150 Days of Halloween: The Loved Ones

Our second Australian film of the list. I'm really enjoying seeing so many interpretations of horror, from so many time periods, countries, and cultures. Its wild, and my appreciation for the genre grows each day, which is shocking, as I already loved horror more then I can really relate in words. Its just always been my thing.

Today's film, The Loved Ones, trades out the surreal and the mysterious of Picnic at Hanging Rock for the white knuckled tension and unflinching brutality of France's Martyrs. It doesn't bring the insane plot or tense relationships of Martyrs though, which is a shame, it instead has qualities more familiar to more torture related ventures listed later in the schedule. While it may be missing out on those aspects, it doesn't detract from the intensity of the film nor the visceral shots it employs so well.

It is rather good.

The Loved Ones falls firmly in the oft maligned segment of horror that has been dubbed torture porn by the media. Movies that linger on painful and excruciating scenes rather then move the camera away, with organic and brutal sounds to pair. Common complaints are that these scenes are meant to excite and titillate the viewer, like some kind of porn. Its fascinating to note that the only people who ever say its supposed to entice in an erotic fashion, are the detractors who condemn the movies. The rest of the viewers don't seem to have that problem, seeing it as horrific and ghastly. When women are the victims a new crowd of critics arrives, but today's outing only sees male victims. So we'll save that discussion for another movie.

The secret desires of angry movie critics aside, that does give you an idea of what you are in for. Very in your face scenes of terrible things happening to good people. So don't pick this one up if that upsets you in anyway. That being said, the tension building used while these bad things happen is done well. I found myself incredibly tense at a few junctures in the movie, most notably during scenes involving a drill. The mechanical whine as it bored into bone, on a one way trajectory to a mans brain, was paced flawlessly. Just long enough to keep me tense but not so overly long that I got over it.

That damn drill!

Getting a bit ahead of myself here, lets blame that on the fact that its 4:30am again and that I just never learn. Anyway, the movie opens in a fashion that should be old hat to anyone that's read all of my reviews, a car crash. A son driving his father home, swerves to avoid a man who is covered in blood, the car strikes a tree so hard that the movie cuts to one year later. We meet back up with the son, our protagonist, who now cuts himself out of guilt for his father's death.

After some typical high school dialogue with his friend, he gently turns down a girl who invites him to a dance, and meets up with his girlfriend for car based sex. This is when we notice the girl he rejected is angrily watching through the window. Her father will then later ambush the boy as he smokes by a tree. Killing his dog and drugging our hero, the man spirits him off to his home, where a makeshift dance has bee arranged in the dingy confines of the kitchen. Then the torture begins.

"Did he say torture?"

We won't dwell on that much, as I have already said most of what needs saying. These moments are visceral and unflinching, and they play with timing in ways that will leave your body aching from the tension it builds. We have seen this all before, but they do it very well here. What I didn't mention were the fantastic jobs of looking totally bat-shit that the father and daughter pull off. The father dotes on his daughter with the same lazy ease that he hammers knives into the boys feet, his sleepy eyes flashing with a delighted menace only the insane can pull off. The daughter flies wildly through intense moods and gleefully dishes out pain with reckless abandon like a child at play, just with salt being flung into deep cuts.

They actually manage to pull some comedy out of the situations this way, such a completely absurd and disturbed relationship played with so much gusto gets a few uncomfortable chuckled out between horrible abuse. These pair well with the b-story of the movie, of our imprisoned hero's friend on his date with the girl he likes. In many ways I wanted more of it, his date is revealed to be the sister of the bloodied man who opened the movie for us, but as interesting as that is, we never get any closure out of it. They build it up, spend the time showing us this happening, and then just leave it unfinished. Makes you wonder why the scenes were included at all, if it was just for comic relief, then that's same dark comedy right their. Seeing a self abusive girl tormented over her brothers year long absence, drinking and being depressed with the comical sidekick, that's not really much fun when the movie ends without her getting any closure.

Crazy done crazy.

This isn't a French movie, so as we near the end we have a heroic escape by our protagonist, which of course includes his bloody vengeance as he wins his freedom. It doesn't all work out perfectly at first, once again giving us some great tension building moments and false starts.

All in all its a well made movie, but it drops its side story abruptly which is a great shame. The potential for building some of the other characters up and fleshing out the story was all right there, but nothing gets done with it. Its the difference between something that's well made, but nothing special, and something that really nails it. Its still a good movie so long as you can stomach it, but it won't surprise you with anything terribly new. Well worth checking out, but leaves you sad at the missed potential.

It must run in the family.

Tomorrow brings us Insidious, which I have been hearing about all year, and all I have heard has been heaps of praise. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited. I have managed to keep all aspects of the plot and story a mystery to myself, just knowing that people think its amazing and scary. Can't wait. For the rest of the movies on the schedule, and for previous reviews, check out The 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: Hour of the Wolf and The Howling

At first glance these two titles seem to imply a double review of werewolf movies, but you would be wrong! One is a surrealist introspection in personal demons, and the other is... about werewolves. So one of them is about werewolves, so what! I will also briefly talk on Cars 2, the Pixar movie the internet loves to hate right now, while forgetting that, "comparable to a Dreamworks outing," doesn't mean a 40% rating. Anyway, onward to our first movie. These may be short, as I have only slept a very little these past few days and have been fairly busy. Hence the double review! Kill me!

Hour of the Wolf is a strange experience, lets get that out of the way now. Unlike in your namby pamby Hollywood ventures, this movie won't ruin the fun and come out and tell you who is crazy, who is real, and who is a vicious externalization of ones inner most demons. It makes for a rather interesting viewing experience.

The movie is presented as a true account, the movie opens with the sounds of a camera crew setting up over black, and eventually cuts to a woman recounting an experience while directly addressing the camera. The fourth wall, thusly obliterated, will no longer be around to help you when a character decides to peer directly at you, despite being in the retelling portion of the film. You are on your own.

I know. I told you it was weird.

The story recounted is that of a wife regarding her husband. He is a tortured artist, plagued by an insomnia I can relate to and hounded by strange persons who may or may not represent his own inner shames and hatreds. That last part I worry about relating to one day. His wife, meanwhile, wants to be by his side through these times, staying awake with him when he can't sleep, and often reminding the viewer that couples who grow old together grow to act and look alike. This foreshadowing can get a bit heavy handed at times, seeing as how she manages to mention it several times.

As the story progresses, so too does the look into this mans slipping grasp on reality. At the open of the film, we are told of these people that haunt him so, he shows his wife drawings of them even, though we are never privileged to see those pieces. Interestingly, we never get a direct look at his finished works, only glimpses of whatever is under his arm or half finished in the background. Soon enough though, they begin to hound him in earnest for us to see, never really sure if they are real or not at this juncture.

No wonder he sees things. Stop that!

This becomes increasingly disconcerting as the encounters become more unhinged and violent, with our tormented artist murdering a child he believes is one of the demons. We, like his wife, have no idea if this was murder, or a violent episode of his degrading mind. It makes for a very effective exercise in mounting dread. Never being sure if the events are actually transpiring or not, who is actually being harmed. The images of the placid island go from beautiful to isolated and foreboding as we watch things decline.

Its not for everyone, certainly, but its an interesting peek into madness and self loathing. If one stops to consider the movie carefully, each character encountered can fit nicely into some aspect of the husbands past and mind. Budding sexuality and curiosity, despair, pompous artistic integrity, and many more. Each one is reacted to in a different way, each a shard of a broken mirror cascaded on the floor.

"Shit, I dropped a contact up here."

If you like Ingmar Bergman, then you would of course like this movie, plus have the added interest in how this relates to the director. If you don't mind surreal and disturbed portraits of mankind, then give it a go. If you prefer a nice linear plot with clear motivations and outcomes, then like Picnic at Hanging Rock, you may want to pass on this. Though you are missing out if you do. Now for our second movie.

Ah, the werewolf myth. The classic tale of man's inner animal, the evil we try to mask through society. Every culture has a myth like it, from skin-walkers to the classic shape-shifters, its one of out oldest legends regardless of where you are. Its natural story fodder, being a part of the collective unconscious as it is, and thus you can find countless movies about it. Such as The Howling!

I too fear large walls of paper.

The Howling is a bit heavy handed at times regarding the nature of the myth, with characters constantly mentioning the inner animal. That's fine though, this isn't exactly an exorcize in subtly here. Its just a good old romp with monsters eating people, and we shouldn't fault it for going through the trouble of adding some story. Even if it drops various threads along the way.

Initially the movie is about a reporter hunting down a serial killer who eats parts of his victims. This of course draws parallels to cult like behavior and the werewolf myth, as well as a clever little moment where someone mentions our societies fixation with violence. Something that was constantly in the news when 80's horror films like this were the big societal scapegoat, after comics got de-fanged. The serial killer is the focus, and with his body vanishing from the morgue, its assumed his werewolf self would play a major role.

Suddenly the sex scene is awkward for everyone.

Well, the writers disagree, and instead we get a whole colony of werewolves! The colony that our poor reporter is sent to as a way of recovering from her PTSD after her encounter with the killer. So, while our serial killer drops from the limelight and is officially the first werewolf to die, that's alright since we have about 15 more to work with. Its a fun, entertaining werewolf story. It sets up more plot threads and themes then its able to actually address in anyway, but that doesn't stop it from being a good old 80's horror experience. Sometimes that's all someone wants. The plot turns are expected, but no less exciting, and we have plenty of hammy actors having fun with the roles. Oh, and the director was Joe Dante, who you may recall from earlier in the list with The Hole. So good times all around.

While this certainly isn't the best werewolf experience, that comes much later in my schedule, it certainly does have some damn good effects for the time and budget. Making liberal use of air bladders under foamed latex appliances, skin bubbles and crawls all over the place. Skin rips open, bones snap and warp, and everything is visceral and immediate. Few cuts, and some clever use of time shifts make for some very nice transformation scenes. Although some of the puppet work once they finish transforming makes it look like an aggressive Muppet doesn't understand how hugs work at times. For me, this is less a detracting from the experience, and more a happy perk. Something to laugh at besides the useless female lead hugging the silver bullet loaded rifle as opposed to firing it.

Aw, look! Hes happy!

If you enjoy campy, bloody, and oft times goofy horror, then watch it already. Its a good time, and a great choice come Halloween. It manages to evoke a tense and creepy atmosphere at times, but also breaks its own spell with hammy goodness enough to keep it a good party movie. Well worth watching alone or with friends.

"Hugging! HOW DO I DO IT?!"

Only 4am and here I am wrapping this up! I may not die today! Well, tomorrow, which is today, is another day, despite really being today. That means another movie! The Howling eased us out of our older movie streak, and tomorrow's The Loved Ones firmly returns us to modern horror for awhile. After that is Insidious, which made lots of waves this past year at festivals and among horror bloggers. So I'm looking forward to the next two days for sure.

As always, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule for future movie dates and previous review links. Hope you didn't mind the slightly delirious tones these revie-OH! Almost forgot about Cars 2!

Cars 2 - A danger to our children?

The internet angry men who review movies have gone feral and now foam at the mouth over how bad Cars 2 is. Lamenting the lack of emotion or soul that we have come to expect from Pixar. They rant about having the redneck tow truck as the focus point, and that its too James Bond, with enemy cars dying left and right. They then give it abysmal ratings, but not before saying its on par with Dreamwork's movies.

That last bit is what annoys me. They give Cars 2 a 30% or a 40% which is a pretty abysmal score, but the average Dreamworks outing in mediocrity gets a 60% or 70% instead. I can promise you that Cars 2 is disappointing when held up to previous Pixar movies, but when you hold it up to Megamind, or Mars Needs Moms, or so many other movies that scored better, Cars 2 is the clear winner. People are skewing the score board HARD for Cars 2, making what is an average movie out to look like some kind of abomination. It's not, its just average. Hell, its slightly above average considering the talent involved.

See it for this short. DO IT.

It's fun for kids, and if you just want to watch some James Bond knock offs that are living cars blow shit up, then hell, your in for a good time. If you want to be emotionally moved in some way, re-watch any other Pixar movie. They didn't hit a home run, doesn't mean we need to beat them to death with the bat for it.

Really done now. No, I won't proof read it at 4:30am. Suffer grammar nazi's!

150 Days of Halloween: Picnic at Hanging Rock

First, an unrelated announcement. For those of you who are on Steam and were curious as to what Capsized is like, I reviewed that sucker over on Nightmare Mode. Spoilers: I liked it. Check at the review here if you are interested.

Beautiful game.

If you don't like movies being spoiled, then don't read any further then this. The movie is a strange one, and nothing is clearly offered up to the viewer. For this reason, speculating on its meaning and events requires I reveal aspects of the movie, including its ending. If you don't mind, then read on, otherwise see the movie first. Its a strange one, and doesn't follow many conventions we expect in a movie. This is less a review and more my open musings on the movie, what it meant to me and what i thought of various decisions it made.

A bit of plot for you before I dive into the surreal movie that is Picnic at Hanging Rock. The movie follows the students of an all girls school in Australia in the 1900's. At the open everyone is getting ready for a picnic at the titular mountain, save for one girl who is told she isn't permitted to attend. So everyone piles into the carriage and they head off to for the day. When they arrive everyone discovers their watches have stopped at noon, but their musing are cut short by four girls who ask to strike out to see the mountain better. As the four climb higher they become more and more detached, save for one complaining girl who wants to go back. The higher they go, the more dreamily they talk about life and human purpose, removing stocking, shoes, and corsets as they go. At one point they all silently lay down on the stone to nap in unison, and upon waking three silently climb higher, and the fourth runs off screaming.

Also Beautiful, but a movie.

The screaming girl returns, but can't remember where the other three went, but remembers seeing one of the teachers climbing the mountain as well, but she wasn't wearing her dress anymore. Unable to find them, they return to the school to alert everyone of the missing girls, and the manhunt begins. Among the searchers is a British boy who saw the girls head off to climb the mountain, and becomes obsessed with finding one of them, much to the annoyance of his Australian friend and servant who helps him. The boy is unable to locate any of them, being unable to climb high enough, but his servant isn't as hampered and does manage to locate one girl just above where his friends strength gave out.

The girl, of course, remembers nothing. The school meanwhile is losing students due to the incident and things begin to fall apart. I'll discuss the rest of the movie after we talk about the tone, ending, and story.

A unified nap among lizards and stones.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a strange movie. Generally speaking horror movies have active antagonists, a man with a knife, ghosts, monsters, aliens, and all other manner of dynamic forces seeking to harm the protagonists. A smaller amount make the protagonist into an antagonist, who, through madness or bad choices manage to drive the horror. This movie lacks both of these aspects, its unclear why the events happen as they do, and little explanation is ever offered up.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing either, although for some viewers this can be frustrating, some would even feel its pointless. Some people don't like a lack of closure, and without a proper ending, will often feel the movie was a waste. For me, however, that's not the case. I'm more about the journey then the destination, stories don't necessarily need resolution for me, which may be why I enjoyed this movie.

Never seen such a haunting movie.

The journey of this movie is a study of unease. Sounds are prominently used to un-center the viewer, clocks ticking and then stopping, strange and otherworldly sounds echo down the mountain side, and sometimes the pleasant soundtrack will just abandon you. The characters who will come to vanish in the mountains each have strange moments, of low spoken monologues about the nature of the mountain, wistfully talking about someday leaving, and other moments that displace them from the cheerful classmates around them.

The cheerful, and not so cheerful classmates at times appear to be the true story being told despite the focus being on the search for the missing girls. If you ignore the surreal moments atop the mountain, the real conflict being explored is classicism in 1900 Australia. Everyone is treated well at the all girls school save for one, notably the only Australian girl among a school full of British students and instructors. Besides her friends and one teacher, who is French, the girl is looked down upon and denied a chance to join her friends on the picnic. After her best friend vanishes on the mountain, she gets no consolation or comfort besides being told her tuition wasn't paid, and she is to be returned to the orphanage.

The poor Australian girl trapped in an English hell.

On the other end of the classicism spectrum we have all of these posh British people in the outbacks of Australia. They build homes that stand out in stark relief in the environment, they explore the mountain sides in corsets and proper dresses, they are like a well dressed infestation on the wilds of Australia. It seems as if the country itself was driving events of the movie, the British boy couldn't climb high enough to find the girl, but his Australian friend did. The girl who ran screaming complained the whole way, and the one girl who didn't remain vanished but was found remarkably unharmed after a week in the wild is the only one who expressed concern for the complainer. The other three, and the teacher, were all seen as having reverence for the mountain in some way, and were seen stripping themselves of class before silently vanishing into the mountain.

Back at the school, the poor Australian girl is tormented by everyone but the servants and the French teacher, no one having any pity for her. The girl who returned from the mountain is accosted by her peers who demand to know what happened to their classmates, she has been tainted in their eyes. This ostracizing of the Australian girl would drive her to suicide, unable to take being confined in the small bubble of upper class Britain. As the school falls apart in her hands, the head of the school would later die attempting to climb the mountain that ruined her, she would be found dead and broken at its base.

The man who fails to find the girls or tame the land.

The missing people are never found, not even signs of where they went, no explanation is ever offered up to us or the people of the movie. My speculations are just that, my own interpretations into the movie, largely informed by assumptions I have on Australian feelings toward a colonial England. The movie is beautifully shot and well acted, and many scenes seem pregnant with meaning that I'm not aware of. I'm still not sure what the movie is about, or what it was trying to say. I enjoyed it, certainly, but I also feel like I need someone who is more knowledgeable in the location and time period to explain it to me. I would certainly encourage you to see it, if only so you can also muse on what you have seen.

Tomorrow we return to Sweden, but in 1968 and directed by the esteemed Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is notable for being the auteurs only venture into Gothic horror. If you want to know what comes after that, or want to read previous reviews, then check out The 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: The Phantom Carriage and Dead of Night

Apparently one movie and one review a day is hard to manage, what with life's vagaries. However, I made a schedule and I am determined to stick by it, even if it means double reviews like the this. The two movies in question are the 1921 Swedish romantic horror movie, The Phantom Carriage. This was the first silent film of the list, and other silent films now have a great deal to live up to. The other was Dead of Night, a series of horror vignettes by the British Ealing company, which is best known for its comedy classics produced following WWII.

First up is The Phantom Carriage, and just to set the tone a bit for you, I loved this movie. Its the best Swedish movie I have yet to see, and its even the best silent film I have yet to see, with a rich and involved narrative uncommon for the time, and the wonderfully expressive acting that was. This ninety (90!) year old movie, which has held up remarkably well, was paired with a distinctly modern soundtrack produced by KTL. At first I was sad that it was the only version I could find, but after watching the movie with this music pairing, I am glad its the version I found. The soundtrack was immensely effective at creating a haunting mood.

Its based on a novel written ten years prior to the film.

This movie is a morality tale at its core, like A Christmas Carol, but instead of being about a man bitter for bitter's sake and often just focusing on Christmas' role, its about humanity. Its a tale about the faults in us all, the potential we each have to fall off the path and become lost souls. It is also about the redemptive qualities in us all, and the power we have to help out fellow man. By giving the main character a distinctly human flaw, alcoholism as opposed to just being a dick, it grants the film great power in affecting its message.

The movie opens with a young women on her deathbed, consumption has been taking its toll on her for a year now, and she doesn't have much time left in this world. In between fits of spasm inducing coughs, she begs for those around her to bring David Holm to her bedside. Everyone looks uncomfortable and concerned, but after much pleading, they consent and begin the search. We soon understand why, the man is a filthy drunk spending his New Years eve with others addicted to the bottle among the dead in a cemetery. In the spirit of the setting and the time, he tells those around him a tale.

He's the drunk on the right.

He once had a friend who was always jolly, the same man who incidentally introduced him to the joys of drinking. This friends spirits were high everyday of the year but one, the day of New Years Eve, and once explained why that was. He was once told a tale, one he believes with all his heart, about the specter of death. You see, Death just oversees the whole operation, he doesn't collect the dead himself. Instead, the last soul to be reaped in any given year will be doomed to drive deaths carriage and collect those who have lost their lives. So, fearing such a fate, he becomes withdrawn and scared every New Years eve.

His drunken friends give a shudder and fretfully glance at the clock to see its almost midnight, at which point David takes a gulp of his wine and tells them the friend died last New Years eve, of all nights. Its at this point that someone finally finds the man and demands he come to Sister Edit's death bed, to which he bitterly refuses. The man soon gives a sad sigh and leaves the drunks to their cemetery.

The titular carriage.

This doesn't sit well with the other drunks however, who soon demand that he heed the call of the dying. Denying them, a fight soon breaks out between the once happy inebriates. The confrotnation comes to a head when a bottle gets smashed over David's head, and fearing he has died just as the clock struck midnight, they flee the scene. Its at this point that his old friend arrives atop a ghostly carriage to inform him of his new duty as Deaths driver, but not before he shows David the extent of his sins in the living world.

From here on out the movie follows the two as they silently witness events from David's past, from his initial fall, various failed attempts to clean up, and the fact that his own callous disregard for others caused Sister Edit's consumption. We watch his slow transformation in these flashbacks from loving father to a broken and bitter man driven only by a desire to watch others fall like he has. While we watch that happen in the past, we watch the opposite happen to his ghostly shade, we see him slowly understand the harm he has caused, and slowly we see his sorrow and desire to repent. These two parallel arcs for a single character happening in one narrative is masterfully done, and for it to happen in a silent movie is incredible. You barely get such great structure and story in modern movies, and this people did it without sound, color, and with the limitations of filming equipment at the time. Not to mention the impressive effects of the film.

His friend, now Death's driver, shows him his life in grim detail.

The double exposure special effect is used to great effect, and better then I have ever seen it. The ghostly apparitions will be covered by elements or characters in the foreground while still allowing the background to be seen through their bodies. For a movie made in 1921 this is an amazing feat, and it allows for incredible scenes, such as death's carriage riding between crashing waves at the scene of a capsized boat. Death's driver is then seen to climb from the carriage, down between the swells and waves, to collect a soul on the sea floor. Its beautifully done, and all the while the soundtrack by KTL is creating a truly haunting feeling that pairs so naturally with the ghostly nature of the film.

I don't have enough praise to heap on this movie, its that good, it is beyond rare for a movie to age even 10 years gracefully, the fact that this one remains powerful and so good after 90 is hard to even believe. You may be wondering why I was so detailed with the opening of the film, and then trailed off into vagueness for the middle and end. The opening really sets the tone of the movie, showing us a present state to the world before stories and flashbacks change everything up on us and take everyone for a ride. I want you to have that set up, and my various peeks into why this movie was as well liked as it was, in the hopes it may drive you to seek it out. Its a beautiful moving portrait of everything we are capable as people, the story is moving and masterfully told, and everyone deserves to see this with fresh eyes. If you like movies, then you owe it to yourself to see it.

Two shades begin to talk about life.

Now for Dead of Night, a decidedly different experience. Made in 1945, this movie is comprised of a series of related stories being told by guests in a house. The stories are all about encounters with the supernatural, be they ghosts, premonitions, or possession. These stories are all told to one character in particular who is convinced he has dreamed his arrival at the house, and that in the dream terrible things will happen. The other characters tell their owns stories, both as a means of agreeing with him that it could be possible he foresaw the future as well as to comfort him that nothing bad will happen.

This makes it hard to judge the movie as a whole, as each story told within the greater story is so distinct. Some of the stories, like the slow tension building story of a man who sees a totally different room on the other side of a mirror that slowly consumes him, or the tale of an unhinged ventriloquist rules by his dummy really stand out as great segments. Some of the others, meanwhile, are not as strong, such as the story of a girl playing hide and seek and finding a ghost alone in a room.

See that? Apparently critics got up and hugged the movie.

On the whole their are more good segments then bad, and they all flow nicely into the main story. The story tellers react and change with each telling, some getting more concerned and some calming down as time passes. All the while portents from the mans dream slowly come to pass, and sometimes fail to thanks to a story that was told, easing his concerns some. This mechanic does wonders to create tension in the main narrative, all of these tales being told leaves you wondering when everything will finally fall apart in that house.

As for horror, not many segments really bring the scares, the dummy sequence does well, but when have you seen a dummy that didn't creep you out? Most people in my age bracket also have the benefit of Are You Afraid of the Dark's dummy episode, which was inspired by this movie, having seeded the fear of dummys in us years ago. Likewise the fear of mirrors is a natural choice, everyone has caught sight of something in a mirror in a dimly lit room once in their lives, this will always leave a lingering doubt.

Any sane person fears a dummy just a bit.

I suppose that's what this movie does well. Nothing is going to jump out at you, nor are any of the scenes gruesome in anyway. The stories though, they are all rooted in very common and basic fears and superstitions. Dreams that seen to predict tragedy, perceived supernatural warnings that avert disaster, ghosts, mirrors, and living puppets. The movie doesn't need to go out of its way, these are already in the back of your mind.

Still though, I don't feel its aged as gracefully as the other movie reviewed in this post, segments could have been much more imposing and left lingering fears that would color the main narrative. I just wanted more out of it, for it to be more creepy and frightening then just merely entertaining. The movie is still good, make no mistake, but it isn't truly frightening, and I sadly never felt much in the way of tension. Still worth checking out, because ultimately this movies concepts have gone on to inspire many more movies after it, some of which took the ideas and really ran with them to great effect.

"Watch these movies, or I'll let the dummy eat your eyes."

Tomorrow we jump forward in time 30 years to 1975, and move from Britain to its former colony of Australia for Picnic at Hanging Rock. As always, check out The 150 Days of Halloween schedule for past reviews and future movie dates.

150 Days of Halloween: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and The Cremator

We are in the middle of a block of older, and largely foreign films now, which is exiting. Yesterday was The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, a 1933 black and white German film by the auteur Fritz Lang. Today's film was The Cremator, a 1969 Czechoslovakian film by Juraj Herz. Vastly different movies in style, tone, content, and direction.

Being from the mind of Fritz Lang, I don't need to tell you that The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was an exceptional film. Not much of a horror movie sadly, save for the creepy titular doctor who organizes a crime spree from a padded cell. A crime spree with no other purpose then to destabilize the government and create havoc and terror in the streets. Kind of like Tyler Durden's Project Chaos, but with a disregard for innocent lives.

Does Fritz Lang have any bad movies?

Despite it not being much of a traditional horror movie, it still has various elements of the genre. The mysterious and mad Dr. Mabuse for instance begins as a crazed man frantically scribbling criminal manifests in his cell. These plans slowly build a larger picture for what essentially amounts to a terrorist cell committed to creating terror for terrors sake. After his death, Mabuse then returns as a ghastly apparition to oversee his plans, his visage is transparent with massive unblinking eyes and a partially visible brain. He would later possess his caretaker and admirer at the asylum, and use his body to personally handle aspects of his plan to destabilize the nation.

Besides the doctor and his ability to drive those who hamper his plans mad with fear, the movie plays mostly like a mystery and a crime thriller. You have gangsters committing robberies and murders, the police working to unravel the mystery and holding gunfights with the gangsters, and the obligatory gangster who has second thoughts and becomes the hero. Its not Lang's best work, but its still a beautiful movie and its a joy to watch. For a better thriller by Lang, you can't do any better then M, which is a brilliant movie.

May not be much horror in the movie, but this certainly counts.

This was a short review, but so were its Halloween appropriate elements. Whatever list I read that listed this as a horror movie was very much mistaken, but I'm still glad I can say I saw it now. I'll be more careful about reading up just a bit more on these before watching them, to weed out anymore non-horror surprises. The bottom line is The Testament of Dr. Mabuse isn't a horror movie, but its still a damn good movie. The special effects are stellar for a 1930's movie as well, Mabuse is a creepy sight as he haunts his plans for ruin, and Lang insisted on using real weapons and explosions through the production, which really shows.

The Cremator is also not a 100% horror movie, but it certainly is creepy and strange. It follows a man who works for a crematorium, and that work borders on obsession. Through the entire movie the man dreamily muses over the nature of death and life, and the freeing nature of burning a body. He monologues through scene transitions, starting a conversation at a brothel and finishing the same line to his wife. This creates an incredibly surreal state through the film, with the main character being the one constant feature as he drifts through the movie.

Morbid, funny, and super weird.

Around him, Germany is closing in the the Czech borders, and loyalties are being drawn. At first he resists the transition, valuing his friendships and his family more then being a member of the Nazi party. Soon that begins to change, as he falls more and more deeply into his warped interpretation of the Tibetan philosophy of reincarnation. As he sees the German influence grow, his desire changes from protecting those around him, to saving them. Saving them, of course, means killing and burning them to spare them the suffering to come.

So, with the same dream like motions he has always had through the film, he begins to kill off his family to save them. He sells out the other workers at the crematorium, his temple of death, to keep it pure and unspoiled. Soon he is having vivid hallucinations of being the reincarnation of Buddha, which coincide nicely with the new job the Reich have for him. They need a party member who knows a thing or two about burning bodies, someone to lead a project to build massive crematorium furnaces. He joyfully envisions a massive hall of fire, where bodies stream in one end and ashes out the other, freed souls pouring out the chimneys all the while. He wants to save everyone in the world.

"My Father isn't insane and evil... right?"

Its a dark movie, I mean did you read that last part? The man goes on to build the furnaces that millions would die in during the war that follows! Despite that dark subject matter, its played perfectly straight. The score is beautiful classical music, the same that plays over the crematorium speakers. Our leading man smiles constantly and is always eager to lay a hand on whoever hes talking to. He never comes across as a killer, and believes everything he is doing is for the best. Its an incredibly black and incredibly dry comedy. The deaths don't happen until the very end of the movie, after he is beyond lost in his own unstable mind, but the menace pours off him long before that.

With his hand constantly touching the people around him, his endless smile and need to constantly fix his hair, the man is just creepy the whole time. His family is stone silent for near the entire movie to really contrast with his nonstop talking about death, beauty, and the nature of the soul. His obsession with death, and his belief that it is a freedom from suffering, is a constant subject for the man, and it influences everything he does. The entire experience is simply surreal.

"Think I'll save my family suffering at the hands of the Nazi's by brutally killing them one by one."

You won't be terrified by this movie, but you may be unsettled by it. Its a window into a warped mans mind, one who believes that death is mans only salvation. As viewers we are aware of the horrible acts that will follow the Nazi parties rise to power, a knowledge that colors the entire experience in a very dark light. If you want a strange experience, then give this movie a go. I'm still not sure what I fully think of the whole thing.

Tomorrow continues our trend of older, foreign, not quite straight horror movies with The Phantom Carriage. Its a 1921 Swedish romantic horror movie. Romance horror is a fairly uncommon sub-genre, so it should be interesting to say the least. To see past reviews and future movies, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: The Dunwich Horror (1970)

This will be a short review, mostly because I have a headache, but also because this movie could have been interchanged with any terrible B-movie from the late 60's or early 70's.

I love terrible B movies, from any year really. The wooden acting, the cardboard special effects, and the thread bare plot and logic are all hilarious to endure. However, this isn't just some random B movie with giant bugs or tin-foil based alien menaces. No, this one chose a Lovecraft story to base itself on, which means it falls under a special kind of scrutiny. The Dunwich Horror can't avoid drawing comparisons to its written source of inspiration.

The female lead and Sir Not Appearing in This Film.

The story is drastically different between the story and this movie. The timeline is truncated, characters are altered and added, motivations have been changed, and the ending is of course vastly different. Aside from names and locations, this could very well be an unrelated movie. This isn't the first movie to fail at adapting Lovecraft's work, but it is the first one to keep its title the same as its source materials.

We follow a charismatic creeper and the best part of the movie, Wilbur, as he manages to charm and make off with a young woman who may or may not be the assistant to Dr. Armitage, who is lecturing at Arkham. Wilbur then slowly, ever so slowly, drugs the woman, Nancy, over the course of a weekend. The purpose of drugging her seems to be so she will be a willing sacrifice as a means to open a gateway to allow entrance of The Old Ones. This slow drugging process gives us plenty of time for Wilbur to make painfully funny faces at Nancy to show us hes using his occult powers to control her. It also gives his grandfather plenty of time to stutter lines at Wilbur in a hilariously forced old man voice.

"My god... I just realized. I'm awesome."

I think the best part of this experience is the "special effect" used whenever someone is attacked by the monster, Wilbur's alien twin brother. The first one is by far the best, a woman unlocks the door the creature resides behind, prompting the creature to attack. The image flashes to a primary color, just a simple colored transparency placed over the film. After the first flash, the woman's coat is gone. FLASH, now she is lacking a shirt. FLASH, now she is naked. With one last primary color the woman falls to the ground screaming, then dies.

Why did she have to get naked during the rave of colors? No idea, that's just how monsters roll in this movie. Later the monster would massacre a forest of armed men, but they got to keep their clothes on as the screen flashed between red, blue, green, and so forth. The monster, apparently, doesn't swing that way.

"Yep, still the best part of this movie."

If you want a good movies, or even just a passable one, this isn't for you. This is a Mystery Science Theater caliber movie experience, it demands that you have fun with it. So sit down with some friends and prepare to mimic the robotic like mannerisms of Wilbur, and to make all the awesome wide eyed faces he makes. I really hope the Rifftrax people cover this movie one day.

In other news, I saw The Green Lantern today. Its a bright and shiny movie, but it has a number of serious flaws when it comes to writing and character motivation. As is the case with many movies I see, this one was more entertaining as something to mock then to absorb and consider. Its not terrible, mind you, this isn't another Dare Devil or Fantastic Four, but it certainly isn't a Dark Knight or an Iron Man either. Its still an entertaining movie, and when they just let GL do his thing it can be pretty good, just be prepared to roll your eyes a few times and to question a number of things that people do in the movie.

"No evil... save for the various genocides in developing regions, those don't look cool to fight though."

So, tomorrow we have The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, by the master of German Expressionism, Fritz Lang. So get ready for a trip back to 1933. If you want to know what other movies will be coming up, or have already been reviewed, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: A Tale of Two Sisters and Cabin Fever

We return to our 150 day long celebration of Halloween, already in progress. In a way this will also be a celebration of my memories with Pleasant Street Video, they may be leaving, but the movies go on. So lets pop a vitamin D supplement because we never see the sun and talk about the past two days movies.

First off we have A Tale of Two Sisters by Kim Ji-woon, the man responsible for the two highly recommended movies, I Saw the Devil and The Good, the Bad, the Weird. One day I'll go through all my past posts and make sure all the titles are italicized, but that day is not today.

If its a good Asian horror movie, then you can bet a shitty American remake exists.

A Tale of Two Sisters was an incredible movie experience, and one that will be frustratingly hard to talk about without somehow robbing you of part of what makes it great. With the exception of Martyrs, all of the movies on this list so far have had stories and plots that could be openly discussed and used for context without seriously detracting from the experience. Knowing that The Descent has monsters and group tension doesn't ruin the movie, just like knowing that Stay Alive is a steaming pile won't make it any less stupid and fun to mock. However, to go too deeply into Martyrs and some of the directions that story goes would seriously detract from the experience, those reveals and realizations are integral to the experience. The movie can't toy with you as mercilessly as it does if you know what to look for.

This is more true of A Tale of Two Sisters, by several factors even. It is essential you go into this movie your first time as unaware of the experience as you can. Skip the Wikipedia entry and the IMDB listing, avert your eyes from the DVD cover and read nothing on the streaming media source relating to the movie. Start it cold and fresh, and allow the confusion and anxiety to slowly build inside you. Here is another important note, if you like to watch movies with friends, consider breaking that trend for this one. You don't want someone asking whats going on, or wondering aloud why someone behaves the way they do. This movie will not be giving out answers while you watch it, and the last thing you want is someone whispering questions or guesses and taking you out of the experience.

So much subtle menace throughout this movie.

The experience is everything. You get little to no background with the opening of this movie, characters have complicated and tumultuous histories with one another and you are not privy to them. Not knowing anything that happened in these peoples lives, to make them love and hate the way they do, it drastically colors your perception of each person living in the barren and foreboding home together. This lack of insight into these lives will pull you in and not let you go, if you lapse in attention you might miss a clue or a window into the mysteries of the family.

Its grasp on me being as strong as it was also allowed the horror aspect of the film to more deeply penetrate the experience for me. Most movies give you plenty of back story to work off of, hoping to endear characters to you as efficiently as possible. Likewise they try to integrate the horror aspect with stories told among characters, expendable cast who die before the main cast arrive, flashbacks, glimpses on cameras or televisions. More likely then not, by the twenty minute mark you are aware of the killers existence, or the monster, or the telepathic car tire - and the important event that caused this horror to happen.

I forgot to mention the movie is visually beautiful as well.

You have no such luxuries here. When creepy comes for you here, it comes with no warning or knowledge of why its come. The soundtrack makes excellent use of distortion to pair with the visuals to unnerve you as effectively as possible, and once it happens the first time you just can't relax anymore. You don't know when those moments will return, you don't know what prompts them or what they mean, you are as helpless as the people in the movie.

I know this is all incredibly vague, but I have to be, the mystery of it all is what makes this movie so great. The fear of the unknown and the mounting dread as each event builds on the last is such a wonderful feeling that it would be criminal to deny them. Watch this movie and let it take you for the ride, and when its all over and you finally understand all you have seen, watch it again. I don't even need to tell you to, you just will. You will have a need to see the events of the film transpire as someone privy to the history of the characters, to know why they are the people they are.

Seriously, see this movie.

Many movies proclaim to by psychological horror movies. A Tale of Two Sisters puts most of them to shame, it makes them feel bad for including that psychological tag in its genre listing. Put on headphones, turn off the light, watch it alone, and let it take you. You will be glad you did.

This brings us to the movie I watched today, a movie I have seen many times and never seem to get tired of. Made by the oft maligned Eli Roth, Cabin Fever is often credited for bring the R rating back into popularity after movies like Scream set the trend that horror needs to be PG-13 to be profitable.

I want a skull cabin.

I love Cabin Fever, I have ever since I rented it from the Blockbuster that replaced my childhood indie rental store. I loved it so much I never returned it, they never noticed, so it was clearly fated that I should own it. Since then I have upgraded to a proper special edition DVD release of the movie, because I guess I like shiny holographic slipcovers for my horror movies. Cabin Fever deliberately chooses a common setting, common protagonists, and other trapping for an 80's inspired slasher movie. Unlike your common 80's horror movie, this one doesn't have a killer.

Not in the proper sense of a killer anyway, no mask wearing behemoth wielding a machete to be found, only a disease. This is one of the big reasons I like Cabin Fever as much as I do, it forgoes the seemingly magical killer in the woods with something just as deadly and unpredictable. Fear and paranoia mount, and without a tangible thing to fear, all of that energy turns inward. As the infection makes itself known, lines get drawn in the sand. They isolate one another, either by choice or by force, in desperate attempts to stay alive. This falling apart makes the other element I love all the better, the fact that nothing ever goes right for these people.

Boy meets world, then meets flesh eating bacteria.

The whole movie is a comedy of errors just as much as it is a horror movie. Attempts at salvation are constantly within reach of these characters, but somehow they always manage to do exactly what it takes to ruin it. My personal favorite being when Paul, the primary focus of the movie, manages to find a house with people in it. He excitedly runs up to a window and peers inside, desperate to save himself and his friends. What he sees is a woman, naked, reading a book in bed. Understandably caught off guard by this, he freezes like a deer in headlights, which is when the husband and his shotgun round the corner.

Roth manages to craftily build tension through the movie this way, while at the same time getting some laughs out of us. The cast progressively get sicker, and range out further and further for help that is always snatched away at the last moment, all the while the flesh literally melts off their bones. Lesions grow and weep, skin slides off in wet heaps of red, and you can practically smell the sweat and rot wafting off the sicker members of the group. The R rating is put to good use in the movie with the gore alone, without it the flesh eating virus that rampages through the film would simply fail to be menacing in anyway, and much of the twisted humor of the experience would be lost.

"Those kids need help! SHOOT 'EM!"

Cabin Fever is a love letter to the genre from someone who grew up with the splatter-fests of the 70's and 80's, the setting is a tribute to Evil Dead, the creepy denizens of the backwaters around the cabin are straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in many ways its a road map of my own childhood. Most importantly, rather then just make his own masked killer in the woods, Roth brought something new to the experience without losing those homages. Horror was dead for a few years in the late 80's and early 90's, Scream managed to make it profitable again, but only as a PG-13 venture. Decry him all you want, but with Cabin Fever Roth brought the R rating back, and in many ways revived Horror in America.

We'll be talking about Roth again not too long from now, when Hostel pops up in the schedule. He gets plenty of flak from people opposed to gore and violence in films, but those people aren't his target audience. People who love the low budget madness of Troma, or who count Bad Taste among the best of Peter Jackson's work are the audience. Those of us who wistfully recall the first time they saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Evil Dead understand where Roth is coming from when he makes his movies. In many ways he is like Tarantino, the movies he makes are Frankenstein like monsters of tributes and homages that still manage a unique twist that takes it out of the range of emulation. In much the same way, half of the critics will pan the surface of the movie, while those who praise them do so by expounding upon the details and features that lie beneath the surface.

Wrong Cabin Fever...

This Cabin Fever review certainly got away from me toward the end there. The movie is a tribute to the genre, its funny without sacrificing its tone too much, and overall its a great time. Its fun to watch with friends, and just as fun to watch alone. If you have fellow horror junkies in your life, sit down with a bowl of popcorn and have a good time with this one. Otherwise, crack yourself open a beer and enjoy the show. Be sure to stick around for the credits, or you miss out on the punchline to a joke that gets set-up in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Tomorrow is The Dunwich Horror, the first directly Lovecraft inspired film on the list, but certainly not the last. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, and a massive inspiration for my life and art, but sadly his stories have rarely been adapted into anything above a B-grade movie. Our best bet was Guillermo del Toro who was all set to adapt At the Mountains of Madness, so fingers crossed another studio steps in that's willing to invest in a dark, R-rated movie that doesn't have a happy ending.

A great behind the scenes moment here.

If you are curious about past reviews, or about upcoming movies, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

The Changing Times and the Death of a Community

Need to interrupt our 150 Days of Halloween with a lament of the changing times, and to draw attention to a good cause. If one thing is clear to anyone that knows me, or even just reads this here blog, I love movies. More then love really, they have been my crutch through every tough phase of my life, not that I don't watch them constantly during the good parts of life as well. After sickness, injury, heartbreak, death, and during periods of loneliness I have turned to movies to ease transitions and dull pain. Often when someone says something like this they then slide into a talk about why that makes their taste in movies superior, or why they know more about movies then other people.

Those people are stupid. From the highest concept art-house film down to the worst b-movie ever strung together with pocket change and lies, they are all worthy in my eyes. I have been, and will be, critical of movies I review on this blog, but I never regret watching even the worst ones and will often defend them against unfair critical attack.

The average movie critic.

Growing up, I had a local rental store not far from my house or my aunts house, so we would often stop and rent a movie from one home to another. Soon enough I was in that little store once a week or more picking out VHS's to watch in the following days. After awhile I became a regular fixture in the horror section, this little 11 year old kid who was working his way through the shelf because he decided he needed to see them all. Also because the game section included a total of five SNES games, and the only one that was ever in was Mario's Missing, so their weren't many other interesting sections.

The owner was a nice old guy who was also passionate about movies the same way I was at that age, the good ones were good, and the bad ones were still plenty of fun. Soon my trips included talking about what I had watched that week with the owner, and not long after that, other patrons. Even though I was just a stupid kid, the regular adults could still chat with me about movies and for kid me, this was awesome. It was my first taste of being a part of a real community, where my age didn't matter, but my opinion on Trilogy of Terror's Zuni warrior Tiki Doll did. That little rental store was my favorite place in the whole world growing up, for the movies as well as the community.

Yes, this was my child-hood. Never met anyone else who has seen this one.

When that store closed during the early years of high school it was more then losing a store, I was losing a community of friends that just couldn't be sustained outside of those walls. I watched a part of my life get boarded up and reopened as a Blockbuster. A year later when I finally decided to give that Blockbuster a try, my rental DVD was snapped in two right in the case. To this day I still don't know how the employee managed to open and stare at the DVD for 15 seconds without noticing half the DVD was upside down. I understand that the store died and was replaced because the switch to DVD happened as fast as it did, and I know it was too expensive for the owner to replace all of his collection with DVDs. He tried, a small DVD section appeared around when The Matrix came out, but Blockbuster had the weight of a corporation behind it.

I hated Blockbuster for years after that, and would often feel a dirty little glow of happiness whenever a location shuttered its doors. Eventually though I realized that, while I hate the corporate and controlled nature of the store, its still a place for people to get the movies they need, and perhaps for communities to form around. Indie rental stores were dead for miles around me back home, so all I had were the Blockbusters. Then I moved away for college, and that changed everything.

We all saw it coming.

I arrived at my new college as part of an orientation group dedicated to geekery. We gamed, we talked comics, and we watched movies. We also drove around in a dinky van to visit every comic shop and game store in the area. I was excited to see these communities, and to be a part of them, but they didn't satisfy the itch for a movie community. Until we casually happened to walk past a place called Pleasant Street Video. It changed everything.

It was everything I could have ever wanted, it was an independent rental store with two floors of every movie I could ever want, built next door to an independent movie theater. Instead of one owner and five regulars, it had eight awesome employees who were all passionate about movies and it always had people browsing the aisles. Once again I had a movie store to visit once a week, and slowly I had a community again.

If I wasn't on campus, I was here.

After my first college breakup I haunted the cult movie section. In my second year I stepped up to run my favorite student group, and once a week I would rent the movie to be projected from among those rows. After my aunt died I celebrated her memory by revisiting those years from my childhood, picking out horror movies based on whatever had the silliest cover, as if I was a kid again and she was there with me. I could count on Pleasant Street to entertain me and my friends, to distract me from the hard times, to inspire my art, to give me research material during my thesis. It was a part of my education those four years just as much as the college was.

I remember the second semester of my third year. It was already a pretty rough year, I was in the hospital the semester before due to severe dehydration and a caffeine overdose, after a week of intense anxiety and forgetting to eat, drink, or sleep for days. Rather then be smart and take a lighter schedule, I had opted to be stupid and had a schedule that included a full course load and three screenings a week. This essentially meant that if I wasn't in class I was at a screening for class or running a screening for one of the two clubs I ran. Two of the screening were at another college, Smith, and so twice a week I would bus down to North Hampton after dinner for screenings. I loved it. Five screenings a week with discussions about the content was the perfect thing for me.

After screening I would chat with this guy and others about the terrible horror movies I was renting.

It being college, a complicated situation with a girl got more complicated and I was in a funk again. The same week that happened, Pleasant Street adopted a new rental policy on the days I was in town for a screening, and I had an hour to kill before and after due to the bus schedule. Rent one movie, get one rental free. It was as if they knew. Soon I would arrive in town, browse the aisles, leave for my screening, return and rent two movies for the clubs I ran and the two free movies were for me. My days were classes and friends, and when the world went to sleep and my sleep disorder kept me up, I watched movies. Pleasant Street Video was always there for me.

Through college, and in the years since graduating, I have grimly watched the tides change. Once Blockbuster had swept the land clean of independent stores thanks to a bigger DVD selection, leaving only a few that were able to either make the switch or had a large enough customer base. The stores around these five colleges had students like me, eager to keep the community going, and so Pleasant Street lived on. Now I watch as Blockbusters close shop across the country, unable to compete with Netflix, Redbox, and the convenience of instant streaming and torrenting. The age of convenience is great for most consumers, order it online for cheap and never leave the home. Its poison for a place like Pleasant Street.

I'm everywhere, Dave.

Sure enough, here we are, with another community I loved closing up shop thanks to a technology shift. I understand why, I barely like to leave the house as it is, and I often hate interacting with people, but that's what makes it hurt as much as it does. This was my exception, it was a place where I belonged. Now it will close up and vanish forever, and unless people help, so too will its library and cultural legacy.

In an attempt to preserve 25 years worth of building the ultimate cinema library, a donation has been started to fund the costs of moving the DVDs from Pleasant Street Video to the Forbes Library in town. The idea is to keep the collection in the area, and if possible, keep the community alive and hopefully expand upon it. If successful the library would have the largest DVD collection of any library, it would preserve a legacy, and it would make a statement on the importance of cinemas impact on our lives. As revealed in past posts, I love to read just as much as I love to watch movies, and would love to see a library with a focus on both.

The Forbes Library, the future of physical movie rentals.

I know not many of you who follow this are anywhere near North Hampton, MA, but if this sounds like a cause you can get behind, then I urge you to consider donating. The donation system is movie specific if you want it to be, you can be the person responsible for The Human Centipede being publicly available in a library for instance. Or you could donate a directors whole works, or an entire genre, its up to you what becomes available in the library. Imagine a little plaque with your name on it telling the world that you knew Takashi Miike's works were of cultural significance.

For more information, and how to donate, check out the Forbes Library link here.