31 Days of Horror 2015: Bloodfreak

5. Bloodfreak (1972)

I've been a fan of bizarre movies for at least twenty years, but because I'm too young to have experienced the drive-in in its heyday, until recently, most of my experiences with cinematic oddities were on the small screen. I have many fond memories of watching classics like "Basket Case," "Reptilicus," and "El Santo vs. Dracula and the Wolfman" on home video with a small group of friends, and I expect to create many more. However, there's also something special about sitting in a room full of strangers, staring at a movie screen, and witnessing a serial killer with the head of a turkey hacking up his victims and drinking their blood.

I was able to have this experience thanks to the local independent theater, the Nickelodeon, and its series "First Friday Lowbrow Cinema Explosion." This month's movie was "Bloodfreak," and to call it "bizarre" is a bit like calling Donald Trump "unscrupulous." The depth of weirdness almost defies description. I'll only add that in addition to featuring a turkey-headed killer, it's also a morality tale intended to persuade its audience to forsake sex and drugs and turn to God.

31 Days of Horror 2015: Cannibals

3. The Green Inferno (2015)

I'm not a fan of Eli Roth. I liked "Cabin Fever," but he tried my patience with "Hostel," and "Hemlock Grove" is just laughable. However, his latest movie, "The Green Inferno," made in the tradition of 1980s Italian cannibal movies like "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal Ferox," gets everything right. Few outside the small subset of horror fans familiar with the Italian cannibal genre will appreciate it, but for those of us who know the names Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi, "The Green Inferno" is a rare treat. It takes all the essential elements of the genre and updates them for 2015.

Italian cannibal movies typically follow a group of American filmmakers who travel to the Amazon to document an isolated tribe that ends up eating them. In Roth's update, the characters are a group of American college students who travel to the jungle in Peru and chain themselves to trees to stop loggers and save an isolated tribe that lives in the path of the bulldozers. They document the event with their mobile phones and broadcast live streams through the Internet. They stop the loggers, but the small plane flying them out of the jungle crashes, and they are soon captured and eaten by the tribe they were trying to protect.

It wouldn't be a cannibal movie if it didn't revel in sadistic gore, but "The Green Inferno" also satirizes wealthy college students with simplistic ideas about solving the world's problems. Moreover, because the gruesome acts committed by everyone involved--the natives, the loggers, their guards, and the college students-- it also suggests that there's a savage lurking in all of us. If this is a sign of where Roth's career is heading, then I excited to see what he'll do next.

4. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

It had been several years since I'd seen an Italian cannibal movie, and while watching "The Green Inferno," I 

realized it was time to revisit Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust." It's a better movie than I remembered and also more gruesome. The words "disturbing" and "fucked up" are used to describe horror movies so often that that they have become meaningless, but they apply here. The warning label about "extreme violence" is not a gimmick.

  

"Cannibal Holocaust" is sometimes called the first "found footage" film, and more than half of the movie consists of footage filmed by an American documentary crew who were eaten by their subjects. As you watch the footage, you realize that they got what they deserved. The flesh eating scenes are very gory and often hard to watch, particularly the scene in which a man's penis is cut off. However, it's not the gore that makes the film so disturbing; it's the behavior of the film crew as they cruelly slaughter animals, and harass, rape, and kill the members of the isolated tribe they discover. The "civilized" Americans are much more savage than the "primitive" natives. It left me feeling a bit sick, and it'll be another several years before I watch this one again.

31 Days of Horror 2015: It Begins

I didn't even come close to watching 31 horror movies last October, and I gave up on the blog after only a few posts. This October is going to be busy, and I probably won't make it through 31 horror movies this year either, so I'm approaching this year's month of horror a bit differently. Rather than focusing exclusively on horror movies, it will be filled with horror events, which means lots of horror movies, but also the Halloween party and Ghost and Danzig concerts. I'll count each movie as an event, and that gives me a realistic chance of enjoying 31 horror events this October.

1. "Kill Baby, Kill" (1966)

Kids in Italian horror movies are either insufferable or terrifying. For an example of the former, subject yourself to the first ten minutes of Lucio Fulci's "Manhattan Baby," in which an annoying little shit calls his sister a "lousy lesbian." Mario Bava's "Kill Baby, Kill" is the best example of the latter. The terrifying child is the ghost of a little girl who chases her ball through the streets of an isolated village. Residents who see her end up dead with coins in their hearts.

Sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of Italian horror," Bava made several very effective gothic horror movies and is often credited as creating the "giallo," a distinctively Italian subgenre that combines elements of thrillers and slasher films. Bava is one of my favorite directors, but my attempts to get Vicki excited about him have been mixed. I'm happy to report that she likes this one as much as I do.

2. "The Prowler" (1981)

For casual horror watchers, slasher movies begin and end with "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th," but those of us who dig deeper quickly learn that there are dozens of lesser-known gems, and Joseph Zito's "The Prowler" is one of the best. Its brutal killer is a man in camouflage fatigues who stalks a graduation dance. His arsenal includes a pitchfork and a serrated knife that he uses in inventive ways.

31 Days of Horror 2014: Days 7 - 12

31 Days of Horror 2014: Days 7 - 12

7. Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974)

During a key scene in this Hammer production, Captain Kronos says this about his assistant, “What he doesn't know about vampires could fit in a flea's codpiece.” This quote tells you all you need to know about “Captain Kronos,” but I'm going to tell you more anyway because I can't stop thinking about this very entertaining mix of gothic horror and spaghetti Western. Castles and vampires are really the only gothic horror elements, and almost everything else seems to have been borrowed from “Django.” Kronos is a former soldier who became a vampire hunter after his family was killed by vampires who drain their victims' youth rather than their blood. Kronos uses a sword rather than guns, but scenes such as the bar fight which ends with Kronos standing in the middle of a pile of bodies ensure that its western soul shines through. At times “Captain Kronos” is a bit campy and the fights are badly in need of a choreographer, but it never ceases to entertain and is a good reminder of why Hammer films can be so enjoyable.

8. Drag Me to Hell (2009)

I wanted to watch “Captain Kronos” again, but Vicki persuaded me to watch this welcome return to horror from Sam Raimi about a loan officer who is cursed by a Roma woman after she refuses to grant the woman a third extension on her mortgage. Its mix of gore and slapstick comedy place it in the same vein of horror as the Evil Dead films for which Raimi is famous, but “Drag Me to Hell” is much more restrained, and unlike the Dead films never veers annoyingly into Three Stooges territory, resulting in a much better movie.

9. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

As its subtitle suggests, this silent film is a documentary of witchcraft featuring commentary on paintings and ancient texts delivered through intertitles and reenactments of witches doing their evil deeds and being punished for them. The reenactments feature several hilarious scenes of demons churning butter. They also taught me that witches literally kissed the devil's ass and gained the ability to fly from special ointment they rubbed on each others' backs. It also raises the point that although it's easy to criticize the witch hunters of the past, their continue in the present; they just take different forms.

10. The Omen (1976)

This one's supposed to be a horror classic, but the past few times I've watched it, I've wondered why. It plays as a serious horror movie, but it has too many ridiculous moments to be taken seriously and not enough to be any fun. Plenty of my favorite horror movies make little sense (“Suspiria” is exhibit A), but they work because they embrace the irrationality of the nightmarish worlds they create. “The Omen” wants me to believe both that it's a serious drama and that a jackal showed up at a hospital and gave birth to Satan's child. Despite these complaints, it is worth watching at least once just for the performance of Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) as the crazy priest who keeps telling Gregory Peck's character to accept Christ and “Drink His blood! Eat His flesh!”

11. The Changeling (1980)

This gem should be much better known than “The Omen," but I'd never seen it until this month. It's about a musician's attempts to uncover the mystery of the hidden room he discovers in a large old house he's renting. The most notable item in the room is a wooden wheel chair that once belonged to a child, and the film uses the eeriness of this object to great effect. “The Changeling” is one of the best ghost movies I've ever seen.

12. The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976)

This has been the biggest disappointment of the month for me. Everything about this one suggested it had the potential to rival “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” as one of the most disturbing horror movies ever made: the title, the cover featuring a man's burlap-sack covered face, the fact that it was made in the 70s, and the documentary-style realism of the opening scene. Sadly, it quickly devolves into camp.

31 Days of Horror 2014: Days 1 - 6

31 Days of Horror 2014: Days 1-6

This year's 31 Days of Horror got off to a rough start with four snoozers in a row, but Tod Browning's “Freaks” helped us get the month of horror back on track.

1. The Cat and the Canary (1927)

Silent horror movies are often eerie in ways that talkies can never be, so we like to include at least a few silent films in the month of horror. This one tried hard to put us both to sleep. It starts out promising with a rich old man (the canary) on his death bed and his family (the cats) waiting for him to die, so they can claim their inheritance.  But when he dies, a clause in his will makes them wait twenty more years.. Twenty years later, the family members gather at his old, dark house at midnight for the reading of the will and learn that his entire estate will become the property of his most distant relative if she can pass a psychiatric exam the next morning. He gains revenge from beyond the grave by provoking the rest of the family into spending the night in the house with the heiress attempting to drive her insane.

Although interesting as the precursor to later movies like “The House on Haunted Hill” (1959) and “The Haunting” (1963), which also place their characters in an large, spooky house for the night, “The Cat and the Canary” loses its appeal after the first half hour. It has a few interesting visual effects and stylized inter titles that add atmosphere, but the attempts to drive the heiress crazy quickly become tiresome. It would probably have worked better if it had been compressed into a tighter plot cutting about half an hour from its 90-minute running time.

2. Pontypool (2008)

We came across this French-Canadian turd while browsing horror movies available to stream through Netflix. It uses the narrative device of telling the story almost entirely inside a radio station. This works well for a while as unconfirmed reports of attacks by zombie-like creatures keep trickling in as the station's producer tries to keep her new morning talk show host from making the reports public until they receive official reports from the police. The fact that they receive none becomes part of the story. It all starts to stink when we learn that the zombies are created by infected English words and that the best defense is to speak only in French.

3. Night Creatures (1962)

Originally released under the title “Captain Clegg,” this Hammer production stars Peter Cushing as a notorious pirate (Clegg) hiding out from his many enemies in a seaside village, where he disguises himself as a parson. The village also happens to be haunted by marsh phantoms, glowing skeletons on skeleton horses who terrorize the villagers at night. It starts off promising with the phantoms chasing a terrified man through the swamp, but after the initial amusement of seeing Cushing as the parson passes, nothing else interesting happens until the marsh phantoms reappear in the film's last five minutes.

4. Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

Over the past few years, I've become a big fan of horror movies produced by the British studio Hammer (if you don't know about Hammer, the Wikipedia article Hammer Film Productions provides a good introduction), and I'm edging closer to having seen all of them. 31 Days of Horror is always a great opportunity to watch a few more. Peter Cushing plays the mad doctor in six of the Hammer Frankenstein films, and “Evil of Frankenstein” was the only one I hadn't seen. Although I appreciate Colin Clive's manic Henry Frankenstein in the Universal films and love Jeffrey Combs over-the-top portrayal of Herbert West in the Re-Animator series, Cushing's Frankenstein is my favorite cinematic mad scientist. He's cold, calculating, purely rational, and never lets squeamishness about removing organs from the recently departed or even killing for parts stop him from doing what's necessary to complete his experiments.

The opening scene with Frankenstein's assistant stealing a body from a wake while the dearly departed's young daughter watches in horror gave me high expectations. It then devolves into a dull hybrid of “Frankenstein meets the Wolfman” (a lesser Universal film from 1943 that still manages to be fairly entertaining) and “The Captain of Dr. Caligari.” From the former film, “Evil of Frankenstein” borrows the story of Frankenstein finding his original creation frozen in a block of ice. He then enlists a carnival hypnotist to help him communicate with the awakened creature, but the hypnotist has his own ideas, and like Dr. Caligari, uses his power over the creature to have him commit crimes. This sounds like a winning combo, but the result is just a bunch of running around as Frankenstein tries to break the spell the hypnotist has over his creation. (For a much more effective merging of the Frankenstein and Caligari myths, see Jess Franco's “The Awful Dr. Orloff.) Although “The Evil of Frankenstein” is not quite as bad as “Frankenstein Created Woman,” by far the worst of Hammer's Cushing Frankenstein films, it's close.

5. Freaks (1932)

After four duds, we had to get this year's month of horror back on track with a classic: Tod Browning's “Freaks.” Set in a circus with a cast consisting almost entirely of actual circus freaks, “Freaks” is easily one of the most bizarre horror films of the 1930s. The plot revolves around the attempts of a trapeze artist to steal the large inheritance of a little person named Hans. But Browning is clearly more interested in showing off the talents of the circus performers, and this is what makes the movie so fascinating. Its scenes of the “half-boy” walking around effortlessly using only his arms, a woman with no legs eating dinner and drinking wine using only her feet, and a man with no arms or legs rolling a cigarette using only his face, are the closest most of is in the earlier twenty-first century will ever come to a freakshow. Browning has been both praised for his sympathetic portrayals of the freaks and criticized for exploiting them. The interviews with circus freaks included on the DVD release indicate that rather than feeling exploited by Browning and the like, they were happy to get the work. As one of them puts it, how else is a man with no arms or legs supposed to make a decent living?

6. Monster House (2006)

This animated movie about two boys investigating the neighborhood haunted house is always enjoyable because it takes me back to my own childhood when my friends and I performed our own paranormal investigations. The main difference, of course, is that the house in the movie actually turns out to be haunted. It also happens to take place on Halloween and illustrates the struggle that boys face in accepting that they are outgrowing trick-or-treating.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 26-31

26.  The Devil's Rejects (2005)

27.  The Gorgon (1964)

28.  The Lords of Salem (2013)

29.  The Conjuring (2013)

30.  The Others (2001)

31.  Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 (2009)

We ended the month with three Rob Zombie movies, one more Hammer movie, and two ghost stories.

26.  "The Devil's Rejects" is a sequel to "House of 1,000 Corpses," and it continues the story by showing the murderous Firefly family on the run from the law after their house full of corpses is discovered.  Whereas the original movie is a some times cartoonish, but still effective, mishmash of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "House by the Cemetery," the sequel is a gritty, brutal film more akin to Wes Craven's movies from the 70's, "The Hills Have Eyes" and "The Last House on the Left."  Rare for a horror movie and even rarer for a sequel, it actually develops its characters.  Because I feel like I know the characters so well and because the story is told mostly from their point of view, I always find myself sympathizing with them a bit and hoping they'll escape even though I also find them despicable and want them to be caught.

27.  The final Hammer movie of the month, "The Gorgon" was also a highlight of this year's 31 Days of Horror.  In Greek mythology, the Gorgons are sisters with snakes for hair whose gaze turns people to stone. One of them features prominently in "The Gorgon," but it takes place in a German village in the early twentieth century rather than in Ancient Greece.  As the dead, Gorgonized bodies start to pile up, a newcomer to the village investigates and learns of a legend that one of the Gorgons, Megera, took refuge in a local castle after fleeing Greece.  Part of what makes this movie so enjoyable is the ridiculousness of its concept.  However, it's played straight and for the most part it succeeds in avoiding unintentional campiness.  It also features some very effective scenes showing the Gorgon's victims turning to stone.  The creature effects are a bit silly, but this doesn't detract from the fun of seeing the Gorgon's head full of writhing snakes.

28.  "Lords of Salem," Rob Zombie's most recent movie, is in many ways his best.  In telling his story about a dying witch's curse being fulfilled on a present day resident of Salem named Heidi, he weaves a tightly controlled narrative that slowly unravels before fraying altogether as Heidi falls victim to the curse.  The last half hour is so bizarre that it's almost incomprehensible as Zombie employs the irrationality of nightmares to illustrate the curse's impact on Heidi.  A highlight is a scene with a zombie-like figure walking a goat on a leash through a cemetery. 

29.  "The Conjuring" is a disappointing example of a good horror movie that's prevented from being a great one by a bad ending.  It merges a haunted house story with a tale of possession that has several moments of true spine-tingling horror.  But it's almost ruined by an ending that resolves the possession far too easily and leaves everyone living happily ever after.  The devil doesn't necessarily have to win for a possession movie to work, but it should at least end in a tie with the demonic spirit relinquishing control of its victim at the cost of taking another life or leaving everyone involved deeply scarred.

30.  "The Others" is an example of why serious filmmakers should avoid twist endings: they don't hold up to repeated viewings.  I thoroughly enjoyed this movie when I saw it upon its initial release in 2001 and liked it well enough during a few subsequent viewings, but although it was mildly entertaining looking out for the clues to the big surprise this time around, for the most part, I was just bored. 

 

31.  Earlier this month, I mentioned that Rob Zombie's "Halloween 2" is one of the best horror movies of the past ten years.  It's populated with well-developed, likable characters who make it much more than a mindless, brutal slasher movie.  The violence is horrifying not simply because it's so intense, but because the movie makes us care about Michael Myers' victims.  Whereas in the "Halloween" remake Zombie floundered with a lame attempt to give Michael a back story while also attempting to follow the basic narrative of John Carpenter's original film, in the sequel, he abandons any pretense of honoring the spirit of the original and makes the story truly his own.  Michael Myers is a bearded, long-haired lumbering brute who hides out in an old barn until the spirit of his mother calls upon him to reunite his family through bloodshed.  Zombie uses this portrayal of the character to explore the often inexplicable bonds that can tie together even the most dysfunctional of families, a theme that has appeared in all of his films to date.  

31 Days of Horror 2013: Day 25: 5 Reasons Why "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is the Best Horror Movie Ever Made

25. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

I wanted to save this one for Halloween, but Vicki asked if we could watch it earlier, and I couldn't say no.  Here are five reasons why it's the best horror movie ever made:

1.     Leatherface - He's by far the most interesting horror villain, and this has a lot to do with the fact that the movie tells us so little about him.  All it reveals is that he's part of a family of butchers who treat humans like any other livestock, that he wears a mask made of human skin, that he cross-dresses, and that he can't speak.  We learn nothing about his family history, why he wears the mask or where it came from, or why he sometimes wears a wig and make-up, and not once during the dozens of times I've watched this movie have I to stopped to ask.  Sequels and remakes try to explain Leatherface and by doing so they ruin the character.  Psychos are much more horrifying when there is no explanation for their behavior. 

Another important fact to remember about Leatherface is that although he's responsible for the deaths of three people in the movie, he does not harm them until after they enter his house.  In fact, TCM could be viewed as a home invasion movie.  The first time we see Leatherface is when a young man walks into his house looking to borrow gas.  Leatherface, clearly a misanthrope with no semblance of social skills, sees this stranger in his home and then reacts the only way he knows how:  by beating him on the head with a sledge hammer, placing the body on his chopping block, and then cutting off the meat with his chainsaw.  Several minutes later, when Leatherface finds the young man's girlfriend in his living room, he defends his home from this intruder by dragging her into the kitchen and hanging her on a meat hook.  Granted, he didn't have to kill either of these people to defend his home; he could simply have chased them off his property with this chainsaw, but the point is that unlike Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger, the other horror icons of the 70s and 80s, Leatherface does not stalk his victims. 

In fact, he even seems distraught by the fact that he has been compelled to kill the home invaders.  After hanging the  girlfriend on the meathook, he retires to the living room, holds his head in his hands, and seems to ponder why these people keep coming into his home uninvited.  Later in the movie, Leatherface does kill wheel-chair bound Franklin in a field outside his house, but he still can't be accused of stalking his victims.  He was tired of people coming into his house and had decided to be more proactive in keeping them out. 

Of course, the main appeal of Leaterface is the chainsaw.  The scene when he chases Sally through the field with the chainsaw buzzing and smoking makes most other horror-chase scenes seem like playground antics.

2.   The ending -- The difference between a good horror movie and a great one is often the ending.  In too many cases the ending either lamely sets up a sequel, provides a quick, easy, and utterly unsatisfying resolution, or both.  TCM ends with Sally escaping in the back of a pickup truck while Leatherface spins around in the middle of the road swinging his chainsaw in frustration.  Neither will ever be the same.  Sally might have survived, but the final shot of her sitting in the truck bed, covered with blood laughing hysterically makes it clear that she'll be spending the rest of her days in a loony bin.  Leatherface, who seems to have had little or no contact with the outside world before Sally and her friends entered his home, has just endured an experience he is incapable of understanding. Both have been terrified by the experience, and because nothing has been resolved, the ending leaves viewers with nothing to latch onto that might provide some relief from the 80 minutes of horror we've just witnessed.

3. The realism -- Too many movies try to seem realistic by claiming they are based on real events.  In most cases, the connection between the movie and the events are so tenuous that the same claim could be made about almost any movie.  Although it's based loosely on the real-life serially killer Ed Gein, TCM never makes such a claim (although it has probably been marketed in this way at some point in the last 40 years).  Instead, it horrifies by telling such a convincing story that it feels real.  From the opening monologue that gives the movie a documentary quality, to the convincing performances of all the actors, to Sally running through windows to escape the crazy family, to the closing shot of Leatherface swining his chainsaw, every aspect of the movie helps create the impression that the events it depicts could actually have happened.

4.  The beginning --  Building upon the ominous tone of the opening monologue, TCM unsettles further with its opening shots of a sculpture made of parts stolen from graves.  But what makes the beginning so effective is the way the sculpture is revealed.  First we see a black screen and hear sounds of something grinding.  Then a camera starts flashing, gradually revealing different parts of the gruesome sculpture.   When night becomes day, we finally see the full figure made of dug-up limbs and a skull sitting on top of a gravestone, and as it's revealed, we can just barely hear a news report claiming that the graves were robbed for occult rituals.  Images and sounds work together to create an opening that hints at the horrors awaiting Sally and her friends.

5.  The dinner scene -- While she's tied to a chair in a kitchen decorated with human skin and bones, Sally can do nothing but watch and listen while the crazy family debates who will kill her.  When they decide to let Grandpa do it, Sally's head is held over a bucket into which Grandpa keeps dropping the hammer with which he's trying to kill her.  Each time the hammer falls into the bucket, the bang it makes gets louder and so do Sally's screams until she finally pulls free  and jumps through a window.  We observe most of this from Sally's point of view, and the scene is so intense that in addition to the horrifying sights and sounds, we can almost experience what she's smelling and feeling, resulting in a very uncomfortable viewing experience.