Reviews

John Landis's skill for being able to mix horror and comedy is absolutely unmatched in the genre. 1981's An American Werewolf in London was a great macabre gallows humor, the kind which the Nightmare on Elm Street series frequently reached for and almost always failed at. 1992's Innocent Blood was full of hilarious visual gags and character mash-ups. With this kind of talent behind the camera, and with the formulaic and uninteresting stories most of the Masters of Horror entries had been delivering as the series first debuted on Showtime, Deer Woman was the "episode" I was dying to see the most. Especially since whoever was in charge of editing trailers for each of the entries was making them look like "Must See" events. Deer Woman probably had the best trailer of the series. With amusing caps on all their humorous conceits, but also making the title woman look mysterious and creepy, and looking like it had a lot of dark scenes. This one seemed to have "winner" written all over it. Then, I watched it. And I have to say- talk about disappointment.

Though this entry still keeps the levels of visual style and production quality very high, the writing and characterization are so shallow and bland, it was pitiful. It's not as boring as Landis's Season 2 entry, Family, but it's not nearly as well-written. Everything here is just a set up for an awful joke or one-liner. The characters are not funny or interesting. And many scenes are stretched out, in the hope of cashing in on the new "quirky humor" of any number of current TV shows. Sort of like the lost episode of Dream On. It even has a fantasy scene, like Dream On. And it's truly the only good sequence in the movie. A trucker and some random girl he met go into his truck in three separate scenarios, all ending with some kind of bizarre (and admittedly very funny) deer-related attack. The best of which being the one where of them are actually hurt in any way. She hears a noise from outside, they both look out the window to investigate, and scream in terror... as they see a deer blink its' eyes. The main character (the still stunning and drop-dead gorgeous Brian Benben) comments- "retarded." NO, John! That's funny!

Other routines that attempt to be funny and sink like the Titanic include: Benben questioning a bartender about the mysterious woman and asks him a question where he gets confused by the answer and makes the man say the "F" word (hugely shocking and outrageous in 2005 - I'm being sarcastic). A string of crime scene investigations where a bumbling detective starts a back and forth chain of insults (none of them the slightest bit clever). A drunk trucker who gets mad and shouts loud in a bar. A scene where a heart-broken pet owner whose cherished friend has been killed being verbally bashed and lashed out upon by a woman whose dog she thinks was traumatized by it (as a pet owner myself, animal cruelty and death is never funny- ever! ...expect maybe in 1989's UHF). At least two scenes where the title woman goes topless (why not get a cheap shot in?). And completely inexplicable and head-scratching moment where Benben's character is stopped by a stranger (played by another gorgeously schlubby actor, Andy Thompson) who insists they know each other from somewhere.

Apparently, John Landis has just been away from the horror genre for so long that he's very rusty. And none of the horror projects he's tried so far this decade have done anything to restore his good name. Deer Woman takes an interesting myth and some good mystery story ties and wastes them on lead-ups to crime scenes with one-foot-hopping detectives and morgue discussions about severed penises. Why does the monster do that? Why is the monster stalking and killing the men? Even if the comedy was dumb, I liked the concept. It could have been a much better piece if they had at least given some kind of creepy clues as to why a succubus creature is luring men away (one of them the smoking-hot Steve Archer as a business man, keep an eye out for him!). All Landis seems to have is some kind of "God works in mysterious ways" mumbo-jumbo. A native-American character later on says, "why does everything always have to have a Why with you people?" Why do I want to know? Because I have to have something to distract me from the terrible humor. Anything at all would be preferable.

There are so many things that could have been done to capitalize on the intrigue and mystery of this old folklore legend. Even some of the dialogue lends itself to making this mystery terrifying and dark. But Landis only seems to see the sexual motivation or result of the situation and focuses in on that. Since if you're completely immature, you could sit around for hours and come up with a ton of jokes about genital mutilation and women messing around with animals. It seems like John's son, Max Landis, did exactly that. The Masters of Horror just do not have the best track record with mysterious women. Argento's Jenifer (who was never really a mystery) was great. And I'm starting to get the impression that Mick Garris and John Landis got the idea to do their entries based on what they thought Argento would focus on. Sure, all the women show their tits. But Jenifer was the only one who did something with her animalistic sexuality. Deer Woman just flashes and runs back into the forest. I'm not really into watching women flash... but if I were, wouldn't I want a better storyline and jokes to warrant the tease?

The success of Nightmare on Elm Street paid for this film. Some people approached Nightmare 2 in development as just another movie. Others put a lot of work into it, and if you're looking, you can tell. And some others, I doubt the public will ever know what was going on inside their heads. For all the claims this sequel's subtext is strongly rooted in homoeroticism, which there is an equally strong argument in support of it, there's only one person who can substantiate these rumors - writer, David Chaskin. But no one seems to knows anything about him. This nearly gives Freddy's Revenge a whole other brand of cult status now- interpreting the meaning of the supposedly gay themes. I would personally love to pick the writer's brain about it as well. But with all the negative energy toward the film, it makes sense that we're never told what this film really means.

Some say the film failed because it didn't have a female lead. At best, these claims are only an aesthetic preference. Fans couldn't have been disappointed by lack of a female lead. Kim Myers becomes the heroine in the last half hour. Even as a 'side-kick', she's in more scenes than Johnny Depp had in the original. The film does cast a male lead. A 20-year old baby-faced cutie (Mark Patton, who I certainly approve of, spending a few solid minutes of the movie in nothing more than tight white briefs). He's not your typical movie teenager, since he's only lacking the proper Cure / Flock of Seagulls / Echo & the Bunnymen goth '80s make up, dyed hair, and dark black clothing before turning into the average punk concert attendee. He has perpetual dark circles under his eyes, an intense look of introversion plastered on his face, and constant nervous mannerisms. But his isolation is what allows Freddy to exist, an ambitious re-working of the original's back story.

I believe the homoerotic elements of the film are intended to take his incredible loner quality (which I always relate to) down an unknown path, somewhere unfamiliar to mainstream audiences. To lead him astray from his natural life patterns (this 'sort' of thing also happened in 1986's Labyrinth, only to a daydreaming girl) so that he would be vulnerable to Freddy taking him over. This of course was revisited three years later in 1988's The Dream Master, when Freddy used a spiritual connection of one character's dreams to catch teens for his victims. Here, he just uses the character's body. And we can never quite tell if he's in a dream or not. This leads to all sorts of fascinating set-ups which people just assumed meant Jesse was living out gay fantasies he was repressing. The first one has Jesse going to a leather or "s&m" bar. Though, a good 40% of the patrons aren't even wearing leather and few of whom are anyone in actual drag.

The second has his Phys. Ed. coach blackmailing Jesse into entertaining him (I assume so he won't call Jesse's parents and tell them Jesse was hanging out in a gay / bisexual bar) in the gymnasium, then getting 'revenge' by whipping the coach naked with towels in the shower room while he's tied up. What stops this from being a fantasy of any kind, though, are several things. One- Freddy murders the coach, two- the coach fears for his life as inanimate objects take on a life of their own (a movie cliché I was obsessed with as a kid), three- Jesse could never be attracted to the coach anyway. He's played by Marshall Bell, king of the creepy 80's sleazeballs (remember him in 1988's Twins?). And even if the coach were played as more of a muscular, sexy, suave, mature older man and not such a creep - the movie sets him up as a classic pedophile.

The third 'fantasy' is a lot more interesting. Jesse runs to his best guy friend, Ron (Robert Rusler, who you can also see shirtless in 1986's Vamp) sneaking into Ron's bedroom in the middle of the night to confess something and begs to sleep with him. Though just in the same room. Unfortunately they never share a bed together. What's great about this is that Jesse gets some guts and starts ordering another guy around, rather than letting someone like the coach walk all over him. And that he finally finds a healthy target for whatever affections he buries inside. Ron is a non-judgmental, open-minded, fun and funny guy who's never too serious (if anything, Jesse's the ultra-serious and uptight one) but is completely supportive in comforting his friend. Even if they never became intimate, Ron would take care of Jesse and help him get to a better place emotionally.

Most people think of movies from the '80s as a technical step above the '70s (though now it looks a lot more dated by comparison). Not completely true in the scene at the old power plant. It's hampered by some horribly plastic creature effects (why'd they even bother with those 'demon dogs' anyway?). But the scene's lighting, camera-work, editing, and ensuing meltdown of Freddy's flesh (through stellar goo and dripping-gore effects), are outstanding. And Kim Myers' first-rate performance. The film is definitely underrated by some. Taken as a low budget film, it has a lot of great effective build-up scenes. An incredible camera pan up from the basement, up the stairs on 2 floors of the house, down hallways and all the way up to a bedroom in 1 shot - now, that's impressive! And other cool assorted imagery - Jesse's sister jumping rope in the middle of the night to the "Freddy" tune, the quirky "Fu Man Fingers" moment, and I thought this was really cool; a bolt of lightning striking inside the house while Jesse stands right in front of the window (a little Poltergeist inspiration?).

This looks like it cost a lot of money to make. That would usually be a criticism. But in this case, the film is able to afford to look good in its' seasonal setting. It's almost always raining, the sky is always overcast in the film. This manages to create a bit of mood. One the movie desperately needs. This is another one of those ultra-silly horror / thrillers. Like 1993's Army of Darkness, 1987's House II: The Second Story, Or 1990's Tremors- although that was an enjoyable movie. Frighteners is a big budget Hollywood movie. And it's so dumb, so insulting to the intelligence that it feels more like Space Jam (which yes, was even more fun than this pile of garbage) or Free Willy (no comment) than it does Jackson's earlier horror masterpieces. It's like- horror for kids. Really dumb kids. Filled with ear-pokingly (makes you want to) one-liners, fake-looking CGI, and actors going so over the top that it makes 1989's Meet the Feebles look restrained!

It was pretty obvious this film would go the safe route by hiring Michael J. Fox (Mr. Family Ties) to be the insurance policy. What killed this film financially? The R rating and nothing more. Because the success of movies like Tommy Boy, The Blair Witch Project, and Dumb and Dumber proves that people will watch anything. Perhaps the fact that it was also 2 hours long and featured a pair of nasty serial killers viciously murdering people in flashback was also a bit of a turn-off. I won't even go that far. I pretty much stated my case back there. It's too loud, it's too talky- all the talking being really bad jokes, there are too many characters in it, almost all the special effects are computerized, and the movie's sense of humor is so aimed toward children. It's as though Jackson just wanted to do another gagfest, like his previous splatter films, but had completely run out of good gags. So he just has the cast inhale a few pounds of sugar before each take and we have to watch them hop around, acting goofy. Except for the sadly miscast John Astin, stuck playing an old coot who not only is tired and saggy, but is killed half-way through the movie. And he was the only ghost I could stand!

This movie is so cliché-heavy, it's oppressive. Not to mention it's yet another one of those "do as many mean things as we can to the protagonist to put the audience through hell"... After the first 25 minutes, the entire remaining 1 hour and 35 (shy of the credits) are a series of misunderstandings and set ups to make things more difficult for Michael J. Fox, who was already showing the signs of suffering from Parkinson's disease. So it's twice as upsetting to see him as the constant butt of cruel jokes. It looks like he's really suffering. This is not funny. It's genuinely rotten and offensive in addition to not being amusing. I think the genre had already had its' fill of this kind of plot. Especially in Wes Craven's Shocker and The Serpent and the Rainbow. Who wants to watch a "pity the poor guy" movie anymore? If they're going to make a stupid comedy, that's one thing. The "stupid comedy" genre always has room for more. But this is supposed to be horror. A genre Peter Jackson has a lot of experience with. His previous films, Bad Taste and Dead Alive, clearly dried up his entire reserve of talent.

Since this is an attempt to bring Jackson's horror to America, he recruited a few big horror names. The best cast actor here is Dee Wallace, the scream queen with roles in such high-profile films as Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, Joe Dante's The Howling, 1983's Cujo, 1986's Critters, and 1990's misguided but still fun Popcorn. She plays the frumpy old spinster daughter of an even older creepy woman, played brilliantly by Julianna McCarthy, who has a face that was made for a horror film! The only good scenes involve Wallace's character playing helpless victim to Trini Alvarado, begging her to save her from her tyrant mother... just wait until that frail little victim gets hold of a shotgun and then see how helpless she looks! Fox is always pro. And a lot more tolerable and sympathetic here than in his usual 'party-guy', show off hero routine. He ages and matures a lot by this role, which is a shame that he wastes his new talent on this lemon. He's a very beautiful man when he isn't fooling around as much. In fact, in this circus freakshow, he's the "straight man" with the fewest wild gestures. A bit of a first for him.

The rest of the cast are pure annoyance. There's a stereotypical black ghost, a stereotypical nerdy white ghost, the stereotypical Horace Pinker-like obnoxious serial killer (played by Jake Busey, taking all of Fox's old over the top-isms, and strongly resembling the actor who always taunted him in the Back to the Future films), and a stereotypically lame, irritating soldier-captain ghost who talks too loud and gets right in the camera lens, shouting army terms. There is perhaps one exception- Peter Dobson. Yes, I find him kinda hot. But that's not why I bring him up. He's actually pretty funny (come to think of it... HE looks a little like the actor who taunted Michael J. Fox in the Back to the Future films too!) and he's equally good in the 1999 comedy Drowning Mona where he plays a bumbling sheriff. But the icing on the cake is truly Re-Animator's import, Jeffrey Combs. A man I have a lot of respect for, but an actor who has a habit of picking really lousy roles that are so unlikable, you just want to punch him! And the character he plays here will forever be the most annoying character in horror history!

Sex is a crude, disgusting thing, and Evil Clutch has "sex" written all over it. It's a full-on nasty, gritty, down-and-dirty assault on the glamour of sexuality and the fetish of... domination, I'd have to say. Featuring a witch with a claw-hand where a vagina should be (and only comes out when she's getting fresh with one of her fellas), her creepily obsessed father who follows her around without letting her know, her zombie sex-slave who she keeps chained in a kind of horse-pen hidden by foliage and dark shadows, the slave chasing around her other lovers and killing them in a playfully aggressive way, and the world's strangest plant ever- one that only seems to eat testicles. Is the witch killing the men to feed the plant? Does the plant give her powers? And most importantly, what the hell does she mean when she says, "It's not all over! It'll never end! One day, all of this will be destroyed!" I have absolutely no idea but I think I like it. Kind of like a Rita Repulsa rant, only with some kind of nightmare-connotation. It's schlocky as all hell, and in any other film, I would have groaned and rubbed my eyes to check that they were really seeing what I thought they were seeing. But this is the real deal.

The plot begins with a creepily romantic montage of photographs, acquainting us with the main characters- a new couple who met in Europe. Him undoubtedly Italian (the hunky and quietly intense Diego Ribon). Her Italian but posing as American, I believe (the lovely Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, from Argento's Opera and Lamberto Bava's Demons 2). Some plot summaries make mention of her being a college student, so perhaps she met him studying abroad. They're a happy couple, but when they meet the witch, things begin to get strange. Their plan to head into the mountains for their camping vacation is detoured by a stop into a local village, which is completely vacant of people. They then meet the witch's father, a man who uses an electronic machine to amplify the vibrations from his throat. In place of a voice, he has a disturbingly sharp-pitched robotic buzz. He tells the two vague clues that there's curse that hovers over the area. Then, he tells them a story about a couple like them who are making out on the beach when the man suddenly, inexplicably gets the impulse to kill his girlfriend and bury her in the sand.

It's moments like this that make Clutch something worth seeing. It's so bizarre, you can't help but be transfixed by it. I've never been able to forget it and whenever I watch it, I can't take my eyes off it. Maybe that's because it's compellingly bad. It's hard to tell with Italian horror movies. And after seeing at least two dozen by now, I have to say- the more confusing, the better. As long as something's happening, it doesn't matter how insane it is. And Evil Clutch is never at a loss of things to show you. It's the closest film I've ever seen that came to real insanity. Not because it's convincing at showing us characters losing their minds. But rather, because it follows a progression of a movie with no sanity or logic or sensibility. Which makes it feel like a pretty real horror. It's almost Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like in its' long sequences of people walking or running off alone, not knowing where they're going but looking for anything they can find that looks like a way out. The film is highly skilled at dragging out scenes of driving and walking, adding music or taking it away, and making them almost too real.

The freak-factor of Clutch is essential to how unpleasant a film it is. And what I can only hope were expectations on the part of some that seeing the couples together at the beginning of the movie would provide "guys" with gratuitous "T" or "A." Neither are here. Which I have to say is another thing that makes the horror more pure. There are only suggestions of sexually-driven acts of violence. One spectacle, a death scene, that almost resembles a wrestling match- one guy taunting (with a high-pitched cackle) and humiliating the other, knocking him down, then choking him before finishing him off. It's almost him saying he'll punish (the victim) for taking his woman. Again, in any other movie I would have groaned. It's a stupid idea if you see it that way. But it's "too" creative and detailed. And too animalistic to feel like a typical zombie or serial killer dispatching. As this is happening, there's a quietly piercing electric rock guitar wailing and a neatly rumbling drum-machine beat chanting this on. And as the attacker finds the victim, he laughs at him and grabs him in an aggressively sexual way. There's absolutely no mistaking what's really going on, under the grunting.

It's a stunning film in many ways. All of them unappealing. But effective as some of the darkest, most deeply disturbing horror I've ever experienced. I might feel that this is was just a strange film and not something much more, were it not for the finale. The finale kind of puts a cap on the weirdness, as the camera angles get so uncomfortably close to every detail of what's happening than you'd ever want to be. I was speechless as I watched blood-gushing brains, fish-hooks tear into skin, and the greatest zombie meltdown sequence this side of 1986's Street Trash. Again, like 1974's classic Chainsaw, what makes this ending work is that every second is played out in graphic detail until it almost becomes agonizing. I enjoy that and so rarely get to see it in horror. The astonishing finale with an exhausted, terrorized Tassoni trying to find a way out of the maze-like woods, plays a lot like the hedge sequence from 1980's The Shining, only all in one shot.

All of filmmaker Lucio Fulci's films are gloomy. They have- no sense of humor, weird and unresolved endings where the bulk of the protagonist characters are dead, and not much story or visual style. They aim for an almost documentary-like sense of real nightmarishness. And show us things that of course could never happen. Except maybe in biblical times. This is the Fulci way, and he's made an astounding number of films. One could figure the reason for that is he never tried very hard. But he was an expert on the Gothic and the gloomy. Which is a nice thing to be a master of if you're making a horror film you want to make have an impression on people. For what it is in Fulci-land, the story makes all the sense it needs to. When it decides to focus on gore effects- it delivers the most spectacularly gruesome moments of Fulci's career. It's all doom, it shows, and we can really feel it. Although this preceded Fulci's The Beyond, and Beyond is a more intriguing working of the 7 gateways to hell mythology, City's usage is more horrific. Now we actually know how the gateway of the film's City was opened, which even without the Eibon link, works well for setting up the rest of the film. In fact, before we see a single gore sequence, we are given all the plot we need to know hellish events will take place. The fortune teller's incredible foreshadowing monologues see to that and actually do justice to the film's ghastly opening imagery and music of setting mood.

This sort of movie doesn't come along very often. Where a town / city is slowly overtaken by something sinister (Fulci copies whole scenes right out of 1979's Salem's Lot). Fans of these movies look more at the zombies, where instead you should really see it for the city-in-fear aspect. There's a threat that is becoming less and less contained, spreading out (in a way like 1990's Arachnophobia). And it's slow, almost to the point of madness. Which is the point, really. The considerable dread it stirs aids in making the film an enjoyably unpleasant, dark experience. How else are you supposed to take a Priest hanging himself in the ugly morning light of a foggy cemetery, than as a symbol of impending doom? Fulci is completely honest about what is in store, tone-wise, for the viewer. That being said though, City of course has some huge flaws. The ending for one, is so inept, that if nothing had hurt Fulci's credibility up to this point in his career, he would never have been able to recover from this. Because on all accounts, the film's threat is vanquished. A "happy" ending. Everyone can go home now and feel secure. There is a ray of light and safety has been restored. Though I might guess this fits in a film where you never know where you're safe, it doesn't work. Actually, the ending doesn't just make no sense, it's also... non-existent. We see 2 shots that cut back and forth which completely contradict each other. So we are getting, in effect, two endings at the same time. Sort of like dual endings displayed in almost split-screen fashion; it's a split-ending. Only in split-screen we could understand what the hell's going on.

The other great capital flaw of the film is the unbelievably stupid subplot involving Bob. Here's the nutshell- Bob is the town pervert. Who knew every town had one and / or only one? But when a town girl Emily dies after telling the town psychiatrist she's going to see him- he receives blame for it. At the scene where her body is found, the coroner announces to everyone in the room - she died of fright. Which means she wasn't murdered. But everyone standing there, all of whom can clearly hear that she wasn't murdered, are yelling it's murder. The town sheriff even says- 'that boy's gonna fry for this.' Fry for what? Didn't you hear the coroner, you idiot?! She died of fright! What pervert kills a person out of fright? With all their clothes on? So after this scene, Fulci gives us a short dossier on why the town hates Bob- because he kidnapped some guy's daughter and took her into the woods to... whatever, we get the gist of it. Later, we see Bob and the "kidnapped" daughter together (in the present), and well, she sure looks happy to see the guy who kidnapped her. Their relationship is cordial, and more than that, so platonic it's almost sibling-like. Yet, we are supposed to cheer his death? Why? We're meant to believe he's a pervert? Just because he shows interest in a blow-up doll does not mean he's a dangerous guy.

But, this is all common in Fulci-land. Fulci's real reputation is a director of bad movies with good scenes in them. Even those good scenes have elements that don't work. But the the mood of gloom hanging over everything, it's still effective schlock. This film also marks the introduction of Catriona MacColl to the Fulci universe. She proves to be an invaluable part of every Fulci scene she appears in, and is one of the few regular actresses in Italian horror to get to keep her actual speaking voice in the dubbed dialogue. Her beauty and grace make her truly hypnotic to watch and here, she sort of gets to be the surrogate Emily (from The Beyond, Fulci's single best character of all his films), the medium of both the real world and the "spirit world." She also gets the best lines. And, what kind of Fulci film would this be without a spine-chilling set-piece? Here it's a character who finds a disappearing-reappearing corpse haunting her home. When she calls her friend Jerry, the town psychiatrist to come over and take a look, they search the house and find bleeding glass walls.

Master of Italian horror Dario Argento is called a lot of bad things by non-fans. And is deserving of absolutely none of the backlash. In fact, every time I hear something bad about Argento- I think they're really talking about Michele Soavi. He just doesn't get the same amount of attention because his films were never as successful in theaters. In fact, his best film - 1994's Cemetery Man - was probably his least successful. Or just didn't get the attention he felt it deserved, because after that, he left film and went into directing television. He's never gone back. So people really don't know how inferior his other films are because by the time they've seen them, they're already fans of the Italian horror aesthetic. Which means you have to accept the fact that they make almost zero sense and are usually very unattractive films. This is where The Church stands out from the pack. Because visually, it's so cheap and ancient-looking, you can smell the dust. But it has its' charms too, though they are few. The camera-work is truly arresting and the music score is hugely elaborate and grand.

Since Argento is the reasons people have seen Soavi's work all, I don't know anyone who caught The Church before Argento's Suspiria and Deep Red. Soavi is a bit of a hack. Sort of like an Italian Mick Garris- the utmost example of a director preferring style over substance. The flaws of The Church are constant and plenty. The film opens with a somewhat interesting prologue showing knights on white horses charging through a peasant village akin to those you see in any Robin Hood adaptation, in some long-ago century. These scenes are intense enough, energetic, and get quickly to the point. Then, we cut to the present, where the film's style takes over. Yeah, the movie is okay to look at. And for about 35 or so minutes in the present, 1980's wherever-Italy, the movie is just interesting enough to get us to the slowly revealing horror elements. So now we know the purpose of the film is the build up of it's horror. And it's a decent build up, for the most part. But as the movie approaches the halfway point, we realize the movie's driving by, and... nothing is happening.

The plot is very simple. I think. Two people working in a church, one as a cataloger of books and the other as a restorer of the building's wall artwork, discover a scroll / scripture that the man thinks will lead them to some kind of buried treasure or priceless artifact that he can sell and get rich off of. So he follows his 'map' only to uncover a force underneath the church that has him hallucinate, while he's slowly becoming a demon who will make everyone else hallucinate. So while he is doing his demon-work, someone he passed the force onto kills himself in a manner that traps everyone in the church while the demon 'contagen' spreads onto everyone, leaving a Black preacher and the little girl who sneaks out of the church every night to go clubbing as the only 2 people who can stop the plague from spreading beyond the church walls. That probably sounds action-packed and Soavi's style is far more lethargic than Argento. But never before have I seen an attempted surrealist film this agonizingly boring. I kid you not. Absolutely nothing happens in the entire film! I've seen expressionistic (or impressionistic, I'm no film school super-grad) films before, but most of them actually show things happening (John Carpenter's Halloween for one).

It follows pretty closely in the footsteps of Lamberto Bava's Demons films (since Argento co-produced). We're shown to a location where a bunch of people gather, one turns into a demon, all the others are isolated, that person infects everyone except a couple survivors, then the demons either get out- infecting the world, or the survivors get out when the demons die. This film puts all those same elements in place. Except, unlike Argento's work, nothing happens. Okay, a few things do happen. But only one bizarre sequence has the panache of Lamberto's much more fun Demons films. A random woman's neck is impaled by a demon using a section of fence he rips out of the floor. What's bizarre about that, you wonder? It happens in front of about two dozen people. What do they do? Nothing. She dies, her head trickles blood in closeup. But all those people don't even notice, though it happens in plain view and no less than 8 feet away from them. Maybe 4 people notice the demon running up to stab anyone he can as he runs toward her, so they duck out of the way. She's killed and in the shot after she dies, everyone is just sitting around, being quiet while a boy plays a saxophone. I kid you not. That's what happens. That's more than logically incoherent- it's plain stupid.

The scene is suggesting that the woman just sort of disappears and no one saw her death. They all just up and forget about it. And this 15-second thing is absolutely the only event that takes place in the movie. I'm not saying it's the only violence, gore, or murder we see. It's not. It's just the only thing we can tell is happening. For example, in one scene a beautiful woman sees herself in a mirror looking old and ugly. She starts clawing the skin on her face off, but when she reappears minutes later- no scratches. People are devoured by fish and their faces are squashed by subway cars. But later they turn up as totally unharmed members of a possessed cult, in a scene that commits the ultimate horror heresy- copying a famous scene from Roman Polanski's 1968 masterpiece, Rosemary's Baby, the greatest horror film ever made, shot for shot. Even if Argento did that, I would be furious!

The Masters of Horror television series only lasted "two seasons," but while it was "on," it was a breeding ground for amazingly original ideas. Mick Garris's self-written Chocolate, from one of his books (if I'm not mistaken, A Life in the Cinema), is a brilliant and fascinating idea. Involving a bored single (newly divorced) man (played by the gorgeous Henry Thomas) who works in a chemical laboratory developing artificial food flavors, suddenly begins receiving sensory projections from an unknown woman. Then when the sensations end, he becomes obsessed with finding out where they came from, discovering the woman he thinks he's in love with isn't exactly an angel. The potential here for taking horror into new directions, making it dark and vague and interesting, is almost limitless. There's so much a good director can do with this material. But then, consider who the director is... It's Mick Garris. A man who got his "Masters of Horror" badge with television series, most of which would get a PG-13 rating, were they to have been inspected by the MPAA. A director whose previous film involved a college student having to decide whose soul the Grim Reaper should take- his or his mother's. A great fan of drama, but not a great director of drama. And unfortunately, he brings his trademark soggy, heavy-handed, all-wet approach to this film as well.

So it plays as an emotional discovery film, not a creepy horror movie. Which means that when the intended shocks come in, they're as horrific as an old sock. I guess Garris was going for a first-person kind of thing. To try and put the audience in the position of the character, Jamie. So that when something bad happens to him, they're upset. Well... they might work for a mainstream thriller or a Lifetime TV-movie. But not a horror movie. I think all the best horror films that tried this kind of formula knew that a remove is very important. To be able to look at the whole situation as though it's comedy. It's over the top and grating, and takes itself much too seriously. The best attribute to the film is style. Garris definitely knows how to make a good looking movie (his previous, Riding the Bullet, was almost breath-taking for a TV movie) and the music score by his frequent collaborator Nicholas Pike (though some of it goes into the ultra-clichéd Classical genre), is also incredible. But without a real horror twist- something darker than what we're left with, it's just blah. Especially since they mix in elements of sexuality. They could have even gone the Clive Barker route, and made the character discover he likes some sexual experimentation (anything would've been fine), change him around somehow. Anything to make him talk in fewer poetic speeches, which all feel totally phony.

On the positive side, the best thing about Chocolate is that it was shot in Canada. The locations they shot at are so beautiful, I want to go there. So, the scenes in the second half are pretty much better than those in the first half. Except for this whole sub-section where Jamie tries to make his best friend Wally (played the handsome, very well-aged Matt Frewer) believe him. Anyone else wish he had just kept it to himself? It would have been more adult to not have him care what other people think. It's a film about psychic transmissions anyway, no one ever believes people in those situations. Even I wouldn't believe anyone in that situation! When they finally get into 'the world' of Jamie's fantasy woman, we know almost exactly what's going to happen (the person I watched this with said right out loud what would happen before it did and she was right; and no, she hadn't seen it before) - the periodic narrations give that away - it's almost too late to care that it's not horrific. So I kind of marveled at how amazing the production / set design of her apartment was. The has this elaborate jungle painting all over her walls and it's a shame the scene wasn't longer or hadn't gone here before. Again, this points to what a good style director Garris can be at times. At least he gives us something to look at while we're waiting for it to end.

But I can't help going back to just how much potential this piece had. It's done in a manner that only gives us traditional sensitivity in return. It doesn't pull any truly disturbing or dark strings. Take for example, the scene in which Jamie's having a psychic vaginal orgasm in bed... in front of his ex-wife and his son. His son thinks the woman Jamie spent the night with previously had done something to him and tries to sort-of attack her while the mother pulls the kid away. All the while, Jamie's writhing and groaning on the bed (without a hard-on, naturally, since again it's vaginal and taking place in his psyche). You could call this scene uncomfortable, but not for any reasons related to the genre. I don't really call embarrassment a typical reaction to a piece of horror. At least, not to one this shallow. Even when the film turns Jamie into a kind of stalker, the tone remains light and only casually mysterious. The only reason I finished watching this was because of the style. As a mystery, it's a big flop. It won't make you feel excited, it won't thrill you, it doesn't stir any deep emotions, and it doesn't play with your mind. It doesn't even play with your eyes, much. Had this been directed by someone who knew to change it or make it more dangerous, and the script been modified considerably, it could have been an epic. Or more refined and balanced than Clive Barker's bloated Lord of Illusions.

Sam Raimi's 1981 masterpiece, The Evil Dead, is a seminal film in the horror genre. It was extreme for its' day, pervasively atmospheric, unpredictable, wild and original, inventive, sharp, scary... It's the kind of film that you know was going to breed a sequel at one time or another. As every successful film in the genre seemed to have a sequel to it by the mid-80's, and Sam Raimi had too much talent and ingenuity to let sit idle. So, the old team decided to reunite a second time making a feature. Well... while many fans will try and convince you that this film was magic, to me it felt more like microwaved leftovers from the first. There are many reasons I'm sure that this film was so disappointing. One I'm told, was the result of controversy the original stirred over audiences being shocked by the scene in which a female character is sexually violated by a tree. It remains a sole flaw in the original, it went too far for pretty much no reason at all. It personally never disturbed me, but that's because it looked so silly and wasn't even recognized by the music score (unlike similar scenes in something like, The Last House on the Left).

Another reason is that some people had a problem with the graphic mutilations and gore in the original. But one of the things that made that film so great was that it mixed terror with large quantities of gore. And it was good-looking gore, too. Even where some of the makeup designs of the zombies was primitive, they're still a lot scarier than what we get here. For this sequel, it appears Sam and company thought they could generate the same level of terror by trimming down gore and doubling on the wacky, speeding camera-work, and admittedly very freaky editing. This I think backfires. Now, the editing is the only thing that generates any scares and the camera-work is the only impressive thing about the movie. Although this sequel hired more skilled special effects technicians, the zombies look terrible. The best thing here in fact, is how creepy they make objects in the cabin look. The film's best scene features the inanimate objects altogether erupt in a spontaneous bout of laughter. Which brings an unbelievably creepy deer head on the wall to life. In the original, the zombies were the scariest thing (other than the creepy woods, but that's before you saw any zombies) and they knew it. Here, they don't seem to know how scary that deer head is. Why couldn't that have attacked someone?

Next, I've heard Bruce Campbell go on about how upset audiences were that the film begins with a short re-do of the original's plot. They had plans to just edit-in clips from the original but couldn't get the rights to them because New Line was being stubborn (and I always got the idea that they were really generous with horror filmmakers). So they shot a new prologue, which retells the original story as though it were only Ash and his girlfriend Linda who went up to the cabin, instead of them and three friends. I could accept that, if Raimi hadn't decided to play up the character of Ash. This sequel is more a personality showcase for the crazy guy Bruce Campbell was cultivating than a terrifying movie, like the first film was. There's a lot more emphasis on his facial expressions, physical comedy routines, and one-liners than in the original. In fact, what one-liners did he even have in the original? This is another big problem. In the original, he wasn't a hero. He was just another victim, one who managed to survive the longest. It's not the fact that it's different that's a problem. It's that it isn't nearly as good. Like the third film, Army of Darkness, Dead by Dawn exists more for Campbell to show off than to really scare people.

People have already said this functions more like a remake than a sequel. But, considering it as a remake- why remake it? You should never mess with perfection. This film is too different from the original. For example, part-way through the film, they add four characters out of nowhere. Seemingly just to have more potential victims to slaughter (not that I'd call anything to happens to the victims in this movie slaughtering). And if three of them aren't the most annoying characters in any horror film I've ever seen before- I'll go out, buy a hat, and then eat it! Now, I would say "especially the backwoods, redneck hicks; the ignorant, overall-ed, black-toothed, most likely inbred, banjo-baby Jake and his bratty, whorey, too-pretty-for-him girlfriend Bobby-Joe," but there is actually someone three times more annoying. Annie the archeologist's daughter (she might be one too, I don't know). The movie does make us like Bruce Campbell (what's the point in calling him Ash anymore? He's really just playing Bruce Campbell), so it's a waste of time to do this whole sub-plot of her walking into her father's cabin, her father being missing, and her assuming Bruce killed him, so she goes psycho and wants vigilante-styled vengeance.

The movie does have a few creepy or cool moments. Particularly- anything involving the deer head, the intro narration about the 'Book of the Dead' with some very cool animation, and a short sequence where Bruce talks about the woods and what he thinks is going on out there. Oh, and there's a little thing about a glowing spirit that warns them about something- I liked that quite a bit. And the sequence where Bruce goes into the basement to "find" Henrietta. It's scary for about a minute. The silliness of the movie really does kill it. And you know something? 1986's House was silly enough to take care of my "silly horror" fix for almost the rest of the decade. House also feels a lot more original than this does.

Winter is my favorite season of the year. It slows and hushes everything down quite a bit. Sends some of the crowds indoors. It's calming and peaceful. Apparently, some movie writers find it to be tense and panic-inducing because there are a quite a few horror films set in the winter. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of The Shining focuses on the idea of a "cabin fever" effect that drives a person crazy and makes them want to kill others. Why? Because killers are supposed to be scary (though they rarely in fact are, unless they're actually coming after you at this moment) and Stephen King wrote it. That's pretty much all there is to it, though the hotel the characters stay in seems to be haunted. I usually hate this kind of movie. But Kubrick's version of The Shining seems to know one thing and I agree with it- ghosts are boring. At least the ones that make women go misty-eyed and shake a few objects, creating strange noises, and that a character makes a discovery that there's a presence in the house and spirits are not at rest, so the house needs to be exorcised. Films like The Haunting and The Uninvited. Snoozefests, for lack of a better word. Films so focused on drama, they lack a credible threat and overly pad the long-winded dialogue with weepy revelations. And if you're lucky, they throw a little atmosphere your way. When they're not too busy making the main characters cry into a teacup. That sort of thing.

This version of The Shining attempts to be pulse-pounding, inexplicable, headily atmospheric, and filled to the brim with creepy images. It's refreshingly straight-forward and highly eventful. But in it's more visceral horror sequences, I can't help feeling they got a bit too gratuitous. The film's world-famous bathroom scene, set in cursed Room 237, for example. That almost feels tacked on for the purpose of a gross, cheap scare. I felt those ghost horror films which came before lacked directness. This film lacks simplicity and definitely overdoes it. Now, that's not saying that most of the horror in the film is unsuccessful. The reverse is true. Just a few select moments. Along the lines of sexual perversity. To burst the bubble of the film's college-student fan club (even the ones who've long since passed on from those days still have much the same attitude, but with potentially less hair), The Shining isn't perfect or a masterpiece. Not by far. Not just for the reason I previously mentioned, although that's certainly a biggie. And of course, on that subject- the film is nearly two and a half hours long. When you watch a horror movie that long, especially one whose intention was solely to creep you out... you have to wonder how films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre managed to do the same thing better in half the time. The budget is high and the crew is strictly professional. So, yeah they can afford to buy you a lot of nice things to look at. On a technical level, the film's stunning. But that's just the outer shell.

What about the inside? In the middle, The Shining is a terribly hollow film. So, don't knock on it, it'll crumble to pieces. The "cabin fever" the father-Jack character goes through would seem to chip away at the nerve of his dislike for his wife and son. Slowly driving him to fits of rage and acts of violence, the movie begins to spend less time making the hotel creepy and more time on making Jack creepy. The effectiveness of this rests entirely on the actor Jack Nicholson's ability to play down the crude transition from sane to insane, to maximize the coldness a person needs to kill others. Instead, Jack plays up the mannerisms Kubrick assumes to associate with crazy people. So, the Overlook Hotel sort of becomes a madhouse-of-one. Every time I watch the film now, I can't help but shake my head in pity at how ridiculous and silly (the bad kind of silly, not the amusing kind) Nicholson comes off. I feel absolutely no threat emanating from his character. He almost exists in this mode for actors to study how to act...forgive me for being so blunt, but: retarded. Jack may show the strain of a weak person letting themselves go crazy, but there really are different kinds of crazy. There's a scary kind. And then there's just an annoying kind. Jack's the latter, not the former. Sitting and watching the film, I can help but feel the audience is being expected to babysit Jack, rather than him being the evil, frightening authority figure a murderous father is supposed to be.

But the film is more successful than not, in spite of these blaring flaws. The music score for the film is incredibly potent and strong, and if not creepy, than at least brooding and cool. There's a lot of very good imagery and camera-work. The character of Danny, as well as the actor playing him, are not very interesting. But Shelley Duvall playing the mother, Wendy, gives an amazing performance. I'm told many audiences dislike a woman in distress, but she is the key to anything from this film being mistaken for tension. Because she takes everything very hard. She's an emotional wreck, and a very sensitive person. And Duvall as an actress hangs everything she's thinking and feeling right out on her wonderful face. That's a character-actor's face. And a believable character, too. As much as she is a victim and even men seem to respond to a strong female protagonist, she's an effective element in the film at making you believe things aren't right. More than what you see floating on the surface. She's especially worn toward the end of the film, when Jack begins stalking her. Her eyes just light up with a fever-pitch of fear and terror. Without her, there is no true "horror" to this film.

There are train wrecks. Sad things; they usually take place down here. And then, there are train wrecks that take place in the sky. Because the transportation conductor running the show is higher than a kite, has absolutely no idea what they're doing, and won't be bothered to look on the road ahead to ensure an accident does not lie up ahead. I thought Child's Play 2 was a train wreck, the sort that would fit this description. I was wrong. I thought that was as low as this series could go and the next film just had to be better somehow. I was mistaken there as well. I am passionately anti-drug, but I want to know what writer Don Mancini was smoking when he wrote these early sequels. Did someone lace his cigars with angeldust? And this isn't because they're in any way Fantasia-like, or anything like that. It's because of how unbelievably insane the ideas are.

First, Andy was never a complex character. You felt bad for the child actor playing him in the first two movies, he was very sympathetic. But there was nothing really going on inside him. He was not an important part of the franchise. I could watch a hundred movies (if I were forced to) with Chucky just running around, stabbing people and swearing at them, and never once go- where's Andy? So, the kid grows up or his parents don't want him in anymore of the movies. I can live with that. I can even accept that Mancini decided to write him as a teenager, since he wrote him into a role that I'm naturally attracted to watching- the introverted, misunderstood, slightly strange, put-upon loner. But that's where this movie's greatest flaws lie.

Let's just start with how whiny and irritating the sniveling, prepubescent Justin Whalin is. At least when John Waters cast him in Serial Mom, he was supposed to be irritating. Here, it's like they think it's an added perk. The character is already such a miserably lame goody-two-shoes, who - even though he's supposed to be mentally fragile and disturbed - leaps at every chance to stop the evil Chucky from killing, even though everyone Chucky targets are oppressing him in some way. If he were really disturbed, wouldn't there be some part of him that was happy people were being murdered? He's basically the Carrie or the Angela Baker (Sleepaway Camp) of this movie, being tormented by stern, judgmental sergeants and sadistic lieutenant cadets drilling and taunting him. Several cadets lashing out at him or threatening him. This situation was just begging for a playfully evil bite of sweet revenge.

But, no... That would have been too experimental or risky. Instead of being mean spirited toward the tormentors, Universal horror movies of this era were all about being mean spirited toward the victims (especially Wes Craven's films for the studio). Then at the last minute, the sadistic jerks who drove you crazy get knocked down by a bullet or they bump their head on the ceiling (1989's Shocker), and that's it. That's all they get as a penalty for the evil they perpetrated and the pain they caused to the protagonists (say that 5 times fast). We get no satisfaction of revenge. No reparations. Nada. In fact, if anything the worst characters in the movie get the quickest, least painful deaths. What kind of justice is that? What ever happened to- what goes around comes around?

Or, if Andy can't be morally vague- what about his twin brother, Whitehurst? He's so physically low head-hung, moping around, defeated in every way. It'd be no stretch at all to show him laughing evilly or smiling a little at the sight of the ensuing carnage. As it stands, he's the only truly interesting character in the movie (played to perfection by the quintessentially nerdy Dean Jacobson). Another bright spot, though not nearly as bright, is the vivacious and energetic Perrey Reeves as the sassy DaSilva. The only cadet to be able to knock king-jerk of the jerk-pile Brett C. Shelton (played by the gorgeous, ultra-masculine Travis Fine, who you may remember as the orderly who loses his job because of Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted) off his pedestal. And because I don't like to leave anyone out, she has a friend who is also enjoyable to watch, played by Donna Eskra.

With a movie this embarrassing, it's best not to dwell too much more on the negatives. So, as a final positive, I'll say that the movie does have a cool ending. Not a great one, but a cool one. You can thank Universal Studios directly for that. There's no doubt that the idea surely had something tied-in with Universal's world-famous amusement parks. This setting actually became amazingly popular for horror films and thrillers in the 1990's (Dr. Giggles, Fear, True Crime- the one with Alicia Silverstone). Here, it's a "house of horrors" type roller-coaster ride that takes the car passengers up a mountain. Or something. You will marvel at it, surrender now. It's truly awesome-looking. As is the famous Chucky doll when the Grim Reaper's scythe slices half his face off. You just gotta love those Kevin Yagher special effects, they look incredible.

The horror genre has been breeding so many wannabe psychological horror flicks this last decade. Embarrassingly twist-heavy turkeys with people from various walks of life being kidnapped and tied to chairs and incapacitated in all sorts of different ways. But none of them, no matter how twisted they think they are, have been able to re-capture the creepiness, the intensity, the all-out bravura of this little house in the snow, half-character study, half-"balls to the wall" abduction picture. You want torture? Annie Wilkes will give it to you. But she'll also give you a killer more tormented, more human, and more sympathetic than a thousand generic dorks like Frank Zito (the killer from 1980's sickeningly overrated Maniac). And her victim, Paul Sheldon, doesn't even half to go on a nightly binge of drinking and drugging in a European whorehouse first. Instead, he authentically heads into the right place at the wrong time. And his captor isn't an inherently evil person (even though she is a Republican), who sets out with an agenda to torture him. Rather, this is one of the few "torture" films where I really feel the killer is sorry for the victim and their self at the same time.

Also sad is the current trend to feel all horror has to be realistic. Why? Misery already captured enough realism to make all similar set ups ineffective. Is there anything more realistic than a person doing terrible things for self-righteous or religious reasons? It has a wealth of historical precedence. It's a classic. And it's relevant to today's world as well. But most importantly, it gives the story dramatic weight and makes the situations more tense and nervy. Best about that, the movie doesn't become an out-and-out drama. So many of Annie's almost weepy confessions are pathetic and funny and so creepy, it's nearly bone chilling. At one point, she casually pulls a gun we didn't know was there out of her robe pocket and talks about putting bullets into it. The music plays it as climactic, but it's incredibly funny. While quieter scenes where she lets something she should keep hidden slip out, such as where she admits "I love you, Paul" or when she talks about how hard her husband's passing was on her, are almost skin-crawlingly uncomfortable or awkward.

Paul Sheldon is the main character and the actor playing him, James Caan (of The Godfather fame) is the star (though I'd never heard of him before this movie). But, Kathy Bates is the real star here. Apparently, she was something of a stage actress who almost never acted in movies. If a director making a horror film now were to cast an actress like her in their film, they would probably relegate her to the role of a zombie with no lines or a simpering, senile old wombat (like any older or more chubby woman is in the current Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake franchise). Even at her age at the time of Misery's filming. It takes a smart director to know what an actress like this is really capable of. And not only is Rob Reiner a smart director (or, at least he was when in the 80's and early 90's), but he actually uses Bates in full powerhouse mode. Not only was this a star-making role, but it was a move to make a fuller figured woman more important in film history. You don't see that kind of thinking or initiative taken by today's class of student-director monkeys making horror films (or any film) now. Although many of them are pleasant enough people, I'm starting to think they're a bit shallow for deciding the Jessica Biel type is always more suited to be the star than someone like Kathy Bates.

James Caan as Annie's unwitting, uninterested love interest is the modestly amicable, handsome face of a gracious guest. He may have a lot of "time and place" backstory going on, but he's not very important. He's really just a body in a bed. And that's the way I like it. Besides, who really goes to a horror film (or thriller) to watch characters wax poetic about some great experience they had- which men often do a lot anyway. Hoping to feel more important or liked by flexing their storyteller muscles. Babbling about romanticised scenes of being somewhere cultural while sharing "a beer" or some vintaged (insert Classy Booze Type here) in the company of some rustic, hard-edged, but life-affirming old fart...blah blah blah. That's what makes me so often think- who cares about Him? Whoever He is, I think you'll find this is applicable to any male character in film or literature who is shown as more important or interesting because they've been everywhere or done everything (everything Classy, that is). I would hope this covers Annie's supposition that he's a man of the world type.

This movie is All About Annie. Oh, and Buster, the town's easy-going "crusty old" sheriff and his very horny wife, Virginia. He's the other main character in a way, because he's a very normal person as well as a great problem solver. Not only does he figure out most of the Paul Sheldon mystery, but he has enough common sense to fix a towns-person's dilemma with one 15 second phone call. He and his wife are not only real salt of the Earth folk but they provide much more skilled comic relief than the cops in Wes Craven's 1972 directorial debut, The Last House on the Left. Misery is simply a masterpiece. Perfect in every single detail. The product of a lot of hard work and dedication to good film-making. Almost no one involved with the film ever returned to the horror genre again. But they crafted one of the most satisfying psychological horror films I've ever seen. Even out-Hitchcocking Hitchcock. It's got needles, a shotgun, a sledgehammer, and a killer typewriter. What else does a horror film need?

John Landis is one of my all-time favorite directors in the horror genre. Though he has worked very infrequently in it over the course of his nearly 40-year career, he's churned out two of my favorite features in the genre. As well as Michael Jackson's legendary music video "Thriller," featuring the famous dancing zombies which also hunt a girl down, chasing her into a creepy old abandoned, dilapidated house, busting through the walls as she screams. They're getting closer and closer, until... That absolutely terrified me as a kid and definitely kept me awake a few minutes longer on several nights. Maybe that's one reason zombie films have always fascinated me so. Maybe that's another reason that I fell in love with Landis's Innocent Blood and An American Werewolf in London when I saw them on video as a teenager. Because, although they are a vampire and a werewolf film respectively, they both not only feature life after death, but people living in their bodies after they've begun to decay. This shows that Landis always used to take the genre seriously. He developed characters you cared about, put them in insane situations, let the horror slowly build, and allowed for large bursts of intensity that were confusing and eventful at the same time. He was truly the greatest action-horror hybrid director there ever was, which is surprising given that he was usually a director of comedies. He let the budget go wild, yet he never neglected characterization.

Then at some point, his career in everything kind of fizzled out. He started making documentaries and independent films- only sporadically. He completely and effectively disappeared from Hollywood altogether. Yet, when his friend Mick Garris asked him if he wanted to be part of the Masters of Horror lineup, he leaped at the chance and has been one of the only directors to, after sticking with the series for 2 entries, move onto the next version of it after Showtime cancelled it and NBC re-imagined it as Fear Itself. I don't want to think he was desperate for the work. His Hollywood studio films were almost all so successful and he directed so many of them, he must still have plenty of money. But, I don't assume he was ever desperate, the same as I won't assume any more about directors' wealth. I might have thought the same thing about John Carpenter, only to hear that he actually isn't doing all that well, financially, and not only had his 1978 masterpiece Halloween raped in the remake process by a lesser director, but didn't get paid for it either. Not like Wes Craven is undoubtedly being paid by the bucketful for the constant stream of remakes of his films.

The Masters of Horror series really sounds like an incredible chance to bring horror directors back to their roots and give them the opportunity to make their kind of horror their way. But it's really not all that attractive to the fans, because the arrangement to get the projects (which are all interesting on paper) made is not fair to people like me. The problem I doubt is in the budgetary restrictions, because the "episodes" (they're supposed to be more like films than TV show episodes) all look stylish and professional, some of them are so good-looking that they threw me back in my chair on first viewing (it was more than I could ever have imagined in some instances). The problem is really an issue of time. One of the directors said in an interview that they could actually make a full feature film had they been given four weeks instead of two to complete the films. And harsher still, with the set up of production shooting - a block system where all twelve North American directed features shoot one after another - each director was locked into that two weeks. If you don't shoot all your scenes by the tenth day, you're out of luck. This resulted in horribly rushed shooting for everyone involved. Which also means- the gore looks cheaper, the acting jobs are less powerful, and if the scripts aren't great then you're stuck with underwhelming material.

All of these things obviously affected John Landis's Family entry. The acting is mostly very wobbly, the script is incredibly dull, the gore is computer generated- so at best it looks like a video game graphic, the music score is lifeless and clichéd, the blood looks like neon Kool Aid, and the entire thing is about as scary as an episode of Blue's Clues. I could blame this on the writer, Brent Hanley. He's a nice guy. But be that as it may, not only is he the mind behind 2002's offensively terrible Frailty, he's also more concerned with M. Night Shyamalan-type plot twists than he is about true observational horror. I would enjoy a good twist as much as the next person if it weren't always about how "clever" or "shocking" the twist itself is. What it leads up to must be horrific as well. Rather, it's too sterile and bland. Also, Family fancies itself as a cross between what has become deemed a "torture" horror film and Alfred Hitchcock's lethargic, frightless psychological thrillers. In fact, one of the characters uses the term "set up" in the final scene, which is all-encompassing of the flaws of this piece. If this "whole thing" was a set up, shouldn't it have led up to something?

John Landis as director does however inject some life into this. By twisting the humorous side to the convention of having the abductor character imagining people speaking when they actually aren't, reflecting what's buried inside the man's subconscious. A scene where teenage girls say vulgar things is not surprising. But an uncomfortably romantic sequence between him and an intended victim shows a little Dream On pizazz when he not only imagines her saying things she actually isn't, but then beginning to make huge physical gestures toward him.

The 1980's was the most interesting and funny decades in horror, with newer technology, improved special effects, and more reliance on shocking visuals than mood. Though a more serious and discriminating fan than myself would have found it silly, I found even the lesser movies amusing on one level or another. Toward the mid-80's, the slasher genre kind of died a slow, horrible death. The idea that sex would doom you to death from any one of an assortment of lame killers in masks of all sorts (a clown mask, a gas mask, a hockey mask, etc) was replaced by fears of aliens landing from outer space (Critters, The Borrower, The Blob remake, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, etc) and weird mutant monsters of all shapes and sizes (Child's Play, Pumpkinhead, Scarecrows, Leviathan, Neon Maniacs, etc). Then we got "the devil" scared back into us with religious horror films such as 1987's The Believers, 1984's Children of the Corn, 1988's The Seventh Sign. And this "s&m" horror film about the sexualized, purgatory-like dimension between heaven and hell where cursed people dare to travel to test their endurance for an eternity of pleasurable suffering.

Hellraiser, from gay cult-author Clive Barker, was a low budget horror film with sophisticated performances by the seductive, vampy, goddess-like Clare Higgins playing the glamorously bitchy 'Wicked Stepmother'-from-hell, and Sean Champman, her bad-boy lover who transforms into the elegant and brooding Oliver Smith (covered in unbearably repulsive makeup and goop). The plot is interesting. Because it's a series of ideas arranged in a way that suggests the writer has no idea why he's writing this way. I haven't read any of his stories, but I'm told they're pretty loopy. And that he often writes without knowing the meaning behind what he's writing. The primary lead character is Julia, the stepmother. She has had an affair with her stuffy husband Larry's rebellious, black-sheep brother Frank, and as the movie begins, she and Larry and moving back into his old family home. Which is also the place Frank last inhabited before he mysteriously disappeared. Skipping ahead, Frank returns but isn't human, and as he hides in the disgusting, dirty attic, he guilts the sexually frustrated Julia into cruising bars for lonely men to bring back to the house for Frank to feed on, using their blood to grow him new human body parts.

I wish I knew what was interesting about that. If anything, I applaud the film's ability to make any of that seem sophisticated. But it does. The dialogue is decadent and often deceivingly poetic. Which kind of presents a problem, whenever a character has to curse or say something crude- it doesn't feel authentic. Until those moments, the movie is using the gruesome special effects and monster designs to do the job of being crude so that the movie doesn't have to make the characters stupid. Not that it matters much. When the score's strings start to swell and row, you're just waiting to see what happens next. It's very arresting. One of my absolute favorites is the very long and breath-taking scene where we meet the secondary lead character Kirsty - Ashley Laurence - and follow her as she walks all the way from an industrial harbor port to the upstairs in her father's house, on a gloriously breezy and overcast day. This movie wants to be quite ugly and gritty, but there are a lot of moments that defy that ambition and look damn good! Another favorite of mine is the gorgeous outdoor bar where Julia meets her first victim. Yet another is a brief sequence with Kirsty and her father in an oriental restaurant. For a low budget movie, the quality of the lighting, cinematography, location shooting, etc, truly look impeccable.

Inevitably, a film like this would have a few flaws. This is Barker's best film but the flaws are first-time-director mistakes. Like, a completely out-of-place closeup of Kirsty looking very intensely upset being edited into the sequence of her walking up to her father's house. That's out of place because she is smiling in every other shot of her in this sequence. That is unquestionably the biggest error in the movie. The others are simple awkward slip-ups that could have been smoothed out with alternate takes. The film slides around all throughout in terms of how professional it feels. It's more plot-driven than just a gorefest, so professionalism is definitely an important consideration. The ending feels a little long in the tooth. Did anyone else think it was silly for Kirsty to have to open and shut the puzzle box every time she had to send one of the Cenobites away? That got on my nerves like repetitive actions can for some viewers. Also, there are some images that just aren't all fans might crack them up to be. Especially, that ugly big orange worm. God that damn thing was ugly. Why was it there at all? This isn't Labyrinth. Also, the design of the twist-face corpse was too much like those from John Carpenter's The Thing. And... why does it look like those rats are eating pureed bone fragments?

Overall though, the film's a winner. It makes you think. Gives you many images and situations you've never seen before in the genre. And manages to have a real grace to the way it combines the more classy elements - like Barker's amazing monologues for Frank and Pinhead, the famous "lead Cenobite" character (and would go on to become a legend in the horror hall of fame) - with the grotesque (for the most part). There's a lot of talent and flair for photography and mood (in spite of the pretty amateur special effects). The music mainly works, though it's a bit overly orchestral and formal for my tastes. Could have experimented a bit more. Much like writer Clive, I imagine, with this storyline. But, I'll let him take care of his own inner demons.

2001's Jeepers Creepers and 1996's Scream are pretty much the reason we still have horror to this day in North America. Cliché and studio sequels pretty much killed the genre back in the early 90's. Especially studios like New Line Cinema which were running horror into the ground with awful films that were destroying the names of great directors like Tobe Hooper (1995's The Mangler) and John Carpenter (1995's In the Mouth of Madness), and 1980's phenomenon franchise Friday the 13th with 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. All the smaller, independent studios were being gobbled up by bigger companies. Until we have today's current situation where Artisan was eaten by Lions Gate, Roger Corman's "New Horizons" by Disney, etc. Studios are responsible for scanning in on a small trend in the horror genre when it's making money, they rip it off, blow that up, and squeeze every last ounce from it until they figure it's not profitable anymore and move on, doing the same to another genre when they figure there's more to be made from romantic comedies or action flicks or family-friendly stuff.

Scream's success gave Kevin Williamson a legitimate career and financed a trilogy. A very good one, all things considered. It also helped to revitalize the horror genre... Although, for better? I say worse. And surprisingly, I say that not because the trend of teen films it gave birth to was all that bad. It wasn't. It's because instead of moving on with fresher ideas, it taught filmmakers to simply copy the basic plot of a current popular film of the same sub-genre, add an alternate novelty twist, then press ahead with a big budget and see if the new Mtv music video directing hot shot would give them Scream type returns. It was a matter of investment. It was all about money and how much it would buy. Nobody fixed the scripts if they weren't interesting. Nobody really wrote deep characters. The actors and actresses would always have to be the characters. Anything that wasn't pure stereotype were the casts just acting like themselves.

Scream was not supposed to start a trend. In fact, when it did, Williamson was tasked to write this script. And he didn't try very hard. Instead, he put all his effort and talent into writing a bang-up script for Scream 2, and probably squeaked this one out for a little pocket change. Or the chance to direct it. Which he didn't get, instead he directed 1999's dreadfully boring teen kidnap comedy, Teaching Mrs. Tingle. The horror genre's in much worse shape now. But back then, even though the movies felt the same, they still had more intelligent characters. Or at the very least, more complex ones. Another thing that made me like this trend better than our current one, was that nobody was posing. The writers really knew people like the college kids they were writing and plot twists were better supported and more solid than the action and crime films nowadays that pass for horror. And, though it took awhile, the movies were just a lot smarter than the direct-to-video films. Where again, the directors probably had grander ambitions but weren't wise or experienced enough.

I Know What You Did Last Summer's focus is on the failures of the wide-eyed, naive teenagers. How in high school they make big plans and often try to go out and make their dreams come true and fall hard, flat on their face. The film already takes place during a season where there is nothing but overcast skies (which I usually adore). But this plot just makes it a bummer. I guess you could call it refreshing that it breaks a few slasher sub-genre conventions. For example, following the film's trademark "accident" (which has been ripped off so many times since, it's not funny), the characters hate each other so much, there's no partying or hanky panky. Which I'm fine with. But maybe if there had been, the movie wouldn't feel so oppressive. This movie has a few good chase scenes and the acting is very professional, but it's absolutely no fun at all. I don't know if that's because of how non-clichéd the activities the characters partake in are or not. The ending (or "coda" as they call it) does sort of pep the movie up a bit. And, my simple mind allows me to smile with the ditsy main character, clad in nothing but a white towel, once again.

This film does manage to feel a little more grown-up than the sequel. More like a real movie, less like a TV show. Although, as I say this I'm reminded that actors Johnny Galecki came from Roseanne, Sarah Michelle Gellar went on to become Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Jennifer Love Hewitt is the Ghost Whisperer. It's also great to see that underrated powerhouse Anne Heche also make a bit of a cameo. That someone of her stature would do a 6-minute acting job on a film like this proves that Hollywood can smell a talent who hasn't even reached their full potential yet. Scream is Kevin Williamson's best work. But by Hollywood standards, his 1998 television series Dawson's Creek swept more awards ceremonies. Why shouldn't he enjoy that success? Even though it isn't great, it's a guilty pleasure show. Much like this movie. Which sold lots of magazines with "exclusive" inside stills of a shirtless Ryan Phillippe who also winds up in no more than a towel in the movie. Too bad they didn't have any skimpy pics of Freddy Prinze Jr.

Jumping right into the story, "where the first film left off"... Apparently Julie has nightmares, about the missing body of the fisherman killer who stalked her and her friends one year ago, so bad she can't get over the trauma of hitting him with her car. Even though he was a killer before she (and company) plowed into him, she's a good girl and still feels guilty. Or something. It's a stretch, but hey- anything that will get Jennifer Love Hewitt into tight clothes and have her and her new friends run around screaming while being slashed off one-by-one is a good excuse to greenlight a movie, right? Let me just talk to you from my viewpoint. I only sound cynical about this kind of thing. I own the film, I've always enjoyed it. I still do. But it's not a good movie. It's not even as fun as the old Friday the 13th movies used to be. And they weren't perfect either. I've always thought if they could put the formula of I Still Know together with elements from the Friday the 13th series, we would have a perfect horror film.

The chasing, the stalking, and the blade-swiping and slicing sound effects of movies like I Still Know and Urban Legend - which are not particularly bloody or gory films - proves that the heaping piles of gore from the 80's slasher films (at least, before the MPAA hacked them out of the movies) are not necessary to make a really fun killer-themed horror movie. The suspense, the thrill of the moment is the most important thing. That's something I Still Know has a lot of. But the reason I suggested it would be so cool for this film to be mixed with the Friday theme is, and think of the possibilities... The victim pool was always so large in those movies. Even though it's predictable that so many would die and the "characters" are blanks because it takes considerable screen time to build up personalities, you had more chances for stalking scenes. It may have been repetitive at times, another "he's watching you" set up to the new person isolated as they're about to be killed. But I always had fun with it. Chase scenes are exciting. They get your blood pumping. Plus, they're noisy, so you can move around in your seat all you want and not disturb anyone else watching.

Still features one of the most gorgeous locations I've ever seen in a horror movie. The constant pouring rain makes it a bit gray and drab, and takes some of the fantasy out of the experience, but even then- how many slasher films take place with a natural disaster threatening everyone in the background? And talk about a missed opportunity. To keep the movie under 2 hours, it avoids using more of the storm in the foreground of the story. Which almost makes me think that they had it raining just so the girls' clothes would soak through. Of course... if that's why it was raining, why were most of the girls wearing black and navy blue tops? In Scream, the cliché was to put the obvious female victim in a brightly colored top, so even in the dark, you could see her nipples. Even Hewitt, who wears a white shirt, has a navy blue bra on underneath. Anyway, it's the writing I have fault with. Not the film-making. The dialogue also could have used a little spit and polish. A lot of bad buddy exchanges, sex related one-liners (why do I care if the screenwriter isn't getting any?), and immature banter (which I could get for free babysitting some younger cousins).

What I'm desperately looking for from a horror film, is anything that breaks the mold. That doesn't feel it has to conform to a set guideline with the typical parameters of traditional Hollywood movies. Here, there is the standard 'self-absorbed teenage girl not happy with the relationship she's got with her boyfriend'. Basic, but a bit long too, don't you think? This comes with its' own predictable scene of a "sort of" break-up between the lovebirds over a simple misunderstanding. One is less giving and more taking, the other sick of all the giving and never getting. Probably just a big stage production to disguise the fact that she's not having enough sex with him. Are there really any teenage girls in America that can relate to Julie's predicament? Especially when her boyfriend is drop-dead gorgeous and she's being hit on constantly by yet another drop-dead gorgeous guy who knows about the boyfriend and could easily slip into his position without any issues of jealousy or him being compared to her ex.

Still is not a thinking person's horror film. Nor does it take risks. It pretty much just copies the first film in every way. You name it, it's here. Except... it does lack blondes. The first had a few blondes. This film however, opens up the rainbow of perspective female victims by adding a black girl and a Latina to the mix. But, no blondes. Guess you could call this one a real "female empowerment" tale. If, that is what you'd have called the first film. They run fast, so they get away better than the old model of horror heroines. And they scream louder too. So the boys will hear them further away and call for help. And they get stabbed better too. They fall right down and don't get up. Unless they're not dead. Then, they have to get up and wave to the camera, so the other surviving heroines (if there are any) know they're not dead. Though to be fair, I guess Julie saves her hot boyfriend at the end instead of the other way around. But in all seriousness, if the movie's going to be a slashfest, there should be more victims to choose from. Not just longer running scenes for 3 potential victims.

Suicide is a very serious problem. Not because in countries like America it's any kind of epidemic that leaves fairly content individuals scratching their heads or the idea of it is so catchy that news outlets panic and fanatics begin pleading with the country to save its' lost youth. In America, we can't be bothered with worrying about how other people feel. There just isn't time. And time is money. That's why suicide is such a serious problem. It's representative of our apathy and ignoring a serious threat. We're living in what are often very cut-throat times. And if you can't hack it, you might as well cut yourself out of the picture. In America, we seem to be handling it okay. As a result of how collectively sick, ignorant, and desensitized our culture has become due to political, financial, and religious anxieties, we pad ourselves by toughening our skin. The fabric of our shallow, sad world and what it's become, could be ripped through at any given moment, resulting in mass confusion and hysteria. To put it bluntly, American citizens are more impressionable now than in the 1990's, when adults were worried that suicide was an epidemic and that musicians like Marilyn Manson could cause a person to kill themselves.

Suicide Club is a powerful, brutal punch of a horror film. Not because of drama or characterization. Asian horror films, the best ones at least, seem to use emotional story lines and such as a misdirection. To make you think the horror will be easier to take when it arrives, to make you expect one kind of ending when usually another one is on its way. Instead of wrapping up the idea of suicide and a horror-filled culture in a neat package, it shows you what is happening to the culture it's representing in a full-speed ahead fashion. Its focus is on making suicide look like the most disgusting and horrifying thing that could ever happen. And naturally, it's hard to watch because it's both realistic in the world we have to live in and unreal because of the way it's portrayed cinematically (the movie's blood is thick and brighter red than real blood). It's all the more disturbing, though, that we know there is some supernatural element in the plot, and the demeanor of the each victim is uncharacteristically happy.

The film is a pure horror show. Horror films are typically more internal. But, Suicide Club focuses more on the external and keeps us confused. The film has a completely paranoid feel to it. And leaves you very depressed and hopeless. You can't help but feel that something about what you're seeing is dangerously real. That it is close to a true human apocalypse somehow, exposing that there is something entirely defenseless inside us all. If we're so weak that we need movies to even tell us how to feel, maybe happiness is just an illusion There isn't much separating us from the mindless masses of people killing themselves in this film. The film brings up what it calls: "a connection to yourself." Certainly, the person who really knows themselves well is a person hopefully less sensitive to the pressures of conformity and the desire so many young people today have to follow the herd.

But the film does give us some red herrings that might actually be legitimate sources for the rash of suicides. The first is a website that is keeping score of all the group suicides. A boy then mentions some of that "pass this along to (fill in the blank) people if you want (fill in the blank) to happen" kind of chain-letter stuff you find so much of online these days. The other major evidence is a pop-music singing group called Dessert that many of the victims have been listening to before or during the time they killed themselves. If you know young people like I did when I was in high school, you know how painfully there is a kind of mainstream standard the wannabe-popular young people desperately follow to remain connected to the clique they hope they fit into. Even though my high school wasn't as scary as the ones you see in Heathers and Jawbreaker, there are still people who will do almost anything to fit in. If the characters in Suicide Club had more of a notion of their own identity as an individual, what you're seeing wouldn't be happening. The film forces you to think about suicide. Even if it takes mountains of bloody FX, you won't be able to ignore these deaths.

The film is a near-masterpiece. It surely as hell is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in my life. And all the more surprising is that the filmmakers crafted such an extreme film out of a concept as stationary as suicide. It is a film so disturbing, it's physically sickening and practically impossible to watch without squirming. With its' pitch-black sense of humor, it's also a film that takes a lot of cheap shots. But they land hard. The cheapest trick the film has in its arsenal is a sequence in a bowling alley that resorts to rape and animal mutilation for a reaction. It's not a perfect film. But it's still the kind of thing that makes you question what the film is. It's another very effective and horrifying portrait of human cruelty and brutality. Whether you interpret the puller of the strings to be Satan, bad parenting, repression, or The Media... this confrontational string of horrors will prove to everyone that films can go too far.

Lucio Fulci made a lot of films. And they were all ugly. Each and every one. This fascinates me. For one reason. Not because people kept paying to see them. I know people will pay to see just about anything. After so many years, Fulci's films (such as: A Cat in the Brain, The House of Clocks, and the sequel to this film, "Zombi 3") became so cheap that they were several steps below the films U.S. direct-to-video companies like Troma, Full Moon, and Roger Corman's Miracle Pictures were producing. I get the impression his films weren't even being released into theaters in Italy. Unless they had the same sort of grindhouse theaters in the 80's America did in the 70's. And the overall reputation of Italian horror was never that great to begin with. Though the master, Dario Argento, is Italian; I find Mario Bava to be overrated, Lucio Fulci was a consummate rip-off artist, and after that, the movies from other directors over there just get sleazier, cheaper, and more exploitational, less artistic (see Filmirage's entire output for further proof). What fascinates me is- how did Fulci's films get funding? After hearing about the nightmare Argento went through getting to direct his first film, it seems like executives and financiers just threw handfuls of money at people like Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and Lamberto Bava and told them to do whatever they wanted.

Of all the directors with this kind of dynamic pushing them to direct, it seemed like Fulci was the only hack-master who tried to make art. One could complain that the stories made no sense. But Fulci always had atmosphere on his side. He wanted to make nightmares on film and he did. And though City of the Living Dead was more cold and tense, and The Beyond was more vague and delusive, Zombie remains his best film. Taking his passion for drippy Gothic mood to what I presume is about the least Gothic of all settings, a tropical island, Fulci tosses a confused blonde (the genuinely unpretty Tisa Farrow), a bizarrely sexy (and rapidly balding), smooth-talking British reporter, a mad doctor and his stressed-out, slowly mentally-deteriorating wife, a mysterious zombie plague, superstitious natives (of some perhaps Haitian origin- though since this is believed to be a rip-off of Dawn of the Dead, it might be meant to take place in Trinidad), a hospital that looks like it was made by the cast of Gilligan's Island, guns, flesh eating, gore, crazy eyes, egomaniacal rants, invisible people banging voodoo drums, and cinema's most original shark attack ever into a blender and hits: Frappé.

Where Fulci succeeds is where he manages to take the typical, boring framework of an exploitation film and really spice it up. I doubt most gritty mystery films about reporters, cops, and missing persons, that involve traveling to a foreign country to find evidence have this level of feverish aura invading every humid location, which makes for a very uncomfortable mood. There isn't much going on in the plot, but it's still intriguing to watch. Especially since Fulci's camera-work is sensational. One of my favorite scenes has Farrow sneaking onto her father's boat at night to take a look around. What's happening? A cop watches the boat outside, she climbs inside, sees a tape-outline around where a dead body was found, and meets the reporter. But Fulci's shocking zoom-lens effect, along with a very cool swinging overhead light, makes the sequence stand out. Where other directors would not have seen the potential to make it anything more, Fulci turns into a memorably entertaining sequence.

Where he unfortunately fails is in the final half hour of the film. I haven't seen many jungle movies, so I don't know what the clichés are. But until the one-hour mark, the film had been a surprising, fresh, enjoyable experience (just short of a little sickeningly sleazy, crude female nudity). Suddenly, the movie does one of those forehead-slapping "bonehead" moments that makes you lose almost all respect for the people who made it. The survivors are traveling across the island by jeep, which suddenly breaks down after they swerve violently off the road to avoid hitting a zombie. What?! Why would the driver be afraid to hit a zombie? They knew it wasn't a person, they couldn't kill it- it's already dead. And it's a big jeep too, they would easily have mowed right over it. No harm done. But of course, the guy's driving too fast and it spins out of control. So, of course they crash into a tree and are now without wheels. Oh, and the crash was so intense, one of the passengers severely injures their leg. Now, he has to be to carried by the other people which slows down their time to get back to the boat traveling on foot. Did it ever occur to the driver to take his foot off the accelerator pedal?? Or even hit the break?

And that's not all. If that weren't bad enough, the film then rips off Night of the Living Dead, by having a series of zombie murders where each victim just stands still for 45 seconds while the zombie slowly shuffles toward them and takes a huge bite. I wouldn't complain about the first person, because it's such a hypnotic sequence. I understand where one of those makes sense. It's a stylistic choice. But by the second time Fulci does it, this style of murder has grown so stale, it's frustrating. So naturally, he does it to yet a third victim later. The ending is such a complete mess. From that, to the mad doctor's stupid "incredible" speeches, to the pathetically schlocky final image of zombies dragging themselves along New York's Brooklyn Bridge, while on the soundtrack a radio DJ narrates a zombie "takeover." If only William Castle had been alive to direct this. An ending this laughably dumb might have been a lot more fun.

Horror and comedy are very hard to put together. A lot of revulsion can come from comedic ideas and many horrific concepts can be amusing. But an idea that's both scary and funny at the same time is incredibly rare. Some fans hate every film that combines the two and need their horror completely pure. Me- I can appreciate a good mix or horror with anything else, if it is indeed good. When I look at the horror films I enjoy most, a large percentage are horror-comedy hybrids. But are they really funny? What is most essential for a horror-comedy is energy. It doesn't matter if the jokes fail, it's the concept that needs to work. Or the filmmaker needs the pace running smoothly, to keep the viewer entertained. Within reason, I think the undisputed master of the horror-comedy is Peter Jackson. He knows better than any filmmaker how to make the most disgusting things ever put on screen amusing. Even pushing them as far as they can go, until the film's excesses become pure art.

Stuart Gordon is no Peter Jackson. His real inspiration is obviously H.P. Lovecraft, the writer Gordon gets most of his movie ideas from. But that said, how funny were the man's stories intended to be? I hear many Lovecraft fans are appalled at what Gordon has done with his work. I could care less. I've always said- a book's a book, a movie's a movie. And that applies to short stories too. But without him, Gordon would have no career. So right away you have to accept that this is an adaptation. Criticize the film for what it is and I won't criticize the material it was derived from. On one hand, you have what I'm sure are graphic stories from Lovecraft that were probably a lot more serious than this film is. On the other, you have a filmmaker trying to in some ways "push the boundaries." With that in mind, I think I would have enjoyed the film being so graphic if the purpose were to shock and horrify. Not to make people laugh a little and cringe safely.

Re-Animator is an excessive film where the excess is used to get a reaction out of people, not to further the story. But always with a kind of childish gag on the end of it to make it easy to swallow for mass audiences. The film has no dark ambiance, no creepy atmosphere. Just a few set-ups where a zombie will go after someone and a lot of gore, almost always generated from an already dead cadaver. Which is where I point out- that's how the film uses it's gross out quotient. Since it takes place mostly in a medical hospital with a very busy morgue, there are a ton of corpses lying around. Thereby supplying the film with lots of bodies to spew gore from. My one problem with that is that the film shows you people taking those corpses apart. You can see that stuff on The Learning Channel, and just because you can see it doesn't mean most people consider it entertainment. And it may be disgusting, but it sure as hell isn't scary. Not that a non-scary horror film bothers me, as I hope I've proved.

Other reviewers have already brought up the score by Richard Band which rips off the theme from Psycho. I don't know what this film has to do with Hitchcock and I don't think I want to know either. I have always been very much against filmmakers outright ripping off other movies. But nothing is worse than a film copying a scene shot for shot or a piece of music note for note. Band copies Bernard Herrmann note for note. Only, adding an 80's synthesized beat to it. Like a very low-key techno song. Not only is it unnecessary to copy another composer's piece, but Herrmann's original was just so much better. I will give Band one credit. The piece that plays during the sequence where Meg walks down the hall into Herbert West's room is good.

The story seems a clever enough idea. And I would have forgiven any number of scenes that moved too slowly- I think slowness is crucial to horror (if the right music and atmospheric elements are in place). But the characters are so grating and the dialogue is so melodramatic, it's like watching a very bland soap opera. Probably the best thing about the movie is how down-trodden Dan Cain is. It doesn't make him interesting, but considering how seldom men in horror play vulnerable, it is admittedly fun to watch him getting screwed all the time. Especially since the actor Bruce Abbott is so beautiful. With his always visible sensitivity and high emotional scenes, it's as though his relationship with Meg works because they're both nurturing. A first in horror? Though most of the time, I wish he would just suck it up so we could move on. Meg, on the other hand, is extremely irritating. With her always high-pitched voice and constant whining, she is the definitive Female Victim. But I just wanted her to shut up. A first for me!

David Gale as the evil Dr. Hill certainly walks away with the movie's Best Actor Award and is the only thing creepy here. Jeffrey Combs as Herbert is just annoying. But, his interplay with Gale actually makes his character slightly interesting. Two "mad scientists" in one movie? That's gold. And I would say it's great watching Gale lose his head. Anything to shake the movie up, right? But the languorous, flat pacing just continues. Things never ascend to the next level. The score keeps dropping pennies in a bucket. And though there's one truly cool montage of terrifyingly ghastly zombie face closeups, we also have to see them naked. You ever seen a naked zombie? It's just plain gross. Not entertaining. Gross!

When I said in my review of his legendary Night of the Living Dead, that George Romero is a horror director with a very inconsistent record, this film sticks out most in my mind as proof of that struggle. Between trying the hardest to be a character study and having to fill out the genre requirements to be sold as a horror film. For his sake, I'm thankful that much of his work feels like it's straining to be horror. Because were it not to add those elements, I wouldn't be interested in seeing his films at all. Without the threat of zombie invasion, 1985's Day of the Dead would be a painfully tedious and irritatingly over the top war flick about people yelling at each other. 1978's Dawn of the Dead would be an action film about people trying to survive the breakdown of society from... what would most likely be anarchy caused by widespread riots and outbreaks of street crime (the sort you'd see in something like 1979's The Warriors or 1978's Saturday Night Fever), were you to take out the zombies. 1973's The Crazies would lack the tragedy to make the boring military effort to contain the outbreak of disease worth watching.

And 1976's Martin would be a lame art film about a lanky, skinny dork walking around the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, watching the people interacting and realizing his upbringing was just not normal. Which is what most of Martin is anyway, save for a half dozen scenes of Martin stalking women, drugging them, then raping them and cutting their wrists so he can suck their "blood," which looks so much like melted-crayons, you'll wonder why the strangely un-vampiric Martin likes to drink it so much. All while the fairly mopey boy narrates almost every shot he's in. And he's in almost every shot. I was once told that narration is the last resort of a screenwriter, a product of desperation. In Martin, rather than Romero using the narrations as a tool of creepy foreshadowing, it's more to provide internal reflections over why Martin is doing what he does. Which, not to beat on a dead horse but, is really quite boring. As is the character of Martin. Who is the entire film.

Is Martin a vampire or is it in his own head? Good question. My answer? I don't care. What I want most from a horror film, regardless of how ambitious it is or not, is to be entertained. All said and done, a horror film being scary is a great thing. But it's a luxury. Something I just can't expect from every horror film I see. So, I try to go with the flow. So, how does Martin flow? Quite well, all things considered. Romero does have a style to most of his films. And even though I find The Crazies to a better final film (partly because of the fact that it looks haphazard stylistically, and documentary-like), Martin is a better film in terms of style or atmosphere. Romero is the horror King of library music tracks, which has always bothered me. But, maybe I should lighten up on that. As a matter of fact, I'll never know or never care to know where the original tracks came from. So, the usage of this music by Romero's films is like sampling the flavor of music at the time. One of the few things I truly like about Martin is that I remember the music. The hallucinogenic, reverberating, trapped-in-a-glass-jar quality to most of the pieces.

The other thing Martin really has going for it is Martin's amusing reactions to 1970's America. If he really was an 80-something year old vampire with almost no exposure to American culture outside the occasional children's novelty toy or magic tricks, watching him browse through stores and his amazing reaction to the sight of a suicide victim, is downright priceless. Romero's foremost focus in Martin is irony. And the film is chock full of incidences of that. Usually, it's nothing impressive. But one scene really blew me away. Martin breaks into a thrift shop at night, which trips off a burglar alarm. The cops are quick to arrive and Martin has to cut it close to evade capture. This scene is the pinnacle of Romero's brand of suspense. As Martin clings to the walls and ducks and dives around objects to hide himself from the cops' eye- I'm on the edge of my seat. Martin leaps out the door and flies through the streets, desperately looking for somewhere to hide out. As he enters the first dark place he sees, he finds himself in the hide-out of some kind of black gang. Because of Martin, the police have inadvertently caught more criminals. But brilliantly, the two sides have a shoot-out and everyone dies... everyone except Martin.

Now, that's a stroke of genius. Irony is what makes it happen. But what makes it so enjoyable is that it is completely unpredictable. Though there are several other scenes in Martn that are unpredictable, none are as filling as this one. Perhaps the film's greatest attribute is that it serves as something of a response to the pressure from Christians or Catholics to conform to what is a normal manner of behavior, etc. When Martin is seen as having "unnatural" impulses, his religious Uncle (was he his uncle? I don't remember) brands him as evil and Satanic, etc. This is some small comfort for the viewers who have experienced psychotic religious people before in their lives, and living in America- it's almost impossible to avoid all of them. But, consider this: I'm getting schooled in religious ethics by a film whose main character is raping and killing women. Which is my second biggest complaint about the movie (the first is how boring Martin the character is). I guess I understand why he wants to rape the women. But, why do I want to watch him doing it?

Some films of the horror genre defy explanation. Just about everything Eli Roth has made fits that bill. After making 2002's remarkably well-paced and watchable, yet sloppy and ridiculous Cabin Fever, which like all other Lions Gate films wasn't released until years after it was finished, Roth decided he wanted to make a horror film as shocking as his new idol- Takashi Miike's films Audition and Ichi the Killer were over in Asia. What Roth ends up doing is making a suspenseful but shockingly anti-human film that was seen by the world as just more torture film fodder. Any great message Roth had was lost on the general public, which either avoided Hostel because they felt it was only gratuitous graphic violence, or flocked to it because they just wanted to see people being tortured. The film was hugely controversial, therefore it raked in mountains of dough for everyone involved (controversy had previously made huge box office hits out of 2004's The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11) and made Eli Roth a pop culture icon, where previously he'd just been a beefy punk with his infectious fanboy attitude all over Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments special. Following Hostel's success, he even took his starry-eyed defiance on Fox News, challenging business correspondent Neil Cavuto. Which only made him look more callous and gave Fox another Jewish face on young Hollywood and what is widely considered their snotty sense of superiority.

Which is what makes Hostel's anti-humanity all the more shocking. Eli Roth is not a bad guy. Rather, he's a surprisingly intelligent writer and director who understands a lot. But when it comes to his own films, he's always more thoughtful about how to market a movie than what actually goes into it. Cabin Fever was marketed as a disturbing, extreme gorefest, and it's not. If anything it was a forgettably pedestrian film made from a story with potential that turned into a David Lynch-ian series of tableaux that all failed to hit that much-desired nerve. Roth is so concerned with the appearances of his films before people see them, the films suffer incredibly. He also hangs elements on his films, like ornaments on a Christmas tree, that are supposed to make people think they are deeper than they really are. In Cabin Fever, it was the perception by backwoods America of anything the 'city folk' did as being "not Christian," and therefore the locals can just shoot anyone they want to and not get in trouble for it. I think Larry Fessenden's Wendigo was trying to make a similar point years before Cabin Fever was released - though in all fairness, Roth had finished writing Fever in the mid-1990's. The point being, Fessenden did it with much more grace and intelligence than the well-meaning but bumbling Roth.

And that brings us back to Hostel. Which, by all signs, is nothing more than traditional teen horror or teen sex comedy taken to the modern equivalent of a concentration camp. Or, a cruder version of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Now, when I say that- please don't imagine the American Pie crew or Harold and Kumar hanging out there, cracking jokes, and having kooky misadventures before finally being sprung and learning a valuable lesson about friendship and common, everyday morality. Believe it or not, Hostel does have a serious side. It's just hard to see it through the haze of plastic, sexy teen / early 20's characters with their trendy one-liners and dated slang, shallow pursuits of casual sex with nameless foreign women, selfish drinking and drug binges, brainless usage of homophobic slurs, and unnatural attachments to their cellphones- which should just be grafted onto their hands to save the time of having to whip them out of their pockets, as well as less chance of having them be stolen by impoverished punk gangs of local street children.

It's hard to see any point to Hostel at all. Especially when the director then makes a sequel a year later which is virtually the same thing, only with women and more obvious misogynistic elements. In the first film, with men being the target of most of the film's pretty graphic violence and murder, people saw the film as being a portrait of the effects of the shameful behavior of America's military under command of George W. Bush on international attitudes of American men. Knowing Roth, the film was probably nothing more than a style exercise in gritty exploitation, just to have people mindlessly being tortured in the name of Roth's favorite cinematic past-time, watching "f***ed up s**t." With that kind of ambition, it's no wonder people find Hostel a brainless experience. I initially bought into the film as a hard-hitting piece of horror, for my own personal reasons.

In fact, I still do see the film as a simple morality tale. Featuring young Americans who could easily be any of the random numbs on the E! Channel's Wild On television series, or the background drunkards in the Girls Gone Wild videos, doing whatever they want to, showing an apathetic streak toward everyone but themselves and a hateful attitude toward anything considered "gay." Take these fools and drop them in the middle of a country they know nothing about, where people are being murdered and pleasure-seeking tourists disappear into thin air. It's like young Americans are being bred like pigs for the slaughter. If it isn't overseas, it's right in our own country. Though not as extreme an example, America is overpopulated, people are breeding too much, our resources are drying up very slowly, with fears of terrorist attacks and disease pandemics flying fast and furious- it's truly like there is no hope for a real future. Tobe Hooper's first season Masters of Horror's entry, Dance of the Dead, glides over similar terrain. And would probably have been more effective that Hostel, all things considered, had that piece not been as afraid of the graphic violence Hostel bathed in.

I don't know if you've noticed, but serial killer movies in the horror genre have grown stale. Since 1986's very good Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, they've been cheap and too easy to produce. So, literally, just about everyone looking to make a name for themselves has made some kind of serial killer movie. The success of 2002's direct-to-video masterpiece Dahmer even started a series (Gacy, Bundy, Ed Gein). Also, multiple films based on the Zodiac killer, dozens of home invasion themed films, hundreds of "based on a true story" clones, and even parodies such as 2006's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It's out of control. Reality in horror has never been more popular. Yet, the reality of these serial killer films is no more real than the masters of the sub-genre. Henry, for one. Also- 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, 1995's Se7en, 1973's Deranged, Wes Craven's immortal The Last House on the Left, and perhaps Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho. This genre screams, "Been there. Done that." A new film about a serial killer needs a fresh approach.

Enter: American Psycho. This 2000 adaptation of the controversial Brett Easton Ellis novel took almost a decade to be made, but I think the film dares to go where almost no other killer film will- blaming its' killer on the culture of America itself. Being a rich, handsome, well-dressed bachelor in the New York business and club scenes of the mid-to-late 80's gives him a wealth of opportunities to meet women he would spend only a night with. Prostitutes, models, drug users, friends of friends. Patrick Bateman is one of the most sickening serial killer characters ever put on screen. He is a member of the sort of Wall Street Elite- a soulless, robotically judgmental bunch who go anywhere they want, do whatever they want, say whatever they want to - with no consequences. But even with this group, there is a chain of superiority. Built by acquiring certain status symbols. And with Patrick being toward the bottom of said chain, he's grown so needy of the status and yet, always receiving less of the validation that his fellow suits are pulling in. With that urge for utmost entitlement not satisfied, Patrick is becoming a blank rage.

Now, that sounds rather cold and boring. It is, but it's also meant to be. The film captures the empty artificiality of Bateman and his type, which are hollow shells. Like an assembly line of pods which factory workers fill with raw material that are shaped by machines into products. Products that all look the same and are hard to tell apart. And that's the key to the film. Psycho is a world where the vultures (the "werewolves of Wall Street," if you will) and their prey are equally hard to differentiate between. Patrick's victims are as faceless or nameless as he is (Patrick is all throughout the film mistaken for different people). And that's where the story gets interesting. Because, now the concept of things like alibis are irrelevant. Patrick lives in a who's-who society of people who are all on drugs or can't be bothered to pay attention to where they've been because their focus is on where they have to be next. It's almost a dark fantasy world, one where again, there are no consequences because there is zero sense of accountability. And in this world, that won't change. The system is too fed by the powers in charge of the nation. If one changes, the other has to change too. In a movie like this, "change" is nothing more than a lyric in a Michael Jackson song.

The film remains purely fascinating. It's always updating itself with new information, and Patrick does undergo a crude character arc of sorts. I especially find it intriguing how his class of victims begins to change as the film progresses. Moving from prostitutes and homeless beggars to his rich friends and business associates. Even though he kills the man he sees who in his mind has it all, Paul Allen (played by 90's TV heartthrob, Jared Leto), no one notices that he's even missing. Patrick also assumes the identity of one of his other clones, no one notices. No one cares to notice. A fascinating turn of the knife from a similar set-up, for instance in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley- where, people actually do notice when the guy who has-it-all goes missing. The horror of American Psycho is the manner in which the film feeds Bateman his victims. Some of them have a human side, which is all we're given to relate to in the film. Otherwise, we're just sitting back and watching the horrors taking place on screen served up cold with no morality and no end in sight to the story.

Lastly, the relevance of American Psycho today is how shockingly the film predicted a piece of history that was about to take place. How much the character portrayals of Bateman and his gang of clones have in common with former U.S. "President" George W. Bush and his administration of evil minions. Other than the obvious heartless and soulless quality to these people, was how much Bush was like a fictional character. And like Bateman himself. His father was a huge power icon (Bateman's father in Psycho owns the company everyone works at), he was a drone selected to do an important job and took advantage of the position for his own personal gains, he's handsome and was dressed well, says everything his cronies wanted to hear even when he was just spitting and not saying anything, and untold numbers of people died because of him. He was so pathetic in fact, he could've been Bateman's brother. That truly makes American Psycho a horror film unlike any other. One that retroactively has its' finger on the pulse of real life terror and tragedy. Oliver Stone's character study, W., was too little, too late.

I was pleasantly surprised when I watched Rob Zombie's directorial debut, House of 1,000 Corpses, the year before The Devil's Rejects was released. I say "pleasently," because I was told the movie was a complete sack of (fill in the blank yourself). The movie's reputation was pretty up and down. It had its' detractors (the person who gave me their DVD copy, which I still have, for free), it had its' fans. And then, it had people like me. People who didn't really know what to think of it. In a way, I still don't. Though, it's a pretty obvious movie. Intentionally kitschy and nostalgic for the era of funky 70's culture watching old black and white 50's horror films and Universal monster movies on TV, creature features, tourist traps, roadside attractions, American small towns on Halloween night. Informal, stylish, fun in lots of ways (sometimes even when it was crude), and trademark of the Rob Zombie I knew from his music career. Then, the movie tried to turn the kitsch into "brutal" torture-film type horror and failed miserably. As it also did when it tried to turn into a trippy freakshow at the very end. That's House of 1,000 Corpses in a nutshell. Imperfect but definitely worth a watch. That was 2003, this is 2005.

Billed and sold all over the place as a horror film, The Devil's Rejects is not a horror film. In fact, it's Rob Zombie bending over backwards to kiss the butt of every exploitation cliché and stereotype in the book. A tribute to Bonnie & Clyde, The Wild Bunch, westerns, road trip movies, escaped criminals out on the lam... And when it could find the time, it would pencil-in a rip-off of either The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left, or Bride of Chucky. Just so the studio could still call it a horror film and cash in on it being a sequel to House, which they sold as a horror movie. Another reason this is often considered a horror movie is because it was released in 2005, the year the torture film began to rear its' lame head into the mainstream. By this time, Saw had bred at least one sequel. Then, Wolf Creek had already been released and caused a sensation. And, the buzz on Eli Roth's Hostel was going through the roof. But, The Devil's Rejects isn't even a torture film. Not that I care. I'm just stating the facts. What Rejects is more than anything else is an action flick. Bad guys hunted by corrupt cop, hostage situation, guns and fast cars, sleaze... No wonder I don't usually watch this kind of movie.

Now, if I were to offer my critique of Rejects, no critique would be complete without me saying things like- pandering to the lowest common denominator. This movie was written like Rob Zombie thinks everyone who would want to watch a horror film on the more exploitation side is a complete idiot who didn't even make it past the 3rd grade. To call this unintelligent would be an understatement. To call it entertainment would be an insult. Every character in the film, save for I believe a mother getting into her car and her small child, talks like they were born in a Special-Ed class room. Now, I guess that could be a deliberate choice on the part of Rob Zombie. Not because he finds it more interesting than actual dialogue and characterization, but perhaps his ambition was to try making the film a sort of greatest-hits compilation of the most moronic things white trash would say. Except that there are also black people in the movie. Or, maybe just Ken Foree (who, by the way, has done much better than this), I'm not sure. I don't really know what was going through Zombie's mind, or if he even had one at all at the time. But this movie is so stupid, it's tedious.

And that is about as politely as I can say it. I could make you a list of all the unbelievably idiotic things in this movie, but if you saw it, you already know. I'll just give the movie one major credit and head home. It's almost two entire hours long. Wow, right! You'd think, being that long, there would have been a point to it. Not really. But toward the last half hour, after watching the criminals being stupid and having "their fun" and an evil corrupt cop be a total jerk and not follow the rulebook in trying to apprehend them, the film stumbles onto a last-minute bit of genius. The movie, having already tried to turn the raping, murderous criminals into heroes (or, "Anti-Heroes" as it says in the current 'Handbook of Pretentious, Self-Righteous, Trendy Excuses in Defending Bad Movies & TV')... has the corrupt cop actually catch the criminals and then torture them for a good, solid 15 to 18 minutes. In all seriousness, who would defend the criminals? The movie glorified what they did by making them look cool, having Bill Moseley overact, etc. It was surprising to finally see the criminals being tortured like that. Then, ultimately die at the end. If only the corrupt cop had lived. Now that would really be breaking the cliché.

Patrick is one of a rare breed- the psychological horror film. It's said that this was meant as a tribute to Richard Franklin's favorite director, Alfred Hitchcock. Some of Hitchcock's movies were boring to me personally, but none of them were as absurd as this. Partly focusing on the suspense of the plot, but mainly meant to be an interesting character study, this is a misguided and confused film. I can't be the only person on Earth who went into this movie with one expectation from the characters, only to find things spin around at their own whim.

Patrick is about a young man who kills people with his psychic abilities. Not many though, because this wasn't intended to be a brutal slasher film with creative deaths. It's more about the fate of the victims in relationship to their killer. Patrick is an ominous figure who is unbelievably creepy (credit the movie there) and takes advantage of his power to move objects, causing major chaos in many ways. That makes him an antagonist. Yet, the film will then switch its' loyalty and try and paint Patrick as a victim. That the people he is attacking in the last 35-40 minutes of the film are only people who are a threat to him, physically. I can't be the only person who is annoyed by that.

Another example is the character of Matron Cassidy. She performs her own patented "shock test" on Kathy by listing types of social outcasts whom she claims are attracted to working in a hospital. The moment she added "lesbians" to her list of evil or mentally sick people, I had no sympathy for her and she was on my hate list. Another antagonist in the movie. She's a troubled woman, no doubt in my mind. Then halfway through the movie, suddenly she challenges Kathy on the subject of euthanasia. A subject I strongly support because I believe people are the only "God" we'll ever see during our time on Earth. Who agrees with me? The homophobic Matron agrees with me, suddenly Kathy is the religious one with the foolish point of view (in my mind).

Is there any explanation for this film's obsession with lying about characters? Why does it make one statement about a person, then completely backtrack over it like it can be easily erased? It's not as though they hid something. What it is is that they switched it. That's basically hypocrisy. This is a pointless, infuriating film. Maybe there was a point to it that I missed. Somewhere between Patrick's erection being a point of interest to the filmmakers, and his jealousy over his nurses and their lovers first being something spiteful, then turning into something supposedly beautiful and poetic by the final scene. If you can figure this out, best of luck to you!

Looking at the film on a much more superficial level, it's a good piece of art. The music score is very pretty. The cast is incredible, everyone does a marvelous job. Susan Penhaligon is an insanely beautiful woman, with (excluding Patrick) amazing taste in men. Julia Blake as Matron Cassidy turns in an astounding performance, one of the reasons I really hated her was how powerful she was. Very intimidating, a good choice to play an authoritative character. Visually, the film is very attractive. It takes place in what I have to assume is the late spring into early summer. Cool winds, breezes, warm locations. My favorite scene of the film involves an incredibly awesome strobe effect (can never have too much of that in movies). Looking at it in a more strict capacity- it's not dignified enough as a drama. It's not dangerous enough as a horror film. It's too crude and frankly, too lame to be legitimately psychological. It's not compelling. Plenty suggestive. But not compelling.

In many ways, this movie is a perfect enigma. So much of it doesn't make sense. My advice: just don't expect or assume anything. Play it by ear. I enjoyed certain scenes, others fascinated me (only to have the movie twist the characters and anger me in doing that). Some scenes were utterly laughable, unintentionally. One outright sent a chill down my spine.

Lucio Fulci is one of the horror genre's greatest enigmas. He died in 1996. But while he was alive, he was considered a classic eccentric, a genius artist, a playboy with women, and nicknamed "The Godfather of Gore." He was a legend in cult horror film-making. But, what did his legacy produce? What are mostly rip-offs of Mario Bava and Dario Argento's notorious 1960's and 70's giallos, some clearly misogynistic Euro-trash exploitation flicks, and a long series of flashy Gothic zombie splatter films. Which both pushed the boundaries, and questioned the artistry, of grotesque set-pieces and over the top gore. He wasn't the only director to try to turn the trash of European horror into art. Be he was radically more successful than the likes of Joe D'Amato, Jess Franco, and Ruggero Deodato. At least in the case of this film, which has gone on to become a serious cult horror favorite, easily eclipsing 1979's Cannibal Holocaust and 1982's Pieces. But, truly what Fulci did, though it has its' admirers (Clive Barker and Quentin Tarantino), will never be mistaken for real art or confused for the true genius of a superior director like Dario Argento.

The Beyond is a perfect showcase for both the talent Fulci did have as a director, but also for what ruined him as well. When he would be on a roll, unfolding an interesting film with expert mood or that maddeningly delectable pacing... it would only lead up to a cheap, unconvincing, and poorly made gore effect. Rather than being able to continue to enjoy it, you're taken right out of the experience of the film, just to gawk at the ridiculous gore. You're so busy noticing the seams because Fulci puts the effect on full display, then wishing it would end quickly. But no, Fulci thought the camera should linger as long as it could on his awful special effects. Making me now have to ponder- who is loopier? Him for thinking it would work, or his psychotic fanbase for thinking it looks great. The best example of this is the infamous "Spider" scene. Where, I kid you not, a pack of tarantulas crawl across a library floor, onto an injured victim... for 2 minutes screen time. I know, I timed it. But that's not all! Then, they start to bite him and tear apart his face. Which doesn't look real, not to mention now the spiders don't look real anymore either. They spend another 2 minutes eating him. I know, I timed it again.

When I first watched the film, I was fuming. That scene was so bad, and I was already so underwhelmed considering the heaping canyons of praise the film received online from various horror review sites. I paid $4.00 for the DVD and now I wanted every penny back. Which I guess goes to show you how much a person can be bothered by bad special effects. But it's more than that with me, it's the nerve of the director to think the audience only comes for gore. I like gore, but I also like a plot too. The Beyond is virtually plot less. Other than some nifty ominous monologues by the glamorously blind and creepy Emily, this movie was made for you to sit down and watch people doing "stuff." Not to understand anything or take anything away from the film. That's all well and good. And that certainly does have its' advantages at times. Fulci does know what to do with a camera. And his camera on The Beyond captures a lot of amazing shots. From gorgeous blonde beauties to the decrepit, crumbling old Louisiana houses, to some ugly Gothic nightmare-scapes (first rendered in a painting, then created as some kind of set), and of course- that huge, eerie hospital.

It's often said that Italian horror is the essence of style over substance. In Fulci's case, that's definitely true. The story really starts and stops at a young beautiful woman inheriting an old Lousiana hotel, starting to fix it up, and being haunted by strange goings-on, in and outside. From there, the script is merely decorated with ideas of a story. What's disappointing about that is, although the film has incredible atmosphere, there is a hugely oppressive and heavy dragging quality to the story. Especially scenes involving the handsome British-accented doctor, John McCabe, and his sub-plot adjoining to Liza's sole character arc, where she questions her sanity as she begins to see things that don't really exist (or do they?). His skeptic routine is annoying to say the least, as evidenced by his tediously slow line deliveries. Actor David Warbeck would go on to become something of a man-crush for the straight male fans of the movie. Their obsession with him outright borders on gender-bending lustful thinking at times. As for how he acquired these fans, I can only assume it's his suave, James Bond-like "butch" quality (as Warbeck himself referred to it on the audio commentary he recorded for the film just weeks before he passed away in 1997).

The Beyond could've been Fulci's best film. It's not. But, the best sequences from Beyond are the best of his career. It's not that they're few and far between. Instead, it's that they start on the right track, then completely derail for the film's unbelievably fake-looking death scenes. Including- a man having his head impaled by shards of glass and spurting blood everywhere, a woman's head impaled onto a nail and having her eye shoot out, a man's face grabbed by a zombie hand which pokes his eyeball out, the before-mentioned "Spider" scene, a man falling off a scaffolding and randomly spurting blood from his mouth, and a man being whipped with chains that tear the flesh from his body who then has his head melted by quick lime. A serious horror film knows better than to sell itself on such a novelty. The art of The Beyond should last longer and be more satisfying.

Ah... what a wonderful and wacky world, Troma. Its' own veritable Disney-Land of the perverse, strange, wild, offensive, tasteless, unique, and often brilliant. Where few other films have dared to go. What many filmmakers only dream or fantasize doing... Troma is one of the world's leading, and only still truly, independent sources of films. Their reputation made with the shockingly cheap and shockingly bad; 1976's Blood Sucking Freaks, 1984's The Toxic Avenger, and 1997's Tromeo & Juliet - among others. One could say they sought to bring the same attitude of much of the films considered "video nasties" in the U.K. to America, putting some of the most grotesque and shocking things ever seen onto movie screens. They acquired a cult following, and with the success of Avenger and its' sequels, 1985's Class of Nuke 'Em High, and 1990's Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, began distributing somewhat more respectable films from clearly more ambitious directors. Including 1983's Monster in the Closet (the greatest horror parody I've ever seen), 1990's daring and smart Def by Temptation, and this little Belgian import, Rabid Grannies.

Grannies is a darkly absurd and ingeniously subversive splatter film about two kindly old aunts and their horrible family of shameless, opportunistic ne'er-do-wells involved in all sorts of underhanded doings. When the aunts host a dual Birthday party, the cousins swarm in from all around to put on an act of smirking, fingers-crossed behind-their-back sincerity, each hoping to con the wealthy women into leaving them a chunk of their vast estate and fortune. Meanwhile, the aunts' house staff know all about the double timing and dirty tricks but keep their mouths shut because the women are so close to senility, they probably wouldn't believe them. And so begins the decadent dinner party, where the cousins stab each other in the back and try to raise doubt in another's reputation with the aunts, hoping to make themselves look better by comparison. Until the aunts receive a mysterious surprise gift with a letter from a disinherited cousin who decides not to attend the Birthday party, wishing them all the best. However, when the old ladies open it, they become possessed by evil spirits and mutate into cannibalistic, demonic zombies, hungry for human flesh. And they're not above feasting on their deviously immoral loved ones.

What makes Grannies so brilliant is how well thought-out and smart it is. Yes, the cousins are all despicable, loathsome things. But, when the gore starts to fly, and the death scenes become increasingly mean-spirited and frighteningly intense (the film's one legitimate flaw), you start to see the humanity in them. Even the worst of people have their human side, all evil has an understandable motivation. By that virtue, the sweet old aunt characters are not entirely clean themselves. They are judgmental - especially to the lesbian cousin and her girlfriend, patronizing to their loyal butler Radu (a smarter version of Manuel from Fawlty Towers), and religiously elitist. But they're also kind and charitable (as we see, they help out a homeless beggar in the street), you have to feel bad for them. A little. And finally, when the aunts become possessed, they are suddenly filled with a sense of perception they were missing before. They now see right through all the smiling, lying faces of their nasty relatives, and are not exactly forgiving of all their bad deeds and deception.

Most important to mention is a scene where the demons confront one of their cousins, a priest who hates kids. The first hands him a machine gun and suggests (in a more overt fashion than, but still in the mood of, Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None) that he kill himself to spare him the agony of being viciously ripped apart. The second tells him not to trust the first because, if the priest kills himself, he will go to hell; suggesting- is an eternity of suffering in the afterlife worth sparing him a few minutes of agony in his current life? They continue bouncing pros and cons off each other, playing a game with him, basically betting over what his choice will be. It's a razor-sharp and clever scene that highlights the film's devilish intelligence and witty subversiveness. Of course, it also goes a little too far as times. Never moreso than when a certain cousin on the plump side has his leg carved open and slowly stabbed, licked, chewed, and devoured by the putrid, alien-like demons. Maybe leaving a little to our imaginations is a good thing.

The film deftly marries elements from 1982's Creepshow, 1987's Dolls, 1985's Demons, and 1981's The Evil Dead, including- the greedy family salivating over an old relative's fortune, being trapped in huge old creepy castle-like mansion, demonic possession from the essence of a somewhat ancient object, and of course, the sadistic murderous zombies with sharp teeth and claw-like fingers. Rabid Grannies would also go on to inspire other rabid grannies in Peter Jackson's 1992 cult classic, Dead Alive (aka- Braindead), and Luca (Ghoulies) Bercovici's grimy little 1995 cheapie, The Granny, whose gore was not nearly as savaged as Rabid Grannies'. Grannies has had an unfortunate DVD history in the eyes of gorehounds. Troma has never cut the film back to its' original uncensored European version. So the film's plentiful, impressive gore effects can only be seen in a montage on Troma's DVD in the special features section- which is also missing at least one key gore sequence.