Horror Film Review: From Within (dir by Phedon Papamichael Jr.)

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Strange things are happening in Grovetown, Maryland.

Sitting out on the dock, Sean (Shiloh Fernandez) reads from a book while his girlfriend, Natalie (Rumer Willis), waits. After he finishes reading, he promptly shoots himself in the head.

Natalie staggers back to her father’s dress shop and says that someone is following her. She then ducks into a backroom and stabs herself in the neck with a pair of scissors.

The next day, Natalie father (Jared Harris) hangs himself in the back of his shop.

And the deaths continue, one after another. One girl crashes her car while screaming that someone is following her. Another cuts her wrists on a broken window. A recovering alcoholic drinks drain cleaner….

Normally, all of this death would be a cause for panic (or, at the very least, a sudden surge of people moving out of town) but the citizens of Grovetown are all confident in their ability to survive. That’s because almost all of them are members of the same megachurch, led by the charismatic Pastor Joe (Steven Culp). They believe that the deaths are the results of witch’s curse. Perhaps all they have to do is kill the witch’s descendants….

Now, the witch’s son, Aidan (Thomas Dekker), is willing to admit that yes, it’s possible that his mother put a curse the town. And it’s also possible that it was the suicide of his brother Sean that unlocked the curse and activated all of the deaths. But Aidan still swears that it’s the townspeople themselves who are choosing to commit suicide. If anything, the curse is just pushing them toward the inevitable….

Of course, complicating things is the fact that Aidan has kind of fallen in love with Lindsay (Elizabeth Rice) and Lindsay is dating Dylan (Kelly Blatz), the fanatical son of Pastor Joe. Aidan and Lindsay think that they may have found a way to stop the curse but Dylan is more interested in just killing Aidan. Working with Dylan is a white trash pyromaniac named Roy (Adam Goldberg) and you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen Adam Goldberg play a white trash pyromaniac.

Anyway, From Within is a film about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the film is full of creepy moments. On the other hand, it keeps getting bogged down in its attempt to say something meaningful about religious fanaticism. I mean, we know that Pastor Joe, Dylan, and Roy are all bad news as soon as they start talking about how religious they are because this is a movie and religious people are always evil hypocrites in movies. At times, this movie comes across as if it thinks it’s the first movie to ever suggest that maybe not all religious people are as perfect as they claim.

Far more effective are the scenes involving the curse. Whenever someone falls victim to the curse, they find themselves being chased by their own doppelgänger, which leads to some incredibly creepy moments. (When the doppelgänger appeared in a mirror and compelled one woman to drink bleach, it totally freaked me out.) These scenes reminded me a bit of It Follows, though it’s important to note that From Within was released in 2008, seven years before It Follows.

From Within is an uneven film, a bit frustrating in its pretensions but undeniably effective in its scares.

Horror on the Lens: What Waits Below (dir by Don Sharp)

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What waits below?

Find out in today’s horror on the lens!

First released in 1984, What Waits Below is a film about a bunch of soldiers and explorers that make the mistake of exploring a cave system in Central America. Needless to say, they’re not alone in that cave!

This film, to be honest, starts a bit slow but things do pick up once they get underground. Included in the cast is Richard Johnson, who all good horror fans remember for his role as Dr. Menard in Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.

Enjoy!

Corey Feldman Goes To College: Voodoo (1995, directed by Rene Eram)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Andy Chadway (Corey Feldman) is an aspiring writer who is attending college in the UK. When he meets Rebecca (Diane Nadeau), he is so smitten with her that he transfers to a school back in the States so that he can be near her. Of course, Andy doesn’t bother to tell her ahead of time so, when he arrives at his new school, he’s shocked to discover that Rebecca doesn’t seem to be happy to see him and that, since she lives in a sorority house, he can’t stay with her.

Desperately needing a place to live, Andy checks out the local fraternities but he discovers that there’s only one frat that is willing to take him. It’s the worst frat on campus, a collection of weirdos led by Cassian Marsh (Joel J. Edwards). Andy joins anyway but soon discovers that the frat is actually a voodoo cult that is more interested in human sacrifice than raging keggers.

Corey Feldman made a huge number of strange movies in the 90s. They were all released straight-to-video and almost all of them featured Feldman trying to get away from his teen idol image. In Voodoo, Feldman battles zombies and voodoo priests and Corey Haim is nowhere to be seen. Feldman is actually not bad in Voodoo. He’s always been a better actor than he’s given credit for but he also brings so much personal baggage to every role that it’s impossible to see him as being anyone other than Corey Feldman. That is definitely the case with Voodoo.

The premise of Voodoo is an interesting one and it had a lot of potential. The film deserves credit for taking its plot seriously and there is one good sequence where Marsh uses mind control to destroy a rival fraternity. However, Voodoo has too many scenes that seem like filler and it never fully explores its premise.

Keep an eye out, however, for Jack Nance. One of the original members of David Lynch’s stock company, Nance played the title role in Eraserhead and also played Pete Martell on Twin Peaks. Nance plays the father of a former member of the fraternity and he’s the one who warns Andy to be weary of Marsh. Nance and Feldman previously co-starred in Meatballs 4 and Nance’s eccentric presence livens up their scenes in Voodoo. This was one of Nance’s final roles before his untimely death in 1996.

Halloween Havoc!: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (Universal 1935)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

James Whale’s brilliant BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is one of those rare occasions where the sequel is better than the original… and since the original 1931 FRANKENSTEIN is one of the horror genre’s greatest films, that’s saying a lot! Whale’s trademark blend of horror and black humor reached their zenith in BRIDE, and though Whale would make ten more films before retiring from Hollywood moviemaking in 1941, this was his last in the realm of the macabre. It turned out to be his best.

Mary Shelley’s got a story to tell…

William Hurlbut’s screenplay start with a prologue set during the proverbial dark and stormy night, with Mary Shelly (Elsa Lanchester ), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon ) discussing Mary’s shocking novel “Frankenstein” as clips from the 1931 film are shown. Then Mary tells them there’s more to the story, and we pick up…

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Italian Horror Showcase: Who Saw Her Die (dir by Aldo Lado)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that today is World James Bond Day?

It certainly is! Today is the 55th anniversary of Dr. No and therefore, it’s the day when we celebrate all things Bond!

Now, it may seem strange to start a review of a classic giallo like 1972’s Who Saw Her Die? by talking about the James Bond franchise but the two do have something in common.

George Lazenby.

George Lazenby was the Australian model who was selected to replace Sean Connery in the role of 007. It was Lazenby’s first big break and it also nearly destroyed his career. Lazenby played the role only once, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Though many modern critics have come to recognize that film as one of the best installments in the franchise, contemporary critics were far less impressed. After the disappointing reception of OHMSS, it was announced that Lazenby would be leaving the role and, in Diamonds Are Forever, Connery returned to the role.

What happened? Why did George Lazenby exit one of the biggest film franchises in the world? In my research, I’ve come across several different theories. Some say that Lazenby voluntarily quit because he either wasn’t happy with the direction of the franchise or he didn’t get want to get typecast. Others say that Lazenby was fired from the role because he was difficult to work with and was viewed as being a diva. Others have said that Lazenby was viewed as being too stiff of an actor to continue in the role of James Bond.

Obviously, I can’t say whether Lazaneby was difficult to work with or not. Nor can I even begin to speculate on what he thought of the franchise’s direction. But, as far as this idea that Lazenby wasn’t a good actor goes … well, all I can say is have you even seen Who Saw Her Die?

As you can probably tell from the trailer, Who Saw Her Die? might as well take place on a totally different planet from the Bond films. Who Saw Her Die? is an atmospheric and, at times, nightmarish giallo. A murderer of children — complete with black gloves and a black veil, because this is a giallo film, after all — is stalking Venice. When the daughter of architect Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) is murdered, Franco and his ex-wife (Anita Strinberg) search for the murderer and discover a connection to a previous murder that occurred, years before, at a French ski resort.

It’s a dark and disturbing film, perhaps the most emotionally intense giallo film that I’ve ever seen. A year before Nicolas Roeg did the same thing with Don’t Look Now, director Aldo Lado captures Venice as a city of both great beauty and great decay. Every scene features the ominous shadow of death hanging over it and, after the murder of Roberta Serpieri (Nicolette Elmi), the viewer is painfully aware that everyone that we see is a potential child murderer. Is it the artist? Is it the priest? Or is it some random passerby? This film keeps you guessing.

And holding the entire film together is George Lazenby. At the time, I’m sure that some said it was a step down to go from playing James Bond to appearing in a low-budget Italian thriller but Lazenby gives such an emotional and empathetic performance that it should silence anyone who has ever said that Lazenby was a stiff actor. It’s not just that Franco wants justice for his daughter. It’s also that he’s haunted by his own guilt. Franco abandoned his daughter, leaving her on the streets of Venice, so that he could get laid. If he had been with there, the killer never would have targeted her. As played by Lazenby, Franco is motivated not just by rage but also by a need to redeem himself. He is equally matched by Anita Strindberg, who perfectly captures the raw pain and rage of a mother who has lost her child. Perhaps the film’s strongest moment features Franco and his ex-wife making love after their daughter’s funeral. The scenes of their love-making are intercut with scenes of them crying in bed afterwards, a technique that, a year later, Nicolas Roeg would also use for Don’t Look Now‘s famous sex scene. Together, Stindberg and Lazenby make Who Saw Her Die? into the rare whodunit where you care as much about the future of the characters as you do the solution to the mystery.

Who Saw Her Die? is an excellent and powerful giallo and proof that George Lazenby was more than just someone who once played James Bond.

George Lazenby (center) in Who Saw Her Die?

Film Review: Venom (dir. by Ruben Fleischer)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Leonard Wilson

VenomPoster About 20 years ago, a friend and I walked out of a movie theatre for some pizza. On the way to the Pizzeria, I raved about the movie we just watched. The effects were awesome, and the main character was bad ass. My friend didn’t share the same sentiment, and over the dinner, he went on to explain everything that was wrong with the film. Bad CGI (for its time), 2 Dimensional Characters, and a pretty simplistic plot. By the end of my dinner, all of my joy was sucked away. I wanted to believe, deep down that I walked into a quality production, but there was so much room for improvement.

That film was Mark Dippe’s Spawn.

I mention this because after seeing Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, Spawn was the first film that came to mind. That makes sense, given that a lot of Venom’s genesis is from artist Todd McFarlane, who also created Spawn (and gave Spider-Man some of the best webbing I’ve ever known). There are parts of Venom I truly enjoyed, and I can say that there isn’t much of a problem with the acting on anyone’s side. However, the levels of boredom in the film’s first hour will have you wanting to bring in a highly caffeinated drink to sip on, just to stay awake. The lady next to me yawned, which made me yawn and it just cycled through the audience. The good sequences are already visible in the trailers.

Here’s a clip of Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man Video Game (easily recommended) to give you a rough idea of how he is.

From a plot standpoint, Venom does a good job in giving us a story for how Eddie Brock and his Symbiote meet without factoring in Spider-Man at all. Comic readers remember the Secret Wars, where Spider-Man lost his suit and picked up a symbiote replacement. When the Symbiote proved dangerous, Peter Parker got rid of it and it fell into the hands of his former Daily Bugle nemesis, Eddie Brock. Together, they formed Venom, a beast with all of Spider-Man’s powers and Brock’s hatred of Parker. Venom plagued Spider-Man, who was incredibly dangerous because he was one of the few villains that didn’t set of Parker’s Spidey Sense. He could sneak up on him at any time, assume the likenesses of other people, and Parker would never see him coming.

The Sony Spider-Man series changed this up in Spider-Man 3, replacing the Secret Wars with more of a Blob-like story. Symbiote crashes to Earth, finds Parker. Parker decides to rip it off and it finds Brock. In this new version of Venom, symbiotes already exist in space, and a corporation lead by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) are trying to bring them to Earth to intermingle with humans. When investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) stumbles on the corporation’s evil plans, he accidentally joins with a symbiote and finds himself with a near insatiable hunger for the living.

You have the best 2 in 1 team up since Leigh Wannell’s Upgrade. I would not be opposed to a sequel for this if they tightened up the writing. Maybe that’s my problem. Both Upgrade and Venom are similar, but only one had an interesting character that looked like Tom Hardy (sorry, but Logan Marshall-Green does bear a resemblance).

Ruben Fleischer’s (Zombieland, Gangster Squad) direction is okay here. With Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Iron Man, Black Swan) at his side, Venom doesn’t have many problems there. With the exception of the final confrontation, the shots aren’t too blurry or hard to track when the action starts. Even though Venom is a visibly dark character, I couldn’t complain that scenes weren’t well-lit.

For me, the problem with Venom is that at an hour and 52 minutes, it feels like the first hour is just waiting for that symbiosis to occur. Eddie Brock doesn’t really become interesting until Venom appears (also voiced by Hardy), and that’s a rough thing to say, given the cast involved. We’ve both seen Hardy, Ahmed and Michelle Williams in better roles, but they really aren’t given any real meat here. The dialog is a little shaky in some places. Hardy pushes himself hard here, and you see how disjointed Brock gets as he adjusts to the changes. Brock as a character, however, doesn’t really have a lot going for him. Neither did Peter Parker or maybe even Steve Rogers, but there were elements about who they were that helped you to appreciate who they be became as superheroes. Steve Rogers was a weakling with a good spirit, which made him a better Captain America. Peter Parker was a chemical whiz kid and came up with his own web-fluid. Brock just…well, reports. There’s a lot of boredom in that first hour. The best scenes are the interactions between Venom and Brock, full of cute banter. It’s like having an unwelcome guest wanting to meet your parents. It just took so long to get to that point. When it does, however, the movie improves. They do manage to get a lot right about what Venom can do.

The CGI in Venom is definitely good in some places. It stands as the best argument for another remake of The Blob. The symbiotes are creepy in their design and motion, slithering up walls and making their way through vents. Venom, in all it’s glory, is quite a sight to behold, towering over humans. It goes a little overboard over the last 3rd of the film. I can’t say I knew for sure what it was I was looking at, but that’s to be expected with some superhero films.

If you see the film, stay for the mid-credits scene, which teases a future character. Also stay for a near 5 minute sneak peek into Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.

Overall, if you feel you have to see it in a theatre, by all means, do so. If you can wait for it to come out on Digital, that may be the best route.

Horror Film Review: Unsane (dir by Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Steven Soderbergh.

Seriously, I know that everyone in the world is always going on about how brilliant he is but I have to admit that I always approach his film with a bit of trepidation.

I mean, yes, Soderbergh can be brilliant. He’s made some legitimately great films, some of the best that I’ve seen. The Informer! holds up brilliantly. So does Traffic and The Girlfriend Experience. Even a film like Logan Lucky remains amusing on a second viewing.

And yet, at the same time, he can be one of the most annoyingly pretentious directors around. Contagion was a raging bore and, with Haywire, Soderbergh squandered the potential of Gina Carano. Che started out strong before turning into a dull Marxist tract. With the exception of Out of Sight, his friendship with George Clooney always seems to bring out the worst instincts in both men. And don’t even start with me about the Ocean’s films. Have you tried to rewatch any of them lately?

Whenever I start a new Soderbergh film, I find myself wondering which Stephen Soderbergh am I going to get. Am I going to get the Soderbergh who is a crafty storyteller and a good director of actors? Or am I going to get the pretentious Soderbergh who always seems to think that he’s doing all of us favor by lowering himself to make a genre film?

With Unsane, which was released way back in March, I got both.

Claire Foy plays Sawyer Valentini. A year ago, Sawyer was working at a hospice when the son of one of her patients became obsessed with and started stalking her. Fearing for her life and realizing that the police weren’t going to be much help, Sawyer moved away from home and tried to restart her life.

Seeking help for dealing with her trauma, Sawyer makes an appointment with a counselor at the Highland Creek Behavioral Center. What she doesn’t realize is that Highland Creek is a scam. The papers that she signed at her appointment allow her therapist to hold her for a 24-hour evaluation. When Sawyer resists and attempts to call the police, her stay is extended by seven more days. Every time that Sawyer demands to be released, she’s judged to be a threat to herself and others and more days are added to her stay. As another patient explains it, Highland Creek basically holds onto its patients until their insurance runs out.

If that wasn’t bad enough, things get worse when Sawyer meets the new orderly (Joshua Leonard). He says that his name is George Shaw but Sawyer swears that he’s David, the man who has been stalking her. Of course, no one listens to her when she tries to tell them. After all, she voluntarily committed herself to Highland Creek….

Unsane received a lot of attention because Soderbergh shot the film in secret with an iPhone. The end results of Soderbergh’s experiment were mixed. At its best, this technique gives the film a gritty look and it visually captures the shaky state of Sawyer’s sanity. At its worse, it’s a distraction that leaves you feeling that you’re supposed to be more impressed by how Soderbergh made the film than by the story being told.

Fortunately, Soderbergh gets two wonderful performances from Claire Foy and the reliably creepy Joshua Leonard. Foy brings just the right combination of fragility and strength to the role of Sawyer and she gives such an empathetic performance that you get involved in her story even if Soderbergh’s style is often distracting. As for Leonard, you’ll recognize him as soon as you see him. He’s a character actor who specializes in playing off-balance people and he’s memorably menacing in this film.

I probably would have liked Unsane more if I didn’t always have the feeling that the movie was mostly made so that Soderbergh could show off. Whenever I see one of Soderbergh’s “genre” films, I get the feeling that he’s looking down on the material and that my reaction is supposed to be one of, “Soderbergh’s such a genius that he can even make crap like this entertaining!” (You get the feeling that Soderbergh might be willing to make a B-movie but he’d never be caught dead actually watching one.) That said, regardless of the motives behind it, Unsane was actually an effective and twisty psychological thriller.

If nothing else, it was better than Haywire….

Horror on the Lens: The Lodger (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A serial killer known as “The Avenger” is murdering blonde women in London (which, once again, proves that its better to be a redhead). And while nobody knows the identity of the Avenger, they do know that the enigmatic stranger (Ivor Novello), who has just recently rented a room at boarding house, happens to fit his description. They also know that the lodger’s landlord’s daughter happens to be a blonde…

Released in 1927, the silent The Lodger was Alfred Hitchcock’s third film but, according to the director, this was the first true “Hitchcock film.” Certainly it shows that even at the start of his career, Hitchcock’s famous obsessions were already present — the stranger accused of a crime, the blonde victims, and the link between sex and violence.

Also of note, the credited assistant director — Alma Reville — would become Alma Hitchcock shortly before The Lodger was released.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Cannibal Man (dir by Eloy de Igelsia)

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Once upon a time, when the fascists still controlled Spain, there was a man named Marcos (Vincent Parra) who lived in a tiny house that appeared to be sitting in the middle of trash dump. Marcos worked at a slaughterhouse and had a loving girlfriend named Paula (Emma Cohen). Marcos wasn’t a mean person but he did have a temper. Because he was poor and unedcuated, he was permanently on the outside of Spanish society.

One night, Marcos was out on a date with Paula when he got into an argument with a taxicab driver. The argument escalated until Marcos finally (and accidentally) killed the man. Paula thought that they should go to the police. Marcos disagreed. Eventually, to cover up his crime, Marcos strangled Paula in his tiny house.

Then, Marcos’s brother came by and discovered what had happened. So, Marcos killed him too. Then his brother’s fiancée came by and insisted on knowing what Marcos was hiding in the bedroom so Marcos killed her. Then his brother’s fiancee’s father showed up at the house and started asking too many questions so Marcos killed him.

And soon, Marcos’s house was full of dead people.

Towering over Marcos’s house was an apartment building. Living alone on the 13th floor was the handsome Nestor (Eusebio Poncela). Nestor use to spend his days watching Marcos through a pair of binoculars. Though he never knew what was happening in the house, Nestor still became fascinated with Marcos and his refusal to move out of his crummy house.

Eventually, Nestor befriended Marcos. Though Nestor was wealthy, his status as a gay man in 1970s Spain made him as much of an outsider as Marcos. Both Nestor and Marcos had reason to distrust and fear the police and this created a bond. With Nestor’s help, Marcos got a hint of the life that he could have been living if 1) he hadn’t been born poor, 2) he didn’t live in the middle of a garbage dump, and 3) if his house wasn’t full of dead bodies….

In the late 60s and early 70s, European art films were often disguised as being exploitation films when they were released in the United States. That’s certainly the case with this Spanish film from 1972. The original Spanish title of this film was La semana del asesino. In English, that translates to The Week of the Killer, an appropriate title since the film follows a week in the life of Marcos. However, when the film was released in the U.S., it was retitled Cannibal Man, despite the fact that there’s not any cannibalism to be found in the film.

Regardless of what it’s called, the film itself is a surprisingly sensitive and well-done portrait of two outsiders trying to survive and find some sort of happiness under an authoritarian regime. For all the murders that take place, the film itself is far more concerned with the friendship between Nestor and Marcos. When Nestor takes Marcos to his health club and they share a dip in the pool, it’s a rare chance for both Nestor and Marcos to escape their problems. It’s a nicely done scene, one that’s directed in such a way that you understand that this is one of the few times in Marcos’s life when he hasn’t been angry or scared. Even he’s not sure how to handle it.

Director Eloy de Iglesia combines scenes that have a gritty, documentary feel to them with sequences that seem almost dream-like. When Marcos kills his brother’s fiancee, the sound of the clock ticking in his house becomes almost deafening. Vincent Parra plays Marcos as being an inarticulate man who often seems to be in a daze, as if not even he can believe what he’s done and what his life has become. Eusebio Poncela is equally well-cast as the sympathetic Nestor.

Cannibal Man is a film that definitely deserves to be rediscovered.

Resist The Call: Cthulhu Mansion (1992, directed by Juan Piquer Simon)

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

After murdering a drug dealer at an amusement park, Hawk (Brad Fisher) and his gang of teenage thugs take Chandu (Frank Finlay) and his daughter, Lisa (Marcia Layton), hostage. As Hawk and company set up shop in Chandu’s mansion, Chandu warns them that they should leave before the mansion destroys them. Chandu has been summoning the forces of darkness and now they’re living in his basement. They already killed Chandu’s wife and now, they’re prepared to kill Hawk and the gang.

Hawk doesn’t believe a word that Chandu has to say. Plus, Hawk’s younger brother has been shot in the leg so they have no choice but to spend at least one night in the mansion. That turns out to be a big mistake. Before the night ends, Hawk’s brother ends up possessed, a woman gets pulled into a refrigerator, Hawk’s second-in-command drowns in a shower full of blood, and the mansion’s just getting started!

A Spanish-American co-production, Cthulhu Mansion was directed by Juan Piquer Simon, who earned a cult following for directing movies like Pieces, Slugs, and the immortal Pod People. Cthulhu Mansion never comes close to being as good as any of those films. Legitimately great actor Frank Finlay hams it up as Chandu and gets to wear some headgear that makes him look like Carnac The Magnificent but everyone else in the movie is forgettable and, with the exception of the blood shower, none of the deaths show any of the creativity that Simon brought to Slugs. Worst of all, Cthulhu doesn’t even make a cameo appearance.

While some may be tempted to watch because of the film’s appropriation of the Cthulhu name, resist the call of Cthulhu Mansion. H.P. Lovecraft wouldn’t have even stepped foot inside this house.