Horror On The Lens: Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (dir by Benjamin Christensen)

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Only four more days to go until Halloween so what better time to feature one the greatest horror films of all time, 1922’s Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages?

Directed by the Danish director Benjamin Christensen, Haxan is a quasi-documentary that, over the course of four separate sections, documents the history of witchcraft and superstition in Europe. Along with making a potent case that religion and superstition are largely the same thing, Haxan is best known for dramatizing various old folk tales. Though the film was made in 1922, its images of lustful devils and dark magic remain powerful to this day.

Enjoy Haxan!

Halloween Horrors 2013 : “Carrie” (2013)

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Let me preface this review by saying one thing : Lou Reed died today, so not much else matters.

Seriously — in a world dominated by poseurs and phonies, Lou was the read deal. Avant garde before there was avant garde, glam before there was glam, punk before there was punk, new wave before there was new wave — Lou stayed six steps ahead of all trends by simply not giving a flying fuck about any of them and staying true to himself. Plus, he was quintessential New York in a way that just can’t be faked. In many ways, he was a mirror to the Big Apple’s other favorite creative son, Woody Allen — Woody’s world is one of stuffy academia, anally rententive dinner parties, emotionally distant family patriarchs and matriarchs, and lifeless and pretentious gallery openings, while Lou’s world wasn’t just the streets but the gutters : strung-out drag queens who will give head to strangers to earn enough for their next heroin fix; two-bit hustlers looking for a gullible mark from out of town; desperate AIDS patients freezing in the cold because they lost their homes, families, and jobs; kids fresh from the Port Authority bus terminal looking to hit it big but willing to do anything to get by in the meantime while secretly knowing from the outset that their dreams are never gonna come true.

In short, the kind of people Woody Allen tells stories about are outnumbered by the kind of people Lou Reed told stories about by a factor of about 1,000 to 1, but the rarified elites from planet Woody love to glamorize and pine for the kind of lives that folks on Planet Lou lived — unless, of course, they had to spend one night on the streets, outside the safe confines of their luxury condos, at which point their romanticized notions of life among the “unwashed” would dissipate in a hurry. They know that, of course, so they just “take a walk on the wild side” comfortably by purchasing framed photographs and paintings by down-and-out artists who may or may not become “the next big thing” but are, they know, quite likely living hand-to-mouth existences right now and probably always will.

Burroughs. Warhol. Basquiat. Reed. Our connection to that New York as it was is fading rapidly, isn’t it? Disney has cleaned up 42nd Street. The grindhouses are gone. Harlem has been Clintonized. And another link to the past was severed today, irrevocably. New York’s got class now, but it ain’t got soul. Characters like Alan Alda’s blowhard from Woody’s Crimes And Misdemeanors have won. Poverty and desperation are more widespread than ever, but they’re inside, keeping their mouths shut. And one of the last honest voices that chronicled the lives of the poor and desperate with no pretense, no bullshit, and no flinching is silent forevermore. Iggy Pop’s doing car commercials now, for Christ’s sake, and Debbie harry’s touring the casino circuit — all is lost.

And on that note, let’s talk about this new Carrie remake, shall we?

Competence shouldn’t be a dirty word, all things considered, but when it’s all a movie has going for it, is that really saying very much? Director Kimberly Peirce doesn’t really do anything new with Stephen King’s horror classic apart from giving the unfortunate title character a more lurid backstory, but it’s not like she’s done anything actively bad here, either. The story proceeds more or less along the lines of the original (and along the lines of the made-for-cable remake starring Angela Bettis), so hey — it’s a decent little horror tale, we all know that. Likewise, Chloe Grace Moretz turns in a respectable enough performance in the lead role, Julianne Moore takes a completely different tack with the elder White than did Piper Laurie but it really works, and among the supporting cast Gabriella Wilde deserves special mention for her nice turn as the well-enough-meaning-but-hopelessly-misguided Sue Snell.

Still — where’s the soul? Like the new, cleaned-up Manhattan, Carrie circa 2013 is an exercise in mere presentation, with no substance beneath it whatsoever. DePalma’s dramatics are nowhere to be found here, nor his shocks. This is a movie that knows we already know the story and proceeds accordingly. “Just don’t fuck things up” seems to be all the more that Peirce and company were aiming for here, and as a result that’s all we get — a movie that gets in, does the job, and gets out.

Little touches like having Carrie make her prom dress herself make sense, but serve no real purpose in terms of broadening our understanding of the character or her situation, much less get us to go so far as to re-evaluate either — and adding camera phones to the infamous shower scene at the beginning don’t so much as “modernize” the proceedings as they draw attention to the fact that elements are being tacked on her for the sake of — well, nothing, I suppose.

So — we come back to competence again. Lou Reed wasn’t a “good singer” in any conventional sense of the term, but man, he was in there. He lived and breathed the kind of life he wrote songs about. He brought the same kind of immediacy to his work that Brian DePalma brought to Carrie in 1976. And that’s what’s missing here in Perice’s cold, clinical, by-the-numbers remake. That doesn’t make this new version a bad one, I guess, as I said — but it does make it a pointless one. This has all been done before, and been done a whole lot better, so — why bother?

But again — none of this matters all that much. Lou Reed died today. I’m wasting your time — and mine — by talking about anything other than that.

Horror Film Review: The Rage: Carrie 2 (dir by Katt Shea)

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(I originally posted a version of this review over at HorrorCritic.Com. I’m sharing it here because I think it makes a nice companion piece to both Ryan’s review of the original Carrie and Leonard’s review of the remake.)

Lately, the 1999 horror sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 has been showing up fairly frequently on Encore and I have spent many an insomnia-filled night watching a wild-eyed Rachel use her brain to kill every high school football player on the planet. It seemed like every time I came across Carrie 2, the film was already halfway over. For some reason, I always seemed to find the movie at the exact moment that Rachel was using a stack of CDs to decapitate some of the most obnoxious jocks to ever crawl out from underneath a cinematic rock. However, once I managed to catch Carrie 2 from the start, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s actually a pretty good film and that — surprise! surprise! — it has a lot more than just bloody ,mayhem on its mind.

In Carrie 2, Rachel (well-played by Emily Bergl) is the half-sister of the original Carrie White. Like her sister, she can move things with her mind and, again much like Carrie, Rachel goes to a high school that is totally and completely dominated by jocks.

However, these are not just your typical high school football players. No, this is the most dangerous collection of clean-cut young sociopaths to be gathered in one place since the beer garden scene from Cabaret. With the exception of sensitive Jesse (played by Jason London, who is so handsome in this film that he looks like he belongs on the cover of a book), the entire football team is obsessed with seducing every virgin at the school. When Emily’s friend Lisa (played by Mena Suvari) is deflowered and then rejected by moronic jock Eric (Zachary Ty Bryan — yes, the oldest Home Improvement kid), she ends up killing herself in a scene that is surprisingly effective because of both Suvari’s sensitive performance and the fact that she was named Lisa.

Seriously, folks, be nice to the Lisas in your life.

Anyway, Rachel soon starts to investigate the circumstances behind Lisa’s suicide and this leads to the jocks hatching a ludicrously complex scheme to silence her. Much as in the first Carrie, it involves humiliating Rachel at the biggest party of the year and, just as in the first film, the end result is Rachel killing a lot of people.

I’m like a lot of filmgoers and horror fans in that I have gotten burned by so many bad sequels to classic movies that, as soon as I see a number in a title, warning flags go up. I tend to watch these films with the expectation that they’re going to both cheapen the original and not bring anything new to the table. However, Carrie 2, while hardly a perfect film, is an exception to the rule. No, it’s nowhere close to being as good as the original Carrie but, when taken on its own term, it’s an effective and entertaining movie.

Along with the strong performances from the entire cast (seriously, you will hate Zachary Ty Bryan’s character so much by the end of this movie), Carrie 2 is well-directed by veteran genre director Katt Shea. Wisely, Shea does not attempt to recreate the original film (despite the similarities in plot) but instead, she brings a unique, feminist perspective to the story. Under Shea’s direction, Emily Bergl makes Rachel into a strong, independent character. She may be victimized but — unlike Sissy Spacek in the original — she is never a victim.

There’s a lot of scenes that stick in my mind from Carrie 2. The film’s final massacre is outrageous and over-the-top and it’s all the more effective because of it. (It also features death by shattered lenses and I have to admit that this myopic reviewer always cringes whenever she sees that scene.) However, to me, Carrie 2 is most disturbing when it explores the pathology behind the film’s doomed football team. One need only watch the scene where the entire team gets their heads shaved, transforming them from being individuals into a mass of virtually indistinguishable teammates, to understand that Katt Shea was looking to accomplish more here than just making a run-of-the-mill horror sequel.

And, to a large extent, she succeeded.

Horror On The Lens: Messiah of Evil (dir by Willard Huyck)

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With only five days left until Halloween, I wanted to make sure that I shared this film with our faithful and wonderful readers. Messiah of Evil was first released in 1973 and, since it’s in the public domain, it has since been included in a countless number of bargain box sets from Mill Creek.

I can still remember the first time that I saw Messiah of Evil. It was way back in 2009, when I was living in my first apartment. I had recently picked up a 10-movie DVD box set called Tales of Terror and I was using the movies inside to try to deal with a bout of insomnia. I had already watched The Hatchet Murders (a.k,a. Deep Red) and The House At The Edge of the Park and, at two in the morning, I was faced with a decision. Should I try to sleep or should I watch one more movie?

Naturally, I chose to watch one more movie and the movie I chose was Messiah of Evil. So, there I was at two in the morning, sitting up in bed in my bra and panties and watching an obscure horror movie while rain fell outside.

And, seriously — this movie totally FREAKED me out!

Messiah of Evil tells the story of Arletty (Marianna Hill), a neurotic woman who drives to an isolated California town in order to visit her father. Her father is an artist who specializes in painting eerie pictures of large groups of black-clad people. However, once she arrives at his home, Arletty discovers that her father has vanished and left behind a diary where he claims that a darkness has overtaken the town.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Thom (Michael Greer) is wandering about town with two groupies (played by Anita Ford and Joy Bang) and interviewing random townspeople. One crazed man (Elisha Cook, Jr.) explains that “the dark stranger” is returning. After meeting Arletty, they all end up moving into her father’s house.

But that’s not all. There’s also an odd albino man who shows up driving truck and who eats mice….

Messiah of Evil is literally one of the strangest films that I’ve ever seen. It’s shot in a dream-like fashion and the much of the film is left open to the viewer’s interpretation. There are two classic scenes — one that takes place in a super market and one that takes place in a movie theater and the movie’s worth watching for these two scenes alone.

Messiah of Evil is a film that will be appreciated by all lovers of surrealism and intelligent horror and I’m happy to share it with you today.

Halloween Horrors 2013 : “Carrie” (1976)

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Over at my “main” site — http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com , for those who don’t know, don’t care, either, or both — I’ve been doing what every other goddamn movie blog in the universe does in the month of October: namely, review a bunch of random horror flicks. But come on — you didn’t think I was just gonna sit back and let Lisa Marie, Arleigh, Leonard Wilson, and everybody else have all the fun here on TTSL, did you?

Nah. I just had to muscle in and opine on a few macabre movie delights on these digital “pages” before the month was out, as well. And I might as well start with the one everybody’s talking about right now, Carrie, the 1976 classic directed, in his inimitable style, by Brain DePalma, based on the runaway best-seller by Stephen King, and starring Sissy Spacek as quite likely the most hapless horror heroine in history.

This film is significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it was the first King “property” to be adapted for the big screen, thus announcing the arrival of a major new player on the scene who would go on, of course, to have a veritable industry of celluloid “translations” of his work sprout up over the ensuing decades, some of which were clearly — oh, wait, people these days are talking about a different Carrie altogether? One that just came out last week?

Well, I saw that one, too, but fuck it — I feel like reviewing this one first.

Let’s backtrack to that “horror’s most hapless heroine” claim for a minute, shall we? It might sound like a bold claim, but I swear it’s true — think about it for a minute : poor Carrie White starts the movie by having her first period in the shower at school, she thinks she’s dying because her religious whack-job of a mom is too chickenshit to tell her about menstruation, she gets teased mercilessly by all the girls who witness her uncomfortable (to say the least) entry into womanhood, she has no friends to speak of, she’s stuck with a bunch of telekinetic powers that she doesn’t understand or know how to effectively control, she’s the butt of every cruel joke her classmates play, she has to listen to her idiot mother blather nonsense 24/7, she gets invited to the prom as by the most popular kid in school strictly as an act of misguided charity, and then, just when she’s granted one moment of respite from the nonstop parade of tragedy that comprises her existence when she’s crowned world’s most unlikely prom queen, she gets a bucket full of pig blood dumped all over her, freaks out and kills everybody with her “mind powers,” and goes home from the best/worst night of her life to find that mommie dearest has decided to kill her in Jesus’ name.

Talk about a gal who just can’t catch a break.

Sure, it all seems a bit over the top — okay, it all is a bit over the top — but DePalma pulls out all the stops to draw you into this sordid little world of revival tent-reject parents (Piper Laurie), evil high school bitches (Nancy Allen), pussy-whipped wannabe-tough guys (John Travolta), well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual teachers (Betty Buckley), semi-guilt-ridden classmates (Amy Irving), jocks with out of control white-guy ‘fros (William Katt), and grounds the whole heady mixture in a turn-for-the-ages performance by Spacek that really makes you feel for the poor kid even — maybe especially — when she finally snaps. His always-stylish-and-inventive use of sound, split screen, and slow-burn tension keep you pretty well fixated on the proceedings throughout, and all in all you’ve just gotta say this still holds up as a pretty impressive cinematic achievement.

Of course, King hit on a fairly inventive little gimmick from the outset here — plenty of horror stories, fairy tales, fables, and probably even nursery rhymes are little more than thinly-disguised metaphors for the onset of puberty and the scary transition from childhood into the ‘adult” world, but here he just dispensed with the pretense and doubled-down by ripping the mask off and piling the real, actual, non-metaphorical point on top of the , as we say in modern parlance, “genre trappings,” and as a result ended up penning a scary story for the ages.

Classic visuals — you know, like the one reproduced directly above — hammer the point home in memorable fashion, to be sure, and what Carrie lacks in subtlety it definitely makes up for in sheer, shock-ya-senseless power. Audiences went wild for this flick back in ’76, and while that might not be saying much because they also went apeshit for every cheesy “patriotic” bicentennial gimmick, knick-knack, gee-gaw, and useless item of “home decor” that came out that year, in this case they were absolutely right — this is a nifty little barnburner of a movie that has aged as well as any wine you care to mention.

Carrie is aviailable on DVD and Blu-Ray from MGM, and it’s also currently playing on Netflix’s instant streaming queue, where it can be found under no less than three category headers — “horror,” “Halloween favorites,” and “cult movies.” So go check it out already — or check it out again already, as the case may be — and we’ll talk about that other movie with the same title next time around.

Horror On The Lens: The Demons of Ludlow (dir by Bill Rebane)

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I decided I wanted to do this Horror On The Lens feature for October, I knew that I wanted to include at least one film directed by Wisconsin’s own mini-film mogul, Bill Rebane.

And that movie was The Great Spider Invasion.

Unfortunately, The Great Spider Invasion was not available on YouTube so, instead, I ended up going with Rebane’s 1984 film The Demons of Ludlow.

You can read my review of the Demons of Ludlow here. The gist of the review is that The Demons of Ludlow is good for a Bill Rebane film.

Horror On The Lens: Tormented (dir by Bert I. Gordon)

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Halloween is the perfect time for a good ghost story and, with that in mind, here is today’s movie.

Released in 1960 and directed by Bert I. Gordon, Tormented tells the sad story of Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson). Now, Tom might look like a pretty regular guy but we know that he’s a little bit crazy because he’s a jazz pianist and you know how dangerous those beatnik-types are. Tom is happily engaged to Meg but one day, his ex-girlfriend Vi shows up. Vi is obsessed with Tom and swear that she’s going to end his engagement.

So, naturally enough, Tom throws her off of a lighthouse.

Problem solved, right?

Not quite. Vi may be dead but she’s not out of Tom’s life. Instead, her disembodied head tends to pop up at random moments and taunt Tom. Meanwhile, Tom is having to deal with Meg’s suspicious sister and a beatnik (Joe Turkel, who years later played Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining) who is determined to collect the $5 that he claims Vi owes him.

Between the beatniks and the raging ocean and the disembodied head popping up whenever it’s least convenient, Tormented is a lot of fun and the perfect film for some retro Halloween fun.

Horror On The Lens: Slugs (dir by Juan Piquer Simon)

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1988, Slugs is literally one of the ickiest films ever made.

The plot of this Spanish horror film is pretty simple. In a rural community, all of the local slugs have mutated into savage, sharp-toothed carnivores. While the slugs slowly consume the locals, health official Mike Brady (Michael Garfield) wonders if maybe — just maybe — this could all be connected to the nearby toxic waste dump.

Despite some less-than-stellar performances and a plot that makes less sense the more you think about it, Slugs works. Some of that is because slugs themselves are just naturally creepy. However, the majority of the credit must go to director Juan Piquer Simon who truly takes this film to its disgusting extreme. This film is probably most famous for a scene in which one character comes to regret his earlier decision to eat one of the slugs.

Horror On The Lens: The Devil’s Rain (dir by Robert Fuest)

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Satanic priest Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) has spent decades pursuing the Preston family. The Prestons, it turns out, have a book of powerful Satanic magic in their possession. After Corbis causes the Preston patriarch to melt in the rain, Mark Preston (William Shatner) decides to confront Corbis and his followers…

Released in 1975, the Devil’s Rain was presumably made to capitalize on the success of films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. The film itself is a bit incoherent but it’s worth watching just to see shameless overactors William Shatner and Ernest Borgnine acting opposite each other. The cast also includes Ida Lupino, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt, and Eddie Albert, which means that there’s not a single bit of scenery that doesn’t get chewed at some point.

If watch carefully, you can spot John Travolta making his screen debut towards the end of the film.