With each passing year we get more and more quality genre films coming out of the rest of the world. I’m not one of those people who thinks Hollywood has run out of ideas and/or rehashing the same thing over and over. For every piece of crap that Hollywood releases there’s a gem or two in the mix. I have a feeling that a small independently made film that came out of the Philippines in 2011 would get the Hollywood remake because of the buzz it’s been getting since it has made it’s way into the US.
The Road is the latest film from Filipino horror filmmaker Yam Laranas and it’s a psychological/supernatural horror film that takes one of the more well-known ghost story types (the story of the haunted stretch of road) and gives it some fresh new infusion of ideas. It’s definitely one of the better horror films to come out of the Philippines film industry (a film industry that has always done some good low-budget and indie horror films over the decades).
The film is finally getting a release in the US market through festivals and Video-On-Demand. It’s definitely one film I plan on watching before the month is through to see what all the buzz and hype about it is all about.
Before I left for my vacation, I watched several of the free horror movies that are available on Fearnet and, to a large extent, I got what I paid for. That said, seeing as how it is October and how this Horror Month here at the Shattered Lens, I committed myself to reviewing each film that I watched via Fearnet, regardless of how thoroughly awful any particular film might turn out to be.
And that brings us to The Amityville Curse, a Canadian film from 1990 that was made to capitalize on the whole Amityville Horror scam.
In the Amityville Curse, a group of 6 friends spend the night in a haunted house and things work out as you might expect. You’d be justified in assuming that the haunted house is the same house from the Amityville Horror but you’d be wrong. Instead, they’re staying in a different house that just happens to also be in Amityville and which just happens to be haunted as well. (One lesson to be learned from this mess of a movie: when it comes to haunted house stories, it’s often best to keep things simple.)
Apparently, decades earlier, a priest was murdered in the house while taking confession and the local community has scorned the house ever since. However, at the start of the film, a fat, balding guy and his boring wife buy the house and their friends come down to help with the remodel. Unfortunately, one of those friends is played by Kim Coates and, as everyone knows, the minute Kim Coates shows up in a horror movie, he’s going to end up getting possessed and killing a lot people.
Which is pretty much what happens here.
I have to admit that I feel sorry for Kim Coates whenever I see him in a movie like this. Kim Coates (who is currently a member of the cast of Sons of Anarchy) is a talented character actor and, when given the chance, he has proven that he can play likable and sympathetic characters. But, he’s got these slightly off-center eyes and a nervous, jumpy manner about him. As a result, whenever he shows up in a movie, he always seems to be killing people. Whenever I see a talented actor like Kim Coates in a movie like The Amityville Curse, I clench my little hand into a fist and I shake it at the unkind Gods of typecasting.
As for The Amityville Curse, well, what can I really say about it? This is a truly terrible movie, one of the worst that I’ve ever seen. It’s a horror movie without a single scare. It’s the type of movie that I would warn everyone to stay away from except that I doubt this already obscure film will ever again see the light of day.
(Before I left on my vacation, I made it a point to watch several horror films that were available for free on Fearnet. In the case of many of the films, I suspect that I may have paid too much. Regardless, since it is October and horror month here at the Shattered Lens, I am going to share my thoughts on some of these Fearnet films.)
Before I review 976-Evil II, I need to make a quick confession The one time that I attempted to watch the first 976-Evil, I ended up falling asleep immediately after the opening credits. I don’t know much about the film beyond the fact that it was directed by Robert Englund and, even by the standards of the majority of the films that are available on Fearnet, it looked to be cheap and unimpressive.
That said, as I watched Part 2, it quickly became apparent that it’s not really necessary to have seen the first film to follow the plot of the second.
A small town in California has a problem. Mr. Grubeck (an enjoyably over-the-top performance from Rene Assa) is the dean of the local college (which, to be honest, looks a lot like a high school). Grubeck is a courtly, middle-aged man who lives in a nice house and just happens to be a demented serial killer. He’s been dialing a mysterious phone number and, with each call, he gains more and more supernatural powers.
At that start of the film, however, a drunk janitor (played by George “Buck” Flower, of course) sees Grubeck killing a student. The janitor goes to the police and Grubeck is promptly arrested and placed in jail. Unfortunately, the police allow Grubeck his one phone call and Grubeck, of course, dials 976-Evil. As a result, Grubeck is given the power to wander about in astral form while his physical body rests. Grubeck uses his powers to start killing anyone who can link him to the murders, as well as to stalk a student named Robin (Debbie James).
However, Robin has another stalker. Spike (Patrick O’Bryan), who was apparently the protaganist of the first film, comes rolling into town on his motorcycle and soon, he and Robin are searching for a way to defeat Grubeck once and for all.
(As a sidenote, I think that the minute a baby is named Spike, the rest of his or her life is pretty much predestined.)
976-Evil II is the type of film that almost always gets universally negative (and snide) reviews but, when taken on its own terms, it’s actually a fun little movie. This is the type of film where all of the actors speak their lines in the most dramatic way possible and authority figures react to bad news by defiantly slamming their hand on top of their desk. In short, this is a film that is not meant to be taken seriously and its obvious that director Jim Wynorski understood that. This is a film that winks at the audience even as it grows more and more implausible. While the film’s scares are more likely to make you smile than jump, there is one very effective sequence where Robin’s friend Paula (played by Leslie Ryan) finds herself literally sucked into the TV. At first, since she was watching It’s a Wonderful Life, everything’s okay. But then, somebody changes the channel to Night of the Living Dead. It’s this type of outrageous sequence that distinguishes 976-Evil II from other similar (but forgettable) horror films.
976-Evil II was released in 1992 and, wow, is it obvious. Everyone has big hair, wears too much spandex, and uses a landline phone. Even the villainous Mr. Grubeck wears a vest with a floral design. That said, the film was so dated as to be oddly charming.
That’s actually how I would sum up 976-Evil II as a whole.
If there was ever a horror film in the last ten years or so that has garnered so much love/hate responses from those who watched it then I will say that Alexandre Aja’s debut film Haute Tensiondefinitely reign on top. It’s also from this very controversial film (at least amongst genre fans) that my latest “Scenes I Love” comes from.
It’s actually fairly early in the film with a brutally, gruesome kill by the film’s serial killer that helps establish the tone Aja was going for. We have the scene of Cécile de France as Marie unable to go to sleep and hearing the house’s doorbell ring and her bet friend’s father going downstairs to answer. Unbeknownst to everyone in the house it’s a brutish figure played by Philippe Nahon who proceeds to brutalize and decapitate the father in a very ingenious and very bloody fashion.
This scene was quite shocking when it first appeared on the big-screen especially since it was from a French horror film that usually didn’t have such extreme violence. Well, this scene definitely helped establish the arrival of the so-called “New French Extremity” film movement of the 2000’s and which continues on to this day. One nice trivia about this establishing scene for this film is that the man responsible for the visual effects for the death is none other than Giannetto De Rossi who also happened to have done much of the effects work for noted Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci.
VGM Entry 60: Splatterhouse
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)
Today is October 1st, and Shattered Lens readers probably have a good idea of what that means.
Namco’s Splatterhouse series first emerged in the arcades in 1988. As the advertisement poster used in this music video suggests, it was one of the first video games that really possessed the graphical capacity for some good old fashion gore. You play as Rick Taylor, a run of the mill college student who takes refuge from a thunderstorm in an old rickety mansion and inevitably finds himself demonically possessed, hacking and slashing his way through all sorts of hellspawn and ultimately butchering his girlfriend before defeating the mansion’s demon fetus-spawning womb and escaping. Quality stuff.
The game is accompanied by quite an impressive soundtrack.
When not taken to weird, incoherent noises such as on “Poltergeist”, the game has a knack for some rather pretty tunes that are only disturbing when placed in context. (The theme for Jennifer is one such instance; let’s not forget that the scene results in you chopping her head off.) I am not sure whether Yoshinori Kawamoto or Katsuro Tajima composed Splatterhouse. The former name crops up slightly more often on vgm websites, but trusting the majority consensus has lead me astray plenty of times before. Unfortunately, Namco have featured so seldom in my gaming music compilation that I am not really in a position to take an educated guess.
Splatterhouse is probably not thought of by most gamers as an arcade series. The original 1988 Splatterhouse only found obscure ports–to the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 in 1990 and the Fujitsu FM Towns in 1992. Its sequels made a bigger splash, becoming staples of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Splatterhouse 2 and Splatterhouse 3 were released only seven months apart, in August 1992 and March 1993 respectively.
Both sequels were composed by Milky Eiko, and despite their wide acclaim, Milky’s rather outlandish pseudonym does not seem to have surfaced since. I could not find any other Eiko associated with Namco, and he must be regarded as both one of the last and one of the most famous game composers to be buried in complete anonymity, before composition credits became standard.
On an odd final note, there was actually another series game, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, released in 1989. It was an SD game, that is, super deformed, which generally refers in video games to over the top, excessively cute anime portrayals of familiar characters from earlier games. Released exclusively on the Famicom, Wanpaku Graffiti offered good clean serial murder for the whole family.
(Before I left for vacation, I watched a handful of horror films that were available for free on Fearnet. For the most part, I think I may have overpaid. But, since I am dedicated to reviewing every film that I see, good or bad, I’ve decided to review these Fearnet films for Halloween here at the Shattered Lens!)
In the past, I have occasionally defended the German director Ulli Lommel against the oft-stated charge that he is the worst director of all time.
“Yes,” I’ll admit, “Lommel is kind of pretentious and a lot of his films can’t overcome the burdens of their low-budget origins. And no, he can’t director actors. But, his early films have a certain dream-like quality and The Boogeyman holds up fairly well for what it is. Plus, consider these two words: Uwe Boll.”
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that even Uwe Boll could have directed a film as bad as Lommel’s 2007 straight-to-DVD film, The Curse of the Zodiac.
The Curse of the Zodiac is one of Lommel’s “true crime” films. In these films, Lommel claims to tell the “true” stories of American serial killers like BTK, the Son of Sam, and Zodiac. (In fact, Lommel has directed two unrelated films about the Zodiac killer.) A while ago, I read an interview with Lommel in which he stated that his serial killer films are about revealing the hypocrisy of puritanical American society. Maybe they are but they’re also pretty bad and The Curse of the Zodiac is one of the worst of them.
Taking place in the early 1970s (though you’d never guess it from the lack of period detail), The Curse of the Zodiac tells the story of the Zodiac Killer. In real life, the Zodiac Killer is one of the most intriguing (and nightmare-inducing) serial killers in history. In the film, he’s just a bald guy who wanders around San Francisco, kills a few random people, and spends almost the entire movie repeating the phrase, “Hey there, fat fuck.” The fat fuck in question is a writer who is investigating the crime and who is kind of fat. We never discover the writer’s name or who he is or why he’s investigating the Zodiac or why the Zodiac knows him or …. well, anything. He’s just a character who shows up every few minutes. Another character who shows up every few minutes is a psychic who has visions of the Zodiac committing his murders. The Zodiac refers to her as “hippy chick.” Neither the writer nor the psychic really do anything that a normal person would do when confronted with a serial killer but then again, Zodiac doesn’t really do anything that a normal serial killer would do when confronted by a writer and a psychic.
What can you really say about a film like The Curse of the Zodiac, beyond that fact that, in the course of 82 minutes, nothing really happens beyond watching three anonymous characters wander around San Francisco. Lommel doesn’t get one good performance out of his tiny cast, though he does find a lot of excuses to show off some nausea-inducing hand-held camera work.
The best thing that I can say about The Curse of the Zodiac is that it deserves to be seen just as evidence of how bad a bad film can truly be.
What better way to kick-off Through the Shattered Lens’ tradition of the horror-themed month of October than a trailer that brings my favorite horror monster of all-time: the zombie horde.
Most zombie films try to be of the horrific and social-conscious variety. Let’s call this the Romero-effect. The grandfather of this horror subgenre was and is known to inject a dose (both subtle and heavy-handed) of social commentary to the scenes of apocalyptic gore and horror that others have tried to copy, mimic and emulate his style of varying degrees of success or failure. Then there are the zombie films that goes for the funny bone in addition to the usual gore and flesh-eating. This first started with the initial Return of the Living Dead film during the 80’s which spoofed the zombie genre without sacrificing the horror and gore. This type of zombie film is even more rare until the arrival of Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead during themid-2000’s. Since then the success of this zombie-comedy there’s been more and more of this type of zombie film and most of them, to be honest, stinks to high heaven. It does make the adage that doing comedy is ultimately much harder to do than drama.
One such zombie-comedy that looks to be cashing in on the success of Wright’s film even now is another release from our cousins across the Pond with Cockneys vs. Zombies. It had made an appearance at this year’s Fantastic Fest and the reaction to the film has been quite positive and with this crowd of genre superfans with discerning taste this means just very good news for fans of the zombie genre looking for something new sink our teeth into.
While this is the type of film that never truly gets a wide release in the US I think it’ll be good for people to check it out once it comes out on video and On-Demand. I mean it has the geriatric and young bank robbers fighting zombies.
I’ve heard the collective groans from many who have achieved zombie oversaturation. For some reason the renaissance of the zombie subgenre which began during the early 2000’s continues unabated. One just has to look at the huge popularity of Robert Kirkman’s long-running horror comic book The Walking Deadright up to the even more popular tv adaptation of the comic book which now enters it’s 3rd season on AMC TV. Yet, not everything zombie-related in entertainment could be considered scary or even entertaining. If one looks at the dozens of direct-to-video which seems to come out month in and month out that barely rises above amateur production and execution one does have to feel that the subgenre should just die and go away. Then something like The Deadby the British sibling filmmakers The Ford Brothers comes along and breathes some fresh blood into the scene.
An indie film shot pretty much in northwest Africa (Burkina Faso and Ghana), The Deadis a throwback to the classic Romero zombie films before the new millennium and, even moreso, the Italian zombie films of Lucio Fulci with emphasis on Zombie. The Ford Brothers pretty much shot the film in some of the worst conditions a film crew could find itself in. It doesn’t matter whether it was the baking mid-day heat in the open plains and desert right up to the very real armed conflict which continues in the region to this very day. These two British siblings definitely took some guerilla filmmaking lessons from their hero Romero in how to stretch their tiny budget and still come out with a very good production.
The Deadis a pretty straightforward zombie film and acts more like a road film than your typical zombie story which tend to focus heavily on the siege aspect of the genre. We don’t get sieges in this film. The openness of the African plains and desert made for an interesting change of pace to the typical urban and/or countryside locales past zombie films ended up using. The film also spent so much of it’s running time in broad daylight which also made it stand out from it’s zombie film brethren which used night time as a prop to create dread and mounting terror. The Ford Brothers were able to use that very brutal heat and searing African midday sun to give the film a beautiful look but also one that highlighted it’s apocalyptic and hopeless situation. The light showed zombies shambling along from every direction, slow as they may be, in that steady, silent pace that was as inevitable as Death itself.
The story of the film is quite bare bones with the opening sequences pretty much introducing the two storylines that would intersect very early and combine to become one. There’s the lone survivor of a military evacuation flight out of the area and back to America (at least Europe) in Lt. Brian Murphy (played by Rob Freeman) whose role as a flight engineer in the doomed flight gives him the necessary technical skills to fix an abandoned vehicle he finds, but who is not what one would call a hardened soldier unlike Sgt. Daniel Dembele (played Ghana actor by Prince David Oseia) whose role as a soldier gives him the skills to protect Murphy. The two become traveling companions who must traverse the post-apocalyptic West African landscape that always have zombies, silent and sure slowly and patiently finding their way to the two no matter how fast and far they go.
Murphy wants to get back to his wife and daughter back in the States though he doesn’t know if they’re still alive or not. Daniel wants to find his son who was rescued by soldiers in the beginning of the film as their home village succumb to an attack of the dead. These similar goals become the very thing which helps the two bond together despite their cultural and ideological differences.
The film doesn’t go too heavy with the themes and ideas of Africa and zombies, but they’re there and the Ford Brothers don’t try to avoid them either. Throughout the film one could see that the film could easily be a metaphor for the birthplace of mankind also becoming the beginning of its end. There’s also the shadow of the crimes of Western colonialism and interference in a land whose people have been exploited and used like chess pieces on the grand world stage. Like some of the best zombie films, The Deaduses the apocalyptic setting and the danger of the zombies as a way to explore serious themes and ideas but do so without being too obvious or heavy-handed. In fact, the Ford Brothers actually were quite subtle with their handling of these ideas throughout the film. This made for a much more streamlined story, but also kept the film from heading into epic territory.
Freeman spends almost the whole time on the screen which stretched his performance somewhat. At times his dialogue came out natural and then on another sequence he would come off stilted. It’s not surprise that some of the best scenes Freeman’s Murphy had was when in the presence of Oseia’s Sgt. Daniel Dembele. Hiss presence on screen almost overshadows Freeman at times and one could almost wonder how much the better the film would’ve been if it was just Daniel searching for his son and no Murphy character to distract things. Oseia’s performance becomes the moral center of the film and as the story unfolded one felt like rooting for the man to find his son even though the odds on him succeeding rises with each passing minute.
The Deadis not a perfect film and one could say that it’s very straightforward nature becomes too generic and evident at certain times during the film. Yet, the rough and raw way the Ford Brothers wrote and shot the film with some very good performances from it’s cast made up for any shortcomings the film had. Even the gore effects wasn’t hampered by the minuscule budget. This film should satisfy gorehounds and story aficionados both. That’s something that most indie zombie films can’t boast about that this film can. The film’s ending leaves things somewhat open for a sequel (something the brothers are open to exploring as a future project) with the final shot evoking a “Lone Wolf and Cub” vibe before the fade to black.
The Ford Brothers’ The Deadsaw a very limited release in 2010 and 2011 but has now seen a wide DVD/Blu-Ray release for 2012. For some it would be a buy and a keeper, but at the very least it deserves a rental to see what all the hoopla was about.
The latest “Hottie of the Day” arrives courtesy of the Spanish horror film sequel REC 3: Genesis.
Miss Leticia Dolera takes on the role of Clara who happens to be the bride of the wedding setting that makes up the second sequel to the Spanish horror franchise REC. I won’t go into detail about whether this latest sequel is worth checking out. For some it was and for others it was a major letdown. One thing that everyone who has seen the film could agree on was Leticia Dolera being one of the highlights of the film. Ms. Dolera was something fierce in REC 3: Genesisand her performance made the film worth watching.
A Spanish actress who began her career in 2000 with the Spanish tv series Al salir de clase and who has become a fixture in Spanish entertainment, Ms. Dolera should become even more well-known around the world especially with the genre crowd because of her appearance in performance in REC 3: Genesis. She has that exotic look that Spanish women are always able to pull off without even trying. I wouldn’t be surprised if she one day makes the jump from Spain to Hollywood.
Telltale Games released the first episode in their adventure game The Walking Deadmonths ago. Due to some of their past titles not panning out despite hype from the studio this time around it seems like Telltale may have finally found their groove with this game set in the zombie apocalypse world created by critically-acclaimed comic book author Robert Kirkman. With the first episode, A New Day, the company was able to capture the chaos and danger of the early days that was only hinted at in the comic book and in the AMC tv series.
That first episode introduced gamers to the two main characters that would be the focus of this horror-adventure title. Lee Everett and Clementine were characters rare in licensed video games in that they’re original to the title and also one of the better written and realized fictional characters in gaming. The first episode did a great job in setting up these two characters and the world that some thought the problems that has plagued Telltale Games with their episodic titles would pop up once more: great beginnings that would fizzle out with each new episode.
I’m happy to say that episode 2, Starved For Help, doesn’t fall in Telltale Games’ past pattern. In fact, this latest episode in the game actually builds on the strength of the first episode and improves upon what made it fun and very good while minimizing some of the flaws with that initial episode. We find Lee, Clementine and the survivors of the first episode (how a player made their decisions on who lives or dies in the first episode will determine the roster for episode 2) still at the motel complex from the first episode. They’ve been largely kept safe at their makeshift haven but the prospect of dwindling supplies has forced Lee and the group to venture out into the surrounding forest to forage for food. It’s during one such foraging mission that the group comes across another group that would kick-off the story for Starved For Help.
Telltale Games doesn’t try to recap too much of the first episode in this follow-up, but does let the dialogue between Lee and others remind gamers about their decisions in the first episode and how it has affected the situation Lee and his group has itself in. The addition of some new members to the group doesn’t feel forced but actually feel quite welcome as it helps keep the growing rift between two factions in the group from becoming too static. In fact, this episode actually makes some of the decisions made by characters we initially found to be on our side to be counter-productive and dangerous while those who came off as too rigid and confrontational end up being more sympathetic.
It’s during these dialogue sequences where players once again have a timed-limit to make their dialogue choices and decisions that The Waling Deadcontinue to impress. Once again players must make their dialogue-choices from four choices that doesn’t really come off as evil, good, indifferent, etc. It’s up to the player to determine just exactly which dialogue answer best fit the sort of game they’re playing. I’ve played through both episodes trying out myriad of choices available to me and with each and every different choices the game plays out much differently, but still continues to straddle the grey area. There’s no good or bad decision and it’s what makes this game’s dialogue-mechanic so much better than most games that use something similar.
The action part of the episode has some tweaks to QTE (quick time event) combat mechanic that makes targeting a tad better than what was available in the first episode, but this part of the game still remains the weakest link in what has so far been a stellar game. After just two episode I wouldn’t be surprised if most fans of the title just wish for the QTE’s to go away and let actions in future episode be determined by dialogue choices. It would definitely help keep the gamer’s from being pulled out of the narrative immersion they find themselves in.
Starved For Help is a great example of how a studio can learn from it’s past mistakes and improve on the template they’ve decided on from the beginning. Even the story that unfolds in episode 2 is a huge improvement from the first episode that was very good to begin with. We see Telltale Games handle the themes of survival vs living, moral grey areas in an apocalyptic world and survival at the cost of others with deft hands that best exemplifies what has been great about the comic book series. There’s been times when the narrative in the game actually comes off as more subtle and less exposition-heay than Kirkman’s own writing which for some is an improvement in itself.
With two episode now released it’s going to be interesting if Telltale Games can continue their new found groove of keeping things consistently good to great which their past games didn’t seem to have. Now three episodes remain and from the ending of episode 2 the group has found a new reprieve from their dire problem of low supplies, but at a cost that may come back to haunt Lee, Clementine and others.
Through the Shattered Lens 