Tag Archives: Horror

Quickie Review: Legion (dir. by Scott Stewart)

Posted on by Arleigh

Scott Stewart’s film about the Biblical Apocalypse was one film that I was very hyped to see in the first weeks of 2010. I had heard some very good buzz about it when a red band sizzle reel was shown in at 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. This was Stewart’s first major work (he had made a smaller film in 2000 called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) and with his background in the special effects industry I thought that this film of his would at least be a feast for the eyes. I knew going in what to expect from something about God, Angels, the Apocalypse and uneding amounts of guns and ammo. So, it was with a profound disappointment when I finally saw Legion and, despite my low expectations, was roundly disappointed with everything about it.

Legion is about God deciding that he’s had enough of humanity’s bullshit and shenanigans (a term I would put on this film) and turned his angelic hosts loose upon the world to start things new. This was God’s version of shaking the Etch-a-Sketch that is the world. He has his two favorite Archangels in Michael and Gabriel leading the vanguard of this Apocalypse with Michael tasked with making sure a baby doesn’t get born before the divine enema has been completed. Well, Michael being the introspective sone decides that he still has faith in humanity and refuses to do God’s bidding. We see Michael go through removing his wings (which also unlocks the very BDSM God collar all the angels wear) then find a huge cache of weapons inside a toy company warehouse. Seems removing the wings makes him human and minus all the cool angelic powers. He says something about the Apocalypse having started then makes off towards Bethle…I mean the diner out in the Nevada desert to protect the prophesized baby who will save humanity.

Yeah, the premise for Legion sounds awesome on paper. Militant angels led by badass Archangels like Gabriel about to go “Terminator” on mankind. The story itself was like a mish-mash of some of the best cult fantasy/horror of the past. There’s some of the cool Christopher Walken film Prophecy in the plot and, of course, one cannot but see some parallels with Cameron’s Terminator. Plus, we have a humanized Archangel Michael with guns and guns and guns to battle his former brethren with his coterie of human sidekicks to help out. The trailer for this was very cool and full of action. A trailer which pretty much had all the cool parts in this film. One can watch the trailer and actually enjoy Legion more than when they watch the film itself.

For a filmmaker with a special effects background the film looked pretty lifeless with action sequences that lacked any sort of memorable action. The dialogue wasn’t awful, but everyone’s performance made it sound worse than it really was. Even Bettany in the lead role of Michael looked tired and bored with his role (a sign the film was going downhill and downhill fast). The possessed humans who made up the bulk of the opposing force against the good  guys were uninteresting with the exception of Doug Jones’ “Ice Cream Man” character shown in the trailer. A scene the trailer pretty much showed almost in its entirety. That character was on the screen for less than two minutes then gone.

I actually think that people should just watch the trailer for Legion then pop into their dvd player Prophecy and Terminator. Doing that will pretty much give them the whole story of Legion and have a kick-ass time doing so. This was a film that looked good to great on paper, but once they actually started writing the script and started filming went down the septic tank. It’s films like these that makes one shout “shenanigans” at all those involved in its making. I think Kyle Broflowski would agree with me.

The Daily Grindhouse: Maniac (dir. by William Lustig)

Posted on by Arleigh

The newest flick to make “The Daily Grindhouse” is the controversial slasher/splatter offering from one of the 1980’s masters of the American grindhouse cinema. William Lustig’s Maniac definitely fits the criteria of what makes a grindhouse flick.

Lustig’s flick helped start the so-called “splatter film” subgenre in horror. While more mainstream (and I used that term very loosely) horror like Friday the 13th and Black Christmas brought the “slasher film” genre to the public eye it was the release of Maniac which gave “splatter” the notoriety it craved. It was a flick which was released by it’s distributor as unrated since they refused to let the MPAA screen it for certification knowing the it would automatically get the dreaded “X-Rating”. This rating would kill off any attempt for it to get shown in cinema theaters (even some owners of grindhouse theaters would deny to screen it). But it was a colleague of special effects and make-up artists (also an actor in Maniac) who gave Lustig and it’s distributor the backdoor way to get the flick seen.

George A. Romero’s classic epic zombie film Dawn of the Dead was released unrated and it still made quite the box-office haul that it gave future filmmakers a way out of the MPAA’s X-Rating hell. Maniac would get the same treatment and, while it didn’t get quite the box-office success as Romero’s  zombie opus, it did make enough coin to be become one of Lustig’s moderate successes.

The flick was controversial not just for the decision to release it unrated but also for the label of misogyny it received from film critics who did see it. It didn’t help Lustig’s cause that the film was practically about a pyschotic and schizophrenic man who murders and scalped beautiful women to help decorate the mannequins he kept in his home. This flick was the grindhouse version of Hitchcock’s Psycho (to me a film that would be grindhouse if not for Hitchcock being the filmmaker thus given classic status by the elite cineaste crowd) and where Hitchcock kept the violence as something to be imagined Lustig went for the jugular and showed everything.

The most controversial scene would forever be the slow-motion sequence of Joe Spinelli’s killer, Frank Zito, taking a shotgun and shooting Tom Savini’s character point-blank in the head. The scene was so horrific and realistic in its execution that people left the theater right after the scene ended thinking even worse things were to be shown for the next hour (acclaimed film critic Gene Siskel left right after that scene). Tom Savini’s experience as a combat photographer during the Vietnam War gave him the necessary know-how to create the “Disco Boy Scene” so realisticly and which made him one of the early “fathers of the splatter genre”.

Maniac would propel Lustig to cult-status in the horror genre not because of the quality of his work, but for how he pulled no punches in showing the violence in his films even if got him labeled misogynistic and exploitative in mainstream cinema. His flicks were average for the most part, but they were definitely grindhouse in that they spoke to the most base denominator and that’s sex and violence sells and he didn’t sugarcoat it.

Review: Let Me In (dir. by Matt Reeves)

Posted on by Arleigh

In 2008 a little film from Sweden swept through the film festivals and earned a rightful and well-deserved place in many film critics and film circles “best of 2008” and “top ten” lists. This was Swedish filmmaker’s film adaptation of the John Ajvide Lindqvist vampire novel, Let The Right One In. It was a vampire film that appealed not just to horror genre fans hungry for a vampire film that was the polar opposite of the current “Twilight” vampire craze. Horror fans wanted something that wasn’t watered down and emasculated to better appeal to the tween girl set. So, Alfredson’s vampire film was embraced by these horror fans and when news came that the rights to the novel was licensed by British-studio Hammer Film and an American-remake was set for production the reaction was decisively negative.

Fans of the original Swedish film were quite protective of the film and saw any plans to remake it for the North American audience as a cynical cash-grab. Their argument was that the original film was such a great one that there should be no need to remake it. Why fix something that wasn’t broken was another point made. It didn’t help the side of those supporting the remake that Matt Reeves was chosen to direct the remake. Reeves was better known as J. J. Abrams friend (some would say Reeves owes his success to Abrams and that he was coattailing the successful producer-director) and the director of the POV monster film, Cloverfield.

As strident fans of the original continued to vent and complain about the remake already failing (despite not an inch of film being shot) the producers were gradually filling the roles in the remake with some very interesting names. Fresh off her break-out performance in Kick-Ass was Chloe Grace Moretz taking on the role of Abby (the vampire child in the original was named Eli) with Kodi-Smit McPhee (The Road) taking on the role of the young boy Owen who befriends her. One name after the other filled out the cast with some very good veteran actors from Elias Koteas to Richard Jenkins (taking on the role of Abby’s Renfield).

Matt Reeeves’ version of Lindqvist novel from Alfredson comes from using the novel itself as the base for the screenplay Reeves himself wrote for the remake. While Let Me In shares many similarities in characters and situations from the original Swedish film, Reeves film does use more of the themes and details from the novel than Alfredson did for his adaptation. Let Me In definitely has enough about it which will distinguish itself from its Swedish counterpart and stand on its own.

The film switches locales from a suburb of in Sweden to a snowy Los Alamos, New Mexico (yes, it does snow in New Mexico). We learn quickly that Owen has become quite the loner due to the constant bullying by classmates. He spends time alone in the plaza area of the apartment complex he lives in with his mother (played by Carla Buono who we never fully see). He fantasizes of getting back at those who have and still bullying him even to the point that he buys a small pocketknife and practices his retribution on one of the trees in the plaza. It’s during one of his nighttime practices with the pocketknife that he first encounters Abby. There’s a certain wariness during their encounter with Abby proclaiming that Owen will not become a friend. But in time the two do become friends with Abby becoming quite protective of Owen once learning about the bullying he has to endure on a daily basis.

The change in Abby’s relationship with Owen doesn’t sit well with Abby’s Renfield. He asks Abby never to see Owen again as he goes out to procure Abby more fresh blood (a previous attempt goes awry forcing Abby to go out into the night to hunt). It’s in the scenes between Abby and Jenkins character that we see more of the duo’s relationship mirroring the novel’s. The novel explores the theme of pedophilia and while Reeves adaptation wasn’t quite obvious about it there are clues and small character interactions which hint at this pedophilic relationship which the Swedish original never really touched upon.

It’s in these small character interactions that Reeves’ film begins to differentiate itself from Alfredson’s version. The narrative between the two films still remain the same, but Reeves’ version explores the darker themes in the novel source while Alfredson concentrates more on the growing relationship between the two primary characters. These differences could be seen in how Reeves films Abby’s attacks while hunting her prey to be more animalistic (though at times the CGI seems too apparent when Abby attacks) and Abby’s subtle manipulation of Owen. I say manipulation because Abby seems very intent on trying to befriend and put Owen at ease despite the earlier comment that they will never be friends. Not to mention her Renfield admitting to Abby that he has gotten tired of what he has done to keep Abby safe and that maybe he wants to get caught to just end it all.

The film moves along quite leisurely but with a sense of growing dread not just between Owen and his bullies, but between Abby, her Renfield and those suspecting the duo. Owen gets caught in the lives of these two newcomers and soon gets confronted by Abby’s true nature and his own reaction to this. It’s a reaction that at first shows Owen fearing Abby and wanting to escape the growing bond between the two of them, but seeing how Abby’s been nothing but helpful to Owen he chooses to remain at her side. Abby rewards Owen’s protective nature by saving Owen from a near-deadly encounter with the school bullies at the school swimming pool.

This is the one sequence in Reeves’ film which many fans scrutinized to no end. The original film shot the scene with an almost arthouse eye despite the obvious violence involved. It was a scene where Alfredson filmed it as “less is more” and let the audience’s imagination run wild. Reeves’ does the same but adds his own stylistic touches to the sequence. not too much to make it so different from Alfredson’s version, but enough that it’s not a shot-for-shot copy. Again Reeves’ chose to show Abby’s violent predator aspect in this scene, but still keeps the focus of the scene on Owen as he struggles underwater. It’s only once he is out that we see — just as he does — the aftermath of Abby’s promise to protect Owen.

The question remains whether this American-remake stands up to the original. In terms of storytelling it more than holds it own from the original film and at times actually surpasses Alfredson’s version. This Reeves version journeys through the darkside more than the original film. It definitely strips away much of the arthouse sensibilities of Alfredson’s film which made it such a beauty to watch even if at times the narrative became more than too slow to keep one’s attention. Reeves’ adaptation doesn’t ramp up the pacing of the film, but keeps it moving forward even if at a gradual pace. When violence does occur in the remake it happens quickly and with a sense of brutality that the original film fails to deliver. The remake doesn’t linger on the gore and violence, but does show enough of it to remind everyone in the audience that this is a horror film first and foremost.

If there was one quibble to be made about this remake its that Reeves relies too much on CGI to show Abby at her most dangerous. Each attack made by Abby was shot at a wide-angle and we see every move but with each move done using CGI which gives it too much of an artificial look to it. It’s a testament to Moretz’ performance as she switches from a friendly Abby when interacting with Owen during their time together at night to one of a predator older than anyone in the film doing what was necessary to attain the blood needed to survive. Reeves could definitely have used less CGI and went for a more natural approach using sudden edits to show the ferocious nature of Abby’s attacks.

The film’s cast does a great job with the roles given to them. While it was Moretz’s and McPhee’s performances as Abby and Owen that keeps the audience’s attention and keeps it from wavering it’s the supporting cast around them which provides the glue. Koteas as the detective who begins to suspect Abby as having to do more with the attacks than previously mentioned was very good, but in the end it was Richard Jenkins in the Renfield role who would steal every scene he’s in. His character’s fatalistic acceptance of his role when it came to Abby was palpable. We watch him do horrible things to people and to himself, but we also get a sense that he couldn’t stop on his own if he wanted to. He has been doing the role of blood procurer for Abby for so long that he doesn’t know what else to do. I will say that Jenkin’s with the garbage bag mask when out hunting for victims will be the images that will stick to people’s minds long after they’ve left the theater. Some will even unconsciously check the back seat of their cars at night before getting in.

In the end, this remake of Let The Right One In doesn’t feel, look and sound like the cash-grab that cynical fans of the original have proclaimed it to be. Matt Reeves does a great job in adapting more of the novel in his version and using some of the darker themes in that source to allow his film to stand on its own when compared next to Alfredson’s version. The performances by everyone involved was wonderful and keeps the story’s slow pacing from losing the audience. While this remake doesn’t have the arthouse quality of the original film it does have a certain grittiness to its look which lends quite well in pointing out how brutal the narrative really was not just in physical violence but in how one of the two leads manipulates the situation to benefit it’s survival even if there was some genuine affection between Abby and Owen. In the end, Abby gets everything and continues to exist for another boy’s lifetime.

Fans so vocal of their negative attitudes towards this film will not have their minds changed, but those keeping an open-mind will be rewarded with one of the better horror films of the year. If the original Swedish adaptation never existed I’m quite sure that all the accolades heaped on Tomas Alfredson’s film would be given to Matt Reeves instead. A remake should never be discounted because its one of an original that’s already lauded for its quality. There’s been bad remakes but thankfully Let Me In is not one of them.

Anime You Should Be Watching: Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji

Posted on by Arleigh

Hentai: slang for the Japanese term “hentai seiyoku” which literally means sexual perversion. A word used by Western fans of anime to signify anime/manga as being of the pornographic variety.

In 1990, during my junior year of high school, I was introduced to a form of animation unlike anything I had known before—the darkly imaginative and transgressive world of hentai. While explicit Japanese media had existed long before, the particular title that marked my first encounter with the genre was Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji. The work did not simply define hentai; it transformed how adult animation would be viewed by audiences in both Japan and the West.

Prior to its release, erotic or explicit manga had long circulated quietly within Japan, often categorized separately from mainstream entertainment. Yet when mangaka Maeda Toshio’s Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji was adapted into animation by director Takayama Hideki in the late 1980s, something shifted. The result was a film that combined the grotesque, the apocalyptic, and the erotic into a single overwhelming experience. Takayama’s adaptation was not content to merely illustrate Maeda’s ideas—it amplified them into a fever dream of violence and desire that pushed the medium into territory rarely explored in animation.

This era in Japanese media was also defined by strict obscenity laws. Direct depictions of genitalia or explicit intercourse were prohibited, both in live-action and animation. To circumvent these limitations, artists employed mosaics or invented visual metaphors. Takayama approached the problem with disturbing creativity: he replaced human anatomy with monstrous, tentacle-like appendages. These served a dual purpose—they satisfied censors while reinforcing the story’s occult and otherworldly atmosphere. Inadvertently, this gave rise to one of the most infamous tropes in hentai culture: “tentacle rape.” What began as a method of evading censorship evolved into a symbol of perversion, horror, and fascination.

Though Maeda initially regarded Takayama’s interpretation as excessively cruel and sadistic, he expressed admiration for the director’s ability to explore the darker undercurrents of his story. In time, Maeda’s own works would adopt similar motifs, blending eroticism with the supernatural. His later projects—including Yōjū Kyōshitsu Gakuen, Adobenchā Kiddo, and the enduring Injuu Gakuen La Blue Girl—refined the sensibilities born from Urotsukidōji, mixing violence, humor, and demonic imagery. These works often shifted in tone but never strayed far from the genre’s defining combination of horror and sexual excess.

Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji can best be described as a collision of disparate influences: the mythic nihilism of H. P. Lovecraft, the explicit confrontational style of Larry Flynt, and the occult transgression of Aleister Crowley, all underscored by the philosophical cruelty associated with the Marquis de Sade. The film’s narrative combines apocalypse with pornography, constructing a universe where gods, demons, and humans become locked in violent and erotic cycles of destruction and rebirth. It is both a nightmare and a spectacle, a work that examines desire as an extension of cosmic chaos.

Watching the OVA as a seventeen-year-old was an experience of shock and bewilderment. Nothing in my understanding of animation prepared me for it. The optimism and adventure of series like Robotech, Starblazers, and Voltron stood in stark contrast to the nihilistic intensity of Urotsukidōji. If such a term had been common at the time, “culture shock” would have described it perfectly. Yet beyond my initial disorientation, I recognized something compelling beneath the shock value—a strange vision that treated eroticism not as mere indulgence but as a reflection of human fear and fascination.

Takayama’s film succeeded because it used obscenity as both spectacle and metaphor. The sexualized violence was horrifying, but it also emphasized the collapse of moral order within its world. The boundaries between sensuality and monstrosity blurred, suggesting that both sprang from the same primal source. In this way, Urotsukidōji transformed its limitations into aesthetic strength. Censorship forced invention, and invention created symbolism: the tentacle became an image of corruption, domination, and inhuman desire.

When Urotsukidōji began circulating in the West through VHS imports in the early 1990s, it acquired immediate notoriety. For many international viewers, the notion that animation could contain such extreme imagery was almost unthinkable. Western audiences, accustomed to animation as a medium for children or adolescent adventure, suddenly encountered a work that combined cinematic brutality with mythology and eroticism. Owning or viewing it became an act of curiosity and defiance. Accessing such media often meant seeking imported tapes or attending small conventions—a process that only heightened its sense of exclusivity and taboo.

Not everyone perceived Urotsukidōji as art. Its reputation became divisive; for some, it represented the most exploitative and grotesque tendencies of Japanese culture, while to others, it was a bold exercise in creative freedom. Regardless of one’s stance, its influence was undeniable. The film inspired countless imitators, establishing a visual and thematic template for subsequent hentai and “erotic horror” animation. Even as later works diversified into comedy, fantasy, and romance, the long shadow of Urotsukidōji remained.

There is also a deeper irony in its legacy. The same adaptation Maeda once criticized expanded the reach and visibility of his creation beyond what any manga publication could have achieved. The collaboration between artist and director—however fraught—produced a convergence of imagination that shaped both the erotic and horror dimensions of modern anime. In a broader sense, it demonstrated that the animated form could explore the same depths of transgression, myth, and existential dread that live-action cinema often reserved for its most daring auteurs.

Seen through this lens, Urotsukidōji becomes more than a piece of pornographic shock cinema. It emerges as a cultural artifact—one that reflects how desire, repression, and fantasy intersect within specific historical and artistic contexts. The work exposes how censorship and creativity can collide to produce unexpected invention, and how audiences, whether through fascination or outrage, help define a genre’s legacy.

For those of my generation, encountering Urotsukidōji was a defining moment that reshaped perception. It suggested that animation could express not only beauty and adventure but also the darker instincts of the human psyche. What began as disbelief evolved into a kind of reluctant respect for its ambition. Beneath the grotesque imagery lay a thematic depth that continues to invite examination—questions about power, violation, and the thin line separating horror from desire.

Today, both Maeda Toshio’s manga and Takayama Hideki’s adaptation occupy a controversial yet essential place in the history of Japanese media. They are remembered not only for their sensational content but for their cultural and aesthetic audacity. The story of Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji endures because it refuses simplification—it is at once abhorrent and visionary, obscene yet strangely philosophical.

From the most ardent anime historian to the casual viewer, its reputation persists. Whether reviled or revered, Urotsukidōji remains the ultimate symbol of hentai’s origins and its infamous reach. It stands as both a warning and a testament: that art, when unfettered by convention and driven by instinct, can explore places society dares not name.

Anime You Should Be Watching

6 More Exploitation Trailers: The Late Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, Lisa Marie here.  I apologize for being a day late in continuing my series of posts devoted to some of my favorite exploitation and grindhouse film trailers.  Unfortunately, I got caught up having a fight with a troll over on my other blog and I ended up running behind.  The lesson here is that trolls are not worth the trouble.

But enough time wasted on dumbfugs and toadsuckers.  Let’s talk exploitation with six more of my favorite trailers.

1) The Candy Snatchers

Sadly, this DVD is now out-of-print and the people selling it on Amazon want you to pay something like $80.00 for it.  That’s a shame because The Candy Snatchers is, arguably, one of the greatest films ever made.  This is one of those movies that I desperately need to review but I’m still struggling to find the right words to express just how brilliant this movie is.

2) Django Kill

This trailer doesn’t really do justice to Django Kill which, quite frankly, is probably the strangest, most surreal western ever made.  Yes, this film is even stranger than El Topo.  However, I still like the pop art feel of this trailer.

3) The Raiders of Atlantis

This is one of Ruggero Deodato’s non-cannibal movies.  It’s actually surprisingly enjoyable in a very silly sort of way.

4) Burial Ground

Also known as The Nights of Terror, this is one of the more infamous examples of the Italian zombie genre.  To be honest, this is an amazingly trashy, stupid movie but once you start watching, you can not turn away.  This is another film I’ve been meaning to review for a while as I think it’s actually the most political of all the Italian zombie films.  People tend to get some caught up with the whole incest subplot that they miss the whole Marxist subtext.  And yes, the movie does include a title card that contains the word “profecy.”

5) The Teacher

I love this trailer.  It is such a relic that I almost feel like it should be put in a time capsule.  Plus, that whole “She corrupted the morals…” tag line is just so priceless.

6) Boss

When this 1975 movie was released on DVD, it was titled Boss.  Well, that’s only half of the original title.  I’ve never seen this movie (as the only westerns that interest me are Italian-made) but this trailer has always stuck with me because of the whole “Did I just hear that?” factor.  However, after I first saw this trailer, I did some research and discovered that the movie was actually written and produced by the film’s star, Fred Williamson.  So, that makes me a bit more comfortable with it.

Scenes I Love: Inferno

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Inferno is Dario Argento’s 1980 sequel to Suspiria.  Inferno seems to bring out the extreme reactions in Argentonians — it’s either loved or hated.  I happen to love it.

Below is one of the film’s best known sequences, the one where Irene Miracle ends up taking a surreal swim through a basement.  To me, this sequence is almost Fulciesque in it’s dream-like approach (punctuated, of course, by one sudden grotesque shock at the end).  Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, which is often compared to Inferno, featured a similarly flooded basement. 

Words of warning: This scene lasts 6 and a half minutes.  Also, the first few minutes are nearly ruined by Keith Emerson’s bombastic score.  Fortunately, once Miracle takes her fateful dive, Mr. Emerson is silenced.

The Walking Dead – Official Series Trailer (AMC)

Posted on by Arleigh

Well, it’s now official. AMC has finally released the very same trailer that people not fortunate enough to have attended San Diego Comic-Con last month. This trailer is under 5 minutes long and it’s the same one those who attended the Comic-Con panel for the show saw. Only shaky and grainy bootleg copies of the trailer has been seen outside of that panel. While some bootleg versions were quite good in quality they’re still not a substitute for the official release of the same trailer by AMC for everyone to watch.

This official trailer release was also AMC’s way of finally announcing the premiere date of the 90-minute pilot episode (directed by showrunner and producer Frank Darabont). The pilot will premiere worldwide on Halloween Night, October 31, 2010. While some thought the pilot will premiere early on AMC’s “Fearfest” campaign for October I think it’s appropriate that the series premieres on Halloween Night. I can definitely see many fans of the comic book series planning their Halloween parties to include group watch of the pilot episode the very same night.

Still two months away and this trailer definitely doesn’t make the wait any easier.

Source: The Walking Dead (AMC)

Review: The Hills Have Eyes (dir. by Alexandre Aja)

Posted on by Arleigh

Many people have issues about remakes and reboots. They see it as unnecessary and a proof that the film industry has run out of ideas. I can’t say that either points have no validity to them, but I disagree with both.While all genres of film have had it’s share of remakes and reboots its the horror section of the film aisle which has seen the most. This shouldn’t come as a shock since horror has always been ripe for remakes. The stories in horror films have always been quite simple and producers take advantage of this by remaking them for a new generation. Take the simple set-up, change the time and setting with a new cast of cheap, unknown actors and you got yourself a horror flick which should make back its budget and make its filmmakers a profit.

While most horror remakes usually range from average to truly dreadful there comes a time when one comes out of the horror remake heap to actually show promise and quality not seen in its remake brethren. One such film is in the Alexandre Aja directed and Wes Craven produced The Hills Have Eyes. Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes is the rare horror remake in that its more than a match to Wes Craven’s original and, at times, surpasses it.

Alexandre Aja first burst onto the horror-cinema scene with his ambitious and grisly homage to grindhouse horror: Haute Tension. Haute Tension was one nasty piece of horror filmmaking which brought to mind 70’s and early 80’s horror exploitation and grindhouse mentality. Aja’s directorial debut was a no-hold-s-barred punch and kick to the stomach that was overtly violent and sublimely painful for the audience to watch. Aja was soon tapped by Wes Craven to lead the remake project of his own The Hills Have Eyes and to Aja’s growing reputation as a rising star of horror, he grew as a filmmaker and more than earned this reputation.

Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes follows pretty much the very same story and characters as the original. This remake has abit more of a political sense to its storytelling in that it doesn’t just pit the basic premise of civilized humans versus the primal inbred, mutant hill dweller, but also the different demographics of red state versus blue state. This theme was hammered through to the audience through the subsurface conflict between Big Bob Carter’s (well-played by industry veteran Ted Levine) red state gung-ho ex-detective and his son-in-law Doug’s (X2‘s Aaron Stafford) pacifist mentality. I think this new wrinkle in the original’s sparse and tight story was unnecessary and unsubtly done. I really didn’t want to know what political leanings and motivations the Carter family members followed. What I did care about was how they would react to the outside forces that was soon to menace and attack them.

The first half of the film was very deliberate in its set-up as it slowly built up the tension and dread as the Carter family’s journey through a supposedly short-cut through the desert put them closer and closer to the dangerous people who dwelt amongst the hills bordering the desert road. Once the family becomes stranded in the middle of nowhere the fun begins for horror-aficionados. For those who have seen the original this remake doesn’t deviate from the main story. The hill people who, up until now have only been glimpsed through quick shadowy movements across the screen, were the true cause of the family’s predicament attack in a brutal and grisly fashion. None of the Carter family members were spared from this attack. From Big Bob Carter, his wife Ethel, their three children, son-in-law and young granddaughter they all suffer in one form or another. The night attack on the camper is the main highlight of the film and shows that Aja hasn’t lost his touch for creating a horror setpiece that doesn’t hold back. From the brutal rape of the Carter’s youngest daughter Brenda to the sudden deaths of several Carter family members. This sequence was both fast-paced and chaotic in nature. It also helped push the definition of what constitute a very hard R-rating. Just like Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects and Roth’s Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes pushed the limits and boundaries of what the MPAA has allowed so far in terms of on-screen violence when it was first released in 2006. I’m very surprised that some of the violence and deaths in this film made the final cut. This film definitely brings back the 70’s style horror.

The cast for this remake was one high point that the original didn’t have. Where Craven had a very inexperienced cast for the original film. Aja had the luxury of a bigger budget to hire a more competent and able group of actors. A cast that was led by Ted Levine who shined in his role as the patriarch of the civilized Carters. Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of the bunch soldiers on even though its almost predestined in films such as this that she would be one of the doomed. The two daughters as played by Vinessa Shaw and Lost’s Emilie De Ravin were quite good in roles that involved some very graphic rape sequences. Much kudos must go to De Ravin for having to perform through her scene during the trailer-camper attack. But the two actors who excelled in the film has to be pacifist turned avenging angel Doug as played by Aaron Stafford. We see in his character Doug the lengths a civilized human being would go through to survive and protect those he cares for. Even if this means resorting to becoming more brutal and primal than the inbred, mutant hill dwellers. It’s in Doug’s character where the basic premise of the clash of the modern with the primitive comes close to matching the same theme in the original. To a smaller degree this was also echoed in the Carter’s teenage son Bobby. Dan Byrd of Entourage plays Bobby Carter and its in him we see the level-headedness of the family. Despite all the horror and carnage he has seen the hill dwellers have inflicted on his family, Bobby remains somewhat calm and even-keeled to protect what is left of his family. The only drawback as to the cast itself was that the opposing family seemed to have been shortchanged. In the original we actually got to understand some of the motivations that drove the hill dwellers to prey on unsuspecting travelers through their area. In this remake the hill dwellers seem more like superhuman monsters and boogeymen. It didn’t bother me as much, but then it also lessened the impact of the story’s basic premise of civilization versus primitives.

Lastly, the look of the film helps add to the grindhouse nature of Aja’s remake. The film has an oversaturated look and feel that took advantage of the desert location and the high-sun overhead. This oversaturation of the film’s look also lends some credence to its grindhouse sensibilities. It looked, felt and acted like something made during the late 70’s and early 80’s. For most fans of horror it would really come down to the special-effects used to show the death and violence’s impact on the audience. Once again, Greg Nicotero and his crew at KNB EFX house show that they’re the premiere effects house. The make-up used to show the mutant effects on the survivors of the original inhabitants of the hills was excellently done. The same goes for the gags used to show the many brutal and messy deaths of both families.

There’s no denying that The Hills Have Eyes was all about pain when boiled down to its most basic denominator. This film is all about pushing the boundaries and piling on violence upon violence. The Hills Have Eyes is not a film that tells us violence solves nothing. Here it does solve the problem for the Carter clan and is also the only avenue of survival of the remaining Carters. The same goes for the nuclear survivors and their offspring who stayed in the irradiated zones that was their home. This film is all about survival and the levels and heights individuals would take to achieve it.

The Hills Have Eyes might not be the original second helping some have expected from Aja after his brilliant, if somewhat flawed first major film with Haute Tension, but it does show his growth as a filmmaker and his clean grasp of what makes horror cinema truly terrifying and uncomfortable. Two ingredients that makes for making a genre exploitation fare into something of a classic. I’m sure that outside of the horror-aficionado circles this film will either be met with indifference or disgust, but for those who revel in this type of filmmaking then it’s a glorious continuation of the grindhouse horror revival that began with Aja’s own Haute Tension, continued by Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, Roth’s Hostel  and continues to live each and every year with the many direct-to-video releases of cheap, but very good horror films. It truly is a great time to be a fan of horror and Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes more than holds its own against Craven’s original.

Review: Piranha 3-D (directed by Alexandre Aja)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I had two concerns about going to see the new horror film, Piranha 3-D.

First off, I know that 3-D has been hailed as “the future of movies” and that apparently, Webster’s is considering whether to recognize 3Dgasm (which is the response that certain film goers have to 3-D regardless of whether the movie itself is actually good or if it’s just Avatar) for inclusion in the next edition of the dictionary.  However, 3-D often makes me sick to my stomach and I mean that literally.  3-D makes me feel car sick.  Considering that I love movies, if 3-D is the “future” than I’m probably being punished for something.  That’s right.  Avatar was just a result of my bad karma. 

As for the second concern, I can’t swim and I am terrified of being underwater.  Hanging onto the edge while wading in the shallow side of my uncle’s swimming pool is about as submerged as I can get without having a major freak out.  It’s not just drowning that scares me.   When I was 17, my family spent the summer in Hawaii and my sisters (being the meanies that they are) had a lot of fun with the fact that I’d spend hours lying out on the beach but I refused to even step into the ocean.  It made sense to me.  There were jellyfish and sharks and those weird little black coil things just floating around in the ocean.  Thanks to seeing Piranha 3-D, I now know that there are also cute little fish that will eat you.

I dealt with my fear of the water by asking my sister Erin (who can actually swim because she’s cool and I’m not) to see the movie with me and to keep me calm if I started to have a panic attack.  She agreed and she did an admirable job.  She also helped me deal with my fear of 3-D when, during the coming attractions, she said, “Why don’t you take a Dramamine?”  Now, according to Erin, the only reason she said this was because apparently I was “going on and on” about it.  That’s not how I remember it but I just happened to have some Dramamine in my purse and I quickly popped a few.

If you’ve ever taken Dramamine then you know the way that it works is by basically kicking your ass until you pass out for a few hours.  (I occasionally resort to using it whenever I’m getting hit with insomnia.)  Within minutes of taking it, the Dramamine was saying, “Sleep, Lisa…”  “But I want to see the movie,” I replied.  “That wasn’t a request,” the pill responded.  “Dammit, will you two shut up!?” Erin snapped.  (That may have not actually happened.) 

The point of all this is that I stayed awake through the entire movie, despite having taken the most powerful sleeping pill in existence.  True, my mind did go a little bit goofy (Erin says I was “babbling” through the entire film) but it never shut down.  That’s the type of movie Piranha 3-D is.  The story moves so quickly and the mayhem is so over-the-top and excessive that the brain never gets a chance to relax enough to check out.

Piranha 3-D begins with an earthquake in Arizona.  The earthquake opens up a passageway to an underground lake.  As look would have it, the underground lake is full of a bunch of prehistoric piranha.  These piranha quickly move up to an above-ground lake where they promptly eat Richard Dreyfuss.  Having gotten a taste of Dreyfuss, they apparently decide to eat every other human being they come across and who can blame them?

Actually, the bloody and graphic demise of Richard Dreyfuss was the first clue I had that this film was going to work.  Needless to say, Dreyfuss is the last surviving star of the original killer fish movie, Jaws.  In Jaws, Dreyfuss is plays a character named Matt Hooper.  In Piranha, he’s just named Matt.  By introducing him and then promptly killing him off, Piranha lets us know that it understands the legacy of previous horror blockbusters (like Jaws) but that it has no intention of respecting it.  In other words, this scene lets us know early on that the film is on the side of the fish.

Anyway, it turns out that its spring break and as a result, Lake Victoria, Arizona is full of stupid, drunken college students who are determined to hang out in the water no matter how many people get eaten.  Sheriff Julie Forrester (Elisabeth Shue) struggles to maintain order on the streets with the help of her loyal deputy (a very likeable Ving Rhames).  Julie is also a single mother and, the morning after ol’ Richard Dreyfuss gets devoured, her oldest son Jake (Steven R. McQueen, grandson of the star of Enemy of the People) blows off his baby-sitting duties and agrees to help sleazy Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell) film the latest installment of Girls Gone Wild on the lake.  Sleazy, speedo-clad Derrick (and the fact that O’Connell looks really good in it doesn’t make that red speedo any less ludicrous) attempts to initiate Kelly (Jessica Szhor), the “good” girl who Jake likes into the world of straight-to-video, jailbait porn.  Kelly, by the way, kinda has a boyfriend, a guy named Todd who will eventually end up killing a lot of people with a motorboat.  Even before this, we know he’s a bad guy because he’s named Todd.  Nobody named Todd or Tad is ever good in a horror movie.

Director Alexandre Aja doesn’t take much time introducing his cast of characters and he takes even less time in letting the fish devour them.  So, no, the characters aren’t exactly all that developed.  But it doesn’t matter really.  With what little they have to work with, the cast works wonders.  They know exactly what type of film that they’re in and they know why they are there and they embrace their roles as piranha fodder with an impressive sense of commitment.  Best of all is O’Connell who turns sleazy, coke-fueled egomania into some sort of art form.

The real star of the film, of course, is director Alexandra Aja who takes a mainstream genre piece and who, much like his fellow French director, Jean Rollin, transforms it into a piece of pure grindhouse exploitation.  Aja may use the clichés of the genre but he never blindly embraces them.  Instead, he uses them to comment on both the genre and the audiences expectations of what those cliches mean.  Aja takes everything we’ve come to expect — the blood and gore, the standard plot device of Shue’s children being stranded out on the lake, and the sudden death of nameless extras — and he then pushes them just a little further than the audience is expecting,  As a result, he not only comments on those expectations but he forces the audience to question them as well.

This is never more apparent than in the film’s climatic piranha attack.  This is when the piranha finally get around to attacking all of the swimmers at once.  This is the scene that we all know is coming and that we’ve all been expecting and Aja does not disappoint.  Things start out as you might expect.  Close-up of bikinis.  Drunk idiots in the water.  A wet t-shirt contest.  Rhamas and Shue come up in a boat and start yelling, “Everybody out of the water!”  Because they’re a bunch of drunk dumbfugs, everyone responds by jumping into the water.  Cut to an ominous piranha point-of-view shot.  Suddenly, one woman — floating out in an inntertube — shouts, “Something bit me!”  And suddenly, all Hell breaks loose.

This is the scene you knew was coming and you’ve seen it a hundred times before.  What makes it memorable here is just how far director Aja takes things.  These fish don’t just bite their victims.  They literally devour them while the camera lingers over every piece of flesh that floats through the ocean.  As everyone struggles to get out of the water, they get their skulls split open by passing boats.  In the background, we see various feet, hands, and other body parts randomly floating in the water.  One older man pulls his friend’s torso onto the beach and cradles it while screaming, “I love you, man!  I love you!”  As Shue tries to pull people out of the water, we see a teenager that’s already on the boat start to shake as his life expires.  As I mentioned before, Todd tries to escape by forcing his motorboat through the crowd of terrified swimmers and graphically dismembers a lot of people in the process.  It’s an incredibly graphic sequence, one that starts out as fun but which just keeps going and going,  Director Aja understands that the audiences is expecting — probably even looking forward to — seeing a little blood.  So, instead he assaults us with a lot of blood and he does so in such a way that the audience is forced to question why a little blood is fun but a lot of blood is disturbing.  It’s as if Aja is saying, “You wanted to see people die, well — here they are, dead.  You feel better now?”

As for the 3-D, Aja proves himself to be one of the few filmmakers to understand that 3-D is not the future of movies.  It’s just another gimmick to be exploited and exploit it he does.  However, he does so brilliantly and he is so shameless about it that watching Piranha 3-D simply serves to reiterate just how silly the whole 3-D craze really is.  Every short is a tracking shot.  The CGI piranha float across the screen, stopping momentarily to stare straight out at the audience and almost wink.  The men in the audience seemed to be especially happy about all the boobs that literally seem to swing out of the screen and across the theater but they were a bit less enthused when a disembodied penis came floating out of the screen.  By not only fully embracing the ludicrous possibilities of 3-D but by also doing so without any shamefaced attempts to justify its use, Piranha 3-D is perhaps the greatest 3-D movie ever made.

Scenes I Love: Two Orphan Vampires

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, I feel that there are only two types of people in the world.  There’s the minority who appreciate the dreamlike atmosphere and sensual obsessions that dominate the vampire films of French director (and genius) Jean Rollin.

And then there’s the majority who don’t.  We refer to this majority as being “the idiots.”

As for me, Jean Rollin is one of my favorite directors.  I’ve previously reviewed his low-budget masterpiece, Night of the Hunted, on this site.  I hope, in the future, to review even more of his films.

For now, I’d just like to share a scene from one of his later films, the hauntingly beautiful and elegiac Two Orphan Vampires. 

Rollin is a director best known for spending the past five decades making films in which he continually and obsessively returns to a few key themes: the importance of memory, a nostalgia for the innocence of youth mixed with the knowledge that youthful innocence could also be destructive, a fascination with the beach, an obvious love of architecture (Rollin films old castles the way that an American director might film an action sequence), and — most notoriously — the use of two female protagonists who are usually portrayed as possessing a very strong, sister-like bond even though it’s rare that they actually are blood-related. 

A good deal of Rollin’s current following comes from men who feel that there’s an erotic element to Rollin’s portrayal of female friendship.  And to an extent, they’re right.  But to an even greater extent, it doesn’t matter.  Regardless of why the relationships between Rollin’s protagonists exists, the important thing is that they are portrayed as sharing an unbreakable bond.  Whether they’re linked by lust, friendship, or just memory, Rollin’s women are bonded by a very true, very real love and that’s what makes his movies special to me.

This is what the scene below is all about.  The two orphan vampires of the title are two teenage sisters.  During the day, they are blind but when the sun goes down, they can not only see but they become vampires as well.  Two Orphan Vampires is a surprisingly sad and haunting look at their attempts to survive in a world that has no place for them.  In the scene below, after failing in several attempts to get the blood they need to continue to live, each sister resorts to drinking the blood of the other.  To me, every thing that Rollin had directed before was leading up to this scene.

(This scene is also prototypical Rollin in that the budget is obviously low, the actors are more than adequate but, at the same time, are obviously not professionals, and the English dubbing is poorly done.  And yet the scene itself — especially when seen in the larger context of both the entire film and Rollin’s movies as a whole — is actually more sincere and memorable than the majority of what is produced by the mainstream.  In short, this is pure Rollin in that you either get it or you don’t.)