Tag Archives: The Daily Grindhouse

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: I, Madman (dir by Tibor Takacs)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1989 horror film, I, Madman, Jenny Wright stars as Virginia.  Virginia’s an aspiring actress who makes ends meet by working in a used bookstore.  (I’m not sure how much money the typical used bookstore employee makes but I have to say that Virginia’s apartment is absolutely to die for.)  Virginia is also dating a police detective named Richard (Clayton Rohner), who is handsome and sweet and looks good in a suit.  In fact, the only problem with Richard is that he thinks that Virginia spends too much time reading trashy horror novels.  According to him, they give her nightmares and they cause her imagination to run wild.

Richard’s not going to be happy to discover that Virginia has a new favorite author.  His name is Malcolm Brand and, despite the fact that Virginia says that he’s better than Stephen King, he’s a mysteriously obscure author.  In fact, no one but Virginia seems to have ever heard of him.  Virginia has just finished reading Brand’s first book, Much of Madness, More of Sin.  Now, she simply has to find his second book, which was called I, Madman.

(Personally, I think Much of Madness, More of Sin is a brilliant title.  I, Madman on the other hand is a little bit bland, as far as titles go.)

When Virginia finally tracks down a copy of the book, she discovers that it is all about this mad scientist who falls in love with an actress.  Because the scientist is horribly disfigured, the actress rejects him.  So, the scientist starts killing people and stealing pieces of their faces, all so he can patch together a new face for himself.

It’s while she’s reading the book the strange things start to happen in Virginia’s life.  For instance, the people around her start dying.  When she witnesses one of her neighbors being murdered, she swears that the murder was committed by a man who had no nose …. just like in the book!  Richard thinks that she’s letting her imagination run wild but Virginia soon comes to wonder if maybe she’s being stalked by the real Malcolm Brand….

I, Madman is an entertaining little horror film, one that sometimes comes across as being an extended episode of something like Tales From The Crypt.  From the minute the movie started with Virginia curled up on her couch in her underwear, reading a trashy novel with her oversized reading glasses on and a storm raging outside, I was like, “Oh my God, they made a movie out of my life!”  And really, this is one of the reasons why I, Madman makes such a good impression.  As played by Jenny Wright, Virginia serves as a stand-in for every horror fan who has ever read a scary novel and immediately imagined themselves as either the protagonist or the victim.  If you’ve ever had a nightmare after reading Stephen King or watching a horror movie, you’ll be able to relate to Virginia.  Both Jenny Wright and Clayton Rohner give likable and quirky performances in the lead role and they’re surrounded by capable of character actors.

The film itself is a bit of an homage to the suspense classics of the past.  It’s easy to compare Malcolm Brand’s novel to The Phantom of the Opera while a scene in which Virginia watches her neighbor play piano brings to mind Hitchcock’s Rear Window.  When Virginia imagines herself as a character in one of Brand’s stories, the film even manages to work in some stop-motion animation.  All in all, I, Madman is an entertaining horror film, perfect for October and any other season.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Q (dir by Larry Cohen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1982 film from Larry Cohen is a strange one.

Q stands for Quetzalcoatl, a winged-serpent that was once worshiped by the Aztecs.  In New York someone has been performing ritual sacrifices, flaying victims of their skin.  As a result, Q has flown all the way to New York City and has taken residence in the Chrysler Building.  She’s also laid an egg, from which a baby Q will soon emerge.

Now, I’ve always heard that it’s next to impossible to surprise a New Yorker.  Apparently, living in New York City means that you’ve seen it all.  And that certainly seems to be the case with this film because no one in New York seems to notice that there’s a winged serpent flying over the city.  Somehow, Q manages to snatch up all sorts of people without anyone noticing.  When Q beheads a window washer, Detectives Shepard (David Carradine) and Powell (Richard Roundtree) aren’t particularly concerned by the fact that they can’t find the man’s head.  Shepard just shrugs and says the head will turn up eventually.

Q is really two films in one.  One of the films deals with a winged serpent flying over New York and killing people.  This film is a throwback to the old monster movies of the 50s and 60s, complete with some charmingly cheesy stop motion animation.  The film is silly but undeniably fun.  Director Cohen is both paying homage to and poking fun at the classic monster movies of the past and both Carradine and Roundtree gamely go through the motions as the two cops determined to take down a flying monster.

But then there’s also an entirely different film going on, a film that feels like it belongs in a totally different universe from the stop-motion monster and David Carradine.  This second film stars Michael Moriarty as Jimmy Quinn, a cowardly but charming criminal who would rather be a jazz pianist.  Quinn may be a habitual lawbreaker but he always makes the point that he’s never carried a gun.  He does what he has to do to survive but he’s never intentionally hurt anyone.  In Quinn’s eyes, he’s a victim of a society that has no room for a free-thinker like him.

However, when Quinn stumbles across Q’s nest, he suddenly has an opportunity to make his mark.  As he explains it to the police, he’ll tell them where to find the serpent and her eggs.  But they’re going to have to pay him first….

In the role of Quinn, Michael Moriarty is a jittery marvel.  Whenever Moriarty is on screen, he literally grabs the film away from not only his co-stars but even his director and makes it his own.  Suddenly, Q is no longer a film about a monster flying over New York City.  Instead, Q becomes a portrait of an outsider determined to make the world acknowledge not only his existence but also his importance.  After spending his entire life on the fringes, Jimmy Quinn is suddenly the most important man in New York and he’s not going to let the moment pass without getting what he wants.  Thanks to Moriarty’s bravura, method-tinged performance, Jimmy Quinn becomes a fascinating character and Q becomes far more than just another monster movie.

It makes for a somewhat disjointed viewing experience but the film still works.  With its charmingly dated special effects and it’s surprisingly great central performance, Q is definitely a film that deserves to be better-known.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Raiders of the Living Dead (dir by Samuel M. Sherman and Brett Piper)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow, were to even begin?

The 1986 film Raiders Of The Living Dead is not an easy movie to describe.  It’s a film that somehow manages mix terrorists, zombies, journalists, movie theaters, a sociopathic kid who somehow invents a death ray, and the Three Stooges.  If that makes it sound like something you want to see …. well, good.  You should see this movie, just so you can say that you’ve had the experience.

On the plus side, Raiders of the Living Dead opens with one of the most brilliant songs that I’ve ever heard.  Seriously, take a listen and then ask yourself why Olivia Cooke was covering Bob Dylan in Life Itself instead of this song:

So, I know what you’re asking.  “What’s this movie about?”

I’m not really sure.  Here’s what I can tell you.

The movie opens with a truck apparently being hijacked.  At least, I think it was a hijacking.  A guy jumped in a truck and drove off with it and then some police cars started following him down a country road so I’m going to assume that some sort of law was broken.  Anyway, the truck gets away because a dump truck pulls in front of the police cars.  The dump truck driver isn’t an accomplice or anything.  He’s just having engine trouble.  I guess the cops just decided they had wasted enough time chasing the other truck so they decided to just sit around and watch the dump truck driver work on his engine.

Suddenly, we’re in a nuclear power plant!  Oh my God, a terrorist is trying to blow the place up!  That will lead to an environmental catastrophe and …. oh never mind.  Two SWAT guys just showed up and shot the terrorist with a taser and then the terrorist stumbled into a circuit box and got electrocuted so I guess that’s a god thing.

Now, I’m not sure how either of these scenes are connected to the rest of the film.  In fact, we soon abandon the nuclear power plant so that we can send time with Jonathan (Scott Schwartz, the same kind who got his tongue stuck to the flag pole in A Christmas Story) and his grandfather, Dr. Corstairs (Robert Allen).  Dr Corstairs is having trouble with whatever the 80s equivalent of a DVD player is and he gives it Jonathan to see if he can fix it.  Somehow, Jonathan turns it into a death ray and accidentally atomizes his pet hamster.  Jonathan never seems to be too upset over killing his pet, which leads me to suspect that Jonathan is a sociopath.

Meanwhile, there’s a reporter named Morgan (Robert Deveau), who drags his girlfriend with him to an old farmhouse in the middle of the night.  He says that he’s investigating something for a story but I think he just has a thing for farmhouses.  Anyway, they get attacked by zombies.  Morgan escapes.  His girlfriend doesn’t.  Morgan never seems to be too upset about it, proving that Morgan is as much of a sociopath as Jonathan.

Anyway, Morgan goes into hiding, which in this case means getting a room in a nearby boarding house and looking for clues at the library.  He also gets a new girlfriend named Shelley (Donna Asali).  They go to a Three Stooges film festival together.  They watch a Three Stooges short which means that viewers of Raiders of the Living Dead also have to watch it.  This actually happens more than once.

Anyway, it’s all somehow connected to a mad scientist who is creating zombies out in a deserted prison somewhere.  I’m not really sure how it all connects and neither is the film.  Jonathan’s death ray does kind of play a role in resolving the whole zombie subplot but to be honest, I was so curious about why no one was freaking out about a kid having a death ray that it was sometimes hard to focus on just what exactly was going on at the prison.

So, this is a very strange film.  Apparently, it was shot over a lengthy period of time, with footage being shot until the production ran out of money and then filming resuming whenever some more money came in.  That probably explains why Raiders of the Living Dead seems to actually be five or six films in one.  As bad as the film is, I am going to give it a cautious recommendation just because it’s so damn weird that I think everyone should experience it at least once.

Plus, I love that theme song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbGYCDACp5w

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Rasputin, The Mad Monk (dir by Don Sharp)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In turn of the century Russia, there lived a man named Grigori Rasputin.

He was a monk, though some considered him to be more a servant of the devil than of God.  Legend has it that he was a man who rarely bathed and who made it a point to live in the wild, a part of nature.  His hair was long and unkempt and he was known for his wild eyes.  Depending on who is telling the story, Rasputin’s stare is described as either being seductive or frightening.  Rasputin had a reputation for being a great healer, as well as a great seducer.  (It is said that Rasputin offered up as his defense that it was necessary to sin so that he could be forgiven by God.)

Despite being a controversial figure (and, in the eyes of same, an instrument of the devil), the charismatic Rasputin became well-known in Russian social circles.  In fact, the stories of his powers as a healer eventually reached the household the Tsar.  The Tsar’s son suffered from hemophilia and was frequently ill.  Rasputin was brought into the royal palace to cure him and, according to contemporary accounts, he was somehow able to do just that.  It was said that only Rasputin could stop the boy’s bleeding.

It was also said that Rasputin grow to have a good deal of influence over the Tsarina.  In fact, he was seen as having so much influence that certain members of the royal court started to view him as being a threat to their own power.  On December 30th, 1916, Rasputin was murdered.  There are many stories about how Rasputin was murdered but it’s generally agreed that the conspirators first tried to poison him, just to discover that Rasputin was apparently immune to cyanide!  Eventually, Rasputin was shot twice and then dumped in the Malaya Nevka River.  Stories about how difficult it had been to kill Rasputin only added to his legend.

After his death (and the subsequent communist revolution that led to the murders of the Tsar and his family), Rasputin became a legendary figure.  Because of his connection to the occult, it’s perhaps not surprising that he’s also been the subject of a number of biopics.  Everyone from Klaus Kinski to Lionel Barrymore to Alan Rickman has played the mad monk.  (Apparently, Leonardo DiCaprio has been attached to an up coming film about Rasputin.)

And then there’s Christopher Lee.  Christopher Lee played Rasputin in the 1966 Hammer Film, Rasputin, The Mad Monk.  It’s probably one of Lee’s best performances, as well as one of his most lively.  Lee plays Rasputin as being a cunning charlatan, one who may act like a madman but who always know exactly what he’s doing.  The film makes perfect use of Lee’s imposing physical presence and, when Rasputin uses his powers of hypnotism, Lee stares with such intensity that you never doubt that he’s a man who knows how to get exactly what he wants.  Lee makes you believe that, through sheer willpower, Grigori Rasputin very well could have become one of the most important men in Russia.

As for the film itself, it’s a briskly paced retelling of Rasputin’s final years, hitting all of the expected points without ever digging too far beneath the surface.  Rasputin cures the sick and seduces their mothers, wives, and sisters and uses his powers of hypnotism to hold most of St. Petersburg under his control.  Many of the usual Hammer performers (including Barbara Shelley, as the Tsarina’s servant and Joss Ackland as a bishop) make an appearance and the fact that no one makes the least bit of effort to sound Russian just adds to the film’s charm.  It’s an entertaining look at a fascinating historical story and, most importantly, it features Christopher Lee at his chilling best.

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

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Bait (dir by Kimble Rendall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What happens when you take The Mist and combine it with Jaws?

Well, you’d probably end up with a movie that’s a lot more interesting than 2012’s Bait.

Bait opens in an Australian supermarket and it’s nice to see that supermarkets in other countries are just as bad as supermarkets in America.  Two teenagers make out in the underground parking garage.  A former lifeguard stocks the shelves.  (The lifeguard, incidentally, was previously traumatized when he saw a friend of his eaten by a shark.)  The sister of that friend who got eaten by a shark shops with her new boyfriend.  The store manager gives people orders.  Two masked men try to rob the place, which leads to shoot out with the police.  It’s just a typical day!

Until, of course, the tsunami hits!

Now, on the one hand, the tsunami hit at the perfect time because it kept the masked men from shooting anyone else.  On the other hand, the tsunami hit at absolutely the worst time because apparently, sharks can survive anything.  Not only is the supermarket flooded but now, there is now a giant shark swimming through the aisles!

Our survivors all scramble to the top of the aisles, where they find themselves stranded.  Not only is the water shark-infested but there is also the risk of being electrocuted by broken wires!  The survivors are going to have to set aside their differences and work together if they’re going to escape the deluge of sharks and bad feelings!

Of course, if you know anything about these type of movies, you know that a group of people can never set aside their differences and work together until at least a handful of them have been eaten.  At one point, our survivors attempt to escape by building a makeshift shark cage out of grocery carts.  That actually might not a bad idea but it just looks so silly!

Anyway, the main problem with Bait is that the film, much like the characters, has no place to go.  The idea of a shark invading a supermarket has potential but once everyone’s stranded on top of their aisles, the action slows down to a crawl and we spend way too much time listening to thinly drawn characters shout insults at each other.  The characters are trapped but, unfortunately, so is the audience.

I was actually far more interested in the couple that was stuck in the flooded parking garage.  Those scenes, of the two of them trying to figure out how to escape from their car, had a claustrophobic intensity that the scenes in the supermarket lacked.  Lincoln Lewis and Cariba Heine were fun to watch as they bickered with each other and debated who was more to blame for their predicament.  Perhaps because they were separated from all of the noisy drama in supermarket, Lewis and Heine actually seemed to be having fun with their roles.

Anyway, Bait is one of those films that tends to show up fairly regularly on the SyFy network.  It’s not a particularly good movie but it is a reminder that the cinematic legacy of Jaws will outlast us all.  To be honest, if the sharks ever get together and form some sort of anti-defamation league, the film industry is screwed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSUUBiHea68

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Christina’s House (dir by Gavin Wilding)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 2000 straight-to-video film opens with a shocking and effectively violent scene in which an innocent girl scout is yanked into a dilapidated house and bludgeoned to death.  There’s even a slow-motion shot of crushed cookies falling to the floor.  It’s excessive, tasteless, and so ludicrous that it actually makes you think that Christina’s House could actually be, if nothing else, an enjoyably self-aware exploitation film.

Unfortunately, everything pretty much goes downhill after that scene.  The rest of the film deals with Christina (Allison Lange), a teenage girl with an annoying father named James (John Savage), an annoying brother named Bobby (Lorne Stewart), an annoying boyfriend named Eddy (Brendan Fehr), and an annoying admirer named Howie (Brad Rowe).  That may sound like a lot of annoying people for one person to deal with but Christina actually manages to be even more annoying than all of them.  Absolutely no one in this film comes across as being someone with whom you would want to be trapped in a murder house.

Anyway, Christina’s mom has been institutionalized in a Washington mental hospital so James, has rented out a nearby house.  (Naturally, it’s the same house where that girl scout was previously killed.)  James appears to be almost absurdly overprotective of and strict with Christina but it’s also possible that he might just be an asshole in general.  He’s certainly not happy that she’s dating Eddy, who is the local bad boy and who does stuff like hang out on the roof at night.  James would probably be happier if Christina was dating Howie, who has been hired to help fix up the house.  Howie’s so respectful and such a hard worker.  He’s a man who really knows how to handle a hammer.

Christina, however, has other things on her mind.  For one thing, young women are being murdered and the creepy sheriff (Jerry Wasserman) keeps coming by the house and asking strange questions.  Add to that, Christina sometimes thinks that she can hear someone or something in the attic.  Of course, every time that she tries to investigate, her father comes out of his bedroom and yells at her.

(It could just be that James doesn’t want his daughter spending her nights wandering around in her underwear and searching for a vicious killer, in which case James probably has a point.  Still, he’s kind of a jerk about it.)

Who is the murderer?  Is it Eddie, Bobby, or Howie?  Or could it maybe be James?  What if the sheriff’s somehow involved?  Well, don’t worry!  The identity of the murderer is revealed about an hour into this 90-minute film and it’s exactly who you think it’s going to be.

If not for the extremely odd performance of John Savage, this film would be totally forgettable.  Savage was the film’s “prestige” actor, a performer who previously appeared in films like The Deer Hunter, the third Godfather, Do The Right Thing, and The Thin Red Line before finding himself in Christina’s House.  John Savage attacks the role of James with all of the ferocity of an actor who has gone from co-starring with Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken to playing second fiddle to Allison Lange and Brendan Fehr.  Savage yells every line and glares at his co-stars with the fury of a man on a mission of vengeance.  As a result, both the actor and the character that he’s playing come across as if they’re always just one annoyance away from putting his fist through a wall.  James may be written as an overprotective father but Savage plays him as being a borderline sociopath.  It’s such a totally inappropriate and misjudged performance that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch.  It takes a great actor to give as entertainingly bad a performance as the one given by John Savage in Christina’s House.

With the exception of Savage’s over-the-top theatrics and Jerry Wasserman’s memorably creepy turn, the rest of the cast is largely forgettable.   The problem is that, as written, most of the characters are fairly unlikable and you really don’t care whether they die or not.  When the killer eventually trapped Christina and Bobby in their new home, I found myself more worried about the house than either of them.

Christina’s House is available on YouTube and sometimes, it shows up on late night television.  (I saw it on This TV.)  It’s pretty dumb but if you’re  fan of good actors bellowing in rage, you might want to watch it.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Hellmaster (dir by Douglas Schulze)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to the end of the world.

Or something like that.

To be honest, it’s a bit of a struggle to say what exactly the 1992 film Hellmaster was actually about but I think it definitely had something to do with the end of the world.  John Saxon plays Prof. Jones, a sadistic eugenicist who, in the late 60s, developed a drug that he claimed would — I kid you not — “cure homelessness.”  Apparently, the drug would make the homeless so strong that they would be able to build a house or something.  Anyway, a reporter (David Emge, best known as the helicopter pilot in the original Dawn of the Dead) discovered what Jones was doing and that the drugs were actually turning the homeless into mind-controlled zombies.  Jones responded by murdering the reporter’s wife and then vanishing.

Are you following the story so far?

20 years later, the reporter is having nightmares about the homeless so he decides to start hanging out around the Kant Institute for the Gifted.  We’re told that the Kant Institute is a college.  There only appears to be one professor and a handful of students, the majority of whom appear to be in their early 30s.  I’m not really sure what’s being taught at the school.  (The only class we see features two white people debating whether or not Malcolm X hated the homeless.)  One of the students, Shelley (Amy Raasch), is apparently clairvoyant and she keeps having visions of the school’s chapel bursting into flames.

Meanwhile, there are shots of an old church bus driving down various deserted roads.  “Have a nice day” is written across the cross that hangs on the front of the bus.  On top of the bus, someone’s painted a smiley face.  The bus itself is occupied by four deformed followers of Prof. Jones.  Apparently, they’ve spent the last 20 years driving around the country and killing people.  One of them is dressed like a nun and carries several hypodermic needles.  They come across a stalled motorist and promptly kill him.  The man’s daughter (Sarah Barkoff) escapes and flees to the nearby Kant Institute.

It turns out that the bus is also heading to the Kant Institute!  Eventually, Prof. Jones pops up and explains that it took God six days to create the world but Jones believes that it will only take him one night to transform the world into Hell.  Why does Jones want to do this?  That’s not really clear.  Actually, it’s not even clear how showing up at the Kant Institute will even help Jones accomplish that goal.

Anyway, the rest of the movie is basically Shelley and the reporter and a handful of friends attempting to not get transformed into zombies by Prof. Jones.  This is easier said than done because, as we quickly discover, everyone in this movie is an idiot.

Hellmaster is one of those low-budget horror films that shouldn’t work and yet somehow, it does.  Yes, the plot makes absolutely no sense and, with the exception of genre vets Saxon and Emge, the performances are almost all terrible.  But no matter!  At its best, the film — which is full of dark hallways and deserted roads and twisty camera angles — achieves a dream-like intensity.  The zombies, with their hypodermic needles and their joyful savagery, are genuinely creepy and John Saxon is properly menacing as Prof. Jones.  It’s a relentless film, one that leaves you feeling as if anyone can die at any time and, when they do die, it’s often in the most macabre ways possible.  A crippled student is beaten to death with his own crutch.  Another is doused with acid.  And you may be asking yourself, “But why was there a big vat of acid just sitting around?” but oddly, it works within the surreal dream logic of the film.  It makes no sense and yet, it happens.  If anything, the lack of a coherent plot and the low-budget aesthetic help this film create and maintain its nightmarish atmosphere.

For all of its flaws, Hellmaster is a thousand times more effective than you might expect.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Survival Island (dir by Stewart Raffill)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydD4W_J1VW0

In the beginning, there was a yacht in the Caribbean.

Working on that yacht was a waiter named Manuel (Juan Pablo Di Pace).  Manuel was strong, handsome, and as sexy as a reality show participant.  He knew how to repair things.  He knew how to catch fish.  His job may have required him to serve margaritas to rich assholes from the United States but he always did it with an attitude.  Manuel was the type of arrogant working man who one would typically expect to find Giancarlo Gianinni playing in a Lina Wertmuller film.  Of course, Manuel is more interested in getting laid than leading a worker’s revolution.  In fact, just before setting out on his latest voyage, he broke up with his girlfriend.  She reacted by pointing at him and laughing evilly.  In a movie like this, that can only mean one thing: VOODOO CURSE!

And then there was Jenny (Kelly Brook) and her husband, Jack (Billy Zane).  While Jenny was the trophy wife, Jack was the American businessman who rented out the yacht for a fishing expedition.   Jack was arrogant.  Jack was outspoken.  Jack was convinced that he knew how to survive at sea, even though he didn’t.  He and Manuel took an instant dislike to each other.  It didn’t help Manuel’s cabin was right next to Jenny and Jack’s and that the sound of Jenny’s ecstatic moaning kept Manuel from getting a goodnight’s rest.

(Of course, another reason that Manuel was having trouble getting any sleep was because, at that very moment, his ex-girlfriend was dancing in a candle-filled room and apparently taking part in some sort of Santeria-related ceremony.)

Well, you can guess where this is going, can’t you?  Jack and Manuel have an argument on the boat.  Manuel gets fired and reacts by taking a towel and throwing it on a stove.  Soon, the boat’s on fire.  Jenny and Manuel wash up on the shore of an isolated island.  For two days, Manuel takes care of Jenny.  He catches fish for her.  He encourages her to swim naked in the ocean.  He yells at her, “You have a perfect ass, senora!  It’s shaped like a heart because God didn’t give you a real one!”  (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that…)  Despite herself, Jenny starts to fall for Manuel.  Suddenly, Jack shows up on the beach!

Jack soon proves himself to be just as obnoxious on dry land as he was on the boat.  Earlier, Jenny and Manuel had buried the body of the boat’s captain.  Jack promptly digs the captain back up so he can get a change of clothes and some cigars.  Jenny is stunned that Jack would do something so gross.  Jack laughs it off as only Billy Zane can.

Soon, Jack is living on one end of the beach while Manuel is on the other.  And Jenny is stuck in the middle.  Meanwhile, Manuel’s ex-girlfriend is still dancing in that candle-filled room…

Survival Island is a movie that manages to both bad and brilliant at the same time.  In the role of Jenny, Kelly Brook gives a performance that hits so many wrong notes that it almost becomes a perfect example of outsider art.  When she should be scared, she seems to be mildly annoyed.  When she should be happy, she again seems to be mildly annoyed.  The script itself can’t decide whether Jenny is meant to be a noirish femme fatale or a repressed trophy wife.  Jenny never really comes to life as anything other than a plot device but I do have to admire the fact that, even after a shipwreck and several days on a desert island, her makeup was always perfect and her hair was always clean.  Still, considering that the film revolves around her, Jenny is a surprisingly insubstantial character.

Fortunately, the fact that Jenny is such a poorly written character almost doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that Billy Zane is in this movie and he’s exactly the type of shameless, over-the-top performer that this story needs.  There’s nothing subtle about Zane’s performance.  Jack talks to himself.  Even before they end up fighting over Jenny, Jack is always glaring at Manuel.  When he manages to catch something to eat, Jack breaks out into a wonderfully self-satisfied grin and when he suspects that Jenny may have cheated on him, he pouts like a child who has just been informed that his favorite toy was donated to the Goodwill while he wasn’t looking.  Jack’s the type of character who has a snarky comment about everything and Billy Zane is one of those actors who definitely knows how to deliver a sarcastic line or two.  Jack may be a jerk but so what?  He’s an American jerk so, as an American film reviewer, I’m required to be on his side.  Once Jack — and Billy Zane — loses it and goes crazy on that island, nothing else matters.  On the basis of Billy Zane’s presence alone, the film is a guaranteed a certain immortality.  Indeed, the main conflict in Survival Island isn’t between Jack and Manuel.  Instead, it’s between a film that takes itself seriously and a star who does not.

That’s really what makes Survival Island into such a slyly (if, perhaps, unintentionally) subversive film.  The movie may think that it has something to say about class, relationships, and sex but Billy Zane is always on hand to announce,, “No, this is all about watching me go batshit crazy on an island!  That’s all that matters!”  Just as how Jenny must choose between Jack and Manuel, the viewer is forced to choose between taking the movie seriously or just enjoying Billy Zane at his zaney best.

I have a feeling that most people will go with the latter.

In the UK, Survival Island was released as Three.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Clown (dir by Jon Watts)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Clown, a gory horror film, sucks.

I can’t say that I was particularly surprised to discover that it sucked but still, I was hoping that it would be better than it turned out to be.  That’s largely because the film itself has a fairly compelling backstory.  In 2010, director Jon Watts and his co-writer, Christopher D. Ford, uploaded a fake trailer for Clown to YouTube, in which they stated that the film would be produced by Eli Roth.  Roth saw the trailer and was so impressed that he actually did decide to produce the film.

Filming began in 2010 and the film spent a while playing the festival circuit, where it got the type of vaguely respectable reviews that are usually given to low-budget horror films made by amateur filmmakers that no one is ever expecting to hear from again.  In 2012, Dimension Films and FilmNation Entertainment acquired the rights to distribute Clown.  What followed was an agonizing wait as Clown was basically released in almost every other country in the world. except for the USA.  In fact, it wouldn’t be until 2016 that Clown would get an American release.  During that time, Jon Watts received deserved acclaim for directing Cop Car and he was hired by Marvel to direct Spider-Man: Homecoming.

As an admirer of Watts’s subsequent films, I was really interested in seeing Clown.  So, yesterday afternoon, I sat down and I watched Clown on Netflix.

Clown is the story of a stupid guy named Kent McCoy (Andy Powers) who tries to save his son’s birthday party by dressing up like a clown.  What Kent doesn’t know is that the clown makeup is cursed and that, by putting it on, he’s now allowed himself to be possessed by a demon that feeds on children!  What a dumbass!  Kent tries to wash the makeup off his face but it won’t come off.  He tries to take off his rainbow wig, just to discover that it’s now permanently attached to scalp.  His wife uses a screw driver to try to pop off the red nose but, instead, she just rips his real nose to pieces.  (The family dog eats the red nose and promptly becomes possessed.)  Kent keeps telling everyone that he’s been possessed by a demon but no one believes him.  Everyone just thinks that he’s a weirdo in clown makeup.

It sounds more interesting than it is.  For all the promise in the idea of a possessed clown, Clown doesn’t do much with it.  Clown is 90 minutes long but it only has enough plot for 30 minutes.  The remaining hour is basically made up of characters repeating what we already know.  We watch as Kent learns that the clown makeup is cursed.  Then, we have to follow his wife as she does her own research and discovers that the clown makeup is cursed.  Then, Peter Stomare shows up and starts explaining to everyone that the clown makeup is cursed.  By this point, I was yelling at the screen, “I KNOW THIS ALREADY!”

Throughout the film, there are hints of the Jon Watts’s talent but, for the most part, they remain merely that.  There’s an effective scene that takes place in a jungle gym at Chuck-E-Cheese’s and occasionally, there will be a line of dialogue or a movement of the camera that actually lives up to the plot’s subversive potential.  However, especially when compared to Cop Car and Spider-Man, Clown is an abysmally paced film.  It’s also terribly acted with Andy Powers neither sympathetic nor compelling as the possessed man in clown makeup.  Not even a reliable character actor like Peter Stomare can bring much to the material.

The general rule of most horror films is that, no matter what the threat, dogs and children usually survive.  The film not only breaks that rule but it breaks it multiple times.  In fact, there’s so much blood spilled in the film that I actually found myself getting depressed watching it.  Lacking both a satiric edge and any real interest in subverting the horror genre, Clown instead comes across as being unnecessarily mean-spirited.  It’s just not much fun to watch.

When it comes to killer clowns, stick with Pennywise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M25cDzZ2DwY