Desperate Living (1977)

Rewatched this old favorite as a midnight movie introduced by Mink Stole herself. Hard not to be jazzed about that.

John Waters last major freak out before taking a small step towards the mainstream with Polyester, Desperate Living is in some ways his most extremely dark and fucked film. Lacking some of the joy of Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, it feels edgier. It is also lacking Divine (his first film without her), but the cast is top fucking notch. Mink Stole as rich anxious headcase Connie Marble, Jean Hill as her housekeeper and “sister in crime” Grizelda. They kill Connie’s husband and hit the road taking refuge in Mortville (a kind of freezone for degenerates and criminals that the cops wont touch, it is ruled by evil Queen Carlotta-Edith Massey).

Connie and Grizelda move in with Mole (a butch dyke) and Muffy (“the prettiest girl in Mortville”).  The story is mostly how the people of Mortville rise up against the tyranny of Queen Carlotta. It is a story filled with rabies, botched sex changes, an army of Tom of Finland style leather daddies, and some of the most fantastic hysterical dialogue ever filmed. The city of Mortville is a triumph of low-budget set design, the interiors and exteriors feel so cold and filthy, but dreamlike and also very much a fucked-Disney vibe. There is even a cameo from Cookie Mueller (my favorite of John Waters “Dreamlander” pool of actors).

Like I said, its an old favorite and I enjoyed it now as much or more than when I was a teenager. It’s the kind of film that when certain lines were spoken on screen I would think to myself “Ah! thats why I’ve been saying that for years!” Having unknowingly been quoting it for years. Dark, hilarious and brilliant.

 

 

Quarantine (2008)

A news reporter (kinda fluff stuff, lifestyle “Evening Magazine” stuff) is doing a hanging out piece on the Los Angeles Fire Dept. We follow her and her cameraman into a building where an emergency call has been made. Upon arrival they find an elderly woman who has become a rabid flesh eating insaniac. They try to evacuate the building but only a few get out, the rest are locked in by the Center for Disease Control (who have suddenly shown up out of nowhere) and…uh…Quarantined.

Anywhoozle, there is a cop, a fireman, the reporter, the cameraman and a few tenants in the building. We stay with them as the CDC shuts down their phones/internet/cable, they plug in a tv with an antenna and hear the reports that the building has been completely evacuated, so they know they’re fucked. The virus (which Jill called “crabies”) takes over various characters making them fearless and thirsty for blood. We only see what the cameraman sees in almost real-time.

The whole first person/found footage film stuff is really stale, I skipped Cloverdale, I really was disappointed with Diary of the Dead, and I’ll quote here what Sherman Alexie told me once “Blair Witch Project is only scary if you grew up in the city”.  But Quarantine isn’t bad, its full of some good scares and even the constant running around didn’t bother me too much.

The acting however, isn’t good enough to make you forget that you’re watching a movie. There are plenty of moments where I was bummed that they stepped out of reality  (you kill a insaniac with a camera, that camera is broken- thats the end of movie). Also, the film takes a turn at the end to explain where the virus comes from and I felt that while this scene is super scary it wasn’t plausible. Which is only a criticism I’d make for a “real footage” kind of movie.

It is scary fun, which is a rare treat, but doesn’t quite hold together to be a great film. Based on a Spanish film called [REC], I’ll check that one out at some point to compare, American remakes usually have these kinds of problems.

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses.

I was really down on this movie when it came out, and then I tried to watch The Devil’s Rejects and really didn’t like the intro so I turned it off. But, I want to give Devil’s Rejects a 2nd chance and figured why not start at the beginning?

Here we have two middle class couples on a roadtrip through the south gathering material for a book of roadside oddities, they stumble upon Captitan Spauldings a real dirtbag fried chicken joint with a serial killer themed haunted house ride in the back that looks like a Rob Zombie video. During the ride they hear about local legend “Dr. Satan” and beg Cap. Spaulding to give them more info, he draws em a map that leads them to a farmhouse outside of town that is inhabited with crazy family that lives in a house that looks like a Rob Zombie video.

They are killed off one by one in some pretty nasty ways, some laughs ensue and some real grisly stuff. With the lightness of the humor and camp getting dimmer every moment.

It’s actually pretty well done. I liked it more than his remake of Halloween. This one feels a lot like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, plotwise and thematically, but with a lot of garish color and postmodern camp. This is not great, or terribly original, the dialogue is awful. It is just above average I’d say, but Zombie brings such enthusiasm and gusto to the movie its hard not to be won over. For something this nasty, its…charming?

The Manson Family (2003)

Low budget, bloody, trippy vision of the Manson Family cult and their murders. In the vein of the “Cinema of Transgression” of the 1980’s or a real low rent “Natural Born Killers” as it mixes film stocks, video, staged interviews, and massive acid freakouts mixed with a fake documentary format. With a twist that you see the news reporters putting the documentary together and some junkie death rockers in a basement plotting the reporters demise.

I wont replay the plotline, it isn’t terribly accurate to the facts. But it gets the overall vibe of their  love/murder/sex/LSD/deathtrip probably better than anyone else has so far, and many of the staged interviews are straight offs of original interview footage from the film “Manson” (1973).

The modern-day subplot of the junkies in the basement I could’ve done without. I mean really, you guys watch Richard Kern movies and shoot up, why should I be scared?

I liked the soundtrack, almost entirely Skinny Puppy, SuperJoint Ritual (and other Phil Anselmo side projects) and one or two Manson songs. And you know, if you are into fake blood, trippy sequences and boobs. This movie is for you. I thought it could’ve been about half as long and would’ve been much better. There are some great moments, but you have to dig to get to em. I would like to see what this director would get up to with some money and an editor.

Quien Puede Matar a un Nino? (1976)

Death is Child’s Play
Island of Death
Island of the Damned
Los niños
Lucifer’s Curse
The Killer’s Playground
Trapped
Who Can Kill a Child?  (This is the title you will find this on dvd)
Would You Kill a Child?

A British couple is on vacation in Spain in a lovely coastal town, they have two children but are on vacation alone. The wife is pregnant and the husband is conflicted about it. They decide to row out to a remote island with a fishing village, upon arrival discover that there are no adults to be found. Until that is, they find one being beaten to death by a cute little girl, later they see the same mans body strung up like a pinata and the kids going at him with a scythe.

This is only the beginning of the terror these kids unleash, whats worse is that the violence is only intermittent, they laugh and play in between these events. In a truly terrifying scene our hero finds a group of young boys in a church undressing a dead womans corpse.   They find a jeep and try to escape to the other side of the island, but are followed. They return to the docks in the village and are once again followed, they have to decide that if they are going to survive they will answer the question posed by the title of the film.

This is a shocking, brutal and heartbreaking film. Well made and with characters you can care about, which makes it scary to watch. I would recommend it wholeheartedly. The army of creepy killer kids are fucking terrifying, tension is built at a very effective pace towards a climax that is amazing and, well, horrifying. This film has been unavailable in its original cut and almost unavailable altogether for years and its easy to see why, it is a bitter pill.

However, the opening credit sequence is a real newsreel footage montage of worldwide atrocities (famine, genocide and other real life horrors) that I found very off-putting, but it wasn’t artistically justified. It didn’t work, it just pissed me off. I would’ve given this a much more positive review had it not been there.

I Tre Volti Della Paura (1963)

Black Sabbath
The Three Faces of Fear
The Three Faces of Terror

A creepy and gothic (I mean olde tyme) horror anthology hosted by Boris Karlof and directed by the one and only Mario Bava. Mario Bava’s influence on modern filmmaking cannot be understated. His use of color and set design are still aped today. You can see his echos in Dario Argento up through Guillermo Del Toro.  Bava’s flims Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and  Bay of Blood (aka  Twitch of the Death Nerve 1970) pretty much wrote the blueprint for Italian Giallo and the later for the modern slasher film (directly ripped off by Friday the 13th part whatever).

But here we have a much more old school affair, short little bursts of fun scares and chills. In the first a woman is receiving threatening phone calls from a man she had put behind bars and only her lesbian ex-girlfriend can help her…or can she? In the second tale and the best, Karloff plays the patriarch of a family that has been gone trying to fallen under the spell of a Wurdulak (like a Russian Vampire), Karloff has been out trying to kill a terrible villain and vampire but returns…changed. In the third tale a nurse steals a ring off of a corpse and then keeps hearing dripping sounds. Kinda ends on a dud. However, the Wurdulak segment is so good that all is forgiven, also Karloffs outro is hilarious: he reminds us that it’s only a movie and the camera pulls back to show the set, the director, in a hilarious kind of Oz behind the curtain gag.

Fucking amazing set design work, costumes, cinematography.  Just gorgeous to look at, moods and atmospheres are perfectly constructed. Movies do not look this good anymore. It’s a shame.

Recommended.

 

April Fools Day (1986)

I always wanted to see this when I was a youngster because I loved the vhs box art. Girl with a noose ponytail. Awesome.

Here we have a group of kids invited out to a party on an island hosted by an heriess with a love for practical jokes, they all do as a matter of fact. Before they even reach the island they fuck around on the boat and a deckhand is severely injured (or maybe killed). Party members begin finding disturbing items in their rooms (creepy newspaper clippings, cassettes of babies crying),  then they begin to disappear and show up decapitated, or fall down a well full of bodies, or whathaveyou. There are rumors that perhaps our heiress hostess (Muffy) has an evil twin (Buffy). It’s worth mentioning that these are 1980’s rich kids so they have names like Muffy, Skip and Chaz.

Biff from Back to the Future is in it, theres a girl from Valley Girl and Real Genius, two people from Just One of the Guys, and a face from Summer School. I spent most of the movie wondering where I knew all of these faces from.

A quick and easy 80’s teen slasher, but a bit unique and with a twist. Firstly it is pretty well paced, almost no gratuitous nudity (even though these teens get to humpin’), and almost no gore. This feels just a hair above a PG-13. The other twist is the ending, which I wont ruin but it’s not like any other 80’s slasher I’ve seen.  It feels more like an extended episode of Tales from the Crypt.

 

Zombi 2 (1979)

Zombie Flesh Eaters
Island of the Flesh-Eaters
Island of the Living Dead
Zombie

So Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy as Zombi: Dawn of the Dead so then Lucio Fulci made Zombi 2, 3 and I think 4. Check out the wiki page for “Zombi Series” it’s hilarious, almost every country has run with it for their own shitty rip off series.

Here we open with a  boat in the New York  harbor, deserted except for one Zombie that kills a cop before being taken care of. The owner of the ship is a scientist that has gone missing and his daughter wants to go find him. They track him down on an uncharted and tiny island in the Caribbean where he has been experimenting with the dead, the undead, voodoo and all that.

It is excruciatingly dull. You sit around and wait for something to happen. Begging for something to happen.

Then a shark fights a Zombie. Underwater. A shark fights…with a Zombie. That kinda rules.

Then nothing for a while, snooze. Then in the last 15 or 20mins some corpses rise from the grave and there is a showdown.

Good gore effects, well sorta-they are inconsistent, some look really dumb. Lots of gross bugs. The rising from the grave sequences are classic and look really great.  Cardboard acting, terrible pacing. Except for some shining moments, this doesn’t live up to its reputation or up to my expectations.

Trick ‘r Treat (2008)

Not to be confused with the Satanic Panic film of the 1980’s, this Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film of a few different stories (all very EC/Tales from the Crypt style) interwoven together, all taking place on Halloween in a small town in Ohio.

The stories involve a woman who hates Halloween, her overenthusiastic husband and a trick or treater that teaches her a lesson, a mild-mannered principal (Dylan Baker from Happiness turning in a great performance) who has a secret life as a killer, Anna Paquin as a virgin (with a secret) looking for a date to a Halloween party whose path crosses a vampire,  a group of preteens pull a prank that involves the phrase “The Halloween School Bus Massacre”, and finally a story where an old drunk (again, with a secret) that is terrorized by tick or treaters. All of the stories are related or a least intersect, you’ll see characters from all the stories in the others, either directly involved or just in the background.

I may’ve just made this sound very boring, but I can assure you that it is absolutely not. It is wildly entertaining, charming, with lots of fun scares. Nothing too nihilistic here, this is the kind of thing that if it had popped up around 1987 or before, I would have gone bonkers for it. It is very faithful to the E.C. comics vibe that it is playing on, as good or better than  Creepshow, with the same kind of pitch black humor. It gets right down into it too, no fucking around. Comes in at a lean 88mins or so. This is exactly the type of thing that kids and  people like me will rewatch around Halloween for a while.

Strangely it was slated for a Halloween theatrical release in 2007 and is only coming out straight to dvd now in 2009. No one is really sure why as all of the reviews have been positive and all of the Horror fansites have gone batshit for it. Weird. Anywhoozle, recommended!

Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski’s first film in English, Repulsion tells the story of Carol a fragile young woman living in a London flat w/ her sister. She is quiet, distracted at her work as a manicurist, uninterested in her suitors, annoyed by her sister’s boyfriend presence, disgusted by the sound of them fucking and generally withdrawn from any emotional or physical interaction.

When her sister and boyfriend go on a trip to Pisa, Carol slowly becomes unwound. Cracks the apartment walls break in two, an uncooked rabbit carcass is left out to rot, when she goes to bed she is terrorized by a dream (memories?) of being raped. Eventually she is sent home from work for cutting a womans finger and general malaise, and shortly after her male admirer breaks down her door to check on her (partially out of concern, partially out of sexual frustration). Viewing this intrusion as an attack (not entirely wrong), this is the moment that the horror breaks from Carols mind into reality.

Hard to think about spoilers for a movie thats over 40 years old, but I’ll keep things vague but not too vague. Eh?

Now, a lot of reviews refer to Carol as being “sexually confused”, which makes it sound like she is in the closet or something. But really I think that shes more conflicted than confused and most of the situations that she finds herself in with men are hostile, intrusive and confrontational. Obviously, unwanted sexual advances don’t really need to end in murder, but some guys are really creeps. Carols seems to be someone who has either a history of mental illness or one of child sexual abuse (which is hinted at in the final zoom shot of a family photo), this mental breakdown doesn’t come out of a vacuum.

A lot of these themes (claustrophobia, alienation, isolation, corrupting innocence) are worked out more in Polanski’s The Tenant and Rosemary’s Baby, both of which I think are a bit smoother than this film, but left me without as many questions. I certainly had to think on this one for a bit before I really had a handle on what I thought. I liked it when it was done, but it lingers with you for a day or two.  I’m still not totally sure, and I like that.

Amazing camera work and lighting, a great performance from Catherine Deneuve and great set design. Walls are twisted and pull away, occasionally closing in and sprouting arms. David Lynch was taking notes.

Echos of Hour of the Wolf as well, which came out a few years later. I wonder if Bergman is a Polanski fan?

any of these films would serve you well Oct. 31st, or any night.