by ·Comments Off on You Were Never Lovelier (1942, William A. Seiter)

The one where a rich guy (Adolphe Menjou of Morocco and The Tall Target) writes love letters to his daughter Rita Hayworth, intending for her to get into a romantic mood then when he finds someone she can marry, he’ll pin the letters on that guy. It pulls off the could’ve-been-icky premise pretty well. Anyway, self-important dancer Fred Astaire (with a big Omaha shout-out) comes along, Rita thinks he wrote the letters, bam.

Nominated for some sound & music oscars but lost to the more patriotic Holiday Inn and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Everyone was supposed to be Argentine but we weren’t convinced.

by ·Comments Off on Shocktober Shorts 2014

Premonition Following an Evil Deed (1995, David Lynch)

David Lynch’s mysterious contribution to the Lumiere and Co. anthology, now in high-def. I think police discover a dead body and inform the family, and in between there’s a weird alien lab with a brilliant burning-paper scene transition.

Festi (2014, Arcade Fire)

Someone is possessed by the ghost of Jim Morrison, who wants to murder Will Butler and Richard Parry, presumably for releasing solo albums. He chases them with a knife saying “these guys won a fucking grammy?” Richard dies running into an electric fence. Terry Gilliam cameos. This is a celeb goofoff with pretty bad camerawork.

Haha, creepy National twins:

Alone (2014, Jeremiah Kipp)

This is a nice eye-cleanser after the sub-amateur cinematography of the Arcade Fire piece.
Adam Ginsberg reads a Poe poem with gorgeous cutaways.

The Minions (2014, Jeremiah Kipp)

“You walked down the witches’ path, didn’t you?”

William helps pick up incredibly drunk girl on the sidewalk and get her home. But drunk girl acts very attracted to poor William, and reminds him of voiceover witch who is presenting him with moral dilemma. I don’t think this is out yet, so will say no more, besides that Kipp seems prolific, puts out consistently high-quality work, and is the only person who emails me to preview his movies and I’ll say yes.

Berenice (2014, Jeremiah Kipp)

I’ve just watched the Rohmer version – this one is set in modern day, so dialogue has been rewritten, and has a 100% more horrifying ending (she wakes up entombed, blood-spattered, her teeth having been removed by her bonkers fiancee). Hmmm both of the last two shorts ended up featuring regular guys who end up being creeps helping to carry passed-out women. Found this on IMDB under the anthology Creepers.

L’etrange Portrait de le Dame en Jaune (2004 Cattet & Forzani)

After Amer and Strange Color I’m out of Cattet & Forzani features, so catching up on the shorts. Of course it’s about a woman’s murder by a black-gloved stranger, but this time no fancy editing since it’s a single take shot through a mirror, which breaks at the end, so at least there’s a semblance of the directors’ favorite split-screen effect

Santos Palace (2006 Cattet & Forzani)

Watched in unsubtitled French and Spanish. Almost-affair-and/or-murder between barista and customer is interrupted. As usual, delectable editing and audio.

Chambre Jaune (2002 Cattet & Forzani)

Most of this is in such extreme slow-motion that it looks like Dog’s Dialogue-style stills. Music box song… black gloved hand holds a razor… somewhat storyless sex/murder/fetish flick. They love keyholes and the creaking sound of leather.

Catharsis (2001 Cattet & Forzani)

Their most explicitly gruesome movie. A La Jetee low-frame-rate loop-film. A man arrives naked in a room, is killed and chopped to bits by gloved stabber played by the same man, who then arrives naked in the room, etc.

La Fin de Notre Amour (2004 Cattet & Forzani)

Guess I saved the most disturbed one for last. Entirely told in still images, man seems like a more artistic Frank from Hellraiser, very into razors and masochism, then leather-clad woman shows up and they destroy each other in creative new ways.

I ran out of screen shots – may have used the wrong one for the wrong movie…

by ·Comments Off on The ABCs of Death (2012)

Series of short twist-ending horrorshows. Quality was higher than I predicted. I watched in small batches over the course of the month – this 2+ hour collection is probably more wearying to watch all at once.

Apocalypse
Woman violently kills her husband, apologizes for not doing it more peacefully but she’d run out of time due to impending apocalypse. Nacho Vigalondo also directed the fun Timecrimes.

Bigfoot
Babysitters make up story of Mexico City heart-eaters. Story is true! Babysitters’ hearts are eaten, little girl lives. I must’ve missed where Bigfoot came in. Adrián García Bogliano made last year’s Here Comes the Devil.

Cycle
Doppelganger strangles his other, ad nauseum. Reliant on shock music. Ernesto Díaz Espinoza is known for action stuff like Kiltro and Mirageman.

Dogfight
Slow-mo, dialogue-free man-vs-dog underground fighting ring. Marcel Sarmiento made a good-sounding abandoned-asylum movie called Deadgirl.

Exterminate
Lazy dude keeps getting bitten by the same spider. We see the dude from spider POV sometimes. Then baby spiders hatch from his ear. Not as good as the Creepshow episode. Angela Bettis is a Lucky McKee collaborator, directing Roman and playing the lead in May.

Fart
The one about Japanese girls farting. Nothing to see here. Keep moving. Noboru Iguchi also made Zombie Ass and Bad Butt – I am sensing a trend.

Gravity
Surfer with first-person camera dies. Not as good as the Cuaron version. Andrew Traucki made a shark movie called The Reef.

Hydro-Electric Diffusion
Live-action cartoon WWII soldier dog fights nazi stripper fox. Even better than it sounds! Thomas Cappelen Malling’s only other credit is Norwegian Ninja.

Ingrown
Kidnapped, tied-up girl is injected with Cabin Fever virus, dies. Awful high-pitched whine on the soundtrack. This is the worst. Jorge Michel Grau did the well-reviewed We Are What We Are.

Jidai-Geki
Executioner cannot focus on his head-chopping job because the dude committing harakiri keeps making funny faces. Yudai Yamaguchi worked on Tokyo Gore Police, directed two comedy-horror baseball movies and something called Meatball Machine.

Klutz
Animation is nice but it’s about a sentient, murderous piece of poop. Anders Morgenthaler made the enjoyable Princess.

Libido
New definition of torture-porn? Jackoff competition, loser is killed with a stake up the ass. One guy makes it to round 14 then finds himself on the wrong end of the contest as a girl has sex with him while chainsawing him to death. Odd. Timo Tjahjanto made the suicide/devil-cult segment of V/H/S/2.

Miscarriage
The shortest segment, and nearly the second in a row to be toilet-based. Ti West has been all the rage since House of the Devil.

Nuptials
Huge relief because it stars a colorful parrot who does not get killed or hurt. Talking parrot gives away dude’s affair during his proposal, he gets knifed. Banjong Pisanthanakun made horrors Shutter and Alone.

Orgasm
The great Cattet & Forzani explore new realms of color and slow-motion with a woman receiving oral sex and blowing soap bubbles. I hope they make another movie soon.

Pressure
Prostitute in financial trouble accepts job to be videotaped stomping kittens to death. Kinda the saddest one. Simon Rumley is known for Red White & Blue and The Living and the Dead.

Quack
Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett decide their segment will stand out for featuring a real death, and plan to kill a caged duck on camera, but they don’t know how guns work and end up shooting each other. By far this is my favorite Wingard movie.

Removed
Hospital prisoner/patient has valuable movie film under his skin, but also has subcutaneous bullets for self-defense. Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat features prominently, and it rains blood at the end. Hunh? Srdjan Spasojevic’s only other credit is snuff-movie thriller A Serbian Film.

Speed
Notably bad acting and editing. Mad Max dystopia turns out to be fantasies of dying druggies. Jake West does DVD-extra docs for horror movies including the feature Phantasmagoria on the Phantasm series.

Toilet
Fantastic claymation. I was nervous since this is the third toilet-based short in the series but it’s completely wonderful. Lee Hardcastle has 20 credits from the last 3 years, and they’re all clay remakes of horror movies.

Unearthed
Death of a vampire, from the vampire’s first-person perspective, in just a few takes. I’ve seen most of Ben Wheatley’s movies, most recently A Field in England.

Vagitus
Sci-fi population-control short looks ike a video game cutscene, super slick, no idea what happened because I turned the volume down but someone was executed in the name of the government and someone else exploded. Kaare Andrews is the second director here after Ti West to have made a Cabin Fever sequel.

WTF!
Brief Metalocalypse-looking animation becomes making-of segment, freewheeling live-action ideas that start with W (includes an Insane Clown Posse magnets reference), then the whole thing turns brutally insane and hilarious. Jon Schnepp directs/designs/edits Metalocalypse.

XXL
French people super-taunt an overweight girl until she goes home and cuts herself thin with knives. Xavier Gens made Frontier(s).

Youngbuck
School janitor is a pedophile, a young victim takes revenge. No spoken dialogue, set to upbeat 1980’s montage music. Jason Eisener made Hobo with a Shotgun and Slumber Party Alien Abduction.

Zetsumetsu
Dr. Strangelove-referencing nazi race-war sex-melee dystopia, ending the anthology in an orgy of bad taste. Yoshihiro Nishimura directed Tokyo Gore Police, obviously.

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 13: Shocktober 2014

The Descent 2 (2009, Jon Harris)

The baddies are people with goblin ears and bald caps. Three bloody, flashlight-and-handicam-wielding women walk among them in a cave trying not to be heard, but fortunately when they are inevitably discovered, they prove to be masters of rapidly-edited blunt-instrument combat. Survivor of part one (there was a survivor?) sacrifices herself to save her friend, who gets surprise-wasted above-ground by a Yankees fan with a shovel. Director Harris edited the first movie, and one cowriter made Eden Lake and The Woman In Black.

An American Haunting (2005, Courtney Solomon)

Thought I watched this already but that was The Haunting in Connecticut. Donald Sutherland’s here so it’s gonna be good. Flashbacks reveal the ghosts tucking in the girl who played Wendy in the 2003 Peter Pan movie, and maybe beating her up or raping her, or maybe Sutherland did that I dunno, then the girl poisons Sutherland while Sissy Spacek (of The Ring 2 the same year) watches. Attn: screenwriters: notice how horror movies that end with explanatory backstory are less good than the ones that end with mayhem? The director also made Dungeons & Dragons, the one with Marlon Wayans and Jeremy Irons. Hulu’s up-next bullshit is making my night difficult, so it’s off to netflix.

Texas Chainsaw (2013, John Luessenhop)

Aha, it was called Texas Chainsaw 3D in theaters. Tied-up girl about to get chainsawed by Leatherface, but the pacing of the scene implies that she’s not really gonna. “It’s your cousin Heather,” she yells, as rednecks enter the abandoned factory, beat up Leatherface and make him cry. Who wrote this? Lots of people, including the director of Jason Goes to Hell, writer of a Val Kilmer revenge flick and American adapter of The Grudge movies. Anyway, rednecks rig a slow-moving certain-death machine to dispatch Leatherface – those always work, right? Nope, rednecks get chopped up, and two Texas Massacrists live to see a new sequel (your cousin Heather can also be seen in the next Joe Dante movie).

Stake Land (2010, Jim Mickle)

Second one in a row with redneck baddies calling people “boy,” only this time it’s a rasping bald vampire who is stabbing a mustache dude. Now he calls a guy “child” instead of boy, but this is his last word as he gets staked by mustache dude, whom he really should have killed instead of taunting for so long. Surviving guys wander off into apocalyptic vampire world, running into soap star Bonnie Dennison. Ooh the child in this played Young Colin Farrell in Alexander and Young Kevin Bacon in Mystic River. Mickle made this year’s Cold In July, which mustache dude cowrote.

We Are The Night (2010, Dennis Gansel)

Not to be confused with We Own The Night. Loving vampire couple (Dani from Passion) is thrown in jail and menaced by vampiro lesbo Nina Hoss, star of Barbara. Cool gravity-defying fight ensues. Hoss is plunged into sunlight, Dani is just as gorgeous as in Passion, and it’s funny how good German actresses become instantly ridiculous when dubbed with bland American accents. Nice going, netflix. Gansel followed up with a Russian spy drama.

Dead Snow (2009, Tommy Wirkola)

How have I not already watched the last ten minutes of the nazi zombie movie? Think I was tempted to watch this for real, but Trevor says it’s terrible. I like the white snowy setting, unusual for a horror. Oh good, subtitles. Very bloody faced guys are fighting off nazi zombies, one gets bit on the hand so chainsaws off his arm, then looks bloody pleased with himself until something too stupid to mention happens, and the movie is playing for cheesy laughs. The premise had promise. Next the director made Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and a sequel to his Kill Bill parody (Kill Bill is parodyable?) before this year’s Dead Snow 2.

Carrie Remake (2013, Kimberly Peirce)

Wait, there was a Carrie remake from the director of Boys Don’t Cry?? I am cheating and watching the last 20 to catch the prom scene – not only is she covered in blood at the prom but her date was murdered? Chloe Moretz gleefully, psychically murders her classmates. No out-of-control hormonal rage, she does each one on purpose then literally flies outside, catches escaping schemers and murders them. I miss Sissy Spacek. Home to mama, jeez it’s Julianne Moore, how many people are slumming in this remake? Moore prays as she stabs Carrie, who takes flying-scissors revenge, then best friend Gabriella “Olivia’s sister” Wilde” is saved as the house collapses. Nothing improves a horror movie like a courtroom ending, amirite? Wait, there was another Carrie remake in 2002 with Patricia Clarkson?

Carrie 2: The Rage (1999, Katt Shea)

People are getting Scanners-style bulging veins then the locked-doors psychic blood massacre begins, and yay, kids are killed by flying CDs just like in Hellraiser III. This time instead of prom we’re at a party in the house of a spear gun enthusiast. A girl’s eyeballs are made to explode, then she spearguns a dude’s dick into the pool, and I’m thinking this movie didn’t take itself very seriously. New Carrie’s mom is a religious nut just like Real Carrie’s mom, but what is mom doing at the party? The boyfriend is Jason London (twin brother of Mallrats star Jeremy), who survives to the dream-sequence CGI epilogue. From the writer of Hackers and director of Stripped to Kill.

by ·Comments Off on Bad Biology (2008, Frank Henenlotter)

Not really a horror movie, more of a John Dies at the End supernatural comedy with a ton more sex and even less of a point. Nympho Jennifer has a surplus of clits, reclusive dude Batz has “a drug-addicted dick with a mind of its own.” Will these two meet and find true love? Yes… well, not really, since nobody survives the ending.

More shocktastic details: she tends to have babies a few hours after sex, and leaves them everywhere. She also tends to kill her partners, and is a pro photographer celebrated for double-exposed photos of her victims. His penis finally wanders off without him via stop-motion, its perspective shot as a purple-tinted fish-eye as it tears through a condo building filled with hot naked women.

Co-written/produced/featuring rapper R.A. The Rugged Man. Nice to see an aging white filmmaker connecting with youth culture of today, even if the results are so mixed. I’ve seen Frank’s Basket Case and Brain Damage, but not Frankenhooker, which is probably the key reference point.

by ·Comments Off on Stereo (1969, David Cronenberg)

“As an aphrodisiast, Dr. Stringfellow proposes the use of synthetic aphrodisiac drugs to assist those who wish to attain a fully three-dimensional sexuality.”

I rented this on VHS from Movies Worth Seeing (RIP) back in 2000-2002, watched and hated it. Now it’s in lovely high-def on my Scanners blu-ray, and I am older and more tolerant, so time to give it another shot. And I still hate it, but the visuals are extremely sharp and it has interesting resonance with Scanners.

The story, or perhaps the backstory, is told via narrator, with total silence at all other times (so no sync sound on the action). Eight subjects underwent brain surgery to extend the natural electrochemical network of the human brain to provide telepathic capabilities. So far so Scanners, but there’s more. The psychics are said to have strange reactions when in the same room as each other, and one “pierced his skull with an electric drill, an act of considerable symbolic significance.”

It’s set at a sanatorium in the woods, which I admit is wonderfully well photographed, as are the actors. The guy who we’ll call the star wears a cape with a giant amulet and carries a cane. I wish I could get away with this look, but I can’t – and neither can he. He appears at all times to be a pretentious film student, which would sink the movie if it didn’t sink itself in other ways, by being dull at all times, by depriving us of sound except for the posh intellectual narration, by having the psychics suck on pacifiers. He even uses slow-mo at times, as if the movie wasn’t already slow enough. In recent interviews, Cronenberg says it works better if you’re stoned. Four of the seven actors were also in Crimes of the Future, which I was going to double-feature with this but chickened out, and one actor got as far as The Dead Zone 13 years later.

by ·Comments Off on Antiviral (2012, Brandon Cronenberg)

“Celebrities are not people. They’re group hallucinations.”

I wanted to double-feature this with a Jennifer Chamber Lynch movie, the children of my favorite horror filmmakers, but couldn’t get a copy of Boxing Helena in time so I settled for the Xan Cassavetes instead. Pretty sure that even if I hadn’t known the Cronenberg connection I’d have been able to spot it: a total body-horror flick with a cool and clinical atmosphere. Plus someone says “shivers” within the first five minutes, and lead actor Caleb Landry Jones even reminded me of Cosmopolis star Robert Pattinson.

Speaking of Pattinson, the movie is about a future where the public’s hunger for celebrities has become literal, buying lunchmeat grown from the stars’ cells and getting themselves sickened by viruses that come from the stars’ bloodstreams. I think the movie is acknowledging that this is farfetched by having the virus thing be a premium specialty business (no huge lines out the door) run by a small staff of technicians also acting as salesmen.

Caleb is magnetic as Syd, whose celeb-virus business contracts exclusively with star Hannah Geist, and who is always trying to turn a buck in black-market virus sales while trying to get close to Geist himself. The black-market aspect already brings mystery to the movie before the new twist where Syd has injected himself with Geist’s newest illness, which kills her – or so the story goes, but really she’s being kept alive while people in the Geist business fake her death while trying to figure out the poison plot and deal with the leak perpetrated by Syd. Really it’s more complicated than this, and either I missed some information or the big picture is never fully revealed, while Syd ends up where he wanted to be, selling Geist by day and having (parts of) her to himself by night.

Plus: viral copy-protection hacking, viruses represented with blurred, manipulated photographs, man-machine-fusing nightmares (and realities), and doctor Malcolm McDowell.

by ·Comments Off on Metamorphosis (1975, Jan Nemec)

A very good hour-long movie of the Kafka story, with Gregor Samsa played by a first-person camera and off-screen voice, so there’s no creature effect to ruin the weird mystery.

First movie I’ve seen by Czech new wave director Nemec whose early features were released by Criterion alongside Daisies. An eccentric movie with long roving takes. I’d forgotten the three initially-silent tenants who move into the family’s apparently spacious apartment to help pay the bills after Gregor stops being able to work. Gregor’s disappointed father is played by Heinz Bennent (Heinrich in Possession).

I’ve also seen Caroline Leaf’s 1977 animated version, a 2008 short where post-death Samsa returns as a flock of CG butterflies to torment his family and coworkers, and the meta-version where Richard E. Grant plays Kafka. Apparently Tim Roth starred as Gregor in 1987, and there’s a well-reviewed Russian feature from 2002.

by ·Comments Off on Altman (2014, Ron Mann)

A career retrospective of Altman, with short celebrity cameo definitions of “Altmanesque,” none of whom mentioned overlapping dialogue. Narration and interviews with family members, many of whom were at our screening. Some good Altman stories within, but not much to say about the doc itself, so instead here’s a list of his movies I should watch (or *rewatch) soon:

– The Long Goodbye
– Gosford Park*
– Kansas City
– Popeye*
– Brewster McCloud
– Buffalo Bill and the Indians
– Thieves Like Us