by ·Comments Off on Death Line (1973, Gary Sherman)

Great doom-groove music on the opening credits by Wil Malone, who’s worked with Black Sabbath, Massive Attack and Opeth. Sadly, it was all downhill from here, since the English don’t know what’s scary, and there’s as much pointless ritual and habit here as in a samurai movie.

Couple of hippies discover a man passed-out in the subway. Male Hippy doesn’t want to tell the cops but his girl talks him into it – he was right, since the cops (led by Donald Pleasance) are pricks. But the passed-out man disappears, because he was kidnapped by the last of a tribe of nonverbal subterranean cannibals. And obviously they’ve been feeding on subway riders for decades, but this time they got a minor government official, so the police take interest – I can’t tell if this was intentional social commentary or if I’m being generous. Why was Christopher Lee in one scene?

Cannibal vs. government man:

Christopher Lee vs. giant mustache:

by ·Comments Off on Tales from the Hood (1995, Rusty Cundieff)

Every SHOCKtober you’ve gotta watch an anthology horror… this played at the Plaza this month, but I didn’t feel like going out during the apocalypse so I watched the blu-ray at home.

Three drug guys have heard that there’s a package for them at a funeral home, but before he’ll give them “the shit,” the mortician shows some bodies and tells how each met their demise. So far, so anthology-horror, but the difference here is that the framing story is the best part, due to an incredible performance by mortician Clarence Williams III (Prince’s dad in Purple Rain, a lead on The Mod Squad, and hey, this is my second movie in a row with an actor from The Cool World). He plays it big and campy, with a comic unpredictability without losing his menacing edge, and whenever the three guys ask for their shit, he repeats “the shit” in the craziest way.

Anyway, story one: Anthony Griffith (of Panther the same year) is a rookie Black cop whose white partners beat a Black political rival (Tom Wright, also star of an anthology segment in Creepshow 2) to death while “Strange Fruit” plays – so it’s gonna be an unsubtle social issues movie. Anthony can’t take the heat and leaves the force, but that’s not good enough. “Where were you when I needed you?” After hunting down and killing the three cops as brutally and ironically as possible, the vengeful ghost frames Anthony for their deaths. One of the white cops was in The Crow, another in Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

The next story involves extreme domestic abuse mixed with It’s a Good Life. I dunno what made them cast David Alan Grier as a violent monster stepdad, but it works out. The writer/director plays a concerned teacher who comes to student Walter’s house, meets his hot mom (Paula Jai Parker of She Hate Me and Friday), and they all get tormented by wicked Grier until Walter (who later played Young Michael Jordan in Space Jam!) takes his psychic revenge.

A racist white southern politician named Duke (heh) is running on an anti-affirmative action platform while living in a house where a lot of bad historical shit went down, until a small army of stop-motion dolls imbued with the souls of murdered slaves take him out (this has better puppetry than the Puppet Master movies). Corbin Bernsen (between Major League II and The Dentist) is the main racist, and Roger Guenveur Smith (Do the Right Thing‘s Smiley) is his image consultant (who is also murdered).

Starting to bring things home for the framing-story boys, the fourth body is a guy they knew. Jerome (Lamont Bentley of TV’s Moesha) is a crazy murderous gangster paired up with a klansman in prison by “experimental” doctor Rosalind Cash (Buckaroo Banzai, The Omega Man) under the logic that they both killed a lotta Black people. Jerome is tormented, but won’t repent, and all this turns out to be a years-long dying fantasy as he’s killed in the street in the first, pre-prison scene.

Cash died of cancer just months after this film’s release:

Obviously at this point the three dudes are gonna discover coffins of their own in the funeral home, though I didn’t need the mortician to turn into a literal demon, he was fine as he was.

Rusty also directed Chappelle’s Show and made Fear of a Black Hat, which suddenly seems essential. One of his two belated sequels stars Keith David in the mortician role, which could work, and the other stars Tony Todd. Rusty’s cowriter on all three films is Darin Scott (also: Vincent Price anthology From a Whisper to a Scream, Danny Trejo anthology Mr. Malevolent, and he directed Jeffrey Combs in Dark House).

by ·Comments Off on Bride of Re-Animator (1990, Brian Yuzna)

Part one was the masterpiece that I remembered, and part two… well, it’s a sequel, it’s fine. Maybe losing Stuart Gordon (who was filming Robot Jox instead) was a real problem, or maybe it’s just sequelitis, or I should relax, since this is still quite good.

Dan has no self-respect, is still palling around with the clearly mad Herbert, who is doing gruesome experiments in an unsupervised warzone before returning to the hospital of part one, where he claims he’s doing important work but mostly fucks around reanimating whimsically-joined body parts.

Curious Dr. Graves (Mel Stewart of Shirley Clarke’s Cool World) awakens the evil psychic head of Dr. Hill. As before, emotionally fragile Dan tries to have a love life (Fabiana Udenio of the second Austin Powers) and West accidentally kills someone (this time a cop!) whom he has to resurrect to get out of trouble. And sure as shit, they go the full Frankenstein, making a Bride out of stolen body parts, causing a love-triangle problem for Dan, who chooses life, so the new creature tears her own heart out.

by ·Comments Off on Diabolique (1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

I’ve seen this – and the remake! – before, but long enough ago that I only had a few images and plot points in my memory. The twist is so good because the cover story is so believable – boarding school principal Michel is married to Christina, having an affair with Nicole, and is a real piece of shit to everybody, the two of them included, so they team up to murder him. Of course, why wouldn’t they? But the real plot is to get the nervous wife out of the way and collect her inheritance. After the murder plot goes wrong in various nerve-wracking ways, she’s finally scared to death by his apparent resurrection.

The happy trio:

Allegedly, Hitchcock wanted to make this before Clouzot bought the rights, so it’s salting the wound that the private detective is named Alfred. He hangs around the morgue looking for cases to investigate, and latches onto this one without anyone asking him to, then busts the two lovers in the last scene. The staging in this is so lovely. I’d have to rewatch Wages of Fear to see which I like better, but should probably rewatch that anyway just for the pleasure of it.

Alfred is Charles Vanel of Wooden Crosses and To Catch a Thief. The nervous wife was played by the director’s nervous wife Véra Clouzot, who did die of a heart attack a few years later. Costars Simone Signoret and Paul Meurisse would reunite much later in Army of Shadows.

by ·Comments Off on World of Tomorrow 3 & Stump the Guesser

World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (2020, Don Hertzfeldt)

Hertzfeldt comes up with his biggest horror yet: embedded-HUD popup ads. A future Emily backup clone contacts a past David and sends him on a disfiguring journey to retrieve secret messages about the clandestine between-time assassinations of various Davids by other Davids. It’s twisty! And excellent, and full of more wonderful quotes, and I’ll be watching these forever.

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Stump the Guesser (2020, Maddin/Johnson/Johnson)

The Odenkirk-looking Guesser (The Editor from The Editor) is renowned for his abilities, but when he runs out of guessing milk, things go bad and his guessing license is revoked. But during this time he falls in love with his long-lost sister, spends some time scientifically disproving theories of heredity in order to marry her, but things go badly at the end when he has to guess which door she’s behind. Some fun leaps of logic and distorted visuals here, but I wasn’t feeling it as much as other Maddin films.

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Accounting for some other things watched recently… The Mads from MST3K have been doing monthly live shows. I checked out Glen or Glenda, a movie that’s so busy explaining itself that it never gets to the movie, and told Neil:

That was… really fun. That’s the most I’ve enjoyed a MST3K-related thing since the end of the sci-fi channel years. I don’t know if it’s because of their obvious affection for the material, or if I’m just in the right mood. I’d never seen the feature either – shame on me, after digging the Tim Burton version for 25 years now (oh you just tried to watch it, is it cringey now? Is it Johnny Depp’s fault?) and the Mads nailed it in their intro when they said this movie has everything, but it also has nothing.

Next was The Tingler, which I already just barely remember (also explainy, features Vincent Price)… then the truly baffling, tensionless version of The Most Dangerous Game called Walk The Dark Street. I think the guy from The Rifleman played the baddie. Then some shorts I should track and name, but am not gonna.

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Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas is her stand-up comedy special to follow Nanette, which was the special to end stand-up comedy, and yet she pulls off the follow-up by creating another perfectly-constructed show and this time being breathtakingly funny. That sounds like a cliche, but I had to pause the show to catch my breath.

And Katy and I watched something called Australia: Land of Parrots, which is everything you’d dream it would be, and I should just play it on a loop.

by ·Comments Off on Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988, Stephen Chiodo)

Glad to see that this holds up. Killer Klowns land in small town and kill almost everybody in extremely circusy ways. Silly, but constantly inventive, with a very high body count and kickass theme song. Looks real good in HD.

The Chiodos have an Alien Xmas special out on streaming this month! Debbie is 80’s horror royalty, also appearing in Return of the Living Dead II and Night of the Creeps. Mike was later in Driving Me Crazy with Billy Dee Williams, and a leprechaun movie from the director of Subspecies. Sympathetic Deputy Dave played DEATHSTALKER in Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell the same year. His shitty, teen-hating cop boss is from Point Blank and Hitchcock’s Topaz. I’m sorry to report that not only did the ice cream truck-driving Terenzi brothers not become major film stars, one of them died this August.

by ·Comments Off on Underwater (2020, William Eubank)

“Structural failure is imminent,” says the same calm female computer voice from all these movies. Before any monsters appear, the underwater base already looks crappy, run down with flickering lights, clear Alien influence. Eubank also made The Signal, which I heard was bad.

Captain Cassel:

Disaster in the deepwater drilling base, Kristen Stewart has to do that movie thing where she closes the blast doors because her coworkers won’t make it through in time. Mamoudou Athie (the punk recluse of Patti Cake$) survives with her, then they rescue Paul (T.J. Miller of a Transformers movie) and meet up with the Captain (Vincent Cassel of Eastern Promises). Together, they go through the motions of an underwater-horror movie, escaping from some underwater Silent Hill creatures that I am not buying and then their Leviathan momma.

Miller is good – I guess he was in the series Silicon Valley, which I skipped. After watching Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body, maybe I should make a thing of it and watch other Transformers stars’ horror movies… let’s see, Shia LaBeouf has Disturbia and Wahlberg’s got The Happening, I dunno. Back to the plot: Rodrigo’s helmet was compromised so he implodes. A Game of Thrones actress is in love with a Short Term 12 actor, giving us more people to root for, as loveless Stewart makes the Ultimate Sacrifice to destroy the monsters. Whatever, it was weird and nice to watch people who are capable at their jobs for a little while.

by ·Comments Off on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968, William Greaves)

Greaves and his crew film in the park (they have permits!) a couple of actors performing a trite scene – but they’re also filming themselves filming these things, and filming the director trying to work things out, and filming the crew voicing their concerns about the scene and the director. It’s an exciting concept, hampered by the small problem of being no fun to watch.

I suppose these are professionals, not hippies, but it’s still 1968 and listening to them talk invites dark flashbacks of Lions Love. And the editing of individual scenes is nice but the overall structure seems slack and random – I want to have examples, but Criterion Channel is mad that I’ve got an external monitor attached, so it’s not letting me review.

by ·Comments Off on Jennifer’s Body (2009, Karyn Kusama)

“Do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie band these days… Satan is our only hope.”

I’m not immune to expectations, and when you hear for a decade that a movie is very bad, then you start to hear that actually it’s maybe quite good, so you watch it and it’s excellent, that weight of the previous decade makes you want to yell that it’s one of The All-Time Great Horror-Comedies, so I dunno if I’m just amped or if this is true. Either way, I had a fine time, and between this and Dellamorte I’ve got a couple new favorites.

Amanda Seyfried is our protagonist “Needy,” with mom Amy Sedaris, boyfriend Young Neil (whose mom is Bonnie from The Player). Chris Pratt is a local cop, JK Simmons is a teacher with a mechanical hand – this great cast must be post-Juno Diablo Cody’s doing, and not post-Aeon Flux Kusama’s. Our lead succubus is of course Megan Fox, proving that she only sucked in the Transformers movies because everything in those movies sucked.

After a music club fire that triggered dark memories of Collectiv, Fox is drugged and kidnapped by the indie band, then virgin-sacrificed to further their career. This works, career-wise, they become huge, but she was not a virgin and so becomes a demonic creature seeking boys and blood and revenge. Loved the goth kid Colin Gray (Kyle Gallner of Red State), didn’t love the very studio sound of the “live” band, but at least the club atmosphere was right on.