THE GUARDPOST (aka GP506) movie review

Guardpost, The (aka GP 506) (2008) (1st viewing) d. Kong, Su-chang

When the titular South Korean Army bunker falls incommunicado, an investigative military team is sent in to assess the situation, only to discover a pile of hacked, dismembered corpses and a single deranged survivor. With only a single rainy night to get to the bottom of things and the clock ticking, team leader Cheon Ho-jin (with gravitas to burn) digs through tattered records and gore-streaked remains for answers; rest assured when they ultimately reveal themselves, it ain’t pretty.

Kong, who impressively served up 2004’s military-minded R-Point, works overtime with his flashback-laden narrative, dropping viewers into past/present scenes with little or no warning. Unfortunately, this disorienting effect only manages to confuse more often than not, as the underdeveloped, similarly clad characters seem interchangeable, especially when factoring in the hallucinatory supernatural forces at play. Despite oodles of claustrophobic atmosphere, and an energetic ensemble whose enthusiastic shouts and screams fill the soundtrack as bunker walls run red, the amount of head-scratching elicited during the excessive two-hour run time ultimately proves a little painful.

MOTHER'S DAY (2010) movie review

Mother's Day (2010) (1st viewing) d. Bousman, Darren Lynn

In this day and age of title reappropriation, it consistently confounds me as to why someone would go through the trouble of acquiring the rights to “remake” a lesser-known film when the final product bears only the slightest resemblance to its source material. Such is the case with Saw II, III, IV and Repo! The Genetic Opera director Bousman’s latest, a gleefully nasty home invasion movie that resides miles away from Charles Kaufman’s early Troma black comic rape/revenge flick.

Rebecca de Mornay earns her matriarchal top billing status, lording over a brood of amoral offspring who wage an assault on the new owners (Jaime King, Frank Grillo) of their recently repossessed domicile. As one might expect from Bousman’s pedigree, there is no shortage of squishy, squirmy gore moments, though they are handled in an intriguingly offhand way, at times relegated to the background or edge of frame.

The impressive body-count-to-be performances are all capable enough, though character motivations are sketchy as they attempt to serve screenwriter Scott Milam’s dicey high wire between gritty realistic set-pieces and outlandish thriller scenarios. The end result is a relatively entertaining but decidedly mixed breed.

BLOOD RITES (2011) movie review

Blood Rites (2011) (1st viewing) d. Booraem, Dorothy

Nebraska-based microbudget filmmaker Booraem has concocted a crime drama dipped in a black magic candy coating, the results being satisfyingly twisty and twisted. When a drug deal goes south (hey, even cornhuskers need a buzz now and again), the remaining members of the team hightail it back to an abandoned warehouse to regroup with a trio of Bible-thumping hostages in tow. Whilst licking and/or tending to their wounds, tensions rise, tempers flare, mysterious dark forces arise and exits literally disappear, leaving the small band at odds as options slowly, messily run out.

Booraem and co-writer/co-producer/cinematographer Chad Haufschild make the most of their limited resources without overextending, and while their serpentine script may have a few red herrings too many, there’s no denying their creative impulses both in concept and execution. From the welcome early dose of down-home nudity to the histrionic bloodbath conclusion, adventurous horror fans should demand their Rites post haste.

THE WICKER MAN (1973) movie review

Wicker Man, The (1973) d. Hardy, Robin

In this classic cult chiller, Christopher Lee turns in one of his finest performances (his personal favorite – good thing, since he reportedly did the role for free). Edward Woodward stars as a hard-as-nails Christian cop searching for a missing child on the remote island community of Summerisle, though his investigations turn up something far more sinister. Director Hardy skillfully crafts an atmosphere-drenched mystery, with Paul Giovanni’s songs and music adding an unexpected high-spirited frolic to the dread proceedings. Extraordinary support provided by lovelies Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt and Diane Cilento. Loosely adapted by Anthony Shaffer from David Pinner's 1967 novel Ritual (who oddly enough receives no onscreen credit), this is must-see material for any horror fan.

OFFICE KILLER (1997) movie review

Office Killer (1997) d. Sherman, Cindy

After having been memorably terrorized two decades prior in the superb 1979 babysitter freakout When a Stranger Calls, Carol Kane gets her chance to play the other side of the knife in this deliciously dark comedy. As a mousy cubicle jockey who slowly becomes unhinged during a wave of corporate downsizing, Kane is a joy to behold, her artfully misapplied eyebrow pencil and tremulous giggle accenting an ever-growing dark side. For a woman whose job is her life, dispatching one’s rivals seems the logical recourse, and director Sherman (who also conceived the screen story) has a ball in the creative offings department, with a surprisingly name-brand cast serving as cannon fodder: Jeanne Tripplehorne, Molly Ringwald, Michael Imperioli, David Thornton and Fassbinder protégé Barbara Sukowa. Not a game-changer, but a more-than-serviceable time-waster.

HORROR HOTEL (1960) movie review

Horror Hotel (aka The City of the Dead) (1960)d. Moxey, John Llewellyn

Three months after Psycho hit cinemas, this effective, fog-drenched Satanist feature pulled a similar magic trick, doing away with one of its main characters halfway through the film. When young co-ed Venetia Stevenson proposes a paper on New England witchcraft, professor Christopher Lee directs her to the small village of Whitewood…where she quickly finds herself a target of the resident coven. Lee is reassuring and menacing in equal measure, but Patricia Jessel deserves equal attention for her riveting dual role as elder witch and reincarnated modern counterpart. American producers Milton Subotsky (who wrote the screen story with George Baxt scripting) and Max Rosenberg’s first horror effort; its success would lead directly to the creation of Amicus Pictures, the challenger to Hammer’s UK horror crown.

RABIES (2010) movie review

Rabies (aka Kalevet)(2010) d. Keshales, Aharon/Papushado, Navot

The title is a bit of a distraction, but I certainly went mad for this flick, billed as Israel’s first horror effort. (If this is any indication of the blood-blasting instincts of the Promised Land’s population, I say hand over the checkbook and let these kids rock the house.) A group of teens en route to a tennis match, a park ranger and his girlfriend, a homicidal killer and his victim and her brother, and two police officers cross paths again and again and again, with stunning and surprising results. In serving a superbly twisted screenplay in all senses of the word, a wealth of memorable stock characters are tossed together and, through an Altman-like series of close encounters, proceed to slice, dice, hack, shoot and smash each other to bits. Sure there are more than a few scenarios that we’ve seen before in Western horror efforts, but to my mind, half the fun is watching Keshales and Papushado put their own particular stamp on the clichés. Highly recommended.

Fool's Views (8/20 – 9/2)

Howdy folks,

As you might have noticed, the H101 blog has expanded from a strictly Fool’s Views-based weekly wrap-up format to include individual posts about certain films. Hopefully this will not prove tedious for longtime readers – it was a format change I resisted for years, not wanting to clutter up the recaps or be a nuisance posting 5-6 times a day. But my experiences at Fantasia and BIFFF have taught me that the online audience is one seeking immediate gratification through a minimum of keystrokes – they want to read reactions to a certain movie as opposed to a certain movie fan’s ongoing journey, and be able to easily Google search it. And, as was pointed out to me at Fantasia, if the point of writing is to be read, it’s hard to be read when you can’t be found. Apparently, shocking as it might seem, no one is searching for “Fool’s Views” when they are deciding what to watch that night.

Therefore, while I will continue to post my weekly log, you will also be able to find individual postings of each week’s horror Views. Still haven’t decided whether it’s worth my while creating a new blog to showcase the civilian Views – I know I don’t want to clutter up my horror-centric column with a bevy of civilian posts. Still working that one out, but as you can see below, some weeks are lighter on the blood and beasts than others, so we should probably do something, right?

At any rate, we’re back with another go-round. Seems I was playing catch-up this time, covering only flicks from the past few years (including an array of current multiplex fare). Hopefully this won’t offend the history buffs too much – we’ve got plans to do some digging next time around, not to worry.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

PENUMBRA (2011) movie review

Penumbra (2011) (1st viewing) d. Bogliano, Adrián García / Bogliano, Ramiro Garcia (Argentina)

The same day a massive solar eclipse is scheduled to take place, hottie Spanish rich bitch Cristina Brondo heads to Buenos Aires to show a prospective tenant her walk-up sublet, a transaction that reveals itself to be anything but standard. The purveyors of last year’s nitroglycerin-fueled chiller, the Bogliano boys go to great efforts to make their upper middle class protagonist as unlikable as possible (she tazers a homeless guy, reveals she’s having an affair with a married man, and just generally puts off everyone around her), the upshot being that when she finds herself in need of allies, they are few and far between. A well crafted thriller that treads familiar waters until its suckerpunch ending nudges into supernatural straits.

THE APPARITION (2012) movie review

Apparition, The (2012) (1st viewing) d. Lincoln, Todd (USA)

Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan star as an insufferably plucky couple, full of contemporary badinage and cutesy quarreling, who take up residence in her parents’ desert community subdivision. This lovely glass-and-adobe would-be dream home has the nasty propensity toward cultivating mold, mangling wooden hangers and leveling lovable canines (the latter’s aftermath yielding 2012’s unintentional laugh leader, “Your house killed my dog!”)

It’s clear that writer/director Lincoln would like this to serve as his generation’s Poltergeist – a film it clearly echoes in both setting and subject matter – but instead of moving cemetery headstones, the premise behind the supernatural hijinks lie in Stan’s former college crew’s wrongheaded attempt to recreate a celebrated parapsychological event. (Former Harry Potter alumnus Tom Felton is saddled with the unenviable task of spouting pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and exposition by the truckload, none of which chills or thrills.) Aside from few fresh ideas and images that deserved a better vehicle, Lincoln’s weak dialogue and “that was it?” ending are unlikely to satisfy anyone.

CHERNOBYL DIARIES (2012) movie review

Chernobyl Diaries (2012) d. Parker, Bradley

First off, it’s worth noting that despite titular indication and Paranormal Activity’s Oren Peli on board as a co-writer/producer, this is not another entry in the “found footage” sweepstakes. Granted, there are some instances of cell phone recordings illustrating previous offscreen scenes’ mayhem, but for the most part this is a straightforward narrative about a group of college grads concluding their whirlwind European tour with a trip to Kiev; within said stop, they swap out their Moscow plans for an “extreme tourism” excursion into Pripyat, the neighboring town of ill-fated Chernobyl, the real-life epicenter of a nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986.

Parker develops an impressive atmosphere of gloom and desolation amidst the deserted – and still radioactive – town, as well as some engaging sequences of attack and retreat by unidentified, and perhaps supernatural, antagonists. Instead, it’s the three-headed screenplay (Peli, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke) that proves the weak link, failing to deliver a satisfying “why” to the strange occurrences. The result is a series of creepy boo scares that lack resonance, dissipating within the cold light of cinema lobby hindsight and reflection.

COLD FISH (2010) movie review

Cold Fish (2010) (1st viewing) d. Sono, Shion

From the writer/director of Suicide Club, Hair Extensions and Himizu comes this wicked black comedy about milquetoast husband Mitsuru Fukikoshi drawn in by charismatic rival fish shop owner Denden, only to have him and wife Asuka Kurosawa instantly exert authority over the milder man’s personal life. And when we say personal, we mean it: child appropriation, spouse molesting, and that’s all before the multitude of murder to which Fukikoshi finds himself an unwitting accomplice.

Sono miraculously balances the increasingly desperate scenarios with an exuberance that buoys the disturbing subject matter, Denden and Kurosawa’s joyous high-wire psychotic enthusiasm driving the breakneck narrative so fast that we, like our hapless protagonist, can barely make sense of it all. Brought to you by the good folks at Sushi Typhoon, this is closer in tone to Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q than, say, the splatterfests of Battlefield Baseball or Machine Girl.

DARK SHADOWS (2012) movie review

Dark Shadows (2012) d. Burton, Tim

Hands down the most mismarketed movie of 2012. I freely admit that, based on the “Man, weren’t the 70s kerrrr-aaaaazy?” trailer that Warner Bros. was using the push Burton’s latest Johnny Depp lovefest, I was already dialed in to hate this sucker right down to the ground, and I’m not even on intimate terms with the source material. (Even though Dan Curtis cult television incarnation had monsters in it, my six-year-old spidey senses still knew it was a soap opera.) The truth is that while there are a fair share of groaners (hidden passages revealing rooms filled with macramé, endless 70s musical references incorrectly assessed as inherently funny), the tale of Depp’s revived Barnabas Collins and his reintegration into society after 200 years of vampiric slumber is an energetic, elevated comedy that, for the most part, works. Sure, Burton allows his star to occasionally overindulge in supercilious line readings and it’s hard to believe the classy Collins clan would indulge in the decade’s tackier décor – in short, when Burton goes for the cheap laugh, the movie falls flat. But when he and his A-list ensemble (which includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jonny Lee Miller and Chloe Marie Grace) stay within the exaggerated fantastic lines drawn, the results are surprisingly satisfying.

MEGAN IS MISSING (2011) movie review

Megan is Missing (2011) d. Michael Goi (USA)

Setting a found footage film within the particular circle of hell that is “party-hearty 14-year-old girls” is a daring enough premise as it is, since it is bound to test the patience and empathies of anyone who is not a party-hearty 14-year-old girl. We are introduced to shy, decent Amber Perkins and tramptastic mean girl Rachel Quinn – somehow inexplicably BFFs – through cell phone chats and self-recorded video footage, but when Quinn is presumably kidnapped by a social network stalker, it sends shock waves through the community, particularly for odd duck Perkins.

THE UNDEAD (1957) movie review

Undead, The (1957) (2nd viewing) d. Corman, Roger

I’ve been meaning to revisit this largely ignored Corman feature (surprising, considering how well the majority of the B-king’s AIP horror features have been kept alive via MGM’s Midnight Movies collection) for a while now, first brought to my attention by Bruce Lanier Wright’s excellent tome Nightwalkers: Gothic Horror Movies and procured via the internet gray market a few years back.

Inspired by the Bridey Murphy phenomena of the ’50s, screenwriters Charles Griffith and Mark Hanna introduce to us streetwalker Pamela Duncan, hired by a spiritualist to explore her past lives through hypnosis. We follow her back through the ages to a non-specified time – let’s call it fairy tale land – where Duncan is accused of witchery, a charge furthered by romantic rival Allison Hayes (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman), who actually is a witch. Along the way, we also encounter thickheaded minstrel/gravedigger Mel Welles (Little Shop of Horrors), Billy Barty as Hayes’ grating silent-laughing imp, and inimitable character actress Dorothy Neumann as helpful hag Meg Maud.

It’s a whole lot of nonsense, but like the majority of Corman’s efforts, it’s well paced and entertaining nonsense, directed with energy and vision.

TWICE-TOLD TALES (1963) movie review

Twice-Told Tales (1963) d. Salkow, Sidney

Mildly engaging trio of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s supernatural stories that acquires the star (Vincent Price) of American International’s Poe series, but director Salkow displays little of Roger Corman’s enthusiastic storytelling zeal. (The opening image of a rather limp skeleton hand opening a rather limp volume doesn’t inspire much confidence.)

In the first story, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” old coots Price and Sebastian Cabot (via some dodgy old-age makeup) discover a youth-restoring elixir. When it also revives their long-dead sweetheart Mari Blanchard, romantic rivalries are sparked anew.

“Rappuccini’s Daughter,” the best of the bunch, offers the dark fable of an embittered scientist (Price) who infuses daughter Joyce Taylor with the essence of a toxic plant, making her touch lethal to human contact. All this plays havoc with suitor Brett Halsey’s social life, as he learns that his first kiss with the lovely lass could be his last.

The final tale, an incredibly truncated version of “The House of the Seven Gables,” follows the scheming Pynchon family searching the ancestral mansion for a hidden inheritance, amidst family curses, ghostly music, and otherworldly lovers. This dramatically uneven segment features spectral effects both impressive (model houses imploding in slow motion) and ridiculous (Price lamely throttled by a disembodied skeleton hand).

As anthology films go, this is by no means a disaster, just not terribly inspired.

TRUE NATURE (2010) movie review

True Nature (2010) d. Steele, Patrick (USA)


Having heard about this supernatural thriller for several years on the interwebs, I finally reached out to writer/director Steele who was gracious enough to pass along a review copy. Having finally viewed it firsthand, the DVD companies’ reticence is understandable, as this is a difficult film to categorize and harder still to sell. Within its intriguing premise (young woman Marianne Porter mysteriously returns home after a year-long disappearance, crippled with disturbing visions…or are they memories?), there is much to equally recommend and repel.

TAKE SHELTER (2011) movie review

Take Shelter (2011) (1st viewing) d. Nichols, Jeff

Oil rig worker Michael Shannon starts experiencing horrific visions of an apocalyptic storm to come – is he a prophet or merely going off the deep end? Nichols, who directed his own script, keeps us guessing at all times, injecting Shannon’s schizophrenic mother (Kathy Baker) and a healthy dose of self-doubt into the mix, further complicated by his protagonist’s refusal to confide in an understandably frustrated wife Jessica Chastain. Things come to a head when Shannon begins expanding the backyard tornado shelter, an endeavor that strains not only the family finances, but the understanding of his community. A slow burn to be sure, but Nichols and his star hold our sympathies and attention throughout.

THE SKIN I LIVE IN (2011) movie review

Skin I Live in, The (2011) (1st viewing) d. Almodovar, Pedro

Stylistic and visually dynamic dark fantasy about an eminent plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas, in fine form) who loses his wife in a car crash, shortly after which his emotionally precarious daughter is sexually assaulted at a party. These two tragic events spark the remainder of the eye-popping narrative, which deserves to unfold organically without any further extrapolation on my part. However, I will say that one should probably check one’s logic circuits at the door, because several plot machinations don’t hold up well to close scrutiny, as dramatically delicious as they might be. The extraordinarily fetching Elena Anaya (Room in Rome), when not sporting her birthday suit, spends a welcome amount of time in a skintight body stocking – a seemingly exploitative move that achieves deeper resonance with repeat viewings.

MY SOUL TO TAKE (2010) movie review

My Soul To Take (2010) d. Craven, Wes

I first heard about this feature via the pages of HorrorHound, where Craven described it as being a project where he was given complete creative freedom to do whatever he wanted. If that truly ended up being the case, the man should never be left unsupervised again because not since the doldrum days of Deadly Friend or Shocker has the writer/director so profoundly bungled the task at hand. The scattered yarn features a revived serial killer stalking a group of youths who were all born the night that he was shot dead by police 17 years prior. Lazy, sloppy, often incoherent plotting takes turns with snoozy kills, with Max Theirot’s social reject acquiring the consciousness of his expired peers for no apparent reason or payoff. A real strikeout.