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JM Cozzoli

A horror genre fan with a blog. Scary.

Quarantine (2008)

/ Movies (Horror) / 4 Comments

Quarantine

Zombos Says: Excellent

Television reporter Angela Vidal’s assignment, to tag along with the night shift of a Los Angeles fire station, starts out as fluff. Firefighters Jake and Fletcher kid around as Angela’s cameraman, Scott, films the banter through his lens. We get a tour of the station house, the locker room, the mess hall, and an explanation for why Dalmatians and firefighters go together like smoke and fire. We even get to see Angela slide down the firepole.

In fact, everything we see and hear is through Scott’s camera, making Quarantine another horror movie not for the faint of eyesight. Although more Diary of the Dead steady and less shaky-waky than Cloverfield, there are times when our view is intentionally obstructed, or pointed toward the floor, or plunged in darkness, which will either frustrate you or leave you with badly-chewed fingernails.

When the emergency medical call comes in (we are told firefighters handle more medical calls than fires), Angela, Scott, and the firefighters rush to an apartment building where a woman’s screams have rattled the tenant’s nerves. The building is filled with dark interiors and concerned tenants. Entering her apartment, our view is blocked until Scott can get his camera in front of the police officers and the firefighters. What confronts them is Mrs. Espinoza, foaming at the mouth, incoherent, and much to their dismay, a lot stronger than she should be. She also has a hearty appetite, which in this case is not a good thing for everyone else. Here is where the carefully built-up fluff gives way to terror with a series of escalating events pushing the tension level up while pulling everyone’s chances for survival down.

In this English version of the Spanish movie [Rec], Angela (Jennifer Carpenter) and Scott (Steve Harris) keep recording events as their light-hearted time-filler turns from feature to hard news, until the struggle to stay alive takes precedence. In desperation, Scott uses the camera as a weapon, giving us a head-bludgeoning eyeful filled with bloody spatters on the lens.He wipes the lens clean, but you can see his nerves are raw.

When the Center for Disease Control (CDC) seals up the building good and tight, and military sharpshooters aim for anything that tries to leave through windows or doors, the apartment house becomes a dark warren of fear. Cell phone communication is blocked, and even cable is cut off. It is that bad.

…

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Edges of Darkness (2008)
Zombies, Vampires, and Saviours

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Edges of Darkness Zombos Says: Fair

Jason Horton and Blaine Cade’s Edges of Darkness is the kind of low-budget arthouse film that, given its uneven acting and shoe-string budget production values, is still important to watch for those flashes of good writing and good direction that shine through. In three separate stories following people dealing with a zombie apocalypse in their own ways, God and Devil, vampires, and organic computing provide the unusual themes wrapped around this flesh-eating grue.

While the stories do not intertwine, they are intercut, which at times jostles the pacing and dramatic continuity. Tying them together is the gated community locale, an unrelenting threat from zombies lumbering just outside, and the need for satisfying hungers that go beyond flesh-munching closeups and dripping gristle.

Edges_of_darkness Even in the least engrossing story there is a wonderful and unexpected flash of macabre poetry shown when Dana (Alisha Gaddis) dreams she is dancing with a roomful of zombies. It is compelling, like the dance of the dead in Carnival of Souls and the dancing dead in Robert Aickman’s short story, Ringing the Changes, because it plays with our sense of propriety. It is unsettling enough that the only person who listens to her is Morris (Wayne Baldwin) the zombie–out of reach, of course–outside her bedroom window, while her husband writes endlessly on his computer. Has he gone mad from the stress? Who does he think will read his story? We never find out, and instead watch as he eagerly plugs in the weird computer chip from DHell. When the lights go out, it starts searching for an alternate power source, sending out wires (tentacles) that first power-up from a house plant, then a mouse, and eventually you know what.

While Dana yearns for romance, her husband Dean yearns for backup power. Uneven acting almost cripples the pent-up tension and despair here.The climax is predictable, but the relationship between Dana and Dean (Jay Costelo) provides a refreshing psychological perspective seldom seen in more mainstream fare. We need to explore more atypical relationships like this one in the cinema of the undead, and devote time to the frustrated, freaked-out, living, coping with the voracious dead, instead of the over-used gut-churning closeups of zombies feasting.

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Edges of Darkness (2008)
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Book Review: Sundays With Vlad

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Zombos Says: ExcellentSundays with Vlad Interview

I became the odd little kid who’s in love with monsters. There’s one in every neighborhood. My favorite book was The Three Little Pigs because of that wolf peeking from just outside the window of the brick house. I loaded up on books about vampires and werewolves at the school library. The grisly woodcuts of creatures loping through the medieval fields and lunching on peasants would keep me awake all night. In the morning, I’d take the books back, promise myself I would never read them again, and check them back out the very next week.
(Paul Bibeau, Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead)

 

“Please take your seats everyone, this meeting of Goths Anonymous is about to start,” said a frail-looking individual in front of the room. He fidgeted with the lace on his shirt cuffs when no one paid attention to him. “We can’t get started until everyone takes a seat,” he implored.

“Will you please sit down,” I told Zombos. He looked at me with a questioning glance as he pulled out an iPod earbud from one ear. “I said you really need to sit down. The meeting is about to start.”

Zombos shut off his iPod. “I really do not know why you dragged me to this so-called meeting. I see nothing wrong with listening to Midnight Syndicate.”

“You’ve been listening to them non-stop.” I said. “And even when you aren’t listening to them, you’re humming Cemetery Gates or Mansion in the Mist ad nauseam. In sum, you’re driving me, Zimba, your son, and Chef Machiavelli bonkers. Oh, lord, is that Paul Bibeau?”

Zombos turned around to look. “Why yes, I think it is. He is wearing that same black ensemble he used to prowl the Renfield Country club circuit for his book. My word, how does he manage to walk in those tight pants. I bet his voice has gone up a pitch or two since he put those things on. Paul! Paul! Over here!,” waved Zombos.

“No! Don’t call him over! I haven’t reviewed his book, Sundays With Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead yet. He’ll be asking me about it and I won’t know what to say,” I pleaded, but it was too late. Paul saw Zombos and headed over to us.

“You have not reviewed his book yet? What in Hades are you waiting for, man, it has been over a year,” said Zombos, folding his arms. I hate when he folds his arms like that.

…

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Igor (2008)
Where’s Dwight Frye When You Need Him?

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Igor Zombos Says: Fair

The most clever artifice in Igor is the name of the country the title character lives and works in—Malaria. That is as clever as it gets in Anthony Leondis’s animated movie about a mad scientist’s assistant who wants more out of life; to create it, mostly, like any self-respecting mad scientist craves to do.

Missing from this fairy tale of endlessly dark and stormy days, laboratories in high towers crackling with electricity and maniacal laughter, and evil scientists churning out evil devices, is the defining touches that Dwight Frye brought to the role of Fritz–not Igor–the hunched back assistant in Frankenstein. Absent, too, are the refining touches that Bela Lugosi brought to Ygor–pronounced E-gor–the hunched back, broken neck lunatic and part-time assistant in Son of Frankenstein. Not even a hint of Marty Feldman’s hilarious Igor–pronounced Eye-gore–another energetic, rather persnickety laboratory assistant in Young Frankenstein sparks life into this surprisingly lifeless nuts and bolts story by Chris McKenna.

Surprising because given the rich cinematic history of monsters and madmen this film should have drawn upon, we are instead given yet another reworking of what has become a clichéd theme in animated movies geared toward the younger set: disillusioned male yearns to break the mold and become something he is told he cannot be. Toss in misfit–but funny–sidekicks, add a dramatic failure or two, then end with boy making everyone see the life-altering truth he triumphantly uncovers as he achieves his dream. Along the way, make sure to depict female characters in conniving, devious, helpless, clueless, romantic, or otherwise secondary roles. Unless, of course, this is a Walt Disney movie; then just switch male and female roles: everything else still holds (at least before Pixar, anyway).

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Igor (2008)
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Halloween M’EYE’Graine Safety Light

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halloween Meyegrain Safety Light I'm a sucker for monsterish Halloween swag that keeps the ghoulishly fun aspect of the season in proper perspective. Here's one little gem I found, to my pleasant surprise, in a grocery store last week. The backing card is quite an eyeful; colorful and creepy and nicely displays the product in context.

What self-respecting little Halloween trickster wouldn't want to wear this cool safety light proudly around their necks as they stomp the sidewalks for sweets and treats?

Interview With Bestial’s William Carl

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Bestial

Zombos Says: Good

“Hello?” I answered my desk phone.

“Is this Zombos?”

“No, I’m Iloz Zoc. Zombos is out and about.”

“This is Billy Castle from Monumental Studios.”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Monumental Studios. You know, “If it’s done right it’s Monumental.”

“Oh, right, I remember that tagline now,” I said.

“Right. Right. Look, I’m calling about this script Zombos sent us. He’s gotta spice it up if he wants a chance at a straight to DVD release. You know, it needs lots more hooters or gore or hooters  with gore to stand out from all the other hooters and gore titles cramming the shelves. What he’s got here is boring as hell. I mean who’s gonna go for werewolves and moonlight and silver bullets these days that’s old, old, old ….”

“But Dog Soldiers had lots of gore and action, and it–” I said.

“Well, okay, yeah, but this script ain’t no Dog Soldiers. He’s got transvestite werewolves attacking cross-dressing vampires, in San Francisco for god sakes. Hell, they’re all males. Got it? No hooters. And location shooting over there is a bitch.”

My cell phone started playing Clap for the Wolfman. “Hold on a minute will you? I’ve got another call on my cell. Okay, thanks. Hello?” I answered the other call.

“Hello, is this Zombos?”

“No, he’s out and about. I’m ILoz Zoc his valet,” I said.

“Damn, I keep missing him. Look, Zoc, this is William D. Carl. I wrote Bestial: Werewolf Apocalypse. Zombos was supposed to do a review of my book. Do you know if he’s finished it yet?”

“Him review a book? I don’t think he’s ever done a review for anything, but he does criticize everything. No, actually I’ve just finished it myself. Enjoyed it a lot. But I’m not sure I can get to it before the next full moon. Just kidding. William? William? Oh, I thought I lost you. Anyway, I’m backed up with other Permuted Press titles before I can get to it.”

“Oh, crimminy! Can’t you knock it up to the top of the pile? Who’s ahead of me?”

“Bowie Ibarra. You know, the zombies down the road guy.”

“Oh, c’mon, not another zombie review! I like Bowie, but zombies are old, old, old,” said Carl.

…

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The Last Supper (2005)
Horror Happy Meal for One

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Zombos Closet: The Last Supper Issei Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch student Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris. In June 11, 1981, Sagawa was studying avant garde literature. He invited her to dinner under the pretense of literary conversation. Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck with a rifle while she sat with her back to him at a desk, then began to carry out his plan of eating her. She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. In interviews, Sagawa describes himself as a “weak, ugly and small man” and claims that he wanted to “absorb her energy.” –Wikipedia

Zombos Says: Good

I could not sleep. My ears woke me up around four in the morning. They stung and itched and–not sure why, exactly–made me think of how awful it must have been for Lon Chaney Jr. to sit through his Wolf Man makeup sessions with Jack Pierce. But unlike Pierce’s painstaking application of Yak hair, strand by strand, I had to endure a painful, heavy-weight tag-team electrolysis smackdown on my ears’ hair follicles, earlier that day. In a perversely skewed Newtonian Law of Equilibrium, my ears started growing hair when my scalp stopped doing so.

I headed to the kitchen for an early breakfast. Not surprisingly, I found Zombos paging through Weekly Weird Asia World News as he sipped a hot chocolate. His insomnia, aided by Zimba’s snoring, usually kicked in around this time of the morning. Chef Machiavelli stood by the stove, flipping one of his succulent pancake omelettes–with oyster filling, judging by the aroma. I flashed a deuce sign for him to make another one and joined Zombos at the table. He poured a cup of caffè corretto for me and slid the Sambuca over, but I reached for the cognac instead: I needed something stronger to quell the sturm und drang in my ears.

I picked up Weekly Weird Asia’s Living section and thumbed through it. “This is interesting. Here’s an article on Issei Sagawa, Japan’s Celebrity Cannibal. He’s opening a sushi bar.  My, my…guy goes and eats his classmate, gets off on a technicality, and becomes a minor celebrity. Tastes like tuna, he said.”

“I giapponesi sono pazzeschi,” said Chef Machiavelli, serving the omelettes. He snatched the ketchup bottle from my hand before I could uncap it. I reached for the pepper and waited for him to nod okay. He nodded.

“Yes, they are a crazy bunch at times,” I agreed, shaking a little black pepper onto his culinary masterpiece. I wonder if he’ll do that nyotaimori thing where they use a naked girl as a dinner plate to serve sushi and sashimi. Hmmm…that might not be a good idea for him, now I think of it. Maybe he’ll–no, I doubt he’d go for that other odd trend of theirs, where a fake body is made out of food so you can operate on it  and eat whatever you find inside. The thing actually bleeds as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely edible they say. Cooked I think. Wait a minute; that might be something for our Halloween party. What do you think? We could bake up a life-sized meatloaf zombie, with all the rotten–”

“Must you?” asked Zombos, a forkful of omelette poised at his lips. “You know, since you are up, you should finish that review for Bestial: Werewolf Apocalypse. Then perhaps move on to more pressing things like finishing the review for the Alone In the Dark Wii game, or maybe even Karloff’s The Mummy Special Edition DVD review, or–and I am brainstorming here–perhaps even tackle some of those Permuted Press books–that pile is not getting any shorter you know. Halloween is just around the corner and you’ll need to pick up the slack a bit. Why, you might even try finishing that Bartholomew of the Scissors comic book you left out on the library table, you know, the one that scared Zombos Jr’s wits clear to Sunday thinking it was an Archie comic, or maybe–and I am really going out on the limb of possibilities here–post that Sundays With Vlad review, the one you should have posted last September.

A forkful of omelette was now poised at my lips. Chef Machiavelli took pity on me and handed back the ketchup bottle. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll get right on it after breakfast. First things first, though.”

…

The Last Supper (2005)
Horror Happy Meal for OneRead More »

Interview With Hasso Wuerslin
The Dead Books

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The Deadbooks Many bitch that we don’t read anymore, but I don’t think that’s true. I think many are just waiting for the novel to catch up with their expectations of entertainment. There will always be a place for word on paper, but what DeadBooks.com represents is where the novel may be headed: what its true potential can be once it’s ripped free from the wood.–Hasso Wuerslin, author of The Deadbooks.

 

It is close to 10:00 PM on a Sunday night and I am reading, watching, and listening to The Deadbooks, Hasso Wuerslin’s self-termed hyper-serialization of the unpublished science-fiction and horror novels in his Deadbooks series. Chapter One had me thinking he needs to work on his Flash skills more. By Chapter Two, I started getting into the  mysterious town of Landsgate, Vermont, and the greatly confused Will Lant,  who is not sure why he is where he is, or what the dreadful mistake is he thinks he’s made. Those ‘Missing Person Will Lant’ posters he keeps coming across don’t cheer him much either, especially when everyone else is missing in the small town. By Chapter Three, I wanted to learn more about the home of Eddie Ranch–‘who looked bug-shit crazy’–and what was in the cellar. The Deadbooks hyper-serialization, in spite of the loading…loading…loading message that pulsed between pagescreens, began to intrigue me and my interest in the story grew from chapter to chapter.

Maybe Wuerslin is on to something here. It’s rough around the edges, sure, and sometimes the voiceovers grate on your ears, but given where printed media, audiobooks, gaming, and the Internet are poised in this digital age, Wuerslin may be a pioneer in creating a novel experience by immersing the hyper-reader into his bizarre world of Landsgate, Vermont. This hints at other applications beyond the Internet. I recently visited my local Borders book store and stood amazed at the 75th Anniversary issue of Esquire Magazine with it’s electronic ink (e-Ink) cover. It was primitive, true, but I was giddy all the same. Within a few years, we will be reading, listening, and interacting with our electronic paper magazines and books in ways that will combine what we do separately now in various mediums. Who says wireless reading devices like the Kindle cannot be used more creatively with multimedia-stylized novels–something short of a game but more than a printed novel, in much the same way that Wuerslin is e-Publishing his stories now.

According to Wuerslin, The Deadbooks encompasses 150 chapters, involves 100 actors (okay, his friends and family I am sure), and the cutting-edge sounds of musical artists worldwide to provide a mash-up of story-telling techniques. You can experience the first seven chapters, then pay a small amount to read the rest.

I asked Wuerslin to step into the closet for a brief chat about his work.

…

Interview With Hasso Wuerslin
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People As Cogs In The Machine

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Metropolis3 Perusing the Wall Street Journal I came across this disturbing trend in the retail sales industry. There is something oddly similar here to the perfunctory roles victims in horror films play, where, more often than not, character-driven actions are replaced with expedient, redundant, superficial actions dictated by a script writer to fit his by the numbers use of hackneyed terror mise-en-scène. Leaving an audience with a sense of quantity importance, not quality importance, dissatisfaction.

In the article Retailers Reprogram Workers In Efficiency Push, by Vanessa O'Connell, she reports "Retailers have a new tool to turn up the heat on their salespeople: computer programs that dictate which employees should work when, and for how long."

Cue Midnight Syndicate's ominous music to play in the background as you continue reading.

Ann Taylor Stores Corp. installed a system last year. When saleswoman Nyla Houser types her code number into a cash register at the Ann Taylor store here at the Oxford Valley Mall, it displays her "performance metrics": average sales per hour, units sold, and dollars per transaction. The system schedules the most productive sellers to work the busiest hours.

Contrary to Number Six's (Patrick McGoohan) "I am not a number, I am a free man!" defiant outcry in The Prisoner, it appears the retail industry is hellbent on doing just that: quantifying a person's work life into a series of statistical numbers to bolster the bottom line. Only the Village by the sea, where Number Six is held captive, has become the mall, and the determined Number Two, always looking for ways to force Number Six into submission, is now your typical retail chain determined to squeeze every cent of productivity out of its employees. To be fair to retailers, with spiraling costs associated with acquiring and distributing merchandise to sell, and the shrinking average shopper's budget for spending, they are looking toward workforce-management systems to improve productivity and cut payroll costs. On the negative side of all this, the word quality is not a buzzword associated with this initiative; quality of life and a reasonably stress-free working environment are not great expectations here either.

Some employees aren't happy about the trend. They say the systems leave them with shorter shifts, make it difficult to schedule their lives, and unleash Darwinian forces on the sales floor that damage morale.

The buzzword here is Darwinian. The article goes on to cite instances of people stealing sales away from other employees at one retail store, and the establishment of standards specifying how long it should take to greet a shopper (3 seconds), how long to help someone trying on clothing (2 minutes), and how long to fold a sweater (32 seconds). Employees are also ranked by their sales quota, which could have negative consequences for weekly pay and hours worked. In a closing note, the system could be used to more efficiently schedule managers, too. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I suppose.

So much for the notion of a rewarding work experience. This sounds like an upcoming Joe Hill novel.

Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered

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Zombos Closet: Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered

Horror suggests physical repulsion, disgust, and that seems to me a worthless, pointless reaction for any work of entertainment to aim at; it's so easy it isn't worth doing. An eye, say, plopping all bloody into a glass dish may provoke a gasp of revulsion when it is first seen on the screen, but this is an entirely physical thing, and something one can get used to–no doubt with a certain coarsening of one's responses in the process. The second or third time something like this happens in a film, the surprise and excitement is gone, and then you come back to the old, inevitable question. What is there to support it in the way of plot and characterization, to give it some point other than providing an immediate physical shock? In other words, what is there to appeal to the spectator's imagination? –Boris Karloff interview, The Times.

I met Gordon B. Shriver at the Monster Bash in 2007, and again in 2008. He read from his one-man play on the life of Boris Karloff at Max, the Drunken Severed Head;s annual party for the notables and quotables attending the annual classic horror convention. Max lets me in anyway.

Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered grew out of Shriver's fascination and admiration for the man whom many horror fans hold in high regard. Karloff's tireless and masterful acting brought life not only to the Frankenstein Monster, but to the Mummy and countless other major and minor roles, whether by using his unique mannerisms and posture, or by using his unmistakable voice,  lisping ever so eloquently, immortalized as the narration for 1966's animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Karloff became the personification of embraceable horror for a generation–and beyond, bringing his terror with a twinkling eye into everyone's living room.

While we grew to love him in movies that tickled our fright-bone, much of Karloff's acting also occurred on stage, radio and, in later years, television.Throughout his long career, even when faced with debilitating arthritis and emphysema, he continued to give every assignment his professional all. Shriver's correspondence with many of the people who worked with and knew Karloff provides a view of the man as consummate acting professional, always downplaying his stardom, and tempering his sinister onscreen persona with wit, charm, and an urbane demeanor in real life.

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LOTT D Roundtable:
What’s Wrong With Today’s Horror Movies?
Part Two

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PrayingskeletonIn Part One of What’s Wrong With Today’s Horror Movies, the League of Tana Tea Drinkers hoisted a few crisp, wet ones while dwelling on the exigencies, intricacies, and commodities of postmodern (as well as classic and neo-classic) horror film fair, and it’s looming quietus into something amounting to little more than the taste of grisly pablum. With salty pretzels well in hand, and a cold drink in the other, let us get back to the discussion.

Dinner With Max Jenke wants more on his plate…

This is a topic that lots of fans have an immediate answer to, with plenty of vitriol to share about how horror is a diluted product now – just watered-down thrills made for an undiscriminating audience. Tips for improvement run the whole gamut–horror movies should be R and not PG-13, there should be less of a focus on teenagers, and more original films instead of remakes and sequels.

But horror fans of every generation have typically made it a point to complain that the horror films of the present are inferior to whatever scare fare they grew up on. I imagine that even some ancient moviegoers who were raised in the silent days must have believed that the advent of sound was the death knell of true horror. Because, you know, movies are only scary when you have to imagine what a creaking door sounds like. And once black and white was replaced by color, I bet some fans never recovered from that because everybody knows that horror movies just don’t work as well unless they’re in black and white. The point being that every era has given horror fans something new to gripe about.

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LOTT D Roundtable:
What’s Wrong With Today’s Horror Movies?
Part TwoRead More »