JM Cozzoli - From Zombos' Closet

Iron Man (2008)
A Superhero with Heart

May 2, 2008 / Superheroes / Leave a Comment

May 2 2008

Zombos Says: Excellent

Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow make Iron Man more than the sum of the boilerplate screenplay by Mark Fergus, and the cover-the-basics villains and action directed by Jon Favreau. As Tony Stark, playboy billionaire (and former Long Island native), and Pepper Potts, his personal assistant handling his professional and personal affairs with equal efficiency–including his hubris-sized ego–both bring a twinkle-in-the-eye charm to this first tent-pole movie of the summertime box office season. And this tent-pole is made solid iron strong because of it.

From the opening salvo of Stark’s bloody capture by terrorists, to his revelation his weapons of mass destruction actually kill more than the enemy, Downey keeps the balance of humor and drama in proper comic book movie perspective. While motivations and characters are measured in black and white to keep the action neatly moving, it ‘s Downey’s cheeky delivery and attitude riffing against Paltrow’s dry, no-nonsense, manner in between the slam-bam fisticuffs, and Stark’s humorous outcomes when developing his suit of armor that delights more than the expected rousing rock music score and flashy explosions; but those are not too shabby either.

Between the exploding tanks and humvees, and bullets ricocheting, his development of Iron Man’s armor from early prototype to uber-gadgetized, mechanized, Jarvisized (a very personal and proper speaking computer net), and hot-rod red splashed alloy chick-magnet, the special effects kick in bigtime but still take a backseat to Downey’s over-eager robotic helpers, his insistence on testing features not quite ready for prime time, and a chest implant keeping him alive, but glows like a Burger King sign and requires more upkeep than he can carry out alone. Ms. Potts rises to the occasion here, but sends him into cardiac arrest when she accidentally pulls the plug on this mini-power plant, which keeps the shrapnel scattered around his heart from moving any closer. It also powers the suit of armor, and provides the impetus for a mine-is-bigger confrontation between Iron Man and a very hostile corporate take over.

The movie stays true to the original comic book storyline, but updates it from Vietnam to Afghanistan. There’s also S.H.I.E.L.D. For comic geeks (like myself) who grew up on a steady diet of the Avengers and Nick Fury’s gadget-topian secret service, I’ll only say you need to stay seated past the credits. A teaser shows the possibilities for the sequel, and they are Marvel-ous indeed. This beginning franchise is running on all thrusters, and if Downey and Paltrow stay the course, it will remain so.

Interview With Joshua Hoffine
Little Girls and Big Monsters

April 25, 2008 / Art/Animation / 5 Comments

Apr 25 2008

One of the greatest pleasures derived from writing a horror blog is meeting so many interesting people involved creatively with the horror genre and how they express themselves through the moving image, the written and spoken word, a chilling melody or ominous sound, nightmarish illustration, or a fiendish photograph that freezes horror for one lasting moment in time, somewhere between our feet dangling into the deepest pit of our fears and the tips of our fingers holding fast to the shorn edge of our reason.

I’m not quite sure whether photographer Joshua Hoffine has lost his grip yet, but let’s chat with him while we still can about his morbid curiosity getting the better of him, and his nightmarish visions clouding his better judgment; in other words, his freaking-me-out photographs of horror.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND MUTATE FROM WHOLESOME SUBJECTS TO FANTASTIC HORROR?

I started making photographs shortly after graduating from college with a degree in English Literature. My original portfolio of photographs was very dark and disturbing. At that time, I was interested in Frederick Sommer and Joel Peter Witkin, and was creating proto-horror assemblages that sometimes included animal parts. I landed an internship with Nick Vedros, who is the biggest photographer in my hometown of Kansas City, and Nick encouraged me to make my work more palatable to survive as a commercial photographer. From Nick I moved onto Hallmark Cards, which is also based in my hometown.

At Hallmark I mastered the art of making things pretty. I left after only 18 months, and started shooting weddings. With the free time and resources that wedding photography afforded me, I began my first project as a mature photographer, a series of horror photographs called After Dark, My Sweet. Without a gallery or an agent or an audience of any sort, I drove my family into poverty time and time again as I self-financed this costly work. My images are not photoshop collages, but meticulously lit performances caught on camera. I build sets, and use costumes, elaborate props, special effects make-up, and fog machines to bring my ideas to life. I am only restrained by budget.

WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS? HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH THE SITUATIONS YOU DEPICT?

From my own memories and fears, as well as the fears of my children. There are sometimes allusions to specific horror films or fairy tales. I am especially attracted to any fears that might be considered universal – like the fear of a monster or boogeyman lurking under your bed.

I FOUND ‘CELLAR’ PARTICULARLY DISTURBING, AND EVOCATIVE OF J-HORROR NIGHTMARE. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS ONE?

That image is directly inspired by Henrietta bursting out of the earthen floor of the fruit cellar in Evil Dead 2.

MANY OF YOUR PHOTOS HAVE A LITTLE BLOND-HAIRED GIRL IN THEM. WHO IS SHE? WHY NOT USE A LITTLE BOY INSTEAD?

The Little Girl is played, alternately by my daughters Shiva or Chloe. I chose to use a Little Girl because it carries more archetypal power, and references other Little Girl characters like Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy in Oz. In my work, like everywhere else, the Little Girl symbolizes innocence and wonder. Simultaneously, the work possesses a subtext about child predation – which is more easily conveyed, I feel, by using a little girl rather than a little boy. I am interested in the operation of subtext and metaphor in Horror.

I’LL ASSUME YOUR A HORROR FAN IN GENERAL. WHICH ARE YOUR FAVORITE MONSTERS AND WHY?

My favorite monsters include Rob Bottin’s work on The Thing, the original Nosferatu, Chris Cunningham’s Rubber Johnny, and the child-devouring ogre in Pan’s Labrynth. Because they are perfect.

DO YOU DO COMMISSIONED WORK; FOR INSTANCE, TAKE SOMEONE’S NIGHTMARE IDEA AND PHOTOGRAPH IT FOR THEM?

I do commissioned work all the time, mostly for bands and musicians with independent record labels. There is no art director with small labels, so I’m able to write an original piece tailored just for the musician. My most recent work was done for a Detroit rapper named Prozak. Some of his work has a political streak through it, so I wrote ‘Uncle Sam’ for him to use as artwork on his CD. Other times, he just had a prop he was interested in, like a gas mask or a chainsaw – and I’d hammer out a scenario to go shoot. We’re gearing up to do another one in fact, based on The Slumber Party Massacre.

WHAT’S THE ONE QUESTION I SHOULD BE ASKING BUT DIDN’T? AND WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER?

Question: Do you still shoot weddings?

Answer: About 20 a year. But under a fake name.

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

April 21, 2008 / Movies (Non-horror) / Leave a Comment

Apr 21 2008

Zombos Says: Very Good

Jet Li and Jackie Chan on screen together for the first time generate entertaining chopsocky mayhem in this light-hearted actioner fantasy from director Rob Minkoff and writer John Fusco. Get a big bucket of popcorn, add liberal amounts of salt and butter flavor, and just enjoy this fairytale story that’s short on logic but long on fun and mind-blowing kick-ass artistry between Li and Chan.

From the opening over-the-top credit roll parading martial arts movie posters in all their pulp-saturated color glory, highlighted by upbeat heart-thumping music, to the whimsical, so bad it’s charming wirework of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King’s aerial combat on a mountain top against the Jade soldiers sent by the evil Jade Warlord (played by Collin Chou with suitable evilness), this movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, but relishes the frenetic Kung Fu energy generated by Li and Chan as part homage to the countless kick-block-punch-jump-fly movies that have brightened up many a Saturday matinée.

Young Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano), martial arts dreamer and fanatical fan, visits his favorite hookup for bootleg, undubbed Kung Fu films, a pawn shop run by an incredibly old Chinese gentleman with a penchant for drinking a lot and keeping the golden Jingu Bang, the Monkey King’s magical fighting staff, in his back room. Telling young Jason the staff needs to be returned to its owner, the story is set and put into action when Jason is bullied by the neighborhood bad boys to rob the pawn shop. The staff and Jason connect big time, sending him through the gate that has no gate to an ancient and mystical China, complete with understandable natives after he meets up with Jackie Chan, who promptly slaps some language speaking skills into Jason’s head when Chan tells him to pay attention and listen.

The hunt is on when the Jade Warlord gets wind the Monkey King’s staff is back in action. Said fighting staff would bring the Monkey King back to life, thereby ending the Jade Emperor’s continued gloating over his despotic ways.

Before Jason can take on the arduous and dangerous task of returning the staff, he must learn the ways of the force, which, in this case, means dealing with two bickering martial arts masters and their differing styles. Chan’s Drunken Master-styled moves come up against Li’s precision strikes early on in a lively exchange between the two as each attempts to claim ownership of the staff. One humorous bit has Chan and Li disagreeing on the best technique for Jason to use, leading to humor for us and frustration for him.

Villainy is well represented with Jade Warlord’s witchy main squeeze, the iridescent Bingbing Li, swinging her long white tresses to bedevil Chan and clan as they battle her nefarious antics, the Jade Warlord’s soldiers who keep showing up in annoyingly larger numbers, and Jason’s lack of chi-confidence in being able to best the overwhelming odds. The mood and pacing throughout fits the PG-13 rating well, and satisfies with its simple but pleasing tale of positive thinking surmounting any obstacle. Liberal use of eye-pleasing cinematography, adequate CGI (with a matte painting tossed in here and there), and colorful costumery add to the overall above average production values for this slugfest that first pits Li against Chan, then both against the Jade Warlord. Sideline love interest between Jason and comely Golden Sparrow (Yifei Liu) provides requisite pathos and secondary story of vengeance fulfillment.

For fans of period piece martial arts action and straightforward characters, The Forbidden Kingdom is a welcome entry in the summertime sweepstakes for their movie-going dollars. For fans of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, it’s a must-see first time collaboration between two genre greats whose consummate skill with a numbing number of Kung Fu styles is sharply choreographed and recorded for posterity in this minor gem of good versus evil and nebbish boy makes good while saving the kingdom.

Remembering the Beloved Gill Man

April 18, 2008 / Universal Monsters / Leave a Comment

Apr 18 2008

By Scott Essman

Yes, there was Ricou Browning for the underwater scenes and suit performers on land who followed, notably Tom Hennesy and Don Magowan, but for millions of “creature feature” fans, Benjamin F. Chapman, Jr. was the “reel” Gill Man from the original 1954 classic, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. On February 21, he sadly passed away in Hawaii at the age of 79.

Certainly, the Bay Area native had the advantage of being a player on the Universal lot in the early 1950s and his 6’5” size and relative youth – in his late 20s – made him ideal for the part of the creature who stalks North American invaders of his native Amazonian lagoon in the beloved film, originally filmed in 3D. But Chapman brought a grace and several nuances to the performance of the first Gill Man, which made him one of the great icons in the Universal Studios canon of classic monsters.

In preparations for the creation of the titular character, Universal’s makeup department, headed by Bud Westmore, cast Chapman’s and Browning’s various body parts to fabricate the Gill Man costume, which was realized in foam rubber. Different sections such as torso, arms and legs, were taken off of impressions of Chapman’s body, then the team, including stalwarts such as Tom Case and Jack Kevan, created individual sections. The memorable Gill Man face was designed by artist Milicent Patrick and sculpted by Chris Mueller. Chapman was suited up on a daily basis by Bob Dawn for his exterior scenes, filmed on Universal’s backlot. Footage of Browning in a duplicate suit was achieved on location in Florida.

Though Chapman never played the Gill Man in the sequels, he did reprise the creature for the Colgate Comedy Hour’s TV episode with Abbott and Costello, a program in which they comedy duo first encounters Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster, then reveals the Gill Man to the public for the first time anywhere. Though only three films all in, the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON series rates with any of Universal’s monsters from the 1930s and 1940s for sheer fan adulation.

Chapman had long been retired from acting but made regular personal appearances at conventions and autograph signings over the years. He maintained a website, The-Reelgillman.com, and was the focus of fans’ love since magazines such as Famous Monsters of Filmland made the character popular again for new generations of fans in the 1960s and 1970s. Always good natured and happy to talk about his 1953-1954 Gill Man performances, Chapman will be fondly remembered by fans of the original film and all who had met him since.

Special thanks to Dan Roebuck plus Sam Borowski & Matthew Crick, creators of the documentary CREATURE FEATURE: 50 YEARS OF THE GILL MAN

Prom Night (2008)

April 15, 2008 / Movies (Bad) / 5 Comments

Apr 15 2008

Zombos Says: Fair

Prom Night‘s life-size theater-promotion cardboard standee of a door, strategically placed to pique interest for this teen thriller, is a good indication of how much effort went into this movie. When I opened the door it only produced a halfhearted, single scream. The teenagers walking by when I did this looked surprised and laughed. Even they were expecting something a bit more slasher-scream-full.

When I watched the movie, I found boredom made my mind wander a bit when Donna (Brittany Snow) and her boyfriend, Bobby (Scott Porter) exchange corsages as Donna’s aunt and uncle look on, beaming with happiness. I imagined a prom night filled with monster corsages devouring boyfriends, Carrie-like J-horror prom nights stalked by ghosts seeking vengeance, or maybe even tuxedoed zombies crashing the prom night party; anything else but this unnecessary reworking of Jamie Lee Curtis’ more violent and relevant 80s slasher. I didn’t attend my senior prom. Perhaps I have unresolved issues with that. Or perhaps this movie has unresolved issues with terror, tension, and thrills. I think that’s more likely.

Director Nelson McCormick has done a large amount of episodic television work so maybe that’s why his movie is paced around imaginary commercial breaks. Each time tension builds he moves away from the action to show people dancing or crowning the prom king and queen. Like an episode of CSI, nothing appears out of control or erupts into hysterical terror. He also seems to have a fetish for closets. I lost count how often someone opened, reached into, looked in, or hid in, a closet. Donna hides under a bed twice, but I didn’t find that as annoying. Not much tension builds from opening closets, I can tell you that. I’d sum up this movie this way: give sinister look, slash a victim, show dancing in slow motion, show someone opening a closet; give sinister look, slash a victim, show more dancing, show someone else opening a closet; slash a victim, stop the dancing long enough to show prom king and queen being crowned, show someone opening a damn closet again, slash another victim; and so on…

Donna is stalked by her college teacher (probably her chemistry teacher; they’re all nutzy from handling toxic substances). It’s not clear why he needs to kill people in order to get close to her, but this is a slasher movie so reasons are not always necessary, only lots of slashing. He’s so good at it he leaves a bloodless trail suitable for this PG-13’er. After her family is massacred, three years pass before Donna’s back to normal enough to attend her senior prom. Not surprisingly, her stalking teacher escapes in time to rent a tux and join the festivities.

The teacher (Johnathon Schaech) gives overly sinister looks and acts like a Charles Manson wannabe. He wears a black golf cap, tweedy sport coat, and needs a shave. He looks intensely at you when spoken to without saying a word. Only in movies do psychos dress and act this way. In real life, the only guys who dress and act this way are directors and bloggers of horror movies. I admit I did wear a black golf cap before seeing this movie. Now I realize it does make you look like an oddball if you’re not golfing, so that’s it for me. I’m happy to say I haven’t worn a tweedy sport coat in years. I do still need to shave.

When Donna realizes she’s being stalked again, the action is chopped, but not in that good, horror-chopped-up sort of way. We keep shifting, never staying long enough in one place to be scared or cause popcorn tipping seat-jump. The opening few minutes promise much but deliver little, and I won’t pin all the blame on the PG-13 rating requirements. All the action is homogenized around those imaginary commercial breaks, and starts and stops with little tension or visceral involvement. It’s all glossy, television-slick—not cable, mind you–with no blemishes to fret over.

The prom is held in a lavish hotel with beautiful young people who don’t worry about recessions or social inequities or our out of control national debt. The police are adequately inept to help increase the body count, but Detective Winn (Idris Elba) goes through the motions anyway, and Elba does a good job in spite of the character he’s written into. When Donna is left almost friendless, I imagined how different this might have been.

What if Polly Pureheart Donna was a black-haired goth with punky attitude? Perky goth Donna flirts with her chem teacher (or maybe lit teacher is better: they like tweedy jackets, too), and going too far, regrets it. He goes nutz when she calls it off and can’t hold a test tube without breaking it just thinking of her. So now there’s her guilt and his feelings of rejection adding to the terror. Guilty terror with feelings of rejection is always great for building tension. To stay alive, she’s forced to make nice with the vixens from hell–the envied, fashion-conscious, hip girls at school who despise her Ubergoth ways. Her Doom Cookie boyfriend finds out all about the side fling and joins the chem teacher and both go after her and her newfound friends. Much collateral damage ensues, add lots of blood. The end is a multi-ambulance tear-jerker.

But, sadly, Donna is not goth, and her friends are the socially coolest in school. Everyone but the stalking psycho is dead set on having fun at the prom. Even the girly rivalry between Donna and Paris Hilton–sorry, my bad–between Donna and the spoiled rich girl who despises her is lukewarm and goes nowhere. Her boyfriend doesn’t even get the chance to protect or save her. What’s a boyfriend good for if he can’t at least do that? When the end comes, it’s exactly like the ending you’d see in a non-continued television episode just before the commercial break.

And roll credits.

Wait! There’s a glimmer of tension when her best friend Lisa (Dana Davis) realizes who the creepy guy in the black golf cap and tweedy jacket reminds her of, but no, that fizzles out without much frazzle. Instead there’s lots of predictable running away from potential help and through translucent plastic curtains hung in dark rooms as Lisa hides from the killer in a deserted part of the hotel under renovation. I was hoping she would stop and improvise a defense from the paint cans and tools lying on the workmen’s tables, but her character wasn’t written to be that clever.

At least she didn’t open another closet.

The Ruins (2008)
When the Vegetation Eats YOU

April 8, 2008 / Movies (Horror) / 7 Comments

Apr 8 2008

Zombos Says: Very Good

A better tagline for this movie would have been "What's Eating You?" That "Terror has Evolved" line is so predictable, so yesterday.

I’m not saying that The Ruins, directed by Carter Smith, is predictable or yesterday's terror, but it does contain some old, some new, and some very intense gore-toned frights; especially for the man sitting next to me in the theater who was so excited during one bloody, bone-crushing scene he had to stand up and shake it off. I could empathize. As for me, I just got cold sweats and tried to keep the squishing, tearing sounds from making me even more nauseous. I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a wimp when it comes to meaty scenes embellished with nasty sound effects.

Novelist Scott Smith adapts his story for the screen leaving it essentially the same, though he shuffles his characters a bit, placing more emphasis on the girls, Stacy and Amy, and less on the sentient, flesh-eating vines that mimic human voices and drip corrosive sap that burns like hell. And instead of Eric becoming infected with the hungry plants, as he does in the novel, onscreen it's Stacy (Laura Ramsey) who's driven to madness and self-mutilation. She looks better in underwear than Eric would have anyway (just saying).

Four Americans are talked into visiting Mayan ruins deep in the Yucatan jungle by a German stranger, Mathias (Joe Anderson), who they meet poolside. He asks them to join him on a visit to a dig site his brother and an archaeologist friend are working on.

Sure, why not? It only takes five minutes of chat to convince them to go deep into a jungle with a total stranger. Haven't these people seen Hostel?

Young Americans abroad in horror movies are always portrayed as irresponsible, fun-loving, and itching to get into mischief. Director Carter Smith dotes on their buff bodies and rosy cheeks as they splash away in the sun, providing quite an eyeful of Stacy and Amy. At first I thought he was doing the usual eye-candy for the teen crowd, but when Jeff, Eric, Amy, and Stacy become trapped at the top of the Mayan temple, he dotes on their increasingly dirty, disheveled appearance even more, exemplifying how unprepared they are, rushing into the jungle without a thought or a backpack. After the taxi drops them off and drives away, they worry how they'll get back to the hotel. Amy (Jena Malone) complains she can't walk through the jungle in her flip-flops.

Political commentary on American arrogance? A social metaphor for American youth's shallowness? No. Just dumb American tourists getting themselves into trouble as usual to prime the terror to come.

And the terror for this foolhardy group sinks in quickly when they realize they're badly screwed and help is not a cell phone call away. Bickering about the food they didn't bring with them, and with no 7 Eleven in walking distance, it's the lively vegetation that's happy to have their company for dinner. The local villagers come and try to warn them, but not understanding each other's language, or the danger, the villagers must force them to the top of the ruins after two of the no comprende touristas inadvertently stomp through the deadly plants during a tense standoff.

At the top they find the deserted dig site. A windlass and rope lead down into the ruins. Mathias insists on climbing down the rope, only managing to break both legs when it snaps. Jeff and Eric send the girls down to help him. The girls move the back-crackling and screaming Mathias into position to be hoisted out.

You'll be reaching for the Tylenol yourself as they move him.

It gets worse when Stacy gashes her leg while helping Mathias. The next morning her leg turns into a flower pot and sprouts a beautiful new vine.

The gore-o-meter hits the yellow zone starting here and goes into the red when Mathias' legs become a bloody trellis for more vines. Jeff, the first-year medical student, decides they have to remove his infected legs. Not much is left after the vines start growing in and around them, but the ensuing graphic double amputation is not for the squeamish. Not to be outdone, Stacy becomes crazed by the growing vegetation squirming around inside her. Grabbing a knife she decides to do surgery on herself.

She's not a medical student.

You may want to buy an extra-large popcorn bucket for this movie just in case. No popcorn; just the bucket. It may come in handy.

The continual ringing of a cell phone sends both girls down into the temple again to look for it. Perhaps it's a sat phone, or maybe Verizon's service really is that good. Or maybe there's something else going on and waiting in the dark rooms of the ruins for them. While the novel delves deeper into the sentience of the plants, the lesser disconcerting glimpses shown in the film provide an adequate sense of mystery and dread.

The Ruins is a straightforward and humorless study in terror, greatly aided by the foley artists. One can only imagine the glee they had in coming up with all those stomach churning sounds. Sure, you can heap on thematic, political, and all the social-allegorical and subtextual discussions you like, but this movie is body horror, visceral terror, and scary as hell, plain and simple. While there have been other movies and novels dealing with people-eating plants, the gore and pretty, but rash, young people come together here in a way that's quite unnerving. While the histrionic acting is par for the horror course, it's still done well to raise the tension. Applying realistic gore where it can do the most damage to your piece of mind, when depicting the novel's more harrowing scenes, doesn't hurt either: except for Jeff, Eric, Stacy, and Amy.

Bring a date to see this movie. I guarantee he or she will be clinging to you just as much as those hungry vines do to their victims. But in a nicer way.

The Perplexing Case of Shrooms (2006)

April 2, 2008 / Movies (Bad) / Leave a Comment

Apr 2 2008

Zombos Says: Fair

Down a forgotten street somewhere in New York City there stands a used-up, ashlar-surfaced office building waiting to be torn down. Should you enter through its bell archway, walk towards the solitary elevator that’s seldom used, and turn right, you would find yourself in a narrow hallway.

In its heyday, you could find the finest business agencies rubbing elbows, hustling and bustling, here, along with the home away from home, cubbyhole, sanctuary, and hideout for the New York Globe reporters. But that was in its heyday. Now all the hustle and bustle is done digitally, behind flickering screens and piled up cups of coffee. Most of the tenants are now tech-related. How boring.

If you walk past those frosted-glass doors now, with their chipped and peeling lettering looking like the worn names on tombstones, and continue all the way to the end, you would come to a frosted-glass door whose lettering still shines. That’s my office and my home away from home: the New York Globe’s old hangout.

My name is Artemis Greensleeves. Since my regular business has been slow of late, I decided to pick up some extra cash by working for the League of Reluctant Reviewers. I didn’t realize how busy I’d be. I prefer the peace of quiet here, though, so they send me what I need when they need to.

I’m always here until three in the afternoon, waiting, with one eye on the door’s metal mail slot, and the other nestled in a good book. After three I head to my regular job, making sure to stop at Starbuck’s for a dark roast coffee on the way. I like my coffee strong.

It’s always the same. I like that, too. A knock hasn’t sounded on the New York Globe’s door since the war, but the sound of footsteps clicking down the hallway lets me know when another movie is coming my way for review. Quick footsteps. Click, clack, click, and another DVD pops through the mail slot; then click, clack, click echoing back down the hallway and the silence returns.

While I waited for the sound of footsteps today, I stared again at the lithograph hanging above the Globe’s trophy case. They sure did win a lot of writing awards. There’s even a Pulitzer in there, on the second shelf, just behind the large crack in the case’s glass door. I’d love to win a Pulitzer one day. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

The lithograph is called The First Prayer of Congress. Every man in it is either bowing his head and kneeling or looking up towards heaven, very pious-like, as if seeking spiritual guidance—or maybe looking for forgiveness? If you look close enough you can see places
where it’s torn and foxing, and fading. I still like it, though.

When the click clack of footsteps came this time they sounded unusually hurried. Before the DVD slid free of the mail slot and hit the floor they were already retreating, leaving me alone with Shrooms. I read the cover, looking for a clue as to what I could expect. The tagline, “Get Ready to Get Wasted,” didn’t fill me with confidence. The soundbyte “Blair Witch on Acid” from a lucyvine.zoo didn’t do it for me
either.

Who the hell is lucyvine.zoo? I got to work writing my review.

Once again a group of American teenagers head abroad to get into mischief, and as usual in these low budget horrors, the actors look a tad older than ‘teensy’ would allow, but I won’t quibble. They do a wonderful job with a listless, by the body count, story for the most part.

Heading over to Ireland they meet up with shroom master Jake, who drives around in a Mystery Machine reject (minus Scooby Doo). I guess being a mushroom expert doesn’t pay all that much these days. Funny, but when I travel, which is seldom, I don’t usually book mushroom tours. I don’t think many people do, either. Only too old-looking college kids in horror movies book tours like that.

Soon they’re off to find magical mushrooms in the forest. Only this forest is populated by two drooling, unwashed, dim-bulb—stop me if you’ve seen this before—axe-carrying ne’er-do-wells who don’t communicate well; which is fine since after seeing them you wouldn’t want to hang around and chat anyway.

Unperturbed, the magical mushroom seekers venture deeper into the woods to steep some toadstool tea. At this point, you realize all of them are expendable because no one is likable and the catholic girls are having non-catholic thoughts while the boys aren’t catholic to begin with.

So you can see what’s brewing goes well beyond a simple cup of mind-bending tea.

Stirring the pot and plot, Jake tells them the creepy tale of the evil black brothers of Glenn Garig, who tortured and murdered their young charges—orphaned boys with no place to run except these woods. After one abused boy sneaks some bad-ass shrooms into the communal soup, seventy-eight kids, assorted brothers—and the janitor, I’d warrant—wind up massacred by one crazed surviving brother carrying
a sharp blade.

And that brother might still be stomping around the woods since no one really knows what happened to him!

At this point, the girls can’t take it anymore and tell Jake to zip it. Lucky for them, Glenn Garig is not close: sure, it’s about a ten minute walk from where they’re camped, but it’s not that close, so they should be able to sleep in their flimsy tents without any trouble whatsoever. Right?

The plop of the DVD hitting the floor nudged my attention. I picked it up. It was Shrooms. Again.

I was just watching it, wasn’t I?

Maybe I was having visions like Tara (Lindsey Haun), who went off to enjoy nature while Jake was giving his lecture on which mushrooms to stay away from. In a fit of pique, Tara eats the bad-assiest one of the “don’t” group.

After her near death experience, she becomes a regular Esmeralda the Fortuneteller, and has visions of her friends being stalked and butchered, one by one, by a hooded creepazoid with long nails, a sharp blade, and rotted teeth; looking like a cross between your typical J-horror vengeance ghost and a Hills Have Eyes mutant, this black brother is a tree-hugging nightmare.

But is he real, or are they all just tripping from the mushrooms?

Her friends, meanwhile, have made themselves pretty damn easy pickings with their sudden arguing. Just once I’d like to see a horror movie with friends that act like they are friends and not acquaintances. Of course the group splits up to make the slaughter, and the writer’s job depicting same, easier. While a group of people screaming at each other is somewhat easy to victimize, it’s just easier to victimize screaming singles instead.

“Don’t forget to tell them about me,” said the cow.

“Sure, I won’t—.” I blinked.

For a minute there I could have sworn a cow slid through my mail slot, blew up to full size, and talked to me, like in the movie. I mean, there’s no mail slot in the movie, just a cow that talks to Bluto (Robert Hoffman), who goes running off —that would be Bluto who ran off, not the cow—after drinking the entire pot of mind-tripping tea. Of course—sorry, but “of course” is a natural with most horror movies these days—that action makes him the first idiot to get
whacked.

On a personal note, I really have to stop drinking those venti-sized coffees from Starbucks. I pulled myself together. This review was starting to get to me.

Hack and slash, and run run run…to Glen Garig.

The one place in the forest they really shouldn’t be going is where they wind up. Before that, everyone is screaming at the top of his or her lungs for everyone else.

So my question is this: when being stalked in the forest, can anyone hear you scream? Based on this movie, the answer is NO.

As panic sets in, Tara manages to do a Looney Tunes bonk! into a tree, face first. While I think Elmer Fudd had better timing, she’s not bad at it.

Holly, meanwhile, runs to the scary-looking dilapidated shack nestling ominously in the woods. Now who, pray tell, would be living here? You guessed it: the Jonas Brothers!

No wait, it’s not them.

It’s Ernie and Bernie, the two drooling, dim-bulb conservationists seen earlier in the movie. She—sorry, but I can’t avoid it this time—of course walks right into the shack as Burt and Ernie—I mean Ernie and Bernie—look on and drool a lot. Maybe because there are no carcasses or raw meat hanging around she doesn’t realize you don’t enter decrepit shacks in the woods looking for a phone while two
unwashed guys talk a lot about goats with fondness in their voices.

And you wonder why the academy awards doesn’t take horror movies seriously anymore?

While there’s a bit of oh-my-god-how-stupid-can-she-be? in watching Holly walk into that shack, the tension doesn’t quite build enough to raise the scare factor beyond tepid. Director Paddy Breathnach also lingers on peering-through-holes-too-closely moments, but builds little suspense. His direction is by the numbers with little V8 creative juicing to liven up the one down, two down, three down slasher momentum. There is one bright moment regarding how the black brother, real or not, can sneak up on you unawares, but that’s the brightest it gets.

Well, it’s almost three in the afternoon. One more thing before I go. You will find out at the end whether the black brother is real or not, if that’s any consolation. Shrooms is not all that terrible. It’s just not the acid trip it could have been. None of the creative people involved in this movie apparently ingested any shrooms during its production, making it one big, unmagical, mystery tour.

The mystery is how it ever got green-lighted in the first place.

Virginia Creepers: The Horror Host Tradition of the Old Dominion

March 31, 2008 / Documentaries / Leave a Comment

Mar 31 2008

Virginia Creepers Documentary by Horse Archer Productions

Horse Archer Productions, is producing a documentary this summer about Virginia’s rich horror host tradition called Virginia Creepers: The Horror Host Tradition of the Old Dominion. Here’s the lowdown from Sean Kotz:

I think we will do most of the filming between the last week of April and the first week of June and we are currently planning a theater event in Richmond at the historic Byrd theater which seats 1300.

A couple of years ago, I formed a film company with my friend, Chris Valluzzo, and our first documentary, 2007’s HOKIE NATION, a film about Virginia Tech’s incredible football fans, has done very well and is now in a second pressing. The success of that film has given us the resources to pursue other projects that reflect our personal interests, including VIRGINIA CREEPERS.

As a kid, I lived in the Tidewater area of Virginia and became hooked by Dr. Madblood on WAVY TV 10, but I was also able to pick up a fuzzy signal from Channel 8 in Richmond and get Bowman Body on nights when the airwaves were generous. We moved to Northern Virginia in 1978 and soon I had Count Gore DeVol to keep me entertained. In other words, I was a host junkie back in the day, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would want to do something to capture that tradition as we experience it here in Virginia.

For this film, we want the microcosm of the Virginia experience to speak to people wherever they are. Naturally, we are interviewing the hosts, and a big part of our goal is to open up that history as well as the great hosts from the state who are still practicing the craft. At the same time, however, we really want to capture the fan experience and try to reveal why our hosts are so important to so many people. We don’t want to define the experience so much as celebrate it, and in that way, I think the film will be very unique.

Currently, we are inviting anyone who has an interest in this film to get in touch with us. We are looking for fans who have great stories, powerful memories and interesting memorabilia and perhaps some old clips unknown to the rest of the world. We are also seeking corporate and individual sponsors, AND we are looking for venues in Tidewater, Richmond and Northern Virginia for fan interviews and media events.

The Sick House (2008)

March 24, 2008 / Movies (Bad) / 3 Comments

Mar 24 2008

Zombos Says: Fair

“I don’t have time for this,” said Anna (Gina Philips), the comely archeology student in The Sick House.

Zombos and I looked at each other. We agreed with her. Once again Paul Hollstenwall, the scion of inconsequential cinema, had underwhelmed us with another exercise in pointless moviemaking.

Anna has just discovered the four punk metal wannabes who are freaking out because one of them appears to have the plague. For shame: that will teach them not to go kicking about in stolen cars for joy rides and breaking into bio-hazard excavation sites previously used as plague hospitals. And shame on Anna, too. Here she is yelling at them for breaking and entering when she did it first, releasing a centuries old evil—and former member of that notorious 1665 London touring group known as the Black Priests—in the process.

The five of them, the usual mix of underachieving and overachieving victims you’ll find slamming into each other in slasher movies, are in for a rough night of it. So is everyone else watching this whoozy, blurry, head-spinning shock-cut apparition, and zoicks! musical extravaganza. Whatever originality and novelty to be found in the story is undercooked by director Curtis Radclyffe’s palsied camera and over-reliance on J-horror hackneyism.

“Why can he not keep the bloody camera still!” cried Zombos.

“He’s sustaining the tension by forcing your disorientation with his constantly moving frame,” explained Paul.

“Tension? My neck is tense from all the quick-cut splicing and visual chittering,” Zombos retorted. “And those flickering fluorescent light fixtures must go. Could they not afford better lighting? I cannot see what is going on.”

Plague doctors? London’s Black Death of 1665?

A capital idea for gut-wrenching suspense and terror is reduced to a half farthing’s worth of overdone digital and cutting room trickery, making sense
the first victim in this suspense-less nonsense. My mind drifted among the possibilities if less confusing herky-jerky motion and more stillness
were the norm, to let the actors convey the terror overwhelming them.

Gina Philips gives a fair performance, though she seems too calm, too emotionless at times when you’d expect some “oh, sh*t, it’s the plague, we’re so f**ked!” or “blimey, what the hell is that thing what wants to eat our souls and kill us!”

Instead, she’s so proper, so academic. At least the others provide some frenzied bickering and craziness, and run like the dickens through the halls of the orphanage away from the not so good reawakened evil doctor making his terminal rounds. Lots of aimless running is part and parcel to horror movies, but here it’s more aimless and unintentionally confusing.

“Help me out here,” pleaded Zombos. “Are you pondering what I am pondering?”

“Not if it involves cocoa butter and bananas,” I said.

Zombos and Paul stopped arguing and looked at me. I quickly pulled my thoughts back to landfall.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“What do you think? asked Zombos. “Paul thinks this bloody movie is a punky masterpiece of new horror style and I am too old to appreciate it. Talk some sense into him will you.”

I took a deep sip from my hot mocha latte, embellished with Chef Machiavelli’s secret mix of herbs and spices he calls the Bombay tincture. I looked at Zombos, then at Paul. They waited expectantly with folded arms. I took another long sip and pondered. Was it simply bad direction or bad directorial choices? Was the acting mediocre or just hacked to pieces by all the scene juggling? Was the story poorly written or intentionally ground into a confusing mash? The Bombay tincture fortified my thoughts enough to proceed.

“It’s obvious the choices made here point to commercially shaping the movie for a younger audience, especially with the odd addition of that acid-drenched-metal song screeching over the opening credits. Today’s kids’ snippet-drenched YouTube attention spans are primed for choppy narrative, so they probably wouldn’t notice the yawning chasms of missing structural coherence in the visual narrative of this movie.”

There. I said it.

Zombos and Paul continued to look at me. Each slowly unfolded his arms. They ignored what I said and started arguing again. Good. At least now they would leave me alone to enjoy my mocha latte in peace.

But what ails The Sick House?

Although it contains cliché after cliché repeated in numbing succession, the acting is strong, the historical context very intriguing, and the atmosphere almost menacing, in spite of the overused Saw–styled tinting in the saturated lighting.

Ludgate Orphanage, aside from its spookhouse-flickering fluorescents, is dark—often too dark to make out what is happening—and filled with brooding rooms and hallways. Then there’s the tall, unstoppable, plague doctor dressed in his bizarre clothing and bird-like mask, stalking around with a bevy of grotesque children, murdered by him back in the 1600s. There is also a kicker ending that twists the story back on itself; but it will leave you just as confused as before.

The archeological dig that Anna’s been working on in the basement of the orphanage leads to another chamber further down. Before she can dig deeper, the authorities find evidence of lingering plague. Being an A student, Anna ignores the grave danger to herself, and the public at large, and breaks into the condemned orphanage after hours, to continue her work.

While she’s digging around in the basement, the four miscreant fun-loving hoody-punksters crash their stolen auto near the orphanage. Finding the door open—thanks to Anna—they hustle inside to avoid the English Bobbies and all those nasty lectures on grand theft auto and public menace behaviors they’ve obviously heard before.

It all goes down at midnight.

Time becomes frozen for everyone in the building as the plague doctor (John Lebar), brought back from the netherworld by Anna’s academic zeal, makes his killer appearance. There seems to be satanic purpose to his malevolence, but in J-horror fashion, the story doesn’t give you much to go on and the director is so hellbent on gimmicking the action it becomes impossible to follow at times, actually, most of the time, to the point of annoyance.

One clue: it all revolves around a baby to be born, but that is all you get.

Although there is not much gore, you do have people yelling at each other a lot and frantically running to or away from danger, people becoming possessed and frantically chasing other people, and people slippin’ ‘n slidin’ in something white, gelatinous, and filled with pukey-looking nastiness.

Leading up to an illogical but plot-convenient bathing scene—this is the creepy, insane killer infested orphanage remember—in thousands of blood sucking leeches (used to treat the plague back then: go figure).

The ending neatly leads into a sequelization antic for another set of plague doctor’s rounds ad nauseam in a round of franchise sequels, but I don’t think this doctor got to make another house call on DVD yet.

Maybe Paul is right. Maybe Zombos and I are too old to appreciate the style of The Sick House. Or maybe a script doctor and a steadier hand at the camera would have made this a more memorable, even classic, frightfest instead of another victims-offed in factory assembled horror movie storyline,
with added visual confusion to make it appear youthfully fresh.

Interview: Peter Normanton
From the Tomb

March 15, 2008 / Comics/Manga, Magazine Morgue / 3 Comments

Mar 15 2008

Peter Normanton is usually buried under, what with just completing The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics, and the rigors of publishing his From The Tomb magazine. But his love of the dissolute images and outrageous stories that spring from the unsavory pages of horror comics, to linger in our minds long after those pages have yellowed with age, makes him the kind of person we like to be interred with, too…for a little chat.

What is it about the horror comic medium that’s made you such an uber fan?

It goes back to my childhood. Like so many other kids I loved to be frightened by Doctor Who. I was convinced as a six year old the yeti was on the landing, stood outside my bedroom door. Twenty years later I had that rotten feeling all over again after watching Aliens at the cinema. I think I got my first collection of ghost stories when I was about nine, I loved that book. After that I was hooked.

I was always reading comics, mainly titles published over here in the UK such as TV21, Sparky, Beano and Jet. In 1972 Marvel Comics began reprinting the Silver Age Hulk, Spiderman and Fantastic Four in The Mighty World of Marvel. This was an incredible revelation because American comics were that rarest of treats; now I had the opportunity to keep up with these legendry stories. The love of horror, however, wouldn’t go away. It was stimulated still further by an afternoon programme with British comedian Bob Monkhouse, who was an avid comic book fan. He had in his hands several old horror comic books with the most lurid images you could imagine. They were ECs and I just had to have one of them. How, I had absolutely no idea. I wasn’t to know these titles had ceased to be published almost twenty years before. They appeared so taboo, offering the most disturbing imagery you could ever dream. I picked up a couple of DC’s one hundred page Unexpecteds, while the covers promised much the interior stories rarely satiated my lust for terror.

A few months later I came across Skywald’s Nightmare 17. It’s one of those moments I will never forget, catching sight of the cover through the newsagent’s window, with that half naked woman and the beast in the background. I had to ask for permission from my mum to make such a purchase. I still don’t know what I would have done if she had said no. I ran all the way back to the shop clutching my eighteen pence (the US equivalent would have been around 40 cents) dreading someone had already snapped it up, but no, it was still there. It seemed so adult and at last satiated my craving for that darkest kind of horror. Well almost; typically I had to have more, but those Skywalds would prove to be incredibly rare. Marvels line of black and white terrors would appear over here in the weeks that came and while I enjoyed them immensely nothing quite matched the feel of that issue of Nightmare.

In the years that followed my love of these titles has just grown. Towards the end of the 1980s, pre-Code comics became available in this country and those ECs finally came my way. Over the years horror comics have dared to unsettle and offer some amazing artistry. At their best they refuse to conform or offer any degree of compromise. I think those horror comics that attempt to be too mainstream are never going to survive. A good case in point is DC’s Hellblazer, which after twenty years is still as challenging as ever.

…

Interview: Peter Normanton
From the TombRead More »

LOTT-D: The League of Tana Tea Drinkers

March 13, 2008 / League of Tana Tea Drinkers / Leave a Comment

Mar 13 2008

Blame Brian at The Vault of Horror blog.

When he honored Zombos Closet of Horror with the E for Excellence Award, which is given from one blogger to another in recognition of their undying efforts, it got my little gray cells humming.

Horror bloggers are a unique group of devoted fans and professionals who keep the horror genre, in all its permutations and media outlets, alive and kicking. Often spending long, unpaid hours to keep their blogsites fun and interesting, horror bloggers share their unique mix of personality and knowledge to fans out of passion for a genre difficult to describe, but easy to love.

Horror bloggers hail from all walks of life, but their passionate love for horror movies, terrifying books, scary comics, and unearthly music–you name it–unites them.

I’m proud to be a member of this divers group. In the spirit of the E for Excellence Award, it’s time to honor exemplary horror blogs with our own special
insignia: one that signifies the heights to which we aspire, and the
code of excellence we follow to promote horror in all it’s wonderfully
frightening forms, from classic to contemporary, from philosophical to schlockical.

I present the League of Tana Tea Drinkers insignia, in recognition of horror bloggers who go the extra line, who toil away the extra midnight hour to present the best in horror blogging. This insignia lets readers know you belong to a select group of bloggers that
reach the heights of horrifying excellence, who know what rapture it is to sip Tana Tea by the
full moon, and trod the dark passageways beneath the earth in search of the unusual, the terrifying, and the monstrous.

Keep watching the skies, and reading the horror. LOTT-D is coming for you!

The Mad Magician (1954)

March 11, 2008 / Movies (Drive-in) / Leave a Comment

Mar 11 2008

Zombos Says: Good

When Price’s performances failed as touching works of naturalistic brilliance, they usually succeeded as thrilling romps of stylish theatricality. As a result, almost any Price performance is worth watching–for one reason or another. (Mark Clark in Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema)

Crypt of Horror’s DVD offering of 1954’s Columbia Pictures’ 3-D The Mad Magician is quite the trick indeed. It fooled me into thinking I was going to have a wonderful evening of murder done with panache, prefixed by that delightful glare of homicidal haughtiness, so patently and masterfully executed by Vincent Price in many of his films. Instead, the DVD’s murderously shoddy performance got in the way; enough to make me as mad as Gallico the Great.

The DVD case cover blurb “Homicidal Maniac weilds Buzz Saw horror against beautiful young women!” is quite foreboding to begin with. It’s not bad enough horror fans must constantly battle a public and familial image of being either illiterate ignoramuses or pimply, basement-dwelling, punk-rocking misfits lusting after beautiful young women (Goth babes especially), but misspelling a simple word like “wield” instead of the more complex word like “homicidal” doesn’t help our case at all now does it? And which homicidal maniac wielding a buzz saw against beautiful young women are we referring to? There’s certainly no one in this 1954 period movie that fits that description.

Following on the heels of Warner Brothers’ successful 3-D House of Wax in 1953, Price once again dons a vengeful smock, this time playing an inventor of magic tricks and stage illusions who dreams of performing his creations in front of the footlights. On the night of his successful debut performance, performing as Gallico the Great, he’s stopped by his unscrupulous employer who holds an ironclad contract not even Lucifer himself could get out of.

Just as Gallico was stopped from performing his magic, I was stopped, repeatedly, by Crypt of Horror’s DVD-R cheapie disc duplication process as it brazenly jumped scenes and unexpectedly paused, taunting me to the brink of homicidal ideation. I was ready to lose my head, but Gallico the Great beat me to it.

Turning slightly daffy, he gives his soon-to-be-former gloating employer, Ormond, a really close look at his buzz saw illusion in action. That horrific scene, with Price’s demonic glaring and vibrant voice spewing invectives, and the whirring blade swinging closer to finally slice off Ormond’s head–conveniently done out of sight to avoid those messy 1954 censorship issues–is still frightfully effective. But there’s no blood! Not one drip nor spray nor streak. If remade today there would be buckets of blood flying in all directions, along with bits and pieces of tracheal innards. Yet due to Price’s theatrics, and the tightly framed action, it’s still a highlight in an otherwise disappointing directorial effort by The Lodger director, John Brahm.

Not being a mentalist, Gallico the Great Klutz promptly loses his severed head when he places it in a leather bag that matches the one his comely stage assistant (Mary Murphy) is carrying. Off she goes to dinner–I wonder what she was carrying before she switched bags because she doesn’t seem to mind the extra weight–and Gallico frantically runs after her to get it back. Not being an assistant to a mentalist either, when he catches up with her he finds she’s gone and forgotten the bloody thing in a hansom cab. But not to worry: the cabby played good samaritan and turned it in to the local constabulary. This ghoulishly humorous interlude, made memorable by Price’s naturally subtle comedic instincts, ends well for him, though his odd behavior running down the bag piques the interest of his assistant’s detective boyfriend (Patrick O’Neal).

Inexplicably, Gallico pretends to be Ormond, and donning a mask and changing his voice, he rents a room from the local nosy mystery writer. No sooner can you say “sinister Sam Spade snookers six slithering snakes,” Ormond’s wife and Gallico’s ex-wife are invited in for tea by the meddling mystery writer who recognizes her new boarder from a newspaper photo. Ormond’s wife (Eva Gabor) surprises Gallico thinking he’s Ormond. Not having the buzz saw handy, he has to rely on good old-fashioned strangulation to let her know how much he doesn’t like her anymore.

So far, she’s the only beautiful young woman he kills, and he didn’t even use a buzz saw. His next victim is definitely not a beautiful young woman: he gets even with the conniving Rinaldi (Kronos’ John Emery), a rival magician. The climactic scene with the cremation illusion jumped past the point of my patience after repeatedly going through Crypt’s Disc of Horror torture test, but it’s a sizzling climax when seen in its entirety.

The illusions in the film, including the buzz saw, the cremation, and the water fountains, are based on noted stage illusions made famous by such magicians as Horace Goldin and Harry Blackstone Sr.–though Ricciardi threw in the innards and blood for the buzz saw, and the Great Rameses performed a version of the cremation illusion. One illusion in the film done with mirrors reveals the secret. Perhaps done in 3-D it wasn’t noticeable.

The bug-eyed music is distinctly 1950s terror in flavor, and adds to the overall mood of the film, especially in tandem with Price’s sinister stare. Introducing the movie is Lon Midnight and his equally odd friends. Lon’s cheesy horror hosting shenanigans, which didn’t suffer from the dubious duping process, were in keeping with the movie’s theme and are fun to watch.