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JM Cozzoli

A horror genre fan with a blog. Scary.

Masterpiece Theatre’s Dracula (2006)
A Forgery

/ Movies (Bad), Streaming/TV/Mobile / Leave a Comment

Zombos Says: Poor

From the Journal of Iloz Zoc

Feb 11. Westbury— Oh, the horror!  In this age of reimaginings and adaptations based on mere fancy and egotistical hubris, to be subjected to this singular carriage-wreck of a teleplay is more than I can bear. What mind could conceive such a thing; to put pen to paper with such disregard, such wretched villainy in this version of Dracula, and to put Bram Stoker’s name upon it? I hear the pounding now, like the beating of my racing heart, as he pummels the lid of his coffin, seeking retribution for this vile act. I feel faint. I must lie down.

Excerpt from the front page of Victorian Variety — Who Do This Hoodoo? A Stinkeroo.

Feb 12. London—From the What-Were-They-Thinking social club comes this switch on the Stoker-coker pot-boiler, mangling Count Drac with so-called Brotherhood of Undead and syphilis shenanigans. Poor Van Helsing (David Suchet) is reduced to switcheroo role with Harker (Rafe Spall) and becomes head vamp’s captive, set free in last half-hour to lead lackluster wooden-stake charge against is-that-all-you’ve-got? blood-sucker in a chamomile tea-paced climax.

Ninety minute walk-through-park story has Lord Holmwood (Dan Stevens) contracting syph from over-sexed Dad, forcing him to postpone nuptials with hot-to-trot Lucy (Sophia Myles) as he goes off to find cure from undead count using social ties with Brotherhood of the Undead, headed by a chap named Singleton, who dresses better
than the count, clothed in simply gorgeous Freemason, secret society-style robe and hat.

Using Singleton (Donald Sumpter) as his go-between, Holmwood foots bill to have Dracula take longer than three-hour cruise to England aboard doomed ship Demeter. Due to minuscule budget, not much happens during faithful trip as weather doesn’t get rough and the tiny ship doesn’t get tossed.

Why does every movie miss potential, terror-filled carnage aboard the Demeter? Then again, why bother writing this snooze-fest?

Bat-man (Marc Warren), smitten by Harker’s snippet of Mina’s (Stephanie Leonidas) hair, decides to woo said Mina while chewing on Lucy’s neck as an aperitif. Lucy, who’s not been getting any lately, is only too anxious to oblige, sending would-be paramour Dr. Seward (Tom Burke) into spasms of impotent rage; or something like that, as his acting is a shade past monotone.

Meanwhile, at the Brotherhood of the Undead’s office, Singleton and another member profess their adulation for the undead guy, only to have him wring their necks. Drac keeps pining for Mina, while Holmwood and Seward pine for Lucy, and this reporter pines for the big stake-o’ pine in Drac’s chest to end this unbelievable tedium.

In the basement, Seward finds Van Helsing—cowering un-Van Helsing-like—in a corner. David Suchet plays Helsing like a man running for the bus. Wisely choosing to hide his features in a white wig and beard, he routinely pulls out the crosses and stakes for the big showdown.

Gearing up for the anxiously-awaited—by this reporter—ending, Helsing, Seward, and Holmwood head over to Lucy’s vault in order to test the sharpness of their stakes. Puzzlement here as to why Holmwood doesn’t just let Lucy bite him in the neck to cure his syphilis—the whole reason for this mess—but why bother with good scripting so
late into the story? With amazing ease, Holmwood plunges a large stake into Lucy’s chest and she goes down for the count.

Speaking of the count, next stop is Drac’s place of unrest, and after a little polite mayhem, Drac and Holmwood wind up dead (with Drac presumably deader than he was),
mercifully ending this life-less version of Bram Stoker’s classic. Or does it? In a sequalization-antic, Drac appears to not be really dead after all. Lord help us all if there’s a sequel.

Telegram to David Suchet from his agent, undated.

Hollywood—Look David, if you insist on appearing in these things, you better wear a white wig and beard to hide yourself. As your agent, I only want what’s best for your
career, and believe me, this ain’t it. STOP But go ahead, do whatever you think best; I can only recommend what I believe to be a saner course of action for you. STOP

Journal of Iloz Zoc, cont.

Feb 12. Westbury—I feel much better now. Chef Machiavelli brought me a nice cup of chamomile tea to calm my nerves. The life of a movie reviewer is not an easy one, and there are moments of real terror as well as joy. Why attach Bram Stoker’s name to such a cinematic detour as this version, nay, this base use of his characters in such
a folderol? Dracula himself is nothing more than a mercurial, long-haired rock star impersonator, showing no cunning, no evil wisdom garnered from living for
centuries. And where is his foreign accent? And how can you relegate a novel, full of terror and action, to a mere ninety minutes?

Sadly, commercial interruption here would have been much appreciated. Worst of all, key dynamics of Stoker’s masterpiece were removed entirely, or presented in abridgment. Harker is dead, and does not return to lead the fight against the count, and the sweep of action from Transylvania to England and back to Transylvania is gone. Van Helsing, once the self-assured powerhouse, the catalyst for action, is nothing more than a shell of his former incarnations.

Subtexts of vampiric sensuality and Victorian prudeness are lost against the flagrant syphilitic-focused plotline. Dracula himself is relegated to a supporting role,
and displays no charisma, no depth, no fear-inducing terror. More effort was spent on his hairdo and self-conscious preening than playing an undead creature
that has survived for centuries, knowing only the lust for blood.

Curse the day I started using TiVo, and the ease at which one can watch such an abomination, unsuspecting.

Documentary: Lugosi
Hollywood’s Dracula (1997)

/ Documentaries, Universal Monsters / Leave a Comment

Lugosi as DraculaZombos Says: Very Good

In spite of a disheartened director, and a greatly reduced budget, the 1931 film, Dracula, remains a classic for various reasons. For one thing, it was the first speaking horror film, although music was not used except for the opening credits. For another, it had indelible performances by skillful actors.

One performance stands out above the rest, and has left its mark on subsequent impersonations of the aristocrat of the undead, and ushered in an era of monsters that continues to this day.

Perhaps it was the oddly-inflected voice, with the thick accent, that hinted of wolves baying in the moonlight and fear-inducing evils-by-night, living in dark forests; or  maybe it was the slow, determined mannerisms of a person, undead for centuries, for whom the urgencies of mortal time held little meaning; or it could have been those eyes that pierced right through you from under that furrowed brow. For whatever reasons, Bela Lugosi’s performance of Dracula is the image of the vampire count that has stood the test of time.

In Lugosi: Hollywood’s Dracula, writer and director Gary Rhodes explores Lugosi’s amazing career using rare film clips and onscreen interviews with Lugosi’s son, and others that knew Lugosi. What makes this documentary stand above the rest is its use of living history — people — to talk about the man and actor, providing us with an insightful glimpse into this iconic actor’s professional and personal life. Combined with previously unseen footage and stills of Lugosi’s early silent work, this two-disc DVD set clearly shows the broad range of talent and indomitableness of Lugosi as Hollywood ignored him, and squandered his acting in films well beneath his abilities.

Clever additions to the set are some of Lugosi’s Old Time Radio ‘appearances,’ including the creepy, The Thirsty Death from Mystery House, 1944, and an Easter Egg! The funny mockumentary of Gary Rhodes’ quest to sit in Bela Lugosi’s chair can be viewed by going to the last page in the DVD Notes section until “Back” is highlighted, then pressing the Up arrow on your remote (or keyboard, if watching on a PC), followed by pressing “Enter.”

In the Deleted Scenes section, you will find more film footage and discussion on White Zombie (one of his creepiest performances) and Lugosi’s Poverty Row films of the 1930s.  From Murder Legendre in White Zombie, to Ygor in Son of Frankenstein, Lugosi’s performances were always masterful and uniquely different, and created memorable characters in horror cinema.

Director Gary Rhodes steps into the closet for an interview.

 

How did the idea for putting together the documentary come about?

I found the previous Lugosi documentaries [of which there were two of note (Lugosi: Forgotten King, and the A&E Bio)] to be very limited. Knowing that there were quite a few important and interesting people that neither of those films interviewed, such as Hope Lugosi, spurred me to plan the documentary. That was in tandem with the fact that I knew the whereabouts of a good deal of previously unseen footage.

What challenges did you face to bring the documentary to life?

There were a few challenges. That so many people we wanted to interview were already deceased. That some clips were so expensive we couldn’t afford them. Those would be the two biggest challenges.

While watching the documentary, I was happy to see many clips and stills from Lugosi’s silents’ performances, something you rarely see. What challenges did you face in finding them, and why can’t we see more of Lugosi’s work in silent films?

The difficulty with Lugosi’s silent work is that very little exists. We incorporated clips from the only surviving fragments of Lugosi’s Hungarian career, which were thus seen publicly for the very first time. We found and used clips from Dance on the Volcano, which was the first time the clips had ever been seen (and we were thus responsible for its subsequent release through Sinister Cinema). And we used clips from Deerslayer, Silent Command, and Midnight Girl.

The reason more of his silent work can’t be seen is that very few beyond those we drew clips from exist. Daughters Who Pay, from 1926, exists at the Eastman House in a version that must be transferred to safety stock and restored (at a cost of many thousands of dollars) before it can be viewed/released. But most of his work of the time simply doesn’t exist, particularly his Hungarian and German period.

That montage of scenes you orchestrated, without narration, especially caught my attention. At first it didn’t quite register, but when I watched the documentary a second time, I realized it captured much of Lugosi’s acting versatility.

I appreciate your comment about the montage of scenes, as that was what I was driving after.  Some way to encapsulate the larger whole of his work, especially given the time constraints of an hour film (which was still in fact longer than previous docs on BL, which were both hovering around 44mins). Plus, it was a way of working with the previously mentioned challenge of not having enough access to the Universal film clips due to cost.

As a writer and director, do you use a different approach when working on a documentary compared to the way you approach a regular movie?

I’ve been making films professionally since 1991, and my first documentary (Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian) is still in print from VIEW Video … it raised enough funds to mark the hitherto unmarked grave of the seminal electric guitar player.

But I think in recent years my approach has changed, and that change has happened since/just after finishing the Lugosi doc. From Solo Flight thru Fiddlin Man and Lugosi: HD, I approached things too much as a historian, possibly. Privileging rare clips/interviews with those who hadn’t been/etc., above the concerns of fictional film, which would be things like narrative form, three-act structures, and so forth.

I think doing the mockumentary film Chair (about Lugosi’s Chair, which is a hidden feature/easter egg on the DVD made me begin thinking more about emphasizing the story being told over the tools used to tell it (like, say, rare clips or the like).

This has impacted more recent work of mine, particularly Banned in Oklahoma , Seawood (a just-finished film about alzheimer’s … a case study), and my movement more and more into fictional film (like Wit’s End, a feature comedy). So it has been a transition.

As for Bela, that was probably simultaneously the best and worst topic for me to do… the best because of my love for his work, my lifelong interest in him, and my knowledge of the subject (I had previously written Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers, a 1997 book for McFarland, recently back in print in paperback). But I say it was also the worst choice because I was/am too caught up in minor details, adoring, say, an extremely rare clip when most viewers wouldn’t necessarily know whether it was rare or not.

At any rate, my love for Lugosi continues. I have a book (that Dick Sheffield helped on) called Bela Lugosi, Dreams and Nightmares that is brand new… it is literally due out in print on Feb 20 of this year, in just a few weeks.

Interview With Jonathan Maberry
On Writing

/ Authors / Leave a Comment

 

Jonathan Maberry Author photo“What’s the matter?” Zimba asked.

“My muse is not amused today,” I said. I sipped my third Dunkaccino in my doldrums, and sharpened a few more pencils. I had been alternately doodling and sipping, trying to get my story down on paper; or, at this stage, anything down on paper.

“There’s more to writing than just waiting for inspiration, you know.”

“I know. But it’s so hard trying to juggle time, things that need to get done, and writing. Like juggling balls, it’s easy to get them into the air and not so easy keeping them there.  To make matters worse, you have writers like Jonathan Maberry blithely juggling literary rings, non-ficion pins, and graphic novel buzz-saws while taking bites out of an apple, all at the same time. It’s demoralizing.” I took a long sip of my Dunkaccino.

“Jonathan Maberry?”

“He wrote Ghost Road Blues, a first novel that’s already received a preliminary Bram Stoker Award nomination. Makes me sick.” I took a hopeful sip from my empty Dunkaccino cup. Damn things are never big enough.

“Well, why don’t you just ask him how he does it,” she said.

“You can’t just go and bother a writer because—”

“Why not? It’s easy. Just click your pencils together three times and say “There’s no writing like my writing, there’s no writing like my writing, there’s no…”

I looked at her. She was serious. I clicked my pencils together and repeated those words. In a poof of light and smoke Jonathan Maberry appeared.

“Damn, not again! You neophyte writers are a pain in my — what? Oh, sorry.” He adjusted the bath towel around his waist.

Zimba exhaled.

“Well, I see you two have lots to talk about.” She left the room with rosy cheeks.

I was speechless.

“Well?” Maberry said, toweling-off his hair. “I’m waiting. Make it snappy.”

 

With the Ghost Road Blues trilogy, the Joe Ledger series, other fiction and non-fiction books written or in the works, comic books, teaching duties, and an 8th degree black belt in jujutsu, how do you do it? Lots of coffee?

I never sleep.  No, actually I multi-task well and I plan things out before I do them.  Unlike a lot of novelists, my background is in journalism rather than creative writing. At Temple U  I learned the reporter’s trade–get your hook, do your research fast, writing quickly, always nail your deadline, and move on.  I don’t believe in writer’s block–I think that’s an excuse for poor planning or a lack of discipline. If it existed, reporters would be telling their editors that “the muse just isn’t with me today”…and the next day they’d be working at McDonalds.

Real pros write, and they write every day. They set goals and meet them. This doesn’t mean, however, that they have less passion or less of an appreciation for the more artistic aspects of writing, it’s just that they can get the job done. I have a lot of friends who are professional writers, and they all pretty much agree.

On the other hand, sometimes time evaporates and I feel like I’m driving three cars at once. Aside from writing a novel a year, I also write one or more nonfiction books a year, I write articles, I’m writing a pilot episode for a TV series; and I own or co-own a few businesses.

I’m a founding partner of the Writers Corner USA (in Doylestown, PA), which is a writers education center, and I teach a bunch of classes there–which I love; I’m co-founder of The Wild River Review, a literary e-zine, and I just wrote a long serial feature on the ‘thriller genre’, which included interviews with Lawrence Blocks, Steve Hamilton, Barry Eisler, and others; I own Career Doctor for Writers, which provides editorial, proofing and career counseling for writers; and I’m president and chief-instructor for COP-Safe, which provides cuff-and-arrest and risk management workshops for law enforcement. I sit on a couple of boards — Philadelphia Writers Conference, etc.; and I’m the president of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania Chapter of the Horror Writers Association.

So…where do I find the time?  The real answer is that I have no freaking idea. Stuff gets done and I stay happy doing it. Coffee and meditation help a lot.  

What’s Ghost Road Blues about, and why is it shaking up the Bram Stoker Awards?

The success of Ghost Road Blues took me a little off guard. After thirty years as a magazine and nonfic book writer I took a shot at a novel–a trilogy of novels, actually–and hoped it would have at least modest success. I’d never written book length fiction before and simply sat down and wrote the kind of book I would read. I love epic stories, I love stories with ensemble casts, I love exploring the psychological cause and effect of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Fiction allows me to explore that.

Ghost Road Blues has racked up something like 107 Amazon reviews, of which nearly 100 are 5-star. Publishers Weekly compared it to Stephen King, and even though I don’t think I write like King, that was a helluva nice thing for them to say.

I think some of its success comes from my public appearances. I have so much fun with the horror genre, and people tell me that they love my enthusiasm and passion. When I do a talk or appear at a signing, I don’t just sit there and blab about my books…I talk about the whole genre, about the marvelous books–both classic and recent–that keep horror vital and alive.

Having the book recommended for two Stokers–Novel and First Novel–floored me. It absolutely floored me. I had no idea that I’d get even a single recommendation, and yet at the end of the initial phase I was in first place for recs for First Novel, and sixth in Novel! If I make it all the way to the official ‘Nomination’ phase, which happens around the middle of February, I think I have my strongest shot in First Novel. But even if I don’t win…just being included in the short list is a real buzz. I’ve read all of the other books, and I don’t see them as ‘competing’ books. These are books by friends and people I really admire. It’s excellent company no matter what happens, and we’ve all been joking that the winner has to buy the others the first round of drinks at the Stoker Banquet.

Why do you use the horror genre as your writing voice?

Horror allows me to take the brakes off. Horror isn’t safe and writing shouldn’t be safe.  In horror you can address the darkest, most dangerous parts of the human heart, and that’s where you learn about the true nature of each character. Some of our most profound pieces of literature have used the supernatural as a vehicle for telling stories of great cultural, literary, or psychological worth. Shakespeare loved the supernatural — The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth; Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a pretty damn scary ghost story; Dracula and Frankenstein are enduring classics. Go back further and look at Dante and Milton, at Homer. Monsters, ghosts, demons. Most people want to believe in a larger world; and even for those who don’t, the horror format allows you a structure for telling a tale that otherwise readers might not try.

You see the same thing in SF and fantasy. The Twilight Zone and Star Trek were really morality tales, social or political commentary, even farces about the human condition–and if they had been done as straight dramas on TV would we even have watched them, let alone remember them all these decades later?

There is such a grand tradition of horror writers speaking in a voice that is unafraid of telling the truth about what goes on in the twisting corridors of the human mind. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend tells you just about anything you’ll ever need to know about how we deceive ourselves by accepting the propaganda that supports our biased vision of the world; The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is a short course on the dynamics of psychological disintegration; Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes speaks eloquently about the devastating effect of the choices we make, and about the ordinary heroism latent in the human soul. The list goes on.

Sadly, in recent years horror’s gotten a bad rap. All of the major publishers, including the one that does my books—Pinnacle–have stopped using ‘horror’ on the spines.  They’ve started calling their books ‘fiction’.  Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub are known as ‘suspense’ writers. Maybe it’s backlash because of torture-based films like Saw and the spate of slasher films we had over the last couple of decades, the whole industry has been labeled as trash. That’s amazingly unfair…especially since most of the slasher flicks were not written by horror writers, or even writers of adequate literary chops. When a real writer takes a shot at writing something like a serial killer story you get a Silence of the Lambs.

I’m going to rant a bit here, so bear with me. When real horror writers–whether they call themselves that or not–take a popular genre and give it their all, you get books that can stand as literature by anyone’s standards. You want a ghost story? Try The Shining, or Matheson’s Stir of Echoes; Wither by John Passarella, or Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.

You want to read about the social and psychological effects of the apocalypse, a genre with a lot of great books, take a look at The Stand, Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

You want a good monster tale that actually has story rather than just shock? Pick up Charles Grant’s The Pet, Phantoms by Dean Koontz, Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker.

There are marvelous cross-genre works, like the Repairman Jack novels by F. Paul Wilson, and the mysteries with a touch of the supernatural that John Connolly and Peter Straub write with such elegance and insight.

Novels about culture clash? Try Dan Simmons’ The Song of Kali or Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory.

Or, how about coming of age? That genre doesn’t begin and end with To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye.  Take another look at The Body by Stephen King, A Boy’s Life by McCammon, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and Bradbury’s Something Wicked this Way Comes and Dandelion Wine.

We even have slasher stories that strike right to the heart–Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris; and Jack Ketchum’s legendary Off Season.

And this is just scratching the surface. For every book and writer I just named there are dozens and dozens of others in the horror genre who have written– and are still writing–books of literary merit that also display deep insight, subtlety, and the power to both encourage and compel deeper thought on the part of the reader. Horror does this because to a large degree that’s what horror literature is all about.

 

“Hey, these Dunkaccinos are good,” Maberry said, sipping his second cup. Glenor was kind enough to make a sustenance-run for us. “You could raise the heat, too, you know. I’m freezing my ass off.” He pulled the towel tight around his waist as I turned up the thermostat. “Now where were we?”

 

…

Interview With Jonathan Maberry
On WritingRead More »

The Messengers (2007)

/ Movies (Horror) / 1 Comment

the Messengers Zombos Says: Very Good

There is nothing worse than having skeletons in your closet, unless you have vengeance-seeking dead people in your cellar, too. In The Messengers, both skeletons and dead people come together in a fusion of Japanese Horror and American Gothic images for its effective PG-13 scares.

The tragedy–there is always an instigating tragedy in J-Horror– sets the tone for mayhem to come as one family reluctantly moves to the cellar of their old, dark farmhouse, stuck out in the middle of nowhere–with no coffee shop in screaming distance–of a North Dakota sunflower farm.

Reluctantly taking up residence in the gloomy house is the Solomon family. Something happened in the city that has caused a lot of tension between them and they need a place to work things out. There’s something to be said for the peace and quiet of the countryside to work things out, but since this is a horror movie they don’t get it.

The original tenants, now bluish-gray with morbidity set in, play with Ben (Evan Turner) in the dead of night and get on Jess’ (Kristen Stewart) nerves. Their clickety-clack scampering along walls and ceilings, and annoying floating, gallows-style, above the floor ruins the peace and quiet for Jess. A nasty black stain on Ben’s bedroom wall keeps getting bigger no matter what mom does. This J-Horror imagery works well with the fusty Gothic farmhouse and the ever-present black crows hovering around it (like the pigeons in Pigeons From Hell). A nerve-rattling scene has Jess being dragged by an unseen force down the long hallway and through the open cellar door, then grabbed at by cadaverous arms shooting out of the darkness behind her, trying to pull her down. Old, dark farmhouses have scary cellars just perfect for scenes like this.
More subtle American Gothic elements move to the forefront when Burwell (John Corbett) shows up at the farm.

Toting a shotgun to scare away the increasing number of crows, he stays on to help bring in the crop of sunflowers. Those skeletons keep rattling as Jess tries to make her family believe in them. John lends a sympathetic ear, but Jess realizes she must find out what happened to the previous family–the ones doing the rattling–in order to save her own. While she goes off to find help, her Mom gets to intimately know more about the large black stain on the wall, and John confronts his past. Both families eventually meet, though I’d hold off on the dip and chips.

If you’re looking for gore and sprays of arterial blood go elsewhere. The Messengers is better than that. Using shock cuts, good acting, and enough time to unfold the terror along with the tragedy, it delivers less bodies with more suspense.

Book Review: The Undead and Philosophy

/ Books (Non-fiction) / 2 Comments

 

Zombos Says: Very Good

“What is it about zombies?” asked Zombos. He put aside his cup.

“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said. Shadows from the long day drifted lazily on the floor of the solarium. I had been trimming the corpse plants and orchids while he sipped his late afternoon coffee.

“That book, the Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless one. I was reading it last night.” Zombos put his hand to his chin.

I gulped. A little philosophy can be a dangerous thing, especially when rattling around in a head like his with nothing to cushion it’s impact against the inside of his thick skull. The vision of a ball-bearing cracking the side of a glass sprang uppermost in my mind. I’d rather be a poor servant to a poor master then have to listen to Zombos’ philosophical ruminations.

“Who would have thought,” he continued, “that zombies, rotting creatures prone to consuming mass quantities of, well, mostly living people, would provide such a large pile of compost to fertilize thought and discussion in of all things, philosophy.”

I accidentally snipped the rare marifasa lumina lupina in half. I wisely put down my shears as Zombos continued. A cold chill ran down my back as clouds blocked the sun, and the complacent shadows on the solarium floor scattered to oblivion.

“Take Murray’s essay, When They Aren’t Eating Us, They Bring Us Together,” Zombos said. My mind frantically put out a call to David Chalmers, but the line was dead, dead, deadski. “In her essay she examines which of the two is better, individualism or communitarianism, by using George Romero’s films.”

“Individualism does lead to higher body counts in horror films,” I said.

“Let me think. That does seem to be her summation of it. Consumerism is also a main point of ridicule and admiration in Romero’s works, too. The zombies consume people, who are themselves consumed by fear, which makes the living scramble for a social contract that, due to their individualism, they ineptly engineer. In the end, unable to become a living community that can defend itself against the more socially-bonded — but dead — community of the zombies, the social contract crumbles, and the living revert back to their individualistic states of actions, which leads them all to being eaten in no time. I say, Zoc, good call on that one. It does appear that communitarianism is the way to go when surrounded by zombie hordes.”

“I see you’ve finally read that book I gave you,” said Fadrus, joining us. He’s an uncle on Zimba’s side. He was staying with us for a spell before he continued his travels across the countryside.

“Very stimulating book it is, too,” Zombos said. “The editors, Greene and Mohammad have brought together some very interesting discussions about vampires and zombies. Of course, I’m prone to zombies these days, but the vampires hold up their philosophical end of it rather well.”

I poured a cup of coffee for Fadrus. I was relieved that he would now take over the philosophical dialog with Zombos. I turned my attention back to trimming the plants.

“Thank you, Zoc. What happened to that beautiful marifasa orchid? You didn’t let Zombos trim it, did you?” He laughed. “Zimba is going to show me your wonderful Long Island shopping malls tonight.”

“Speaking of malls,” Zombos said, “that reminds me of the consumerism innuendo Romero plays with in Dawn of the Dead.”

“Yes, that’s quite an image, isn’t it? The dead dying to get in, though they don’t know why, and the living just dying to shop.” Fadrus was also an ardent horror film fan. “Did you read Walker’s When There’s No More Room in Hell, the Dead Will Shop the Earth?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, I won’t recite the essay for you, but I will mention that he uses Dawn of the Dead as a springboard to discuss hedonism and the acquirement of goods beyond reason. He posits the simple question, ‘Can the ultimate goal of consumerism, to achieve happiness through the acquirement of more and more goods, actually lead to happiness?'”

Zombos thought for a very brief moment. “Why yes, of course.”

Fadrus looked at me. We both laughed. We both knew that the world’s treasures are not hidden in anyone’s closet, no matter how big that closet might be.

“What? What did I say?” Zombos asked.

“Nevermind,” Fadrus said. “Walker goes on to discuss the common elements that tie both dead and living together, aside from wanting to go to the mall and consume as much as possible. He also explores the individualist versus community aspect of it all, a strong theme that runs throughout most horror films, especially zombie ones. And it’s always the living community, built on individualistic behavior and disagreements that falls to the more efficient, single-minded community of the dead.”

“When you’re dead, there’s not much to disagree about,” I added.

“Astute point. Now, moving beyond the undead per se, Noel Carroll’s The Fear of Fear Itself examines the paradox of Halloween, which provides a wonderful dessert to the more involved discourses on vampires and zombies.”

“What is the paradox?”  Zombos asked.

“Death, my friend. The grim blackness of no return. The great question mark of life. The paradox is why we embrace death’s imagery so eagerly every Halloween, seeking it out in the media, playing trick or treat costumed in the grave’s finest, making fear our parodied captive while it holds us eternally captive?”

Zombos rubbed his chin. “Heidegger’s angst, eh?”

“Yes, and more. Carroll looks at the psychoanalytic approach, but then goes on to explore the meta-fear of fear. Our need to control fear by experiencing it — the how-close-to-the-cliff-without-falling-off approach. It can be exhilarating and life-altering in the same breadth. This mastery could be the reason why horror films focus more on realistic horror these days, that of serial-killers and sadists, more than supernatural ones. One strives to master fears based in reality, not fancy, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” Zombos said. “But there are worse things than death.”

“In what way? Fadrus asked.

“Hamish Thompson’s, She’s Not Your Mother Anymore, She’s a Zombie, opens up discussions that go beyond zombies and the undead.”

“I think I understand. You mean the value of personality when it no longer exists, or partially exists in another form that is more alien than familiar. Like a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or mental disease. What of the soul, then? Is it there, where does it go? How does it survive the physical and mental battering of life? That uncertainty can be overwhelming.”

The long day turned grayer. Zimba’s voice called to her uncle, and soon they were off to the malls.

Zombos sat quietly in his chair, looking into the dusk, hoping to see well beyond it. I poured another cup of coffee for him, and continued to trim the orchids as long as the fading light permitted.

Chindi Speaks: The Dresden Files

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The Dresden Files group scene of characters.Although I missed the premiere episode of The Dresden Files on the Sci Fi Channel, all-knowing, all-TV-viewing Chindi wrote up a review for us. And anyone who can use the word “nictitating” in a sentence can write a review for Zombos Closet anytime.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not yet read Jim Butcher’s original fantasy books upon which the SCI FI Channel’s new, original series, The Dresden Files, is based. I suppose that means I may have saved myself from the all too familiar disappointment when a TV adaptation fails to live up to the vision created by the author. On the other hand, I was quite taken with the premiere episode of The Dresden Files, “Birds of a Feather”.

Harry Dresden is a wizard in Chicago. What we see of the city is not the usual stock footage used in the old Bob Newhart Show, the original Night Stalker series or Steve McQueen’s Bullet. Rather, it’s lovely aerial footage or ground shots that don’t dwell on the
usual landmarks. In short, Harry could just as easily have set up shop in your neighborhood. This is a small but important thing which draws the viewer into the story. The show was full of subtleties like this, and I love details like that.

Harlan Ellison said that most protagonists in a story are looking for their father. Harry, on the other hand, is a man in search of his mother — even if she is dead. There are some nice Native American touches in the first episode: a skin walker (near and dear to my heart), the raven clan who aren’t what you expect, and a brother (Uncle Justin Morningway) wanting to care for his late sister’s son (it’s an Iroquois thing) even though  Harry’s father is doing a pretty good job. That’s the surface. It’s pretty clear that everyone has their own agenda. I particularly enjoyed the fact of the raven clan nesting inside of an abandoned Methodist church. I was also quite amused with how Uncle Justin wore black and Harry’s father wore white. Those details again.

The fact that he, a man who appears to be in his early to mid 40s, with a receding hairline, can wake up next to a hot waitress nearly half his age, should give all us single guys hope. On the other hand, he does get his ass kicked by two women in a row. Who of us hasn’t been there, too? Even if one of them was an animated corpse controlled by the skin walker, and the other was the skin walker herself (at least, we think it’s a “her” since we never see its true form), it still hurts.

In Harry’s world there are monsters, real and imagined, but not all of the real ones are malignant (the ravens feed young Scott a banana split). This, of course, is an obvious reference to the monsters (terrorists, serial killers, republicans, etc.) real and imagined which exist in our world.

In my first viewing of “Birds of a Feather”, I noticed the rather cool and subtle effect of the nictitating membrane in the eyes of the raven clan leader. It appears twice, but the first one wasn’t obvious. There’s a lesson here: we’re going to want to watch these episodes very closely, and probably more than once.

The acting is wonderful and we can’t always say that about things offered by the Sci Fi Channel (did anyone watch Pterodactyl in its entirety?). [ZC: What do you mean? Zombos loved Pterodactyl.]

Paul Blackthorne uses a nondescript amalgam of an east coast accent, which I translate back into his UK voice in my head. That’s my problem, not the fault of his acting. The other characters are immediately believable and I look forward to watching them develop throughout the series.

Many questions remain. How did Harry’s mother die? Why wasn’t she wearing the shield bracelet which could have protected her? With which tribe or tribe was she affiliated? Why were she and her brother fighting the High Council? Who are the High Council and why does Harry want to stay off their radar for now? How and why did Harry “kill” his uncle Justin? How did Bob the ghost get that very interesting hole in his skull (which sits on a shelf in Harry’s home)? Will Harry reconcile with Laura the waitress? Will he begin a relationship with Cheryl?

If you know the answers to any or all of these questions, don’t tell me. I plan to read the books, but I want to continue to be pleasantly surprised by the show. We get one such surprise toward the end of the first episode. I have already alluded to it, but I won’t spoil it here for anyone who has managed to avoid the many airings of the show or the torrent files online. We know something Harry doesn’t. It will be fun watching him find out.

Again, the details are what will keep us watching.

— review by Chindi

Interview: Raymond “Coffin Joe” Castile

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There is a method to director/persona Jose Mojica Marins’ madness. Ze do Caixao, or simply Coffin Joe to his American horrorhead fans, is a sardonic and sadistic Nietzschean-styled anti-hero, whose mundane heretical beliefs lead him to humiliate and torture countless victims — in wonderfully gruesome and fun ways — yet sanctimoniously cherish and laud over children at the same time.

There is something strangely entrancing in watching the machinations and sardonic deeds of Coffin Joe as he painstakingly struggles to find the perfect woman to bear his perfect son, while gleefully terrorizing and murdering everyone else in the process.

Coffin Joe, a village undertaker who dresses the part with dark top hat and billowing cape, is introduced in Marins’ first film, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. The archetypal fortune-telling witch, as well as Coffin Joe himself, deliver monologues at the beginning of the film; the witch, to presage future events, and Coffin Joe to rant about his philosophy of heresy and superiority. The spook show styled sets, chalky opening credits, and grainy chiaroscuro blend together to create a moody and surprisingly effective low-budget film. The ease at which Coffin Joe slips into serial killing mode is startling, and he easily can be seen as the nascent model for later nihilistic anti-heroes of the killing-screen, including Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, and Freddy Kruger.

In the second film, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, higher production values (well, somewhat higher), allow for more open set pieces, and a color interlude detailing a fun, Trash Cinema version of hell, complete with muscular pitch fork carrying devils, and well-endowed topless female victims. Lots of blood, too. There are Universal Studios horror -styled homages galore, including the requisite horribly-deformed and murderous hunchbacked assistant, and the mad scientist  laboratory complete with flashing lights, sounds and operating table.

In one memorable scene that will have you looking over your shoulder and itchy all over, lots of big, hairy spiders crawl over sleeping nubile women. Eventually, the torch-wielding village mob, fed up with Coffin Joe’s deadly antics, finally hunt him down through a sticky swamp at the end of the film.

Raymond Castile knows Coffin Joe well —

…

Interview: Raymond “Coffin Joe” CastileRead More »

Interview: Director Lance Weiler

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Weiler "Can I come out now?" A sheet of paper slid under the closet door as Zombos entered the room.

He stooped to pick it up. "Who is in my closet and what is this?" he asked, looking at the sheet.

"Oh, that's director Lance Weiler. I locked him in there until he finished answering a few questions," I said, taking the sheet from him.

Zombos looked perplexed. "But what is he doing in my closet?"

"I mentioned to him about your vast collection of horror-related trinkets, gimcracks, and movie spoilage. He couldn't wait to see it," I explained. “That’s how I got the interview in the first place.”

"You locked the director of Head Trauma in my closet?"

"Yes.”

"To be clear, the co-director of The Last Broadcast, the first digitally-rendered and distributed movie, is locked in my closet?

"Yes."

Zombos was silent for a moment. "Make sure you check his pockets before he leaves."

"Of course," I assured him.

Zombos left the room. I took out the key to unlock the door.

"Hey, wait a minute." said Weiler, "I didn't see what's down Aisle K. Man, this place is huge."

I put the key back in my pocket. Now that I had his answers, there was no rush.

 

What motivated you to become an indie director/writer? 

I got hooked on photography at an early age and thought that I'd become a photo journalist, but then I fell in love with movies. I started making movies in high school, instead of writing papers, and I was hooked.

What should budding independent directors be doing now to shape their careers?

Write, shoot and edit as much as you can. The more you do it the better you'll become. Watch what others are doing. If there is someone that you respect, research how they made it to where they are. Don't give up. if you have the drive and the desire it will work out. Lastly, take the time to learn as much about the process as possible. The more you know about all the aspects of filmmaking the better.

Which directors influence you the most and why?

Stan Brakhage for his daring use of image and experimental structure. I've seen Dog Star Man more than any other film, and I never grow tired of it. Roman Polanski for the atmosphere and tension he brings to films like Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. David Lynch for his independence and warped vision of the world. Inland Empire is a return to the strange and bizarre world that harkens back to Eraserhead.

You were a pioneer for digital filmmaking when it was a small blip on the industry's radar: why, and what challenges did you face going all digital?

It was bleeding edge at the time. When Stefan [Avalos] and I started making The Last Broadcast in 1996 the concept of editing on a desktop PC was a novelty. We had to build our own computers to do it. But we were determined to make a movie with pro-sumer gear. In the end we helped to spark a whole digital revolution not only in the way we made the movie, but in the way we distributed it. At the time, digital was treated like a bastard child. There was an attitude that if it wasn't shot on film then it wasn't serious filmmaking. A couple years later the attitude would change. Now digital is an excepted way to make work.

What are your favorite horror and non-horror films? Why?

The Tenant — love the tone and atmosphere. It is a haunting film, and it's pacing is slow and methodical. The Conversation — I think it's one of Coppola's best films. I love the use of sound, and the political undertones are just as relevant today as they were during Watergate. The Shining— I'm a huge fan of Kubrick. Alien — thrill ride with amazing vision and production design that still looks great today. Docs like Grey Gardens, High School, Salesman — cinema verite at its best. There are a ton of others that I love for various reasons.

Where do you see the film industry heading in terms of production and distribution in the years to come?

Digital. Everything will be digital. The number of movies shot on film will continue to drop until everything is eventually shot digitally. Distribution to theaters, homes, hand-held devices, etc., will all be digital. We'll be drowning in media and movies. Movies will find narrow niches and devout audiences, like the way magazines and music have. Since things will be digital a remixing culture will explode and we'll see more remixes of movies. Both fan driven, and depending on digital laws maybe, even a remix culture that can turn a profit. The biggest challenges will be around copyright, rights management and fair use.

Complete this sentence: If I had (blank), I'd (blank). Please explain your fill-ins for the blanks, too.

If I had 10 million dollars I'd create ten movies with various directors and start a new filmmaking model that gave control and ownership to the people creating the work. The films would be all digital and there would be no physical media like DVDs. Everything would be delivered via digital distribution. In addition, we'd work to involve the audience in every phase of the process to allow them to observe from start to finish. They would also be able to contribute in various ways.

Movie Review: The Boneyard (1991)
No Bones About It

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The_BoneyardZombos Says: Fair

It was a late winter night for us in the cinematorium, the mansion’s movie theater. Zimba was stretched out on the Empire scroll sofa, already snoring away while I prepared drinks for myself and Zombos.

“Make mine a double-espresso with lots of foam,” said Zombos.

He stretched out his long legs and slumped in the Chesterfield club chair.

“And don’t forget the popcorn.”

I loaded up the big ceramic skull o’popcorn and brought the drinks over.

I prefer to sit in the traditional theater seats that take up the first half of the cinematorium. Zombos rescued them from the Manhattan 44th Street Theater just before its demolition in 1945 to make room for the New York Times newspaper headquarters expansion.

I dimmed the lights, took a sip from my frothy mocha cappuccino, and started the movie.

Our movie this evening, The Boneyard, is a macabre but uneven mix from director and writer James Cummins. While there are watchable moments, the remainder comprised of
drawn-out scenes, comical monster puppets, and dull acting by the main character gets in the way of any good scares. The premise is promising: a burned-out and overweight psychic investigator, Alley (Deborah Rose), takes on child-ghouls that eat too much. But by the time we get to the demonized, gigantic Miss Poopenplatz (Phyllis Diller) and those demon-poofle puppets, it
all becomes ludicrous as in what were they thinking?

It starts with a drawn-out scene when detectives, played by veteran Ed Nelson and James Eusterman (Spaced Invaders), enter the world-weary—and messy—psychic’s house. They need her help to solve a baffling case involving a mortician and what appear to be three dead children he’s been hiding. They draw their guns dramatically when she doesn’t answer, but why do that? She finally turns up after an endless search of the house we’re forced to follow, room by room. When they fail to enlist her aid they leave.

Later that night she has a disturbing vision involving a putrescent little girl with lots of long, stringy blond hair, who wants very much to hug and thank her for her help in a previous case. This promising scene has nothing to do with the story, but
it does cause Alley to change her mind about helping the detectives. Deborah Rose’s lifeless acting is flatline throughout.

At the police station, Alley and the detectives listen incredulously to the interrogation of the mortician. He explains how his family has, for three centuries, kept the three child-sized ghouls—he calls them Kyonshi—from devouring living people by feeding them body parts garnered from the funeral home’s cadavers. Kyonshi, or hopping vampires, are not flesh-eating ghouls, I think, so the use of the term here may be a stretch.

Next, it’s off to the soon-to-be-closed coroner’s building where the story kicks into low gear, but not before we are subjected to a confusing flashback experienced by Alley, followed by an interminable dialog between the two detectives standing in a hallway. Show and do aren’t buzzwords this director adheres to. We also meet Miss Poopinplatz. She manages the front desk along with her annoying poodle.

Alley has a vision of the three little ghouls awakening downstairs in the morgue with all the tasty attendants (Norman Fell among them) in the next room. Little tension is generated as boy-this-weight-does-slow-me-down Alley clumsily makes her way downstairs to warn the lab attendants of their impending Happy Meal status.

When she finally does reach the morgue, chewed up dead bodies are strewn everywhere. Gobs of blood splatter the floor and the little hellions are still chomping away—especially one who gustily attacks an exposed rib-cage. This is the only good gore scene in the movie. My guess is the budget was blown at this point. All this explicit gruesomeness is a sudden and unexpected jolt in an otherwise static movie. Bodies hang limply from shelves, carried there by the three child-ghouls. Sitting atop a battery operated forklift, the medium-sized ghoul feasts on a pathologist while another rips apart another body. The smallest ghoul has dragged the bloody corpse of a Pathologist to the fifth level of shelves. It eats an ear off and then snacks on a finger. The creature makes a happy purring sound as it chews. Its gaping mouth continues to rip a chunk from a pathologist’s side.

Mayhem ensues as survivors try to escape. They trap and kill one ghoul, but he manages to stuff part of his skin—it’s disgusting to watch—down Poopinplatz’s throat, turning her into a very tall and pop-eyed Muppet-like puppet monster that desperately needed more money and a better design to be convincing. The comical nature of the puppet derails the momentum established by the morgue scene. Poopinplatz’s dog, Floosoms, licks up bubbling yellow ichor oozing from one expired ghoul and quickly turns into a man-in-a-suit demon Muppet Floosoms. A horrified girl rescued from the previous morgue attack laughs when she sees this comicalpoodle monster.

Who wouldn’t?

The action is stopped cold, again, for another long and bewildering dialog as Cummins gives the ENTIRE background of the girl who survives the morgue attack. The action picks up again with an Alley and demon-Floosoms confrontation and some dynamite. If Cummins used a lot less dialog, and Deborah Rose’s acting were a lot lighter, and the three child-ghouls were given more screen time to terrorize, The Boneyard could have, would have, been a scarier movie even with Phyllis Diller mugging it up as Poopinplatz.

Take a look, fast forward a lot, and you’ll be fine: the morgue smorgasbord scene is worth a look at least.

Christmas Evil (1980)

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Zombos Says: Very Good (but weird)

Okay, sing along with me now to the tune of Jingle Bells: “Run like hell, Run like hell, Screaming all the way. Oh what terror it is to hide, as whack’o-crazy killing Santa comes your way. Hey!”

Christmas Evil, or as originally titled by the director, You Better Watch Out, is a weirdly magical holiday film filled with enchantment; once you get past the whack o’ crazy amateur Santa dealing death from his bag of deadly toys, and the torch-wielding neighborhood villagers chasing him, and the depressing Jolly Dream toy factory, which may remind you of your own place of employment.

When did you find out that Santa Claus was not real? Hopefully it was at a later age than poor Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart). He finds out the hard way during Christmas Eve while young and still impressionable; and that impression left him yearning for the real Santa and the real Christmas Spirit. His cramped apartment is filled with Christmas memorabilia and he sleeps in Christmas pajamas and a red cap (nicely trimmed with white fur).

His obsession colors his life the wrong way. He’s lonely, creepy, and spies on the neighborhood kids with binoculars, writing down all the nasty or nice things the kids do in his Good Boys and Girls and Bad Boys and Girls notebooks. But this Christmas season is different. His fetish for red gets the better of him, and soon he’s trying on white beards, and sewing a holly-jolly Santa suit; he even paints his van with a sleigh. He desperately wishes he had “super magic”, and since this is a holiday horror movie you know what usually happens to people who wish for things.

Harry starts going off the deep end of the skating rink and stalks a local boy who is really really naughty. After giving him a good scare, Harry continues his descent into craziness. With success under his big black belt, he molds metal toy soldiers with long, sharp swords.

He reluctantly attends his company’s Christmas party, but quickly leaves, finds a few good, strong laundry bags, and fills them with the company’s cheaply made toys and dirt for bad boys and girls. He dons his white beard and loses what little hold he has on reality when he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror.

Soon he’s dashing through the snow in his sleigh-painted van. He starts off jolly enough, and really wants to play the part of Santa Claus, but like that Christmas when Santa didn’t bring me the one special gift I wanted so much, Harry doesn’t get what he wants either. When he shows up for midnight mass the snow runs red with blood as a few of the pious commit the cardinal sin of insulting Santa. The art-house pace switches with this shock moment, picking up as fast as the confused Harry runs away. He stumbles onto a party and is invited in. Much fun is had by all, but in a chilling scene, he scares the dickens out of the kids with a warning not to be naughty, then cracks into maniacal laughter.

With his Santa psychosis now in full drive, he starts treating his van as if it were a real sleigh, yelling for Dasher and Dancer to hurry it along. He also climbs up to a roof and tries to go down the chimney and gets stuck in the process. Getting into the house the usual way he happily puts gifts under the tree, then happily kills a co-worker that’s been naughty with a Christmas tree star-topper.

With his nicely sewn Santa suit looking pretty soiled after such a busy night, Harry returns to the Jolly Dream toy factory while the police, in a humorous scene, hold Santa Claus line-ups as they round up all the motley sidewalk Santas, looking for the killer. Wonderfully framed scenes follow Harry as he walks down a dark street lined with brightly-lit Christmas decorations. When he stops to give presents to beaming children, their parents confront Harry and one parent flips open a switchblade knife. Harry high-tails it but the villagers — I mean parents — chase Harry through the streets, carrying torches. The chase is ludicrous, directed seriously, and works given the bizarre tone of the film.

The surreal ending is sort of like Art Carney’s Night of the Meek episode of the Twilight Zone, and has Harry finally getting his Christmas wish in an unexpected way. You’ll rub your eyes in disbelief when you see it.

Jack Frost (1996)
No Frost on This Pumpkin

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Jack_frostsnowman Zombos Says: Fair

As another year begins its slide into posterityI suppose I should at least write up some resolutions I can judiciously ignore throughout next year. I’ll make my first resolution to do that — perhaps next week.

I recently watched Jack Frost on DVD — hey, there’s an important resolution right there: make sure to watch more GOOD horror movies. Now that was easy. I made the mistake of listening to Yahoo Group members’ recommendations on this one and — wait a minute, there’s my second resolution: do not listen to movie recommendations garnered from trolls in chat groups. My word, coming up with New Year resolutions is easier than I thought.

While the idea of a serial-killing snowman may be novel-looking on paper, its execution, which could have been on a par with Shaun of the Dead in wit and visual humor, falls far short; and you can’t blame it on budget limitations, either. In the hands of a Roger Corman or Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, low budgets ignite creativity with cheap but imaginative set pieces and self-indulgent—wink, wink– scripting. That didn’t happen here.

Whenever you combine the elements of comedy and horror you have to decide how far to go in each direction. Should it be a parody, a satire, tongue-in-cheek, or a mix of these approaches? What visual framing will tone your choices and how will the characterizations and actions move the story to highlight them, and keep funny-bone chuckling and shinbone trembling with fright?

Uncle Henry’s inappropriately risqué bedtime story voiceover to his young niece sets the mood. As he horrifies her, we, very slowly, look at ornaments on a Christmas tree, pausing to see the movie’s credits written on each one. At first a novelty, it becomes tiresome as it drags on. Uncle Henry’s story introduces Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) the criminal as he’s conveyed to his execution in a van aptly titled with Troma-like subtlety, “State Executional Transfer Vehicle.”

A collision with the also aptly titled “Genetic Research” truck reveals the miniscule budget: quick cuts cover up the absence of showy car-explosion pyrotechnics. Jack gets doused genetic research liquid, turning him into a wise-cracking, not very jolly, serial-killing snow cone with a button nose. A pseudo-scientific explanation is later given by one of the Genetic Company’s agents to explain this transformation, but it’s all intentional nonsense unintentionally witless.

Now to Snowmonton, a small town where an annual snowman contest– hey, wait a minute, there’s that budget drain again: no snow! There are scant piles of flaky fake snow here and there, but the few snowmen in the contest look pitiful. How the townsfolk made them is bewildering: there’s no snow in Snowmonton. This might have been funny if directed with that thought in mind, but director Michael Cooney’s thoughts are on rote murder instead. We don’t see the first murder, just the victim’s discovery, with us looking from behind the old man’s spiked-hair-frozen head at three dismayed police officers. They are looking down at his icy body seated in a rocking chair. One of the officers absent-mindedly rocks the chair with his foot. That’s funny.

No reason for why this poor local yokel was murdered is given, but being a horror movie, who needs reasons, right? Only escalatingly gruesome and growing body counts matter. Jack Frost the snowman makes his appearance in a flaky-fake foam rubber suit. His oddly designed facial features don’t do much for either the comic or horror mood he’s trying to project.

I admit to the guilty pleasure of finding humor in the second murder, where Jack cuts off a bullying boy’s head with a sleigh, but his grieving parents’ acting is so bad the humor is quickly lost. Luckily that acting doesn’t go on for long; mom is viciously dispatched by Jack using a Christmas tree’s string-lights and broken glass ornaments to shut her up. The attack starts funny, but heavy-handed direction turns it into a nervous laughter situation–something that looks funny but isn’t. Watching her face repeatedly mashed into the shards of glass while Jack makes merry quips IS NOT FUNNY. When her body is discovered, we see the three, still-bewildered, police officers through the blinking string-lights wrapped around her. The humor falls flat because we suffered through her sadistic murder. The movie’s tongue-in-cheekiness, its balancing of humor and horror, tips out of sensible control after this, becoming a slasher-formulaic catastrophe without focus.

A convenient plot device to make Jack more mobile has him change from snow to water as needed. How he moves along in the snow without legs is still a puzzler. Using his solid to liquid trick, he commits a rape and murder. I assume the scene looked awfully clever in the script, but to watch it made me scratch my head wondering what they were thinking. When Jack starts shooting icicle daggers from his body to gleefully kill, I found it difficult to keep watching. Cooney loses his street-cred completely at this point, making Jack Frost a movie for people interested in novelty killings more than coherent story-telling or characterizations. Sadly, the horror genre is full of such fans. Jack slaughters an entire family while cracking sarcastic one-liners all the way, then goes after Sheriff Tiler (Christopher Allport), the man who sent him to prison. More mayhem follows. The Sheriff’s habit of losing keys at critical, key-needed-urgently moments becomes tiresome, aerosol cans and hair dryers magically appearing in quantity to fend off Jack is humorless, and the preposterous, but imaginative, climax involving an anti-freeze filled truck bed and amazingly good timing to save the day doesn’t make up for the time wasted leading up to it. The townsfolk bury the anti-freeze bottles that now contain Jack Frost; of course, Jack will return in an even more cheaply conceived sequel.

While this is not a good horror movie by any worthwhile stretch of critical assessment, it does provide an excellent primer for budding scriptwriters on what you should avoid when attempting a horror comedy. This movie doesn’t deserve its cult status because it simply doesn’t earn it.

Head Trauma (2006)

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Head Trauma Movie PosterZombos Says: Very Good

Suppose you left your town and home many years ago, and drifted along here and there, never putting down roots. Suppose you are homeless, friendless, and suffer from a fragmented memory, whose shards of clarity are confusing and terrifying. What is it you can’t remember, but can’t seem to fully forget? Portrait of a man in crisis: George Walker.

In indie director and co-writer (along with Brian Majeska) Lance Weiler’s Head Trauma, George Walker returns to his deceased grandmother’s house and soon goes head to head with those shards of memory; and a mysterious and ominous Snorkel Parka dressed individual who just may be a maniacal killer.

But why does he go after George? Is it because George’s return to his grandmother’s abandoned and condemned house, filled with dark corners, squatter debris, and a really creepy attic—

“This review won’t fly, you know,” said Zombos, peering over my shoulder.

“What?” I said.

“Didn’t you listen to the director’s commentary? He mentions this film came from his own experience with head trauma after a serious auto accident. He goes on to mention how he worked through Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief and—”

“You mean her five stages of receiving really bad news. Not sure how “grief” got in there over the years, but the original sense was for catastrophic news; which can lead to grief, I suppose.”

“Whatever,” said Zombos. “The point I am trying to make is that you can’t review the story without realizing  the director’s subtexts of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that pace the film into a character study of self-awareness.”

“You mean how George was in a state of denial for many years before he returns to his deceased grandmother’s house?”

“Right. In the opening scene, we see George sleeping out in the open, and awakened by a bad dream of an auto accident. He is making the trek back to his grandmother’s house.”

“But what about the anger part?”

“When he returns home, he has to deal with a neighbor that wants the house demolished so he can buy the property, a massively flooded basement, a ruined relationship with old-flame Mary, the presence of a mysterious person dressed in the parka, and trying to keep the house from being torn down.”

“With all those bad nightmares of his on top of all that, I’d say he has some anger management going on. Okay, what about bargaining?”

Zombos thought for a moment. “He has to bargain with Julian, the young man next door for help in fixing the house up. He also bargains that he can persuade the town’s building inspector to not have the building torn down. He tries to bargain with Mary.”

“The ex-girlfriend he meets in the local hardware store while looking for a water pump?”

“Right. Apparently they had something going on between them before he left town. His showing up at her door, with pie no less, at an ungodly hour of the morning is a bargaining ploy.”

“And he wants to spend the night with her because he is also scared of being in the house alone,” I added. “Everybody thinks the place is haunted anyway. And even Julian is creeped out when he has to go into the attic, or down in the basement alone.”

“Yes, there are nice shock cuts that keep the tension going, along with brooding scenes of the house and its desolate rooms. No splatter gore, or naked screaming nubile woman to distract you from the carefully paced mood,” agreed Zombos. “The focus stays on George, his depression over his current state of affairs, and failure to achieve his goals, and his growing realization of something just out of the corner of his eye waiting to poke a finger in it. I daresay his encounter in the basement with the dark hair bobbing up out of the water, presumably attached to a head just out of sight, would unsettle anyone’s nerves.”

“The eerie tooth wrapped in dark hair, found between the floorboards, and the intercut of scenes—and here Weiler keeps you guessing as to whether they are flashbacks, or lucid dreams, or depictions of events in real-time—keep us off balance until the acceptance part of the film.”

“The shock cuts of the J-horror girl in the woods, in the house, in the flooded basement are done well. While not very frightening, they still move the story to a point of realization for George and us. Things were not quite what they seemed, and George’s head trauma covered up another, deeper trauma.” I pushed my chair back from the desk. “Elements in the film trigger George’s visions, but also tie his present life to his more secret past life.

“Those scenes do not need to be very frightening,” said Zombos. “They do need to unsettle and confuse George and us, and that’s what they do.”

“The production values for this indie are quite high,” I said.

“Right, and the acting is very well done, also. Vince Mola plays George with all the right angst, and Jamil A.C. Mangan does a solid performance as the comic-drawing Julian, reluctantly helping George, and dealing with that creepy abandoned house.”

“Speaking of that house,” I said, “the extras on the DVD include a segment on filming in the house. It was indeed a creepy place, and I got  chills watching the segment last night. They were lucky to find it: it had an effective dark character, and the debris in it was disgustingly real. Quite a demented provenance, to be sure. Cinematography did a skillful job of lighting it all, especially the basement. How they flooded the basement, or made it look like it was completely flooded, is fascinating. I am always amazed at how resourceful indie production crews can be with small budgets, but lots of talent.”

“I found the director’s commentary very informative,” said Zombos. “Lance does a wonderful job of explaining his rationale for the setups, and adds technical information that only an indie director would do. I look forward to his next endeavor.”

“Indeed,” I said. “I’m just not sure if I would classify this film as horror, though.”

“Psychological thriller, then. It is simply a very good film, well-scripted and directed, with on-the-money performances and solid cinematography. And production values that are top-notch,” added Zombos.