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Movies (Slasher)

Terror Train (1980)
Masculinity Certain, Gender Unknown

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Poster for the Terror Train movie with clownish dressed conductor holding a sharp knife.
I first took this trip on Terror Train for the anthology, Butcher Knives and Body Counts: Essays On the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film,  edited by Vince A. Liaguno and published by Dark Scribe Press, 2011. Unfortunately the book is out of print, but if you can find a copy…

 

“Death?” I asked.

“An infinitely large house in which you never have enough fresh towels and somebody is always in the bathroom ahead of you,” said Zombos, tipping the last drops of Royal Brackla from his glass onto his tongue.

“Interesting,” I said. We were whiling away the moments of boredom with a word association game. I finished my Manhattan. I like it with three dashes of Angostura bitters and two ounces of Italian vermouth. “How about…slasher?”

Zombos slumped in his leather wing chair, deep in thought. I waited. The triple-chime from the Promoli fantasy clock on the mantle roused him.

“Shake and Bake,” he answered.

“Shake and Bake?”

“Yes. You know the slogan; gotta be crispy, gotta be golden, gotta be juicy.”

“I don’t see how it relates to the word slasher,” I said, still perplexed.

“Simple enough. Take one big, unsympathetic, psychopathic killing porkchop of a silent killer, add frisky-until-dead young adult seasonings, shake vigorously in a plastic see-through bag, then cook until the red juices flow.”

“I’m not sure it’s always that simple,” I said.

“How so? Can you name me one slasher film, not including Psycho, of course, that is not prepared out of the bag?”  Zombos slumped back down, content he was right.

“Terror Train,” I said without hesitation.

He sat upright. “Terror Train? How is it different from every other slasher?”

“Well,” I began, Kenny, the killer, is a sympathetic average kid, smaller than a porkchop, and he doesn’t use weapons bigger than a toolbox or need gasoline. More importantly, although he can whip up enough masculine aggression to commit messy murder, he’s somewhat confused and definitely uncomfortable with expectations about his gender, leading to his inability to blend into being an insensitive, oversexed clod like the other frat boy jocks. It’s their in-your-face masculinity that terrorizes him enough to turn him into a screwball hell-bent on revenge.”

Zombos interlaced his fingers and settled back into his chair. “I recall the film.”

I continued. “Sure, it blends those elements we’ve come to expect: a holiday—New Year’s Eve—timeframe; a fairly isolated location created by the premed kids renting an antique locomotive—without a working radio—for a last fling party before graduation; and a traumatic backstory providing the impetus for mayhem. But…”

“But?” repeated Zombos, listening attentively.

“While the plot is threadbare around the fringes, there’s a tad more complexity weaved into the characters than first meets the eye. Certainly more than today’s bland seasoning of young victims,” I said.

“Really? How so?” asked Zombos, leaning forward to refill his glass.

I took a breath and continued. “You can see a spectrum of masculine certainty all the way to uncertainty on display, from the comfortable manliness of Ben Johnson’s train conductor to the gender-bending masquerade of Kenny, who has no social identity of his own, nor clear sense of his masculine side. Now in the middle, to provide contrast, you have Jaime Lee Curtis’s Alana, who is firmly feminine with masculine sensibilities bordering on manliness, and the queer relationship between Hart Bochner’s Doc Manley and his best bud—and Alana’s boyfriend—Mo.”

“Queer in the sense of gay?” asked Zombos, holding his glass midway, waiting for my answer.

“Well, yes and no or even maybe. I don’t think the use of the name ‚Manley, is by accident. Doc is certainly jealous of Mo’s relationship with Alana, and does everything he can to sabotage it. Is he just a control freak or is there something deeper going on? On the surface he comes off as being obnoxiously masculine, yet when Mo is killed, Doc acts like he’s lost more than a friend when his emotions overwhelm him. I would even go so far as to say he acts more feminine when and after it happens. I mean he freaks over the sudden loss and lovingly cradles Mo in his arms as he screams for help. I think he has a stronger bond with Mo than just frat boy friendship; I think he’s in love with Mo.”

Zombos downed his drink in one gulp and leaned forward. “Let me see if I understand you. Kenny, the killer, is confused about his gender—”

“Let’s say he’s made very uncomfortable because of it,” I added. “Before Doc Manley suckers him into bedding down with a ripe autopsied corpse, sending him to bedlam for three years, we know Kenny is shy and frail in both appearance and spirit, awkward in his physical sexual identity with the girls, and a misfit in the college social scene because of all of the above. Sadly, this makes him more of a real character, someone many of us can relate to from our own experiences with the social scenes in high school and college.”

“And Doc Manley is compensating for his unwanted mixed-gender identity by outwardly acting more masculine,” said Zombos, “but inwardly feeling more feminine in his relationship with Mo,” as more of a thought than a question.

“Which is why Doc scapegoats Kenny,” I said, completing Zombos’s thought. “Deep down, Doc is strongly attracted to Mo, but Doc knows to fit in on campus he’s got to play the machismo card, the ideal-of-manhood expectation college society expects of him: jock, alpha male, and lady-killer all rolled into one neat little package; which can become problematic if you’re gay and sensitive or straight and sensitive. So Doc takes out his frustration over this unwanted, but still strong, feeling toward Mo by playing his sadistic joke on Kenny in an attempt to exert his control over it. So, you see, there’s more to this story than the usual hack and slash.”

“Indeed,” said Zombos. “With what you have just said, Kenny’s transvestite disguise and costume swaps with his victims can be viewed beyond their utilitarian plot-use for hiding his true identity aboard the train.

“Definitely,” I replied. “While he changes into the costume of his latest victim to more easily commit his murders, he doesn’t need to masquerade as the magician’s female assistant. Just before the train leaves the station, he murders that annoying jokester Ed, and uses his Groucho Marx costume as a disguise to board the train. So why does he bother to masquerade in drag, at all? Is it just a pretense, or is it really who Kenny feels most comfortable with being?”

Zombos sat back in his chair and thought about what I said. The clock chimed half-past the hour as he continued to mull the question over. “Because…,” he finally said, “the relationship between the magician and Kenny mirrors the relationship between Doc Manley and Mo.”

“Bingo!” I said. “Ken, the magician played by David Copperfield in an almost effeminate manner, becomes infatuated with Alana. Kenny, who has feelings for Ken, eventually murders him out of jealousy. I admit I’m stretching a bit here, but there’s no explicit reason given for killing Ken. He just winds up skewered through the ears. But the relationship between Ken, and Kenny as his female assistant, and Doc’s relationship with Mo, contain some tantalizing similarities too good to ignore. It appears the costumes weren’t the only disguises in use aboard that train.”

“But when Kenny eventually confronts Alana for that kiss he never got,” said Zombos, “he goes off his rocker again, and relives that night three years ago.”

“That’s right,” I explained. “He realizes, after all this time, her kiss doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t resolve his gender identity confusion as he hoped it would. Alana represents the feminine and masculine in harmony, something which Kenny cannot resolve. Curiously enough, the resolution is provided by Ben Johnson’s assured manliness wielding a mean axe.”

I prepared another Manhattan while Zombos poured another drink, but added more ice this time. We sat in silence for a little while.

“Jaime Lee Curtis,” said Zombos.

“Hot, take-charge babe,” I answered, then said, “Ben Johnson.”

“Saddle soap and Old Spice,” he answered.

We continued our word association game until the sunlight crept quietly into the library and the soul-lifting aroma of Chef Machiavelli’s Turkish coffee drew our attention elsewhere.

Havenhurst (2016)
Movie Review

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Havenhurst 2016Zombos Says: Good (But an extreme gore effect is jarringly unexpected)

Movies about dwelling places holding dark secrets, hidden passageways, and maniacal intentions are the no-brainers of the horror genre. Just think of Crawlspace (1986), or The People Under the Stairs (1991), or Thir13en Ghosts (2001). Such places take on an horrific character all their own, and a good movie or book presents that character foremost in as many scenes or chapters as possible.

Of course, visually speaking, for a movie it's relatively easy. Just spend as much time as you can in the endless hallways, the old apartments, and that stifling basement you don't want to find yourself in. That will do the trick. Havenhurst has all of that, and old fixtures, the quiet rooms, the spooky closets, and the permanent and transitory residents one would need for the terrors to begin. And a very, very, slow elevator when your dying for speediness. And a dungeon-like basement waiting for you if you misbehave.

Jackie (Julie Benz) takes up residence at the stuffy and musty Havenhurst apartment building after her rehabilitation from her addiction to alcohol. She has been a neglectful and self-destructive mother (we learn that from her fitful nightmares), but she is aiming for a fresh start with the help of her detective friend, Tim (Josh Stamberg), and her counselor who referred her to Havenhurst (wink, wink; hard to say if he is on the up and up here, but I sense a sequel may address that).

Havenhurst BasementShe takes up residence in her missing friend's spacious, but oddly suffocatingly close, apartment. Her friend, Danielle (Danielle Harris in a brief appearance before she disappears), has left all her photographs and antique cameras behind. Jackie suspects foul play. Jackie soon realizes Havenhurst is full of foul play. Cue the terror. Director and writer Andrew C. Erin, along with Daniel Farrands co-writing, are not too sure in how they play that foul terror, though. Not so much a mystery, not so much a slasher, not so much a gorehound delight, but a little bit of each moves the story along. Some of the movie posters show Jed (Douglas Tait), a mushroomy-skinned denizen of the hidden passageways, trapdoors, and sudden long drops to the basement, so not much mystery there. Hint! He is dressed a bit like a Hostel hosing-it-down man doing superintendent work in his spare time. So we know Jed's role in all of this right off the bat.

His brother, Ezra (Matt Lasky) is the building's handyman. He is good at cleaning up Jed's bloody messes. Both of them are dutiful sons to Eleanor (Fionnula Flannagan). She runs the building and decides who stays or gets evicted. After Jackie takes a drink too many, there is an understated scene where Eleanor goes to a large antique cabinet, opens it to reveal dozens of pegged apartment keys, and reverses the one to Jackie's apartment. That's when you notice a few other keys had already been flipped over, just like Jackie's. Needless to say, you don't want to be like Jackie, and those others, and have your key reversed in that big old cabinet.

Havenhurst Lobby

A hidden door in the laundry room (yes, me too! I hate creepy laundry rooms with hidden doors.) is revealed, as are the surprisingly versatile hallways and walls, in the photographs Danielle had left behind. Jackie investigates, get's her detective friend involved, and befriend's Sarah (Belle Shouse), a foster child who has her own secret room to hide from her foster parents. Sarah's parents eventually get evicted too, and that's where the gore kicks in. It seems out of place in this Gothic chiller and the camera stays too long admiring it. But soon the running away from Jed begins and the family that slays together is revealed, giving explanation to the building's unique luxury-to-die-for features.

Havenhurst Secret Room
The ending is a bummer as it clearly is done to set up the franchise for Jed and the building's future apartment dwellers. But there is more to tell about Havenhurst, so hopefully we will see the sequel soon. That deadly family tradition needs further exploration and I'm very curious to know what Jed does in his spare time. When he's not butchering tenants.

A courtesy screening link was provided for this review.

Tower of Evil (1972)

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Tower of evil posterZombos Says: Good

Normally, Tower of Evil, also known as Beyond the Fog and Horror on Snape Island, a Shepperton Studios’ budget-minder with process shots (you know them as phony background scenes), get-it-done scene lighting, and enough bare buttocks and breasts to raise an eyebrow’s–if nothing else–worth of attention, wouldn’t be worth a critical mention. The story, however, does warrant one.

Attractive young people running around au naturel looking for action, then getting more action they hoped for, would become a staple of popcorn-munching horror fans later in the 1970s, when cutting up nubile teenagers in ever more creative ways became the box-office drawing power to emulate. Here we see an inkling of that direction to come, salted with supernatural and Gothic elements, making Tower a notable transitional horror movie if nothing else.

Gurney and his father, John (George Coulouris), are heading to Snape Island in the opening scene. It’s late at night, or too early in the morning, with darkness and dense fog obscuring the many rocks aiming to cripple their small boat as they approach the island. They have important business to finish that couldn’t wait. On the island, more gory business greets them with one severed hand, one severed head, two dead males, and an understandably upset survivor wielding a mean knife in her frenzied breakdown. The mystery begins, and it’s added to when the large, solid gold, and ancient sword used to pin one of the victims to a door, like a bug to a board, perks the interest of the police and archaeologists who believe it’s part of a sizable Phoenician burial treasure. The impaled, door-hanging, male reminded me of a similar door-hanging murder seen in Carpenter’s Halloween.

The survivor, Penny (Candace Glendenning), is comatose and placed under psychiatric evaluation. The police have to wait for answers as a very progressive psychiatrist rolls out a syringe and flashing colored lights to hypnotize Penny into recalling what happened. Given the long sideburns, bell-bottom pants, and Barrymore-collared shirts worn in this movie, the flashing lights fit right in. Her brief but vivid recollections provide flashbacks that exploit the gore and nudity. Each flashback digs deeper into Penny’s mind allowing O’Connolly to cut back and forth between what happened to her and what is happening on the island, now that the archaeologists and Gurney have returned to it to find the hidden treasure. The gruesome deaths, the mystery of the sword, the isolation of the lighthouse, and hints of the former lighthouse keeper’s family tragedy provide plot depth that goes beyond simply waiting and watching for people to be killed. Equal attention is also given to male and female nudity, a savvy move that broadens the movie’s audience appeal. We get to see John Hamill’s tight bum as much as Glendenning’s perky breasts. Murderous intent also is equally distributed among the sexes and not driven by the undercurrent of misogynistic contempt seen in later slasher slaughterfests.

It’s easy to forgive the obvious pandering to the audience; many horror movies do it to pad weak storylines while titillating audiences anyway, but the sexual display and tension here works with the movie, not against it, especially when you’ve written a horny Phoenician god into the subplot. Of course, slasher enthusiasts will reason that lusting and groping is necessary to initiate the morality-righting vengeance of the killer, which brings back propriety and social stability by butchering its flaunters. Bouncing bare breasts and firm derrières do little to bring in box office, of course, so the enthusiasts may have a point. Hard to excuse is the cheap trick of re-releasing Tower in 1981, re-titled Beyond the Fog, in hopes of cashing in on The Fog‘s success by faking Tower as a sequel to John Carpenter’s more studious movie. That’s pretty low, even by today’s standards of marketing.

I can be fairly lenient with Jim O’Connolly’s (Valley of Gwangi) direction. It’s tight and sufficient for generating enough atmosphere to move his (and George Baxt’s) story along at a no-dawdling pace. He makes good use of his studio-bound frame depth and the few sets where the events take place, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere suitable for terror with his close camera and its angles, especially in the caves running under the lighthouse. Bolstering the ensemble of frisky and bickering characters is Jack Watson’s Hamp Gurney. He’s steady as a rock while everyone else is being chipped away around him. His heavily-lined face, strong masculine presence, and ability to move effortlessly to the foreground or background of a scene is always impressive to watch. His classy presence benefits every movie he’s in. The usual bickering and libidinous undercurrents break out among the boys and the girls, but he’s just along for the ride. Or is he? His secret agenda adds a little more suspense and mystery as everyone does what they shouldn’t by opening doors best left closed, walking up to rocking chairs that shouldn’t be rocking in the dark by themselves, investigating odd sounds alone, and meandering through damp caves after splitting up.

I must be less lenient with Desmond Dickinson’s (City of the Dead, Horrors of the Black Museum) set lighting. Moonlit scenes are shown in bright, full color, and the lighthouse model isn’t lit in such a way as to help camouflage that it is a model–and it’s not helped by the dry ice haze, either. The lighthouse interiors are overly lit–you can’t get that much steady light from paraffin lamps–but the narrow stairway, small rooms, and the abandoned condition they’re in, along with the creaky furnishings, provide an adequate level of unease for us as much as it does for the archaeologists and investigator (Bryant Haliday) hoping to either find the gold or the truth. To be fair to Dickinson, using the Technicolor process could have reduced the amount of light hitting the film stock, requiring increased lighting on the set. Given his black-and-white background, Dickinson may have overcompensated with too much lighting for his color scenes given the film stock used. Or he simply had no choice and did the best he could with what he had to work with. But I have no reservations in recommending Tower of Evil to the slasher fan who thinks he or she’s seen it all, or any horror fan not satisfied, so far, by 2014’s paucity of decent horror fare to scream at.

The Silent Scream (1980)

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Silent scream

Zombos Says: Good

Listen to the Movie Review

Scotty (the impossibly thin Rebecca Balding) needs an apartment badly. She’s late to the college semester and the college dorms are filled. At the end of an almost fruitless day of apartment hunting, shown in humorous vignettes of crappy places and dubious renters, she finds a small, comfortable room in a big, brooding, beach-side house at the top of a hill. Three other college latecomers join her: there’s the spoiled rich Peter (John Widelock), the feisty, bosomy, fun-loving girl Doris (Juli Andelman), and the hunk, Jack–who makes sure to keep his shirt off or unbuttoned as much as possible because he’s the hunk–played by Steve Doubet. Living in the house are the brooding Mrs. Engels (played by Mrs. Munster herself, Yvonne De Carlo), who stays mostly up in the attic; the quiet and ill at ease Mason Engels (Brad Rearden) hangs out in the bedroom across the hall; and everyone’s unknowingly waiting for a family secret about to become known. Violently. Now guess which one of the college kids gets killed first.

The family secret is also a natural one for an American Gothic story rather than a slasher movie. It takes its time to reveal itself as the tightly wound and fragile Engels’ family composure unravels, and not much mayhem occurs until Scotty is tied up in a closet with her blood about to be spilled across the floor. Deep focus (in an interview on the DVD using a split diopter to accomplish this is mentioned) keeps both the desperate Scotty, who’s eyeing the closet doorknob, and the closet doorknob that is just out of reach, in sharp focus as the knife-wielding killer comes closer: a surprising giallo-styled visualization in an American Gothic framework, culminating in a frisson of terror when door edge, sharp knife, and Scotty’s hand get awfully close to each other.

As one family secret is exposed, another one causes Mason, who’s already emotionally tighter than his buttoned up and tie-less collar, to retreat into fantasy, leading to more violence. There is not much gore or body count here, but Jim and Ken Wheat took over an ailing, unfinished movie and penned it into a ‘coherent’ family tragedy playing out in an old and not so dark house atop a lonely hill. Imagine Henrik Ibsen writing a slasher play and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark describing The Silent Scream. Bridging together existing scenes with clearer motivations, stronger relationships, and a linear progression that slowly builds drama, The Silent Scream is a low key slasher easily lost among the more traditional murderfests of the 1980s like Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th because of its less frenetic, more television-styled direction.

The Silent Scream is not much of a mystery; neither is it much of a blood-flowing slasher story. The acting ranges from bread and butter, courtesy of television veterans Cameron Mitchell and Avery Schreiber, to studio classy with Yvonne De Carlo and Barbara Steele. In-between, the college kids act much like college kids do in a slasher movie–they want to have fun and fool around–but there’s a more natural and slower tone to their behavior here. This naturalness makes them more personable. I didn’t want to see any of them die. Peter does act like a jerk when he’s drunk, but he’s spoiled, so he’s a predictable jerk. Doris is fun-loving, but not the kind that usually leads to trouble in a horror movie, and Scotty and Jack do eventually snuggle, but they take their time before jumping into bed.

This is the movie Ti West should have remade instead of his homage to 1980’s slashers, The House of the Devil. Both keep to the same pace, both have an impossibly thin college girl in danger, and both involve families with deep dark secrets, who live in old houses with horror waiting in the attic. But The Silent Scream has a better story and better directorial nuances, making it a more chilling and distinctive movie that draws you in instead of trying to impress you with the director’s ego.

Sorority Row (2009)
Party Hardy Till You Die

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Sorority Row 2009 Zombos Says: Very Good

What a difference a decade or two makes. In this remake and retinkering of The House on Sorority Row (1983), the overheated and nubile Theta Pi girls are non-stop partying like it’s 2009; and the usually horribly-deformed-and-mentally-somewhere-beyond-Saturn stalking killer is easily a People or US magazine cover candidate. Stewart Hendler’sSorority Row is overly-sexed, overly slick and glossy, and murderously fun.

All the elements for successful slashing are here: a prank gone horribly wrong; a deep dark secret to be kept; a mysterious killer who, months later, knows the deep dark secret that apparently has not been kept very secretive. And then people start dying in creative, bloody ways with a signature weapon–in this case a pimped out lug wrench. What is different is Hendler’s playfulness with an audience’s expectations for the murderous mayhem, and the sincere acting from a cast that is not just eye-candy, which balances this cat and mouse game between tongue in cheek and serious terror. Carrie Fisher as the shotgun toting house mother, Mrs. Crenshaw, puts up a classy mean fight, bringing legitimacy and sophistication to the action.

Sorority row 2009 jessica Bacchanalian partying, hot tub simmering, and excessive drinking round out the sorority girls’ studies. Bossed by Jessica (Leah Pipes, when the prank they play on Megan’s (Audrina Patridge) cheating boyfriend, Garrett (Matt O’Leary) results in death, they hide the body down an old mine shaft. Arguments for going to the police and for not going to the police are heatedly exchanged, leaving the sisters in disagreement and the body still hidden; until eight months later, at graduation time, when their ringing cell phones tease them with a picture of the lug wrench. Does someone else know or is it Garrett succumbing to remorse?

Ellie (Rumer Willis), the bookish one–she wears glasses–starts to crack under the strain, while Claire (Jamie Chung) gets hot and not so bothered with her boyfriend in the hot tub. Meanwhile, the keep-it-warm-between-my-legs Chugs, (Margo Harshman) goes in search of prescription-strength fun only her shrink can provide, but finds a nasty mouthful instead. Chugs is my favorite. I was sorry to see her go so soon. The death by bottle is not pretty or humorous and so smoothly executed it kicks off the slashing with promise. Hendler draws more suspense out of the subsequent killings, dwelling over each dispatch with a fine eye to gruesome–but not gory–detail. I do not want to spoil the hot tub and bubbles everywhere walk and stalk for you, but I will leave you to imagine how a misused flare gun can brightly light up the bubbles and a sister at the same time. Another moment to savor is when Claire’s hot to trot boyfriend Mickey (Maxx Hennard) has a fatal bottoms-up interlude with a dumbwaiter.

Who the killer turns out to be is not much of a brain-twister: Hendler telegraphs the identity throughout by emphasizing a certain handy feature available on most cell phones these days. But the fun is getting to that point, even with the preposterous time it takes for the fire engines to finally show up and the somewhat jittery camera eye.

Zombie’s Halloween II (2009)

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Michael myers Zombos Says: Very Good

I did not expect Rob Zombie to surprise me with Halloween II. Beyond his unavoidably repetitious metal-rockers, hippie-hillbillies, and tattoo-punkstering of Laurie Strode and Haddonfield Illinois’ social set, miring Halloween II in a seedy glaze of grunge, strip joints, and Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa posters, he surprised me.

Probably many horror fans are surprised, too, and will be dismayed or downright violently annoyed with this bold mashing of J-horror’s quintessential rage-filled imagery into Myers’ endless angst-driven slashing ouevre.

In this brilliantly audacious diversion from John Carpenter’s classic bogeyman, Michael Myers (the towering Tyler Mane) becomes a deadly juggernaut guided by a mysterious other embodied in the white gossamer spectre of his dead mother and her majestic white stallion. But to what purpose? Is she a vision of Shiva the Destroyer? Or is she a demonic chaos seeking succor? Or is she simply a confabulation in Myers’ tortured mind? Zombie builds mystery by confounding us with this and an unexpected folly a deux between Myers and his sister, which now takes the Halloween franchise into a strikingly new direction.

My surprise comes from how Zombie’s bizarre imagery grates against my expectations (and probably those of most of the audience): a mad-hatter’s kind of tea party in Hell; Myers’ adult skeleton–its skull wearing his scarecrow-like mask–eerily hanging in the background as young Michael and spectral mommy chat about the future of the Myers family; and then the final jarring image that completely displaces Halloween II from its slasher underpinning by invoking the psychologically terrifying hallmarks of Samara from The Ring and The Grudge’s unstoppable curse of violence. I am more than surprised: I did not think Rob Zombie capable of such creative impudence.

Halloween II 2009Teasing with a beginning that makes us believe he is comfortably rehashing the hospital mayhem from 1981’s Halloween II, Zombie instead drops us off in Haddonfield a year later. Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) now lives with long-haired–and burned-out–Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) and his short-haired, more healthy-eating, daughter Annie (Danielle Harris). Laurie suffers from horrific nightmares and attends therapy sessions. She is a wreck physically and mentally, and cannot get her life–after that night Michael came home–jump-started again. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) is doing smashingly well. He is promoting his succcessful book on Myers. Zombie alternates between showing Laurie’s ongoing struggle with her trauma and Loomis’ unsympathetic attitude to the fallout from Myers’ serial-killing as he tours the book-signing circuit. More and more, the limelight reveals Loomis’ callousness in contrast to Laurie’s growing despair when she cannot find forgetfulness in the shadows.

There is no suspense generated from this shifting focus between Laurie, Loomis, and Myers’ continuing killing spree, even after Zombie gives Myers a shiny new knife, one Jim Bowie would be proud of, and sends him off, guided by his visions, to bring Laurie home. I wondered how all this carnage leading up to another Halloween night with Michael Myers could leave no room for suspense. I will pin it on Zombie paying greater attention to his imagery, which is wonderfully macabre and wicked and filled with malevolent long-haired spectres (although in a Zombie movie just about everyone has long hair), to the detriment of his more perfunctory treatment of Myers. He is big, he is bad, he is unstoppable; yes, we get that. Having Myers kill and eat a dog, uncooked, also seems a gratuitous gorehound moment, which Zombie seems to relish. Missing from this Halloween movie is the signiture music, which only comes into play at the end for the revelation that, ironically, changes everything. Carpenter’s music would have been out of place here anyway. This is no longer Carpenter’s classic vision: it is Zombie’s.

There is a sad flashback involving young Michael at the sanitarium. Michael wants to know when he can go home, while we know he can never go home; making him a lost soul who will stay lost. The gift of a toy white horse figures prominently in adult Michael’s visions. But the ultimate meaning and significance of those visions will have to wait until Halloween III.

Which leads me to another surprise: I never thought I would be eager to see a new Rob Zombie movie. If he directs Halloween III, I will be. Hopefully he can put the suspense back into the next one.

The Collector (2009)
Have Trunk Will Travel

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The collector

Zombos Says: Good

At the end of The Collector I felt cheated. I cannot tell you why as that would give the ending away. But here is a clue; in Sabotage, Alfred Hitchcock regretted blowing up the bus. While he wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable from the buildup of tension between the boy, the bus, and the bomb ticking away, he felt he cheated the audience by blowing up the bus, killing the boy and everyone on it. In a word, his payoff for putting the audience through the wringer was negative, not positive. Hitchcock realized he let his audience down: no one wanted to see the bomb go off after all that suspense.

In combining Cube-like lethal traps with a hint of Saw-styled ingenuity and malice, and yet another relentless masked-slasher victimizing a family in unsavory, bloodily grisly ways, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Feast) do their darnedest to pulverize the audience with fears of helplessness, torture, and death. They almost succeed, but choose to blow up the bus by going the usual horror franchise-building byway at the end with a negative payoff. In their case, however, the bomb takes the form of a trunk for the one he always takes.

lucky survivor and continue on his bizarre journey to perdition (and potentially a hot franchise). He also likes to devise fiendish traps and set them throughout the house, though I am not sure why since he ties up his victims before he sets his don’t-step-in-the-bear traps, don’t-pick-up-the-phone traps, don’t-step-in-the-glue-on-the-floor-because-it-burns-like-acid traps, don’t-walk-into-the-razor-wire-strung-across doorway traps, and don’t-go-near-the-window traps. Where he finds the energy and time to build all these devilish traps I do not know, but if he devoted it to stamp and coin collecting, even comic books, he would be awesome.

The uncomfortable–for us–increasing tension begins with the unexpected intrusion of an ex-convict looking to pay off his ex-wife’s loan shark debt before midnight. His wife and daughter’s lives depend on him completing his heist. While opening the safe, Arkin (Josh Stewart) hears screams and goes to investigate. After he realizes what is happening, he tries to help, but the Collector’s traps are demoralizing and painful, and the people he tries to save do not trust him and are crazed from fear and pain, making them loud and unmanageable. The house is isolated, of course, so he needs to quickly make a decision whether to save them or himself.

He tries to leave and realizes he is also trapped in the house. How he narrowly escapes the Collector’s traps while trying to evade capture, make the midnight deadline and save both families, including the little girl he had a tea-party with earlier that day, keeps his feet in motion, his breathing heavy, and his situation changing from unpleasant to bloody-hell messy unpleasant. Images of spiders and bugs crawl through the movie, and in one tender moment–for the Collector–the masked maniac lovingly frees a spider from the house into the yard. A thunderstorm provides classic gloom, and there is a gruesomely poetic revelation of a web-like trap, illuminated briefly from a flash of lightning, just before Arkin stumbles into it.

The dilemma facing Arkin, to save both families or his own skin, is something not often seen in horror movie fare. It provides a catalyst for audience involvement that goes beyond vicarious body-count watching. When the Collector goes after the little girl, forcing Arkin to make difficult choices between physical safety and his conscience, it made me root for this home team to hit a home run.

But all Dunstan and Melton can do is get stranded at first base. They dote on the bloody-hell messy parts of the movie, replacing most of the suspense with typical–for a psycho-butcher-torturer movie–outcomes. Closeup views of lip sewing, chisel to teeth, shears poised to snip a pliers-held tongue, carving a roast without the roast, and, really, just about every dire torture-gore situation and its outcome we now anticipate due to their overuse is here in lavish closeup. It is stylish, it is done well, but it has all been done before.

So, I felt cheated. But I also felt like double-checking the doors before I went to bed, too.

Warning to cat lover’s; don’t see this movie. For dog lovers who like drool-dripping, snarling and snapping hounds on chain leashes, this one’s for you.

The Last House on the Left (2009)
To What Purpose?

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The Last House on the Left

Zombos Says: Good (And to the idiot who walked in at the movie’s midway point, sat down in front of me, and proceeded to chat on his cell phone until I had to tell him Miss Manners was looking for him in the lobby, I would have loved to have set that microwave on high with his poppin’ head in it.)

This film, for example, which as I write has inspired only one review (by “Fright”), has generated a spirited online discussion about whether you can kill someone by sticking their head in a microwave. Many argue that a microwave won’t operate with the door open. Others cite an early scene establishing that the microwave is “broken.” The question of whether one should microwave a man’s head never arises (from Roger Ebert’s review of  The Last House on the Left, 2009).

Of course, whether one should turn on the kitchen garbage disposal to mangle a person’s hand into bloody pulp, accompanied with stereophonic screams of agony, could be another philosophical question to ponder in this vicious–yet, oddly, less terrifying–remake of Wes Craven’s gut-wrenching 1972 interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. But philosophical ponderance is not often measured into horror movies as much as sadistic inhumanity. So to what purpose do I bathe in blood, along with the innocent and the damned, on this hellish, stormy, night of vengeance?

Last House on the Left The criminals who eventually rape and attempt to murder Mari (Sarah Paxton) are certainly depraved enough to warrant ill-treatment by her parents. But how far can her parents go before becoming just as depraved as her tormentors, and why do the rest of us choose to watch it all happen? For the suspense? There is none. For the terror? We know what is going to happen so there is no terror. To watch normal people act abnormally when driven beyond the edge of reason? A strong possibility here, especially if those abnormal acts include suffering, redder gore, and darker death; key thematic elements in many horror movies.

At least Ingmar Bergman put God squarely in the middle of his story, forcing guilt and shame on the parents who mete out vengeance to their daughter’s killers. You will not find emphasis on a divine presence in this latest incarnation of a story that really did not need to be retold. No guilt or shame, either. There is lots of ungodly loud, screeching music though, like bones dragged across a chalkboard. Unless you are entertained by the  creative ways directors and writers emphasize these thematic elements, there is not much here for you. But if you are, you will especially enjoy the totally gratuitous ending involving a microwave and a deliberately paralyzed sadist. If you’ve seen Gremlins, you know what to expect.

Leading up to the poppin’ head gag, as I like to call it, are the usual characters found mucking about in horror cinema; there is the psycho-witch-bitch girlfriend, Sadie (creepily played by Riki Lindhome), who, I am sure, pulled the arms off of little boys (and girls) while she was growing up; led by the snake-oil-salesman cool, sociopathic boyfriend, Krug (Garret Dillahunt), who easily attracts psycho-witch-bitch type women; followed by the tag-along guy, Francis (weasily played by Fred Podowski) who likes to watch as the other two go medieval-crazy on their victims.There is also the withdrawn, confused son of Krug, Justin (youthfully played by Spencer Treat Clark), who is not all that comfortable associating with the other three. A brief mention of his dead mom makes you wonder how she died.

Setting calamity in motion is Mari’s friend Paige (perkily played by Martha MacIsaac), who insists on following Justin back to his motel room to sample his stash of primo weed. Mari, tired of waiting in the car, enters the room and finds Justin and Paige puffing away. Mari gives into Paige’s insistence to join them, and starts puffing away, too. This being a horror film, you know Paige and Mari must now suffer and die for smoking weed, even if it is the good stuff. Justin’s severely maladjusted family enters the room to fulfill that invariable rule.

Taken into the woods, Mari and Paige are dutifully tormented, Mari is humiliated and raped, and Paige is murdered. While not as emotionally disturbing as Wes Craven originally directed it in 1972, their torment is still brutal and unpleasant to watch. Unable to leave the way they came, Krug, Sadie, Francis, and Justin head through the dark woods to the last house on the left (actually, it looked like it was the only house on that road), where Mr. and Mrs. Collingwood, Mari’s parents, put them up for the night. Barely alive, Mari manages to crawl back home and alert her parents to the true natures of their house guests. Much blood-soaked mayhem ensues.

I hope this is the last version of The Virgin Spring we will be tormented with. While the acting, direction, and writing are all very well done, fans of horror have been taken down this road too often already.

My Bloody Valentine 3D

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My Bloody Valentine 3D

Zombos Says: Very Good

Cinema in three dimensions does for the slasher movie what black and white does for film noir; it provides the best atmosphere and in your face vantage point to see all the gore,  join  in the  screaming mayhem, and easily count the number of mangled bodies piling up.

Three 3D-enhanced images stay with me after watching My Bloody Valentine 3D: the sickening way one victim’s shovel-sliced head, bisected at the mouth, slowly slides down the sharp blade toward the audience;  the stark beam of the headlight darting about in the gloom of the movie theater as the gas masked, pickaxe-wielding, miner stalks his next victim; and the vivid Utz Potato Chip bags displayed prominently on an endcap behind Sarah and Megan as they run their hearts out–to keep them beating in their chests–down a grocery aisle. I could, of course, mention other images that come to mind, like gaping chest cavities, a blood-dripping, lifeless hand so close you can almost touch it, and one eye-popping surprise–courtesy of, once again, that über-utilitarian, death-dealing pickaxe, but it is a slasher film after all. So much carnage from such a simple tool is quite surprising; of course, clothes dryers can also be useful as vividly shown in this movie.

My Bloody Valentine 3D does not stop at the dozen or so pickaxe techniques for artfully–if messily–dispatching the careless townsfolk of Harmony, the place where ten years earlier Harry Warden went on a killing spree, in the Hanniger Mining Company’s Tunnel No. 5, that puts a Cuisinart’s slicing and dicing ability to shame. It heaps on the pounding, relentless music suitable for an unstoppable killer on the loose, who pickaxes hearts out of chests and stuffs them in heart-shaped candy boxes, with love, every Valentine’s Day, and unabashedly oggles drop dead gorgeous, screaming in terror, women running naked in stiletto heels. For a remake of a minor Canadian slasher movie from 1981, director Patrick Lussier and writers do their best to bring back the unbridled yet simple construct of the slasher genre: violent graphic death, people running for their lives,  more violent graphic death. They outdid themselves here.

My Bloody Valentine 3D With actors like Jensen Ackles (Supernatural) and veteran Tom Atkins, as well as a talented cast taking it all very seriously, the story is brutally lean and mean. Bridging the 1981 film’s comparatively tamer carnage with its more flagrantly bloodier remake, an early scene,  where body parts are liberally distributed in a hospital after Harry Warden wakes up from his coma in a bad mood, transitions neatly into the present, which in this case is ten years later. It is interesting how horror movies often rely on anniversaries and ten years later-styled storylines to pick up the tragic action, isn’t it?

Tom Hanniger (Ackles) returns to town after a long absence, to sell the mine where he caused the tragic accident that started Warden on his killing-spree. With his return, the killing begins again, and the victims include those who survived Warden’s butchery ten years before.  In due time, secrets are revealed, and Tom and Sheriff Palmer (Kerr Smith) argue over Palmer’s wife Sarah (Jaime King), who is showing rekindled ardor for Tom, her former boyfriend. As suspicion grows with the blood flow, Tom, Sarah, and Sheriff Axel return to the mine where it all began. They are not alone.

Jensen AcklesMy Bloody Valentine 3D has the distinction of being the first horror movie to utilize the technique to its fullest; namely by highlighting gore and making sure to stick the audience’s face into it, or toss it into the audience’s lap as often as possible. Given the highly effective visual intimacy that cinema 3D naturally lends to the horror genre, can 4D be far behind?

And for those parents who brought their young children to watch a movie like this, I ask simply “What the hell were you thinking?” If anyone deserves a pickaxe through their dumb skulls, you certainly do.

The Strangers (2008)
Home On The Strange

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Zombos Closet: The StrangersZombos Says: Excellent

The message director Bryan Bertino seems to be implying in The Strangers is not to misuse technology; doing so can get you killed. Two misused cell phones, one misused house phone, and a misused car and ham radio later, he clearly illustrates why in this latest iteration of the home-invading stalker movie. With similarities to 2006’s European Them, Bertino’s masked assailants lay siege to the desolate home and psyches of an already distraught couple, entering the premises at will and often standing quietly in the background watching their freaked-out victims, Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman).

After his marriage proposal doesn’t go the way he anticipated it would, James and Kristen head to his family’s vacation house at four in the morning. With red rose petals strewn across the bathtub and bed, and a bottle of champaign less chilled than the soured marriage proposal, both try to reconcile the awkwardness by getting frisky instead. Of course, as you and I know, any hint of sex in a horror film spells trouble with a capital T. Right on que, a nerve-rattling pounding on the front door ends their reconciliation. Outside, a Squeaky Fromme-voiced girl, her face hidden in the darkness created by an unscrewed porch light, is looking for someone. Maybe it’s me, but how can James not get a clue even when he screws the porch light back in after the girl goes away? Clueless victims in horror films make matters much worse, as you and I also know.

Thestrangers02 An empty pack of cigarettes sends him driving to the corner store for a refill, but the corner store is miles away, leaving Kristen all alone. Let’s recap, shall we? A really creepy girl shows up at the front door asking–in a very creepy voice– if some guy they don’t know is home. Oddly enough, the porch light is unscrewed so her features are hidden in darkness. Oh, and let’s not forget the incessant and really, really loud pounding that preceded her appearance: a pounding such a diminutive girl could not have possibly done on her own. Do you see where I’m going with this? apparently James doesn’t. Maybe Kristen is right in not marrying such a dope.

While he’s away, little squeaky comes back, more annoying and creepy than before, with more threatening pounding on the front door. Bertino adds a subtle shifting of the camera, right to left, left to right, as it focuses on the unsettled Kristen, reflecting her growing distress. Then the misuse of technology begins.

Instead of calling the police, Kristen calls James–you know, the dope who left her alone in the first place for an expensive pack of cigarettes. Oops, should have charged that cell phone. She plugs it in and goes for the house phone instead. Not much luck with that either. Gee, I wonder why? Technology can be such a bother when making a horror movie. Isolation is essential when creating the right mood and increasing helplessness. You can’t have good horror if potential victims can make quick phone calls for help, or jump in cars and drive away from trouble. Better to make sure they’re remiss in using all that life-saving, help-bringing, techno-crap; best to eliminate it right away, leaving them powerless. Dead batteries and poor cellular service are two ways to squelch this cell phone empowerment dilemma. Bertino uses them and more in nice, too-easy, techno-swipes enabled through poor decisions, as the strangers silently hover, surprisingly close, in the background, taking full advantage of James and Kristen’s shattered composure and wilting thought processes.

James returns, but leaves his cell phone in the car. Even after Kristen explains the weird things happening, the crazy noises, and stuff in the house moving from where it was left, he’s slow to realize they should be driving off like the devil was shooting white-hot flames after them. When he does decide it’s time to leave, his car is tidily put out of commission, sending them running back into the house where their attackers can enter at will.

In desperation, James remembers the gun. In the best argument for the NRA put on screen, he fumbles trying to use it, load it, and aim it. The axe chopping through the front door adds a sense of urgency, so he figures it all out pretty quick and shoots. Unfortunately, he misses. But he does have a shotgun and lots of shells, right, so they’re safe now. Let the intruders come. He’s ready. Sort of. Then again, no, not really.

The home invasion continues, and James and Kristen continue to work against each other and misuse any technology they come into contact with that could possibly help them. Bertino’s grim, helter-skelter-styled, 1970’s-toned, stalking-slashers-treating-you-bad “because you were home” directorial and writing debut relies on the usual dodges–unwise separation, getting yourself hurt when you can least afford to, and mistaken identity–but through his “uneasy” camera, use of music and loud, incessant, irritating noises, and the movement of his three masked intruders inside and outside the home, builds the terror and suspense. Roger Ebert would have given Bertino one star but upped it to one and a half when he found out this was his directorial debut. I’ll go one better and say he’s earned two stars for mixing tried and true formulas into an effective thriller. The Strangers will make you double-check your door at night and sleep just a bit more uneasily, even with the lights on–and keep your cell phone charged and close by at all times.

Carved (2007)
Scissors Are For Cutting

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Hanako-san and the Toilet

Hanako-san’s ghost haunts the restrooms of many schools in Japan. She appears if her name is called, but you really don’t want to do that; especially on a dare, late at night, when her darker, revenge-filled spirit is at full strength. She died from a broken heart, from constant bullying by her peers, and waits patiently for the time when her tormentors will have to go. School children in Japan were so frightened by this urban legend, many could not go alone to the toilet; where Hanako-san patiently waits. It is said that if you listen closely, you can hear her whispered curses echoing softly off the tiles…

Zombos Says: Good

Japanese urban legends are engrossing, aren’t they? While similar in many respects to American ones, they tease reason loose from the mundane, and play on our fears of unrelenting  supernatural evil and contagion, spiraling out of control in a way that uniquely plays off the community and tradition-based culture of Japan. In America, the witch, Bloody Mary, simply rips your face off if you’re suckered into saying her name thirteen times out loud, while looking in a candle-lit mirror in the dead of night. In Japan, she’d be the ghost of some mistreated woman who rips your face off, then pops up unexpectedly to rip all of your friends’ faces off, then possesses someone close, just when you think it’s over, to continue ripping faces off anyone coming into contact with you.

And she would most likely hold a large pair of blood-dripping scissors to squeeze every last drop of terror out of you as she silently floats across the floor in a greenish haze, anxious to snip snip snip your flesh.

Director and co-writer Kôji Shiraishi’s, A Slit-Mouthed Woman (released as Carved in the USA by Tartan Video), uses the Kuchisake-onna urban legend as its source. In Japanese mythology, Kuchisake-onna is the evil spirit of a woman mutilated by her samurai husband, who cuts her mouth open from ear to ear as retribution for her infidelity, or pride, depending on which version of the legend you prefer.

In Carved, Kuchisake-onna is transformed into the evil spirit of a sickly mother who physically abused and killed her children. Her obake returns to prey on the frightened children in the small town of Midoriyama, wielding a rusty pair of bloody scissors and wearing a white hospital mask and trench-coat. The white mask, a common sight in Japan, covers the gash that runs from ear to ear, a nod to the original legend, but not quite explained here. The traditional “Am I pretty?” question, which presages violent death for her victims, is also out of place. Instead, Shiraishi and co-writer, Naoyuki Yokota, while keeping the well-known aspects of the legend, alter it by adding abusive mothers as the underlying instigation and perpetuation of the horror that steals children away late in the afternoon to murder and mutilate them.

Many Asian horror films center on an unrelenting evil force that grows from the murder of an innocent person. While vengeance is often the catalyst, that force soon envelops or contaminates anyone in close proximity, whether good or bad, as it spreads outward. In Carved, the evil grows from a person who’s bad to begin with—a refreshing change from the usual Japanese approach, though it’s a typical American Horror staple: we like our monsters monstrous from the start you know, and our victims less than pure so they sort of deserve what they get.

The unsavory story begins with three kids talking about the slit-mouthed woman as they walk home after class. Indeed, I wish I had a quarter for every time “slit-mouthed woman” was said by someone in the film. Half-way through I stopped counting. An earthquake shakes the town, and releases the spirit of Kuchisake-onna. Before you could gasp “slit-mouthed woman!” she snatches away kid number one. The next day, Mika, the abused-at-home and bullied-at-school kid thinks she’s next. Depressed kids often think like that, even in Japan.

Ms. Yamashita, her teacher, walks the students home, and when it comes time to drop Mika off, they start talking. Mika shows the bruises her mom left on her arms, but Yamashita, a reformed abuser herself, yells at Mika for wishing ill on her mom. As Mika runs away—that’s right—she’s nabbed by the slit-mouthed woman while Yamashita cowers in fear.

Maybe they should have sent Mr. Matsuzaki to take the kids home instead. Strangely, he’s not really scared of the slit-mouthed woman (have you started counting how may times I’ve written “slit-mouthed woman” yet?). But he does keep hearing her voice in his mind, just before she grabs a kid and disappears. The police, not believing Yamashita’s supernatural depiction of the kidnapping, think it’s someone dressed up as—oh, you know who—so Yamashita and Matsuzaki team up to search for the missing children. When he hears “Am I pretty” again, they jump into his car and race to the home of the slit-mouthed woman’s next victim. They show up in the nick of time to watch the slit-mouthed woman grab the poor kid from behind. When she whips out her scissors to do a little trimming on his mouth, Matsuzaki plays WWE SmackDown with her while Yamashita cowers again. Surprisingly, he plunges the scissors into the slit-mouthed woman instead and “kills” her. But not for long.

Up to this point, the pacing is slow and remains that way. Tension doesn’t build in this film, and the emotional setpoints that should kick our feelings into gear around certain scenes don’t budge one iota. Yet, the storyline remains strangely involving, and a few scenes, while lacking emotional charge from the missing tension-building, will still make you squirm in discomfort.

I squirmed when three bound children are brutalized, leaving one stabbed to death, another horribly mutilated and scarred for life, in both body and soul, and the third having to witness it and wonder when she’s next. While the atrocities are mostly implied, the impression is still harrowing. We don’t often see children harmed in horror films, and I hope this doesn’t mark a trend in that direction. But within this film, it stands out as truly shocking and horrible, and fits into the context of the story.

The inevitable showdown takes place on Childbeck Hill, at the deserted home of Mr. Matsuzaki. It appears he left one particular skeleton in his closet, and those bones are still rattling rather loudly. A flashback gives us his story and why he may be the only one who can stop the slit-mouthed woman. In a totally American-styled ending, the evil continues to play rock, paper, scissors-in-your-mouth for the potential sequel. While I’ve often quipped “would you like fries with that” in regard to American Horror, I never thought I’d be saying it when discussing J-Horror. Times change, I suppose, and the franchising sequelization-antics so prevalent in America’s horror industry appear to have spread their evil contagion, too.

The image of the slit-mouthed woman is nicely stylized for marketability also. I can see those McFarlane toys now. Horrorheads will love them; especially the realistic removable hospital mask, real fabric trench-coat, and realistic-action scissors. Now if they can toss in a voice-chip that says “Am I pretty?” “Smile!” and “Kiss my ass, Freddy” that would be perfect. Add a few mutilated children cowering in fear and you’d have an awesome playset.

Tap Dancing to Hell and a Pot o’Gold Part 4
Going Dutch Can Be Murder
Slaughter Night (2006)

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SlaughternightPart 3 

Zombos Says: Good

“Ya know,” said Curly Joe, “that supernatural slasher film from the Netherlands just popped into my head. Must be all this walkin’ through these dark, creepy tunnels; reminds me of the old mine they were trapped in.”

“You mean Slaughter Night?” I asked.

“Yep, that’s the one”

“Yes,” I said, pausing to hit my flashlight, hoping to make it a tad brighter. “At least we aren’t being chased by the ghost of some maniacal killer who cuts people’s heads off.”

What sounded like a maniacal laugh echoed down the tunnel, bouncing off the walls with a screech like gritty chalk on a blackboard. We looked at each other, then walked faster in the opposite direction from where the sound came from. Never hurts to play safe, I always say.

 

The backstory within Slaughter Night would have been a more engrossing movie, but overall this 1980s-styled slasher is still a Dutch treat with good
acting, an eerie story, and a moderate pace moving the action along. Although the overuse of shaky-cam blurs that action at times (probably intentionally to
lessen the strain on the budget), and an unexpectedly jarring point-of-view for some scenes, along with a few head-scratching plot logic lapses, all come
together to almost weigh the movie down, but at least the earnest victim by victim mow down is lively enough.

There’s something evil afoot in the Province of Limburg as children are mysteriously kidnapped. When the latest victim is snatched a clue is left behind, leading the local constabulary to the home of one Andries Martiens (Robert Eleveld)–just as he slices off the head of another poor kid. Martiens’ basement is definitely not a rec room in the usual sense: there are heads mounted on poles stuck in the earth, and lots of candles cast a nice warm glow over the glistening , maggot-crawling faces of the dead. It’s Voodoo and Satanic Mass nastiness Martiens has been conducting, paid with ritual slaughter to buy his passport to Hell and back again. He’s pissed his parents died without leaving him an inheritance and he’s hellbent on making the trip to annoy them into revealing where the family fortune is. With four heads for the compass points and four heads to represent the elements, he’s off accruing all the frequent flyer miles he can between Hell and Earth.

What a backstory!

Unfortunately this filled-with-possibilities period piece ends too quickly with Martiens’ capture and we jump to the present day into a frenzied nightclub scene. Kristel (Victoria Koblenko) and her High School buddies are out partying, but when her car refuses to start, she calls Dad (Martijn Oversteegen) to pick them up. One of her friends, Lies (Carolina Dijkhuizen), the Tarot-card reading seer, accidentally mentions Kris’ plans to leave town. After he drops her friends off, Dad and Kris argue themselves into a fatal car wreck. Kris blames herself for her dad’s death. After the funeral, her mom asks her to go to Belgium to pick up her Dad’s manuscript. Sure, why not? I suppose FedEx would have been too expensive. He was working on a book about serial killers, writing it at the mine museum where Martiens did his dirty work. Packing her friends in the car along with her guilt, they head to the mine.

A montage of road trip antics set to rock music–what the director considered rock music, anyway– is mercifully brief and they arrive at the mine. She finds her Dad’s tape recorder and listens as he explains the Satanic aspects of Martiens’ serial killing and the need for eight heads to open the gateway to Club Hell.

She also finds a Ouija board–always useful for getting into trouble in a horror movie–a heavy and rather large music box, and his thick manuscript. She stuffs all this in her already cumbersome backpack, and LUGS IT on a last-minute tour of the historic mine. Her friends join her. They huddle around the tour guide as he tells them how Martiens’ met his end in the very tunnels they will now walk through. A condemned murderer, he was given one slim chance at life if he could survive being a “fireman,” the role an unlucky convict played years ago, sent into methane-filled tunnels to ignite the firedamp. He didn’t play the role for long.

A gimmicky and jarring use of point of view has them mugging the lens, ruining an otherwise atmospheric tableau in another montage of kids running wild down in the mine; until they realize they’ve been locked in.

To while away the time they whip out the Ouija board from Kris’ backpack to communicate with Martiens, the maniacal, head-removing butcher since they have nothing better to do. Lies explains the intricacies of the planchette and board. In little time they summon Martiens who promptly possesses one of the idiots. She takes out the tour guide first.

Going through the horror movie victim’s litany of things-that-will-certainly-get-you-killed, her friends start getting the axe, the pick, and the shovel on the receiving end. In-between the mayhem and carnage, Estrild and Kris whip out the Ouija board again to dial up Dad for some fatherly advice on coping with Martiens.

Dad’s cryptic advice stymies them for a bit. While they figure it out, Martiens keeps possessing her friends one by one and chasing after the others. Unnecessary shaky-cam fuzziness ruins the details of death, but the panic-acting is frenzied to a turn, providing satisfying denouements at proper terminal velocity.

There’s one more moment when the Ouija messaging board comes into play, helping Kris realize why the music box she’s been lugging around is so heavy (and should have been left in the car except the plot needed it here).

All in all, while Slaughter Night uses gimmicky camera work and the standard horror movie mechanics of shock, drop, and die, it’s still watchable and involving.

Part 5