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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.

Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)

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Lemora A Child's Tale of the Supernatural movie sceneZombos Says: Excellent

Thanksgiving Day is always an interesting time for us. The Zombos and Zimba families, including those above and below ground, crawl, hop, fly (usually by plane), and drive to the mansion for the eagerly anticipated holiday festivities. Each year Chef Machiavelli outdoes himself, and this time prepared the three-tentacled octopus and turkeys with a wonderfully seasoned shrimp and yak-eye stuffing.

Speaking of stuffing, Aunt Vesta and Uncle Tesla were in their usually supercilious moods at the dinner table, spicing the repartee to new heights. Afterwards, dessert was taken in the grand ballroom and the conversations continued.

“I must agree with Zombos,” said Cousin Cleftus, adjusting the thick amber-colored monocle over his one good eye. Uncle Tesla raised his brandy, sniffed it with disdain, and sipped a little.

“Lovecraft’s premise that mankind’s oldest and strongest emotion is fear,” he continued, “while essentially correct, is incomplete. Fear is merely the emotional energy. You must define those elements that instill fear, and once you do, you will find what makes us fearful today is greatly different from what made movie audiences frightened years ago.”

“And today,” continued Zombos, “one fears not the supernatural unknown, but the loss of one’s authority over life. That theme is reflected more and more in this current Cinema of the Helpless. To have one’s life and death inevitably at the whim of forces beyond one’s control is essentially the basis of all horror, but those forces are no longer cosmic or alien in nature, but mundane and co-existing with us, and conspiring against us until they strike, leaving us helpless, or in pain, or dead. We live with the
monsters and they are us.”

Uncle Tesla sipped his brandy as he listened. He looked very much like Renfield in Dracula; not as portrayed by Dwight Frye, superb as he was, but Bernard Jukes in his stage portrayal. He glanced toward the desserts buffet with longing.

“When would you like to screen Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural in the cinematorium?” I asked.

“Lemora?” said Uncle Tesla, ecstatic. “Why, I’ve not seen that movie since the seventies.”

“It is a wonderful anamorphic version,” said Zombos.

Cousin Cleftus’ monocle popped out and dangled across his vast circumference.

“No, no,” said Zombos, “anamorphic, as in taking the wide-screen movie aspect and retaining it for the home screen. You get to see all the detail of the movie as it was shown in the theaters without losing anything on a smaller screen.

“Oh, I see,” said Cousin Cleftus, popping his monocle back in place.

“It is a wonderfully unpretentious southern Gothic, set in the 1930s South. From the blue-tinted night scenes to the zombie-like cancerous decay makeup of the wood ghouls, it is a movie that surmounts its low-budget limitations,” reminisced Zombos.

“And let us not forget the beautiful vampiress, Lemora, herself. Her Lizzie Borden appearance, paired with her pallid, Countess Marya Zaleska look from Dracula’s
Daughter is superb,” said Uncle Tesla.

“And what about those irrational actions of the rat-like bus driver during the frightful night ride to that vampire-infested town of Asteroth,” added Zombos, “wonderfully Lovecraftian in conception as the wood ghouls claw at the bus. The whole affair harkens to Lovecraft’s story the Shadow Over Innsmouth.

“Yes,” continued Uncle Tesla, laughing. “How on earth any sane man, knowing that he’s surrounded by murderous vampires, gets out of a stalled bus after saying he can just coast down the hill to the town—to fix the engine, no less—boggles the mind.”

“And he leaves the rifle on the side of the bus, of course, losing it,” I added.

“Of course!” said Zombos and Uncle Tesla together. “He deserved to be attacked.”

“The scene with the witch holding the red lantern and singing that weird folklorish song in close-up is unnerving,” I added.

“What’s even more unnerving is the sexual undertones running throughout the movie,” said Uncle Tesla. “What with Lemora’s amorous posturing toward Lila, the “Singin’ Angel,” and the ticket-taker’s provocative “what do you like best now, soft or hard centers?” comment when he holds the box of chocolates up to Lila as she buys her bus ticket.”

“The Catholic League of Decency condemned the movie, didn’t they? That probably ended its limited distribution in theaters prematurely,” said Uncle Tesla.

“Yes,” said Zombos. “I hear it became a cult movie in France, though. They tend to appreciate the artsy fare more than we do.”

“They restored the longer scene with the ticket-taker,” I said. “The actor’s wonderful, unctuous delivery, in close-up to show his creepy Peter Lorre eyes peering over the box of chocolates at the girl, is quite striking.”

“The choice of vibrant colors is also striking, especially when contrasted with the shadows and dark lighting in the movie. It gives a dream-like air to the story as much as the slow pacing, and languid performance by Cheryl Smith as Lila,” said Zombos.

“Let’s see it,” said Uncle Tesla. “I can’t wait any longer.”

Zombos told everyone to grab their desserts and follow him into the cinematorium. Uncle Tesla took his usual three and I pushed along the coffee and tea station behind him. As soon as everyone was settled comfortably, I began the movie; and enjoyed another helping of Chef Machiavelli’s Turkish Delight.

Slither (2006)

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Slither movie posterZombos Says: Very Good

“Well, Falstaff, how is the diet going?” asked Zimba.

“As well as to be expected, Madam,” I replied. She could be so cruel at times.

She looked at my waist, smiled demurely, and walked away. I suppose I could cut out the Dunkaccinos every morning, I thought, as I sipped my extra-large Dunkaccino. At least I did not have the weight problem that Grant Grant had in Slither. That whole alien-slug parasite infestation thing can be so demoralizing to one’s self-image.

Slither is a well-crafted mix of computer animation, traditional puppetry, rubber and gook special effects, and slimy, horrific make-up artistry that, combined with a witty, fast-paced script and bread and butter cinematography, is a fun and disgusting romp at the same time.

This 1950s-styled monster story breezes along with colorful small-town characters, headed by a self-deprecating sheriff played by Nathan Fillion, and the unpleasantness of an alien-slug-in-the-meteor invasion that has detrimental effects on the local yokels.

What sets this horror film apart from so many of the half-baked, “hey, let’s snuff those teenagers again in all sorts of gruesome, but oddly enjoyable ways” cinema of the helpless films that have inundated the theaters lately, is its skillful approach to the technical elements that make a good monster movie, combined with a whimsical splash-it to-the-walls sense of gore. And it leaves out the over-used, angst-ridden teenage gore-fodder, and instead gives us a cast of seasoned actors who expertly chew up the scenery just as the scenery starts chewing them up.

…

Slither (2006)Read More »

Nightbreed (1990)
Are We Not Monsters!

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Nightbreedposter

Zombos Says: Fair

“What the hell was that all about?” said Zombos. The man has been quite brusque since his recent birthday, but he did have a point.

“Offhand,” I replied, “I would say it’s about monsters, both human and otherwise, alienation, and uneven direction that
stymied the translation from literary source to the screen. And to think he did such a wonderful job on Hellraiser. Tsk, tsk.”

We had just finished watching Nightbreed, Clive Barker’s ambitious but confusing directorial and scripting approach to his novella Cabal. Having not read the story I cannot speak for the pacing and clarity of the source material, but I can point to the cinematic folderol in his twist on the premise that good humans always fight evil monsters.

Nightbreed opens with an MTV music video-styled dream sequence involving very fashion-conscious monsters, cavorting around in a dark, misty landscape as if choreographed by Paula Abdul. Aaron Boone seems to be having a lot of these crazy monster-dance dreams, while the biblical word Midian haunts his waking hours, too.

He looks very clean-cut for a person with mental problems, and sports a cool leather jacket straight out of Grease, along with a nice pompadour to complete the look. He is seeing a psychiatrist, played by David Cronenberg—so you immediately know who the real psychopath of the story is. As the psycho shrink Dr.Decker, he has been slaughtering families left and right
even before the film begins.

The one scene that had us sit up and take notice early in the film is his first appearance as the oddly masked killer. Picture your worst fear as a child. Was it the bogeyman? Perhaps he was hiding in the closet, or behind the door, or under the bed? Or was it the fear of losing your parents, and being left unprotected and helpless against the bogeyman?

In the film’s only truly frightening scene, a little boy stands alone at the top of the stairs, and tells his mom he “heard a bad man.” His mom tells him it was nothing and not to worry, and she promptly gets slashed to death by that bad man as the boy watches helplessly. The boy then watches the bad man go into the living room, where his dad’s throat is quickly opened from ear to ear. The bad man returns, looks up at him, and slowly, quietly, walks up the stairs toward him, the knife glinting in his hand. Now cut back to the boy, slowly backing up helplessly against the wall. End scene. The implication is clear, the visual impact strong.

It is a brilliant scene, simple in execution, horrific in effect. Being a father, Zombos couldn’t watch it. Unfortunately, the remaining scenes quickly lose that horrific tone, something Barker did not fail to do when directing Hellraiser. In that seminal film, the horror never ends; it keeps building without humor, without remorse. But not here. When Top Ten Horror Scene lists are tossed around, this scene is never mentioned: it should be, but it may go unnoticed because it is lost among all the other stylish
scenes that lack coherence.

Dr. Decker first tries to convince Boone that he, Boone, is the killer that’s going around murdering families. When that fails the psychiatrist convinces the police that Boone is the killer. Yet there is no explanation as to why Dr. Decker is butchering people, no backstory, and when he finds out about the monsters living in the ancient and really big cemetery called Midian, he also wants to kill them—just like that. He expresses no surprise that monsters are hanging out in the local ancient cemetery.

Perhaps he has a conformity fetish. Or perhaps the main pieces of this puzzle, including the relationship dynamics between Boone and Decker, were left on the cutting room floor. The Wikipedia entry on Nightbreed states: To this day, Barker expresses a disappointment with the final cut and longs for the recovery of the reels so it might be freshly edited. It was intended as “the Star Wars of monster movies”, with over two hundred monsters created by Image Animation. I’m not sure what “the Star Wars of monster movies” actually means.

Once the monsters of Midian enter the picture, everyone is rather nonchalant about it, and either wants to get to know them better or kill them. This is where the film takes a sharp left turn, goes racing past that STOP sign up ahead, and stalls in a ditch. When Boone is killed by the police and comes back to life, everyone, from Dr. Decker, the police, and even his girlfriend, is okay with the notion there are monsters here, even when Boone becomes a walking once-dead man without a heartbeat.

The cosmic consequences don’t sink in to anyone in the film. Barker makes no allowance for pacing in a little necessary awe, disbelief, and “oh my god!!!”

Perhaps that’s in the missing reels?

It also seems everyone knows about Midian except for boy-I’ve-got-a-headache Boone. He finally finds out where it is from another headcase he meets in the hospital, who frantically rips the skin off his face in hopes that will make him more acceptable to the monsters of Midian.

Right.

Barker does seem to have a fetish about skin in his films regarding keeping it on and in one piece most of the time.

When Boone visits Midian he runs into the monsters, who reject him at first. The evil psychiatrist tells the police they can find Boone in Midian, and he makes sure Boone gets gunned down by the police as he leaves the cemetery. When Boone comes back to life, the psychiatrist becomes quite upset and tells the police that Boone is not—dead.

So what’s the deal here? The story is moving pell-mell, and badly needed exposition on whys and wherefores is not given.

Hello! Haven’t read the novella! Need help here.

Even Boone’s girlfriend, Lori, inexplicably heads to Midian searching for him, even though he shouldn’t possibly be ambulatory, what with a few dozen bullets in him and being dead already.

Finding the place EASILY, she soon comes across a creepy dog-like creature caught in the damaging rays of the sun. She rescues it at the behest of one of Midian’s inhabitants, who pleads with her from the doorway of a tomb. I don’t know about you, but when dark hooded figures plead to me from open tomb doors, asking me to pick up a creepy dog-like creature—well, I’d be flying through the air in the opposite direction at that point. But Lori saves the creature, finds out it was actually a shape-shifting child, and suddenly wants to learn all about the monstrous inhabitants of Midian.

Just like that. No cosmic consequences, confusion, or fear on her part; just pass the tea and crumpets and let’s hear all about it, deary.

We soon find out the monsters are the last descendants of shape-shifters, which have been hunted by humankind because they are DIFFERENT! and years ago found shelter living under Midian. Lori is fine with all this, and just wants to find Boone.

For the descendants of shape-shifters, it is odd that most of the monsters appear to be stuck in some really bad shapes. The menagerie of monsters that Lori comes across in her search for Boone is done mostly for shock value, and has little story-sense. The makeup art direction here is again reminiscent of an MTV music video, and the piece
de resistance are the Berserkers, who reminded me very much of the man-in-suit beasties from Dark Crystal. They are penned up in a cell, vicious, and serve no purpose until the end, when they are released to attack the invading humans.

Lori eventually finds Boone who, it turns out, is supposed to be the Cabal, the legendary savior of the monsters of Midian. I missed the lead up to that one; oh wait, there
wasn’t any. But they didn’t need saving until he showed up, bringing along kill-all-the-monsters humanity with him.

The police finally realize Boone is indeed dead but still walking, and, yes, there are monsters living in Midian. They quickly get pissed off there are monsters living together like normal people and gather up the usual assortment of redneck towns-folk, who don’t have nine to five jobs apparently, along with a drunken priest who was in the cell next to Boone, and head to Midian to kick some monster butt.

Why suddenly introduce a drunken, world-weary priest? He plays an important part in later events. A little backstory lead up would have been useful here.

The cigar-chomping sheriff and his redneck entourage soon get their butts kicked (in a badly choreographed game of slow motion touch-football, low budget action way) by the Berserkers, set free to protect Midian—although I thought Boone was supposed to do that, him being the Cabal and all—but Midian gets blown sky high anyway, and the monsters are out of a home.

Boone does get to kill Dr. Decker, but the loopy “I saw their god and he burned me. I want to burn him back” priest, who now looks like a monster himself, brings the psychopath back to life and calls him master. Both whoop it up a great deal in a sequelization-antic ending that is obtuse as the rest of the film.

Did I mention that the score is by Danny Elfman? That’s a plus.

My recommendation for preparing to watch this movie is to read the novella first. Perhaps that will fill in the cinematic gaps that you could drive a Ford Expedition through and make the film a more enjoyable viewing experience for you.

It certainly wasn’t one for me.

Interview: Something To Be Desired
Halloween Special

/ Halloween Novelty / Leave a Comment

“Not another new horror magazine?” asked Zombos.

I nodded. “Yes, they seem to be popping up as fast as flies on a corpse these days.”

“Any good?”

Before I could reply, I heard Zombos junior calling for his dad. Zombos panicked. “Lord no! If I have to watch High School Musical one more time I’ll pluck my eyes out! Don’t tell him you saw me!” Zombos jumped behind the sofa to hide.

“Have you seen Daddoes?” asked junior, as he ran into the room.

“Why no. I don’t know where he is,” I said, while motioning to junior to look behind me.

“Dadda!” he cried, jumping onto the sofa beside me and looking behind it. He is such a bright boy. “Come on! Mommy said you would watch High School Musical with me while she went shopping.”

A cry of anguish escaped Zombos’ lips as he was reluctantly pulled out of the room. I could hear him moaning all the way down the hall. Poor fellow. At least things were getting back to normal at the mansion.

I returned to reading my new horror magazine. When that was done, I flipped on the old PC for something completely different, and started watching the Something To Be Desired: Halloween Special (on Blip.tv).

STBD has been on the Internet air for four years now. Created, directed and produced by Justin Kownacki, who is also a rodeo clown and lawn-flamingo assembly worker (hey, it’s Pittsburgh, what else are you going to do?), the comedy series follows the trials and tribulations of DJs at the WANT FM radio station.

The Halloween Special is a fast-paced, wacky zombie-fest complete with gore and well done makeup, that places our intrepid DJs in a dire situation as they try to not get eaten by the horde of dead party-goers that suddenly show up at the station. It also answers the burning question, “what does a vegetarian zombie eat?”

It took STBD four years to finally do this Simpsons’ Tree House of Horror-styled episode, so I asked Justin and Erik Schark (he plays Rich Mathis on the show) a few questions about the special and STBD.

…

Interview: Something To Be Desired
Halloween SpecialRead More »

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
TCB, Baby, TCB

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Bubba-ho-tep
Zombos Says: Excellent

Poor Zombos. Another birthday has come and gone, another year much older. He is now at that nonretractable age where the over-the-hill birthday cards are no longer funny, no matter how many humanized monkeys, sun-glassed grandmas, scantily-clad woman, and you’re-not-over-the-hill jokes grace them. The poor fellow is tumbling down that hill at this point. He has entered into that past-tense territory; the somewhat foggy land of blurred memories and time-diluted dreams, where his reminiscences of the good old days bore everyone around him to tears in their constant retelling.

Zimba valiantly tried to cheer him up, and was partially successful when she flipped the TV channels to find King Kong Lives! What a bizarre movie. Zombos was practically on the floor by the time the “big” operation scene came along with Linda Hamilton wielding Land of the Giants-sized surgical instruments to perform open-heart surgery on the ailing ape. When they craned in the mechanical heart the size of a Smart Fortwo car, even Zimba was rolling on the floor laughing.

Zombos went back to his doldrums when the movie ended. I ventured into his closet, looking for something that would put a smile on his face again. Perhaps a bittersweet Don Coscarelli and Joe Lansdale tale of a mummy, an old Elvis Presley, and an older John F. Kennedy pretender, played against the backdrop of fading vitality, unfulfilled dreams, and the inevitable slack time between living hard and sleeping big would certainly cheer him up?

Bubba Ho-Tep is not a great movie but it does come close enough to do the job, like the really good Elvis impersonators. Bruce Campbell is the real Elvis Presley and Ossie Davis is a maybe JFK (as told by him, he was dyed black after the assassination incident), and both elevate this mojo-horror with sentimental charm and simple humorous gumption. The twangy guitar and acoustic drum laden score by Brian Tyler countrify this B-movie appropriately with a bittersweet mood—despairing one minute, glorifying the next.

Terror springs up in the Mud Creek Shady Rest Convalescence Home, where Elvis mopes his time away three stops past his prime. Seems he’s tired of the same old thing, day after day, and wanted out. Hiring Sebastian Haff, the best Elvis impersonator he could find to take over the life he no longer wanted, he hits the road as Haff, while Haff hits the stage as him.

Both men impersonate each other, but it looks like Haff gets the better half of the deal. When Haff overdoses, the real Elvis becomes trapped in Haff’s impersonation. No one believes Elvis when he says he’s the real deal, winding him down on his luck and sending him all alone to Shady Rest.

He’s stiffly glum and ornery, ruminating on what should have worked out right and his famous gyrations are now devoted entirely to using a walker to get around. He also suffers from a humiliating ailment on his little prince. His ego’s deflated so flat it’s detached him from with his surroundings: he lies in bed watching every day transpire in blurry fast motion and odd time slices. People treat him like the unimportant head-case with mutton chop sideburns and sparkling wardrobe old guy he feels like.

It takes a scarab beetle as big as a “peanut butter and banana sandwich,” and JFK, thirty-fifth president of the United States, to get him taking care of supernatural business with gusto.

After more than the usual dead old people go out the front door, Jack tells Elvis there’s a mummy scuttling through the halls of Shady Rest, sucking out the souls of its denizens through their butts. He knows this because he’s seen hieroglyphs in one of the men’s toilet stalls. The absurd discussion between Jack and Elvis regarding the discovery of these “stick pictures on the sh*thouse wall,” and Jack’s simple translation of them, leads both to surmise they have a soul-sucking Egyptian mummy roaming the halls. Jack’s copy of the Everyday Man and Woman’s Book of the Soul leaves no doubt about this.

No one really wants to be in the old-age home; not Elvis, not Jack, not Reggie Bannister, who plays the rest home administrator, not Kemosabe, the senile masked cowboy with toy cap guns, and not even the soul-sucking mummy wants to be there. How he wound up in a Texas rest home is as sadly commonplace as anyone else’s story. Since he’s trapped there, too, he has to take care of business to stay alive, or as alive a mummy can get to.

Coscarelli takes us slowly down the gloomy and empty hallways the mummy, dressed in cowboy duds—a Bubba Ho-Tep as Elvis calls him—roams, but the real horror in this movie isn’t the mummy, it’s the humiliation of old-age and the “always the hopes, never the fulfillments,” regrets as Elvis realizes he has lots of too-late-to-do-anything-now tucked away. There’s enough melancholia to go round for everyone at Shady Rest and Campbell’s narrations of his thoughts and dreams sets the tone against the raspy twang strum of the guitar punctuating the empty spaces between his words mood.

There’s a wonderful Carl Kolchak-bucking-the-odds feeling to this story: two men struggling to overcome their age-related handicaps to fight a supernatural force as uncomfortable in the world as they are. Elvis in his walker and best stage costume, and Jack in his wheelchair and best dress suit confront Bubba Ho-Tep in a fight highlighted by animated hieroglyphic invectives uttered by the mummy, with subtitle translations, and the duos frantic, partially ambulatory, attack aided by wheelchair and guile.

In the current cinema horror cycle where torture and grisly death await most victims and the would-you-like-fries-with-that franchising of stories to over-salted excess burning out the craft and skill of writing memorable, Bubba Ho-Tep is a little gem that should not be missed. Or, as Elvis would say, it manages to “TCB, Baby, TCB.”

Saw III (2006)
Once Again Unto the Breach

/ Movies (Gore) / Leave a Comment

SAW 3 movie posterZombos Says: Very Good

“Hello, Zoc.”

“What? Who’s that?” I shook the sleep away. It was 2:30 in the morning. I had
dragged my butt back from watching the midnight showing of Saw III and
was fighting sleep to write an early review of it.

“Let’s play a game.”

“Who’s talking to me?” I asked.

A squeaking sound came from the dark corner of my attic office. A tricycle slowly
rolled into the circle of sparse light that illuminated my desk. It was Papa
Smurf.

“I am Jigsaw. Your life is an empty shell.”

“You’re not Jigsaw! You’re Papa Smurf!” I cried, frantically pinching my hand to
wake up.

“I am—”

“You’re Papa Smurf with large red targets painted on his beard.” I pinched harder.

“I am here to help you face your fears. Of course, you may die in an extremely
painful and gory way, but you will thank me in the end.”

“Okay, look, when Zombos said I needed to cover these midnight showings while he’s
away, he didn’t mention sh*t like this.” I gave up on pinching my hand. It
hurt anyway. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the game? I’m dreaming all this so
it doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Look at you; you are tired, overworked, and barely notice the richness of life
around you. Your entire existence is now focused on only one thing. Blogging.
How sad. To lose the gifts of Twitter, of Facebook, and yes, even the gift of
World of Warcraft, just so you can type away on that cold, hard laptop
keyboard. Click, click, and click all day and well into the night.

For what?

You have lost touch with your inner self, Zoc, and those most important around you. I
will help you find the way back to your social obligations—did I mention you
may die horribly like a twisted pretzel, or maybe a ribcage deboned would be
visually cool—back to your social life that is waiting patiently for you, and
the loved ones who miss your tweets and incessant profile changes on
Facebook.”

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“The game is simple. Write the review. If I like it, you will live and have fame and
fortune. If I don’t like it, you will make like a corkscrew and go pop in a
shower of crimson. Make your choice.”

I always knew deep down that Papa Smurf was evil. I just didn’t know how much
until now. Creepy little guy, anyway.

“Okay,” I agreed. I was dreaming, so what did I have to lose? I also vowed to give up
either midnight showings of horror movies or drinking that fourth cup of
coffee. I started typing on my cold keyboard and relived the horrors of Saw III.

 

Before you can get comfortably nestled in your theater seat with your drink and
popcorn, Saw III starts with a little game. Should the victim saw his
foot off or just mash it down to a bright red pulp in order to slip it through
his shackle. Let’s see, you’re a horror fan, what would you rather see?
Oh, wait, sawing off a limb was done in the first Saw, wasn’t it? No
sense repeating that, then.

And before you can take a swig of Coke, and eat a handful of popped kernels,
another game brings us to a room, a guy who is about to have a really bad day,
and another set of chains, although these have large hooks at the ends.

Bloody chunks should have been the tagline for this movie. You do get to see lots of
them.

Funny, but no one sitting around me in the theater—it was surprisingly packed for a
midnight show—ever touched their drinks or popcorn after that one.

The story——do you really care there’s a story linking all this gory carnage together?— revolves
around two plotlines: Amanda (Shawnee Smith) is back with a vengeance as
Jigsaw’s eager apprentice, and a man who must come to grips with the loss of
his son, and the witness, judge, and killer involved with his son’s tragic
death.

Director Darren Lynn Bousman moves between both stories using a fair amount of woozy
camera shots, dark lighting, and grainy, garish coloration to move characters
through a succession of torture tableaus highlighting the devious, extremely
unkind, and painfully realized Rube Golderg devices that come into play for
unlucky victims.

Once Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) escapes into Jigsaw’s maze, he must face the people he
blames for his son’s death. Will he save them from horrible, painful deaths—and
disappoint horror fans if he does—or will he let them suffer and die gruesomely
for our entertainment and sadistic voyeurism?

Surprisingly, even knowing what must happen—this is a horror movie, after all—the tension is
still palpable, the expectations still hopeful. Everyone’s acting sustains this
suspense well as does the direction, although the woozy camera is used a bit
much and dilutes some scenes down into confusion.

As Jeff makes his way to salvation or damnation, Doctor Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) is
kidnapped by Amanda. Good old Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, of course) is not doing so
well. He needs a doctor. In one of the most gorily effective scenes I’ve seen
to date, the doctor tackles his brain tumor with a few handy Home Depot tools
lying around the old torture device workshop. I tried the old standby of
closing my eyes, but Bousman put the foley (sound effects) guys into overtime
with this scene. The squishy, ripping, sucking, peeling back the scalp, cutting
the skull, and wrenching the bone fragments out audio is the best use of nauseating
sounds I’ve heard in a horror movie.

So many directors forget the sounds and the smells of horror, you know? and only
focus on the visuals.

Considering the stark, bloody chunky close-ups of peeled away skin and the drill bit biting
into his head—with a lot of close-up blood bubbles dribbling around the drill
bit—this scene is one sustained gorefest treat.

Did I forget to mention Doctor Lynn is sporting a beautiful new shotgun shell
collar, designed by Amanda?

A bit showy, but definitely a party conversation starter (or ender, depending).
If Jigsaw dies, Doctor Lynn’s head goes bang. If things weren’t bad enough
Amanda is going off the deep end and Jigsaw is having trouble staying alive and
keeping her in check. Woozy flashbacks tell the story of Amanda and how she
came to be Jigsaw’s apprentice and heir apparent.

Jeff finally meets the man who killed his son, tidily stuffed into the Twister, a
fiendish device that does exactly what its name implies. His arms, legs, and
head are locked into a 360 degree rotating armature.

Guess what happens next.

Will Jeff save him, or spend too much time debating what he should do while bones
crack and sinews snap? While Jeff deals with this latest conundrum, the doctor
and Jigsaw have a nice chat about suffering and murder.

Tobin Bell is so convincing as Jigsaw he makes your hair stand on end; much like
Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter charisma. Jigsaw is so self-righteous, so
certain what he is doing is proper; his character embodies the insanity of
extreme moral superiority and certainty without a grounding in reality.

In a twisting climax (pun intended), Jeff confronts Jigsaw, the doctor, and Amanda.

Will he make the right choice? Will Jigsaw once again play his game too well?

Exactly who is Jigsaw playing games with here and why does he think he’s teaching
people lessons when he’s not leaving anyone alive in his classroom?

Saw III is hard horror. There’s  supernatural horror, sensual horror, ghostly horror, rational and irrational
horror, and hard horror. Hard horror guts you like a fish and makes you flop
around after being gutted. Hard horror doesn’t care about messy character
involvements, or deep narrative, or witty scripting. It filets your senses.

The midnight showing I attended was sold out. I am not sure if that’s a good thing
for horror in general, but it certainly may bode well for Lionsgate and the Saw
franchise. The acting and scripting is done well enough, and the ever ingenious
evolution of the main star of this franchise, the convoluted machine of death,
is an unforgettable draw for the more demented gore and torture fan—

“Um-hum…” Papa Smurf Jigsaw cleared his throat. “…for the more avid horror fan of the genre.”

“Well,” I said.

“It will do.”

“So I win, then?”

“No.”

“What? You said I would win!”

“Surely,  you of all people should realize that you will have to wait for that.”

“Wait?”

“Wait for the sequel of course; there is always a sequel,” said Papa Smurf as he and his tricycle squeaked back into the darkness.

“Noooooooo!”

The Magic of The Prestige (2006)

/ Movies (Horror) / 1 Comment

The Prestige movie posterZombos Says: Very Good

Like a well-performed routine of cups and balls, director Christopher Nolan and writer Jonathan Nolan manipulate the nonlinear twists and turns of Christopher Priest’s novel, The Prestige, pausing here and there just long enough to make sure we are watching closely until the revelatory climax. Steampunk science-fiction merges with Victorian-era stage magic in this engaging story of rival magicians striving to upstage one another in a dangerously escalating battle of wits, secrets, and one-upmanship bravado.

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden’s (Christian Bale) obsessions for their magical art, and for one teleportation illusion in particular–the Transported Man–provide the drama in this story set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London. Mingling the social horrors of workhouses–where little girls could be sent  for want of money and family–with the wonderment of stage magicians, the headliners of their day, performing their pseudo-scientific and preternatural miracles to the amazement and delight of their Industrialization-era audiences.

…

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Interview: Angel’s Blade Actor Jeb Toms

/ Movies (Indie) / 1 Comment

In the upcoming film, Angel's Blade (2008) a young girl is possessed by Mayan spirits. When she dies, the spirits live on, haunting a lonely stretch of road. A man finds that the spirits are responsible for the death of his wife. Unfortunately, the spirits have followed him home – and are now after his young son's soul. Actor Jeb Toms steps into the closet to talk about himself and his role in Angel's Blade.

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