From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Lemora A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973)

Zombos 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.

Movie Review: Slither (2006)

Zombos 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.

Movie Review: Nightbreed (1990) Are We Not Monsters!

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

"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.

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.

Movie Review: Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) TCB, Baby, TCB

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’nt be missed.

Or, as Elvis would say, it manages to “TCB, Baby, TCB.”