From Zombos' Closet

The Ultimate Boy's Gift Back In the Day

Every boy when I was growing up wanted a Daisy BB Gun, and every mother I knew worried about us boys shooting our eyes out with it, as so well depicted in the classic film, A Christmas Story.

The ad appeared in the back of comic books. Don't you just love those wonderfully unsafe but fun toys they used to sell! Now everything is so damn prim and proper. You'd think we were a bunch of idiots the way we need to be protected from ourselves. I miss the good old fun days of non-litigation and living dangerously.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

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

Zombos 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.

Zombie: Eat FleshT-Shirt

In our never-ending quest to bring you the most fun apparel any zombie-lover -- that's you! -- can wear, Chindi spotted this chic t-shirt that reminds us of how much we love to eat fresh at Subway, and how much we love to watch zombies eat fresh, too.

I bet Jarred wears one. Though, after losing all that weight, he probably wouldn't make much of a meal for a hungry bunch of zombies.

Horror Fan Gift Guide for 2006

So there you are. Yes, you; you waited and waited and — put down that tie set ! — unless of course you want it knotted around your neck. No self-respecting horror fan would be caught walking-dead in that thing. Nix the cuff-links, tie tac, scarf, funny hat, pen set, and sweater, too, and pay attention. This is your last chance to make that special horrorhead in your life devilishly happy for Christmas with one or more of these you-really-care DVDs and books.

Movie Review: Christmas Evil (1980)

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.

Movie Review: Jack Frost (1996) No Frost on This Pumpkin

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. 

Movie Review: Head Trauma (2006)

Zombos 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.

 

Best Book Gift Ideas for the Horror Film Fan

So there you stand, scratching your severed head in dismay; what gifts to get that ho-ho-ho-so difficult horrorhead in your family? Why suffer the hordes of zombiefied holiday shoppers, overwhelmed store employees, and bargain bins of the damned when you can sail down the Amazon in shopping comfort while sipping your favorite frothy beverage? To help you with your gift buying, Zombos Closet presents the first annual list of bloody best books any fan of horror cinema would die and come back for, again and again.