From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Hostel (2005)

Zombos Says: Very Good

Thank you. It's very exciting for me to be here, especially since I know that there are some people from Slovakia who probably want to kill me for making this movie. In America, Hostel is a very terrifying horror film for many people, but I truly believe it could become one of the great comedy classics here in Eastern Europe. I'm sure you have questions, and about why I made Slovakia look like all of a sudden it's from the 1950s, and what it might do to the tourist industry in Slovakia, and I look forward to answering all your questions and hopefully I will not get tortured to death. (Eli Roth, 'Smash hit horror Hostel causes stir among citizens of sleepy Slovakia')

 

Whistling. I hate whistling in a horror movie. It's such a pleasant activity, a normal activity; one that reflects a satisfied, joyful—even exuberant state of mind in the whistler. That's why it's so frightening and effective in the opening scene of Hostel. To hear that simple tune casually whistled by one of the "janitors" as he nonchalantly cleans the guest suites, routinely rinsing away the red splatter and body chunks down a drain, will freeze your blood. Just another day at work: just another day in hell; especially for the tourists. And you thought the plane trip was torture.This chilling contrast between the innocuous whistling and the gory evidence of disturbing activity is frightening, setting the gruesome tone for the film. Callous indifference is the theme here with people unconcerned that intense suffering and death are their job. They make money from it so it's okay; providing human cattle to be slaughtered by bored Über-rich seeking ever more intense emotional experiences, dehumanizing themselves in their avid consumerism.

What redeems this film from being a gratuitous exercise in explicit gore and sadistic violence is Paxton, the survivor. He starts out as another hedonistic consumer, but gains a precious sense of his soul while losing two fingers along the way. He is forced to care: he cares enough to take time while escaping to pick up his severed fingers; he also cares enough to rush back into the charnel house, after narrowly escaping the caress of a chainsaw, to save a girl he hardly knows.

His decision sets up one of the more intense and nauseating scenes in a film filled with them. When he finds her, she is missing half of her face, and one eye dangles precariously from its now burned-out socket. That dangling eye does present a problem. Okay, what do you do? At this point I had my hands over my eyes, but through my fingers I could see the flash of scissors as Paxton decides what he must do. You know what's coming, but Roth extends the tense moment into an excruciating eternity.

Roth tickles our fear-bone: the fear comes from being helpless while someone can commit any form of injury on you, and fear also comes from the knowledge that the amoral townsfolk in this creepy village gladly share in this consumerism-from-hell scenario. Even the children are sadistic monsters, roaming the town and demanding tribute; willing to harm or kill for a bag of candy. Being a foreigner in Hostel is a death sentence. The chilling words spoken to Paxton by one of the rich clients sums up the moral decay best: “Be careful: you could spend all your money in there.”

But after a film like Hostel, where do you go? How much torture and depravity can an audience take in a horror film? I'm sure Roth will try and find out.

 

Movie Review: Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007)

Zombos Says: Fair

Half-way into the movie I started to wonder why I wasn't feeling the love. Where was the lingering taste of candy corn on my lips, the smell of burning pumpkin innards, charred by candle flame, in my nose? Certainly there was no suspense, or even anticipation of it, from the unstoppable bogeyman as I watched Rob Zombie's re-imagining of John Carpenter's 1978 retelling of The Hook urban legend, Halloween. Of course, Zombie didn't have actors like Jamie Lee Curtis or Donald Pleasence to bolster his story, but since he spent much of the film focused on the unkempt Daeg Faerch as the young Michael Myers, perhaps that's a moot point. Or maybe not?

Making Myers more psychotic serial killer than ghost-like supernatural force to reckon with may be the cinematic equivalent of getting toothpaste and dental floss in your trick or treat bag instead of mouth-watering chocolates and sugary sweets. With Zombie's penchant for dysfunctional, white-trash families, and potty-mouthed, libidinous characters you really really don't care about, and lingering stares at his all too familiar blood-splattered tableaus, the hairs-rising-on-the-back-of-your-neck quality of the original story has been carved out and replaced with the pedestrian graphic violence prevalent in today's horror repertoire. 

Subtlety is not one of Zombie's stronger directorial abilities. He prefers to show everything, raw and bloody, and provide a rationale for why Michael Myers slices and dices like crazy. With a stripper for a mom, a Bowery bum for a father, a very loose unsisterly sister, and school chums that despise him with a passion, Michael will either become a born-again Christian, or a serial killer. While some may argue both cases can be the subject for a horror film, Zombie chooses the latter, and promptly drains the Jack-O-Lantern life out of the franchise.

The adversarial quality of Carpenter's film, exemplified by Jamie Lee Curtis struggling to survive the normally festive Halloween night, and Donald Pleasence earnestly warning of the bogeyman, sustained the tension and suspense of Michael's return to Haddonfield. Zombie erases this adversarial plotline by perfunctorily moving from sex-romping victim to sex-romping victim in well-orchestrated, but uninvolving mayhem as Michael goes after his now grown up baby sister. There is no anticipation of violence here, and therefore no suspense or real scares from the unexpected. Michael kills anything in sight so knowing what he's going to do next is a no-brainer. He's going to kill everyone in sight. Ho-hum.

Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis is more social worker than psychiatrist, and doesn't have the vulnerability that made Donald Pleasence's more fearful Loomis more interesting. When McDowell tells Michael—after the body count has been steadily rising—that "I've failed you," I thought to myself "Ya think?" Zombie's Dr. Loomis laments why Michael is so screwed up he can't be helped; Carpenter's Dr. Loomis realizes Michael is just plain evil, he's dangerous, and needs to be locked away forever. Which one do you think would sustain more tension in the storyline?

The trend toward making serial killers humongous in stature also works against subtlety here. Tyler Mane's Michael Myers is visually imposing, but evil is most devilish when it comes in  average height. And how the hell did little Mikey grow so big anyway? Mask-making is hardly a resistance-exercise, and that's all he did in his little cell; make paper-maché masks of all kinds to hide his face.

Zombie does toss in a few nods to the original film, and makes good use of the original soundtrack. There's also a nod to his former band, White Zombie, as  Murder Legendre briefly pops up on a television screen. Zombie continues this theme as classic horror movies appear on television screens here and there. Numerous cameos include Micky Dolenz and Sid Haig.

Zombie knows his craft, but relies on trash-violence and unsavory characters to tell his story every time, demeaning the level of artistry Carpenter showed in the original. Giving Michael Myers a sordid background, filled with animal cruelty and vicious murder, removes the mystery behind the mask, making this just another slasher film whose action  could have taken place at any time during the year. But this movie’s monster is supposed to be the Halloween bogeyman, damn it.

Re-imaginings like these make us realize what makes a classic so classic. That, at least, is a good thing.

Movie Review: Carved (2007) Scissors Are For Cutting

Hanako-san and the Toilet

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

Zombos Says: Good

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Phantasm (1979) Beware the Tall Man

Zombos Says: Very Good

 

Welcome to your nightmare, Mike.

Your parents are dead and your brother Jody is thinking of dumping you off to your aunt while he hits the road in his Plymouth Barracuda muscle car. I'd be depressed, too. It's no wonder your imagination starts running wild. I'd start imagining all sorts of phantasms if loss and abandonment were uppermost in my mind.

Being a kid in the 1970s doesn't help much, either. After that exuberant, but now defunct, 1960s high, Tom Wolfe's aptly named "Me Decade," is spinning out of control like a bad, long, hallucinatory trip that begins with a glittering disco ball and quickly morphs into one of the Tall Man's sentinel spheres sticking out of your forehead, drilling into your brain.

Phantasm is Don Coscarelli's acid trip on the dark side. With many social institutions losing their veneer of propriety in the 70s, Coscarelli made sure to beat up our quaint notions of peaceful death, comforting undertakers, and simple horror movies. His low-budget film, initially financed by his dad and picked up by Universal after a rough-cut showing, is a tad dated in the special effects department, but remains a scary, bizarre, trip centering around Morningside Mortuary with Mini-Me versions of recently deceased people popping up, flying metal balls with nasty skull-drills popping up, and a tall sneering gentleman from another place far far away popping up. Able to lift long coffins with a single arm, and endowed with abilities far beyond those of mere mortals like Jody, Mike, and Reggie—the guitar-playing ice-cream man—the Tall Man is one cantankerous and dangerous undertaker.

So go ahead, toss an ABBA platter onto the old turn-table and crank up the volume if that will help make you feel better for a little while. It's time to have that safe, comfy, feeling blown out from under you, when even in death you get no respect.

Can you dig it?

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes Phantasm a cult classic. While the direction is a bit rough, there's a distinct momentum in scenes, like a deck of cards being neatly shuffled with each card crisply riffling into the interweaving pile. While the acting is also a bit amateurish, there's a disarming simplicity to each of the characters, making their nightmarish ordeal stand out against the ordinariness of their lives. While some of the effects are low-tech, they play on the absurd terror of the situation, and the eerie, almost dreamlike—or nightmare-like—situations that reveal more of the sardonic Tall Man's alien nature, and his sacrilegious dwarfing-down of the bodies of loved ones supposed to be at rest.

The film opens with a glimpse of sex and murder precipitated by the Tall Man's more feminine side. In a weird twist that disorients with its shock-blink between her and him, we're hustled into a funeral that brings together best-buds even though the unexpected death of their buddy, Tommy, breaks up their musical trio for good. Now with little left to hold him down, Jody is ready to leave the small town, but Mike, his younger brother, doesn't want to lose the only close family he has left. But Mike has little time to be depressed; the mortuary's undertaker is a queer sort, and Mike starts to suspect why.

Or is Mike just punch-drunk from grief and imagining things?

Not knowing which end is up, Mike heads to his local psychic for help. She plays the old stick-your-hand-in-the-box trick and tells him to control his fear. But fear from what? Leaving the psychic, he's more confused than when he went in, so he stays close to his big brother. Trolling the local bar, Jody picks up the same "woman" who iced his bud, Tommy. Lucky for him, Mike interrupts his brother's nocturnal romp in the cemetery before she can do any harm.

The next day, while following Jody around again, Mike sees the Tall Man walking across the street. A blast of cold air from an ice-cream truck attracts the Tall Man's attention. Angus Scrimm is surreal as the lean, mean, undertaker-machine. His voice, his face, his whole body makes you want to run the other way when he approaches. Like the alien harvester in 1957's Not of This Earth, the Tall Man is up to no good, and Mike aims to find out just what that is.

Taking a sharp knife with him, Mike heads to Morningside Mortuary.

Late at night, of course.

A quick kick through the basement window later, he's prowling around the creepy marble hallways. In no time at all, he's barely escaping encounters with an oversized ball-bearing from hell and the Tall Man and his Jawa-looking munchkins. After slamming a big metal door shut before he's caught, he's startled to find the Tall Man's hand, flattened, still moving, and sticking out of the tiny crack in the door frame. He lops off a few of its fingers, spilling yellow ichor from the stumps. Mike realizes it's time to high-tail it out of there. Before he goes, he grabs one of the fingers as evidence.

More nightmarish events ensue after underage Mike downs a beer or two and convinces Jody not all is right with Morningside Mortuary. Jody loads up the old family gun and heads there—again at night—but gets attacked by a dwarf and makes a run for it. Worse yet, a hearse chases after him, driven by a much shorter—didn't we just bury him?—Tommy. Underage Mike pulls up in the bitchin' Barracuda, and the race is on. Reggie pulls up in his ice-cream truck after the hearse crashes and they discover the diminutive Tommy at the wheel.

Jody sends Mike to Sally's antique store for safety while they stuff the little guy into Reggie's truck so the squirt can ooze yellow ichor over all the popsicles. While perusing the antiques back at Sally's, Mike's eyes pop out when he comes across an old tintype photo of the Tall Man that comes alive (Stephen King uses the same effect in his novel, IT).

Looks like the guy's been around for a long, long time. Great. Time to rethink their fighting strategy.

Reggie, the ice-cream packing, guitar-strumming dude, joins in the fight. Being an ice-cream packing, guitar-strumming dude, he gets whooped good when Tommy bounces back to angry life among the popsicles. When the three of them—Mike, Jody, and Reggie—regroup and converge on the mortuary, they find the gateway to another world, lots more angry munchkins ready for UPS Global pickup, and all about what the Tall Man's been up to. Just when you think the story is nice-and-tidily ended, Coscarelli throws in a curve-ball. With three sequels, the Tall Man is unstoppable.

Phantasm will leave you wanting more flying balls of death, more of the Tall Man's shenanigans, and more munchkin-madness.

 

Movie Review: The Gravedancers (2006)

Zombos Says: Good

Step on a crack, break your back.
Step under a ladder, fall with a clatter.
Dance on a grave, get your ass kicked.

Zombos and I were out in the family cemetery, in the tepid air of a late summer night, prowling around for blurry apparitions to capture on video and unintelligible but spooky noises to record on our digital recorders. He was so excited after watching the new episodes of Ghost Hunters and the Haunted Collector on the Syfy Channel he went online and bought a bunch of spirit-busting gizmos.

"I think I have Uncle Clarence on the thermal imaging scope," he said with glee. He pointed to a pink blob in the lower left corner. It was bent over at an odd angle; Uncle Clarence was always bent over from the weight of his hunchback.

"That's your thumb," I finally said. He grunted his disappointment and moved his thumb out of the way.

"Hullo, what's that?" I pointed to a dark shape floating just above Cousin Shoemaker's tombstone. The Ghost-Mart Smart-Budget EMF reader's numbers were jumping into the high digits.

We cautiously approached the globular shape that quietly hovered above the grave.

"Quick, ask some questions so we can capture its voice on the digital recorder," Zombos directed.

"Are you Cousin Titus Shoemaker? If so, where did you bury your fortune in the mansion? And how much is it worth? And is it true that Aunt Matilda hit you in the head forty-one times with that meat cleaver Chef Machiavelli still insists on keeping in the third drawer to the right of the triple sink just because you snored?"

"Oh, bugger!" Zombos had gotten close enough to touch the floating shape. "It is not ectoplasm. It is a Barney helium balloon."

"Damn." I turned off the digital recorder. "Well, perhaps we should just watchThe Gravedancers instead?"

"Capital idea!" someone said.

Zombos looked at me. I looked at him. We looked around the empty cemetery. We kept looking back at it as we ran to the safety of the mansion.

 

While the smartly dressed paranormal investigators in The Gravedancers aren't exactly the plumbers by day, fearless supernatural inquirers by night kind, they still manage to do a few things right. But in the end, when you go dancing on other people's graves, you might as well stick a "Kick Me" sign on your back and be done with it.

The nearer to death among you may remember the 1942 Lights Out radio drama, Poltergeist, about the terminal effects from gravedancing. Building on this premise, Mike Mendez' movie is a tidy little romp in the spirit world that draws inspiration and visual styling from such gems as Night of the Demons, The Frighteners, and Poltergeist.

Unfortunately, it also draws a bit too much from the over the top remake of The Haunting, and that's where it loses the scary-cred it builds up in the first two-thirds of the story. For a low-budget fright-flick, however, it's stylish, has good acting, and has coherent—if not always best for the situation—dialog. Toss in its few good shocks and you've got a good ghost flick to add to your Halloween viewing list.

Three long-time, but haven't-seen-each-other-in-a-while friends get together for another friend's funeral. Oddly enough, the funeral has nothing to do with the now obligatory horror movie shock opening in the first few minutes. It's thrilling and chilling, but don't expect it to tie in anytime soon with the rest of the story. At the goading of the friend who's yearbook photo has noted "voted the most likely to succeed at Kinkos," they wind up back at the grave in Crescent View Cemetery, late at night, and stone-cold drunk.

Oh look! Someone's left an odd card at their friend's tombstone.

It reads to party all night, and dance over as many graves as possible to loud rock music.

Sure, why not?

Their luck goes downhill from here. The camera nervously peeks around at the shocked tombstones as our bunch, led by that Kinkos ne'er-do-idiot, dance on the resting spots of the town's worst former inhabitants: an incendiary child guilty of multiple homicides; a pillar of the community who tortured many women tied to it; and a piano teacher who chopped up her lover when not playing Chopin; making that a neat one ghost each for them and their death-mocking dance.

In the weeks that follow, creepy sounds, flickering lights, doors opening on their own, a frightened cat, and a piano playing by itself spook Harris McKay (Dominic Purcell) and his significantly-spooked other, Allison (Clare Kramer). They follow up with Kira, another gravely afflicted cemetery party-goer, who has been having her own ups and downs with a spirit that alternately bites and molests her. They bring her to a hospital; a setup for a wonderfully frightening encounter with a spirited gurney.

Their third dance partner, that Kinkos guy who got them in this mess, has been having some hot issues of his own. When they go to visit him, he's already called in the local college's paranormal investigation team (all the rage now, really) headed by Vincent (Tcheky Karyo), and his comely assistant, Culpepper (Meghann Perry). It takes the investigators little time to figure out it's the old dancing-on-graves curse at work, which persists from moon to moon, or until the cursed person dies. I bet Jason and Grant from TAPS never heard of that one.

So it's back to Crescent View Cemetery, in the dead of night (of course), to rebury the remains of the antagonized ghosts in hopes of putting them to rest—again. What ensues is a nicely choreographed example of why you shouldn't jump into graves with very spiteful ghosts itching to bury you, too. It gets worse when one of the investigators decides to do something very unprofessional, leading to more animatronic special effects, surprisingly well done on such a small budget, but somewhat over the top for what started as a more intimate haunting.

Everyone regroups at the investigators' stately mansion (Jason and Grant, eat your heart out), but soon they're bickering over who slept with whom and arguing over old relationship issues. You know, the sorts of things every potential victim in a horror movie does just before he or she dies. An unexpected rearrangement of the landscape keeps them locked in the mansion, trying to fend off their three ghostly antagonists who keep coming on strong.

The climax is a heady mix of really big, ghostly CGI animation, a determined floating bloody corpse wielding a very sharp axe, and a skillful product placement for HUMMER—I'd like to see a Prius save the day like that.

After this movie, I guarantee you'll not dance on any graves any time soon, and you'll pay more attention to Jason and Grant on Ghost Hunters, looking for as many useful pointers as possible to ward off vengeful spirits.

You never know.

 

Movie Review: Ray Harryhausen Presents The Pit and the Pendulum (2006)

I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

--Edgar Allen Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum

Zombos Says: Very Good

Having grown up on TV shows like Davey and Goliath and Gumby, stop motion animation is an enjoyable form of storytelling for me. From the simplicity and witty fun of Gumby, to the richness of design found in The Nightmare Before Christmas, the stories are often magical and the characters always imaginative. Stop motion techniques can be used with clay, puppets, and realistic-looking articulated models like Willis O'Brien's emotive King Kong or Ray Harryhausen's creepy fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts.

Stop motion has been skillfully and shoddily used with many traditional and avant-garde horror and science-fiction films since around 1908, and lends itself to the short subject rather well, especially when the setting is simple, and the actions straightforward. Marc Lougee's stop motion adaptation of Poe's, The Pit and the Pendulum, is a good example of this. Poe's story is a straightforward narrative of despair, desperation, and horror. The anonymity of the villains, the delirium of the victim, and the increasingly horrific situations he confronts is ripe for a short film that captures this singular time frame of struggle against increasingly dire odds.

While Poe's story is required reading for many college kids, this visualization of the torments suffered by the unnamed prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition would be a welcome addition to the curriculum. While a bit of license is used for dramatic visual effect (the prisoner doesn't have a metal helmet locked around his head in the original story), the short seven-minute film adheres to and captures the essence of terror with vivid detail in its CG-enhanced miniature sets and stylized puppets.

There's an exaggerated character-movement inherent to stop-motion. It can either breathe dramatic life into the actions of its diminutive characters, or create a cartoonish-effect that hinders more serious storylines. Poe is deadly serious here, and animators Weiss and Fairley create movement that conveys much of the drama and tension without whimsical or absurd motions. The robed tribunal members, murmuring and motioning with their heads and hands in a condemning way, and the prisoner's halting steps, exhausted posture, and fearful exploration of the dungeon, visually portray the literary tone of the short story with their painstaking and time-consuming attention to detail.

Dwayne Hill narrates the inner thoughts and feelings of the confused and fearful prisoner, condemned to the dark dungeons, without maudlin overtones. His voice is of a rational man in irrational circumstances; a man trying to reason through his predicament in hopes of finding an escape from his tormentors, and their fiendish instruments of torture and death.

One ray of hope and beauty written into the film, and not in Poe's gloomy tale, is the entrance of a brightly-colored bird fluttering around the solitary window of the cell, high up out of reach. The cheerful scene contrasts with the somber browns and blacks of the walls and floor. It is a nice foreshadowing of hope as the prisoner looks up toward the feeble light, entering through the bars, illuminating the red feathers of the bird flying about carefree. It fortifies the visual storytelling in a simple but majestic manner.

Though not based on historical accuracy, the fictional pit and pendulum of the story heighten the fearsome depravity and inhumanity of the prisoner's death sentence. In true horror story fashion, death is not the worst part, but getting there is. While reason keeps the prisoner from succumbing to the razor sharp blade of the pendulum, it can't stop the heated iron walls of his cell from forcing him ever closer to that infernal pit in the middle of the room. What horrors await should he fall down into the deep darkness?

It's hard to capture Poe's narrative detail, the rush of terror-filled thoughts overwhelming the long-suffering prisoner in his final moments before succumbing to the foul-smelling pit, especially in a six-to-seven minute film. But the climax here, with its carefully framed arm darting down to rescue him as he descends into oblivion, pulling him back to sanity and safety, is thrillingly done.

The Pit and the Pendulum's stop motion artistry proves old techniques, when combined with creativity and a touch of new technology, still have much to offer.

Movie Review: Night Monster (1942)

Zombos Says: Very Good

"Do you hear that?" asked Zombos.

"Hear what? It's quiet," I said, puzzled by his question.

"That is my point: the quiet. The cicadas have gone quiet." He looked over his shoulder.

"By George, you're right. I wonder what..." I looked over my shoulder, though I wasn't sure why.

We had been walking the beach close to the mansion, enjoying the West Egg summer night's mix of sticky humidity and soft breeze coming off the water. With the sudden quiet, we had stopped and were now intently looking at the dense woods a few feet away on our left.

"I'm sure it's nothing," I reassured him. "Come to think of it, it reminds me of that movie...let me think...the one with that swami guy, Bela, and those croaking frogs that stop croaking in the middle of the night just before a murder happens."

"Oh, you mean Night Monster," said Zombos, not taking his eyes off the woods.

"That's it!" I said, not taking my eyes off the woods, either. "You know, we should retreat to the cinematorium for a showing." Zombos agreed wholeheartedly and we dashed back to the mansion, looking behind us every so often as we ran. Though I'm not sure why.

 

An old dark mansion, blood stains that keep appearing in the carpeting, and thick fog swirling off the slough; if that's not creepy enough for you, Night Monster, an unusual Universal B-horror movie energetically directed by Ford Beebe, also has Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, and some thing—scaring the croaking frogs into silence—going around killing people inside the brooding Ingston Towers mansion and outside it.

Of the many B-movies that Universal churned out in the 1940s, Night Monster stands out as a tidy little exercise in country-gothic horror, and, while not truly a mystery, although it plays like one, it retains an eerie atmosphere with its fast-paced tale of grotesque preternatural goings-on, Hindu mysticism, and familial madness at the Ingston Estate nestled deep in the southern woods.

Curiously enough, while Lugosi and Atwill are given top billing in the opening credits, both have only supporting roles: Lugosi plays the persnickety butler, Rolf, and Atwill is Dr. King, whose mortal coil is shuffled off rather early in the movie. They make the best of their limited time onscreen with enough preening and posturing between them to satisfy any fan of the classic horror genre. Perhaps Lugosi was supposed to be the plot's red herring, but if so, that aspect of his role got lost in the translation from script to screen.

Evil things are afoot at the old Ingston homestead. One look at Torque (Cyril Delevanti), the sour, hunched-over gatekeeper, and Sarah (Doris Lloyd), the starch-collared and tight-lipped housekeeper, is enough to see the household is not doing all that well. Margaret Ingston (Fay Helm) worries she's got hereditary bats in her belfry, so she invites psychiatrist Dr. Harper (Irene Hervey) to visit and bring a cup of sanity. Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan), her crippled brother, stews in his own juices, cynical of the modern medicine that failed him, and hating the three doctors responsible for his disfigurement. Yet he invites them to a little-dinner-and-a-lot-of-vitriol weekend to see a demonstration of something beyond their science, beyond the natural laws of nature, courtesy of his very own yogi master, Agor Singh (Nils Asther).

Surprisingly, the important Hindu mystic role is not played by Lugosi, who did wear a turban as Chandu the Magician in The Return of Chandu, and as psychic, Tarneverro, in The Black Camel. Instead, Asther, an actor born in Denmark, provides the foreign accent and dark features this time around, perhaps necessarily less than Lugosi would have mustered given his iconic gravitas.

It's when Agor Singh does his after-dinner demonstration for the guests, calling forth a skeleton from an ancient tomb far away to appear out of thin air, with blood dripping from its outstretched bony fingers, that the story takes a welcomed spooky detour from the usually more straightforward B-movie fare. Singh has been teaching Kurt Ingston the ancient art of cosmic substance control. With his mind properly trained, Ingston can replace his amputated legs with new ones created by his mind, enabling him to walk again; or instead, he could kill those incompetent medical bastards one by one with his new, cosmic stuff-filled limbs.

I wonder which way he'll go? A puddle of blood is found where the skeleton appeared; an odd byproduct of the arcane mind control, comments Singh. A quirky little toss away detail that adds a touch more to the weirdness.

Jack Otterson's (The Mummy's Tomb) art direction and Charles Van Enger's camera build a gothic atmosphere and slick gloss for Beebe's movie. Enhanced by moody, terror-tense music, some of it previously heard in The Wolf Man, the secluded mansion’s menacing shadows, secret passageways, and flickering, fireplace-lighted gloom, all surrounded by a miasma of swirling fog, show a hypnotic palette of images. Window-frame shadows play across daytime interiors, and ominous shadows cast by furniture give a noir-ish textural depth to ordinary scenes, showing unexpected creativity and artistic preference in this budget production. The sudden quiet of the boisterously croaking frogs, followed by the screech of a door opening in the garden, signals the approach of the monster, a clever gimmick to heighten the suspense. In the 2007 movie Dead Silence a similar technique is used to equal effect.

The air of dread and impending doom is sustained by the mansion's characters and their questionable intentions: Laurie (Leif Erickson) the chauffeur has nothing but dames and hanky-panky on his mind, but it's not clear what else he's involved in. Rolf acts sinister and supercilious until the bodies start showing up, and Sarah secretly has the hots for Kurt Ingston and looks guilty just standing around.

Providing comic relief are Constable Beggs (Robert Homans), who investigates when Millie (Janet Shaw) the maid is found strangled next to a puddle of blood, and Dr. Phipps (Francis Pierlot), the diminutive physician with a penchant for gland research. The more serious romantic roles are handled by Dick Baldwin (Don Porter), a mystery writer invited to the little gathering by Kurt Ingston (okay, why invite a mystery writer?), and Dr. Harper, who’s trying to get to the bottom of Margaret's fears.

The weird murders happen fast and furious. While Dr. King is strangled off-camera, the discovery of his body is shown through the reactions of others, followed by a close-up of his lifeless clenched hand.  Dr. Timmons is surprised in his room next as a silhouetted figure steps out of his closet, its shadow growing larger on the wall as it lunges toward him. A close-up of his lifeless hand is shown. Then timid Dr. Phipps is attacked when he opens his bedroom door, thinking it is Laurie come to take him away from the mansion. We see him through the killer’s eyes as he recoils in fear, unable to scream as death approaches.

In the climax, Dr. Harper and Baldwin make a dash for it as the frogs stop croaking and the garden door creaks open, while Margaret decides to throw a hissy-fit with Sarah and play with fire. Will the killer be revealed? Will Dr. Harper ever get her blasted foot unstuck from the rotted foot bridge that Dick insisted on fleeing across? Will we ever find out why the, up-till-now, very reserved and strong-willed psychiatrist starts screaming like a B-movie girl instead of concentrating on getting her foot unstuck before Dick gets his ticket punched by the monster?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy finding out.

Special thanks to HHWolfman at the Universal Monster Army. While at the 2007 Monster Bash, I mentioned I wanted to review this neglected film. He soon surprised me with a copy of it, hot off the back of a hearse. Thanks HH. Thanks also to Richard Scrivani, who screened it at the Monster Bash, rekindling my interest in it.

Interview: Richard Scrivani A Journey with Zacherley

 Zombos Says: Very Good

But most of all, for kids born under the bomb and black-and-white TV, the revolution that was the 1960s began with Zacherley. (David Colton, Preface to Goodnight, Whatever You Are)

 

We take a lot of things for granted. I don't mean all those little inconsequential things that we siphon from our daily wake through the great white waters of life, but the really important things like our relationships with people, the places we go, and the history we take part in. Living our lives takes so much effort, so much involvement, that we scarcely get a chance to look back and reflect before it's all, suddenly, too late.

Richard Scrivani did look back, and his reflections on those things he didn't take for granted back in the 1950s and 1960s are the stuff of history, and childhood culture, and all those really important things many of us, who grew up in those churning and yearning years, have tucked deeply, and absent-mindedly, into our back soul-pockets.

Now I know it would be narrow-minded of me to say that the '50s and '60s were a wonderful time for everyone who grew up then, but I can say with certainty that there was one wonderful part of it that anyone could share in, whatever you were: Zacherley. In Richard's book, Goodnight, Whatever You Are!: My Journey with Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul, he reminds us of a time when monsters ruled the nascent airwaves, and Zacherley reigned as the TV horror host with the most, and flaunted it to the horror of many parents and authoritarians.

Zacherley came on the scene when Screen Gems opened the cinematic vaults in 1957 to release the Shock! Theater and Son of Shock! films, unleashing many classic—and many spastic—horror and suspense movies onto the little screen, awakening the monster-lust in many a young fan with their arcane terrors. In the middle '50s, the first lady of terror, Vampire, helped open the crypt door to future horror hosts who put their bite on the jocular vein, in welcome contrast to their show's more traditional, or just plain godawful, fright offerings.

As TV stations around the country scrambled to market their Shock! package of films, Philadelphia's WCAU-TV came up with a creepy character named Roland to play host for their show. John Zacherle, already acting in a western aired by the station, was asked to play the surly, acerbic-witted, but humorous crypt-kicker.

Richard Scrivani documents Roland's creation, and the ghastly business-side antics that led to Zacherle's eventual move to ABC-TV in New York to become the nationally known ghoulish gagster, Zacherley. With lots of photos, and a clever interview format that continues throughout the book, this look at Zacherley's rise to notoriety provides a revealing look at early television, which was a roll-up-your-sleeves time when local stations created much of their own programming and broadcast live entertainment.

Scrivani pays close attention to the progression of Zacherley's career across TV stations up to and including the move to UHF and WNJU-TV 47, where pop-music and pop-horror meet in a broadcast-live dance show called Disc O-Teen, aired every weekday at 6 P.M. from the Mosque Theater in Newark, New Jersey, starting in 1965. He attributes his first meeting with Zacherley to luck; the cute girl he danced with, Sami, caught the attention of the camera men and Zach. His luck would lead to a return visit for a Halloween show, and many more visits that spanned the three years Disc O-Teen was on the air.

Notable rock bands and their music in this era of social transition, and the dancers that made Disc O-Teen a happening show week after week, along with Zacherley's uniquely wacky sense of "grumor," are vividly told. Against this backdrop, Scrivani writes about the  friendship that grew between him, a shy kid from New Jersey, and the palid punster whose iconic persona became the eternal poster child for monsterkids everywhere, whatever they were.

It's hard to describe a time in American culture when the word "plastic" was confined to model kits, and not used pejoratively, but Scrivani manages to capture the innocence, the angst, and the harsh reality of the black and white TV age. Along the way in this personal journey, his friendship with Zacherley hits its idle periods, but picks up as John Zacherle moves from horror icon to radio announcer and back again.

I was lucky to meet Richard at a little private soiree thrown by the Drunken Severed Head at the 2007 Monster Bash Convention. While I didn't have a cute girl like Sami to grab his attention, we were wedged in tight enough--small hotel room, many notable guests--that he couldn't escape my asking a few questions.

How did your friendship with TV horror host Zacherley get started?

It started with a visit to Zach's dancing show, Disc-O-Teen, in August, 1965. My younger brother's band, Herald Square, was competing in a contest on the show and the winning group was to be awarded a recording contract with World Artist Records. My dance partner and I were invited back for the upcoming Halloween show. That was the very beginning of what would become a friendship with Zach.

In your book, Good Night, Whatever You Are, you write about an era of television and culture that, sadly, no longer exists. Why is that?

Because there are no longer any local TV personalities like Zach, Chuck McCann and Soupy Sales to host live programming. Everything is tightly scheduled and sent out like mass-produced cookies. Videotape is also becoming a thing of the past because stations are now broadcasting with hard drives.

The days when you could walk into a studio where a show was being taped (like sneaking under the circus tent), sadly, have long disappeared.

What's your first monsterkid memory?

My very first "monster kid memory" has to have been the first time I saw THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS in the movies with my father and younger brother in 1953. I remember the picture had a slight greenish tint to it!

What other monsterkid memories can you share with us?

I remember my first experience with a vampire film. I was about 10 years old and THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE was being shown on a local TV station long before the "Shock!" package was released. It was the scene where Nina Foch kisses her fiance and the camera swings over to reveal Lugosi as Armand Tesla hiding in the shadows. The female vampire was obviously following his command and it terrified me to think that a vampire could pretend to kiss you and instead drink your blood.

Also (probably on the same station around the same period) Glenn Strange changing into a werewolf and stalking an old man in THE MAD MONSTER scared the life out of me. But the most intense memory was Bramwell Fletcher's abbreviated scream in THE MUMMY after coming face to face with Karloff's reanimated Imhotep, followed by that insane laughter. I watched the rest of the film with the sound so low it was barely audible; I wasn't going to be frightened like THAT again!

Having grown up on the early horror movies, what's your impression of the current crop of movies?

Every once in a while I see one I really like, such as THE OTHERS or the remake of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. For the most part, though, I'm not a big fan of current horror movies. I did actually like M. Night Shyamalan's  THE SIXTH SENSE and THE VILLAGE, and I don't know if this qualifies as horror, more likely fantasy, but I thought PAN'S LABYRINTH was one of the best genre films of all time.

What's the one question you'd love to be asked, and what's your answer?

The question would be: "What makes Zacherley so unique and appealing?"

My answer: To a kid my age (12) in the uptight, conservative, tow-the-line 1950s, there were no TV personalities who broke the rules by poking fun at the stations' programming and even their bosses. When Zach came on the scene he seemed to be speaking just to us and it felt like he was one of us. He also wasn't afraid to make himself a filthy, disheveled mess while doing his crazy "experiments" and that was very much like the behavior of another kid!  I think radio personality Pete Fornatale, who calls Zach a "televisionary", sums it up best -  it was like Zach was telling one big joke and we were all in on it.

 

Goodnight, Whatever You Are is a terrific trip down memory lane for anyone who grew up as a monsterkid. For everyone else, it will make you envious that you missed out on all the fun. But remember, it's never too late, whatever you are.

Comic Book Review: Papercutz' Tales From the Crypt 1

Zombos Says: Fair

Welcome, dear readers, to another unbelievably gruesome tale for your morbid delight. Pull up a coffin and sit for a spell, won't you? Tonight, we look at another vain and feeble attempt to resurrect the dead. What's that you say? No, it's not good old Frankenstein up to his old tricks, nor voodoo zombies dancing in the moonlight. It's more diabolical than that! It's Papercutz' Tales From the Crypt, Issue Number One!

The office is quiet. The clock on the desk shows midnight as the sleepy-eyed artist finishes his work. Reaching for his long cold cup of coffee, he accidentally spills red ink across the freshly drawn page.

"Damn," he says out loud, but there's no one to hear.

Or is there?

"Hahahahaah!" cackles a mucous-filled throat.

"Who's that! Who's there?" says the artist, jumping out of his chair.

"Only us," replies another voice, as if clogged with fresh earth from a newly dug grave.

Gasp! The artist trips over his chair as he spins around. Standing behind him are two figures. They glare at him from the darkness his desk lamp can't reach. Their clothes hang in tatters, and moist earth drops in little clumps from their rotted limbs.

"Oh my god, you...you're..." The artist staggers backward in disbelief, raising his hands in horror.

"Yeah, I'm Feldstein, and he's Johnny Craig. Look, we're not entirely happy with what your doin' with our baby, the Crypt-Keeper." Feldstein's finger drops off as he points vigorously at the artist. "Not again, damnit! Now where did it go?" He motions to Johnny Craig while he looks for his finger.

"What he said," snarls Craig. "I mean, just look at that artwork for the first story, Body of Work. Are you kidding me? Jack Davis was so upset he went to pieces. Wally Wood's still back at the cemetery trying to put him together. Just look at these colors; bright, cheerful? And what the hell do you think you're drawing, a Picasso? And don't get me started on that storyline. Horror writer my ass! I'll admit it's kind of witty, and the tone of the story and art style work fairly well together, but that ending? C'mon, how original to use the old PG-standby, heart attacks. These are fiends, man! Thirsting for blood!"

"But I didn't draw the first story; I drew the second one, For Serious Collectors Only," pleaded the artist.

Feldstein stands up, grabs the tape dispenser off the desk, and tapes his finger back onto his hand. Then, in a fit of inspiration, he staples it for good measure.

"There, that's not going anywhere now. Now what was I saying? Oh, yeah. The Crypt-Keeper may be demented, but he's still educated. Who wrote those godawful word ballons for him anyway? You'd think he was a bit comic doing a dead vaudeville shtick the way he talks. Where's the puns, the biting sarcastic wit? From Ralph Richardson to this? I can't believe it. Even Kassir did a better job."

The artist cowered. "That's Salicrup. He did it. You can't blame me for any of that. I told him it was too juvenile, too pedestrian. All I did was draw the second story."

"That second story's a doozy, too. It's "250% more cursed" is right. How many times have I seen comic book stories about nerdy comic book collectors who live in their mom's basement? Gee, let me count those times on my fingers. Damn, ran out of fingers!"

Once more, Feldstein's overly dramatic hand gestures send another finger flying through the air. His pinky lands in the artist's coffee cup.

"Gross," says the artist, pushing the cup away in disgust.

"Damn, not again!" says Feldstein, reaching for the tape dispenser and stapler.

"He's right," says Craig. "These stories are so overly done and so predictable. Where's the witty but ironic endings, the twist of the fickle finger of fate? Tsk, tsk."

"There's no unique Tales From the Crypt look, either," says Feldstein. "No bold ink lines, or saturated morose colors, or salient looks of dread on fear-stricken faces. Where are the tombs, the crumbling cemeteries, the rotting zombies? Is this the best you got? All I'm sayin' is show the respect due, that's all. Don't just throw anything together and call it Tales From the Crypt. I want to see more effort put into the second issue or else."

Feldstein leans forward to emphasize his "or else." As the artist frantically jumps backward to avoid the snarling corpse, he trips over his own two feet, and cracks his head open on the edge of the heavy steel desk. His blood pours out from the large gash in his skull, mixing with the red ink already spilled.

"Damn, didn't see that coming," says Craig. "His artwork wasn't that bad, either."

Both Craig and Feldstein hurriedly stagger off. Light begins to enter the office windows. The clock on the desk shows 6 A.M., the time the artist usually goes to Starbucks for his morning cup of coffee. He won't be going to Starbucks today.

Well, dear readers, the poor artist has learned, only too late, that the comic book business can be murder. Perhaps he'll be drawing a pair of wings next. Hehehehehehe.

Movie Review: Silent Hill (2006) Dear Mr. Ebert

Zombos Says: Good 

Dear Mr. Ebert:

I am aghast that you, as mentioned in your review for Silent Hill, cannot describe the plot for this movie. I, as you, have not played the video game, but even so I think the plot woefully obvious. Allow me to illustrate it, with as much brevity as possible, so you can better appreciate the nuances of this gripping horror story.

But before I begin, I was wondering what you use for a light source when you take notes during the movie? I've tried various book-lights and pen-lights, but they're either too bright, annoying those sitting around me, or too awkward to position, or uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. I was lucky with Silent Hill as there was an Exit sign which cast just enough reddish light for me to see what I was writing. Of course, I had to sit on the floor next to it, but it wasn't too uncomfortable; except for the occasional person stepping over me to go to the bathroom or concession stand. It's a good thing I don't review Disney movies as I'd have had the little monsters and their rude parents incessantly running back and forth, trampling me.

Getting back to Silent Hill, the plot is a simple one, often repeated in horror and science fiction movies. It even reminded me of the Star Trek episode, And the Children Shall Lead, where Gorgon, an evil alien who appears to children as a friendly angel (played by real-life attorney Melvin Belli), takes advantage of their naivety to further his evil plans. He uses them as a conduit for his nasty powers. Now instead of an evil alien, in Silent Hill we have a kid, Alessa, who's being used by a malevolent demon to exact malicious mischief and revenge on the titular (I always love using that word: it sounds so naughty) townspeople that did her wrong.

Now—oh, wait a minute—is it a demon that is using the girl as a conduit or is it actually the dark half of the girl that's taking revenge on the townsfolk? The convoluted explanation toward the last quarter of the movie, oddly done in an inappropriate grainy faux-home-movie-styled flashback, describes how badly the poor kid was mistreated, and how she eventually split into a dark half who curses and destroys the town and everyone in it, and a good half the dark half sends away, only to call it back after nine years.

But then why bother to send the good half away, only to have it return after nine years?

I missed something. I better start over.

 

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I'm surprised that you, as mentioned in your review for Silent Hill, can't describe the plot for this move. I, as you, have not played the video game, but even so, I think the plot fairly obvious. Allow me to illustrate, with as much brevity as possible, so you can better appreciate the nuances of this atmospheric horror story.

Alessa, born out of wedlock, is tormented by her classmates, victimized by the school janitor, and cooked like a hot dog by a wacky religious cult. The poor kid, amazingly, survives all this rude treatment and, naturally, develops an evil personification that can reach out from her badly scarred and bed-ridden body to maliciously destroy her tormentors. No wonder there.

Then again, you could look at it this way: a demon from hell takes advantage of the poor girl’s revengeful, hate-filled state of mind to kill everybody in town and lock their souls into a very imaginatively depicted hell-like limbo filled with endless horrific punishments. 

After wreaking chaos and horror on the townsfolk, she realizes she's been acting rather badly and decides to create a good version of herself—pre-nastiness and all that, which she then sends away to live with total strangers until precisely nine years pass. Demon Alessa—or just a hell-spawned demon along for the ride—then summons pre-nastiness Alessa (now Sharon) back to town to…to...what?

And what’s that weird, confusing backstory about a witch burned by townsfolk and the town being on fire for years and years?

Oh, bugger! I thought I had it this time. I have to start over.

 

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I'm not surprised that you can't describe the plot for Silent Hill. It can be confusing to those not all that familiar with horror movies. Allow me to explain, with as much brevity as possible, so you can better appreciate the nuances of this visually stunning and creepy movie.

But first, I must give kudos to the art direction.

It's a wonderful creaturefest of makeup, CGI-enhanced sets and coloration, and icky-monster costuming that's quite a treat to watch. The creatures are nightmarish, in that nifty damned-to-hell kind of way, and the sounds and music when Alessa's mom goes deeper into that cursed town—especially when the siren blares a warning that the town is going ‘into the darkness’—is goosebumps inducing, evoking quite a horrific mood; and those embers glowing on the damned creatures’ bodies, and all that falling ash and pall over the town—again, Dante himself couldn't have done any better.

The script is another matter entirely.

The dialog, for instance, is atrocious. Many of the lines are eye-rollingly bad. The acting also needed better acting, especially during the climactic Barkeresque Hellraiser-styled confrontation in the church between Alessa’s mom and those evil cult members.

Mom does manage to walk through a congregation of crazed, kid-roasting individuals with amazing ease, doesn't she?

And the verbal showdown between them is so contextually dry; I wish I had Visine to squirt in my eyes each time they rolled around those groaners.

While I'm at it, what's with the black, skin-tight, leather uniform on the female motorcycle cop: I mean really, could you get it any tighter? How DOES she get on the motorcycle dressed in those tight pants? All she needs to complete her ludicrous ensemble is a pair of stiletto heels. Her weak acting during her own barbecue scene in the church is also very disappointing, especially when she’s the one being barbecued. A little more Ouch! or Ooh! would have provided more drama.

But before I go off on a tangent, let me explain the plot.

Alessa, a poor kid born out of wed-lock and who winds up roasted like a turkey by an evil religious cult while HER mom puts up little resistance, takes revenge on the townspeople of Silent Hill.

Though I'm not sure if this occurred before the fires broke out in the mines or afterwards. I'm also not sure how the witch burning, thirty years beforehand, fits into the events with Alessa. There seem to be a few storylines going on here and little explanation to tie them together.

Anyway, from her hospital bed, the badly scarred and immobile Alessa, either through sheer malevolent will power, or by the assistance of a hellish demon (maybe the witch’s familiar?) destroys the town and its citizens, forcing their spirits to ‘live’ in a nightmare world that puts Dante’s Inferno to shame. They must endure not only the hellish Limbo they've been caught in, but also the Darkness that brings Pyramid Head (you need to have played the video game, but a guy with a pyramid on his head) and his agonies (give or take a few like in the video game) to torture them if they're unlucky enough to be caught outside their only sanctuary, the church.

Alessa, for some reason, sends off a good version of herself as a baby, now named Sharon, and then summons Sharon back to Silent Hill after nine years. Since Sharon sleepwalks and blurts out "Silent Hill" in her sleep a lot, her mom, casting caution to the wind, takes her to Silent Hill.

Not exactly sure why since Sharon’s scared sh+tless of the place. Perhaps her mom is just taking that confronting your fears thing a little too seriously?

Yes, Silent Hill! The one with all the well-known, evilly-cursed stuff attached to it. A place so notorious, Sharon’s father reads about it on the web at www.ghosttowns.com. This is the ABANDONED place that has had toxic fires burning beneath it for years, so much so that ash continually falls from the sky, and deadly fumes reek forth so badly not even a Glade Plug-in Air Freshener could cover it up.

So her mom takes her there, AT NIGHT, hoping to find out why her daughter keeps sleepwalking and saying “Silent Hill” a lot and seems so frightened of the damned place.

Along the way they're almost stopped by a dominatrix-looking motorcycle cop who dresses in impossibly tight leather motorcycle garb (minus stiletto heels, though), but her mom is determined to bring Sharon (really Alessa) to that deserted, fires-still-burning, town (that nobody else wants to go near)—in the middle of the night no less—so she puts the pedal to the metal, promptly crashing her car in the process.

Mom wakes up, finds her daughter missing, and heads into town on foot. The motorcycle cop follows them, promptly crashes her motorcycle, and heads into town on foot, too.

Now, Mr. Ebert, here is where the subtlety begins.

You see, Sharon (really Alessa), her mom, and the motorcycle cop are actually dead, but they don't realize it. They died in their respective vehicular crashes. This is why they can be affected by the creatures and hellish darkness of Silent Hill while her husband, and the others searching for her, walk through the town unaffected and unaware.

Now Alessa, as Sharon, has her mom and the cop go through quite a few trials and tribulations to find her so she can use them to get into the church to send those evil cult members to Hell—well, more Hell that is, seeing as they're all ready knee deep in it. Much gore ensues as Alessa gloats and tears them apart in a scene of ripping butchery that Pinhead would be proud of. Sharon as Alessa--or Alessa as Sharon--and mom then walk back to the car, buckle themselves in for safety—this time—and head home.

Of course, there's the confusing sequelization-antic ending (my term for forcing a sequel: clever, huh?), where the husband is home as they return home, but he can’t see them and they can’t see him. The scene shifts between husband in his nice sunlit home and them in their bleak, ominous-looking home. Sharon-now-Alessa, or the demon posing as Sharon-now-Alessa, gives us that sinister, look, so common in horror movies these days, to tip us off that it isn’t over until the franchise says it’s over.

With them being dead, though, how, exactly, does dead Alessa benefit from taking over now dead Sharon’s body?

And they (the script writers, I mean) still haven't explained why the witch was burned or why the fires started in the mines in the first place.

Oh bloody hell. I thought I finally had it right this time. Crap.

 

Dear Mr. Ebert,

Never mind. You were right as usual.

Yours Truly,

Zoc

PS. We miss you. 

Interview: Sight Unseen

Zombos Says: Good

Robert Tinnell and Bo Hampton's graphic novel, Sight Unseen, is an American Gothic story that, in true style, keeps the evil all in the degenerate family. With tight pacing, shadowy, emotive art panels that read like a cinematic storyboard, and a premise that doesn't overwhelm the story but allows it to unfold, it delivers a tidy mix of eerie imagery and believable-within-context situations; along with a damned, J-Horror-styled spirit that simply loves to hurt people.

While seeing dead people through special optics like eyeglasses has been done in print and film before, that's not the focus of the story. It just so happens that Frank Byron, blinded in a lab explosion, seizes the "opportunity" to explore a different type of sight; one based on his observation that his seeing-eye dog apparently sees things that no human can see. Dead things.

In the course of his experiments he distances himself from his daughter while becoming closer with the dead. But the dead are not entirely the focus of the story, either, except for one dead person in particular, still residing at The Birches Estate, recently put up for sale. She's quite a handful as Frank gravitates to exploring the mystery with his newfound second sight when people start disappearing.

The artwork and story work well together, and the heavy line strokes combine with the shading and coloration across panels to sustain a morosely detailed and creepy sense of dread.

I met with director and author Robert Tinnell at the 2007 Monster Bash Convention, and took the opportunity to ask him a few questions.

How did Sight Unseen come about?

I met Bo Hampton at Wizard in Philly and we clicked. He read The Black Forest on the plane on the ride home and then called me and asked if I was interested in collaborating. I'm still trying to figure out why! He had ideas - the notion of a blind guy who could see ghosts.  I had a story involving the haunted house - and wanted to do the southern gothic thing - and we just sort of married the stuff...[Note: The last few pages in the book are devoted to the collaborative creative process involved in bringing Sight Unseen to print.]

With much of your creative work done in a horror vein, what is it about the genre that motivates you?

I think there are a number of factors, and while it may be embarrassing, there's no denying nostalgia's influence. Working in the genre brings to mind the things that inspired me in the first place - and the accompanying emotions. Of course, there's more to it than that. In general, I think horror allows us to explore other aspects of life - sex and death are certainly primary examples. I mean - how can you watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers and think it simply exists to try and scare you? Of course, I do love trying to scare people. Always have.

Tell us about your monsterkid background and when the horror bug first bit you.

I remember seeing an ad for Hammer's Kiss of the Vampire - it was going to be on CBS late night television, and I was immediately drawn to it - but forbidden to watch!  Later it was Dark Shadows and the Hammer films - still later the classic Universals. And in the seventies I was heavily into horror film fandom - did my own fanzine. I guess it was a cumulative effect of all that stuff...

Did your directing experience influence your writing in The Black Forest, The Wicked West, and Sight Unseen?

Not so much on TBF but definitely on the latter two. On TWW the book itself is certainly a rumination on film - at least one aspect of the book is. As far as Sight Unseen goes, I think even more as I was definitely tapping into cinematic methods of eliciting scares - and Bo was doing the same thing - drawing on his experience as a storyboard artist.

What was it like directing Frankenstein and Me?

Truly the best and worst of times. My personal life was in great upheaval. I don't think the film is what it should have been - and I blame myself. But on the other hand, I did get to make it and did get to pay tribute - however flawed - to all those films and people who inspired me. Just standing around on the Brides of Dracula set and the Night of the LIving Dead location (I should clarify - recreations used for the film) was fantastic. And there are moments in the film - like when the kids are watching Dark Shadows that are very rewarding for me personally. I just wish I could go back and redo it.

Which horror films are your favorites and why?

The scary ones! Although I am partial to some that aren't so much scary as they are beautiful to look at or thought-provoking. But here's a partial list - The Uninvited: a ghost story that really delivers the chills.  It's a very evocative little film - and I like the fact it doesn't try too hard. The Innocents: a ghost story that's about something, elegantly photographed, eerie in its simplicity. I'm a big fan. Night of the Living Dead: verite horror - this is a text book case about how to scare - and not because of the gore - which is actually the weakest part of the film. The Horror of Dracula - scary, sexy, economical, elegant, beautiful to look at, brilliantly directed. What more can I say? The Exorcist: you don't have to like it - but you have to respect it. Scary because it takes its time, building its case, so that once you are confronted with the actual supernatural events you have no choice but to believe. The Old Dark House: The original James Whale version - scary and fun and sadly under-appreciated.

The list goes on and on - and my hands hurt from typing - so I'll just note: THE CAT PEOPLE, FRANKENSTEIN, THE INVISIBLE MAN, DRACULA, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER, SON OF DRACULA, THE WOLF MAN, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, BRIDES OF DRACULA, DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN, FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, QUATERMASS FILMS, SUSPIRIA, DAWN OF THE DEAD - whew - the list is literally exhaustive...

What current and future projects are you working on?

I am writing two graphic novels - EZ Street for artist Mark Wheatley, and Bo and I are co-writing and he's drawing Demons of Sherwood. I just finished the graphic novel, Eagle: Legacy, for Neil Vokes and once he's done drawing that he starts our monthly comic, THE VOICE - which is my first foray into Mexican horror. I'm writing a big horror adventure screenplay and at the same time writing another more mainstream screenplay. After that I'm going to adapt Lee Maynard's novel Crum - which is a brilliant book about Appalachia. I'm preparing to direct the movie version of my graphic novel, Feast of the Seven Fishes...I'm sure I'm forgetting something...Oh yes - writing the book, Jump Cuts, with Mark Clark - which we hope will serve as a interesting study of how horror movies have tried to scare us...

What's the one question you'd love to be asked, and what's your answer?

What are some dream projects?

I'd love to direct the movie version of The Living and the Dead, the graphic novel I wrote with Todd Livingston that Micah Farritor drew. I'd love to adapt Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife, though apparently that will never happen thanks to some convoluted rights' issues. Tim Lucas wrote a marvelous novel, The Book of Renfield, that would be a joy to adapt as a screenplay.

Movie Review: Primeval (2007) What a Croc

Zombos Says: Fair

Director Michael Katleman's Primeval is a film filled with monsters. There's Gustave, the four-legged, meat-eating kind, and Little Gustave, the two-legged and hungry for power kind. Both do not help make Primeval a good horror movie. The story's tension and scares are lost in the flip-flops between social commentary, which requires lingering and thoughtful scenes, and horror, which requires the exact opposite.

Based on a real-life crocodile that's been attacking people along the Rusizi River in Burundi, Africa, you'd think the story would pretty much write itself: the largest man-eating crocodile in history, born out of a genocidal civil-war raging in Burundi. With so many bodies floating around in the river, it's no wonder Gustave develops a taste for human flesh. Yet, Katleman's film misses the real horror of this human tragedy.