FTP: The Vault of Horror (1973)

OCTOBER 3, 2023

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I could have sworn I actually saw The Vault of Horror before, but I apparently just got it mixed up with the half dozen other early ‘70s horror anthologies, which explains why I always get Vault questions wrong at horror trivia. To be fair even when I started watching it it seemed like I had already seen it, because the setup was so similar to Tales From The Crypt’s, with a bunch of dudes (well, Crypt had Joan Collins among them) finding themselves grouped together under mysterious circumstances and proceeding to tell their individual stories about how they might have gotten there. I mean it's technically a sequel as it's from the same producers and based on the same old comic series, so I can't fault it for taking a "if it ain't broke..." approach.

Luckily I found it to be just as enjoyable as Tales, so at least it’s worthy of the name. As I’ve said in the past, I tend to like few anthology films as a whole; the hit or miss ratio inherent to such things makes them hard for me to recommend when all is said and done, making me wish you could just extract a segment (say, "The Raft" from Creepshow II) and not deal with the rest. This also makes me less likely to revisit any of them, though since Vault is packaged together with Tales (via Scream Factory) I took another look at that one, and since it had been nearly 16 years since I last saw it (holy crap I’ve been here for a long time) it was basically like a first time watch, and I even enjoyed the story I didn’t like as much the first time around.

As for Vault, the protagonists are even bigger jerks than the ones in Tales, which at least had the good sense to introduce a few sympathetic characters (Peter Cushing’s, for example) to mix along with them. Here the closest we get to a decent person ends up murdering her jerk husband and cutting his corpse into pieces which she then stores in a bunch of labeled jars – hardly a role model. But I was in the right mood for all the crass behavior, so I had a good time cackling at how reprehensible these people were and then cheering for their demises; a movie with no heroes but plenty of crowd-pleasing moments. The first story exemplifies this attitude the best; it’s a pretty short/simple tale of a guy who wants to find his sister regarding the family inheritance, but not to split it – he kills her so he can have it all (he also kills the PI who tracked her down). Then he treats himself to a celebratory dinner, only to discover everyone in the restaurant is a vampire, all of whom proceed to place a valve in his neck and use him as a blood keg. And that’s it! I love it.

The next one is the one I mentioned, where the lady kills her husband – but he had it coming, as he was an insufferable ass who marries this younger woman only to make her miserable by being so obsessively neat and tidy, screaming at her for things like not buying more tomato sauce even though he has a (complicated) checkmark system in place to ensure that things are replaced when used. I was delighted by this one too, but it also made me feel a bit bad, because I’ve definitely scowled at my wife for not telling me we were out of this or that. Guess I won’t ever do that again, so thanks for setting me straight, fifty year old horror movie. (Still, I’m glad she didn’t watch it with me and point it out, as I’d feel worse!)

The next one was the seemingly obligatory weak link, about a jerk magician and his jerk wife going out of their way to show the audience how a rival magician was pulling off his tricks, then killing the man’s daughter in order to steal a “magic rope” trick that appeared to be the real deal. It felt drawn out compared to the others, and the ending was both abrupt and puzzling (a dead character resurfaces with no explanation – magic, I guess?). And the next one wasn’t exactly a slam dunk either, but was at least pretty short, involving a guy being buried alive as part of a scam only for his partner to leave him there to keep all the money. There’s another twist after that, resulting in what’s probably the most comical of the five stories, but it’s too slight to really register as a highlight.

The final one is pretty great though, focusing on an artist who has been told by the critics and dealers that he’s no good, only to discover that they were lying to him in order to sell his (apparently good!) paintings at high prices and not tell him about it. So he strikes a deal with a voodoo doctor that allows him to paint someone, then do something to the painting that will happen in reality to the person depicted in the painting (so if he paints a guy and then lights the painting on fire, the guy will be suddenly immolated). This leads to some amusing death scenes and a howler of an ending, when the guy leaves his own self-portrait out in the open (he can’t put it away or else he feels like he’s suffocating) and it’s destroyed by paint thinner, heh.

Alas, the disc has no real extras (same for Tales) except for an alternate version of the movie which, best I can tell, censors the gory ending of the vampire restaurant story, and also presents it at a different aspect ratio (it was shot open matte, so while the 1.78 image is the one preferred by the filmmakers, the open one actually has more information at the top and bottom). For reasons I can’t discern, one disc has Tales and Vault, with the other version of Vault on a second disc? Why not put both Vault versions together on one disc for easier comparison? Bizarre decision. But that’s it beyond trailers; no historian commentaries or anything like that, which is a shame as it was an interesting trend in the early ‘70s that basically died out, something a historian could have gone over in detail along with pointing out the original Gaines comics the stories came from and such. Oh well.

But hey, it’s the best time of the year for these sort of movies, as they’re fun but fiendish, and also if you’re like me and find yourself too busy to watch too many movies at home, it’s certainly easier to break up your viewing into chunks with an anthology than it is for a traditional feature. So it’s a bad "Pile" movie, because I’m going to keep it, but I’m glad I finally saw Vault (it’s been in said pile for several years, again because I thought I had seen it already and therefore it would be a rewatch) and gave Tales a second look. Plus, having recently seen an anthology where the segments were all over the place with regards to tone and quality, it was nice to watch one with a little more cohesion.

What say you?

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FTP: A Taste of Phobia (2018)

DECEMBER 16, 2022

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I don’t wish them ill or anything, but I really have little to no interest in multi director anthologies, something I figured out about a decade ago when we were suddenly bombarded by them (V/H/S, ABCs of Death, etc). I mean, to be fair I don’t even love a lot of traditional, single-filmmaker ones like Creepshow, feeling that the time spent on a few short films could have been spent on a full narrative I can sink my teeth into (I don’t DISLIKE Creepshow, to be clear – but I rarely feel like rewatching it either; I’ve probably seen Diary of the Dead more in full, among Romero films). The only time I ever seem to get on board is when the stories are connected in some way (like Trick r Treat, or, going outside the genre, Pulp Fiction); otherwise while I will almost certainly like some of the segments, as a full viewing experience I almost always walk away unfulfilled. But after watching and disliking A Taste of Phobia, I poked around online to see if it was “just me”, only to discover that the (admittedly few) reviews I found were pretty much all negative.

The concept is fine, at least: the multinational team of filmmakers each present a short based on a fear. Some of the fears are kind of known (Hemophobia, or the fear of blood) or can at least be sussed out just from the name (Politicophobia is, you guessed it, fear of politics), but many are pretty obscure, such as Mageirocophobia (fear of cooking) and Partenophobia (fear of virgins), so at least they weren’t sticking to the usual stuff like clowns and spiders and things like that. In fact, I had to laugh that there’s a deleted segment available on the DVD, because my instant thought was “How bad is it that it couldn’t make the cut along with all this nonsense?” but it was Achluophobia, which is indeed a fear of the dark, so I’d like to think they cut it for being a little too basic.

And to its credit the tone is all over the place, which is, yes, part of why the movie didn’t work, but when you see a segment like Coprophobia (fear of feces), which is mostly devoted to a guy fighting a poop monster in his bathroom (and by fighting I mean pretending that a stuffed animal covered in guck is actually doing anything as he basically rubs it all over himself), you will be thankful that “be real gross!” wasn’t an edict from the masterminds behind the damn thing. There’s not a lot of genuine humor, but there are psychologically driven entries, a few that offer social commentary (including the aforementioned political one), freak-out types, gore for the sake of gore, etc. It’s even possible that some of the entries would have been a little more to my liking if I watched them on their own, though only Astrophobia (fear of stars) came off as legitimately good.

See, when you’re watching these things back to back, with only a vague wraparound story guiding them, it just becomes exhausting. Short or not, I’m still being introduced to fourteen worlds with fourteen sets of characters and fourteen different narratives, so even if they were all great – and they most certainly are not – it just wears my brain down trying to process all those introductions. And making matters worse is that many of the stories end without really resolving much and instantly go into the next one, leaving you no time to consider what you saw before the next one pops in. I just watched it and, gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you the order of the entries, though I do remember that the fear of hair (“Chaetophobia”) was first because I thought the hairless villain looked like the dude from Live terrorizing some girl. Gimme THAT movie.

So, yeah. Perfect pile movie, in that I can now trade it in for 19 cents after it’s been taking up space for years, which I probably could have done after watching the first couple but I sat through the whole thing anyway (the lone entry I enjoyed was right around in the middle, natch). What’s the fear of getting rid of a movie until you’ve seen it called?

What say you?

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A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

DECEMBER 23, 2020

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, HOLIDAY
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

I forget who talked me out of watching A Christmas Horror Story back when it first hit in 2015, but whoever it was deserves a giant lump of coal... in their face! This isn't a classic on the level of Black Christmas or Inside (i.e. must-see Christmas horror films) but it's certainly worth watching and gets more right than wrong. By structuring the film like Trick 'r Treat and letting the stories drift in and out (instead of contained chunks) it avoids the erratic pacing of most anthologies, working as an traditional single film experience, as opposed to something like Creepshow where you might hit the chapter skip if you're not in the mood for this or that story.

And all the stories are engaging in their own way; even the wraparound (featuring William Shatner as a Christmas-loving DJ) not only has its own little unfolding mystery (a tragedy at the local mall) but ends up tying into one of the tales in a surprising and kind of awesome way. Careful viewers might be able to spot which one (an actor appears in both, though in one he is not seen in closeup and is partially obscured) and then in turn figure it out, but if you're just soaking it in instead of trying to get ahead of it I'm sure it'll get past the average viewer. One problem I have with a lot of anthologies is that there's no real connection between the tales, and has a wraparound of almost no importance - this one uses the whole buffalo, and is all the better for it.

The stories are also well balanced in terms of sub-genre (though all have something supernatural) and characters: there's a standard group of horror movie teens in one, a dysfunctional family unit in another, a married couple with a mute kid in a third, and... Santa Claus? Yep, the big man himself features in one story, in which the poor sod has to battle his elves, who have turned into foul mouthed zombies. For some reason I had the idea that the movie was a comedic one in the vein of junk like Santa's Slay, but in reality the only real "comedy" in the movie stems from hearing elves swearing as they try to eat Santa Claus and his wife. It might not even register as funny to some people; I just revert into an 8 year old whenever I hear profanity coming from unlikely places (one of them accuses Mrs. Claus of f-ing the reindeer, which is also amusing to my warped mind).

The rest is played pretty straight, and gets surprisingly dark at times; I was not expecting to think about Tales From The Hood's "Boys Do Get Bruised" segment when I sat down to watch this film. The weakest storyline is probably the one with the teens, because it inches into found footage territory as they not only film it (it's not all POV, just a few shots) but they're also - sigh - walking around a closed up building and dealing with a ghost, which is something I am happy to never see again as long as I live. On the other hand, it actually went AGAINST a tired cliche by having a dude rebuke a girl's advances because he has a girlfriend (and the two girls are friends as well). To be fair it's the "ongoing affair that gets uncovered while they're running from a maniac" cliche that I really hate, but still! It's nice to know some of these people have standards! Also the sex is important to the plot, if you can believe it or not (the girl - possessed for the record - needs a "donor").

Also, it's set in the same town as Ginger Snaps (Bailey Downs, for the record), which is the sort of tip of the hat I always like. It doesn't mean anything to the plot; it's just a fun in-joke for those who will get it and won't distract anyone who is unaware. It's part of why I dislike the "name all the characters after directors" kind of thing - it ends up being a distraction, A. because some of those names are unusual (something like "Mayor Cronenberg!" is going to cause an eyebrow cock whether you know who David is or not) and B. you're likely to recognize some (Craven, Carpenter, Romero) and then feel left out when there's one that you don't recognize, or - if you're a bit of a snob - scoff when they throw in one that doesn't deserve to be on the same level with the others. It's best to just let the people who will get it smile, while everyone else is unaware that there was ever a joke at all.

And yes, it makes good use of the Christmas theme. The kids one not so much, but obviously the Santa story is loaded with it, the family unit is visiting an aunt for the holiday when they awaken Krampus, and the other family sneaks onto private property to get a Christmas tree and bring back something else. I noticed a few other modern Christmas ones don't really have much seasonal relevance (the newest Black Christmas goes the total opposite direction of the 2006 one, with a bare minimum of decor and a fairly crowded campus for what is supposed to be break), so it was nice to see them making the effort in that department. Moreso, it's presented with a noticeable and appreciated lack of much cynicism; even the mall element isn't stacked with anti-commercialism sentiment or whatever. Despite this year's unending stream of misery, the season still flew by for me, so I would have been bummed out if, on Christmas Eve Eve, I watched something that was seemingly made by people who hate the idea. I nearly cried yesterday when I turned the tree on, knowing it was already going to be one of the last times I did so for another year (I watched the movie on the 23rd but am writing the review on the 29th, just to clarify). Hell, today is the day my mom would traditionally take the tree down when I was a kid, and I'm feeling I just put it up!

Needless to say this will be added to the rotation. I'm slightly curious if I would be as warm to it if it was presented in the usual "chapter" structure (with Shatner presumably introducing each tale properly), and would be open to watching it that way if someone did a fan edit or something, but I suspect I'd prefer it as is. The ways the stories connect (the teen girl in the Krampus story is friends with the teens in the ghost one, who were tracking a case investigated by the man in the Christmas tree story, and so on) felt a little more natural than other anthologies that have attempted similar things, and as a result you can't really just remove one story which is often what most of these things could really use. It made it more of an "ensemble" movie as opposed to a traditional anthology one; the Love, Actually of horror?

What say you?

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Books of Blood (2020)

OCTOBER 6, 2020

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (DRIVE-IN SCREENING)

In 2009, there was a Book of Blood movie that inexplicably used Clive Barker's same-named story as the film's entire narrative, instead of using it as the framing device for an anthology as the books did. It was also pretty lame, and I wasn't surprised when this new version, titled Books of Blood, was announced that almost no one I spoke to remembered it. Luckily, this one gets things right, so if you say "I saw the Book(s) of Blood movie" to someone you hopefully won't even have to clarify which one you mean, and if so, it's easy enough to remember which one's which despite the confusing title stuff: this one's good.

And if you've read all the stories, you only get half of a head start on its narrative, because writer/director Brannon Braga cooked up some new tales (working with Barker and co-writer Adam Simon) that weaves Barker's "The Book of Blood" story (from the first of his six volumes of the Books of Blood series - confused enough yet?) together with two others, and it's not a straight adaptation of the story either. In Barker's story, Mary was a widow who had roped in the phony psychic Simon to contact the dead in a most unusual way; in the movie, Mary (played by Anna Friel) works to debunk so-called psychics, and she was a divorced woman whose son died of leukemia, and Simon found her because he thought he could help her contact her son. Simon's fate is the same, but the circumstances are very different, making it feel like a new story itself.

It's also the second main story, and the third to be introduced, as the film opens with a quick scene where a legbreaker of some sort (played by the always awesome Yul Vazquez) is trying to collect a debt when his mark tells him about, you guessed it, a "Book of Blood" and that it would be worth more than the money he was owed. As Vazquez and his partner go off to find the book, we are introduced to Jenna (Britt Robertson) for our first meaty story/second overall. Jenna is a college-aged girl who is living with her insufferable rich parents and suffering from extreme misphonia, an affliction which causes certain sounds to cause you severe distress. Instant sympathy for me, as I have a mild version of it; I absolutely cannot stand any kind of rattling/ticking noise, which has resulted in several sudden stops on the side of the road to locate one in my car because I can't concentrate on the road until it stops (it's usually like, a water bottle tapping against whatever seat it's under). Hers is mostly people chewing/swallowing, which understandably makes her hate being around people.

So she runs away, intending to go to Los Angeles but gets off her bus early when she thinks she's being followed by someone, perhaps related to an unexplained incident in her recent past. She ends up at a B'nB run by two people who are far too kind and folksy to trust; even if this was a comedy/drama film I'd suspect they were murderers. The exact nature of their crimes isn't something I'll spoil here, but I will say it's more Tales from the Crypt/Stephen King type macabre than I am accostumed to from Barker, with no supernatural elements whatsoever. Not that that's a bad thing, but if someone is all huffy because the stories aren't all taken directly from Barker, this shift probably won't help win them over.

The next one is the one that's more or less based on "The Book of Blood", and - somewhat risky for an anthology - is presented in flashbacks, as Mary and Simon tell the story of how they met (and fell in love!) to a group of investors. It's the best of the three stories (after this one it returns to the world of Vazquez' violent book-seeker), unsurprisingly, but I can't help but think the film as a whole might have improved if it came first, though I need to spoil the reason why in the next paragraph, so skip that one if you want to go in blind.

Still here? OK, so while I overall really liked the movie, I was taken out of it for a while at the "conclusion" of Jenna's story, because it ended on an almost literal cliffhanger, with a car containing a protagonist going over a cliff and smashing into the rocks below, seemingly letting the villains get away with it. Then Mary/Simon's story is self contained before going back to Vazquez, whom we now can probably guess is actually seeking Simon, who (as in the story) has become a sort of living book, with the dead writing their stories on his skin. This segment is somewhat inspired by "On Jerusalem Street" (the closing story from the final installment of the Books of Blood series), but in early on there's a scene where Vazquez' partner nearly runs someone over as they drive toward the location of the book - and that person is Jenna. It's here, over an hour into the movie, that Jenna's story is clearly connected to the others, which is a fun surprise, but it comes at the expense of leaving the audience cold when her story "ends" without any indication they would be going back to her. Had Mary and Simon's segment come first, and then Jenna's, it would only be a few minutes until we were informed that the stories were going to intersect, and in turn only another ten minutes after that before we get the rest of that tale.

Otherwise, I think it works really well. Jenna and Mary both prove to be easily likable protagonists, and despite the "TV movie" status (it premieres on Hulu today) there is some admirably gnarly violence, particularly the "Book of Blood" effect and a fairly disturbing fate for one of its characters. The success rate for the odd joke here and there is pretty high (a coffee shop scene is particularly great), and while it may not have Barker's specific words flowing through every line, the general vibe is right at home with his work (at least, from what I've read - which is I think three of the novels and a selection of the short stories). Perhaps I was more taken with it than the average viewer because I remember how bad the other adaptation was, and they likely won't have that low bar to compare it to, but I think folks will enjoy it even going in with a complete blank slate. It beats rewatching Modern Family with your Hulu subscription, anyway.

What say you?

P.S. I was amused to see that this makeshift "drive-in", with an inflatable screen and parking attendants who hadn't the slightest clue how cars should be arranged for watching a movie, looked better than the films at the actual drive-ins I've been settling for all summer/fall. When Jenna gets a text message - I could read it! When a character is running around in the dark - I could see what was happening! I was quite tickled by that, as I was fully expecting to have to rewatch the film on Hulu today to pick up on everything I missed. Headlights were kept to a minimum too, for what it's worth.

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Blu-Ray Review: Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)

AUGUST 26, 2020

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Confession: As a total viewing experience, I think I actually prefer Tales from the Darkside: The Movie to any of the Creepshows (at best, it's a tie with the original). The pacing of Romero's original movie is awkward thanks to the uneven length and ordering of the tales, and the sequel has a big ol' dud kicking things off that it never fully recovers from*. Darkside's framing story, on the other hand, has the rather fun idea of utilizing an old Grimm's fairy tale (Hansel and Gretel, sort of) as a vehicle to tell its other stories, which come from the likes of Stephen King and Arthur Conan Doyle. The celebration of storytelling is evident on both sides of the camera, and that unifying thread makes the film more fully satisfying to me.

It doesn't hurt that there are no dud segments, which is something that can really hurt an anthology film's shelf life - how excited can you get about watching something you already saw when there's a full chunk of it you dislike? Not the case here; the wraparound is fun and each of the three stories are both entertaining and different from each other, with no obvious, standard go-to monsters like vampires or zombies. Nope, we get a mummy (in "Lot 249"), a vengeful cat (in "Cat From Hell") and - whoa - a gargoyle (in "Lover's Vow"), and the best I can say about each one is that I could conceivably watch an entire movie about any of them, or at least something longer like, well, an anthology TV show (albeit an hourlong one like Masters of Horror; the Darkside show was 30 minutes, roughly the length of the segments here). On that note, in my original/more traditional review of the film I said the 3rd story didn't quite work for me because it wasn't long enough, but I've come around on it. The time-jump still feels a little awkward, but (maybe because I'm now a father?) the heartbreaking reveal makes up for it.

But while we're on the subject of how long things should run, I want to bring up - and praise - the full length documentary that's presented on the disc and makes up the majority of its bonus features. This used to be more common on Scream Factory's discs; sometimes they only ran 35 minutes or so, other times they'd be full length, but either way I always preferred them to the solo interviews that they have gravitated toward over the past few years. I know that it's probably more enticing to see a long list of extra features than a single/simple "retrospective documentary", but here's the thing: you'll probably end up skipping some of them unless you have all the time in the world and/or it happens to be one of your all time favorite movies. I got their Escape From LA disc a few months back, a special edition I've been hoping to exist for literal decades (the film was one of the first DVDs I ever got, and I never upgraded it even though it's non-anamorphic), and I probably only watched half the interviews, if that.

However, if they were all edited together into a retrospective doc, I would have dove right in. And in turn, if they took the usual route with this one, I can guarantee I wouldn't have been too excited about listening to the production designer talk for 15 minutes straight, but when she is adding more context to the things that director John Harrison and the KNB guys (all three of them, though Kurtzman is separate from Nicotero and Berger) are discussing, it remained interesting to hear her talk. That said, if you only like listening to actors or writers, don't bother; it's a very directorial/production-focused piece, as very few of the actors are on hand (basically only the two leads from "Lover's Vow", James Remar and Rae Dawn Chong) and except for Stephen King, who almost never does these things, all of the writers (Doyle, Romero, and Michael McDowell) are dead.

But even with those absences, it's still a very thorough look at the film's inception, production, and release. The doc is broken up into six chapters: origins, one for each of the segments, the post production, and final thoughts (sadly, SF neglected to offer a "Play All" function, but as their disc programming continues to be the low point of all their releases this wasn't a surprise. GIVE US RESUME PLAY YOU MONSTERS!), each running about 15 minutes or so and leaving few stones unturned. That said, don't look for any dirt - by all accounts it was a pretty easygoing shoot; the film was produced independently so there was no studio interference, the actors were all happy to do the work (this was Julianne Moore's first movie, and she is said to still be proud of it), and the budget, while hardly astronomical, didn't make them cut short their ambitions. The DP (who also shot Halloween 5!) and Harrison worked hard to give each segment its own style (particularly "Cat from Hell", with its crazy in-camera transitions), and hearing them break down their work alongside the clips just clarifies how fantastic the movie really looks, and makes me lament Harrison never got to do another big movie (everything else was TV).

They also break down the history of swapping the order of the segments, which was alluded to in the old commentary by Harrison and Romero (brought back here) but never fully explained. "Lover's Vow" was originally first, and "Lot 249" would be last, but test screenings showed that the audiences felt the film was peaking early, so they were reversed (with "Cat" remaining in the middle). However this resulted in some minor continuity issues with the framing segment, since Debbie Harry (!) and the kid comment on the stories that the latter is telling, so their footage had to be rearranged as well. I never noticed them, but now I know what they are - she lays down some flowers that disappear a second later, replaced with the full table of food (as she would be well along in her meal prep by the time that footage was originally meant to appear). Cue the "the more you know" gif!

The other bonus features are the aforementioned commentary (which is peppered with long stretches of silence, alas) and a new one by a co-producer that I haven't listened to yet. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you'd know I've been building a giant Lego haunted house while going through my Universal Monsters set, and I'm a few days late with this review as is (thanks also in part to this *other* Universal horror set, which came out the same day) so I had to skip it in order to finally get this up. But it gives me something to look forward to the next time I watch the movie and want to keep the night going!

What say you?

*There are only two Creepshow movies.

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The Uncanny (1977)

APRIL 28, 2020

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Despite having an affinity for cat-driven horror, I somehow never heard of The Uncanny until I saw a trailer at the New Bev (can't recall when exactly, though it was in the past few years I think. In my head it was during one of their all night horror-thons), at which point I immediately made plans to see it. X number of years later and one quarantine at home later, I finally found the time to check it out via the Blu-ray I managed to obtain somewhere along the way (though it only came out last year, so it hasn't been THAT long). I really should start cataloging where exactly I get these things - for every one I distinctly recall getting ("Won at trivia") there are five that I haven't a clue how they ended up in the endless pile of films next to my couch.

As it's an anthology that rarely gets brought up, I wasn't expecting much out of it beyond a few laughs at the never-successful attempts to make cats act as threatening as they often are in real life. Since cats can't be trained as well as dogs, they're rarely used as the main antagonist for a horror film, as there's simply not much a director can do with the damn things when they won't do what you want. Basically you have to piss them off to get them to do something like snarl and swipe (not very nice!) and then toss one at an actor from off-camera, hoping editing can cover the rest. But director Denis Héroux (who was following up the woefully unpleasant Naked Massacre) and screenwriter Michel Parry came up with a solid workaround: make an anthology where the evil cats change every 20-25 minutes!

The wraparound is pretty great: Peter Cushing (!) plays a frazzled author who is trying to get a book published on how cats are evil and have been the ones in control for centuries, and to convince a publisher about it he presents three of his findings. As he tries to sway the man (who clearly isn't buying it), more and more cats keep appearing outside, which to Cushing means more proof of his theory and that they're there to silence him. It's fun to see Cushing as kind of a loser for a change, since he's usually the most prim and proper (and awesome) guy in the room, and you can't help but feel bad for him since he's obviously right. A lazier producer would have cast him as the no-nonsense, slightly antagonistic publisher, but instead we get the rare sight of pitying the actor.

The stories aren't too bad either, and get better as they go which is always a plus. The first one is fine, but the problem is that it's basically a sped up version of Eye of the Cat, the terrific (and funny) thriller about a guy trying to scam his way into his cat-loving aunt's will. Here, the devious nephew is barely seen - more of the focus is on his lover, who is the woman's maid and target of her cats. It's all too straightforward and brief on characterization to feel suspenseful or intriguing, and the plot similarities to the superior film don't help matters any. But in terms of ridiculous cat action it delivers better than the other two (which only have single cats in them) so it kind of evens out.

The second one kicked things into gear, and won me over quickly with the appearance of a Cathy's Curse cast member (Renee Girard, who played the lady who lived next door in that film), and got even better when I realized it was a low-key evil child story, as our antihero (and cat owner) was a little girl sent to live with her cousin after her own parents died in a plane crash. It takes all of seven seconds for the cousin to start being awful to her (including terrorizing her with a remote controlled plane that crashes! I mean, JEEZ), and her AND her mother hate the poor girl's cat, trying to get rid of it within days. So the young lass does what you or I would do: uses a book on black magic to cast a spell that shrinks the evil cousin down to the size of a mouse, then lets Wellington the cat bat her around as if she was one. The FX are largely terrible, naturally, but the sheer insanity and viciousness of it more than makes up for it.

Then there's the third and best story, in which Donald Pleasence (!!!) plays a Vincent Price-esque actor who arranges to have his own wife killed during the shooting of a Pit and the Pendulum film, replacing the fake blade with a real one for its iconic scene, a scheme hatched between him and her stand-in (Samantha Eggar), with whom he has been having an affair. When they go home that night (my man has zero interest in putting on the pretense of being in mourning, I guess) we learn the woman had a cat, so you can guess what will happen next. But what it lacks in surprises it makes up for in Pleasence's performance, as he's having a ball playing a total scumbag (this was one year before Halloween gave him a bit of a career boost), and if you're a Curtains fan then you can enjoy Eggar as another actress for director John Vernon - I had no idea the later film was actually a reunion for them, in similar roles to boot.

As the disc was only released in 2019 it's pretty scarce on extras, since Héroux, Parry, and a lot of the cast are unfortunately now deceased. The lone supplement is an interview with Susan Penhaligon, who plays the maid in the first segment, who reveals Cushing sent her flowers for her first day of filming, which was quite nice of him since their characters weren't even in the same scenes. So I can't say it's a disc worth paying full price for as the movie is fun but not exactly one you'll watch over and over, and the thin supplements mean you'll spend well south of two hours with it. But if the film ever pops up on Shudder or whatever, give it a look - it's a pretty fun timekiller that offers about as much evil cat footage a movie can without resorting to CGI or something, and treats you to the sight of Donald Pleasence as an man women would literally kill to be with.

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Two Evil Eyes (1990)

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Should movies do away with opening credits, and let people watch them "blind" (granted, the internet and the like would have already revealed the same information, but let's pretend) so that the movie can be judged on its own merits without the big names behind the camera adjust their expectations or biases? It could only help Two Evil Eyes, a film that's perfectly fine and easy enough to recommend to those who enjoy Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and/or anthology style films, but unfortunately doesn't come close to living up to the potential established by its opening titles, which tell you it's from George Romero and Dario Argento. The only other movie that can boast a partnership between these two titans of horror cinema is Dawn of the Dead, aka one of the greatest horror films of all time. Two Evil Eyes, on the other hand, might not even be one of the best horror films of 1990.

Hell, it's not even the best Romero-related film of 1990, as he wrote a segment of Tales From The Darkside as well as the script for Tom Savini's Night of the Living Dead remake, both of which are superior. And he doubles down on reminding us of his legacy by populating his segment with a number of actors from Creepshow, which will likely leave audiences wondering why this film didn't follow suit and have four or five tales that ran shorter instead of two that run about an hour (with no framing device). To be fair, that was indeed the original plan: Romero and Argento were originally going to be joined by John Carpenter and Wes Craven, but when their other commitments got in the way and dropped out, the two men decided to just split the film in half, though why they never decided to add some kind of framework or "host" is beyond me.

So it makes for a strange viewing experience - the closest example would be Grindhouse, I guess, but at least that offered two complete features, plus the fake trailers to sell you on the overall "double feature" experience. There's no such frills here; the movie starts with Romero's "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar", then shifts to Argento's "The Black Cat" without any segue or intermission. And while I suppose it's possible some people prefer Romero's, the vast majority agree that Argento's segment is superior, so to sit down and watch this as a movie means you wait an hour for it to get good, or skip past it entirely to get what amounts to a Masters of Horror episode length experience that will leave you unfulfilled if "watching a movie" was your plan for the evening. There's not even any real connection between the two to make it fun; I was hoping some supporting characters would appear in both segments (both take place in contemporary Pittsburgh), but no dice.

Anyway, as I mentioned "Valdemar" isn't exactly up there with the best of Romero's work, which makes sense when you learn on the bonus features that his heart wasn't really in it (Romero wanted to do "Masque of the Red Death" but his ideas proved to be too costly for the production, forcing him to find a different story). "Valdemar" is a strange consolation choice; the original story doesn't have much of a plot, so Romero invented one around the basic idea of a guy caught in a limbo between life and death thanks to a form of hypnotism called mesmerism. Unfortunately, his story isn't all that exciting or unique: it's the ten billionth "woman and her lover kill her husband to get his money" tale, one you could have seen - in half the time - in any number of episodes of HBO's Tales From The Crypt series, which had debuted the year before and was becoming a minor powerhouse for the genre. It picks up in its final 10 minutes (mostly thanks to Tom Atkins showing up as a cigar chomping cop) but by then it's too late to save this from becoming one of Romero's least interesting productions.

Luckily, Argento's fares much better, to the extent that I wish they simply turned his into a traditional feature sans Romero at all (except for maybe as producer). In fact it's a bit longer than Romero's segment as is, so it'd only take another 15-20 minutes' worth of footage to qualify as a feature, which they could have easily added in without really padding things since it has a rather underdeveloped subplot about a local serial killer (played by Savini himself, another Dawn holdover that might enhance your expectations for the film) and a somewhat rushed climax, as if they were making sure the film didn't cross the two hour mark (it comes in literally seconds under, in fact). And it benefits from a better story; Argento updated Poe's classic tale for a modern setting, changing the protagonist into a crime scene photographer - allowing him to work in other Poe references, such as a "Pit and the Pendulum" inspired murder scene - but otherwise stuck fairly close to the narrative Poe wrote nearly 150 years prior.

Plus it's fun to see Harvey Keitel going through the horror movie motions, as he didn't exactly dive into the genre all that often. And he's one of those guys who never phones anything in, so he's fully committed as the drunken asshole murderer who repeatedly kills a cat (and others along the way), but taking it seriously instead of hamming it up - it's a great performance from an actor who I wish embraced the genre more often. And Argento clearly didn't have trouble adapting to working in America - it's got a number of his nutty camera shots (a falling key being one notable example), splatter, and out of nowhere plot turns - come for the contemporary Pittsburgh setting, stay for the nightmare scene set in medieval times! Any fan of the filmmaker can tell you that his decline was about to start, so having missed the film for so long it was great to see "new" Argento that more or less lived up to his talents, before declining budgets and changing studio politics forever handcuffed his abilities, resulting in sub-par efforts.

However you feel about the film, it's inarguable that Blue Underground has put together a fantastic package for it, starting with a new transfer that looked pretty fantastic to my eyes (though I have nothing to compare it to, having never seen it before) and a mother lode of bonus features old and new that require their own disc. The film was previously released on special edition DVD, and it seems they have carried over all of those supplements (including interviews with Romero and Argento) while adding several new ones, including interviews with Madeline Potter (who plays Annabel, Keitel's wife) and composer Pino Donaggio and a very fresh commentary by Argento biographer Troy Howarth, which must have been recorded in the past few months as he notes the death of actor Bingo O'Malley (Valdemar), who only died in June. He's perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about Argento's segment, claiming it's among his best work, but he gives plenty of background on the production, the two filmmakers' careers as a whole, actor bios, etc - he barely ever stops to breathe. The limited edition release also includes Donaggio's score on CD as well as a booklet with an essay by the great Michael Gingold, so if you plan to go through everything on the set, you best take a day out of work.

Ultimately, it was an intriguing and noble experiment that didn't quite stick the landing due to the compromises on participants (a TV show concept was even floated, which would include American AND Italian maestros contributing episodes) and - in Romero's case - story selection, but is still worth a watch thanks to Argento's segment and the sheer novelty of the whole thing. Plus, if you've followed the careers of its two directors, you'd know that this was at the end of their glory years - Romero would only make five more films over the next 27 years until his death, none of them exactly great, while Argento would make one more attempt at breaking into American filmmaking with Trauma before going back to Italy and doing what he could with their own declining film business. Maybe the film itself isn't a classic, but it's from a time when that was still a possible outcome for these masters.

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V/H/S/2 (2013)

MAY 13, 2013

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

I liked but did not love V/H/S, having issues with pretty much every segment (some more damaging than others) and being disappointed with the total lack of payoff in the wraparound sequence. But happily, I can confirm what a lot of pals have told me (thanks to SXSW/Sundance screenings and such): the sequel, originally the much better S-VHS but now simply V/H/S/2, is superior in just about every way - hell, they even improved the (already awesome) VHS tracking ravaged/ugly font end credits that simulate a VCR's on screen display. It's not quite Creepshow or Trick R Treat, but any sequel that surpasses its original is always to be commended.

The wraparound segment is similar, and confusingly unrelated - it's about a sleazy PI and his partner hunting for a missing college student and tracking him to a house filled with VHS tapes, but it's not a. the same house from the first movie or b. even one of the same aged kids who disappeared in the first film. I thought it would be a fun way to build a mythology (a 3rd film is already planned) out of wraparounds, which would be unique for this genre (not that sequels are common to begin with), but it seems they just wanted to keep the idea of VHS tapes and disregard everything else. Nothing against it; it's not like I've been clamoring the IMDb boards to theories on what happened at the end of the first wraparound sequence, but as a fan of sequel mythology in general (see: my love of the Saw movies) I was a bit bummed. Luckily, as a whole it works better than the original's, with a terrific scare and a fun little resolution that suggests something a little more supernatural is at play - which may also explain how all this high tech camera stuff ends up on cruddy VHS tapes in the first place.

The first proper story has a great hook - there's a camera inside the experimental cybernetic eye that has been put into the victim of a car accident, which gives him a bit of a Terminator look at first (but seems to heal quickly). As with Maniac, this means we get not entirely convincing shots of the actor (Adam Wingard, who also directed) looking at a mirror more than seemingly necessary, but it's a great way around the "Why are they filming" thing (something that seems to have been a goal of every short's crew). The horror kicks in when he starts seeing ghosts with his new eye, and then a mysterious girl (and not very good actress) comes over to explain that she has an ear implant from the same people that allows her to hear ghosts talking to her, at which point all hell breaks loose as the ghosts begin their assault. I can't help but think this deserved a feature or at least a longer segment; not only do we know very little about the ghosts (kind of important in a ghost story) but it's never fully clear what the company can gain from doing this. Sadly the film's weakest installment, but the jolts work and the concept itself is intriguing.

Next up is a zombie tale from none other than Eduardo Sanchez, half of the writer/director team behind Blair Witch Project (who co-directs here with BW producer Gregg Hale). I loved the scenario behind this one - a bicyclist with a GoPro on his helmet is bitten by a zombie while racing through the woods, and then we see his transformation and resulting attack on innocent bystanders all from the POV of the camera that's still attached to his head. It's the most fully satisfying of them all in terms of closure - I didn't feel it was too short (or long), nor did I feel it deserved more explanations or backstory for anything that was going on - it was a simple story with a unique idea, done quite well save for a few unfortunate digital blood sprays mixed in with the practical ones.

The third will probably be everyone's favorite, and not just because it's from Gareth Evans - the director of The Raid, the current go-to movie to name check when you want to complain about Hollywood does everything wrong. As with the first story I can't help but feel this could have been longer, as our filmmakers (with a variety of cameras here, though at least one is in a shirt button to explain the "still filming" aspect when things go apeshit) seem to get easy access to this very disturbing cult sect on a day that is apparently very important to them - why'd they let them in in the first place? But otherwise it's an intense slice of WTFery, rivaling the first film's haunted house segment in terms of how insane it gets from where it began. At one point a room full of cult members shoot themselves in the head simultaneously, and that's not even in the top 5 moments that left my eyes widening and muttering "Holy shit..." I heard someone say the final shot was too much, and I won't spoil it, but I will say that I loved it - I'm all for things just going for broke and being as nutty as they like.

And that is why I was left SOMEWHAT disappointed with the final entry, directed by Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun). It starts off with kids playing elaborate pranks on the older sister of two of them (and her boyfriend), and then things go awry when aliens invade mid-prank. It's certainly intense, but kind of one note - the aliens (standard pale skinned/giant eyed things) just sort of swarm around as a giant white light explosion/loud noise out of a current movie trailer (BWWWARRRRRRRRRM) goes off over and over. It's so chaotic (and lo-fi - the camera is attached to a dog which suggests another GoPro, but it looks like mini DV at best) that it's often hard to tell what is happening and who has been taken (except for the poor dog - UNNECESSARY, JERKS!), so it gets a bit tiresome by the end as it's basically just one long attempt to run away from a not-very-well defined villain. I actually preferred the pranks part - the kids are kind of awesome and foul mouthed (making me wish Eisener would just redo Super 8 and give it a better 3rd act this time around), but since each segment was better than the one before it, I wanted the film to keep topping itself, and it doesn't QUITE get there.

But again, overall it worked better than the original, and each segment had its merits (something you couldn't say about the first movie thanks to that terrible one in the woods); the weakest spots here are as good as the best in the first film, which is commendable. Plus it's shorter, and there was more variety between each one - aliens, zombies, cults, mad scientists... - and I liked that they found ways to attach the cameras to something other than someone's hand as often as possible. Add in the improved wraparound and you just have an overall better experience; the biggest hurdle it has is that it's closer to spiritual remake than sequel, so the novelty has worn off some. Thankfully, since they're NOT related, if you haven't seen the first yet, feel free to just start with this.

What say you?

P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I do know some of the folks behind the movie (and it was produced by my old boss from Bloody Disgusting), but I certainly don't know the Raid folks and that was my favorite part. Also, just an FYI, over time my opinions have shifted on the first one; I previously liked the Skype story the most but have come to like the haunted house one above all. And that 3rd story is my least favorite, not the 1st (the "bat girl") as my review states. Should I do a HMAD 2.0 and re-review every movie? (I don't care what you say, I won't actually DO that, but it'd be interesting to handpick a few others and see if my opinion has changed.)

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Scary Or Die (2012)

JANUARY 30, 2013

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Another anthology! And, like Barrio Tales, Scary Or Die was shot in Los Angeles and has a segment about racists battling border crossers, only for one of the "illegal aliens" to turn out to be a legal resident and business owner. And they're both from Phase 4. And they both lack any real surprises. But other than that, they're different!

For starters, there are five stories here, giving the film two more chances to impress or disappoint. The first is the border crosser one; a pair of rednecks and one of their girlfriends drive out to a common crossing spot with a pair of guys they've kidnapped (after killing a Spanish store clerk on the way), aiming to kill them and leave them by the border as a warning. Things, of course, go awry, and our awful racists get their just desserts. It's a decent segment (better than the one in Barrio, anyway), but I couldn't help but feel a bit puzzled at its final scene, where a pair of US Border Patrol agents matter of factly discuss the thing that killed our racist folks. It's an intriguing concept, and one they should have explored in more detail, rather than leave it for what basically comes across as a joke.

The second story is the worst; depicting an Asian guy who sees a girl being kidnapped and rescues her. She repays him by inviting him over, and since he's all lonely (his wife has recently passed, it seems), he's more than eager to take her up on it. But surprise! She's a vampire. This is a twist, but a poorly delivered one, and worse, the rest of the story (when, I shit you not, Van Helsing arrives on the scene) takes place off-screen, robbing us of the only thing that might have been entertaining in the entire segment.

The third is an improvement, telling the tale of a hitman of some sort who is trying to dispose a body. It's got a "Tell-Tale Heart" thing going on and one of the few inspired twists in the movie, plus the hitman is played by character actor Christopher Darga, who is an interesting presence not often given a lead role. All of that helps make up for the clunky editing, which shows us the middle of the story first, then flashes back to get us to that point and shows most of the same scene again. This sort of thing is annoying enough in a feature film; it's downright unforgivable in a 15 minute anthology segment. It also lacks proper introductions and setup; I have no idea why he was killing this person, if he was ordered to do it or acting on his own, etc.

The fourth is the best, and also the longest, which is probably why the cover features its central villain: a zombie clown. Our hero is a drug dealer (stay with me) who gets bitten by a clown and then slowly turns into one himself, sort of like a more tragic werewolf movie, or The Fly. So he tracks down the original clown while trying to hide what is happening from his family and the cops (including one played by Darga), all while trying to keep himself from hurting anyone. It runs for about 30 minutes and has the most interesting characters out of all the segments, and the clown makeup is pretty awesome (the white afro is a nice touch), making this an easy winner that probably deserved to be released on its own as a long short film.

Then there's an extra installment that no one needs at all. I am completely at a loss to explain this one; a woman returns from the dead to get back at her boyfriend, and that's it. It's about 5 minutes long and she narrates the entire thing. It has a tie to the wraparound, but they could have thrown that into any of the stories. And it feels so tacked on coming after the longest/best story, so this is just a boneheaded decision on all counts. Especially when the wraparound has zero story at all - basically there's a website with uploaded videos (the segments) and in between them we just see a hand on a mouse scrolling over to click another one. The concept is fine (and is a nice way to explain why the shorts look/feel so different, as the multiple directors have an in-movie justification), but it's entirely weightless. Think of the wraparounds in things like Creepshow or Tales From The Crypt - they're just as memorable as the stories between! Who the hell is going to remember this one, even if they loved every segment - was it worth killing the film's late momentum just to have a (flimsy) tie to it?

In my eyes, they should have just dropped the 2nd and 5th stories, expanded on the 1st and 3rd, and let the wraparound have its own contained little story, since the "I'm watching these movies" approach doesn't quite lend itself to having a connection to one of them anyway. They would have had a really solid anthology on their hands instead of a frustratingly uneven one, though I will meet them halfway on that as it seems there might have been some production issues. In an interview, Michael Emanuel (who seems to be the driving force behind the project) claimed that characters from each segment would intersect with the others (a la Trick 'r Treat), but except for this last bit, that doesn't seem to be the case in the finished product. Darga APPEARS in two segments, but he isn't playing the same character, so that doesn't count. So, maybe some things got messed up/changed and resulted in the movie's wildly disjointed outcome. Either way, it's a decent effort, and at least the two weakest segments are also the shortest - when you suffer, it's brief!

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Barrio Tales (2012)

JANUARY 24, 2013

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Just as the news came in that S-V/H/S had been picked up by Magnolia (who put out the original as well), I was watching Barrio Tales, another horror anthology in what is becoming a bit of a trend (is someone listening to me?); I saw more than twice as many anthology films in 2012 as I did in 2011, in fact. My article explains why I think it should be a more attractive prospect for studios, but all of them are indie productions like this - there's still a long way to go before we can expect to see such fare in the multiplexes.

Anyway, Barrio is decent, but it lacks the element of surprise (well, to me anyway - maybe you'd be surprised by its story turns. In that case, don't read the review! I honestly can't tell if any of the things were supposed to be surprises). It's pretty easy to see where each one of its stories (and the wraparound) are going, which is a big faux pas in this particular sub-genre. Inspired twists or just plain out of nowhere revelations are not only common, they're encouraged! Let's face it, the number of amazing characters in these films is a pretty short list, which is why it's common to get popular actors in those roles - it gives them a boost of depth and sympathy that the short format doesn't allow for. We don't like Laurie in Trick R Treat because she's interesting or has an identifiable character motivation - we like her because she's Anna Paquin. This being a low budget production with unknown actors (no offense to any of them), it doesn't have that benefit, so they should be making up for it by blowing our minds or giving us something completely new.

Alas, they're all pretty standard tales, albeit given some Mexican flavor and a touch of humor. The first one is your basic "wronged person seeks revenge on the assholes that hurt them" tale, focusing on a maid who is employed by an absentee pair of rich folks and harassed by their jerk son and his equally dickish friends. There's a slight variation, in that it's her grandmother who gets the revenge via voodoo, but that just makes the outcome even less satisfying. These kids are quite possibly the biggest bunch of pricks in a movie ever, to the extent that pretty much any comeuppance wouldn't have been satisfying - but at least if it was done by a ghost/zombie/whatever of the girl, it'd be slightly more cathartic than her grandmother (who we've never seen before) doing it from hundreds of miles away. And it's pretty simple, one guy just sort of chokes to death and that's the grimmest one! These guys should have been torn asunder like Frank in Hellraiser!

The second is the most overtly goofy, which means it's also the best. Some neighborhood kids are obsessed with this taco track, and its owner "Uncle" Tio who is awesome and remembers everyone's preferred orders and gives stuff on the house and such. But what's the secret to his delicious tacos??? You don't need to have seen Soylent Green to guess, and it's a pity they delay this reveal until the halfway point or so, since it could have been fun to just focus on Tio going about his business, instead of presenting it from one of the neighborhood kids' point of view as they solve this non-mystery. It doesn't help that we get the most obvious giveaway in the history of cinema, when a character goes out of his way to point out his class ring (accompanied by a closeup), so we know someone's going to find that ring inside a taco later on. Come on guys, we're all smarter than this.

The third is interesting; sort of a sped-up version of that movie Undocumented where a couple of red-blooded Americans (read: extreme racists) catch a bunch of Mexicans who are sneaking across the border, bring them to their compound, and proceed to torture/kill them. This is the weakest of the segments, the villains are too cartoonish and the heroes too ill-defined to care much about any of it, and the attempts at a mythology of sorts (on both sides) fall flat. But it moves along, and like all the segments is well made and acted, and thankfully avoids too much soapboxing as it devolves into general entertainment, mimicking any Hostel type movie where folks escape their tormentors and become just as violent in the process.

The wraparound is too brief to care much about; two kids who sneak across the border to buy drugs run afoul of the guy telling them the stories as they wait for the dealer to show up. Like the stories themselves, you can see where it's going from the start, but it never makes sense on any level. There's a bit in one of the stories where we see a newspaper headline about a pop star dying, which I thought would tie into the wraparound (or one of the other stories at least) somehow, but nothing comes of it. Perhaps I just had Tales From The Hood on the brain (which DOES tie a story into the bookends, quite cleverly) because the movie steals one of that film's jokes (the "refried beans" bit). But I can be generous and call it an homage to another minority-centric anthology horror film, I guess.

Not much more to say, really. I wasn't too bored, it was professionally made, and the acting was above average for this sort of thing. And even though I'm sick of the "film damage" filter, it had some pretty sweet credit sequences, so it's all good. If you're starved for some anthology action, you can certainly do worse. Order up some tacos first though; human meat or not this movie made me damn hungry.

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Night Train To Terror (1985)

DECEMBER 11, 2012

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

A year or so ago my buddy John Gholson sent me a copy of a movie called Death Wish Club, saying it was along the lines of Birdemic and other "Holy shit how awful can one movie be?" type films. However it didn't sound like a horror film, so I never got around to watching it (sorry, John), which is why I didn't realize that it was one of the three feature films that were badly re-edited and used as the stories for Night Train To Terror, which may be the most baffling anthology movie ever made.

If I am understanding correctly, director John Carr and writer Philip Yordan (who has an Oscar, for Christ's sake, plus two additional nominations) had three movies (one unfinished at the time) that weren't going anywhere. So they devised a wraparound segment, apparently found the least discerning editor on the planet to hack them down to under 30 minutes a piece, and put this masterpiece together. Rumor has it that it even had a theatrical release (a print definitely exists), but nowadays it's, somewhat ironically, relegated to the same dump bins and public domain multi-packs that also house the original versions.

Possibly by accident, the wraparound's concept is actually pretty cool: God and Lucifer are on a train, arguing over the souls of a few folks like Chevy and Dan playing against the Russians over the fate of certain nuclear weapons at the end of Spies Like Us - a very casual discussion over something that's pretty goddamn huge for those involved. The endgame seems to be a plan to crash the train and kill everyone on board, so God is either trying to stop that from happening OR ensure he can take a bunch of the victims' souls to heaven, I was a bit hazy on that detail (compared to the rest of the movie, it's as understandable as my own name, however). Since the only passengers we see are the members of a horrid/awesome 80s pop band singing their own song over and over ("Everybody's got something to do/Everybody but you!"), it's hard to care much about the outcome. As the guy in Airplane would say "They BOUGHT their tickets, they KNEW what they were getting into! I say, let em crash!"

But what minor confusion is caused by the wraparound (which uses stock footage at a different aspect ratio for the exteriors of the train chugging along, and a toy for when it crashes) is nothing compared to the brain-melting WTFery that I felt watching the stories. Shockingly enough, cutting a movie down to 1/3 of its original length does not yield coherent results, and even with voiceovers trying to bridge scenes together and sum up the battered storylines, I found it easier to understand what was going on the in-flight movie without sound (and it was Premium Rush, which doesn't take place in chronological order) than I was anything in this.

And yes, I was on a plane while I watched this. Worse, it was an American Airlines plane, which meant my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me before its occupant even reclined and there was no in-flight progress option like on a Virgin or JetBlue plane, so I had no idea how much of the flight had passed. And since they can't even get those basics right, I had no faith in their wifi and thus didn't opt to spend 10 bucks for it. Had I done so (and it worked), I probably would have looked up some information on the movie and discovered its origin as a re-edited trio of movies. In other words, I watched this without knowing any of the above, assuming its insane approach to storytelling was by design - but I assume its 1985 audience was in the same boat, and thus it was the most fitting and apt way to watch this particular film.

The first one was the closest to a complete story, which is odd because it was the one that they never finished anyway. A guy gets into a car crash on his wedding night, and wakes up in a mental institute (the wife had died), where he is being brainwashed into picking up women at bars and such, and then bringing them to the institute, where they are murdered (and raped, I think?) by Bull from Night Court. Eventually he realizes this is wrong and mounts an escape, which is successful, I guess. There's a lot of "huh?" and jumping around, and it's nearly impossible to tell why anyone is doing what they are doing, but compared to the other two it's pretty much the epitome of coherent storytelling. And the hero is John Phillip Law from Diabolik, so there's something.

The next story (by the way, each story is bridged by more of God and Lucifer chatting it up, and that band singing their "Dance With Me" song again - you'll know all the words by the time the movie ends) is the one from Death Wish Club, and includes the worst editing of the bunch. When it starts, this rich asshole is wooing a girl selling popcorn, and then the voiceover explains that the guy put her into porn movies. One such film is then watched by the hero, who becomes so entranced by this woman that he drops everything to pursue her. We then see him watching her at a nightclub, where she plays the piano (or not, since she gets up and the song keeps playing), and even though it seems like they haven't even met yet, the next scene has them living together. But the porn producer guy is jealous/angry and thus makes them enter his death club, at which point almost nothing that has happened so far has any bearing on the plot. Once I learned about the re-editing I was quite confused - since they had the voiceover, why even bother with the porn/popcorn selling parts of her life? It wasted time they could have used making a little more sense out of the death club scenes - they could have just been any normal couple duped into playing this guy's game. That's the beauty of a post-production mandated voiceover - he can tell you the movie is about anything, and we have no choice but to believe him!

This one has the weirdest ending of them all, which is saying something. We're watching their newest death game, where they all lay under a swinging wrecking ball until it snaps off the rope and kills someone - this is how they get their thrills, sort of like a group Russian Roulette). Both men and the girl are among the possible victims, and then the rope breaks, crushing.... uh, some blond woman. The outcome literally has no meaning, and that's how the story ends! We cut back to God and Lucifer with not a single thing resolved, rendering it a complete waste of time even by this movie's standards. It's amazing.

The third story seems to be from a movie that was possibly incoherent even in its uncut form, as it combines Nazi vampires, the non-existence of Christ, Cameron Mitchell, stop motion demons, and who the hell knows what else. See, by this point I had long given up trying to make sense out of anything on-screen, to the point that it barely even fazed me when Bull from Night Court showed up as a different character than the one he was playing in the first, making him sort a sort of 2/3s Karen Black for this trilogy of non-terror. For what it's worth, it seems like it could be a pretty interesting movie; sort of a cross between Dorian Gray and an Exorcist sequel, so maybe I'll track it down and watch it on its own, but I'm not expecting much. Mitchell's presence alone seems to guarantee that it'll be a head-scratcher in any form, being that it seems every time I see him in a movie I'm also shouting "WHAT?" at the screen more often than not.

In other words, this is the best movie I've ever seen.

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Terror Tract (2000)

NOVEMBER 24, 2012

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (BORROWED)

It didn't take long for me to realize I might enjoy Terror Tract at least a little more than the average made for cable horror movie, as it featured a pretty funny "food chain" gag in its opening moments - a bird eats a worm, a cat eats the bird, and then the cat is hit by a car, its remains eaten by a dog. And the driver of the car is the late, great John Ritter, who doesn't seem remorseful about what he did and continues on his way. He's playing a realtor who is in the process of showing a couple a house on the block, and thus provides the framework for this uneven but mostly enjoyable little anthology.

It's actually a pretty cool idea for a wraparound - each time he shows them a house, he is forced by law to tell them about the bad things that happened there, and it seems that no one ever just moves away from this neighborhood. But it also has its own little storyline, as Ritter tells them that he is vying to win a company sales contest, and if he can sell them a house by 5 pm, he will win. We learn there's more to it than that, and while it doesn't quite pay off satisfactorily (who is he talking to on the phone?), it's more inventive than the usual "Hey let me tell you some scary stories and then there will be a twist at the end where I turn out to be a ghost or something" scenario.

It's a shame that the three stories aren't so creative. As stand-alone tales they are fine, Tales From The Crypt-ian pieces that deliver the expected amount of carnage, but the thing is that I felt like I had seen them all before, making it easy to call their twists and thus ruin some of my fun. None are far and away better or worse than the others, which is rare in an anthology film, but in some ways I think I'd rather two (or even just one) standout tales with one (or two) duds than three "Yeah, that was pretty good I guess."

The first is a traditional "love triangle gone bad" tale, with a woman cheating on her husband (Fredric Lehne) with a younger dude. Lehne catches them in the act, there's a scuffle, and he ends up dead. So now the couple has to get rid of the body, but there's complications, and the wife keeps having nightmares (the segment is called "Nightmare") about him coming back as a slimy zombie thing, and Lehne's best friend is suspicious... you know the drill. Like a slasher, it hits all of its beats when you expect them to, but during the lulls you can easily daydream thinking about the other antho-segments or even features that had the whole Diabolique thing going on, albeit without any clever twists. That said, it was nice to see Prison Break's Wade Williams in a bit role (the suspicious friend); in fact the movie as a whole is something of a serial drama fan's wet dream, as Lehne represents Lost AND Supernatural, Reunion (!) star Will Estes and Desperate Housewives' Brenda Strong shows up in the 3rd story, and the second segment has the best coup of all: Bryan "Walter White" Cranston.

"Bobo" is slightly better than the other two, but part of that is due to the pleasure of seeing Cranston, pre-Breaking Bad (practically pre-Malcolm in the Middle, actually; it was shot before that show premiered but aired later), demeaning himself by getting out-smarted by a monkey. As I learned in Dead Space, there's no such thing as a bad Cranston performance - dude gives it his all regardless of the material, which is a big help as the tale is basically the "Cat From Hell" segment from Tales From The Darkside, or a Cliff's Notes take on Of Unknown Origin, but with a monkey instead of a cat/rat. It's goofy enough, and surprisingly grim (I figured the pet control guy would be the only human casualty, alas...), but the monkey is way too crazy to let it go without a back-story. Cranston's daughter finds it - wearing a little suit! - in the backyard and keeps it, but there's no real push to find out where he came from or why he's so psychotically attached to the girl when he hates everyone else. I don't know if I need a full feature about it, but it lacks the "good enough" explanation of Cat, or the full-blown Moby Dick dark parody of Origin, to really live up to either. And if Cranston hadn't ever gotten the fame/respect/roles he deserves, I'm not sure how much of this would work as well as it does.

The third definitely deserves a feature, if only because the Granny Killer would be an amazing addition to the late 90s/early 00s slasher canon - the creepy mask and voice, plus the giallo-inspired kill scenes, are among the best things Tract has to offer. Unfortunately, Granny is sidelined for most of "Come To Granny" (which is also the shortest of the bunch), as it focuses on Estes' character, who has psychic visions of Granny killing people and believes a shrink (Strong) will be the next victim. Strong, of course, suspects Estes himself is the killer, and thus we should too, so naturally (spoiler) he isn't. Part of the thing that bugs me about anthologies (and short films in general) is how many of them go for twist endings, and they're not usually too successful because there isn't enough there to distract us away from seeing the warning signs. Obviously Estes can't be the killer himself, because the story is from his POV - we'd have to see it from Strong's in order to work, or he would have to be telling a really meaty story to draw us in so we miss any clues that lead us to believe he might be the dangerous one (there's a very underrated horror/thriller from 2002 that is a good example of that - I won't spoil the title since I'm still convinced only 29 people have seen the movie). But again, it's the shortest of the bunch (even the wraparound seems to take up more time), so the "twist" isn't one - it's actually the only possibility.

And then we return to Ritter and the couple, which DOES have a decent surprise in store and then a riotous final sequence where a character sees how insane the entire neighborhood is, as if Ritter was only scratching the surface concerning the ridiculous violence that goes on in this "perfect" little suburban block. It got me thinking about how it could have launched a fun little anthology TV series, where each week would be about a different resident, with Ritter as its Rod Serling. Alas, it lives on now only as one of his final films (he died 2 years later) and as the "other movie" on the DVD with Cherry Falls, which similarly had a lot to like but also some dodgy execution. Hopefully the DVD will go back in print someday so it only costs a couple of bucks (as opposed to 30 or more) to check out these little movies that almost could; they're worth a look for sure, but not at THAT much of a cost.

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