Twas the Night Before Christmas...

And all through the house. Not a creature was stirring cuz we're all in fucking lockdown.

VOTE!

Désolée

I should be a fucking plane right now. Instead, I am languishing in a humidified office.

Fuck you, Covid. Way to break my streak of twelve years.

Mickey, The Walkin' Dude.

These responses below to Disney World's reopening announcement are hilarious.

You're welcome!

The World Is A Trash Fire.

Yup.

Source: Horror DNA

Cautionary Tales...

In Quarantine, No One Hear Can You Scream 2.

Well, we had so much fun doing the script read for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer that Ali got us all together again on Zoom to read Scream 2 just a few days later. This script was only seventy-five pages so the whole affair was much brisker this time around. I played the Mickey character, originally portrayed by Timothy Olyphantastic. Anyhoo, enjoy!

I Still Know What You Did Last Quarantine

While shuttered away, I've been watching movies with friends through Zoom. It's been working really well and so far my various crews have watched J Lo's Anaconda, Don Dohler's Nightbeast and Danzig's indefinable Verotika. Last weekend, my friend Ali Chappell took things up a notch and did a live script reading of 1998's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. If you are at all interested on what that would look like, you can watch the shenanigans below. I played the Jeffrey Combs character. It was a blast!

There will likely be more of these to come, so stay tuned if you are so inclined.

Gifrific: Steven Soderadamus

Source: Contagion (2011)

Bark At The Moon

I've been keeping myself busy during quarantine in all sorts of ways, including doing this puzzle that's been in my parent's crawlspace for decades.

I guess I should be thankful that after fourty years of meddling Clarke children there are only three missing pieces. Stay safe, kiddies.

Gifrific: We're All Very Tired.

Source: The Thing (1982)

Off Air...

In The Year Nineteen Ninety-Two!

This week's VHS is Charles Band's 1982 flick Parasite. I acquired one of those infamous Wizard “big boxes” while working the Full Moon booth last weekend and decided to crack it.

A scientist (Robert Glaudini) infected with his own creation escapes his captors and searches for a cure in the barren wastelands outside futuristic Los Angeles.

I had never seen this movie and almost immediately realized I had no idea what it was about. I watched Prophecy last year and am now pretty sure I may have always thought these two were the same movie. I certainly did not know this one was set in a post-apocalypse where cash was no longer accepted and the only three things on the menu were canned fruit, canned beer and canned soup. And this universe had laser guns by 1992. How progressive!

Parasite was originally released in 3D and much like my childhood watches of Friday the 13th Part III you can tell which parts are made to cash in on that - my fave bit being the guy who gets impaled by a length of pipe... and bleeds oil apparently.

Despite its low budget underpinning, it did possess a good amount of pedigree, as Stan Winston designed the creature, Richard Band did the score and boasted Demi Moore in her second ever role. Former Runaway Cherie Currie also turned up randomly as one of a gang of toughs.

Demi Moore as Pat Welles in Parasite

I appreciated the world building in this movie, even if the exchanges were a little stiff scene to scene, especially the ones between Moore and Glaudini. That's okay though, because once the creature got let out of its container, it became the star anyway. I feel like this giant tadpole with teeth motif got used a lot in the eighties, but like the saying goes - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Parasite concluded with a cool full body burn and our heroes living happily ever after. Well, as happy as one can be in a post apocalyptic world I suppose.

It's The End of the World, Eh?

With this weekend's finality of both Endgame and the Battle of Winterfell, I thought it appropriate to dust off an eighties end of the world title in Paul Donavan's Def-Con 4 from 1985.

Three astronauts crash land on Earth shortly after a nuclear war has ravaged the planet.

Denizens of the video store era will no doubt remember that infamous coverbox above. I just only recently realized that Def-Con 4 was a Canadian production. Donovan was a CanCon journeyman with a resume that included Lexx, one of the most wonderfully weird sci-fi's to ever grace the small screen. As for Def-Con 4's Canadian roots, you need look no further than the cast that included adopted Torontonian Maury Chaykin and Lenore Zann, who appeared in such notable homegrown titles as Visiting Hours and Happy Birthday To Me.

Tim Choate & Lenore Zann in Def-Con 4.

Def-Con 4 begins in orbit and we are let into the tense situation on the ground via news broadcasts. At first, I thought this might be another teleplay like previous crisis flicks Countdown To Looking Glass and Special Bulletin. Not so though, as their shuttle crashed to Earth in the second act, revealing a very different world than they left.

It wasn't long before I realized that the coverbox was another elaborate ruse. However, I must admit that I was fine that it went the Mad Max route instead. I was expecting this movie to be pretty cheap-looking, but to be honest it looked like they had at least some money to spend on sets. Though it probably wasn't hard to make Nova Scotia look like a desolate wasteland (I keed!)

Seriously though, Def-Con 4 has a good deal of personality. I love the fact that no one in the production though to check if DEFCON was a retro-graded scale. In actuality, Def-Con 4 only denotes mild concern. It may also be the first time I've ever seen a Social Insurance Card used in a movie.

Even though Def-Con 4 may not have reached the heights promised on its cover, this was still some choice eighties post-apoc shenanigans.

A Bad Robot Mystery.

Two months ago, Bad Robot surprised everyone with a trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane. Just as they did with the original Cloverfield, they were somehow able to shroud the entire production in secrecy – a feat that becomes more and more impressive with each passing year.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up in an underground bunker after being saved by a man named Howard (John Goodman) who tells her that the world above them has ended.

10 Cloverfield Lane is an interesting beast because it's a hybrid of two separate ideas. The project began in 2012 as a script called The Cellar, which was later re-appropriated to fit into the Cloverfield universe. I'll talk more about that later, but right now I want to focus on the piece's biggest strength.

You've probably heard about how great John Goodman is in this, and I agree. Howard can be added to his long list of memorable characters. He's an unsettling presence throughout that you never really feel comfortable around because you are never quite sure if his behaviour is malicious or just plain awkward. As solid as Goodman is though, I also feel that Mary Elizabeth Winstead deserves just as much praise. She is one of a few actresses that can not only balance vulnerability and strength, but always remain grounded and relatable while doing it. Her role here just further cemented her place as one of my favourite actresses working today. The third player in the film, John Gallagher Jr. as Emmett, is also great as the intermediary between the two.

Howard (John Goodman) & Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in 10 Cloverfield Lane.

With the help of the confined setting, director Dan Trachtenberg created some real tension here. After cutting his teeth on a decade's worth of commercials, this was a very competent debut. Given the piece's intimate tone, I'm very impressed he had the confidence to let his actors do a lot of the heavy lifting. I used to religiously watch a Web show Trachtenberg was on for many years, so it puts a smile on my face to know he's now finally achieved the things he always talked about doing.

I was also happy that the trailer (I only watched the first one) didn't give away as much as it seemed to. While it is true the name Cloverfield, which implies a somewhat problematic expectation of the grandiose, does fly in the face of the straightforward character piece presented in the trailer, I do think they can co-exist. Regardless of where the story eventually goes though, I think there were some major improvements made from the original script, the best of which being the character of Michelle. She was a much better realized character here, which is in part due to rewrites, but mostly Winstead, the only actress who was ever considered for the role.

To sum up, 10 Cloverfield Lane probably won't knock anyone's socks off, but it is a solid thriller that I feel gets most, if not all, of the important things right.

Love Thy Neighbour.

For those who saw Miguel Ángel Vivas' 2010 feature Secuestrados (aka Kidnapped), I bet you likely never forgot it. It was unapologetically dour and its final frames still rattle around in my brain several years on. Aside from that though, the film was a technical marvel, consisting of a dozen extended shots stitched together into a feature length thriller. So, when I saw that Vivas' new project Extinction was playing Fantasia, I knew I had to see it.

Holed up in a pair of cabins in the mountains while awaiting the end of the apocalypse, Patrick (Matthew Fox), Jack (Jeffrey Donovan) and his daughter Lu (Quinn McColgan) realize that the zombies might not be as dead as they thought.

I found Extinction to be surprisingly solid. When I say surprisingly, I mean that the premise sounded so overdone that I was skeptical Vivas would be able to bring anything new to the table. But he did. Unlike a lot of post-apocalyptic stories, it doesn't get bogged down in the hows and whys, it just concentrates on the here and now. I found the structure of how the last two men (quite possibly on the entire planet) who can't stand to look at each other, yet still remained neighbours at the end of the world to be really interesting. That's not to say that it's completely fresh, as there were whole sections where it felt like other material (The Walking Dead, 28 Weeks Later and I Am Legend being the most prominent), but Vivas was always able to bring it back with some wonderful character work.

And that is one of the two strengths of the film, the relationship between the three main characters. Orphaned from the television roles that made them stars, Jeffrey Donovan & Matthew Fox were terrific and their end-of-the-world gruffness was nicely counteracted by their child co-star Quinn McColgan. Young actors like McColgan come along very rarely, so expect to see a lot more of her in the future.

Patrick (Matthew Fox) dispatches one of the infected in Extinction.

The other strength was the technical prowess of Vivas that I alluded to earlier. He makes the snow covered exteriors look beautiful despite utilizing very little colour in his palette. I was also glad to see that he didn't totally abandon his penchant for long takes, as there is a memorable sequence where the camera tracked down, going through the three floors of the cabin during the climax. I have to admit there was a bit more CG than I would've liked (hence the Legend reference), but there were also a good amount of practical creature effects to balance it out.

I fear that Extinction could get lost in the sea of other zombie/post-apocalyptic offerings (a situation certainly not helped by the blasé poster) and that's a shame, as I feel this has a lot more to offer than the majority of genre chaff that gets released. Fortunately, Extinction releases soon (July 31th on VOD) so hopefully you'll give it a look and decide for yourself.

Trailer Tuesdays: Chosen Survivors

During one of the many conversations I had with cinephiles at this year's Shock Stock, I was made aware of THIS film--

It should not be a surprise to you that I quickly sought this out (it was released in one of those Fox double features with The Earth Dies Screaming.) based on premise alone. 

I wish it was... better. I mean, all the ingredients are there, but the effects were a little lacking. It was great to see they used actual vampire bats though, as the scene where one walked (or more accurately shuffled) across a character's bedspread was pretty darn creepy. I never even knew they could do that! However, whatever tech they used (compositing? projection?) to generate the swarming scenes was not so great.

Killer bats or film grain, who can say?

The really unfortunate thing for me is knowing that this is probably the closest I will ever get to seeing an adaptation of James Herbert's third rat novel, Domain. Swap out the bats with giant rats and you're pretty close, they both even feature a fevered climb up an elevator shaft. But I don't want to get on another rant about Herbert's untapped resources.

Regardless, Chosen Survivors is still good for some grade A seventies cheese.

DKTM 257

Good afternoon all. While I nurse this hangover with a large dose of couch, let me serve you up some new morsels from the world of horror.

Spring Is In The Air.

This week, the campaign for Red Spring went up on IndieGogo. This post-apocalyptic vampire tale is actor/writer Jeff Sinasac's (a real class act I've had the pleasure of working with several times) baby and he needs your help to raise the remaining funds to make this project a reality. Here below is the concept trailer and Jeff's pitch video.

Based on Jeff & Tom's track record, this should be quite something, so please, donate what you can or at least pass along the link to get the word out. Click here to see the campaign page.

Still Here. Tonight.

Ted Geoghegan's debut film We Are Still Here starring Barbara Crampton has its world premiere at SXSW this evening. Check out this sweet poster.

Hopefully, this makes its way to a festival near me soon.

Bad Breakup.

If you're in the mood for a cool short, here's one from Andrés Borghi called Alexia.

I think this would make a good pairing with the upcoming film Unfriended (formerly Cybernatural), as their sense of the here and now seems really fresh to me.

Anyway, that's it for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Nine More Nightmares.

The Toronto After Dark Film Festival just revealed the remaining nine titles of their 2014 line-up, and boy, are there some doozies! In fact, including the ten already announced - which includes the likes of The Babadook, ABC's of Death 2 and Open Windows - this looks like the strongest slate in years. Take a look!

Click on posters for more info.

Toronto After Dark runs October 16th to 24th at the Scotiabank Theatre. For ticket info, click here.