It's A Jag!

In celebration of Women in Horror Month, I picked out Gaylene Preston's 1984 Kiwi ghost tale Mr. Wrong aka Dark of the Night.

After a few unexplainable events involving her newly purchased Jaguar, Meg (Heather Bolton) starts to suspect it may be haunted.

It would be easy to dismiss Mr. Wrong as a Christine rip-off, but it's really more of a mash-up of several classic urban legends. Adapted from a novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard, it very much had the ingredients of a campfire tale. Mr. Wrong was old school storytelling through and through with solid performances and steady direction. It has that naturalistic vibe that a lot of stuff from that corner of the world during that era.

Heather Bolton as Meg in Mr. Wrong

I especially appreciated that the moment something seemed off with the car, Meg was like, nope, and not only went about trying to sell it, but also immediately had the thing towed back to her place. I think that might be one of the smartest things I've seen a protagonist do in quite some time. My only real gripe is that the ending featured a pretty anti-climactic crash. I mean, do they not have cliffs in Wellington?

Mr. Wrong was pretty tame by today's standards, but it's definitely the type of movie that I would remember fondly if I'd seen it in my childhood when I was ingesting stuff like Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Trailer Tuesdays: Heavenly Creatures

On the subject of young girls tragically separated from reality, I give you the trailer for Peter Jackson's 1994 opus Heavenly Creatures.

All Hail The Blind God!

A movie I'd been hearing about since its premiere at SXSW was New Zealand's Jason Lei Howden's horror comedy Deathgasm.

A group of teenage metalheads unwittingly resurrect an ancient evil that casts their sleepy town into chaos.

Deathgasm was bloody buckets of fun. The Kiwis have always had a real affinity for mixing comedy and horror, as aside from the obvious Peter Jackson classics that this film playfully pays homage to, there have also been crazy cats like The Spierig Brothers (Undead) and Jonathan King (Black Sheep). However, I would say the biggest influence on this movie was Sam Raimi's Evil Dead though. It was really hard not to enjoy myself when very Candarian-like demons started popping up everywhere.

The movie was also incredibly gory. I should've expected that considering the source, but I guess it's just been a while since it's been done properly like this. Although, I do feel that Howden may have a borderline unhealthy fixation with crotch-area mutilation. He seems to get a little too much enjoyment out of stuffing sharp objects up people's anuses.

Milo Cawthorne (left) & James Blake as Brodie & Zakk in Deathgasm.

I feel like this was kind of what I wanted from 2008's Dance of the Dead, but it never quite hit the mark like Deathgasm did. I've never been into metal – unless you count my brief sampling of Twisted Sister and Motley Crue circa 1985 – but I feel the outcast teen is pretty relatable no matter where their interests lie. I don't have much more to say other than Deathgasm is definitely the kind of movie best seen as a shared experience with an audience.