In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.
For those who haven't been following the journey, the LBFS was created by a couple of Toronto cinephiles to celebrate the underappreciated and eccentric side of cinema. It began with screenings inside an indie video store before rotating around a few members' residences before settling into monthly screenings at the Royal Cinema about seven years ago. It has lied dormant during Covid, but founder filmmaker Justin Decloux has been keeping it going with intermittent 24-hour Twitch marathons (the next of which is October 16th!)
I miss those guys terribly and hope to be attending live LB events soon. Until then, check out the LB site and maybe you'll spy something to track down.
Last Thursday, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the indispensable film archive Canuxpliotation.com, the Laser Blast Film Society screened the 1981 Canadian classic The Pit at The Royal. My love of this film is no secret and I was super chuffed to see it on the big screen.
Fortunately, there were others with artistic skills just as excited and they fashioned stuff for the event.
Two things I wanted to share with you. First, the full line-up of this year's Hexploitation Film Festival was announced yesterday.
There are several titles I'm intrigued by including Eduardo M. Clorio's I Wish I Wish, Preston DeFrancis's Ruin Me & Toor Mian & Andy Collier's Charismata, as well as the Hamilton Premiere of Chad Archibald's The Heretics.
We're also serving up some terrific shorts, running the gamut between festival favourites like Justin Harding's Latched and Mike Marrero & Jon Rhoads' Buzzcut and world premieres Niall Shukla's A Doll Distorted and Mike Pereira's Zandavi Lives. I'm also fond of Isreali import My First Time from Asaf Livni.
HexFest goes down at The Staircase Theatre from March 23 to 25. For more info, click here.
Secondly, I wanted to make you aware the Laser Blast Film Society (of which I am a card carrying member) has a spiffy new website. Check it out by clicking the image below.
Sometime ago, a member of the Laser Blast Film Society put forth the idea of doing a Hellraiser marathon. Similar endurance tests had been undertaken before with the likes of the Resident Evil and Saw series' - plus that legendary time we watched films for twenty-four hours straight - so no big deal, right? Well, I'm not sure we were all aware - at least I wasn't - when we signed up for this that there were actually nine fucking titles to the Hellraiser franchise. I myself had previously only seen five with vague recollections of three of them.
So last weekend, we did it. We absorbed nine films in fifteen hours and emerged with our souls relatively intact. But we had to get creative. We started with Hellraiser, mainly because not all in attendance had seen it and we wanted to create a base. Going forward though, we decided to watch the rest of them at random - our fate decided by a dice roll.
Whatever number came up, we watched that sequel. In keeping with the theme of hell, we also employed some penalties for various transgressions. For instance;
If you arrived late; PUNISHMENT!
If you looked on your phone for too long; PUNISHMENT!
If the die rolled outside the area; PUNISHMENT!
If you rolled a previously rolled number or a 10; PUNISHMENT!
Punishments involved us watching ten minutes of various terrible Halloween specials, namely the animated David S. Pumpkins' and Michael Jackson ones. Worst of all by a large margin was the Big Bang Theory special. Holy fuck, I'd rather watch all nine Hellraiser films again rather than suffer anymore of that. It is mind boggling how agonizingly unfunny that show is.
We were also “treated” to the Hellraiser fan film No More Souls featuring a sixty-year-old Pinhead lamenting Shakespearean-style about days gone by. Then the two Cenobites from Hellworld walk out and stab him to death. Hurm. That the director of this (though an accomplished FX artist) was in fact responsible for the upcoming tenth film in the franchise did not instill me with a lot of confidence.
Anyways. The first Hellraiser film.
Where it all began. It is still the best and the make-up effects are straight up terrific. What a breath of fresh air Clive Barker was circa 1987. In a world of slashers and creature features, he brought forth not only iconic imagery, but interesting and provocative themes. I always forget that considering how iconic The Cenobites are, they had very little screen time. I also found it quite funny that Pinhead was, in fact, relatively easy to trick. Kirstie (Ashley Laurence) was super good at it.
Kirstie: Frank escaped you!
Pinhead: No one escapes us!
Kirstie: He did, I've seen him.
Pinhead: ...Suppose he did escape us...
OR in Part II
Pinhead: Time to play.
Kirstie: Wait!
Pinhead: No more deals.
Kirstie: No deals, just information.
Pinhead: ...Go on.
We were watching the Arrow Blu-ray release of the film and as a result I noticed for the first time there were a couple of dicks nailed to that turning pillar of carnage at the onset.
So now that we had a good foundation, the first die roll was a 9. Yes folks, we went right to the shit.
Revelations, the super cheap flick from 2011 that was seemingly made just to keep the rights. The movie is by far the worst out of the bunch and thank God we got it out of the way early. I am one-hundred percent sure we would have not finished if we watched them in numerical order.
I don't even know where to begin with this. The shitty found footage setup? The fat Will Forte looking mofo playing Pinhead? The boring family stuff which played out like a porno with the sex scenes cut out? The characters yelling Tijuana! to remind us that's where they were supposed to be?
The horror. The horror.
I think the worst thing was that, unlike parts 5-8 which put on different skins, Revelations just aped the first movie. It was more like a really shitty reboot of Hellraiser, than a sequel. It was painful, but thankfully only seventy-five minutes - trust me we checked to see how much time was left on several occasions.
Hellworld was released in 2005, and the third and last Hellraiser sequel directed by Rick Bota. I knew nothing about it, except it had something to do with a Hellraiser-themed MMO. From what I understand, a good number of these Hellraiser sequels were unrelated horror scripts with some Pinhead shoe-horned in at metered intervals. I can see that. This movie was definitely made in the wake of Saw. There's a scene you could have stuck in one of those movies and you wouldn't know the difference. Also, it had this veneer of self awareness where the franchise existed in this world so characters wore Pinhead apparel and used terms like “the Lament Configuration” and “wall-walker”.
Kathryn Winnick in Hellworld.
However, despite that this movie ended up being my favourite of the post-canon sequels for two reasons. First, it starred, unbeknownst to me until the opening credits, both Lance Henriksen and Kathryn Winnick. Secondly, in Saw-like fashion, Hellworld had a ridiculous hail Mary plot twist that made no sense that somehow made the movie infinitely more entertaining. We were all confused as to why Pinhead - when he was in it - had become a stock slasher villain and said twist explained that. I'm pretty sure it was unintentionally clever on the filmmaker's part, but I'll take it!
Bloodline was the last true Hellraiser movie and also the last theatrical release - which I saw in its original run. I remembered very little, except that it was in space - a trend popular with fourthinstallments. I appreciated that director Kevin Yagher attempted something a little higher concept with the multiple time periods, but it was a little dry and I don't think that was all due to studio tampering. Even though the series was getting stale, there were still a lot of great effects in this with two practical explosions - one you get to see twice!
But, getting back on the subject of tricking Pinhead, the best part in the movie is the priceless look on Pinhead's face when he gets duped by a hologram.
I think by this time my brain was starting to short circuit because I only remember bits and pieces of this one. Adam Scott in his period getup, the cool Cenobite design of Angelique, that Kim Myers - the Meryl Streep lookalike from NOES 2 - was in this one and the entertaining space station effects.
Inferno was the first direct-to-video title and also the first re-appropriated script - a detective noir thriller. The influences are many, but Lost Highway, The Bad Lieutenant and the stuff David Fincher was doing in the last-half of the nineties are right up front. It has a few interesting sequences, namely the cowboy poker game, but it - like many of these middle sequels - often meandered into watch glancing territory. The ending was pretty pedestrian and has been done better on a least half-a-dozen occasions.
We were getting into a rut, so it was fortunate that Hellbound came up at this point. This is a lot of people's favourite and I'd agree the most visually interesting. It brought back the characters from the first movie and successfully expanded the universe. The effects built upon the grotesqueness and even marched into cringe-worthy territory. It even has some sweet stop-motion stuff in it, as well. Hellbound was just the pick up we needed, before falling off the ensuing cliff.
This one was a slog that starred Kari Wuhrer as an investigative reporter tracking down a death cult of people called Deaders. It was shot back-to-back with Hellworld in Romania. It was a pretty dull affair, but I'll take Wuhrer over Inferno's Craig Sheffer any day of the week. I do recall two memorable things, the first being two sequences that took place in a club that happened to be on a running subway car and the other involved a bloody scene where Wuhrer tries to pull a knife out of her back. It was oddly arousing -- oops did I type that aloud?
We were pretty happy with this roll, because it meant we got to end on something fun with Hell on Earth. Hellseeker was the only non-canon sequel I had previously seen. I remembered it being pretty good. My memory lied to me. This was even more of a chore than Deader. And it even had Ashley Laurence back as Kirstie! It was another uninteresting noir that couldn't even be saved by the talents of Dean Winters.
I feel ya, bro.
I realized that for some reason this series seemed better suited to female protagonists. Someone brought up the point that many of these sequels are even Bechdel approved, as there are several women team-ups over the course of the series (Kirstie/Tiffany in 2, Joey/Terry in 3 and Amy/Marla in 7). Equality shows up in the weirdest places it seems.
While I still maintain that the scene where Pinhead and company march down the street while dispatching cops was the point-of-no-return moment of the Hellraiser series, after watching all the non-canon entries Hell on Earth was a helluva lot of fun. I think the theatrical version I saw might have been cut because I didn't remember a lot of the gore in this. I believe this one has the most Cenobites per capita, as well. Even if Pinhead was pretty much doing his best Freddy Krueger impression by the end, I can still appreciate it.
Hell on Earth came out in 1992, right when mainstream horror was in its death throes before being revitalized by Scream a few years later. This movie had a decent start, but by the third act, director Anthony Hickox was basically throwing everything at the screen and just hoping something would stick.
And then we were done! This marathon was not nearly as painful as I was expecting. Hellseeker & Deader weren't great, but still miles better than Revelations. I think that was the only one that really tested our mettle and, as I said, it was a Godsend that we got that over with quickly. Should you ever attempt to do this yourself, know that it is possible.
Last Saturday for its third year in a row, The Royal Cinema hosted the What The Film Festival.
A satellite event of the Laser Blast Film Society, the WTFF caters to the eclectic and experimental. Programmer Peter Kuplowsky scowers the globe for stuff outside the mainstream and this year gave us three such examples in Shinichi Fukazawa's Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell, Kentucker Audley's Sylvio and Michael Reich's She's Allergic To Cats.
Due to a family engagement, I was only able to catch the first show, but what a time it was.
You may have heard this movie referred to as the Japanese Evil Dead and that is pretty accurate. However, though there were many bits and pieces that were ripped right out of Raimi's beloved splat-stick trilogy, Fukazawa did make this his own thing by mixing in traditional Asian ghost story tropes and the aforementioned bodybuilding obsession. It did take a while to get going, but once the vengeful spirit was unleashed, the balls-to-the-wall inventiveness took over.
Here's blood in your eye! (sorry, couldn't resist)
As a huge Sam Raimi fan, it was impossible for me to not find this incredibly endearing. Body Builder was as fun as it was gory with a delightful everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to practical effects. Shot mostly in confined spaces, you could tell how difficult and time consuming - much like Evil Dead - some of these sequences must have been to shoot. It's the kind of DIY filmmaking that not only entertains, but also inspires.
Writer/Director & also lead actor Shinichi Fukazawa.
It is sad to think that this movie almost did not see the light of day. It was shot in 1995, but not fully put together for another fifteen years. It was then only available underground on DVD-R until UK company TerraCotta finally did an official release this year. I feel the world of splatter cinema is now a little redder for it.
Now for those who don't know, Phantasmagoria was a pair of adventure games from the mid-nineties put out by Sierra On-Line. Unlike most video games, these featured full-motion-video sequences. They may ring a bell as games like this (most notably Sega's Night Trap) were the center of the video game violence Congressional hearings of 1993.
I had little access to FMV games back in the day (1993's Dracula Unleashed and the Sega CD titles I sampled on the display console at my video store were the extent of it), but I always found them an interesting medium. I watched a walkthrough of the first Phantasmagoria a while back, but I didn't even know there was a sequel until a few weeks ago when I learned of this event.
Now when I say “screening”, I mean that Toronto-based filmmaker Pierce Derks painstakingly went through hours and hours of gameplay footage to splice together the cut scenes into a (semi) coherent narrative. A joint effort by the Laser Blast Film and Hand Eye Societies, this little project was glorious.
What to say about A Puzzle of Flesh... Well, I've heard it described as The Office meets Skinemax meets Hellraiser, as well as Zalman King directed by Brian Yuzna. All of these descriptions are accurate. With all of the tedious gameplay removed and the fact that most of the footage was shot on actual sets - as opposed to the bluescreen of most FMV games - Pierce's cut actually plays like a legitimate (well, legitimately fucked up) B-movie.
For 1996, this project was extremely subversive for a video game, not only for its sex and gore, but also its depictions of S&M and bi-sexuality. And in keeping with WIHM, both Phantasmagorias were spearheaded by women, Roberta Williams and Lorilei Shannon, respectively.
This was a fantastically fun event and hopefully Pierce will put his cut online one day for everyone to enjoy.
This is a post I've been meaning to do for quite some time now, and the Laser Blast screening tonight at The Royal was the kick-in-the-pants I needed to finally get it done.
Six years ago, I did a post gushing over how much I loved Ed Hunt's 1988 creature feature The Brain. Part of the movie's appeal is that it (like many of Hunt's pictures) was shot in my area. So, since then I've been tracking down a lot of the locations used in the movie.
The most striking location in the film is obviously that of the Psychological Research Institute.
This site is actually the Xerox Research Centre of Canada in Mississauga, Ontario. Those trees in the foreground have all grown in thirty years, so it's now basically obscured from this angle.
By ridiculous coincidence, my friend Kurt works there and last year he gave me a tour of the place. We walked around the perimeter looking for some of the places used in the film. The doorway and glass panel facade is still the same.
This shot is from where the paper box in the above still was.
Sadly, the area where Willie (Bret Pearson) & Janet (Cynthia Preston) enter the facility, and the parking lot where Verna (George Buza) chases her and Jim (Tom Bresnahan) down were built over when the building was extended sometime in the nineties.
Gone forever :(
Even though some commercials and TV (most notably the pilot for Bill Shatner's TekWar) were shot inside the XRCC, it was not used for The Brain. The interiors of the Institute hallways, front desk and the television studio were shot inside the Ontario Science Centre in North York, Ontario.
All of the industrial interiors were shot at the Canadian General Electric plant in the West End of Toronto. Several sets, including the opening bedroom scene, the Brain control room and the warehouse climax were built in one of the buildings on the CGE site. (Ed - The Brain's assistant art director Michael Borthwick informs me that the shooting took place in a smaller building that was behind the one pictured.)
Meadowvale High School was pretty easy to find, as it is in fact, Meadowvale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario.
The exterior has changed a lot in thirty years, so much that if it wasn't for its close proximity to the XRCC, I'd wonder if it was in fact the actual location. I did go inside, but unfortunately the library isn't public, so it's only open during school hours.
The only two sequences that weren't shot in the Toronto/Mississauga area were done around Dundas, Ontario. The scene where Jim pushes his car off the cliff is at the quarry there, and the shot where he looks out at the city at night was no doubt Dundas Peak. (Ed. - a helpful reader in the comments let me know that cliff is actually the Devil's Punchbowl in Stoney Creek, Ontario.)
The other location I was able to track down was the used car lot Jim walks through toward the end of the movie. It is now a strip mall, but I was able to find it because of the Red Lobster/McDonalds in the background.
As with the XRCC, tree growth has obscured the original angle, but you can see that this is likely the location.
I am still on the hunt for Jay's Burger Bar.
I know it (or its current incarnation) is somewhere in the Lakeshore/Mimico/Long Branch area, but that is some sizable ground to cover and not something I want to take on while it is minus a million degrees outside.
The Mississauga suburbs are just rows and rows of houses that all look the same, so finding Jim's house is unlikely, but maybe someday I'm come across the one that girl tumbles out of at the beginning.
Anyway, that's the tour. I'm pretty stoked about the screening tonight. It is technically a Christmas movie, so I'm killing two brains here!
*Thanks to Kurt Halfyard and Ken Gord for all their assistance in putting together this post.
