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.
To all those who came here from the event or FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's a selected list of titles mentioned at the last event, which was a special appearance at Offworld's October pop-up Hellbar. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.
To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's a selected list of titles mentioned at the last event, which was a special appearance at Offworld's October pop-up Hellbar. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.
To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's the selected list of titles mentioned at the last event. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing. Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here.
To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog.
If you heard a title while at the last event and thought “oh that movie sounds cool, I should check that out”, here's a comprehensive list of all the films that were mentioned. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.
For everyone else, maybe there's one or two here you have yet to catch. Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here. If you're not local, we do often stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram.
Frank Laloggia's Fear No Evil is another thirty-five-plus year old revisit, likely since the early days of First Choice.
Lanky weirdo high-schooler Andrew (Stefan Arngirm) is actually Lucifer incarnate. That can't be good.
The thing that struck me right away was the soundtrack. Fear No Evil's first two acts are busting with punk and new wave tunes from the likes of The Boomtown Rats, Talking Heads, Patti Smith and The Ramones. It would be the kind of movie in the nineties that made its money back on record sales, but I don't think that was the intent here. I think the production just had Avco money to blow on hip music.
Stefan Arngrim as Andrew in Fear No Evil
Literally the only thing I remembered from my first watch was the dodgeball scene. That still rocked, but then everything after that became a bit of a slog. Fear No Evil seems to struggle with two identities, it starts out as a high school centric horror with the kid discovering his powers ala Omen 2, but then takes a turn into bizarro religious end of days calamity. The climax is set at a Passion Play on the beach where the guy playing Christ actually gets crucified (via devil powers I guess) and the living dead randomly show up.
I could just hear the producers saying, hey, this third act is a snoozer, how do we spice it up? I know, zombies! For reals though, I had to re-watch that last half-hour because I dozed off. And even the second time around, it was like cinematic tryptophan.
Oh, one thing I didn't pick up on when I was a kid was that this movie is kind of the gayest movie that ever gayed. Like, it makes Freddy's Revenge look cis by comparison. I'm assuming the director was working through some shit. Cool, you do you. Wasn't so much a fan of the animal sacrifice with the really real looking dog prop though.
Fear No Evil feels like a really meandering version of the first couple of Omen films. I would instead recommend watching Laloggia's other film Lady In White, as its far more assured and engaging.
This week it's Jag Mundhra's Halloween horror Hack-O-Lantern from 1988.
Three siblings discover their grandfather is the leader of a satanic cult, or close enough... the particulars are already fading from my memory.
I haven't been having much luck with the holiday-themed horrors this year, as this was pretty much an archaic, meandering mess. You see, there's this really lame Satanic cult that likes to sacrifice people on Halloween. How do I know they're lame? Well, Exhibit A.
The grandfather (played by Hy Pyke) is the ring leader of this cult and he's pretty grating to watch. It's like he's channelling a really shitty version of Emperor Palpatine at times. Grandpa has three grandchildren - one of which he's trying indoctrinate and the other two he doesn't really seem to give two shits about - and the movie can't seem to figure out which one is the protagonist.
Things really get crazy when the Halloween party gets started. It's your average small town event that for some reason has a strip show - featuring a lady who I'm pretty sure, based on her distinct tan lines, was the same one who got a pentagram branded onto her ass a few scenes earlier - and a snake dancer for entertainment. I'd let that pass, but the dude who breaks out into a stand-up routine outside... not so much. I think the only thing more painful were the extras fake laughing in his vicinity.
Where is Candyman when you need him?
Eventually in this really long eighty-seven minute movie, we get a few kills and then finally an anti-climactic pitchfork/sword fight that lasts an awkward twenty seconds. You know, I remember seeing this cover box back in the day and passing it over. Now, I wish that demon woman was the protagonist and not just a weird chick who shows in a random music video dream sequence.
This Friday, I’m forgoing the usual
VHS to do a rare post about a new release. I went to a screening of
David Amito & Michael Laicini’s film Antrum this week and just
had to throw down some thoughts here.
A recently unearthed film believed to
be cursed tells the story of a little boy and his older sister who
dig a hole to hell.
I did consider further cultivating the
myth surrounding this movie, but its Imdb page now lists the release
date as 2018 so I guess the jig is up. I knew nothing about Antrum
going in so as far as I knew it was made in 1979. And I can’t
say for sure that, if not for co-director Laicini’s appearance at the screening
(he’s not in his sixties) and the blatant homage to Mulholland
Drive toward the end of the film, I wouldn't have been duped. While
at The Royal, I got a kick out of all the precautions and
disclaimers.
We even got an onscreen thirty-second
countdown clock before the movie rolled, just in case anyone had
zero-hour second thoughts. Antrum was also book-ended by documentary footage about all the dead viewers this movie has left in its wake.
Curiously, this marketing campaign
works for and against the movie in some ways. Daring someone to watch
a movie definitely gets you more eyeballs, but I feel like even
without all the hoopla, the movie could stand on its own as a
retro-experimental piece. Though, by Laicini’s own admission,
“experimental” is not a word you should ever utter when speaking
to possible distributors.
I generally dig movies that covet this
vintage vibe and Antrum was one of the most authentic examples I’ve
seen. It had a dream-like quality that lends itself to multiple
viewings as well as a thinly veiled nihilism that further aligned it
with the era in which it was spiritually conceived.
In addition to the haunting sound
design and score, the movie featured a lot of spliced in stuff that
you might expect from a “cursed” flick. Not all of it worked, but
I did like the idea of the summoned demon watching us watch the
movie.
Antrum is one of those movies that I
like more and more as I think back on it. I'm getting a kick out of
envisioning alternate realities where it actually released in the
late seventies. Would Antrum have served as a prequel the 1981’s
The Pit? Would it have enjoyed a cult following similar to that of
The Evil Dead, a picture with whom it shares more than a few
similarities? Who knows?
Regardless, I’m pretty proud of this
little Canadian oddity that comes with its own embedded lore, the
likes of which I haven’t seen since The Blair Witch Project. I read
an angry review on Imdb (posted the day after this screening so I
assume we were at the same one) about how the filmmakers ripped off a
2016 flick called Fury of the Demon. I guess he didn’t stick around
for the Q&A to hear that Antrum was actually shot in 2015. Oh
well. Guess I’ll have to track that one down, too.
Continuing Women In Horror Month, it
made sense to watch another title from prolific filmmaker Roberta
Findlay in 1988's Prime Evil.
A coven of Satan worshipers prowl New
York looking for sacrifices for their eternal youth ceremonies.
Finding female-helmed horrors on VHS is
a challenge, so I had to cheat this time and watch a rip. You know, I
wish Findlay's catalogue was stronger. When I watched Lurkers last
year, I commented on how her career seemed to be tailing off by this
point and Prime Evil did not contradict that. While larger in
scale – they certainly made good use of the NYC locale – Prime
Evil was another bore featuring a bloated cast of characters walking
through clumsily executed set pieces.
I guess my first uh-oh moment was
during the opening scene when a voice-over suddenly cut in over the
action to explain what was going on. Doubling up on your exposition
is never a good sign. Considering her adult film background, I
assumed the reason Findlay was introducing all these superfluous
ladies was that most were eventually going to get naked. But they
didn't. Presumably they were there to pad the running time... and give
bad dating advice.
I don't think I really need to mention
the demon puppet thing. However, I will say the scene where
the mother gets offed was amusing. While trying to escape her
attackers, she picked an even worse hiding spot than the fridge girl
in Madman.
Admittedly, I can think of worse ways
to go than being drowned in wine. At one point, the story shifted to
a nun assigned to infiltrate this evil cult. I'd have been interested
in that, but it barely comes back to it to the point that when she
popped up to save the day I was like, “oh yeah, her!” What
followed was basically a way shittier version of the climax in The
Devil's Rain. And let's face it, if that's your
ceiling, you got problems.
Christine Moore in Prime Evil
So another dud on Findlay's resume. She
has made some winners in her career – Tenement was solid, and The
Oracle looks bonkers – but Prime Evil was not one of them. I really
should have watched The Oracle instead. Maybe I'll leave that for
next February.
This Spring saw the release of the book
My Best Friend's Exorcism, the newest piece of fiction from author Grady Hendrix. I was a big fan of his last book Horrorstör, so it didn't take me long to track this down.
Abby & Gretchen have been
inseparable since they were ten years old. But ever since that night during
sophomore year when Gretchen got lost in the woods, she's been
different. Is it hormones, or is something more otherworldly to
blame?
Hendrix has spun another
solid tale here, using the same tools that made Horrorstör such a great
read. He took a tried-and-true trope – the demonic possession
story – and used his colourfully visual storytelling to put it within
the context of something commonplace, though arguably just as tumultuous, the life of a high
school student.
Also like his previous work, the
presentation was top notch and added a lot to the story. In addition to the book jacket resembling a high school yearbook, the chapter
headings were all eighties song titles that directly related to the
words that followed. It's such a clever device, and it made me smile because I'd hear the song – whether it be We Got The Beat, Missionary Man or I Think We're Alone Now – in my
head when I began each chapter.
That's one of the main reasons that I
loved that My Best Friend's Exorcism was set in the eighties. It gave
me that extra layer of relatability, but it also felt right for the
story that it took place during the Satanic Panic of the Reagan era.
There's an inherent readability to this book that reminded me of the
heyday of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. Their books followed a formula, but like Hendrix, they engineered universes with life and flourish. While doing some research on Hendrix, I discovered
he had previously co-authored a YA series of called The Magnolia League. That makes so much sense in hindsight.
That's not to say that this book was all together tame, as there's some nightmarish imagery within. I am certainly glad I already didn't like milkshakes... Mainly though, I
just responded to the through-line of a lifetime friendship being tested. It made me think of my oldest relationships and how I should make an effort to keep them from fading away to nothing.
Yeah, I liked My Best Friend's Exorcism. Hendrix
continues to find magic and malevolence in the most mundane areas of
life, and I'm definitely eager to see what dark corner he travels to next.
Even though the Black Museum lecture series' have wrapped up for the foreseeable future, they are still hosting awesome events around town. This past weekend, in conjunction with the recent book launch of Satanic Panic, BM offered up some
BM co-founder Paul Corupe offered up an hour-long video chock full of eighties pop-culture paranoia. Among them was this trailer for the 1988 heavy metal horror opus, Black Roses.
So much going on here and it fits in well with all the other satanic exploitation films of the eighties, which also included the likes of Evilspeak, Trick or Treat and 976-Evil.
Late in the festival, I caught Tasmanian director Sean Byrne's newest film, The Devil's Candy about a painter
battling Satanic forces after moving into a new home with his family.
Byrne burst onto the scene in 2009 with The Loved Ones, which I
liked, but did not adore as many did. However, I was still very much
interested in seeing what he had come up with after six years in the
indie film development trenches.
I liked The Devil's Candy quite a bit.
Byrne's sophomore effort had personality, a thing that was lacking
from some of thisyear's Midnight entries. More than that though, it had not only a coherent narrative, but also an organic one. Aided by
his considerable visual flair, Byrne established the family unit
early and made us actually care when the devil came calling.
This, of course, succeeded due to the
well chosen cast. Ethan Embry gives perhaps his best performance here
and looks like he's probably in the best shape
of his life. It's been a long and winding road for Embry, whose gone
from embattled goof (Can't Hardly Wait, Empire Records) to creepy
psycho (Vacancy, TV's Masters of Horror) and has now reached the role of
loving father. In the role of antagonist, character actor Pruitt
Taylor Vince does what he does best as the twitchy
Satanic sycophant.
Ethan Embry as Jesse in The Devil's Candy.
Colour was a very important part of The
Loved Ones and it was carried over into this film in the form of the
paintings created by Embry's character, Jesse. The large mural he
creates in the film was rather striking and reminded me of the old
X-Files episode Unruhe, coincidentally also starring Taylor Vince. I
would not be surprised if it was an influence. In addition to colour,
Byrne used metal music to create the underlying tone to the film. It
not only fits the characters of Jesse and his daughter Zooey (Kiara
Glasco), but also the preconceived notions we have about Satanism.
I'd say the only real negative was the
climax being a tad far-fetched, but I was invested enough by that
point to let it slide. Perhaps I responded more warmly to Byrne's
newest effort because it was more upfront about its intentions. Right
from the get-go, I knew this was a film about Satanic possession. It's
also a film about losing yourself in the artistic process, something
for which I have at least cursory knowledge. I mean, when you are in
“the zone”, who is to say that those inspirations don't come from
outside sources? In contrast, The Loved Ones to me was just a really
well-made torture flick.
Director Sean Byrne (left) & star Ethan Embry.
The Devil's Candy was a simple
well-conceived idea that admirably put the pieces of character,
visuals and sound together to make a solid horror film.
One of the films I was most looking
forward to at this year's Midnight Madness was Turkish director Can
Evrenol's debut Baskin.
A squad of police officers respond to a
distress call, only to find they've entered a doorway into hell.
I'm sad to say that I was left
disappointed when the credits rolled on Baskin. I dug the 2013 short of the same name,
as it was one of those rare occasions where I thought it was a piece
that could be expanded on. It teased of a world with a rich mythology
and obviously many other people thought so too, because two years
later, here we are. However, even now with its extra running time, I don't
feel the mythology, which was nicely set up at the start, was fleshed
out as well as it could have been. I did like the long dialogue scene
between the two main characters (that my friend aptly compared to the
diner sequence in Mulholland Drive), but overall there just wasn't
enough meat.
Evrenol did spend a lot of time
developing his characters at the beginning, but I felt that the film
pretty much ground to a messy halt once the main antagonist showed up. The actor (Mehmet Cerrahoglu) who played The Father had an
extremely unique look, but I felt he, and the entire last half
truth be told, hit a level and stayed there throughout. I was
hoping for Event Horizon levels of hellish chaos in this film, but it
didn't quite get there. The resolution was also too quick and not nearly as clever as it probably thought it was.
I also thought that the score was very overbearing. I found it strange that during the Q&A, Evrenol quoted It Follows as an influence, because the music in Baskin was nowhere near as complimentary as that score was. If anything, it was a detriment at times.
Abandon all hope...
Despite all of this though, Evrenol should
still be proud of what he accomplished here. Turkey is not known
for its horror movies, and this one should at least put them on the
map. It is also impressive what they were able to put onscreen for
under a half-million dollars.
Perhaps my expectations were a little
high based on the potential of its premise. It is also possible that
the Madness film the night before, the exceptional Green Room from Jeremy Saulnier, set the bar too high. In any case, hell is what you
make it, I guess I just wanted a little more variety and extremity
with my fire and brimstone.
While I was reading the recently released book, Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980's, I saw mention of the 1983 flick Skullduggery in the chapter covering the religious backlash against Dungeons & Dragons. I remembered the cover box from back in the day...
...but up to now I didn't realize that a) it was a Canadian production and b) that D&D - or a poor facsimile thereof - was featured in the plot. I was not able to locate a trailer, but I did find a number of scenes online.
This movie... Well, I don't even know. This isn't some of the Toronto film industry's best work, let's just say that. These scenes below should give you some indication as to what we're dealing with here.
I realize those scenes are taken out of context, but I spent most of my time while viewing them muttering “what the fuck is going on?” That is when my mouth wasn't just hanging open in utter confusion. I mean, JESUS, at least Mazes & Monsters had a coherent narrative.
But I digress. We're out of the dark ages now, and millions of people around the world now play role-playing games in some capacity. If they were indeed part of some master plan orchestrated by Old Scratch, then let me be the first to say, “well played, Sir,”
After snagging a copy while in
Montreal, I finally finished reading Spectacular Optical's second
release, Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, an
exhaustive compilation of essays that further reinforces just what a
whacked-out decade the eighties truly were.
I was raised in a neutral environment
when it came to religion. Well, truth be told, it may have leaned
toward disdain on my father's part based on his constant mockery of
said establishments. I know our address was eventually blacklisted by
the Jehovah's Witnesses that used to come door-to-door. The point is
that I never gave Satanism any less legitimacy than any other
religion out there. Even as a kid, I knew that the extremes offered
up in the horror movies I watched were just that; extremes.
Not all of us were as liberal, as I
cannot understate what an accurate term “panic” truly is. The
deeper I got into the book, the more fantastical it became. Several
decades removed, some of the fear mongering that was going on was
downright comical. The chapter by Joshua Benjamin Graham on
fundamentalist readings of the occult in Saturday Morning cartoons in
laughable. At worst, they were a disingenuous way to sell toys and
merchandise to millions of children, but a conduit of evil? Let's get
real, people.
He-Man: The Great Corrupter...
As highly visible figures like Geraldo
Rivera – whose infamous 1988 “Devil Worship” special is broken
down by Alison Lang – continued to fan the fire, hysteria began to
take hold.
A phenomenon called Satanic Ritual Abuse arose and several
high profile criminal cases popped up around the world, the most
publicized being the McMartin Pre-school Trial. As written about by
Adrian Mack, due to a lack of evidence, no one was ever convicted and the media fervor over the alleged Satanic activity seemed to
overshadow the real tragedy of grievous child trauma.
The book balances out these horrific
chapters with some lighter fare, including the chapter by W.M. Conley on
Christian evangelical VHS and Paul Corupe's piece on Jack T. Chick. I learned of Chick and his religious tracts just a few years ago around the
release of Dark Dungeons.
I find this trailer highly amusing, yet I'm still not completely sure this is supposed to be satire. What is no laughing matter is the
genuine alarm Dungeons & Dragons brought about in the early
eighties, profiled here by Gavin Baddely. I was introduced to the world of D&D very early on
through my older brother and was acutely aware when the media
started portraying it in a negative light. How anything that fostered
imagination and creativity (I was designing dungeons by the time I
was nine) not to mention reading and math skills, could be rallied
against as evil was beyond me. Alas, I distinctly remember being told
by a friend that he wasn't allowed to play at my house
anymore because I engaged in such activities. Such prejudices are
hard for a young kid to absorb.
Still got my set. Still got my soul.
Naturally, my favourite chapters of the
book were the ones about film, of which they were a few as horror has
often danced with the Devil. Kevin L. Ferguson explores the
integration of technology and Satanism through the eighties films
Evilspeak & 976-Evil, Samm Deighan runs down the fairly robust
history of “Heavy Metal Horror” & Kurt Halfyard quite astutely
heralds Joe Dante's The 'Burbs as the death knell of the Satanic
Panic, even if America's inherent xenophobia still lives on to this day.
When it comes down to it, the
establishment is always going to look for a tangible element to pin
the woes of the world on. Before heavy metal music and its “Satanic”
disciples, it was comic books and now, many years later, violent
video games are allegedly corrupting our youth. Sadly, the
Satanic Panic happened due to a religious
right having just enough clout to sway even the most supposedly
objective of peers. It was a time of widespread insanity and, even
putting aside the prevalent threat of nuclear annihilation, it is
kind of a miracle that we all made it through to the other side and into
the nineties.
