K is for The Kiss (1988)

I had intended to do Killer Workout for K, but while I was at an event at The Revue this week, I saw a trailer for this eighties movie called The Kiss. I had a vague recollection of the coverbox, but certainly knew nothing of it so I took a chance.

After the death of her mother, Amy's (Meredith Salenger) long lost Aunt Felice (Joanna Pacula) shows up and begins to infiltrate her and her father's lives.

The Kiss kind of fucking rules. It is a weird hybrid between a sexual thriller (this is was the period between Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct where that shit was fire) and a supernatural horror. When I find a random movie like this, I'm happy if there are one or two moments I can latch onto, but this was a picture that kept on giving.

Let's start with the effects, which were abundant. Like shockingly so. Felice's powers off many people in Final Destination-esque ways. You remember that urban legend about getting sucked into an escalator? Well, this is the first movie (I've seen anyway) that actually visualized that. Also, our witchy antagonist has a familiar, a delightful cat puppet that could be bros with the one in Uninvited. Both 1988, what a year!

The cast is good, peppered with Canadian actors like Mimi Kuzyk and Peter Dvorsky - the guy with the “hand” grenade in Videodrome, but what blew my mind was that Terry, the dude bro who keeps losing his ear stud was Shawn Levy. Yes, Deadpool and just fucking slayed with season four of Stranger Things Shawn Levy. I wonder if Ryan Reynolds busts his balls about this movie on a daily basis.

Continuing with the revelations, as I said, this film was shot in Canada, Montreal to be specific. I can't believe this movie isn't talked about more by our brethren. I could go on for a while about this movie - Chekhov's hedge trimmer, the weird incestuous allusions, the musical sting lifted from Carpenter's Prince of Darkness and the climax where our heroine struggles to get out of the pool when there is a ladder LITERALLY two feet to the left -

- but I feel you should really experience this for yourself. This is a great movie night movie. While The Kiss might not have the clout of something like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, it's still fucking bonkers and deserves to be seen.

Gifrific: Door To Hell

Source: Hellbender (2021)

Movies I've Rented From Eyesore #1

While I replenish my VHS queue, I'm going to start up this new segment. For those not aware, Eyesore Cinema is one of the last video stores left in Toronto. It opened down the street from the wreckage of the old Suspect Video about twelve years and has since north to Bloor St. It now also has a backroom for screenings that Little Terrors relocated a while back. But enough with the history lesson, here we go.

After seeing Richard Stanley's recent recommendations video I was reminded of a film called The Blood on Satan's Claw from 1970. The title has been in my brain since childhood when I read about it in the first video guide I ever owned.

The editors of Video Times Magazine saw fit to give Piers Haggard's period horror piece three-out-of-four stars. Reading this book as a pre-teen I distinctly recall how it mentioned it was also known as Satan's Claw and Satan's Skin, teaching me that movies could have multiple titles.

Anyhoo, I'm inclined to agree with the book in that this was some pretty evocative gothic horror. I guess this falls toward the end of when the Brits were fucking owning this genre. Everything about this felt incredibly authentic, even if the effects were fairly rudimentary. 

Haggard did a solid job of balancing all the tropes one associates with this era. Some of it could've even been rather horrifying, but growing up in an English household, I can't hear an angry mob yell “Witch!” without thinking of Monty Python.

Being set in a small village, the cast was rather large and both leading ladies (Linda Hayden & Wendy Padbury) absolutely lit up the screen as totems of “evil” and “good” respectively. I also have to mention the theme by Mark Wilkinson, as it has become one of new favourite instrumentals.

Linda Hayden (left) & Wendy Padbury in The Blood on Satan's Claw.

After watching Satan's Claw, I came away with two questions. First, how the hell did any women live through this era, and why were dudes so terrible at saving damsels in distress? Like, what the fuck Ralph? How were you just running through the countryside for five minutes while Zoe from Doctor Who was getting slaughtered? Weak sauce.

I'm glad I waited thirty-five years to finally see this, as I don't think I would have appreciated it nearly as much as I did now.

Gifrific: House By Dawn

Source: Witchboard 2 (1993)

The Deadliest Film Ever Made.

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.

They've Doomed Us All, Church Man!

This week's VHS is James W. Roberson's Superstition from 1982.

An old estate haunted by the spirit of an executed witch seeks revenge on all that cross her path.

I'd been waiting a long time to re-watch this, as it had been over twenty-five years since I had first seen it. I remembered it being pretty gory with a high body count – I was only five off the number of twenty I for some reason had in my mind as a reference point. I hosted a VHS double bill last weekend and paired this with the 1988 Lenzi flick Ghosthouse. I hadn't seen that one and was unaware what a fortuitous tandem they would make together.

James Houghton as Rev. Thompson in Superstition

Superstition was even more fun than I remembered it, with tons of gore, creative deaths and just the right amount of nonsensical storytelling. It got going right out the gate, spectacularly dispatching two unsuspecting goofballs. And in a clever switcheroo, this may be one of the only horror movies where the couple making out in their car at the onset actually lived. From then on, the special effects provided by Steve LaPorte & David B. Miller were on point.

At a brisk eighty-five minutes, this movie moves along at a good clip. My friend Jeff also made a good point when he said, “it really helps when you have a great location because you don't mind watching people wander around in the dark for entire scenes.” I would have to agree though, my muddy VHS notwithstanding, some scenes were indeterminably dark. When ubiquitous eighties kid Billy Jacobi met his end in the basement, we kind of had to go by his halted screams rather than anything we actually saw on screen.

I was surprised to find that Superstition was Canadian, even though it was shot in Los Angeles. I'm hoping that the Shout Factory Blu-ray – that I will no doubt be grabbing now that I have reaffirmed that this movie is, in fact, rad – will shed some light on this. People are finally discovering this movie due to that release and realizing that it is not just a pretty coverbox. To all those uninitiated, believe it.

Go To Bed!

The next VHS off my shelf is Jeff Delman’s 1986 anthology Deadtime Stories.

While babysitting, Uncle Mike (Michael Mesmer) tells his young nephew three stories to try and get him to sleep.

Deadtime Stories is a movie that has always been on my periphery – for the coverbox alone – but one I always reckoned I had seen at some point. When I was a kid I thought it was a George A. Romero joint, perhaps because of its passing resemblance to Creepshow. In my defense, with its hand-drawn opening credit sequence, it does feel eerily similar.

I have to admit this movie did start out a bit dull with the first segment involving a trio of witches and a young Scott Valentine, who would've been a year into his recurring stint on Family Ties by this point. I thought this movie looked a bit cheap until the effects by Ed French & Bryant Tausek rolled out. That's when I realized where most of the money likely went and I was back in. There's a great Hellraiser-style reanimation that was the first sequence in a bunch of solid practical effects pieces throughout the movie.

The money shot.

Next, there was a take on Red Riding Hood that involves a werewolf. The idea of a RRH being a horny teen is not new, but I did like the idea of the lycanthrope trying to knock himself out with pills. When his pharmacy order got mixed up with Red's Grandmothers', that's when chaos ensued.

It was the third and final story that Deadtime Stories pulls a complete one-eighty. This wacky rendition of Goldilocks & the Three Bears feels a lot like Crimewave-era Sam Raimi. I actually perused Imdb to see if there were any un-credited affiliations to the Renaissance boys (ala The Nutt House) because the tone was so similar. To give you an idea, the “Bears” are actually a maniacal crime family – which begins with “Mama”, played by Oscar Winner Melissa Leo, breaking “Papa” and “Baby” out of the loony bin – and “Goldi Lox” (Cathryn de Prume) is a murderous telekinetic. I got a kick out of the Rockabilly ditty “Looney Tune” featured – also written by Delman – here, as well.

Cathryn de Prume as Goldi Lox in Deadtime Stories.

I spent most of this segment with my jaw agape because it was so at odds with the rest of the picture. I can only justify it by thinking that perhaps Delman was trying to illustrate how at the end of his rope Uncle Mike might have been by that point in the evening. His tales did become increasingly more inappropriate for underage consumption.

Michael Mesmer (left) & Brian DePersia in Deadtime Stories

Imdb also told me that both Valentine & Leo were injured right before they went to camera - the former has a noticeable limp and the latter was wearing a cast under her wardrobe. That had to be a pre-production nightmare.

Deadtime Stories is not one of the more memorable anthologies from the eighties, but it's certainly worth watching for shits and gags.

DKTM 352

Hello all. I hope you are enjoying your Labour Day weekend. I am basically just killing time before the two-hour finale of Twin Peaks tonight, but in the meantime here are some damn good bits of genre to chew on.

Better Watch Out!

I wanted to call attention to an awesome publication that is currently taking pre-orders on IndieGogo, Spectacular Optical's Yuletide Terror. I'll let the pitch video take the floor.

Edited by Kier-La Janisse & Paul Corupe, they have been putting out quality books on film for years, including 2014's Kid Power and 2015's Satanic Panic. I am super stoked for this one, as it will have articles on some of my favourite Xmas titles, including Black Christmas & 3615: Code Pere Noël aka Game Over.

I immediately pledged when I found out that there was a perk available commemorating Ed Hunt's 1988's Christmas classic The Brain.

For more info on the campaign, click here.

Rue Morgue Turns 20.

Congratulations to Rue Morgue magazine to hitting twenty years, as their new Halloween issue hit stands recently.

It's a pretty ballin' issue with extensive articles on the history of witches on film and media as well as the terrific piece (which I also contributed to) 25 Non-Fiction Genre Film Books That Everyone Should Own. To commemorate the 20th anniversary, music editor Aaron Von Lupton compiled this sweet horror-synth playlist entitled They Came From Rue Morgue.

Here's to twenty more, Rue Morgue!

Bustin' Cape Town Style!

Check out this awesome proof-of-concept video for Michael Matthew's adaptation of the Charlie Human novel.

The comparisons to Ghostbusters and District 9 are obviously apt, but I actually got a big John Dies At The End vibe, as well. Hopefully, something larger comes from this.

Barker Bits.

In addendum to my piece on HexFest's Rawhead Rex last weekend, there was also some coverage done by the Clive Barker Podcast via correspondent Jonathan Kui. Check it out below if you wanna hear interviews with yours truly, HXFF director Aaron Allen and the full talk with Greg Lamberson that followed the movie.

Back From The Empire State!

Hey all! My little trip to New York for the Ithaca Fantastik Film Festival was a total blast. Ithaca is a beautiful little town, teeming with culture and little curiosities. Hugues Barbier and the rest of the team at the fest made my compatriots and I feel so welcome. 

This may be a smaller fest than some, but boy do they have their presentation down pat with a gorgeous programme, and even some exclusive posters for their retro screenings. The amount of work that went into just their pre-show entertainment puts some other fests to shame.

The Cinemapolis in downtown Ithaca was a great little space. Run as a non-profit, it's a wonderfully cozy cinema that reminded me a little of Toronto's Carlton Cinema.

IFFF's programming was also on point. With festival faves like The Handmaiden and Train To Busan (opener and closer respectively), more challenging offerings in Alipato and I, Olga Hepnarova and a robust retrospective programme, there really was no genre stone left unturned. Even documentaries (24 x 36, S is for Stanley and Creature Designers - which I'll get to in another post) and animation (Nova Seed, Seoul Station) had their place here.

The film I'll start with today though, is Anna Biller's The Love Witch.

A witch named Elaine (Samantha Robinson) leaves a trail of dead bodies in her wake as she searches for true love. 

I had a lot of fun with this film. Right out of the gate, it was impossible to ignore how gorgeous this movie was. Shot on film, the colours really pop off the screen, much like the old sixties and seventies giallos for which The Love Witch has been compared. However, the beauty of the film was not all in the scenery as the lead actress Robinson was positively luminescent. I have no trouble comparing her to some of the greats like Edwige Fenech and Barbara Bouchet in the way they lit up the screen. Robinson was able to play both femme fatale and naive vixen with equal conviction.

Samantha Robinson is The Love Witch.

The film is by design a comedy that includes both intentional and (perhaps) unintentional laughs in that Biller seems selective in the things she chooses to play straight. I liked how the subject matter toyed with the expectations and preconceived notions of love. It's really quite absurd when you shine a light on the L word as a concept, don't you think?

Gian Keys & Robinson in The Love Witch.

I think the only real negative was that it's a lot longer than it needed to be. It sounds crazy to say, but at two hours, a full quarter of its running time could have been trimmed. At ninety minutes, The Love Witch would have been a much more tight and tidy affair. With so much to look at though, I can't really complain much.

I took in much more while in Ithaca, so come back tomorrow for more highlights.

Netflix Pix 11.0

While bouncing back and forth between BoJack Horseman Season 3 and Dragon's Den Season 9, I realized that Netflix Canada had recently added some really great horror titles from the last six to twelve months. It's been a while since I've done one of these, so here are some solid titles to get your October started.

You know doubt heard about The Witch when it hit theaters earlier this year. I think it is a fantastic film. It is not only incredibly well acted, but I love that everyone involved was one-hundred-per-cent invested in inhabiting the time and place of the film. While I admit the pace and language may not appeal to everyone, there is no denying this was an effort at the top of its craft.

Mike Flanagan (Absentia, Oculus) has recently switched gears from the supernatural to something more grounded (but no less terrifying) with Hush. It starts out as a fairly simple home invasion film, but I was surprised by how much the protagonist's disability added to the narrative. It was also rather chilling to see quintessential nice guy John Gallagher Jr. play a villain for once.

I saw this indie at Tribeca last year and was very glad to see this one pop up on Netflix. As you know, I love babysitter flicks, and Sarah Bolger plays one of the most unpredictable and unhinged child minders to ever hit the small screen. I was also pretty impressed with the child talent, as well, especially since, if I recall correctly, one or more of them had to be replaced last minute. I think this one is a hidden gem.

This one about night terrors made a splash on the festival circuit last year and it's quite good. Though its execution and “science” can be a little wonky, some of the re-enactments are genuinely creepy, as are some of its assertions about the very nature of sleep paralysis.

For those who grew up in the nineties, I noticed that five seasons of Goosebumps are now on Netflix. This stuff was a bit after my time, but I did ingest my fair share of Stine & Christopher Pike while working at a local book store.

There! I dare say these should keep you busy for a while. Enjoy your weekend, folks!

Day Four.

All right, four days in. Halfway there! Today, I'm going back to the promised land of the eighties with Avery Crounse's period nightmare, Eyes Of Fire.

Forced out of their community, a group of eighteenth-century settlers set up stakes in a remote valley only to find they might not be alone.

I remembered the striking coverbox above from back in the day, but I'd never seen the film until last week at a rare 35mm screening downtown. It was a real treat to view it in its best possible form, because as you can see, current video versions are murky to say the least. This is a shame, as this film features such wonderful production and creature designs.

I have heard this film described as “The Witch before The Witch”, and I think that is very apt, as not only are the stories similar, but also their attention to detail and dedication to crafting a time and place. Additionally, the performers were one hundred per cent committed and, perhaps most impressive, both efforts were confident debuts.

However, while Robert Eggers' film was an exercise in restraint, Crounse spends much time externalizing the threats encountered by his protagonists. The film is bathed in the surreal, in a way that only the eighties could have nurtured. Today's filmmaking climate just doesn't allow for pictures like this anymore. Though, I don't want to sound like the film is too obtuse to be accessible, as it has some well crafted scares, as well.

I was again reminded of how glad I was that I was not alive during this era. It must have been so exhausting to have threats coming from every angle, not the least of which being cripping paranoia. Though to be fair, with the current political climate to the south, it sometimes feel like those attitudes are not as far off as they should be.

Eyes of Fire was a great little oddity with an uncomprising visual style. It's a shame that Crounse only made two other films (the decidedly less supernatural ventures The Invisible Kid and Sister Island) as he had an exciting voice that recalled the work of Ken Russell. I'm just glad we still have guys like Rob Eggers around to carry the torch.

Best Horror of 2015

Another year, another slew of horror titles come and gone. It took a bit more thought to come up with a top five this year, as not only did nothing really “knock my socks off”, I also spent a good amount of time catching up on the titles I missed in 2014, the best of which being The Borderlands, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Starry Eyes & Berkshire County.

I do want to start off by saying that if I hadn’t seen it last year at TIFF, It Follows would top my list for 2015. Subsequent viewings have peeled back layers of subtext – whether intentional or imagined – and that’s something that is severely lacking from its contemporaries.

Although, considering the widening berth I am giving mainstream horror these days, I might not be qualified to even make such a statement. I don’t generally seek them out unless someone I really like is involved (January's The Forest with Natalie Dormer for example.)

That said, I did highly enjoy a handful of titles this year. Here they are below in no particular order.

We Are Still Here

USA, Dir: Ted Geoghegan

This haunted house horror and loving homage to the works of Lucio Fulci was exactly what I hoping for. It was incredibly atmospheric, but also built to a satisfying climax, which is where a lot of the current wave of retro-horrors inevitably fail. The film was also anchored by some great visuals, sound and spectral designs.

The Witch

Canada/USA, Dir: Robert Eggers

The award for most authentic horror film would no doubt go to this film. Everyone involved was one-hundred per cent invested in recreating the hardships and paranoia of this time period. The performances were top notch, most notably the youngsters Anya Taylor-Joy & Harvey Scrimshaw, as was the direction executed by first time director Eggers.

February

USA/Canada, Dir: Oz Perkins

As I said in my original review, I had low expectations for this film because I did not like the script when I read it a few months earlier. However, the cold, calculated cinematography, the life breathed into the characters by Emma Roberts, Keirnan Shipka & Lucy Boynton and the theme of dealing with loss - that came across much more effectively than in the script - really stuck with me.

The Final Girls

USA, Dir: Todd Strauss-Schulson

This one was another I expected to not like due to negative rumblings from some peers. To be fair, their criticisms are valid, but they did not make one lick of difference to my enjoyment of the picture. I felt there was something really sincere about the central relationship between mother and daughter (Malin Ackerman and Taissa Farrow respectively) that kind of made it impossible for me to not like it.

Stand By For Tape Back-up

UK, Dir: Ross Sutherland

This isn’t a horror movie, but it is related to VHS so I’m putting it on here. Forget what I said before, this part spoken word performance and part experimental art piece did “knock my socks off.” I urge everyone to seek it out. It is amazing how a random collection of sequences can be nostalgic, profound, hilarious, haunting and beautiful all at the same time. This was a gift.

Honourable Mentions

Though I was too lazy to actually type up a review earlier this year, I dug Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak. A visually driven gothic romance of this nature is just not the type of thing that is attempted anymore. Though it was a shame they decided to CG over the practical creatures designed for the film (The Thing remake all over again!), Peak was definitely the prettiest horror film I saw this year, especially the breathtaking blood-soaked climax in the snow.

I think the movie that most surprised me this year was M. Night’s The Visit. Perhaps I had low expectations being that Shamaladingdong had about five strikes against him, but I thought it was a simple, yet really effective piece. Imagine, all he had to do to get back on track was drop the convoluted pretension. Although, I am aware that the movie's enjoyment is probably equal to the number of minutes it took to figure out the “twist”, as that was certainly true with Goodnight Mommy. Why on Earth did they make that one so obvious? Barely ten minutes in and it basically became a game of “how much torture will I have to endure before they finally get to it.”

Thanks to Toronto After Dark and Blood In The Snow, I was also able to catch some great homegrown indies. Trevor Juras’ The Interior and Andrew Moxham's White Raven were both effectively visceral tales about being lost in the woods.

On the dumb fun front, Cooties and Deathgasm were both a barrel of laughs. The former had a wonderful ensemble cast that somehow got away with gleefully dispatching busloads of children, and the latter was the best hybrid of Raimi & Jackson's sensibilities I’d seen since 2003's Undead.

Disappointments? Well, apart from the aforementioned Mommy, I was also underwhelmed by Can Evrenol's Baskin. It brought forth the nightmarish visuals from the original short film, but didn’t really translate into the feature length format for me. I’d say The Girl In The Photographs was the biggest offender though. How could something with such great pedigree behind it turn out to be so maddeningly unremarkable?

Again, this is at least the third year in a row where my top five titles have been largely from this side of the pond. So, I have to ask. Has the rest of the world been slacking off, or am I just not looking hard enough? Where are those wonderfully wicked titles from the French? The Japanese? The Spaniards?

I guess we’ll just have to see what 2016 brings…