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 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. 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 Storm Crow 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.
I imagine you were expecting the new Hellraiser today and that would have been my first choice, but alas it is not currently available in Canada for some strange reason. So, I went instead for Hellgate, which was the unwatched half of an Anchor Bay double-bill DVD with The Pit.
A group of friends get caught up in the legend of Hellgate, an abandoned mining town that lures strangers to their doom.
No way around this one, Hellgate a piece of shit. A boring piece of shit. I guess I should have been weary when the only thing that happened in the fifteen minutes was people talking fireside and cinema's lamest biker gang riding into town. Then Horshack (Ron Pailillo) shows up and does not add a single thing to it. He really should have quit while he was ahead in Friday 6.
Abigail Woolcott & Ron Palillo as Josie & Matt in Hellgate.
You know you're dealing with a dud, when the Imdb cast list is just a bunch of empty placecards where headshots should be. Not even the blonde cutie femme fatale Josie (Abigial Woolcott) went further than this film. I guess the PTB were like, hey we already have a Kathleen Kinmount/Elizabeth Kaitan, sorry you're out of luck. I love that her father had an 80's glamour shot hung in his office even though it was a flashback set in the fifties(?). Good catch, set design guys. But to be fair, if the movie was more like that office scene, we all would have been better off.
I'm not kidding when I talk about how boring this movie is. It's a clock watcher of the highest order. There is just so much empty space and I couldn't help but be astonished every time I checked the time. It's bad movies like this that remind me of that classic Calvin & Hobbes cartoon.
Hellgate does blow most of its budget in the last ten minutes, but by that time who cares? Even when they do think of something cool - like decapitation by sign or when Josie gets shot-gunned out a window - they find the most uninteresting way to film it. This was director Will Levey second to last film so I guess even he knew it was time to hang it up. Unless, you have insomnia, avoid this one at all costs.
Hey all. Here's a local short film that just dropped online. The Four People Who Call You At The End of the World is directed by Kenzie Yango and stars the lovely and talented Storm Steenson who you may remember from my 2017 short The Good Samaritan. Enjoy!
While having a conversation about Jean
Rollin (as one does) last weekend, I realized that I hadn't yet
watched my Wizard VHS of his 1981 flick Zombie Lake. This has
since been rectified.
A group of murdered Nazis spring up
from a local pond to reap revenge on the townsfolk that ambushed them
many years before.
During said discussion, I described his
filmography as “running the gamut between Hammer art house and soft
core porn” for which Zombie Lake feels closer to the latter. It
sure doesn't waste any time in that regard, as a young nymph almost
immediately strips before going swimming in the titular lake/barely
disguised swimming pool before being pulled under by a zombie. I'd
have felt bad for her if she hadn't literally pulled down the no
swimming sign earlier.
A little history. I first became
acquainted with Rollin back when the Scream channel was a thing back
in the aughts. They used to play double bills of his films late on Friday nights, but I actually had to start taping them to watch the next
morning because though his work is pretty, it is often like
cinematic Ny-Quil. Zombie Lake was no different, as the first half was
barely a movie and more of a thin construct to get from one nude
scene to another and as I'm typing this I'm wondering why this sounds
like a complaint... Eventually the essence of a story emerges, but
it's more of a sloppy patchwork of better pictures – think 2000
Maniacs without the gore or personality.
Jean Rollin's Shock Wav-- I mean, Zombie Lake!
I read that Rollin was embarrassed by
this movie, having been a last minute replacement for Jess Franco so
I guess it was doomed from the start. I wager most of the budget went
to the Nazi uniforms, vehicles and flamethrowers and everything else
was just fly-by-night. Did I mention there were a lot of naked ladies
in this? Because there are. If only they had some decent gore to go
with it, they'd have really had something to hang their hat on here,
but sadly it was of the green and red paint variety.
Only thing missing from this scene is a flower...
Apart from the sky high skin ratio,
Zombie Lake was a snooze-fest. However, I came away from this with
one burning question about that scene with the frolicking basketball
team. In 1981, did Europeans (or at least the people who dubbed this
movie) not know what basketball was?
Hey all. The thirteenth edition of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival wrapped up last Friday. Though I wasn't able to attend as much as previous years, it was a strong line-up that seemed to be well received by the October faithful.
Today though, I'd just like to highlight three titles I was impressed with during the fest.
This sci-fi western from Chris Caldwell & Zeek Earl was some really great stuff. I appreciated that Prospect's universe was literally built from scratch and was surprised by how much of it struck me as fresh and original. Buoyed by terrific performances by Sophie Thatcher and Prince Oberyn himself Pablo Pascal, I was completely immersed in this world.
The easiest way to describe Overlord is Band of Brothers crossed with the Resident Evil video games. JJ Abrams threw a lot of money at this movie and it showed from the opening seconds. This was also a movie that moved, as there's not an ounce of fat on this picture. Like Prospect, it also had some recognizable faces in Wyatt Russell (channeling a bit of his father as MacReady at points), Pilou Asbæk & Jovan Adepo. For those who think zombies have been done to death, I think Julius Avery may have given it another stay of execution.
Infamously known as the first movie to be conceived from a Twitter conversation between two writers, You Might Be The Killer was a really fun time. Seeing Fran Kranz again reminded me of Cabin In The Woods and just how much fun it is for horror fans to get together and gleefully deconstruct the genre we all love. There's also gore, some entertaining physical comedy, as well as the always delightful Alyson Hannigan.
Drop by tomorrow for my first of two posts on TAD's selection of short films.
This week’s VHS was Armand Mastroianni’s 1986 effort The Supernaturals.
A platoon of recruits (headed by Nichelle Nichols of Star
Trek fame) out on maneuvers come across the site of a Confederate massacre and
run afoul of some vengeful ghouls.
Happy Friday the 13th everyone! If I’d been more
astute I’d have posted about a slasher this week, but such is life. I’ve been
preparing for my yearly jaunt to Montreal – and crying into my pint over
England’s loss – so I just picked the VHS on the top of the pile.
The Supernaturals was a half-decent yarn. I say “half”
because it started pretty strong, but fizzled out toward the end. I did learn
something new though. In the opening sequence, set during the Civil War –
actually a solid bit involving Confederate civilians forced to walk through a
mine field – I wondered if mines had been invented yet. The Internet then let
me know they’ve actually been around for almost a thousand years. I guess I
shouldn’t be surprised. If humans are good at anything, it’s dreaming up new
ways to kill each other.
Anyway, I was into it during the first act, as the
camaraderie between the recruits was entertaining and boasted some familiar
faces, including Max Caulfield, Scott Jacoby (now grown up from his teen roles
in Little Girl That Lives Down the Lane and Bad Ronald) and also, decades
before her work in two of my favourite shows Homeland and Mad Men, Talia
Balsam.
Quite strangely though, once things started to get weird,
everyone turned into an idiot. It wasn’t particularly clear that one of the
characters was drunk when he went monosyllabic and stumbled off, but on several
occasions people went sprinting through the darkness knowing full well there were
pointy stick traps set up everywhere.
I imagine that the budget was a restraint here, but I really
wished the effects (provided by Bart Mixon) could’ve been more front-and-center
here. It’s like the opposite experience Mixon had on NOES 2 where it seemed
like they had money leftover for some inserted climax creature gags. The ghouls
in The Supernaturals were largely just shadowy shamblers and save for a decent
throat rip, there’s not much to write home about. It’s disappointingly a
decidedly PG-13 affair at best - regardless of what the coverbox says! With the Civil War backdrop, I guess I had the
sinewy excesses of H.G Lewis’ 2000 Maniacs in my brain.
Oh I forgot to mention that, in a stroke of serendipity,
LeVar Burton was also in this film. I like to think that between takes Burton
was asking Nichols about Star Trek, not knowing that, within a year or so, he
himself would become part of the canon in The Next Generation.
The Supernaturals was watchable fare, but I feel it
could have been better if it had more money and edge behind it. Mastroianni is
a prolific director who by that time had already directed He Knows You’re Alone
(and later some notable genre television like Tales From the Darkside & Friday the 13th) so he certainly had the chops.
This week's VHS is Victor Halperin's
1932 film White Zombie.
A wealthy plantation owner's plan to
steal a young woman from the arms of her fiancee backfires when he
enlists the help of an evil witch doctor.
Making my way through the second season
of Luke Cage and its use of black magic (the show doesn't call it
voodoo or obeah so it won't either) I was reminded that my White
Zombie VHS still remained un-watched. This was a title I was obviously
aware of being a fan of the band that took its name in the late eighties, but never had the inkling to watch it until now.
White Zombie was a pretty cool watch. I
found it a bit less substantial than RKO's similarly themed 1943
picture I Walked With a Zombie, but there was still a lot of
interesting stuff in here. As I stated with that film, there was something
really disturbing about those pre-Romero shamblers. Being a
reanimated corpse is one thing, but the indignity of being a soulless
slave is quite another. Starring in this vehicle (one year after his
turn as Dracula) was Bela Lugosi, as the subtly monikered villain
Murder Legendre. Lugosi really did have one of the best glowers in the
business.
Bela Lugosi in White Zombie.
Like a good number of the silver screen
horrors I've been acquainting myself with over the last decade, this
one also used shadows to great effect most notably the bar scene where our drunken protagonist Neil (John Harron) plays against other patrons represented only as specters on the wall behind him. I
noticed several cool in-camera tricks as well that likely would've been quite dazzling to American audiences back when this was released. Most
impressive though was the pretty spectacular scene in the mill where
Legendre's drones monotonously work the machinery. Sequences like
that make me wonder how this film could've been shot in just eleven days,
even if did filch a bunch of stuff from previously shot Universal
productions.
John Harron in White Zombie.
White Zombie was another
black-and-white classic that I was glad to cross off the list. It
featured Lugosi at the height of his fame and some devilishly stark
visuals that explain why it has persevered through the ages.
This week it's Gary Sherman's 1981
horror film Dead & Buried.
I have to admit that I cheated this
week. I did not watch a VHS, but rather attended a special screening
of the film at The Royal with Sherman himself in attendance. Considering
I've spent almost every night this week at that theatre, there's been
no time for anything else.
It had been about twenty-five
years since I'd seen this movie, so it really was like watching
it for the first time. And it's great. Dead & Buried is a
really well put together film with good pacing and lively
performances. I was a little awestruck by the large number of
character actors that included the likes of James Farentino and Jack
Albertson in his last onscreen role, as well as Melody Anderson
(fresh off her role in Flash Gordon), Lisa Blount and Robert Englund
three full years before putting on the Freddy glove.
Dead & Buried was based on a novel
by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and adapted by Dan O' Bannon & Ronald
Shusett. Even though O'Bannon later disowned the film when he stated his
contributions were cast aside, I can't help but see the shared sensibilities between Sherman & O'Bannon. Sherman's previous horror
effort Death Line had a wonderful balance of horror and humour, as
did O'Bannon's 1985 classic, Return of the Living Dead.
Sherman is a rare breed of filmmaker
and part of the movement that began with George Romero in 1968 where
the work can viewed on two levels. Dead & Buried was a
deliberate attempt at political subtext (specifically
totalitarianism), but it can also just be viewed as a straight up
horror film, as well. I also really love that EC Comics style ending.
It contributed to the feeling that though this movie may have been
contemporary, its themes and lore were from a much older era.
Lastly, I must comment on the top notch
special effects supplied by Stan Winston. Sherman has long had a love
for in-camera effects – crescendoing in 1988's Poltergeist III but more on that later – and he paired up perfectly with a guru
like Winston. The eyeball insertion involving Lisa Marie was so
seamless, I actually had to ask Sherman himself how it was achieved.
And yet despite all the effects, in a feat of clever
foreshadowing, there is a deliberate lack of red throughout
the film.
Dead & Buried was a solid film. It
may not be as well known as some of the horror flicks from that era,
but it should be. If you haven't taken the trip to Potter's Bluff,
there's no time like the present. Especially when a little birdie
told me there is a newly-minted 4K resto coming soon.
Probably not the most clever of names to be sure, but call it a work in progress. I wanted to kick off the first month of this by showcasing some of my favourite short films of all time. First is Spencer Susser's I Love Sarah Jane from 2008 - holy smokes this thing is ten years old now!
I'm a big fan of horror films that also explore coming-of-age themes and there are few that do it better than this. It's also an opportunity to see Mia Wasikowska before her rise to the Hollywood A-list. Enjoy!
Canuck indie director Colin Minihan's
newest effort It Stains the Sands Red has been rolling out over
several Canadian cities this week (including Toronto, Ottawa and
Edmonton) so I gave it a whirl.
Stranded in the Nevada desert during a
zombie apocalypse, Molly (Britanny Allen) tries to literally stay
steps ahead of her undead pursuer.
It has been a while since I've seen a
movie where I flip-flopped between engaged and annoyed as much as It
Stains the Sands Red. It opens pretty rough, introducing us to a
couple of idiotic characters doing shit that flies in the face of Horror 101. I
remember not being overjoyed I would be watching this for another
hour or so.
However, once it got going and I
started to realize what the “nugget” of the premise was, I was at
least appreciative of what was being attempted. I was on board with
the themes of helplessness and the inevitability of death, even if it had been handled more deftly before (It Follows came to
mind). I did recognize that these kind of low budget affairs usually
have a character stuck in a single room, so Minihan's use of an entire
desert was something rather interesting.
To be honest though, the only thing
holding It Stains together – with duct tape and sheer will – was its
lead. Allen was in virtually every frame of this movie and she
carried it admirably. Her character had an actual arc that went from
imminent zombie fodder to empowered survivor. It was this evolution
that made me forgive the uncomfortable amount of logic leaps in this
movie.
I think my main problem was
the erratic tone. Characters made so many boneheaded decisions in the
first act that it was hard to take it as anything but a comedy. Then
halfway, it takes an unnecessary turn into exploitation territory to
where I had to utter, “really guys?” To further muddle things,
the piece bordered on straight up drama once the final reel rolled
around.
While the execution is shaky at best, I
never fully wrote off It Stains the Sands Red. Allen was able to keep
me invested enough to want to know where her journey would end up.
Gaping wounds aside, it's still a big improvement over Minihan's
earlier work. If you are a fan of low budget zombie yarns, give
it a go.
We lost a giant, figuratively and literally, yesterday. Filmmaker George A. Romero has passed away after a brief battle with lung cancer. He was 77.
George A. Romero 1940-2017.
After bursting onto the scene with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, Romero's contribution to film is beyond compare. His debut ushered in a new era, not only for the zombie genre, but also the idea of using subtext within horror. He may not have been the first to do it, but Night sure inspired a lot of future filmmakers to do the same.
Beyond his influence as a filmmaker, his works had an indelible effect on me growing up. Night, Dawn of the Dead and much later Day of the Dead (once I was actually able to find it outside the limited resources of my Toronto suburb) are the pinnacle of zombie cinema, both in terms of special effects and what can be achieved through genre. His leanings toward the bleak carried onto 1977's The Crazies where he gutted me not once, but twice with the death of Lynn Lowry and the zero-hour loss of the cure.
Romero then did what he did with ghouls with bloodsuckers in 1978's Martin with his non-sensationalized portrait of modern day vampirism. Later, Creepshow would run through my VCR more times than I can count and that syringe climax in Monkey Shines still remains one of my most intense memories of watching a horror film. I could go on and on.
What makes this even more sad is that Romero had made his home here in Toronto. He was a fixture of this community. You get into that frame of mind that he is always going to be there and it is just a matter of time before his next project would be announced. Then he's gone. I am taking some comfort in that we will get more time with him posthumously when his interview with Guillermo del Toro gets released on the newly announced Between Night and Dawn set from Arrow.
Rest in peace, Mr. Romero. Your legacy, much like some of your film subjects over the years, will never die.
As you may remember, killer rat movies are among my favourite subgenres in horror, so a gaming version of that makes my whiskers tingle. No release date yet, but 2018 is a good bet. What a stacked year for horror gaming that is going to be!
Fantasia 2017.
Fantasia announced its first block of titles for this year's festival this week. This Montreal-based event never disappoints with many awesome looking things on tap. Here's a peek.
First, Fantasia will be honouring the great Larry Cohen with a well deserved Lifetime Achievement Award. This will be celebrated with 35mm presentations of Q: The Winged Serpent, It's Alive, God Told Me To. As for new films, I'll be hoping to check these out.
Stefan Ruzowitzky returns with an action-horror hybrid Cold Hell about a taxi driver (Violetta Schurawlow) targeted by a serial killer. I was a fan of Anatomy back in the day, so I'm stoked for this.
Game of Death is a project I've been tracking since it hit SXSW earlier this year. Originally conceived as a web-series, this premise of a kill-or-be-killed board game is so delicious, I cannot resist it.
After some good buzz at Sundance, I am looking forward to seeing Damien Power's Killing Ground. Outback horror has always been one of the most intense out there, so here's hoping this delivers.
Joe Lynch's Mayhem will be playing this year, so I'll finally be able to see how it stacks up against the similarly themed The Belko Experiment. It will likely not be as polished, but I do expect it will be more f*cked up.
Replace is one of the more provokative of the announced titles. Co-written by Richard Stanley and featuring Barbara Crampton, this movie tells of a woman who replace her skin with that of other women's. This has some serious gross-out body potential!
Genre darlings Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson are back with their newest venture The Endless. I'm not going to tell you what its about because like their previous works, it is best to just go in and let things happen.
Lastly, what would Fantasia be without Japanese splatter. Yoshihiro Nishimura returns with a sequel to the 2005 flick, Kodoku Meatball Machine. You can be sure the walls of the Hall Concordia will be stained when this one plays.
My Air bnb is booked, my train ticket is purchased, all I need now is for July to get here! Fantasia runs July 13th to August 2nd.
What You Can't Hear...
Lastly, I wanted to post a short film I saw last year at Fantasia. Here's director Rob Savage's take on a tried-and-true genre. Enjoy!
Hey all. I've torn myself away from the Friday the 13th Game long enough to bring you today's post. Actually, I could probably do this while I wait to get into a match lobby (I keeed) but more on that later. For now, here's what I've got.
Zombies From Oz.
A trailer recently surfaced for the upcoming Australian TV series Wyrmwood.
I liked the original 2014 movie well enough. I think my only real qualm was that they opened the film introducing this really bad-ass heroine (Bianca Bradey, the gal who shows up at the end of the above video) and then she was chained to a wall for most of the movie -- coincidentally like Nandalie Killick does here. I was definitely won over by the end though.
What Are You Afraid Of?
AMC's horror streaming service Shudder is launching its original programming slate with a documentary/horror narrative hybrid called Primal Screen. Directed by Rodney Ascher (Room 237), Primal Screen explores why we are both attracted and repelled by what scares us most.
I'm into this. Primal Screen feels like an extension of Ascher's last doc The Nightmare, but I'm also getting Channel Zero vibe from it, as well. Primal Screen premieres this Thursday on Shudder.
Who Need Art Classes?
My friend Trevor directed me to this cool little art generator this weekend. Just go to http://fotogenerator.npocloud.nl, make a little doodle and this handy doodad will turn it into nightmare fuel right before your very eyes. Case in point...
After missing Colm McCarthy's
adaptation of Mike Carey's book The Girl with All the Gifts at TIFF last year,
I made sure to catch it during its recent run at The Royal.
During a zombie apocalypse, the
residents of an underground bunker race against time to find a cure
using a group of infected children that still somehow possess their
humanity.
I thought this film was pretty solid. I
feel like the mainstream appropriation of the zombie genre has caused
it to get a bit stale (even I've stopped keeping up with The Walking
Dead at this point), but I thought this was a really interesting take
on it. Maybe it is not a coincidental that Girl with All the Gifts is
a UK production, as I recall another Brit coming along about fifteen
years ago with 28 Days Later and giving the zombie genre a much
needed shot in the arm.
Much like the antagonists in Naughty
Dog's 2013 video game The Last of Us, the pathogen in Girl was a fungal
infection that grew outward from the victim's body, which made for some
really unique designs that we're not used to seeing on the
silver screen. Of course, this was not the only thing this movie
shared with The Last of Us, as also present were the aesthetic of the
overgrown urban landscapes and the theme of protecting a child from
the dangers of the waging apocalypse.
The Last of Us also had said children
possessing a partial immunity that others were attempting to exploit.
To be fair though, it was presented much differently here. I enjoyed
the direction that The Girl with All the Gifts went in, as I had
previously assumed the majority, if not all, took place in Day of the
Dead fashion, when in fact that only comprised the first act of the
film.
I thought the performances really
elevated the film, as well. Gemma Arterton and Glenn Close were both
terrific as characters at odds due to their conflicting theologies
and Paddy Considine was solid as always as their gruff team leader. Most
impressive though was the breakout performance of Sennia Nanua as the
title character, Melanie. She brought a dual innocence and
intelligence to the character that I thought gave the story real substance.
Sennia Nanua as Melanie in The Girl with All the Gifts.
Yeah, I dug The Girl with All the Gifts
and am glad to see there are still new avenues to be taken by this
flea-bitten subgenre.
