Choose Your Own DVD Adventure

Serena gave me a great Xmas gift yesterday. The Bluray edition of the recently released Return To House On Haunted Hill.

Now, I know I'm in the minority, but I actually like the 1999 House on Haunted Hill remake. It's a much maligned title, that I have to defend all the time, but I've always really enjoyed it. The solid cast, great sound design and awesome visual style really work for me. I guess that makes me a tad hypocritical considering my last post, but so be it. House was also one of the first movies I ever purchased on DVD.

So, I guess it makes some sort of cyclical sense that Return would be one of the first next-gen DVD's that I own. What makes this disc really unique is the 'navigational cinema' functionality. Simply put, the movie plays like one of those old choose your own adventure books that I used to read as a kid. As I understand it, at frequent points during the movie, a menu screen will pop up with a question like, "Should Paul run away? Yes or No?". You make a choice using your remote and the movie continues based on your decision. Apparently, there are ninety-six different scenarios.

I'm really looking forward to digging my teeth into this. I'll update this blog on my 'adventures' soon. Oh, Cerina Vincent and Jeffrey Combs are in it, too. Score!

Thanks Serena!

Holiday Horror. Old & New.

My friend Serena regularly hosts horror movie nights at her place and this time the theme was Christmas horror. Over spiked eggnog, we watched the Bob Clark classic Black Christmas and its recent Hollywood counterpart back to back.

One is a classic. The other. Not so much.

It had been a while since I’d seen the original and the refresher reminded me not only about how good it is, but also how influential, as well. During the opening sequence, you can immediately see the similarities between it and horror movie staple Halloween. Black Christmas also takes it time. It doesn’t rush into things. The prank phone calls are an extremely creepy device. I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking wow, for a movie made in the mid-seventies, they are throwing the word ‘cunt’ around fairly liberally. Ah, us Canadians, always stretching the boundaries. We’re like the Europeans of North America. Margot Kidder is great as the house lush, Olivia Hussey adds some Shakespearean exuberance (i.e. overacting) and Andrea Martin is good for long… awkward… pauses. And for giggling at all of her fellow sorority sisters jokes. John Saxon rocks of course, as well.

For a film that was Halloween’s - the grandfather of the American slasher – main influence, Christmas isn’t really a slasher at all. At its heart, it is a slow burning mystery thriller.

So, after Black Christmas ’74 came to its chilling conclusion (I’ve always really liked that ending; absurd as it is), Serena popped in the remake. I had already seen it because she – being one of only people I know who actually likes the movie – had played it for me when it first came out on DVD. I promptly went to the fridge to grab another beer because well, I was gonna need it.

I really don’t know what Glen Morgan and company were trying to accomplish with this movie. I mean, there are points where it feels like an old style genre flick, but really, it’s everything the original isn’t. There are more people dispatched in the first twenty minutes of this movie than in the entire span of the original. So much for taking your time. None of the characters are likeable, the plot is incoherent – the first two acts seem like two separate movies running in tandem – and the climax is totally incomprehensible. I guess one positive is that since all of the actresses are fairly well known, it's not evident which one is the protagonist, so that’s something I suppose. At this point, I would like to shed a tear for Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I guess that’s a spoiler, but since this isn’t The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense, I don’t think I’m ruining anyone’s day by revealing that.

I suppose at the end of the day, Black Christmas ’06 is mildly entertaining. Being a gorehound, I think that I would have enjoyed the EXCESSIVE gore a lot more if I weren’t in the back of my mind comparing it to the minimalist nature of the original. Unfortunately, that seems to be the late motif of these seventies revival remakes, doesn’t it? Both the Texas and Halloween remakes replaced suggestion with outright splatter and are lesser films because of it. But I digress. I’ll leave my remake rant for another day.

Oh, and we also watched the hilariously bad Jack Frost. I hadn’t seen it since it originally came out on video – come on, how could I have resisted that holographic coverbox? I’m glad that Shannon Elizabeth was able to take her experience being raped by an evil snowman and parlay it into a fairly successful Hollywood career. Good job, girl!

Jack Frost needs to be seen to be believed. I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM UP HEEEERE!!!

Ten Great Modern Horror Films

In this day and age, when it seems like we are flooded with mediocre horror fare every week – on the big screen and at the video store – it’s easy to ask yourself, how come no one makes good horror films anymore? Well, like any form of mass media, they’re still being made, it’s just that there is so much gristle to chew through, it can sometimes be hard to get to the meat. This is a list of ten modern horror films that I wrote earlier this year for DvdWolf. These titles exemplify what I love about my favourite genre of film. Some are more mainstream than others, but all are worth a space on your DVD shelf. Here they are in no particular order.

The Descent
2004, UK. Dir: Neil Marshall
One really needs to look no further than Neil Marshall’s sophomore effort - the fine werewolf movie Dog Soldiers being his debut – to see that kick ass horror flicks still exist. The Descent is a success on every level. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, the antagonists effective and the gore perfectly balances the tension – something that a good deal of Marshall’s peers seem to have either forgotten or chosen to ignore.

Session 9
2001, USA. Dir: Brad Anderson
Session 9 has many strengths. A chilling build-up, a great set piece – the abandoned asylum, a character in itself ala The Shining – and some great performances. Brad Anderson’s track record continued with the remarkable The Machinist in 2004.

Gin Gwai (The Eye)
2002, China. Dir: Danny & Oxide Pang
The Eye has always been my favourite Asian horror film. It has more prolonged bouts of creepiness than Ringu and is more linear and coherent than Ju-on. It is a great ghost story, told well in tandem with fantastic sound design. See it before the American remake comes out this winter.

Haute Tension (High Tension)
2003, France. Dir: Alexandre Aja
Haute Tension is a flick I like more and more as time goes on. It excels at all the things I love about horror films. While combining elements of Texas Chainsaw, Bill Lustig’s Maniac and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, the screeching score, intense cinematography and visceral gore make this a revelation for fans of the genre. I know that many people like to shit on it because of the story’s outcome, but I’ve always considered it inconsequential to the overall bloody canvas on which Aja paints.

Open Water
2004, USA. Dir: Chris Kentis
This one is a perfect example of guerrilla filmmaking. The two leads put life and limb on the line to give what was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had in a theatre. Open Water is simple, adeptly shot and really leaves you with a feeling of dread.


Espinazo del diablo, El (The Devil’s Backbone)
2001, Spain. Dir: Guillermo del Toro
Backbone is the ‘brother’ film to del Toro’s brilliant award winning 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth. A lot simpler in story and tone, Backbone serves to remind us that del Toro can produce gold no matter what size budget he is working with.


Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
2006, USA. Dir: Scott Glosserman
Mask was the biggest surprise of last year. It takes documentary style conventions – seen in films like Blair Witch and Man Bites Dog – and takes them even further. Nathan Baesel as the title character is just so hard NOT to like. The very difficult line of horror and self-referential comedy – a popular avenue these days since the arrival of the Scream series – is skirted adroitly, but never crossed.


Ôdishon (Audition)
1999, Japan. Dir: Takashi Miike
Audition is one of infamous director Miike’s best works. It's a real slow burner that boils over with a finale that is still referenced to this day. An interesting concept that only avoids coming off the rails because of the mad genius at the controls.



My Little Eye
2002, UK. Dir: Marc Evans
This film was on the forefront of a sub genre that has now become somewhat saturated, but Eye still remains one of the best examples. The story unfolds in such a way that you are alongside the characters and therefore feel the unease and uncertainty, as well. Probably one of the lesser known gems on this list, but still no less worthy of a look.

The Abandoned
2006, Spain. Dir: Nacho Cerda
Cerda, the director of the infamous and controversial short Aftermath, takes a simple story and makes it fresh by using superb sound design. Only employing, for the most part, one location and two characters, Cerda is able to craft a film that oozes atmosphere. The Abandoned was part of Maple’s “8 Films to Die For” series and the best of them by a grand margin.

Overcome by awesomeness

I'm still trying to figure out how I want to set this whole thing up, but in the meantime... BEHOLD the radness of THIS!



Real or not, it rocks! Although I do have one question... how practical a weapon IS a drill bra really?

A lost art

I guess another reason I wanted to document these old VHS cover boxes is that it has become something of a lost art. Ever since Scream, it seems that often times, all the cover really does is sell who's in it. I know that sounds silly because selling is obviously what a cover is supposed to do, but nowadays it's just 'let's put everyone in the cast in a semi circle and call it a day'. I could probably find half a dozen examples easily and post them up here, but not only am I a blogging noob, but I'm also extremely lazy.

The old VHS boxes from the seventies and eighties had actual art. And the real rub is that when they finally get around to re-releasing these old movies on DVD, they often CHANGE it. No, no, no, that won't do at all. I mean, take My Bloody Valentine for instance. Can you really argue that the newer DVD cover art (below left) is better than its predecessor?

So, consider it a public service. I'm helping to preserve the history of the VHS cover box.

N is for Nostalgia

I worked at a video store in my youth for almost four years. Starting in October 1990, I worked at a retail chain called Major Video. In August of 1992, it went into receivership and was unfortunately swallowed up by Blockbuster. I then worked there until my unfair dismissal in August of 1994. Anyway, enough with the history lesson. The purpose of this blog is not to lament about how Ballbuster runs their business, but rather to document that old store's best attribute - their horror section.

Being an avid horror film watcher from a very early age, I was quickly put in charge of this vast section that took up a very large area of the store. Being the go-to-guy for people who cared to ask for recommendations was something I very much enjoyed. This was, of course at Major, before the corporate structure of Cockbuster had stifled all individuality. This horror section was a far cry from the pathetic back-of-the-store one unit sections they have today. It is a sad state of affairs, that pains me to even describe it.

There were several hundred titles in this section, some of which I have never seen since. Luckily, due to having spent so much time looking at their cover boxes - the horror section was closest to the registers - I have most of them committed to a special cache in my memory. I may not remember all their names, but if I see the cover box art, an instant spark of recognition is ignited. For those who have read or seen Stephen King's Dreamcatcher will recall the memory warehouse. Those old battered VHS cover boxes are in that "special" room. So, I guess this blog is a way of cleaning house.

Early on in my tenure, I had vowed that I would watch every single title starting from A through Z, but that turned out to be a little ambitious. Such an undertaking would have required a lot more time than I had at my disposal. My goal now is to recreate that old section from my past, bringing it back to its former glory. Armed with my memory and the world wide web, I hope to document it as best as possible. I haven't really decided how I'm going to do this yet, but I'll probably be updating it a little at a time. I'll also be throwing up new reviews and comments as they come to me, as well.

When all is said and done, our old catalogue might not seem too impressive to a real film aficionado - big city archives like my old Toronto haunts like Suspect and Queen Video would put it to shame - but for a small suburban video store owned by a major conglomerate, I propose that this section was quite unique. Now, you may also notice that countless titles from this era are missing (Last House, Cannibal Holocaust and Maniac to name a few), but keep in mind that this was a so-called "family" video store. Many of our titles were "Rated" versions. Dead Alive, Hellraiser and Return of the Living Dead Part 3 were titles I know for sure were heavily cut. This is where it gets odd though because some others (Romero's Dead films, H.G. Lewis' oeuvre) were available in their full bloody glory. It was as if this section had been made up of several different inventories. The bean counters had also failed to notice that some of them hadn't rented in years, yet they weren't purged from the system until way after I was ousted.

I still own a few of them today. The Video Dead, Cannibal Girls, Color Me Blood Red and the colourfully titled Beast of the Yellow Night are some I can see from where I'm sitting right now. This manifest will really only scratch the surface of the beautifully bizarre range of titles that were around during the golden age of video, but to me, that old section was my home away from home.

Just do it!

Even though this must be the billionth blog out there, I figured what the hell. Procrastination and inactivity are two of my favourite things, so it took a culmination of several events for me to finally start this blog.

The first and main reason was that the website I've been contributing to for several years is finally defunct - or at least inactive. There are probably about a hundred of my past reviews still sitting there. If you feel so inclined to check them out, the site is http://www.dvdwolf.com/. I wrote under Tom Servo, and my own name. I might link them to this blog at some point, but that is a job for another time. Motivation to write reviews is hard to come by - at least for someone as lazy as me - when you know it will just disappear into the ether once it's sent. Why don't you just post reviews somewhere else? you may ask. Good question. I don't know. I had established myself as the horror "guy", for lack of a better term, at dvdwolf.com and I guess I just didn't want to start over. However, I finally just had to suck it up and move forward. Secondly, I have a lot of friends who write for websites and I just wanted to get back in the game. Sure, it isn't bloodydisgusting.com, but it's still writing. And that's really what it comes down to. I feel the itch to write and this is the best way right now for me to scratch that itch.

I guess the final reason is that I came up with something I wanted to document. There are hundreds of blogs about horror movies I'm sure, but what I plan to do will hopefully be somewhat unique.

Also, I can't forget to mention that nowadays it is incredibly easy for a programming illiterate person like myself to put something that looks halfway decent onto the web. I'm learning as I go here, so please bear with me.

Anyway, on with the show. The Horror Section is open!