Shiver Me Timbers.

The subject of this installment of On The Shelf is the new Spanish horror Eskalofrío aka Shiver, which Zip.ca finally decided to send me after what seemed like eons.

Xeroderma afflicted Santi (Junio Valverde) and his mother move to a remote Spanish valley town to in order to better shield him from the sun. Soon after his arrival, people start turning up ripped to shreds. Is Santi responsible for these grisly murders, or is there something more sinister out there in the woods?

There is so much to like about Shiver. I thought the first act was absolutely stellar. We are introduced to a character with a condition that is rarely explored in film (2001’s The Others – another Spanish production coincidentally - is the only other example I can think of) and then weird things start happening around him. The setup and editing is so skillfully done, it had me on the edge of my seat. A great deal of Shiver seemed so fresh to me. I mean, there are some contrivances – night vision makes a brief appearance – but it always seems to bounce back quickly. Shiver is also strange in that it felt like three seperate movies. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it seemed like the film shifted focus a few times.

ummm... RUN?

Unfortunately, this brilliant setup proved to be somewhat anti-climactic when the antagonist was revealed. Director Isidro Ortiz does so many clever things to ratchet up the fear, but I could never shake the simple fact of what I was actually looking at. It was a fundamental thing that really prevented me from lifting this movie from good to great. It’s a call that everyone will have to make when they experience it, but it left me wanting. Shiver is a solid film that has several tense moments and is gorgeous to look at. It is also well acted, although Valverde (who we first saw in 2001's The Devil's Backbone as a boy also named Santi) does get a little too worked up at times. I also want to make special mention of the phenomenal sound mixing. What is it about forests that lends itself to surround sound? I remember the climactic scene in Ils (aka Them) also had my muscles tensed just like this one did. I’m not surprised the producers of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Orphanage got behind this production. There is a darkly fantastical quality to Shiver that falls right in with those sensibilities. If you are a fan of those aforementioned titles, then I would say that Shiver is required viewing.

The Lost Reviews

I have a little announcement today. As I’ve mentioned before, from 2001 to 2007 I was contributing to a movie website called DVDWolf.com.

Most of the reviews I submitted were posted on the site, but every once in a while - and unfortunately this became the norm as the years went by - one would disappear in the Internet ether after I sent it. The webmaster Rob Paul and I had a good relationship and I think the lack of activity on the site had to do with him moving onto other things more than anything else. Much later, after I had created THS, I wanted to link to one of my old reviews on DVDWolf and found it wasn’t there. ‘That’s odd’ I thought. ‘I KNOW I wrote a piece on that.’ It was then I remembered about all those floating reviews. After some investigation, I found there was a sizable number that shared this fate. So, instead of just having them waste away on my hard drive, I figured I would post them here in their own special section called...

Feel free to check them out by going here.

Alma Is Coming... And She Is Pissed!

I got my hands on F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin recently and played the hell out of it all last week.

F.E.A.R.2 is a big bag o’ fun. After my ultimately disappointing experience with Resistance 2, F2 reminded me of what I love about first-person-shooters. It is a wonderfully designed game with mad helpings of stuff that goes boom. The two things that stand out right away are the weaponry and the artificial intelligence. The weapons themselves are pretty standard, but it is the weight of them that is instantly apparent and even more enhanced by the Dualshock functionality. And what is it about bullet time that never gets old? I must have cut down hundreds of replica soldiers in slow motion and every time was as fulfilling as the first. I didn’t get into Fallout 3 because all the video footage I’d seen was basically “I see enemy/stop time/95% headshot/cut scene of head exploding/rinse and repeat” which made me think ‘wouldn’t that get boring?’ After my experience with F2, the answer is clearly no. The addition of the drivable ‘mechs’ was a stroke of genius. You can literally SHRED through waves of enemies with one of these things. I would have a played a whole game of that! F2 also builds on the already impressive AI from the first game to make it something truly remarkable. Enemies are constantly moving, interacting with their environment and actually work as a squad to flank and flush you out of hiding.


And F2 doesn’t skimp on the scares. There are plenty to be had and they know what buttons to push. In addition to the ubiquitous Alma, you encounter several other supernatural baddies, as well. A highlight is when your flashlight stops working inside an abandoned school filled with swiftly moving spirits that are basically just wisps of smoke with angry eyes. Let’s just say the combat shotgun was my best friend during that level. One thing that surprised me was the kinship I felt for my squad. I’m not sure how to quantify this. It’s not like there was a lot time spent getting to know them, but for some reason I actually felt like part of a team. Maybe it was the realistic character models or constant communication (or both) that contributed to that.


The story is pretty convoluted, but I did like how it was conveyed throughout the campaign. Instead of the voicemail messaging of the original game, you collect pieces of Intel scattered throughout the levels. The more you find the more the craziness around you starts to make some kind of sense. I think the only thing I was unhappy with – apart from the glitchy tacked-on multiplayer that should be avoided at all costs – was the ending, or rather the lack of one. It was so open-ended I felt like this game should have been called F.E.A.R.2 Vol. 1. Although, I can’t complain too much as this just means there is more to look forward to.

F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin is an excellent single player experience that is definitely worth a rent. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it fully delivers on everything I want in a FPS.

Don't Kill The Messenger VI

Okay, I've got a lot of stuff to get to today, so let's get right to it.

13: Fear Is Real-ity Televison

The reality show from Ghosthouse (Sam Raimi's production company) wrapped up this week. The premise of 13:FIR was basically thirteen people competing in horror-themed challenged in different locations of a Lousiana bayou for $66,666 - probably the lowest amount ever in the history of reality television. The first episode was so ghetto, it was tough to watch. The faceless antagonist named The Mastermind was such a thinly disguised rip-off of the Jigsaw character, I was surprised they didn't throw in a creepy talking doll for good measure. The horror challenges were pretty cool (and I should say probably the most dangerous - or at least the illusion of danger - I've seen in a reality show) but often seemed like they were also from a Saw movie. In fact, one challenge was basically the foot-cuffed puzzle from the original installment. It wasn't all bad though. There was an extra variable added to the game called the Death Box, which could enable the carrier to kill off his fellow players if they got them alone. This seemed of no importance to a large number of contestants who seemed to make it a priority to go wandering off on their own. Honestly, the amount of stupid people playing this game was uncanny. The Death Box was a good idea though on the part of the creators to get rid of those contestants who obviously weren't going to be 'spooked' by anything that could be thrown at them and worked best in the last episode when the final three contestants were all stalking each other in the swamp at night.

For the most part 13:FIR was extremely cheesy and contrived, but still watchable in a low-rent reality show kind of way. And if you guys do decide to do a sequel, make sure you don't kill off the hottest chicks first this time.

Trailers Galore

A huge batch of trailers hit the tubes this week. Check them out below.

The really real teaser for REC 2 (not that fan made imposter from several weeks back) dropped this week. It looks like it picks up right where the last one left off. Sweet!



Lesbian Vampire Killers looks like a lot of fun. It got a great reception at the EFM (despite being enigmatically listed in the programme guide as LVK) so hopefully it'll make its way around the festivals here this fall.



You should only have to watch a few seconds of this teaser for the live-action adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire to know I am fully committed.



Finally, a full trailer for Mason and Boyes new project Blood River has surfaced. It looks a lot like Wolf Creek to me, but I know from seeing The Devil's Chair that Andrew Howard makes a really convincing psychopath. Bring it on!

I've been having a problem embedding vids from Twitch recently, so click here to see it.

Gooey and Chilly

Last March I posted a trailer for an low budget indie called Bioslime. Recently, some stills popped up online courtesy of Undead Backbrain.

All's I can say is it certainly looks like it lives up to its name. Click here for the rest of the pics. Also, new info has surfaced on Bloody Disgusting about Adam Green's new project Frozen. It is about three friends who gets stranded on a ski resort chairlift. You know it's funny. I watched an obscure Korean film called Spider Forest recently and it had a scene where two characters got momentarily stranded on a ski lift. I thought to myself 'why has no one done an entire movie about this?' Well, it looks like Green had that same thought. Green begins filming in Utah this week, so you can follow his progress on the shoot by going here.

"Nobody's Afraid Of The Mailman."

Last night I trekked out to the Bloor to take in a little movie called Dark Night Of The Scarecrow. Having been a made-for-television movie from the early eighties, this was the first time it had ever been played on the big screen. The format was a newly restored version that will be released on DVD later this year. I had never seen this movie before, but its reputation preceded it. You don’t have to go very far into the horror blogosphere to find someone who speaks of this film fondly. It clearly affected a great deal of people during its initial broadcast and later on VHS. I have a question. Why is the scarecrow such an untapped icon of fright? They are frickin’ creepy man, yet you can probably count the number of movies featuring our straw-filled fiends on one hand. After a vintage 16mm trailer for The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (awesome, awesome, awesome!), the Scarecrow was unleashed!

After a simple-minded man named Bubba (Larry Drake) is mistakenly gunned down by a lynch mob headed by local mailman Otis Hazelrigg (Charles Durning), they start being haunted by a lone scarecrow. Initially, they think someone is having fun with them, until the first of the group meets a grisly end. Does someone in town know their secret, or has Bubba come back from the grave for revenge?

Dark Night Of The Scarecrow appears fairly dated now, but that works as much in its favour as it does against it. You might assume that the Spartan nature of the production was to fit into a teleplay mold, but it was actually originally written as a feature and not much, if anything, was changed for its transition to the small screen. It is standard fare, but there is something oddly watchable about it. The story is fairly predictable as I found myself on several occasions to be one or two steps ahead of the narrative – though the ending IS pretty cool – and yet again I was still engaged. It also helps that the piercing score, very indicative of that time period, enhances the movie immensely. Durning excels as the town’s slime ball mailman. He strides around the movie with an air of self-importance that the rest of the townspeople seem to half-tolerate and half-fear.

I’d say the biggest weakness of the film is the conspicuous lack of the title character. There are very few shots of the scarecrow itself, which is a shame because there was huge potential to be capitalized on there. The last shot of the scarecrow at the end of the movie is super creepy and I just wish there had been more of it. I understand that the filmmakers were subscribing to the ‘less is more’ theory, but there’s ‘less’ and then there's ‘too little’. And when I say ‘too little’, I’m not referring to the lack of violence either. Even as much of a gorehound as I am, I certainly don’t NEED the sticky stuff to have a good time. As for the transfer, it looks superb. They certainly took great care (‘they’ presumably being Image Entertainment) in cleaning it up and fans looking to reacquaint themselves will be very pleased.

J.D. Feigelson, the writer of DNOTS was in attendance and stuck around after the screening for a Q&A. He spoke about being unaware there was even a following for this movie until encountering all the kind words online. The most surprising thing about the movie is how close to the script the end product was. According to Feigelson, you could literally read along with the original script, which, let’s face it, is unheard of these days. He also pointed out that he is in no way threatened by the idea of a remake, saying that the original would always be locked in and whether another take on it turns out to be better or worse is completely irrelevant.

Writer J.D. Feigelson

Though I don’t think Dark Night Of The Scarecrow is anything to write home about, there is something to be said for straightforward storytelling done well. With everything in your face these days, it is nice to go back and see how filmmakers told stories back in simpler times.

Time Flies

It's hard to believe that the Suspect fire was one year ago today.

Fortunately, Eyesore Cinema has risen from its ashes (in a location a little further west than its original site) and is now fully established. They are now my go-to source for all things obscure. Here's to many more years on the fringe!

The Red Stuff

Blood. Nothing reminds us more of our own mortality than seeing that dark crimson fluid - or anything else that is supposed to be on the inside for that matter - flow out of us. In horror, blood is an almost ubiquitous component, whether it is dripping out slowly...



or spraying out gloriously!

Is it any wonder red is my favourite colour? My video store was a little short on the infamous gore titles like Maniac and Cannibal Holocaust, so I'll make this week's bloody edition of Coverbox Wednesday a bit more literal. Just the word 'blood' grabs your attention and instantly conjures up all sorts of grisly images in your mind. Is it any surprise then, that horror filmmakers have honed in on this to market their product?