Skinny Puppy's Horror Show

Skinny Puppy, one of my favourite bands of all time is coming to town tomorrow and I can’t wait. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I – the lover of all things horror – am a huge fan as their dark soundscapes as they're often horrors in themselves, even without all the genre movie samples that populate their music. I’ve posted about this before, but with their concert date imminent, I wanted to go into more detail and showcase my favourites. Now, at first I thought this post was going to be an insane amount of work because of all the capturing I’d have to do from multiple sources. However, after some searching around YouTube, I found a few users had already done a lot of the work for me. So, I want to give shout-outs to billynair, dvsoldier, Jennifer1023 & especially radi0n for making this a lot easier on me. So, let’s get on with it, shall we? These are my top ten favourite movie samples from Skinny Puppy songs. Apart from the few instances where they have been mixed together, I will have the original song on top, with its corresponding source(s) underneath. I’ll roll out five today and the rest tomorrow. Enjoy!

10: Song - The Choke; Source - Roman Polanski's The Tenant

The Tenant shows up a lot in Skinny Puppy's work, they even named a song on their album VIVISectVI after Isabelle Adjani's character Stella.



9: Song - 200 Years; Source - The Twilight Zone Episode "Elegy"

The Twilight Zone was an incredibly influential show and this is the first of two occasions it appears on this list.



8: Song - Deep Down Trauma Hounds; Source - Looney Tunes Episode "Water, Water Every Hare"

I always knew it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but it took me years upon years to actually find the right one. Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse was the first Skinny Puppy album that I ever listened to, so naturally it appears a total of four times on this list. The other samples in this song are from an episode of Perry Mason.




7: Song - Love; Source - The Legend Of Hell House

This is probably my favourite instrumental work of theirs. The layering of sounds here is just brilliant. Skinny Puppy were obviously big fans of the film as samples also popped up in several songs on Bites and Remission.

6: Song - Who's Laughing Now?; Source - Evil Dead 2

It's not hard to see why this is one of my favourites. The gratuitous dismemberment of Sam Raimi's classic fits in well with the themes of Skinny Puppy's album VIVISectVI.

Be sure to check back tomorrow when I reveal the final five entries on the list.

Remembrance

Don't Kill The Messenger XXXVI

New UK Horror.

Here below is a new trailer for Nick Cohen's upcoming horror flick The Reeds. It's hard to tell whether the antagonist is man, beast or perhaps both, but it looks pretty solid to be sure.



Oh Happy, Dark Days.

Things are looking good for that 30 Days Of Night sequel. Not only does it have Kiele Sanchez (Lost) and Mia Kirshner (The L Word), but now Bloody Disgusting brings news that Katherine Isabelle has just been cast.

Now, that's a threesome I can, ahem, sink my teeth into. Click here for the full story.

Cronenberg Rules.

While surfing around digg.com, I found a list of top sci-fi-horror films on Top10Films. It should not be surprising that Canadian icon David Cronenberg owns. Click here to check it out.

I Call Bullshit.

The Fourth Kind follows Dr. Abigail Tyler as she investigates strange occurrences in the small town of Nome, Alaska circa 2000. The movie cuts between her actual video & audio recordings and dramatizations with Tyler being portrayed by actress Milla Jovovich.

The Fourth Kind should have been a slam dunk, as the premise is terrifying. Beings come into your room at night and take you away to do God knows what, and the worst part is you can't even remember it. So, you are now a shell of a human being because fundamental parts of you are missing and distorted. Ultimately though, you know what my biggest problem with The Fourth Kind was? I just didn't buy it. This production goes to SO MUCH trouble to make you swallow that this stuff happened, with all the archive tapes and grainy video footage and I just didn't believe a word of it. This video 'proof' is difficult to buy when anytime something interesting happens, the camera goes all wonky, so you can kinda sorta see something. I mean geez, the only time we are privy to a UFO in the movie, I didn't even see it until it was pointed out again with a circle and arrow at the end of the movie. I'm all for not shedding light on the monster, but eventually you have to give us something. The sound is certainly effective, but that can only take you so far. Shit, the end credits sequence of recordings taken of people relating their encounters is more unsettling than the movie itself. How sad is that?

Zombies are WAY easier to deal with.

Now, I LOVE Milla Jovovich – in fact I have a theatrical viewing streak going of her movies that is now at seven – but she can only do so much with the material here. The director's use of split screen at certain points is definitely interesting, but again because it's all bollocks, it didn't resonate with me. I wonder if it would have been more effective if they had just gone one route of the other. Without Milla involved, The Fourth Kind never would have got me into the theater, but if it was all Hollywood, the movie likely would have been even more flat than it already was. I might just be that The Fourth Kind is a little late to the party because the days where pop culture was abuzz with abduction theories died with The X-Files – which itself was largely crippled by 9/11. This would also fall in with how a similar movie called Fire In The Sky was received in 1993. It was largely panned by critics even though being a solid film in my opinion, but since alien abductions would not hit the mainstream for another year, perhaps it was too ahead of the curve. To be honest, I don't think The Fourth Kind works on any level, just because it hinges on the fact that you believe and the infrastructure they build for that is just too flimsy.

The owls are not what they seem.

The Fourth Kind was a swing and a miss for me, but I'll move on without a scratch. And my Milla film streak will continue as my ten bones for Resident Evil: Afterlife is already set aside.

Nightmare Man.

I took a little time this week to read Robert Englund’s book Hollywood Monster. In it, Englund reminisces about his career, which has spanned four decades.

The book starts with forwards by horror legends Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven as they both speak of when they first met Englund and each chapter begins fittingly with the actor sharing a nightmare – either recurring of a one-off – that he has had. Hollywood Monster is a wonderfully brisk read. I burned through it in a few sittings and the smile rarely left my face while doing so. This is a man who loves what he does. He may have initially fallen into local theatre to meet women, but it became clear early on that he was actually good at it. In fact, the impression I got from Englund’s book is that roles were pretty easy to come by for him. And if, for some reason, he was passed over for a part, he stuck in the minds of casting directors and was referred for something else – which was how his audition for A Nightmare On Elm Street came about. I suppose its probable that Englund omitted his more painful rejections to keep things light.


Considering that Englund is best known for his role as Freddy Krueger, I was surprised to find that I found the first half, covering his pre-Nightmare career, the most engaging. Hearing his anecdotes about hanging out with Mark Hamill and indirectly influencing the careers of Andy Kaufman and George Wendt were really interesting to me. And I loved hearing about his experiences playing Willie the alien in V. I’d almost forgotten what a phenomenon that show was in the eighties. It certainly gave Englund a taste of what worldwide fame would be like. That’s not to say the large chunk of the book that covers his career as Freddy isn’t fascinating though. If anything, the tale of his first interview with Wes Craven about Nightmare is one of the best of the bunch. As the Nightmare movies wind down, so does the book, as he doesn’t go into too much detail about some of his other roles, like his turn as The Phantom Of The Opera in 1989 and his re-teaming with Tobe Hooper for The Mangler in ‘95. Hollywood Monster ends with a series of appendix, which cover a lot of Englund’s (and Freddy’s) favourite films, songs and other little tidbits.

The Man Behind The Makeup.

Englund is a consummate professional and it shows through clearly in Hollywood Monster. It is also apparent that he loves working with up-and-coming directors, as proven by his roles in Behind The Mask & Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer.

“Audiences know when you are relying on CGI because your story sucks and the scares aren’t there. And I think their frustration led to nostalgia for good old blood ‘n’ guts and cheap thrills. Fortunately, a generation of young filmmakers – Eli Roth, Adam Green, Scott Glosserman, Tim Sullivan, to name a few – understand this and look to Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter for inspiration, rather than their Mac Pro.”

Hollywood Monster works because Robert Englund is a good storyteller. His style is conversational, full of whimsy and he’s not afraid to be self-deprecating, much in the same way fellow genre actor Bruce Campbell is. What I think I respect him for the most is that he accepts, even embraces the fact that he’s been typecast as a genre actor, as he says, “stumbling into this world was a happy accident that gave me a wonderful career”.

That’s the mark of a class act as far as I’m concerned.

At Least The Rent Is Cheap.

I earmarked last night to knock another title off ‘the pile’. My target this time was the haunted house flick The Haunting In Connecticut, as it had been there since July. I had won a copy from somewhere and had intended to do a review for the DVD release, but didn’t get around to it. The release date came and went and some less than stellar reviews had sort of soured me on making it a priority. However, in the interest of tackling ‘the pile’, here goes.

After The Campbell’s move into an old Connecticut house in order to be closer to the hospital where their oldest son Matt (Kyle Gallner) is receiving cancer treatment, strange occurrences begin happening almost immediately.

The Haunting In Connecticut wasn’t nearly as monotonous as I was expecting, but it was still fairly mediocre. It gets weighed down for the most part – as most haunted house movies do these days – by its conventional structure. The other problem that often arises in this type of film is why the fuck the family chooses to stay, especially considering they had somewhere else to go. I know it’s a financial hit and moving sucks, but you pretty much HAVE to cut your losses when you find a box of human eyelids in the attic. But maybe that’s just me. The Haunting In Connecticut does do some stuff well though. There is a real attempt to focus on the strained relationships of the family and the acting is solid enough to support that lofty goal. Unfortunately, the overall blandness of most of the horror elements only kept me fully invested for about a twenty-minute chunk in the middle. I will say that for all the typical jump scares and ghostly posturing, there were some impressive visuals that spiked the movie once and a while, though the scene on the cover isn’t really one of them. I thought the ectoplasm-vomiting bit was far more striking as a still than it was on film.

Always wait an hour after eating before communing with the dead.

I should point out that the DVD is pretty stacked with extras. There are several featurettes on the real case the movie is based on that are often creepier than the actual movie. Their story is likely bollocks, but the family members seem pretty convinced it happened. So, even though The Haunting In Connecticut is a largely by-the-numbers affair, good performances and some cool visuals keep it from being a total loss. And it’s still miles better than the Amityville remake a few years back. But then again, what isn’t?

Snip: The Final Cut.

Here's the final cut (pun intended) of the 24 hour film race short Schwartz & I made in June. It is pretty much the same version that screened at the competition, except for new end credits and a few insert shots of Boo that we didn't get to put in originally. This short was done for the 2009 Toronto Film Race, where teams were charged with writing, shooting & editing a short in only 24 hours. Snip ended up coming 2nd place in the competition. Enjoy!



Also, here is my short The Mountebank from last year's 24 Hour Film Challenge.