Short of the Week #15: T is for Turbo

One of the breakout contest shorts from the first ABC's of Death was 2011's T is For Turbo from French Canadians François Simard and Anouk & Yoann-Karl Whissell.

Not only were this trio able to parlay this short into a feature four years later, but have also since moved onto directing studio pictures with this year's retro thriller Summer of '84. Not bad for a couple of tapeheads from Montreal!

Rats!

Rats make everything better. Ghost agrees with me! Here's their new video where they go all Italian horror!!!

Worth The Price of Admission

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! The next anthology I pulled off the shelf was Jeff Burr's 1987 flick The Offspring aka From A Whisper To A Scream.

On the eve of his daughter's execution, a writer (Vincent Price) tells a reporter (Susan Tyrell) about the evil that resides in his hometown of Oldfield, Tennessee.

It wasn't until recently that I even realized this movie was actually an anthology. I mean, look at the cover. It appears to me more like an It's Alive rip off. “They were born to kill?” Within the context of the movie that makes no sense. I suppose I should be thankful that the thing on the cover actually shows up, if only for like thirty seconds. Even if its appearance was in itself perplexing, I'm never going to poo-poo creature effects.

So the first thing that struck me was – HOLY BALLS there are a lot of people in this movie! Just in the wraparound you have Price, Tyrell – who somehow looks younger than she did five years previous in Night Warning – and a brief appearance by Lawrence Tierney. The gravitas Price brought to every role cannot be understated. I read that he later disavowed the project, but you can't tell from his performance. He always looked like he was having a ball.

Vincent Price in The Offspring.

The Offspring's quartet of stories were pretty solid and played out in ascending quality I think. The first story that featured Clu Gulager as an Ed Gein-type character losing his sanity was fine, though a bit joyless. I kind of got the feeling the writer didn't know how to end things either so that's how buddy on the cover worked his way in here. Terry Knox showed up in this segment looking surprisingly slobby. He must have gone all Christian Bale before heading to Hawaii to shoot Tour of Duty shortly after this.

Clu Gulager in The Offspring.

The second segment had consummate eighties man Terry Kiser (just before his defining stints in Friday 7 and Weekend At Bernie's) playing a scumbag (go figure) trying to trick a voodoo priest (Harry Caesar) into telling him his secret to eternal life. It doesn't go well for him. Next was about the denizens of a travelling carnival led by Rosalind Cash of which the highlight was a nifty gore gag of someone getting ripped up from the inside out.

Lastly, whenever I see Cameron Mitchell in the credits I know I'm in for a good time. Here he played the leader of a group of Confederate soldiers who, after learning the war is over, come across a very unusual settlement. This mash-up of 2000 Maniacs and Children of the Corn was my favourite of the bunch for sure. Tommy Nowell from Friday 6 & the 80's TV movie Poison Ivy showed up here as well in a pretty bad-ass role.

Cameron Mitchell in The Offspring.

I dug that the stories started in present day and worked their way back to the nineteenth century. It's a pretty cool framing device that I don't think was ever attempted before. Coverbox misrepresentation aside, this movie was a fun watch, just for the genre stargazing alone.

Short of the Week #14: M is for Matador

In keeping with the anthology theme, I wanted to focus on filmmakers who broke out while competing in the ABC's of Death series. Today's short is Gigi Saul Guerrero's ABC's of Death 2.5 segment M is for Matador.

Guerrero had already made a few shorts (and a mini-series) by the time the ABC 2 contest rolled around, but this was the ones that turned the heads of many. The one-two punch of this and 2014's El Gigante proved she wasn't playing around.

She has gone on to make several more fantastic shorts and most recently directed seven episodes of a TV series (with co-creator Shane McKenzie) called La Quinceañera. I wager a feature cannot be far off.

Tales From The Mountain State!

I decree April to be Anthology Month!!! Over the next four weeks, I'm going to post about the three unwatched anthologies I have on my VHS shelf (with the last TBD) starting with Daniel Boyd's Chillers.

Five travellers stranded at a bus station pass the time by relating the nightmares they all had the night before.

Chillers was another film I could sworn I watched back in the day, but remembered none of, except the ending. To be honest though, I could've just as easily guessed it five minutes in.

So off the top, Chillers is not great. It looked pretty cheap - Imdb says it was filmed on 16mm, but it often seemed shot-on-video - and the acting was stiff at times. Having said that, it is not without its charms. Boyd was clearly using the resources at his disposal – West Virginia State University and surrounding areas – I just think his ambition may have caused him to overreach. Though he maybe the only horror filmmaker to ever reference Cocoon, so there's that I suppose.

I give props to Boyd for being able to write five distinct stories for this movie – I've read that he subsequently published a graphic novel in the same vein – even if they were a bit thin. I mean, despite having a quintet of stories, a wraparound and a looooooot of padding (hope ya like drawn out credit sequences, shots of people swimming, and goth chicks dancing in living rooms) this movie was still less than ninety minutes. That said, even though I took the piss out of that credits sequence, it was nifty to see they created an entire font for this movie.

Chiller's story concepts were decent for the most part, it was the execution that was problematic. The first one, if you took the sex scene out, actually felt like an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode. That's decidedly not a bad thing I suppose. Next was a story about cub scouts that was definitely the most competently shot and the only segment that could've worked as a feature. Third was a bit silly and involved a woman thinking that a news anchor was talking to her through the TV. Fourth was a variation on the Monkey's Paw tale that I think was probably my favourite and last was a bizarre, almost out of place tale about an anthropology class accidentally awakening a demon.

As I alluded to earlier, Chiller concluded fairly predictably, but I did get several chuckles out of it, even if only some of them were intentional. This was a perfect example of the typical grassroots fare that grew like weeds on rental shelves during the home video boom. And you can do a lot worse than Chillers.

Short of the Week #13: Killer Kart

Here's a oldie, but a goodie in Floridian James Feeney's short film Killer Kart from 2012.

Break The Mirror!

Last Wednesday, The Black Museum held its newest lecture at The Royal.

This long running series has put on many great events in the past, but this one in particular was extra special, as filmmaker Gary Sherman was particularly well suited for this forum. I've seen him speak at a few events now and man, does this guy have stories. He's an extremely affable individual who would describe himself as “someone who has been very lucky and often been at the right place at the right time”, but I'd say there's a bit more to it than that. It takes more than luck to find a crew that would follow him into the insanely ambitious project that was Poltergeist III.

While it is true that Sherman has always been a very technical director, whether it be that impressive opening tracking shot in Death Line or the abundant special effects (courtesy of Stan Winston) in Dead & Buried, Poltergeist III would be the culmination of his talents. Not bad for a project that Sherman himself said that he initially did not want to do. He explained that the studio had first tapped him for Poltergeist II, but he was unavailable. When they came back to him for part three, he agreed because they'd been instrumental in getting his debut Death Line made. His one condition was that he wanted everything to be done in camera with no optical effects.

Filmmaker Gary Sherman talks Poltergeist III.

We sometimes forget there was once a time when computers did not rule the day and Poltergeist III might be one of the most impressive examples of pre-CGI filmmaking out there. To most I'm sure, the third Poltergeist entry was a throwaway sequel, overshadowed by the tragic death of its young star, Heather O'Rourke. I can assure you that no one thought that after this lecture. Everyone in attendance walked away with a new appreciation for this movie. Although I believe we're still not sure who was crazier, Sherman for attempting it or the studio for signing off on his requests.

The evening consisted of a screening of Poltergeist III with running commentary from Sherman. Whenever a significant effect happened, they would stop the film and he would explain how it was done. We would then watch the scene again with this new context. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Sherman's techniques was that they were honest-to-God magic tricks. When he pulled back the curtain, the audience reaction was that of true awe.

Movie magic!

Using mirrors and double sets, Sherman created an veritable amusement park haunted house – or rather skyscraper. You add in the talents of Dick Smith, the inventor of modern make-up (and the reason I grew up thinking Max Von Sydow was twenty years older than he actually was) you have a gift that keeps on giving. The session ran about three hours and Sherman regaled us about every facet of the production, including the parking garage explosion debacle and the three different endings.

The late Heather O'Rourke in Poltergeist III

Sherman also talked at length about O'Rourke who he absolutely adored, saying that being a pallbearer at her funeral was one of the worst days of his life. He's decidedly not happy with how the film turned out overall, but he's really proud of the effects, which is why he was glad to talk about them at this event. I hope does this talk in more cities because it's a film clinic for filmmakers and cinephiles alike, especially ones with a love of practical and in-camera effects.

I can't reiterate enough how super cool a night this was. It was a Black Museum for the ages that struck the perfect balance of subject and subject matter. Huge thanks to Paul, Andrea & Gary for putting it on.

Filmmaker Gary Sherman w/ BM curators Paul Corupe & Andrea Subissati

*Event pics courtesy of Brian Baker.