the cyn and the horror movies

Isolation (2005)

2010-02-02T21:54:00.036+01:00

Lionsgate, what else...

....oh, ahem. Sorry. Didn't know anyone was already listening/reading/watching, as I'm prone to random forgetfulness these days (yay for Gabapentin...). Wikipedia doesn't really mention it, but the side effects of this drug are impressive indeed. It's like having a déja vù all the time.

Anyways, enough of your host's (that would be me) rambling, and on to what ails us this time: Isolation

.As I already mentioned to TF*, this millennium is in some ways a new start in Horror. I mean... we have Sheep Horror (the brilliant Black Sheep from New Zealand, which I should review here anyways and prbably will), and now there's Cow Horror.

Yes.

Cow Horror.

This is what Isolation is about, basically.

For all you city folk out there, the concept of Cow Horror may be funny and all that jazz - but trust me, you didn't grow up around cows. You are missing something important - the mental link to this absurdity horror cinema throws at us. I have it. Win.

Let me preface this review with a fact: If you ever wanted to see how it looks like when a vet sticks an arm up a cow's ass, this movie is the movie for you. It will also remind you of past traumata (as in my case).

The setting is Ireland, the present. Some scientists** played around with the DNA of a cow - and now, the cow is calving, but the little critter is stuck in the, erm, inside of said cow. It's a bit sad that I didn't get a name for the animal, as I'm sure that even Irish farmers name their cows. I bet she's called "Betty" or something.

What actually scares me is the semi-enticed look on her face whilst feeling up Betty.

Scenes full of human drama enfold as we witness the tragedy that sets the premise of the movie up: The cow has difficulty giving birth, although two men are trying to get the little thing out. You see, Betty - let's call her Betty, shan't we? - is "very tight". I kid you not. Seriously.

Half stuck, Betty's calf already is something of a mystery to us - the thing inside her actually bit the veterinerian Orla who's caring for her (Essie Davis) whilst being in the womb, and the presence of a mad scientist (more on that later) doesn't help. We wonder - what is it? It's just a cow, right?

...or not.

Dan the farmer, who apparently owns the cow (Betty), as portrayed by actor John Lynch of various other movies' fame, gets bitten by the little one as he and Jamie (Sean Harris) try to help with the birth of the young. Something is indeed wrong with this genetically manipulated little calf.

Jamie and Mary: Apparently live in a trailer and are on Dan's land. My first guess was that they're in this movie to provide more gruesomeness. Mary even has resp. had a believable backstory, to my utter surprise. Then again, In was oblivious to the obvious.

Many of you city-folk (well, those of you who are A) actually readung this, B) familiar with the concept of "rural areas", C) live in an actual city, D) only see the countryside in movies or on vacation) will wonder about some points in the movie, or rather, one point: Why is everyone familiar with cows and how to handle them in this movie?

Simple.

Us countryfolk are... well. We are usually familiar with the animals living around us. This is where the past traumata I mentioned at the beginning of this review come in.

Did you know lots of little girls want to become veterinarians? I already told teh_mally*** and TF* about it, and now you're in for the ride as well.

[TRAUMA]

...
...
... back to the movie at hand.

Just like Black Sheep managed to make sheep into scary creatures, Isolation manages to effectively keep you on the edge of your seat once it gets going. It's creepy. And I'm not saying this out of some ...twisted fear of the countryside or somesuch thing. No, ghouls and ghosts, ladies and gentlemen and those of other persuasions***** - it's the movie. Yes, the story might be ridiculous and sound as if some totally stoned up Irish guy came up with it whilst hitting the bong one too many times, but it is a beautiful, well-crafted creature feature that is made out of the simple and stupid pretext of "mutant cow monsters".

On a stupid sidenote, it's amazing how much shit these animals produce. I almost forgot... but Isolation brings it back mercilessly.

Personally speaking I think that the movie works better for people with a certain, uhm, experience with the countryside. Especially the remote countryside. But aside from adding that little ..."personal touch" to horror, the movie delivers anyways. I won't give away too much because I actually recommend watching this movie and don't want to give too many spoilers than I already have, but damn - Isolation is infectuous (teehehee) with its cow-induced madness.

I mean... it has to say something that a gorehound like me thinks that a movie about cows is creepy and has jump-scares as well as unexpected deaths aplenty if you think of the limited cast (only 8 persons, if my count is correct). Well, not aplenty as in "lots of them" thinking of numbers, but as in "lots of them considering how many people actually appear in this movie".

I won't say more besides that it has a really icky twist and that the end really blows home.

8.5/10 biting teeth that are coming for you...

P.S.: Also, don't buy the German edition of the DVD if you want to watch your movie in English without subtitles. The German subs are hardcoded, which sucks balls royally and pissed me off to no end. I can understand English just fine, thank you very much, Sunfilm Entertainment. Fuckers.

P.P.S.: Thanks to Kroh for notifying me of this: http://www.shagrat.net/Portfolio/cows.swf

100% SFW!

* The Friend, in case you forgot. You know, the one who rarely reads the reviews and is the one who happens to be the person I watch the presumably "better" movies I get with. He also said I shouldn't buy the special edition limited 2-discs widescreen - something of Talos the Mummy with Christopher Lee. I still mourn this nonexistant loss.

** Exactly. Black science. I knew you'd all remember, my faithful, loyal min.... readers. You rock!

*** Dude. COW LEVEL!****

**** Gabapentin: Serious business.

***** I'm PC. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I can access the net via my hardware and software, but that I care for those that society doesn't like. Or something like that. Besides, Rincewind****** just puked in the kitchen.

****** The Primordial Malice From Beyond Time And Space

Moon (2009)

2009-12-27T14:09:00.022+01:00

Let me preface this review by stating that I was never a big fan of science fiction. It's not that I don't like sci-fi; I read Perry Rhodan when I was a kid, but the amount of science fiction books I own is not a lot. And by that I mean really not a lot. The only sci-fi I actually enjoyed reading is/was the stuff by Michael Moorcock (because Michael Moorcock rules), which I chanced upon when I started collecting his stuff. So maybe it's my lack of exposion to science fiction that leads me to... not exactly appreciate this movie.

To put it bluntly: This movie (from the UK - shame on you, Great Britain!) is a complete waste of time. Do yourself a favour and watch something else. I found myself sitting in the dark, rocking back and forth with my chair (which I hadn't done since school before I saw this movie) and thinking wistfully of jewels like Death Machine or Lesbian Vampire Killers. Or, fuck it, Gothic Vampires From Hell.

But this wouldn't be a movie if I wouldn't tell you a bit more about it, would it? So, on we go.

The movie starts out with a really interesting advert, telling us that 70% of the earth's energy needs are met by harvesting He3 (Helium 3) from the moon. This is done by Lunar Enterprises - and after the spot, we say hello to our protagonist, Sam (played by Sam Rockwell). Sam is the only person on the Sarang Base 1 on the moon, accompanied only by the roboter Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). His contract runs for 3 years, and he's soon to return to earth to meet his wife and baby daughter again. The only information he gets from the outside world comes in via pre-recorded video messages, and he communicates in the same way, as for some reason the interception of a live feed is impossible.

Sam is an interesting character. When we first meet him, he's not in the best of moods, in a way that Gerty the robot is worried. The only human being on the base shows irrational behaviour, is more aggressive than usual, complains of headaches etc. The lack of human communication is getting to him, and he worries about getting home - in only two weeks, his stay on the moon would be over.

In the past years since he got there, he developed a relationship with the plants on the base (he talks to them), started woodcarving (an entire little town, complete with people - impressive), and generally started to talk to himself more often and regularly.

Then something weird happens: As he goes to get some hot water, he sees a beautiful young woman sitting on the chair in the living quarter. Staring at her, completely distracted, he doesn't even notice that he's burning his hand with the burning water. Gerty, who fixes him up, is worried that Sam starts hallucinating - he doesn't mention the word, but it's implicit enough.

The next day, Sam has an accident.

Long story short, he wakes up in the infirmary. Gerty talks to him, asking him if he remembers what happened, but he doesn't, suffering from slight amnesia. Gerty wants to keep him in the infirmary for a few days to run some tests, and Sam is indeed very tired as the robot suggests.

When getting up for the first time, Sam's legs don't work. As if... as if he'd not been using them for quite a long time. Gerty runs quite a few tests on him, some of them cognitive etc., because he might have suffered damage from the injury. The observant watcher notices that the burn on the back of the hand disappeared. And Sam is suffering from nightmares. And the robot won't let him out of the base.

Sam sabotages the base and manages to convince Gerty to let him out in order to fix the damage - he promises just to fix the damage. Nothing else. So, as expected, he runs off with one of the massive 6-wheelers of the base to the site of his accident. And finds himself, lying wounded and dying in the wreck.

This all happens within the first 30 minutes of the movie. There is practically everything to make a compelling movie: The shots are beautiful, as well as the special effects. The whole set of the Sarang base and the moon is very well done and practically awesome. I liked the bulky look of the equipment and its intentional simplicity (although having them had Sam run a sneak Linux machine would have been nifteh as well). The colours were crisp and clear, and the contrast between cold and warm colours is used with great care and to the expected effect. The music adds to the bleak atmosphere of the moon and the isolation and, indeed, despair our main character (Sam #1) goes through.

After minute 27, the movie remains somewhat interesting until minute 35. During this time, the problem of the character is established... and after that, you can more or less turn off the movie and do something more interesting, like watering your houseplants or lying on the bed and looking at the wall.

The movie takes the interesting premises it worked half an hour to establish and then forgets them in a corner of the bathroom after having taken a piss and some valium. Quite a few of the nice little blue pills, in fact.

I watched it together with Riesenkater, who definitely knows more about science fiction than I do and has actually seen movies of that particular genre, and his reaction was eerily similar to mine. When I mentioned to him that this movie has been compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, he just shook his head and said that that must be the opinion of semi-intellectuals who want to glorify something they don't understand because they don't understand it. The problem is not that the movie is "intellectual" or anything remotely connected to that: The problem is that there just is nothing interesting or new in the movie. It starts out impressive and fine, then takes a turn and violates your boredom-receptors. It RAPES them, actually.

It came as a surprise to me to learn that the movie was already out, and I was looking forward to it. Maybe it was exactly that which turned out to be the problem - my high expectations. Or maybe not.

Oh, and don't get fooled into thinking that this movie contains any horror elements. It's about as much "horror" as Twilight. Only that Twilight is more entertaining. Seriously.

3.5/10 for looking good and having tried in the first 30 minutes.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

2009-07-05T23:18:00.015+02:00

To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie...It's only a movie..."

It seems to be 70s time these days - Rabid was from 1977, Shock Waves from 1977 as well, and The Last House on the Left is from 1972.

The first things I noticed was the soundtrack. It's very ...70s like. Jazzy. Snazzy. You can just feel the summers of love, and can smell the weed (well, that might just be me) pervading the air. Girls are not wearing a bra, Daddy remarks upon his little girl's nipples, gives her a little gift (see below, maybe to enhance the nipples)... and one o those girls, namely one of our initial protagonist, is going to a concert to visit a gig by a band that dismembers live chickens on stage. Want to see them live.

She and another female friend of hers have no intention to go to that concert, though - they are sitting outside together, exploring the wild, drinking whisky, laughing, having fun. On their way in their car to... somewhere else... they hear of a group of escapees of violent rapists and murderers.

Cut to the violent rapists and murderers - a quite nice group of young men and one woman, whose habits include drinking, smoking, possibly listening to wild music and misbehaving.

The paths of our two parties cross when the two girls meet the youngest of the bunch, as they approach him for weed... and he takes them with him, to get some Columbian Gold. However, things don't go as they are planned.

I find this scene strangely erotic.

Meanwhile, we learn that tomorrow, one of the girls would have her birthday, and the parents are busy preparing the gifts and cake for Mari (their daughter).

Who is, in the meantime, watching helplessly as her friend gets raped.

Next day - Mari's birthday - we can see her being carried out of the flat in which she and her friend found themselves, thrown into the trunk of a car ("right on top of your friend!"), whilst the gang of misfits drives somewhere else - with their car breaking down in front of Mari's place. They take her out of the trunk, down into the dense woods. The police decides to not see the car (could cause problems, you know)... good old law enforcement. You can always rely on them.

It's suspenseful to watch the girls trying to escape from the group of violent fugitives - engaging. Something that this movie has in abundance and which new movies from the US lack is suspense. You never quite know what will happen next, the plot isn't so watered down that you could as well have none, and the plot we do have is simple, straightforward and believable. There's nothing fancy about this movie. And I mean that quite literal. Besides for the beginning, with Mari an her friend drinking and enjoying themselves, every minute of this movie is bleak and mercilessly realistic. Me like.

There's also a constant comical element contained within the movie in the form of the incompetent policemen.

Things start to turn weir when the brutes, who killed Phyllis as well as Mari, show up at the house of Mari's parents. They behave a little bit suspiciously. Junior, the youngest member of the gang and a heroin addict, has nightmares in his withdrawal symptoms about letting the gang shoot Phyllis and kill Mari. Whilst throwing up, Mari's mother hears him, comes to help him to his bed... and notices that the gift her husband gave to Mari looks the same as the chain that Junior/Willow is wearing around his neck. Suspicious, she opens one of the bags of the gang... and finds the bloodied clothes of her daughter. A plan begins to form.

One hell of a bloody plan.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable movie with a satisfying plot, satisfying violence, realistic behaviour, and it looks pretty good for 1972.

7.85/10 things that aren't too little, just afraid *grins*

Shock Waves (1977)

2009-07-05T19:46:00.014+02:00

Once They Were Almost Human! Beneath the living... Beyond the dead... From the depths of Hell's Ocean! The Deep End of Horror!

The SS made scientists create a race of superhuman soldiers near Koblenz* (!), with the mysterious involvement of the dead bodies of slain soldiers, used for medical experiments**. This happened at the end of WWII, and indeed, there was a group of soldiers who fought without weapons, killing with their bare hands. They never have been found... not a single one of them.

Cut to a mysterious boat rifting afloat the sea. A female figure is lying in it, and a female narrator voice tells us that she remembered hardly anything. She is in bad shape, and the seamen who rescued her want to know what happened to her... but she cannot tell them.

Flashback... to what happened. And our story begins.

Sun changes colour to yellow, dark, as something is making its way underwater. In those areas, solar phenomena always accompany occult/supernatural phenomena, wherever "those areas" are (B-Movie-Country?). The boat attempts to get out of there (in case someone hasn't noticed yet: This place of the movie takes place on a boat. On a BOAT. Now, that we've cleared that up, let's continue). The people on the boat don't know what is happening, and they're getting uncomfortable.

Their water-bound vehicle is going somewhere... and they don't know where. Especially the appearance of the sun bothers them. The captain tries to disperse the tension, but it doesn't really work. The passengers are torn amongst themselves and there are tensions flaring up with the Captain, mostly due to the blunt way of a certain guy speaking his mind.

Night alls, and sleep comes.... or not?

Our heroine (at least I identiy her as such - Brooke Adams, playing her role as Rose) gets up during the night to visit the silent, handsome, moustache wearing... guy*******. The boat is drifting into an unknown direction, the compass isn't working and they finally collide with...

... a Ghost Ship! Or did they?!
O_o

*shifty eyes*

...and I'm not even at the 20 minute-mark! Take that, boring modern films of lower standards than Shock Waves! And I want to add here that Shock Waves is not exactly what I'd call a "masterpiece". Or a "good movie". Or a "solid movie". But - things are happening... which is always good in a movie.

Let me begin with a short parenthesis about why I like this movie; I've first watched it about 4 (four) years ago, around 2005... could also have been 2004, I am not too sure on that one... and was half asleep and under the influence of beneficial herbal blends whose use I would never condone under any circumstances at the time of seeing it - naturally, my brain added "Zombies" + "Nazis" + "Underwater" + "Peter Cushing" to = "Awesome". And to some degree, this is true. I mean, come on: Underwater Nazi Zombies. It could only be better if it was "A Virgin Amongst Underwater Nazi Zombies"... or something like that. It has zombies, to which my generation has a very close relationship. It has Nazis, to which especially my generation in especially my country and Germany have a very special relationship with***, and... well, it has boats.

And it is hilariously funny. I have to start laughing every time I hear the narrator's voice at the beginning, followed by the dramatic Swastika******...

...Did I mention it has John Carradine?
End of short parenthesis.

Next morning, the Captain is missing. There's an islang close by, and the survivors of the crash and the succeeding night travel towards it in the small rescue boats of the Bonaventura (the name of the crap of a boat they are/were on). Whilst doing this, they find the Captain (John Carradine!) ...floating dead in the water.

Whilst exploring the island, which has a jungle-like atmosphere, they stumble across an apparently deserted old villa. Of course, they break in to have a better look at it (have these people never seen a horror movie?). They meet its only inhabitant - Peter Cushing. Later, we find out that he knows what is going on... and that there's "danger in the water".

In the meantime... let us switch from the complicated plot to what interests us really:

Underwater Nazi Zombies!

They first really show up at around the 35 minute mark, but then we get continuously more of them rising slowly out of the sea. Within that whole SS-undead-supersoldier-background story, I actually found their slow movements to add to the atmosphere. They walk in broad daylight, and yet you feel threatened by their mindless single...minded...ness... uhm. Yeah.

Peter Cushing is a commander of the SS - or rather, was the commander of a SS unit. As he finds out that people got killed, he tries to explain what is happening - that they, the Germans, created the perfect soldier - pathological murderers and sadists as well, called the "Todeskorps". They proved to be too vicious and were captured as their behaviour became erratic, were kept sleeping and imprisoned. As the war effort grew more desperate, he - Peter Cushing, he has no name - was ordered to bring the dreaded unit back - but he sank the ship with its cargo and since has lived on this island. And now, the Underwater Nazi Zombies have risen again...

Random Fish Picture.

The people try to escape the island, and what happens is predictable - they are followed by the zombies. Underwater. Of course. I mean, they had time enough since WWII to get used to it, it's convenient, camouflage enough... plus, if this was a normal zombie movie, it would be boring. I have to admit that it borders on boringness with its spare use of zombie action until the hour mark. Sometimes, a slow buildup is good, but at times, Shock Waves is overdoing it a bit.

But then, the protagonists are being robbed of all hope: Their boat...

...does this.

So, we get more Underwater Zombie action. This time, on land AND in the water, it's quite refreshing. Our heroine gets hunted somewhat fierce (well, for this movie, compared to, say, the Dawn of the Dead remake, it's cheese). People split up (of course... *sighs*), but the rightly terrified heroine finds a way to incapacitate and kill the Underwater Zombies: Removing their goggles when it's sunny out there. But as it's not sunny anymore as night breaks, they lock themselves in a small room with a lamp and hope to survive the night... whilst outside, the Todeskorps runs amok. With an unexpected psychological twist that I appreciated, they lose their only source of light and can't lock themselves in anymore. During the day, the hide-and-seek game between the two survivors (guy and heroine) and their hunters continues, outside on the island...

The camera shots are at time really good, and although with little effects, they managed to get the Underwater Nazi Zombies across as weird and alien. They're just not what you expect from an underwater zombie - I mean, look at the zombie at the begin of Zombie Honeymoon, that's how you normally picture an underwater zombie. But these...? These are creepy. Well, not really, but in a zombie-way for someone who has already seen a lot o movies with zombies in them. You'll like the scenes of the Underwater Nazi Zombies rising out of the water.

All in all, the movie isn't bad, if at times unnecessarily drawn out. If you want to see Underwater Nazi Zombies for the first time in your life, watch this flick. If you know of any other Underwater Nazi Zombie films, please let me know. It's an endearing subgenre.

7/10 times sunglasses really help you when you're that photosensitive

*Koblenz: Situated in the picturesque landscape of the Rhine and Moselle and surrounded by four low mountain ranges is the 2000-year-old town of Koblenz. Its abundance of cultural monuments and historic buildings, its cosy lanes and narrow alleyways, the relaxed and happy atmosphere of its squares and river promenades make Koblenz a friendly town where its guests feel right at home. (Source, 5/06/09 1812)

**Black Science

***Depending on your political views and what you went through in school. I'm naturally left-wing oriented, with anarchistic leanings, so that does not bode well for me being of the enthusiastic relationship with Nazism-sort, but 5 (five) (!!!) years in school with NOTHING BUT LEARNING ABOUT WWII IN HISTORY CLASS DOWN TO EVERY LITTLE DETAIL AND HAVING THE GUILT PUSHED INTO YOU will make you, or at least me, a Nazi-hating leftie. Who thinks Nazi Zombies are awesome. Just as Jesus Zombie****. Or vampire zombies*****.

****Zombie Jesus.

*****www.lastblood.net, thanks to Amalgam for that link originally. Zombies and vampires. Check it out.

******Which already appears on Samarra-ware type pottery in Mesopotamia around 5000 BCE, so sue me, it's an ancient symbol.

*******I apologise for the lack of detailed actor names, but I can't for the life of me figure out who is who at the moment, so please forgive me.

Rabid (1977)

2009-06-08T02:21:00.017+02:00

Good to know. Thank you, movie.

We start out with a woman and a man riding a motorcycle - rather fast - through some nice scenery of wood and fields.

Cut to a medical corporation - a bunch of high-ups are discussing a new kind of plastic surgery.

Cut back to the couple on the motorcycle - and there's a big car trying to turn around their SUV, stuck on the road.

This

+

This

=

This

turning into

This (Yes, there's a person inside)

Luckily, someone sees the accident happen, and the ambulance is called quickly. The guy only has a broken hand and some other minor injuries, but the woman... she burned, and needs to have major surgery. She's rushed to a hospital where the medical corporation guys were discussing earlier - about a new kind of plastic surgery...

As the woman is badly injured, they use the new, radical plastical surgery technique. Taking skin from her upper leg, they created grafts from that skin, going back to something akin to stem-cell-research.

2 Months later... the woman is still not conscious.

One night thought, she wakes up screaming and flailing around. A guy comes to check for her, and she insists he stays as he wants to call the doctor... and complains that she is so cold and he is so warm. She hugs him... and he starts to scream, and blood starts to flow from under his arm. And she... she seems... excited.

Our female protagonist escapes from the hospital one night and chances upon a stable with lifestock in it. She hugs one of the animals, and ...something appears to happen. She seems to receive ...something, but it makes her sick and she throws up. Blood.

The story rolls on from that point - a typical Cronenberg movie. His visual style is arresting, as usual, the changes of focus, the simple, crisp pictures, the lingering shots... everything we know to expect from the Master. Yes, I adore Cronenberg far too much, just like Stuart Gordon and a few other directors.

Basically, Rabid is a movie about blood, changes in blood and changes in people. Physical and mental changes. Rose (our protagonist) is undergoing changes of a definitely weird nature - the skin graft on her arm grew into a penis-like feeding spike. It basically works like a vampiric feeding-device, like fangs or a sort of short tentacle to tear into people and suck their blood.
In turn, people who get... uhm... fed off by Rose turn into bloodthirsty, living vampire-beings. As the incidents spread, the media and police suspect rabies infecting the people involved. They have no idea that what they are facing is people changing into blood-feeding creatures, and that the cause is nothing but a young woman... that has changed in a grotesque, vampiric way (but without all the modern, 21st century vampire-"coolness" attached to it). Rose is a rather plain woman, has no special powers.

The "infected", on the other hand, degenerate more and more the longer they live, especially without nourishment. Some look like zombies.

Rose continues her spree through the US, feeding and infecting people with whatever it is that changed her into what she is now.

The pain of our protagonist is palpable in several scenes, as Need consumes her and she can't/doesn't feed on the human blood she needs.

Soon, the epidemic of infected people is getting out of hand. Martial Law is established, as it has turned out that the victims of the "rabies" are immune to medical intervention. Shooting them is as good as capturing them, because they will fall into a coma shortly after arrest (and being kept from feeding) and die soon. Surely it's more humane to shoot them before they reach this state?

It's amazingly brutal for a Cronenberg movie - compared to his other movies, there are lots of kills, some just for the sake of shedding more artificial blood (which looks remarkably realistic at times, and at times like pink goo). Kudos for that.

Te camera is outstanding, as is the editing. The use of body language and lighting and shadow are also professional - Cronenberg shows what he can do once again.

An atmospheric movie I can only recommend. Earns my stamp of approval.

8/10 ways of suffering because of something one doesn't understand

Coraline (2008)

2009-06-07T22:54:00.015+02:00

Ich nenn' ihn Mauzi.*

Delightful movie. Coraline herself is an interesting character, and the way she explores the house after pointlessly trying to get the attention of her parents is beautiful. The soundtrack also really really enhances the feeling of the movie - which is weird, surreal, and at the same time absolutely enchanting.

Coraline's parents are prime examples of a weirdly dysfunctional family. Her father seems to mean well, but is too busy with his work, and her mother (also busy with work) is distant and strict bordering on harsh to the girl.

Coraline reacts to this by being a "witchy girl". We first meet her when she's running around the countryside and later the woods with a dowsing rod.

Back in the house. There's the obligatory family evening meal, and later, it's off to bed for Coraline. The food is disgusting. At night, she wakes up, woken up by mice. She follows one of them down into a room in which she, earlier, found a small door which led into a brick wall. Now, at night, it doesn't lead into a brick wall anymore...but into some weird, surreal world in which she has Other Parents.

An Other Mother, an Other Father... and everything she could ever have wanted in her parents. Happy there, she goes to sleep... and wakes up in her own room. And the door is leading into a brick wall... again.

She also gets a package from Wybie (more about Wybie later, let's just say that he's male and a teenager for now), which contains a peculiar doll in the likeness of Coraline. She is a bit pissed off at this.

She finds out about a man - the amazing Bobinsky - who lives in the house with them. Hilarious and freaky are words to describe him. He is some sort of circus man, and he tells her that the mice told him to tell her not to go through the little door. But he dismisses it, as the mice "did not even get her name right - Coraline instead of Caroline!"...

Then she meets the other ...eccentric occupants of the house, among them two old, weird ladies who live with dogs, live in a darkened room, and who read coffee leaves. One of them tells her that she is in terrible danger and needs to be careful.

Coraline also manages to meet Wybie again - a socially awkward, but funny little guy with a cat and a bike. He is made of win and awesome. I mean, he wears skeli-gloves. How cool is that?

That night, Coraline goes back to the Other World... and things start to get creepy. When she has a fight with her mother the other day, she decides to go to the Other World. The "Other Mother" is already referring to herself and the "Other Father" as Mother and Father. She also meets the cat of Wybie, who can talk in this world... and he explains to her that this world is not a dream come true... but instead something entirely else. And things get... really creepy.

For you see, the inhabitants of the Other World have black buttons instead of eyes... and in order for her to be able to stay, she has to have her eyes removed and buttons sewed into her face instead of them. And everyone is smiling. It's really freaky.

For the cat alone this movie wins my full approval. It is full of Neil Gaiman's brilliant, weird ideas (I just got introduced to his books recently). Like his other "children's book" of his, "The Graveyard Book", I personally wouldn't let any child read that unless I really want to form a child in mine own image.

I mean, I grew up with myths and Stephen King and Dean Koontz, which isn't the lightest fare, but still doesn't have that psychological depth to it. I really, really don't like children, but another side of me says that if I had read that as a child, I would have turned out even more fucked up than I am now. Then again, I still approve of darker books for children.

Great movie. The use of soundtrack is flawless and makes this a truly enjoyable piece of animation. The characters are beautifully animated, and the whole movie conveys an eerie mood.

10/10 spidery claws creating dolls with medical instruments

*<3 R

Aftermath (1994)

2009-05-20T23:43:00.009+02:00

A heart beating. A woman screaming. Blood.

Such ends the life of a young woman. A young woman we shall get to know well.

There's no dialogue - not just hardly any dialogue, as in Trouble Every Day, but literally no dialogue whatsoever. No single word is uttered throughout the whole movie. Blessed silence, leaving us to Sound and Sight... and Imagination.

Suffice it to say, this is not a movie for the faint of heart. If you like sick underground flicks like that, prepare for a mercilessly beautiful movie - achingly beautiful in its simplicity and exposé. If you don't like "sick" movies... I suggest you find something else to watch together with your bunch of friends on your birthday party.

Aftermath is a brilliant movie that deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Granted, today's audience is made up of kids who would screetch around... but still. I totally approve of this movie. One of my favourites.

11/10 pieces of cloth used for brain tissue.

Midnight Meat Train (2008)

2009-05-20T22:51:00.020+02:00

The most terrifying ride you'll ever take.

*yawns*

It's the third time that I'm trying to watch this movie. Not that that's got to say anything about its quality - it just says that I have not been able to keep up enough suspense from the beginning to the end to actually *watch* this movie, instead of having a pleasang look at it from the corner of the eye.

The Midnight Meat Train is one of those movies that I never had high hopes resp. expectations for. I read the original story by Clive Barker (one of the better ones in his Books of Blood), and I have to admit that I liked it. No story I like can turn out good on screen... and Midnight Meat Train proves that once again.

I had high hopes for it, and if it had come to the big screen in Vienna, I'd have seen it - so apparently we either didn't get it or I missed it. Both valid possibilities.

Anyways... Midnight Meat Train. In the story, a photographer discovers gruesome evidence of one of the underground trains of New York going... somewhere. Somewhere else. And that somewhere else includes a butcher selecting clean meat for Them... and Them. It's a delicious story that opens up some questions about Clive Barker's universe and an intriguing read.

The movie... yeah.

The main protagonist plus his handful of friends are sympathetic enough, but at the same time exchangable.

At 0:19:25 we get Ted Raimi! Automatic +1 for the movie. I heart Ted Raimi. He has less than a minute to live. 49 seconds, to be exact. I love his character. Just as I love any of his short-lived cameos.

So... movie. Plot. Photographer who needs to make better pictures in order to secure money happens upon a mysterious guy in a suit, who apparently works at night until the morning comes. Fascinated for some obscure reason, the photographer starts following the man. He arrives in a meat packing plant on his heels of his mysterious quarry.

He also manages to take some pictures of Nyarlathotep the Younger*.

Who is waiting... waiting for something (the Butcher, not Nyarlathotep the Younger... or maybe he is? Or isn't? You decide...).

Or someone?

But a security guard stops him from entering the same train as the man he'd been following.

...

Our butcher has a problem (a quite unsavoury one at that) which makes him slower - worse - at his job: Procuring meat.

Human meat.

Our photographer starts to freak out a little bit when it seems that the people involved in the subway are also involved in unsolved abduction cases along the subway line... and of course, this doesn't go without consequences. Our vegetarian suddenly discovers the joys of meat (steak, to be precise), but things go downhill with his girlfriend. She thinks he's obsessing too much about the whole stuff with the missing persons and the butcher. After an argument, he agrees... only to follow the butcher the very same night

He sees his work. And the butcher sees him.

After what may or may be not a dream sequence, our photographer finds himself ...marked.

He tells his wife, but she doesn't believe him. He seems crazy to her, and she's scared - of him and of what might happen. That night, they try to break into the butcher's room at a hotel. There, they find various torture instruments.

I've always dreamt of one of these...

Anyways, jealousy on my part aside, the movie certainly is interesting. I guess that if the viewer is not familiar with Clive Barker's story, Midnight Meat Train can be an actually engaging film with an interesting storyline which is not quite as predictable as others within the genre. As with the original story, there are hints of something Greater beneath the streets and bowels of New York, the epitome of the City as a living hive.

I'd hit it. Quite literally. Possibly with the hook. *toothy grin*

I like to think of them as ghouls. Yeah, blame me for my impertinence.

I liked that they kept some of the details of the story. As in, really, really liked it. Overall, a surprisingly good adaption of the short story, and an entertaining movie in itself.

...9/10 sterilised meathooks

* See my Hellraiser review.

Mind Ripper aka The Outpost aka The Hills Have Eyes III (1995)

2009-05-20T20:19:00.017+02:00

The Government Created Him. Now They Must Destroy Him.

Yay! Thanks to the fine folks over at Bloody Disgusting, I can finally watch the movie I've always wanted to watch again since I first caught it on TV about 12 years ago. This piece of work is called Mind Ripper aka The Outpost aka The Hillls Have Eyes III. It fails as an installment of The Hills Have Eyes, it fails as a Wes Craven output (then again, what were we expecting - he is only ....."presenting" the thing)... but it works as a nifteh, funny movie that I am deeply nostalgic for.

A group of three (3) scientists find a wounded young man in the middle of the American desert (well... some American desert). They inject him with a curious, uhm, injection - and soon after, the doctor who developed the. uhm, injected stuff leaves the project, as he is not okay with the way the other scientists are treating the subject.

Funnily enough, as coincidences go, on the day of leaving for his holidays with his family, the good doctor receives a phone call informing him about difficulties with the subject... his former subject.

Luckily, the movie is fast: 20 minutes into the movie, we already get our explanation for what what happened when. The military tried, as usual, to create a super-human soldier* by means of scientists**. Actually, they injected the guy they found with some sort of virus... which is now running wild in the subject, changing and transforming him.

...into something that leaves eyes behind.

In the meantime, we get some characterisation through father-son-interaction. Teenagers were allowed to smoke back then, and parents were allowed to get a little louder with their kids.

Cut to annoying daughter of scientist with her even more stupid and annoying boyfriend. "I want to pleasure you forever..." - we all know where that leads ***

For some reason I cannot fathom yet, the dysfunctional semi-family is heading towards the military headquarters - in which the three scientist/military-guys (and gal) are making a desperate run from something they can't understand. Whilst the family is happily walking into the former nuclear testing facility.

A former nuclear testing facility owned by some nice company named GenTec. I tend to inherently trust companies with names like GenTec. They can only have the best of humanity on their minds, surely? They wouldn't ever give in to scientific curiousity... or lucrative offers of high sums of money for more practical experiments. Surely not.

Gods, watching this movie is a pure delight. The camera is at times abysmally bad, very simple and... uhm... old. It's a cheap 90s B-movie in the tradition of 80s B-movies. It screams DTV-release with every fibre of its being. But I love it dearly. I just liked it when I accidentally caught it on TV more than a decade ago, and occasionally remembered it fondly. But now, I love it.

This is happening to the infected man's mouth, for example. In case you can't realise what it is, it's a tooth/claw at the end of a long, tentacle-like, penis-like thing that the mutated soldier can shoot out of his mouth - to feed on other people's "minds" (we freely assume he includes "brains" in that rather broad and metaphysical concept).

They also had computers back in those days when I was but a wee little babe.

Inevitably, the group splits up, because, you know, you're safer in small, uncoordinated groups when in some creepy, apparently deserted surroundings that shouldn't be deserted.

At the beginning of the third act, we get the explanation for all the weird stuff that has been going on on the defunct military base.

The thing that makes this movie special is the mutant/monster - "Thor" (TransHuman Organism). He has a background story, he even has character and a personality. He is changing, and he doesn't know what is changing in him or into what he is changing... and it causes him pain. We get a little twist here, one that makes Thor even more tragic than he already is... and then he loses himself in desperate rage.

Cut to our rag-tag group of heroes, off to save the day. With brains. Because they figured out that our anti-hero needs brains... or rather, certain parts of them.

We get some 15 minutes of filler "plot" (brother-sister-bonding, talks about dad, a useless dream sequence, drama, guilt etc.) before things really start again. Our refugees need to find the kids' father's hand, because only his hand is authorised for the main door (?)

One thing: This movie has far too many survivors. Far. Too. Many. Survivors. On the other hand, it has a nifteh monster that I've liked for the past 12 years.

Plus, I approve of monster-rape (one of the reasons why Evil Dead is such an endearing movie).

I mean... this movie just has it all. A nifty monster with character background, Lance Henriksen, death by monster, death by electricity, 80s visions of computers... far too many survivors... Still, a mightily entertaining flick. And I don't just say that out of pure nostalgia. I actually enjoyed watching this flick, even though the death-count is below acceptable.

6.75/10 sudden onsets of baldness. I love this movie.

*Black Science. Remember?

** Scientists are always working for governments and secret organisations and believe in Evil(TM).

*** Tcha. Better luck next time, mate. We got fooled with that.

Bleeders aka Hemoglobin (1997)

2009-05-19T17:57:00.015+02:00

Ah... H.P. Lovecraft.

I admit it, I am easy to please in some regards. Movies based on stories by HPL are one such thing. No matter how abysmally bad it is, I will see it and to some degree enjoy it. Bleeders aka Hemoglobin is based on the story "The Lurking Fear"... and indeed, it's not entirely off the mark.

The movie explains to us that there was a Dutch countess, Eva van Dam, who was of such a narcissistic nature that she only wished to make love to herself. Failing to be able to do that, she settled for the closest other thing: Her twin brother. And so, a love-story, fairy-tale and horrific dystopia began, lasting for hundreds of years...

Hemoglobin wants us to say hello to our main protagonist: John Strauss (as played by Roy Dupuis). He is pale, has lips that are a little bit too red, his eyes are of two different colours, he can't stand the sun for too long, he can't eat most foods, is always tired during the day, suffers from spontaneous nosebleeds and seizures as well as cramps, spasms and blackouts. It's clear from the beginning that he's not a healthy man.

Thing is, John Strauss is suffering from something that appears to be an incredibly rare genetic disease. John and his wife are traveling to an island from which John's ancestors possibly came from. There, they find some Dr. Marlowe (Rutger Hauer!)... and Dr. Marlowe doesn't come as the bearer of good news. Whilst he is examining the strange young man, the inhabitants of the island are exhuming coffins in the local burial ground - something there seems to be wrong with the ground, and they want to preserve the dead.

John and his wife (can't bother to look up the name right now) get a room at the local hotel. John has it bad - he can't stomach food, and even the mild light of dusk is too bright for his eyes. Walking around, they (well, mostly she) ask about the Strauss family - but to no avail. The people in this village aren't really willing to talk to people from outside the island.

[Insert sub-plot about necklace and burial and grave-robbery here]

Whilst John is falling asleep, his wife is visiting Dr. Marlowe, asking him if he thinks that what John has is hereditary. Dr. Marlowe mentions the Van Dams and their inbreeding habits - and shows her one of the Van Dam children.

Yes, that's formaldehyde.

Meanwhile, John is having flashbacks to... something. Somewhen. Disturbing images.

And he's hungry...

...it's night outside. And the gravedigger's daughter is out. Out in the graveyard...

It's a bit hard to type with that buzzing rhythm pulsing uncomfortably in my right side, so please bear with me. They travel to the Van Dam estate - it is empty now, as the last Van Dams died in a fire 75 years ago. An old woman is supposed to live up there, a nurse who might know more about John's disease.

Meanwhile, Dr. Marlowe is trying to make sense of John's test results, as he gets interrupted - by someone carrying the mauled body of a ...humanoid creature with him. Examining it further, the good Doctor ascertains that it appears to be human, but a hermaphrodite - a fully functional hermaphrodite, capable of replicating with itself.

Cut to John Strauss. He and his wife are surprised by an old woman who seems to recognise John. Further identification ensues, and the old woman tells him that he was the only surviving member of the Van Dam family, saved from the fire. When the talk turns to the desires and Cravings he feels, and he admit that he suffers from them but does not know what they are about, the old woman retreats fearfully, threatening both him and his wife and driving them away. Reluctantly, they leave.

In the meantime, we get one (1) child dragged into the ground through a hole.

Returning in fury, John demands of the old woman to know the truth - she couldn't have saved him from the fire because he wasn't 75 years old. It was his right to know the truth.

...and she shows him...

And the truth is... not all of the Van Dams are dead.

As a storm approaches mercilessly, the small island slowly descends into terror. John is sick and hardly able to move on his own; dark rain is cutting into the people's faces, thunder deafens human ears... and somewhere, something is crawling. Eating. Breeding. Feeding.

Dr. Marlowe discovers a group of... humanoids. Things. Mutated monstrosities of centuries of inbreeding... deformities feeding on corpses. It's the remaining family members of the Van Dams... apparently, they had been tunnelling underneath the cemetery for centuries since they disappeared from the eye of the public, feeding on corpses for generations - necrophagia and anthropophagia in general (but mostly necrophagia). Them lucky ghouls*.

Formulating an answer to John's problem in his mind, Marlowe talks to him and his wife, leaving a jar. With a Van Dam embryo in it. For John to feed on it.

After devouring the fetus, John is filled with vigour, life and power.

Then some other stuff happens. It involves a lot of screaming, hysterical people, deformed monstrosities, light, darkness, psychological terror, ...

...and then my favourite scene EVER.

EVER.

And no, I won't tell you about it (actually, it's two scenes, but what the heck).

Bleeders aka Hemoglobin is a very atmospheric movie; a friend of mine called it "dreamy", and I think that's a word that can be employed with a good conscience when talking about this movie. It has a dream-like quality - much more so than the short story "The Lurking Fear" upon which this movie was loosely based.

If you like Lovecraftian inbreeding stories, then you should enjoy Bleeders a lot. And if you like slightly weird, character-centered movies, you should give it a go as well. I would recommend it to the vampires-crowd, but Hemoglobin isn't pretty and shiny enough for that. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Ghouls have rights, too**.

Rutger Hauer's performance is not as great as it could have been, but then again, I compare each of his performances with The Hitcher... so he naturally pales in comparison to his old self. Roy Dupuis has some really fine moments in the second act of the movie - when the film starts, I sometimes wanted to bitchslap him for being artificial, but during the second act, everything he did became fluent and natural. I now wonder if I haven't been a bit too harsh, for maybe the artificiality of the character of John Strauss is not just an accident of bad acting but an intended characterisation of the persona being incorporated.

9/10 whole new sets of senses...

*You might be wondering why I classify this as a ghoul movie, but considering my personal definition of a ghoul, it fits.

**If I ever should find myself leader of a political party, that will be my motto.

Angst (1983)

2009-05-19T15:44:00.012+02:00

Angst is an Austrian movie, made in the glorious year of my birth. We follow .... ....., a guy who has been living 14 years of his life in prison - first for attempted murder of his mother, then for a random old woman he killed. He narrates his story to us.

This movie is so essentially Austrian that I only want to mention it once. This movie breathes Austria.

Our protagonist informs us that he plans to kill again - and again and again. His plan consists of visiting the first café that's open to look for a human.

Camera, editing, sound and acting combine to create a tense atmosphere. Our protagonist - our killer - needs to act out his fantasies after 10 years in prison. After a failed attempt to kill a female taxi driver (she reminds him of his first girlfriend...), he gets out of the taxi, slightly disoriented, and runs through the wooden area. He does not know where he is, how long he was running or into which direction. Aimlessly, he walks on.

...until he chances upon an apparently empty, deserted house surrounded by a park with a small wood and a lake. Ideal - no neighbours anywhere, big, isolated... our protagonist breaks a window and enters the house.

He is full of nervous, greedy tension, and informs us that he cannot take it much longer without... without. He is afraid - in a state which ruled out any logic. He is afraid of himself. Thoughts of his grandmother and his early childhood fear of being alone in a dark room. Haunted and tense, he wanders through the house... and then he sees the white car approaching. The inhabitants.

His plan will work. This place is perfect.

What follows is the spiraling down of our protagonist's rational thought into disorder and fear, the events spiraling out of conscious control. His thoughts scatter, drift back to his childhoods. His mother tried to kill him. He explains it to us in the same way he explains to us that he hadn't been wanted by his mother, as she would have preferred a girl. Growing up with his grandmother, who was very religious, he was sent to a monastery. They also kept animals there, and he used to go there and cut one of the animals - a pig - until it bled and screamed. After that, he'd had to leave the monastery. His mother then told him that his family had to be afraid of him. Fear. Abuse had followed, in order to discipline him.

All the while, he is pacing around frantically through the house, searching for his victims. He needs to find them. Needs to kill them. Both of the still living victims are incapacitated in some way... so it's not that difficult to find them. But still, nothing went as he had imagined it. He wanted it to be ...more dramatic.

The plan goes haywire. One of the victims, the old woman, appears to be unconscious, and he needs her to be conscious. He wants to see her suffer. Semi-freeing the daughter, he crawls off with her to the kitchen to find the medication for the old woman. Indiscriminately, he feeds her pills, for she still needs to whimper and cry before him - she cannot die just like that. But she's dead.

Rage.

And then... cold again. Now, only the girl is left.

But this death also doesn't go as planned, and frustration consumes him - his urges are still unfulfilled. No torture. No pain. Everything went too fast, had been too much out of his control.

And then... well, then things spiral even more out of control.

The camera is always well done - nothing special, a bit minimalistic, but good at capturing the mood of an Austrian city and Austrian, uhm, woods. Some of the shots are more than just good and help to add a frantic, surreal atmosphere to the movie, as befits a flick about a serial killer spiraling out of control. There is no logic to his psychotic needs anymore - where before there was cold planning, there now is hectic, frantic, impulsive rage and delusion.

Killer-wise, we get treated to some light necrophilia (if we can call it that) and the spectrum of manic episodes in a disordered serial killer after his first kills in 10 years.

I congratulate Erwin Leder for his portrayal of the psychopath. It's a good performance that shows us one of the myriad faces of mental disease. He really is perfect for the role - whilst watching Angst, you can literally see Leder grow into the role more and more the more demented our protagonist becomes.

He is, as an actor, delving into the midst of psychotic, fragmented thought - the thought-pattern that has come to dominate our killer's psyche. Wide shots accompany him as he hurries to the car, showing us the bleak Austrian landscape of autumn. That specific Austrian feeling. Funny Games (the original, not the remake) had some of that atmosphere as well, but nowhere near as completely and markedly as Kargl's Angst.

Déja vù.

A brilliant movie. I personally can only recommend it.

10/10 unstable serial killers who never experienced their mother's love.

Staplerfahrer Klaus (2000)

2009-05-19T15:07:00.013+02:00

I don't know what to say... hilarious.

Klaus, now one of 37,000 qualified people in Germany who can call themselves fork-lift drivers, experiences his first day at work. It's an educational movie. For people who, you know, learn how to drive forklifts. A friend of mine actually had to watch it during his course.

Klaus is a very careless forklift driver. He is responsible for one supposed death by falling, one zombie-sort-of-thing by knife-to-brain, one loss of two hands,

one separation of torso and legs, one impaled colleague, one severed head (his own), another impaled person, one severed arm with chainsaw and one cutting in half of an injured guy. All that by virtue of fork-lift driving.

Nifty little movie if you're bored and have 9 minutes to kill.

6/10 for the sheer hilarity and the tongue-in-cheek humour

Joshikyôei hanrangun aka Attack Girls Swim Team vs. The Undead (2007)

2009-05-18T21:13:00.007+02:00

Oh my freaking Gods. Nyarlathotep, Enkig, Nergal, Hastur, Azag-Thoth, Arioch... what the fuck is this movie about?

A young girl in a swimming pool. She seems to get pulled underwater at times,, although she's perfectly alone. Loses hair. Cut to Japanese schoolgirls in, well, Japanese schoolgirl uniforms. Cut to Japanese schoolgirls swimming. Cut to boob-shot. Cut to more Japanese schoolgirls in aforementioned school uniforms... and we're informed that a new virus is going around and that people are required to wash hands and gargle.

Weird scene with swim-team coach following.

If you like Japanese schoolgirls, you'll like this movie.

Aki, the new girl at school, finds herself variously under showers with other girls who happen to share the same birthmark as she does, being shunned as a creepy outsider, enjoying the air... and in the meantime, the pupils get shot up with a green vaccination*...

...and the teachers with a yellow one.

Then, Aki wakes up to this:

Sexual tension of course ensues. And all the time, the voice in the background (aka the subtitles) tell us that everyone should get their vaccination shots right now at the nurse's office. But still, the girls are coughing, feeling weak, stumbling occasionally...

And for some reason, it's important that Aki joins the swim team - at least to one girl (the girl she had a shower with, and who not only has the same birthmark, but also the same mole). Aki says she doesn't like the water...

Poor, sick people get the attention of worried, scantily-clad people. *sighs*

Enter the coolest maths lesson you ever had: Meet decaying zombie maths teacher.

Mahyem ensues. The school (all girls, I might want to add) erupts with zombies.

At this point in the movie, you have some vague idea of what is happening. There's a school for girls, with a swim team. Made of girls. There's a new girl, and everyone is wearing very short skirts. Suddenly, there is a virus, vaccinations, and zombies appear everywhere around school, normal people morphing into them. Some of them seem to be classical zombies, other seem to be more of the Versus-persuasion of zombies.

We find out that only the swim team (made up of Japanese schoolgirls) is unaffected by the virus/zombie-ism. They figure out, thanks to Aki, that there must be something in the water - or, as our heroine puts it, "the Secret is in the Pool".

But of course, there are difficulties on their way to... whatever it is they want to go.

For example, your zombified maths teacher who wants to kill you.

Then he suddenly wields a torch, and you, the viewer, are just sitting there, eyes wide open, mind blank. What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?

You have about 3 seconds time to wonder before the movie cuts to another scene: Aki (our heroine), is in... some place, and the other girl (the one she had a shower with and who has the same birthmarks as she does) is caring for her. Talking about... stuff. Swimming. Sides. Training.

Aaaaaaand...

Character Background!

I like how frank this movie is with us. We don't need no characterisation of evil - "He was a mad scientist." Brilliant in its simplicity. I mean, what else do we need to know?

And man, we like our character background, aka "How Aki became a Water Assassin".

(involving kink-training)

...and her escape from the accursed life of a H2O Assassin because of reading up on serious mattters. Teenage girl magazines, in this case.

Turns out that shower-girl is willing to, eh. Look for yourself:

Also, you cannot not love the noises Japanese schoolgirls make whilst having sex. To quote teh_mally****: "The whimpering..."

So.... the plot at this point: Somewhere, people are turning into zombies, something is wrong with the water/the vaccinations, zombies, softcore lesbian sex, Japanese schoolgirls, Japanese schoolgirls, softcore lesbian sex, Japanese schoolgirls, tender moments... uhm... what is this movie about again?

Oh, yes. A chainsaw-wielding female super-zombie teacher. And zombie schoolgirls. Let me tell you one thing: I have rarely seen such ...idiotic zombie acting. And that says something. But still... if I haven't managed to say it yet:

This movie is full of win and awesome.

At some point, your brain just stops trying to make sense of what is happening onscreen. You just sit there watching girls taking showers, swimming, zombies, randomness, Japanese schoolgirls getting it on, random semi-erotic scenes, random semi-hilarious scenes... and sometimes, there are zombies. For a little while. Then there are encouragings speeches about fighting together as a girl swim team.

I think that screenshot says it all.

Anti-zombie-rally by the girl swim team. Appearance of mysterious coach. Former zombie-teacher appears. Still a zombie. Able to fake human emotions. Completely insane. Kill Bill with zombies and Japanese girls in swim-suits. With... swords. And staffs. And bricks. You're watching it, but somehow, it doesn't really register as a whole on your brain. It registers as... a bunch of weirdness. Again: What. The. Fuck. Is. Happening. On. My. Screen?!

...Followed by a twist that really actually isn't one, if you were somewhat sober when starting the movie (in the hope of it making any sense). Somewhat's not what he seems to be... and then, for some reason, there's a bomb. In the school. Exploding.

Aki, our heroine, barely escapes the mighty explosion, but alas! She is captured by her evil former master, who taught her how to become a H2O Assassin. He identifies her by, you guessed it, making her masturbate because of his flute-playing. Then she drops her schoolgirl-skirt... and...

...you start laughing and giggling hysterically and can't stop anymore. She defeats the guy, kicks him in the balls, he injects himself with zombie poison (green), becomes Super-Enemy(TM), and finds insane weaponry, nearly kills him, he injects himself with the yellow zombie poison (which makes him go all insane and rage-y), another Final Battle...

...followed by hawt lesbian incest kissing, as the two girls, Aki (our heroine) and Sayaka (the girl with the birthmark) celebrate that they're sisters. But then - alas! Betrayal! They're not twins at all - it was a fake! Just as Aki was the Master's slave, Sayaka was - and she adored the Master as a god. So, she, like kissed Aki after coating her lips with a nerve paralysis causing agent. called AK151.

Up until now, you have managed to suspend any disbelief - you just sit and watch. Dialogues like "Where should I start cutting? I'm pretty jealous of your cute, soft breasts..." (O_o)

Attempt at Final Battle - but then: Plot Twist! Unexpected one at that. Really unexpected. You could even call it another WTF?!-moment...

Really. It's just "WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. HAPPENING. ON. MY. SCREEN?!"... all the time.

And I can't even bring myself to try and understand the... Final Final Battle. It apparently involves a stick of power. Cosmic power, or something. And,,, oh my Gods, You just won't believe it. You shall also mentally chant the mantra of this movie**.

It's awesome. Pure fucking awesome.

9/10 WTF?!-moments...

*Look at it. Can you feel it?***

**"WHAT.THE.FUCK."

***Black Science

**** ...dude.

Vampire Diary (2007)

2009-05-14T17:23:00.021+02:00

Lead Us Into Temptation

...and deliver us from the goths.

You see the characters and you hate them. That makes it hard for me to objectively review this movie adequately. But then again, every review of mine turns into me ranting subjectively on something, so there we go.

Meet the gang! Yippiiee!

Vampire Diary starts out in a special subset of the goth-scene: The vampire lifestyle scene, in this special case that of London. For some reason I cannot fathom, these people call themselves "weekend vampires" - a bunch of young adults who like to "play vampire" in their free time. They dress up as vampires, put fake fangs in their mouth (I guess that makes it hard to talk without a slight lisp, as can be heard throughout the movie, which is quite amusing) and dance to loud music and frantic, epilepsy-inducing lights when they are not cutting each other's arms in something they call "the exchange" in order to suck on the small cuts.

Within this freaky scene we find Holly, a quite normal young filmmaker who decided to shoot a documentary about this group of young people, associating with them and filming all the while.

Plothole: The "documentary" focuses around a core of 4 or 5 people (+/- some) - I can't for the life of me imagine that they'd just let themselves be filmed all the time and somehow taking it for granted. Especially not given the wider circle of friends and acquaintances and the entire subculture itself.
And especially not given the set of circumstances - I don't exactly know if cutting other people for blood at parties is the most legal or even sane thing to do. Is there a group of people like that in London? Scary thought. I find it doubtful that such a scene would accept to be filmed just like that all the time by someone who isn't a trusted friend. Yet Holly somehow seems to exist in a vacuum - it is useful for the viewer, because her view of this scene of people is as distant as ours, but it makes a few aspects of the documentary-approach just not believable.

Preparations for "The Exchange"...

Her character is constructed as an outsider to the weekend vampires, partly as a plot device, partly for the viewer and style of the "documentary" - but there's no way people like that would let an outsider film all of their secret ...indulgences (no insults intended for any of my readers who happen to be of this persuasion. More power to you, really.).

Scary fact:
Somewhere, someone is masturbating to the thought of blonde vampire nurses in short uniforms.

This approach worked in Man Bites Dog, a French movie (correct me if I'm wrong, it has been years since I've seen it on a VHS) - but the approach of the filmmakers in that mockumentary was different, and the relationship(s) between the filmer and the filmed more closely cut defined. Plus, for Raptor Jesus' sake, they filmed a serial killer. Holly (Morven Macbeth) is filming a fringe group of goths who think vampires are really cool. Not a serial killer. It just doesn't really work out the way it should.

Anyways, on with the plot. Holly films the weekend vampires, and one day, a woman named Vicky appears in London's underground scene of those living the vampire lifestyle. She is beautiful, she is mysterious, and she captures the attention of Holly's camera quickly. Especially since Vicky is also holding a camera - filming her.

Vicky soon seduces the (straight) Holly, and the two women fall in love with one another - and in the vampire scene, people start to disappear. And Vicky never eats anything, and questions quickly pile up. It turns out that she is a "real vampire" - she has to drink blood in order to survive - human blood. As the relationship between the two women spirals down the rabbit hole because of Vicky being a vampire, it takes a turn for the worse when it turns out that the vampire vixen is pregnant after she had been raped by a male "real vampire". The fetus grows quickly, and Vicky grows ever more hungry and careless in acquiring victims. The situation grows (there we go, I really hoped not to use it a third time, but apparently I can't help it) ever more desperate as the weekend vampires begin to wonder about some things.

Plothole: It is highly unlikely that a "real vampire" would film all it does. Who in their right mind would want to capture on camera how one kills people and drinks their blood? For what purpose? The Saturday Night Romantic Movie Evening With Blankets? "Oh, look honey, that was when I killed that bum. Doesn't the blood look stunning on my face?"*

It's not so much a real horror film than a relationship drama that centers around the problems of the age-old adage how the love between a vampire and a human can unfold (as witnessed by the Twilight craze)... and where to get new victims.

The movie really isn't bad. If you take it as a "vampire-love-story"-kind of movie, it certainly works good. As a horror movie... not so much. However, the vampire lore is something a little more unusual here; as you might have gathered from me mentioning Vicky's pregnancy, "real vampires" can procreate - but only with others of their kind, which would make them another species entirely. "Real vampires are born with two sets of fangs and really really need to drink blood - and only human blood will do. I honestly don't remember whether they mention that "real vampires" are immortal or whether they age normally, or slower, or whatever, but it makes for some nicely played situations.

And the goths are so freaking annoying.

The camera is as could be expected from a fake documentary, but it sometimes offers really pretty shots. And the subtle use of very, very, very slow zoom can be applauded. I liked the zoom.

Another thing... once again, it's Rippy the Razor time;

We get some erotic scenes (as evidenced below), some vaguely gory scenes... they're more tools than anything else. The main character of the story is doubtlessly Vicky, with a great performance from ex-model Anna Walton. She puts in a very strong performance as the "real vampire", and frankly, without her, the movie would be crap. I haven't seen Hellboy II, and I can remember Mutant Chronicles only dimly (too boring), so I can't really comment on her overall acting skills in different roles, but she really carried the movie.

Yes, this is an accidentally shot view of a woman's body. No, no naughty parts.

Useless Trivia of the Day: The song you hear at 0:44:40 is "Lesbian Vampires from Outer Space" by the Scary Bitches.

You really have to accept and like that sort of movie. I was pleasantly surprised... if only more goths had been killed. On the other hand, the movie as a whole concept, taking aside Walton's performance for a moment, it's... not that great. *sighs*

I'm being generous. To encourage a bit more violence and less goths.
7/10 difficulties getting coagulated blood out from between the teeth.

*Yes. Yes it does.

Chemical Wedding aka Crowley (2008)

2009-04-06T00:16:00.022+02:00

What can I say...? I officially apologise for this review.

I personally think that this is, all in all, a great movie - then again, I've been studying Crowley's stuff since I was 15. So... to put it bluntly: Someone without any background knowledge on To Mega Therion and his works will probably think "WTF?" throughout the whole movie.

We get treated to an amusing, nifty opening scene of rural England to the sounds of...well, jolly music, of two young men visiting a boarding house, where Aleister Crowley (aka Good Ol' Uncle Al) is residing. "Do what thou will shall be the whole of the Law." - "Love is the Law, Love under Will." (I apologise to the hardcore Thelemites who might be reading this - although I seriously doubt it that there are any -, if I didn't capitalise the right words. I always forget that stuff... Crowleyanism just isn't my thing). Yadda yadda - apparently, one of the young men is seeking initiation through The Beast.

Chatter ensues, including Uncle Al telling the story of Isis and Osiris. For those who don't know it, here's a recap:

Isis and Osiris were together. Now, at some point, because of something else, Seth killed his brother Osiris and cut his carcass into little pieces, all of which he scattered over the land of Egypt. Isis (with the help of her sister) gathered all of the parts of the body and resurrected Osiris. But the phallus of Osiris was missing, and Isis changed into a birth and used a reed to become impregnated by Osiris. The resulting child was Horus.

This, conceived as a "virgin birth", is considered to be a great act of Magick****. It's one of the basics of the whole Moonchild concept. Well, you either have read Crowley and know what I'm ranting about or you don't.

The young man, to whom this is relayed through the old man, tells Crowley that he doesn't have the money to arrive later that week for his initiation, but apparently, a letter which has arrived should solve that - by one Jack Parsons. You can't imagine how much I had to giggle. Apparently, "the head of our Californian* brethren seems to have fallen under the spell of a writer of science fiction." They invoke his (Crowley's) Scarlet Ritual to produce such a Moonchild.

JACK PARSONS!

After that is out of the way for the movie to begin, Crowley dies, curses someone on the way out.

Let's start with the plot:

Professor Haddo teaches classical history and literature (I hope I got that right, but over here in Austria, it would be classical history and literature... if anyone is out to correct me, please do so) at the University of Cambridge. He also dabbles in the occult (Hermeticism** springs to mind, mixed with a dose of Thelema***). Dear Professor Haddo is what you expect from a teacher of the humanities who's interested in the occult: He stutters, is overweight and seems to have... issues.

One of the people he regularly interacts with outside of his academic circle is a guy named Victor - and Victor is also interested in the occult, particularly the Crowley-brand of the Art.

Victor is sort of cool, actually.

This is the basis for the bond between the two men. Victor also works in a project meant to create some sort of supercomputer based on quantum mechanics. This computer is not just a computer, though - it is a highly sophisticated virtual reality simulator. As you might (or might not) know, quantum mechanics/physics/electrodynamics is a very, very complex field - one that, these days, has quite a lot in common with Magick****. And no, I am not referring to the David Copperfield-kind here. See footnote.

Anyways, back to the plot. The supercomputer has to be tested, but before the official, backed up and nice testing begins, Victor and Prof. Haddo conspire to use the revolutionary machine for themselves. Haddo is put into the VR-suit, Victor types in the coordinates for the information Haddo should receive... and voilá!

We got us one professor possessed by the spirit of Aleister Crowley... an Aleister Crowley who wants to produce a Moonchild during his time in Haddo's body.

Now, the thing is that: In order to get all of this, you have had to somewhat understand the introduction of the movie, the one playing in 1947 (yes, that's actually when Crowley died... although he didn't die of a heart attack due to a letter from Parsons*****) - otherwise, it won't make any sense to you. You won't understand the significance of the colour Red (the Scarlet Whore), the little quips from Crowley, the whole sex-magick stuff (I am wondering if we're talking about IX° here...)... everything.
The remark about Mathers' mother's hair colour will seem completely unimportant and random to you. If you don't remember from the introduction that Jack Parsons has begun the Scarlet Ritual (remember?) in order to produce a Moonchild and do the maths (all two things based on things that are mentioned only once or twice, all in all), the whole movie will seem a bit pointless, and the "big reveal" at the end (which hasn't been a reveal for anyone who knows that sort of irrelevant stuff) will seem a bit hazed and inconsequential to the viewer.

I can see why this movie doesn't score that high in the average horror review. First of all, there is little bloodshed/gore/horror. I wouldn't exactly call it a horror movie, but I don't know what other kind of genre it would/should belong to. Seriously, it's...

Second - and I think that's the most important aspect of this movie - I don't think the average horror movie fan is that well-versed in Western occultism, especially the works of Aleister Crowley. In order to understand the movie, you really ought to have read... uhm... quite a lot by Uncle Al; you have to know about his life, his philosophy, the concept and philosophy of Thelema, Western Hermeticism, the OTO, Crowley's life, his relationship with Parsons, the whole Scientology-OTO-thingie, politics of the occult world before WWII... and I don't want to insult my few readers, but most of that stuff is known only to serious students of the occult. Anyone can read a book by Crowley, but there aren't that many who actually understand what he was saying.

Hell, even the name of the protagonist is an inside joke. Joshua Mathers. It's so obvious it's not even funny anymore. Or is it really just me who notices those things? I mean... seriously. Joshua. Yoshua. Yeshua. Jesus. Moonchild. And 'Mathers'? Please. But nice touch, really.

Note also that the name of the guy who gets possessed by Crowley, Prof. Oliver Haddo, was one of the pen names of The Beast.

It's stuff like that that can make the movie really enjoyable (also consider the trick of Prof. Haddo with turning water into wine). Without... hrmph.

Without that amount of background knowledge, the movie will seem incoherent, weird, even pointless at times.

That said, I enjoyed it immensely. Quotes from Crowley's works and references to it are abundant, even if they're sometimes mangled a bit for the "average" audience. Trying to view this movie as a non-occult person, I'd say that the dialogues are terrible, at times nonsensical and that there is no horror involved in it. However, as someone who is intimately familiar with Crowley and his work, I was enjoying every single minute of Chemical Wedding (although it still hurts my soul that it's "Chemical" Wedding instead of Chymical Wedding... that would have added a nice touch).

Frankly, I can't tell you a lot more about this movie without delving deeply into the realm of the occult and of Crowley's Thelema. And frankly, I don't think that you would be interested in reading that. In the end, it would boil down into me talking lots and lots about ...weird stuff.

Something I definitely have to criticise is the inclusion of Kal Weber as the theoretical physicist Joshua Mathers. Whilst the character in itself is a plausible concept, and the name will get many chuckles from occultists and magick-workers, the movie could have done without him. There is a love-affair between him and a female, redheaded student at Cambridge which was just unbelievable. Maybe it's me and my knowledge about how such affairs turn out in the end (not good for the party that already holds a degree and is supposed to teach and work instead of fucking young students)... but seriously. The role of Yoshua could have been done better - much better, considering the whole Moonchild-thing.

Besides for the constant occult references that only a small part of the viewers will get, the theoretical physics-jargon was also something that one shouldn't put into a movie made for the average viewer. References to Einstein's famous e=mc² abound, as do terms from theoretical physics that the average viewer just won't understand. I'm in the lucky position to know a bit about occultism/Magick and less about theoretical physics, but hey: If you make a movie, don't expect that everyone knows that kind of stuff. I got a good chuckle out of some obscure references to quantum physics, but I bet all my books on the fact that most people won't. Ever.

I hate to have to reference movies outside of the horror genre, but I guess that Chemical Wedding suffers from the same things as Dante 01 or PI: If you're not into the occult, the qabbala and Magick, you won't get much of what those movies are actually about.

Hence: Two different ratings for this one.

cyn-score: 8.75/10 for making me get up and get back into doing more workings.

normal-score: 4/10 for being an incomprehensible pile of spent time wondering about what these people are babbling about.

(See? I can do both, normal reviews and "HOLY CRAP IT'S A CROWLEY FLICK!")

Anyways, I hope to see more movies catering to an audience such as myself.

* I wasn't too sure whether to spell it like that or make it Caliphornian, or Caliph/fornian, or any of those combinations combined with "fornication". Pardon the pun.

**=0 Uhm... google?

*** Knock yourself out.

**** Oh come on, you know the definition. Don't make me pray it. Please... *sighs* Okay. But only because it's you.

You've been warned.

I) DEFINITION.

Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.

(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magickal weapons”, pen, ink, and paper I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magickal language” ie, that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct I call forth “spirits”, such as printers, publishers, booksellers and so forth and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of Magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

In one sense Magick may be defined as the name given to Science by the vulgar.

II) POSTULATE.

ANY required change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner, through the proper medium to the proper object.

(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold. I must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in a vessel which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold: and so forth. Every change has its own conditions.

In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)

*****Jack Parsons. Look him up.

Splinter (2008)

2009-02-18T00:48:00.005+01:00

A young couple, Seth Belzer and Polly Watt (played by Paulo Constanzo and Jill Wagner respectively) are celebrating their anniversary by going on a camping trip - to have cuddly sex underneath the stars. However, things don't turn out as they were supposed to - they get car-jacked by ex-convict Dennis Farell (a great performance from Shea Wigham) and his reluctant girlfriend Lacey (played by Rachel Kerbs) aka "Firecracker", who is on withdrawal from her drug addiction.

Whilst driving on, they manage to run over a small animal... which, interestingly, manages to kill one of the car's tyres. The dead creature has splinters growing out of its body, which explains why it devastated the car that much. Dennis, whilst helping to change the broken tyre, gets stabbed by one of the splinters, which are stuck in the object. He dismisses it, and the four people carry on driving. Which would be fine... if it wasn't for the broken radiator of the car (courtesy of small splintery animal on the road). When they arrive at a gas station, which is abandoned, the real terror starts.

Man. I don't know what to say. Oh, no, wait. I do know what to say.

I've read numerous reviews about why Alien was such a great and suspenseful movie. As I am a child of the eighties and never really got around watching Alien before I knew how the creatures looked like, I never was afraid of the movie (when I finally watched it, that is). And I think that Splinter has the potential to be something akin to Alien when it comes to the terror and jump-scares the monster/creature can inspire in the hapless audience watching this film.

Seriously... I wasn't expecting much. First of all, monster/creature flicks aren't exactly what I'd term my favourite sub-genre of horror. More often than not, they are completely disappointing and ridiculous (I apologise to all the fans of monster horror flicks out there... we just have to agree on disagreeing with each other). But Splinter... wow. I was literally on the edge of my seat for most of the movie's playing time.

The acting is not bad - although there are some instances of the characters not exactly behaving realistically (mostly in the first 20 minutes of the film), the acting and interacting between the characters was fluent, believable and realistic. The only point I'd have to criticise in regards to the acting would be the character of drug-addicted Lacey (Rachel Kerbs) - she was just way over the top to be taken seriously as a real character. Withdrawal or not, it was just... well. Overacting. But that problem solved itself nicely.

And the creature... oh my god. We never get to see it fully, but trust me when I tell you that it's one magnificent, garbled, distorted monstrosity. I mean... wow. The way its parts are moving... awesome. Just awesome. More than awesome, even.

A solid movie with a good script, good acting, an awesome antagonist (or should I make that plural?) and a really good idea when it comes to creating terror in the audience. I was hooked from the very first minute on. Everything just... fits. Perfectly so.

It's a rare movie that can keep me entirely focused and at times creeped out. Splinter managed to do all of that, and more. Recommended - definitely recommended!

9/10 freakishly rearranging limbs, hungry for blood.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

2009-02-17T07:37:00.000+01:00

Man is omnipotent; nothing is impossible for him. What seemed unthinkable undertakings yesterday are history today. The conquest of the moon for example: who talks about it anymore? Today we are already on the threshold of conquering our galaxy, and in a not too distant tomorrow, we'll be considering the conquest of the universe - and yet man seems to ignore the fact that on this very planet there are still people living in the stone age and practicing cannibalism.

There is so much baggage and back story that goes with the movie that it is entirely impossible to simply write a review of Cannibal Holocaust without delving a bit into the reasons why this movie is as infamous as it is.

But first, I'll try to give you a short synopsis of what passes for a plot in this flick: Professor of anthropology Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) travels to the Amazonas - the "Green Inferno" - in search for a team of four young people, who travelled there to film a documentary about cannibalism as practised by certain tribes living in that area. Together with Chaco Losojos, a man who knows the jungle like his, errr, pockets and what I can only surmise to be a half-native guide (and a native tribesman who is used like a dog) he embarks on a search that makes him experience for himself how cruel reality can be - and when he discovers the remains of the film the four missing (and dead) people left behind as their legacy to the world, he discovers that the cruelty of reality isn't just confined to "primitive" people, and leads him to wonder who the true cannibals are...

I have a few issues with this movie, to be honest. Let's start with the most obvious one:

Lack of cannibalism.

Yes, you read that correctly. Maybe my appetite for gore (no pun intended) is a bit too high for a movie from 1980, but considering that this movie is named Cannibal Holocaust and deals with, well, cannibalism, I was definitely expecting more. What we get are a few scenes of implied cannibalism, and the few shots of "actual" cannibalism just look fake. And not gross and disgusting at all. Or, you know, bloody and violent.

My favourite scene - a meouwser, only in big!

Which brings me to my second point: The blood and the gore effects. For Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake, can it be that hard to at least produce artificial blood that doesn't have that faint touch of pink? Considering that Ruggero Deodato had enough money to film on location in Colombia and New York, only filming the interior scenes in his native Italy, it sure as hell couldn't have been a question of money.

To all you ambitious film makers out there who want to avoid someone like me ranting about how the lack of quality-blood makes your movie terrible: Add a little bit of green to it. Make sure it has the right consistency. Make sure it's not too bright, or, gods forbid, pink. Trust me - a little effort with the blood makes up for a lot. Deodato or whoever was responsible for the creation/acquisition of the fake gore sure as hell didn't go for quality with the blood. Or quantity, if I might add that with a slightly nagging voice.

Third point: The portrayal of the Yanomamo and Shamatari tribes... I don't care that the film is presumably misogynistic, but damn, if that isn't exploitation at its core, I don't know what is. I seriously don't know how they got the natives to cooperate and play their assigned roles in Cannibal Holocaust, because man... demeaning. I was constantly reminded of animals - only that, in my experience and in this movie, animals actually are treated better. As long as they're inedible. Ehm.

Plus... careful with the word "primitive" and the use of the term "stone age" to indicate that something is "primitive". At least try to be careful with that around me, movie, because that happens to just include my archaeological field of study, and I'm easily offended when it comes to calling my chosen cultures "primitive". Or any other culture that is remotely linked to mine by the derogatery use of the term "stone age". Let me add that "stone age" is a bit of a vague term, because it encompasses quite a long time.

Then there's the sex scenes... or should I make that "rape scenes"? I have no problem with rape scenes in general, but watching one in particular, in which the documentarists are gang-raping a young native female, made me feel ashamed of being a member of the species homo sapiens.

Pwetty. Me like.

On to the strong points of Cannibal Holocaust.

The first thing that I noticed was the incredible soundtrack, created flawlessly by Riz Ortolani. It is atmospheric and incredibly well made - it adds a special quality to what may otherwise remain a more or less unspectacular exploitation flick from the very beginning of the eighties.

The gore and violence, whilst not exactly on a level which sits well with the gorehound in me (as the three people who read this blog of mine know, the more blood and guts and pointless violence I get to witness in a horror movie, the more happy I am), is at times beautifully executed, as with the skull in the screenshot above.

What I could have done without was the animal cruelty. 'Nuff said about that topic.

Stone peni:

I will never look at a vibrator with the same eyes after witnessing how the script of Cannibal Holocaust uses that stony, ehm, member.

The acting is actually good - not great, not wonderful, certainly not something that would win an award these days, but it is brutally realistic - partly due to the nature of the scenes the actors were forced through. If you're interested in reading more about the details of the tribulations the cast had to go through, check wikipedia - the whole story is way too long and detailed for me having the flu and still being up, freezing and hungry, at 7:15 AM on this beautiful Tuesday morning. Man... I need sleep badly. And something against the flu. Merf.

A surprisingly good movie, everything considered. Even with the amount of criticising on my part, I still find the movie to be entertaining and moving at the same time with its scenic, sweeping shots, its fast-paced and hectic certainty and bitter grimness. Truly, Cannibal Holocaust manages to do something which I noted with the French directors of The Hills Have Eyes, Inside and other recent awesome movies from that part of Europe: The merciless camera. The viewer becomes entangled in the movie, he is the voyeur for whom these scenes have been staged and created - and although we may flinch and shy away from the brutality, we still are captivated by what happens on the screen.

You certainly won't be bored with this example of cinematic voyeurism.

A moving and brutal criticism of our modern society and how it behaves when there is no law to keep the darkness of humanity in check.

7.75/10 ritualistic punishments for adultery.

Masters of Horror 02 - "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House" (2005)

2009-02-17T05:27:00.015+01:00

I admit it, this episode is my favourite of all the Masters of Horror episodes. It is directed by Stuart Gordon (a man I adore for his work), is a nifty and pretty faithful adaption of the original story by the Master of Horror himself*, AND features Ezra Godden. Yes, I admit it - I have the hots for Ezra Godden. There, I said it.

What instantly becomes available to everyone who has read Lovecraft's stories with the same obsessive eagerness than I have, is that this movie stays surprisingly close to the story. Over the years, I (and apparently other fans of HPL) have come to accept that there will never be a movie which stays faithful to its roots... then came Stuart Gordon's Dagon (one of my all-time favourites EVER), and now he surprises us with this neat little output.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story... a young student of mathematics moves into a weirdly built room in an old house (why? He is a student! Don't you people know that my kind is continuously and eternally broke?). Rumour has it that a witch, responsible for the deaths of many children - babies, even! - used to live in there... and other tenants are reluctant to speak about the old hag and what happened. Being a student of maths and thereby crazy by definition**, he immediately spots the weird angles' similarity to what he is working on - a theory about how the use of certain angles could make it possible to twist the space-time-continuum and eventually allow travel to... other places. And then... then things start to get ...weird.

Besides or actually being able to keep up the suspense and tension throughout the whole episode, H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House is a very atmospheric little flick. And although there is no lack of tension and suspense (greatly helped to an unsettling degree by the creepy and tense soundtrack), I am glad that this wasn't a whole feature film.

...and then there's Ezra Godden as Walter Gilman (HAH! One of the Gilmans! *broad grin*). Besides for me having the hots for the guy (Attention, humans: The cyn is swooning! And a terrifying sight it is to behold!)), he really is a great actor who is just perfect for appearing in movies based on Lovecraft.
The other main character introduced to us is Frances Elwood, as played by a very convincing Chelah Horsdal. The interaction between the two actors slash characters is always believable and floats naturally. No overacting here - instead, the realistic portrayal of Walter and Frances.
Other than that, Campbell Lane portrays the crazed old fella Masurewicz who used to live in the same room as Paul is now inhabiting. Although only appearing a few times, he adds a genuine level of good creepiness to H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House.

This movie offers a lot to the discerning Lovecraft reader. The atmosphere is brooding and dark, with lighting and camera used to the definite advantage of the flick. It's not what I'd call a perfect piece of art (after all, I have The Living and The Dead as well as Aftermath to consider...), but it definitely is one of the better movies when it comes to the camerawork employed.

The pacing is perfect for this faithful adaption of a classic. Also, we get treated to a really awesome Necronomicon, creeping insanity, being enstranged from oneself and reality (always a bonus), more creeping insanity, rituals involving infanticide*** and Latin that is actually correct.

I personally adore this short, and have no trouble watching it for the xth time just to deliver screenshots.

Aaaand - let's not forget the Miskatonic University shirt. See for another one of those in my review of From Beyond... and trust me, I still want that thing badly.

9.5/10 really furious battles between a creepy witch and her intended victim, featuring eye-gouging. Man. I so approve.

* H.P. Lovecraft, of course!

** It happens to the best and brightest amongst them... I should know, I have a bunch of friends who study mathematics and theoretical physics.

** The killing of a child.

Masters of Horror Season 01 - "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" (2005)

2009-02-07T04:40:00.019+01:00

A young woman is driving through the night - her eyes are focused straight ahead, lost in thought, melancholic indie music is playing. She looks down at the radio in order to change the station...

...and crashes into another car.

I believe anything can happen to anyone - at any time.

Flashback - to happier times.

The young woman wakes up from her memories, dragged out of them by regaining her consciousness. Getting out of her car, she realises that the car she crashed into is empty, its doors opened - and blood is everywhere.

Someone tried to escape, obviously. Helplessly, she yells for the person who must have been in that car. And her phone doesn't work anymore either.

But it's not just the victim of the ...car accident who hears her.

You've always got to expect the unexpected... and do the unexpected.

Flashback - to happier times.

But were they really happy?

Our young woman is being hunted - hunted in a game of life and death. By ...something.

Or someone, maybe? And her past has all and nothing to do with it...

When everything else fails you... try everything.

A seriously engaging hunt. The lighting is atmospheric, the camerawork truly good for something that A) ran on TV, B) gets distributed in my video stores for more than double the money than a regular horror DVD. The whole hunt, the whole thing with the flashbacks, the whole thing with the captured guy... impressive. I could love this episode of Masters of Horror if it wasn't for the end.

Pornographic at times. At least for someone like me.

8/10 moments in which you would just love to have those damned torture tools...

Wicked Little Things aka Zombies (2006)

2009-02-07T00:36:00.028+01:00

Prey for them.

That's what I get from thinking that a particularly campy zombie flick has made it into my collection... Because although it is a zombie flick, it's not a traditional zombie flick (if you'll excuse the overuse of the term "zombie flick" tonight, I'm working on getting drunk, without much of a success, it seems), and looks... beautiful.

The opening informs us that it's the year 1913 in Addytown, Penssylvania. The exact location? Why, the Carlton Mine, of course... and there's a problem - a problem that requires someone very small in order to handle it. Good thing that child labour was still in fashion back in those days - and a girl is selected. Selected to be crawl into a tunnel and place some TNT.

With the mine in danger of collapsing, the child - Mary - is being left behind in the tunnel, and the cage with the remaining children is caught in the explosive wave* of the TNT as well.

Fade to the black of death and the enclosing darkness of the collapsed mine...

Welcome to the present day.

A mother, Karen Tunny, and her two daughters Sarah and Emma are moving into a new place - Carlton, just right next to Addytown. On their way, their mother nearly runs over a mysterious person - who leaves traces of blood, but none other. Just... disappears. Or maybe not?

The first look at their new house.

Having arriven at their new home, they find out that it is creepy - no electricity, weird ...stuff (that may or may not look like blood) on the door, the emptiness... Honestly, if you ask me? I would love to live in that house. High, wide rooms, wooden panels, gritty walls, hardly any light coming in from the outside... perfect. Just perfect. Then again, I think living in run-down, gritty surroundings that reek of decay and old death is nifty anyways.

They spend their first night there, in what is to be the place they'll call home... but neither do they sleep in piece nor undisturbed. Dreams are interrupting the night's rest the mother had hoped for - or are these dreams reality? What is the stuff on their door - and who is that strange person who leaves through the woods at night?

Whilst supervising the repairs to her house, she finds pictures - pictures of children who worked at the mine. Something with that disaster we witnessed at the beginning of the story just didn't work out... and the dark wood with its impenetrable roof of green night is calling out to the youngest daughter, Emma, with beams of light...

...which does not bode well, for everyone tells them to stay out of the woods and inside the house - especially at night. And Sarah learns that there are zombies up in the hills... those very hills she and her penniless family are living in. And it has something to do with the mine... which Emma nearly entered. Speaking softly into the darkness towards the children's laughter, towards Mary - because she could hear...

Because of Mary... Mary lives in there.

Night falls. Cut... to a man saying an Ave Maria, bleeding...

...apparently to put it on his door. And that of the Tunny widow's house**.

Karen, who went to find Emma and found her daughter, is lost together with her child - and night is falling fast. They stumble across the shed of Aaron - who admits to have been the one who smeared the blood onto the Tunny's door, but insists that Karen doesn't thank him but instead that she come back during the day, so that they can talk.

And that's enough of the plot, at least from my side. I don't want to give away too much... and if you're up to watching a really atmospheric and interesting undead movie for a change to the typical stuff us fans who love flicks with the things that go bump in the night get thrown at... watch Wicked Little Things.

As you might already have inferred from the screenshots, the lighting is incredible. Less so when it comes to the indoor scenes - but the outdoor scenes are really awesome. They're beautiful. Maybe it's that whole "the cyn grew up around woods that are eerily similar to those in this movie"-thing going on again, and granted, this may play a part in my appreciation of the outdoor scenes. But I invite you to judge for yourself - J.S. Cardone, who produced this movie for the "8 Movies To Die For"-Collection (Useless Trivia of the Day: Originally, Tobe Hooper should have done this flick) really managed to make this into a beautiful and deeply atmospheric movie.

It just all works. The lighting, the camerawork, the props - the makeup of the children especially -, the music, the angles, the story. Granted, the story might not be the most original one that was ever written - but it sure as hell is better than that of a lot of other horror movies.

Special mention goes to the makeup of the children - despite my classification of it as a zombie movie, despite its German title (Zombies), and despite the fact that the children actually are zombies of some sort, the makeup is not what you'd expect from a zombie flick, whether traditional or not, whether it features child zombies or not, whether it's atmospheric or not. It's a very basic makeup, one that I particularly like to use as well when I get any chance to do someone's "undead"-makeup, and it's more creepy than any kind of latex-y excess could ever have been in Wicked Little Things.

Also, this movie delivers a few genuinely creepy scenes that created goosebumps on the back of my neck. Kudos for that, it rarely ever happens these days when I'm watching a movie.

I got this movie when I was browsing the local Rock'n'Roll vinyl store (I still need to go there and buy the nifty original copy of the first Stray Cats album... if it isn't gone already...), and the German DVD cover doesn't promise anything more than an at best mediocre zombie flick. But this is better - way better.

Prey... Prey for them.

8.5/10 pale, black-eyed children who enjoy meat as much as I do. And have a similar way of eating it as I do. Ah... joy.

* It's actually not the temperature that makes an explosion deadly, but the force of the particles and the heat extending with extremely high speed. Yes, I wrote a paper on explosives back in school.

** What a waste. What a terrible, terrible waste.

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

2009-02-06T21:47:00.000+01:00

The second part of Friday the 13th leaves us with Alice (Adrienne King), the Final Girl from the first Friday the 13th movie suffering from nightmares about what happened at Camp Crystal Lake. If you've read my review of the first movie, or are in any way, form or shape familiar with the film (and you should be!), you might remember (or not, depends) that the kills in Friday the 13th were being committed by Mrs. Voorhees, as played by Betsy Palmer. Alice, the lucky one, survived by going all medieval on Mrs. Voorhees' head.

Now, Alice is not just suffering from nightmares - no, she is a classical PTSD-story. She needs to put her life back together, apparently, and that means that she more or less hides away in her home. Feeling sorry for herself.

What particularly haunts her is the memory of the little boy who pulled her under the water those two months ago...

Jason v.01

...and of course Mrs. Voorhees also makes for convincing nightmares. No insult intended to Betsy Palmer, but man, she's one creepy lady. Or maybe it's just me being used to her being Jason's mother, who knows. Early childhood imprinting tends to leave mental scars.

However... All is not well in ...uhm... wherever Alice's house is standing. Her rest is interrupted by the screeching, ringing sound of a telephone. An actual ringing, not like those mobile phones these days which play fancy ringtones (guilty as charged - I have the Gutter Demons as my standard ringtone...). The first time, it's her mother, bothering her the way only mothers can. The second time... silence?

No, it'sa kitteh!

Fetching food for kitteh reveals the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees in the fridge, as well as... well. Jason.

Kitteh watching mommy die...

...and what really makes this first kill in the movie for me is how considerate Jason is: He puts the kettle down. No need to cause a catastrophe involving boiling water, right? For those of you who keep track, this is actually the first kill of our beloved Jason, as, don't you dare to forget it, his homicidal mother collected all of the kills from the first part.

5 years later...

Cut to the beautiful Crystal Lake, where two young people are greeted by - you guessed it - Crazy Ralph (and his trusted sidekick, his bike)!

"You are all doomed!"

Turns out that, this time, there is a training centre set up for camp counselors, so that they may learn how to be... uhm... camp counselors? For being a counselor is not just some job for a baby, or just a summer job. For someone who is irresponsible.

Say hello to our victims. Take your pick!

These young people are going to learn the basics - survival, first aid, boating, archery... you get the picture. Also, they are meant to make merry, goof around, drink, do drugs (it's the early 80s and I am biased, because if I was at such a place, I'd totally smoke something for atmosphere... but then again, I totally do NOT condone the use of illegal but pleasurable herbs used for relaxation, chilling out and relieving pain), kiss, have sex... in short: Getting doomed. We all know the rules of slashers, and those camp counselors are easy prey for Jason.

Funnily enough, our first victim isn't one of those easy, tight-panted kids, but...

...yes. You are looking at Crazy Ralph, coolest character in a Jason flick ever. Death by garrotte / barbed wire. I am not sure if I can forgive the young Voorhees boy for that. After all, it's the death of the most nifteh character in the history of Friday the 13th. He brought me happiful*.

I will, however, admit that I find the sequence with the little dog-like creature terribly funny. "Muffin"... what a particularly stupid name for a dog. Well, not that that thing qualifies as a dog, really. I apologise to all lovers of small, unnecessarily furry dog-like creatures who look as if they had been bred by an insane scientist who got the concepts of "dog" and "sewer rat" mixed up in a horrible, horrible way.

And who, of course, die (or do they?!). In a way that they're too mangled to tell whether they're a dog or not. Note that I'm still siding with Jason. But I want to genuinely apologise to those people who are horrified by the above picture. Remember: It's just a movie, and none of what happens in there is real.

Anyways... on with the plot (yes, it IS hard to believe, but there is an actual plot beyond "all the kids get killed"...):

Now, five years after what happened at Camp Crystal Lake, the local arm of the law enforcement wants to make sure that things stay calm and good in his area - and on his way to do so, he finds two of the counselors (who found the animal-remains pictured above on their way to Camp Crystal Lake, to sneak a view at the horrible haunted place - Camp Blood... [There, I said it. Fine now?]) trespassing. He returns them to the training centre, but on his way back to town, he sees a person dashing into the woods. Being a clever policeman, he follows the figure...

And voilá, Jason's villa.

The man has to enter, of course. It's part of the dynamics of slasher movies, and especially the Friday the 13th series is fond of that. So... what may happen, pray tell?

It's Hammer Time!

...ehm... I mean... pardon the pun.

If your guess was "one hammer to the back of the head", you can pride yourself on knowing the Friday the 13th franchise very well. If your guess was "death", then you can still take solace in the fact that you were right, even though you were lacking the fine details.

Back at the training camp, the counselors-in-training get told that they can spend a night out in town, and only those who will be our victims stay behind. Now that the night has come and the number of potential victims has lessened to a practical amount, the killings can really begin.

We start out with exhibit A, Terri, a young lady who decides to go skinny dipping in the middle of Crystal Lake. For an extended amount of time. Her clothes are being stolen by exhibit B, Scott, an annoying but oh so charming guy - who sort of gets stuck upside down in a trap when he tries to run away from the enraged Terri. She promises to get him down... and so she leaves for her cabin.

Neither situation nor separation work out well for exhibit B:

One machete to the throat.

Exhibit A, on the other hand, returns with a ridiculous-looking pocket knife to retrieve her colleague... only to be killed by Jason. Offscreen. Presumably with a machete as well. But damn you, Jason, for not showing us! ...or should I make that "Damn you, Steve Miner!"? Presumably so.

Back at the camp, we cut to exhibits C and D - the horny couple, their names being too unimportant for me to notice or even remember. They go upstairs, to do... you know. The big nasty. Meanwhile, exhibits E and F (a girl named Vicky and the guy in the wheelchair, Mark) are to be offed - Vicky walks outside during the storm that has come, and Mark eagerly awaits her coming (they kissed before leaving for their respective cabins).

But alas, Mark is not greeted by his Vicky... instead, Jason - possibly as befuddled as we, the viewers, are as to the fact what a guy in a wheelchair is doing in the woods - gets creative and sticks his machete into the head of the guy before throwing him down a flight of stairs. That's what I call irony - and truly, Jason has a black sense of humour.

What follows is death by editing (though presumably it should be death by spear) of the lovebirds, exhibits C and D. Impaled by a spear whilst cuddling happily after sex.

Vicky (exhibit F) finally enters Mark's (wheelchair-guy-with-machete-sticking-in-face) flat - only to find out the horrifying truth: The lovebirds are dead, but... but...

...what's this?

It's pillowcase-Jason v.02.0!

...and he kills her by editing. Again. With a knife to the stomach, but just because my logic centre works well enough in these instances doesn't mean I let it count as a proper onscreen death.

With the kids being out of the way, Paul (the equivalent to Stephe Christy from the first movie and played by John Furey) and his assistant and love interest Ginny (Amy Steel) return to the trainee-camp - just to discover the gruesome deaths of the young adults in their care. As well as the death of Crazy Ralph - true to his habit of locking himself in cupboards to be the doomsayer we love and adore, Jason locked his corpse in a cupboard. I guess he was going for maximum ironic effect there.

Paul is apparently suffering death by spear through the hands of Jason, who in turn gets attacked by a desperate Ginny who thinks he's dead (Jason) when she attacks him with a chainsaw and he falls down, face (pillow?) down, apparently without any life left in him. Screaming, she runs into the woods, where she finds Jason's cabin... and his lovely altar to his dear mother, Mrs. Voorhees (accompanied by a few other dead people).

Playing the hand of using his psychological vulnerability towards his mother, Ginny sneaks into the deceased woman's sweatshirt and convinces him that she's Mrs. Voorhees... which doesn't turn out too well when Jason sees the actual head of his mother still on the altar. With Paul storming into the shed (surprise! He wasn't dead! Only wounded!) the young Voorhees fashioned for himself, they all struggle... to death. Jason is left for dead, and the two lovers leave, shocked and traumatised by what has happened.

Fazed and shocked, they return to their own cabin - and oh, once again stress is is intruding into their lives as they hear... something... at the door. But oh no, it's not Jason - it's Muffin! The little dog! The music softens, becomes a beautiful crescendo of love and happiness...

The soundtrack by Manfredini is, as was the soundtrack of the first movie, eerily evocative and really added to the movie itself. I like the first sequel better than the original movie, mostly because I adore the altar, it's more fast-paced than its prequel, and yay for Jason! However, the death by editing really got on my nerves...

8/10 machetes, spears, throats, axes, icepicks and editings.

* Remember...

Friday the 13th (1980)

2009-02-03T22:05:00.035+01:00

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my own feeble attempt to bring the Friday the 13th franchise right into your living room... or rather, onto your screen, wherever that may reside. In my case, that's the living room, so I naturally assume that this is where your main machine (in case you have more than one and are as obsessed with PCs than I am) is. Why did I get this idea? Well... my evening didn't go as planned (Hint: Do NOT mix Zyprexa with Psychopax. It will make you sleep like a corpse. A dead one.), and so I thought I might as well do something productive. Sitting through all the Friday the 13th movies I own seemed like a good idea. At that point, anyways.

Friday the 13th - who hasn't heard of the movie yet? Created in the glorious year of 1980 (that is... ehm... a few years before I was born, actually - but hey, it's my job to glorify the past*, so I can safely say that!) by Sean S. Cunningham, the man who is also responsible for Last House on the Left (a classic if there ever was one, and with me being the proud owner of the DVD, a review should be coming up at some point in the near future... promise!), the House movies as well as, you guessed it, Friday the 13th.

Sean S. Cunningham - we love you. Without you, the slasher subgenre of horror wouldn't be what it is (was) today. Why do I use the past tense in parentheses? Well, you know... back in the days, everything was better. Especially when it comes to slasher flicks. But I digress.

There really isn't much to say about the plot - some young adults are at Camp Crystal Lake, and there, they get killed off one by one. Point. Just in case you weren't familiar with the... eh... plot (for lack of a better term).

But because this would be one awfully short review with just me summing up the plot, let's do this another way: Say hello to the medium of screenshots!**

This is Camp Crystal Lake - one of the most beautiful areas around the world that you can imagine if you want to see a scenic lake, beautiful woodland areas, some decorative mountains, decrepit huts and young adults/teenagers being slaughtered. Note that the year is 1958 - and indeed, something tragic is about to happen...

Two of the camp councelors are leaving the evening full of merriment, making music, singing songs about Jesus together etc. - why, you may ask? Well... you'll see.

But one thing is for sure: I, personally, wouldn't trust this full moon. It has that lovely tint of blood to it, which always makes me suspicious when I'm playing a role in a slasher movie. Not that I ever played a role in a slasher movie... but you catch my drift.

Alas, back to the nameless couple (I am sure they actually have a name, but my attention span tonight is a bit too short to care about the names of vict.... errrr, couples. Couples.). What might they be up to, pray tell?

Of course. Of-fucking-course. As soon as the children are out of the way, those hormone-ridden young people have nothing better to do than to sneak into a shed and start kissing more or less passionately.

Of course, it doesn't just suffice for them to stand around whilst sticking their tongues down each other's throats. No, they have to get a blanket - apparently, sheds come fully equipped with love-blankets... you know, in case someone decides to sneak out into the shed in order to make sweet, sweet love... on the ground. With the blanket. No, not making love with the blanket.... making love on the ground with the blanket as a safe place to, you know, do the nasty on. After all, blankets are sanitary.

But nothing stays as sweet as it is, and so our happy, nameless couple meets a grisly demise...

One knife to the stomach, and something which I can only assume to be another knife to... somewhere (possibly the throat?) - I can't tell you how the girl dies, because after we get to see a close-up of her screaming face, the movie fades to a blinding white (thank you, Friday the 13th, for forcing me to watch this with my sunglasses on... *sighs*)... followed by:

THIS.

Hallelû-jah***, as someone of a more religious persuasion than myself could be tempted to say.

And now, the movie finally starts (in "Present Day"... aka 1980). I have to admit that, when I watched it the first time, Friday the 13th already had me hooked at the first kill (poor guy from nameless couple, as pictured two screens above, also known as "knife-to-stomach-guy"). And now, years later, it's still the same. I just like the movie. So, for all the purists of 80s slasher flicks out there: You may hate me for my intense dislike of John Carpenter's Halloween****, but at least accept that I am still a big fan of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Thank you.

This is Crazy Ralph***** (Walt Gorney - born in this very city I am residing in - Vienna! See, we produce the best actors over here... Kudos to Gorney. I'm a big fan... so R.I.P., man...). I just love the guy more than words can convey. What better life than to warn others about the Death Curse of a place where children are supposed to enjoy themselves?! In a decidedly creepy way at that. Gods, Crazy Ralph truly is my favourite character in the whole frigging movie.

Did I mention that Crazy Ralph also locks himself in cupboards at Camp Crystal Lake, just to nonchalantly step out of them in order to deliver his message of doom that none shall live who are in this cursed place? Man. What a nifty character. If I ever get old and wrinkly, I want to do that sort of thing as well.

One of the girls that is supposed to work at Camp Crystal Lake (sorry, I can't bring myself to call it Camp Blood... it always has been Camp Crystal Lake in my mind, and shall always remain that) hitches a ride with a friendly lorry-driver. At this point, I want to draw your attention to the screenshot above.

Notice anything?

No?

What about his hands tenderly pressing her ass whilst "helping her into his vehicle"?

I don't know if that was okay in 1980, but man, it creeps me out every time I see it. Sweaty, fat hands... ewwwww. Maybe it's that double-X-chromosome of mine, but damn, the thought makes me squirm in disgust.

The young lady in question is brought to a crossroad, where she can exit right in front of the beautiful and scenic cemetery in order to walk down to Camp Crystal Lake. Call me paranoid, but the cemetery does definitely not bode well... verily.

Once again, our young lady in question tries to hitch a ride... which works. The only problem is that... oh, well. She has to jump out of the driving car, and after a truly enjoyable hunt through the woods (I particularly enjoy the camerawork employed in this scene), my paranoid feeling of stuff not boding well for aforementioned young lady gets paid off:

Told you. I wouldn't have gotten into that car. So that's one slit throat more in our inofficial killing list. I'll possibly do a ranking later on... but that's just an idea which I might not necessarily follow through with.

However, you have to admit that Camp Crystal Lake is very scenic when the night falls down...

As night has fallen, the councelors of the beautiful and scenic camp are trying to spend their time in a variety of ways.

Two of them opted for doing the nasty together in some sort of shed. At least I call it a shed, the fine differences between different kinds of wooden huts out in the middle of some freaky (but scenic!) wood next to a scenic lake are really lost on me... and that although I grew up in an even more scenic, woodland-infested area next to a scenic lake. Then again, I might just have drowned out any memories on the fine details of... sheds.

Our two lovebirds are completely oblivious to one of their buddies sleeping a very final sleep on the top bunk of the bed in which they're... you know. Doing it. Getting all hot and steamy, and so on.

Meanwhile, back at the place of social gathering and fun here at Crystal Lake, the remaining three young adults are drinking beer (le GASP!), smoking (I can't express the level of terror I am feeling at the mere thought... *rolls herself a cigarette*... yes, that was sarcasm. No, not the cigarette-rolling. The stuff before that... oh well, forget it...) and playing - you won't believe it - STRIP MONOPOLY! Now if that isn't deviant behaviour, I don't know what is...

Back at the place where the two lovebirds are doing the nasty, something goes horribly, horribly wrong...

One arrow through throat...

...and in the outhouse where the girl in question went to make herself a bit more presentable after the steamy action, we get one death by axe to the forehead.

Now for something completely different: Meanwhile, at the...

Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), the man who actually owns and runs Camp Crystal Lake (way to go with a career choice, Steve), is having a cup of coffee.

I am only including the screenshot of this terrible, terrible creature here because it reminds me of the aliens from Killer Klowns From Outer Space (a cult classic - look out for the new Bloodsucking Zombies from Outer Space stuff, there's a nifty song of the same name on it). Just FYI... and just because I went like "HOLY SHIT, IT'S ONE OF THE THINGS FROM KILLER KLOWNS!" when I watched it tonight.

Meanwhile, the fun carries on to be had at Camp Crystal Lake, Killer Klowns from Outer Space or not (I apologise for that, but seriously... look at the screenshot above. If you are in any way familiar with the movie I am referring to, you'll see how uncanny the similarity is).

One other thing that we learn from Friday the 13th is that, no matter how bold your fashion statement - for those of you who are slightly colour blind: The guy pictured above wears a bold combination of green, red and white stripes and caros on his shirt... *shudders* -, you're still not save.

In fact, you might want to reconsider your choice of shirt in the future... if you had a future, that is. That shirt resp. its owner make for another death by arrow(s).

Our Final Girl (you know it - there's ALWAYS a Final Girl, and we could pick her out right from the beginning) has figured out that something nasty and terrible is happening - which leads to her chickening out.... errrr, I mean, panicking in an understandable way.

However, I don't know about you, but... if you were locking yourself in a small wooden shed which has windows, would you spend minutes of your time by using one (1) rope, one (1) tree trunk, one (1) box and three (3) chairs to do nothing but amateurishly barricade the door? I don't know about you, but that seemed a tad stupid to me. Especially since she left the windows completely unprotected. But... *shrugs*... whatever floats your boat in situations of life and death, I guess. Or...

What the kitteh sez.

Well, we get to see two more dead people: One is the female that I can't really sort... oh, wait. She's the one that was stupid enough to walk out into a storm in nothing but her nightgown (ah yes... back in the days when decent young women still wore nightgowns after playing a heavy party of strip monopoly... I so understand this... not). What happened to her, you might ask?

That. I am not entirely sure if she's still alive or not, because her head moves a few times and I am pretty sure I saw her breathing, but that might just be the actress in question and not the intended effect by the producer.

We also get to see Steve Christy again... you know, the guy who was having a cup of coffee at the diner I was graciously showing you above. Only that I like him much better when he's dead.

As for the climax... well. It's not Jason, as you might have been led to believe if you've never watched the movie, but instead his mother, the delightfully deranged Mrs. Voorhees as played by Betsy Palmer. Mrs. Palmer... you'll always be Jason's mum to me and a lot of other people. And we thank you for it, you creepy lady.

The end...

...or is it?!

7.75/10 arrows being used to kill someone after sex from below the bed. Man, Mrs. Voorhees is one scary lady... remember to check your beds, kids!

* Ancient history student. At a real university. Which means I can kick your ass when it comes to the Ancient Near East... or the Neolithic.

** I apologise for the annoying "Paused"-icon in the upper right corner of most of the screens. I recently switched my OS back to Ubuntu 7.10 (less issues than 8.04, and trust me, I know what I'm talking about) due to various reasons (like me working on a 64bit machine), and I have yet to figure out how to get rid of that stupid icon. So... yeah. Sorry.

*** "Let us praise Jah" - and "Jah" is short for "Jahwe". I hope that any Jewish readers I might have are not insulted. I just try to enlighten and teach... mainly because it pisses me off to no end when people make stupid jokes about this sentence. Hello Höllus - yes, I mean you (not that he'd ever read that).

**** Carpentry by John Carpenter. Annoying use of soundtrack by John Carpenter.... AAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHH! >< ***** /me giggles

Dracula (1931)

2009-02-02T02:14:00.013+01:00

Dracula... Bela Lugosi.

A legend, both of them - the 1931 movie as well as the guy who so convincingly played the Transsylvanian undead aristocrat. With the uncanny Romanian accent, Bela Lugosi has been an icon for a lot of people, including those of my generation - a quick "hello!" to Marc van Dark from Kitty in a Casket* is in place right here and now.

Once again, as it is with me and classics in the horror genre, I haven't had a chance yet to watch this movie. Had it lying around for about a year or so, but... as I already mentioned in my review of The Brood, I just didn't get around to watch it due to the sheer number of movies I have.

But tonight was the night... and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed. Of course, there are shitty scenes and crappy effects (RUBBER BATS! RUBBER SPIDERS! Freaking armadillos...!) - but come on, people, this movie was made more than seven decades ago. And for a movie that old, it manages to be pretty good.

The acting, of course, is way over the top. Dwight Frye as the nifty character of Renfield is the one where this is most obvious - but nonetheless, I enjoyed his performance immensely.

And what would a review of Dracula be without honourable mentions to Bela Lugosi? He truly shines here. Maybe it's that he, at times, reminds me of TF**, but nonetheless his performance is awesome. No matter how much I know that the trademark accent - which I am able to imitate quite well, according to the last Shadowrun group I was playing a female character in - stems from Lugosi having been terribly bad at English, learning his text word by word and syllable by syllable - when you actually watch the movie, you hardly notice it. And there's no way around admitting that he is just nifteh***.

As for the plot, I don't think I have to reiterate it. If you have never watched any Dracula movie, you're missing out on an important element of today's culture. And yes, I mean that just the way I just typed it.

Cool old movie.

8.75/10 armadillos which definitely do not live in Transsylvania... I should know, it's basically just around the corner from where I live.

*Kitty in a Casket: Add them, listen to their music and tell Marc that I told you to do so. Nifty**** sound.

**The Friend, in case you forgot.

***cynsanity-ese for "nifty".

****Yes, I like the term "nifty" tonight.

The Brood (1979)

2009-02-01T23:21:00.023+01:00

Finally. I've finally managed to watch The Brood - as you might have cunningly guessed, seeing as this is a review of the movie by yours truly (aka me, myself and the beast within*).

Let me preface this by stating that I am a big fan of David Cronenberg. Besides for Stuart Gordon and, more recently, Rob Zombie as well as Alexandre Aja and Eli Roth, he's one of the few directors/writers/producers whom I really like a lot. This also includes going to unimaginable lengths to see his movies - even though, sometimes, it may take me years to find a copy of the movies in question. Such was the case with The Brood... and after I had managed to actually find this movie last year, it of course took me more than six months to actually get around to watching it. And I have no real excuse, besides for "I have more than 1000 (one thousand) movies, I get lost sometimes"...

Just seeing this on my screen makes me happy...

David Cronenberg. A man who is as fascinated by the topic of change and transformation than I am by liminal states of transformation. If you can see the similarities (no worries, they are easy to spot even for dimwitted readers, although I severely doubt that any of my readers fall into that category), you should understand why I love the guy and his work, behind the camera as well as in front of it.

But, enough of me going all fangirl over Cronenberg and on to the movie at hand.

I doubt that many people who read these mental meanderings (and at times, rants) have never heard of the movie, but I'll sum the plot up nonetheless:

Nola Carveth is a woman who, for reasons lying in her childhood, needs to undergo an intense psychotherapy. Having had to deal with an abusive mother and a father who was too weak to defend the girl Nola against her mother, she is all screwed up in the head. Now, that is more or less the situation of a good percentage of the world's adult population... so what makes this psychotherapy different to others?

Say hello to "psychoplasmics".

"Psychoplasmics" is a new brand of psychotherapy, as developed by Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). The catch is that, during this form of therapy, the patient's body transforms - basically, it works like psychosomatics. Your body transforms in order to fit your mind.

Dr. Hal Raglan, psychotherapist extraordinaire...

A man who has been suffering all his life under an abusive father, abusive stepfather and lack of an understanding father figure develops disfiguring welts, and another man developed lymphatic cancer, apparently due to his intense self-hatred (good thing I'm not doing anything like that... having a weird psychotherapy, I mean...). Now, you'd think that people would be wary of something like that - I certainly wouldn't start therapy if I had to consider that there is a distinct possibility of my body going even more haywire than it already does... but alas, it was the 70s, and things were different back then.

For example, people were allowed to smoke.

Now, the thing that makes Nola different is... well. Her physical changes are a bit more ...drastic than those of other patients of the esteemed Dr. Hal Raglan.

She doesn't just show psychosomatic symptoms or more drastic physical changes, like cancer running wild through her system. No... in her case, she gives birth (if that word can be used) parthenogenetically to the titular Brood - deformed, creepy children which are telepathically linked to her subconscious. And they are attacking those who want to destroy her dreams of a happy life with her child, Candice, and her not-so-loving husband Frank.

The Brood is indeed the shape of Nola's rage... and that rage is directed against those who in any way threaten her and her dreams.

I have to admit that the script (also written by Cronenberg) is not exactly one of the most complicated ones - the movie plays out predictably, and there is no element of surprise to the kills and their order. If you are in any way familiar with horror movies, you'll sit right in front of your screen, nodding to yourself as the Brood kills its way through the people responsible for Nola's problems - and problems she has... verily so**.

There isn't that much to give away in The Brood, but nonetheless, it is a very engaging movie. Not one second did I feel any sort of boredom - which you might not have inferred from my complaint about the predictable script. This is where Cronenberg truly shines - he can take a story, give you hints how it will play out and and he will play all of it out, without any surprising twists, or big and unexpected turns of events or scares. What he does is running along with how the story is supposed to play out, showing us just enough to confirm our suspicions... and yet, it's new, engaging, interesting and at times gritty to watch.

The Brood is spectacularly low on the gory end of things - although we get four kills, all of them the same modus operandi, they are not particularly bloody and violent (then again, that might be my skewed perception of violence - I imagine being bludgeoned to death to be quite a painful and violent experience, but no matter how much I know that, the scenes just didn't register on my violence-radar). However, that doesn't matter at all - and I am a gorehound at heart.

No, what The Brood manages to do is to let us glimpse into the terror of change. Yes, recently, throughout the past years, the subgenre of body horror has risen to new heights, and Cronenberg was particularly absent from the movies that have mercilessly shown us the first-person or third-person perspective of involuntary transformation - but still, he is the undisputed master of venereal horror.

Camera and light are not exactly what I'd call great pieces of art, but they're not bad, either. Above average, yet never so obvious that they'd take away from the story that unfolds before the eyes of the viewer. And I cannot stress enough that this story is a captivating one, although we pretty much know how things are going to turn out. Although I am in no means a filmmaker, and although my contacts with the world of movie-making have only been minimal, I think I can still state confidently in my position as a writer*** that there is an art to making the already known and expected seem more than just interesting - to make that which everyone already expects into a captivating story that unfolds and doesn't lose its psychological grip.

This movie is more than just entertaining - and if you're in any way like me, you'll probably enjoy the movie just as I did.

7.5/10 mothers licking their newborn baby clean...

*A friendly nod goes to the BZFOS here.

**As I already mentioned in another review of mine (can't remember which, though), the word "verily" can be used in a great way to add emphasis to a sentence, as well as killing any sort of idiotic question as to the validity of the statement made in said sentence. But here I just use it for stylistic reasons... and, admittedly, a bit of emphasis. I just needed it.

***Yes. Indeed. I write. Now stop laughing and scroll down!

Vampyres (1974)

2009-01-18T21:38:00.030+01:00

They shared the pleasures of the flesh, and the horrors of the grave!

Two women are lying together in bed. Both wake up, and they kiss... when suddenly, the door to their bedroom opens: A man with a gun! He fires several shots at the scared lovers... and they fall onto the bed - dying - dead.

So starts Vampyres, a 1974 movie by José Ramón Larraz.

Then the titles start rolling.

Cut to present day: A couple is driving its car with a trailer through the woods, when they come across a female stopper. They ignore her, driving on - but a man is willing to take the (quite attractive, in that 70s way) woman in and drive her to her goal.

Back to the couple. They parked close to an abandoned castle, which somehow seems to worry the woman, Harriet (played by Sally Faulkner). She keeps thinking back to the woman they saw - and that other, blonde woman, who was hiding behind the trees... but only Harriet saw her. Maybe it was a hallucination? But we know better.

And the abandoned castle isn't as abandoned as they were led to believe - a single scream, coming from the lungs of a man, wakes Harriet from her sleep.
But no one's out there... or so she is assured by her husband, John (Brian Deacon).

The next morning, she sees two women - one of them the brown-haired woman who was hitchhiking, the other one the blonde woman who was hiding behind the trees. They were running off, hand in hand, to the nearby cemetery.

The day is spent with leisurely activities - painting, fishing... and images of the cemetery haunt us with their spectral beauty.

And again, we witness the dark-haired hitchhiker - Fran - getting a ride, with her mysterious blonde companion hiding behind the thin trees...

This time, the man lucky enough to pick up the sensuous, full-lipped Fran comes with her, accompanying her inside the "abandoned" castle - and of course, Harriet sees them. She has noticed... and in her mind, she already has constructed something dark and foreboding around the castle and its apparent inhabitants.

What we are being treated to here is a masterpiece of vampire cinema. I should know - although, as I already pointed out in my review of Låt den rätte komma in, I am not too big a fan of vampire movies, but the Gods be my witness that I own a lot of them. And I mean a lot a lot. However, I don't really enjoy most of them - if I have to watch a vampire flick, I prefer it to be one of the more "artsy" types... or, as in this case, a beautifully done, interesting movie. This is the type of lesbian vampire movie that I can thoroughly enjoy.

Back to the story... Fran and the as of yet anonymous man she invited into their home have some fun - of the carnal sort. What follows is a genuinely creepy scene - the as of yet anonymous gallant she invited finds her asleep next to him, her eyes wide open... but unseeing. He also feels weak, and getting out of bed to check the door makes him more than just uneasy. Exhausted, he falls back into the bed - he didn't even make it to the door. What happened during the night...? And why does he have a deep gash on his left arm?

And where is the beautiful woman he spent the night with - now that it's day and the sun is up in the sky?

Not just that... but he also finds one of the wine glasses broken, covered with some thick ...red at its edges. And there's blood on the sheets where he was lying on.

And still, Fran is nowhere to be found...

He searches through the castle - but besides for a dangerous looking dagger, he finds nothing.

And so, he decides to leave the empty, abandoned castle. On his way, he stops by the couple and their van, because he's searching for help with his wound. The cut is deep, and he explains it, rationalising its existence to himself and the couple by stating that he fell onto a glass, hence the injury. He leaves with mysterious words as he's asked if someone lives in "that house" (referring to the castle) - "That's what I asked myself earlier this day - and I haven't found an answer!"

But for some reason... for some reason we don't know, if we're normal humans, he drives back to the castle, sleeping through the day - until he finally awakens as another cars drives by, and Fran exits it. She apologises for her disappearance earlier that day, and Ted is okay with that. But Fran has brought friends - the beautiful blonde Miriam, and a ...friend of hers, a young man.

As Miriam and her young visitor, Rupert, go to fetch some more red wine for the company's amusement, Ted starts up a conversation with Fran, during which he finds out that the two women are lovers.

This movie has some awesome dialogues - and need I talk about the pictures? It deals openly with sex and sexuality, without degrading itself to the level of softcore porn. This is not a Jess Franco movie about pretty lesbian vampires - this is a serious, nearly flawlessly executed, sensuous movie about two women who need to drink blood.

I love that they both - Fran and Miriam - don't have fangs, and that they and their interaction with one another and the others give us a portrayal of vampires that isn't Hollywood's idea of what a vampire should entail, but instead one that paints the two blood drinkers in a more human light. They are women first and foremost, and lovers, too. They just happen to have to drink blood.

Miriam (the blonde one) warns Fran that she's playing a dangerous game with the man she more or less took in and is playing with - but Fran won't listen. We are left to wonder why...

As another day comes, both women are off to the cemetery together - again.

Meanwhile, Ted has noticed that his watch stopped functioning - again. It never stops... only when he's around Fran resp. her friend Miriam. He also discovers that the mirrors in the castle are covered with black tape. What could this mean...?

A short note on the subsequent theme of clocks stopping in the vicinity of the two vampyresses (hey, CG, I'm thinking of you!) - this could be explained in different ways. It could be that they're subconsciously drawing the energy off the batteries, or a metaphor for their timelessness. I, personally, prefer to think of both of these theories of mine as true within the context of this movie.

When he, Ted, tries to leave for the second time, he is stopped by the police - and, to his horror, discovers Rupert and his car - or, more appropriately, Rupert's car with the young man dead inside. He is horrified and shocked - and returns to the castle... yet again. It seems as if something is drawing him there... and it's not just his curiousity and dread. He seems to be determined to find out what the secret of the castle and its beautiful female inhabitants is...

Vampyres is a beautiful movie. The camerawork is, for the 70s, brilliant - the pictures we are shown are beautiful and hauntingly evocative, and there's no single piece of dialogue that seems forced or out of place. Much is said without words - I especially applaud Murray Brown for his role of Ted, the man who comes back again and again for the vampire Fran - fascinated by her, infatuated with her - the mysterious woman whom he cannot fathom, whose very being he can only touch through the medium of his blood being licked off his wounds by her...

Special mentions also go to Marianne Morris, who plays the female vampire Fran, and her younger companion Miriam, who is played by the beautiful Anulka Dziubinska (only credited as Anulka in the movie's credits). The performances of these women is astonishing. It doesn't matter whether you like their looks or not - and as it's a movie from 1974, I doubt that many viewers in this day and age will see them as beautiful. However, in terms of the 70s, they are very beautiful indeed, and eroticism oozes from every single movement of them. It's in their movements, their smiles and the way they bear themselves. Their eyes alone say more than dialogue could - and, luckily, this isn't a dialogue-intensive movie.

A warning, though: If you're not into watching two women having a go at it whilst completely naked, kissing and playing and licking and doing other wonderful things to each other with the inclusion of bloodplay - don't watch this movie. If you have no problems with things like these, though... enjoy the ride.

This is the vampire movie I always wanted someone to make. And ever since Ive seen it for the first time about four years ago, this feeling hasn't changed. This movie is brutal and violent at times, yet sensuous and beautiful, filled with ardent splendor intermingling seamlessly with terror and violence. But in the end, beauty and eroticism prevail. At times, an almost dream-like quality fills the movie - and a tangible sense of despair, mixed with urgency.

Still one of my favourites in the vampire-subgenre.

9.5/10 ways to slowly drain a human of blood through subsequent sexual and sanguinarian feedings...

Whisper (2007)

2009-01-18T18:25:00.023+01:00

The devil's work is child's play...

Cor 11:14 - And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

Stewart Hendler surprises with a, forgive me the repetition, surprisingly good movie. The plot?

A group of three men and a woman kidnap a child, one David Sandborn (played by a convincing Blake Woodruff). But it's not that easy - one of the kidnappers, Max Truemont (as portrayed by Josh Holloway), has just been released from prison, and together with his fiancé Roxanne (Sarah Wayne Callies), he wants to build a new life for both of them by opening a diner However, he isn't granted the $50,000 loan he was building his plans on, and so the future looks more than bleak. But he wants to fulfill this dream, and with hesitation he teams up with his former colleague in crime, Sydney, and his sidekick Vincent - they are hired by a mysterious stranger, only known as a distorted voice on the phone. Their job? To kidnap David... which isn't that hard. The hard part is not to fall prey to the vicious mind-games the child is playing... and not to listen to the whispers filling their minds with images and ideas which are far from holy...

Really, I was surprised. Although we know that something is wrong with the child David as soon as we get to see him the first time - no normal kid controls cars with his mind, and no normal kid can control black wolves to do his bidding -, we still don't know what exactly it is that he's doing... or what exactly he is. But it all becomes perfectly clear with every minute of the movie.

David is, for all practical intentions, the 2007 version of The Omen's Damien. They even look similar, and I don't think that the very conservative dress of the child actor here was a coincidence - his whole demeanor, the way he carries himself and how he speaks literally screams "DAMIEN!!!". This can't just have been coincidence - and although it works out very well, I still would have appreciated a tad more originality.

Don't get me wrong, Blake Woodruff does a great job in this movie as the creepy kid with the creepy, supernatural powers (which he definitely doesn't use for good). It's just that I got the distinct impression that someone gave him a copy of Omen and told him to do just that... because that's how it comes across. Maybe I haven't watched enough movies about evil children yet, though...

Besides reminding me of Omen's Damien (believe it or not, I constantly have to keep myself from typing the word "Damien" when I want to type "David"), there's another eerie child that Woodruff's portrayal of Whisper's main character reminded me of: Caleb Temple, played by Lucas Black, in the 1995 TV series American Gothic (which, by the way, is awesomeness incarnate - if you don't know it yet, grab yourself one of the hard to find copies and enjoy it). Some of the scenes had an eerie similarity to the portrayal of David in Whisper.

But enough of that.

The camera is ...impressive at times. In some shots, the angles used are really interesting, adding to the oppressive and dark mood considerably.

Speaking of dark... this is a dark movie. The topic in question aside, the whole movie oozes darkness. Most of what we see happens at night, and the scenes which were shot during the day make much use of light and shadow - although, admittedly, at times it's a bit unbalanced in that regard, and shadow used too liberally.

Also, the colours fit in with the mood - mostly a palette of grey, white, blue and shadow (or, to put it differently - blue, the first royal colour of shadow). And yes, I am definitely considering shadow to be a colour in this context. See for yourself if you don't believe my judgment.

Another thing that might put viewers off is the religious/mythical background for the story which is told. I know a lot of people who'd rather watch their least favourite flick another time rather than watching a movie with religious symbolism present - Dante 01, of which a non-horror review is due soon, is one of the prime examples for this, but I've heard of people who refuse watching Rosemary's Baby or assorted stuff just because of the present YHVH/Satan dualism. Although I'm not a big fan of that particular religious paradigm myself, I enjoy movies with that sort of undertone. But maybe that's just me with my spleen when it comes to religious/supernatural movies...

But one has to admit it: Sound and imagery work in subtle favour of aforementioned religious/mythical background of Whisper.

6.75/10 children that really, really shouldn't play with crayons...

The Grudge (2004)

2009-01-18T14:37:00.015+01:00

As of now, I've escaped the surge of J-horror and the assorted remakes the USA is producing with an alarming rate... until now, that is. For today, I shall watch my second J-horror flick. Or should this still be considered to be my first one? The first product of Japanese terror I ever watched was Takashi Miike's Imprint. So... let's just call this my first full-length J-horror flick.

The Grudge.
It never forgives. It never forgets.

The movie informs us that, when someone dies in the grip of powerful emotions, a curse is born that will haunt the place where it has been created. Given that Bill Pullman (playing college-teacher Peter Kirk) commits suicide within the first seconds of the movie, I can't shake the feeling that he has something to do with this mysterious curse... and damn, I am right.

Speaking of Bill Pullman: I can't remember when I last saw the man in a decent movie. He seems to have fallen on hard times these days. But suffice it to say that he actually has a role beyond that of moodily throwing himself off a balcony in The Grudge. He's actually important, although the reason why he is important (and why he throws himself off his very own balcony) is revealed much later in the movie. I can't blame Takashi Shimizu (who wrote and directed this movie, and is also the guy behind the Japanese Ju-On) for the late reveal, though - any movie that features Bill Pullman as the romantic love-interest would have to try and hide this fact as long as possible from the audience. I mean, I do not dislike the guy and don't think that he is... weird or something, but... romantic love interest? That's quite a stretch.

So... Sam Raimi presents: The Grudge. With Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Which sort of pisses me off - her presence means that she's not the one who suffers terribly and then goes insane and dies (because that's what I want to happen to her). She's death proof by virtue of being the female lead. Yikes.

Buffy and her boy toy Doug (played by Jason Behr) have moved to Japan (from the US of A), apparently because they're studying (though it's hard to picture Buffy in a lecture - nigh impossible, even). And for some reason, I don't believe her when she's going all philosophical about Buddhist rituals - not that I doubt that what she says is true, but it just seems that she's a bit retarded and reads the facts off some sheet of paper. And I don't buy her being able to read Japanese either. Dear Mr. Raimi or whoever else thought it would be a good idea to cast Buffy as the lead: Don't. Just... don't.

But this movie has Ted Raimi as well, which maketh me happy. One appearance by Ted Raimi can make me forgive all the major flaws of a movie.

I know, I know... this is just a movie... However, seeing Buffy doing chores makes me feel as if my soul is being lifted up by invisible choirs of angels. Because I hate doing chores, and just had to do some of them and will probably do the rest of them after this review/after I finished eating this pizza (spinach and cheese topping), of which Rincewind has taken a healthy bite already (which translates to "I gave him a slice of pizza in order to befriend him"...).

It has kitteh!*

And so, we hop back in time, just in order to arrive at this dark place as it was in the past - just in time to see Matthew Williams (William Mapother) and his family (Emma appears to be his mother) as they buy the accursed house - and Emma feels that something is wrong... but greed and assorted emotions do not just exist in The West(TM) - also the Japanese are affected by it, and so they buy a haunted house. Gosh darn, that's what I call bad luck.

What The Grudge manages to do is showing us how lost someone can feel in a strange, new land, without knowing the language OR being able to read the script. I've been lost in France without the ability to speak or understand the language, but at least English is something even the French should admit to know, and the script is still our Latin script. But losing both, script and language... I imagine that would be tough. Hell, it would make me nervous.

Kitteh! Going "meow"!*

Creepy kid. But not creepy enough - I keep thinking about its hair rather than how threatening it appears. But maybe that's just me... although, strictly speaking, children should be the ideal monster for me - other people are traumatised to death by clowns, bacteria, viruses, disease, snow (I just mention that because it's snowing outside), ponies, death... with my inherent dislike for small human critters (aka "children"), the movie-world could scare me into submission, theoretically speaking. But it never does, no matter how creepy the creepy small human critters are.

Oh dear. Buffy feels that there is "something" in the house she was found in. Oh dear. Oh dear. My mind automatically made that into "MY BUFFYSENSE IS TINGLING!"... great. Now I can't take the movie seriously anymore. Curse you, sarcasm-muscle!

One thing that I simply have to mention is that I totally approve of the use of teh intarwebz in The Grudge. All too often in movies, you see some nameless search machine showing up on a computer, or some sort of eye-cancer inducing website that seems to have escaped from the early to mid-nineties, complete with animated .gifs and colours that just make you want to die (the alternative would be to slowly torture the person to death who actually came up with such a desaster in the first place). Here, we get so see the familiar face of yahoo and the (to me) less familiar face of some Japanese newspaper, the Daily News Japan (which is, of course, fictional but really conveys a feeling of "it's good, this site can exist"... Font-recognition can be something comforting).

The concept is interesting: When dying in extreme rage and/or sorrow, at death, that part of the mind is imprinted in the area the death happened. Death becomes part of that place, and kills whoever it touches. Sort of like an infection - you can run, but you can't hide. The curse will get you, no matter where you are.

I am not familiar enough with Japanese mythology, fairytales, sagas and assorted things. It's occasions like these that make me want to learn a bit more about Japanese culture and mythology - whilst the concept is interesting, I wonder how differently it impacts Western audiences than it would with a, say, Japanese audience. I know from my own experience that horror movies based on figures or stories that I am familiar with have a much deeper impact on me than a movie which deals with something I have no single iota of knowledge of.

Anyways... the camera is, as could be expected, very good. It's not perfect, it's not flawless, it's not too original... but it's solid, and a few shots managed to really impress me. Most of them were the claustrophobic ones I have come to like in Raimi's work. As I haven't watched the original Japanese Ju-On yet, I can't say how much he, in his role as co-producer, has influenced this aspect of the movie, as I don't know Takashi Shimizu's style... but no matter who it is that is responsible for them - I still like them.

Award 3 points for unnecessarily long and complicated relative sentence serving absolutely no purpose other than making this review longer.

The sound of kittehs routinely used in The Grudge makes me happy - I love the critters far too much to be able to feel anything but love and loyalty to the race of my feline masters**.

Something that didn't exactly help with my enjoyment of this movie was the American cast. I think my feelings on Buffy are already clear enough - but in case my dislike has been too subtle, I shall make it abundantly clear: I don't like Sarah Michelle Gellar, for she is stupid and her acting is about the quality of a dead slug. She is routinely outplayed by everyone in everything I've ever seen her in - and that includes the more obnoxious characters in the Buffyverse.

Besides for Ted Raimi, whom I adore because he's so full of win and awesome, the whole rest of the American cast appears wooden and artificial. I enjoyed the scenes in which there were only Japanese actors around - by comparison, they are much better and ....livelier than the ones in which we are nearly drowned in a puddle of American-ness. I don't know why this movie was re-done for Western audiences - unless you count using wooden actors and cutting down on the plot.

Speaking of the plot... I really don't know whether it's good or bad. As I already stated, I like the idea behind the curse - the "infecting" of others with it by sheer localised contact. But the rest... *shakes head*
It's really not bad, and I can't talk about it without giving away everything... suffice it to say that I feel a bit ambivalent towards it. But judge The Grudge for yourself...***

5/10 awesome scenes with a dislocated lower jaw.

* This is proof that the ability of cats to drastically lessen human intelligence through mere close proximity also works through the medium of film. xkcd speaks truth.

** Only people who are owned by one or more cats will understand this.

*** See what I did there?! O_o

The Living and the Dead (2006)

2009-01-16T10:50:00.038+01:00

I really don't know how to classify this movie - but that's not a bad thing at all. Let me try to explain...

Attention: screenshot - intensive.

The Brocklebanks are a weirdly dysfunctional family. Father Donald Brocklebank has, at the verge of bankruptcy, decided to leave the family manor Longleigh House for London, to get treatment of his terminally ill wife Nancy. The main problem, though, isn't Nancy's disease - it's their son, James, a young man who is a little bit... unstable.

I may have to define my use of the term 'unstable' a little bit more: His breakfast consists of medication. A lot of it. I have to take a lot of meds in the morning, but my pharmaceutical breakfast looks ridiculous compared to the amounts that James is taking - even when he's under-medicating himself. Because James needs his medication.

James seems to be on the verge of psychosis most of the time, his erratic behaviour getting more extreme. He seems to be aware of his condition, shooting himself up with medication, which seems to calm him down (I'd like to know what it is that he's injecting himself with).

His father, who has to leave the mansion they're living in (without any people working for them - it's just Donald, his wife and his insane son) and who appears to be strict, harsh even when dealing with James, shows a touching side of a father's love for his son when he finds him early on in the movie, a wound on his head from banging it against various objects, passed out on the kitchen floor. He may be harsh, but he does care for James - his pale, erratic son...

Something will go wrong, we realise, as James decides not to shoot himself his much-needed medicine the morning after his father has left for London.

He tells his mother that he will take care for her whilst her husband is away, and that the nurse which is supposed to do that cannot come. His mother is suspicious... and worried. She is bedridden and cannot care for James... who would need being cared for just as much as she does.

At minute 26, there is a sudden change in the tone of the movie. An urgency is gained that has not been present before, and it will be with us at certain times throughout the rest of The Living and the Dead.

Hectic. The focus shifts from James' mother to himself and his frantic experience of the world around him - dissociative, breaking apart. He reminds me of some of the schizophrenics I have met in associated hospitals, and his distorted perception of time also seems familiar, though in a less insane way. It hits a nerve... or two.

James decides to lock out the nurse (Sarah Ball) when she arrives, and this, for some reason, sends the woman into some nameless, urgent feeling of dread and panic. She leaves, and James is left with his mother - who doesn't want him to stay with her any longer, as she clearly sees the change taking place in her unstable, demented son.

He feeds her pills that she doesn't want to take, obviously scaring her. His aggression becomes more and more intense, and he's forcing her to swallow more pills after he attacks her. She has difficulties breathing and wants to speak to his father, but he becomes even more erratic and aggressive, yelling at her that he "is the man in the house".

Finally, his mother throws up the pills, and he is devastated, screaming and yelling at her while she flees in her wheelchair...

James has degraded into a raving madman as he watches his mother flee, falling out of her wheelchair onto the stairwell.

The second day arrives... and James doesn't take his medication. Again. And now, the movie truly begins... taking us with it on a meandering, surreal path through mind, illusion, reality and time - down the rabbit hole, towards the abyss, where Da'ath lurks, and with it - madness and despair.

This movie tells a story - a long, sad story, one of madness and loss, of pain and dissociation from reality. Its language is mainly the medium of pictures - it is hard to convey in words what each of those pictures alone says, on a multitude of levels. Opulent in its simplicity, I am confident to say that this movie is brilliant in its optical execution of a dreamlike, surreal experience that bespeaks a philosophical depth rarely seen in a conventional horror movie.

The eyes drink in the ever growing intensity of the pictures and scenes, whilst the mind struggles with making sense of it - what is real? What is illusion? What is future, what is past? Is there something like reality? What is madness, and what is not? Or is all madness? Time loses meaning, becomes something we cannot make sense of anymore. The Living And The Dead blends the various scenes and episodes that take place in a seamless way which creates the illusion of coherence where none exists - for there is no coherence left within the depths of psychosis.

This brings me to the second strong point of this movie: the acting. As we are following only three characters throughout the whole movie, we can see them in a variety of scenes which help to define their personalities. We know next to nothing about them - but yet we see into their souls, into their fears, despair and inner struggles - and their insanities. And all three main protagonists are doing a really great job.

Which impressed me most was the performance of Leo Bill, who played James Brocklebank (thank you, imdb.com, for the information on the family's last name). His portrayal of the character was most convincing, and he brought an unexpected depth to the staple idea of "the lunatic". It's because of him and through him that we experience the mixing of reality with illusion, of hallucination with reality, of hallucination with hallucination, of reality with reality. Kudos to him. His portrayal of body-wrecking physical and mental agony that comes in advanced stages of certain forms of psychotic attacks was stunning, and I applaud him for it.

There was a merciless realism to his portrayal of psychotic, dissociative behaviour. It touched me, because this is something very personal for me. It hits too close to home to be entirely comfortable.

Also impressive was Roger Lloyd-Pack, who played James' father, Mr. Donald Brocklebank. He certainly is a good actor, and although his performance was outshone by that of Leo Bill, he still brought life and depth to his character. Personally, though, I find that Kate Fahy ranks in on second place when it comes to the portrayal of the depth of a character. She plays James' mother with a natural ease that betrays her experience as a mother (this by no means implies that her kids are in any way like the fictional character of James Brocklebank). She's a really good actress for this sort of characterisation, as her portrayal of different emotional states was very convincing.

The stories we are being shown in The Living and the Dead are brilliant - because they are real, each single one of them. No matter what version of reality you want to see or will see if you don't embrace all of them as equally real - you will be touched.

It is a dreary movie - there is no joy in it, for even those precious few moments are overshadowed by the gloomy atmosphere of Longleigh House.

Much of the dark, but achingly beautiful mood of the movie is carried by the setting of the old, decaying manor. Set entirely within those brooding walls, the merciless maze of versions of reality gains an extra depth, one that perfectly represents the isolation which is such an integral part of The Living and the Dead.

Isolation - it rings through the movie as a central theme, made out of hollow echoes of bleak despair. Longleigh House is isolated, far outside in the countryside, far away from help. Donald Brocklebank is isolated - all wealth is lost, his wife terminally ill, and his son is lost to him. Nancy is isolated - her health is falling apart, and so is her family and her dreams. And James... James can't even reach outside himself, confined within the fractal madness of his own broken mind, fractalised, dissociative, fraying out at the borders. Reality - lost; to him as well as to us.

The camerawork is outstanding as well. Simon Rumley (who wrote, directed and produced The Living and the Dead) truly shines with this movie - it is executed nearly flawlessly on all levels. The use of light and shadow are brilliant, the camera's angles unusual but highly effective, the frantic editing of some scenes are blending seamlessly into the movie as a whole whilst still delivering the intensity and hectic, dissociative sense of urge that is so characteristic of James' perceptions, the pictures are beautiful... Flawless.

Weaving a net of sounds and impressions is the language. The dialogues never seem artificial or forced - there is, again, a stylistic minimalism at work here, which adds a particular feel of loneliness and - again - isolation to this piece of art. And the soundtrack by Richard Chester is of particular intensity as well. It is hard to describe, but the music has the effect of a painter's few final, highlighting strokes with the brush against the painting as a whole. It is admirable.

I don't know what to say.

11/10

Jaws (1975)

2009-01-16T09:24:00.025+01:00

A group of hippies is hanging out on the beach, gathered around a bonfire, having a good time. Two of them run off to go swimming in the ocean - actually, a girl runs off to do so, and a guy tries to follow her. But man, is he stoned, and he decides to lie down on the beach during this lovely nightfall. The sun is nearly down, and he falls asleep, whilst the young lady is swimming in the fresh, wonderful water.

Silence...

...but something deadly is coming, closing in from under the water.

And the silence is broken by screams.

Jaws starts out promising. Shame on me, for I have never watched the movie in my whole life. But it already fills me with a sense of nostalgia for those good old times - back then when there were still hippies, when smoking was okay in a movie and didn't automatically make you the main-villain, when people could have a drink. Good old times - with that wonderful 70s hair-do.

No, that's not what I meant by "70s hair-do".

The new Chief (from New York), Martin Brody (played by Roy Scheider) suspects a shark attack after the mangled body of the girl I mentioned above are found and wants to close the beach; but this idea is met with resistance from the town's mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), as Amity Island is dependent on the summer tourist season - and reports of shark attacks would devastate this much needed income.

After a boy of about 8 is eaten by the shark, Vaughn is convinced, and the beach is closed.

The mourning parents.

The dead child's mother places a bounty on the beast, which suddenly makes shark-hunting a very popular pastime for a lot of brave, courageous men - from all over the States. One of them is Quint (Robert Shaw) - a hardened and seasoned veteran of shark-hunting - with his boat, the Orca.

Meanwile, the marine biologist Matt Hooper arrives in Amity. After having a look at the remains of the victims, he is convinced that the shark responsible for the attacks is a Great White - and, judging from the bite marks, it's a GIANT.

It's a shark!

A big one, even!

...but it's not the shark that attacked and killed the victims - the bite marks are different.

After cutting open the shark that has been caught (and of course, everyone thinks that it's the shark responsible for the attacks, for Raptor Jesus knows that there is only one shark in the ocean), they find out that the animal's intestines hold fish and garbage, but no human remains.

Rummaging around in the gastro-intestinal tract.

A Great White (Carcharodon carcharias) is responsible for the kills - and still, Vaughn intends to open the beaches on July 4th, as he is sure that there is no problem whatsoever left - now that "the shark" has been caught and killed. This is a disaster waiting to happen... for there still lurks the perfect killing machine.

This is what a shark can do to you when he's test-biting you to see if you're tasty.

And this topic also makes for great dinner conversations!

Gods. I've always loved sharks. They are wonderful, fascinatingly beautiful animals. I stand in awe before them - they are evolutionary perfect. Praise the sharks. Underwater-creatures generally make me happy (although I admit to being partial to deep-sea monsters - they are pretty, awesome, nifty and just adorably cute, with those big eyes and big teeth... *wants to cuddle them all*), and sharks are something that makes me more happy than your average fish. They are just... perfect. I admit it, I stand in awe before the Selachimorpha, the most successful predators from the Ordovician on. *happy sigh*...

What a wonderful day to be out at sea...

Closing in...

After a prank goes terribly wrong, resulting in the death of one more person by shark (nearly killing Brody's oldest son in the process), the Chief of Police manages to convince the mayor to hire Quint, the professional shark-hunter - because something needs to be done. And so, Brody and the marine biologist with city hands (I'm talking about Hooper here) join the weathered hunter on his boat, the Orca - setting out to kill the man-eater*.

Dead meat.

There's no way around it: Jaws is a superb movie. Usually, I'm not that big a fan of animal flicks, as I've always felt them to be a cheap shot at humanity's fear of creatures it doesn't understand - but Jaws is different. Everything fits - the camerawork comes natural and easy, showing us exactly what we need to see in order for the movie to work.

Steven Spielberg just knows what he is doing, and it clearly shows that this movie is not some horror flick produced and directed by someone with good intentions (or should that be 'bad intentions', considering the usual themes present in horror?) but not the technical abilities to pull it off, but instead a horror movie that has been created by one of the best directors the US of A have produced - and this is definitely one of his best movies.

Another thing I noticed is the timelessness of the movie. Yes, it's from 1975, and usually I am not the biggest fan of 70s movies, either (granted, there are exceptions, but speaking of decades, the 70s just don't make it to my "favourite decades in the world of horror"-list - might just be that I watched the wrong movies as of yet, though... I definitely plan on extending my experience with that time-period!) - but Jaws just ...works. You don't become distracted by what is, for me, a period long gone (I mean sheesh, I wasn't even alive back then) - the plot and the suspense just draw you in.

And the shark... oh Gods. He is beautiful. We never really see him until we're close to the end of the movie, and this technique of only showing us glimpses of the magnificent beast works out really well (better than in Alien in my opinion - which reminds me that I finally need to write that review *sighs*) - and when we get to see it, it truly is majestic. Estimated to be 25 feet long (~ 8 m) and to weigh in at 3 tons... I think I have fallen in love.

The score by John Williams also adds a lot to the experience that is Jaws. It is perfect (and I usually don't easily call a movie soundtrack 'perfect', unless I am absolutely sure and can detect no single instance of it not contributing to the feeling, ood and effect of the movie in question), and combined with the superb acting by all of the actors involved just adds that certain something that marks a hallmark of a movie.

Speaking of the acting... our three leads are flawless. My personal favourite is Richard Dreyfuss in his role as marine biologist Matt Hooper - a rich, well thought-out character that we care for and understand (well, at least I understood the whole "scientists really love their work with something not just bordering on but surpassing obsession"-thing...).
Roy Scheider (as the main character Police Chief Martin Brody) also does a more than good job - his performance is not over the top, but instead has all the marks of a really good, experienced actor. He is nigh perfect in his role.

On a related note - it made me very happy to see that the actor who played the first eaten child, Alex Kintner, has been played by one Jeffrey Voorhees. Yes, I know - it's easy to make me happy.

I guess what really makes this movie what it is is the fact that Spielberg manages to keep a constant tension in the movie. The water becomes something threatening, something we cannot trust any longer - even bright, happy and inconspicuous scenes of people hanging out at the sunlit beach, swimming in the water gain an underlying sense of dread - for we never know when the shark is going to strike again, dragging down his next hapless meal... errr, I meant "the next poor victim".

The water isn't really that appealing anymore...

Subtle dread.

I fully approve of this movie - in fact, I consider it to be Spielberg's best as of now.

And if you're interested in learning more about sharks... Wikipedia is your friend:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_characteristics_of_sharks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_great_white_shark

9/10 magnificent apex predators...

*I swear it - I didn't copy Wikipedia. I only noticed the eerie similarity after looking up the details on how much money this blockbuster made back in the days.

Cloverfield (2008)

2009-01-15T17:48:00.004+01:00

Here I am, with a fresh start into the year 2009, and a fresh review to, erm, celebrate the new year on this later day. That's how much I love to celebrate.

I apologise for my lack of reviews in the past months; but problems with my health are keeping me from doing this more regularly (you may or may not believe it, but my movie-watching-quota has sunk drastically... *sighs*). I'll try to write more often this year...

Some Thing Has Found Us

Today's movie of choice is Cloverfield, as directed by Matt Reeves and written by Drew Goddard (who is also responsible for some episodes of Buffy, Angel, Alias and Lost, besides for being known as co-executive producer of aforementioned Lost) - and, ladies and gentlemen, ghouls and ghosts, I am pleasantly surprised.

Living on teh intarwebz, so to speak, I had of course read a lot of differing opinions on the long-awaited monster-movie of 2008, not all of them positive. When TF, who had eagerly awaited this movie since the marketing campaign had started way back, finally got his fingers onto the movie (I gave him my copy before watching it myself), was disappointed, my expectations were lowered even more. But alas - this movie is actually awesome.

Disclaimer: I'm under the influence of a soothing herbal mix.

Cloverfield starts out weird:

A group of friends (and acquaintances) is throwing an unexpected surprise farewell party for their mate Rob Hawkins, a young man living in Lower Manhatten, New York, because he's going to leave the city - and the country, even! - in order to work in Japan. This, of course, warrants alcohol and fun for everyone. One of those friends responsible for the surprise is Hub, who is more or less forced to record the testimonials of the people hanging out and chilling, so that Rob can watch the tape when he's far away from home.

That was the only part of the movie that I really could have done without and that bored me. But the hand-held camera is very realistic (something that, luckily, carries on throughout the whole movie, but more on that later) - I've had the misfortune to see such things a few times before, and it is very ...authentic. We get to know the people at the party, the gossip, the relationships between them - who is together with whom, who is sleeping with whom, who had an affair with whom and who might break up with whom... just a typical party with all the human drama that those things entail, after enough alcohol has flown and emotions started making complicated things even more complicated. Actually, I started to get curious... and suddenly, a big crash shakes the building, and outside, some parts of the city lose electricity.

Soon, the TV reports a possible earthquake in Lower Manhattan, with an oil tanker capsizing near the statue of liberty. The people decide to go there and see what is happening... and the camera follows.
Then - an explosion - panic. Sirens and alarms ring, people flee wildly through the streets - and no one knows what's happening. But in the background, there's a sound... like the roaring of a giant monster.
... and SOMETHING is moving. Something eery. Something big.

Gigantic, thunderous steps shake the buildings, the roaring fills the air with primeval, animalistic sounds. And all around, there are sirens, people screaming, police cars... and dazed survivors of the monster's wake. Manhattan is burning - a wasteland. Cars crashed, people crying, buildings shattered... and the severed head of the statue of liberty, like a blind reminder of what is being destroyed.

No one knows what happened and what it was that caused this destruction - but they figure that it would be best to get out of there...

Unlike Romero's Diary of the Dead, Cloverfield's camera doesn't exploit what is happening, doesn't want to bring some Truth - it just happens to be there, and records what is happening in a very subjective way. It's much less clean-cut and professional, but much more engaging for the viewer. It's like being in the middle of what happens, and it works for me. Then again, I'm stoned right now.

The monster is awesome. You can't really make it out, you only get glimpses of limbs, partial glimpses of body parts, and the sight is always partly covered, the cam shaking, and the frantic authenticity of the camera instills a sense of expectation and adrenaline rushing. Even a bit of terror at times.

Our group of survivors decide to walk through the tunnels of the subway line out of Manhattan - which is what I, personally, would consider to be a bad idea. Because, you know, it's dark in there...

Something that I found very good is that people in this movie actually get injured and attacked by critters and survive, without shrugging it off as if it were nothing (alternatively, dying...). The scenes in the makeshift sick bay are pretty good (though short), and the presence of the military and its stressed, aggressive but yet disciplined behaviour adds a good deal to the hectic feeling of the movie.

The style which is employed in Cloverfield leaves much to the imagination of the viewer. An individual with a certain sense of phantasy can fill in a lot during those scenes which leave the mind time to think, or to combine parts of a picture into a warped hole.

And I want to add yet again that the monster is awesome - full of win and awesome, in fact.

I heartily recommend watching this movie whilst being under the influence of your favourite herbal blend (perfectly legal, of course - I'd never condone the use of natural, healthy substances like the products of the cannabis-plant, because it's illegal and bad). Good stuff (both).

8/10 viciously cool limbs which move in a really cool way.