Necronomicon (1993)

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

Holy fucking shit. Of course this trainwreck is a Brian Yuzna production.

So...  Necronomicon (1993*). I wanted to do this for a while.

This, ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and ghouls, vamplings, zombesquities etc., is what scientists watch whilst typing away fanatically at long-winded papers about the development of hypostases of ancient Sumerian deities which could be linked conceptually with Yog-Sothoth**. 

I don't know about you, but my own brand of horror education has made me aware of the fact that people dealing with things like this are usually prone to visits from terrifying abominations lurking beyond the frail borders of mortal perception, elder things that have lurked beyond the dim echo of the line dividing life and death, immanent in the horrifying splendour and awe-inspiring terrors of the universe, waiting and spawning at the gateways. So there you go, my eventual fate is probably to die screaming in an asylum after attempting to summon the monstrous horrors of the void and emptiness between the stars.***

Necronomicon (1993) consists of three shorts - 'The Drowned', 'Cold Air' and 'Whispers' - embedded into a frame-story (0, also known as 'The Library' and directed by our collective favourite, Brian Yuzna), which, amazingly, gives us Jeffrey Combs as the man himself, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Within said frame-story, he (...or should that be He?) is visiting a library to research the hidden secrets of blasphemous monstrosities from beyond, so naturally, things become interesting as he stumbles across that most evil of all books: The Necronomicon! Lovecraft starts to read - and the stories we are shown are right from the pages of that terrifying tome penned by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred.

'The Drowned' (I) - The last of the lines of the Delapores (well, de la Poers actually if we're really going by canon here) returns to his ancestral manor... and we all know that ancestral manors are usually a beacon for evil forces that cast their demented shadow over such places, attracting all kinds of abominations from the lonely places beyond.
The first minutes are more or less setting up the story of the de la Poers - but just as the esteemed Lovecraft-fan is getting comfortable and begins to identify the story used as 'The Rats in the Walls' (one of HPL's masterpieces - if you feel like, enjoy), gleefully waiting for the ancestral cannibalistic terror to be involved, atavistically driving our protagonist to madness, the story kind of... switches around in the middle of establishing itself and adds weird story elements not really congruent with what we know the mentioned story at all.
The ancestral manor - sitting upon a cliff that is honeycombed with ancient caves, which any faithful reader of the master of weird fiction knows to house a terrible, terrible secret - is situated near the sea. This apparently made it a favourite with suicides of the de la Poer family... and whoosh, suddenly the story completely switches, and we're suddenly right in something that... is not a Lovecraft story I recognise. A ship runs aground in a terrible storm (one feels slightly reminded of The Call of Cthulhu, but that's wrong alarm... or maybe this potpourri is intentional? Who knows...), and a character's wife and child die in the process; said character, now lacking said wife and child, burns the Hol(e)y Bible out of a theatrical display of anger aimed at the Most High and kind of renounces god (that YHVH-guy). What follows is the most logical conclusion - he gets a nightly visit from a fish-/crab-/thingie-creature threateningly telling him that he is not alone, and as such, he suddenly finds the (you guessed it) Necronomicon (dun - DUN - DUNNNNNNNNN!!!!) underneath a pile of sea-ish stuff with which probably would have disgusted Lovecraft to no end****. As the book (or should that be 'tome'?) is friendly, it opens to a ritual called "Towards the Remedie of Untimely Loss". This includes chanting the famous lines we all know and love - that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die as well as the line about 'in his house in R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming' (or something like that, I'm reciting from memory here).
As this is a Lovecraftian story nonetheless, no matter on what story or story elements it is based on or not based on, the ritual succeeds and the guy's two loved ones, wife and son, are indeed resurrected - AS TENTACLED MONSTROSITIES! *mad laughter*
...suicide ensues.

... ...AAAAAAAND we're out of that story segment (let's call it I.1) and back in the frame-short of Mr. Delapore/de la Poer in his ancestral manor. In the library, no less, frantically researching hidden knowledge that man was never meant to know. As he falls asleep in exhaustion, the story suddenly makes a violent turn and rapes your Lovecraft-mind: Bony things appear from underneath Delapore's bed amidst a green glow (of the black magick / black science-persuasion of colour), whispering something.
Naturally, the last scion of the line of those degenerated de la Poers finds the - you guessed it! - Necronomicon (I begin to see a pattern here) and immediately starts ritualising around, calling upon Elder Forces from beyond.
For some reason, hot undead chick ensues (yepp, another relationship-y resurrection), and we nearly get some action - this being a Lovecraft flick by Brian Yuzna, we know that not all is well, though. The moment the female begins to develop quite the tentacles-from-various-orifices-theme, we know that we're back in "we're doing Lovecraft not for the cosmic terror and creeping fear, we do it for the octopoid abominations and possibilities to use great slimy masses of stuff to make our point about otheworldly terrors"-land. Which is so charming that you can't not like it... (unfortunately, no screen shot. Craptop doth not want to take screenshots - 't'would be too much, running two applications at the same time!)

...And we're back in the movie's frame-story (0) about Jeffrey Combs as Howard Phillips, reading the Necronomicon...

...and the story that unfolds right before our eyes is 'The Cold' (II), obviously based on the original story 'Cool Air'. This one's been produced by Shûsuke Kaneko, whose other works I have not been privy to.

Interestingly enough, the first time I saw this outside of my <3 suhrkamp editions of actually rather good German translations of Lovecraft's stories or in lovingly made .txt-files on the net, it was in a zombie-anthology ('The Dead that Walk'). I had never seen it under that premise of an idea.
This version of the story involves a young woman being extraordinarily sensitive to heat, living in a suspiciously cool flat. A reporter visits her and asks her about the doctor used to live there - and his alleged connection to 11 dead people. After clumsily threatening the woman, she starts with her story...

The Past:
Young woman (with no particular sensitivity to heat - HINT HINT HINT) moves into the house, the other people living there being the woman who owns it and a mysterious tenant (which we could foresee to be the mysterious doctor) who is not to be disturbed. In her apartment, however, young woman notices ammonia accumulating on the ceiling, dropping onto her musical notes.
Cue in abusive stepfather, crude sexual innuendos and attempted rape - in the end being heroically forestalled by mysterious tenant with a scalpel. Yes, meet David Warner as Dr. Madden. He's awesome in that role. Seriously awesome - but maybe that's because I'm kind of a fan of the guy, so there is a distinct possibility of bias.
The good doctor explains the frigid temperature to young woman by his skin disease, which requires an unusually cold room temperature, and after noncomittally having accepted that matter-of-factly, they part ways. Blood dripping down from the ceiling at night is the logical next step in this story's development.
We also find out that the doctor is probably more than 100 years old, and that he bleeds transparent ick instead of blood.
The story proceeds predictably from there if one is aware of the story by HPL, with only minor variations. Okay, we get a pretty kitschy romantic scene (which is surprisingly awesome considering the participants) complete with a bit of romantic love-making (...yaayy(?)!)... complete with a love-plot of the respected "Oh noes! I cannot stay away from this elderly mad undead scientist!"-variety + a kind of love-triangle. Followed by graphic melting of the good undead elderly mad scientist. We love you, Brian Yuzna. We do. So very very much.

Back to young woman and reporter. Reporter is drunk and suspects young-woman-talking-to-him and young-woman-from-the-story-about-the-goodly-doctor to be the same person. Oh noes. We totally didn't see that coming. Blah blah spinal fluid blah blah.

After that:
Back to Jeffrey Combs... eh, I mean Howard Phillips in 'The Library' (0), reading the Necronomicon. Another story - the third in this collection, again arising mystically from the pages of that evil book! (*grins*) ---

--- cut away to short number III, 'Whispers'. This one's also directed by Brian Yuzna, so you can freely assume to be in for some fleshy ride. And you would be right! 

It's the most ridiculous thing EVAR.

I love it dearly.

You will, too, if you can appreciate Yuzna-stamped fleshy things man was never meant to see and a campy plot:
Two policemen (one guy, one gal) have a car accident. Waking up, the female finds herself alone, her partner taken. As she's a cop and he's her partner and this is a predictable movie, she goes off to find him. Doing this, she demonstrates a great ability to pick out the worst situations to be in as she follows the trail of his blood...
The male disappears, whereas she ends up in some sort of subterranean hall and is found by a harmless and polite-appearing elderly man. Still underneath the earth, his bizarre wife appears, and it turns out they know about The Butcher - the (ghastly, terrifying, terrible, horrifying, astoundingly evil, bad, monstrous etc. etc. pp. ad nauseam) criminal that the policefemale and her partner have been hunting together! What a coincidence!
So they (the elderly couple) take her to their home, having a bit of small-talk and such things (...one would expect tea and biscuits!), and inform her that The Butcher is an alien that has been here since before the time of the dinosaurs - or is he the servant of an alien? Who knows...
In order to achieve police-y stuff,  female cop is being taken downwards...  farther down into the depth of the earth - to a tunnel, decorated with odd wallcarvings and stuff like that (presumably, this is supposed to be a 'Lovecraftian' design), where the elderly male shows her a deep hole in the ground, fully hidden by a malevolent mist and surrounded by more eldritch (kind of Aztec-looking) carvings. How did he come by this knowledge, we all wonder? So finally it turns out at this point that the elderly couple is a team of obscene cultists of the Great Old Ones. Female cop is thrown into a surreal, slime-filled, squicky underworld, where she finds her partner undergoing a horrible transformation.

It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever fucking seen. I mean... OMG. Flappy flapping things. Seriously, this beats a lot of crappy animatronics, and ZOMG -- this is perfect. Hilarious.

In the end, the cultists turn out to be pro-life AND marrow-sucking aliens. This is indeed worth a satisfied nod - predictable, yes, but awesome. It's far too random and awesome and cool to give away the 'plot', for lack of a better worth, - well, give away more than I already did, but hey, I did slap a spoiler warning on top of this - but... man.
Flappy things.
They make me giggle every time I see them.

*happyful*

...rest assured that madness ensues.

Cut to frame-story (0) of Jeffrey Combs in the library with the Necronomicon. Something tentacled attacks him, and an awesome bald priest - who is seriously cool, I like the character a lot -, has, after warning Lovecraft cryptically of evil things, most of his face pulled off by our soft-spoken Providence scholar. Then a terrible evil from the other end of a colourful tunnel connecting the Necronomicon to worlds beyond eats his skull out of his skin.

Forces have been unleashed that should never have been stirred from their uneasy, merciful sleep...



A remarkably funny way of butchering Lovecraft. I am often lenient with the truly trashy terrible transmutations being marketed as 'based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft', especially if they have this ...special charm. Yes, I'm an addict. However, this flick is thoroughly enjoyable and will guarantee giggles galore. The FX alone are enjoyable - handiwork one recognises and appreciates. There should be more movies like that.


6.75 / 10 flappy flapping things wildly flapping around in a completely non-menacing way (yes, it's that good).

* There seems to be some kind of disagreement on the year; my copy says 1994, and I've originally seen this aired on TV ages ago as a 1994 movie. IMDB says 1993. I am obviously going with IMDB here.

** Spelling disputed.

*** Knowledge of obscure dead languages - check. Researches ancient religions - check. Trained in archaeology / anthopology - check. Reads old books - check. Pale and thin - check. Indulges in the occasional mad giggling - check. Watches horror movies - check. Reads HPL - check. 

...Holy fuck, I am a manifestation of a cliché!

**** Lovecraft didn't like seafood or general fishy stuff. Like... really didn't like it. Never wondered why most of his grand, icky stuff comes from the watery abyssal depths?

Rabid (1977)

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)

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

Aftermath (1994)

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)

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.

Bleeders aka Hemoglobin (1997)

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.