kindertrauma

Category: General Horror

The Conjuring (2013)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

ALAN MOORE once said " Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness." I couldn't agree more and have I got a spell for you. THE CONJURING is a scary, endearingly romanticized, elaboration of a some-say ‘true" haunting. I' m not going to get wrapped up in the authenticity of the story because any tale, true or not, that inspires a movie as swell as this is all right by me. If things are grandly exaggerated, that's fine. That's what urban legends are fueled by, that's what tall tales stand up on and that's what fills every history book in every elementary school in America. Hyperbole is what storytelling is all about and we're all guilty of tweaking the truth to make it shine a little brighter. If we can force ourselves to believe that Thanksgiving isn't a shameful travesty then surely we can humor a harmless ghost story every once in a while too. Wow. Even in the heart of summer I hate on Thanksgiving!

JAMES WAN is a wonderful director. There I said it! I said the director of SAW is wonderful! He beat me down folks! I tried to resist but it's over. INSIDIOUS was a left hook and THE CONJURING is a right hook and then some. I give up already! It's not a fair fight when he has PATRICK WILSON on his side and I just have bitter, misplaced feelings of exclusion on mine. Anyway, our tale is about a nice family (The Perrons) who moves into a haunted-looking house and discover that it is indeed infested with invisible forces that yank them out of bed and according to at least one source, smell like farts. Who ya gonna call? Why notorious married supernatural specialists ED & LORRAINE WARREN (WILSON & VERA FARMIGA) of course! Now, I know there are some people who are not fans of the real life Warrens (Ed has passed away) and think of them as cons. I never met them so I can't say. I just know they were really nice to the Smurl family in that excellent TV movie that scared the crap out me called THE HAUNTED (1991) so I'm going by that. Plus if WAN was of the mind to aggrandize the couple ,he sure casted well. On a side note, JAMES WAN, can you cover the Smurl haunting in the sequel pretty please? And can you release the movie on the same day as SMURFS 3 so that Box office Mojo is forced to write the headline SMURLS SMASH SMURFS!? Do it!

THE CONJURING is getting enthusiastic reviews, which is nice as most horror movies are pummeled for simply existing. I notice though that many critics feel the need to temper their kudos by saying it's well done but a "typical" haunted house tale. Personally, I think it has a lot of merit outside of just being a well-oiled scare dispenser. The frights aren't random jolts, they're tethered to something solid and concrete. They're not simply about being in dangerous situations with the unknowable they uniformly concern the worst fear of all, that harm might come to someone you care about and worse still, it may be your fault. Ed fears that Lorraine looses part of herself each time they involve themselves in such things, Lorraine frets that their daughter Judy is swinging between being neglected and endangered. The Father of the haunted family (RON LIVINGSTON) is anguished over putting his family in peril and the mother (LILI TAYLOR at her best) ends up personifying everybody's worst fears by melding with a spirit who has killed her own offspring and has supernaturally strong-armed others to unthinkingly do the same.

I can totally relate. Let me tell you, for full horror pleasure it's all about the empathy. People who don't have it are missing a world of flavor! Sorry, I'm going to talk about myself again. But isn't that the nice thing about blogs? You get that personal touch. Do you know what you get from magazines? Paper cuts! So as I was saying, we too recently moved into a haunted-looking house. When we got here I realized that the previous owners took all the screens from the windows. This freaked me out because we have five cats and I didn't want them running away. They were all scared out of their minds and oh, God, what have I done to them? I started imaging the worst. The cats slipping between doors, getting hit by cars, freezing in the streets, lost. It got worse, I'd be hammering a nail and think, what if I dropped the hammer and it landed on a cat's head? It got ridiculous. What if one crawled into the dryer? It got nuts. What if the cat choked on a discarded pistachio shell? My dreams were filled with drowning cats; cats on fire, cats crushed under poorly installed air conditioners. It was exhausting and I could not make it stop. The resolution of THE CONJURING that involves something as simple as recalling a moment of pure connection with those you care about resonated with me. Maybe focusing on that thought alone IS enough to expel the witch in my head.

Oh, I get it! I'm mentally ill! You know how folks with screws loose think the T.V. is talking to them? They see signs and coincidences everywhere and they get messages, lots and lots of messages? Well, that's how I interact with movies. It's been that way ever since I was a kid, the movies, especially the good ones, they tell me things! This one really went out of its way to whisper in my ear. The new house, the five kids, my favorite episode of THE BRADY BUNCH playing on the T.V., a ghost with the same name as my cat, a clown music box (mine plays "Send in the Clowns"), a porcelain lamb, a rooster painting, an embroidered owl, landscape T.V. trays folded against the wall- how is this not my home?

I found this movie frightening enough (WAN is gifted at sneaky distraction and leaving enough blank canvas for the viewer to paint themselves) but that really wasn't the most important thing for me. For as much as THE CONJURING embellishes the dark it is depicting, it puts forth equal effort accentuating the light. Maybe that won't please those who follow horror as an endurance sport but who cares about tourists? As corny as it may be, I love that this movie has a strong conscience. Remarkably it doesn't stop at giving you distinct characters; it makes a point of concerning itself with the relationships between those characters. (Seriously, the sparkage between WILSON and FARMIGA is so dynamic somebody oughta shove them in a THE THIN MAN remake.) In real life, things did not end on such happy, tied in a bow terms. The Warrens were asked to leave the case and the house remained (and is said to still be) haunted. That's the "true" story and who the hell needs it? I like this much better! Reality, take a lesson from fiction, ya lazy bore! I've never been one for happy endings in horror flicks but this one suited me just fine. I say sequel time! Send in the Smurls! Don't bother…they're here!

American Gothic (1988)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

If anyone ever asks me to name an underrated horror heroine, remind me that I want to say Cynthia (SARAH TORGOV) from AMERICAN GOTHIC (1988). It's not hard to guess why she's never gained much traction with the horror crowd; she's not butch, bookish or boob-centric. In fact, she starts out as kind of a drip. It's not where you begin but where you are going that matters though and glum Cynthia is going to the best place of all…crazy town!

When we first meet her, she is being released from a mental hospital! Is there a better time to meet a person? It's no wonder she's a mess and a half, it turns out she's committed the ultimate blunder! One day she was giving her baby a bath when the phone rang and she just left for a second and then…zoinks! That's some pretty heavy baggage and that's why I don't give my cats baths. In the interest of taking it easy and getting her mind off the fact that she killed her baby so that she could answer a stupid telephone call, Cynthia jumps in a plane with a bunch of people she has no business being friends with and takes a trip! Only God must truly hate Cynthia because he places her plane down onto an island whose inhabitants are super counterproductive to her recovery.

Talk about your island of misfit toys. There's fair weather religious nut Pa (a fire breathing ROD STEIGER), prudent Charleston fan Ma (a hard not to love YVONNE DeCARLO) and their three less than adorable moppets: Fanny, Woody and Teddy (JANET WRIGHT, the legendary MICHAEL J.POLLARD and WILLIAM HOOTKINS, respectively). The kids are pushing fifty but act like they are twelve and please remember this was released in 1988 way before Facebook made such behavior the norm. Cynthia's pals make the deadly mistake of scoffing the backwards ways on display while I only wish I could book a weekend stay. No cars, no lights, no motorcars… not a single luxury, unless you consider having a giant swing next to a cliff so that can you push people to their doom a luxury, which I do. If Cynthia would open her eyes maybe she could learn something here. As somebody who is having trouble letting go of the past she might take note of how that same approach to life has hardly benefited her demented hosts. Are these frozen-in-time, perpetually stunted human defects her future if she doesn't get a grip? Yes. In the meantime her snotty friends must die one by one in increasingly gratifying ways.

(Kinda spoiler-y) Perhaps the only reason that Cynthia survives longer than her buddies is that darling Fanny takes a liking to her. Cynthia's emotional state so closely mirrors the family's folie a cinq that she glides smoothly into ponytail-enhanced Stockholm syndrome. This is a great turn of events…for me! What nobody has bargained for is that Cynthia's secret power is insanity and Fanny owns the exact key to click her switch to berserker mode…oh you know, you might have one around the house too… a dried up baby corpse! Cynthia's resulting transformation is better than your average slasher-chick metamorphosis from dishrag to ShamWow. It's as if a crazed understudy has pirated the part. It's not the first or last time a horror character has switched sides mid-game but it's one of the few times where it's handled in a way where it makes absolute sense. Ultimately Cynthia is not playing on any team. What's she's raging against is the same thing Pa renounces when he's presented with the death of his own offspring, the absence of a higher power who cares enough to stop such horrible things from happening.

Fittingly JOHN (INCUBUS) HOUGH's AMERICAN GOTHIC borrows freely from the classic horrors that walked before it while indulging in whatever eighties excesses it cares to. Although it's a kissing cousin to many films from PSYCHO to THE BABY to MOTEL HELL to maybe even JOHN WATER'S PINK FLAMINGOS, it probably shares its strongest kinship to WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? In both cases we're dealing with eccentric outsider characters that are somewhat comical on the surface and downright tragic at their core. As amusing as AMERICAN GOTHIC's billowing black comedy antics often are, it's only one hopscotch jump away from hitting upon something deeper. When it's not dealing with infant death and the questioning of God, it puts forth a generational clash between old and new ways that exaggerated though it may be, is recognizable as a true American constant. This movie has more than its share of mentally ill oddballs bouncing around yet in the end, it seems the big baddie looming in the shadows might be cruel, heartless time itself and the ambivalent way it tends to make mincemeat out of those who lag behind. It's not the scariest movie in the world but this is one baby you should not throw out with the bathwater! I'm sorry; I just had to do that.

The Incubus (1982) He is the Destroyer!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Once upon a time, one of my favorite video stores was closing and selling off its stock and so I went to feed upon its carcass like a slobbering vulture. I had a limited amount of funds and so many a Sophie-esque choice was made that day, one of which would come to haunt me in shameful, near psychotic ways. My haul was to be complete after one final DVD decision. I could either get AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS (1973) or THE INCUBUS (1982). I had not seen the former and I owned the latter on VHS and so in the spirit of open mindedness and expanding my horizons, I left doe-eyed THE INCUBUS behind. What kind of a person does that? A fool.

As it turned out I had severely underestimated my love for THE INCUBUS and richly overestimated my giving a crap about AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS! In order to rectify the situation, I jumped over to Amazon to rescue my mistake only to find it out of print with its price tag soaring by the minute! To buy it at three or five times the amount that I had recently snubbed my nose at was impossible! I was an idiot and suddenly my life was incomplete. There was a hole in my heart that went all the way to China and that howling abyss could only be filled by one thing. It was as if I had lost a leg in a war and was now cursed with a phantom ghost leg except for the war and the leg part. (Please note that while all of this nonsense is going on there are actual real tragedies taking place all over the world.)

What was wrong with me? By my calculations this behavior was the exact opposite of Zen. I was acting like one of those horrible record troll people who hang off of cardboard boxes at garage sales with crazed looks in their eyes prepared to strangle anyone who gets in the way of their precious Gollum prize! I had to snap out it. I had to stop checking Amazon every week with the sole purpose of torturing myself! Why was my sense of well being tied to something so trivial and why did I feel like I had somehow betrayed a part of my youth? I'm not what I own and yet I can't help thinking nobody deserves to have this DVD more than me! I might have just stopped the madness and bought it at any price but you know…you just know… as soon as I did that it would become available again and I'd be a chump again.

I had to get off the merry go round and so I gave up. The dust settled, the cuckoo went back in the clock… and soon, as predicted, THE INCUBUS was rereleased on DVD! See miracles really do happen when you set your sights low and happen to be the pettiest person on Earth! I even waited (the hubris!) for a used copy and got it super cheap! Victory was finally mine! It came in the mail and I welcomed it with open arms and I was contented for exactly one second! Hooray for me.

I really do like THE INCUBUS more than I lead on in THIS review. Now that we've been through the ringer together our relationship has grown even stronger. It's got some hammy acting, at least one instance of truly horrendous dialogue (I don't want tenderness!) and a less than stellar script (based upon a book that probably shouldn't have been adapted in the first place) but Lord love a duck, the general vibe of it sings my wretched song. How are you are not going to love this perfect bubble of time when the eighties were becoming the eighties but were not all bright and wacky yet? Is there anything better than a movie that wants to be a slasher and a gothed-out supernatural tale at the same time? I want to be both those things too!

I know some folks find this movie super sleazy on account of all of the wall-to-wall demon rape going on. I guess it is but it's all presented as so grim and depressing that it's hard for me to see it as exploitive. Personally, I'm more interested in the oppressive wall of monstrous sexual angst I believe it shares with the same year's AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION and THE BEAST WITHIN. Seriously, what is it with that year? Where the planets aligned in some specific way? Anyway, in my book, director JOHN HOUGH is criminally underappreciated. He's done great stuff (TWINS OF EVIL, LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, the excellent AMERICAN GOTHIC), some noteworthy stuff (WATCHER IN THE WOODS, the WITCH MOUTAIN movies) and even a lovable stinker (HOWLING 4: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE). Really, what DVD collection is complete without all of his movies? Oh no.

The Lords of Salem (2013)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

In THE LORDS OF SALEM, Heidi Hawthorne (SHERI MOON ZOMBIE), a radio disc jockey, receives a mysterious package with a record inside. A friend attempts to play the record for her but it merely skips until Heidi places the needle upon it herself. The disc produces a haunting wall of sound that puts Heidi in a sort of a Stendhal syndrome trance while her friend remains unmoved. For whatever reason, Heidi then chooses to share her unusual discovery by playing it on her radio show. As the recording howls and booms over the airwaves, we again observe that the music affects different people in vastly different ways, some scowl and shrug and some stop in their tracks mesmerized. The best way to describe ROB ZOMBIE's THE LORDS OF SALEM is to say that it's a movie that operates exactly like that record does. It's a treasure trove for those that respond to visual and audio stimulation and a barren coffer for slaves of clarity and traditional storytelling. If you fall into the latter category, don't ever see this movie! I beg you! That whole crossed arms, I just ate a lemon, indignant consumer routine you do; it's not as cute as you think it is.

ROB ZOMBIE is one of the more significant horror directors working today not because he is the most commercially successful but because he has miraculously held on to and honed his own voice (against a tsunami of chattering teeth opponents, I might add). Love it or lump it, he's now at the artistic level where accessibility is no longer a concern. Think of THE LORDS OF SALEM as his STARDUST MEMORIES, he's point blank telling anyone still listening that he's not truncating his journey just because you dig his "earlier, funnier movies." That could very well irk folks who can't seem to connect with his work but stand down horror fans; the genre deserves at least one modern director not slavishly beholden to the sensibilities of mall teens. If you don't like it, good. Welcome to the world of art! Don't frown; in this joint you can get just as much stimulation from the stuff you don't like as the stuff you do! Remember, you must be this tall to enter, keep your hands inside the car and stand ready to see things done in ways that you might not have done them yourself! Here is a bullet to bite. I know it's not what you want but trust me, it's what you need…

To me, in one way or another, each ROB ZOMBIE movie has been more interesting than the one that came before it. I'm not saying "better," I'm just saying more thought provoking. (Actually, I could almost say I like each one better than the last except THE LORDS OF SALEM is not dethroning H2 in my heart anytime soon.) Maybe I'm just a very visually oriented person but there are moments in THE LORDS OF SALEM that I think are more potent and valuable then many of ZOMBIE's directing contemporaries entire output. I'm not kidding. If an alien came to earth and was like "I'm either going to obliterate from existence that frame from LORDS with the orange fur beast or everything that ADAM GREEN and ELI ROTH ever laid a hand on, I would take zero seconds to shamefully respond "Give me the orange fur beast."

Not that I have anything against those other guys, it's just that for my needs they're comparatively disposable and more likely to indulge audiences rather than shepherd them anywhere new. If I ever missed HATCHET, I suppose I'd just watch MADMAN whereas I don't think there's anything I could trade ZOMBIE's imagery for regardless of how much it might be inspired by existing material. He's just a brilliant visualist, end of story and sorry, that means something to me.

"But Unkle Lancifer!" you might be saying while taking off your spectacles and cleaning them with an embroidered handkerchief, "I don't care for his writing! His dialogue is trite and like many horror aficionados, I'm an absolute stickler for dialogue!" Here's the thing, I think his writing is fine and moreover, hold onto your tea cup Oscar Wilde, when it comes to the expression of horror, I don't think the written word is paramount. "Clay face man walks goat in graveyard" is not much on paper but trust me, visualized it's a whole different crap-your-pants kettle of fish.

I promise you, I didn't salute every flag ZOMBIE hoisted. Remember when I was talking about the EVIL DEAD remake and I was saying that it was well built but failed to conjure up a believable presence of malevolent mojo? LORDS is the flip side, its malevolent mojo is indisputable but its structure could stand a few more laps around the gym. I'm not buying the SHINING-style days of the week title cards as framework. As in my actual life, I don't care what day of the week it is and it's really no less corny than showing a clock spinning. If you are dubious about SHERI MOON ZOMBIE playing the lead, I'm not going to totally disagree. I think she's wonderful, a one of a kind character actress, she made an indelible mark in DEVIL'S and she broke my heart in HALLOWEEN. Still, I feel like this movie needed somebody that you didn't intuitively predict was scrappy enough to wiggle out of whatever. It's noble to put forth a different type of protagonist but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think some of the film's erosion themes aren't blunted by that choice. Do you know who would have been perfect? FAIRUZA BALK! Think about it. Before you agree just know that my answer for every casting quandary is FAIRUZA BALK and I may be subconsciously judging SHERI MOON on her hair.

Here's the thing though, the most important thing, after the movie was done I went to the restroom in the theater and something about the place felt wrong. The overhead fan was acting up, singing a crazy womp-womp LYNCH-ian dirge and the lights were blinking an indecipherable code. Half my head was still in the movie and that's my idea of success. True, I missed the emotional punch of H2 (if you didn't feel anything during Annie's death scene, congratulations you're a sociopath) and I admit that I prefer my ZOMBIE a little more stompy. And yet LORDS certainly constructed a hazy, mad malaise that wasn't so easily wiped off my windshield. Those who get frothy at the mouth minimalizing ZOMBIE's vision can sleep well, LORDS' adamant ambiguity gives you plenty of space to dig in your talons. All I know is that my trusty specter detector was reading some true, undiluted horror on the screen. And when I say "horror," I don't mean the pandering power fantasy kind, the giggly, popcorn sleepover kind or the logo strewn, fan bought collectible kind used to spackle over identity chasms and make one feel all safe and special. I mean the unpleasant, corruptive, soul-siphoning kind that has no interest in patting you on the back. No, LORDS doesn't deliver the rousing cathartic thrills horror fans are looking for instead it offers something most horror fans have little taste for at all, actual horror.

Burned at the Stake (1981)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Approximately a trillion years ago, I came across a picture in a magazine (either Fangoria or Famous Monsters) of a weird priest with gross bubbly skin. It was for an upcoming horror film called THE COMING, which to my knowledge, ironically, never came out. The image made a strong impression on me, either due to my psychotic fear of acne or, simply because anything related to religion can't help being creepy. That dusty memory sat in a shoebox at the very back of my mothball-riddled brain until the other day when I finally came across THE COMING on YouTube, hiding under the alias of BURNED AT THE STAKE! (sticklers who point out that nobody was ever burned at the stake in Salem as the film suggests should be burned at the stake themselves for bumming me out.) Lo and behold, it's directed by the nice man (BERT I. GORDON) who gifted the world with ant-o-vision in EMPIRE OF THE ANTS and brought to life H.G. WELLs spectacular vision of a world gone mad thanks to giant chickens in FOOD OF THE GODS! This was too good to be true and so I pinched myself and, by pinched myself, I mean did a jig.

What a pleasant surprise this movie is! Maybe it's not good in that useless, "It's made well" sense but it's certainly good in the more important, "I cannot wait to see what happens next" sense! How has this movie remained so far under the carpet for so long? I see that it involves a time traveling pilgrim so I'm going to blame him. It's very difficult to pull off a time traveling pilgrim. BURNED AT THE STAKE stars the incomparable SUSAN SWIFT of AUDREY ROSE fame, who apparently was working on being type cast as a reincarnate. She plays a nice girl named Loreen, who was not such a nice girl a couple hundred years ago when she was known as Ann Putman and her hobbies included screaming her head off and randomly accusing people of being witches. Loreen is having flashbacks of her previous horrible self and to make matters worse, she's being stalked by an adorable/scary black dog, the pizza-faced priest and the aforementioned time traveling pilgrim who is rightfully amazed by airplanes. Luckily there is a helpful witch on hand to explain the fuzzier parts of the plot when she's not too busy having telepathic conversations with the dog. There's a sweet redemption bit near the end that reminded me of THE SEVENTH SIGN (1988) and more than a few absolutely horrifying wax historical reenactment figures one of whom may or may not spring to life. Also, I dig this witch mobile…

OK, this movie is patently ridiculous but it's way better than I ever dared hope. Plus, it's all autumnal and takes place in beautiful Salem, Massachusetts! Fortuitously, I found it mere hours after having seen ROB ZOMBIE'S LORDS OF SALEM (review pending) and I decree that the two movies make an excellent wonder twin double feature! I think they might have even used the same graveyard! It's probable! Kooky though it may be, BURNED has a semi-cruel dark streak as only a film that concerns itself with a five-year-old being burned alive can. SUSAN SWIFT's performance is seriously solid, regardless of the heaps of hokum thrown at her and frankly, I'd take this cockeyed lunacy over drippy AUDREY ROSE any day of the week! Somebody who cares about humankind should put this unfairly forgotten flick out on DVD and they should do it quickly! They should also put a blurb by me on the back that says, " So bewitching, you won't even care that it doesn't involve giant chickens!"

Summer Girl (1983)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

For the last five or six years, on a roughly monthly basis, I've been checking YouTube for the appearance of the elusive 1983 TV movie SUMMER GIRL. My sad, faithful diligence has finally paid off! To the best of my memory, I haven't laid eyes on this chestnut since the original night it aired. Not that my powers of recall can be trusted. My strongest recollection of SUMMER GIRL has always been of its startling final image, a dark silhouette standing on a cliff in some kind of ominous victorious pose. It stayed sharp in my mind even while the rest of the flick blurred…

…only I totally got that wrong. That scene happens in the middle of the movie with plenty of stuff still waiting to happen. It's still awesome though! It's not necessary to go into much detail about SUMMER GIRL's plot. You are familiar with this tale in one form or another. It's the same as THE BABYSITTER (1980) which came before it, and the same as any number of HAND THAT ROCKED THE CRADLE-molded films that came after it too. Take a happy family with an insecure wife (in this case our old pal KIM DARBY) and a husband with a roving eye (MEGAFORCE-of nature BARRY BOSTWICK) and then add a seemingly helpful innocent who is in actuality a cunning sociopath and stir. What makes this routine outing momentous is that the one and only DIANE FRANKLIN plays the requisite interloping usurper.

If MOLLY RINGWALD is the peachy pastel face of the eighties we choose to remember, DIANE FRANKLIN is like the darker, deeper, more complicated truth hiding behind that candy coated mask. Not to take anything away from the RINGWALD but while she was constructing happy endings reliant on the acceptance of others (see the classic JOHN HUGHES triptych), FRANKLIN was forging a fickle opportunist heartbreaker (THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN), a tragic incestuous victim of demonic sororicide (THE AMITYVILLE HORROR 2: THE POSSESSION), a fish out of water French exchange student in a suicide comedy (BETTER OFF DEAD) and a vapid video vixen who unsuccessfully battles a mutant from space (TERRORVISION). In her made for television efforts she has the rare distinction of playing both the honorable final girl (DEADLY LESSONS) and the evil menace that must be destroyed (SUMMER GIRL).

I can't say SUMMER GIRL's "Cinni" is my favorite FRANKLIN creation (that honor belongs to AMITYVILLE's Patricia Montelli) but the mesmeric psycho with delusions of grandeur surely adds gravitas to FRANKLIN's oeuvre and mystique. As it turns out, I'm not all that happy with my newfound knowledge that Cinni is ultimately foiled by party-pooping nonbelievers so I have decided to revert back to my false recollection and continue to see her as that dark goddess on a cliff looking down at us mere mortals triumphantly.

Shadows of the Mind (1980)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey, I just figured out that I can watch YouTube videos on my big TV thanks to my friendly best buddy PS3! This opens up so many wonderful opportunities for yours truly! Lately, due to events completely out of my control, I have caught some pretty decent movies. Enough is enough. I need something terrible! Luckily, every request my mind ever makes is always promptly fulfilled by the universe! That is how SHADOWS OF THE MIND (1980) waltzed into my life! This movie nearly knocked CATHY'S CURSE off its perch as my number one most-beloved, maddening atrocity! Of course SHADOWS has no evil doll in it so there was never any real threat of that happening but still, that previously unthinkable thought did cross my mind! Will a normal human be able to watch this movie for five minutes without shutting it off? Who knows and who cares! I wish I knew how to properly describe this awkward oddity. It's sort of like being stuck on a bus for hours sitting next to a rambling nutcase and it's sort of like if ANDREA MARTIN starred in a movie based on the comic strip ZIGGY except somebody gets stabbed in the eye with a corkscrew. This is one of those movies that is often hilarious in its ineptness and yet is so persistently peculiar that it ends up being creepier than you'd expect.

SHADOWS is the story of slack-jawed, sad sack Elise (MARION JOYCE) who is set free from the funny farm after spending the last 12 years learning to say goodbye to the trauma of witnessing her father's tragic boating death and hello to a seriously unhealthy attachment to her psychiatrist. With the best of intentions she moves back to her stately family home, only to be tormented by her snarky stepbrother and stalked by a shifty groundskeeper. Soon folks are being murdered and we're lead to wonder if Elise is being framed or if she's lost her marbles again. It's kind of like PSYCHO 2 without the burden of quality. The most fascinating thing here is the fact that the screenplay was written by lead actress JOYCE. This adds a weirdly personal, almost confessional vibe and it compounds the discomfort when other characters must duly remark how vibrant and beautiful the (sorry) borderline hunchback Elise is. Director ROGER WATKINS (who is also responsible for the more notorious THE LAST HOUSE ON DEAD STREET) has a way of making 80 minutes seem like 180 but the film's campy, parlor room hysterics and through the roof nutso payoff are easily worth the sluggish haul, at least, to me. Make no mistake this movie is not good in the traditional sense but I loved it in ways I could never love a good movie. It certainly didn't successfully convince me of everything it set out to but in the case of its depiction of mental illness I stand absolutely sold.

Sunday Streaming:: The Awakening (2011)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

THE AWAKENING (2011) opens with a séance and we all know that's a good thing. Shortly we're on some 1920's era, cross country train trip and it's clear we're being taken to one of my favorite places on Earth…uptight lady who may be bonkers in an ominous mansion with super creepy kids-land! (See THE INNOCENTS, THE OTHERS, THE ORPHANAGE, HOUSE OF VOICES, FRAGILE, et al.) Let me be upfront and say this type of movie gets a ton of leeway with me. I just want to spend as much time inside it as possible and I'm fully prepared to tolerate it going through whatever well-worn motions it needs to in order to do so. Maybe these digs are nothing new but what's a subgenre for anyway, unless to sign a secret agreement to deliver essentially what you expect? Yes, there are few surprises (I may not have known exactly the precise inevitable twist but I sure knew the ballpark) yet honestly, if it went on forever I wouldn't have minded much as it satisfyingly establishes a complete and believable arena for the supernatural to roam.

Written by STEPHEN VOLK, the brains behind the legendary GHOSTWATCH, THE AWAKENING most fully earns it's place at the ghost table by delivering some intriguingly robust characters in hard-nosed proto-Ghostbuster Florence Cathcart (REBECCA HALL) and her injured and enigmatic confidant/love interest Robert Malloy (DOMINIC WEST). If these two kooky kids had the mind to jump out of the movie and start an X-FILES type show, I would gladly pull up a chair each week. It's certainly a shame that director NICK MURPHY didn't better resist the urge to gild the lily with uninvited splashes of unnecessary CGI, but those few incidents weren't so obtrusive as to tear the whole playhouse down. I'll probably revisit and investigate this movie's familiar yet absorbing halls more thoroughly in the future. For now, this is a great Netflix find for anyone who enjoys a more classic and refined approach to scares; it takes full advantage of its setting and what it lacks in innovation, it makes up for with the company you get to keep.

The Evil Dead (2013)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

THE EVIL DEAD (2013) is exceptionally good, particularly for a remake, but I can't say it completely blew my socks off. That's O.K., maybe in the future it will. For now I'm satisfied, even if my socks aren't. I certainly recommend checking it out while it's in theaters; it's a big, gorgeous, blood-red hell painting that deserves to be seen on the largest canvas possible but I'd take those "most terrifying movie ever" blurbs with a grain of salt. I say that as someone who is a light touch when it comes to being unnerved by possession flicks. Obviously a great effort was made to strike a more serious and grounded tone and it absolutely works but the stripping away of anything campy or freaky for me, lessens my sense of a more unrestrained truly evil, mocking presence. Both figuratively and literally, this movie sings a haunting lullaby that is precise and sharply assembled, yet I can't say this tune is as rabidly fierce as the simple, absurd maddening chant of "We're going to get you." In many ways — finer acting (with the exception of lightening in corduroys CAMPBELL), resplendent cinematography, and fuller script — this reworking is superior to the film it's based on and yet it suffers for being too straight-faced and cautious about fully dipping its paw in the rampant insanity jar. Yep, it's bloody as hell but I can't say physical gore can really hold a candle to the threat of crazed, unbridled delirium.

Sorry, I'm looking at this gift horse straight in the mouth and maybe I should be careful about comparing this spring chicken with a movie that has lived in my bones for decades. If nothing else, director FEDE ALVERAZ branded more than a few fresh, potent images into my brain. There's a bit involving a conversation through a plastic bag that is touching, gloriously bizarre and exhilaratingly unique and there's a final clash battle image between two figures that I wouldn't mind having as a mural on my wall. I love the look of this movie. It's like some kind of muddy, rusty religious relic someone dug up out of a grave. If I could kidnap ALVERAZ at gunpoint and lead him into a time machine in order to remake all the other remakes that sucked, I would.

And yet I wanted more. I wanted to be taken over the top. I was right there on the edge waiting for him to push me. There's a well done, late in the game build up to the resurrection of what we can only imagine is a sort of ultimate demon and then when it arises we get….a pretty girl with muddy hair. She's expertly utilized for the most part, we catch her climbing out of a shed and it's [REC]-level yikes but God, I wanted to slap a death skull mask of some sort on her! Sure, that might have gone against the film's level-headed, non-cartoony approach but I was primed at that point to jump to the next plane and take on some wilder beasts. Oh well, maybe next time. As is, this an accomplished sturdy nightmare, I just wish I could push it off the cold turkey wagon, dose it with hallucinogens and free it to cackle like a truly impious fiend.

Sinister (2012)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Home movies are naturally creepy. There is something depressing about folks hamming it up while forever trapped in a grainy, bleached-out world that no longer exists. SINISTER opens with a super-8 flick that brings the medium's innate moroseness to grotesque heights, as it happens to feature a family with sacks on their heads being hung from a tree. Some sort of makeshift execution device has been crafted where, as the tree's branch is sawed off, the weight of the branch dropping raises the squirming family off the ground and to their final Kodak moment. It's a grisly way for a movie to introduce itself and an early indicator that SINISTER aims to live up to its name. What could be more disturbing than witnessing an entire family killed together? Later in the film we'll find out; witnessing an entire family killed together in front of their Chihuahua!

ETHAN HAWKE plays dishonorable dad Ellison Oswalt who moves his unsuspecting family into the house where the murders took place. We're clear on his motivation (Ellison was a once celebrated true crime writer who has fallen out of favor and is looking for his next inspiration) but his reasoning is foggy. The killer of the family was never caught and one child was never found so the house's heinous history is still an open wound. Who would bring their kids into a place like that? Can't Ellis' research be done anywhere considering it mostly consists of pinning string to a map and writing questions on Post-it notes? Ellison knows his family is bound to find out but he lies to them just the same and it's suggested this is not the first time he has put work ahead of them. Hey, I'm down with an unlikable protagonist, I'm just not sure I'm down with his wife being presented as a wet blanket nag when she has every reason to be pissed off. Moving sucks.

Ellison's theory that living in the crime scene might offer him insight pays off in spades when he finds a box full of snuff flicks in the attic made by the killer! What a break! Sure, this is clearly invaluable evidence to the murders of dozens of innocent people but by sharing it with the authorities, he's jeopardizing his book so he keeps it to himself. He's obsessed, not obsessed enough to watch all the movies in one sitting, which by the looks of it he could, but obsessed just the same. The more he watches the more his life crumbles and the more he has to deal with scorpions, snakes, invisible dancing children with circles under their eyes, stay-at-home actor VINCENT D'ONOFRIO and his daughter painting on walls other than those she has been given permission to paint on.

SINISTER contains brief moments that are sublimely scary. When we first catch a glimpse of what's breeding the horror, it's a vague, bone chilling image. But the more things come into focus the harder I found it to swallow (which is strange because my gullibility is of legend.) HAWKE is great but his earnestness tends to highlight the multitude of shortcuts and contrivances. (How convenient that an ancient deity just happens to resemble a modern metal-head's SAW-friendly wet dream.) The wrestling flavors of deadpan gritty thriller and broad horror fantasy don't so much clash as beg to be better stirred.

Can I get nit-picky? When Ellison's family moves into the house months after a notorious slaughter has taken place, I get that the tree remains in the back yard to inform us of where we are, but why the hell is the branch that was sawed down still hanging off of it? I've learned to let bigger issues than that pass in order to get my scares on but I'd be lying if I said that dead branch didn't get stuck in my craw. It drove me nuts. In fact, I still want to jump into the movie and drag it off myself. Maybe it's me. I have been on organizing tear lately but still…even if a family was not hanged on that tree, human behavior dictates that somebody would do something about that branch! It's dead! I should concentrate on the score. The score is cool.

If you are a fan of supernatural flicks this is worthwhile for the handful of times it hits the nail on the head but honestly I could never completely fall under its spell. For me it was like the devil laughing in my face but with spinach in his teeth.