Iro's October '18 Horror Thread

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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Now who's stretching the horror definition thin?
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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I don't know, man. Sure as hell ain't me.
I wouldn't call Prometheus horror at all. Sure it shares the same universe as Alien, which many would call Sci/Fi horror, but I fail to see the same elements used for Prometheus. Maybe it's just me.



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#22 - The Brood
David Cronenberg, 1979


While a woman receives a radical new form of psychotherapy, her estranged husband notices that a series of violent murders may be connected to this therapy.

David Cronenberg does not make pleasant films. His filmography's most iconic images include everything from exploding heads to vagina-shaped chest wounds to a man slowly and painfully turning into a giant fly. Even by the standards already set by the films I've seen of his, there's something particularly nasty about The Brood, if only because of its subtext being more informed by his own real-life family troubles than his usual cold and clinical polemics on whatever topic happens to take his fancy at a given time (though I suppose that this film does involve some criticism of alternative medicine and therapy in the process). The method of therapy shown in The Brood involves a psychiatrist (Oliver Reed) engaging in role-playing sessions with patients that somehow result in them channeling their repressed psychological trauma into the formation of visible physiological changes to their bodies such as lesions all over one patient's torso or even a possible case of lymphoma for another patient. As intriguing a concept as this is, it's all just background for the film's main plot - that one of Reed's patients (Samantha Eggar) is also in the middle of a separation from her husband (Art Hindle), who is also concerned that she may be acting physically abusive towards their young daughter whenever she visits. As if this isn't a tense enough situation already, there's also the matter of the murderous mutant child that shows up before too long...

The Brood is definitely recognisable as early Cronenberg with its late-1970s Canadian kitsch sort of (but not really) mitigating the horror that the film tries to communicate through a combination of twisted practical effects and the uncanny circumstances that produce and surround them. The extremely personal nature of the family drama at the heart of the matter proves a strong backbone to a film where the brevity means that the creepy children show up quickly and yet you're constantly left wondering just what Reed's shifty psychiatrist is really up to when his bizarre therapy starts having dire consequences. It's definitely easy to question whether or not Cronenberg's decision to bring his real-life issues into the texture of the film might have problematic implications and end up turning the film into "My Ex-Wife Is Crazy: The Movie" (especially as it reaches its grotesquely troubling conclusion), but given how much time is devoted to examining the cyclical effects of parental abuse influencing the film's narrative it does come across as a strangely empathetic treatment of the topic that doesn't limit Eggar's character to being a deranged harpy nor does it make Hindle's character into a straight hero either. In this regard, it's a step up from the hyper-sexual nihilism of Shivers and recognisable as a significant step forward for the filmmaker towards his best works, plus it's a solid film in its own right.




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I wouldn't call Prometheus horror at all. Sure it shares the same universe as Alien, which many would call Sci/Fi horror, but I fail to see the same elements used for Prometheus. Maybe it's just me.
I would cite the various examples of body horror - the black goo kills one character from the inside out, creates a killer snake that painfully kills another one, turns another one into a rage zombie, causes another one to be impregnated with an alien and leads her to carry out a C-section on herself - as being enough to make it horror, never mind the metaphysical elements. Certainly a better justification than "there's a vampire in it".



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#23 - Carnival of Souls
Herk Harvey, 1962


After surviving a severe car accident, a woman travels to a new town to start another job but is plagued by nightmarish visions.

On the surface, Carnival of Souls looks like it could be yet another cheaply-produced mid-20th-century American B-movie that would be right at home in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with its stilted performances and amateurish technique. Of course, in some cases that quality turns out to be a feature instead of a bug and it's very much the case with Carnival of Souls, which takes a less-is-more approach to horror that might not be altogether obvious when starting the film. The plot even seems like a simple enough slice of small-town drama as it follows Mary as she moves to a new town following her improbable survival of a drag-racing crash. She works as a church organist despite not showing any particular signs of faith and moves from one church to another, setting up in a small boarding house as her new residence. However, as she arrives in town she finds herself being haunted by strange sights and sounds, most prominently the eerily grinning visage of a pale, black-eyed man in a suit. Even if that weren't a problem, the town itself is more than a little strange; leaving aside the abandoned pavilion on the edge of town, there's also the various individuals that Mary encounters who would prove a problem (most notably the extremely presumptuous male lodger who constantly makes advances towards her from the moment they meet).

Going into any film that you know has drawn a considerable cult following can always be a double-edged sword as so many of those films earn said followings by appealing to distinctly off-kilter perspectives that you yourself may not share, hence why so many of them are so incredibly polarising. I would consider Carnival of Souls itself to be a polarising experience as it proves a strange combination of shoestring dramatics and genuinely surreal horror that thankfully doesn't stretch itself thin and keeps things to a lean eighty-ish minutes. There is something distinctly proto-Lynchian about its juxtaposition of its protagonist's seemingly mundane troubles with adjusting to her new small-town life and the surreal depictions of creeping dread that begin to follow her wherever she goes, especially when the two start to bleed together and cause severe consequences. The low-rent nature of the film not only necessitates some inventiveness on the creators' part but actually pays it off when it comes to effective horror, rendering the somewhat plodding first two acts as ultimately worthwhile preamble to a truly unsettling third act. It's a curious piece of work that definitely earns its cult following for crafting some remarkable imagery and builds up to a persistent sense of dread after a while, which definitely elevates it above similar B-movies of the era.




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#24 - Queen of the Damned
Michael Rymer, 2002


A vampire comes out of hiding in order to front an up-and-coming band, which draws the anger of other vampires who fear he may expose them to humans.

With Queen of the Damned, I once again question whether I should assume a film with vampires in it automatically qualifies as horror by virtue of their presence. There is certainly something innately horrific about the concept of formerly-human beings who must survive by feeding on the blood of living creatures (especially people), but especially so when it turns out that the ones who last the longest and thrive the most do so by virtue of being supernatural serial killers. The real challenge sets in when you take one of these inherently cruel creatures and try to make them into sympathetic anti-heroes. It made sense for Anne Rice to centre her debut vampire novel Interview with the Vampire around Louis, a vampire who viewed his condition as a curse and refused to feed on humans out of moral convictions - a viewpoint that constantly put him at odds with Lestat, the much less morally-conflicted vampire who originally turned him into a vampire. Queen of the Damned, another story from Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" universe, opts to make Lestat the straight-up protagonist and attempts to repurpose him as a lovable rogue who would re-emerge after decades of obscurity simply to become a rock star. Of course, in order to turn him into even a vaguely sympathetic anti-hero it has to set up a conflict with someone even worse than him, which is where the titular queen Akasha (Aaliyah) comes in after being roused from her own long slumber with her own designs on Lestat. Throw in some stuff about vampires who want to kill Lestat for potentially exposing their world to humans through his vampire rockstar gimmick and a paranormal researcher who becomes intrigued by him and, well, that's where things go off the rails.

Even when allowing for the fact that Queen of the Damned may not always be aiming for straight-up horror (though it still makes time for plenty of graphic scenes involving vampires attacking humans or even each other), its attempts at being entertaining in any way are failures. It haphazardly jumps from set-up to set-up - from rockstar antics to vampire-watchers to old-timey flashbacks and back to rockstars - and doesn't do anything of worth with any of them. It gets to the point where attempts to bring the plot back around to focusing on the actual queen attempting to reign over Earth again (I guess) feel like unwelcome intrusions on the gleeful absurdity of Lestat's rockstar antics riling up the local vampires. I might've actually welcomed a film that leaned into the somewhat comical nature of Lestat having to fend off his fellow vampires in order to continue fronting a nu-metal band, but unfortunately this film is still committed to its apocalyptic tale of ancient curses. it even gets to the point where marvelling at the film's ostensibly campier aspects (such as the motion blur added to vampire speed and flight or the fact that Lestat's singing voice is provided by Korn's Jonathan Davis) does little to actually make this anything other than a dull and painful chore of a film. As such, I can't recommend Queen of the Damned in any capacity. At the absolute least, it looks like it should be goofy fun for alternative kids but it never makes good on that promise so all I can say in the end is that it sucks.




28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I sometimes wonder what Aaliyah's career would have been like had she not died. Never seen this movie though. Might add it to my list this month.



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#25 - Maniac Cop
William Lustig, 1988


The streets of New York City are terrorised by a serial killer dressed in a police uniform.

What had initially drawn me to check out Maniac Cop was the rumour that John Hyams (who I mainly knew for directing two surprisingly good direct-to-video Universal Soldier sequels) was in talks to direct a remake that would be produced by Nicolas Winding Refn of all people. A tantalising prospect, to be sure - enough so that it made checking out the original something of a priority. As if you couldn't tell from the bluntly sensationalist title (which even gets acknowledged as such within the film itself), the original Maniac Cop is as B-movie as they come. A hulking figure dressed in an impeccable NYPD police uniform begins the film by interrupting a mugging not by killing the muggers but instead their hapless victim who comes to him for help. From there, the movie becomes about trying to stop him as one veteran detective (Tom Atkins) tries to figure out what's going on while another police officer (Bruce Campbell) is set up as the fall guy who must clear his name.

I can certainly understand why the prospect of remaking Maniac Cop sounds so enticing - the original definitely strikes me as the kind of film that doesn't make the most of its premise's potential. There are definitely aspects to it that resonate all too well in 2018, though even when it touches on the subject of police brutality (as it can't help but do given that, you know, it's a movie called Maniac Cop), it still ultimately drops that tangent about a third of the way in order to focus on an otherwise standard tale of supernatural revenge (albeit one that still focuses on corruption within the police department and mayoral department). At least it still proves mildly entertaining in that regard, not least because it's buoyed by dependable cult actors like Atkins or Campbell and capable of delivering down-and-dirty B-movie antics all the same. As such, I mildly recommend Maniac Cop. Though I question if I'll bother with its sequels and I still hope that it gets a remake that makes better use of its potent premise than it did, it's got that '80s roughness that can be charming if you let it.




28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I liked Maniac Cop enough to give it a
. My only real memory of it though is the bad make-up effects on Robert Z'Dar, whom in real life has an unforgettable face structure.



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The MST3K riff about him having a face like a catcher's mitt is forever burned into my brain.

But yeah, I would think that if you have to add any movies I cover here to your watchlist then you should try starting with the ones that are at least a
.



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#26 - The Hunger
Tony Scott, 1983


A pair of vampire lovers have their relationship disrupted when one of them starts to rapidly age.

Original review found here.

Sometimes I wonder if I try too hard to like the works of Tony Scott. The man definitely threw himself into making high concept movies across his career, though one can readily examine his filmography and question whether he really managed to really bring something overly new to a table that could only be polished so much in the grand scheme of things. Considering how much of his filmography revolved around high-octane Hollywood thrill-rides, it's odd to look back at his solo feature debut and see him do something as anomalous as an extremely Gothic tale of vampire romance (it's comparable to Zack Snyder beginning his blockbuster-heavy career with the relatively small-scale Dawn of the Dead remake). Again, the does-vampire-automatically-equal-horror question comes up and I think The Hunger manages to qualify, at least as far as its actual scenes of vampiric bloodletting go - Scott makes a hell of an opening statement by inter-cutting iconic Goth-rock outfit Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in the middle of a dingy industrial club with the two lead vampires (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) seducing and devouring two such clubgoers. The ensuing film...well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Much of the film concerns Deneuve being a long-lived head vampire and Bowie being the latest in a long line of lovers she's kept and ultimately discarded as they struggle to keep up with her own everlasting life; this is a matter that's only complicated further when a degenerating Bowie seeks out a geneticist (Susan Sarandon) to try to solve his issue.

As my old review will attest, I thought this was very underwhelming upon first viewing but a second viewing has made it easier to appreciate (though not overly so), if only because of altered expectations. No longer was I disappointed that the film wasn't as capital-C Cool as I'd expected (though it still manages quite a bit of that with Scott readily demonstrating the hazy aesthetics that he and brother Ridley favoured so much), but coming to understand the ways in which it defied my initial expectations has helped me to realise its strengths. Knowing that this and Blade Runner were both made in the wake of the premature death of Tony and Ridley's other brother lends both films extra substance as both filmmakers reinterpret their grief through fantastic concepts about creatures with unusual life-cycles (whether it's seemingly-immortal vampires or deliberately short-lived androids). Even when the film opts to divert away from the overtly horrific and focus on the romantic angle (complete with softcore scenes between Deneuve and Sarandon), there's still a recognisable undercurrent of existential dread as the latter is drawn into the former's soul-sucking toxicity. Just when it starts getting a little too easy to forget that this is a horror, it will bounce back with advanced decrepitude here or arterial spray there - the pacing seems practically glacial at times, but not without purpose. As such, The Hunger benefits considerably from a re-evaluation that doesn't quite make it classic material for me but makes it clear that I was definitely missing something the first time around - at the very least, I find myself interested in seeing what Scott would've come up with if he'd kept making films in this vein.




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#27 - Apostle
Gareth Evans, 2018


A man travels to a remote island in order to rescue his sister from a religious cult.

Apostle represents an intriguing move on Gareth Evans' part to shift away from the Indonesia-based martial arts films that had defined his career for better or worse and into the similarly visceral genre of horror. He does so by creating a period piece set at the turn of the 20th century, beginning with Thomas (Dan Stevens) learning that his sister Jennifer (Elen Rhys) has been taken prisoner and held to ransom by a religious cult that has taken up residence on a remote Welsh island. Since he is presumed dead following a mysterious occurrence in his past and his own father unable to go, he opts to go undercover in order to infiltrate the island and bring her home. Of course, that's not going to be easy when everyone must journey there via the same boat and be subject to all sorts of inspections and trials in order to make sure they are true believers in the cult led by Brother Malcolm (Michael Sheen) lest they face torture and execution for threatening the island's docile (perhaps too much so) community.

In much the same way that Evans' The Raid 2 took the lean and mean action approach of its predecessor and padded it out with mobster drama, so too does Apostle lean into an extended running time in an attempt to slowly build the tension as to what's really going on with this island. It works perhaps a little too well as it is at once caught between the urgency of Thomas's mission and the time taken to develop both him and the other characters on the island (with particular attention being given to a pair of star-crossed lovers who try to hide their romance from the puritanical community). It still interjects violence at seemingly regular intervals - a slashed throat here, a thoroughly aggressive impaling there - before gradually ramping up into a frantic and uncomfortably bloody finale, but the route it takes to get there is almost a little too patient at times. Even once it gets there, it still seems like too little, too late. I won't deny that I had some fun with Apostle and how Evans' trademark action made for a different take on the cult sub-genre (which might be one of my favourite horror sub-genres, but then again this film did make me question that at least a little), but in the end it didn't grow on me.




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#28 - Leatherface
Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, 2017


The youngest son of a family of murderous cannibals is institutionalised and proceeds to forget them, but things start to change after the institution's patients break free.

The conventional wisdom dictates that the villains in slasher movies (and horror movies in general) are more often than not better left undeveloped due to the idea that learning more about their histories and motivations takes away the mystery behind their seemingly-unfathomable acts of evil and compromises the all-powerful fear of the unknown in the process. We may get glimpses or pieces of exposition that give us just enough of an idea of the character to make us scared, but an extended delve into their backstory tends to be out-and-out unnecessary. That being said, if any slasher villain's backstory could theoretically carry a feature-length prequel, it's definitely Leatherface. His status as a mentally-challenged victim of constant abuse by his more lucid and aggressively sadistic relatives arguably makes him the most sympathetic of the slashers, so a film that explores how that came to be certainly isn't the worst idea for a prequel. That's the angle that Leatherface takes as it begins by showing young Jed Sawyer, initially seen being uncomfortable with the idea of taking part in his family's cruelty, being carted off to a home for criminally insane delinquents by the local sheriff (Stephen Dorff). Dorff does this less to ensure Jed's well-being than to spite the family and its matriarch (Lili Taylor) for murdering his daughter. Ten years and one name-change later, the boy formerly known as Jed has forgotten about his family but they certainly haven't forgotten him - enough so that Taylor's attempt to get him back causes a full-scale riot that results in Jed reluctantly taking to the road with a handful of other patients and a kidnapped nurse.

In fairness, Leatherface at least makes the effort to change up the franchise by swapping out the usual house-of-horrors approach for a road movie where the main group of youths are not under threat by a masked madman but by a combination of encroaching police attention (including an increasingly deranged Dorff) and in-fighting due to the group here consisting of a homicidal outlaw couple who have effectively taken the other three hostage as part of a plan to flee to Mexico. As someone who always considered Leatherface's relatives to be the worst part of any installment (even the five-star original), I'm actually glad that the whole second act of the film just ignores them completely. This is especially true of the decision to frame Leatherface as a nominal good guy who has to survive against the whims of an unrelated pair of maniacs and a vengeful sheriff, which is a plot thread that does a good job of carrying the film. Unfortunately, the novelty of this approach doesn't last too long and it's back to business as usual by the time the third act rolls around - while it's arguably effective considering the story it's trying to tell, it still manages to wring an especially sour note out of its inevitable conclusion. As a result, I have to add Leatherface to the increasing list of bad films in the franchise (which well and truly outnumber the good ones - or is that one?). As the eighth installment in the franchise, it adds a much-needed sense of variety to a franchise that was always rather repetitive, but even that isn't enough to salvage the whole film.




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Yeah, it's...something. At the very least it gets points for originality, which gives it an edge that most of the other installments don't have but the trade-off is that it spends a good chunk of its runtime being an outlaws-and-hostages road movie so I'm not sure what your tolerance is like for that. Still, that might be enough to push it ahead of the remake/The Beginning (and well ahead of The Next Generation).



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#29 - Witchfinder General
Michael Reeves, 1968


In 17th-century England, a witchfinder travels across the country persecuting those he suspects to be guilty of witchcraft.

There's always something remarkable about watching a particularly old film that manages to be exceptionally violent not just by the standards of the day but also still leaving a bit of an impact even by contemporary standards. Witchfinder General turns fifty this year and I'm more than a little amazed at how raw and brutal it manages to be, especially in its uncut version. In the case of the DVD I watched, the scenes that had originally been cut had visible deterioration all over the footage due to having been duplicated off a recovered print and re-inserted into the cleaner-looking cut version - if anything, this added an edge to the proceedings as anytime the film got noticeably grainier it ended up serving as a heads-up that something especially twisted was about to happen. Of course, it's about what you'd expect from a film that opted to tell a story in as horrid a setting as an England being so divided and ravaged by civil war that the eponymous witchfinder (Vincent Price) is capable of waging his own war against the threat of witchcraft. This is especially true when his idea of finding witches ultimately amounts to him subjecting various people to cruel and unusual punishments under the guise of figuring out who is or isn't innocent (in ways that end with innocent people dying anyway).

A plot does formulate wherein a soldier (Ian Ogilvy) goes out for revenge after his lover (Hilary Dwyer) and her priest uncle (Rupert Davies) are tormented by Price, though this does ultimately serve as a means to keep things moving from scene to scene of puritanical barbarity. It's a decent enough backbone, especially when Ogilvy is constantly caught between his commitment to the war and his dedication to Dwyer in a way that underlines such a difference (and yet such a similarity) to Price. However, Witchfinder General definitely takes more time to go over its brutality in detail to the point where the soundtrack is often wall-to-wall screaming that feels as if it's mixed in such a way to torture a listening audience as well. In this regard, I have to consider Witchfinder General an effective horror, but there's always the question as to how much it earns its right to wallow in such unpleasantness throughout its brief running time. The thing about the earliest attempts at gore-hound horror is that I wonder how much of it has a point or exists just to test the waters of what a film could get away with as standards began to relax in the middle of the century. I can't shake the feeling that Witchfinder General is a case of the latter, but it certainly does make an admirable effort to give its cruelty some measure of substance.




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#30 - Hellraiser: Bloodline
Joe Chappelle and Kevin Yagher, 1996


An 18th-century toymaker is commissioned to build a puzzle box only to find that its owners have used it to open a pathway to hell.

What I find especially amazing (or is that amusing?) about Hellraiser: Bloodline is that everyone likes to make a big deal about how the Friday the 13th series really went off the rails and ran out of ideas when its tenth installment centred on Jason ending up on a futuristic spaceship, yet here is the Hellraiser franchise managing to make the jump to space in the...time it took to make a mere four installments (and also makes referring to Event Horizon as "Hellraiser in space" a little redundant). I guess that says a lot about the sheer malleability of the Hellraiser franchise - when your villains come from another dimension, they can manifest pretty much anytime and anywhere. That certainly seems to be the conceit behind Bloodline, which spans hundreds of years as it follows three different men (all played by Bruce Ramsay) from the same, well, bloodline. While the last couple of entries delved into the backstory of Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and Hell itself (or at least a dimension that passes for it), Bloodline opts to explore the origins of the arcane puzzle box that is used to summon the Cenobites to the human world. It begins as the work of a French toymaker (Ramsay) whose discovery of its true purpose prompts him to start work on designing another box that will cancel out the effects of the original; predictably, he doesn't succeed for a variety of reasons and it ultimately falls to his descendants (also played by Ramsay) to figure out how to make the box a reality and stop Pinhead once and for all.

In my review for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, I remarked on how the franchise was already struggling to sustain itself after only three installments and Bloodline shows that a fourth one fares no better. While the concept of the Cenobites feuding with an entire family over the course of centuries is a promising one, it's too often wrapped in stilted dramatics (especially when it shifts to the dullness of the present day) and some rather underwhelming variations on the usual displays of leather-bound body horror. That being said, it's still a pleasure to see Bradley savouring each ornate line of dialogue in a severe baritone, especially when he's given a foil in the form of the demonic princess Angelique (Valentina Vargas) as they both represent different sides of Hell - the ascetic versus the decadent. Things pick up enough during its space-bound third act that sort of make me think that that should've been the whole movie (then again, that's sort of what we got with Event Horizon after all), but I do grant that said third act relies on the build-up of the preceding centuries in order to have any sense of impact. As such, I find Bloodline a seriously mixed bag. It creates a compact narrative that also expands the scope of the franchise even as it provides diminishing returns on all that made its predecessors ever-so-slightly superior. As such, it proves a shining example of the contradiction at the heart of the Hellraiser franchise - the constant attempts to blur the line between pain and pleasure within the film bleed out into an audience who can quite understandably question whether the film's good points are enough to compensate for the bad