The Whisperer in darkness (2011)

2005 faux silent movie Call of Cthulhu stands as one of the best adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft, if not actually the best. It worked around the pitfalls of presenting material that really cant be "shown" as if it was made during the heyday of silent cinema and did an exceptionally good job of it with surrealistic miniatures and a strong set design. Now comes the next production from the very same filmmakers and this time we move forward in time with an adaptation of the short story The Whispererer in darkness as a 1930-1940ish horrormovie. My expectations were sky high.

The original short story deals with strange and alien creatures haunting a farmer in the forests of Vermont and the revelation of their purpose as the main character travels to the remote house to meet the besieged man. However, the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has decided to expand upon the story and actually managed to lessen the horror content. The original story itself is about half of the movie now, going in an entirely different and more "action-oriented" direction after the events of the story has played out. I suppose I could bitch about this, but it is actually quite in tone with the filmmakers intent of it being a 40s movie with some dashing and running around, ending in a rather good and authentically cheap looking actionsequence. In fact, the movie really does an excellent job in the look and feel of that very era. The actors are wildly uneven, either risibly stern or overacting like their lives depend on it and I'm pretty damn sure that it is all on purpose. It doesnt really matter, it works perfectly. Sure, there are a few instances of the cinematography being a bit too obviously digital but these never distract from the overall feeling. The only thing that does not work is the special effects of some of the creatures that look more like they came straight out of a Starship troopers sequel shot for Syfy but they are redeemed by a couple of truly wonderful and inspired flying beasties towards the end of the movie that bring a smile on my face just when thinking about them. I'd like a miniature of one of them on my shelf.

Yes, I was not disappointed with The Whisperer in darkness. The storyextensions doesnt really feel that much Lovecraft but within the context of the movie they are excellent and invokes a cool atmosphere of fun, spunky black & white horror. If you liked Call of Cthulhu you should check this out.

Oily maniac (1976)

This fine piece of Shaw Brothers exploitation tells the story of a cripple (polio as a child) that kills all the bad people he knows by turning himself into an Oily monster thanks to a magic spell he got from a friend. Look at this supreme awesomeness that is the title character!

This is how a rubbermonster should look like!

Highlights of the movie include stomping on the head of an evil plastic surgeon who is about to restore the hymen of a prostitute so that she can be sold as a virgin once more. That is one perfectly strategically placed bottle, eh?

Seriously, what I think of this movie is quite irrelevant. Just look at that monster!

Ok, so it might not be the best movie ever made, but with that monster... Besides the lovely monster that I can't stop talking about the movie contains a lot of nudity, a bit of gore, something that is awfully similar to the Jaws theme everytime the Oily maniac roams around the neighborhood and several cool kung fu fights where the monster gets an arm or a leg chopped of, only for it to grow back instantly using stop motion. No, it really isn't very good at all and I might just be a bit biased because of the AWESOME monster, but I cant help it. Did I mention that the monster has glowing yellow eyes. can swim on walls and ceiling as a giant puddle and can jump really high?

Trackman (2007)

 

Trackman starts with a bankrobbery gone to hell - two policemen are killed and the robbers take hostages as they flee down into the underground into a an abandoned metrosystem. One of the robbers is planning to kill the others to get all the money but all of that is thrown aside as a killer with a fetish for plucking out eyes starts to hunt them throughout the dark tunnels, killing robbers and hostages one by one.

What we have here is basically a slasher, people are killed by a generic masked killer. There isn't really anything new or fresh about the story itself, the characters have all been seen before in similar movies and we never really learn anything about the killer other than he is tall and masked, likes to remove eyes and kills with a large pickaxe. The fun part about Trackman, the thing that makes it rise a bit above the usual slashermovie, is the setting: the dark, wet tunnels of an abandoned Russian metrosystem. Here is where the movie shines, the filmmakers uses the location exceptionally well with good cinematography and a strong pace that never bogs down into bickering or anything else that scriptwriters use for padding their movies into full length.

It is always fun to watch a Russian take on a very western genre and at first I though I rated this movie higher just because it is Russian but in reality there isn't really anything particularily Russian about Trackman. It is "just" a very competent slasher that uses its resources very well and as such is a a lot better than a lot of similar movies. There are no bubbly teens, no jiggling silicone boobs - just people trying to outwit a killer in a very atmospheric location and that is all I need. I suppose there could have been a bit more gore but we do get a couple of glimpses of pickaxerelated violence and a semi-gory eyeextraction or two. Good clean fun, worth picking up if you are into well made slashers.

Okaruto (2009)

Kôji Shiraishis 2005 Noroi is one of the finest mockumentaries I have seen to date, a tautly constructed chiller that builds its case slowly and deliberately, making itself a perfect example of how a fake documentary should be done. Four years later Shiraishi comes with another movie in the same mold and proves that he is a strong filmmaker who is in his true element. Unfortunately he also shows that one bad scene can almost ruin a movie but more on that later on.

Okarauto aka Occult is one of those movies you should go into knowing as little as possible about plot and I will only tell you the basics. Shiraishi plays a version of himself, a documentary filmmaker looking into a strange killing spree in a forest park where a young man started to kill indiscriminately before jumping off a cliff and vanishing. He interviews the survivors and relatives of the victims and is told a number of strange things that at first just sound weird such as the husband of a dead woman who claims to have seen his wife and shows a photo of himself with a woman in the background that looks a lot like her. Another man that was stabbed in the back several times has a strangely shaped scar very similar to a birthmark that the perpetrator had and it goes even weirder when he claims to have started to see strange ufo-like things that he calls miracles. The documentary makers decided to give him a camera to documents all these happenings and from there the story really starts to take into strange land.

The best thing about this type of movie is that it is based on legends that are very Japanese, taking its horrors from a source that is somewhat similar yet very alien to our own, thus being perfect for a horror movie. Somehow I think that this works even better for a gaijin like me that hasn’t grown up with all of this. This is the reason why Noroi is so good and while Okurato might not use these as much as I would have liked it to, it still has that very undercurrent of odd folktales that keeps the story interesting, especially in the latter half of the movie when Kiyoshi Kurosawa cameos playing himself as an amateur researcher into a particular legend. This leads to a series of quite unpredictable events and a very shocking ending that really punches you in the gut. But, and there is that major but, now we get to the major flaw of the movie. The special effects budget of Okaruto must have been exceptionally low. Most of the "miracles" that one of the characters see all the time are shown with really simple and cheap digital effects which I suppose could take away some of the atmosphere of the story. They aren’t exactly awful and some even work really well but it is most noticeable in the final coda of the movie, a short sequence that is so mind-bogglingly bad that you wonder if the director’s ten year old son made it and put it in the movie with anyone knowing it. I would not be surprised if some people would rate the movie negatively because of this since it is actually that bad. This is a true shame when the rest of the movie is a good as it actually is and personally I try to dismiss the ineptness of that scene and take it for what it is supposed to represent (though I admit it took me several days to overcome this little hurdle). While some of the parts of the story might not gel into the picture in a satisfying way (I suspect they were just there to add some additional mystery) the whole experience is what matters and this movie does that very well. There are several exceptional plot twist that needs to be seen with your own eyes. Okaruto is simply put a well written, well-acted and very exciting fake documentary about a number of supernatural events that merge into a horrible coming event and if you liked Noroi or fake documentaries in general, then this will serve your addiction well. It's a shame about that final image but personally I wont let myself hate it. The rest of the movie is that good.

Zaat

I have seen things, things beyond comprehension. Things on the borderline of insanity, meandering streaks of complete and utter boredom that would make a normal person rip their eyes out but instead I choose to embrace them, to welcome them into my mind and while someone else would perish, I mostly let out a chuckle or two. But now everything has changed. I have encountered a true monstrosity that will leave me mentally scarred for life. If it lets me live.

Zaat.

This is not just a movie; it is a document of something beyond everything I have ever seen. It is a gathering of extremely repetitive images and sounds for ages upon ages and normal circumstances would maybe create something hypnotic, something that dulls your mind with its own stupidity. Not Zaat. Zaat tries to destroy you, tear down all the mental boundaries you have created since your birth and thrust itself straight into your mind and scream with a carnal power that only sees you like an obstacle to tear down into tiny fragments!

So what is Zaat? First of all, this is a tool. A tool to bring forward the darkest emotions from the deepest pits of despair. We watch a nazi-tinged dream of biological superiority, to create an army of foul man/fish hybrids as a scientist finally succeeds in his quest to become that very thing of horror. Revenge is first as he tears out the throats of the members of the local scientific community that spurned his research but then he moves on to procreation, to breed with a female human and spawn more monstrous hybrids. A special team of two experts are brought in to unravel this ungodly menace but Zaat is nothing you dispose of easily. Zaat!

This is 100 minutes of pure torture, designed to shred your brain into tiny pieces ready to be shaped into exactly what the makers of Zaat want it too. We get to watch Zaat walk and walk and walk and walk, sometimes swim. We see Zaat kidnap a young girl and fail in trying to convert her into his foul bride. We see nothing that comes even close to being anything other than an excruciating droning journey, clean from the violence and nudity that usually comes with the genre. No, this is the equivalent of watching straight into the eyes of a mad god! This is the essence of boredom, ancient mother of all the legends of dull cinema you have ever heard of.

The media that Zaat is presented on is nothing more than exceptional if you accept the fact that this is a device to turn your brain into mush so that the cult that is Film chest can drive you into the asylum like a pack of lemmings over a cliff. The image is strong and clear with maybe a tad of faded colors which is good - Zaat with crystal clarity would most likely blow a hole straight through your head.

I really don't know what more to say, I fear this movie. I fear what it represents and at the same time I applaud the makers for actually making it and Film chest for releasing it. Think about it, it cannot be a coincidence that this is released in 2012 - the very same year that the Mayans predicted the world to end. And we all know that a world where Zaat exists needs to be destroyed.

Strangeness

Back in the days long before dvd I (like so many others before and after me) I used to hang around the local videostore, browsing the horrorsection and staring at the wonderful covers of all these movies that probably were the scariest movies in the world. As I grew up and began collecting movies I finally got to see all of the movies I had drooled over but there was one that eluded me. It was a movie called Strangeness about a monster in a cave but the cover had a picture from the Cormanproduced Alien clone Forbidden world, which added to the confusion. For some reason I never rented the damn thing and I spent a lot of years wondering if this really was an existing movie (this was before you could find everything online and this movie didnt pop up in any horrormoviebooks I had) or if my mind had deluded me over the years. Thankfully I found a scan of this very cover online so my mind could finally be at ease. Even better, Code Red released it on a nice special edition dvd and I finally got the chance to see what all the fuzz in my mind was all about.

The story is simple and effective. A group of people gather at the entrance of a cave that shares its tunnels with an old mine that was hastily closed down for uknown reasons a century ago. The reason for their spelunking is to evaluate if there is any gold left but we all know that they will be entombed and hunted by a tentacled stopmotion monster. It always goes down like that in California, I've seen this in lots of movies.

Strangeness was made by a group of first time filmmakers on a very low budget which shows really well from time to time, especially when it comes to the cave itself which sometimes is obviously fake. This is on the other hand redeemed by a decent enough script, some uneven but enthusiastic acting and a really fun monster. The atmosphere in the cave is good enough to sustain a fun feeling of lowbudget monster mayhem and the cinematography works really well, especially considering that the movie is almost entirely lit by torches and flares. Strangeness has a general sense of good fun with its cheesy but fun characters and an excellent tentacled stopmotion monster. Yes, the animation may be crude compared to Harryhausen but what the hell, how often do you get to see a tentaclebeast that looks like a huge vagina?

Strangeness is not the best monstermovie of all time, is has it share of flaws mostly related to it's budget but it was made with the best intentions and some of it comes off clearly when you watch it. It is entertaining enough and has a bit of good tension, the lovable monster and even some slime. If you are like me, a big fan of the low budget monster movies of that very era, you will adore it. Thanks to Code Red for an excellent dvd.

Wakusei Daisenso (1977)

This movie brings back memories, so far back that they aren’t exactly crystal clear. Sometime during the early 80s, 1982 or 1983, my parents took me on a trip to the southern parts of Sweden to visit relatives and as soon as we arrived I got a high fever and was basically bedridden for a week. My relatives had a vhsplayer (this was before we had one of our own) and I managed to persuade them to rent a movie I had checked out earlier called Planeternas Krig (Planet wars - a not so subtle Star Wars reference). I spent the following day watching the movie over and over and over again and this is about the only thing I remember about this particular holiday. Now some 30 years later I finally managed to get hold of the dvd of this very movie and while my memories of it were distant and clouded, I still got a sense of joy just by owning it. During the years that have passed I have also found out that the movie was directed by the infamous Jun Fukuda, fuckerupper of many a Godzillamovie which made me wonder if I would still like the movie. The question is, is the movie as good as my boiling 10 year old brain remembers it?

Things are rough in the future that is 1988. When a space station is destroyed the Japanese government realizes that something is up and revives the Gohten project (Yes, the T should have been before the H), a giant spaceship built to protect Earth from nasty aliens. It doesn’t take long before the skies are filled with of thousands of small Ufos, blowing up cities by the hundreds with their lasers. Que lovely Toho mass destruction. The mean aliens are traced to the planet of Venus and the Goth, I mean Goht, is sent to clean up the place for good. The aliens won’t make this easy of course, kidnapping the Captains daughter and coming up with lots of other ways that they think will stop our heroes. Lasers galore!

The Fukuda stigma lies heavily over the movie and the first 20 minutes are mostly filled with dialogue and internal strife, but as soon as the mayhem starts everything gets plain awesome and manages to keep a fun momentum all the way to the end. There's a shitload of excellent effects and destruction, making me giggle like a child in a toy store. It is pretty obvious that the movie is heavily influenced by Star Wars (the even got their own wookie - but with horns) but it all has a Japanese tint that keeps it away from straight plagiarizing. What we have here is 90 mins of pure laser filled fun and that is enough for me, making me recommend this one to all lovers of Japanese mass destruction. To use the old cotton candy comparison again, it might not be good for you but it tastes so yummy!

Wakusei Daisenso aka War in space will from now on be remembered as the movie that made me stop disliking Jun Fukuda and that's quite a feat. If you like Kaijumovies you will love this.

The Abomination (1986)

Oooookkk... Listen to this.

Cody lives in a rundown house down white trash lane with his religious mother that spends her days watching television evangelist Brother Fogg, beliving that only he can cure her of her lungcancer. After a healing session on the tv she coughs up a tumor which then mysteriously disappears, only to crawl into Codys mouth during the night. This strange tumor now takes over Cody completely, spawning additional weird creatures that start to nest in the kitchen all while making him kill random (and not so random) people in various cheap and graphic ways.

Wow. The Abomination is truly a wonder to watch. I have no idea what the budget was but it cant have been more than pennies, which makes the whole thing so much more impressive. Yes, it is cheap and horrendously acted (not made better by the fact that the movie was obviously shot on super 8 and dubbed afterwards by a group of people with the enthusiasm of sloths) but the movie rests on the awesome foundation that is THE ABOMINATION!. This creature is a huge mass of teeth and tentacles, filling the cupboards and drawers with its gloopy, rubbery nastiness. When Cody isnt outside slitting peoples throats or whacking off heads with shovels to feed the creature he brings them home and even gore ensues. If you can stick with the excruciatingly droning dialogue there is much joy to be had from all the stupid silliness of The Abomination. It's like David Cronenberg designed a goreversion of the muppet show, only to have Andy Milligan rewrite and direct it, just mindboggling and so plain odd and entertaining. Recommended for fans of 80s cheapo gore and those of us that like a little cozy weirdness on their screens.¨

You can buy it here on a doubledvd with Ozone: Attack of the redneck mutants.

Nuklear zombies (1989)

Sometime in the future after some sort of catastrophy the surviving humanity live in the cities, never venturing outside since the wilderness is infested with the living dead. Max Maker, the hero of this story, travels out into the wild to search for survivors but encounters only death.

What we have here is 25 minutes of gore and a great atmosphere with the added bonus of a hero that looks a lot like Han Solo. That is because he is Han solo. Well, actually a Han Solo action figure. All the characters are action figures except for a barbiedoll or two. What we really have here is a crude stop motion postapocalypse zombiemovie shot with a Super 8 camera using dolls and actionfigures (A Tattooine landspeeder even makes an appearance). There is no sound except for the soundtrack that lifts music from movies such as John Carpenters Halloween and the only dialogue is told through corny intertitles in German. And i loved it.

The biggest reason that I liked this is the fact that this is truly something that I wish that I had made when I was 15 (just guessing. I have no idea how old the filmmakers were at the time). It is crude and repetitive but the simple yet effective sets combined with action figures turned into zombies by melting off pieces of their heads is just so lovable. I must have a subconsious fear of the cold, blank stare that these plastic pieces of old have since I find them nicely creepy. There is no real plot to speak of. Han Solo, I mean Max Maker, kills zombies during the day and sleeps in a cabin at night all while some sort of supernuklearzombie watches over him, waiting to finish him off. Torn up action figures are covered in blood, melted and blown up until the end that promises a sequel. And thats it. Freaking awesome, the fun factor is as high as the stop motion is crude.

Easter bunny kill kill! (2006)

The main reason I bought this movie was because a friend of mine has an somewhat unhealthy obsession with bunnies, flooding all of his digital life with imagery to the point that people are starting to abhor him. We have a semi-regular gathering that consists of him cooking and me bringing strange movies to watch while we gorge ourselves on pulled pork, yummy burgers and whatever else he wants to dazzle us with. Naturally Easter bunny kill kill seemed like a movie we HAD to watch so we did. And what a ride.

The first thing that caught my eye was the little blurb on the back of the UK dvd:

"Contains strong gory violence and sexualised hard drug use"

My mind started wandering, giving me the strangest images of sex and drugs possible. What the hell was all that? This could be really odd and really awesome. But then I realized that this was the British Board of Classification speaking, which would likely mean that a naked chick smoked weed and not the rampaging giant mutant clitoris injecting heroin that I was picturing in my head. In the end I was disappointed, there was just snorting of cocaine off naked breasts and talk of drugged molestation. But the movie itself did give me so much more that all I could be angry at was the lame conservatives at the BBFC for their rating.

Easter bunny kill kill with its alluring title is the brainchild of writer/director Chad Ferrin and deals with Nicholas, a retarded sixteen year old who is left at home with her mother’s new lover as she has to work. Remington, who is shown killing a store clerk during the movies first minutes, is quite the douchebag who plays a nice guy when Nicholas mom is around but calls his pedophile drug dealer friend Ray as soon as she leaves and promises the freak some action in exhange for drugs. Remington goes out and gets himself some prostitutes (que the sexualised hard drug use) while Ray starts preparing for his dirty deed. Depraved yes, and now the psychokiller with the bunny mask arrive on the scene killing with much brutality.

One thing that might put people off is the pacing (in fact, one of the people I watched this with started playing solitaire on the phone about halfway through the movie as she was bored beyond belief). Easter Bunny kill kill takes its time introducing all the characters and the gore and violence doesnt start until at least 45 minutes have passed. Personally I didn’t mind since the time spent with the players did what it was supposed to do, it told a story that made me interested in the characters. And those characters, holy fuck. Timothy Muskatell in the role of Remington chews scenery like his life depended upon it, singing hilarious little songs (Hookers and cocaine... hookers! And cocaine... Awesome. I want this as a ringtone for my iphone) and at times sounding like a villain from an old serial, if not for the fact that he is verbally assaulting a retarded kid. David Z Stamp plays the heavy breathing pedophile in very much the same manner and he is a hoot. Ricardo Gray doesn’t really fare that well, his interpretation of a mentally impaired person sometimes borders on the absurd, slightly overdoing it. He never goes crossed the line to over the top and you get used to it. In fact, it really does suit the movies deranged intentions. The other actors do an decent enough job, even though they aren’t as memorably weird as Muskatell and Stamp.

But the real star of Easter bunny kill kill is the writer/director, Chad Ferrin (something he really proved with his next movie, Someone's knocking at the door which is a fucking masterpiece of sexualised hard drug use). He shows a lot of talent in telling this piece of dementia, giving the movie a good flow (apart from a few scenes that could have been a bit more tightly edited such as when the pedophile crawls around on the floor when trying to find the kid which drags on a bit too long) and most importantly: keeping you entertained. The story is distastefully fun and leads to a really far out ending while still remaining somewhat predictable especially when it comes to the identity of the killer. You have to see it to fully get my point. The budget was obviously very low but the filmmakers worked around this in various smart ways such as having the movie take place in a house that is being renovated with all the furniture covered in plastic. An excellent way around budget shortages. The violence is brutal and plentiful; people are drilled, sawed and hammered to death. My favorite scene is where an intruder has his head smashed to bits with a hammer with a short cutaway where a piece of skull messily landing on the floor. Hardcore.

So, if you have any sort of interest in low budget dementia and gore you could most likely be a candidate for liking this. Sure, the overacting, the slow pace and the whole very unsubtle way that the movie pounds in its freaky stuff might be off-putting for the average movie fan but I sure as hell had a deliciously good time.

Night of the sorcerers (1973)

An expedition travels to Africa to investigate the disappearance of elephants in a particular area. When they arrive the local population warns them not to wander around in the jungle at night, especially not around the old sacrificial grounds nearby. For the sake of plot development you know what will happen. It doesn’t take long before the pretty young ladies of the expedition have been sacrificed to a god and resurrected as leopardvampires (meaning they wear leopard bikinis and jump around in slomo). The hero of the movie could probably have stopped all of this early on but he was much too busy boning his girlfriend every time it was his watch. Now he has to stop the evil leopardvampires before it is too late. Or something.

My first thought was that this felt a lot like one of those awful Jess Franco adventure/cannibalmovies. The plot, the environment (a Spanish national park standing in for Africa) and the large number of naked breasts in plain view(including something every movie should have. Nude flashbacks) makes all of this comfortably sleazy and enjoyable. However, this is not the average sloppy zoom fest of Franco, Amando De Ossorios movie is surprisingly well made on a budget that obviously was very low. The photography is good and although there is a shitload of so so day for night scenes it still works well. Maria Kosty, Kali Hansa and Loretta Tovar prance around in the jungle wearing as little clothes as possible which make Night of the sorcerers so much more fun to watch. Simon Andreau does an decent job as the hero who can’t resist putting his penis in his girlfriend even if it means that he endangers the lives of everyone else and Jack Taylor is his usual dependable mustached self as the leader of the expedition. This is a fun exploitationmovie who can’t really be described as good but is still full of yummy goodness. The ritual that is used to create the vampires is particularly sleazy, whipping the clothes of the ladies and decapitating them. I mean, come on. You can’t hate stuff like that. It might be impossible to take the movie seriously due to the leopardwomen that jump around in the jungle in slomo while they hiss. But you do get all gooey and warm inside while watching it.

Spider Labyrinth (1988)

Gianfranco Giangnis Spider labyrinth aka Il Nide del ragno is somehow a rather unknown movie. It is an Italian piece of horror that was released during the end of the great era when Italian exploitation was dying a slow death which resulted in that it didn't get the attention it deserved. A sad thing really since this is an excellent flick that should be more known to horror fans than it is. It might not be a masterpiece but it is among the best of the genre movies that came out in the late 80s.

We meet young professor Alan Whitmore working on a religious science project where people are trying to learn more about a hidden religion that seems to be spread all around the world, yet very little is actually known. He travels to Hungary to meet a professor Roth who has delved into the very same matters and finds him sick, delirious and very paranoid. Whitmore is asked to return the next day upon Prof Roth is found hanging in the ceiling in something that looks like spider web. Roth did manage to leaves some sort of clue and when Whitmore starts to unravel them he realizes that the whole town seems to be in on it, members of some sort of ancient spider cult who wants to keep their secrets out of the public eye.

Italian exploitation that has as much meat and substance as Spider labyrinth are rare. The script is excellent and actually manages to stay away from all those usual leaps of logic that these movies are known for. Gianfranco Giangnis direction is fully concentrated on maximum atmosphere, greatly helped by excellent cinematography and Franco Piersantis score straight out of the Bernard Herrman school of music writing. Fans of cinematic violence get their fair share of stylish grue thanks to Sergio Stivalettis good special effects.

Ok, so I can’t really just pour on with the asskissing here and there are a few nitpicks, the most crucial one is the acting. The lead actor to be precise. Roland Wybenga as Whitmore has a annoyingly droning and dull way of spouting out his lines and he sounds more like spoiled child in the scenes where he is supposed to be panicking. The script is well written but I don’t really understand how such an intentionally slow movie can feel so short. We need more! 10-20 more minutes of exposition would have done wonders for the movie, more background on the Spider cult for instance. These are only minor annoyances, nothing that will destroy your enjoyment. The plot sucks you in and these thoughts only come afterwards, the story moves forward in such an exciting way all towards a fine ending that you don’t care. If you like old school Italian horror then Spider Labyrinth is something you really should track down

Die Farbe (2010)

H.P Lovecraft’s The Color out of space is in my opinion one of his best short stories, detailing the deterioration of a small farm after a meteorite contaminates the land. The alienness of the decay in both humans and everything around them is one of the most memorable events in any Lovecraft novella. There have been a few movie adaptions of it earlier, such as Daniel Hallers Die, monster, Die! from 1965 with Boris Karloff and Nick Adams (not a bad little flick but not very Lovecraftian), David Keiths The Curse from 1987 that starts out as a decent adaption but fails miserably when it goes for the old "We need a biiig climax" shtick. Italian filmmaker Ivan Zuccon had a decent go at it in 2008 with his Colour from the dark, a movie that benefitted from excellent visuals and a strong production design when it came to the decay of the land but changed the concept into something more supernatural and ergo, less fun than it could have been. Now onto Huan Vus adaption Die Farbe (The Colour), a low budget independent movie shot in yummy b&w and is quite faithful to the original story while having the audacity to expand upon it with a new narrative that opens and closes the movie. How does it fare compared to the earlier tries and more importantly, how does it fare as an adaptation of Lovecraft?

What Die Farbe does with the story is to start with an opening set in America where a young man travels to Europe to locate his missing father who left for a small village that he had some sort of connection to. He meets an old man who recognizes the father and starts to tell a story. In flashback we move to just after the end of the Second World War where a German farmer comes home from the front, only to find that his farm has been annexed by American soldiers to house wounded people. They need a guide to go further into the valley but the soldier refuses at first. We then go further back in time as the young man watches as a meteorite strikes the ground near a neighboring farm, melting into the ground and making their crops grow abhorrently large, and as it turns out, totally inedible. The meteorite also seeps into the well, contaminating the water and turning both the land as well as its inhabitants into something else. Something alien.


Is this the Lovecraft adaption we all have been waiting for, the one that finally will give us a glimpse into that strange world that grew inside H.P Lovecraft’s head? The simple answer is no and I doubt we will ever see anything resembling the images we create in our heads when reading the short stories. Die Farbe does give it a good go. The extended narrative is evocative and helps expanding the story into something more interesting for those of us that know the story by heart, though there is a totally unnecessary twist at the end that comes out of the blue and only serves to confuse the viewer. It should have been left out of the movie. The actors are serviceable as long as they speak in the native German but the actor that is supposed to portray an American never comes close to sounding like one. The film also feels a bit toned down, the alien horror excesses never even comes close to the delirium of the original story but I suspect that was for both budgetary and maybe artistic reasons. I can live with it, the overall atmosphere of the decaying German valley might not be straight out of the Lovecraft story but it is still chilling enough for me. Die Farbes greatest strength lies in shooting the whole thing in evocative black and white, with the entity the only thing that has a color, a fun effect although it works more in concept than on film for the reason that it is just an earthly color we are seeing.

So, was Die Farbe a disappointment? At first I thought so, a friend of mine had hyped it and since I am a fan of Lovecraft’s fiction I had high expectations. Maybe I expected something else but when I stepped out of the theatre I felt slightly underwhelmed. The movies focus on ambience over goo was maybe part of the "problem", maybe I wanted more. But after a couple of days I started thinking about it, there were images that would not leave my head. To me that is proof that a movie does what it should, that the creators had something to say. It might fail as a Lovecraft adaption but it does a pretty good job as an art-house excercise in mood and ambience. Other Lovecraft fans will want to see this, it is still a lot better that the cheesy Curse and has more alienness than Colour out of the dark. A nice try, well worth watching.

You can get it here

The Beast and the magic sword aka La bestia y la espada mágica (1983)

No matter what you think of this movie, no matter how much you may hate Paul Naschy, you must agree that we very rarely see ninjas and werewolves in the same movie! For that reason La bestia y la espada mágica aka The Beast and the magic sword is a masterpiece! This was the last Waldemar Daninskymovie (there were a few more low budget crappy flicks that utilized the character but they dont really count. Because I say so.), produced partly with Japanese money (the same deal also gave us the fun Human Beasts) and mostly set in Nippon as well (the concept is great, it's just a bit strange to watch samurai lords speaking spanish). This time Daninsky goes to Japan to find a cure for his lycanthropy, fighting ninjas, samurais and an evil witch intent on getting hold of his powers for her own use. Every woman in the vicinity falls in love with him, as usual and you know fairly soon who will be the one to kill him in the end. It's rather fun to see the Daninskymythology being rewritten in every movie, though mostly just in setting. And the movie has ninjas! And werewolves. Did I mention topless ninjas? Too bad there is no werewolf vs ninjascene, that could possibly have been the coolest scene in the entire universe.

If you have seen one Waldemar Daninsky movie you know what to expect, Naschy/Molina does not deviate from the formula one bit, instead deriving its strength from the novel setting of Japan and its myths and legends. The werewolf makeup even gets an upgrade, though I am still divided if I actually like it or not. Naschy also seems to have gotten a bit of extra cash since the movie looks quite good and makes great use of some excellent locations. If you have seen any of the earlier Daninskymovies you know exactly what to expect and it is all good fun. Good, yummy, furry, topless fun.

Phase IV (1974)

Intelligents ants on the warpath? No, this isnt Bert I Gordon, this is Saul Bass superior scifimovie (his only full length movie). Bass was more known as designer for movietitles such as Psycho, Spartacus, Alien, Big and Cape Fear. Why he only directed one movie is unknown to me, he was a man with a great eye for design and judging on the basis of Phase IV he could have given us a lot of interesting movies.

During some sort of cosmic event an english scientist discover that ants all over the world have started to form some sort of collective intelligence, even between different species. He builds a laboratory in the middle of the Arizona desert and has the local population evacuated since the ants have exterminated their natural rivals and now begun to kill cattle. It doesnt take long before the scientists are under siege from the strangely intelligent ants.

Evil antmovies arent exactly numerous out there and succesful attempts can be easily counted, the only two being THEM! and this one (Yes, I know that Empire of the ants is entertaining as hell but it cant really be called good). Saul Bass has taken a concept that could be a sinking ship from the start and turned into an exciting and well made movie, thanks to an intelligent script and imaginative design. What impressed me the most is the microphotography where you get to watch the ants move around in their strangely geometricaly perfect world (the first sign that something is amiss). The scenes where you see the ants gather their dead in long lines are actually quite chilling. It might sound a bit odd but Ken Middlehams superior photography truly makes something extraordinary with it. The only real weakness with the movie is the somewhat weak characters which makes Bass direction give you quite a bit of sympathy for the ants as they go about their business.

The great cinematography and the setdesign (in particular the weird monoliths that the ants build outside the laboratory) is another strength of Phase IV, which brings the movie straight into the halls of fame of intelligent science fiction. The actors may not win any awards, especially since the characters arent that well developed but they do a servicable job. All of this moves forward to a spectacular ending which may raise more questions than it answers but it sure as hell looks awesome. So, Phase IV is well recommended to any fan of scifi and takes its subject seriously which is a big positive in my book.

Footnote: That poster. Wow. I would imagine quite a few people being dissapointed with the movie after seeing it.

And I would like to end this review with the conclusion that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is a stupid concept since this is one of the movies they make fun of. Come on, I can accept Manos hands of fate, but this? You got to be fucking kidding me.

Adam Chaplin

My first encounter with this movie was through this trailer which at a first glance (well, the first minute of it at least) looked kind of cheesy, that very particular cheese that so many low budget shot on video gore movies tend to be full of. You know, just a movie without ever reflecting on narrative etc, just pour on the gore. This can be good in itself but very straining on your patience. But then came a couple of really striking scenes and I knew I had to have this. I hopped on the filmmaker’s website and about five minutes after watching the trailer I had ordered it. It arrived yesterday (a bit smashed up due to the fucking post office but working just fine) and I popped it into the dvdplayer to hopefully get an entertaining experience.

And by God it is!

Adam Chaplin might actually be one of the best comicbookmovies I have ever seen. It is not based on a comic but the story, the visuals and most importantly - the violence, are all as if torn straight out an ultraviolent manga like Story of Ricky and Fist of the north star (the latter even appeared on the extras several times as major influence which just confirmed it for me). Adam Chaplin, our ultra-buffed hero (he is so toned and muscular that it almost looks goofy but then again, it is straight out of Fist of the north star) is in love but his girlfriend owes money to the ultra-evil mutant freak Denny and is doused with petrol and set on fire. Adam is consumed by rage and somehow summons a demon who grants him superhuman strength and superior fighting skills, something that will help him track down Denny and his two freak sons and get his revenge. All of this is set in murky hallways and ruined buildings in the fictional country of heaven Valley, a place that looks slightly post-apocalyptic at times but has a lot of normal looking traffic on its roads.

Ok, so the story offers nothing new, we have seen (and read) it many times before. What Adam Chaplin does with it is an entirely different thing. The budget was obviously low but Emanuele De Santi (Writer, director and star) and his team realized that to make this work they had to go all style. Heaven valley and its inhabitants are doused in great looking filters and small but significant visual aids, making the illusion complete and most importantly, making you forget that you really are looking at the same old abandoned buildings that we usually see in this kind of movie. The movie is full of these awesome little quirks that makes me applaud the filmmakers, things that shouldn’t work but does thanks to a bit of ingenuity. My favorite example of this is the demon that follows Adam Chaplin around, a sort of burned puppet that is constantly looking over his shoulder (or actually hiding in it), speaking to him and his victims all throughout his journey. Most of the people are in full makeup looking goofily mutated, another smart choice that at first feels strange but turns out to be very appropriate for the proceedings. The filmmakers have created their own style and look, slightly derivative of the before mentioned Japanese comics and animes, and this puts Adam Chaplin way ahead of similar low budget projects. The camerawork might be a bit claustrophobic at times, a lot of close-ups that can feel unnecessary but the photography is in general excellent. Another strength is the good editing, something other filmmakers should concern themselves with a bit more.

And then we come to the violence. Is this the bloodiest movie ever like the trailer promises? No, not really but there is plenty of it, long bursts of freaky splatter with liters of blood exploding out of torn limbs, impaled bodies and busted heads. All of this is mostly practical, some of it a bit cheesylooking but helped tremendously with a bit of cgi to make it look a bit better and more hard hitting. Gore hounds will be more than satisfied.


I really liked Adam Chaplin, it might look like the average shot on video gorefest on paper but it is really an exercise in what a bit of imagination and ingenuity can do when you go all out in the battle of style versus budget. Much recommended to all fans of gore and independent filmmaking. Buy it on the official website, the dvd has english subtitles. Well worth your money.

The Savage hunt of King Stakh (1979)

Seriously, I dont really what to make of this movie. It is a Russian gothic fantasy horror that plays like a mixup of The Blind dead series, Hammer and Tarkovsky. It is wonderfully designed and shot, a true feast for the eyes but thanks to a overly talky and pretentious script it becomes quite hard to keep up your interest.

A student traveling through some remote parts of Russia during the 19th century is on a quest to write down all the different myths and legends of the region and arrives at Marsh Firs, an old castle out in a swamp. He meets the neurotic owner of the castle who tells him about three legends of the are, The Little man, the Blue lady and the Savage hunt of King Stakh (an ancient king who was murdered by his best friend and now roams the swamp looking to kill any descendant of that very friend), and of course - the curse on her own family. The castle and the surrounding marshlands are littered with strange characters and during his stay our hero desperately tries to survive all their odd machinations as people start to die after telling him about the Savage hunt of King Stach.

I dont really know what genre I should put this movie. The best thing about it is the design of the sets and the cinematography, it oozes Mario Bava and Terence Fisher. Or maybe if Tarkovsky made a remake of the old Hammer favorite Hound of the baskervilles? The environments of the castle are striking, pervaded in a gothic atmosphere with halls overgrown with vegetation or having lost to the waters of the marshes and are now flooded. The wet and cold marshes is a character in itself and the atmosphere cant be cut with a knife. The scenes with King Stakhs riders roaming through the land are supremely surreal and makes you think about Amando De Ossorios Blind dead series. The problem with the movie is that all of these ingredients, the horror and the fantasy are only a small part of something else, something that would be more suited for a small room full of pretentious moviewatchers drinking wine in their Fassbinder t-shirts, not uttering a word until the movie is over. There are droves of heavy, doomladen philosophical dialogue without any obvious connection to the story and all of this becomes clear when you watch the dvdextras where the director clearly states that he wasnt interested in doing a fantasy/horrormovie. But on the other hand I will admit that it is impossible not to be drawn into this macabre world thanks to the visuals, the good acting and the interesting story. It requires patience. And the reward is a movie you most likely will never forget.

Tetsuo - The Bullet man (2009)

 

FINALLY! The Iron man is back! With a vengeance! And in... English? Wtf? Then again, we always knew that if there was another Tetsuomovie there would be lots of Wtfs. Twenty-two years after the original Tetsuo and nineteen after the sequel, Shinya Tsukamoto finally returns to the wonders of biomechanical psychopatics and more loving fusions of flesh and metal.

An American man living in Japan with his Japanese wife and their son is struck by grief when a mysterious man kills the young boy by running him over with a car. As this is a Shinya Tsukamoto movie this event triggers something in our hero, making him turn into a metal beast and he starts searching in his past to why this is happening all while trying to control the anger that is transforming him. Not so easy when your wife is demanding vengeance.

Yes, here we go again. The original is a frenetic masterpiece in black & white technofetish surrealism and while the sequel had a larger budget it actually suffered from having a slightly more coherent narrative. Some of the magic was lost as the scenario grew bigger and bolder. Tetsuo - The Bullet man goes back to its roots with a smaller scale which I liked but still does one big mistake. It substitutes the panicked, glorious kitchen sink mentality of the original with some sort of headache inducing frenzy, complete with camerawork that is just too much. Tsukamoto moves his camera like he is on the sugar rush from hell and I am certain that a lot of people will be put off by this. As soon as any sort of action starts there is instant migraine. Mind-blowing, soul tearing migraine. I spent the first half of the movie in a state of trance, trying not to get upset over this but suddenly I realized that I had gotten used to it. Or somehow during the process Tsukamoto discovered a pattern that your brain responds to better. I don’t know. What I do know is the fact that after this, Tetsuo - The Bullet man became a much more fun experience.

And then we come to another not so fun part. The fact that it was shot in English. I do not know the reason for this, maybe Tsukamoto has some sort of reason for it. But it doesn’t work. The American actors (per usual when it comes to non-Japanese actors in Japanese movies) aren’t particularly good. The lead actor does an ok job with the physical part of the role; the transformation into something that looks like it was ripped straight out of H.R. Gigers foundry in hell and left for dead fused to a concrete wall. But as soon as he goes for a bit of dialogue, you cringe, mostly for the fact that the dialogue doesn't feel "natural". The lead actress fares better but she struggles a bit with the English language, just enough to make you notice. And then we have Shinya Tsukamoto himself as the main baddie, not exactly fluent in English but strangely appropriate for the proceedings. Or am I just a bit more forgiving because it is the fleshmetalmaestro himself? This doesn’t really matter in the end, it is the same as with the weird camerawork - as soon as you get used to it (more accurately get sucked into it) you just go along for the ride. When The Bullet man takes on an entire swat team in his father’s house there is no going back and of course, things just get better and cooler as our hero continues to transform into something... more.

Tetsuo The Bullet man is a kickass movie that is a worthy part of the Tetsuo saga, even though it does not do everything right. I am glad that I did not watch this at a cinema; my head would most likely have exploded. It is much more suited to the small screen and those dvd subtitles are much needed. If you liked the previous parts you will most likely love this too but if you are new to this particular universe I recommend you start with the original. It is still the best one.

Brain dead (2007)

You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you realize that the movie you have just started watching will be awesome? Ok, so there might be a small voice in the back of your head that keeps insisting that "no, the movie cant keep up this momentum. In the end, it will suck." but you ignore that and place all of your hopes on what the director (in this case Kevin S Tenney, the maker of Night of the demons and Witchboard) will dish out. When 20 minutes have passed and every single female in the movie has shown her breasts I know I truly am in for a treat.

During the precredits we follow a meteorite traveling through the universe in a decent sequence, especially considering the low budget of the movie. In an amusing sequence the meteorite (actually not much bigger than a coin) lands on earth, smacking straight through the head of a fisherman turning him into a member of that exclusive club of the living dead since the piece of rock contained an alien parasite. He kills his friend in a nice, juicy goresequence and then the movie sets about doing what it does best, bring a number of characters into a remote location so they they all can be killed in joyfully gory ways. Sometimes you dont need more than that. Not only does the first part of the movie contain the before mentioned nudity, we are also treated to an exploding head and an eyegouging followed by a head torn to pieces - all with good, practical effects. This is how Brain dead goes, from beginning to end and it is helped by a decent script and a bunch of actors who are all in on the joke. Lots of clichés and silly humour, but with a nice wink to the audience. There might be an accent or two that arent exactly believable but really, who cares? This is a movie about braineating zombies infested with alien parasites. What is more important is that you are never bored, not one second. This is guilty pleasure at its finest. The only thing that I can complain about is the zombiemakeup which mostly looks silly but on the other hand, I am a firm believer of the Italian style of claypot zombies. The makeupeffects are otherwise excellent, good old school grue.

Brain dead might not be for everyone, I'll admit that but to the likes of me that love old school gore it is a wet dream. The story is simple but effective and Kevin S Tenney is a good director, whatever the material may be. If you want 90 minutes of boobs and gore you can do much much worse.

Splinter (2008)

In these times of failing economies, religious strife and a general contempt for human life and dignity, it is nice that we all can agree on one thing. There can never be enough parasitemovies. To enhance the general quality of life as we know it we need more movies with strange lifeforms that takes over and changes human beings in ways that are as painful and gory as possible. When you ponder the masses of weird lifeforms in mother nature (and our bloodstreams) there should be about a million potential movie scripts out there. But as usual we get a shitload of crappy remakes instead. Thank you very much Hollywood.

Onto Splinter, which actually is an excellent example of a good parasitemovie. The plot is simple, almost waferthin but effective enough. Its only function is to bring people to an isolated location (in this case, a petrolstation) and let them try to survive the mayhem of a nasty parasite whose only purpose in life is to kill. And assimilate of course. The Slinter beastie is a very nice creation that absorbs its victims into a snarling heap of twisted limbs straight out of John Carpenters The Thing and the infection itself can be very painful, both for the victim and the audience who has to watch bones break in very excrutiating ways. It is a simple concept that works wonders for monsterlovers like me and the practical effects are marvelous. I also love the fact that we never learn the true reason for the parasite and just accept it for what it is: A hungry creature. The acting is another strong point, they do a good job with the material they have and actually behave fairly intelligent except for a slightly goofy sequence toward the end where they are trying to outwit the beastie using cold but it is only a very minor annoyance, the sequence works tensionwise but is a bit silly. I do have a bigger beef with the camerawork where the camera is all over the place a lot of times. It's like an manual on how not to use shakeycam which means that we dont get to see the parasite as much as we would like to. A choice of the filmmakers I assume but it gets annoying as hell at times. But that is about as negative as I can be towards Splinter and it does not detract from the fun of it all, just lowers the grade from Awesome to Really good. It is a fun and gory flick full of excitement which I really recommend and wouldnt actually mind to see in a sequel or two.