Monster Mash Movie Marathon Month - Week 2

Another week down, and still the movies keep getting screened. 

As usual, if you follow my exploits on Facebook, you might notice a discrepancy regarding the grades. This is because the Facebook grade is graded in a vacuum, and is largely based on initial reaction. By the time I sit down and write these reviews, I might have had a change of heart here and there.

First of all, it's very nice to have watched so many different films by different directors this week. Not that Wes Craven wasn't a decent filmmaker, but three of his films back to back - especially New Nightmare and Scream, which may as well been the same film for all their meta musings - isn't really in keeping with the MMMMM's dog's breakfast of films. 

Remember my grading system?

A = Excellent, a must see

B = Very good, I’d watch it again

C = Worth Seeing

D = Maybe don’t bother

F = Worthless

+ = Superior for this grade

- = Just barely makes it into this grade

 As usual, MY REVIEWS CONTAIN SPOILERS. Not all of them, and not necessarily the biggest of spoilers, but I do not pull punches in terms of content. You've been warned...

Ghosts of Mars (John Carpenter) - D

A small mining colony on Mars has gone silent. A squad of Martian Police officers, including Lieutenant Melanie Ballard, our protagonist, is sent to retrieve ultra-dangerous criminal Desolation Williams (played by eternal badass Ice Cube), who, rumor has it, strung up a bunch of decapitated colonists for everyone to see. Immediately upon arriving at the colony, things are amiss. Hardly any colonists can be found, and those who are aren't talking. When Sergeant Jericho Butler, played by pre-action star Jason Statham, finds the Police commander's head impaled on a spike, and witnesses a crowd of colonists being whipped into a frenzy by what appears to be an actual Martian, the Mars Police lock themselves in the jail, and prepare for a siege. Turns out, Earth colonists unleashed a red mist while digging - Ghosts of the Martian race, we are told - that travel on wind currents, possess Earthlings, and drive them into a rage that can only be sated by slaughtering invaders and destroying buildings.

Ghosts of Mars is a triple genre hybrid, featuring Action, Sci-fi and Horror elements. Friends of mine touted it as a zombie movie, but strictly speaking, that's not true. The self-mutilated Earthlings that are possessed by the ghosts look more like orcs from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings franchise. It is Sci-Fi first, concerning itself with its universe. And explaining small details of how life on Mars came about. Next it is an action movie, more concerned about padding the body count, and playing heavy metal exactly when it needs to. Horror takes a back seat to these other elements, meaning while horrific things certainly happen (oh man, the commander got decapitated!), often this is immediately diffused by violence (30 of them, 2 of us? I like those odds). As sarcastically mentioned, the music is unbelievably heavy metal. While I may not be the biggest fan of that kind of music, it definitely supports an action film more than a horror movie, and when those guitars start wailing, any suspense immediately vanishes, and guns start blazing. Even when characters die, it goes so fast you might miss it. In one scene towards the end, I looked away from the screen for literally 30 seconds, and when I looked back up, three characters had died. One character that had been with us since the start - arguably the most main character besides Ballard, Butler and Desolation - gets her head cut off during the final action scene, and the movie barely lets you register it.

All that said, it’s a well thought out concept (as mentioned, they don't skimp on details of technology), and the possessed colonists are pretty grim to look at. The ghost-cam effect (which shows the Audience who's getting possessed) gets kind of tired before too long (this was clearly a signature camera technique for the film - it is done no less than 10 times). But, really, had this movie focused more on characters, and featured less ball-numbing battle scenes, it might have been far more decent. No one (except maybe Natasha Henstridge, who plays  Lt. Ballard, can be a little difficult to watch act at times) puts in a bad performance in the film. With a different treatment, it might have been better, but for what it is, there are probably better flicks to spend your time on.

The Tenant (Roman Polanski) - B

Mr. Trelkovsky (played by director Polanski) is looking for an apartment, but it's Paris in the 70s, and its not going well. The film opens on Trelkovsky approaching a landlord about a room he heard was available. The previous tenant, as it turns out, committed suicide by throwing herself out the window. Trelkovsky becomes somewhat obsessed with the previous tenant, a girl named Simone. First he visits her in the hospital just before she dies (in the process meeting Shelly, a good friend of Simone's and Trelkovsky's eventual love interest), but then after she dies, Trelkovsky sees her in his building, and then takes to dressing up like her in private. To make matters worse, everyone in his apartment complex seems to be conspiring against him. His neighbors show very quickly that they do not tolerate loud noise or parties, and at one point, Trelkovsky believes one of them attempts to choke him. This leads Tartofsky to the conclusion that the building's residents forced Simone to her end, and he fears soon they will turn on him.

It's a bit of a mind fuck, this one. Trelkovsky is the sole point of view of the audience, and so you're perfectly willing to believe him, despite his paranoia truly getting out of hand. But somewhere along the way, probably in the third act of the film, when he betrays the surprisingly supportive Shelly, you realize that Trelkovsky is in the wrong. His neighbors may be stingy, old fuddyduddies, but there is no conspiracy. Trelkovsky has lost his mind. However, in the final scene, Trelkovsky is lying in a hospital bed and sees himself and Shelly standing over him, just meeting for the first time like they did when he visited Simone on her deathbed, implies that Trelkovsky was Simone all along, living some kind of existential loop like in Groundhog Day, or reliving the horrors of 'her' final days in dying breath.

Either way, the Tenant is a bleak picture. Considered the final part of Polanski's unofficial Apartment trilogy (along with Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby), the Tenant features a dark soundtrack, very moody setting and tone, and doesn't answer anything for its viewers. Much of it is left up for you to interpret. It was definitely a unique, thought-provoking film. While it may not be entirely fair to hold this film up against proper entries into the genre, the nightmare existence of Trelkovsky is deeply troubling and unsettling. Nothing is going to pop out to frighten you, it’s not that kind of horror.

Sinister (Scott Derrickson) - D+

Ellison Oswalt, a down on his luck true crime author, has moved his wife and two children into a new home. What he hasn't told them is that their new home was also the former residence of the victims depicted in his new novel. After a brief brush with local law enforcement, who flat out tell him that they don't want to help him (turns out he smeared the police concerned in his later novels), Oswalt goes up to his attic, and immediately uncovers a bunch of homemade snuff movies on hi 8 film, including the death of the subjects of his new novel. Then a bunch of spooky shit starts happening. There's a demon. He causes children to murder their families. It starts obviously interfering in Oswalt’s life. His family tries to flee the obvious ending that only Oswalt knows is coming, but it's not the kind of demon you can run from. And, in the end, exactly what you knew from the start was going to happen does, and one of Oswalt’s children gets possessed.

I know that's far more sarcastic than I usually am with my synopsis of the film, but that's because I'm kind of pissed off at Sinister. It actually is a pretty effective thriller, with a very strong premise. Watching the films Oswalt finds along with him is suitably uncomfortable (excellent use of found footage style, though the film pulls punches for gore). The trouble is, without any good reason other than it was scripted to happen, all of a sudden, Oswalt hears a noise in his house, walks around in the dark for a bit. A jump scare of some kind will play out, and then it will switch gears back to another morning in the life of Ellison Oswalt. I'm not complaining about the jump scares exactly - modern American horror from major studios thinks that jump scares and torture porn are the only viable modes for horror these days - it's that they break up what was otherwise a very compelling movie. Oswalt's investigation is what we're interested in, not where their demon is going to pop out next. The film itself even ends with the most predictable face in the camera & sudden music sting I've ever seen - and I've seen a lot of them. If you're going to set a tone like Sinister does for 80% of the movie, why not stay the course, and keep building your film on that excellent foundation? Why do you have to cram about six useless scenes in?

I'll bet money was involved.

Despite this backlash, I cannot deny that a lot of Sinister is well done. Everyone turns in a pretty good performance, and the camera is well-handled. This is what saves it from being a total lost cause. The film has a very confusing soundtrack, featuring a lot of odd vocals, that has been edited just right to underline the atmosphere. But, so appalling is the use of overt scares in what is otherwise a subtle film, that I'm left to grade it so lowly. It feels cheap to suddenly drive your film in a more crowd-pleasing direction.

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi) - B

A New Zealand documentary film crew has gained exclusive rights to interview and live with a group of four vampires, who share a flat. Deacon, the youngest vampire at 168 years old, is kind of a slob that has shirked his flat duties for years. Viago, an old world Victorian dandy that moved to New Zealand for love, is the group's neat freak. Then there's Vladislav (aka Vladislav the Poker), who is from Medieval times. He's something of a tragic figure that has been jilted romantically, and as a result is now a shadow of his former self. Finally there's the abominable-looking Petyr, who is supposedly over 8,000 years old, lives in the basement, and is responsible for turning at least Deacon (though I suppose the implication is that he turned all three). Things get even more crowded when, a few months after filming has started, Petyr has turned a new member into their group: the loud-mouthed Nick. Nick himself is kind of a tool, but his best friend Gary is a real swell guy, and the group is glad to have him. The film culminates in the group attending the Unholy Masquerade, a yearly gathering of all of the local supernaturals, and a walk home following that all of the vampires are sure to remember.

What We Do in the Shadows is a marvelous take on mockumentary film making. Though the style persists through the whole film, there are times you can forget entirely that it's not just a narrative. The entire thing is filled with subtle jokes to its audience, often in the form of gags based on vampire mythology. Other supernatural stuff also gets a nod in this film, including werewolves, vampire hunters and zombies. And all of it handled with love and respect. A charming touch for you horror fans is that the four vampires originally living in the flat seem to be a reference to famous vampires through the years (Petyr is Count Orlok from Nosferatu, Vladislav is Dracula [particularly the young Gary Oldman version from Bram Stoker's Dracula], Viago is likely a reference to Anne Rice's An Interview With the Vampire characters, and Deacon escapes me - maybe Twilight?).

The format and brand of humor could lead itself to being very dry, but I found it to be well paced so that the laughs continued to hit throughout the film. There are dark moments as well (one of the camera men doesn't make it...), so our funny bloodsuckers can't be called squeamish. This is another entry into horror parody arena of recent years that I would consider to be a shining example. What We Do in the Shadows is worth a watch, no matter who you are. I know many of us feel burned out on vampires lately, but if someone tells you this one's different, I'd be inclined to agree with them.

The ABCs of Death 2 (Various Directors) - C

Like its predecessor, The ABCs of Death 2 is a 26 Short Film anthology. Each director got assigned a letter of the alphabet, and had to make a short film that featured someone dying due to a topic of their choosing that starts with the letter they were assigned. The shorts fall everywhere from silly, to gruesome, to chilling, to bizarre. Directors from all over the world contributed to this project, many languages are spoken and several different formats are used. Due to the nature of this film, it would take forever to summarize each piece, so I'm just going to proceed with my analysis.

As you may recall, the first film got a B+ rating from me last year. The sequel has only garnered a C. Personally, I found this installment to be a little more all over the place, and was less in a horror vein. This doesn't necessarily net it the drop in grade by itself. Where the first film featured a lot more dialogue, this one had far more entries in which there was no dialogue at all (I'd guess about 1/4 of the content was this way). While this technique certainly breaks down language barriers, and allows for a broader audience consumption, I found myself missing the spoken word. I'm also not sure that the directors were all notable genre people (Julian Barrett, whom I like a great deal, directed B, for example. As far as I know, though, he's never directed anything horror). It feels like they went for more dark humor this time around. This isn't to say there's no gore or unsettling moments to be found, it just felt softer overall. I suppose you could chalk this up to the notion that, having seen the first, the concept is subject to diminishing returns. However, I truly believe that, unlike other anthology franchises, the ABCs of Death series could potentially stay fresh forever, so long as there's new blood to be had. Nevertheless, I was less enthused by this outing.

The ABCs of Death 2 is still a very well done piece, full of talented artists and memorable films. Like the first, this film is not for the faint of heart - there may be more laughs in this one, but the gory ones will still turn your stomach. And, its worth noting that while I preferred the first, the general consensus seems to be that the sequel is the favored of the two.

This time around my favorites were: A, B, I, K, M, O and W.

The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks) - C

At a remote station at the North Pole, a science team, along with some good old boys from the air force, have made the find of a century! Trapped in the ice near the base is a fully preserved UFO. After a failed attempt to unearth the craft with thermite, the group manages to salvage a lone alien life form, itself encased in ice. Once interned on the base, it isn't long before the Thing gets free, and starts killing first dogs, then people in order to amass blood for reproduction (the creature is vegetable based and can only develop seeds in plasma, the scientists discover). Ultimately, after the scientists fail to deter the military from acting against the alien, the brave Earthlings lead the Thing into an electrical trap, and destroy it but good. Captain Patrick Hendry and his boys don’t suffer a single casualty, but Earth was definitely under threat.

Being a fanatical supporter of John Carpenter's 1982 remake, I'd hesitated to watch this one. Remakes tend to be outshone by their predecessors in this modern age of cinema. While The Thing From Another World has a lot in common with its remake, the differences are staggering. In this version, we have a far less threatening creature. Not only does it only manage to kill a mere two humans, being large, strong and impervious to bullets appears to be the extent of its powers. Therefore, there is no major plotline about sussing out who was and who wasn't an alien (something that is at least 2/3s of the Thing 82). In fact, by and large, The Thing From Another World is a pretty standard 1950s science fiction outing. You can't even call it a horror film, really. The only human deaths are off camera, and most of the monster stuff doesn't even occur until the last third of the movie. In fact, much like Ghosts of Mars, this one was more about its science than almost anything else. A lot of time is devoted getting the characters (and therefore the audience) to understand how a vegetative life form works, and how such a thing could be possible. The air force team saves the day with typical, cold-war era America efficiency. Their plans are formulated quickly, and work very well (when some poindexter scientist doesn't get in the way). This adds some boredom into the proceedings, but not enough to spoil the film entirely.

While your military and science personnel are represented, a curious amount of time is spent on the character of Mr. Scott, a balding, bespectacled 'newspaper man' that joins up with Captain Hendry in Alaska, before arriving at the base. Scott is definitely a comic relief character that constantly grumps about his inability to report on alien contact to the world (after the monster is dealt with, Scott finally gets to report to some media bigwigs about what's been going on. The entire speech he gives is dripping with ham). Scott is with the soldiers pretty much every step of the way, determined to try to get a photo of the Thing. The character of Nikki is another interesting one. An assistant to the head of research, she has an ongoing fling with Hendry  that involves some light bondage play. She too tends to add mirth to the otherwise dry monster movie. In fact, the scenes between Captain Hendry, Scott and Nikki could be very silly indeed. In one scene towards the end, I could have sworn the trio fully improvised their dialogue. This all gave The Thing From Another World a sense of humor that I wasn't expecting to find. The whole thing is pretty polished, for 1950s b-movie. This picture is entertaining, witty and not without a certain charm. Still, it is probably too tame for those who crave the darkness of the classic remake.

Life After Beth (Jeff Baena) - C+

Zack's girlfriend Beth has recently died by snakebite. After the funeral, Zack respectfully pays a visit to Beth's parents, and strikes up a friendship with her father, Maury. The couple are very open and warm to Zack, who's own family are somewhat detached and uncaring about his problems. Zack continues to try and befriend Maury, but suddenly cannot get in touch with him. When Zack pays a visit to the house, he discovers Beth has returned and is very much alive. She displays some odd behavior (there's always a test the next day she's worried about, even though it's summer), but Zack is overjoyed to have her back. While Zack and Maury struggle over whether or not they should tell Beth that she's been dead, Zack also notices other members of the community have been reappearing, and when Beth starts exhibiting actual Romero-style zombie behavior, it isn't long before the entire community is beset by the walking dead.

The film is a lot more subtle than I make it out to be. The rise of zombies in the community is not only slow, but also comical. Many of the would-be scares in the film (which, admittedly are few and far between - it's more of an indie romantic comedy than something concerned with scares) are often comedic gags (a favorite of mine is while Zack is trying to find out how to stop the zombies, he has a conversation with a man through a hotel room door. The music and Zack's sudden reaction to someone creeping up on him is a cue that violence is coming, but instead, a zombie woman - naked as the day she was born - asks him if this place used to be a car wash). The film also takes the time to establish the rules of its undead, something you wouldn't expect it to do. It even has a nod to humans being the actual monsters, as evidenced by their violent response to what is otherwise a fairly peaceful zombie infestation.

Some of the performances are quite good (John C Reilly and Molly Shannon are excellent as Beth's parents), and the writing is sharp. Some of the camera work (especially at the start of the film) looks a little amateurish, but, even that doesn't stop Life After Beth from being a worthwhile movie. It isn't quite as laugh out loud as What We Do in the Shadows, but it's definitely quality horror comedy.

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And that's that. This week, I'm starting my Christopher Lee mini-festival (starting with Horror Hotel today, and A Taste of Fear and the Gorgon on Monday and Tuesday). I believe next week will be my week of Asian films, but there's still a lot of fright to come!

Monster Mash Movie Marathon Month 2014 - Week 2

Well, it's Sunday, so it's time to tell you all about the movies I watched this week, and how I felt about them. But first, here's another friendly reminder of the grading scale.

A = Excellent, a must see

B = Very good, I’d watch it again

C = Worth Seeing

D = Maybe don’t bother

F = Worthless

+ = Superior for this grade

- = Just barely makes it into this grade

I know many of you don't agree with some of the grades I give out, and it just goes to show you how personal the horror genre can be. And, as usual, please be aware that THESE REVIEWS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!! So, without any further ado, let's get into the reviews...

Insidious (James Wan) - C+

Josh and Renie have just recently had their third child, and have moved into a beautiful new home. Almost immediately, though, after their eldest son, Dalton, slips into a coma, Renie starts to have horrifying experiences and seeing figures that no one else can. She convinces Josh that they need to move. At first the new house seems to have done the trick, but it isn't long before Renie has the same old problems. Renie hires a psychic, someone Josh's mother knows. The psychic immediately informs the couple that their son is the source of their haunting, and from there, it gets complicated.

This film received a lot of positive hype when it was released, but probably only because it was being made by the creators of successful horror franchises like Saw and Paranormal Activity. It did a very good job of making both houses feel very sinister. The usual format of ghost movies, in my experience anyway, is that the paranormal aspects enter the film slowly, revealing the restless dead piece by piece to the viewer, often not letting the audience see an active ghost til the final confrontation (though, many times, this is probably due to budget-related reasons). Not the case here! The ghosts haunting Dalton physically appear very early in the picture. While at first I found this to be a refreshing change, it didn't leave much suspense for the finale. And while the monsters were very cool to look at, it's hard to be scared of ghosts that always smile. Or of a demon that looks like Darth Maul.

The film's pacing suffers. While it does reveal some of the ghosts early on, you only get frustrated when the reveals end too quickly. It feels like you're just waiting for the next scene that features something other than the protagonist family. It picks up somewhat when the psychics and her lackeys enter the picture, but then it gets real Poltergeist. You know somehow that things are going to be OK, and it seems kind of silly on the film's part to try and convince you otherwise. Still, the presentation and visual effects are good enough to keep you going.

The Thing (2011) (Matthijs van Heijnengen) - D+

A remote Norwegian science team has made the discovery of the century! Frozen in the ice near their base is a friggin' alien! The leader of the Norwegians, Dr. Sandor Halvorson, enlists the help of some American scientists, led by Kate Lloyd. Once back on the scene of their discovery, Halvorson cracks the ice to get a tissue sample, and it’s not too long after that the alien wakes up and parties like its 1982! Before long, only Kate and Carter, her crackerjack pilot ally, are all that stands between the Thing and the end of humanity.

Sound familiar? It ought to. This prequel to John Carpenter's version of The Thing examines what happened to the Norwegian science base that the Americans find destroyed. While it nicely sets up many tie-ins with Carpenter's movie, it also borrows almost every tense moment from it too. The famous blood test scene, the old dead-body-coming-back-to-life-at-an-inconvenient-moment trick, all the classics are there. It also prefers a more direct approach with its monster, rather than relying on building a character story to play off the paranoia of the premise. You get to see a lot of CGI Thing creatures running around in this movie. Big ones, little ones. And most, not all, but most of them have pretty grizzly vagina dentatas.

Maybe that's sour grapes. Carpenter's Thing is one of my favorites in the genre. This movie takes a neat premise - what happened to the last guys that found this impossibly hard to kill alien? - and bungles it. The reason Thing 82 was such a good movie was because there was a decent build up to the meat of the plot, thanks to having strong characters. Macready was a cynic who hated having authority thrust on him, Childs was skeptical of everyone, Blair was paranoid of the legitimate threat to humanity, Palmer was a chuckle-hungry stoner, Windows was a fuck-up who deserved to be badgered through the whole movie and so on. In Thing 2011, you really only get to know Kate as your protagonist, Halvorson as the asshole who was in it for fame, and you kind of got to know Lars, the only Norwegian at the base who doesn't speak English. The trouble is, there's probably over 20 living characters at the peak of people being alive in the film. That's a hard number to keep track of. There's really no chance to get to know many of the characters before they start getting eaten. I think a solution to this problem would have been to dispose of the American team all together. True, Kate is your protagonist, so the story would have to be retooled a little, but the Norwegian characters were all solidly done, so it seems clear they could have done this and still managed to make an excellent film (though it would have been a reader).

Thing 82 largely succeeded because it didn't attach a morality to its characters, leaving the audience to make their own decisions about who was good and evil (other than Macready, who was the only obvious protagonist). Even characters that went bad, like Blair, often did it for very plausible reasons. In Thing 2011, we are supplied with this information. Kate and Lars are good guys, Halvorson is the bad guy, and anyone who supports either immediately falls into that camp for the viewer. As such, it greatly reduces the paranoia the audience feels. While in Thing 2011, there is the ever present threat that some good characters are aliens, there's a whole group of characters that we aren't supposed to like, and whether they're Things or not doesn't add anything to the narrative.

I'm also not sure how to explain this, but the advanced CGI effects somehow seemed more fake to me than the creature effects in Thing 82. Especially the scene in which we first see a character turn into one of them. He's just talking, then his face ripples and then he morphs suddenly into a monster. But you can almost tell when he stops being just an actor. I found several of the effects, specifically when transitioning from human to monster, to look extra fake. This movie had a real tough act to follow in the special effects department, though, so maybe I should be less critical.

Race with the Devil (Jack Starrett) - D-

Frank and Roger, along with their wives, have got a plan to go skiing up in Aspen. They have this new-fangled RV, you see, so they hitch up some dirt bikes, and they get traveling. One evening, thinking they've managed to spy on a hip, young orgy, the pair are horrified when they discover what they witnessed is in fact a ritualistic sacrifice. Those hippies are Satanists, who are pretty pissed off when they realize Frank and Roger saw their misdeed. From there, the RV crew races desperately to flee pursuing bad guys who manage to be around every corner.

There's not much to say about this one. It billed itself in the trailer as one long car chase, but this really only happens for about 12 minutes towards the end. This chase scene is the only scene in the movie of any note. It does contain a lot of shots of Roger and Frank's RV getting smashed, a few car tricks, and some spectacular crashes. I imagine a good portion of this films budget went into pyrotechnics, as more than one car goes up in a huge fireball.

But the majority of the movie is spent watching the characters go through an increasingly frustrating series of attempts to get help. Everywhere they turn, they meet resistance. They, and by extension, you in the audience don't trust anyone they meet. The wives tend to handle every challenge by going hysterical (earlier they try to help by stealing some books on witchcraft from a local library, but this moment of helpfulness is overshadowed by every scene that follows having them scream and cower). The locals are colorful, but you can immediately tell that they are up to no good. In fact, when you realize that every scene in the movie leading up to the car chase is the same thing done over and over again, you lose interest. This is compounded by the film not even taking the time to explore its antagonists. Once you see the sacrifice and our heroes get back on the road, very little is discovered about the satanic society. All you get to know is they're everywhere. But not why. Or to what end. Ho-hum.

The Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis) - F

We open on a monologue from Montag, the Magnificent. Montag is a magician that butchers lady volunteers during his act in just the bloodiest ways possible. Each night of his show he does a different "trick". These tricks are obviously fatal (being sawed in half, having a metal spike driven through a brain, swallowing swords, etc.), but somehow the volunteer is miraculously unharmed after some trippy editing. At least, until about an hour after the show, when the women suddenly die in the same fashion that Montag killed them on stage. Sherry, a day time talk show host, and her fiancée, Jack, see Montag's first show, and Sherry is determined to have the wizard on her program. He agrees, but only if she keeps attending his performances.

This film was completely a vehicle for its gore effects. You can tell by the emphasis the film puts on its gross-out scenes, and by the lack of talent with any other aspect of the movie. Microphones pick up wind in outside scenes, there are millions of jump cuts giving the picture a terribly disjointed feel, and none of the actors are particularly good at acting.

So let's talk about these gore effects. Since it’s obvious by the lack of any sort of talent through the rest of the film, and Lewis used to be considered quite the gore-maker of his day, the special effects have to be kind of impressive. But the way in which they are presented - with uneven, repetitive music, confusing jump cuts, and Montag leering and running his hands through their wounds - leaves a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, fans of bad horror will be delighted by the acting here. Some of the lines are comedic gold, including a little piece in which Jack panics about his friend’s hands.

The Beyond (Lucio Fulci) - C+

Liza purchases a fixer-upper hotel somewhere in Louisiana. Decades previous, however, a murder had taken place, the body boarded up in room 36. As it turns out, room 36 contains a doorway to hell. When Liza has an ill-fated plumber begin to work on the pipes, it sets off a chain of events that threatens to bring hell to Earth. With the aid of smarmy, nonbeliever, Doctor John and the mysterious blind woman, Emily, Liza attempts to find out exactly what is going on with her hotel.

Now, the above paragraph sounds pretty straight forward, but this movie is kind of all over the place. From our first on screen death, the kill scenes are varied and even somewhat confusing. Early it becomes clear that deaths are not confined to the hotel, but it’s not exactly explained how. The special effects are oddly inconsistent. In scenes where ghosts arrive to haunt Emily, you can tell that what you're looking at are rags and paper mache made to look humanoid. Yet not five minutes later, some excellent gore effects happen. Sometimes this can be quite the contradiction (such as a scene where a man who has fallen off a ladder is beset by tarantulas. While some of the spiders are real, others are unabashedly fake). But then, at the same time, some of the gore effects are awesomely done (I howled with laughter and rewound several times when Doctor John offs a character in the last few minutes of the film).

But Fulci is no hack. The cinematography is pretty wonderful. The visuals of the film make up for some of the shoddier special effects. But some of the scenes go on too long. The aforementioned spider scene goes on about three times longer than needed. This movie could be a good time, as long as you don't take it too seriously.

The ABCs of Death (Various Directors) - B+

This collaboration is an anthology film quite unlike any other. 26 contemporary horror directors were each given a letter, and got to pick a word (or phrase) that corresponded to their letter. The result: 26 different short films in which at least one character dies. I couldn't possibly give you the premise of each film, so I'm not going to try. Besides, it’s best to go into a film like this knowing as little as possible.

These films are truly all over the map. The feel of ABCs runs from satirical to hilarious to gory to disturbing. But it evokes these emotions skillfully. It is an international effort, bringing several different languages to the table.  It also includes different formats such as animation, claymation, puppetry and found footage. But the common thread through most of the anthology is talent. Say what you will about the content of some of the pieces, each one is done particularly well.

While not every short could be considered horror, those that are are fairly disturbing. People that can't stand the genre (or violence) will probably not be able to stomach it, but overall, I found ABCs to be an excellent appeal to the horror geek in me. And people like me are most definitely the film's audience.

And while I really don’t want to talk about the specific shorts, I will let you know my favorite letters: D, F, Q, S, U & Z (Which is perhaps one of the strangest things I have ever seen. Thanks Japan!).

Carrie (Brian De Palma) - B

Nobody likes Carrie White. Though she may have secret telekinetic powers, she gets pushed around daily in just the most unthinkable ways by her high school peers. And when her almost-definitely-a-lesbian gym teacher interferes in the pranks against her, ringleader Chris decides Carrie must suffer even more. Of course, it doesn't help that Carrie's mother is a religious fanatic who makes her daughter's private life hell too. What's a girl to do? Hey, I know! After getting pushed to the limit at her prom, she goes berserk (mentally) and annihilates as many people as possible.

Director Brian De Palma tackles the celebrated Stephen King story, and he does a good job of it. True, much of his style is borrowed from Hitchcock, but he still shows a lot of class here. Many of the girl gym sequences are dazzlingly choreographed, and De Palma even brings his signature split screen effect to the table for Carrie's famous meltdown (though, personally, I found he used this technique to greater effect in Sisters). Some of the performances, including Piper Laurie, of Twin Peaks fame, as Carrie’s devout mother are excellent. The film also features a funky, electronic-sounding soundtrack that adds to some of the more surreal scenes.

Parts of Carrie are baffling to me (why does the house implode?), but the film is captivating enough that these details don't matter. Even knowing exactly where the story is going, watching Carrie discover new experiences in life only to have it all crash down around her is a satisfying experience. At points she seems to climb impossibly high, so high that you can't believe that she doesn't realize it's all a ruse. But she needs to climb that high in order for her fall to have the correct emotional impact.

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That does it for another week! This coming week, I think, will be my found footage marathon, including Afflicted, Cloverfield and Cannibal Holocaust. Tonight, though, I'm going to be checking out 2009's Pandorum, starring.... Dennis Quaid? Am... am I sure about this? Aw, mannnn....