Zombos' Closet

The Last Broadcast (1998)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Is the following fact or fiction? Two young movie makers use a desktop PC and less than nine hundred dollars to produce the first all-digital documentary-styled horror film in 1998?

It's fact. A few months before The Blair Witch Project brought documentary style horror to the forefront, The Last Broadcast presented a chilling account of three bloody murders that happened one cold night in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Beginning as a fictitious documentary about the Jersey Devil Murders using salvaged video footage, interviews, and police evidence, the film's twist ending reveals the real murderer--or does it?

Using Photoshop to enhance scenes, consumer-grade video recorders, and lots of post-production doctoring on a desktop PC,  Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler digitally composed their thriller using mostly non-actors, Weiler's mom, and anything not nailed down. The final product is an eerie, slow-building, story that takes a sudden left turn to  reveal the true murderer. According to the audio commentary on the DVD, seven clues are in the film pointing to the murderer. I missed all seven.

Technology plays an important part within the film itself, first as visual and auditory information is manipulated to create the pseudo-documentary structure of the film, and then as impetus for the events within it.

Chindi Remembers Charles Grant

West Nelson (aka Chindi to Zombos Closet readers) shares his thoughts on the passing of horror and science-fiction author Charles Grant. Thanks West.   

We said good-bye to Charles Grant on Thursday. You can read his obituary here and here, but I'd like to talk about the first time I met him. 

It was about 10 years ago and I'd been corresponding with his wife, Kathy Ptacek, for some time. She kindly invited me to a party they were having for his 100th book. It was a weekend long affair, but I couldn't make it on that Friday. I do recall that we were all watching an episode of the X-Files that Friday night. When I saw Charlie's name on a list of suspects that Mulder was reading, I called Kathy and Charlie to tell them. Of course they'd seen it and the celebratory noise in the background made me regret choosing work over fun.

That night I prepared a couple of pans of spicy sesame noodles with shrimp and scallops and in the morning, I loaded it all up in the car and drove to Newton, NJ. The minute I arrived, I was welcomed with open arms. Not just by Kathy and Charlie, but by their community of friends as well. At some point, I mentioned to Charlie that his work had a Dickensian touch to it. The characters you got to caring about the most were the ones who were doomed, in particular the children. He rather enjoyed that. Later, when discussing his book, Jackals, I stated that it reminded me of the National Geographic film, Eternal Enemies: Lions And Hyenas. He fairly leaped into the air and said he got the idea for the book from that video. We riffed on the name the researchers (Derek and Beverly Joubert) gave the male of the pride. Ntchwaidumela which means "He who greets with fire". In fact, whenever we'd float past one another that night, we would bow to each other and say "Ntchwaidumela" in a most formal tone.

As for my spicy sesame noodles, they were a hit. Charlie made me promise to send the recipe which I gladly did. Come to think of it, he's the only person to whom I've ever given it.

When the blackout of 2003 occurred, I was in the midst of reading one of his Oxrun collections. Rather than wait for the lights to come on, I settled onto a couch and turned on a flashlight. I finished the book that night and when I went to sleep I had a nightmare I hadn't had in years. I emailed Charlie about it and told him that I'd decided to finally write it all down. He wrote back and told me that he'd like to see it when I finished it. Sadly, I let life get in the way and I never did finish it.

Years ago, Charlie put out a small print magazine called Haggis. It was a way for his fans to get a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes of his work. There was also a great deal of fan participation. He organized a virtual wrestling federation. We had to come up with our own characters. Mine was Loup Garou, the werewolf. I described him as George "The Animal" Steele with serious dental issues. Loup was quite tame as long as he was leashed. In truth, I'd forgotten about it until Jet Li's Unleashed came out. Charlie was kind enough to email me to ask if I'd had anything to do with it.

People like Charlie Grant are never fully appreciated by most of us while they are here. I regret getting so caught up in my own life that I couldn't take a day to see him when he took ill. "There's always next weekend", I kept telling myself. If we are to learn anything from his passing, it should be that we must cherish our friends and family while they're here. Email and web communities are one thing, but they cannot replace real face to face encounters. It is small consolation that his funeral and the following reception were just the kind of gathering that he would have enjoyed.

We'll miss you, Charlie. Thanks for everything.

         

Where's the Light? Left In Darkness (2006)

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

Horror fans are intimate with death. Whether sudden or prolonged, subtle or explicit, depicted in hyper-realistic or preternatural artistry, the intention or completion of death is the modus operandi of all horror movies. Often taken to absurd extremes, it is parodied, glorified, exemplified, and gorified. Sometimes theology is tossed into this terminal stew of misery and body parts. Not much, as that would hold down the body count while characters go through annoying self-reflective dialogs, delaying all the spouting-blood action with cumbersome discussions about life and death, heaven and hell, and why me?

Jason. Put down that head! I've got to think about all this! or Freddy, cut that out--no, not like that!--I mean you need to wait until I discuss the raison d'etre of your existence  juxtaposed with my hacked-up dead friends--oh, and Tommy, too, who I never liked that much anyway.

Such character introspection in a horror movie tends to muck-up the story and require mental gymnastics today's audiences may not be in shape for. It is easier to show death than to explore its boundaries. No lengthy expositions, just nifty death throes and screams and body parts scattered aplenty. So when a horror movie brings death in close proximity to religious themes such as Heaven and Hell, otherwise collectively known as ‘the afterlife,’ it needs to justify its story between just enough horrifying action and just enough theological surmising to move it along in an entertaining, thought-provoking manner.

Left in Darkness fails to live up to this potential. Part of me finds its premise annoying: a devout young woman, Celia (Monica Keena), dies and must find heaven’s entrance before her limbo sanctuary is overrun by damnation. Dying is hard enough. To be forced into playing heaven, heaven, where the hell is heaven like an Amazing Race episode with a detour of soul-eating demons wanting to suck you dry, shoots for a target of horror story convenience sans sense. However, there’s also a part of me that finds it an interesting dogmatic challenge to encompass it onscreen with sufficient suspense, terror, and ecclesiastical justification to warrant this wicked situation. It could make for one hell of a horror movie, especially if you're an atheist. 

But the pivotal question almost every horror movie ignores is Where's God in all this? And this movie ignores the question, too. Riddle me this, horror fan: Why is it in every horror movie where you have demons and devils in the game, God’s always on the sidelines while the Devil’s players are hot in the game? God drops a few cryptic clues to help her, but I'd be screaming for brawny angels with flaming swords instead. And why is it HER battle?

Celia is an unhappy dead person. In flashback we see her in a cemetery reluctantly visiting her deceased mother who died giving birth to her. Her grandfather Joe (Tim Thomerson) is with her. He raises her after her dad abandons her. Joe asks her to talk to her mom, but she refuses and runs away, right into oncoming traffic. She is saved from premature death by an invisible boy named Donovan (David Anders). He acts like a protecting angel keeping her safe most of her life.

On her twenty-first birthday, Celia joins a friend for a party at the local frat house. Frat boys spike her drink and rape her unconscious body. Too much of the drug is used and she dies from an overdose. She wakes up, realizes she's dead, and now must search for a way into heaven. Clumsy jump-cuts and fast-motion scenes don’t aid her struggle and fail to hide lapses in story logic and budgetary shortfalls. Donovan, her childhood savior appears. So does Joe. But Joe, after explaining the game’s rules to her, turns into a demon. Donovan tells her Joe's soul has been eaten by a demon who digested all of Joe's memories and feelings. He explains the frat house in the netherworld she’s now in is her sanctuary until 2am. After that, the soul-eating demons can enter and gobble her up. How or why Joe became a demon is not explained.

At least in Beetle Juice the Maitlands get an Afterlife Handbook. Celia has to wing it without even CliffsNotes. Donovan is not much help either. He pressures her to do what he wants. And why she only has until 2am to find the physical doorway, stairway, or closet to heaven is not clear. Why she even needs to go through all this trouble is not explained. She’s been a good girl. Why does God need her to play detective?

Donovan does help her fight soul-eaters while she makes up her mind whether to trust him or not. She lets him into the frat house sanctuary—he couldn’t enter until she okayed it--and he tells her she needs to go to the basement to save herself. Sure, why not? The DARK basement. How dumb do the writers think we are? If this is their idea of forshadowing, it’s done with a sledgehammer.

The man who caused her death commits suicide and joins her in the sanctuary. The natural tension such a meeting would generate in the real world is not explored here. Instead, it’s more like a Ghost Whisperer episode:  metaphysical connotations, emotional confrontations, and appropriate dialog simply don’t apply. The spirits of her grandfather and mom pop in and out to offer more cryptic clues to find heaven’s entrance and test her stress level telling her to hurry up, time’s running out. Her sanctuary starts winking out here and there, letting soul-eaters in. Any potential tension or suspense during all this is never nail-biting because Steven Monroe’s pacing is like a TV movie with scenes timed for commercial breaks.

Boil it all down to the bone and it’s about Celia making a choice. She needs to listen to her grandfather, or her mom, or her guardian angel, or the voice within herself. Why she needs to do this is never explored. At least if she was an atheist I could relish the irony of her situation.

Like the afterlife, this movie is a complete mystery. Just not a good one.

A Hell of a Movie Jigoku (1960)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place; poor theology student Shiro (Shigeru Amachi) cannot seem to keep from going to hell and taking everyone else with him. The Criterion Collection brings Nobuo Nakagawa's 1960 surrealistic terror and damnation cult classic, Jigoku, to DVD. Like a nightmare, the film takes twists and turns that defy visual logic and story sense, plunging you--along with Shiro--into an absurdest world with no possible exit. Before you  watch the film, I strongly recommend reading the essay by Chuck Stephens in the included booklet and watch the documentary Building the Inferno on the DVD. Jigoku is not a film to see on an empty mind.

Perhaps it is Shiro's indecisiveness hastening his descent. The poor man is not a happy camper and, as he broods, his fiance, family members, and acquaintances suffer the consequences of his inaction. Then there is Tamura, Shiro's evil friend. With friends like him, as the saying goes, you are sure to wind up in hell before breakfast. Tamura has an eerie way of popping up unexpectedly, and knowing all the dirt on everyone. Who, or what, is he?

But which Hell are we talking about here? Every religion has its own claim to the greener pastures and turgid rivers of bubbling corruption. For Shiro, hell is a tenth-century Buddhist's depiction of nastiness, complete with images from thirteenth-century Japanese Hell scroll paintings--with multiple levels of torture. All out for level two; dismemberment, disembowelment, and peeling-you-like-a-grape for ever and ever; next stop, eye-gouging and tickling your feet until you up-chuck. I never knew Buddhists had it in them.

Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters In American Pop Culture

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

If you can read only one non-fiction horror genre book this year, first I strongly suggest you reexamine your priorities, then second, I highly recommend you pick up Annalee Newitz' Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture. Now I warn you, you will need to really think while reading this book, which is one of the necessities for discovering fresh insights into the inner workings of what makes horror go bump in the night.

Now mind you, I didn't say you will need to agree with everything Annalee Newitz posits in this encompassing examination of sociological and economic forces pushing on our cinematic realizations of the undead (zombies), the indifferent (serial killers), and the insane (mad doctors); but if you disagree, you better be prepared to argue why as well as she does.

 "I'm a zombie, you're a zombie, we're all zombies too". Repeat these words over and over again to the tune of Dr. Pepper playing in your head. Now you're ready.

If you work in a sterile corporate office you will embrace Newitz' ideas: if you work in a dull gray cubicle world for a pittance allotted by CEOs who walk away with unjustified millions, you will understand her reasoning; if you've gone through the demeaning and demoralizing experience ironically called 'the performance review,' given by the-company-is-my-life, alienated and mostly clueless manager who (only funny in The Office) will quickly sell you out to sell themselves up that dubious corporate ladder, you will nod your head in agreement with her arguments.

For that dog biscuit reward most of us roll over and play dead for everyday, we do it in order to survive the dullness, the inanity, and the inherent humiliation of our daily work life. So is it any wonder the monsters we see on the golden screen are the products of our collective economic misery and aspirations? Or why they pursue their psychotic and body count careers with such workmanlike aplomb and enthusiasm?

Universal Monsters 75th Anniversary at SDCC 2006

You'ld never know it is the 75th Anniversary of the Dracula and Frankenstein films with how Universal Studios is "promoting" this milestone, but at the San Diego Comic Con, they remembered and celebrated with Forry and a panel of fans. Go to Jennifer M. Contino's detailed post to relive the excitement. Wish I had attended it myself.

And another thing...

I wonder why Universal Studios has not capitalized on their wealth of classic horror monsters in their theme park.

When will Universal Studios wake up and smell the freshly turned earth? Being home to a bunch of classically scary icons like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman and the Creature, you would think they should have come up with haunted house and scarefest attractions by now that would make an awesome bunch of monster house rides.

Hell, imagine a Creature from the Black Lagoon attraction similar to Disney’s Jungle Cruise, or walking through the streets of an old Transylvanian village, ala Disney’s Fantasy Land. Every so often you could have actors running through the streets with flaming torches (or safer reasonable facsimiles) chasing after Frankenstein’s Monster.

Imagine a ride built around the movie Them!, where you fight giant ants, or a frightening tour of Dracula’s castle (Todd Browning version, of course). I love the Mummy ride, but there are more monsters, you know. Perhaps, with the new Creature and Wolfman remakes on the way, more classic monster attractions will become a reality.

Then again, they did do Van Helsing…

The Maid (2005)

An effective ghost story should have an air of mystery to it: why is there a ghost? What purpose does the ghost have in haunting a particular place or person? A modicum of pathos is also important for a truly emotional turn of the screw, as a ghost cannot only be vindictive or vengeful, but must have sadness about it; something that we can empathize  that will make the haunting all the more tragic, as well as spooky.

Gore also must be kept to a minimum, as an effective ghost story relies on creating and sustaining a balanced mood of tension. Too much gore and the balance shifts into rapid moments of revulsion and anxiety, whereas a good ghost story relies on impression and subtlety, implying more than is actually shown.

The mystery in The Maid builds slowly and inexorably toward a climax that brings us to an unexpected place. Director and writer, Kelvin Tong, while using the now standard shock cuts of  ghosts sitting, floating and crawling, keeps the gore factor down, and raises and twists Rosa's and our impressions of what's happening in this first significant horror film from Singapore.

Rosa is a young Philippine maid who travels to Singapore to work for the Teo family. While traveling as a stranger in a strange land is stressful enough, her trip is made more vexing by the timing of it. She arrives at the Teo residence during Hungry Ghost Month--a time when the gates of hell unlock and all those annoying relatives you really didn't want to see anymore return.

Of course, there are ways to appease the ghosts, and Rosa, not at all familiar with the rituals that the community follows during this preternatural month, sweeps up ashes that were better left alone. No sooner than you can say boo! she's seeing dead people, or sitting in their reserved chairs for the opera, or hearing strange sounds and watching doors fly open as they pull their usual scare tactics. Let's face it, if you're dead, scaring the living can be lots of fun. What else can you do?

As she becomes more and more unnerved by all this, she notices a neighbor that runs away from her, and the Teo family begins to act a little odd. Which is quite a change from her initial entry into the musically-inclined family; who, with their co-workers in the opera, broke into song upon her arrival. But now the Teo family is becoming distant, and more controlling. And then there is Ah Soon, the little-boy that can't grow up with his body, the Teo's son. He develops an infatuation with Rosa, and Rosa plays along with his childish behavior.

Through the increasing ghostly activity, Rosa realizes one ghost in particular is trying to get her attention. But why? Like any well-crafted mystery there are clues along the way, but of course you never notice them until the summary flashbacks at the end--then you kick yourself for not realizing what's happening. Okay, I kick myself for not realizing what's happening.

In too many American horror films, it's the undead or loony-toon psycho, and the soon-to-be-dead that are prominent in the story--along with a modicum of T&A and flashy gore for good measure. The Maid eschews all that and focuses on the relationships between the living and the dead, and Rosa (Alessandra de Rossi), who doesn't disrobe (damn!), curse, or act in that "I'm just here to be killed" kind of fashion. Instead, Tong builds his story on the traditions and eeriness inherent in Hungry Ghost Month, and provides quiet moments of uncertainty at first, then less quiet moments as Rosa realizes the supernatural world is real and uncomfortably close.

But is she in danger from the ghosts or from the Teo family? Or both? Her struggle to find out makes Tong's story a suspenseful, slightly scary, and very entertaining traditional ghost story.

Biology of B-Movie Monsters

Michael C. LaBarbera looks at genre classics including The Incredible Shrinking Man, Dr. Cyclops, King Kong and Rachel Welch--sorry, I meant to say Fantastic Voyage--and shows how the science of biology and geometry in the movies is often skewed as size goes up or down.

Go to Fathom Archive now! and become the life of any party!