From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: The Descent (2005)

Zombos Says: Excellent

"Dude," said Mr. Blackbird. His illuminated plumage blinded me. It pulsated in kaleidoscopic colors that shot out rays of reds, greens and blues.

"What," I said. My vision was hazy and my voice sounded dull, like I was talking under water.

"Dude," he repeated, and said something else, but I couldn't make it out.

It sounded like tweeting. What a funny blackbird. With red human lips it kept repeating something, but it sounded like tweet, tweet, tweet. His pinky finger—wow, crazy, the bird's got a little white hand at the tip of his wing—had a little gold ring. What was that he was repeating? Door of indigo and blues across the street, across my way. What was that? You want me to knock a rap in ones, threes and twos, with these knuckles of mine. On that door of indigo and blues?

"DUDE! Wake up!"

I shot awake. "What happened?" I looked up at Pete, my movie-mate. He was bending down looking at me. The last thing I remember was sitting in the theater watching The Descent.

I had asked him to tag along because I hate cave films. I hate caves. I hate tight places that remotely look like caves, and the whole damn idea about squeezing your ass through narrow cracks in rock walls that I couldn't even fit my wee-willy through is stupid and insane.

"Man, what the hell happened to you?" he said. "You started screaming and jumped out of your seat. You ran to the concession stand screaming "don't eat the Milk Duds, it's people! Milk Duds is people!" You scared the crap out of me. Crazy bastard." Pete looked at his watch. "Great, man. Just 'effin great. Just when it was gettin' good, too. Look, the next show is in a half-hour. With you or without you, I'm seeing the 'effin movie."

With his help I managed to sit through the entire film. It wasn't easy. I kept closing my eyes, but what I did see was white knuckle-busting horror that took it's time to build, then whumps you over the head until you can't take it anymore. Sam McCurdy's cinematography is spot-on, and walks a fine line between darkness and light, as electric and flare lights feebly illuminate the glistening cave walls. He tosses in reds and greens, too, to create an alien landscape that heightens the terror and claustrophobic atmosphere.

In 2004’s Creep, Christopher Smith trapped a woman in the London Underground so she could discover, and struggle to escape from, a crazed monstrosity in Creep. In 2005, Neil Marshall trapped six women in a cave so they could discover a lot of crazed monstrosities they needed to escape from.

Neil Marshall's direction and writing tricks you at first. You don't think it's a horror film. Hell, the damn thing starts off like an Ingmar Bergman movie. I kept wondering when Max von Sydow would show up and play chess with dusty Death himself.

It opens on a happy note, suddenly takes that away from you, and never lets up until the end. The music is also more elaborate than your typical horror film, and it wisely stays out of the way in the most important parts. And those parts are killer.

Six highly-testosteroned women love to take chances. Their alpha-leader, Juno, pushes the envelope for them. She's relentless: a go-getter and athlete to the extreme. Interestingly, Marshall has ironically given her the name of the Roman goddess who is the protector of women and marriage. She fails on both counts, and it's this failure that provides the impetus for the group's fracture.

So off they go on another adventure, only this time she thinks they should really tackle something big. She doesn't bother to let the other five know that they're going to an unexplored cave, and not the one with that all-important guidebook now left in the SUV. Bingo! The cardinal rule of a good horror film is to have potential victims always muck it up by doing downright dangerously stupid things. That includes exploring an unfamiliar cave, not telling anyone about it, and not bringing Twinkies along.

There's a J-Horror pacing to the film. Marshall takes his time, dwells on their tenuous relationships, their camaraderie, their different personalities, then shakes them all up once they hit the cave and everything goes wrong. Just how strong are they really? And how much do they really know about each other? This is what's tested in the cave. The cannibalistic, sub-human troglodytes crawling around the cave's walls are only part of the horror. Yes, a really big part of it, but the reality of being trapped in a cave, where it's pitch black, damn tight, with no guide book—and you didn't pack any Twinkies—well my friend, that's horror done to a masterful level. Turn it up a notch with shaky, can't-rely-on-you relationships, and that makes matters much worse.

Don't let me spoil it for you, but the cave scenes are, like their team spirit, all smoke and mirrors, too. That's right; miniatures, model sets, and blue and green screens are so skillfully used, you'll be huffing and puffing and gasping for breath without realizing it. You'll start to feel the theater walls closing in on you when the women start crawling through too-narrow passageways on their bellies. That's where I lost it the first time. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. And when they dangle over a chasm that drops down all the way to China, in the pitch blackness by their fingertips, I'll bet even money you'll be kicking the back of someone's chair and squirming in your theater seat for the tension to end.

But the tension keeps building until they stumble into the cannibalistic crawlers’ equivalent of a McDonald's. That's when we find out if they really do know each other or even themselves for that matter. The bloody attack sends them scrambling into different directions in panic.

The struggle for survival is fast and furious, and filled with shocks. In true horror movie fashion, the only well-knit social group turns out to be those disgusting—vegetables? what's-that?—cave crawlers. The make-up job is horrific and detailed, and the annoying habit they have of slobbering mucousy gobs out of their mouths will—you better hold the buttered popcorn for another movie, that's all I'm saying. The ticking sound the crawlers use like sonar to find their prey is also unnerving.

In the heat of battle, Juno proves to be the first one to fight back. She's also the first one to commit another blunder that proves having a lump in your throat is better than a sharp pickax sticking out of it. Her inevitable confrontation with Sarah, amid all this chaos and death, doesn't improve the situation, either. Why do characters in horror movies always wait until the worst times to picking a fight with each other when the monsters are getting closer?

The filming for The Descent took place in the United Kingdom, with the cave interior scenes filmed on sets built at Pinewood Studios. There are two endings, the UK version or the U.S. Depending on whether you like your horror movies ending on a woo-yay or hell-no, take your pick. Hint: U.S. movie goers apparently like happy endings.

The DVD from Lionsgate Films has lots of extras. There are two audio commentaries, Marshall with the crew and Marshall with the cast, that provide more insight into the making of the film.
Another solo interview with Marshall has him discussing the long and short versions for the ending. He prefers the more downbeat, longer (UK) ending, and goes on to explain why the shorter version is a bit confusing, as it was an editing choice, not an original plot choice. Test-marketing shot up a few more points with the more upbeat shorter ending, so that's what American audiences saw in the theater.

More extras include a stills gallery, deleted and extended scenes, blooper reel, cast and crew biographies, and a behind the scenes documentary.

The Descent is a scary and shocking horror film that shouldn't be missed.

Interview: Monarch Model Kits

A new monster model kit maker is prowling the block!

Picking up the legendary Aurora styrene kit-making torch, Monarch Models plans on bringing horror nostalgia and classic monsters back to rampage among the boring shelves of snap-together car, plane, and Star Wars vehicle kits.

Monsterkids rejoice!

Their first offering will be Nosferatu, a one-eight scale kit, packaged in the beautiful box-art and wrapping that Aurora fans know so well. I can smell that glue now!

Scott Mckillop of London, Ontario, the founding father of Monarch Models, dropped by for a brief chat.

What is Monarch's mission?

To give modelers like myself a choice beyond the ordinary cars and armour.

What makes you want to rekindle the legendary Aurora model kit mystique?

Aurora made modeling fun for me as a kid, and I miss that in the hobby today. Polar Lights did a great thing when they were here but with their disappearance, we are back to square one.

The design of your website is very retro. Who came up with the concept?

That's all me.

Your logo follows the original striking image of Aurora, but how did the Monarch butterfly image come about?

Ahh, sort of by serendipity. It was a nice tie in to the Monarch name (Monarch Butterfly) and to lend a continuity to the Playing Mantis praying mantis mascot. Mostly I liked the whole innocent presentation of the icon for a toy industry. I plain ol' like the look.

Who are the creative people behind Monarch?

Me, Gary Makatura, Jeff Yagher.

That Nosferatu box cover art has old Aurora fans drooling. It's very reminiscent of James Bama's work. What other model kits are you planning? Come on, spill the beans!

Well the next couple of kits are public domain. And that's fine with me because for one, it's free, and two, my favorite kits were always the public domain stuff like the Forgotten Prisoner, Dinosaurs, the Witch.

But we are in the process of creating the next two kits and until the tooling is ready to go, I have to play it close to the vest. I will say this; the next kit is monster related to fit in nicely with the original aurora monsters. And the third kit is for the Sci-Fi figure guys.

Both releases will occur simultaneously and in the next 8 months. These will be all new original kits, never seen in styrene before and likely never again because like all things we do at Monarch, these are limited runs. Licensed properties are next but probably not until 2008. Maybe sooner, it's hard to know with these things.

Where can we find Monarch model kits? And when will you launch the first one, Nosferatu?

So far Stevens International has stepped up to the plate as the largest world wide distributor, and they reach pretty much everyone. But no dealer will go away empty handed. But they still need to contact me; the crystal ball cracked a few years ago. I am planning on world wide distribution through the help of Stevens International beginning in June.

What's the Monarch Fan Club all about?

Free stuff! Well...for the nominal fee of two sawbucks! But believe me, this is a non profit club. It's just my way of rewarding the loyal model builders with cool gratis promo booty. Clubs were always the fun part of models and toys in the 60's and 70's. Think of the GI Joe club from way back when. Great stuff!

 

Interview: Dead Lantern Speaks

Writer and director of The Grand Horror, Mat Kister, steps into the closet to chat about his effective cross-genre first film, a three-hundred dollar budgeter that has stressed-out people desperately trying to not get eaten by a horde of zombies outside while desperately trying to not get killed by a homicidal ghost inside. And you thought you had it bad.

What's a nice guy like you doing in the horror business?

Just trying to make movies. The horror genre has always fascinated me from an early age and it’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do.

How did The Grand Horror come about?

We conceptualized it and then began the first day of shooting in less than a month. My friends and I had always had ideas for movies and had flirted with the idea of doing one, but they never seemed to get past the treatment phase. My friend Braden and I were in a band at the time and we were playing a show at the Theatre. Braden’s uncle was one of the board members and took us on a tour through the basements and corridors and the various secret areas that the audience never gets to see.

The theatre itself was just magnificent and so damn creepy that we decided on a whim “We gotta make a movie here!” I went home and hammered out the storyline, conned a few friends into helping out, and off we were, on an adventure no one was quite sure how it would end.

What did it take to bring the concept from idea to finished film?

The actual shoot itself went fairly smoothly in that we had the typical problems associated with a no-budget picture (camera and sound malfunctions, a lack of any real knowledge in how to make a movie, etc.), but after a couple weekends we more or less had all the kinks worked out. Then, it was just a matter of finishing the shoot. There were multiple times when it looked like we would be shooting forever and everyone got a little, shall we say, grumpy. Originally, I was like “We’ll have this thing shot in 3 weekends”, which is all that the actors originally agreed upon. The shoot went on for nine weekends. But we all got through it

The editing process was a nightmare. We never differentiated between different takes and didn’t label the tapes in any discernible, logical way. Essentially, we had just hit “record” on the camera and kept shooting until tapes ran out. Since we didn’t shoot the scenes in order, when we started loading all of the footage and takes onto our computers, we saw right away that we were in for a stressful time.

Try going through 30 full mini-DV tapes with no guide! It was horrible! To compound how awful it was, the whole film ended up being ad-lib, which meant that even though we finally put all the footage into rough scenes, every single take had a different piece of dialogue! Trying to sync the characters dialogue was probably the worst thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. It took nearly a year for me to get through it and looking back on it, I’m surprised we were even able to garble a storyline out of it.

There are shoestring budgets, and there are no-shoes budgets: how did you get it done with so little money?

The actors and crew worked for free and the location was free. We didn’t have any major special FX work, so all we bought was some Wal-Mart brand corn syrup (Karo was too expensive for us!) and food coloring, and a white shirt with a pair of black pants. All the different ghosts in the film are wearing the exact same outfit! We just threw some blood on it to make it look gross. You’d be surprised how far fake blood can go.

Rhyann’s death, for example, is nothing more than dumping a gallon or so of fake blood all over, covering her face in it, and then adding sound FX to “show” what we couldn’t visually: namely a graphic head smash on the counter. Deejay Scharton did all of the sound FX and music in one 24 hour cram session on my mom’s living room floor, and I give a lot of credit to him for enhancing the atmosphere of the film. Without his sound work, The Grand Horror would have suffered quite a bit. And he was free, too. He is a musician and had a portable studio for recording bands and so we got all the music free and were lucky enough to have access to a talented musician.

The one thing about all of us is that we each bring a different talent and strength to the project, whether it be Deejay’s music, Steve’s enthusiasm and ideas, Braden’s wisdom and glue to keep it all together, or the rest of the cast’s dedication to see it through, we all contributed a piece of what makes us unique in order to see the project finished and I think that is what makes it most rewarding.

How did you assemble the cast? Friends of friends, family?

I just asked them. Rhyann was the only member of the cast that didn’t live in Nebraska at the time. She was a theatre actress in California and we’d been friends for a number of years and she agreed to fly out and be in the movie. That was cool because then we’d jokingly tell everyone “Yeah, we have an actress flying in from California to be in our film!”

Pam is my step-sister and Robert is my uncle and they were actually the only people in the cast who actually memorized lines and tried to create unique characters. I give them a lot of credit for that. I told everyone else to “just be yourselves”. But yeah, everyone in the film was either a friend of mine or family member with the exception of a couple people like John Evans who was a volunteer who helped out at the Grand. He was the “Cannibal Ghost” and was really enthusiastic about it, which I think shows during his scene.

Did you encounter any rough spots along the way? How did you overcome them?

The only real "rough spot” was the editing process which was akin to having hot pokers stuck into every orifice of my body. Other than that, we had to deal with losing our external mic set up which forced us to use the audio from the camera itself, which kinda sucked.

Something went frizzy with Deejay’s portable studio, not that it would have mattered since his car broke down and he couldn’t make it to the shoot after the second weekend (he was driving from Colorado to Nebraska every weekend). Since the shoot went 6 weeks longer than I had envisioned, Rhyann had to go back to California, which was a problem…until she got engaged to Jeremy (who she met on set) and stayed put.

Everyone was injured in some way while shooting. T.J. kicked a grate open during the scene when he and Steve saves Pam, but his foot got caught between the bars and when they kicked the gate open, it twisted his foot around. I have some funny footage of that. After working so many hours, the cast had the tendency to hit up the local bar that was right around the corner, so you have a lot of the scenes in the film where the actors are noticeably drunk, which I thought was funny since they “acted” better drunk than sober. But for what it was, I think we handled the problems quite well.

What advice can you give to other independent filmmakers who want to get that first film in the can?

Just go out and shoot one. Gather your close friends and family, people you know who will be willing to run the gauntlet for you, and start shooting. Come up with a basic story and let your creativity run wild. The Grand Horror is nothing more than ghosts killing people. It’s important to know that just because you think you have the greatest story ever and you want to tell it, that doesn’t mean you have to do it the first time out. Start slowly, get your feet wet, and most importantly, just worry about getting something done. Your film doesn’t need to be sold or accepted at Sundance to be successful.

I think we’ve shown that, if nothing else, you CAN make a movie for $300 and a cheap camera (ours was a Panasonic that had been bought at a retail store). The quality may not get you the Academy Award for Best Editing, but that doesn’t really matter as much as the experience you had making it. It’s something you’ll remember forever, just don’t worry about making something perfect your first time out.

What's the one question you would love to be asked, and what's the answer?

Q: “What is the greatest movie ever made?”

A: Big Trouble in Little China

So what's next?

A couple things: first is a web-only horror series for Deadlantern.com that will take place within the universe/mythology of The Grand Horror. We’re going to explain a lot of things with these 5-7 minute films that will be released every couple of months, including the back story that was only hinted at in The Grand Horror; that is, what the “darkness” is, why these supernatural things are occurring, etc.

The big thing I’m excited about is that we are going to make these short films so that they have direct viewer participation. I don’t want to give too much away right now, but the viewers will have a direct impact on how the story goes. I think a lot of people will find it neat. We’re filming the first episode in May and hopefully it will go online in June.

The second thing is a feature length slasher film dealing with the issue of abortion. It’s way too complicated to try and explain here, but we’re definitely NOT going the exploitation route. We’re trying to make a new kind of slasher film that makes you think and is a sort of “cinematic debate” about the abortion issue. I hope we can pull it off.

Movie Review: Matango (1963) Attack of the Mushroom People

Zombos Says: Very Good 

Have an insatiable appetite for radiation-laced mushrooms and 1960s Japanese horror-fantasy? Why not invite everyone over for a Matango Mushroom Party! It's fun and nutritious! Just get out the Fondue pot, light up some Tiki torches, and follow the instructions below for a groovy party your friends will never forget.

INGREDIENTS:

1 lightly greased DVD-player

1 fresh copy of Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People

1 Fondue pot

3 cups Velveeta cheese

2 cups Tenshi cheese, cut into small cubes

Enough Shiitaki mushrooms to feed 10 to 15 horrorheads

Enough beer, wine and Saki to inebriate 10 to 15 horrorheads

 

DIRECTIONS:

While the cheese is melting in the Fondue pot, put on Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People. Make sure everyone has their beverage of choice and is comfortably seated. Get the Shiitaki mushrooms ready while they enjoy this cinematic delight. Whenever any of the characters onscreen munch on a mushroom, have everybody yell "Matango!" and dip their mushrooms into the melted cheese. Yummy. You'll have more fun than mimes at a karaoke party!

Inspired by William Hope Hodgson’s short story, A Voice in the Night, a crew of seven soon-to-be castaways are enjoying a nice sunny day aboard a wealthy man's yacht. There's the professor, the professor's demure girlfriend, an alluring actress in a big hat, a mystery writer, a disgruntled skipper, some tough guy who never takes off his sunglasses—must be a gangster—and Gilligan

Just kidding about Gilligan.

Before the bikini-clad, ukulele-strumming actress can launch into her next song, with more lyrics like "lalala" dubbed over and over again with “lalala,” a storm (thank god for us and the other listeners) suddenly whips up. As the sea starts getting rough, their tiny ship is tossed and the skipper yells for everyone to come on deck and lend a hand. Everyone, that is, except the two women aboard. Apparently 1960s women were pretty helpless when it came to helping out during crisis situations at sea.

The writer gets tangled up in the rigging and things go from bad to really bad. The not so brave and sure skipper yells for everyone to go back down below deck since they're fairly poor deckhands.

Apparently 1960s men were pretty helpless, too.

Lack of courage and seamanship from the not so fearless crew lands them on the shores of a mysterious island covered in dense, swirling fog. Uppermost in everyone's mind is the need for food, so they start foraging. They continue to move deeper into the island to find water and come across another, much larger, ship run aground.

Obviously a romance novelist, the writer stays with the girls while the others board the mysterious ship to investigate. A greenish, reddish fungus is everywhere, and the sure-footed skipper slips on the slimy stairs landing on his poop-deck.

"It's weird," says one of them. 

Yes, it is.

They soon discover it's an atomic energy research vessel. There are Geiger counters and mutated specimens in jars, so they assume the missing crew was doing radiation research of some kind. They find a big crate labeled "Matango," pry it open, and find a giant mushroom inside. The crew is nowhere to be seen.

I’d like to see what Iron Chef would do with that fungi!

Bored with waiting, the girls board the ship. Naturally, they're the first ones to notice all the mirrors in the staterooms are missing. In the captain's quarters, a red, powdery, fungus is piled deep across the entire room. Before anyone can sneeze, the professor covers his mouth and nose and grabs the logbook. More searching yields few canned goods.

The once cheery group of seafaring friends is now surly and hungry. They need food badly so they start assigning hunting and gathering tasks. The wealthy guy slacks off while the others go about their business. The writer builds a signal fire and starts daydreaming a nightclub flashback, a nifty gimmick to get more scantily-clad singing girls into the movie and pad the running time.

Pop Quiz! Name one other Japanese radiation-themed movie with a lengthy nightclub dance scene. (See answer at the end of this review.)

Two others go hunting with a rifle and come across the broken mirrors, piled neatly, in the forest, creeping them out. As they watch, a bird does a sudden one-eighty and flies away.

"Even the birds don't want to hang around here," quips one of them.

Walking a little farther, they come across mushrooms. The logbook was pretty explicit about not eating any mushrooms on the island, so they just look longingly at them. A shadowy figure ahead of them causes momentary panic, but they gather their wits and head back to the research ship empty-handed.

After cleaning down a stateroom or two with the carbolic acid they found on the ship, they bed down for the night. Outside, the incessant rain dampens more than just their spirits. The action kicks in when one of them sneaks off to horde some of the canned food, only to run into a very knobby-looking, potato-headed individual. As the hoarder runs, falls, and screams (I thought only women did that in horror movies), the others race to see—gasp!—Mr. Potato Head.

Discretion being the better part of valor, they all run the other way and lock themselves in their sleeping quarters. Finally a woman screams as we get another glimpse of Starchy, the spud-looking guy (although he’s supposed to really be Mr. Mushroom guy.) Come morning they all think it was just a hallucination brought on by their hunger and dire predicament. The continued bleakness of the fog, the rain, and the lack of food starts to bring tempers to flash point, and their once friendly relationships deteriorate into everyone for him or herself. The writer drinks some courage and heads off with a rifle to find Mr. Potato Head. He doesn't find him, but he does find lots of tasty, juicy mushrooms. Will he eat them?

Yes!

Matango! Don't forget to dip.

When he returns, they have to lock him up because he wants to shoot everybody. Making matters worse, the skipper takes off in the repaired S.S. Minnow (my rough translation of the boat’s name) with the remaining canned goods. As the others continue to fight among themselves, the actress lets the writer out of confinement. Once again, he goes for the gun and they have to wrestle it away from him. Having no other recourse, they banish writer and actress from the tribe and send them into the jungle.

More rain, more fog, more bleakness, and more mushrooms, growing larger by the minute due to the hot, wet climate. The wealthy guy just about had it when the alluring actress shows up as pretty as ever. "I haven't been hungry since I left," she coyly says. He eagerly follows her to the mushrooms. He sees the writer is already chowing down, and starting to turn lumpy, but he gives in to his hunger and starts munching.

Matango! And dip, everyone!

"Oh, by the way," she tells him, "you'll become a mushroom, too." But he doesn't care because, as he eats the mushroom, a wave of euphoria comes over him, leading to even more flashbacks of scantily-clad women dancing in a nightclub.

Only two are left now, the professor and Maryann—sorry, I mean to say the professor’s girlfriend. He sees the boat the skipper sailed off in bobbing up and down offshore. He swims to it and finds a message written by the skipper: "I died at sea." Wondering if the skipper wrote that before or after he kicked the chum-bucket, the professor heads back to the research vessel. More potato heads show up, and as he tears off one fungus-filled arm in his desperate struggle against them, they carry off his girlfriend to the magical mystery mushroom forest. He races to save her, but it's too late; she’s already munching on a mushroom.

Matango! Dip and munch!

She smiles at him. He tries to drag her away from the really big mushrooms with arms and legs surrounding them, but to no avail. Eventually, he flees alone, back to the boat, and away from that hellish island. While there may be layers of metaphor and allegory lacing this story, I haven't a clue as to what those might be. On the other hand, the weird color-spectrum of lighting, the mysterious and moody sets and ever-present fungus, and the surreal surrender to a mushroomy fate (rice pastry is used for the edible ones), all blend into an effectively off-beat and unsettling entry in the horror-fantasy genre that's pure Lovecraftian in tone and mood.

So start heating up that Fondue pot now and grab a copy of Matango! You and your friends will be glad you did.

 

*Pop Quiz Answer: The H-Man (1958).