Zombos' Closet

Chernobyl Diaries (2012) Missing a Few Entries

The cleverest moments in Chernobyl Diaries come early: scenes of young American tourists enjoying the sites of London, France, and eventually Russia as seen through the digital camera recording them. But director Bradley Parker and scripter Oren Peli are just teasing us. This isn't, thankfully, a through-the-lens or found footage movie, although more professionally handled handheld cameras do follow the six Americans as they head to Prypiat, the ghost city near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Their tour guide is Uri, a beefy entrepenuer with special forces training,  offering "extreme" tours through the abandoned, desolate buildings and less radioactive areas of ground. The cleverness stops somewhere between their boarding of Uri's rundown van and a little after its breakdown as night approaches, leaving them stranded in Prypiat. 

Given this real and eerie environment, suspense builds for us while concerns mount for Uri and the six adventurers. Their this-is-cool mood, filled with playful banter and a few false-start scares that leave them acting giddy, filled with the sense of doing something special and naughty--like American youth traveling abroad, in horror movies anyway,  are supposed to act--changes to recriminations, fears, and blame-gaming. The change is on a dime, so it surprises me; where do all these pent-up feelings come from?  Not from the script: it doesn't pinch harder than necessary to line up the usual suspects for this phase of the movie, shifting everyone into last-one-standing mode. 

Uri pulls a handy gun from the glove compartment as stray sounds and vicious, starving, dogs frazzle nerves. I would have put my money on Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) to bring this story up a few notches. He looks tough, acts tough, and is built like a brick wall. Perhaps it was too much to expect that the story would break out of the mold for parts unknown, but Uri, the biggest and baddest of the group is still written out early, leaving six bickering, frightened, American numbnuts to go find him or, at least, his gun while they figure out what to do next. 

It's the figuring part that wears this movie like yesterday's fashion (which admittedly, for the majority of the horror movie industry,  is worn everyday);   shaky-blur "found footage" of an attack on the van; darkened interiors punctuated by flashlights to disorient us and tease at possible terrors lurking outside the light; phantom assailants we never see clearly, and a lot of screaming, shouting, and running away from them, leading deeper into ever tighter passageways, a maze of claustrophic, bunker-like rooms, and the Chernobyl Power Plant, still hot with radiactivity. If you've ever screamed through a haunt attraction with your friends (or a bunch of strangers), the overall effect is similar to watching Chris (Jesse McCartney), Michael (Nathan Phillips), Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), Zoe (Ingrid Berdol), Amanda (Devin Kelley), and Natalie (Olivia Dudley) be terrorized, although more usually happens in the haunt attraction.

Chernobyl Diaries is well acted, atmospheric, loaded with promise, but leaves a bland taste. Some people will find some scares (or recognize them from the trailer), but seasoned horror fans will find a well-worn roadmap to boredom with too few interesting stops along the way.  

Brian Corder Talks About Carnies

Director Brian Corder was kind enough to chat about his  film Carnies, which follows the denizens of the Knuckles Brothers Show and their travails as a sinister force stalks the midway, leaving a bloody trail of "crumpled, torn, soulless bodies in its wake." With a talented cast that includes Reggie Bannister, Doug Jones, and Denise Gossett in a setting that automatically screams 'creepy'.

Carnies is shaping up to be a notable entry in the grand tradition of carnival-stylized horror films, such as Freaks, The Funhouse, and Vampire Circus.

Carnies is set in the 1930s. What challenges have you experienced in directing the action and characters for a film set in this time period?

Thanks to my wonderfully talented cast, I don't recall a problem with direction when it came to it being a period piece. There is certain Carny terminology, like the words Rangy and Grouch Bag that had to be worked out in prior to the shooting, but it really wasn't any problem.

ZC Note: A grouch bag (circa 1908) was a hidden purse used by a performer to carry money, and was usually strung around the performer's neck. It is reputed that Julius 'Groucho' Marx got his nickname from using one to carry his poker money. BC Note: Rangy or wrangy (rhymes with "tangy") — Worked up, usually in a vulgar sense (possibly a variant of 'randy'). A show could be rangy ( a really 'strong' kootch show), or the patrons might be in a rangy mood (a very hot Saturdaynight, or being able to afford too much beer 'cause it's payday) or a patron may be rangy or ranged up (drunken, disorderly, disruptive, spoiling for a fight). "He's wrangin' the joint" would mean the customer is giving the jointee a very hard time. May also apply to an aggressive animal. From what I understand, the word 'rangy' is derived from the word 'orangutang'.

Still Freaky After All These Years Freaks (1932)

ZC Rating 6 of 7: Classic

Zombos was gloomier than usual. The ageless Grandpa Munster had finally passed the veil. I must admit that I was also saddened by the passing of Al Lewis. Nothing reminds us more of our own looming mortality than the death of those traveling along with us through life’s journey.

“The man had history,” said Zombos, sipping his claret. “So few performers today have history.”

I nodded in agreement. The fireplace crackled in agreement. The Promoli fantasy clock on the mantle chimed in agreement.

I felt a spell of reminiscence coming on.

“You know,” said Zombos, “I remember when he had his Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, back in the eighties. It was late one night, and we were just walking along, and there he was, sitting in front of his restaurant—I believe it was called Grampa’s—chomping on a huge cigar. As we stopped to take a look, he jumped up, opened the door, and said 'Are you hungry?' Well, of course we could not pass up the invitation. Such a wonderful personality; earthy, yet vastly talented and resourceful, with a true zest for life.” Zombos fell silent.

Our peaceful mood was soon broken by the arrival of Uncle LaVey, the blackest of the black sheep in Zimba’s family tree. Dressed in his black shirt and pants, and with his black widow’s peaked hairline and black goatee, he presented quite the look of the Satanist about town.

“Zombos!” he said, “I thought you might like to see this again.” He tossed over my copy of Freaks, directed by Tod Browning.

“Well, it’s about time you returned it,” I said. He smiled.

A peal of thunder echoed outside, followed by a flash of lightning. Rivulets of water started sliding down the narrow windowpanes of the library; a perfect setting in which to view one of cinema’s more outré films. Zombos passed the bottle of claret over to Uncle LaVey, and I inserted the DVD into the player.

The Funhouse (1981)

Hooper, who did the unsettling Dance of the Dead episode for Masters of Horror on Showtime, as well as the all-time family classic, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), presents a not so pretty picture of carnival life, and a somewhat pathetic—and homicidal—monster with a decidedly grotesque visage and penchant for mayhem.

The opening of the film is a nod to Halloween and Psycho, and from there builds into a creepy story revolving around teen lust, sleazy carnival characters, and a man-made monster that has needs like everyone else, but cannot satisfy them in more socially acceptable ways. A fascinating subtext running through the story is that it is a variation on the tragedy of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. In Tobe Hooper’s tale, the monster is one born of genetic mutation, cleverly foreshadowed by the Freak Animals Alive tent exhibit, where the fetal brother of the monster floats in a jar as an abominable attraction for the hoi polloi.

In the film’s opening sequence, the Frankenstein Monster is shown, first as a poster showing the Glenn Strange characterization (my favorite!), and then as a Mego doll—oh sorry, action figure—carried by the young boy, Joey, whose sister soon curses him because of his bizarre prank that scares the wits out of her. Joey’s actions are also another subtext running through the film: he dons a mask to become a monster to frighten his sister, and the funhouse monster wears a mask to become less frightening to others.

Unlike the current crop of horror films driving the story with eye (popping)-candy, here the characters are presented with choices, yet consistently make the wrong ones. And as we all know, in a horror film when you make the wrong choices someone--or more likely-- everyone winds up dead. Amy, Buzz, Liz, Ritchie, and Joey consistently make the wrong choices, and suffer the dire consequences. In the tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monstrous creation, wrong choices also led to death and disaster. But at least here we have the funhouse; iconic fodder for numerous urban legends and rustic tales told around camp fires and sleep-over parties.

The funhouse is surrounded by the carnival, a seedy, grimy affair filled with seedy and grimy denizens. There is a bag lady that looks very much like Grandmama from the Addams Family spouting “god is watching you!;” a homeless man that wanders around like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead; a few bums; the past-her-prime fortuneteller and palm reader (well played by Sylvia Miles); the not so magnificent Marco the Magician, and the carny barkers (three of them, superbly played by Kevin Conway as if he were a natural).

Properly toned by John Beal’s score and Andrew Lazlo’s moody cinematography, the loud and brightly lit carnival facade hides a darker, more primitive underbelly of murderous anarchy, repressed emotions, and dark secrets, with its nexus the funhouse. Hooper’s use of two tracking crane shots, one at the beginning and one at the ending of the mayhem, emphasize this emanation of evil flowing first toward the funhouse, and then away from the funhouse.

Our hapless group of monster fodder soon regrets their decision to stay the night in the funhouse, and Joey soon regrets sneaking out from his bedroom—down the trusty-trellis-by-the-window to visit the carnival. We also learn that the father of the monster has regrets about letting it live, in a scene that contains a wealth of hinted at backstory. Because of his decisions he must share responsibility for its murderous actions.

The fun-seeking and frisky teens decide to spend a night in the funhouse after closing time, and after the requisite fun-that-must-soon-be punished-for scenes, they witness a murder, and promptly wind up stepping deeper and deeper into a big pile of no return. One of them makes another spur-of-the-moment bad decision, and because of it the wrong people learn about their presence in the locked funhouse.

Scenes of mayhem and carnage follow, as one by one, the teens meet their untimely and grisly death in 1980's horror fashion. A particularly harrowing image has our heroine calling to her parents through a large, wildly-spinning exhaust fan, but of course they cannot hear her because she is too far away--in the funhouse, where her parents specifically told her not to go; and they are at the carnival to retrieve their errant son, Joey, who also disobeyed them. People who disobey in horror films suffer dire consequences for their actions, and he is no exception. His parents meet the shady and perhaps too-interested carnival handyman that found Joey sneaking around the tents. His actions are never quite clear, and Joey is strangely out of it, so we never really know what happened here, but whatever it is it's unsavory.

The climactic confrontation in the mechanical belly of the funhouse is suitably horrific, yet uses little gore, and, unlike the requisite sequelization-antics of many fright films today, provides a definitive closure. Unlike the simplistic snuff-horror by the numbers approach in today’s films, The Funhouse explores themes and provides a story depth worth seeing, along with the thrills and chills.