From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror genre fan with a blog. Scary.

Godspeed (2009)
In Search of Intensity

/ Movies (Indie) / 2 Comments

Godspeed A small picture vibrating with grand passions, “Godspeed” transforms the vast lawlessness of the Alaskan wilderness into a playground for damaged souls and Old Testament mischief. Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times)

Once again, Ms. Catsoulis’ review is perplexing to me. Interesting, but very perplexing. (Zombos)

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

Twice I started watching Robert Saitzyk’s thriller Godspeed and twice I stopped at the same scene in the movie. I wondered why. It’s when faith healer Charlie Shepard (Joseph McKelheer) and Sarah Roberts (Courtney Halverson) have awkwardly met and each wants the other to go in a different direction, which is either to find something or to lose something, or maybe both. Intensity should be radiating from them but it doesn’t and I couldn’t pin down why. Maybe it’s Saitzyk’s direction, which lingers too long on scenes, trying to give them importance the story and its characters can’t muster, or maybe it’s McKelheer’s struggle (he co-wrote with Saitzyk and Knauf) with overly contemplative dialog inadequate for fully expressing his struggle with his inner demons. There’s a weightiness to Godspeed that doesn’t add up given its story, and for a thriller–I wouldn’t call Godspeed a horror movie–it never finds the intensity it needs to involve us, or justify its artsy spiritual despair spilling over into bloodshed at the beginning and the ending of the movie.

Given the beautiful but lonely vista of the Alaskan location, Saitzyk doesn’t allow his tormentors or their tormented much interaction through metaphor or religious iconography with the wilderness surrounding them–and in them; instead, he fills the empty spaces with drawn out, self-conscious talkiness, where everyone moves hopelessly around a lot  pontificating on their desires and sins without making us feel they’re sharing the burden with us. Neither are their actions embellished or even made insignificant by God’s intrusive knack with nature all around them. This leaves the movie’s underwhelming religious-poking bland to watch, forcing more of our attention on a weak story just not engrossing enough to hold it, which, given the soul-searching and ulterior motives abounding at its heart it should. Godspeed doesn’t let us feel the philosophical ardor it so heavily tries to concern us with.

Godspeed While Shepard’s family is tastefully being killed, seen between glimpses of the serene aurora borealis lights and his tryst with a prostitute, the emotional impact of the murders falls flat. Moving too slowly, back and forth, between the lights, the murders, and the prostitute’s consternation over his need for her when he has a beautiful wife at home, Saitzyk’s monkish pacing dulls the intrinsic horror and, worse, fails to build momentum beyond Shepard’s retreat into the wilderness.

We see him months later, all Grizzly Adams and living in a trailer home, when Sheriff Mitch (Ed Lauter) pays a visit to apprise him that nothing has been discovered concerning his family’s murder. Mitch asks about his questionable past, the one that brought him to the small town. Saitzyk and McKelheer beat this scene to death while Mitch waits for Shepard to vent his frustration and anger. And vent it some more. At the local diner, Sarah finds him blocking out lines in his Bible with a Magic Marker. When she ventures closer, he explains what he’s doing: he’s blocking out the lies of God. Sarah needs him to return home with her so he can save her brother Luke (Cory Knauf) from himself. Luke hates Shepard. Luke wants to start his own little world of salvation for his followers. Too much time is spent listening to Luke preach to his followers and showing closeups of their faces as they intently pay attention.

Exactly what Shepard is retreating from is not fully explained. It’s possible he really does have a gift buried in him for faith healing; but it’s also possible he’s a charlatan who really does want to heal the sick. Maybe he’s a bit of both: a faith healer who’s lost his gift for healing and wonders why God has forsaken him. Does he blame himself? Does he blame God?  His inner turmoil starts well before his wife and child are murdered, and his inability to heal has leached out to overwhelm Sarah and her brother.

The both of them are in a soul-searching freefall after the death of someone close and important to them. Both blame Shepard, but for different reasons. Sarah is drawn to him both romantically and spiritually. Luke is drawn to him but with a different reason. All three suffer from their inner demons, but given all of this inevitable tension from unfulfilled love, seething hatred, and constant religious questing, the monotone direction keeps it corked, the superficial story keeps it bottled up, and the acting keeps it on the shelf, never threatening to become more than something interesting to look at but not to partake in.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Not a Dreamy Remake

/ Movies (Bad) / 9 Comments

Freddy KruegerZombos Says: Fair

Look, here’s the thing in a nutshell: if you’re going to do a remake, reimagining, reboot, or whatever you’d like to call it, you better come to the table ready to ante up big and play it for all it’s worth. Otherwise, why bother?

Freddy Krueger may be properly dressed in his signature striped sweater, brown Fedora, and nasty blade glove, but he has nowhere to go in this unimaginative reimagining of Wes Craven’s original nightmare. Under a deathmask’s worth of immobilizing rubber makeup (although I admit it appears more medically correct), Jackie Earle Haley’s perpetually pouting face made me pine for Robert Englund’s glistening bald pate, leering, spongy flesh-burned face, and his manic, gleefully malicious dream-devil-in-the-boiler-room enthusiasm.

The outrageous, lethally-twisted dream intrusions that are the hallmark of this franchise are put to bed in Samuel Bayer’s cardboard standee version of Freddy, where winking consciousness between Elm Street’s dreamland and wakefulness is less important than an almost back to back line-up of dead-teenager-walking kill-fests, escalating the body count while decreasing emotional involvement from us for those being stalked. This is a painting by numbers, pretty to look at (it’s well photographed by Jeff Cutter), but rote in its execution of mayhem: there is no sizzle when we should feel the burn as much as child-molester Fred Krueger did.

Ironically, the interpersonal perquisites of cell phone, too many close-ups of Google-like search engine queries, and a victim’s anguished YouTube-delivered solilocam cry for help, distance Freddy’s victims from each other—and from us—by substituting the more intimate sleep-over vigil shown in the original film, when Tina, Nancy, and Glen fret over their shared nightmares, with a modern digital one that trades the popcorn closeness for laptops and no-doze medications. While Freddy’s potential victims share a forgotten connection from having attended the same preschool, their relationships are made weaker because of this digitized distancing, rendering them less supportive of each other and easier prey for their tormentor. Which is good for Freddy because, being less creative in his attacks in this remake, he doesn’t do much beyond making sparks when he scrapes his blades against the pipes.

Again and again and again.

At least Nancy remains his favorite little girl. But this Nancy (Rooney Mara) is not 1984’s Nancy (played by the feisty Heather Langenkamp). Here she puts up a less-spirited fight against Freddy and spends more time searching the Internet for information and sketching her nightmares instead of trying to save her friends. Where Craven drove his story through the battle of wills between Nancy and Freddy, escalating the stakes through an ambitious series of special effects to add urgency and nightmarish uncertainty, writers Strick and Heisserer use the slow revelation of Freddy’s nastiness with children as their primary driver, eschewing the giddily insane, booby-trapped confrontation between Nancy and Freddy for repetitive, almost static, boiler room scenes of Freddy looking ominous and victims looking scared. Fans can debate the merits or demerits of this changed dynamic, but this remake’s less dreamland, more rational approach keeps the story as rigid as Haley’s burn makeup.

As a fan of horror movies, and yes, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, I can tell you this movie is a disappointment because it takes from the original storyline but doesn’t seem to understand it. Freddy is here, his victims are here, lots more technology use—and no weird-looking hairdos—are here, but the nightmarish invasion of one’s dreams is missing; the menace that sparked the first entry in this franchise is missing; 1984’s spirit behind the envelope-pushing special effects is missing.

This is one boring movie when it should have sizzled.

Now, if they had Johnny Depp play Freddy instead…?

Television: Happy Town
American Gothic Terror Returns to TV

/ Streaming/TV/Mobile / 1 Comment

Happy_town The locals call us "The Bready." We happily employ 12 percent of Haplin's residents, and we are proud to make Haplin a place where the air is alive with the aroma of fresh baking bread, all the live-long day! Enjoy! (Our Daily, Baking and Confectionary, Haplin, MN)

Zombos Says: Very Good

Measure two fingers of sinister mystery from American Gothic, add a dash of Stephen Kingish small-town-hiding-dark-secrets, spice with serial murderer and missing people, stir in an all too quiet and aloof visitor, Merritt Grieves (Sam Neill), top off with a more recent visitor who's way too anxious to ascend the staircase leading to the dark third floor of the boarding house she's staying at, and finally dabble assorted bitters of quirky townsfolk and a sheriff and his son in over their heads. Shake it all violently, garnish liberally with tidbits of plot, then knock back this new series on ABC called Happy Town: it's quite a rush given the promise shown in this first episode, In This Home on Ice.

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Television: Happy Town
American Gothic Terror Returns to TVRead More »

Cowboys of the Silver Screen Stamps

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Bill_Pickett_Handbill While mailing the American Vampire comics to contest winners today, I noticed these nostalgic stamps at the post office. Westerns were the mainstay of Universal Pictures before they discovered more lucrative box-office receipts with monsters. Cowboy serials were the ideal world of every white boy growing up in a long ago era, when American pride, fortitude, and integrity were as sociable and wholesome and as much a given as eating mom's apple pie with a glass of milk on a Sunday afternoon.

As for me, I saddled up with the Lone Ranger and Tonto, rode the trails with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and I always hoped to get the pretty girl, kick-ass a little harder with the villains than Tom Mix, and strum the guitar strings faster and straighter than Gene Autry. I'm still working on his Cowboy Code. I wish some of the people I meet and read about these days would work on it, too.

Missing from this wonderful line-up of Americana is Bill Pickett. He's a black cowboy. Not too many folks sashayed up to the box-office to buy tickets for movies with black cowboys back then. But there's black and white in that silver screen all the same.

Way back in 1923, rodeo sensation Bill Pickett became the first black screen cowboy in The Bull-Dogger, and he was just the first in a long line of cowboys of color who galloped through movie history alongside their more mainstream, pale-faced peers. (Robert Silva, The Good, the Bad, and the Black Cowboy)



Looking at these wonderful stamps reminded me of Stephen Avalos' The Ghosts of Edendale, a creepy twist on the invincibility and purity of men wearing white ten-gallon hats, and Dead Birds, a Lovecraftian-western best not viewed alone and after dark.

Which Western horror movies would you recommend? And if you dare say Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, better put up yer dukes, cause them's fightin' words! (Click on the graphic for a larger view while you're ponderin'.)

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Trading Cards: Midnight Madness, Desert Rats

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Desert_Rats_wrapper Here is the twelve card story for my favorite one in the series, Desert Rats, from Rosem’s Midnight Madness Card Set. Story is by Steve Kiviat, and illustrations by Alfredo Osorio. (Copyright 1990 by Rosem Enterprises.)

Can’t you just eat it up! It is so quaintly gruesome. And look at those cute little fuzzy faces. They just gnaw at your heart, don’t they?

Click on the images for a larger view.

 

Desert Rats Desert Rats
Desert_Rats_1-6back Desert Rats

Book Review: and Falling, fly By Skyler White

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and falling, fly Dominic's voice is meltingly tender. "What if you're right? What if hope is the master of Hell? What if something in your own mind, in your own hopes, or fears, or ideas, is the cause of your suffering? What if you are not damned?"

"If I am not damned, what am I?"

"A woman in pain."

Zombos Says: Very Good

Ambiguity and certainty abound in Skyler White's novel and Falling, fly, along with fallen angels turned vampires, a neuroscientist traumatized by his cycle of reincarnations, and an Irish Goth-punk hotel that is either Hell, Limbo, or a comfortable bed and breakfast for its guests. In words thought and spoken, her characters shift between first and third person narratives to dwell on the certainty of their fate and the ambiguity of their despair: continue living fettered by their assorted curses or dare to surmount them even if it means painful loss. But are they indeed cursed as they believe or are they living a delusion? That's the tantalizing conundrum White presents with her words as they blend mellifluously into scenes ripe with irreconcilable decadence, sex, and mythologically-based–and sanctioned–angst over what may or may not be real.

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Book Review: and Falling, fly By Skyler WhiteRead More »

The Silent Scream (1980)

/ Movies (Slasher) / 1 Comment

Silent scream

Zombos Says: Good

Listen to the Movie Review

Scotty (the impossibly thin Rebecca Balding) needs an apartment badly. She’s late to the college semester and the college dorms are filled. At the end of an almost fruitless day of apartment hunting, shown in humorous vignettes of crappy places and dubious renters, she finds a small, comfortable room in a big, brooding, beach-side house at the top of a hill. Three other college latecomers join her: there’s the spoiled rich Peter (John Widelock), the feisty, bosomy, fun-loving girl Doris (Juli Andelman), and the hunk, Jack–who makes sure to keep his shirt off or unbuttoned as much as possible because he’s the hunk–played by Steve Doubet. Living in the house are the brooding Mrs. Engels (played by Mrs. Munster herself, Yvonne De Carlo), who stays mostly up in the attic; the quiet and ill at ease Mason Engels (Brad Rearden) hangs out in the bedroom across the hall; and everyone’s unknowingly waiting for a family secret about to become known. Violently. Now guess which one of the college kids gets killed first.

The family secret is also a natural one for an American Gothic story rather than a slasher movie. It takes its time to reveal itself as the tightly wound and fragile Engels’ family composure unravels, and not much mayhem occurs until Scotty is tied up in a closet with her blood about to be spilled across the floor. Deep focus (in an interview on the DVD using a split diopter to accomplish this is mentioned) keeps both the desperate Scotty, who’s eyeing the closet doorknob, and the closet doorknob that is just out of reach, in sharp focus as the knife-wielding killer comes closer: a surprising giallo-styled visualization in an American Gothic framework, culminating in a frisson of terror when door edge, sharp knife, and Scotty’s hand get awfully close to each other.

As one family secret is exposed, another one causes Mason, who’s already emotionally tighter than his buttoned up and tie-less collar, to retreat into fantasy, leading to more violence. There is not much gore or body count here, but Jim and Ken Wheat took over an ailing, unfinished movie and penned it into a ‘coherent’ family tragedy playing out in an old and not so dark house atop a lonely hill. Imagine Henrik Ibsen writing a slasher play and you wouldn’t be too far off the mark describing The Silent Scream. Bridging together existing scenes with clearer motivations, stronger relationships, and a linear progression that slowly builds drama, The Silent Scream is a low key slasher easily lost among the more traditional murderfests of the 1980s like Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th because of its less frenetic, more television-styled direction.

The Silent Scream is not much of a mystery; neither is it much of a blood-flowing slasher story. The acting ranges from bread and butter, courtesy of television veterans Cameron Mitchell and Avery Schreiber, to studio classy with Yvonne De Carlo and Barbara Steele. In-between, the college kids act much like college kids do in a slasher movie–they want to have fun and fool around–but there’s a more natural and slower tone to their behavior here. This naturalness makes them more personable. I didn’t want to see any of them die. Peter does act like a jerk when he’s drunk, but he’s spoiled, so he’s a predictable jerk. Doris is fun-loving, but not the kind that usually leads to trouble in a horror movie, and Scotty and Jack do eventually snuggle, but they take their time before jumping into bed.

This is the movie Ti West should have remade instead of his homage to 1980’s slashers, The House of the Devil. Both keep to the same pace, both have an impossibly thin college girl in danger, and both involve families with deep dark secrets, who live in old houses with horror waiting in the attic. But The Silent Scream has a better story and better directorial nuances, making it a more chilling and distinctive movie that draws you in instead of trying to impress you with the director’s ego.

I Sell the Dead (2008)
And Not So Dead, Too

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I Sell the Dead Zombos Says: Good

Awaiting execution for his crimes of grave robbing and murder, Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) recounts his nocturnal exploits, conducted with his accomplice Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden), to the attentive Father Duffy (Ron Perlman). Over wine, Blake reveals how his low-paying start with providing certainly-dead cadavers to a nefarious Dr. Quint (Angus Scrimm) blossoms into a more lucrative endeavor procuring the less-certainly-dead–vampires, zombies, and a ‘sideshow freak’–for an inquisitive medical clientele. Director Glenn McQuaid embellishes this Victorian period parody and homage of late night B-movie horror staples with bizarre and suitably grimy characters, lots of foggy scenes, and a witty story that outwits itself now and then by rushing too quickly to the punchline.

Making Blake’s and Grimes’ jobs all the harder are the seedy, insane, and fear-inducing house of Murphy, led by Cornelius (John Speredakos) and his mysterious father. Valentine (she wears a mask to hide her badly burned face), and Bulger (he had his teeth replaced with canine chompers), round out the colorful Murphys, who vie with Blake and Grimes for the ghoulish spoils. Occasional comic book-styled illustration appears, especially when highlighting the picaresque Murphy clan, lending a horror comic motif similar to 1982’s Creepshow and the more recent Trick ‘r Treat (2008).

I sell the dead McQuaid keeps his scenes excruciatingly tight in an attempt to conceal the production’s budgetary limitations, but often this produces the opposite effect by calling more attention to his meager mis en scenes because of their static framing (made worse by a woozy camera movement within the frame when least needed). At other times, his closeups highlight the slapstick antics of Blake and Grimes, and their wild encounters with the Murphys, with giddy aplomb.

What really sells I Sell the Dead are McQuaid’s Victorianesque characters and their travails while digging up their best prospects. His penny dreadful-flavored twists and turns with horror conventions percolates new life into recognizable situations: a vampire encounter at a crossroads turns into farce when the garlic and wooden stake are unwisely removed and frantically put back, again and again; an unusually frigid grave yields an unexpected corpse; and zombies prove highly desirable for medical research into immortality, but tend to be hard to procure. A chance shipwreck provides an opportunity to cash in on the burgeoning zombie demand.

Rowing to Langol Island in the dead of night ahead of the Murphys, Grimes, Blake, and their new, overly eager, apprentice Fanny (Brenda Cooney) go looking for the shipwrecked zombies. They find one crated undead, the foot of another undead, and Valentine, Bulger, and an angry Cornelius. In the ensuing mayhem after Valentine removes her mask, frightening Blake, Grimes–and a zombie–into a frenzy, Grimes gets bitten and the undead bite off more than they can chew with the Murphys.

I Sell the Dead is a cheeky blend of the usual horror setpieces made unusual by playing them almost to absurdity as Grimes and Blake cope with the ever present threat of the Murphys and the rigors of their demanding profession in order to get ahead. Before they lose theirs. Jeff Grace’s music is a treat as it evokes the mood and style of earlier horror movies from Hammer to Amicus, especially when playing against the animated opening credits. For many horror aficionados, especially those weaned on Shock Theatre and supernatural horror movies from the 1950s to the 1970s, I Sell the Dead will be a lot of fun to watch.

Graphic Book Review: The Nightmare Factory Vol. 1, 2

/ Comics/Manga / 1 Comment

Nightmare factoryZombos Says: Very Good

Shhh. Listen. That is a furtive step creaking up the basement stairs. Hold your breath. That is a shadow crouching in the corner of the room, and every other room you enter. Breathe in. That is the briny smell of fish scales and water-logged wood, and freshly turned earth filled with bloated worms, and moldering leather-bound volumes crammed onto drooping shelves. Now look. Those crumbling facades of edifice and sanity, cracking and peeling in the mirror behind you, are yours. And yours alone.

Welcome to the eerie world of Thomas Ligotti, an author who is either highly praised or mostly ignored by readers of the horrific, whose stories are adapted in these two volumes from Fox Atomic Comics. Somewhat Lovecraftian in intent, partially E. F. Bleiler– with a tincture of Robert Aickman–in portent, Ligotti’s stories are incessantly bleak and eldritch and filled with uncanny events confronting his displaced, misplaced, and psychically-debased characters. Images of festively-clothed clowns and harlequins, ancient alien things with grotesque appendages, and arcane horrors waiting patiently at your doorstep occupy his imagination. And now yours.

Reading Ligotti’s words, you always enter the story in the middle and work around to the edges of beginning and ending, leaving you very much like the little rat nibbling at a large wheel of cheese: feeling anxious because there is always more just out of reach and desiring it badly. This is neither a bad or good thing. It is simply Thomas Ligotti at work.

In volume one, the nightmares include a small town’s festival involving clowns and those that seem like clowns, a sanitarium that was better left standing than taken down, an intermezzo with a mannikin, and an artist’s brush with the mysterious Teatro Grotessco. Each tale is drawn by a different artist with relish and Ligotti provides the introductions. The stories are adapted by Joe Harris and Stuart Moore, and capture the anxiety, paranoia, and weirdness of Ligotti’s temperament. Dr. Locrian’s Asylum is the most unsettling in illustration and tone, and touches at the ghostly with an M. R. James’ spookiness. Interestingly, the first two stories are drawn using a black-bordered background, and the last two stories use a white-bordered one.

Gas Station Carnivals, The Clown Puppet, The Chymist, and The Sect of the Idiot are adapted in volume two. The questionable emotional stability of the narrators in the first two stories leaves you with a sense of dread and uncertainty, while the certainty in purpose expressed in the last two stories’ narrators leaves you with a sense of fear, of out-of-your-control-evil happening, again and again. The life-sized puppet-clown in The Clown Puppet floats silently in the back of Vizniak’s pharmacy, looking for a prescription that may be difficult to fill. Bill Siekiewicz’s arresting panels imbue the absurdity and malevolence of this apparition with vivid terror. The impossible remembrance in Gas Station Carnivals hints not only of a troubled memory, but of a troublesome future, especially with it’s story within a story framework. Ligotti introduces each story again, but more like he is thinking out loud with his ruminations rather than a fact-laden rundown of the story’s provenance. As in volume one, these ruminations, on the theme permeating each story, gives us a peak into Ligotti’s fears, and subsequently, those of his characters about to experience the uncanny. It is here in volume two that the sense of being in the middle of something far more sinister and dangerous than imagined, or of having walked in, unwelcome, on a private conversation is strongest.

In all likelihood, Ligotti’s writing stems from an inhibition to take his assigned medications in a timely fashion. Reading these tales, you may find a need for medication also, if only to not fear brightly-dressed clowns, and to be able to shake away the unease when all alone in those dark, quiet moments.

Critical analyses of Ligotti’s work can be found in S. T. Joshi’s book The Modern Weird Tale (2001) as well as in a critical anthology assembled by Darrell Schweitzer, a fan of Ligotti.