From Zombos Closet

Movies (Horror)

Ghost In the House of Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931)
Part 1

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BORIS KARLOFF
Zombos Says: A Classic

Shadows were everywhere. Ominously large shadows mingled with mysteriously short ones. As I tripped and groped my way through them, the dank, dust-laden air irritated my nose and throat. Lightning flickered occasionally, revealing the shadows for what they were–only briefly, gone in an instant–leaving a faint mental snapshot behind, confusing me even more.

“Did you find it yet?” squawked a petulant voice in the darkness.

Startled, I dropped the two-way radio and banged my head on the sloping attic roof as I stooped to pick it up. Rubbing my head, I tapped my foot along the floor, hoping to find Zombos’ blasted new toy. I found it. I pressed the talk button.

“No, I’m still looking,” I whispered.

“What? Why are you whispering?” he asked.

Good question. I cleared my throat. “The dust…I’m still looking. The lights are out and I can’t see a damn thing. Are you sure you left it up here?”

“Yes. Of course I am sure. I definitely remember I put it–what? Oh? But I thought–oh. Never mind then, Zimba found it. You can stop looking.” He clicked off his radio.

Lightning flashed through the dormer window as I stood in the darkness, desperately searching for reasons why I should remain valet to the once renowned B-movie horror actor, now known only by a few remaining–and just as decaying–fans. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I sighed and began the arduous journey back through the clutter of shadows towering and tilting across the west attic’s floor.

Suddenly there came a tapping, then a frantic rapping on the dormer window behind me. At first I thought it was a tree branch blowing in the wind but realized no trees were high enough to reach the mansion’s attic. I went to the window. A lightning sprite lit up a large flittering shape outside. Thunder rumbled, shaking the window’s broken latch open. A spray of water blew into my face as a flopping ball of wetness and blackness rolled onto the floor. Startled, I tripped over something in my surprise and fell backwards. The ball unfurled into wings. It was the largest bat I had ever seen.

“Damn, it’s a night only Frankenstein could love,” said the bat, shaking his wet wings. “Hello, might you hand me that please?”

I stood there. My lower lip hung an inch lower than my upper one. I reached into my pocket to see if I had left the two-way radio on. Nope. I then felt my head to see if I was bleeding or had a bump suitable for hallucination. Nope. I still stood there.

“I say, if you would, I’d appreciate it greatly.” The bat pointed the tip of his right wing at my left foot. I looked down and saw a small Al Capone slim cigar sticking out from under it. I lifted my foot and used the tip of my shoe to roll it to him.

“Ah, many thanks,” he said. He folded his wings together and used their tips to pick up the cigar. “You don’t happen to have a light?”

I checked the two-way radio and felt my head again. Still nope.

“I’m Wally,” he said.

“Wally…the bat,” I mouthed the words without a sound. I stood there looking at him. He looked up at me. We looked at each other for about a half-minute. “We don’t allow smoking in the mansion,” I finally said.

“Yes, well, it’s soggy and flat anyway.” He dropped the cigar and flicked his wings, sending droplets of water across my patent leathers. “Sorry about that. I must say, this is the most cluttered attic I’ve ever been in.”

We looked at each other for another half-minute or so.

“Is that an English accent?” I asked. Bat hallucinations speaking with English accents always fascinate me.

“I hadn’t noticed myself. Must have come from my hanging out at Oxford.” He flicked his wings again. “Sorry. Force of habit.” He puckered his lips as if he were whistling. We continued to look at each other in silence.

My mind began to wander. I, understandably, at a loss for words, and Wally the bat looking, forlornly it seemed, at his wet flat cigar. An odd night indeed and one more suited to mad scientists. My thoughts meandered around English accents, lightning storms, undead monsters, their reluctant brides, and other times…

…

Ghost In the House of Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931)
Part 1Read More »

Trick or Treat (1986)
Wicked Rock and Roll

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Trick or treat

Zombos Says: Good

Metalheads, demonic forces, wicked rock and roll, an intimidated outcast teen, and the 1980s seem to go together in horror movies like Honey Nut Cheerios and fat-rich milk. I don’t know if Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price) likes Cheerios, but he does
like heavy metal rocker Sammi Curr (Tony Fields). Idolizes him in fact. Sammi does things Eddie dreams of doing if he had the chance. When Sammi goes and dies in a hotel fire, Eddie, disheartened, heads off to school to face his typical day of being emotionally bullied by the in-crowd; the pretty faces, lithe bodies, why-do-you-listen-to-that-crap and why-can’t-you-be-like-one-of-us crowd. His day is made worse when jock Tim (Doug Savant) precipitates Eddie’s sudden appearance, without his very important shower towel, in the girl’s gym class. Luckily for Eddie this is the pre-YouTube, Facebook age, so it was just a Polaroid of his butt making the hallway rounds later.

Sammi, before he became famous, was bullied and intimidated for being different, too. He even graduated from the school Eddie goes to. Both have a lot in common, but it’s Sammi’s death that brings them face to face. But at a price of course; this is a horror movie after all.

Eddie’s deejay buddy Nuke (Gene Simmons) perks up his down day with the master recording of Sammi’s last, unreleased, album. Nuke already has it on tape and is going to play it at midnight. Later, when Eddie falls asleep listening to it, he dreams about Sammi’s death. He wakes up to the record repeating some odd words and, on a hunch, tries the old trick of playing the record backwards (now it is an old trick; back then it was fairly new). Eddie realizes Sammi is speaking to him; really, not philosophically. There is no psychological subtlety here, no maybe it is just Eddie going off the deep
end. Trick or Treat keeps its Black Sabbath evil straight as any self-respecting 1980s heavy-metalized horror movie should.

Sammi is anxious to get even for all the bullying he had to deal with in school. Eddie wants revenge for all his mistreatment. It’s a match made in Hell and both hook up for some payback; only Sammi plays a lot rougher than Eddie and for cemetery-keeps. When Eddie balks after almost killing Tim in shop class, Sammi pays him a fire and brimstone visit, powered by the amperage in Eddie’s stereo.

Ozzy Osbourne puts in a brief appearance as televangelist Reverend Aaron Gilstrom, a crusader against the bad influences of heavy metal music. Brief because, as he appears on Eddie’s television set during Sammi’s sudden visit from the grave, Sammi reaches into the screen and pulls him out by his Holy Roller neck in a 1980s special effects kind of way.

Not only does Sammi look heavy metal rock and roller musician bad, he is bad.

Eddie realizes he may have misjudged his idol a bit, and with the Halloween school dance about to start, needs to act fast to stop Sammi from exacting his revenge. Powering the dead rocker is his music played from a cassette tape (how many of you remember cassette tapes?).

A seductive scene in Tim’s car involving his girlfriend and Sammi’s hot music allows for 1980s puppet-demon and melted ears special effects. Eddie deals with the evil cassette, but Nuke has his reel to reel tape set to go at midnight, and Sammi has set up a mystical force field around the machine at the radio station.

Bummer.

As I recall, there were times I wanted to do to my tapes what Eddie does to Sammi’s cassette—and do not get me started on those really evil 8
Track cartridges.

Eddie gives the task of destroying the cassette to his only friend, Roger (Glen Morgan). Sammi pays Roger a visit and, well, you know where this one is going. The cassette winds up at the school dance, allowing Sammi to appear for a song accompanied by lethal pyrotechnics. Eddie’s sort-of girlfriend, Leslie (Lisa Orgolini), helps him fight Sammi. Both split up; Leslie tries to destroy the reel to reel tape player before midnight and Eddie goes for a hectic drive with Sammi.

Although the scariest things in Trick or Treat are the 1980s hairdos and being reminded of those nasty cassette tapes, Sammi is a cool rock and roll villain, the story is low-key horror fun, and the music is heavy-metally sharp. Eddie’s character is one many of us can relate to and his idolization of Sammi mimics our own glorification of our rock and roll gods.

And playing records backwards is really cool to do, especially on Halloween, too.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

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Paranormal Activity The idea for the film came about when Oren Peli began to experience “weird things” at the home in which he was living and wondered what would happen if he were to set up cameras to capture what happened as he slept at night. The vulnerability of being asleep, he reasoned, tapped into a human being’s most primal fear, stating, “If something is lurking in your home there’s not much you can do about it.” (Wikipedia)

Zombos Says: Excellent

Paranormal Activity surprisingly frightens more with less scares as odd as that may sound. With a razor-thin budget, a cast of only four people, and events taking place entirely in one location–Katie and Micah’s home–director Oren Peli’s ingenious movie is a distillation of simple spook show tactics escalating in intensity. It is the Blair Witch version of home invasion-styled horror, understated but unrelenting.

Katie (Katie Featherston) has been haunted by paranormal events since she was thirteen. Micah (Micah Sloat), surprised by this revelation, is annoyed she did not tell him this before spooky sounds begin to keep them up at night. Micah sets up his camera in their bedroom, facing the bed, and hooks it up to his laptop so it can record while they sleep. We see everything through Micah’s camera: the bedroom they sleep in; the rest of the house as he carries it into the bathroom, or the living room, or the kitchen during the day. We mostly see Katie as Micah holds the camera, which is probably why she grows more annoyed with his insistence on tackling her problem with his typical, and insensitive, guy attitude of technology-can-handle-it. I admit I would have tackled it the same way. While his constant recording and EVPs appear to give him control over the situation, he becomes increasingly frustrated because all he can do is observe events after they have taken place. How many of us, like Micah, feel powerful by all our techno-gadgets, yet, like him, all we do is watch, listen, wait, worry, and yearn for more sleep?

“Once we get a camera, we can figure out what’s going on,” says Micah; but the figuring out part becomes more difficult than he planned. Over the course of twenty or so nights, Micah’s camera records small, creepy instances at first, which happen in the wee hours of the morning, including Katie’s sleep-walking; then bigger, more frightening events happen. While much time is spent in silence watching them sleep, and waiting for something to happen, it never becomes repetitive. A timestamp in the lower right corner tells us when events occur during the night; this, combined with our anticipation of what will happen next heightens the tension. I kept looking intently around the bedroom and through the open doorway as time slipped by. A low rumbling signals an important moment while it helps raise the hairs on your neck. All this combines into a brilliantly simple effect Peli uses to build suspense. Featherston and Sloat fortify the realism by acting exactly like two people caught in a weird situation like their’s would typically act. Their relationship begins to understandably deteriorate when sleep deprivation and powerlessness set in. Ironically, being able to see what is transpiring while they sleep makes them more fearful and helpless.

Katie asks a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) for help. His interview with Katie gives us interesting background to her supernatural experiences. Fredrichs is easily believable as the ghost-hunting psychic. When he concludes it may be a demon causing the mischief, he quickly explains he cannot help her and recommends a colleague who specializes in demon cases. He fears his presence in the house will only antagonize the entity. Micah does not want Katie to call in the demonologist, insisting he can handle the situation himself; a classic, I-don’t-need-to-read-a-map guy-type response. Eventually, when his camera and EVPs do not give him the results he needs, Micah resorts to low-tech by using a Ouija Board to communicate with the entity, over the psychic and Katie’s stern warnings that it would make things worse. The camera chillingly captures what happens when he leaves the Ouija Board alone with it. With the camera stoically recording everything, paranormal or not, its unemotional eye lends a level of creepiness that fosters a portentious atmosphere even when nothing bizarre is happening.

What Paranormal Activity achieves with its reality point of view camera setup–minus the shaky-cam–would have made William Castle smile with its unadorned, matter of fact, unblinking eye on the action. The use of an opening thank you statement to the San Diego police department enhances the realism of its found video footage approach, and even fooled the sales person at Best Buy (who found me the last copy of Trick ‘r Treat they had in stock). A big horror fan, he saw Paranormal Activity and swore it was based on a true story. I thought he was kidding. He was not. I looked him in the eye and told him it was not based on a true story–demons do not go running around bothering people in reality–and  opening statements like that are used all the time in horror movies.

I was right, wasn’t I?

District 9 (2009)
Aliens, Apartheid, Aggression

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District 9 2009 Zombos Says: Very Good

The striking thing about District 9, the expanded version of Neill Blonkamp’s short science fiction movie Alive in Joburg, is how it reworks familiar plot elements from movies like Alien Nation, The Fly, and The Matrix, cements them together with tableaux of apartheid and Nazi-like genetic experimentation, and still gleefully gets away with blowing lots of things up with popcorn-movie zeal.

Important to both the incidental social commentary and the loud action is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who makes us first dislike him for what he blindly stands for, then like him for what he learns to stand for. All of this does not make District 9 a great film, just a very good one; lying somewhere between Armond White’s energetically overreaching discontent with its “sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema”
substance, and Roger Ebert’s ultimate disappointment that it “remains space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction.”

It is to District 9’s credit that it dares to place more emphasis on its pop cinema approach, and less on those higher realms, to deliver pulp science fiction that, blow for blow, gets its deeper message across without preachiness or prompting moral revelation above the basic template of blood splatter, bullets, and bombs. Social commentary has all been done effectively and artistically before, frankly, to the point where it no longer really matters it be spelled out for us yet again in a movie that flows much better without it. Sometimes a movie should be just that, a movie; and not held to a higher
accountability.

One aspect remaining uncluttered from higher philosophical exploration is the relationship that grows between the commonly—and somewhat derogatorily—named Van De Merwe, and the non-human alien with oddly human attributes, Christopher Johnson. When both must work together, each desperately needs something from the other, or die separately, everything else flows. It is this working together against an aggression now directed at both of them that District 9 manages to convey its social commentary in an entertainingly lively way.

Like 1988’s Alien Nation, whose Newcomers were stranded in Los Angeles, the derogatorily named Prawns are stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa. But where the more human-looking Newcomers were assimilating, albeit slowly, into human society, after twenty years of not integrating well with the native population (they are mug-ugly and have seriously bad hygiene issues), the Prawns are herded into District 9, a government camp turned slum, where they are exploited by Nigerian gangsters who sell them cat food for technology, and quietly experimented on by the MNU; a privately-run defense and security contractor looking to harness alien technology and weaponry. But alien technology requires alien DNA to work, thus rendering their weapons useless to humans. Van De Merwe, through his clumsiness, provides MNU with the solution.

That solution is to harvest Van De Merwe’s changing genetic material. All of it. After exposure to the alien ship’s fuel source during a forced relocation of the Prawns, he begins changing into one. The transformation he goes through is similar to Jeff Goldblum’s transformation from man to insect in 1986’s The Fly, loose teeth-pulling, changing limbs, and fear included.

Fighting capture from the MNU, Van De Merwe is captured by the Nigerian gang. A black market has sprung up between the Prawns and the Nigerians, trading technology for cat food, which the Prawns love to eat. The gang’s leader figures he can power the alien technology if he eats Van De Merwe’s alien-mutated arm. At this point, the only person who does not want a piece of him is his wife, who has been led to believe his transformation results from having sex with a female Prawn, as preposterous as that may sound given their physical attributes.

All this explosive aggression culminates in Van De Merwe donning an Iron Man and The Matrix-styled exo-suit. Strangely, although the techno-suit is designed for an alien whose body is clearly non-human, the technology fits him like a glove. The Nigerian gang, MNU force, and Van De Merwe duke it out as Christopher Johnson tries to return to the mother ship, providing much opportunity for gory body explosions, vibrant vehicle explosions, and shrapnel-flying bomb explosions.

The movie unfolds after the events have taken place, using interviews and news footage mixed in with shown-in-the-moment situations; not shaky-cam, not cinema verite, but a smattering of the two, handled in such a way as to keep up the momentum for tension-building. Interestingly, critics
have spent more time on its shallow apartheid and sociological underpinnings, and not enough on the movie’s more interesting mechanics.

Moving between third-party retrospections on Van De Merwe’s behavior and showing his panic brought about by his predicament, along with those pop cinema trashy explosive situations, Blonkamp and Terry Tatchell (co-screenplay) accomplish something unique: Van De Merwe’s pain and hopelessness, even the Prawn’s exploited and hopeless situation, in spite of their complete alienness, becomes personal and realistic for us, even through its science-fiction artificiality.

Fans of Stargate SG-1 will recall the need for alien DNA to power ancient alien weaponry in order to save earth from the Goa’uld. I wonder if Blonkamp is a fan of that television series?

Frostbite (Frostbiten 2006)
Swedish Vampire Chills

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Frostbiten 2006 “The night that all the film crew will remember is when we shot a scene with a vampire who had clambered up a lamppost after devouring a messy meal (another dog). This shot involved a large crane and the actor, who was wearing a thin layer of clothing, was strapped to the lamppost.

“At the time, the temperature was a relatively mild 10-12 degrees below zero, but during the shoot, rain came down from the heavens. I have never witnessed anything like it, and I have no idea how rain can fall when it is way below 12 degrees centigrade. The effect of the rain is that when it lands on anything–particularly metal–it freezes instantly, covering everything with ice. One of the crew very aptly described the rain as napalm, but its effects are the other way round. Within seconds, the camera, crane and crew were covered in ice.

“The poor actor, who was strapped to the lamppost, covered head-to-toe in fake blood, froze in thirty seconds. And that was his first day of shooting and introduction to Frostbite. We actually had to pry off the camera assistant who was stuck to the crane–he was stuck fast to his seat. I think it will be some time before we do another film in the snow” (from the interview with director Anders Banke conducted by Jay Slater, in The Dark Side, Issue 125, 2007).

Zombos Says: Very Good

Once I got past the incongruity of the wise-cracking dogs, I realized Frostbiten, directed by Anders Banke, is meant to be fangs-in-cheek fun, just shown seriously. If you can imagine Fright Night with more blood and bite to it you will know what I mean. This unorthodox blending of opposites makes Frostbiten an off-kilter visual experience: dogs chat it up with Sebastian as he slowly becomes a vampire thirsting for blood; an incredulous police officer is heavily, and comically, outfitted in riot gear before he interrogates Sebastian, now a full-blown vampire; teenagers party it up with helium-inhaled voices one minute, then climb all over the house–really climb–as vampires the next, thanks to Sebastian’s stash of stolen red pills. Sebastian (Jonas Karlstrom) is the medical intern who swallows one of the pills when he should have known better than to swallow one of those pills.

Frostbiten Frostbiten is filled with unusual touches that go beyond talking dogs, lending this first Swedish venture into the vampire genre an offbeat quality–lying somewhere between The Fearless Vampire Killers and 30 Days of Night–making it hard to explain but easy to describe.

It begins in 1944 with a skirmish in the Ukraine. Soldiers fleeing to safety come across a snowbound cabin, find no one in it, although the stove is hot, and assume whoever lived there fled when they saw the soldiers. Unable to sleep, they start to wonder how the people in the cabin could leave it since it was snowbound. The answer, of course, is they did not leave, which leads us to the present day. All of this happens before the title credits role, including a surprising visual flourish that sweeps our view from inside the cabin, quickly through its small window, and up to the winter moon; and to present day Northern Sweden, where dawn is a month away.

Annika (Petra Nielsen) and her quiet daughter, Saga (Grete Havneskold), move to a small town so Annika can work at a hospital where renowned geneticist Gerhard Beckert is conducting research. At school, Vega (Emma Aberg–exuding a sultry, classic Hammer glamour, appeal) takes a fancy to the more reserved, but cute, Saga and invites her to an upcoming party.

Vega is the wildest one in the school clique and insists Sebastian bring suitable drugs from the hospital to liven up the upcoming party. What Sebastion eventually finds are the red pills Beckert has devised as a sort of vampire vaccine. With Vega’s help, the pills eventually make it to the party, and into the punch bowl. The action now moves in-between teenagers at the party getting a blood rush, Sebastian slowly turning into a vampire after swallowing one of the pills, and Annika discovering Beckert’s secret.

Frostbiten Sebastian’s awkward situation–he is meeting his girlfriend’s religious parents for the first time over dinner at their apartment–is the funniest: crucifixes adorn the walls making Sebastian uncomfortable; when he shakes her father’s hand his hand starts smoking; the main course for dinner includes sea trout braised in garlic; and when he succumbs to his blood lust by draining their little pet bunny dry, their pet dog thanks him for getting rid of the attention-getting hippity-hopper. His thirst for more blood lands him in police custody after killing a dog. Seen at the top of a lamppost, he is apologetic to the dog’s owner, who stares at him in disbelief.

Back at the party, Saga is locked in the bathroom, helping a teenager going through the vampire metamorphosis, when the punch bowl is empty and the pills have taken full effect. Suddenly plunged in darkness, the teenager’s glowing red eyes are the only thing to be seen. When the light comes back on, the teenager is on the ceiling and looking for more punch. There is blood everywhere as Saga makes her way through the carnage. Vega, now a real vamp, goes after her, leading to a serious, but comical, denouement with a garden gnome. As the police arrive, and call for “so much f**king backup,” they have their hands full as one vampire quips to them “Don’t worry. It’ll soon be over. Dawn is just a month away.”

The vampires in Frostbiten hop around in high jumps, have vampire-vision–a reddish, squiggly haze–along with glowing red eyes, super hearing (there are humorous subtitles as Sebastian listens to his neighbors), and their faces morph into snarling, devilish creatures as their teeth stretch longer when the need for blood takes hold.

Frostbiten captures a cheekiness for nocturnal sanguine horror that you do not often see nowadays. It delights in mixing its bloody discharges with edgy wit and humor, and showing it through a veneer of seriousness. All of this brings a fresh approach to an old genre.

Orphan (2009)
Hell On Heels

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Orphan Zombos Says: Very Good

Kids may say and do the damnedest things, but little orphan Esther is hell to be around. In Orphan, a movie that will do for adoption services what Jaws did for the summer beach trade, young Isabelle Fuhrman chills the scenery.

Dressed in Old World frilly finery, speaking with a European accent that would make Bela Lugosi blush, and harboring a dark secret that makes her a dicey addition to the Coleman family, Esther’s talent with a claw hammer and penchant for surreptitious mayhem is a solid B-movie thrill ride not seen in a while. The twist-ending will also make anyone currently seeking adoption double-check that paperwork again and again.

Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) has a rough time of it after her third child is stillborn. Hitting the bottle she loses her teaching job, and her drinking almost costs the life of her second child, Max (Aryana Engineer), who is deaf but knows what people say with the help of her hearing aid and by reading lips. This puts a strain on Kate’s relationship with husband John (Peter Sarsgaard). I should note that many horror movies begin with a severely strained relationship that leads to much more strain (usually from bloodletting and death, of course), which in this case is precipitated by the adoption of sweetly sinister little Esther from St. Mariana Orphanage.

Esther We immediately see Esther is different because she prefers to paint alone upstairs when every other kid is playing downstairs. She likes to sing The Glory of Love when she is painting and also when she is on the toilet. John hears her singing and they bond over their mutual artistic talents. Max, who likes to have mom sign to her a story about the sister who went to heaven, takes to Esther immediately, but her brother Daniel (Jimmy Bennett III) thinks Esther is weird, as does his friends at school. At first he feels threatened by her getting his parents’ attention; after the incident where a razor blade is closely poised near his most vital areas, he has a lot more to feel threatened by.

When bad things begin to happen to those around Esther, like the girl at school, who teases her, breaking an ankle, or like Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder; Mrs. Frederic in Warehouse 13), who signs-off on the adoption papers–before she realizes how Esther is always around when bad things happen–having a car accident, Kate’s suspicions grow. John, of course, along with Kate’s psychotherapist, thinks his wife is having a relapse. Both insist she commit herself for treatment.

Seasoned horror fans will recognize this scenario: the only person to see the threat is the only person no one trusts or listens to. But director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax) provides enough suspense to make this familiar situation work to the Orphan’s advantage. We feel the terror felt by Daniel and Max; they know how awful Esther can really be, but they are helpless against her as she keeps trying to get rid of them. Permanently. I normally do not want to see children in R-rated movies, but their fear and potential to be harmed by Esther is essential to the momentum of the story. Adding to this tension are flashes of Esther losing her outward calm in fits of rage when no one is around, and how Collet-Serra shows her prowling to spy on her adopted parents and siblings. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Esther acts innocently until she needs to act violently. What Collet-Serra should have left out are the overused, falsely queued–music and camera–scares, and person-popping-up-behind-you seen in mirror. Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther provides all the scares he needs.

Towards the climax, the revelation of Esther’s true intent, previously hidden on the walls of her bedroom, brings the evil vividly home to John just before the lights go out. While this movie may cause adoption rates to dip a bit, it will certainly take the summer heat off you with a chill or two.

[REC] (2007)
When Home Is No Place To Be

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REC It's nearly 2 A.M. and we're still sealed in this building that we came to with the firemen earlier this evening, to assist an elderly woman who later attacked a policeman and a fireman. They're both in critical condition. The police won't let us leave and are giving us no explanations (Angela Vidal, [REC]).

Zombos Says: Excellent

 

After the goosebumps I received from Quarantine (2008), I expected watching the original Spanish version of this home-is-where-the-zombies-are, shaky-cam, movie would be a perfunctory exercise in comparing the two. I was wrong.

While Quarantine parallels [REC]'s situations and characters almost completely, [REC] still scared me even though I knew what to expect. It is more energetic–even more shaky–as fluffy-television reporter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) unexpectedly finds the news story of her career in the hallway and rooms of a Barcelona apartment building. The scenes are more brightly lit, the police officers more ineffectual, and the contagion more preternatural in origin, perhaps even supernatural. Even the rapid staccato of Spanish words alternately screamed, cried, or spoken in desperation by Angela, her camera man, and the helpless tenants around them, gives [REC] a personal sheen of terror that comes from having your home, which is normally a place of comfort and security, become the one place you do not want to be.

The home invasion-styled horror movie is a genre staple with various derivations. I will go out on a limb and state, without crunching the numbers properly, that home intruders terrorizing, as seen recently in The Strangers (2008), and earlier in Ils (Them, 2006), are not as prevalent as home sweet home soured as seen in movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Uninvited (1944). The main differences lie in the former involving an active, direct, and immediate threat to one's safety–get out now or die!–as opposed to an ongoing, indirect, and future threat–what are those giant seed pods doing in Becky's cellar?– that make the home the least safest place to be.

Of course, when both are combined into the more inclusive home intruders laying siege scenario, such as in Night of the Living Dead (1968)–-where they're coming to get you inside while keeping you from going outside –the horror generates more from ongoing threats that are direct and indirect, and present and future perfect for terror, usually all rolled into a tidy, unrelenting, mayhem in a confined space.

[REC] falls into the home intruders laying siege category, but with a twist: laying siege within the building are the tenants themselves. While the military and police lay siege from without, keeping everyone, infected or not, locked up tight together. The growing number of infected tenants force the desperate survivors to seek temporary safety within the various apartment rooms as control of the hallway gives way to pandemonium.

While Quarantine adds more of the American sensibility for terror-filled gory moments–annoying man caught in elevator with zombie-dog; menacing zombie-fireman standing on sickeningly, bone-cracked legs; noisy drilling into brain moment (how many times have you seen those?)–[REC] keeps gore a little more subdued and spends more time with Angela interviewing the tenants as a real news reporter would do. It does slow the movie, but [REC] maintains a better sense of realism because of it.

A major difference between both movies involves the cause of the contagion. Quarantine shows its American-influenced zombie provenance by using the more scientifically explained and popular–for today's fiction and cinema–biohazard outbreak. [REC]'s virus stems from the isolation of it from the blood of a possessed girl, giving its explanation elements of religion, exorcism, and an old-world folklore creepy charm.

Within the context of an evolving news story shot from the camera man's perspective through his lens, [REC] and [Quarantine] remain the best use of the shaky-cam, found-footage, school of filming along with the Blair Witch Project (1999). And even if you have seen Quarantine, I urge you to see [REC]; not because it is the original story, but because it will still scare the daylights out of you.

The movie spawned four sequels: Rec 2 (2007), Rec 3 (2012): Genesis, and Rec 4: Apocalypse (2014). While Rec 2 continues the found-footage style, Rec 3 begins with it but then switches over to a more traditional story-telling style. Rec 4 moves the action to a ship and goes off the rails in doing so.

Malefique (2002)
Hell Is Other People

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Malefique Zombos Says: Very Good (Let me know if the ending here reminds you of the one in Being John Malkovich)

Four characters in search of an exit sustain and disdain each other’s mauvaise foiin this incarceration screenplay involving a serial killer’s dark arts journal written in 1920. With freedom just out of reach beyond a barred window, a locked door and four dreary walls complete their bleak prospects for salvation.

The beginning teases us with Danvers, the murderer who fears growing old, busy in his fetid cell and not alone. A crispy-charred corpse frozen in agony and one unfortunate individual with a gaping chest wound hint at arcane mischief afoot. Danvers casually dips his fingers into the man’s wound and draws blood to draw mystical symbols on the wall of his cell. Gore is sparsely used in Maléfique, a film directed by Eric Valette, but when it is, its brief, dramatic appearance provides suitable goosebumps.

Present day. Of the four men imprisoned in the small cell, the only one with hope of freedom is newly admitted Carrère (Gérald Laroche), but as time passes he grows more despondent and desperate to see his son again. His three cellmates are Marcus (Clovis Cornillac), who is midway between being a man and a woman and hoping for the latter; Lassalle (Philippe Laudenbach) who no longer reads or dares to listen to the many books involved in his wife’s murder; and Pâquerette (Dimitri Rataud), who is an insane child dressed like a man. He eats anything and everything, has had a very regrettable childhood–though not as bad as his 6-month old sister: she fared worse because he eats anything and everything–and he likes to make visits to the prison infirmary, necessitated by acts of self-mutilation.

MalefiqueThe book draws their attention at first, then gives it back, allowing us glimpses of their temperaments, temptations, and failings. Patience can be a virtue in French horror cinema; for every Haute Tension there is a quieter, more studied approach to building a sense of foreboding and ultimate dread, like in Sheitan; and in Maléfique, director Valette and writers allow Carrère, Marcus, Pâquerette, and Lassalle’s shadows to overlap without them ever touching each other. Each man is what he is and they wait in a room with no exit; until the book appears.

How it wound up hidden in their cell wall is not important; neither is how the erudite Lassalle knows so much about its notorious author’s quest for a fountain of youth. Much is left intentionally unexplained–like a good Japanese horror story– giving us a mystery, a mood, and imperfect men desperately looking for a perfect escape, which creates tension from their few agreements as much as their many dissents. Carrère, the cold business man, is the first to realize the journal’s commercial value; but when his bail does not materialize, and his wife divorces him, he realizes it may be his last and only way to see his son again. Much like Lemarchand’s Lament Configuration, Danvers’ journal, filled with magical spells and cryptic symbols, is a mean’s to an end, an end to all means, and a puzzle that intentionally mismatches the pieces; and the same caveat emptor warning applies here as well.

Malefique 2002 When Pâquerett, in his childlike simplicity, draws a symbol from the book onto the floor and persuades Carrère to recite an incantation the symbol suddenly bursts into flames. Quickly, the men realize the power that lies within those pages. A second test symbol drawn on the wall throws them off their feet after another incantation is muttered. Carrère wants to study the book and asks Lassalle for help, but Lassalle protests, saying he can no longer read. Marcus wants no part of it, either. As for Pâquerett, the wall eats his fingers as an appetizer. Unable to control his oral fixation, he pigs out on the pages of the book; but the book defends itself as Lassalle later points out. In the most startling and grotesque turn of events, Pâquerett gets turned and turned, first like a pretzel, then like a corkscrew, eventually giving a little quiet pop like a fine champagne. There are no screams, no showers of blood and gristle; just terror culminating in death in the night and a growing fear of the book, even though their desperation for escape is stronger.

Distraught over Pâquerett’s death, Marcus throws the book out the window. Not so surprisingly, it returns, along with a fifth cellmate whose fetish for recording everything with a video camera shows them the way out. Will they use the book to escape? Will Carrère be able to see his son again? Sometimes, a room with no exit can be the safest place to be.

Unless, of course, you find an old book stuck in the wall.

Knowing (2009)
Destiny In a Handbasket

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Knowing 2009

Zombos Says: Excellent

That particular sequence caused me no end of headaches and nightmares, because we decided at an early stage to get it all in one continuous shot. So from the moment when the plane crashes into the freeway and goes breaking up and exploding into a field, Nic’s character then pursues, and runs into the maelstrom and tries to save people (from Alex Proyas interview).

I am taken aback by the negative–at Times, vitriolic– criticism for Nicolas Cage and director Alex Proyas’ dark, apocalyptic thriller Knowing; such disdain is usually reserved for horror films, not more mainstream fare. As he did in Dark City, Proyas conjures another sepia-toned vision of determinism, fate, and faith, and ratchets up the tension with three carefully crafted, special effects-laden scenes of death and destruction before finishing with an outstanding fourth. Cage, as astrophysicist John Koestler, portrays an everyman, quirks and all, coiled and held tight in the moments, filled with knowledge but mostly powerless. Borrowing the science fiction staples of pending global cataclysm (seen in 1951’s When Worlds Collide, slated to be remade in 2010 by Stephen Sommers), and celestial intervention, Knowing is an emotionally charged drama meticulously combining horror, science fiction, and fantasy conventions into an absorbing story worthy of more serious, and less caustic, critique.

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Knowing (2009)
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The Uninvited (2009)

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The Uninvited (2009) Zombos Says: Excellent

The mind is a poor host at times, bringing in uninvited nightmares when least expected and most unwanted. In this American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters, those uninvited, bake-eiga-styled nightmares haunt Anna’s dreams and waking moments, whether in her darkened bedroom or in the sunlight-bright hallways of her nooks and crannies shorefront home. And while that may be disconcerting for Anna (Emily Browning), it certainly is a good thing for us. Directors Thomas and Charles Guard’s The Uninvited is deftly handled with splendid and unexpected–for a horror movie– photography, real acting, and suspenseful pacing that places it well above the usual horror affair of blood spatters, screams, and more bloody spatters. This is classy horror at its best.

Mystery surrounds Anna’s release from a psychiatric hospital. Ten months earlier her invalid mother died in a fiery explosion and Anna has no memory of that night, but she does have a recurring dream in which the spectre of a red-haired girl, very fresh-from-the-grave looking, tells her “not to go out.” Her therapist, not entirely sure of what it all means, still considers Anna well enough to leave the hospital. While you already have an inkling this may not be the best therapeutic course of action for her, it does set up the frights when she returns home. (Hint: pay close attention to Anna’s friend in the hospital who complains she will have no one to tell her stories to when Anna leaves.)

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Quarantine (2008)

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Quarantine

Zombos Says: Excellent

Television reporter Angela Vidal’s assignment, to tag along with the night shift of a Los Angeles fire station, starts out as fluff. Firefighters Jake and Fletcher kid around as Angela’s cameraman, Scott, films the banter through his lens. We get a tour of the station house, the locker room, the mess hall, and an explanation for why Dalmatians and firefighters go together like smoke and fire. We even get to see Angela slide down the firepole.

In fact, everything we see and hear is through Scott’s camera, making Quarantine another horror movie not for the faint of eyesight. Although more Diary of the Dead steady and less shaky-waky than Cloverfield, there are times when our view is intentionally obstructed, or pointed toward the floor, or plunged in darkness, which will either frustrate you or leave you with badly-chewed fingernails.

When the emergency medical call comes in (we are told firefighters handle more medical calls than fires), Angela, Scott, and the firefighters rush to an apartment building where a woman’s screams have rattled the tenant’s nerves. The building is filled with dark interiors and concerned tenants. Entering her apartment, our view is blocked until Scott can get his camera in front of the police officers and the firefighters. What confronts them is Mrs. Espinoza, foaming at the mouth, incoherent, and much to their dismay, a lot stronger than she should be. She also has a hearty appetite, which in this case is not a good thing for everyone else. Here is where the carefully built-up fluff gives way to terror with a series of escalating events pushing the tension level up while pulling everyone’s chances for survival down.

In this English version of the Spanish movie [Rec], Angela (Jennifer Carpenter) and Scott (Steve Harris) keep recording events as their light-hearted time-filler turns from feature to hard news, until the struggle to stay alive takes precedence. In desperation, Scott uses the camera as a weapon, giving us a head-bludgeoning eyeful filled with bloody spatters on the lens.He wipes the lens clean, but you can see his nerves are raw.

When the Center for Disease Control (CDC) seals up the building good and tight, and military sharpshooters aim for anything that tries to leave through windows or doors, the apartment house becomes a dark warren of fear. Cell phone communication is blocked, and even cable is cut off. It is that bad.

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The Last Supper (2005)
Horror Happy Meal for One

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Zombos Closet: The Last Supper Issei Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch student Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris. In June 11, 1981, Sagawa was studying avant garde literature. He invited her to dinner under the pretense of literary conversation. Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck with a rifle while she sat with her back to him at a desk, then began to carry out his plan of eating her. She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. In interviews, Sagawa describes himself as a “weak, ugly and small man” and claims that he wanted to “absorb her energy.” –Wikipedia

Zombos Says: Good

I could not sleep. My ears woke me up around four in the morning. They stung and itched and–not sure why, exactly–made me think of how awful it must have been for Lon Chaney Jr. to sit through his Wolf Man makeup sessions with Jack Pierce. But unlike Pierce’s painstaking application of Yak hair, strand by strand, I had to endure a painful, heavy-weight tag-team electrolysis smackdown on my ears’ hair follicles, earlier that day. In a perversely skewed Newtonian Law of Equilibrium, my ears started growing hair when my scalp stopped doing so.

I headed to the kitchen for an early breakfast. Not surprisingly, I found Zombos paging through Weekly Weird Asia World News as he sipped a hot chocolate. His insomnia, aided by Zimba’s snoring, usually kicked in around this time of the morning. Chef Machiavelli stood by the stove, flipping one of his succulent pancake omelettes–with oyster filling, judging by the aroma. I flashed a deuce sign for him to make another one and joined Zombos at the table. He poured a cup of caffè corretto for me and slid the Sambuca over, but I reached for the cognac instead: I needed something stronger to quell the sturm und drang in my ears.

I picked up Weekly Weird Asia’s Living section and thumbed through it. “This is interesting. Here’s an article on Issei Sagawa, Japan’s Celebrity Cannibal. He’s opening a sushi bar.  My, my…guy goes and eats his classmate, gets off on a technicality, and becomes a minor celebrity. Tastes like tuna, he said.”

“I giapponesi sono pazzeschi,” said Chef Machiavelli, serving the omelettes. He snatched the ketchup bottle from my hand before I could uncap it. I reached for the pepper and waited for him to nod okay. He nodded.

“Yes, they are a crazy bunch at times,” I agreed, shaking a little black pepper onto his culinary masterpiece. I wonder if he’ll do that nyotaimori thing where they use a naked girl as a dinner plate to serve sushi and sashimi. Hmmm…that might not be a good idea for him, now I think of it. Maybe he’ll–no, I doubt he’d go for that other odd trend of theirs, where a fake body is made out of food so you can operate on it  and eat whatever you find inside. The thing actually bleeds as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely edible they say. Cooked I think. Wait a minute; that might be something for our Halloween party. What do you think? We could bake up a life-sized meatloaf zombie, with all the rotten–”

“Must you?” asked Zombos, a forkful of omelette poised at his lips. “You know, since you are up, you should finish that review for Bestial: Werewolf Apocalypse. Then perhaps move on to more pressing things like finishing the review for the Alone In the Dark Wii game, or maybe even Karloff’s The Mummy Special Edition DVD review, or–and I am brainstorming here–perhaps even tackle some of those Permuted Press books–that pile is not getting any shorter you know. Halloween is just around the corner and you’ll need to pick up the slack a bit. Why, you might even try finishing that Bartholomew of the Scissors comic book you left out on the library table, you know, the one that scared Zombos Jr’s wits clear to Sunday thinking it was an Archie comic, or maybe–and I am really going out on the limb of possibilities here–post that Sundays With Vlad review, the one you should have posted last September.

A forkful of omelette was now poised at my lips. Chef Machiavelli took pity on me and handed back the ketchup bottle. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll get right on it after breakfast. First things first, though.”

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The Last Supper (2005)
Horror Happy Meal for OneRead More »