Frankenhooker

This week in the corner we are going to take a look at Frank Henenlotter's wonderful horror comedy Frankenhooker.  Henenlotter has amassed quite a bit of cult following status with this movie and for Basketcase.  I had seen Basektcase years ago and loved it's absurdity, gore, acting, but also the strange way it showed heart and compassion.  I saw Frankenhooker for the first time two days ago and Henenlotter included many of the same things in this movie that made me like Basketcase so much.  Frankenhooker starts out following a young couple, Jeffrey and Elizabeth, very much in love at a backyard birthday party.  Jeffrey is into medical experiments and has been thrown out of 3 medical schools for it.  Elizabeth is a bit of a ditz, but is very happy and content with her life.  Ten minutes into the movie Elizabeth falls victim to a tragic lawnmower accident and her body parts are sprayed all over the backyard during the birthday festivities.  You can pretty much read the title of the movie and figure out where the movie goes from here.  Jeffrey uses the body parts of dead hookers and the decapitated head of his dead girlfriend and pieces her back together a la a Frankenstein like creature.  Any description I write cannot do justice to what this movie truly is.  It is a campy, comedic, over the top movie whose genre became popular in the late 80's and early 90's.  If you have ever seen the iconic Evil Dead or Re-Animator, then this movie falls right into that same type of arena.  Although in my opinion this movie is not quite as gory as those two.  The characters are wonderful and the actors do a great job.  Patty Mullen uses her timing and facial expressions to nail down the title role.  This movie has a scene of exploding prostitutes that I could watch over and over again, and the ending is so classic and unexpected that I wouldn't dare write about it here.  If you watch this movie you will be glad you knew as little about the ending as I did.  It will truly make you enjoy it more.  This movie is fairly hard to find.  I purchased it on blu ray from the Synapse Films website.  The HD transfer looked great and there are a number of special features.  So if you are into this kind of a movie you may just want to go ahead and purchase it to add to your collection.  I am happy I bought.  If you don't think you want to own it you cannot stream this movie instantly on Netflix but you can get the disc through the mail.   I had a great time with this movie and if my opinion isn't enough, Bill Murray of Ghostbusters and Caddyshack fame has said many times that this is one of his favorite movies of all time.  So give it a shot!

I will be out of town next week, so there will be a week off from a new entry.  But I am going to try to have my next entry be my first blog post from a new movie in the theater!  I hope to have a new entry on the The Evil Dead remake that is set to hit theaters on April 5th.

As always if you have comments about Frankenhooker I would love to see them.  If you have friends or family members who are into horror, pass this website on to them!  Finally thanks to everyone who takes the time to read these every week!  I have had almost 350 readers in 5 weeks!  I really appreciate it and I hope you keep reading!

I Drink Your Blood

This week in the corner we will take a look at David Dursten's I Drink Your Blood.  Right off the bat I should say that this movie was released in 1970 and was the first movie rated X for violence.  It follows a group of Satan worshiping, acid tripping hippies who have arrived at a small rural area to perform demonic rituals.  In the process they end up catching a women spying on one of their rituals and they take it upon themselves to assault her in the woods.  When the woman arrives home she tells her grandfather and little brother what has happened.  When the grandfather seeks revenge, the little brother decides to follow.  What transpires from there is a mixture of a twisted after school special and Sweeny Todd.  For one, the band of Satan worshipers drop acid like they are candy.  The movie, for me, has sort of a "don't do drugs" undertone.  Also, the little brother in the movie ends up killing a rabid dog in the woods.  He gets a syringe and draws blood from the rabid dog and secretly injects the blood into some meat pies that the Satanic cult plans to eat.  The cult then gets rabies themselves and begins to go on a blood thirsty rampage.  The cult members foam at the mouth, decapitate each other, and just plain go insane.  This movie seems to try very hard to be like George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead(my favorite horror movie).  Although to be fair Romero released The Crazies in 1973 which is in a lot ways similar to I Drink Your Blood.  Living Dead, for me always spoke to social inequality, civil rights, and what it means to be different.  All topics relevant in 1968 when the movie was released.  I drink your blood doesn't necessarily tackle the exact same issues but for being released in the same time frame and having LSD being the drug of choice of a bunch of devil worshiping rapists, it is hard to ignore the "drugs are bad" message.  If you choose to watch this movie, make sure you get the uncut director's X rated version.  That version is 8 minutes longer and includes all of the things that have made this movie a grind house hit.  The R rated version actually cuts a scene, in my opinion, that is fairly important for the rest of the movie.  This movie isn't for everyone, but if you like early 70's grind house flicks with gritty footage and grisly gore, you should definitely check this out.

Next week in the corner, I will write about a movie that I have never seen before!  FrankenHooker!!!!

Oh and give me your thoughts in the comments section!!

Silent House

This week in the corner I am going to take a look at an interesting movie directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau called Silent House.  Kentis and Lau last teamed up in the 2003 creepy shark movie Open Water.  Their reunion for Silent House 9 years later is a shot for shot remake of an Uruguayan film of the same name.  Silent House follows Sarah, a twenty something who has come to visit her father and uncle in a country home that is old and in need of repair.  The old house has been in the family for years but Sarah's father is trying to fix it up to sell it. Sarah has returned for one last time to help with the repairs and say goodbye to the childhood memories.  When the electricity goes out, and the house goes dark, Sarah's uncle leaves to get an electrician and that is where the scares begin.  Sarah ends up staying behind in the dark house and when her father goes upstairs to do some work, she hears a scream and a thud and then becomes a prisoner in her own house with a what seems to be an intruder who is stalking and lurking around every dark corner.  To be honest the brief synopsis of this movie does not sound all that exciting, but there are some really bright points to this movie.  For starters, Sarah is played by Elizabeth Olsen who is the younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen from Full House fame.  I didn't even know that there was another Olsen sister, but I can tell you that Elizabeth is by far the finest actress of the three.  Throughout this movie she exhibits fear in such a believable manner and portrays a ton of emotion without a ton of dialogue.  I was thoroughly impressed by her performance and look forward to seeing her in future projects.  The other interesting hook to this movie is that it is shot to look like one giant 90 minute continuous take.  In actuality the movie was shot in 10-15 minute chunks and edited to look as though it is one long cut.  I knew this going in and I couldn't tell where the edits took place.  The directors do a great job hiding the cuts and the allusion of one long take really adds to the suspense and fear throughout the movie.  The camera swings and turns and spins over shoulders, behind the heads of the actors, and under furniture, all the while never seeming to cut away.  Having said all of this, the movie does have some problems.  For one, this movie follows every maddening horror trope in existence.  There are times when you just want to scream at your TV screen to JUST RUN OUT OF THE HOUSE!, or WHY ARE YOU RUNNING UPSTAIRS!  But after having seen hundreds of horror movies, sometimes you just expect nothing less.  Also, without getting into the ending too much, the movie concludes with a twist that many will probably see from a mile away, but I don't want to write too much and give it away now.  This movie is rated R, but it is not very violent and if you like a thriller more than straight horror, you may get into this movie.  Others may find this a little slow and boring but either way give it a shot and let me know what you think in the comments below!

Silent House can be instantly streamed on Netflix.

Next week, I am going to write about another pretty hard core flick...David Dursten's I Drink Your Blood.

Cannibal Holocaust

This week in the corner we are going to take a look at one of the most controversial films of all time...Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust.  This movie was released in the early 80's and pushes so many buttons it has been banned in over 50 countries at one point or another.  The film has two main acts.  The first act follows a New York anthropology professor who heads into the jungles of South America to search for a missing documentary film crew who were following and studying native tribes called the Yacumo and Yanomamo.  The professor finds both tribes himself and uncovers the remains of the missing the film crew as well as the documentary footage they shot while in the jungle.  Upon returning to New York the professor then begins to watch the found footage which then gives way to the second act.  The latter half of the movie is similar to many of the "found footage" films like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, or even Quarantine.  So what makes this movie so controversial?  For starters, when the New York professor begins to study the found footage, he begins to realize the documentary film crew was actually staging all of their footage and torturing and mutilating the tribes in the process.   The native tribes eventually get fed up with these documentary film makers and spend the final 20 minutes of the movie, beating, raping, beheading and finally eating the documentary film crew.  There weren't many movies to come out with style of film making at the time and the gritty realism with which much of the footage is shot is frighteningly realistic. Also, there are 5 animals that were killed on camera for the purpose of this movie.  There is a scene in particular when a large river turtle is removed from the water and then beheaded, de-shelled, and cooked and eaten.  It is a tough scene to watch and is really only the beginning of what is to come.  The most infamous scene involves a native girl who is raped and then impaled nude on a large spike on the shores of the Amazon.  Deodato also shows footage from an older documentary within the movie that contains actual firing squad footage from South America and Africa.  In 1980, many people who viewed this movie thought that the "found footage" was actually real, and that Deodato had killed his actors for the movie.  The animal killings were real, the firing squad footage was real, so why not the rest of the movie?  The Italian government actually charged Deodato with making a snuff film and Deodato was forced to subpoena his actors to court to prove that they were still alive.  He also had to demonstrate how he impaled the native girl on the pole with movie FX right in the middle of the court room.  So why would anyone want to watch a movie like this?  For me personally, I have never thought so much about a horror movie as much as I did after viewing Cannibal Holocaust.  Many movies claim to have a message or an underlying social commentary.  Deodato's movie most certainly does.  His critique of media and sensationalism weighs heavily throughout the rough 90 minutes.  His documentary film crew commits horrid acts of violence, rape, and murder, yet they come from the supposed "civilized" society.  The Yanomamo live the deep jungles of South America with no technology, running water, and are cannibals, but are they any more savage?  Many detractors of the movie accuse Deodato of being hypocritical and committing the very same acts of sensationalism with the animal killings and violence that he so harshly critiques.  Cannibal Holocaust is movie for the hard core horror fan.  It pushes boundaries and pushes the envelope in almost every scene.  If you choose to watch it I would love to know whether you think it is a visceral social commentary or an overly violent hypocritical mess.

Next week I will be writing about the creatively shot Silent House.

Leave comments below!!!!