Frogs

This week in the corner, I am writing about a much different kind of movie than in past weeks...George McCowan's Frogs!  Let's get a few things out of the way.  First off, the poster would lead you to believe that this movie is about giant man eating frogs.  While there are lots of frogs, none of them are enormous, nor do they eat humans.  Secondly, although this movie would be considered a horror movie, it is rated PG and is pretty low on gore and adult content.  So why have this on my blog?  Because this movie follows another very common horror trope in the genre sometimes known as the creature feature.  Creature features have been around almost since the beginning of film making.  Lon Chaney, who was a master of make up, was the wolf man in 1941, Creature from the Black Lagoon was released in 1954, and Frogs was released in 1972.  These are of course not the only creature features to come out, but movies about monsters, creatures, and animals that attack have been made for over 70 years.  So what does Frogs have to offer?  Not much...Frogs is basically about a rich old curmudgeon who owns a plantation of sorts in a swampy bog in what could be Louisiana, Florida or some other kind of marshy area in the southeast.  The rich old man is celebrating his birthday weekend and his entire family has come to "celebrate" with him.  The family doesn't like him much but they all hope to be included in his will so they try to put up with his unpleasantness once a year.  While all of this is going on a wildlife photographer played by a very young Sam Elliot ends up in a boating accident on the water and ends up crashing the old man's birthday party.  What Sam Elliot's character begins to realize is that the old man's fortune has been made through various factories and plants that have been poisoning and contaminating the swamps and bogs for years.  Well it turns out that frogs, snakes, spiders, alligators, and all forms of reptiles don't like to be poisoned and decide to attack the entire family during the old man's birthday party.  This movie is pretty terrible.  But terrible in one of those so bad it's good kind of ways.  Writer Fran Lebowitz actually called this "the best bad movie I have ever seen in my life."  The interesting thing is that I think most creature features are kind of bad.  So why do they continue to get made?  For one they tend to attack a lot of humanity's base fears.  Lots of people are scared of snakes and spiders.  Lots of people are scared of creepy crawlies.  Also human beings mistreatment of the environment has been a hot topic for a lot longer than people realize.  Frogs is clearly conveying an eco-friendly message and this kind of movie was actually very popular in the 1970's.  Godzilla, which may be Japan's most famous export outside of high end electronics, was about mutated wildlife that resulted from the nuclear bomb.  Creature features will continue to be made...some better than others.  Frogs as a film is pretty terrible to watch all by yourself.  But with a few friends and some beer, you could have a pretty fun Saturday night.  You could make a drinking game out of it and take a drink every time there are 3 or more frogs on screen.  You can stream Frogs on Netflix right now.

If you end up watching this with friends or you brave through it by yourself, leave comments below!  Next week I am going to change gears a bit and actually write about a TV show instead of a movie.  I will be taking a look at the first episode of the Netflix exclusive Hemlock Grove.  This series is created and directed by Eli Roth who is famous for his nasty horror flicks Cabin Fever and Hostel.  Hope you come back next week!

Evil Dead (2013)

It's been a while since my last post.  But a European vacation followed by a nasty bout of food poisoning has delayed the next post.  But this week, we are bringing it back with a brand new release in theaters, the remake/reboot of Evil Dead.  If you are a horror fan and have visited this blog multiple times you have probably seen the original version from 1981, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell.  They developed cult icon status with this movie and the even better Evil Dead 2.  They went on to make a third installment called Army of Darkness, which is often forgotten about in the franchise.  Sam Raimi has since gone on to become a bonafide Hollywood blockbuster film maker.  He directed the Spiderman trilogy with Toby Maguire, and more recently just released Oz with James Franco.  This post is about the new Evil Dead movie, but it is important to note that Raimi and Bruce Campbell were producers on this film and were involved with the movie.  If you were a fan of the original, I honestly am not sure what you will think about this movie.  First off, the 2013 edition has a much more somber tone overall.  The movie centers around a group of friends who go up to a cabin in the woods, but the main character, Mia, is battling  a serious addiction to heroin and is trying to kick the habit cold turkey at the cabin with her friends providing unyielding support.  This is different from the 1981 version which was basically just a group of college friends going away for the weekend.  Just like the 81 version, in the new film, the group of friends uncover the infamous book of the dead which is the book bound in human skin and written in blood that summons the evil spirits from the woods.  Of course the spirits possess our main character Mia.  At first her friends think she is just going through a painful withdraw from the drugs.  Quickly they found out that it is something completely different.  The original Dead definitely had some tense moments but there was almost a three stooges quality to the film.  It acquired cult status in large part to the campy nature and the great performance from Bruce Campbell.  The new version doesn't have many, if any at all, comedic moments.  It is dark and dreary from the get go.  There are a few homages to the original.  You'll see an old car you may recognize, some great camera work through the woods and of course...the chainsaw.  But the tone is one that is much more serious and dare I say it, more violent.  This is one of the goriest movies I have ever seen released to a theater.  Body parts are severed, blood is sprayed, and at one point literally rained down from the sky.  Directer Fede Alvarez said he wanted to use as many practical effects and as little CGI as possible.  This really worked for me in the movie and added to the extreme gore.  I personally liked the movie and had fun during the short 90 minutes.  The bigger point for me is the growing trend in the last 10 years of remaking or rebooting every horror franchise almost in existence.  The question for me is, why remake a franchise?  Is it for the cash grab?  Is it to introduce a franchise to a younger generation who may not have had the chance to see the original?  The new Evil Dead does enough in my opinion to change things up just enough from the original to do something fresh and different that warrants the remake.  I think that if you are just going to do the same thing and do a shot for shot redo, what is the point of the remake in the first place?  Evil Dead will not make hundreds of millions of dollars because of its extreme violence.  But I do think it is one of the better remakes of a horror franchise to hit theaters.  If you think you can stand the gore, check this out.  If you haven't seen the original Evil Dead, you should see that to!  I think you can currently stream it instantly on Netflix.  Ultimately, what I am most excited about from all of this, is the possibility and rumor that Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are going to finally get to work on an Evil Dead 4.  Nothing beats the original...Hail to the king baby!

If you have seen both the original and the remake, leave a comment below and let me know what you thought of the remake.  Too violent?  Loving homage the original?  Check out next week as I will be writing about an old school horror movie.  One of the original creature features...George McCowan's Frogs!

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!!!!

The Innkeepers

This week in the corner we are going to take a look at Ti West's latest film...The Innkeepers.  Ti West gained notoriety a few years ago with his 80's homage The House of the Devil.  The Innkeepers is a similar film in style and scope and relies heavily on mood and ambiance.  The movie takes place at an old hotel in Connecticut called the Yankee Pedlar Inn.  The hotel is going out of business and we are with two employees on the final weekend of operation.  The catch to the whole thing is that legend says that the hotel is haunted and we are left with some of the typical bumps and spooks that come along with a haunted house movie.   Sara Paxton has the lead role and for me was the highlight of the movie.  She has a plucky and adventurous personality that lends to the need to explore the old spooky hotel.  Pat Healy plays the other hotel employee.  He is a bit older and owns the recording equipment used to find the paranormal entities a la Ghosthunters.  There are few extra characters sprinkled about the movie.  Lena Dunham from HBO's Girls has a one scene cameo.  A creepy old man checks into the hotel on the final night with strange requests and Kelly McGillis from Top Gun plays a sort of washed up actress who has now moved on to pursuing a psychic and holistic lifestyle that has influence in the rest of the haunts throughout the movie.  Regardless of how big of a role these extra characters play, they all seem to just be filler to the rest of the movie.  This is where many people will have problems with the film.  Ti West is meticulous with his movies.  Every shot, every camera angle, every character movement is done with a purpose and style.  His motives are to give his audience the same monotonous feeling as his characters. Much of the first two acts involve watching the employees working a graveyard shift in a practically empty hotel with not much to do besides surf the internet or listen for the supposed ghosts that haunt the halls of the Yankee Pedlar Inn.  This makes the first hour of the movie a pretty slow burn.  The movie is dialogue heavy and there are rarely more than two characters in any one given scene.  His intent is to try to build the anticipation and suspense that leads to the final 30 minutes of the grand finale.  If you are a fan of cinematography and art direction in movies I think you will enjoy the Innkeepers, the rest may just find it boring.  The final act does provide some real scares but the movie closes with a number of loose ends.  This movie isn't really gory, nor does it really have the cheap thrills of a Paranormal Activity.  The hotel is front and center along with what lurks in the hallways and basement.  The chance that something may happen at any moment is the draw.  Writing any more about the ending gives away too much because ultimately you should watch the movie and decide for yourself whether you think this movie is a masterpiece of suspense or just a slow boring haunted house movie.  If and when you watch it you should leave a comment at the bottom and let me know on which side of the fence you fall!

The Innkeepers can currently be streamed instantly on Netflix!

Next week I will be writing about one of the most controversial movies of all time.  Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust.  This movie has been banned in over 50 countries and is only for the hardest of the hardcore.  See you next week!