TEENAGE GHOST PUNK -- Movie Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 4/12/17

 

The word "lightweight" is usually used in a deprecating way, but in the case of TEENAGE GHOST PUNK (Midnight Releasing, 2014) I don't think anything weightier would've worked.  It would be like dumping an entire pint of ice cream on top of a Twinkie instead of a tasty dollop of Cool Whip.

The Twinkie, in this case, is a pleasant little tale of a displaced family: recent divorcée Carol (Adria Dawn), nervously re-entering the workforce in a new town; teen daughter Amanda (Grace Madigan), angst-ridden about leaving her old school and friends; and kid brother Adam (Noah Kitsos), a prematurely intelligent, erudite little wiseacre who enjoys getting on his big sister's nerves. 

What they don't know is that the neat little two-storey house they're about to move into is already inhabited by the ghost of Brian, a teenaged punk rocker who was electrocuted back in the 70s while playing guitar on the roof in the rain and has been unable, or unwilling, to "move on" since then.

 

At first, there are a few weird POLTERGEIST-type occurrences--rooms found in disarray, silverware spelling out words, bumps in the night--that Carol blames on the kids, but nothing really scary.  It's just lightly, comically spooky stuff because this movie isn't trying to scare us as much as it just wants to be lightly comical.

In fact, the funniest thing about TEENAGE GHOST PUNK to me isn't the ghostly stuff, but rather some of the secondary characters such as Squatchie (Jake Shadrake), a clumsy, extremely hirshute fellow student of Amanda's who keeps trying to get her to go out with him, and Carol's new co-worker Barry (Darren Stephens), a conceited jerk whose constant come-ons are delightfully annoying and groanworthy.

And then there's faux medium Madame Lidnar (Lynda Shadrake), recommended to Amanda by their new neighbors, a mixed-race gay couple who are both named Steve.  But best of all are a ghost-hunting group known as SPIT (Super Paranormal Investigation Team), a funny take-off of shows like "Ghost Hunters" where excitable team members creep around in the dark, jumping at shadows and "hearing" things. 

 

For me, the film's biggest giggles come when this gaggle of idiots are loose in the house or giddily explaining why all their equipment has an "X" in the name (because an "X" makes everything sound cooler).

Naturally, Amanda will eventually form a simpatico relationship with Brian (and his friends, who all hail from different time periods but are equally stuck in the limbo between two worlds) that helps compensate for her recently being dumped by her old boyfriend. 

There are the usual complications when Carol doesn't believe Amanda's ghost stories and blames her for various manifestations, and a twist or two that are so obvious that we must be intended to figure them out in one second flat.  But we know it'll all work itself out by the end because this movie has "happy ending" scrawled all over it.

 

It's all pretty smartly-written and acted in a way that makes even the less interesting scenes watchable, and writer-director Mike Cramer handles it all adeptly.  Still, by the time Amanda's Halloween party arrives--in which all ghosts will be visible to the living and all secrets revealed--the story has begun to lose some of its steam.  But by now it's as comfortable as an After School Special and remains easy to take until the upbeat fadeout.

TEENAGE GHOST PUNK may come up short for those expecting something with more depth and substance. For me, however, it's like a party balloon--lightweight, but colorful and amusing enough until it pops. 

SICK NURSES -- movie review by porfle

 

(This review has appeared online in 2007 and again in 2012.)


SICK NURSES (2007) is a mind-boggling horror flick from Thailand that plays around with all those Asian ghost-story cliches and offers some of the most flabbergasting, over-the-top death scenes I've seen in quite a while.  It's a wickedly fun tale of revenge, summed up pretty well by Michael Madsen's "Budd" in KILL BILL:  "That woman deserves her revenge...and we deserve to die."  But Budd got off easy in that movie, because if he'd been in this one, he would've ended up worse off than Paula Schultz.

Dr. Tar (Wichan Jarujinda) is a celebrated young doctor who's engaged to the lovely nurse Tahwaan (Chon Wachananon).  But when she catches him fooling around with another nurse--her own sister, Nook (Chidjan Rujiphun)--she goes ballistic and threatens to expose the dirty secret that he sells bodies on the side.  As the rest of the nurses hold Tahwaan down, one of them stabs her to death.  Exactly seven days later, right before midnight, the ghost of Tahwaan returns to the hospital to wreak bloody vengeance upon Dr. Tar and the other nurses. 

This is one weird, gory, surrealistic movie.  Tahwaan's ghost is jet-black with piercing eyes and long, long black hair, which she uses for all sorts of fun things like cocooning people or hanging them from the ceiling.  And that's just for starters.  She can also turn your arms and hands black and take control of them, causing you do commit grave and usually very ironic injury to yourself.  A bulemic nurse who spends most of her time binging and purging ends up stuffing herself with some extremely unhealthy items until her jaw-dropping demise, while a couple of cute twins who deeply admire one another's beauty are eventually compelled to lay into each other with hacksaws.  As for Nook, who is pregnant with Dr. Tar's child...well, you can imagine her ironic fate.

The setting is what must be the emptiest hospital since HALLOWEEN II--there isn't a patient in sight--and the nurses all seem to have their own private, girly bedrooms and don't ever actually do anything except scamper around in sexy uniforms.  It's more like a big giddy sorority house run by SCTV's Johnny LaRue than a hospital.  This doesn't matter, though, because once the terror begins, logic would just get in the way.

At first it seems as though there's barely any story at all, but little scraps of the narrative fall into place along the way, mostly in flashbacks, to make things interesting between bursts of bloody horror.  And there's an awesome twist ending which, I must admit, I didn't see coming at all.  It doesn't make total sense, but that's one of the endearing things about this movie--it's so freakishly entertaining that it doesn't have to.

The simple premise is similar to dozens of killer-on-the-loose borefests we've sat through over the years, but here, lots of visual style and a truly imaginative sense of the bizarre set it apart.  SICK NURSES benefits from an enthusiastic young cast (composed mainly of lovely young ladies), impressive gore effects with a minimum of bad CGI, and an attitude that's as gleefully sick as those titular nurses.

GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 12/14/20

 

One fan's cheesy low-budget monster mash is another fan's treasure.  Film Detective has taken a prime example of this, director Richard Cunha's 1958 debut feature GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, and served both kinds of fans (including those of us who are both) with a crisp, finely-rendered restoration.

Filmed mostly on location in the rugged mountains and forests of southern California, this is the tale of a monstrous Spanish conquistador named Vargas who wakes after being frozen alive in solid rock for centuries and goes on a rampage that leaves ravaged bodies both animal and human in his wake.

Played by 6'6" actor Buddy Baer (FAIR WIND TO JAVA, QUO VADIS, AFRICA SCREAMS), brother of famed boxer Max Baer, the armor-clad behemoth sports a fearsome visage created by former Universal makeup maestro Jack Pierce and swings a deadly battle ax.

While the local sheriff (cowboy star Bob Steele, later to be a regular on the TV classic "F Troop") tries to solve the mysterious murders, archeologist Wayne Brooks (Ed Kemmer, THE SPIDER, "Space Patrol") heads into the wilderness with fellow explorer Dr. Cleveland (Morris Ankrum, ROCKETSHIP X-M, EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS) and his beautiful daughter Janet (Sally Fraser, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, THE SPIDER), where their search for ancient relics brings them frighteningly face to face with a live one.

As they inch closer to the truth behind the recent murders, Vargas follows up his killing of more townspeople by setting his sights on Janet.  This will eventually bring every able bodied man in town into the hunt for the monster, who uses his fierce strength and cunning to fight them off. The film climaxes with a furious confrontation between him and the vastly outmatched Brooks.

 

For fans of low-budget movies, this is a fascinating opportunity to observe Cunha's handling of his meager resources and limited experience (before this, he'd done mainly commercials, industrial films, and the like), and a solid cast composed largely of film veterans doing their best with an often awkward script, to turn in what is a professional-looking effort that entertains despite a slow pace and some dull spots.

Technical aspects are well-handled, with photography and camerawork especially good. Composer Albert Glasser turns in his usual wildly bombastic score. Pierce's makeup mastery creates a monster who resembles a huge stone Golem, with Baer using his wide, glaring eyes to good effect. 

 

The Blu-ray from Film Detective is a 4k transfer from the original camera negative. Bonus features include a commentary track by noted horror/sci-fi film historian and author Tom Weaver which also includes comments by Cunha and others involved in the film. There's also an illustrated booklet with additional information and trivia. Several other features are listed below.

Fans of Cunha's other films such as FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, SHE DEMONS, and MISSILE TO THE MOON will likely find this relatively modest but nicely-done effort of great interest. While B-grade at best, and only moderately exciting, GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN nevertheless remains one of those minor gems from which appreciative genre fans can derive a special kind of pleasure from watching.

 

Order it from Film Detective


Retail Price: $24.95
Release Date: 1-19-2021
Runtime: 77 minutes
Genre: CULT CLASSIC, DRAMA, HORROR
Language: English
Color/BW: BW

Also available in DVD and red-label Blu-ray

 

BONUS MATERIALS:

Audio Commentary with Author/Historian Tom Weaver and Guests; 

Audio Commentary with co-star Gary Crutcher; 

'YOU'RE A B-MOVIE STAR, CHARLIE BROWN' - An all-new interview actor/screenwriter Gary Crutcher; 

'THE MAN WITH A BADGE: BOB STEELE IN THE 1950'S' - An all-new interview with author/film historian C. Courtney Joyner; 

Collector’s booklet with still gallery and liner notes by Tom Weaver; 

Original Theatrical Trailer

TRAUMA -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/21/18

 

When it comes to horror movies, how extreme do you want to go?  With TRAUMA (2017, Artsploitation Films), Chilean writer-director Lucio A. Rojas (ZOMBIE DAWN, PERFIDY) answers that question for us in ways that will have some viewers gasping with perverse thrill and others scrambling to put as much distance between them and this movie as humanly possible.

Even the first few minutes had me feeling nasty and kind of disgusted with myself for even watching it.  The film opens with a scene of the most vile torture porn imaginable, easily earning its original NC-17 rating (and this is the unrated director's cut).

It will get, if not worse, then just as bad in different but equally horrific ways.  The first home invasion sequence, in which four young women vacationing in a secluded cabin find the world's sickest psycho (Daniel Antivilo as "Juan") and his son at their front door, almost makes I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE seem like a rom-com.

Other atrocities, including a tour of psycho dad's hellish chamber of horrors and its woefully unfortunate captives, take everything that was vile and repellant about TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and turn the dial to eleven.

And I'm saying this as someone who has been watching extreme horror movies for several decades.  This wallow in utter depravity and degradation is the kind of stuff that movie theater walkouts are made of.

Okay, there's that.  In addition to the almost invasive nature of TRAUMA's horrific images is something else that director Rojas is really good at, which is building suspense.  This is one of those movies that manages to keep us painfully on edge, not just during the torture scenes but in other ways as well.

The survivors of the initial attack must decide whether or not to make their way to Juan's secluded torture chamber in the woods to help a little girl who has been kidnapped by him.  With a near-useless young local cop as their only help, Andrea (Catalina Martin) and the others embark on a rescue attempt that will lead to prolonged, stomach-churning suspense.

Through it all, there's an underlying message about how violence and hatred are passed down from generation to generation, sickness breeds sickness, etc. which we see in flashbacks to Juan's boyhood.  The dead seriousness of the film adds to its effectiveness--there's no distancing humor or satire to make the horror more palatable.

Nor does it have any amusing technical deficiencies.  Rojas' direction is entirely effective, his script literate.  The cast, especially Catalina Martin and Daniel Antivilo, are fine.  Photography (including some sweeping aerial shots) and other technical elements are above-average.

The Blu-ray from Artsploitation Films is in 2.35:1 widescreen with 5.1 surround sound.  Spanish soundtrack with English subtitles.  A trailer is the sole extra.

Gorehounds who like to get as down, dirty, and just plain twisted as possible with their horror movies should definitely check out TRAUMA as soon as possible. Everyone else--you've been warned.  As for me, I'm a notorious "re-watcher", happily viewing my favorite films time and again over the years, but for this one, once is way more than enough.

CANNIBAL CORPSE KILLERS -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 7/25/20

 

CANNIBAL CORPSE KILLERS (Indican Pictures, 2018) enters the undead arena with a dash of "Mad Max", a pinch of Rob Zombie, some spaghetti (western) sauce, and a flashback intro in which a cousin of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" book appears and cooks up a passel of the same brand of hell-spawn zombies to terrorize a poor little desert community (and, we assume, the rest of the world).

Into this apocalyptic wasteland comes a ragtag group of misfits who look like they just stumbled out of "The Devil's Rejects" and have cool names like Pike (Dennis Haggard), Ruby (Theresa Holly), cranky old hermit Slim (Chris Shumway), Scar (Katherine Norland), and group leader Boots (Nate Philo). These are the good guys, since they're only interested in survival. (Okay, Pike has a much loftier aim in mind, but that's for later.)

Fortunately for us, this survival includes lots of zombie killing that's bloody, gory, gutsy, grotty, and very action-oriented. The zombies in question are horrifically aggressive, again more in line with Raimi's "hellish speed-freak" model than the simple, shambling reanimated corpses of yore.

The makeups are consistently good, as are such production elements as locations (I kept wondering where they found all these trashed neighborhoods and other decayed desert architecture), costumes, props, and cars.

On the minus side, most of the cast indulge in relentless overacting of the "scream obscenities really loud" and "make spaghetti western faces" varieties, while director Joaquin Montalvan (LEGEND OF THE HILLBILLY BUTCHER) has a loose, freeform style that's sporadically effective.

As with many low-budget flicks these days, there's a heavy reliance on sweeping drone camera shots which take good advantage of the desert surroundings.

As the main characters slowly make their way to a tiny desert burg called Jawbone (first in Slim's van, then on foot), flashbacks from each person's past reveal the reasons why they've ended up as messed up as they are.

(For example, "Scar" had to shoot her own zombie son in the head as he was administering her namesake facial wound.) These brief episodes flesh out the characters and give the story some of its best scenes.

Meanwhile, the Magistrate (Ron Jason), a psycho hick who discovered the book and acts as a go-between for Ava, vile princess of evil (Charlotte Bjornbak) and her slack-jawed minions, waits in an abandoned church as the evil forces prepare to do battle with our heroic good guys.

The final clash on the dusty main drag of Jawbone is more of the clunky fight choreography and nerve-wracking sound effects we've experienced throughout the film, enhanced by more of those nicely-rendered gore effects and cool-looking zombie makeup.

The bonus menu consists of a making-of featurette, an interview with the sound designer, and extended/deleted scenes.

Alternately entertaining and irritating, CANNIBAL CORPSE KILLERS practically grabs us by the lapels and screams "I'm a cool cult film, dammit!" It's one of those doggedly earnest low-budget indy flicks that works overtime to prove how cool it is in every shot.

 
Buy it at Indican Pictures

TECH SPECS

Runtime: 100 minutes
Format: 1:78 HD
Sound: Dolby Sr.
Country: USA

DARK HOUSE -- movie review by porfle

 

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 28, 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]

Loud, obnoxious, and dumb, DARK HOUSE (2009) is like a cross between a slasher flick, a ghost story, and a funhouse ride.  Its 80s-retro vibe even reminded me a little of Tobe Hooper's FUNHOUSE (along with films such as the obscure cult fave SILENT SCREAM), only minus most of the fun and plus a heaping helping of cheese.

The story opens with a little girl being dared by her friends to enter the neighborhood "scary house" (actually, it looks more quaintly picturesque than scary) and finding the bodies of seven murdered children strewn about.  Their foster mother, Miss Darrode (Diane Salinger), is in the kitchen grinding her hands off in the garbage disposal.  She thinks that by killing them, she's just saved the souls of her evil foster children because she is that most dreaded of all horror movie psychos--a religious fanatic! (Gasp!)

Fourteen years later, Claire (Meghan Ory) is, not surprisingly, undergoing therapy, and her doctor urges her to return to the house and confront the fears which continue to haunt her, hoping that she'll regain her buried memories of the event.  Conveniently enough, the members of her college drama class have just been hired by flamboyant horror showman Walston (Jeffrey Combs) to work in his brand new hologram-enhanced spookhouse attraction, which is located in none other than the Darrode house. 

Claire's friends are a sorry bunch of stereotypical kill fodder that we can't wait to see get theirs.  There's Rudy, the arrogant jock; Ariel, the dumb blonde nympho; Bruce, the nerd; Eldon, the black guy; and Lily, the Goth chick.  That's literally the extent of their character development, and from the first moment we see them in drama class "acting out" their true feelings for each other, we hate their guts.  Then Walston flits in to pitch his new haunted house idea to them, and we hate his guts, too, because the wonderful Jeffrey Combs has been given a truly awful character to portray and he tries way too hard to sell it.

The filmmakers tip their hand the moment we enter the house, when a misty black shape can be seen flitting about.  Then we get a demonstration of the holographic attractions, including a psycho clown with an axe, a mad scientist, a dungeon master, various zombie types, and, my favorite, a really freaky-looking young lady with long, sharp fingernails who reminded me of "The Angry Princess" from THIR13EN GHOSTS.  They aren't very scary but are fun to look at as they spring out at us as though we were watching a 3D movie.  (SCTV's Dr. Tongue would love it.) 

Naturally, the malevolent spirit of Miss Darrode enters the computer that runs everything and turns the holograms deadly.  There's not a whole lot of suspense and most of the characters are done away with rather summarily, one breaking her neck from a tumble down the stairs and a couple of others dying off-camera.  The first of the drama students to die (see if you can guess who) gets a mace to the head by that scariest of all horror characters, a medieval knight.  The resulting gore effect is done digitally instead of with good old-fashioned physical effects, which is always a disappointment--you just can't fake a genuine exploding head with CGI. 

The film's main asset is Diane Salenger as Miss Darrode.  She's pretty unsettling at first--an early jump-scare with her insane face shooting toward the camera is a real jolt--but she's overused to the point where all her prolonged screaming and twisty-faced mugging into the camera gets old.  (I'd love to see what a really good Japanese or Thai horror director could've done with her character.)  Before long, the jump-scares themselves begin to feel like someone continually goosing us until the effect is diminished.

Direction by Darin Scott is slick but doesn't quite capture the sort of fun-spooky William Castle atmosphere he seems to be going for.  Things get less dumb-fun and more serious in the final act, when the hidden secrets behind Miss Darrode's murder spree and Claire's amnesia are revealed, although the more we're shown the more confusing things seem to get.  I think I caught most of it but by then the film's dogged attempts to terrify me had become rather numbing.

I watched a screener of this movie so I can't comment on DVD specifics.  According to Fangoria.com, special features will include "a commentary track by Scott and producer Mark Sonoda, the 8 FANGORIA FRIGHTS cable special and the eight FrightFest trailers." 

DARK HOUSE is just diverting enough to be worth watching if you don't have anything better to do.  But you have to go into it the same way little Claire crept into the spooky old Darrode house all those years ago--expecting the worst.

 

ROAD KILL -- movie review by porfle

 

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 28, 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]


Two young couples motoring across the long, lonesome highways of the Australian Outback are menaced by a massive double-sized tractor-trailer rig known as a "road train" (the film's original title) in 2010's ROAD KILL, a fairly effective horror-thriller that takes a different route than you might expect. 

The premise immediately brought two movies to my mind upon first viewing.  One is Steven Spielberg's classic made-for-TV thriller DUEL, in which Dennis Weaver plays a harried salesman whose tiny car is the prey for a crazed trucker in the middle of nowhere.  Yet another Aussie thriller, ROAD GAMES, is also set in the Outback and features a trucker (Stacy Keach) and a comely young hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a cat-and-mouse game with a traveling serial killer. 

But just when I'm thinking ROAD KILL is going to be a rehash of these two plots, it decides to go somewhere else entirely.  The two couples--Craig and Nina, and Marcus and Liz, who have a history of jealousy and rivalry simmering below the surface of their fragile friendship--are run off the road by the roaring behemoth just when we think we're at the start of a long chase sequence.  This is the last such scene we'll see until much later in the film when there's one more high-speed clash between truck and automobile.

Climbing out of the wreckage with Craig (Bob Morley) badly injured, they stumble along until they find the road train parked by the side of the highway with nobody in it.  They get in just as a crazy man emerges from the bushes blasting away at them with a pistol, and Marcus manages to get the thing moving.  Lulled by hours of monotonous motion, they drop off to sleep--even Marcus seems to doze at the wheel as the truck continues to rumble onward.  Suddenly it stops, and they awaken to find that Marcus has accidentally turned off onto a side road and gotten them lost.  Or...was the truck acting on its own?

Yes, with our four main characters now stranded in the wilderness, ROAD KILL becomes a haunted truck story.  While a bitterly quarreling Marcus (Xavier Samuel, TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE) and Liz (Georgina Haig) strike out for the main highway on foot, Craig and Nina begin to sense a pervasive evil eminating from those two locked containers.  I'll skip the details of what follows, but it includes possession, betrayal, and the horrific discovery of what's really going on inside that damned truck.  Meanwhile, Marcus and Liz have some pretty shocking experiences of their own before they make it back just in time to get in on the gory fun.

Dean Francis' capable direction (this is his first feature) keeps the suspense pretty taut considering that most of the movie consists of four characters and a truck.  Good performances by the cast help to put over a script that often doesn't make a whole lot of sense (and doesn't really try to), with Sophie Lowe as Nina carrying most of the acting load and giving us at least one character we can identify with who isn't a total jerk.  She even gets to drive that damned truck when they finally get it back out on the highway for the exciting gear-grinding conclusion.

I watched a screener so DVD specs were unavailable.  Fangoria.com lists the special features as "audio commentary by director Dean Francis, a behind-the-scenes featurette, deleted scenes, the 8 FANGORIA FRIGHTS cable special and the eight FrightFest trailers."  One thing's for sure--if the nerve-wracking soundtrack for this flick doesn't threaten to jar your skull right out of your head, you've got stronger ears than I have.

I'm not sure how rewatchable ROAD KILL will be once you've slowly and patiently peeled the onion away from its mysterious core, but that first time was definitely enough to maintain a firm grip on my attention span.  And I now have an interesting new mental image for the term "monster truck." 

PIG HUNT -- movie review by porfle

 

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 28, 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]


I didn't know it was such a short drive from San Francisco straight into the heart of DELIVERANCE country, but in PIG HUNT (2008), five friends from the city end up stranded in Yokelvania and running for their lives from homicidal hicks, cutthroat cultists, and a man-eating hog big enough to keep two Piggly-Wigglys stocked in bacon and pork chops for a year. 

When a loony forest-dwelling uncle dies, nephew Johnny (Travis Aaron Wade) inherits some land and the old shack where he grew up.  Johnny and his girlfriend Brooks (Tina Huang) decide to spend a pig-hunting weekend there with three friends--green, trigger-happy Marine Ben (Howard Johnson, Jr.), chubby tenderfoot Quincy (Trevor Bullock), and slacker Wayne (Rajiv Shah).  In the woods, they run into some of Johnny's childhood acquaintances, hillbilly brothers Jake and Ricky (Jason Foster, Nick Tagas), who go along for the hunt.  Jake tells them of a legendary 3,000-pound boar hog named Ripper who supposedly roams the woods, but of course they don't believe him. 

Things turn ugly when the hunters stumble upon a huge marijuana field hidden in the forest.  While Jake and Ricky want to sack up a few hundred pounds of prime weed, Johnny's for alerting the authorities to their find.  An altercation results in death for one of the brothers, and the other, stoked for revenge, runs off to gather the rest of his kill-crazy clan.  The city kids flee to the supposed safety of a hippie commune run by a mysterious stranger (Bryonn Bain) where they find themselves in even deeper hog-poop than before.  Carnage ensues when city dwellers, yokels, cult crazies, and a 3,000-pound surprise guest hog start makin' bacon out of each other.

While lesser hands may have botched such a promising premise, director James Isaac (JASON X, SKINWALKERS) scores a bullseye by mixing gory TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE-style backwoods horror with a wicked sense of fun.  The long build-up of the film's first half explodes into kinetic energy when the hillbilly clan goes into action against Johnny and his friends, racing headlong down dirt roads in their trucks, dune buggies, and motorcycles in the first of several sequences that look like the filmmakers had a ball shooting and editing them.  When they converge on two of the main characters back at the old shack there's a frantic sense of real terror as they scramble desperately to escape the mindless killers. 

Meanwhile, Ben stumbles into a scene right out of his most surrealistic fantasy when he comes across about a dozen beautiful naked women lounging around the local swimmin' hole.  I have to hand it to the writers here--this scene really adds that certain special something to the story.  Ben ends up like a shiek in a harem, complete with hookah, and thinks he's gone to heaven.  Hog heaven, that is, which he's about to abruptly discover.

One of my favorite scenes occurs after one of the yokels bursts in and starts blasting away.  As he holds the main cult babe at gunpoint, she plucks a boar's tusk from her necklace and jams it into his eyeball.  Johnny grabs the gun and points it at her, but waits.  As cult-babe is viciously rearranging the hillbilly's face, she glances up a couple of times to make sure Johnny's going to hold off and let her finish before pulling the trigger.  It may not sound like much in the description, but the way it's acted, shot, and edited makes it one of the coolest moments in the film.

And then there's the Ripper.  For most of the film his presence is shown by a JAWS-style POV accompanied by low, throaty growls and brief glimpses of blazing eyes and jagged tusks.  When he finally makes his grand entrance in the final act, complete with a dead bit player dangling from his mouth, the rig that the SPFX guys have come up with to depict this massive pork-orca is so over-the-top outlandish that it's hilarious and impressive at the same time.  CGI would've rendered a smoother, more active creature, but ruined the more satisfying effect achieved by good old-fashioned methods and judicious editing.

I watched a screener so DVD specs and details on special features were unavailable.

A capable cast playing fairly interesting characters for a change helps kick PIG HUNT up a notch over similar films.  (Trevor Bullock as Quincy is particularly good as he reacts convincingly to his impending death at the hands of the hillbilly clan.)  Add to this a sense that the filmmakers are having all sorts of fun making this movie, and you've got a no-holds-barred backwoods blowout that's just as much fun to watch.

 

HUNGER -- movie review by porfle

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 28, 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]


With a name like HUNGER (2009), I was expecting yet another vampire or zombie flick.  Fortunately, this is something else entirely--it's one of those "predicament" stories where the characters are placed in a seemingly inescapable situation which slowly degenerates as their desperation grows, along with their hunger.

Five people awaken to find that they've been kidnapped and imprisoned in a dark underground pit.  When the lights come on, they're surrounded by stone walls with the only exit being at the top of an overhead shaft.  Four barrels contain plenty of drinking water, but there's no food.  A clock mounted on the wall is designed to tick off the next thirty days one by one, which, according the attractive blonde surgeon Jordan (Lori Heuring), is roughly the amount of time a person can manage to survive without eating.  It doesn't take long for them to figure out that they are little more than human lab rats in a ghastly experiment. 

With this interesting premise established, L.D. Goffigan's script takes us through the early stages in which personalities are revealed, alliances are formed, plans are made, and escapes are attempted.  Grant (Linden Ashby) is the level-headed older guy who takes charge and immediately sets to work trying to scrape some bricks loose from the wall.  Anna (Lea Kohl) is the mousey girl who's a hair's breadth away from freaking out, and Alex (Julian Rojas) is the insecure loner who isn't far behind.  The one we start to worry about the most right off the bat, though, is Luke (Joe Egender), an antisocial hothead with violent tendencies and a ruthless will to survive.  But we know that any one of them is capable of killing since, as we discover, each of them has killed before for various reasons.

Like a slow fuse, the story takes its time setting up what's to come and letting the situation gradually worsen.  Tension mounts as we wait for someone to snap, which is heightened when one of the subjects discovers a big, sharp scalpel (just right for slicing human flesh) which has been placed in their prison.  Sure enough, hunger trumps humanity and the five captives begin to turn on each other with horrifying results, while those who refuse to surrender to savagery become entrees on the grisly bill of fare--all of which is dispassionately observed by their captor whose motives are revealed through tragic flashbacks. 

Director Steven Hentges displays a talent for keeping all of this claustrophobic interplay consistently suspenseful and involving, allowing the story to unfold in a deliberate and believable manner until it's time for the inevitable bloody horror to begin.  With only one interior location for most of the film and a limited cast, he turns what was probably a pretty small budget into a stylish film that looks good.  Performances are fine, particularly from a low-key, intense Lori Heuring as Jordan and a frighteningly manic Joe Egender, who reminds me of Giovanni Ribisi, as the unstable Luke.  Linden Ashby is ideal as Grant, the authority figure whom we hope can keep things under control, while Lea Kohl as Anna and Julian Rojas as Alex emerge as unpredictable wild cards later on.

I watched a barebones screener so I can't comment on DVD specs.  According to Fangoria.com, extras will include "director’s commentary, behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, 8 FANGORIA FRIGHTS cable special and the eight FrightFest trailers."

HUNGER is a tense, engrossing survival thriller that's all the more disturbing since these aren't zombies lurching around ravenous for human flesh, but regular people who have been driven to madness.  Who will survive, and what will be left of their humanity?  A final battle of wits between the last test subject(s) and "The Scientist" leads to a stirring conclusion which left me fully satisfied.  (BURP!)

GRIMM LOVE -- movie review by porfle

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 28, 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]


Why the hell would anyone want to be a cannibal, or a cannibal's  dinner?  I haven't a clue, but according to the fact-based GRIMM LOVE, aka "Rohtenburg" (2006), such a subculture exists and they're pretty serious about it. 

While part of the Fangoria FrightFest series, this isn't really a horror film at all, the gruesome elements shown so matter-of-factly that it de-emphasizes the horror and softens our repulsion.  In fact, at times it even feels a little like a tragic romance.  It would be different if Simon Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann) were portrayed as an Ed Gein type, preying on unwilling victims and reveling in mindless sadism, yet he's anything but.

Katie Armstrong (Keri Russell) is an American grad student in Germany gathering research on notorious cannibal Simon for her thesis.  She has an unhealthy fascination for him and his crimes which will eventually cause her a great deal of emotional turmoil as she delves deeper into the case.  Meanwhile, we're shown flashbacks of Simon's unhappy childhood as he's separated from his father and forced to live with a mentally unstable mother who will never release him from her arthritic grasp as long as she lives.  Once freed to live out his increasingly twisted desires, Oliver turns to the internet in search of willing and equally-troubled subjects to help him fulfill his one great desire--to feed upon human flesh.

He meets Simon (Thomas Huber), who, for reasons that are depicted in further flashbacks, yearns to be taken apart and devoured like the character in a Grimm's fairytale he was read as a child.  Even a loving relationship with his handsome boyfriend Felix (Marcus Lucas) can't quell this obsession.  Oliver and Simon, isolated at last from the judgements and condemnations of the normal world, revel in a brief episode of intense mutual fulfillment which they perceive as something beautiful.

The cliche' "You complete me" would be pretty appropriate here, as they reciprocate each other's impulses and fulfill each other in the most basic fundamental way imaginable.  Maybe the most disturbing thing about the film is how understated and unsensational it is, as our sympathy for Oliver and Simon almost allows us feel, as they do, that the culmination of their mutual desires is natural and even necessary.  GRIMM LOVE certainly makes no attempt to frighten us or even to establish a creepy atmosphere.  Director Martin Weisz is interested only in presenting a very dark, slowly-unfolding character study which contemplates a terrible depravity with a certain amount of empathy for its hopelessly deranged participants.

As Katie, Keri Russell is good but doesn't get to do much emoting until the end, when we find out whether or not she's really as much of a sick puppy as we fear.  It's interesting to watch how Katie's initial perceptions of Oliver are affected as the comfort zone between her imagination and stark reality is diminished.  Thomas Kretschmann (KING KONG, BLADE II) manages to convey Oliver's inner pain and yearning with barely an overt gesture or expression--his feelings are deeply repressed.  As Simon, Thomas Huber gives the most moving performance as a man still wracked with sadness, regret, and fear even as he surrenders to the terrible bliss of his heart's fatal desire.

I watched a screener so DVD specs were unavailable.   According to Fangoria.com, extras will consist of "director’s commentary, deleted scenes, 8 FANGORIA FRIGHTS cable special and the eight FrightFest trailers." 

GRIMM LOVE is, ultimately, a weird love story about two people striving to satisfy their bizarre, overwhelming physical and emotional needs by reaching out to make a symbiotic connection.  The fact that what follows is utterly horrific and revolting is shown only through the shocked reactions of a third-party observer--the film itself seems blandly sympathetic.  "He was a nice boy," an old neighbor of Oliver's tells Katie, and we're tempted to agree even after we've witnessed his ghastly crime. 

FRAGILE -- movie review by porfle

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 28, 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]


While the first half may cause drowsiness, eventually FRAGILE (2005) begins to take effect, with a generous dose of gloomy British atmosphere and enough creepy ingredients to elicit symptoms of restlessness and anxiety in most viewers.

Calista Flockhart stars as Amy Nicholls, the new night nurse at a secluded children's hospital in England.  The hospital is closing down but a train disaster has delayed the evacuation of the young patients to their newer accomodations, and Amy finds herself working in a creepy, decrepit old building whose entire second floor has been mysteriously sealed off completely.  She discovers that some of the children have suffered broken bones for no apparent reason, and one of the girls, a terminal patient named Maggie (Yasmin Murphy), blames this on a malevolent apparition she calls "the mechanical girl", who lives on the second floor.

Amy forms a close bond with Maggie and eventually becomes convinced of the ghostly presence herself.  Venturing up to that spooky second floor in search of answers, she finds evidence of a former patient named Charlotte whose nightmarish experiences in the hospital may be the source of the haunting.  But when she finally convinces her superiors to get the children out of there as soon as possible, it may be too late to save them from the terrible wrath of "the mechanical girl."

Director and co-scripter Jaume Balagueró ([REC]) uses the first half of the film to build up a fair amount of suspense and rainy-day, gothic English mood.  Several of the early scenes have the potential for your usual jump scares, but for the most part Balagueró wisely holds off on these in order to increase our tension for what's to come.  This begins to pay off when the (pretty freakin' awesome-looking) ghostly entity makes its grand entrance late in the film and fulfills our anticipation quite nicely.  I didn't find any of this to be all-out terrifying, but it's definitely very enjoyably unsettling, with a chaotic climax that mixes cool special effects with some cliffhanger excitement. 

Calista Flockhart is impressive in the lead role, enough to actually make me temporarily forget that she was "Ally McBeal."  As Maggie, Yasmin Murphy proves to be quite a talented child actress.  VAN HELSING's "Count Dracula", Richard Roxburgh, does a low-key job as Dr. Marcus, who's skeptical at first but eventually comes around and helps Amy battle the supernatural, while HARRY POTTER regular Gemma Jones is the annoying head nurse Mrs. Folder.  Another VAN HELSING alumnus, Elena Anaya, plays day nurse Helen Perez.  Colin McFarlane, who was Commissioner Loeb in BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT, is likable as Roy, a kindly orderly who befriends Amy and the children.  I don't think it's giving away too much to reveal that at least one of these characters will die a wickedly OMEN-style death before it's all over.
 

I watched a screener so DVD specs were unavailable, but according to Fangoria.com the extras will consist of "a behind-the-scenes featurette, a look at the creation of the film’s visual FX and the 8 FANGORIA FrightFest trailers."

FRAGILE isn't bash-you-over-the-head, turn-your-guts-inside-out scary, but it should suffice until something more horrible comes along.  That second floor is wonderfully creepy, and "the mechanical girl" is the stuff of nightmares.  The ending may turn some viewers off, but what the hey--it appealed to my sentimental side.

THE TOMB -- movie review by porfle

[Note: Fangoria magazine teamed up with Lightning Media and Blockbuster for a series of eight horror/thrillers which were available exclusively on DVD, VOD, and digital download Sept. 2010 under the "Fangoria FrightFest" banner. This film is part of that series.]


Horror fans expecting this entry in the Fangoria FrightFest series to satisfy their sweet tooth for sanguinary scares may be in for a rude awakening when they watch THE TOMB, aka "Ligeia" (2009).  Or perhaps "awakening" isn't quite the right term, since this pedestrian Goth-boiler is more apt to elicit an opposite reaction. 

Wes Bentley (AMERICAN BEAUTY) plays college literary professor Jonathan Merrick, whose engagement to sweetie-pie Rowena (Kaitlin Doubleday) is threatened when he falls under the spell of a beautiful dark-haired Russian student named Ligeia (Sofya Skya).  Ligeia marries the pie-eyed prof and whisks him off to her castle in the Ukraine, where he discovers that his new wife is engaged in a dastardly scheme to prolong her life by sucking the souls from her victims by means of a weird mechanical contraption.  When faithful Rowena rushes to Jonathan's aid, the terminally-ill Ligeia chooses her as the next vessel for her wicked soul and retains her hold over unsuspecting Jonathan.

Despite some nice photography and great Russian locations, THE TOMB resembles one of those obscure low-budget flicks you might've run across in a video store back in the 80s.  Direction is a little shaky at times, and the editing is loaded with those annoying speed-up/slow-down moments and other unnecessary gimmicks.  Everything makes noise, too--jarring bangs and clangs are meant to startle us while some of the whiplash camera pans sound like a jet taking off.

Even so, the film seems as though it may be going somewhere interesting early on, when we see Ligeia applying her soul-sucking device to her victims' faces and extracting their life essence into vials.  (Although what she eventually does with these is just a tad goofy.)  When we relocate to her Russian castle, however, it starts to feel as though we're trapped inside one of those old Gothic romance comics that DC used to put out.  There's a lot of business with creepy crypts, dark basements, windy parapets, and women creeping around in the dark in their nightgowns, with very little of it managing to raise any hackles or scare up as much as a shiver.  The disjointed story sometimes makes it seem as though scenes are missing, especially when major characters die and people barely notice.

Sofya Skya is interesting as a spidery seductress who resembles a young Morticia Addams, or perhaps a grown-up Wednesday.  As the blonde, purehearted yin to her evil yang, Kaitlin Doubleday ("Cavemen") is adequate.  The main problem in the acting department is a glowering Wes Bentley, who wanders blandly through the role of Jonathan as though he thinks they're still doing a read-through.  It's funny that when I saw him in WEIRDSVILLE (which I liked), he reminded me of a young Eric Roberts--one of my favorite actors--since Roberts appears here in a tiny, thankless role meant only to add his name value to the cast.  Ditto for a disinterested Michael Madsen, grunting his way sleepily to another paycheck.  Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (PEARL HARBOR) fares somewhat better as another hapless professor lured into Ligeia's evil web.

I viewed a screener so DVD specs weren't available.  According to Fangoria.com, extras will include "behind-the-scenes footage, 8 FANGORIA FRIGHTS cable special and the eight FrightFest trailers."

Wes Bentley recites "The Conquering Worm" over the closing credits, which is about as close to Edgar Allan Poe as THE TOMB ever gets.  As a horror flick it barely registers, with a story that's so rote that if it were a fill-in-the-blanks quiz we'd all get an A+.  Even the "surprise" ending is right off the rack.

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US -- movie review by porfle

(NOTE: Originally posted at Bumscorner.com.  CONTAINS SPOILERS.)

 

 Last posted on 10/3/09

 

With the passing of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy from neighborhood theater screens in the late forties, it seemed the era of the classic gothic monster movie was over. England's Hammer Films would eventually revive each of these monsters in one form or another, in brilliant color and with a shocking (for the 50s) amount of blood, violence, and sex, but before they did, Universal Studios (now Universal-International) still had one great classic monster character up their sleeves.

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) introduced eager audiences to the "Gill Man", a human-fish hybrid that had somehow been left behind by evolution, who was forced to contend with a group of scientists invading his home in an isolated tributary of the Amazon river. After apparently being shot to death, the Gill Man sank lifelessly down into the dark depths, only to return a year later in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. This time, he was captured and taken to a marine park in Florida, where more scientists tried unsuccessfully to domesticate him. But the Gill Man had no intention of joining "Flippy" the dolphin as a performing tourist attraction, so he escaped and wrought havoc along the Florida coastline until being tracked down and riddled with bullets yet again. A reprise of the previous film's ending, with the Creature drifting slowly toward the bottom of the ocean, brought another temporary end to his ongoing saga.

Finally, in 1956, U-I decided to resurrect the highly popular character for one last adventure, THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US. It begins much like the first one, with yet another group of scientists setting out to track down the Creature, now residing in the Florida Everglades (this time, however, they're better organized, much better funded and equipped, and, as JAWS' Chief Brody would no doubt have advised, have a "bigger boat"). The leader of the expedition, wealthy and brilliant yet somehow not-all-there Dr. William Barton (a delightfully googly-eyed Jeff Morrow), is all a-titter about capturing the Gill Man and turning him into an air-breather (for reasons not all that logically explained), but is equally concerned that his young trophy wife Marcia (the lovely Leigh Snowden) has begun to slip from his rigid grasp and seek romantic fulfillment elsewhere. Handsome young Dr. Thomas Morgan (Rex Reason) is along to aid in the quest to capture the Creature, and also to share the focus of Dr. Barton's irrational jealousy along with Jed Grant (Gregg Palmer), a sex-obsessed wolf hired to help with the more dangerous aspects of the expedition but who is more interested in helping Mrs. Barton get horizontal.

The first half of the story is pretty slow going unless these various character interactions pique your interest (as they do mine). One early foray into the deep by Morgan, Grant, and Mrs. Barton does feature some nice Creature footage from the previous movies as he stalks and observes them from afar, but it isn't until about midway through the film that the first really good action takes place when the men set out in a motorboat with a sonar-tracking device and are attacked. First, the Creature smashes their floodlight, leaving them in the dark until they frantically light a couple of gasoline lamps. Then he leaps onto the boat and picks up the gasoline can in order to hurl it at them, accidentally dousing himself with the flammable liquid. Grant hits him with one of the lamps and the Creature goes up like a flaming torch. He retreats back into the water, but soon passes out from his third-degree burns and is captured.

Back on the boat, the Creature is bandaged and treated for his injuries by Barton and Morgan, who discover that not only does he have a more human-like secondary layer of skin underneath the scales, but also sports lungs capable of breathing air after a little surgical assistance -- fitting perfectly with Barton's goal of turning him into a land-dweller. When the bandages come off, the Creature's new look is revealed -- most of his fins and other identifying characteristics are gone, and his eyes have mutated to a more human appearance. But he's still a hulking, frightening monster. He escapes from the infirmary aboard the boat, interrupts a tender love scene between Grant and a less-than-willing Mrs. Barton, and plunges back into the water. No longer possessing gills, however, he begins to drown until Morgan dives in with an air hose and rescues him. At this point the Creature seems to realize that resistance is futile and becomes more docile.

Back on the mainland, the Creature (now crudely-garbed in a baggy outfit made of sailcloth) is transported by truck to a house in Southern California where he is enclosed within an electrically-charged fence. It is here that he begins to observe the volatile interactions between the supposedly more civilized humans -- Dr. Barton incessantly berating Marcia for being a "tramp", Grant horndogging after Marcia, etc. At last, Dr. Barton's jealousy gets the best of him and he murders one of the other men as the Creature watches, then drags the body into the cage to divert blame from himself. That does it -- Dr. Barton's uncouth behavior has finally gotten on the Creature's last good nerve, and he angrily rips the door off the cage and goes on a frenzied rampage through the house.

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is considered by many monster fans to be the least of the three "Creature" films -- which, in fact, it probably is -- but I find it to be a worthy conclusion to the series. Not only is the conflict between the human characters interesting, but I think the idea of having the Gill Man transformed into an air-breather and placed among humans is a good one, and gives this third entry in the series a unique quality that was necessary for maintaining interest in a continuing saga that had already covered just about all the other possible story developments.

Technically, the film is just as well made as the first two, and the cast is fine, especially Jeff Morrow as the flaky Dr. Barton. Ricou Browning is once again on hand to ably portray the Creature in the underwater scenes, while the land-dwelling incarnation is handled this time by bulky character actor Don Megowan. Megowan manages to be quite expressive underneath the monster suit, using his eyes and body movements to convey the Creature's emotions ranging from anger to sadness. His final rampage through the house is the film's highlight, bringing to a fitting close not only this series but the entire Universal "classic monsters" era as a whole.

But it is at the very end of the film, when the Creature at last makes his way back to the water that is his home, that we best see him as the tragic figure he was always destined to be -- accosted by outsiders, taken forcibly from his natural environment, violated by cold science, and, finally, unable to return to the very water that had always sustained him.