My new blog Cinematic Shocks is coming very soon sometime next month. As well as obviously writing new material regularly I’m revising all of my old work and the articles will be much better reads. I will be announcing the launch on here with a link so keep your eyes peeled.
See you all soon,
Dave J. Wilson
Sadly Cinematic Horror Archive has come to an end. Since this blog was started in July of last year my goal was to turn it into a fully-fledged website. Unfortunately though, due to other stuff going on in my life that takes more priority it is impossible for me to get into a routine of time management to feasibly be able to run and maintain a full website. However, I am coming back with a new blog in which I will be concentrating on editing and publishing my own work. I will be writing in-depth analytical pieces covering horror, exploitation and other shocking cinema. So look out for Cinematic Shocks coming in the New Year.
All the reviews by other contributors to CHA will remain online and my own articles will be taken down then revised and re-published on Cinematic Shocks.
Thanks very much for reading,
Dave J. Wilson
By the mid-80s, the Nightmare on Elm Street film series had cemented its place as the number one horror franchise for fans all over the world. From its humble beginnings with the original movie in 1984, which was a low budget independent feature that barely got off the ground, its screaming success single handily created a studio – New Line Cinema, and thrust horror directly into the mainstream. Freddy Krueger, the series’ villain, started out as a terrifying monster; the child murderer with the burnt face and knives for fingers that could invade your dreams and make sure you wouldn’t wake up. The concept by creator Wes Craven was a breath of fresh air to the horror community who were looking for something different, and once the first film became a hit the fans demanded more.
If Freddy were a recording artist, his career trajectory would go something like this. First album: all spit, snarl, and bite – a surprise debut from left-field, which surprised and shocked its audience with its brutality. Second album: similar to the first outing but has a nastier raw edge. Third album: the sound and identity is established combining the old with new bolder elements. By the time Krueger came around to his fourth adventure he was a fully-fledged star that had shaken off his underground beginnings and was performing with confidence. He owned the stage, had his audience going crazy, and had them eating out of the palm of his hand. Freddy Krueger, the man who had scared people the world over was now everywhere on t-shirts, posters, lunchboxes, and just about anything else that could have an image printed on it. He was performing in rap videos and appearing on popular music channel MTV, which would itself have a shameless plug during one of Part 4’s kill sequences. This huge popularity also begged a more pressing question: Is the “Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs” still scary now that he’s so well loved? The answer of course is a resounding no, but even though his spit, snarl, and bite had long disappeared, he was as wildly entertaining like never before.
After the massive success of ‘The Dream Warriors’ in 1987, New Line immediately began work on the next chapter in their growing franchise. Impatient fans could not wait for a fourth installment and they were expecting it to top the movie before it, and the studio was more than willing to oblige. Robert Englund again would find himself in the makeup chair playing Freddy, getting ready to stalk and slaughter unsuspecting teens in grotesque ways never before-seen in any horror film. Well, not since Part 3 that is. New Line, wanting to stay true to its independent roots, hired a relative unknown to direct their next installment. Finnish director Renny Harlin, fresh from his Hollywood debut with the horror movie ‘Prison’, was brought on-board to helm ‘The Dream Master’. Being Harlin’s second only film he was more than enthusiastic to impress the studio with his outlandish ideas for the movie.
The plot of ‘The Dream Master’ follows directly on from ‘The Dream Warriors’, in which we see the surviving kids from that film, Kristin (Tuesday Knight, who took over the role from Patricia Arquette) and Joey and Kincaid (Rodney Eastman and Ken Sagoes reprising their roles), all now released from Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital and living normal teenage lives. The trio are attending Springwood High and Joey and Kincaid have moved on from past events, but not Kristin, who is unable to accept that Krueger has been vanquished; instead believing that he is lurking in the shadows waiting to strike. This paranoia soon turns into reality, and before you can laugh or cheer at a dog urinating fire, the Dream Demon is back and has his clawed hand in the stomach of Kincaid. Directly after that he’s paying a visit to Joey, and drowns and stabs the poor kid in his waterbed. With only one Elm Street kid left to kill and time running out for Kristin, Freddy Krueger has to come up with a plan to find more victims. Kristin has a gift that allows her to bring anyone into her dreams, and she passes it onto her friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) once she meets her end in a boiler room furnace. It is now up to this shy and introverted red head to provide Freddy with “fresh meat”.
From then on we are treated to a series of demented set-pieces in which Freddy uses his powers to stalk Alice and her friends, and where she must confront Krueger in one of the most spectacular finales the series has ever seen. The pace is quick and there is no time wasted as Freddy Krueger moves from victim to victim, cracking jokes and appearing in some very unusual circumstances; his claw is turned into a shark fin in one scene. In another, after Alice is sucked into a movie screen, she winds up meeting her future self at the diner where she works, and Freddy is snacking on a pizza no one would want to order. Another sequence that is one of the more head scratching has Alice running around in circles on an endless loop, as she’s trying to save a friend from a particularly grisly demise. These oddities and bizarre moments add to the loopy tone of the film; the filmmakers certainly had a “more is more” approach when going into this movie.
As the series grew so did the ways in which Krueger would dispatch his prey. Having their stomachs slashed open or swallowed by beds and spewed out in a gushing torrent was no longer enough to appease his growing fan base. The death sequences had to be bigger, badder, and had to be more surrealist eye popping than ever before. If Part 3 had Freddy Krueger offing his victims in imaginative ways then Part 4 not only ran with that particular ball but also kicked it over the fence. Audiences were now expecting creative deaths and this film would deliver them.
The 80’s horror movement had become notorious for its use of special effects; heavily employed at the time were Dream Quest Images and Screaming Mad George. Their creations and effects were used in multiple genre movies including Freddy’s previous installment, but ‘The Dream Master’ would end up being their Sistine Chapel. A skeleton reassembling itself in a grave, Freddy bursting from a waterbed (an obvious nod to the first movie), miniature meatball heads on pizzas, Krueger sucking the air out of an unfortunate girl who is asthmatic, a girl transforming into a cockroach, and the wild over the top finale with the souls of Freddy Krueger’s victims bursting from his body. ‘The Dream Master’ is a crazed showcase of effects that still hold up today and is filled to the brim with sequences that had audiences gasping and cheering. In terms of special effects ‘The Dream Warriors’ was inventive but Part 4 had taken an acid trip.
These are just the sequences that we actually got to see. During the 2010 documentary ‘Never Sleep Again’, it is revealed that one particular effect had Freddy clawing the breasts off one girl. It’s no surprise that this scene was dropped so the film could avoid the dreaded X rating, but it shows how far the filmmakers were willing to go in terms of violence and gore and giving the audience what they now expected. Fingers crossed that this scene someday sees the light of day.
Not only were the effects now a staple of the Nightmare franchise but so was Krueger’s dialogue. Depending on the death, Freddy Krueger was now expected to deliver a witty catchy one-liner right before or after the deathblow. This was nothing new as he had dialogue in his first two outings but there it was kept to a minimum. With each passing installment the clown act was amplified and purists began to scoff at the way the villain had become a dark joke, but Englund himself was instrumental in pushing Freddy in that particular direction. He was more than willing to experiment with the way Krueger talked and walked, and for the most part audiences went with it until the comedy act did what many died trying to do – it ultimately killed Freddy Krueger! Some argue that Renny Harlin was responsible for killing off the dark Freddy we saw in the earlier movies and replaced him with a comedian. This is untrue and unfair; the studio, the writers, and most of all the actor playing him all had a hand in what Krueger would become, and so did the audience. They were the ones who were turning out in droves to see Freddy Krueger acting like a wild man and cackling maniacally; the audience had inadvertently created the circus act themselves.
Reviews for ‘The Dream Master’ upon its release in August 1988 ranged from mixed to positive. As expected it became an instant number one hit taking its studio and everyone else by surprise by easily outranking the previous three installments, becoming the franchise’s top performing film; still to this day, it sits in the number one slot as the highest grossing Nightmare. After the release, Freddy mania had reached gargantuan levels; now well in the mainstream Krueger had sold out and gone commercial. Kids were buying plastic versions of his razor glove and wearing his grotesquely burnt face that you could find in show bags, staging nightmares of their very own. That’s right, kids! People now worshiped the child murderer the very same age of his original on screen victims. He was no longer the dark and brooding underground performer but a bright and in your face showman, and like most showman, fatigue would start to set in and the party would come to a halt. After his biggest success would be his biggest failure.
Rod Taylor
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
Snowtown, Adelaide, Australia; a spot on the map, a blink and you’ll miss it kind of town. The sort of place where not much happens, but on the 20th May 1999 this small sleepy village would have its reputation changed forever when local Police walked into a disused bank vault and uncovered unspeakable horrors; horrors that would change the face of Snowtown and Australia. What they found inside would soon become known as “The Bodies in the Barrels” case, where once the full details emerged would horrify an entire country, and became the basis of a startling feature film debut from filmmaker Justin Kurzel.
Australia has a bloody history of creating movies that deal with horror and the dark side of cinema. From the Ozploitation boom of the 80s with such genre films as Road Games, Razorback, and numerous sequels to The Howling, to more current fare such as Wolf Creek, Dying Breed, and The Loved Ones. Now comes along Snowtown, a confronting and harrowing portrait of innocence lost and the evil manipulation and destruction of an entire community at the hands of a true psychopath.
What makes Snowtown such a frightening piece of cinema is that everything on display is so genuine. For a moment, you actually forget you’re watching a movie and instead think you’ve sat down to take in a grotesque documentary. Filming took place under a veil of secrecy in the exact same locations where the real life murders took place, and locals were used to pad out the cast. This authenticity drags the viewer in by the throat and never lets them go. Salisbury North is an area of the city of Adelaide that you wouldn’t want to visit let alone live there. Housing project hHHell coupled with high unemployment, its suburban fringe dweller residents live their lives in front of poker machines, eating cheap take away, and watching junk TV; just letting their lives rot away. It’s in this environment in which paedophiles go about their grimy business and in which a man manages to twist and corrupt the vulnerable into vicious killers.
Jamie Vlassakis is one of these unfortunate citizens, who lives with his mother, his brother, and half-brother; who sodomizes Jamie regularly. Vlassakis’s mother is friends with a local man who she gets to babysit for her, and he abuses her three young boys. Through a local transvestite, Barry Lane, this man’s actions are uncovered, and the charismatic John Bunting soon runs him out of the neighbourhood. Bunting and his friend Robert Wagner, who happens to be in a homosexual relationship with Lane, soon take it upon themselves to rid their neighbourhood of people who they perceive to be gay or child molesters, all with scarce evidence or just none at all.
Soon enough, locals, friends, and even family members start “moving interstate”. Unknown to everyone, those who have “moved interstate” have been buried in the backyard, or are rotting in the shed in barrels filled with acid. Young Jamie, who has taken a shine to Bunting, seeing him as somewhat of a father figure (Bunting is in a relationship with his mother), is slowly drawn into his and Wagner’s murderous world, and begins to take part in the torture and deaths of several people, including Vlassakis’s own half-brother and stepbrother. It was Jamie turning Crown Witness, which finally put an end to the carnage perpetrated by Bunting, Wagner, and a third man, Mark Haydon. Haydon’s wife unfortunately became one the victims.
What these men did is nothing short of unspeakable; the methods they used to torture their 12 victims to death are sadistic and cruel, and thankfully, the audience is spared the full extent of their crimes. As the movie is shown from the point of view of Jamie, we see what he sees, so director Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant slowly and subtly feed us titbits, and it is up to us to piece together the events to work out the sheer horror of what is going on. As Vlassakis becomes more aware so do we, until we find ourselves just like him – fully immersed in the spree. This approach adopted by the filmmakers makes the film work better and the tension slowly cranks up to an unbearable level. A gore fest this is not, and what makes the events even more shocking is that they evolve in such a banal manner.
Horror fans will notice strong similarities with another movie based on a real life serial killer, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Like Henry Lee and his partner in crime, Otis, Bunting and his cohorts kill out of the need to do something; they are bored – the death of the innocent that makes these monsters feel alive. Victims are chosen while Bunting and Co are eating dinner and driving around the streets, and motives and reasons are discussed in the same way someone would talk about making a cake or deciding what film to watch. Because of the material, the number of victims and the methods used to dispatch them, Snowtown could have easily been a Saw-esque torture porn feast, but instead we get a slow burn descent into a world that thankfully most of us will never encounter.
Daniel Henshall and Lucas Pittaway are absolute revelations as John Bunting and Jamie Vlassakis respectively. The former, at first appears to be someone who you could like, the typical man next door, the guy who would stop you in the street and ask how your day is, but underneath the façade lurks a cold and calculating demon whose hatred for his fellow man knows no bounds. Henshall brings these conflicting personalities to vivid life like a true professional, much like fellow Aussie Eric Bana, who received great reviews for his portrayal of Chopper Reid, he doesn’t just play John Bunting but completely becomes the man – this startling performance truly captivates the audience. The same can be said for Pittaway, the 18 year old who failed drama at high school, but has turned in a powerhouse portrayal of an abused child who becomes the abuser. These two men deserve all the praise that comes their way for inhabiting the skin of two very different but damaged people. For many other actors, playing these people would not have been easy, but Daniel Henshall and Lucas Pittaway pull it off effortlessly.
Snowtown was recently in competition for the Critics Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival; met with rave reviews it won a special award. That’s because it’s a special film, one of the most extraordinary and disturbing movies ever to come from the land Down Under . Yes, we’ve come a long way from making throwaway Howling sequels. Snowtown has been picked up for distribution in the US and Britain, so keep your eyes open for it and take the trip if you dare.
Rod Taylor
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
William Lustig’s ‘Maniac’ is a more unconventional slasher film compared to its peers, offering a lot more weight (and no, I am not talking about Joe Spinell’s hefty frame); this is a movie that I would call a character study slasher. Yes, you read it right; character, study, and slasher are three words that would not normally fit into the same sentence, but here we have a film summed up perfectly with those very words.
Spinall plays Frank Zito, an Italian-American middle-aged overweight loner, and the landlord of a small apartment building in a nameless borough of New York. He is also an unassuming schizophrenic serial killer, who ventures out at nights killing women and scalping them. Taking the scalps back to his grotty little room, he uses them to decorate his collection of female mannequins. One new scalp = one new mannequin, sleeping with each one for several nights, and carrying out conversations with them to communicate with his deceased mother; a prostitute who physically abused him as a child, and left him orphaned when she died in a car accident. When every seven nights is up, he poses each mannequin up around his apartment and goes out to kill again. One afternoon in a park, he notices a young woman taking his picture; fashion photographer Anna. Tracking her down after getting her address from her purse, instead of killing her he begins dating her when he becomes impressed with artwork she has done; unsurprisingly, things do not work out between them.
Whereas other movies of its ilk usually focus on a lone survivor and the supporting characters of the soon to be victims, ‘Maniac’ focuses wholly on the antagonist of Frank; seen entirely through his point of view, we are thrust into the deep dark chasm of his madness. There are no real protagonists here; we have only the company on a deranged lunatic for the whole duration of the running time. The late Joe Spinall co-wrote and co-produced the film, and did a lot of primary and secondary research for the role; he spoke to psychiatrists, spent hours watching videos, and went through newspaper archives about murders in New York. What is truly fascinating about his portrayal of Frank is that there is no clear distinction between good and evil. Over the course of the movie, Spinall, aided by some solid direction from Lustig, shows different layers to the character bit by bit; his evil acts should make us hate him, but then more of his human side is revealed to draw our sympathies. He is a sad lonely soul, and what with the supplement of a morose musical score that is often touching with its emotional flute pull you in, it helps to force our empathy for Frank.
Sure, he commits atrocities with the women he brutally kills, but the mental damage received from years of abuse as a child, and his bereavement with the loss of his mother, the inflictor of his pain, has not completely washed away his humanity. We see another side to him; a sympathetic character that cries for his mother, and can even be charming and polite in the company of others with genuine sincerity, as opposed to the growling stalking murderer of women. He does not torture his victims, and when he kills them it is not sexually motivated, but out of loneliness in the want of his mother. So what we have here is both the monster and the victim all rolled into one; we the viewer are not given an easy task in what we should be feeling. The contradicting personality traits also make the character of Frank very unpredictable and even more frightening for that – we never know what he is going to do!
Opposed to forcing us to empathize with Frank, Bill Lustig paints a harsh and unforgiving New York City of 1980, creating a world that shows little empathy itself. I cannot help but think that this is where maybe John McNaugton took his inspiration for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), another slice of life character study of a deranged murderer. I wrote in my feature article – “Throughout the course of the entire film, McNaugton purposely does not include one law enforcement officer on screen. While the movie is indeed realistic, this also contributed to the presentation of a bleak harsh world a seemingly lawless one; stripping us of any comforts that we might feel from seeing a police officer, as Henry and Otis roam freely to dispatch in the most gruesome of ways, whomever they feel like.” It is very much the same here in ‘Maniac’; we see on the TV in Frank’s apartment sensationalized news reports of his gruesome crimes, but yet never once on screen do we ever see anything done about it. Not until Frank himself stops his own reign of terror with a self-inflicted wound do the police turn up at his door, after a presumable phone call from Anna.
Frank is very much the result of his own environment; the apathetic New York is the symbolization of his own isolation. Both the city and his mind are broken – he is an uncontrollable psychopathic rage of violence in a world that cannot stop him. Lustig employs punky guerrilla techniques in filmmaking with natural lighting to build a world for him that is his prison; his emotional wounds are wide open to such harsh surroundings that he is all alone in. The entire film is encapsulated in the bleakest atmosphere. There is no hope for him, even when he starts to lay the foundations of a relationship with Anna, who should help bring normality to his life; he instead falls deeper into the void of his insanity.
The violence in ‘Maniac’, some of the most powerful murder set-pieces ever committed to celluloid, emphasize upon this mean spirit nature; uncompromising in the visualization of gore, the sequence that defines this graphic destruction of the human body in the highest potency, is the Son of Sam inspired “Disco Boy Scene”. It is shot in three different camera angles in slowmo, with William Lustig using the natural lighting technique with this night scene just shot entirely in the headlights of a car. Frank takes a running jump onto the bonnet of this car with a shotgun, crouches down, aims, and blows to bits the head of a disco dancer (Savini) in the driver’s seat. It is stomach churning to look at, but at the same time, you cannot turn your head away in fascination of how sublimely executed it all is; Tom Savini being a Vietnam war veteran, drew from his own experiences in witnessing the horrific results of such wounds, and he captures that perfectly in its gruesome realism.
‘Maniac’ is far from a perfect movie though; riddled with flaws playing out all the old inconsistencies in logic that horror fans have all come to love, and groan about, when it comes to the slasher; i.e. victims about as bright as a packet of cigarettes. It is such a shame that these common negative characteristics of the sub-genre were not addressed and rectified; because it is obvious in other departments there is a great deal of intelligence here.
However, Joe Spinall’s compelling performance, and the combination of Lustig’s grimy visuals and Tom Savini’s ultra-realistic SFX work – are what make ‘Maniac’ a piece of the most shocking cinema not easy to digest, and is equally unforgettable. Disturbing and unpleasant, this is an uncomfortable viewing experience in the most potent exploitation of sub-human depravities, and an honest, emotional, and depressing analysis of the traumatized consequences of child cruelty and abandonment. Recommended.
Dave J.Wilson
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
It’s quite well known that William Shatner dabbled here and there in horror early his career, and more recently in American Psycho 2. In that early part of his career, The Devil’s Rain and this gem are the two that spring to mind. I saw this as a kid watching the Deadly Ernest Horror Show, and it really stuck with me until I managed to grab a copy on the Shout Factory label (please ignore the dodgy 23rd Media release from a few years ago). I am happy to relive this childhood memory and share it with you all.
We’re in proper open range and mountain America territory for this film; horses and cowboy boots are available for all to purchase in 1977. Two farmers, Walt Colby (Woody Strode) and his wife Birch Colby (diseased widow of Sammy Davis Jr., Altovise Davis), with big smiles let a young calf out to graze on the field. They get on with their work and so does the calf. Suddenly we have three alternative camera views from the angles of small fast things in the grass, and they’re approaching the calf. Meanwhile, William Shatner is Rack Hansen, the small valley vet. We meet him lassoing livestock, and a girl, as cowboy valley boys do. He’s called out to the calf that’s been totally paralyzed from bites. “Ain’t that a crock,” says Walt as the calf dies (This guy must be related to Scatman from my previous review of The Rats).
Across town, a mechanic comes across one hell of a big spider whilst picking webs off tyres in his storeroom. He spits on it and walks off. As he shuts the door, the spider gives chase. The Mayor is quite concerned due to Walt’s calf and the chance of quarantine, because the county fair is due soon. Meanwhile, Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) arrives in town from the university due to samples Rack sent over for testing; he’s discovered that spiders bit the calf. She catches Rack’s eyes straight away. Back at the farm as Hansen and Diane arrive, Walt and Birch’s dog is found dead (although the dog is still breathing – he he!) and they find a huge spider hill filled with maybe a thousand or so right near the farm. Diane takes a venom sample from a spider and sends it off, then kisses Dr. Hansen for a while. That night they decide to burn the hill and discover Walt’s bull coated in spiders. As the hill burns, some spiders have an escape tunnel a few feet away.
The next day as Walt is driving spiders attack him all over his face; when he’s found in his crashed truck, he’s in a cocoon. Further back in the fields there are now twenty or so spider hills – Oh ohhh! The Mayor sends up the Baron, a fella with a crop-spraying plane to wipe out the hills. The Baron draws a really stupid sketch of a spider on the side of his cockpit, which looks like a hairy skittle, then does a few circles over the fields before he finds himself covered with spiders. A high explosive crash follows.
The spider armies rampage through the valley, into town and all over. Shatner throws spiders around with a priceless expression, which reminded me of the infamous Star Trek episode, Trouble with Tribbles. He rescues his niece, who for a five or six year old wears very worrying short dresses. He takes his niece and Diane and hides out in a lodge with the Sheriff and a few others, whilst everyone else is cocooned in the invasion. The small group have to defend themselves from the mass of creepy little bastards.
Its a fun movie that actually uses real spiders, and a lot of them! The characters are plastic and predictable, but carry the film well enough. William Shatner is a competent actor as a rugged ranch cowboy vet of sorts. As I said earlier, it’s best to seek out the Shout Factory DVD; extras include features on spider training and a Shatner interview.
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
What happened to John Carpenter? He was, and still is due to his legacy, one of the greatest directors the horror genre has ever known. If you look back at his body of work, it is impossible to ignore this highly skilled filmmaker’s importance to genre cinema in general.
Carpenter has made such wonderful movies as ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ (1976), ‘Halloween’ (1978), The Fog (1980), and his last great film was 1982’s ‘The Thing’. There is also of course a delightful array of treasured little gems throughout his filmography: ‘Dark Star’ (1974), ‘Escape from New York’ (1981), ‘Christine’ (1983), ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ (1986), ‘Prince of Darkness’ (1987), ‘They Live’ (1988), and ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ (1995). With that exception of his last good movie there in ‘95, come the 90s showed a creative stagnation in the director’s output. This ranged from such mediocre efforts as ‘Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), ‘Escape from L.A.’ (1996), and ‘Vampires’ (1998), to the just down right stinky with his ill-conceived remake of ‘Village of the Damned’ (1995), and the terrible rehash of ‘Precinct 13’ in space with ‘Ghosts of Mars’ (2001).
Burnt out with his enthusiasm for filmmaking at an all-time low, due to his bad experiences with that last production, John Carpenter decided to leave Hollywood for good, and with that, it looked as if my hopes of one of my heroes ever making at least one more decent movie again had vanished. That was until Mick Garris assembled some of the finest horror auteurs of all time to contribute episodes to the horror anthology TV series, ‘Masters of Horror’. Coaxed back into the director’s chair for the show’s first season, Carpenter delivered some of his finest work in years in 2005 with ‘Cigarette Burns’; a disturbing, nightmarish, and surreal journey into the world of film buffs. He followed it up the next year with the hugely enjoyable ‘Pro-Life’. It seemed that John Carpenter’s time away had refreshed his skills, and therefore, with his passion for cinema seemingly restored, and after a string of on and off projects, the director has finally returned to the big screen this year with 2010’s much delayed ‘The Ward’. Unfortunately, It pains me to say that the news is far from good.
Fast becoming a scream queen genre vet, and one of the few bright spots in this mundane movie, the very capable and strong Amber Heard plays Kristen, who after being found by police wandering alone in the woods of Oregon in 1966, and is caught burning down a house, she is admitted to the local metal institution. She has no memory of who she is. There, placed in a group with four other troubled young women, under the care of the suspicious Dr. Stringer (a sleepy phoned in performance from Jared Harris), soon after arriving she starts seeing at night another young women wandering the corridors. With her ghastly-decomposed visage, and killing off the group one by one, and what with the sinister revelation of former patients going missing, it becomes apparent to Kristen that something supernaturally evil is going on. After failing to convince the staff, she decides to see to it herself.
From this synopsis you can already tell how hackneyed the script is; Michael and Shawn Rasmussen’s screenplay is desperate, clichéd ridden, and unfocused. It is an uneven hybrid of J-horror plot, money shot torture death scenes, and psychological thriller with a M. Night Shyamalan style twist ending. ‘The Ward’ cannot decide what sub-genre of horror it belongs to; we have a vengeful ghost story, but the kills are slasher physical, and it delves into psychological terror using all the conventions we would expect from an asylum set thriller; electro shock treatments, experimental drugs, the stock horrible head matron and orderlies, etc. There are no surprises here whatsoever! The characterization of the other girls is blander than bland as well; extremely annoying supporting characters that we could just not care less for, coming straight from the stereotypical mental health cookie-cutting machine. Only Heard stands out with her acting abilities, making the best of what she has to work with.
Only a director of John Carpenter’s calibre could make something interesting out of this lazy writing, but he does not! If you are expecting the creative skills of his very fine early work being on display here, then it is kept to the bare minimum; the director employs little innovation, instead opting to do it by the numbers – this is flat filmmaking. This does not feel like a Carpenter film for the most part, lacking most of his trademark auteur stamps, with an absence of the lovely visuals and sounds that define the director’s work. It looks and feels mostly like a TV movie of the week with largely bad cinematography (no Panavision for the first time ever!) and some very lousy lighting. The only resemblance of his glory days can be seen very early on in the film. While failing to capitalize upon the setting of the asylum, lacking the claustrophobic atmosphere of ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ and ‘Prince of Darkness’ with their similar settings, in the opening of the movie at least we do see his unique way of framing scenes that we have all come to love, with odd angles used for these interior shots. The musical score, although not John Carpenter’s himself, Mark Killian does manage to replicate the composer’s style with bombastic jolts and low bass beats.
John Carpenter does manage to pull off some mildly effective jumps scares, while all along building some suspenseful tension, but the murder set-pieces are executed with rhythm-less execution. Although, Howard Berger and Greg Nictotero do provide some descent gore effects, and the special make-up of the ghost girl killer is suitably hideous. The Shyamalan esquire twist feels very forced, revealed so clumsily with heavy-handed exposition aided by a montage of flashbacks, spelling it out for us as if were a load of idiots for not getting it throughout the already very linear narrative; rather than shocking you it will leave you very annoyed. An engaging film this is not.
“An old school horror movie, made by an old school director”, so said Carpenter on ‘The Ward’. Well, I would not have a problem with that, John, if it were made with the enthusiasm and passion that seemed to have returned to this old school director with your ‘Masters of Horror’ outings, instead of knocking out some hack job between sessions of watching NBA in your on-set trailer. Not only that, but thanks to the shoddy script, the film applies too much modern Asian ghost like elements, slasher and so called “torture porn” like scenes of gory violence, and fails hard by insulting the audience’s intelligence with the psychological aspects – to be just an “old school horror movie”.
So there you have it, yet another new severely disappointing offering from the much-loved director of such great films early in his career. My only hope is that this was just John Carpenter’s way of getting his foot back into Hollywood’s door, and that his next project will be the real deal – written by himself, directed with the creative flair of his first fifteen years heyday, and featuring one of his own very unique musical scores. It is just so tragically sad to see one of the all-time greats of genre cinema got to waste like this, and he deserves to do much better with his considerably huge talents as a writer, director, and composer. ‘The Ward’ (2010) is just boring and uninspired tripe, and not even passable entertainment for guilty pleasure kicks – no replay value at all!. Best avoided.
Dave J. Wilson
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
A serial killer murders the beautiful fiancée of a secret agent; said secret agent then tracks down the serial killer. A simple formulaic premise there that is no different from a huge number of Hollywood outings into crime thriller land. However, Korean feature Ji-woon Kim’s ‘I Saw the Devil’, takes this overdone routine idea and turns it into a unique portrayal of an obsessive pursuit for revenge.
Bloody, brutal, stark, and uncompromising in its scenes of torture, if this extreme violence was handled by a lesser director it could have easily been lumped in with the media labeled so called horror sub-genre of “torture porn”, but Kim also manages to make a beautifully filmed, emotionally rewarding, narratively well-structured movie that depicts the sadness caused by such violence. It features great turns from the leads with Lee Byung-hun as secret agent Soo-hyun, and especially Choi Min-sik as Kyung-chul, delivering one of the most memorable edgy screen villain performances ever, as a serial killer who just does not give a fuck! What with some truly astonishing stand out action set-pieces as well, the director completely has our undivided attention in a totally engaging film.
The hunter becomes the hunted as a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, as Soo-hyun (Byung-hun) makes a promise to his departed true love of returning the pain to her killer 1000 times more. Taking two weeks off work and disconnecting himself emotionally, not allowing himself to grieve for his loss until the job done; he begins a manhunt for the murderer, narrowing it down to four suspects. After beating the first two senseless, he investigates Kyung-chul (Min-sik) who we actually see commit the callous and savage crime in the opening scene. Discovering his lover’s engagement ring in Kyung-chi’s filthy den of murder, Soo-hyun exacts his cold and calculated revenge, becoming every bit the monster himself as he beats, tortures, and releases Kyung repeatedly; making him swallow a transmitter (some kind of special GPS microphone capsule) while unconscious from the first attack, so he can trace his every move. What price will Soo-hyun pay for the dangerous games he plays with Kyung-chul?
The first act is bursting with emotion. We see the happiness of Soo-hyun and his fiancée Joo-yun (Oh San-ha) as two people very much in love, only for it to be taken away in the most inhumanely evil way possible straight after. Joo-yun pleads for her life (and somebody else’s), only for it to fall on the deaf ears of Kyung- chul, giving a disturbingly abrupt non-verbal answer. The aftermath of her death shows us the sadness of the loved ones left behind by such a violent act, with the discovery of her body witnessed by Soo-hyun and her father Jang (Jeon Kuk-hwan), a retired police detective. The scenes after between the two and Joo-yun’s sister, Se-yun (Kim Yun-seo), handled with immense pathos towards the characters with strong performances of the grieving enhancing the melancholy, makes for very moving viewing.
Going into the revenge part of the movie, a line begins to blur between out protagonist and the antagonist. It becomes hard to determine who is more insane as the violence of Soo-hyun’s revenge escalates – he is an unstoppable force of vengeance inflicting incredible physical pain upon the sub-human Kyung-chul, an unmovable object of evil with a total lack of humanity who laughs in the face of Soo-hyun, and taunts him as he takes his punishments. We also come to question Soo-hyun’s carelessness of his consumed rage of revenge by letting go Kyung-chul over and over again, and putting other innocent people in danger of this maniac. In the movie’s title, ‘I Saw the Devil’, lays an ambiguous question.
The material is treated very seriously, but amongst the grimness of its horrifying subject matter there is a darker than dark humour to the proceedings. Emphasis on this is brought forth with Choi Min-sik’s hilarious reactions to Lee Byung-hun’s character’s constant turning up and beating him to a pulp, as he is about to dish out some evil doings upon his victims. The tone even shifts quite significantly during the comedic scenes between Kyung-chul and his cannibal friend Tae-joo and his girlfriend, which offers much needed comic relief until the tone swings right back around into disturbing darkness again, when Kyung-chul wises up to Soo-hyun’s game. Park Hoon-jung’s tight script, Ji-woon Kim’s inspired direction, and Lee Mo-gae’s lush cinematography keep a consistent complete control over the overall look and feel, the film never once feeling uneven. This movie is also so intriguing in that it does not play out like a traditional law enforcement officer hunts serial killer story; here they meet very early on, and throughout the course of the film it is played out like a grudge match with two powerhouse performances making it all irresistibly engrossing.
I stated in the conclusion of my feature article, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), and the Genesis and Execution of Evil, that “Along with ‘Manhunter’ (1986), ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991), ‘Seven’ (1995), and ‘American Psycho’ (2000), ‘Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’ is one of the definitive serial killer masterpieces.” Well, Ji-woon Kim’s ‘I Saw the Devil’ (2010) can now strongly stand head and shoulders amongst all of these very fine pieces of filmmaking. As well as being now one of the quintessential serial killer epics, it also falls into the revenge category as being one of the very best of this kind as well. It stands up straight and proud with such non-horror greats as ‘Get Carter’ (1971), ‘High Plains Drifter’ (1973), ‘Death Wish’ (1974), ‘Rolling Thunder’ (1977), ‘Mad Max (1979), ‘The Crow’ (1994), ‘Kill Bill’ (2003 & 2004), ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ (2004), Park Chan-wook’s ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’: ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’ (2002), ‘Oldboy’ (2003), and ‘Sympathy for Lady Vengeance’ (2005), etc.
Unquestionably one of the best movies of last year, this is highly recommended viewing. ‘I Saw the Devil’ (2010) is testament to how celluloid can achieve high art in the right creative hands.
Dave J. Wilson
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is a screamer of a winning goal in the grindhouse revival that was innovated by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino in the 2007 double feature ‘Grindhouse’. Their respective films in that truly unique cinematic experience, with the best zombie offering since Zack Snyder’s 2004 redux of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ with ‘Planet Terror’, and the semi-successful thriller ‘Death Proof’ (Tarantino’s worst movie to date, but still well worth a look) were each bookended by a very convincing set of faux trailers. Directed by numerous fresh talented filmmakers catering for different genres, made like those two features in the B movie style of exploitation films shown in the grindhouse theatres of yesterday year – they are now being made into full-length features themselves.
First last year, it was the also directed Rodriquez trailer ‘Machete’ that got the full feature treatment. Co-directed by himself with long time collaborating editor Ethan Maniquis, and although it is an overall enjoyably cartoonish entertaining time, this action thriller’s unevenness in the directing styles of its two different directors made for awkward pacing. There was also a distinct lack of authenticity in terms of it having a genuine B movie exploitation look and feel – a far too polished production to achieve that, despite using some of the actual footage from the original ‘Grindhouse’ trailer. However, at last we have the much-anticipated ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’, which started life by its director Jason Eisener, writer John Davies, and co-producer Rob Cotterill, winning Robert Rodriquez’s international grindhouse trailers contest at the South by Southwest festival, with the original fake trailer its based upon. Featured with ‘Grindhouse’ in selected theatres mostly in Canada, it proved to be one of the most popular of the false trailers with audiences – see it here.
I will not bother with a synopsis; if you want to read one go to Creepy Crawler’s negative review here. As the now full-length feature’s tagline states “DELIVERING JUSTICE ONE SHELL AT A TIME”, ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ certainly lives up to that promise and does not disappoint. It delivers an unapologetically over the top intentional cheesefest, in homage to a kind of filmmaking that produced trash purely for cheap thrills. Its tongue firmly in cheek nudge nudge wink wink approach distracts us in ever taking seriously the immense amount of jaw dropping goretastic bloody displays, which is at a constant non-stop rate. The humorous Troma like spin on the gratuitous violence is what lends to the film’s success; being just one of the most shamelessly entertaining times in pure unadulterated blood soaked mayhem that I have seen in absolutely ages.
One of Creepy’s complaints was that it just could not copy the original grindhouse movies with its superior production values; pointing out that those old exploitation flicks were limited to showcase a small to modest amount of showstoppers in terms of eye popping violence, and between those set-pieces were injections of atmosphere. While I agree that this was the case with their measly budgets, ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ just has the privilege of having a $3 million spending spree to amp up the more blood there is the better sequences that those filmmakers back in the day wish they had, and more the power to Eisener for that. He is able to spray the claret very predominately over the lean 86 minutes running time, and it captures perfectly the other stylistic traits that made those exploitative endeavours get such solid cult followings over the years. As well as the violence, it is all here – sex entailing the mistreatment of women, far out bizarre subject matter incorporated in an equally loopy plot, whacky characters (wait until you get a load of The Plague, which just screams out spin off!), etc.
As well as recreating the grindhouse elements, Jason Eisener shows off some other inspired direction; with very fine pacing throughout, he also impressively pulls off a John Carpenter by making the small locations of “Fuck Town” bigger than what they actually are, all the while employing a palette that is dripping with colours. This is a directorial talent to watch. The performances are very strong all round. Rutger Hauer is at his coolest best here in the title role, echoing his heyday of the ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘The Hitcher’ era. Embittered, fearless, grizzled, moody, relatable in his quest for justice that draws our sympathies, he plays the part of the stranger riding into town and clearing up the scum off the streets with much glee; he is really loving this role. A part of old school vigilante movies in using this western set-up, and Hauer even arrives into town to a spaghetti western style theme, and as Creepy Crawler said it incorporates samples of the main ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ title music.
Other notable performances are Molly Dunsworth as the prostitute with a heart, Abby, and Brian Downey as the movie’s villain The Drake; a wonderfully campy bat shit crazy turn. As you can probably tell from the title of this article with the cheeky play on one of the film’s quotes, there is an array of effortlessly quotable lines of OTT dialogue. “Put the knife away, kid… or I’ll use it to cut welfare checks from your rotten skin!”, “I’m gonna sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight!”, and “You and me are goin’ on a car-ride to hell… and you’re riding shotgun!” – are just a few of the golden greats.
I’m leaving this review spoilers free, because who am I to ruin such a good time; ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is destined to become one of those home video favourites that will forever garner repeated viewings with such ease, whether you are alone or with a group of friends. This is a masterpiece of fun beer and pizza flicks, and is undoubtedly the best of the new wave of grindhouse movies to date – an epic piece of insane exploitative entertainment.
Dave J. Wilson
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
A friend of mine gave me a copy of this the other day; I’ve been looking forward to seeing it, having followed its infamous Machete style genesis from the Grindhouse double bill as a jokey trailer, to a full blown film starring 80s legend Rutger Hauer. I’ve always admired Hauer for his abilities ever since watching such movies as Flesh and Blood, The Hitcher, and Wanted Dead or Alive. As for Hobo with a Shotgun, he gives his performance a feel of raw power, like something slowly building to explode. As for the film itself, well…
What is it about the old seventies and early eighties exploitation movies that are so different you cannot copy those flicks today? Is it the low budget, which restricted the effects to only a handful of showstoppers, and instead used a lot of atmosphere to fill in the time? Perhaps it was the cheeky feel of someone out to make money, but at the same time delivered a quality film with some jumps and sick scenes. Maybe it could be an era that simply cannot be duplicated unless by a master craftsman; Quentin Tarantino came close with Death Proof, and no, I’m not a big fan of his, but I saw where he aimed for with the movie – keep the shocks spaced apart for maximum effect.
So, what happed to Hobo with a Shotgun? Rutger Hauer rides into town on the back of a train to a nice theme that has touches of the Cannibal Holocaust main title music, and expects to go about his usual day of surviving as a homeless man. Instead, he’s greeted by a guy with a camera filming fights, in an idea inspired by the Bumfights DVDs – some guy is being beaten half to death for a few dollars. In the next street, Hauer watches in horror as the lead bad guy The Drake, who is the white suited town gangster, and his sons remove the head of their brother/uncle with a fountain of crimson. Next he sees… hold up, stop. This is the problem. Flashy editing aside, there’s too much and it doesn’t slow up. It has a Toxic Avenger style OTT humour that works for Troma, and, say, Bad Taste, but this is done with no spirit. This is gore violence with no style. Maybe I’m getting old, but when I watch tons of gore I like to have as well an interesting story and interesting characters.
Rutger Hauer meets Abbie (Molly Dunsworth), the prostitute he saves from The Drake’s sons, but is sliced up in the process whilst in the local police station with the help of a corrupt cop. She cleans him up and gives him a bed. There’s a brief bit of character building as he tells her about bears – obviously drawing comparison to himself: solitary has its own circle, if you step into the circle it’ll rip your face off. Back on the street, he sees fights, shots, and a paedophile driving past in a car as a little kid screams in the backseat; the paedo laughs like a panto villain. Hauer has had his eyes on a lawnmower in a pawnbroker shop since he hit town, so he can to start up his own business. Seeing its $49.99, he goes to the kid with the camera and eats broken glass for money… I’m not making this up. In the pawnbrokers as he’s about to buy the lawnmower, there’s a robbery – the thieves put a gun to a baby’s head, etc. Hauer sees a shotgun for the same price, wavers on his change of plans emotionally, and then blows the hell out of the three robbers in a hail of gore. He buys the gun and heads out to hunt any criminal he finds, including the evil The Drake and his sadistic sons.
The film has a great intro with a nice old school title sequence and music while we worship Rutger Hauer as he arrives into town. Then the non-stop gory violence and the cartoon characters come into it. If this was the idea of the film, it didn’t pay off well; the spirit of old exploitation movies does live on… but just not in this.
out of
©2010 – 2011 Cinematic Horror Archive, Dave J. Wilson – All work is the property of the credited author(s) and may not be reprinted or reproduced elsewhere without permission.
