Suspiria (2018)

Suspiria (2018)

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloe Gretz Moretz, Jessica Harper 

I remember back when there were such a thing as video clubs, I saw the VHS box art for Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977). I thought the art was very weird and artsy for a horror film, but what always caught my attention was the films catchphrase on the box which read “the only thing more terrifying then the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92”. I always wondered if it was actually that scary. Of course, years later when I started to explore Italian horror films, I discovered that Argento’s Suspiria was one of horror cinemas best supernatural thrillers. A beautifully shot piece of atmospheric, supernatural filmmaking. And indeed, it was a spooky tale about witchcraft with an intense ending. But nothing could prepare me for Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Argento’s film! I mean, remakes by norm already carry a certain amount of hatred towards them, even before they are released, people come into theaters already hating the film. Me, I’m one of those that gives remakes a chance, because there’s that off chance that it might be one of the good ones. And who knows, maybe it might even be better than the original. The buzz around this one was so good, almost too good. So, how was this remake of Suspiria? Did it live up the hype?

Jessica Harper in a scene from the original Suspiria (1977)

 For those who haven’t seen the original Suspiria, this is a tale of witchcraft and dancing. You see, the story is all about this young American dance student who ends up following her dreams of going to a dance school in Berlin. When she gets there, she gets more then she bargained for when she realizes she’s not just in any dance school! 

The thing about Argento’s Suspiria is that it isn’t just a horror film, to me it’s an exercise in gloomy atmosphere and a work of art. The color palette alone, filled with Argento’s trademark primary colors, is a beauty to behold. On top of that, it’s surreal, it’s hard to define. Sometimes you don’t know exactly what you are seeing, but you know that you feel something and that something is freaking you out. My worry was, how was this remake going to top that? Was it going to duplicate Argento’s film or take a road all its own? Well, I’m happy to inform that it took a road all its own and I have to commend director Luca Guadagnino on this because he really did a great job of doing something different, yet familiar.

Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton

Yes we get the same basic premise, the giant, brooding dance school in the middle of the the never ending rain. Yes it’s run by witches…but there’s a bit more depth to it, there’s a bit of the socio-political background to the story. There’s a revolution going on in Berlin in the background and some of the dancers are involved. The color palette is entirely different, instead of being drowned in Argento’s vibrant primary colors, the film seems devoid of color and life, so that when there is color it pops out! It adds to the dreary vibe the film carries  throughout its entire running time. I loved that sustained note of dreariness. The overall tone is way more horrifying and serious. Where the first film felt sort of like a fairy tale amongst immature dance students behaving like little girls, here we get this deadly serious dance school where you are lucky to get admitted into. While Argento’s feels like a colorful, feverish dream, this one feels dreadful, sad and deadly serious. So in terms of tone, we get a very different film. 

 Yet it retains a lot of what works from Argento’s version. For example, the surrealism. Though for me it felt way more intense on this new version. The dreams and nightmares are way more horrifying. The death’s that occur in the film are more intertwined with the themes of the film: the dance and the witchcraft. Somehow Guadagnino managed to mix witchcraft with dancing and it works amazingly well, especially in one magnificently graphic death scene. And speaking of the graphic nature of this film, well, it’s really out there. I mean, the film is slow paced, a slow burner for sure so be ready for that. But when it decides to turn up the fire, get ready because it turns up the fire to hellish temperatures! And by hellish I mean the fiery pits of hell itself! The gore on this movie is really magnificent, spectacular. 

 And just like its 1977 counterpart, this new Suspiria holds no stops in banging out an amazing ending! Seriously speaking my friends, this films ending will blow you away. I’m not going to go into any details so that you can experience all the horror for yourselves. And yes, I said horror, not jump scares/teeny bopper horror, but true horror. The kind that makes full grown adults cringe in disgust and terror, the kind that's bizarre, just plain bizarre. The kind of bizarre that oozes off of the screen with intense and pure evil! I swear I could feel the evil pouring out of the screen. It almost feels wrong to watch! But you won’t be able to stop watching. Because in a weird twisted way, it is also beautiful, as the film also addresses. There is something meta about the dialog in the film, I felt it was also talking about art, filmmaking and the nature of horror. If anybody else felt that, please comment on it below.  There’s beauty in all this horror! So there you go my friends. My review for Suspiria. The film that Quentin Tarantino saw and personally congratulated the director after watching. I mean, there’s a lot of naked feet on this movie so I get that. Plus it’s divided into chapters just like a Tarantino film. But aside from all the Tarantino love this movie got, this movie is a good example of what a great, epic horror film should be like. It should leave us scared and disturbed long after we leave the movie theater. 

Rating: 5 out of 5 

The Witch (2015)

The Witch (2015)

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Anya Taylor Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw

The quintessential ‘good horror film’ is a diamond in the rough, hard to find, elusive, so when it comes across your path you thank the cinematic gods for it; you cherish it like the delicacy that it is. The Witch is such a film, a true blue fantastic horror film that plays with your notions of religiosity and the supernatural. It takes place during the sixteenth century in New England, a place and time in which being a witch meant you’d get either tortured or hanged, most of the time both.

 On a personal note, it’s interesting that I saw The Witch days after taking a college class on the late works of William Shakespeare. On said class I wrote an essay on the supernatural elements in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this essay, I wondered if Macbeth, the power hungry king, had actually spoken to witches and seen actual ghosts and apparitions, or if it was all just part of a head trip in his guilt ridden mind. I concluded that it was a little bit of both. The Witch is similar to Macbeth in that sense; it keeps you on a loop about the witches. Are they real? Are the village folks simply bible crazy? Are they simply religious fanatics willing to take their beliefs to the extremes? Or are witches really snatching up babies for sacrificial purposes?

On The Witch we meet a family of Puritans who are psychologically traumatized by the fact that their baby has disappeared. I mean, literally, the baby was there one moment and the next it wasn’t, vanished into thin air. To make matters worse, the baby disappeared while under the care of the adopted daughter of the family, a girl whom they’ve always suspected of being a witch. But is she? Are they just looking for a scapegoat to blame? As you can see, there are always two possibilities to everything in The Witch; there’s that ambiguity to the story which I loved. You’re never really sure where to stand, which in my opinion makes the film incredibly effective.

Artistically speaking the film is a wonder to behold, the art direction, the wardrobe, the dialog; it all evokes its era to perfection. For starters, the film was mostly shot with natural lighting, this means, little to no artificial light was used during the shoot, which gives the film an amazing look. Interiors were lit with candles; exteriors were lit by the sunlight.  Few directors have pulled this off effectively because it’s a difficult way to shoot a film, a lot can go wrong; you risk images ending up grainy and losing definition. Yet on The Witch, this natural lighting goes so well with the era they are depicting, an era where there was no electricity. Last time I checked, Stanley Kubrick was the last one to pull this off perfectly in Barry Lyndon (1975). So The Witch has a great spooky dark look to it. Another added bonus that adds authenticity to the film is that the dialog rings true. It doesn’t feel out of time or place; this is due to the fact that they used real life accounts of “witchcraft” to write the screenplay. This is why the dialog sounds like something straight out of Shakespeare.

They also got the behavior of these characters right. You feel the backwards mentality of these Puritan Christians. You believe they truly think evil lies within the woods. You feel the paranoia, you feel that genuine fear of God and the Devil and you feel how dangerous it all is. How once you got blamed for possibly being a witch meant you were going to go down even if you weren’t, because now doubt had been planted. The film shows how dangerous religion and hive like mentality can be. How superstition can turn its back on you and bite you in the ass in a heartbeat!  I mean, back then they used witchcraft as an excuse to kill a person. Let’s say you were a rebellious woman who had an opinion, suddenly they’d blame you for witchcraft and boom, days later you’d be hanging from the ugly end of the rope. A lot of innocent women died this way. So you get that vibe with this film, that when the masses turn on you, you’re done for. For more films dealing with witchcraft watch The Crucible (1996), Witchfinder General (1968) or Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922), the last one being an exploration of the origins of witchcraft.

I have to hand it to director Robert Eggers for doing his homework and making sure every little detail is faithful to the time period, the 1600's. I mean, so many things worked in favor of this film, right down to shooting in a remote, real location where these actors could cut loose, that was genius. This isn’t some set in a green room, the exteriors were shot a real location, with real freaking trees and mountains and wind, that’s a plus for me in this day and age of computer generated everything’s. The isolated location lends itself to making everything look evil somehow, you know those films that make even nature and animals look evil somehow? Films like Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (2009)? Well, that's what they achieved with The Witch, where even aninals look like they could have evil within them, more so if they are black goats. And speaking of solid performances, that’s what you get all around. Special shout out to Harvey Scrimshaw, the child actor who portrayed the character called ‘Caleb’, he really knocks it out of the park with his performance. He portrayed a child whose psyche has been damaged by religion and its fears. And while I’m at it, kudos to first time director Robert Eggers who made this fine film on his first outing. Here’s hoping this wasn’t just some fluke and he ends up making more films as good as this one.

Rating: 5 out of 5  

Devils Due (2014)

Title: Devils Due (2014)

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillet

Stars: Allison Miller, Zach Gilford

I thought it was kind of hilarious that just before watching Devils Due, they played the trailer for the new Jesus-centric fantasy film called Son of God (2014) because here I was about to watch a film about the anti-Christ! Suddenly I felt bombarded by a bunch of Christian propaganda! An overdose of direct and indirect cinematic indoctrination!  And yes, if you ask me, that is how I see a lot of these Christian based horror movies, as a way to spread the fear instilled by religion. But whatever, I enjoy a good horror movie, be it based on Christian mythology or not. It kind of works the same way for me with films like The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Noah (2014), I’ll watch them even though I’m not a Christian because they are entertaining; at the end of the day, all that matters to me is if it’s a good movie or not. So, was Devils Due a good movie?

Devils Due tells the tale of a newlywed couple that decides to go to Santo Domingo for their honeymoon.  The husband is the kind of guy who likes to film every waking moment of his life, his wife tolerates it, so he carries the camera all throughout the film. So anyhow, as they visit a couple of tourist attractions in the island, they suddenly end up in a shady part of town, lost in the middle of the night in the lonely streets of Santo Domingo; lucky for them a kind taxi driver rescues them! Not only that, he offers to take them to a fun part of town, which he does. They end up in a seedy bar getting all drunk! When they get back home from their vacations, they suddenly realize that they are going to have a baby! But strange things begin to occur and it isn’t long before the mother starts feeling like there’s something wrong with her pregnancy, like satanic wrong. Is she pregnant with Satan’s child or what?

Found footage films are simply another way of telling a story, so I don’t bitch and moan about them like a lot of people do; these films are simply a spawn of the digital age we live in, the video age. Actually, by now these types of films are pretty common place; they aren't going away. Hollywood loves them because they are cheap to make and audiences love them because they can identify with the style, because it looks like they could’ve shot the movie themselves.  Personally, I dig them because they have an immediacy to them; but I do have to say that whichever filmmaker chooses to make his or her film in this style has a challenge because these films have been done to death. When making a found footage film, the filmmaker has to come up with innovative ways to keep our interest. Devils Due unfortunately has very little in the way of originality.

Now this is not to say that it’s a bad movie, I actually dug the movie a whole lot. Technically speaking the movie is good, the way it was shot and the whole found footage thing works great because I felt so much closer to the crazy Satanists. And speaking of Satanists, this movie did a very smart thing with its depiction of them. It kept them in the shadows! Which of course made them a heck of a lot scarier; if there’s one thing I hate about movies dealing with Satanists is how silly they always appear. Not on Devils Due; on this movie they creeped me the hell out! Another positive aspect of the film is that the performances were solid; both of the main characters were portrayed convincingly by Allison Miller and Zach Gilford; so kudos to all the actors involved in keeping this one genuine and decidedly credible.

Where the film comes down a couple of notches is in the originality department. For a seasoned movie buff like myself, this film plays out like a remake of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Omen (1976) mixed in with a little Paranormal Activity (2007) to keep things contemporary. The real problem is that the film has so many clichés that you can practically predict certain moments and even certain scares. It’s not a good thing when you know what’s going to happen in a horror movie, or when you can predict a shot. And still, I found myself enjoying the film. I guess they found an interesting way to tell us a story we’ve already seen a thousand times before. If I was to mention one more movie that this film is similar to it would have to be The Last Exorcism (2010), which I dug as well. But fear not, even with the similarities it shares with all these other movies, Devils Due does have a couple of original moments in there to keep your interest. The last few minutes were very gripping. In all honesty, I believe that these types of horror films are worn out; the whole supernatural/Satanist shenanigans should be given a rest for a while! There’s been an overdose of these lately! I could formulate a whole list of films that are the same as Devils Due. So yeah, this theme has been played out and until something new and refreshing can be thought up, I suggest Hollywood to leave these alone for a while. But of course, since these movies always make their money back because they are so cheap to make, I guess we’ll keep on seeing them until you, the audience says no more. So what’ll it be people?  

Rating: 3 out of 5 

      

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Title: The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Director: Alan Gibson

Cast: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Coles, Joanna Lumley

Dracula A.D. 1972 is universally considered to be the worst of the Hammer Dracula films, it took Dracula out of the gothic setting and put him right smack in the middle of 70’s London hipster scene. I guess it was a way for Hammer Films to attempt to connect with a younger crowd, after all, it was mostly the kids who went to see these movies and they couldn’t risk losing a connection with that market! As a result, we have these long scenes of young dudes and dudettes partying and grooving to the tunes of some hippy rock band as Dracula is being resurrected by a young dude interested in the black arts. For me it didn’t work because honestly, what I enjoyed about those old Hammer Dracula’s was the gothic setting, I liked the castles, the full moons, the cemeteries; it’s what made those films special for me. Taking Christopher Lee’s Dracula out of that and bringing him to swinging 70’s London felt like suddenly Dracula was in a fish out of water story? And that’s not what Dracula’s about! So anyways, I hated that film, it was directed by a guy called Alan Gibson, a director whose career was mostly centered on directing television. So here’s a guy who made one of the worst of the Hammer Dracula’s and what does Hammer do? They let him direct the next Dracula film as well! It’s not surprising that the end result was a less than stellar film.

On The Satanic Rites of Dracula the Count has become the head honcho of a major corporation, he runs things from this shadowy office at the top floor of his office building.  Apparently Dracula has grown tired of eternity and is looking for a way to end it all, in other words, on this film Dracula wants to hang his cape and die! But he doesn’t just want to die, he wants to take all of humanity with him, so he enlists the help of some of his followers (who also happen to be Satanists) in order to create a deadly plague that will eradicate all of humanity by way of a deadly flesh eating virus! It’s up to Van Helsing and a couple of detectives to stop Dracula’s plans!  

The thing about this Dracula movie is that it is kind of uneven in tone. For example, at times it feels like a James Bond movie, at times it feels like a satanic film and at times it goes into sci-fi territory and then at some point it attempts to turn into one of the old Hammer Dracula films, so it’s kind of like a mish-mash of genres that never quite works in my book. I will elaborate. On this movie, Dracula’s followers are a group of Satanists who kidnap people in order to sacrifice them to Satan, so part of the film focuses on their little operation, you kind of get the idea that they are here to resurrect Dracula, but it’s not even about that. Anyways, their operation hasn’t passed unnoticed to local authorities who have sent secret agents in order to infiltrate the satanic cult and find a way to stop their evil schemes. Now here’s where the James Bond type of thing comes into play! The secret agents use micro films and gadgets in order to record the secret meetings that these cultists perform! Then the film takes a turn towards sc-fi/post apocalyptic territory with the deadly plague plot line, and the idea that this plague could possibly destroy all of humanity. Of course, we never actually see the plague take over the world or anything, but the idea is there, the virus is set and ready to go on the petri dish! Where the film completely fails in my book is that it doesn’t even feel like a Dracula film at all! It might as well have been a film about the satanic cult and that’s it. Dracula feels like he was shoehorned into the plot, which is sad because what we want to see is a Dracula film, not a James Bond wanna be.

And here’s the most disappointing thing about this movie, we hardly ever see Dracula on this one! Now this doesn’t surprise me at all because Lee always did a lot of these Dracula movies without any real interest in doing them. Actually, he was quoted as saying that he thought this particular Dracula film was unnecessary. “I am doing it under protest!” he said, Lee also used words like pointless, fatuous and absurd to describe this particular film and I have to say I agree. This is probably the reason why we don’t see much of Lee during the film. Actually, the film is close to hitting the 50 minute mark and still no Dracula! Can you imagine seeing an Indiana Jones film with no Indiana Jones after 50 minutes into the movie? Exactly. Instead we are treated to Satanists performing rituals involving naked girls and killing roosters. The film also centers a lot of its time on the Satanists escaping snooping cops.  The one moment where you feel you’re finally in one of those old Hammer Dracula movies is when the cops stumble upon a dungeon filled with a couple of Dracula’s vampire brides, but if it wasn’t for that, you’d think you were in some other movie. I also liked some of the visuals they pulled off during Dracula’s demise that I really liked, they did this thing where Dracula gets entangled in thorns which was pretty cool, Lee’s face on those scenes has all the evil and all the rage that should have been present on more of the film, not just the last 15 minutes!

Thank god we do get some Van Helsing! And this movie got me to thinking about what an important element Peter Cushing was in these movies, he was in them a heck of a lot more than Lee himself. Cushing was one of the most vital components of the Hammer Dracula formula. Gotta say, even though this isn’t the best of the Hammer Dracula’s, Peter Cushing gave it his all. By the way, this was the last time that Lee and Cushing worked together on a Hammer Dracula film, so it’s notable for that alone. This is the last time you get to see Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing vs. Christopher Lee’s Dracula, after this one, Cushing would go up against Dracula again one more time in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), a film that brought together the worlds of Shaw Bros. Kung Fu movies with Hammer Films Dracula universe, it’s one of the more offbeat Hammer films, but also, one of the most fun, highly recommend checking that one out! So anyhow, The Satanic Rites of Dracula doesn’t hold anything special to it, save for it being the last Cushing/Lee collaboration in the Hammer Dracula films.

Rating: 2 out of 5 

  

The Lords of Salem (2013)

Title: The Lords of Salem (2013)

Writer/Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Sherri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, Maria Conchita Alonso, Meg Foster

From the very beginning, when I first saw House of a 1000 Corpses (2003), I always thought that Rob Zombie was a horror film director with lots of potential. House of a 1000 Corpses wasn’t a perfect film, but there was something there that screamed "this guy is promising". What gives Zombie the edge that other horror directors don’t have is that he knows horror inside and out; he’s obviously seen thousands of horror films and genuinely loves the genre.  Add to this the fact that he’s directed many of his own music videos and you’ve got a guy with the knowledge and understanding of the horror genre as well as the necessary experience behind the camera to make a decent horror film. He took a stab at making commercially viable horror films with his remake of John Carpenter’s Halloween (2007) and followed that one with his own thing called Halloween II (2009), but according to Rob Zombie himself, making these two films wasn’t exactly the happiest of experiences. Working under the yoke of oppressive movie producers just isn’t Zombie’s style! He needs to let those creative juices run wild and free! And so, thanks to Oren Peli and his Haunted Films label well, Rob Zombie was given carte blanche to do a movie his way, and so here we finally have The Lords of Salem, a true blue Rob Zombie horror film. How was it?

The Lords of Salem revolves around Heidi Hawthorne, a radio DJ whose life begins to take a twist towards the dark side when she receives a mysterious package addressed to her. The package says it comes from “The Lords of Salem” a heavy metal band that she’d interviewed on her radio show. The package is addressed directly to her.  She soon discovers it’s a vinyl record, when she plays it out of sheer curiosity, she goes on a trance, getting these weird visions of witches being burned alive. What's happening to Heidi? Why is she seeing these horrible images? To make things worse, she has a mysterious neighbor who looks at her from the shadows of his apartment down the hall. She tries to be friendly to the new faceless neighbor but the neighbor only slams the door in her face! What gives?

I’ve always said that Rob Zombie is kind of like the Quentin Tarantino of horror films. Same as Tarantino, Rob Zombie watches a bunch of movies, puts them all in a blender and then makes his own thing with them. Take for example House of a 1000 Corpses, which was a homage to Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II (1986). He took elements from both of these movies and mixed them with his own brand of craziness, the result was an experience, uneven at times, but an experience none the less. For The Lords of Salem, Zombie put an even larger amount of films in the grinder! First up, Rob Zombie bows down to one of the greatest directors of our time, Stanley Kubrick. Many shots on the film have that Kubrickian perfection to them; for example Zombie has these long shots of a hallway that echoed those long shots on of the hotel hallways in Kubrick’s The Shinning (1980). I must say that this careful attention to constructing a shot was something new for me in a Rob Zombie film; most of the time Zombie’s camera is kinetic and crazy, moving about in scattershot fashion. On Lords of Salem you can tell that Zombie was going for a slightly more elegant horror film, in this way he paid his respects to Kubrick, which I immediately dug.

Then we have these crazy dream sequences that looked like they came straight out of a Ken Russell film. You ever seen Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980) or Lair of the White Worm (1988)? On these films, Russell’s characters always end up having these crazy dreams that feel like acid trips, with religious iconography being profaned. Images of goats and crucifixes and nuns being raped and all that?  Well, on Lords of Salem you will see these types of tripped out dream sequences, one look at them and you can tell Zombie watched a couple of Ken Russell’s films. I’ve yet to see Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), but something tells me that The Devils was a huge influence on The Lords of Salem because that film is also about witches. I also caught similarities with films like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), because of this idea of having a paranoid character surrounded by a bunch of devil worshipping neighbors, and yet another film it reminded me of was The Sentinel (1977), a film about a woman who lives in apartment building that ends up being a gateway to hell. And if I go deeper, then I can also tell ya that certain scenes, especially those involving the witches and their satanic rituals reminded me a lot of Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922). The scenes with the witches dancing naked in the fire and spitting on babies and the such…right out of Haxan in deed. On one scene they put this mask on a witch, an obvious homage to the opening sequences on Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963). So the influences on this one are like a Smorgasbord of horror. What can I say, Rob Zombie knows who to borrow from.

What surprised me the most about Lords of Salem is that Zombie has constructed a film that relies more on mood and feel than on words, like an Italian horror film, there’s very little dialog, the film tells it’s story more through images.  Every shot of the film is dark, brooding, depressive…Zombie really created a permeating, dreadful atmosphere with this one. The film isn’t loud and in your face like House of a 1000 Corpses, this one takes its time, building up the scares. Cheap jump scares are out of the question on this one. No, with this one Zombie wants’ to get inside your head, it is more about creating a sense of impending doom, loved that about it. This isn’t a film where people are running around screaming and running from a chainsaw, nope, this one is about the slow scares that creep up on you, so in that sense it’s a very different type of Rob Zombie film. And yes, it is style over substance, but that’s a good thing in my book when it comes to certain directors. What I mean is that Rob Zombie is an incredible output of artistic energy, the guy is a bonafide Rock Star, still pumping out cool tunes to this day (listen to Dead City Radio if you don’t believe me!), the guy has done comics, cartoons, films…he’s done independent horror films as well as commercial ones, the guy has even done freaking television commercials! Hell, Lords of Salem even has a novelization! In other words, Zombies all about the art, so I like the fact that this movie is not so much about the words and more about the visuals and the mood. And speaking of visuals, Zombie out did himself; at a certain point the film simply turns to eye candy for me, couldn’t take my eyes off. The colors, leaping off the screen! 

Final word on Lords of Salem is that it isn’t a film for everyone, at times it can result truly shocking, especially when it comes to those scenes involving witch rituals. Normally, films about Satanism come off as goofy to me, but when they are done right, it works. And this one pulled it off brilliantly. Like Alucarda (1977), this film is all about people hailing Satan and requesting his presence and all that, which I’m sure will prove to be just a bit too much for some viewers, especially those of you inclined towards Christianity. You’ve been warned! In this movie, there is no hope, it’s all gloom and doom. At the same time, I have to tell you guys that this is without a doubt in my mind Rob Zombies best film; it’s far superior to anything he’s done before and for that I salute the Zombie. I believe Zombie can go even further, but this one was close to being perfect in my book. So if you ask me, Rob Zombie continues to grow and evolve as a horror director, he keeps surprising me and I’m happy he’s still making horror films. He’s turned into one of this generations greatest horror directors. I’m sure he’ll keep it going, I certainly hope he does, which reminds me, there’s hope for horror yet!

Rating: 4 out of 5

976-EVIL (1988)

Title: 976-EVIL (1988)

Director: Robert Englund

Cast: Stephen Geoffreys, Patrick O’Bryan, Sandy Dennis, Robert Picardo

Review:

So 976-EVIL is a film known primarily for two things: it stars Stephen Geoffreys (‘Evil’ from Fright Night (1985)) and it was directed by Robert Englund. Now, Robert Englund is of course best known for playing Freddy Krueger on the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of films, but he’s also been known to direct a couple of horror films. So far, his repertoire includes a horror film called Killer Pad (2008) about a house that has a portal into hell in it’s basement, a couple of episodes of the Freddy’s Nightmare’s television series and the film I’ll be reviewing today: 976-EVIL. How was this, his first directorial effort?

On this film we meet a nerdy highschool student called Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys) and his cool James Dean type cousin Spike. Spike is kind of ashamed to have Hoax as his cousin because Hoax is such a super nerd, but on the other hand Hoax worships Spike and wishes he could be more like him. One day while reading a magazine, Spike stumbles upon an advertisement for a phone service that gives you your “horrorscope” for the day. Out of curiosity and boredom Spike calls and gets advice from the telephone service, but he quickly gets freaked out by it and quits calling. Unfortunately, Hoax gets hooked with the service and starts calling regularly. It isn’t long before Hoax is doing everything that the horrorscope tells him to do. What evil powers lay behind this telephone service?

Stephen Geoffreys gets Satanic! 

Well, I gotta say, this isn’t a bad little horror movie for a first time effort from Mr. Englund. This is the kind of film in which the nerdy teenager who gets beat up and harassed by  everybody suddenly gets revenge on all those who wronged him; not unlike Evil Speak (1981), Trick or Treat (1986) or Fear No Evil (1981) all of which have nerdy teenagers avenging themselves through Satanic powers. All of these movies are basically the same film, the teenager gets harassed by bullies in the first half, and on the second half the nerdy dude gets help from Satan and avenges himself. All the bullies get what was coming to them in various gruesome ways. Of course, it’s the little things that make them different. On Evil Speak, the main character connects with Satan through his computer, on Fear No Evil, the nerdy guy ends up being the antichrist, on Trick or Treat heavy metal music connects nerds with Satan and on 976-EVIL Hoax connects with Satan through the telephone service.

You mess with the bull you get the horns! 

I liked a couple of things about this movie, for example, the angle about the mother being ultra religious and treating Hoax as if he was still a child. The mother played by Sandy Dennis is depicted as a religious fanatic who watches t.v. evangelists all the time and has paintings and statues of Jesus spread out through out the entire house. She was by far the most animated character in the film, very entertaining, she’s kind of a living cartoon of an over protective/religious fanatic mother. Stephen Geoffreys as Hoax is another plus for the film, he plays Hoax as a sexually repressed young man, who has to resort to watching pictures of naked African women from National Geographic magazine to satiate his sexual curiosities; he also ends up being a peeping tom, spying on his cousin as he’s having sex with his girlfriend. He’s kind of mousy and harmless, trying to break out of his shell. Another bonus on this film is Kevin Yagher’s make up effects for Hoax’s possessed visage. We get a couple of gory moments, Hoax showing signs of possession are very subtle at first and they grow and grow as the film progresses until by the end Hoax looks full blown demonic. 

 The film has a religious themed WTF?! moment in which suddenly, out of freaking nowhere fish start falling out of the sky as if it was some sort of miracle from God. It brought to mind a similar moment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) in which frogs start raining from the sky as if God was so angry at humanity that he performs this miracle to get them to remember he is watching. Funniest thing is that in 976-EVIL, this miraculous event doesn’t seem to phase anyone save for the religious mom who takes it as a sign from God himself. Everyone else keeps living their lives as if nothing had happened, including Spike and Hoax who saw the whole thing happened first hand. I mean, this sort of thing would make the town a freaking media event or something! But no, most of the time the town seems to be completely deserted, lifeless. Actually I liked this feeling the film had, as if the town was this desolated little town in the middle of nowhere. No people on the streets save for the characters in the film and the loose news papers rustling through the streets.

There’s these little inside jokes spread through out the whole movie. Since the movie is based on the premise that this phone service gives whoever hears it satanic powers, everything in the film is Satan related. The coffee shop is called “Dante” (as in Dante’s Inferno) the movie theater is called Diablo (Spanish world for Devil) one scene has a character about to eat a t.v dinner and the box reads “Devil Twins”. The local theater is apparently run by a group of teenagers (!!??) who have the projection room filled with posters from old horror movies like Maniac (1980) and even Fright Night (1985). In order to get your horrroscope for the day, you have to press “666” and so the Satanic inuendoes continue all through out the film, keep an eye out for them.

 The big thing about this movie is that it was the film that Stephen Geoffrey’s decided to do instead of returning as many horror fans hoped he would, for Fright Night II (1988). I’m sure a lot of you out there ask yourselves why Geoffreys choose not to reprise his extremely memorable role of ‘Evil Ed’ in the Fright Night sequel and chose instead to appear in 976-EVIL? Fright Night II isnt a bad sequel in my book, but I’m sure it would have been a bit more memorable had Geoffreys returned. Geoffreys reply to this query is that he was looking forward to working with horror legend Robert Englund, a reason that I respect. Sadly, Geoffrey’s followed one bad career move with another, Im sure many of you are already aware of Geoffreys escapades in porn. Still, I think he managed to leave two notable performances in the horror genre, Hoax from 976-EVIL being one of them.

There’s a lot of silliness in this movie, but I guess that’s to be expected in a film from the 80’s, on top of that, were talking about a film whose premise is a Satanic powered horoscope phone service? On this film, telephone booths blow up without explanation! Guys get their hands chopped off and the best thing they can think of doing is using toilet paper from a public bathroom to cover the wound! Another guy gets his face sliced and he can think of nothing better than going to play poker with his buddies afterward! The local movie theater is run by a group of poker playing highschool teenagers! Fish fall from the sky and no one thinks nothing of it! But what the hell, 976-EVIL manages to be entertaining anyways in spite of all its flaws, and that’s what really matters in the end.     

Rating: 3 out of 5

The Sentinel (1977)

Title: The Sentinel (1977)

Director: Michael Winner

Cast: Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Burgess Meredith, Eli Wallach, Ava Gardner, Jose Ferrer, Beverly D’Angelo, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum

Review:

In Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1981) the suicide of a priest causes the doors of hell to burst open. After that, ghosts/zombies are set loose upon the world and the undead begin to walk the streets, people barf up their innards and maggots fall from the sky. But that’s the Lucio Fulci version of the gates of hell opening. Now that I’ve seen Michael Winner’s The Sentinel, I can see where Fulci might have gotten the idea for his City of the Living Dead, in fact, I’m sure Fulci was inspired by The Sentinel. Both films have lots of similarities in terms of plot, images and situations. This wouldn’t surprise me, since Italians were particularly well known for ripping off American horror films and making lower budgeted versions of them.

 In The Sentinel, we meet Allison Parker a young model living and working in New York City. She’s thinking about marrying her fiancé, Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon) but she still hasn’t given him the proverbial “yes”. Instead, she wants to find her own apartment and be an independent person; just to prove to herself that she can survive on her own in this big bad world. And find her own apartment she does; It’s in a beautiful building right smack in the middle of Brooklyn, New York. According to the landlady, Allison along with an old blind priest that lives in the fifth floor will be the only ones living in the apartment building. But is that the truth? Allison hears strange noises in the middle of the night and meets a bunch of weird neighbors. Could there be something more to this apartment building then meets the eye? And why is that blind priest always sitting by his apartment window staring at nothing?  

 So yeah, the similarities between this film and Fulci’s City of the Living Dead are pretty obvious. Girl moves into a new apartment, turns out it’s the gateway into hell. She starts seeing all manner of strange supernatural events. Suicide figures into the plot, as do blind girls. The only thing is that Fulci being Fulci, well he’s take on the “Gates of Hell” theme is way more graphic, and gory and over all, pretty freaking nasty. After all it’s not in every film you get to see a beautiful young girl barfing up her intestines. But such is the nature of a Fulci flick, always aiming to shock you. The Sentinel is a much more cerebral and moody film. It doesn’t aim for cheap shocks, or to gross you out with its graphic nature. Instead, it wants to creep you out with its atmosphere. The Sentinel is disturbing on a whole other level that City of the Living Dead (a.k.a. The Gates of Hell) isn’t. This difference between films with similar premise shows us just how much of a difference on a film a director can make. With these two films we have a similar premise, but two completely different films in terms of mood. Give a movie like this to Mr. Fulci and you get a maggot storm. Give it to Winner and you get human oddities as demons.

 If I had to compare The Sentinel to another horror film in terms of mood and atmosphere, it would be with Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the biggest influence on The Sentinel if you ask me. The Sentinel was made in the late 70’s the day and age of the supernatural horror film. Because of the resounding success of The Exorcist (1973), horror films dealing with the supernatural where the order of the day for Hollywood. So films like The Omen (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Changeling (1980) were getting made left and right. But in my opinion it was Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby that influenced The Sentinel the most. We have a female protagonist, who is not really right in her head. The film is all about a girl moving into a new apartment, in New York City. She is hounded by a bunch of weirdo neighbors, who may or may not have an evil purpose for her. No one is to be trusted, and just like in many Roman Polanski films, paranoia reigns supreme. The similarities with Rosemary’s Baby are all over the place with this film.

With it's evil old people, The Sentinel was obviously influenced by Rosemary's Baby!

Same as in many supernatural themed horror films, the Catholic Church is the one with all the answers and the powers to stop the evil. And yet again I notice how much these films are used to propagate the idea of Christian faith onto the masses. And once again this is a film in which an unbeliever is taught a lesson and made to pay for her sins. In one moment of The Sentinel the main character actually goes into a church to ask for forgiveness for having renounced Jesus Christ, you see, she’s been experiencing a lot of spooky shit and so she wants to be on Gods side, just in case. This is yet another film which brings Catholic fantasies to life. And a big fat fantasy it is, I mean the gates of hell are on the top floor of an apartment building in Brooklyn! The blind priest who lives in the top floor is supposed to be the guardian of these gates, unfortunately he doesn’t do a very good job at it because demons keep getting out and harassing poor Allison. Characters in this film talk about paying for their sins for all eternity and what not, so yeah, this one is all about Catholic guilt, and Catholic beliefs.

 But I will give this to The Sentinel, it does have some truly disturbing imagery in it. On this film, demons harass Allison, the dead visit her in the middle of the night and she has these weird dreams. And it’s the way that these undead entities are portrayed in the film that brings forth the disturbing and unsettling nature of The Sentinel. Director Michael Winner thought it would be a good idea to use real deformed people to portray the demons. So suddenly, whenever demons appear in the film we are treated to an avalanche of fat, old, deformed, handicapped, human beings.  This isn’t the first time that a film director uses human oddities for a horror film. Other examples of this can be found in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre (1989); actually, any Jodorowsky film can be mentioned here because that’s something Jodorowsky always relied on for his films: the use of human oddities to bring forth a feeling of unease. The use of human oddities on The Sentinel cause some controversy when the film was first released. Is this exploitative? Should it be allowed in films? Is it wrong to use these kind of people in films? Is it ethical?

 Sexuality is also used as a means to convey ‘evil’. For example, amongst some of Allison’s freaky neighbors there is a pair of lesbians. When Allison asks them what it is that they do for a living one of them replies “we fondle each other”. Then Beverly D’Angelo’s character begins to masturbate in front of Allison, in what is without a doubt one of the most awkward moments in the film. A lot of the ghosts appear naked through out the film; in fact, at the crux of the film is a scene in which Allison catches her father in an orgy! So sticking pretty close to Catholic beliefs, sexuality is demonized on this film.

 Finally, something has to be said about the films cast. It’s interesting that the film is filled with so many good actors in extremely small roles. Some of the cast members were not particularly well known at the time, but they were going to be. Bit parts in this film were performed by the likes of Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum and Beverly D’Angelo; all unknowns at the time. The film also has bit parts for famous old actors like Ava Gardner, Jose Ferrer and Burgess Meredith, by the way Burgess Meredith always plays these nice old dudes in his films. I mean, I always remember him as Rocky Balboa's father like figure 'Micky' from the Rocky movies, but on The Sentinel he is this weird old man, he was obviously going for something against the type of characters he was used to playing all the time. We also get Chris Sarandon playing Allison’s boyfriend, I mean, we have a star studded cast for this old school spooky film. And old school it is; The Sentinel has a classic vibe going for it, it is not a film that relies on visual effects or cheap looking ghosts, the emphasis on this one is mood and atmosphere. And I must say that it achieves a spooky, unsettling atmosphere quite effectively. With The Sentinel, you get the feeling that something is not quite right, that there is evil in the air. The Sentinel is one of these ultra-serious horror films from the 70’s; the kind of horror film they don’t make anymore.

Rating: 4 out of 5