This is Halloween Havoc V

[Brian Fowler]

Welcome, welcome once again to the house of fear, welcome once again to the darkness, welcome to...  HALLOWEEN HAVOC...

 

 

Film:  The Mummy's Shroud

 

Chosen by:  Travis Sheldon

 

Third of four Hammer Films Mummy movies.
I picked this film because there's little chance anyone will pick anything older.
Or did they???

 

DunDunDun

 

Reviewed by: Ultimo Necro

 

Come children, let me tell you a tale.  It's a tale set in Ancient Egypt.  Once upon a time there was a Pharaoh, let’s call him Pharaoh Awesome.  Pharaoh Awesome had a needlessly convoluted back story about a jealous brother and a son.  Then, one day, the jealous brother and his gang killed Pharaoh Awesome, but not before the Pharaoh’s right hand man, THE SLAVE PREM, whisked Pharaoh Awesome Jnr. to safety.  

 

Well, when I say safety, what I really mean is that THE SLAVE PREM led the young Pharaoh Jnr. and some slaves through the desert, just like Moses, or Khaleesi.  Unlike Moses or Khaleesi THE SLAVE PREM led most of them to their death in the desert.

 

THE SLAVE PREM then mummified the young Pharaoh in the middle of the desert, performed some Arabic mumbo jumbo and then headed home. Way to protect the Pharaoh’s son THE SLAVE PREM.

 

Fast forward to 1920.

 

We are now in 1920, where men are men, women appear in weirdly-framed solo camera shots for no reason and everyone talks in x4 speed.  Here we meet Mr. Stanley Preston, just in case you didn’t get that, Michael Ripper, Preston's butler, makes a point of saying "Mr. Preston" about 30 times in the space of 40 seconds. 

 

Mr. Preston is here to investigate his missing expedition which is trying to uncover the tomb of Pharaoh Awesome Jnr.  On arrival he literally gets press-ganged into going out with the search party.  We also find out that Mr. Preston likes results and cold beer.  Given this was filmed in England in 1967 I think Mr. Preston is supposed to be the good guy here.

 

The expedition consists of Preston's son, his best chum who is clearly Mummy-fodder, Claire the linguist and the old Professor.  Claire the linguist is played by Maggie Kimberley; I cannot stress how hot she is.  I was surprised to see she wasn’t in more things.  She was in WITCHFINDER GENERAL and not much else according to IMDB.  She is stunning.  I'm also fairly sure one of them called her a cunning linguist at one point.

 

We come across them in a tent in the middle of a sand storm, they have enough water for 3 days and need to decide whether to return to base or go further on.  They should have listened to Hot Claire as she warned them about leaving on FRIDAY THE 13TH!!!  After a quick chat, Claire randomly tells them they should carry on, however, "some of us won’t survive" and they all agree and celebrate by drinking some of their water.  Yay, some of us are sure to die! Go team!

 

The sandstorm goes away and they venture outside and IMMEDIATELY find the tomb, right there outside the tent. Literally 10 yards away.  "Shall we leave everything?", "Yes, just bring the guns and water".  Stupid English people be making stupid English decisions.  They run into the tomb's guard, Hashmit Ali aka THE MASTER from DR. WHO, who tries to attack them; good job they brought them guns.  From here on out it gets a bit like PROMETHEUS for a while, they enter an ancient tomb, wander around aimlessly and one of them gets bitten by a snake.  Luckily for that guy Preston and his search party turn up. 

They then uncover the tomb, find the mummified remains of Pharaoh Awesome Jnr. and unleash the curse. 

 

Now.  All of the above took 40 goddam minutes. 40 minutes of literally nothing happening.  40 minutes of English people talking quickly and very easily finding the long lost tomb.  So far there has been no suspense, no intrigue, nothing. The setup of the curse could have been done in about 15 minutes.  Urgh.  The death scenes better be good.

 

The film sort of resets at this point and turns from English family soap opera into a more traditional hammer horror.  We meet a creepy old fortune teller who lives in what looks like the Voodoo Woman's house from Monkey Island.  For a low budget Hammer Horror movie the set design has generally been okay.  Anyway, creepy fortune teller is watching the protagonists through her crystal ball and OH SNAP, HASHMIT ALI is her son and in control of THE MUMMY PREM who has been unleashed as part of the curse from disturbing the tomb of Pharaoh Awesome Jnr.

 

Having unleashed THE MUMMY PREM on our gang of English chums.  Death number one comes in around 50 minutes where the old professor, who has now went insane for reasons never really explained other than "must be the curse" or "must be ill", gets Kona Crushed to death by the mummy.  THE MUMMY PREM looks pretty neat, he kind of has a leatherface / Jason vibe about him.   The next 20 minutes is taken up with the English people arguing with the Egyptian Police (and their awesome Fez hats) about whether they can leave or not.  This bit really dragged, I was hoping to see THE MUMMY PREM do more deaths and Hot Claire the Linguist being a dame in distress.  I was let down.

 

The second death comes at 64 minutes, but by god is it worth the wait.  Mummy-Fodder #1 is developing some photos in his hotel room when the Mummy attacks resulting in an awesome Acid-Fire combo death.

 

There is some more English bickering ad-nauseum; Mr. Preston's wife in particular is an absolute horror.  I feel sorry for the old guy, she is a complete bitch to him and stops short of saying "I hope you die" at one point for no real reason other than 1) he is rich and 2) likes to brag about things.  She's been married to him for 26 years and is just figuring this out? Such a weird plot point.

 

The deaths are coming-a-ripping now as Michael Ripper's character gets bundled up in some bed sheets and lobbed out of a window by the Mummy in probably the best death scene in the movie.  Death number 4 follows pretty swiftly when old Preston finally snuffs it after being choked out /massaged Andre style and having his head mashed against a wall, his wife will be most pleased.  Hot Claire then decides now is the time she should do something about it. Enough is enough, she better go and visit the creepy fortune teller woman.  She does and discovers the secret to stop THE MUMMY PREM is that she should visit THE MUMMY PREM and simply apologisz in the language of the Pharaohs.  Which she does, eventually.

 

There is a short chase scene as the Mummy chases them around the museum, you could speed this bit up, get some lingerie clad lovelies and play the BENNY HILL THEME over it, it’s pretty hokey.  This then leads into the best scene of the movie as Claire speaks the "WORDS OF DEATH" which results in the THE MUMMY PREM disintegrating.  Pretty awesome special effects piece (for 1967) and really well done.  It almost made the soap opera elements of the majority of the previous 85 minutes worth it.  The end. You want an epilogue? Nope. Not getting one.

 

This goddam movie though, there were no scares, no frights, no gore and no real suspense.   It did, however, have about 10 minutes of out and out awesomeness.  Namely Michael Ripper's whole performance and ultimate death, Stanley Preston being awesome and Hot Claire being hot.  THE MUMMY PREM was pretty good and not as cheesy as it might have been.  The film is fairly well acted as well; Hashmit Ali and his crazy fortune telling mom were both great characters and played with great over-the-top enthusiasm.   The downside was that at times it just dragged and felt like a really long crappy soap opera.

 

I enjoyed it though (I also enjoy crappy soap operas, go figure), given it was filmed nearly 50 years ago it holds up fairly well and as the Brits say "it was an enjoyable romp" and perfect Saturday afternoon Matinee fare.

[Brian Fowler]

Sunday.  Or dark and evil Sunday.  Welcome back....

 

 

Film: Deadheads

 

Chosen by: ingrsco (can I buy a vowel, dude?)

 

I choose Deadheads from 2011. It's streaming on Netflix

 

Reviewed by: Travis Sheldon

 

The film I got for Halloween Havoc is Deadheads (2011). My first question was, "Is this a movie about drug fueled, homicidal hippies or stoners fighting a zombie invasion?". Sadly, it was neither.
Deadheads is about two self aware zombies that meet up and go on a quest to find one of the zombies' true love from high school.
Technically this film looks and sounds absolutely fine. The filmmakers, brothers Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce, made the best of their, what I imagine to be, small budget. It's possible some of their expertise came from their father, Bart Pierce, who did work as a visual effects artist on the original Evil Dead (1981).
The acting was better than I would expect from a film like this. Some of the characterizations are OTT (Over The Top), but that actually fits in perfectly fine with the tone of this film. The problems with this film lie within the script. This film can't decide whether it is a romantic comedy, splatstick, or a road trip. One thing it is not is horror. There were no sequences in this film that would make it a horror movie to me. Gore does not equal horror. I had to fight the feeling to put an exclamation point at the end of the previous sentence.
The fact that they went with a non-ending for this tale was the icing on the cake. I realize it is a very fine line to walk with horror and comedy hybrids, but in this case comedy totally won out. There were too many loose plot points and the lack of a clear direction with the story killed this film for me. I can only suspend my disbelief for so long.

[Travis Sheldon]

I realize what I wrote was a rant and not a review, but a story with no end gets no slack from me.

Negative one star.

[Brian Fowler]

Shudders in the night, children?  Oh, I certainly hope we haven't unnerved you already.  There is so much left to see.

 

 

Film:  All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

 

Picked by: JR Goldman (who didn't send an explanation)

 

Reviewed by: Jingus

 

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane: 2/10

This movie could make you cry, but not in the good way. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is the most lamebrained horror flick I've seen in a little while, a wretchedly cynical and sadistic exercise in pointless audience manipulation. It's eighty endless minutes of watching a bunch of worthless morons do annoying shit before their disgusting deaths. This is one of those Dead Teenager Movies which is almost entirely constructed from the exhausted old cliches of this genre, except for a really fucking insulting ending which is totally stolen from some more recent horror films. 

 

So there's this chick, Mandy Lane (Amber Heard). All the boys love her, apparently because she's a barbie doll with absolutely no character traits other than being virginal and pure. And she quickly breaks that single bit of personality when she inexplicably agrees to go on a weekend getaway with a bunch of the local degenerates. Why the hell does the local virgin go on vacation with a bunch of drug-addled horndogs? It's never explained. Anyway, yes this is one of Those Teen Slasher Movies where we never see anybody's parents; all these kids seem to be independently wealthy, and they all drive cars and drink liquor and smoke pot and fuck like rabbits and stay out all night without even having to call in with some excuse about why they're not home yet. So anyway, they all drive out to a Standard Slasher Movie Mansion which is out on some ranch in the middle of nowhere. And gee, you think their cell phones might ALL get no reception out there too? And please, anyone, tell me if you're surprised that the men are all quickly killed outta nowhere while the women are all chased around screaming and horribly wounded and take forever to finally bleed out. 

 

When the movie isn't strictly adhering to the formula, it occasionally veers off in some very fucking odd directions which don't improve the general quality of the story. Like, the nudity. For the first half of this film, this appears to be one of those R-rated flicks which teases nudity all damn day, but never delivers. (One of the first scenes takes place in a girls' locker room, where everyone is carefully covered up with towels.) Then out of nowhere one, and just one, of the girls gets topless briefly for no apparent reason. After that, further nakedness is never even teased again. WTF? And what the HELL was going on in that weird scene in the bathroom, where Mandy and the blond bitch had some kind of sapphic tension going on? For a brief moment that scene made me feel like I was watching real people having a real moment, but it's quickly cut short and forgotten about. 

 

If there's a single positive thing about the film, it's that our cast of tweenagers are at least all real actors, and try for a more naturalistic style of performance than you usually see in slasher flicks. Unfortunately, since all their characters ever do is the same old stupid shit we always see, it's all for naught. And that GODDAMN ending! WOW, that was one of the worst fucking endings I've seen in a long time. Firstly, I saw both "twists" coming a mile away. The movie randomly tells us who the killer is about halfway through the movie (without even a single token red herring first), so it was obvious that it still had some kind of "surprise" later on. Secondly, it just made NO fucking sense, they never even attempted to explain what the hell was going on or why the characters were doing what they were doing. This boy typing here would love Mandy Lane to suck his cock and die gagging on his spunk.

[S.K.o.S.]

We've got movies with people getting carved up and people carving up movies!

[Burgundy LaRue]

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane isn't a bad movie.  It isn't a good movie, either.  But it's not rotting-flesh bad by any means.

 

One problem it faces is that it made its way into American movie-watchers' hands last year--7 years after it debuted at film festivals.  It sat around too long. It became stale and saw other slashers do similar work more effectively. I saw Mandy earlier on, but only because I purchased the Region 2 DVD a few years ago.  So my opinion comes from watching it before it became this mythical internet creature. I caught on to it at the right time.

 

It has some things going for it.  The acting is solid, and quite good for the genre.  Something else I liked--and this is a 'mileage may vary' situation--but Jonathan Levine didn't seem to realize he was directing a teen-centered slasher film with a sketchy script.  Because of that, he didn't pander to the audience.  He could have hammed it up--and I imagine the formal script was cheesier than what we eventually see.  But Levine tries to go above that.  Whether it was a rookie mistake or his actual directorial mantra--I don't know.  Either way, points from me for trying something different.

 

But I normally hate when the killer is revealed mid-way through a film.  Not that the actual reveal bothers me, but the payoff for it had better be REALLY good.  For Mandy, it fell pretty flat.  So points lost there.

 

Ultimately, Mandy's biggest problem is that doesn't go far enough in its deconstruction of this genre.  They had a capable actress in Amber Heard, who played the main character with the right mix of reserved coolness and ethereal sensibility.  Watching her is like seeing someone through a screen door--you SEE them, but you can't make out all of their features.  Had the script went further in showing how women are either objectified or ridiculed in slasher films--the movie would have been really unique in its original time.  But it falls short.

 

Mandy is too smart for the average movie-going crowd, but too dumb for anyone who fancies themselves an artsy cinemaphile.  It gets caught in the middle, and that's the worst place to be for any art project.  Either be great or awful, so people remember.  But if you like horror films and are willing to be patient--take apart the film slowly--there are some unique elements happening.  I think it's an interesting movie to deconstruct and study, as long as your expectations are tempered.

 

It's hardly the worst film ever.

 

BLR Score:  2.5 lollipops (out of a possible 5)

[Brian Fowler]

I liked Mandy.  Didn't love it.  It definitely got way too much hype on the internet horror fansites (like Burgundy, I eventually imported it from England, in my case on a region free blu-ray)

 

It's not revolutionary, but it's perfectly decent for a slasher.  It's better, for instance, than most of those F13 movies I watched this week (although, to be fair, it's less fun than all but two or three of them.)

[Travis Sheldon]

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was not on my radar. But reading Burgundy LaRue use the word deconstruction while discussing it will make me pass.

The last movie with word of mouth that I heard that word used in conjunction with was Cabin in the Woods.

Diagram that, muthas!

[Brian Fowler]

I don't really think All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is all that deconstructionist.

 

Of course, it's also not nearly as good as The Cabin in the Woods.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Deconstruction may not be the right word.  The movie had a great chance to really turn itself on its own head, and whiffed.  But someone who enjoys taking apart pieces of a movie to see how it ticks, it's a worthwhile watch.

 

A Cabin the Woods has the opposite problem--it sort of went too far in 'deconstructing' the genre.

[Hollywood Cibernetico]

I will be working on my review this week. I watched the first 10 minutes and had to tap out. I will give it some time.

[Jingus]

I must say, that review of mine is long years old.  I caught a leaked copy online, way before it was finally released commercially.  I might try to acquire a copy now and see how it's aged.  

[JRGoldman]

I remember when I first watched Mandy Lane after years of reading reviews about how it turns the genre on its head, I was shocked at how by the numbers it was. I think I picked it because it is easy for people to watch and also I was wondering what kind of other reactions it would get from someone else. I'm glad Jingus got it, even if he seemingly detested it, because I knew I was there was a well thought out review of it in store. 

 

Brian, I have watched my movie, I'm just struggling with the time to do a write up. I'll get it to you soon. 

[J.T.]

I remember not really hating Mandy Lane, but I also remember not destesting it as much as Jingus did.

 

One thing I do recall is feeling much like Jingus that Mandy Lane isn't truly formulaic, but it contains too many slasher film tropes to be ignored.

 

The movie toys with the idea of Survivor Girl, but you have the scary house and virginal female figures and horny goofball teen guys that you can almost predict the order in which they will die.

[Brian Fowler]

Mandy Lane wanted rather desperately to be more than it is.  It clearly wanted to be the elusive and rare "intelligent slasher film" that rises above the genre.  Instead, it just wound up being mostly just another slasher that happened to have better than average cinematography and surprisingly decent acting.

 

Mostly, I think they felt the big twist meant something (or at least they really wanted it to mean something) that would then elevate it above those tropes, and it didn't and thus didn't.

 

That said, it's not exactly a secret that I love slasher films, and overall it is a fairly well executed modern slasher film.

[Brian Fowler]

Muwahahahahaha yes we are back, back my children of darkness

 

 

Film:  Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door

 

Choosen by: bobholly138

 

Picked it because it is the first horror film in almost 30 years to get under my skin.

 

Reviewed by:  Lacelle

 

This movie felt like work. Rough to watch this uneasy film. One of the things I dislike the most about horror movies is that often times characters will make decisions that no human would ever make and that usually has me fiddling with my phone The children in this film were frustrating the heck out of me. I didn't buy that these seemingly normal kids would have such devious sides. The actresses who played the main villain, Ruth did an outstanding job at making you want to see her get what's coming to her but it did venture into the absurd a time or two. I would never recommend this movie to anyone because I don't want to be responsible for this chain continuing. A miserable experience comes from watching this movie and while there may be some interesting stylistic decisions there are not nearly enough to overcome the sheer dread that overwhelms while sitting there wondering why this was made.

[Curt McGirt]

Yeah, we've talked about this before... that's a rough watch. I was amazed it was on Chiller when I saw it. The book is supposed to be worse, and having read Jack Ketchum before, I believe it.

[HumanChessgame]

Girl Next Door is based on a true story.   It's far more sadistic and more openly graphic than another movie made about the same incident, "An American Crime", which was I believe straight to cable.  According to what I've read about the situation, Ketchum's book was actually fairly accurate in describing how brutal everything that happened to her was. 

[Jingus]

This review is old and stale, but I doubt a rewatch would change my mind.  Haha, who am I kidding, I'm absofuckinglutely never gonna rewatch The Girl Next Door

Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door (2007): 1/10
Well, here’s a nice contender for the short list of Worst Films Of The Decade. The Girl Next Door is an appallingly awful experience on every level, artistically clumsy and morally offensive. It does the impossible, and actually makes that piece of shit Funny Games look justified and reasonable in hindsight. In that film, legendary art house director Michael Haneke was trying to satirize a movie which I thought didn’t exist; now, unfortunately, I have seen an example of what he was whining about. 

The movie plays unfair right from the beginning: it sets us up with a perfectly decent little opening sequence starring the great William Atherton. Man, Walter Peck just doesn’t get enough work these days. But it turns out that his role is basically a cameo, and then the real story starts. In the late 50s, a boy named David (Daniel Manche), who’s hanging out with his friends on summer break. He happens to befriend Meg (Blythe Auffarth) who is indeed the new girl next door. But alas, Meg is in the clutches of a wicked stepmother named Ruth (Blanche Baker) who is completely fucking insane. For inexplicable reasons, she begins tormenting Meg; first just little things, but it eventually descends into full-on torture porn with Meg being bloody and naked and tied up in the basement. Our brave and brilliant protagonist David just watches and does nothing, while other children take turns helping out in the cruelty. Ninety endless minutes later, Meg dies. The end. 

The actors all suck. Hard. Well, Auffurth does the best she can with her thankless victim role. But everyone else is godawful. Especially Baker, who can somehow manage the impressive feat of chewing the scenery even when she’s sitting absolutely still. Their line readings are just miserable, and the language sounds incredibly anachronistic for a story which is allegedly supposed to be in the 1950s. There’s way too much cursing, especially from the kids; and you can actually see the untalented child actors fighting back their grins at being allowed to say so many naughty words on camera. Even aside from that, the dialogue is wretched bullshit: it gives us lines like Ruth telling her son “pull up this little girl’s skirt and pull down her panties for Mama” and it’s not supposed to be hilariously bad. 

But even putting aside the cinematic incompetence, this movie is just plain sick. Not in terms of how offensive the violence or sex is; the real hardcore stuff like Martyrs takes a wimpy pretender like Girl Next Door and rape it up the ass with a box cutter. No, I got the disgusting impression that the filmmakers actually enjoyed this shit. When they’ve got a teenage boy who is cutting off the clothing of a teenage girl, and it’s filmed exactly like a strip tease with the same timing and everything, what other conclusion am I supposed to come to? Once Meg is put in the basement, any sense of character development vanishes; she’s just a screaming piece of meat, devoid of any personality traits that we humans might identify with. 

The worst part of all? It’s all based on a true story. In the early 60s, a woman really did lead a bunch of neighborhood kids into torturing her adopted daughter to death. But this movie NEVER made me buy its storyline. Between the shitty script and shitty actors, you get the pod-person willies at these people who do not resemble any live human beings that you’ve ever known. It provides no insight into the psychology of the psychos; we’re never given even a token excuse of why this woman and her kids are all so crazy, or how nobody ever turns them in, or any of a thousand other inexplicable plot holes. It’s a terrible goddamn movie on every level, and I wish I hadn’t seen it.

 

 

 

 

Anyone seen An American Crime?  It's got an interesting cast: Ellen Page is the girl next door, Catherine Keener is the scary mother, and a buncha neat character actors filling up the list.  

[Brian Fowler]

The week of darkness has begun, my sweet sweet children that shall never leave.

 

 

Film: Borderland

 

Chosen by: Lawful Metal

 

I want to pick Borderland. It was part of the first 8 Films To Die For / Afterdark Horrorfest. To be perfectly honest, I've only seen it once, an edited-for-TV Syfy version. It made me feel sick, disgusted, terrified and horrified. Based on a true story. We've never wanted to see it again, see the real version, or have anything to do with it. Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time, and it hasn't aged well, but then again, maybe it's just that good. The director and writer haven't made anything since, which is too bad.

 

(EDITORIAL CLARIFICATION:  It was actually part of the second Afterdark Horrorfest, not the first, but carry on...)

 

Reviewed by:  Suicide King of Spades

 

So I got Borderland as my movie.  It's less than 10 years old, it's gotten some good reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes, and scanning the review blurbs, it seemed like it'd be pretty gory too.  Sounded like a good time, but it didn't really deliver.

 

In the end, I thought this was just a little below average.  It's not a terrible movie by any means.  For some reason, though, just about everything I can think of to say about it is negative, which isn't really fair.  I'll make an effort to accentuate the positive points.

 

The first positive came during the opening credits, when Rider Strong's name showed up.  Sean Astin was in there, too, and I wasn't completely sure who he was but it seemed like a name I should know.  At that point, as I reflected on what it said about me that I got more enjoyment out of Boy Meets World than the Lord of the Rings movies, there was no way I could know that I'd be seeing an unshaven, unhinged Sean Astin holding Rider Strong captive in Mexico, with Rider's only comfort being televised lucha... and I guess the sheer absurdity of that is another positive.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

Two guys, Ed and Henry, are taking their younger friend Phil to Mexico to rid themselves of the horrible millstone that is Phil's virginity.  Although they're all friends, there's a very clear dynamic of Ed being good and Henry not being so good.  Henry is all "WOOOO HOOKERS" but Ed really just wants to go to Mexico to relax.  Unfortunately, Ed has a less than ideal amount of personality or presence, and I say "unfortunately" not only because Ed generally lets Henry take the lead and that means that some unwise decisions are made, but also because I think the root cause is that the guy playing Ed isn't a very good actor.  He kind of drags every scene that he's in down with him, too, in the same way that one mopey person can ruin a whole party.

 

Anyway, at some point, Phil wanders off and ends up getting into a car with some strangers.  I'd have to check when the drug wars in Mexico started to get out of control, but I'm pretty sure that by the mid-2000s everyone should have known that getting into a car with people you don't know in Mexico is a really, really bad idea.  It turns out that Phil has been captured by members of some sort of satanic cult who are into human sacrifices.  Ed and Henry have to find Phil and save him... and there isn't too much more to the movie than that.  It's a simple story without many wrinkles.  There are some women who tag along with our heroes, but they're not there for much more than to be eye candy and/or victims.  There's the question of "at what point do you assume your kidnapped friend is already dead and just get out of the country while you can", which is a decent plot point, but they didn't spend nearly enough time on it.

 

There's a particular visual style to how they shot this.  I want to take the easy way out and say that it's similar to what Soderbergh did with the Mexican scenes in Traffic, but it's not really like that.  There isn't the constant yellow tint, though it's there in some scenes.  The colors look a little washed out, which makes it feel a little like something from the 70s or 80s, but they also turned the contrast way up, so you've got really bright whites and very dark blacks.  You can definitely see that it kicks in right when they're driving to the border.

 

For a while I was thinking this wasn't even really a horror movie, but it gets there eventually for sure.  Maybe it would have been better if I wasn't expecting it to be horror.  There's some gore that's alright, though it's nothing you couldn't see on some X-Files episodes, and it had this weird kind of vibe where it wasn't clear if people were doing things maliciously or just out of annoyance.  It seemed like they were trying to keep the cult's intentions unclear for as long as possible, and it got to the point where it made things less frightening than they should have been.

 

Lastly, I wouldn't say it dominates the movie, but there's enough stupidity from the protagonists for it to be noticeable.  I already mentioned Phil getting into a car with strangers.  There's also a scene where a good guy holds a gun on a bad guy for a very long time and has a very long conversation with him without pulling the trigger - and of course that ends badly.  Lastly, and I guess this isn't a character doing something stupid, but there's a fake-out jump scare with a bird that's unexpectedly inside a house for no apparent reason (like, I was thinking "What the hell was that?  Was that a bird?").

 

So overall, it wasn't like a kick to the kneecaps, but I've seen better.  Sorry to whoever picked it.

[Lawful Metal]

Borderlands.

 

I think it's a perfect storm of terror.  For me, it's right place, right time to be completely haunted by it.  I went to UT, and I had friends who regularly went down to Matamoros.  Satanic stuff is always fascinating to me, but the look and feel and sense of setting was very unnerving and felt disgusting.  The real terror was when the nameless, faceless horde started randomly chasing them down in the middle of the city.  No one would help them, and they were powerless to escape.  In my international travels, there's always that random fear of accidentally walking down that wrong street and getting overwhelmed by some group of others.  This movie just struck a chord with me. 

 

I know your review was mostly negative, but I recognize that you had positive things to say as well.  I just hope I can get more people to check it out, because this is the movie that made me feel the most scared watching it, and produced the scariest dreams the week after. 

[Brian Fowler]

Welcome to the edge of the abyss, come closer, closer

 

(Note for clean-up:  This spot originally should have been Horror House on Highway 5, but we were unable to locate a copy. Sincere apologies.)

 

Film:  Humanoids of the Deep

 

Chosen by: Twiztor

 

I discovered it a couple years ago and fell in love. it's from 1980 and is sorta a slasher and sorta a sci-fi horror movie. great stuff.

 

Reviewed by: Curt McGirt

 

Me and Humanoids have a bit of a history. Back when I was a kid, there was a big rush of re-releases (prior to the DVD wave) on VHS. Anchor Bay was cranking out all the Fulci and Argento and Bava films in these neat hardshell cases with an insert you could flip over for a little read about the picture and it was some pretty heavy-duty collector shit to have uncut versions of these films that were for the most part obscure or cut for release in the States. Of course there were other people putting stuff out at this time and one of them was New Horizons, who decided to re-release some of the Roger Corman classics -- Death Race 2000 being the best of the lot. But anyway I put Humanoids on a Christmas list never thinking my parents would get it for me but they did. Opening that box felt like inadvertently being given free porn as a gift, because my parents sure as hell didn't know what they had bought, though I did, as I had a Fangoria hardcover book that had the entire birth scene splashed out 12 x 6 in full bloody color. For years now it sat in a box out in the garage, but since I couldn't find Horror House on Highway 5 (sorry to whoever picked that), I got this and it'll be interesting to look at something that was insane to get as an Xmas gift when you're 11 years old. 

 

All of these re-releases open with Leonard Maltin interviewing Roger. His voice has always been hypnotic to me and I could listen to him talk for hours though this is very brief. Apparently the film was directed by a woman, Barbara Peeters, which I didn't remember (and is interesting considering the content). Corman didn't really have much to do with it aside from being an executive producer so he basically just gives the film a backhanded compliment saying he didn't expect it to be good but it got more screams than most at the theater. After watching that I looked it up on Wiki and found out that Roger reshot a bunch of monster rape scenes (we'll get to that soon enough) to give the film more of a kick and Peeters was pissed, asking to take her name off the film and being refused. Pretty disingenuous there Roger, way to bring up some real controversy in that interview. 

 

So the setting is a coastal California fishing town and we are immediately greeted by a racist Vic Morrow talking shit to a Native American dude. Pleasant. From there we rush headlong into a vessel catching a monster in its net, whereupon it kills a kid that falls in the water and some leaked gas makes the entire boat blow up. Then in no time flat we have it killing the family dog of some locals, a fisherman and his wife, who find some bodies on the beach in the search for the dog. Same time Vic and his drunken crew find a bunch of dead dogs on their boats with only the Indian dude's dog left alive... so of course he immediately blames it on him. Then we have a local hoe-down where a bunch of asshole cannery guys give the townspeople their pitch to move into the area, with a skeptical marine biologist in tow who obviously could care less about her bosses. The Indian dude shows up with his dog, now dead, in tow, threatening to take the cannery guys to court to get his people's land back. They have a big fight outside and Vic has now solidified his A #1 Asshole Role in the film. 

 

Sprinkled throughout all this is some cheesecake stuff and a little nudity in the back of a truck, until we finally get the two fresh young teenagers from said truck together on the beach. Of course they go horsing around in the ocean, the boyfriend gets whacked out by a monster (with a convincing makeup job of his ripped face) and the girl gets raped (!) by the relatively unconvincing monster. It's a brief scene with a torn bikini and not much else. In no time flat however we get another couple on the beach, another ripped-up dude, another set of jiggling tits, and another barely-there rape scene. They're not holding back on this one. 

 

Meanwhile Morrow has decided to perform a little domestic terrorism and burn the Indian dude's home with a molotov which explodes like it had ten pounds of TNT inside. The monsters use this as a handy excuse to attack one guy and our friend Johnny Eagle who blows two of them away. The creatures' heads look like they have exposed brains so its cool to watch them bust when a bullet hits 'em. The girlfriend of the dude that got killed is driving the truck to get help and is attacked by a monster, making her conveniently fly off a bridge, and the truck -- what else? -- blows into a million pieces. 

 

Johnny, the main dude, and the biologist go searching for the monsters and immediately find evidence and she makes a sketch that looks better than the actual monsters do. In the full-bore nature of the film she already believes there are monsters created by some shit the cannery is up to and they promptly find skeletons, caves, and then several of the long-armed bastards attack all of them out of some crappy fog in their breeding ground. The costumes are about as much of a throwback to the '50s as you can get; a little slime and blood are the only additions. They find one of the raped girls on the beach so we get another gratuitous tit shot. 

 

And of course, guess what? It's time for the local Salmon Fest! Complete with Madman Mike Michaels, a radio host that insists on pronouncing the word "sall-mon" like a true rube, accompanied by Miss Salmon who is wearing a bikini. I sense a theme here. In mere moments THE CREATURES ATTACK! And now we got some rapey monsters stalking the boardwalk looking for victims. The scene is a riot with fountains of blood spraying all over and a pan away from the action just to show main dude's wife/stunt double in the shower for no reason. I guess she didn't fancy going to the fest. Our unlucky host gets his chest ripped open and his barely-dressed friend gets (what else?) her top ripped off, but she brains one of the fuckers with a rock and escapes. Meanwhile our heroes have been dumping gallons of gas in the water, which they proceed to burn with flares, and Vic Morrow learns his lesson after being saved by Johnny Eagle. There's a great scene where a bunch of guys surround a monster with boards and jump its ass in like it decides to join the Crips.

 

Of course the wife gets attacked and she survives thanks to a bottle marked in all caps "DRAIN CLEANER" and your handy kitchen knife. We pan back to the festival, which looks like it got hit by a bomb, and the wife muses "everything's going to be fine... right?" At which point we get the money shot. The raped girl is seen in a hospital, with a doctor telling her to push... her stomach expands as much as the doctor's eyes, and then a humanoid baby bursts from her stomach like Alien wasn't just made a year earlier. That's some true Corman shit right there -- steal from Jaws and steal from Alien to make something incredibly low-brow but entertaining. And cheap, because that's always his first priority. 

 

So hey, a fun little piece of work. It's certainly brisk, has its share of gore and gratuitous Vic Morrow, and really I don't think the additional nudity was over the top or nasty. I remember why I liked it as an 11 or 12-year old, for sure. A nice little walk down memory lane and a solid piece of trash cinema.

[Curt McGirt]

There are so many goddamn explosions in that film. One of Roger's rules was there needs to be either a killing or an explosion in his films every 15 minutes and they tried to keep up on both counts.

[twiztor]

glad you enjoyed it!
i found it on a whim and have been in love ever since. have shown it to soooo many people, and i'm always amazed when people don't appreciate it. luckily, that number is quite small.

[Brian Fowler]

Tomorrow, all the remaining reviews go up.