Stranded (2013)

 

I actually preordered this movie just from reading the plot, I am that much of a sucker for scifi/horrors. I mean, come on. Meteorite crashes on moonbase, bringing spores that infect a woman that goes instantly pregnant and within 24 hours gives birth to a humanoid thingie with a predator-ish mandible mouth. I did not go on Imdb to read reviews or look it up online, I had to have it. It was as simple as that. Roger Christian, the director, will always live in infamy because of him being responsible for Battlefield Earth but we have to remember that he also directed The Sender, a very underrated little chiller back in the early days of his career.

Stranded is quite a timeless movie, it doesn't have any clothes or technology that specifically places it in a particular time and it uses miniatures instead of CGI. It could easily have been set in the 80s or the 2000s. In fact, the only thing that actually tells us that we are watching a movie made in 2013 is the fact that Christian Slater is getting "older-ish" (That man has aged well, that's for sure). It feels like it could have been a Roger Corman production, released by either New World or Concorde. The story is straight out of a fifties scifi movie and gets in gear without any real character setup, the meteorites start smashing the half-decent models right after the credits and moves on at a good pace introducing the ways of the creature right up until the cliched ending. It doesn't try to break any new ground whatsoever and works fine just because of that. Sure, the actors are bland (mostly because of the weak characters) and the movie could have gone for a bit more of the ole' gross-factor but the important thing is that you never have the chance to be bored. It won't be remembered as a cult classic in the years to come but I sure as hell don't regret buying it. It's no Forbidden world but you could do much worse.

Creepers aka Contamination point 7 aka The Crawlers aka Troll 3 (1993)

 

Creepers aka Contamination Point 7 aka The Crawlers aka Troll 3 (which from now on will be mentioned as Creepers, the title I saw it with) is the type of movie that goes into your brain, hunts down your braincells, lines them up against a wall and executes them all, without mercy. On paper it might look like a real movie if you catch a quick glance with something that resembles a genuine plot and camerawork that looks like someone actually used a real camera but other than that Creepers is a real travesty, the ancient mother of the god we all call Boredom. All hail the mighty Creepers, supreme creator of diabolical dreariness beyond comprehension.

It starts comfortingly promising with the Filmirage logo. They've given us a lot of enjoyable movies like Michele Soavis Stagefright and Joe D'Amatos Anthropophagus and Endgame and even though Creepers has a 1.9 Imdb average I still had some hope for the movie. To put it simply everything goes downhill very quickly after that as we are ushered into the story of a small town girl returning home from the big city to rekindle her love for her old boyfriend at the same time as a nuclear company tries to conceal the fact that the radioactive waste they have been dumping has caused the tree roots in the forest to become carnivorous. I cannot really single out anything in particular that is flawed, the entire damn movie is so pedestrian and incompetent beyond belief. It's like the filmmakers had no interest in making a movie at all. The actors are all awful, hough mention has to be made of the sheriff that stumbles on dialogue like he just went through trepanation and of course, the owner of the nuclear plant that seems to parody a villain straight out of Scooby Doo. His final euology has to be seen to be believed. Also, it seems like there only was one take on every single scene, there is quite a lot of stumbling of dialogue on a level that I haven't seen since really early Dr Who. Everything about this movie screams boredom. Boredom from the point of view of the filmmakers as there is not an ounce of anything resembling love for the craft and boredom for the viewer who wonders how the hell this thing was even made (even more perplexing is the fact that Creepers was supposed be shown at cinemas. That could quite possibly have caused an epidemic of mass suicides).

Too put it simply: There is nothing fun here. The movie has no nudity, no gore (apart from a quick scene where a character gets a root into his mouth and having it exit through his eye but it is so poorly made that it doesn't really matter), no exploitative materials at all. It is just... Dull. I can't even see it working when watching it with friends over a case of beer. It is that bad. A major avoid.

And the worst part about all of this? At the time of writing it is not officially available on dvd/blu ray but there is a blurb on Wikipedia that Scream factory are going to release this in the future. And I would probably buy it. That scares me the most. All hail the ungodly cancer that is Creepers! DEATH BY BOREDOM TO US ALL!

Macabre (2009)



 

Macabre is quite an oddity since it is a very violent and gruesome movie, coming out of a country that is predominately Islam, something you rarely see in cinema today. It seems to base it's reasons of horror firmly in the legacy of the Dutch colonialism of three and a half centuries which is actually quite refreshing, although it actually only hints of this.

Plotwise this is nothing new, on the contrary. We follow a group of youths travelling by minibus through the countryside as they almost run over a young woman in the middle of nowhere. They take her to her house, an old mansion, meet her slightly odd family and reluctantly accept an offer of dinner. The family of four, three grown children and the matriarch that oddly looks a bit too young for her age, soon show their true colors. They want the youths to die. Horribly.

The story is really old, we have seen it hundreds of times. The good thing about Macabre is the way the filmmakers treat it, infusing an extra creepiness in the villains that are more uncomfortable than the usual gimmicky buffoons that we mostly get to see in this type of movie. I won't go into discussing the vague reasons behind all of this but believe me when I say that they are truly horrifying in their ambiguity. The matriarch herself (Shareefa Daanish chewing her way through the scenery with great fun) is a marvel of death and torture and her children aren't far behind in maliciousness. The violence is bloody and hardhitting, just like we want it and combined with fluent direction we get a movie that rises way above its kind. Damn I want a sequel now!

 

One of the reviews I found online (can't remember which one, sorry. Might change this text when I remember) summed this up fairly well: Think Frontieres in Indonesia, and this is a good description although I rate this much higher. It isn't really anything new but the treatment is still interesting enough to give this my highest recommendations, it really is that well made.

Thanks Fred over at Ex-Ninja for recommending this movie, NOW HOW ABOUT WATCHING LAKE MUNGO THAT I'VE TALKED ABOUT FOR YEARS?!

Evil dead (2013)

 

So, it is finally here. The Evil dead REMAKE. The internet have been as usual, a lot of people behaving like spoiled children, screaming that THEY CAN'T DO THIS! WE WANT BRUCE CAMPBELL! Personally, I am not that big a fan of remakes but ever since I was positively blown away by Zack Snyders Dawn of the dead I'm keeping an open mind.

You know the story, a group of youths are going out into the woods for the weekend, the difference being that in the original they were partygoers and now they are having a kind of intervention, helping a friend (Jane Levy) to kick a drughabit. It doesnt take long before they find a mysterious book in the basement, someone reads a passage out of it and demons are released. You dont need to know more, it is all there and very recognizably so. The variations from the original story aren't major but enough to make the story interesting. Some of it is good (the whole kicking the drug habit is somewhat fresh, it gives the movie just a bit more edge, as it just might all be in the head of Levys character) and some of it is not (the backstory about the demons, but more on that later on in the review). but there is enough of it to make the story feel somewhat fresh. We even get a bit of a twist towards the end that I did not expect and it is a fun one too.

So, let us start with the bad stuff. First of all, and this is a pet peeve of mine, why do we have to have an explanation of what is going on? Why do we need to know all these details about the demon? Does the screenwriter think that the normal moviegoer is stupid and needs to have things explained in detail in order to understand the intricate ways of a plot that mainly is about dismemberment? Ok, so I am exaggerating a bit here, Evil dead is nowhere near the worst offender of this crime (#1 on this list is the American remake of Ringu) but the original did it so much simpler and better. We don't need to know (with illustrations) that there are three ways to kill the possessed, we just want to see the characters trying to survive as ferociously as possible! I want my own mind to fill in the blanks, not to have them filled in by the screenwriter with a dull hammer (which could have been put to better use in the movie itself as a way of inflicting even more grue and gore). This is only a minor flaw of the movie though, I'm just pouring out some old hate towards Hollywood. The movie moves so fast that I never had the chance to be upset about this until after it was finished. I could also bitch about the fact that some of the characters are somewhat undeveloped, mainly the leads girlfriend who is a blonde chick who we never have a chance to get to know until *SPOILER* she is torn to pieces in a long, delightful sequence with several nods to the original movie. *END OF SPOILER*. But then again, she really is just there to be dismembered violently. (oops. Forgot the spoilertag).

So, the good bits? Most of the god damn movie. As i mentioned before, it moves like lightning and the brief scenes of setting up the scenario are over before you can say Bodily dismemberment and as soon as the words that are used to summon the demon are read, we are way in over our heads of blood and nastiness. There is a lot of violence and it sure as hell is really red and painful, most of it actually old school practical stuff (there is a scene of the remnants of a chopped off arm that looked suspiciously CGI but if it's not, kudos to the makeup artists). All of the actors are good even though some of the characters are thin and they serve the script well. Fede Alvarez does an excellent job setting up all of this and the cabin itself is a marvel to behold, surrounded by a dark and gnarly forest that works wonder with the atmosphere. To top it all off we get those cool last ten minutes that follow a slightly cheesy moment (the only one actually) and what we have is a solid piece of gore.

I realize I spent more time writing bad stuff than good, but don't let that deter you from watching Evil dead. As remakes go, it is up there as one of the better I have seen. It does not reinvent the wheel but it serves up its images with style and relish, giving us a nasty piece of horror that stands fairly well together with the original. It does keep its horror dark and serious which I personally like a lot. Good stuff indeed, and I really look forward to getting it on bluray (fingers crossed for even more gore!). Recommended.

Manborg (2011)

Holy fuck, I haven't been this entertained by movie in years! Manborg is a real curio, a loving tribute to the 80:s that throws in everything and the kitchen sink in a glorious display of lo-fi special effects and tongue in cheek storytelling in such a way that it is over before you realize you are having the best time in your life.

The gates of hell have opened and mankind are at war with the hordes of demons pouring out, and losing it. A young soldier watches his brother get killed by the evil Lord Draculon before he himself is mowed down by the demonic soldiers. A number of years later he wakes up into a dystopian, demon-controlled society where humanity lives in the blasted cityruins of what used to be Earth. He has now been transformed into the half human - half man:  MANBORG. Together with a small group of cliched characters straight out of 80s actionmovies he has to battle the evil Lord Draculon and his cohorts in order to redeem his humanity and avenge his brother. I hope I did a good job sounding like the text on the back of an old Empire vhs because this is what Manborg feels like.

With a quick glance at Manborg you might dismiss it as cheap and silly but while it actually is both, it doesn't mean that it is boring or worse. On the contrary, the movie (shot entirely on green screen) is full of cool things that are meant to look like that. The special effects are cheap and simple, but designed that way with an production design that I haven't seen elsewhere other than in C64 games or maybe Captain Power and the soldiers of the future if you remember that old tv-show (I haven't seen Captain power since it was released so I dont remember much but it popped up in my mind pretty quick as I started to watch Manborg). There is so much cool stuff here, like the crude but awesome stopmotion demons that pop up everywhere and the lovingly overacting actors (for instance, the asian guy Nr 1 Man who always walks around without any clothes on his upper body and is hilariously dubbed). Everything moves as such breakneck pace that the miniscule 60 minutes feel like 20. And that is my only real complaint, the movie is way too short although they stretch it out to 70 by adding an hilarious trailer after the credits of a fake movie called Bio-Cop, a movie about a police office transformed into a slimy mass after getting doused with radioactive waste and his hijinx after remaining in the police force (he just screams Kill me all the time). Fun stuff indeed.

Yes, I admit, I loved Manborg. It was perfectly tailored to my own tastes in popular culture and is a must see. Astron 6 have perfected the art of loving the 80s and now I want more. Manborg 2? Please? PLEASE?!

Demonwarp (1988)

Demonwarp really had some potential. It starts with a meteor landing on earth with a preacher discovering it as he is trecking in those classic Californian hills. From then we move forward in time and watch as George Kennedy (who is prominetly featured on the cover but in the movie for about 10 minutes) is playing Trivial pursuit with his daughter in a cabin in the woods. All is well until something hairy attacks them and runs off with the daughter. As the plot moves forward in its intricate machinations we are now introduced to a group of overage teens traveling to the very same woods for a weekend of partying and debauchery, not knowing that the "leader" of the group is actually going there to find out what happened to his uncle who disappeared in the area. To pad the movie to a decent length the movie also gives us a couple of other random characters that never really interact with the rest, such as a hiker and two women who are only in the movie to show their breasts and get messily killed. So far so good, but now everything falls apart. Big time. And boy does it fall apart in one of the more bad ways I have ever encountered.

The first half of the movie isn't exactly good but it is at least somewhat entertaining. We get lots of nudity, bad acting and some nice gore, not a bad thing. But then the movie decides to throw in just about anything it can think of and turns plain stupid. SPOILERS GALORE from now on. You see, it is a Bigfoot doing all of this killing and it's just not any plain Bigfoot, it is an aliencontrolled bigfoot. The meteor that we saw in the beginning of the movie contained an alien who has for the last hundred years been sitting in a cave, turning travelers into bigfoots and/or zombies so that he can build a ship or something to be able to leave the planet. We eventually end up in the alien lair (about as high tech as anything made in the 50s) where the lead character confront the alien and his zombies who are all wearing cheap halloween masks, like they ran out of money for the final confrontation. It is straight out of the cheapest 50s scifi and such a big disappointment after the somewhat fun first half, you just can't take a second of it seriously. END OF SPOILER.

So, Demonwarp (nice title since there are no demons in it) is just a bad, silly movie; cheesy to the extreme. There is quite a lot of bad acting, naked breasts and cheesy gore to keep you interested throughout but in the end you just get frustrated by the climax that is so mindnumbingly awful that you want to put a bullet in your brain. If you just have to see every cheesefilled, latex-ridled horrormovie of the 80s then so be it, I suppose there are more boring movies than this. But I sure as hell won't be watching this again. Unless there is a proper dvd and a lot of beer.

The Whisperer in darkness (2011)

2005 faux silent movie Call of Cthulhu stands as one of the best adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft, if not actually the best. It worked around the pitfalls of presenting material that really cant be "shown" as if it was made during the heyday of silent cinema and did an exceptionally good job of it with surrealistic miniatures and a strong set design. Now comes the next production from the very same filmmakers and this time we move forward in time with an adaptation of the short story The Whispererer in darkness as a 1930-1940ish horrormovie. My expectations were sky high.

The original short story deals with strange and alien creatures haunting a farmer in the forests of Vermont and the revelation of their purpose as the main character travels to the remote house to meet the besieged man. However, the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has decided to expand upon the story and actually managed to lessen the horror content. The original story itself is about half of the movie now, going in an entirely different and more "action-oriented" direction after the events of the story has played out. I suppose I could bitch about this, but it is actually quite in tone with the filmmakers intent of it being a 40s movie with some dashing and running around, ending in a rather good and authentically cheap looking actionsequence. In fact, the movie really does an excellent job in the look and feel of that very era. The actors are wildly uneven, either risibly stern or overacting like their lives depend on it and I'm pretty damn sure that it is all on purpose. It doesnt really matter, it works perfectly. Sure, there are a few instances of the cinematography being a bit too obviously digital but these never distract from the overall feeling. The only thing that does not work is the special effects of some of the creatures that look more like they came straight out of a Starship troopers sequel shot for Syfy but they are redeemed by a couple of truly wonderful and inspired flying beasties towards the end of the movie that bring a smile on my face just when thinking about them. I'd like a miniature of one of them on my shelf.

Yes, I was not disappointed with The Whisperer in darkness. The storyextensions doesnt really feel that much Lovecraft but within the context of the movie they are excellent and invokes a cool atmosphere of fun, spunky black & white horror. If you liked Call of Cthulhu you should check this out.