The Revenant Review

Movie Review – The Houses October Built (2014)

**Movie Review – The Houses October Built (2014)**

The Houses October Built (2014) is a found footage horror about a group of friends on an RV road trip in search of extreme haunted house attractions, until they are stalked by some of the more unnerving performers and the scares start coming to them. Directed by Bobby Roe, who also stars, and co-written by him and some of the others who also star, the movie begins with an intriguing premise. Halloween haunted house-like attractions are a surprisingly under-utilized setting for horror films, with the main exception being Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse (1981). The film is part found footage, part docu-style, and although the film is sometimes creepy but not terribly scary, it does actually do a good job of making one apprehensive about visiting such attractions – it unsettles the security one feels that they will be untouched. Who exactly are behind those masks? Have there been background checks? What’s to stop a killer from dressing up and taking people out, hiding them amongst the fake body parts and theatrical blood?

As has been mentioned, there are some creepy parts to The Houses October Built, particularly one involving a girl in a porcelain doll mask. And if you’re afraid of clowns, there’s plenty of them around. The narrative actually owes a lot to The Blair Witch Project (1999), with thuds on an RV standing in ruffles on tent fabric.

However, the movie falls into some of the unfortunate traps of found footage that ironically could have been fixed with a few more lessons from Blair Witch. Firstly, we’re never given a convincing reason as to why these people would be filming everything. They say they’re documenting their trip, but real people would forget about the camera after constantly being approached by hostile locals and being terrorized by strangers in frightening Halloween costumes. Had they been documentarians committed to the craft, we might have believed their persistence in filming. Also, it would have helped to have more camera perspectives rather than the single hand-held cam and a few stationary shots from mounted cameras (and why was there a camera facing the front of the RV?).

Lastly, Houses pulls its punches far too often, having much of the violence take place off camera. Blair Witch can get away with this because of the mythology it was building and the supernatural nature of the antagonist. But in Houses they’re people in masks and what we have is the equivalent of a slasher film that turns the camera away every time someone is killed. The ending is also abrupt and anticlimactic, and the creepy characters we’ve been seeing are inexplicably replaced by henchmen in skull masks who basically all look the same. There’s simply no pay off, and I for one was left feeling very disappointed.

The Houses October Built does not reach its promising potential, but I could easily see it fitting into a rotation of Halloween films. As said before, there’s really no onscreen violence, and though it’s unrated it could easily be shown on television with very little editing. On its own it’s generally avoidable, but just before going to a haunted attraction it might serve to set the mood perfectly.

Grade: D+

October 21, 2015 0

Movie Review – The American Scream (2012)

**Movie Review – The American Scream (2012)**

My childhood memories of Halloween are all fond ones, but the ones that stick out most involve visiting those houses on the block that went the extra mile. They would create sensory wonders in their homes or in their yards, inviting people into their creative world to be scared or awed, or both. Strobe lights, gravestones, jack-o-lanterns lighting the paths, descending spiders, shrieking ghosts, eerie music and sounds being fed from the darkness, and if you were really lucky, a neighbor with questionable judgement jumping out with a chainsaw dressed as Leatherface. Everyone embraced the macabre for just one night. We faced our fears of death and laughed at our own mortality.

The 2012 documentary The American Scream, which first premiered on Chiller, follows three working-class men in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, whose drives and passions lead them to create extravagant “home haunts” even more elaborate than the ones I experienced as a child. It highlights the amount of work, dedication, inventiveness, and personal resources required to make an even minor home haunt successful. While the men’s reasons vary somewhat, all are ultimately motivated by communal celebration, and the film, directed by Michael Stephenson, captures the spirit that made my own childhood experiences so special. As one of the men says, “Everybody’s screaming, they’re smiling, and that’s the point… Halloween is intensely special to me and it feels very different from every other day. It’s a community thing, it’s not just a family thing – Thanksgiving and Christmas are family holidays. Halloween brings the whole community together. You’re not going to see that any other time of year.”

The American Scream is an endearing documentary, even if it’s a bit light on content given its length. Nevertheless, it really makes one appreciate just how much effort and commitment it takes to pull off a home haunt, and I for one would love to see the trend continue and grow.

Grade: C

October 20, 2015 0

Movie Review – Blind Justice (1916)

This review is part of the A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema Series

**Movie Review – Blind Justice (1916)**

Blind Justice (1916) is a Danish thriller directed by Benjamin Christensen, who also plays the lead character – the tragic and simple-minded Strong John, a circus strong man who is falsely accused of murder. On the run with his infant son, John mistakenly believes a young woman, Ann, has betrayed him, causing him to be caught and imprisoned. Fourteen years later he’s acquitted as new evidence comes to light. He leaves prison a broken man, in search of his son who he believes is forever beyond his reach. Eventually, Strong John comes under the influence of local thieves and soon decides to carry out the revenge he promised upon Ann – to strangle her with a rope – not knowing how connected she now is with the circumstances of his boy.

Blind Justice is a tightly crafted tale of interweaving subplots and terrific characterizations, especially in the sympathetic John. It is well-paced, the lighting is excellent and the camera placement creates many shots of depth and intriguing, almost voyeuristic perspective. One memorable shot is of Ann in her bedroom looking frightened into the camera, only to have the camera pull back into the night to reveal the window frame and John’s silhouette creeping before the panes. The scene where a monkey puppet in baby’s clothes is revealed, due to the camera’s perspective, might qualify as a very early fake jump scare (and is still better than a screeching cat). Even the inter-title cards are stunning and evocative.

The last twenty minutes had me anxiously watching the screen, my legs restless. That’s no small feat for a silent film, especially since I watched it on mute so as not to be distracted by the generic music that was being played over it. Blind Justice is thoroughly impressive.

Of course, this was still 1916, of which I was reminded when the circus manager yells, “Get the crocodile act on at once and warn the Chinks to be ready twenty minutes earlier!” But that’s all just part of the experience of watching an old film like this, as is the final frame which comes after the tense finale, and which is a title card that simply reads “SLUT.” Come to find out, this means “END” in Danish.

Christensen would have many false starts in his film career. When Blind Justice was not met with great success he returned to the theater. But in 1922 he would return to horror to direct the seminal Häxan which contained what was considered at the time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and perversion. Christensen would continually return to film, fail, and then go back to the theater in a cycle thereafter. The actress who played Ann, Karen Caspersen (as Karen Sandberg), would go on to appear in films until she died in a house fire in 1941.

Blind Justice is a major achievement of the early silent era that deserves more recognition.

SLUT.

Grade: B

October 19, 2015 1

Movie Review – Crimson Peak (2015)

**Movie Review – Crimson Peak (2015)**

In an early scene in Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015), our American heroine, Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), is trying to write a novel which someone casually dismisses as a ghost story. “It’s not a ghost story,” she tells him, “it’s a story with ghosts in it.” The same description can be applied to the film’s approach to the supernatural. As Cushing states in the opening, “Ghosts are real. That much I know.” This is less an indication of what is to come for the audience, who would be justified in anticipating a story infested with malevolent entities, and more of a statement of fact. In Cushing’s world ghosts exist and they sometimes interact with mortals, just as her inky mother visited her as a child and cryptically warned her to stay away from Crimson Peak. Ultimately, however, in this tale they are peripheral – truly, the plot would still stand if the ghosts were removed.

Ghosts are not the point, yet they are also not the gratuitous window-dressing their inclusion may at first appear to be. Cushing says that in literature they are metaphors for the past, and that is to some extent true for this treatment of them, though Del Toro’s preoccupation with moths and butterflies in the film could offer another. The ghosts may be the past coming back to haunt our central character, but they come equipped with knowledge of the present and future. In one scene, as Cushing and the mysterious Lady Lucille Sharpe sit in the park they view butterflies dying in the sun and note at least one particular cocoon. Perhaps death is simply a metamorphosis to an altered state, yet like these butterflies the spirit cannot live in the open. Nevertheless we later see dozens of moths thriving in an attic – the home is the place for the dead, if our centuries of stories are any indication.

Those going to see Crimson Peak expecting a fast-moving modern horror will likely leave the film feeling underwhelmed. The film is a gothic romance, through and through, and is an ode to the gothic writers of the nineteenth century. Set in the last years of the Victorian era, Del Toro takes Cushing from Edith Wharton’s New York high society backbiting to a veritable House of Usher oozing with blood-like red clay. It is the stuff of what Edgar Allan Poe’s contemporaries called “German tales,” where the horrors weren’t the figments of imagination, but real and dangerous. Victorian literature rears its head as Cushing notes a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle on a bookshelf, foreshadowing her own detective work later in the film as she begins to realize the danger in which she has placed herself. I almost wish there were more of these literary nods for I could easily see Cushing being a variation of Jane Austen’s Catherine Moreland from Northanger Abbey (1817), who is so taken with gothic literature that she immediately suspects the worst when first inside an actual, though entirely benign, medieval abbey. Austen’s story was satire (though she personally loved the gothic genre), yet I could imagine Cushing being more mentally prepared for the agitated spirits and murderous mysteries she encounters due to her familiarity with the gothic genre, like the Victorian equivalent of meta-horror in the vein of Scream (1996). To emphasize her as a romantic, rather than a budding logician, might have better served to explain her willingness to be swept away in the more macabre circumstances.

Crimson Peak is not a film in a rush to tell its story. It’s in no hurry to leave the exquisite sets and impressive period wardrobe that the camera picks up in rich detail. The house is a character unto itself, built whole for the film. While the story looks two centuries back for inspiration, the color palette and general mood look to the period films of 1960s Hammer Film Productions (Cushing’s last name is likely an homage to Hammer’s Peter Cushing) and to the vibrant reds of Italian filmmakers like Mario Bava or Dario Argento. Similarities could easily be made, in period and visual style, with Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), though Crimson Peak is in many ways less surreal and more grounded than that film. Nevertheless, Del Toro doesn’t always allow logic to get in the way of his images and gives his imagination relatively free reign, particularly in the aspects of the crumbling estate as red clay flows continuously like blood down the walls or snow falls dreamlike within the house through a hole in the roof. Del Toro’s approach is a conscious contrast to modern horror. He attempts to make horror big both in budget and in ambition again, and perhaps also more respectable to the general audience who may be more forgiving of its horrific qualities if they can get lost in a compelling tale. The story, which was co-written by Matthew Robbins, is not one that will hold many surprises for most experienced viewers, but for those with a fondness for gothic romance there is a great deal to appreciate and respect about Del Toro’s loving treatment of it here.

For all the nostalgia at play, Del Toro’s take on the centuries-old genre is still decidedly modern. Firstly, the gore is consistent with today’s tastes. Del Toro doesn’t let the camera look away from the more uncomfortable and brutal acts of violence, shown in patient, painful detail. Secondly, Del Toro reverses traditional gender roles where men can now be the weak and manipulated sex and women can be dominant, smart, and capable of saving themselves. Gothic romance generally emphasized the female perspective, illuminating fears of patriarchy. Crimson Peak does this too and attempts to infuse its female character with a strong dignity. All in all, it becomes that rare breed of horror film, in a genre dominated by boyish sensibilities, which seeks to attract and focus upon the perspective of the female audience.

The cast is solid, particularly the macabre siblings Sir Thomas Sharpe and Lady Lucille Sharpe, played by Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. Hiddleston manages to evoke despicability and sympathy in equal measure, and Chastain is perfectly cold and unhinged.

My lone complaint of the film, and it is one on which much of the film unfortunately relies, is the central character of Edith Cushing. She is thoroughly likable and Mia Wasikowska does a fine job in her portrayal, but she lacks a story arc. The head-strong, intelligent woman we see in the beginning is the same head-strong, intelligent woman we see at the end, albeit bloodier. Her single weakness was the desire for her writing to be accepted, but this plot-line ceases half-way through the film and should have come into some significance before the end. She is a surrogate for the viewer and sometimes feels like little else.

Considering his stellar output, it is not a great criticism to say that Crimson Peak is not Del Toro’s best film. For my money, that is still 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. However, it is thus far his best English language film, and that indeed is saying something. Crimson Peak is Del Toro the auteur returning from his big budget forays, and if those who watch it know what they’re getting into and allow themselves to be swept down the dark, dank corridors of a bygone era, filled with the suffering cries of restless dead and the malicious secrets of the living, the experience is a rewarding one.

Grade: B

October 18, 2015 0

Movie Review – WolfCop (2014)

**Movie Review – WolfCop (2014)**

WolfCop (2014), written and directed by Lowell Dean, is a Canadian comedy-horror that consciously stays within the bounds of B-movie fare. In the film, a lazy alcoholic small town cop named Lou Garou (“loup-garou” means “werewolf” in French) is abducted by Satanists and turned into a werewolf, to be used towards their own nefarious ends. Finding that he stays conscious while transformed, Garou decides to clean up the town. But things aren’t what they seem and people close to him may not be who they appear.

WolfCop earnestly tries to be a cult classic, but such a status is bestowed, not made. There are some funny sight-gags, especially one involving a genital-first transformation and another with a bloody face being thrown on a windshield. Also, I appreciated the nods to past werewolf myths and classics, from Garou’s name to the use of the pentagram (1941’s The Wolf Man) and a shop called “Stiles Autobody” (1985’s Teen Wolf).

However, WolfCop ultimately does not deliver on its promise. The acting ranges from adequate to amateur, the story moves along slowly, and a lot of the comedy falls flat. At one point Garou decides to modify his police car into something akin to a cross between the Batmobile and Knight Rider, yet the changes are purely cosmetic and never play a part in the rest of the movie. It’s symptomatic of the film’s larger problem – ultimately, there’s simply not enough here.

WolfCop is overall entertaining. It had potential and it tried to be something fun and memorable, and it sometimes succeeded in the first goal but never really attains the second.

Grade: C

October 15, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Queen of Spades (1916)

This review is part of the A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema Series

**Movie Review – The Queen of Spades (1916)**

The Queen of Spades (1916) is a Russian horror film made upon the eve of the revolution, which would erupt the following year. It is often referred to as one of director Yakov Protazanov’s masterpieces, and he would go on to make films well into the Soviet era. The film’s star, Ivan Mazzhukin, would flee to Crimea and then to France. His career would thrive until the advent of talkies which exposed his thick accent, effectively making his marketability obsolete.

The plot is based upon Alexander Pushkin’s 1834 short story of the same name and is filled with beautiful sets and lavish costume designs. The story follows a young nobleman who learns that an old wealthy countess was once told of a progression of cards that, when played, were unbeatable. He is determined to get the secret and accidentally scares the old woman to death, only to be visited by her ghost and given the secret. He goes to gamble and at first wins before things begin to unravel for him.

There is artistry here, certainly, but pacing is an issue. The camera lingers too long too often and left me staring at the screen wondering if I was missing something when, in fact, the character was just slowly finishing a meal and putting on his coat. This has a lot to do with feature length film still being in its infancy, especially in Russia, but the plot is fairly thin and moves quite slowly through its 84-minute running time. I have considerable patience for silent films, and I sometimes even enjoy those long candid shots. Nevertheless, I found my attention being tried here, especially as the plot doesn’t really kick in until the last twenty minutes, and from there it ironically feels too rushed.

That being said, The Queen of Spades employs novel techniques for the time, such as split screen and retrospection. Additionally, it’s easy to see how this film would have resonated deeply with Russians at the time with its depiction of a slothful upper class having little to do but drink and gamble away their fortunes. One scene even shows the countess returning home while beggars are pushed away from the door, ignored by her as she passes. Her privileged class would be overthrown within a year’s time, and one can’t help but see what the poor and underclass must have been thinking and feeling as that day quickly approached.

Grade: D+

October 12, 2015 0

Movie Review – Banshee Chapter (2013)

**Movie Review – Banshee Chapter (2013)**

Loosely based upon H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” (1934), 2013’s Banshee Chapter, the directorial debut of Blair Erickson, mixes elements both real and unreal to generate effective scares.

When an old college friend takes a mysterious chemical and goes missing, an investigative journalist named Anne goes in search of him and of the origins of the chemical. She eventually tracks down his supplier – a burnt-out, drug obsessed author named Thomas Blackburn, based upon Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and played brilliantly by horror icon Ted Levine. The plot throws in elements of the factual Project MKultra, which were illegal mind control experiments using human subjects carried out by the CIA from the 1950s into the 1970s, as well as the eerie nature of number stations – strange broadcasts heard on shortwave radios that often have repeating sounds or voices, usually of women but sometimes of men or children, reading numbers. Many of these are likely government transmissions meant to discourage others from using the frequency, but some have yet to be fully explained. Soon Anne and Blackburn are being followed by an otherworldly entity and are in a race against time to find the source before they succumb to it.

Lovecraft, MKultra, and number stations make a good stew. The scares are mostly predictable but they’re also mostly pulled off so well that they’re still effective. The transmission of the number station, which acts as a harbinger for the entity’s approach, is an unnerving soundtrack to the visuals on screen.

Ted Levine is the highlight of the film. He’s a bit like having Jeff Lebowski, AKA The Dude, in a horror film, yet he never devolves into being a mere cartoon version of that character, which in lesser hands he might have become. His Blackburn is sympathetic while maintaining enough mystery as to seem untrustworthy and potentially dangerous. He also manages to get all the good dialogue, like when he tells Anne: “People are afraid of death because it’s so fucking ordinary, it happens all the time.” Levine single-handedly elevates the movie to the point where he almost looks out-of-place within it.

While there are a few instances of found-footage in the film, mainly in the opening, this is not that kind of movie. Nevertheless, the director takes the found-footage approach, filming hand-held and moving with the actors as though he is another character in the film. At times this is distracting, but when the horror elements start it gives that unnerving sensation of a camera swinging and not knowing what its lens will land on.

Yet Banshee Chapter is not without its shortcomings. The plot is threadbare and, except for Blackburn, the characters are all two-dimensional. Even Anne gets no depth. The most we learn about her is her relationship to the missing friend, told only in a few flashback images, and her job. Also, as has been mentioned, despite being genuinely creepy the film is still predictable and borrows heavily from other films, such as The Ring (2002). It’s stuff we’ve seen before, but at least they’re doing it fairly well. Finally, the two twists at the end are rather absurd. The first makes no sense when one considers the effect it would have had over several decades and yet there’s no indication of it in the film, and the second is so obvious as to not be a twist at all.

Christopher Nolan was originally tied to making this film before deciding to do Interstellar (2014), and I can only imagine what he could have created with these strong ingredients already in place. As it is, Banshee Chapter is a film that is worth watching, especially in the dark, but it doesn’t warrant repeat viewings.

Grade: C+

October 11, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Unseeable (2006)

**Movie Review – The Unseeable (2006)**

The Unseeable (2006), also known as Pen choo kab pee, is a Thai horror film directed by Wisit Sasanatieng that is awash in ghosts and a Gothic sense of foreboding. I was curious to see how a culture steeped in ancestor worship and rich supernatural traditions would depict a ghost tale, to see what new cultural elements they might bring to the genre.

When I first began watching the film I was struck by the grainy picture and the seeming overuse of haunting music to ramp the tension where it didn’t appear to need it. In my American hubris I chalked this up to being the result of the budget constraints of filming in a poorer nation and of a director trying to imitate Western horror films. My first reaction was, “well, this is quaint.” In my defense, the budget was indeed meager and my feelings were consistent with the vibe of the first 10-15 minutes. However, after going through the entire film I see that I grossly underestimated the filmmaker. I now see how deliberate his artistic choices were as the ending of the film gives a whole new perspective on its beginning.

Set in the 1930s, a pregnant woman on her way to Bangkok in search of her husband stays at a creepy estate/compound. It is owned by an elitist woman who some say sleeps with the ghost of her lover in the main house. The place is run by a cold, domineering housemaid straight out of a Gothic melodrama who warns her to stay away from the antique closet. The other two guests include Choy, a superstitious blabbermouth who thinks the only other guest, an old woman who shuffles around the garden at night, is a vampire. Amid this we throw in the apparitions of a man digging at night, a girl who appears and asks to be played with and then disappears again, and a story about a woman who hanged herself from a nearby tree. And of course, just when she’s about to flee our protagonist gives birth and has to stay on longer.

The plot carefully distributes these puzzle pieces and asks the viewer to be patient and soak in the atmosphere. The costuming is meant to recall 1930s cinema stars and the visuals are inspired by 1930s and 40s illustrator Hem Vejakorn. The twist(s) at the end are actually quite satisfying and I was surprised at just how well-crafted this classic ghost tale was. There were elements that may have been lost in translation for me, particularly regarding the garden shrine (there was something creepy there I apparently wasn’t seeing most of the time) and the lore of vampires, which works quite differently in Thailand. Dealing smartly with primal fears and desires and crosscut with class conflict, the script was one I found myself pondering long after viewing. It’s just the type of ghost tale I hope to find but rarely do. For those interested in Southeast Asia’s take on the Gothic ghost film, I highly recommend seeing The Unseeable.

Grade: B-

October 10, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Avenging Conscience (1914)

This review is part of the A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema Series

**Movie Review – The Avenging Conscience: or “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (1914)**

1914’s The Avenging Conscience: or “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is the earliest feature length American horror film. A year before D.W. Griffith, the greatest director of his day, would win fame and subsequent infamy for The Birth of a Nation (1915) – a masterpiece of filmmaking whose historical accuracy is less commendable – he used his talents to tell this horror tale inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “A Tell Tale Heart” (1843) and his poem “Annabel Lee” (1849). Griffith had already tackled the macabre in previous shorter works, such as 1909’s The Sealed Room, based on Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), and 1912’s The Unseen Enemy, which had the first appearances of the starlet sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish in a Griffith film.

In some ways The Avenging Conscience is the opposite of 1913’s The Student of Prague from Germany. In that film I praised the effects but criticized the lack of close-ups and the slothful pace of the editing. D.W. Griffith, on the other hand, is a skillful director who effectively employs close-ups to set mood and explore character, and to communicate anxiety and madness. The editing is quite good and the film moves along swiftly enough. The camera placement is also interesting as Griffith has an eye for finding and employing outdoor locations, though the scenes of the garden party in particular become frivolous in retrospect. Griffith also uses symbolism to effectively communicate the inner workings of the main character, such as a spider eating a fly to show his growing murderous intent. Likewise, he uses editing and close-ups in stunning ways when the main character is being questioned by a detective, amplifying the paranoia as the audience is subjected to the subject’s fearful hypersensitivity, much as the narrator of Poe’s tale does.

The acting is not as exaggerated as in many other silent films of the era, and the lead role is played wonderfully by Henry B. Walthall, who manages to hold a screen presence while communicating a wide spectrum of emotions. Also starring as The Italian is George Siegmann who would also appear in the silent horrors The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Man Who Laughs (1928), both directed by the masterful Paul Leni. In 1915, the year following the release of The Avenging Conscience, Siegmann would suffer severe injuries in a car crash with future horror director Tod Browning, who was driving and who was also injured, and actor Elmer Booth, who died instantly.

Where The Avenging Conscience has not age well, unlike The Student of Prague, is in its primitive effects, especially in the short fantasy sequence at the end which looks goofy at best and can be a distasteful distraction from an otherwise well-told story of tragedy and suspense. Though the movie takes initial inspiration from Poe it ultimately embodies an undoubtedly Victorian sensibility, substituting Poe’s psychological claustrophobia with a focus on Christian redemption. In this way, the film is far more Griffith than Poe. Nevertheless, one can still admire what Griffith was trying to accomplish – he was undeniably fluent in the language of film – and it’s still exciting for early horror history buffs like me to see the ways directors of the time were beginning to incorporate the macabre into their longer artistic endeavors.

Grade: C

October 8, 2015 0

Movie Review – To Catch a Virgin Ghost (2004)

**Movie Review – To Catch a Virgin Ghost (2004)**

To Catch a Virgin Ghost (2004) is the international release name of the Korean horror-comedy Sisily 2 km and is the directorial debut of Shin Jung-won. The film is about a gangster in search of stolen diamonds at a farming commune, one that also appears to be haunted by a ghost. It attempts the melding of horror with the gangster genre to mixed success. A lot of the humor is found in the morbid situations the characters find themselves in and the script tries to turn horror conventions on their head, particularly the prevalent and overused J-horror ghost girl whose pale skin and stringy black hair have become readily recognizable tropes.

The movie is a lot of fun with some genuinely funny scenes, especially those of the main protagonist hanging out with the ghost, but the film as a whole doesn’t really mesh. Characters are underdeveloped and what should be plot twists are telegraphed far too early. Additionally, certain plot elements are never explained and feel more like they were inserted to simply move the film along to the next scene.

Despite these faults, the way To Catch a Virgin Ghost makes the audience shift in its loyalties makes it a film worth watching.

Grade: C

October 7, 2015 0

Movie Review – Kill List (2011)

**Movie Review – Kill List (2011)**

Kill List (2011) is an overall impressive piece of British horror directed by Ben Wheatley that almost feels like three different movies. The film’s first act focuses on the marital troubles of Jay (Neil Maskell), who hasn’t worked in eight months. The financial strains are causing him and his wife to squabble as his young son tries to understand it all. Jay at first appears meek and docile but we soon discover he’s a former hitman with a nasty violent streak, and being in need of money it isn’t long before he teams back up with his partner and best friend Gal (Michael Smiley) for a few more contract kills. This turns the film in its next act into a twisted buddy road trip that is as wonderfully filmed and acted as it is brutal, particularly a certain hammer scene.

Of course, things aren’t what they seem and either Jay’s sanity is slipping or something more is going on. The final act is strongly reminiscent of The Wicker Man (1974) with the revelation of occult machinations and, for me at least, the film here feels too divorced from what came before, both in terms of quality and plausibility. The final shots leave more questions than answers, and I was ultimately underwhelmed and dissatisfied with where the story went. I can see where the seeds were planted for the final twist, and while I respect the effort the narrative lost a lot of its impact on me.

Nevertheless, this is all very subjective and I acknowledge that many, if not most, will disagree with me, and I can certainly see why some would really find the ending effective. I still strongly recommend Kill List as there is some undeniably good filmmaking to be found throughout.

Grade: C+

October 6, 2015 2

Movie Review – The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine (1974)

**Movie Review – The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine (1974)**

Believing I was embarrassingly uneducated on the vaunted subgenre of nunsploitation, I decided to give the Italian film The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine (1974), directed by Sergio Grieco, a go. The film stars Françoise Prévost and Jenny Tamburi, who appeared in many giallo films.

What surprised me is actually how reserved much of the film is and how seriously it takes itself. Truthfully, I found the plot, set during the Inquisition and dealing with such concepts as corruption, zealotry, bigotry, and betrayal, not to mention lust and desire, oddly compelling at times. I expected to laugh and give my eyes a roll but I found myself interested in the characters and their fates. That’s not to say this film is a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. It certainly has its budget constraints and the exploitation aspects are oddly handled, but Grieco actually tried to tell a story amid the naked nuns, which don’t really appear until the end.

The film even throws in a sober message or two, such as when the High Inquisitor states that “Fanaticism is often nothing more than the other face of madness.” What I thought would be a schlock-fest was actually quite watchable, which admittedly may say more about me than it does about the quality of this film.

Grade: C-

October 3, 2015 0

Movie Review – The Student of Prague (1913)

This review is part of the A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema Series

**Movie Review – The Student of Prague (1913)**

1913’s The Student of Prague is cinema history’s first feature length horror film, and some historians have argued it to be the first feature length film, in general. Earlier filmmakers certainly played with elements of the macabre, most notably George Méliès who incorporated Gothic tropes as early as 1896, but their intentions were almost always to titillate their audience rather than disturb them. Some early short films, particularly by D.W. Griffith, or 1910’s Frankenstein, played with dark elements and could easily qualify today as horror.

It was the pre-war The Student of Prague, however, that helped to launch the German Expressionist movement and first employed camera effects to create ghostly images meant to shock and frighten with a longer running time, attempting to create more complex characters than the short film model allowed. Drawing inspiration from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “A New Year’s Eve Adventure” (1814) and Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839), with a bit of the Faustian mythos added, the original script, written by novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers, revolves around a student and accomplished fencer named Balduin. The cash-strapped student agrees to exchange anything in his mostly barren boarding room to a mysterious man named Scapinelli in return for a magical change-purse which produces endless amounts of gold coins. Scapinelli, to the student’s and contemporary audience’s horror, chooses the student’s reflection, which leaves the mirror and becomes a haunting, murderous doppelganger bent on ruining the student’s life.

The Student of Prague is an intriguing film which uses camera effects that are impressive for the time. The scenes in which Balduin, played by Paul Wegener, is interacting with himself through use of split screen look great, actually better than most other films I’ve seen that attempt this same illusion. His character, though, is the only one that fully succeeds in getting fleshed out. Unlike the source materials which inspired the story, or the popular contemporary interpretations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Balduin’s double does not represent an unsavory element of his personality. The real horror of the tale is that Balduin’s decency means that he is wholly undeserving of the malicious machinations which haunt him. It is a cautionary tale, but not necessarily a moralizing one.

Shot on location in Prague, though the film influenced post-war German Expressionism it is distinct from it in important ways. Notably, the realism of the locations is emphasized – the supernatural is seen to be imposing on a believable reality. This is typical of a story inspired by Hoffmann, whose writing attempted to produce the same effect. This devotion to realism, however, effects the film’s pacing, which can be languorous, lingering too long on location shots. About halfway through watching I sped the film up to 1.5 speed, improving its pacing considerably for this modern viewer’s sensibilities. Other films had already begun to effectively employ close-ups, but the stationary camerawork and wide angles used here sometimes leave you squinting to see just who is on the screen and what they’re doing. Overall, aside from the doppelganger effects, the direction takes a great deal from the stage, perhaps too much, as it’s still early in German filmmaking whereas American filmmakers like Griffith had already begun to master and evolve the film medium to a considerable degree. The film was remade in 1926 by many of the people involved in both The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), but the present state of that film, which is superior in many ways, makes it less watchable than this earlier version.

It is worth pausing and taking note of the men involved in making this film, and what they say about early German cinema and what was to become of it. The screenwriter was Hanns Heinz Ewers, a famed German horror writer who is virtually unknown today due to his eventual ties with the Nazi Party, although his criticism of the party’s anti-Semitism and his own homosexual leanings lost him favor with the National Socialists. Nevertheless, he was among the first to take screenwriting as seriously as literary writing.

The director, Stellan Rye, would die the following year at the outbreak of the war as a POW in France.

The film’s star, Paul Wegener, would go on to make horror history by creating the Golem trilogy (1915, 1917, and 1920), only the last of which survives, which propelled the monster subgenre and served as a major influence upon James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), which was also influenced by 1926’s The Magician, which also starred Wegener. He was horror cinema’s first real star and was among the earliest to take the film medium seriously, seeing it as distinct from and not dependent upon either literature or drama. He would appear in some Nazi propaganda films while secretly financing resistance movements and harboring fugitives from the Nazis. After the war he would help to rebuild Germany’s art scene until his death a few years later.

And finally, the tragic John Gottowt, who played Scapinelli, and who was Jewish, would be banned from German entertainment by the Nazis and eventually murdered by the SS in Poland in 1942.

The Student of Prague will be of interest to those dedicated to seriously exploring the roots of film horror, like myself, but offers little to those not so predisposed. It doesn’t have the strengths of the silent horrors of the 1920s, and while it’s a great effort, it does show its age. Regardless, the scenes of Balduin facing his doppelganger are still impressive and will stick with the viewer long after the film is over.

Grade: C+

October 1, 2015 7

A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema

Introduction to the Review Series

Any devotee of horror movies will eventually crawl their way to the classics. A small number will tread through the Universal era of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, finding endearment in their depictions of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Fewer still will explore further back to the silent era, and those that do generally only watch a meager selection of films, notably The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). Most conversations about silent horror cinema begin with these films, yet there are over twenty years of macabre movies that precede them, including feature length offerings beginning in 1913.

For eighteen years these silent feature films laid the foundation of horror before audiences would actually be able to hear Lugosi in his signature voice utter the lines, “There are far worse things awaiting man than death.” It took filmmakers of the 1930s several years to adjust to the advent of talkies, and in many ways some of the films which preceded them were more ambitious and better crafted. This is mainly because silent filmmakers didn’t need to worry about lugging around heavy sound recording equipment or concern themselves with the noises of the sets. They were artists who could focus purely on their visual aesthetic and tell rich tales of nightmares projected upon screen canvases, their only paints being light and shadow.

In this series of reviews I will dedicate myself to watching every feature length silent horror film I can access from 1913’s The Student of Prague to the dawn of the talkies. Where I am able to I will examine the people who made these films and the part they played in horror movie history, the techniques and focuses of the films and their impact, what these stories meant to contemporary audiences, and what, if anything, these films have to offer a modern audience. On this last point a note should be made about my grading system, which is of course subjective: I am someone who enjoys silent films and I assume the audience for my reviews does so as well. Silent films require more attention from viewers. Often scenes are left to interpretation and the person watching must fill in elements of the narrative with their own logic and imagination. Anyone new to watching movies of this era should be aware that it is hardly a passive experience, though it is, in my opinion, a rewarding one.

I hope that readers will find these reviews helpful, whether in pointing them to unknown selections, finding renewed passion for the movies they already love, or in offering reasons to respect and appreciate the movies of this era, all of which we are extremely fortunate to still be able to enjoy after a century.

Reviews can be found on the site’s pages for 1910-1919 and 1920-1929.

Movie Review – Stage Fright (2014)

**Movie Review – Stage Fright (2014)**

Stage Fright (2014) is a Canadian musical slasher film written and directed by Jerome Sable. It attempts to meld the sensibilities of Glee with the post-Scream (1996) teen slasher. Starring Allie MacDonald and Meat Loaf, it opens with a brutal kill and rolls to the opening credits, then entering into a campy musical number with genuinely hilarious lyrics:

Sam Brownstein: [singing] All of us have heard these names of hate, but let me get one thing straight: I’m gay, I’m gay, but not in that way / Musicals move me and touch me in ways I can’t say.

Liz Silver, Sheila Kerry, Bethany: [singing] He’s gay, but not in that way.

Sam Brownstein: [singing] I sleep with women but musicals make me feel gay!

David Martin: [singing/butting in] I’m gay, I’m actually gay. I don’t get hard when I see T and A / Could be my DNA or how I was raised.

Liz Silver, Sheila Kerry, Bethany: [singing] We don’t distinguish here at Center Stage.

Entire Camp: [singing/dancing] We’re all gay, we’re gay in all kinds of ways!

Sheila Kerry: [singing] Some in the bedroom.

Sam Brownstein, Liz Silver, Sheila Kerry, Bethany: [singing] And some ’cause of musical plays!

It is a great opening and a promising start.

Alas, the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to this opening. It doesn’t effectively maintain either the campy humor or the slasher violence. This latter aspect, especially, falls flat. Nevertheless, the film is entertaining throughout and Meat Loaf in particular gives a committed performance. Truly, the movie is a better musical than horror film, and Sable undoubtedly has an ear for melody. Even when I was yawning at the kills I was tapping my finger to the songs and smiling at the gusto with which some of the young actors were singing them. Had Sable pushed the horror farther, and at least threatened to have that horror visited upon the earnest young campers, it might have made the film far more potent.

Stage Fright doesn’t offer much beyond the novelty of mixing the two unlikely genres, but it makes me hope more filmmakers will attempt the marriage and succeed. It comes close but comes up short, but if another filmmaker digs a little deeper they may hit real pay dirt.

Grade: C+

September 30, 2015 0