"Dracula" Restoration Featurette

Here's a featurette about the restoration of Todd Browning's 1931 masterpiece, "Dracula."

"House at the End of the Street" Featurette

God knows if "House at the End of the Street" will be any good.

 As a skeptic of PG-13 horror films, I doubt it, but hell, I'll see it and keep an open mind.

Here's a featurette about the film.

"The Cabin in the Woods" - Drew Goddard (2012)

If you only see one film this year about human sacrifice, for Jesus' sake, don't let it be "The Hunger Games."

 

"The Cabin in the Woods" is a simultaneously funny and scary horror film that comes out on blu-ray and DVD later this month.
 
 
Tension between city folk and hillbillies is just one of the fun elements of "The Cabin in the Woods."

The story is very familiar.  We follow a group of young people on a retreat into the woods where death and dismemberment awaits them.
 
The twist is the entire scenario is being controlled by a bunch of people in a lab.

Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford play the puppet masters who crack jokes like a sadistic Waldorf and Statler.
 

Seeing "The Cabin in the Woods" is the most fun I've had watching a movie in a very long time.

After years of a disturbing uptick in PG-13 horror movies, the horrific violence, profanity, nudity and sex in the film is more than welcome.

Black Swan - Darren Aronofsky (2010) - Video Review

Here's my video review of "Black Swan."

It doesn't have a single original thought to be found anywhere, but it's an effective psychological horror film nonetheless.

Grace – Paul Solet (2009)

Dear God, thank you for treating us to movies every once in a while that are just wrong in every way.“Grace” is Paul Solet’s feature film debut. Solet, isn’t someone you’ve heard of iunless you’re just the most obsessive horror movie fan in the universe, or maybe one of his friends or something.
He won “Fangoria Magazine’s” Best Short Horror Film of the Year Award in 2005 for his film, “Means to an End.”

It was amusing, but nothing earth-shattering. There was nothing in the film that would indicate he would go on to make such a wonderfully obscene and original first feature.

In a nutshell, “Grace” is about a cannibal baby.That’s right, this movie is about a baby that drinks blood. And of course, animal blood just won’t do. That would just turn into a short, boring movie really fast.

But “Grace” is wonderful and it is revolting. You have not seen breast feeding like this before.

But that’s not even the best part. Neither the blood-sucking baby nor the mother who supplies the infant with God’s yummy, red innards-nectar is the creepiest character in the movie.

The baby has a grandma who’s almost demonically insane. I mean, she is just a treat to watch. When she finds out she’s going to be a grandmother, she does some research and discovers that women can lactate past menopause if their nipples get sufficient stimulation.

Of course, the crazy grandma gets excited about this and starts letting grandpa into her sweater full of goodies for the first time in God knows how long, just in the hopes of being able to breastfeed her grand-baby. Which of course, is more unsettling than the baby who drinks blood.

Now that’s a level of insanity you have to work at. God doesn’t just give that kind of crazy away.

So what we have here is Solet weaving together a tapestry of people behaving in just the most unimaginable ways.


First, we have the baby who has to have breast blood instead of breast milk.

Then there’s the mother.

Let’s just say if you really like a sick thrill, like I do, it’s better for you go ahead and watch “Grace” then to have me explain how it all works here.

If you are the kind of person who’s just dying to have me describe how the mother gets Grace her blood, you’re probably the kind of person who's out there killing small animals, not the kind sitting at a computer, reading movie reviews.

Then you have the just unbelievably insane grandmother who’s determined to make herself start lactating again so she can feed her grand-baby, but oh my God, she has no idea what she’s getting into.

Add it all up and Solet serves up a recipe for a truly delightful 84-minute ick-fest.

If you like gross and you like “what is wrong with you lady” filmmaking, you really aren’t going to do a whole lot better than “Grace.”

Solet doesn’t come near the level of Cronenberg when it comes to examining just what our relationships to these bizarre things we call bodies are. But that is a high watermark.

Cronenberg will always be the master of this kind of film, but “Grace” is more than worth a look, nevertheless.

Ne te retourne pas (Don’t Look Back) – Marina de Van (2009)

When I started watching this film, I had no idea what it was going to be about.

To tell the truth, I have a soft spot for French films, for some reason.

I have no idea what it is about that country, but their movies make sense to me.

Truffaut, Leconte, Alain Resnais, Gela Babluani, Alexandre Bustillo, Gaspar Noe, I love 'em all.

French films are beautiful and horrific. They move, inspire and scare the Christ out of me all at the same time.

"Ne te retourne pas" is no exception. It does all of those things at once and it does them very slowly and subtly.

Aside from that, I had seen de Van’s 2002 freak-fest “Dans ma Peau” (In My Skin) and to this day, I’m the only person I have met in real life who liked it.

And who doesn’t want to spend 100 minutes or so watching Sophie Marceau? (Well, as it turns out, the better part of half that time, anyway.)

I vaguely had the idea that it was going to be some kind of thriller.

So imagine my delight and surprise when I found myself completely lost and confused as hell about 12 or 13 minutes into the movie.

The film centers around Jeanne, a French trade writer who finally wants to write fiction, specifically autobiographical fiction.

The problem is, she can’t remember anything before she was 8-years-old.

The other problem is that while her work as a professional writer is exceptional, her first attempt at fiction is terrible.

It’s tepid, self-aware, disassociated, overly-descriptive and trite.

Of course this is because memories of childhood are more than just facts told to Jeanne by her mother. The novel is cold because Jeanne never felt, touched or tasted a childhood. Poor Jeanne.

Before long, Jeanne’s mind starts playing tricks on her. Or is her family just messing with her?

Little things start to seem out of place, like the kitchen table, and s

he catches her husband and children ges

turing ominously to each other, exchanging conspiratorial hand signals.

Of course, at this point, we, the audience have no idea what's going on, but that’s okay

because neither do any of the characte

rs. Is Jeanne going crazy? Is it a brain tumor or a legion?

Is it Satan?

Actually, there’s nothing that suggests anything supernatural, but whenever there are endless, baseless theories as to what’s happening in a movie, I always like to throw Satan into the mix.

Before long, Jeanne’s loving husband is actually changing into another man and then Jeanne finds herself morphing.

The scene where we first see her with half of her own face and half of a new face surprised me by how effectively creepy it was.

It’s impressive how we’re about half an hour into the film and we have no reason to be frightened, but for some reason, I’m finding myself with a severe case of the willies.

Again, we still have absolutely no idea what is going on. And that's a very good thing because none of the characters do, either.

The rest of the film plays out with Jeanne’s mind swapping out her perception of realities to the point where her husband, mother, children and herself are different people.

Jeanne goes on a journey to find who her ‘true’ mother, self, husband, and her whole reality actually is.

By the time we get to the 'twist ending' which I won't give away just on the principle of not spoiling films, the plot is no longer the point. This isn't a film where the story matters.

The chain of events is incidental. What’s important is Jeanne’s broken mind.

Toward the beginning of the film, there’s a scene that shows her mother playing poker in an apartment with a handful of friends around a small table.

Later, when Jeanne visits her mother, she’s playing poker in an enormous, elegant penthouse, filled with affluent gamers, security guards and high stakes.

When Jeanne’s reality is altered, it’s disturbing, especially when the change is subtle.

For me, the most jolting moments were toward the building when she would catch her husband and children exchanging those subtle hand signals out of the corner of her eye or in a reflection or on a home video.

Of course, they had no idea what she was talking about and watching the film, I believed them.

They were truly her loving family and meant her no harm.

I was just as lost as Jeanne was and that was what made the film so psychologically gruesome.

Because Christ, do any of us really have any kind of grasp on anything?

Watch this movie. Buy this movie. It’s a masterpiece.

Along with John Hillcoat’s adaptation of “The Road,” this is the second film to make me realize I put out my top 10 of 2009 too soon.

I need to wait like a year before doing those.

And, in case any of you care, right now, I'm listening to:

Inside – Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury (2007)

I have to be honest.

Fair warning must be given.

"Inside" is truly offensive and exploitative. The plot centers around one of the most horrifying and shocking true-life crimes I can remember.

Having said that, if you don’t mind being offended and you can look past the truly bad taste this film shows, you are in for one hell of a treat.

I loved every frame of this blood-soaked movie.

Every distasteful and odious moment in the film just made me giddy.

The story starts with a POV shot from a fetus. That’s right, a fetus. This movie is that unconscionably abusive of both its characters and its audience. Wow, hats off, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury.

They leap right over into that territory where they've crossed the line and shown too much. And oh, don't I admire these ladies for that.

And this frantic, obscene violence keeps up through the entire film.

As I keep writing this, I can’t emphasize this enough: when I use words like ‘unconscionable’ and ‘offensive,’ I’m just giving fair warning weak-stomached viewers, not passing judgment myself.

Again, I loved, loved, loved this film.

LOVED.

Let’s get back to the opening scene.

It’s not just any old fetus POV shot. It starts with a soothing ‘another-nice-warm-day-in-the-womb’ vibe complete with a mother’s muffled voice as the fetus must hear it talking about how she’ll take care of her baby.

Then, BAM! There’s a car crash, a gush of blood clouding around the fetus and a miscarriage all within a matter of seconds. Do you see what I mean when I say this movie is horribly offensive?

It opens up with a miscarriage from the fetus’ point of view for Christ’s sake. I asked myself, “Could anything be more offensive?” Bustillo and Maury spent the next 80 minutes doing their god-damndest to answer that question with a definite “Yes.”

So let’s flash-forward four months, give or take and the woman whose husband was killed in the crash is so far along in her pregnancy, well doesn’t she just look like she’s about to burst?

The transition from benign caller to menacing killer happens in a matter of seconds.

First, who doesn't love it when a girl accidentally kills her mother by stabbing her in the neck? Whoops? And then screams, "Mommy!" as her mother falls down and bleeds to death.

But I'm getting WAY ahead of myself. And I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum.

But then, the point of movies like this isn't really plot twists, is it?

"MOMMY!" Ladies and germs, that's comedy.

When the very bad, scary lady gets into the house, the slashing starts immediately and doesn’t stop until the end of the movie.

And since everyone else is thinking it, I'm just going to say it.

The killer is hot.

This isn't any surprise for those of you who've seen Jean-Jacques Bieniex' infamous "Betty Blue," in which Béatrice Dalle played a big pile of sex.

I found her pretty enough in that film, but in "Inside," I don't know if it was just because she was sadistic and evil, but I was irresistibly attracted to her.

And I’m not ashamed to say that one of the things I loved about this movie is that so much of the bloodshed was not necessary. Was it really necessary for the crazy lady to snap that cat’s neck?

Of course not. That was just a little extra gift for the audience to enjoy.

The initial attack is absolutely brutal as our sleeping heroine lies, unaware of the intruder.

She realizes she is not alone only when crazy-bitch starts to slide the knife into her gut.

The scene ends with survival for our good girl, but for the rest of the movie, our protagonist looks like she walked right out of one of the Joker’s “Do you want to know how I got these scars?” anecdotes from “The Dark Knight."

Any fan of horror films knows what the rest of the film will be like.

Would-be rescuers come to our damsel-in-distress’ door only to meet horrific and hilarious deaths.

I won’t give a play-by-play because there really isn’t a need for one, but I will say that one of the sequences involves one of the most startling and cackling-out-loud cop-getting-his-head-blown-off shots ever.


I rewound it like ten times. Cackled. Like a green-faced, warty witch. Seriously.

There is a very good reason I usually watch horror movies alone. I laugh myself into fits and that sometimes disturbs people.

I've had people move a few seats over from me in the theater. Seriously.

And throughout "Inside," I felt like a kid, opening birthday present after birthday present every time a would-be rescuer approached the house. You know they're going to die and it's going to be messy.

They are not going to go quietly into this dark night and after the first couple scenes of "Inside," I knew that the SFX guy was going to put wit into every kill.

I won’t ruin the ending for you, not because there's some kind of shocking twist or anything like that because this ain't that kind of movie. I'm just not going to tell how it ends on principle.

But if you’re the kind of person who makes people move away from you at horror movies because you’re laughing at the worst possible moments, or if you wanted to touch yourself just a little bit during Hostel 2 when Heather Matarazzo met her bloodletting demise (and I’m not saying I’m that kind of person) then “Inside” is a movie you will absolutely and unabashedly adore.

And in case any of you are wondering, I'm listening to:

Kansas City filmmaker screens new film - NBCActionNews.com

“Numb” is the fifth in a series of short, experimental horror films from Kansas City filmmaker John Barnes. It’s the final chapter of the first volume of the “OV” film series. “Numb” is based on a man who has lost all emotion. He has a beautiful wife and child, but has no feelings and will go to any length just to experience an emotional sensation again.

The short film screened June 2 after the IFC meeting at the Westport Coffee House Theater at 4010 Pennsylvania in Westport. “Numb” will be followed by a screening of filmmaker Jerry White’s “0:22:43.”

John Barnes is a Kansas City native who has been making independent films since 2000. He says the pool of talent in Kansas City is surprisingly endless and sadly untapped.

And when it came to making his dark shorts, the network of filmmakers he has come to rely on is essential. That’s why he has called his production company “Drei Productions.” “Drei” meaning “three” in German. “’Drei Productions’ because it always takes more than one person,” Barnes explains. “You gotta have three or more people to make a short film.”

When I asked him what to expect from the screening of “Numb,” John said, “It’s very dark. It’s based on people that have hidden emotions that come out in extreme, most of the time violent ways.”

Watching "Numb" reminded how good of an artist John was in high school. His eye is brilliant.

After the screening at the IFC meeting, it’s off to other film festivals. There’s the KC Fringe Festival that runs July 23rd through August 1st. The Fringe Fest features art from different mediums and is new to hosting films.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) – Tom Six (2010)

WARNING: If you dislike being completely revolted, stop reading now!

This film has been hailed as the most revolting movie ever made. Aside from that, when I checked out the trailer, it looked appropriately creepy, appalling and all that good stuff. But promises like “goriest ever” or “bloodiest ever” have been made before, so naturally, I was skeptical. I was not expecting “The Human Centipede” to be the grossest movie I had ever seen.

I was wrong.

The reputation “The Human Centipede” has made for itself is well deserved.

A big part of the film’s impact was the horrifying revelations regarding the details of this “experiment.” So, if you’re planning to see this, proceed with caution. I might spoil something here for you.

As “Centipede” starts, we’re introduced to two American girls travelling across Europe. It’s a familiar enough horror movie setup. Of course, the girls get a flat tire on their way to a party.

Now, let the good times begin.

Predictably, the girls can’t get a cell phone signal. So they have no choice but to venture out in search of help. Hooray! They find a house!

They knock on the door and meet the creepiest man alive.
Six makes a wise decision at this point of the film and gets right to the nastiness. Normally in a film like this, there would be a drawn-out scene where the homeowner is pleasant and charming and the girls feel safe before the shock of having him turn out to be a sadistic weirdo.

Not so with Dr. Heiter. He makes a quick, fake phone call and then it’s straight to drinks with the date-rape drug. He’s yelling at them, calling them cows before they’re even unconscious. He’s malicious from the moment we set eyes on him and this departure from formula is very jolting.

Of course, if you’ve seen the preview, you know the girls are going to come-to in a hellish medical lab-looking room.

And Dr. Heiter explains the procedure in horrible detail. His goal is to have three humans share one digestive track.

I’ll just let that sink in.

That’s right. We’re going to graft mouth-to-anus, having the person in front eating, passing through the unfortunate soul chosen to be the middle piece (retch!) and then out whoever’s bringing up the rear.

I made the mistake of fixing myself lunch and then sitting down to watch this movie while I ate. This is the first film that has actually made me physically sick to my stomach. About a third of the way through my spaghetti, I was just done.

The most disgusting and hilarious scene (I’m not ashamed to say that this movie made me laugh out loud) starts as Dr. Heiter is taking his human centipede outside for a walk. The dude at the front stops suddenly, turns around and starts begging for the person behind him to forgive him. Before I could say to myself, “Oh God, no!” the doctor is shouting, “Yes! Feed her!” maniacally.

It was so sickening, but I could not stop laughing.

Suffice it to say that if you have the sense of humor for it and can handle the insanely, unbelievably nauseating, “The Human Centipede” will not disappoint you.

“Feed her!”

Daybreakers - Peter & Michael Spierig (2010)

The highlight of the week, especially if you’re a horror aficionado, is the Spierig brothers’ “Daybreakers,” starring Willem Dafoe, the criminally underused Sam Neill and Ethan Hawke as our hero: a vampire who just wants to do the right thing.

I’ll break the suspense now and just tell you this was a wonderful movie. So many thrillers rely on atmosphere and effects without taking character development and story into account that “Daybreakers” shows up as a truly delightful surprise.

Ten years into the future, the earth has been taken over by vampires. Under normal circumstances, taking over the world would be a victory, but there’s one problem here.

With the human population down to less than 5 percent, the vamps are running out of food.
At the beginning of the movie, we see a panhandler with a cardboard sign that says he’s poor and “needs blood.” Of course, the rich society vampires pass him by without a second look. And then the vampire cops collar him because I guess panhandling is something the undead just won’t tolerate.




Ethan Hawke, donning a scraggly beard and Amish-style hat, looks like one of the Children of the Corn all grown up. He’s a hematologist, working on a blood substitute, providing the vampire world with food when humanity becomes extinct. As it is, human blood is rare enough to necessitate human “farming,” where people are hung up and hooked into IVs and kept alive so their blood can be harvested.

Once the premise is set, the pacing of the “Daybreakers” is perfect. Character revelations and story developments are doled out at just the right intervals. We learn why some people chose to “turn” when vampirism broke out and why others chose to remain human.

Add to that the extensive political and social criticism of “Daybreakers,” and you end up with a multi-layered, frightening, funny and even emotionally rich allegory of good vs. evil in the form of class warfare. “Daybreakers” directly links fascism to classism and it makes its case eloquently, especially considering the fact that it’s a horror film.

The blood shortage causes riots in the street that recalls the kind of desperation we’ve seen on the news in communities around the world following different natural disasters.

When a vampire goes too long without blood, it turns bestial and loses its rational mind. So, as the lower-class slowly turns into wild, uncontrollable animals, they are exterminated. The film is very poignant in its depiction of these mass executions, reminding us that our characters inhabit a world where the rich kill the poor for the crime of being poor.



Meanwhile, amongst the human resistance, there are experiments going on looking for a cure to the vampire plague. They are constantly on the run, hunted by the military for their precious human, life-sustaining blood.

The mercenaries serve as an example of soldiers doing corporate work to feed the upper-class’ hunger for wealth without questioning their orders.



By the end of the film, the personal showdowns, the massive battles and the attempted “final solutions” put forward by both vampires and human culminate into a wild action frenzy that will entertain the hell out of you and make you think at the same time.

But if you’re one who doesn’t like their politics and entertainment mixed, never fear. “Daybreakers” is wildly entertaining as a horror/action film.

So if you want to turn off your brain and just enjoy the excitement, carnage and the humor you won’t be disappointed.

Legion – Scott Stewart (2010)

This movie has an enormous caveat and I’ll just give it to you up front. If you are not a horror movie fan, you will hate this movie.

Most horror/action movie fans will probably not like this movie.

However, if you’re a devoted horror buff who would rather watch a horror movie – any horror movie – than anything else, “Legion” is not a horrible waste of your time. If you love the genre, there are enough fun moments to justify the 90 minutes of life you’ll spend on it.

Take every zombie you’ve ever seen that pits a small, spunky group of survivors holed up in a big house, church, diner, etc. then replace zombie infection with demon possession. Then steal a plot twist from 1995’s “The Prophecy,” and write the worst dialogue known to man. Now, you have “Legion.”

“Legion” opens with an entertaining little sequence where a fallen angel meets, a couple of racist, then possessed, then dead cops. That’s followed by an ominous warning from some unidentified entity. It would have been nice if it was frightening, but we’ll have to settle for amusing.

Predictably, we are taken to a town that, if you’ve ever seen a horror movie in your life, we know is doomed. The name of the town is “Paradise Falls” and that is about as subtle as the film gets.

One pleasant surprise was that at one point, the truck stop’s jukebox plays, “I Just Don’t Understand” by Ann Margaret. I thought I was the only fan of that song.

As the first act starts, we meet our usual cast of characters that we know will be stuck together in the truck stop for the duration of the film.

There’s the spunky, pregnant soon-to-be single mother and the schmuck who follows her around like a puppy, nobly devoted to her even though she’s carrying another man’s child and won’t give him the time of day.

Then there’s the bickering middle-aged couple and their smart-alek teen. Of course, we’re given the troubled young man who’s running from his own personal demons, We have the truck stop owner whose life is a miserable failure because, well, he’s a truck stop owner.

And then there’s a fry-cook.

The siege begins with a crazy old lady who turns out to be possessed. I’m sure you’re familiar with the trailer. “Legion” is probably best known as ‘that movie that has the freaky old woman climbing on the ceiling.’

This sequence is admittedly entertaining. And there are a few more amusing scenes, one of which involves one of our doomed battalion being crucified upside-down and having his blood replaced with acid-pus.
And the action sequences when the truck-stop is under siege are fun enough to watch.

But at the end of the day, “Legion” plays out like a traditional zombie movie with a twist.

Aside from my theory that someone thought seeing an old woman crawling up the ceiling would lure horror fans into a movie theater, I can’t think of a single reason why this film didn’t go straight to DVD.