Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

FrightFest Preview: The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Stephanie Scaife

Yawn… yup, you’ve guessed it, here we have yet another straight to DVD found footage horror film. This alone should be good enough reason to avoid The Dyatlov Pass Incident (or Devil’s Pass, as it is now known) but for my sins, I’ve sat through it and can confirm that there are in fact many reasons you may want to give it a miss. There may be a sense of curiosity given that it’s directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea etc.) and after the pleasant surprise of Barry Levinson’s The Bay last year it may, for a fleeting second, have seemed like there was still some steam left in this tiresome and tedious sub-genre. But don’t be fooled, this is strictly by the numbers stuff.

Perhaps the most intriguing and also frustrating thing about this film is the fact that it’s based around a real life incident that in itself is pretty fascinating. In 1959, nine experienced hikers mysteriously died on a ski trek trip in the Ural Mountains of Russia. Despite evidence that the hikers had left their tents barefoot in freezing conditions and had been found dead (two with fractured skulls, two with broken ribs and one even missing her tongue) there were no signs of any struggle. Authorities determined, tantalisingly, that this had been due to “a compelling natural force”. Needless to say the story has sparked much interest over the years and spawned various conspiracy theories. You’d think that such a story would lend itself well to being adapted into a film, but Harlin seems to have decided not to opt for just one conspiracy theory, but ALL OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES. There’s talk of the USS Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment, secret underground nuclear testing, time travel, aliens, yetis and more! The original story with all its ambiguities is actually pretty creepy, so it’s a real shame that the film really isn’t, at all. It’s also painfully familiar and similarities to The Blair Witch Project are almost embarrassing in their frequency, more so than almost any other found footage film I’ve had the misfortune to see.

As for the plot, The Dyatlov Pass Incident is about five college students, Holly (Holly Goss) a psychology major, and Jensen (Matt Stokoe) a documentary filmmaker who along with some fellow students enlisted due to their supposed mountain climbing expertise embark on a trip to retrace the steps of the original lost hikers in a bid to solve the mystery surrounding their deaths. They’re each supposed to be all-American co-eds but the cast is made up primarily of little known British TV actors, who at times struggle with the accents, but do their best with what little they’re given. The film for the most part looks pretty good, due to being filmed on location in Russi,a and it foregoes shaky handheld footage (for the first two thirds of the film at least) with the fact that the characters are filmmakers at least partially explaining why everything is so well shot. One of my main issues with the film, however, was how indistinguishable the characters were and how little I cared about what they were doing, why they were doing it and what ultimately happened to them. Especially towards the end of the film, when things take a turn for the worse and there’s a lot of screeching, running around, bad CGI and nauseating hand-held camerawork. The ending itself resulted in an audible groan from myself and from various other audience members, so I’m assuming it was supposed to be a twist, but by that point frankly I just didn’t care.

Admittedly this really isn’t my sort of thing so it could be that I’m being overly harsh as many of the other reviews I’ve seen haven’t been quite so scathing, but I found this film to be contrived, entirely un-scary and ultimately pretty forgettable.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident is screening at FrightFest on 23 August and is released on DVD and Blu-ray by Anchor Bay UK on 26 August.

DVD Review: Nowhere (1997)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

I always fucking hated Beverly Hills 90210 with an absolute passion. As imports from the US go, it’s right up there with Ruby Wax and the school prom: a tedious, aspirational display of not-very-much being enacted by people who were far too old to be hanging around a school anyway. So, you can imagine how far my heart sank when I received the press release for Gregg Araki’s movie Nowhere, and found it gleefully described as ‘a Beverly Hills 90210 episode on acid’. Oh. dear. As Nowhere is also part of a trilogy, I should probably offer another mea culpa here, by saying that I haven’t seen the two other films – in fact, this was my first experience of an Araki film altogether. This may explain some of my enmity towards Nowhere. I accept that. The rest of it can be explained by the fact that this is just a terrible film.

Plot doesn’t seem to figure all that highly here, and nor does characterisation, but here – essentially – is what happens. ‘Dark’ (now how’s that for a nickname you chose for yourself?) is a teenage boy going through a totally bogus existential crisis whereby it doesn’t seem like anyone, anywhere will ever truly love him for himself. He ponders this crisis when he’s not drawling witticisms, participating in slow-mo masturbation or indulging in his other favourite hobby, video editing. He adores his sorta girlfriend Mel, but she’s forever hooking up with megabitch Lucifer (and again, make up your own nickname dear?) and then, everyone they know seems to be in the throes of various dysfunctional, check-box kinky relationships and flirtations with drugs. This is the order of the day as they all rock up to a party one Friday night and head for even more weirdness along the way…

In the interests of balance, and to try to be as positive as I can, I’ll get on and talk about the things I liked about the film. Well, it certainly boasts an interesting, distinguished cast, many of whom went on to do great work. We have James Duval, Heather Graham, Mena Suvari, Christina Applegate, Rachel True, and in cameo roles, Traci Lords, Rose McGowan and Shannen Doherty. You can’t deny, that’s a hell of a roll call. In terms of how the film was shot (as opposed to why, ahem), I liked lots of aspects of the cinematography. Coming at this film from the perspective of someone who usually reviews new films which often have identical, washed-out colour palates, it was refreshing to see such a bright, bold film, peopled with bright, bold people; 90s sub-cultures definitely had more variety to them, and that’s reflected here. Lots of the sets are superb, interesting to look at, and benefit by the interesting use of lighting, whilst a lot of the songs on the soundtrack showcased the best of the sleazy alt-rock of the decade.

As I’ve said elsewhere, though, a film is not a painting. A film can look good, but if that’s all it can do, then it’s not enough – and Nowhere, ultimately, smacked of hedonism as imagined by someone who really doesn’t get out that much. Adding the correct jumble of drug and sex references and making a party the crux of the plot? I felt embarrassed and drained, by the end. The script, overblown but not so overblown that I could laugh at it or with it, is peppered with silly names, sillier insults and comes delivered by a horde of doe-eyed bulimics and unbelievable junkies. The inclusion of a rape scene felt like yet another cynical decision, the about-face fantastical elements which crept in towards the end of the film failed to add anything in the way of depth or exposition, and – well – all I could think of during Nowhere how much I now want to re-watch Fire Walk With Me to cleanse my palate.

Sure, it could just be that I don’t ‘get it’. That’s fine. I can live with that. My main sentiment, though, by the time the credits rolled was that Nowhere perfectly illustrates the problem with aspiring to surrealism. Here’s a truism: films which aspire to surrealism almost invariably suck. To come back to Fire Walk With Me, that’s a film which seems to naturally embody the thrill of the weird in the course of its storytelling and, as with all David Lynch movies which I’ve seen, it works very well indeed. Surrealism should be a pleasing side-effect, not a guiding principle, and if you try too hard to be weird, you’ll probably wind up being weak. Oh well, if you’re an Araki fan, you might be pleased to know that this upcoming DVD re-release will feature an audio commentary by the man himself, as well as by stars James Duval, Rachel True and Jordan Ladd. Meh.

Nowhere will be released by Second Sight on 26th August 2013.

DVD Review: The Seasoning House (2012)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Editor’s note: for another take on this film, be sure to check out Tristan’s FrightFest 2012 review here.

Amongst the worst horrors of war are not those things which people find unable to bear, but those which they do. On these occasions, the most harmful, hopeless situations become, somehow, acceptable. Life – whatever its condition and however it is to be lived – finds a way to go on. This is the plight of the young girl known only by her nickname, ‘Angel’.

Angel (Rosie Day) was brought to a place known as the ‘Seasoning House’ as just another abductee amongst a host of others like her – young girls, collateral washed up by conflict in an unnamed country in the Balkans (and be assured, in depicting flashbacks to that warfare, the film pulls no punches). Once arrived at her destination Angel, who is Deaf, makes it her business to be useful, but not like the other girls. Their fate is to be prostituted to those visitors in the know, who come to the house in droves; Angel however sets herself up as a general servant, keeping the terrified newcomers quiet with digs of heroin and cleaning them up when their gentlemen callers have (seemingly inevitably) left them bloodied. Angel does her work quietly, dispassionately. Why, and how can she behave like this? The blankness of survival instinct? We are shown some of the circumstances which have brought Angel to this point, and it reveals that her arrival at the house was only one event in a catalogue of horrors. Regardless, a light shines through her own trauma when one of the girls she tends to reveals she can use sign language. Suddenly Angel isn’t so alone any more.

This note of humanity shown to her leads Angel to reveal she can move about in the crawlspaces of the house, observing everything that is happening whilst passing, unseen, from one part of the building to another – it also acts as a catalyst, so that when Angel witnesses the treatment of her new, only friend, she begins to exact her revenge.

The Seasoning House is a very disturbing yet engrossing film, sustaining – for the most part – concurrent threads of dread and tension. I will admit that I found a lot of the scenes here, particularly in the first half, difficult to watch: so much deliberation has gone into making things as hellish as possible. Women aren’t just captives, they’re tied down and drugged; they’re not just raped, they’re routinely mutilated. The whole experience of watching this unfold is wearying – which I’m sure is exactly what director Paul Hyett intended. Visual flair which goes beyond the requirements of the plot itself contributes to this effect: the whole film is rank with grime and decay, and all of the characters seem as dank and unclean as that impressive house; they’re filmy with blood, or dirt, or sweat.

This eye for the minutiae of human misery usually works for the film, then, but as things progress, there’s a danger of the sort of sensory overload which has caused many other lesser ordeal-fixated films to come apart at the seams. The Seasoning House does avoid that fate through its other merits, but the revenge section of the film, with its straining plausibility and ongoing barrage of shocks is definitely weaker than what precedes it, particularly when it begins to play fast and loose with the promise of vindication for its central character.

I’m probably being picky because of how much I liked the film’s many strengths – absolutely key amongst which is Rosie Day’s performance as Angel. She really is superb. There must be a lot of challenges to sensitively and believably enacting Deafness on-screen but Day does it, creating her character almost entirely non-verbally yet sustaining it across a very challenging performance, both physically and emotionally. I think the women in this film generally have more to work with, though; even though practically all the women in the film are made to suffer, they do at least get to act out that plight. Most of the men in this film are just brutes. There are lots of men in this film, but only a couple of male characters – the punters, generally, just perpetrate abuse and leave, while of course this adds to the horror of the film. As for those male characters who are present, the master of the Seasoning House, Viktor (Kevin Howarth) gave me some qualms at first. He seemed initially to be a rather two-dimensional villain, a stereotypical pimp, all hair-oil and bad leather – so I was pleased that he got a more delineation as time passed, particularly when his power was challenged by military man Goran (Sean Pertwee). Goran comes in with very similar issues but, again, improves as the film progresses – but with respect to both actors, this film belongs to the girls.

By its nature, The Seasoning House is not an easy film to watch. If it pulls on the heart-strings, it then purposefully hacks through them. Whilst I found the set-up more effective than the pay-off, and thought that at times the film began to labour under the sheer weight of the nastiness it seeks to express, I can’t argue with the ambition and verve which can be found here, and in particular considering that this film is the work of a first-time director.

The Kaleidoscope DVD release comes with a selection of extras. There is an audio commentary featuring director Paul Hyett, producer Mike Riley and cast members Rosie Day, Kevin Howarth and Sean Pertwee, a fifteen-minute Behind the Scenes feature and the original feature trailer.

The Seasoning House arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on 12th August 2013.

Métal Hurlant: French Sci-Fi Comic Art

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Comix

The French have released some of the gnarliest horror the world has ever seen. Works like Martyrs, Haute Tension and Inside have forced many fans to question not only their own morality, but the twisted notions of the creators themselves. Though the current wave of horror movies is relatively new to our coasts, the French are absolutely no strangers when it comes to stirring up artistic controversy. Perhaps it’s the different temperament with regards artistic expression or perhaps they just suffer from a particularly stubborn case of ennui, but France has never had a problem with nudity, gore, or even defying the laws of gravity in their works and while we sit disgusted and enthralled with their brutality, they are already on the next wave, riding a spaceship to the stars. This, of course, is not intended to insult art work from any other countries, being more of an homage to a country that, in a way, saved American horror comics, helped re-invent horror and sci-fi art, and gave us the grail of sci-fi magazines, Heavy Metal.

The three artists that I have chosen for this article were all part of the French Heavy Metal (Métal Hurlant) Magazine. If you remember, Heavy Metal came to the States at a time when horror comics were suffering under the Comic Code Authority and were heavily censored. Thanks to the magazine, horror and sci-fi – along with all the boobs and blood you could want – were once again beyond the reach of the censors, free to roam the wild unknown. The three following artists were some of most influential artists to have emerged from the 1970s French sci-fi boom. They were the Frank Frazettas, the Richard Corbins, the strangest of the strange, the iconic, the unique and most of all, the immortal.

Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud

Jean Giraud is one of the most well-known comic artists to have ever emerged from France. His art has influenced creators from Stan Lee to Hayao Miyazaki and has become an iconic symbol of French alternative art. One of the founders of Métal Hurlant, he is better known under his pen-name Moebius and, to a lesser degree, Gir. Born on the outskirts of Paris, he was initially drawn to Western comics and illustrated his own cowboy tales for several French publications. As it was his first foray into comics, his drawing style had yet to develop and he mostly stuck to a more standard comic illustration style that was prevalent in the 1950s. It wasn’t until 1963, with a comic titled Blueberry, did a new style begin to emerge, a mix of heavy pens and sharp details. After Blueberry and a short sci-fi stint, it would be another decade before Giraud would return to comics, this time under the name Moebius.

It was at this time when Moebius, with the release of Métal Hurlant in 1975, would become a staple of the sci-fi genre. What exactly he was up to in the ten-year-plus interim is up for debate (some say drugs and New Age fun) but what we do know is that his return changed the European comic market. His artwork had evolved from a darker, albeit pretty normal style, to one of full blown color, details, and bizarre creatures and landscapes. He began playing with various mediums such as etchings and watercolors, but became most famous for fine-lined pen work mixed with ink or paint. He also started to explore different worlds and creatures, along with attempting to express thought and enlightenment in a visual world. His work exploded with movement and shape while it played with the concept of inner and outer existence.

On top of doing his own comic work, he also collaborated with many other creators over the years. Stan Lee invited him to come to the States where he illustrated a two-part Silver Surfer comic, for which he won an Eisner, and he also did design work on 5th Element and Alien, amongst others. He’s also had several works translated into English, most notably an eleven volume collection of random comics titled The Collected Fantasies of Jean Giraud. Unfortunately, Giraud passed away in 2012 after a battle with cancer, but his work still lives on in various galleries and the hearts of fans across the world. His over-the-top designs and alien landscapes have long since established him as an unparalleled artist and talent, one that every comic fan should have the pleasure of knowing.

Philippe Druillet

Though less known than his counterpart Giraud, Philippe Druillet was the other creative half of the founders of Métal Hurlant. With a strong visual style and a hard passion for H.P. Lovecraft, he took the things that scared and inspired him and smashed them down onto the canvas with the force of a thousand suns. Born in France, he spent the majority of his childhood in Spain, and returned to France a hardened man. He originally started out as a photographer, but under the tutelage of artist Jean Boullet, he began to draw professionally with his first work out in 1966 titled “The Mystery of the Abyss.” In it, he introduces his long time character Lone Sloane, a space rogue forced to survive in an alien dimension after his spaceship crashes in a desolate landscape. The series continued in the French publication Pilot from 1970-71 and, after various works, he left the publication altogether in 1974.

During his time with Pilot, Druillet began to truly develop his style. Not only did he break away from conventional comic dynamics, but he scrapped panels altogether, opting instead for full pages of stark colors and images. In 1975, when he and Giraud formed Métal Hurlant, he got unrestrained freedom to play around with his imagination. His artwork became darker and more detailed, heavy with paint and probably a touch of crazy. It became immersed in Lovecraftian creatures and multiple dimensions; his work at this time was almost a type of pre-cursor to the DC/Vertigo line that would emerge in the late 80s. From bug-eyed creatures to sweeping fortresses, he created a world that never gave up pushing the limits of exploration, both in space and time.

After Métal Hurlant, Druillet developed several other series along with Loan Sloane, such as La Nuit and the strange character Vuzz. Most of his work ended up peaking in the late seventies and once the eighties arrived, readers saw a distinct drop in his production, though the quality was still definitely there. He produced a three part graphic novel based on the French book Salammbo and a comic called Nosferatu in 1989 before he stopped developing comics completely. He still produces art for various publications, but is more or less retired. There are two works that have been translated by Heavy Metal: Loan Sloane and Chaos, and another, Yragael-Urm, which is available through A&W Publishing (and costs about $100). Otherwise, if you ever visit France, drop by one of their comic conventions where he’s occasionally spotted and say hello. I hear he’s very nice.

Philippe “Caza” Cazaumayou

Philippe Cazaumayou, or Caza to his fans, was a heavy contributor to Métal Hurlant and another distinctive face in the world of French sci-fi. His art, as beautiful as it is deadly, helped redefine sexuality in alternative culture while playing with unique color combinations and hellish worlds. There is not much known about Caza (at least not in English), but we do know that he originally started his career in advertising and in 1970, began to create comics for the Franco-Belgian audience with his first release, Kris Kool. In 1971, he put out When Costumes Have Teeth, a comic released through Pilot magazine, along with several other works. He continued to work with them for another four years until he signed up with Métal Hurlant in 1975, switching over to sci-fi.

Caza’s art style had gone through some very interesting changes during his time at Métal Hurlant. While he adapted very well to the new genre, it would be his techniques that grew the most. In the first couple of years, Caza stuck very closely to black and white interior drawings, focusing more on fine line art and refined shadow placement than color work. Not only did he perfect linear movement but he also developed a very involved ink-dot style where, instead of lines, he literally did entire pieces with ink dots. After the ink-dot style proved to be insufficient, he decided to switch over to the painted medium which later began to dominate his style. He took what he learned while penning and applied it to color, creating a visual world over-run with dystopian elements and human sexuality. He explored the human body in reference to landscape, dreams, and mechanics, while playing with god-like creatures in the presence of man.

After Métal Hurlant, he went on to make several more comics, such as the three part Scenes from a Suburban Life in 1977-79, Arkhe in ’82, and Lailah in ’88, but slowly began to reduce his output in the late 80s, with the exception of The World Arkadi that ran from ’89-2004. A couple of collected works re-appeared recently, but The World Arkadi marked the last work Caza would do in its entirety. In 2002-03, he was also found working on an animated film titled The Rain Children. Despite his respite from hard sci-fi, he was still illustrating newspaper comics up until 2009 and released a book about Adam and Eve in 2012. Sad to say, there are not a lot of translated works out by him; NBM Publishing Company released Scenes from a Suburban Life (retitled as Escape from Suburbia) and Heavy Metal released the Age of Darkness. Otherwise, he’s still semi-active in art, so keep your eyes peeled for more work.

Afterword

Métal Hurlant is one of the magazines that not only helped solidify strange, new genres of sci-fi but, like 2000 AD, also unleashed an incredible amount of talent onto the world. Though I have only listed three creators here, there is a whole spectrum of artists and writers that have emerged from its pages; young, hungry, and with imaginations as big as the sky. Next time you’re flipping through a Heavy Metal magazine, don’t underestimate the amount of skill and determination that went into making it. If it wasn’t for them, who knows where we would be.

DVD Review: The ABCs of Death

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Kit Rathenar

I think this may mark the most times that Brutal As Hell has ever reviewed a single movie, given that we’ve covered this one here, here and here already. That being the case, I was asked in this review of Monster Pictures’ UK release of the already-legendary anthology film The ABCs of Death to focus on the DVD extras as well as the finished product itself. As it happens, the extras are almost all specific to the individual shorts, so I’m simply going to go through, do some ultra-brief reviews and tell you what you get for your money in the extras for each short in turn…

A – Apocalypse. I’m impressed with Nacho Vigalondo for squeezing trauma, tragedy and a twist into such a short piece with both humanity and narrative sophistication. Sadly, the only extra here is a short clip showing how one of the special effects was done – a shame for a film that was very much more about character and story than it was about splatter to begin with.

B – Bigfoot. Adrían Garcia Bogliano offers an evocative, well-executed and darkly playful take on the myth of the boogeyman. This one stood well on its own, but the DVD adds a routine but watchable “making of” clip that isn’t terribly informative, but still conveys the impression of a team of professionals not afraid to have fun doing their jobs.

C – Cycle. A tightly focused little exercise in the macabre that answers no questions but leaves the viewer with a strangely queasy sense of comprehension nonetheless, from Ernesto Díaz Espinoza. As extras, he’s provided a couple of deleted scenes – whose deletion makes perfect sense, as they wouldn’t have added anything to this stiletto-sharp little piece for being left in.

D – Dogfight (see main image). Marcel Sarmiento supplies my favourite film of the entire ABCs with this emotional curveball of a short that takes the relationship between a man and his best friend in a gut-punching new direction. If anyone in the entire ABCs deserves a Best Actor award, it’s Riley the dog; which is why I was delighted to discover that the “making of” bonus feature shows – with reassuring openness – the tricks, effects and awe-inspiring levels of dog-training that went into creating this beautifully savage film without harming either human or animal stars. A genuine masterpiece.

E – Exterminate. I’m not a fan of spiders and Angela Bettis does nothing to change my mind with this disappointingly simplistic riff on a particular horror trope that thankfully is mostly restricted to the realms of urban legend. No extras.

F – Fart. There are two kinds of people in the world – those who find fart jokes funny and those who don’t. From what I can tell, most of the population of Japan consists of the former, and certainly Noburu Iguchi is one of them. Despite its resoundingly absurd premise this light-hearted little romance-with-a-twist had me laughing for the duration, and the attached making-of reveals that it did pretty much the same for the cast and crew. I defy even the most po-faced critic not to chuckle somewhere along the line here.

G – Gravity. A snapshot of tragedy in paradise from Andrew Traucki, utterly stripped of context but still leaving a coldness in the gut. No extras.

H – Hydro-Electric Diffusion. Thomas Malling’s surreal riff on a Nazisploitation flick could have equally well been filed under F – for either Furries or Fascists, which aren’t two things I usually expect to see together. Despite this, taken for what it is this tale of the good, the bad and Third Reich mad science is well worth a look and a smile. The extras here are a little too extensive and repetitive (the parallel screening of the finished and making-of versions of the film doesn’t add anything to the making-of itself) but the how-to of making really convincing anthropomorphic animal masks might be of interest to many viewers and practical use to a few…

I – Ingrown. I was halfway to writing off Jorge Michael Grau’s painful little lock-in sequence of a woman’s victimisation and death as mere torture porn until I saw, in the final credits, the words “2015 women murdered in the last 10 years in Mexico… the horror is not on the screen”. And when Grau explains in the making-of how this message was deliberately framed to dovetail with the film itself, I realised that the compilers of the ABCs did this stark little piece a huge disservice when they moved all the credits to the end en masse. Respect to Grau for sacrificing his chance to make a merely artistic statement, in favour of this obviously far more personally significant one.

J – Jidai-geki (“Samurai movie”). About all I could glean from this is that Yudai Yamaguchi is a fan of funny faces, and the behind-the-scenes footage mostly reveals that it’s surprisingly hard to pull the right funny faces at the right moment and then film them effectively. Comical but disposable.

K – Klutz. I was almost expecting the K to be for Khazi, since once again we’re in the realms of bathroom humour with this animated short from Anders Morgenthaler. Gross as it gets, but with little beyond that to its name. No extras.

L – Libido. I’m somewhat glad that Timo Tjahjanto didn’t contribute anything else to go with this ultra-extreme piece of psychosexual horror, since I was wincing enough sitting through the piece itself. An endurance test for both the characters and the audience, this film will leave you either unable to masturbate for a week, or possibly, for some people, needing to do so the second the credits roll. While I was definitely in the former camp I’m still impressed with the sheer horrific imagination on show here. No extras.

M – Miscarriage. I think Ti West was stuck for inspiration, as he’s fallen back on a cheap combination of hot-button subject matter, and a quick gross-out punchline. There’s a nasty whiff of misogyny, too, in the choice of “baby mama” as the designation of the main and only character in the credits. No extras.

N – Nuptials. There’s an old joke about a man who bought a parrot that used to live in a brothel. I can only assume that joke is told in Thailand too, as Banjong Pisathanakun turns a variant on the idea into a short that goes from cuteness to catastrophe in one swift slide. Predictable but neatly executed. No extras.

O – Orgasm. I adored Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet’s magnificent Amer but was disappointed in this, not least because in its plotless, eventless sensory overload it could easily be a cutting-room outtake from another project that needed a sex scene shortening. I do love those two but this time, I think they’re faking. No extras.

P – Pressure. Originally titled “Paramaribo” for the capital of Suriname where it was filmed, this visceral, sympathetic portrayal of how far someone might go for what they love held my attention with its rich visuals and powerful, dialogue-free soundtrack. The extras here are interviews with director Simon Rumley, a shy man who seems much less at ease in front of a camera than behind one, and cinematographer Milton Kam – both interesting viewing, if low-key. I was touched by the compassion and lack of prejudice shown by both men, despite their dealing with several different kinds of social marginalisation and stigma here both onscreen and off – two thumbs up.

Q – Quack. Someone had to make a meta-film about the challenges of making a film based on an awkward letter, and Adam Wingard rises to the challenge with the help of a duck. Sadly, I suspect it’s because he genuinely didn’t have any better ideas. No extras.

R – Removed. Running Dogfight a very close second for my personal favourite here, Srdjan Spasojevic’s contribution mixes visceral body horror with an evocatively cryptic plot that must surely be only a snapshot of an entire story waiting to be told. If there’s one film here that I’d like to see expanded to a feature, this is the one. The only bonus here is a photo gallery featuring a handful of on-set snaps, neatly reflecting the odd sense of frustration-born-of-admiration that the film itself creates. Show me more, dammit!

S – Speed. Jake West almost lost me at the opening of this faux-grindhouse tale of two women, one car and a monstrous pursuer thanks to some painfully wooden acting, but the combination of this film’s raw, hyper-chromatic beauty and the dark twist of its ending left me forced to admit I’d enjoyed it. No extras.

T – Toilet. Yet more animated bathroom humour, this time of an even blacker tint, from Lee Hardcastle; a man whose claymation filmmaking style is so stripped-down that when asked to provide a behind-the-scenes, he simply talks to the camera for three minutes and in that time manages to explain his entire process from storyboard to completion. While I’m not a huge fan of this particular piece, I’ve got to applaud his genuine talent.

U – Unearthed. The death of a monster from a slightly unusual perspective, courtesy of Ben Wheatley. I think this suffered from being a short, as I’d have cared a lot more about the events if I’d seen the rest of the prior plot. No extras.

V – Vagitus. Kaare Andrews attempts to squeeze an entire futuristic dystopia into a very small space with moderate success; though as with Removed, this is a scenario that could clearly have been expanded to much greater length, as the inclusion of a deleted scene makes further apparent. The lengthy behind the scenes segment has some interesting moments, mostly pertaining to the FX and props, but was rather spoiled for me by its self-congratulatory tone. As for the tedious “Animatics” segment that consists entirely of the storyboard being run on-screen with the dialogue of the film recited over the top, the less said the better.

W – WTF. Another take on the “we’ve got no ideas for this letter” gimmick, according to Jon Schnepp the “plot” here is about the contents of people’s subconscious minds becoming real. All I can say is that I’m glad my own subconscious isn’t that of an attention-deficient man-child, then, because I’d hate to deal with this on a daily basis. The behind-the-scenes footage only reaffirms this film’s general air of delight at its own idiocy, as does the blooper reel that consists entirely of Schnepp and a crony laughing too hard at their own dialogue to actually deliver it. Unfortunately, they’re probably the only ones who were.

X – XXL. Xavier Gens has created a masterpiece of nightmarish social commentary with this tragic, traumatic take on what our society’s obsession with skinny women is doing to the rest of us who can’t fit into those jeans. I watched this through my fingers out of pure empathic distress, and yet was glad every second that someone had had the courage to create this horrifying testament to the unreasonable expectations and the suffering that so many women deal with in silence every day. No extras.

Y – Youngbuck. A creepy, clingingly unpleasant little fable of abused innocence and deserved revenge that Jason Eisener has for some reason dressed up entirely in eighties trappings; from the look, to the feel, to the acid-neon colours, to the soundtrack. Obscure, macabre and strangely compelling. No extras.

Z – Zetsumetsu (Extinction). While Yoshihiro Nishimura’s deranged portrait of an alternate Japan where nuclear energy got way out of hand has a certain weird charm for its sheer joie de vivre, the behind the scenes footage demonstrates that when a film didn’t make any sense to start with, seeing how it was done won’t leave you much the wiser. Oversexed, politically incorrect and utterly chaotic, this is at least a truly fitting end to the rollercoaster ride that is the ABCs of Death.

There’s one final extra on the second disc that I have to mention, though: AXS TV’s “A look at the ABCs of Death”. A short teaser reel featuring snippets from the films and insights from some of the directors, it’s a watchable little piece that would certainly have made me want to see the ABCs if I hadn’t already – but the thing that most caught my eye about it was a single red screen featuring the pull quote “Bloody fun – Brutal as Hell”. See, I told you we’d reviewed this thing too many times…

DVD Review: The Sigil (2012)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Tristan Bishop

If you’re in love with film, you tend to find something to enjoy in nearly every film you watch, whether it be a performance, or camera-work, or (in the case of horror fans), a nice bit of gore. Most films aren’t great, a lot aren’t very good, but there will usually be something to hook the film buff and keep us watching. Once in a while, however, a film comes along that is so misguided in concept and execution that it beggars belief and makes watching the thing a chore. Ladies and gentlemen, I present, The Sigil.

How about this for a set-up? We learn that a mysterious event wiped out 41 people in a house in LA. At the time the government released a statement claiming the disaster was caused by an undiscovered uranium source. Yes. A very very VERY localised uranium source. So localised, that even the house six feet away hasn’t been evacuated. Devan, whose brother died in the house, decides to go on a road trip to the house in order to come to terms with his death (because rooting around in a uranium-rich environment is generally the sane way to deal with grief). She brings along her friend Nate, who brings along his camera-toting friend, as they have decided the journey should be documented on film (yep, this is, at least partially, a found footage film). Nate and Logan, being massive arseholes, decide that the point of the journey is to ‘blow the lid’ on the government conspiracy, rather than to help Devan come to terms with her loss. They attempt to break into the house on arrival, but are stopped by the young neighbour, Miki (played by her namesake Miki Matteson), who takes them aside and reveals that not all of the people in the house that night are dead…

It feels a bit harsh to trash a first feature, but in this case it’s probably well-deserved – a low budget does not mean you can skimp on a script, or some good ideas, and it certainly does not mean you can wheel out the now-tired found footage sequences that have been plaguing the direct-to-DVD market for far too long and expect not to piss off your intended audience. The set-up is patently ridiculous – it’s such an obvious government cover-up that no-one would have believed it, and those involved certainly wouldn’t have just left the house unguarded for any passing conspiracy-theorist to go and have a look. The characters are the biggest bunch of dickheads I’ve had the misfortune to spend 70 minutes with (at least it’s short!) and this is really not helped by amateur performances all-round (excepting the generally OK Matteson – credit where credit is due!). The found footage format is mercifully only used for about 50% of the film, but even this is no real saving grace with a film which even at such a short length feels stretched to breaking point. When the climax does come, there is a twist that, if it had been handled with any amount of skill by the film-makers, could have been rather good, but here it is signposted for a good half of the film, and the climatic sequences themselves are choreographed so ham-fistedly that they elicit no more than a head-slap and groan from the viewer.

So please, first-time directors: if you value your audience and aren’t, as I suspect in this case, contemptuous of horror fans and you’re just latching onto a cheap genre as a way of getting your name out there, get a script, rehearse it until it works, dump the found footage (unless you’re willing to work on other technical aspects such as sound design – which the recent The Entity got right), or at the very least give us a bucket of the red stuff, because we won’t stand for this crap for much longer.

Horror in Art: The Great He-Goat By Francisco De Goya

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

 

By Keri O’Shea

Few artists can boast such a versatile career as Francisco De Goya, although the great changes in his style through the five decades in which he worked were often tragic in origin. It is hard to reconcile Goya’s early work as a portrait painter to the Spanish royal court with the harsh, distended figures in his last paintings, but the latter were refracted through years of ill-health, and Goya’s own increasing alienation from a Spain which he thought was become retrogressive, anti-liberal. The fame of the so-called ‘Black Paintings’, of which the painting above is one, is ironic considering that it’s unlikely Goya ever wanted them to be seen. He never named them, displayed them or discussed them: having withdrawn entirely from public life by the time in which he was working on them, Goya, towards the end of his life by this point, painted these pieces directly onto the walls of his villa. However, they were discovered after his death, their importance was recognised, and they now form part of one of the most scintillating displays in Madrid’s Prado Gallery – a series of striking vistas of fear, death, ageing and the sinister supernatural which forms a strong contrast to the rooms upon rooms of Annunciations, Crucifixions and Resurrections.

The modern Spain of the 1820s had, in Goya’s eyes, become a sham: the Peninsular Wars had spread conflict and death, and he saw the combined forces of the monarchy and clergy which had gained in power in the years after the wars as reactionary, opposed to the progress and reason which the Enlightenment had promised. In this decade, Goya’s paintings take on a deeply nightmarish aspect. The Black Paintings are in many ways Goya’s protest against his times, as well as an expression of his terror at his own decline. One of the most famous of these has come to be called ‘The Great He-Goat’.

Goya had used the image of the coven before he came to paint The Great He-Goat. In 1798, for example, he had painted a similar scene (in a painting which is simply known as Witches’ Sabbath) – but despite the similarities in set-up between these two, the execution is massively different. The earlier painting has an attractive, Romantic landscape with a feeling of distance and depth; there is an abundance of colour, from the night sky to the simple, but bright fabrics worn by the women. When he revisited the image of the coven in the 1820s, much had changed.

This is, first and foremost, a large painting (55 x 93 inches in size) and yet, for all that, it feels cramped, claustrophobic. In contrast to the earlier coven, The Great He-Goat shows a much bigger group of people – maybe twenty or thirty – all rapt with attention and focused completely on the silhouetted He-Goat, who sits, neatly robed in what looks like clerical garb on the ground before them. This is a repellent group, too: although there are one or two younger faces amongst the gathered (at least judging by a glimpsed hairstyle on the left-hand side of the picture) and at least one male face, most of those present are older or elderly women – and ugly faces predominate, with heavy or distorted features in abundance. Some faces are rendered more or less as skulls, and some faces seem barely human at all: observe the figure sitting at the He-Goat’s feet. What is also striking about this coven is that, although there are identifiable faces in their midst, this seems like an amorphous mass, rather than a meeting of true individuals. The common ugliness, the common colourlessness, the proximity of one person to another, the way in which all of the gathered are huddled on the floor to listen to proceedings gives an impression of a lack of individuation.

One or two figures stand out from this meeting, though. A crone at the far left of the scene seems to be writing notes on whatever is being said which has so fascinated the rest of the group; at the feet of the Goat there looks like more written notes and an ink-pen. A collision between modernity and superstition perhaps? Coven this may be, but with a scribe and a written record present, it looks as though bureaucracy doesn’t necessarily guarantee reason and order, which seems to be what Goya felt when he created this piece of art. Then, sitting apart from (and being completely ignored by) the others is the painting’s only visibly youthful and attractive character, a rather genteel and well-dressed young girl who appears to be a prospective initiate. Passively, with none of the vividity of the other figures, she faces the He-Goat, and waits. Her fate, should she be accepted, is to become one of the horde who seem more intrigued by the procedure of enrolment than by her as an individual.

The Great He-Goat is a painting of anger, hopelessness and despair, created by a man who saw the next generation in Spain being enslaved by the old irrationality which he had hoped was in decline. It is an ominous painting, reflecting the anxieties of the impending Ominous Decade. The coven here is a therefore used as a symbol of the fear of resurgent barbarism – of people’s propensity to throw in their lot with systems and beliefs which had seemed to be relics of the past. Horror cinema has continued to use the coven or the secret society, often in similar ways to Goya, riffing on the idea that modernity is in fact a very tenuous thing and, more so, that it could be jeopardised by covert groups working in its midst. Modern horror has added an important difference of its own, however: here, those who would inflict harm in private look respectable in public, such as in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Lords of Salem (2013), to name but two. If we can unite Goya’s work with modern horror in one fundamental way, though, it is through understanding that history is not a straight line, moving from darkness upwards towards progress; it is a series of peaks and troughs, and the actions of even small groups of people can precipitate the sort of decline that we may, in our arrogance, assume is long behind or beneath us. In that, we may share Goya’s rage and frustration.

You can see a larger version of The Great He-Goat here.

Comic Review: The Hand That Feeds! Parasyte

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Review by Comix

Japan has no luck. If it’s not a natural disaster destroying half the coast, then it’s Godzilla or some other godforsaken monstrosity tearing apart whatever’s left. After so many crises and near brushes with death, you’d think the Land of the Rising Sun would be prepared for the possibility of anything, but sometimes, even the most carefully laid plans can’t foresee the danger right under its nose. Enter Parasyte, a comic of epic proportions which starts with something incredibly small: spores. One of the earlier adult horror comics to have made the transition over to English, Parasyte is still fondly remembered and read as one of the pinnacles of alternative manga. At a time when Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z were forming the minds of young kids, Parasyte – along with Viz’s adult collection Pulp and early Dark Horse manga – was shaping the imaginations of the older readers who were looking for more mature titles following the immense popularity of Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Vampire Hunter D. Parasyte offered up exactly what they were looking for, along with blood, boobs, aliens, and a possessed left hand that craves human flesh. In short, good times.

There are two versions which got released in English, one with Americanized names and one with the original Japanese (I’ll get into that later), but for the sake of the review, I’m going to stick with the Japanese originals. The comic begins with our hero, Shinichi Izumi, who lives with his parents in the suburbs of Tokyo. Shinichi is pretty much your average teenager; he likes music, girls, and being awkward. One night, as he’s chilling in his room, strange, alien spores flutter down from the sky and settle over Japan. As they land, worm-like creatures crawl from the shells and begin to body-snatch anything they can get their ‘hands’ on. One, though, has the unfortunate luck to try to take over Shinichi and while attempting to crawl in through the kid’s ear, is suddenly stopped by a pair of headphones and mistakenly enters his arm. Here begins a journey of strange relationships and bloody adventures, as the now dubbed arm-parasite Migi, is forced to share a body with Shinichi, who is less than excited to have his arm possessed. As they learn to get along, other body-snatched humans/parasites begin coming out of the woodwork, curious and disgusted by Migi’s failed attempt to take over Shinichi’s body and keen on eating and taking over the entire human race. In classic heroic tale style, the pair’s destiny becomes clear as they realize they are the only thing standing between Earth and a total alien invasion.

Parasyte is a classic tale of aliens and savior-of-the-universe type story, but what really stands out are the parasites themselves. They are incredibly gnarly. The way the parasites work is that not only do they take over people, but they snatch up anything that moves and, for food, they eat the same type of creature that they had become. Essentially, they became cannibals. As they take over the brain, they kill the host and adapt to their surroundings, only to come out when they have to eat or fight other parasites for resources and man, oh man, do they fight dirty. The parasite can manipulate the host body into various shapes, a la The Thing, and attack with various shape shifts (such as splitting their heads open or making blades with their arms), reinforcing human strength, and dodging bullets and knife attacks with quickened speed. They lack emotion and would run over a squadron of grandmas if it meant having a nice old lady goulash for dinner. This comic perfectly plays on our fear of other people, especially if you’re paranoid; but on a side note, it does have its share of lighter moments. Despite everything, Shinichi is still a teenager with plenty of girls coming and going. So, if I really had to to summarize Parasyte, it would be as a horror high school story aimed at adults.

Now, when I say it was one of the first horror comics to be translated into English, that doesn’t mean it was one the first horror comics in general. Japan has an incredible history of horror comics, some even reaching cult status among horror circles, but Parasyte (first released by Mixx/Tokyo Pop) was one of the initial comics to transition into English. Also, since it was one of the earlier mangas to hit the translated comic market, it was first adapted in a flipped format (left-to-right instead of Japan’s right-to-left) and the names were changed to sound more American, so as to appeal to audiences abroad. Shinichi became just Shin, a character named Reiko Tamura became Tamara Rockford, and Migi (whose name means ‘right’ in Japanese) became Lefty because as they flipped the comic for the English-speaking audience, Migi wasn’t a right hand any more. There was also a second version released by Del Rey that printed a translated version as well, but this time keeping the Japanese format and all the names went back to their originals. Really, it comes down to preference, but it’s an interesting observation at the lengths foreign countries used to go to just to appeal to other domestic industries.

Parasyte is written and illustrated by sci-fi/horror mangaka (manga artist) Hitoshi Iwaaki, who, along with his characters during the Mixx/Tokyo Pop run, also got his name romanticized, but only to Hitosi Iwaaki. Though he has written tons of other comics, only Parasyte has managed to hop over the pond. His art style, while not exactly distinctive, does break away from the standard big-eyed cartoons and goes for a more subdued style, focusing more on story than large and flashy splash panels (which actually made the monsters more intense.) This was especially noticeable when Parasyte was getting big in the nineties; a time when long legs and short skirts were all it took to get famous. Parasyte was first published in Japan’s manga magazine Morning, but moved over to Afternoon after a few issues, where it remained for its entire run from 1990 to 1995. When it was finally collected into books, Japan released a total of ten volumes, whic,h oddly enough, became twelve volumes through Mixx/Tokyo Pop, then eight volumes through Del Rey after Mixx/Tokyo Pop edition went out of print. Why the volumes were different is beyond me, but there you go.

As I mentioned, there are a couple of different versions for you to pick up. As always, there is the Japanese version, but unless you know Japanese, there’s really no point. While the Mixx/Tokyo Pop edition is easier to read with the flipped format and less Japanese-y names, it’s also more censored; it tends to Americanize cultural references and cuts out like, tons, of boobs (yet keeps all the violence). Also, the Mixx/Tokyo Pop editions are out of print, so while some books can still be bought for a dollar, others are going to be harder than hell to get. I suggest getting the Del Rey version. Along with the proper art and names, the volumes are thicker, so you don’t have to buy so many books, and they are way easier to find. It’s a great read for fans of body horror who have been looking for a fix after a John Carpenter marathon.

Interview: Cinema Sewer Maestro and Artist Robin Bougie

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Interview by Keri O’Shea

Artist Robin Bougie has been wreaking his awesome graphic havoc on the world for many years now. His magazine, Cinema Sewer, combines a healthy love of good ol’ fashioned smut with film reviews, articles and retrospectives, all topped off with that inimitable cartoon artwork. As we wait on the release of the new Cinema Sewer compilation, Robin was good enough to take some time out to speak to Brutal As Hell, and definitely went the extra mile with his responses. By the way, it should go without saying that a lot of what follows is not safe for work, unless you work somewhere pretty enlightened…

Brutal as Hell: You’ve been working on Cinema Sewer since the mid-nineties, and – since 2007 – FAB Press has been releasing compilations of the magazine, with Volume 4 due to come out next month. Can you tell us how these compilations came to be, and are you pleased with the response so far?

Robin Bougie: Well, I started out as a comic artist. A self published teenage comic artist who lived on the prairies and xeroxed his silly comics about stuffed animals and farting, and sent them to other lonely disenfranchised kids in other towns. This is pre-internet world, 1991 to be exact. So I did nearly 100 of these little 16 to 24 page comics, and eventually got into movies, and reviewing movies, and using comics to review movies. That was when I started doing Cinema Sewer in 1997. After nearly 10 years of getting pretty good at that (the early issues were terrible) I built up a readership and felt confident enough to start offset printing it with full color glossy covers, and looking to land a publisher for book collection of the best of the magazine. My first choice was FAB Press in the UK, who specialize in genre film books, and are rather legendary for being one of the best at that little niche.

After some convincing and some pleading, and some proving that my work has a built-in audience that I had been carefully fostering for years — a publishing deal came about, and here we are. Cinema Sewer book one has gone into multiple printings (three, at last I checked), and the other volumes have gone to a second printing as well. So yeah, I’m very pleased with the response. I’m not getting rich or anything, but people are paying to read my writing and to look at my comics and art, so I’m very tickled. I feel pretty blessed – but I’ve also paid my dues, you know? I’ve done my time in the gutters. I used to write for Screw magazine in New York, I’ve done time in the salt mines of porn industry journalism, reviewed boring porn dvds for jerk-off mags like Fox and Lollipops… I’ve done my time. I had to quit that freelance porn journalism stuff mostly because it was so hard to get paid. Unless you live in the same cities as these guys, they just pay whenever they feel like it, and they know you can’t do anything about it. What am I gonna do? Jump on a plane and fly down to Los Angeles to collect the $130 they owe me for reviewing “Young, Dumb, and Full of Cum” volumes 3 through 8? I had to get out of that and concentrate on my own little sleaze empire of Bougitude.

BAH: With your interests being what they are, this is reflected in the type of art you create, and a lot of your stuff is pretty graphic – but it seems to me that for you there’s a sense of fun, almost an adolescent sort of glee about drawing what you draw. Is this an accurate impression?

RB: Absolutely! The more graphic the better. We’re all consenting adults, so why the heck not? I’m a big believer that people only think something is “wrong” if you ACT like it is wrong. I’m a pornographer, and I honestly think that is something to be proud of — and so I use the title of pornographer or smut-monger with a sense of pride and enthusiasm. It’s something I’m proud of, and know is totally fun. I feel like a carnival barker sometimes in my writing, you know? Like “Step right up! See the 94 year old woman who gladly made a hardcore sex movie! Who says you can’t make up for lost time?! Does pussy that old still get juicy? It’s like nothing you’ve seen before! You sir! Hey there, ma’am! What’s that? You’ve never seen Brazilian lesbian face-farting videos? Well, let me tell you all about them in this illustrated essay, my good gents and ladies! We’ll delve deep into sight, sound, and smell! It’s a whole other world of delightful perversion and funky debauchery, so step right up!”

BAH: From your point of view as an artist and as a fan of a lot of adult mediums – do you think we are a more permissive society compared to say, thirty or forty years ago?

RB: In some ways, yes. In some ways, not really. There are so many aspects to society, so many levels, and different groups and sub-groups. But let’s focus on the positive. Like for instance, women – a whole new generation of young women under the age of 30 are quite open-minded about all of this for the most part, and that is kind of a new thing. About gender, about sexuality, and about sexual content. They’ve had access to adult material and can finally make up their own minds about what they like, what turns them on, off, and what they think is offensive.

Ever since porn was legalized, if you were a women you had to walk into a porn shop to be exposed to this kind of material – and that wasn’t really open to you thanks to the cultural taboo of such an act, and also the fact that there wasn’t really anything in there made for, or marketed to you — even if you were made welcome, which they were not. Now they can investigate and discover this stuff just as easily as men, and on their own terms. And if what they want to see isn’t there, instead of picketing and getting all pissed off about it like the previous generation did, they get creative and make it themselves – how fucking fantastic is that?

So many of my female friends are totally open about their interest in porn, and masturbating to it, and why shouldn’t they be? “Stud” was always a compliment, and “slut” was always a put-down for the older generation, but the 20-somethings are saying “Fuck that sexist shit!” to that now, and that really makes me happy. Homophobia is slowly dying off, and transphobia is gonna be next to go. I’ve got a lot of hope looking forward. Honestly, I really love this new era of feminism. It’s not the same old sex-negative Dworkinites that gave the word such a negative aura, and it’s sad that some people haven’t figured that out yet. It’s not even so much about being permissive per se, it’s just about being open-minded and a lot less judgemental about what other people are into. Just because it isn’t for you, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, and I see a more people warming up to that way of thinking. Both men and women.

BAH: Not everyone loves what you do, and I gather you’ve got some rather irate mail down through the years. Tell us about some of the best (worst?) hate mail you’ve ever received…

RB: Oh, the usual stuff. People telling me I’m wrong, or that I don’t have the right to draw what I draw. But they mostly question me. They do the interview thing when they confront me. “Don’t you wonder what kind of damage you’re doing, putting this kind of thing out into the world? This kind of negative imagery? What is it that you like about exploitation? Why do you want to exploit? Why do you hate women? Could you find a more positive use for your talents?”. It’s all very condescending, and it almost always comes from the far left. The Christian right have never bothered me. It’s the people obsessed with political correctness and making the world G-rated, for the most part.

But mostly I barely hear from the haters, to tell you the truth. I skate by because, like I said before, I know I’m not doing anything wrong, here, and I don’t act like I’m doing anything wrong – and when you try to soften the blow and look to legitimize yourself by saying things like “I don’t do porn, I do erotica”, you are indirectly acting like you’re doing something wrong. It’s like how a nude model will tell you she’s not like those dirty disreputable porn girls. She’s legit! And a dominatrix will tell you how she’s not like those lowly prostitutes! Ohhh, she’s so much better than those whores. Why are we stepping on our fellow perverts to curry favour with a vanilla mainstream that thinks we’re lowlife shitbags regardless? Every one of us is a sex-based organism. Own it! Erotica is interchangeable with pornography, anyway. It’s all semantics and perception. One person’s erotica is another person’s porn. And porn, and horror movies, and drive-in movies – they’re just like any other genres. It’s just entertainment.

BAH: You’re a collector: comics, magazines, movies, and more. Is there any one piece in your collection that you treasure above everything else, or is there one item that you covet like hell?

RB: Hmmm. I don’t really know. I have a vintage pair of Vanessa Del Rio’s shoes – signed to me. I really like those. They’re super slutty looking, and totally cool. She’s one of the greatest adult entertainment performers of the 1970s and 80s, so I wouldn’t ever want to get rid of ’em. She’s such a warm, funny, wonderful lady, and worthy of every single ribbon of salty jizz she’s coaxed from her multitude of her happily masturbating minions over the decades. You could probably fill 20 swimming pools with it by now, if it had all been collected. Ewww… what a thought. Festering forty year old goo-pools. Barf.

BAH: Erm, eww indeed! Cinema Sewer is choc-full of obscure movies, many of which have never been released to DVD and probably didn’t get that much of a run on VHS! What 5 ‘lost’ films would you like to see get a DVD release, and why?

RB: These five films are amongst my very favourite of all time, and they have barely been seen – and it’s a goddamn shame! They need to finally be given a proper home format release (special editions with extra features would be nice!) so the people can know what they have been missing. Until then, here are some words about them, and links to the movies on Youtube. Now your week is set on “stun”. You’re welcome.

The Devil At your Heels (1981. Canada)

This is just astounding, and one of my fave documentaries of all time — bar none. Simply put, this is a movie about a Canadian stunt man named Ken Carter. Keep in mind that I don’t mean the kind of stuntman who substitutes for actors when there is a dangerous situation on a film set. I mean the kind of Evel Knievel-esque daredevils that captured the imagination of the entire world in the seventies. These were showmen. Gloryhounds. Mental cases — and Ken in particular might have been the most insane of them all. Listen, this cat wanted to shoot off a giant ramp, fly a fucking car almost a mile across the St. Lawrence Seaway, and land what was left in some flower bushes in a cow pasture. Watch it to see how that turned out. Hint: NOT WELL. Watch the whole movie here.

Not A Love Story (1981. Canada)

The ultimate hand-wringing anti-porn feminazi screed of its era will amaze you, infuriate you, and titillate you from minute one to its bitter, guilt-packed, victim-flavoured end. If you’re as interested as I am in the classic era of the porn industry, the early knee-jerk baby-steps of the misguided sex-negative Dworkinites, and the days when Times Square was a fetid urine-soaked stink-pit of debauched sin and sleaze, you absolutely must not miss this hilariously one-sided investigation into why men are reprehensible monsters for wanting to see women sans clothing! Mega-props to this propaganda made by the mother of author Naomi Kline! Watch the whole movie here.

The Killing of America (1982. USA)

Leonard (brother of Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul) Schrader compiled, edited, and wrote narration for this, the finest mondo-style documentary ever made about violent death in America. Sound distasteful? Nay, it’s all class, baby. It was made with money raised in Japan, and Leonard scoured several countries, buying footage from TV stations and “several hermit-like collectors”. The material he scraped together was exclusive, truly unforgettable, and has never been topped. From race riots, to police shootings, to interviews with serial killers, to insane and random acts of violence accidentally captured on film, The Killing of America delivered the disturbing goods brilliantly cloaked in a powerful anti-gun message which remained unmatched in the years prior to 2002’s Bowling for Columbine. Watch the whole movie here.

Mindgame (Japan 2004)

Due to some vile injustice I have not been made aware of, this radical animated movie has not yet found a release on any home format in North America, nor was it given much of a theatrical release outside of a few festival screenings halfway through the last decade, where I was lucky enough to peep it. There really hasn’t been much else ever made quite like this batter-blast of imagination that washes over you and melts into your brain like a waking dream. I also happen to find this movie incredibly inspirational. I’m not even going to go into the plot, or why it is so great, because it really is better if one comes to it as innocent as a newborn fawn in a wooded glade – and simply experiences it. Trust me, it is worth your time. Watch the whole movie here.

The Sexy Killer (1976. Hong Kong)

Jack Hill’s Coffy, starring Pam Grier, was one of the greatest blaxploitation films of the 70s, and this is a stone cold fact. But lesser known is that just a short time later, the amazing Shaw Brothers studios in Hong Kong decided to do a remake – which is nearly shot-for-shot the same, and every bit as funky and entertaining. The radical Chen Ping (who did a lot of Chinese exploitation and martial arts films) takes the role that Pam played so well, and totally does it justice. She’s a tough young sexy thang whose sister gets drugged and seduced by an evil dealer working within a corrupt drug industry, and it’s up to Chen to go buckwild, and kick all kinds of ass as she makes the bad guys wish they had never fucked with her or her family! Watch the whole movie here.

BAH: In the past few years we’ve been seeing a lot of exploitation homage – things like the Grindhouse movies/fake trailers, Bitch Slap, Hobo With A Shotgun and so on. What do you think of this trend and the movies it’s produced so far?

RB: I’ve seen pretty much all of these grindhouse throwbacks thus far, and I can tell you that only two of them have gotten it right. There are only two very noteworthy exceptions. One is Anna Biller’s VIVA from 2007, and the other is Black Dynamite from 2009. They both play it for laughs which is a marginal cop-out, but they both do it brilliantly regardless. The really important thing is that they get the tone right. The language, the costumes, the way the movies were made. They did their homework and they got it all correct. Excellent films. The rest of them range in fucking terrible to not-so-horrible in terms of execution.

BAH: Thank-so much for taking the time to chat to us! It’s much appreciated!

Many thanks to Robin Bougie – now go and check out his online store! You’re very welcome.

Horror in Short Double Bill – Crestfallen (2011) and Drool (2011)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

The majority of short films which we encounter are put together, in the broadest sense, to entertain. More often that not, this means that they have a tale to tell, however brief it may be. However, this isn’t the only way to use the medium of the short film at all, and in the following two shorts directed by filmmaker Jeremiah Kipp, there’s a little of two different approaches. In the first of the films we have for you, Crestfallen (2011), there is some evidence of a story arc but no conventional development or resolution. The result is a very economical, yet visually impressive five minute film.

Crestfallen (2011) from Codebreaker Productions on Vimeo.

The nameless woman at the hub of the film is represented as a person in turmoil, but it’s not immediately obvious why – at first all you really see of her is the prelude to, and then a strangely painterly suicide attempt, a scene which is deliberated over by the camera. In fact, and surprisingly, the suicide bid is the most painterly moment in this very painterly short film – Shipp even conflates the character’s blood-soaked limbs with a sex scene, so quickly does it follow on from the earlier scene. Can a suicide be picturesque? It looks that way here, which some folk may find problematic. It’s a bold move to make the film dialogue-free too – or rather, sound-free, as lines are obviously being spoken but remain unheard, and the reveal of what has driven the central character to her actions is very subtly done.

Crestfallen is not a story as such; it’s more of a snapshot, albeit strikingly well-presented. The Harry ‘Friday the 13th’ Manfredini soundtrack lends weight to proceedings too, sounding for all the world like Angelo Badalamenti’s work on Twin Peaks to me. I can’t call this entertainment as such, and I would usually prefer a punchline, but nonetheless there is much to respect here. Even less of a conventional film, though, is the second of Shipp’s films which we are featuring here – Drool (2011)…

Drool from Slick Devil Entertainment on Vimeo.

Drool is a film which has not come any form of plot, character or action; instead, this is a more like a performance art reel. And there really is a fetish for everything, eh? Here we have two people who seem to enjoy (or are they enjoying?) writhing around in spit. Each to their own and all. Shipp himself terms this ‘experimental’, and you get the impression that the purpose here is to showcase some nifty camera work and interesting visual material, without taking too much of an interest in anything else. Does it generate atmosphere? Yes. Would it have an interest for most horror fans? Probably not, generally speaking, so I’d definitely recommend the first of these two shorts. However, this is just a small selection, and Shipp also has an extensive filmography to his name, so if you’re keen to see what else he can do, be sure to check out his website.

http://kippfilms.com

DVD Review: Static (2012)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Sara Paxton. Now, where the hell do I know that name? Sara Paxton, Sara Paxton, Sar…

Oh wait. Oh, BOLLOCKS.

When I realised that the actress from The Innkeepers was also in Static, and that the press release describes her role in Static as that of ‘a hysterical young woman’, I wasn’t exactly filled with joy. Y’see, being a contrary old cuss, I did not enjoy The Innkeepers one bit, and sad to say but Paxton’s nervy, quirky, high-pitched performance was a large factor in that. Frankly, I wanted to push her face in, and she was never described as ‘hysterical’ there. What were we going to get this time, I wondered? Still, I am very glad I gave Static a whirl, because all in all this is an ambitious, well-told story which proves itself capable of a few surprises. Not least of which is an understated performance by Ms. Paxton…

The opening scenes of Static set the scene for what is to follow in terms of tone: this is for the most part a low-key, morose movie, as we’re introduced to a grieving husband and wife, writer Jonathan (Milo Ventimiglia) and Addie (Sarah Shahi). Having lost their beloved son at three years old, they are slowly getting their lives together, but their feelings still all too readily spill over into anger and frustration at one another. However, now that Jonathan’s long-awaited book is complete, Addie looks forward to leaving their country house with all its dismal memories, making a fresh start back in the city.

This is the movies, though. No sooner have they talked about moving on, but in the middle of the following night, a young woman claiming to be a neighbour (Paxton) arrives at their door claiming that there is ‘somebody out there’; a group of men wearing gas-masks, no less. Thinking she must have been spooked by some local kids, Jonathan goes outside to take a look – but, when he sees her car is indeed outside with the tyres deliberately slashed, it seems like she may have been spooked by something a bit more menacing than pranksters. Who has she brought into their lives?

All of that sounds like your common-or-garden home invasion movie, and yeah, there are a lot of common elements, but the chief strength of Static is that it keeps you engaged by turning out to be something quite other than I, at least, expected. For one thing, forget optimism; Static begins with its ending, not dissimilar to 2010’s In Their Sleep (and Static resembles the earlier film aesthetically in several ways, too). You know from the earliest frames that you’ll be journeying towards this point, so all that remains is to watch this play out, knowing all the time that the conclusion exists. Another thing which builds upon this feeling is the point of view afforded to the audience. As we see Paxton’s character Rachel talking individually to Addie and then to Jonathan, we wind up knowing more than each of them, and that is that – all’s not quite right with this young woman. Why are these men after her? Does she know more than she’s saying? Is she even some kind of rabid fan? Unease comes on gradually here, but it sticks.

Static understands that in order for all of this tension to matter, you have to be able to engage with the people under siege, and also that it’s possible to humanise them with a few muted touches. Together, first-time director Todd Levin, the screenplay-writing team and good performances from the lead actors allow this; in good hands, you don’t need acres of exposition to create a couple on-screen who are believably in mourning. Just a sidelong glance at a photo of the deceased little boy or the presence of a small keepsake garners more pathos than any protracted speech; this sense of loss is important for the film throughout, taking on a different significance as the plot proceeds.

And, as things proceed, Static reveals more and more that the force invading the home is somewhere between the earthly and the unearthly. I couldn’t help but think of ‘F’ and its omnipotent hooded figures at some points, as the same sense of awe and doubt also surrounds the invaders in the newer film. The outcome here is rather different, nonetheless: although the film drops in some rather trite tropes (jump-cuts, car trouble) it is at its best when maintaining the much more quiet sense of dread it builds so well, and the conclusion proves an engaging pay-off to that dread, merging earthly/unearthly in a way I didn’t see coming. Is the ending flawless? No, and there are a few ways you could pick it apart if you so wished; personally, I thought it was bold and effective enough to override the urge to do that. When a film can look tried-and-tested, but then it carries you in a different direction altogether, then it deserves credit.

An imaginative blend of genres and visual flair, Static is a real achievement for a first film, and I advise you to go into it spoiler-free to really give it its dues. Oh, and apologies to Sara Paxton. I take it all back!

Static will be released in the UK by Second Sight on 15th July 2013.