Vanishing on 7th Street is the new flick by Brad Anderson and is currently available on Netflix Instant. The premise is a mysterious darkness begins covering the earth. As it covers, it blinks most people out of existence, rapture style.  The few that survive end up at a local bar whose power is being run by a single generator. Turns out, there are shadow monsters in the darkness that can only be held at bay by light. So our merry band of uninspiring characters, led by Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, and John Leguizamo,  try to stick together and keep alive while their batteries mysteriously die one by one.

The first half our of this movie is pretty rad. Anderson is great at making nothingness creepy. He did it in Session 9 and he does it once again here.  This movie is just oozing with atmosphere and mood. The cinematography is great to look at and the early hook of everybody disappearing keeps you genuinely interested (even if it did feel a little too Shyamalan for my taste). The glaring problem with this movie is that none of the characters are interesting or likeable. Anakin is sad about the wife he split up with, Newton is sad about her missing baby, and Leguizamo is sad about his wasted love life. There’s also a kid who is sad about his missing mom. The film amounts to little more than a bunch of sad characters deciding to try and get a truck running so they can drive to Chicago. It’s all so haphazard and aimless. And one super bothersome aspect to me is the “rules” for the shadow monsters. Like, they are scared of light, but people die around light in the movie constantly. It just feels like they use it when necessary and sort of whitewash it in other places. Disappointing because the film had a ton of potential but it just doesn’t go anywhere and has bland, dumb characters. Still, I didn’t hate this movie as much as most people seem to be hating it. If you like Brad Anderson, which I do, you might be able to get by on the atmosphere and spookiness alone. It doesn’t do much right, but the few things it does do it does it well.

I talked about this movie on the latest Splattercast. John Carpenter returns to feature lengths with a very uninspired, generic “ghost” movie. The story is about Amber Heard getting locked up in a mental institution where a killer ghost is stalking the halls, murdering the various girl inmates. As I said on the show, this movie is soul crushingly dull. Every jump scare is telegraphed, the plot has been told a million times, and none of the characters are remotely engaging. Heard does her best but once the big twist is revealed (which isn’t really a twist at all considering it’s so obvious) you’ll actually scratch your head trying to figure out “Wait, what exactly was the ‘ghost’ doing this entire time?” It doesn’t make a whole lotta sense.

The film does have a couple cool kills, though once again they have been done a kajillion times. One chick gets her throat slit in the shower. Another girl gets skewered through the eye with some sort of sharp doctor instrument. The ghost itself actually looks ok. Carpeter is still able to generate some tension with special kudos to the morgue and dumbwaiter sequences. Unfortunately, the content is so blah that it barely registers. Oh, and there is this really goofy shower scene with all the girls. The camera just sort of pans across their naked….backs. With some goofy music over the top. It’s just weird.  I will say that Carpenter totally fell in love with creepy hallway dolly shots. There’s about a million scene transitions of a camera moving down the same lightning flashed hallway. Again, not the worst film in Carpenter’s canon (eat a dick, Pro-Life) but just a total letdown in terms of expectations and execution. Just a cliche filled yawner barely worth remembering.

Mad Monster Party is another film currently available on Netflix Instant. It’s a feature length stop motion animated film from 1967 that has built a cult reputation over the years. Boris Karloff plays Dr. Frankenstein, leader of the monsters. After creating a secret formula that destroys matter, he decides to retire and name his nephew Felix as his heir. This doesn’t sit well with the voluptuous Francesca, Karloff’s secretary. She makes a deal with Dracula to knock off Felix so she’ll be named heir and share Frankenstein’s secrets with the other monsters. Felix shows up, completely out of his element, and the various monsters attempt to knock him off…all the while “It” is making its way to the island, ready to crash the party for every monster.

In all honesty, Mad Monster Party is merely ok. It has funny moments, for sure. And seeing all the famous monsters in stop motion is worth the viewing on its own. It should be noted that this is not a Universal production, so The Wolfman is simply The Werewolf, for example. And the designs are very different from the classic Universal looks. But it’s still a super fun time. It’s 100%  kid friendly with enough innuendo for adults to get some entertainment. The voice acting is really good with Karloff, Phyllis Diller, and Gale Garnett as Francesca being standouts. To be fair, a lot of the jokes aren’t funny. And a few of the musical numbers and scenes go longer than they need to. But it’s worth watching just to say you’ve seen it. And c’mon. It’s a stop motion animated movie with monsters. Enjoy it for what it is.

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Red White & Blue (2010) d. Simon Rumley

Horror fans have been promoting Red White & Blue pretty heavily. It’s getting a lot of play and buzz on genre sites and is spreading pretty quickly via word of mouth. I’m becoming more and more interested in the question of “What is a horror film and what is classified as a horror film?” I have always been one of the stalwarts that argues “Horror is a Big Tent genre.” I’m always comfortable with putting films that might otherwise be considered a stretch by a stricter definition into the horror camp. But I’ve started to rethink this a bit. It began when I saw genre sites placing The Disappearance of Alice Creed unabashedly within the confines our favorite genre. That film is very clearly not a horror film and I’m wondering whether the definition of horror is changing, or if fans are just so desperate for quality movies that we’re adopting stuff that shouldn’t be considered horror at all, all willy nilly like. The hard truth is that Red White & Blue is not a horror film. Keep that question in mind when you watch it, which you should (It’s available currently on Netflix Instant).

Red White & Blue follows the lives of three separate characters who all meet in gruesome and unexpected ways. First is Erica, a woman who drifts through life emotionally detached from everyone. She has no family or friends and spends most of her time having sex with random strangers in order to find some sort of human connection with those around her, always refusing to get closer to them than the act itself. After she loses her job, she meets an older man named Nate who offers her a job at a hardware store. Nate has his own emotional problems. He strikes an interest in Erica and although she is resistant at first, the two become close. He claims to be ex-CIA and has been offered a new black ops job and is just trying to decide whether or not to take it. The last major character of the story is Franki. Him and his garage band have just obtained a European tour and he is struggling to decide whether or not to embark on it. His mother has been in and out of the hospital due to cancer and his girlfriend briefly left him for another man. We see him and his band mates having group sex with a drunk Erica near the beginning of the movie. Unfortunately for him, that one time event turns out to be not so one time as both he, Erica, and Nate’s paths will cross in violent ways. To reveal any more plot points would be to spoil the film which I definitely don’t want to do. This is a film worth seeing. There might be some minor spoilers in the next paragraph, so just skip to the end if you don’t want the possibility of figuring out important events.

Though there is certainly some brutal violence in the last act of this film, violence in and of itself does not constitute a horror film. In fact, the first 2/3 rds of this movie reminded me more of a variation on Larry Clark’s Kids then it did a horror film (though maybe that would be a debate itself, whether Kids is horror). In all actuality, it’s more of a gritty, realistic drama with some revenge elements. This movie works because of the performances. Noah Taylor (Nate), Amanda Fuller (Erica) and Marc Senter (Franki) put in spectacular work. You get completely engrossed in these peoples lives and there is a bizarre “have to watch the train wreck” aspect that comes across much better than the work of somebody like Harmony Korine. When some of the stuff about the characters is revealed, it’s genuinely tragic, and, oddly, sympathetic. I felt myself liking these characters and feeling for them even though the actions that led to their problems were wholly despicable to me in many ways. That’s hard for a film to do and to be able to pull it off successfully is even rarer. The violence that is shown in the last act is definitely brutal but the acts themselves are not filmed in such a way to allow the viewer to revel in “Oh that’s awesome” blood and gore. For example, the final kill is disturbing, but the act itself is shown almost exclusively in extreme closeup. So you never get the full exploitative “look” at what is happening. Rather, you hear the screams and see brief cuts of what is happening. There’s enough restraint shown to allow a very excruciating scene to develop before your eyes without actually showing you the whole shebang. And it works perfectly.

One problem with the film is its slowness to develop. For example, there are multiple scenes early on of Erica having sex with various men. It goes on a little too long. I already “got” that she is emotionally screwed up and is using sex as a weapon of sorts. Some of that running time could have been used to further explore the relationship between Erica and Nate which was far more interesting and would have made Nate’s revenge a bit more powerful. The film is strange in that , about half way through, it just drops the Erica/Nate storyline to focus on Franki. It feels abrupt and sudden and by the time Erica and Nate come back into the picture, you’ve sort of lost that connection you might have had with them. The film would have been better served in showing Franki’s storyline at the same time, rather than just switching gears so suddenly. In the end though, Red White & Blue is a good little grimy flick. The acting is fantastic all around and if you can get past the first 20 minutes, you’ll be genuinely intrigued as to where the story will go and how these three characters end up crossing paths with each other. It’s a dirty film in the vein of Larry Clark with some nasty violence in the last act and worth checking out if you like that kind of film, which I do.

7.5/10

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Jim Mickle’s Stake Land is a good movie. It’s hard to not make a good post-apocalyptic movie. The setting itself has a built in appeal to most viewers. The idea that civilization as we know it has been obliterated and there is this driving will to survive and rebuild, or even just to exist, has a natural attraction to people. Maybe because we are so curious to see what it would be like to be thrust into something so outside of our normal day-to-day comfort zone (we all feel some apocalyptic event  plausibly could happen). Or maybe, as the now infamous quote goes, some of us just want to see the world burn….and then watch the subsequent misery

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I’ve never been a big fan of Takashi Miike. My big criticism with his movies, especially his horror films, is that he seems to build a movie around neat moments but never seems to be able to pull off a film. He got a pretty big reputation with genre fans for ultra violent stuff like Ichi the Killer and the not-as-violent-as-you-think Audition, but one thing I do give the guy big props for is his ability to do everything. Miike makes a million movies in just about every genre possible. Comedies, dramas, splatter films, psychological thrillers, westerns…you name it, Miike has done it. And even though I don’t like his films, I can recognize that most of what I’ve seen from him can be solidly put in the general “good movie” category (except Sukiyaki Western Django. That movies just sucks). With 13 Assassins, I might re-evaluate my opinion of him. Or at the very least, explore his filmography a little deeper than I have.

13 Assassins is a remake (yes people, ANOTHER REMAKE) of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 film of the same name. As with many samurai films, the plot is very simple: The age of the samurai is coming to an end. There has been peace for many years and the samurai have become fairly useless. Big problems arise when Lord Naritsugu, the psychotic younger brother of the shogun, begins raping and murdering the people for fun. Because Naritsugu is so close to becoming shogun, the government hires a wise old samurai by the name of Shinzaemon to gather a team to ambush and assassinate Naritsugu before he can spread his reign of terror across the countryside. As the title of the film suggests, thirteen samurai assassins band together in a desperate attempt to knock of Naritsugu before he reaches the safety of another province. A plan is put into motion to force Naritsugu through a small village where the final battle will take place.

This movie is pretty awesome, though it does have a few things that keep it from really ascending into “great” territory. First, the film is basically divided into two halves. The first half introduces all of the various assassins and gives some back story on why they want to kill Naritsugu. The second half is a massive  40 minute fight sequence which is quite incredible in its scope. During the first half, we get introduced to a few of the different assassins and their reasons for fighting. One, for example, is doing it for money to help his family with their debts. Another is doing it because he wants the thrill of the ultimate “gamble”. One samurai helps them divert Naritsugu to the fateful village because the evil Lord decapitated his sons head and raped his sons wife. The “13th assassin” is actually not a samurai at all, but wishes to be accepted by them. A lot of these characters are definitely interesting and the motives are sound. One problem that arises is that only a couple of them really get any development beyond the superficial. So when the final battle takes place, and they inevitably start falling, you don’t feel any emotional punch for a lot of them. The villain of the film, Naritsugu, is absolutely bat shit insane. He could have gone down as one of the truly terrifying villains of recent years. His introduction begins with rape and ends with psychotically chopping off the head of the woman’s husband in front of her. In another scene, reminiscent of Miike’s Imprint,  we are shown a woman who had her arms, legs, and tongue chopped off by Naritsugu, only to be used as a sex toy by him until he tired of her. Some of the stuff the guy does in this movie is just pure evil, and he does it with a really unsettling calmness. One of his interesting traits is that he is looking for “excitement”, but nothing he does seems to satisfy him, but he revels in destroying his subjects who he claims are only there to serve their master, him.

Naritsugu is so crazy and evil at the beginning of the movie that you sort of begin to miss the fact that he doesn’t do much at all the rest of the film. He rarely appears and during the second half of the film which is one long, extended fight sequence as the assassins have boobytrapped the village in order to take on hundreds of rival samurai, Naritsugu is shuttled from place to place, never joining the fight. The end scene with him and Shinzaemon is cool, but you can’t help but feel a bit let down that this evil badass didn’t really put up any sort of fight. I think that was sort of the point, but because he’s missing for so much of the film, the two representations never seem to click and come together. Speaking of that 40 minute fight, it’s pretty spectacular. I’ve read people calling it one of the greatest action set pieces in cinematic history. I wouldn’t go that far. It’s basically 13 dudes swinging swords against 200 other dudes with swords, but just the sheer technical prowess and artistry it took to put an action scene that long together is mind boggling. And another interesting thing: This film isn’t that bloody. And I say this relative to Miike’s other work and reputation. There are some decapitations and some blood sprays from swinging swords here and there, but I was struck by the restraint that Miike used. Hundreds of samurai are being chopped up during the big action sequence but it is most definitely not some Kill Bill House of Blue Leaves over the top gore fest. It’s about the artistry of the action, not Ichi style blood spewing. Not saying that Miike doesn’t indulge here and there, but overall, it’s pretty “tame”. It was a great decision, because gallons of blood is not what that sequence needeed. It felt real, not cartoony.

In the end, I highly recommend 13 Assassins. It’s a wonderful, simple story about a small group of dedicated warriors who have to take on, and kill, hundreds of bad guys. Miike’s direction is subtle and reserved and you can really see the influence of people like Yasijuro Ozu during the first half, and Kurosawa-esque action in the latter half. I’ve seen some people claim this film approaches Kurosawa, that’s not really the case. But it doesn’t need to. Miike has made a film that stands on its own without having to be compared to Kurosawa. Though not all of the characters are interesting or noteworthy, there are enough to gravitate towards. I just wish the villain would have been a bigger presence. Definitely see this if you can.

This movie is currently available on Time Warner On Demand.

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I hadn’t bought a comic in close to 5 years. I’ve said this on the Splattercast before, but I used to be a huge comic collector. Then the industry just priced me out. $3-5 per title, per month was just more than I was willing to pay. So I just stopped. That doesn’t mean that I still don’t have a love for the medium, just that I’ve been totally out of sight, out of mind on anything related to comics for years. I happened to be in Grand Island this weekend at a store called Hastings, which is sort of like a Best Buy combined with a Barnes & Noble. Plus they sell all sorts of collectible action figures and stuff. Lots of cool junk in there. As I was wandering through the store I found something new that I didn’t realize they had: comic books.

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Black Death (2011) d. Christopher Smith

I’ve had some horrible disease ravaging my frail body for the past few days, what better than to watch a movie about the bubonic plague, right?

First, this movie is awesome. Plain and simple. I might be overreacting due to the chemicals altering my brain right now and the fact that it’s one in the morning, but literally, as I was watching this, my first thought was “This is a 21st century Wicker Man.” I see you raising your eyebrows, brushing me off. And again, it might be the drugs talking, but Black Death really impressed me in a way a religious horror film hasn’t done in a long time.

The plot of the film involves a teenage monk named Osmund. He’s recently devoted himself to the Church and being a servant of God. Meanwhile, he has a girlfriend whom he is deeply in love with. The tension is “Hey, I’m a teenager…do I really want to be a celibate monk for the rest of my life?”. What’s happening around the country is, of course, the black death. The plague is ravishing all the villages and even the monastery. Nobody is safe and so Osmund basically forces the girl he loves to leave for fear that she’ll be a victim. But she makes an ultimatum to him. She tells him that she’ll wait at a specific location at dawn for a week to give him time to make a final decision. If after a week he doesn’t come, she’s leaving forever. So she rides off and Osmund asks God for a sign as to what he should do.

Meanwhile, Ulric (Sean Bean) rides into the monastery. He and his men are on a mission from the Bishop and they need a guide to lead them through a foggy forest in order to find a village in the middle of a marsh. Seeing this as his sign to be with his gal, Osmund volunteers but it soon becomes clear what this secret mission is all about. The village is untouched by the plague due to a necromancer’s shenanigans. The objective is to infiltrate the village, find the necromancer, kill him, and then bring his  body back to the Bishop. So the first part of the film is following Osmund, Ulric, and this band of motely God-loving warriors through a creepy forest.

Then they find the village.

I won’t spoil any of the stuff that happens because I thought it was all really rad and well worth discovering on your own. Without giving anything away, these soldiers do find a group of friendly, welcoming citizens. But things start going terribly wrong. Is it the necromancer, or is Ulric a little too blinded by his faith to see the truth?

I was totally engaged by this movie the whole way through. Normally, I hate British period pieces like this. I find British middle-agey history to be the dullest, most boring shit ever. Like “Oh, let’s have another stupid war with France. Gee, aren’t our longbows swell?”. And I was generally concerned about that aspect. But this movie was totally forward moving, beautiful to look at, and engaging the whole way through. I haven’t been the biggest Christopher Smith fan. I hated Severance, for example, and Triangle was so close to a copy of TimeCrimes that it felt almost like plagiarizing. But Black Death is Smith really coming into his own.  It is chock full of religious themes and questions. Characters are constantly having their faith challenged. It’s a film that shows both the cruelty and humanity of religion, sometimes at the same time. The film has great acting across the board. All of the soldiers in the group are unique and easy to distinguish from each other. I wish there had been more scenes with all of them to develop them more fully. If that’s one thing the film falters a bit with its that some of the secondary characters could have been stronger and more well rounded to the audience. These dudes are badass, I wanted to know a little bit more about them. The cinematography is great with the outdoor locations just stunning to look at. There’s a healthy dose of blood, but nothing over the top, though there are a few scenes that’ll make you cringe. And the ending of this movie is just flat out rad bananas. Starting at the village (you’ll know the scene when you see it) and culminating in the change that happens to one of the characters.

It’s 2 in the morning and I’m in pain. I need to try and get some sleep. This has probably been a terrible review but I was excited enough after watching this that I wanted to get my initial reaction out there. I can’t imagine a horror fan not respecting some of the stuff this film is saying. It’s heavy themes you just normally don’t get in horror movies nowadays. It does what a good religious horror film should do: make you think.

Loved it.

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Just posted a review for the remake of I Spit On Your Grave: here

And I have just realised, this is by the same director as Mongolian Death Worm (see Splattercast #177)

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Drive Angry, directed by My Bloody Valentin 3D’s Patrick Lussier, opens with a CGI hot-rod jumping the gates of hell.  From this opening, you know what you are about to see exists in a hyper-real comic book world where the laws of physics are bent and folded like a wet noodle.  Sadly, this works against the films many car chase scenes.  When a car slams against another and flips through the air as if it’s on guide wires, the scene loses its visceral impact and feels empty.  In a movie where 80% of it takes place in cars, the chase scenes should have a sense of speed and power.  In Drive Angry, they often look and feel like they were taken from an 80′s episode of T.J. Hooker.  This is a shame, too, since much of the rest of the film is a lot of fun.

Nicolas Cage plays the ever so cleverly (excuse the sarcasm) named John Milton.  Milton is a man on a mission that not even hell can keep him from accomplishing.  He is a bad-ass, boot stompin’, mutha’ that can fuck a woman and take out the bad guys at the same time without ever missing a thrust.  After escaping from hell, Milton begins tracking down the cult leader that killed his daughter and intends to use his infant granddaughter as a sacrifice.

Along the way, he meets and partners with the sassy and feisty Piper, played by the sexy and talented Amber Heard.  As Piper, when Heard says she’s gonna’ kick someone’s ass, you believe it. She is the linchpin that holds the film together and manages to steal the show while doing so.

Chasing behind them is The Accountant, an enigmatic figure that has followed Milton to earth, and is determined to drag him back to hell.  Played by the great character actor William Fichtner, The Accountant is a fun and charismatic figure that has more depth than what we are first led to believe.  Fichtner is one of the highlights of the film, and along with Heard, brings a true sense of fun to the proceedings.

The villain of the piece is the Charles Manson like figure of Jonah King and his dozens of followers.  King, as played by Billy Burke, is one of the larger problems of the film.  He is supposed to be a charismatic leader, but there is nothing charismatic nor frightening about him.  He is mostly just there, and in a movie where the protagonists are turned up to an eleven, the villain needs to come across as more than a three.

There is very little new here.  The story borrows heavily from comics, TV shows, video games, movies (Race With the Devil FTW) and novels that will be very familiar to many genre fans, but the momentum at which the story is told is fun and only drags in a few spots.   The writers, Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier, weren’t trying to break any new territory with Drive Angry, but they did give the film lots of punchy and fun dialog that only falters in a few groan-worthy spots.

The film has some decent blood and gore, accomplished with both practical and digital effects.  The 3D, having been shot in 3D, looks good and is used to good effect in several action-sequences, but is nothing that should make you rush out to see it in 3D.

I wish I could whole-heartedly recommend Drive Angry, but there are a few major problems with the film.  Mainly it comes down to the car chase scenes.  They just don’t have much momentum and feel as if the vehicles are driving on flat tires.  Remember the power and speed you felt watching Tarantino’s Death Proof, well that’s what this film could have used.

5/10

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