THE TEMPLE OF GHOUL

GOLDEN GHOUL AWARDS for Achievements in Horror during 2011

2012-01-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

After the mostly-poor and forgettable year for horror film such as 2011 has been, viewed en generale, I decided to make a selection of the best achievements and pleasures I got from horrors during the past year so as to award them with my inaugural GOLDEN GHOUL AWARDS. When I look back, I realize that most of these films I've seen at Vienna's SLASH FILM FESTIVAL. Great selection there!
These are the best.

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR

O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for CREEPIEST HORROR

Kyofu aka The Sylvian Experiments

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MOST BRUTAL HORROR

NIGHT DRIVE

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST ARTY HORROR

O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR EXPLOITATION

FINAL DESTINATION 5

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST CREATURE FEATURE

THE TROLL HUNTER

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST FOUND FOOTAGE

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR COMEDY

HELLDRIVER

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR DOCUMENTARY

CROPSEY

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST DOCUMENTARY ON HORROR

HALLOWEEN: THE INSIDE STORY

GOLDEN GHOUL
for LOVECRAFTIAN MERITS

THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MOST HORRIFIC NON-HORROR

COLD FISH

GOLDEN GHOUL
for SERBIAN CONTRIBUTION TO HORROR

ENEMY (aka NEPRIJATELJ)

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST DIRECTOR

--- JOE CORNISH
ATTACK THE BLOCK

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST SCREENPLAY

--- TI WEST
THE INNKEEPERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST ACTOR

--- NUNO MELO
O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST ACTRESS

--- SARA PAXTON
THE INNKEEPERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST SCORE

--- JEFF GRACE
THE INNKEEPERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

--- LUIS BRANQUINHO
O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MAKE UP EFFECTS

--- TOM WOODRUFF JR. & ALEC GILLIS
THE THING

GOLDEN GHOUL
For SET DESIGN

--- ROGER FORD
DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

GOLDEN GHOUL
For SUPPORTING ACTOR

--- TIHOMIR STANIC
ENEMY (aka NEPRIJATELJ)

GOLDEN GHOUL
For SUPPORTING ACTRESS

--- REBECCA DE MORNAY
MOTHER'S DAY

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MOST PROMISING DIRECTOR

--- JUSTIN HEAD
NIGHT DRIVE

GOLDEN GHOUL
for HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Fiction)

NEW CTHULHU: THE RECENT WEIRD
--- Ed. Paula Guran

GOLDEN GHOUL
for HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Non-Fiction)

NIGHTMARE MOVIES
--- KIM NEWMAN

GOLDEN GHOUL
for HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Unclassified)

ESOTERRA: JOURNAL OF EXTREME CULTURE
--- Ed. CHUD HENSLEY

The beautiful GOLDEN GHOUL ™ statuette was sculpted by Tijana Jevtić based on the design by truly yours, Dejan Ognjanović.

TOMIE: REBIRTH (2001)

2012-01-16T19:40:00.000-08:00

Country: Japan
Running Time: 101'
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Cast:
Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Kumiko Endou, Masaya Kikawada

GHOUL RATING:
**(*)
2+

Story: Hideo, an art student, murders his model Tomie when she, in a fit of jealousy, slices up his portrait of her. His two friends help him bury her body in the woods. Later, however, at a party they notice a girl resembling Tomie. Right then, Hideo is found dead in the WC, with a knife in his neck held by his own hand. His friend Shunichi immediately falls for Tomie, much to chagrin of his mother. Obsession, silly acting in public, decapitation and dismemberment, crawling heads and other strange events follow.

Review: TOMIE movies are one of the greater mysteries of contemporary horror cinema: this phenomenon should've ended with the first film, as even the original was a barely watchable exercise in boredom. While its atmosphere was occasionally fine, it lacked anything resembling character, plot, logic, sense or enough memorable set-pieces to pay off for the lack of contents generally expected in a good movie. Yet, the haphazard sequence of non-events which served as its 'plot' somehow became the source of a whole series of movies, each duller and more pointless than the previous.

'Wait a minute!' I hear you say. 'Someone actually LIKED those dull-fests enough for them to make a whole series of crappy TOMIE flicks?'
'I'm afraid so,' says I. 'And they are (almost) all available in a single pack now, courtesy of RONIN.' The series is made up of these titles: TOMIE, TOMIE: RE-PLAY, TOMIE: RE-BIRTH, TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE and TOMIE: FINAL CHAPTER aka TOMIE: FORBIDDEN FRUIT. The one that’s missing in this package is TOMIE: REVENGE.

The mystery of this series' existence may be somewhat elucidated by the fact that it is loosely based on a very good manga by Junji Ito (UZUMAKI). In other words, many people had a reason to expect that movies adapted from a decent comic should also be good. Ah, it was not meant to be. Say goodbye to the comic's creepiness and its clever scrutiny of the highschoolers' moral dilemmas, say goodbye to its insights into the gender and sex politics of Japanese youth – say hello to a series of slow-burning, uneventful, silly, pointless, uninvolving, scare-less excuses for 'horror'.

Alexis Glass wrote a fine introduction to the work of Junji Ito. In it, he points out to one trait which cannot be stressed strongly enough: ''Junji Ito is also well known for eschewing any sort of scientific explanation for the strange events in his comics, concentrating his efforts instead on simply making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible.''

As all fans of Japanese horror already know, American clear-cut logic and explanations are not always to be found here. Irrationality is a common 'spice' in the Oriental dish, especially in Japanese horror, with its disregard for logic and tendency towards puzzling, open endings. That's all fine and dandy. However, the TOMIE flicks push viewers' tolerance for this approach a bit too far, without ''making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible''. There is an exchange in TOMIE: REBIRTH which I find exemplary and crucial for understanding this series:

''But why did Hitomi become Tomie?'' wonders one character.
''It does not matter,'' philosophizes another.
''I see. Tomie again,'' accepts the first one stoically.

And again, and again, and again… How or why – it does not matter. Judging on whether you find this exchange creepy, funny or just plain ridiculous you can decide whether you'll give TOMIE flicks a chance or not. Personally, if I were to choose between unkillable, ever-resurrecting baddies, I'd take Jason Vorhees any day of the week and twice on Friday. At least he works on his own dumb level, whereas Tomie does not rise to the ambition it set out to accomplish.
One TOMIE flick not yet reviewed from this collection is TOMIE: REBIRTH, and that is my sad duty. It is directed by Takashi Shimizu in a rare excursion away from his repetitive JUON/GRUDGE movies, but sadly, his creepy touch is largely absent and the flick remains another dreary piece of non-entertainment typical for this entire series.

Shimizu seems bent on boring his audience to tears with his long shots, mostly immobile camera, brooding dark-ambient music interrupted by long silences and other devices commonly found in dull artsy movies, but rarely effective in genre filmmaking, which requires some regard for pacing, rhythm, narrative-drive and structure. None of the latter can be found in this movie, which goes all over the place: without a main character, it deals with a group of barely sketched persons 'distinguished' merely by their good looks and names. There is no suspense nor drama nor horror, for who could care for those ciphers lost in a 'plot' (dis)organized by the principle of 'anything goes'?
For example: one character's mother dies unexpectedly. 'She suffered from a strange illness,' says he, apparently unmoved. When his friend comes to the wake and removes the coffin's lid, he sees the woman's face all hairy, like a werewolf's. Just then, her mouth opens and a stream of long hair flows out. A solid visual is achieved, a jump-shock provided, but then… this boy and his just-orphaned friend shrug it off and never mention it again. TOMIE: REBIRTH is full of such moments. Things... just... happen. With no inherent logic, no matter how limited of constructed.

What's even worse, Shimizu fails to create a feeling of strange events building into an oppressive sense that the whole concept of rationality is existentially undermined – something that another adaptation of Junji Ito, namely UZUMAKI by Higuchinsky, has done effortlessly. What you get instead is the feeling of the scriptwriters who thought: ''It IS crazy, but who cares?'' Lacking focus of any kind, TOMIE: REBIRTH meanders through some longeurs and a couple of memorable scenes (like the never-failing effect of Tomie's detached head, here growing a pair of limbs/tentacles) to its irrelevant, non-poignant 'who cares' ending. And that's it. The tech credits are solid enough, and there ARE duller TOMIE movies than this one, so it can be serviceable in a moment of utter desperation when you have nothing better to watch, but is there anything to recommend it on its own? No, not really.

And now, for the inevitable questions.
One: if you were to see one single TOMIE flick, which should it be? I'd recommend TOMIE: REPLAY. It's as silly as the rest, but at least it's more eventful, with quicker pace and more outrageous imagery than in others (after all, they are growing a Tomie girl in a water tank in this one!).
Two: is this collection worth your while? The answer for most 'normal' film lovers would be 'No!' It is made up of one atrocious (ANOTHER FACE), one poor (the first TOMIE), two watchable but nothing special (FORBIDDEN FRUIT and REBIRTH) and one mildly interesting (REPLAY).

DVD [NTSC, Region 1]: Image quality of all titles in this collection is barely passable, as they are all muted and washed out, with pale colors and very poor blackness (which is mostly gray). TOMIE: REBIRTH's screen (anamorphic widescreen, 1.85: 1) is additionally cropped so that the effect is that of watching a movie taped off someone else's TV. Audio is in Japanese, 5.1 Dolby Digital, no complaints there. English subtitles are very fine. Extras include: interviews with the cast and director, storyboard-to-film comparison, a look at the special effects and trailers for the five titles in this collection.
Extras for other movies in this set are like this: TOMIE ('making of' documentary + trailers); ANOTHER FACE (zero: this is a cheap direct-to-video flick, so nothing to add to that); REPLAY (trailers + a 'gallery' of only 4 or 5 Ito's illustrations!); FORBIDDEN FRUIT (trailers + making of).

PS UPDATE: The last addition to this interminable series, TOMIE UNLIMITED is by far the most outrageous, irrational, surreal, out-there wacky gory entertainment, so I urge you to give it a try if you're into this sort of thing. It makes NO SENSE AT ALL, but is full of crazy imagery, ambitious make up and CGI effects (pretty decent in all) and there's never a dull moment! Now, for a TOMIE film, that's a first!

THE BARON / O BARAO (2011)

2011-12-18T16:30:00.000-08:00

Directed by Edgar Pêra;

Produced by Ana Costa;

Screenplay by Luísa Costa Gomes, mr. Pêra, based on the novella by Branquinho da Fonseca, O Barão;

Music by Vozes da Rádio;

Director of photography: Luís Branquinho;

Art director: Fernando Areal;

Starring Nuno Melo, Marcos Barbosa, Leonor Keil.

GHOUL RATING:

***(*)

The Baron is a Portuguese film shot in retro-modern-scope, in glorious high contrast Black and White, boasting to be "a 2-D film by Edgar Pêra". One could say that it is modern precisely in its anti-modernity. It is almost impossible to describe this film without relying on comparisons: The Baron looks and feels like a weird re-enactment of a 1930s horror film through the arty lense of a very talented modern director – something along the lines of Almereyda's Nadja, Merhige's Begotten and Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. There are also droning soundscapes and grotesquely nightmarish non-sequitur situations in which humor and horror are disquietingly close reminiscent of David Lynch.

The key overall effect is instability. Nothing in the world directed by Edgar Pêra is permanent: the images dissolve or overlap, the lights and darkness come and go, a huge room is suddenly shrunk to a black solitary cell... Nothing is stable. The same goes for his narrative, with only the vaguest respect to linearity and conventional logic. The events are governed by dream logic, and The Baron may easily be one of the most oneiric narrative films in recent times – or perhaps since the days of Jean Cocteau.

For those yearning for plot, here's the essence: it all starts like Kafka's The Castle, with a frail-looking school inspector visiting a remote ("off the maps") village whose name he's forgotten. Unlike K. he is almost forced into the towering prison-like structure and brought to the powerful Baron who governs the region through fear. Just in case there's any doubt, he keeps repeating: "I'm the one in charge!" What follows after the inspector's arrival to the Castle is a series of increasingly nightmarish scenarios, although the terrors are rarely specific. As in the films produced by Val Lewton in the 1940s (humorously alluded to in the prologue), few are the scenes of direct horror, yet the sense of foreboding and doom hangs over all.

The center of it, of course, is the Baron himself: as played by Nuno Melo, he is one of the most charismatic and memorable "gothic" villains ever since Klaus Kinski had his larger-than-life role in Nosferatu (1979). It is a performance which cannot be praised enough: the entire film hangs on Mr Melo's strong sholders and his commanding, scene-stealing presence haunts the screen even when he is not visible. His Baron is a force of nature and a joy to watch (from a safe distance, that is)! The other players are very fine indeed, but inevitably overshadowed by the iconic presence of Nuno Melo.

Of course, Edgar Pêra as the veteran avant-garde director, Luís Branquinho as his trusted director of photography and Fernando Areal as art director (with his sparse, heavily stylized sets) are equally prominent stars of The Baron. Their job in creating this world of floating shadows and vague nightmares of oppression (political and existential, almost metaphysical) is nothing short of amazing. This is a daring, original and highly memorable work of a true visionary and demands the audience ready and willing to be surprised by something unconventional and new.

This, however, doesn't mean that the film is all about doom and gloom and slowburning terrors: it is also very funny in its own idiosyncratic and eccentric ways. Its playful absurdities are channeling Kafka's insight of the proximity between horror and humor, and its vision of the world is at the same time very dark, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, too.

This review is based on the film's screening at Vienna's Slashfest, where Mr Pera was a delightful guest. His next film will be a very original adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hook seen as a parable of racism. Let's pray to the Elder Gods that this happens soon!

Here is the trailer:

This review originally published at Beyond Hollywood.

ONE MISSED CALL 2 (2005)

2011-11-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 105'

Director:

Renpei Tsukamoto

Cast:

Mimula, Yu Yoshizawa, Asaka Seto, Renji Ishibashi

GHOUL RATING: **(*) 3-

Story: The familiar cell-phone ring announces a different ghost in this sequel. Kyoko (Mimula) has three days to unravel the secret behind the curse, or to die trying. She is helped by her boyfriend, and a female journalist whose sister was killed by the same (or is it?) cell-phone haunting, death-foretelling ghost. Ultimately, they are led to Taiwan, to a deserted mining village where a young girl was tortured and killed in the mine, only to leave a terrible grudge behind her…

Review: The movie opens with a fine scene: it's raining, and a spooky black-haired woman, dressed in white, her face obscured by the umbrella, comes to pick up a little girl from the kindergarten. The little girl greets her teacher, and someone else next to her. But no one is standing there. She goes with the woman, leaving the teacher puzzled… Pity that none of this prologue has anything to do with ONE MISSED CALL 2. The story proper starts with a similar scene like in the original: a group of young people are sitting in a restaurant, when that well-known cell-phone melody starts again. This time, however, the film breaks one of the basic rules established in part one. The phone is left in the kitchen, and is picked up by the owner's father. He hears his daughter making a remark about leaving the oil on the stove, and then screaming. Only minutes later he will be found with half of his face literally poached in oil. All this is fine, but whatever happened with the basic rule of the phone-owner being the next victim, and warning him/herself from the future? What about the three days' period between the omen and its fulfillment?

ONE MISSED CALL 2 takes such rules pretty haphazardly: sometimes they apply, sometimes they don't. Who cares, as long as anything spooky happens, right? Well, not really. One of the many qualities of RINGU, the unattainable blue-print for most of later Asian ghost-horrors, is that it establishes its rules early in the film, and plays upon them consistently until the end, with no cheats, no forced twists and eleventh-hour's changes of plan for the sake of adding yet another superficial 'boo!' But, ONE MISSED CALL 2 is pretty far from RINGU. Hell, it's far even from Miike's ONE MISSED CALL! While many accused the Master for making a 'derivative' film, unworthy of his status of a groundbreaking, unpredictable purveyor of hilarity, frights and gruesome images, at least his ONE MISSED CALL was scary, dynamic and full of memorable images and set-pieces. The sequel by the TV helmer, Renpei Tsukamoto (not related to Shinya!), is a typical by-the-numbers retread of been-there done-that.

The worst attempt at 'originality' is at the same time the most misguided step-away from the original: namely, the ghostly perpetrator of cell-phone haunting is no longer Mimiko, but some entirely new girl creature. As the story goes on, the link to the previous film, and the whole cell-phone thing, becomes increasingly tenuous so that, after the half-hour mark, it's almost entirely forgotten. The whole affair seems like one of those instances where an unrelated screenplay is forcefully made to fit a franchise by inserting random elements from it which never properly gel into a coherent whole (see the later parts of HELLRAISER series as text-book examples of this strategy).

To sum up: no Mimiko, no warnings to self from the future, no colorful death scenes (OK, there is ONE, in the bathroom, and that's it for the whole movie!), no jawbreaker candies (until the forced twist ending)… So what do we have here? A tired, worn out story of yet another investigation which leads to yet another mistreated girl who avenges from beyond the grave. Because of her scary premonitions, the villagers of her Taiwan community sewed her lips shut, and left her tied to a chair in an abandoned mine. There are at least TWO plot points here which resemble RINGU, and yes – there IS a scene in which the girl slowly, one hand at a time, creeps out from a well. Only minutes later another broken apparition crawls down the stairs for all those of you who somehow missed the JU-ON / GRUDGE series. Bo-ring! The final half-hour gives its best to achieve an over-the-top horror-action finale like in Miike's original, but fails miserably. It's just too incoherent, too 'anything goes' to make us care for any actor from the stupidly separated trio which roam the abandoned mine. Even the 'tragic-romantic' ending is half-hearted (or is it half-assed?) since the characters were never real in the first place.

Make no mistake: ONE MISSED CALL 2 is a tolerable, watchable time-waster which can be recommended for die-hard fans of J-horror. There are some moderate scares, or at least solid attempts to create them (although very few in the overlong mid-section which begs for fast-forwarding!), so indiscriminate viewers can be satisfied for the time being. But there's nothing in this particular film to stay with you and haunt you, say, a week or two later. As the time passes, all that'll remain is a ghostly blur which merges with all those other would-be-spooky Asian horrors trying to cash in on the ghost-craze. If you care for originality, good frights, and movies which respect your intelligence, this is a call you can afford to miss.

THE BEST HORROR FILMS EVER MADE

2011-10-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

Halloween is the perfect opportunity for a list of the best horror films ever made – of course, my personal picks.

The list is not perfect, nor is it carved in stone, but still – I hope it can serve as a guide and reference, or at least reminder while making your own lists, or while selecting movies to watch, on Halloween, or on any other night.

Here it is: I hope you find it useful.

The list is in jpg. format because Blogger otherwise doesn't allow tables – so, in order to see better, please click on each image to see it bigger & easier to read.

DONNIE DARKO by Geoff King

2011-10-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

Wallflower Press, 2007

118 pp

Review by Dejan OGNJANOVIĆ

I guess I was subconsciously expecting this book to be a letdown. The first two in the Cultographies series were excellent and very much to the point: so, at least one had to be somewhat behind, right? Rarely does one find a series made up entirely, and with no exception, of excellent books. And yet, the third Cultographies book is another sure-fire winner.

This accomplishment is even greater if we consider that it deals with the most difficult title of the three. THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and THIS IS SPINAL TAP (previously reviewed here) are both universally liked and popular. They've been with us for several decades, they had the time to grow its cult following, while numerous articles, essays and whole books have been devoted to their meticulous analysis. Not so with DONNIE DARKO. Devoting a book to the most recent among the titles (released only 7 years previous to writing), Geoff King did not have the advantage of piles of literature to rely on. Although DONNIE DARKO became an "instant cult" phenomenon, it remains to be seen whether its cultdom will last for decades as the case is with THE ROCKY HORROR and SPINAL TAP. But, King does not shy away from the difficulties of his task, and overcomes them masterfully.

He deals with the fact that DONNIE DARKO was hard to categorize, which is a cult-worthy credential, but one that made industry figures tread warily. He goes on to narrate the history of troubles the film had to overcome to find the finances, then to find a distributor at Sundance and ultimately to reach its audience. The latest trouble had to do with the unfortunate release date, immediately after the 9-11 tragedy. Still, there are telling details to be known about the theatrical and TV trailers for the film, as they unveil how the makers wanted their film to be perceived.

As the matter of fact, Geoff King stresses the role of the audience in creating a cult phenomenon – provided that the makers structure their work in such a way to make it cult-friendly: "A major qualification for some texts that generate 'fan' activity, as John Fiske suggests, is that they are 'producerly', by which he means texts that generate more than usual amounts of interpretive and other activity by their followers; 'they have to be open, to contain gaps, irresolutions, contradictions, which both allow and invite fan productivity.'"

In other words, one of King's key arguments in this book is that the originally released version of DONNIE DARKO – with all its gaps, irresolutions and contradictions, with its intentional ambiguity between a symbolic (psychological) and literal (science fiction) reading – invited fan activity and various interpretations that had a good deal in obtaining the film a cult status. It is a bit unorthodox, but in this particular case quite necessary that King devotes some time to analyze fan response at the 'customers section' of the sites like Amazon and internet forums at the IMDb, and they strongly support his case that DONNIE's openness to various readings was among the crucial factors which made its cult. King compares the theatrical release and 'Director's cut' and convincingly argues that the latter version has actually diminished DONNIE's cultdom by over-explaining the ambiguities of the original version and by explicitly using 'The Philosophy of Time Travel' as the guiding light in interpreting all the mysterious events of the film. This may be the key reason why many fans prefer the earlier (ambiguous) version.

Some devoted fans may be angered by King's very objective assessment of the film's merits, especially when he places it among the 'light-weight' variety of cult film, made such more by blurring the generic distinctions than (as is more common in cult movies) by transgression, provocation, shock and excess. DONNIE "seems a very safe and unthreatening form of cinema", and it had received prominent mainstream reviews upon its release, mostly positive and approving. It did not take numerous years to crawl from obscurity and attain recognition: it became an instant-cult classic, embraced by the majority. As such, it "remains very much a part of the commercially oriented indie-sector rather than its more marginal realms."

Yet, it is precisely the objectiveness of his approach which makes this a reliable, well-researched and convincing study of a complex film and the attendant phenomenon of cult films in general. Very readable and intriguing, the book made me want to see DONNIE DARKO once again, and that's an additional quality: it makes you think, and makes you want to argue with it, too.

Since all three books of the first series of Cultographies proved to be such a success, we can impatiently await the upcoming titles, which should include books on films such as BAD TASTE, THE EVIL DEAD, BLADE RUNNER etc. Keep up the good work!

Slash Filmfestival in Vienna

2011-09-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

The second edition of the Austrian /Slash Filmfestival will take place this year September 22–30 at the Viennese Filmcasino, a beautiful old cinema characterized by its lavish '50s-interior-design and a patina-laden atmosphere.

/Slash Filmfestival was conceived as a film festival organized and programmed by young genre enthusiasts. Its premier edition last year was extremely well attended and instantly became one of the events to go to for Vienna's cinephile community and hipster crowds alike. We've decided to go against the grain with our filmfestival, moving away from the cineplexes and instead giving our audience a chance to absolutely immerse themselves in a universe filled with the very best of international genre cinema.

Films screening at this year's /Slash include Kevin Smith's RED STATE and the Guillermo del Toro-produced chiller DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. Other highlights include titles like John Carpenter's THE WARD, THE WOMAN, THE RABIES, COLD FISH, A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE, KILL LIST, STAKE LAND, THE INNKEEPERS… The full program can be seen here: http://slashfilmfestival.com/programm-2011/

Apart from Joe Cornish, who will present his movie ATTACK THE BLOCK, other guests of the festival are Portuguese avantgarde-genre-auteur Edgar Pera as well as Hollywood's most daring character actor Crispin Glover who will present Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show and his film It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.

Apart from screening films we are well connected with magazines like VICE with whom we're working together on our festival parties, this year including a superhero drag ball and a pop-up party in the breakfast room of a small Vienna boarding house. Already last year we did a Zombie flashmob in Vienna, which will happen again during this year’s edition.

There will also be two panels on the 26th. Their overall subject is "The (utopia of) subversion in genre-cinema". The question to be discussed is, whether modern genre cinema can still be subversive and political. Before the discussion, the Austrian short film DIENSTAG (1993) will be screened in presence of the director Franz Berner and cameraman Robert Angst. It is a film that had its premiere 18 years ago at the DIAGONALE (Austrian Film Festival) to great controversy and has never been shown again since. Panel 1 is about "Genre cinema in Austria", while Panel 2 is about "Porn and Politics".

Dejan Ognjanovic will participate in the second panel and will announce the showing of Serbian distaster/horror film VARIOLA VERA.

All artwork used in this article is done by Andre Breinbauer for the Festival's booklet.

Further details on the festival's site.

NEIGHBOR NO. 13 (2005)

2011-08-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

Country: Japan

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 108'

Director: Yasuo Inoue

Cast:

Shun Oguri
Shido Nakamura
Hirofumi Arai
Yumi Yoshimura

GHOUL RATING:

**(*) 3-

Story: Juzo is an introverted boy constantly bullied at school. Akai is the leader of the pack which douses Juzo with water and burns him with acid. The scars of these treatments remain. He grows up into a fine looking young man (Shun Oguri), but no one suspects that inside he harbors another self – the one which bears the marks of inhuman acts visited upon him. It is a scarred, ugly and more muscular version of him (Shido Nakamura). This dark doppelganger is bent on vengeance. As it turns out, it is no coincidence that Juzo lives in the same tenement building as his former tormentor. Nor is it pure chance that he starts working for the construction company where Akai (Hirofumi Arai) is still up to his old bullying tricks. Akai's cute wife and a small son do not suspect anything regarding their neighbor from the apartment no. 13...

Review: NEIGHBOR NO. 13 is the kind of a movie that can be hurt by false expectations. It is marketed as a vengeance saga (after all – vengeance sells! Don't we all dream of one kind or another?). The DVD package presents it as an over-stylized action flick: you see two cool dudes, one of them sporting a bloodied samurai sword, and the dark blue wall behind them is splattered with blood. Oh, yeah! The fanboys are drooling already. Below the title, you see the magic words: 'director's cut'! 'Aha', you think, 'so there was some other, censored cut? There must be plenty of gore and nudity to be cut from here!' On the back cover you instantly recognize Takashi Miike scowling from a photo. 'Damn! Miike is in this too? This must be cool beyond words!' If you cannot read Japanese, the rest won't tell you much, since there is no English on this DVD cover, but then you go on the internet and find reviews that mention that it's based on a manga ('Hell yes!') and you also find all the talk about 'brutality', 'gore' and... yeah – 'nudity'! Your hand, with a will of its own, is already in your pockets, counting the cash.

Wait a minute.

First you must be warned of the following: I am not aware of there being any other cut of this film, but if anything *was* cut, it must be mere seconds, since there is not much explicit stuff here to begin with. The most 'shocking' thing you'll see is a close up of a big fat turd. The violence is mostly off-screen, or shot from a distance, while its aftermath –if shown at all- can be seen only in glimpses. Of course, that's a legitimate aesthetic decision – as long as you're aware of it, and do not expect something else. Something more Miike-like. Talking about whom – his cameo is the smallest 'blink-and-miss' cameo you'll ever see in your life: he is onscreen for the whole three seconds. And as for the nudity: no, the cute wife (Yumi Yoshimura) does not bare much more than a single shoulder. The only bare flesh you'll see here belongs to the boyish Shun Oguri: of course, this being an Asian film, you cannot expect full frontal (that's still a big No-no!), but you do get to see almost every other inch of his slim bod. If that's your thing – you've been warned.

OK, now that we've discussed the exploitation parts (or lack thereof), let's talk about art. After deciding that this is neither action nor horror film that the package might lead you to believe, how about drama? Is it a 'revenge saga' along the lines of Chanwook Park's vengeance trilogy? Well, not really. The revenge is utterly uninspired and takes the most predictable route. No ingenious and convoluted plans here. Nor is it emotionally searing in the way that Park's films inevitably are. Admittedly, there is some creepiness involving the bully's kid, but that's about it. (Of course, if you're on a strict diet of recent American fare, then you *will* be shocked by a lot that goes on here, but I assume that readers of this site are well versed in Asian cult cinema, and are therefore not easily shocked.) Our protagonist is reduced to a cipher and his 'struggle' with the double (the two of them fighting in a lonely cabin in the wasteland under gloomy skies) is shown in stylized imagery where visuals from the director's commercials creep in. Unfortunately, none of that makes the drama any deeper or more layered – just prettier, especially in contrast with the drab, claustrophobic environment of the tenement building which takes the bulk of the film.

The greatest fault with NEIGHBOR NO. 13, however, is its 'deliberate' pacing. The story is too simple and the characters too conventional to fill the two hours' running time, and the pace is too often too slow. Our debutant director shows signs of promise, especially in instances where he refuses to go the easy way and provide cheap thrills, but on the other hand, a story like this *requires* something more visceral – either in terms of imagery or emotions. The detached attitude (e.g. over-reliance on long, wide shots, which place the characters and events in the distance) is not the way to go; when mixed with a really uneven, stop-and-go pace (with more stopping than going) and an utterly underwhelming ending, it all boils down to a solid, if overlong exercise in nothing special, although occasional flashes of quirkiness make it more palatable. The patient viewers will certainly find some rewards in this film, but the common viewer might not be predisposed to enjoy a too-simple story unnecessarily complicated and prolonged.

DVD [NTSC, Region 2] : The fine, but misleading package of the disc is already mentioned above: the DVD cover and the menus lack anything in English, so it may take some wandering around until you find what you want. Animated menus are good (although inappropriate for this particular film: they also try to 'sell' a cool, stylish action film – which this is not!), but of little use to English speaking viewers. When you click on 'SET UP' – all you find is a bunch of Japanese characters. Luckily, once you play the movie, the English translation is excellent and subtitles are readable. The visuals vary a lot, but that seems to be the way it was filmed: the scenes in the apartments are intentionally under lit and lacking detail, while the symbolic, stylized parts (in the cabin) are crisp and top notch. The sound (in 5.1. surround) is excellent, making a particularly good use of the brooding dark ambient score and sound design. There is also an audio commentary here, in which (at least) two Japanese talk and laugh, but there is neither explanation in the menus nor subtitle for it, so this was obviously not meant for the English speaking viewers. The bonus materials are scarce: a theatrical and TV trailer (again, misleadingly presenting the flick as a much weirder and gorier affair than it is) and cast and crew text info (only in Japanese, of course). You also get chapter selection (if that's an extra for you!) – and that's all.

SODOM THE KILLER (2004)

2011-08-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

Country : Japan

Genre: Horror / Comedy

Running Time: 104

Producer: Kenzo Horikoshi, etc.

Director: Hiroshi Takahashi

Cast: Takashi Urai, Aki Miyata, Rena Komine, Shoko Nakahara

GHOUL RATING:

Story: Bad things happen when innocent blood is shed. In the early 1700s, Lord Sodom Ichibei is celebrating his wedding day when his bride-to-be suddenly vomits blood on her white gown and dies. Suspecting witchcraft, he kills his bride's two maids, but once he realizes their innocence, he becomes completely insane and kills everyone around him. 300 years later, his descendant goes through the same: one of the innocent victims is reincarnated and poisons all the guests at his wedding, while his bride dies in a similar bloody manner. This transforms Ichiro into the evil and vengeful 'Sodom the killer', a cursed man who becomes blind at the spot (except he can see cats, dogs, trees and flowers). He finds a group of minions and starts a master-plan for the world's destruction.

Review: SODOM THE KILLER seems to be a horror comedy, but it's neither funny nor scary. SODOM THE KILLER seems to be a spoof, but a spoof of what exactly? I don't know. SODOM THE KILLER seems to be intentionally bad, but does that really distinguish it (and make its watching worthwhile) from flicks that turned out bad while striving for the good? That is the key question, and on its answer depends whether you'll find it enjoyable or just plain horrible. The film opens with a relatively straight face: a typical prologue of 'how the curse started'. It becomes slightly suspicious when the bloodshed comes, and you see it shot completely bloodless, and extremely poorly staged. Once you spot the very modern pipes in an 18. century castle you realize that perhaps you're not supposed to take this seriously. OK, so far so good. But, once you see through the real intention, does that make the film any more enjoyable? Well, that's where SODOM THE KILLER lost me.

I do not deny, some of the jokes are not too bad: for example, an evil master-plan to replace one single bag of real money with counterfeits manages to create a nation-wide inflation and is followed by a starving family massacre of the entire restaurant because they cannot pay for the meal. Also, there are plenty visual jokes which try to make the film's deficiencies into its strengths, like using an obvious dummy instead of a human stand-in for a fight scene. Later on you see a life-sized photograph of an actress glued to the back window of a car in full-speed instead of a stunt double. If that's your idea of humor, you'll laugh yourself senseless. What else do we have here? Toy aero planes instead of real (or at least CGI) ones. Dodgy rear-screen projection in several cases: in one scene, a toy-train in stop-motion is 'derailed' in a fuzzy rear-screen projection while the video-sharp shot actors react exaggeratedly in front of the screen. In another, towards the end, a character abandons the 'car' and runs off the rear-screen projection down the corridor. Numerous such winks and reminders of the medium of cinema and its conventions make this flick a solid inspiration for another of those dry academic essays on post-modern discourse in contemporary film, layers of reality and their appropriation in genre cinema, and the like. Yeah, right. But does THAT make the film any more fun?

How hard is it to make an intentionally bad film? It's cheap, and does not even pretend that there was anything remotely resembling a budget around. Shot on digital video, it looks cheap and ugly. Its look becomes tiresome pretty soon, just like its humor, or what passes for it. The whole thing leaves a strong impression that perhaps it could be palatable only with a strong dose of alcohol or some stronger brain-addling additive, in which case the silliness might be alchemically turned into entertainment and the time might no longer be a factor. You see, a good spoof should not exceed 85 minutes, whereas this one is at least 20 minutes too long. If you watch this sober, you'll feel almost every one of those minutes taken away from you.

SODOM THE KILLER also presents one of the more blatant cases of false advertising in recent times. The DVD case shows off a dark and gloomy, possibly satanic imagery, and promises that it comes 'from the creator of RINGU'. Uh-uh, I'm creeped out already! I wish they lied about the latter. Sadly, this flick is really written and directed by Hiroshi Takahashi, the genius who wrote the screenplay for the original RINGU - but also the dumb-ass responsible for its underwhelming sequels and even for the despicable American remake-sequel, THE RING 2. Why should a man like him want to be involved with an homage to Ed Wood and Ray Dennis Steckler right now and in this manner is anyone's guess. As it stands now, I think another RINGU is required from him to annul this mediocre (at best) endeavor.

From the above it's quite obvious that you should not expect a horror film, or anything remotely similar in quality to RINGU. No horrors, no creepiness, not even a trace of sodomy - unless the latter refers to the feelings of those innocent souls who buy or rent this DVD expecting a scary movie and end up being f***ed in the ass by a completely different, dumb creature!

INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW MORGAN, THE DIRECTOR OF ARKHAM SANITARIUM

2011-07-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

by Dejan Ognjanovic

Here at The Temple of Ghoul I've already published H.P. Lovecraft's ARKHAM SANITARIUM Script Review And Concept Art.

Now that shooting of the film is over, its director Andrew Morgan is subjected to a torturous examination in order for us to decide whether his Lovecraftian anthology is blasphemous or respectful to the Great Old One. The result is the exclusive, illuminating and quite promising interview below.

It's originally published on TWITCH – so you can read it there. Plus, there's embedded a short teaser to give you a better idea of what to expect.

CLIK THE LINK.

Interview about Serbian horror films

2011-06-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

Below you can find the interview I gave to Donato Totaro while I attended Montreal's FANTASIA 2010. The occasion was the program called SUBVERSIVE SERBIA during which I presented a selection of new and old Serbian fantasy and horror films.

It is a lengthy interview, and it includes talk about general tendencies and close reading of certain aspects of specific films + some talk about Serbia's unfortunate recent history... There are also Donato's sharp insights into some of the films, so it's all pretty worthwhile, if you care to learn more about the cultural background that brought A SERBIAN FILM, among other films – but also to find out about other, not as publicized titles.

You can read it all in the latest issue of the excellent net-magazine OFFSCREEN if you clik the link in the title below:

An Interview with Dejan Ognjanovic ~ a reasoning voice behind Serbian horror ~

Talking about FANTASIA, I also recommend you take a look at the new issue of their magazine, Spectacular optical ! Plenty of great stuff, especially if you're into cult, genre, horror, weird, avant-garde, bizarre, crazy, esoteric filmmaking!

And, finally FANTASIA has announced some of its highlights for this year's fest, and it promises to be one of the strongest ever! I envy all those who'll be able to go there. It's just the best film festival anywhere... You lucky North American bastards!

MIRRORS (2008)

2011-06-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

Director:

Alexandre Aja

Cast:

Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart, Jason Flemyng

GHOUL RATING:

**(*) 3-

Story: A burnt-out ex-cop turned night guard (Kiefer Sutherland) works in a burnt-out shopping centre with strangely preserved mirrors. There is something in them – some force which turns the reflections against their originals. If you’re killed in the mirror, the wounds appear on your own flesh and you die. Ghosts from the past need to be appeased, and Jack Bauer must find the truth about a certain girl before it’s too late for his family...

Review: Alexandre Aja burst onto the horror scene with his furiously ingenious apotheosis of slasher, HIGH TENSION (Haute Tension, 2003). His gloriously gory and gloomily romantic horror debut made him look like a messiah of this genre. Two remakes later, this role becomes highly questionable.

His re-imagining of Craven’s classic THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977), made in 2006, upped the brutality and stylization, but dulled the satiric and intellectual edge of the potent story, in his version reduced to a mere Grand Guignol. In his third horror outing, Aja wrestles with the South Korean spook fest INTO THE MIRROR (Geoul Sokeuro, 2003) directed by Sung-ho Kim. In this case there’s no aura of a classic to be afraid of, but the expectations of horror fans are understandably high. Alas, his MIRRORS have more than a few cracks.

INTO THE MIRROR is your average Korean horror flick: a good concept that’s, eventually, half-baked; a memorable opening scene that is never to be matched by anything later in the film; and a strong social criticism added so that the dull thrills and non-horrific scary scenes at least have SOME kind of ’weight’. There’s too much meandering between the solid opening and a fine closing scene, too many missed opportunities and a completely unnecessary subplot which ultimately reduces the scare factor to zero once you realize the whole thing is a revenge-from-beyond-the-grave aimed at very specific bad guys.

In his version, Aja wisely keeps only the start and finish, together with the essential premise, but changes all the rest, mostly for the better. From the very beginning of the USA version it’s obvious that this won’t be a carbon copy of the Korean: an elegant cut on the neck in the original produced a gentle trickle on a woman’s skin; in the remake, a gush on a man’s neck spouts gushes of blood all over the place. The opening credits are also borrowed from Korea, but made more dynamic and show-offy, and accompanied by the bombastic, impressive score by Javier Navarrete (TESIS, DEVIL’S BACKBONE, PAN’S LABYRINTH...). So much about subtlety.

Essentially, MIRRORS follows the trend of Americanizing the Asian horror films: Eastern subtlety, slow rhythm and suggestiveness are replaced by the faster, more aggressive and spectacular effects – but, at least in this case, such an approach improves the original. It is a more visceral, but also scarier film with a clever use of the elaborate set of the burnt-out department store, shadows, sounds, music and visual effects.

However, the problems begin and end with the lazily written screenplay, with clichés that are neither overcome nor masked well enough: a tortured, pill-popping ex-cop with a trauma and guilty consciousness, his annoyingly mistrustful ex-wife (who still loves him!) and their sugar-sweet kiddies (ugh!) are too stale to swallow, additionally so due to Aja’s still imperfect English which reduces the dialogues to the cut & paste phrases from deja vu films. It doesn’t help that Kiefer Sutherland’s one-note acting is too reminiscent of his 24 role: too often he looks and sounds exactly like Jack Bauer, which makes the would-be scary scenes more laughable. It is more entertaining and eye-pleasing to replace the brightly-lit and dull-white setting of the freshly-reopened department from the Korean version with the blackened ruin in the American version, but even this triumph of set design, with its half-melted mannequins, becomes boring once you see that the characters roaming the film are not much livelier than the said mannequins.

The uninspired script abandons the satire and social criticism of the original, but can’t think of anything better to replace them with than yet another RING-circle: the hero must investigate the past of a certain female ghost; he goes to the rural backwoods to find her family (why are they always in the rural regions?); he discovers the history of abuse against her (mad scientist included!) and must literally wrestle with her embodied spirit in the store’s basement in the end. This whole thing is well directed: Aja knows how to stage an inventive gore set-piece, he’s good with suspense too, but the one-dimensional and unoriginal script prevents him from making a truly scary film. What we’re left with are two memorable scenes (the opening one, and the one with the jaw, seen in the trailers) an improved ending scene, excellent score, camera and effects and... that’s all folks!

As a remake of an Asian horror MIRRORS stands pretty well above most of the other attempts, and –even without comparisons with the original- it is a perfectly watchable horror flick. The trouble is that it doesn’t bother to extract more visual and connotative potentials from the potent archetypal motifs of mirrors and doppelgangers than it has to. The final score is in accordance with the lowered ambitions. Crack!

KOMA (2004)

2011-06-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Country: China

Genre: Thriller / Horror

Running Time: 85'

Director:

Chi-Leung Law

Cast:

Karena Lam, Angelica Lee, Andy Hui

GHOUL RATING:

Story: An annoyingly noisy, drunk girl leaves a wedding party only to stumble upon a 'steal the kidney and run' victim. Instead of being cut up for her obnoxious ways, this broad becomes the lead character (her name is Ching). When sober, she's equally irritating, what with her pathetic whining about her illness (kidney failure) and uncontrollable bursts of anger. Then she's stalked by Ling (notice the rhyme there?), the main suspect in the kidney-case, who just happens to be her doctor-boyfriend's one night stand. But, is Ching stalked by Ling? Perhaps Ling means well? Oh, the suspense! Who will survive and how many kidneys will be left of them?

Review: The publicity for KOMA is based on the fame of its two female 'stars' whose faces are blown over posters and DVD covers as the film's chief draw. Both of them became famous for seeing ghosts: Angelica saw them after THE EYE operation, while Karena was helped (or cursed) by her INNER SENSES. Both of these films were ludicrously overrated: if you believed the hype that surrounded them, you'd bee fooled to expect at least something above average. While decently directed (at least as far as slick visuals pass for good filmmaking these days), they both suffer from unbearably shallow drama, uninvolving characters and infantile, unimaginative 'scares'. In short, they are both dull attempts of Hong Kong and Thailand cinema to jump the bandwagon of Japan's and Korea's serious horror, leaving the obligatory Chinese comic reliefs and action scenes behind them, and embracing 'drama'. Nice ambition – slightly undermined by the lack of any purpose more serious than a pure economic one. The end results are mere aping of the approach mastered by the modern Japanese and Korean horror, but – they were both immensely crowd-pleasing, and therefore commercial.

And now they are joined by KOMA, a new flick by Lawrence Cheng, the perpetrator of INNER NONSENSE. The supernatural paraphernalia is left behind, but what his screenwriter, Susan Chen, has come up with is an even more unimaginative affair. Basically, what you get is a silly and utterly contrived soap opera 'enriched' by even sillier exploitation of the trite urban legend (a laced drink from a stranger in a bar, after which you wake in a tub filled with ice: the opposite wall offers a friendly advice to 'Call the police if you want to live!', the mirror reveals a nasty cut on your side, and you realize you're one kidney short). The above-described situation is responsible for KOMA's single exceptional scene, and you get it in the very first 10 minutes. After that, you're left with characters you'd rather see as victims in some elaborate slasher horror than as people you're supposed to care about and fear for. What's worse, there's not even a decent villain to root for!

Let me spoil the movie for you – if a turd can spoiled, that is. In a surprising twist at the end, it is discovered that the villain is – Ling, who's been the main suspect all along. She was also the ONLY suspect! Susan Chen's amateurish script did not even bother to provide a red herring or two so as to create a half-decent whodunit. No, ladies and gentlemen: what you see in the very beginning is what you get in the end (unless you fall asleep by then). Let me tell you how amateurish the script is. In case you don't get the nuanced relationships between these people, you're helped by the dialogues along the lines of (and I quote here): 'I hate you.' 'Why?' 'I'm jealous!' For the more profound psychology, Ching & Ling (who, unconvincingly, become friends for a while) at one instance go to some pseudo-self-help-rebirthing-whatnot group, where they sit on the floor and follow the advice to 'look deep into each other's subconscious'. After approximately 6 seconds of meditation, they manage to see their innermost secrets, and spell them out to the inattentive viewer: Ching is insecure because of her illness, while Ling is lonely because her mommy is in a coma. Somewhere in the background of it all is Ching's boyfriend, a zero character who's barely more than a plot device to have Ching & Ling meet and interrelate. This questionable type oscillates between faithfully protecting his sick girlfriend Ching and violently banging Ling (who's unable to pay her mom's hospital bills but the kind doc is willing to oblige); at least we're treated to his nice demise (involving an unexpected scalpel in the eye), which is more than could be said for the hateful leading ladies.

KOMA's inconsistencies, contrivances, strains of logic, suspensions of disbelief, psycho-babble and plot holes would require an essay to enumerate and analyze – but they're not worth the trouble. The despise it has for its audience's intelligence is most obvious in the following exchange. Ching: 'Did the woman have one kidney removed, or two?' The police inspector: 'One. Is there any difference?' Ching: 'With one left she won't die.' The police inspector has a look saying: 'Now is that so? Damn, every day on this job a man learns something new!' And this from an 'inspector' working on the kidney-case for 5 months now! Yes, dear viewer: this is the kind of film that treats you to the most basic Psychology 101, Medicine 101, etc. without having covered its bases in Screenwriting 101. Direction, on the other hand, gives its best to elevate this mess. The pace is OK, excellent cinematography makes the most of the good production values, and there are a couple of decent gore sequences. Nothing innovative, mind you: it's strictly 'been there, done that (much better), got a T-shirt' material. The stalk'n'scare scenes are created through the usual 'subjective camera' moves, and the action is overscored by the over-melodramatic music. Any self-respecting horror fan may expect only the mildest kicks out of this (say, on a dull wet afternoon), but otherwise – stay clean off KOMA. This is soap-horror directed towards the lowest common denominator.

A SERBIAN FILM PHOTOS

2011-05-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some exclusive behind the scenes photos from the making of the notorious shocker you may have heard of, called A SERBIAN FILM.

As can be seen, the making of the film was not as grim as the final product appears to be. From my visits to the set I can vouch that the atmosphere was rather usual: the crew people were in their usual professional, but also fun-loving & cheerful attitude.

The photos below show the EFX crew, led by Miroslav Lakobrija; the sculpture and the puppet of the baby from the infamous "baby scene" (aka "newborn porn"); the director Srdjan Spasojevic with a decapitated head and various details from the film's probably most gruesome splatter set-piece – and so on.

If you like the pics, but still haven't seen the film – what are you waiting for?!
--- click on each pic to see it larger ---

NIGHTMARE MOVIES by Kim Newman – Book Review

2011-04-22T02:32:00.000-07:00

NIGHTMARE MOVIES

Kim Newman

Bloomsbery, 2011

Trade Paperback

650 pages

Review by Dejan Ognjanovic

originally published on TWITCH

At one point in this book its author admits: "I'm well aware that the vogue for remakes, reimaginings and reduxes extends to books like Nightmare Movies." But there is no reason to fear: this is not one of those cash-in products with dollar signs in their evil eyes. The new, extended edition of Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s is clearly a labor of equal amounts of love and understanding bestowed upon a genre which few writers take this seriously. This book needed to happen: the cult original (in its three editions: 1985, 1988, 1989) has long been out of print, and the new developments in horror after its publication practically begged for an update from an author whose judgements have already been proven right.

When they announced the updated version, it was reasonable to expect some 20-25% of new material to fill us in on the movies made in the two decades after the original Nightmare Movies. What no one expected was a whole new book added to the old one, equal in size and even better in quality! Yes, folks, this humongous volume – 634 pages in large format (+16 pages with photos) – contains the good old Nightmare Movies we all know and love on its first 293 pages, followed by more than 300 pages of entirely new material + index of titles, fully updated. The result is, plain and simple, just the best and most reliable study of modern horror film you can find! You want one book to tell you all you need to know about horrors made between Night of the Living Dead and A Serbian Film? This is it!

And why is that? Simply because Kim Newman is the Man. As he said in the original introduction: "I was around to gauge the impact of Shivers, Carrie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and The Evil Dead on their original releases. My first professionally published piece was a review of Last House on the Left in 1982." He's been around. And he's been watching, it seems, even the unwatchable: in this huge book you will find references not only to unknown gems (the Russian Jekyll and Hyde from 1985!) but also, occasionally, to unbelievable trash.

Who else but Newman would notice that Coppola's Dracula (1992) has a set-up which is "surprisingly close to the way Dracula (Jamie Gillis) becomes a vampire in the porn movie Dracula Exotica (1980)"?! Who else but Newman has seen this many low budget flicks few people have even heard of? Let me rephrase this: yes, there may be horror freaks out there with nothing better to do who have seen all this, and more, but how many of them are able to see through them, to analyze them with such wit and precision, and to draw comparisons with their nobler, better known brethreen?

Newman's knowledge of horror sometimes seems scary, but it's never dry, dusty nor burdened with the tiresome "discourse" of the post-structuralist-feminist-Marxist-Freudian-Lacanian-Žižekian claptrap which passes for horror theory these days. His insights are penetrating and profound, but always clearly put, in a finely wrought language of a good writer (Newman is equally known for his novels and short stories) – language which most theoreticians of horror can only dream of. Here is just one example, in dealing with Branagh's Frankenstein (1994): "Few Frankenstein films are as reactionary, with the punchline coming when Walton learns his lesson from Victor's awful example, deciding that all his science is a bad thing and turns his ship away from the ice floes to return to a civilisation where surgery is performed without anaesthetic and the natural process of birth is as bloody and doomed as the unnatural activities of mad scientists."

It certainly helps that Nightmare Movies is the result of a life-long devotion, instead of a hasty "research" conducted by some stuffy professor on his/her black sabbatical. Newman gets his names, titles and facts right; okay, there are about a dozen misspelt names in the new volume, but that's almost unavoidable in this "encyclopaedia of evil", as Robert Bloch calls it in his blurb. Even more preciously, his analyses are uncannily right, too. When one covers such a vast field, with hundreds of titles overviewed, a certain percentage of disagreement seems inevitable. Not so here. In this particular instance I can't think of any major issues of that kind (well, I wouldn't call Dead & Buried "disappointing" but I cannot entirely disagree with the complaints Newman has to it). His evaluation is always well-supported and convincingly argued, and this surpasses the matter of "taste".

The thing is that Newman approaches his films as parts of a bigger whole: the oeuvre of a particular director, the period, the cycle, the sub-genre... No horror is an island, and Newman is at his best when it comes to pointing to connections and influences and trends beneath the trends. After all, that's how the book is organized – in chapters devoted to particular dominant categories of modern horror. The original Nightmare Movies has chapters on zombie films, British horror revival, neo-Gothic, Devil movies, slashers, paranoia (about the horrors of nature, machines, disasters, conspiracies and apocalypse), psychos, auteurs (Argento, Cohen, Cronenberg, DePalma), ghost stories, Italian zombies and cannibals, post-Romero living dead, post-modern horror, and even on the weirdo horror film (cult, kitsch, camp, sick, punk, porno).

The New Nightmares addition contains chapters on serial psycho-killer films after Silence of the Lambs, classical monsters in modern guise (vampires, werewolves, mummies etc), Scream and its po-mo slasher clones, modern ghost stories (including, inevitably, Ringu and other J-horrors), virtual reality, "torture porn", more fresh zombies and more auteurs (Burton, del Toro, Fessenden, Lynch). Always with a bigger picture in mind, Newman puts modern horror in a perspective and explains its numerous phenomena so effortlessly it may seem deceptively easy – until you try it yourself.

And this is what makes Nightmare Movies a pleasure and a treasure: it covers the most flourishing period of horror cinema – the past 40 years – but its vast ambition and scope are perfectly matched by the knowledge, taste, authority and insight unrivaled among the contemporary critics. In plain English this means merely that the new, mammoth two-books-for-the-price-of-one edition of Nightmare Movies is your ultimate guide to modern horror cinema. Kim Newman has explained it!

Before someone starts screaming: "Plant!" I feel obliged to find some fault with the book. Even a small one. Well, I tried, but I couldn't think of anything bigger than the following two: 1) Alexandre Aja's Haute Tension (2004) is only briefly mentioned, and the basics of its plot recounted, but there's not a hint of analysis or even evaluation of this remarkable film. 2) I must complain about the selection of photos. This edition, apparently, doesn't want to alienate the modern reading public with occasionally gruesome images that adorned the original version (rotting Fulci zombies, face falling apart in Amityville II, Edith Massey being messy…); those are now replaced by more wholesome and generic stills. And that's all. Everything else about Nightmare Movies is just perfect. If you care about horror film this is definitely a must-have!

H. P. Lovecraft's ARKHAM SANITARIUM - Script Review

2011-04-18T19:17:00.000-07:00

All concept art for this film is done by Dave Wood

(click on images to see bigger versions)

This text originally published on TWITCH

Lovecraft's fiction is notoriously difficult to translate to cinema, for several reasons. The main one has to do with his reliance on mood, atmosphere, subtlety, hints and vague suggestions of unspeakable horrors. This doesn't mean that his stories are entirely lacking in action or memorable set-pieces, but their scarcity and brevity have usually caused filmmakers to resort to padding the brief tales with all kinds of conventional (romantic, detective, slasher, monster) elements, usually dilluting and betraying the original. Lovecraft's cosmic horror was, more often than not, turned into (unintentionally) comic horror. This author has written only two novels: one of those, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward was filmed twice, as Roger Corman's lame flick The Haunted Palace in 1963 and as a much better, but still lacking The Resurrected in 1992 by Dan O'Bannon. The other, SF-horror epic At the Mountains of Madness, was almost greenlighted to be directed by Guillermo Del Toro, but Universal eventually backed-out.

It seems that anthology format is better suited for Lovecraft's shorter fiction: three short sharp shocks in a row are better than a single one padded for feature legth. This, at least, must be the rationale behind the script written by Andrew G. Morgan based on "The Haunter of the Dark", "The Shunned House" and "The Thing on the Doorstep". His anthology H. P. Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium is produced by Survivor Films, an independent film production company based in London, as their first feature-film. The filming of this low budget venture begins in May 2011 (on Friday the 13th!), with the movie planned for release in October 2011. What follows are my impressions of the screenplay.

Briefly and simply put, this is a very, very good script. It is pretty faithful to the stories and the changes are made mostly for dramatic and cinematic purposes. Love and understanding of Lovecraft's stories are evident (no "teens in peril" here), the structure is tight and no time is wasted on unnecessary or extraneous elements. There is no tongue-in-cheek nor wink-wink nudge-nudge nonsense here: just straight horror, in tone and approach similar to the superior anthology Necronomicon (1994). If they come anywhere near it, we should be happy. If they manage to surpass it, we'll have a new modern classic on our hands.

It is not specific about the period, but it's certainly not contemporary: a character is seen driving a 1950s Sedan, which means this is moved up in time from Lovecraft's 1920s and 1930s, but not enough for our cell-phone, video-cameras and internet age. The wraparound segment deals with a lady reporter who comes to an asylum called Arkham Sanitarium and has a meeting with a dr West (Howard, not Herbert). The following three stories depict the gruesome events which brought three of its inmates to the brink of insanity – and beyond.

All three segments take place in Arkham, fictional New England town based on Lovecraft's Providence. "The Haunter of the Dark" is about a spooky deserted church (or is it?) and a creature which dwells in the darkness. The story is faithfully adapted, except the ending is more elaborate. Whereas Lovecraft liked to confine his most epxlicit horror for the final paragraph, or even sentence – leaving most of it to the imagination – the script shows us not only the story's concluding image of "the three-lobed burning eye" but also the face and jaws of the haunter of the dark, and what they do to an unfortunate character.

"The Shunned House" is one of Lovecraft's best earlier tales, a uniquely creepy tale about a house haunted not by a ghost but by something much, much worse – a malevolent, parasitic entity which sucks out life out of the unsuspecting inhabitants. After numerous deaths the house becomes deserted, when a student and his uncle decide to spend the night in its basement and see if there is anything supernatural behind the strange fungi and yellowish miasma on its floor... This segment is excellent until the end, when the screenplay discards the uncanny and original non-human entity and replaces it with a disappointingly conventional all-too-human element. It's a pity, because it is precisely Lovecraft's ingeniously devised concept that distinguished this particular story from hundreds of similar "haunted house" stories. This change, to my mind, is the only big and serious lapse in the entire script, especially since it brings the conclusion closer to a Tales from the Crypt episode than to genuinely Lovecraftian terror.

"The Thing on the Doorstep" is another story previously not filmed, although there were rumors that Stuart Gordon wanted to do it as a feature. It is the only instance of a Lovecraft tale with a prominent female character, although there's a twist to that, too. To put it vaguely, it deals with a marriage gone horribly wrong due to the influence of the bride's father. Who, by the way, happens to be dead. But, as HPL put it, "that is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die." So, as can be seen from these examples, church is hell, family house is hell, marriage is hell, and, obviously, insane asylum is hell. Which all leads to a nice and cheerful ending, Lovecraft style.

It is difficult to predict how this script will turn out: this is the first film from Andrew G. Morgan, the writer and director, his cast is made of mostly unknown actors, and the budget is relatively low for the ambitious concepts which will be done blending CGI and practical make-up EFX. A lot will depend on the DP's (and production designer's) ability to capture the atmosphere that the script provides opportunities for in spades. Also, they're gonna need really good EFX artists for some rather complex visual and make-up effects (and thankfully, the script is not stingy when it comes to Lovecraft's trade-mark body-horror). Anyway, the script, if filmed as written, promises to be a basis for one of the better HPL adaptations out there. Good luck, folks!

THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS (2011)

2011-03-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

review by Dejan Ognjanovic

originally published on TWITCH

***

The Whisperer in Darkness is the first feature length film by the folks from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Their version of The Call of Cthulhu (2005), directed by Andrew Leman, was a brave and surprisingly successful medium-length film (47 minutes) done with a lot of care and talent. Unlike numerous other flicks which (ab)use Lovecraft's name merely to sell yet another same-old creature feature and/or slasher, The Call of Cthulhu was obviously a labor of love, but also of knowledge about what makes the Great Old One truly great.

It was shot in the style of a 1920s silent horror (which means: in glorious black and white), with period-style music and inter-titles. The Call... used the legacy of German expressionism in its high contrast photography and play of shadows, visible also in the stylized sets a la Cabinet of Dr Caligari with weird shapes and angles to depict surreal dreams and the non-Euclidean geometry in the city of R'Lyeh.

The Whisperer in Darkness is a far more ambitious effort, and not only in terms of its running time (103 minutes). If Cthulhu was done as a re-enactment of 1920s horror, then The Whisperer, directed by Sean Branney, looks and feels like a long-lost noir-style horror from the 1940s.

Shot in "Mythoscope", this time with sound, but still in black and white, it is clearly a letter of love and dedication to H. P. Lovecraft, one of the greatest horror writers of 20th century.

It follows the novella it is based on (published in 1931) pretty closely, up to a point, and deals with Henry Akeley (Barry Lynch), a farmer secluded in the woods of Vermont who discovers strange, not-of-this-earth footprints (that is, hoofprints; or are they clawprints?) around his home and begins to suspect a race of creatures from the distant gulfs of space abducting some men and beginning a clandestine invasion of our wold.

He corresponds with professor Albert Wilmarth (Matt Foyer) from the Miskatonic University, who decides to visit him and decide for himself if there is any truth behind the letters and curious photographs he was sent.

This film is obviously made by Lovecraft's followers primarily for other like-minded individuals, with no big concessions made to turn it more commercial – although the action-packed ending, significantly altered from the one in the novella, may seem like an attempt to liven up things a bit and provide a more suspenseful climax than the original had, based as it was on a rather predictable "twist".

The Whisperer in Darkness certainly has a far greater commercial appeal than its almost avant-garde experimental Cthulhu predecessor, but its intentionally old-fashioned approach (and black & white photography) will probably limit its appeal to the Lovecraft initiates, SF-horror enthusiasts and the remaining adventurous followers of the weird cinema as its primary target-audience.

Viewed as an adaptation of a genre classic, it is pretty well done, though the first half may seem too talky to some. It would've been nicer to see the creepy contents of the farmer-to-professor correspondence dramatized instead of mostly narrated and presented through dialogues. Charles Fort, a famous weird-phenomena enthusiast from the 1930s (when the story and film take place) has a clever cameo in an episode (not in the story) in which professor Wilmarth has a discussion with Fort, live on radio, about the modern science and its attitude to "wonders" and mysteries of existence.

Lovecraft's twist about "the whisperer" is revealed shortly after one-hour mark, and the remaining 30 minutes or so offer events, action, chase sequences, creatures, horrors and visual concepts completely invented by the makers (the screenplay is written by Branney and Leman).

Some Lovecraft purists may find the action-driven climax too different from what the novella is about, but others will be happy to see the well-made scenes of flying creatures chasing the small airplane and the ensuing struggle.

The CGI aliens are the only obviously modern visual element in a film otherwise pretty minute and accurate in its period setting and dedication to the style of vintage horrors. The design of creatures and their various alien gadgets are excellent and rightfuly reminiscent of the retro-futuristic machinery from the covers of classic Weird Tales.

My greatest complaint, other than too many "photographs of people talking" (as old Hitch would say) in the first half, would be the lack of sufficiently thick atmosphere in the Vermont woods. Lovecraft envisioned the plot based on his travels in the region, and conceived it as an exercise in mood and creeping hints of something sinister lurking in the silent and lonely hills and forests.

There should've been more than a few brief shots of that in the film (some involving fine miniature work). Also, the ending resorts once again to the cliché of people in queer robes shouting incomprehensible things while invoking strange "Gods". This is not only done to death in practically every other "Lovecraftian" film, but is also utterly incongruent with this particular plot, in which the occult has absolutely nothing to do with its SF concepts. In a film pretty faithful to Lovecraft this is an unnecessary slip.

In terms of filmmaking, The Whisperer in Darkness is exquisitely shot and edited by David Robertson and very well directed by Sean Branney. The latter has already won the Audience award for Best director at the SFF-rated Festival of SF and Fantasy Film in Athens. The low budget origins are visible but expertly overcome by good costumes, elaborate production design and, of course, by the crisp photography.

The loving attention to period detail is, after all, to be expected from the people who call themselves "H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society", and this adds to the intriguing viewing for those in the mood for such a blast from the past. The makers certainly showed that one doesn't need 150 million dollars, nor Tom Cruise, to make a very good HPL adaptation. Besides, their actors' motivation is enthusiasm, not dollars, and this clearly shows in every frame of the film.

They deserve success for their efforts, and if they continue their evolution along the lines already sketched, after the 1920s and 1940s hommages, their next film will be probably in color, styled after Roger Corman's and other AIP Lovecraftian flicks from the 1960s. Let's just hope they remain closer to Lovecraft's spirit than those.

ZOMBIES! AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNDEAD by Jovanka Vuckovic

2011-03-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

BOOK REVIEW

Dejan Ognjanovic

St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 2011

176 pp

Zombies are in!

After decades of mindless shambling in the confines of pulp magazines and B-movies, the living dead have finally reached the mainstream with the box-office success of 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel, followed by the Resident Evil series, but especially after Zombieland (2009) gripped the mass-audiences. The book stalls are cluttered with the titles like Zombie Apocalypse, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, The Zombie Survival Guide: How to Live Like a King After the Outbreak, and the like "manuals", topped only by the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

Zombies! An Illustrated History of the Undead by Jovanka Vuckovic is a timely overview of these creatures, from their origins in Haitian folklore through their literary and cinematic incarnations all the way through comics, video games and phenomena like "zombie walks". After a brief tongue-in-cheek introduction from the inevitable George A. Romero (in which he talks about his own relation to the living dead), the book opens with the history of zombies. These chapters provide a necessary insight into the background which includes not only the voodoo beliefs but also hints of the racist and degrading American influence on Haiti, later reflected in equally racist steretypes which accompanied most of early zombie comics, pulp stories and horror films. These facts are commonly neglected in popular texts on zombies, and it is to Ms Vuckovic's credit that she does not omit unpleasant truths in between the lines of her subject.

The greatest part of the book is devoted to zombies in cinema, beginning with the poverty row Z-classics like White Zombie (1932) and the rightfully forgotten trash curios from the 1950s. Zombie renaissance begins with Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), which gets a special chapter, the same as its follow-up, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and unofficial sequel (cash-in), Fulci's Zombie (1979). Pre-Fulci Euro-zombies (the Blind Dead series; Manchester Morgue...) get their due just like the spaghetti-undead (with plenty of red sauce) of the 1980s. American highlights of that decade include the cult faves Dead and Buried (1982), Re-Animator (1984), The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and the initially misunderstood and unloved Day of the Dead (1985), which Vuckovic labels as the best of the Romero bunch (those who prefer Dawn of the Dead would tend to disagree). Post-Millennial zombies are there, too, including Dawn of the Dead remake (2004) which, strangely, gets equal space in the book to Romero's original, in spite of author's accurately calling it "unnecessary" and pointing to its numerous flaws. The Japanese undead are there, accompanied by the most recent popular TV series like the British Dead Set and American The Walking Dead.

Jovanka Vuckovic is a Canadian author of Serbian origin: award-winning writer, editor and film critic who was recently labelled one of the top-13 most important women in the history of horror! To lovers of horror she's probably best known as the editor-in-chief of one of the leading genre magazines, Rue Morgue (she held that title for seven years, until 2009). She is, therefore, knowledgeable when it comes to horror, and her writing shows that rarely found talent of recognizing the relevant, meaningful and interesting details to choose from, especially when one deals with the over-rich and over-ripe history of the undead. The book is not too analitical and may not be as detailed as some might like: its ambitions are obviously more towards the popular than towards the academic. This doesn't mean that it is lacking in insight: quite the opposite. But, due to limited space, and desire for lavish illustrations (full color throughout!), many intriguing readings and arguments are only sketched. The author readily admits these limitations, and offers helpful lists of 100 Zombie films and 100 Zombie fiction titles for further investigation.

I have very few complaints about this book, the greatest being that Pupi Avati's Zeder (aka Revenge of the Dead, 1983) is inexplicably lumped together with Lenzi's, Mattei's and Bianchi's trash flicks, dismissed all together as "mediocre to abysmal outings that manage to make quick work of undressing beautiful women in raunchy scenes that often have little to do with the plot" (page 85). Regardless of one's evaluation of this title (I tend to find it way above "mediocre"), the references to raunchy scenes and the like have absolutely nothing to do with this particular film. While Zeder is far from perfect, the quoted complaint against it has no ground in the film itself. Also, one might wish there was more space for discussing some of the more unconventional titles, barely mentioned here, like Pet Sematary (1989), Dead Heat (1987) and Les revenants (aka They Came Back, 2004). On the other hand, it is commendable that not even patriotic inclinations could make Ms Vuckovic include the truly abysmal Serbian Zone of the Dead (2009).

Zombies! is a quality introduction to and overview of the plaguing problem of our near-apocalyptic times. More ambitious students are referred to the popular culture classes in Zombie Studies offered by The University of Baltimore and to other books of this growing phenomenon. Be prepared: they're coming to get you, and Ms Vuckovic's book (especially in its hardcover edition) may come handy!

This review was originally published at Beyond Hollywood!

FLOWERS FROM HELL: THE MODERN JAPANESE HORROR FILM

2011-02-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

FLOWERS FROM HELL: THE MODERN JAPANESE HORROR FILM

Jim Harper

Noir Publishing, 2008.

Book review

Dejan Ognjanovic

The lucrative phenomenon of J-horror film has already produced several titles dealing with it. Some of them include Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, And Thailand by Patrick Galloway, Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema by Jay McRoy and J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to the Ring, The Grudge and Beyond by David Kalat. Here comes another book devoted to it. This one is about the most vital and developed of all Asian cinematographies – the grand-daddy of them all, Japanese.

Its title is sadly reminiscent of a far superior one, Eros in Hell by Jack Hunter, the unsurpassed look into Japan's more otherworldly forays into Eros + Thanatos (pinku + horror + cyberpunk SF + avant-garde and experimental cinema), but this is an entirely different book and should not be mixed with the former. Its ambitions are explained thus: "Flowers from Hell is not an encyclopedia or a movie guide, and I have not attempted to cover in detail every RING-inspired 'vengeful spirit' movie or direct-to-video horror anthology that appeared in the '90s. The purpose of this work is to track the major themes, films and creative talents that have appeared over the past twenty to twenty-five years, so I have concentrated on films that either typify a certain trend or are in some way significant because of content, cast and crew or general quality" (from Introduction, page 9).

The book is organized into chapters which follow this ambition, some named after themes, like "Vengeful spirits", "Demons, Monsters and Beyond", "Psychos and Serial killers" etc. while others deal with a representative author, like "Hideo Nakata and the RING Cycle", "Love and Mutation: The Works of Junji Ito on Film" and "Takashi Shimizu and the JUON Series". This makes the book rather easy to follow, although it still leaves a bit to be desired in terms of organization and clarity.

The author decided to deal mostly with the films made from the mid-80s onwards, claiming that the development of J-horror up to that point "requires several books of its own". This leads to starting the book rather arbitrarily, and without a sufficient introduction into the trends and motifs up to the mid-80s. Very little is said, and very briefly at that, about the folklore beliefs, legends, literature and early films which are the basis of what followed. Instead, right from the very beginning of Chapter I, Mr. Harper jumps into analysis of specific films by Nobuhiko Obayashi (HOUSE and IJINTACHI TONO NATSU) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (SWEET HOME). Thus, some knowledge of the cultural and cinematic background against which J-horrors appeared is necessary for the full understanding of this book, and must be looked for elsewhere.

The analyses of the specific films are mostly decent, but not too profound nor elaborate: they provide the basic plot and elementary commentary on the film's qualities or lack thereof (acting, photography, pacing, plot logic, etc.) but rarely delve deeper than that. The styles or worldviews or obsessive themes of particular directors are rarely invoked, and even the connections and thematic similarities between different films are barely sketched, which makes the critiques rather simple-minded and devoted only to the most obvious. This hurts especially when one comes to the true masterpieces of J-horror, which often remain misunderstood by the author.

This is what Mr. Harper has to say on Miike's AUDITION: "Attempts have been made to read the film as a critique of patriarchal Japanese society, but in truth Miike's main intention is simply to shock the audience. This might not be a particularly noble ambition, and it's certainly something the director has tried before, but AUDITION is the most effective and successful attempt..." (page 70). Reducing this masterpiece to a mere shock-machine (albeit successful!) exemplifies the shallowness of the writer, not of the film in question. Later on, the author rightly labels BATTLE ROYALE "a milestone of contemporary cinema" but his brief and generic 'reading' of that film barely sustains such a ponderous claim.

What, exactly, makes BR a milestone remains to be seen in some other, more ambitious study. A lengthy retelling of the film everyone has seen, Nakata's RING, is not a basis for anything deeper than the conclusion that it is, just like AUDITION, yet another film made merely to scare you, and that's it! Here goes: "RING does not attempt to carve out new territory or push the boundaries of the genre (although it did end up doing so, ironically). Its aims are much humbler: it seeks only to scare" (page 118). Even if one reduced these films to mere scare-mongering, their analyses leave a lot unsaid about HOW, exactly, these particular films work, unlike so many other which try the same, yet fail.

Jim Harper's writing is fluid and simple, easily understandable. It did require more proofreading and editing than it got, as many typos and clumsy sentences remain in the text. For example, it will take you a few pages of reading to see what, exactly, was meant by a sentence like this: "As Mima struggles to come to terms with the demands of her new career – including a graphic rape scene – others are equally unhappy with the situation..." (page 72). Lavish illustrations in black and white are spread throughout, while 32 pages in full color show-off numerous photos and film posters in the book's middle, which means that the book's text is skimpier than it appears. Although the full book has 192 pages, without photos the text would barely fill over 100.

Therefore, Flowers from Hell may not be as thorough and detailed as some might want, but, on the other hand, those looking for a brief, simple, down-to-earth introduction to a phenomenon much more complex than here presented will be pleased by the user-friendly approach taken here. Basically, Jim Harper's writing is on the level of a slightly above-average user comment on IMDb and, as such, it can provide the basic information and elementary criticism on the J-horrors from the last 25 years. Noir Publishing did a good job with this finely printed and solidly designed book which has a greater appeal for the masses than for the smaller numbers of already initiated and devoted connoisseurs looking for something more and deeper.

KIREI: THE TERROR OF BEAUTY (2004)

2011-02-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

Country : Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 1H25

Director:

Katsuya Matsumura

Cast: Yukiko Okamoto, Asuka Kurosawa, Kota Kusano, Mami Nakamura

Story: Yoko Noguchi is a beautiful and successful plastic surgeon with a very peculiar patient- a psychologically unbalanced woman named Yoshie. Yoshie begs Yoko to perform surgery on her when all other doctors refuse. Yoshie behaves like a very obvious loony, but she is loaded with money (although does not appear to be rich) which she lavishly pours on Yoko. Yoko ultimately accepts the challenge, but after the operation realizes that it was only the beginning: after having her face corrected, Yoshio wants her belly and later her virginal vagina operated as well… Yoko succumbs to these demands as well, but making Yoshie beautiful is only the preparation for a very ugly ending…

Review: If you are tired of J-horror being equated with ghostly female black-haired apparitions, THE TERROR OF BEAUTY offers a reminder of another popular staple of Japanese horror - the equivalent of hard R splatter in which the accent is put on body horror with strong surgical overtones, filled with moralizing about human mortality and hypocrisy. As this sub-genre is usually very low budget (unlike its more respectable, ghostly cousins), another element commonly found in it is plenty of sex and nudity.

Who would be better to provide this kind of entertainment than Katsuya Matsumura, whose fame lies mostly in the wonderfully, unbearably sicko/sleazy ALL NIGHT LONG series (five parts so far, but only the first three are available in the English speaking world). Beneath the veneer of crude direct to video exploitation the ALL NIGHT LONG flicks actually provided a genuine, original and surprisingly intelligent satire on modern Japan, especially the world of otakus, outcasts and youth gangs indulging in all kinds of depravity. THE TERROR OF BEAUTY would seem to provide an excellent opportunity for another inspired mixture of satire and sleaze, ideas and gore, sex and death, social concerns and opportunistic exploitation. Unfortunately, the end result is below the expectations that this author and these themes would seem to inspire.

THE TERROR OF BEAUTY suffers from a lame script which is too simple-minded and straightforward to provide enough food for either brain or… well, whatever organ the gore hounds have. By deciding to mystify Yoshie’s origin, including the incredible amounts of money at her disposal, the scriptwriters deprive the film of any real drama. The two main characters are sketched in broad strokes: a beautiful but greedy plastic surgeon and an ugly AND creepy disturbed woman. That is all you learn about them. Yoko’s boyfriend is not even a cipher- it seems that his sole function in the flick is for Yoko to have someone to talk to and thus speak up her thoughts to the audience.

Of course, coming to a film like this, character development may not be your first demand- but Matsumura, surprisingly, disappoints even in what he’s usually doing best. The nudity quota is relatively low (for his standards), the surgical tools are barely touched, the explicit operations are present in a couple of uninspired seconds and the gore scenes are limited to splashes of unconvincingly colored violet/red liquid. To be honest, there are a few queasy moments involving liposuction and at the very end, when the frail beauty, recently operated, starts unstitching. The common viewer has enough of unpleasantness to cover his/her eyes from, but more experienced splatter-fans, anxiously expecting to see what kind of aces Matsumura may have up his sleeves could be a bit disappointed.

THE TERROR OF BEAUTY is obviously a quickie whose no-budget makes the ALL NIGHT LONG series look like SCREAM. It’s limited to three different rooms and as many ‘characters’, so there’s not much production value to speak of; the camera is barely functional, but most of the scenes are over-lit and lacking in any kind of beauty. The score is sweet, quiet and barely noticeable while the make up effects are decent, though obviously cheap, and not nearly as prominent as you might expect from a film with a ‘surgical’ plot like this. All in all, this flick is watchable since it’s not too boring (but it’s not too exciting either!), so some viewers –you know who you are!- may want to rent it, but note that it is not a highly rewatchable film which would require a constant place in your collection.

DVD [ NTSC, Region 1 ] :

The DVD comes in a bland, unattractive cover which fails to even mention its main selling point: namely, that it’s made by the director of ALL NIGHT LONG films. For some reason, the pictures from the film on the back cover are all in black and white (?!). It’s not clear whether Media Blasters is trying to sell this as some kind of TETSUO or RUBBER’S LOVER, or if they’re merely cutting costs in saving their color for better films. THE TERROR OF BEAUTY is presented in color, 1.85:1 anamorphic wide screen, with the kind of visuals you can expect from a direct-to-video flick. The same goes for the sound, in Dolby stereo: there is a Japanese audio track, with decent English subs. The extras include a 20 minute ‘Making of’ feature (with interviews with the lead ladies, but mysteriously – no Matsumura; was he a hack for hire in this product?), trailer for this and several other Tokyo shock flicks (IZO, ONE MISSED CALL…), and that’s about it.

2010: THE BEST HORROR FILMS

2011-01-11T12:06:00.000-08:00

Or, more precisely, the films which did not entirely & completely suck.

The past year was a largely disappointing one, for all the usual reasons: American horor mostly defined by recycled ideas, sequels, remakes, unimaginative 'reimaginings' or, at best, misguided, lukewarm, forgettable flicks. On the other hand, international horror was mostly uninspired, plagued by a similar misdirection and memorable punches. There was some decent, moderately entertaining stuff but, other than A SERBIAN FILM, nothing really memorable – nothing that will be talked about in a year or two.

So, here goes my list of the least terrible horrors I saw in 2010.

1. SRPSKI FILM (A SERBIAN FILM)

SER, 10

**** 4

Because it has balls & knows how to use them.

2. I SAW THE DEVIL

KOR, 10

***(*) 3+

Because it's a very entertaining and vicious Grand Guignol.

3. TETSUO THE BULLET MAN

JAP, 09

***(*) 3+

Because of its manic energy and craziness.

4. AMER

BEL, 10

*** 3+

Because it's fetishistic and doesn't give a flying fuck - like all good Giallo villains.

5. DREAM HOME

HK, 10

*** 3+

Because it's unashamedly exploitative, entertaining and surprisingly clever.

6. THE REVENANT

USA, 10

*** 3

Because it has an admirable balance of horror and humor.

7. HEARTLESS

UK, 10

*** 3

Because it's brave, energetic, and one of a kind.

8. HIGANJIMA

JAP, 10

*** 3

Because its has a big budget for a big loud story, and is fun to watch.

9. SOLOMON KANE

USA, 10

*** 3

Because it entertains with some great visuals, without being stupid or cheap (mostly).

10. CABIN FEVER 2

USA, 09

**(*) 3-

Because it's unashamedly exploitative, entertaining and yucky - although somewhat spoilt by the silly ending.

The others:

11. PIRANHA 3D

USA, 10

*** 3-

12. BLACK SWAN

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

13. THE CRAZIES

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

14. PHOBIA 2

THAI, 09

**(*) 3-

15. REC 2

SPA, 09

**(*) 3-

16. THE REEF

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

17. FROZEN

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

18. THE LOVED ONES

AUS, 10

**(*) 3-

19. ROAD KILL

AUS, 10

**(*) 3-

20. SPLICE

USA/CAN, 10

**(*) 3-

21. BURNING BRIGHT

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

22. THE HOLE

USA, 09

**(*) 3-

23. LET ME IN

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

24. IN THEIR SLEEP

FRA, 10

**(*) 3-

25. LA HORDE

FRA, 09

**(*) 3-

26. MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD

JAP, 10

**(*) 3-

27. BLOOD CREEK

USA, 09

**(*) 3-

28. CARRIERS

USA, 09

**(*) 3-

29. BLOOD RIVER

USA, 10

**(*) 3-

30. EMBODIMENT OF EVIL

BRA, 09

**(*) 3-

31. THE FORBIDDEN DOOR

INDON, 10

**(*) 3-

DARK STARS RISING by Shade Rupe – Book Review

2010-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

review by

Dejan Ognjanovic

Dark Stars Rising: Conversations from the Outer Realms

Author: Shade Rupe
Format: Paperback
Size: 218x157mm
Page Count: 568
ISBN-13: 9781900486699

Though unrelated to Lovecraft, in spite of the allusive title, Dark Stars Rising is a true Necronomicon, a Black Bible of transgression and transcendence, of the Other and the Beyond. Big words, I know, but this is a big book – big in every sense. More than 560 pages of large format (8 of them in glorious color) are crammed with 27 long interviews with some of the most daring fringe artists in various modes of the One & Only True Art: that of pushing Boundaries! Whether they're expressing themselves through directing, producing and starring in movies, or their respective modes include photography, music, magic, self-torture, stand-up comedy, performance etc. – all of them share a rare passion and total devotion to their Art, and revealing talks with these "dark stars" are nothing short of inspirational.

Dark Stars Rising reveals a candid and warm side of Divine, the inimitable star of John Waters's trash epics and puts a new light on erotic death trips of Richard Kern's photos and short films. Udo Kier, another cult star of high camp, shows off more lucidity, humor and insight than many of his better known colleagues. Jim Vanbebber talks about the low budget splatter of his Chunk Blower, My Sweet Satan and Charlie's Family, while Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock, Life is Hot in Crack town) rises from a similar background of shoestring moviemaking to reveal his deals with Troma and why Maniac 2 (with Joe Spinell, again) never happened.

The mystical insights are oozing from the thorough, career spanning and thought-provoking interviews with the masters of (oc)cult cinema like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Richard Stanley, while the somewhat academic, yet still down-to-earth and funny Dennis Paoli bares all about his collaborations with Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak, etc.). Chas. Balun, veteran of horror-zines, and Johannes Schonherr, critic, festival programmer and author of Trashfilm Roadshows: Off the Beaten Track with Subversive Movies (also from Headpress) uncover the varieties of extreme cinema from around the world. French provocauteur Gaspar Noe is here, too, to put his Argentinean background in perspective with French influences in making the angry movies like I Stand Alone and Irreversible.

William Lustig talks about Uncle Sam, Maniac Cop films and how he almost directed True Romance. Crispin Glover unveils his uniquely schizophrenic position of alternating between the blockbusters (Back to the Future, Charlie's Angels) and personal, offbeat projects (What is it?). Tura Satana, the memorable busty star of Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! offers a surprising amount of brains, emotion and attitude behind the appearance of a fetishized, objectified (or is she?!) woman with big boobs and even bigger personality. Authors Peter Sotos and Dennis Cooper talk about the extreme topics of their controversial books (homosexuality, serial killers, pedophilia, pornography etc.) while Hermann Nitsch, the legendary Vienna activist of gory and scatological performances (some featured in the cult classic, Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie) talks about transcending the body by immersing into its tissues and liquids. Etcetera, etcetera.

These are just some of the unique creators whose words and images grace this Book of Transgressions. And, talking about images: if you expect your typical talking-heads book, with huge chunks of dull black-on-white text and an occasional ordinary photo of the artist thoughtfully looking into the distance, think again! This is a Headpress book, which means that it is lovingly designed (by David Kerekes) with an almost incredible amount of photographs and stills (some of them exclusive, never seen before), diagrams, esoteric and other symbols, all of which not only accompany but also embellish, extend and further explain the words around which they grow. The wonderful design merges the word and text in such a manner as to provide an even closer look into the idiosyncratic world of each specific artist so that whatever is lost on the way to the page (like, the artist's voice, manner of speech, the aura of his/her surroundings etc.) is more than recovered through the lavish visuals which augment their words. These images almost literally burst from the paper in a subliminal, psychedelic manner, spilling from the edges of the pages into your surroundings and into your brain – altering them so that after reading this book you can't be the same person as before. The trippy cover art by Howard Forbes also helps immensely.

The enthusiasm expressed by these dark stars is contagious, and reveals new constellations of a parallel, far more interesting universe which thrives beyond the dull, fabricated facade of shallow "films" and fake "artists" boasting the covers of mainstream books and magazines. Shade Rupe, as the author of all interviews, has done an excellent job of probing into the essence of what these subversive minds are all about, and his knowing but modest presence allows these stars to shine without the obtrusive "me! me! me! look at how much I know!" stance which mars so many otherwise interesting interviews. His balanced questions manage to provoke his subjects into giving what must be some of the best interviews in their respective careers, and this certainly applies to the thorough and more than honest ones by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Udo Kier, Dennis Paoli, Tura Satana, Peter Sotos, Genesis P-Orridge, Gaspar Noe, Richard Stanley and Crispin Glover.

I wouldn't want to sound like a plant, but in trying to curb my enthusiasm for this book by finding a fault with it, I couldn't come up with anything other than the fact that some of the interviews are not so fresh (a few are a decade or more old). However, in most instances like that, what is being said is so worthwhile that even references to then-contemporary plans and intentions do not take away from what's really important and timeless. In the book's commendable "the more – the merrier" attitude, on top of all 27 interviews and all the amazing imagery, there are 50 pages of Shade Rupe's reviews of books and films directly or indirectly relevant to the stars interviewed previously, and they adequately complement what precedes them. Hopefully, they'll help to educate and initiate the novices into the parallel universe of films, books and art that many may not be aware of.

Dark Stars Rising is a perfect holiday gift: just make sure you don't give it to your grandmother or to a relative or friend of any kind of orthodox persuasion or taste, because the book itself is as provocative and boundary-pushing as the artists it covers. There is movie gore, splattered bodies and zombies; there is real (animal) blood and animal carcasses (in Herman Nitsch's sessions); there is frontal nudity, both female and male, not all of it in the conventionally erotic context (sewn pussy; animal brains and innards around a penis; suggestive though non-explicit kiddie photos; morbid attractiveness of skeletons, pregnant beauties and dead chicken, etc.); there are images at the same time titillating, repulsive and strangely ambiguous…

Just like the Necronomicon, this book is not for everyone. After seeing its table of contents and reading this review you'll know who you are. Invoke often, but carefully, from the pages imprinted by these dark stars!

This review originally published at Beyond Hollywood.

100 BEST EUROPEAN HORROR FILMS

2010-12-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

edited by Steven Schneider

British Film Institute, London, 2007

I had the honor to give a small contribution to this excellent selection by, first suggesting a film to the editor, and then writing about it. The title in question is the only Serbian film included in this prestigeous company - Déjà vu (Već Vidjeno, 1987) by Goran Marković.

Here is the list of all the films included, accompanied by MY RATINGS for each title – those are the usual Ghoul ratings, from Worthless (*) to Masterpiece (*****).

Anatomy

**(*)

Angst

****

Autopsy

**(*)

Awful Dr. Orloff, The

Beast, The

***

Bell of Hell, The

***

Beyond the Darkness

***

Beyond, The

***(*)

Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The

***

Blood and Black Lace

***

Blood and Roses

**(*)

Blood Splattered Bride, The

**(*)

Bloody Pit of Horror

**(*)

Cabinet of Dr. Calgari, The

****

Cannibal Ferox

***

Cannibal Holocaust

****

Cannibal Man

**(*)

Castle of Terror, The

***

Church, The

***

City of the Living Dead

***(*)

Curse of the Devil

****

Dark Waters

***(*)

Daughters of Darkness

****

Day of the Beast, The

****

Deep Red

****

Deep River Savages

Déjà vu (Već Vidjeno)

***(*)

Dellamorte Dellamore

****

Demons

***

Diabolical Dr. Z, The

**(*)

Diaboliques, Les

**(*)

Don't Torture a Duckling

**(*)

Door with Seven Locks, The

Eyeball

Eyes Without a Face

****

Fascination

**(*)

Four Flies on Grey Velvet

***

Funny Games

***

Girl Who Knew Too Much, The

Golem, The

****

High Tension

****(*)

Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock, The

***

Hour of the Wolf

***

House that Screamed, The

**(*)

House with Laughing Windows, The

***

Hunchback of the Morgue

**(*)

In a Glass Cage

****

Inferno

***(*)

Kill, Baby…Kill

***

Laurin

**(*)

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

***

Lips of Blood

**(*)

Lisa and the Devil

***

Malefique

***

Man Bites Dog

*****

Mark of the Devil

Mark of the Wolfman, The

Mask of the Demon

***(*)

Mill of the Stone Women

***

Nameless, The

***

Nekromantik

***

Next!

**(*)

Nightwatch

***

Nosferatu

*****

Nosferatu the Vampyre

****

Opera

***

Ordeal, The

**(*)

Orgy of the Vampires

**(*)

People Who Own the Dark, The

**(*)

Perfume of the Lady in Black

***

Possession

****

Rabid Grannies

Raisins of Death

Return of the Wolfman

Schramm

***

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids

***

Short Night of Glass Dolls

***

Spirits of the Dead

***

Stendhal Syndrome, The

***

Succubus

Suspiria

****

Tenant, The

****

Tenebre

***

The Lift

Thesis

***(*)

Tombs of the Blind Dead

**(*)

Torso

**(*)

Twitch of the Death Nerve

***

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

***

Vampires, The

***

Vampyre

****

Vanishing, The

***

Vij

**(*)

What Have You Done to Solange?

Whip and the Body, The

***(*)

White Reindeer

***

Who Saw Her Die?

**(*)

Witch, The

***

Zeder

****

Zombie Flesh Eaters

***

ISOLA: MULTIPLE PERSONALITY GIRL (2000)

2010-12-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 93'

Producer: Masato Hara

Director: Toshiyuki Mizutani

Cast: Yoshino Kimura, Yû Kurosawa, Ken Ishiguro

GHOUL RATING: ** (2)

Story: This film's background is a real event, the earthquake which devastated the city of Kobe in January of 1995. Yukari Kamo (Yoshino Kimura) finds herself in Kobe, and offers her help in a shelter for the recently homeless victims of the quake. Her ability to read other people's minds is anything but welcome but, as it turns out, might come handy when she comes across Chihiro Moritani (Yu Kurosawa), who has a multiple personality syndrome. Out of the 13 characters inhabiting her brain one seems to be a murderous entity which calls itself Isola, apparently after a vengeful character from the collection of classic ghost stories UGETSU MONOGATARI. Several deaths later it seems that people who cross Isola's past are bound to die in some very unusual ways. Further research into her past discovers a certain scientific experiment which may have started it all. It will also provide another possible explanation for the killing-personality's name, as it has to do with an ISOLAtion chamber in a nearby institute…

Review: ISOLA starts nicely enough. It opens with a real horror, the Kobe earthquake (several shots only: don't expect large-scale sensational set-pieces of destruction, as this is a rather low budgeted film, and it shows). Then it introduces its troubled outcast characters, and appears to be a character driven horror. Sadly, this impression does not last, and the film quickly progresses into a muddled, conventional and shallow exercise in déjà vu. In the context of ISOLA's rather pulpish denouement, the Kobe documentary-footage prologue seems a bit arbitrary, and questionable as well. Using a real-life tragedy, including actual shots of destruction and desperate people in the streets, for the sake of… what? Elevating a conventional and undercooked horror flick?

A slow build-up at first seems OK, as the film appears to be about some people. However, their plights are soon forgotten and pushed aside while the storyline becomes more muddled, convoluted, uninteresting and… just plain boring. There are very few kills: one is a grotesque, (un)intentionally funny suicide of a girl who drowns herself by submerging her face in the toilet (!). The other is a somewhat more interesting ghost-induced suicide in which a professor who slapped Isola ends up jamming a bunch of chopsticks into his own neck, with a predictably strong (and so typically Japanese) geyser of blood spurting on unsuspecting customers of a diner (one of whom is Takashi Miike in a blink-and-miss cameo)! Other than those two scenes, the horror part is woefully underwhelming.

For a film that boasts the subtitle of a "multiple personality girl", it does not use the tiniest shred of this rarely found concept. We barely see ONE of those personalities, far from all THIRTEEN! The trials and tribulations of having all those people in your head… that sounds like an interesting idea for a good movie, but this is not the one. Nothing is really made with that: all we see is a cute girl (Akira Kurosawa's grand-daughter, Yu Kurosawa) bullied by her schoolmates and teachers, and small glimpses of Isola behind that. Pity for the wasted potential of some intriguing drama.

There's another fine concept wasted here: the sensory-deprivation chamber for inducing hallucinations in whoever is submerged in a solution which renders the body weightless and deprived of any sensations from the outside world, thus making space for those from inside. A great idea lifted from some actual scientific experiments, interestingly used in Ken Russell's extravagant ALTERED STATES. Sadly, it was not all that inspiring for Mr. Mizutani, the director of this flick. The isolation chamber's organic design is an improvement over the ugly, angular one from Russell's film, but that's as far as the inspiration has gone. The psychological and mystical trappings of this device are avoided altogether, while even the cinematic ones are barely touched upon.

The plodding direction brings everything to a conventional, derivative conclusion which will only leave you shrugging your shoulders – provided you're still awake as the end credits roll. Therefore, ISOLA is recommended only for die-hard fans of J-horror: it does show some potential, and there are interesting ideas and bits to be found here, but very little is done with them.

ISOLA is now available as a part of THE KADOKAWA HORROR COLLECTION, a four-disc set with variable contents. Other titles in it have already been reviewed separately at this blog: SHIKOKU is the best among them since it is the creepiest and most intriguing (although my colleague's review will lead you to believe otherwise); INUGAMI is another example of a great concept wasted for an artsy, dull movie, partly saved by its eye-candy use of stunning Japanese woods and mountains; in this company ISOLA is slightly better only when compared to the surprisingly shallow SHADOW OF A WRAITH (surprising - because WRAITH was directed by Toshiharu Ikeda, the man behind EVIL DEAD TRAP).

STICENIK (The Protected One, 1973)

2010-11-16T17:28:00.000-08:00

Directed by:

Djordje Kadijevic

Production:

Radio Television Belgrade, 1973

Running time:

46 min. (16 mm, b/w)

Screenplay:

Djordje Kadijevic,

based on a story by

Philip David

Director of photography:

Branko Ivatovic

Music and sound:

Milan Trickovic

Make up:

Lepa Prvanovic

Starring:

Milan Mihailovic

Dusan Janicijevic

Branko Plesa

Bogdan Jakus

Ljubomir Cipranic

Toma Kuruzovic

Svetlana Dragojevic

PLOT: A young man is running through the desolate area, surrounded by sand and an occasional blackened, barren tree, apparently fleeing from someone. He is followed by a man with a cold expression, wearing a black mantle. The young man reaches the large building of an asylum and requires the doctor to receive him and take care of him. He introduces himself as Michael, but refuses to say anything more about his persecutor. He denies hints that he may be sick, and believes that he does not need treatment, but only care and protection. The doctor is initially skeptical, but there is a shadow of a doubt because he himself saw, or thought he saw, someone who had followed Michael to the very asylum.

The second time, the follower comes into the asylum's yard and heads towards the building. The doorman stops him, claiming that it is not time for visits, but the Man just grabs him by the neck and throws him down to the ground. He leaves only when the screams attract attention of the rest of the staff and patients.

One morning, a doctor walks through the foggy wasteland, when he encounters the pursuer, seeking his protege back. He claims to be Michael's guardian. Michael has escaped him but, allegedly, he needs the kind of care that the doctors are unable to provide. The nameless "guardian" threatens a gloomy outcome if his protege is not delivered back to him...

REVIEW: The Protected One is another example of Djordje Kadijevic's skills in mature adaptation of a literary work so that, in his interpretation, it becomes even more complex, with the potential developed to the utmost. The literary text becomes only a point of departure for an intelligent and inspired author's superstructure, fully colored with Kadijevic's trademark style, but basically true to the original. This personal touch can be seen, among other things, in the very title: none of Kadijevic's horror adaptations (The She-Butterfly, The Maidenly Music and A Holy Place) is called by the title of stories they were inspired by ("After 90 Years", "Alpurarian Music", "Viy"). This freedom is fully deserved, because of the originality and seriousness evident in the director's approach.

The story "Michael and His Cousin" by Philip David originates from a collection of short stories A Well in the Dark Woods (1964). The central theme, in all of them, concerns man's inability to transcend earthly limitations and penetrate into the beyond. This is perhaps most explicitly present in the story "A Blind Bird," about a man obsessed with becoming a bird and flying away from his empty life. At the same time, stories of this collection speak of fascination with "the dark side" and inability to resist the metaphysical darkness, especially apparent in the collection's titular short story, in which a father fails to rescue his son from the mysteriously magnetic attraction of a well in the dark forest which no one else can see. "Michael and His Cousin" also falls into this thematic circle since it deals with inability of escaping one's destiny. David's story is merely nine pages long in print, and hardly comparable to a sketch. Kadijevic is inspired by this sketch to apply his paintbrush and make a detailed artwork worthy of Francisco de Goya.

Narrated from the perspective of an unnamed doctor, the story begins in a dark, stormy night when a mysterious fugitive enters the doors of asylum. In Kadijevic's film, it happens in broad daylight. True, this is a gray, overcast fall day filled with howling winds. In this author's films the day is as often the scene of horror as is the night, and he manages to create some of his most memorably spooky effects of his films in their daytime scenes. Even if these proceedings are, to some extent, due to the limitations of a cheap TV production and difficulties related to night shooting, the fact remains that Kadijevic has no problem circumventing this obstacle and finding terror in the cold daylight. This is actually closer to the point of David's prose, in which the light of day does not bring salvation.

Certainly the key moment in the story and the film version is the relationship between the young man and his pursuer. The true nature of the follower has intentionally been left foggy in both cases. In the story's title he is referred to as a "cousin", and later references describe ''a slender, elongated inhuman and swift figure'', ''unknown creature", ''a stranger'', ''persecutor'', "mysterious, tyrannical, parasitic creature'', ''unknown master", ''ghostly man'', ''phantom'' and so on.

The origin of this creature remains unclear, but subtle allusions suggest that he is most likely the Devil, who came for his due, for the soul of the one who unwisely, and perhaps unknowingly, sold it into predition. In any case, it is clear that the relationship with the "relative" does not come from blood ties, but that their connection is of a more intangible, more sophisticated nature. It is a relationship of a master and a (runaway) slave, or guardian and ward, "the protected one".

In fact, the story seems to repeat the situation of the classical German horror film Der Student von Prag (1913), screenplay written by H. H. Evers, but in a way that elliptically obscures the first phases of the plot, representing only its culmination, with no introduction and development. In the film by Stellan Rye a young student sells his reflection in the mirror (his soul) to a refined man of aristocratic manners, dressed in black. The latter is presented as Dr. Scapinelli, but it is clear that this is a devil incarnate. (See: Dejan Ognjanovic, Faustian screen: The Devil in Cinema) In the end, realizing what he has done, the boy runs away, but in vain, and his own reflection kills him. "The Buyer" appears to rejoice over the dead body of the student, ripping the contract, and symbolically taking the soul to eternal damnation… The Protected One ends in a very similar manner…

(This is an excerpt from the book on Serbian horror cinema In the Hills, the Horrors by Dejan Ognjanovic)

A SERBIAN FILM and other Serbian horrors in RUE MORGUE!

2010-11-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

"Subversive Serbia" was the name of a program at this year's Fantasia festival in Montreal which showcased new and much talked-about titles like The Life and Death of a Porn Gang and the notorious A Serbian Film, together with somewhat older horrors, all coming from a country not known for its genre fare. It was a success, both in terms of audience response (and awards) and in terms of the recognition by the jury and the press. It took the audiences by surprise – and by the throat!

A wave of shocking, transgressive and fascinatingly moving horrors, which some have hyperbolically compared to A Clockwork Orange, originated in what other reporters labeled "an undiscovered country." Well, the time is ripe to reveal new and old Serbian shockers to a larger audience.

That's where the renowned Canadian horror magazine RUE MORGUE enters to fill the gap and provide the belated, yet timely (!) introduction to Serbian horror films. The latest issue #106, which hit the North American stands on November 1st, boasts a large section on Serbian horrors, namely:

1) THE ART OF ATROCITY

This is my brief introduction to the recent real-life horrors which fuelled the new wave of Serbian films, coupled with a very thorough interview with Srdjan Spasojevic, the director of A Serbian Film. This is probably the longest and most thorough interview he's given so far – so brace yourself to hear what he had to say in answer to all these questions:

- One American critic called A Serbian Film – "one of the angriest films I've ever seen". What is the root of that rage?

- How did you get funding for such an extreme film?

- How difficult was it to cast such a movie, particularly the underage actor who plays Milos’ son?

- What’s your attitude towards horror? Although A Serbian Film is not a “pure” example of that genre, that’s the label it gets most often because of its extreme imagery, gore and shocks.

- How did you meet your co-screenwriter, Alexandar Radivojevic, and how did the story develop?

- Why title it A Serbian Film?

- Was the movie inspired by any particular real-life incidents, or is it simply the fallout of growing up during wartime?

- In A Serbian Film there are obvious influences from American, European and perhaps Japanese films. It has been compared to works by filmmakers as different as, say, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gaspar Noé, Pascal Laugier, Eli Roth, Tobe Hooper and Takashi Miike. What do you think about those, and who are your real influences?

- The movie is riddled with scenes of atrocity; what was the most difficult sequence to shoot?

- Why did you feel that the notorious “newborn porn” scene was necessary?

- Have audiences thus far understood your intentions with the scene?

- Tell us about some of the other problems you’ve run into. Is it true that you had to leave Germany because of the film?

- So, you’ll allow your film to be cut for some releases? What do you think about such demands?

- Do you consider the film dangerous?

- Are you working on another film now, and will it share a similar aesthetic to A Serbian Film? Take a similar approach?

The intro + the interview occupy stunning 4,5 blood-drenched pages of the mag!

2) PAIN AND PERVERSION IN THE BALKANS

This is my review of The Life and Death of a Porn Gang laced with snippets of interview with its director, Mladen Djordjevic. It takes ½ page.

3) TRADITION OF TERROR

A brief overview of all horror films ever made in Serbia, from the local-cult SHE-BUTTERFLY to the most recent ZONE OF THE DEAD. This intro is graced by the exclusive photos of these films, largely unknown in the West.

That's what occupies this unique 7-page Serbian horror special.

As for other horror contents, take a look HERE.

MEMORABLE SERBS IN FOREIGN HORRORS

2010-10-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

The new issue of the RUE MORGUE magazine, which hits the stands on November 1^st, has a spotlight on Serbian horror films, which includes: an introduction to the real-life horrors which gave birth to the cinematic ones, a very thorough interview with Srdjan Spasojevic (the director of A SERBIAN FILM), a brief presentation of another recent Serbian shocker (THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG) laced with the talk with its director, Mladen Djordjevic, and an overview of all Serbian horror films made up to date (more than a dozen gems waiting to be discovered by the Western audiences).

In order to announce this Serbian horror-special, I'll point out some of the more memorable and lasting impressions made by the Serbs upon the international horror scene.

- During the silent era, Iván Petrovich (real name: Svetislav) was a big star: he had major roles in such horror films as The Magician (1926) and Alraune (1928).

Also, in the Austrian-Hungarian film The Death of Dracula (1921) female lead was played by a Serbian actress Lene Myl. Sadly, all prints of this first screen adaptation of Dracula (made before Murnau's Nosferatu!) seem to be lost.

- In the curious Incubus (1966), a horror film entirely in Esperanto, the titular character is played by Milos Milos (!), a Serbian actor who soon after that film shot and killed the estranged wife of Mickey Rooney, Barbara Ann Thompson Rooney, and then killed himself.

- Srdjan Zelenovic

played Sacha (aka The Male Monster) in Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), as a representative of the Serbian uber-male who was supposed to father the master-race.

If only he weren't impotent...

- Olivera Katarina

played Vanessa Benedict, a waitress with a stunning buxom in Michael Armstrong's Mark of the Devil (1970). Her other genre credits include Devicanska Svirka (A Maiden's Music, 1973) and Carlston za Ognjenku (aka Tears for Sale, 2008).

- Rade Serbedzija

had a memorable role in Serbian disaster-horror film Variola Vera (1982). Later he had a successful international career, with roles in Eyes Wide Shut, Snatch, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, etc.

His genre credits include: Mighty Joe Young (1998), Stigmata (1999), The Fog (2005), The Eye (2008) and Quarantine (2008).

- Milla Jovovich,

the star of the Resident Evil series, is born of a Serbian father and Ukrainian mother. Her other horror credits include A Perfect Getaway (2009) and The Fourth Kind (2009).

- Bojana Novakovic

is another hot actress from Serbia whose horror outings so far include Drag Me to Hell (2009) and Devil (2010).

***

PS: - The French actress Simone Simon (pictured at the very top of this article) played a character named Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian cat woman in the original Cat People (1941). The legend of the cat people, as presented in the film, is a complete invention and has no correlation with Serbian folklore, just as her surname isn't even remotely Serbian.

T. T. Syndrome (2002)

2010-10-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

(T. T. Sindrom)

Serbia

105 min

Director: Dejan Zecevic
Screenplay: Dejan Zecevic
Cast: Nebojsa Glogovac, Sonja Damjanović, Nikola Djuricko, Branko Vidakovic, Dusica Zegarac
Producers: Milan Peca Nikolic, Pedja Milojevic

A group of young people try to score some weed. They go to the Turkish baths within the ancient Belgrade fort to meet a pusher, but end up trapped there and mercilessly killed one by one by a mysterious slasher clad in black leather. It all seems to have some connection with a strange and very rare T. T. Syndrome, but will they solve the mystery before they're all gone down the drain?

Zecevic creates a rather effective collage of slasher stereotypes mixed with an Argento-like whodunit (close-up fetishism of gloves, door handles and various sharp weaponry, plus the typical giallo motifs of a strong mother figure, childhood trauma and a haunting nursery rhyme). Relentless claustrophobia and tension in an inspired setting at their most effective resemble the highlights of early John Carpenter's and Tobe Hooper's films, while the vivid flashes of gore invoke the spirit of vintage Lucio Fulci.

T. T. Syndrome is the first Serbian horror film which does not feel obliged to justify itself with elements of more respectable genres or motifs. It does not imply a political allegory, although placing (and killing off) its youthful cast entirely in a public toilet might have been a statement about dashed hopes of post-Milosevic Serbia, after all! But above everything else, the movie uses motifs and style of slasher, plain and simple, to scare its audience. It is a horror fan's brainchild made first and foremost for other horror fans.

In spite of its shoestring budget, T. T. Syndrome can stand next to most American low-budget efforts without feeling inferior. Zecevic makes a most inventive use of his limited setting, the decrepit Turkish bath and public toilet. Through his directorial skill he creates a palpable menace within such a banal setting which, by the end which takes place in the fort's catacombs, attains almost mythical proportions. The film's technical side is quite competent, and the same can be said for the acting ensemble, including a few veterans from Variola Vera. T. T. Syndrome became a cult film in Serbia and even managed to get into several international genre festivals: Brussels, Sitges, Barcelona, Puchon, Luxembourg, Neuchatel, Ravenna, Trieste.

HELLEVATOR: THE BOTTLED FOOLS (2004)

2010-10-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Country: Japan

Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror

Running Time: 97 min.

Producer: Hideo Nishimura

Director: Hiroki Yamaguchi

Cast: Luchino Fujisaki, Yoshiichi Kawada, Ryôsuke Koshiba, Kae Minami…

GHOUL RATING:

**(*)

Story: 17-year old schoolgirl Luchino has a smoking problem. In an oppressive, futuristic society where smoking is prohibited, her attempt to violate this rule accidentally sets off a fire and explosion in one of the corridors. Running away, she ends up in an elevator, which is the main means of transport within the crammed megalopolis (which we never see, but so we’re told). Pretty soon she gets trapped there with a group of unusual characters, including two convicted rapists being escorted to their execution. Of course, they are not in chains for long, and then… blood splatters the sickly-greenish walls and floor…

Review: The title HELLEVATOR makes this sound like a cheesy Charles Band production (say, about a killer elevator in a ‘modern’ high-rise; or, a gateway to hell posing as an elevator, or some such); however, the original title BOTTLED FOOLS doesn’t make it sound much better. Under any other name, this rose would still smell low-budget but, luckily, this is not the type of flick the title(s) would make you expect. HELLEVATOR belongs to a subgenre that fat encyclopedias usually define as ‘a bunch of unsympathetic caricatures (or was it ‘characters’?) confined to a single set, yelling at each other for at least 90 minutes’. Being trapped in an elevator is bad enough; but, to be trapped with a gang of hysterically screaming Japanese provides a totally new definition of Hell - so I guess the American title is accurate after all. Add a couple of rapists and a mad scientist to liven up the proceedings, and you get bottled fools too.

The futuristic design and claustrophobic setting led some to compare this effort to a budgetary-challenged Canadian SF-horror CUBE (1998), and to be honest – some similarities are there: one main set, poor acting, lots of screaming, quite a lot achieved from the limited resources, etc. The main difference with CUBE and other members of the ‘confined claustrophobic quarrelling’ subgenre is that there is no immediate threat in the setting, or from outside. Horror comes mostly from inside the elevator. Freud said something like ‘A man is a wolf to another man’: or, to put it simply, it’s people giving hell to one another in this film. And not just the usual suspects (or convicts) either! Torment also comes from inside, since our main character, Luchino, is plagued by the memory of killing her abusive father (talk about Freud!), and – to add insult to injury – her telepathic abilities which enable her to peek into the unsavory minds of her fellow passengers.

HELLEVATOR was directed by Hiroki Yamaguchi, revealed in the additional features on the disc as a likable young man in his mid-twenties. Orson Wells he ain’t, but let’s say he could become a solid Japanese Don Coscarelli. Shot on digital video, with a group of unknowns, using (literally) discarded waste material for the sets, HELLEVATOR does not (and cannot) hide its very low budget origins. Yamaguchi uses all kinds of editing tricks to overcome the limitations of his setting and make the rhythm faster. Decent lighting and framing make the grainy images palatable, although the pea-soup-vomit color of the inside of elevator may become too oppressive after a while. In spite of no budget, Yamaguchi even managed to squeeze in an amazingly accomplished bullet-time sequence, and the ‘Making of’ documentary reveals the unbelievably simple way it was done!

All this is very well, but how much fun is there to be had on this HELLEVATOR ride? Let’s see. Gore is flowing freely: no complex latex effects here, but red spells red. The obligatory rape scene is there, too. What, you thought the Japanese would make a SF-horror without one? Hey, that would be like a good old American slasher from the ’80-ies without a shower scene! Cool gadgets made of scrap? Check! Uber-cool characters? There’s this guy with dark shades and a walkman, sitting in a corner, unmoved through most of the carnage; how’s that for ‘cool’? Heroine, on the other hand, is pretty, but bland (let’s say: pretty bland). All the rest are the kind you cannot wait to see dispatched ASAP. Any subtext for your intellect to chew on? Well, you might read some into it, what with the oppressive society of the future as imagined by a teenage boy who hasn’t read much else than manga, but that’s as far as it gets. The ‘twist’ ending might give you some food for thoughts, provided you freeze-frame it to see what’s there for 15 frames (non-Japanese viewers are advised to watch the interviews on the disc for further explanation. Note: that blink-and-miss image was NOT the Eiffel tower!).

The end result is a watchable, occasionally entertaining, but mostly underdeveloped and uninvolving film. It is a great showcase for its director: we should pray that he gets more money, and more inspiration, for his further films, for he certainly showed a considerable technical talent here. In the future, let’s hope for more substance to his stories, and more budget and style to his direction. Till then, you may want to rent this, but I’m not sure how much it deserves to be owned and re-watched.

A HOLY PLACE (Sveto mesto, 1990)

2010-09-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Director: Djordje Kadijevic

Screenplay: Djordje Kadijevic (based on Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy")

Cast: Dragan Jovanovic, Branka Pujic, Aleksandar Bercek, Mira Banjac

Producers: Zoran Otasevic, Dusan Kalmic

Country: Serbia 1990

Running time: 90 min

In this photo:

DP Aleksandar Petkovic (far left), the director Djordje Kadijevic (next to him)

This is the version of Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy" that foreign audiences have barely ever seen (and most have probably never heard of it, too). Unlike the rather benign Russian fantasy (VIY 1967), the Serbian version is definitively for adults, both in terms of erotic and horrific content. The story is still about a reluctant theology student forced to spend three nights in a row in a spooky locked church reading the Psalms over the (un)dead girl. All the while supernatural forces are trying to grab him from the Holy Circle drawn on the floor. Gogol's half-humorous story is enriched into a more complex one by the new back-story for the witch-girl and her father. They provide an unparalleled excess of perversity and terror, whose intensity is unique among other, tamer Slavic attempts at producing fear.

In Kadijevic's version, the character of Catherine is an embodiment of a femme fatale. A number of flashbacks reveal the young woman as a true devourer of men and, in a rare example of an explicit lesbian scene within the Serbian cinema, of women too. Catherine's back-story is learned through a gradual process, with three separate stories about her (each more horrible than the previous one), heard on three successive nights. The final "turn of the screw" (completely invented by the screenwriter/director), is reminiscent of the powerful climaxes in Pupi Avati's Italian rural gothics, suggesting the corruption and perversion hidden beneath the respectable appearances.

This "Serbian Gothic" is psychologically motivated. For Kadijevic (the veteran of Serbian cinema), the human condition is quite sufficient as a source of horror, and the eternal struggles of Eros and Thanatos seem to be at its core. A Holy Place is most reminiscent of Mario Bava's gothic films, both in terms of elaborate visuals and a serious, dramatic treatment of the story and characters. Barely noticed at the time of its release, A Holy Place remains a hidden gem of psycho-supernatural horror which the audiences outside of Serbia have yet to discover.

The film is not available on DVD with English subtitles. This Divx with fan-made subs is the only option for those who didn't catch it on the big screen at Fantasia's SUBVERSIVE SERBIA program.

FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION: BEAST STABLE (1973)

2010-09-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

Country: Japan

Genre: Crime

Format: DVD

Running Time: 88'

Distributor: Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters

Director: Shunya Ito

Cast:Meiko Kaji, Yayoi Watanabe, Takashi Fujiki, Koji Fujiyama

GHOUL RATING:

*** (3)

Story: Some 'prisoner'! Matsu the Scorpion (Meiko Kaji) spends most of her time running away from the cops and criminals (usually equally sleazy and interchangeable!), and pissing off the bossy prisoners if/when temporarily imprisoned. This time, in the third part of the series, she is offered a hiding place with a prostitute who's pregnant with her mentally challenged brother's child. Matsu is captured by the colorful criminals and put in a cage with ravens. As usual, it doesn't take long before she escapes, leaving blood-sprayed walls and white sheets behind. Forced to hide in the sewers, Matsu is helped by the prostitute who brings her food, but the police follow her trail and prepare one last trap, filling the sewers with gas and lighting a match…

Review: The film opens with one of the all time greatest credits scenes: caught and handcuffed by a cop in the subway, Matsu severs his arm with a knife and runs away with it still attached to her wrist. She's running through half of the city with a bloody arm dangling around her while the great "Urami Bushi" theme song is playing over the credits. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense (talk about drawing attention to yourself!), but the FEMALE PRISONER series is not about making sense, it's about looking beautiful and cool while being outrageous. The first three parts of the series, all directed by Shunya Ito, firmly reside on the border between fanciful exploitation and art cinema, providing a full spectrum of cinematic pleasure for the viewer inclined towards the weird, unusual, irrational.

BEAST STABLE is slightly more restrained in terms of excessively surreal imagery, but that's only in comparison to the previous part (FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION: JAILHOUSE 41), which is matchless and best in the series. On its own, it is a non-stop sequence of wonderful imagery with vivid colors, imaginative framing, quick editing, fine camping, and unpredictable bursts of ultra-violence. The characters, situations and actions are over the top, but that's exactly what makes this series a darling among the fans of real good exploitation (Tarantino included). Let's check some elements of this concoction. Severed arm. Prostitution. Tits. Retards. Rape. Boiling water in the face. Golf club genital torture. Ravens. Gynecological punishment. Scalpel revenge. Trial by fire. Psychological torture. Razor strangling. And much more. No one can call Shunya Ito an underachiever! He delivers!

And talking about delivery, Meiko Kaji delivers, too. She's at the top of her game, mostly silent, but with expressive features and developed body language which speak volumes. She's certainly one of the coolest characters of action-crime genre ever, anywhere, and is a joy to watch in every second she's onscreen. The violence and extreme content in the film are beautifully stylized so as to be enjoyed as fantasy (after all, this series is based on a manga): you won't feel dirty after watching the film, but will beg for more.

And more comes in the fourth part, FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION: GRUDGE SONG, but, unfortunately, it's not directed by Ito, and it shows. Meiko Kaji is still there, so it's certainly worth watching, but the direction is not so stylish (except for the ending, which is so overripe it's just ridiculous). The screenplay provides some really out-of-place moments, like the sub-plot about Matsu's love affair (!), and the flick is not even dynamic or eventful enough to fully satisfy those spoiled by the first three parts, although it's decent enough for fans of this kind of entertainment.

DVD [ NTSC, Region 1 ] : FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION: BEAST STABLE is presented in an anamorphic widescreen with the film's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio preserved. Made from a solid print, it shows off vivid colors and fine contrasts. The sound is only Japanese (who would want an English dub anyway?), in Dolby Digital mono. Translation and subtitles are excellent and make the enjoyment of the film a smooth ride. It could use some more extras (like, commentaries or interviews), since it that department all the disc offers are trailers, scene access and image gallery. The same kind of extras are there on the GRUDGE SONG disc, too, but it must be said that the image of that film is not presented so perfectly (dark scenes are too bright, with weak contrasts). If you had to choose only one of these two, there's absolutely no doubt which to take (Part three! Part three! BEAST STABLE!), but lovers of the series and completists will (understandably) want both of these, and won't regret the decision.

Reviewed by DEJAN OGNJANOVIĆ

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS Script Review

2010-08-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

If you like horror in any shape or form, then you must've read one of the greatest, scariest and most intelligent SF-horror novels of the 20th century - AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H. P. Lovecraft.

And, if you like horror movies, then you probably know that Guillermo del Toro (HELLBOY) is set to direct a solid-budget version of AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS with James Cameron producing. The recent announcement that the long-gestating project will be financed by Cameron's AVATAR money was largely considered good news. With dozens of announced Del Toro projects in various stages, this development made it seem like this particular film is going to happen, after all. And reasonably soon, too.

Well, I managed to lay my tentacles on the screenplay for AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, written by Guillermo Del Toro and Matthew Robbins, and here's what I thought of it.

Before you read it, just a brief note - as it turns out, the version of the script this review is based on is a slightly older one: there were three more drafts after this one. See the PS note at the bottom of this text.

Briefly: it feels like a HELLBOY movie without Hellboy, with a light dose of Carpenter's THE THING.

It's not as bleak as Lovecraft's novel or Carpenter's film which was vaguely inspired by the spirit of this same novel, although based on J. W. Campbell's novella. With the kind of budget this film will require one cannot reasonably expect it to go too far into the unconventional and risqué territory. I guess we should be content with the fact that this is most definitely a script for an R-rated monster-fest and there's no way of cutting it down to a PG-13 or some such shit without throwing more than a half away. However, with all the monster-mayhem, this still remains a Lovecraft-lite project.

There's plenty to like and a few things to dislike in this script.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, as written by Del Toro and Robbins, is definitely aimed at those who "know" their Lovecraft from second- or third-hand: not directly from his stories, but from the way his work was re-imagined and grotesquely dumbed-down by the pop-culture. by this I mean his genre fiction "followers" (in name only, mostly), comics, video-games, RPG, heavy metal songs and the like. Those who perceive Lovecraft merely as an eccentric who wrote about some cool mega-monsters with lots of tentacles and slimy orifices are in for a treat here. Because that's ALL of Lovecraft they're gonna get. Those who expect a certain meaning and symbolism behind those "monsters" – those who expect philosophy – cosmic horror – loads of atmosphere, suspense, build-up... Well, not much of that, sadly.

It is a period piece: the frame story takes place in 1939, at the very beginning of World War 2 (quite unnecessary and silly parallel!), but the bulk of the film is made up of a flashback narration by the last survivor of the previous expedition to the South Pole from 1930. Of course, it is told to the chief of the new expedition going there… This being a classic, I guess there's no need for going too much into details, you know the plot. Scientists go to Antarctica, find remnants of primaeval, alien creatures, reveal terrible things about the (pre)human history. In this version, it si somewhat simplified into: Scientists go to Antarctica, resurrect primaeval monsters, mayhem ensues.

WHAT TO EXPECT?

1) More monsters, creatures, mutants, hybrids than in the entire Lovecraft's opus.

Just to make myself clear: I love me some cool movie monsters as any guy, and then some. Especially if those monsters are made-up of humans – men and women merging with things, or other creatures, human forms emerging from blobs of alien flesh with plenty of tentacles... ehhh, there's nothing out there in horror cinema to please me more. This script takes Lovecraft's concept of Shoggoths – large blobs of intelligent protoplasm which can assume any shape (including human) – and runs with it to lengths that Lovecraft never bothered with. In his novel, those creatures had a clever role in the complex history of the rise and fall of The Old Ones (basically, slaves rebelling and destroying their masters). In this film, they are a perfect alibi for countless scenes of cool monster action – those blobs swallowing, partly digesting and re-creating humans (and dogs) into shapes nature never intended. The bigger picture they belong to is paid just a brief lip service, in a couple of lines of dialogue you might just miss while checking your text messages.

Yes, there will be inevitable comparisons to THE THING: the magnitude of some shape-shifting scenes here definitely surpasses what Carpenter (and Rob Bottin) concocted; there are dog-things and dog-related action similar to THE THING as well; and some brief "is he human or Shoggoth?" doubts – though, what with all the stress on action, there's no time to lose on suspense, atmosphere, drama and stuff like that. Also, there is a much quicker and simpler test here, to see if one is a thing or human.

Like in THE THING, there are numerous characters in this script, briefly sketched, even more so here since there must be at least two dozen of them – plenty of food for Shoggoths, for sure, but only 3 or 4 of them really stand out as characters at all. The main guy, Dyer, is pretty lame, defined solely through the either/or dilemma: pregnant wife at home or scientific breakthrough at the South Pole. (Enter the moralizing tone, typical for Del Toro, and totally absent in Lovecraft – even more obvious in the character of an unscrupulous Doctor Lake, a comic-book Mad Scientist sacrificing everything and everyone to reach his goal. Damn those pulps!)

I never thought I could have too many creatures, but there's such an overload of them in this script that at some point they lose their entire scare factor and become just cool effects in broad snowy daylight – interesting images to enjoy while detachedly observing the fight of two-dimensional characters against them.

As for other thingees: The Old Ones have very little to do (except one human dissection which could be cool unless it's too brief to register); the albino penguins are slightly more prominent in this script than in the novel, but still remain mostly in the role of creepy bystanders; and, in case your monster-thirst remains insatiated, at the very end there is (yet another) appearance of Cthulhu itself! This last detail (if you can consider the mountain-sized monster – a detail!) is not only incongruous but downright stupid. Cthulhu is supposed to be "sleeping" in the deep warm waters of Pacific Ocean in his lair at R'Lyeh – not in the ice wastes of Antarctica!

No, this is not just some "geek" nit-picking: I'm all for artistic liberties and reimaginings (and there's plenty of those in this script – some of them fine), but bringing Cthulhu into this story out of nowhere makes absolutely no sense whatsoever within the film's own dumbed-down "mythology". It seems like an artificial, forced attempt at upping the ante and out-climaxing the climax – but, with no rhyme or reason. Hell, bring in Yog Sothoth and Shub Niggurath to the party, too. The more, the merrier! Or not?

Much as Lovecraft was accused of not knowing when to stop, his balanced, mostly restrained prose and well-thought narrative from his masterwork is used here as a starting point for a non-plus-ultra in monster-exaggeration with very little subtlety preserved. Lovecraft was forced to publish most of his works in pulp magazines, but his best work (such as AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS) is most definitely NOT pulp fiction. This script, in its essence, IS pulp – but big budget may hide this fact from many. And after decades of cheap direct to video in name only "adaptations" with shoddy effects and laughable dialogues – Del Toro's large-scale version will certainly be a step-up and a welcome improvement, at least in terms of visuals. Other than THE THING, FROM BEYOND, DEEP RISING and HELLBOY, few other films have even tried creatures this elaborate. That department certainly won't disappoint.

2) More action, action and action than in the entire Lovecraft's opus.

There are fights, flights, chases, shoot-outs, cliffhangers, last second salvations, big explosions... The pace is quick: once the action starts, around 30 minute mark, it never stops. NEVER. So, once this gets made and you go to the theater (as you should!), grab your popcorn in time and go to the bathroom BEFORE the film, because there's not a minute of non-action here to waste.

This approach is understandable in the light of bringing droves (and drones) of youthful audience into the theatre: Del Toro certainly doesn't want to bore them with some big thoughts or life-changing revelations. He's out there to entertain you with incredible creatures, action and 'splosions. Nothing wrong with that – unless you're one of a dozen remaining people on this planet who still believe that Lovecraft was about more, much more than that.

WHAT NOT TO EXPECT?

1) There's relatively little stress on atmosphere. OK, the Antarctica setting is spooky in itself, but it's mostly used as a background for chase and action scenes. Very little space for poetry and weird, alien beauty of the landscape. Hopefully they add some of that.

2) Don't expect a long and complex retelling of the history of the Old Ones – the bit that, according to many critics, is the key innovative element of Lovecraft's novel. It is the narrative which powerfully surpasses the pulpy Good/Evil dichotomies and presents a complex, clever and highly relevant account incomparable to genre fiction of its times – or to genre movies of our times, apparently. In this script, it is reduced to 3 or 4 sentences. I hope they make it a bit longer, and stress the human place in the entire story more convincingly and powerfully.

3) The section from the novel when the expedition goes deep, deep, insanely deep into the bowels of the Mountains of madness is entirely gone. Perhaps the scariest part of the book is gone completely. The submerged city in the deep caverns, too. None of that here. And very little exploring of the city above, as well. It seems like they discover the bas-reliefs with the Old Ones' history in the first building they come across, and that's it. I wanted to see more of the deserted city of the Old Ones!

4) Don't expect the same ending as in the novel. Expect a more predictable one.

To sum up: it all depends on your expectations. It'll definitely be an entertaining creature feature. The big budget will certainly buy some creative people to depict those cool monsters, and it will be a joy to see them on a big screen, in 3-D. I'll be there to see it the first chance I get, no doubt about it.

If, on the other hand, you're not too happy with the idea of turning Lovecraft's far more complex (and scary!) novel into a rollercoaster monster romp, well, tough luck. You'll have to pray to Azathoth that this film earns enough money for a much belated resurrection of Lovecraft at the movies. With greater interest for his stuff among the movie audiences, who knows, maybe someone, some day, will conceive and produce a truly Lovecraftian film which will not be pulp – a film to capture Lovecraft's spirit, not just creatures? For now, we'll have to be content with those.

PS: In the meantime, I got a message from someone close to the production in reaction to my review, and he said that the version I read & reviewed above is older, an that there are some (minor, I'd say) changes in the current version. Also, that the Thing appearing at the end is not really Cthulhu (as it was labelled in the version I read), but that it is some other, nameless 'deity'. This person also said that much of the detail remains VISUAL instead of TEXTUAL or dialogue oriented. What I called "poetry" and "atmosphere" is entirely dependant on execution, tempo and visual design, and thus not "scriptable". Or so they say.

Let's see.

With all possible pitfalls I mentioned (and some that I hadn't – like the WW2 allusions, which, for me, diminish the timeless horrors of Lovecraft to a historically superseded and all-too-human nazi horror), Del Toro's film is still the best chance Lovecraftian cinema has to break through from the confines of schlocky B-movies. With all due respect to Stuart Gordon, whom I interviewed a month ago at Fantasia (and whose work I more than respect and love!), I think Del Toro is the only real hope for truly Lovecraftian cinema at this moment, especially on this large scale. Well, maybe a mutant between Carpenter, Herzog and Lynch would do a better job at capturing the 'madness' part of these mountains, but as things stand, he's the one holding the torch. I can only pray that the production does not require too many compromises, and that they let him make an adequately dark and provoking vision of truly epic, alien terror.

PPS: A few more exclusive MADNESS pics, made in the John Hay Library at the Brown University, Providence, RI.

1. A certain Lovecraftian scholar poring over the original manuscript of HPL's MOUNTAINS:

2. Lovecraft's magazines with his stories in them + more of the MOUNTAINS manuscript:

3. A certain Lovecraftian scholar with Lovecraft's own copy of the issue of ASTOUNDING in which MOUNTAINS was originally published.