The Horror Geek – News, Rants and Reviews From The Horror Geek!

After the box office success of the indie-film juggernaut The Blair Witch Project almost anyone with a camcorder and a few buddies thought that they could make just as good a film by taping events as they transpired in their backyard—yet, despite the enthusiam of a gazillion wannabe auteurs, there’s only been one film to come out and mimic BWP’s cinema verite style…1998’s The Last Broadcast—a film that actually predates The Blair Witch Project.

TLB is a faux documentary about about Steven Avkast (Stefan Avalos) and Locus Wheeler (Lance Weiler)—two guys who host a local public access cable show that explores the paranormal entitled Fact or Fiction. In December of 1995, Steven and Locus plan a live remote broadcast from the New Jersey Pine Barrens—the supposed haunting grounds of the infamous Jersey Devil. The two hosts, along with sound guy Rein Clackin (Rein Clabbers) and supposedly psychic guide Jim Suerd (Jim Seward) set off into the isolated forest, taping their trek. After a long dark night in the forest, only Suerd returns to civilization—Wheeler and Clackin are found murdered and mutilated, Avkast is never found at all.

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Lionsgate has a disturbing new trend happening with their releases. The company’s never been bashful about putting horror movies in theaters, but over the past couple of years they’ve “dumped” some films rather unceremoniously onto a tiny number of screens (to fulfill the theatrical release part of the contract, one would guess) with no promotion and then whisked them away to DVD. In the case of Ryuhei Kitamura’s Midnight Meat Train, this mishandling on Lionsgate’s part sucked. One could make a similar argument for Joel Schumacher’s Blood Creek. Schumacher’s film isn’t as good as Kitamura’s, but it certainly deserved a better fate than what it got.

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If you were to walk up to the average man on the street and ask him what he knew about Lucio Fulci, you’d undoubtedly be greeted by blank stares and a resounding round of ‘who?’. If you asked the average horror fan what he knew about Lucio Fulci, he’d most likely tell you about how Fulci was revered by fans of demented cinema and christened the ‘godfather of gore’. You’d no doubt here about his film Zombi, and how it ushered in an immensely popular (and long lived) cycle of Italian zombie flicks. And while this answer is a good one, it really only illuminates one facet of Fulci’s career. Prior to the success of Zombi, Fulci had made literally dozens of films—working in whatever genre was hot at the moment…be it the gialli, the western, or even comedy. In fact, many of his early films eschew the gore elements almost entirely—showing that the late director could make films that were successful for reasons other than because they piled on buckets of blood.

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Perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to Michele Soavi’s super cool 1988 horror film The Church is to refer to it as Demons 3. Sure, the first Demons flick is great, and the second is, well… not bad, but this film is something entirely different from its predecessors. Where the first two Lamberto Bava-helmed films relied on gore, action, and frenetic pacing, Soavi’s film takes a much more atmospheric approach–with some interesting results.

In the beginning, a group of Teutonic Knights destroy a village of witches, burying their remains and building a large gothic church on the gravesite to hold the evil in. Jump to the present day, where the cathedral still stands. A new librarian arrives (Tomas Arana) and meets a woman doing restoration work within the church (Barbara Cupisti). After workers find cracks in the building’s foundation, the two discover an ancient scroll, telling of the church’s secret–and setting in motion events that will unleash an ancient evil.

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Over the course of the past few years, I’ve been pretty vocal when it comes to just how tired I am of Asian horror films. It’s not xenophobia, but instead an ever-present feeling of “been there, done that” when I sit down to watch one of these films. Invariably, they all have some convoluted giallo-esque tale about someone who died (usually a young woman with long straight hair) from being wronged by someone else. Unable to rest in peace, these angry girl ghosts always come back (with their long dark hair framing their pasty ghost faces) and haunt those who did them wrong–or in some cases, those who might set things right–and we eventually arrive at a big twist conclusion. This usually occurs after numerous scenes where this undead specter appears out of nowhere and creates countless “cat through the window” moments to make everyone jump. Then the films almost always provide a mundane explanation for why these supernatural events are happening. As far as genre templates go, the Asian horror film is the new slasher: it adheres rigidly to a formula, the films have become almost interchangeable, and the pissed off girl ghosts with hair in their face are as ubiquitous as the masked killers of countless ‘80s stalk-and-kill flicks. It’s just too bad that the Asian horror films are so goreless and devoid of sleaze—that’s what kept me watching slashers long after everyone else had grown tired of them.

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Thanks to the explosion of Euro-horror releases on DVD American horror film fans finally have access to some of the more impressive (and rare) movies to emanate in Europe. No longer do fans of directors like Jess Franco, Lucio Fulci, or Mario Bava have to make do with bootlegs or heavily edited video releases from the 1980s. No, now fans can run down to their local Best Buy and pick up movies like the one we’re discussing today—Amando De Ossorio’s groovy 1971 zombie flick, Tombs of the Blind Dead.

Opening up with some great footage of the desolate ruins of an ancient Abbey, the film tells the story of the of the ancient Knights Templar—a group of mystic crusaders from the middle ages who were eventually excommunicated for dabbling in the black arts in a quest to gain immortality. These knights stole women from the nearby villages, using them as sacrifices in their black rituals—at least until the townspeople got fed up. The knights were sentenced to death, hung from trees (where crows ate their eyeballs), then later buried at the Abbey.

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In 1977, Italian horror maestro Mario Bava would release what would be the final feature length film of his illustrious career, Shock aka Beyond the Door II–a film that ended his career on a strangely ironic note.

Bava was one of the greatest visual stylists of Italian horror cinema. His best films (e.g. Black Sunday, Blood and Black Lace, Lisa and the Devil) were surreal, almost gothic affairs. Bava used his keen eye (he started his career as a cinematographer) and flamboyant camera movements to create films that were visually arresting, yet slightly left of center—somehow removed from modern day reality even when they were set in it. Couple this with his love of lurid lighting (particularly noticeable in his seminal giallo Blood and Black Lace–a film that would undoubtedly inspire the lighting scheme of Dario Argento’s Suspiria) and Bava’s work becomes something of a visual precursor to the movies of contemporary filmmaker Tim Burton.

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The cover to Ken Wiederhorn’s 1976 zombie film Shock Waves proclaims that it’s ‘the best of the nazi zombie movies. That’s not false advertising, as this is, indeed, the best of the nazi zombie flicks (although Dead Snow and Outpost now give it a run for its money. HG). Of course, being the best film in a subgenre filled with bad movies isn’t something most people would brag about, but in this case, I think the bragging is justified—because Shock Waves is a creepy little film that few people have had the pleasure of seeing.

The plot of the film is a lot like an episode of Gilligan’s Island. A group of pleasure boaters (led by captain John Carradine) run into a giant boat in the middle of the ocean—yeah, Carradine and first mate Luke Halpin make Gilligan and the Skipper look like Sir Frances Drake and Amerigo Vespucci. The next morning, they discover that the ship is damaged badly enough to require an evacuation—and luckily enough, there’s a deserted island nearby. Unfortunately, the island isn’t really deserted…it’s inhabited by a lone Nazi commander (played by the always entertaining Peter Cushing).

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No live organism can continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone–Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

The Danvers State Mental Institute is not Hill House, but it doesn’t take much to apply Shirley Jackson’s memorable description of that haunted home to the large, foreboding, and empty mental institution that serves as the focal point of Brad Anderson’s horror film, Session 9. If normal homes can slowly go crazy with the passage of time, what might happen to an institution where the mentally disturbed once dwelled? How crazy might a building like that become after being left empty and to its own devices?

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It’s the summer of 1970 and a camera prowls across the desolate southern California landscape, highlighting vibrant red rocks and a chillingly blue lake before revealing a hippy commune up on the ridge. It’s your prototypical hippy institution, with several men and women hanging out, listening to music, and painting flowers on one girl’s bare breast. However, things aren’t as tranquil as they seem.

Moments later, a stranger enters camp. His name is Damon (Tomas Arana) and he’s a grizzled hippy in his own right, one with a penchant for quoting lines from The Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. Despite his Manson-esque appearance, our hippies welcome this stranger into their camp—and ultimately pay for it with their lives.

And so begins Michele Soavi’s 1990 film, The Sect, a movie that blends Italian horror film aesthetics with a plotline borrowed from Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

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