Homecoming (2005)

A highly entertaining political satire.

The Screwfly Solution (2006)

Buffalo wings. I'm addicted to them. Seriously addicted. When a new Buffalo Wild Wings opened less than a mile from my home a few years a ago, I would instantly become a regular and the future recipient of an ulcer or two. And, recently, I discovered a better way to eat Buffalo wings: baked, with Frank's Red Hot Buffalo wing sauce! So, you can image my satisfaction on Saturday night when I sat down with a big bowl of baked Buffalo wings and watched a horror movie!

Just like the wings (which were demolished within three minutes), the movie was great. Of the Masters of Horror offerings I've seen, The Screwfly Solution ranks among the strongest in both concept and execution. No easy feat when you have under an hour; but for this time constraint I love the Masters of Horror series. With features just under an hour in duration, they are the perfect solution for someone with severe A.D.D. Or, if it's late and you're tired, but you can't go to sleep without watching a horror movie: MoH!

Anyway, back to the movie. Great plot, though not original; click here for the Wikipedia information on the 1977 short story by Raccoona Sheldon. Plot: Something is causing men everywhere to brutally murder women who arouse them--a common, frequent occurrence in the life of a typical, heterosexual man. This alone set the stage for some truly creepy scenes, whether you're a man or a woman. The movie plays off the notion that we humans are merely insects in a garden (many references to the biblical Garden of Eden), and an exterminator (God? Aliens?) has been sent to eradicate our existence; and what better way to eradicate humankind than by killing off all the women?

Sam Hamm (writer) and Joe Dante (director) do a great job adapting Sheldon's story. I loved the character shift from the (female) epidemiologist, first and foremost. Just when I thought the movie was going to follow this assertive heroine as she fought through bureaucratic government forces to uncover and expel the root of the epidemic, that door is closed and the focus shifts to Jason Priestley and his family. Dante is able to pull off some fairly dramatic moments despite being pressed for time; and despite poor acting on part of the daughter, the viewer is drawn into their lives enough to care what happens. The always reliable Elliott Gould is under utilized, thrown in for good measure. But he still manages to add some depth to the film, and reveals his true purpose toward the end.

Cheers to Dante for the consistent white-noise transitions that ultimately brought the film to a close; for injecting a quick clip of a Miike film (Imprint?); and for foreshadowing the notion of aliens. Wings and The Screwfly Solution were a perfect pair for a late Saturday night. I thoroughly enjoyed the film from start to finish, and I look forward to future MoH installments I haven't seen yet. Thanks to Netflix for instant, streaming movies, a selection that includes quite a few from this Showtime series. If you haven't seen this one, check it out. Have fun!

Dream Cruise (2007)

The acting is rigid, and the plot is lame. This film exemplifies the reason so many people view horror movies as a waste of time. And to all J-Horror filmmakers: Please stop using multitudes of supernatural hair!

Family (2007)

Not so much a horror movie as it is a dark comedy. Well, truly it's just a comedy with creepy elements. George Wendt plays an excellent serial killer who suffers from delusions that we, the audience, get to enjoy! This film is filled with wit and twisted fun. It's definitely worth a watch, but don't expect anything close to MoH offerings such as Pelts, Imprint, or Cigarette Burns.

Valerie on the Stairs (2006)

This movie wasn't by any means outstanding, but as an aspiring fiction writer myself, I couldn't help but embrace the plot. Also, all the little "writer" details were pleasing: the use of Courier New font; the backspacing and correcting of the film's title; "Doc Brown's" (he will never be Christopher Lloyd) self-correction of well versus good; the constant reminders that writer's a far from sane; and, of course, the rejections slips. Other than that, the movie was just okay. A few musical stings and some cliche mirror stunts.

The Black Cat (2006)

Synopsis: Events that inspire Edgar Allen Poe to write The Black Cat.

Like(s): I'm currently writing a paper on Poe and his personal theory on dreams (specifically viewing "wakeful dreams" as an achievement of the profound), so when I saw that there was a MoH film based on Poe and his story The Black Cat, I couldn't resist. And I'm glad I didn't. This movie combined other stories (e.g. The Tell-Tale Heart and The Imp of The Perverse) with a short overview of Poe's later life, specifically the trials and tribulations he faced. Elyse Levesque played a dazzling Virginia Clemm and Jeffrey Combs portrayed a striking Poe. Thank you, Stuart Gordon, for taking the time to freshen up this nineteenth century masterpiece!

Dislike(s): I have no qualms with this movie. As much as I want to say 'it could've been longer,' I know this was intended to be short, and it sticks to Poe's theory of brevity, as found in "The Poetic Principle."

Candidate For Omission: No.

Deer Woman (2005)

Synopsis: An attractive Native American woman enchants guys and then slaughters them.

Like(s): I liked the humor; it had the feel of an episode of The Office.

Dislike(s): This was by no means a horror movie. It was excessively cheesy..

Candidate For Omission: Yes.

Also Recommend: Anything else.

Pelts (2006)

Argento's Pelts is the first MoH entry I've seen so far that gives Miike's Imprint a run for its money. Dario Argento took a decent plot and poured on the graphic gore to produce a highly disturbing horror flick. Honestly, I cannot decide which was more disturbing to watch: Pelts or Imprint. What do you think?

The plot seems like it was thought up by a couple of guys out drinking. Some fat guy, who makes and sells illegal fur coats, is obsessed with a local stripper. He recovers the deadly pelts from one of his suppliers and aims to use them to sleep with her. Okay, it's deeper than that, but who cares? The point of this movie is to evoke terror and repugnance...and it gets the job done.

My favorite thing about the brutality was that it got increasingly worse. I hate it when the most vicious kill is done at the beginning of the movie. As the movie went on, each brutal scene got harder to watch. the special effects were equally mind-blowing; I couldn't believe how realistic they were. I'd have to say it's a tie between the guy cutting into his stomach with the scissors and the kid snaring his face at the beginning, as far as most uncomfortable to watch.

One last thing to note is how, like Jenifer, Argento connected the beginning to the end with the severed raccoon arm!

High honors for Pelts, a shrine to self-mutilation. Now, help me figure out whether I should move Imprint to second place.

Review Soundtrack:
Kanye West - "Heartless"
The Melvins - "Mechanical Bride"

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Right to Die (2007)

Right to Die can be summed up by the title of Shakespeare's play All's Well That Ends Well. Not that the rest of the movie didn't go well, but the final scenes left me entertained and satisfied. This is a great example of how to make a horror movie clever and fun while maintaining a strong level of seriousness and repulsion.

The plot is interesting and holds up for the duration of the film. A scheming, cheating husband escapes a car crash, but his wife suffers terrible burns and is placed on life support. Each time she flatlines her spirit comes for her unfaithful husband, seeking revenge and uncovering his dark secret. He reacts by urging the hospital to drop the DNR he originally issued, desperately trying to keep his wife alive in order to thwart her murderous intentions.

The special effects are spectacular. I've seen countless burn victims in movies, but this one is definitely in the top echelon. The wife's lips and eyelids have been burned away which allows for a disturbing pair of eyes and set of teeth behind the gauze wrapping. Each time she looks at someone (directly at the camera/audience) it sends chills down your spine. A notable scene involving the burn victim is where the husband walks in on the hospital workers picking tattered clothing from his wife's bloody body.

The first time she dies, she visits the husband in their home and an intimate scene quickly turns grotesque. This is when we first start to learn that her spirit comes for him when she physically dies. In another scene, after he has foolishly slept with his mistress again, his wife flatlines. The mistress leaves the bedroom to fetch some glasses of wine and starts sending him risqué pictures from her camera phone. As he scrolls through the snapshots, his wife suddenly appears in the background. This scare tactic has been used repeatedly in movies, but it is still highly entertaining.

The movie found its rhythm just after the scene where the husband decides to use the skin from his mistress to save his wife's life--she needs the skin or she will die; the hospital cannot find a donor. He takes her to his office where he works as a dentist, straps her to one of the operating chairs, and gives her some gas. Then, he starts cutting along the dotted lines he has drawn to easily extract large sheets of her skin. The husband and the mistress have this comical dialog that lights up the screen with personality.

In the next scene, the husband is racing to the hospital with a cooler full of human flesh and his mistress's body parts strapped to the roof of his Smart car. Irony: He swerves to miss a fallen tree--the same fallen tree that set the whole movie into motion, I think--and body parts start falling from the roof. He stops the car and begins picking up the pieces when a cop approaches with his lights on, but goes zooming by, and from the speaker we hear, "Get out of the road buddy!" I don't know about you, but seeing a guy standing in the headlights of a police cruiser, holding a severed human leg that has just fallen from atop his Smart car is just plain funny.

The final scene of the movie is equally entertaining. The wife dies before the husband can arrive with the skin. We watch as he sulks back home and neatly disposes of the body parts in a garbage bin and rolls it out to the curb. For just a moment, I wondered why he would leave it somewhere so obvious, but as the ramifications of his wife's death dawned on me, the front door of his house opened and she was standing there with this priceless triumphant smirk. He hangs his head and walks past her, and everything about his body language says, I know I've been bad and there's no escaping the punishment I'm about to receive.

Oh, and one more thing. I noticed that the news station was WMOH-4. Nice!

Review Soundtrack:
Sepultura - "Breed Apart"
Meshuggah - "Glints Collide"
As Blood Runs Black - "My Fears Have Become Phobias"

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Pro-Life (2007)

I felt compelled to make up for yesterday's dross by picking another one from Masters of Horror. Of the selection Netflix has available to view instantly until April 1st, John Carpenter's Pro-Life was chosen. I almost picked between Pelts and Deer Woman, but decided to save them based on recommendations I've received from readers. Having already seen Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, I felt moderately certain Pro-Life would deliver what I want in a horror movie.

In a young girl's attempt to have an abortion behind her overpowering father's back, she conveniently runs into two doctors who work at the local abortion clinic. They take her in and then ward off the father when he shows up and demands his daughter be sent back out.

Not everyone in the movie delivers a solid performance, but the main characters certainly do and that's what matters. The father is played by Ron Perlman who easily invokes fear whether acting in a horror movie or not. He pulls off the role of an über-religious nutcase with finesse.

Once we're past the first ten minutes, which quickly lay out the conflict, the movie begins building the tension between Perlman's character and the entire abortion clinic, mainly by bringing up a lot of arguments in the ongoing ethical issue of abortion. Eventually, the father forces his way into the clinic, taking some casualties along the way, all in the name of God.

Pregnancy oddities are used to build suspense and horror as well. The daughter is disbelieved when she claims to have been impregnated only a week prior as her stomach is already showing; an ultrasound is performed and the child inside of her begins punching and kicking visibly through her abdominal wall; crablike legs emerge from between her legs.

The most notable scene in the movie involves the father overthrowing the head of the clinic and performing an abortion on him (that's right: him). While not terribly graphic--the way Takashi Miike might have done it--it was still quite insane and uncomfortable. What really makes the scene disturbing is Perlman's calm dialogue throughout the process of making a hole and then using the actual clinical abortion equipment to perform the makeshift surgery.

The movie ends with the daughter killing the evil child, and just before the credits roll she says, "God's will is done." So, it seems the moral of the movie, amid all of the ethical arguments, is that abortion is justified if you are aborting a demon seed.

Très bien Carpenter. I maintain that this MoH series has been a profitable investment for you. Now, go forth and make a full-length movie for us!

Review Soundtrack:
Deftones - "Digital Bath"
Parkway Drive - "The Siren's Song"
Becoming The Archetype - "Elegy"

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Jenifer (2006)

Meet Jenifer. She will seduce you; she will be loyal to you; she will...gobble up everyone around you!

Coming off of my Let the Right One In high, I wasn't sure how good tonight's movie would seem, but Dario Argento's Jenifer delivered something from a fresh vein that kept me entertained and disgusted. Jenifer's mutilated face was so wicked that each time she suddenly appeared I felt the same revolt as the person whom she startled on screen.

It all starts when Steven Weber's character, a detective named Frank, rescues Jenifer from a man who is poised and ready to hack her head off. Thereafter, we find that Frank and his wife are having marital problems, but lo and behold, Franks ends up being drawn toward poor Jenifer and brings her home one night without telling his wife. I'm thinking, okay, this is a little far fetched, but I'll hang in there. Then, he goes on to actually sleep with Jenifer while they're supposed to be out looking for a place for her to stay. Now I really think this is too unbelievable. I mean, that face! The white blisters on her deformed tongue! No way would this guy do that.

Then it dawns on me that this movie is the ultimate metaphor for the quintessential bad girlfriend and bad boyfriend.

Let's examine the bad boyfriend first. Frank is in a serious relationship with an attractive woman who is willing to please. She is gentle and passive when trying to get Frank to open up about his feelings, but he lashes out and scolds her anyway. She doesn't withhold anything from Frank. Rather, Frank seems to be simply bored with her. So, Frank goes out and starts sleeping with another woman who has a demonic face, but a voluptuous body. This is real life people. If only I had a nickle for every time I heard a girl say, "I don't know what he saw in her anyway. His [girlfriend/wife/fiancée] is so much prettier."

As for the bad girlfriend, Jenifer gives him all the superficial things he craves but ultimately leaves him worse off. She is always there for him, seeking and giving attention. She is eager to seduce him and hand him another bottle of alcohol when his current bottle runs dry. It seems great, but then she is clinging to him like a leech. He can't think rationally, and everyone in his life who really cares about him has been swept aside. It's just the two of them, drowning in their misery together.

I still can't get past some of the unbelievable stuff, however. For instance, hours after Jenifer is found sinking her teeth into the family pet, Frank sleeps with her. I think this was supposed to show how blinded by the femme fatale he was, but it just caused me to cock my head to the side like my dog does when she's perplexed. What I loved, on the other hand, was how Frank's wife and son fled the coop after the incident. No second guesses, no questions. They caught one look at Jenifer's feline frenzy, called a taxi and bolted. That was truly believable.

As in my concluded metaphor, Frank just couldn't get Jenifer out of his life. Eventually she went too far for him and the movie came full circle, which won me over.

While not one of my favorites, Jenifer remained steadily uncomfortable and bloody, leaving hideous images tattooed on my brain.

Cigarette Burns (2006)

Alas! I wanted to watch a horror movie and what Cigarette Burns gave me was indeed a horror movie. Though not as repugnant as Takashi Miike's Imprint, this John Carpenter film for the Masters of Horror anthology is a fitting entry. It's as if Carpenter grew tired of negative criticism and proved himself in just under an hour.

Perhaps using these short Masters of Horror films is a way of cheating on my pledge to this daily blog, but I'm certainly having a blast with them. I love how the movies pay homage to other horror movies and directors. In Pick Me Up, homage was paid to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (both versions!) and Psycho, and in this movie homage was doled out to Nosferatu and director Dario Argento. It shows the unwavering camaraderie between horror movie fans and filmmakers.

Cigarette Burns is about a theater owner's search for a mysterious film that turns its audience into deranged maniacs. Hired by a wealthy collector, and driven by a debt to pay off, the theater owner pursues the film and begins to get sucked in by its growing darkness.

The search for the film kicks off with this thought: We put our trust into filmmakers, allowing them to manipulate our emotions, believing they will not go too far. In the case of this film the director not only wanted to manipulate but destroy the audience.

There were two things I loved about this movie. First and foremost, the fact that the movie plays off of its title and uses its own cigarette burns as both a scare tactic and a way to open up a whole new dimension for the film. The first time we experience the interactive cigarette burn, it captivated me and pulled me helplessly into the story's clutches.

The second thing I loved about Cigarette Burns was the suspense surrounding the notorious film. It's a plot that's been done before, in many different ways; you watch a film and something out of your control occurs (sound familiar?). But the movie did a tremendous job of using almost the entire cast to bring the mystery to life. We follow the protagonist from California, to France (where he becomes part of an abhorrent film himself), to Canada, seeking out the film, learning more and more about its baleful history. Finally, he tracks it down in British Columbia, at the home of the director's widowed wife.

By the time he delivers the video to the millionaire collector, the rare film has been built up so much I wondered how Carpenter would deliver its promise, so to speak. I wondered if we would get to see the film for ourselves like we did in The Ring (Ringu). What he did was reveal bits and pieces of the film to us while using the characters who watched it to validate its claims. As the movie rolled, it unleashed its power menacingly. I can't say that I've ever seen someone feed their large colon into a movie reel before!

Using stunning special effects, shocking gore and a steadily increasing level of suspense, this taut film seals the deal and leaves horror fans satisfied.

Pick Me Up (2005)

This is another one from the Masters of Horror series, so at 58 minutes long the action starts right off the bat and doesn't let up until the credits roll. A bus breaks down in the middle of a desolate mountain town and the travelers are caught in the crosshairs of two serial killers. Unaware of one another, the two begin picking off the prey easily enough, but cross paths when they both set their murderous sights on a feisty woman scorned named Stacia.

The best part of this movie was the two serial killers. A truck driver that, at times, reminded me of Christopher Walken, and a hitchhiking cowboy who was a southern gentleman even while tearing pieces of flesh off of his victims! Both characters had their own flavor and it was wonderfully executed on the screen. It's hard to pick which one I liked better: the older, nonchalant truck driver from New York, or the young, gentleman who always had a smile and something clever to say?

The cowboy does a flawless job creating a completely unconventional serial killer character. Didn't they say Ted Bundy was a well mannered, good looking gentleman who used his charm to lure unsuspecting women into his hellish world? Well, meet the Pick Me Up version of Ted Bundy. On the other hand, the truck driver delivered the perfect role of a seamy older man who believes he is wise and therefore talks constantly and deeply even when it's just to the clerk ringing up his items at a convenience mart.

What's to say about the action of the movie other than they kill some people and it's moderately gory? It was a made-for-TV movie and, like a short story, you usually depend upon strong characters more than upon what happens to carry the film.

The ending had a nice twist. Shot from inside an ambulance, we find the truck driver on a stretcher, aided by a paramedic. After being thrown through the windshield of his truck, and brawling with the cowboy, it seems that the truck driver made it after all. Then, the camera pans out and we find that the cowboy is on an adjacent stretcher, as jovial as ever. The two start to bicker once again despite their current restraints. The paramedic walks over and for just a moment we are persuaded that the two killers are going to team up, but it turns out the paramedics are serial killers too! Finally, one more little twist: The camera pans up and we find that Stacia is still alive, securely strapped into an overhead compartment of the ambulance.

Bravo for this made-for-TV movie. Aside for the slightly bad acting in the first ten minutes, the film is off and running thereafter.

Imprint (2005)

Imprint is director Takashi Miike's contribution to the Masters of Horror series. The story follows an American journalist into the depths of a strange island, in search of his estranged lover. Instead, he ends up with a prostitute for a platonic evening of palavering about the girl he is seeking. The prostitute uncovers an unsettling truth.

The first Takashi Miike film I saw was Audition, and I loved it. It's a shame I can't review it since it's already in the [ list ]. If you haven't seen it, see it; I'll leave it at that. The second Miike film I saw was Ichi The Killer, which I thought was so over-the-top it was impossible to take seriously. There was nothing scary about it, save for the ridiculous acting. I refuse to waste time explaining exactly why it was so terrible since this review is for Imprint, but what I will say about Ichi The Killer is that it turned me away from Miike's films with the intention of never going back.

And then I took a chance on Imprint.

Maybe this is another case of the low expectation effect, but I can honestly say that Imprint was an outstanding horror movie. From the very beginning, it drew me in with its strange macabre setting and characters. I could've done without Billy Drago's character (the American journalist). Whenever he spoke started, I could barely understand what he was saying. I think he was supposed to be drunk off too much Saki (Sake?) or something, but he came off like a bumbling idiot. The redeeming character was the prostitute who told him the story of her death. As soon as she reveals her face on the screen the effect is solid repulsion. Her face continued to creep me out more and more throughout the film.

She prefaces the tale with the fact that she sees the dead and prefers them over the living. When she freaked out over the sight of one of the dead, I flinched and had to look around the dark room I was sitting in. It caught me totally by surprise. As she begins to tell the tale, strange leering apparitions pop up out of nowhere, creating the perfect unsettling tone for what is to come.

It turns out that the prostitute lived with Drago's lover and not only caused, but witnessed her gruesome torture, which is shown to us in strikingly vivid detail. In classic Miike style, long, sharp sticks are jammed under each of her fingernails. For the thumbs, the camera gives us a super-closeup and unflinchingly delivers a scene that caused me to cringe and squirm in my seat. Too bad I didn't get any pictures of my face during that scene. I'm sure they'd be amusing! Perhaps I'll start taking "reaction shots" while watching Miike movies from now on. Anyway, next, her mouth is forced open, her lips are peeled back, and more sticks are shoved into her gums, causing her lips to remain pulled back. The woman is left tied up without removing any of the sixteen-or-so sticks from her fingernails and gums, which creates a nauseating image every time she is on screen. It's amazing how realistic the special effects are in this movie. Are we sure the actress who played the estranged lover is really still alive?

The movie switches back and forth between flashbacks and Drago's conversation with the prostitute to tell the story of his lover's death. Sometimes the two sequences bleed together as only Miike can do it. Those sequences were reminiscent of the bizarre scene in Audition when the man is becoming paralyzed. After learning about the horrific death of Drago's lover, the prostitute begins telling her story, which is where Imprint pulls out all the stops.

It's a typical childhood, really. Her mother and father were brother and sister. They were exiled from their village when people found out and ended up living in a straw hut beside a murky river. Her mother started running a primitive (the movie shows us the definition of primitive) abortion clinic. This is the first time I've seen something on screen that revolted and offended me. Undoubtedly, Miike's intention, and it worked. After the prostitute was born to the brother-sister lovers, she was dropped in the river and carried away by the current like all of the other products of the makeshift abortions. But she got caught up on a log and the mother happened upon her two days later and decided to raise her.

Just when things can't get much worse as far as moral offenses, taboos, and torture, the film gets surreal. Well, surreal and just outright bizarre. Don't believe me? Well, how about this: A hand starts to force its way out of the prostitute's head and it ends up having a face! Yes, I'm talking about the hand...the one that just slipped out of the girl's head. Apparently, the prostitute was born with a twin, and like Stephen King's The Dark Half, the twin developed inside of her skull.

At the end, the journalist manages to kill the prostitute and is jailed for it. Two jailers allude to the fact that he will be tortured slowly and consistently while waiting for his impending doom. Once they leave, Drago is stuck in the room with his demons--literally--and we get some irony, metaphor--dare I say moral?--but after enduring everything we had just witnessed, it was hard to even focus on the ending.

Imprint is not for the weak-stomached. This is as graphic and disturbing as it gets. Its horrors will definitely leave an imprint on your mind, and you might watch family movies and cartoons for a while to shed yourself of the dark skin it shrouds you with. But it is truly a well-executed horror film that surpassed my expectations and forced me to give Takashi Miike another shot.