27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day Seven

Originally Published Sunday 12th October 2008

The Wicker Man (2006)

When I first entered into the 27 Days I suspected that there would be two demons that I would have to slay. The state of horror movies coupled with the state of Hollywood today has fostered the twin demons of sequels and remakes. As I was drawing up the list of movies I was to watch, I feared that I’d end up with rakes of sequels, especially the Nightmare on Elm Streets as I have the box set. Remakes are in many ways more worrying than sequels as nearly every time Hollywood has another go at a film they make a mess of it.

There are exceptions to this rule but the remake of The Wicker Man is not one of them.The retelling of The Wicker Man starts in modern day California where Nicholas Cage is working as a bike cop. He is involved in an incident where a mother and daughter are killed and as a result of the emotional trauma takes some time off work. While he’s off an old flame writes to him seeking his help to find her missing daughter. Nick obliges for the want of something better to do and heads off to the little island where she lives. There he discovers a strange agricultural commune that has developed into a matriarchal society and the women who run the place deny that the missing girl ever existed.

The children opening their books to page 54 had the surprising result of conjuring up Nicholas Cage

After a little digging by our Nicky the islanders change their tune and claim that the girl is in fact dead and her mother delusional with grief. Nick doesn’t believe this, especially when the girl’s mother reveals that Nick is the father. He develops the notion that his daughter is still alive and that she is to be sacrificed by the islanders as part of their weird religion in order to prevent another failure of the crops like the previous year. Trying to save his little girl Nick finds himself at the mercy of the islanders and their pagan ways.

The basic story of the Wicker Man is unchanged from the original in that a cop goes to an island looking for a little girl and things end badly but the heart of the film has been well and truly removed. In this version the battle isn’t between people of different religions but instead a battle of the sexes, Nick’s character isn’t a pious policeman devout in his beliefs up against a group he considers to be heathens but just a whingy twat who likes so shout at and punch women and this lack of depth and tendency towards domestic violence mean that you don’t care what happens to him. As for the rest of the characters in the film, they’re so one dimensional that they barely register.

The remade Wicker Man suffers cruelly on the internet as several of its scenes have been made into YouTube comedy bits and most of them are better than the film itself. It’s hard to believe that the film-makers didn’t realise how ridiculous the script was and how poorly the movie was going to turn out, for example there are several scenes where Nick hallucinates about the accident that killed the mother and daughter in the opening of the film while on a boat. He has visions about a truck hitting a car, on a boat. How could anyone be startled by those visions or believe that they were actually happening? It really is hard not to laugh at what are meant to be deeply serious, dramatic moments. Also, Nick is a junkie addicted to Prozac.

Two thumbs down for the remade Wicker Man.

27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day Six

Originally Published Saturday 11th october 2008

28 Days Later

Myself and a mate of mine were chatting the other day about what it takes for a film to be classified as a horror. I didn’t have a straight answer then and I still don’t but I do have some thoughts on the subject. I think that the main factor has to be that the lead characters find themselves in a horrific situation. The type of horrific situation then falls into two categories, the scientifically explainable and the supernatural, but this leads me to the odd conclusion that many of the films we consider to be standard horror movies are in fact of another genre altogether, and technically that’s the case with last night’s film.

28 Days Later is a reimagining of the zombie movie, from the director of “Trainspotting”, which paved the way for the recent explosion of zombie films. Set in present day London, 28 Days follows Jim (Cillian Murphy) from when he wakes up on a hospital bed bollock naked. He discovers that the hospital is deserted and soon realises that the rest of London is deserted too. As he roams the city looking for people he encounters a few hiding in a church who appear to be the living dead. He escapes the zombies with the help of two strangers who turn up in the nick of time. They hide out in a shop and explain that a virus was unleashed that quickly spread through the population turning people into zombies (though as far as I remember that word is never used – they’re referred to as the “infected”). An evacuation was ordered and peopled tried to flee Britain to escape infection. Over the 28 days since the virus showed up the country has turned into a zombie ridden post-apocalyptic deserted little island.

Vodafone's poor customer service is enough to make anyone see red!

Jim wants to find his parents despite the fact that his new friends Selena and Mark assure him that they are already dead. The trio set off the next day to Jim’s parents place, walking through an abandoned city. Jim’s parents are indeed dead having taken their own lives to avoid infection. The gang stay in the house and are attacked by a bunch of infected. Selena kills Mark when she realises that he’s been infected and warns Jim that she’d do the same to him if it becomes necessary. Jim and Selena escape and come across two other survivors, a father and his daughter, Frank and Hannah, in a tower block.

Frank has a clockwork powered radio and has picked up a transmission from some soldiers near Manchester who claim to have the answer to infection and a safe place to stay. The four survivors from London head off in Frank’s taxi cab to find the soldiers and bond as a group along the way, dodging the infected as they go. When they get to the soldiers all is not what they expected and things take a turn for the worse.

28 Days Later is really a science fiction film that puts the characters into a horrific situation because the whole thing is caused by a virus getting loose from a lab that’s raided by animal rights activists. The infected aren’t really zombies as they’re not dead, they’re living people with a terrible disease and they can and do die from trauma like a gunshot or from starvation.

I have always had problems with films that use the “post-apocalyptic” world as a setting, I find it lazy as it means the film-makers wanted to do something in their world that they couldn’t easily explain, but in 28 Days the apocalypse becomes the point of the film which in some regards is unfortunate as you tend not to care as much about the characters as you should. There are some genuinely touching moments in the film, like when Jim finds his parents, but these are few and far between. The dynamic between Jim and Selena is well handled, she starts out a hard bitch and he starts out soft as warm butter and during the course of the film they switch roles as they affect each other and are affected by their situation.

The production values for 28 Days seem to swing about too, sometimes the film seems like a slick big budget production and at other times it’s more like a student’s film – there’s nothing wrong with either approach but the changing quality can be distracting as you look for how a scene is filmed as opposed to what’s happening in it, but that’s a minor enough gripe.

One thumb up and one thumb down for 28 Days Later.

27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day Five

Originally Published Friday 10th October 2008

An American Werewolf in London

There are some things that shouldn’t go together but do. Orange and chocolate for example, or cheese and onion, or McDonald’s fries and caramel topped ice cream, or bananas and crisps in a sandwich. Like those things you wouldn’t expect comedy and horror to go together and work but there are many good examples of just that. But for every great horror comedy mash up there are about five that don’t work and unfortunately An American Werewolf in London falls into that category.

American Werewolf tells the tale of two young American tourists backpacking around the north of England where they encounter a village full of odd folk who give them strange warnings, like "stick to the road" and "beware the moon". The two lads wonder off the road of course and are attacked by a creature out on the moors. One of the boys, Jack, is killed by the creature and the other, David, badly wounded before being rescued by tooled up villagers. Dave is moved to a hospital in London to recover and there he falls for one of his nurses who he shacks up with once he’s discharged.

It becomes apparent, through a series of nightmares and an encounter with Jack’s rotting ghost, that David has been bitten by a werewolf and that he is destined to transform into the wolf at the next full moon. On top of that, seeing as how the original wolf was killed during the attack on the moors, David’s victims will become members of the un-dead, like Jack, as David is now the last of the Werewolves. The only way for anyone to move onto the afterlife and get some peace would be for David to kill himself. The full moon rolls around and David transforms and goes on a little killing spree around old London town.

Travelling abroad without proper insurance can have surprising consequences

Once he changes back into human form, Dave tries to get himself arrested to prevent any more deaths but to no avail. His new girlfriend and one of the doctors from the hospital try to help him but are unable to prevent his transformation the next night and another round of killings before he’s finally stopped by the fine men of the Metropolitan Police.

American Werewolf fails on both fronts as it’s not scary at all and not that funny except for a couple of little moments like when David (naked as the day he was born) confronts a young lad near the zoo the morning after his first go as a werewolf, or like the end credits featuring Kermit the Frog as himself and Miss Piggy as herself as the Muppet Show was on the TV in one scene. The Yorkshire countryside setting and the age of the film (1981) creates an air more like “Withnail and I” than a horror film but the script is nowhere near as funny or as quote-able as that movie, nor does it have the excuse of being an unintentional comedy like “Gremlins”.


The premise of the film, tourists falling prey to something like a werewolf, is decent enough but poorly executed and the film is bogged down by its in-jokes (the soundtrack is made up of songs about the moon for example, and it was made by Lycanthrope Productions) as opposed to being made funnier by them. The ending (which I won’t spoil) is pretty good to be fair and the performances aren’t that bad either, though I can’t help but feel that they should have been hammed up a little to go for comedy effect.


One thumb up and one thumb down for An American Werewolf in London.

27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day Four

Originally Published Thursday 9th October 2008

Poltergeist

Poltergeist was one of the first horror movies I remember seeing as a child and it still has the same power to give me the creeps today as it did back then. As horror films go it’s not particularly frightening but it is, well, creepy. What makes it so is hard to pin down, maybe it’s because of the little girl and her “they’re heeeeerrrrreeee” line or maybe it’s the stories of a curse that’s associated with the production that kinda brings the horror of the film into the real world.

Poltergeist tells the tale of a young family just living their lives in sunny California. Steven Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) is a sales rep for the company that built his house and the rest of the development they live in. His missus Diane looks after the home and is busy raising their three children. Strange things begin occurring in the house, furniture moving by itself and the like, and at first it’s quite fun. Things take a turn for the worse when one of the children, Robbie, is attacked. The attack is a diversion to cover the youngest child, Carol Anne, being taken by something in the house.

Carol Anne’s frightened parents search the house and half-built swimming pool until she is heard in the master bedroom. Oddly though, her voice is heard coming from the television. Finally accepting that something supernatural is going on the Freelings seek out the help of some scientists from the university parapsychology department. These ghostbusters are well out of their depth and have to get help themselves from a diminutive medium with a funky southern accent in order to save Carol Anne.

In many American homes the TV acts as a substitute parent

Steven Speilberg movies are easy to spot, especially any made in the early eighties. He liked to use Californian suburban tract housing developments in his movies and he loves families with problems especially things like divorce (a core feature of E.T. for example). Poltergeist is set in a Californian housing development and sure enough there is tension in the Freeling family though this is caused by the events happening to them and the different ways they handle the pressure.

Poltergeist is one of the most well known horror films and has secured for itself a place in pop culture with parodies turning up on Family Guy and The Simpsons, mostly due to young Carol Anne’s performance. It also has some of the best stories associated with it, including the use of real skeletons in some scenes leading to a curse on the film. The curse apparently manifested itself in the untimely death of Heather O’Rourke, the actress who played Carol Anne, at the age of 12.

One thing really stuck in my mind from last night’s viewing. When Steven Freeling goes to the university he tells the scientists that Diane’s age is 32 and that their eldest daughter is 15, making Diane 17 when she had her. If horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street teach us anything it’s that those who play around with booze, drugs, or sex get what they deserve, horror movies acting as modern day morality plays. In fact during the film we see Diane do soft drugs and drink spirits while Steven hits the sauce as soon as Carol Anne vanishes. While the disturbances in the house may have been caused by the location of the place, there is definitely a subtext about the adult Freelings behaviour.

Poltergeist is a slick movie but doesn’t lose sight of what it’s about – giving you the creeps. Two thumbs up for Poltergeist.

27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day Three

Originally Published Wednesday 8th October 2008

Rosemary’s Baby

We all have tells, those little quirks and gestures that give away what we’re thinking or feeling. Some people look in a certain direction when they’re lying for example, or fidget when they’re bluffing at poker. For me when I’m tired and absent minded I play with my hair and when I’m pissed drunk I sing Denis Leary’s hit song “Asshole”. Mr. Leary’s musical stylings are a party piece of mine due to the simple fact that for the most part I can remember the ranting bit, even when shitfaced. If you walk into a room or bar or are passing a certain gutter at a certain time and you see me strutting around like a deranged fool from Boston then you can rest assured that I’m three sheets to the wind at that moment. It’s one of my tells to be sure. I know the song pretty well but one thing has always bothered me about it and that’s the very last part of the rant where it trails off with a list of names… “…I’m gonna get The Duke, and Lee Marvin, and Sam Peckinpah, and John Cassavetes, and a case of whiskey, and drive down to Texas…..” I know who those guys are (or were) except for John Cassavetes, I never knew who he was until last night when I sat down to watch “Rosemary’s Baby”.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) stars Mia Farrow (who was served divorce papers from Frank Sinatra during the making of the movie) as Rosemary and John Cassavetes as her husband Guy, a young couple in New York who move into a new apartment in a building with a history of unusual goings on and violent deaths. The couple befriend their elderly neighbours and Guy becomes particularly friendly with two meddlesome and nosey but apparently harmless old people. Life is good for Rosemary and Guy. Guy’s acting career takes a turn for the better after he lands a role vacated by an actor who suddenly turns blind and the couple plan to start a family. After a romantic dinner one night (the dessert of which was supplied by their auld neighbours) and a few too many glasses of wine, Rosemary passes out and has a messed up dream in which she is raped by a demonic creature. The following morning Guy reveals that he’d slapped one into her when she was asleep as it was the right time of the month to knock her up. (What’s really disturbing about this is not that Guy did that but that he enjoyed it in what he calls “a necrophile sort of way”).

Rosemary gets pregnant and attends a doctor recommended by their neighbours who advises Rosemary to stick to natural medications during her pregnancy, herbal drinks and the like. As the pregnancy progresses Rosemary becomes increasingly unwell, losing weight and suffering terrible pains that her doctor keeps telling her will pass. Her friends become concerned and one friend in particular, Hutch, does some investigating into the herbs she’s been taking. Hutch falls into a coma before he can tell Rosemary what he has discovered and he eventually dies. He leaves word that a book be given to Rosemary on the subject of witchcraft. After reading the book and decoding her dying friends last message to her, Rosemary figures out that her new neighbours are part of a cult who have used her to bring about the birth of the Antichrist!

Rosemary - Yummy Mummy!

Rosemary’s Baby is a slow burner of a film and never really scares in the way that modern horrors try to; there’s no jump out of your seat moment or any gore to speak of, though there is a bit of nudey cult action during one of the dream sequences. The horror is in the situation Rosemary finds herself in and it is here that the fright lies as I can imagine that any mother goes through all sorts of paranoid moments during a pregnancy and deals with fears of things real and imagined. Rosemary is surrounded by unsympathetic people, including her dear husband, who do nothing except chastise her for her appearance despite her obvious illness and do nothing to help her as she suffers. That lack of sympathy is a really scary concept and is a common theme in horror, the last three films all have an element of people either not believing, not caring, or deliberately out to do harm; from the victims perspective the result is the same.

Rosemary’s Baby has some important lessons about trust in it. You cannot trust Old People as they are all devil worshippers, Obstetricians are the most untrustworthy medical professionals who will help devil worshippers ply their filthy trade, husbands are all lying bastards, mothers will raise Antichrists (but we knew that), and Tenacious D are definitely in league with some evil people (there’s a great scene where two old women shout out “Hail Satan” in a way that totally reminded me of Tenacious D).

Two thumbs up for Rosemary’s Baby (despite the woeful product placement) a film so good that the planned Hollywood remake can only make a balls of it.

27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day Two

Originally Published Tuesday 7th October 2008 A Nightmare on Elm Street The original Nightmare on Elm Street was released back when I was in primary school and I can still remember hearing about it from one of the kids in my class who had claimed to have seen this hit 80's gore fest on video. Nightmare is, like Star Wars, one of the movies whose reputation preceded itself for me and it was several years later before I finally got to see it. Jump forward in time more than twenty years and you'll find that A Nightmare on Elm Street was last nights movie and that it still holds an amazing ability to entertain especially considering how cheaply and (to be fair) badly made it is. For those not familiar with the film that started one of the most successful horror film franchises, Nightmare tells the tale of a group of suburban American teenagers from the same neighbourhood who are plagued with terrifying dreams of a killer with an old hat, a stripy jumper, and knives for fingers. Those dreams become even more scary when they stop being just dreams and spill out into the waking world. Those youngsters having the dreams are violently murdered one by one until we are left with Nancy (the hero of the day) and her chum Glen. Indiana Jones really let hmself go Nancy is determined to survive the killers rampage despite her mother trying to cure her nightmares with doctors and whatnot. While at the doctors, undergoing a form of sleep and dream analysis, Nancy is attacked again but manages to escape when her doctor and her mother wake her. This time Nancy takes a souvenir in the form of the killers hat and this prompts her dear old mum to reveal what she knows about the killer. It turns out that a few years prior there had been a serial child killer working the area who was eventually caught by the police but got off on a technicality at trial. The local parents weren't best pleased with this and took the law into their own hands, killing the killer, one Mr. Freddy Krueger. Nancy determines that Freddy is out for revenge through the dream world and that the only way to end the horror is to drag him into the real world and sort him out there! A Nightmare on Elm Street was not the first of the teen slasher flicks but it came to embody all the clichés of the genre - disbelieving parents, those experimenting with drink or drugs or sex die first, running up the stairs when they should go out the front door, and most importantly a female protagonist who starts off as soft as shite but ends up well 'ard! Nightmare was cheaply done and this is very evident from some of the effects and stunt work, in particular keep an eye out for the mattress used to break Freddy's fall down the stairs near the end. But the cheapness of the production and the familiarity of the story do nothing to detract from what is definitely an out an out classic horror. Nightmare unleashed two horrors onto the world; Freddy Krueger, a villain in every sense of the word but oddly charismatic and a guy we love to hate, and Johnny Depp - Nightmare was his first film! (I kid, Depp's OK in my book, just check out Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to see why). For a great intro to the slasher flick phenomenon check out A Nightmare on Elm Street - but remember out the door not up the stairs! Two thumbs up for Freddy Krueger! One thing I nearly forgot to mention - look at the state of Nancy's mother in this film. Boozed up royally for most of the movie she doesn't really act much until her brilliant death scene under (that's right, under) a flaming Freddy Krueger! The droopy eyed piss-head...

27 Days of Fright (The Reprint) - Day One

Early September is a great time of year. Autumn starts to hit, there's a nip in the air and the evenings begin to draw in. With the encroaching nights thoughts tend to turn to darkness. The darkness without and the darkness within. At this time of year my appreciation for the darker things in life definately ramps up, I almost exclusively listen to Marilyn Manson, Tool, and Cradle of Filth around now (there's something odd about having "Her Ghost in the Fog" blasting first thing in the morning, especially if it's one of those bright, clear, crisp mornings).

With September here Halloween is on the horizon and our plans are already at an advanced stage and that means that the second annual horror movie fest isn't far away. As a warm up for this years event I'm reprinting last years reviews in their entirety and will be adding a few additional remarks here and there. Some of last years films may also get a second viewing and an update to the original review. But not our first film...

Originally Published Monday 6th October 2008

First up, “The Eye”.

Jessica Alba (of Dark Angel fame) plays Sydney Wells, a girl who has been blind from a young age who receives a cornea transplant that restores her sight. Soon after the operation however things turn nasty as she begins seeing horrible visions. Not sure if what she is seeing is real or the result of her brain being overloaded with visual information for the first time in years she seeks out the help of a therapist Dr. Paul Faulkner who tries to reassure her that what’s occurring is normal. The visions persist and get worse and Sydney quickly realises that she is seeing past events and death coming for people.

Upon realising that the root of her trouble lies in her new eyes and that the reflection in the mirror isn’t her, Syd and her quack go in search of the family of the donor of the eyes trying to right whatever was wrong and put to rest the whole sorry mess.

The Eye is another of those Hong Kong horror films remade by an American studio along the lines of “The Ring”. I mention that film as the storylines are shockingly similar in many respects, a female lead, an unsettled spirit needing to have things put to rights before they can rest, and a dodgy male character who is bugger all use for most of the show. But The Ring isn’t the only thing that should feel raped by The Eye, the images of shadowy death figures coming for people is like a less humorous version of the gravelings from “Dead Like Me” and probably the creepiest thing in the whole flick, which really isn’t saying much, and the whole “I see dead people” has been done better elsewhere.

As for the lead actress, while Jessica Alba isn’t likely to be up for an Oscar anytime soon she is normally likeable and functional as the lead chick in anything, this time out however I can’t help but think she wasn’t even trying and really just showed up to collect her paycheque.

Overall, The Eye is a mediocre movie at best and hardly a horror film at all due to its utter lack of scare. The most disturbing thing for me was that the filmmakers decided to name the main character, Sydney, after the main character from the “Scream” series – hardly a wise move for a film trying to pass itself in its own right.

One thumb up, one thumb down for The Eye.