PRE-EMPTIVE HALLOWEEN SHENANIGANS: THE MASK OF THE BLACK DEATH

 Due to the pandemic not abating anytime soon, this year's Halloween is basically a wash and trick-or-treaters everywhere will just have to suck up the disappointment. It's simply a matter of common sense and safety, so there you go. That said, as an adult in NYC, I plan to get gecked-out and wander my neighborhood, hopefully creeping-out the few who will be out and about.

This year's concept is certainly era-appropriate but with my signature spin on things. I'll be doing "Plague Brutha," a SOUL TRAIN take on the medieval plague doctor.

The concept sketch.

I ordered the various components and they have begun arriving, with the leather mask showing up first. Upon taking it out of the packaging, I test-drove it and it took a little while to get used to breathing in it.

Masked.

That was sorted by stuffing the bill with a black sock and adjusting the strap at the back for a more precise fit. The eyes are blue-tinted lenses that, when looking through them from the inside, provide almost normal-colored vision. It's quite comfy, so let's see how it all fits together with the rest of the costume, when the other components arrive. STAY TUNED.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 15: SHIN GODZILLA (2016)

Big G reimagined for the 2010's.

So, SHIN GODZILLA... It's a Japanese-made Godzilla film, so after 31 previous films in Toho's series, you know the drill, so there's pretty much no point in citing the plot details. Simply put, it's our favorite anthropomorphized force of nature reimagined for the umpteenth time, only geared for the 2010's.

This first genuine (meaning "made by Toho") Godzilla movie since 2004's GODZILLA: FINAL WARS gives us a soft reboot that is more or less "Godzilla a la Cloverfield" in that it chronicles what happens when a new and nastier Big G surfaces for the first time, only with a more serious-minded "grownup" take on the proceedings. (It's arguably among the more dour of the Godzilla entries, right up there with the 1954 original,  1984's THE RETURN OF GODZILLA, 1989's GODZILLA VERSUS BIOLLANTE, and 2001's GODILLA, MOTHRA, AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK.) The narrative is basically a governmental disaster procedural that's about 90% rapid fire talking heads dealing with the crisis, but the relatively small monster action is more than worth the price of admission. Big G unveils some new abilities and never before has his atomic breath been so devastating. Coupled with a fin-generated photon attack, Godzilla's atomic fire basically levels Tokyo and it is FUCKING SPECTACULAR. When I saw this in the theater, the packed crowd of Godzilla fans was genuinely awed, and we're a hard bunch to stun. 

                                                                 Cue Blue Oyster Cult.

BOTTOM LINE: Don't go expecting much in the way of tons of monster stuff, but what we do get is Godzilla at its most destructively epic. Oh, and to me the pacing was slow as hell, which was not helped by the film's length and talking head abundance. Also, Godzilla is no longer a personification of the atomic bomb. He's now the result of improper dumping of nuclear waste, which I do NOT like at all. Losing the bomb angle robs the character of a great deal of his dread power.

Poster from the Japanese theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 14: THE BLOB (1958)

 

Horrific things come in small packages...

A meteorite plummets to earth and lands in the woods near a podunk American town. A nearby hobo comes across the cooling meteorite and pokes it with a stick, prompting it to crack open and reveal a grapefruit-sized gelatinous mass. The old duffer picks up the goo with the stick and examines it as is slowly oozes down the wood, turning it upside down before it comes into contact with his hand. Unfortunately for him, the mass suddenly launches itself up the stick, engulfing the man's hand.

The scene that taught me as a child NOT to poke at unknown substances under any circumstances.

Unable to dislodge the goo, the now terrified hobo staggers out of the woods and into the nearby town in search of help, as the mass has begun consuming his flesh. What follows is a tale of escalation as the implacable titular entity mindlessly rampages through the small town, consuming victim after victim and turning strawberry red in the process (presumably due to all of the flesh and blood it absorbs) and exponentially gaining mass. The only ones who are aware of the threat are a number of local teens (all played by actors who are clearly too old for the roles, including screen legend Steve McQueen, who was 28 when this was released), and though they attempt to alert assorted parents and authorities, no adults believe them because it's the era of fear of "juvenile delinquency" and general mistrust of teenagers, and the local kids are perceived a pack of no-good hot-rodding troublemakers.

THE BLOB is not a full-on shocker, but it is packed with memorable set pieces that demonstrate what a truly horrifying concept the creature is. It's utterly mindless and unknowable, fueled by an insatiable hunger, and its amorphous physiognomy allows it to use through grates, under doors, you name it. It's also eerily silent, wordlessly conveying its lust for sustenance. It's also notable for be being (perhaps unintentionally) Lovecraftian monster, as it is cosmic in origin and quite beyond our understanding. It's brilliantly realized and could not be more simple. It's just a big, hungry blob of space-jelly, and there's fuck all you can do to put a stop to it. Well, that last part isn;t true, and when the solution is found, it's so elementary and simple, it's absolute genius.

The Blob checks out a double-feature.

 

In what is arguably the film's most memorable sequence, the Blob oozes its way into a packed movie theater and does its thing, and when it exits it looks for all the world like a big, nasty ballsack. That scene never fails to elicit giggles from the viewing audience.

"Jesus, dad! Put on some goddamned pants!!!

 

Since its release in 1958, THE BLOB has gone on to become a minor cult classic (undaunted by its rather turgid pacing) and something of a cultural milestone due to the sheer originality of its monster. It's an entry-level effort for monster kids and it endears with its textbook trope-setting simplicity, thanks to it pretty much being the Ground Zero of "local teens versus disbelieving grownups" horror trope.

Lastly, it sports one of the most memorable theme songs of all time, penned by no less that Burt Bacharach and Mack David. The second I hear the opening guitar strum of this, I'm instantly transported back to being eight years old, seated in front of my parents' massive wooden-bodied solid-state color television set for a screening of NYC's legendary THE 4:30 MOVIE during one of its beloved "Monster Week" showcases.

   

 

Though I was a seasoned horror kid from the age of three, a monster like the Blob was like nothing I had encountered up to that point in my development, and I forever love it for that.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 13: INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (1994)

 Two friends sharing a meal.

In present day San Francisco, a journalist (Christian Slater) scores the interview of a lifetime when he follows a mysterious stranger and asks him to tell his story. The mystery man is one Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), who claims to be a 24-year-old who became a vampire in 1791. Understandably skeptical at first, the interviewer is soon convinced of Luis' claim by displays of his inhuman speed and clearly otherworldly pallor and eyes. Luis then recounts his tale:

Distraught over the death of his wife in childbirth (along with the baby), Louis, the owner of a slavery-era plantation just south of New Orleans,  gives up on life and seeks death by misadventure. During an evening out, he is rescued from a knife-wielding pimp by Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise), a vampire dandy who senses Louis's bleak mental state. Lestat briefly feeds on Louis, but leaves him alive in a state straddling mortality and vampirism, giving Luis the choice to join him in eternal life. Louis accepts and Lestat allows him to feed on his vampiric blood, which transforms Louis into a creature of the night. The pair go about the nighttime scene in and around New Orleans, with Lestat merrily feasting on three kills per night — a young woman as an appetizer, a gelded boy as the first course, and a member of the aristocracy as the main dish — while Louis, who cannot bring himself to murder innocent people, instead makes do with rats and chickens (which do not satisfy like human blood).

Louis does his best to resist but eventually gives in to his unnatural bloodlust, which only delights Lestat, for now he believes he has at last found a true partner in his murderous immorality. But when the plantation's slaves start succumbing to mysterious deaths, the voodoo-practicing slaves, who fear Lestat and believe him to be the devil, embark on a revolt. Louis, who kills a favored slave (Thandie Newton) when unable to resist his urges, is disgusted with himself and the whole (un-) lifestyle, so he orders all of his slaves to flee as free men, for he and Lestat are indeed the devil, and then puts his home to the torch.

The pair flee to New Orleans, where they feed on the local prostitute talent, but, disgusted again, Louis wanders the streets in a state of bummed-out contemplation. He makes his way to a section where a plague is killing the locals, and it is there that he encounters Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), a pre-pubescent girl whose mother has perished from the disease. Seeking to do her a kindness by killing her (while also sating his hunger), Louis puts the bite on Claudia, but it is Lestat who converts her to vampirism with his blood. Sensing their relationship needed something to unify him and Louis, Lestat creates Claudia as a their "daughter" who will give them someone to parent and thus make them a family. 

Lestat, Louis, and Claudia on a family outing.

In no time, Claudia proves herself to be a born killer, far outstripping Louis as Lestat's hoped-for protege. But what neither adult considered was the damage that would be done by Claudia mentally and emotionally growing up but being forever trapped in the unchanging body of an 11-year-old. Filled with resentment, Claudia engineers a way to remove Lestat from the pictures so she and Louis can travel the world in search of others of their kind. After years of fruitless questing, the pair finally encounter other vampires, in fact a whole theater troupe of them, and then things get really interesting...

I read the novel of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE during my junior year in high school (1981-1982) and I enjoyed it a lot, even going so far as to be inspired to draw a family portrait of the central trio. (A piece that long ago vanished into the ether.) It was arguably the first popular novel to truly get into the heads of its monsters, and though they committed heinous acts, it was impossible to to relate to and sympathize with them. Anne Rice's novel was the first vampire novel brings up the now-tired trope of the alluring, glamorous undead, along with focusing the narrative on deeper themes instead of merely providing a "shocker" of a yarn. The novel was written as a means for its author to come to terms with the death of her four-year-old daughter from cancer, and her grief and general sadness are all over every page. A funfeel-good read it definitely is not, and that attitude carries over into the film adaptation. Though the movie obviously cannot convey the story's themes of loneliness, family dysfunction, and pervasive bleakness with the same depth of prose, the translation to the screen does a damned fine job, bolstered by lavish production values and a rock-solid cast. Tom Cruise at first seemed to have been miscast as Lestat but, and I say this as someone who's read the first five out of the 11-book series, his usual obnoxious smarmy manner is just right for conveying Lestat's assholism and arrogance. Brad Pitt was likewise and unlikely pick for Louis, but his face communicates Louis's world-weary melancholy to great effect. But it's wee Kirsten Dunst who steals the film with her stunning portrayal of Claudia. 

Kirsten Dunst as the bloodthirsty Claudia.

In the novel Claudia is turned when she's only 5, which would have been impossible to do with a kid actress that young, so aging her up a bit was a matter of necessity. Fortunately Dunst was up to the challenge, and she absolutely convinces as an eternally young grown woman trapped in the body of a child. It's a horrifying concept, and she knocked it out of the park.

The novel drew its power from being a multi-player character study of infernal creatures, ephasizing sadness and creep-factor over actual visceral scares. The scares put forth by the novel are strictly conceptual, though there's certainly no shortage of blood and gruesomeness, and that carries over into the film. It's not scary, per se, but it very eerie/creepy in content, and there's a LOT of Karo syrup blood on display. In short, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE is horror for an adult audience that can groove on its MASTERPIECE THEATER vibe and flavor, and truly enjoying what it has on offer is very much dependent upon having a certain amount of experiences with the misery of adult life and its existential horrors. Recommended for vampire fans and for most audiences of 16 and older. Younger viewers will likely find it too boring and nowhere near gory of shocking enough, but I wholeheartedly dig it.

Poster from the theatrical release. I get that Tom Cruise was the biggest draw in the film, but this poster is flagrantly misleading. This is Louis's story all the way.

 

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 12: VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1972)

The Serbian village of Stetl is home to the vile Count Mitterhaus, a vampire who preys on young local girls for sustenance while sating his baser desires with Anna (Domini Blyth), the nubile wife of schoolmaster Albert Müller (Laurence Payne) and the vampire's very willing lover. 

                                         Evil for evil's sake: Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman).

Müller, fed up with the serial decimation of female youth (plus to say nothing of his being cuckolded by an undead suckface), rallies the village's men and leads a raid on the Count's castle, interrupting him in the midst of a lusty romp with Anna. The ensuing battle sees the deaths of a few of the men, but Albert drives home the needed stake through the heart. As his unnatural life force ebbs, the Count curses the village men, their children, and the viallge itself to death while Anna is scourged by the townsfolk. Even though she betrayed him for another man, er, vampire, Albert calls a halt to the beating, allowing Anna to flee back into the castle, which is promptly put to the torch by the rabble. But, unseen by the incensed villagers, Anna hauls the Count's body into then depths of the castle, where, with his dying breath, he instructs her to contact the Circus of Night, specifically his cousin Emil, who will "know what to do." As the castle burns, Anna flees the scene. Fifteen years later, Stetl has been closed off from the rest of the world as it is wracked by a deadly plague, a disease believed by men of science to be a pandemic, but what is in actuality part of the Count's curse in dread action. Into this bleak tableau arrives the caravan of the Circus of Night, featuring an eerie assortment of performers, all of whom are vampires, shape-shifters, of other creatures of indeterminate nature.

What we get with VAMPIRE CIRCUS is a well-mounted but middling effort that reveals the once-groundbreaking and relevant Hammer studios on its last legs, a brand done in by changing times and the permissiveness wrought by the 1960's and early-1970's. Where Hammer had once been a trendsetter with its then-shocking amounts of gore and saucy sexual content, international works had over the course of a decade eclipsed them with what filmmakers could get away with. The splashes of bright Sherwin-Williams red paint that stood in for blood now looked quaint and tepid when compared to the gore-fests of the like of Herschel Gordon Lewis and the nudity now found in European releases rendered Hammer's tight bodices and generous, heaving bosoms passe, so in order to compete Hammer upped the gore and grue, and the nudity moved well past the occasional mouthwatering decolletage into the realm of frequent toplessness, nekkid ass, and minor glimpses of bush, all at the expense of narrative quality. Hammer's stock in trade had been the Gothic made palatable to the masses, telling those stories with genuine suspense, lavish production design, a signature flavor and sound, and frequent reinvention of horror tropes that had been long established, most notably by the Universal monster cycle of the 1930's and 1940's, but the audience of the Civil Rights and Vietnam era were more sophisticated, having been exposed to the real-life horrors of the social unrest and military conflicts in clear representation in footage broadcast on the nightly news. Horror grew up in the 1960's, along with its audience, so the fare became harder-edged and more nihilistic, so Hammer's "Grimm's fairy tales for grownups" were a casualty of that evolution.

VAMPIRE CIRCUS, while not bad by any stretch, plays like what it is, specifically a catalog of Hammer vampire movie tropes, minus the creative spark that made their vampire efforts so memorable. It possesses a certain amount of atmosphere, but by the time of its release nearly every one of its aspects is as familiar as a beloved old cat that's getting on in years and clearly does not have long before the inevitable. The only new wrinkle in this is some of the bizarre performers in the circus (including a pre-Darth Vader David Prowse), but they are not all that well-realized. Yes, this was a last gasp and it showed. 

A pre-Darth Vader David Prowse takes a shotgun blast...and keeps on coming.

 If you ask me, the final Hammer piece that displayed real inspiration was 1974's CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER, after which the studio hobbled along until ceasing production in 1979. The company had enjoyed over two decades of trend-setting, beginning with THE QUATERMASS X-PERIMENT (1955), and kicking off proper with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957), and THE HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), with many worthy films following in their wake and adding up to an impressive legacy. If you love the Hammer brand (when it's firing on all cylinders), then by all means give VAMPIRE CIRCUS a look, but don't anything particularly engrossing or all that fresh. It's an okay way to kill 87 minutes, but that's about it.

 

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 11: THE REPTILE (1966)

When those dirty foreigners influence British womanhood.

In a Cornish village at the dawn of the 20th century, the locals are terrified of the mysterious "Black Death" that has struck down several among them. Harry Spaulding (Ray Barrett) inherits his brother's cottage when the brother is done in by the Black Death, so he moves in with his new bride, Valerie (Jennifer Daniel). Spaulding starts to look into the circumstance of his brother's death but is met with standoffish locals, eventually encountering the stuffy Dr. Franklin (Noel Willman) and his daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce), and eerie beauty dressed in foreign garb. In short order all of these elements (and more) converge and the Black Death is revealed to be hideous snake woman, actually Anna, who had been kidnapped and cursed by a Malay snake cult.

Anna (Jacqueline Pearce), her British whiteness besmirched.

I love horror films from Hammer Studios and when they are firing on all cylinders they are a thing of joy forever, which is why when they turned out the occasional middling effort, it came as little more than a passable time-filler. Such was the case with THE REPTILE, a story that retreads what was by now familiar ground for the studio, basically being yet another of its many vampire shockers but done up in serpentine drag. If you've seen one of those films, you've seen this, only done with more lively flavor and minus the old school xenophobia. The sole truly memorable aspect of this one is the look of the titular monster. In fact, if one really wants to go there, this is a case of Hammer ripping off itself, as this is pretty much a rehash of the far superior THE GORGON from two years early. While THE REPTILE is by no means bad, it's strictly for Hammer completists only, so check out THE GORGON to see the same basic story idea done right. It's suitable as an entry-level mildly-scary movie for kids, so take it as such.

 

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 10: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

No-bullshit old school vampirism, from back when vampires were figures of raw terror.

After being ditched in a rustic Transylvanian (where else?) village by a shady coachman, Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur), a pretty French student schoolteacher, finds herself stranded among clearly terrified locals. Luckily (?) for her, the sinister Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt) rolls up and, hearing of her plight, offers the girl accommodation for the evening at her family's castle (a location whose immediate visual leaves no doubt that diabolical things will occur there.

 

Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur): Hijacked into a waking nightmare.

 

While settling into her guest room, Marianne goes to the balcony and surveys the outside of the castle, noticing a young man on the balcony across from her. Over supper, the Baroness explains that the man her guest witnessed was her son, whom she claims to be "ill" after he fell under the influence of a certain bad "wicked" associate — alluded to be have been Count Dracula — and whose presence she hides from the locals, having convinced them that he died some time earlier. Later that night, concerned for his well-being and catching a glimpse of the young man seemingly about to hurl himself to his death, Marianne calls out to him, admonishes him not to jump,  and swiftly sneaks out of her room in the middle of the night to confront him. Upon entering his rooms, Marianne meets the handsome young man, who reveals himself as the Baron Meinster (David Peel), a bitter prisoner in his own castle who is prevented from escaping by a shackle attached to his left ankle. 

 

Moved by his plight, Marianne agrees to steal the key  to the shackle from the Baroness's room and free the Baron, and when she obtains it she  throws the key to him on his balcony. He eagerly unlocks the cuff and tells Marianne to get dressed and meet him downstairs, but the Baroness realizes the key has been stolen and confronts Marianne. The Baroness, clearly beside herself with terror, tells Marianne that she has no idea what she has done, at which Marianne flees to meet the Baron. With the Baroness in hot pursuit, Marianne rushes into the arms of the Baron, who is now dressed in a cape and ready to leave, and he orders Marianne to get dressed, as his mother can no longer hurt her. As Marianne heads off to get dressed, the Baron commands his mother to follow him. As she readies to leave, Marianne hears the Baroness's housekeeper wailing in horror that "He's free! HE'S FREE!!!" and when she goes to investigate, the now utterly mad housekeeper shows the foolish, well-intentioned teacher the now-exsanguinated corpse of the Baroness, noting that the Baron has fled into the night (which is announced with the presence of bats being noted and the ominous howling of a wolf). Still unsure of why all of this is going on, Marianne runs off into the night while the housekeeper states to herself that the young Baron must return before the cock crows. Return to his coffin, that is...

The next morning, an unconscious Marianne is found in the woods by a passing coach. It's vampire-slaying expert Dr. Van Helsing (a returning Peter Cushing), who revives the girl and takes her with him back to the tavern where her misadventure began. the good doctor's timing could not have been better, as a local's daughter was killed during the night and now her wake is being performed, so the doctor examines her and discovers — you guessed it — she bears the signature neck wounds of a vampire attack. Van Helsing happened to be on his way to give a lecture on "the cult of the undead" and how it must be stamped out, so, immediately after she has filled him in on every aspect of her story, Van Helsing drops  the young idiot off at the girl's academy that she was on her way to in the first place, establishes himself with the school's director as an authority not to be trifled with, and, with undead suckface ass-kicking kit in hand, heads off to Chateu Meinster. As we all know, a vampire's victims can rise from the dead not long after they are interred, so in no time there are a number blood-imbibers running around for van Helsing to contend with, and let us not forget that there is a conveniently-located academy full of nubile young girls for the Baron to prey upon...

Risen from the grave to join the party...

 

The first of many sequels to the game-changing HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), THE BRIDES OF DRACULA could have been just another followup cranked out from the cinematic sausage factory to appease lovers of the newfound permissiveness of British horror in the wake of the studio's previous groundbreaking horror entries (the aforementioned Dracula effort and 1957's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), but this was made during the period when the soon-to-be-iconic Hammer brand was finding its footing and fired on all cylinders. Despite the absence of Christopher Lee's towering evil as Count Dracula, thanks to the character having been quite decisively killed (yeah, right) in the previous installment, director Terence Fisher crafts what is pretty much Hammer's finest vampire outing outside of the Dracula franchise, ranking alongside THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1963) as the best and most fun of their undead suckface yarns that did not feature Christopher Lee. 

 

As always, Peter Cushing is a study in cool under pressure as Van Helsing takes the fight to the undead with a crusader's gusto and conviction, and he certainly has a lot to deal with in Baron Meinster and his minions. Meinster in an interesting against-type vampire, being blonde and somewhat fey in an era where such figures sported dark hair and a sense of superiority that one imagines an apex predator feels in comparison to its prey. He's almost baby-faced, and one can see how his initially pleasant looks and manner would sway an impressionable young lady. Such is definitely the case with Marianne, who has to be the most brain-dead heroine in a Hammer film up to this point. Her interference in family matters that do not concern her leads to the deaths of the Baroness, a local peasant girl, a stable hand, and one of the academy's students, and she remains about as sharp as a bag of wet mice, even after she is made fully aware of what's going on around her.

 

 "Une moment, Monsieur Baron... You are ze vampire or something, no?" (Poirrot she is not.)

 

To sum up, THE BRIDES OF DRACULA is a hoot and a half. It's a textbook vampire story across the board and is in every way a lesson in how to do a sequel right. It does not rehash the previous film to diminishing returns, and it offers the audience old school vampire thrills of the type that pretty much died out on the silver screen by the mid-1970's. Gothic to the core and replete with the signature look and feel of classic Hammer, this one is a must-see, both for Hammer enthusiasts and vampire junkies alike.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 9: TORMENTED (1960)

When one very wrong move comes back to bite you on the ass.

In a Cape Cod island community, local pianist Tom Stewart (1950's icon Richard Carlson, from IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON)) anticipates marrying his sweet fiancee, Meg Hubbert (Lugene Sanders), but obsessive previous sexpot girlfriend Vi Mason (Juli Reding) arrives shortly before the wedding day,  threatening to destroy Tom's potential futre with Meg, even going as far as to threaten Tom with blackmail. (What Vi has on Tom with which to blackmail him is not made clear.) The two argue on the matter on the top level of a beachfront lighthouse and while they squabble the railing Vi is leaning on gives way, leaving her dangling precariously. Understandably terrified, Vi pleads with the nearby Tom to pull her up but, realizing that his predicament is about to solve itself, a nervous Tom allows Vi to plummet to her death, his inaction thus rendering him a murderer.

Taking the easy way out of conflict resolution.

The next day, Tom finds Vi's corpse floating off of the beach and when her hauls her body ashore, before his stunned eyes it turns to a mass of seaweed. From there, though trying to remain cool, Tom is haunted by visions of Vi's spectre, eerily showing up at inconvenient moments and howling "TOM STEWART KILLED ME!!!" with Tom being the only one who registers her presence. Things only escalate as the day of the wedding nears, and the question that remains front and center is that of Tom's sanity. Is he merely losing his mind or is the vengeful shade of Vi actually driving him to madness and possible further acts of homicide?

"TOM STEWART KILLED ME!!!"

TORMENTED is an effective little low-budget shocker that plays right into its era's wave of psychological horror, debuting the same year in which PEEPING TOM and PSYCHO were unleashed upon a not-ready-for-them public, and by comparison it's considerably milder meat. That said, it's still quite spooky, and it wastes no time in getting down to business. Throughout the narrative Tom's attempts at remaining cool after allowing Vi to meet her fate as a way of hiding his guilt are rattled by Vi's ghostly presence, and while there appears to be a good amount of physical evidence that the haunting is real, there's a strong possibility that the apparition is all in Tom's mind. As his torment is noticed by a couple of the ancillary characters, it's made clear that Tom will do anything to save his own sorry ass, including the murder of another innocent...

 

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (or in this case allowed to plummet to her death.)

TORMENTED's prolific director, Bert I. Gordon, brought us a number of classic sci-fi B-movies (and some classic stinkers) including KING DINOSAUR (1955), THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957), BEGINNING OF THE END (1957), EARTH VS THE SPIDER (1958), ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958), THE MAGIC SWORD (1962), VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS (1965), THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976), and EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977), several of which focused on giant monsters, thus earning him the nickname "Mr. B.I.G." Here he plays very much against time, offering a shocker that's considerably more mature in tone than most of his other efforts, concentrating on the unraveling of its protagonist's psyche instead of some gargantuan whatchamowhoozits wreaking havoc hither and yon. It's a surprisingly intimate tale, featuring a number of very memorable ghost sequence, and though the effects rendering them are rather dated, they are nonetheless eerily effective, their obvious unreality making them that much creepier.

Now best remembered due to its lampooning during the the fourth season (1992) of cult favorite MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, TORMENTED is a good entry-level ghost story for youngsters that will likewise hold adults' interest due to the grownup motivations behind its plot. Humble but solid.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 8: EVIL DEAD (2013)

A different kind of cabin fever.

When the original THE EVIL DEAD came out back in 1981, it was lauded as an original and innovative alternative to the era's seemingly endless and mostly fucking awful assembly line slasher flicks, and it remains a landmark in the annals of 1980's horror films. It put both director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell on the map as cult figures and was followed by the delirious EVIL DEAD II (1987) —which perfectly walked the fine line between sheer terror and outright hilarity to end up as one of the best sequels ever made (I think it's easily the best of its particular series) — and ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992), which formed the end of what is now known as The EVIL DEAD Trilogy. I have to admit that I'm the rare horror fan who is not a fan of the original or of the much-beloved ARMY OF DARKNESS, though I do appreciate the original for being something different at a time when different was exactly what was need, so I approached the remake with no particular attachment to or great love for the 1981 version. If anything, I was hoping for a remake almost as good as the superb (though extremely nasty) 2010 take on I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. I saw the remake with a dear friend whom I've known since high school and he's a huge fan of the original; he saw it when he was about sixteen or seventeen, back when HBO was kind of still a new thing and a novelty, while he was alone and house sitting for a mutual friend's parents. He watched the original at night in a house he was unfamiliar with and didn't even know where some of the light switches were, so the stage was set for a young lad to have the living shit scared out of him. To this day he freely admits that it terrified him in a particularly primal way.

The new version follows the basic template that was set back in 1981, with a group of young twenty-somethings going to a cabin deep in the middle of nowhere and finding a dark tome via which unseen and incredibly evil forces are unleashed to wreak appalling havoc. The chief differences between the old and new iterations of the story involve a passage from the evil book now actively being read by one of group rather than the demonic force being called up by playing a recording of a recitation of one of the spells, and the reason for the crew being present in the creepy shack in the middle of nowhere being shifted from spring break to it being chosen as the site where heroin addict Mia (Jane Levy) intends to go cold turkey and have some of her friends and estranged older brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez) and his girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), around for support (plus Grandpa, the family pooch). David left home years earlier, leaving his sister behind to care for their demented mother, who ended her days in a mental institution — the dealing with of which apparently set Mia on the path of hard narcotics — with his desertion royally pissing of their friends, registered nurse Olivia (the dark and lovely Jessica Lewis, whom you may remember from CLOVERFIELD) and school teacher Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), who had to handle Mia during her last attempt at abrupt sobriety. That previous situation not only nearly resulted in Mia's death by overdose — in point of fact, she actually was dead but eventually revived by defibrillator — it also added fuel to the fire of the group's reunion due to David's absence during that near-fatal O.D.

So what we have here is a bad situation made immeasurably worse when the crew heads into the cabin's basement in search of the source of a foul stench and discover the revolting evidence of some sort of dark and horrifying witchcraft ritual (which is seen before the titles). It's never a good idea to enter the basement of a remote cabin in the woods — as we have seen many, many times previous, and as was quite pointedly commented upon for the ages in 2012'ss brilliant THE CABIN IN THE WOODS — and it's especially poor judgment to retrieve something that's been sealed in an industrial trash bag and subsequently tightly wrapped in barbed wire. So of course egghead Eric snags said taboo object, opens it, and finds an ancient book haphazardly bound in what appears to be human skin, with pages scrawled with an arcane alphabet hand-written in blood. Loaded with fucked-up illustrations and hand-scribed notes in English that in no uncertain terms warn the reader not to read the book or speak any of its passages aloud, this is the kind of shit that you or I would take one look at and immediately put as much distance between ourselves and it as fast as humanly possible. But, as this is after all a horror movie, over-educated Eric of course does exactly what the notes explicitly warn him not to do, and in no time the withdrawal being suffered by Mia is compounded with a serious dose of full-on, foul-mouthed, murderous demonic possession.

Kids, if you find something like this securely wrapped up in a garbage bag and barbed wire at the site of what was obviously some kind of ultra-evil ritual, complete with the putrefying remains of animals suspended from the ceiling...

...do NOT read aloud from the fucking thing like this fucking idiot did! Round up your friends and get the fuck out of there immediately!!!

From that moment forward, no one is safe and and the sanity and fortitude of all will be pushed to the brink and beyond.

As remakes from the current spate of such efforts go, EVIL DEAD is entertaining enough but it does have some problems. First and foremost, it's just not that scary, despite it being as serious as a heart attack when compared to the original's twistedly humorous approach. Sure, the possessed Mia is creepy as all get-out but the film's suspense is minimal and the narrative relies on gore rather than genuine scares to deliver the shocks. The film is clearly a product of the influence of "torture porn" flicks like the SAW series and HOSTEL, wherein excruciating depictions of mutilation and suffering are lingered over with a borderline-prurient gaze, creating in the audience a sense of physical discomfort as opposed to the more visceral dread generated by the primal horrors wrought by trying to wrap our collective heads around forces and beings that we cannot hope to understand or prevail against. Seeing some crazed psychopath slowly drag a weathered machete across the flesh above one's kneecap is something that's all-too-easy to understand and relate to, and while it is definitely horrifying in the way that the details of  the real-world's "mundane" serial murders can be, it's just not comparable to the horror of the imagination. Instead of making that sort of effort, the film delivers amounts of gore and spew that frankly surprised me, especially when considering how pussified the MPAA has been when applying ratings to violent/gory content over the past twenty years or so, and as such EVIL DEAD will no doubt delight gorehounds to no end. In fact, on the scale of sheer gore, this film easily receives a solid 10 out of a possible 10, which makes me wonder if anyone at the MPAA even saw it.

Now don't get me wrong, I love gore. Love it! It's just that I'm no longer an adolescent who's jonesing for "forbidden" sights and thrills and plot be damned, so when I am treated to bucketloads of the red and gooey stuff, I like to see that element in service of a story with real narrative flesh beyond something told around a campfire. My own personal taste in horror nowadays runs more toward what the given scary scenario has to say about the human condition, and in this case I suppose the demonic possession and what it results in could be seen as a commentary on addiction and how it affects the addicted individual and their loved ones written in the most broad of strokes, but EVIL DEAD obviously has no such considerations on its mind and is instead content with giving us the most basic of setups as an excuse for what is an admittedly impressive bit of way-over-the-top charnel house entertainment. That's all well and good but the individual audience member's mileage may vary.

Some of the gruesome set pieces are quite compelling in the way that one is powerless to look away from a car accident where severed body parts litter the asphalt and splashes of what was once the very fluid that fueled those bodies paint the tableau in congealing sanguinary shades. Especially good are the rather...intimate way in which the entity enters Mia's body (in a nod to the original's infamous tree sequence; ladies, you are guaranteed to squirm), Natalie's solution to a possessed left arm (hint: it involves an electric carving knife), a lesson in the offensive application of a loaded nail gun, and the bifurcation of a once-human tongue via the use of an extendable utility knife, all of which employ the modern grand guignol sensibility taken to a giddy extreme.

Mia and an apparently tasty utility knife.

It should also be noted that this is the first feature from Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, and while he does not hit the audience with the kind of innovative razzle-dazzle that Sam Raimi brought to the proceedings thirty-two years ago (though certain shots crib from Raimi's memorable stylistic touches), this effort is assured and quite professionally crafted. I hope this film is a springboard to bigger and better works from him.

So when all is considered, I recommend EVIL DEAD but also advise waiting for cable, unless you just have to see its excesses unspool on the big screen, which I can certainly understand. It's entertaining for what it is — not great but entertaining — and if you are a gorehound, you will be in hog heaven. If, however, you are like me and prefer your horror with more meat to it, it's an okay way to pass the time until something heavier is unleashed. Oh, and there's an extra for those who stay through to the end of the film's credits. I mention it solely for completists as it is an utterly gratuitous piece of fan service, adds nothing to the narrative, does nothing to set up a possible/inevitable sequel, and it's over in maybe six or seven seconds. If you miss it, you miss nothing but I figured I alert you to it anyway.

The poster for the theatrical release, making a claim that few films live up to and that this one definitely doesn't.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2020-Day 7: PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (2011)

As you've probably gathered after reading enough of my reviews, I'm a tough audience and that critical eye certainly extends to the cheesy stuff I sit through. I love low-budget/B movies, provided they entertain me and provide me with something fun to sit through. In the case of PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, I did not think it was terrible, but I cannot say I enjoyed it or that I would recommend it. 

The plot follows a crew of infamous space pirates who rob an orbiting casino/brothel of cash and an antique space cruiser, and what befalls them when they are subsequently pursued by a dogged police officer (Jawara Duncan). After unnecessarily spending a half hour leading up to the heist and providing viewers with a bevy of nekkid titties, the pirates head to a mysterious planetoid where their captain (Paquita Estrada) is possessed by a strange parasitic entity that turns her into a vampire (which is convenient since she already looks like a Goth dominatrix, only she's black). After killing one of her crew (who subsequently rises as a vampire minion), the captain escapes the ship and heads for the mysterious ruins on the planet's surface, where evidence of an advanced but extinct civilization reveals how disembodied vampiric presences wiped out the indigenous populace. More vampirism ensues as the remainder of the crew pursues the captain and eventually discovers the secret of the parasitic entities and realizes that the creatures must not be allowed to venture from the planet lest they spread throughout the universe.

Vampires...IN SPAAAAAACE!!!

That setup is rife with promise and could have made for quite a memorable little bit of fun, but the key problem here is pacing that redefines the word "lugubrious." The first half-hour is padded out to a merciless degree and considering the setup of the heist and the need for exposition on who the characters are, all of that stuff leading up to and including the crash-landing could have been accomplished in ten minutes rather than thirty. Gratuitous nudity is always fun and chase scenes can be entertaining, but not when they're so clearly being used to cover up the fact that nothing is going on in the narrative for long stretches. Once the crash has happened, it was yet more drugged-Brontosaurus pacing that went nowhere. That was a shame because even with the minimal exposition and characterizations, we were given enough info about the main characters to get that they could have been much more interesting if they had been served by a tighter script. 

A movie like this could get by with having its characters engaging in interesting/clever dialogue while running around on that hostile planet, but what there was of the dialogue was too sparse and did nothing to alleviate the drag factor. The only characters who truly generated interest were former-Marine Maldonado (Liesl Hanson, looking very butch-cute), cyborg Automatic Jones (Keith Letl), drug-addicted and officially disgraced Doctor Calaveras (Stephen Vargo) and Astrid Corvair (Stephanie Hyden), a smart and sunny pleasure-clone with the ability to change her appearance with a suggestive flick of her hips (whom I liked rather a lot, despite her being a less-gratuitous and comparatively non-violent Cutey Honey knockoff), and the four of them could have easily carried a whole movie without having to resort to the whole staler-than-stale vampire trope. For example, when questioned about displaying what seems to be an uncharacteristic and considerable amount of knowledge about alien archaeology, the bubbly Astrid, who up to this point seemed to be little more than a dumb blonde stereotype with a gimmick, cheerily replies, "There's a lot of down time between all the fucking and sucking. I read a lot." If only the rest of the script displayed such wit.

Exploring the mysterious planet.

 

I could go on, but I won't. The effort that went into it was all there on the screen and its low-budget in no way detracts from its potential. In fact its DIY qualities added to its charm, giving it a feel like a gene-splicing of PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, ALIEN, RED DWARF, JASON OF STAR COMMAND and the third season of LOST IN SPACE, with acres of tits thrown in for good measure. So basically my problems with it all come down to terrible pacing and a script that needed a lot more work. When seeking to overcome budgetary limitations, a script for a story like this needs to either be as serious and taut as a heart attack, or else it needs to be flat-out funny, and this script did not have enough of either to fully work for me. But, as previously stated, I'm a tough room and I am also not clairvoyant, so I can't predict how well PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN may work for you.