Post-Mortem Depression

Bluecat Interview

2011-12-20T07:54:00.001-08:00

Hey y’all. Ever wonder what I’m doing during these long interminable dry spells between posts? Well, I’m writing screenplays, that’s what. And someone over at Bluecat Screenwriting Competition decided to interview me about it.

You can read the whole thing here. Check it out, won’t you?

But if you are all like “I’m not clicking on one more link today and could give a crusty eye boog about his half-witted thoughts on screenwriting”, then I say to you … fine … be that way! But just read this one part where I talk about PMD and horror movies and shnizzle…

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BLUECAT: You maintain a blog, Post Mortem Depression, about slasher films from the 1970s. What draws you to this specific genre, and do you think modern horror directors could learn something from the films of this period?

Tim Grant: My Dad used to bring me to the Drive-Ins when I was a kid. I grew up on Halloween, Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead -- all of the great and not-so-great horror flicks of the late 70s and early 80s. Those Friday and Saturday nights are among my favorite childhood memories.

In terms of modern horror movies, I’ve been generally disappointed with the lack of character development and story. They often make the mistake of focusing on the monster instead of the heroine (she is usually female). If the heroine is flat and the demon doesn’t line up with the psychological problem she needs to solve, then it just seems to be a parade of gore without purpose to me.

But this was even true in the “golden age” of horror in the 70s and 80s. You had classics like The Exorcist, Halloween, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but you also had shoddy imitators like Beyond the Door, New Year’s Evil and Pieces. The thing about bad movies of that era is that they were low-budget and looked like crap, so they are fun and cheesy and get a pass on story.

The newer bad horror films have big budgets and expensive effects, but haven’t really upped the ante in the story and character department, which is too bad, because the story-crafting part is comparatively cheap.

But there are some great 21st century horror movies: Martyrs, Wolf Creek, Eden Lake, Lake Mungo, The Descent, Let Me In / Let the Right One In, Trick r’ Treat, [rec], Zombieland, House of the Devil, probably a bunch I’m forgetting. Each one took familiar genre elements and did something very fresh with them while paying close attention to story and character.

In general, I think horror gets a bad rap. There are certainly lots of bad horror movies out there, but the genre as a whole still gets maligned as harmful by some who claim to be spiritual or psychological. I find this ironic, since at the core of all great religions and depth psychology is the basic idea that the path to wholeness always starts with a descent into the darkness and a confrontation with our demons. It is an archetypal human growth cycle and horror movies provide a safe, communal, fun way to engage in it.

Jung said “to confront a person with his Shadow is to show him his own light," and I can’t say it any better than that.

Poltergeist II: A Reckoning

2011-11-27T22:20:00.001-08:00

Poltergeist II is considered the better of the two Poltergeist sequels.

That's technically correct. However, despite having most of the original cast and a decent budget, Poltergeist II sucks almost as bad as Poltergeist III (which at least sucked in a campy, fun way). So when grading on a curve, PII sucks much harder and longer than PIII. It is not just a little step-down from the brilliance of the PI, it is a drop off of a cliff straight into a valley of maggoty mule shit laced with rusty razor blades.

At least Dominique Dunne had the good taste to pass on this mess.

What’s that? She was murdered by her psycho-douchetwat boyfriend before filming started an he got off with voluntary manslaughter? Well, Rest in Peace girl, and fuck him!

And while we are at it, in a celebration of the heavenly fuck-you spirit of Dominique Dunne, let’s send her iconic one-fingered salute to all the many elements of this sequel that make it suck so bad:

(1) Fuck the fact that formerly geography-bound ghosts can follow the Frelings to another state. Plot convenience bullshit…

(1) Fuck the dippy white suburban liberal faux Native American sweat-lodgicism. Take that burning bundle of sage and stick it …

(2) Fuck the tequila-worm-possessed Craig T. Nelson getting rapey with JoBeth Williams like some Dad-jeaned hillbilly to her pink-housecoated Ned Beatty. NOBODY PAID TO SEE THIS…

(3) And for love of all motherfuckery, if you are going to promise to take us to the OTHER SIDE … into the ghostworld of the fucked up tree-eating, jelly-smearing, TV squatting brilliant spirits of the first movie, it motherfucking better not look like actors grafted onto the background of your least favorite Windows screensaver. FUCK THAT!

(Yeah, I know it was 1986. No excuse. Watch Alien. That was 1978.)

(4) And fuck all the family group hugs and declarations of love that are like holy water against this supposedly relentless evil. Nothing scary should be conquerable with several well placed “I-love-you-honeys.”

(5) And fuck the Deux-ex-Grandmama saving Carol Ann from the light and bringing this cinematic turd to a conclusion befitting of a very special episode of Touched By an Angel…

In Memoriam:
With all profanity-laced kidding aside, the talent that was lost along the way of the Poltergeist series is mind-boggling. Who knows what other brilliant performances we missed out on due to the untimely deaths of three talented actors. It’s a testament to their talent that Poltergeist II’s suckery does not diminish any of their work.

Julian Beck (1925-1985):
Julian Beck’s Kane remains the saving grace of this otherwise dismal sequel and, despite all of the shit-smeared-on-celluloid in this film, his performance remains one of the most chilling and memorable in horror cinema history.

Fuck you, stomach cancer.

Heather O’Rourke (1975-1988):
Heather O’Rourke is the only cast member in all three Poltergeist films. She is the epitome of innocence and naïve openness to the world that good people should seek to protect from evil and corruption. One wonders how much better the not-completely-terrible third installment might have been had she lived to complete production.

Fuck you intestinal stenosis.

Dominique Dunne (1959-1982):
In the original movie, Dominique Dunne gives one of my favorite plucky teen girl performances this side of Reese Witherspoon in Freeway. When she arrives home, exits her car, sees her supposedly clean house in a state of paranormal distress and screams…

What’s happening?!?!

… it never ceases to give me chills.

Fuck you John Thomas Sweeney, or whatever name you go by these days. I hope you are living a miserable loveless, toothless, meth-addicted existence, and doing horsey porn to make rental payments on a rusted trailer parked on a sewage dump.

I hope the demons of regret and shame follow and haunt your psychotic ass until you unceremoniously pass to the Other Side with only the diner ladies even noticing you’re missing.

That worthless piece of shit owed me a dime-bag.

Review Haiku: Martha Marcy May Marlene, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Ward

2011-11-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Haunting, gripping piece
A star-making performance
Just needs an ending

We Need to Talk About Kevin
Masterfully shot;
Swinton rocks, but two hours of
pointless misery.

The Ward
Carpenter could rest
on Halloween and The Thing;
The Ward proves he should.

Review Haiku: Red State

2011-09-05T21:59:00.001-07:00

God hates false witness.
God hates false equivalence.
God hates this movie.

Final Destination meets Saved By the Bell...

2011-08-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sounds like a bad Hollywood pitch, but it turns out to be a VERY entertaining music video...

Review: Cold Prey (2006)

2011-07-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

Despite having a somewhat neurotic fear-based personality, I can name a great many things that have never scared me – furry kittens, the letter J, neck fuzz, Liberal agendas, Trapper Keepers, Norwegians…

Yes, Norwegians. With one of the highest human development index rankings in the world, Norwegians are born entitled to government healthcare, free college tuition and oral sex on demand. It is the Miss Naughty Niceypants of countries. Even tolerant Socialist slut Sweden has been known to occasionally reach over, grab Norway by the ankles and give it a swirly.

So when the illustrious Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl assigned her fellow horror bloggers the Norwegian horror film Cold Prey to review for her Film Club, I had expectations as low as the Norwegian wind chill factor.

Because Norwegians aren’t scary. Need proof? Consider Norwegian rap music….

Now stop considering it entirely. Now look at their athletes…

And last but definitely least, consider their most lasting contribution to Rock and Roll… a-ha…

I'm sorry, but no primal emotion can be evoked by a man in high-wasted Mom jeans with a gay-porn-power-bottom-over-the-shoulder-come-hither-stare. (I am also quite certain that this picture must be used somewhere for denim-aversion therapy.)

So Norway - not scary, not sexy. Charming, sweet, safe, perhaps a bit nipple-hardening in the weather department. But nothing from there could possibly disturb the core hypothalamus of my lizard brain.

But, would Cold Prey change my mind? Would this little plucky slasher movie have me trembling in fear at the sight of a masked Norwegian madman?

Cold Prey opens with a young boy being chased through the snow. Soon after, we are introduced to our horror movie douchebags. To make things simple, lets call them Horny Couple, Sensible Couple, and Annoying Understandably Single Redhead Geek.

I'm not a betting man, but if I was I would have placed my marker on the female half of Sensible Couple to be the survivor. She has that not-too-sexy, but hey-I’m-not-a-Lesbian way about her that just screams Final Girl.

The Remote Place Where The Douchebags Will Get Slaughtered is an abandoned ski lodge. Once there, all of the slasher movie rules will be adhered to as if The Great Santini was hovering over the director and ordering a drop-and-gimme-20 every time he strayed.

Yes, the slut will be slaughtered first, weapons will be ignored or dropped, guns will run out of bullets at the worst time, the killer will keep walls of newspaper clippings to make it easy for our survivors to figure out his identity, and victims will cower inside of small spaces instead of mounting a likely successful joint assault on the killer. And by killer, I mean this guy…

Yes, we are meant to believe that 5 able bodied extreme sports enthusiasts are unable to take this cuddly fella who looks like either an extra from the pre-CGI cantina scene in Star Wars or the loneliest furry at the convention. Maybe he just needs a friend…

Horror movies are made or broken on two criteria for me: (1) Do I care about the people who are in danger and (2) Has my disbelief been suspended to the extent that I actually believe they are in danger?

Unfortunately, Cold Prey failed on both fronts for me. It’s not a badly constructed low budget horror movie, I guess. It’s just nothing special.

And though Cold Prey did nothing to instill the scareds in me, a seed of Norwegia-phobia may have been inadvertantly sparked by this guy...

Norwegian on Ecstacy is truly the fertile womb from which nightmares are born.

Let's all go to the snack bar...

2011-07-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am a bigtime Drive-In fetishist, so this wacky little piece of disturb-ishness really buttered my popcorn this morning.... Enjoy...

MK12 | Follow the Sun | 2011 from MK12 on Vimeo.

How Scream Should Have Ended....

2011-06-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

Review Haiku: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

2011-06-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

Staring into the plot ... er ... rabbit hole.

If the Red Queen yelled

'Off with her head!' one more time,

I'd have cut off mine.

Reviews: Red Riding Hood (2011)

2011-06-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

What, like, big teeth you have...

When I heard that Orphan scripter David Leslie Johnson wrote an update of the Red Riding Hood legend, I peed just a little bit.

Sucking my pee back into my peehole was word that it would be directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Though she burst onto the scene with the awesome raw, kinetic teen-hormone horror of Thirteen, her version of Twilight was twee, phony, pablum.

What happened? I mean, Thirteen would totally flip off Twilight, then chuck an empty beer bottle at its head while sucking a whippet balloon.

So I wondered to myself if Catherine would reclaim the mantle of violent, imploding teen girl angst by putting a modern, punk rock spin on a classic legend? Or would she cover up all the raw dark edges in a shitty Twi-hard sheen that lacked anything resembling a real human emotion? My answer is best described visually....

The original script for Red was a clever, dark take on the legend. Grounded by the idea of the "monster" as the projected unintegrated shadow side of a 14th century European community, the script combined the witch-hunting insanity of The Crucible with the whodunnit aspect of an Agatha Christie story. The script had its weak spots. Red was a little passive and weak for a modern protagonist. Many of the characterizations were one-dimensional. But there were just enough allusions to the town's heart of darkness, that it gave the more silly, plot-driven elements some weight.

Unfortunately, Hardwicke made the choice to double-down on the weak points of the script, so we are presented with 14th century Europe via the CW. By scrubbing out all the the darker elements that gave a potentially silly and dated story some gravitas, she went and delivered some Twilight-porn.

Redken Molding paste was big in the 1400s

The small town looks straight out of Disneyland. No 14th century disease and suffering here. Everyone is scrubbed clean and moussed within a inch of their lives. Despite werewolf attacks, medieval torture devices, and boiling pots of mealy looking stew, you never once feel transported to anything remotely dangerous or medieval. Everything feels incredibly safe. Then there is the wolf. Dear God, the wolf. The less said about that unscary CGI abomination the better.

In the script, Red's sister Lucie, was an interesting, compelling and conflicted character with incestuous, and perhaps suicidal drives. Clearly that would be too much of a bummer for the tweens, so the movie glosses over one of the most tragic moments of pathos in the script.

I wished Ms. Hardwicke could have made Red more like Thirteen, injecting it with the same throbbing hormonally punk fuck-you energy that powered that micro-budgeted film. I think that would have been a kick in the ass.

Instead, we have this over-produced piece of studio poop, that was hardly pee-worthy. Cathy, I'm sending you my dry cleaning bill!

For some Red Riding Good, go rent Freeway!

Devlish Advertising

2011-06-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry I am in the lame zone posting-wise here. Buried in projects, blah, blah. Assuming you haven't abandoned me already and jumped into a more prolific blogger's arms (ahem, My New Plaid Pants), I offer you this little morsel of advertising goodness.

Dirt Devil-The Exorcist from MrPrice2U on Vimeo.

Review Haiku: Scream 4

2011-04-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

Great killer reveal.

Too bad you have to sit through this

lazy sequel first.

Viscera Film Festival - Sunday, July 17th

2011-03-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

For the second year in a row, Post Mortem Depression is sponsoring The Viscera Film Festival! OK, by sponsoring, I mean I sent them a little scratch. Shannon Lark is the brains (mmmm brains) behind this wonderful event that showcases up and coming female horror filmmakers.

The 2011 Event will take place on Sunday, July 17th at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles, CA.

Come check it out and tell 'em PMD sent ya....

Review: Train (2008) ... or how pecs became the new boobs in horror films ...

2011-03-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

There is little point to reviewing Train ...

It was mercifully dumped to DVD to cause the least damage to the careers of those involved, including Thora Birch who took a precipitous fall after American Beauty and Ghostworld. Like her A.B. co-star Mena Suvari, she is a talented actress who has been relegated to making dreck and I personally get no satisfaction whatsoever in pissing on the grave of this film.

So I was just going to skip doing this post, but there was something remarkable about Train that merited a post. Something that spoke to a trend in modern horror films that I haven't seen too much written about.

Pecs have become the new boobs in horror films.

Yes, it seems that the exploitation of women's bodies in horror films (so prevalent in the 70s and 80s that it galvanized the Feminist movement to oppose the entire genre) has given way to the unabashed exploitation of male flesh. Train is but one example of this trend, but it is definitely one of the more overt.

We start by meeting a team of American wrestlers (male and female) travelling in Eastern Europe. We linger on the male leads (Kavan Reece and Derek Magyar) in their singlets...

Then it's time for a bath. While Thora Birch remains tastefully submerged, we get some nippleage from Derek Magyar.

Later, during a game of Truth or Dare, none of the women are disrobed, but the gay assistant coach (Gideon Emery) bares his ripped bod and tattoo...

... and then dares Derek to strip to his jock and run the length of the train. Which he does with aplomb...

But I didn't count one boob. We had pecs galore, along with a side serving of bum, but no boobs. In the 70s and 80s, it was nothing but boobs. At least one actress had to bare her breasts, before being killed in some undignified manner quickly thereafter. It was just how it was. But now, boobs have become an endangered species in horror movies.

We're not gonna take this lying down, girls!

I almost feel bad for boobs. With the exception of the Friday the 13th remake and the My Bloody Valentine remake, boob sightings in modern horror films are as rare as believable character arcs. (And, no, I'm not just repeating the word boobs to get extra hits on my website. OK, I totally am ... Boobs).

Simply put, in the 00s, the leering gaze of the horror film camera started shifting from the female to the male torso. Is this just a sign that the horror audience has shifted from being primarily male to primarily female?

Perhaps. But my theory is that Mary Harron started the trend in 2000 when she translated the oft-accused-of-being-misogynist Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho into a classic horror/dark comedy...

Christian Bale

American Psycho (2000)

Bale's Patrick Bateman may torture, exploit and abuse women, but Harron's camera never exploits his victims, it only exploits him. We empathize with them, while Bateman comes off as the giant soulless hefty bag of douche that he is.

I'm sure her point was to expose the grotesque body consciousness of the superficial 80s, but Harron inadvertently kicked off a trend in pec-gazing that would last another decade and, thankfully, shows no sign of stopping.

I submit as evidence....

Justin Long

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

Al Santos and a Busload of Hotties

Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

Ryan Reynolds

Blade: Trinity (2004) and Amityville Horror (2005)

Chad Michael Murray

House of Wax (2005)

Matt Bomer and Taylor Handley

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

Al Santos (again)

Killer Movie (2008)

Bobby Campo and Nick Zano

The Final Destination (2009)

Penn Badgely

The Stepfather (2009)

Is this a trend that anyone else has noticed? Any alternative theories on why?

Gone Fishin'

2011-03-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while. Dana from Poltergeist is so upset that she just looked at me and said...

WHAT'S HAPPENING?!?!?!

It's not that I don't have stuff to say. I have two perfectly great posts that are living in my brain and trying hard to grab hold of my fingers and my gelatinous attention span so I will post them.

But Mama's got some stuff cookin' in the kitchen and it needs my full attention so it don't burn.

So for those jonesin' for another edition of PMD, I pray patience. Posts are coming. They will be good. One will involve lots of shirtless menses. I'll make it worth the wait.

In the meantime, here is an adorable little mouse that will do my begging for me. How can you say no to him?

Just stay ... baby... stay!

Off Topic: I Love The Distillers

2011-02-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

Apropos of nothing, I want to post a bunch of Distillers videos. When are Brody and the gang coming out with a new album? I want. I need. I beg.

"Dead Island" Trailer

2011-02-20T11:34:00.000-08:00

It's not every day that a video game trailer evokes any kind of emotion, but this one got to me...

Spatter Analysis #4

2011-02-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

Well, looky here. Jonny Metro over at Midnight Media included a lil' ol' blog posting I did about Phantasm back in the day (and .... by back in the day, I mean about a month ago) for his online horror magazine Splatter Analysis.

Go and check it out along with all the other fine selections he has assembled for your reading pleasure.

Why so Suspirious?

2011-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Darren Aronofsky gave me the biggest horror nerd hardon this morning when he released this new spot for Black Swan. In a mash up that had me touching the tips of my nips just a tad, clips from the film are backed up by the freaky, haunting theme from 70's Italian horror classic Suspiria...

Smoking a ciggy now and blowing smoke rings at the ceiling ...

Seven Deadly Sins of Horror Movies

2011-02-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

(This is a copy of a guest blog that I did for Tawnya Bhattacharya's awesome screenwriting blog: Script Anatomy.)

I love horror movies. I love watching them. I love writing them. But after watching hundreds of hours of possessions, tortures, slashings, hauntings, alien abductions and hostile zombie takeovers ... well ... I've got one nagging question ...

Why do so many horror movies suck so badly?!

So I developed a list of the seven deadly sins of horror movies -- common storytelling gaffes that time and time again turn potentially frightening, interesting ideas into huge piles of suck. For each sin, I have plucked a film (or scene) from the horror cannon as an example of the saints and sinners of the genre.

So grab your holy water and rosaries as we get started with ...

SIN #1: Your characters are morons.

I know that a lot of your characters are going to end up on the business end of power tools. All of these chumps can't be MENSA members. But please, for the love of all things unholy, try to have them react with some semblance of conscious thought.

Remember, when characters on screen react like we would, then we identify with them and their plight. Instead of pointing at the screen and yelling "idiot!", we will be quietly thinking: "Hey, that could ... be ... me."

Sinner - Dead Silence (2007):

Quiz time: Let's say someone sends you a ventriloquist dummy in the mail and then said dummy kills your spouse in a violent and heinous manner. What is the one object you will NOT take with you when you return to your home town for her funeral?

OK, pencils down. If you said the homicidal evil ventriloquist dummy that killed your spouse in a violent and heinous manner, then consider yourself smarter than this dipshit …

… who spends most of the movie carting the killer doll all over creation as he tries to figure out how to get the dummy to stop killing everyone around him.

Here's a thought Skippy: Throw it in the fire. Wood burns.

Saint - Prom Night (1980) [Scene - Wendy's death]:

Wendy finds herself in the unfortunate situation of being a mouthy, bossy, slutty pot-smoking babe in a slasher movie made in 1980 starring Jamie Lee Curtis.

Alas, she was created to die.

However, Wendy does something quite unheard of for a female character not played by Jamie Lee Curtis in an 80s slasher film. She runs and fights like ... well ... any living mammal with a hypothalamus that was confronted by an ax-wielding glitter-ski-masked maniac. She isn't the final girl, but she doesn't act as if she already knows that. She's smart, resourceful, and puts up one hell of a fight. You're sad to see her go.

SIN #2: Your plot makes no sense.

Sure lots of horror classics stretch believability to its limits. In Suspiria, why doesn't Suzy just leave the dance school and alert the police instead of taking on an entire coven by herself? In The Ring, how did Tamara make that killer videotape being ... you know ... dead and in the bottom of a well?

But somehow those classics invented a nightmare reality that allowed audiences to overlook these flaws and suspend their disbelief as they lured us along toward their unnerving conclusions. Things have to make sense in your world, not necessarily any real world that exists. It's when you violate your own rules of logic that you start to sink into the suck.

Sinner - High Tension (2003) [Scene - The Ending]:

I felt cheated by the ending of this otherwise superb French chiller. The final twist could have been set up in a clever way that repeated viewings would reinforce, but (SPOILER ALERT) you just can't have a car chase with yourself. Not even if you are an otherwise kick-ass French lesbian. You just can't!

Saint - Sixth Sense (1999):

This movie does so many things right on so many levels that when the final major plot twist hits, it's a big “AHA” … not a "WTF?!" All of the setups pay off in a very satisfying way.

SIN #3: Your monsters aren't linked to the hero(ine)'s inner-demons.

The villain should always be the embodiment of the main character's psychological demons. They are their worst fears made flesh. When the battle on the outside lines up with the battle on the inside, you will have your audience hook, line, and sinker.

Sinner - Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003):

Quiz Time Again: Who is Erin? Sure, she's the final girl of this misguided remake, but what makes her tick? What is her worst fear and/or childhood trauma? How will her battle against the homicidal Hewitt family make her revisit and conquer her core weakness?

Pencils Down. Drawing a blank? Apparently so did the screenwriter. But I guess they figured if Erin looks like Jessica Biel ...

... nobody will really notice or care.

Saint - Silence of the Lambs (1990):

Hannibal Lecter is a shadowy father figure who forces Clarice Starling to confront the psychological damage caused by her actual father's death. Lecter may be the devil made flesh, but he is also a dark guide to the trouble spots of Clarice's own psyche.

And Clarice has another monster in her life. Serial killer Buffalo Bill skins women to make a dress to become a woman. He is a dark inverted representation of her own struggle with her gender identity as a woman in the largely male and chauvinistic world of the CIA. Bill may want to put on a woman suit, but Clarice struggles daily with the need to put on her man pants when dealing with her macho peers and the bad guys.

SIN #4: You've emphasized kills over suspense.

Sure, when you go home from a horror film, it's the inventive kills that you remember. But those scenes only work if the filmmaker builds up to those kills with chills and suspense. Horror movies are like sex … you don't win points by rushing to the climax.

Sinner - Friday the 13th Part 5 (1985):

This could probably apply to any part greater than 2, but nowhere is it more egregious than in Part 5. Watching this one is like watching cows being herded into a kill chute. You know these dumb animals are going to get it, so it simply becomes a tedious waiting game. Mooooo.

Saint - Exorcist III (1990) [Scene - Nurse Station Scene]:

This is by no means a great movie, but director/screenwriter William Peter Blatty creates one absolutely pitch perfect scene of suspense and payoff. Study it and learn, if you dare:

SIN #5: Your main character is a douchebag.

I don't care how many Freddy Krueger lunchboxes you had as a kid, if you watch a horror movie and you are rooting for the homicidal maniac to succeed, either the writer has failed or your anti-psych meds have. Make your main character somewhat relatable, three-dimensional and likable and the audience is likely to feel every ounce of their terror and cheer them on when they battle the bad guy.

Sinner - Severance (2007):

I like director Christoper Smith a lot and consider his film Triangle to be a work of genius. But in Severance, once the killing is underway and our "heroes" emerge, we are left with a dilemma. Are we supposed to be rooting for the drugged-out sex addict or the ruthless selfish businesswoman who left her colleague to die?

Saint - Halloween (1978):

Oh my dearest Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). So good. So innocent. And, therefore, so destined to be plunged into the darkest depths of slasher movie hell.

John Carpenter and Debra Hill's script spends almost one third of the movie setting up Laurie and her world. We know that she is shy, has a crush on Ben Tramer, and has two friends, Linda and Annie, who are more sexually experienced and adventurous. By taking the time to properly set up Laurie as a flesh and blood teenager with fears and hopes, the audience is invested in her survival when the mortal battle begins.

SIN #6: ALL of your characters are douchebags.

I separated this one out as a separate sin because there are some movies who go above and beyond the call of duty in making us hate all of the potential victim characters. Not just the protagonists. ALL OF THEM.

Sinner - Friday the 13th (2009):

This "re-imagining" really commits all of the seven sins, but #6 is its most unforgivable. Lets review our potential heroes, shall we?

How about slutty blond chick? How about slutty blond dude? Stoned one-note Asian guy? Wisecracking masturbating black guy? How about the other four who leave their dying friend outside with the killer because ... hey ... better the wisecracking masturbating black guy then them ... right? (And seconds after making that dubious decision, they split up - see Sin #1). DIE ALREADY!

Saint - Wolf Creek (2005):

Wolf Creek has a flawed, but relatable young threesome. They are young, fun 20-nothing Aussies who just want to party at the coast, then travel across the outback, getting in a little adventure before their lives becomes calcified by the obligation and routine of adulthood. If you weren't these kids when you were their age, you wanted to be.

Not surprisingly, there is a love triangle. But, because these girls are not one-dimensional catty soap-opera stereotypes, they don't become enemies. They remain friends. They love each other and work it out like likable people do. By spending almost the first half of the movie setting up this affable trio, director Greg McLean lulls you into thinking you might not be watching a horror movie after all. Then he reminds you ... in the most sinister way possible.

SIN #7: We see too much of the killer too soon.

I know you spent a lot of time creating the best killer ever. He's funnier than Freddy. Stronger than Jason. More viscous than Michael Myers. He skins his victims, then rolls them in push pins, while wearing a haz-mat suit and speaking in Aramaic. He even leaves clever riddles at the murder scene.

Great! Now get his, her, or its ugly mug out of Act 1 and most of Act 2. The thing you can't see in the dark is always scarier than some CGI mutant or rubber suited Alien. Darkness is your friend in horror. It's also a cheap special effect, so use it.

Sinner - Descent Part 2 (2010):

The caves in Part 2 are so well lit it looks like a Sid and Marty Krofft production. The crawlers are not only highly visible and, therefore, not at all scary, but they look like the sleestaks from Land of the Lost. You are left wondering when Will, Holly and Cha-Ka are going to appear.

Saint - Alien (1979):

In the original, the Alien is never revealed until the very last scene. Up until then, it exists only in the shadows with flashes of a drooling jaw, or an unfurling tail.

James Cameron knew better than to try to play this trick twice, so he wisely switched genres from horror to action and brought us hundreds more Aliens in the sequel.

--------------------------------

So do you have to avoid all of the seven sins to create a spec horror script that will set Hollywood on fire and become the next Saw or Final Destination? Obviously not. All of the sinners above were produced screenplays. Not only that, some of them made lots of money.

But if you want to create a horror film that has some staying power. Like The Exorcist, Halloween, Psycho, or Microwave Massacre (just seeing if you were paying attention), then heed the seven sins. Repent if you must (and by that I mean re-write).

There are enough bad horror movies in the world.

And I end up watching most of them.

--------------------------------

SCRIPT ANATOMY was founded by story consultant and screenwriting instructor, TAWNYA BHATTACHARYA. Tawnya has completed writing assignments, and has several optioned screenplays with independent producers and her original TV pilot, GRAND COULEE was optioned by FOX. Tawnya is a fellow with FOX's 2009 Writers Initiative and recently finished participating in NBC's WRITERS ON THE VERGE with writing partner, Ali Laventhol. Their NURSE JACKIE spec was one of eight selected out of over 1200 submissions that got them into NBC's 12-week workshop focused on polishing writers and readying them for a staff writer position on a television series. Visit Script Anatomy's website @ www.scriptanatomy.com

Review Haiku: Enter the Void (2009), Severance (2006), Dead Silence (2007)

2011-01-29T12:42:00.000-08:00

Enter The Void:

Trainspotting, but French.

Just slow it down by one-third

and add heaps of sex.

(PS - I loved this movie)

Severance:

Uneven farce from

Director Chris Smith. Go watch

Triangle instead.

Dead Silence:

The creepy dummies

Illicit a few scares, but

Looks cheap and dumb script.

Bugcrush

2011-01-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

I will say nothing about the 2006 short film Bugcrush other than to say it is the only gay themed horror movie that I've seen that ... well ...

... succeeds. Not only succeeds, but brilliantly so. The main character is an innocent, naive, but bold gay teen Ben ...

... whose inner demon becomes flesh in the form of, well, this guy ...

No more words will come from my lips. It's only 34 minutes long and it's right .... here ...

Part 1:

Bugcrush. Part 1
Uploaded by ovejaelectronica. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Part 2:

Bugcrush. Part 2
Uploaded by ovejaelectronica. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

Part 3:

Bugcrush. Part 3
Uploaded by ovejaelectronica. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

You can breathe now.

Red State Trailer

2011-01-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

I've never been a huge Kevin Smith fan. His "Catholic guy trying to balance out his faith with his love of pussy and fag and dick jokes" just never really did much for me.

But this kind of Kevin Smith movie I can get into ...

Review: The Loved Ones (2010)

2011-01-21T23:07:00.000-08:00

So, I got my mitts on a screener of The Loved Ones – the newish Aussie indie horror sensation. Being a giver, I burned a DVD copy for my blog buddy JA over at My New Plaid Pants. Even though I'd already watched it and scribbled down notes for this here blog post, I joked that he’d probably have a blog post up before I did, because he's fast and prolific and I’m … well … lazy.

slow and steady wins the race, right?

So then like five seconds after I dropped the DVD into the mailbox ... JA had already watched it and posted a review on his blog … and what a wondrous review it was. Funny, intelligent, personal, sweet, grounded in sensation, and seemingly created in the length of time it will take me to decide how to end this sentence.

So naturally, my first thought was …

GOD I HATE THAT GUY! HE’S SO F-IN PROLIFIC! DOES HE HAVE SOME TYPE OF TELEPATHIC F-IN DEVICE ATTACHED TO HIS SKULL TO TRANSMIT HIS PITHY, WITTY OBSERVATIONS DIRECTLY FROM THOUGHT TO BLOGSPOT?

"jake gyllenhall and ryan gosling jello wrestling naked...stop.
greta gerwig is the face of god ... stop."

I felt inferior, useless, ashamed. My inner Piper Laurie popped up and taunted me: “THEY’RE GONNA LAUGH AT YOU … THEY’RE GONNA LAUGH AT YOU … THEY’RE GONNA LAUGH AT YOU …” Even my inner Uncle Arthur showed up to crack wise.

"you blog like betty white power walks..."

Then shame turned naturally to anger. It wasn't fair. Damn him, damn his new plaid pants, and double-damn his ceaseless blogging competence. Yes, I went ugly. I even briefly contemplated revenge.

"...and michael fassbender has skinny legs!"

But thanks to some nifty impulse control and a deep seated fear of what happens to skinny, blond, laser-printer-paper white boys in jail, I knew not to act out this irrational flash of shame and anger. Because part of being a mature and sane person is learning to treat that little inner crazy jealous voice like the street corner Jesus freak that it is. You politely smile and continue walking down the sidewalks of your brain without paying mind to their mad barking.

Which brings me back, finally, to The Loved Ones. (SPOILERS AHEAD)

The Loved Ones gives us a new pink-eyeshadowed koo-koo-bananas to add to the horror cannon: Lola.

"When she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine. Oh my Lola"

Lola is neither mature nor sane and she does not ignore and dismiss her inner mad ravings. Nope. When she hears that inner crazy jealous voice, it's a Call to Action! So it makes perfect sense, then, that her response to a polite rejection for the prom would consist of the following: Kidnap. Incapacitate. Torture. Lobotomize.

The unlucky object of Lola’s affection is Brent. Writer/director Sean Byrne had the novel idea of making Brent … er … likable. There is really nothing not to like about Brent. He digs death metal, his dog and rock climbing. He lost his Dad through no fault of his own, but still blames himself and is borderline suicidal about it. Even when he rejects Lola, he is incredibly considerate of her feelings. He is not one of the typical bags of douche that we are accustomed to seeing and not caring about in modern horror movies (cough … Hostel ... cough … Friday the 13th). Brent is a real relatable kid with a loving worried mother and a sweet girlfriend who just want him to heal from the trauma of his father’s accidental death.

Eddie Vedder called. He wants his early 90s angst back..

So not only do we like our protagonist Brent, but writer/director Byrne also sets up his antagonists as his perfect psychological foils. Lola becomes Brent’s tormenter, but she is also the manifestation of Brent’s own self-hatred . She is the homicidal outer demon to match his suicidal inner demon. Her parents … known only as Daddy and Brighteyes (love that name so much I am dry humping it with my brain) … are a Oedipal/Electra funhouse mirror reflection of his own family drama.

turn around brighteyes.

And you have to give it up for homegirl. Robin McLeavy’s Lola is one of my favorite horror performances of the past umpteen years. She is heartbreaking, ball-busting, and wicked with a nice dollop of freaky sex perv for good measure. She devours every scene she is in and then licks her garishly pink chops.

i like em tall, dark, and tortured

But TLO is by no means perfect. There are issues. First and foremost, we know where our bad guys/girls are at all times, so there is not a lot of good old fashioned “where is the killer?” tension and fear … except for one scene where a cop enters the blood-spattered house (without calling for backup, naturally) and forgets to … er … look behind him. Also there was a B-story that involved Brent’s stoner friend going to the dance which, while somewhat entertaining, served no purpose and never married up with the A-story.

However, The Loved Ones still rocks. We care about our protagonist and his inner and outer torment. We see that he has a family that cares about him and is worried when he goes missing (when have you ever seen that in a modern horror movie? Try never!). We are entertained by demonic Lola and her incestuous family, but we are also given sympathetic glimpses into the root of her evil (but our loyalties are always with Brent).

So when The Loved Ones is finally released in the US, don't walk, run.

run lola run

If you have a sick mind like mine, you'll probably enjoy it, though you may never look at a tea kettle the same way again.

PSYCHO-Babble: Phantasm (1979)

2011-01-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

I miss the Drive-Ins of my misspent youth. The rows of gargly metal speaker boxes. The seven story screens. The rusted playground filled with broken glass at it's foot.

If I was to cast a cynical eye, I could attach a metaphor to that sad little playground. Something about my lost innocence. Fractured psyche. Blah, blah, blah. I guess that could be true, but would also be kind of boring. I prefer to look at it a different way.

The Drive-Ins were where the most lurid and dark aspects of my own self found a home. Boobs the size of buicks. Buckets of entrails gushing out of body cavities. Cars honking their approval of every depraved moment. Sex. Violence. Giant garish communial projections of the animal nature within us that we labor to repress.

And thanks to this venue for double and triple featured grindhouse cheapies, many filmmakers used the horror genre to create classic visions of horror. Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. John Carpenter's Halloween. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. Without studio heads and test audiences, these filmmakers were able to get as close as possible to transmitting their nightmares directly to their audiences, with only their limited budgets as barriers.

What was even more interesting than these highly regarded grindhouse classics were the ones that were less successful. These films also reflected a personal and twisted vision, but didn't work quite as well and have failed to register in the cannon of classic horror. But because of their sheer wierdness, they definitely stood out from the pack. I'm thinking of Charles Kaufman's Mother's Day and, most definitely, Don Coscarelli's Phantasm.

We open on Tommy, sporting some Quinn Martin Production sideburns. He's at Morningside Cemetery getting busy with a trashy blonde who is looking all Andrea True Connection with her blue eyeshadow and white pumps.

Clearly queludes are involved, because the boning movement is so slight I'm thinking actual penetration is not possible. Which may be all for the good, because after she stabs Tommy to death she turns into (lightning, thunder) The Tall Man.

So now we meet Tommy's brother. AKA Jody. AKA Seventies sex on legs.

Yeah, his hair is parted down the middle. Yeah, his bellbottoms are tight and his wavy brown locks hang down over his ears. (Later we learn he drives a Black 'stang. He's just that hot. You just know he read for Greg Evigan's part in BJ and the Bear and came this close.).

He's at Tommy's funeral with his best friend and jam session parter: Baldy McPonytail. BM also happens to drive an ice cream truck for reasons that will not become clear later.

We also meet Michael, his high strung younger brother who rides a dirt bike and is watching the funeral from afar via field glasses. He wasn't invited to the funeral because he still hasn't gotten over the death of his parents and is expressing his submerged rage with a super annoying haircut.

Suffice it to say, things get wierd. Set pieces include, but are not limited to:

An Old Witch who looks like Ozzy Osbourne:

The iconic Flying Metal Ball of Death:

Zombie jawa dwarves:

A parallel universe slave planet accessed by giant tuning forks:

Yes, Giant Fracking Tuning Forks:

As a 10-year-old rake of a horror nerd, I was mesmerized by Phantasm. Sitting in a lawn chair next to my Dad's Chevy Nova at Neponset Circle drive-in, shoveling handfuls of greasy stove-popped popcorn, riding out the sugar rush of five Stop and Shop Orange sodas, I related to Michael's sense of alienation, his fear of abandonment, his call to the dark side, his questionable grooming choices.

His nemesis The Tall Man represented everything that a 10-year-old fears: old mean people, death, even sex (when he was donning his disco diva drag). And the creepy theme music, with its hints of Rosemary's Baby, Halloween, and Suspiria. Synthesizery and oh-so-seventies really gets under your skin.

And it's not a stretch to see a little of teh gay in Phantasm land. Phantasm is a world of men. Women were either villainous or witchy, but not a main part of the core world. This is quite unusual for horror, which generally favors a "girl-in-trouble" plot structure.

And, whether intentional of not, Phantasm provided images that would play like a series of coming attractions for the archetypes that would take up permanent residence in my gay psyche for years to come:

EXHIBIT A: Before Frosty McEyeshadow pulls out her tits like a couple of raw chicken cutlets, we are treated to a shot of Jody's ass. It's brief, but I remember that it got my attention. It still has some type of magical talisman-like quality over me. I believe if I held it in my hand I might be able to fly, talk to the dead, or predict the future.

EXHIBIT B: There is that whole ending scene where Michael sees The Tall Man as a reflection in his closet and is then pulled into his closet by demon hands.

Again, intentional or not it was certainly an image that would hold increasing resonance as the onslaught of gay puberty headed my way.

EXHIBIT C: It's tempting to make a crude joke about the balls flying at one's head in this movie, but seriously ... look at this thing. I mean. C'mon.

And then after it gets, er, inserted into homeboy's skull, um ... this happens.

I'm just saying.

What I Did on my Christmas Vacation....

2011-01-02T16:52:00.000-08:00

What I did not do is blog. Sorry. But I did manage to squeeze in a decent amount of horror flicks.

You better not f-in pout, bitch.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale:

A fine little Finnish chiller about an annoying young Bjorkish child who stumbles into a fiendish plot to unearth the real Santa Claus, who is a giant child-eating demon trapped in a mountain across the Russian border. (And no, I'm not kidding.) It's old-fashioned Spielberg-esque horror that takes you up to the edge of darkness, but doesn't plunge you into the abyss. A fun trifle with some memorable visuals.

Why do I feel like I'm forgetting something?

Triangle:

This is really an underground gem. A single mother gets on a sailboat with a guy she barely knows and his suspicious friends. Truly clever, inventive and fascinating to watch. Its twists and turns reminded me of other mind-bending thrillers with unreliable narrators like Jacob's Ladder and Angel Heart. I've seen some complaints that it doesn't make any sense, but everything you need to know is there. Highly recommended. Director Christopher Smith is one to watch.

Do you notice me now?

Lake Mungo:

OK, warning. This one moves pretty slow. It is in documentary style,but not in a queasy-stomach inducing shaky camera way. The story of a teen girl who drowned and her family that sees her apparition everywhere is all about understated performance and beautiful, haunting, lingering visuals. If you have the patience for it, it reveals itself to be an effective meditation on loss and family and how difficult it is to get close to those we love while they are still among the living.

Cheap Real Estate. Hidden Costs.

Eden Lake:

Eden Lake takes you deep into the abyss and at every turn gives you hope for escape, then plunges you deeper into depravity and hopelessness. The story about a sweet school teacher and her gorgeous, but insecure boyfriend on a doomed trip to the exurbs does not let anyone off the hook, including the viewer. In this film, violence corrupts everyone. It's like a mash up of Deliverance, Straw Dogs and Kids, with a sprinkling of Martyrs. It's very disturbing, but I found it also quite effective. After our final girl has finally been pushed to the brink and strikes back, the result is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing. You won't be cheering on her violent revenge, nor will you leave you with a happy feeling about humanity.

Will and Holly, get me that crystal!

The Descent 2:

It pains me to see that this awful sequel was written by the same guy who wrote and directed Eden Lake. Where the original depended on the subtle relationships of a group of strong women, the remake runs a bunch of unlikeable "douchebags you find in a horror movie" through the same set pieces. The original gave us a Final Girl (Sarah) who was quite possibly mad and quite possibly the killer with all of the murderous "crawlers" just part of her own dementia. The sequel brings her back looking spooked and having convenient amnesia about the events in Part 1. Then things unfurl in a predictable and unsatisfying way. (Even the return of fan favorite Juno is as flat and anti-climactic as Marion Crane's return in Indiana Jones versus the Flying Saucer.) The caves are lit like a Sid and Marty Kroft production. You expect a sleestak to round the corner at any minute. Come to think of it, a sleestak might have made the whole affair a might bit scarier.

Review Haiku: Sorority Row (2009)

2010-12-05T02:13:00.001-08:00

Dumb hateful skanks kill,
Then dumb hateful skanks die. Who cares?
Total piece of shit.

Review: Black Swan (2010)

2010-12-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

Carrie Fisher once said she hated writing, but loved having written. That is a pretty close match to my feelings towards watching a Darren Aronofsky film. I can’t say I enjoy watching these bleak, raw explorations of human misery, but I love having watched them.

I made the mistake of watching Requiem for a Dream one Thanksgiving morning. By the time I showed up to my friends’ house for dinner, I looked like I had just walked away from a plane crash – ashen, confused, a little less optimistic about the future and a lot more anxious about the present.

Black Swan did not quite disturb me that deeply, but it did leave me with a sour stomach and a feeling of unease.

I think Mr. Aronofsky would be happy to hear this. He seeks to disturb. Though his movies are not horror per se, they share the basic arc of a horror film. Things go from bad to worse for the protagonist(s) as they embark on an unerring collision course with their doomed fate.

With tight dizzying angles and raw uncompromising performances, Aronofsky is expert at strapping his audience in so tightly to the experience of his doomed protagonists that you feel every ounce of their torment and confusion on their plummet to hell.

In Requiem, the dark side is represented by addiction. In Black Swan, the dark side is the Black Swan herself – the seductive, dark side of the Swan Queen in the ballet Swan Lake.

Our heroine is Nina (Natalie Portman) the ballerina – a study in perfectionism, rigidity, and hyper-competitiveness. And like the archetypal Final Girl of slasher movies, she has a few issues with her body and sex.

Though she scores the lead in Swan Lake, she lacks the dark, animalistic, lustful grace of the black swan. She can embody the light, but not the darkness required of the dual role.

In fact, Nina is so uncomfortable in her own skin, she tries in vain to scratch it right off of her bones. It seems to be one of her many antagonists. She is so alienated, she cannot even count on her skin as an ally.

But there are many more antagonists to be found in Nina's dreary world: a psychotic aging Ballerina (Winona Ryder) who isn’t quite ready to be replaced; a sleazy stick of sex of a director (Vincent Cassel); an overprotective, infantilizing, sabotaging mother (Barbara Hershey); and a sexy, backstabbing minx of an understudy (Mila Kunis).

As Jung warned us, denial of our psychological shadow has both a personal and worldwide cost. What we deny, we can project onto others, leading to violence against individuals or groups we perceive as demons. Or we can start to view our own dark sides as an internal evil that needs to be destroyed, leading to addiction, self-abuse and psychosis.

Black Swan, like Requiem, is an exploration of the latter. Nina’s need to stay her mother’s perfect little sweet girl and to become the perfect Swan Queen, while lacking any connection to her own darker nature, is the seed of her undoing.

Though I can’t say I enjoyed the experience of watching Black Swan, I marveled at the the performances, cinematography, and the dancing itself.

As the many close-ups of the dirty undersides of the ballerina’s slippers portray, this is a film about the soul-destroying dark underbelly of the people-pleasing perfectionism that drives many performers. It's a trait that drives these individuals to great heights, only to leave them there without the emotional maturity or relational skills to handle the altitude.

And, though Natalie Portman gives a career-defining performance as Nina, it doesn’t hold a candle to THIS.

Review Haiku: Frozen (2010)

2010-11-20T23:37:00.000-08:00

I've known pet rocks with

Better survival instincts

Than these three douchebags

Meet Ze Monsta....

2010-11-11T17:25:00.000-08:00

Postings have been few and far between lately, because ... er ... stuff. Yeah, lame. I know. Full time job. And this ... other project. The one I told you about before.

So it's time for another hint. It's a movie. One I wrote. And it's been optioned by producers who want to make the damn thing.

That's all I will say. I'm absolutely superstitious. Lots of people option screenplays that never get made. Blah, blah. I don't want to be overly optimistic or negative. I like to ride that middle ground between hope and despair, which means I guess I'm pretty much numb most of the time or something. Kind of like sistafriend here....

Anywho, just thought I'd share a few bits from my fantasy soundtrack for my movie. These are the songs that in my biggest, wettest, gayest dreams, would be blasting from the theater speakers while the movie plays ... to packed houses ... of faithful fans ... returning for their fifth viewing ... dressed as their favorite character...

OK, got a little carried away there. So, without further adieu, my fantasy soundtrack...

You may have noticed a theme.

OK, that's all for now. I probably just jinxed everything to hell....

The People You Meet ....

2010-11-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

I had a nice Halloween surprise whilst out making merry on Halloween. Met a great guy named Russell. Friendly. handsome. Piercing blue eyes. And somewhat ... familiar.

He mentioned he'd been on a soap opera for years, television, commercials, etc. Figured I'd seen him on something here or there. Then he mentioned that he was in Friday the 13th Part 2.

Well, wouldn't you know, it was Russell Todd who played Scott, the devilish slingshot-wielding prankster.

Things don't work out too well for Scott after he meets up with Jason...

Luckily, it appears that Mr. Russell Todd is alive and well and looking damn fine. I, however, look like a dog's breakfast standing next to him in my my "Rocky Horror Balboa" costume.

A Happy Halloween to me, indeed. :)

Review Haiku: The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

2010-10-31T14:01:00.000-07:00

Why can't white people

In haunted houses, just get

The frack out of there?

Review: New York Ripper (1982)

2010-10-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

Am I an enabler? I mean, I’m gay. I’m a feminist. I’m liberal. But I love 70s and 80s slasher movies. And in these movies, we often see malevolent male killers graphically kill … well … mostly ladies...

Were 70s/80s slasher movies part of the backlash against Feminism or were they a comment on the backlash on Feminism? Does the realm of “low art” simply reflect the attitude of the times and does that hold any value or is it simply exploitation?

Usually these questions don’t bother me any more. Since the 90s, slasher movies have become a bit more gender neutral. Sure it’s almost always a male killer, but the victims are pretty evenly distributed. We are less likely to see the boobs of the female victims and more likely to see the ass of the male victim. And most of the final girls in the post-80s movies know how to throw a punch. All of these are welcome developments.

So what, then, to make on the Fulci’s New York Ripper? I mean it has so many things that should give me a movie boner for it...

1) A killer that quacks like a Donald Duck on the phone:

2) Two awesome 70s beards (you're welcome, Jinx):

3) Headphones guy:

4) Green-screen terminal computer guy.

5) Hot Italian men in sweaters and leather jackets:
6) Hot Italian men without sweaters and leather jackets:

7) Lots of fake 80s high tech wizardry including this close-up. can you read the subliminal message? Can you?

All of that plus:
- "Sometimes I wonder how a girl like you with an IQ of 182 can be such a dummy."
- Sleazy sex scenes, like one where a high-society lady gets a foot job from two Puerto Rican strangers in a restaurant.
- Italian horror staples, like weird jazzy disco music at completely inappropriate times and long boring expository scenes.

Yes, the New York Ripper is weird and awful, which are usually a recipe for a mega-win for me in terms of movie finds. And this movie is so ridiculously weird and incredibly awful in every conceivable way that to be offended by it feels like a defeat. I demand my ironic distance! I will not be defeated by the likes of New York Ripper! You will not offend me!

But offended, I was. It reminded me of my feelings towards Showgirls.

I always get lots-o-laughs from the "I ate Doggie chow" scene. I pee a little when I see the "fish-flop" sex scene, the horrible dance numbers, and Elizabeth Berkeley doing whatever Verhoeven asked of her, hoping this piece of shit was going to make her the next Sharon Stone. And then ....

There's that rape scene. The misogynistic fly in the bad movie ointment. It rips away my precious ironic distance and makes me aware of the sleazy minds behind the trash I am mocking. And I hate myself just a little for watching it.

To put it in Showgirls terms, New York Ripper is 95% rape scene and 5% fish-flop sex scene. The lady-hatin' is just way too much. For those in the know, the misogynist piece-de-resitance is the scene of a seemingly passive bound woman getting her eye and breast sliced open. The actress is completely unable to convey her terror and the special effects are laughable. These are good things. You can get through the scene knowing it's all make believe, but then you think to yourself ... WTF Fulci?

And there is more. Like when one of our Beards buys a Blueboy magazine on the street. To a modern mind, it seems like a strange scene. He bought some gay porn. So what? It took me about 20 minutes to realize that, in Fulci’s world, buying gay porn makes you a murder suspect. Not just normal murder, but girl-hating murder. Motive? Because … wait for it … he was jealous of girls having a vageen. Something he wanted oh so bad.

New York Ripper kicks it very old school, but in the homophobic, misogynistic way, not in the fun "the two Coreys" kind of way.

Sure I laughed at the Donald Duck voice, the terrible acting, and the cheesy special effects. Sure, the 80s New York sleaze filtered through a Catholic damaged Italian horror filmmaker is perversely fascinating.

But by the time the credits roll, I felt depressed, trapped in Fulci’s Madonna-Whore complex, and thinking about all of the more enjoyable and rewarding things I could have done with my time … like counting my nose hairs, bedazzling my socks, or rubbing a cheese grater against my face.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

And if you didn't catch the Glee version, the audio of Mercedes belting it out can be found here.

Review Haiku: Let Me In

2010-10-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's sacrilegious
to say, but I think I liked
this version better.

I've BeenTagged!

2010-10-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

The Spooky Vegan -- delightful purveyor of delicious non-animal-murder-derived goodness and Halloween fun facts -- has tagged me!

She then immediately demanded I answer a battery of her questions. She's awfully pushy for a non-flesh eater, no? I will relent, because I completely lack the ability to say no (especially to someone as adorable as the Spooky Vegan. I mean, can she be any cuter?) As stated before, I also lack the ability to tell people what to do and these memes/awards/taggings always highlight that nagging character flaw. So unfortunately, the tagging will stop with me and I will not be passing it along.

But here are my answers to questions I'm sure you are just dying to know about me...

1. If you could get away with one illegal act in your life, what would it be and why?
I would stalk Ryan Reynolds. And since we are in total fantasy land here, he wouldn’t press charges and choose, instead, to become my love slave.

2. What is your all-time favorite Halloween costume that you've worn?
I went as Melissa Sue Anderson who played both final girl and killer in Happy Birthday to Me. My friends pretty much hated my obscure choice and made me promise to never attempt drag again.

3. What are five movies from your childhood/teen years that define you?
Bambi, Halloween, New House on the Left, Dawn of the Dead, Damien: Omen 2. They all left their own teeny traumatic tuna-style sear on my grey matter.

4. What character in a movie/book/TV show/etc. do you identify with the most and why?
If I say Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, would you shoot me point blank in the face? I certainly hope so. It's a hard question to answer definitively, but I have to say that I was deeply affected by the character of Solly in Europa Europa. The incredible true tale of a Jewish boy having to hide his identity under Nazi rule had a lot of resonance with me, since I grew up gay in ... well ... Earth.

5. What is your favorite Halloween-related activity to do in October?
Going to Day of the Dead Celebration at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

6. What's your favorite Halloween-themed movie to watch around Halloween?
Halloween 3. Killer robots, Laser-equipped Halloween masks that melt child noggins into snakes and spiders, And the frakkin' Silver Shamrock tune. The first horror movie ever to use an annoying jingle (instead of a sense of dread or shock) to get under your skin ....

7. Who is your favorite horror movie villain/monster?
Mrs. Voorhees from Friday the 13th. I defy anyone to find a campier (no pun intended) slasher killer. OK, Angela from Sleepaway Camp (still no pun intended) might be a runner up.

8. What is one "luxury" product you can't live without?
I'm totally blanking on this one. If by luxury, you mean anything beyond food, water, clothing, and shelter, then I'd have to go with soap. Yes, that's it. Soap. Wow. I really choked on that last one.

Final Girl Nirvana

2010-10-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

Though Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis' comedy You Again did not open to such hot reviews or box office (my boyfriend, connoisseur of chick flicks that he is ... loved it), it did present us with the following horrorgasm inducing interview clip wherein the final girls from Halloween and Alien riff about which movie is scarier. I need a cigarette...

It Gets Better: In the meantime, watch more horror movies…

2010-10-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

This rash of reported suicides of bullied gay teenagers has got me thinking. Fucking fuming is more like it. As I sit in my protected world, far from the psychological meat grinder of public high school, I realize how lucky I was to survive.

I dealt with homophobic bullies from 5th grade until my senior year in high school. I had friends, but since I wasn’t out to them until my 20s, I repressed a lot of my anger. As a result, I was plagued by hidden obsessive thoughts of suicide and violent revenge against the bullies. Thankfully I never acted on either.

Though Dan Savage and Ellen DeGeneres are doing the right thing by letting troubled gay teens know that things do get better (and they do, TRUST ME, they do), I’d like to address those darker regions of the gay teen mind that even the most caring, responsible message cannot reach. The only way I could reach those places as a teen was HORROR.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s – the golden age of feminism, sexual and gay liberation, and the slasher movie. Slasher movies for me were a trip into the dark reaches of my own mind and a way to reconcile subconscious forces that threatened to undermine my psychological health.

The final girl was always a sex shy tomboy – a perfect avatar for my own sexual repression, self-doubt, and self-loathing. The depression part of repression.

floating on a sea of sadness...

The slasher was also a perfect avatar for my repressed primal rage and internalized homophobia. The angry, destructive part of repression.

i will cut a bitch...

Via slasher movies I could have a fully satisfying psychological experience. First, I could enjoy watching a batch of overprivileged, horny, irresponsible hetero teens get violent consequences dished out to them via chainsaw, razor blade, pitchfork, or George Foreman grill -- essentially playing out my own fantasies of violent revenge against my peers in a safe, non-destructive way.

that's mr. faggot to you...

Then, when the slasher and final girl faced off, it was a chance for me to watch the two disconnected aspects of myself face off. Would the inner wounded rage (slasher) finally kill off the weakened, depressed sense of self (final girl)?

this inner struggle is killing me...

But the slasher never wins. The final girl always manages to stop running away, face down her demon, get out of her shamed fetal position and triumph over the slasher. Symbolically, she integrates the slasher's rage, fighting fire with fire, pulling her out of her depression so she can destroy her (inner) demon.

the revolution within...

High school is not a slasher movie. It is a series of indignities that you just have to endure. I can tell you that it was the worst time of my life. The minute I graduated, my life became immeasurably better. College is better. Your twenties are better. I’ve lived long enough to report that the thirties and forties are fucking amazing.

The teenage mind is cruel and absolute. It runs on rampaging hormones, ego, and insecurity. Teens haven’t lived long enough to understand consequence or self-awareness. Most of these bullies will become miserable adults, attracting misery to themselves. They may not get a hatchet in their face, but their karmic wheel will turn.

what's the number for the glenn beck show again?

Others may even change. Some of the kids that made my teen life miserable have become good people who since apologized for their behavior.

Either way, know that they don’t matter and your life will become fabulous … so let it.

i rule!

In the meantime, focus on school, and hang out with the nerds and arty rejects in school. They’re the ones that have the kindest hearts and will be going places.

And watch more horror movies. You’ll be glad you did.

Get involved:

It Gets Better Project YouTube Channel

The Trevor Project

Hideous Linky: The Righteous Fury of Carrie White

2010-09-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

I am speechless after reading the brilliantly incendiary post over at KinderTrauma today, wherein Unk links the film Carrie with his rage at the recent rash of bullied gay teens who have committed suicide.

I can't add anything to his brilliant rant, so I can only humbly link and urge you to click immediately....

Carrie: Don't Ask, Don't Snell

Just for Fun: True Mud

2010-09-23T10:12:00.001-07:00

Sesame Street captures the vampire zeitgeist with their parody "True Mud"....

Thanks to Andy at Towleroad for posting this.

Rock the Quote: Black Christmas (1974)

2010-09-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure Jason Adams at My New Plaid Pants beat me to it on this one, but it deserves to be highlighted again.

Black Christmas was the inspiration for Halloween and all other Holiday slashers that followed in the 70s and 80s. It starred the improbable trio of Andrea Martin, Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder as sorority girls being stalked by a killer in the attic of their sorority house.

Hussey is Jess, the final girl with the boyish name. Martin is her kinky haired best friend Phyllis. Kidder is her drunken, taunting overly bold friend Barb. (They are the archetypal precursors of Laurie, Annie, and Linda in Halloween.)

Kidder's Barb has all of the best lines, including this classic:

Clare: ...[Y]ou know that town girl was raped a couple of weeks ago.
Barb: Darling, you can't rape a townie.

A List to Ponder

2010-09-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl has requested Top 20 lists of favorite horror movies from her fellow horror bloggers. Because she is the alpha queen of horror bloggery, we must do as she says. Bad things happen to those who don't.

So without further adieu, here they are.

1. The Exorcist
With Regan’s violent rages, skin eruptions, and body secretions, The Exorcist captures the gross horror of puberty better than any film before or since.

2. Halloween
The second scariest closet I have ever experienced.

3. The Shining
Because it’s so much better than the book and Stephen King still can’t quite understand why. And Shelley Duvall is freakin’ amazing.

4. Psycho
The original Freudian freak show.

5. Alien
Sigourney battles double-jawed bugs while dodging buckets of extraterrestrial acidic drool. I named my cat Ripley. End of story.

6. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Every time I watch this, I think it will be dated and fun, but it ends up re-traumatizing me all over again. It’s just still that effective. And Leatherface is the scariest drag queen since Divine.

7. Friday the 13th
Goes from creepy to campy and ends with a girl fight. Three words: “Kill her Mommy.” No Jason-based sequel or remake will ever compete. There's even some subtext to be had beneath the cheese.

8. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Yay for slow zombies in bluish/green makeup! Yay for horror that criticizes the consumerist culture in a way the remake would never dare.

9. Carrie
The second best puberty-horror movie ever. I always hold out hope that things will end different. Sissy Spacek is just that good.

10. Rosemary’s Baby
“What have you done to its eyes?”

11. Videodrome
Videodrome draws you into its sleazy grasp early on and never lets you go. The line between reality and fantasy blurs beyond recognition and we start to wonder if the media-induced hallucinations of our protagonist are any different from our own. And Debbie Harry dishing out S&M punishment to James Woods? “Long live the new flesh!”

12. Suspiria
A bloody Technicolor hallucination that makes absolutely no sense (you can leave the school, ladies!), but has the gravitational pull of your worst nightmare … drawing you closer and closer to the dark mother within us all.

13. Silence of the Lambs
Two words: Jame Gumb and his psycho tranny tuck dance. OK, that was eight words.

14. Damien: Omen II
This movie creeped me out much worse than the original. Maybe because the idea of a kid struggling with his fate as the spawn of Satan coincided with my own homoerotic stirrings. Or maybe because a lady gets her eyes pecked out by a raven, then blindly wanders in front of a speeding truck. (And with Lee fucking Grant as Aunt Ann? I mean, come on!)

15. Martyrs
The French existentialist “fuck you” to Passion of the Christ.

16. Angel Heart
Underrated to the extreme. Great performance by Mickey Rourke. Perhaps one of his best. When he finally realizes the devilish truth and chokes out “who was the boy?” my spine is all ashivers.

17. Audition
That bag. Those acupuncture needles. The wire. Lordy!

18. Safe
Has that Rosemary’s baby’s creepy feeling to it while also being quite funny. The invisible killers that stalk Carol White – pesticides, germs, spiritual alienation, etc – aren’t supernatural. They are the silent, quiet horrors that stalk us all, every day. The last scene with her looking in the mirror saying “I love you” always gives me the sads.

19. Hellraiser
“And Jesus Wept.”

20. Requiem for a Dream
Plays like the Suspiria of drug addiction. The sense of dread and suffocation is almost unbearable. Like any good horror movie, things go from bad to worse for our characters … and there is nothing they can do to stop it. Ellen Burstyn shreds my heart to little pieces.

I've Got a Secret...

2010-09-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

So this is a picture of me ... with a laptop ... wearing my super cool Damien t-shirt from Fright Rags (those guys rock ... go buy a t-shirt from them already!).... on my way to .... oh, I can't tell you ... but it's a project ... and it's cool ... at least I think so ... and I hope to have good things to tell you soon ... but for now there is just this ...

... and here is a picture of Tahmoh Penikett's nipple ... cuz' I ran into him this weekend at an Malaysian restaurant in Vancouver ... and because it's my blog and he's hot ... so there...

Homo Horror Hall of Fame: Leatherface

2010-09-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows Leatherface. He wears the faces of his kills, runs around with a big chainsaw in the flatlands of Texas, and likes to hang his victims on meat hooks while they are still alive.

But what people always tend to overlook is his flair for cross-dressing.

OK, I know. I know. I hear what you are thinking, astute readers. Cross dressing doesn’t make Leatherface a homo. And not everyone who has the gay does drag (just ask anyone who saw me when I dressed as Melissa Sue Anderson from Happy Birthday to Me for Halloween one year... I was so bad that someone made me promise to never do it again).

So, you are right. Leatherface's cross dressing does not equal him having the gay. In fact, the one time Leatherface showed any sign of a sexual interest was when he dry humped final girl Stretch with a chainsaw in TCM2....

"Get your subtext out of my vageen!"

So, I could put him in the transvestite category with other hetero icons like Bugs Bunny and Uncle Milty. But his gender distress seems a little more extreme than that. If I had to assign an LGBTQ letter grade, I gotta assume he falls somewhere in the T zone.

Take the following examples:

Leatherface in Vicki Lawrence's Mama drag

Leatherface in Dixie Carter drag

Leatherface in fey meltdown, while carrying a
chainsaw like a purse in Dixie Carter drag.

OK, purists. I know. These stills are from the much-derided Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. He also did some housewife drag in the original, but it's hard to get a good still. And I am NOT including anything from the Platinum Dunes’ remakes which, among other atrocities, sucked all the gay out of Leatherface … okay that sounded way dirtier than I intended.

However, I will counter with this: The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and this admittedly awful sequel were the only ones written by Kim Henkel. They were also the only ones in which Leatherface donned drag. Coincidence? Kim invented this character, so I'm assuming he is the expert on his nature.

And, yes, I know fellow LGBTQers. It's problematic. The transexual psycho was a staple of the 70s and 80s slasher film, seemingly ignoring the fact that most serial killers are heterosexual white men (not that there's anything wrong with that ... being heterosexual and white I mean ... not the serial killer stuff). But it is what it is.

So for all the great hot tranny mess looks Leatherface has rocked over the years, he deserves a place in the Homo Horror Hall of Fame. Don't agree with me? Just try to take it away from him...

I won! I won!

Review Haiku: The Last Exorcism

2010-09-01T10:53:00.001-07:00

Clever script. Great cast.
Red herrings a plenty, but
Just didn't scare me.

Review Haiku: Pirahna 3-D

2010-08-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

I couldn't care less

whether these douchebags lived or
died. In bad 3-d.

The Exorcist - Scenes with Linda Blair's voice as the demon

2010-08-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to King Joe the Wicked at Paracinema for posting this fascinating snippet. An industrious Youtuber has re-edited scenes from the Exorcist using Linda Blair's original voice, instead of the dubbed over Mercedes McCambridge voice.

Embedded player is disabled, so you will probably have to click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3_z0mYXnMc&feature=player_embedded

Really shows you what an amazing job the young actress did in a demanding role. It's unfortunate that the sequel (one of my favorite bad movies of all time) pretty much ruined her career thanks to scenes like this ...

And this ...

And of course, this ...

Rock the Quote: Joe Versus the Volcano

2010-08-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

Go ahead and laugh at me. Everyone does. But, I'll say it loud and proud: I love the much-derided Hanks-Ryan bomb Joe Versus the Volcano.

I am not alone. Check out this guy, who looks all sort or ironic hipster cool. He got a tattoo of the lightning bolt used as a visual throughout the film. I'll call him Seth. I think he'd want to be my friend if he knew our shared love of JVtV.

And consider this haters: it is written and directed by John Patrick motherfucking Shanley ... who also wrote Doubt. It rocks some heavy philosophy like Doubt, but instead of bickering nuns, we get Meg Ryan (playing 3 roles quite brilliantly) and Tom Hanks in a quirky not-so-romantic comedy about a man with a "brain cloud" willing to sacrifice himself to a volcano for the chance to live it up a little first.

Anyway, I love it and still think it's much better than people give it any credit for being. And so does Seth. And I'm sure he drives a Vespa and listened to MGMT way before you knew they even existed. So I feel validated. And now you so want to be in our club. But you can't ... until you drink the orange soda and confess that you love this deep, weird tale which contains one of my favorite quotes of filmdom ...

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement." Meg Ryan as Patricia Graynamore

(Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with horror, but it's a blog ... roll with it people ...)

Awards season

2010-08-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been getting so much love from Miss Jinx over at Totally Jinxed that I'm thinking I might have to send her a fruit basket or a nice flan.

Yes, she has now bequeathed the "Bloody Award" to me. This Dr. Blood's Video Vault creation is viewable right here:

Being the world's laziest horror blogger (see Stacie Ponder quote, blog right), I will simply cut and paste the instructions required for receiving the award from her website.

“Below are twenty horror films which are universally accepted as classics listed in alphabetical order. Just rearrange the list by cutting and pasting them into your own order based on how you would rate them. For instance, if you think that "The Hills Have Eyes" is a better movie than "Hellraiser" then cut and paste it higher up in the list. Repeat this with all the titles until you have your own personalised top twenty. Other people will then be able to see if you have the same tastes in horror as them or not.”

So here goes ...

The Exorcist (1973)
Halloween (1978)
The Shining (1980)
Psycho (1960)
Alien (1979)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Friday the 13th (1980)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
The Thing (1982)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
The Omen (1976)
Hellraiser (1987)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Wicker Man (1973)
The Haunting (1963)
The Lost Boys (1987)

Though I will have to admit that almost every film below Friday the 13th (save for The Lost Boys) is a better film than Friday the 13th, it is such a sentimental part of my formative years that it just can't go any lower.

So, thank you Jinx for propping up my self-esteem for just a bit longer. Any more awards from you and I just might let my Zoloft prescription expire... wait, what's this?

For the love of love. Jinx has also awarded me the Happy award. Alls I have to do is list ten things that make me happy. Since I love following instructions, but hate giving them (see earlier awards post), I won't be passing it on to other bloggers. They should know they make me happy when my wormy face shows up on their followers list.

But here are ten things that make me happy in no particular order:

10) The extra large Japanese Cherry iced tea at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

9) Table Rock Beach in Laguna, CA where I can dive around like a Hardy Boy with goggles and stare at all the sea life that BP hasn't gotten around to killing yet.

8) My cat Ripley (named after that other source of infinite joy ... Sigourney Weaver). I especially like it when she stretches out her fat belly to get her chubs rubbed. Ripley, not Sigourney.

7) Seeing a piece of art that completely cracks my eye open. This happened just recently with the movie Martyrs, but also happened at a Jasper Johns exhibit at MoMa.

6) Trader Joe's Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

5) Chips and salsa

4) The Mai Tais at Yamashiro in Hollywood. I don't drink very often. I have the tolerance of a toddler. But one of these puts me in a shiny happy place.

3) My nephews ... they just rock ... and watching them grow up, unafraid of the gay ... even writing essays about how "Gay Must Be Okay" ... makes me realize how all of us are seeds of a greater revolution.

2) My boyfriend ... he puts up with my 12-levels of crazy disconnected thoughts all crammed together like trains in Penn Station at rush hour ... he makes sure I remember to get three squares ... he pulls me out of my computer cave to make sure I go outside and speak to other human beings ... he warns me when I'm about to walk into things ... or onto things ... or under things. And he's super cute. I got lucky.

1) Getting recognition, love, and comments from readers. I still can't believe anyone takes the time to read my blog, but it always makes me happy to see my Follower tick increase or to get a comment or, of course, an award.

OK, so that last one was pure unpasteurized suck-up, but it also happens to be true. :)

Review: Martyrs (2008)

2010-08-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

French filmmaker Pascal Laugier has done something that happens only about once in a decade. He has created an original, coherent, and uncompromising vision of horror. It is, IMHO, the first truly great horror movie of the 21^st century: Martyrs.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew the film was controversial, but had carefully avoided reading too much about it. I knew that it was a divisive film, scoring a perfect 50% on the Tomatometer.

I became further intrigued after putting in the DVD and selecting an option for the filmmaker’s introduction. Laugier (I kid you not) apologizes for what you are about to see. I've never seen that before. It’s no grindhouse gimmick. He doesn’t plea with you to repeat “It’s only a movie” as a mantra to get yourself through it. He seems utterly casual and sincere in his apology. He seems to be saying: “This is the vision that came to me and now you must wrestle with it as I have.”

Where to begin? The narrative has so many clever redirects, so many jogs to the left when you thought you were going right, so many mind fucks, and so much yummy subtext that a plot summary almost does it a disservice.

But here is the setup: Lucie is a young girl who escapes a hellish torture chamber in an industrial building. She is brought to a hospital where she is haunted by the vision of an attacking demon, and is befriended by another orphan named Anna … a helping, loving giving tree of kindness, who is pained by her friend’s torment.

That’s everything up until the opening titles. Then, its 15 years later. That’s all I can say without a …

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Instead of going through the clever plot twists (a plot synopsis is available on Wikipedia if you must know), I really want to get into the character of Anna and the ending which is, I assume, where much of the controversy lies.

Anna, our ultimate final girl, is a good soul. She is also a ragingly co-dependent lesbian stuck on damaged, psychotic straight girl Lucie. But she always tries to do the right thing. Though she is stuck in a universe devoid of moral absolutes, she is compelled to try to save everybody. But it is she that needs saving. And you want her to be saved. You would reach into the screen and do it yourself if you could break that fourth wall.

SERIOUSLY, THERE ARE SPOILERS COMING. IF YOU HAVEN”T SEEN MARTYRS GO RENT IT AND COME BACK LATER.

We want to save Anna so much that when, in the 3^rd act, her relatively good deeds land her in the hot seat of torture, it is a miserable experience. And her ultimate fate incites deep dread.

I imagine many viewers might interpret Anna’s "transformation and enlightenment" after her abuse as a statement that women (and perhaps gays) are meant to be beaten, tortured, and abused. That they/we are put here on the earth to carry the sins of the unenlightened.

But that is not the meaning I got from Martyrs. I got quite the opposite.

For in the end, Anna’s abusers, led by the evil Madamoiselle, are revealed to be a bunch of twisted soulless religious wackos looking outside themselves for meaning, literalizing the idea of martyrdom, and trying to steal spirit from someone who has the heart and soul they lack. In the end, what they get for their evil deeds is nothing. They are still as hopeless and devoid of meaning as when their fiendish plot was devised.

Yes, Anna quite literally transcends the flesh to become pure consciousness. She is the Christ. Their calculated martyrdom of Anna “works.” It is perhaps true that people who are subjected to horrible amounts of cruelty may have no other place to go than to the deeper realm of spirit and/or psyche.

But the misguided, selfish (and doomed) fools who have engineered her martyrdom for their own salvation (instead of looking within) are ultimately left with nothing. In that sense, it doesn't work. It fails miserably.

The closing scene (and especially the closing line) delivers the true theme of the piece. It is what, I believe, reveals Laugier’s true intention. Watching it made me realize that Martyrs was both a direct dick punch to Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ and a French existentialist fuck you to Christian fundamentalism.

C’MON. DON’T SPOIL IT FOR YOURSELF. GO SEE IT FIRST!

In the last scene, Madamoiselle, having received reports from martyred Anna on the secrets of the afterlife, gets ready to report her findings to her anxious flock. After causing the suffering of so many innocents to steal the essence of their consciousness, what is the message that Madamoiselle has to relay?

“Keep Doubting.”

Then she blows her brains out.

Hallelujah.

Fuck you, Mel Gibson.

Review: American Zombie

2010-07-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

Zombies used to scare me when I was a kid. Back in the day (assuming that day was located somewhere around the time Leif Garrett was a household name), zombie movies weren’t even rated. Seminal zombie classic Dawn of the Dead was released in 1978 with the warning that “No One Under 17 Will Be Admitted”.

It made pre-teen horror geeks like myself drool, wondering what brain-searing images might be up on the screen.

They could have just said: "Prepare to get brainfucked through your eye socket" and it may have been more subtle.

Then Michael Jackson (no disrespect, may he rest in peace, sham-on) ruined everything with his dancing zombies in Thriller. Sure it was fun, inventive, and cool. But it made zombies seem, well, silly.

Or more to the point, it made me realize how silly zombies already were. They were slow moving (yeah, I know, not anymore, but we are talking pre-28 days Later) and really dumb. A zombie attack was like being chased by a herd of carnivorous turtles. Anyone dumb and slow enough to get caught and eaten probably should have been thinned from the herd anyway (just as Darwin intended it ... when he created the Universe in 7 days in a laboratory in Cambridge ... it's true ... just read the Bible).

I'm going to eat you ... if you just hold still and wait right there for 20 minutes ... rigormortis acting up in the right hip.

Anyhoo, in 2008 the zombie genre and the mockumentary genre had a mumblecore baby called American Zombie and I finally got around to watching it. Though it hasn't changed my feeling that zombies are silly, I found it to be a thoroughly fun, clever, well acted piece worth an add in your Netflix queue.

We're Here! We're Dead! Get Used to It!

Our protagonist is Grace Lee, an overly-earnest and politically correct documentarian, who teams up with her old college friend John to make a documentary about how zombies are a new political minority seeking its rights.

For all five of you who read my blog (love you guys!!), you know that I have had a hard time with True Blood because of the whole “Vampire Rights as Gay Rights Analogy” thing. It’s clever and funny, but it also bugs, because vampires are predators and(just put me in the humorless liberal club on this one ... something I will be sure to be embarrassed about in 5-10 years) gays are not predators.

So, the idea of a “zombie rights” movie had me a little skeptical from the outset. But, I think filmmaker Grace Lee succeeded in making a very amusing low-budget dark comedy.

The members of the “non-living community” are explained to be misunderstood. They aren’t mindless, flesh eating monsters, but people afflicted with the R428 virus which makes them undead, but still thinking, feeling, and one assumes eating ... er ... something.

Ivan, the perhaps-not-so-terrible

We have Ivan, the overweight teen who works at a convenience store and writes a zine (you gotta love that zombies still have zines!); Judy, an Asian zombie who works for a vegan organic food company; Joel, the revolutionary who leads Z.A.G. – the Zombie Advocacy Group; and Lisa, a middle-aged zombie with a bad dye job.

What makes the film work as a comedy (it’s not a horror movie by any stretch), is that we have a very funny conflict between respectful, painfully P.C. Grace and aggressive, pushy John. John asks the questions that Grace will not out of politeness. Important questions like … do you eat the flesh or brains of the living? It’s all very well played, their resentments well buried deep beneath their calculated filmmaker exteriors.

It also succeeds as a satire of modern urban liberalism. The zombies are all very lefty, sweet-natured, hippie types. But no matter how tame vegan Judy seems as she is tending her organic tomatoes, she is still a fucking zombie right? And, well, zombies are dangerous ... or aren't they?

Judy looking perfectly passive ... but will she cut a bitch?

Zombies as a metaphor for the pacifist left turns out to be quite inspired. Grace seems to be poking fun at us hippie types who have shunned our natural aggression and buried it deep into the psychological shadows, only to have it emerge in neurotic and unexpected places (like having a meltdown when Whole Foods doesn't have the Unsweetened Organic Hemp Milk that you like ... for example ... not speaking from personal experience).

Can zombies be happy as shut down, civilized, TV-watching, passive-aggressive Americans ... or do they need something more? It's a fun question and the movie has fun playing around with it.

American Zombie does a lot with its limited budget. I am not going to nit pick any details that don’t work, because there are so many that do.

It is very well shot, especially considering it is done completely handheld. One scene in particular stands out: As things start to go off the rails and Grace is in the back seat dealing with a crisis, the camera slips and focuses simply on the car window, drops of rain reflecting the flashing lights of cars that pass by. The visuals are meditative and quiet as we listen to the drama unfolding off screen. It’s a lovely, simple and cinematic moment that made me wonder what Grace Lee would be capable of given just a little more money.

Are you listening Hollywood?

GWM, over 30, blond, blue eyes, horror geek, 5'11", 165, Versatile

2010-07-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

I am very lucky, albeit lazy, blogger. On a week when my blogging output was lower than Glenn Beck's IQ, two fantabulous bloggers (Totally Jinxed and The Spooky Vegan) have given me The Versatile Blogger Award. See it in all of it's green loveliness below:

So first of all THANK YOU to these talented bloggers for giving me this honor on a week that I felt I really didn't deserve it. It even made Glenn Beck cry when he heard it ... either that or he poked himself in the eye with his sippy cup ...

But now, I must earn it for there be rules attached to said award. Sees them below...

The rules attached to this award are:
• Thank the person who gave it to you (Thanks again, Jinx and Spooky!!)
• Share 7 things about yourself.
• Pass the award along to 15 who you have recently discovered and who you think fantastic for whatever reason.
• Contact the blogs you picked and let them know about the award.

7 Things About Myself:
1) One of my favorite movies is "Joe Versus the Volcano" (I know, but it's seriously a hidden gem and Meg Ryan's best work ... no, I'm serious ... where are you going?)
2) I have an incredibly low threshhold for pain.
3) I'm friends with someone who does those celebutard "body language" interpretations on the TV, which I think is fucking hysterical.
4) I'm also Facebook friends with the guy that wrote Friday the 13th (the original), which makes me love both the Internet and America a little bit more.
5) My cat is named "Ripley" after Ellen Ripley in Alien.
6) I once went on a date with someone who was on the 80s sitcom Head of the Class.
7) I have an almost unnatural fear of imposing rules on others (this will be important later!)
8) I sleep in separate beds.
9) I can't count.

Bloggers that J'Adore:
Like I said, I have a weird aversion to imposing rules on people (see #7 above), and clearly this post proves I have some difficulty following them as well. I know at this point you are probably thinking "Save it hippie", but it's the truth.

But I would like to give some love (and the award) to the following bloggers who are just a bunch of smart coolheads that you should check out. First to the bloggers that gave me this award.

Jinx at Totally Jinxed will just riff on whatever catches her fancy (beards, Ron Perlman, and being David Bowie in Labyrinth) or do an in-depth movie review of a movie I had no idea exists. My Netflix queue grows exponentially just by virtue of her being in my Google Reader. She also seems like an extremely nice person with extremely red hair. And she has a stuffed pirahna. You gotta give it up for girlfriend.

The Spooky Vegan loves Halloween and who doesn't love someone who loves Halloween? She mixes up her Halloween fetishism with handy recipes for those who don't dig the taste of cow mucus and muscle tissue. I can seriously say it is the only place on the internet that will provide an "I Spit on Your Grave" review and a Tuscan Bread Summer Salad recipe in the same week. I know, right? You so want to be her friend.

And here are a list of other bloggers that I think are worthy of the title (in no particular order) and why ...

- the jaded viewer (because he fucking swears alot and I fucking love that.)

- Day of the Woman (because she's like the kid sister I never had ... ok at this point in my life, she could be my daughter ... just don't try to steal her signature "Peace, Love, Brains" sign off, cuz' she will cut a bitch...)

- My New Plaid Pants (I just assume everyone already reads this ... and if you aren't ... why not? Jason Adams is smart, freakin' hysterical and totally mo's out at the sight of Jake Gyllenhall ... or Ryan Reynolds ... or ... well, you get the picture.)

- Billy Loves Stu (Gay horror blogger extraordinaire Pax Romano serves up lots of juicy horror homo tidbits ... I only wish he'd change that darn font color ... )

- Final Girl (because Stacie Ponder is the queen mother of all horror bloggers and has a wit so dry, you need an IV drip)

- Mrs. Hall (because she does starkly confessional blogging, digging down into her human suffering without the predictable ironic distance of most of the blogosphere ... and then will gush about how that Jason Stackhouse - that lean, mean sex machine of True Blood - makes her ladyparts smile. How can you not love?)

- Rick Rossovitch (ok, this guy almost never blogs and each entry has exactly one tag: "stream of consciousness," but I have been obsessed with Mr. Rossivitch since the 80s when he looked like this ...
... to the 90s when he shot his TV show Pacific Blue outside of my house in Venice and fed all my silver fox daddy fantasies while looking like this ...

... and has since apparently retired to work on his house in Ojai and do some random blogging about incredibly random things while looking, er, like this ...
(I would still so be his little mini fire truck, that's alls I'm sayin.)

OK, so Rick doesn't deserve the award, but I've never figured out a proper place to vent my obsession with Mr. Rossovich. So here 'tis. Plus his blog is fascinating in a post-celebrity freak out kind of way.

So, I know that was just 9 and I'm breaking the rules and junk, but please go check out these folks and follow their blogs. It will make you a better person and more people will want to have sex with you just for doing it.

Peace, Love and ... er ... that's all, just Peace and Love...

Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves: The Viscera Film Festival

2010-07-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

Post-Mortem Depression is one of the sponsors (through a modest donation, mind you) of an awesome event in Downtown LA this weekend: THE VISCERA FILM FESTIVAL. If you are in the area and do not have per-existing plans (sadly yours truly does ... cue the loser sound ... WAHWAAAAH!), then you should go check it out:

$15 measly dollars for 35 short films. Plus an after party where you get to hang out with cool filmmakers like Shannon Lark, Stacie Ponder, and Jen and Sylvia Soska (and discuss why I'm such a loser having pre-existing plans during such a cool happening).

So, please go. Because a woman's place is in the director's chair ... not just in front of the camera getting chased by the oogely-boogelys....

Here's the lineup:

4 pm:

BLOODY CARPET WALK

Special guests and filmmakers take center stage on the bloody carpet to discuss with Press about their projects and the women in film movement.

4:45 pm:

Shannon Lark and Heidi Martinuzzi introduce the festival. Amber Benson, escorted by Jeff Dylan Graham, presents the Comedic Program.

Drones (Trailer) – Amber Benson and Busch – 2:10 minutes

A man discovers a universal threat to his life, job and the planet.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk (Trailer) - Jen and Sylvia Soska – 1:17 minutes
Four unlikely friends discover a dead body in their trunk after a night of heavy partying. Unable to go to the police, they find themselves on the run from the police, the killer, and the devil himself.

Space Girls (Trailer) – Stacie Ponder – 1 minute
SPACE GIRLS is about…well, it’s about girls in space. They shoot ray guns, they fight big monsters, and they fly around in rocket ships.

Sprinkles (Trailer) - Roger A. Scheck and Brooke Lewis – 1:01 minutes
High-priced call girl Maura (Brooke Lewis) has a seemingly chance encounter with a client, Gary (Don Danielson), while on a business trip.

Movie Monster Insurance - Paula Haifley - 3:56 minutes
Isn’t it time you protected your family? Call 666-MONSTER to learn more about Movie Monster Insurance. Do it today. Do it for your family.

BRAINS – Shannon Lark and Amber Steele - 4.09 minutes
A parody of Kelly’s youtube sensation “SHOES.” She’s going to get what she wants!

Confederate Zombie Massacre - Devi Snively - 16:04 minutes
It’s love and gore in the Civil War!

Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day - Faye Hoerauf & Jessica Baxter - 13:33 minutes
When an unexpected snowstorm strikes Seattle, the dead rise from their graves to prey on the city’s helpless citizens. From the confines of their living room, a group of unlikely heroes emerge to stop the flesh-hungry hordes, only to discover that zombies aren’t the only evil they are up against.

Barbee Butcher - Sophie Lagues - :25 seconds
A greenish clay creature cuts a Barbie doll into pieces with the aim of turning itself into a femme fatale … but with unexpected results!

I Spit on Eli Roth - Devi Snively - 5:04 minutes
A cautionary tale about what happens to men who underestimate women in the horror genre.

Heading Home - Jane Rose - 10:30 minutes
Marie knows that terrible things are afoot in her husband’s lab: strange sounds come from behind the door; the butcher brings grotesque deliveries to their house; children are disappearing from town. But will her decision to interfere in Edward’s macabre research unleash an even greater horror?

Taste of Flesh, Taste of Fear - Stacie Ponder - 9:56 minutes
The only thing that could possibly be better than a B-grade lesbian vampire movie is a B-grade lesbian vampire movie made with Dollar Store knockoff Barbie Dolls!

15 minute intermission

Cerina Vincent, escorted by A.J. Bowen, presents the Experimental/Psychological Program.

Ludlow Trailer – Stacie Ponder – :60 minutes

An abused young woman flees her boyfriend in the desert, where she tries to make sense of contradictory memories, experiences, and hallucinations.

The Commune Trailer - Lis Fies - 1:43 minutes
A young virgin finds herself isolated in a remote commune of religious “family” members with a sinister agenda to ensure their supernatural survival.

I’m a Little Teapot – Sallie Smith - 21 seconds
Explores the connection between childhood memories and the realization of sudden death.

Distraught - Brenda Fies - 5:38 minutes
Fame has its price.

Hollywood Skin - Maude Michaud - 10 minutes
A young woman moves to Hollywood with the hopes of becoming an actress, but slowly descends into madness as she keep accumulating rejections.

Mary Jane Go Round - Ginnetta Correli - 4:21 minutes
Based on the novella called the Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli.

When Sally Met Frank - Victoria Waghorn - 9 minutes
A satirical love story of women’s obsession with the beauty myth and a fun commentary on our society’s increased desire for homogenization of the masses.

Lip Stick - Shannon Lark and Stacie Ponder - 10:34 minutes
A lonely woman with an overwhelming obsession of masturbation and self deprecation must extricate herself from what consumes her every moment.

Sisters - Belinda Green-Smith - 4:07 minutes
Two Sisters hiking in the woods fall in a vast underground cavern and soon discover they are not alone.

The Date - Jennifer Gigantino and Natasia Schibinger - 2:55 minutes
A blind date goes terribly wrong.

Salome’s Picnic - Victoria Waghorn - 1:00 minute
A passionate couple lie beyond, entwined in a deep embrace, doing what lovers do. Or do they?

Fantasy - Izabel Grondin - 15:09 minutes
Marc and Chantal have nothing in common but for a peculiar fantasy. Tonight they meet for the first time.

Beautiful As You Are - Doug Mallette and Mary Katherine Sisco - 6:10 minutes
A long time TV addict finds his mate.

15 minute intermission

Brea Grant, escorted by Paul Solet, presents the Scary Program.

Legend of the Red Reaper (Trailer) - Jose Zambrano Cassella, Matt Dean, Tara Cardinal - 1.42 minutes

For a thousand years, the Reapers guarded mankind from the demons that wait in the dark. Now, at the beginning of a new age, the Reapers are betrayed and slaughtered. Only one Reaper remains – Red, and she’s out to exact revenge.

Side Effect - Liz Adams - 13 minutes
A blood-curdling tale of science gone wrong in a pill-popping culture where the cure is more deadly than the disease.

The Resurrectionist - Susan Bell - 14:45 minutes
Terrorized by supernatural happenings, Fredrick is at the mercy of an angry ghost as it reveals its chilling story. And the nightmare won’t stop until retribution is found.

17th Man - Yimeng Jin - 23:00 minutes
A dark-tale thriller about a best-selling author haunted by his fictitious femme fatale. When she comes to life after he tries to put an end to her in his final book “The 17th Man”… a psychological mind-game of deception ensues and only one can survive!

Don’t Lose Heart - Matt Mitchell and Talieysn Brown - 10:00 minutes
Lucy wants out, but all the zombies want to do is get in!

Mockingbird - Marichelle Daywalt - 1:40 minutes
Description: Sometimes the most terrifying things are heard, not seen

Wretched - Heidi Martinuzzi and Leslie Delano - 20 minutes
Jenny (Jaime Andrews) and her husband Eric (Joe Bob Briggs) sit at a diner eating a cheap meal of burgers, fries and chocolate cake. Through their everincreasing arguments and Jenny’s constant visits to the ladies room, the audience will start to learn how close to losing her sanity Jenny really is, and how oblivious Eric is when it comes to Jenny’s disorder.

Switch - Melanie Light - 4:14 minutes
A man on his drive home from work gets more than he bargains for when he follows a woman into the snowy woods.

Void - Meredith Berg - 20 minutes

Follow an FBI agent into the VOID as she enters a small town where a mysterious killer roams and strange phenomena abound. As her investigation deepens and desperate phone calls to her son go unanswered, she’ll come closer and closer to an inconceivable truth.

Consumed - Lis Fies - 6:20 minutes
Hero is her one and only, forever.

5 minute intermission for voting.

Filmmakers in attendence come up on stage for a 20-minute Q n A!

CLOSING AWARD CEREMONY

Viscera Statues will be given to attending Filmmakers.

Cerina Vincent, Brea Grant, and Amber Benson will give out the Awards in Best Direction, Best Cinematography, and Audience Favorite.

Afterparty on the roof till the bar closes!

Head Trauma: Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments

2010-07-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Horror Digest did a list of the top 10 Willy Inducing moments, prompting Final Girl to follow suit. Since I would follow these two bloggers anywhere (yes even if they jumped off a cliff, Mom), here are mine … (THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD)

10. Suspiria – Leap into razorwire
When our poor non-final girl, Sarah, is chased by an oogely-boogely down the darkened hallways of the spooky dorm, we know she’s gonna get it. The only question is how and when? Suspiria answers both questions with cruel brilliance. Trapped in razor wire, she is helpless against a viscious stabbing.

9. Zombie – Eye meet splinter
Eye trauma is icky. You don’t really see it too much in horror movies. But in Zombie, not only do we have eye trauma … we have drawn out, oh-my-God-I-can’t-watch-it kind of eye trauma. Italians are crazy.

8. Night Train Murders – Knife to the hoo
The only thing worse than eye trauma is hoo trauma. And by hoo, I mean junk, gennies, nads, your means to the nasty. It’s also rare to see in horror. We Americans like our eyes and our hoos … but not those Italians!

7. Carrie – Mama attacks
Carrie White is shy, tender, a raw nerve. You want to take care of her, defend her against her evil Mother and dreadful peers. So when her mom stabs her with a knife, it’s both heartbreaking and willy inducing. “Why mama, why?”

6. Wolf Creek – Head on a Stick
Our resourceful, heroic, and chaste final girl Liz saves her friend Kristy, then goes back into the lion’s den looking for a car. But the sneaky (and unreasonably attractive) filmmaker Greg McLean pulls a fast one. Liz, the goodhearted and brave, gets stabbed in the back by maniacal Mick. He severs her spinal cord, SO SHE CAN FEEL PAIN, BUT CAN'T MOVE. (Wait! She’s NOT our final girl? She’s paralyzed and going to be tortured horribly? She’s now just a head on a stick?) What we don’t see is unimaginable.

5. Audition – That f-in bag
If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. As spoilery as this post has been, I can’t spoil this.

4. Hellraiser – "Jesus Wept"
When skinless masochist asshole Frank Cotton gets caught by the cenobites, we cringe as hooks and chains pull his skin every which way. After a losing battle against his demons, Frank is locked in a metal spider web crucifixion. Knowing he is doomed, he delivers a most chilling line: “Jesus Wept,” then gets pulled apart. Willies!

3. Angel Heart – "Who was the Boy?"
Though the special effects on this movie are dated, it is so frigging creepy and Mickey Rourke and Robert DeNiro are so fucking good that it doesn't matter. By the time the mystery of the voodoo-loving crooner Johnny Favorite is revealed (“WHO WAS THE BOY?!”) and Robert DeNiro reveals himself as Lucifer (with glowing yellow eyes no less) ... and that creepy baby, the willies are crawling all over me.

2. Tie: Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave – THAT scene
Last House on the Left (the original) is in many ways a terrible movie. It is super low budget and has lots of awkward dumb moments. However, the rape and murder scene is so grisly and the aftermath so believable, that it can't help but linger with you. To me, it felt like I witnessed something horrible and did nothing to stop it. I felt implicated in the crime.

I Spit on Your Grave is a better movie in many ways. It is shot better. The acting is better. And the rape scene is even more horrific. The contrast of the suffering of the victim with the good-old-boy tomfoolery of the attackers is devastating. It goes on for WAY too long. Even when you think it should stop. It makes you suffer the way she suffers. Many reviewers had a problem with that. I came away being even more horrified by the brutality of rape.

1. Texas Chainsaw Masacre – Sally’s run
Texas Chainsaw is relentless, weird and unsettling. It sits at the intersection of the Venn diagram between slasher and grindhouse. Leatherface - a hulking he/she, a not-so-hot tranny mess - is but ONE of a family of killers that our final girl Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) has to face. Though Leatherface has his signature chainsaw, his lesser-known brother (known simply as Hitchhiker) has a nasty-ass straight-razor. As Sally is fleeing, Hitchhiker mercilessly slashes at her over and over again, cutting her back as she flees. I just want to scream at the screen “Leave her alone! She’s suffered enough!” But this movie has no mercy and always leaves me exhausted by the time we get to this horrific willy inducing finale.

Hideous Linky

2010-07-02T15:27:00.000-07:00

File this under "Things I should Love, but Don't" .... True Blood.

I know, I know. It's got gaysexiness up the wazoo and vampires and werewolves and all that. I know, I know. Bad gay horror geek.

Billy Loves Stu has a nice overview of the link between teh gay and teh vampire that is ages old.

It makes me feel even more guilty for having given up on it after Season 1. I don't even want to get into why I don't love it or why the last episode of season one made me throw up my hands and delete the Episode recording from my DVR.

It is the trifecta of horror, funny and gaysexiness and all the things that I should love.

But it goes down like ice cream, pickles and pizza to me. Things that I like separately, but when put all together ... not-so-much.

I want to love. I just can't. I have my reasons.

Off Topic: Why I f-in HATED 'The Hangover'

2010-07-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as a reasonable person. I'm pro-homo without being anti-hetero. I'm a leftie, but don't always disagree with my Republican friends about everything. I'm an athiest, but support Christian organizations that do things that I am unwilling or unable to do -- like feed the poor in Africa.

So when I find myself in a minority opinion, it rarely is anything that would dip below the 35% of polled Americans rate. Not to say that this is a good thing, but it is generally true.

Well, The Hangover changed that. With its Certified Fresh rating from RottenTomatoes.com, fawning reviews, and gonzo box office, I can neither deny nor fathom its popularity.

I loathed this movie so deeply and completely that I felt sort of like I did after the 2004 elections. I had a sense that the world had gone mad. Like the Presidential debates that year, I just kept wondering if I was watching the same show as everyone else.

And it isn't just that I'm simply too gay to get the rowdy hetero bromance aspect of the script. I really liked director Todd Phillips' first effort Old School (despite the over-the-top gay blow job instructor). I think he's a good director. Like that film, this one is expertly shot and the performances are all solid.

My problem is in the script by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore ... specifically the theme of the story.

Whether you like it or not, all movies are morality tales. No matter how awful the behavior of our protagonists, they are our avatars. They get to do the things that we can't (or at least shouldn't). We are able to experience their misadventures without the repercussions.

But the protagonists MUST experience the repercussions. Whether their flawed humanity is played for humor, horror, or drama, they either learn the lesson and triumph or they don't and suffer.

But in The Hangover, we are forced on a road trip with four douchebags who act like utter turds AND DON'T LEARN A FUCKING THING.

It all starts out with a promising comedy setup, mind you. The four protagonists get fucked up in Vegas during a rowdy bachelor party. They wake up with broken furniture, broken bones, a tiger, a chicken, a baby etc. The plot revolves around figuring out what happened and getting the groom to the wedding.

As the movie progressed, I was surprised to discover that the comedy smash of 2009 was not making me laugh. The comedy was lost on me. I just kept thinking what fucking assholes these guys were. Zack Galifianakis is a seriously disturbed whack-job who drugs his friends and is also a pedophile who ends up in charge of the baby (COMEDY!). Bradley Cooper plays a narcissistic douche who puts them all in constant danger for some pathetic shot at recapturing his youth. Ed Helms plays a henpecked nerd who can't stand up to his wife.

Among our antagonists is Mr. Chow, a lisping Asian stereotype that plays like a live-action re-enactment of Mr. Magoo's sidekick Charley. He spouts inspired lines like "What you talking about Willis?" (AUTHOR!). And of course we have comic genius Mike Tyson playing himself.

I hated all of them -- protagonists and antagonists alike. I was hoping that I would at least get the satisfaction of watching them suffer consequences and grow up a bit. But that was not to come. I was about to learn that in the moral universe of The Hangover, things are a little different.

In every movie, there is a theme. Even in an immoral universe, there is a theme. For instance in The Godfather, the theme would be "Family first." Most films, at some point, will explicitly state the theme. This is where we learn what the moral center of the story is.

In The Hangover, the theme is (appropriately?) stated my Mike Tyson. Yes, it's the morally grounded Mike Tyson (who bit off a man's ear and beat his wife) who shrugs off our douche-tagonists' shenanigans and states the theme:

"We all do dumb shit when we're fucked up."

That's it! Not, "Hey you middle-aged assholes are in need of serious self-examination, perhaps a twelve-step program or (in Zack's case) medication."

"We all do dumb shit when we're fucked up."

Like a Douche ex Machina, Mr. Tyson solves everyone's problem by telling them that they aren't the problem. Apparently causing thousands of dollars in property damage and putting your friends and a baby in mortal danger for no frickin' reason is cool ... as long as you are drunk.

"We all do dumb shit when we're fucked up."

Take that Mothers Against Drunk Driving!

"We all do dumb shit when we're fucked up."

If douchebaggery ever needed a statement of principle, they now have it.

"We all do dumb shit when we're fucked up."

It's at this point in the movie that I started actively rooting for the protagonists to die.

And don't even get me started on the three female characters, of which there are three types: (1) Shrew (too hard), (2) Hooker/Stripper (too soft), (3) Overly understanding fiance with "boys will be boys" attitude (just right!).

So everything sort of works out for our unlikeable protagonists. Bradley Cooper is off the hook for instigating the whole nightmare. Ed Helms dumps his wife for the stripper/hooker (WIN!). The groom somehow forgives all of his friends by the time his wedding starts, so he's as dubious as the rest of them. Zack Galifianakis, I assume, lives to molest again (HILARIOUS SEQUEL POTENTIAL!).

So there it is. Why I hate this movie. It's now off my chest. I'm among a small minority, but I won't be quiet any longer. And if you don't like it, talk to my Grandma...

Hideous Linky

2010-06-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Freddy's -- er -- coming for you: Jason Adams over at My New Plaid Pants posted a titillating link today.

Its deliciousness can be savored over at FourFour.

It's a clip from Never Sleep Again -- the Nightmare on Elm Street documentary in which the filmmakers and actors from Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge fess up to the overwhelming gay-osity of that movie.

And yes, readers, Marshall Bell -- Homo Hall of Fame inductee Coach Schneider himself -- is interviewed.

Good times will be had by all, so go there now.

Homo Horror Hall of Fame: Jame Gumb a.k.a. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs

2010-06-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

Jame Gumb liked to wear makeup, mince around with a small dog named Precious, tuck his gennies between his legs while staring at himself in the mirror, and make dresses -- out of "great big fat person" girl skin.

In 1991, that made him a bit of a homo controversy. Jame was seen as yet another psycho-fag stereotype. Protests erupted. San Francisco burned (just after they had finally rebuilt after that whole Basic Instinct thing).

These were dark times, readers. Long before lovable pet homos on Will and Grace and Queer Eye appeared to re-assure hamburger-eating regular 'murcans that gays didn't want to skin their fatties. As it turns out, we only wanted to de-frizz their hair and toss their college-era bong-stained tie-dye wall hangings into the trash.)

But now that 20 years (gulp!) have passed and we have somewhat of a broader range of homos in the American film cannon, it's time to ask the question: what exactly was Jame's deal? Was s/he trans-sexual? Doctor Lecter says he is not (though he is an unreliable narrator if ever there was one). We know Jame had a boyfriend named Benjamin Raspall at one point, but he was also apparently shtupping ill-fated Frederica Bimmel (who provided the lovely diamond pattern for his lady suit). So does this make Jame a bi-trans-sexual?
Well, whatever Jame was, I will go out on a limb here and declare (you can't stop me, San Francisco!) that the Unsinkable Miss Gumb was not straight. This is not just some confused straight man who'd be eating Nachos at Hooters if it weren't for the years of "systematic abuse" he endured.

So Jame, hold your head high, girl. Apply as much lotion as you like. Put on your best nipple rings and blonde wig.

You are a beautiful butterfly and don't let nobody tell you different. You have now made the Homo Horror Hall of Fame and they can never take that from you.

Hideous LInky

2010-06-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

So ... am I busy, lazy or just a Capital L Loser? I'm busy dammit! I swear -- I got stuff going on! What kind of stuff? You know -- stuff stuff. Hopefully one day I can even tell you about it all and you'll all be like "Wow!That's some stuff!".

But for now, alls I got is some hot links --

Male Bonding: Pax over at Billy Loves Stu plumbs the interracial gaysexiness of Dawn of the Dead. Pax is the bloodhound of horror gay subtext and for that I am profoundly grateful.

The Wiggles: Deadly Doll's House reviews Squirm -- one of my personal favorite Animals Run Amok features.

Double Feature: Stacie over at Final Girl Ponders two movies I am dying to see -- [REC] 2 and Centurion.

So go see them! I swear it'll be worth your time. I'm not just pawning you off on my more prolific blogger brethren. OK maybe I am ...

Don't hate me...

Off Topic: Ode to Vanessa Lutz

2010-06-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would not be a prisoner to it. “Blog,” I said, “You will not be the boss of me. I will only post when I have the time and something to say.”

Yet, even given that low bar for prolificity, I have been the lamest lamester in the town of Laminghood. It has been almost a month since my last post.

So, I’m forcing myself to post, even though I am going slightly off topic.

After reading EW's top 100 characters of the last 20 years, I was hurt, shocked, disappointed, dismayed, angry and every other adjective that describes a state of irritation to learn that they had overlooked my personal favorite.

Though they felt compelled to name Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston's portrait of a hairstyle on Friends) as #6, they completely dropped the ball by omitting Vanessa Lutz, the foul-mouthed, quick-tempered, violent, white trash spawn of a crack whore mother who was channeled brilliantly by Reese Witherspoon in the cult classic Freeway (1996).

Today, I will remedy that sinful omission by singing her praises.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

"Fuck you, you piece of shit."

Where to begin? Vanessa Lutz, not wanting to end up a ward of the state again after her mother and molesting step-dad are arrested for solicitation and drug possession, hits the I-5 freeway-- towards her Grandmother's trailer park in Northern California. But, unfortunately, her car breaks down.

Further adding to her misfortune, she is picked up by an Orange County serial killer named Bob Wolverton (Keifer Sutherland). Bob gains Vanessa's trust through a series of increasingly personal questions that touch upon the abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather.

"I guess I trust you more than I've ever trusted anyone in my whole life, Bob."

There is one big obvious way that this modern-day take on Little Red Riding Hood could have gone from this point forward. Vanessa would be victimized, barely escaping with her life through much of Act 2, until finally finding the inner strength she needs to kill Big, Bad Bob Wolverton in the Act 3 confrontation.

But this is NOT that movie ... and this is most definitely NOT the Reese Witherspoon you may know and love from Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama.

You see, Miss Vanessa Lutz is no victim. She may be a traumatized and trusting child, but once her street smarts kick in and she sniffs out Bob as the wolf that he is, she turns the tables.

"You wanna get shot a whole bunch of times? Now do like I tell you, dumbass!"

Against all odds (and fully against audience expectations), Vanessa remains fully in control of her fate from the moment she turns the tables on Wolverton right up until the final confrontation at Grandma's house.

Vanessa Lutz, as written by Matthew Bright and as played by Witherspoon, is hilarious, heartbreaking, and more than a little scary. She flips between child-like vulnerability and cold, calculated violence in an instant. She lies, cheats, steals, and is responsible for the death of at least one person who didn't seem to deserve it, yet you still want her to win. She may be more "Hood" than "Little Red Riding", but you can't help but cheer her on as she makes her way through a series of situations that would make most grown men crumble.

By the time Vanessa is done with Mr. Wolverton, he's pooping in a bag, impotent and looking like this:

And we aren't even halfway through the movie, yet.

Freeway takes the "girl in peril" archetype, flips it over and body slams it. Vanessa Lutz has no reason for optimism in her situation, but she never collapses into self-doubt or self pity. She is a crafty survivor who is used to having the odds stacked against her and drawing on her seemingly infinite will to see her through.

But why does this girl who has nothing going for her find the relentless drive to survive and triumph over her tormentor? What is the reason for her ability to overcome every obstacle -- both physical and psychological -- that is thrown her way?

As Vanessa Lutz herself says:

"Because I'm pissed off and the whole world owes me."

Hell yes, Vanessa, the world does owe you. And EW owes you big time. You are one of the most original, funny, brutal, and (yes) loveable misfit protagonists of the last 20 years. You are the reason that I can forgive Reese Witherspoon for the string of less interesting roles she has tackled since (with the notable exception of Tracy Flick in Election).

The world owes you ... but, unfortunately, you will have to settle for this mere blogger shout-out.

(Just for the record, after seeing this movie, I had what I still believe to be the brilliant idea of casting Reese Witherspoon as the grown-up version of Newt in Alien 3 ... not that anyone ever asked me .... because if they did ... that's what I would have told them ... but instead they went and killed off Newt in the opening credits ... which still bugs me ... Reese would have rocked it...)

Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

2010-05-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

With some sense of trepidation, I recently subjected myself to the latest Platinum Dunes remake/reboot/re-imagining of a classic eighties slasher film -- A Nightmare on Elm Street.

SPOILERS, AHOY!

The Good News: It appears that the screenwriter read my blog entry of a few weeks ago, then went back in a time-machine, and created a Freddy legend that is more "psychologically correct." It now makes sense that Freddy pops up in the dreams of his teen victims because of their past connection to him. He molested them as children.

The idea of Freddy as a "filthy child murderer" in the original always felt incomplete and unbelievable. Incomplete, because nobody just murders kids for the sake of murdering them. Unbelievable, because it would be impossible to keep the story of a local child murderer from the kids in the neighborhood.

So where the original merely hinted that the Freddy in their dreams was a traumatic flashback to childhood molestation, the remake explicitly makes that link between Freddy and the kids he stalks.

And it makes more sense.

The Bad News: The movie just is not scary. It moves in a rushed, ADD kind of way. Frenetic, yet flat. Never feeling real enough to force the audience to invest in the characters or feel their dread.

I wish I could say I liked it, but I didn't -- and I've grouped my reasons into three categories.

1) Disposable Teens

Freddy's new victims are written in such a way that they show almost no traits of survivors of sadistic childhood sexual abuse. If these kids were truly violated by a creep like Freddy, it would affect them in their waking lives, not just their dream lives.

They would have drug addictions, sex addictions, social phobias, and/or intimacy issues. Instead they are shown to be relatively well-adjusted high school students -- a jock, pretty girl, a shy arty girl, a shy arty boy -- with nice enough parents whose biggest waking problem is Dawson's Creek level dating drama. Based on what we learn of their past, they should be much more fucked up (and much more interesting) than they are.

Biology is so, like, stressful

I must give credit to Rooney Mara. She plays Nancy as a sort of mumble-mouthed introverted misfit. Of all of the kids, she comes the closest to hitting the right notes of a girl layered in the toxic shame of an abusive past.

And there are a few scenes where you feel a bit of her distress. One scene where Freddy puts Nancy in a little girl dress and starts to molest her again is particularly freaky.

But these moments of ick are fleeting and never last long enough to sustain a true feeling of dread.

2) What's the rush?
There are moments in horror movies where the filmmaker should violate your trust. He should show you something too raw, take you someplace too dark, and do it much quicker or slower than you expected.

But in this film, there seems to be a concerted effort to cut away from the more disturbing elements before the true horror can really sink in. It all just goes by too fast.

This remake hums as quickly and efficiently as a music video. You don't worry too much about what is around the corner, because (a) you can usually see it coming a mile away, and (b) you can trust that there will be an edit that will take you out of the scary place before things get too disturbing.

I've never found movies with constant quick cuts to be scary -- just irritating.

3) How Evil is He?

There is no real explanation of what exactly Freddy did to these kids, so the depths of his evil is never fully understood. Did he rape them or just fondle them? Did he torture them? How were the finger knives involved? Did he threaten them if they told the secret? Your average episode of Law and Order: SVU would have more details than we are provided with here.

"Show me where the bad man touched you."

It's just hard to judge the magnitude of this Freddy's evil. When Nancy discovers the proof that Freddy molested her vis-a-vis Polaroid pictures, we don't see them. We get no sense of what is on them. By not knowing the extent of Freddy's treachery, we are again distanced from the suffering of the protagonists and it all seems kind of remote and abstract.

Childhood sexual abuse is really disturbing stuff and the filmmakers were correct to bring that element of the Freddy story out into the forefront. Horror is one of the mediums we have for confronting such evils in our society. In fact, one might argue it is horror's sole purpose.

Our protagonists were victimized as children, which is bad enough. But then they are re-victimized through their subconscious years later. This idea has a lot of potential for evoking empathy in the audience and delivering a truly frightening and grueling horror movie experience.

But we never quite get there. It never feels quite real.

When Nancy finally "kills" Freddy, it's generic. We don't feel the years of Nancy's repressed rage bubble to the surface. Nancy never calls Freddy to account for all of the horrible things he did to her and how it fucked up her life. Sure, she kills him, but we never see her truly take her power back. We are robbed of what could have potentially been an awesome catharsis. We get no "Ripley v. Alien 'Get away from her you bitch!'" moment. We don't even get a "Mom v. Orphan 'I'm not your fucking Mommy!'" moment.

Nancy just kills him. It just kind of happens. Then we move quickly on to the next scene.

Efficient as clockwork -- and about as scary.

Happy Friday!

2010-05-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

That's to Final Girl Stacie Ponder for posting this so I could steal it. :)

Psycho-Babble: Halloween (1978)

2010-05-07T13:27:00.000-07:00

Anyone who reads this blog knows the story of Halloween. Michael Myers is the boogeyman. He is a soulless child who kills his teenage sister, then goes to the nuthouse, then comes back years later to kill more teen girls. Add some nonsense psychology spewed in Shakespearian intonations by Donald Pleasance about Michael being pure “e-e-e-e-vil” and you’re done.

Simple, effective horror.

Halloween was arguably the first in a long line of “violent-sexual-repression-symbolized-as-psycho-with-knife” horror that emerged in the 70s/80s.

Our shy and sensible final girl Laurie Strode is a virgin with a crush on never-seen Ben Tramer, but lacks the extroverted, brazen lustiness of her pals Annie and Linda.

Whore. Slut. Survivor.

So Michael Myers comes back to town – the embodiment of Laurie Strode’s inner animus. Michael is, to put it crudely, the cockmeat Laurie wants and fears made manifest. He keeps coming after her again and again, breaking down doors, trying to break through her skin with his big, thrusting knife. In Michael’s nightlong attack on Laurie, we see her hormone-driven inner conflict played out in a suburban cat-and-mouse horror show.

"Is it supposed to hurt?"

What works about the original Halloween is that (without the Rob-Zombie-esque explanation of Michael’s inner world) we are free to project anything we want onto Michael. An effective boogeyman, like an effective prostitute, should be able to become whatever we need him to be.

But what is a boogeyman?

The boogeyman exists, first and foremost, in everyone’s personal subconscious. He is an archetype within our monkey brains, inherited from our knuckle-dragging forefathers and foremothers who had the good sense to fear, and therefore avoid, bad people bent on doing them grave bodily harm.

"You're welcome!"

In our modern world, we still need our boogeyman archetype, because there are still plenty of assholes and crazies who want to fuck with us and those we love. Our modern manifestation of the boogeyman includes, but is not limited to, the serial killer, the rapist, and the terrorist.

Even today, 1978’s Michael Myers remains a great target for our projections of the boogeyman because he is so vague – faceless, shadowy, nightmarish. Whatever is freaking us out at the moment -- whether it be a touchy substitute teacher, a person-shaped shadow in our closet, Osama Bin Laden, or one of the Olsen twins -- can be projected onto the Shatner-masked creepo with the big butcher knife.

I'm your boogeyman. That's what I am.

At 9-years-old, my boogeyman lived in my bedroom closet that (thanks to the rotted wood around the latch) would never quite close. Every night, I would stare at the dark sinister crack, shrink into my Scooby Doo blanket, and wait for the shadowy humanoid-shaped hanging coats and shirts to start talking, moving, and plotting my lengthy and painful demise.

So as I watched Michael’s violent rampage at the Drive-Ins from the front seat of my Dad’s Chevy Nova, I found a masked representation for the evil, scary boogeyman in my closet.

But Myers was more to me than just some vague imagined thing that hated me and lurked among the toughskin jeans and Braggin’ Dragon shirts in my closet. He was more than an echo of my half-monkey great-great-(to infinity)-grandmother’s “avoid-the-scary-man-with-the-sharp-thing” survival code.

Michael Myers was the projection of a demon I was battling inside of myself -- a malicious and ugly motherfucker called internalized homophobia.

I will haunt your dreams...

By nine, the first strains of homo-lust had already begun to permeate my psyche vis-à-vis Patrick Duffy, Tom Wopat, Grant Goodeve, and other dark-haired, light-eyed stud-muffins of the era. Unfortunately, I had also already begun to internalize the violent homophobia of the culture around me.

What is a nine-year-old gay growing up in a blue-collar section of Boston in 1978 to do with thoughts of getting lost in the tangles of Tom Wopat’s magnificent chest hair? These were strong, powerful thoughts that – according to God and television – were very, very bad and needed to be violently crushed.

The face of evil.

So I developed an inner mechanism -- a violent interloper that would come in to exterminate any intrusive thoughts of Patrick Duffy’s nipples or the bulge in zipper area of the Marlboro Man’s jeans. By developing an inner gay basher, perhaps I could crush these evil thoughts and avoid an actual gay bashing in real life.

So, as I watched the last scene of Halloween, with Laurie hidden in a closet as marauding Michael smashed his way through the thin membrane of the slatted closet door, it was at precisely the same time that my closet (as a personal symbol) was transforming. The dark closet that housed my childhood bedtime boogeyman was quickly becoming a secret place where I could hide my emerging homosexuality from the hostile world around me.

And Michael Myers, whether symbolizing my repressed homosexuality itself, or the violent homophobic reaction to said homosexuality, could tear right through that psychic slatted door of denial.

Who you think you're kidding, girl?

(Carol Clover in her brilliant essay “Her Body, Himself” posits that the final girl is actually a boy made female to allow the audience to accept his/her vulnerability. This explains why final girls are often tomboys, sometimes with unisex names. Accepting that thesis means that it isn’t a big leap to view the final girl as a gay boy, no?)

So do I think John Carpenter and Debra Hill intentionally sought to create Michael Myers as a symbol of violent internalized homophobia and Laurie as a closeted gay boy? Not at all. But they did create a film that was universal enough in its dread and symbolism that anyone could project their personal shadow drama onto it. Clearly many, many others who had different struggles, passions and fears were able to project those up onto the screen as well, which is why it made so much damn money and fostered so many sequels and remakes.

But, what did I learn from Halloween? I learned that the safety of the closet is an illusion. The door can be stripped away at any time, and you better be ready to stick a wire hanger into homophobia’s cursed eyehole or you just might find that prison to be your final resting place.

Come to the light!

She likes me ... she really likes me...

2010-05-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

Hey look at me ... Stacie Ponder interviewed me about my horror blog from her much more popular horror blog, Final Girl ... it's like the scene in Grease where no-nonsense alpha-dog Rizzo finally accepts Sandy as one of the Pink Ladies ... just before she dresses her up as a hosebag so people will like her ... that's me ... right now ... because of this ...

Hideous Linky

2010-04-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

These are a few of my favorite things around the blogosphere:

Party Down: Billy Loves Stu reminds us of the horrors of Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Surprisingly not mentioned or shown is the loveliness that is Tom Berenger circa 1977 . This I rectify below. Even in coked up drag-queen mode you know you would would so hit that.

Nice Piece of Kick-Ass: Jason over at My New Plaid pants continues to speak my secret thoughts with his spot-on review of Kick Ass (summation: Calm down nerds, not so great). Because he is a giver and never misses the chance to exploit the flesh of the residents of the Pretty-sphere, he also points out that the supposedly geeky actor who plays Kick-Ass is actually a hot piece in disguise.

Are You My Mother? Reminding us why we should have sympathy for those who ship their adopted brats back to Mother Russia, Scare Sarah explores the delights of last year's wonderfully campy Orphan.

Celluloid Saviors: Arbogast rounds up all the contributors (myself included) to his "One I Would Have Saved" blog challenge. Some worthy choices.

Bad Luck: Friday the 13th Part 2 is shelved. I have mixed feelings about it. After initially loving up on the much hated 2009 remake, I recently re-watched and realized that it was pretty much a turd with hateable characters doing non-sensical things and deserving whatever punishment Jason had to dish out.

The One(s) I Might Have Saved

2010-04-21T11:48:00.001-07:00

Arbogast over at Arbogast on Film has asked fellow bloggers to identify "those doomed characters from horror movies whose plight or personality so moved the writer that he or she wished they had the power to breach the fourth wall of cinema and save that person from his or her tragic fate."

Though, my tragic character flaw is an almost pathological inability to choose, luckily we are talking about horror movies! Horror movies are so often (and frustratingly) filled with thinly drawn douchebags that I easily narrowed down my candidates to three.

These three characters evoke such a sense of pathos that no matter how many times I watch these movies, my magical thinking is engaged and I cringe and yell at the screen hoping that somehow, maybe this time (abracadabra, presto-chango), they'll live.

(Since all these characters die, do I really need to have a SPOILER ALERT?)

1) Carrie White from Carrie (1976)
Carrie White, as played by Sissy Spacek in 1976's Carrie, is a potent extract of teen fear, shame, and self-loathing. Her wide downward-cast eyes, chalk-white skin, and hushed voice are a powerful magnet for both our sympathy and disgust.

You know the story. Looney mom. Cruel kids. Telekinesis. Ends up at prom getting crowned Prom Queen as a joke. Things don't end well.

But, no matter how many times I watch this movie, I want to pause it right here:
Look at her. Carrie is happy. She has rejected the violent dogma of her religious mother. She has dolled herself up and is standing next to the curly-haired Greatest American Hero William Katt in his powder blue tux. She is on top of the world. Pretty girl happy at last.

It is at this moment, despite repeated viewings and attempts at psychic distancing, that I can't help but engage in an irrational list of maybes: Maybe the bucket of blood will miss her. Maybe she won't have a telekinetic freak out that results in the mass murder of her classmates. Maybe she'll get away, get a good therapist and learn to use her powers for good and not eeeevil. Maybe she won't kill herself.

But no such luck. Once I unpause the film, I am forced to watch my beloved Carrie White hop on the express ride from the top of the world straight down to hell.
2) Brenda from Friday the 13th (1980)
What's not to like about Brenda? She likes to smoke pot and play strip monopoly. She has that deep party girl voice that only girls named Brenda can pull off. You would so totally be her friend. And because she is Brenda the Goodhearted, she would totally be yours.
And true to Brenda's good nature, she tries to save a child -- a child, damnit. Not just some cat in a tree (which would make her pretty damn likable), but a child crying out for help in the rainy woods which makes her a superhero of likability. Armed only with a flashlight and her Little House on the Prarie nightgown, Brenda heads out in the pouring rain with the sole purpose of saving this poor child.
Unfortunately for likable Brenda, this poor child is Jason Voorhees and Jason Voorhees is long dead and now just a sub-personality of his murderous psycho-mommy Pamela Voorhees.

We don't see Brenda die, but we do see her corpse -- looking surprisingly broad-shouldered and hairy -- crash through a window towards the end of the film.

Laurie tried to save a little boy and all she got for her trouble was defenestration. Life is not fair.

(Sadly, Laurie Bertram -- the actress who played Brenda -- died of cancer in 2oo7 at the age of 47. Life is truly not fair.)

3) Liz in Wolf Creek (2005)
Greg McClean is a sick fuck. The Australian writer-director (who also happens to be hot) begat Wolf Creek which begat Liz, Kristy and Ben -- three very likeable backpackers who seem to genuinely like each other.
Of the three likable leads, Liz is clearly the most likable. She is our classic Final Girl. She is sex-shy and plucky enough to save Kristy from psycho Mick Taylor (Crocodile-Dundee meets Leatherface) and get her away from his outback torture den.
While Kristy cracks psychologically and Ben is M.I.A., it is Liz who soldiers on and keeps bringing the fight to the killer. So she should be the one who lives, right?

Er ... audience expectation FAIL. Not only is Liz the first to go, but she is first paralyzed by Mick with a nasty looking hunting blade to the spinal column, turning her into what Mick calls a "head on a stick."
Then, she is subjected to some off-screen torture to extract information on her friend Kristy.

Like I said, Greg McLean is a sick fuck. Liz deserved to live and yet she was subjected to the worst of the dark fates assigned to the three likable leads.

Conclusion
If these three girls lived in the world of the romantic-comedy, not only would they have lived, but they would have triumphed: Sexually liberated Carrie would have ripped off William Katt's powder-blue tux with her telekinesis and ridden him like an urban cowgirl; Fun-girl Brenda would have taught uptight Alice the secret technique of finger-banging a guy while performing oral sex to give him the maximum pleasure; and Liz, Ben and Kristy would have had a rocking three-way on the beach and never gone near nasty old Wolf Creek.

But they don't live in that world. They live in the world of horror. And, despite my wish to save them, the world of horror should be an unfair place. Because it is when bad things happen to good people that we truly experience the dread that is the mark of the best horror movies.

And it is a testament to the three actresses (Sissy Spacek, Laurie Betram, and Cassandra Magrath respectively) that after having viewed these movies over and over again, I still want to smash the glass of my television and pull them to safety.

The Cradle Will Rock...

2010-04-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day (1980) was a grindhouse rip-off of grindhouse classic Last House on the Left starring the whacked out Rose Ross as Mother - a woman who liked to direct her deranged inbred sons to do bad things to girls she met at Est-like meetings.

I gave my two cents on it back in the day.

Now they are remaking the movie. Will it turn out to be largely an improvement over the flawed source material (like Last House on the Left) or will it be a complete abortion (like Prom Night)?

New pictures of Rebecca de Mornay as Mother have surfaced over at Bloody Disgusting.

It looks to me like Mother has been transformed from a whacked out tea-bagger paranoid redneck of 1980 into an anal-retentive, TMJ-afflicted GOP pundit of 2010.

I love me some DeMornay, but excited about these pictures, I am not. What do you think?

Happy Friday!

2010-04-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

Psycho-Babble: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

2010-04-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) introduced us to the burnt-faced, razor-fingered killer Freddy Krueger. Freddy was a terrifying new type of horror villain who could kill you in your dreams. Your only defense was daylight and a fistful of No-Doz.

But after multiple sequels, a TV show, and countless media interviews, Freddy quickly became as familiar a ghoul as Count Chocula or Herman Munster – and about as scary. As with most shadow dwellers, the more Freddy stayed in the spotlight, the more his essential evil was worn down, dulled by the coarse stone of over-exposure.

More importantly, the mainstream embrace of Freddy as “the killer you love to hate” squeezed out the single most chilling aspect about him, the thing that was most psychologically resonant and disturbing:

Freddy Krueger fucked kids and then killed them.

All child rape is evil, but even such an unspeakable evil must be graded on a scale. On one end of the scale, you have the pathetic groping lechers (see “Molester, Chester The”) and on the other end are the vile psychopaths who so defile and torture the innocent that they are compelled to murder them afterwards (See “Fish, Albert”).

Freddy is that latter kind of evil. The worst kind.

Child rape and murder was all too familiar to those of us around in the early 80s. Between 1972 and 1978, John Wayne Gacy raped and murdered 33 boys. From 1979 to 1981, the Atlanta Child Murderer killed at least 28 children. In 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a Hollywood, Florida Sears in 1981. Only his head was found.

The 80s was the decade when children started appearing on milk cartons.

We all knew a Freddy Krueger or two. There was that guy who lingered at the school playground in gray sweat pants pulled up over his gut offering you Starbursts. There was your Dad’s co-worker with the sandwich crumbs in his porn-stache who smelled of Whisky Sours and French Onion Soup dip.

While our caretakers numbed out on dry martinis, valium, McDonald’s cheeseburgers, Pall Mall cigarettes, or episodes of Barnaby Jones, we kids of the 80s were left to navigate the perv gauntlet with only an ABC Afterschool Special on “Stranger Danger” to guide us.

In 1983 President Ronald Regan proclaimed May 25 National Missing Children’s Day. By 1984, the child-killing Freddy archetype was seared into our individual and collective subconscious … just waiting for a sick fuck like Wes Craven to exploit it.

And exploit it he did. A Nightmare on Elm Street tapped into that archetype and milked it for all it was worth.

But what makes A Nightmare of Elm Street so powerful is that it isn’t about Freddy Krueger. It’s about Nancy Thompson (played by Heather Langenkamp) and her slow realization that Freddy is living in her subconscious and trying to kill her. The power of the film comes in the subtext. A Nightmare on Elm Street is an allegory about a teenage girl dealing with traumatic memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Everything about Nancy, from her sleepy depressed demeanor, to her fear of sex with Johnny Depp (c’mon it’s Johnny Depp!), to the self-inflicted burn marks on her arms, to intruding subconscious images of a violent, molesting demon are all symptomatic of a survivor of sexual abuse.

The movie revels in images that reveal the feelings of violence and disgust that Nancy has about sex and her body – from Freddy’s serpentine tongue kiss through the phone to his finger knives in the bathtub, dangerously close to her vageen.
Nancy’s checked-out alcoholic mother naively thinks that killing Freddy would save her daughter, but revenge is worthless because the damage is done. The subconscious is where the trauma is buried and where Freddy wields all of his demonic powers. It is only in the subconscious where Nancy can face down and triumph over her demon.

Freud would totally love this movie.

I got a chance, several years back to ask Wes Craven a question at a screening of Nightmare. I wrote my question on a card and handed it to the moderator. It said:

“Is Nightmare an allegory of a sexual abuse survivor having memories of her abuse?”

The moderator read my card, paused, then actually announced that he was going to paraphrase it. (I know, right? Crazy rude.)

What he said wasn’t a paraphrase, but an entirely different and totally lame question along the lines of: “We have a lot of fears from childhood. Does Nightmare tap into those fears?”

It should have pissed me off. I really wanted to know the answer to my question. I’m a sucker for subtext.

But I was more fascinated than angry. It just made sense.

The whole theme of A Nightmare on Elm Street is that child molestation is disturbing and, therefore, the collective chooses to push the entire subject into the shadows, even though doing so creates disastrous results (see “Church, Catholic”).

So even in a discussion of Freddy Krueger with the creator of Freddy Krueger about the true meaning of Freddy Krueger, Freddy’s true horror was once again pushed back into the darkness.

Happy Friday!

2010-04-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

Homo Horror Hall of Fame: Coach Schneider from Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2

2010-04-06T22:22:00.001-07:00

Many horror movies have gay subtexts. What I love about 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge" is that the subtext bursts right out of the screen and sprays the viewer with it's gooey gay love juice.

Take for instance, the scene where fey Final Boy Jesse wanders the suburban streets of Springwood (even the name of the town has a gay subtext) and inexplicably stumbles into a hopping gay leather bar.

And wouldn't you know it (and darn all the luck), mean old Coach Schneider is there. And Coach is not some "sipping a cosmo and catching up on some episodes of Golden Girls at the video bar" queer. No, sir. He is bitched up like an extra from "Cruisin'" and ready for action.

Sir Schneider grabs frightened Jesse by the scruff and commands him to "Hit the Shower!" and before you can say "Get your balls on my tumbling mat!" Jesse is stripped down and soaped up.

Unfortunately for Coach Schneider, Jesse is possessed by Freddy Krueger and, well, Freddy is a bit of a control bottom.

Freddy takes over Jesse's body, opts for a little (finger) knife play and turns hunky-pervy Coach Schneider from a butch top to a bleeding bitch bottom in no time flat.

Congratulations, Coach Schneider on being the first inductee to Post-Mortem Depression's Homo Horror Hall of Fame.

Feel free to hang around as long as you like.