(August 14)

——High Tension (2003)——

I like this movie. You are either going to buy its bizarre ending or completely hate it (I really can’t make up my mind either way), but beyond that you can’t deny that up until that point this is a well-crafted, terrifying horror film. I was a little surprised, because I wasn’t all that impressed with Alexandre Aja’s latest film, the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, if you remember (March 14). High Tension hits all the high notes though.

Marie and Alexia are college students off to Alexia’s parents’ house to study for exams in peace and quiet. A sick, sadistic serial killer chooses that exact same night to break into their house though and kill them all. He goes through the family one by one before kidnapping Alexia. Only Marie is left to save her and stows away in his truck in an effort to free Alexia. I won’t say anything more, other to bring up again that there is a huge twist at the end.

I liked it. It’s real scary, classy horror, reminiscent of the great slasher flicks of the 70’s like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Very freaky, very bloody, very gory. Everything you’d want in a great slasher. Give it a chance, be open to a weird ending, and enjoy.

(SEE)

——Go West (1940)——-

The Marx Brothers make a Western! That’s basically the premise of this movie. All the gags are the same, but at least the new setting lends a freshness to the material that was much needed. Of course, this movie is very funny. It’s the Marx Brothers!

Chico and Harpo are two brothers that make their way West only to unwittedly acquire a very valuable piece of land, lose it, and then try and get it back again. You don’t really need to know much more of the plot. There’s a great gag where Chico and Harpo fleece Groucho out of a hundred dollars by asking for change that doesn’t exist and then stealing their money back anyway. And the end of the movie has a pretty amusing climax involving, of course, a train chase sequence. It’ll remind you quite a bit of Buster Keaton’s The General. There is along the way the usual wordplay, sexual leering, and the required musical number to show us all why Harpo is called Harpo. All and all though, not a bad flick.

(SEE)

——Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom (1973)——

Of the three films in the Pinky Violence Collection that I have seen so far, this is definitely my least favorite. It seems to revel in its sadistic violence without bringing any fun or entertainment to the proceedings. It’s just mean towards its main characters for no real reason.

The story is about an all girls’ school where the disciple committee takes quite extreme steps to make sure the girls stay in line with what the politically ambitious principle wants of them. They go a little too far though, and one girl commits suicide trying to flee their torture. That girl just happens to be the friend of female yakuza (the always awesome Reiko Ike) who gets sent to the school and seeks revenge against the neo-nazi girls and their corrupt teaching staff. Probably the best part is when a rival yakuza comes into her classroom to challenger her to a duel (right in the middle of the lesson!), but the two call a temporary truce until things are taken care of at the school. A corrupt newspaper man sees this as his way to big money and he also helps the girls take their revenge by blackmailing the sex obsessed principle by putting them in compromising situations by literally whoring themselves out.

Unlike the other films in this collection, this one is hard to watch and just isn’t fun. It doesn’t have that gonzo spirit to it. Just a sadistic streak. Not my favorite.

(MISS)

——The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)——

This comedy/western isn’t the greatest film Sam Peckinpah has ever made, but it still manages to be some fine entertainment despite itself. Cable Hogue (Jason Robards) is a misfit who is betrayed by his comrades and left to wander his way out of the desert with no water. His situation is pretty hopeless. Except that for right before he is ready to keel over and die, he finds a water hole unknown to anyone else. He digs it out, claims the land, builds a house and starts to make a business for himself, being the only game in town. Meanwhile he falls in love with a prostitute from the nearest town. They seem made for each other, but she wants to make it big in the big city whereas he just wants to see his little venture grow and see revenge taken upon the two that left him to die. She leaves, and it is not known whether or not they’ll see each other again.

Because it is a Peckinpah western, Cable gets his revenge, but not in the usual take-no-prisoners fashion. This is a comedy, after all. It’s a sweet little film. Comfort food film, as it were. There could be a lot worse addition to the Peckinpah boxset that Warner Brothers put out.

(SEE)

——Mondo Cane 2 (1964)——

I believe this was made up mostly from outtakes from the first Mondo Cane. And it shows. Mondo Cane 2 has its moments, but mostly it just consists of weird and wacky things from around the globe. And not even particularly interesting ones. I thought this one was supposed to be more extreme than the first, but the opposite seems true. Aside from a few key moments this is mostly just trash. I’d stick away from this.

(AVOID)

(August 15)

——Masters of Horror: Jenifer (2005)——

I love this series. You’ve read a lot of my reviews on it in the past. So far its been more hits than misses. Director Dario Argento definitely brings the goods here. This is one of those films that embraces its short story anthology origins and creates a nice tight little tale with a clear beginning and end. The script was written by Steven Weber, who also stars as the cop that finds out in the middle of nowhere, about to be killed by a raving madman. Weber kills the man and saves the girl, but not before the man warns him about Jenifer.

Jenifer has a beautiful voluptuous sexpot body, but the face of a monster. She’s also mentally challenged, behaving more like an animal than a person. Weber takes pity on her, thinking she’s just abused. But then bad things start to happen. Like a cat, Jenifer kills things for her new master. She also seduces him. He finds something very sexually arousing in her that even despite her looks he’s drawn to her. There’s just something about Jenifer. More bad things start happening, though. This is a horror movie…

The one quibble I have with this movie is that in the documentary on Dario making the film, they show you some scenes Dario shot that were cut for being too sexually graphic. Dario mentions that he wishes that he could put them back in the film. Well, why weren’t they? Isn’t that the magic of the unrated DVD? Besides that, though, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I can’t wait for the next episode to make it in the mail to my house.

(SEE)

——Pulse (2006)——

Despite the presence of the beautiful and talented Kristen Bell, Pulse was about what I thought it was going to be from seeing the trailer. I have already seen the original Japanese film (Feb. 27) and knew from that that all of the best bits from the trailer were ripped off completely from the original. Everything else seemed lame to me. And what do you know, the film followed pretty much the same formula. And I think this is probably one of the first ever instances where the American remake of a Japanese horror film made less sense than the original film. I liked the logic of the original. The afterlife was all filled up, and thus spirits were trapped between the two worlds, stuck in the internet. This movie acts as if this were some plague unleashed by a rogue computer virus. The world of internet was never supposed to be opened, as it ripped into another world and let that world loose on us. It doesn’t make any sense. The why doesn’t even seem to matter.

The scares also suck a whole lot more than the Japanese version. American audiences must be stupid, because everything in here happens so fast. The movie is about the same running time and has the exact same story arc, and yet the American film covers about twice the amount plot points than the original. There are some genuinely creepy moments in the original, and they all have to do with long takes that hide things just outside of the frame, building up tension as the time elapses. The American one just jumps head on into the scares, without ever actually taking a minute to consider what actually makes them scary. It’s pathetic. Don’t see this. See the original.

(AVOID)

(August 16)

——Crash (1996)——

No, not the recent Oscar winner. This is the original Crash, directed by David Cronenberg. It’s not his best film, but like all of his movies it gives you a lot to think about. Even his so-so movies are totally worth seeing.

I found Crash very similar to his superior Videodromes, this being basically the same movie except for cars have replaced television in determining the “new flesh”. The film is about some sexually obsessed car crash victims who develop and interesting connection between the two things. A car crash becomes a religious experience. One character goes so far as to recreate famous car crashes, like the one that killed James Dean, to try and relive what that might have been like. He drives erratically in the hopes that he will have one of the mother of all car crashes that will kill him.

After his own car crash James Spader gets sucked into this world when he starts to see the woman (Holly Hunter) who he put in the hospital and killed her husband. There is this strange fascination with the sudden fusion of flesh and metal in a car crash. It reminded me of Tetsuo: The Iron Man in a way. There is an erotic force in a car crash. That rush you get when you crash but are still alive, it’s a powerful aphrodisiac. The two of them then start to sleep together, but only in the back of the car that killed her husband.

The reason why this film isn’t another Videodromes is because it never takes the final step. The theory is imagined but never fully developed. It never takes things to the next level, which is a shame, because I was totally going along for the ride. Still, Cronenberg fanatics are going to want to check this one out.

(SEE)

(August 17)

——Ginger Snaps (2000)——

One of the reasons why I love the horror genre is because of their ingenuity. When you actually have somebody talented behind the camera, who has something to say instead of just throwing buckets of blood and gore at the audience, they get a chance to say things that they probably wouldn’t be able to under the studio system. As long as the film delivers on the thrills they usually let you do whatever you want, because hell, they don’t give you that much money to begin with. If you can make something out of nothing, profit is profit.

Ginger Snaps is one of those surprising movies. Take a look at the cover of the DVD and you’d assume that this was some straight to video trash title not worth your time. In reality you’d be looking at a well written, well acted and well directed film well worth your attention. It plays out a lot like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except for the fact that there is no slayer there to help anyone.

The story is about two teenage sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, who are inseparable, so much so that they pledge to kill themselves, should the other die first. They are both obsessed by death, going so far as to take various pictures of themselves dead for a school art project. Then, one day, two life changing things happen. First Ginger gets her period for the first time. Neither sister has had one, even though they’re three years past the normal age a girl gets her first one. Then, Ginger gets attacked by a werewolf that has been ravaging the neighborhood. Thus Ginger starts changing. First into a women, second into a monster. Becoming a werewolf becomes a metaphor for puberty. Not only does Ginger start taking an interest in boys and bad behavior, but she also grows a tail and a taste for blood. Poor Brigitte stands in the sidelines, no longer the center of her sister’s attention, and tries to find a cure for being a werewolf using the help of a local pot dealer (who reminds me very much of a young Christian Slater, a la Heathers).

The movie is quite funny, has some good thrills at the end, and is surprisingly well crafted. Don’t let the cheap cover fool you. This movie is definitely worth your time.

(MUST SEE)

(August 18)

——Small Gauge Trauma——

If you are a real hardcore film fan you probably know that aside from all of the indie movies made out there, there are also a lot of great shorts just dying to be seen. Of course, those shorts almost never see the light of day outside of film festivals. Which is why the fine people at the Fantasia International Film Festival made this DVD, which contains 13 shorts from 8 different countries. If you are like me, have seen it all and like horror or just weird film in general, then this is probably a must have DVD for your collection. Not all of the shorts are great but they are all interesting. I’m not going to write about them all, because heavens to Betsy, I’ve got a lot of movie reviews to write, but I will point out the highlights:

I’ll See You In My Dreams–Zombie lovers will get a real kick out of this Portuguese zombie fighter film.

Tea Break–A sick and twisted black humor commercial similar in style to Ridley Scott’s 1984 ad, about a slaughterhouse worker who slaughters…people.

The Separation–A Cronenbergian stop-motion animation piece about conjoined twins who just want to be back together again.

L’ilya–A Japanese mini-movie about an artist who films people committing suicide for a performance piece she’s working on.

Ruta Destroy!–Probably the most bizarre film in the collection, this hilarious Spanish short is a surreal music video/musical about drugs, sex, violence and…more drugs.

(SEE)