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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Newlydeads (1987): Or, Crossdressing Ghosts Need Love Too
Ahh, Troma! Troma movies are like a rancid fart bubble that escapes a hobo’s anus and travels up his ass crack until it bursts at the top, causing instant foulness, but often hilarity. You might be passing by this hobo with your friends, after a night of partying. You are safely outside the blast radius, yet you push your friend past the event horizon and suddenly he’s choking and clawing at his throat. Everyone is having fun, laughing, and he’ll have a story to tell later when his brain repairs the damage, but most of all you were entertained. For Troma movies, that’s what it’s all about: showmanship.
Take for example “The Newlydeads”, an unpolished turd of a movie that nonetheless strikes the perfect balance between camp and just plain shitty. With a high boob-to-death ratio, it titillates as much as it triggers your vomit reflex. Oh, yes, the town fathers might sit in their gilded chairs, stroke their beards, cluck their tongues, and wonder aloud how anyone could derive entertainment from such pap, but I’m here to once again champion a movie that some might find repulsive, but that others, those select few, our faithful readers, who might, just might, find something to enjoy.
The Newlydeads (how can you NOT like that title? It’s perfect!) starts us off with a bang. We see a blonde chick driving a convertible whilst jamming to 70’s tunes on the radio. She arrives at an inn for the night, carrying only one small suitcase, and the hotel owner/manager/sexer takes her up to her room. Right off the bat he’s standing too close to her, but she isn’t repulsed by his pushbroom mustache or oily hair, nay, she’s receptive, and when the maid brings in a complementary bottle of wine and a fruit basket, the blonde asks him to crack open the bottle.
Welcome indeed!
They share a sip from the same glass, and then start to kiss, only the innkeeper makes a shocking discovery! The blonde is really a man in drag! Now, if you are the Vicar this wouldn’t be a problem, but for the innkeeper it is. Ain’t no plan with a man! They begin to fight (unconvincingly, I might add), and fearing that he might catch “the gay”, the innkeeper grabs a nearby ice pick, stabbing the crossdresser in the stomach with it. Not content with this grievous wound, he stabs again, this time ramming the pick through “her” skull. I’m guessing this movie is set in Wyoming.
"I seem to have gotten something in my hair.."
The scene fades and we jump 15 years into the future. We spend some time here being introduced to various couples, all coming to the inn. It seems the inn is a newlywed destination, known for its free bottle of wine and overall tranny unfriendliness. First off, we have the psychic and her douche of a husband. Seems she gets these “feelings” all the time, and they’re coming true with alarming regularity.
Next up we have a newly married country couple who attempt to speak with Southern accents and end up sounding like toolbags. The chick is a smoking hot blonde with giant funbags, so we’ll forgive them. She wastes no time getting naked when the dude pulls them over for a roadside quickie, unable to contain his need to treat his new wife as a sperm receptacle.
"Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand!"
Next we have a nerdy dude and his smoking hot blonde wife. We don’t get much info on them, and it turns out, as we’ll see, none was needed. We then have an old couple, looking to get remarried. I’m not sure why they were included, as they really serve no purpose and their scenes mostly fall flat or add nothing. Finally, we have a punk couple. The dude tries his best to look and act like Sid Vicious channeling Johnny Rotten channeling The Macc Ladds, but instead he comes across as a dillhole. His girlfriend is kinda hot but she doesn’t do anything but smoke weed, so we can forget about her.
All these people show up around the same time, but it’s the psychic we are primarily concerned with. Her hair resembles Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction, but her voice resembles that of a screeching harpy with a sandy vagina. She constantly screeches about how something bad is going to happen, and happen it does. Before she even gets to the inn, she’s yelling at her husband to not take a certain road or there’ll be an accident. Just to show her up, he takes it anyway.
We cut to a wedding. The innkeeper, now 15 years older and just as ugly, has taken a young bride. A small ceremony is taking place for them near the inn. Just before he can say “I do.”, he sees the crossdressor in full drag, only this time it’s his ghost, come to haunt and torment. Her face is like burnt paper caked with cake frosting. She runs off laughing and the innkeeper tries to follow. Meanwhile, the psychic and her husband are driving by at that moment, and the tranny’s ghost runs right out in front of them.
"Kids, don't let acne ruin your life like it did mine... try Clearasil."
Screeching to a halt, they investigate, only to find no body. The psychic declares that she’s not leaving until they get to the bottom of this, instantly suspecting the innkeeper because of his dago mustache and greasy hair. And now the stage is set. All the couples have arrived, the innkeeper has a new hot wife, and the psychic forgot to use conditioner.
We cut to nightfall, and the innkeeper is supposed to be sexing his new wife but is instead preoccupied by a certain ghost pre-op transsexual. He decides he better get liquored up so he goes to get some wine. The psychic, being the nosey bitch that she is, interrupts him in the kitchen to accuse him of murdering the ghost woman. She then goes on to prophesy that before morning two people will be dead.
The innkeeper couldn’t care less, he has a smoking hot wife to roger, so off he goes. As soon as the sexing begins, however, the ghost tricks him into believing he’s kissing the tranny, not his wife, so he begins to choke him, only it’s not really the tranny, it’s his new wife! Not being into erotic asphyxia, she gets upset and leaves.
Meanwhile, the nerdy guy and his bombshell of a new wife are getting busy in the hot tub of their room. After getting fellated underwater, he suggests they retire to the bedroom, whereupon they are interrupted rather rudely by the ghost tranny. Employing the use of a curtain rod, the ghost rams it through the nerd’s skull, the end coming out his mouth, where he is propped up above his lady. Her screaming is quickly silenced when the ghost magics a knife out of nothing and stabs her repeatedly.
"This is not what I meant when I said we needed new window treatments!"
This is quickly discovered the next day, as the psychic wakes the innkeep up early to go check the rooms for murder, and conditioner. Meanwhile, the priest who earlier married the innkeeper is revealed to be a pot smoking drunk. He remarries the old couple, and then proceeds to smoke weed with the punk couple. The innkeeper’s lady ends up returning back to the lodge after picking up a hitchhiker that turned out to be the ghost tranny in disguise. She’s so distraught that she does what anyone would do in that situation: take an unnecessary shower! The innkeeper, having botched his last attempt at fornication, joins his wife. Unfortunately for him, the ghost tranny pulls the same trick!
"You missed a spot... right... here."
Unfortunately for his new wife, he falls for it, again! This time, though, the tranny isn’t taking any chances and magics another knife from thin air, which the innkeep grabs and uses it to stab the ghost, only it’s really his wife obviously. Horror stricken, he flees after looking at her breasts one more time. He goes and grabs a 9mm pistol and puts it in his mouth, so distraught with grief he is. Instead, the ghost shows up to taunt him and he empties the whole clip at it, doing nothing of course.
Meanwhile, the psychic’s husband is angry at her for spending so much time looking for dead people, so he takes off to a nearby shopping center and calls the police, letting them know something odd is going on. Ghost tranny has followed him, though, and runs a pair of scissors into his throat. His wife sees that it’s going to happen, and gets the innkeeper to drive her over to stop it, but they are too late.
"Do you think she has any conditioner in here I could use?"
The psychic and innkeeper formulate a plan. She asks if he has anything personal belonging to the ghost, and he admits he kept her/his suitcase. Having the means to destroy her/him, they set a trap. The innkeeper cuts his palm and bleeds on a picture of the tranny (that came from the suitcase, natch), and then the psychic burns the pic. The ghost shows up instantly and starts choking the psychic, but the innkeep rescues her by cutting the ghost’s arm off. She/he is now corporeal and prone to injury it seems!
What follows this is a series of unlikely events set up in elaborate ways that make little to no sense: In other words, a Troma calvalcade of awesome! The maid, busy delivering wine and fruit to the guests, runs into a cross-cut saw that just happened to be placed at the right height on a tree to decapitate her. The hick shows up with a shotgun, that he got who knows where, and shoots at the ghost, who suddenly can’t be hurt again, and instead shoots one of the cops that showed up to investigate.
The other cop shows up, draws his automatic, shoots three times at the ghost, then throws his gun at her! (wtf?) Meanwhile, the hick chick is impaled on a couple of sharp tree limbs, we don’t see how exactly. Finally, the psychic shouts at the innkeeper,
“There’s something you aren’t telling me!”
Innkeeper: “She’s a man!”
Psychic “Oh, I see. He wants to go to bed with you!”
"Excuse me Mister, is this the way to the sauna?"
So, with that stunning dialogue, the psychic kisses the innkeeper (eeewww!) and boom, she’s possessed by the tranny. She’s ready for this, though, and quickly stabs herself in the stomach with a wooden crucifix! The ghost, and the psychic, are dead for good!
The final shot of the movie is of the punk couple, who had absolutely nothing bad happen to them, nay they witnessed nothing untoward.
Punk dude: “It’s so peaceful here, we should come back sometime…”
The end.
"If the gift basket doesn't include any 'ludes, we don't want it."
See, like I said, Troma movies are crap. But, they are my kind of crap. I laughed quite a bit throughout this festival of awful. The acting, the script, the sets, everything was beyond hokey and amateur. However, it works. It works on a lot of levels, and I pity the fool who can’t derive entertainment from such as this. These fine folks gave up one of their weekends to film this movie, and from the looks of it they had a blast. We get lots of 80’s hair styles, lots of naked chicks that are admittedly hawt, and one shrill psychic lady.
I give this movie 1 Thumb Up if you aren’t a Troma fan, and 3 Thumbs Up if you are. Put this one in your movie player of choice, pour yourself a cognac, order one of your servants to massage your inner thigh, and relax back in a overstuffed chair. Until next time, friends, I bid thee happy viewing!
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Vicar-ious Vacation, and Sundry
So yeah, might as well get this tidbit out of the way first: today is the Vicar's Birthday. Whoop-de-freakin'-do. ;)
As it turns out, it's also the first day of my Summer vacation, so for the next 8-10 days I'll be lying on the sand like a beached whale, sipping Pina Coladas and roasting myself to a golden brown while reading up on the theology of the Sect of Betamax or penning my memoirs, Much of Madness, More of Sin while watching the narhwals frolic in the surf. My undisclosed va-cay lo-cay is a secluded Mad Mad Mad Mad Monastery serviced by the Sisters of Kinescope (saucy ones!) and removed from such technological niceties as "internets" and "sanitary wipes." All in all, a good time promised.
Fear not that this means a lack of MADness, however, as my compatriot the Duke of DVD has promised to take up some of the slack with an offering of his own unique wit and wisdom a few days hence. And upon my triumphant return, I reckon to be refreshed and ready to spew forth on more of the Mad Movies that are the reason for my calling. So catch up on the archives, wait for the good word from the Duke, and think of me fondly while I'm gone, as I will you.
In short: later, peeps. ;)
Monday, June 15, 2009
Bloody Birthday (1980): or, Death Wears Garanimals
A few days ago I reviewed a killer kids movie that (purposefully) left the origins of the kids' murderous natures unexplained. For some reviewers this was a refreshing lack of spoonfeeding, but for me it neglected an opportunity to give the proceedings added depth and meaning, either literal or metaphorical. It's been said again and again that horror films are perfect vehicles for symbolically addressing deep-rooted cultural fears--about science run amok, the dangers of the unrestrained id, or the terrors of an unchecked Communist menace--and it's not for nothin'. While I'm not necessarily advocating a Diary of the Dead-level Baseball Bat of Significance-style thrashing, I think it *is* nice when a filmmaker at least gives us a hat-tip to something bigger than the monsters-meet-characters-and-turn-them-to-hamburger raison d'etre.
And it doesn't take much. Case in point, today's killer kids movie from 1980, Ed Hunt's Bloody Birthday. Three kids are born in the same town within minutes of one another during a lunar eclipse. As a result of the malefactory alignment of planets at the hour of their birth, they are born without a sense of compassion or conscience. With their tenth birthday drawing near, this birth defect begins to manifest in increasingly bloody ways. A commentary on human nature reflected in the perversion of childish innocence? A warning about the dangers of lax parenting? A testimony to the importance of astrology in our day-to-day lives? The possibilities are unlimitless!
The wild death scenes, copious nekkidity, and summarily MAD plot developments are just icing on a delicious, poisoned cake.We open at a hospital in Meadowvale, California, on June 9, 1970. A slumming and somewhat confused-looking José Ferrer arrives for work (he's "The Doctor," as the opening credits have already informed us) to find that not one, not five, but THREE of his patients are getting ready to drop slick, steaming piles of joy in the maternity ward. "Well, you can forget about watching that eclipse!" he tells the nurse on duty, and they duck inside. Luckily *we* don't have to forget about it, as we get to enjoy time-lapse stock footage of the celestial event under a soundtrack of baby-squeals and Ferrer announcing, "It's a boy! It's a girl! It's a boy!" It's actually kind of soothing and disturbing at the same time, like Koyaanisqatsi without all the chanting and garbage.
Don't go 'round tonight
An onscreen timestamp next informs us we've jumped nearly 10 years into the future to June 1, 1980, still in Meadowvale. A teenaged couple stop in the local graveyard to make out like rabid minx, but after allowing her gentleman caller to get to 3rd base up against a marble cross, the girl suddenly gets shy and wants to find a place out of the open. Erection is the mother of Invention, so the boy quickly finds a suitable make-out spot: a freshly dug open grave! Proving her GGG-ness, the girl happily hops into the corpse-hole and they git awn widdit, injecting the film's first dose of boobulin. When they hear someone moving around six feet up, the boy stands to see what (the fuck) is going on, and quickly catches three shovel-smacks to the face! The spade has barely stopped ringing before the screaming girl finds a garrotte around her neck and is lifted up the earthen walls, giving new meaning to the phrase "sexual hangups." She soon expires, another few shovel blows do for her beau, and the unseen killer(s) start filling the grave with loose dirt. SCENE.
"No! Please! I can't die in this shirt!"
Next we're introduced to fresh-faced high school senior Joyce Russel (Lori Lethin), who writes the astrology column for the local weekly and serves as a teacher's aide at the elementary school in her spare time. With a boyfriend away at college and a suave married editor who seems to have more than her deadlines on his mind, Joyce is obviously our Jamie Lee stand-in here. An early scene with her strolling through the streets of a suspiciously Haddonfield-like Meadowvale removes all doubt. She does know how to rock the man-shirt and bolo-tie, though, so bonus points there.
She arrives late to the elementary, where police chief James Brody (Bert Kramer) is questioning the kids about the recent graveyard murder. It seems a broken jump-rope was found at the scene, but none of the kids cops to having lost one. Joyce gets a little suspicious of her brother Timmy (K.C. Martel), who came home late the night of the murder, but it doesn't take long before knowing glances from soon-to-be 10-year-olds Debbie Brody (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis Taylor (Billy Jacoby), and Steven Seton (Andy Freeman) clue us in to the real culprits. Stern-to-a-fault schoolmarm Miss Davis (Susan Strasberg, on her way down the career slope that would lead in a couple of years to her turn in Sweet 16) takes a few minutes to scold the kids pointlessly and shame Joyce for being late.
After class the Eclipse Kids come up to ask whether homework can be suspended on Monday, as that's the day of their joint birthday party to which the whole town is invited. Miss Davis quickly puts the ixnay on that noise. "Homework is more important than a party! And just because you all have the same b-day doesn't mean that you're special!" Angel-faced Debbie gives her sweetest smile and nod, but it's clear from her significant looks to her two male enforcers and some overbearing ominous TV music from composer Arlon Ober that Ms. Tingle is going on The List. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't lay odds on Strasberg making it to the end credits.
"We're cooking up some fava beans just for you, ma'am."We soon learn just how surface Debbie's sweet-and-innocent looks are, as that night at her place she charges Curtis and Steven 25-cents a minute to look through a peephole in her closet at older sister Beverly (future MTV v-jay and novelty songster Julie Brown) as she gets dressed! Years before proving that Earth Girls are Easy, Brown spends a good three minutes proving Real Boobs are Good Boobs, dancing topless in front of her mirror with a feather boa and a Coke bottle (like you do) for the benefit of the prepubescent boys and the post-pubescent audience. She even treats the future Beavis and Buttheads of the world to some FULL DORSAL NUDITY before settling on an outfit, for which a child of the 80s like me can only stand and applaud. Well, applaud, anyway.
When Bev goes out with Joyce to discuss the ins and outs of her relationship with her editor ("You've got a mind like an X-rated soap opera!" Joyce laughs), the kids decide there's no reason to wait for their birthday to get bloody. Setting up a skateboard on the back steps, Debbie calls her father Sheriff Brody out of the house, hoping to take him out Tom-and-Jerry style. When he steps around the skateboard it appears he's dodged a bullet; unforunately he doesn't dodge Steven's home-run swing, as the boy steps out from behind a bush and cracks him on the skull with a Louisville Slugger! He's OUTTA here! The children then arrange the Sheriff's body so that it looks like an accident, but are surprised by Timmy walking by. Though he doesn't tumble to what they're doing, little Debbie's narrowed eyes let us know The List just got one name longer.
The next day The Unholy Three lure Timmy into a game of hide-and-seek at the local junkyard, and Curtis scares the rest of the players off with a realistic revolver ("It's a replica!" he foreshadows) before tricking Timmy into hiding in a freezer and then locking him in to suffocate. There are some very effectively tense scenes of the young boy, buried alive, banging on the doors from inside and slowly getting shorter and shorter of breath as his air runs out. Luckily he carries a pen light and a Swiss Army Knife with him, however, and is able to unscrew the door hasp and escape in a nick of time. Joyce doesn't believe his accounting of events, however, not even when he confesses he'd spent the evening of the previous murder feeding Debbie quarter after quarter for a look at Bev's bodacious ta-tas. Joyce finds this invasion of privacy and burgeoning voyeurism incredibly funny, and when she tells Bev later, her friend also laughs it off and doesn't even bother to cover the peephole--a move chock full of sisterly awesomeness but unfortunately one she'll come to regret.
"Tell you what--just run a tab."A movie like this could live or die on the believability of its pint-sized villains, and this is one area in which Bloody Birthday succeeds like few others. Tow-headed tough Andy Freeman is given little to do as the silent-but-deadly Steven, but he does convey a kind of dangerous childish petulance in between kill scenes. The real heavy here is Billy Jacoby as Curtis, a playfully remorseless psychopath with a talent for electronics and a Dirty-Harryish love of handguns. (He even gets to parody DeNiro in Taxi Driver late in the movie, striking poses in front of his bedroom mirror with his weapon of choice.) Astute readers will be interested to know that Billy is the younger brother of Scott Jacoby, the wall-dwelling weirdo of the previously reviewed TV terror Bad Ronald. But the real ace in the hole here is Elizabeth Hoy as Debbie Brody, the ringleader with the sweet face and an absolutely unquenchable thirst for blood and death. Director Hunt does a great job of making the kids seem simultaneously childlike and murderous, precociously cruel in the way bright kids who realize there are no consequences to their actions could believably be.
The rest of the movie follows our trio of terror as they take out a few more locals, baffling the remaining police despite Joyce and Timmy's growing suspicions. A couple of standout scenes include the birthday party, where Hunt generates a lot of suspense over a possibly-poisoned birthday cake, and a junkyard chase scene where an eerily masked Steven nearly runs Joyce down among the wreckage. More nekkidity is provided by a van-rockin' couple making an ill-fated stop in front of the Russel residence, and the blood flows freely from Curtis's gunplay, Debbie giving her sister an arrow to the eye, and a tense babysitting assignment gone awry to tie everything up.
"Go ahead--make my play-date."Lori Lethin as Joyce does a good job here as the confused but ultimately strong heroine, left to protect her brother while their parents vacation somewhere else for the entire two weeks of the running time. It's through her interest in astrology we learn the reasons behind our killer's spree, and her decision to skip college because what she really wants to do is become a journalist provided a chuckle. While her acting is more Facts of Life than Halloween, she does manage to make you care about her character and hope she doesn't get killed.
The script is pretty tight and moves along at a good speed, and though the TV-music score occasionally seems overly dramatic, there are a few good passages with creepy music-box like music that set the tone well. Hunt does a good job ratcheting up the tension, and though some would fault him for not going all Class of 1984 with the final confrontation, the flick does provide an interesting and believable coda with Debbie's twice-bereaved and obviously shell-shocked mother holding on to her one remaining child despite her rather hard-to-reconcile behavioral idiosyncrasies. The post-climax stinger is one that sent me out smiling and seemed earned.
In short, I found Bloody Birthday an entertaining way to spend an hour and a half, and one of the better killer kids movies it's been my pleasure to watch. It keeps the kids in focus without skimping on exploitation staples like nudity and death, and it's to be applauded for that. Never boring and occasionally genuinely suspenseful, Bloody Birthday earns its 2.5 thumb assessment. If you're in the mood for a trip to a more innocent, bloodier time, give this one a spin.
Bloody Bonus! More images from Bloody Birthday:
Bloody Bolo
"See me after class, Vicar."
Swing for the Fences, Kid
"Just attach the electrodes and press *this* button, Gramps, and zap! No more E.D.!"
Dark Night of the Scarecrow: Tarantino Version
"Let me show you something that weird Meyers kid taught me at recess."
Friday, June 12, 2009
High School Horrors!
As those of you following the Twitter of VHS already know, tonight your ever-lovin' Vicar is taking a trip 20 years back in time, and this time it's not in the form of a candy-colored goretastic mad movie from the 80s. No, what I have on tap tonight is even more terrifying, even more horrible, than anything Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon ever concocted:
The Vicar's 20-Year High School Reunion.
To be fair, my high school years were not all that bad--discounting 10th grade, which was abominable. But like everyone I've got my horror stories from that formative time, from fashion faux pas to stupid things said in class to all the girls who rejected my clumsy teen-aged advances (many of whom will be in attendance tonight). Good times?
Anyway, in order to steel myself for tonight's festivities, I'm drawing strength from my memories of a few classic high school horrors, thoughts of which will hopefully provide the inner fortitude I need to make it through. Well, them and the cash bar. Bear in mind this is not a "Top 5," but merely a handful of flicks that occur to me as I get ready to revisit this glorious and painful time of my life.
You want to help a Vicar out? In the comments, please share your favorite high school horrors! And should you feel the urge to confess some of the terrifying tribulations *you* endured during your high school years, that's encouraged too. The worse you had it, the better I'll feel.
Student Bodies (1981)
Though I was still 8 years away from graduation when this movie hit theaters, I remember watching it again and again on cable and VHS back in the day. An Airplane!-influenced spoof of the slasher genre when the tropes themselves were still in their infancy, this never failed to make the Young Vicar and his seminary mates giggle with glee. The Breather may not have had the marketable costume of the Ghostface Killer, but he was a hell of a lot funnier. Death by horsehead bookends, a fly being added to the ongoing, on-screen body count, and the mysteriously hilarious entity known only as The Stick playing Malvert the Mentally Challenged Janitor, all combine to make this a movie I need to revisit.
The Redeemer, aka Class Reunion Massacre (1971)
I found this one at a used VHS store a couple years back, and was surprised by how out-there it was. A group of students making preparations for their 10-year class reunion run afoul of an evil spirit that haunts the hallowed halls of their institution of learning, with borderline surreal and over-the-border MAD results. A full-sized football player mannequin, a doomsaying preacher bent on purifying the graduates of sin via extreme bloodletting, and a strange 3-fingered child rising from a nearby pond are only scratching the surface.
Slaughter High (1986)
A group of the popular kids who maimed a nerdly classmate find their bad deeds coming home to roost when a killer starts offing them at their reunion. Any similarity between this plot and actual events, past or present or future, is purely coincidental.
Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)
One of Troma's earliest and still best efforts--if such a tag can be applied to Troma's gleefully and unapologetically tasteless output--this one is like Class of 1984 with all the seriousness excised, the dystopian elements played for laughs, and radioactive mutants added for spice. Goopy dayglo FX and people trying way too hard to offend you (and succeeding) make this the most realistic portrayal of the American 80s high school experience ever filmed.
Carrie (1976)
This movie is required by statute to be at the top of every high-school horrors list, but there's probably a reason for that. From a novel by Stephen King before he stopped editing himself, the story is tight and effective, and really captures the vulnerability and pain of a high school misfit repeatedly getting punished for her attempts to fit in. Sissy Spacek completely owns the title role, making her the prototype of pubescent psychokinetic sexually-repressed weirdos for decades to come. And if you never wanted to see a school dance go up in flames, your high school experience must have been happier than most. The director's not bad either.
Okay kids, your turn! CONFESS!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Plague Town (2008): or, The Kids are Not All Right
Sometimes, as immersed as I get in the wild and wonderful worlds of 70s sexayness and 80s excess, I almost forget that new horror movies are coming out. Oh, I see posters and commercials now and then, and I might even catch a few minutes of one on TV while I'm feverishly searching for the DVD remote to fire up my latest Paul Naschy or Coffin Joe acquisition, but on a conscious level, they barely register. And that's a failing of mine, one I should work to address. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
I was shaken out of my complacence recently when I received a screener of Dark Sky Films' latest DVD offering, David Gregory's 2008 effort Plague Town. Knowing next to nothing about the movie before popping it in my player, I'd like to think I came in fresh, without preconceptions or prejudices. So what's the verdict?
It's okay.
The set-up is a tried and true one, full of Mad Movie promise. A dysfunctional American family consisting of father Jerry Monohan (David Lombard), daughters Jessica and Molly (Erica Rhodes and Josslyn DeCrosta), and the girls' stepmother Annete (Lindsay Goranson), are on a vacation to Ireland to dig up Dad's roots. A couple of wrong turns and a missed bus, and they end up in the titular town where Bad Things Happen After Sunset and Not All of Them Will Make It Out Alive.
Pretty standard, but like I say, it has its possibilities. The selling point here is laid out in the prologue, set "14 Years Ago," in which a crusty Catholic priest oversees a very reluctant young mother as she gives birth, hoping that "this will be the one" to break some curse--or PLAGUE, if you will--the rural village has suffered under for who knows how long. We don't get to see the infant, but obviously the priest doesn't think she's the one after all, and pulls out a revolver to perform a Church-approved post-natal abortion. The young husband rebels against the Ecclesiastical father figure, however, to the tune of a fireplace-poker skull impalement and a hatchet head-split! There's lots of good goopy gore here, done with practical effects, which gave me hope.A tetradecahedron's worth of solar cycles later, the Monahans descend on the Irish countryside, bringing all their Issues with them. Snotty sis Jessica is the stereotypical blonde hell-on-wheels type, complaining nonstop about the weather, the lack of civilization, the company, and particularly the presence of meek stepmom Annete and her attempts to become a part of the family. Tweeny Goth girl Molly is sullen and withdrawn, but seems better disposed toward Annette than her sister. Dad is flustered and clueless, and obviously spends more time grooming his immaculate salt-n-pepper beard than dealing with family problems beyond making travel reservations. To cope with the untenable situation her new hubby has put her in, Annette keeps quiet and chain-smokes every chance she gets.
Father O'Shaunessy gets a little sloppy with the Communion Wine
Half out of rebellion and half out of boredom, Jessica has picked up British bloke Robin (James Warke) at a pub the day before they head out to the country, and he's tagged along with Dad's permission. When he and Jess sneak off to make out, thus making the family late back to the bus stop and forcing them to seek shelter at a nearby village (dun dun DUN!), that's when the horror begins.
Up to this point the movie has a number of good things going for it. While the broad-brush character development seems facile, it serves its purpose and lets you know the types you're dealing with here. Some would call this lazy, but I found it easy to settle into, like a comfortable chair. And the movie looks awfully good--it was shot on film, and cinematographer Brian Hubbard gets some nice ominous shots of the fog-shrouded countryside. The group's early encounters with the requisite Odd-Acting Townspeople are handled well too, particularly with Robin being force to "translate" their Irish brogue to American English and back--a fun touch. Also, obvious protagonist Molly has a nice Addams Family-era Christina Ricci thing going on, which is always approved.Once they get near the Plague Town, the real action commences. Crowds of deformed, plague-riddled children descend on our hapless Americans, forcing them to split up. In a particularly tense scene, stepmom Annette is slowly beaten to death by a hubcap-wielding kid, and Lindsay Goranson does some great, intense acting here, making your feel every blow. Molly is captured and taken back to town by her new playmates. Meanwhile, Robin is shot by a creepy local, but revives later (magically?) and is also taken back to town. Dad fares much worse, finding a pair of creepily masked girls in an abandoned house and meeting an inventive and gory if not exactly buyable fate.
"Are they made with real Girl Scouts?"
Since this is a movie that just came out as opposed to being 30 or 40 years old, I won't spoil the ins and outs of the ending. Suffice to say the outsiders are menaced by the insiders, the antogonistic sisters must band together to fight the weird foes, all leading to disturbing imagery and a kind-of downer non-ending of the sort some people will really dig.
Still on the positive tip about the movie, the make-up on the deformed kids is pretty good, particularly for the main girl Rosemary (Kate Aspinwall), a blind sibyl-figure with chalk white skin and a graceful, ghostlike air that was pretty effective. There's also quite a bit of gore, all done with practical effects, that will please some viewers--particularly poor Robin's eventual fate at the hands of his childish tormentors.
"Don't look so surprised."
Still, the movie didn't really succeed for me, due to an accumulation of relatively small points that built up over time to become significant. Chief among these is the fact that the nature of the plague under which the townspeople and their offspring suffer is never made clear. The prologue priest says something about the Devil, but of course that's the kind of thing you'd expect him to say. It wouldn't have taken much to drum up some ancient curse or Druidic burial ground or something to give a method to the madness, but it's never done. Even in the wackiest of the Italian gorefests of the 70s, at least SOME backstory was posited to explain why the evil was being visited upon them, nonsensical as it often was. The lack of context not only removes any possibility of our protagonists figuring things out and thus formulating a method of escape, it also strangely robs the proceedings of any weight. To quote a much-quoted Homer Simpson line, "It's just a bunch of stuff that happened."
Once that realization hits, the edges really start to fray. How is it this village is populous enough to produce such a large crowd of demon children in a 14-year span (at least partially through kidnapping of tourists and forced breeding), and yet rural enough that nobody notices? Further, how isolated can a village be that has daily bus service within walking distance, access to electricity, and backhoe rental availability? Given these conveniences, how come nobody in town ever thought to take advantage of the National Health System to see what (the fuck) was up with their tainted gene pool?
Josslyn DeCrosta as Molly does a good job as the de facto heroine in the early going, but once the mayhem starts the movie kind of forgets about her and focuses on the murderous set pieces. While these are good as far as they go, again, the lack of context challenges the viewer to care very much. James Warke is good as the hapless victim of the plague kidz, but without having any clue as to why they're doing what they do to him (on the DVD commentary, Gregory says they're just "playing"), it falls flat for me.Gregory is a director with nearly a hundred credits on his imdb page, a great many of them short documentary subjects (DVD features?) about cult movies, directors, and actors. After rubbing shoulders with such Mad Movie luminaries as Valerie Leon, Lynn Lowry, Jess Franco and Lloyd Kaufman, you'd hope he'd be able to bring some of their rubbed-off pixie dust to bear on his own feature.
Time to Play
However, in the featurette and DVD commentary, Gregory seems strangely oblivious to the history he's spent so much time documenting. For instance, he seems convinced that the "eeevil kids" genre has not been done in recent years, neglecting the MANY recent movies that have used just this trope. (Ils, Wicked Little Things, etc.). He also seems awfully proud of having come up with the "kids just playing in innocent murderous ways" idea, like it's his own creation--I can only presume he hasn't seen Who Could Kill a Child?, Devil Times Five, Children of the Corn, the famous Twilight Zone episode, or any other examples my readers could name off the tops of their heads.
As for features, the DVD includes the aforementioned commentary with Gregory and producer Derek Curl, and a featurette involving those two, the effects and sound guys, and much of the cast. Everyone seems to think they've made the best, scariest, evilest movie ever, which I guess is the kind of enthusiasm you want from your cast and crew, but to me reflects a rather appalling lack of knowledge of the genre. Curl does seem to be rather jovially drunk throughout both features, though, which is kind of entertaining in its own right.
There's also a featurette with composer Mark Raskin about the musical score, which does have some creepy work on it, though I found it at times to be rather overbearing. Raskin doesn't think so, however--he's totally in love with everything he did here, which again is probably the attitude you want. Gregory is rightly proud of an incidental theme contributed by Claudio Gizzi, who composed the score for Andy Warhol's Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, but less rightly proud of a completely incongruous techno song by Ladytron, one of his favorite bands, that he throws in when Jess and Robin are making out.
Overall I didn't hate Plague Town, but it didn't leave me feeling like I'd just watched the next great killer kids movie of our generation. Mileage will vary depending on your tastes, of course, but I ended up on a 1.5 thumb rating. It's available now from Dark Sky Films and your favorite rental outlets.
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