EMPUSA (2010): or, Naschy's Final Bow

A little more than five years ago, the Duke of DVD and I started this blog with a review of Vengeance of the Zombies (1973). That film was and is a perfect example of everything Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies has sought to celebrate, a little-known slice of insane and deliriously entertaining cinema that brought us so much joy, we just had to share it with the world. It was also the first movie we had ever seen featuring the legendary hunk of monstrous manliness that is Jacinto Molina, better known to us all as Paul "Fucking" Naschy. Over half a decade and more than 350 reviews, Paul has been the patron saint of our site, inspiring us to continue our search for treasure in the forgotten realms of b-movie madness, and providing an immovable foundation on which we have tried to build a fitting tribute. His frequent appearances here only give a small glimpse of the wonder he has afforded us, the joy he has so generously given.

So it's only fitting that, in this belated 5th Anniversary Post, I come back to the man who started it all. And ironic perhaps that I do so with the film that, in a way, ended it all: Paul's very last starring role in a feature film, Empusa (2010). I admit, going into this flick, I was a little worried--I'd been waiting for this since August of 2007, two years before Naschy's death, when I heard that principal photography was finished and post-production had begun. As the months passed, my excitement flowed and ebbed, and now at last here it was, ready to be watched. Could it possibly live up to my anticipation? Would it be a fitting end to my idol's magnificent career? Would it deliver the madness and joy I craved, or would it fall flat? Would Empusa (perish the thought) disappoint?

Ah, Paul, fogive me. I should never have doubted you.

J&B: the Breakfast of Champions

 In a beautiful resort city somewhere on the sunny coast of Spain, retiree Abel (Naschy, whose long flowing wig and array of do-rags tread the line between ridiculous and awesome) lives a simple, quiet life. He spends his days walking the beach with his fisherman friend Victor (Antonio Mayans) and his nights between the legs of innkeeper/saloon girl Natalia (María Jesús Solina). He writes about his avocational occult researches, socializes with local aristocrat Baron Ulrich (Paco Racionero),  takes recreational barbiturates and consumes gallons of undiluted absinthe. You know, the simple pleasures.

His peaceful routine is shattered, however, when one day he and Victor almost literally stumble over a grisly discovery on the beach: the severed right hand of a young woman, bearing a very strange wrist tattoo. Over the strenuous objections of his friend, Abel takes the hand back to his apartment and sticks it in the fridge, for...um, further research or something. Abel promises Victor he will return the hand to the beach in a couple of days--three, tops!--and then they can call the police.

Even Paul's porn is classy

A quick Internet search later, Abel has confirmed his initial suspicion--that the hand belongs to a victim of the Empusa, a class of demons in Ancient Greek mythology that are like vampires, only meaner. These exclusively female creatures have none of the traditional weaknesses of folkloric vampires, and satisfy their unholy appetites on the blood of their male and female lovers. Their surviving victims thereafter become "second-hand vampires," which are the garlic-fearing, sunlight-shunning, stake-hating sorts of folks we're all much more familiar with. Which makes sense, you'll agree. Shaken by this discovery--though not so much so you'd notice--Abel takes the hand back to the beach and tosses it into the ocean, forgetting his promise to inform the authorities.

Sadly, this is not the end of the horror--a few days later the police discover a nude body on the beach, a young Nordic tourist who coincidentally is missing her right hand. Not long after, Victor and a friend go squid-fishing only to pull in another mutilated body in their nets. A couple of seashell-seeking daytrippers are attacked Alfred Hitchcock-style by a flock of seagulls (vampires:bats::seagulls:empusa, apparently). And while dining with the Baron, Abel gorges himself on all-you-can-eat shrimp while the aristocrat is assassinated by a steak knife-wielding Belgian--though apparently this has nothing to do with the empusa. Just a value-added bloodbath.

"Got any Chapstick? Just put it on my bill."

Meanwhile, Abel's social life has taken a turn for the "Wow!" While lunching in town, the old Lothario strikes up a conversation with a striking, flame-haired young woman, Christabel (Cristina Carrión), who just so happens to be of Greco-Hungarian extraction. Despite having discovered evidence of a Greek demonic invasion mere days earlier, Abel sees nothing strange in a Hellenic hottie making eyes at a man three times her age--because fuck you, I'm Naschy, that's why! He meets Christabel later frolicking nude in the waves with a female friend, who seems similarly drawn to the irresistible Molina Man-Musk™. A day or so later, he meets yet another interested party--the absolutely smokin' hawt Laura De Pedro--who is looking for some silver artifacts that are rumored to be in the possession of the deceased Baron. With all the new women in his life Abel has little time for Natalia and Victor, the latter of whom just can't shake the feeling that the hand they found and the recent death-storm raining bodies on the beach might have something in common.

Of course Victor's not wrong--Christabel and her ever-expanding army of Eurobabes are indeed a pack of empusa on the loose-a, sucking their way through the local populace while Christabel prepares to battle with their queen Lilith (yes, THAT Lilith...apparently Greek and Jewish mythology have significant overlap) for empusian supremacy. She thinks Abel might be the wild card she needs to overthrow the ancient queen, but of course once she reveals her plan, the old fox is none too keen on helping her. Maybe she and her bffs shouldn't have killed Victor in a blood-fueled frenzy before asking for help? No use second guessing, I guess.

With vengeance on his mind, Abel sets out to bring down Lilith and the other empusa, getting posthumous help from Victor, who appears to him as a rotting corpse a la American Werewolf in London. But what can an old man do against an army of deathless vampire-demons and their ancient queen? Can he find a way to defeat them before they take over all of coastal Spain? Will aged justice prevail over nubile evil?

Puh-leez.

No, thank you.

In addition to being his last starring vehicle, Empusa also marks Naschy's last writing and directorial credit, and as he often does, here he adopts the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach that makes so many of his movies such wild, delirious rides. Obscure ancient mythology, literary and cinematic allusions, European folklore and good old-fashioned exploitation all rub together and produce a friction that is as delicious as it is confusing. Naschy was never afraid to throw everything at the wall just to see the splatter-pattern, and his last effort is no less fearless in this regard than his first.

It's also, believe it or not, extremely funny--and in this case, that's by design. Yes, parishioners, Empusa is not simply a monster movie: it's an all-out horror/comedy! Naschy plays Abel as an absolutely unrepentant rascal, and his chemistry with Mayans as the perpetually exasperated Victor is the stuff of comedy gold. There were many laugh-out-loud scenes for me, including but not limited to:

• Abel's ravenous obliviousness as the Baron regales him with tales of his ancestors' outrageous sexual exploits ("She dyed her pubic hair every color of the rainbow!") before the Baron's hilarious dying soliloquy (his last words compare his gaping abdominal wound to "a waiting, open c****!")
• A police inspector who reflexively punches out a corpse
• Victor communicating with Abel from beyond the grave...via FAX.
• An elderly priest, cop, and fisherman discussing their new status as "second-class vampires"

Viagra: Let Us Put an Epidemic in Your Pants™

• An absolutely hysterical sequence where Abel tries several traditional methods of repelling vampires on the empusa, with hilariously ineffective results
• Naschy learning the hard way that you shouldn't buy crossbows over the Internet

That's not to say the movie is perfect, however. While the women playing the empusa are all completely gorgeous and frequently naked (zang), as actresses they are almost uniformly terrible. I guess it's too much to ask for a modern equivalent of Julia Saly or Helga Liné, but still--ugh. The lone exception is Laura De Pedro as Lilith, who actually seems to know what she's doing and thus comes off as the best actress in the piece.

And also the sexiest.
(photo credit empusafilm.blogspot.com)

The score is either questionable or hysterical depending on your taste, veering from melodramatic orchestral swells to Danny Elfman-style whimsy with reckless abandon. The editing is a trouble spot too--transitions step on dialog, gaps in coverage are filled with random scenes of archaeological digs (?), and a couple of kills--one in a back alley by an empusa, and another in an amusement park spookhouse (??) by Lilith herself--pop in and out of the narrative with such disregard for coherence and continuity that I almost got whiplash.

I found it interesting that with the exception of the monsters, almost the entire cast was made up of actors of more advanced years. I don't think I saw a single human character under the age of 50 who had more than a few lines, which is extremely unusual and a little refreshing in our youth-obsessed culture. However, perhaps as a result of this (and perhaps as a result of the film's budget) there were noticeably few "action" scenes--in fact, a great deal of the film's runtime involves two people sitting in a cafe talking, which may be trying to some viewers' patience. The one real special-effects scene is a standout though, with Lilith in her true form--a nicely grotesque mixture of green scaly demon-beast and hot nude Eurobabe--chowing down on a hapless victim.

Literature: Bridging the Generation Gap since 1955

I would say that whether you enjoy Empusa or not will depend very largely on whether you are already a Naschy fan. To be very honest, I can't see someone unfamiliar with his work watching the film and getting much out of it. But for me (and for the Duke, judging by his chortles and snorts as we watched), it was entertaining, joyful, and a heck of a lot of fun. It's not the best of Naschy's movies by any means, but neither is it the worst. It has the kitchen-sink mentality and the heedless creative energy that make all of Naschy's films such a treat for his fans. And best of all, it has Naschy, his wry wit, his love of all things horror, and the boundless childlike joy that no film could fully contain and no amount of years could ever exhaust.

You gave it to me right to the end, Paul--for that, and for everything, thank you.

2.5 thumbs.

HEAR YE: You can (and should!) download your own copy of EMPUSA for a mere $5 by going to the following link.

http://www.naschysempusa.tk/

Do it! Do it NOW!

A few more images from EMPUSA (2010):

Feel the Glamor

Naschy's man-musk sends all mammals into uncontrollable sexual frenzy--even aquatic ones.

"AND YOU RAAAAAAN! YOU RAN SO FAR AWAAAAAAAAAY!"

Their sermons have only one subject: "Stay Away from the Wall"

Naschy always gets a "Thank You" card--as well he should.

*standing ovation*

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Skew (2011): or, Tale of the Tape

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 30!

Amateur videographer Simon (Rob Scattergood) embarks on a week-long road trip with his beer-swilling best friend Rich (Richard Olak) and Rich's girlfriend Eva (Amber Lewis) to attend another friend's wedding. Simon's girlfriend L.T. (Taneal Cutting) was also supposed to go, but cancels at the last moment, leaving Simon a third wheel. As the friends travel cross-country, tensions mount due to Simon's obsession with recording everything they see, and also due to his growing romantic obsession with the lovely, bra-poor Eva. Soon triangular tensions are the least of their worries, though, as Simon begins to notice strange images through his viewfinder: a hotel clerk and a gas station attendant both show up with their features strangely skewed on the tape, and later both wind up dead, the victims of seemingly random violence. As the video anomalies become more common, the body count rises, and Simon fears his camera is the instrument of a terrible supernatural curse. Still, he feels strangely compelled to keep filming, putting his friends in greater danger with every push of the "record" button...

I hadn't heard of Skew (2011) before reading a recent review on the excellent site Planet of Terror, but I'm very glad I did--dispite obvious similarities to the Ring/Ringu movies (cursed characters there also show up distorted on video), director Sevé Schelenz manages to make his "reality horror" film something fresh and intriguing. The main genius move is making our point-of-view character a flawed, possibly unreliable narrator--in addition to experiencing the supernatural visions along with him, we also slowly piece together his own neuroses and strange desires, which enhances the film's texture and deepens the resonance of the images we're shown. Schelenz does a great job revealing his character through visuals and interactions with his friends, giving the audience enough to stay interested without seeming unnaturally expository.

The cast helps things a lot too, as Scattergood, Olak, and Lewis have a lot of natural chemistry. Watching their relationships develop and change is often just as interesting as the next creepy set-piece. Which is not to say Schelenz skimps on the creepiness--the skewed faces of innocents and our knowledge of what that means generates some suspense, and Simon's periodic visitations by the ghosts of those who died of the curse are shocking and goosebump-worthy. The director also uses the medium to good effect--scenes where Rich and Eva borrow Simon's camera reveal a lot about them all, and when Simon rewinds and rewatches some of his footage at the end, it adds another possible explanation to the strange happenings. Or maybe not--I found the final image (no spoilers) puzzling, but still got an inexplicable shiver out of it, which is perhaps a testament to how the film gets under your skin.

Thanks again to Planet of Terror for turning me on to this hidden gem. It's streaming on Netflix instant, so if you're looking for a creepy little story for your Halloween viewing, you could do a lot worse. 2.5 thumbs.

"I think this shirt really brings out my eyes."

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The Last Exorcism (2010): or, He Puts on a Hell of a Show

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 21!

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), former child preacher and the last in a long line of evangelical exorcists, invites a film crew along to document all the hocus pocus that goes on behind the scenes. It seems the good reverend has lost his faith--while he still believes he provides a service for his flock, giving them the mystical experience they psychologically crave, he does not see himself as anything more than a showman and second-tier magician. Picking a letter at random from his pile of requests, Marcus and crew go to rural Louisiana to help Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), whom her widowed and Bible-obsessed father Louis (Louis Herthum) insists is possessed by the Devil. Marcus gives the yokels the whole show, and seems to cure Nell's ills. But soon the preacher discovers that there might be something to all this exorcism business after all...

The Last Exorcism (2010) does a lot of things I liked, and does them very well. The set-up of a revivalist preacher documenting his own hokum is taken directly from Marjoe (1972), the fascinating documentary about child-preacher and later B-movie star Marjoe Gortner.* Certain early scenes and even some of the dialogue seem to be direct quotes of that movie. Director Daniel Stamm lets the mystery of what's happening to Nell unfold slowly, rushing directly to the neck-snapping exorcism business, but still dropping enough clues and stingers along the way to keep the viewer engaged--unlike some recent horror flicks. The script by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland is intelligent and intriguing--and I don't want to spoil the ultimate solution to Nell's troubles, but it was shocking in a way that still made sense with what had come before, and sent me into the end credits with an appreciative smile.

*And a highly recommended viewing in its own right.

The acting is great from top to bottom. Fabian plays Cotton Marcus as a charismatic, sardonic but lovable rogue, a man who knows he's full of it but nonetheless genuinely seems to care about the people who come to him for help. Bell's Nell (ha!) is wonderful--all fresh and innocent and giggly at the beginning, throwing her later sinister turn in stark relief. (According to imdb trivia, Bell also did all the amazing, poster-spoiled contortions herself, without the aid of special effects.) Herthum makes a great menacing, possibly not so well-meaning dad, and Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class's Banshee) gives a nice performance as Nell's brother.

Put simply, The Last Exorcism is one of the best recent horror films I've seen in a long time. A fresh look at the "possession" subgenre--a stylish, entertaining and even frightening film. 3 thumbs. Recommended.

On third and short, the Devil shows Blitz.

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Paranormal Activity 2 (2010): or, Wake Me When It's Haunting

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 20!

In the months before the events of the first movie, new mother Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and husband Daniel (Brian Boland) bring their infant son Hunter home from the hospital to their palatial mini-mansion in the suburbs. All is happy days and lollipops for a while, until one day the couple finds their house completely trashed, apparently by vandals who had the courtesy to lock the doors behind them and not steal anything of value. Being the wealthy, proactive father he is, Daniel has surveillance cameras installed so that they can monitor all nocturnal goings on in the house. But the footage thus captured doesn't reveal bored teenagers emulating their favorite MTV shows--rather, it's g-g-g-ghosts!

The strange happenings escalate--pots fall from kitchen racks, mobiles spin by themselves over Hunter's crib, the automatic pool cleaner inexplicably removes itself from the pool, and strange knockings are heard. As the frightened young parents try to make sense of things, they discover a dark secret in their family history that will threaten not only their own safety, but spill over into the lives of Kristi's sister Katie (Katie Featherston) and her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat)--the protagonists of the first film, whose own subsequent travails are a direct result of what happens here.

I was a bit lukewarm about Paranormal Activity (2007)--I thought it had some unsettling imagery and well-executed, totally legit scares, but found the main characters annoying and their actions more than a little contrived. I also felt it was a bit too light on explanation for the haunting, and the pacing much too slow. Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) does a bit better on the first count, proposing a Faustian bargain in the sisters' family history in which a first-born son was promised and must now be delivered, since Hunter is the first male in the line for a few generations. However, it does even worse on the second count. There are a few scare scenes in the flick, but you have to sit through more than an hour of fairly boring "found footage" before you get to them--by which point, if you're still awake, you might well wonder if the payoff is worth the wait.

The acting is okay, and the "reality" filming is done pretty well, but in the end there are few things more boring than watching someone else's home movies, particularly when you don't know or care about the people involved. While a little restraint and deliberate, slow-boil reveals are usually a good thing in a haunted house flick, I felt director Tod Williams went a little overboard here--when you're more than an hour in and the scariest thing that's happened has been a CG shadow disturbing someone's nap, you run the risk of trying your audience's patience.

Once we actually reach the climax, it's pretty good stuff--nothing we haven't seen before at this point, but well executed nonetheless--and I appreciated the creepy little tie-in to the ending of the last film. But after enduring an hour and fifteen minutes of only occasionally-broken boredom, I felt it was too little, too late. 1 thumb.

"Screw this, I'm outta here."

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INSIDIOUS (2010): or, Should Have Gone Further

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 4!

Musician and exhausted mother of three Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) and her well-meaning but more than a little thick schoolteacher husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) have just moved into a palatial, deeply shadowed old house, when their energetic oldest child Dalton (Ty Simpkins) suffers a knock on the head while exploring the requisite creepy attic. The next morning the boy has fallen into a coma, and the family begins to suffer under a plague of what paranormal experts like to call "freaky shit." Creepy voices from the nursery are overheard on the baby monitor, strange faces appear in second-floor windows, and middle son Foster (Andrew Astor) reports seeing his brother walking around at night, even when Dalton is clearly still strapped in his sick bed. Fleeing the haunting, they move into suburban crackerbox that is much more believably affordable on a high school teacher's salary, only to find that the malevolent entities have followed them. Turns out it's not their house that is haunted, but their son--his soul has come detached from his body via innocent astral projection gone too far, and the demons of the netherworld called "The Further" want to commandeer his body to wreak havoc on the living. Can Josh use his own astral projecting skills to retrieve his son and keep the demons at bay?

Spoiler: yup.

Directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell (the horror loving duo who struck gold in 2004 with the first installment of the loved-by-some and reviled-by-others Saw series), Insidious has a few good ideas and manages a couple of extremely effective scare scenes. The movie's at its best early on, establishing Renai's exhaustion and Josh's obliviousness, then turning up the tension with the tried-and-true "child in danger" shtick. Once Josh follows his son into the Further, the ghosts and demons that inhabit the place are wonderfully creepy in a "porcelain dolls gone wrong" way; the Sith Lord-styled, Tiny Tim-loving Lipstick Face Demon is also a disturbing creation. The astral projection angle is an interesting one too, and I got a kick out of psychic Elise Ranier (Lin Shaye) and her team of nerdy paranormal techs. (The medium's method of channeling the dead while wearing a fetish-style gas mask was also a pleasingly WTF touch.)

However, much of the movie seemed to me a slightly higher-rent version of Wan's summarily awful 2007 flick Dead Silence. As in that earlier flick, Wan doesn't seem to trust his nightmare imagery to be quite scary enough, and so relies heavily on screeching strings and other loud noises to put the exclamation point on every jump scare. The director even seems to transplant the "creepy old ventriloquist lady" character from that movie into this one, here making her a netherworld demon.

The problems continue with Whannell's script, which includes such absurdities as Renai listening to a grunting, growling male voice on her baby monitor for a full three minutes (BEFORE rushing upstairs to, you know, CHECK ON THE BABY), and Josh dashing downstairs to find the front door wide open and the burglar alarm going off, then nonchalantly shutting the door, turning on the alarm, and, you know, NOT CALLING THE POLICE. 

TWICE.

Byrne and Wilson are both usually fairly decent actors, but here they both seem to be phoning it in from a great distance. And scream flick legend Barbara Hershey is similarly detached in her small role as Josh's mother. When the most engaging actors in the flick are our comic relief ghostbusters (writer Leigh Whannell as "Specs" and Angus Sampson as "Tucker"), somebody at the top of the marquee isn't pulling his or her weight.

I didn't think Insidious was really a bad movie--I can see where many viewers (especially those whippersnapping young'uns) might be thrilled and disturbed by the spookhouse scares and loud noises--but I guess it just left me a little tired and unfulfilled. It looks good though, and did manage to raise the goosebumps a couple of times, so I give it a 1.5 thumb rating.

"See you later, babe. Darth Maul and I are going to try to get in a quick 9."

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TROLLHUNTER (2010): or, Don't Feed the Trolls

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 3!

 
A group of conservation-minded college students, on the trail of a man they think is poaching the fiercely regulated and protected bear population of their native Norway, think they have found the perfect subject for their Dokumentar 101 final project. But as they follow the rough, enigmatic hunter on his mysterious nightly raids, they find themselves at the center of a whole different wildlife conservation battle, focused on a much rarer and more dangerous native predator: the Troll.

Just when you think endless knockoffs and repetitions have completely sapped the found footage subgenre of its vitality and creativity, along comes a group of plucky Norwegians to show us there's life in the old bird yet. Combining a believable documentary style with a clear passion for the fairy tales and folklore of his native land, writer/director André Øvredal creates an exciting, funny, and truly inventive take on the old Giant Monsters Amok tropes. Throw in government cover-ups, eccentric bear hunters, and a gruff monster-fighting badass of the Ash/Reggie the Ice Cream Man stamp (Otto Jespersen, whom I could almost believe really is an honest-to-Odin Trolljegeren), and you've got a good time for everybody.

The rest of the cast is good too, but the real stars of the show are of course the trolls. Here the "documentary" style really helps a lot, as Øvredal is able to use shadows, dusky light, and night-vision effects to help sell the idea of a twenty-foot tall, three-headed beast rampaging through the forest. The movie is edited extremely well, with exciting chases and entertaining bits of dialogue explaining the folklore for the uninitiated. (For instance, it's important to the Troll Hunter to ensure that none of the documentary crew are Christians, since trolls can "smell the blood of a Christian man.") Several troll species are represented, and my favorite scene involves a witty take on one of the most treasured Grimm Fairy tales from my childhood. Most importantly, by the time the two-hundred foot Final Boss showedup, I found my imagination so engaged that I didn't even think about the CG. Which seldom happens, and is a big complement.

2.75 thumbs. Recommended!

"Do you mind? I'm tryin' to dump some gravel here!"

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DVD Review: THE TAINT (2010)

My dearest friends! Fret not, the Duke of DVD is back, once more following close behind the pox-ridden arse that is the slow, plodding, diseased horse of MAD cinema, holding a burlap sack in which to catch any cinematic nuggets of offal that might fall. I save only the choicest lumps for you, my dearest readers! Your letters, emails, and runed scrawlings etched upon stretched cat stomach have not gone unread. “When is the Duke coming back to further educate us upon the innermost workings of the sewers of cinema?” you asked. “What is this new crop of downy hair I appear to be growing upon mine nethers?!” you entreated. Well, here I am, to bring you the good word and deliver what you most want: truly MAD movies.

Today I bring you a movie so flamingly foul that even I could barely stomach it. “Does that mean it’s a bad movie, unworthy of my precious time?” you honk, Krispy Kreme flakes shedding from your blue-red lips like so many snowflakes. Heavens no, sir or madam! This movie is supremely entertaining, and though it may be filled to the brim with more cock-shots than the Vicar’s first movie (brazenly titled The Vicar Reveals His Cock During Mass), it is still a modern MAD movie masterpiece.

Let us begin, shall we?

THE TAINT, referring to a spreading disease rather than the place between your foul pucker and your shriveled genitals, opens with a black and white shot of a woman’s breasts, which cuts to an interior shot of what I'm assuming is supposed to be a vagina. We peer outwards as the lips part. Then we see a man wearing red long-johns running through the woods with a scythe. A youth with yellow hair wakes up next to a girl. He had been dreaming the images we saw--all except for the man in the red long-johns, who appears near where the boy and girl sit (somewhere out in the woods it seems). The scythe-wielder chases the boy off whilst farting and shitting through his brown-stained long-john's back-flap. The boy trips, and falls next to a severed head. He gets up and runs from the man, and starts lighting a cigarette as he runs.

"Note to self:  Avoid Old Man Miller's farm... and daughter."

This, friends, is the opening of THE TAINT, and it only gets more and more weird as time goes on. The dude with the David Bowie hair, named Phil O’Ginny (played brilliantly by movie co-creator Drew Bolduc ), wanders the woods until he meets up with a shotgun-wielding chick named Misandra (Colleen Walsh), who explains to him, via flashback with her former husband, what’s going on. Apparently, some toxin is making male humans go crazy, turning them into sperm-squirting, rapey, skull-crushing zombie lunatics! Or else your typical junior high school football players--something like that. The point is, nearly every zombie (I’m using this term loosely, folks) in the movie has his cock hanging out of his pants. A prosthetic cock to be sure, but still hilarious. These dicks shoot gallons of sperm at the drop of a hat, all the while the person in question is murdering a helpless female.

James Hetfield prepares for the latest Metallica tour.

Phil, who incidentally has two pairs of giant sunglasses that he changes depending on how he’s feeling at the time, walks around with the shotgun chick, occasionally killing a crazed rapey dude, until they finally run into a group of non-crazy rapey dudes. Their leader, a former coach at Phil’s school, is shown in a lengthy flashback to be ragingly gay, only he denies it, to himself and others. I had a good lengthy chuckle out of his character; the guy who plays him does so really well. But back to the dick waving. It seems a group of scientists has developed a self-described “penis enhancer”. We get a lot of hilarious scenes with the scientists, and we’re shown their television commercial, which is a black and white riff on old Nazi war propaganda. Brilliant stuff!

"Welcome to Le Spa du Vicar! Here's your free facial!"

It seems the penis enhancer is the cause of this rapey-zombie outbreak. It was far too potent and turned men into rampaging zombies with unrelenting erections. Really. That's it.

Folks, there’s little to no point in discussing the “plot” here, because there really isn’t one, other than jizz-squirting psychopaths rampaging across the country while Phil changes sunglasses. Throw in a coat-hanger abortion, a dude tearing his own dick off, someone ripping the guts out of another person while they still live, a lengthy workout video done by the gay school athletic coach, and more exploding cocks than you can comprehend, and you have THE TAINT. The movie ends with Phil, draped in an American flag, walking blood-covered down a city street filled with men whipping women or assaulting them bodily, all  while giant penii droop from their open pants. A nightmare, or a land of dreams (if you are the Vicar, that is).

I've really nothing to add.

I absolutely salute the men and women who made this movie! A low budget labor of love, lust, and the lowest of the lowbrow, it offends everyone equally. I was shocked, surprised, and absolutely moist with entertainment. We need more movies like THE TAINT in the world, says I.

2.5 Enthusiastic Thumbs Up!

"You sure got a purty mouth."

How Beef Jerky is made.

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DVD Review: Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives (2010)

Well, that was a surprise!

I'll admit, when I saw the title and promotional materials for Israel Luna's 2010 comedy Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives (distributed by Breaking Glass Pictures), my expectations were lower than basement level. I fully expected it to be another in the long line of tasteless retro-exploitation "comedies" that never reach for anything beyond the obvious joke, that would go out of its way to offend with blatant stereotyping and knee-jerk homophobia. In fact, so dire were my fears that I almost had to force myself to slap the screener in the dvd player and watch it unfold.

So imagine my delight when T-OTwK grabbed me from the get-go and kept me interested and involved almost throughout. Engaging characters, skillful filmmaking, and some genuinely chilling scenes of violence? Over-the-top zany comedy and gore scenes tempered with sensitivity and respect for its subjects? All in an indie comedy with an obvious love for 70s exploitation and the confidence to play with its tropes and trust the audience to come along? Who'd have thunk it?

The plot synopsis goes a little like this: protagonist Bubbles Cliquot (Krystal Summers) works as a dancer at a transgender strip-club in some major urban area (Dallas, as it turns out). With her fellow dancers--the glamourous Tipper Summore (Jenna Skyy), Latina bombshell Emma Grashun (Erica Andrews), Southern belle Rachel Slurr (Willam Belli), and fiercely protective "Momma" Pinky La'Trimm (Kelexis Davenport)--Bubbles is part of a supportive and understanding family of transsexuals. As we see the girls perform and join them for afterhours cocktails and conversations, we sense the cameraderie and affection between them, an "us against the world" sisterhood that feels both real and engaging.

Unfortunately that sisterhood is shattered when trannie-hating psychopath Boner (Tom Zembrod) lures Bubbles, Emma, and Rachel into a warehouse trap, and proceeds to take his vengeance on them, ostensibly for Bubbles' having "tricked him" into homosexual sex, but more obviously because he can't handle his own repressed sexuality. The other girls answer Bubbles' distress call, but the ensuing fight ends with Boner and his two gang-mates free, Tipper and Emma dead, and Bubbles in a coma.

When Bubbles awakes, she joins Pinky and Rachel in a plan to avenge their sisters' deaths--a plan that involves a trip to the dojo of club regular and kung-fu expert Fergus (Richard D. Curtin) and extensive training with a variety of ornate bladed weaponry. Once they're ready, the girls set a trap for Boner and his thugs that leads to a blood-soaked and action-packed climax--pun definitely NOT intended.

Ticked ,but still fabulous

It would have been very easy for this flick to fall into the Bad Comedy Tar Pit, but director Luna  shuns the easy jokes and over-the-top camp and focuses instead on the sisterly relationship between his characters. The "trannies" in this flick are never treated as jokes just because they are transsexuals--rather, they're human beings who just happen to also be funny every now and then, and who also face real dangers and problems. Really, you could have replaced "trannies" with just your average female strippers and made almost exactly the same movie.

Which is not to say there's not camp here--there is, of course--but to me it was realistic camp, i.e., the campiness you would expect to find in groups and clubs such as those depicted here, in real life. If you've ever been to a drag show or hung out with people involved in them, then you would not blink twice at the witty bitchiness or jokes presented in Luna's script. However, the camp is less central than the real affection between the characters, and the way they band together, even before tragedy strikes.

Maybe because I was so taken with the relationships Luna focused on, the most over-the-top of the comedy bits didn't work as well for me. One is when Bubbles wakes up in the hospital, and she and her friends are flabbergasted by a latex-clad transsexual nurse (Chase Wade) and the reflector-wearing, innuendo-spouting Dr. Laccio (Todd Jenkins). Another is the trip to Fergus's dojo, a bit of chop-socky silliness that elicited some giggles, but mostly fell flat for me. Luckily, Luna had the directorial intuition not to let the bit go on too long.

Boner (Zembrow) menaces his victim

The style of the film winks knowingly at 70s exploitation, though it probably owes more to Quentin Tarantino's take on the same. The movie is divided into chapters, each with its own usually humorous title card, and there is artificial film grain and even a "missing reel." While the flick is never really convincingly "grindhouse," the practical gore effects and creative vengeance methods in the final confrontation do hit that mark.

The acting here is not Shakespearean quality--many of the line readings are stilted and some reactions less than convincing--but graded on a sliding scale for low-budget direct-to-video indie films, it's really not that bad (and certainly as good as many of the 70s films it emulates). The girls--most of them real transgendered actors--do passably well, and as I said, the affection and cameraderie seems real enough. Standout performances are Davenport as Momma Pinky, who manages to be hilarious when the film calls for it and menacing as a mother lion when her girls are threatened. And Zembrod is an excellent villain--his first scene, wherein he whispers his grievances in a sing-song voice while he brutally kills one of the girls with a baseball bat, is truly chilling and well acted. (Well-filmed too--Luna handles the difficult scene with skill, even throwing in some disturbing, gruesome touches, like the matted hair and brain matter on the end of the killer's weapon.)

There are some negatives, as always. The pacing of the final confrontation scene suffers when first one group and then the other explain their needlessly complex and convoluted vengeance schemes--though again, perhaps this is true to the spirit of the 70s films that are the model. The comedy didn't always work for me, and the shot-on-video cinematography may put some viewers off, especially with the added video-effects grain and things like that. For me, I didn't mind it too much--Luna and crew had won me over, so I just went with it. Also, while Zembrod gave a chilling performance, his character *is* a stereotype of Southern bigoted homophobes that seemed a bit too easy for a movie that otherwise seemed to be fighting such stereotypes.

(Also, I learn through the wonders of the internet that there was backlash against the film from GLAAD and some trans-groups, citing the films' portrayal of transsexuals as "murderous vigilantes" and use of the perjorative term "trannies" as unhelpful. I can't presume to speak to those issues, but I for one never felt the title characters were presented anything other than affectionately, and certainly no different from heterosexual characters in similarly plotted films. But judge for yourself:  Full article here.)

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives, and extremely glad I got the chance to see it--somehow I doubt it's going to be playing theatrically in Little Rock. :) DVD features will inlude bloopers, Behind-the-Scenes footage, the "missing reel," commentary, and more (but were not included on the screener I got for review.)  2.25 thumbs.

Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives trailer (youtube)

Interesting, informative article from Queerty discussing the pros & cons of T-OTwK (hat-tip to Tenebrous Kate for the link!)

Note: Breaking Glass Pictures provided a copy of this film to MMMMMovies for review purposes. Images gleaned from the Internet--if one is yours and you need credit or to have it removed, please let me know and I will gladly comply.

Luna (center, in leather jacket) and cast at the Tribeca Film Festival

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DVD Reviews: NOCTURNE (2007) and INBRED REDNECK VAMPIRES (2010)

Look, folks, you know I like to give the movies I watch the benefit of the doubt. No matter how ineptly made, how crudely plotted, how bargain-basement the effects, I always try my damnedest to work with the filmmakers and find those little nuggets of inspiration, those small successes that may not redeem the entire work, but at least keeps it from being a total waste of time.

This is particularly true in indie movies. I mean, God bless the Indie Filmmaker, right? Without the resources of a major studio at their disposal, with just an idea and a dream, these cinematic warriors get out there and do their best to realize their visions. They don't let the things they lack--money, time, equipment, often even basic movie-making talent--stand in their way. I respect that, I do. It's the Doctrine of the Glorious Failure the Duke and I lined out in or MMMMManifesto: to wit, it's better to aim for the stars and miss, than to aim for a pile of shit and hit it.

But if you go back and read the above-linked mission statement, you'll find another tenet of our philosophy that's just as important, the First Inviolable Commandment of the Church of Mad Movies, the one that must be upheld no matter what else goes wrong: THOU SHALT NOT BE BORING.

I think you can probably guess why I'm telling you this.

I recently received these two straight-to-DVD movies for review: A Nocturne: Night of the Vampire (2007) from Troma DVD, and Inbred Redneck Vampires (2010) from MVD Entertainment. The films share a few things in common. Both are indie films--so indie, in fact, that I was unable to find either of them on imdb.com. Both are about vampires. Both look like they were made on consumer video equipment, whether they actually were or not. Both break the Cardinal Rule of Mad Movie enjoyment. And neither should be watched by you.

Let's get through this as quickly as possible, shall we?

A Nocturne caught my attention because the back cover sported some glowing pull-quotes on the back cover, comparing the flick's visual tapestry to that of Vicar-fave director Jean Rollin and similarly vamp-obsessed reprobate Jess Franco. Near as I can figure, the only reason for the Rollin comparison is that the movie is about vampires, and at one point there's a woman in it who speaks French. Otherwise--not so much.

The movie is about a male/female vampire couple, "X" and "Y" (seriously), who have been alive for hundreds of years and are SO VERY BORED. They communicate this boredom to the viewer by staring off into space, not saying very much, and walking around in a blank-faced daze for fully 2/3 of the movie. There's an old man who I think is a priest but is certainly a cannibal, who indulges in long nonsensical wannabe "poetic" soliloquies about his dead wife, which you can barely hear over the pervasive microphone hiss. Every now and then the vamps kidnap someone we've never seen before, who obviously wanders in just to be bitten, and bite them. There are a couple of Nietzsche quotes, and the aforementoned French woman who comes in for an info-dump monologue that doesn't really explain much, and what it does explain is stupid. At the end, somebody else we've never seen before shows up out of nowhere and kills one of the vamps. Fin.

Really, that's IT. There's no character development, no plot to speak of, and nothing much happens. At least in Rollin, even when characters went for 40 minutes without a line of dialogue, SHIT WAS HAPPENING. Mad shit. Here--no.

But as I said up above, I really like to work with movies to see if I can find something good. So here are the good things about Nocturne:

• There's periodic nudity, pretty good, usually with blood.
• The crazy old cannibal, while never making sense, is clearly totally committed to his role, to an almost admirable degree.
• The aforementioned French actress seemed to actually know her way around a line of dialogue, and was by far the best actor in the movie.
  
• The movie really succeeds in making you feel the boredom of its protagonists, by making you feel like you've been just that bored for 400 years.
• It helped me determine that the fast-forward button on my remote was in top working order.

Moving on...

Inbred Redneck Vampires is just what it sounds like, but worse. Here's the company synopsis, straight from MVD Entertainment's website:

Sexy vampire Catherine and her familiar Lendel are on the run from a ruthless vampire hunter. They hide out in the small redneck town of Backwash, where Catherine hatches a plan to turn the backwoods folk into an army of her vampire slaves. Cultures further clash when Ma Poissier wins a free room redecoration by fruity Frenchman Jean-Claude Les Eaux, who tries his best to fit in with crazy hillbillies like Lil' Junior and his buddy Cletus. Beer drinking, bean eating, tripe cooking, shower peeping, competitive farting, strip poker playing and all manner of insanity follow, all leading up to the town's annual Tripe Days Festival.

Hoo, boy.

It's a maxim by now that of all the "bad movie" categories, the worst of the worst is "bad comedy." Think of it--with any other genre, be it Bad Horror, Bad Scifi, Bad Action, or Bad Drama--you can at least laugh at the ridiculousness of it, or chortle affectionately about the filmmaker's wrong-headed but right-hearted attempts. Bad Comedy, however, removes that possibility of enjoyment. If a comedy makes you laugh, it's not bad--it's GOOD. Therefore, a bad comedy is by definition one you CANNOT laugh at.

Inbred Redneck Vampires is a very, very bad comedy. The "shower peeping" (in which the peepers fail to notice when a sexy trailer park woman switches out with her hairy boyfriend--hilarious?) and "competitive farting" scenes (this latter goes on for a good 5-10 minutes, and is just three guys at a table eating beans and farting on each other--laffin' yet?) alone make Mama Dracula look like Lust for a Vampire. The "redneck" humor is sub-sub-Hee Haw! levels. (Think about that: it's LESS FUNNY than HEE HAW.) I only chuckled once in the whole movie, and that was when a nude, obese, one-eyed woman stumbled backward to crush a vampire's head with her gigantic ass. Sue me, I was desperate for mirth.

With both the redneck and the vampire portions of the plot, the filmmakers never reach beyond the broadest, most obvious joke. That Frenchy, he talks funny! Hey, Cletus is a midget, and he always calls Frenchy "Peckerwood"! Somebody put cat shit in the tripe! The Frenchman thinks it's delicious! That vampire ate some garlic by mistake! Stop it, my sides!

But again, there's enough negativity in the world. Good things about the flick:

• Again, there was some passable-to-decent nudity, and most of the redneck chicks were fairly hot, if you could get past their terribly overwrought country accents.
• The "sexy vampire queen" did a pretty good impression of Teri Garr in Young Frankenstein. This was annoying at first, but by the end marked her as the best thespian in the flick.
• There was a Rube Goldberg-esque vamp-staking that was borderline creative.
• Umm...that's it.

We all love the Ideal of the indie filmmaker--someone outside the bounds of Hollywood, pursuing his or her unique vision and overcoming all obstacles to bring something personal and creative to life. And periodically that happens--but more often, it seems, we get uninspired, unsuccessful imitations of movies that weren't that good to begin with, made without a trace of the passion or drive required to make the results watchable.

Unfortunately, these two films are examples of this latter trend. While I can respect the work it must have taken for the filmmakers to get their work out there, and don't doubt they all had a good time seeing it through, I didn't enjoy watching them, not one little bit. I sincerely hope both find better projects in the future, and realize them more fully and entertainingly. But in these cases, I can only say this: no thumbs. AVOID.

These two deserve better.

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A Few Thoughts on THE WOLFMAN (2010)

UPDATED 2/16/2010! Now with even MORE nitpicking! (See end of review)

Everyone around here knows (or should know by now) how important George Waggner's THE WOLF MAN (1941) is to your ever-lovin' Vicar, as both a piece of horror cinema history and a formative influence in my own personal journey that has led me to where I am today, which is to say right in front of your eyes spouting forth on the glories of all that is MAD at the movies. You also should know that I don't spend an awful lot of time writing about new-release movies on this blog, partly because I prefer to walk the ornate, psychedelically painted halls of 70s exploitation and neon-lit corridors of 80s sci-fi horror. However, because THE WOLF MAN is such an important movie to me, I felt it appropriate that I take a few minutes to talk about the Universal remake and my reaction to it.

The requisite disclaimer/spoiler warning: if you are planning to see Joe Johnston's THE WOLFMAN (2010) in the near future, I encourage you to skip this piece of writing and go in fresh; knowing as I do that cinematic enjoyment is an intensely personal rubric, and that one man's trash is another's treasure, I would hate to color someone's reaction when that person might otherwise have a great time with the movie. Which is not to say that I hated it--but I did have problems with it, which I plan to detail briefly below (along with the things I thought it did well). So caveat lector--don't say I didn't warn you.

The net by now is lousy with plot summaries and comparisons, so instead of subjecting you to all that, I think I'll just go through my likes and dislikes in list format. If you need a refresher on the original movie, I encourage you to check out my lengthy Halloween Monster Memories piece on THE WOLF MAN, seen here in October of 2008.

Things I liked about THE WOLFMAN (2010):

• I thought the movie looked fantastic. The gloomy gothic of Talbot Manor and the surrounding perpetually fog-shrouded woods, the period costuming, the silver/grey color scheme that largely (and appropriately) called to mind both the black & white original and the silvery light of the moon--all gorgeous.
• Rick Baker's makeup design for the Wolfman was, I thought, dead-on. Respectful to the original while updating it and making it more vicious and frightening--no complaints. I've read several places that they wanted Del Toro to be able to *act* under all that makeup, and I think they succeeded. And despite the sometimes iffy CG transitions, I did like the half-biped/half-quadriped locomotion of the creature.
• I don't know if they were entirely intentional, but I think I spotted at least two nods to the werewolf lore of permanent Vicar hero Paul Naschy, which were greatly appreciated at least by me. First, they give lip service to the Naschylore that the werewolf can only be set free by someone who loves him, though thereafter they really don't go much further with it. And in a show-stopping massacre scene, there is a definite instance of Human Jerky a la Jacinto, which again had me smiling and nodding my head.
• There were also a couple of definitely intentional nods to what I've always considered a tonal remake of The Wolf Man, i.e. American Werewolf in London, which Rick Baker also worked on of course. The first is the appearance early on of David Schofield, the Dart Player from the Slaughtered Lamb in AWIL, playing a similar pub-goer role. The second is the Wolfman's rampage in London, which despite period setting hits a lot of analogous notes as the Picadilly Circus sequence from the earlier flick. (Nota bene: Rick Baker himself makes a brief cameo as the first killed onscreen by a werewolf.)
• That London rampage? Excellent. Again, there was some iffy CG tansitioning going on, but the werewolf going crazy on the steam-powered double-decker, taking off over the rooftops of London, and generally wreaking havoc? Fantastic, exciting stuff, imo.
• Emily Blunt as Gwen Conliffe was probably hired because she looks so beautiful when she cries, as she's called upon to turn on the water-works in just about every scene. This is not a bad thing--she's gorgeous, believably bereaved and confused, and turns in my favorite performance of the flick.
• I liked that the werewolf was so solid and weighty here--not light and airy like the vampires we see in modern flicks who barely seem to touch to floor. This creature rages, slams into things, knocks trees over, and makes a lot of noise. I appreciate that.
  

Things I didn't like quite so much:

• One of the central themes for me of the whole werewolf mythos is the tragedy of a good man who is driven to do evil and cannot stop himself. Werewolf movies suffer, imo, when they forget this or give it short shrift. We get to see quite a lot of Lon Chaney Jr. being a good if misguided man in the original (too much, some might say), which makes his drive to kill all the more tragic. Benecio Del Toro's Lawrence Talbot *is* meant to be a good man, but his development as such is all done in shorthand. In fact, this is a problem with ALL the character develpment in the movie--rather than learning about the characters by how they interact, we get shorthand versions of their motivations, either through summarizing dialogue or flashbacks. Some viewers will like this better than the build-up of the original, but for me it just seemed lazy.
• Speaking of lazy--those flashbacks and dream sequences. Far too many, far too often. I would have preferred sacrificing the scenes of Larry and Ben as kids for some more character development, perhaps using the same narrative but told by the characters rather than flashback. This would have helped Larry and Gwen's later relationship become more moving as well, I think. And that long dream sequence in the asylum? I know there's a similar scene at the carnival in the original, but the new one is bigger, longer, flashier, and dumber. I could have done with less of that.
• Speaking of the asylum--wtf? This is probably my biggest problem with the flick--again, in the original, Larry murders the grave digger and becomes aware of his situation before anyone else. When he tries to convince his father and the town that he's a monster, no one belives him, thinking instead he's disturbed. Here, however, the townspeople light up their torches and march on the house demanding Larry's cursed hide BEFORE HE EVEN TRANSFORMS FOR THE FIRST TIME. There is NOBODY in the town who DOESN'T believe Larry is the Beast, and yet when they capture him after a huge massacre in which he does away with at least half a dozen townspeople and everyone sees him wolfed out, what do they do? SEND HIM TO THE ASYLUM for treatment. In the context of the original story in which Larry might well be a lunatic, that would work; but here it's just nonsensical.
• The dialogue, frankly, was horrible. Del Toro, Hopkins, Blunt and Weaving do their best with what they have, but when your lines are MORE melodramatic and stilted than lines from your 60-year-old source material? You've got a major problem there.
• We needed more gypsies. I mean, A LOT more gypsies.
  

And finally (MAJOR SPOILER HERE--TURN BACK NOW!)--the double-werewolf dynamic. I'm of two minds about this one--on the one hand, I LOVED the final battle in the burning Talbot manse, as it reminded me again of the monster mashes Naschy and I both love so well, and was exciting and interesting and bloody. On the other hand, it replaces the tension between Sir John and Larry in the 1941 flick--Dad thinks his son just needs to man-up and stop believing folklore--with "Dad is a remorselessly evil killing machine and wants his son to take the fall for him." I didn't mind the idea itself--I thought it could have been used a lot more effectively than it was, though. Also, I didn't like Hopkins' dead-eyed performance, while I understood the reasons for it.

I could go on for a while about the things I liked and didn't like (the nods to the original with the Wolf's Head Cane and dad's telescope, for instance), but I think that's enough for now. In all, I didn't think it was terrible, but I didn't think it was all that great either, and I believe the 3/5 star, "C" ratings you're seeing all over the net are probably about right.

Of course I fully cop to the fact that my love for the original may well color my enjoyment of the new one, and I might enjoy it more if I could just separate myself from Chaney and Rains and view the flick on its own merits. But I'm not so sure--there's a lot of flash at the expense of substance, which seems to be the curse of our blockbuster age.

Anyway, YMMV as always. I'll be interested to hear what other parishioners think.

Bunnies,
The Vicar

EDITED TO ADD: As I've thought more about the film since my weekend viewing, another problem has occurred to me I wanted to add to this review. (And apologies to the blogs I've already posted this on in comment form--it takes me a while to get my thoughts in order sometimes.) One thing the new film misses that made the old film so compelling to me is Larry Talbot's crushing sense of guilt for having the blood of innocents on his hands. In the 1941 version this starts when Larry attends Bela the Gypsy's funeral and is clearly emotionally distraught at the idea he may have inadvertently killed a man and not a wolf--even though he's pretty sure he killed a wolf! Later, after the gravedigger's death, he's completely destroyed by the knowledge that every time the moon rises he'll go out and kill again--and worse, that no one around him will believe him or help him stop it.

In the new film, with the villagers mobbing up for his hide before he even wolfs out the first time, his later bloodshed seems less like wanton slaughter and more like self-defense. I never got the feeling that Del Toro's Talbot was that worried about having killed so many innocent people--rather, his torment seemed based on the fact that he was being hunted down by them. It's an important difference, I think, and works to the new film's detriment imo.

At the end of the day, though, the film is just okay--I guess I'm mostly disappointed b/c I was hoping it would be "great."

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