Unholy (2007): or, Some Things are Better Left Unknown

 October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 9!

Pianist and GMILF Martha (the lovely and legendary Adrienne Barbeau) has her life turned upside down when her daughter Hope (Siri Baruc) commits suicide in the family cellar, after warning her mother cryptically to "beware the experiment." With her mostly useless stoner son Lucas (Nicholas Brendon) in tow, Martha starts digging into the dark history of their small town, which leads her to menacing encounters with the local creepy recluse Gertrude (Susan Willis, whom I mistook for Cloris Leachman until I read the end credits), the worlds most threatening florist (Richard Ziman), and into the bowels of local folklore involving Lester Krauss (Joseph McKenna), also known as The Necromancer. Much more than just a bedtime boogeyman, Krauss was apparently a Nazi occultist working on the "Unholy Trinity" of parapsychological powers--Invisibility, Mind Control, and Time Travel--under the post-war auspices of a shadowy US Government agency. As the plot unravels, Martha learns that not only was Hope a subject of Krauss's experiments, but so also was the entire town--herself and her son included. Soon she finds herself in a race to find out what really happened to her daughter, and perhaps to save history from the evil machinations of a time-traveling Nazi warlock--the worst kind!

I remember when Unholy was being hyped by certain horror websites and on messageboards back in '07--fans were of course excited to see Barbeau working in anything, and the Nazi occultism plot seemed a can't-miss premise. (If memory serves, I think there was even some kind of abortive Augmented Reality Game launched to build anticipation for the flick.) Then the hype seemed to disappear, and I forgot about the flick until it turned up in the Netflix instant queue.

Well, some things are indeed better left unknown, including the entirety of this terrible, terrible movie. It's hard to tell which is more at fault--the nonsensical script by Sam Freeman or the clunky direction of Daryl Goldberg--but both smell up the joint with alarming consistency. Goldberg substitutes dissonant orchestral stings for suspense, leaves out huge chunks of context, and drops in some of the worst CG I've seen since Barbie: Fairytopia. Barbeau gives it a decent shot (I wonder whether she realized what kind of stinker she had somehow signed on for), but even an actress of her ability is consistently hamstrung by the script's wooden dialogue and intelligence-assaulting contrivances. Ziman is entertaining as the confrontational storekeeper, and for his part McKenna makes a very creepy Nazi doctor, but the rest of the acting is uniformly bad--though again, perhaps we can't blame the actors, given what they had to work with.

Unholy tries to set up a time-twisting mystery thriller, but the only mystery I was interested in solving was how they got Barbeau to agree to be in it in the first place. 0.75 thumbs. Avoid.

"Get my agent out here...RIGHT NOW!"

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DVD Reviews: DARKNESS (2009) and BRAINJACKED (2009)

Here are a couple of new releases from Breaking Glass Pictures, a distribution company I admit I'd never heard of before they contacted me, asking me to review some of their upcoming horror offerings. I've been in the horror blogging biz long enough to know that it's often dangerous to take screeners from strangers; every now and then you get something interesting and worthwhile, but more often you get something...well, somewhat less so. Still, I wouldn't have got where I am today without being willing to thrust my hand in the bucket and see if I can dig out a pearl, no matter how many times I come up with a fistful of chitterlings instead. So, knowing the risks, I accepted their generous offer.

In this case I'm very glad I did, because if the two movies they sent for initial consideration are any indication, I'm going to want to keep an eye on their future releases. And that means, of course, that you should too.

We start with Darkness (2009, dir. Juraj Herz), a moody, atmospheric ghost story from the Czech Republic. (It was originally titled T.M.A., which I guess means something to Czech readers?) Successful musician Marek (Ivan Franek) is taking some time off from his rock n' roll, clubbing lifestyle to return to his rural home village and focus on expressing himself through painting. Marek's parents were killed in a car crash more than 20 years earlier, when Marek was 7 years old, and he hasn't been back to the family estate since. Apparently no one has, as the place looks like the Haunted Mansion ride at Eastern Bloc EuroDisney, all cobwebs and thick layers of dust and icky rusty water gurgling from the pipes. Wanting to get his head together and separate himself from the rat race, Marek has purposefully left his cell phone charger in the city, which you just KNOW is going to turn out to be a wise decision on his part.

Marek: the Justin Beiber of the Czech Republic

Marek gets down to producing paintings--VERY prolifically, I must say, soon filling the decrepit house with eerie, expressionistic nudes--and soon begins to unearth repressed memories from his childhood, in which he and his now-institutionalized sister performed strange rituals in the basement of their house, which just so happened to have been a Nazi hopsital in WWII where experiments were conducted on Downs Syndrome children. As he reacquaints himself with childhood sweetheart, foxy redhead Lucie (Lenka Krobotová), he begins hearing and seeing strange things around the house--radios come on by themselves, always playing a children's choir singing the Czech version of "Frere Jacques," and ghostly figures come in and out of the darkness. He learns disturbing things from the town archivist about the house's history, and when his sister escapes the institution, it all comes to a head in a creepy climax.

I'm being purposefully vague on the details here, since Darkness is one of those movies that rewards curiosity and lack of foreknowledge. Herz directs the film with an assured talent, giving the audience enough to keep them interested without spoon-feeding like the inevitable American remake is sure to do. The cinematography is just gorgeous, with deep shadows and sparsely used filters evoking a very creepy tone. The acting is great too, particularly from the two leads, but also from Lucie's father and the town archivist who may or may not have a darker history of his own. The ghost story elements are handled expertly, and while the threads of the story and subplots down't always mesh exactly, the end result is still satisfying. It's also a very sexy movie, with a few well-shot sex scenes and lots of nudity (bonus points for not being of the anorexic, Hollywood Barbie variety--by necessity, no doubt, but still, Vicar likes), so really it left me wanting for nothing.

Lenka Krobotová, trapped relaxing in the Vicarage garden yesterday

In short, if you like creepy, well-made ghost stories that are beautiful to look at and feature Czech rock music and lots of Czech sex, then you should definitely "czech" Darkness out! (HAW!)

On the other side of the Mad Movie coin we have Brainjacked (2009, written and directed by Andrew Allan). The flick follows the adventures of Tristan (Chris Jackson), a young man from a supremely dysfunctional family (as in, we first meet him as he awakes to find his stepfather throwing a gangbang/drug party, with Tristan's mom as the main entertainment) who is also plagued by debilitating migraines. Running away from home, Tristan falls in with angelic pixie-girl Laney (Somali Rose), who gets him into the halfway home of philanthropic neurosurgeon Dr. Karas (Rod Grant) where she and a bevy of other runaways/former migraine sufferers have found a kind of communal paradise. The reason for the "former" qualifier is Dr. Karas's unique, 100% effective treatment for migraines: the ancient art of trepanation!

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Karas is a Mad Scientist of the first order, and has some dark ulterior motives behind his seemingly selfless procedures. After a few weeks of happiness at the commune (and a "falling-in-love-with-Laney" montage, naturally), Tristan discovers that Dr. Karas has done more than cure their headaches--he's implanted a mind control device in each perforated cranium, turning his devoted patients into mindless automatons he plans to use to infiltrate the highest echelons of society for the usual Mad Scientist reasons. After a fight with some of Karas's grotesque surgical "failures" knocks the control unit out of Tristan's skull, he liberates Laney and together they try to expose the bad doctor. But Karas's influence goes further than they think, as everyone they meet seems to have that same tell-tale forehead scar...

This movie has much more of a shot-on-video, indie-production feel than the glossy, high-budget-looking Darkness, but it overcomes that with good low-budget set design, some interesting lighting, and a mad science storyline wild enough to keep you interested. The performances range from amateur to pretty great. Johnson as Tristan is fairly bland and deadpan, though he pulls off the migraine pain believably. Christopher Sarlls, who plays rebellious former patient Zane, delivers all his lines as if instructing you on the pronunciation of his own last name, in a Wolverine/Batman tough-guy snarl that is so overblown it's hard not to make fun of (so don't try). Rose does better as Laney, and is a feast for the eyes in her white mini-dress, matching stockings, and intricately braided coiffure.

My stars! No garters!

But the best by far is Rod Grant as Dr. Karas, who plays the mad scientist with an eeevil glee that's contagious. Like all the best mad scientist portrayers, Grant really makes you feel his character's unflinching faith in his own mad schemes, and delivers the entertainingly outrageous pseudoscience with admirable conviction.

Example: "I'm going to drill a hole in his skull to alleviate pressure and recalibrate cranial blood volume....You see, sometimes our brains grow too large for our skulls...this drill removes more than bone marrow...it removes the barriers of the mind...and once you are free, nothing can stop you from your destiny!"

Sounds good to me! Also, kudos to writer/director Allan for going the extra mile and giving Karas a Lionel Atwill-worthy artificial hand, which he can snap off and switch with a cranial drill attachment to perform his life-changing trepanations! Something we don't see enough of, in my opinion. More kudos for using practical effects for the movie's numerous and subtantial gore scenes, some of which I admit had me cringing in my seat. In fact, I'd say Brainjacked is one of the better low-budget indie horror flicks I've seen in a while, thanks to an unusual, creative premise, a mostly well-thought-out and delivered narrative, and Mad Movie style to spare.

"Is it safe?"

Both Darkness and Brainjacked are scheduled to street in mid-September 2010. The screeners I received had no extras to speak of (not even chapter selection), but I'm guessing (hoping?) this was merely for the review copies and not the final retail versions. The picture looked great on both, though, and the films themselves are worth seeing, so keep an eye on Breaking Glass Pictures' online store if either piques your interest. 2.5 thumbs for both flicks, and the Vicarious stamp of approval.

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The Nightmare Never Ends (1980): or, Ridin' on the Night Train

Riding on the Night Train to Terror, Part I!

Early in the history of MMMMMovies, I reviewed a little-known anthology flick Night Train to Terror (1985). That movie, notorious among 80s video trash connoisseurs and Mill Creek Enthusiasts, is a gloriously inept hodge-podge of three full-length movies whittled down to 30-minute chunks and slapped in a frame story that has God and Satan taking a cross-country train ride to review problematic "cases" while a group of would-be new wave punks in the dining car sing one of the most insidiously catchy 80s pop tunes that's ever got stuck in my head. (Seriously.) I assumed at the time that the butchered features, while certainly not the work of master filmmakers, would have to be better films at their full running times, since the stitched-together leftovers were not so much a challenge to the viewer's ability to follow them as a direct assault on the very idea of coherent storytelling.

But now I've seen 1980's The Nightmare Never Ends (aka Cataclysm), the full version of the third boxcar on that infamous night train, and let me tell you parishioners, I was wrong. Or rather I was right, but not in the way I thought. No, not that way at all.

Allow me to elucidate.

"Reed" Richard Moll puzzles over how to expunge this film from his resume.

Simply put, The Nightmare Never Ends is a wonderfully entertaining movie for all the wrong reasons. The acting, editing, and screenplay (by Academy Award-winning writer Philip Yordan!) would easily rank near the bottom of anybody's "worst-of" list. To call the story disjointed is to drastically understate the explosive nature of its disjointedness. The direction can scarcely be commented on, since the credits list not one, not two, not five, but THREE different directors (Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, and Gregg C. Tallas), which probably has a little to do with the flick's piecemeal vibe. Add a dash of Nazisploitation, a whole lot of blasphemy, and a truly amazing performance by cinematic bottom-dwelling legend Cameron Mitchell, and what have you got?

A movie that had me grinning like a grade-A eedjit all the way through, and turning off the DVD with a song in my heart. That's what.

As we open, Nobel Prize-winning author James Hansen (Richard Moll, easily the most talented thespian in the film--yes, you read that right) and his surgeon wife Claire (Faith Clift) are on their way to Vegas, presumably to escape the nightmares Claire's been having--nightmares that seem to consist entirely of stock footage of underwater volcanic vents. (Hey, everyone's got a phobia.) Escape proves impossible when Claire is singled out by a stage-show clairvoyant who looks like Marty Feldman's younger brother and falls into a trance at the merest suggestion.

"It's pronounced EYE-GOR."

Apparently the undersea volcanoes in Claire's dreams were just a placeholder for what's really troubling her: NAZIS! Suddenly we're whisked back in time to 1944, where an evil but very pretty young Nazi Officer busts up an opulent Third Reich Rave by gunning down the all-girl string orchestra--which really, you know, is just rude. Back in the clairvoyant's dressing room after the show, he warns Claire that her visions point to something demonic; but Bull, I mean James hurries her out and before you can say "Gimme that Prime Time Religion!" Feldman the Younger drops dead, a strange "666" tattoo on his scalp. WTF?

Suddenly we're in the apartment of the aged and extremely disoriented Mr. Weiss (character actor and Hollywood Blacklist victim Marc Lawrence), who gets all palsied and excited when he catches a TV interview (broadcast live from the intermission of the New York Ballet--do they do that?) with prettyboy rich-kid Olivier (Robert Bristol, clearly Sean Cassidy's evil twin), who is the spitting image of the Nazi Officer who killed Weiss's parents at Auschwitz, and not coincidentally the big beautiful baddie from Claire's dream. As it turns out Weiss is not just a confused old man, but a NAZI HUNTER, and he's sure he's found his man, despite the fact that the quarry hasn't aged a day since 1944.

Doddering and incomprehensible, Weiss calls in his neighbor Lieutenant Stern (Mitchell), a loose-cannon cop with a bad attitude. ("I'm only the police in the 5th Precinct--the rest of the world, I don't give a damn!") Still, to calm the old man Stern takes him to the ballet theater before the final curtain, where they see Olivier exit and follow him back to his opulent mansion, The Round House. (Not, unfortunately, The Road House.) Despite many raucous protestations, Stern just can't convince Weiss that the boy in the house is the same Nazi Bastard from Weiss's own childhood. I mean, he can't, can he?

"Hotsy totsy, I'm a Nazi!"

Meanwhile, back in Plot A, we learn that James got his Nobel Prize for his research into THE DEATH OF GOD--seriously--and has just published his prize-winning manuscript for popular consumption. This involves book signings, interviews, and his very own TV special in which he plans to "shatter the myth" of religion. Surprisingly, no one seems too upset by all this, except for one woman at the local Waldenbooks, who calls him a fiend in a whisper before walking out. Everyone else seems to accept his Divine Obituary as the un-Gospel Truth. Everyone except Claire, that is, who we further learn is a devout Catholic.

So Weiss gets out his antique Luger and goes to kill him a Nazi, but is surprised in the house by a demon of some sort jumping out from behind a curtain--it happens kind of fast. Anyway, he's dead now, a new 666 tattoo to go with his concentration camp numbers, and guilt-wracked Mitchell swears to find out who did it and why. Olivier--who is actually THE DEVIL (<--Spoiler), wants to fund Hansen's further "research," since they're fighting on the same side. Meanwhile, Rasputin-like defrocked priest Papini (Maurice Grandmaison) is trying to convince Claire and that the devil wants her soul, and only she can stop him.

When I lay it all out like that, it sounds like a fairly straightforward story, doesn't it? Well friends, that's a testament to my consummate writing skills, because this movie is absolutely NUTS.

Yes, that's the edge of the sets. IN FRAME.

First of all, the acting. Faith Clift as Claire is called upon to carry at least one third of the movie; I don't know which of the three directors she was sleeping with, but I hope she was good in that arena, as she literally could not be more awful here. Delivering every line as if she were the stagefright-stricken relative of a used car salesman pressed into service for a public access commercial, Clift is an absolute vaccuum of talent. In fact, she's SO bad, she's absolutely hysterical to watch! It's like her performance sucks so hard it turns itself inside out and becomes a glee-inducing work of art. The truly terrible lines she's given to say only paradoxically help matters.

Also turning in a performance that's so horrendous it's awesome is Cameron Mitchell, no stranger to such a phenomenon. His line readings are so haphazard and pause-strewn, I'm nearly convinced that Mitchell improvised them all, with a gut full of cheap bourbon and only the most rudimentary idea of what the scene was supposed to accomplish.

Richard Moll gives the best performance in the movie, faint praise indeed. He really gets into his blasphemous TV special monologue especially, delivering arguments against the existence of God that sound like they came from a gaming messageboard OT thread as if they were the most profound, earth-shattering revelations ever. Added joy comes from the fact that Moll and everyone else in the cast seem to be purposefully drawing out every line, speaking in a slow-motion cadence that is as perplexing as it is entertaining. You'd think it would get old, but for me it never did.

Cameron Mitchell searches in vain for his dignity.

The three plots of the movie--Claire and James' story, Cameron's investigation, and Olivier/the Devil's machinations--must have each been directed by one of the trio of credited directors, but all are so inept it hardly makes a difference. The stories seldom overlap, and as a result characters are forgotten for huge chunks of run time only to be reintroduced via jump cut. My advice is don't worry about it--just go with the manic flow.

It would take me hours to catalog all the incidental crazee in the plot, so instead I've decided to present some of my favorites in bullet-list form:

• After Mr. Weiss's death, Marc Lawrence reappears as Cameron's partner, Dieter. His character does nothing but deliver one-liners and die.

• Characters periodically start screaming their lines for no discernable reason, only to deliver the next chunk of dialogue in a perfectly calm monotone. Not one character--ALL OF THEM.

• Olivier, who looks like he should be the lead in an Andy Warhol movie, seduces Claire's nephew's fiancee and takes off his shoes to reveal a CLOVEN HOOF. You just have to see it.

• Actual dialog between Cameron Mitchell and Olivier:
  Cam: "To you, I'm a cockroach."
  Olivier: "Worse. A PIECE. OF. CRAP."
  Cam: "Be careful Mr. Olivier--don't step on me, or you'll never get rid of the smell!"

• Out of nowhere, Olivier has a demon assistant. Named Ishtar. In a bikini:

Belial Got Back

• Claire visits a black occultist who out of nowhere goes on a racially explosive diatribe: ""I am a black man--a n*gger in your country...You are a rich woman, I'm sure you have many powerful friends...but they couldn't help you...you had to seek the help...of a N*GGER!" Where the fuck did that come from?

• Cameron, on having spent too long going through Mr. Weiss's papers: "I see swastikas swimming in my oatmeal!"

• Confronting the devil he never believed in, Richard Moll's character is suddenly attacked...BY A GROUP OF WILD WEST INDIANS!

• All this, and what has to be the most EPIC DISCO SCENE EVAR.

Disco for the Devil

There's so much more awfulness to be enjoyed, but it all leads up to a final confrontation between Claire and Olivier, where she performs what has to be the only OPEN HEART EXORCISM ever committed to film. Words fail--you just have to watch.

Or don't. I know full well this kind of thing is not for everyone, but for me, it was a brainfuckling trip through Wackyland, and that's a trip I'm always up for taking. Bad on almost every level, it was just what I needed to get me through a boring, uneventful evening. Much as I want to give it three thumbs, I'll split the difference between my experience and that of normal people and peg it at 2 thumbs. Not for every taste, but if it sounds like yours, it should leave you licking your lips.

A few more images from The Nightmare Never Ends:

The Devil Meets the Hardy Boys
Slaughtering the Bull
Surgical Kill-Face
"What a country!"

Hood Ornament

Devilectomy
"Oh, Vicar!"

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