Tag Archives: horror

Caveat (2020)

I saw one of those too clever mystery movies that is amazing if you let it wash you along, but as soon as you start to think about it, everything kind of falls apart. So there’s this scruffy, apparently partially amnesiac drifter who gets hired by his former landlord to watch the landlord’s niece for a few days out in the backwoods. See, the niece is mentally imbalanced, and the uncle is just, ugh, I can’t cope, but I’ll pay you to cope! There’s just this one little Caveat…

Okay, maybe two. The house is on an island, only reachable by boat, and the uncle intends to leave with the boat for the aforementioned few days, but mainly it’s that the drifter has to be locked into a harness with a long chain to allow him to wander some of but not all of the house, as the niece doesn’t want him to be able to get into her room, for example.

It’s a pretty interesting premise, on the face of it. What happened here? Why is the uncle being so weird? But if you think for too long, you’ll start asking other questions, like, why would anyone ever agree to this job? Why is there a lockable harness chained into the basement cement that can reach most of the house but not all of it? If the niece is unstable, why let her have a crossbow? Why is the spoiler in the basement untouched by the passage of time? And so on.

It’s not that it’s a bad movie, it’s just that maybe don’t trust it to have good answers to any of these questions, and enjoy the atmosphere instead. Because there’s definitely atmosphere out the wazoo. Not the least of which is the gratuitous screaming foxes.

À Meia Noite Levarei Sua Alma

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It started, like it does a lot more than is probably apparent from the individual offerings here at Shards of Delirium[1], with Joe Bob. The first episode of The Last Drive-In this month was a sequel movie about Coffin Joe, a Brazilian villain (or anti-hero, back before that was a thing people said) I had never previously heard of. The two-pronged catch was, a) I have of course never seen the first movie, and b) I could not stay awake past the first 20 minutes of the sequel because of having had three vaccines earlier in the day.

Obviously, I decided to watch the first movie first, which I now have. My conclusion is that the choice to not air At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul was the correct one. Joe is a mortician, and he’s a pretentious self-absorbed dick, but in a way that is initially hilarious. He strikes dramatic poses from on high, he mocks the superstitions of the plebes (including faith), he beats his wife at only period-appropriate levels, that kind of thing. …okay, the last one wasn’t hilarious, but ultimately this is my point. Coffin Joe of this first movie is, as soon as his plan kicks off, supremely unlikeable.

That plan is to have a son. The downside is, his wife is barren. So he gets rid of her, picks a new girl, gets rid of anyone standing in the way of acquiring her, and so on until he gets caught up in some kind of consequence, and I ultimately did not understand why people like him or would watch sequels. Then I did watch the sequel, wherein he’s an anti-hero with likeable qualities instead of just a wife-beating dick, and even though he’s still clearly a villain, he’s a lot more fun, and so ultimately, I would say it’s fine to give This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse a try, even if it has one of the worst endings of any movie I’ve ever seen. (But that was not Joe’s fault[2], and is undone in the third movie [which I have not seen], so yay.)

The sequence in which Joe is walking alone at night on All Hallow’s Eve[3] and runs into or maybe hallucinates the annual procession of the Dead is pretty great, though.

[1] And like is probably eminently apparent from the site in aggregate
[2] Joe the director, not Joe the character, although it turns out they are portrayed by the same human person.
[3] or maybe it was the Day of the Dead, but since it was at night and what I’m about to say happened, I assume it was the night before

La polizia brancola nel buio

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Gialli!

The Police Are Blundering in the Dark was the absolutely perfect title of one of the movies in a box set categorized for forgotten giallos, which you may note was not indicated to be forgotten gems or anything, just, forgotten. But that’s okay, when you’re in the right company and already like the genre and especially, my lord, that title.

A bunch of fashion models have been disappearing over the last few months, including one nice lady who clearly should have worn a bra if she was going to be running away that much, and a second nice lady who had abysmal taste in boyfriends. But now that she’s dead, the boyfriend has decided he cares enough about her to at least find out what happened, even if he couldn’t be bothered to show up the night before and help fix her car, since he was cheating on her at the time.

He quickly finds himself at the center of an inexplicable and poorly explained family drama involving a local erotic photographer, his unhappy wife, their niece, and the local doctor who likes to hang around and prescribe drugs for the wheelchair-bound photographer, who to be fair is in poor health. Also, the photographer can take pictures of thoughts. For some reason.

Who among them is the killer, though? Or could it be the newly hired stone-faced butler and nymphomaniac maid who are objectively pulling some kind of con? Or the mentally simple son of the innkeeper and his estranged wife? Or for that matter someone I’ve forgotten? But I don’t think I have. Like the police, you’ll blunder in the dark wondering what is going on, why so many plot points have been dropped, and how the mystery got solved other than timing and dumb luck.

The thing is, this makes it sound like I didn’t like the movie, when, oh no, it was hilarious and inexplicable in exactly the ways bad exploitation movies should be. Great with friends and drinks, and probably still pretty great just by yourself.

Skull: The Mask

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With a sample size of two[1], I can say reliably that modern South American audiences and filmmakers are mostly afraid of demons, with an undercurrent of being afraid of corrupt police. Skull: The Mask is about waking up some demon dude who wants to either help the intestines of the earth move (because that would be bad) or stop them from moving (because when they’re moving that’s a good thing), I am really unclear as to which.

After a throwaway gorefest scene with Nazis, we fast forward to modern times, where the top stories are Bolivian children gone missing[2] and a murder spree that started at the home of an archaeological professor and her way too young girlfriend, both of which cases are being investigated by the same lady cop who was recently cleared of murder charges in some as far as I know unrelated case, but man is the press well-informed on these matters, giving out specific details of the murders and showing graphic footage, and I really do have to wonder if it’s done that way down there, or if local audiences would be rolling their eyes a bit.

But so anyway, there’s this mask which is kind of a six horned skull that wraps around your face and now you’re possessed with the demon, and if you guessed that this has some tie-in with the Nazi shit and the archaeologist and the earth’s intestines, then I’d say you’ve been paying attention. There’s plenty of gore, plenty of weird dream sequence stop motion animation, and a respectable number of breasts, all gratuitous as though the dream of the ’80s is alive in São Paulo.

My intent here was not to give everything away, but I’m torn right now between feeling like I should say more, feeling like I’ve already said too much, and feeling like honestly I’m not sure I’d know how to spoil the plot fully even if that were my intent. In any event, this was an experience and a half, and I’d say check it out.

[1] The other is an unreviewed Joe Bob showing of a movie whose title I’m blanking on, I think Argentinian, and with some serious darkness to it. Like whoa. If I remember the name of it. I’ll mention it.[3]
[2] Maybe something to add to the things South Americans are afraid of?
[3] When Evil Lurks, about which I should add that another fear, if perhaps not of the public but for sure of the writer, is custody battles / divorce.

Psycho Goreman

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You learn basically everything you need to know about Psycho Goreman[1] in the opening text crawl, when we learn that he comes from the planet Gigax. These are people who are definitely in a joking mood, and want you to be in on it. …for certain values of “you”.

There are these two siblings, and the younger sister is abusive to the nebbish older brother. (10 and 7, maybe?) For example, in their regular game of crazy ball[2], if he wins he gets something pretty regular, I forget what because it was reasonable, while if she wins, he has to dig a hole and then bury himself in it. And of course he never wins.

Anyway, in the course of digging the hole, they uncover the hidden burial site of an immortal dark power bent on galactic domination, and wacky hijinx ensue. It’s astonishing how close this comes to being a family-friendly movie[3]. You would have to change almost none of the plot, but man would you have to change a lot of the special effects.

My point is, you shouldn’t watch it with your kids. Even if it does have a little bit of a lesson right at the end. You should watch it if you like gross-out horror comedy or were ever kind of a dweeb, and if you’re not allergic to children in movies.

[1] PG for short, but since the movie is unrated, I guess they did not compromise on their artistic vision.
[2] Dodgeball but with a Calvinball-influenced ruleset
[3] There’s even a musical interlude in the middle, almost more of a music video, entitled Frig You. Which is a perfect encapsulation of how it’s almost family-friendly.

Godmonster of Indian Flats

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There were actually several episodes in a row of my horror podcast that covered movies I had already seen, which was a nice change of pace. But then they got (via the scare being “animal” and the theme being “Western”) to a movie nobody has ever seen before, Godmonster of Indian Flats. This is one of those movies that has two plots that have nothing to do with each other, and the payoff is in seeing how everything comes together in a thunderous crescendo.[1]

In the first story, some kid is awkwardly introduced to a town near Reno called “The Comstock”, a goldmine boom and then bust and then historically recreated town that might even be real for all I know, so he can get beat up and then rescued by a scientist and then exposed to some weird mutant sheep embryo, so we can follow the sci-fi horror portion of the movie. The second, and far weightier by volume, story is about a conspicuously black dude who represents a mining magnate who wants to buy up parts of the town and reopen the mines, in direct opposition to the “this place is a historical recreation now” ethos the mayor(?) is espousing.

The first story proceeds with lots of science talk mostly and very little plot or character advancement of any kind. The second story is an increasingly (but subtly) racist game of cat and mouse between the buyer and the town, where nothing is as it seems if you’re the buyer character, but also everything is exactly as it seems if you’re the person watching the movie. (Which, by the way, you should not be. Big mistake.)

The climax of the second story kicks off the actual start of the first story, but then it quickly fizzles out after a big lassoing demonstration, and now we’re at the thunderous crescendo where everything comes together, and it… well, it’s not fair to say it fizzles out again, because nothing this inexplicable is a fizzle. Basically, the big reveal about what’s really been going on in the first story happens, and then people react to it in ways that first make sense, and then make no sense at all, and then I cannot even figure out what is supposed to be happening, and the whole time the movie’s villain is laughing maniacally and monologuing about how inevitable his (ie, capitalism’s) victory is and always was, and then there’s an explosion, and then the movie ends, bad guys firmly victorious and good guys in total disarray.

I just don’t even know.

Also, if it seems like I basically forgot to talk about the mutant sheep monster that was the whole reason I saw this? If it seems like that to you, reading, imagine how it seemed to me, watching, when the movie also basically forgot this seemingly integral plot element.

[1] I’m actually stealing from my future self here, as it will [I anticipate, at least] be a better metaphor for the thing I’m reading right now.

A Quiet Place: Day One

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I have long claimed that in virtually all zombie movies[1], the zombie part should be considered a setting, Space movies, Westerns, zombie movies, etc. The zombies are where the movie happens and the circumstances the characters are baselined against, but the movie isn’t about the zombies. It’s about whatever the characters are going through plus whatever metaphor the writers / directors want to shoehorn into those plot events and that setting.

The new A Quiet Place movie from last year seems willing to let those weird quadruped aliens that can hear really well and not see so great, so as long as you’re silent you’re safe from them? I was saying, it seems willing to let their alien invasion become a new such setting. We’ve moved away from the “end of the world through the eyes of this one family” viewpoint of the first two movies, in favor of, superficially, a more global approach. Want to see how hard it is (or, perversely, how easy it is) to be quiet in Manhattan? Let’s show invasion day from right there, and give you an idea of just how much noise 8 million people can make, even and perhaps especially when they’re not supposed to.

But the real movie isn’t about this at all. It’s actually about dying. …okay, yes, tons and tons of people die in this movie. But I mean, it’s about being in hospice, and knowing you’re going to die, soon, and wanting to do that one more thing you have on your bucket list while trying to decide if you’re willing and able to let go, not that you have much choice, and anyway, what about your cat? Who’s going to take care of your cat? This is so much bullshit.

The real movie, I was saying, is about that. The “you’d better be quiet” quadruped aliens are simply the backdrop against which this quotidian internal drama is taking place. As always, the sound design for these movies is superb, and even if there are things that happened that I am categorically unwilling to believe if I stop and let myself wonder about them, the movie works so well on an emotional level[2] that I’m willing to handwave those things and let them lie.

[1] Okay, probably not Return of the Living Dead
[2] Helped along, to be sure, by the acting talent of Lupita Nyong’o and also by the extremely intimate size of the cast

Communion (1976)

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Horror movies in the ’70s sure had a lot of names. IMDb says the original title was Communion, the title card called it Holy Terror[1], but the search terms and the podcast called it Alice, Sweet Alice. Which is not without its charms, to be sure, although the girl being like 12 or something makes it iffier.

So, there’s this girl Alice, and she’s not not a psychopath. Withdrawn because she’s unhappy with her parents’ divorce is a way to look at it, but most withdrawn kids don’t dress in feature-concealing transparent plastic masks and terrorize basically everyone around them, but especially their kid sisters portrayed by babby Brooke Shieldses. It doesn’t help matters that, rightly or wrongly, Alice perceives that everyone likes her sister in equal measure to how much they apparently dislike her.

Naturally, therefore, babby Brooke Shields winds up dead. And suddenly the movie becomes a giallo, in which the cops and Alice’s absentee father try to solve the mystery of who killed Alice’s sister, and why it was Alice. It was interesting, because I’ve never seen a US ripoff giallo, at least not since I knew enough to recognize one. Also, it was pretty good, and frequently pretty disturbing!

[1] My personal favorite

Violation (2020)

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It is difficult to talk about, and in fact difficult to want to talk about, Violation. This is not only, and perhaps not primarily, due to the subject matter. It is not only because I don’t want to accidentally reveal virtually any spoilers, although that may be the primary reason. It’s not only because I’m still not entirely certain what happened, although I’m not.

See, the movie is presented completely out of order of events. There are two sisters, one in the final death throes of her marriage, one moved to off the grid and learning how to be a survivalist. Over the course of events, which were legitimately difficult for me to piece together not because they were out of order so much as because they were fragmented so badly that it was difficult to tell where any given moment might fit even in retrospect, and not only that, whether any given moment had actually happened; over the course of those events, I was saying, a violation of trust occurs, with the result being the slowest burning, most intimately shot revenge story I’ve ever seen. I mean intimate in almost every sense of that word, but I will focus on the facts of how small the cast is and of how nearly every scene is shot in close frame, suffocatingly close. It’s almost impossible to separate the act of viewing the events from the events themselves. I’m used to a comfortable distance, as an audience member, and it was absolutely impossible to achieve that distance.

I am impressed by this movie, and I should probably watch it again, only I find that I don’t want to. It’s just too raw.

The Howling (1981)

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I’m supposed to remember what the randomizers are that lead into the movie my podcast bids me watch, but I really very don’t. Werewolves and something else. ’80s? Could be that, for sure, but it sounds wrong. Either way, I had somehow never seen The Howling, and so here we are.

I imagine, had I known it was a Joe Dante film, I might have put in more effort.

So there’s a serial killer[1] stalking the streets of Manhattan, and that isn’t the only reason by a long shot that I felt this movie had strong giallo elements, despite being a creature feature. Dee Wallace who you may remember as the mother from Poltergeist a year later[2] is a TV reporter engaged in an implausible sting operation where since he’s been calling her and breathing heavily, they have a connection and she agrees to meet him in an adult arcade[3] on Times Square (probably), where he is promptly shot by police. Well, not I suppose promptly enough, since she is emotionally scarred by the whole ordeal first.

Therefore, she (and her husband) are sent off by Patrick Macnee[4] to one of those peaceful outdoor psychiatric retreats, where she can be regressed through hypnotherapy to remember what happened and ease her burdens, except instead of that her husband is being constantly seduced by a hot brunette while she is being tormented by one or more creepy dudes and meanwhile for no obvious reason her friends back in town are researching werewolves, and before you know it, the moon is out of the bag, if you catch my drift.

The effects were pretty decent, one or two literally animated transformations aside. We really lost something, when CGI came to horror. It’s great for action and sci-fi and whatever genre superhero movies are, but for horror and probably fantasy? Practical effects are just where it’s at.

To be clear, this was not a good movie, and I’m not recommending it or anything. But at the same time: monster movies are cool, you know?

[1] played by the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, but I could never see him well enough / in sufficient lack of makeup to recognize, and definitely didn’t by voice
[2] or from not confusing her with Dee Snider because nobody besides me does that
[3] I went to an adult arcade in downtown San Jose in the late ’90s, and it was one of the greatest disappointments of my life to learn that they just meant you could watch movies there, when I was expecting to play porn-themed video games to a bitchin’ ’80s soundtrack.
[4] Best known (to me at least) as Count Iblis in the original Battlestar Galactica show, which meant I immediately distrusted him.