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Cronos

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2011 by splatterpictures

There is a lot of horror out there, and I mean a lot. No scratch that. There is a lot of cinema out there. The sheer number of films that get made a year is staggering. Especially if you consider every film that gets released, not just the stuff that makes it to theatres. We just don’t have enough time in a day to watch everything.

A lot of my friends like to say that I seem like the type of person who’s seen or heard of everything; especially in regards to horror. Let me tell you that it couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a tonne of stuff out there that I haven’t seen. Every time I slip open a genre magazine, like Rue Morgue or VideoScope I am seeing advertisements or reviews of stuff I’ve never even heard of let alone watched.

One of the reasons I started this site was so that I would have an opportunity to see horror that I normally wouldn’t be able to. It’s equal parts research and dumb luck that leads me to a lot of the stuff I end up watching.

I recently was visiting a friend of mine; he’s always had an impressive and varied taste in movies. Really his collection has something for everyone. Mine is pretty genre specific and as time goes on it only gets more so. While looking for something to watch my finger passed over the Movie Cronos, it looked interesting, I checked the back. “Whoa this movie was directed by Guillermo Del Toro?” I kept reading “Whoa this movie has Ron Perlman in it” I read further “10th anniversary special edition?” How did this movie completely blow past me on all fronts? Apparently this film, by a director I love, and containing an actor I enjoy, was released or rather re-released without my knowledge. Now, let’s be clear about something.

Guillermo Del Toro is an excellent director, and I have yet to find a movie he did that I dislike but like most people, I had no idea who he was until things like Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. The latter being a particular favourite of mine. Also, since another Del Toro horror flick is set to be released this month, it seems oddly appropriate.

Cronos was released in 1993 and is a Spanish language film. It stars Frederico Luppi and Ron Perlman, funnily enough he speaks English through most of it.. It also has Tamara Shanath, to round out the immediate cast.

The film starts off explaining that hundreds of years ago an alchemist created the Cronos device, it would enable the user to live forever provided they keep using it. The Alchemist himself dies about four hundred years later, through a massive chest wound when his house collapsed in on him. After that the device goes missing and nobody is able to find it.

We then meet a kindly old antiques dealer named Jesús Gris (Luppi) and his granddaughter Aurora (Shanath). They discover inside of a statue the Cronos device and while trying to figure it out, Gris winds it up and accidentally sets it off, having no idea what it will do to him.

It’s never really explained how the device works, although it eventually is revealed that inside of it there is some kind of insect that apparently can survive just fine inside of it. The insect is fused with clockwork of the device and the solution it creates is what grants the user eternal life.

Nothing comes without a price and Gris soon realizes that he is changing, not only is he getting younger and more energetic he is also starting to crave blood.

Also, unknown to him is that there is another man who is looking for the device for his own use; Dieter de la Guardia played rather well by the late Claudio Brook. He is sick and dying and wants to use the device to cheat death. He sends his Nephew Angel de la Guardia (Perlman) all over the place looking for it. It’s obvious they hate eachother, and their interactions are some of the highlights of the movie.

The device seems to have an addictive quality to it and Gris can’t help himself but keep using it, despite the fears of his granddaughter Aurora. Throughout off of this she is basically what is grounding him to humanity; she seems to love him unconditionally and will do anything to help him, so long as he doesn’t leave her.

Because he seems to be becoming addicted to using it he also is unwilling to hand it over when De La Gaurdia finds out he has it, they have a series of interactions but eventually out of desperation Gris is murdered for the device. This prompts his resurrection and at this point he is so far gone from this kind old grandfather he was in the first half of the movie that it’s really remarkable.

His skin rots and falls off to reveal a pale undead look underneath; he has an aversion to sunlight and needs blood to…wait a minute. Don’t all of these things make him a vampire? Well yup, it does. Cronos is a well hidden vampire movie, to be sure but it’s pretty subtle and he doesn’t seem to have supernatural powers aside from not being able to die without destroying his heart.

The pacing of the film is kinda slow, and I could have done with a little bit more on the horror side, but if you liked Pan’s Labyrinth I really can’t imagine not liking this, because they are pretty similar in tone.

I have a lot more for you guys in the near future so stay tuned and thanks for reading!

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Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Posted in Horror Showcase, Ode to the Unsung Slasher, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2011 by splatterpictures

The weirdest thing in the world to me is breaking down a film. I mean don’t get me wrong, I do it all the time, but for the most part I take what I see for what I get. I never took any sort of film studies course I just kinda watch things and “notice stuff”.

When you watch enough of anything you find all kinds of trends, whether it’s in a television series, or a certain author’s work. It’s especially noticeable when you start looking at entire genres of film.

I think it’s safe to say that when it comes to horror, people have parodied it, mocked it, paid homage, and downright insulted it. A lot of times people feel they are being clever but dumb it down a lot(Like Wes Craven’s scream series) Other times it’s just a quick buck piggy banking on stuff that’s already popular (Scary movie series). I really never had much time for those types of films. I always thought that Scream was just lame. Although, with four movies behind it, maybe I’m the one with the problem.

This brings me to our latest and greatest Splatterpictures; Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. The flick dropped in 2006 and was directed by Scott Glosserman. It was written by him aswell and distributed through Anchor Bay (I swear they should put me on their pay role with how often I seem to be talking about them).

The movie is shot like a documentary in a world (I did the epic movie guy voice thing in my head) where the slashers of film are real. They set this up pretty well, referencing Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

The film crew is apparently following around a new slasher wanting to make a name for himself; Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel). How they got the idea to do this isn’t really clear and neither is what they think this will all lead to. They go through Leslie’s set up to his “big night” the start of his Legacy. He tells them his story of how he is supposedly the returned spirit of a boy killed by the townspeople. He takes them to his “house” where this will all go down and proceeds to walk them through his “plan”. Honestly what follows is probably the most dead on and hilarious break down of a horror movie I’ve ever seen. It pays homage to horror in a way that is really fun to watch. They talk about everything. The selection of their victims and why, sure Scream did that but think of Scream like cole’s notes compared to Behind the Mask.

A lot of things they mentioned had great moments of “oh yeah I noticed that” Like why they always let some couple have sex before killing them. Why they hide the bodies until the last moment. How about why the phones never work, or the lights go out? Or maybe why weapons always seem to break or killers never seem to stay dead? One moment in particular had me laughing is when Leslie is discussing how much cardio he has to do to give the illusion that he is walking, while everyone else is running away.

There is also a beauty to his plan, and it also shows a more subtle side of the killer that nobody really gets to see. There are moments where Leslie’s true nature peeks through in bursts of anger or when he goes on long obsessive rants about the legacy he is trying to create with his “survivor girl” and how everything he does is for her I really felt like I was sitting through a film class when they start getting into the phallic imagery of a killers weapon and what it means for said survivor girl to use it against the killer.

This movie is first and foremost a comedy and it’s a pretty damn good one. The nice thing is that while I always felt movies like scream were poking fun at horror for the general audience; Behind the Mask seems to have been made for true fans. In the same sort of way that the Comic Series Hack/Slash is for horror fans in that it doesn’t take you through all the obvious references. Sure they talk about the big killers that we are all familiar with but it also goes deeper making direct references or illusions to lesser known horror films or obscure uses of minor things from major films.

During the early parts of the movie, the film crew join Leslie as he visits an old friend and mentor who was a masked killer aswell (now retired). He talks about how “In the old days” it was all about getting in, killing everybody and getting out without anybody ever knowing. That is pretty much the entire plot of Black Christmas (arguably the first slasher film). There are a lot of subtle sight gags, like the “Stay awake” pills from Nightmare, or the Red Rabbit Inn from Halloween.

They also have some great Cameos by Kane Hodder as a guy living in the Elm Street House (he played Jason in Friday the 13th). Of course, the big Cameo is Robert Englund as Doctor Halloran who Leslie refers to as his “Ahab” basically a person who has made it his personal goal to track down and stop his evil. In other words a character type made famous in Halloween with Doctor Lumis.

By far the most amazing Cameo is by Zelda Rubenstein (she played the famous role of the medium in Poltergeist) she delivers her usual creepy speech to perfection.

You’d think that after people start dying the film crew would grow a conscious and try to Stop Leslie’s plan and want to save the teenagers and they do, but it becomes obvious that this was all accounted for. It has a great ending with all the clichés and overall I highly recommend checking this out.

My one complaint is kind of a big one though. I don’t know if it was the DVD that I had and another version exist but there was nothing in the way of gore. The deaths aren’t all that great, some are pretty good but they all cut away before anything is shown, or even worse they happen off camera with just audio. Now, why would they go to all the trouble of carefully crafting references, getting horror icons for cameos and making this movie if they weren’t going to put some gore in it? I have no idea. Like I said maybe it was just the version I had and there is a directors cut out there somewhere.

It’s made even worse by the fact that a lot of casual viewers probably wouldn’t be half as entertained as I was with all the references and jokes. So that leaves more serious fans with a great slasher movie but without a lot of good or memorable kills.

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Charles Band Spotlight (Part 3: Dolls)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 29, 2011 by splatterpictures

I’ve heard complaints about Charles Band and Fullmoon about how a lot of his stuff has a heavy emphasis on killer dolls, puppets, toys or whatever. Charles Band has admitted himself he’s always had a fascination with that concept.

My personal opinion is that if something is done well, I don’t mind seeing it again and again. I can tell you this much when it comes to dolls.

When I was a kid, staying at my grandparents house they had this doll. It was about a meter tall and it always just sat on this stool facing out from the television. During the day, when the lights were on, it was just a doll to me, not freaky at all but at night, it was the scariest fucking thing I’d ever seen. Its doll-face was cracked and held together by bandages. Its hands were these tiny shriveled brown messes that looked like a mummified corpse. I swear to god, that thing would look at me sometimes. Just look straight at me. I always thought one day for sure it was going to come to life and kill me.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well because our third and final spotlight on mister band is going to be his movie, titled simply; Dolls.

Dolls was released in 1987 and was produced by Charles Band and his Empire Pictures company. Band had nothing to do with the directing however. That was done by Stuart Gordon (a horror legend in his own right) It was a precursor to the Puppetmaster franchise and interestingly enough, it’s a hell of a lot better.

The film starts off with a family taking some non-specific vacation in England. It seems the father David (Ian Patrick Williams) has divorced his wife and remarried Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordan). A fun fact is that both these actors would be in another film together, albeit in smaller roles in “The Re-animator”.

David has a daughter Judy (Carrie Lorraine) Who has a big imagination and seems to piss off her father and step-mother to no end. The opening scene itself is equal parts hilarious and “what-the-fuck”. After their car gets stuck in the mud, they notice an eerie old mansion nearby. As if some kind of paint by numbers horror scenario they start to walk through the storm towards the house. For –no- reason whatsoever the step-mother turns to Judy and tells her to leave her teddy-bear in the car. When Judy tries to explain that the toy is her best friend, the mother just takes it out of the little girl’s hands and throws it in the bushes. What a bitch! The best part comes when for no reason the teddy is now a giant. It then attacks and kills Judy’s Father and step-mother. Judy says “Oh teddy what have you done now” And the bear, covered in blood just gives a shrug. I was dying of laughter. This whole sequence was just in Judy’s head however, it cuts back to reality and they enter the house where they are introduced to its owners.

An elderly couple live in the mansion are Gabriel and Hilary Hartwickle, (Guy Rolfe and Hilary Mason respectively) Rolfe would later be cast several times and Andre Tulon, in many of the Puppetmaster sequels. It seems Gabriel is a toy-maker who specializes in one of a kind dolls, their entire house is filled with them on every shelf. Most are the really creepy kind with the big cheeks and dead eyes.

Out of the absolute blue three more characters show up, two British punk rocker chicks (one of whom seems to be channeling early 80’s Madonna.) and a big guy named Ralph. As if totally expecting these new people to come, the Hartwickles invite everyone to stay the night. Of course it doesn’t take long for things to start to get creepy as guests start to vanish and nobody will believe young Judy that it’s the dolls.

This movie is part horror and part comedy. It’s not as goofy as Ghoulies but it also doesn’t take itself as seriously as Puppetmaster. The person who really steals the show is the guy who plays Ralph, (Stephen Lee) he’s a lovable nice-guy who never outgrew the heart of a child. He has a big of imagination, like Judy and while reluctant at first, he is quickly to believe Judy to help her investigate the Toys. Honestly his scenes where he interacts with Judy and the Dolls are the highlight of the film, he really seems to be channeling his Lou Costello in a lot of his lines. The whole time I was watching this I couldn’t ignore the fact that a lot of the comedy was similar to that of the old Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy/Dracula/ Frankenstein etc.. films.

The Dolls themselves are great. The combination of animatronics, stop motion and camera tricks really make those things effective. I think I have a natural leaning to be somewhat creeped out by dolls in the first-place but with all of the Charles Band productions I’ve watched, this was the first time where I was actually freaked out by the dolls. The death scenes are pretty brutal all things considered. A lot of the toys are just savage and attack in large packs.

Now, my biggest complaint about this movie is probably the ending. People who read my blog know that I hate to ruin endings or important plot points while talking about these movies. So, I really don’t want to say much other than, it was really hard to swallow. How the characters could simply buy the story that was fed to them by the elderly couple is just…well like I said it just made no sense.

That being said, I highly recommend this movie, in that if you are going to watch any of the three from my Charles Band Spotlight, watch Dolls. It’s the perfect mix of horror and comedy, plus it’s only an hour and seventeen minutes long, so you can’t really go wrong. It’s available on Netflix for those who have it.

Well that’s it for the Charles Band Spotlight. I hope you guys had fun reading about some of these productions. I said at the start of this that at splatterpictures, we love Charles Band, the reason why we do is because the guy has made his career out of horror.

So many other directors, actors and producers get their start out in the horror industry because they are fast, cheap, and profitable for the most part. People take risks on newcomers, when it isn’t a 100 million dollar franchise. So in that sense, a lot of people use horror as a stepping stone.

Charles Band, just makes horror, dumb, cheap and ridiculous horror. For that mister Band I thank you!

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Charles Band Spotlight (Part 2: Ghoulies)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2011 by splatterpictures

Welcome back to our look at Charles Band productions. Last time we checked out his most famous works, which was the Puppet Master franchise. Next up we have a film that I actually had no idea his name was even on. This time we’re hitting up Ghoulies.

When I’m talking about iconic box art, I think a lot of people can remember Ghoulies. In fact I remember this movie kind of came back for me when I was trying to remember the name of it. My friend and I were standing there trying with all out might to remember what the name of the movie with “the little monsters coming out of the toilet on the cover”

I definitely remember this movie from when I was a kid in the video store. I just wish that the box art wasn’t the best thing about this it. Before we go into the movie, let’s talk about that cover. So we have a Ghoulie coming out of a toilet? I always wondered what that was supposed to imply. The story goes that, they just sent the image to the studio as a joke, but it tested so well that they actually filmed a scene in the movie with it after the fact. Oddly though, in the picture that Ghoulie is wearing a t-shirt and suspenders. He’s actually naked in the movie so…yeah weird.

Ghoulies was released by MGM on good old fashioned analog in 1985. It was supposed to be directed by Charles Band himself but that “honour” went to Luca Bercovici.Band kept the producing credit by way of Empire Pictures, which he was a part of before Full Moon. It achieved moderate success on the home video front. It’s a horror-comedy and for a movie that came out before Puppet Master, it really showcased Bands “leanings” I guess you could say. He always seems to have, the idea of a big mansion with a bunch of hapless people in it. Add a bunch of little guys that are adorable while being deadly and you have the basic premise.

I really wish I could give you a real idea about what goes on in this movie, but it’s so absolutely all over the place it’s kinda hard. The entire movie jumps from scene to scene and situation to situation. Even with all of the strange decisions about editing, it’s not a complex plot by any means.

Basically Jonathan and his girlfriend Rebecca move into a big old mansion that belonged to Jonathan’s parents. The idea is that they’ll fix up the house while going to college. It doesn’t take long until Jonathan discovers old books about black magic and satanic rituals. He becomes compelled to perform these rituals by some unknown dark force.

They throw a party and for some reason decide that a good time killer would be holding a summoning of some kind. Like that would honestly be suggested at a party with a bunch of college kids. “Hey guys, who wants to summon demons?” They didn’t strike me as the D&D crowd. They do the ritual but nothing happens right away; of course though they managed to summon one of the Ghoulies that looks like a rat on steroids.

Jonathan starts to act stranger and stranger, the scene where Rebecca finds out he has been moonlighting as a Satanist is hilarious. Picture this guy in the basement in a fancy robe with a fucking trident that looks like it was made by a high school theatre class. He’s there just screaming his lungs out and boom, his girlfriend walks in with a well placed “What are you doing?” He just stands there looking totally shocked like she just caught him jerking off to some messed up porn. Worse! She caught you roleplaying!

The acting in this movie is cheesy as all hell. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen but it’s pretty bad. Dialogue is so stiff and completely random. Attempts at humour are pretty awkward. It’s even worse when they are trying to be dramatic. One scene, Rebecca is trying to run away from Jonathan who is pretty far gone at this point, she falls down the stairs and while she is falling she screams “Why Jonathan why!?” Needless to say the parts that are supposed to be serious will get the best laughs.

I know what you’re thinking, this post is half over and you haven’t said anything about the “Ghoulies” yet. You know what this movie is actually about? Well welcome to my world. The Ghoulies don’t actually show up to do anything until about halfway.

The Ghoulies seem to be summoned to do the bidding of whoever is calling them. In that way they’re loyal to Jonathan. They look ridiculous, even by 80’s creature standards. They’re clearly just fancy hand puppets, sprayed with water to make them look slimy or something. Some scenes are decent with them, but most of the time all I kept thinking of was how they are like Jim Henson’s nightmare.

Oh I forgot, the Ghoulies aren’t the only things that get summoned, there is also two midget servants named Gizzel and Greedigut. They seem to be just more powerful servants, who have knowledge of magic.

The mysterious dark force drives Jonathan to perform one big ritual, and it all becomes clear who was really pulling his strings and who truly commands the Ghoulies.

The “deaths” if you could call them that, all come at the very end and in quick succession of eachother. I put deaths in quotations because…fuck it I’m spoiling something. For some reason, they all are alive again at the end of the movie. They get chewed up and attacked by the Ghoulies and other things. Then they all writher and snake their way to the basement like zombies; then at the very end they all run out of the house together, no injuries whatsoever. I seriously don’t get it.

When I was young this movie was great, but I think that it really is an example about how some things just don’t age well as you get older. The special effects are bad, the creatures are pretty bad and whatever plot there is, isn’t exactly inspired. Even by horror movie standards. That being said, Ghoulies spawned a bunch of sequels and pretty good cult following. I should point out that this movie is fucking Shakespeare compares to Ghoulies III: Ghoulies go to College.

Stay tuned, we’re gonna take a look at one More Charles Band Production before we close the toy box on this one.

Thanks for Reading!

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