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Charles Band Spotlight (Part 1: Puppet Master)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2011 by splatterpictures

One of the weirdest concepts I’ve always tried to wrestle with in horror is just how some things can kill other things. It seems to boggle my mind every time I hear about another strange horror movie where the killer is something totally fucking random. Take the recent movie “Rubber” for example.

When I was a kid I was definitely more forgiving on bizarre concepts, giant brains attacking people; or a videogame gone crazy. I’ve said before that there was just something about movies that came out of the 1980’s. It seems equal parts indifference and marketing genius. I get a lot of joy out of showing some of these movies to people. I know full well they are going to roll their eyes and say “you’ve got to be kidding me” Sometimes I wish I was. Sure as someone who bares a striking resemblance to an adult I would love to be part of the camp that just scoffs at these sorts of movies and moves on, but we all know that isn’t the case.

There are a lot of different kinds of horror; one of those is the just plain old “What the fuck” The kind of horror that really isn’t scary and it’s hard to imagine it was ever intended to be. I usually just assume that it all started with good intentions but the money just wasn’t there, maybe they ran out of time, or the actors they got just were terrible. They end up with a finished product that becomes art in how terrible it is.

Thankfully we had Charles Band and Full Moon productions. Charles Band is a director, writer and producer of Full Moon productions; he had some success in the 80’s with many horror movies, which are just off the wall. Honestly when I was young looking at all the crazy horror movies in a video story, I had no idea the ones that kept standing out to me involved Charles Band in some way. Here at splatterpictures, we love horror, we love all kinds of horror and we love Charles Band. It’s time to shed a little light on three of his films, first up! Puppet Master.

Puppet Master hit the shelves in 1989, and was the first film that launched Full Moon Productions. I say “hit shelves” because it never made it to the theatre. Puppet Master is a prime example about a lot of the things that Charles Band likes about horror like the Killer Doll concept. He already had some success with the movie “Dolls” and I guess he wanted to keep moving forward with that idea.

So, the big question is. What is the movie even about? Well basically there is this old man “The Puppet Master” named Andrea Tulon (William Hickey), he fled Europe during world war two with his creations but was followed by German spies to learn his secret technique of bringing his puppets to life so they could use them as some kind of weapon in the war.

How does he bring the puppets to life? It’s not totally explained, but it’s some kind of Egyptian magic.

Tulon hides the puppet in this room at the Bodega Bay Inn that he’s staying at and kills himself. Cut to the “present day” in this case the present day is 1989 and a bunch of people arrive to attend the funeral of a college of theirs named Neil Gallagher. Now the Inn has been abandoned for years and the puppets have remained there seemingly undetected. It doesn’t take long for shit to go down and we realize that it was no accident that they all came to the very Inn where the puppets have been in hiding.

Now I have to mention some of the weirdest concepts that this movie tries to get across. For starters all of the guests that arrive have psychic powers of some kind. Each one of them can use their powers at different times. One woman actually needs to be aroused for hers to work. I’m not kidding, you basically have to have sex with her or grab her boob for her visions to come through. It leads to a death that still makes me squeamish after her lover is tied to a bed.

All of the characters are pretty bland, but the real draw is of course the puppets. Each one of these guys has their own abilities and part to play in the movie. You have Blade who is totally badass, He has a knife and a hook for a hand, Jester; whose head spins around but he doesn’t actually have a weapon. Pinhead; he seems to have some kind of super strength. Tunnler; His head is a friggin drill and lastly and most disgustingly we have Leech Woman who spits out giant fucking leeches. Seriously where do the leeches come from? How are they still alive? Does she have to go to the store to get more leeches after she runs out?

The funniest thing about this movie is how the humans are all taken out by some of these guys. The puppets are all about two feet tall at best. Somehow everybody gets knocked down to the floor and once you’re on the ground the puppets can pretty much end you. They can’t ever seem to get away, or even stand up after the puppets nail em. Watching the movie is ridiculous only because you wonder why nobody just frigging stomps these things into pieces.

I will say that for such a weird concept, the film does try to take a serious tone and it works to a point. The deaths are good with a decent amount of gore to them. The final death is particularly gruesome where the puppets all gang up on one guy. Also, if murdering dolls aren’t enough it has a good amount of nudity too.

Last thing I’ll mention is the musical score; it has a killer theme that I absolutely loved. It sets the creepy tone of the horror movie while also playing with the childish concept of a puppet in the first place.

Puppet Master gained a massive cult following and spawned eight sequels and even a crossover with another franchise. In my opinion they got progressively worse. The most recent ones are not really what I would consider horror anymore (I don’t even think they would qualify as R rated).

I highly recommend anyone interested to check out this movie but you might want to leave your brain at the door.

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Whispering Corridors

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , on June 14, 2011 by splatterpictures

When it comes to Asian horror I try not to differentiate much between what we view here in the west and what is viewed in Korea or Japan. So treating it as a sub-genre within horror isn’t really my style.

I would love to boast about how I liked this sort of stuff before it was cool and that you are all sheep herded into liking it by such box office giants as The Ring or The Grudge, but I truthfully never gave much thought to Asian horror.

I noticed (as I tend to) that there was this steady stream of supernatural horrors coming out to the theaters. Furthermore, I noticed that most of these are remakes of horror movies from Asia, so I became interested in what the originals were like. I was pretty lucky growing up because my parents always had a collection of stations dedicated to playing movies of various ages. They also had a lot of foreign stuff coming out of Japan which enabled me to watch Ringu and then Ju-oh, the source material for The Ring and The Grudge respectively.

I liked them but they were different. I noticed they were slower in pace and a little bit more abstract. I felt like maybe I was taking Western horror for granted. In my opinion we like to have things spelled out for us more than some foreign films.

It wasn’t long afterwards that a film called Whispering Corridors became known to me. It was really a casual conversation among friends and someone mentioned that this Asian horror boom could be traced back to this one film. Needless to say I was pretty interested in watching it but alas my good intentions fell to the wayside. Thankfully things like Netflix exist to force me to toss away all my excuses about films that are less convenient for me to find.

Whispering Corridors was released in 1998, and directed by Ki-hyeong Park, Park also took part in writing the film along with Jung-Ok In. The film focuses on an all-girl’s school in South Korea where the students are taught to consider each other as rivals. The teachers run the gambit as normal to extremely harsh. The film opens up with one of these teachers murdered by some unknown force. A senior student named Ji-oh (Gyu-ri Kim) discovers the body of the teacher handing from an overpass. She and several other students who witness this are swore to secrecy by their teachers because they don’t want anyone like the press snooping around at the school.

Ji-oh is a somewhat bizarre girl who many of the students believe has supernatural powers. She attempts to communicate to the dead and even goes so far as to paint the image of the murdered teacher in her art class. Most of the teachers dismiss her as hopeless.

One of the teachers is a former student named Miss Hur (Mi-yeon Lee) she still feels a bit out of place and somewhat like a student still. She has a closer relationship to a lot of the students and tries to help them while trying to figure out what is going on It’s also revealed that the murdered teacher (now being claimed as a suicide) contacted her moments before her death claiming that Jin-ju is alive. Jin-Ju being miss Hur’s high-school friend who committed suicide.

The rest of the film has various girls who go through their daily school lives where they’re grades and future social standings are pitted against each other. As the film progresses more mysterious are unveiled and more tragic realities of a lot of the girls pasts come to light. Of course there is more death.

Where I think most people can agree why this movie never made it to the mainstream western audiences like The Grudge or The Ring is its slow pace. And it is very slow.

I didn’t find myself bothered by the pacing but I could easily see the standard western movie crowd having a different idea of what a horror movie should be. What I felt was refreshing was the genuinely well acted scenes and the interesting characters. There is a low body count but I found myself legitimately worried if certain characters were going to die or not. The ending is excellent although a bit confusing until you have a minute to think about it. I felt like the film did take things for granted in terms of how the teachers and students conducted themselves. I chalked it up to me simply not being South Korean and this film probably was never intended for a westerner to watch it.

I’m frankly glad this one was never remade like a lot of the other horror films coming out of Asia and no I’m not saying that I dislike remakes of J-horror or things of that ilk. I’m just saying that in this case I feel like a remake would most certainly try to drive the pace, or ramp up the body count.

The film is fine on its own and serves as a reminder about the artificial barriers we put between each other. Whether or not you can still be friends with someone who has lower grades, or what being friends with someone of a lower social standing could do to your own reputation. The film attempts to drive home the argument that it these sorts of things can take something that everyone wants to cherish – like the memories of friends and happy times in high-school, and turn them into a horror we all wish we could forget.

I highly recommend anyone interested in the supernatural to check this one out. It’s a different kind of horror that has all the elements but serves better as a mystery than something really intended to scare or shock. That being said, it definitely has set a standard over the past ten years about how we tell these stories.

See you next time!

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History of the Zombie Genre (Part 6: The Video Dead)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 23, 2011 by splatterpictures

Holy shit, if there is one thing I love, it’s doing these horror showcases. If there is one thing I hate, it’s getting a horrible virus because of them. It seems that while searching for images for the latest (and final) entry into the History of the Zombie Genre, I came across the fucking apocalypse of viruses and my old computer is down for the count. Fear not loyal readers, I have returned with the help some friends and am ready to re-write our final stop of this magical journey!

I’d like to take a minute and talk about the 80’s. What a weird and wonderful time. Business was booming and, as such, a lot more risks were being taken. Not to mention the fact that studios like New Line Cinema and things of that ilk basically built their companies off the backs of horror movies. The 80’s in horror saw the slasher boom and everybody was trying to create a mascot akin to Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees. Some where pretty good… most were pretty bad. A very rare few are so bad it becomes good.

Horror movies of this era saw a lot of distribution through minor labels of much larger film studios that existed to provide low risk, low cost, and decent reward to the studios. Universal, MGM and the suddenly-relevant New Line Cinema were all pretty big on this practice and released all kinds of stuff direct to VHS. Yeah, that’s right, VHS! Some rare studios managed to remain independent for the most part, but a lot of them were swallowed up in the 80’s by big business. On the other hand, there are select studios that flourished because of this new fangled direct to video market.

The 80’s saw a lot of great stuff for the Zombie Genre too. My original plan was to review the 1980’s classic Return of the Living Dead seeing as there are few films that encompass the decade in the genre so perfectly. It has everything; the music, the comedy, the origin of the Zombie battle cry “Braaaains”. It really is great example. That being said, I feel like we can do better. I think that it’s time to dig deep, and I mean –really- deep and talk about something that isn’t so “classic”. I’m talking about a film that, to this date, has never been released officially on DVD. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about The Video Dead.

The Video Dead was released in 1987 and distributed through Embassy Home Entertainment, which was the direct to video portion of Embassy Pictures. Don’t worry if you never heard of it. Basically, it was an independent studio that was eaten alive by larger studios in the late 80’s. If memory serves me (and even if it doesn’t we live in the information age), it was taken over by MGM, or New Line Entertainment. Embassy Pictures had a decent run, but eventually went the way of a lot of studios from the old days of movie making.

It was written, directed, and produced by Robert Scott. You know this sort of hat trick happens a lot in films, especially from new directors. When a director really goes all in, they have nothing really to fall back on when things go bad. Without a doubt, and despite –anything- Robert Scott could ever say, the Video Dead was his baby. I’m sure once that baby came out of the delivery room, Scott was tugging at his shirt collar wondering just what the fuck happened.

So what’s it about? Well let’s see here. Basically, the film starts out with this writer who mysteriously gets delivered a television. He’s cranky and wants to be left alone, but he reluctantly takes the TV and goes back to his writing. Things get weird when the TV magically turns on by itself and it only seems to play one thing: A zombie movie called “Zombie Blood Nightmare”. Unknown to him, the zombies actually are aware that they are in a TV and know the way out. He goes to bed and is none the wiser that a dazzling array of 80’s blue lighting effects enable the Zombies to escape and march upstairs.

The next day the deliverymen return and discover the writer’s body. Here’s the weird part: He’s sitting in a chair when the door opens with his throat slit and wearing a party hat. I remember seeing that and saying “okay weird. Why did the zombies dress him up festively?” They didn’t eat him clearly, but they slit his throat? I was pretty confused. Here’s the deal: The zombies aren’t really the zombies people are familiar with. In keeping with the spirit of the 80’s they basically say “Fuck you” to all the typical rules.

Most films had used the basic idea that if you destroy the brain you kill the zombie. I don’t know if it was because everyone in the 80’s had a desire to move forward, that this became a trend in film. For the most part if you ask someone how to kill a zombie they’ll say “Shoot em in the head!” Well that won’t really work with these, and here’s why. Some loose narrative in the story tells us that these zombies want to be alive and hate to be reminded that they are dead. A big symptom of this is a fear of mirrors. So if you want them to leave you alone, show them a reflection of themselves. Also, forget head shots. That won’t work unless you can somehow convince them that –they- are dead which you do by inflicting enough damage to their bodies. Perhaps the most ridiculous method is if you trap them in a place where they can’t possible get out, they’ll eat themselves. Lastly I’ll mention that if you show even the slightest fear, they’ll attack you. In other words, if you are nice to them and treat them as if they are alive, they’ll like you.

There you have it, the weirdest rules I’ve ever heard. Not only are they weird, they also don’t work. After the writer is killed, a brother and sister move in and start preparing the house for their parents who are away on business. They find out too late that the television that was left behind is haunted and there are still zombies out there. An old Texan comes along who knows all about the TV and the zombies. He tells them these rules and then takes the boy to go hunting for them. Well… I just don’t even know what to say. None of the rules even work and it makes me wonder what the point was in bringing them up at all.

Oh, and I normally don’t give spoilers about the ending but (SPOILER ALERT) do you want to know how to trap them from a place where no escape is possible? Just take a minute and think about a place like that. Bottom of the ocean? Stuck in a cave with a huge boulder at the entrance? How about shoving them in a bank vault? All pretty good ways, right? Well you don’t need that, just lock em in the basement for five minutes. That’s right, the basement. Nothing special about it; just a wooden door with a lock and it works.


One scene that I found pretty funny was when these two random people get killed, this old lady goes to check on her laundry and one of the undead somehow got into her washing machine. Next thing you know the old woman’s legs are just sticking out of the washer while it does a spin cycle. Good stuff.

The acting in this movie is hilarious and the writing is pretty bad. The special effects are decent enough but I can’t help and wonder just what all of the actors were thinking. Actually forget the actors. What was the director/writer/producer thinking?

This movie is a straight up horror comedy but the parts that made me laugh weren’t any of the gags but more so the silly plot and ridiculously bad acting. I recommend it to anybody who has a sense of humour about horror films in general. Like I said before, it’s never been released on DVD but for some reason Netflix has it. Check it out.

Well that finally does it for our little look back through the history of the Zombie sub-genre of horror. Also, I know you’re thinking “But what about the 90’s or the 2,000’s? Well you have a valid point, there were a lot of them in that 20 year span. Those two decades saw the birth of the “Fast Zombie” as well as a boom in the zombie culture in general. Especially the last ten years, thanks in no small part to some great authors. Not only that but it saw a few remakes of Romero’s work as well. Right now the word Zombie has a lot of marketability again which is both good and bad for fans. It’s good because it means a lot more content coming from different sources. It’s bad because a lot of that content is god awful.

I’ve decided to cut it off at the 80’s to allow myself some breathing room because, frankly, a lot has happened in those years and I’m a little zombied-out. Don’t worry too much; this topic will be resurrected again very shortly. Until next time, happy hunting!

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History of the Zombie Genre (Part 5: Zombie)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2011 by splatterpictures

It goes without saying that people watch movies to be entertained… escapism and all of that business. When it comes to horror films, people have many individual reasons to like them. A lot of people like to be scared when they watch a movie, others just find them to be easy to digest in terms of cinema. As an adult, I don’t find a lot of horror movies scary anymore. When I was a kid, though, I was disturbed more times than I wanted to admit. These days I still can get freaked out by some pretty unassuming movies, but that is probably because of my over-active imagination.

There is always something I want to recapture as an adult when I watch these films, but it’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is. Well, loyal readers, we can thank our trip through the history of the Zombie genre on a little self discovery. Today while we’re visiting the 1970’s, I’d like to stop by and say hello to Zombie.

I remember so vividly the first time I ever saw this film. I had been invited over to a friend’s house, who had in turn invited others over (one of those situations where every seat on the couch is full with a few people sitting on the floor). One of my chums owned a video store and always had something with her. To this day, I have no idea if it was planned to watch that movie the entire time or not, but they suggested we watch this movie called “Zombie”. I was down; I’m always down. I had no idea that that this movie would end up being my favourite zombie movie by a wide margin and is still one of my favourite films of all time.

Before I get too anecdotal, I’ll try to lay down some of those facts people are usually looking for. Zombie was released in 1979 in Italy under the title Zombi 2. Yes it’s a sequel. To what movie you ask? Well it’s a sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which was just a sequel of Night of the Living Dead. Yeah, you heard me right; it’s a sequel to a sequel. A sequel that I might add has nothing to do with Romero’s “Dead” series. When Romero’s Dawn of the Dead hit Europe in 1978, it was edited and had the title changed to Zombie (don’t ask me why, I have no idea). So in 1979 an Italian made sequel called Zombi 2 was made. (Let’s not forget that fact that in the U.K. it’s called Zombie Flesh Eaters!)

The film was directed by Lucio Fulci who had a somewhat lackluster career up until this point, but that all changed when Zombi 2 hit the market and blew up. The film was well-received by audiences and made a ton of money, so it eventually was released in 1980 over in the west (with the new title of just Zombie).

Well what’s it about? Basically some harbour Patrol in New York City finds a drifting yacht with big fat zombie in it. After the zombie is killed, an investigation follows and it turns out the boat belongs to the father of a woman called Anne Bowel (Tisa Farrow). He left behind a note that says he was at the island of Matool that is cursed with a strange disease. Following this lead, the Bowels and a news reporter head to the island to investigate. They meet more characters along the way to fill out the cast and presto! You have zombies on a tropical island.

Now, everyone who knows this film knows that there are certain scenes that are nothing short of iconic. This is where everything ties together with watching Zombie with my with friends all those years ago. First, there is a zombie fighting a shark. No I’m not kidding, and it’s a real tiger shark. A man named Ramon Bravo was a shark trainer and Lucio had him dress up like a zombie and battle the creature under the water while they filmed. The zombie bites the shark the shark rips off the zombies arm. It’s truly an epic battle of legendary proportion. I will say this the first time my mind was officially blown. I had –never- seen anything close to that in a zombie movie. I remember one of my friends yelling “zombie shark” and the prospect of a shark being undead blew my mind further!

Another iconic scene is pretty nasty. A character named Paola (Olga Karlatos) experiences a slow and gruesome death where her eye is slowly run through with a broken sliver of wood. Honestly, her eyeball gets closer and closer and when the wood finally punctures it, I remember every one of my friends cringed and yelled “Oh man!”Such a great reaction.

The last thing I’ll mention, just as an aside, is the music.
There is something about the theme of this movie that I just love. The creepy synthesizer that builds and builds while the zombies start to march, whenever there was more zombies the music matches the intensity and when the music is at it’s height you’re fucked; they’re everywhere. I remember walking home from watching this and trying to desperately remember the theme because I thought it was so cool.

This movie is seriously all about being cool. It has a lot of great moments that were enhanced when I watched it with a large group of people. It really reminded me why we watch scary movies. It’s all about that moment that everyone can share together. When I first saw the zombie fight the shark, or the woman get her eye poked in, I had no idea I was witnessing some of the most iconic moments in a horror film; I just knew they were great. A lot of times I’ve heard people wonder “Oh god who’s idea was it to do that?” Or “Oh that’s sick, why would they do it?”

Maybe if I first saw this film by myself I wouldn’t have remembered it as much…or maybe wouldn’t have even liked it as much. In short, loyal readers, horror movies are best shared. Writers and directors of horror films (the good ones) try to recreate these moments that everyone can collectively say “Oh my god, I’ve never seen that before.” Those of us who get it, will get it, those of us who don’t, are excited for Transformers 3.

There’s one more stop on our look back at the history of the Zombie sub-genre. Stay tuned!

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