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Deliverance from Evil (we’re gettin’ Indie!)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , on April 13, 2012 by splatterpictures

As I’ve said many times on this site. We love independent horror on Splatterpictures. That being said it opens us up to some things that can be pretty awful. Thankfully Deliverance from Evil manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that just make things with a smaller budget impossible to enjoy.

Deliverance from Evil is brought to us by the good folks at Pumpkin Patch Pictures. It’s directed by Indie horror veterans the Quiroz brothers. The film stars Angel Avoles and Jose Rosete.

The basic idea is that a couple move in to a new home with their young son who is taking a bath. Suddenly a mysterious force causes the boy to drown and it triggers a chain of events that forces the devastated parents to uncover the mysterious and tragic history of their new home and banish an evil force before it destroys them all.

The film never loses focus of its story and that is one of the strongest aspects of it. Both Avoles and Rosete do a fine job portraying a couple who has just lost their son in a seemingly sudden accident. I think they both start off as likable characters that come off sympathetic and sincere in their portrayals. I also really enjoyed the secondary characters. The special cameo by Friday the 13th writer Victor Miller was also a nice little treat. He plays the sort of soothsayer mailman.

One of the biggest problems I had with the film was the lighting. Supernatural horror relies on many things to create tension or fear. Actors have to do their part, music is also very important but you can’t ignore the lighting. Many of the scenes (in fact almost all of them) take place during the day or in well lit areas. In supernatural thrillers I often tease about how dark the films always are and how even when characters turn on a light it often makes little to no difference. As cheesy as the perpetually dark rooms can be there is something to be said for the atmosphere they create. Ghost stories like this rely on our imaginations to fill in a lot of the blanks. When you’re in a dark room your mind can play tricks on you and shadows can suddenly take shape into something horrific.

Scenes where I felt there should have been a lot more tension just didn’t work because it was bright as day. The film did have more night shots towards the end and when certain scene were going on at night or in dimly lit rooms they were noticeably more effective.

The special effects were great. I was glad to see some practical stuff which always looks much better than CGI when you’re dealing with smaller budgets. There is a great scene with a pillow indenting as if a head is reading on it that looks great. The effects on the ghost were decent as well but I would have liked to have seen more instances where the characters were encountering the ghost as oppose the just us as the audience seeing him.

All and all the Quiroz brothers offer up well thought out character driven supernatural horror that is defiantly worth a look. The complaints I have are pretty minor and by the second half of the movie they are mostly fixed. The ending especially has a great creepy spin on it that sticks with you. Check it out!

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Killer Klowns From Outer Space (Holy Sh**!)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , on April 3, 2012 by splatterpictures

The 1980’s has seen its fair share of ridiculous crap. I’ve spoke often about the horror boom of the 80’s and how it’s shaped how we look at horror nowadays. The interesting thing about Killer Klowns from Outer Space is not how 80’s it is but how 50’s.

Watching this movie I couldn’t help but notice how it felt as if I was watching a 50’s B movie in the drive in. Well not that I would even really know what that’s like since the drive-in went the way of the dodo before my time but I have seen a lot of films from that era and they all have the same “feel” to them.

Killer Klowns was written, directed, and produced by Chiodo brothers. Just three guys who loved science fiction and horror and wanted to make something that could be scary and silly at the same time. I think the final product was a lot sillier than anything else, but if you have a phobia of clowns or something this movie is probably your worst nightmare. The film stars Grant Cramer John Nelson and Suzanne Snyder. Snyder of course doing pretty well for horror in the 1980’s being in both Night of the Creeps and Return of the Living Dead II.

Well, I am not sure I’d even need to explain what this movie is about. It’s in the friggin’ title. There are space aliens that come to earth and kill people for food. They don’t just grab them and munch away; first they cocoon them in cotton candy which apparently makes them dissolve into a liquid that the alien clowns then drink. (with a silly straw)  The whole gimmick is of course that these aliens just so happen to look like clowns. Not only do they look like clowns but ever aspect of their technology is also circus themed. They have big top space-ships with pastel interior colour schemes. They have pop-corn guns, acidic pies, and giant wiffle-bats.

I remember wondering how much political debate would it have taken to get an entire society to stick to one theme like that. It probably took years of campaigns. I mean imagine if all of a sudden it became law for us to dress like clowns and then all of our technology would have to be changed to perpetuate the overall theme. I wonder if their home planet has outlaws that don’t dress like clowns…you know what? I’ve officially over analyzed this.

This is one of those movies that I’ve heard as many negative things about it as positive. I like to look at it from the perspective that it’s paying homage to a genre of films that in themselves weren’t exactly great. That being said a lot of its charm comes from the very fact that it doesn’t take itself seriously (honestly how could it?) Sure things are goofy but they’re supposed to be.

The special effects are pretty good all things considered. The clowns themselves look creepy as all hell. The entire time I was watching the movie I was wondering how anybody could be fooled into thinking they are actually people. Not only are they disproportioned they all have fucked up faces that would make me not want to go anywhere near them. A lot of the gags are based around killing unsuspecting people with clown-like shenanigans. My personal favourite was when they rolled up to a security guard in a clown car and then a bunch of them all get out one at a time, while the guard stands there completely confused about what he’s seeing they pelt the poor guy to death with pies. After the guy is a melted pile of ice-cream one of the little clowns puts a cherry on top. I was dying of laughter.

"Anyone who spells "Klown" with a "C" gets the pie!"

As I said before this is a tribute to 50’s movies and the one that it gets compared to a lot is the Blob. The only similarity really is the overall premise of teenagers running around while adults refuse to believe them. This is brought to outrageous proportions by the town’s police officer Curtis Mooney (played by the late John Vernon) he just crosses his arms and refuses to believe anyone even as the phones are ringing off the hook. He hates teenagers and is always just looking for excuses to arrest them. It’s pretty great.

Another similarity to The Blob I noticed was the inclusion of a theme song specifically for the movie.  (The Blob from 1958 had a catchy jingle aswell) Killer Klowns got the novelty song treatment courtesy of the punk group The Dickies (Later to be called Dill Pickles) The song “Killer Klowns” is fantastic and just sets the entire film up as the campy mess it ought to be. The rest of the music was scored by John Massari and every moment is just filled with slightly twisted and silly little circus jingles.

Early word has it that by next year the Chiodo brothers will be adding a long awaited sequel called The Return of The Killer Klowns From Outer Space. As much as I was amused by this film I’m not sure that a sequel should be made even with the best of intentions I like Killer Klowns as it is; a weird oddity that exists on its own.

Sadly, I don't think you can eat your way out of this one.

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Helldriver (I dig it I dig it!)

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2012 by splatterpictures

To think back on my life before Helldriver I have some hard realizations to come to terms with. For example, before Helldriver I’d never seen a woman use a zombie’s spine like a stripper poll.  I’d also never seen a car made entirely of zombies, be driven by another zombie but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Helldriver was released by the good folks at Sushi Typhoon and was directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura. Nishimura, of course a longstanding figure in Japanese splatter flicks having worked on The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police to name a few.

The movie probably has one of the longest pre-titles I’ve ever seen. It felt like I was already twenty minutes into the thing before the title flashed across the screen but it does give the skinny on the plot.

Six million citizens in Japan have become infected with a mysterious alien ash. This ash causes them to look and behave much like zombies, except for some volatile tumour on their heads. In an attempt to save as many people as they can the Japanese government builds a wall separating the north and south of Japan. There are a great many normal citizens (including the Prime Minister) who believes that these zombies shouldn’t be killed but rather cured.

Kiko (Yumiko Hara) is a young girl who comes from a tragic family. Her mother and uncle are a pair of cannibalistic psychopaths while her father was unfortunately disabled and unable to protect her from them. During a bizarre altercation Kiko’s mother rips out her daughter’s heart after a small meteor blows through her body. Her mother becomes the “Zombie Queen” and Kiko gets picked up by authorities and has an outboard motor installed in her chest that activates a chainsaw sword when she pulls the rip-cord.  (yeah I’m not kidding)

She and a small group of others travel deep into the zombie’s territory to attempt to kill the queen and end the nightmare. Along the way they are barraged by hundreds of flying heads, a pregnant zombie that uses her zombie baby attached to an umbilical cord like some kind of medieval flail. The stuff they come up with is just a mind boggling.

Helldriver thankfully feels closer to Tokyo Gore Police than anything else and that’s a good thing. It does have the typical “Sushi Typhoon standbys” Lots of awkward dance scenes with some dodgy CGI and long close-ups of people jamming disgusting things in their mouths which at this point seems like they do it just because they feel they have to. Strangely all of my complaints about the film were before the main story kicks off. When it gets into the meat of the action the film really starts to work.

Special effects are what these movies are really all about and I can tell they really kicked it up a notch especially with the whole look of The Zombie Queen. Throughout the movie there are a lot of really nice looking effects but only when they stick to the practical stuff.  Nishimura has this obsession with wriggling tendons and merging body parts together so his monsters always resemble some horrific modern art piece.

The CGI is -and probably always will be -the biggest weakness for this production company. It has a lot to do with their limited budget and the fact that they keep coming up with crazier and crazier things. Helldriver is no exception, the CGI looks incredibly synthetic and I’ve always found that to be a personal pet peeve of mine in any movie.

To be honest I’ve not enjoyed a lot of the stuff that’s come out of Sushi Typhoon lately. The stuff they’ve released was alright but there was something about their earlier films that I just liked more. I was generally disappointed with films like Robo-Geisha. Mutant Girl Squad and Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl. They were too silly and chaotic and I couldn’t really say they were worth the price of the DVD but I feel this is probably the best they’ve released in awhile and I did actually find myself really enjoying it by the end. If you get a chance I’d say check it out. It’s a non-stop gore fueled comedy that just begs to be watched with a group of people.

This is a horde of zombies in the shape of a plane holding two rockets.

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The Summer of Massacre (2011) Review

Posted in Horror Showcase, Updates with tags , , , , , , on February 9, 2012 by splatterpictures

I feel like this was an attempted mob hit. Like somebody sent me this in the mail in hopes I would kill myself before finishing it. Or maybe it was really Jigsaw but the package didn’t come with a tape recorder informing me that I was going to play a game.

There is a lot of great independent horror out there. The nice thing about the genre is that you can do a lot with very little. It’s a great way for new people in the industry to get their feet wet and every so often a little movie can change the shape of the horror scene. The Summer of Massacre is not that type of film.

I knew absolutely nothing about this movie going in to it. Just what was on the DVD made it seem like I was in for a pretty fun ride with an insane body count. Sure I wasn’t expecting much but anything that boasts the Guinness book of world records title for highest body count in a film couldn’t be all bad.  I hate being this wrong about something.

The Summer of Massacre is an anthology. Each story is book-ended with a little monologue by a different serial killer. These killers have banded together to becoming the ultimate killing team. I don’t know what the four separate stories have to do with them but that’s what we’re given.

I don’t know if I should take the time to discuss the individual plots of the stories because frankly I’m not sure what they are. Oh what the hell I’ll do my best.

Story number one is simply titled “Rage” a guy wakes up on his day off from a job and proclaims that he’s going for a run. All of a sudden it’s night-time and he’s jogging. He gets knocked on the head by a guy with a foam pipe and gets his face all messed up.

I’m not sure if he died and came back or was just really hurt and got up anyways but he starts killing people. I think he is trying to get revenge on the guys who robbed him but he has to kill a lot of people along the way. (Naturally).

The second story is titled “Lump”. It’s about a mentally challenged hermaphrodite invalid on her death bed, (I’m not kidding the character is acted by a man pretending to have downs-syndrome or something). She has a loving mother, a bitch of a sister who hates her and a sweet but simple brother. She is given a short time-frame to live. The mother feels it’s the perfect time to let her kids go off on some…weird trip. Anyways they try and kill their wheelchair bound sibling even though she’s going to die anyways.  She doesn’t die and this horrible growth on her head pops. Uh, she becomes a super powerful killing machine. They try to give it one of those ironic horror endings but the acting was so bad and frankly offensive that it was lost on me. The end.

The third story is titled “Son of the Boogeyman”. In this one we learn of a woman who was raped by a local maniac who wishes to father a son for the soul purpose of terrifying him The boy all grown up now, tries with all of his might to escape his psycho killer father and save the people he loves. (Actually this one wasn’t so bad plot wise)

The fourth story is called Burn and it actually slows the entire movie down. Up until this point it’s basically been a revolving door of death scenes, this one has a pretty long set up all things considered. A group of young people are at some sort of hippie woods party when it gets late and they decide to tell the story about a pair of firefighters who are killed in a massive forest fire. The men apparently came back as vengeful ghosts or zombies or something and burn people to death. Well turns out it’s not just a story.

The acting in this movie is beyond terrible. I would suspect it’s just a cast of first timers or just friends of the people who made this ungodly mess. Nobody sells anything but instead walks through all the scenes looking and acting as confused as I was.

The worst part however had to be the CGI. Holy hell is it bad. Like how bad you ask? It makes Sharktapus look like it was made by James Cameron. The box promises gore unlike you’ve ever seen but any chance these scenes had of being effective in any way has been tossed right out the window. It’s so laughably bad that I feel as if I am missing something. They –had- to know what this looked like. The practical effects weren’t so bad really and if they maybe just stuck with those it wouldn’t be as terrible. Especially in Burn and Son of the Boogeyman, it was decent but the moment they started again with the CGI it just fucking died.

I will be the first to admit I am a pretty cheap date. I am totally fine with taking certain movies for what they are and I am notoriously forgiving but not this time. When I say this I want it to sink in. This is the worst horror movie I’ve ever seen. It was so bad it took me two separate times to actually watch the entire thing. It fails across the board, in acting, writing, directing, special effects and cinematography. Slapping a Guinness world record title on your cover is a pretty handy marketing tool so consider this your warning. I watched this so hopefully you’ll never have to.

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