LITERAL REMAINS

I’ve had a fascination with Jack the Ripper just about ever since I was in knee pants.  I’ve read the official stories of the killings, fiction stories, seen movie after movie.  I have yet to read Alan Moore’s original graphic novel, as strange as that sounds, but the film adaption of From Hell is one of the best chronicles, and speculations, about the Ripper.

Everyone knows that in 1888 London, in the impoverished Whitechapel and other districts, a monster stalked the darkened streets and alleys.  The victims, prostitutes, had their throats slit and were, in most instances, severely mutilated with internal organs removed.

Johnny Depp plays Inspector Fred Abberline, assigned to investigate the grisly murders.  Abberline has made a name for himself by solving some crimes with the use of psychic visions.  These visions, though, come from the use of opium and absinthe.  The closer Abberline and his partner, Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane), get to the heart of the mystery, the more dangerous to the both of them it becomes.  It not only threatens the very government, but it is a matter of the heart when Abberline has a budding romance with one of the intended victims, Mary Kelly.

From Hell was directed by the Hughes brothers, known for Menace II Society and Dead Presidents.  At the time of it’s release, it was pondered why they would go from doing “street movies” to a period film such as this.  Their response was that this is a street movie.  And it is.  From Hell leads us down the dirty streets, looking face to face with the poor, the sick, the criminal, and the wrongly accused.  The period detail is phenomenal, the atmosphere drenching and intoxicating.

This is one of those movies, and I probably say this a lot, I can’t recommend enough.  It’s stylish mystery and horror, with quite a bit of grit, and deserves a better look from us all.  Ripperologists will like it, so will suspense and horror fans.

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These are some wallpapers I found while searching the ‘net.  I can’t remember where they all came from (some I’ve had for a while).

J.
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The Lusman Arms is a run down apartment building rich in history.  Once decadent and luxurious, it’s a bit sleazy now.  But for Nell and Steven, a young married couple just starting their life together, it’s a stepping stone to better things.  She is a teacher, he is a medical student starting his internship.  It’s the first year of marriage that’s the roughest, as they say, and things do get rough for the couple.

The Lusman pops and groans with strange noises and is filled with rather eccentric characters.  The building manager is a sleaze who refers to the Lusman in glowing terms that belie the reality, and the maintenance guy is appropriately creepy.  One other quirky tidbit about the place is that people tend to disappear at the Lusman Arms.  When they don’t simply vanish, they are brutally murdered.  Savagely killed.  It gets nasty.

When their neighbor, Julia, disappears, Nell sets out to find her.  She receives advice and guidance from another kind neighbor, “Jazz” Rooker, and old-time actor.  He knows some secrets about the apartment building, and they are the kind of secrets that could get a person killed.  Or skewered.

Tobe Hooper directed this remake, and though I’ve never seen the original Toolbox Murders, I do like this one.  This movie holds up, and though the ending becomes a little silly it’s still a enjoyable.  It’s not Hooper’s original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it’s still Hooper’s best work since Poltergeist and TCM 2.

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Oh, you thought I forgot?  Well, not today.

The Orphanage is one of the best ghost stories committed to film, or probably ever told for that matter.  It’s neck and neck with The Innocents.

Laura was an orphan, as an adult, she and her husband, Carlos, buy the old seaside house that was her orphanage and turn it into a home for them and their son, Simon.  Their intentions are to open the house as a facility for disabled children.

Life in the home has a bumpy start.  A social worker visits, an elderly lady, inquiring about Simon.  He is adopted and HIV positive.  Even after Laura sends the nosy lady away, Laura finds her snooping about in the shed that night.  Mysterious?  You bet.  Creepy?  Any time I find an elderly lady snooping through my shed, it creeps me out.

Then there is Tomas.  Tomas is Simon’s imaginary friend.  Tomas teaches Simon a scavenger hunt game, and Simon in turns teaches it to Laura.  Playing the game together, the hunt leads mother and child to Simon’s adoption file.

During a birthday party, Simon, still incensed, argues with Laura and refuses to attend the party downstairs.  Later, when Laura tries a second time to persuade Simon to join the party, she finds Simon missing.  But she does discover a child upstairs wearing a mask with “Tomas” stitched on his shirt.  This little angel locks her in the bathroom and disappears.  Laura and Carlos then discover that Simon is missing.

What follows is, like I said, one of the best ghost stories you’ll ever watch.  Laura’s search for her son is harrowing, and when she starts seeking help from Tomas and the spirit world, it’s a mother’s desperation verging on madness.  The Orphanage is just a movie that you have to see, because no matter how good I tell you it is, the words just fall short.  It will draw you in and floor you.  Really.

There is a scene, when Laura is all alone in the house, and she begins playing a game she played as a child, well, it just had me on the edge of the seat.

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A mule skinner wandered into the mining town of Abandon on Christmas Day, 1893.  There wasn’t a soul to be found.  Every man, woman, and child had disappeared, even the gold secured in the town went missing.  The mystery of what happened remains to the present day.

June and Emmett are paranormal investigators.  They hire Lawrence, an expert on Abandon, to take them to the ghost town.  Lawrence hires two guides, Scott and Jerrod, and he invites his daughter, Abigail, a journalist, along on the chance they find the gold rumored to still be hidden there.

It all goes horribly awry.  Before it’s over and done, there will be betrayals, bullets flying, knives slashing, and a lot of blood spilled in the snow, and only one survivor.

See, here’s the thing, Lawrence, apparently, has made some shady deals with some shady people to get the gold.  He is pretty sure he knows where it is, but people have been looking for that darned precious gold for over a hundred years.  A group of researchers in the 1980s went looking for it and were never heard of again.  Abandon just may be cursed.  Tarnations.

Author Blake Crouch alternates the story of Abandon between the present day hunt, and the events that took place in 1893 that led to the disappearance of the entire town.  Half the book is good, the other half mediocre.

It’s the story of Abandon, 1893, that’s more interesting.  The present day tale is kind of crazy.  People seem to pop out of the woodwork.  I was surprised there was only one survivor, because new characters had a tendency to come out of nowhere.  I would have liked it if Crouch had just stuck to the 1893 side of things.  The original settlers of Abandon are more rounded, and grounded, than the present day players.  Those pioneers felt real.  Lawrence and his crew just bide their time until they are picked off.

Nice twists and turns, though, keep Abandon on the good side.  It’s nothing too earth shattering, but it did keep me glued to the pages.

3.5 out of 5
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Honestly, this is a Halloween fanatic’s wet dream.  Trick ‘r Treat, which Warner Bros. has let languish, needlessly, on the shelf since ’07, is a near perfect treat for this All Hallow’s Eve season.  It continues the streak of studios releasing less than average pictures to wide theatrical releases while sending some quality films (The Midnight Meat Train, The Burrowers) to a limited run (if they are lucky) or simply straight to video.  It’s mixed up, totally.

Trick ‘r Treat tells four interconnecting stories on Halloween night.  There’s the twisted high school principal, the little red riding hood virgin, the teen pranksters, and the grumpy old man next door with the dog.  Watching them all is a little tyke in a burlap mask; he’s cute, cuddly, and creepy.  Their stories unfold, the time shifting back and forth, amid a sumptuous tapestry of festive colors, costumes, and decorations.  It’s filled to the brim and overflowing with the spirit of Halloween.

Unlike some films set on October 31st, it is more about the holiday rather than just the action incidentally taking place on the holiday.  Traditions are observed.  Keep the jack o’ lanterns lit.  Please the spirits.

Trick ‘r Treat is pleasing, it’s delightful, and has a couple of tense moments.  It also has a wicked sense of humor.  There is one scene towards the end that had me laughing out loud.  All in all, it has just about everything to please most fans of the genre.  With a cast that includes Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and the great Brian Cox (the screen’s original Hannibal Lecter), this is a good time.

My complaints are minimal.  The shifting back and forth in the storyline, though handled well, is a little off-putting at first.  Though, on repeated viewings it eases.  My second, and final complaint, is it tends to be mean towards children.  I’ve never been one for films that have children in danger for a cheap scare; there is nothing cheap in Trick ‘r Treat, but still, it just seemed to not like kids that much.  I know, I know, it’s only a movie, but come on….

4.5 out of 5
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 Trick ‘r Treat
  A creepy, darkly comic celebration of the scariest night of the year from producer Bryan Singer (director of X-Men and Superman Return) and writer-director Michael Dougherty (co-scripter of X2 and Superman Returns). Trick ‘R Treat takes the Creepshow/Tales from the Crypt approach to nefarious new depths with four interwoven tales set on Halloween night: a high school principal (Dylan Baker) moonlights as a vicious serial killer; the quest of a young virgin (Anna Paquin) for that special someone takes a gruesome turn; a group of teens carries out a cruel prank with disastrous consequences; and a cantankerous old man (Brian Cox) battles a mischievous trick-or-treating demon.

Dark Country
In his directorial debut, Thomas Jane stars in this suspenseful horror thriller. Also starring Lauren German (Hostel: Part II) and Ron Perlman (Hellboy II: The Golden Army).   Two honeymooners rescue a mysterious car crash survivor in the Las Vegas desert. But their decision to save the man becomes increasingly regrettable when he turns on them, forcing the newlyweds to do the unthinkable. In a blur of paranormal chaos, the couple must take drastic measures to cover up their actions from the local police, ultimately leading each character to an inescapable fate.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil
  Forming the band Anvil in 1982, the duo released one of the heaviest albums of all time – Metal On Metal – influencing some of the biggest names in rock including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. But while those bands went on to sell millions of albums and achieve international fame, Anvil’s career took a different path – straight to obscurity.

Until now….

Director Sacha Gervasi brings us Anvil: The Story Of Anvil – a brilliant, achingly hilarious, and surprisingly touching documentary about Anvil’s last-ditch quest for fame and fortune. He joins the band members, now in their 50s, as they perform all over the world, record a new album and struggle to make ends meet. Providing an intimate, insightful look into the band members’ ever-supportive, yet long-suffering families, Anvil: The Story Of Anvil is also a tale of survival – and the passion and drive it takes to follow your dream, year after year after year.

It’s Alive
When a young woman (Bijou Philips) leans she is pregnant, she leaves graduate school to move to the country with her boyfriend in this remake of the classic 1970s horror film. The fate of the happy new family takes a gruesome turn when animals and people end up brutally dead – all with a strange connection to their newborn. Could their new child be the monster responsible for the gruesome murders?

The Thaw
When a renowned environmental advocate, Dr. David Kruipen (Val Kilmer), discovers the carcass of a woolly mammoth in a polar ice cap, he leads a team of four bright ecology students in a research mission at a remote Arctic station. The group uncovers information beyond their wildest dreams…and nightmares when a prehistoric parasite revives and searches for a new warm-blooded host. Now infected, the unsuspecting students are forced to choose between a quarantine that will result in their death or a global epidemic.

Children
A family anticipates a Christmas filled with sledding, laughter and hot cocoa as they head to their vacation home in the secluded backcountry… The holiday cheer takes a fast turn for the worse after a mysterious flu-like virus sweeps through the kids. One by one the children become deadly. Amidst the suspicion, mayhem and murder, the parents fight for survival against their own twisted offspring.

Wicked Lake w/ Soundtrack
Four beautiful but mysterious girls embark on a road trip for a relaxing weekend getaway in the woods. Unbeknownst to them, two clans of deranged male misfits follow them to their secluded and picturesque lakeside cabin in the mountains. The girls appear to be easy prey for the predatory perverts until the fateful stroke of midnight when all hell, literally , breaks loose and the tables are turned!

Seventh Moon
According to an ancient Chinese myth on the full moon of the seventh lunar month the gates of hell open and the dead are freed to roam among the living. While honeymooning in China, a young couple takes part in a sacred event that honors these spirits. As night falls, their tour guide abandons them in a desolate field. Now what they thought was a joke is becoming far too real as they fight to survive the night of the Seventh Moon.

Wondering what I’m doing?  Check it out.

It’s been some time since I last watched The Company of Wolves, and I may take my own recommendation and watch it again.  I remember the first time I saw it, way back all those years ago when I was a wee child, I just simply didn’t get it.  That’s the great thing about age and maturity, sometimes you get the subtext.

This is “Little Red Riding Hood” as told for adults.  Rosaleen dreams she lives in a forest, and after her sister is killed by wolves she goes to visit with her grandmother, played by a very fairytale looking Angela Landsbury.  Granny Angie is nice enough to knit a bright red shawl for her granddaughter.  As Rosaleen returns home she is accompanied by a boy with romantic intentions, but all romance is dashed when they discover cattle torn and killed by wolves.

The attack on the cattle rallies the villagers and they hunt down the pack of wolves.  Tracking a wolf, they kill it.  But the wolf, upon dying, transforms into a man.  Did I mention the hunter in the woods?  The one with the unibrow?  What did granny say about men whose eyebrows have grown together?  What was that a sign of?  And why is Rosaleen attracted to the hunter?  And what are they doing at granny’s house?

The Company of Wolves is dreamy, which is only right since it takes place in Rosaleen’s dreams.  It is a dark bedtime story bubbling with sexuality.  This was director Neil Jordan’s second film, and he would go on to worldwide acclaim for such films as The Crying Game, Michael Collins, and Interview With a Vampire, but this remains one of his most stunning works.  The special effects, mainly the werewolf transformations, look dated (it was released in 1984), but that will not stop you from falling under this movie’s spell.

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If you pop The Hills Run Red into your DVD player, you will see that this movie has a certain infectious, morbid, glee.  It feels nearly as giddy as a school girl on prom night.  It knows it is traveling well trod territory, but makes such a mad dash through it you don’t really mind that you can predict the plot.

In the ’80s, Wilson Wyler Concannon made a movie called “The Hills Run Red” which was so sick, twisted, and shocking, it was quickly pulled from theaters and drive-ins and was eventually lost.  Concannon receded from society in his final years and the movie became the stuff of legend

The mystery that is “THRR” more than fascinates Tyler; it’s an obsession for him.  Tyler convinces his girlfriend, Serina, and his best bud, Lalo, to help him make a documentary on their search for the lost film.  Tyler does some investigative work and locates Concannon’s daughter, Alexa (who, as a child, had a role in the movie). 

All grown up, Alexa is a stripper with a drug problem, and, it turns out, is still haunted by her experience of filming “The Hills Run Red”.  Tyler convinces Alexa to help search for the lost movie, but before they can return to the woods where it was filmed, and even to Concannon’s isolated farmhouse, Tyler helps Alexa kick her drug habit.  Mad glee, people, mad glee.

Once their journey begins, however, Tyler and the gang begin to suspect that Concannon may have actually murdered people in making his movie.  The special effects and set pieces were so disturbing because they were real.  It also falls under their suspicion that Concannon pulled his movie from release because he wasn’t finished filming it, and that someone has intentions of finishing it for him.

The plot to The Hills Run Red can be seen from a mile away, but it’s pretty fun despite all that.  It was sent straight to DVD by Warner Brothers, but it is a couple of bars above what you might think.  It has some clever moments, and although the twists aren’t that shocking, it just may say something about us horror fans, about how numb we may have become at all these scenes of torture, violence, and pain.

4 out of 5
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…yeah, I had to shave and everything-  Oh, hi there, didn’t see you.  I was just talking to….You know what, never mind, never mind, it’s not important.

So, it is the sixth day of October, and up today for your consideration is May.

May Dove Kennedy is an awkward girl, and that is an understatement.  Shy.  A wallflower, or she would be if she ever went out.  May has a lazy eye, and it makes her self-conscious.  As a child, her overbearing mother took her to the doctor who suggested May wear an eye patch.  That only caused the other children to torment her even worse.  As an adult, her only friend is the doll her mother gave her as a child.  Socialization really is not her thing.

Fully grown and working in a vet’s office, May finally sees an optometrist who corrects her lazy eye with contacts.  It’s practically a new lease on life, but with so little social interaction she still has a difficult time fitting in.  She ultimately meets a guy, Adam, although she had more or less stalked him.  Sadly the relationship doesn’t work, and through a string of events May overhears Adam referring to her in unflattering terms.  This leads May to a decision resulting in gruesome actions.  It’s like her mother used to tell her:  “If you can’t find a friend, make one.”

May is a downward spiral into madness.  It’s a slasher film, but also more than that; it elevates the genre.  It’s deep, moving, affecting.  This is top notch all the way; Angela Bettis, who plays the title character, gives a performance that is dazzling and nuanced.  She gains our sympathy and makes May as real as real can get.

If you’ve never seen this movie, it’s a shame.  May really is something to behold.

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Can you believe it’s only a little over two months until Christmas?  Yeah, I know, I hope the sacrificial goat packs on a few more pounds, too.  And, forgive me, but yes this is a blatant plea for you to buy something from our advertiser, DarkFigures.  They are having a HUGE sale on some classic horror, um, not toys but ACTION FIGURES…Living dead action figures.  Ooh, pretty….Tiny Tim would crawl across the floor on broken glass for one.

Think of what all you could do with your very own Hare Krishna zombie.  You could take it just about any-freakin’-where.  Even on holiday, guvnuh.   I would rub its bald head and smile…a lot.

About two or three years ago I was up late and skimming through the channels.  I stopped on Showtime and watched the last few minutes of some action shoot’em up and then this little movie followed that was perfect for a late night excursion into the unknown:  Fear of the Dark.  I know what you’re thinking:  An independent Canadian horror movie?  Just trust me on this, okay.  Some movies were made for midnight, and Fear of the Dark is a winner.  Whether you buy or rent, it’s worth the few bucks you slap down for it.

Brian Billings is a young boy with an intense fear of the dark.  He sees ghosts in the house, hears things.  To combat it all, he keeps his lights, and takes a flashlight with him wherever he goes.  Brian’s parents don’t believe him, neither does his big brother, Dale.  When his parents go out for the evening, they leave a begrudged Dale to babysit Brian, but luckily Dale’s girlfriend comes sneaks over in the storm, so he isn’t too sore anymore.  He is a little embarrassed by Brian’s behavior, what with him being afraid of the dark and all.  It doesn’t help matters that the storm knocks the power out.

Once the lights are gone, Dale and his girlfriend try to comfort Brian and keep his mind off his fears.  But in the deep dark of the suburban house, filled with lightning flashes, Dale begins understand his little brother’s fear of the dark.  There are things lurking in their house, things roaming the halls, the basement, the attic….

Fear of the Dark has charm.  It is reminiscent of Darkness Falls and They, though I liked it better than both of those movies (most anything is better than They).  Fear has more ingenuity, more smarts, and more heart (you can’t say that about a lot of PG-13 movies).  And like the old saying goes, “Personality goes a long way.”

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For today, there is Venom.

Don’t groan.  I think this is an overlooked little gem of a movie.  Sadly, it was released in the Fall of 2005, just after Katrina hit, and since this movie is set in the Louisiana bayou, it came and went pretty fast.  So exists a fairly large consensus that know little to nothing about this movie, and that’s a shame.

In the swamps of Louisiana, a good Samaritan tries to save a drowning elderly woman and ends up cursed.  The elderly lady is voodoo woman and she was carrying a suitcase of talismans; they are evil, as expected, and are in the form of snakes.  As Ray, the good Samaritan, tries to rescue the woman, he is bitten by them.  Actually, they possess him, and once he dies, he comes back to wreak all manners of murderous mayhem.  The reanimated Ray, now known as Mr. Jangles (though it’s not once mentioned in the movie) begins killing off a group of local teens.

This is a throwback to some good old horror fun, circa the 1980′s, from the writer Kevin Williamson (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) and director Jim Gillespie (I Know What You Did Last Summer).  It’s a put your mind on cruise control good time that is far better, in my opinion, than I Know What You Did Last Summer.  Lets face it, I Know What You Did…was a dog.

Venom was the first in a planned series, but that never materialized because of its now you see it, now you don’t, disappearing act at the box office.  It was to be a video game as well, titled Backwater I believe, but I don’t think that materialized either.  Not sure.  The only thing I am sure of is that this movie is available, and you should watch it.

And I’m certain it’s nearly perfect in its own B-movie popcorn fun-time way.

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The countdown to the 31st continues!  Or would it be a count up?  Whichever (you all know we’re not professionals here), it is the third day of October and I’m here to drop my day’s recommendation on you.  If you don’t know what I’m doing, where ya been?  Read this to catch up.  (And come on, it’s day three and you’re still not wise to the October Countdown 2009?).

And for October 3rd, might I suggest…The Phantom of the Opera.

No, this is not the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, or the classic Lon Chaney silent film.  This Phantom is from 1989 and stars one Robert Englund.  Yes, it stars Freddy Krueger.  It’s a loose adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s book, as a lot of them are, but it does keep some of the elements of the source material.  Like the Phantom’s darker tendencies toward violence.

This movie has been labeled a “slasher film” for years, and it could be called that, it’s got some slashing.  Some blood letting.  And in this version of the story, the Phantom’s face is disfigured due to a deal with the Devil; Old Scratch touched his hand to the Phantom’s face, burning it.  The Phantom, therefore, stitches together a mask of human skin from victims to cover his burns.  That’s different from other versions of the book.

But the rest is familiar enough, and this is quite the entertaining piece.  The music, the sets, and the costumes are wonderful.  The kills aren’t that imaginative, and it does have all those “slasher” stereotypes going for it.  But it has Robert Englund, and Robert Englund is one of the best actors to ever grace the screen, no matter the genre.  Everyone else in this thing may be creaking along and struggling, but Englund gives a wonderful performance as the Phantom.  And his performance alone makes it worth viewing.

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Mary Florescu, a paranormal researcher/investigator, is a visiting professor.  She is in the city to conduct an investigation into a house that has had some gruesome activity, the most recent of which was a teenage girl being horribly killed.  “Horribly” as in her parents found her with her face ripped off.

Helping Mary, other than her tech guy, Reg, is a student, Simon.  Simon’s history is sprinkled with paranormal activity, dating back to when he was eleven years old and “saw” the death of his brother.  Once Simon begins staying in the house, all manner of things begin to go bump in the night.  One recurring phrase is “Don’t Mock Us”.  That’s one bit of advice the researchers should heed and take to heart (as well as a lot of filmmakers).

Mary, herself with a macabre past, begins to be troubled by the house and the spirits within.  She has difficulty, at times, distinguishing reality from illusion.  And it doesn’t help that she has begun a romantic relationship with Simon; it only seems to give strength to the supernatural incidents.

Book of Blood, based on two Barker short stories, “Book of Blood” and “On Jerusalem Street”, is no Midnight Meat Train.  Yes, those are very two different films, but Train is by far the superior in both story and quality.

As gruesome as the title sounds, Book of Blood, the movie is not too gory.  That’s not a bad thing, though.  Book takes its time to tell its story, it doesn’t rush to the money shots (so to speak), it develops its characters nicely, slowly building.  But it all feels so familiar, so been there-done that.  It’s not until the final scenes with Mary and Simon in the house that it has any ambition and offers an interesting take on the world of the dead.  And the movie takes itself so seriously at times, it verges on silly.

Good, but a little lifeless.

3.5 out of 5
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