BLACK STATIC #41 (18 page)

TONY LEE ON DVDS/BLU-RAYS

THE LAST HORROR MOVIE

CELLAR DWELLER

DEMON LEGACY

PIT AND THE PENDULUM

I, FRANKENSTEIN

RE-ANIMATOR

THE PIT

TRUE DETECTIVE

TRUE BLOOD

13 SINS

RAPTURE

HAUNTER

THE FORGOTTEN

THE ATTIC

DELIVERY

DEVIL’S DUE

Julian Richards attempts to deliver a chilling study of absolute evil on the loose in
THE LAST HORROR MOVIE
(re-released on DVD, 5 May). Made in 2003, this stars urbane Kevin Howarth (from
Razor Blade Smile
, 1998) as mad Max, a wannabe documentarist of supposedly real-life murders. Max interrupts the beginning of a standard American slasher picture and, with apologies, quickly launches into a denunciation of you (the viewer) just for agreeing to watch the grisly violence that he, so formally, introduces. The misdeeds of the one do not outweigh the needs of the many.

Inevitably, there were comparisons with Belgian black comedy
Man Bites Dog
and John McNaughton’s cult classic
Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer
but, seriously, Richards’ effort is simply not in their league. Max asks pointed/loaded questions about distasteful voyeurism, and contemplates the appeal of covertly observing others’ pain/distress. And yet, in spite of a handful of emotionally manipulative scenes – in which helpless captives are ‘slaughtered’ while Max repeatedly queries viewers’ sensibilities with his “why are you watching this?” schtick – Richards’ attempted treatise on modern horror movies in general and torture porn in particular very soon becomes tiresome. He is too busy joining up the dots to see the connecting lines of influence (from sociopathic studies?), never mind the proverbial big picture.

The premise was a promising one but ultimately
The Last Horror Movie
never manages to be as disturbing as it ought to be. Woefully bad amateurs take some of the supporting roles, and that certainly does not help with the degree of realism being strived for here. We learn along the way that Max’s regular job is shooting wedding videos, so my favourite alternative title for this picture would surely be ‘Four Weddings and Lots of Funerals’.

As a genre mockumentary this submits no answers to its battery of questions, and reaches no apparently useful conclusions. Yes, it is a clever wheeze (perhaps you will cheer when the traffic warden is dispatched with a claw hammer?), and it’s fine enough as a thesis idea for a student’s 20-minute short, but
The Last Horror Movie
fails to hold viewers’ attention at feature-length. Instead of any kind of a meaningful statements about the grim amorality of horror videos, illegalities of cod-mythical snuff movies, and the public’s seeming fascination with designer violence and cinematic massacres, too much of this feebleminded drama is pretentious twaddle. John Herzfeld’s
15 Minutes
(2001) already said all of this, and it served up a watchable cops ‘n’ killers thriller at the same time. Overall, I would have to admit that even Ryan Lee Driscoll’s tawdry crime fix
Making A Killing
was decidedly more intriguing throughout than Richards’ alleged shocker is. Despite the director’s view that he is engaging in something original and extraordinary for British cinema, there is actually nothing ‘new’ here. We really have seen it all before and many times since too, complete with knotted loose ends.
The Last Horror Movie
is not a Hindenberg-scale folly, it’s only an ill-fated big mistake like one-too-many drinks on a stag night.

From Kubrick’s
The Shining
and Disney’s
Condorman
to
Romancing the Stone
and Tibor Takacs’ cult
I, Madman
(aka
Hardcover
), the 1980s were an especially intriguing period for movies about writers and artists, where blurring the distinctions between creator and character, page and screen, confrontation and escapism, explored new levels of complexity in terms of their fantasy content, often to surrealistic effect. We can trace some of the mutant trope’s literary DNA back to mimetic TV icons like Jason King and his ilk, which propagate today in shows such as
Castle
, but the ‘write stuff’ theme and its artistic leanings has a rich history across genre media.

The prologue of
CELLAR DWELLER
(DVD, 12 May) has Jeffrey Combs playing a doomed comicbook artist who is seen to create the monster that slays him. Thirty years later, fan artist Whitney (Debrah Farentino, in her first starring role) attempts to revive his disreputable old comic when she enrols at an institute for the arts. Supernaturally, her drawings conjure up the very same ravenous beastie, causing multiple deaths among the students. John Carl Buechler produced some memorable make-up effects and creatures but, even by the often maligned decade’s standards, his work as a director of gothic fantasy remains quite mediocre. Buechler’s approach is too clumsily comedic to facilitate much genuine horror and far too predictable to be very funny, except for some obviously gory slapstick. Perhaps the main point of interest in
Cellar Dweller
is its inadvertent but effective
demon
stration of how imaginative storyboard artwork can be so vital to what appears on-screen. Of the main cast only Farentino (née Mullowney) holds our attention, as heroine Whitney becomes increasingly fraught with guilt and shame at her inexplicable culpability in the carnage of serial murders. Can she simply
draw
her way towards redemption, and safety for all? There’s a double-twist ending but its details are foreseeable, partly because Buechler’s directing is so thuddingly inept when it comes to any moral subtlety.

DEMON LEGACY
(DVD, 19 May) has all the guileless impact of a hopelessly contrived package of formula clichés and subgenre referencing, as director Rand Vossler presents a blatantly novice (“Let me show you what happens to a sorority slut who dabbles in witchcraft”) effort likely to please only the executive gods of supernatural churned-out rental/retail products.

Five girls get together at a lodge in the woods, hoping to dispel pity-party blues. Gothic possession antics are triggered by a Ouija board game. Cartoonish malevolence is faced by heroine Michelle (AnnaMaria Demara), in bouts of scaredy-cats versus snarly-bitches, for silly comedy to brighten the sketchy plot (just add one heroic ex-boyfriend) dullness, with a family mystery anchoring extended chase sequences. John Savage plays the red-herring lurker who rescues this offering from a stilted mishmash of zombie infectioneering and charmless
Evil Dead
tribute, as he capably guest stars to expose what’s what and who’s who, rising to the challenges of a demon slaying finale with a sackful of rolling heads.

I won’t pretend this clunker is worthy of recommendation but, if you are in a forgiving mood and have plenty of booze to hand, it’s a watchable slice of paganist nonsense boasting unintentional character jokes, haywire story developments, and a few surprisingly effective jumpy moments. This should entertain, for an hour or more, in the esteemed B-movie tradition.

“She could play the harpsichord like no other woman,” remarks widower Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price), but his crushing bereavement is only a state of mind in Edgar Allan Poe’s
PIT AND THE PENDULUM
(Blu-ray, 19 May). Dwelling so much upon creepy obsession, and living in the morbid past, Roger Corman’s picturesque sense of oppressive atmosphere, here centred on a Spanish cliff-top castle, follows his Poe-cycle launcher
The Fall of the House of Usher
(
Black Static
#36), and screenwriter Richard Matheson leaves viewers with little doubt that Poe’s worldview lacks any future that his typically haunted characters might look forward to.

Under the dreadful weight of barbaric history, it is appropriate that inquisitional terrors of mechanical/spiritual nature are revealed in tinted flashbacks. Not satisfied with Don Medina’s reluctant explanations about his beloved Elizabeth (Barbara Steele) being simply ‘frightened to death’, the ‘dead’ wife’s brother investigates, discovering much overly theatrical melodrama leading to the genre custom of exhumation. Vengeance duly arrives with a sympathetic thunderstorm and the parting shot delivers a hysterical but silent scream of despair. While the twisty plot offers a very specific ending, the nightmarish comeuppance it conjures goes on and on – but not as lingering continuance of gloomy life, just the anguish of being stuck in a death trap. Oh, yes…those dark eyes still have it.

The hi-def transfer of this 1961 production is excellent, and the disc comes with a couple of commentary tracks to reward further viewings.

From the diurnal cycle and circadian rhythms comes our human penchant for redoing everything, including meal times, sleeping patterns, and varied anniversaries. If the zeitgebers of chrono-biology control social behaviours and genetics, why not also include psychology, language, culture, and the fields of art and entertainment? Yes, it’s only the illusion of freewill that is driving filmmakers to remake movies. Whether the projects are seemingly chosen as personal favourites now deemed worthy of revision, neglected classics apparently in need of updating for the modernist pulse of zeitgeist concerns, or simply a money-raking spin-doctoring of re-scripted themes, it often feels like over a century of genre cinema means everything new is just a rehash of something else. The differences between before and after, and between the recent past and the near futures, appear to be closing faster than ever.

A decade after the super-heroics of Stephen Sommers’
Van Helsing
, here’s Stuart Beattie’s
I, FRANKENSTEIN
(Blu-ray/DVD, 26 May), with its urban- gothic/modern fantasy of stoical demon-bashing by the patchwork immortal without a soul. If the comicbook-derived
Hellboy
can succeed as a monster hunter/slayer following the super-team model, this franchistein variant of the wandering loner and killer seems eager to please as a ‘hell-bloke’ made good. Zombie champion Adam (Aaron Eckhart) is recruited by the sometimes stony-faced matriarch Leonore (Miranda Otto,
War of the Worlds
remake, Eowyn in
Lord of the Rings
sequels), the angelic queen of a righteous order of gargoyle vigilantes occupying a besieged cathedral. Adam Frankenstein – as our hero becomes known – is being targeted for experiments by demon prince Naberius (Bill Nighy, doing his level best not to look bored here), conducted in secret labs by a human-pet scientist named Terra Wade (Yvonne Strahovski, co-star of TV’s
Chuck
), whose re-animation research is destined to enable Nab’s army, ready for possession apocalypse. When evil plans to win the eternal war erupt into fiery battles on the night-city streets, at least the spectacular visual effects provide us with a welcome break from the most horrendously clichéd dialogue scenes of mouldy-prune comicbook-styling we have seen for many a cyclical year. On paper, it looks less like storytelling and more like free-gift origami tat.