GhoulieJoe

Bill Condon’s ‘Gods and Monsters’ is Beautiful and Bittersweet

Fictionalized version of the last days of James Whale, director of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. It’s the 1950s, and Jimmy (Ian McKellen) is an old man now, having long been booted out of Hollywood for being openly gay. His mind is starting to go, leaving him with two options: not take medication, be overcome by memories and occasionally pass out, or take the medication and have trouble thinking coherently. His troubles are lessened by a friendship with his hunky gardener Clay (Brendan Fraser), but the past keeps coming back to haunt him.

The film is nowhere near classifiable as horror, but given that it’s about James Whale, that monsters are a continuous image system, and that Clive Barker is an executive producer, I feel good about including it here. Fans of Universal monster movies will enjoy a scene when a pesky acquaintance of Jimmy’s (Jack Plotnik) reunites him with Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester—the actors playing them look close to the real thing.

Jimmy is often equated with Frankenstein’s monster in the movie (for example a dream sequence when he’s the monster and Clay is the mad scientist), symbolizing his status as an outcast and his loneliness. He has a sort of boyfriend, but David (David Dukes) is very closeted and tends to scold Jimmy for not playing the game of acting heterosexual for the masses. Clay has a bond with him, but Clay’s grossed out and skittish about Jimmy’s sexuality. Which leaves his kooky live-in maid Hannah (Lynn Redgrave), who loves him, but thinks he’s going to hell.

It’s a sad movie, but there’s still quite a bit of humor, keeping it from being too depressing. Which is appropriate, since Jimmy (at least movie Jimmy) always meant his horror movies to be kinda funny. Check it out if you’re in the mood for monsters but not gore, or if you’d like to see a movie about a gay dude played by a gay dude and made by gay filmmakers for once.

‘Dead Friend’: A Nifty Korean Ghost Story

Korean movie, AKA The Ghost, AKA Ryeong. Ji-won (Ha-neul Kim) is a college student with amnesia. She starts having visions of an angry spirit coming to get her, but doesn’t remember what she did to cause it. She’s approached by Yu-jung (Hie-ju Jeon), one of her old friends from high school, who helps her gradually recall that she, Yu-jung, and their two friends Mi-kyung (Yi Shin) and Eun-seo (Hye-bin Jeon) were stuck-up and mean back then, particularly to a poor girl named Su-in (Sang-mi Nam), who mysteriously disappeared. As her friends start dying, Ji-won needs to uncover the rest of her past if she doesn’t want to join them.

I’m used to a higher level of quality from Eastern horror films than Western, so the occasional bouts of overacting in the film are disappointing, but forgivable. As per usual, there’s no romantic subplot; unlike in an American movie, Ji-won’s male platonic friend stays that way. (Though I’m still unsure why he’s there in the first place—he doesn’t do much of anything.)

There are some creepy moments, like when Eun-seo discovers her sink is clogged with a large mass of hair—ew! There are also some funny moments, like when Eun-seo’s teenage sister Eun-jung (not to be confused with Yu-jung) (Lee Yun-ji) and her friends play with a Ouija board: “Ask what’ll be on the finals.” “How will the ghost know that?” “Because it’s the ghost!” Check it out if you’re in the mood for something eerie, well-written, and with a neat twist.

‘From Within’ is Pretty Not Terrible

Lindsay (Elizabeth Rice) is a Christian teen in Small Town, USA. Suddenly, apparently because of a curse, teenagers are killing themselves faster than fashion dictates change. It seems that evil apparitions that look like the victims are killing them. The town points its collective finger at Lindsay’s schoolmate Aiden (Thomas Dekker), the son of a woman who was supposedly a witch. Lindsay and Aiden (to the displeasure of Lindsay’s staunchly right-wing boyfriend Dylan, played by Kelly Blatz) team up to solve the mystery.

From Within was recommended to me by my sister Leslie, who was interested in my take on it. My verdict is: annoying. I didn’t look kindly on the unlikable characters such as Lindsay’s drunken mother (or big sister, whatever she is) or the sanctimonious Dylan or even Lindsay—she struck me as whiny and helpless. Naturally I should like Aiden, who reminds me of the company I kept as a teenager—goth outsiders. Alas, I didn’t like him much either; maybe because he looks too much like Garth Brooks’s alter ego Chris Gaines. See?

In addition, there are plot issues like the question of how Aiden and his younger brother were supporting themselves after their only parent died, and why a witch would want to move to such a close-minded locale. Though the portrayal of witchcraft in the movie is inoffensive, it’s still hokey, and it’s clear no one did any research on actual witches.

from7 — Sybil Leek: awesome, but not theatrical enough, I guess

Gripes aside, I have to admit I liked it better the second time I saw it. It has a few creepy moments, for example when Lindsay’s friend Claire (Britt Robertson) is standing in the bathroom, gazing at herself in the mirror. Suddenly, Claire emerges from a stall, revealing that we had actually been looking at her doppelgänger. I like the disturbing twist ending; it concludes the movie with a bang. I also enjoy the irony that Aiden tries to protect Christian Lindsay with a magic spell.

fw7 — “The power of bullets compels you!”

The motif of the victims seeing look-alikes and reflections of themselves doing ghastly things is quite similar to Mirrors; I’m not sure whose idea was first, but I have to give credit to From Within for being released about four months earlier–though technically Mirrors is a remake of a Korean movie. Check it out if you’re in the mood for reflections and Jesus (and reflections about Jesus).

‘From a Whisper to a Scream’ is a Seedy Gorefest with a Little Social Upheaval–Love it!

Mid-’80s Vincent Price movie, AKA The Offspring; it’s told in four segments with a wraparound story. Having just witnessed the execution of a serial killer, reporter Beth (Susan Tyrrell) pays the dead woman’s uncle Julian (Price) a visit. He sits her down and explains how his town of Oldfield, Tennessee poisoned his niece’s mind by demonstrating with four case studies. The first is about Stanley (Clu Gulager), a man dangerously obsessed with his comely but disinterested co-worker Grace (Megan McFarland). The second concerns Jesse (Terry Kiser), a man running from debt who meets a powerful practitioner of voodoo (Harry Caesar). The third shows Steven (Ron Brooks), a carnival glass eater who falls in love with the wrong woman. The fourth takes place just after the end of the Civil War, with a corrupt Union captain (Cameron Mitchell) meeting the remnants of a war-torn Oldfield.

fam3 — “One thing I’ve learned, my dear, is that one is never too old for nightmares.”–actual quote

I give the film high marks for originality, as well as excellent acting and (for the most part—there is an animatronic puppet) good special effects. It gets quite gruesome; I was actually shocked several times, for example in the fourth segment when a group of children capture a man and stab him in the crotch (later they play a game with his dismembered body parts).

What I find most interesting about the movie is the lack of hegemonic (I got me a fancy college edu-ma-cation!) white male authority. Stanley is helpless before Grace, Jesse longs for the abilities of the Black voodoo master, Steven is not just controlled but literally owned by the carnival proprietor Snakewoman (Rosalind Cash), and the Oldfield children rebuild the town on the blood of adults. Many of the murder victims are men as well, and most of the typical crawling and groveling that is usually reserved for women is left to the men.

I watched this first with my sister Leslie, horror movie buddy extraordinaire, so it has the nostalgia factor for me. But I also genuinely appreciate it for what it is. Give it a look if you like good acting, realistic-looking fake blood, and social justice issues with your horror.

1985’s ‘Fright Night’: Sassy, Fabulous Vampires!

Not to be confused with the 2011 remake. Charley (William Ragsdale) is a normal teenage boy who likes to do teenage boy stuff, like try to score with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) while watching Fright Night, a TV show devoted to classic horror movies. His good times are disrupted by new neighbors Jerry (Chris Sarandon) and his boyfriend—er, buddy, Billy (Jonathan Stark). Charley discovers that Jerry is a vampire, but has difficulty convincing anyone else. Amy hires Fright Night host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) to prove Charley wrong, but Peter soon realizes Charley’s right. When Jerry kidnaps Amy, the two team up to stop him.

I suppose the most striking thing about the film is that it’s (intentionally or not) gay, gay, gay. Starting with the cast, we have Chris Sarandon, whose most memorable roles include playing Al Pacino’s husband in Dog Day Afternoon. Roddy McDowall was rumored to have been at least bisexual. Stephen Geoffreys, who plays Charley’s sorta friend Evil Ed, if not gay, has made a lot of gay porn. Amanda Bearse is gay. Then there are the characters. Ed is seduced (ahem, into being a vampire) by Jerry.

fn1 — “All you have to do is take my hand.” –actual quote

Amy is constantly telling Charlie to stop it when he tries to go all the way with her. She doesn’t seem scared, just disinterested. She’s later attracted to Jerry, but only because he’s using his vampire wiles. Jerry and Billy are at least partners in the sense of a symbiotic relationship: Jerry supplies him with power, while Billy protects him during the day. But they do seem to love each other, particularly in a scene when Billy comes up behind Jerry and embraces him, with one arm over Jerry’s shoulder and one arm across his chest. IMDB claims that writer/director Tom Holland wrote Jerry and Billy as subtextually gay, but not Ed. Too bad the remake shied away from the Billy idea entirely (but it’s not not gay).

If you want to indulge in the stereotype that gay men are good at doing hair and picking clothes, then consider that Amy’s transformation into a vampire includes shedding her ugly I-don’t-want-to-have-sex-with-my-boyfriend-duds (overalls! the girl wears overalls!) and wearing a sexy dress. She’s completely out of it, so presumably either Jerry or Billy dressed her. Her hair is also longer, for some reason. I picture the two guys off-camera, one fretting over hair and the other dashing off to find something that doesn’t make her look like a farmer. See the before and after:

Moving along, it’s pretty original, for a vampire movie. It’s funny and even a little creepy—when Amy becomes a vampire, she has a crazy warthog/shark face—see the movie poster. The makeup and special effects are pretty good for the mid-‘80s. The performances are decent aside from a bit of overacting (mostly on Sarandon’s part). Check it out if you’re in the mood for something retro and fun.

Tim Burton’s ‘Frankenweenie’: Wholesome Undead Canine Shenanigans

Not to be confused with the (godawful, hate it!) remake; this is one of Tim Burton’s early works. 10-year-old Victor (Barret Oliver) loses his dog Sparky when he’s hit by a car. Unbeknownst to his parents (Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern), he brings Sparky back to life a la Frankenstein. Unfortunately Sparky gets loose and the neighbors think he’s a monster. Before long, there’s an angry mob wanting to put Sparky back in his grave.

fw2 — It’s the neverending Spaaaaarky, ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah…

There are obvious homages to James Whales’s Frankenstein movies, both in plot and appearance. It’s shot in black and white, and at one point Sparky hides from the mob in a windmill (on a miniature golf course—too cute!). Though in terms of theme, I’m not sure what the moral lesson is (unlike with Frankenstein, it‘s not that reviving the dead is wrong—this works out pretty well here), though I suppose it involves not being judgmental and jumping to conclusions.

My only gripe about the movie (besides that it’s short—only 29 minutes) is that since it’s made by Walt Disney Productions, there’s a lot of shameless product placement crammed in. Otherwise, the actors are great, Sparky’s makeup is amazing, and it’s funny without being sappy. For example, my favorite quote: “I guess we can’t punish Victor for bringing Sparky back from the dead.” I just don’t understand why it’s called Frankenweenie, since Sparky is a bull terrier.

I don’t have many precautions for animal lovers, besides that a major plot point is a dead pet. The accident isn’t shown, nor do we see anything graphic like a mangled corpse. Check it out if you’re in the mood for something cute but horror-themed.

fw4 — Look, it’s Jason Hervey from *The Wonder Years*, Paul C. Scott, and Sofia Coppola!

Somehow all YouTube has are stuff from the remake and clips from either this scene or the scene when Sparky gets hit.

‘The Fourth Kind’ is Eerie, but Nowhere Near Based on a True Story

Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) is a psychologist in Alaska whose patients all seem to have repressed memories of being abducted by aliens. (The title comes from Allen Hynek’s scale for UFO experiences, being, respectively, sightings, physical effects, and the actual presence of aliens, though Hynek did not posit a fourth kind himself–thank you, Wikipedia. For the love of all that is holy, give them some money, folks.) Her home life is also complicated by the recent death of her husband, resulting in her daughter going blind and her son being hostile toward her. Her patients start exhibiting extremely erratic behavior, and one seems to be warning her to stop her investigation of the phenomenon. When Abigail’s daughter is abducted too, she’s at her wits’ end.

Ostensibly The Fourth Kind is based on a true story. The movie is inter-cut with supposed footage and sound clips from the “real” Dr. Tyler’s collection, along with interviews with Tyler by the director of the film, Olatunde Osunsanmi. IMDB claims the film is a hoax and has a filmography for the supposed “real” Abigail Tyler (Charlotte Milchard). Nevertheless, Milchard gives a smashing performance with her skeletal face and dead eyes.

While the footage of the “real” victims adds a sense of realism and is suitably creepy, it’s difficult to try to watch a continuous split-screen with two sets of audio. The film tries to be authentic, but now all I can see is hoax.

However, the film sticks in my mind as creepy even more than a decade after first seeing it. Give it a look if you’re in the mood for an interesting take on the extraterrestrial horror movie.

‘The Fly’ (1986) is More Emotionally Involving than the Original, but Much More Revolting–So, Standard ’80s Cronenberg

Seth (Jeff Goldblum) is a scientist working on teleportation. His girlfriend Veronica (Geena Davis) is chronicling his experiments for a book. After a lengthy process of figuring out how to transport live objects (without making them a bloody mess), Seth transports himself, inadvertently with a fly. He and the insect fuse together, causing Seth to mutate. At first, he’s pleased; he can do gymnastics and have marathon sex sessions. But then his nails, teeth, and even his ears fall off, his skin becomes gray and bumpy, and he has to eat like a fly, which involves dissolving his food. Emotionally, he becomes aggressive and insists Veronica leave him before he hurts her. Unfortunately she’s pregnant, and scared to have the baby. Meanwhile, an increasingly deranged Seth thinks he can weed out the fly genes if he splices himself with enough people, and sets his sights on Veronica.

fly4 — “Dammit, I’m more than just a sexy sexy man! I’m an actor!”

Ah, my very first David Cronenberg film. I feel he did a good job with this remake; in fact I don’t think anyone else should have done it—the radical altering of flesh is his specialty. There are major changes from the original, not the least of which are updating it scientifically (watch for Seth’s giant ‘80s computer), changing everyone’s names, and making the characters American instead of French. Of course he took out the fly crying “Help me! Help me!” but he replaced that iconic scene with the much-used phrase “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” I do miss Vincent Price, but Davis is always pleasant, and Goldblum gives a great performance as the “fly who dreamed he was a man.” Kudos to him for wearing what looks like ten pounds of makeup. I enjoy how oddly cheerful he is while mutating, and how excited, like the scene when he examines a mystery growth on his stomach: “Oh, look at this. What’s this? I don’t know.” I rarely consider remakes to be superior to the original (or even a good idea) but this one’s in gifted hands.

fly6 — Juuuust kidding. Here’s what we all came for.

This film has one of the worst gross-out moments I’ve ever seen. Seth is arm-wrestling a guy, and makes the bone pop out of his forearm. What makes it worse is the guy’s agonized screams (when I watched it last, my brother came in from another room to see what was going on). Check it out if you like Cronenberg’s tactics for disgusting happenings (but not for bizarre ones), and watch for him playing a surgeon.

1987’s ‘Flowers in the Attic’ is Disturbing but Delightfully Trashy

When her husband dies suddenly, Corrine (Victoria Tennant) has to pack up her four children: six-year-olds Carrie (Lindsay Parker) and Cory (Ben Ryan Ganger) and teenagers Cathy (Kristy Swanson) and Christopher (Jeb Stuart Adams), and reunite with her wealthy estranged parents, whom she hasn’t seen in 17 years because she married her uncle (yes, you read that right), and plead with them for somewhere to stay and maybe a place in the will again. Corrine’s cruel mother (Louise Fletcher) takes them in, but since her sickly husband is unaware that the children exist—and she wants to keep it that way—she decrees that the kids have to stay in one bedroom, with boys in one bed and girls in the other, without leaving or making noise. On the plus side, there’s a room in the attic they can escape to (and make paper flowers, hence the title). On the negative side, Corrine never visits, the lack of sunlight depletes their health, and they are being starved, prompting them to wonder if they’ll ever leave.

fa3 — The face of a woman you don’t want to piss off

It’s not technically a horror movie, but it is plenty horror-ish. The concept of a woman locking her inbred grandchildren away and slowly murdering them is quite disconcerting. Speaking of disturbing, the incest factor looms quite large in the foreground for the entire film. Besides Corrine’s marriage, there’s a scene when she begins to make amends with her parents by taking off her top in front of her dad—chest facing him—while her mom whips her. Cathy and Christopher don’t really seem interested in each other that way, but Christopher sure does like talking to Cathy while she’s in the bathtub, not to mention washing her back.

They also like sleeping in the same bed. Then there’s the uncomfortable scene when Christopher and Cathy try to escape by prying the bars off of the windows, as captured by subtitles: [Straining sounds] “Grab the bar, Cathy. That’s it. Yeah. Grab it. Pull, pull, Cathy.” Corrine seems jealous of Cathy (if you want to get Freudian, it’s like the Electra complex in reverse); the first scene shows her looking huffy that her husband bought a present especially for Cathy. She’s pretty creepy in general, like how she fills her kids’ heads with nonsense about how getting their grandparents’ money will make all their dreams come true. (I guess you could say a theme in the film is that money doesn’t make one happy—the ability to leave one’s bedroom does.) She’s unlikable from the beginning, and my favorite scene is when she slaps Cathy for being saucy, and Cathy slaps her back. I couldn’t find a still, gif, or YouTube clip of that scene, so here’s a clip of Cathy getting her ultimate revenge (*spoilers*):

There are a few other unpleasant aspects of the movie, particularly Kristy’s constant whining—the twins are positively mature next to her. The dialogue is terrible. There are some questionable points of the plot, for example how the children clean that filthy attic with nothing but a broom, and who does their laundry? And seriously, whose microscope is that? Great performances are given by most of the cast, particularly Fletcher, but Swanson had yet to come into her own as an actor. Check it out if you like dirty secrets better than gore.

‘Feardotcom’: Lovely, but Completely Nonsensical

Feardotcom(.com) is a website run by serial killer Alistair (Stephen Rea), who believes that “Reducing relationships to anonymous electronic impulses is a perversion.” His solution: kidnap young women and film himself torturing them until they beg to die, thus creating “intimacy with death.” Protagonist Mike (Stephen Dorff) is the detective who’s been hunting him for years. He meets Department of Health worker Terry (Natascha McElhone) while they’re both studying a series of bloody-eyed corpses. Turns out the fear site has been taken over by Jeannie (Gesine Cukrowski), the vengeful ghost of a victim, and she’s killing everyone who looks at it within 48 hours. Mike and Terry are left with one option: to enter the site themselves.

The more I watch Feardotcom, the more I appreciate the direction and cinematography (the film noir vibe is as puzzling as it is gorgeous) and the more I hate everything else, from the thinly veiled European accents of all the main actors but Dorff and Jeffrey Combs

(the movie was shot in Canada and Luxembourg, with actors from England, Germany, Ireland, and Sweden—thank you IMDB) to the waves of plot holes. Here’s a mere fraction of them: everyone who looks at the site dies of his or her worst fear—sorta. One girl was afraid of drowning, so she dies in a bathtub full of water. How Terry comes across this bit of information about the girl’s phobia is uncertain, since the girl is a German exchange student—did Terry call her friends and relatives and pump them for information on every single aspect of her life? The woman who’s afraid of insects sees a horde of them—and jumps out a window. Was the car she crash-lands on made of bugs? Jeannie kills everyone who looks at the site—which, according to Alistair’s hit counter, is in the tens of thousands; she’s gonna have a hell of a time getting to all those people within 48 hours. We find out through Jeannie’s (American-accented) mother that Jeannie (German-accented—huh?) was a hemophiliac who could bleed to death from a scratch in an hour without her medication, and thus was “scared to death of anything sharp.”

feardotcom2 — Every girl dreams of such a whimsical playhouse

But her favorite place to play as a child was an abandoned steel mill, where surely there is nothing pointy or dangerous. We find out Jeannie was cut and tortured by Alistair for two days (hence her victims’ time limit)—did Alistair give her hemophilia medication or what? And don’t get me started on how she was able to somehow get loose from her restraints, write a note on a piece of paper, put it in her lipstick tube, and swallow it. Aside from all that, the acting is decent (besides the previously mentioned fake American accents, which sound about as natural as Jeannie’s blond hair and black eyebrows look), the score by Nicholas Pike is appealingly ominous, and there are some creepy moments. There’s an interesting theme, it’s just poorly executed. I have to admit I saw it in the theatre twice, as it had kickstarted an epic crush on Stephen Rea. For some reason.

Despite my gripes, I’d say it’s worth at least one viewing for the visuals alone; don’t blame William Malone for the script—he just directed.