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Rob Zombie is probably the most divisive figure in the horror fan community in recent memory, but, if I remember correctly, “House of 1000 Corpses” was fairly well liked, at least by fans, upon premiere. The film had a protracted post-production and, if it had been released in 2001 as originally planned, before the turn of the century horror revival really started, it probably would have been even better received.
It’s a conflicted film and I’m tempted to say it’s not very good. Honestly, the movie is a lot like being inside the “Dragula” video for 88 minutes. (The movie even features the song-title-lending “Munsters” episode.) The stock footage, the psychedelic imagery, and the constant cutaway sequences certainly feels more like a Rob Zombie music video then the 1970s grindhouse fare the movie aspires to. This style has a twin effect of making the movie schizophrenic and borderline incoherent while also establishing an appropriately nightmarish tone early on. It’s distracting at first but, once we get to the titular house, it actually starts to work in the film’s favor. The Firefly family exists in its own exceedingly twisted world and this movie is willing to take you there. The movie is the product of a mind that has seemingly consumed nothing but old horror movies, southern hick culture, and drugs his entire life. If it was a better movie, I’d say it’s the apotheosis of low-culture, trash cinema.
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And thus we come to one of the main problems with Rob Zombie’s skills as a screenwriter. While he can write a great psychopath, his normal people come off as much less likable and well rounded. Jerry, the bearded one, is kind of an abrasive asshole and seems to do nothing but force his friends into more danger as the movie continues. Rainn Wilson’s character is clueless and any likable attributes he has are because of the performer, not the script. The two girls are indistinct from one another and defined solely by their relationships with their men. When the hard ass Tom Towles cop is the most interesting non-murderous character in your movie, you’ve got problems. So basically the middle section is about enjoying the mayhem, torture, and depravity the psychopaths inflict on these victims. Honestly, horror fans do that all the time in films like this but the torture and murder here is just grimy, explicit, and unlikable enough that this becomes a somewhat queasy, uncomfortable experience. (The rape, torture, and necrophilia performed upon the cheerleaders are the hardest bits to swallow.) Despite heavily referencing and featuring the Universal Monsters films, this as about as far removed from the benign horrors of those films as you can get. Having said that, the middle part of the film is probably the best, solely due the great cast. The movie sort of falls apart in the last act too, partially because the focus is shifted back to our victims, but primarily because the movie slips totally into incoherence. Why do the Fireflies have zombies in a cave system under their house? What’s the point of the weird, backwards tape they play? Why are their old guys in bunny suits wandering the caves? Are we to believe the Fireflies have really been killing and torturing people for that long, totally undetected? (The real reasons the old guys are there is to get our final girl out of her own bunny suit.) And while Dr. Satan is cool looking, his collection of retarded weirdoes makes for something of an anticlimactic final reveal. The movie descends totally into standard, slasher-chase stuff at the end before the obvious twist. Honestly, when your psychos are your movies main selling point, removing them from the story at the end leads to a weak end.
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I legitimately like this movie a great deal. Yes, the premise, essentially “Jaws” in the desert with a phantom car instead of a shark, is hokey. But the movie has likable characters, a laidback setting, some genuine thrills, and a unique main threat in its favor. Of course, I’m somewhat partial to car chase movies in general and killer car movies in particular.
Which is weird, because it’s not like I’m a motorhead or anything. Car culture kind of mystifies me, to be honest. I think why the killer car is such a good horror threat is because you’re way more likely to be killed by a car then you are by a vampire or werewolf or what have you. The titular Car in this film is a fantastic creation. First off, it just looks cool. Designed by the same guy who made the Batmobile and the Munsters Koach, the Car is specifically designed to make an everyday object look as threatening and sinister as possible. Its squat cab emphasizes the face of the car. The prominent headlights, wide grill, and angled hood gives the Car a glaring, grinning face, perfect to commit murder. Beyond being an excellent design, the Car just does cool shit, like flip onto its side and roll over two oncoming police cruisers. And if it’s possible, the vehicle is even driven in an expressive, personality filled way. Just look at the scene where, after being denied access to its victims because they’ve fled onto holy ground, the Car does donuts in frustration. Or the way he pushes and manipulates other vehicles around. This is why, despite being ridiculous, the Car works as a horror movie monster.
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So, whatever. Opinions differ but “The Car” is a goodie in my book. I think as long as you accept and get over the innate ridiculousness of the premise, you’ll enjoy it as well. (7.5/10)
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I love a good horror anthology. Amicus Production, the rival to Hammer Studios, got a lot of the same stars Hammer had but, in order to distinguish itself from that iconic studio’s output, it focused on and specialized in the anthology format. “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” was actually the first anthology film they ever did. It’s… Not as good as I remember.
The set-up is classic Amicus. Five guys get on a train car together, among them Christopher Lee and Donald Sutherland, and are soon joined by a strange man calling himself Dr. Shriek (Back when that name was associated with the German word for terror, not a CGI cartoon ogre.), played by a nicely ominous Peter Cushing. Using his deck of tarot cards, Dr. Terror proceeds to predict each of their futures, all of the predictions ending in violent death via supernatural creature.
The first three stories are a major drag. The opening sequence features an old house, an entombed werewolf, a family curse, and a kind of cool twist ending that’s sort of predictable. But the segment spends most of its time on set-up and only gets really good in the last few minutes. Following that is a story about murderous creeping vines. This story has a lot of droll scientific information in it, takes place mostly on one set, and has a seriously anticlimactic conclusion. The third story has the fun premise of a pop song writer stealing the melody to a voodoo ritual song. But it goes on way too long. Far too much of the segment is devoted to musical performances. It’s actually the longest story in the film and feels every minute of it. It does have a somewhat spooky walk down a darkened street and a decent conclusion.
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The framing device then concludes in a very memorable, darkly amusing way. (The same ending that Amicus would continue to use in many of their other horror anthology films.) Honestly, because of that ending, the cast, and the last two stories, I always remember “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” being a lot better then it actually is. The fact that the film has never been released on DVD and I watched it on my well worn, very dark VHS didn’t help any. While it’s the first one made, the best place to start if you want to get into Amicus horror is “Asylum” or “Tales from the Crypt,” two of the best films the company would make. (5/10)
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A very strange sequel. There’s no fly monster in this movie. The curse of the title refers to the Delambre family’s bad luck with teleporters. The movie also seems to heavily retcon the events of the first two films, letting Andre get out of the mishap of the first film unharmed and changing Philippe to Henri. (And into a huge asshole.) The fly DNA being mixed into the family bloodstream has caused Henri’s son to have accelerated aging and he must take a shot to prevent a sudden on-set of death. None of this information is given to us until well into the film itself. The movie starts with a scene of a woman in her underwear escaping from a mental institution in slow-motion. (While a slow paced, romantic version of the “Fly” theme plays.) Though Martin Delambre, his dad, and the teleportation technology enters the story soon afterward (After the crazy woman falls in love with Martin), the movie is mostly about this girl, a concert pianist recovering from a nervous breakdown. Either somebody had an unrelated screenplay he decided to latch to a sort-of-popular franchise, or somebody decided to take this series in a vastly new direction. Or they couldn’t afford a fly monster? Either way, “Curse of the Fly” is an odd film and definitely a product of the sixties.
If you’re thinking, “None of that sounds like a horror movie,” wait, there’s more. Martin and Henri have been experimenting with cross-Atlantic teleportation… And they have the stable full of mutants to prove it, among them Martin’s ex-wife. (Ex in the sense that he’s ignoring her now that she’s a mutant. They’re still technically married and this is a plot point.) While turning humans into deformed mutants and then treating them like animals is pretty evil, Henri insist they keep it up, “in the name of science.” Patricia, that’s escaped mental patient girl, is keeping her own secret from Martin and folks, making “Curse of the Fly” partially a film about secrets and how they can eat away at otherwise healthy relationships. An aged blind Inspector Charas from the first movie (though played by a different actor) shows up briefly as well, just to tell us some back story.
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It’s weird that after a huge hit like this, that Neil Marshall would kind of disappear. Was “Doomsday” really that big of a bomb? I haven’t seen “Centurions” but it didn’t look very interesting. “The Descent” remains as effective now as it was upon release. What’s really exciting about the film is that this is a monster movie that didn’t need any monsters at all. If this had just been a movie about a group of girls lost in a perilous, unexplored cave system it would have been just as good and probably just as exciting. There’s a solid hour of claustrophobic suspense before the Crawlers even show up. The scenes of Sarah getting stuck in the collapsing cave or the sequence of Holly falling and shattering her leg are particularly harrowing.
But once the monsters do show up, the film really ramps up into frenzied terror. One of the things I've always admired about “The Descent” is that, despite being shot on sets, it feels like it was shot in a real cavern. Never once do you feel like the characters are in a false environment. The darkness and red light of flares makes it clear that our protagonists are not in their own world. This puts them at a definite disadvantage to begin with and, when the Crawlers appear, it becomes clear just how defenseless they can be. Why I don’t think they’re super original designs, the gray, shrieking, skittering Crawlers are effectively creepy horror movie monsters. The movie makes it clear that anybody who faces these things unprepared is going to meet a nasty end. After establishing the creatures as a threat, the movie then delights in putting our characters in constant peril from them. More then once, someone has to keep absolutely still and quiet while a monster sniffs around them. It’s an old trick but it works, and never better then here.
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The cast is strong, even if only about four of the girls get any real decent development. Sam and Rebecca are mostly Crew Members 5 and 6, to be honest. The boisterous, adrenalin junky Holly has always been my favorite character. The movie seems to intentionally design her as the most fun character, since Sarah’s in morning, Juno’s somewhat duplicitous, and Beth is mostly the mediator between the rest of the group. But because this is a horror movie, a particularly uncompromising one, the most likable character is the one who bites it first. (Pun.) Holly essentially fills the same role Burt Reynolds did in “Deliverance,” the person you’d think would be the most help and the big hero in the story who actually ends up becoming useless fairly early on. Shauna MacDonald and Natalie Mendoza also give very good performances as Sarah and Juno. These are the two characters that really shape the world of the film after all and drive the plot forward.
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Basically “Danse Macabre: The TV Special.” While I’m not exactly a huge Stephen King fan, the guy is knowledgeable about the genre he works in. (And should really only talk about his own genre. His “Entertainment Weekly” column was often excruciatingly tin-earred.) To listen to him chat about his favorite horror films or his opinion on the facets of the genre in general is basically like just sitting down with another fan and chatting with them. The way he compares the “I Was a Teenage…” series of the fifties with the modern “Twilight” fad is an interesting thought and I generally agree with his assessment of the vampire genre. I also find myself agreeing with his disinterest with the “gore-for-gore’s sake” spectacle that rules the genre today, even if I think it’s perfectly all right to relate too and route for the killers and psychos in movies. The anecdotes about him first seeing “Carrie” in an urban theater full of large black men or watching “Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers” as a child only to have the showing interrupted by the news of Sputnik’s launch are anecdotes he’s told before. But they’re good stories and ones well worth hearing again.
What’s really fun about this special is hearing King’s opinions on the adaptations of his own work. It’s good to know he holds “Cujo” and “Christine” in such high regard, two adaptations I’ve always thought were underrated. His frankness about his dislike of Kubrick’s “The Shining” and his performance in “Creepshow” are interesting and refreshing. Despite his massive fame, King has always come off as a generally laidback sort of person. While wholly inessential, “The Horrors of Stephen King” is a fun little feature. Turner Classics Movies is good at this kind of thing. (7/10)
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When you’re a nerd, wither it be a horror, movie, comic book, or anime nerd, you probably find yourself sitting down and making up a mental list, if not an actual list, of all the stuff you consider essential to the genre. It’s either a list of all the stuff you need to see but haven’t seen yet or a list of all the stuff you think you have to see before you can call yourself a proper fan. In my on-going journey through the horror genre that I’ve been on for about twelve years now, there aren’t too many essential films left that I haven’t seen all ready. Lots of obscurities or hidden gems, sure, but not too many have-to-sees. “The Innocents” is one such film that has escaped my sights until tonight.
I watched this at 2 in the morning and it’s getting super late, so I don’t have a super lot to say about this one. I also think I need to re-watch it to absorb all the layers and subtleties there. But I can tell this is an excellent film. Deborah Kerr gives a wonderful performance as a repressed woman who, by trying to save a pair of children from a perceived threat, actually says more about her own conflicted faith and repressed sexuality. Martin Stephens, who would go on to play the exact opposite side of the “horror movie kid” scale in the original “Village of the Damned,” gives maybe one of the best performances from a young child I’ve ever seen. His character is an old soul, somebody very young who seems to know quite a bit, and Stephens himself seems like one as well.
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“The Innocents” is, overall, a hugely successful mood piece. The shadowy atmosphere, provided by future Hammer and Amicus director Freddie Francis, is extraordinary and the movie makes great use of music and sound design. I really should have seen this one sooner. With this and “The Haunting,” 1961 was a good year for ghost stories. (9/10)
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Oh, well. Better luck next year, I guess. More updates coming soon. And I mean it this time.
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