Halloween 2020: October 26th

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

If you look at any long list of essential horror films, or movies that had a huge impact on the genre, eventually you're going to see “Cannibal Holocaust” mentioned. The most (in)famous film of the Italian cannibal wave, it is widely considered the first found footage movie. Moreover, the film's utter brutality has made it one of the most widely censored, banned, and controversial motion pictures ever made. It's the kind of movie even hardened horror fans refuse to watch, largely due to including real life footage of animal cruelty. Over the years, I've been one of those people. Yet curiosity – as well as a desire to max out all those aforementioned lists – was going to get the best of me eventually. If I was going to watch the movie, it would have to be during October so I could get a review out of it. Because I have no intention of watching this thing more than once. Let's sink our teeth in.

A group of American filmmakers head into the Amazon rain forest to make a documentary about local cannibal tribes. They are never seen again. Professor Harold Monroe heads into the Amazon in hopes of discovering what happened. After witnessing numerous acts of brutality and cannibalism performed by the locals, Monroe retrieves the unopened film cans. Reviewing the footage with television executives, who intend on airing it, Monroe discovers what exactly went down in the Green Inferno: Filmmaker Alan Yates and his team terrorized, raped and murdered the tribes-people in order to stage footage for their sensationalist film... The same film that would eventually document their own brutish deaths. 

Sometimes he says he was just making a movie about cannibals but director Ruggero Deodato usually says “Cannibal Holocaust” is meant to be a criticism of the media. Specifically, the coverage of the Red Brigades terrorist group in the seventies, which focused on the lurid details of the crimes, inspired him. That much is obvious, in the choice to turn the documentary filmmakers into completely vile characters. Similarly, the network executives who screen the footage realize something this shocking could make them a lot of money. “Cannibal Holocaust's” thuddingly obvious social commentary doesn't end there. The movie wants us to wonder who is the real savage, those in civilized society or the people living in the jungle? That's almost word-for-word the final line of the movie. No shit the raping imperialists are equally, if not more, evil than the brutal cannibals. (Who certainly perform lots of rape and murder of their own throughout the film.)

Yet this extremely heavy-handed commentary is the not most interesting thing about “Cannibal Holocaust.” This is a movie about the subjective reality of the moving image, an obvious reaction to the mondo film fad of the previous decade. Before Monroe watches the footage of the doomed voyage, he watches an earlier film by Yates, depicting atrocities in war-torn Africa. All of that footage, Monroe learns afterwards, was staged. The horrors Yates reaps in the Amazon is to create dramatic footage for his film. The real context – that he started the fires or provoked the killings – is stripped away. The supposedly objective quality of the camera's eye is removed. “Cannibal Holocaust” itself participates in this game. The found footage of cannibals killing white people is fake. It stands alongside real scenes of animals being slaughtered, shot in the same style. Deodato wanted people to think all the violence was real and he successfully blurs the lines. (So well, the Italian government wanted to put him in jail for murder.) At its best, “Cannibal Holocaust' is a movie about how images – and, by extension, reality itself – are inherently mutable. 

Clearly, “Cannibal Holocaust' is clever and raises some extremely interesting questions about the power of cinema. Does that justify the sickening content of the film? Early on, a native Amazonian brutally defiles and kills an adulterous woman. More rape occurs during a battle between rival tribes. Yet more sexual assault goes down in the found footage. The film also depicts a tribal abortion, a steaming fetus pulled out of a woman and buried in the mud. The movie is obviously super racist too, depicting indigenous people as either simpletons or horrible killers. As vulgar as these moments are, the real animal deaths are obviously far more disturbing. A coatimundi screams as it's stabbed and cut open. A pig spasms after being shot in the head. A squirrel monkey's face slowly slides off after being hit with a machete. Most vile is the infamous turtle sequence. The reptile's flippers kick as it's decapitated, its body chopped apart, its guts splashed about. The men disrespectfully play with its still warm, twitching remains. This goes on for several minutes. I eat animals but I had to look away. I couldn't take it. The excessive, in-your-face sadism is too much. It's fucking revolting.

So is this protracted on-screen butchery justified? I wish I had a good answer to that question. The truth is “Cannibal Holocaust” is horrifying. The framing device is awkward and needlessly muddles the presentation. The unending sleaziness, which entails constant nudity and sex and mud caked to naked body parts, is exhausting. Since most of its characters are evil, the film feels nihilistic. Yet, when it gets down to it, this is a uniquely scary movie. The gory effects are not always convincing but frequently sickening. The found footage finale, in which the film crew are torn apart by the cannibals, is terrifying. The shaky camera work, far-off shooting, and incoming hordes of pissed-off cannibals creates a real sense of enclosing doom. When scored with Riz Ortolani's equal parts serene and foreboding score, these scenes only become more disturbing. There's a rare, distressing power to “Cannibal Holocaust's” climax that has never been replicated by the countless found footage films it influenced. 

Simply put, “Cannibal Holocaust” is one of the most unpleasant movies I've ever seen. I actually considered becoming a vegetarian for five minutes after watching it. That's how much it grossed me out. I watched the Last Drive-In version on Shudder and Joe Bob Briggs' cuddly host segments are the only thing that got me through. As much as I definitely did not enjoy the movie, as repugnant and obnoxious as I found it, I must respect Deodato's skills. I think he achieved exactly what he set out to do, creating an utterly depraved exploitation movie that is still too powerful to ignore. And now that I've conquered “Cannibal Holocaust,” I guess I have no excuse not to watch other notorious films I've long sworn off, like “A Serbian Film” or “Men Behind the Sun.” Until I cross those moral thresholds, “Cannibal Holocaust” is a rare example of a movie I think I hated that I'm still going to give a begrudgingly positive score to. [7/10]

Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (1988)

Since I've always loved spooky stuff, you might assume I'm a fan of “Scooby-Doo.” You wouldn't be entirely wrong. I've seen many episodes but rarely loved them. Even as a kid, I found the narrative's formulaic, the humor pedestrian, and the animation cheap. As an adult, I appreciate the show educating children to be skeptical of the supernatural. As a kid, I just wanted the monsters to be real. Which might be why the eighties incarnations of “Scooby” interested me more back then. “The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo” is controversial among Scooby nerds, for removing Fred and Velma. Similarly, a trio of TV movies from 1988 – made during a rare break in the show's production history – are also sometimes disparaged for cutting the cast down further. Yet “Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School” was perhaps my favorite incarnation of “Scooby-Doo” as a kid and has other fans. I can recall being extremely excited when the film debuted on Cartoon Network in the late nineties. Let's see if this one holds up to my childhood recollections.

Having left the rest of Mystery Inc. behind, Shaggy has gotten a job as a gym teacher at Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls. Scooby and Scrappy-Doo naturally tag along. Upon arriving, Shaggy and Scooby are terrified to discover that the school is occupied with the daughters of famous monsters. Sibella, Winnie, Elsa, Tanus, and Phantasma frightened the duo but, quickly enough, Shaggy and Scoob grow fond of them. (Possibly because their monstrous dads threaten them into taking good care of them.) The duo lead the girls in their rivalry with the all-boys military academy next door. Later, a monstrous witch named Revolta appears to brainwash and kidnap the girls, our heroes working to protect them.

“Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School” is up to the standard of quality you associate with eighties Hanna-Barbera productions. Which is to say it's a mediocre product, quickly churned out. The colors are drab. The animation is stiff. The story is episodic, to be kind. For most of its run time, “Ghoul School” simply has Scooby and Shaggy running through various scenarios: teaching a dance class, a volley ball game, an encounter with a one-eyed sea monster. A long sequence involving an evil reflection of Shaggy is especially baffling. The jokes are, as you'd expect, childish. Over the course of its overlong ninety-three minute runtime, “The Ghoul School” unleashes one lame pun after another. Even more uninspired are the physical gags, which are also as obvious as can be. This is a motion picture clearly targeted at the most undiscerning of kiddy audiences, from a time when the standards for children's television were much lower.  

Hanna-Barbera spent most of the eighties trying to keep the “Scooby-Doo” franchise alive through increasingly desperate means. While some of these attempts have become cult classics, I can see why some long-term fans were alienated. Scooby and Shaggy do all the shit you expect. They flee in terror, eat lots of food, and mispronounce words. Yet they are many scenes that do not feature those guys at all. The sequences devoted to the military school boys are especially terrible. The boys cheat at sports, yet we are suppose to like them. Mostly, they are all indistinct stereotypes, culturally diverse but tone-deaf. So there's a black kid, a Latino kid, a smart one, a fat one, etc. The movie's villain is equally uninspired. Revolta is creepy looking but doesn't actually do anything. Once she successfully brain-washes the monster girls, she simply has them clean for her. You'd think she would use that technology for more nefarious goals. She's still to busy doing whatever it is she does, dictating most of the work to her even lamer sidekicks. 

If “Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School” is painfully unfunny, lazily written, and poorly animated, why do some people recall this movie with fondness? The monster girls are really cute. Sibella, Dracula's daughter, has an appealing design, peppers her speech with vampire puns, and seems friendly enough. I definitely had a small crush on her as a boy. Winnie the wolf girl is rambunctious. Tanus the little mummy is adorably tiny. Phantasma the ghost girl has a manic streak and wears bitchin' go-go boots. Elsa Frankenteen is probably my least favorite, owing to her awkward design and doofy voice. The girls even have a cute little dragon pet named Matches, who is amusingly cranky. The cadre's antics are uninspired as anything else from the movie. Yet they are undeniably the most charming thing about the movie. Especially in the scenes where they interact with their dads, all of whom crack lame puns of their own. (Though the movie gets credit for giving Frankenstein and the ghost Karloff and Lorre style voices, respectively.)

Unsurprisingly, “The Ghoul School” owes most of its cult following to the creepy school girls. There's something irresistibly amusing about the combination of cutesy cartoon girls and the classic monster archetypes. (Though I'm afraid to do image searches for any of them, least I discover any perverse fan art.) Considering the amount of attention that was obviously devoted to their designs, I'm not shocked to read that Hanna Barbera toyed with giving them a spin-off. Decades later, the “Monster High” franchise would run with the same idea to far more success. “The Ghoul School” came first, which is about all it has going for it. Watching this cartoon was largely an embarrassing, tedious experience. Damn, Kid-Me would enjoy anything if it had the slightest spooky vibe. [5/10]

Beginning of the End (1957)

The Pop culture of my childhood, in attempts to appeal to my parent’s generation via boomer nostalgia, often mocked the B-movies of the fifties. As a kid, I was led to believe that every six or eight-legged creature starred in an atomic age horror flick. The truth is, the big bug fad was pretty short-lived. Giant-sized ants, spiders, scorpions, and a praying mantis menaced the world but there were few jumbo creepy crawlers beyond that. No cockroach ate Cincinnati, no enormous katydid ravaged Seattle. However, great big grasshoppers did attack Chicago. “Beginning of the End” was the first Bert I. Gordon film about small things becoming large, a premise he would soon specialize in. It’s widely regarded as one of the worst big bug movies. I’ll be the judge of that!

The small town of Ludlow, Illinois is reduced to rubble overnight, its citizens lost. The military is baffled and, in hopes of preventing a panic, stop reporter Audrey Aimes from writing about it. She meets with scientist Dr. Ed Wainwright, who is using radiation to grow enormous vegetables. After discovering a similarly wrecked grain warehouse, Ed and Audrey discover the culprit of this destruction. Locust, fed on Wainwright’s radioactive plant food, have grown to enormous size. They alert the military but they can do little to stop the swarm. Soon, the grasshoppers are descended on Chicago. It’s up to Dr. Wainwright to stop this tide if hopping doom before the government nukes the whole city. 

Bert I. Gordon is well known for his low budget methods of filmmaking. This is proudly on display in “Beginning of the End.” For the majority of its run time, the giant grasshoppers are kept off-screen. We see a crunched up car in the second scene. But that small town that is munched by the locust? We never actually see it. The grain silo the big bugs raid? We only see some loose wreckage in a field. Gordon is also good at beefing up his story's scope with stock footage. Footage of tanks rolling through a forest, soldiers leaping out of trucks with bazookas, or military rolling up on a location are all clearly recycled from other sources. Say what you will about Mr. B.I.G. but he knew how to stretch out his meager resources. 

Which is probably for the best, as “Beginning of the End's” actual special effects are about as underwhelming as you might expect. The enormous locusts are brought to life via crude split screen and rear projection gags. Often, we see grasshoppers walking through the area or looming behind potential victims. These shots are repeated several times, including one scene where a grasshopper peers through a window at the unaware woman within. (A gag stolen directly from “Tarantula.”). This forces the actors to acted horrified, screaming and overdoing it with their hands as the off-screen grasshoppers barrel down on them. Which is pretty funny. When not using crude camera tricks, “Beginning of the End” has regular grasshoppers crawling over paper cut-outs of famous Chicago landmarks. This might've worked for a brief shot but the film focuses on it, drawing attention to the cheesy effect.

“Beginning of the End's” trashy cheapness is, in fact, part of its appeal. The script is obviously ridiculous. In the beginning, the grasshoppers are seemingly impervious to bullets. By the end, Peter Graves is blasting them away with machine guns left and right. The dialogue doesn't quite reach Woodian levels of oddness but the way it repeats exposition is amusingly stiff. If you're a fan of fifties B-movies, the multiple shots of a stout-chinned scientist and a brassy lady reporter conferencing in boardrooms is likely to give you the warm-and-fuzzies. Peter Graves, years before starring on “Mission: Impossible” but one year after appearing in “It Conquered the World,” is an ideal pick for the role of a fifties B-movie hero. He never cracks up, even when looking down a giant grasshopper in a big fish tank. 

Despite the lack of on-screen big bug action and many talky moments, “Beginning of the End” rarely drags. It's too goofy throughout to be boring. Unlike creepy spiders, intimidating ants, or threatening praying mantis, grasshoppers simply aren't very scary. “Beginning of the End” fails as a horror movie but succeeds as a comedy. The underwhelming climax, the locusts being killed off so swiftly and in such a simple fashion, even makes the whole movie into a 72 minute punchline. Naturally, “Beginning of the End” has been mocked over the years, on “The Simpsons” and “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Yet it was also a money-maker in 1957, proving Gordon's abilities and earning him his next job of “The Amazing Colossal Man.” When viewed in the right mood, this one is some grasshoppery fun. [7/10]

Retch (2018)

Here’s another choice cut from Alter. “Retch” concerns a pair of women, one of which is laying on the floor, going into spasms. She trembles, wretches, and vomits. The other woman searches desperately for some sort of medication. She finds it but it’s too late: The transformation has begun. The sick woman is confine to a locked room in the basement. She begins to convulse, her bones twisting. Her hair falls out, she peels her skin off, and slime leaks from every pour. What is happening to Sonia? “Retch” never says but it does have a pretty unexpected ending.

Filmmaker Keir Siewert clearly made “Retch” to show off his prowess. The short immediately drops us into a tense situation. The music pounds, establishing a frantic mood right from the start. Siewert utilizes a number of flashy visual techniques. This includes split-screen, as Sonia shakes on the floor and the other woman searches for the drugs. There’s some nice use of light, shadow, and color as the red-tinted dungeon is revealed. There’s also some blurry shaky-cam closer to the end,  as the transformation grows more severe. On my first watch, I was convinced “Retch” was one of those shorts that are trying too hard to be disturbing. Characters scream profanity. There’s lots of gross body horror and slime covered special effects. It’s all a bit overdone... Until the pitch perfect ending, which wraps the four minutes up on a sarcastic joke. That moment raised “Retch” in my esteem, taking it from a try-hard gross-out to an amusing metaphor for menstruation. [7/10]