When banner ads for the DVD release of director Tom Six's notorious mad science tale The Human Centipede first appeared on several of the movie sites I frequent, I paid them no special mind - outside of idly wondering if I'd ever get around to watching this tale of a sicko surgeon with too much time on his hands (I probably won't). But the more I kept seeing them, with their animated diagram of three people on their hands and knees joined in the manner that the film's title promises with the accompanying text of "3 Humans, 1 Tract," it occurred to me that these ads - in which there's even a helpfully illustrative arrow that enters through the mouth of the first person, and moves all the way out the ass of the last person (see below) - were a hell of a thing to be blasé about. I mean, I know that I'm pretty desensitized but when did so much of the rest of the world go down that path, too?
Years ago, a movie like The Human Centipede would've only been known - and whispered about - by the most hardy and dedicated connoisseurs of the bizarre. Only by patronizing the seediest of theaters or scouting the bootleg tables at conventions would one ever come across the likes of The Human Centipede. This is a film that once would've had to fight to exist and then fight even harder to reach its audience. Now it's a freak show that's as easy to obtain as clicking on an ad. You don't have to actively seek this stuff out anymore, you don't even have to be a knowledgeable movie junkie to be aware of it. Someone going to Shock Till You Drop to check out the latest news on Breaking Dawn can be instantly introduced to The Human Centipede. And if you don't buy it online, you'll see it stocked in plain sight on your next trip to Best Buy, or Target (for more on that, check out this recent post from my fellow Horror Dad, Dennis Cozzalio, over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule).
I grew up during a time when slasher movies were regularly targeted by angry picketers and were the subject of offended screeds by movie critics. Now, apparently, you can make a movie where people have their mouths sewn to other people's asses and it's no big deal. This doesn't outrage me, it just astonishes me.
Once upon a time, The Human Centipede would've been a strictly underground sensation. Now you can get it out of a Redbox at your local supermarket. What used to be only fit to exist on the outer fringes of cult culture is now part of pop culture. I never would've imagined that a movie like this would be made - and so widely available - with barely a peep of controversy but now I have to think we're not too far off from seeing Human Centipede: The TV Series.
Denial plays a big part in my outlook as a horror fan. You can call it optimism, if you like, but denial is closer to the truth. Optimism is when you have no facts to go on but yet, based on a sense of faith, you still hold high hopes for whatever new situation you're facing. Denial is when you're given cold hard facts but choose not to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
You see, even when a movie has every sign of being atrocious, I convince myself that it might actually turn out to be good. I'm so adept at bending my head around reality that I'm ready to believe a movie that has been on the shelf for ages, gone through multiple reshoots, post-production 3-D conversion and a title change to boot might actually be a winner.
So even though Wes Craven's latest outing, My Soul To Take, fit all of the above criteria to a "T" and was also denied critics's screenings, I still figured that Wes wouldn't let me down. Having now watched My Soul To Take, though, I realize that I didn't have the one crucial piece of information beforehand that really would've told me what was up. I knew about the troubles with the movie, sure, but what I didn't know is that Wes Craven had totally lost his mind.
It's a big surprise to all of us, I know. I mean, he's produced two of the best remakes of recent years - The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and The Last House on the Left (2009) - so you don't think a guy like that is going to make a movie like My Soul To Take but there you go. It's a crazy world we live in, that's for sure.
Seriously, I don't even know where to begin with this one but here goes: a serial killer called the Riverton Ripper is found out by the police and killed during an escape attempt. On the night he was killed, seven children - including his own son - were born. Sixteen years later, these kids have to contend with the frightening possibility that the Ripper's soul may be living inside one of them.
I like the basic set-up. Unfortunately, Craven went off the deep end with the telling of his tale. The biggest problem is that no one in this film behaves as though they come from this planet. There's a disconnect from reality here that's just jarring. For example, at the high school, everything that happens is controlled by "Fang," (Emily Meade) an adolescent dictator who has her doting minions inexplicably following her every instruction - even down to administering daily beatings (referred to as "punitives" in the film) to those that Fang deems deserving. Fang is still in high school at age nineteen, by the way. This is usually the kind of person that would be roundly mocked as a loser, not be calling the shots. We're also supposed to believe that for a school show and tell session, two of the Riverton Seven - the troubled, possibly schizo, Bug (Max Thieriot) and his best bud Alex (John Magaro) - create an elaborate California Condor costume, one that's capable of spewing fake vomit and shit on their classmates. I know that at age 70 or whatever, Craven is a long way from his teen years but his bizarre - almost surreal - take on high school life is worrisome.
Then there's the issue of the identity of the Ripper, a mystery that's never engaging. Maybe because the movie is so full of nonsense, it never seems worth getting interested in unravelling the story. After all, how much can you care about what happens in a film when a blind character - Denzel Whitaker as Jerome - is able to make it unassisted to someone's house, climb a rope into a second story bedroom window, and fight the Ripper? We don't see any of this happen, mind you, we just have it related to us in a lengthy monologue from Jerome after he's been discovered severely wounded in the closet.
Listening to Jerome's credulity-defying (as well as dramatically inert) description to Bug of how he ended up in his closet, all I could think of is "why the hell is this character even blind to begin with?" Not only does Jerome's disability not play any role in the plot but thanks to Craven apparently not understanding what the hell "blind" means only adds to the sense that Craven is off his nut. Yes, I know that blind people are very capable and they can do a lot without any assistance but come on now. Maybe Craven got all his info on the blind from watching Daredevil, I don't know.
I'd like to be able say it's heartening that MSTT is the rare modern horror film with a real personality to it. As a bid to try and launch another franchise character there's some obvious market-minded thinking involved but yet this isn't the processed garbage found in a Platinum Dunes remake - it's evident that Craven is pouring some real spirit into his work. There's plenty of talk about the human soul and of good and evil and morality that make it clear that even after all these years of toiling in the genre that horror isn't just an easy buck for Craven. He cares, he respects his audience, and he's still putting a little of his deeper self into his films. This is the first original script he's penned since 1994's A New Nightmare and it fully bears his imprint. But then there's the inescapable fact that it's lousy.
Craven has always gotten into trouble the more metaphysical his material is. Down and Dirty is where Craven shines (The Hills Have Eyes, The People Under The Stairs). Anything Goes Craven (Shocker, this crap), not so much.
There's a germ of a good movie here but Craven never finds it past the clutter of his ideas and his faltering dramatic instincts. I did like some of the performances, Emily Meade in particular. But overall, My Soul To Take is just Too Much To Take.
There's no William Shatner mask and no Rob Bottin FX but Prince of Darkness (1987) is a John Carpenter joint that is essential to my JC love. Although its title conjures expectations of a classic depiction of Satan complete with horns and cloven hooves, Carpenter went for the unfamiliar instead.
When an aging priest dies on the eve of a pressing appointment, a long-kept secret of the Catholic church involving 'The Brotherhood of Sleep' is revealed to a fellow priest (the much-missed Donald Pleasence). This secret hidden in the basement of the abandoned St. Goddard's church is so ghastly, and the importance of unraveling its implications so pressing, he must reach out to physics professor Howard Birak (the also much-missed Victor Wong) to help grapple with the enormous danger at hand.
Birak corrals a group of his brightest students (including Jameson Parker, Lisa Blount, Dirk Blocker, and Dennis Dun) to stay at the church for a weekend to study the mysterious canister of green, glowing liquid stored in the basement of St. Goddard's church and determine the nature of its swirling contents firsthand as well as translate an ancient book that records its history.
This examination will not prove to be an easy task - X-rays reveal that the canister is fitted with a locking mechanism that only can be opened from the inside, so no direct samples can be taken. Even worse is that everything about this liquid defies all accepted notions of science. As the contents of the container grow in power, it psychically extends its will and possesses the group of students and academics (as well as an army of street people, led by rocker Alice Cooper).
Written by Carpenter under the pseudonym of Martin Quatermass (in a nod to Nigel Kneale, writer of the Quatermass series), Prince of Darkness was the director's much-anticipated return to low budget horror after discouraging experiences with big projects such as The Thing (1982) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). That he choose to play to his strengths and make Prince of Darkness a siege film in the manner of his acclaimed Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is not surprising. What is surprising is the level of earnest philosophizing that finds its way into the script. There's a heightened, poetic quality to much of the dialogue - which Wong and Pleasence naturally prove especially adept at delivering - and the younger characters in this film (who may be college students but are still unusually mature both in age and temperament by '80s horror standards) are not just tested physically by their ordeal, but as they fight on through day and night, their accepted concepts of good and evil, of science, and of reality itself, are all proven to be wrong in a darkly-told case of finding themselves 'Through the Looking-Glass.'
Perhaps realizing that he was asking a lot of the horror audience's patience by subjecting them to involved discussions of religion, tachyon particles and quantum physics, Carpenter didn't pull any punches with the gore. The physical appearance of one doomed character chosen to rebirth the essence of evil undergoes a bodily transformation that makes the ravages Linda Blair suffers in The Exorcist look like a mild head cold. With this character's flesh entirely covered in glistening pus (with make-up FX courtesy of Frank Carrisosa), Carpenter achieves the kind of vivid, putrescent horror that would do Lucio Fulci proud.
It isn't all about being graphic, though. Embodying Prince of Darkness' apocalyptic vision is the recurring image of an eerie 'broadcast' transmitted from the future date of 1999 into the sleeping minds of the film's characters wherein we see a dark figure emerging from the church's entrance, its arms spread open as it steps across the threshold ready for its close-up. Shot on video, it's a haunting example of 'hand-held' horror that anticipates the faux-doc, shaky-cam approach popularized by The Blair Witch Project (1999).
Carpenter goes for low-tech scares in other ways, too. Years before Francis Ford Coppola adopted an old-school movie magic approach for Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Carpenter and his team utilized photographic tricks dating back to the days of silent film - methods pioneered by the likes of George Méliès (A Trip To The Moon, 1902) and cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan (Metropolis, 1927) - accomplishing the illusions of Prince of Darkness in-camera.
In preparation for this blog post, I had to ask myself "is there anything about Prince of Darkness that isn't awesome?" My answer to that was "No, damn it! HELL, no!" See, I could've just simply answered no there - especially if I was just talking to myself - but I went the emphatic extra mile because Prince of Darkness is that good. This is a much more overtly horrific movie than Carpenter's made before or since - jam-packed with nightmarish imagery (when someone who's body is crumbling as it's consumed from within by hell-sent beetles tells you to "pray for death," that's the ultimate sign that shit has gotten real). When I have the itch for classic Carpenter, more often than not, Prince of Darkness is just the (old) scratch to fix it.
Prince of Darkness may not have the same legendary rep as either Halloween or The Thing but as far as I'm concerned if you're talking signature Carpenter, then you're talking Prince of Darkness.
* This post is part of John Carpenter Week at Radiator Heaven. Go there to check out all the Carpenter love you can handle!
In honor of the recent DVD release of the classic anthology series Thriller, the duo of Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri have launched the A Thriller A Day blogspot to review each and every episode of the show. Along with the reviews, they've had some of the talent involved in the DVD release stop by to talk about all things Thriller.
One of those guests is writer/producer Alan Brennert who shares audio commentary duties with writer David J. Schow on the Robert Bloch adaptation, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper." A full time novelist these days, Brennert's past credentials include his work on the '80s revival of The Twilight Zone and the '90s The Outer Limits. But Brennert's biggest claim to fame - at least to me - is that he contributed to the short-lived horror anthology Darkroom (penning one of the best installments - the series' opening story "Closed Circuit").
For those unfamiliar with the show, Darkroom ran on ABC on Friday nights from late fall of 1981 to early winter of 1982 with James Coburn as the show's Rod Serling-esque host and lasted a scant seven episodes before cancellation. Unfortunately, despite the impressive talent that was involved - actors like Billy Crystal, Ronny Cox, Helen Hunt, Rue McLanahan, and David Carradine, directors like Rick Rosenthal (Halloween II) and Paul Lynch (Prom Night) and writers like Robert Bloch and William F. Nolan - Darkroom has never been given any kind of a home video release. But during Brennert's swing by A Thriller A Day, he casually mentioned this piece of information:
"By the way, after all these years Darkroom has just been released on DVD in Australia, the only video release of any kind it's ever had."
I was floored to read this and a quick check revealed that, indeed, an Australian home video company called Madman has given Darkroom a Region 4 release. While it doesn't appear that any plans are afoot to release the series elsewhere yet, the fact that it's finally been given a release somewhere makes me believe that sooner or later, it'll be issued on R1. The thought of Darkroom on DVD has always seemed like a pipe dream to me so I'm ecstatic to find that a US release isn't that far-fetched anymore.
Darkroom wasn't the cream of the TV horror crop but it was a fun show that deserves more appreciation. Even if it wasn't of the same caliber as '60s classics like Thriller or The Twilight Zone, it was the closest thing to them that the early '80s offered, serving up eerie tales that have stuck with Gen-Xers for decades - which is especially impressive given how seldom its brief run of episodes have been re-aired since their original broadcast. For the short few weeks it was on, I couldn't wait to see what developed in the Darkroom. Of course, back when the inimitable Ernie Anderson was doing the voice-overs on ABC's promos, as in the clip below, it was always easy to think you were in for something special:
Originally scheduled for US release way back in August of '08, it's been a long, trying journey for Case 39. But here we are in October of '10 with the supernatural shocks of director Christian Alvart's tale finally up on the big screen. That minor victory aside, things haven't been working out so well in Hollywood for the German director. He made a great impression on his home turf with the 2005 serial killer thriller Antibodies but in the US, his two films to date - Case 39 and last year's Pandorum - haven't received much acclaim or brought in much business. I hope studios will keep giving him more chances, though, because he's good. Pandorum was one of my favorite genre offerings from last year - a really strong, atmospheric sci-fi horror pic like we haven't seen in ages. And now Case 39 (which was filmed prior to Pandorum) is a better film than its reputation would lead you to believe.
That's not to say that Case 39 is a misunderstood gem or anything. It's kind of a mess, really, but it's a better mess than I expected. Written by Ray Wright, who had a hand in the recent Crazies remake, Case 39 has an intriguing first half and a silly but still highly watchable second half. When social worker Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) is assigned a case involving a ten-year-old named Lilith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland, of Silent Hill) whose parents are clearly a pair of nuts, Emily makes it her mission to protect Lilith and get her out of that home. At first, bureaucracy and the Sullivan's wily ways keep Lilith out of Emily's reach but when the Sullivans try to actually roast Lilith in an oven (!), Emily is there to put a stop to it.
Rather than put Lilith in a state-run home until a foster family can adopt her, Emily puts on her mommy shoes to take her in as her temporary caretaker. That's a nice gesture but a big mistake, as it turns out, because Lilith is some kind of demon or something. Whatever Lilith really is, Emily lives to regret being conned by this hell spawn's innocent act. Before long, Emily is secretly paying visits to Lilith's parents in the psycho ward just to get the full story on what she's dealing with. Can Emily's psychologist friend (Bradley Cooper) or her cop buddy (Ian McShane) be any help? The odds don't look favorable.
Evil kid movies live or die on the strength of the performance of the kid and happily for Case 39, Ferland plays Lilith just right. Unfortunately, a lot of people will likely see Ferland as playing a knock-off of Isabelle Fuhrman's performance in last year's instant cult favorite Orphan without knowing that Case 39 actually predated Orphan. Ferland doesn't have as complicated a character to play as Fuhrman did but she does a great job anyhow.
The most curious aspect of Case 39 is the lack of explanation - supernatural, scientific, or otherwise - regarding Lilith's origins. Most monster or demon movies make a point to name their creature and give them a cooked-up mythology of some kind. Because that mythology is how the film's characters know how to stop it - whether it's going to be a wooden stake, a silver bullet, an exorcism, or whatever. Is Lilith deep down a good girl who's been possessed by a demon? That'd be an expected way to go. That way, Emily could purge the demon from Lilith's body and live happily ever after with the real Emily. Is Lilith some kind of alien, maybe? A shape-shifter? We don't know. We never know. There's not even any educated guesses thrown around. More than anything else, I think this is going to keep audiences from enjoying Case 39. Too much ambiguity, too many unanswered questions.
From a dramatic standpoint, the lack of revelations about Lilith make it hard for Case 39 to build to a rousing third-act climax. There's no exorcism to perform, no incantation to say, no mystical dagger to use. Once Emily knows that Lilith is truly evil, it's just a matter of taking her out but yet the proper manner of accomplishing that is never known. Emily is forced to go improv with her child-killing skills and try whatever seems deadly enough until something sticks and Lilith doesn't get back up again.
Having expected the worst from Case 39 and finding it to be...not that bad, I don't know what kept this one out of theaters for two years - maybe the studio just thought it sucked that hard. But that hasn't stopped other movies from making their release dates so Case 39 should've been given a break, too. Alvart has the skills to make a good horror movie and he makes the most out of Case 39. I liked that this was, at heart, a horror movie about how parents can feel held hostage by their children. There's been plenty of killer kid movies over the years but they usually take the approach that the people around the parents keep figuring out what's up with the kid - and getting killed for it - while the parents remain oblivious until the last act. Here, it's the parent that is clued in but everyone else thinks they're crazy for suggesting that their kid is evil.
I wonder if this is why the studio was so reluctant to get behind Case 39 - that they felt it was too hard to sell a movie about an adoptive mother who wants to kill her kid. All the ads for the movie make it look as though Lilith is being pursued by demons and that Emily is trying to protect her, not that Lilith is evil herself. In fact, I think there was material shot just for the trailer to give the impression that Emily and Lilith are under attack - we see them cowering in a corner together, hiding under a bed - because I'm telling you that no scenes like that are in the film itself. There's also a glimpse of a demon (check out the 1:42 mark) and a scene of Lilith being sucked into her bed that aren't in the final film. Check it out:
This trailer is completely deceptive and I'm not sure why the studio went that route. One of the strongest aspects of the movie is Ferland's performance - why keep it a secret that she's the villain of the film? Orphan did so well for Warner Bros. last year on the strength of its ad campaign that featured the evil Esther front and center. Then again, that same campaign also drew a lot of heat from adoption agencies who claimed the movie put adoption in a bad light.
I bet Paramount feared that another film about another evil adoptive child would've gotten the same kind of flak and chose to sell Case 39 as an entirely different movie than what they had. It's too bad. Case 39 still might not have been a hit but it should've been sold for what it really is. As is, what we have is a cinematic case of false identity.
The fact that a new vampire film is in theaters that isn't part of the Twilight saga ought to be cause for celebration. But for many it's a problem that Let Me In - a remake of the 2008 Swedish film, Let The Right One In - exists. After all, Let The Right One In is a very recent film - not some dated classic. And if people were not so reluctant to read words at the bottom of the screen, one of the best genre films in recent memory would not need to be retold.
All this is true. In a perfect world, studios would look at a movie like Let The Right One In and say "man, we'd be assholes to try and touch this." And in a perfect world, there'd be no hesitation on the part of the average moviegoer to sample foreign fare. But we don't live in that perfect world. If Let Me In introduces a wider audience to a great story, then I don't see the need to disparage it as a matter of principle. When the remake is atrocious, as in the case of Pulse (2006), the abomination masquerading as a remake of Kairo (2001), then yes - that's bad. But when the remake is as finely made as Let Me In, then why be high-handed about it?
While Let Me In does nothing to eclipse the artistry of Let The Right One In, writer/director Matt Reeves has attentively preserved the tone of the original. It's still a melancholy look at a lonely, bullied kid who finds a lifeline in the form of a vampire. Only now instead of Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson), it's Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Abby (Chloe Moretz) who develop a strange, sad bond. And instead of taking place in Stockholm, we're in New Mexico. It's still 1983, though, and it's still in the dead of winter.
The major story beats and set-pieces are all pretty much the same as in director Tomas Alfredson's film - even down to the way they're staged. But it feels as though Reeves is honoring Alfredson's work rather than just mimicking it. Reeves does bring in some new scenes and tweaks a few existing ones. He also prunes some of the extraneous story elements from the original, making for a more efficiently told tale. From the start, there's a palatable sense that Reeves "gets" the original - and its source material novel - and that in his hands, Let Me In was never in danger of becoming the movie that fans feared it might be.
However, there are some ways in which the remake just can't compete. As strong as the child performances are here, it's difficult for Smit-McPhee and Moretz to surpass the work that Hedebrant and Leandersson did in the original. Those two kids - Leandersson, especially - just had a look and vibe that can't be duplicated. Smit-McPhee and Moretz are outstanding but as you watch them, you're looking at actors. Skilled actors, yes, but still actors. There's an inevitable (if faint) air of Hollywood to Let Me In. When you watch Leandersson as Eli, you easily buy into the reality that this girl (or whatever) is a vampire. With Moretz, you're seeing Hit-Girl as a vampire. That's not enough to derail Let Me In but it's one reason why it can never have the unique mystique that the original does.
Let Me In is also less enigmatic than the original, with Reeves choosing to be more explicit about the relationship between Abby and her caretaker (Richard Jenkins) than Alfredson and novelist/screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist were about the relationship between Eli and her caretaker (Per Ragnar). I thought that this tragic pairing of young and old (or rather old and very old) was one of the eeriest and most affecting aspects of the original but it wasn't clear to every viewer what the nature of that relationship was (was this man Eli's father, or perhaps a pedophile?). By including an old film strip from a photo booth capturing Abby side by side with her guardian when he was just a boy himself, Reeves confirms that this person came into Abby's life decades earlier and has grown old as Abby's protector. Now the cycle is starting over with Owen.
There's so much that's wise about Let Me In that it's glaring when Reeves makes a bad decision. The single poorest choice on Reeves' part was to depict several of Abby's attacks and her gravity-defying movements through CG. It looks silly and I can't believe anyone connected with the movie thought it was the right way to go. It only occurs a few times but it's a few times too many. A secondary issue with the use of CG is that it makes Abby appear so capable and deadly that it makes us question why she would need someone to hunt for her. If Abby is so ferocious - moving like a Reaper from Blade II - then a companion doesn't seem so essential. And if we question Abby's need for a companion too strongly, that could derail the entire movie. After all, as with the original, Let Me In really isn't a love story. It's about Abby choosing someone that will serve as her protector and guardian. Reeves should've been more aware of the problems he was potentially creating before deciding to invite CG in.
Some slight missteps aside, though, fans of the original who wanted to guard a film they loved from the machinations of Hollywood should be relieved that Let Me In has emerged as a smart, sensitive movie. That it exists in the shadow of a better film shouldn't discount the excellent work that Reeves and his collaborators have done.
When banner ads for the DVD release of director Tom Six's notorious mad science tale The Human Centipede first appeared on several of the movie sites I frequent, I paid them no special mind - outside of idly wondering if I'd ever get around to watching this tale of a sicko surgeon with too much time on his hands (I probably won't). But the more I kept seeing them, with their animated diagram of three people on their hands and knees joined in the manner that the film's title promises with the accompanying text of "3 Humans, 1 Tract," it occurred to me that these ads - in which there's even a helpfully illustrative arrow that enters through the mouth of the first person, and moves all the way out the ass of the last person (see below) - were a hell of a thing to be blasé about. I mean, I know that I'm pretty desensitized but when did so much of the rest of the world go down that path, too?
Years ago, a movie like The Human Centipede would've only been known - and whispered about - by the most hardy and dedicated connoisseurs of the bizarre. Only by patronizing the seediest of theaters or scouting the bootleg tables at conventions would one ever come across the likes of The Human Centipede. This is a film that once would've had to fight to exist and then fight even harder to reach its audience. Now it's a freak show that's as easy to obtain as clicking on an ad. You don't have to actively seek this stuff out anymore, you don't even have to be a knowledgeable movie junkie to be aware of it. Someone going to Shock Till You Drop to check out the latest news on Breaking Dawn can be instantly introduced to The Human Centipede. And if you don't buy it online, you'll see it stocked in plain sight on your next trip to Best Buy, or Target (for more on that, check out this recent post from my fellow Horror Dad, Dennis Cozzalio, over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule).
