Tag Archives: gore o’clock

Reason to remain childless #23,472: Evil

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CHILDREN OF THE CORN IV: THE GATHERING

2.5 Stars  1996/18/82m

Director: Greg Spence / Writers: Spence & Stephen Berger / Cast: Naomi Watts, Brent Jennings, Karen Black, William Windom, Jamie Renee Smith, Samaria Graham, Brandon Kleyla, Mark Salling, Lewis Flanagan III.

Body Count: 7

Dire-logue: “I don’t wanna be the one in charge when their heads are doing 360s and they’re hurling pea soup.”

He Who Walks Behind the Rows doesn’t get a mention this time around, despite taking the action back to a small midwestern town surrounded by cornfields. It’s been suggested that this was not part of the franchise initially. Hard to swallow given everything that happens.

A pre-fame Naomi Watts is a med student who returns home to look after her agoraphobic mother, Black, and her two younger siblings, one of whom will later play Puck on Glee, then kill himself after some nasty charges were brought.

Shortly after her arrival, a local farmer releases the spirit of a dead preacher, who subsequently unleashes a fever on the local children. Once the virus passes and the kids are on the mend, they begin turning into pint-size psychos, offing parents, doctors, local law enforcement, and then congregate in an old barn to resurrect Josiah to his human form, using Watts’ little sister.

Plenty of bloodletting for a nineties horror flick (when the genre kinda pussed out of explicit content) and there are some creepy setups, but dopey padding concerning the medical subplot (about as wacky as the contaminated corn excuses in The Final Sacrifice) decelerates the horror. Echoes of The Wizard of Oz in the “I’m melting! I’m melting!” finale are also anti-climactic.

Although a little better than Urban Harvest, there’s still a distinct lack of adhesive to the central motif surrounding the cult of brats, taking it about as far from Stephen King’s original short story as possible. Oh no, wait, it strays further in the next few sequels…

Blurbs-of-interest: Karen Black is also in Oliver Twisted, Curse of the Forty-Niner, Out of the Dark and Some Guy Who Kills People; Brent Jennings was in Alone in the Dark; Mark Salling had a small role in The Graveyard.

Eject

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V/H/S

2 Stars  2012/116m

“This collection is killer.”

Directors/Writers: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, David Bruckner, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Glenn McQuad, Joe Swanberg, Chad Villella, Ti West, Adam Wingard / Writers: Simon Barrett, Nicholas Tecosky / Cast: Calvin Reeder, Lane Hughes, Adam Wingard, Hannah Fierman, Mike Donlan, Joe Sykes, Drew Sawyer, Jas Sams, Sophia Takal, Drew Moerlein, Jason Yachanin, Helen Rogers, Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Paul Natonek, Eric Curtis.

Body Count: 16-ish

In horror, the only thing worse than over-explaining something is not explaining it at all. That is, to say, if it REQUIRES explanation. A smart film will drip-feed you enough information for to draw your own conclusions.

V/H/S, a new anthology of the “found footage” sub-set may have traded on the ever more common retro/throwback hype-o-meter that people tend to wheel out as an excuse for gore and tits, as if one is even needed.

However, in the case of this picture, which I saw at London’s FrightFest, the complete lack of explanation for four of its six tales (including the ‘arcing’ story) sunk it quickly and, if post-viewing murmurs were to be heeded, few people in the audience thought it was that great.

It goes thusly: four annoying twats are hired to go steal a video cassette from a house. Why? Dunno. Who hired them? Dunno. What’s on the tape? Dunno. They break in, and find the inhabitant has expired and begin to search for the tape. Unlike the cover art, there is no great wall of VHS tapes, but several scattered around, which they choose to watch.

The first story is a guys-night-out affair filmed through camera-glasses. Three idiots pick up chicks, go back to party, one of them ain’t right. It wraps itself up well enough. Story #2 is the travelogue of a young couple, which has a suitably creepy midriff, let down by a random twist lobbed in from nowhere that is neither clear, nor in any way smart.

Next is Tuesday the 17th. Four kids in a car go to the woods, invisible and/or magnetically charged killer, who screws with the playback, does them in. An amusing riff on Paranormal Activity permeates the fourth story, which is a selection of Skype conversations that has some decent atmosphere, laughs, jumps, but is ultimately ruined – yet again – by a real head-scratcher of an ending.

The final story echoes the opener, with four guys out at Halloween, who turn up at a party with a decidedly unenthusiastic vibe. It’s probably the best segment out of the lot. The finale of the ‘arc’ story yields no answers either, ending predictably but without the bang needed to make the audience go “ah!” and tie it all together.

Shaky-cam syndrome was to be expected and is no big deal, but uneven acting, largely unsympathetic characters, and the feeling that very few ideas were thought through beyond the most basic of concepts are the concrete boots that drown V/H/S in the end.

Icky ways to go: Schwing! Tentpole!

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After eight murder rampages, New Line acquired the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise after 1989’s Jason Takes Manhattan and decided to just end it there and then. Or so they thought.

1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was played to test audiences whose main complaint was the lack of horny teenagers and thus, what’s likely the best, most nostalgic scene in an otherwise turbulent movie.

Three suitably dumb and nubile teens – Alexis, Deborah, and Luke – hitch a ride with John D. LeMay’s lead, Steven, stating they’re on their way to camp at ye olde Camp Crystal Lake site. Steven puts it to them: “Looking to smoke a little pot, have some sex, and get slaughtered?” “Jason’s dead!” they cheer and he drops them off.

Alexis is summarily done away with by a Jason-possessed coroner, who then sets his sights on the humping couple in the pop-tent…

“Sex is fun!”

 

“Bugger.”

 

Well… can’t say it wasn’t wet or wild

One wrong turn deserves another

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DETOUR

3 Stars  2003/18/88m

“One wrong turn and you’re fresh MEAT!”

A.k.a. Hell’s Highway; Cannibal Detour

Director/Writer: S. Lee Taylor / Writer: Steven Grabowsky / Cast: Ashley Elizabeth, Aaron Buer, Jill Jacobs, Brent Taylor, Kelsey Wedeen, Jessica Osfar, Ryan De Rouen, Anthony Connell, Curtis Davidson, Micky Levy.

Body Count: 17

Dire-logue: “Mmm, takes like micro-phallus.”

Bearable cash-in on the fan-success of Wrong Turn and retitled the mouthful Cannibal Detour: Hell’s Highway for UK DVD, I once got crucified by some horror snobs for saying it wasn’t that bad. Like I’d compared it to Black Christmas or some such. Some people can be a-holes over the most trivial stuff.

Anyway, seven LA clubkids spend the night raving in the middle of nowhere and begin the long trip home in their RV intent on picking up some wonder-pot at an abandoned army base off the beaten track.

As in all road-based horror movies, there’s a gas station attendant on hand to warn them off but they fail to take heed and hang up the vehicle somewhere between checkpoints. One of the gang hikes back to the gas station while another pair disappear for some outback sex. Before long, they’re set upon by a large number of whacked-out freaks who favour stranded motorists as their main food source.

What distinguishes Detour slightly from its brethren is the choice of lead characters. From the outset we’re presented with stereotypes of the sensible guy (who drives), the horny couple, smart-mouth goth girl, two bimbettes who obsess over reality TV and then Loopz. Loopz is quite possibly the most annoying character ever to stray on to celluloid: A whiteboy rapper who channels Eminem and talks like a middle-class gangsta wannabe.

It’s this idiot and the two bubble-brained party girls who emerge as the only survivors. Initially dim-witted, lollipop-sucking Tara morphs into an ass-kicking Xena chick, saving the other two and making the right kind of decisions.

Plenty of gore and decent production attributes help to overcome the seedier elements but a better explanation of the gorked-out psychos would have been welcome, but on the whole Detour is probably a little better than it has a right to be. Although it loses points for not killing off Loopz with extreme prejudice.

Blurbs-of-interest: Look out for Tiffany Shepis in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-her rave montage. Kelsey Wedeen was also in Lake Dead.

Party hard

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INVITATION ONLY

3 Stars  2009/18/96m

“A party to die for.”

Director: Kevin Ko / Writers: Carolyn Lin & Sung In / Cast: Bryant Chang, Julianne, Vivi Ho, Jerry Huang, Kristian Brodie, Joseph Ma, Kao Yin-Hsuan, Liz.

Body Count: 12

Taiwan’s “first slasher movie” is more of an answer to Hostel than it is a straight-up bodycount pic, with down-on-his-luck chauffeur Wade randomly passed an invite to a society function by his rich client, Mr Yang, who can’t be arsed to go and instructs the youngster to claim he is the mogul’s cousin.

Once at the party, Wade, and four other ‘newcomers’ are introduced and there’s some spiel about writing down your wildest dream on the back of the invite, that the host makes a reality. Wade wants a sports car and consequently receives one, but is soon clued in, along with his fellow debutantes, that they’ve been selected because they’re allegedly ‘impostors’ – poor people either stealing from wealthy clients or transgressing some other high-society sin.

To be honest, I couldn’t make much sense of this part: the three less ‘valued’ characters have all done somethung fundamentally wrong but I couldn’t work out what either Wade or nice girl Hitomi were supposed to have done that would earn them a death warrant.

Each newbie is attacked, slashed, and then put ‘on show’ for the baying crowd of rich folk to see tortured and murdered. A corrupt political wannabe has his balls fried with an electrified jumper cable and a light-fingered nurse has some amateur surgery carried out on her face.

Wade and Hitomi do their best to escape but find themselves thwarted over and over again until they’re forced back into the lion’s den and have to fight fire with fire. Or, rather, sharp implements with other sharp implements.

There’s a decent amount of tension and liberal bloodletting – the electrodes-to-the-bollocks scene is especially cringe-inducing and grim. That aside, there’s not much new material worth lapping up in Invitation Only and it plays out in a very similar way to Eli Roth’s American counterparts, a couple of scenes almost directly lifted from them. Still, it passed 96 minutes without boring me so it’s worth a look, if not only to see how Asia does the job.

On a side note, I love how the cast credits are rounded off with “and Liz”! As if we all know who this Liz person is. I know a couple of Liz’s. This Liz, though, evidently as important in Taiwan as Madonna or Cher, plays the red-dress victim at the beginning. All hail Liz!!

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