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Crack n’ hack

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A CRACK IN THE FLOOR

 2 Stars  2001/18/86m

“Something terrible awaits underneath…”

Director/Writer: Sean Stanek / Director: Corby Timbrook / Cast: Mario Lopez, Daisy McCrackin, Justine Priestley, Beatley Mitchum, Francesca Orsi, Bo Hopkins, Jason Oliver, Stephen Saux, Rodger Hewlett, Tracy Scoggins, Bill Erwin, Gary Busey, Rance Howard.

Body Count: 11

Dire-logue: “We made a pact to take these trips ’til we’re old and grey, or we die. Whichever comes first.”

Another cheapo attempt to bring Friday the 13th into the 21st century that pits six college kids against a Jason-like hermit who resides in the basement of the standard horror movie cabin-in-the-woods, where you just know these scholars are gonna end up by nightfall. Seems our loner doesn’t take kindly to strangers since two hicks raped and slaughtered his mom thirty-three years earlier.

With a few familiar cast members in the wings, it’s surprising the project came off as cheap looking as it has. Bo Hopkins is the local sheriff who may be on the brink of solving all of the missing persons cases that flood in whenever anybody hikes out into the trees; Gary Busey has about three minutes of screen time as a derange chicken chaser. You get the feeling he was helping out a friend.

Mario Lopez – Slater from years-gone-by’s Saved by the Bell, who also cropped up in the lamentable Fever Lake – leads the doomed pack of off-the-shelf teenagers, including Alicia Witt-a-like girlfriend Daisy McCrackin.

The rest of the characters and plot appear like a second-generation photocopy of Friday the 13th Part III, with two stoners and a newly-pregnant couple. The cabin’s not too dissimilar either… In spite of these flaws and an essential lack of blood (half the murders are off camera or fleeting) it’s not the tragic misfire it could have been. Everything certainly looks like the producers put some effort in and the script flows along quite efficiently even through the kids set up as the heroes are quite casually killed off.

A Crack in the Plot may have been a more fitting title.

Blurbs-of-interest: Bo Hopkins was also in Sweet Sixteen and Uncle Sam; Rance Howard was also in the Toolbox Murders remake; Daisy McCrackin was one of the reality-teens in Halloween: Resurrection.

Don’t go in the house. Or the basement. Or the cemetery. Just leave.

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THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY

2 Stars  1981/18/82m

Director: Lucio Fulci / Writers: Fulci, Elisa Livia Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti & Giorgio Mariuzzo / Cast: Katherine MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, Silvia Collatina, Dagmar Lassander.

Body Count: 6

Dire-logue: “Ann, mommy says you’re not dead… Is that true?”

Cooool title and cooool poster. For me though, that’s where the coooolness ends.

It’s Italian, it’s dubbed badly, it’s Fulci, it wants to be The Shining, it makes next to no sense. As far as I could tell, the Boyle family – professor dad, squealy jittery mom, and blond moppet Bob – are moved into the old Freudstein house. By a cemetery. Two teens were killed there in the prologue so we know more than the Boyle clan already.

Little Bob is friends with a girl, Mae, who it seems nobody else can see. She says cryptic things and tells him not to go in the house etc… Meanwhile, Realtors and babysitters drop by and whomever is loitering in the seemingly unlockable basement totters in and kills them horribly. There’s some weird shit going on with the childminder, who resembles a mannequin we see randomly decapitated earlier on, stares a lot, and cleans up massive pools of blood that nobody questions.

Much ado is made about the experiments of Dr Freudstein but it was both boring and incoherent, made worse by the absolutely atrocious dubbing, for which it seems that Bob was voiced by a thirtysomething woman whose scream could shatter all the glass in a church.

Being an Italian horror flick, the gory violence is almost exclusively angled at women and the end comes shackled to a twist that isn’t at all comprehensible. According to Fulci, it’s something to do with the relationship between the children, but I read theories on time travel, limbo n’ all sortsa crap. And the zombie-monster-killer thing regenerates his cells by killing folks. Or something. There was a vile poo-like substance dripping from him when he was stabbed.

There are comparisons with Amityville and The Shining (which Fulci thinks is crap) but it’s more of a crumbling slasher flick with supernatural factors. The fact that they go unexplained lends to the creepiness of the film, as it did in the likes of Ghosthouse and I’m probably the only viewer who didn’t hate the kid with a fiery passion from hell. I actually thought he was quite sweet – nothing like the obnoxious back-talking brats they’d put in the role these days.

Is it a classic? Shrug. I laughed at it a bit. A couple of sequences were well done – Bob trying to escape from the basement. But I’m not a fan of crazy, haphazard all-over-the-place horror (wait ’til we get around to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) so I won’t lose any sleep if I never see it again.

Blurb-of-interest: Frezza (the kid) had a bit part in A Blade in the Dark.

Forward to the Past

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In a sort of pre-emptive celebration of the release of Scream 4, March 15th to April 15th 2011 is 90s Horror Month on Vegan Voorhees.

This means that the next few weeks will be solely devoted to the love of Ghostface, The Fisherman, uh… Parka-killer-fiend and all manner of imitations, resurrections, sequels, wannabes and cash-ins. Yes, some have been reviewed already but there’ll be “new” and “exciting” things to say that weren’t said before. Or were and have been deleted by me in an effort to disguise the fact.

We’ll also be cheerleading the various little things that 90s teen horror gave us, from killers with super-personal motives to the total lack of boobs on screen and so-called homages that were little more than blatant rip-offs of films the producers thought nobody had seen.

For the pedants among you, “the 90s” will also include films released in 2000, as they were most likely conceived and shot while the 90s were still about.

So, prepare to get self-referential and in-jokey; 90s Horror Month begins at the chime.

…Chime!

Rubbish films that don’t deserve long reviews

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…And no screencaps either, God damn it! They suck, so adding what I believe to be ‘good shots’ from any of them might only pique your interest. And then you’ll go and watch them, realise I was right all along and come back yelling at me.

We’re going in order of what I think looks best.

MASK OF MURDER

1.5 Stars 1985/18/84m

“Who is innocent… Who is guilty… Who is safe… Who is next…?”

Director: Arne Mattson / Writer: Volodia Semitjov / Cast: Rod Taylor, Christopher Lee, Valerie Perrine, Sam Cook, Terrence Hardiman, Frank Brennan.

Body Count: 7

Look at those big-hitters: Christopher Lee! Rod Taylor! The guy who played The Demon Headmaster in The Demon Headmaster!

Lee reportedly turned down the role of Doc Loomis in Halloween and was perhaps therefore under the illusion that taking a clone of that role for this Scando-Canadian production might bathe that wound. How they sucked Taylor in is a mystery. Maybe Lee brought him in. Maybe Lee was already stuck like his legs were in a combine harvester and he held on to Taylor until both were dragged to their deaths career nadirs.

They and Sam Cook are cops in a small Canadian town where a loon in a shitty cotton mask is slicing the throats of young women. They find him and shoot him dead but only a few days later copycat killings begin – but whoooo could it beeeee?

Trouble is, MoM can’t make up its mind over being a slasher film or a cop film. The victims are presented as non-speaking plebs or women who ‘had it coming’ and there’s no heroine to speak of, no chase scenes, nada. We do get to see some frontal male nudity (gasp!) and there’s a boring subplot about an affair going on between one of the cops and the wife of the other one who isn’t Christopher Lee, because he’s in hospital for most of it.

The obnoxious twist ending is smug as can be but it doesn’t elevate this above being a bad combo meal of seasoned professionals surrounded by rank amateurs that has the audacity to rip off the far superior He Knows You’re Alone.

Blurbs-of-shame: Lee was in Sleepy Hollow and the even worse Funny Man.

* * *

TABOO

2002/15/77m  1 Stars

“Would you ever…?”

Director: Max Makowski / Writer: Gary Fisher / Cast: January Jones, Nick Stahl, Amber Benson, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Lori Heuring, Derek Hamilton.

Body Count: 6

Six egotistical Cruel Intentions-type college brats gather at a remote mansion on New Year’s Eve where they engage in a polite game of Taboo, which entails writing answers to some risque questions like Would you have sex with a minor? Would you have sex for money? blah blah blah…

At midnight, a package containing five cards arrives, labelled Prostitute, Homosexual, Infidel, Rapist and Hypocrite (ooh, that one’s gonna sting!) Lo and behold, bodies start stacking up, each found with the appropriate card.

However, all of this happens too early to fool us and it’s all revealed to be a gag at the expense of Jones, the only one not to get a card and has apparently been blackmailing the others. When they seemingly forgive her and move on, Hypocrite flips, takes a shotgun and begins offing the others. Told you it was gonna sting.

With the cheater-weapon in play, Taboo is a very boring stalk n’ shoot with next to no grue and it ends with an entirely dull poison murder-suicide pact thing. But at least they’re all dead.

Buffy alumni Amber Benson is endearing as the ever-wrecked Piper but she truly deserves better exposure than this crap, which fails to impress on any scale, becoming taboo itself for reasons of taste.

Blurb-of-shame: Derek Hamilton was Eddie in Ripper: Letter from Hell.

* * *

BLEED

1.5 Stars  2002/18/82m

“Join the club.”

Directors: Devin Hamilton & Dennis Peterson / Writer: Devin Hamilton / Cast: Debbie Rochon, Allen Nabors, Danny Wolske, Orly Tepper, Laura Nativo, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Julie Strain, Brinke Stevens.

Body Count: 9

Dire-logue: “You wanna see tits? Well here they are and fuck you!”

Another post-Screamie with all the budget of a shopping trip to Aldi that has lonely new girl in LA Maddy (Rochon) seduced by her boss and then inducted into his snobby circle of friends who fool her into thinking they’re all part of The Murder Club and have each offed a stranger to surf the adrenalin rush.

Poor naive Maddy takes it the wrong way and kills a woman she has a ruckus with. The others regroup and decide what they should do but by then the white-masked psycho who, until now, has been chopping up various extras starts doing away with them in their homes.

Is it Maddy? After all her mom (Brinke in a flashback) and dad chucked her out years earlier? No. It’s someone else.

The trouble with Bleed is that it’s an out and out retread filmed almost entirely in back yards and apartments with dialogue exchanges used to staple the plot holes together; for instance, Maddy goes on one date with her boss and is invited to a party the next day where a group of complete strangers decide to let her in on their “big secret!”

In spite of some production polish and the ever-lovely Rochon, Bleed sucks out more tolerance than claret.

Blurbs-of-shame: Rochon has also been in American Nightmare, Blood Relic, Final Examination and Head Cheerleader, Dead Cheerleader; Julie Strain was in Psycho Cop Returns.

* * *

SMALL TOWN FOLK

2007/15/87m  1 Stars

“Welcome to Grockleton.”

Director: Peter Stanley-Ward / Writers: Natalie Conway & Peter Stanley-Ward / Cast: Greg Martin, Chris R. Wright, Simon Stanley-Ward, Hannah Flint, Dan Palmer, Jon Nicholas, James Ford, Sophie Rundle, Tamaryn Payne, Warwick Davis.

Body Count: 16

Cheap shows for pre-schoolers often include effects work that looks like a crayon drawing has been scanned into a Mac and then actors are superimposed over the top of it. Fine. Baby Susie isn’t going to get angry with crap production values at her age. But in a horror film…? Just… No.

Had it not taken four years to create and been funded by the cast and crew, this would unquestionably be a native of half-star city.

Unexplained men near the town of Grockleton in the New Forest kidnap women to procreate ‘their kind’ and murder any men who get in the way. Enter a married couple “on an adventure” and some local teens fooling around in the woods and… and… and fuck it, I don’t know what was going on.

As it was originally intended to be a short, there just ain’t enough her to justify history’s longest 87 minutes. There are more than half a dozen killers running around cracking misfired jokes, tormenting Grockles (non-locals) and talking in a bizarre thespian sub-language.

I’d wager 95% of the budget went on securing the three-minute Warwick Davis cameo that bookends the story. Britain’s Got Talent – yeah? Where is it when you need it?

Blurb-of-shame: Dan Palmer was in the marginally more amusing Freak Out.

* * *

URBAN MASSACRE

1.5 Stars  2002/15/84m

“A real life horror.”

Director: Dale Resteghini / Writers: Dale Resteghini & Carl Washington / Cast: Demetrius Gibbs, Erin O’Donnell, Badia Stewart, Ross Filler, Leroy Jones, Rosario M. Gancitano, Wayne Mogel, G-Flex.

Body Count: 9

In the 80’s, mucho slasher filmage associated itself with hair metal and, in several examples, featured doomed rock bands pitted against a loon with a blade. So time (sadly) moves on and thus this millennial slasher centres around the fortunes of growing rap quintet The Supernatchrals, who find various members of their entourage are being knocked off by a maniac dressed as a clown – as they always seem to be in urban bodycount pics.

For a shot-on-video feature, Urban Massacre doesn’t look bad but, unless you’re well versed in rap and hip-hop (safe to say I’m not), much of the dialogue – largely consisting of ‘fuck you’, ‘fuck him’, ‘fuck that’ – will be lost on you.

While intermittent rap numbers and “statements” on the companion culture to downright racism are testing, at the end the feisty fivesome (three guys, two gals) literally have the killer pinned down, stop, look at the camera and tell the audience they will not unmask him as we will have to wait for ‘Part Two’.

FUCK THAT.

Given this 11th hour atrocity – especially when the pre-credits practically spelt out the identity and motive – all points gained immediately return to zero. It’s insulting and hypocritical, especially as the characters have spent eighty minutes whining about racial injustice and forcing their shit brand of “music” on us, yet they’ve seen fit to halt the film completely and cut back to another cruddy rap number.

For slasher-but-not-rap fans (me), the chubby white MC in the group occasionally spouts pointless horror movie trivia but everything else is about as memorable – and credible – as Vanilla Ice’s last album.

Puerile / Perfect

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CUT

4 Stars  2000/18/79m

“Warning: movies can kill.”

Director: Kimble Rendall / Writer: Dave Warner / Cast: Molly Ringwald, Jessica Napier, Geoff Revell, Sarah Kants, Kylie Minogue, Frank Roberts, Simon Bossell, Stephen Curry, Cathy Adamek, Matt Russell, Erika Walters, Sam Lewis, Steve Greig.

Body Count: 15

Dire-logue: “There is a force at work here… It is not human and it is unspeakably evil. You must destroy that film at once – or you will all die!”

If the worldwide appeal of Scream could ever be doubted, then look no further than this Australian reactive export. Actually, Australia is quite far to go to look.

Self-referentiality, sharp dialogue and comic reflections on the genre abound, but Cut is a wildly misunderstood and consequently vastly underrated film. I had the privelege of seeing it at FrightFest, which turned out to really be a stroke of luck as, to date, it has only ever received a very limited rental release on VHS on these shores. Region 1 DVD it is, then!

Things begin on the set of 80’s slasher film Hot Blooded, where the kill scene of Molly Ringwald’s character’s character is fucked up by the stuntman/actor playing the killer – Scarman – forgets to rip off her blouse before slashing her throat, inducing an explosive outburst of anger from highly-strung lady director Hilary Jacobs, played by the ever-lovely ‘smiley’ Kylie Minogue (not smiling much here, though).

Humiliated by her diatribe in front of the crew, stuntman Brad (who sports a pair of nice, meaty sideburns) kills her and cuts out her tongue before Ringwald’s Vanessa shows up and manages to introduce him to the business end of his modified shears, effectively shutting down production on the film altogether.

For 12 years.

A group of film students with a final assignment to deliver bug their teacher – who was a runner on Hot Blooded – about finishing the movie, which is rumoured to carry a curse that killed the original producer and a director who attempted to complete it some years earlier. Defying their professor, they purchase the rights and get an investment from the producer’s widow, doing enough to tempt Vanessa Turnbill back down under to star in it.

Of course, you can’t keep a good curse down and shortly after the surviving footage is screened, people start to die. Could the professor still be scarred by damaging memories? Or has the interim decade turned Vanessa into a homicidal Hollywood hacker?

Once the group of students are out of the city and on location, just about everybody becomes a plausible suspect, with suspicious close ups of ambiguous facial expressions or questionable utterances and there’s always a few absentees when a murder occurs. Although one would think that Bobby, playing the killer, is the most likely candidate if for nothing more than being the long lost twin of Billy Loomis:

bobby-billy2The outcome of the ‘mystery’ is that there is no mystery killer at all. Cut‘s killer is Scarman himself, as Professor Lossman attempts to explain, the curse is the product of the creative energy put into the film itself – created by belief and emphasized by the rantings of a requisite old person (see Direlogue). Thankfully, such a rubbish resolution is met with perfect sarcasm from Ringwald: “Believe me, there was no creative energy put into that piece of shit!”

This is where Cut likely divides the audience. On one hand it’s a cheat, leading you on a merry game of who’s the killer? only for none of that to count, fobbing us off with a frankly dreadful explanation. As Hot Blooded was a late 80’s film, so the whatthefuck ending of Cut suits that era down to the ground: Shocker anyone? The later, increasingly ridiculous Elm Street films? Bad Dreams? The Horror Show? Dreamaniac?

The tail end of the slasher genre was a dumping ground of stupid ideas such as this: Killing from beyond the grave or through appliances, possession, dreamscapes and the like… It usually sucks, but the forces behind Cut make the right move of fusing their dumbass idea with the all-knowing attitude of Scream, resulting in a great fun flick – but probably only if you view it in the knowledge that it’s sort of deliberately rubbish.

Even outside of the divisive finale, there’s some good stuff in the film and it’s liberally bloody with a high bodycount for a sub-80 minute (PAL timing, people!) production. Jessica Napier is an effective stand in for Neve Campbell as the ambitious young directorette with a couple of secrets and Sarah Kants impresses as the producer with a crush on the former. Ringwald plays with her bratty has-been persona with relish and most of the meat-on-legs backgrounders do enough to elevate themselves from non-dimensional stabbing objects.

Cut wasn’t a particularly lucrative film, scuppering any hope of a pitched sequel with a killer robot (I think, I saw some artwork for it years ago) and will probably go down as one of the many international attempts to duplicate Scream‘s formula, in spite of the fact that it’s better than most of the contemporary efforts. Much was made of Kylie’s involvement in the “Drew Barrymore role,” which coincided with her commercial comeback but considering she appears rather fleetingly, it was a bit of a stretch to try and pivot the marketing on her presence. This is one for genre fans

Blurb-of-interest: Molly Ringwald was in Office Killer.

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