The Blind and the Bloodthirsty

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JULIA’S EYES

4 Stars  2010/15/113m

Director: Guillem Morales / Writers: Morales & Oriol Paulo / Cast: Belen Reuda, Lluis Homar, Pablo Derqui, Francesc Orella, Julia Gutierrez Coba, Boris Ruiz, Andrea Hermosa, Daniel Grao.

Body Count: 6

Dire-logue: “My father is lonely and you’re hot.”

Guillermo Del Toro’s name on anything seems to sell it internationally at present. But if he’s not careful he might fall victim to The Wes Craven Syndrome, whereby any old shite that passed over his desk somehow gains endorsement as ‘executive producer’ credence. I wonder if Wes has even set eyes of Don’t Look Down.

Fortunately for Del Toro, Julia’s Eyes is a great little foray into the world of the blind. It’s not entirely original, mind, echoes of Blink with Madeline Stowe (whatever happened to her?), The Eye, and some tawdry made-for-TV thriller with Victoria Principal (Blind Witness?) abound.

A sightless woman goes to hang herself, only to have the job done for her when a stranger kicks the stool from beneath her legs when she has second thoughts. Her twin sister Julia (Reuda, previously seen chasing ghosts in The Orphanage) and her husband, Isaac, are the ones to find her. Julia is almost instantly dismissive of the suicide explanation but, suffering from the same degenerative sight disorder, Julia wants answers before her vision fails the same way as Sara’s.

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Julia becomes convinced Sara had a boyfriend who, at the very least, ‘assisted’ the hanging but nobody seems to remember him. An old hotel custodian describes him as ‘invisible’ to the world around him before being electrocuted in the tub as Mr Invisible appears to be able to cover his tracks before Julia can find out who he is.

The stress of the situation followed by Isaac’s apparent suicide accelerate Julia’s loss of sight and her doctor forges ahead with a transplant operation and Julia faces two weeks beneath a blindfold before she will find out if she can see again. Her care worker Ivan becomes her rock and Julia eventually develops feelings towards him that are thwarted by the apparent return of Sara’s killer, who can seemingly be anywhere at anytime…

The resolution isn’t entirely unpredictable, after all Ivan’s face is kept off-camera for the most part, despite the fact we saw him earlier on with another patient. But does that make him a killer?

Julia’s Eyes takes a bit of a commitment as it passes the 90 minute mark with a lot of stuff still left to cover. Even though it eventually conforms nicely to some cut n’ dried slasher movie shenanigans, it could easily lose 15 minutes or so as the gripping nature of the first half dissipates into a sort of “how will she get out of this one?” scenario that is repeated several times over towards the finale.

The film would be redundant if at least some of these cliches went unchecked: Julia’s doctor advises she recovers at the hospital but she insists on going it alone in her late-sister’s unfamiliar house, yet she’s the only one who truly believes there’s a killer running about. It’s forgivable as otherwise the final third would just be a retread of the Halloween II hospital slasher opus.

That said, there’s little slashing: two people are hanged, another zapped in the bath but there’s a decent knife-in-the-gob and a cringeworthy needle into the eyeball, shown in all its clear yukkiness.

Some scenes work just perfectly: Julia’s visit to a resource centre for blind people is creepy for varying reasons as she unwittingly finds herself in the middle of a conversation between a group of blind women who don’t sense she’s there for a couple of minutes, then there’s a chase through the drippy back tunnels of the building when one of the blind women declares that “there’s someone else with you – he’s right behind you.”

The climax is a little drawn out and familiar but an almost heartwarming twist is added on at the end – the biggest mystery is Julia herself: she quite literally appears and replaces her dead sister. We learn almost nothing about her life up to this point, where she lives, who her friends are… Husband aside, it’s as if she never met a soul.

Again, forgiven due to the tasty Spanish vibes on show: you only need to see this once to appreciate how good it is.

Blurb-of-interest: Daniel Grao was in Killer Book Club.

Cold Prey-garism

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BLOOD RUNS COLD

2 Stars  2011/15/74m

“Hell just froze over.”

Director: Sonny Laguna / Writers: Laguna, David Liljeblad & Tommy Wiklund / Cast: Hanna Oldenburg, Patrick Saxe, Andreas Rylander, Elin Hugoson, Ralf Beck, David Liljeblad.

Body Count: 6

Sweden: Land of Volvo, saunas, ABBA, and Roxette. Norway: Land of herring, fjords, and famously coming last in Eurovision countless times.

Sweden shouldn’t really be jealous. But then Norway got Cold Prey – hands down the best slasher, neigh – best horror – film in a long time. Sweden was all like “yeah we can do that.”

So out came Blood Runs Cold, shot on a minuscule budget of about $5,000, and boasting a plot staggering similar to Sweden’s next-door neighbour’s celluloid prize possession.

Winona, a singer of some such, drives into the snow-covered turf of her old town for a couple of months away from the stress put on her by her manager. Unfortunately for her, she gets the wrong house and beds down in a twee, but dilapidated shack of a place.

She drives into town and runs into an old boyfriend and invites him and a couple of his friends back to the house to party. This is where Blood Runs Cold trades in some of its admittedly impressive style for some dumb ass character behaviour… It seems the house has no bathroom as people keep going outside to piss and one of them sees a figure in the upstairs window but doesn’t bother telling the others about it. The other guy finds that Winona’s van has been tampered with, picks up a torn out spark plug, tosses it into the snow and doesn’t bother telling the others about it.

Before sun up, all three of the invitees have been murdered and eaten by the hooded, goggled freak living in a series of secret rooms and caves beneath the house. Winona assumes they just went home and, upon finding a large paddle of blood on the living room floor, simply cleans it up and goes about her day as if it meant nothing…

“This film is snot what I signed on for.”

When it’s just Winona and the loon – who appears to be deaf, blind and made of dust!? – all dialogue is gone and as he hangs her up to serve up some chick-meat, she escapes, he catches her, she escapes, he catches her and so on until the credits suddenly spring up out of nowhere, several minutes earlier than the box promised!

There’s some good looking photography on parade and the house geography supplies a few good hidey-holes for Winona to crawl around (could’ve provided some Kleenex for her Heather Donahue moment too, I guess) but even at 74 minutes this drags and isn’t nearly a quarter as tense as Cold Prey.

Curiously recorded in English – which also seems to inhibit the acting – with a higher wad of cash at their disposal, this could’ve been much better but seems lazily written with an almost purposely dumb cast and a stack of unanswered questions, not least of all who the dude at the beginning is?

Revenge of the Return of the Son of Shitty Sequels

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Here we go again on our oooown… Going down the only road we’ve ever knoooown… To movie hell.

Last time we took a look at some of the crappiest sequels. This time, well it wouldn’t be a sequel to a thing about sequels if it wasn’t just more of the same old same old. Enjoyomento!

Children of the Corn: Genesis (2011)cotcgenesis-2

After the horrible, horrible, horrible 2009 TV version of the original Stephen King yarn, I was glad to hear that Dimension were planning to re-ignite their largely “debuting on DVD” franchise. Until I watched it.

Genesis could be, in an ideal world, just the necessary evil to reboot things. A young city couple find themselves stranded in the Californian desert and end up bunking with a freaky couple who lock their kid in an outhouse.

The cover has Dimension Extreme on it. The only extremity is how freakin’ BORING this film is. Almost nothing happens for the whole run time; there’s a drawn out dream sequence and re-used footage from Bad Boys II of all things. Far and away the worst COTC movie.

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)

Freddy Krueger has a lot to answer for. Not least of all this ambitious but frankly lame in-name-only video sequel to the death n’ disco Jamie Lee Curtis Halloween knock-off in 1980.

Still set at Hamilton High (which looks entirely different), bitchy unfaithful prom queen Mary Lou Maloney is burnt to death after being crowned at her 1957 formal. Thirty years later, her spirit is released by the heroine who is subsequently possessed and a few people die: bitchy rivals, suicidal punk chicks, horny jocks and the men responsible for Mary Lou’s death. Most memorable bit is when a girl hides in a locker that literally squishes her.

Prom Night III is, however, vastly more entertaining.

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

Freddy is also to blame for this bizarre headfuck of a sequel, in which a girl rock band vacation at a condo where they are haunted and hunted by the ghost of a 50s rock star-cum-driller killer.

Sod all happens for the scant 77 minute running time and when it does, it’s fractured by stupid attempts at comedy and even a couple of musical numbers. This couldn’t look more 80s if it tried: the hair, the clothes, the (non-50s) music… Even the photography has that grainy Saturday afternoon chop show feel to it.

A good cast with a few familiar genre faces is wasted.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Chainsaw series – I’m even pretty indifferent the original. So watching the first attempt at ‘rebooting’ the series (by original writer Kim Henkel) in the 90s after the pretty dismal original two sequels, I naively hoped the presence of both Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey might be some sign of a quality boost.

It’s not. Instead, Leatherface spends his screen time in drag whilst McConaughey’s performance borders on camp and the whole thing is riddles with continuity issues. Word is the 2012 3D movie is yet another attempt to reignite the series.

Perhaps take the hint people…

AND THE SHITTY SEQUEL I LOVE:

The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1983)

Wes Craven claims he ‘needed the money’ when he agreed to make a sequel to his 1977 balls-to-the-wall siege flick. Evidently uninspired, he pretty much churned out a third-generation Xerox of Friday the 13th, with a literal bus full of teenagers stranded at an old ranch where they fall victim to the last surviving cannibals from the first movie.

This is a movie so rubbish that it’s padded by a flashback that a DOG has! The blind and psychic heroine delivers hilarious lines a-plenty and Kevin Blair (later to be a Friday final boy) hams it as the male lead.

Not that any of it matters, it’s not remotely boring and is much more fun than both the 2006 remake and its sequel (which Craven also had a hand in) and ranks as one of my real guilty pleasures.

Camp Crudstal Lake

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moonstalker-2MOONSTALKER

3 Stars  1989/92m

“There’s a bad moon rising… and it just got worse!”

A.k.a. Camper Stamper

Director/Writer: Michael O’Rourke / Cast: Blake Gibbons, Jil Foor, Joe Balogh, Alex Wexler, Ann McFadden, Pamela Ross, Jon Marzilli, Ingrid Vold, Sioux-Z Jessup, Neil Kinsella, Tom Hamil, Ernie Abernathy, Kelly Mullis, Joleen Tropp, Ron K. Collie.

Body Count: 23

Dire-logue: “So the guy doesn’t stop for hitchhikers – doesn’t exactly make him Jack the Ripper.”

For a while I wondered if seldom-heard of horror flick MoonStalker was going to be a slasher version of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, like there was a film called Slashdance. Let me cancel that raised-eyebrow expression from your face now by telling you that it’s not.

Instead, seldom-heard of horror flick MoonStalker is a super low discount price campers-in-the-woods flick shot in Nevada that mixes bits of Madman with Friday the 13th and features the most unashamed Halloween knock-off theme music this side of He Knows You’re Alone.

Don’t be distracted by my three-star rating however, MoonStalker manages to both suck and blow in unison but it does so with an endearingly naff charm. It’s a kindergarten carol concert: shit but cute.

The POV opening episode sees six teens attempting to dance around a campfire in the snow while someone watches from the trees. Two of them take leave to go and do the dirty in a caravan and are quickly axed off-screen. The fate of the rest of the teens is left to us to decide, but let’s pretend they all died for their Strictly Come Swaying and Waving Your Arms Around Mentally sins. Camera pans up to the full moon – roll titles…

After the credits, which run alongside the Halloween cover version, the “action” shifts to what looks like the family camping trip from hell. If you’re family is made up of the least talented members of the local theatre group. While Dad shouts his lines and tries not to look directly into the camera, Mom just wants to watch soaps on the fabulous portable color television and their two kids – a bratty daughter permanently fused to her cassette Walkman and a suspiciously camp son – whine about going to LA instead. Oh, but they tried so hard!

The serenity is soon ended by the arrival of an old man, originally going by Pop, towing a crappy caravan. They talk fishing and his son Bernie, who, it turns out, is chained up in the caravan and let out with his axe to off the family because he hates campers. Pop suddenly dies of a heart attack during the massacre, leaving poor Bernie to go it alone but with a spunky new RV!

Eventually, Bernie kills and replaces a guy on his way to a ‘Wilderness Counsellor’ training camp (to earn certificates – woooo!!!), which appears to consist of a few tents around a campfire and has a sign made out of a piece of card and felt tip pen. It’s a tad late to introduce the supposed ‘main characters’ but MoonStalker doesn’t care – MoonStalker plays by it’s OWN rules!

Nice guy Ron and bespectacled joker Bobby welcome probable heroine Debbie to the camp. She turns up in an undependable old car and echoes of Amy Steel abound. The camp is run by Third Reich wannabes Regis and Marcie, who like to engage in combat sex when he’s not ordering around his delegates, which are the array of usual horny teens, some of whom barely register on screen before being killed off by Bernie, who has slain and taken the place of one of the overdue attendees, opting for a stetson and reflective shades over the actually-quite-creepy mask he wore to kill the bad acting family.

Action Barbie likes sex to the sounds of Ride of the Valkyries

Everyone has, or tries to have, sex. Which is weird because there’s snow everywhere and nobody particularly exudes much hotness. Curiously, I didn’t spot any boobs – even during the shower shag moment. Bernie kills most the gang off screen but lops off a couple of limbs and the shower girl is seemingly murdered by having hot water sprayed on her face for about two thirds of a second.

But MoonStalker undoubtedly peaks with a loon-made ropes-and-planks contraption that keeps a line of corpses swaying to and fro while a tape of two guys singing ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’ plays from behind a tree! It provides a bonafide ‘LOL’ moment that ensures you’ll at least remember something about MoonStalker.

Still, I had to watch the end twice to try and figure some things out:

  • Who is the guy in the back of the ambulance at the end?
  • How did that female deputy turn up at the cabin and where did her buddy go?
  • So, who got shot!?

MoonStalker is bad fo’ sure! You’d be hard pressed to find a more by-the-numbers camping slasher flick from this era, but the fact that it was shot on film rather than video and it’s rebellious does-what-it-feels-like nature lends it a likeable sort of fascination that just about overrides the train wreck acting (especially from that family), cruddy effects work and vision-molesting fashion choices.

Also, I hope the actress whose name is the staggeringly brilliant Sioux-Z went on to become mega famous. I don’t think she did though.

Blurb-of-interest: Pamela Ross was Sara in Sorority House Massacre; Joe Balogh was in Hollywood’s New Blood.

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