Tag Archives: slasher

The Vegan Voorhees Pre-Halloween Horrorfest Part III

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So Groupie was mediocre and The Collector depressed me – next it was on to A Night to Dismember, which I’d heard “things” about, the same way you “hear” “things” about Camp Crystal Lake. Well you would if it existed.

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER

1.5 Stars  1983/69m

Director: Doris Wishman / Writer: Judith J. Kushner / Cast: Samantha Fox, Diane Cummins, Bill Szarka, Saul Meth, Miriam Meth, Frankie Sabat, Chris Smith.

Body Count: 15

Dire-logue: “Someone was calling her – the voice seemed to be coming from the hat box.”

According to the IMDb, according to director Doris Wishman – according to the DVD commentary, the main reason A Night to Dismember sucks harder than a Portsmouth hooker is that a disgruntled lab employee burnt most of the negatives, leaving Wishman to spend some years re-shooting and re-cutting the film into the 69 minute end product.

If you could ever get a headache on to celluloid than this is surely it. There is no original sound, it was all re-recorded and dubbed back on with the haywire plot strung together (or attempted to be) by a narration leaving next to no dialogue for the people on screen.

So the story goes, in October 1986 the Kent family pretty much all get murdered after daughter Vicki (Samantha Fox – no, not that Samantha Fox) is released from an asylum where she had been residing for the past five years after murdering two local boys. Her brother Billy hates her and tries to make her crazy by dressing up in cheapo masks and emerging from a lake to follow her like a zombie.

Some people die pretty much from being lightly tapped by either a machete or the preferred axe. At one juncture, a loving couple are slain with the former weapon, their decapitations seen as shadows against a wall, both are quite literally prodded by the blade and their heads just tumble off. Then, in the next shot, their killer places the featureless plastic head of a mannequin in a fireplace, which we are asked to believe is the noggin of the woman! It’s plain white! It has no hair! Later, a decapitated head actually gets stuck to the axe blade.

Narrator man – supposed to be a detective – babbles on and watches Vicki through a window:

– “Vicki saw me through the shades and started to dance. It had been a long time since any man had paid any attention to her.”

And then he tells us about Vicki’s dream:

– “Vicki felt as though someone faceless was making love to her in bright flashing colours that were changing from one second to the next.”

nighttodismemberSome other people are murdered and then Vicki’s immediate family members begin dying. Here, the actor playing Billy’s hair changes from shot to shot. And I mean changes. It’s a short back and sides one second and then flopping around his shoulders the next, clearly after at least a year’s growth.

The killer is revealed to be Mary shortly afterwards and she is almost immediately haunted by the ghosts of her murder victims. So she runs into the woods. Then into the cellar where she hears a voice coming from a hat box (see Dire-logue). Then she packs a case and leaves and murders a taxi driver. What was her motive? Fucked if I know!

So Vicki was innocent after all but ends up getting strangled by the detective when she starts tapping him with the axe in self defence. Things end with the narrator telling us he knew all the juicy details because the entire family kept diaries.

Wow. 69 minutes has never dragged as much but if you’re really hunting for bad, bad movies then drop anchor here, it’s truly unbelievable. Everything seems to have gone wrong: the music changes completely in a snap from sort of jazzy gameshow theme to tuneless stringy shrieks but almost never attuned to what’s supposed to be happening on screen; the effects work is horrible and the camera work all over the place. Considering the title is a play on A Night to Remember, you’d be hard pressed to ever forget this. Technically speaking the worst film I’ve ever seen but at least it wasn’t a completely uninteresting experience…

The Vegan Voorhees Pre-Halloween Horrorfest Part II

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With Groupie down I turned my attention to The Collector, as sent to me by the folks at Lovefilm. Now, I wasn’t sure if I’d even count this as a slasher film for much of the running time but I guess it adheres enough to the general opus, even if I’m totally against seeing animals killed on film. Disapprovingly, while it’s a pretty good flick, I’ve not a lot to say about it…

THE COLLECTOR

3 Stars  2009/18/87m

“He always takes one.”

Director: Marcus Dunstan / Writers: Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan / Cast: Josh Stewart, Michael Reilly Burke, Andrea Roth, Madeline Zima, Karley Scott Collins, Juan Fernandez, William Prael, Daniella Alonso, Alex Feldman.

Body Count: 8

Heavily debted ex-con Arkin works honestly by day in construction and moonlights as a thief. When working on the home of a rich jeweller and his family – who are about to go away for a few days – Arkin sees an opportunity to meet the deadline of a loan shark and sneaks into the house after hours to break into the safe.

Unfortunately, not only does it seem that somebody else is in the house, but said somebody has the family captive and is intent on torturing them to death, thwarting any escape attempts with numerous well-thought-out traps around the place. Yes, it’s Home Alone by Jigsaw.

What ensues for a while is a tense game out cat and mouse between Arkin and the hooded killer – The Collector – until the kind-hearted thief decides to try and help the family, if no one else than their pre-teen daughter Hannah, who is hiding somewhere, with whom he struck up a rapport earlier in the day.

Naturally, the killer’s pre-set traps are all used and all of them work exactly as they should, to squish, skewer, snap and slash the family members, a boyfriend and anybody else who happens by. Nothing is shown that is not used in some way and when the killer is more hands-on, luck is always on his side when spinning a blade at some more schmuck. But there is success in the potrayal of the killer – he’s a genuinely unsettling fellow with eyes that, when caught at the right angle, glow green like when you take a picture of your dog. He has no particular motive and it’s not even clear what his purpose is, to kill or ‘just’ torture?

Now, the ranty bit…

It would be hypocritical to denounce a film for being too brutal when you make a habit of watching and blogging about them but The Collector, like some of the scenes in, say, Hostel: Part II, goes further than what I’d find entertaining. Gruesome ways to kill people – fine, this does share some production credits with the Saw franchise – but the prolonged suffering of people and animals isn’t where I want to get my kicks and, like it or not, there are people who get off to that kinda stuff, it’s a losing argument to say otherwise.

Adam Green made the point at FrightFest that horror fans are often viewed as weird or sick in some way prior to the premiere of Hatchet II but comparing the cartoon violence of that film to a domestic cat pretty much melting into an acidic composite is pointless – you can laugh at the stupidity of Victor Crowley taking out two burly guys with a phallic chainsaw but at recreations of genuine pain – blecch. Even the quote from Gorezone on the front is worrying: “Good, twisted fun.” Good and tense as parts of The Collector were, there was absolutely nothing fun about it.

One final weird thing was the presence of Madeline Zima as the teenage daughter, Jill. She played the little girl in the a fore mentioned The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. In the same way Danielle Harris grew up from her little kid role in the Halloween sequels to go topless in Rob Zombie’s remake, it feels a bit perverse to see Zima disrobed here, able to remember clearly her squawking “you’re not my Mommy!” at Rebecca DeMornay what feels like only a few years back…

OK rant bit done with.

This will NOT end well…

Some pro’s: Stewart is a good, charismatic lead and Marcus Dunstan directs more than competently, creating a decent amount of tension in the opening sequence that poses some questions that may or may not be totally answered.

I’d say The Collector is more of an experience than a piece of escapist horror like a Friday the 13th sequel. Pushing the boundaries has been key to the success of several recent entries in the is-it/isn’t-it torture porn sub-set but even just a hint of a happy ending might’ve made this one more bearable. Let’s see some ass-kicking of the psycho rather than cowering and shrieking victims. What little it does give you isn’t enough to satisfy the counter balance that makes your more regular slasher flick a fun viewing experience – the bit where the final girl turns the tables. Yeah, I said I’d finished ranting already. OK, cut.

Blurbs-of-interest: Daniella Alonso was in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End. Michael Reilly Burke played Ted Bundy in, uh, Ted Bundy.

The Vegan Voorhees Pre-Halloween Horrorfest Part I

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I’m celebrating Halloween a couple of days early. Why, you snap? Well, a day off work and the absence of VeVo’s love-toy (who can’t be doing with all the grue) means today is the best possible window for some much needed viewing of my growing stack o’ horror flicks…

So, it’s just after 10am – teeth clean, showered, dog walked – let’s slide in the first flick…

GROUPIE

2.5 Stars  2010/80m

“She’ll take care of the band.”

Director: Mark Lester / Writer: Dana Dubovsky / Cast: Taryn Manning, Hal Ozsan, Eric Roberts, Scott Anthony Leet, Betsy Rue, Bevin Prince, Danny Arroyo, Mitch Ryan, Michael Teh.

Body Count: 8

Dire-logue: “Did I pull my face out of a cow’s arse or something?”

Horror movies about rock bands were numerous in the 1980s – devil worship through their satanic music n’ all that stuff or the members of a hair metal group and their entourage being stalked and slain by some maniac. Groupie is the first in some time to go down this path, save for, perhaps Slash (where the band went to a farm for some reason) or The Choke (where I can’t remember why they were being killed).

Rockers The Dark Knights are rumoured to carry a curse after one of their shows results in a pyrotechnic accident that, in turn, causes a stampede and a reveller is killed.

The band’s comeback tour is now under pressure to deliver both an album and some satisfied patrons, the latter proving a problem as introspective lead singer Travis is dead against repeating the fire trick that caused the death before. Things seem to be going otherwise okay – there’s ample Coke and shitloads of girls willing to flash their tits – until new groupie Riley turns up and people start to die.

A publicist disappears and a rival groupie (Betsy Rue) for Travis’s affections is soon found face down in a hotel swimming pool. The tour manager (Roberts) wants all groupies out of the picture but Travis buys into Riley’s talent for creating molds of faces and creating masks – perfect for the cover of the CD.

Thus, Groupie begins to show more in common with the 90s mental-woman movement which churned out The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,  Single White Female et al, settling in the end as the perfect partner for something like Devil in the Flesh, as Riley will, it seems, do just about anything to get rid of anyone standing between her and Travis – including the rest of the band.

Turns out, of course, that the dead concert teen was her lil bro and now she wants vengeance – so death comes by knife, pre-planned electrocution and the plaster cast mush that Riley uses the make the molds, seducing the band members into letting her tie them up and apply it.

As is so common in this era, things start better than they end. Acting and production are neatly above average and the scenario is, for the moment, believable. Once Riley is revealed as looney toon things go all Fatal Attraction for the exegesis to the anti-climactic but at least un-twisted ending. It’s worth a once over but, like most groupies, will probably be forgotten about in the morning.

Blurbs-of-interest: Betsy Rue was in both My Bloody Valentine 3D and (Rob Zombie’s) Halloween II. Director Lester was executive producer on Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse and also produced Devil’s Prey and The Wisher.

Teenage Dirtbags

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ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE

2.5 Stars  2006/18/87m

“Everyone is dying to be with her. Someone is killing for it.”

Director: Jonathan Levine / Writer: Jacob Forman / Cast: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able, Michael Welch, Edwin Hodge, Aaron Himelstein, Luke Grimes, Melissa Price.

Body Count: 7

The popular, not very nice kids at a high school invite Mandy Lane to a pool party because all the boys lust after her. She takes her friend Emmet with her and he is blamed when an asshole jock tries to impress Mandy by leaping into the pool from the roof of the house, fatally hitting his head on the concrete as he goes.

Nine months later, the popular, not very nice kids invite Mandy Lane away for a weekend at a remote ranch because all the boys still lust after her.

Emmet is no longer a friend so it’s just Mandy, a Barbie-wannabe and her limpet friend, Marlin, who Barbie keeps calling fat, and the boys: Jake, Bird, and rich boy Red. Stupid names for stupid, unlikeable teenagers. Let’s hope they all die.

What’s amusing is that, despite the boys’ lame ass attempts to impress Mandy, she only has eyes for grizzly farmhand Garth (Mount). So the kids pass the time in the usual ways, flirting, snorting coke, drinking loads before they begin splitting off for various reasons. Thankfully, the ostracised Emmet has followed the group to the ranch and answers our prayers by proceeding to kill, Kill, KILL the dreadful brats.

Come daybreak, the group’s attempts to escape are continually thwarted by shotgun-wielding Emmet, who shoots some, stabs others and forces one chick to perform a sort of blowjob on the barrel of the rifle.

With a reported budget south of a million dollars, All the Boys was a festival regular for awhile before being picked up for international distribution but only ever gained a limited release nearly two years after it was made. Reviews were mixed, strange considering the film’s resistance to entertain in favour of pretences of being some form of higher art, thanks largely to the grainy photography and ‘topical’ resolution once the requisite twist is tossed into the machinery, sucking thick cloud-cover over the motive thanks to the charades of said twist.

The plot may have been the stuff of the golden era of slasher film but the fun-time kids who populated those flicks are all but gone, replaced by nasty backstabbers and absolutely no one worth rooting for. Even Mandy is as hollow as an abandoned warehouse, existing only to swish around like a Geisha with nothing particularly interesting to say and while she’s not slutty like the other two girls (one of whom pads out her bra and uses big-ass scissors on her ‘delicate undercarriage’ area), it’s difficult to discern what it is “all the boys” see in her beyond general aesthetic blah.

I got to see All the Boys on the big screen but it’s almost definitely a DVD flick and not one you’d rent for a horrorthon party – it doesn’t want to be a slasher film, but it is, and the fact that it thinks above its station kinda makes it a bit like the clique of high school kids it destroys: they think they’re great but, y’know, not everyone shares that opinion.

Yay!

Blurb-of-interest: Anson Mount was in Urban Legends: Final Cut; Amber Heard was in The Stepfather remake.

Volume of violence – ’tis a book on the slasher film

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TEENAGE WASTELAND: THE SLASHER MOVIE UNCUT

J.A. Kerswell

In case you didn’t know, Justin Kerswell is the force behind Hysteria Lives!, about the biggest slasher devoted website around now Slasherpool has vanished quicker than a horny couple at Camp Crystal Lake.

I’ve been a casual acquaintance of his a few years: I gave him my VHS of Dead Girls, he scarred me with Satan’s Blade. We’re even. Weirdly, the author biog bit in the back of the book says that Justin is a vegan. And this is Vegan Voorhees. But I’m not a vegan, merely an animal-loving 85% vegetarian (for shaaame!) Weirder still, years ago he lived in Brighton, while I was out due west and then he moved due west and I moved to Brighton. I’m pretty sure if we ever met we might both drop dead in some Drew Barrymore Doppelgangy way.

Anyway, the book. “You should have written this!” my friend Lorna told me when she found my leafing through Teenage Wasteland a couple of weeks ago. Well…not really. As much as a slasher film geek I am, I’ve never committed fully to the cause. That’s to say, I’ve not picked up a lot of memorabilia aside from a handful of posters and my beloved Jason doll. Justin Kerswell, on t’other hand, could start a museum. Frankly, if I had all the posters, quads and lobby cards he does, I’d never be happy until I had enough walls to emblazon them on, dancing among them dementedly like that chick from To All a Goodnight.

Furthermore – and this is going to make me look lazy – there’s a few chapters devoted to the prototype era of the slasher film. Psycho, fine. Peeping Tom, great. And then it goes into the Italian giallo ouevre. Being part Italian I should rightly be proud of this kind of heritage but it’s practically alien to me. I couldn’t do it. So no, Lorna, I could not have written this.

What impresses most about Teenage Wasteland is the product itself: the book is beautiful. The covers fold out to reveal pristine recreations of posters for Friday the 13th (at the front) and Terror Train (at the back); there are numerous foreign and domestic prints, almost all of it’s in colour and it’s as stunning as a Kevin Spirtas calendar.

It’s so great that there’s some tomes on the genre now, coming from my hazy early days of addiction in the 90s where there was nothing but a few scathing mentions in almanacs and the Dika and Clover academic texts, I genuinely believed nobody else watched these films. With comparative ease Teenage Wasteland outperforms the competition just by the nature of its evident love for it.

Criticisms? None really – OK so I noticed a typo – it’s a journal of a love affair between man and film. Suffice to say, after this the world doesn’t need another overview of the genre’s golden years. What could it possibly say that hasn’t been touched on here? A guide to shot-on-video films? Ugh. Perhaps in a decade or so’s time it’ll be right for a retrospective on Scream and its disciples but I think I’m gonna stick with fiction, that way I can be lazy and blame it on art!

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