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Holiday Mayhem Now With 87% Less Fun!

So you’re paging through the on-demand titles of your video service of choice and you find a supposed remake of the cult classic Silent Night, Deadly Night. “Well that’s cool. The original was a good slasher, savaged by censorship into a toothless mess but with some real promise in its execution. The sequel was another mess, but this one a delightful mis-match of tone stemming from the performances that elevated the mediocre writing to hilarity. And this new one even stars Malcolm McDowell! That’s probably worth a rental!” Well, inner monologue, I hate to disappoint you but that is all that this in-name-only cash-in will do.

Silent Night takes place over a single Christmas Eve, during the annual parade of Santas in a small midwestern town. Officer Bradimore (Jaime King) is a recently divorced police woman who must find the Santa suited killer who is on a murder spree. Suspects loom everywhere and the body count rises as the deplorable behavior of the townsfolk shows that no one belongs on the “nice” list. In the end the killer will be revealed, and will have nothing to do with anything.

Officer Bradimore, despite being an armed officer of the law who is never out of uniform is the target of constant sexual harassment. Not a scene passes by without her needing to talk past disgusting innuendos or shrug away from unwanted physical contact from co-workers, suspects and the creepy reverend. Not once does she ever effectively deal with a male character. She isn’t Laurie Strode, a virginal high-school girl, she’s an officer of the law! Much is made of her recent divorce weighing heavily on her mood but that can’t account for how pathetic she appears when it comes to defending herself from every half-drunk punk in a red suit.

Tell me I’m going soft if you want, but killing an obnoxious 13-year-old girl with a cattle prod just seems mean-spirited to me. Just because she whines to go to the mall and her mom is too strung out to argue with her, I’m supposed to laugh as Santa shocks her into vomiting and collapse? God Bless America wasn’t funny either.

This film hates Christmas. The script is peppered with monologues about how Christmas is awful. A “bad santa” wannabe writes and reads journal entries about how it drives people insane. A drunken drifter in a stained Santa suit tells us about how he uses the holidays to take advantage of people. The skeevy reverend delivers a homily about how Jesus was born into cow shit because we’re horrible sinners. None of these raving diatribes are very well written or well delivered but we’re all going to sit down and watch one wacko or another vent about why Christmas is all wrong before we’re allowed to go back to watching our bad murder-Santa movie! Other Christmas themed horror films don’t spread a message of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, but they also don’t chew up more than a minute or two of runtime with someone complaining that Christmas isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Silent Night wants you to know that it’s all Christmas’ fault. So I guess the writer never got that red fire truck he wanted.

McDowell is here to do his signature move. Act wacky and collect an easy paycheck. Sheriff Cooper is a raving loon and his portrayal shows another flaw in the direction, a lack of commitment to McDowell’s background. He delivers his lines in a forced broad Midwestern accent but often slips back into his natural British accent. For a small town sheriff out in the boonies, he uses the epithet “bloody” a lot. The confused result sounds like McDowell was told to improvise his lines to be suitably raving but translating to the American accent caused some bumps in the process. Because no one tried to correct these painful moments, I suppose I’m meant to shrug my shoulders and chuckle warmly and say “Hey! McDowell, amiright? As these comedy efforts of the crazy sheriff fall apart there are a few poor executed references to the other films to try for an ironic chuckle, such as a redo of the killer offering a bloody gift to a little girl witness and a poor deputy made to actually speak the line “What is this? Garbage day?” Even the actor is embarrassed of that half-muttered line.

The story tries its hand at several different approaches for the modern slasher. A few early kills borrow the look of Saw or other “torture forward” flicks. Some murders have the 80′s flair for incongruous set ups, including the sexy teen impaled on reindeer antlers ala Linnea Quigley in the original. Victims at first are entirely characterized by sex, such as the cheating husband and the pornographer, so it’s implied that the film carries the “morality play” inspiration of the 80′s original, but then discards that angle. The killer leaves a calling card that the police can’t find but the audience is forced to see as obvious. When Bradimore shoots a suspect a red gift box can be seen on-screen, implying that the killer knew she would have to shoot? Or that the man she shot was the killer? Here’s where the film takes another page from a famous horror franchise.

Once the police are clued in the film becomes an awkward Scream sequel. Suspects are picked off one by one and the script tries to throw suspicion on others as the police race around trying to locate them. But it’s a hack job. The audience is already aware that half of the candidates for the electric chair don’t fit the appearance of the killer. We saw him in shadowy profile in the first minute of the film! No time and attention is actually paid to crafting a whodunnit mystery. In the end the killer is . . . Spoilers! . . . some guy. He’s no one to us because he hasn’t been a character before the reveal. And in that reveal he’s a child in a flashback to a murder from 20 years ago. Simultaneously the killer is a roving madman who appears in a different town every year and a wronged child returning to his hometown for vengeance against the people who shot his father for burning his mother to death while wearing a Santa suit. What?

That’s why Silent Night fails. It tries to be everything horror-film at once and ends up succeeding at nothing. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, and it’s certainly not interesting. The original two films have recently seen a Blu-ray release. Go spend your Xmas money there.

Merry Garbage Day Everyone!

Filmed in New Jersey on a shoe-string budget with a cast of unknowns but some excellent monster effects, The Deadly Spawn is one of those cult horror films that, with an Arrow release, has remained cult.

A meteor crashes in the hills outside a typical sleepy town. Campers are the first to be shredded by the creature that emerges; a 6 foot high, three-headed, fleshy and phallic collection of toothy maws that soon finds its way into the basement of a nearby house. Once it has set up shop, the creature begins to populate the flooded basement with dozens of tadpole like spawn, equally hungry for fresh meat.

The action of the film takes place over a single rain-soaked day in Charles and Pete’s house. Pete is a typical high school nerd. Worried about his grades and trying to get his study partner to recognize his romantic interest in a passive/aggressive way. Charles is a different variety of geek; obsessed with horror films and with a bedroom full of zombie movie posters and special effects toys.

Their parents are the first to go, venturing downstairs to meet a grisly end. Then the electrician wanders in and is similarly chomped to pieces.  By this time the creatures mobilize and spread out from the house and it isn’t long before the tadpoles attack neighboring grandma’s vegetarian luncheon, chew their way through uncle Herb and force the kids to barricade themselves in the upper storeys of the house. Charles, like all young boys with an affinity for chemistry, mixes up some explosives to put the monster down in a fountain of gore.

The greatest attention was obviously paid to the special effects featuring lots of animated monster puppets and full prosthetic bodies being eaten into bloody chunks. Performances are so-so, with some more earnest work by the adults while the teens chew scenery. Young Charles is forced by the script to stare at monsters in confused horror for long stretches as the effects play out, and there’s only so long he can hold the expression before it looks more like quiet concern than fear of gory death.

The two young female characters are painted in very broad strokes. There’s Ellen, the good girl honor student on one side and Kathy, the naughty girl on the other. One of the more interesting twists in the filming is that Ellen needed to leave the project, so it’s the good girl who gets killed while the naughty one makes it to the film’s end. A reversal of the script that feeds into the ending in which the survivors are traumatized rather than triumphant.

The filmmakers borrow heavily from other horror films in what might be seen as homage but what I experience is more a grab-bag of ideas. Not all of them are appropriate. There are comedy moments, with grandma grinding up a tadpole in a food processor and serving it to her guests, some scenes that recreate the last few moments of Night of the Living Dead, and plenty of Fulci inspired prolonged kills but with the zombie replaced by the toothsome spawn. Scenes just happen and then end; the sense of time is confused between the concurrent and consecutive events.

Which would matter, but we’re really just here for the gore. And if you are too, it’s worth your time to watch The Deadly Spawn.

All proms come with power tools, right?

What better way to kick off the best month of the year than with a little blood-spattered love story?

Made in Australia in 2009 but just finding a release in the States now, The Loved Ones, written and directed by first-time filmmaker Sean Byrne, centers around Lola (Robin McLeavy), a shy young lady who asks cute but damaged Brent (Xavier Samuel from my new favorite shark movie, SHARK IN A GROCERY STORE!) to the prom.  Brent must say no – he’s in a relationship with a nice girl who’s helping him heal after a tragedy.  Lola, however, is not a lady who takes no for an answer.  So logically, the best way to deal with this rejection is to kidnap Brent, tie him up, dress him up in a tux, and subject him to various tortures?  It’s just like a normal prom, right?  It’s like Pretty in Pink by way of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (complete with a clever homage to the dinner/hammer scene).

This movie has a reputation for being gory, and that’s not a lie.  Brent suffers some serious brutality in the name of love and prom.  But the real star here isn’t the red stuff.  It’s the characters, especially Lola and her rather questionable relationship with her “Daddy.”  McLeavy as Lola is just terrific – completely unpredictable, petulant and demanding like a teenager, sexual like a grown woman, and totally, gleefully insane.  This girl knows she’s nuts, and is perfectly okay with it.  You know she’s going to hurt someone (the poster can tell you that), but you can never quite guess which direction of crazy Lola’s going next – and how extreme that mood swing will be.  But it’s all in the name of love, right?  She’s just looking for love!  And she has her family around to help her fulfill all her prom dreams.  Especially her Daddy.

John Brumpton as “Daddy”

Daddy, played with few words but incredible facial nuance by John Brumpton, brings the creepy so strong that even though Lola’s the one with the knife, it’s Daddy who you keep watching out of the corner of your eye.  And the two of them together give you a relationship that is absolutely unsettling (their cheerful yells of “We can’t hear you!” over Brent’s tortured screams is especially effective), but also strangely similar to a touching portrait of father and daughter.  You know, if father and daughter were both psychotic torture/murderers.  For them, this is like a game mixed with a sort-of romance that’s about as screwed up as it gets.  Again, Brumpton conveys so much of this wordlessly, and McLeavy excellently plays the knife edge (sometimes literally) of young-girl ignorance and womanly awareness.  And while it’s pretty damn obvious that Lola and Daddy’s feelings might be more than familial, with one possible exception, it’s not overplayed.

Maybe he’s okay…

As a director, Byrne makes some smart choices.  He creates likable characters – when Brent turns Lola down, it’s not because she’s a loser, it’s because he already has a girlfriend.  He doesn’t mock or torment her.  It’s a perfectly normal reason to say no to someone, and it makes his capture later that much more upsetting, because there’s no “jerk guy comeuppance” to enjoy.  This is an honestly nice guy with some shitty life experiences even before Lola; a tragedy from his past that not only helps him endure the impending tortures, but even gives him reason to suspect he deserves them.  It’s not “he’s a MAN, so he’s so tough and can handle all this torture stuff!” These are sympathetic and realistic character traits absent in most films in the genre.

Just another normal family dinner

There’s a lot more to this movie, such as a subplot with a couple actually attending the prom, but I don’t want to give too much away and spoil all the fun.  Personally, after the credits rolled, I kept remembering the scenes with Brumpton and McLeavy (and Samuel, but his character was a little out of it at the time).  These two give special meaning to the word dysfunctional, and you’ll enjoy watching them play it out.  As for Byrne, he can count me as someone who’ll be looking forward to what he does next.

Given how much derivative crap is out there, this wild, brutal and just plain crazy original is well worth your time.

Another low-budget indie horror flick that relies on talented actors, an intriguing script and subtlety? If this is a trend, it’s a good one and I want it to go on as long as possible.

This poster suffers from what I’d like to call “The Absentia Syndrome.” Meaning this questionable imagery neither appears in nor represents the content of the film, most likely attached to the property without the filmmakers’ consent. -JD

Here’s the semi-official synopsis:

As a woman struggles to come to grips with her past in the wake of her mother’s death, an unsettling presence emerges in her childhood home. 

This simplification of the film’s events does it a disservice as the depth of the conflict comes from the disappearance of Anna’s (Caity Lotz) sister Liz, played by Kathleen Rose Perkins. Liz is the responsible one in charge of sorting out the estate of their late mother; an abusive woman who drove the siblings to escape their childhood home. Liz disappears and Anna must try to find her. As she searches, she sees disturbing visions of ghosts and uncovers strange and terrible secrets.

Casper Van Dien plays a very down-to-earth grizzled detective who is drawn into the case and the conflict about what has really happened to Liz. Haley Hudson has some cutely off-putting scenes as Stevie, the spirit medium who was the high-school freakshow now grown up to be . . . not much different.

While not in the same caliber as Absentia, The Pact has some clever twists and worthy scares. It is a film that relies on Lotz’s performance and she does a good job of creating a troubled yet determined character; without the gratuitous childhood flashbacks that a higher budgeted but less intelligent film would use to generate the character conflicts of an abuse survivor. Maybe it’s this characterization that makes the film important to us as it is an important subject that is often handled poorly and it’s good to see some dignity and respect paid to these issues in a genre film.

Jenny adds: One thing I appreciated about The Pact was its refusal to make the audience wait for a drawn out introduction before delivering some truly frightening moments and creepy atmosphere. As the sisters independently revisit their childhood home, we jump right in to some well-played scares. The tension continues to build on that foundation, without killing the mood, as the characters are fleshed out and the mystery unfolds. This is pleasantly at odds with the Hollywood convention of cheap jolts in the opening followed by at least 30 minutes of exposition and the development of dull and unlikeable twenty-somethings.

Going back to a previous point, yes, this film is genuinely scary. Although the set is your typical outdated apartment on the surface, the environment is no less creepy than your classic cobwebbed mansion. Dizzying wallpaper, imposing decor, a circuit of hallways that suggest a presence waiting around every corner, and… well… we don’t want to give everything away. Let’s just say that the setting, a character of its own in any quality haunting, contributes nicely to an unsettling mood and helps gives the scares their edge. With the exception of one or two debatable moments, none of these shocks are cheap or–even worse–false, and we’re doubly impressed by their liberal use of practical effects when so many productions would have sullied the same scenes with unfortunate CGI. I’m always looking for the next film that can get under my skin and this mission is rarely successful. I’m happy to admit there were a few scenes in The Pact that really got me.

The film’s not perfect. Few are. A scare or two opt for the tired herky-jerky movement so prominent in lesser films and fall flat. Not a big deal compared to the sins of big Hollywood startle-fests. These flaws stand out only because the rest of the film’s apparitions are handled so very well. In addition, looking back once the credits are rolling, some very creepy moments in the film make little to no logical sense . I wouldn’t necessarily want to see those scenes removed, but they’re misleading; practically undone by the reveals of the final act. The argument CAN be made that this material is a clue to a greater mystery, but I see scares for the sake of scares. Forgivable.

With all of this said, yes, I definitely recommend The Pact to fans of supernatural horror; especially those of you who prefer scary flicks heavy on atmosphere and light on the gore (though there is a tiny bit). However, the plot does take some unexpected turns that have been a turnoff to some. I’d urge you to just go in with an open mind, turn off the lights, and enjoy this odd little ghost story.

Does it pass the Bechdel Test? Most of the major players here are women. It passes with flying colors.

Despite film success with the Hellraiser and Candyman series and Lord of Illusions, Clive Barker’s relationship with the movie business has been strained. The best recent example of these troubles may be Midnight Meat Train, a Barker short story turned feature film that languished in production Hell and was grudgingly released to DVD after much strife. I thought it was a great little horror flick as you can read in my review. Nightbreed was another Barker project that suffered, being cut down at the last moment by the studio and released with little fanfare as a psycho-slasher film. It was poorly recieved, a box office failure and the end of what was originally planned to be a trilogy of films. Nightbreed was left to rot, simply filling out a place on the horror shelf for decades. But now, Russell Cherrington and Mark Miller are hoping to change that by restoring the film with the Cabal Cut.

I had the opportunity to view their work in progress at Monster Mania 22. Originally, Clive Barker was to be a guest of the convention and introduce the film but his health issues prevented his attendance. A real shame because I would have loved to hear the horror stories of the production from his own mouth. I’m morbid that way. I like hearing about the blood and sweat and tears of the film world. Even without Barker though, the show must go on and so it did.

For those unfamiliar with the film, Nightbreed is the story of Aaron Boone (played by Craig Sheffer,) a young man troubled by violent visions of murder. His psychatrist, Dr. Philip K. Decker (a transparent Philip K. Dick reference played by David Cronenberg) does little to help him and in fact gives him pills that encourage his hallucinations. Boone’s girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby) tries to help him but he pushes her away, convinced that the visions are actually memories and that he is a schizophrenic mass murderer. Boone flees the big city and goes looking for a place called Midian that he recalls from his dreams. He finds this subterranean city populated by monsters, the last survivors of the tribes of man-beasts that used to share the Earth before humanity hunted them to near extinction. Lori follows in his wake, trying to save him from himself but so does Decker who, it is revealed, is the real serial killer. Decker is a psychotic obsessed with finding Midian and the monsters and Boone’s visions are the lead he had been waiting for.

“Would you like to see my mask?”

Boone is grudgingly accepted as a monster among the denizens of Midian but soon Lori upsets the balance of their carefully concealed life. Then Decker arrives and engages the assistance of a local militia of racist rednecks to assault and destroy the city.  Boone rallies the Nightbreed to fight back and a cataclysmic battle ensues that destroys the enemies of Midian but also the city itself. After dispatching Decker, Boone accepts his new place as leader of the Nightbreed and his new name: Cabal. He sets out with the survivors on a pilgrimage to find a new place to call home. And the setup for the sequel is prepared.

Nightbreed is a visual treat, with some terrific prosthetic makeup and a cavalcade of monster denizens that would be at home in the Mos Eisley cantina or any Hellboy movie. At the same time though, it is a film with some serious problems. There are strange leaps of logic on the part of many characters and actions that seem to defy their previous motivations. Boone and Lori are allowed to run roughshod over the leadership and traditions of Midian, being told time and again that something is forbidden before they immediately do it anyway and with almost no resistance from the monstrous and deadly Nightbreed. Boone, who has fled to Midian to hide and escape his fears of being a killer then demands that the Nightbreed fight to the death against the invaders and he slaughters a half dozen of them himself. A prophecy that declares Boone the savior of Midian is introduced with about 10 minutes of runtime left to the film. Many times, especially in the final battle, people flit about from place to place, seemingly chasing their tails above and below ground, wherever the editing drops them. My hope was that the new cut would correct these flaws, reintrouducing some order into the chaos of last minute cuts by the original studio.

Hey, I’m just as confused as you are folks.

Material for the restoration is drawn from work prints and even dailies from the original filming. The visual and audio quality of these re-edited segments is often very poor and much digital correction and restoration will need to be done before it can be shown outside of enthusiast audiences. Those shifts in quality are useful however as the signposts marking off what was left behind in the theatrical edit. The Cabal Cut lengthens the film to 2 and 1/2 hours of runtime. This restored material provides much deeper characterizations of the leads, making their relationships and actions more human and believable. Lori’s character is especially improved by the restoration. Entire scenes of dialog and action for Lori (including her introduction as a night club singer) are returned along with her interactions with the Nightbreed familiy that she discovers when she first arrives at Midian. More backstory is provided along with more depth and more scenes of violence and carnage.

Unfortunately, as much as this helps explain the story, it does little to make sense of it. People still seem to move about at random and some behaviors come across as a contrivance to serve plot rather than characterization. A completely restored set of flashbacks to the pogroms that destroyed most of the Nightbreed are visually interesting but add little to the story and the flat, stodgy performance of the Nightbreed child who shows these visions to Lori was probably better left out of the film. Pieces of Danny Elfman’s score have been reintroduced to flesh out the edits but his work on the film is another flaw of the original. A hurried mess of rejected cuts from his Batman scores, minus the Keatonesque motives and with synthesized jungle flutes overlaid to try to disguise the sound. I actually bought that soundtrack album when it was released and even then realized I had been had. Thank goodness it included the excellent country music rendition of Oingo Boingo’s Skin.

Now, I have no real love for the studio cut either. Seeing how badly Lori was treated by the theatrical edits is eye opening. I think it’s been a very noble endeavor of the restoration team to spend the time and energy that they have, to find and edit and correct all the material and bring the film back to Barker’s original vision. It seems that’s just not what I wanted from Nightbreed. If you are a fan of the film and Barker’s works, or if you’re just curious about the amazing work that Cherrington and Miller have done then I recommend you check out the film and show your support. If you were never a fan to begin with however, Cabal is not going to change your mind.