THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE Shines

The Color Out of Space (2010)

Directed by Huan Vu
Written by H.P. Lovecraft (story), Huan Vu (screenplay)

IMDB

The Color Out of Space is a rare bird. Much like 2005’s The Call of Cthulu, it represents one of the stronger adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, remaining faithful to the original story’s essence while imagining it through a unique cinematic style. First published in 1927, the author’s short story of the same name has been twice adapted for the big screen, once with Die, Monster, Die in 1965 and again in 1987 with The Curse. This time around, German director Huan Vu gives us a moody, understated experience, filming in shadowy black and white and setting the events in a remote farming community in Bavaria; a departure from Lovecraft’s Arkham, Massachusetts which is given a passing nod in the opening scene.

Set in 1975, this version gives us Jonathan Davis, a young man whose father has gone missing. His attempts to track him down lead him to Germany where the elder Davis had been stationed at the end of World War II. Arriving in the remote village, Jonathan meets late-middle-aged Armin who remembers Jonathan’s father from an encounter 30 years prior. From here the film alternates between the present and the pre- and post-war eras as Armin chronicles in flashback a bizarre tale of a meteorite crash and its effects on the local soil and water. Not to mention the humans. The crash itself and the subsequent study of the strange, sublimating rock by a cadre of bewildered scientists is engaging in its deliberate sense of mystery. We’re absorbed in a classic sci-fi puzzle as the meteorite shrinks by the day and seems impervious to any substance that might reveal its composition. Once it vanishes completely, the creeps really begin. Nearby plants and crops start to grow to enormous proportions, but are rancid and inedible when harvested. Eventually a local farming family, the Garteners, begins to exhibit strange behavior as they withdraw from the community and only entertain visits from neighbor Armin. These scenes of the family’s unfolding isolation and dread are the film’s core and are skillfully presented using suggestion and restraint. A madwoman’s babbling is heard while the camera lingers on her shadow-shrouded, closed bedroom door. Dead frogs, birds and fish litter the surrounding land in a quiet montage. Trees, fields, and even the interior of the farmhouse are shrouded in a perpetual mist that feels both soft and suffocating in the film’s grey tones. Meanwhile a low whooshing sound hisses on the soundtrack to create a disorienting mood. These touches accumulate into a sense of menace and otherworldliness that reaches its height during Armin’s final visit to the Garteners. There’s a queasy body-horror that follows, if only in hints and partial glimpses, as the titular substance (the film’s German title is Die Farbe, meaning “The Color”), manifests itself. As effectively eerie as the film is, it does have its rough edges. Director Vu overuses cut to black between scenes that occasionally feel like they linger too long. The performances, though generally solid, suffer from some spotty late cues and wooden delivery. And this is clearly a budget effort, even if the black and white aesthetics mask the fact to a large degree: a number of landscape shots use lighting and foreground silhouettes to create a nice sense of unreality and artifice, for example. There’s also an unnecessary twist ending. The film’s biggest sin, however, is the somewhat tacky looking cgi that animates the alien effluence, a swarm of bright fuchsia that constitutes the only (and overbearing) use of color. Vu was undoubtedly going for major contrast, highlighting “color” in its most literal sense. Alas, the connotation is more cheer than fear. But don’t let some minor bruises stop you from enjoying this apple. It’s visually rewarding, engaging, and has a deliberate pace that works to its advantage, gradually building to an oppressive feeling of dread that lingers after the credits roll. So give it a watch if you enjoy slow burn horror. Watch it if you’re a fan of Lovecraft. Or watch it if you’re just in the mood for something unique and stylish. You won’t be disappointed.

Canadian Buddy Comedy Gone Sour MON AMI Out NOW!

I think everyone and their kid brother that the Soska's sophomore effort American Mary is the number one Canadian import that FINALLY hits the DVD rack State side today. So while I wait by my mailbox for my copy on blu ray, I wanted to take a second to let folks know that another Canadian effort is worth every bit your attention as it hits iTunes, DVD and video on demand today.

Rob Grant's Mon Ami is a fantastic mashup of workplace revenge, buddy comedy, and kidnapping tale gone horribly sour. It's got more than a passing resemblance to Fargo, and not solely because of the funny accents.

What it also has is a pair of pitch perfect performances from its two leads Mike Kovac and Scott Wallis. This has been the year of "buddy horror" with Mon Ami joining the ranks of standout films The Battery and Resolution as titles that nail the tricky dynamic of making its leads friendships feel earned. In the case of Mon Ami you totally buy into the pairing, and that it extends back decades and that's it's dangerously close to slipping away due to growing up, pairing off, etc etc.

That's not to say Mon Ami is a mealy mouthed tear jerker where everyone learns a little something about themselves and everyone goes home happy. It's a film that cuts a bloody swath through a number of bodies that get stacked like cordwood by the conclusion. It's bloody and it's hilarious and more important it's bloody hilarious.

Check out the trailer below:

Lunchbreak Horror: DOLLFACE

Written By John Sylvain
Directed by Colin Campbell

Adult trick or treaters never cease to be terrifying do they? A trick or treater in creepy get-up leaves behind her purse at a young couple's front door, the do-gooders embark on a night of bloodshed and terror, when the sensible thing would have been to keep playing chase and maybe order a pizza using a credit card the weirdo left behind.

There's a very Alice in Wonderland vibe to the short as our lead makes her way through a labyrinthine mess of a curio shop with panicked hopes of finding her missing husband. DOLLFACE delivers a healthy dose of dread and some nice scares in less than eight minutes.

Who Do You Want To See Take A Crack At The Next V/H/S?

Now that V/H/S 2 has hit via various On Demand platforms, the public en masse can enjoy one of the ballsiest, most entertaining genre films of the year. The sequel to the disappointing first effort is the rare gem that that learns from the mistakes of the first film, eliminates them all and churns out a wildly entertaining follow up.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that a third VHS is going to happen right? Without a format that allows for maximum creativity and a lack of heavy mythology to weigh the films down, getting to helm a segment of V/H/S is a kind of signal that let’s a director know he’s made it into the cool kids club of genre filmmaking.  With that in mind, here’s a peek at who I’d love to see handle segments in the next installment. I think it’s a given that writing/directing corroboration of Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard are grandfathered in at this point.

Patrick Rea His debut feature, Nailbiter, earned rave reviews as it played the festival circuit before getting picked up by Lionsgate for a home release. While Nailbiter represents a fantastic mashup of a disaster film with old school monster movie making, Rea has also churned out a slew of fantastic shorts for years. One trait that runs through the bulk of Rea’s work is a cheeky sense of humor, even as he crosses over from sub genre to sub genre. Serial killers, vampire mistresses, fairy great godmothers, couple’s nights gone sour and alien girl scout invaders are a handful of the subjects Rea has delved into. With a keen knack for working within a limited budget and a great understanding on how to make a killer short, plus a devilish sense of humor, Rea would be the perfect up-and-comer to tap for the next installment.

Xan Cassavetes One of the cool things about the V/H/S series is it doesn't shy away from classic monsters despite the found footage angle of the films. David Bruckner’s Amateur Night had the beautiful weirdo vampire tale Amateur Night.  With Kiss of the Damned Cassavetes balanced the erotic side of vampirism with the blood lust. I’d love to see her helm something with a tinge of eroticism that doesn’t demean its principals. She’d knock it right out of the park.

Drew & Marichelle Daywalt They have pretty much OWNED the horror short for years now, churning out three minute blasts of terror through his Fear Factory. Dewalt’s shorts take mundane situations: listening to your wife sing your baby to sleep over the baby monitor, getting awoken by a late night call, a late night drive home, hiding in the closet to surprise your mom and twist them on their ear with a last second jolt that packs a wallop. If you don’t believe me check out their Youtube page. It’s the Lay’s potato chip of the indie horror circuit. You can’t just watch one.

Bill Palmer The wildcard on the list, Palmer has made two of my hands down, all time favorite short films with The Living Want Me Dead and Christine inspired spoof Vicki. While most of his work has been in television, these two shorts alone demonstrate Palmer has the knack for combining over the top sticky, gory mayhem alongside gut busting laughs. The V/H/S series is one that benefits from the communal theater experience, and Palmer’s work plays great to the crowds.

Stephen C Miller Aside from shepherding a remake that pretty much no one bitched about (the splat-tastic Silent Night) Miller was behind of of the coolest films of last year, the under appreciated The Aggression Scale. Showing a knack for working with kid actors and coming up with the perfect blend of Rambo meets Home Alone, Miller could be the perfect fit to step into the role Jason Eisner filled on the second go-round with his terrifying kids-in-peril alien invasion segment.

BLACK ROCK Grounds Its Thrills in Character

Black Rock (2012)
Directed by Katie Aselton
Written by Mark Duplass and Katie Aselton
IMDB 

The mumblecore movement has done its fair share of flirtation with genre filmmaking. Mark Duplass co-directed and co-wrote 2008’s Baghead, which while primarily a comedy-drama drew on elements of classic slashers in a tongue in cheek way. Last year’s Safety Not Guaranteed, in which Duplass starred, similarly used science fiction as a bookend to a more personal narrative about taking chances in relationships. Still, with the exception of Ti West few mumblecore directors have embraced horror outright, (though that didn’t prevent the term mumblegore from being coined for these intersections). Now, however, Katie Aselton has brought us the Duplass-penned Black Rock, a film that sits firmly and unequivocally between suspense thriller and horror.

Aselton, who also stars as Abby, assembles a strong cast of female leads in Kate Bosworth’s Sarah and Lake Bell’s Lou. The trio are longtime friends heading for a short vacation to their childhood haunt, an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine (also director Aselton's home state). The trip is of Sarah's making and an engineered manipulation to get Lou and Abby to patch things up. A past betrayal has kept the pair apart for years. While on a hike to unearth a long-buried time capsule, their simmering hostility explodes into an intense quarrel as we learn details of the backstabbing.

Eventually a trio of hunters arrive on scene and, still smarting from her blowup with Lou and her very real romantic grief, Abby allows herself to get drunk and begin a flirtation with one of the boys. There’s an assault that escalates to a revenge-fueled extended stalking of the women, a tense cat and mouse that occupies the last half of the film.

Arguably some will check their watches during the early scenes establishing the women's relationships and history with one another, impatient for the real meat of the thriller to start. This is a suspense movie after all. Yet when that action finally arrives, it's all the better for the chemistry that comes before it. We're always more invested in characters who are developed and here the mumblecore tradition of naturalistic dialogue, along with the credible performances, get us there nicely. Also, like many of Ti West's efforts, this is slow burn horror. The story grows from the somewhat extended early character interactions, giving us a chance to empathize enough with these women so we care when they're terrorized.

As Aselton's second outing behind the camera, Black Rock's direction is competent if not particularly exceptional. The coastal New England island setting with its rocky beaches, grey ocean and cloudy skies does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of providing a moody visual backdrop. The nighttime scenes where the women huddle in a wooded shelter or try to silently crawl through brush convey a nice sense of menace. We feel how vulnerable they are and constantly fret over them being detected by their stalkers. In fact Aselton maintains a good level of suspense throughout and the script keeps things plausible, at least for the most part. There are a few too many near misses with guns from supposedly well-trained soldiers and the women's brief, nude foray into spear making hits us over the head with the 'humanity reduced to its most primitive state' theme. Had the scene lasted much longer it would have devolved into absurdity. But these moments are largely forgivable and hardly detract from the sustained tension of the final acts.

Although it's unlikely to linger in your consciousness for very long, Black Rock is a solid, entertaining little thriller. The estimable acting talent and authentic dialogue along with Duplass' mindful script make it well worth checking out. It's also a welcome antidote to the relative dearth of women directors and strong female ensembles in the genre. Here's hoping it inspires more of the same.

The Commentary On Horror-Movies.Ca "Masters Of Horror" Is Straight Up Fucking Bullshit

I know I’m a week late to the ballgame with this post but work and potty training spare time for no man. After reading some distressing and downright hateful commentary towards women taking a role behind the camera, rather than their assumed position in front of it, I had to weigh in.

About a week ago Horror-Movies.ca posted their list of the Ten New Masters of Horror. While it’s always easy to sit back and armchair critique the content of any arbitrary list, overall the choices are solid if safe and mundane. I’d argue that Alexander Aja has made one excellent film (High Tension) before embarking on a career of mediocrity while riding the remake gravy train ever since. There may not be a more reviled director this side of Uwe Boll than Rob Zombie and while Eli Roth came out like a house on fire with Cabin Fever, he hasn’t demonstrated any burning desire to step behind the directors chair since Hostel II tanked, choosing to focus on acting a producing ever since. The last thing he directed was the pilot episode for Netflix’s trainwreck of a foray into the world of horror, Hemlock Grove. Still, any list that gives mention to Steven Miller (The Aggression Scale), Xavier Gens (Frontiers) and Adam Green (Frozen) is not without merit.

The issue with some, myself included, take from the post is the obvious gender bias with the exclusion of any female directors of note. This was first pointed out by Hannah Neurotica, founder of Women of Horror Month. Other commentators soon chimed in hoping for an explanation.

I have to commend the post’s author, Herner Klenthur, for doing something not often seen in the relatively anonymous world of online commentary where keyboard courage allows someone the freedom to act like a giant baby when faced with critique. Klenthur reasonably explained his position: with limited time and financial resources he lacked the insight and information required to recommend a female to the list. Off the top of his head he could only name the Soska sisters (American Mary, Dead Hooker In A Trunk) as potential qualifiers, but at the time of writing he had failed to see either of their films.

Unfortunately, his politeness doesn’t excuse what a cop out this answer is. While no one has found a way to squeeze more than twenty four hours in a day, if you’re running a large horror site and struggle to simply name one female director among the dozens working in genre right now, then you lack the innate curiosity required to carry out your role well. Basic knowledge of how Google works, a handful of additions to your RSS feed and the ability to type an email with complete sentences will gain you access to screeners from a wide array of directors,  and the whole process will cost you little more than time. It’s also impossible to let someone off the hook when they can’t take the time to do basic research and watch a handful of films directed by women but can put together 33 slides of the  “Hottest Horror Movie Victims”. This kind of mentality is bullshit sexism at its worst, one that perpetuates the idea that women need to know their place in front of the camera, preferably in a state of undress, rather than behind it.

Just off the top of my head here’s a handful of women whose body of work is worth investigating:

There’s the aforementioned Jen and Sylvia Soska, whose second feature film American Mary, sits near the top of the iTunes rental charts and has earned a metric ton of critical praise as a stylish, disturbing thriller in the vein of early Cronenberg. Karen Lam has followed up her terrific debut Stained with Evangeline which just made its debut at Cannes and should be out later this fall. Xan Cassavettes and Kiss of the Damned just served a kickass reminder that vampires can be terrifying and terrifyingly sexy all at once. Helene Cattet is one half of the team behind the sexy, stylish giallo Amer. Jennifer Lynch has proved more than able to follow in her father’s footsteps with the mind bending Chained. Caroline Du Potet’s In Their Sleep is french horror every bit as visceral, brutal and thrilling as a Them or Inside. Emily Haggins (My Sucky Teenage Romance) continues to mature as a director and I don’t think she can even legally buy booze yet. Katie Aselton’s nifty revenge/thriller Black Rock is now out there for you to see.   Lindsay Denniberg channeled the punk energy of Black Flag with the visual flair of Warhol with Video Diary of a Lost Girl while Devi Snively adapted the feel of classic EC Comics with her feature Trippin’ along with a handful of fantastic short films. The next wave of fantastic directors are about to break through as Lori Bowen (channeling Fulci with her short Stella Buio), Maude Michaud (the upcoming Dys) Ama Lea and Shannon Lark each prep new projects. Genre favorites Danielle Harris and Brea Grant ar making the transition behind the camera with their horror and sci-fi directorial debuts later this year. You don’t know Boston’s Izzy Lee (Legitimate) yet but you will as she turns heads and stomachs with her work. These represent a handful of names snapped off in five minutes by our rinky dink blog.

The author’s narrow frame of reference isn't the issue here. The issue is the ugliness that spilled over in the comment section.

One particular poster’s vitriol towards a civil exchange of ideas revealed a near sociopathic view towards women’s place with horror. Kicking things off with a stunning lack of comprehension of what words actually mean, things managed to spiral out of control quickly (emphasis mine):

I wasn’t going to join in this nonsense, but the list is entitled “10 New Masters of Horror” not “10 New Mistresses of Horror”. The clue in the words just in case the grammatically challenged don’t get it.

Look, I’m all for discussions of the ins and outs of the hardcore bondage and domination scene (in fact can we go ahead and just start talking about THAT right now? I’ll bring the gimp mask and assless chaps), it’s almost impossible to fathom that said poster doesn’t comprehend the context that the word “master” is being used. We’re talking about achieving the pinnacle in one’s craft, not whether or not you can make someone cry out “Thank you sir can I please have another?”

Linguistic comprehension issues aside, the commetary got ugly and defensive fast: Get real and stop touting “hobby horror”/glorified YouTube videos and “Suicide Girl” wannabes as the next best thing. Nobody watches that shit or buys into it apart from the delusional....The whole “Women in Horror” thing is a fucking joke. Just a bunch of e-beggars, Kickstarter/Indiegogo beggars, and wannabes who hit the conventions to sleaze their way into these low-budget and micro-budget nasties because they think they can jump the queue and use them as stepping stones into real movies as a result...In fact, 90% of the original “Women in Horror” wannabes have quit because they got too old or married or pregnant… or a combination thereof.

The above quotes are examples of straight out ugly, hateful and pig headed opinions. While we’re told we should accept everyone’s point of view even when it doesn’t jive with our own, there’s no reason to see the above for anything other than what it is: fucking bullshit that needs to be expunged. The facebook commentary wasn’t much better. The always lovely charge that the Soska’s only get attention or opportunities because they flaunt their attractiveness was thrown around more than once. The narrow mindedness suggests that there’s still too many male horror fans that can’t handle the idea of a strong, dominant woman giving the orders rather than taking them. This boy’s club bullshit has to stop. It’s rare that any of the criticism levied towards the women listed above has anything to do with the merits of their films, and even when it does, it’s within the context of how these women’s physical appeal. No one ever says Adam Green gets to make the same mildly entertaining slasher movie over and over again because he’s cute. No one questions Rob Zombie or Neil Marshall regarding their credibility as a horror fan or questions whether they’re simply using the genre as a stepping stone. None of the films nor artists I listed above are perfect. One of my favorite writers despises American Mary and will go out of his way to tell me how awful it is whenever I sing its praises. Yet he does it within context of the film’s flaws, not whether or not the artists spend too much time worrying about their wardrobe.

Levies of sexism aside, the lack of opportunity and exposure for women in creative roles holds the genre back. The prism of horror is seen through such the narrow focus of young, white males that there’s little new and exciting to discuss. This doesn’t mean that there needs to be a quota or that men need to stop making films. There needs to be more room for exploration and opportunity. If you continue to expose yourself the same material, whether it’s film, literature or art, you fail to grow. A five minute short like Legitimate is going to make you think about aspects of life that as a fairly well off white male I can take for granted, whereas my friends have to deal with the terror of this shit every day.

I love horror as a genre. I’ll defend it to my dying breath. I’ll argue that romantic comedies are a thousand times more condescending to women that the most vile horror flick. But the fact that so many talented women continue to be dismissed and marginalized has to stop.

THE BATTERY is Now Officially Available. Drop EVERYTHING And Watch This NOW!

We’re coming up on the halfway point of the year and today marks the official release of my favorite film so far. The Battery is everything I want in my indie horror: smartly written characters, fantastic back and forth, and a script that has its principals reacting to a situation in a way that makes sense as opposed to coming off as pawns moving across the plot’s chess board. The film is available RIGHT NOW on iTunes and other on demand platforms. The film has torn up the festival circuit, playing multiple continents and venues, including Dead By Dawn in Scotland (where it won the Audience Award) and Imagine: Amsterdam (where it also won the Audience Award, beating out John Dies at the End, American Mary and the Maniac remake). People are falling in love with this little zombie that combines heart, grit, balls and elbow grease into something joyous to watch.

I’m actually jealous of everybody that’s going to experience the joy of watching The Battery for the first time this week. A lot is made of the film’s miniscule budget (about $6,000). Whereas most indie fare uses the lack of monetary resources as a crutch to cover up a stunning lack in imagination (“Well what did you expect for no money?”)  writer/director/star/bearded weirdo Jeremy Gardner embraces the lack of resources to discard the bulk of expected cliches in the oversaturated zombie subgenre. Lifted from the burden of having to provide an escapist start to finish zombie fest, The Battery remains at its core a simple story of two friends tossed into an unimaginable situation. While i have a soft spot in my heart for indie horror as a general rule, I can’t stress enough how much it makes me want to run through a wall with joy when a film as amazing as this, put together by a smart, ambitious and righteous cast and crew, beats the big guys at their own game.The Battery (and films like it) is the reason we press on with this site, even during the hardest days.

Below is the reprint of our initial review of The Battery:

I'm fond of lamenting that if I never had to watch another low budget zombie movie for this site again, that day could not arrive too soon. When you do your best to focus on independent films, a hazard of the trade is the seemingly never ending deluge of tossed together shaky cam films. There will always be someone  ply buddies with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon if they'll spend a hot summer's day shambling around the backyard covered on karo syrup and corpse paint. To borrow a phrase from David Lowery, the world needs another George Romero like I need a hole in the head.

Yet every once in a while a film comes our way that makes the slog worth it all. Filmed for less than the cost of a ten year old Subaru Forrester equipped with a faulty cassette deck, The Battery lays waste to films with twenty or more times the budget at its disposal.

The Battery thrusts the viewer into the end of the world with little fanfare. Much like David Carradine in Kung Fu, Ben (Jeremy Gardner, pulling triple duty) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) wander the earth, sticking to the backroads and living off the land and foraged canned goods left behind at the isolated homes they find along the way. The former minor league ballplayers (the title is baseball jargon for the relationship of a pitcher and catcher) have no plan in place except to survive one more day. Gardner makes economic use of the opening sequences to establish both his world and the personality differences between his two leads. From that jumping point The Battery delves deep into what makes Mickey and Ben tick, thoroughly dissecting them both in a way that leaves the viewer vested in their outcome. The zombie threat is pushed into the background, with the undead not posing much threat to the harrowing last act. Gardener has far more interest exploring the dynamics of his two characters, and for most of The Battery's runtime, any number of doomsday scenarios that paired his duo up would have served.

The two have differing opinions on what needs to be done to survive. He keeps Mickey on the move, never stopping for even a night's comfort under the roofs of one of the homes the two stumble across. You get the feeling that there's a part of Ben that secretly loves the end of the world has allowed him to unleash his inner caveman. While his friend clings to romantic notions of this all being just a phase, Ben takes a realistic look at the longview, and decides that the world is pretty much fucked, so it's best to keep moving lest you get dragged down with it. This is a good idea in theory, but in practice, Ben's snarky nature and tendency to play the role of Dad to Mickey doesn't endear him to his travel partner. Ben needles Mickey in an attempt to toughen him up but instead his effortsdrive a wedge between them and wear his travel mate down.

Cronheim's Mickey is a fascinating study in human frailty. He clings to vestiges and vanities of a world that's gone and will never return. A pair of oversized headphones act as his security blanket, literally enveloping him and drowning out the world around him. Despite the heaps of evidence to the contrary he can't accept that this is the world he lives in now. It's too empty an existence for him to bear. Yo keep waiting for him to make a mistake-be it negligence or saying the wrong thing to the wrong person-that's going to get the two of them killed.

The Battery explores the danger of interjecting a glimmer of hope in a hopeless situation. At a critical moment Ben and Mickey intercept a call on their walkie talkies. After months of scavenging with only each others company to keep there's the dangled carrot of community. There's food, structure, electricity and even the promise of movie nights (Tremors!). Despite being told in no uncertain terms to bugger off by the voice on the other end of the line, Mickey can't let it go. Ben wants to forget the call and press on but Mickey can't let the thought go. While building an imaginary fantasy about life on this compound, he starts cracking at a rapid rate, growing more petulant and careless. The slightest glimmer of normalcy forces Mickey to examine the hell the world has turned into. He can't stomach an endless stretch of days sleeping on rooftops and living off pillaged canned goods any longer when the illusion of the world left behind is within reach. These thoughts destroy him emotionally.

Gardner's attention to small details make The Battery a joy to watch. Ben's clothes hang a size too large on him serving as a subtle reminder that the character's are living off whatever they can dig up, and have been doing so for a long time. When the two find themselves under siege by a horde and trapped within a station wagon, they make it a point to conserve every resource at their disposal, including draining the water from canned tuna in their empty gallon jugs. Mickey's fanatical adherence to dousing himself with hair product every day, or holding on to winning lottery tickets provide further details into his inability to cope with the new reality. These small details don't cost anything but effort and add an extra layer of depth and understanding to The Battery. You see it too often in indie films where directors justify narrative laziness by blaming it on a lack of funds. The Battery is a fine example of how ambition and dollars don't always go hand in hand.  This is the first must-see zombie film in a hell of a long while. When you see something this good with this little money behind it, it lowers your tolerance for less efforts considerably. Seek this film out.

BLOOD FOR IRINA Is An Erotic Vampire Tale Told In A Fog

Long before they were stripped of their terrifying characteristics and molded into sparkling, sullen faced teenage fashion wear models for the high school crew, vampires were still considered the most romantic of all the classic monsters of literature and film. Even in their most demonic, blood thirsty iterations, there’s an exploration of the tortured side of their eternal existence. Perhaps its the idea that even immortality would lose its charms after a while, once all the ties that bound one to humanity have faded from the fingertips and dissolved into dust.

Chris Alexander’s Blood For Irina follows the trajectory of the vampire as a tortured, lonely and lost soul. The film draws heavy influence from European art house horror, and draws comparisons to the dream like atmosphere of Jean Rollins’ work in the subgenre.

Irina (Shauna Henry) is at the tail end of her vampiric unlife. Struggling to keep down the blood of her victims, she finds herself holed up in an abandoned seaside motel. She wanders deserted streets during the late hours of the night, not so much looking for sustenance that her body will violently purge from her as she is looking to make a connection, no matter how fleeting. The only lasting but tenuous connections she has left are to a pink wigged, abused street walker (Carrie Gemmell) and the motel caretaker.

“Dream-like” is the most apt phrase I can come up with to describe Blood For Irina. Alexander relies heavily on slow motion and an ambient noise filled soundtrack to create a surreal atmosphere. Alexander also shows no fear on drawing attention to inanimate objects long past the point of comfort (one of the best examples is the opening shot of a discarded doll washed up on the surf). The upside is a film that contains a number of compositions that one would love to pause, print and frame. Alexander possesses a rare and uncanny eye for beauty and detail. The eventual pairing of Henry and Gemmell is a beautifully shot bit of erotica that combines the sexual and horrific appeal of vampires.

The unfortunate downside is a film that lacks any forward momentum. Even at a run time under eighty minutes, the pacing feels laborious. If the slow motion were sped up and played in real time, you’d be left with a short film that topped out at twenty minutes and change tops. There’s also too much repetition in the shots. After a half dozen 15 to 30 second languid views of the motel’s dilapidated exterior, I found myself almost begging for something to actually happen on screen.

Ultimately Blood For Irina is a film where I appreciate for its artistry but find the end result lacking.It’s too art house for my personal taste, though your own tolerance will vary.

PRISON is Muddled 80s Fun

Prison (1988)
Directed by Renny Harlin
Written by Irwin Yablans and C. Courtney Joyner
IMDB

Before he started Full Moon Productions, Charles Band ran Empire Pictures, a production and distribution company that gave us the 80s standouts Re-Animator and From Beyond, as well as Ghoulies which was one of its top box office earners. In 1988, toward the tail end of Empire's run, before it succumbed to financial problems, Prison was given a brief, limited release in theaters. The VHS landed on rental shelves later that year and for a long time was the only way the film would have been viewed, by sanctioned means, in the United States for the next two and a half decades. That changed earlier this year when Scream Factory released the title on Blu-Ray as part of a series of collector’s editions of 80s minor horror hits and cult curiosities.

The production was a confluence of talent and soon-to-be genre veterans. Renny Harlin took the director's chair for his first horror outing just prior to A Nightmare on Elm Street 4. Halloween producer Irwin Yablans co-wrote the script. The special effects were supervised by makeup legend John Buechler. And a young Viggo Mortensen starred in one of his first major roles since his debut in Witness. For this alone, the film’s obscurity is undeserved.

Yet while the cast and crew deliver plenty of fun, the story never really weaves its threads together in a way that's satisfying.

Things start promisingly enough with the wordless marching of a convict to his death by electric chair, which sets off a motive for supernatural revenge. (The late 80s saw a tiny subgenre of electric chair horror with this, The Horror Show and Shocker.) Budget cuts force the state to reopen a long-disused prison and exploit the newly bused-in inmates as free labor for the fix-up. While tearing down a wall Mortensen's Burke frees our bottled up entity whose emergence causes a spectacular surge of furnace flarings, wind and electric sparks.

From here we see prisoners and staff alike picked off in some truly inventive ways as this becomes one of those 80s flicks whose gore set pieces take center stage. One man's torso is burned through by ectoplasm. Another is fried alive by his cell walls. A pipe is driven through a skull in loving detail and a shredding by barbed wire puts Suspiria to shame. Surreally mutilated bodies explode through doors, floors and ceilings to the shock of witnesses and the delight of the rest of us. These scenes of giddy mayhem and mass panic are Prison at its strongest and most fun. They recall an era when a lot of us were young enough to eagerly take in any horror movie just to see what gory inventiveness could be splattered our way.

As things progress, however, mature tastes assert themselves and we yearn for the competence of a coherent story. The warden, played with gleeful severity by Lane Smith, soon realizes he has a vengeful spirit on his hands and institutes a lockdown. But our electrified revenant is having none of it. It liberates the prisoners from their cells and sets about completing its revenge. It's up to Burke to set things right. Or maybe not so much.

The backstory reveals little we haven't already pieced together: years ago the warden conspired to cover up an inmate's wrongful execution and his ghost wants to settle the score. Nothing terribly original, but all well and good. The problems come when the script spins off subconflicts and themes that never go anywhere.

There's a strident prison board representative bent on opposing the warden's inhumane treatment of his charges, the liberal rabble-rouser to his hard ass conservative. But her protestations come off as grating and one note and her character seems to exist solely to add a pretty woman to the all-male cast. We're left scratching our heads when the ghost communicates his intentions to her through her television and computer. Does he want her to expose the injustice of his death? Does he want her to try and stop him? Apparently neither.

Burke establishes his virtues early on by standing up to a prison yard bully and caring for his elderly cellmate. We in turn care about him and root for him from the start. He's a true protagonist. And yet his involvement with the backstory is nil. The fact that he's the spitting image of the long-deceased spirit never goes anywhere. It feels like a detail added in only to set him up as an antagonist to the warden.

Also, if the spirit is interested in vengeance on the warden and his co-conspirator, why does he attack and kill inmates? This is never made clear.

Because of all this murkiness, after a sudden, 'let's show the monster' climax, we're left feeling vaguely unsatisfied. A recipe with fewer ingredients might have left a better taste in our mouths.

But is it scary? If you've seen any movie with the typical stalk and slash setup, you're unlikely to find Prison all that frightening. It does, however, pile on the atmosphere quite effectively. The prison interiors are suitably dank and misty, even in daytime. And Harlin is quite adept at using light to convey a sense of otherworldliness. Doorways glow diffusely in the background. Sink drains radiate an eerie blue. The scene where a cell transforms into an oven is a masterfully lit bit of surrealism. Less convincing are the cheesy electric bolts used as the ghost's signature. In massive overkill, they skitter across railings to show his path and over inanimate objects to show his control over them. The film would have been far better without them. But then again the movie is less concerned about subtle creepiness and more about startle and spectacle.

More overkill comes in the form of swelling music that works hard to try to build tension during key scenes. While it doesn't feel overly intrusive, neither does it have the intended effect.

Viggo Mortensen performs admirably even if his laconic character verges on wooden early on. As he grows more expressive, we start to see hints of why he'll go on to be considered a great actor. But the real showstopper here is Lane Smith who seems to be having a lot of fun barking ultimatums and drill sergeant-ing his way through the role of the warden. His lived-in gruffness only makes those moments where he's called upon to show true fear and vulnerability seem more authentic.

Now that the film has been rescued from obscurity, it's hard to dismiss it as just another piece of 80s cheese. There's enough talent on display in the direction and in the lead performances to make it worth checking out. And the bravura gore set pieces are must-see if you're feeling nostalgic (or just curious). Because let's face it, there's a retro gore fan buried inside all of us.