The other night I watched The Frankenstein Theory.  Why? I have no idea.   I shouldn’t want to watch it, after all, it has all the things I loathe about current horror movies: a group of five to seven young people become isolated and are stalked by something horrible? Check!  Abuse of the “found footage format?” Check! Weak characters that nobody cares about because they’re all going to die? Check!  But wait!  There’s more!

Though The Frankenstein Theory looks like just another by-the-numbers low budget snore fest,  there is one thing going for it – a truly intriguing premise.

In a nutshell, the central character, the young Dr. Jonathan Venkenhein, believes the Frankenstein’s Monster is real, alive and continues to roam the Arctic.  The novel by Mary Shelly, he insists, is based on real life experiments conducted by his ancestor, Dr. Johan Venkenhein.  I freaking love that idea.  I love it so much that I want to dress it up nice, take out for an expensive dinner followed by a moonlit stroll in the park, invite it back to my place for coffee, concluding the evening by making sweet love by the fire.

I’m ready to forgive all the horror movies clichés and dive head first into The Frankenstein Theory.   We have our five to seven young people in the form of the disgraced Dr Venkenhein and his documentary film crew.  Together they go into the vast Arctic wilds of Canada to bring back proof of the Monster.

Aside from the core idea, there is nothing especially awesome about The Frankenstein Theory.  On the other hand, there is nothing especially bad about it either.  Veteran actor Timothy V. Murphy, who plays Karl, the guide they hire to take them into the wilderness, carries the movie whenever he’s onscreen.   At one point he delivers a chilling little monologue about polar bears. I imagine the notes went like this:

Director Andrew Weiner: “Okay, Tim, have you ever seen Jaws?”

Timothy V. Murphy: “Sure have, Andy.  Why?”

Director Andrew Weiner: “Remember Robert Shaw’s Indianapolis monologue?”

Timothy V. Murphy: “Yeah.”

Director Andrew Weiner: “Do that—only make it about the polar bears.”

Timothy V. Murphy: “Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

Kris Lemche does well enough as Dr. Venkenhein. The rest of the cast is okay.   One guy reminds me of my friend Saul, which means nothing to you, but I find it amusing.  I could totally imagine Saul doing the sound on documentary film crew looking for Frankenstein’s Monster.

I found myself drawn into the movie mostly by curiosity.  I wondered how this adventure would play out.  Would they find the Monster? What would it look like? Boris Karloff? Glenn Strange?  Peter Boyle?  Donald Trump?

There is enough tension and action here to keep me interested.  The Frankenstein Theory is more entertaining than should be expected.

Starring:

Kris Lemche

Joe Egender

Timothy V. Murphy

Eric Zuckerman

Director:

Andrew Weiner

Screenplay:

Vlady Pildysh

Andrew Weiner

Today, my creepy lil’ kiddies, I’m going talk about the Evil Dead. You have nothing to fear.  This is 100% spoiler free.

It’s not The Evil Dead.  It lacks the slapstick silliness, cheap ickiness and originality of Raimi’s movie.  It’s  billed by the film’s producers (which includes Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, more on that later) as the scariest movie ever made.  Nope.  Evil Dead isn’t that.

I know some people I know will say, “That’s what you get with re-makes! Bah!  Back in my day . . . ” To those people I say, “Normally I’d be right there with you, but this isn’t a remake.”  I know.   It says it’s a remake, but it’s not:  It doesn’t have the same characters going to cabin.  The five friends that are in the cabin are not there for the same reason as the victims from the Raimi film.  The back story is different.  The nature and manifestation of the malevolent force is different.  The entire feel of the films is different.  It’s clearly not a remake.

Evil Dead is also not a sequel or a prequel.  I wouldn’t even call it a “re-imagining.”   So what the heck is it?  I would say the fairest label you could stick on Evil Dead would be “inspired by.”

So what is Evil Dead? It’s a slick, professionally made cabin-in-the-woods-style horror film.  It’s contemporary.  Unlike a fair number of recent horror films that wax nostalgic, Evil Dead is decidedly not sentimental, it chainsaws the cord from its 1980s horror-camp roots.  There is nothing about this movie that harkens back to the days of having a bunch of friends over for a low budget direct-to-video VHS gross out and Jiffy Pop.

Evil Dead draws as much inspiration from Saw as it does from The Evil Dead.  The camera lingers on open wounds, tearing flesh and scream of pain.   It’s not torture porn, but there is an emphasis on the graphically realistic portrayal of gore and suffering.  That sort of gore is not my cup of tea– that is just me.

On the plus side, the characters have depth.   They aren’t the Hollywood equivalent of Punch and Judy horror puppets.  They have a reason to live beyond being chopped up into tiny pieces.   They’re not especially likable, but they are complete characters that actually fit together in an organic way.  Their presence at the cabin makes sense.    I like that.  It makes the horror that much more horrific when it comes.  Even though the camera lingers to long at times, Evil Dead never revel in the pain and gore.  There is restraint.  Everything about Evil Dead shows that care was taken to make a complete, well thought out scary movie.

Taken on its own merits and forgetting that it has anything to do with Raimi’s The Evil Dead — which is easy enough to do when you’re watching it– it’s a bloody good movie (or a good bloody movie).   Not great, but certainly good.

Fun Note:  Bruce Campbell is billed as a producer.  I’ve heard that Sam Raimi, way back when, wanted to make his pal Bruce a big star.  The Hollywood establishment, for whatever reason, didn’t like Bruce.  It’s their loss.

Good.  Bad.  He’s the guy with the fans.  And if Bruce Campbell went around to all the cons talking about how they were remaking The Evil Dead, and how he got the shaft — again — those legions of Bruce Campbell fans would go into a colossal nerd rage and savage the film.  I like to think that the producer credit (and maybe a fat check) went to Bruce just to get his blessing.

Fun Note II:

Evil Dead has one line that would make a great t-shirt.  “I can smell your filthy soul!”  Awesome!
Staring:
Jane Levy
Shiloh Fernandez
Lou Taylor Pucci
Jessica Lucas
Elizabeth Blackmore

Director:

Fede Alvarez

Screenplay:

Fede Alvarez
Diablo Cody
Rodo Sayagues

When I was a kid, I used to have the most horrendous nightmares.  I would wake up in the night, paralyzed with fear.  Even now I recall wandering the nightmare version of the street we lived on, knowing that once again I was to be stalked and torn apart.  Every night I would go to bed. I would enter the murky, disordered world of dreams.  I would be chased.  I would hide. It always ended badly, an arm or leg painfully torn from its socket.  I’d wake up gasping for air.

Once and a while, a movie comes along that has that same nightmarish feel.  It’s in the Blood is one of those movies.

The appropriately named October (Sean Elliot) returns home to patch things up with his estranged father (Lance Henriksen), the local peace officer in what, judging by his police cruiser) is probably the poorest county in the USA.  The two go for a trip into the woods and weird things happen.

It’s in the Blood was made on a very small budget, most of it likely going to pay for the sack lunches that Mr. Henricksen accepts in lieu of cash.   The film’s producers managed to make the most of their resources.  The effects are surprising good, so go in fact that it was sometimes a little distracting. I was especially surprised by the quality of the CGI effects.  I’ve seen many bigger budget films that looked far worse.

You’ll note that I made a point of talking about the film’s look and feel without getting to far into the story or scares.  It’s in the Blood shares more with Italian horror than American horror, in my opinion.  The film dwells on texture and atmosphere rather than the storyline. Timelines skip back and forth in a disordered, nightmarish way.  Odd, frightening things lurk just out of sight – you know, like that time you were staggering around Walmart while suffering from fever hallucinations while looking for the death green cold remedy.  Remember that? I barely do.

The bottom line is that It’s in the Blood is surprise treat for fans of genre favorite Lance Henriksen and should garner a following from fans of atmospheric, moody Italian-style horror.

Staring:
Lance Henriksen
Sean Elliot
Rose Sirna
Jimmy Gonzales

Director:
Scooter Downey

Screenplay:
Scooter Downey
Sean Elliot

I have never wondered what Hannibal Lector would be like as a priest– never, not even once.  Okay, maybe just once:

Possessed Girl (in an unnaturally deep voice): “The sow is mine!”

Father Lector (calmly): “You should leave now, demon.”

Possessed Girl (in an unnaturally deep voice): “Never!  I will keep this body until it rots! Mwahahaha!”

Father Lector (Humming, pulls a jar and butter knife from his pocket): “Hmmmmmm, mmmm, mmmm.”

Possessed Girl (in an unnaturally deep voice): “What have you got there, priest? Holy water?  Ha! I dare you!”

Father Lector (Opens the jar and dips the point of the knife inside): “No.  This isn’t holy water.  It’s Dijon mustard.” (He begins to spread mustard on the girl’s leg).

Possessed Girl (in an unnaturally deep voice, sounding a little confused and scared): “What are you doing?”

Father Lector (puts the jar aside, smiles): “This is going to hurt quite a bit.”

Cut to the outside of a bedroom door. Demonic screams can be heard, then silence. The door opens.  Father Lector steps from the room, wiping his face with a napkin.

Now that I think about it, I would like to see that movie.  The Rite comes close to that – sort of.   It’s the story of, Michael Kovak (Anthony Hopkins), a priest in training struggling to keep his faith in a materialistic world.  He is sent to Exorcist school in Rome to shore up his failing religiosity.  Once there, he is referred to Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), a creepy Jesuit who lives in the creepiest house in Italy.

In between bouts of being creepy with Father Lucas, Kovak hangs out with Angelina, a hottie journalist and Exorcism 101 classmate.  Will Kovak follow Lucas’ path, his faith restored, take on the mantle of the exorcist? Or will he run off with Angelina get married and open a Bed & Breakfast?  Ah, that is the question.

The chief selling point is that The Rite features Anthony Hopkins doing his creepy Hopkins thing.  The biggest problem is Hopkins doing his creepy Hopkins thing.    The Rite is to atmospheric horror as a drooling leer is to a subtle seductive smile.  Between Anthony Hopkins chewing up the scenery and Colin O’Donoghue’s sleepwalking his way around the bits Hopkins left unibbled, The Rite is just uninspired and flat.  It’s not The Exorcist.   It’s not even The Exorcist II: The Heretic, but it comes mighty close.

Starring
Anthony Hopkins
Colin O’Donoghue
Alice Braga

Director:
Mikael Håfström

Screenplay:
Michael Petroni

History is filled with people who’ve had good ideas and people who‘ve had bad ideas.  Edward Jenner’s development of the small pox vaccine was a good idea.  The alphabet was a good idea.  The wheel was a good idea.   Conversely, Gouverneur Morris jabbing a whale bone up his pee-hole to clear a blockage in his urinary tract was a bad idea.   Invading Russia, showering with a hair dryer, Sarah Palin are all examples of bad ideas.  Following in the footstep of those great bad ideas is 2006’s Night of the Living Dead 3D.

I’m not against remakes.  Some of my favorite films of all time, such as Frankenstein (1931) or Dracula (1931), are remakes.   Though I do think if you’re going to remake somebody else’s work, you should at least take it in  new and interesting directions – or improve it in some way.

In Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, Barbara is a totally different character.  As depicted in the original Night of the Living Dead, Barbara seemed a little off, even before the dead walked.  I often wondered whether she was supposed to be mentally retarded.    In the remake, Barbara is an intelligent, fully fleshed out character. The contrast is striking.

The 2006 remake is another story altogether.  And by another story, I mean completely different story.  Producer/director Jeff Broadstreet pretty much just boosted the title and the names of the characters from Romero’s classic film, presumably in a cynical attempt to cash in on zombiemania.   If you strip away the Romero trappings, what you are left with is a cruddy zombie movie not even worthy of being a SyFy Original.

The story? A bunch of people I didn’t care about end up in a farm house owned by a local pot grower.  Zombies come. Sid Haig is crazy. Zombies run amok. Ben and Barbara run for it.  I fall asleep for just moment.  I’m dreaming that I’m doing my taxes.  I need a form 2012-Z Part 2. I have no idea what that is.  I sweat bullets.  Where is the work sheet for that form? Carry the amount from line 179b to line 6902c.  There is no amount!  I wake up with a start.  I scream! That movie is still on! Nooooo!

It gets one Vincent for competent basic filmmaking.

Starring:
Brianna Brown
Joshua Desroches
Johanna Black
Greg Travis
Sid Haig

Director:
Jeff Broadstreet

Screenplay:
Robert Valding

Is it the lost poor man’s Creature from the Black Lagoon?  Naw, it’s just a native Californian doing a little beach combing.

Anyone who read Famous Monsters of Filmland — or in my case Vincent Price’s Horror of the Silver Screen, a one off horror fanzine– will no doubt remember a grainy black and white picture of a monster caress a bloody severed head.  The beastie looked like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a deformed pig.  Underneath the picture was a blurb telling me the name of the film was taken, The Monster of Piedras Blancas.  I stared and stared and stared and wondered,” Why don’t they ever show this on TV?”

Years went by.  The magazine fell apart.  Even with the arrival of cable TV, with its seventy-seven channels of dreck, The Monster of Piedras Blancas remained elusive.  Sure, they’ll run Dana Carvey’s crapfest, The Master of Disguise one hundred and sixty-seven times in a week but hoary old black and white monster films? Nope.   I wasn’t able to get a copy until last year.  It’s crazy, but true.

Was The Monster of Piedras Blancas worth the wait?  Yes and no.  There is no way it could have lived up to the movie I imagined as a kid.  On the other hand, it’s packed to the rafters with 1950 micro budget horror film awesomeness that the adult me keenly appreciates.

I recommend it to anyone who likes films such as The Mole People or This Island Earth, they share the same spirit of corny monster fun and also the same monster parts.  The molds for clawed hands of the molemen and the feet of the space mutant are artfully reused.  I hope that I don’t sound sneering and derisive.  I love this movie.  It’s more fun than any of the heartless, big budget films I saw in the last year.

Starring :

Les Tremayne
Forrest Lewis
John Harmon
Pete Dunn
Jeanne Carmen

Director:
Irvin Berwick

Screenplay:
Irvin Berwick

Angry Red Planet, a film that captures a bygone age of science fiction and monster movies, an age where men were men, women were women, and Giant Spider-Bat-Mice from Mars were Giant Spider-Bat-Mice from Mars.

A scant three years before President Kennedy threw down the challenge to go to the Moon and a mere nine years before Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we were still indulging in wild pulp comic-style speculation about the nature of Universe.  Weird monsters lurked everywhere.  Ancient civilizations, impatient with our infantile behavior as a species, were ready to spank us.  Rockets blasted off.  Rayguns fired.  Women with advanced degrees in Astrophysics were expected to serve the coffee.  Two-fisted space heroes fought deadly foes on alien worlds.

Though tolidly pulp in nature, Angry Red Planet, like the best science fiction reached in new directions. Its wonderfully bad experiment in “CineMagic”, — a technique was monochromatic positive and negative images are printed on the same film, accentuating contrasts in the image– is iconic.  The scenes on Mars were tinted red, wrapping the Martian environment in an alien and aura.  The creature effects in Angry Red Planet are entertaining and strange.

The story itself is a simple retelling of the Mankind Lands on an Alien World, Gets in a Few Shots Before Escaping with His Cheese Barely Intact. What makes Angry Red Planet so great is its visual weirdness combined with its pulp science fiction flavor.  It’s an EC Comics Weird Science story on the silver screen.   Angry Red Planet is unique; a film chock full of the vices and virtues of its time and one that could never have been made in any other way.

We live in the Nuk-u-lar Age.  Bankrupt, greedy and wallowing in our own apathy, our society is reduced to celebrating the latest flavor of Mountain Dew with which to wash down gobfuls of thick, powdery Flaming Hot Cheetos.  Angry Red Planet reminds us of a yesterday were everything was truly possible and the stars were just within our grasp.

Director:
Ib Melchior
Norman Maurer

Screenplay:
Sidney W. Pink
Ib Melchior

Starring :
Gerald Mohr
Naura Hayden
Jack Kruschen
Les Tremayne

Oh, how I love it when I am right.   From my little soap box on the interwebs, I’ve been haranguing Hollywood –Universal in particular – to stop making (or remaking) monster movies with big stars, over-the-top effects and bloated budgets in quest for a blockbuster.  It’s a recipe for failure.  Instead of putting all your monster eggs in one bucket of blood, make several smaller quality films.  The risk is spread out and the profits are bigger.   The proof, as they say, is in the pudding  . . . and now for the pudding.

The production team behind Insidious is back with Sinister, showing once again that a small budget and an unimaginative title are no impediment to making a profitable quality horror film.

Ethan Hawke, looking more Kevin Bacony than usual, plays Ellison Oswalt, a writer who scored one critically acclaimed true-crime bestseller years ago and hasn’t been able pen another hit since.  In dire financial straits he moves his family to a less expensive home in a another town, not only to save money but also research his next true-crime book, a book about the family that was murdered in that very house.  While poking around in the attic, he finds a box of disturbing Super 8 home movies.  Viewing them takes his investigation to a very dark place.

Sinister shares quite a bit with Insidious.  They’re both  similarly paced with the same kinds of scares, the same kind of feel.  Sinister, by its nature, is a little more of mystery film than Insidious.   As Oswalt uncovers the truth behind the box of drolly labeled Super 8 home movies and how they relate to the crime he is researching, the tension mounts, and the horror reveals itself.  There are some chilling and effective moments here.

I have only two minor complaints. The sound design gets a little heavy-handed at times– the movie screams “This is scary!”   It’s not needed.  The film’s scares would work just fine without the sound calling attention to it.  Lastly, Sinister goes into unneeded exposition to remind you of things that have already been revealed.

Sinister, like its cousin Insidious is a solid film with several frightening moments.  It has a solid cast, good effects and is an all around professionally-made quality film.

Starring:

Ethan Hawke
Juliet Rylance
James Ransone
Vincent D’Onofrio

Director:
Scott Derrickson

Screenplay:
C. Robert Cargill

Imagine that Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining is Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy.  Continuing with that analogy, imagine digging through the fridge a week later looking for leftovers.  You find one last slice of dry white meat and a glob of congealed gravy in a Tupperware container labeled “The Off Season.”  Yeah.  This movie is like the old leftovers of another, better movie.

The Off Season is a Glass Eye Pix production. I confess, I have a soft spot for their films.  They have produced some of the best low budget horror films made in the last decade, including I Sell the Dead, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.   Being well disposed towards them, I’m inclined be more forgiving than I might be in other cases.

The basic premise of the movie is interesting: a struggling writer and his girlfriend rent a room haunted by the unsettled dead.  The problem is in the execution.  The script is plagued with weak dialogue. The story is hideously unbalanced, often forgetting what it’s supposed to be about.   Initially the movie focuses on Rick Holland (Don Wood) until the last 15 minutes or so when it shifts over to his girlfriend Kathryn Bennett (Christina Campanella), who it really the center of the film.  Honesty, even though we spend the lion’s share of the film with Rick, he wasn’t needed.  It would have been easy enough to write him out altogether.

Visually, The Off Season is a dreadful.  It looks like it was shot on cheap video camcorder which only makes the already horrible shot composition look even worse.  Dutch angles, shaky cam, and long static shots all serve to make the movie come off as amateurish.   I should be immersed in the story instead of thinking about how I’d have shot and edited this scene or that.  Mah gawd!

Even with all of its deficiencies such as: a long winded story that gets hopelessly lost in itself, uneven acting, terrible dialogue, cinematography and sound design– The Off Season does manage to have a small handful of scary moments.  I’m just not sure that it’s worth sitting through the whole movie just for that.

Starring:

Don Wood

Christina Campanella

Angus Scrimm

Larry Fessenden

Ruth Kulerman

Director:

James Felix McKenney

Screenplay:

James Felix McKenney