Zombieland brings several nice touches. Our young heroes (Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin – very early in their careers) band together with the a master zombie killer (Woody Harrelson). The zombie killer’s astonishing skills and unwholesome enthusiasm are very funny. After many close calls, the group finds shelter in Bill Murray’s LA mansion where Bill Murray (playing himself) is surviving by impersonating a zombie. The climax is a showdown in an amusement park where the zombies have cornered the heroes.
Zombieland is also on my list of Woody Harrelson’s Overlooked Gems. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
A Bucket of Blood is a campy, minor horror film from 1959, but it’s most interesting as window into beatnik culture. Turner Classic Movies will air A Bucket of Blood on May 13.
In 1959, the Beat Movement had been alive for a decade, but had just begun to be recognized by the mainstream culture. Beatniks, before the usage of that word, had been glimpsed in the 1950 classic noir D.O.A. and in 1957’s Roman Holiday. The word “beatnik”, usually a pejorative used by squares, was resisted by the Beat generation artists and thinkers. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined by Herb Caen in his San Francisco Chronicle column of April 2, 1958. Of course, the popular stereotype of a Beatnik stems from the character of Maynard G. Krebs (played by Bob Denver of later Gilligan fame) on TV’s Dobie Gillis (1959-63).
By 1959, beatnik consciousness was ripe for exploitation by low-budget movie wizard Roger Corman, who produced and directed A Bucket of Blood. The story is about a loser who covers a dead cat with plaster of Paris and is acclaimed as a talented sculptor. He embraces the hoax and starts hunting victims to cast into human “sculptures”; hence the horror and the bucket of blood.
“Beatnik” conjures up 20-somethings adorned in black turtleneck sweaters (and black leotards for women), berets, goatees and dark glasses; they’re in coffee houses snapping their fingers to applaud poetry and jazz. And they’re conversing in hip cat patter. Watch A Bucket of Blood and you’ll get a dose.
Can you dig it?
[Ubiquitous game show host Burt Convy, as a young actor, played Lou in A Bucket of Blood.]
In the horror comedy Blood Paradise, the author (Andrea Winter) of lurid best sellers is wallowing in malaise after her latest book bombs. For a change of pace, she gets away to the Swedish version of an agriturismo, a remote and spartan farm. The farm has every earmark of Gothic horror, and Blood Paradise has great fun with every creaky door and ominous scarecrow. The farmer explains his wife’s grave out back, “she loved the garden but now it’s only a garden of death”. The farmer’s creepy middle-aged sister is obsessed with dolls. His menacingly silent, paunchy son is mostly shirtless and fondling a shotgun. And the author’s driver is her biggest fan – and seriously unhinged. Just when the blood starts splattering, the author’s hunky, dim and besotted boyfriend Teddy shows up for a surprise visit in a white suit.
Part of the fun is that the author has adventuresome sexual fantasies and makes a living envisioning gruesome scenarios; her especially rich imagination makes every ominous cue seem even more alarming.
Blood Paradise is written by its star Andrea Winter and directed by Patrick von Barkenberg (who also plays Teddy); it is the first narrative feature for both. Winter is a good sport about her own nudity, and has fun playing the author as a brat. She also has fun with Teddy’s allergies, which erupt at the most importune times. And there’s a very amusing homage to Psycho.
This is a Swedish movie set in Sweden, but almost all the dialogue is in English. Blood Paradise plays at the 2019 Cinequest.
Here is the best-ever psycho serial killer movie. Peeping Tom was released in 1960, the same year as Psycho. The British film critics didn’t know what to make of a thriller where the protagonist was so disturbing, and they trashed Peeping Tom so badly that its great director Michael Powell (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Stairway to Heaven, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes) wasn’t able to work again in the UK. But I think Peeping Tom is an overlooked masterpiece and even better than its iconic counterpart Psycho.
Karlheinz Böhm plays a mild-mannered urban recluse who most people find socially awkward, but wouldn’t necessarily suspect to be a serial killer. The very innocent downstairs neighbor (Anna Massey) finds him dreamy and in need of saving – not a good choice.
Two aspects elevate Peeping Tom above the already high standards of Hitchcockian suspense. First, he’s not just a serial killer – he’s also shooting the murders as snuff films. Second, we see the killer watching home movies of his childhood – and we understand that ANYONE with his upbringing would be twisted; he’s a monster who repels us, but we understand him.
Until the last decade, Peeping Tom was unavailable, but you can find it now on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and Google Play. There’s also a Criterion Collection DVD with lots of extra features. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a more satisfyingly scary movie than A Quiet Place. Director John Krasinski proves an economical story-teller – with essentially no dialogue, he helps us learn the set-up in few minutes. The earth has been overrun by man-eating monsters, who are blind but have a super-acute sense of hearing. Anyone who makes noise is immediately eaten by a monster. There aren’t many human survivors, but one family is holding out on their remote farm – a dad (Krasinski), a mom (Krasinski’s real life wife Emily Blunt), a daughter who is eleven or twelve and a son who is a year younger.
They walk only barefoot, speak only in sign language, and have devised ways to do every possible task silently. However, the mom is pregnant; childbirth and babies tend to be noisy, so there’s a ticking time bomb element to the story.
In fact, the characters (and we) are in a state of intensely heightened alertness during the entire movie – except for when a monster shows up and plunges us into outright terror. Mercifully, the gore and splatter happen off-screen, but the monster is plenty scary, and it hunts the family members at the closest of quarters and when they are at their most vulnerable. I saw A Quiet Place in a theater, and the audience stayed in a state of tense silence – like we were all afraid to make any noise by gasping or shrieking.
Each family member blames himself or herself for the loss of the third and youngest child, so there’s also an element of family drama in A Quiet Place. Krasinski and Blunt are excellent, and the kid actors (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) are, too.
I’m not a big horror movie fan, but I enjoyed and admired A Quiet Place.
So here’s the thing with every movie ghost story – either the ghost is real, or the protagonist is crazy enough to hallucinate one. The beauty of The House on Pine Street is that the story is right down the middle – ya just don’t know until the end when the story takes us definitively in one direction – and then suddenly lurches right back to the other extreme.
Jennifer (Emily Goss) is a very pregnant urbanist, who reluctantly moves from her dream life in Chicago back to her whitebread hometown in suburban Kansas. Unlike Jennifer, her husband hadn’t been thriving in Chicago, and Jennifer’s intrusive and judgmental mother (Cathy Barnett – perfect in the role) has set up an opportunity for him in the hometown. They move to a house that is not her dream home AT ALL, “but it’s a really good deal”. Jennifer overreacts to some crumbling plaster.
Jennifer is pretty disgruntled, and, generally for good reason – her mom’s every sentence is loaded with disapproval. Her mom’s housewarming party would be a social nightmare for anyone – but it’s too literally nightmarish for her. One of the guests, an amateur psychic (an excellent Jim Korinke), observes, “the house has interesting energy”.
Then some weird shit starts happening: knocks from unoccupied rooms, a crockpot lid that keeps going ajar. And we ask, is the house haunted, or is she hallucinating? Her sane and sensible and skeptical BFF visits from Chicago as a sounding board, and things do not go well.
Co-writers and co-directors Aaron and Austin Keeling keep us on the edges of our seats. Their excellent sound design borrows from The Conversation and The Shining – and that’s a good thing.
The Keelings also benefit from a fine lead – Emily Goss’ eyes are VERY alive. She carries the movie as we watch her shifting between resentfulness, terror and determination.
The total package is very successful. I saw The House on Pine Street at Cinequest, and now it can be streamed from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
In the very satisfying horror film Unfriended, it’s the one-year anniversary of a teenage girl’s suicide, and her bullying peers convene via webcams on social media. But their computers are hijacked by an Unknown Force who starts wreaking revenge. The kids become annoyed, then worried and, finally, panicked for their lives.
Here’s something I’ve never seen before: the entire movie is compiled of the characters’ screenshots. The critic Christy Lemire says that “Unfriended is a gimmick with a ridiculous premise, but damned if it doesn’t work”, and she’s right. Writer Nelson Greaves and Director Levan Gabriadze came up with this device, and their originality pays off with a fun and effective movie.
It’s on both my lists of I Hadn’t Seen This Before and Low Budget, High Quality Horror of 2015. Unfriended is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
If you’re in the mood for a seasonal scare, I suggest you revisit last year’s Scare Week from The Movie Gourmet. I programmed six horror films from different decades and from different countries. Even folks who normally avoid the horror genre will find someone to enjoy here. I don’t like Gore Horror, so there’s relatively little blood and guts. All six movies are available on home video.
So here’s the thing with every movie ghost story – either the ghost is real or the protagonist is crazy enough to hallucinate one. The beauty of The House on Pine Street is that the story is right down the middle – ya just don’t know until the end when the story takes us definitively in one direction – and then suddenly lurches right back to the other extreme.
Jennifer (Emily Goss) is a very pregnant urbanist, who reluctantly moves from her dream life in Chicago back to her whitebread hometown in suburban Kansas. Unlike Jennifer, her husband hadn’t been thriving in Chicago, and Jennifer’s intrusive and judgmental mother (Cathy Barnett – perfect in the role) has set up an opportunity for him in the hometown. They move to a house that is not her dream home AT ALL, “but it’s a really good deal”. Jennifer overreacts to some crumbling plaster.
Jennifer is pretty disgruntled, and, generally for good reason – her mom’s every sentence is loaded with disapproval. Her mom’s housewarming party would be a social nightmare for anyone – but it’s too literally nightmarish for her. One of the guests, an amateur psychic (an excellent Jim Korinke), observes, “the house has interesting energy”.
Then some weird shit starts happening: knocks from unoccupied rooms, a crockpot lid that keeps going ajar. And we ask, is the house haunted or is she hallucinating? Her sane and sensible and skeptical BFF comes from Chicago to visit as sounding board, and things do not go well.
Co-writers and co-directors Aaron and Austin Keeling keep us on the edges of our seats. Their excellent sound design borrows from The Conversation and The Shining – and that’s a good thing.
The Keelings also benefit from a fine lead – Emily Goss’ eyes are VERY alive. She carries the movie as we watch her shifting between resentfulness, terror and determination.
The total package is very successful. I saw The House on Pine Street at Cinequest, and now it can be streamed from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The bloody thriller Green Room is a fresh and satisfying, well, bloody thriller. A vagabond rock band (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and a couple of others) finds themselves playing a gig at a remote white nationalist compound in the woodsy Northwest. Inadvertently, they witness a murder and the chief skinhead (Patrick Stewart!) needs to eliminate all the witnesses. The band members and a local girl (Imogen Poots) are trapped in a room with just one way out, as the skinheads send in waves of machete- and shotgun-wielding thugs and vicious pit bulls. Who will survive and how?
Director Jeremy Saulnier proves again that he’s the rising master of the genre movie. Saulnier’s writing and directorial debut was 2014’s Blue Ruin, an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. An audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, Blue Ruin didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose. In Blue Ruin, Saulnier was responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue. Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.
In his superb leading performance in Blue Ruin, Macon Blair was believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. In Green Room, Blair plays Gabe, the put-upon middle manager of Patrick Stewart’s compound. Blair is just so interesting an actor. Here, he brings an unusual humanity to his role as a henchman.
The actor who drives the story, however, is Imogen Poots. Her character is very practical – realistic enough to see that the situation is hopeless. At first, she is numbed by the murder of her friend. But when she finally decides that she is going to survive – watch out! Since 2012, Poots has becoming a preferred indie leading lady withGreetings from Tim Buckley, A Late Quartet , The Look of Love, A Country Called Home, Green Room and her most complex role so far in the upcoming Frank & Lola. Here in Green Room, she’s a force of nature.
Once again, Saulnier delivers a very fresh and original genre movie. The total effect is very intense and very violent. If you’re okay with some gory violence, then Green Room is a thrill ride worth taking.
