Maggie 2010: HALLOWEEN PARTY SURVIVAL GUIDE

So it's the day before Hallowe'en, and you're scrambling to finish your costume and get party supplies for tonight and tomorrow. Problem is, you're already hung over from Friday, and someone forgot to grab movie picks from Gen X a sensible time in advance--say, Wednesday, even Thursday, to beat the rush.

Now you know you're going to be shit out of luck for most of the new horror films--which is too bad, because Pig Hunt, about an epic quest for a mythic giant pig that takes its heroes into the realm of nympho pig worshippers, is just the right kind of ridiculous. And if you haven't seen The Human Centipede yet, what, are you living under a rock? A rock with no centipedes???

As for contemporary classics like Let the Right One In and Evil Dead: please. You'll be lucky if one of the sequels to Resident Evil or Underworld got left behind. (But check, just in case.)

Speaking of zombie films, there are some kick ass numbers out there. We've got every "of the dead" you can imagine -- including the more recent Survival of the Dead, but the zombie hit list also includes more sombre fare like Mutants (which is an awesome film, with really intelligent human interactions, but requires English subtitles, and for this reason might not do as well in a rowdy crowd), so wade carefully through piles of the dead!

So what do you do? Well, first you see if one of the Feast films is in--the series a clear party favourite because each film makes fun of its genre for you, leaving you with more time instead to say and do really dumb shit in the company of "friends" who may or may not help you puke into your porcelain god of choice a few hours down the line. You know, because that's always fun.

Still can't find a movie that's in? Cover all your mainstream bases by checking out the following:

1) Cabin Fever
2) Scream (It's better than you remember.)
3) Sleepaway Camp
4) Trick 'r Treat
5) Alien
6) Se7en

All out? That's cool. You know what works for parties? Vagina dentata. Say that three times without a shiver coursing down your spine, and then rent Teeth. It's awesome in crowds.

Too light-hearted? Check out my Staff Picks wall for The Orphanage. Del Toro loves killing children in his films, and damn, is he ever good at it.

Still too light and fluffy? You have two options:

1) Go gore-fest crazy: Dead Alive (you will NEVER look at zombies the same way again), Poultrygeist (you will NEVER look at fast-food the same way again), Ichi the Killer (you will NEVER look at people the same way again), or August Underground (you will NEVER... well, actually, it's hard to look at anything the same way after watching this: Win!); or

2) Go bizarre: Eurosleaze classic The Devil's Nightmare, Fulci's Zombi 2 (complete with a scene where a SHARK, A ZOMBIE, AND A NAKED CHICK FIGHT EACH OTHER UNDERWATER), Otto: Up with Dead People (note: read the case CAREFULLY before deciding to traumatize your friends with this one: the trick is not to let on how grossly inappropriate this film is until you're already halfway through, and there's no turning back!), or They Live! (for the glasses scene alone -- trust me, a clear crowd favourite for sheer ridiculousness, as all John Carpenter films are).

NO NO NO, you say: You've got it all wrong -- this is a CHILDREN'S party! A family-FRIENDLY affair! Don't you have something my kids can watch without wetting their beds after?

Fiiiiine:

1) Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit -- Delightful fun at the expense of misunderstood monster rabbits. WARNING: Many vegetables were harmed in the making of this film!
2) Arsenic and Old Lace -- A classic black-and-white flick about two sweet little old ladies and the dreadful menace they pose to lonesome gentlemen (complete with the ever-unsettling Peter Lorrie!)
3) The Dark Crystal -- You've never seen muppets so utterly terrifying.
4) Labyrinth -- You've never seen DAVID BOWIE so utterly terrifying.
5) It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown -- If you don't like Charlie Brown, well, you're just a bad person. The End.

BUT MAGGIE! you might then ask -- being kind and courteous that way -- if we're all renting these fantastically fun party films, what will YOU be watching for Halloween?

Good question! The answer: Kimjongilia: A documentary about the tyrannical dictatorship of Kim Jong Il, and the cult of personality that has allowed millions of people to have lived and died in fear, oppression, and almost complete isolation from the rest of the world.

Now THAT'S scary.

Happy Hallowe'en weekend, everyone!

Mike D Watches a Movie #1: 30 Days of Night: Dark Days

Picking up one year after the events of the first film, Stella, the sole survivor of the vampire attack on Barrow, Alaska, has been traveling the world, telling the story of the events that happened there. Met with ridicule and laughter, she is about to give up, when she is met by 3 individuals who tell her that they can help her get revenge on Lillith, the vampire queen responsible for ordering the Barrow attack. The group ventures into the unused Los Angeles sewer system to hunt down the Queen.

There were a lot of things I liked about this movie, a lot of things I didn't like about this movie. What I did like was Lillith. She has got to be one of the creepiest movie villains I've seen in a long time. Everything about her invokes the fear that I associate with classic vampires. Her pale skin, cold dead eyes, and the creepy vampiric (or maybe eastern European?) language sent chills down my spine every time I saw her.

On the other side, the movie was very stop-and-start. It would be very high-action/suspenseful one minute, then almost instantly switch to scenes of failed attempts at character development, that, in my opinion, ruin the mood of the movie. Budget constraints and a few instances of bad acting also prevent this movie from reaching its potential.

In the end, I think it's worth seeing for no other reason that it reminds you that vampires can actually be scary, and not what's been making Stephanie Meyer money for the past few years.

There is some good action, some genuinely creepy scenes, and at least a few times where someone's face disappears as a result of bullets or cinder blocks, but I don't feel like it does a good job at following up from the first film.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #77: Frankenstein (1931)

So much is different from the original story that comparing the two is a pretty good waste of time. This film exists as its own entity and really has a life of its own. Of the classic monster movies I've seen to date on my Hallowe'en trek, this one is by far the best. I daresay it's a masterpiece. At its heart it contains a 'who is really the monster' dynamic that has since become awfully trite, but in its original form still potent.

As if the hints of German Expressionism wasn't enough to catch my interest, much of the acting is actually pretty good, which, given the other classic Universal horror films I've watched, was a total surprise. Boris Karloff is fantastic as the monster, and it's easy to see how, I think after this film, he became a household name. His monster is incredibly sympathetic. After a sheltered and grim life filled with torture, the monster frees himself and escapes into the woods. There's an amazing scene where he finds a little girl. The little girl hands him a flower, and they sit down by a pond. She shows him how you can throw a flower into the water and watch it float gently along. The monster is so overjoyed to find something kind and delicate and beautiful in the world that it is genuinely tear-pulling when something goes wrong. He gets up, trying his best at laughter, and throws the little girl into the water because she's like a flower too. She drowns, and it's genuinely disturbing to see the monster's panicked reaction when he doesn't understand what's happened. I hadn't felt that stirred by a movie in a long time. I was really bothered by the moment.

Made before the motion picture code was actively enforced, you get some cinema that's not afraid to upset you. While the edges will sometimes show, the violence is shocking when it wants to be, and I found myself continuously surprised by what the film was prepared to do. The film bubbles with potential violence, and by the time the mob lights their torches, the loss of control that you didn't realise was creeping into your brain reaches its apex. People shout through the streets, dogs yelp, women and children cower on the sidelines, and the beast has been loosed on the monster. It was a torch that was initially used to torture the monster, and it's unsettlingly fitting that an army of them tries to flush him out of hiding, trap him, and set him ablaze. Karloff's thrashing screams while the flames rise about him will stick with me for awhile.

Also surprising, I'm noticing that the female characters in these early monster movies aren't as helpless as I expect them to be, and I wonder if that had anything to do with the code as well. They're not neutered characters, and rigid gender roles don't seem to have been installed as safety mechanisms yet. The women in these films are just as sensible as the men, and they aren't afraid to speak their mind. In the years to come, that wouldn't be the case for quite a while. Hell, it's mostly not the case in films today.

Despite all of the injustice in the film, it's hard to really hate anyone in it save for an annoying comic relief character I'll just ignore. The monster is understandable, Dr. Frankenstein is understandable, the angry torch-wielding village folk are understandable, and even the abusive Fritz is understandable. He's a deformed hunchback that Dr. Frankenstein treated like shit. Of course he was going to whip the monster and burn him when Frankenstein wasn't looking. Nobody's really to blame in this film, which makes it so remarkable. It ends off remarkably too, with an an ironic ending that presses home the severe tragedy at the centre of the film.

So: Fantastic. I expected an iconic cheese-fest and got a dramatic masterpiece that probably made it to my list of favourite films.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #76: The Mummy (1932)

Still going on my Hallowe'en kick and finally getting around to seeing the great monster classics of film history. I had decided a few weeks back that I was going to go for a classic costume this year, and I settled on the one that (I won't call the Invisible Man a monster, he was just a big jerk) is probably talked about the least: the Mummy!

You're probably familiar with the Brendan Fraser Mummy from 1999. I'll pause to shudder for a sec. It lifted some elements from the original Mummy, namely the fact that there's a guy named Imhotep that fell in love with the Pharaoh's daughter. She died. Then his love drove him to seek out forbidden rituals and raise her from the dead, but he was caught, and soon sentenced to be buried alive and partially mummified. A terrible curse was laid down upon his tomb.

Made a year after the success of Dracula and featuring much of the same cast and crew, The Mummy doesn't possess the same magic but manages to be a pretty cool flick for a number of reasons. I guess I'll tell you what those might be, since this is a review and I only get fed my fish heads if I write a review. I also might get my beloved red bouncy ball back.

For starters, I saw this film before I watched the historic Frankenstein, and this was my first run in with the real Boris Karloff. I find that I love Boris Karloff. He's starring as Imhotep, and his rigid creepiness, sullen voice, and gaunt face have all been parodied so often that I felt immediately familiar with him. It was a treat to finally see the icon at work.

Secondly, like with Dracula, I was surprised to find an interesting female character, this time one both alluring, evasively clever, and amazingly unafraid to refer, just once, to sex. She's played by Broadway actress Zita Johann, who was actually seriously interested in the spiritualism of the occult and took her role perhaps a little too seriously. There's a famous scene in the movie where she dies in a past life. She reportedly fainted for real in that scene, after a strenuous day of filming without much food or water thanks to the director's cruel and ridiculous feud with her.

Now, the plot is almost identical to the plot of Dracula. We get the dude who played Van Helsing playing Doctor Muller, who is, like Van Helsing, a master of occult lore and adept at fighting the supernatural. He helps everybody out when shit hits the fan. Like Dracula, the Mummy seems to be after a young woman in Muller/Van Helsing's care. Imhotep also seems to be able to control people's minds, like Dracula could, by staring hard at them. What makes him different, though, is motive. The man isn't entirely evil, he's just obsessed with a love he couldn't attain. That's all. Leave him alone, you guys.

I was hoping, especially for my costume research, to get some serious dusty cloth-wrapped mummy action. Sadly there is virtually none in the first Mummy. Instead you get a slightly wrinkly Boris Karloff, who has inexplicably been restored to much of his living health. There's no lurching violence, but there are a few ancient Egyptian spells used to wreak some havoc.

So: A cool piece of monster history, if not as great as other first monster appearances. Certainly better than most Monster Movie sequels to come. The Mummy manages to hold his own. Also, look at this:

Wendy's Films of 2010 #100: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

This may be the first film I watched after getting my wisdom teeth out back in May, but I definitely remember it clearly as I often do with films I thoroughly enjoy. I'm glad that this film, my 100th, is one that I sincerely liked. 


Kind Hearts and Coronets is the story of a young man whose mother is shunned by her aristocratic family after marrying a man of lower means. As her son, Louis, grows older and his mother dies (her family denying her dying wish) he begins to plot towards inheriting his family's dukedom. The only trouble is, there are 12 others in his way.

The film has the perfect level of black humour as Louis simultaneously begins to elevate his position in society and terminate members of his rich, upper-class family, almost all played by the genius Alec Guinness. Each death is planned to comedic and undetectable perfection and Guinness's portrayal of 8 different characters ranging from a middle-aged woman to several men, young and old simply blows my mind. Of course, the complications come with women, and Louis finds himself in some potential trouble after a former lover reenters his life. As for his fate, you'll have to wait and discover it in the film's clever and artful ending, definitely one of the best I've seen in recent memory.

Wendy's Films of 2010 #99: The Wolfman (2010)

Quite a while back (I'm talking mid-May) I watched a film called The Wolfman. Now I made the mistake of later telling Mike and Chris that the movie wasn't "that bad;" I may have said it "wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." They took this as my endorsement and decided to watch the film for themselves. For several weeks afterwards I was harassed for suggesting the film was watchable, and anything I said wouldn't relieve me of their constant (albeit joking) persecution. I am now able to say that upon reflection I realize suggesting the movie wasn't that bad was likely a terrible idea, though I'm unused to them taking my opinion on any movie to heart. I think I even remember Mike jokingly saying he'd considered firing me after seeing my list of top 10 films...

Now! All commentary on the events surrounding my viewing of the Wolfman aside, I would like to say I do not recommend this film. It is not particularly well-acted, the CGI as Chris mentions in his review (linked above) is quite terrible, and the ending is inadequate. I can say that some will like this movie, obviously my employers are not among them; and though my dislike of the film isn't nearly as intense as theirs, I am also to be included in those who are not fans of the film. It may look neat in the trailer, but the film itself lacks any charm that the original had. I can say, however, that I did like Emily Blunt's acting, as I often do.

Maggie 2010: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Part II

#114. Seance



I entered the world of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films seeking a deeper understanding of the most striking motifs in Asian horror -- the designer labels, as it were, that trickle down into the off-the-racks imagery of Ringu, Ju-On, and Dark Water. My first stab at Kurosawa's canon, Cure, gave me confidence in his strength as a director, but did little to quench my curiosity about Asian horror mythology itself. Seance, on the other hand, was nigh on perfect in that regard.

However, I should stress first that Seance is not (for me) a perfect film in and of itself. This is because I put a lot of stock into the ease with which any one film allows me to suspend belief in its causality--namely, to accept the rules of the distinct world I'm occupying for an hour and a half. But with Seance, these mechanics seemed to change without clear justification around the halfway mark, and while I understood by the end of the film what Kurosawa wanted us to see as an inevitable series of events, that inevitability was not as clearly wrought throughout as it could have been.

For some context to that last paragraph, the film's premise is fairly simple: Junko and Sato are a modest couple--Sato (Koji Yakusho), working in sound production for a TV station; his wife (Jun Fubuki), a genuine psychic with few opportunities to exploit her abilities. While reluctant to help a researcher interested in her gift, Junko leaps (passively, almost imperceptibly) on an opportunity to lift the burden of household finances from her husband when a missing person's case comes her way. When the missing child conveniently escapes from her kidnapper only to end up in Sato's sound equipment, Junko sees this, too, as an opportunity to establish herself and start the money train rolling. Fortune does not, however, favour her daring or her cunning--and least of all the poor, wayward child.

This is the playing field into which some truly marvellous deconstructions of Asian horror archetype emerge--everything from the spooky crawling form of a child (is it alive? is it dead?) up a flight of stairs, to spirits haunting the living on a deeply personal level (are they real, or are they just manifestations of guilt?), to the staple "face obscured by hair" shot that's pretty much iconic in Asian horror. Kurosawa even goes so far as to directly address a central conceit of many Asian horror films, in a dialogue between husband and wife where both agree that their desire to deviate from the norm, the social expectation of living a mundane and unremarkable life, is what has led them to utter ruin.

But while all these archaeological details are a sheer delight, and themselves wholly merit viewing the film, I still find such a lack of clear causal relationships in Seance, especially on the part of the wife, as makes it impossible to get fully behind this film. I recognize that many of these difficulties are cultural (I disliked Ringu for the sheer passivity of the female lead, but absolutely cede the point that the widespread expectation of a passive female in that context was meant to make her rare proactive moments even more striking to viewers), but a few incongruities also seem to surpass common sense.

Why, for instance, did it take so long for husband and wife to realize they'd need to hide their identities from the child for their plan to work? What signs did viewers get that the husband was so burdened by his work it had become utterly, immediately imperative that his wife strive to free him from his day job? And let's just say it: Why the hell didn't the little girl call attention to her presence in Sato's box when he moved it to his trunk? ("Fear of men after just being kidnapped" doesn't work: she got into the box knowing full well it belonged to a man. Hell, to that end, why didn't she just say "Mister! Mister! My kidnapper's chasing me!" when she spied Sato at work in the woods? Because that would have made for a very short movie, of course.)

That said, Kurosawa has an impeccably measured style, and many of his shots are extremely thought-provoking. From what I could see in Seance, his use of horror archetype is quite serious and mature, and in this sense a real treat. Yes, I have reservations about the consistency of his characters' moral engines, but no question exists in my mind regarding Kurosawa's talent as a maker of fine, suspenseful films.