SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!
SPOILERS ABOUND!!!!!
Goodnight Mommy is beautifully filmed horror movie that prefers looking awesome over offering anything that makes the violence redeemable. It is empty calories disguised as art house cinema and is getting a lot of attention because Austria submitted it as their Best Foreign Language entry for the Academy Awards. Watching Goodnight Mommy felt like slow walk into a spiked wall that is 200 yards directly in front of you. You see the spiked wall off in the distance so there is no surprise as you inch closer and closer. I knew exactly where Goodnight Mommy was going and despite all the fantastic cinematography and new horror elements it felt familiar.
Normally, I am down for intelligent and critically loved horror but nothing in this film worked for me. It felt like a midnight film met a pretentious (and talented) film student and formed a hybrid that tried to be clever. It bums met out that it has been overshadowing gems like Spring, Creep and Housebound because they are all much more ambitious and earnest. Over the last two years I’ve written copious amounts about the indie horror boom and loved movies like Bone Tomahawk, Under the Skin and The Babadook. Those movies have a heart and soul and presented their indie horror ideas with clarity and a lack of pretentiousness.
Goodnight Mommy tells the story of a mother returning to her remote country home after facial reconstruction. She is welcomed by her two kids named Lukas and Elias who spend their days patrolling the countryside and burning cockroaches to death. The mother refuses to acknowledge Lukas and only feeds and talks to Elias. At this point it should become painfully obvious that there is only one kid and I was surprised to learn that people didn’t see the twist coming. I am still amazed because I never pick up on twists and I noticed this twist two minutes in. I actually thought it was so obvious that the real twist would be that Lukas was actually alive and the mom was a total jerk. However, that wasn’t the case we get a bunch of mom torture.
Poor lady.
I totally understand the cool Austrain vibe and adherence to patience but it all felt too obligatory. If you want to watch a movie about body dismemberment I recommend the film Cheap Thrills. It is a ballsy and tough little film about escalating dares. The villains keep their mystery and the two participants are likable and actually grow on you. The violence feels warranted because the filmmakers created a movie where you like the people and their motives seem plausible. It doesn’t gloss itself up or feel too cold because the movie has a purpose.
Goodnight Mommy is artificial in almost every aspect and that prevented me from caring about it. If you are into midnight horror films gussied up in an arthouse veneer you will love Goodnight Mommy. The violence is nasty and the build up is extreme and will most certainly satiate your need to see super glue used creatively.
Share this post:
.
The Finest Hours is an old school rescue film that is unpretentious, earnest and a lot of fun. The film is set in 1952 and tells the story of a massive oil tanker named the SS Pendleton that broke in half off the coast of Massachusetts. A nor-easter ripped the boat apart and left 30 men stranded aboard the ship. In any other circumstance they would’ve certainly perished but between the men aboard the Pendleton and four brave rescuers in a tiny Coast Guard boat they survived. The rescue is still considered the greatest small boat rescue ever and you would have to see it to believe it.
The $80 million film features more than 1,000 CGI shots and does a great job making you feel like you are in the action. I sat squeezing my poor wife’s hand as the 36-foot boat miraculously made its way to the Pendelton without a compass and luxury of daylight. The men aboard the rescue boat should have died about 80 times over yet they kept plugging along in an effort to rescue 30 men in a boat that could only hold 12. The suspense is palpable and if it wasn’t true I would’ve called BS on the whole thing. Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Casey Affleck do a solid job of making you believe they could survive the ordeal and actually inspire men to trust them. Director Craig Gillespie (Fright Night, Million Dollar Arm) balances action with earnestness and does a fine job juggling all the stock subplots (romance, cranky fishermen, punk crew members) a movie could offer and keeping them in the air.
There are archetypal characters and the cheese factor is high but I was able to look past all of that and embrace the experience. If you leave cynicism at the door I guarantee you will enjoy the journey. It was a different time and place and I loved the earnest and old school vibe The Finest Hours showcases. The heroics come front and center and I was really happy to see Casey Affleck playing a hero.
.
I love when Disney turns its attention towards true stories. I am a big fan of Cool Runnings, Miracle, Million Dollar Arm and Invincible and they’ve all been very motivating. The things that people can accomplish blow my mind and I love when great and unselfish feats are rewarded. I had never heard of the Pendleton rescue before and now I find the whole endeavor amazing. True stories like this deserve the big screen treatment and The Finest Hours does a fine job honoring the rescue party.
Watch The Finest Hours. Appreciate the true story. Never take a boat out during a nor’easter
Share this post:
The MFF Podcast #44: Cinematic Revenge
You can download the pod on Itunes or LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO.
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!
We hope you enjoyed our previous episode:
MFF Podcast #43: Advice for Cinematic Henchmen.
SUMMARY: This week we discuss our favorite moments of revenge in film, covering such films as The Revenant, Unforgiven, Jaws Revenge, Payback and Gladiator.
We also answer such important questions as…
“Which three characters would you pick to go on an adventure for lost gold with?”
“How did Jaws follow his victim’s family from New England to the Caribbean?”
“What cinematic beast would you not want attacking you?”
LISTEN TO THE POD ON BLOGTALKRADIO,
or head over Itunes so you can download, REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod.
Share this post:
MY CALL: This bigfoot movie is not an example of “amazing” filmmaking, but it’s a cleverly made monster movie that revitalizes found footage and reminds us that characters are far more important than creatures. Probably the best bigfoot movie since Harry and the Hendersons (1987), and easily bigfoot’s most successful foray in horror.
MORE MOVIES LIKE Willow Creek: Afflicted (2013) and Cloverfield (2008) provide excellent examples of creating great characters. I’d also consider The Blair Witch Project (1999).
HOW YOU CAN WATCH IT: I saw this on my Shudder Subscription via Amazon Prime Video (click here to go to the movie’s page).
If you were to only glean the first five minutes of this film, you’d likely label it as just another tired found footage horror flick not worth your time. I consider myself to be a very open-minded critic and film fan, yet even I was thinking to myself “why am watching this…this couldn’t possibly turn out to be decent…what on earth makes this interesting enough to include in Five 21st Century Creature Features You Might Have Missed?”
But after about 10-15 minutes I realized that, not only do I not hate our main characters, but I might even like them a little…more their dynamic than the individuals themselves…okay, as the story progressed I liked this couple more and more. Jim (Bryce Johnson; The Skulls III) and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) are a couple; one a bigfoot believer, the other a pragmatic and skeptical doubter. But we can see that Kelly has embraced Jim’s silly mania because she’s embarking on this Bigfoot Adventure vacation to visit famous sighting localities and interview locals for Jim’s documentary. This might just be their first trip together as a couple, and we get see them grow.
By the time I was halfway through the film I had to remind myself that this was, indeed, a “horror” film because, thus far, I had encountered nothing of the sort. But I didn’t mind. I may not think this film is “amazing” but I was caught up in enjoying watching this couple interview, banter and film their way through Bigfoot Burgers, local believers and witness testimonials on their quirky little vacation.
I’m actually reminded of the opening sequences of Cloverfield (2008) and Afflicted (2013). Now, these two films did a far superior job of this, but the similarity is that all these films had the ability to make me forget I was watching horror or sci-fi monster movies as I was content to just watch and see what was happening in these characters’ lives.
Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait takes heavily replayed horror concepts–like getting lost in the woods (Evil Dead, The Cabin in the Woods) and found footage documentaries-gone-wrong (The Last Exorcism, Grave Encounters)–and presents them with a less familiar spin. He doesn’t waste his time doing what every other filmmaker does. There’s not a single cheap loud noise jump scare, the movie doesn’t open with some brutal or provocative clip (to be revisited/realized at the end of the movie), and the film isn’t prefaced by some harrowing caption on a black screen. There are no gimmicks here, just two likeable characters and the story their journey has to tell…and that story gets pretty interesting in the second half of the movie.
The final act addresses the question: “So if you actually find bigfoot, what are you going to do?” In this case, it seems that bigfoot was looking for them. Long and generally quiet scenes are sporadically populated with sasquatch vocalizations, stick knocking and leaf-and-twig-rustling footfalls in the middle of the night. And they’re getting more frequent, louder and CLOSER.
This bigfoot movie is not an example “amazing” filmmaking, but it’s a cleverly made monster movie that revitalizes found footage and reminds us that characters are far more important than creatures. It’s probably the best bigfoot movie since Harry and the Hendersons (1987), and easily bigfoot’s most successful foray in horror. I’d strongly recommend this movie for a couples date night because there is zero gore, it’s more spooky than scary but generally it’s more on the fun side, and the couple’s banter is delightful.
Share this post:
MY CALL: A pleasant indie horror film with both feminist and sexual overtones, Other Halves presents an evil dating app, a strong female cast and better acting than we should expect. It’s more playful than scary, the movie kills are weak, the gore is “okay”, but what makes this film work is some very likable characters. This is more for critics and film aficionados than general horror fans. MORE MOVIES LIKE Other Halves: Other techno-horror films include Smiley (2012) which uses Skype, Strangeland (1998) which uses old-school chat rooms and Unfriended (2015) which covers everything from Facebook and Skype to Gmail and Google.
Disclaimer: This review was solicited by the filmmakers. However, my opinion remains unbiased as I was neither hired nor paid to produce this critical review.
For more information about this film visit their official:
Website: www.OtherHalv.es
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4308714
Twitter: www.twitter.com/otherhalvesfilm
Facebook: www.facebook.com/OtherHalvesFilm
YouTube: www.youtube.com/OtherHalves
(includes trailers, clips, and behind-the-scenes)
After opening with a refreshingly honest commercial for the dating app “Other Halves” we cut to Jasmine (Mercedes Manning; Monster Heroes), who has just awoken naked, covered in blood, beside a dead man who was presumably her un-lucky date last night. Amplifying the contrast between these two opening scenes is that Jasmine reacts as if this has happened before. Uh ohhhhh…
We find the Other Halves programming team working out the bugs on the eve of their big launch. Rather than answering a series of vetting questions, preferences and filling out personal data, the app uses all of your online activity to summarize your “real” preferences to match you with your other half. The problem is that, in this case, the bug opens a psychopathic doorway to our most uninhibited selves (our darker half), which amounts to a bunch of sex and murder.
As the movie progresses people become “infected” by the app and a series of flashbacks reveal that some of them actually knew about the App’s flaw. But why keep that a secret? Well therein lies your story in this low budget techno-horror.
Now let’s be honest, people. There’s a good amount of full frontal nudity (male and female) in this movie–some of it gratuitous (okay, most of it), but some of it actually adding value to the scene. Now I’m not complaining about this at all. I’m just warning that you don’t go watching this with your kids or your grandmother. That said, I’d like to point out that there is a rather long shower scene in which we see Devon (Lauren Lakis; Lovely Molly, Witch’s Brew) and Jasmine completely naked for a good while. But what sets this film apart is that, and I shit you not, these ladies are seriously acting throughout this scene… totally naked, but addressing some pertinent plot points as seriously as if they were in an informal meeting. Bravo, filmmakers! I’d say you’ve risen above adding boobs to get teenagers to buy your movie and sort of made nudity cool again.
Some of the characters’ reactions were, at times, a little exaggerated. But this is to be expected in horror and, to be quite honest, the acting vastly eclipsed any expectations I had for a low budget horror capitalizing on dating and sex for its theme. I also found myself really liking a some of the characters, particularly the quirky optimist Devon, the geek-in-love (Megan Hui), and the rigidly literal socially awkward German Jana (Melanie Friedrich). These characters (these actors) offered up more than most horror movies deserve. And whereas the plot was quite basic, I never found myself bothered by its simplicity. The cast carried this film much to my satisfaction and they did so with the female characters bringing all of the strength for both protagonists and antagonists alike. The men filled more supporting roles–eye candy, love interests, victims. Even the female nudity was delivered in a minimally exploitative manner–even if gratuitous.
My only real complaints would be budget-linked. For example, there are a couple good efforts regarding the gore but the actual killing (except for a weak strangle scene), takes place off-camera. The ending also really gets overly hammed up–I guess I didn’t really care for that, or the “big reveal.” But sometimes simple concepts and melodrama are necessary tools to ensure your entire audience follows and understands the journey to its end.
Writer/director Matthew T. Price did a pretty nice job for his horror film. Am I going to recommend this film to general horror fans? Honestly, probably not. But I would recommend this to deeper and more thoughtful fans of the genre, particularly indie horror fans, who are always on the lookout for promising new filmmakers and underutilized concepts (i.e., techno-horror, social media horror, feminist themes). And I really like what Price and his cast accomplished. I’d like to see what this crew could do with a little more money and, no offense to the writers, but a little more experience.
A pleasant indie horror film with both feminist and sexual overtones, Other Halves presents an evil dating app, a strong female cast and better acting than we should expect. It’s more playful than scary, the movie kills are weak, the gore is “okay”, but what makes this film work is some very likable characters.
Share this post:
MFF Podcast #43: Advice for Cinematic Henchmen
Hello all. Mark here.
You can listen to the MFF podcast on Blog Talk Radio or you can download it on Itunes. If you get a chance please make sure to rate, review and subscribe!
Cinematic henchmen occasionally make very stupid decisions. They fight on moving vehicles, attack the Incredible Hulk and apply for jobs in secret lairs. Their poor decision making has spelled their doom and it has gotten boring. So, I wrote up 10 pieces of advice and we recorded a spirited podcast that will help the henchmen of this world.
Don’t be the henchmen who gets knocked out by a well-thrown rock.
As always we answer incredibly random questions and wax poetic about whether or not Kurt Russell waxes his mustache. If you have any random questions for us please comment below or message us on Twitter/Facebook.
Enjoy the pod!
Head over to Blog Talk Radio or Itunes!
Share this post:
The 10 Best Moments of 21st Century Horror Films
I love horror movies. There is an art to developing exceptional horror films and when a director/writer can capture dread, urgency and surprise they can create iconic moments that live on in infamy. The following post explores my 10 favorite horror moments of the 21st century. There have been hundreds of movies and thousands of moments but I’ve narrowed it down to my favorites. You will love them.
What are your favorite moments?
1. The Car Park Fight – Drag Me To Hell
I beat you, you old bitch!
Leave it up to Sam Raimi to provide an entertaining brawl between an elderly gypsy woman and a young heroine. In one fight we get an old woman being stapled in the face, dentures exploding out of a mouth and a full on face gumming. It is a bonkers fight that is pure popcorn fun. Sam Raimi knows how to entertain and he adds levity to the horror which makes every fight surprising. I love every second of this fight and consider Drag Me To Hell to be my favorite horror film.
.
2. Spelunkers vs. Crawlers – The Descent
What makes these creatures scary is that they are acting on instinct. There is no lame back story (I did learn on the commentary they named one Steve) or motives. They are human enough to keep the fights even and this allows the brawls to be barn burners. The stage direction was limited as director Neil Marshall told the actor in the creature suit to “go for the neck,” then he told his actress “don’t let it get your neck.” The simplicity kept it believable and raw. These confrontations do not seem rehearsed and they play like a classic predator/prey hunt. The coolest thing that Marshall did was wait to show the actresses the creatures until the initial introduction. The reaction was fear and the phrase “they scared the living daylights out of me” was heard multiple times.
.
3. The Monsters Are Unleashed – Cabin in the Woods
I want to see a movie with each and everyone one of these monsters/creatures/witches/Kevin. I love Cabin in the Woods and I agree with the internet when it claimed it was the best horror film of the 21st century.
.
4. The Lipstick Demon Makes an Appearance – Insidious
Insidious is a tour de force of beautiful low budget horror. The red lipstick demon is a massive jerk and the moment when he appears behind Patrick Wilson you are scarred for life. I love the trilogy and no other film series has stressed me out more.
.
5. The Townsfolk vs. Vampires – 30 Days of Night
Tristan Sinns of Dread Central wrote an amazing review (Ebert quoted it) for 30 Days of Night. I love the way Sinns discussed the vampires and the incredibly effective bird’s-eye view attack scene.
The vampires of 30 Days of Night bring new energy to the mythos and they do this in practice by simply being more primitive. This type of monster is so out of the mold of the modern take on vampires that it is fair to call them more of a werewolf archetype than a vampire. Vampires, on the whole, are creatures with the power of seduction; while werewolves are monsters of rage. These particular vampires have rage aplenty and are so good at killing that they’ve no need, at all, to seduce anything. They are filthy, ugly things, and they don’t care if you like them; they only care if you’re dead.
In 30 Days of Night, director David Slade has proven he has a knack for tense contextual horror; those awful situations that manage to creep right under your skin. The townsfolk’s fight to survive is a horrendous and passionate battle. There’s one shot in particular that is simply stunning; a bird’s eye view of a frozen street, panning slowly over the breadth of nearly the entire town, capturing a long and frenzied battle between the vampires and their victims. This shot goes on and on and does so much to impress the impact and scale of the devastation and horror faced by the small Alaskan town.
.
6. Running Away – 28 Weeks Later
The urgency and hopelessness in this scene is heartbreaking. I remember sitting in the theater holding my breath as Robert Carlyle ran desperately through the field. 28 Weeks Later is a nasty piece of film making and it is one of the rare horror sequels that is actually good.
.
7. The Empty Streets of London – 28 Days Later
Watching Cillian Murphy walk the empty streets of London really stressed me out. You sit there waiting for the inevitable violence and you cringe everytime he yells. Without this setup you wouldn’t understand the scale of what happened and many zombie films owe a debt to 28 Days Later.
.
8. People Meet Monster- The Host
The Host is cheeky, inventive, bloody, funny and beautifully made. The initial monster attack is a thing of glory and I can never get enough of it. I lived in South Korea for a year and whenever I went to Seoul I would always look for the monster (it could happen). You need to watch this movie.
.
9. I’m Not Welcome – Paranormal Activity
Paranormal Activity is a tiny $11,000 film that exploded in the theaters. It placed a camera in a static position and managed to create more scares via dread and anticipation than I could’ve ever imagined. The best thing about PA is that it introduced us to an incredibly jerky demon that loved to pull bed sheets and occasionally drag people out of rooms. There is a moment that I love when a paranormal investigator walks into the house and immediately realizes he needs to go because it isn’t safe. PA did something many movies fail to do. It created a villain that scared the crap out of the audience (until they named it Toby)
.
10. Shaun is Oblivious – Shaun of the Dead
What I love most about Shaun of the Dead is how they featured an incredibly rehearsed and ambitious two-minute steadicam shot. The moment isn’t about terror, violence or showing off. The shot centers around a slacker making his way to a shop while not noticing the carnage around him. He is so checked out that he doesn’t notice the blood he slips on or slow-moving zombies all around him. It is a moment of pure cinematic nerd glory and proves that this film about two dudes, a lady and a pub is a lovingly made zombie film. Viva la Cornetto and Edgar Wright!
Share this post:
Bone Tomahawk: A Fantastic Horror Western Full of Lyrical Dialogue and Ultra-Violence
Bone Tomahawk is a beautifully written horror western that plays with multiple genres while creating memorable characters. It takes its time getting to the violence and I applaud that decision. I understand why it has stayed on the fringes of the mainstream because it can’t be categorized and features lots of patience and extreme body mutilation. Director/writer S. Craig Zahler pulled off a $2,00,000 dollar miracle and worked wonders with a brief 21 day shooting schedule. It is rare when a tiny horror western can gather such a great cast and gets nominated for multiple Independent Spirit Awards.
The story revolves around a group of men hunting down some cannibal Troglodytes. Their native burial mounds were molested (by David Arquette of course) and in their quest to get back their weird skulls they kidnap a local nurse named Samatha (lili Simmons) and drag her back to their mountain cave. What follows is like The Searchers met Green Inferno and spawned something completely original.
.
I love the pairing of Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and the fantastic Richard Jenkins. The four men bring something different to the table and they get to each build their own character while spouting great dialogue. This hurts my soul to say but Kurt Russell is overshadowed by his costars. Normally, Russell is the best part of any film but Richard Jenkins (Cabin in the Woods) steals the show. Jenkins deputy character is a good man who has seen war and lost his beloved wife. At first glance he comes across as the town jester but as the film moves along he becomes an immensely likable and original character. Jenkins gets the best dialogue and I loved this line in particular.
You know, I know the world’s supposed to be round, but I’m not so sure about this part.
Their journey will inevitably lead them to doom but it all plays out unexpectedly. The violence is ugly and when it starts you almost want to cover your eyes. The $2,000,000 budget limits the sets and action set peices but it also makes the film more creative. I was talking about the film to MFF co-writer John and he was shocked to know how tiny the budget was. Bone Tomahawk is a tiny film that feels expansive and almost epic.
.
Bone Tomahawk exemplifies the recent crop of horror hybrids that are making a name for themselves by being very good films. They take recycled tropes and make them fresh by solid casting and legit dialogue. They aren’t content telling the same story and they’ve taken it upon themselves to build new mythologies and worlds.
Watch Bone Tomahawk. Don’t molest Troglodyte burial mounds. Appreciate Kurt Russell’s beard.
Share this post:
Sorceress (1982), a raunchy 80s fantasy movie featuring naked twin barbarian women, a floating manticore God and the dumbest magical prophecy ever.
MY CALL: This ranks pretty low even if you enjoy bad 80s R-rated fantasy. There’s nudity, raunchiness, dumb dialogue, one scene with a neat monster, stupid magic spells and a satyr peeping Tom. If that sentence doesn’t make you want to see this, then you don’t want to see this. MORE MOVIES LIKE Sorceress: Do you like this 80s badness? How about Flash Gordon (1980), Kull the Conqueror (1997), Krull (1983), Conquest (1983), Deathstalker (1983), The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) and Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans (1987). All of these movies are better than Barbarian Queen (1985) in every possible way except for amply breast-filled minutes of screen time. Like all the fantasy but don’t care for all the “bad”? Let’s try Legend (1985), Beastmaster (1982), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984) or Willow (1988) on for size. ALTERNTATE TITLE: The Barbarian Women.
This movie is so bad that even IMDB totally phoned in the synopsis, which reads as follows: “Sword and sorcery story of the cosmic struggle between white magic and black magic.” I’m pretty sure this just described every movie featuring magic ever made. Thanks for the clarification, IMDB. <<Drops the mic and walks away>>
“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagic! I’m spelling you!!!!!”
The story is shaky at best–but this should come as no surprise from a campy 80s genre best known for even having its strong lead female protagonists get naked (e.g., Barbarian Queen). Some evil wizard needs to sacrifice some woman’s first born child to summon some sort of monstrous demon thing. There’s just one problem, the woman had twins and the evill wizard needs to know which twin was first. With me so far…sort of? Good.
Like a fairy godfather, Krona (Martin LaSalle) the good wizard bestows unto these twin girls the powers of sword and sorcery. It’s about as easy as Neo uploading kung fu in The Matrix (1999), but without the HDMI ports in the back of the head. The twins, Mira (Leigh Harris) and Mara (Lynette Harris), are so clueless into their early 20s that they don’t realize there is a difference between boys and girls and, as such, don’t think to hide their lady parts from the opposite sex. They don’t even understand what sex is. This is really convenient for this kind of semi-smutty movie and the campiness that ensues is barely tolerable.
Meet the twins “disguised” as very leggy boys. Pretty legit costumes.
I totally bought that they were boys.
They “glow” with magical power!
And kick really high.
The action is laughable in an awesomely bad way. A guy catches a spear and throws it back, Mara catches an arrow bare-handed, and all combat seems to be a fumbling tumble of silliness. Unfortunately the action falls short in all ways compared to even other bad 80s sword and sorcery films–leaving this movie very low among their ranks for overall entertainment value.
Just a random, VERY misleading movie poster. The women don’t have those physiques or fight in string bikinis, no clue what’s going on with the floating planet or jaguars there, and the badass Norse God-lookin’ dude turns out to be really lame!
The manifestations of magic are a tribute to low budget early 80s fantasy. That is to say, they look awful! LMAO. Don’t worry, you should enjoy it.
And another misleading poster/cover having nothing to do with the actual movie. There is no dragon, there is no woman in a 3-horned helmet and there is no warrior woman in a battle thong. This…THIS…is how they get us to watch these movies. LIES. SORCERY!!!!!
Written by Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall, Deathstalker II, The Haunting of Morella–don’t be fooled, these three movies are much better than Sorceress) and directed by grindhouse champion Jack Hill (under the pseudonym Brian Stuart; Coffy, Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters), this exploitation fantasy filth leaves no raunchy stone unturned–seizing every opportunity for breasty sophomoric thrills. A woman’s panties must be revealed (on-screen) before disemboweling her (off-screen), breast-feeding prefaced with commentary of “how full” her breasts are, our naked twin heroines skinny dipping in a river who naively try to figure out what “that thing hanging between his legs” is before kicking their voyeur’s ass, peasant women are raped, there’s a threat of death by anal impalement, and Mara learns what it means to be a woman…yeah, it’s all pretty classy over here.
Yeah, so here’s the most skeazy-looking satyr EVER and the Norse God-looking guy from that lying movie poster. Talk about buyers’ remorse.
The evil wizard Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros) evidently has three lives and self-resurrects at a predestined location if killed (kind of like FPS games), his scantily clad ally (Ana De Sade; Caveman) has a servant in an evil gorilla suit, an awkward satyr incessantly “baahs”, the town bazaar boasts what seems to be an outdoor strip club, there’s a gorilla assault, and for the finale there’s an undead army
In the end, simply uttering a magic word dispels some enchantments and summons a pretty spiffy looking good manticore God (basically a giant floating lion with bat wings) which snarls and spews lightning at this disembodied head of an ugly disfigured evil woman god. This is accompanied by a large scale melee of sword fighting that is yawnably awful. Just pure shit.
Meet the Manticore God thing…he’s a good guy….clearly!
Manticore God meets floating ugly witch face.
Pew, Pew, Pew!!!!!
The sword and sorcery genre peppered bad movies throughout the 80s, but this is easily one of the least pleasurable installments even for lovers of campy, dumb movies. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it at all. But I’ll probably never watch it again and prefer pretty much all other such films of the decade above this one.
Happy ending for this guy!
Share this post:
John’s Horror Corner: Altered States (1980), an intellectual mix of body horror, intense psychological horror and a wacky ending.
MY CALL: This underrated mix of body horror and psychological horror has a lot to offer more intellectual fans–even if it ends on a weak, loony note. MORE MOVIES LIKE Altered States: Possession (1981) and The Manitou (1978).
First I’d like to make a friendly disclaimer that I had not seen this movie before and, as such, my review is completely unbiased by any sense of nostalgia or past impression. That said, however obvious the film’s age may be, the plot did not feel numbed of its intensity as so many older movies can be. Director Ken Russell (The Devils, The Lair of the White Worm) and his cast do a fine job of mature, credible storytelling…at first. Later, it may go off the deep end a bit.
Pondering the inherent value of hallucinations, visions of Christ and other religious experiences, psychophysiologist Dr. Eddie Jessup (William Hurt; The Village, The Countess) experiments with sensory deprivation chambers and Mexican Toltec hallucinogenic mushroom rituals in search of deep inherent answers rooted in the 6 billion-year old atoms that compose our very bodies and which may, indeed, confer “genetic memories” under the right circumstances–that is, with psychedelic drugs.
The dialogue is highly intellectualized and well-versed. If ever there was an 80s horror movie for academics, this is it. Eddie engages in deep reverie regarding the inflexive oneness of Buddhism, resurrection and the self. Obsessed with proving his hypotheses linking our personal biological matter to the ancient past and, primordially speaking, “the beginning,” he sheds himself of all distractions…even his wife and children.
After a decade of experimentation Eddie turns to extremes which appear to afflict him physically. Doctors suggest seizures and trans ischemic attacks, but Eddie “knows” that his body is undergoing temporary transformations to more primordial states.
The sex scenes are not terribly graphic by today’s standards, but there’s something intense about them; not so much physically, but atmospherically. And whereas Eddie maintains a rigid mixture of academic focus and social disconnection, he is balanced by his colleagues’ (including Bob Balaban; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Lady in the Water) concern for his health and skepticism of his wild claims.
What present-day audiences may find hokey are the very abundant hallucination special effects. I’m sure at the time (back in 1980) they were trance-like and discomfiting. But now they look silly–although they get the job done of relaying Eddie’s mania and some of the religious imagery is a bit disturbing. But still quite pleasing are the pulsating physical effects as Eddie “transforms” into something more primitive which, for at least a moment, smacks of a less elaborate werewolf transformation.
Just as his genius eclipses his sanity, the film takes a turn for the worst into Looney Tunes land as the scenes of him running around as an ape-man felt quite awkwardly displaced and ran too long. The closing finale was weird…I’m not sure I feel satisfied with the outcome.
Movies, Films & Flix 