John’s Horror Corner: V/H/S/94 (2021), more substance than style, this is a horror anthology for gorehounds.
MY CALL: I’m a major anthology fan and a picky critic. That said, this has nothing inspired or clever, but plenty of gory entertainment within its anthology segments.
MORE HORROR ANTHOLOGIES: Dead of Night (1945), Black Sabbath (1963), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Uncanny (1977), Screams of a Winter Night (1979), Creepshow (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Deadtime Stories (1986), Creepshow 2 (1987), From a Whisper to a Scream (1987; aka The Offspring), After Midnight (1989), Tales from the Crypt Season 1 (1989), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Grimm Prairie Tales (1990), The Willies (1990), Two Evil Eyes (1990), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Campfire Tales (1997), Dark Tales of Japan (2004), 3 Extremes (2004), Creepshow 3 (2006), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), All Hallows’ Eve (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013), The ABCs of Death 2 (2014), V/H/S Viral (2014), Southbound (2015), Tales of Halloween (2015), A Christmas Horror Story (2015), The ABCs of Death 2.5 (2016), Holidays (2016), Terrified (2017; aka Aterrados, a pseudo-anthology), Oats Studios, Vol. 1 (2017), Ghost Stories (2017), XX (2017), All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018), The Field Guide to Evil (2018), Shudder’s series Creepshow (2019-2021), Scare Package (2019), The Mortuary Collection (2019) and Xenophobia (2019).
After three V/H/S horror anthologies in as many years (2012-2014), a fourth installment has finally come about to grace anthology fans. In its wraparound story, a police SWAT team investigates an abandoned warehouse with dead bodies and videotapes depicting horrors. The stories in those tapes are as follows…
Chloe Okuno’s (Slut) Storm Drain explores an urban legend about a “rat man” in the sewers. Despite the humble budget, it conjures fond memories of Digging Up the Marrow (2014) as a reporter (Anna Hopkins; The Expanse) investigates what turns out to be an incredibly gross, disfigured creature. It culminates in a hilarious yet utterly gross projectile acid vomiting which melts a man’s face off in chunky splendor.
Directed and written by Simon Barrett (Séance, V/H/S 2 segment Tape 49), The Empty Wake tests the sanity of a woman (Kyal Legend) overseeing an evening wake in which the family never shows. Over the course of the evening, she is all but certain that the man inside the closed casket is actually alive! This segment takes it’s time and, like its predecessor, comes to a very exciting and gory finale that kinda’ smacks of The Re-Animator (1985).
The Veggie Masher, directed by Steven Kostanski (Psycho Goreman, The Void, Manborg), is just an awkward play on an informercial SlapChop product.
With The Subject, Timo Tjahjanto (May the Devil Take You, The Night Comes for Us) shows us a mad scientist obsessed with combining man and machine… against his subjects’ will. But oh how his subjects shine in the blood of their enemies as they slice soldiers in half and enter battle in FPS videogame POV. The violence is grisly, graphic and very creative! Likewise the robotic surgery victims are gloriously macabre.
The final segment Terror (Ryan Prows; Lowlife) is the weakest of the lot despite its strong ending. A righteous militia keeps a strange prisoner with an interesting secret. I guess it’s got its share of dark humor. But I just didn’t care for its flavor. Eventually brain matter spills out of a head like Chunky Soup. It starts out lame, but boy it really comes around! Gory, chaotic, and funny. I mean, if Rawhead Rex (1986) was infected by a Blade II (2002) vampire biting off faces on a low budget… that’s the monster we eventually see here!
Holy Hell (Jennifer Reeder; Knives and Skin) is our closing/opening/wraparound story in which a SWAT team converges on a warehouse discovering the eyeless bodies of some cult. It’s not very interesting and has nothing to do with its anthology tales.
We have sewer monsters, intestines being dumped to the ground from one’s abdomen, sliced off heads, monstrous vampires and war cyborgs. It’s a simple fun lot. Although I prefer my anthologies to have linked stories (e.g., The Mortuary Collection) or richer stories to tell with clever twists, themes or moral spins (e.g., Terrified, Holidays), this anthology still manages to deliver the goods in the form of raw gory payoffs. I wasn’t impressed by any of the storytelling or ideas, but graphic spilled guts goes a long way in finding my forgiveness and approval. So there’s that.
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John’s Horror Corner: Madman (1981), a satisfyingly brutal and mean slasher classic.
MY CALL: This is a pretty mean slasher with decent kills that we fully see on screen, above board gore, and a monstrously cool-looking psycho killer. Recommended for 80s slasher fans. MORE MOVIES LIKE Madman: For more “mean” early slashers there’s The Burning (1981), Friday the 13th (1980), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Prowler (1981) and My Bloody Valentine (1981).
Ugly, mean and evil, Madman Marz differs somewhat from other more relatable early slashers of his era (e.g., Cropsy, Jason Voorhees, Angela) in that he was never wronged or misunderstood, nor does he have any moral grounds for vengeance. No… much more like the killers of Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978) or TCM (1974), he is inherently evil.
Marz borrows from many of his homicidal contemporaries. He murdered his family in their sleep a la The Amityville Horror (1979), he slashes up camp counselors as was the style at the time, he shares his name with a famous cannibal (The Hills Have Eyes), and like Candyman (1992), Bloody Mary or even The Bye Bye Man (2017), saying his name will seal your bloody fate. If you utter his name above a whisper in the woods, he will hear it and he will come for you.
The stuff of campfire tale folklore, Marz is the size of a sasquatch and grunts and growls like one, too. His hulking size, wild hair and mangled face likely inspired Victor Crowley (Hatchet) among others.
The first death scene caught me happily off guard. A sudden, unexpected and gory throat gashing with lots of lacerated flesh. The flappy flesh wounds are strong in this movie. There was also a noose/hanging death that was much more entertaining and developed than I would have expected. A couple decapitations and an ax to the chest follow, serving more as filler. The early two death scenes represent the most substantial shock value of the movie, which is slower (and thus, less shocking) than desired even in the final 30 minutes. But Marz comes though with a major finale claw gash to the face and a brutally impaled victim on a meat hook like in TCM (1974) make up for the dip in excitement as he mows though his victims (incl. Gaylen Ross; Creepshow, Dawn of the Dead).
Overall an entertaining lazy afternoon viewing. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest it is your Saturday night popcorn feature (maybe Thursday night), but I’d still strongly recommend it to fans of 80s slashers. I must say, I’m bummed that one-time writer/director Joe Giannone never produced any more horror after this. He definitely proved that he had a knack for it.
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John’s Horror Corner: The Number 23 (2007), a moderately over-the-top noirish thriller to sharpen Carrey’s dramatic acumen.
MY CALL: A bit too much to be taken seriously as a thriller and not enough to scratch one’s horror itch, this remains an engaging movie if for nothing more than Carrey’s immersively obsessed performance. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Number 23: For more books that take reality too far, consider Stranger Than Fiction (2006) or Adaptation (2002).
Living a simple, uneventful, tedious but happily normal life, animal control officer Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey; Once Bitten, The Bad Batch) one day chases a stray animal to the grave of Laura Tollins (Rhona Mitra; Skinwalkers, Hollow Man) on his birthday—February 3rd.
As someone with a fondness for Jim Carrey, I enjoyed seeing him in this unusual role. Carrey’s forays into drama (e.g., Man on the Moon, The Truman Show) have been my favorite performances by this warm, introspective, quirky man. And it is that very thoughtful, soulful, wanting introspection that makes this role work so well, particularly with respect to his narrations as Walter Sparrow reads from his birthday present: a book called “The Number 23.”
Walter finds suspiciously strong parallels to his own life in the book, and we witness his internal visualization of the story of a dark detective with an edgier Carrey as the character, and an edgier version of his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen; Candyman, The Prophecy, Dune, Better Watch Out) as a sultry love interest. Moreover, Walter continues to find links between his life and the number 23.
Strong themes of suicide, betrayal and murder follow as the line between Walter’s life and his book begins to blur and his paranoia rapidly accelerates. The twisty-turny-ness of this movie gets far too elaborate for its own good and wanders past my own limits of a suspension of disbelief. But despite this, I find enjoyment in it.
Director Joel Schumacher’s (8mm, Flatliners, The Lost Boys) kinky noir foray into numerological mystery is perfectly enjoyable and interesting, even if ultimately nothing riveting. The performances forgive the mild shortcomings of the far-reaching plot, which digs a bit deeper than it should have perhaps.
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Gasoline Alley (2022) Review
Quick Thoughts – Gasoline Alley – Grade – C- – : It’s a shame that most of the press about this movie will be about Bruce Willis and his run of easy money performances, because Devon Sawa turns in a solid performance that is equal parts weathered, physical and determined. Gasoline Alley is much better than director Edward Drake’s other films Cosmic Sin and American Siege, but it desperately wants to be stylish, which works against it as the style never feels organic.
Produced by 308 Entertainment, who also released Cosmic Sin, Apex, and Breach in 2020 and 2021, Gasoline Alley is different from its predecessors in that it’s much more visually impressive and doesn’t involve space travel or aliens. Most importantly, it features an impressive performance from Devon Sawa who between Hunter Hunter, The Fanatic, and Disturbing the Peace, has been on an impressive run in low budget films. His character Jimmy Jayne is a chain-smoking tattoo artist who become embroiled in a murder mystery that involves human trafficking, dirty cops, and neon-drenched bars. The best parts of Gasoline Alley revolve around Sawa rolling up his sleeves, and using his height (he’s 6’0 feet, which is huge by Hollywood standards) and muscular frame to intimidate people while explore the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles (AKA Georgia) looking for a murderer. During his journey he comes across detectives Freeman (Bruce Willis) and Vargas (Luke Wilson) who initially suspect him after finding one of the lighters he gives out to promote his tattoo business Gasoline Alley. After deciding he isn’t a suspect, they form an uneasy truce which leaves Danny free to hunt down the killer and expose a conspiracy.
The screenplay by Drake and Tom Sierchio (who wrote The Girl Who Invented Kissing, which stars Luke Wilson and Johnny Messner, who is one of the 24 producers on this movie) puts a lot of focus on cigarette smoking characters spouting noir-ish dialogue while drenched in neon lights that adorn the ceilings of seedy bars or homes. While there is an occasional solid bit of dialogue involving Citizen Kane, swap meets or name placement on a call sheet, it never feels totally organic and the dialogue occasionally has a clipped vibe that either comes down to the script, editing or coverage of scenes. Also, It is understandable why the producers would want Bruce Willis involved (a worldwide release and guaranteed press), but his scenes are wild to watch as he only delivers one word responses or labored sentences that made me want to research his state of mind. It’s clear he was only there a few days for a hefty paycheck, but his appearances are distracting and take away from the movie.
The cinematography by Brandon Cox (Cut Throat City, Cosmic Sin) is the Co-MVP of the film because it’s quite ambitious and there are moments and conversations that look really good. Cox put in a lot of work to make the film look good, and the mostly on-location shoot adds a nice level of grit to the proceedings.
Final thoughts – I can’t wait to see what Devon Sawa does next because I really enjoyed his performance here.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 413: Underworld: Blood Wars, Fancy Coats, and Kate Beckinsale
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!
Mark and David Cross (@ItsMeDavidCross on Twitter) finish up their Underworld franchise series by talking about the 2016 film Underworld: Blood Wars. In this episode, they discuss blood wars, fur coats, and why this movie kept Kate Beckinsale on the sidelines. They also talk about the franchise and rank the five Underworld films. Enjoy!
Make sure to check out the Award Wieners Movie Review Podcast after listening to this episode.
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 412: The Prestige, Top Hats, and Christopher Nolan
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!
Mark and Phil discuss the 2006 mystery thriller The Prestige. Directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johannsson and a plethora of top hats, the movie focuses on what happens when rival magicians take a feud too far. In this episode, they talk about Nolan’s filmography, clones, and water tanks. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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John’s Horror Corner: Saint Maud (2019), a British religious horror that is more intriguing drama than horror.
MY CALL: Patient, quiet, and rich with human frailty, this A24 film plays out like its peers. The relationships are heavy and intriguing, the horror is limited largely to a powerful climactic revelation, and then it’s over and you feel a deep morose emptiness. MORE MOVIES LIKE Saint Maud: Hmmm… I’m thinking The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015). For more ‘caretaker horror’ I’d recommend The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014), Relic (2020) or The Skeleton Key (2005).
Recently assuming her in-home nurse and caretaker duties, Maud (Morfydd Clark; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Crawl) is tasked with caring for the terminally ill Amanda (Jennifer Ehle; John and the Hole). The two couldn’t be more opposite. Praying before dinner alone in her meager studio kitchen, Maud routinely overshares the tedium of her life with God and narrates her daily perspective to Him. A now wheelchair-bound former dancer and choreographer, Amanda is a thoughtfully inquisitive yet critical woman who cares little for whoever may be caught in her chain-smoking, indulgent wake. But perhaps she’s warming to Maud…
The drama of their developing relationship creates more tension and intrigue than any sense of horror or dread, which is more scarce than I expected or hoped. Maud ponders how Amanda ever ended up where she did, in a small simple boring town. Skeptically agnostic, Amanda wonders about Maud’s relationship with God, as Maud comforts her that God sees her and waits for her.
Maud is a curious one, mildly alarming in her piousness and quite certain that she is God’s Chosen to save Amanda’s soul. It’s as if Maud is falling in love with the idea of saving Amanda… perhaps even to obsessive infatuated degree. The imagery occasionally tiptoes the boundary between possession and rapture as Maud engages in self-castigation to reach closer to God, and God reaches back.
As A24 films do, this takes its time but does not fail to deliver abruptly shocking, disturbing imagery. Leave it to an A24 film to make me fear a sex scene. The intense, disturbing, effects scenes were admittedly few… until the rug is briefly ripped out from beneath you with violent and emotional intensity in the end. But brief it is. Too brief, I felt.
Probably among the weaker of A24 films in terms of emotional gut punches (e.g., Midsommar, Hereditary), but still a finely crafted film with solid performances and an adequate contribution to religious horror. Writer and director Rose Glass fared well in her first feature film, and we should welcome her future endeavors.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast: Brad Pitt Eating, Creating Content, and Data Collection
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome!
Mark and Zanandi (@ZaNandi on Twitter) discuss the 2019 data article that Mark wrote about Brad Pitt’s cinematic eating. In this episode, they talk about why the movies that feature Pitt eating over 200 calories make more money and have higher critical scores. Grab a spoonful of peanut butter and enjoy the episode!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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John’s Horror Corner: Scanners 2: The New Order (1991), a weaker yet decently serviceable follow-up to Cronenberg’s gory allegory.
MY CALL: A somewhat worthy sequel that succeeds in entertaining and advancing the story just enough… and with enough gooey gory chunky head trauma as well. MORE MOVIES LIKE Scanners 2: Well, there’s Scanners (1981) and the subsequent sequel Scanners III (1991), as well as the Scanner Cop movies (1994-95). Firestarter (1984) might scratch your psychic itch. And although not at all horror, I might also recommend Wilder Napalm (1993).
Following in the footsteps of director and writer David Cronenberg (The Fly, Rabid, Videodrome, The Brood), who made serious statements about modern psychology and metaphysics in his early 80s horror oddity, this sequel’s director Christian Duguay (Scanners 3, Screamers, The Art of War) delivers far less intrigue and compelling content. The advancement of the original story is simply less interesting—but certainly not bad either. Ephemerol-addicted scanner patients have been reduced to fix-seeking junkies at research facilities, and criminal rogue scanners are up to what seems to be the same old mind-controlling shenanigans. The plot doesn’t steer far from its source material.
Suffering from strange migraines, first-year veterinary student David (David Hewlett; The Shape of Water, Cube, Haunter, Splice) protects his girlfriend Alice (Isabelle Mejias) by making convulsing pulsating work of a convenience store stick-up robber by turning his head into a brain-spewing blender. The visual effects are chunky, gory, visceral and extensively satisfying. But caught on security video, David’s scanner secret is out, and he is now to be studied by scanner specialists.
This sequel takes place over 22 years after the events of part 1, and the middle majority of this movie seems to drag on slowly so we really feel those years. It’s not very eventful and the story slowly pours in connections to the past. The revelations of the plot are not uninteresting but also not very compelling since the shocking revelations of part 1 are behind us. The problem seems to be in the execution. Not that this is a bad film at all. Just… a film that struggles to escape its predecessor’s shadow of strong allegory and more compelling characters. Most interesting for me was the discovery of new ways to use scanners’ abilities.
We are introduced to our twitchy and intense antagonist scanner Drak (Raoul Max Trujillo) early in the film. His role and dark intensity build throughout. When he finally faces off against David, the encounter falls short of the gravity brought by Michael Ironside in part 1. Still, the effects are impressively gross as he is reduced to a flesh-sunken husk.
Finale deaths come with the gross, wet, pulsating faces and puffy flesh we’ve come to anticipate cueing the pending cephalic explosion of latex and gobbledygoop. So like part 1, this movie is largely reducible to a couple of impressive effects scenes bookending the film. Overall not bad. Not bad, but not great. I’d say part 1 was far superior.
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John’s Horror Corner: Beyond the Door III (1989; aka Dark Train, Death Train), a zany and gory, false-sequel, ‘not-quite folk’ train horror.
MY CALL: This wasn’t bad! Between solid death scene pacing, general zaniness and a lot of bloody decapitations and the like, this is a good “check your brain at the door” one-and-done horror flick. MORE MOVIES LIKE Beyond the Door III: They’re totally unrelated except in title, but there’s Beyond the Door (1974) and Schock, aka Beyond the Door II (1977). Want more train horror? Consider Terror Train (1980), Midnight Meat Train (2008), Howl (2015) or Train to Busan (2016).
An American student of Serbian blood, Beverly (Mary Kohnert; Star Trek TNG) is off to Yugoslavia for a school trip to observe a rare ancient pagan ritual. I somehow doubt this class trip idea would fly with school boards nowadays. The students are met in Belgrade by their kind Professor/host (Bo Svenson; Deep Space, Curse II: The Bite) who leads them to a remote village inhabited by time-forgotten sullen folk. You might be getting a folk horror vibe here… but that aspect of the film doesn’t develop as you’d expect.
When it becomes apparent that the villagers are trying to kill the students, they flee the woods and jump onto a moving train to escape. Just one thing… the train might be possessed by the spirit of Beverly’s devil-worshipping father, who has plans for his daughter! Not sure how that spirit-possessed train makes sense, but we’ll just have to go with it. The runaway train makes its own itinerary and occasionally travels off track through countryside and swamp alike.
I expected a hopefully entertaining one-and-done B-movie. But truth be told, this movie is trying a lot harder than I expected. For example, the Serbian-speaking mother brings a lot to the table as a minor character, Vesna the village witch is an over-the-top delight, and the ritual scenes are elaborate.
The opening death scene was much better than I’d expect from some movie I’d never heard of originally. The death smacks of the decapitation in The Omen (1976), and much later Final Destination 2 (2003). Subsequent death scenes are also actually pretty cool: decapitation by train and death by engine furnace! Another major highlight was when a student tears the flesh from her face, spewing blood and gore while revealing the grotesque beneath. There really are a lot of beheadings and head trauma in this feisty little flick. I haven’t even managed to mention all the bloody severed head shenanigans encountered on this ride. A guy even has his lower half completely severed in a gloriously gory display while another is completely impaled through his torso. Gosh, this movie is really entertaining, and it isn’t pulling any punches in the death scene department.
Despite its title, this is the third in a title series that has nothing to do with one another ensuing Beyond the Door (1974) and Schock, aka Beyond the Door II (1977). But director Jeff Kwitny (Iced, Illegal Alien) did well here. Against all odds, I very much enjoyed this movie! The special effects and death scenes are delivered with good pacing and execution, the gore is abundant and very entertaining, and this was just zany enough without being mindlessly fun. Highly recommended for fans of obscure 80s horror.
Movies, Films & Flix 