John Rozum's Blog, page 29

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 1

Today's viewing is of two very different movies involving merpeople. The first one is The Lure (2015) is about two mermaid sisters who come ashore in Poland for adventures among the humans, and who become strippers and back-up singers in a sleazy nightclub. The movie is a visual delight, but often seems all over the place, often to the point of losing sight of what it wants to be. Even through all of the distraction there are two parallel plot threads which hold it all together. The mermaids depicted straddle to line between Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and the more monstrous mermaids of folklore. Silver, tragically, falls in love with the bass player of the band, and goes to horrible lengths to obtain true womanhood from the waist down, while Golden becomes increasingly consumed with hostility as her sister grows apart from her, and she finds it harder and harder to resist her own vampiric urges to feed on the humans who only want to exploit them.

As a horror-musical, The Lure is certainly not for everyone, but it's compelling to watch in its novelty. Marta Mazurek and Michelina Olszanska are riveting as the mermaid sisters, at once vulnerable and threatening, but always sympathetic.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7

Cemeteries and Halloween go hand in hand. When we think of cemeteries, and Halloween decor based on them, we think of something akin to the photo above. In my searches online, I've found a lot of headstones, and tombs that are quite different than that. Quite different. You can see some weird ones right here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Movie 2

In Curtains (1983) a group of young actresses head to a director's mansion to compete for the role of Audra in his next movie. They are killed off one by one by a killer in an old hag mask.

This movie seems to have a following, so I decided to take a look, even though I'm not a fan of the slasher subgenre. That status has not changed. The actresses are all very similar looking, even though each is defined by a single trait; ice skater, dancer, slut, etc. Their deaths are all improbably staged. A doll standing by the roadside that attracts no other motorist other than the intended victim. Another victim running through the woods, leans back against a tree to catch her breath. Guess who not only secretly kept pace with her, but happened to be waiting behind that very tree.

This movie was really dull and disjointed, which makes sense given it's trouble production. Tension between the director and producer over the tone of the film led to the director quitting with only 45 minutes shot. The rest would be filmed a year later. The whole film is just a boring mess. The hag? Not scary in the least.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Movie 1

In the Texas backwoods, a bunch of people keep showing up at rundown hotel that looks like it hasn't seen a guest in ages. The hotel owner is a big guy with some serious issues and a huge crocodile that lives in the swamp abutting the hotel's deck. The purpose of all of these guests stopping by the hotel is to provide fodder for Judd to feed his pet. Oh, and Judd likes to use a full-sized scythe to dispatch his victims first.

Eaten Alive was Tobe Hooper's follow up to his masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Loosely based on a true story, it lacks the raw, cinema vertité feeling that made TCM so successful. It's a mean, ugly movie with a grating soundtrack of near constant screaming and a painful electronic score. It's probably best viewed in an early 1980s 42nd street grind house, or not at all. This was a pretty dismal viewing experience. It may hold some curiosity for appearances by Carolyn Jones, Mel Ferrer, and Robert Englund. Every character in this movie is a disposable role.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6

Above is a cut paper recreation of a Collegeville mask of the Metaluna Mutant from Universal's This Island Earth (1955) that I did as a private commission.

At this link you'll find a Halloween related piece I did just for the fun of it back when I was in college.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5 - Movie

We know all of the elements of the home invasion movie; masked killer(s), isolation from the nearest neighbors, cut power, the arrival of a neighbor and possible salvation, improvised weapons made out of household items. Husband and wife team (Absentia, Oculus)of Writer/Director Mike Flanagan and Writer/Star Kate Siegel know them too and make the effort to use those elements to their advantage in Hush (2016).

The story is pretty simple and straight forward. A deaf writer (Kate Siegel) is living in an isolated house as she struggles with her second novel. One night a masked stranger (John Gallagher, Jr.) arrives and chooses to terrorize her before killing her, using her deafness to his advantage.

Kate Siegel's character is one you can sympathize with, not because of her deafness, but because she is presented as a real person before the assault begins. She's smart and courageous and thinks before acting, making it seem entirely plausible that she's going to turn the tables on her attacker, who comes of as not the smartest, or most effective serial murderer. He comes of as a bit of an amateur, even though the notches on his crossbow tell is this is far from his first outing, and that maybe we are underestimating him. The best aspect of this film is that the outcome is never certain. Right up to the finish, there are no assurances that the writer is going to best her attacker, and it's just as likely that she's going to be one more notch on his crossbow.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5

Halloween would not be Halloween without the headless horseman from Washington Irving's  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow riding through. You can examine my posts about the headless horseman here, here, here, here, here, and here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 4 - Movie

I'd been looking forward to watching Maggie (2015) since I first saw the trailer. I was intrigued with the premise of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing an everyman father caring for his daughter (Abigail Breslin) who has been infected with a slow working zombie virus, and only has a few short weeks before she stops being the human daughter he loves and becomes the monster he must either turn in to a quarantine location to be destroyed, or he must destroy himself.

The intimacy of the scope of this film set against the backdrop of the now overly familiar zombie apocalypse scenario was one of the things that appealed to me, but not a whole lot happens in this film. It could be about any family coping with a member with a fatal illness, only with putrid make-up. The performances are all right on the money, and it was nice seeing Schwarzenegger in a quiet role, where he's conveying most of his inner turmoil through behavior more than words. The movie slowly leads towards one action which the filmmakers chose not to include, thus undermining the strength of everything that came before. There are enough moments in it to make it worth a look, but don't expect too much from it.



 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 4

It's never too early to decorate. If you need a special project to give your home that old haunted house look nothing is more classic than filling it with cobwebs. Here's how to do it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3 - Movie

An island of fishermen, scientists, and alcoholics is menaced by killer crabs. Many of these are big, but really normal sized crabs, but one of them is about the size of a bus, and comes equipped with an impenetrable shell.


Island Claws (1980) is something of a leftover from the 70s range of environmental horror movies such as Squirm (1976), Food of the Gods (1976) Frogs (1972), Empire of the Ants (1977), Day of the Animals (1977) and Prophecy (1979). If you've seen any of those films you know exactly what you can expect from this one. There's a lot of talking about things that don't further the story, local color which has the same impact, drinking, walking around, and scientists working on experiments to increase the size of crabs (for food reasons) although there's nothing to link this work with the crabs attacking people, nor the existence of a giant crab. There's also a leak at a nearby nuclear reactor, which again is not made to be a direct cause on the behavior, nor size of the crabs, so it's all a bit confused. In spite of this, the path of destruction left in the wake of the giant crab is impressively done and adds some real suspense and awe. The giant crab itself, a practical effect, is actually pretty impressive, though maybe not enough to recommend this film.

As a bit of trivia the screenplay was co-written by Ricou Browning who played the gillman during all of the underwater scenes in Creature from the Black Lagoon.