31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Saw

Saw

I've never seen Saw. I avoided it as a representative (if not the progenitor) of the modern wave of so-called 'torture porn' movies. I just had no interest in watching a film that was essentially two guys having to cut their feet off and other people in similar situations being horrifically mangled. (Which was the entirety of the film, as I understood it.)

Now, don't get me wrong. I love a good splatter picture. Romero's zombie films, any given Cronenberg picture, Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Dead Alive, Fulci films, Ricky Oh, the Story of Ricky - you get the gist. But I've never been able to enjoy normal people being, well, tortured. I can watch the head exploding scene in Scanners over and over again, but the dentist drill sequence in Marathon Man makes me squirm every time.

I couldn't look while I tried to post this - did I post it? I did, right? Okay, I'll look... gah!

On the other hand, Saw is kind of a seminal horror film at this point. Also the start of one of the most popular horror franchise series of the current century. That I had never seen it has become more and more of a glaring omission in my horror curriculum vitae. I finally watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre last year after decades of avoiding it - and that turned out to be an amazing film that I wish I'd seen earlier. Could I be misunderstanding the film? Could Saw turn out to be just as much of a classic as TTCM?

The Medium
Streaming on Amazon. I've really been depending on Prime a lot this year, as Netflix doesn't seem to be adding horror movies in October like they use to. Quality was a helluva lot better than some other recent Amazon viewings - not that Saw really needs it.

The Movie
A man, Adam (Leigh Whannell), wakes up in a large, dilapidated bathroom. Freeing himself from a bathtub (he wakes under water) he finds himself chained to large pipes coming out of the wall. Also chained on the opposite side of the room is Lawrence (Cary Elwes), a doctor. In between them is the corpse of a man who has apparently shot himself in the head (a pistol lies near his hand, in addition to a microcassette recorder). They each find tapes in their pockets and, using the recorder, listen to them to discover that someone has imprisoned them and given them instructions. Adam must escape. Lawrence must kill Adam - or his wife and daughter will die.

On the bright side... no, you're right, there is no bright side.

I spent a good chunk of the first 10-15 minutes reflexively wincing at imagined horrors. Waiting for the hammer to drop (or the saw to cut, as it were). Nothing much happens, though - gore wise, that is. Seeing the hacksaws come out was something I expected, and weighted on my mind as the film progressed.

"This is what the hacksaws are for, right?"

"I don't think so..."

Lawrence thinks he knows who has done this to them. A serial killer named Jigsaw, who doesn't directly kill his victims. Instead, he places them in positions where they have to struggle to save themselves. All but one of them has failed his games. And Lawrence was once a suspect.

I like Cary Elwes, but he's really not very good here. He's a bit too broad for the subject matter and the cadence of his speech is a bit off - slipping occasionally into his native English accent. Whannell is a tad better, but doesn't have a huge range. In general the acting is simply passable, with Monica Potter (as Lawrence's wife, Alison), Danny Glover and Michael Emerson being standouts.

"I'm looking for my agent's number. I'm sure it's in here somewhere."

The pacing of the film is uneven. The procedural segments with Glover's Detective Tapp and Ken Leung's Detective Sing are slow and - except for a confrontation with the Jigsaw killer - kill the mood built up by the scenes in the bathroom. There's a scene with the only survivor - a subdued Shawnee Smith - that's really good, however (and that particular contraption is freakishly cool/awful).

"He was the only dentist in my preferred provider list!"

As the movie progresses we learn more about Lawrence and Adam - and their secrets. Flashbacks reveal that neither of them is telling the other the real truth about themselves. Meanwhile, Detective Trapp keeps an eye on Lawrence's house - because he still believes that the good Doctor is actually the killer.

Two days 'til retirement, right?

Things pick up speed quickly as time runs out for Lawrence and Adam, setting in motion several violent confrontations and making sure that a hacksaw is finally used for its intended purpose. I've read a few articles about Saw, but the ending was still a surprise for me (even knowing the actor who plays Jigsaw), so I won't spoil it. It was almost worth it just for that reveal.

Jigsaw is actually a grown up Howdy Doody! Whatta twist!

The movie is pretty well shot and directed, though it feels very claustrophobic - which was probably on purpose. It did make it all feel a bit 'staged' rather than something occurring in the real world. Some of the editing and pacing was problematic and it felt like a first film by a very talented amateur filmmaker. Flashes of brilliance with some technical faults.

Wan and Whannell have gone off to bigger and better things, of course - Wan is actually set to direct an Aquaman film, which should be interesting. They're both still involved in the Saw franchise, which looked to be fading with the release of Saw VI, but had a resurgence with Saw 3D in 2010. Saw VIII is noted on IMDB as 'in production.'

The Bottom Line
To answer my own rhetorical questions: Yes, I was misunderstanding the film - it's a much better and more interesting movie than I gave it credit for. Is it a classic - on par with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Well - no. But it's not bad! I'm not sure I need to see any of the others, though - are there any particularly good installments?

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: 6-5=2

I found myself thinking that I hadn't watched any found footage movies this thread. It seemed like every other movie last year was found-footage (it wasn't). After Kwaidan I was also thinking that I'd seen a few Japanese horror movies, plenty of Italian horror movies, Spanish, British, Korean, Swedish, Australian, French - even a Venezuelan horror movie. I hadn't seen an Indian horror movie, though.

So when Amazon offered up a found footage Indian horror movie it seemed like exactly what I was looking for. Which is how I ended up watching:

6-5=2

Unfortunately, it's not very good. It has all the bad tropes of the found-footage genre without adding much in the way of fresh angles - other than the beautiful landscape. A group of young people - four guys and two girls - head out into the mountainous rural landscape of southern India. One of them is training to be a cinematographer (A DOP, or Director of Photography, as he often says), which explains the camera. Spooky things happen. Some of them die. One makes it back alive and the film is supposedly built around the footage from the camera guy, showing what happened to the rest.

The problems start off right away. For one thing,  the whole movie is dubbed. It's still in Hindi - they just redid everyone's dialogue. That immediately removes the feeling that this is the actual footage. It's also often flat in inflection, which you often get when people are having to redo lines in the studio. The cinematography is also far too good for a found footage film. That's okay at first, but as things get worse and worse the footage should also start being... I dunno, less centered, less in focus, less professional. And it's slow - god it's slow. It takes nearly 45 minutes before anything really interesting happens (a spooky tree hung with skulls and dolls) and another 20-30 before it really starts to get going.

The actors are okay - in the sense that they each have a distinct character that is consistently portrayed - and some of the early scenes are quite funny in a 'young people giving each other a hard time' sort of way. However there's just too much of them goofing off and ragging on each other. They just talk and talk and don't say much. It seems like a third of their dialogue is in English - but it doesn't always match the terrible subtitles. I almost wished I could have turned the subtitles off - I think I could have figured out 90% of what they were saying without it. (And, like I said, it didn't always seem to go with what was being said.)

The actual horror movie bits are a combination of Blair Witch Project noises and weird things in trees added to some Paranormal Activity poltergeist action and actors making weird motions as the camera watches everyone sleep. Very little of it is scary (a moving doll, a suddenly violent character, some distant noises) and it doesn't all fit together. Is it a ghost, a demon, a forest spirit? They could all fit, or none. I'm going with demon - there's a weird claw-print that shows up on someone's back and some possession-related shenanigans.

I went looking for the cast list and found that the version I watched is actually the Bollywood remake. The original film was made even more cheaply made in the Kannada language. I wish I'd actually seen that one, as cheap/raw sometimes enhances the found footage aspect of a film.

I can't really recommend it - though it has a few bright spots in cinematography and sound design.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Kwaidan

Kwaidan (1964)

I love when something I've never heard of just blows me away with how good it is. It's a rare thing, and I can't really think of the last time it's happened to me. Kwaidan is that good, though, that much better than I expected it to be. It's a movie made in 1964 in Japan that is an adaptation of several Japanese folk tales as written by a Greek named Lafcadio Hearns. It should be a mess. Instead, it's one of the most beautiful horror movies I've ever seen.

The production is heavily stage-bound, with only the occasional location shooting. Fine for interior locations, but for exteriors shot on a sound-stage... well, in general I've found this stultifying in other productions - limiting scope and scale and imposing a "packaged" feeling on a film. Somehow the director of Kwaidan, Masaki Kobayashi, transcends these limitations - even uses them to give us fantastic vistas that would be impossible on a location shoot. The sky - illuminated by the northern lights - becomes a vista of eyes, following the action just as we do. A snow-swept forest feels just as cold and dangerous as the real thing - yet also poetic, controlled - a work of art.

I don't know, there's just something about the production. It's like a living painting - but it also feels real, more real than real, if that makes any sense. A woman and her children run through a field and the breeze that whips the grass doesn't seem fake, though the background of the sky does. It has the effect of making everything seem slightly heightened - like you're on a slight high.

There are four stories in this anthology. No real attempt is made at a frame - though the last story seems to extend beyond the borders of its own section. I'll break them out individually:

"The Black Hair"

This is actually my least favorite of the pieces - though only because of the length. The final story benefits from its brevity. It's about an impoverished samurai who selfishly divorces his wife in order to marry a wealth woman and improve his status. His new wife is cold, selfish and cruel (we're informed of that fact by the narrator - though to me it seems like she's simply young and reacting to the emotional distance of her new husband) and he finds himself longing for the simplicity of his old life and the warm, uncomplicated love of his previous wife.

Years later he returns to his old house, finding it in even worse disrepair than when he left. He does find his wife inside and they reconcile. He spends the night - only to find the morning brings a revelation that drives him mad or worse.

There's a great auditory note that occurs throughout this piece - the sound of a loom clacking. It works extremely well with the minimal music and is sometimes creepy and sometimes comforting. The pace of the piece is a little slow for me in this modern era, but I still enjoyed it. It also contains the only moment of genuine horror - albeit brief - in the entire film.

"The Woman of the Snow"

And this is my favorite segment. The plot is fairly straightforward and vaguely familiar. A young man and his master are out gathering wood when a freak winter storm traps them in an old shelter. A supernatural creature - The Woman of the Snow - kills the old man, but spares the young man's life, but makes him promise to keep her secret. Years later he marries a woman with whom he has several children - but when he tells her the story she reveals herself as the same creature.

The visuals in "The Woman of the Snow" just wowed me. They're not quite as grand as those in "Hoichi the Earless," but are somehow even more effective for all that. From the initial storm - which manages to feel both real and staged - through fall days and even warm scenes within the young man's hut, the lighting, staging and direction is just fantastic. There's a sequence in which the young man turns his head as he realizes who he is speaking to, and the lighting goes from warm oranges and reds to cool blues over the course of the pan - it's a simple effect, but it's so good. I'll end up picking this up on blue ray just to see this segment in high def.

"Hoichi the Earless"

This segment is about a blind musician, Hoichi, whose is especially proficient at performing The Tale of the Heike - a story/poem/song about a final battle between two clans. One night a samurai arrives to take him to a nearby pavilion where he is to perform this tale for an august personage. Every night he leaves the monastery where he lives and his friends and the priest grow concerned. Eventually it becomes clear that he is performing for the ghosts of those who died in that battle. To save his soul the priest and his acolyte write holy words over his entire body and instruct him to ignore the ghosts when they return. However, the two holy men have neglected a certain part of poor Hoichi's body...

This segment has some beautiful scenes, great artwork, and epic battle sequences. It's the most impressive of the film, though I still enjoy the simple emotionality of "The Woman of the Snow" more. The sets alone are worth the viewing, though. And I, for the first time, gained an appreciation for the Japanese lute - the biwa. Something I've always thought as atonal noise before. It also has some striking visuals in the final few minutes - particularly the image of Hoishi covered head to toe in calligraphy.

"In a Cup of Tea"

The weakest of the segments, "In a Cup of Tea" is at least very short. An unfinished story about a samurai who sees a man in a cup of water, the film offers a potential reason for the story's unfinished state. It involves a cup of tea...

The Bottom Line

While short on genuine horror, Kwaidan is an epic in the visual department. The skill and artistry of the people involved cannot be overstated. It's a bit stiff and formal, but that befits both the time period and the culture. I loved it.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Motel Hell

Motel Hell

When I was growing up in Northern Maine we had a local drive-in. I only remember going a few times (with my parents) and I don't really recall the movies (I do recall the snacks - Mike & Ike's, Junior Mints and a candy that was basically caramel balls covered in chocolate - that used to have dinosaurs on the package). Though it used to run all kinds of movies it, at some point, began showing more standard drive-in fare - that is, horror movies and exploitation flicks. It went under not long after that, though the enormous poles supporting the screens were still visible for a decade or more afterwards.

Unfortunately for me it went under before I was old enough to be able to go and SEE any of these movies. So no Tourist Trap, or The Toolbox Murders or Maniac! I was old enough to want to go see these films, however, and was roughly aware of what was playing. One of the last films that the old drive-in ran was Kevin Connor's Motel Hell. I desperately wanted to see this movie for some reason - probably the issue of Fangoria with Rory Calhoun on the cover in, dressed in a pig's head and carrying a chainsaw. It just seemed over-the-top insane. I even concocted a plan with my friend John - he of the Fangoria magazine subscription - to try and climb some trees in the woods near the drive-in and watch it through binoculars.

Ah, Fangoria. "I swear I don't know how that magazine got there, Mom!"

Our plan remained - as most of our plans did - nothing but late-night hot air. The movie went away and eventually the drive-in did too. Somehow, in the intervening time, I have never gotten around to watching Motel Hell. It's now available on Amazon Prime and - despite feeling like I've had preponderance of 80's horror films this year - I figured it was time to finally watch it.

The Medium
The  streaming quality of Motel Hell on Amazon is not great. I've seen worse, but it was no better than watching it on a (non-HD) tv broadcast. There's a blu-ray release that I'm now seriously thinking about picking up - Scream Factory again. Not necessarily for picture quality, but if there's a commentary track I'd like to hear it.

The Movie

So. This movie is a comedy. I had no idea. I mean, I should have, but I just never paid much attention to it after missing it in my youth. I must admit to needing a few minutes to adjust - I expected a movie with a garden of heads and a pig-headed guy with a chainsaw to be more serious. Which I can't believe I just wrote.

Anyway.

Farmer Vincent and his sister Ida run a motel (the Motel Hello - though the 'o' flickers a bit). They've also got a meat smoking business, which is pretty popular. It even has its own tagline - "it takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters!" Now, I don't want to startle anyone, but Farmer Vincent's smoked meats may contain some roadkill. The kind that actually drives on the road.

"They're also manufactured in a facility that uses peanuts."

There's no real mystery here - by the time an over-inquisitive health inspector uncovers the truth of Vincent's 'secret garden' we're pretty clear that Vincent and Ida are using human flesh as their secret ingredient. Those sack-covered things, moving and making gurgling noises? Those are people that Vincent has ambushed on the road, buried up to their necks, cut their vocal cords, and is fattening up before slaughter. No, the real meat of the movie (sorry again) is the interaction of the characters and the bizarre and surreal beliefs and actions of the guests (and Vincent and Ida).

"Well, Ida, we're finally get ahead - get it, ahead? A head? I'll get my coat."

Motel Hell takes a little while to get going - the early scenes revolve around Vincent 'rescuing' a young woman named Terry from a motorcycle accident (that he caused). Unaware of Vincent's actions and with nowhere to go, she slowly warms to Vincent's homespun demeanor and kindness. Ida is not so welcoming to the interloper and their younger brother, Bruce - the local sheriff - develops a crush on Terry as well.

Obligatory slasher flick picnic scene. They all have one, right?

Around this small-town soap opera are sprinkled some genuinely weird moments. A couple shows up having found the Motel Hello in a magazine for swingers - and allow Ida and Vincent to tie them up and gas them, believing them to be fellow swingers. There's a punk band - including John Ratzenberger - that flip their van and end up being hypnotized by bizarre equipment (Vincent's 'humane' way of killing his 'dumb animals'). There are cardboard cows, Terry's former lover, Bo, and Wolfman Jack as a local preacher (his presence on the TV as the swingers get 'warmed up' is priceless).

They're so excited! And they just can't hide it!

Things just continue to get more and more unreal. After Terry is nearly drowned (by Ida) and saved by Vincent she tries to get Vincent to sleep with her. He refuses - they should be married first! Terry agrees and this drives Bruce a little crazy. He finally does some digging and figures out exactly why Farmer Vincent's meats are so darned good. He rushes to tell Terry at the same time that the 'secret garden' is experiencing a breakout. Ida finds herself overwhelmed by the 'animals' and Vincent duels Bruce over Terry - with chainsaws, of course!

When I added this picture my mind added 'vvvvvvvrrrr' lightsaver sounds. Because it hates me.

The thing about Motel Hell is how darn nice Ida and, in particular, Vincent are. They really believe they're doing good things - and it's the 'animals' that are, well, animals. All deviants and social misfits - bikers and punk rockers and swingers and... well, I guess that one girl got the clap from a ski instructor. Anyway, the joke is that of course the things that Vincent and Ida are doing - fattening up people and using them in smoked meats - is a billion times worse and more deviant than anything their victims do! They just SEEM nice and normal - and honestly it's enough to trick us into rooting for them, at least a little bit. (Especially as Bruce - the nominal hero of the film - is kind of a dick.)

Rory Calhoun is fantastic as Vincent and more than redeems himself for Night of the Lepus. He just seems to be having a good time with the role. His final line is a howler - seems Vincent's been a hypocrite this entire time... he used... preservatives!

And punk band members - that's a controlled substance right there.

The Bottom Line
Not the movie I expected - but the movie I deserved! Motel Hell was way more fun than I thought it would be. Low budget, yes, but with a lot of black humor, gore, and bizarre characters that lift it above similar films.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

This may have been the first Halloween movie I ever saw. Probably on HBO in the 80's. I remember enjoying it a lot - especially the scene with the kid in the pumpkin mask. It added the requisite amount of 'ick' in a relatively bloodless film. The androids also reminded me of Maskatron - a villain from the Six Million Dollar Man series, always a plus.

In the years since first watching the movie I, unfortunately, bought into the prevailing opinion that Halloween III was something of a misstep, a mistake on the part of Carpenter and Hill. Season of the Witch, this line of thought goes, is simply a mid-tier horror film unfortunately slipped into the middle of a classic slasher series. Something that would have disappeared with nary a ripple in the cinematic landscape had the Halloween name not been attached.

But I still, secretly, in my heart of hearts, sort-of liked the film. I liked the masks, I liked the creepy town, I liked the androids. I even liked the title sequence, with its digital play on the previous installments use of a jack o' lantern. I hid that from my fellow horror fans, however - like I hid enjoying The Fixx from my heavy metal friends.

The Medium

It's been a long time since I last saw the movie, but I've been thinking about re-watching it for 31 Days since 2012 (when I watched Halloween II for the first time). I'd been hoping it would show up on Netflix first, as I didn't really want to shell out money for what I'd come to think of as a crappy movie with some good bits. A recent discussion about it got me to finally make the decision to buy a copy - and my local Bullmoose had a used copy of the Fear Factory blu-ray.

It's probably not necessary to buy Halloween III on blu-ray, to be honest. The picture is good, but it's not a showpiece of cinematography and a DVD should hold you fine.

There are some nice shots, though.

The Movie

I really like the opening sequence. I've got an interest in the use of mundane locations for horror, so the underpass, the junkyard, the gas station - public places that we all pass by or interact with every day - being presented in a horror context was right up my alley. (Alleys are creepy regardless of time of day.)   Older guy on the run from mysterious pursuers, cornered in a junkyard where he manages to pin one of the men - all of them in business suits - between two cars. He flees to a gas station where he collapses, muttering "they're going to kill us all."

Oh yeah, that's the stuff! Nicely ominous opening, followed up by a hospital sequence that is also pretty horrific. One of the pursuers finds the old man, now in a hospital room, still clutching a Halloween jack o' lantern mask. And then proceeds to kill him by putting a thumb and forefinger into the old man's eyes and pulling his skull apart. Though not particularly gory it's genuinely disturbing to watch. The murderer is pursued into the parking lot by the doctor on staff, Dan Challis (Tom Atkins), but douses himself in gasoline and sets himself on fire while in his car. Which explodes. Because every car in every movie is extremely flammable and full of explosives.

Pretty much everything is flammable and full of explosives.

The rest of the film concerns Dr. Dan and the old man's daughter, Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) trying to find out what happened. This leads them to the small town of Santa Mira, California. (You may recognize the name as that of the town in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) The elder Grimbridge ran a toy and novelty shop, and had driven to Santa Mira to pick up an order of Halloween masks from the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory.

Except for Ellie and Dr. Dan hooking up (I didn't buy it in The Fog either, Atkins), I love everything about the parts of the film that take place in Santa Mira. The way townspeople stare out of shop windows at outsiders driving by. The mysterious men in business suits who are so disturbingly similar. The whispered warnings of the town drunk (shades of The Shadow Over Innsmouth). The fact that Jamie Lee Curtis is the voice on every telephone. The 'misfire' when one of the masks turns a woman's head into insect-laden mush.

"No, she's not my daughter. Not my granddaughter either, geez!"

Ellie and Dan manage to finagle their way into a tour of the factory and meet the mysterious owner, Conal Cochran. The tour studiously avoids the 'Final Processing' area of the factory, however. And then Ellies sees her father's car in a storage area - despite being assured that he had shown up, picked up his order, and left. She's blocked from seeing further by more of those business suited guys and she and Dan decide to try and bring in the authorities. Of course it's already too late for that, and by the time Dan realizes that all the phones are out of order Ellie has been taken to the factory.

The movie, which has done a great job of building mood and tension up to this point, falls down a bit at the inevitable 'and now I reveal to you my cunning plan' part of things. Dan is captured and Cochran explains his intent to use the masks - incorporating a piece of Stonehenge in every tag - to... well, firstly to turn children's heads into a mass of snakes and insects, which is demonstrated for Dan in a scene that still grosses out, despite not being quite as nasty as my memory of it. After that... well, not sure, really. Lots of dead kids and some dead parents later they'll have, what, exactly? I think it's supposed to be some kind of sacrifice, to pay homage to the old gods of Samhain. It's not clear though, and because of that the film loses some of its oomph.

"Watch out, it's got a laser lasso!"

I've heard that the original story (by Nigel Kneale, of the Quatermass films, The Stone Tape and lots of other good stuff)  had Cochran be revealed as a 900 year old demon, using the mass deaths to open a gateway between the old gods and the world they once ruled. Which would have been awesome.

"No, no larger story. I'm just looney-tunes."

The battle with Cochran and his defeat is also confusing - I think Dan activates a bunch of the chips somehow, causing a short circuit between the Stonehenge fragment and the computers. The fight with Ellie-ganger seems extraneous and tacked on and once again slows down the pace. The final scene, with Dr. Dan screaming into the phone for some network guy to shut down the television show that will activate all the masks is pretty good though, and is especially fun when watching at home, because the actual final shot is of him screaming at YOU to turn it off, please God just TURN IT OFF!! As if you're responsible for what happens next!

Snakes and bugs, that's what happens next.

Bottom Line
I think this movie would have done alright if it had been allowed to stand on its own. I know Carpenter and Hill had hoped to widen the franchise with this, but they miscalculated the popularity of Michael Myers. Maybe in some alternate universe Season of the Witch succeeded and instead of a series of slasher films of variable quality there's a series of Halloween themed films... of variable quality.

I'm glad I bought this, as I think it's a really good film, much better than I remembered. If you approach it as its own creature rather than a part of the Halloween series then there's a lot to like.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: The Screaming Skull

The Screaming Skull

You know, I thought this movie was based on the F. Marion Crawford short story. That story creeped the hell out of me when I was a kid. I think I read it in one of the Alfred Hitchcock  short story collections. It's in public domain now and you can read it on Project Gutenberg. (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605421.txt)  Instead, it's a low-budget film that seems to take most of its inspiration from Rebecca, the Alfred Hitchock movie.

Eric and Jennie, newly married, move in to Eric's old estate, where his previous wife, Marion, died. They meet the local pastor and his wife and the caretaker, a mentally limited man named Mickey. Mickey was enamored with Marion, and seems to resent Jennie's presence.

At night Jennie hears screaming, but Eric insists it's only the peacocks that roam the estate. Jennie has had mental issues in the past, and is concerned that they might be re-occurring. Eric comforts her. The next night, while Eric is on town on business, Jennie hears the screaming again and finds a skull. She becomes convinced the either she's going mad - or Marian is haunting her.

"This is the worst Easter Egg hunt I've ever seen."

The plot is one we've seen a million times - husband tries to drive rich wife crazy or to suicide so he can gain control over her wealth. It's handled well enough, for the time and budget. The actor who plays the husband (John Hudson) really acts like a concerned husband for much of the film. If the synopsis of the film didn't immediately give it away I wouldn't have necessarily suspected him of anything. I like the twist that the supernatural elements turn out to be real, where the reverse was often true in films like this (The House on Haunted Hill for instance).

There's a great little bit at the beginning of the film where a narrator lets you know that your funeral bill is paid for if you die of fright during the movie.

Not a great film, but effective given its limitations.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Underwater Creature Triple Feature

Underwater Creature Triple Feature: Deepstar Six, The Rift (1990), Leviathan (1989)

It was Creature Feature weekend! Ever since the first 31 Days thread I've been setting aside one weekend for this (that was Frogs and the original Piranha). It's usually been 'nature gone wild' related, which is primarily a 70's thing. I was even able to do sub-themes the last couple of years (Empire of the Ants/Kingdom of the Spiders and Day of the Animals/Night of the Lepus). This year I was fairly certain I was going to watch William Girdler's Grizzly - one of the first of many Jaws ripoffs from the 70's, but couldn't decide on a companion film. I'd already watched Prophecy (the skinless bear one, not the Christopher Walken one), so no 'inside-out' subtheme. The Swarm, maybe? Orca?

In the end it was that last film that gave me some direction. Recommended films related to Orca gave me Deepstar Six, which made me remember that 1989/90 was a bumper year for underwater monster movies. For my purposes The Abyss doesn't count - I think of it as more a straight sci-fi film - but there are plenty of other options. Beyond Deepstar Six I had Leviathan, of course. Lords of the Deep was also a possibility, but I'd seen that already and knew it was terrible. There was another flick I'd missed - The Rift (which was released in the US as Endless Descent), and when I saw it was available for streaming on Amazon Prime that became the third film.

Without knowing the quality of The Rift I decided to place it in the middle of the Triple Feature, which turned out to be something of a mistake, but ah well. First up was:

Deepstar Six
I've always been somewhat unkind to Deepstar Six and it really deserves better. Of the three underwater films that had a US theatrical release in 1989 it was probably the lowest profile - it's certainly the cheapest. It was, however, the first in release - not that it helped the box office much.

This is a Sean S Cunningham film - the man who created the Friday the 13th franchise - and while that means a shoestring budget it also generally means competent filmmaking and something sorely missing from the other films I watched this weekend: a sense of fun. It's a B movie, and it knows it.

Like every other underwater thriller/horror movie that came out in 1989 Deepstar Six sports a diverse crew of scientists and blue collar misfits. Ostensibly a military operation (one of Deepstar's missions is to set up a missile platform on the ocean floor), there's really only a nod or two to that premise. Essentially, one guy wears dog tags - that guy is played by Miguel Ferrer, so you know he's also a douchebag. I didn't really recognize anyone else except the Russian guy who was in everything in the 80's and 90's when they needed a Russian guy. And Nia Peeples. Who I always thought was related to Mario Van Peebles because I got the p and the b confused.

"Stop pointing out that I always play douchebags!"

Man I'm random today.

SO! Disparate crew, military support, two days until retirement... er, 'till they can go topside, and of course the Russian guy finds a huge cavern under the location where the nuclear missiles are supposed to go. (A US military project involving nuclear missiles that's run by a British guy with a Russian guy on staff - the monster is not the most difficult part of this movie to believe, actually.) They decide (well, the British guy decides) to collapse the cavern with explosives so they don't get behind and shut down. This doesn't sit well with the geologist (Peeples), but she's overruled. Should have listened to Nia Peeples, gentlemen - she knows 'you're nothin' but trouble.'

Okay, trying to jam lyrics from "Trouble" into this review was a bad idea.

The explosion releases a large monster that first destroys a submersible, then severely damages the remote research station, leading to the Russian guy getting killed. During the rescue mission the captain is also killed. When the crew decides to shut things down and bug out the designated screw up (Ferrer) manages to detonate the missiles, causing massive damage and setting in motion even worse things.

Which is when the monster shows up and bites a guy in half.

Looking back after watching all three movies I can say that the Deepstar Six monster is my favorite of the bunch. It's a little stiff, yeah, but it's an armored arthropod (and looks like one), so I buy it. It's a much better level of special effects than in The Rift and is just a better design than the deep-sea fish inspired monstrosity of Leviathan.

I think this guy is just someone they fed to the monster in between takes.

There's more monster, bad decisions, sudden-but-inevitable betrayals, explosive decompressions, poor weapon handling and water. Lots of water. The ending is no surprise, but it's still exciting and satisfying in a cheeseburger and fries sort of way.

Deepstar Six is way more fun than I remember it being. It does the best it can with its limited budget, has a great monster, some bad guys to root against and good guys to root for. If the model sets are a bit cheesy, the blood a little too bright, and nobody wears a bra, well that's just to be expected in a B movie.

The Rift (1990)
The Rift is way too serious for such a crappy, low-budget affair. In some ways it's more a thriller than a horror movie, but there are monsters involved so I'll let it slide. Plus

The Rift is the story of a scientist and his hair, assigned to the high-tech submarine (The Siren II) he designed to help track down what happened to the other high-tech submarine he designed (the Siren I, natch). All the corporate guys he meets seem to be made of plastic. At least the sub is full of real people - jerks, mostly, but real people. Including recognizable actors! Holy crap, that's R. Lee Ermey with black hair. And Ray Wise!

Anyway, the Siren II finally finds the signal from the black box of the missing sub. It's deep within a rift and the Siren II starts to descend to unreasonable depths. It's okay, though - there's not even a hint of scientific accuracy in this move. People move in and out of the submarine and into air-filled caverns or the water with nary a nod to pressure. It all might as well be taking place in the shallows. I think they do mention the depth a couple of times, but don't worry - that brief moment of concern will pass.

And the hair will take care of everything.

If Deepstar Six is a B movie, then The Rift is several letters further down in the alphabet. It could almost pass for an exploitation movie, except there are some decent actors (with some terrible lines they have to say) and some monster effects that are better than expected. It takes a long time for the monsters to show up, but when they do there's a wide variety of them. There's a creeping seaweed, some bug-like creepy-crawlies, fanged fish, mutated humans and a huge monstrosity that like a poor man's vision of Nyarlathotep.

It's like a sea amenom... anemo... amen... it's like Lovecraftian or something.

The Rift rips off a lot of movies - The Thing, The Abyss, Alien, Aliens, Terminator - hell, they even seem to rip off "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" from Creepshow. I can't say that do it with panache, but they're pretty shameless about it, so there's a refreshing sort of honesty. It feels like a movie made by people who really love monster movies, military thrillers and corporate espionage flicks and decided to make a mashup of all of them - without really learning how to make them fit.

This is a terrible movie, but I can't say I didn't have a good time. There's a sense that these folks did their best with more enthusiasm than talent - but at least it didn't come off as dry and lifeless as The Rig, for instance. It also gains points for being the only film in the bunch to avoid the 'stinger' ending.

Just as an aside, the guy who directed this film also made Slugs, which I reviewed last year. This was at least a much better film than that one.

Leviathan
Leviathan is a bit of a lost movie. It doesn't have the budget or script or actors or director that The Abyss had. Neither does it have the gleefull fun a monster movie should embrace if/when those other elements are unavailable (like Deepstar Six). Don't get me wrong, I like Leviathan - I actually like it a lot - but it wants to punch at a much heavier weight and fails. And I liked the movies that it's emulating a lot more.

It's hard to spoil much about Leviathan because you've seen it all before. It mines the same depths (sorry) as The Rift - mostly The Thing and Aliens. The monster is even designed by Stan Winston, who did the creature designs for Aliens (amongst many other things). There's the rough and ready crew who don't trust their greenhorn captain (Aliens), the creature that infects you, then makes you part of it (The Thing), the 'arming up' to defend a small area against the creature (Aliens again), the abandoned foreign location where something awful happened and from which the monster is brought (The Thing - though it's a Russian freighter, not a Norwegian base). You get the idea. The monster even goes for the blood supply, just like in The Thing.

"Wasn't there a scene like this in The Thing?" "You shut your mouth boy, you want to get sued?"

These sorts of things should annoy me, but for some reason I simply find them familiar and almost comforting while watching Leviathan. Unlike The Rift these elements are handled well and they work together rather than being jammed in because it's 'cool.' And the actors are all professional and (mostly) not painful to watch. Hector Elizondo, Ernie Hudson, Amanda Pays, Richard Crenna, Peter Weller - you get the feeling like the producers on this film thought they were making a bigger, better film than what they ended up with, because those are all fine, professional actors. Hell, even Daniel Stern did a good job - and was substantially less annoying than Miguel Ferrsr in the same sort of role in Deepstar Six.

Still annoying, though.

It's a decent monster movie and has mined the best bits from the movies it steals from. It's biggest drawback is that the monster is a bit of a letdown. It's got a sort of deep-sea fish look to it, but it's also lumpy and shapeless. It has parts where the faces of crew that have been absorbed are peering out of the mass, asking to be killed - but this has been done better before and since. I will say the line uttered by Weller as he finally dispatches the monster elicits more laughs than cheers - though it's still a good moment.

"We were in like 8 feet of water this whole time?"

Bottom Line
There's a likable cheesiness to Deepstar Six that makes me think I might need to own it now. The Rift is best avoided - though it could be good fun in the right company. Leviathan still holds the top spot in my estimation - at least out of these three. Though how weird is it that Leviathan has a blu ray release and The Abyss does not?

1989 was the first time I realized that ideas and plots got passed around and that smaller studios would rush films into production to capitalize on the release of a bigger budget film in the same genre. I knew that copycat films got made, of course - Jaws and its 'admirers' had provided a really good example of that. Star Wars as well. This was the first time I'd really paid attention to films that came out roughly at the same time, though. Sometimes it was opportunity, sometimes it was just cultural zeitgeist. It's one of those mornings where I can't retrieve mental information, but I know there have been several examples in the last 20 years or so where this same sort of theme-related years has happened. (People with working brains have pointed out Dante's Peak/Volcano, Deep Impact/Armageddon among others.)