Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Terror Toons

     This is a totally screwed-up film... on many levels. Wow, where does one start? First of all this movie looks like it was filmed with a home camcorder, the characters are beyond unreallistic and completely unbelievable, the concept is really weird, and the acting is some of the worst ever caught on celluloid.  And yet, you get the feeling that all of it, even the bad stuff, is all on purpose.  

     Anyway, the story is about how Satan discovers the amazing qualities of a popular modern item (well, not anymore) we all know as a DVD. He creates a monstrous cartoon character (mostly played by a guy in a costume) called Dr. Carnage and his sidekick, a ravenous monkey named Max Assassin, and places them on DVDs and drops one in everyone's mailbox (I guess since AOL did that, he thought he could too). 

      Some weird chick with breasts big enough to be classified as weapons of mass destruction, who also looks 35 years old but acts like a 6-year-old, finds one in her mailbox and decides to play it out of childish boredom. 

      Meanwhile, her parents (consisting of an obvious man in drag with a voice like John Wayne) are going out of town for the weekend and put her older sister in charge. Somehow as if planned, the "older" sister looks much much younger than the "younger" sister. 

    Anyway, the older sister invites some friends over, some boys who bring liquor, what have you, and throws a party. Little sister with boobs so big they have different zip codes, is watching what looks like a stupid cartoon about a mad doctor and his rabid pet monkey. Suddenly, Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin leap from the TV and extract very cartoonish (and strikingly gruesome) ways of killing everyone. All the cartoon cliches are used... safe dropped on the head, being sawed in half, spine ripped out, TNT explosives, etc. Live-action is mixed with cheap cartoon overlay and computer effects, some of which are truly hilarious and deserve really good drugs. 

      As expected this movie is extremely colorful, being about cartoons and all, but this is as gory as can be expected when a safe falls on your head. In a real cartoon, their head came out flat, they blew on their thumbs and everything pops out into place. But here, when a safe falls on you, you're squashed beyond recognition, your guts are coming out and brain matter is staining the wall. All through the night, everyone gets it in a different way. 

      Monday when "Mom" and Dad return, they find the house a mess and body parts everywhere. The drag queen mom goes into a totally hilarious spastic fit that was so side-splittingly funny that it was almost worth sitting through this entire cheap piece of crap for an hour and a half! And, I seriously stretch the word "almost".  As bizarre as it was, I can't say that I didn't enjoy it.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

The Short Films of David Lynch

     David Lynch was married to a girl named Peggy at the time, who was an exceptional painter and he used her talents to make most of these short films. There are about 8-10 total, and most can be found on Youtube, but there was a DVD release that contained all of them.  These short films were the precursor to David Lynch's first full-length feature film Eraserhead.  We'll discuss a few of them here.

     The Alphabet:  Lynch got the inspiration for this film one night when Peggy's niece woke up from a nightmare where she was frantically repeating the alphabet. Filmed half live action and half animated, letters appear (a capital A even gives birth to a bunch of little lowercase a's). A girl (played by Peggy Lynch) writhes around in bloody sheets, reciting the alphabet, blood-red flows from her mouth and eyes in an otherwise completely monochromatic atmosphere. The soundtrack is mainly a male opera singer and wind sounds. Approximately 4 minutes long. Very gothic, very nightmarish. After completing "The Alphabet", David Lynch had been "bitten by the movie-making bug" and immediately started putting together another project titled "The Grandmother". 

     The Grandmother:  The script is very dense and very short, a trait that we soon learned came with most of David Lynch's movie scripts. Lynch was already in the process of making Eraserhead (almost a hobby, taking over five years to complete) for over a year at the time and the money had run out. So Lynch applied for a grant from the American Film Institute, not at all expecting to get it. The scripts for both movies were submitted and surprisingly, he got the grant which was eventually used for the shorter of the two films (Eraserhead was over 90 minutes and The Grandmother was only 23 minutes). The Grandmother was finished in 1970 and quickly gained notoriety and very much displayed what was to be known as David Lynch's gothic personal style. It begins with some stop-motion animation using photo cutouts. A man, woman, and child are "born" from the earth, and the man attacks the child, which is the opening to the film's theme in live-action. The story is told through imagery and has maybe a total of six words said throughout the entire film. Basically, a young boy that has very neglectful and abusive parents yearns for love and affection. After getting his ass whipped for peeing in his bed, the young boy pours dirt on his bed and plants a seed of some kind. He "waters" it daily and grows a disgusting-looking plant that "gives birth" to an old lady. She turns out to be a grandmother figure to the child. All is well, apparently, the grandmother has no problem with the kid wetting his bed (we see it colored yellow against a mostly monochromatic background). One day the grandmother starts to "malfunction" and goes flipping out all around the room. The kid goes to his parents for help but is met with abuse. The grandmother disappears. Next, we see the kid strolling through a cemetery and he runs into the grandmother there, they both scream, and the kid goes home... The End. What does it all mean? I don't even think David Lynch knows for sure. 

      The Amputee: Filmed in 1973, The Amputee exists in two takes on two different types of film. The American Film Institute was looking into buying a large quantity of a particular kind of film tape and since there were two major brands being made at the time, both were tested using the exact same scene to see which looked better. Lynch asked if he could film whatever he wanted and was given permission to do so as long as both scenes were exactly the same. With the freedom to do what he wanted, he scripted a scene where a male nurse (played by Lynch) is cleaning and dressing the wounds of a woman who has recently had both of her legs amputated. The woman (played by Catherine Coulson which we all grew to love as "The Log Lady" from Twin Peaks) is busy writing a letter or novel of some kind and pays absolutely no attention to the nurse who is about to puke because oozy crap is flowing out of her wounds. The first take had better quality, but the second take is much funnier. Much more ooz than in the first one and the actress is clearly on the verge of laughing. Catherine Coulson plays the amputee and was married to Jack Nance at the time. We know Jack Nance mostly from his portrayal of Henry in Eraserhead. They were reunited several years later when both had major roles in the hit series Twin Peaks.  Coulson played the Log Lady and Nance played the part of Pete Martell. 

      The Cowboy and the Frenchman: After Blue Velvet was released, David Lynch took a vacation in Paris. While there, he was approached by an associate about a TV series about how Americans see the French. David originally declined because he didn't feel that it was something that could be done in what was becoming an ever-evolving personal film style of his, which was very artful, abstract, and gothic (everything this film wasn't supposed to be). Six different directors were chosen to make a short film that could possibly end up being the pilot of a new TV series. David Lynch went home and did some thinking about the offer and thought that maybe he could make a film with this theme. He should have stuck with his gut instinct because this film really sucks and is my least favorite of the entire collection. Basically, the story goes as such... Four ranch hands are sitting around chewin' "Tabaccee" and out of nowhere, a Frenchman comes staggering out of the forest carrying a suitcase with all the French essentials, such as wine, cheese, snails, perfume, etc. Eventually, the group is joined by three women, who only dance around and have no apparent purpose for being there. Also, a choir of three other women breaks in every now and then to sing only one verse and then back to the "story". When David Lynch presented his version of the pilot, he was greeted with the insult "Great, two cliches for the price of one". Needless to say, his version wasn't chosen. Can't say that I blame them, it really was bad and had a theme that I don't think Lynch could lower himself enough to even attempt to turn this kind of crap into a full TV series. I think he felt a need for a more artful kind of work and a little more freedom when it came to his artistic integrity. But hey, it was worth a try. 

      Lumiere: In the late '90s, Lumiere Brothers Incorporated., a large producer of TV and movie cameras, was doing an experiment with an antique camera. The camera was made of wood and had a crank. This camera was passed around to a few different directors. Each individual director was to produce 55 seconds of footage with the camera. Also, there were some restrictions enforced: you could have no more than three takes, and once you got the crank turning, it couldn't be stopped until the film was over. In the short 55 seconds that David Lynch had, we see quick flashes of events such as... cops finding a dead body on the lawn, people crying, etc.

      Six Figures Getting Sick Six Times:  This is basically just a cut-and-paste sort of animation style where the background of six different faces remains motionless while different styles of vomit appear to come from each face.  This happens six times with only the sound of a siren playing in the background.  Out of all of them, this one is the simplest and for some reason is my favorite, probably because it's the most artistic overall.

     There are several other short films on the DVD release, some are good, some are bad, most make no sense at all, some are just miscellaneous attempts to create other projects that never made it off the ground, etc.  Even though it was an expensive collection to buy on DVD, the price wasn't worth it and many people regretted purchasing it.  It's really only for the hardcore David Lynch collectors out there who must have everything that he ever made, even when he was young and didn't have much of a clue as to what he was doing.  Some of the short films do give you a good glimpse into what David Lynch was to become when he finally became a well-known filmmaker.
 

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

     Even though this movie is rather popular and competes with The Exorcist for the coveted title of the scariest movie ever made, it is still a cult classic. It was shot on a shoestring budget and under deplorable conditions. This was Tobe Hooper's first attempt at filmmaking and does a rather good job all things considered. Through this film, he became more and more popular and eventually began to get work on much bigger and better projects, eventually making Poltergeist which became one of Hollywood's greatest successes. 

      The story goes as such... A series of graves in a local cemetery has been robbed and parts of corpses have been used to create gruesome sculptures. A group of friends, including Sally and her younger wheelchair-bound brother Franklin, learn of the grave robbing and decide to take a road trip to the cemetery to see if their grandfather's grave has been one of the graves that were violated. Fortunately, it was not, but while in town (hardly a town, it's in the middle of nowhere and has maybe three houses and a population of ten) they decide to check out their grandfather's old abandoned house nearby, which is decrepit and hasn't been lived in for decades. 

      Before reaching the house, they pick up the hitchhiker from hell. Some weird greasy guy with a birthmark the size of Rhode Island on his face (probably the result of several generations of inbreeding). He babbles about working at the slaughterhouse and making "head cheese". He then takes a picture of Franklin, burns it, and still manages to take a slice of Franklin's arm with a razor before being kicked out of the van. 

      The group stops by a gas station along the way because the van's gas tank is almost empty. The station is unfortunately out of gas, but at least they have some righteous BBQ. While visiting Gramps's old house they notice strange things, like bird bones hanging from strings (very Blair Witch). Kirk and Pam (part of the group and friends of Sally and Franklin, there's also Jerry who is Sally's boyfriend) go down to a nearby watering hole only to find it dried out (much like everything else in Texas during the summer). They hear a generator and follow the sound to a large house close to Gramp's old place. Kirk knocks but gets no answer. He enters the house and gets bashed in the head by a giant man wearing a skinned human face as a mask. When Kirk doesn't return Pam goes looking for him. She enters the house, then trips over something, and lands in a disgusting room full of bones and feathers. Human skulls and rotting animals hang from strings. Human bones have been used to decorate everything from walls to furniture. Halfway into total shock, Pam pukes and tries to run, but she too gets caught by the huge man with the leather face (even though this character's name is never revealed, he ultimately became known simply as Leatherface). Pam is dragged off and hung on a meat hook, she then has the pleasure of watching Leatherface turn her boyfriend into hamburger meat with a chainsaw. 

      When Kirk and Pam don't return Sally's boyfriend Jerry goes looking for them. He also comes across the neighboring house with the intention of asking if anyone had seen his friends around. When Jerry looks around the house he finds Pam's body in a freezer and is then greeted with a tremendous blow to the head, again inflicted by Leatherface. 

      When dusk arrives and no one is anywhere to be found, Sally and Franklin go looking for them. Out of the woods jumps Leatherface again. This time it's Franklin that gets it (by the way, despite the movie's title, this is the only killing actually performed with a chainsaw. Kirk was dismembered with a chainsaw, but was actually killed by a blow to the head). Sally (a damn good screamer!) runs back to the gas station with Leatherface closing in on her and hysterically lands in the arms of the gas station manager (a creepy little BBQ cook) who explains that he has no phone and goes outside to have a look at what Sally could be so terrified about. 

      Meanwhile, inside the station, Sally sees his BBQ turning over a fire. The meat looks suspiciously like human body parts, arms, and legs mostly. The manager returns with a broom and beats the hell out of Sally before tying her up and dragging her back to the house where he lives with Leatherface and the weirder-than-weird hitchhiker. 

      Upon arriving home, the cook picks up the hitchhiker along the road and bitches at him to stay away from that damn graveyard (evidently it was the hitchhiker that was making the cemetery sculptures). Poor Sally, who has long since passed out from fright, now awakens into a living nightmare. She comes to, tied to a chair, surrounded by the most disgusting dining room ever conceived. There are lamps made of human bones and skins. Rotting meat is all over the place. And all three cretins that we have now been introduced to, are all sitting at the table with her, having their "supper". The more she screams, the more the "family" loves it. Creepier still, Leatherface now has makeup on his leather mask. I'm talking frosty blue eyeshadow and ruby red lipstick. Truly bizarre, sort of as if Hannibal Lecter and Divine had a child. Indeed a very good argument for birth control. Anyway, Sally's screams and pleas for release only feed this "family's" appetite for horrification. 

      We soon learn that there is a fourth member of this family of sub-humanoid cretins... a grandfather that though still alive, looks like he's about 175 years old. After wheeling Grampa to the table, Leatherface cuts Sally's finger and lets Grampa suck on it for a while. Apparently, Grampa also worked at the slaughterhouse and was regarded as quite a pro at what he did. Forcing Sally to kneel before a bucket, Grampa is handed a large hammer and tries many times to hit her. He strikes her enough times to bloody her head but not enough to kill her. 

      In the midst of the commotion, the hitchhiker goes for the hammer and Sally manages to struggle free. She runs and bursts her way through a window, plummeting into the early morning light, after a night of pure hell. The hitchhiker runs after her, stabbing her repeatedly until she is completely covered in blood. She makes it to the road where a huge semi-truck runs over the hitchhiker (much like Leatherface, we never do learn his actual name). Unfortunately, Leatherface is still closing in on her. The man driving the semi tries to help by throwing a wrench and smacks Leatherface on the noggin', causing him to land on the ground with his chainsaw gnawing into his leg. Another truck comes by and with all the strength she has left, Sally manages to crawl into the back of the truck and screams for the driver to go go go!!! 

     The movie ends with Leatherface wildly swinging his chainsaw in the air, showing frustration at having lost his prey. And poor Sally is in the back of the truck, hysterically laughing her way to the nearest funny farm. 

      This film actually has the prestige of being accepted into the official Museum of Modern Art. There is also a plethora of great trivia surrounding the making of this film. To name a few... the meat in the dinner scene was real and rapidly making all the actors sick with its atrocious stink of decomposition. As Sally runs through the woods in search of help, we see that her clothing is torn and she has bloody cuts all over her. This wasn't faked, she actually ran through the woods and all the bloody cuts were real. When they slice Sally's finger in order to feed Grampa, the fake blood tube in the knife got clogged, and rather than fix it, they just gave up and actually slice actress Marilyn Burns's (Sally) finger. To keep with the continuity of the film Gunnar Hanson (Leatherface) was not allowed to wash his clothes and therefore began to smell so badly that the other actors would stay as far away from him as possible when not filming. This movie was made in August when the heat in Texas is almost unbearable, making strenuous acting difficult and causing the meat on the table to rot a lot faster and stink much worse. It's not surprising that almost every actor in the film said that if offered another acting job working with director Tobe Hooper, they would most assuredly turn it down. 

      This film, along with Psycho, is loosely based on the actions of serial killer/cannibal/necrophiliac/all-around weirdo Ed Gein. This led to the boasting that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was actually based on a true story, though only about 5% of it was taken from the Ed Gein case. The rest is purely fictional. Regardless, this movie is a masterpiece and is very effective at installing pure terror into its viewers.  The scene where Sally is screaming at the dinner table was officially labeled as cinematic torture...and I have to completely agree with that.  After you hear the amount of screaming that she does throughout the entire film, I'm actually quite shocked that it didn't do permanent damage to her vocal cords.  

     This film produced way too many sequels, none of which were any good.  Parts two and three were released as major motion pictures but the rest were released straight to video.  A remake was released in theaters in the early 2000s and produced its own numerous set of sequels and prequels.  I think out of all of them, my favorite has to be part four.  It stars Renee Zelwigger and Mathew McConaughey before anyone knew who they were at all, has a really stupid plot, and such terrible acting that you are constantly praying that they get killed off as soon as possible.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Anthropophagus

     Yet another "video nasty" filmed in Greece that has been relatively unknown for years (at least in English), until a recent DVD release. There aren't many gore scenes, but when you get to them, they are extremely effective and worth waiting for. 

      For the most part, it's a psychological thriller dealing with the results of the disintegration of a decent family man into a cannibalistic monster. Generally, the story is this... A young couple is seen on the beach of a Grecian island, the girl goes swimming while the boy starts jammin' with his headphones. The girl comes across what looks like a boat adrift with no occupants. Upon inspection, she lets out a horrendous scream and is attacked by something under the water. Subsequently, her boyfriend has his head split open with a machete by an unknown wet, blood-dripping entity. 

      Meanwhile, on a cable car ride, a young girl named Julie (played by Tisa Farrow, Mia Farrow's sister) makes friends with a group of young people touring the Greek Islands. She explains that she babysits a Greek couple's blind child during the summer and in return, the couple pays for her vacation. She asks if she can tag along since some friends of hers are missing (the young couple that was slaughtered on the beach) and she doesn't have a ride to the island. Since the group's tour will bring them in close proximity to the island in question, they happily agree to help her get to her destination. A woman in the group named Carol is a Tarot card reader and quickly discovers that danger lurks ahead. A pregnant woman named Maggie gets her cards to read, only to find that she has all blank cards (no future). Carol also predicts that death is imminent if they set foot on this island. 

      They arrive at the island. Maggie sprains her ankle and has to stay on the boat and rest, the others leave to explore the island which seems totally deserted with the exception of a mysterious woman that warns them to go away. Meanwhile, on the boat, poor Maggie pulls a bucket of water from the side of the boat, only to discover that it contains a severed head, she screams and is dragged away by "someone". 

      After finding the island deserted, they inspect Julie's friends' house. It also seems deserted, but upon inspecting the cellar, they find the couple's daughter Ariette hiding in a wine barrel, stabbing at anything that comes near. She talks of her parents being killed and that she knew where "it" was because "it" smelled of blood. As the others are looking for signs of what happened, the guy watching Ariette is attacked and has a chunk bitten out of his neck by an unknown monster. 

      Upon exploring the island, the group comes across a large house that belonged to a prominent family on the island. Flashback sequence: a man, his wife, and their child are in a lifeboat that has gone adrift. The child has died from exposure and Dad begins to see him as dinner. The mother is repulsed by the idea, and the father loses it and kills her. We are led to believe that he eventually ate them both (this is no doubt what the female swimmer at the beginning of the film was screaming about). 

      They find a diary about the incident written by the father's sister who has gone insane because of "what happened" (we are given hints that "what happened" isn't necessarily the boating incident where her brother ate his family). The mystery woman hangs herself from the top staircase of the large house that the group is now taking shelter in, we soon learn that the mystery woman was actually the sister that had written the diary. 

      Julie and Ariette decide to stay at the house while the others go check on Maggie. Julie continues reading the diary and reads how her brother became "the beast". Apparently, after having to eat his wife and child he went completely insane, and once rescued and returned, he began to kill and cannibalize the entire island. His sister who has now become quite a nut too has tried to hide her brothers' depravity by hiding all the victims all around the house (only some are partially eaten, and most were drained of blood). A reference made in the diary hinted that the bodies were hidden only in the foyer of the house. Julie finds a large mirror that seems to be covering a door. She smashes the window and finds a room containing the dead population of the island's occupants. 

      During the search for Maggie, the group discovers that she isn't on the boat. They spread out looking for her. Maggie's boyfriend finds her hiding in a cave and she tells him about the severed head she found in the water. While in the cave, "the beast" descends upon them and pushes Maggie to the ground, reaches up her skirt, rips out her baby, and takes a bite out of it (a scene very effectively achieved with the use of a skinned rabbit to be the baby). 

      After killing most of the group, He (the beast, the man who ate his wife and kid and then proceeded to continue with his newly found taste for blood and insanity) chases Julie and Ariette up to the roof. Stupidly thinking that they're safe, he rips through the roof and grabs Ariette by the hair, scalping her and tasting her hairdo. Julie makes it outside and is on the watch for "the beast". Unbeknownst to her, he's hiding in a well that she wanders a little too close to. Instead of pulling her into the well, he uses her to climb out of the well. David (the last surviving member of the group of people who befriended Julie in the beginning) comes out of nowhere and hits "the beast" in the gut with a pic ax. He looks down at his bloody guts, pulls out some organs, and starts munching down, looking quite happy until he slowly died of blood loss. The End.

      Usually when a hard-to-find movie is released on DVD, one would expect it to have some improvements. Not here. It's a great story but has some serious flaws. Not because of the story, acting (which actually wasn't that bad), or scenery, but mostly from the sound quality which sucked in multiple ways. First of all, the original language that the movie was filmed in was Greek and in the making, didn't have a great sound quality to begin with. Second, the English dubbing is deplorable, with talking that occurs when no mouths are moving, and no dialogue at all when people are obviously having a conversation. I was also disillusioned when I discovered that the optional subtitles don't match a damn thing. The words displayed aren't in the slightest bit associated with what's being said. Oh well, very few movies can boast perfection. This film actually does have a great storyline and a relatively original plot. Pretty impressive, with the exception of the audio. By the way, in case you didn't get the title, Anthropophagus is Greek for "human consumption"