Film Appreciation - Missing, Presumed Dead

Jay Burleson looks back at the life changing release of The Blair Witch Project for Film Appreciation.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

Directed by Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez

Starring Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams.

The only horror film that I've been fortunate enough to witness the pandemonium around upon its release was the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.

There are many memories that instantly come to mind when I think of Blair Witch. I can vividly remember watching the faux Sci-Fi documentary based on the "real" legend of the Blair Witch as if it were yesterday. As a kid of just 12 years old I was convinced that all of it was real, and I wanted to believe it. There was nothing that could change my mind. Upon my second theatrical viewing of the film, which my grandmother took me to, she called me out on and it and said, "You know none of that is real!" I wasn't heartbroken by her words, but rather disappointed that she had to remind me. At school, I sported an overly large white T-shirt which featured the three filmmakers' faces with huge bold letters reading: MISSING.

I recall the first time I saw it, a packed showing my mom and I attended together, and the magic that seemed to be in the theater that night. As we took our seats we encountered a woman who was apparently preparing for her second viewing. A conversation briefly ensued, during which the woman told us that she hadn't seen anything this scary since the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even as a kid, I knew how big of a statement that was. I was psyched, and I ate up what followed on screen. My mom, not so much, but there has rarely been a horror film over the last twenty years that she has felt lived up to the classics of her youth.

 

For me, Blair Witch changed my life. It led me to a discussion online with a stranger in a chat room. His name was Cody, and we were both posters on a Halloween movie message board. Blair Witch helped us strike up a conversation, and the son of a bitch is still in my life today. In case you haven't figured it out, he's the blog runner for this site. Blair Witch also allowed me to easily make my own films. If that's all it took, then I could finally bring my dream to life, and all I needed was another friend and a handheld video camera. Classics such as "The Redfield Mansion Project", "Area 220", and "The Last Documentary" were all projects I created from the ages of 12-14. If anything, Blair Witch set my idea of what making a film was back by about ten years. Redfield Mansion Project was a documentary about two guys investigating a haunted plantation. The plantation would go on to serve as the main location in my first real attempt at filmmaking, as it became the home of Duke Wolfgang Moonlight in Feast of the Vampires. Area 220 was based around an area of land where 220 people had vanished or died in a certain amount of years, and Last Documentary saw three friends set out to make a documentary about devil worshippers in the woods. I could probably still turn the last two into viable direct-to-video knock-offs.

Blair Witch itself didn't scare me as a kid, but did crawl under my skin. A lot of horror buffs would scoff at the thought of Blair Witch as a classic, but I'm one that accepts it for what it is and what it was able to accomplish. I definitely prefer it over recent popular horror movies of its type, but I guess you could accuse me of being old school, or better yet, just plain nostalgic. If I had been a 12-year-old horror fanatic caught up in the buzz of it all when Paranormal Activity came out, I might be singing an entirely different tune.

I still find the last few minutes of Blair Witch to be 100% effective, and the character drama that had been built up amongst the three was so believable to me that the horror of being lost in those woods felt pretty real. The gritty look of their project, the early '90s setting, and the believable performances from Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams all came together to create a perfect storm. The film starts so casually, with the candid footage of the three together, where they do a good enough job of making us feel like they are real people with a camera. The lost in the woods stuff works on many different levels, but the sounds in the night and crazy twig/rock formations they discover help push things into a satisfying horror realm.

The wonderful job they did marketing the film is definitely one of the top reasons why the film took off the way it did. The documentary they ran on Sci-Fi was a stroke of absolute genius, but the trailers were all short and enticing instead of full of giveaways. You could argue that there isn't much to give away, but here it works wonderfully as they make the viewer eager to learn more. I'm having a hard time describing exactly what I want to say about the feel around the film, and I think calling it magic is the best way to put it. There was a magic in the air for me around the release of this film, even if it was morbid, that has never been topped in my cinematic experiences. It's not even so much that the film was great, which I think it was, but that the build-up and expectations were so high.

This is the type of film that will one day leave me in a theater, explaining to the people next to me that the film they're about to see is the most effective I've seen since The Blair Witch Project. Hopefully the thought of that will mean something to them, and excite them as much as those words excited me back in 1999. Experiences like this in cinema are few and far between, and thats one reason I don't feel the need to revisit Blair Witch very much. The environment I saw it in back in 1999 far exceeds anything that could possibly come of it now, but that's not to say it doesn't hold up. I'd just much rather remember it the same way 12-year-old me did, with all the anticipation and enthusiasm that one can imagine. 

The Road (2011)

APRIL 30, 2012

GENRE: GHOST, SERIAL KILLER

SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

I don’t usually look at the director’s filmography before sitting down to watch a film, because I figure if it meant anything to me I’d remember. Luckily, while Yam Laranas’ name rang a bell, I couldn’t quite place it until after I had come home from seeing The Road, and saw that he was behind Sigaw as well as its remake The Echo, two films I quite liked. So it’s a good thing I was ignorant - had I known that, I may have been more excited for this one, and thus would have left even more disappointed than I already was.

The Road is broken up into three parts (each taking ten years apart), which gives it a bit of an anthology feeling. The first takes place in 2008, and focuses on three youths who find themselves on a deserted road and menaced by what appears to be ghosts as they attempt to get back on the main road. It’s the best segment, in my opinion, as the characters are likable and the scares are at their most effective – the ghosts are creepy as hell, in fact. Their heads are covered with bloody plastic bags, and they have a tendency to appear in impossible places (under the gas pedal!), which raises the tension nicely as our three kids are seemingly never safe. Plus, of course, we don’t really know what’s going on, so there’s additional panic from that.

Unfortunately, the 2nd and 3rd parts go about explaining that, and the more we know, the less interesting the movie becomes. In part 2 (1998), two OTHER girls around the same age are traveling that road, and run into car trouble. Being a horror film, the first person they see and ask for help is also a killer, and then we’re treated to 20 minutes of two girls screaming and getting smacked around. But we know they’re goners because of the present day scenes, so it lacks the tension of the first part, and gets far too repetitive to boot – I just wanted it over with so we could get to part 3.

Sadly, if anything part 3 is even MORE of a chore, because now we’re in 1988 and seeing why our killer from part 2 is so evil, almost trying to make him sympathetic. Even if this was interesting it would still be an awkward way to tell the story, but it just comes down to the usual motive lifted from Psycho – his mother was a deranged woman who thought all females were filthy, locked him in a closet, made him clean up her messes… everything but the cross-dressing, really. Also, considering the way the 1998 segment ended, by now any good horror fan would have figured out the film’s central twist, which seems to be the only reason for this particular structure. Thus, much like Intruders (which I saw in this same screening room, oddly enough), you have a movie with an alienating construction that serves to hide a twist that is far too easy to figure out – not exactly the best approach for me. I’d rather not know anything than know everything long before I’m supposed to.

Not only was I too ahead of the movie, I was also getting restless - this sucker is LONG. A lot of Asian horror flicks run closer to two hours than the American standard of 88 minutes, but it's not an issue if the story's compelling. However, when there's not a lot to it, you start to feel every minute of the 110 minute runtime, and several things drag. The second act in particular could be trimmed down, unless you haven't yet grown tired of girls screaming while being held against their will. I was also starting to get pretty tired of seeing the damn road over and over - it's not a particularly long stretch, and it's blocked off for reasons that are never explained (they over-explain everything else, why not this?), which makes it feel like a contrivance for contrivance's sake. And yet, if the editor was a bit more vicious, I might have been too caught up to notice.

But I'm glad to see that a foreign language horror film is getting a decent theatrical release here in the US - it's been quite a while. Also I should note I'm in the minority; lots of pals and critics I trust have enjoyed it. I also couldn't help but think of Wind Chill, which not only also dealt with a strange road and ghosts, but was a movie I really didn't care for the first time around only to enjoy it a little more on video. So maybe this will play better a second time around - I'd certainly like to watch the first part again at any rate. We'll see.

What say you?

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The Quick Word- The Raid: Redemption (2012)

(aka Oh, Hell Yeah!)
Release Date: Click HERE for release info by country.
Written and Directed by: Gareth Evans.
Starring: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, and a scrappy lil' son of a bitch named Yayan Ruhian.

The Raid: Redemption is purely an action movie, no horror involved at all (unless you count gratuitous violence and copious amounts of blood), but we just had to take a minute to give it some love.

In horror terms, it's reminiscent of The Horde; where a small group of people are trapped in an apartment building and are forced to fight their way through a crazy horde of zombies in order to escape the death trap they're in. In The Raid, the zombies are replaced with some vicious Indonesian gangsters, and the people that are trapped and forced to fight their way out are Indonesian cops. It's also way more violent and bloody, and by the end, I think there were more corpses lying around... more corpses than a zombie movie. Think about that one.

They have guns, should be no problem...

It's not often that a movie comes a long and just blows us away, especially when we're talking about the action genre; most action flicks are good, but don't really tend to dazzle or excite us. We've seen so many action movies over the years that we're fairly jaded on the subject. I takes a lot to get our fists pumping and even more to get us to hoot and holler during a movie, especially in public... we generally try to behave and not look like super nerds when amongst strangers.

The Raid: Redemption was so awesome that it made us stand up in the theater and throw karate kicks into the air, while yelling "Hyah!" (*That didn't really happen, but in our hearts it did.)

It's really hard to explain how crazy and action packed The Raid truly is, because at some point while trying to explain it, we'd end up sounding like we're just way over exaggerating things. A week removed from seeing The Raid, with emotion taken out of the equation and our heads calm and clear, we can say that the movie was so full of insane, bloody, mind blowing action, that we honestly can't think of any other movie in recent memory that comes close to its level. Not even kinda close.

It's honestly one of the best martial arts flicks we've ever seen. Ever.

The little guy on the right, Mad Dog, not only kicked crazy amounts of ass on screen, but was the movie's fight choreographer too. We love him.

So intense, unrelenting and overtly bloody and violent was The Raid, that a woman in our small screening audience said "I can't take any more, it's exhausting!" She wasn't being dramatic at all. The level of graphic violence in this movie is through the roof, and by the end, even we the audience felt as if we'd been through the same hell that just unfolded on screen.

It seems as though lately if we're in the mood for a really good thriller or action flick, that countries like Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, HK or Japan (among other Asian/Pacific Island countries) are doing them better than anyone else in the world. For an American viewer like me, they films from these countries seem a bit odd or different in some ways, but they always seem to find a way to entertain, dazzle and often times disturb me in great ways. They do it different there, and Hollywood really ought to take note of what makes the average Asian flick so good, and maybe try to emulate them a bit more, instead of remaking already great movies in a sub par way. I shudder to think what Hollywood is going to do to Oldboy, even with Spike Lee at the helm.

Indonesia just gave the world an action masterpiece. You really should go out of your way to find The Raid and enjoy the hell out of it.

Does every guy with dreadlocks always have a machete on them?

One of the best and most exciting action movies we've seen in many moons, The Raid: Redemption satisfies on just about every level that a movie like this possibly can. It's definitely more focused on the visuals than it is deep character development or narrative, but that's not to say it lacks in those areas at all. This is about a perfect as an action flick gets these days, and it really is one that you owe it to yourself to go and see.

Since there are no women in The Raid at all, here are a few pics of some random hot Indonesian actresses... because you deserve to see them.

The Unnameable (1988)

APRIL 29, 2012

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

If you remove Stuart Gordon’s entries, there really aren’t a lot of Lovecraft adaptations out there, which is odd because his vague writing style would seemingly inspire more filmmakers to use his stories as a springboard, as opposed to Stephen King or Clive Barker. Their novels are often too vast and specific to properly adapt in one movie without making major changes, but with Lovecraft it seems you can meld his ideas with your own without getting his fans too upset. Then again, when movies turn out like The Unnameable, it’s easy to see the money men might not be too interested in backing his stories.

It’s a decent enough time-killer I guess, but the movie is somewhat obnoxiously bland and awkwardly structured (and has seemingly been forgotten for the most part). Most of the movie takes place in a big ol’ decrepit mansion, but our main characters don’t actually show up there until the 3rd act, making it hard to get too involved with the 2nd act, where four classmates of little to no importance to our main guys wander around the mansion and (slowly) die one by one. This also makes the movie needlessly repetitive; the first act has a guy exploring it by himself, then these guys show up, and finally our heroes come and ALSO wander around – 75% of this movie consists of people wandering down hallways. When your third act begins with your main characters more or less re-enacting the same stuff you already saw in the first hour, it makes it a bit hard to get too wrapped up in the movie, at a time when you should be at your most engrossed.

This also keeps the movie’s best character off-screen for far too long. Mark Stephenson plays Carter, and he’s basically a less dangerous version of Herbert West from Re-Animator. He’s arrogant and doesn’t care too much about the human life around him, but he’s also dryly hilarious, and has fun chemistry with his co-star, much like West’s relationship with Dan in Gordon’s classic. they even have the same approach to names – everyone refers to him by his last name and his pal by his first: (Randolph) Carter and Howard (Damon), (Herbert) West and Dan (Cain). But he barely appears in the film’s 2nd act, and even in the 3rd, when the two of them come to the mansion, they split up and we spend more time with Howard. It was a surprise to discover that this movie had a sequel, but not so much that it seemingly focuses on his character (the movie is titled The Unnameable II: The Statement Of Randolph Carter).

Besides him, there are really only two reasons to watch the movie, possibly with the fast forward button handy. One is the occasional death scenes; clearly knowing part of what made Re-Animator a classic, director Jean-Paul Ouellette delivers some gory goods, particularly for a guy that gets his head repeatedly slammed into a floor until the wood is covered with blood. It’s not played for laughs, nor is it very splatter-y, but it works well, and there are a few other choice gags to enjoy – I particularly liked the face ripping during the climax. Scenes like this make up for the film's oft-clumsy editing and direction, with head-shaking moments like when someone says "We should keep moving!" and they walk out of frame, and then we cut to a shot of them standing completely still in another room. Smooth.

The other perk is the title creature, because they actually did a pretty good job of living up to the fact that it’s supposed to be an indescribable “thing”. It’s got goat type legs and is clearly female, but otherwise it’s hard to describe, and one could probably name a dozen animals that it shares a trait with (while being humanoid, and totally white, and sort of demon-ish, and…). And they use it just enough – fleeting appearances throughout the film followed by a big showing in the finale, where the hero laughably keeps trying to kick its ass even though its injured and more or less ignoring him. Like it’ll howl and just sort of stand there, and the hero will run over to get another whack in, only for the Unnameable to smack him across the room yet again. Just leave it alone, dummy!

Shame that the movie has never gotten a DVD release in the US, apparently. Netflix is streaming a full frame and not particularly good transfer, though I am pretty sure it’s uncut at least (read something about the head smashing being cut from some versions). The sequel is available on DVD, oddly enough, but that too is full frame and probably shit because it’s a mid-00s release from Lion’s Gate, all of which seem to be awful, VHS transfers. It’s not a great movie, but it’s worth seeing properly to appreciate the creature design and practical bloodletting. Also to hear the film’s amazing end credits theme song, which sounds like a Ric Ocasek ballad. I leave you with it.

What say you?

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The Moth Diaries (2011)

APRIL 28, 2012

GENRE: TEEN, VAMPIRE

SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Maybe I should just stay away from "literary horror" for a while? Just a day after being bored into a near-coma by The Raven, I take in The Moth Diaries, which is not only based on a novel (one that predates "Twilight", I should mention) but is about a girl who thinks the events in her life are paralleling "Carmilla", a novel that incidentally predates that OTHER famous vampire novel ("Dracula" - heard of it?) and is pretty much directly responsible for the "lesbian vampire" sub-genre that this movie flirts with but never commits to. But it never commits to anything, so that's not really a surprise.

The main problem with the movie is that it's practically an 80 minute montage. The passage of time is vague at best, and nothing is given a chance to really develop before the situation changes. The plot is about how this new girl in school has driven a wedge between our main character Rebecca and her best friend Lucy, but we only see them together for about a minute or so before they meet the new girl (Ernessa), and after what only seems like a day or so passes, they're already "drifting apart". And this sort of thing carries throughout the entire movie - at one point a girl leaves for spring break, when it had only been about 5 minutes and a handful of brief scenes since they had all returned from the holidays.

Thus, it's hard to take any of the drama seriously, because it just seems like Rebecca is over-reacting to Ernessa's "influence", and Lucy is supposedly dying all of a sudden when she just started showing signs of illness. If this was some historical epic with 58 characters, sure - you can deal with some shorthand, but when it's essentially about two girls fighting over a third, set entirely in one location, it feels really awkward to be constantly given the Cliff's Notes version of the story's events. The runtime is also suspect - it's not like 82 minutes with credits is bloated; they could have had another 10-15 minutes to flesh these things out, spend some time with the girls before Ernessa's arrival, etc. Why are they racing through a character based thriller?

See, the idea is (I think) is for us to wonder if Rebecca is just being paranoid or if Ernessa is actually a vampire. There are a lot of metaphors at play here (possibly too many); the natural drifting apart of close friends as they get closer to womanhood, the conformity of a private school stripping one of her identity, vampirism as a drug, etc, etc. Again, all in 82 minutes! PICK A THEME, MOVIE. But anyway, with some focus this could have worked, and there are times when it DOES, particularly when a girl is found dead on the ground outside her window. It's chalked up to a suicide or accident, but of course Rebecca suspects that Arnessa pushed her in order to get her out of the way, same as she had given one of the other girls some drugs that caused her to freak out and toss a chair through her window, resulting in expulsion. Stuff like that is always fun to puzzle through, and despite all of its problems I was sort of enjoying it for a while (at least, as much as I can enjoy a movie aimed at teen girls that have tired of Twilight).

But it never really escalates, and the film's refusal to focus just gets worse as it goes - when a major character suddenly dies I wondered if the editor accidentally deleted a ten minute chunk of the film right before he output it for its final mastering. And while they give enough evidence to "prove" that Arnessa is a vampire (or a ghost of some sort, at least), we never really get a full blown reveal - just a weird scene where her and another girl are scene floating before turning into moths, which seems like one of the film's many dream sequences. Ultimately, director Mary Harron seems to be suggesting that it doesn't matter, and that the point of the movie was to show how Rebecca learned to get past the death of her father, but again - the film's overly generalized approach to plot and character development prevents us from latching on to her. Ultimately, we only care about her because the camera's on her more often than anyone else, not because of anything she actually DOES.

Oh, and can we call a lifetime moratorium on scenes where an English teacher talks about some book and it happens to parallel the plot of the film we're watching? It works in Halloween because the book is made up (and it refers to the general idea of fate), but this movie (and presumably the book) seemingly spends half its time comparing itself to "Carmilla" and even a bit of "Dracula", which is not a good idea when things are so uninvolving. "Hey, I could be reading one of those, or at least watching one of their adaptations, instead of watching this" is what any sane person would start thinking after a while. Plus it's just so cheesy in general; it's gotten to the point where as soon as we cut to the class for the first time, we're basically going to get a spoiler for the movie as soon as we know what book they're reading. "Oh, Hamlet? I guess we're in for a Pyrrhic victory." On that note, I'd actually like to see a comedy where someone is reading "The Odyssey" and then wonders why their own life isn't mirroring Homer's tale.

Oh, and it's not scary. For an R rated movie, nothing happens on-screen; this may be the first vampire movie that doesn't have anyone being bitten. There's a tame, very brief lesbian tryst that MAY involve biting, but, you know, some people just do that - we don't see puncturing, at any rate. People bitch about the Twilights not really being horror; shit, at least we see them transform, and get at least ONE true fight in each film (hell, the 3rd one had the sparkly bastards dying left and right at the end). I assume they were interested in making more of a drama, but since they failed so miserably in that department it's a shame they couldn't make up for it by being a little exploitative or graphic every now and then.

As I said, it's aimed at teen girls, and I'm sure they will find it entertaining because they can identify with fighting with their best friend over stupid shit that they think is much more important than it is, or swooning over one of their younger male teachers or whatever. However, the R rating will theoretically prevent them from seeing it until they're old enough to realize it's empty trash, so the target audience is girls with parents who don't care much about what they're seeing, but if that's the case then they might as well just watch Hammer's The Vampire Lovers, which is also based on "Carmilla". Or Harron's American Psycho, her last feature length genre effort in which she managed to make a serial killer yuppie douch more likable and compelling than she did our innocent heroine here.

What say you?

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Seventh week, still first run

I can't remember the last time I saw a film in the theater when it was as deep into its theatrical run as 21 Jump Street was when I saw it yesterday.

Even at a second-run theater. And the second-run theater nearest to me closed down, so it's been awhile since I've seen one of those anyway.

21 Jump Street was released on March 16th. Yesterday was April 27th. That means it was beginning its seventh week in the theaters. A pretty impressive feat these days to be sure.

And I'm glad I went. As you recall from yesterday's post, I was choosing between this and The Raven. But after the stressful day I had, barely ever getting a chance to even stop and collect my thoughts, a comedy that was absolutely dynamite for its first two acts was a much better fit than a dour period piece about a serial killer.

But as I touched on yesterday, there's something funny about seeing a movie in the theater when it's already been out for so long. Especially when you're paying $12.50, which seemed entirely too much for a movie playing on its seventh Friday at 2:50 in the afternoon.

Namely, there's a moment that passes when you feel like you're closer to the film's video release than to the beginning of its theatrical run. To be sure, it's very possible that 21 Jump Street will be out on DVD sooner than seven weeks from now. That would put its DVD release in mid-June. Mid-July seems like a better guess, but the point is, that moment seems to have passed in my mind, even if it has not passed literally.

And I'm trying to examine the psychology of it. I mean, if you've determined that a film is worth seeing in the theater, does it really matter if it's the first day it's out, or the 42nd? Either way you are seeing it on the big screen. It seems like it should be a simple choice: Is it worthy of seeing on the big screen, or isn't it?

So then I come to the idea that the main goal may not be seeing it on the big screen, but rather, seeing it sooner rather than later. If it's already been in the theater for seven weeks, you start to reason "Might as well wait until video at this point."

And if that's really the mentality, it suggests that the studios might really be on to something if they're talking about making movies available sooner at home. Maybe people really don't care if they see it on a big screen, that's just their only option if they want to see it sooner rather than later.

Of course, sometimes the decision just comes down to what's playing at a convenient time so you can watch it after an early release from work and still pick up your son from daycare on time.

Livide (2012)

(aka Not Inside part II)
Release Date: On DVD now (Germany.)
Written & Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.
Starring: Chloe Coulloud, Catherine Jacob, Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Chloe Marcq.

We've been waiting for Bustillo and Maury's follow up to their 2007 French classic, Inside, for years now. Inside was a nasty little movie that stuck with us long after we had seen it, and we we're hoping to be equally as disturbed by their newest offering, Livide.

Well, we were and we weren't.

Lucie is a young, hot French chick who just got a job as a traveling nurse. She's got two different colored eyes (which is foreshadowing about having two souls or something), and can't follow directions very well. While traveling around visiting patients and learning her new routine, she's told to stay in the car by her trainer, Mrs. Wilson, because "she's not ready" to handle the likes of their last patient of the day.  Lucie of course doesn't stay in the car and wanders into the creepy old mansion of Mrs. Jessel, which pretty much seals her fate.

Creepy tea party from hell.

Lucie finds Mrs. Wilson attending to the comatose Mrs. Jessel. Her trainer tells her of a secret treasure rumored to be hidden somewhere in the creepy house, and that Jessel had a daughter who died under mysterious circumstances, many years ago. Those two plot elements should be enough to terrify most people into never wanting to come back into the house, but not Lucie, because she's not very bright.

Relax, it's just a doll.

Lucie hatches a scheme with her boyfriend and another nitwit to break into Jessel's house, find the treasure for themselves, and live rich and easy for the rest of their lives.The problem is that the treasure involves vampire ballerina kids, teleportation mirrors, a floating house, and plenty of nuance. Needless to say, the blood flows and people die in horrible ways,  and we're not exactly sure what in the hell happens at the end.

Flashdance!

Livide is a gorgeous and very atmospheric movie, which is really quite something to behold. While not as effective as their first film, Inside (2007), Bustillo and Maury absolutely know how to craft and direct a movie that pulls you in and plays with your fear buttons. The movie felt a lot like Suspiria at times, and in fact was an homage to the Argento classic, although there were definitely differences between the two, both technically and aesthetically.

Think of Livide as a new twist on the vampire mythos, with some elements of witchcraft and serial murder thrown in, all wrapped up in some odd sort of fantasy blanket. It's thematically complex at times, and overtly bloody and gory at others. It's definitely a mixture of a lot of elements, all of which work or fail to varying degrees. It did lack focus and felt anything but linear, which detracted a bit from the overall good quality of what we saw on screen.

There's always some sort of eye torture in these Italian-inspired French horror flicks, isn't there?

The whole subplot involving the two guys convincing Lucie to rob the house really should have been left out of the movie, as it only truly served to get them into the house so that the rest of the movie could happen. It felt sloppy and unnecessary. Why couldn't they have explored the other subplot with the creepy chick abducting kids and draining them of their blood... that would have been more satisfying and effective, in our opinion.

Why the hood?

What exactly was this movie trying to be? At first, we're given a creepy and atmospheric horror flick that showed signs of being truly great, but then as the film wore on, it became more of a dark fantasy movie. By the end, it felt like some sort of spiritual meditation of the freedom of the soul or something. Maybe it was the ending itself that mad things so awkward, because it was a little bit... out of place. Metaphor and sentimentality twisted this movie into a bit of a confusing mess at times. The movie was too ambitious for its own good.

There's plenty of bloody and disturbing elements to be found here, most of them involving vampire shenanigans of some sort. Lots of kid violence too.It wasn't as visceral as some other French horror offerings such as Inside or Martyrs, but there was enough.

Maybe she fell down in the tub?

Nope, but we do get to see a creepy old lady laying in bed wearing an oxygen mask, if that's your thing.

Dance lessons lead to nothing but death. Also, you really shouldn't ever try to steal from a helpless old woman in a coma, because it's a trap.

Fun times at the Dance Academy of Death.

Livide is a movie that falls into the B-range because it's a well made, mostly effective and gorgeous film, filled with enough gore and menace to satisfy the average horror fan. If it would have been a bit more focused, lost the jump scares and made a bit more rational sense, it could have definitely been an A-range movie. As it stands, Livide is a solid effort that you should check out when you're able, just don't be surprised if you find yourself saying "What the hell just happened?" afterwards.

Chloe Coulloud is one hot French girl, as evidenced by her facial features and nice figure. We don't make this stuff up, it's just how it is.

Worth Mentioning - We'll All Be Glowing in the Dark

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Cody belatedly celebrates Easter, then scopes out a Night of the Living Dead documentary. Jay is interviewed and gives a look at his latest short.

THE BEING (1983)

Four years before she rocked the world with the H.G. Lewis homage Blood Diner, Jackie Kong made her directorial debut on this monster movie, which she also wrote.

The setting is the small town of Pottsville, Idaho, "the spud capital of the universe", where residents have been disappearing, green slime is being found all over the place, and "the ultimate terror has taken form".

That form is of a radioactive mutant, caused by the dumping of nuclear waste. Things get off to a great start as a kid tries to flee from the monster in a car and it tears through the roof of the vehicle to rip his head off his shoulders. The discovery of the crashed car (filled with slime, no sign that there was a decapitation in it) brings Detective Mortimer Lutz into the picture, played by Kong's then-husband William Osco under the name Rexx Coltrane.

Several of the other roles are filled by Oscar level actors and popular TV personalities: Martin Landau plays a chemist in town to check the radiation levels. He appears on the local news to assure the people of Pottsville that the dumping of nuclear waste into the aquifer will not affect the drinking water. Dorothy Malone is a woman driven crazy by the disappearance of her child. José Ferrer appears as the mayor, who doesn't want this monster talk to ruin the town's potato business. As the mayor's wife, Ruth Buzzi is on a crusade against smut, aided by "The Unknown Comic" Murray Langston and novelist/politician Kinky Friedman (who also had a cameo in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.)

As the mutant slimes and kills its way through Pottsville, a standout setpiece occurs at the drive-in movie theatre. A young couple go there on a date to make out through the new horror show. When we get a look at the movie that's on the screen, we see an attractive blonde is sitting on a bed in a hotel room, painting her toenails while completely nude. I want to watch that movie! Well, it's footage that was shot for The Being, so I am watching that movie, but I would've liked more of that character.

While the blonde on the screen is attacked by a monster that looks just like the one rampaging through Pottsville, slime drips through the entire dashboard of a the young couple's car (they don't notice, things are getting hot and heavy in there.) The slime then solidifies into the monster, and that finally gets the couple's attention.

The monster likes attacking people in cars, that's why we expect the worst when Lutz gets into his vehicle and we see a pair of freaky eyeballs shining from the darkness of the backseat. Luckily, it's just the town bum.

Lutz is a very laid-back guy, a few times we're even privy to his monotone thoughts in voiceover, but one of the craziest scenes in the movie is a black & white Lutz dream sequence. In his dream, Lutz is riding in a plane being flown by Landau's character. The monster attacks the plane, pulling Landau out, leaving Lutz to figure out how to fly... And then Ruth Buzzi flies past on a broomstick, blood running from her eyes. She smiles at Lutz, "It's all in your mind."

Slimy monster action, unexpected cast members, gratuitous nudity, gore, goofiness, weirdness, a unique charm, this movie has a lot going for it. Plus, it's a holiday horror. It's set around Easter, and was originally titled Easter Sunday.

Early in the movie, Ruth Buzzi hosts an Easter egg hunt for a bunch of kids, and a featured toddler is the daughter of Jackie Kong and William Osco, Roxanne Cybelle. Roxanne went on to play "Young Michael" in Blood Diner, and followed in her parents' creative footsteps. As a college student in 2001, Roxanne wrote a script called Cash Money Sex that was going to become a feature produced by her father. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have been filmed.

This week's viewing was the first time I had ever seen The Being, but the poster image is very familiar to me for some reason. I don't think the movie was ever available to rent at my local video stores, IMDb informs me that I may have spotted the poster in The Monster Squad.

AUTOPSY OF THE DEAD (2009)

The making of the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead has been well documented, the stories the main crew and cast members had to tell have filled interviews, books, documentaries, featurettes, and commentaries... But there were still more stories to be told.

For this documentary, director Jeff Carney sought out some voices that hadn't been heard before. There are interviews with some of the less celebrated crew members and contributors - from special effects man Regis Survinski and sound recordist Gary Streiner (who is currently heading up the Fix the Chapel fundraiser to save the cemetery chapel seen in the film), to the man who provided the animal heads mounted on the farmhouse wall and a guy who helped with the looped cricket chirping heard on the soundtrack - and several people who are featured in the film as members of the horde of ghouls surrounding the farmhouse and/or the posse that scours the countryside on a ghoul-hunting mission.

Autopsy of the Dead is not a documentary for casual fans, this is something for the fans who want to know everything that they possibly can about what it was like making Night of the Living Dead. For me, the making of that movie is one of the most interesting filmmaking stories there is, and it's one of my most favorite, desert island essential films, so I found the stories from these new perspectives to be very interesting.

Throughout the documentary are glimpses of some great pictures taken behind-the-scenes of NOTLD, and shots that compare the way filming locations looked then and now. Locations that I want to visit myself someday. The pictures and location shots are also included on their own as special features on the DVD.


Jay's Mentions: 

This week I'm mentioning some personal news involving an interview I did alongside actor/musician/producer Lane Hughes for the Film Snobbery Live! series. We were both guests on Episode 91 of the show, their final in the Boston area, and I wanted to share the video with everyone here. We both had a great time chatting with Nic Baisley and his co-host, Jerry Cavallaro.

Film Snobbery Episode 91

The description of the episode is as follows:

Actor Lane Hughes and Director Jay Burleson call in to talk about their careers, their goals and challenges when making and promoting films, and their upcoming projects. We also say goodbye to an era of FilmSnobbery Live! and to a world class co-host, writer/director Jerry Cavallaro.


I'm still tweaking my special report on the latest Sidewalk Scramble and may hold off a few more weeks until I can view all the films on DVD. We didn't attend the screening, and were not even in competition outside of Audience Choice after some faulty uploads and a no-show ride left us holding the bag at the competition deadline.

Here is an image from our short, Horrible Hearts, starring Randy Hale and Christy Colburn.