Census Bloodbath: Not That Innocent

Year: 1984

Director: Colin Eggleston

Cast: P.J. Soles, Kit Taylor, Martin Balsam

Run Time: 1 hour 17 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: After Cathy Willis (P.J. Soles of Halloween) witnesses her husband Joe (Kit Taylor of Early Frost and Eggleston's follow-up slasher Cassandra) murdering a prostitute (Debi Sue Voorhees of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning), she enlists the help of local Houston Sheriff Virgil Baker (Martin Balsam of Psycho, indulging in the chewiest Southern accent that ever y'alled) to catch him. Once he's behind bars, she flees to live with a friend in Australia, but the Sydney apartment complex she lives in is run by a voyeuristic madman named Philip (John Warnock) who sets his sights on her.

Analysis: I have never seen a movie that is more clearly split right down the middle. The two halves do ultimately come together to serve the general theme of "men, am I right?" but essentially the final 45 minutes of Innocent Prey is Innocent Prey 2. Unfortunately, like most sequels, there are diminishing returns.

It doesn't help that the first half of the film is shockingly good. Even though it's an Australian's vision of Texas, where everyone's accents are a little wobbly (except for the aforementioned Martin Balsam, who is encased in concrete) while they are looking out at you from under the brim of an enormous cowboy hat, it showcases an astonishing ability to ratchet up the tension using the camera. The film's plot is a pretty standard Lifetime movie-esque story (this is not a complaint, I love it when slashers do that), spruced up with an approach pure cinema.

The scene that best exemplifies this is the murder that poor Cathy witnesses. When she suspects her husband of cheating on her, she sneaks around the back of the motel that he has parked outside of and sees him with the prostitute, her body up against the window. We see Soles' eyes through a narrow sliver of the open window, then the other woman's heaving body with her lover only visible in the mirror, pulling out a straight razor and making a slashing motion above the character's sight line. Then the upper body of the woman drops into view, her throat slashed, as she crumples to the floor. It's an astonishingly well executed set-up that keeps the viewer off-kilter and highlights each horrifying revelation at the exact moment that it's too late for Cathy to do anything about it.

This is by far the best scene in the movie, but there are multiple moments in this branch of the story that achieve a similar level of visual tension. It then becomes a hell of a good "woman under siege" thriller as she must fight back after her husband traps her inside her home. It's also a showcase for P.J. Soles as a horror heroine in her own right, delivering a nuanced performance that's not quite Jamie Lee Curtis level but certainly worth celebrating.

The second half, on the other hand, is just goofy. It's basically asking the question "What would happen if Norman Bates ran the apartment building from Sliver?" The answer? "That would be pretty stupid." 

There is much less control over tone and tension in this part of the film, which highlights the fact that the gore effects are pretty minimal instead of using their limitation as an advantage, as the first half does. There is also some wacky-ass stuff with an electrified doorknob that has absolutely no business being in this movie. It's certainly not enough to ruin the movie, because it's still totally watchable, but it does have a deflating effect until the film's shocking but perhaps inevitable final shot.

Killer: Basically All Men

Final Girl: Cathy Willis (P.J. Soles)

Best Kill: Absolutely that opening motel bathroom kill, because holy shit.

Sign of the Times: The perm that threatens to throttle the life out of Cathy and gets closer than any man ever does.

Scariest Moment: The cop guarding Cathy steps out of the room and instantly stops responding to her conversation.

Weirdest Moment: Philip sings Cathy a lullaby while watching her fall asleep on the monitor.

Champion Dialogue: "My legs feel like they belong to someone else. And whoever it is just ran a marathon on 'em."

Body Count: 8

1. Prostitute has her throat slashed with a straight razor.
2. Warden #1 and
3. Warden #2 are killed in a brawl, though their exact injuries are indistinct.
4. Officer Casey is beheaded offscreen.
5. Workman is strangled in the crook of Joe's elbow.
6. Joe is killed offscreen.
7. Gwen is blasted with scalding water. I think.
8. Philip is electrocuted and defenestrated. 

TL;DR: Innocent Prey is two completely distinct films stapled together, but the first one is excellent.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 791

Census Bloodbath: Mad Macks

Year: 1981

Director: Richard Franklin

Cast: Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marion Edward

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

It’s a darn-tootin’ shame when I pop on one of my scheduled slasher flicks and it turns out to be a less-than exemplary purveyor of the form. No masked killer, no gore, no body count – it’s enough to make me worry whether or not I made a misstep in my research and accidentally spliced a romantic comedy into my calendar or something.

Road Games is one of those films. It’s about as far from a slasher as you can get while still maintaining the general formula and without, say, starring Meg Ryan. But it compounds the problem by being one of the most genuinely interesting flicks of the flock, much like the worrisomely categorized Motel Hell from way back yonder in 1980. Why oh why do the best movies in this project have to be the ones that turn themselves away from slasherdom?

I mean, we all know the answer to that but I’m electing to ignore it.

Road Games tells the story of the lonesome trucker Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach), who drives he highways of Australia (oh yeah, did I mention that this flick is Australian? They had a surprising wealth of slasher output in the early 80’s) delivering meat, entertaining himself by playing the harmonica along with the radio, playing word games, imagining stories for the other drivers along the road, and engaging in comic banter with his dog, Boswell the Dingo. However, his games begin to go sour when he picks up a hitchhiker who spots a man digging a hole on the side of the road during a game of 20 Questions. The very same man who he happened to see at a motel last night with a beautiful young woman who has since gone missing. In the very same town where a maniac is on the loose cutting up beautiful young women.

Forget 20 Questions. Now Quid only has two: Is this man in the green van a murderer, and will he strike again? On the road he picks up a girl who he calls Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis) and together they speculate on the identity of the man, chasing the van from truck stop to truck stop along the desolate outback en route to Perth. When Hitch herself is captured, Quid becomes the prime suspect and he finds himself on the run to catch the culprit, save Hitch’s life, and clear his name before the meat in the back thaws.

The meat delivery business is a very high steaks industry.

As you can probably surmise from my description, Road Games is a goofy road movie that slowly boils into a pulse-pounding crime thriller though it’s hardly a dyed-in-the-wool slasher. It’s terrifically strange, strangely terrific, and uniquely Australian, but it’s slasher elements don’t so much occur within the narrative as they do around it. The way that these elements are integrated into Quid’s restless jokes and games is superbly piano wire thrilling, but it’s a through-the-looking-glass entry in the genre to say the least.

The quickest description that comes to mind is that Road Games is like National Lampoon’s take on Duel. Its loony outback sense of humor seeps in through every pore, from the Mont Python-esque names given to its roadside ensemble (who Quid sees time and time again in different combinations at various rest stops along his journey – a clever, realistic touch) like Captain Careful or Sneezy Rider to the casual banter between Curtis and Keach regarding the murderer’s methods. It dances a little too close to the keen knife edge of wackiness in some slapstick scenes, but for the most part the atmosphere of effortless comedy propels the thriller elements straight to the core when they do arrive.

If any single person is responsible for the success of this highly unusual thematic pairing, it’s Stacy Keach. A large portion of Road Games is what can only be described as a one man show, and he has the ability to tune into the needs of each scene with the ease of a skilled chef knowing exactly how much spice to add without overpowering the soup. And naturally Jamie Lee Curtis is great too, but her hardly-a-cameo fifteen minute role is almost more thankless than her appearance as a headshot in Halloween 4. No, this is Keach’s vehicle and he drives it like a well-oiled machine. I’m genuinely dismayed that he didn’t’ work ore outside of the realm of comedy, because his Robin Williams meets Dennis Weaver mien is really working for me.

I’m glad I write about slashers. There’s no way a romantic comedy project would provide this many startling combinations of adjectives.

Of course, if Road Games were the glistening slice of pure cinema perfection that I’ve thus far made it out to be, we’d be talking about it in terms of awards buzz or in conversation with the rest of the crime thriller classics, instead of here in my lowly backlog of slasher reviews. Because no, it ain’t perfect. It’s ramshackle, rough around the edges, and unmistakably Less Than. Whatever it has, there’s never enough. There’s not enough gore, not enough Jamie Lee, not enough incident… It’s terrific at what it does, but it’s low budget and low key, content to stay in the slow lane and ruminate while chomping its cud. This is certainly not a detraction, but it prevents it from entering the upper echelon of true classic films.

That said, for what he had to work with, director Richard Franklin makes his film sing. Although the first two acts are aesthetically competent (smashing lonely wide shots and Duel-esque glimpses at the speedometer), in the third all hell breaks loose. Franklin opens Pandora’s box, unleashing every ounce of directorial talent at his disposal all at once in a glorious visual crescendo. Highway imagery (concrete, glass, and rushing metal) collides with organic matter in a sickeningly beautiful manner, most memorably in a shot where Quid’s eyes are drowned out by the glow of the van’s taillights, giving him demonically mechanical red eyes. His descent into madness is captured by the frenetic, magnetic imagery on display in hat is one of the most visually inventive sequences of the whole year

I liked it a lot, can you tell?

Really, all of these things merely endeavor to make Road Games a more confusing film. The more I fall in love with it, the stranger and more alienating it gets. And while I can admit that it’s far from a masterpiece, it holds an iron grip over my heart. Really, all I can say is that you won’t regret checking this one out for yourself. Don’t expect a slasher, don’t expect to be scared, don’t expect, well… anything. Just get ready for a wild and dusty ride.

Killer: Smith or Jones (Grant Page)

Final Girl: Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis), sort of

Sign of the Times: People still hitchhiker instead of just using Uber.

Best Kill: Not really applicable, but the girl who died was playing guitar naked, if that’s of particular interest to you.

Scariest Moment: Quid keeps watch on who he thinks is the killer in the restroom while Hitch sneaks into his van.

Weirdest Moment: There’s a mural on a rest stop wall depicting soldiers massacring aborigines. Nobody seems to care.

Champion Dialogue: “No, it’s 'Q-U-I-D'. 'D' as in 'death to young girls'."

Body Count: 2

1. Naked Guitar Chick is garroted.
2. Some Girl is decapitated and split in half offscreen.

TL;DR: Road Games is a surreally strange, goofy thriller yet an utterly effective one.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1279

Take A Look, It's In A Book

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 2014

Director: Jennifer Kent

Cast: Essie David, Noah Wiseman, Benjamin Winspear

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The hype machine is an insatiable monster more devastating than any horror villain. And the Australian psychological shocker The Babadook has been its victim for the past couple months, receiving rave reviews and accolades with many critics proclaiming it as the scariest movie of the year. Many audience members are bound to be disappointed because the film sold to them isn't quite what they will receive. 

This is a massive shame because, much like The Exorcist (a victim of the even more deadly "scariest movie of all time" hype), The Babadook is a downright fantastic horror film with nuance and insurmountable tension. By a first-time director who is also a woman, no less! It's a low budget masterwork that will chill your spine to sub-zero temperatures so severe that Walt Disney himself will be thawed before you ever feel warm again. It's easy to love. But it is a more subtle, understated horror than the reviews make it sound.

No, you won't be jolting out of your seat during The Babadook. You likely won't have nightmares after your screening. You may not even be "scared" for a single frame of the 93 minute run time. But that isn't a detraction. The Babadook is more insidious than that. Instead of throwing all its energy into startling the viewer, it gets into the back of your mind and starts slowly squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until you want to scream "Make it stop!" In fact, I've never seen a movie in my life that I more dearly wished to be over, to end the screaming torment of the mind.

And there goes the hype machine again. The Babadook has that way about it. Of wiggling itself into the deep crevasses of your brain cavity and peeking out over the edge, daring you to love it. It's hard not to. And once the dust settles, people will see the film for what it is: a tiny film with a minuscule budget that borrows more tropes than it creates. But The Babadook synthesizes these elements into the best possible iteration of itself that it could be within those constraints.

With all the trauma that that implies.

Many people are eager to forgive an indie movie for its flaws, stating that due to the limitations of the budget it couldn't be exactly what it wanted to be. This is a rare example of a film that achieves its exact intention to great success, but it is of necessity a smaller, more intimate affair. At certain (few) points, I do wish that the intentions were slightly larger with a budget to match, but The Babadook deserves no pity. It is shrill, taut, adventurous, visually stunning, and one of the best horror films of the year, "scary" or not.

It tells the story of Amelia (Essie Davis), a young mother who works at a nursing home. She struggles to care for her six-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) - in every sense of the word. Raising him is a chore due to his shrill disobedience, and his very existence is a grim reminder of the loss of her husband Oskar (Benjamin Winspear), who died in a car crash on the way to the hospital when Amelia was in labor.

As she faces the challenge of dealing with a lifetime of raising a child she's not sure she wants to have, a mysterious pop-up storybook appears on her shelf, telling the tale of one Mr. Babadook, a monster who sneaks into kids' bedrooms during the night wearing a friendly disguise, before gobbling them up. Naturally Samuel doesn't quite want to sleep after reading it, and over the next few weeks his constant bleating about the monster drives his mother crazy. When strange happenings begin, well, happening around the house, is it Mr. Babadook after her son's soul? Or is it something far more sinister inside Amelia's own mind?

Mind you, I think we'd all go a little bananas after finding this on our doorstep.

The answer to this question is far less obvious than in Oculus, which set up a fantastic Haunted Mirror vs. Damaged Girl plot before quickly spinning into Yeah OK There's Ghosts Let's Eat A Light Bulb. It's still a good film, but The Babadook on the other hand prolongs any revelations, letting the audience marinate in psychological torment, making it a great film.

The Babadook explores an area of motherhood that pushes the boundaries of traditional cinema, even in the horror genre. Many similar films with single mother protagonists (like The Ring or New Nightmare) focus entirely on a brave woman's attempts to save the life of her child. But The Babadook fearlessly asks the question: What if the brave woman has to face this threat to her child but doesn't actually care for the little stinker all that much?

I won't spoil things by leading you through the layers of metaphor involved in this process, though I could - and might - write an essay on it at a later date because that's how delicious the subtext is to chew on.

Yummy yummy childr- metaphors.

The beauty of The Babadook is that, in the midst of this daring tale of child rearing gone wrong, it combines age-old tropes of the genre into new meanings. Whether its things that go bump in the night, or bugs that appear where the patently shouldn't be, the horror of this horror film comes from how its events are depicted, not what they actually are.

The film's brilliant use of editing and sound design hammer the audience over and over, even if the scene is something as simple as watching TV or going to the doctor. Whether it's amplifying normal sounds by a thousand percent or creating an entirely new sonic experience for a familiar sound, the audio pummels the senses, battering the ears into submission. And the rhythm of the editing is thoroughly modern, using smash cuts and abrupt halts in music as well as alternating between smooth, swooping shots and quick 'n dirty choppiness.

This erratic pattern keeps viewers on their toes, all the while slowly turning the dial to Boil. By the end of a whirlwind scene, the sound and fury is enough to shake tears out of one's eyes through pure, unmodulated power. Not to knock the actors, who are brilliant (even the kid, thankfully), but even Essie David's door-busting performance is no match for the pure cinema of the best moments of the film.

The Babadook is an exercise in tension, preferring to create prolonged, unbearable pressure rather than momentary frights.

Although closets are never not scary.

The Babadook does have its share of flaws, though they are extremely minor. It gets a little pacy in the first act, and it has a touch of Third Act Syndrome when the finale unspools with a "kitchen sink" mentality. But this is not a film to miss. It's improbable that everyone will be able to see it in theaters thanks to its unsettlingly brief visit to our shores, but I urge any horror hounds to check this out on their nearest VOD outlet. 

Since, presumably, you are using the Internet to read this, the nearest one is in your hands. Close out this page and watch The Babadook right now. Don't expect the film to shock you out of your Armani socks (since you're reading this, you're obviously the epitome of fashion and taste), but appreciate it for its clever, nauseatingly nerve-wracking ability to twist your soul apart.

TL;DR: The Babadook is so tense, you should print out coupons for a Deep Tissue Massage before going into the theater.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 1294

Horror on Party Beach

For our podcast episode about this very film, please click here.

Hello! The time has come for my big announcement!

I just got hired to write for an indie publication called CinemaBeach. It's unpaid, but there are some press perks and it's a very exciting opportunity.

I will be running a horror column called Killer Waves and reviewing new indie horror releases, which means I get to go to the Laemmle Theatre in Beverly Hills (and the nearby Sprinkles Cupcake ATM) a lot more often.

I will of course keep posting here. I like to review every movie I see and CinemaBeach has no use for mainstream movie reviews.

However, when I write a post for the website, I will link to it here and consider my work done for the day. One post a day is my goal and I don't think anybody can complain if that post is in a slightly different format.

My first official review in my new capacity is of the Australian import 100 Bloody Acres, and please check it out. I'm very excited.

Note: Because the format is different on CinemaBeach and doesn't include ratings, I will post my usual information here along with a link to the article.

100 Bloody Acres

Year: 2013

Director: Cameron Cairnes

Cast: Damon Herriman, Angus Sampson, Anna McGahan

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Leave it to the Aussies to find the fun in bloody mayhem. 100 Bloody Acres is filled with wicked glee ,whether it’s presenting a severed hand, a vat of carnage, or a local radio jingle. Taking place in a small town in the Australian Outback, the film follows a group of three teenagers who are on their way to a music festival. When their car breaks down (as vehicles in these types of movies are wont to do), they are given a lift by Reg Morgan (Damon Herriman) of Morgan Organic, a local blood and bone fertilizer company.

Unfortunately, times have been tough for Reg and his brother Lindsay (Angus Sampson) and they have been forced to cut corners in order to make ends meet. Lately Reg has been culling new blood and bone material by appropriating still warm bodies from roadside wrecks. He is in the middle of delivering a bloody metalhead when the hitchhikers discover the corpse and the brothers are faced with a tough decision.

On one hand, they could threaten them to keep their mouths shut and send them on their merry way.

On the other, they could really use fresh fertilizer for a big delivery this afternoon.

What ensues are hearty laughs, geysers of blood, and a comic examination of the interactions between country folk and city slickers. This horror comedy is decidedly more funny than scary (the filmmakers were more keen on making you cringe instead of shriek), but the humor is so devilish that the dearth of scare sequences is not to be lamented. Some would even go so far as to call this film a straight comedy, but the humor is hung on the framework of movies like Saw or Hostel, and in fact could not have existed without their influence. As it happens, the audience is too busy laughing to discuss the intricacies of genre.

A standout performance is Damon Herriman, whose Reg is simple, polite to a fault (even when taping someone’s mouth shut), and too scared of his big brother to raise a stink when it comes to his alternative business methods. Cute as a puppy dog, Herriman somehow manages to make Reg an audience favorite despite some of his more morally reprehensible actions. His inherent goodness hangs in the balance of a delightfully subtle portrayal for which the filmmakers should be immensely grateful. Drinking a juice box while covered in blood is a naturally funny concept. But with Herriman behind the wheel, it is not only a silly gag but an important character moment.

Also a standout is Anna McGahan’s Sophie, a strong woman whose role is key in subverting the historically misogynistic slant of the torture genre that the film is riffing on. There is a particularly vicious case of slut shaming at the middle mark that would make any feminist cringe, but the characters that view Sophie’s sexuality as immoral get their comeuppance in the end. In fact, a diatribe against her actions is explicitly detrimental to one character’s survival. It reflects very well on the filmmakers that they not only take a stance on a hot button issue, but avoid bludgeoning the audience with a “moral”. It’s obvious that we should root for her character, and we do. That’s all there is to it, no need to make a fuss.

One of the biggest strengths of the movie (besides Sophie being one tough sheila) is that every character’s actions logically follow from their circumstances and personality. Albeit that logic is somewhat twisted, but it makes perfect sense in the heightened cinematic reality of the film. There is a complete lack of dumb horror movie character behavior and, though mistakes are made, the setups are unforced and avoid the common “Don’t go in the basement, stupid!” pitfalls.

Regrettably, sometimes Australia-specific jokes or concepts will fall flat for American audiences (John Butler? Australia Day?), but in general the humor is broad enough for international audiences to enjoy and sharp enough that even if one doesn’t understand a particular cultural reference, it frequently adds to the absurdity rather than detracting from the audience’s understanding. But that is beside the point, because the film is necessarily Australian. Many plot points hinge on social, economical, and environmental structures unique to the country. For example, many horror movies accentuate the protagonist’s predicament by placing her in a far-off location where nobody can hear her scream – the mountains, a cabin in the woods, and sometimes even space.

In Australia, every single place is like that.

The movie is far from flawless, but the humor is satisfying and rich, the gore is suitably realistic and campy for the bloodthirsty horror faithful, and the underlying message is sincere but not too preachy. 100 Bloody Acres is a must-see for fans of comedy and horror alike, although more squeamish audience members may wish to sit this one out.

TL;DR: Bloody good fun, with a uniquely feminist and frequently hilarious riff on the backwoods torture genre.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money on This? It might be hard to catch it in a theater, but it's a worthy film to catch on demand for a night in.

Word Count: 908