The specifics of the plot aren’t entirely clear, or really even necessary. Suffice to say loads of beautiful young blonde women arrive at the school and soon begin disappearing, but only Angela (Olivia Pascal) seems to notice anything is wrong. Who could be killing all these young women? Is it Miguel, driven mad by returning to the scene of his crime? Antonio, the horny young gardener who the girls constantly bicker over? Alvaro, seemingly the only teacher at the school, who creepily hangs out with all the students? Or is it Bueno, the simple-minded handyman? Actually, you can count Bueno out the second you lay eyes on him. He can barely stand up straight and hold his pruning shears.
Bloody Moon would be a straightforward slasher, but it becomes something much weirder than that thanks to Jesús Franco’s bizarre style. In an interview on the Blu-ray (ported over from the previous DVD release), Franco explains that he was hired by the producers to deliver a horror movie, but that once he got the script he had to take everything but the basic setup out and start over again.
The result is still undeniably Jesús Franco, but a bit more accessible than his weirder films. None of the characters display anything remotely resembling human behavior, and at least one scene entirely depends on a character not understanding how shadows work. Bloody Moon is packed with hilariously bad dialogue and moments of inexplicable (/accidental?) humor, but it also delivers the gruesome goods. There’s a reason this film was on “Video Nasties” list, after all, and it has some surprisingly great makeup and gore effects for such a clearly slapdash production.
Severin’s new Blu-ray looks fantastic. Severin has not stated what the source of the new transfer was, but it looks like it could well have been the original negative. There are a few sequences where the video quality drops drastically, likely scenes that were lost on film and transferred and cut back in from inferior video tape sources, but these shots are fleeting (mostly gore inserts running a few seconds), and honestly only add to the unsettling camp nature of the film itself. For anyone looking for a good entry point into Franco’s intimidating filmography, there might be no better place to start. And for anyone looking to upgrade their Video Nasties collection to Blu-ray, this one’s a no-brainer.
Bloomington (2010)
Originally published on Film Monthly 17 April 2011
As a filmgoer, seeing too many references to other films in the promotion for a particular movie almost always sets off red flags. Either the comparisons are completely incorrect, or they set expectations much higher than the film can actually deliver. So it was with some apprehension that I approached Bloomington, as its press materials mentioned another film called Loving Annabelle multiple times. Sure enough, the comparison really doesn’t stick: while the two films share similar themes and storylines, Bloomington comes off as a less interesting version of Loving Annabelle.
Sarah Stouffer plays Jackie, a young actress who heads for college in the Midwest after the popular science fiction series in which she starred is canceled. The audience is probably supposed to find Jackie a little aloof but endearing, but unfortunately the character zooms past “somewhat awkward” and directly into “spoiled brat.” Jackie has zero tolerance for anyone who mentions her television show past, then complains to her mother that she’s having trouble making friends. One friend she makes very quickly is Catherine (Allison McAtee), an attractive teacher with a reputation for bedding students. Jackie and Catherine meet at a school mixer seemingly days after the semester starts and, after a very brief conversation, Catherine takes Jackie home to spend the night.
One of the major problems with Bloomington is its pacing and sense of time. The way the film is structured, it literally looks like Jackie starts school one day, spends the night with Catherine a couple of days later, and has completely moved in with her right away. This begs many questions: why doesn’t anyone notice the famous freshman who got a special single room never uses it (much to the annoyance of the RA who shows Jackie the room when she moves in)? Is it really not a big deal at all that a professor and a student are carrying on such a brazen affair? Jackie and Catherine don’t seem to have all that much in common, either, except for a similar disdain for most all other human beings.
Including, as it turns out, each other. When Jackie gets a call to audition to reprise her role from the television series, Catherine snaps and begins treating Jackie like an unwanted houseguest. Jackie alienates Catherine by inviting her to a party thrown by one of the film’s producers but not explaining their relationship to the other party guests, and she gets a vicious (and well-deserved) slap across the face from her mother after mouthing off to her family during a holiday dinner. These two lead characters are just not likeable in any way: Catherine is desperate and clingy but verbally abusive, Jackie is simply a spoiled rich kid who goes completely Billy Bob Thornton whenever things don’t go exactly the way she wants. This makes it really difficult for the audience to get too invested in their relationship, which is a deadly misstep for a film entirely about that relationship.
Loving Annabelle, directed by Katherine Brooks, is similarly about a teacher/student attraction. However, the specifics are what make all the difference: instead of taking place at a large public college, the action takes place in a small Catholic girls’ school. Annabelle is a rebellious teenage girl, the daughter of a prominent local politician, and Simone, the teacher Annabelle works toward seducing over the course of the film, is deeply closeted and has spent her entire life at the school. The stakes in their relationship are very high, and the film’s languid pacing allows the audience plenty of time to learn about the characters and understand how they come to the point where they are willing to risk everything for each other. While Simone and Annabelle are certainly not perfect, they are at least fully-rounded characters with whom the viewer can identify.
Nothing seems to be at stake in the central relationship of Bloomington, especially given the way things turn out. Not to spoil anything, but neither Jackie nor Catherine seem to come out of the experience having learned anything or changed in any significant way. Loving Annabelle managed exactly the opposite in barely over 70 minutes, while Bloomington races through its plot and still leaves hardly any impression at over 90 minutes. Promoting a film by invoking another film is inviting the audience to choose which is the better use of time, and in this case the clear-cut winner is Loving Annabelle.
Book of Blood (2009)
Originally published on Film Monthly 23 September 2009
Clive Barker adaptations have, traditionally, had a history of inconsistency. For every great Barker film (Hellraiser), there’s one equally dire (Rawhead Rex). Fans were excited when news got around about the new “Films of Blood,” a series of adaptations based on Barker’s stories from his Books of Blood. This new series got off to a rough start with Ryûhei Kitamura’s pointlessly hyperactive adaptation of The Midnight Meat Train, after which it’s impossible to know what to expect. And so it comes as a refreshing surprise that the next film, John Harrison’s Book of Blood, is a return to more elegant, restrained filmmaking. Kitamura’s key charm is that he’s not happy unless a camera is being flung somewhere ridiculous, bogging down The Midnight Meat Train with an air of stubborn excess. Book of Blood, in comparison, feels like a classical haunted house movie, and in some ways it is. Based on a story now over two decades old, some of the horrors Barker pioneered feel almost quaint.
An adaptation of the stories “The Book of Blood” and “On Jerusalem Street,” Book of Blood is similarly set up as a frame story for the other “Films of Blood.” Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong) is a student of psychic researcher Mary Florescu (Sophie Ward), who is investigating possible paranormal activity at an infamously haunted house. Allegedly horrible murders took place in the house years before, and the house has since become a magnet for paranormal junkies. Simon agrees to help Mary in her research and stays in the house’s attic room, and soon enough strange events begin to occur that defy rational explanation, while Simon and Mary’s relationship becomes somethi
ng more than that of teacher and student.
Book of Blood is, for the most part, a slow-burning haunted house story. There’s a strong attraction between Simon and Mary, and their chemistry imbues the film with some of the trademark sensuality of Barker’s work. The solid performances and powerful atmosphere of supernatural unease make the film feel like something of a throwback, although not necessarily in a bad way. Barker’s work in general and the Books of Blood in particular have been so hugely successful and influential that revisiting the originals feels like returning to familiar territory. All this goodwill is almost enough to make you look past the weak special effects toward the film’s finale, which unfortunately mar what is otherwise a solid horror show.
Still, there’s more than enough good here to recommend Book of Blood to any horror fan, and despite the dodgy CGI the film earns a lot of goodwill through sheer class. Watching it is like slipping into a comfortable old sweater, or that first outfit you made out of human skin. Here’s hoping future Barker adaptations err more on the side of restraint and less on the side of pointless stylistic excess.
The Box (2009)
Originally published on Film Monthly 7 November 2009
The fact that The Box is Richard Kelly’s most accessible and straightforward film so far is unquestionable. This is the man responsible for Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, after all. Donnie Darko quickly became a cult favorite due in part to its numerous loose ends, and a strong online community of fans devoted to dissecting the film and teasing out its secrets. Southland Tales took the sci-fi surrealism of Donnie Darko and cross-bred it with Magnolia– a sprawling, bizarre epic full of intriguing concepts and inspired imagery, even if it did feel like Kelly’s reach far exceeded his grasp, and keeping the audience up on what the hell was going on seemed to be pretty low on the list of priorities.
With The Box, Kelly returns to a more intimate suburban canvas, but retains most of the obsessions that have become his trademark. The first half of the film is mostly a recognizable adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button” (also adapted as an episode of the 1980s incarnation of The Twilight Zone). Arthur and Norma Lewis (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz), a couple living in 1970s Richmond, Virginia, are presented with a device by a strange man, Arlington Steward (Frank Langella). Steward delivers the device to their home and returns later with an ultimatum: they have 24 hours to push the large button on top of the device. If they push it, they will receive $1 million in cash and someone who they do not know will die.
The deck seems stacked against Arthur and Norma by the time they get around to seriously discussing what to do with the button: Arthur is rejected for astronaut training and Norma learns that the faculty discount that allows their son Walter (Sam Oz Stone) to attend private school is being discontinued. Additionally, Norma needs a surgery for her foot, disfigured years before in an accident. Under the circumstances, pressing the button seems justified. Unfortunately, once the bargain is made it cannot be undone, and one of the rules of the deal is that Norma and Arthur are never to discuss their encounter with Steward with anyone. Arthur, worried sick by his conscience, tries to find information on Steward, and soon the Lewis family seems surrounded by Steward’s “employees.”
Despite its strange subject matter, The Box is almost more of a family drama than a sci-fi thriller. Kelly gives the action of the film a solid foundation in the Lewis family and their relationships with each other. James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are both excellent, and it’s easy to identify and sympathize with their actions. The film has many creepy moments, but it’s more unnerving than overtly horrific. By the end, it becomes clear that The Box is basically a Greek tragedy in Ice Storm drag more than anything else. And, once again, Kelly leaves the audience with more questions than answers.
It’s hard to imagine The Box being a big mainstream hit, which is unfortunate as it seems Kelly could really use one after the difficulties he had with Southland Tales. If anything, The Box proves that Kelly at his most accessible is still more than willing to challenge audiences with unusual concepts and leave them chewing on a film long after it’s over. In short, The Box is one of the best major-studio American films of the year. And now I’m more curious than ever about what Richard Kelly might be up to next.
The Boy (2016)
Originally published on Film Monthly 10 May 2016
2016 has been a big year for prosaic horror film titles. The Forest, The Witch, The Other Side of the Door, and The Darkness will all have seen release before half the year is over. Other than The Witch, all of these films are (or in the case of the as yet unreleased The Darkness, look like they will be) pretty standard early-year studio multiplex filler. The Boy, for the most part, is just another one of these products as well. When discussing mid-level American studio horror releases like these, it helps to put them in context with their peers. For example, saying The Boy is definitely better than The Forest but not as good as The Lazarus Effect may help the viewer looking for a passable genre time-waster decide whether or not to give it a look.
Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan) is an American woman who takes a position as a nanny for an older couple in the UK. She is somewhat taken aback when she learns that her charge is not a child but a life-sized doll made to look like Brahms, the son the Heelshires tragically lost many years before. They treat him like a real boy, even continuing to home school him. When they leave Greta and Brahms alone, she blows off his regimented schedule until strange things start happening with the doll that have no apparent explanation. She begins to treat Brahms like a real boy, too, much to the alarm of grocery deliveryman Malcolm (Rupert Evans), Greta’s only acquaintance during her time at the house. But a secret from Greta’s past looms, and threatens her future and Brahms’s.
For its first hour or so, The Boy is a pretty solid and relatively classy studio horror movie. It looks great, with detailed and evocative production design and atmosphere to spare. Lauren Cohan has to handle some tricky emotional beats and acquits herself admirably for the most part. The film starts to fall apart ramping up into its finale by having one of the main characters make a decision so unbelievably ludicrous it’s laugh-out-loud funny. From that point on the explanation for what’s going on is unraveled, and like many horror movies the more that is revealed about the strange goings-on the less interesting the film becomes. It also doesn’t help that the finale is lifted almost wholesale from a popular and well-received international horror/comedy from just a couple of years ago.
Still, contrary to its typically shrill trailer, the film doesn’t lean as hard on jump scares as many of its contemporaries. Director William Brent Bell gets a lot of mileage out of Greta’s uncertainty in dealing with this unusual situation, and the tiny supporting cast sets the stage nicely. This is certainly not a new classic, but it’s also nowhere near the worst American studio horror movie to be released this year. It’s a shame that the story falls back on blatant mimicry of a much more successful recent genre film; the final impression left by The Boy is one of a slightly better than average PG-13 horror movie made from off-the-shelf parts. It’s not quite as generic as its title might suggest, but viewers may well remember it that way.
Breeders (1986)
Originally published on Film Monthly 6 November 2015
Home video company Olive Films has been releasing an impressive slate of interesting movies that have fallen by the wayside in the transition between VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, giving a number of obscure films their first legitimate U.S. release and upgrading a number of others. These have included everything from big-studio comedies to overlooked horror films that bigger companies have been reluctant to give the Blu-ray treatment. One of the latest is Tim Kincaid’s 1987 low-budget sci-fi/horror Breeders, previously released in 2011 on DVD by MGM but now given a new HD transfer for the first time.
A rash of violent sexual assaults has New York police detective Dale Andriotti (Lance Lewman) desperate to find the culprit and end his reign of terror. The only p
roblem is that all of the victims have reported different assailants, despite identical patterns of attack. Doctor Gamble Pace (Teresa Farley) reluctantly teams up with Andriotti as they investigate this strange mystery, which leads them to the abandoned tunnels beneath the city. Time is running out as the insectoid monsters continue their mission, leaving a mounting pile of victims in their wake. What do they want, and will Andriotti and Pace be able to stop them before it’s too late?
Breeders was made at the same time as writer/director Kincaid’s Mutant Hunt. Both films were released on VHS by Wizard Video, a cult imprint that has recently come back into the spotlight thanks to Full Moon Pictures’ recent re-release of a number of Wizard Video titles. Somehow Breeders has ended up in MGM’s hands, but it still feels like a Full Moon/Wizard Video production. There’s a lot of completely gratuitous nudity, some really bad acting, and some obviously cheap but effective gore and makeup effects. The film’s storyline suggests an urban take on Humanoids from the Deep, but Breeders is not quite as ghoulishly exploitative as that film. That said, this is still a movie in which women are raped by a bug-eyed monster, and that makes for some uncomfortable viewing.
When it’s not indulging in alien rape and leering at nude female bodies, Breeders displays an almost impressive lack of interest in filmmaking standards. There are a number of unintentionally humorous moments of awkward editing and/or acting throughout the film, but the finale stands out as a noteworthy example of how not to stage an action-packed climax. For most of the last ten minutes or so of the film, instead of doing anything to stop the impending doom of humanity the lead characters stand around looking bored while the monsters’ plot is explained to them in detail. Luckily Breeders at least never overstays its welcome, clocking in at right around 77 minutes including end credits. This is a fairly typical mid-80s sci-fi/horror that ticks all the boxes for content fans could expect. It’s hardly a lost classic, but horror fans looking for inspired practical effects and pointless T&A will find Breeders fits the bill.
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