The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  It is exceedingly rare that I have literally nothing positive to say about a film at all, but this is definitely one of those cases. The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol is an ugly, disgusting, aggressively unfunny film. All of its humor comes from a place of hatred and cruelty. From a technical standpoint, it looks terrible and doesn’t sound much better. Trimming about twenty minutes might have helped make it easier to sit through, but otherwise wouldn’t likely improve anything. Its underlying messages are tired and unsurprising, and it offers no fresh insights other than the fact that things may be even worse for humanity than we could have possibly imagined.

  Perhaps making this film helped Tommy Pistol deal with some of his issues regarding working in the porn industry and his struggles trying to make it in the mainstream, in which case it at least did him some good. However, he really should have kept it to himself. The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol is a black hole of hopelessness, misery and regret. If you spend any time with it, you will immediately find yourself angry and sad, infected with its staggering negativity, as if the only way that Tommy could feel better was to make a film that makes you feel as bad as he does about himself. Why would anyone elect to spend their time this way?

  Breaking Glass Pictures and Vicious Circle Films released The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol on DVD on 27 March 2012. The DVD has a number of extras too depressing to describe.

  Halloween II (2009)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 28 August 2009

  Rob Zombie is nothing if not a divisive figure in horror culture. His films have often split horror audiences right down the middle– he has die-hard fans and bitter detractors in almost equal numbers. This should come as no surprise given that he established his name as a musician before moving into filmmaking, a career choice met with excitement by his fan base and apprehension by many horror fans. Despite what anyone thinks of Zombie’s films (or music, for that matter), there’s no arguing that the man is a hardcore horror aficionado whose sensibilities are informed by an all-embracing love for the macabre.

  Halloween II is probably– probably– not going to change anyone’s mind about Zombie as a director one way or the other. It’s a strange beast, taking the revived series in a more supernatural direction that the “realistic” first entry in the new franchise. It’s probably not what anyone was expecting, which isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, but it’s certainly a nice surprise.

  The bulk of the film takes place one year after the events of 2007′s Halloween and follows three storylines, each focusing on a different character. Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is now basically the adopted daughter of Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif), working at a coffee shop for an old hippie and going to therapy for, well, obvious reasons. Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) has written a book exploiting Michael Myers’s murder spree and has become something of a bastard, obsessed with publicity and dangerously self-centered. Michael (Tyler Mane), presumed dead after the events of the first film, wanders around in the countryside before making his way back to Haddonfield for Halloween, accompanied by the ghost/hallucination(?) of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie), communicating with her via his inner child (Chase Vanek). Eventually, all three characters come together again on Halloween night.

  One of the major differences between Halloween II and the first film is apparent right away– shot on 16mm film, Halloween II has an appropriately grimy grindhouse atmosphere, and this distinct look is one of the film’s biggest assets. Zombie doesn’t skimp on the brutality and delivers some truly nasty kills and buckets of blood. The deceptive “low-budget” look renders the violence disturbingly immediate, most notably in a strip-joint slaughter that (intentionally or not) brings to mind the opening of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. The surreal dream/hallucination sequences are also made several shades weirder given that some of them almost look like they were lifted from a Guy Maddin movie. Stylistically, Zombie is all over the place, but the schizophrenic tone is fitting.

  Unfortunately, the film relies far too much on loud noises and jump scares when it’s obvious that Zombie is capable of more understated creepiness. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if, like the recent Friday the 13th remake, there was any hint that the audience is supposed to be having a good time. Halloween II is relentlessly bleak, only periodically lightened by (generally awkward) humor. The point is clearly to rattle the audience, which of course works– so would setting off cherry bombs behind the seats. Aside from the focus on jolts rather than scares, there are a lot of other problems, not least of which is the fact that Laurie and her friends (and would-be saviors) are mostly not very interesting. It also seems very strange that Laurie and the Brackett family seem to have hired Rob Zombie as their interior decorator: the Alice Cooper poster and spray-painted pentagram in the bathroom are more than a little distracting.

  Despite being seriously flawed, there’s no doubt that Rob Zombie’s Halloween II is a better sequel than the original Halloween II was to the classic first film. It looks amazing, and clearly shows that Zombie is capable of delivering the horrific goods. It’s not a great film but it’s certainly better than it has any right to be, and the ending signals an interesting new direction for the franchise if it continues from here. A completely different direction than the original series, to be sure, but if it isn’t, what’s the point?

  Hardware (1990)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 15 October 2009

  Hardware has long been one of those films that fans have been clamoring for on DVD. Tied up in the same sort of red tape that has held up the release of other cult films, Hardware seemed like a lost cause. Thankfully, Severin Films has finally released not just a bare-bones disc with a passable transfer– more than we ever expected to get in the first place– but a full-on Special Edition worthy of its capital letters. Hopefully now that the film is widely available it will get the audience it’s been denied for all those years between its original release on VHS in the 1990s and today.

  The film opens with a scavenger making his way across a vast, red desert. It quickly becomes clear that this is taking place in some sort of bleak post-apocalypse: the man is scavenging battlefields strewn with human corpses and parts of machines. He finds a twitching mechanical hand and what appears to be a robot skull, which he takes into a city to sell. Here, he encounters Moe (Dylan McDermott) and Shades (John Lynch). Moe buys the scrap as a Christmas present for his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis), an artist who works with metal and refuse. Unfortunately, they discover too late that the skull is the brain of a new military robot called the Mark 13, able to reconstitute its body with whatever is on hand. While Moe is out of the apartment, Jill is left to face the Mark 13 alone.

  While there are many familiar elements in Hardware, writer/director Richard Stanley gives them enough of a twist to keep things interesting. The world of Hardware is almost gleefully nihilistic. Even the popular radio announcer Angry Bob (Iggy Pop) happily proclaims “As for the good news, there is no fucking good news!” The sky is red, the government is enforcing mass sterilization, and an unnamed conflict rages on endlessly. The city in which Hardware takes place doesn’t seem to have any cars– everyone walks or takes a taxicab that’s been transmogrified into a boat (driven by Lemmy from Motörhead). Television is packed with images of torture, war, bizarre commercials and ranting madmen. This is not a place to vacation.

  Similarly, once the action changes gears into an Alien-style scenario of a group of people trying to destroy the rampaging monster, interesting concepts keep things fresh. Moe is basically useless against the Mark 13, and Jill is clearly less interested in dealing with the thing than just getting the hell away from it. Stanley keeps the tension ratcheted up tight, letting the Mark 13 release infrequent but very nasty bouts of violence in between unsettling lulls in the action. It’s a great, claustrophobic film that absolutely deserves its rabid cult following.

  Severin has done a fantastic job with the 2-disc DVD set of Hardware. In addition to a beautiful new tr
ansfer, the first disc also includes a feature-length commentary by Stanley. The second disc is packed full of intriguing supplementary material: a nearly hour-long documentary about the making of the film, an early Super-8 version of the film Stanley made in 1985 called Incidents in an Expanding Universe, an interview with Stanley regarding the fate of Hardware 2, 25 minutes of deleted scenes (transferred from a VHS tape in Stanley’s personal collection), Stanley’s first 8mm film Rites of Passage, a 2006 sci-fi short by Stanley called “The Sea of Perdition,” and a collection of promotional videos. It’s hard to imagine there ever being a more definitive release for Hardware than this one.

  Harvest Lake (2016)

  Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 23 March 2016

  Indiana-based filmmaker Scott Schirmer’s film Found made a big impact on the independent horror scene when it started playing festivals in 2013. Found was a unique take on some very familiar material, a story about a young teenager who discovers his older brother is a serial killer. Technically solid and willing to take on uncomfortable and taboo concepts and imagery, it’s no surprise that the film had many horror fans anxious to see what Schirmer would do next. After working as producer and editor on Arthur Cullipher’s Headless and Shane Beasley and Leya Taylor’s The Legend of Wasco (both released in 2015), Schirmer has returned to writing and directing with Harvest Lake, and it’s probably safe to say no one could have seen where Schirmer was going with his latest film.

  The setup is familiar: four young friends head out into the woods for a party weekend. Josh (Jason Crowe) is the birthday boy, and his girlfriend Cat (Tristan Risk, who — full disclosure — is an occasional contributor to Daily Grindhouse) has a special birthday surprise planned for him. Cat’s former roommate Jennifer (Ellie Church) and her friend Ben (Dan Nye) have been invited along, and when they arrive at the cabin Cat invites Mark (Kevin Roach), a camper staying in the woods, to join them for dinner. And before dark falls, the situation takes a few unexpected turns. First Cat explains to Jennifer her plans for Josh’s birthday surprise, then the four friends discover strange plants in the woods and something in the lake that seem to hold an erotic influence over them. The weekend, then, does not go as planned.

  On its surface, Harvest Lake is a take on the “cabin in the woods” horror trope, but one with some distinct tweaks to the formula. Instead of a monster or killers lurking in the woods, the “creatures” here are cleverly designed plants that exert some kind of sexual mind control over anyone who wanders into the woods. These plants, created by Schirmer’s Found and Headless collaborators Clockwerk Creature Company as well as prolific Ohio-based horror filmmaker Dustin Mills, are excellent examples of what inventive genre filmmakers can do with practical effects on a budget. Also like Found, this is technically impressive for a low-budget independent production. It looks great and the sound is mixed well and used to great effect in creating the film’s dreamy but ominous atmosphere.

  Despite its technical impressiveness and interesting concept, though, Harvest Lake never quite feels like it reaches the potential that concept promises. It gets closest during its insane finale, but other than a surprisingly matter-of-fact gay sex scene, the action here never really pushes the boundaries of what we’re used to seeing in independent horror cinema. There are moments where the film feints toward a hybrid of Lovecraftian horror and eroticism, but again until the final minutes of the film it feels like Schirmer and his game cast — once things get really crazy, they all really do go for it — hold back on really committing to the concept. It’s unclear how much of that is due to artistic choice and how much may be due to budgetary restrictions. After all, a microbudget can only buy so many dripping, phallic tentacles.

  That said, Harvest Lake is still unquestionably a much different beast than the typical indie zombie or slasher movie. This is a low-budget horror movie not afraid to include moments of eerie calm, and its commitment to practical creature effects is admirable and exciting. Schirmer’s approach to homosexual characters is hugely refreshing: they’re not uncomfortable stereotypes, they’re not entirely defined by their sexuality, and the film doesn’t blanch at depicting gay sex. That’s virtually nonexistent outside of genre cinema on this level that’s not specifically marketed to a gay audience. Ultimately, Harvest Lake is more proof that Scott Schirmer and his collaborators at Forbidden Films and Mostly Harmless Pictures are capable, passionate filmmakers willing to take chances and deliver something unexpected.

  Hatchet 2 (2010)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 23 February 2011

  Adam Green’s Hatchet came complete with an ad campaign touting the film as “Old School American Horror.” Placing the Old School in the early 80′s, Green’s likable, familiar slasher tribute grafted a strong comedic bent onto Friday the 13th Part 2 and won Green a lot of fans in the horror community. After four years and other slightly more high-profile projects like Frozen, Green has delivered the Hatchet sequel that its rabid fans were clamoring for.

  Or, maybe more accurately, he has delivered a sequel that may or may not be the one the fans wanted. Hatchet 2 strips most of the comedy element from the formula and puts a stronger emphasis on ridiculously gruesome death scenes with some impressive practical effects. However, the amped-up gore doesn’t really make up for the lack of personality– much of the first film’s success was due to Joel Moore’s performance as Ben, who anchored the proceedings with a sympathetic lead character. It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever seen a slasher film that of the male and female leads (Moore and Tamara Feldman, respectively), only one of them carries over into the sequel.

  Picking up literally the second the first film left off, Hatchet 2 opens with Marybeth (now played by Danielle Harris) escaping from the clutches of Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder). She flees to a small cabin where a one-eyed redneck drops a sinister hint about her father’s past and sends her to find Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd). Zombie, who rented the boat carrying the victims of the first film into the swamp, takes up Marybeth’s cause and agrees to put together a team of hunters to go into the swamp, recover his lost boat, and destroy Victor Crowley.

  Once the team is in the woods, they all split up and become fodder for Crowley’s bloodlust. Characters are decapitated, cut in half vertically and horizontally, and otherwise dispatched in a series of scenes that become more cartoonish as the film goes along. The practical effects are pretty great, but for the most part it’s hard to feel too bad for the characters since, for the most part, they’re not that interesting. The first film spent a long time setting up its main character so the audience had at least one character to root for. This one spends a long time setting up some mild retcon of the mythology established in the first film and then delivers quick sketches of the characters before they get chewed up and spat out on the scenery.

  On that front, at least, Hatchet 2 delivers. Gore fans will not be disappointed by the quantity and quality of the kills, but anyone looking for much else will likely find that the film comes up short. Here’s hoping that by the time Hatchet 3 comes around, Green will find the balance between comedy, character, and gore that made the first film so popular in the first place.

  Haunted House on Sorority Row (2014)

  Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 5 March 2014

  Henrique Couto’s Babysitter Massacre was one of the best independent horror films of 2013. In that film, Couto stripped the ‘80s slasher template to the bone and gave it a legitimate updating, even managing to squeeze in some decent characters the audience could give a damn about—a rare thing in most modern horror films, regardless of their budget. Alternative Cinema released the film on DVD and it is now available through Amazon and other online outlets, but aside from some acclaim on various horror blogs, Babysitter Massacre remains an underrated gem, and those who stumbled across it in 2013 were bound to be curious what Couto would do to follow it up.

  On February 21st 2014, that question was answered at the world premiere of Couto’s n
ew horror film, Haunted House on Sorority Row, held at the Englewood Cinema in Englewood, Ohio. A mostly-packed house of cast, crew, friends, family and fans had the chance to check it out in advance of the film’s DVD release in July (again through Alternative Cinema). Fortunately, it does not disappoint, although it does take a completely different approach to the genre than Babysitter Massacre: as the title would suggest, Haunted House on Sorority Row is a supernatural psychological horror film rather than a straightforward slasher. Alex (Joni Durian) is looking to start a new sorority at her college where girls can go who don’t want to deal with on-campus sorority life. She finds a great bargain in a big remote house outside of town, but there’s naturally a catch: according to legend, the place is haunted. The story goes that the house was a brothel when it was first built, and during a particularly brutal winter all the women who lived there froze to death. Alex dismisses any idea of haunting as ridiculous and buys the house anyway.

  Soon after, her new sorority sisters move in: quiet Sherrie (Erin R. Ryan), dedicated cosplay enthusiast Kathryn (Brandi Baird), and heavily tattooed party girl Melissa (Haley Madison). Melissa brings along help, asshole frat boy Jim (Eric Widing) and his much less abrasive friend Dave (Mike Hilinski), who has an obvious crush on Alex. The day starts off promisingly (except for Jim’s constant taunting and complaining), but the girls have barely moved the last box in the door before weird stuff starts happening: all the food brought into the house goes immediately bad, cell phones and Wi-Fi don’t work inside the house but do outside, torches rush past open windows. As the sun goes down, each person in the house is faced with the thing from their lives that they most fear. As their darkest secrets come back to haunt them, will Alex and her friends survive the night? Or are they doomed to the same mysterious fate that befell the women trapped in the house all those long winters ago?