Catfished

Take a look at this DVD cover.

Do you have any idea how excited I was when I found this? You you you oughta know...by now that I love possession movies, no matter how bad they are, so any take on The Exorcist is going to tickle me pea soup green. Thus, it is no surprise I was all "Yo Dorothy, c'mere, girl. Evil chose you, and so do I!"

It wasn't long into the film when I realized that Dorothy Mills is 99 things, but 'a contemporary take on The Exorcist' ain't one. And I don't even know what that "evil chose her" shit is all about, either. That's right, folks...I have been misled. Misled! This is a marketing misstep that brings to mind William Friedkin's Bug, which was shoved into a genre it didn't fit. I get it, you know, why it's done. A film comes along and the PR department gets flustered, tut-tutting as they try to categorize it. What do you do with a Bug? Is it a drama? It won't play with the drama crowd. Is it horror? Mmm, not really. Well, not within the narrow paradigm that "horror movie" tends to bring to mind...but hey, it's close enough! And it's from William "Exorcist" Friedkin, so screw it! Yes, folks will be angry when they find out they've been duped, but what does it matter? By that time, they've already parted with their money. As for the movie's future...long run, shmong run.

And so goes my relationship with Dorothy Mills. I picked it up largely based on that Exorcist reference. I didn't read reviews beforehand because I wanted to remain unspoiled...I wanted to find something new and have the experience in a sort of good ol' days-style information vacuum. I guess you could say it was my fault that this film didn't meet my expectations, except that I arrived at my expectations from the GD marketing. How very frustrating!

It's even more frustrating when you realize that misleading box art does a disservice to a fine film that doesn't need whatever cachet the Exorcist name might lend to it. If anything, it's more akin to, say, The Wicker Man or Dead and Buried and it likely would find as much of an audience among the horror crowd if those films were referenced on the cover. I still would have checked it out! I love an outsider ends up in an insular and quietly hostile community that harbors some bad secrets movies almost as I love possession movies! Just be what you are, Dorothy Mills, and we will give you a chance.

The "outsider" here is Jane van Dopp (Carice van Houten), a psychiatrist who heads to an isolated island community off mainland Ireland to examine and assess troubled young teen Dorothy Mills (Jenn Murray), who was found physically abusing an infant under her care. Locals are both friendly and unfriendly, but none of them want Jane digging too deep. The sooner she heads back to the mainland the better, but what of Dorothy's fate? Will she end up in jail because of the assault? Or is there more going on than is immediately apparent?

Of course there is, what the heck did you think?

Listen, I'm not giving away the rest of the haps with this flick because it should be seen in a good ol' days-style information vacuum. Suffice it to say that while many parts of the film will be familiar to horror fans, it's original enough to satisfy. Really, though, I'll highly recommend it based on Jenn Murray's performance alone. Dorothy's got a lot of demons to battle- none of them Pazuzu, mind- and Murray's range is astonishing.

So look, take a chance on this little gem from writer/director Agnes Merlet. Just, uh, know what kind of gem you're getting.

By: Unknown On 11.33

Continue Reading

I Heart: The Amityville Horror

I came across a copy of John G. Jones's The Amityville Horror II in a bookstore the other day and I got excited in that bug-eyed, hand-clapping simpleton way I have. Somehow this book had escaped my notice for decades despite the fact that I consider myself to be an AmityManiac! Well, to clarify, I'm an AmityManiac who still hasn't seen all of the films, and who didn't know that there were so many goddamn books beyond the "classics" by Jay Anson and Hans Holzer. It's just that The Amityville Horror is as much a part of my formative years as Star Wars and comic books and Donna Summer records and KISS records that I can't help but get my simpleton on whenever 112 Ocean Avenue comes up.

112 Ocean Avenue. What other addresses do people actually know like that, beyond their own and grandma's? 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, maybe. I am just saying.

So, this book. I start flipping through it, giving it a read here and there, and I was shocked- shocked, I tell you- at how it read like fiction. I'm not talking about how "it reads like fiction" is used to compliment history books to reassure the masses that History Can Be Fun and Not Dry! (I made that slogan up, but if you run a history club or whatever you can use it.) (Oh, and a great example of a history book that "reads like fiction" is Erik Larson's Devil in the White City, great book, highly recommend, love you)...I mean that The Amityville Horror II reads like straight-up fiction, as if John G. Jones bent over and pulled the narrative right out of his ass.

I felt...confused. Was this book a work of fiction, further adding to the Amityville mythos? You know, like Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes and the possessed floor lamp (aka the greatest thing to ever grace a screen)? I took to the best source of information: Amazon reviews. There, I was reassured by a helpful reader. Let his (or her; "whytewolf" is a pretty gender-neutral screenname, I suppose) words ease your doubts as well:

WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND IS HOW SOME REVIEWS I HAVE READ,PEOPLE PUT THIS BOOK DOWN AND DEPLICTS THE WRONG INFORMATION ON ITS STORY. HERE IS WHAT IT IS ABOUT! IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT THE LUTZES HAUNTED ATTACKS. YES THERE IS ENOUGH HERE TO PLEASE YOU. BUT MORE ABOUT THE AFTERMATH TO THE STORY OF THEY'RE UNBILIEVABLE 28 DAYS IN 112 OCEAN AVE. THIS BOOK COVERS WHY GEORGE SOLD THE FAMILY BUISNES,HOW THE ATTACKS CONTINUED,WHY THEY MOVED AROUND SO MUCH,ALL THE HOWS AND WHYS CONCERNING THE BOOK BEING WRITTEN.HOW THEY FELT ABOUT THE NEGATIVE PRESS SURROUNDING THEM,THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THEM TRYING TO ENSURE PEOPLE THE STORY IS TRUE! SO IT ABOUT HOW THEY HAVE HANDLED EVRYTHING AFTER THEY FLED 112 OCEAN AVE. TO CLEARIFY THEY'RE STORY BETTER! WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO DETERMIN IF THE STORY IS TRUE OR NOT, WE WE WERE NOT THERE. BESIDE IT DOES MAKE A GREAT HORROR STORY ANYHOW!

HERE IS WHAT IT IS ABOUT! indeed.

I know in my heart of hearts that all the Amityville hoo-ha is a crock of shit. I know this, but I choose to ignore this. Total case of willful ignorance. Does that make me a crazy person? I care not! For you see, the seeds of love were sown early and they were sown deep. And that sounded way dirtier than I intended.

Look, here's the thing. Anytime I have a rational thought regarding The Amityville Horror, such as "everything George and Kathy Lutz put forth as evidence of supernatural goings-on has been debunked or greatly obfuscated", I counter it with something like "But George and Kathy Lutz were so good-looking! In the movie! Good-looking people never lie!"

EVIDENCE IT'S ALL TRUE: look how beautiful George and Kathy Lutz are when they are portrayed by beautiful people James Brolin and Margot Kidder!

See what I mean? And every time I think some negative thought about it all, something along the lines of "Wait, so Jody the evil presence...was...a giant purple pig?", I banish such a thought with "The cover of Jay Anson's book said it was all true so it was ALL TRUE. And be honest, if you saw a giant purple pig with glowing red eyes, you would be scared shitless once you made sure it wasn't simply a side-effect of too many Motrin IBs."

And just like that, easy, breezy,  I choose to believe in The Amityville Horror because it's not simply a cinematic juggernaut (holy crapping crap, ten movies), it's become a part of American folklore, dammit. I choose to believe that the Lutzes weren't simply trying to cash-in on the tragedy that occurred in the house before they moved in. I choose to believe that it wasn't all a fabrication because if crazy wall-bleeding shit can happen at 112 Ocean Avenue, it can happen anywhere. Maybe your house has a red room in the basement. You just need to look harder.

Look in your heart.

(Clutching a copy of The Amityville Horror II, Final Girl is carried aloft by a billion teeming houseflies. You bellow "Get out!" after her, but it's too late. She's already gone.)

(Just kidding. I didn't buy the book, it's total crap.)

(But Amityville 5ever though.)

By: Unknown On 14.59

Continue Reading

Learning to Let Go

Hey, Silent Hill, come on in. Have a seat. Can I get you anything? I have...well, I have water. Wow, I really need to go shopping, ha ha! Oh wait, I have tea. You want some tea? I can make some coffee. Just let me know.

Anyway, yeah, why I asked you over. Listen, let me say right off the bat: you won't find a bigger Silent Hill champion than me! Look, the first three video games are about as good as you're going to get in the survival horror genre. The rest of the games aren't even that bad...a couple are actually good.

As for the first cinematic foray into the world of Silent Hill, what can I say. I was so pumped about it, right? And I saw it and I loved it. Then I calmed down, saw it again...and while it's not worthy, perhaps, of all the adoration I initially heaped upon it, it's fairly solid and more good than bad.

I'm realizing, though, that the slow-but-gradual slide into mediocrity since the 2003 release of Silent Hill 3 has cooled my fervor. To use a scientific term, it's cooled my fervor a shit ton. While I'm still interested in new Silent Hill games, they're no longer release day purchases for me. Hell, for the most recent title, Downpour, I waited until the price dropped to $15. Trailers for Silent Hill: Revelation piqued my interest- I admit to still harboring a Pavlovian (if fleeting) response to all things SH, and I have enjoyed past work from writer/director Michael J. Bassett- but not enough to get me into the theatre to see it. Then it was released on DVD and I thought, "Hmm. I will wait for Netflix." Then it appeared on Netflix and a trusted friendsource warned me:

"It's bad."
"What do you mean? Bad how?"
"I don't want to spoil anything. It's just...it's bad."
"The effects? The plot? The acting?"
"It's just bad. You'll see."

So ominous, that "you'll see"! I get shivers just thinking about it. But, I could put it off no longer. It was time to see if I would, in fact, see.

BOY OH BOY, SEE I DO. This movie, I just...I mean...what the hell happened?

On paper, it doesn't sound so bad: in the years since Silent Hill, Sharon (Adelaide Clemens) and her father Chris (Sean Bean) have been on the move, changing their names as often as they change their address. Sharon is now Heather, and her life ain't nothin' but lies! She believes that they're constantly moving because her father (now calling himself Harry) killed someone in self-defense. She believes that her mother Rose (Radha Mitchell) died in a car crash. She believes her dreams of a place called Silent Hill are just, you know, dreams.

But! The troof ain't so convenient or pretty. After finding a way to allow Sharon to escape years ago, her mother Rose remains trapped in Silent Hill. Her father keeps the family mobile because Silent Hill wants HeatherSharon back because something Alessa something something awakening their God something. Through a few twists and turns o' the plot, Heather does head to the Hill to rescue her dad and...whatever. 

Sure, it's convoluted and likely impenetrably confusing for anyone who hasn't seen the previous Silent Hill film. It's a workable plot, though, so it's a bit surprising that Silent Hill: Revelation is such an utter, utter failure. It's a perfect fucking storm of failure, in fact.

The dialogue is atrocious. It's flat and boring and corny, on par with some of the worst video game dialogue out there. Silent Hill has never been known for its writing, but it's better than this. The performances and the script feed off of each other like vampires locked in a kind of tangled battle of suckage: the performers surely couldn't be inspired by the writing, but for fuck's sake I don't think any of them are even trying, which makes everything sound even worse. Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell in particular- I mean, I'm not convinced that Mitchell is a decent actress at the best of times, but both her performance and Bean's can't even qualify as "doing it for the paycheck" acting. They're phoned in from farther away than E.T.'s phone home bullshit. I don't know who to feel worse for while watching this- them, or me. Or maybe the world.

At times the effects aren't that bad, I suppose, in that CGI "some pixels walk around and stab other pixels and then some pixel gore happens" kind of way, but it's all just wrong. The world feels wrong. There's nothing ominous at play. Silent Hill is as easily accessible as Hoboken. One of the major face-offs in the film is resolved with a hug. A hug of death, mind you, but still. A fucking hug.

I don't know how to sum it up beyond saying that this film is just embarrassing. Embarrassing to anyone who calls herself a Silent Hill fan, to anyone who has enjoyed Bassett's other endeavors, to all of the actors (what the frig, Carrie-Anne Moss is totally wasted and you shut up, I will not tolerate a disparaging word because I love Carrie-Anne Moss), to anything and everything that ever was or will be. My friend was right: for fuck's sake, it's just bad. You'll see.

By: Unknown On 14.25

Continue Reading

Don't Take Your Booze-Addled Tantrums to Town

While I admit that I am no Murder, She Wrote, I like to think that my deducing skills are somewhat substantial. The swirly thing on the stovetop turns orange, I deduce that it's hot. I eat a berry and begin to die, my penultimate thought is "That girl is poison!" (my last thought would be "Am I really to shuffle off this mortal coil with a Bell Biv Davoe song stuck in my head?") because deduction. And so, I see this poster for Ruby (1977) and I immediately set about to deducerizin'.

The title: clearly a Carrie rip-off a la Jennifer.
The Piper Laurie: clearly a Carrie rip-off a la the episode of Matlock that Piper Laurie was in LOL just kidding but can you imagine an episode of Matlock that rips off Carrie, come on that would be one of the reasons life is worth living.

Okay, so I somehow deduced from the totally not obvious clues that Ruby is going to somehow rip-off Carrie. But! don't go thinking that the girl who takes up 2/3 of the page is Ruby, oh no. Read the fine print and school yoself- Piper Laurie is Ruby. And I dunno, there's definitely a Rosemary's Baby kind of thing alluded to, like maybe Ruby is all evil and has sexytimes with Satan or something and then this girl is born and sixteen years later the girl goes all telekinetic and there's, you know, death and whatever.

Anyway, that's all what I deduced from the poster. Not gonna lie, I was totally excited to watch this...not only because of the perfectly perfect movie I was imagining in my head, but because of such Amazon user endorsements as

Knowone remebers the good movies! but, I still remember " Ruby " That's a great movie.

and

REAL GOOD, DIDN'T EXPECTED!!!

Ruby and I, we were gonna be friends, see. Friends. I could picture it clearly: Ruby and I running hand-in-hand through fields of gold, laughing and singing the theme from Family Ties together. I imagined in every future conversation I'd ever have I would blurt out "Holy fucking shit, have you ever seen Ruby?" because it would need to be seen. I'd become a Jehorror Witness, clutching a DVD whilst knocking on every door in every neighborhood to ask "Have you heard the good word about Ruby?" I felt as if my life were truly about to begin.

Man, I gotta stop doing that!

Although I suppose I can't really blame Ruby for being not at all what I was expecting. Ruby is what Ruby is, after all. But! What Ruby is is pretty terrible, and that's not my fault.

Ruby and Nicky (Sal Vecchio) are out for a moonlight-n-champagne tour of a swamp when Nicky is ruthlessly gunned down by a vicious mob of mobsters. Ruby, all stressed out, immediately goes into labor- christened in blood, indeed.

Before you can say "Wait she was pregnant what is up with drinking that champagne, was it actually sparkling cider or something", it's 16 years later and my, how things have changed! Ruby owns a drive-in, appropriately called Ruby's Drive-In. The mobsters now work for Ruby, selling tickets and crappy concession stand burgers or running the film projector. Leslie the Swamp Baby (OMG WHAT IF THAT WAS A MOVIE) has grown into mute weirdo who sometimes bites people. Ruby loathes Leslie because she'd rather have Nicky back in her life than be all alone, saddled with their offspring and her Bud Cort-ish face always looking looking LOOKING.

I mean, it's Harold in drag, amirite

Before you can say "Wait how can Ruby's Drive-In be showing Attack of the 50ft Woman when it's supposed to be 1951 and everyone knows that movie came out in 1958, duh", the mobsters start dying courtesy of some invisible force. As the bodies pile up, ex-mobster and erstwhile Ruby lover Vince (the ever-stalwart Stuart Whitman) grows concerned. However, all of his "Hey Ruby, everyone is dying in strange, awful ways...maybe we should do something about it?"s are met with a "Aw, shaddap!" for you see, Ruby is still a real moll, the type of woman who wears feather boas in the home- in the home- and maintains a constant, fine patina of booze buzz.

Vince takes matters into his own hands and calls in a psychic expert who determines that yes, something is indeed afoot. But what?

What indeed. Leslie is possessed by Nicky, who apparently has been offing his murderers for revengeance. At this point, Ruby turns into a quasi-possession flick which, if you know anything about me you know normally I am seriously into...but Ruby is too little too late and more than a bit too wait why is this happening. Why did Nicky wait 16 years for revenge? Why would he possess Leslie when he was perfectly capable of getting shit done as the aforementioned invisible force? Questions remain unanswered as the film culminates in a freeze-frame ending (always a treat- ALWAYS I SAY) apparently disavowed by director Curtis Harrington. Sure, it's a slapdash and nonsensical, added solely for the shock value, but it has a bit of a nice EC Comics-vibe that marginally redeems it.

total moll

While Piper Laurie is terrific, but I can't help feeling a bit bad for poor Ruby, neither classic nor cult classic, destined to be remembered by only a few- Knowone remebers the good movies!- and forever relegated to the Z List. It's too bad, because the film feels as if it was dealt a real disservice by it being shoved into a Designer Impostor Carrie/Exorcist box; had it been treated as a proper ghost story, it coulda been a contenda. As it is, it looks like I continue to run through the fields of gold alone.

By: Unknown On 17.29

Continue Reading

Black Belt Lilith Aensland From Darkstalkers Cosplay

By: Unknown On 05.55

Continue Reading

Di Gi Charat Ero Cosplay - Dejiko Higurashi Rin

By: Unknown On 07.42

Continue Reading

Art vs Cancer

Hello everyone! So check it out: cancer is an asshole, right? Yes, we all know this. Also asshole: all the bills and financial debt that come along with fighting cancer. Friend of Final Girl and actress Michelle Tomlinson (The Cellar Door) is gonna give cancer what for...and to help her give the costs what for, she's set up a GoFundMe page where you can donate as much or as little as you please.

I've also put a bunch of sketch cards on eBay, and I'll be donating all monies raised in the auctions (minus fees) to the cause. There's some horror goodness in there, check it out!

There are also cards from other movies (Escape from New York, Silence of the Lambs, whaaaaat!), comics (Batfolk, yeah!) and video games (Halo, boss!), so give a consideration to bidding, won't you? You get some art, Michelle gets some help paying for treatment. It's a win-win if I ever heard a one!

If you can't bid, holy moley, I get it. You can still help by spreading the word and the link to my auction page. That don't cost nothin' but 10 seconds. Everybody got time for that! Thanks, gang.

By: Unknown On 16.47

Continue Reading