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Monthly Archives: May 2014

Dark Fields (2006). A below average slasher.

06 Tuesday May 2014

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As Pumpkin Person continues my endless quest to find those hidden horror gems that never got the respect they deserved, I keep forcing myself to sit through trash, that I don’t deserve.  And trash is what we get with Dark Fields (2006), directed by Mark McNabb and Al Randall (perhaps having two directors was part of the problem).

Pumpkin Person bent over backwards to give this movie a chance. I turned off all the lights in my house to watch the movie in utter darkness. I even ignored my own rule which states that horror films that have an IMDB rating less than 4.5/10 are not worth watching, hoping this movie (which currently has a 2.2/10 rating) would be the exception to the rule.  It wasn’t.

The plot:  A group of teenagers on their way to a concert run out of gas and visit an abandoned house in the hopes of finding some, only to be stalked by a brutal killer.  This is simply a low quality slasher film that invokes virtually all the tropes of the sub-genre, except for the “seer character” a la Dr. Loomis in Halloween or Crazy Ralph in Friday the 13th warning the characters that they’re doomed.

Not that I was expecting, or even wanting originality, but a little effort would have been nice.  Instead I was treated to a lot of vulgar dialogue, a disappointing climax, and an abrupt lackluster ending.  Though the movie wasn’t entirely awful.  I was never bored and the killer was mildly interesting, with a unique appearance, and there was at least one creepy kill.  But even those redeeming qualities were overshadowed by the goofy end credit sequence that told me that not even the film makers took this movie seriously.  

 

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The 16 most influential people on the planet

04 Sunday May 2014

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Time magazine just released its annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people (with Beyonce on the cover).  The list is not ranked, but the most influential people are those who appear on the list year after year, as opposed to the one year wonders.  The list began in 1999 when Time named the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, and then beginning in 2004, Time began publishing an annual ranking of those who continue to change the world.  Unfortunately no people from the horror industry have been consistently recognized, but that makes sense since slasher films no longer dominate the culture like they did circa 1980.  On the other hand one of the hottest shows on TV is The Walking Dead.

However just because there is no one from the horror industry, does not mean there are no people who have done horrific things to achieve their great power.  Pumpkin Person believes that psychopathy (evil) especially when combined with high intelligence is sadly, an incredible competitive advantage in our cut-throat society. However many of these people achieved their success through incredible talent, luck and good old fashion hard-work, and they should not be smeared by the psychopaths who may walk secretly among them.

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON ON THE PLANET:

It’s a tie between Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.  Both have been recognized by the Time 100 list an astonishing NINE TIMES.

THE THIRD MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON ON THE PLANET:

Hillary Clinton.  The Time 100 list has recognized her influence eight times.

THE FOURTH MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON ON THE PLANET:

Angela Merkel.  Recognized six times.

THE FIFTH MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON ON THE PLANET:

This slot would go to Steve Jobs but sadly he has passed away, so it’s a tie between Aung San Suu Kyi, George W, Bush, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Hu Jintao, Condoleeza Rice, and Jamie Dimon, all of whom have been recognized four times,

THE 12TH TO 16TH MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET:

Rounding out the list are Tenzin Gyatso, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and Pope Benedict XVI who all have been recognized three times.  Nelson Mandela has also been recognized by the Time 100 list three times, but sadly he has passed away, and thus can no longer be considered one of the most influential people on the planet.

It is interesting to ask who the most influential person of all time was.  According to a controversial book called THE 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential persons in History by Michael H. Hart,  the most influential human of all time was the Prophet Muhammad, followed by Isaac Newton and Jesus Christ.  

 

What’s the definition of a slasher film?

02 Friday May 2014

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The term “slasher film”, like most categories, is kind of arbitrary.  While everyone can agree that the Friday the 13th movies are slasher films, and that films like The Exorcist are not slashers,  there are a lot of films that horror fans continue to debate.  Was Psycho (1960) a slasher film?  How about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) or Black Christmas (1974)?

The best analysis I have ever seen on the topic is an essay called “The Stalker Film, 1978-81”, by Vera Dika, that appeared in a book called American Horrors, edited by Gregory A. Waller.  Although Dika used the term “stalker film”,  she was clearly talking about a sub-genre of horror that many people would label slashers.  Pumpkin Person will use the term “pure slashers” since Dika was describing a very specific type of movie.

According to Dika, this sub-genre typically has a narrative structure that is divided into a past and present event, with the following outline, which I’ve paraphrased:

PAST EVENT:

Some young people do something “wrong”.

The slasher sees a wrongdoing, injury or death.

The slasher suffers a loss.

The slasher kills guilty young people.

 

PRESENT EVENT:

Something commemorates the past action.

The slasher’s violent impulse resurfaces.

A seer warns the young people.

The young people ignore the warning.

The slasher stalks the young people.

The slasher kills the young people.

The heroine discovers the killings.

The heroine fights the slasher.

The  heroine defeats the slasher.

The heroine is alive but the threat isn’t over.

 

According to Dika, the golden age for this sub-genre was 1978-1981.  She quite cleverly correlates this with the American political climate of the time. For these were the final years of the unpopular Carter administration, the president who is credited with never firing a bullet, never dropping a bomb.  But many Americans at the time felt humiliated by Carter’s non-violent foreign policy and the outcome of the Vietnam war, and a decade after the 1960s, there was a backlash against the peace and love pot smoking hippie movement.  The mood was rife for films about pot smoking love making non-violent teenagers getting slaughtered as brutally as possible, while a conservative virgin heroine uses violence to triumph against the enemy.   Dika’s theory nicely explains why slashers were so prolific and popular for such a brief period in American history, with only the most fleeting of revivals. 

 

The genius of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

02 Friday May 2014

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WARNING: If you have not seen Halloween II (1981) or Halloween 4 (1988) yet, please stop reading because this review contains spoilers.

Directed by Dwight H. Little, (screenplay by Alan B. McElroy), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is one of the most underrated horror films of all time (aside from the silly looking Michael Myers mask). After seeing Halloween II (1981) as a child, Pumpkin Person had wondered how Myers could return after being burned to a crisp in a hospital fire.  I pictured something cheesy and entertaining like Myers’ rotting corpse being dug up and then struck by lightening a la Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986).

Instead the film makers came up with something far creepier:  Michael Myers had been in a coma for 10 straight years, just lying lifeless in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown with his burned head wrapped in bandages like a mummy, dumped into the basement of a criminally insane asylum.  “This is where society dumps its worst nightmares” one of the character says.

After all the supernatural feats Myers had pulled in Halloween II, there was something so spooky about seeing him humanized this way. Reduced to being satiated by feeding tubes, and wheeled from one hospital to another, Myers had, for 10 years, been just another of society’s dark secrets, shoved into a dark basement, where only underpaid public nurses looked at him.  A ward of the state who nobody wanted.

And then while his seemingly unconscious body is being driven in an ambulance, one dark and stormy Halloween eve, he suddenly grabs a hospital worker, repeatedly bashing the man’s head into the ambulance wall while sinking his thumb deep into the man’s forehead.  It was one of the most terrifying scenes in horror history.

Why is Myers waking up from his “coma” now?  Pumpkin Person prefers to think it’s because his 6 or 7 year old niece (played brilliantly by Danielle Harris) is now roughly the age Myers was when he committed his first murder. Pumpkin Person thinks it’s creepier to believe that Myers’ psychotic evil is a hereditary disease that strikes around the age of 6.  Myers’ sister Laurie got lucky and didn’t inherit the gene, but his niece Jamie did, and Myers’ is coming home to make sure it’s triggered on Halloween night.  For “Jamie’s uncle is the Boogeyman” the kids at school hauntingly tease.

There is a beautiful symmetry about the Halloween films that so few appreciate.  Myers killed his older sister when she was 17 on Halloween night and came home (in the first two Halloween movies) to kill his younger sister when she was also 17 on Halloween night.  Myers committed his first murder when he was 6 on Halloween night and in this film returns home, in my opinion, to get his niece to commit her first murder, at about age 6, on Halloween night.  It was the perfect full circle moment.  This is how the original series should have ended.  Just where it began…with a young child committing a murder on Halloween night.

And there was something so poignantly pathetic about Myers’ psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (played superbly by the late Donald Pleasence) screaming in terror, trying to shoot the little girl, as horrified on-lookers try to stop him.  For only Loomis, who devoted his life to studying Myers, fully grasps the evil Myers’ young niece has become.  But Loomis is now a weak old hysterical man, and after 25 years of obsessing over Myers, he’s burned out (literally, from the hospital fire in part 2).  Loomis is ready to retire, and it would have been the perfect time for the original series to retire too. 

Beast: A Monster Among Men (2013). Low budget obscure horror.

01 Thursday May 2014

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For several days Pumpkin Person has been scrounging through horror titles on Rogers on-demand, looking for something to watch from the convenience of my dark home.  After scrolling through one unoriginal zombie title after another, I finally stumbled upon Beast: A Monster Among Men (Directed by Mike Lenzini). Before seeing a movie I generally look it up on IMDB to see what rating it got out of 10.  I’ve learned from past experience that horror films rated below 4.5 are almost never worth watching.  I was struck by the fact that this film had a 6.7 (quite high for a horror film) but with only 22 votes in so far, it could have just been the film makers and the actors voting so I dismissed it.  I then googled for movie reviews, and found very little, so I decided I would write one.

The plot:  A group of men (one of whom is kind of creepy) head off to a cabin deep in the woods and people start getting killed.  Can the characters figure out who or what is killing them before it’s too late?

I’d be lying if I said this was a good movie, but my expectations for this kind of ultra obscure low budget horror film are so low, that I can’t say I was disappointed.  When you’ve seen as much crappy horror as I have, a film that shows even a smidgen of effort and skill is a nice surprise.  I liked that the film was set deep in the woods.  Not exactly an original setting, but the woods used in this film had an especially isolated and ominous feel to them.  And the film had atmosphere, with beautiful shots of the sky turning from sunny, to cloudy, to dark, and a pleasantly haunting yet sad musical score.   The film also knew its limits:  Rather than tainting the movie with laughable special effects, the film shot its special effects from a distance or with dim enough lighting that their cheap cheesiness could not be exposed, and with a run-time of only 72 minutes, the film shrewdly ended before embarrassing itself.