Q- What Are Your Favorite Obscure Subgenres of Horror?

A- I've always loved the cozy feeling of the breezy, studio b-movie action-horror-romance-comedy-buddy films of the early 1940s, particularly from Universal. This includes films like The Mummy's Hand, Night Monster, and my personal favorite, Horror Island.

Redneck Horror can be a lot of fun. There's the kind where the rednecks are the horror, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Two Thousand Maniacs!, but I prefer when the rednecks fight the horror. Nightbeast, Galaxy Invader, Slither, and The Giant Gila Monster all feature a bunch of people running around wearing flannel, chewing tobacco, and loading up their shotguns to go out and find the monster.

The surf-horror genre has always been a fascination of mine as well. Films like The Beach Girls and The Monster, Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster, Revenge of the Creature, and The Horror of Party Beach all brought their monsters to the surf, and the result is something delightfully dumb. Most of them, particularly The Beach Girls and The Monster and The Horror of Party Beach, heavily capitalized on the beach-movie craze established by Frankie and Annette during the early 60s, so we get rocking tunes, fast cars, surf stock footage, and a monster all rolled into one!

Review- Blood Shack

Ray Dennis Steckler is the only filmmaker I know next to Ed Wood who has the balls to shoot 10 minutes worth of rodeo footage so that his film can be over an hour. Yes, you heard me correctly. The action and "suspense" all come to a screeching hault (because they were gaining so much momentum, right?) and we get to enjoy cows getting lassoed and all that bullshit because the film wasn't long enough to get a theatrical release.

The Chooper, later renamed Blood Shack for obvious reasons (It sounds really dumb, like maybe a motorcycle film or porno hybrid. I guess the only reason horror fans saw it was because they thought it was called The Chopper, a surprisingly easy-to-make typo. So I guess the aforementioned reasons weren't that obvious), is a bizarre film about an actress (played by Steckler regular Carolyn Brandt) who inherits a farm that turns out to be haunted by a guy who yells a lot and looks kind of like Peter Stormare in The Big Lebowski (with the jumpsuit). Despite the fact that she "buys the farm" she never dies. *Spoiler*

Blood Shack was produced for $500, a testament to what imagination and craft can do for a film. Just kidding, Blood Shack has neither of those things. The acting sucks, there's a little bit of blood, and the cheese-factor is turned up high. There is one of the most bizarre fight scenes I've ever seen on celluloid, involving two guys duking it out whilst two little girls play around with a shovel. I thought for a while that these two events would converge, and one of the guys would get impaled on the shovel or something like that, but no. The fight ends and the girls just keep on digging. But what do you expect?

That's the whole vibe I get from the film. I want to criticize it, but you can't get your expectations too high, especially from the director who brought you such classics as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies?!! (and yes, that "?!!" is part of the title) (damn, I have a lot of parentheses in this review)? At least he went for a bit more subtle approach with the title, instead of flat-out giving you a synopsis.

Blood Shack, or The Chooper, is a great b-movie sleepover slice of cheese with enough goof-ups to keep you and your friends generating those MST3000-esque quips. It doesn't overstay its welcome, independent on which version you see, rodeo or not.

Rating:

Review- The Innkeepers (2011)

For those of you who haven't seen Writer/Director Ti West's previous efforts, The House of the Devil and The Roost, I would highly recommend them. I can't hold his new film, The Innkeepers, to as high a level of praise, though I can say that it does offer its fair share of thrills and chills.

The only problem I can find with the film is that it is incredibly slow. Sure, The House of the Devil and The Roost take their time, but this one seems arduous at points. While the pacing does help to establish West's signature "What is going to happen?" atmosphere, other films have established the same amount of intensity with a relatively fast-pace. Take Paranormal Activity, a film which, in my opinion, is scarier than this one.

But this isn't meant to be a scary film. It's meant to be a spooky film. And it can be positively eerie. Two particular scenes, one in the middle and one towards the end, stood out for me. While almost every effective horror film manages to get my heart-rate up, this one somehow managed to give me goosebumps, something I don't get very often if ever when watching a film. It's a unique kind of fear.

Ti West has an obvious understanding for horror films and their audience. I hope he keeps up the good work and starts to realize that a snail-pace isn't always necessary. But it's refreshing to see a filmmaker who favors atmosphere over gratuitous blood and torture. His masterpiece will come soon enough.

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Review- The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

I couldn't help myself but to compare The Cabin in the Woods to Scream. They both play off of the audience's anticipations and expectations and both walk the line perfectly between scares and humor. However, while Scream parodies the horror genre, The Cabin in the Woods does more to celebrate it. Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard love horror films enough to want to change them.

I don't want to give anything away, but let me just say that this film is very, very clever. The characters are great, the scares are great, the humor works very well with the scares, the acting is great, and the atmosphere is perfect. However, the film crams too much in at the end and rambles for an additional twenty-minutes that I don't really think it needed. These last few scenes become too epic for the film's good, and they feel out of place among the rest, which is like a really really good independent 80s slasher/zombie flick. Imagine if Friday the 13th suddenly tried to become Star Wars in its last act. I would've appreciated a much more subtle approach.

I only feel the need to criticize the last twenty because the first seventy are so great. Multiple horror-movie-references (including a fifteen-minute stretch taken right from the Evil Dead series), a smart script, and an engaging storyline all add up to one knock-out horror-comedy. One of the best I've seen so far this year.

Rating:

Review- The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Imagine the most annoying kid you can think of in a motion-picture. Think of the red-head from Troll 2, Jake Lloyd from Episode 1, and Veruca Salt all mixed into one kid. Now give that kid a voice that sounds like a fourty-year-old talking in falsetto, and you've got something along the lines of Bob from The House by the Cemetery. Even that's being generous. I am not exaggerating, this child makes me want to rip my teeth out with a pair of tweezers and hammer them into my corneas.

Its a shame, too. This film has some promise. The keyword is some. But any shred of redemption that this film bears is destroyed by the BOB. Focusing on just the film, its typical Lucio Fulci fare. Its slow, at times tense, at other times very boring, and occasionally bloody. The gore here is really good but I can't help but feel like I missed something. Even with the unrated edition, there are only about five deaths, one of which is a bat and one of which is very awkwardly off-screen.

The premise is that there's a creature living in the basement of a creaky old house that comes out to kill people. It's pretty simple, but Fulci wastes his time dealing with Bob's strange powers. I would've liked to see more focus on the monster. And I would've liked to see Bob strangled. Or worse. This movie is almost worth checking out just so you can hear how ridiculous this kid's over-dubbed voice is. But unless you're a hardcore Italian horror fan or under the influence of some kind of substance, I'd stay away from this one.

Rating:

Review- Cabin Fever

Allow me to defend this film from a sea of harsh criticisms.

It can't decide whether it wants to be a horror movie or a comedy. As a comedy, it's freaking hilarious. As a horror movie, it's gross, unpredictable, and squirm-inducing. I'm not going to praise a movie for succeeding in what it tried to do. I mean, the Saw films are supposed to gross you out, and they do. Does that mean they are good movies? No. But Cabin Fever should at least warrant some praise for delivering both genuine laughs and scares.

It tackles too much at once, i.e. political, social, and biological overtones. Sure, Cabin Fever can be a little ambitious at times, but it is never boring. I always feel that great movies can be discussed for more than a couple of hours, and my friends and I have discussed this film for many-a-conversation. Don't think of it as cramming, think of it as layering. The film can be analyzed from many different viewpoints, and, most importantly, it never feels overwhelming. However, take a film like Batman Begins, which takes on too much at once, or The Strangers, which would've functioned better as a short. And although Cabin Fever isn't perfect by any means, to say that it's too ambitious would be to criticize practically every first film by a great director. I think Eli Roth will come up with more than a few masterpieces in the future.

The acting sucks. For crying out loud, its an b-movie homage! Whether or not the bad acting is intentional or not doesn't detract from the atmosphere. You really get the feeling that you are watching a film from the 80s or early 70s.

The characters are unlikeable. Okay, so, you're right, this isn't a Tarantino or Coen or Allen film. You don't fall in love with the characters, nor do you need to. I didn't have too much of a problem with anyone. I was surprised that I started liking Brent, who initially seems to be the jackass of the group. Rider Strong's character isn't bad either, and I don't have a hardtime at all relating to him. The only problem I could see was with Jordan Ladd's part, but she exits from focus after a while.

WTF is up with the Kung-Fu Pancakes scene? I don't know. And I don't really care. I thought it was really funny, and it seems to me to be an homage to films with unexplainable moments such as the popcorn scene in Troll 2, the bear-costume scene in The Shining (which is referenced later in Cabin Fever with the guy in the bunny suit), the deer-head scene in Evil Dead 2, the zombie vs. shark scene in Zombi 2, the tunnel scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the candy-bar-ax scene in Friday the 13th Part IV, or the Kung-Fu scene from Pieces. So it's weird. Why have audiences gotten so nit-picky?

I love the film. Paired with The Devil's Rejects, Trick'r'Treat, Slither, and Shaun of the Dead, I may even consider it to be one of my favorites of the '00s. All I can say to audiences is, quit band-wagoning. I think that Alien was a little overpraised and Halloween III: Season of the Witch was destroyed because audiences can't form their own opinions and have to turn to critics for the answer.

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Review- Two Thousand Maniacs!

The 1960s was an awkward phase for horror films. I've always considered it to be the middle ground between the light, sci-fi spook films of the 50s; and the violent, corrupt exploitation films of the 70s. As a result, the 60s produced a vast array of haunted houses, psychedelic-scares, 30s-and-40s remakes and throwbacks, and even budding zombie flicks. There is no quintessential 60s horror film, because it was such a weird decade for the genre.

However, if I had to narrow down a horror picture that I consider to be one of the best from the 60s, I would have to go with Two Thousand Maniacs!. It matches the charm and goofiness of a film from the 50s, while delivering the blood and gore you'd expect from the 70s. It executes genuine suspense and makes me nervous even when I know what's going to happen, which is a lot to say not only of a horror film from 1964, but of a horror film. And I don't get nervous too easily.

Writer and Director Herschell Gordon Lewis realized the success of his gory masterpiece, Blood Feast, and instantly decided to "make a good one". While Maniacs isn't as blood-soaked as its predecessor, it still achieves similar effects.

The plot goes a little something like this: a group of people from the American north are passing through the American south when they are lured into a small town of roughly two thousand people (you can guess where the title comes from) and are asked to partake in a "Centennial Celebration". Unfortunately for the Northerners, the celebration involves gruesome carnage.

The violence is pretty amusing, and a lot more is left to the imagination as was in Blood Feast. This lack of blood, although a little disappointing for a blood hound such as myself, is a little more effective in the long run. Luckily the deaths are more creative this time around, including people getting torn apart by ropes attached to horses, a rolling barrel lined with nails, and plenty more. Ironically enough, the most disturbing death involves a simple ax.

As the festivities progress, tensions mount, not just for the characters, but for the viewer. Like I said before, the tense atmosphere of this film never lets up, and although some cheese is

sprinkled into it all, this film still gets under my skin. I really don't know why, but my heart gets going every time someone's about to die. The charm arises in the poor acting, vibrant colors, and catchy theme song ("The South's Gonna Rise Again").

The ending is a weaker than the rest, and some unnecessary supernatural elements start to creep in, but Two Thousand Maniacs! is definitely worth a watch if you are a horror movie fan.

Rating: Two Thumbs Up

"Misspent Youth"

Ahh, the countless hours of sitting on my living room floor, wrapped in blankets, watching the flickering television set as it projects images of ghosts, mad scientists, serial killers, atomic-spawned giant insects, and zombies directly into my impressionable cranium. Another Friday night of monster movies and popcorn, a time of laughable immaturity and yet an ever-present desire to regain our youth.

The days of horror-hosts are gone, but that doesn't stop myself from popping in a DVD or a VHS and enjoying a night of fun-filled scares anyways. My weeks lead up to Friday night, when the image of a scantilly-clad damsel-in-distress being carried off by the muscular monster or the silhouette of a werewolf howling at the moonlight can bring me an infinite amount of joy.

And as King Kong falls 100 stories to his demise, as Dr. Loomis and Laurie look in horror to find that the Shape has disappeared, as the burning mill collapses, as Klaatu and Gort aviate back into the skies, there remains a sign of promise. A promise that the next Friday will be full of the same amount of fear, humor, and bewilderment.