Joseph Howell
Horror has always been a pretty big business, especially on home video. So, in the advent of Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital Download, what titles are worth seeing? Which ones are worth avoiding? Well, read on to see the best, worst, and most “eh, whatever” titles in genre films available now.
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Much has been made about Day of the Dead (Shout! Factory), what was originally supposed to be the end of George A. Romero’s “Dead Trilogy”. It was originally intended to be the grand epic of the series – a gory as hell tale with a large cast, big ideas, and a definite conclusion. The ultimate zombie movie. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, as budget constraints and studios being afraid to fund a $7 million horror movie in an unrated format kept Romero from fully achieving his vision.
So whilst it isn’t as good as “Night of the Living Dead” or “Dawn of the Dead,” “Day” still remains a fine conclusion for the original trilogy. Here, what may be the last remnant of humanity lives in an abandoned government bunker. Mostly made up of army personnel, they mostly argue amongst each other on how to survive -the worst of them being Rhodes (Joe Pilato), who seems to be near the end of his rope at all times. Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) thinks that he can finally find a way to put an end to this, as he has discovered that the dead can be trained – to an extent – thanks to a zombie he has affectionately named “Bub” (Howard Sherman). Rhodes isn’t too fond of this, and with tensions rising, it seems like it won’t be too long until the dead come looking for munchies.
Out of all the performances, the one that sticks out the most is Sherman as Bub (the fact that nobody has done a picture of him with popular internet kitty Lil Bub (disappoints me), as he manages to create what may be the most human zombie in movie history. Throughout his time on screen, you can’t help but like and root for the guy, even though his pal Dr. Logan is more than a bit nuts. Also, this is the goriest of the trilogy, as KNB provide some of the most nauseating splatter effects ever committed to celluloid with plenty of grotesque highlights (“Choke on ’em!”) to go around. Finally, like most of his works, there’s a fair amount of social critique, as the film tackles the Regan Administration’s Military Industrial Complex and questions the idea of the military as the last act of defense. It’s not as stinging as what he said with “Dawn,” but it still packs a wallop.
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Prince of Darkness (Shout! Factory) was John Carpenter’s return to the world of horror after “Starman” and “Big Trouble in Little China,” and it presents a world in which Science and Religion work together, only to find something neither of them hoped to. That is a sinister something that’s been hidden in a church basement for centuries, and after a priest dies, another one (Donald Pleasence) turns to Prof. Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and his students to find out what that vat of green liquid in the basement is. It turns out that liquid is the essence of Satan himself, and that it wants to unleash his father, the Anti-God, unto the world.
The second part of Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy” (the others are “The Thing” and “In the Mouth of Madness”) feels a lot like a supernatural horror version of “Assault on Precinct 13,” with a claustrophobic setting and siege story. It’s also loaded with atmosphere, as the dead surround the building, people turn into piles of insects, and nearly everyone has a horrific dream of a figure in black walking the earth. Carpenter directs the whole thing extremely well, managing to create a palpable sense of dread with things like beetles crawling off faces and dark corners becoming entries of death. He manages to get good performances out of his cast to boot (well, except for Dennis Dun as Walter, who is a really annoying comic relief character). Add a sinister score, eerie visuals, and a haunting conclusion and you have what’s easily one of Carpenter’s most underrated films.
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If director Patricio Valladares intended Hidden in the Woods (Artsploitation) to be something that would disgust the viewer, then mission accomplished. The film deals with two sisters who have spent much of their lives being abused in a myriad of ways by their scumbag father whilst being sheltered from society. After dear old daddy has a violent altercation with police, the sisters and their deformed mentally retarded brother go off on their own on the road. They eventually seek what seems to be some kind of refuge, but they end up on the run again. This time from a drug kingpin and his gang, who are convinced that the daughters and their brother have possession of drugs their father had.
Vile, misogynistic, and without any real substance or value, “Hidden in the Woods” is something of a new low in the world of Neo-Exploitation movies. The film functions as nothing more than a bunch of grotesqueness: rape, incest, abuse, torture, and cannibalism. None of it is particularly well written or directed, with the editing feeling chippy and at times incomprehensible, whilst the characters only exist to scream, shout profanities, or abuse the two sisters (every man with the exception of their brother is a rapist). This all might be a bit excusable if there was a point to this, but there’s no point to it other than to serve as a movie for people who masturbate to stories about rape and torture. It’s all an empty exercise at shock value, and nothing more. You’re better off watching a real exploitation movie like Thriller: A Cruel Picture than this cheap pretender to the throne.
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As far as titles go, No One Lives (Anchor Bay) couldn’t be more obvious. A gang of robbers (including WWE superstar Brodus Clay, Lee Tergesen from “Oz,” and America Olivio from the “Friday the 13th” remake) run into what they think is an unassuming couple (Luke Evans and Laura Ramsey), and end up taking them hostage. Things however, are not what they seem, as the man is actually a skilled serial killer who begins to knock them off one by one. However, there may be salvation at hand in Emma (Adelaide Clemmens), a girl the killer has kept around, and whom he has a strange relationship with.
I will give the movie this much: as far as slasher movies from WWE Studios are concerned, this is a better movie than See No Evil. Unlike that movie, this actually has a talented director in Ryuhei Kitamura (whose credits include The Midnight Meat Train, Godzilla: Final Wars, Versus and the underrated Azumi), who shoots the thing at a good clip. Unlike “See No Evil” he doesn’t rely on flashy editing or annoying camera trickery. It also has some pretty impressive gore on display, especially in a scene involving the killer literally crawling out of a victim’s body. On the minus side are the performances and script. Whilst Evans and Clemmens do fine work, the rest of the cast ranges from wooden to overacting at the point of inducing a headache, with Derek Magyar in particular grating on my nerves with his performance. Also, the script by first time writer David Cohen isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. Sure, there are one or two neat twists thrown in, but apart from that, this is nothing more than your usual by the numbers slasher movie that sometimes veers uncomfortably towards outdated “torture porn” aesthetics. As a rental or streaming, this is alright, but it ultimately doesn’t do enough to deserve repeat viewings.
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Finally, there’s The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond (Anchor Bay), which was released in theaters in 2010 and is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray. The story in itself is nothing special, and plays out like a poor man’s mix of “The Evil Dead” and “Night of the Demons.” Here, nine friends take a holiday vacation at a Victorian home on a private island. It’s there that they find a strange board game that starts out like a game of truth or dare. However, the game ends up bringing out the worst in them, and they soon begin to violently turn on each other whilst a strange demonic presence takes over them one by one. Oh, and then there’s that guy who lives on the island (Robert Patrick, who also serves as an executive producer), who is there because… well, other than the fact he lives there, I don’t know.
The weirdest thing about “The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond” is that unlike many of today’s horror movies that try to be throwbacks to the 70’s and 80’s, this actually feels like a throwback to direct-to-video movies from the late 90’s-early 2000’s. You know, stuff like Breeders, Infested and The Dead Hate The Living. As you can guess, this turns out to be a bad thing, as the movie has nothing going for it other than some decent kills and gore. The direction is bland, the score is unexciting, the acting is terrible (James Duval is awful whilst Danielle Harris and Robert Patrick seem bored), and none of the characters are remotely likeable. As people are killed in bloody fashion and turn on one another, it didn’t take long for boredom to set in. If you do not like any of the people in the movie, why should you care about what happens to them? The fact that it even got a theatrical release amazes me.
Next Time: “The Conjuring”, Season One of “Hannibal” and Franck Khalfoun’s remake of “Maniac”
