Final Girl Film Club: Blood and Roses (1960)

Does the presence of vampires automatically make a film a horror movie? This used to be an interesting question back in the day, you know, before it could be answered with two simple words: "Duh, Twilight."  As horror fans, I think we've definitively kicked that series the hell out of our genre and sent it home with its fluffy werewolf tail between its legs. But what to make of Blood and Roses?  After all, it is the film's tragic and romantic elements that drive it, and like in Twilight, the supernatural part is merely a vehicle used to explore other themes.

The difference, I suppose is that Twilight is a money-making machine rushed into production to cash in on the popularity of the latest (semi)literary phenomenon, while Blood and Roses is an artfully-made film based on a classic gothic tale from 1872. Basically, we want Blood and Roses included in our genre because it doesn't suck.

The best thing about Blood and Roses is its original take on the vampire mythos. Millarca is not your garden-variety drain 'em and leave 'em bloodsucker. When we first encounter her, she is no more than a voice in Carmilla's head.  Right away, this sets up the audience to question whether this is a case of supernatural influence or some sort of psychotic break with reality. When Millarca appears to Carmilla, the audience never sees the vampire, only Carmilla's reaction. In fact, the whole film is set up to screw with the audience's sense of reality. My only complaint here is that in the end, the voice-over narration spells everything out explicitly, denying the audience the pleasure of piecing it together themselves.

The highlight of the film is the hallucination/dream sequence. Carmilla approaches her cousin's fiancee, Georgia, as she sleeps, moving aside her nightgown at the neck to take a bite. But the bite is never shown. Rather, the picture goes black and white, and Georgia has a vision of Carmilla bleeding copiously from under her necklaces, which is striking because the red of the blood is the only color on-screen. This is followed by a sequence of increasingly bizarre images, such as a girl swimming upside-down outside the bedroom door, a long tunnel with a queue of hundreds of seated women (victims or incarnations of Millarca?), and a topless Carmilla strapped to a surgery table while masked nurses with red gloves prepare her for some nameless procedure.

Going into the film, I had heard it was a lesbian vampire movie. Once I'd figured out that it wasn't exactly a horror movie, I just figured it would be a lesbian romance thinly disguised as a vampire film. But after watching it, I'm honestly not sure what to make of the film's homoeroticism. There's no doubt that a lesbian undercurrent runs through the film, but I'm not entirely sure why it was there, since the whole plot centers around Carmilla being in love with her cousin Leopoldo and being jealous that he's getting married.

Still, there's all kinds of meaningful gazes and exchanges between Carmilla and Georgia, who even share a kiss (there is a drop of blood on Georgia's lip, giving the filmmakers a defense in case of attack by 1960s homophobes). Also, part of the film's vampire mythology is that female vampires only feed on females, which has got to mean something, but I'm a little too dense to figure it out. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a social statement hidden somewhere in there. After all, horror has always been a transgressive genre, and was therefore one of the few media available in 1960 in which to address taboo subjects.

I did find the movie to be somewhat insulting to women. The female characters are treated as fragile, flighty, silly things who must obey the men in their lives. But I don't think the filmmakers had any sort of misogynist agenda; it is just an artifact of the time it was made.

I've read that in the original French version, the narration is performed by the character of the doctor, rather than by Millarca, and that it's much lighter on exposition. The narration, especially at the end, is heavy-handed, unnecessary, and a little damaging to the experience. I've also read that the Netflix version is the dubbed version, but it looks like they're speaking English to me. Anyone know the real deal on this?

Overall, I enjoyed Blood and Roses in the same way I enjoy most Hammer films: not as scary movies, but as gorgeous pieces of gothic diversion--a comforting escape from both the world and the intensity of modern horror. This is a beautiful film that I will want to return to, even if there are more roses than blood.

This is Just To Say

I have eaten
the brains
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so white
and so gelatinous

Oh yeah, and this is also just to point out that there's (finally) a new post up on my other blog, Films My Spouse Made Me Watch.  The concept behind the blog is that my wife and I have disparate taste in movies, so we often watch different films and go on and on about how the other should really check them out. The one who inflicts the movie upon the other writes a preview about why they chose that particular film, then we watch the film together, and the inflictee writes a response. It has been defunct for the better part of a year, but we're ready to revive it.

I note this here because many of the posts, including the newest, have to do with horror films. The latest is Let Me In.  We've also written about [REC] and the Nightmare On Elm Street remake.  Here's a link, and you'll also find I've added it to the sidebar. http://robandchelle.blogspot.com/

Idea for the Next Friday the 13th Movie

Rather than continuing the current reboot with a Part 2, why not make Camp Crystal Lake: The Mrs. Voorhees Story. It would be a retelling of the first Friday, but focusing on Mrs. Voorhees struggles to raise her special-needs child while working for poverty-level wages in the kitchen at a run-down summer camp. The teenage counselors are irresposible adolescents who routinely put children at risk to run off into the woods to smoke pot and have sex. She teaches young Jason fundamentalist lessons about the wages of sin, and loudly denounces the teenagers as Hell-bound heathens.

When the counselors allow her son to drown she goes ballistic, hunting down the counselors with no regard for who was actually responsible. The film would recreate each murder from the original, but show Mrs. Voorhees performing the killings.

The film would end exactly like the original with the death of Mrs. Voorhees and the reemergence of Jason.

The trick would be to keep it scary, even though the killer is no longer a mysterious figure. I suppose you could always focus on the tragic side of the story, rather than the frightening.

Who's with me on this?

Meet Lil' Crawley

The Mancave finally has an official mascot: Lil' Crawley.

I made him myownself using both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, plus a Wacom tablet decked out with the mighty art brush. Feel free to save and repost him, but please give credit to Enigmatic Deezyne.

How to Ruin Perfectly Good Trash - Case Study: Trip with the Teacher

So maybe I’m not too well-versed in 1970s exploitation flicks, but my latest viewing experience had me running the gamut of emotions from pure, soaring, trash cinema love to utter shock and nauseated disgust.  Pretty powerful stuff, no?  But then, no, it really wasn’t.  It was a trifle of a film, stupid and pointless, and executed by clueless incompetents. At the same time, there’s a real darkness behind the movie’s dopey exterior which was supremely unsettling and made for one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I’ve had in a long time.

The film in question is “Trip with the Teacher,” from 1975.  I watched it first thing in the morning--not the optimal time for horror viewing, but you get your kid-free hours where you can. Because I knew the kids could be awake and making a servant of me at any minute, I opted not to watch a movie I’m seriously eager to see, but instead thought I’d go with something cheesy and fun. Last Christmas my sister gave me the “Gorehouse Greats” collection, and of the twelve titles, this one intrigued me. So I popped it in.

For about half the run time, it was everything I could have hoped for and more.  From the moment the title music began, I was in bad movie heaven. The score is worse than 70’s porno bad. I was laughing aloud before the production company’s logo appeared.  And bonus, we get to groove to the soundtrack while watching endless long shots of a short bus moving through the landscape.

Eventually, the director treats us to a peek inside the bus and we meet the titular teacher and the four girls she is chaperoning.  The teacher reads a droning history lesson while three of the girls stare out the windows and the other nods emphatically, hanging on the teacher’s every word.  That, my friends, is character development—see, she’s the studious, teacher’s pet type. The dialogue on the bus is so impossibly bland that you can’t not laugh. Here’s a small sample:

Studious Girl: “Are there any Indians still living there?”

Teacher: “Why of course.”

Studious Girl: (enthusiastically) “Wow, then we’ll get to see them, won’t we?”

Teacher: “We sure will.”

Studious Girl: “Won’t that be interesting?”

Rebellious Girl: (sarcastically) “Yeah.”

But it gets way better.  Next we meet the biker brothers who are the film’s villains.

Hippie Brother to Gas Station Attendant:
"What do you do out here when you get horny, old man? Or don't you get horny?"

Hippie Brother has blown a tire, and Psycho Brother cannot be bothered to do anything but plop down by the roadside and look menacing.  As luck would have it, Nice Biker shows up with a patch kit and a hand pump.  He fixes Hippie Brother’s tire and invites himself along for the ride. While a lesser director would probably just cut to the next scene at this point, Burt Whatshisass knows that audiences aren’t that smart.  They’ll get confused if you just jump to a shot of the three guys riding, so he kindly shows us how they got on the road.  In fact, he shows us how they very, very slowly mount their bikes, kickstart them, wait for Nice Biker to fasten his safety helmet, and carefully take off down the road.  I shit you not, the one shot lasts for 55 excruciating yet hilarious seconds until all three riders have disappeared around a distant bend, and then lingers a few seconds more on the empty road. It’s as if the director couldn’t stand the thought of a single frame of his precious film touching the cold, dirty cutting room floor. It becomes kind of a running (unintentional) joke that every time the bikers depart or arrive, we have to sit through the entire process of them mounting, starting, and taking off, or slowing, stopping, and dismounting, usually very slowly.

Nice Biker shows some teeth!

Eventually, the bus breaks down, and the girls get a chance to stretch their legs and have an uncensored conversation away from their chaperone. The dialogue is great as always, with the girls talking sex in the tamest, most euphemistic of language.  The Rebellious Girl is, of course, the sexually experienced one, and she teases the Virginal Girl, who calls her a bitch, and they come to blows.  As if I didn’t love this movie already.

At this point in the movie, the Psycho Brother has already killed a feisty old gas station attendant (who is hands-down the coolest character in the movie) by dropping a jacked-up car on him.  The death is tame and in no way gory, and the act is preceded by the same goofy music that the movie opens with.  It is supposed to be the “suspenseful” music, but is just goofy and makes the scene laughable.  So let’s take a moment to recap: we’ve got this terrible “Gee-whiz!” dialogue, a reluctance among the girls to talk about sex directly, and a murder scene that is about as disturbing as The Care Bears Movie.  This set up a false expectation that the film was going to go on being a tame, somewhat innocent proto-slasher. But it is the very goofiness and innocence that makes the transition so jarring when things start to get ugly. 

Psycho Brother gives a genuinely creepy performance.

As the film continues, the bikers pull the short bus out into the middle of nowhere on the pretext of helping out, then trap the girls in an abandoned old house. Given the premise of the movie, a sexual assault scene was expected. What I didn’t expect was that it could change the tone of the movie so abruptly that it could shock even a jaded horror-nerd like me. The scene isn’t super-explicit, and it cuts before the actual rape begins, but the viciousness with which the Psycho Brother attacks and rips the teacher’s clothes from her body felt way too real. I was convinced that this dude was not acting, and the director just found some crazy rapist motherfucker to turn loose of the set.  And the reaction of the teacher, whose performance had previously been wooden, was equally real.  The fear on her face during the scene, and her looks of hatred afterward, seemed just too genuine, especially after half a film’s worth of sub-amateur acting.

The aftermath of rape. This movie isn't fun anymore.

After the rape scene, I felt genuine dread for whichever poor girl they decided to put in a room with that psycho next. Thankfully, only one other of the girls had to be subjected to his “acting.” The Studious Girl gets it next, and again Psycho Brother tears her clothes off viciously, but rather than raping her, he suffocates her by pushing her head into the sand.  I swear you can see the actress take a lungful of sand and choke.  And again, the scene feels way too real.  I felt genuinely sorry and scared for this poor actress who looks to be having the low point of her career.

So there I was, angry because I’d been robbed of the right to have “discovered” a new holy grail of fun, cheesy B-movies, shocked and disgusted at what I’d just witnessed, and then the filmmakers pull off their final coup – A huge insult placed like the cherry on top of a steaming manure-heap of cinematic injury.  The Nice Biker had previously been driven off a cliff, but in a misogynistic twist that puts the assault scenes to shame, he returns in the final act to rescue the girls because, you know, no way four healthy girls could possibly fight off a pair of leather-clad bikers, let alone muster the brain power to attempt an escape.  But it gets worse.  After the rescue, our hero bids the girls a fond adieu and rides off into the sunset, and the film closes with the teacher actually fucking smiling, like she’s just pleased as punch that she only lost a quarter of the girls.  This woman has been brutalized, and you’d think her students would have to take on the role of protector in the end.  But no, the status quo is maintained and the Teacher’s brutal rape was but a minor bump in the road back to normal.

So, here I am, disturbed and angry with the film, but thinking I’ve got it all figured out, then came the final twist.  I had missed the Psycho Brother’s name in the opening credits, so by the end I was waiting for his name to reappear so I could google him and find out that he went on to a couple of minor genre roles before being jailed as a serial rapist.  But then his name came up: Zalman King.  That Zalman King? The erotica director Zalman King?  Sure as shit yes, it was him, which either means that Zalman King really is a batshit crazy bastard, or that it was a masterful piece of acting that stands out primarily because the rest of the cast sucked so hard.  Which is to say, I don’t quite know what to make of all this.  I had believed while watching Trip with the Teacher, that I had come across silly movie that became unintentionally disturbing when a particularly ugly bit of truth shone through the terrible performances.  However, if I gave the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and believed that they were masterfully manipulating my emotions and expectations to provide the maximum impact of the violence, then this film would be some strange species of masterpiece.

But I don’t give them that benefit. Too much of the film is an amateurish mess for me to believe that the director could have pulled off a mindfuck like that.  As it is, the early promise of the film as a true trash classic devolved into an ugly, brutal, offensive movie that I couldn’t recommend to anyone.

Oh, and by the way, this post contained spoilers.

Review: Lake Mungo (2009)

I wish I’d stumbled upon Lake Mungo while channel surfing at 3 am. Its faux-documentary format is a spot-on recreation of your standard “real-life haunting” TV program, and without knowing it was fiction going into the film, I would have spent at least the first hour wondering if what I was watching was real.  The chills would have been absolutely convulsive.

As it was, I went in fully aware of what the movie was, and found it pretty boring.

Don’t get me wrong, Lake Mungo is a well-made film with a talented cast that is 100% convincing as the grieving family and friends of Alice Palmer, a 16-year old girl who drowned before she starts making appearances in the background of family photographs and videos. The problem is the inherent limitations of making a film in this format.

Lake Mungo’s primary asset is also one of its biggest downfalls. The cleverly executed documentary format is precisely what makes the relatively tame ghostly appearances work. You see a glimpse of a shape moving across the frame or a blurry face reflected in a mirror, and it’s far more terrifying than it has any right to be, simply because it so closely resembles countless accounts of supposedly real hauntings. The lo-fi recording equipment also works to the film’s advantage. The film’s scariest moment comes in the form of a maddeningly pixilated cell phone video that looks hauntingly real precisely because the image quality is so bad. The less you can see, the more your imagination fills in the gaps. At the same time, the documentary format severely limits the suspense and sheer visceral impact the story could have. Very little can be shown in real-time, because the film relies so heavily on talking head narration.

The real downfall of the movie, however, is not its format, but its structure. After a good solid half hour of steadily-building creepiness, a twist in the narrative utterly destroys the film’s momentum. The middle of the movie drags horribly and I couldn’t help but wonder if the movie had anywhere left to go.  But as hinted at earlier in the film, there is the matter of the deceased character’s secret life still to be uncovered, and the film begins to get interesting again.  I say begins, because it never follows through. You get enough juicy secrets to tantalize your imagination, but believe me, whatever you might conjure in your mind is certain to be far more exciting than what the secret turns out to be.

Near the end, there’s one big scare that really worked for me, followed by an epilogue that dragged on and on.  One of the film’s final scenes uses a great narrative device that intercuts video footage of Alice before she died with footage of her mother after her daughter’s death, both describing the same encounter with each other.  It’s a cool scene, but by then, it’s too little, too late, and you just want the movie to end.

I chalk up Lake Mungo to a noble experiment.  While it’s an interesting viewing experience, it never seems to kick into high gear and deliver on the scares it promises early on. It does, however, have enough going for it that I hope writer/director Joel Anderson continues his career in the horror genre.

Final Girl Film Club: Frozen

BIG FAT SPOILERS AHEAD, TURN AROUND! DON'T RUIN THIS MOVIE FOR YOURSELF!

Can I just start by saying that I am ridiculously excited to finally be able to participate in the Final Girl Film Club? For those who don't know what it is all about, the Final Girl Film Club is the brainchild of the inimitable Stacie Ponder, whose horror blog, Final Girl, is one of the best around. Each month she picks a film for her fellow bloggers to review, and links to all our posts. This month's pick was one I'd been dying to see anyway, Adam Green's Frozen.

When I heard about Frozen, I thought the premise was too weak to base a feature on. Don't get me wrong, the prospect of being stranded on a chairlift is terrifying, but the main dangers are height and cold, which don't generally play well on the screen. After all, watching someone freeze to death is only incrementally more exciting than watching golf on tv, while seeing someone plummet to their end is only exciting for the five seconds it takes to go kersplat. But then again, I had heard so many good things about the film that I had to see it. I was not disappointed.

Adam Green has certainly stepped up his game since Hatchet. While I liked Hatchet, I enjoyed it because it was funny. As far as I can remember, there weren't many scares and no real tension to speak of.  But Frozen was practically all tension. From the opening shots, Green imbues the machinery of the chairlift with a sense of cold, unfeeling menace. There's no music, just the squeal of steel cables on massive rotating wheels.

When the 3 lead characters are introduced, there's tension of another kind. Joe (Shawn Ashmore) is annoyed with his lifelong friend Dan (Kevin Zegers) for letting his girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell) tag along. Her presence not only holds them back (because she can barely ski), it also represents the loss Joe feels at losing his BFF to a girl. I like that Green spends ample time on characterization and setting up the relationships, because it definitely pays off once the horror part begins. After Dan has fallen to his death, there's a great scene where Joe and Parker start laying into one another, blaming each other for their situation. I found this scene even more upsetting than the death itself. The surviving characters have been terrified out of their wits, are trying to deal with an impossible situation, and have both just been emotionally devastated by their friend's death, and yet they continue to viciously inflict emotional wounds on one another. It was uglier than the bones sticking out of Dan's legs. This scene, for me, is emblematic of everything that is right with Frozen. There are characters you actually care about, a well-written script brimming with emotional truth, and phenomenal performances by the leads that really make the movie.

Another favorite scene: After the lift has stopped but before the characters suspect that something is horribly wrong, you can see the lights for night skiing behind them, shutting off one by one. The darkening of the lights starts in the distance and steadily moves closer, so the audience sees what's happening before the characters do, creating suspense rather than surprise. Something about it reminded me of the feeling you get when you first hear the shark's theme in Jaws. You can just feel the dread in your stomach. It's magically delicious.

If I had one complaint about Frozen, it would probably be the wolves. I'm no expert, but I'd think the pack would likely steer clear of a ski resort with its high human traffic. Also, I don't think New England has too many wolves these days. However, this is a small complaint, and given a choice between wolves and no wolves, I'd feed Shawn Ashmore and his brother to the hungry pack.

It is my firm coviction that movies cannot be evaluated objectively. One's enjoyment of a film depends on their expectations, their personal experiences and attitudes, their current mood, and the circumstances in which they watched the film. This being the case I'd like to note the several factors that influenced my enjoyment of Frozen. First off, I watched it during a subzero cold snap, which made things that much more real for me. I live in the heart of ski country in the Montana Rockies, yet I've only been skiing once. I found riding the chairlift to be a singularly unnerving experience. Montana also has a significant wolf population, with a large pack living just a few dozen miles to the north of where I live. A few years ago, a pack slaughtered a hundred head of sheep in a single rampage, and no one can figure out why (I suspect it was a political protest at having been reintroduced to the state). All of this means, of course, that I was predisposed to find the movie scary. However, it is totally to Adam Green's credit that he executed the film with such skill.

One last fun fact: the week after I watched Frozen, the chairlift at my local ski resort derailed. There were no deaths, but several minor injuries. Perhaps if they'd have watched Frozen they would never have gotten on that lift in the first place. See, horror movies can be good for you.

Can we retire the term "torture porn" already?

When the term "torture porn" started popping up, I figured it was just a case of mainstream movie reviewers finding yet another way to write off horror films as a degenerate art form. But then I noticed the term creeping into horror blogs as a shorthand for the kind of movies even some die-hard horror fans don't like. I understand why these ultraviolent, graphic films are off-putting for most reasonable human beings, but I also find the label "torture porn" to be lazy, presumptuous, and insulting.

The purpose of any horror film is to be scary, to ferret out our most primal fears and manipulate them, bring them to the surface and make us face them. For some people, these deepest of fears involve the supernatural, or vicious, man-eating beasts. Personally, I can think of nothing scarier than being captured, bound, and tortured to death by some sick bastard who is getting off on my pain and fear. Movies like Hostel and Saw (around which the term "torture porn" seems to have originated) cut right to the heart of this fear and put it on display, daring you to watch. It's not a comfortable viewing experience, and it's not meant to be.

So if these films are doing exactly what horror is supposed to do (disturb, unsettle, and frighten the viewer), why are they so quickly dismissed by certain viewers? Perhaps they are too effective. Maybe they are just so disturbing that some viewers don't get what they want from them, which is entertainment. Many horror fans like their scary movies to be more fun than disturbing. Take away the element of fun, and what's left? Just the pain and fear. They are suspicious of the motives of anyone who would like horror devoid of fun. They don't understand the appeal, and can only imagine that fans of this kind of horror must get off on watching violence. So obviously, torture movies must be like porn to these sickos.

This is what I find so insulting about the term "torture porn." It implies that fans are fetishists who take pleasure in the pain of others.  Now I can only speak for myself, but the attraction for me is much different. I only enjoy horror films when I can put myself in the place of the victims and feel their fear. To me, all good horror asks its audience the question: What would you do?  How would you react in this situation? To get the most out of a horror film, viewers must make themselves vulnerable, lower their defenses, and let the movie do its work on its own terms.

Perhaps this is another reason some are so quick use the "torture porn" label - the inability to lower those defenses, to let themselves be scared. If you can't put yourself in the victim's place, you either identify with the killer (and probably do get off on the violence), or you act as a voyeur. A viewer who doesn't feel fear during a torture scene must see it as pointless violence for violence's sake. No wonder it seems like nothing more than porno for psychos.

Not long ago, I watched Pascal Laugier's Martyrs for the first time. It was the single most powerful film experience I've ever had, and despite being relentlessly brutal, harrowing, and ugly, I thought the film was absolutely beautiful. Yes, there were prolonged scenes of torture, but this was really a film driven by ideas, and the violence was used in service to these ideas. The violence could certainly been toned down, but it would have been to the detriment of the film. Laugier is not content just to present the ideas as pure ideas, but wants the viewer to experience them vicariously. The end effect is emotionally devastating. I ascended from the mancave literally in a daze, to which my wife can testify.  The next day, I looked up reviews to see what critics were saying about Martyrs. In retrospect, it was probably a little naive, but I had no idea how many people would despise the film. Going through the negative reviews, I found that the "torture porn" label was ubiquitous and uniformly applied by critics too lazy to try to discern the film's meaning. And that's the problem with the term - it's a cop-out. It allows critics to decline the challenge presented by films such as Martyrs. I'm not saying these movies are for everyone, but those who dislike them should at least explain themselves rather than resorting to such a tired, misapplied label.

Thoughts on Babysitter Wanted

Warning: Major spoilers ahead

Okay, I know there was a good movie in there somewhere, but between the script and the direction, something went horribly wrong.  I didn't know a thing about this movie going into it, but here's what the cover looks like:

So, it looks way brutal and horrifying, yes? I most definitely was bracing myself for some disturbing shit, but I ended up laughing so loud that my wife said she could hear me cackling through the floor. So what exactly went wrong?  Shall we dissect this film? But of course.

First off, from the very opening scene, you get a pretty good sense of what is going on. You see bare flesh with black marker lines that suggest butchery. Pretty chilling, right?  But then, early on when the babysitter is first being shown around the house, the whole plot is blown when the mother instructs the babysitter to only feed her child the food in the containers marked with his name. You can clearly see through the tupperware that each meal consists of bloody cuts of meat. So, with an hour and fifteen minutes to go, you already know the plot is about a child, most likely a demon, who lives off of human flesh. Now, I've got to say, this is a pretty cool premise for a horror movie, but for God's sake, don't blow the whole plot fifteen minutes in.

The tragedy of this movie is that there are so many great oppotunities to be truly scary and unsettling, but the filmmakers managed to blow them all. If the film was just a straight-up shit sandwich, I'd have switched it off and watched something else, no biggie. But the frustrating part is there's much to admire in this film. The performances are solid (for the most part), the look and feel of the movie are spot-on, yet at every turn, something just falls short. For instance, there is a scene in which a large, scarred, scary dude busts into the house, obviously out for blood. The babysitter, in her very annoying habit of explaining to herself what is perfectly obvious to the viewer, says aloud, "I need to find a weapon." She ransacks the house, and in the process opens a cabint to find several human skulls and an upside-down cross surrounded by burning candles.  This is obviously supposed to be a big beat in the script where she realizes what is really going on, but instead she just closes the cabinet, presumably thinking, "No weapons here," and moves on.

Speaking of the big scary dude, once you figure out the plot, the character is completely ineffective as a red herring. If the child is a demon, this guy must be the demon slayer, right? As if the movie didn't project his true identity 3 miles away, the filmmakers thought it clever to make his weapon the freakin' Ajanti Dagger from The Golden Child (okay, maybe not everyone would get that reference).

All in all, Babysitter Wanted is a strangely compelling mess that absolutely reeks of amatuer filmmaking, but has enough redeeming qualities that you kind of hope the filmmakers will hone their skills, study some early John Carpenter, and come out with a better movie in the future.

Five Reasons to be Stoked about the Current State of Horror

I’m more excited about horror now than I’ve ever been, including my teenage years when Freddy Krueger was all the rage and we still believed Friday Part 4 was the final chapter. Part of the reason for my excitement, I’ll admit, is that I hardly watched any horror for the better part of a decade. I blame my kids. As soon as my first son was born, I completely lost my tolerance for screen violence. But after eight maddening years of non-stop child-rearing, I was more than ready to see some good blood-letting. When I returned to the fold a few years ago, I was amazed at what I had missed.  Great things have been a-brewin’ in the world of horror over the last decade. So here’s my list of the top 5 reasons I’m stoked about the current state of horror.

Horror makes me happy!

1. Europe is bringing it – Remember late’70s/early ‘80s horror, and that rugged collection of independent filmmakers who could take a shoestring budget and craft it into the gritty, disturbing films that would become the future classics of the genre? You know, before Hollywood smelled the money in all that blood? Well that’s what’s going on in Europe right now. Armed with tiny budgets and endless imagination, the new Europeans horror auteurs are bringing scary back. Even in this new age of ultra-gore, these filmmakers are finding new ways to unnerve us. My fellow Americans, it’s time to shed that irrational fear of subtitles and embrace the new century’s best horror.  Here’s your must-see list:

High Tension – Alexandre Aja’s slasher on steroids is relentless and brutal. Lots of people have a problem with the ending, but don’t let that ruin it for you. Besides, if it was just a straightforward slasher, you wouldn’t spend the next three days thinking about it.

[REC] – This is the absolute masterpiece of the found-footage horror genre. By the finale, I literally could not believe my eyes.  I was like, “I know what I’m seeing isn’t real, but it’s not CGI either, so what the hell is that thing?” My wife had to sleep with the lights on for a week.

The Descent – If you seriously can’t stand subtitles or dubbing, behold, here’s one in English.  Spelunking is just inherently terrifying, so I was pissing myself before things even got weird. Director Neil Marshall seems to be moving away from horror for the moment, but this and Dog Soldiers should be enough to earn him a place in horror history.

Also check out Frontier(s), Sheitan, Martyrs, Slaughter Night, and The Orphanage, at the least.

2. New School American Horror – Forget Hatchet’s tagline, this is the New School of American horror, and it’s looking damned promising.  Here are some of the Yanks who are taking it to the next level.

Adam Green – Seriously, I didn’t think Frozen would be that scary. I mean, the premise is terrifying – being trapped on a ski lift for a week in subzero temperatures—but really, how can you make that into a movie?  Ask Adam Green, or better yet watch his film to see how it’s done.  While Frozen is his finest, Spiral is another fine, unsettling character piece, while the Hatchet movies bring the fun back to slasher flicks.

Eli Roth – Okay, lots of people don’t like Eli Roth, but come on, have you seen Hostel II? I strongly suspect that it’s his personality people have a problem with, because his skill as a filmmaker speaks for itself, and his movies get progressively better.  With any luck, Roth’s best films are yet to come.

Rob Zombie – Quiet down everyone. I know, I know.  All of Zombie’s films are deeply flawed in numerous ways, but it’s hard to argue that he has established himself as a unique voice in American horror.  Love him or hate him, his films are always interesting.  He’s got brutal, gruesome imagery down to a science, so if he just brushes up on his suspense, he may change some minds yet.

3. Indie Horror – I went to film school in the late 90’s and remember having to sign up weeks in advance to get a few hours in one of the editing suites. Student and amateur filmmakers today don’t even know how lucky they are.  These days editing software comes standard with pretty much every computer, and even cheapie $100 digital cameras are capable of shooting video and sound.  Of course, there’s more to filmmaking than equipment, but at least there’s opportunity for young filmmakers to practice, hone their craft, and even make a releasable film on practically no budget.  Paranormal Activity, of course, is the little indie that could, but there are hundreds of lesser known films out there vying for the opportunity to become the next big thing.  I honestly haven’t seen that much indie horror, so I don’t have a list of must-sees. I can recommend Stacie Ponder’s Ludlow (see my review here), but that’s about it.  Hopefully this blog will start to attract some followers and people will start sending me screeners (Dawning and Dead Hooker in a Trunk, I'm looking at you).

4. The Horror Blogosphere – My current obsession with horror is only half about the movies themselves. There’s a thriving horror community out there that is getting the word out about the best of what’s bloody. Back in film school, it wasn’t so hard to find like-minded people who loved nothing better than to talk movies, even horror movies all day.  Since joining the workforce and moving to a low-population area that is more rest home than college town, I’ve run low on real live people to discuss my interests with.  Now all the hardcore horror heads are online and I’ve been introduced to so many great films that I want to give the whole internet a big, groping hug.

5. Availability - Back in the day, if my video store didn’t have it, I didn’t get to see it.  These days we have Netflix streaming hundreds of titles to my freakin’ videogame console.  Some indie filmmakers let you watch their films for free on the web.  Forget that no good movies ever come to my local theater, who needs ‘em? My other main source of horror films is the venerable pawn shop.  Back in 1999, I got my first DVD player, and the first movie I bought for it was John Carpenter’s Vampires.  I got it from a pawn shop for $8 (VHS tapes were $5).  These days, most pawn shops in my area have a massive selection of DVDs for $2-$3 each.  I must have bought 80 movies in the last two months.  Now all I need is the time to watch them.