True Blood, Anyone?

Scientists are now able to convert blood types.

Seems like it won't be long until artificial blood? Maybe vampires really will decide to come out of the coffin. :)

-DR

I Drink Your Blood (1970)

I Drink Your Blood was directed by Davis E. Durston and starred Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, who had a tragic, but fascinating life.

This movie, inspired by the Manson Family, is abut a group of Satanic hippies who get on the wrong side of a little boy. As a result, he doses them with rabies by injecting the blood of a rabid dog into meat pies and selling them to the hippie clan. The rabies spreads as the hippies go on a crazy killing spree until the town is razed to the ground. The only thing saving the few survivors is that rabies causes an extreme fear of water, which allows for an anticlimactic escape through a river.

I think the description says it all, really. A wonderful example of why Grindhouse movies are great. :) I mean, this is two hours of hippies wielding axes as they foam at the mouth. Beautiful.

Also, Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury really gives a stand-out performance. His dance background is readily apparent in the theatricality of his acting. The movie is worth seeing just to see him as a Satantic cult leader. He comes across as much more of a protagonist than the sociopathic little boy.

A+

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Since I have so many to write, each of these is going to be quick and dirty, just the facts, ma'am. :)

Rosemary's Baby was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Mia Farrow and Ruth Gordon, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role.

I have seen this movie MANY times, but it never fails to spook me. I read the book when I was eighteen, and it is the only book I have ever read that has given me nightmares.

However, I think people misplace the horrific aspects of this movie. While Levin is obviously drawing from the idea of the invasion of the body and ancient ideas of demonic possession, I think the true terror in this movie lies in the idea that sometimes the people you love betray you. It really speaks to the inherent evil in human nature and how trust can be so easily broken.

I mean, Guy sells Rosemary to the Devil for his own success in acting. Everyone around her, including her neighbors and her doctor, are in on the plot, and there is no one she can turn to. If you ask me, that's much scarier than her demon baby.

A+

Happy Halloween, Y'all!

Halloween is the time for horror, after all, so I have embarked on a two-day horror fest, reviews to come shortly. :)

So far:

Rosemary's Baby

I Drink Your Blood

Island of Death

Nightmare on Elm's Street

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

The Hunger

Practical Magic (Not Horror, but whatevs.)


Happy All-Saints!

Paranormal Activity (2009)

Just in time for Halloween, a RETURN TO EXTREME UNCTION!!!

Just a general note, I've decided I'm going to make my posts much shorter in general, so I will be more likely to get them up, rather than let them pile up.

Now to the good stuff:

Paranormal Activity was directed by Oren Peli, and stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat as themselves.

This movie's been kicking around film festivals since 2007, and it seemed to get good reviews, though not much hype until recently. I really wasn't too enthused to be seeing it until I actually got into the theatre. I mean, it's a found footage movie about a haunting, meaning it could have gotten real hokey, real fast. I was expecting the same old Amityville Horror House nonsense, with flies and dripping blood, but the actual movie was much more subtle.

Basically, the director did something really smart and avoided the obvious. No cats jumped out of trashcans; no hideous visages appeared in reflections from behind the camera. Each effect was well placed and timed, so that each new occurrence built on the previous with almost no lag in between. This allowed the director to get the most out of each paranormal event, winding the audience up in a way that one really doesn't see in horror anymore.

I mean, the audience never sees anything truly tangible beyond shadows or footprints. The first scare is a door moving slightly one way, stopping, then swinging back in place. The end scene, out of context, could be considered on par with an opening scare in other movies, but when I saw it, the entire audience screeched. I was genuinely scared even after I left the theatre.

The only problem I had was in the advertising. Like Quarantine, (2008) the end shot is shown in the trailer. It just seems counter-productive, and trivializes the suspense the movie works so hard to build.

Movie: A

Trailer: C

Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas

Throat Sprockets was written by Tim Lucas and published in 1994 by Delta Books.

I picked this book up on a whim, not knowing that it had been listed by Rue Morgue as one of their "50 essential alternative horror novels," among other accolades.

I can see why it garnered such attention. Lucas chronicles his protagonist's (unnamed, an affectation that works here) growing obsession with the film Throat Sprockets and how that fixation draws him, and eventually the world, into oblivion.

Throat Sprockets is absolutely dominated by the influences of Lynch and Burroughs, which is both good and bad for the novel. Lucas juxtaposes the film and the protagonist's life as they intertwine, until the whole world is drawn into "sprocketing," the vampiric throat fetish featured in the film, and characters in the film begin to make appearances in the protagonist's life.

This use of overlapping symbols works for most of the novel, until the last section. I just don't know what to think of the last chapter. It almost ruined the entire book for me, honestly. Did Lucas really need to push the film's influence all the way to destroying the world? In the chapter before, we see how pervasive the film has become, how society has contorted itself into a mimic of the film.

Really, I think this vision of declining society is more evocative than a ruined landscape. The last chapter comes across as muddy and confused, with the Christian anti-vampire group STOKER roaming the land like Burroughs' Wild Boys, killing off sprocketers. It just came across as too contrived, and left me in a funk all night after I finished reading.

The Novel, Minus the Last Chapter: A

The Last Chapter: I don't even know.

Oh no....

I like musicals...

Squeaky Fromme!!

Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme was released from prison Friday. She served thirty-four years due to her ill-fated attempt to assassinate President Ford, though she is most well-known as a member of the Manson family. She is the only member of the family still devoted to Charles Manson, even escape prison in 1987 to visit him when she heard a rumour he was ill and dying.

A few years ago, I read her biography, Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme, by Jess Bravin. If anyone needs a bit of not-so-light reading, I would highly recommend it. Her life, especially her life with and devotion to Charles Manson himself, is absolutely fascinating. I don't want to tell too much, but from reading about her childhood, it is really no wonder she got caught up in such a mess.

Who knows, maybe now I could have her over for dinner. :) I would love for her and I to sit down and talk.

-DR

Much more chic than a musty old coffin...

I want this over my bed. For realz.

Also, TruBlood is going to be released as a real drink!

Coming Soon:

Recently, I have been absolutely awash in horror, so much so that I have quite a few reviews coming. These include:

Gingersnaps (2000)

The Ruins by Scott Smith

AND

The Ruins (2008)

Leprechan: Back 2 Tha Hood (2002)
(This is not, incidentally, number two, but instead the sixth in the series. Weird.)

I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

And FINALLY:

Skeleton Key (2005).

Orphan (2009)

Orphan was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, and stars Isabelle Fuhrman, Vera Farmiga, and Peter Sarsgaard. It is currently in theatres.


As a preface: SPOILERS! WATCH OUT!


What truly impressed me in this movie was Isabelle Fuhrman's acting. The girl is only twelve or thirteen, yet she pulls off nine and thirty three with equal aplomb. You see, the twist is that Ester is in fact a grown woman, a proportional dwarf masquerading as a nine year old girl. Now, this sounds patently ridiculous, as quite a few Internet sources have noted, but I feel Fuhrman gave a strong enough performance to make her secret believable.


Through almost the entire first act, Ester comes across as almost too sweet, and one finds one's self almost rooting for her, despite knowing that she MUST be evil. After a girl at school is particularly cruel to her, pushing her off a jungle-gym seems not only excusable but justified. However, Ester's rage intensifies as the movie progresses, and her transgressions get more and more serious, and correspondingly less well-thought-out, until she can disguise her true intentions no longer. Fuhrman gives Ester a snarl that slowly emerges through her East European accent as she begins her siege on the family, using their spotted history to turn them against each other until it is almost too late.


Additionally, I felt Vera Farmiga was excellent. She plays Ester's adopted mother, who lost her third child while it was still in the womb. She descends into suffering as Ester escalates into manic insanity, matching her in violence until they battle in the final act. In fact, one of the most shocking scenes in the movie is not due to Ester, but when Kate slaps her. She must be physically restrained from beating Ester, and this rage from a "good" character is quite jarring.


However, a few things did bother me about the movies. The reason Ester wears ribbons on her throat and wrists is to cover scars she recieved from her straight jacket when she was in the mental instituation, but these scars look more like cutting scars, rather than the abrassion marks one would get from rubbing fabric. I think they had these scars mostly for the sake of misdirection, really, and for visual effect.

In fact, I felt quite a few things in the movie were done mainly for mood, sacrificing logic. For instance, Ester likes to paint, but her seemingly innocent pictures are, when shown under blacklight, to contain twisted hidden images, such as burning children or heaqds on pikes. Now, these day-glow ciphers were certanly interesting and spooky, the whole thing seemed a bit too hoodoo-magic to fit with the logic of the rest of the film. I mean, did she own a blacklight in the orphanage? However, it did make for a great closing credits sequence.


B+

Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Drag Me To Hell (2009) was directed by Sam Raimi and stars Alison Lohman.

Now, I saw this movie well over a month ago. I really enjoyed it, yet I haven't been able to write anything coherent about it. It seems to just evade my grasp.

Raimi's gruesome glee is there in full force. There are scenes of absolute horror-comedy disgustingness you can't help but be swept along, such as the first fight between the gypsy woman and Christine. The gypsy woman loses her teeth at one point, and basically ends up gumming Christine's face. My immediate reaction was "Awesome!" and there were many moments that captured the joy of Evil Dead (1981).

But then... You could SEE the end coming from a hundred miles away. As soon as she puts the cursed button in an envelope identical to the one she gave her boyfriend, you KNEW what was coming. I just... this doesn't ruin the movie, it just... I can't decide. The fumbling bits would not have bothered me in ANY OTHER MOVIE, but from Sam Raimi...

Just...
B

Geraldo Rivera Is Silly

Really, how could anyone take this as anything BUT sensationalism?