oldsharky

Frankenstein’s Army (2013)

OK, this bad boy rocks.

If you haven’t seen anything worth inviting into your Netflix queue lately, Frankenstein’s Army is a brilliant remedy.

What we have here is a disturbing Weird War tale with steampunk accoutrements fitted into a “found-footage” frame, with a visual aesthetic that’s bold and nightmarishly distinctive.

In the waning days of World War II, Russian troops are streaming into Germany, wreaking havoc along the way. One such unit is accompanied by Captain Dimitri (Alexander Mercury), a cameraman making a documentary about these “heroic” soldiers.

While holed up in a bombed-out village, the group discovers a church converted into a mad scientist’s lab and are soon set upon by the most outré pack of Nazi zombie-robot-monsters I’ve ever seen.

Frankenstein’s Army is a Czech/US/Netherlands co-production filmed in the Czech Republic, which perhaps goes a long way toward explaining its unique appeal.

A hearty shake of my flippers goes to director and story man Richard Raaphorst, who hits a horror home run his first time at bat.

Admittedly, the lengths needed to preserve the found-footage premise become increasingly (and purposely, I think) absurd as a 70-year-old Soviet movie camera is able to capture pristine audio while getting tossed around like a Samsung at a frat party.

But Raaphorst is a filmmaker with vision: his nimble mind invents extraordinary beings, and like Dr. Frankenstein (Karl Roden), he has the ability to bring them to life.

He’s clearly not just another fawning acolyte of Sam Raimi or Tim Burton—if anything, his work reminds me of England’s once-reigning madman, Ken Russell.

Take it from me, Frankenstein’s Army is some very fresh hell, indeed. Highly recommended.

The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)

In space, no one can hear you yawn.

Sadly, this cheezoid mashup of Alien and The Thing features no Pink Floyd in the soundtrack. In fact, The Dark Side of the Moon has precious little going for it, although its depiction of a “futuristic” space ship from the Year 2022 is good for some snarky horse laughs. Really? Steam pipes? And the electronic consoles are constantly misfiring and shooting off sparks while the teensy monitors look like they would be more at home hosting a spirited game of Pong. Oh well, you get your perks where you can.

A small crew of mostly no-name talent (headlined by John Diehl, Cruiser from Stripes, and Joe Turkel, Tyrell from Blade Runner) finds itself adrift on the wrong side of the moon where it encounters a derelict space craft that has mysteriously appeared direct from the Bermuda Triangle (*eyes roll*). It’s lone occupant is a shape-shifting creature that turns out to be… THE DEVIL!

Yes, there are spoilers aplenty here, but trust me, you will not be watching The Dark Side of the Moon for its agile plot twists. It’s cheap, boring, ineptly written, and offers nothing whatsoever in the way of frights. Director D.J. Webster’s idea of cinematic finesse consists of extreme closeups of the cast, in case you were wondering how their pores are holding up in the vacuum of space. Listen carefully: Not every artifact from a bygone era is worth saving.

Camp Hell (2010)

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I think that if a movie is featured on Fearnet Channel it should, in fact, be a horror movie.

While writer-director George Van Buskirk is able to cobble together a few ominous sequences, Camp Hell, for the most part, is a tepid coming-of-age film in which brooding protagonist Tommy Leary (Will Denton) decides that the fundamentalist sect of the Judeo-Christian faith that has enveloped his family and friends is not to his liking.

On behalf of everyone who managed to sit through this sleepy spectacle, I would just like to add, “Congratulations.”

And “Who gives a shit?”

Obviously Van Buskirk must be connected to “somebody” in the filmmaking community, because he managed to cajole Andrew McCarthy, Dana Delany, Bruce Davidson and Jesse Eisenberg into appearing in this painfully amateurish production, that looks like it was shot on Super 8.

Throughout its 99 interminable minutes, Camp Hell (originally titled Camp Hope—Oooh! Scary!) attempts to dress-up an adolescent lad’s clumsily symbolic account of losing both his virginity and his religion, with occasional references to Satan, who seems to be lurking in the bushes at Camp Hope, a strict Christian camp run by authoritarian asshole Father Phineas (Davidson).

Sadly, there is no Satan, no demon, no monster, no murder, no nothing, no kidding.

Even the scene where Tommy dry humps his girlfriend for the first time, and thus opening the doorway to all sorts of temptations and pleasures of the flesh—has all the drama and passion of a QuikBooks tutorial.

The power of Christ and I compel you to avoid Camp Hell.

The Fields (2011)

Cloris Leachman (April 30, 1926–January 27, 2021) is beyond awesome.

Maybe you remember her Academy Award-winning turn as the neglected wife of a high school football coach in The Last Picture Show. Or the time she won an Emmy for her portrayal of Mary Tyler Moore’s nosy neighbor, Phyllis.

How about the two Emmys she took home as the weirdest granny of all time in Malcolm in the Middle?

Hell, she was Frau Blucher (*horse whinnies*) in Young Frankenstein! In her twilight years guested on American Gods and Dancing with the Stars! Let’s see you do that.

At age 85, she’s the best thing about The Fields, an eerie slow-burner co-directed by Tom Mattera and Dave Mazzoni.

Based on an actual occurrence from writer Harrison Smith’s childhood, the movie is set in 1973, and follows Steven (Joshua Ormond)—an angelic kid with hair like Robert Plant—who gets shipped off to live with his grandparents in rural Pennsylvania, after he witnesses Dad (Faust Checho) pointing a rifle at Mom’s (Tara Reid in a wig) noggin.

Enter Grandma Gladys (Leachmen) and Grandpa Hiney (Bev Appleton), who welcome the lad to their decrepit farm, surrounded on three sides by enormous (and dead) cornfields. Gladys tells young Steven to avoid the fields.

“We’ll never find ya in there, at least not till you’re all black and swollen,” she warns. Kids never listen.

On the other side of the cornfields is an abandoned amusement park currently occupied by a cult of evil hippie girls. Next door there’s a milk farm where Eugene (Louis Morabito), a dead ringer for Manson, works as a hired hand. Slowly, and with the inevitability of a bad dream, Little Steven finds himself surrounded on all sides by sinister forces.

If The Fields had just a smidgen more action or more beefy scares, I would be shouting my praises from the rooftops. As it stands, it’s a very watchable feature with an assortment of haunting touches.

Directors Mattera and Mazzoni capture the dread of being a child in an unfamiliar environment and without parents to explain life’s little mysteries: For instance, why is there a dead girl in the cornfield, and how come my cousins are all deformed lunatics?

And through it all, there’s Steven’s protector, Cloris Leachman, as a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking matriarch who likes to watch horror movies. The Fields is planted on her firm foundation.

Stitches (2012)

Come on, send in the clowns already!

In this case, the horrific harlequin is none other than Richard “Stitches” Grindel (Ross Noble), a kid-hating misanthrope who lives in an old school bus on the outskirts of town.

After a fatal encounter with a party of very naughty children, the vengeful jester rises from his clown grave to seek bloody revenge. My hat is off to Irish writer-director Conor McMahon (From The Dark, Dead Meat), who has fashioned a frenetic visual fun-house of grotesquery that rivals Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive in both gushy gore and belly laughs.

Like most clowns, Stitches is down on his luck and needs to occasionally tap the lucrative birthday party circuit to keep his kinky girlfriend in hooker shoes.

Sadly, the brats attending Tommy’s party are narcissistic sociopaths suffering from ADD, and instead of being treated to an inspiring afternoon of professional buffoonery, they torment the miserable merrymaker to death!

Tying his clown shoes together results in a face-plant into the dishwasher where a carelessly placed carving knife awaits.

Frankly, these little turds deserve to die horribly, and they do, in a rash of over-the-top impalings, gougings, and decapitations that follows in the wake of Stitches’ sinister resurrection ceremony conducted by his malevolent clown brethren.

If you only see one movie about a zombie clown this year, make it Stitches. You’ll be glad you did.

Mountain Monsters (2012)

It’s not a movie, but if you’re lucky enough to have Channel 201, Destination America, you must watch this incredible show.

Apparently the hills of West Virginia are teeming with all manner of cryptozoological fauna, including the Moth Man, the Grass Man, wolf men, dog men, devil dogs, wampus beasts, and every distant relative of Bigfoot known to mankind.

So who you gonna call? John “Trapper” Tice and his AIMS (Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings) team, that’s who!

Trapper and his boys like nothing more than an excuse to go crashing through the woods at night in search of legendary beasts spotted by their hillbilly brethren.

Besides Trapper, there’s Jeff, who’s in charge of research. In other words, he has a laptop and knows how to use it. Willy and Wild Bill build all sorts of outlandish traps, pits, and snares, in hopes of capturing a heretofore unknown specimen. They’ve never succeeded, but by god, it ain’t for lack of trying!

Huckleberry (Woooot! Team Huckleberry!) is a hunter and tracker with a ready supply of guns, ammo, and thermal-imaging gear. (“Wait! There’s something there! *pause* Now it’s gone!”)

And then there’s Buck, the fat-guy comic relief, who once locked eyes with the Moth Man himself—and fell over hypnotized! On camera! At least once per episode, Buck will gaze in wonder at sketchy video evidence of their mythical quarry (usually a misshapen shadow or tree branch that moved) and exclaim, “That thing’s huge!”

Needless to say, AIMS has never brought home any appreciable evidence of wolf men, aliens, blue devils, or thunderbirds. But I sleep safely at night knowing that these fearless investigators… are really, really far away across the country and unlikely to mistake me for the Beast of Bray Road or the bloodsucking Devil Dog of Logan County and fill my hide with buckshot.

Mountain Monsters is a hoot and it’s must-see TV. It’s also been renewed for a second season!

Blood Runs Cold (2011)

Based on the description, I thought this might be some annoyingly clever musical crossover, since its rather featureless lead character Winona (Hanna Oldenburg) is supposedly a successful pop singer.

To my relief, she doesn’t sing a note. She’s far too busy trying to elude the zombie-cannibal-miner-hillbilly freak that’s intent on having her over for a snack (if you know what I mean).

Blood Runs Cold is filmed somewhere near Stockholm, pretending to be North Carolina—which also accounts for the mercurial accents on display.

Winona (not a Judd) must four-wheel her way through several miles of frozen tundra to a remote house near her hometown that has been rented by her manager.

Note: If this guy was my manager, and he stuck me way-the-hell-out in some snowbound hick town without my entourage, he’d soon be nut-punched.

Winona (not a Judd) finds her crummy dump of a house, settles in and drives to a nearby tavern where she stumbles over her high school sweetheart Richard (Patrick Saxe) and his friends Carl (Andrea Wylander) and Liz (Elin Hugoson).

She invites them all back to her crummy dump (lots of time spent driving around in Arctic conditions just adds to its zero-budget charm) where they fall prey to a multifaceted maniac (David Liljeblad—who also serves as producer and co-writer) with a penchant for pickax perforation.

He falls a bit short of frightening, but I would have appreciated two minutes of backstory on where this colorful killer came from.

With Blood Runs Cold, director Sonny Laguna gives us a fascinatingly unadorned minimalist study in the field of hack-and-stack. Not one dime of this film’s budget was spent on set dressing, wardrobe, or the cast; it’s all earmarked for blood, guts, and decapitation.

And if you ask me, that’s money well spent.

Rubber (2010)

Oh, France! What a nation of jolly, irreverent provocateurs you are! Why did writer/director Quentin Dupieux make a “horror” movie about a sentient car tire with terrifying telekinetic powers? As Lieutenant Chad (Steve Spinella) says many times during the film’s introduction, “No reason.”

In the middle of desert nowhere, a tire comes to life and uses its psychic ability to make heads explode. Nearby, an audience of nitwits watches the action through binoculars. The tire becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman (Roxane Mezquida) in a Volkswagen and trails her to a decrepit motel.

To his credit, Dupieux has made a marvelously intricate and witty movie that poses a passel of burning questions to its audience. (That would be you and me. The audience with the binoculars has been poisoned with bad turkey—except for the guy in the wheelchair played by Wings Hauser.) It would be easy to dismiss Rubber as absurdist twaddle with a side of pretension, but it’s filmed so cunningly through low-angle cameras that roll us right along with the murderous tire, that it becomes a brutally hypnotic experience. And by then, it’s too late.

Unlike similar exercises in reflexive filmmaking by Dupieux’s highbrow cinematic forebears (Godard and Wenders come to mind), Rubber maintains a much-needed sense of its own playfulness that keeps the whole business from sinking under the weight of its concept.

Even while some of the characters ponder the reality of the situation as if they were in a staged reading of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Dupieux seems to be more interested in why we’re still watching this nonsense. You see, Monsieur Director, as nonsense goes, Rubber is hard to ignore. Will there be a sequel with the tricycle?

Night of the Demon (1957)

Let’s dispense with the chit-chat and get down to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Whether you see it as Night of the Demon (the full-length British feature) or Curse of the Demon (the American version with 12 minutes edited out), you’re in for a sweet ride.

Based on the M.R. James short story “Casting the Runes” this black-and-white creep-a-thon is required viewing in the horror canon—and if your tender sensibilities can’t fathom a scary movie without a shower scene or diced camper, then I suggest you move on.

Generic 1950s leading man Dana Andrews stars as John Holden, an American psychiatrist and skeptic, who travels to England to expose “devil cult” leader Julian Karswell (Niall McGinnis) as a fraud.

The problem is, he isn’t one, and soon Holden realizes the avuncular Karswell has slipped him a piece of paper with a powerful curse on it. (I think it translates as “Hey demon, please mangle and mutilate whatever sorry sack of shit has the misfortune to be in possession of this here paper. K? Thanks!”)

Karswell coolly informs Holden that he will be taking a dirt nap in three days, prompting the spooked shrink and his comely sidekick (Peggy Cummins) to race around the English countryside in search of a solution.

Credit the skills of veteran director Jacques Tourneur for creating a true atmospheric classic. Demon, as well as previous films such as The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and the noir masterpiece Out of the Past (Robert Mitchum’s best movie?) demonstrate Tourneur’s finesse with camera angles and his juggling of light and shadow to create menace.

The apocryphal story of Demon concerns the studio’s decision to have an actual demon appear at the beginning and end of the film, contrary to the wishes of Tourneur.

IMHO, it would have been a fine movie without it, but I appreciate the effort to give viewers a nightmare they can take home with them. It’s really not a bad demon; I’ve seen much worse.

Devil’s Pass (2013)

With a found-footage narrative similar to The Frankenstein Theory—film crew blunders into a frozen hell searching for answers to an unsolved mystery—Devil’s Pass provides sufficient diversions for an afternoon of chilly thrills.

Plus, it’s directed by former A-list filmmaker Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight) who seems to have fallen off the map of late.

A five-person film crew from the University of Oregon (Woooot! Ducks represent!) retraces the steps of the Dyatlov Expedition, a Russian team that perished under mysterious circumstances in the Ural Mountains in 1959.

Why anyone would want to follow the path of a doomed expedition defies comprehension, but as team leader Holly King (Holly Goss) notes gleefully on camera, “We got a grant!”

Once they land in the former Soviet Union, the crew is bedeviled by a failing GPS navigator, huge footprints in the snow that randomly appear and disappear, and some scary sounds in the night.

All this leads to the discovery of a huge door in the mountainside and hints that the Russian military has been messing around with alien technology.

The finale of Devil’s Pass makes a passable attempt at explaining all the questions that have emerged during the movie’s running time, but it’s still kind of a train wreck.

So instead of yeti we get teleporting ghouls that maybe used to be human? Sure, ok, whatever. The bottom line is that it’s a grueling and unpredictable trip that’s worth taking.

Don’t trip over the plot holes along the way.