Guy in a Suit – Page 8

The Hills Run Red (2009)

Boy, do they ever!

A gruesome splatter fest about our devotion to cult films, The Hills Run Red is a lot like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only the family business is cinema instead of meat.

And instead of Leatherface, we have Babyface.

Movie nerd Tyler (Tad Hilgenbrink) is obsessed with a notorious horror film from the 1980s called The Hills Run Red that up and disappeared, along with its director, years before.

Tyler tracks down the director’s daughter Alexa (Sophie Monk), a junkie stripper with a heart of gold. After helping her kick heroin, Tyler arranges for Alexa to guide them into the “deep woods” where the movie was filmed.

Tagging along for this road trip in search of cinematic buried treasure is cameraman Lalo (Alex Wyndham) and Tyler’s restless girlfriend Serina (Janet Montgomery).

In a clear case of Careful What You Wish For, Tyler eventually gets to see the legendary film, only to discover that he and his friends are reluctant cast members.

Gallons of gore ensues, but The Hills Run Red isn’t just another homage to vintage slice-and-dice. There are astute discussions on the fly about horror movies, that bring up interesting points about what fans really want, e.g., Emotional Connection versus Violent Spectacle.

Director Dave Parker opens with a hellish montage sequence and keeps his foot near the gas pedal at all times, which means some plot points end up on the cutting room floor.

No matter. As the title implies, there is blood and there are guts, and they are used judiciously and effectively.

I also noticed on a number of occasions, the character Lalo offers sensible advice to his friend Tyler, that is completely ignored. He observes that horror movies take place away from civilization, so one should never leave the city.

They go anyway. To the woods.

Lalo also tells Tyler that maybe The Hills Run Red was hidden for a reason. Tyler should have listened.

From The Dark (2014)

It’s time to play Name That Creature!

Vampire? Ghoul? Revenant? Other?

A reasonably attractive couple experiences car trouble while touring the Irish countryside. This wouldn’t normally be a big deal, except their mishap coincides with the accidental resurrection of an undead dude by a clumsy sod farmer.

After holing up in the farmer’s house, Fay (Niamh Algar) takes charge of their situation, maintaining a level head under extreme duress. Mark (Stephen Cromwell) reverts to a whiny little piss pants.

Fay figures out the monster is extremely light averse and sensibly surrounds herself with headlights, lanterns, candles, lamps, lighters, and a cell phone, all while trying to keep her doofus husband conscious and motivated.

Writer-director Conor McMahon (Stitches) skillfully renders From The Dark in miniature, with only four characters in the whole movie, including the living dead one (Ged Murray). The events unfold in real time, with no atmospheric cutaways.

McMahon keeps the camera tightly focused on Fay’s anguished face, her head on a swivel trying to get a bead on a shrouded figure who’s at home in the darkness.

But what is it?

A vampire, probably, but at times behaves more like a slobbering ghoul, this creature doesn’t speak a word. He just comes and goes until the inevitable showdown right before dawn.

It’s a well-conceived monster, if a bit insubstantial at times.

There are pacing problems. From The Dark roars out of the gate like a cyclone and calms down considerably in the Second Act, as the couple sweats it out in captivity.

But that sweet, sweet tension is never far away, and Fay knows she’s in for a real street fight.

Screamers (1979)

You can tell Screamers is pure Italian schlock because the monsters are dripping with olive oil.

Originally titled Island Of The Fishmen, it’s a bit of an H.G. Wells mashup of Mysterious Island and The Island of Dr. Moreau, as Claude, a young naval doctor (Claudio Cassinelli) washes ashore in the Caribbean after the sinking of the prison ship to which he was assigned.

He and two surviving prisoners are taken to the wicker plantation home of wealthy misanthrope Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson) and his stunning lady friend Amanda Marvin (Barbara Bach, aka Mrs. Ringo Starr). Together they preside over a household of voodoo enthusiasts, led by high priestess Shakira (Beryl Cunningham).

A tired-looking Joseph Cotten shows up long enough to play Amanda’s mad (but seemingly decent) scientist pappy, who is determined to create a new race of oily gill men to populate the oceans of the world. His experiments are then employed by Rackham as cheap labor to loot the treasure vault of a nearby submerged temple.

Oh yeah, and it’s a volcanic island that’s gonna blow any second.

Directed by giallo veteran Sergio Martino (Slave Of The Cannibal God, Torso, Blade Of The Ripper), Screamers isn’t nearly good enough to be lost treasure, but it’s brisk, watchable trash with a decent budget, and Barbara Bach is radiant.

I already checked, you don’t have anything better to do.

The Blackout: Invasion Earth (2019)

No need to overthink it. The Blackout is a slam-bang, sci-fi, action blockbuster from Russia that’s certain to hold your attention long after the Milk Duds harden.

Borrowing from well-sourced material like Starship Troopers, Alien, and War of the Worlds, directors Egor Baranov and Nathalia Hencker have dropped a fairly epic slab of space spectacle on our heads, featuring a cast of brave comrades from the former Soviet Union battling an unearthly menace.

Nutshell: The Earth has gone dark except for one small circle of civilization in Eastern Europe. Russian troops are deployed, but prove mostly useless against an unseen enemy that sends wave after wave of brainwashed bears and people at their shrinking defenses.

All seems lost until the arrival of Id (Atryom Tkachenko), an alien with godlike powers (but no mouth), who offers the beleaguered survivors a possible solution to the impending invasion.

“But at what cost?” as the saying goes.

Seen mostly from the grunt’s-eye view of two soldiers, Oleg (Aleksey Chadov) and Grubov (Pyotr Fyodorov), The Blackout serves up balls-to-the-wall military gear excitement and plenty of narrow escapes, while bodies pile up to the heavens.

Having the aliens enslave millions of human subjects and making them fight against the Russian holdouts is a brilliant strategy that also saves tons of money on the special effects budget.

No need for Godzilla to stomp Tokyo when there’s plenty of domestic cannon fodder at hand.

Thankfully, even at 2-hours plus, there’s no lag time in The Blackout, and that’s worth plenty in my book, especially since it’s light on CGI.

Turns out there’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned blood and guts.

Demon Wind (1990)

Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead = The Velvet Underground.

I accept that it’s not a perfect analogy, but you get where I’m coming from. It’s an undeniable influence.

Nearly 10 years after Raimi and Bruce Campbell caught lightning in a bottle, Charles Phillip Moore and his crew unveiled a delightfully unfettered homage, Demon Wind, about another bunch of old teenagers assailed by occult forces in a rural location.

Corey (Eric Larson) and his girlfriend Elaine (Francine Lapensée) meet up with a group of friends and stereotypes to solve the mystery of Corey’s grandparents, who perished under mysterious circumstances during the Great Depression.

Turns out the family farm (more of a tattered theater set, really) is on land originally claimed by a devil-loving preacher and his followers who were set ablaze by townsfolk with no taste for human sacrifice.

Once Corey and his comrades reach the farm, all hell breaks loose, and suddenly, we’re at a Dead show, with ghouls coming out of the woodwork.

I’m not recommending Demon Wind because it’s a brilliantly conceived film that was nurtured to life by the artistic vision of writer-director Charles Phillip Moore.

Rather, it’s the sort of slap-dash amateurism (it was filmed in seven days) that drove Ed Wood to create flying saucers out of paper plates and a cockpit from a shower curtain.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention, and the makeup and practical effects on Demon Wind, though plentiful, range from barely adequate to comically half-assed.

Moore employs a similarly scattergun approach to the narrative, seizing and abandoning ideas with random enthusiasm.

One of the doomed kids, Chuck (Stephen Quadros), is a magician with a black belt. His friend Stacy (Jack Forcinito) has a shotgun with unlimited ammunition.

Chuck still carries a torch for Terri (Lynn Clark) who now belongs to homophobic meathead Dell (Bobby Johnston).

Poor Bonnie (Sherrie Bendorf) gets turned into a doll, and no one seems to care.

Magic spells are cast. You can tell because that’s when the bloopy, hand-drawn animation appears.

The entire cast looks as though it just stepped out of a Huey Lewis video. Feel free to hit pause and ridicule the myriad lame looks available to pre-grunge adolescents.

And don’t worry about Corey’s friends dying. When the pack gets thin, Amazon thoughtfully sends more.

Stinky cheese makes the tastiest snack, no?

Terrifier (2016)

Move over, Pennywise. There’s a new clown in town, one without pity or dialogue.

Ladies and gentlemen, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton).

There’s little setup necessary in Terrifier. It’s Halloween. There’s a killer clown at large. What else do you need?

After a night of fending off creeps, Tara (Jenna Kanell) and Dawn (Catherine Corcoran), a couple of pickled party girls, stop off for a slice of pizza in the hopes that one of them will eventually be sober enough to drive home.

While perusing the menu, they are in turn perused by the next customer, a plainly fiendish harlequin, who says nary a word. Incapable of miming his toppings, the clown gets 86’d by the brusque owner of the establishment (Gino Caferelli).

And thus the fuse is lit and the carnage cannon can commence firing.

Art the Clown kills people because he thinks it’s funny, explains a character identified as Cat Lady. “But it’s not funny, because people die,” she concludes.

Talk about a weird sense of humor. Art the Clown doesn’t merely murder his victims, he creates gory performance art installations.

He chases victims atop a wee tricycle with a little beeping horn. He stomps one guy’s head like a pumpkin (big shoes!), and removes another head to make a jack-o-lantern.

For his big-finish showstopper, Art non-magically saws a woman in half.

Even when he prosaically resorts to using a gun, it’s not for the sake of efficiency, but because he likes to make holes in people’s faces.

Terrifier is an absurdly gruesome and bloody spectacle, and writer-director Damien Leone leaves no jugular unsevered, layering one darkly delicious death on top of another like an evil cake boss.

The silently menacing clown, a sinister cross of Harpo Marx and Pagliacci, is indeed terrifying. Actor David Howard Thornton demonstrates an impressive range of skills, including dexterity and marvelous comic timing.

Only it isn’t funny because people die. Fortunately, they do pass in entertaining fashion.

Sweetheart (2019)

It’s a rare day in May when I can get the long-suffering Missus Sharky to watch a monster movie with me. Rarer still when she actually enjoys the experience.

Bolstered by a rocket-hot performance from actress Kiersey Clemons, Sweetheart is an absorbing and inventive survival thriller that pits lovely castaway Jenn (Clemons) against a nameless terror from the briny deep.

Nutshell: After a yachting kerfuffle, Jenn washes ashore on a tropical island, along with a soon-to-be-deceased shipmate. Despite some tears and false steps, the plucky party girl proves to be a natural hunter/gatherer, and for a brief movie moment, her basic needs are adequately met.

Cue monster.

It gradually dawns on Jenn that she’s competing for resources with a hulking amphibious biped that strolls from the surf on a nightly basis in search of snacks.

Her aquatic adversary sends Jenn back to basics, namely Fight or Flight. When her flotation device fails its buoyancy test, she’s left with the former option.

Time to sharpen some sticks.

Director and co-writer J.D. Dillard paints a fascinating creature feature that checks a number of positive boxes for me. What’s not to love about a resourceful (and OMG beautiful) heroine faced with a formidable, frightening foe, set on a scenic stretch of white-sand paradise?

Dillard’s camera eye emphasizes the wild desolation of the island and Jenn’s desperate measures to hide from, and observe, a creature the likes of which she’s never imagined.

Kiersey Clemons radiates fire, vulnerability, and kick-ass charisma as Jenn, a true survivor who simultaneously finds her inner warrior and rids herself of a condescending asshole boyfriend.

More likes this, please!

Hell House LLC (2016)

In which the haunters become the haunted.

Five friends form a professional haunt company, staging elaborate Halloween tours in creepy locations. The opening of their latest attraction is not entirely successful, as most of the staff ends up deceased in gruesome fashion.

The police and civic authorities shut down subsequent investigations, but five years after the Halloween Holocaust, a documentary crew attempts to solve the mystery by tracking down and interviewing the lone survivor.

For fans of the found-footage genre, Hell House LLC doesn’t disappoint. Writer-director Stephen Cognetti peppers the premises with ghosts, demons, a Satanic cult, a big scary clown, and enough paranormal pageantry to make up for any quandaries about who’s supposed to be running the camera in this scene.

I cheerfully recommend the movie, and may go so far as to check out the two sequels it inspired.

Note to filmmakers on a budget: Behold the beauty of a found-footage film; the iPhone cinematography actually enhances the dreadful atmosphere, forcing the trembling viewer to strain for every grainy terror captured.

The very existence of sequels to Hell House LLC proves that someone made their money back—and that’s enough to keep the iPhones rolling.

Trick (2019)

By the narrowest of margins, I’m going to recommend Trick.

It was barely compelling enough for me to see it through, largely based on a gutsy performance by Omar Epps as FBI agent Mike Denver, a haunted man tracking a Halloween-masked serial killer.

Epps is the big fish in this cinematic small pond and acquits himself as a true professional, elevating a maxed-out credit-card budget and a ponderous script to a level that is almost entirely serviceable.

Nutshell: Anonymous adolescent Patrick (“Trick”) Weaver (Thomas Niemann) becomes an internet celebrity after flipping his mask and stabbing a bunch of classmates at a Halloween party. Despite being gutted by a fireplace poker, falling out a five-story window, and getting shot several times by Denver and Sheriff Jayne (Ellen Adair), Trick’s body is never found.

Coincidentally, teens in neighboring towns are similarly slaughtered on subsequent Halloweens, leading a determined Denver to ponder the possibility of a copycat killer—or one that’s seemingly returned from the grave.

Director and co-writer Patrick Lussier is an industry lifer with editing credits that date back to MacGyver in the late 1980s. It’s not surprising that Trick is competently crafted in terms of action and pace, and there’s more than enough blood and guts to pacify the psychos.

However, if you’re paying attention at all, there are plot holes aplenty, and when some characters we barely know reveal themselves to be key figures in a vast conspiracy, the effect is more confusing than clarifying.

Mostly what you get with Trick are familiar bloody tropes taped together in haphazard fashion, in the hope that genre fans will recognize and appreciate a very modest tribute.

The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957)

That’s a bit specific, isn’t it? It’s not like there’s an Abominable Snowman of Pasadena to get mixed-up with.

Despite warnings from a bunch of concerned monks, a Tibetan expedition led by brash adventurer Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) and British botanist John Rollason (Peter Cushing) sets out to find the elusive howling hominid known as the Yeti.

Outfitted with the latest in fur coat technology, the little band, which includes a big-game hunter (Robert Brown) and a traumatized eyewitness (Michael Brill), dutifully climbs through blizzard-like conditions to establish a basecamp somewhere near Snowman Central.

Once in their tents, things get intense for the members of the expedition. As the howling and bellowing gets closer, Friend, Rollason, and the rest begin to bend under the pressure of the creatures’ approach.

Cushing and Tucker are actually quite good in their scenes together; the former as the compassionate man of science, and the latter as the Ugly American, a morally bankrupt con artist.

At one point, Friend observes that if “they” drop the Hydrogen Bomb, it might be their own frozen remains that get dug up in the future. There are plenty of thoughtful moments like these, where science and reason clash with greed, arrogance, and fear.

Unlike Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World, which came out six years earlier, the creature menace turns out benign, while the real threat comes from soulless hucksters like Friend, who want to exploit and destroy an advanced, ancient race of beings.

Fortunately, justice is served and lessons are learned.

As directed by Hammer Films stalwart Val Guest, The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is a fast-moving blast from the past, a fairly fun flick that’s def worth a watch.

Needless to say, it’s always a treat to see a dependable thespian like Peter Cushing sink his teeth into some serious scenery.

Bon appetit, Peter! And thanks for everything.