Survival – Page 6

The Fog (1980)

The Carpenter Kick continues.

Three years after John Carpenter set the night on fire with Halloween, The Fog, his return to the horror genre, earned lukewarm reviews and is generally considered one of his lesser efforts.

People forget that Carpenter came up helming made-for-TV movies with micro budgets, like Someone’s Watching Me, and Elvis, a surprisingly good Presley biopic from 1979 starring a young Kurt Russell, who was nominated for an Emmy.

Carpenter’s theatrical movies, which tend to feature desperate characters trapped together against unearthly enemies, are similarly economical affairs with superior practical effects by master technicians.

The Fog once again forces his cast indoors as vengeful spirits from a doomed sailing ship descend on a coastal California town on the night of its 100th anniversary.

Speaking of master technicians, makeup and effects whiz Rob Bottin even gets to step in front of the camera as Blake, the leader of the ghostly mariners.

Antonio Bay, California is the setting, as citizens excitedly prepare for the upcoming centennial celebration. Sad-sack sermonizer Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) discovers a diary written by his grandfather, detailing a treacherous deal offered by town founders a century earlier.

It seems that Blake, a well-to-do leper and his flaky followers, were determined to settle near the still-undeveloped Antonio Bay, even sealing the deal with a generous amount of gold.

Instead of welcoming their new neighbors with casseroles, locals lured the leprous crew’s ship onto the rocks with a false campfire, sending the scabrous sailors to a watery grave.

Once the founders lifted the lepers’ loot from the wreck, they had sufficient capital to incorporate and become an actual spot on the map.

To no one’s surprise, this original sin results in sword-wielding spooks rolling into town via a glowing fog bank on founders’ day to slay six unlucky souls to match the number of drowned crew.

The Fog isn’t exactly scary, but it’s got a ton of atmosphere, the 44-year-old effects are decent, and Carpenter keeps the action—and heads—rolling while notching the tension with minimal dialogue and unforeseen events, such as dissonant symphonies of car horns going off at night.

Carpenter’s cast is filled with reliable talent, including, Holbrook as the guilt-ridden Father Malone, Adrienne Barbeau (his wife at the time) as sexy DJ Stevie Wayne, Jamie Lee Curtis as a free-spirit hitchhiker, and her mom, Janet “Psycho” Leigh as the town mayor.

As is par for the course, Carpenter crams everyone into a church in the final scene to keep the spectral swabs at bay, but they only leave after Father Malone returns most of their gold and gets beheaded for his trouble.

And so, order is restored, because you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

This is definitely a case that calls for an enhanced re-release with better picture quality, because The Fog is a very dark movie, and I don’t mean thematically.

Note to auteurs: If you plan on a lengthy career don’t use cheap film stock. It can can dim the enthusiasm of the newly curious.

Last Night In Soho (2021)

I’ve been a fan of Edgar Wright from his earliest work on Spaced, the hilarious BBC sit-com from the tail-end of the previous century.

This foundational series teamed director Wright with writer/actor Simon Pegg, a partnership that flourished with ace collaborations like Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007).

Pegg is certainly the more visible of the two, appearing in high-profile film franchises based on TV shows from the 1960s, Star Trek and Mission Impossible.

In Last Night In Soho, Wright’s musically minded, bloody Valentine to swinging London, he affirms his true love (and understanding) of those riotous times through masterful manipulation of color, sound, and movement in telling the story of two girls from different eras whose lives overlap in Dreamland.

We open with Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a spirited lass from Cornwall with dreams of being a 60s-inspired fashion designer in London.

Upon landing in the big city, Eloise is treated rudely by her designing classmates to the point that she’s forced to abandon the dorms in favor of lodging with Mrs. Collins (Diana Rigg) a lovely old-lady landlord who doesn’t allow male guests after 8pm.

Soon after acquiring the new digs, Eloise begins a dream odyssey about the adventures of Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy), a live-wire hip chick who captures the attention of everyone she meets during her meteoric ascent in London’s nightclub scene, circa 1965.

Coincidentally, it’s the very same historical period that Eloise obsesses about through her clothes and music. Cilla Black, Kinks, Chad & Jeremy, and Petula Clark can be heard plugging away on the phonograph, while her attempts at creating swing silhouettes and bubble dresses are clearly influenced by Mary Quant and other Carnaby Street regulars.

Eloise and Sandy overlap in these subconscious interludes: Sandy is portrayed by Taylor-Joy, but whenever an opportunity for a reflection appears, it’s McKenzie looking back at the action.

A lesser director would milk this device as a gimmick. Wright uses it to set the story to a fevered rhythm, as Sandy, a beautiful rising star, sees her ambition smashed to bits by horrible old men.

When not living her dream, Eloise styles herself as the beguiling Sandy, until the viewer loses her sense of identity in both the sleeping and waking worlds.

Last Night in Soho is a rise-and-fall fable that kicks off with a dazzling bang, and shifts gears into a sordid nightmare spiral that’s grim going indeed.

Wright’s poise and whirlwind finesse with the camera is thoroughly transportive, evoking both delirious highs and utter misery in strikingly composed scene after scene.

This is a bumpy ride, but Last Night In Soho is more than worth it. Instead of grousing about getting the rug yanked out from under, we should be thankful that an artist of Wright’s ability has fully materialized in our present day.

Fresh (2022)

Ask anyone. The dating scene can be murder, especially if the relationship consumes you.

In director Mimi Cave’s black-comic thriller Fresh, Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a smart, witty, modern girl just looking for a meaningful nibble in her stagnant dating pool when she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a super-attractive doctor at her local produce market.

After a quick roll in the sack, Noa is whisked off for a magical weekend trip with the too-good-to-be-true Steve, despite warnings from her lesbian BFF Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs) that there are some definite red flags in this picture.

Next thing Noa knows is waking up chained to a floor. This is never a good sign.

Turns out Steve has a thriving black market business that needs new blood occasionally.

“What the fuck is happening?” Noa screams at Steve.

“I’ll tell you, but you’re going to freak out,” Steve replies.

Noa is in a very bad place, but she shows grit and determination by convincing her captor that she shares his unusual tastes for the very finest cuts of meat.

Yes, it’s every bit as gruesome as you think, and then some, but Cave also sneaks in stress-relieving laughs when we need them most, particularly after one of the director’s many rapid-fire meat-cutting-and-eating montages designed to make the viewer queasy with self-loathing.

“I don’t eat animals,” Steve tells Daisy in the early days of their courtship. Not ones with four legs, anyway.

Fresh doesn’t pull any punches in its portrayal of toxic masculinity, embodied by the charmingly evil Steve, a respectable man with a home and family who just can’t resist a tempting morsel.

Unfortunately, as any upset stomach commercial ably demonstrates, sometimes your food will fight back.

Big Trouble In Little China (1986)

It appears I’m on a Carpenter Kick.

While The Thing (1982) remains one of my absolute favorite horrors, Big Trouble In Little China finds John Carpenter at the top of his game. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a film that can match it for sheer volume of fun, fights, and full-tilt frenetic action.

It’s the ideal midnight movie.

We must remember that Kurt Russell has been a leading man in Hollywood since The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Big Trouble is essentially a live-action comic book, and Russell plays hero Jack Burton as a bumbling John Wayne caricature who’s routinely saved by his buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dun).

Indeed, Burton’s capacity to stupidly screw up and still save the day is unmatched in my cinematic memory.

Trucker Jack Burton (Russell) gets his rig stolen after an all-night game of cards in SF’s Chinatown. The culprits are connected to David Lo Pan (James Hong) a sinister sorcerer/crime boss who has also arranged for the kidnapping of Wang’s girlfriend Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), a beautiful woman with green eyes.

From here, the plot thickens into a dark, delicious pudding of ghosts, monsters, sorcery, aerial martial arts, and a flying blade ceremony designed to make Lo Pan flesh and blood so he can wed Miao Yin after centuries of living as a formless ghost.

Unless he chooses Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), another beautiful woman with green eyes.

Like a good paella, Big Trouble is a feast for the senses as Carpenter’s cameras fly alongside supernatural warriors locked in thunderous conflict. When you combine the movie’s breathless pace with acrobatic cinematography and those distinctively quotable tough-guy cracks from Burton, the results are pure gold.

But don’t take my word for it. Let the man speak for himself.

“Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake.

“Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, ‘Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.'”

Indeed, you really can’t go wrong with the team of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.

Let’s watch ’em all.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Funny thing, I went to the theater and saw this when it came out. I remember liking it well enough, but Prince of Darkness is a relatively small-scale production for John Carpenter.

His previous run of films included Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, and Big Trouble In Little China, so perhaps I was missing the star power typically provided by Kurt Russell and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The real reason, I now suspect, is that Prince of Darkness is more akin to Carpenter’s earlier, grittier Assault on Precinct 13, a no-name thriller about cops fighting off a crowd of vengeful gang members while trapped in a shuttered police station.

The cast of Prince of Darkness, including vintage TV stars Jameson Parker (Simon & Simon), Thom Bray (Riptide) and Dirk Blocker (son of Dan Blocker/Hoss), are similarly under siege, this time by a seemingly synchronized horde of hobo schizophrenics led by a menacing Alice Cooper.

Carpenter’s resident authority figure Donald Pleasence plays Father Loomis (Doctor Loomis’s twin brother?), a nervous priest who discovers an infernal device in the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church.

The ancient artifact, which resembles a moldy lava lamp, appears to contain some kind of organic material that’s rapidly developing consciousness after lying dormant for untold centuries.

Loomis calls in Professor Birack (Victor Wong, Egg Shen from Big Trouble) and a group of his top physics students to study the strange canister and possibly decipher the accompanying doomsday grimoire also found on the premises.

How could they know they’d be hastening the return of the titular character, even providing a human vessel for its gestation period?

Nope, didn’t see that one coming.

I would expect college students to be dopey enough to take on this insane extra-credit assignment, but distinguished scientists?

All hell proceeds to break loose, as the assembled eggheads fall victim to having unholy water squirted in their faces from newly made zombies, or getting torn apart by the mute mob of street people that have surrounded the accursed church.

Professor Birack and the increasingly agitated Loomis deduce that the evil essence contained in the canister is now fully awake and influencing people on a subatomic level. Like ants working together toward a common goal.

You get it? Carpenter? Ants?

Carpenter is at his most diabolical depicting a wounded world, teeming with swarms of furious insects, that’s clearly reached end time, requiring an act of selfless sacrifice to save the day and keep the devil—and his creeping minions—away.

The dour final frame of Prince of Darkness indicates that he won’t be gone for long. A hell of a movie.

Monsters (2010)

British filmmaker Gareth Edwards is nominated for two academy awards this year for The Creator, a provocative and timely sci-fi tale about Artificial Intelligence.

In addition to directing a well-received installment of the Star Wars saga (Rogue One, 2016), Edwards made an auspicious debut with Monsters, a bit of speculative fiction that imagines a not-too-distant future where humanity has lost a chunk of Central America to alien life forms brought to Earth from a deep-space NASA probe six years previous.

Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is a freelance photojournalist trying to get photos of the mysterious creatures that have “infected” Costa Rica and Guatemala, and thus making travel in the region dicey and expensive.

He is sidetracked from his quest for fame and fortune with an offer from a media mogul to escort the latter’s runaway daughter Sam (Whitney Able) through the Infected Zone and back to the United States.

What follows is a gritty survival film with a credible romantic subplot about two strangers who must learn to trust each other under fire if they’re to make it out of an embattled landscape, as soldiers try to contain a mounting threat from tentacled terrors from beyond the stars.

Though the alien menace appears infrequently, its presence is felt constantly, reinforced by scenes of people in small villages watching news reports of monstrous destruction.

“You leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone,” comments one local.

We’ve seen this movie . Most of the time the danger is posed from warring nations or an impending natural disaster.

Writer-director-editor-FX guy Edwards juxtaposes gigantic octopoids wreaking havoc into the background, but this dark journey of discovery seen through the eyes of two stunned civilians could be about any set of fleeing refugees.

Kaulder and Sam must negotiate with locals for risky transportation options that are rapidly shrinking in the face of alien aggression. Eventually they are forced to go on foot, bearing mute witness to eerie tableaux of fallen creatures and aircraft alike, that are staged for maximum shock and awe.

Before Gareth Edwards takes a turn at the Oscars, Monsters offers an opportunity to see noteworthy work from an emerging artist. I would advise you to do so.

Project Metal Beast (1995)

I will begin by reintroducing a pair of the descriptive phrases I use when reviewing my HorrificFlicks.

Anonymous Industrial Walkabout: This means the majority of the action takes place in a generic location, usually festooned with pipes, control panels, and endless nondescript doors, offices, and hallways.

Serviceable Piece of Shit: A movie that transcends its budget constraints and offers genuine entertainment value.

Project Metal Beast is a shining example of both.

Our story opens somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, as U.S. agent Donald Butler (John Marzilli) and a red-shirt subordinate are on a dangerous, top-secret mission to acquire werewolf blood.

Pretty standard, really.

Butler watches idly as a nasty specimen noshes on his comrade before dispatching the beast with silver bullets and retrieving the precious blood sample.

We quickly discover that Butler is hot-headed and impulsive, as he ignores his orders and injects himself with the dreaded Type O Super Negative.

“I will be a new kind of warrior,” he boasts. “One that can shape-change at will! With senses of an animal and the mind of a man!”

Before he can take his powers for a proper test drive, Butler is immobilized by Colonel Miller (Barry Bostwick), his sociopathic commanding officer, and frozen for 20 years.

Eventually, Butler is thawed out of retirement and given metal skin by Dr. Anne De Carlo (Kim Delaney) at the direction of Colonel Miller.

When Butler changes into an armored lycanthrope, he goes on a reasonable rampage slaughtering a stereotypical Italian chef, a nerdy scientist, and a few other nonentities.

How do you kill a metal werewolf, anyway?

Writer and director Alessandro de Gaetano is definitely operating on the cheap side of the street. The werewolf effects are ok, but the costume (worn by Friday The 13th‘s most famous Jason, Kane Hodder!) looks like a gorilla suit that went on tour with Gwar.

Between the scenes of fairly awesome wolfen mayhem there are many, many interludes of educated characters contemplating their dire situation and spouting pseudo-scientific jibber jabber.

Feel free to mute these parts and invent your own smart-ass dialogue. It’s fun!

Project Metal Beast wouldn’t be nearly such a hoot if not for Barry Bostwick’s kooky performance as the power-mad Colonel Miller, a man who seems quite delighted with the havoc he causes.

In one scene, Miller gleefully shoots a superior officer in both legs so he can’t escape the werewolf, who, sure enough, comes along and shreds the poor guy.

And when the monster turns on Miller, he is disciplined enough to straighten his uniform before being disemboweled.

Once again, we observe that it’s those little human touches that make for a memorable metal monster movie experience.

The Invitation (2015)

I am a restless channel surfer, something that my lovely wife won’t tolerate. So, I have to sneak around like a burglar and surf on the down low when and where possible.

H is for horror. H is also for home.

This is the category I relentlessly peruse. After skimming through the same titles over and over again, I have come to the conclusion that there may be in excess of 5,000 movies about folks trying to rebound from tragedy (kid dies, kid goes missing, kid joins cult, kid kills other kid) by moving somewhere for a “fresh start.”

And it never works.

Our gradual awareness of the significant wounds we acquire (and inflict), while going about the business of our lives, is fertile turf for purveyors of contemporary horror.

We are in a weakened state, and the oceans of emotions used to somehow transform sorrow into a way of “living with it” are often identified as symptoms of madness.

The Invitation, director Karyn Kusama’s dinner-from-hell, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, by seemingly offering its cast the chance to not only overcome grief and guilt, but to live in a serene present.

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) reluctantly agree to attend a dinner party in Laurel Canyon thrown by Will’s ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michael Huisman).

Also present are several old friends whom Will hasn’t seen since a tragedy two years before, that resulted in the accidental death of Will and Eden’s son, Ty (Aiden Lovekamp).

Throughout a long evening of reminiscing over excellent wine, David and Eden reveal their true agenda for this jolly reunion, recruiting the guests to accept The Invitation, a growing metaphysical movement that seeks to rehabilitate poor souls suffering from overwhelming guilt.

Like Will.

“Grief, anger, depression, abuse… It’s all just chemical reactions,” Eden explains.

The soiree hits rough waters on several occasions, due to suspicion and eventually open hostility from Will, who pushes back at David’s spiritual salesmanship by storming out of the room every five minutes or so.

“I don’t pretend to know what you went through, and you don’t know me. You can’t!” he growls at David.

His friends are rightfully worried, as Will demonstrates classic post-traumatic paranoia, especially when David locks the doors, explaining that there was a recent home invasion nearby.

But what are Eden and her rather intense new hubby up to?

“Something dangerous is going on, and we’re all just ignoring it because David brought some good wine!” Will barks at the other guests.

The action is a delicately paced slow-burn, as Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body, and TV’s Yellowjackets) and husband-screenwriter Phil Hay manifest the most nightmarish episode of dinner and drinks since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I urge you to accept The Invitation (at your own risk) and you will be rewarded with a sharp, uncompromising thriller that also serves as a fevered meditation on the various paths we take to process tragic events.

Apparently there is a right way and a wrong way.

From (2022-23)

Back to the small screen for a moment, if I may.

Amazon Prime temptingly offers the opportunity to pig-out on obscure and overlooked horror television from every port of call imaginable. After a bit of grazing. I’d highly recommend From, a series filmed in Nova Scotia that’s captured the imagination of myself and Mrs. Sharky.

It should ring several bells if you’re a fan of Lost, The Walking Dead, and Wayward Pines, as a four-pack family unit drives its RV into one of those cursed communities that you can never leave.

To make matters worse, everybody has to be inside and locked down before darkness falls, because monsters (kind of like vampires, kind of like zombies) come out of the woods at night seeking to gain entry into the town’s various residences to murder and mutilate the town’s various residents.

The pale whispering ghouls surround a home, endlessly cajoling and compelling its occupants to throw open their doors so they can be properly displayed as part of a gruesome tableaux come the morning.

On the upside, houses are free, but you might have to clean up the viscera from the most recent undead onslaught.

Still a good deal, if you ask me. I bet it’s cheaper than Salem’s Lot.

Vehicles arrive from a disparate assortment of starting points, and after an interval of freaking out, travelers must decide whether they want to reside in the town itself, under the severe protection of Sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), or find some floor space with the free-loving bohemians of Colony House, where the Sheriff’s brooding, model-handsome son Ellis (Corteon Moore) holds court.

The two camps represent humanity as ludicrously polarized despite a shared goal of not wanting to end up as chew toys for a mob of malevolent entities.

Series creator John Griffin does a stellar job of knitting hard horror elements into a character-driven show. The creatures that stalk the populace of this nameless community aren’t driven by a biological need to feed.

They’re just evil and cruel!

The cast of “castaways” on From range from complaining assholes to compassionate caretakers, including a tech bro, an amusement park engineer and his traumatized family, an unstable clergyman, a spooky waitress with voices in her head, and a crayon-coloring man child who’s been exiled in this particular limbo the longest.

As for the bigger picture, Boyd and company must solve the mystery of how they all got there and devise methods of escape from a location that isn’t on any map.

But as one character says bitterly, “We’re not on Gilligan’s Island. We can’t fix the radio with coconuts.”

From keeps enough intriguing subplots at play (e.g., where is the electricity coming from?) to reel in even the casual viewer. At present, there are only two seasons available.

I’ve seen the first one and I’m completely hooked.

The inevitable comparisons to Lost are well warranted. Executive producers Jack Bender and Jeff Pinkner both worked on that genre-defying show.

Perhaps they belong to the same universe? I’ll know more after my next season session.

Editor’s Note: The addictive theme song to From is a minor-key, dirge arrangement of “Que Sera Sera,” performed by the Pixies, that sounds like Lee Hazlewood.

One more reason to tune in.

The Lake (2022)

The Lake is a movie about many things. Oddly enough, a lake isn’t one of them.

Rather, Thai filmmaker Lee Thongkham has gifted us with a magnificently exotic specimen that defies easy categorization. It also has to be one of the dampest movies ever! There is pouring rain in like 75 percent of the shots!

In a humble Thai village, bordered by a river and a lake, humble Thai fishermen and toad wranglers gather in the gloomy darkness (with rain dumping buckets) to hunt their respective quarries.

While pursuing tasty amphibians one group of men discover an enormous egg and wisely decide to run off with it, no doubt with visions of enormous omelettes in their futures.

Seeking quick profit over respecting the sanctity of the nest, draws the ire of a rampaging parent monster and the interlopers are dealt with harshly.

The egg is found by May (Wanmai Chatborirack) a curious and empathetic little girl who becomes its protector, much to the dismay of her older sister and brother, who now find themselves as the heads of the household and in charge of the willful child, since their father, an unlucky fisherman, was recently squashed by the angry monster.

One of many points raised by writer-director Lee Thongkham, is that the family unit is a sacred thing, which explains why the kaiju from the lake is so thoroughly pissed at these poor starving peasants who’ve made off with her bambino.

Thongkham encourages peaceful solutions to the conflict between the enraged monster and the humans that poached its egg. On the way to forgiving and forgetting, there are many lessons to be learned, including, who knew that Thai monster movies were such a kick?

The creature effects are first-rate. Whether it’s a very nimble dude in a rubber suit raising hell among the fleeing villagers or the XXL version that’s ready rock in Bangkok, fans of monster mayhem will be tickled pink.

Go ahead and take a dip in The Lake. You’ll get all wet, but it’s quite refreshing.