The Vampire Lovers and some notes on the collector’s dilemma

One of the U.S. taglines for 1970’s The Vampire Lovers reads “Caution: Not for the Mentally Immature!” and Scream Factory’s new Blu-ray release flashes the same warning up before the menu. The line is good for a giggle, but it’s also incredibly telling of the motion picture we’re about to watch.

The Vampire Lovers is a Hammer film made with AIP* money. That tagline and the awesome—but misleading—American poster give you a good idea about what kind of film you’re getting, even if the Hammer influence does class the proceedings up tenfold.

By 1970, even though they still had some solid efforts left to make, Hammer was beginning its final descent and entering rocky economic waters. The Vampire Lovers is one of several attempts to reinvigorate the studio’s horror output by mixing up the formula a bit (the Shaw Brothers co-production The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires would follow four years later).

Sex appeal is the gimmick they chose to employ in this film to try and keep the studio aloft, and it was successful enough that the mix of censor-pushing violence and sex would be repeated.

While earlier Hammer efforts almost uniformly boast beautiful women and film them with a glamour photographer’s eye, The Vampire Lovers runs on scandal. For devotees of Jean Rollin, the amorous vampire action will seem tame, but there’s also an earnestness to The Vampire Lovers that makes it still feel wholesome and proper. If Hammer is doing a vampire movie with strong lesbian overtones there has to be a sprinkling of culture to the affair, so the film is (somewhat faithfully) based it on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 story Carmilla, where the titular character the progenitor of the modern lesbian vampire.

For one of Hammer’s lower budget productions, the lush sets and location shots look great in Scream Factory’s fine transfer. It’s that combination of top-shelf talent and honest-to-goodness filmmaking chops that makes The Vampire Lovers so much less sleazy than it could be. Screenwriter Tudor Gates delivers a serviceable script that Hammer (and later Amicus)-regular Roy Ward Baker translates beautifully to the screen. There’s plenty of movement and sweep to Baker’s camera, he was a prolific film/TV director who knew how to wring scope out of soundstages.

Although Peter Cushing’s appearance is more of a prolonged cameo (the commentary reveals that AIP was insistent that one of Hammer’s stars make an appearance), the cast is lead by the spectacular Ingrid Pitt in her first starring role and features Jon Finch (who starred in Polanski’s Macbeth a year later) so there’s no lack of star power for film fans.

The most notable extra on the disc is a lively and humorous interview with Madeline Smith that runs about twenty minutes. Apparently, Smith was told that all her nudity in the film was going to be restricted to the Japanese cut. It wasn’t.

The other extra assembled for this release is a short feature about the film’s production and source material that runs about ten minutes. One wonders why this is so short, especially since many of the experts interviewed (Kim Newman, specifically) could hold our interest for much longer than that. The commentary is incorrectly labeled on the back cover as only with Baker, when in fact the director is also joined by Pitt and Gates. Since Baker passed away in 2010, I’m guessing this track is a holdover from a previous release, but I’m not 100% sure.

This is a gem of a release, one that Scream Factory should be applauded for and one you should buy. The company has put out some great discs over the last couple years, but most of the films have been of a more recent vintage than this (late-seventies, and eighties). I love eighties American horror as much as the next fan, but I also love films like The Vampire Lovers. It’s good to see distributors putting out discs like this since studios seem to be getting out of the “special edition” game entirely, especially with regards to catalog titles.

The only downside of physical media is the physical part. The sound and picture are the best you can get, the box art is purty, the features add additional value to your purchase, but the discs have to be stored.

More importantly, the discs have to be moved when it comes time to move apartments. As someone who just spent the better part of my day boxing up his collection, I’m beginning to feel conflicted about a hobby that usually brings me nothing but joy. Wouldn’t it be easier if I didn’t have to lug these around? Shouldn’t I give in and look forward to my collection being stored in the cloud?

Eh, not yet.

Even though they look great lined up on a shelf, I’ve found that it’s easier to suppress my obsessive tendencies when it comes to collecting books. I’m a kindle owner, and proud, so unless I plan on getting a book signed, these days I opt for the ebook edition and save my shelves the strain. But that’s because when I buy a book for my kindle I’m getting the exact same content. There’s no bonus features on a book, there’s no loss in audio or visual fidelity in an ebook over a paperback, but there is when you stream a movie on Amazon or Netflix instead of throwing in the blu-ray.

There’s also the sense of ownership that accompanies a DVD or Blu-ray. Nobody’s going to flip a switch and make my Criterion discs unplayable (although I may not have something to play it on, where’d I put that Laserdisc machine?), but they could very well decide that I was only “renting” my digital copy in the first place.

These are the reasons why physical media needs to stick around for movies, even if it’s only the small boutique labels like Severin, Shout Factory (the parent company of Scream Factory), Blue Underground, Kino and Vinegar Syndrome that remain dedicated to releases like this. They’re making it possible to still be a collector in the digital age and I salute them. Even if my bookshelves do not.

My one complaint about this release? It doesn’t use this dynamite art by Jeff Zornow (commissioned for the most recent British release of the film):

*Sam Arkoff’s American International Pictures, long time Roger Corman collaborators.

V/H/S/2 Shares Its Bangin’ Tape Collection

In my review of last year’s found-footage anthology, V/H/S, I claimed that the film benefited from being watched alone, in the middle of the night, in an empty apartment. I stand by that statement, but V/H/S/2, the film’s lighter, trimmer sequel is meant to be experienced with an audience.

I saw the film at its New England premiere as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston and the audience was humming as the credits rolled. Eavesdropping on my way out of the theater, the phrase on everyone’s lips seemed to be: “SO much better than the first one!” and I have a feeling that that’s going to be the central idea of most reviews in the coming months, but it’s not one that I unreservedly agree with.

Well, maybe that’s not true. I do think I enjoyed V/H/S/2 much more than the first film, it’s a great anthology film, one of the best in recent memory (possibly even a contender for the “All-Time” label), but why it works so well is a more complicated answer than “it’s better than the first one.”

Although the structure and set-up are similar on paper, V/H/S/2 feels very different from its predecessor. Tonally, there’s a lot more humor in this film and that’s one of the main reasons this is more of a crowd-pleaser. Gone is the dour ambiguity of some of last year’s segments, replaced this time with wit and (in some of the most unlikely places) warmth. While V/H/S tried (and I would argue, succeeded) to unsettle with droning, languorously “experimental” wrap-around stories, V/H/S/2 provides us with a single wrap-around with a straight-forward plot with two characters on a clearly-defined mission (scripted and directed by Simon Barrett).

At nearly thirty minutes shorter, most of the last film’s “dead air” is gone. It was an aspect I criticized in the first one, but also a necessary component in establishing the creeping dread and “oh crap, this is really happening” feeling the found footage genre usually trades in. With the sequel, the shock quotient is similar despite its tighter runtime but the stories themselves now hew a little goofier.

Not only are the stories more cohesive (each has a beginning, middle and end and none of them feel like the setup for a one-off gag), but they also fit more neatly into specific sub-genres. There’s a ghost story (Adam Winegard’s “Clinical Trials”), an alien abduction story (Jason Eisner’s “Alien Abduction Slumber Party”) and even a zombie story (Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale’s “A Ride in the Park”), and all of them offer worthy twists on their formulas, some of the twists originating from framing them as found footage, some of them coming from the stories themselves.

Last September I talked about the “curse of the anthology”, the problem that there are always going to be stories that outshine others, but V/H/S/2 is the only anthology film I can think of that doesn’t suffer from this. Every time I try to pick a favorite or rank them, I remember a great moment from one of the other films and have to re-shuffle my list.

If I were forced to pick a favorite, I couldn’t but Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s “Safe Haven” and Eisener’s “Alien Abduction” would be in a dead heat. Evans directed The Raid: Redemption and “Haven” is a huge departure from the martial arts genre, but just as kinetic and thrilling.

The most complete of all the segments, “Safe Haven” is a strange religious cult yarn that is equal parts chilling and ludicrous, walking a tonal tightrope that had the audience screaming one moment and guffawing the next. It’s packed with evocative images and a great ending, so much so that it feels like “Safe Haven” could be expanded into a feature film without losing any of its impact. The audience would gladly spend an hour and a half in this bizarre world.

I believe “Alien Abduction Slumber Party” is Jason Eisener’s first film that doesn’t employ the faux-grindhouse aesthetic (he’s the man behind “Treevenge” and Hobo with a Shotgun) and it’s such a powerful, controlled film that it forced me to reconsider this director. The most literally-titled of the films, “Alien Abduction Slumber Party” is about a suburban slumber party crashed by an alien invasion.

In such a limited amount of time, Eisener establishes his teenage protagonists as they torment their older sister, swear like pint-sized sailors, and just generally act like the most believable young people to grace a horror movie in eons. The set-up is so funny and endearing that once the horror kicks in (and it does in a big way) you’re intensely rooting for these kids (and their cameraman/dog).

V/H/S/2 should be having a theatrical run sometime in the near future and I can’t recommend seeking it out enough. Get some friends together, have a low-key evening watching the first one before you head out to the theater, and allow the sequel to leave you on a laughing, squirming high-note.

My only criticism: S-VHS was a much better title, but I see why they changed it. Although the “Who’s Tracking You?” tagline is a pretty good consolation prize.

Drape yourself in Cesare (plus a contest)

Big news! Sam McCanna has released two t-shirts inspired by my work through his company Skurvy Ink. For the Video Night shirt I got to work with the fantastic Nick Gucker and Justin T Coons brought Tribesmen to life.

I own several Skurvy Ink shirts (and I’m going to be adding their new Muerte Con Carne one soon, too), so I can vouch for the quality of the product. Sam’s a one man operation and his shirts are spectacular.

“We firmly believe that authors and artists are just as much rock and roll as any musician could ever be, so we want to represent some of our favorites with Skurvy Ink clothing.” Who couldn’t love a company with this mission statement?

If you end up getting one, please send me a picture of you wearing your new shirt.

If we can get ten people sporting shirts (with photographic evidence), I’ll choose one at random and send them some DVDs from my collection. Last time I did a contest I ended up mailing out some pretty gonzo stuff, you’ll want to be in it to win it.

Bonus points if you take your contest entry picture in public, handing out paperback copies of my books.

Click on one (or both) of the designs to order.

The Lords of Salem and some halfbaked thoughts about auteur theory

Love him or hate him, I would argue that Rob Zombie is American horror film’s only decently distributed auteur. Before you start poking holes in that statement and before we start talking about Zombie’s latest, let’s back up a bit and do some surveying of what brings us to The Lords of Salem.

First came House of 1000 Corpses, which might have well have been billed as “the film Universal didn’t want you to see!” Even though the company fit the bill for Zombie’s candy-colored, Southern-fried debut, they wimped out when it came to distribution. I was a freshman in high school and after what seemed to me an unbearable series of delays, I found myself loving the film once it saw the light of day. Looking back, House is more than a little shrill, but I still love certain moments in that same way I did when I was rocking poorly fitting jeans and self-confidence issues.

The neon spookhouse monsters (sure they’re “human”, but come on, that’s some classic movie monster-making on display) of House of a 1000 Corpses work when we allow them to engage us. Instead of focusing on what Zombie’s vocal deriders would rather we take away (the affected dialogue, stunt-casting), we need to relish in what musician turned first-time writer/director does well: present us with the cinematic equivalent of the “murder ride” that our protagonists take in the beginning of the film.

Next up is The Devil’s Rejects, a film that up until yesterday, I would have pointed to as the high point of Zombie’s output. Again we have a film that is colored by my boyhood perceptions of it (I actually conned my way into the film’s San Diego premiere during 2005’s Comic Con, try to dislike a movie when you’re a teenager sitting next to Brian Posehn), but also one that holds up remarkably well. There’s better character work here (in that there are characters) and the film’s mix of ugly naturalism and Zombie’s trademark trailer-park shtick leads to some thrilling, tense moments. Plus the soundtrack lets us know that Zombie has some major league good taste in music.

Paradoxically, his Halloween films are his most widely seen and most derided, but even those give my inner teenage horror fan something to cling to. I was a college sophomore for the first one and a senior (I think) for the second. Zombie’s interpretation of the material is admirably out-there in some respects, and slavishly faithful in others (the second half of Halloween feels like it comes from different movie). For example, I enjoy the way he changed Doctor Loomis into an evangelist huckster instead of a wizened sage. Zombie is making his own films here, even if he’s butting heads with the studio and losing final cut.

It’s unfair to do so because they’re such disparate movies, but compare the abysmal, tone-deaf Nightmare on Elm St. remake to either of Zombie’s Halloween films and you’ll get an idea of why I feel the need to defend them when they get spoken ill of in horror circles. Even if I don’t love them, they’ve got a soul. Zombie’s love of the horror genre and attempt (however flailing that attempt may be) to do something different is palpable in both of his Halloween entries. But even in the highly “experimental” second film, which is a real-deal movie with themes and ideas floating around in it,  Zombie is still tethered to the demands of the franchise and that hurts the final product.

Nobody is happier than me that all the Kubrick and Jodorowsky-influenced tricks that Zombie tried in his second Halloween film are pulled off with much more success in The Lords of Salem. After two franchise pictures, Lords feels like the smaller, more mature work of an artist who’s learned from past mistakes but is still open to trying to push their style forward.

The camera has been bolted back down to earth in this picture, gone is the frenetic style of earlier Zombie films, replaced by a more painterly, European style. The third scene in the film, a nude Sheri Moon Zombie in repose (the filmmaker’s wife and muse, taking center stage here) is photographed in a way that calls to mind Jess Franco and Lina Romay’s creative and romantic relationship (more so now with Franco’s recent passing than it would have a month ago).

By placing the film in a real-world town, as opposed to the imagined suburbia of Haddonfield or the nostalgic south/western locales of his first two films, Zombie and his characters reach a level of believability and likeability heretofore unseen in his work. These are really the streets of Salem, not a Toronto mock-up or an “in season” cartoon version (hundreds of thousands of tourists swamp Salem every October, but that’s not the town we get here). In that way we’re offered a sense of place that works so much better, even if the viewer has never stepped foot in New England.

The film’s still populated by Zombie’s cadre of actors, but they don’t feel like cameos here and I really love seeing Ken Foree show a bit of range. Bruce Davidson (Willard), Meg Foster (They Live) and Andrew Prine (Simon, King of the Witches ) are recent, welcome additions to the stable.

The film lost steam for me at the end, but mostly because the finale felt perfunctory. Even while I successfully avoided every trailer for this movie, I was still anticipating the psychotronic freakout that caps the film, just because it’s broadcast so far in advance (we even have character’s musing about the immutability of fate around the halfway point). Even with this undercutting of what was meant to be the most engaging part of the film, I still find myself very much enamored with what Zombie does in The Lords of Salem.

This love/apathy/respect relationship I have with Lords is a microcosm of the relationship I have with Zombie’s decade worth of films. I may not agree with everything Rob Zombie writes or directs, but I will lay down life and limb in the comments section to defend his right to do it.

WOULD YOU RATHER and the problems faced when renting ‘indie horror’

David Guy Levy’s Would You Rather is both way less gross than its premise suggests and WAY better than any reasonable horror fan would expect it to be.

Let’s deal with that second idea first and see if we can’t swoop around to the gore later, shall we?

When I say that the film is “better than any reasonable horror fan would expect” I’m not condscending and saying that the film is “surprisingly good” I’m just saying that there seem to be so many bad to mediocre movies on the market that it’s surprising to find one that’s so good.

Why in this day and age of VOD and same-day-as-limited-release do I find myself looking at each new horror release like a roulette wheel? Not one where I’m betting black or red, either, we’re talking significantly worse odds. Add to that that each of these rentals costs between $5-$10 and you’ve got yourself a quandary.

I think the problem is two-fold and we can split it into internal(problems with me) and external (problems with the world at large) factors.

Internal factors I can’t control and I shouldn’t complain about. Let’s sum that category up by saying: as my life gets busier and busier, I find myself having a lower tolerance for crap. I’m not above turning a film off thirty minutes in or setting a book down after a hundred pages. I’m not saying that I feel myself becoming snobbish, only that if I’m paying you (the author, filmmakers), you better live up to your end of the bargain and give me something or I’m not going to waste my time on your product.

External factors is where we get to the meat of this problem. When it comes to horror films that circumvent normal distribution methods (not to say that studio horror is any better, it’s not, there’s just a different set of problems there), there’s no good way to tell if the movie you’re about to rent is a diamond in the rough or amateurish dreck.

There are a three tips that I’ve found can help increase my odds of landing on the good stuff (these are things that have worked for me, not a how-to guide, relax):

-Finding distributors you trust. Magnet and IFC Midnight seem to be the top two labels consistently releasing quality genre material. IFC Midnight released Would You Rather, and while they don’t have a perfect track record by any means, they also put out my two favorite genre films in a long time: Pontypool and Kill List. Those flicks bought them about 10 years of goodwill with me.

-Find critics, not websites, that you trust. This one’s a little more complex. If you read sites like Dread Central, Bloody Disgusting, etc. or mags like Fangoria or Rue Morgue: learn the by-lines. Don’t only pay attention to the critics that you agree with, but also try to keep tabs on the ones you don’t. Don’t just scroll down to the critic’s numerical rating, try and read what they’re saying and judge how their saying it. Our over-reliance on numerical grades is a topic for another rambling post (a 7.5 out of ten? What does that even mean? This is a film, not an algebra exam. Jesus.).

-Follow the talent. See those names in front of the movie? They all mean something. If you only follow directors and actors that you like, you’re missing out on all the fresh talent. Look at your favorite low budget movie and see who the producers are, check out what else they’ve done and reward their talent by taking a chance on the other material they’ve worked on.

These tips beg the question: if we have these resources, why is renting a movie still such a crapshoot? Because (a) making a good movie is difficult and (b) we horror fans choose to enjoy a genre that is considered easy (or easier) to turn a profit in. Most times these films are funded like office lottery tickets, the goal being to pay the investors back as quickly as possible, not to make art. Yes, there are some very talented people using this money to create art, but that’s not the reason people are fitting the bill, let’s not lie to ourselves.

The other reason is that we, as a culture, are pretty predictable when you start pressing our nostalgia buttons. Take a look at most DTV or VOD horror flicks and you’ll notice that a bunch of them feature “horror royalty” in either a cameo or leading role. If Tony Todd or Sid Haig or Robert Englund show up in your movie, their cadre of die-hards are considered a built in audience.

Not only does nostalgia play a role in casting, but it can influence the aesthetic of a film or its advertising. If the producers of ____TITLES REDACTED_____ can convince your inner 15 year-old that their film recaptures the magic of the ’70s and ’80s films that you love, then you’re more likely to fork over your 10 bucks. This probably sounds hypocritical coming from the guy that wrote a novel set in 1988 that has hot-and-cold nostalgia running through its veins, but I like to think that’s different.

Now that stuff is off my chest let’s talk about Would You Rather and how much I like it, shall we?

In Would You Rather a group of down-on-their luck strangers is brought together to play a deadly version of the frat-house parlor-game “Would you Rather” for the perverted delight of their host, who has promised the winner their deepest desire.

Even though the concept reads very much like House on Haunted Hill for the Saw generation, the film is much more restrained than that.

I don’t think that it did, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me that Would You Rather began life as a stage play. Most of the action takes place in one room, the ideas it plays with are intelligent, and the bulk of the kills are low-key enough that they could be pulled off with minimal rigging.

This script is perfect for a film like this because the filmmakers don’t have to throw money at 15 different locations or a huge SFX budget, and can instead put that money into making the film look slick (which it very much does) and outfitting the cast with some real talent.

A mix of endearing character actors and full-out great perfromers, WYR is filled with familiar faces. Jeffery Combs is the closest the movie allows itself to go towards horror-geek-baiting stunt-casting, but the guy gives such an energetic performance that it never feels like the producers are only trying to take advantage of his Herbert West cache. Brittany Snow (remember her from that show about American Bandstand, American Dreams?  I liked that show) plays a more-than serviceable final girl and she’s joined by British heavy Jonny Coyne, John Heard, Eddie Steeples, and Sasha Grey (playing the most amusingly unlikable victim to grace the screen in some time).

Tonally the film walks a smart line. While not a straight-out horror comedy, it throws some welcome dark humor in to defuse some of the more ludicrous elements of the plot. These gags feel like the work of a confident director and screenwriter (Steffen Schlachtenhaufen) who are playing with the audience, not against them.

Even though the game within the movie promises that each task the participants face will be more gruesome than the last, the film is hardly a gorefest. In fact, Would You Rather shares more than its premise with the great William Castle, it seems to share his attitude toward onscreen violence(which he lifted from Hitchcock). There’s a lot more violence suggested than what gets shown. This works so that when there is a splatter-y moment, it hits that much harder (there’s even a moment of splat-schtick that had me laughing at an otherwise likable character’s demise).

Like the parlor game on which it’s based, Would You Rather is acutely aware of its novelty and the ease with which that novelty could go off-the-rails. It stocks itself with enough surprises and wit that it never feels repetitive, and it gets out the door swiftly enough that it could never be labeled as boring.

Bottom line: I’m very glad these people got my $6.99.

Snowed In (a.k.a. links, plus some re-heated thoughts on HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS)

It’s been awhile since my last blog, so this will most likely be a babbling outpouring of links and incoherence.

First it’s got to be mentioned that some incredible press has dropped for Video Night since we last spoke. I’ll try to off-set each blatantly self-promotional link with something that has nothing to do with me then finish up with a movie write-up, that way you’ll keep reading…or you’ll just scroll to the end.

Anyone who’s stopped by here before knows how big a fan of Stephen Graham Jones I am. I blab about his work every chance I get, so imagine my surprise when British site This Is Horror ran a review of Video Night penned by SGJ!!! Not only is it a positive, intelligent review, but to me it feels like a real upset of the natural order because I hold his work in such high regard.

Speaking of Jones, he was featured on the Booze and Books podcast here and stopped by Lit-reactor to drop some knowledge about writing here. Both of those are well worth your attention and both are certified 100% Cesare-free.

While we’re on the subject of kind words from authors I respect, Shane McKenzie (author of All You Can Eat, Infinity House, and publisher at Sinister Grin Press) had this to say about Video Night:

“Adam Cesare’s VIDEO NIGHT took me back to when I was a kid begging my parents to take me to Blockbuster so I could rent and re-rent every horror movie on their shelves. If you grew up watching horror flicks, you’re going to love this. A blast from cover to cover.”

Big thanks to Shane!

That’s another gorgeous sketch from Nick Lopergalo, this time it’s Rhonda in repose with several of her babies. I’m in love with this. Look at that late 80s color!

In the unrelated-to-me category, I really enjoy this essay by Nate Southard in which he rebuts Brian Keene’s equally engaging tract on full-time writing. Both essays are from writers whose work I enjoy (Southard’s Down is loaded up on my kindle right now) and both are well worth the read even if you’re not in the field.

Fun fact: Southard is also writing the fifth Sam Truman mystery. What better way to lead into that than reading Bound by Jade: The Fourth Sam Truman Mystery? Here’s the cover:

Okay, last bit of self-promo.

Cult movie site (one of the best on the web, if you ask me), Daily Grindhouse, ran a review of Video Night a few days ago and it is off the hook. Big thanks to DG and John Abrams for the kind words.

What I’ve found myself doing over the last few months is writing up semi-elaborate reviews on facebook when I come back from the movies. I do this to keep my film school muscles limber and so that I have someone to talk to the movies about (sometimes, other times people keep their distance because I wind up sounding kooky). It recently dawned on me that this “movie journaling” is probably counter-intuitive since it’s writing done for such a tiny audience.

Here’s the post I put up after returning home from Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, a movie that I didn’t actively seek out, but it was playing and I was near a movie theater and things like that happen sometimes:

The most disappointing thing about HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS is not that it’s bad (although, I don’t want to imply that it’s good, either*), but that it has some pretty great practical effects and makeup that get squandered by a lame script.

For a movie that has its very title revel in excesses, how can it be this boring? It’s a silly concept executed in the most square, humorless and milquetoast way imaginable. There’s a ten minute bright spot right before the end, a sample of what the movie could have been, but then it’s over.

Tommy Wirkola’s last movie, DEAD SNOW, had this exact same problem.

That movie got its joke out of the way in the logline: Nazi zombies verses teenagers. If you were to complain that the movie had a boilerplate script with all its best gags–although they may have been serviceably executed–lifted from better films, I imagine that Wirkola would reply: “Hey there’s Nazi zombies verses teenagers. That’s all I promised you. What more do you want?”

Next time spare yourself the vanity of the “Written and Directed by” credit and get someone to write you a couple jokes. Seriously, there seem like there are set-ups for witty zingers already in the script, but they just don’t exist. It’s like a Mad-Libs book without the blanks filled in.

*It’s ironic that there’s been a bunch of straight-to-video Hansel and Gretel cash-ins hitting shelves, because the movie itself feels like it’s about three bucks and one Jeremy Renner away from the DTV market.

Video Night Art!

Quick post to share this awesome sketch from Nick Lopergalo (website here). This is Nick’s take on the opening scene of Video Night, enjoy:

 

TEXAS CHAINSAW Book Release 3D

Video Night came out on New Year’s Day, which is a surreal, exhilarating and joyous experience for me. This is my first novel and I’m humbled by the response so far (it even got a shout out from Stephen Graham Jones in this interview).

I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks of it. Please consider buying a copy and helping to spread the word. A few amazon reviews and blog posts go a long way.

I waited to write a post until I had something to talk about other than “Buy my Book!”

Today I saw Texas Chainsaw 3D (which, although it bills itself as a direct sequel to the original TCM, drops both “Massacre” and the space between “Chain” and “Saw” from the title). I can’t say that I loved the film, but there is so much here that I respect.

There’s also a lot of things that made me shake my head, but let’s not focus on that, let’s be positive first.

It’s a crappy corollary, but the only point of comparison I was left with as the credits rolled on TCM3D was the most recent Bond flick, Skyfall.

While Chainsaw 3D deviates from slasher precepts slightly in its last third, what it spends the entirety of its runtime doing is trying its darnedest to convince us how in love it is with Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original. So much so that Leatherface’s tie has a guest spot.

The general arc of Skyfall is aligning Daniel Craig’s rougher, tougher, more Batman-y Bond with the classic continuity. The film used bits of Bond iconography to wink and nudge audiences just enough to make them feel like they were still getting a classical cinematic Bond while still feeling new.

TCM 3D does the same trick on a somewhat (okay, very) diminished scale. The opening credits sequence is footage of the original film post-converted to 3D. This both sets the mood and effectively ruins all the kills for the teeny-boppers in the audience who haven’t seen the original classic.

After this trip down memory lane, we’re presented with a heretofore unseen coda to the original film in which the cannibalistic Sawyer clan faces off with an angry mob.

On paper this sounds great, but the botched execution makes it the weakest sequence in the film. Starting off promising we have Bill Mosley and Gunner Hansan playing members of the Sawyer family. They live in the house from the original film (along with about 36 other Sawyers that we didn’t see in Hooper’s film), but the reconstructed set looks cheap and the layout is all messed up.

The Sawyers go out in a blaze of glory protecting Leatherface (who’s called Jeb here) from the townspeople, but this standoff is filled with the worst CGI in a wide release film this side of 1998. It’s terrible and made even more noticeable by the 3D (which is fairly great in the rest of the movie).

The movie begins in earnest when we skip to present day and meet our final girl, Heather, and her absolutely atrocious friends. The grandmother she never knew is dead and Heather’s just inherited a new house in Texas (three bedrooms, two baths, one Leatherface). The band of superhumanly attractive youths load up their van and begin their roadtrip to Texas.

Okay. I know it doesn’t sound like I enjoyed this movie, but I did. Discussing what I liked specifically would probably constitute a huge spoiler.

To put it vaguely: despite its flaws (leaden dialogue, a protagonist that can never find a shirt that fits, and too many anachronisms to list), Texas Chainsaw 3D is TRYING. There’s a dogged determination palpable in the last half of the film that’s admirable. We get a final girl that upsets the archetype and a slasher that’s matured beyond the self-awareness of Scream and back into his primal form.

To demonstrate this let’s look at one small moment that happens halfway through the film. Leatherface (no, movie, I will not call him Jed or Jeb or whatever) is chasing Heather through a crowded carnival fairway. Out from the fair’s haunted house comes a performer wielding a tiny fake chainsaw and wearing the pig mask featured in the Saw films. The haunted house employee, not realizing Leatherface is for real, taunts him, asking him if he would like to “play a game” to which our slasher replies with a rev of his (much bigger) chainsaw.

It’s a small moment, probably about 20 seconds end-to-end, but it tells you so much about what the film is and what it strives to be. We’re rooting for Leatherface when that ineffectual Jigsaw wannabe pissant jumps in his way. For the audience ol’ BBQ-Breath represents what horror cinema used to be: blue collar, threadbare and dangerous ( maybe even full of ideas if you take a longer look at Hooper and his contemporaries, all smart guys and gals).

The movie pivots into an interesting trajectory from there, because now Leatherface is part of the home team. TCM3D is rough around the edges and it bears one-too-many of the codifiers of modern lackluster horror, but its heart is in the right place:

Still warm and beating, at the bottom of a slop bucket.

I’ll leave you with this advertisement found in the pages of this month’s Fangoria:

Side note: There’s a few minute span near the climax that is absolutely begging to be turned into a youtube sensation. The first person to intercut footage of the Texas Chainsaw characters (the sheriff, the disgruntled locals, Leatherface himself) prepping for the final showdown to the tune of “One Day More” from Les Miserables is going to have comedy gold.

More news, plus “The Next Big Thing…that I didn’t do”

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. In fact, I haven’t really delivered any meaty content since finding my way to my new digs. This is inexcusable, I know, but hopefully you will be satiated by this mini post. First let’s get the news out of the way.

Video Night just keeps racking up the high-profile notices. The excellent Blu Gilliand reviewed it for FearNet and enjoyed it so much that he asked me over to conduct a fairly in-depth interview about the book. I think it made for a fun read as I rant about movies and books and dead formats. There’s also an insanely intelligent review over at Bookgasm that has been making me smile for the last three days.

The picture above comes from reader Jesse Lawrence (who is clearly not only a “reader” but a daper gent with unbelievably good taste). He received his paperback of the book early after pre-ordering it from Samhain’s official website. It’s worth noting that the paperback is also a few bucks cheaper if you pick it up from them. The paperback version of the book is currently shipping from Barnes & Noble and officially launches January 1st from amazon and other fine retailers.

The next part of this post must now take the form of a public apology. I’ve got to say that I’m sorry to W. D. Gagliani (author of the wonderful Nick Lupo werewolf horror/noir series). You see Bill tagged me in that “The Next Big Thing” meme that had made the rounds a month or so ago, but I never did my part by writing my post. Not only that, but several other wonderful authors also approached me about doing a post. As you can see, I never answered the questions and never did any tagging of my own. So here’s an abbreviated version of “The Next Big Thing” too late and a dollar short:

My next big thing is a novel called The Summer Job. It’s me trying to explore the “satanic panic” sub-genre from a fresh perspective. It’s the first piece of writing I’ve done that takes place in Massachusetts and the first with a female protagonist. Other than that, I can’t tell you much because things are still cooking and I don’t want to jinx it. Even without it finished, it is quite clear that this is the most ambitious piece I’ve ever attempted (minimal humor, no ties to film history). I’m consciously trying to push myself out of my comfort zone.

The problem with this writer chain-letter stuff is that everyone and their brother gets tagged so quickly. So instead of officially “tagging” folks and having them tag me back, I’m just gonna rattle off some names of people I like who have work that I respect. Why not spread some of that holiday cheer and buy a book from Ed Kurtz, Jeremy Robert Johnson, Bracken Macleod, Stephen Graham Jones, Mercedes M. Yardley, Shock Totem, or John Skipp?

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Bonus mini-post:

If you are like me in ANY way shape or form: you must get a hold of Trailer War from Drafthouse Films. It’s a trailer compilation in the vein of the 42nd Street Forever discs assembled by Lars Nilson and the guys at the Alamo Drafthouse. These trailers are mind-boggling and if they don’t leave you awe-struck by the possibilities of cinema: you’re dead inside. Not only is it a hefty amount of content (about 2 hours worth of trailers), but some of the proceeds of its sale goes to the American Genre Film Archive. Plus it’s also got some great special features (an interview with Joe Dante, a tour of the AGFA vault). Pick this up now, you’re going to love it.

Some new reviews you may have missed

Hi all,

The new project is stressing me out to no end, so let’s instead look to books that I’ve already written.

With less than two months until its release, Video Night has received some awesome pre-reviews. Check out this one from The Crow’s Caw.

Likewise, Bound By Jade has scooped up some nice mentions like this one here at Dreadful Tales. As I’ve said in other places: I think this is one of the coolest thing I’ve done, so if you want to check it out it’s only two bucks. If you like what you read, let people know about it. If you’re a first timer who enjoyed Bound, then you might want to go back and check out the other Sam Truman books to see what you’ve been missing.

Back to the mines. Peace.