Murky Visions: Scalper (2023)

Scalper (2023)

Rating: *

Starring: Susan Priver, Jake Busey, Bai Ling

Y'know, it's hard to get excited for a slasher when the first kill involves a dirty fat fella getting sodomized with a dagger until the weapon is caked in blood and shit. Yeah.

Clementine Carver (Susan Priver) is a psychic, as well as a surviving victim of a serial killer dubbed The Scalper, named so after their habit of scalping women. It's been some time since the maniac was killed off and with her niche of having powers that helped track down The Scalper, Clementine sees herself getting interviewed for a radio show one day, with her friend, Jade Mei, excitedly calling the station for give the psychic some support over the air. Horrifyingly, Jade finds herself attacked by a man masked in black, her screams for help broadcasted over the airwaves. Clementine, in turn, goes into a seizure-like trance wherein she sees what happened to Jade, which is nothing short of a full-on slaughter that ends with her face and scalp being sliced off.

When Clementine comes through, she's greeted by Detective Hayden (Jake Busey) and his partner Detective Lupino (Kate Patel), who are already on the case of the recent murder and hoping to have her otherworldly abilities help them investigate what appears to be a copycat Scalper killing. Unbeknownst to them, this new wave of scalp murders has a more personal touch to it, all of which seems to lead down to Clementine herself...

Now, see, this is fine and all but, not going to sugarcoat anything, the production of this movie blows; aside from the downright horrendous writing and the very questionable set of C to Z-grade talents involved in bringing this murder mystery to life, Scalper (2023) tries to be this slick and creepy supernatural slasher by involving the previous victims of the titular killer in helping solve their own murders and, too, the new killings, via our heroine's psychic connection. Just for it all to fall embarrassingly flat when the shoddy editing, lowbrow CG effects and dollar store practical make-up distractingly and hilariously highlights how cheap this movie really is.

You could argue that this may be the intention, to bring a bit of humor to the plot, but the direction of the film is clearly aiming for something serious with how much it builds around the police procedural, and the trauma Clementine is going through being nearly another victim of the Scalper. Not to mention her worries of losing her father after he himself became a target of the serial slayer, presented here with her transversing the afterlife to convince his soul to return. Only, for some reason, the afterlife is a highly tinted barren of ruins, but not really since you can see moving traffic just way over the horizon. Yeah. Hard to take these heart-wrenching emotional moments seriously with all of that clunky production showing up.

You may be wondering, then, if I find this movie as absolute horse crap, why did I still give it a single star? Well, I'm awarding that to this movie's single highlight, which is the killer's design. Under the right lighting and angle, the fella is genuinely creepy with their flesh face mask and messy wring of a scalped hair, and I applaud Scalper (2023) for that.

That said, take this shitty movie out of my face and kick if off a trash heap.

Bodycount:

1 male sodomized with a dagger, scalped

1 male sodomized with a dagger, scalped

1 female slaughtered with a dagger, face flayed and scalped

1 female killed with a dagger, face flayed

1 female killed with a dagger, face flayed

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 female sodomized with a dagger, face flayed

1 male stabbed through the neck with a dagger

1 male gets a dagger through the head

1 male found murdered

1 male stabbed with a dagger

1 male stabbed to death with a dagger

1 female decapitated with a dagger

1 male shot on the head

Total: 14

Psychometric Situations: Departing Seniors (2023)

Departing Seniors (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, Yani Gellman, Ireon Roach

Tired of being on the receiving end of homophobic bullying, Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) wanted nothing more right now than just to graduate out of Springhurst High and move on with his life. Until then, he soldiers through the final days of high school, finding comfort from his spunky bestfriend Bianca (Ireon Roach) and a sympathetic English teacher Mr. Arda (Yani Gellman), as well as on the graceful chance of finally hanging out with new student he's been crushing on, William (Ryan Foreman). 

Javier's would-be fling, however, gets exploited by the bullying ringleaders, star student Ginny (Maisie Merlock) and her meathead jock boyfriend Trevor (Cameron Scott Roberts), faking an invite to lure Javier out to another round of harassment afterschool. Finally having enough, Javier lashes back and outs another bullying jock, Brad (Sasha Kuznetsov), as a closeted gay, bringing up romantic flairs that's been happening between them behind everyone's back. Outraged, the jocks chase Javier and accidentally knocks him unconscious after he get thrown down a flight of stairs.

Waking up later in a hospital, Javier discovers, much to his shock and initial horror, that he can now randomly see glimpses of the past or future of whoever he touches, or by touching objects that belong to them. Unsure what to make of this at first, Javier quickly learns that he may need to use his new clairvoyant abilities to save the very people that tormented him when a prowler in a stylized Greek theatre mask starts snuffing out the bullies, staging them as suicides. Can Javier convince his aggressors of the dangers in time? Or will they all fall victim to the blade of this mysterious killer?

Visions in slasher films isn't exactly a new party trick given the likes of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), Fear (1990) or even the Final Destination movies already tormenting clairvoyants with killings to come, courtesy of a vicious murderer. Departing Seniors (2024) practically follows the same beat with Javier and Bianca racing against time to stop these deaths from happening and hopefully put an end to the killer's terror, only there's more happening around the slayings than the actual slayings itself. 

While Javier's ability to see visions is often given a comedic pass, with characters quirkily citing similar instances from various movies and TV plots, it also becomes a catalyst to the film's warmly emotional moments as it taps into the more vulnerable sides of the people surrounding Javier, this including his bullies who, through psychic foreshadowings and flashbacks, turns out to be surprisingly sympathetic despite their horrible behavior, having to deal with their own plights of insecurities and personal dilemmas which they hide behind an intimidating front. We get to see them mourn their losses and even try to better themselves, building a refreshingly solid cast to be cathartically killed off, but with the bulk of the plot centering on the drama, as well as the mystery behind who's doing away the bullies, Departing Seniors (2023) is light on the kill count and even lighter on the blood shed as the killer prefers to stage the murders as suicides to cover their tracks.

The film makes a good effort on twisting suspicions around with clever misdirection and plausible red herrings to keep the whodunnit angle fun and engaging, though with the casts so little, it's not too hard to eventually figure out who the culprit is. Even more so their motive behind the killings given the film's stance concerning bullying. The climactic confrontation is hammed-up, to say the least, with the killer breaking into angry monologues and one of the victims taking a little longer to realize how deep into trouble they are, going as far as chastising the villain for their threatening behavior. It's a passable finale with a few good fights and one that ends with the killer being arrested rather than killed, something you don't often see in a teen slasher.

It may not have the messiest bodycount, nor much of an exploitative edge, Departing Seniors (2023) still works as a slasher drama with a fun cast, a crisp production quality and the right amount of heartbreak and blood spill. Recommended for warm murder mystery afternoons!

Bodycount:

1 male had his wrists slashed with a hunting knife, drowned in a pool

1 male hanged with a fire hose

1 male beaten against a steering wheel, pushed off a building

Total: 3

The House of Transcendental Boredom: Boardinghouse (1982)

Boardinghouse (1982)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: John Wintergate, Kalassu and Lindsay Freeman

Boardinghouse? More like Bore Me House!

...Look, I'm drained tired trying to watch this movie from start to finish. I am not bringing my A-Game puns for this one! 

Through an irritatingly loud early 80s computer graphics, the film starts by bombarding us with exposition upon exposition about some family called the Hoffmans who studied telekinesis and occultism because, hey, I'm pretty sure nothing bad ever happens from meddling with the two subjects under the same household, right? Right? Well, color most of us unsurprised, the folks were found dead one day and their eldest kid goes bananas from an emotional breakdown. Since then on, the house got sold and resold as it becomes a hotspot for fatal accidents, killing those who step foot in the hospice. 

One of these unlucky meat bags just happens to include the house as a part of an inheritance package for their heir, Jim Royce. (played by director John Wintergate) The place goes from haunted to "hot damn!" as Jim turns the estate into a party haven for the ladies where he is the acting den mother, which is not a bad arrangement so long as they don't mind the man's weird meditation sessions, supernatural ability to move objects with his mind and his wardrobe choice of animal pattern speedos. As the ladies sunbathe, get wasted in quality wine and have steamy shower scenes, someone or something around the house isn't happy with the new living arrangements and it's damn well making it obvious with the sudden surge of demonic visions, bloody accidents and, well, gruesome deaths happening all over the house!

With a production that resembles something an 80s swinger would make at their own backyard with their girlfriends, Boardinghouse (1982) is often cited as one of the earliest, if not the first, example of shot-on-video horror films and with its abundance of strange editing, nonsensical plotting, terrible audio and lighting and select actors with talents comparable to a 70s pizza place's animatronic, all the known restraints from a shoestring budget production, it's not hard to picture why. What does work here, though, is its hilariously dumb cheese factor and a level of determined creativity that comes paired with it; while the implementation is laughable, I do have to at least give credit for the film for trying to do something unique for its haunted house-cum-slasher melting pot of a story, tossing in killers with mind-control powers and lethal telekinesis, as well as not skimping on the blood works and gore effects in its attempt to be a competent horror flick.

The over and underacting also has its unintentional hilarity, which goes the same for some of the cheap spectral effects done for the movie's more supernatural inclined scenes that undoubtedly show the movie's age. Frankly, I really want to like this film for dumb moments like these, but the matter that it paces through one random big house escapade and pool party jig to another before doing something remotely interesting is just a big gut punch to its entertainment factor. By the end of it, I'm simply tired from all the people idling around and bullshitting, too frustrated to completely enjoy this film's idea of a climax wherein three people are just standing in a supposed "telekinetic battle" (complete with dry ice), inflicting hellish agony to one another as indicated by the warping screen and the actors comically scrunching up their faces. 

Seeing how Boardinghouse (1982) developed some form of cult following over the years, it's safe to say that, perhaps, this film is just not for me. I can appreciate a movie's hokey premise and chunky corn-syrup gore but, at times, it's simply not enough to look past its direction and pacing issues. For those who can, then I guess this is your movie, you crazy lot. Seeing it once is good enough for me...

Bodycount:

1 male drowns in a pool

1 female had her arm shredded through a sink garbage disposal

1 female hanged with a length of knotted stockings

1 male disembowels himself

1 male electrocuted in a bathtub with a live hairdryer

1 female suffers through spontaneous bleeding, drowned in the ocean

1 cat hammered to death

1 female shot to death

1 male shot on the head

1 male stabbed in the gut with a thrown lawn dart

1 female plucked out her eyes

1 male had his heart levitated out of his chest

Total: 13

Astral Pain: Host (2020)

Host (United Kingdom, 2020)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb

During 2020's COVID-19 pandemic, six friends choose to spend some time under quarantine performing a seance over Zoom,  a cloud-based video conference service. With the help of a medium they invited, it's all fun and games until one of them went a tad too far poking fun at the session, somewhat angering an otherworldly force that wouldn't hesitate to haunt and hunt them all down.

Running only under an hour long, Host is a relatively modest techno-horror feature from director Rob Savage, basically a haunt movie with a bodycount and a "Screenlife" format similar to the likes of the Unfriended series, wherein we watch the entire spooks and carnage through a single computer or phone monitor. Story-wise, the film isn't doing anything far different from the classic supernatural horror plot, with the group dabbling into the unknown with little regards to the possible dangers they're putting themselves in, until that is people starts dying and they're desperately struggling to stay alive. 

It's scene after scene of horror trappings, particularly of the paranormal found footage variant with its share of eerie focus on darkened rooms, things moving on their own in the background and the generous helping of jump scares. Of course, this style and direction wouldn't work for everyone; some might find the movie's video conference-style pretty restricting or that the gimmick is nothing more than an evolved take on the found footage style, not really offering new aside from a more digital perspective. Others might see its quick pacing has a tendency to go over decent character or warranted plot development, but I personally don't mind any lack of depth in a movie's writing and/or scripting so long as it entertains. And Host entertains. 

With a group of decent actors doing a splendid job immersing themselves in the movie's horror and a talented director crafting the scares wonderfully with good timing and setup, Host boasts some genuinely impressive set-pieces from both its fright and murder sequences, some getting quite brutal and intense even without spilling a shocking amount of blood. (Though one did get awfully bloody. Like really bloody) Its cool practical stunt work and the creepy make-up and visual effects used for the villainous spirit and their rampage also further heighten the chill factor of these scenes and the fact that all of this was shot through and presented as a Zoom meeting calls for some ingenuity, at least in an effort to make this film a tad more memorable, relatable and fun as a quickie horror flick that plays around the creepy voyeuristic factor of the horror "Screenlife" approach. 

Best watched with a pair of headphones on and with the lights off, Host has the right amount of unnerving content and engaging character to make it slightly more than just another footage horror flick. As cheap and easy as it can be at times, it has its occasions that guarantee goosebumps and a good watch.  

Bodycount:
1 male dropped dead from a ceiling
1 female killed, method unknown
1 female beaten to death against desktop
1 female had her neck snapped
1 male set on fire
1 female tossed from a window, crashes into a table
2 females attacked, presumably killed

Total: 8

Death In Cycles: Final Destination 5 (2011)

Final Destination 5 (2011)

Rating: ****

Starring: Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Arlen Escarpeta

Looks like 2009's "The" Final Destination wasn't the final destination. Good!

It's the corporate retreat of printing company Presage Paper and all of the white collar types are attending a camp for a team building experience. Enroute to the retreat however, employee Sam Lawton foresees the bridge's destructive collapse which not only kills everybody caught in the fall, but almost everyone in the company bus as well, including him.

Disturbed by this premonition, Sam tries to convince the others to get off the bus before the accident happens, successfully getting his ex-girlfriend Molly to go with him, followed by his concerned friends Nathan Sears and Peter Friedkin, Peter's girlfriend Candice Hooper, their boss Dennis Lapman, and finally his co-workers Olivia Castle and Isaac Palmer. True enough, the bridge starts tearing itself no soon after, killing a many and putting some suspicion on Sam considering all the conspicuous things he did before the collapse.

Nevertheless, not enough can be pinned on him so Sam is free to go and continue working in Presage Paper with his surviving colleagues and friends, even getting back with Molly who had some sort of epiphany from the accident and welcomes him to her life again. But not everything is fine and dandy as you can tell by this point of the franchise; Death, the cosmic weaver of fates, isn't happy that his design was cheated by some mortals so those who got off the bridge collapse starts to die one by one through a series of bizarre accidents, all in the order they were supposed to die in the vision. 

As our survivors start piecing together what's happening to them, it's only a matter of time for them to figure out how to beat the inevitable, which may or may not involve a suspicious mortician's advice that one can steal the remaining years of those not originally in Death's design through outright murder. A life for a life.

Looking into the basics of the franchise, the Final Destination movies all feature the core idea of Death being a cold, spiteful and sadistic cosmic force, but what differs for each is how their direction approached the notion; the first movie tackles this with some existential leanings, the second noticeably has a stronger emphasis on heightening the death count with a small twist on the gimmick, the third caters to how brutal death can get as a splatter flick, and the fourth basically just made a dark joke out of it. 

Shot in 3D, Final Destination 5 (2011) is more or less a do-over of the series' previous chapter back in 2009 with The Final Destination, the franchise's supposed attempt to close itself with a bang. In this fifth serving, the movie tries to get back to the saga's roots, keeping the story as simple as they can while still maintaining the gore quota the franchise is associated with at this point. The result is technically another soft-reboot of sorts (like how Final Destination 3 (2006) and the aforementioned The Final Destination (2009) can stand as their own movies given how little they mentioned or tie-in the events of the first two films) but only with a much more respectable angle.

Straying away from the typical screaming teen victims, this entry looked for ways to expand its circle of working class characters from cliched trappings, mostly through slower and quieter scenes in an attempt to make most of the casts a lot more likable, or at least interesting. This is used generously on the main three leads Sam, Molly and Peter, as two of them figure out where to go from their close encounter with the Omega, while the other's slowly driven insane on the notion that Death isn't and shouldn't be playing favorites. Without a doubt, we still have a few duds who are simply there to be the comic relief or the casual lamb for the slaughter, but they do make sitting through their moments worth the while considering the eye-candy demise they'll be getting into.

On that note, Final Destination 5 (2011) makes a finer effort blending in CG with practical effects for its 3D gimmick, unlike the 2009 prior which have majority of its murders done in obvious cartoonish digital graphics. It is noteworthy, however, that this entry's treatment of its gory accidents have more proper build-up to them, swaying us from one possible cause of death to another in nail-biting suspense before striking us with an unexpected bloody surprise. Furthermore, the chance this movie did to bend the mythos' rules a bit is also a clever touch as it introduces the possibility of human killers. And, sure enough, the climax treats us with a more brawl-out action thriller fight that kinda felt misplaced in a horror movie, but ties in fittingly either ways once we get to the finale.

Now, notice I never called this movie a sequel and there's a reason for that, but it falls into spoiler territories. It's a particularly nice touch of a twist, one that is almost completely hidden unless you take a gander at the pieces of technology everybody is using here, as well as the littered hints thrown here and there that hails back to the other Final Destination movies. This reveal ties the franchise altogether with a better and, dare I say, stronger knot and I wouldn't be any happier if this amazing entry is indeed our last foray into the series. (Hopefully, for now)

All in all, Final Destination 5 (2011) brought an tired formula back to life with the proper manic energy, a hint of grim mysticism, and rightfully placed sympathy for its leading casts. (and then some) It's focus is without a doubt to be another movie for the franchise fans to chew on, from the random visions to the Goldberg-esque set-pieces, but with a bit more messy meat and thought to it, a matter that horror fans can surely appreciate from a humble entry like this. See it and hail it!

Bodycount:

86 individuals killed in bridge collapse

1 female mangled upon a bad landing from a balance beam routine

1 male had his head crushed by a falling Buddha statue

1 female falls to her death through a building window

1 male gets a construction hook through the head

1 male gets a flying wrench buried into his face

1 male shot to death

1 male impaled through with a barbecue skewer

1 female sucked out from a plane, bisected through a rudder

1 male incinerated in a plane explosion

1 male crushed by a falling plane wheel 

Total: 96

(Note: Not counting the rest of the passengers and staff killed in a plane explosion. It would feel redundant...)

A Drug Trip For Pounded Flesh: Death Walks At Midnight (1972)

Death Walks At Midnight (La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte) (Italy, 1972)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Peter Martell

When fashion model Valentina (Nieves Navarro) volunteers to be an anonymous human guinea pig for a new experimental drug called HDS for her journalist friend Gio (Simon Andreu), she didn't expect seeing a vision of a girl getting her face caved in with a spiked iron gauntlet by a maniac in large shades. Worse even is that Gio didn't stay by his word to keep her anonymous, exploiting her freak out from the vision by taking and publishing pictures of the session, crafting a sensationalized tabloid piece for the city to see and read.

Rightfully angry about his deceit, Valentina confronts Gio about the stunt as it costs her a magazine job, vandalizing his office in the process, but she'll soon learn that something worse is stirring up for her; presumably to cover his tracks, the killer from Valentina's vision begins to stalk her, spiked gauntlet at hand, and has come pretty close to killing her in more than one time. When the police fails to properly recognize her stalker, it's up to Valentina to figure out who this is and stop him for good.

An intriguing labyrinthine plot is always a good expectation to meet from a well-crafted giallo and Death Walks at Midnight certainly delivers on that point; there's no mystery that killer from Valentina's drug trip actually exists, but their identity and motive is what keeps the story going, especially with the twists that the murder she saw was actually committed six months prior and, apparently, a different set of victim and murderer was involved. It's a twisty situation and the increasingly tangling dread subjected unto our lead makes for a good practice of paranoia that heightens the  curious nature of this conundrum, getting further muddled and oppressing the more the plot goes.

Despite the growing strangeness of the story, soon tainted with talks of suicidal women and drug addiction, Midnight impressively keeps a focused direction to all of these set-pieces and revelations, giving us a palpable stream of prowling sequences and an atmosphere of crippling helplessness that sustains the story with enough thrills and haunts to entertain its audience. A drawback here is that it can get too talky with its expositions, force-feeding us one info to the next before we can even properly sink everything in. There's also the matter that the movie nulls over exploring Valentina's relationships from her artist boyfriend and on-off journalist friend to a creepy talker and an inspector who believes she's holding out information from the crime, more often branching the story into character drama territories before kicking itself back into a murder mystery.

Nevertheless, it all ties up neatly at the final act in which the movie shift gear to a hammy action thriller with bad guy monologues, giggling assassins and a drawn-out brawl up at a rooftop in broad daylight. It's also in these parts wherein the kill count starts piling back up, the bloodiest it can get being another spiked gauntlet beating and one hilarious looking drop in which the unfortunate sap's brains get splattered out.

A crafty example of the giallo form, albeit less graphic and sleazy and putting more emphasis on curving plot lines, Death Walks at Midnight works an engaging enough tale that may have spiraled  out of control in some parts, its certainly isn't lacking on blood splatter and vintage cheese to occupy us in the midst of the madness. Rewarding us a fair payoff for sitting through its tricky little devil of a plot (I say fair because I don't even think they bother explaining how drugging Valentina got her seeing visions in the first place), it's an invitingly fun piece of Italian horror/thriller cinema well worth your time.

Bodycount:
1 female beaten to death with a spiked iron glove
1 female found knifed on the chest
1 male found dead with chest wound
1 male found knifed on the chest
1 female beaten to death with a spiked iron glove (flashback)
1 male falls off a building, brains splattered upon impact
1 male shot through the back
1 male shot
Total: 8

My Blade Is Set, As Firmly As Ever: Oliver Twisted (2000)

Oliver Twisted (2000)
Rating: **
Starring: Signe Kiesel, Brian Ahmes, Jason McMahan

An institution gets more than they bargained for when Oliver, a car-crash-survivor-turned-iron-plated-loonie, snaps out of the drugs meant to keep him asleep for a routine hair cut and kills two orderlies. He slips into a coma after a third orderly shoots him repeatedly with a dart gun, but now the institution doesn't want him anywhere within their walls. Thus, they opted to go with the next best thing they could think of: send the comatose killing machine home with the closest living relatives obliged to take care of him.

In comes Mrs. Mary Happ (Karen Black), who's rightfully upset over the fact the institution's only giving her the choice of either hosting the comatose nephew in her house, or pay thousands of clinic bills which she cannot afford. She's eventually swayed to do the "right" thing and takes the man home, much to the delight of her son Jeff, who immediately becomes obsessed with the dude, and uneasiness of her daughter Olivia, who starts to have visions of murders-to-come.

With Mrs. Happ leaving for a business trip no soon after, Olivia chooses to ignore the sudden strangeness and go on with her life taking care of Oliver and hanging out with her friends. But the further the days go by, the more she experience these visions and it isn't long before people starts disappearing.

Very misleading title aside (Sorry, boys and girls, we have to settle with Phantom of The Opera (1989) for our slasher-fied literary classics for now), Oliver Twisted (2000) is an okay oddity that tries going for the teen horror dramatics by centering most of the plot on Olivia's struggles to understand her premonitions, the odd set-up of having a cousin they never heard of getting placed in home care, as well as the unnerving feeling that Oliver isn't really in a coma and could go up and out chopping mailmen to death. A lot of cheesy acting and bad hairdos meant this is all done with cringe and ham, but the misguided aim for seriousness just falls into silly mishaps and unintentional humor that are gladly still watchable as guilty fun.

Despite the discount bin production quality, the movie still packs some serious gore effects and a few effectively executed scenes, like the chunky red offscreen scalping of an early victim and one of Olivia's visions involving a dude getting his face and gut assaulted with a machete in front of a busy convenience store. Cameos were also afforded as we have the presence of Karen Black and 70s cop show CHIP's’ Erik Estrada gracing our screens, though both have very little to do apart from being the adult figures popping up from time to time, checking on the Happ family.

Story could have used a once-over to fix the plot holes tattering it and maybe even do a better job hiding the obvious twist reveal, but the final product still entertains as junkfood horror so Oliver Twisted (2000) is not a complete trash heap to avoid. Good enough for an overnight rental and that's it.

Bodycount:
1 male found scalped down to the skull cap, killed
1 male beaten to death against a wall
1 male had his hand lopped off with a machete, killed offscreen
1 female brained with a meat tenderizer, hand ground with a meat grinder
1 male sliced across the face with a machete, stabbed through the chest
1 female had her throat sliced with a machete
1 male knifed to death
1 female found dead with a stab wounds
1 male ran through the gut with a steel bar
1 female presumably killed with a machete
Total: 10

Night of the Glass Eyes: Tourist Trap (1979)

Tourist Trap (1979)
Rating: ****
Starring: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness

Inspired less by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and, instead, taking cues from Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) (among plenty others), Tourist Trap (1979) is a slasher that defies structure and embraces nightmare logic, resulting to a surreal trip down familiar footings and then some.

When a friend fails to turn up after working on a car tire and their spare ride breaks down in the middle of an isolated countryside, a small group of youngsters foots to a nearby watering hole and garage that's also close to the titular tourist trap. There, the teens are greeted by an eccentric yet kind-looking old man named Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), owner of the trap which turns out to be a wax museum filled with a collection of mannequins and life-like mechanical figures made by Slausen's brother who left for the city.

The gang is allowed to hang around the museum under Slausen's approval, given that they don't leave and go snooping around the house next to them while he and another dude of their number drive off to town to find assistance. Finding Slausen to be a tad suspicious, most who remained choose to disregard the old man's request, not knowing they have sealed their fate to an unimaginable masked horror awaiting them.

Truth be told, the only flaw I endured through Tourist Trap (1979) is its slow padding moments wherein characters are either just walking around and sticking their noses in places it doesn't belong, or getting chased for the umpteenth time. It can get testy, but other than that, everything else about this movie just works.

Its meager budget may have shown the rough edges of the movie's production, but I cannot completely disregard this lack of funds as a negative aspect as it did little damage to the final product and, in some way, may have even help the story somewhat achieve a feat of creepiness and surrealism, particularly on how they utilize the simplicity of their special effects to it full unsettling potential. The worn-out and cluttered set-up of both the tourist trap and the killer's home, for example, not only boast a claustrophobic feel from the piles and piles of mannequins displayed or trashed around, but little details like the smooth gazes of the figures' glass eyes and the janky movements they do in places add an air of mocking menace and haunting uncertainty to what exactly the teens are dealing with.

Giving the killer telekinesis is a concept not often tackled in slasher movies, let alone have it leave out any solid ideas as to how they ended up with it and to what extent they can wield it. This, however, works favorably in Trap's case as the absence of background concerning the killer's psychic abilities strongly adds to the surrealism of the massacre, especially when it eventually reaches a climax where the lines of living, inanimate or dead gets blurred so bad, it's insanely delightful in its cheap yet effective execution. The kills, in turn, are an unconventional set with only a dab of blood here and there, as it focused more on the creative demises of the casts with sound design and editing helping elevate the techniques used.

More or less, Trap's strength lies more on creep factor than violence, an approach that succeeds greatly through its share of silliness that managed to double as effective eeriness, like how its own score flips from bells and whistles to exaggeratedly gasps over striking violins. It also helps that Chuck Connors does a wonder of a job conveying this tone to his scene-chewing range of personality from a calm old timer-type to a deranged man-child with godlike powers, giving little points like out-of-place cracker dinners with mannequins or the fact the killer couldn't stick to just one masks all the dinky and disturbing identity they needed.

Tourist Trap (1979) dwells openly in the unknown, fancying itself to leave its logic at the door to dish out a nightmarish story for us to enjoy. It's unique and disconcerting in all the right ways, thus a cult classic deserving of its status and that little space in our growing horror film hoard.

Bodycount:
1 male impaled by a levitating pipe
1 female strangled with a scarf
1 female had her face covered with plaster, suffocates
1 female gets a thrown knife to the back of her head
1 male killed offcamera, mannequin duplicate revealed
1 male gets an axe to the neck
Total: 6

Curse You, Satanic Cheese Lightning!: A Night To Dismember (Lost Cut, 1983)

A Night To Dismember (Lost Cut, 1983)
Rating: **
Starring: Samantha Fox, Diane Cummins, Saul Meth

Back at 1983, slasher fans got the displeasure of seeing A Night To Dismember, a bodycount movie that was nearly lost in a fire-related sabotage attempt only to be salvaged and then had its surviving footage and a couple of random clips from other (and arguably better) cult horror flicks spliced together into a hodge-podge patchwork. As you would expect from this, the resulting product is an atrocious mess, making very little sense from a narrative point of view and made kinda worse by its cheesy editing. For the longest time, this final product would come in as one of the worst slasher movies from the 80s (gaining cult status of its own from this notoriety, strangely enough) and it appears this isn't going to change ever.

Until 2019, at a Youtube channel called Hamilton Trash Cinema; Ben Ruffett, founder of the channel, happens to have inquired with the movie's cinematographer C. Davis Smith about getting a copy of the film to screen and while Smith did not own any of the film's official VHS releases, he did have a copy of the original extended cut on tape which includes Diana Cummings in the lead role. So, does this mean we will finally have a long lost classic at our hands and eyeballs here?

Mmm. Could be?

Our lost movie opens in a cemetery, where a cloaked man welcomes us to the story in an EC Comic Crypt Keeper fashion, to the power of ten dad jokes. He regales us a tale of two generations of women; the first is Mary, pregnant out of wedlock and keeping it a secret from the rest of her family out of shame, a predicament that got her so troubled that she decided to stroll out one night, into a freak lightning accident that (as the narrator wordily suggests) grants her otherworldly powers which may or may not include her just going bonkers.

Through clairvoyance and a ghostly voice egging her to destroy those who made her suffer, Mary unleashes bloody retribution against anyone she deems worthy of her revenge, from her cheating lover to her abusive family. This half of the movie ends with Mary giving birth and dying from it, leading us to the next generation psycho, her adult daughter Vickie.

Adopted and unloved, Vickie gets the reputation of being the crazy weirdo of the town thanks to her dark family history, a matter made worse when she and her adoptive family decided to move in to her birth mom's home. Add in the troubles of her suddenly seeing bloodied visions of decapitated heads and skeletal hands, it becomes clear to us that Vickie inherited her mum's insanity and supposedly supernatural need to destroy people.

Much like the case of another lost slasher The Intruder (1975), the story behind the lost cut of A Night to Dismember is more interesting of a tale than the movie itself; though the film has its charms, it's definitely not for everyone since the plot more or less narrows down to just two women going stab-happy and murder anyone who mistreats them. It does try to add more substance to it by introducing some supernatural aspects, but this is done so cheaply that it's either close to nonexistent or too laughable to be taken seriously.

In fact, the whole movie is a joke of a production from its wonky editing to wooden acting, inconsistent details to overly electrified score. But as mentioned before, this can be a fun deal if you're into feisty cheese and hammy terror. Its budget certainly shows, but as far as being a slasher film goes, it's less in it for the gory shlock and instead boasts quite a maniacal energy on unleashing sizable killcounts, even if the methods used can be a tad repetitive or nonsensical. (Keep an eye on the house fire kill, it's whacked out of nowhere!) You could say that this lost cut is comparable to a very violent issue of an old school EC horror comic like Tales From The Crypt or The Vault of Horror turned feature length grindhouse flick, short on story but rich in pulpy horror goodness.

A better example of a so-bad-it's-good flick compared to its prior butchered release, this lost cut of A Night To Dismember is a tiny roughed-up gem of a find that only a brave few can enjoy. If you fancy yourself as the patient and forgiving kind then feel free to try this and brace yourself for a barrage of chunky stale cheese.

Bodycount:
1 male and 1 female decapitated with a machete
1 male brained with a rock, buried alive
1 female hacked to death with a hatchet
1 male gets stabbed through the neck with an ice pick
1 female hacked to death with a hatchet
1 female dies from childbirth (implied)
1 male knifed through the neck
1 male knifed to death
20+ individuals burned to death in house fire
1 female knifed to death
1 female stabbed and hacked to death (dream)
1 male hacked on the head with a hatchet, heart  punched out
1 female had her head ran over with a car
1 female hacked to death with a hatchet
Total: 34+

Some Bad Trips: Shrooms (2007) and One Way Trip (2011) Double Bill Review

I just realized a few days before writing this that I haven't covered Shrooms (2007) in this blog which was honestly shocking for me since I sincerely thought I had all this time. I even went through each of my posts to check and, yep, not a single review page on Shrooms. That day also happens to be the day I finally get to see One Way Trip (2011) in all of its German-speaking glory so here's a double bill review of these two movies about massacring magic mushroom munchers!

Shrooms (Ireland, 2007)
Rating: **
Starring: Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, Max Kasch

While on a trip down into the Ireland countryside, five American college kids join a local for a mushroom picking session and sample fresh fungi off nature's floor to get some of that all-natural high. One of the gals of the group, Tara (Lindsey Haun), ends up munching on a deathcap mushroom despite being told not to, resulting to her suffering a seizure and, for some reason, gaining the ability to experience trance-like foresight.

One campfire tale and a random talking cow later, the group is soon menaced by a trio of creepy boogeymen; the axe-wielding cloaked wraith called The Black Brother, the sack-masked menace monikered the Lonely Twin and a feral man that goes by "Dog". One by one, the mushroom munchers and a couple of rapey-looking hicks nearby get snuffed out, all of which seen by Tara through her trippy magic mushroom-triggered visions. Desperate to escape the killers and save as many as she could, Tara tries to use these foresights in a race against time to warn others of these maniacs. (All, interesting, are from the aforementioned campfire tale. Coincidence?)

Crudely, said attempts to save others mostly have our Tara weeping and screaming at "something" before running through the woods to save her hide, much like the teens from The Blair Witch Project (1999) which this movie is often compared with. The unintentional hilarity of this, along with the movie's minimalist and nearly bloodless kills, as well as its stand to use surrealism for creepiness are practically the reasons why Shrooms (2007) is often regarded as dull and testy to watch. Nevertheless, I grew a minuscule soft spot for this wreck over the years as I learned to at least appreciate the effort of what it was trying to attempt, which is a trippy slasher movie with a tone and direction to match. 

It undoubtedly has the chaotic visuals and narrative flow, and too a moody atmosphere that definitely would have made an interesting hallucinogen-tainted supernatural bodycounter, if only the story wasn't shit and unfocused, the characters weren't walking hollow stereotypes and, again, the murders were a lot more creative and not too all over the place.

Good idea. Flawed execution. Just another backwoods horror for the rental bins.

Bodycount:
1 goat beaten to death with a tire iron
1 male castrated, hacked on the head with an axe
1 male killed offscreen
1 female hacked on the head with an axe
1 female drowned in the lake
1 male stabbed on the gut with a knife
1 male hacked on the head with an axe
1 male killed offcamera with medical scissors
Total: 8

One Way Trip (Austria/Switzerland, 2011)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Sabrina Reiter, Melanie Winiger, Herbert Leiser

Four years after Shrooms (2007), this Austria/Switzerland co-production does its own take on a mushroom picking-gone-wrong slasher flick on a note much closer to your classic backwoods bodycounter. In 3D.

Six young adults travel to the Swiss trails during peak season for magic mushrooms, picking up a couple of friendly hitchers along the way and encountering a not-so-friendly farmer and his estranged scarred daughter. Things were going great otherwise as the group proceeds to camp and taste Mother Nature's fun fungi until one of them left to take a wizz and returns battered on the face with a dead branch.

And as if trouble had a switch and some merciless god turns it on, a storm suddenly gathers, their phones now wouldn't work and the only protection nearby is a farmhouse owned by the same shotgun-totting farmer they met before. It isn't long before the farmer makes his presence again and his daughter reveals to have a mean streak of murdering people who rejects her ala billhooks and machetes. Bodycounting ensues until a very familiar yet more workably executed twist at the end...

Despite guilty of having a mediocre plot and characters, One Way Trip (2011) is well made enough to warrant a fair viewing as seen with its beautiful camera work and quality, easy pacing and a few good run of your classic backwoods cat-and-mouse stalking and slashing. It also helps that the murders are damn good bloody and occasionally brutal even if some of the digital 3D effects look laughably silly (Remember the popped eyeball scene from Friday the 13th Part 3-D (1983)? Recreated here only with a knife and splatstick logic!), so while it may amount to nothing really but another garden variety slasher movie, I frankly enjoyed One way Trip for the simple yet earnest end result.

Good idea. Semi-decent execution. Just another backwoods horror for the rental bins that I'm sure will see again and again.

Bodycount:
1 deer shot with a shotgun
1 wolf shot with a shotgun offcamera
1 male stabbed in the head with a pair of hedge trimmers
1 male gets a knife through the head, eye stabbed out
1 female falls into a gate railing, impaled
1 male caught on fire, immolated
1 male hacked on the back with a billhook, bled to death
1 female hacked on the back with a billhook
1 male had his throat slashed with a scythe head
Total: 9