March 31st, 2015 - The Deadly Spawn (1983)

The Deadly Spawn is a monster movie in the vein of Evil Dead - made locally on an obviously low budget, but by people who are obviously passionate about what they are doing. I'd say Raimi was more interested in the craft of filmmaking, whereas the emphasis of The Deadly Spawn is crazy creature effects. (It's probably worth noting here that Spawn had 1/15 of the budget of Evil Dead though.) Sure, there are some rough edges here and there, but at the end of the day the clear affection for the creature feature shines through, and makes The Deadly Spawn a really fun and gory b-movie romp.

The story is about an alien that crash lands to Earth on a meteor a la the Blob. It's sort of a multi-headed fat worm thing with a ton of teeth, and it quickly starts its reign of terror by eating a couple of campers who go to check out the meteor. (At this point, just don't go anywhere near something that fell from space... it never turns out well.) It then makes its way to a house and climbs in the basement window, where it just kind of hangs out, eating whoever happens to come downstairs. It gets bigger and bigger every time it eats, so by the time we see it the thing is probably a full six feet tall and six feet wide. It can't move very well (I don't know if it has feet or even legs), but what it does have is deadly spawn - as it grows, it releases a bunch of little baby monsters. Some are the size of small snakes, and some get to be about cat sized. All with deadly teeth and an appetite, of course.

March 30th, 2015 - It Follows (2014)

For me, It Follows was another victim of being overhyped. I had heard so many good things about it in the weeks leading up to its release that it was probably impossible for it to live up to my expectations. I mean, I still thought it was a really well put-together and interesting film (and there's a lot more to chew on than the STD angle that you've probably heard about), but ultimately I was let down. And that's not the movie's fault - had I seen this as a random watch on DVD I'd probably be pretty damned pleased with myself right now. But that's the world we live in...

Presumably you know the story? Jay (Maika Monroe) is a young woman - maybe 19-20? Ages are never really discussed, but the group seems to be high-school aged and a little older. Jay has been on a few dates with this guy and has sex with him. It turns out he has passed on some sort of sexually transmitted curse to her. When you have it, you'll be followed by some strange evil presence that wants to kill you. It can take on a variety of looks (someone you know, or a total stranger), but it is always following you. And it can only walk, but sometimes it just stands there if that's scarier. No one who hasn't been cursed can see it, but if it catches up to you, you're dead. The only way you can get rid of it is to sleep with someone else and pass it on. But if that person is killed by it, it comes back for you. And so on, and so on.

So Jay has to first convince her friends that this is in fact happening to her, and then enlist their help to figure out just what is exactly going on. Is there anything she can do to get away from the titular it?

March 29th, 2015 - Devil Bat (1940)

How you feel about two things will basically determine whether you enjoy The Devil Bat or not. They are (1) Bela Lugosi, and (2) big stupid bat puppets. I happen to be a big fan of both, so found The Devil Bat quite enjoyable.

Lugoisi stars as Dr. Carruthers, a scientist developing chemicals for a cosmetics company (perfumes, lotions, and the like). Unbeknownst to his employers, he performs "weird, terrifying experiments in his hidden laboratory." The experiments are mostly bat-based. Through glandular manipulation via electric shock, he can make a bat as large as a giant bird! Not only that, but he's trained the giant bat to kill whatever is wearing a particular scent he has created. You see, Dr. Carruthers is very bitter that the owners of the company (the Heath family) have made millions off of his hard work - he was offered a percentage of the company early on, but took a cash payout instead. So he gets his revenge by getting members of the Heath family to try out his new "shaving lotion" - which happens to contain the deadly scent that drives the giant bat into a murderous frenzy.

March 28th, 2015 - A Cat in the Brain (1990)

Another Lucio Fulci jam... I've come across people saying this is his masterpiece? The Italian trailer says something along the lines of (I think - I don't know Italian - but I inferred) 'what Hitchcock created, Fulci perfects." That's a bit of hyperbole, right there. But A Cat in the Brain (I like that title more) is certainly a unique vision from the horror maestro. While there is a general framework to the story, it feels like a pretty free-wheeling film. It has that unique Italian craziness you've come to expect, but feels a bit more unstructured. Like it's mostly an excuse to get a bunch of kills onscreen - and also for Fulci to take a crack at being a leading man.

The opening scene is pretty rad. Fulci is sitting at his desk writing, while the camera lingers above him and slowly zooms in on his head. You hear his voiceover, as he is writing in a notebook - just random ideas about violence:

a woman - hacked to death with an ax - her face cleaved in half
another strangled
yet another hanged
someone chopped to bits by a chainsaw
or drowned in boiling water

March 27th, 2015 - Kingdom Come (2014)

Kingdom Come starts off pretty stupidly with an obvious premise, slowly starts to win you over, and then pisses it all away at the end. So if you are judging things based on percentage of time that you kind of like the movie, Kingdom Come comes out on top with about a 65-35 cut. But that 35 percent is pretty goddamned aggravating. But, it's the sort of deal that is hard to complain about without spoiling, which I won't do. But buyer beware.

The opening credits roll over sounds of a car crash and footage of breaking glass. A man wakes up in a strange abandoned building with no recollection of how he got there. Eventually, he ends up with a big group of people (10 maybe? Including a young girl) - none of them have any idea where they are or what has brought them there. All of their efforts to escape are fruitless (they can't find any stairs, the halls seem to be an endless maze, and they cannot see the ground from the windows) - and when one guy sticks his arm out of the window he gets bitten by an unseen something. Individually, they start to have hallucinations about past events in their lives... bad past events.

March 26th, 2015 - Evil Brain From Outer Space (1965)

The Evil Brain from Outer Space is more of a science fiction film than horror.  But it's inclusion on the budget set 50 Tales of Terror makes it okay for my purposes. In spite of my insistence on going through all of the set, I'll skip ones that are obviously not horror (i.e Hands of Steel: "The industrialist hopes to continue his profitable, but environmentally unsafe practices, by sending his cyborg assassin to kill [a meddling ecologist]). But the description here includes: "the monstrous brain unleashes a horde of monsters upon the planet to spread disease and destruction..." So I was hoping it would be somewhat horrific. But not a lot of luck there - while there are some scary ideas/concepts in theory, the overall tone of the film seems to be more aimed towards entertaining children rather than thrilling adults.

Much like many MST3K episodes from Japan, Evil Brain seems to be patched together from episodes of a television show or something. Much of what passes for the plot is explained in a voiceover, and plot lines are introduced and then dropped shortly thereafter. My favorite? There are two kids that just seemingly vanish from the film, and later there are two random kids at the end that you have never been introduced to. Presumably this was taken care of over the course of the television series, but in the film version, it's just like they are trying to replace the kids without us noticing.

March 25th, 2015 - Hell (2011)

As someone who has never been a big fan of the sun - it's too bright! - I appreciated the central concept of Hell. For some reason (solar flares?), the sun freaks out and the temperature on earth goes up by 10 degrees celsius, since it's a German film. (About 50 degrees Fahrenheit.) It's sunny and hot enough to make it dangerous to go outside unexposed, and water has become extremely scarce. Most people have died, and social order has completely broken down. So really, it's a post-apocalyptic style flick, but the reason behind the apocalypse is a consistent threat. Although of course people are the *real* threat to the survivors, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and since it's not America, no one really has guns, so that's cool.

And Hell is a pretty solid film. The story isn't radical by any means - it starts with three survivors in an old car, in search of ever dwindling supplies (water, food, gasoline). But it's the sort of story that is best discovered on your own. A synopsis won't do it any favors. And a lot of what works in Hell isn't the basic story - it's the little details. You see the ways that this solar disaster has affected people, and the clever ways in which they've responded. It's just kind of neat.