Armchair Commentary

"Nosferatu: The Vampire" - December Horror Spotlight DVD

Our year or horror spotlight DVD's comes to a close this month with December's selection  - Werner Herzog's vampire classic - Nosferatu. Read below for Tim from Bloody-Disgusting.com's review of the DVD, and buy your copy at 53% off all this month to celebrate it's spotlight selection.

Also, for the horror fans on your list, check out our Anchor Bay Horror store for more great horror for the holidays. Enjoy!  --Lisanne

It's certainly nothing new to tackle on the Dracula story. By some estimates nearly 200 films have been created  about the Transylvanian count.   But, in 1979, German maverick filmmaker Werner Herzog decided not only to give the world his take on the classic character, but to remake what is considered to be one of the true Masterworks of Expressionist Cinema, fellow countryman F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic Nosferatu.

 Nosferatu is steeped in legend, since Murnau's decision to make the film infringed on the copyright of the original Bram Stoker work Dracula.  In an effort to circumvent the ownership of the property by Stoker's widow Florence, Murnau changed the name of the characters--specifically renaming the lead Count Orlok--and other minor details.   Herzog on the other hand, has essentially recast the film and populated it with the basic stars of the book (although his has merged Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra into the single character Lucy Harker).  Once again Dracula is Dracula, and this time he is played by the venerable Klaus Kinski.

To call the film a simple remake of Murnau's epic is to gloss over the brilliance that Herzog has brought to the story.   While it is true that some of the film's scenes are virtually shot-for-shot recreations of the original, Herzog's use of atmospheric and dreamlike cinematography lends an air of unease about the production.  Something achieved in the original by the stark expressionist lighting and set design, but more difficult to recreate in the soft cobblestone streets of Delft, Netherlands--where Herzog was forced to film the production, after Wismar, Germany (the films setting) refused to allow the director to shoot.

Perhaps the most enduring aspect of the film, remains the physical transformation of the formidable Kinski into the slight and hollow Count Dracula.  Retaining the ghost white appearance and rat-like fangs and ears from Murnau's film, Kinski plays his Dracula not as the fiercely imposing and exotic Bela Lugosi, or the dapper Count's of Christopher Lee and Frank Langella.   Kinski's Dracula is the ultimate tragic figure, a man doomed to a life eternal, consumed by the desire for blood, long since given up on the hopeful promise of death.   It's a haunting film and an unforgettable performance.  Herzog hints at the permeation of death and despair that envelops and defines his film as early on as the opening credits sequence, which is comprised of super-imposed title cards over actual footage of the famous Mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico.  The leather-like corpses covered in soft orange dust of their desert resting place cry out in immortal pain and stare at you through empty eyes.  In so many ways, these silent dead project the same pathos as the Count.

Kinski and Herzog (who had known each other since the director was a teenager in the 1950's) would create one of the cinema's most enduring creative partnerships. They made 5 films together over the course of 15-years. Those films are book-ended by the great Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) and the unsettling genius of Cobra Verde (1987).  After Kinski's death in 1991, Herzog eulogized the manical actor in the great documentary love letter My Best Fiend (1999) , detailing their turbulent and sometimes outright violent partnership. 

The legacy of Nosferatu remains that of its enduring and iconic imagery, albeit imagery and design that are borrowed from another film.  Still, any arguments that magic didn't occur on the set of this production--in the streets of Delft, Netherlands--can be immediately refuted by taking  a look at 1988's  Vampire in Venice.  That film, a sort of spiritual sequel to Herzog's production sees the Count, now simply called Nosferatu (and once again played by Kinski) tooling around the Italian city during Carnival and searching for a Transylvania Princess.  While Vampire in Venice is visually interesting and Kinski is as intense as ever, the spark of the earlier production is missing, and the film comes off as melodramatic and dull.   Additionally, Kinski refused to cut his hair for the production, leaving the count quite a bit less pale and with long, flowing locks of brilliant silver tresses.  A stark image to be sure, but not nearly as iconic as Herzog's Murnau homage.

Nosferatu is available on DVD from Anchor Bay in a 2-disc special edition that includes the English Language version of the film, in addition to the German Language version.  What sets this film apart, once again, from the standard is that instead of hiring actors or even the original cast to dub their voices into English for the North American release, Herzog, simply (or rather make that, much more complexly) shot the film twice.  Once in English and once with his actors speaking in German.  He then cut the two versions of the film for release. Simple, as they say, is not a word in the vocabulary of Werner Herzog.  And, yet the simplistic beauty of Nosferatu (coupled with the powerful performance of Kinski) is what makes the production so memorable.

-Tim Anderson, Bloody-Disgusting.com

 

 

"Children of the Corn" - September Horror Spotlight DVD (Blu-ray)

September's Horror Spotlight title is the 80's cult classic Children of the Corn -- on Blu-ray. Read the review from Tim from Bloody-Disgusting.com below, and pick up your copy - a must for any Blu-ray horror collection. -- Lisanne

When author Stephen King's short story Children of the Corn first appeared in Penthouse magazine in March of 1977 the film world was less than 6 months into the beginning of King's domination of the late 1970's & 80's box office.  With the release of Carrie in 1976 followed up by Stanley Kubrick's classic take on The Shining in 1980, King would become a cinematic force that in many ways equaled his domination of the literary world. 

By the time Children of the Corn was adapted for motion pictures in late 1983, no fewer than seven features had already been released based on King's work.  What's even more amazing is that by the end of 1984 that number would increase to nine films and represent the adaptation of all but two of King's then written novels (The Dark Tower and The Stand).   And even though all of these feature films had seen success, Children of the Corn was still something of a revelatory anomaly. 

Children of the Corn tells the tale of married couple; Burt (Peter Horton) and Vicky (Linda Hamilton) who are traveling cross country to California when tragedy and mystery befalls them in rural Nebraska.   Driving along the deserted back roads they hit a young child with their car.  Upon further inspection they discover the child's throat has been slashed and they speculate that he may have been pushed into the road.  Wrapping the body in a blanket they head to the nearby town of Gatlin to notify authorities—only to discover that Gatlin is a ghost town with seemingly no life at all.  But, Gatlin holds a secret.  Three years earlier the children of Gatlin fell upon the adults and savagely murdered them all.  The Children are led by Isaac a teenage preacher who claims to communicate with a god-like force known only as "He who walks behind the rows".  

An unequivocal box office success at the time of its release, Children of the Corn pulled in about 14 million dollars in receipts based on a budget of about 1.3 million dollars (nearly a third of which went directly into King's pocket). 

With operating capital of only about $800,000, the film was nothing if not a struggle to successfully realize.  And that task fell to newly minted head of production for New World Pictures Donald P. Borchers. As Producer Borchers had two major hurdles to overcome.  The first was adapting a Spartan 30-page short story into a 90-minute feature film.  The second was to treat King's somewhat inflammatory source material with kit gloves.   

Borchers along with Writer George Goldsmith and Director Fritz Kiersch managed to solve the first problem by adding some minor backstory on the town of Gatlin, creating two pre-teen protagonists to help guide Burt and Vicky through the town and drastically increased the roles of Isaac and his henchman Malachi (a pair of characters that appear in less than 2 pages of the original story.).  Additionally, they softened the relationship of Burt and Vicky considerably—in the original tale the couple are at wits end with one another and on the verge of divorce.   They also wrap the plot up in a much more positive manner than in King's bleak vision.  And, though the film still deals with the thematic ideal that one should not blindly follow without question that which one should know is wrong, the film is not a direct attack on religion.

While Children of the Corn made more than its share of money at the Box Office and on home video—where it inspired an incredible 6 sequels—it's hardly a great film.   Clunky and full of arguments that any sane person would have never done the things that Burt and Vicky do in the film.  These lapses in judgment often handicap the narrative and often leave viewers smacking their heads in disbelief. 

For example, in the book, Burt and Vicky are forced to Gatlin because it's the closest town for 70 miles.  In the film the next nearest town is less than 20-minutes away—begging the question why in the world they would even stop in a town that they were specifically warned (by an unlucky gas station attendant) would be of no help to them.   The film also would have us believe that Burt would essentially abandon Vicky to go exploring the ghost town knowing full well that something is very wrong here.   The book is more organic in the capture of Vicky and much more effective in explaining what has been going on in the town since the parents were all killed--which in the movie is a mere 3-years ago but in the book it's closer to 12-years.   Of course the film has one other major drawback.  Due to the budgetary restrictions the final special effects sequence is amateurish and laughingly cartoonish—and truly one of the worst I can recall from a movie made in the 1980's.  

Still, what makes the film work is the deft casting of not only Horton and Hamilton as the hero and heroine, but bringing in veteran actor R.G. Armstrong (El Dorado, Heaven Can Wait) and newcomer's Robby Kiger (The Monster Squad) as Job, Courtney Gains (Can't Buy Me Love) as Malachi and the amazing John Franklin as Issac.  Franklin is the revelation of the film.   In the original work Issac is only 9-years old.  Franklin, who suffers from Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD) and only stands 5 feet tall, is alluded to be older than nine in the film (they never specifically state his age) but the actor was 24 at the time the production was lensed.  With that strange man/child performance Isaac delivers mouthfuls of pseudo-biblical-verse with an otherworldly aura of weirdness that completely contributes to the overall aesthetic of the film.

The film arrives for a 25th anniversary special edition on Blu-ray DVD courtsey of Anchor Bay entertainment where it retains all of the previous bonus features that were made available on the studio's 2004 Divimax Edition DVD.  Those features include audio commentary with director Fritz Kiersch, producer Terrence Kirby and actors John Franklin and Courtney Gains as well as the 36 minute documentary "Harvesting Horror: Children of the Corn".  

In addition to the maintaining the original special features,  the Blu-ray offers over 40-minutes of new material including "Fast Film Facts" a pop-up trivia track that runs in conjunction with the film and three featurettes.  “Welcome to Gatlin: The Sights & Sounds of Children of the Corn” (15:23) focuses of Production Designer Craig Stearns and Composer Jonathan Elias. In "It was The Eighties!” (14:09) star Linda Hamilton reflects on what was essentially her first major theatrical role.   And finally, with “Stephen King on a Shoestring”, Producer Donald Borchers discussed the film's hectic production schedule and the upcoming reincarnation for the SyFy network. The disc is rounded out with a Theatrical Trailer, Poster & Still Gallery, Original Storyboard Art and Original Title Sequence Art.

If you can measure a film's success by nothing more than its lasting impact then Children of the Corn is an even greater success in 2009 than it was 25-year earlier.  The label of cult classis is often assigned films long before they've had time to ferment in the culture of cinema.  But, the film by virtue of its tenacious longevity manages to embody that cult spirit in a great many ways.   It's hardly a brilliant production, but it's also impossible to argue the fact that this little film that could has spawned a rabid following and a series of sequels that if nothing else show that name recognition alone is often all it takes to cement your place in pop culture history.  - Tim Anderson, Bloody-Disgusting.com

"Cemetery Man" - June Horror Spotlight DVD

June's Horror Spotlight DVD is Cemetery Man . Read below to find out from Tim Anderson from Bloody-Disgusting.com, the story behind this demented Italian horror masterpiece, and why it's a horror film worth watching. And check it out for yourself - the Cemetery Man DVD is 40% off during the month of June.

Italian horror cinema has always been the domain of a few grandmasters - Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci. This triumvirate represents the pinnacle of spaghetti splatter, the touchstones to which so many modern gore-maestros aspire. Cemetery Man Director Michele Soavi’s storied career is steeped in the lineage of these Italian masters, from Argento and Joe D’Amato to Fulci and Umberto Lenzi. Michele Soavi studied under his country’s darkest and most depraved.  He even broke the mold and stepped onto the international stage to shoot second unit footage for Terry Gilliam’s Barron Munchausen and Brothers Grimm films. With his reputation and pedigree, it’s easy to see Michele Soavi as a force to be reckoned with in Italian cinema.

But Soavi as a filmmaker is a paradox. Taking substantial periods of absence from behind the lenses, the auteur refuses to shoot feature films without epic stories to tell. A reluctant director who has often been described as the future of Italian cinema appears more often than not to harbor the same intense psychological makeup that shaped and molded careers as immense and unpredictable as that of Stanley Kubrick and Terrance Malick. And so, the world will continue to wait for the return of Michele Soavi, but until then, we can bide our time and gaze once again upon Soavi’s majestic masterpiece of surrealistic sanguine cinema.

Cemetery Man or as it is best known, Dellamorte Dellamore, is the brainchild of comic book creator and novelist Tiziano Sclavi as seen through the twisted eyes of Soavi. The story is that of a man, pure and simple, and his struggle with both the inner and outer demons of the world he calls home.

Francisco Dellamore (Rupert Everett) is caretaker of the small Buffalora Cemetery , a job that would typically entail little actual responsibility. However Buffalora has a bit of a problem, it seems that the dead that inhabit this decrepit necropolis don’t spend their eternity resting in peace. Within seven days of burial, each will rise from their graves to walk the night in search of flesh. Dellamore’s job is to keep the dead, well…dead. With the help of his half-wit assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), Dellamore wields his revolver and brandishes sharpened spades to stop the influx of living dead from taking over the town, and all is maintained in its matter-of-fact oddity until the appearance of Anna Falchi sends Dellamore’s world spinning.  To further complicate matters, Falchi portrays several characters in the film. But different beings as they are, they each exist only to torment the lovelorn soul of Dellamore. After an erotic tryst on the grave of her deceased husband, Falchi falls prey to the same curse as all the inhabitants of Buffalora. This tragic turn of events sends Dellamore into a spiral of madness where reality and fantasy dance on the dangerously thin edge of the Cemetery Man’s sanity.

When he released the film in 1994, Soavi set Italian horror cinema on its ear.  No longer a world of leather gloved killers, set against contrasting lighting schemes, Soavi reconfigured his beloved genre—taking the best bits of fantasy and lyrical imagery from Argento and Fulci and wrapping them around a stark divergence of cynical comedy. Dellamore is neither hero nor villain; devil nor angel, and the flesh feasting fiends that he faces are hardly mindless, murderous beasts soullessly searching for the soft skin of their next victim. The film is the darkest comedy set inside the brightest parts of the genre - bullets flow freely blasting grapefruit size holes in the reanimated corpses of the undead, but the biting satire draws more blood than a hundred Hollywood horror fables, taking the modern zombie film back to a place that George Romero once envisioned it, a place where the guts and the gore and the girls are just subtext, serving the greater meaning.

Soavi’s film is still uniquely Italian, feeling every bit the seed of Phenomena and City of the Living Dead, echoing the great shot composition of the Gialli’s that came before, but at the same time, Soavi’s film is wholly his own – a masterpiece of macabre wit and murderous laughter that takes all the great elements of Italian cinema and redistributes them with wit that’s as sharp as the Cemetery Man’s shovels! --Tim Anderson, Bloody-Disgusting.com

Jan. Horror Spotlight Film: Phantasm

In 1977, a 22-year old Southern California filmmaker and a 51-year old character actor created a legacy of nightmarish films that are unequaled in their commitment from both Star and Director. Freddy, Jason, Chucky and all the others have soldiered on long after their respective creators passed them by for sometimes-greener pastures. But in the 30-years since it first arrived on movie screens, PHANTASM creator Don Coscarelli and Star Angus Scrimm have never wavered in their commitment to the terror of The Tall Man.

It took Coscarelli and company almost two years to shoot and edit PHANTASM, with cast and crew working on the film over weekends to keep the costs low. Truly a labor of love for all those involved, what the film world got a hold of in the spring of 1979 was perhaps the rarest of all things—a truly original horror film.

PHANTASM is really the story of a boy—Mike Pearson (A. Michael Baldwin). Mike has already lost his parents and now he’s obsessed with losing his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury). For Jody’s part, he’s having a difficult time being tied down as a surrogate father to Mike. When the film begins, Jody and his best friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) try to shield Mike from another death as they forbid him attending the funeral of a friend. Mike sneaks to the cemetery anyway and soon discovers strange goings on amongst the tombstones. As Mike begins to unravel the mystery surrounding the Morningside Funeral Parlor he uncovers a bizarre realm presided over by a menacing Tall Man and his midget minions.

The thing that Coscarelli’s film imbues in its viewers is a profound sense of dread and the confounding possibility that the entirety of the production is taking place in the mind of 13-year-old Mike as some heightened form of psychosomatic separation anxiety. It would take further sequels for the realities of the first film to truly be explored, the history of The Tall Man, his motivations behind stealing the dead and the truth about what really happens behind the walls of the Morningside Funeral Home.

Interestingly, if the film is indeed all held in the subconscious of young Jody, then Coscarelli himself has free reign over the surrealistic world he sets forth. In other words, the filmmaker is not beholden to the constraints of reality—even celluloid reality. The film certainly has all the hallmarks of a childhood dream. Mike shows up often to save the day, he packs a chrome plated pistol, drives his brothers supped up Hemi ‘Cuda and tools through graveyards on the back of his motorcycle—all things that might run through the mind of your average 13-year old boy. But, the air of unease that permeates the film leaves viewers unsure, until the final moments, exactly what the actuality of the situation is.

Indeed, the final frames of PHANTASM are the stuff of cinematic legend, and Coscarelli is given little credit for the influence those moments had on Sean Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH and Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. In fact, over the years, Coscarelli has been shown very little respect for a series that he has personally overseen. Perhaps it is because the PHANTASM films were never flashy, or filled with exorbitant amounts of blood, gore and naked bodies. The PHANTASM films are psychological science fiction horror and they exist to leave your head scratching in their wake. Taken as a whole, the four films that make up the series—even in their inherent unevenness—provide a broad scope into a world created within the mind of a visionary filmmaker.

On a side note, because the length of the original production was so long and varied, Coscarelli ended up with multitudes of additional footage and discarded plot devices—a bonus, since the filmmaker has been able to insert “lost” footage and alternate takes from the original film into flashback sequences in the subsequent sequels—a technique that Coscarelli does so well, it’s almost hard to believe he wasn’t planning it from the very beginning.

Halloween 2008: Slasher Films 101 - Cutting Classics

 

Bloody-Disgusting.com Picks from Tim Anderson

Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter’s seminal classic sparked the decades-long obsession with Slasher films. Directly responsible for innumerable imitators, inferior sequels and one outright remake, Michael Myers stands tall and carries a sharp knife in his quest to slaughter the residents of sleepy Haddonfield, Illinois Myers’ boogeyman may not be the first slasher but no one better-embodies the faceless nightmare that haunts promiscuous cinematic teenagers to this very day.

Maniac (1980)

When you think about a Slasher Film, most imagine the killer to be an unstoppable force of nature, a supernatural entity of evil with only one goal—kill ‘em all. Frank Zito is not that guy. A slasher film at its bloody, beating, heart, Maniac is a disturbing guttural journey into the world of Zito, a man, but also a monster. Maniac also ranks high on the list because it bucks conventions when its most disturbing death scene does not involve a knife or machete but a shocking shotgun blast that saturates the screen in an orgy of blood—all courtesy of Special Effects guru Tom Savini.

Psycho (1960)

Released in 1960, the same year as Director Michael Powell’s serial killer film Peeping Tom, this classic set the stage for the bloodbaths that would follow. In the pantheon of Slasher Film lore, Norman Bates was one of the first to wield the knife.

Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982)

As a series, Friday the 13th stands as the most successful offspring of the Michael Myers revolution. But even though the once and future camp killer Jason Voorhees appeared in the first two films, Part 3 is the one where he donned his indelible hockey mask for the very first time, no doubt sparking hundreds of thousands of incredibly cheap and easy Halloween costumes in the process.

Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve) (1972)

Italian genre maestro Mario Bava’s 1971 film is the standard by which all other Slasher Films can be measured. It set up the rural location and the fantastic kill sequences better than any other film before it. Eagle-eyed genre fans will quickly point out that Friday the 13th Part 2 lifts one of it’s most talked about deaths nearly shot-for-shot from this landmark production. Bava’s profound influence with this film and so many others can be felt in almost every facet of modern horror cinema. Viva Mario!

The New York Ripper (1982)

Mario Bava wasn’t the only Italian to get into the gore. Maverick filmmaker Lucio Fulci’s maniacal Manhattan-based opus is probably the bloodiest, and most certainly the nihilistic slasher film ever committed to celluloid. The movie was so notoriously graphic at the time of its release in 1982 that the British film censors actually had all prints of the film escorted to the airport and deported!

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

If a peaceful night’s sleep is the closest we come to death in our everyday lives consider the terror we would face if we went to bed one night knowing we’d never wake up—Wes Craven’s greatest cinematic creation sums that fear up in one sentence. “Never sleep again”.

Black Christmas (1974)

Before Filmmaker Bob Clark made December 25th a little bit nostalgic and a lot repetitive with his holiday staple A Christmas Story, he was making our winter wonderland infinitely bloodier in this original silent night/deadly night flick. Rumor has it that Clark and Director John Carpenter once discussed doing a follow-up film set on Halloween. Hmm… I wonder how that would have turned out?
 

The Burning (1981)

Inarguably the greatest collection of future Hollywood talent ever assembled in upstate New York to film a Friday the 13th rip-off! The Burning was created by future Miramax honchos Harvey and Bob Weinstein and featured appearances by Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens and Holly Hunter. And to think…you all thought Kevin Bacon’s bit in Friday the 13th was slumming it.

Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

By 1981, the Slasher craze was in full swing, and like Norman Bates said “we all go a little mad sometimes”. That rational is the only thing that could explain the casting of Melissa Sue Anderson (Little House on the Prairie) and Glenn Ford (Superman) in this Canadian production that was directed by Oscar nominee J. Lee Thompson (The Guns o Navarone). Probably more famous than it should be for it’s bizarre casting, the film does feature a notable exception to the standard slasher rules with its ending.

Scream (1996)

It’s debatable if the devolution of Wes Craven’s Freddy Kruger is completely responsible for the ruin of Slasher Film in the late 80’s and early 90’s. But one thing is certain, with the help of writer Kevin Williamson and a cast of fresh faced TV stars, Craven is almost single-handedly responsible for jump starting the genre back to life with this self-referential slash-fest. Good enough to put itself and both its sequels over the 100 million dollar mark at the domestic box office. Unstoppable serial killer? I think so.

The Prowler (1981)

More impressive special effects work by Tom Savini can be seen in this brilliant little post-Maniac horror film about a WWII veteran who returns home to find his girlfriend has left him. He summarily kills her and her new boyfriend at the Graduation Dance. 35-years later the school decides to have the dance again. Guess what happens?

Prom Night (1980)

Speaking of proms…With her appearances in Halloween, Terror Train, The Fog and this film, Jamie Lee Curtis succeeded her mother (Psycho star Janet Leigh) as the best set of lungs in horrordom—earning her the original title of “Scream Queen”. Even though she was nearly 22 at the time and looked nothing like a high school girl, Prom Night is probably best remembered as another Jamie Lee vehicle about another unlucky girl who loses a lot of friends over the course of 90-minutes. This one also spawned a series of       sequels including the far superior Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then what does that make satire? Leslie Vernon lives in a world where Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers are actual inhabitants—anti-heroes of the highest order—and Leslie Vernon wants to be just like them. In Scott Glosserman’s razor sharp mocumentary we watch our budding serial killer prepare for his ultimate coming out party all the while totally deconstructing what makes a Slasher Film tick.

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)

Looking for a laundry list of the greatest, goriest and most shockingly disturbing Slasher Films, look no further than this documentary based on the absolutely must-own book by Adam Rockoff. This is Slasher Film 101…and you better not sleep through this class or you might wake up with Nancy down in the boiler room!