So, why a book review? Well, we all love movies, and horror movies especially, here at TWTT, but just like with anything else, you need to mix it up every now and then. I love writing about films. I've always been passionate about it, even to the point where I find it daunting at times. Therefore, I figured why not take a break from film and talk about this fab new graphic novel I picked up today, Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft.
The plot is pretty straight forward at first glance. One weekend afternoon, three siblings are out at their neighbors, fooling around. They return home to find their father being murdered by two of their high school classmates. They then must fight to survive themselves. After their terrible ordeal, they all move in with their uncle who owns Key House, a mainstay of the family's past for an undisclosed amount of time. It is here that they find strange creatures, living echoes, and doors that can lead a person in some unexpected directions. Now, I'm being a little vague here because I don't really want to give anything away. Sufficed to say, the tale is not as "magical" as it sounds, and is in reality down right disturbing at times. While I obviously felt the shadows of Lovecraft and King here, the association that I felt the strongest, and that popped into my mind first, was that of Clive Barker. Now, that could be a subconscious reaction on my part. You see, the illustrator of Locke & Key, is the same guy who did the recent Great and Secret Show graphic novel adaptation. That aside, I still think the dark fantasy elements here are reminiscent of the Abarat series, while the serial killer, family dynamic, and sexual elements are strongly influenced by some of Barker's earlier works. Don't get me wrong though; while all of these elements are strongly present, Joe Hill does bring his own distinctive and strong voice to the story. He is simply very adept at taking the mythology and styles of modern horror and drawing from that diverse pool, much like Neil Gaiman does with folklore and mythology.
Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up illustrator Gabriel Rodriguez. I was a little put off by Rodriguez's artistic style. At first glance, his characters are drawn in a very vague, cartoony sort of way, with angular features, and a certain lack of facial definition. As I looked closer though, I realized how wrong I was. What may at first appear generic and caricaturish is in actuality highly detailed, but in an expressionistic style. This is confirmed by the amount of detail that can be found in his seemingly simple backgrounds, and everyday objects like the wood grain on a door, or a piece of jewelery. This combination of subtle expressionistic illustration, combined with Hill's ability to keep the constant danger lurking just beneath the surface is a strong mixture, and one that takes this book up another notch.
Maid in Sweden
The Foot Fist Way
The TV Set
Recently I had the awesome chance to go to the Cinema Wasteland convention in Cleveland and meet director Lamberto Bava and actress Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni. These two have made a lot of great films in their time, and a few of them they’ve made together. Unfortunately, while Ghost Son is one of those films they made together, it’s not a great one. As is often the case, Coralina is relegated to a supporting role here. The lead actress of the film is Laura Harring. While this may come as a surprise to some, given her popularity after her breakout in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it seems Laura has a soft spot for horror pictures. She has appeared in such gene projects as Silent Night Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!, Willard, and All Souls Day: Dia de los Muertos. Supporting Laura in the film are actos John Hannah (The Mummy Remake Series), Pete Postlewaite (Ususal Suspects, Alien 3), and Laura Harring’s giant breasts.
Drillbit Taylor
The Kingdom 
In Bruges 
The Darjeeling Limited
Entourage: Season 4
Battlestar Galactica:
Hot Rod
Well folks, its been awhile since the last update. Our editor in chief has had some electrical impairments. But we are back! And what better cinematic tone to come back with than something so terrible it's awesome! I bring you: Hawk the Slayer Directed by Terry Marcel and written by Terry Marcel and Harry Robertson.
The Amateurs
Teeth
The Wire Seasons 2 & 3
The Last Winter is director Larry Fessenden’s fourth feature film and his most high profile to date. This film tells the story of a team of oil company workers in the arctic, attempting to establish a base of operations for a controversial new drilling operation. Two things automatically sprung to mind when I first read about this film: environmental issues, and John Carpenter’s The Thing. Let me get both of these out of the way. First, this film does have a strong environmental message. How strong you ask? Well, during the film there is a montage of ecological disasters as one of the characters talks about how we hate our planet so much. Preachy? You bet. Thankfully, this scene is short and the majority of the film is free from such ham-handed sociopolitical posturing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the green thing, but while I don’t mind it being a theme in my movies, don’t hit me over the head with it and don’t stop the film to try and “educate” me, it’s insulting. Secondly, there’s the obvious comparison to John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as the original The Thing From Another World. Do the films compare? Not really. While both are horror films set in the arctic and feature some kind of “monster”, the monster in Last Winter is very subtle, very CGI, and very spiritual. Oh, and bloodless. So, don’t go in expecting a sweet creature feature. Does this mean that Last Winter is bad? Not at all. As a matter of fact, I found the film quite good for the most part and a definite step forward directorially for Larry Fessenden.
I recently rewatched a horror movie from my childhood, Lifeforce. From Director Tobe Hooper and screen play written by Dan O'bannon and Don Jakoby from the novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson. In researching this film a little bit I looked into what else Tobe Hooper had directed, and the list was fairly notable. Aside from his obvious Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, he directed: Salem's Lot, Poltergeist, and the 1980's remake of Invaders from Mars. Then there are countless TV shows he's worked on episodes of over the years, or particular note is a show that failed but I loved called The Others about psychics banding together to help stem the rising tide of dark spiritual activity occurring. So this guy is impressing me a lot.
This movie is essentially Dracula in space. OK, the head vampire is female, and OK, there are 3 vamps rather than 1; but the broad strokes are the same. Instead of people dying on a sea going vessel as Dracula's coffin is transported to London, its people dying on a space shuttle as space coffins (all clear and glass-like) are transported back to London. Then the vamp escapes, and manages to turn some other people into vamps, and they turn to friends, and they turn to friends, and soon its like a vamp pyramid scheme! Until finally one lone S.A.S. hero and one lone scientist find that thing that will stop the vamps, and its used. Of course it seems like the vamps are stopped, but maybe they aren't. This film could have been sequalled easily, but thankfully was not. I like narratives that live the after story to my imagination.
Now, to the weak points. It is a rehashing of plot points from Dracula, so some would hit it for that. The acting is a bit over the top. The biggest weak point I found was certain problems with the plot. I'm fine with astronauts bringing back alien life forms, that makes complete sense. What doesn't make a lot of sense to me is the veritable lack of security where they are kept. This is set in the U.K. so I don't know what their military is like, I can only think of how the military is in the USA. I can't see alien lifeforms being brought onto U.S. soil and not being kept under strict lock and key by the military. Add to this that fact that the compound these vamps are kept on has "zero" panic alarms (maybe I've just watched too much SG-1, but I feel compounds housing potentially dangerous shite should have a panic button in each room) so when the vamps are scene by an administrator over CCTV, he has to run down several levels of stairs to go and see the girl vamp finish her midnight feeding and then escape. I'm not saying she couldn't have escaped from higher security (since that's kind of crucial to the plot) but it would have seemed less like a joke in the long run. That's my only really major weak point for the movie, that the military wasn't in on guarding these aliens from the beginning.
So to wrap it up. I loved this movie, even after 20+ years since my last viewing (and that I was a child when I last saw it). Its a cool 1980's space rehashing of Dracula, with a hot chick naked through out most of the movie and great F/X too. If you call yourself a fan of Tobe Hooper because of his first movie (I think it was set in Texas), then you owe it to yourself to watch another (very different) film from him. And I nominate this one!
Today’s Underrated Classic is the rarely seen or talked about Klaus Kinski tour-de-force, Crawlspace from 1986 (not to be confused with the 1972 made-for-TV film of the same name). The film begins with a young girl traveling up the stairs of an apartment complex stopping at Mr. Gunther’s (Klaus Kinski) room. The door is ajar and inside she discovers several bizarre things: rats in cages, a film projector, a white cat and…a woman in a cage. Suddenly Mr. Gunter appears from out of the shadows to calmly point out that the woman cannot speak (he cut out her tongue) and that it is, “a shame…I liked you”, suddenly releasing a booby trap that impales the girl. He then plays a game of Russian Roulette (in a scene that plays out several times throughout the film) and after “wining”, he proclaims, “So be it” and quickly flips over a For Rent sign. Queue the opening credits, which play over POV shots traveling through the air ducts, aka the “crawlspace” of the apartment building, which will play a key roll later in the movie.
We then cut to a scantily clad woman, Sophie (Tane McClure) who is undressing, while a creepy man watches outside her window. Unbeknown to her/them Mr. Gunter is watching them both through the air duct. Seems the two are playing a little home invasion/rape sex fantasy with Gunther watching on. The next day a young college student, Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam), arrives to inquire about the apartment; Gunther is quickly (and creepily) enthralled with her and demands that she take the room. A couple of the noisy neighbors, Jessica and Harriet (Barbara Whinnery), comment on how Gunther only rents to young attractive women (“What is his secret?”). He retires to his hidden room and writes (again, another reoccurring scene-namely to introduce his back story) in his diary before trying to feed his captive, Martha (Sally Brown), who in the process passes him a note asking him to kill her. (“I can’t kill you…who would I talk to?”)
The tenants all meet for a little booze and sweets party, which of course is watched by Gunther, who releases a trap door that sends a rat into their room, scaring the girls and turning Gunther on. Later he watches Lori, making noises that she mistakes for another rat. When she goes up to complain, Gunter really tries to lay on the charm, but she declines. We get more voice over back-story in which we discover that his father was a Nazi, who sent his wife and young son to live in South America. Gunther grew up and also became a surgeon, but after discovering his father’s diaries, in which he recounted how he killed patients, Gunter begins to experimenting and eventually killing his own patients. At first the killings were to put severely/terminally ill patients out of their misery, but soon became an addiction, producing in him a god like sensation (“Killing is the only way I feel alive…killing is my heroin, by opiate, my fix.”). That night Gunther interrupts the fantasy lovebirds and kills Hank before he can recreate another fantasy booty-call. Once again Gunter plays roulette-seems after every murder he does this, and if he lives he continues killing.
The next day a strange man, Josef Steiner (Kenneth Robert Shippy), from his past arrives-seems Steiner’s brother was a former patient/victims of Gunther’s and he has spent the past few years tracking him down; trying to convince everyone that Gunther is a murderer. Steiner produces a photo reviling that Gunther’s father, one of the top Nazi experimental surgeons, was executed for war crimes and also produces a photo that shows that Gunther himself was a Nazi Youth.
Gunther is disturbed and begins upping his watching/stalking antics, becoming increasingly violent and brazen in each. He also begins constructing a slew of killing machines and booby traps. That night Jessica (Carol Francis), the soap opera star, brings home a date: some rich douche who starts to put on the moves but can’t complete the deed because of Gunther’s noise-making from the air duct-which again is mistaken for rodents. He attempts to leave but becomes Gunther’s next victim. Steiner returns to interview Gunther’s tenants, namely Lori, who finds him intrusive and refuses to cooperate. Steiner is then lured into Gunther’s room were he falls victim to another booby trap. After one final round of roulette, Gunther falls completely off his rocker: putting on makeup, dressing up as a Nazi while watching Hitler propaganda films, and going on a final killing spree of everyone in the building.
The ending plays out like Halloween (1978) in which Lori (humm…) slowly discovers all the bodies and then must confront Gunther in one long, dragged-out fight/chase involving several twists and surprises-and more nods to Hitchcock and De Palma than you can shake a stick at! As I mentioned earlier, this is a Kinski tour-de-force, outside of his films with Herzog (which are all incredible) this is probably his best performance: subtle, sinister, charming, creepy, sympathetic in the beginning and just plain psychotic towards the end. Even his calm voice-overs added a nice touch to a character that is extremely flawed yet likable. The movie is also a character study, not just of a person going insane, but also of the Serial Killer-something that was being wildly talked about at the time. Crawlspace was released the same year as Manhunter, which dealt with many of the same themes and ushered in the serial killer vs. profiler/forensic trend, which continues to be popular in movies and especially television today. I could also discuss the whole “voyeur” concept and symbolism, but that would be too pretentious don’t you think?
While the body count is high, there is very little gore, as much of the killings occur off screen-yet you do witness the aftermath, as Gunther tends to collect “parts” which he displays in jars. Perhaps he is constructing the perfect person, a la The House that Screamed (used again in May). The film is heavily influenced by Hitchcock and De Palma, even using the composer Pino Donaggio (frequent collaborator of De Palma) to write the score. The film was shot by Sergio Salvati, who is mostly known in horror circles as the DP on all of Fulci’s best films. The movie was directed by David Schmoeller, who also directed Tourist Trap (1979), as well as the classic Puppet Master (1989), and produced by Charles Band, the legendary “hack” producer behind about a million direct-to-DVD titles released through Full Moon.Fans of serial killer films, Hitchcock/De Palma-style thrillers, or Kinski should definitely check this out. It was released on one of those double bill Midnight Movies DVDs from MGM a few years back (with The Attic, another underappreciated film) but is now OOP, but you can get it from Blockbuster On-Line or possibly Netflix.
As some of you may or may not know, the Evil Dead films are some of my favorite horror films of all time, true American classics. Well, after years of making some pretty damn fine Spider-man movies, Sam Raimi is finally returning to horror. Raimi's new film, called Drag Me to Hell, is a story about a young woman who falls under an evil curse. Originally, when I first heard about this project, it was set to star Ellen Page, and I almost creamed my pants. However, she had to pull out before filming and was replaced by Alison Lohman.
Do you like zombies?
