"Pumpkinhead", or How My Favorite Revenge Film Isn't About Revenge

PART I: TALES TO GIVE YOU THE SHUDDERING SHITS

So before we get too far into this (or any distance really, since I'm starting with it) it's story time!

I got this bad boy on dvd a few years back, stocked up with tasty special features and all that jazz. To watch it for the first time in a while (it was a favorite of mine from our local video store, back when that was a thing) I went to my best friend Neal's place. For those of you who don't know this brother from another mother of mine, he has himself a case of the ol' Irritable Bowels. It was not uncommon back then for him to just cut you off mid-sentence saying "Hold that thought." and walking awkwardly to the bathroom. He's since gotten it more under control, but back then it was a lot more common of an occurrence.

"This guy better start talkin' about me pretty soon..."

Don't worry, I'm getting to ya, bud.

The apartment Neal had back when I got this movie was... cozy. Snug, even.

Bitch was tiny.

It was basically converted attic space with a kitchenette, a living room, and a bedroom. and that was it. The bathroom was directly off the living room. This is where Pumpkinhead more directly re-enters our story again. See, when he was staying at this place it was not uncommon for him to go just suddenly in there and since things were so...snug, he'd just continue whatever conversation you were having. While loudly accompanied by the merry, chortling farts of a lower digestive system with a pranksters sense of humor. But we just kept on, business as usual.

Y'know, guy stuff. Some people got it. Others were wrong.

And this happened when we had just put on the directorial debut of the legendary Stan Winston.
 We had several other friends over that night and suddenly it was just me and them while Neal dashed into the WC while telling us there was no need to pause it, since he'd also seen it many a time.

Now the beginning of the film is set somewhere in the deep Gothic South in the mid 1950s, on a dark and foreboding night. A little boy is being told to go to bed and say his prayers while his parents stare meaningfully outside, his father locking the door and loading his gun. Something wicked this way comes, and they know it.

Out of the darkness, a harried man careens through the night. Something is after him, something that isn't human. A creature from the darkest bowels of Hell.

SO, speaking of bowels... While this man pounded on the door of the house in the film, begging to please be let in, Neal was about five feet away from the rest of us, shitting his brains out. So for us, the sequence had suddenly gone from creepy mood-setter to MST3K skit.

"Dear god, pleeeease let me in!!!"
*explosive shitting noise*
"Oh god, please open the door!!!"
*shitting intensifies*
"What kind of a Christian are you?"
*Loooooong fart*

SO the rest of us were just dying outside, and very nearly needed to use the restroom ourselves... and one of my favorite stories to tell in conjunction with this film was born. And though I can never take the opening seriously EVER again, it remains a special favorite of mine.

Now, let's get to the actual movie.
Plus, enjoy this image from back when movies had real posters.

Yes, we are talking about yet another film I love and could ONLY give a good review of, so this one isn't a review, but a discussion of theme and how this movie is so unique from the series it spawned and from basically any other film in its genre. And I don't mean Horror. I mean the Revenge Film.

Here's lookin' at you, Bronson.

The Revenge movie is not uncommon in horror as a sub-genre, though it's more of a staple in action. Usually when it shows up in horror, the act of revenge itself tends to be more gruesome than the act that was perpetrated, and the avenged party (sometimes the person who was hurt like in I Spit On Your Grave, sometimes a third party like the parents in Last House on the Left) gains some catharsis along with the audience, feeling some cosmic wrong has been righted. This is very basic, speaking to a human need for balance and retribution. And it just plain goes against many of my values and sensibilities.  Yeah, great you killed a bunch of folks for the person they killed. That'll show 'em not to... do that again. Being dead and all.

So I always appreciate when the burden and awfulness of revenge is brought into focus. Good revenge films do this, bad ones don't and that's the key difference between action specimens and the horror counterparts, though some horror revenge films still do it. Charlie Bronson struts off into the sunset, secure in his status as a large-penised hero, morality be damned.

Because my main problem with revenge films is that they are abut revenge and not grief. Why grieve when you have a shotgun? Why sort out your feelings on how to carry on without your loved ones when you can splatter some folks across a wall? So the films just become about the Big Man being Too Manly to cry, so he has to go kill people. It's so macho, not to mention misogynistic since most of the time the hero is perfectly willing to let evil roam around until evil kills his girlfriend (which says a lot about our 'hero' in my opinion).

 And because these narratives get glorified in media, our response is to sometimes take pride in our supposed capacity for vengeance, talking about the lengths we'd go to if someone were ever to harm us or our loved ones, as if they are anxiously looking forward to the day someone assaults their child or murders their spouse...

Pumpkinhead could have just been a film about a guy who summons a monster to kill the teenagers that took his son from him. It could have been that dumbly simple, just a set-up to get the monster on screen and get those heads rolling. But it isn't. That's mostly down to the story being but more than that synopsis. It's a movie about grief and how actions taken in tht clouded state can have permanent consequences, how grief can consume you until you aren't yourself anymore. And as such, Pumpkinhead should have a slightly different name...

PART II: THE TRAGEDY OF EDWARD HARLEY

Lance Henriksen is the literal soul of this movie and without him the whole enterprise would just fall apart. His performance grounds a very strange tale in the emotion that needs to be at the forefront of the story at all times so you understand why he undertakes the actions he does and why he feels it is necessary to so viciously unleash Hell on our hapless victims. His physicality as Ed, the little boy from the prologue now grown into a man and a father, is one of a practical salt-of-the-Earth type, his weathered face and hard lines making it obvious we have here a man who works for his living. But tall that drops away when we see him with his son. He's a spritely little tyke, with a mop of blonde hair and Coke-bottle glasses that make you wonder if he's adopted or something. But it becomes obvious through the performance that the child takes after his departed mother and that he is all Ed has left of her. As such, he's incredibly tender with his son and the heart of the film is planted in these first interactions with them.

And to drive home just what kind of story we're telling here, little Billy asks his daddy for a story after breakfast and he of course begins it with "Once Upon A Time..". Because Pumpkinhead isn't a horror movie. It's a Grimm Fairy Tale for the modern age. And what do fairy-tales always have? Well, I'll get back to that

The story moves along. Things inevitably happen. A gaggle of City Kids come through Ed's store and while Ed is running a quick errand, the City Kids leader, the brash and slightly drunk Joel, accidentally runs Billy down with his dirt-bike. Billy is pretty badly injured, but not killed outright. But check this screen-cap from the scene and tell me if you notice something.

See that guy waaaaay in the background, running away from all this?
Yeah, that's Joel.

Leaving his shit-head brother to explain what happened so any authorities that get involved won't know he's been drinking, Joel runs for it, at first with the excuse they need to find a phone.

But yeah, Ed returns to find his world shattered, and the sorrow he's been carrying in his performance begins to boil over into a rage that refuses to be sated.

The actual death scene of Billy is very profoundly heart-breaking to me because the scene is just smart enough to give you hope for a second as he seems to wake up, calls for his Daddy, then just slumps. The shot composition and lighting couple perfectly with the music here and the soul of Henriksen as his hope turns to fear, grief, then quiet rage and revenge. He's had everything taken from him, and he's going to get his.

And when you want some revenge, know the police won't do anything to those slick City Folk, and personally saw a demon kill a guy when yiu were a little boy, where do you go?
Answer: to a witch named Mother Haggis.

Well it is a fairy tale after all....

With a name like Haggis, you know it's-
 OH HOLY BATSHIT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?

And though the witch warns him of all the consequences of this act, that his soul will be damned to Hell for all eternity, Ed doesn't care. As far as he is concerned he's already in hell. But though there appear to be other caveats in the bargain, Ed is already committed, it's done.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY SOUL!!!

And with that, the kindly but sad hero of the narrative becomes it's doomed tragic center. Because the price for summoning the Demon of Revenge is more than just your soul. You don't just sit back and take it easy while your pet monster chipper-shreds whoever has wronged you.

No, you get to see the death through the monster's eyes and feel the pain of their victims. Just to be sure you're getting your money's worth. And that's where a big part of the tragic nature of this story comes in for Ed. Only one of the group is directly responsible for the accident that killed his boy. Some of the others are in shock, but at least two of the group turn against him and try to make him take responsibility (something he never does). In fact, the City Folk come out of this movie the worst because on top of having very thinly sketched characters, they also don't show a terrible lot of moral backbone in the face of a tragedy, instead just kind of running around going into histrionics as they are picked off one by one by the Devil's Xenomorph outside. The only one that ever left an impression with me was Jeff East's character, and that's mostly because he played the young Clark in the Richard Donner Superman movie.

There's a lot of metaphor and stuff under the surface on this movie, because it does just kinda run headlong once it gets going and is really fun and a gory nasty good time with a monster picking off teenagers if you're here for that.And mostly, I am. But where the film shines is the reveal that while the demon is utterly invincible (even popping right back up ready for round 2 after taking a direct shotgun blast to the dome), Ed Harley can be harmed... and his pain hurts the beast.

Because revenge turns inward and consumes the host, and soon you can't tell where you end and it begins, as demon and man begin to undergo a strange eldritch symbiosis that can only end in a final, self-destructive clash between man and monster to help spare the people who haven't wronged Ed, because the creature doesn't care. They're all guilty by association and it will not stop until all of them are sent to Hell before it.

And then a pitchfork features heavily in the final clash with
an emissary from Hell, because Symbolism. 

Because in the end, it isn't about getting revenge for Ed Harley. It's about making the pain stop. And when he realizes he's just creating more pain, becoming a monster that his sweet little boy would never recognize, he wakes to the truth that revenge doesn't fix anything. It doesn't raise the dead. It doesn't mend broken hearts. It doesn't make the bad things not happen.

Once this is gone, there's no getting it back.

And the tragedy of Ed Harley is he learns this so soon after summoning his demon, but still light-years too late for it to make any difference.

The one thing every Fairy-Tale has (beyond witches, monsters, curses, or magic frogs) is a moral, a message of warning. And ours has a very simple one: Revenge is never worth it. It can only ensure your own destruction along with your target. There are no angels with revenge. Only more demons.



PART III: STAY AWAY FROM PUMPKINHEAD, UNLESS YOU'RE TIRED OF LIVIN'

So like I usually do, I'm gonna talk about the guys who made this movie for a bit, and how their contributions to it are part of what made it special. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first feature from legendary effects god Stan Winston (Famous from....so much stuff, but The Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park, Small Soldiers, Lake Placid, Avatar, and Iron Man to name a highlight reel that might catch the eye). Stan only directed two feature films: Pumpkinhead and A Gnome Named Gnorm. One was Pumpkinhead, the other was...not, to put it bluntly. I remember seeing Gnome when I was kid, and hating it. And as a kid, I liked just about everything, I had absolutely no standards. And it surprised me to learn that this was the other film Stan directed and that it was his second. Everything about it screams amateur, first-time production, but it had largely the same crew.
But that second film doesn't have the script of this one, and the cast is mostly TV regulars, giving it all a made-for-tv feel. So the one real jewel in his directing career is this one, and it's a lulu.

The script was written by Mark Patrick Carducci and Gary Gerani. Gerani is mostly known for this, but Carducci was also a regular contributor to an old favorite of mine, the tv series Tales from the Darkside, so his efficiency at crafting a solid creature yarn with great visuals, a fun mythology and setting, and a moral lesson rings solid from experience. The story itself was inspired by a poem by Ed Justin, which goes a little something like this:

Stay away from Pumpkinhead, unless you're tired of livin',

His enemies are mostly dead, he's mean and unforgivin'.

Bolted doors and windows barred,

Guard dogs prowling in the yard.

Won't protect you in your bed.

Nothing will,

From Pumpkinhead.

"Dis MF spittin'..."

The poem features in the film, chanted by the children who reside on a nearby farm that are so numerous I always assumed the scenes that took place there were in a small shanty town as a kid. But it's all one big, happy, genetically questionable family headed by the patriarch Wallace,  played by B-Movie stand-by Buck Flower, playing a rare stand-up guy instead of a hobo or minion.

And even while posting this caption I can hear you all yelling, "Oh, THAT GUY!"

Now the script is great,as I've mentioned, so no need to make bricks without straw for Stanny W, and that's where his real expertise comes through. See, he wanted to make this film because he was tired of having to teach directors how to properly use his creations on screen. Directing a practical effect is hard work, one of the reasons they fell out of fashion with the rise of CGI that never needed to be reset, didn't break down and could be shot from a different angle without exposing all the pipes or pulleys that make it work. But the results speak for themselves, with the best results coming when the two art forms help each other make something that truly can be called a special effect, like in our previous article about HOWL.

So Stan Winston knows how his effects work, and that allows him to direct some absolutely wonderful scenes with his titular monster, my personal favorite being the scene where Mother Haggis summons him. All the scenes with the witch are lit hellish red and the infernal atmosphere only swells with the presence of an actual demon in the room.

"OK, fine, I'm up- but I'm not doing this without coffee..."
"oh ...Uhh."
"Dammit, Haggis- every time..."

And the make-up and creature designs are of course amazing. In latter day practical effects showpieces, there's a tendency to over-reach ending up with a movie that's over stuffed with lots of medium quality effects that have a hard time wowing, like the mediocre effort of Harbinger Down that could have used the focus this script had.

In this though, we are treated to each effect and costume being a part of the story and given the utmost detail and attention possible at the time. Not all of it has aged perfectly, and it's always a guy in a suit. But I love me a guy in a suit. Knowing that there is a beating heart inside that creature, knowing it's a performance and not something mocked up in a computer program is what makes it feel alive, and real, if only while you're watching. And what's more, everyone on the set has a thing to look at, react to, and be afraid of. You can look at a tennis ball and be told it's a demon, or you can get backed into a corner by THIS.

And then feel free to add your own practical bladder effect...

Pumpkinhead towers over our hapless city kids, slow and graceful, unhurried. He knows he can't be hurt by them, so he plays with them, taking his time. And that's something you can only get from an actor inside the costume, working with the puppeteers to bring this creature to life.

Pumpkinhead shines as the work of a professional effects man, but amateur film-maker, but the first effort is carried along very solidly by the great lead actor (One of only two men to ever be killed by the Terminator, the Predator, and the Alien along with the late great Bill 'Game Over, Man' Paxton), a soulful script with a valuable message, and an unforgettable monster.

So check it out if you can, it's an underappreciated gem that works for non-horror buffs too in my opinion.

Or just watch it to admire Lance Henriksen's dreamy bedroom eyes...

NEXT TIME: SOMETIMES DEAD IS BETTER.... MUCH BETTER.

Also, if you want to spend some more time on the Internet, check out my previously mentioned friend Neal's DnD/gaming blog at Improved Initiative ! He's even more entertaining when he's not shitting in a closet!

Wolves At The Door: "HOWL", "Dog Soldiers" and the Monster Siege Movie

Don't judge me too hard, but I really like Spam.

But I notice that nobody's panic-buying it....

I don't care that it is probably the lips and assholes of a variety of hogs. It's probably a lot of things. You're occasionally happier when you stop asking questions about things that make you happy.

I like it. I like saying it, and I like eating it. Often with ketchup. It's versatile too- anything that could have regular meat in it could have Spam in it. There's a whole Monty Python sketch about that.

But you know what I like almost as much?

Spam in a Cabin...

Buuuut we're not talking about this cabin. Much. ...today. Later.

'Spam in a Cabin' or 'Spam in a Can' is what a lot of us horror junkies refer to as any film where a bunch of characters get stuffed into a small, easy to film and manage location, then get stuck in there with some terrible thing trying to crack the seal and, well... eat the Spam. Often with ketchup.
This is a pretty reliable way to make a horror movie if you happen to be trying to do so on the cheap (and if you're making a horror movie, you've already resigned yourself to that, nine times out of ten).
SO that is exactly what a plucky young lad by the name of Sam Raimi did when he decided to move from his more amateur efforts into the realm of a feature film, stuck a bunch of his best friends and some raw meat into a cabin and called what came out the other side The Evil Dead.

And in so doing gave the world of cinema its finest chin.

That film was uh, kind of a big deal?

And it spawned many imitators and folks trying to emulate the style, aesthetic, and sometimes just the budget conscious nature of its set-up: basic setting + teenagers + sum spooky shit = $$$.
The set-up became its own genre for a while, and in my mind kind of became the go-to 'don't waste your time' signifier for a long stretch of time in the 2000s, with my interest instantly shifting elsewhere with any synopsis that began "A group of college kids go to a secluded..." and BOOM I was out, looking for bloodier pastures.
See, that particular brand ran out of imagination pretty quickly in the hands of a jobber, and then if you'd seen one, you'd seen them all. If you weren't there for the story (scoff), and you weren't particularly interested in the nigh guaranteed boobs (OK FINE, I still watched a lot of these), then you were just doing it for the love of the game and not to enrich your sinful horror lover's heart. From the turn of the century, basically all of them were bad, with the obvious exception of the to-be-discussed-later Cabin in the Woods, by Drew Goddard.

So why do I talk about loving this sub genre so?

Because when someone approaches it with guts, imagination, and verve the results are something AMAZING...

And brings us handily to today's entries for discussion.

Now, you might notice this little blog of mine has gone under the knife a little since yesterday, Like, how the word "reviews" is absent from the banner, along with any reference to 'review bombing'. When I made that name up, I wasn't aware of the practice of "Review Bombing" on Rotten Tomatoes to try to hurt a movie's performance. I wanted to drop thoughts on films like bombs, that's all. But I don't even want to be tangentially related to that kind of scum and villainy. And I don't want to think of myself as a critic either, because I'm not. I'm a fan of film, particularly the trashy world of B-movies and monsters.

So Beyond Midnight Movies is about film discussion, admiration, and occasionally comparison and analysis.

So anyway, here's my review of HOWL.

"Oh, that sneaky bastard..."

But, it's gonna be short, because what I really wanna do in this entry is compare and contrast two werewolf movies I really like, dissect what makes siege movies fun, and make you all watch me do it.

HOWL is a 2015 film directed by Paul Hyett. If you don't know who that is, that's okay. Not all of them are Richard Stanley or John Carpenter. He's done a handful of features, and has mostly worked in effects, specifically special effects make-up. He helped create creatures and gore for more widely known flicks like The Descent films and Attack the Block, while also turning his hand to directing.
Which reminds me vaguely of Pumpkinhead again, which was also the directorial effort of a longtime effects guy...hmm, signs are pointing to me doing that one next, methinks... or something with Lance Henriksen at the very least.

The main character of the film is Joe, a put-upon guy who works on a train in Britain as a ticket-taker and guard. One of the first things we learn about him is that he's been passed over for a promotion that a smarmy co-worker got, and said smarmster rubs it in by assigning him an extra shift when he thought he was going home.

And of course, because this is a horror movie, his night gets worse from there. He has to deal with one of the most terrifying things in the world: the public.

I've worked my share of customer service jobs and let me tell you the cringe in the scene that introduces us to the rest of the Spam in this picture is very VERY real. Taking tickets from folks with their heads firmly lodged in their asses, talking on phones, expecting special treatment because they ride so often, etc. It's the same kind of thing I dealt with behind a fair share of cash registers and elsewhere and it hurts to watch. It's also one of the first things to hurt this movie, since we meet all these people through Joe's eyes, and Joe hates the world right now, so these characters take a LOOOONG time to become something other than a bunch of whiny, self-obsessed cowards in the face of the danger that they literally speed towards.

When the train breaks down in a remote stretch of rural woodland (on a full moon) it quickly becomes apparent that there is something out there that is super hungry and super dangerous.

A shitload of werewolves. Cue the struggle to survive, and the steady devouring of the Spam in this very literal Can.

THINGS WHAT ROCK:
 First off, this film is paced pretty well, and has a lot of imagination for how the beasties work, how they hunt, and how they slot into the folklore of the area (including a scene where an old man tells the story of the Thornton Railway Massacre of 1963, retroactively tying the same creatures to that as we see now which is a chilling bit of business). The gore is exceptional, including a long and harrowing sequence with a vicious bite wound that looks very intimately real, while also adding the unnatural detail that it seems to refuse to stop bleeding (as if the wounds inflicted by the creatures can't or won't heal).
And the creatures themselves are very cool, some of my favorite werewolves on screen in the last decade. They're largely practical (and you all know what a slut I am for a good practical effect), except for their legs, which are blended very seamlessly with the performances from the actors in the suits and make-up, and they feel designed explicitly to evoke what it would look like if werewolves were a real thing in our world. The suit actors give wonderful performances, amply aided by good shot composition, clear editing, and a creepy as hell  CG glowing eye effect that feels just subtle enough to be natural.

This particular shot is probably my favorite use of the full package, along with the downright unnatural gait this actor gives the beast. It really sells the CG leg effect and creates a seamless creature.

THINGS THAT DON'T WORK:
I already mentioned the characters in this movie are pretty awful people for too much of the film's run-time, but there's more to it than just that. I watched this one on Amazon Prime (and you can and should too, as I always recommend it highly on it's creature work) and I always like to have closed caption on for that kind of thing, especially a re-watch like I did today. And the captions for this one are hilarious, because the film takes so long to assign names to half the people on screen.
(One of the only other named characters early on is Ellen, Joe's co-worker, whose main character trait is not wanting to date Joe, being pretty, and being scared.)
Because of that, the caption makers kind of went with whatever stood out in these uniformly flat landscapes, and thus we end up getting what amounts to a really lame version of the Justice League getting their shit pushed in by lycanthropes.

Thrill to the adventures of Assertive Man, Glamorous Woman and her husband Old Man, Rude Girl and Smart Woman,  with cameos from all over the Character Archetypes Cinematic Universe like Young Man, Man with Glasses, and Football Man!

And aside from some efforts to give them more dimension than this (see, Assertive Man is also a massive douchebag who cheats on his wife, who'da-thunk, and Football Man is also A Fat and needs to poop!) there isn't much beyond this minimal  effort on display. Such shallow caricatures just don't work for a variety of reasons, but the main thing is they're so overdrawn at first that attempts to humanize them later feel like rushed rewrites and never ring true. Am I supposed to be hoping they die or not, movie? Either make me worried for their safety or make me despise them, you can't have both.
 Also, as a fat guy I tend to judge a movie pretty harshly on if a character's entire being seems to revolve around their being heavyset on screen. Especially for the purposes of 'humor'.
(Oh, those Fats, they sure love their food, huh? Can you imagine if one needed a shit on a train? Hilarious!)

Oh fuck, I think Smart Woman is on to my sarcasm, cheese it guys!

There's also an attempt to sketch out a "survival of the fittest" theme, but it falls flat since it's mostly just Assertive Man being a dick and making sure other people die instead of him. There's a much better version of this arc in Train to Busan, by the way.

IN COMPARISON, AND THE FUN OF THE SIEGE

Now, to compare this film to one as unassailable as Dog Soldiers is poor sportsmanship, but it's also available on Prime, or I have it here so come one over and watch it with me once all this blows over.

Dog Soldiers is the tale of a genial bunch of English squaddies, soldiers out on training maneuvers in Scotland, finding themselves under assault from werewolves instead of the Special Forces boys they thoght they were up against. Now, the best part is that there is nore to it than that, and the film delivers on all counts. I breifly thought of reviewing Dog Soldiers instead of HOWL, but I knew that any attempts to 'review' it would just be me shamelessly fellating this absolute champion of a film, and HOWL is on the list of rquests that Amber gave me, so I thought I'd try this approach instead.

Because I love that flick, and what's more- even though I haven't watched it in a while I could still tell you who most of the character in it are, despite 90 percent of them being in identical uniforms! The Sarge, played by son of the Third Doctor Sean Pertwee (a hard bloke with a knack for keeping morale with badass stories), Cooper, (a blonde mountain of Kevin McKidd in full hero mode), Spoony, Joe, Terry, Bruce, and the nefarious Captain Ryan and the helpful camper Megan, a bunch of lads that make more of a hearty stew than just Spam, and that shows the difference a great script and some excellent casting and chemistry can do for ya.

"Oy, fuckin' 'ell, he's talkin' 'bout us, lads!"

In fact, I could discuss this film for a long while before you noticed I actually have barely mentioned the werewolves! And they are in the movie quite a bit, but the difference is Dog Soldiers is about the soldiers where HOWL is about werewolves attacking a train full of Mystery Meat (which we have to spend most of the movie with, a problem similar to how people go to Godzilla movies to see Godzilla and not all these people running around pointing upwards).  Now that said, it is interesting to note that the werewolves in my favorite werewolf film actually aren't that great, though they are interesting. Neat side notes about the way they were realized: the director Neil Marshall wanted very elegant and graceful creatures so he cast dancers instead of stunt performers for the the wolf-pack, resulting in a group that is pretty statuesque and cool, but lack some of the ferocity and dazzle of the lycans in HOWL. As a result, the wolves work best as a threat from without, a mysterious foe out there somewhere...

But aside from these examples being such absolute bangers, what is it that makes a Spam in a Cabin flick, the horror equivalent of a siege film, so much fun?

Well, it's interesting I ask this question now, huh?

Of all times?

Because right now there is a threat out there. Just outside the door. We can't see it. But we know it's out there. Just waiting for us to slip up and let it inside.

But you know what I'm seeing as well? A lot of people pulling their shit together to fight back, finding the way to save as many as possible, and ensure that it isn't just the fittest that survive, it's all of us. I went to the store today and found people being absurdly kind to each other, while still keeping distance and being careful- but the cashiers were being treated with some dignity and respect, and nobody was complaining that the store wold be closing early to clean, disinfect, and restock.

We were in this together.

And that is part of what is cool about siege horror movies. In those stories, we're reminded that it is human nature to put aside petty shit in the face of a greater threat.

They show us that we are at our best in times of crisis, stuck together, Spam in out Cabins. Each one is an object lesson that our purest colors shine through in hard times and we'll beat back anything, monster, serial killer, alien, robot, genetically engineered super-soldier, zombies, or the fucking Corona virus... with the power of our combined humanity. Whatever it takes.

SO....

Go watch HOWL. Or go watch Dog Soldiers. Or watch 'em both, man. We got time.

Whatever keeps the wolf from the door.

Until then, I'll be here waiting- just Beyond Midnight.

Oh hot damn, I think that's gonna be a thing....

NEXT TIME: IN THIS TOWN WE CALL HOME, EVERYONE HAILS TO THE PUMPKIN SONG...

A Caged Double Feature- Part 2: Can You Hear the Caged Dad Kill?

If you, like me, ever find yourself endlessly wondering "Where can I finally scratch the itch I have of watching Nicolas Cage have an emotional breakdown with a sledgehammer while singing an obscene version of the Hokey Pokey?" well... I have good news and bad news.
The good news: It's this movie.
The bad news: You and I both need some fuckin' therapy.

Let's talk about dead kids!!

Caution: May Contain Nuts

Have you ever watched a film then gone "Well, where the HELL did THAT come from?" Well, in my experience, the answer to that question is half the fun of watching movies. Finding out who is behind something, what else they've done, and what they are doing now is a lot of fun for me. And telling you is most of the reason that I do it! So, let's talk about Brian Taylor.
As one half of the directing/writing/daredevil film-making duo of Neveldine/Taylor, he is partially responsible for bringing you such cinematic delights as Crank and its sequel Crank: High Voltage, Gamer, the second Ghost Rider film, the better than I hoped but still kinda weird Spirit of Vengeance, and the transcendent trashiness that is the tv series Happy! He and his partner threw themselves into their films quite literally, occasionally having themselves rigged to their own suspended cameras to make sure they got the right shot in their hyper-kinetic gore-ballets of action.
I knew of, enjoyed, and in some cases loved all of these before seeing Mom and Dad (and I love when a movie is named after it's monsters *wink*), but I hadn't caught that it was him making it when I watched it the first time. If I had, I might have been ready.
I'm really glad I wasn't.
So, who thinks they can take their parents? Show of hands? Anyone wanna weigh in? ....Yeah, it's a weird thought isn't it? But it's one this film brings up time and again, and one of the things that really struck me as this movie rolled along was how fully this film commits to the premise and finds as many ways as possible to explore it before settling in to the main drag of the story. As for anyone with kids....you think you could take them out? If you put your mind to it?

What if you had some prep time, some deep stretching, and a pick-axe?

That core concept is what really drives this movie into it's very weird niche of exploitative trashiness meets domestic farce, a hybrid I've seen done weirder in only a few places, in bizarre indie fare like Flexing with Monty or Meet the Hollowheads, and neither with this manic intensity.
(Somebody remind me to do pieces on both these films sometime, by the by...)
Much like our piece yesterday, the story revolves around the struggles at the heart of a family headed by Nicolas Cage as they are overwhelmed by the inexplicable changes to their world that suddenly overtake them. Unlike our subject yesterday, this one starts crazy. It features some wild, choppy editing between scenes and smash cuts to indicate inner thoughts or memories, but overall we follow Brent, played by Cage, and Kendall, played by Selma Blair (from the good Hellboy movies!) two well-off suburban parents (They can even afford a maid, and they're cool enough to let her bring her daughter to help babysit!) of two precocious youngsters, teenage Carly and grade-schooler Josh.
The standard issues are at play at first, Kendall and Carly aren't as close as they used to be, she's keeping secrets, while Dad and his boy keep goofing off and taking nothing seriously.
Until Josh throws a ball at Nic's head and he makes THIS face.

Coupled with the line "Ten...is not a guarantee, son." 

Yeah, something is definitely...off in the world. And this gets explored over the next hour and 20ish minutes as it becomes clear: all over the world, with no explanation, across basically all strata of life, parents are turning on their offspring. Savagely. They even use the term "savaging" at one point, describing the practice in the animal kingdom of creatures devouring offspring in times of stress and shortage, along with a cameo by Scottish comics writer and magical thinking advocate Grant Morrison as a talking head in one of the many harrowing newscasts that dot the first act of the film, as it becomes steadily more apparent that there isn't anywhere to hide from this: the human race is going obsolete, and it's time to recall the newer models.
This part of the film is where it really shines, exploring and contorting and elaborating on it's bizarre and anathema concept. Standout scenes include a crowd of parents patiently waiting for their kids to finish SATs before going in silently en masse, a stampede of parents pursuing teens across a football field, and the haunting shot of a man in a swimming pool stolidly drowning a child like he has other shit to do. Outside of the cause being related to a mysterious transmission, this outbreak of behavior is given no explanation. Aliens? Terrorists? Wrath of a spiteful God? Doesn't matter.
What matters is one of the scenes in this picture made me nearly look away, a feat few films achieve and I applaud it for. I love fearless artists, and I know that Taylor is among their ranks. The horror in this horror comedy is pretty intense, but the way that it leans into the comedy is by leaning hard into the absurdity of parents going about their business then getting hardwired to destroy their kids and still carrying on as if it's one more chore to do today.

"OH, and honey remind me to rinse this mallet, or else it's gonna stink up the kitchen..."

This isn't to say all of it is gonzo, jet-black comedy. In fact some of it is quite heart-wrenching. The scene I mentioned at the very beginning is later in the film, but takes place before the hysteria sweeps the country, and it's mostly about that feeling that sets in when you're trying to be happy with something you've never wanted, but were convinced you did. Nic struggles with the dichotomy of being cool and responsible. The emotions between Nic and Selma are a hundred percent real in that scene, and Selma is the stand-out in this movie early on, as she tries to rejoin a world that seems to belittle her for having been a mother first and not a career woman, when the entire world told her first to be a mother and not to wait. And the saddest scene for me is when it confronts a question maybe some of you have already asked yourself: What about abusive parents? When Carly's boyfriend comes home from taking the hardest test of his life to his slovenly father decking him in the face, his first reaction is "THIS shit again?" and is thus still off guard when the assault escalates higher and higher. 
Now, this film does have a few issues. Aside from its content being a thing that is going to scare off lots of folks or make them not take it very seriously, it also has a few pacing issues- an odd trait for a film that clocks in under 90 minutes.
It should be a lean, slick machine like the muscle car Nic keeps lovingly restored in his garage (because of course he does). BUt instead, once the film gets everything very firmly established, we have quite a few slower scenes in the house, keeping the parents at arms length while the kids try to figure out how to survive. They're still interesting, but it results in the first half being much more memorable than the second if it wasn't for the usual tour-de-force masterclass in go big or go bigger that is Nicolas Cage.

"Oh, now... you didn't forget about me, didja?!?!?!"

OF COURSE WE'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT THIS, WHY DO YOU THINK I'M WRITING THIS THING? (aside from the very real apocalyptic event outside making me unable to focus on anything else other than if I'm doing something interesting or productive to stave off a sense of inevitable doom and panic that this is it guys, this is really fucking it, like *deeeep inhale*.....sorry, what was I saying?) RIGHT.
Nic Cage is a nutso wonder in Mom and Dad.
Once it's time to cut loose, Nic knows how to do it. And one of the reasons i think he does it so well in this one is because this is of course his second rodeo with Brian Taylor, since they were first teamed on Spirit of Vengeance together. The Ghost Rider movies are odd beasts, with the first one being about as bog standard as you can get for an early 2000s comic book movie, and the second being every departure from that you can imagine, being engaging, funny and charming while STILL  not being terribly good. I mean there's Idris Elba, a shot of Ghost Rider peeing like a flame thrower and Christopher Lambert in weird make-up and somehow this movie still kinda blew. BUT, one of the things it does right is let Cage off the leash and play the Rider how he wanted, complete with their own special brand of performance capture and letting him channel the spirit of the Loa and act like a stoned cobra. After making Nic force himself into the standard hero mold (a place he's never belonged, doing much better with the unconventional, or eccentric hero) he was happy to be trusted enough to go the full Frank Reynolds and get real weird with it. And that trust resonates with this production as well, as you can just feel how good a time he's having chewing scenery, cutting scenery, and puncturing scenery. His near-erotic fascination with his Sawz-All is... well, I'm glad they're happy together, relationships in Hollywood are tough.
And to top it off, the chemistry that Selma and Nic have as a couple, even when they're realistically dysfunctional, carries over into their homicidal mania, with their united front of destruction bringing their relationship into a better place than one suspects it's been in years.
The final cherry on top is hinted at in the trailers, but it is a pip of a surprise guest star turn from Lance Henriksen that finally brings this movie home to a place where even its strangely ambiguous ending doesn't bother me much. I like Lance in a different way to Nic, as I admire Henriksen for being the absolute workhorse he is, just keeping that constant level of quality whether it's in classics like Pumpkinhead or direct to video drivel where he's fighting Bigfoot or some shit.

And the day is coming for this Spirit of Vengeance too...

So, in the end, I know some of you reading this are NOT gonna like this movie. It has a lot of the same problems as Taylor's other work, but all of the same strengths, so it's really down to how much Nic Cage you need in your system...
Either way, it probably beats dinner with your in-laws.
NEXT TIME: WE BARK AT THE MOON...

A Caged Double Feature- Part 1: Don't Judge a Cage By It's Color

So, just to start us off on the appropriate foot: I fucking love Nic Cage.

This face ALWAYS means I'm about to have a good time.

I really do, and it's not in an ironic "OMG his movies are so bad, he's so over the top!" kind of way. I'm not a Cage-centric ironic hipster about it, and I don't have any intention of lampooning him here.

So I don't bury the lede on this double header too soon, I wanna go into why very briefly before we dive right in. I always admire fearless artists, and I'm going to return to that point in a moment when we discuss our first film (and its film-maker). And Nic? Ohhh, Mr Cage doesn't know the meaning of the word. diving headfirst into every performance I've seen him give, Nicolas Cage might just be the hardest working man in show business in sheer force, if not quantity or quality per se. He experiments. He tries to find the way to bring his character to life that literally no one else could have thought of, let alone topped.
I have not seen every Cage picture, but if someone brings him up, I'm going to sing his praises and if someone asks if I wanna see a movie, a really easy way to make me say yes is to let me know he is in it. But- this isn't a blog about Nic (though I might make one of them, one day, if I'm feeling squirrely). I want to mostly do what it says on the airplane in the back-ground: drop the spook on ya, and talk about horror movies and shit... 

So let's get to that part, huh?

I: The Return of a "Lost Soul" to Film-Making

Oh, how dearly did I wait for this movie... I fell in love with the bizarre, atmospheric style of South African born Richard Stanley when I was house-sitting for an old girlfriend and was mooching off her Netflix. This was some years back, before Netflix had grown into the beast it is today and was still prone to have the odd nugget of strangeness clinging to its newborn hide.

 And it was there that I found Hardware, Stanley's sophomore directorial effort, and still my favorite. His style, world-weaving, and sick sense of humor just vibed with me, and I wanted to see what else his name was on. To my surprise, I found only two (2) other examples of his work. And one of them was a movie I had seen before! But alas, as I found out more, the apprehension turned to disappointment. Short version (longer version can be found in the excellent documentary "Lost Soul"): Richard Stanley rose high and fast, then was immediately eaten alive by studio meddling, famous asshole Val Kilmer, mega-famous giver of zero fucks Marlon Brando, and a seemingly cursed production of The Island of Doctor Moreau that he was fired from shortly after production began, which I had seen as a young boy and said: "...huh."

In the days in which I found his work, Richard Stanley was exploring old castles looking for ghosts, wrestling with the legacy of his very mystical mother, and being super-mega-Alan-Moore-reading-the-name-of-God-in-his-belly-button-lint STRANGE. And above all, he didn't appear to have much interest in returning to film-making. Sad, but his two and a quarter films were still pretty damn cool.

And so was his hat.

But the rumblings began, quietly at first, like the ominous hill noises of far-off Dunwich. Interest in his films had resurged with the aforementioned documentary, and his own interest in returning seemed to come with it, for the right project. One of the ones he wanted to get done? A biopic he himself had penned based on the life of Howard Philips Lovecraft called simply "Providence"...
He returned to the directors chair briefly, but for the first time in almost two decades, to helm a segment of the anthology film Theater Bizarre about witches, sex, and frogs. Could a return to features be far behind? 

Yes. It could be far behind. Cuz it took forever for this movie to get made.
but. it. was. WORTH. IT.

"Now make this blog about me again, Alex."
"Yes, Mister Cage."

Color Out of Space is based on the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft. For those of my readers who don't know who this is, he is basically the father of weird fiction. NOT science fiction, that's Mary Shelley's baby and I'm not taking that away from her.

Weird Fiction is a whole different beast. It's less 'Star Trek' or 'Alien', more... The Twilight Zone, or  Stephen King. It's a place where the strange happens and it can shatter you with the realization that not everything in the Universe has an explanation that you can comprehend, and if you could you would stop being human...And it's a place where Nic Cage slots in perfectly.

 As an actor, he is straight up made for this kind of material. In last year's Mandy he proved this without a doubt, and much of the same production and business team that made that hallucinogenic mind-melter of a picture re-teamed for thins one, with our man Richard Stanley in the captain seat.

The film and story revolve around the Gardners and their three children Benny, Lavinia, and Jack, residing on a remote farm in Lovecraft Country: New England. Their idyllic life is a little unusual, as the Gardner's themselves are, but despite some troubles in their past,( including the ghosts of an abusive dad for Nic and a recent cancer experience for his wife played with a haunting frailty by Joely Richardson) their life seems to be settling into a period of peace once more after too many years of worry and woe.

BUUUUUT that never lasts...not in Lovecraft Country...

All that literally comes crashing to an end when a meteorite crashes to the ground on their property.
But this isn't just a rock. It carries something with it. Within it. Something indescribable. A color. A force. A sinister intelligence, and a corrupting power that infects everything it touches...

However, I'm not here to regurgitate plot. That isn't how I want to do things here. But I am gonna talk about stuff I like, in much the same way as I would if I were say, telling you personally. I'm hoping it can be way for some of you to feel closer to me and for me to feel closer to you during this whole....thing going on. (For those reading this in the future, I really hope this all passes fine and nobody talks about toilet paper or COVID-19 anymore, except in a "Wow, wild times right?" kind of way). So, anyway:

II: Love and Craft, and the Horror of Both

A level indicator of how bizarre this movie is is that I have gotten this far into a discussion of it without even mentioning the fact that Tommy Chong is in this picture.

Resident expert in seeing imaginary colors.

Every choice made early, pays off in incredibly satisfying and sometimes horrifying ways. From Theresa Gardener's creeping sense of body dysmorphia, Nathan's glib impression of his dad (channeling his first truly bizarre performance in "Vampire's Kiss" at sudden and jarring times), little things grow to become big things, and those big things grow to become things Man wasn't meant to see. Where things are even more interesting, are the details changed or enhanced to tell the story in the modern day.

See, in the original yarn, the tale is told by a nameless academic (a Lovecraft staple), years after it originally happened, largely through memory and testimony of those that survived the incident, namely a mysterious old man (another staple) named Ezra, before revealing that the threat of the evil that blighted this place may not be entirely dissipated (yet another Lovecraft staple). This gives the short a two-track structure where we can step back into the framing tale to breathe as things get ever more awful for the story versions of the Gardners. But that is done away with in the film, making the story richer for it, allowing the dread to build, our narrator (and the great Thomas Chong) to experience the tale in real time, and for the film (written by Stanley as well as directed) to indulge in the main element so often lost in adaptations of H.P.'s work: his prose.
For those who came in late: No one wrote stories the way Lovecraft did. His vocabulary was immense and that can make the stories a little impenetrable for the beginner, but the beauty and flowing quality of his thoughts as they translated horrible idea into chilling reality for the reader is second to none. And that prose gets to flow through the beginning and end of the film, book-ending the tale with lyrical horror poetry. That's H.P.'s prose however. His dialog is...awful, but that is to be expected from someone as socially awkward and isolated as he was. As such, characters rarely talk to one another in real time in Lovecraft, instead opting to relay the idea of what was said through later recollection of our narrator.

Of course, in film you can't do that. And in this film, Stanley proves that his old wit and sly humor has remained 100 percent intact from his "Hardware" days, giving character interactions his own eccentric charm. 
The younger characters feel very fresh and energetic, (I especially like the choice to have our narrator, here named Ward Philips as a winking reference to Howard Philips Lovecraft himself, played by Elliot Knight a black actor from the UK. If you read the original tales, you'll know why sooner or later) while the older generation feel more like what I'm sure Stanley is himself these days: old mystics with some wild adventures behind them but new stories to tell in the here and now. But that dividing line between the young and the old becomes a fault-line, then a schism as the influence of the Color spreads through the land and the minds of the family. 

"What the prog-rock is goin' on 'round here?"

And that is where one of my favorite flourishes comes in. For anyone who hasn't caught the gist yet, there is a nice, succinct scene in which the allegory for the now is laid out for anyone who hasn't caught it yet. But suffice to say that the younger generation is aware there is a HUGE problem, while the older one tries desperately to hang on to what they know and, ahem, deny that anything is happening that is out of the ordinary outside of their sudden celestial visitor.

"R'lyeh, Boomer."

But eventually the denial does more harm than good once the influence of the Color goes beyond anyone's control or understanding, seeping into the water, the fauna, and the flesh of everyone around it. And that's where the story takes a turn away from the source that at first I didn't wholly agree with but has grown on me the more I've thought on it.

 In the original tale, one of the more unsettling things about the description of the Color's effect on the land and animals is how eerily similar it was in action and reaction to the effects of radiation. About ten to fifteen years before the first atom bomb was detonated and showed us what it would really do to people. We had ideas, sure, Marie Curie had done her research obviously, but the tangible, known quantity that "Radiation = You're gonna have a bad time" was not commonly known and Lovecraft's prescience on this subject puts him right there with Asimov and Roddenberry as far as speculative authors getting things very close to the mark.

In the film, this by now almost mundane form of desolation and ruination is enhanced with a squelching, body-horror kaleidoscope of flesh and twisting perception that rivals the prime of both David Cronenberg and John Carpenter, and it utterly shocked and disgusted me in the best ways. My initial disagreement with the change, that something sad and almost contemplative became something more in your face and grandiose, melted away when I saw that it wasn't sacrificing story or character to do it. No matter how grandly things mutate ("There's something wrong with the alpacas." has never been a more ominous phrase) the core remains the Gardner's attempts to cope with what is happening no matter how nightmarish it becomes.

Sound familiar?

This, but with more insanity and purple.

III: Fun Place to Go, Lovecraft Country... But Don't Drink the Water

For every squamous moment of body deformation or mutilation, there's a tender moment of coping with the sudden change in your loved ones from illness or disability, or the dejected, dissociating aftermath of a histrionic release of emotion. (From Nic, obviously) And it builds to a pitch-perfect recreation of the spirit if not the letter of the original story and retains all the mental impact reading the original short years and years ago had on me in a new and vibrant way.

Speaking of vibrant, I wanna wrap this up on how beautiful this movie is.Since the Color was described in the story as something that our eyes couldn't make sense of and we didn't have a name for, and that is nearly impossible to put on film, the makers opted for the very clever trick of using Magenta.

No, not that one,

See magenta...isn't a real color. Stay with me here, magenta doesn't exist as a single wavelength of light. Instead, it's what's called an extra-spectral color created literally by our minds when the red and blue rods in our eyes interact with specific circumstances to create it. SO, what that means is, IF we saw the Color Out of Space, this one is what we would likely see since our puny brains would have no clue what to tell us was fucking happening. I love when a movie does it's homework like this. Got a headache thinking about that yet?     ANYWAY...
Steve Annis was the DP on this and every frame is just a painting, especially once the haunting beauty of the horror almost makes you wish it wouldn't stop. Checking his credits, he's worked on lots of music videos and his attention to getting the dreamlike visuals just right really shows from that kind of background. It evokes my favorite scene from the source, where a character pauses to take in the beauty of the trees waving in the wind...before realizing there isn't even a breeze...

In short, this movie rocks.
I'll just show myself out...

So do yourself a favor if you're looking to get your mind blown like I did, this movie is on demand on Amazon Prime, go watch it and enjoy. But be careful around the barn. The alpacas are acting awful strange...

Next time: More Nic Cage as domestic farce meets The Purge in "Mom & Dad"!