Cross Bearer (2012, Adam Ahlbrandt)

"Cross Bearer" is a decent au courant slasher flick that doesn't do anything too groundbreaking, but brings on some admissible indie entertainment...

A community of drug-infatuated degenerates is targeted by a religious vagabond disguised by a sheet-wrapped face and armed with a claw hammer. Some lesbian strippers and a mohawked DIY pornographer get mixed up in the bloodbath as they enter a dilapidated building where they hope to make a drug deal for an obnoxious club owner. Little do they realize that the killer is taking care of business and righting some wrongs in the name of Christ.

First off, you're getting a reasonably hefty amount of fake tits and bloody hammer-bashings with this one, so, in that regard, it scored some points with me. I guess what I didn't really go for was the total lack of 'build' or mystification surrounding the killer. He's one of the first faces we see in the movie (maskless) and, from there, he's just sort of a 'prop' that goes around rambling Jesus-freak nonsense and bludgeoning people to death. That's all fine and dandy, though I would've preferred he be given some kind of half-way interesting back-story or, at least, ONE of the characters should've been kinda interesting. The film is just really light on suspense and plot. Too much so, if you asked me. They try to poke fun at this in a overly long scene where the soon-to-be victims have a ridiculous film discussion, one of whom arguing that she prefers trashy slasher films over Kubrick's films... This didn't really 'land'...

But still, it's not a BAD flick. Good amount of practical gore effects and I like the idea of an extremely religious slasher antagonist. You could do a lot worse than "Cross Bearer".

Récompence (2010, Ronny Carlsson)

"Récompence" is a bleak 25-minute 'arthouse'-horror flick, directed by Ronny Carlsson of filmbizarro.com. Like many of these types of surrealist, visionary films, the premise seems to be up for interpretation from the viewer. Or else I'm just an idiot who can't fully grasp subtext... Eh.

A woman - whom we see driving through the country with a guy (boyfriend or husband... or brother) - is crawling through the woods, covered in dirt and clearly injured. She comes across a house where she spots a ghostly blank-faced, robed figure peering out of a window. After entering, she finds the figure sitting across the room where he proceeds to disembowel himself. Our lady gets rather 'intrigued' and a bit riled up by this macabre display and peels off her top before munching on some innards. More staggering through the woods and, eventually, she happens upon another (or maybe the same) figure whom she has some kind of bizarre, intimate moment with...

I gotta say, "Récompence" is a pretty well-made short. It's got a cool, desaturated black-and-white look, no dialog and is skillfully and effectively shot. The tone of the film is gloomy and nightmarish with a visual aesthetic that reminded me of E. Elias Merhige's "Begotten". Also a decent amount of gore and some satisfying full-frontal female nudity to help it along. Recommended. And check out Carlsson's site http://filmbizarro.com.

The Bighead (2013, Michael Ling)

In case you're not aware, Edward Lee is a phenomenal horror novelist who specializes in the ultra sick-and-twisted. His 1997 book "The Bighead" has been made into a short film and it's looking like there's a feature in the works. I NEED this to happen!

What you have here is a well-made 25 minute 'sample', if you will, that takes a portion from Lee's book in an obvious attempt to gain funding for a full-length film. We're introduced to a pair of out-of-towner bar floozies who are craving hillbilly dick, a couple of redneck hoodlums mercilessly brutalizing a prostitute and a local legend concerning an inbred mutant with a giant cock that enjoys raping and mutilating folks...

Again, "The Bighead" short isn't a complete 'story', but I must say I am hoping for more. The production quality looks good. Better than I expected and the Bighead creature looks pretty badass. I liked the whole mean-spirited hooker ass-raping and forced shit-eating scene. Well done, as well as the bar room brawling priest (kicking ass for the lord, I suppose). So yeah, I fucking dug "The Bighead"! I just need to see more of him in action.
http://www.thebigheadmovie.com/

Population: 2 (2012, Gil Luna)

"Population: 2" is a decent post-apocalyptic melodrama. The timeline frequently switches from flashbacks of a pregnant woman happily expecting a baby to her in the present, surviving alone in a world nuked of all other life. The source of the population's demise is apparently political corruption. Apparently, there's this giant corporation that is doling out "habitats" that can only accommodate so many people, so it seems that the woman's husband has to make a difficult decision is regards to his wife and their unborn child...

I enjoyed this flick for the most part. It's slow and not the most original take on the whole post-apocalyptic world set-up, but they did quite a good job considering it's rather 'tight' budget. The lifeless landscapes are well done and the film is just shot really well. The main actress, Suzanne Tufan, pulls off a pretty stellar performance as the lone scavenger amidst a world reduced to rubble in the way she convey's that crushing loneliness and despair.

So again, don't expect "Omega Man" type shit cuz this thing is a much more demure take on that whole concept. It's slow, but it's paced just right and has a VERY modest run-time. I'd certainly recommend it. Hit up http://moontribestudios.com for a copy.

Hate Crime (2012, James Cullen Bressack)

It's hard for me, at this point, to be thoroughly even-handed when dealing with the exasperatingly homogeneous 'found footage' genre. I wouldn't say that I'm one of those people that has a comprehensive dislike for this style of horror film-making - I just feel that it's been heavily reduced to a medium in which indie 'up-and-comers' can simply discard 'traditional' (for lack of a better term) movie-making components and, above all, STYLE, and just sorta... wing it. I don't typically see a lot of artistry and 'character' within the 'found footage' mark since I can't help but feel that it has run it's course. That's not to say I can't find this type of thing enjoyable from time to time... It's just getting harder for me...

James Cullen Bressack's "Hate Crime" details the home-invasion of a Jewish family by a trio of masked neo-Nazi's who wish to "welcome" their new neighbors. It kicks off with the dad recording his kid's birthday party on their home camcorder when they are suddenly ravaged by the bigoted maniacs. The film follows the torture and ruthless torment the family endures throughout the course of the night as the camera captures it all.

My main gripe with "Hate Crime" is a complaint I have with a lot of 'found footage' films and that would be that more of them should apply a mixture of POV and 'conventional' film-making elements. This, of course, isn't specific to HC, but with many of these kinds of flicks, it stops making sense WHY we're seeing what we're seeing. The first 3-5 minutes of HC bothered me for the fact that the dad positions the camera with he and his wife PERFECTLY in frame while they quietly bicker in the kitchen. Why would he want the birthday celebration home-video broken up with marital squabbling? And when the Aryan Brotherhood goons come barging in, the dad takes off running - camera still in tow. Break it over the fucker's head, dude! This is followed by a lengthy scene in the basement where the family is tied up, raped, FORCED to rape and brutalized while the aggressors now record their tomfoolery. This actually made more sense up until a point - kinda like the "August Underground" films (of which this reminded me a LOT of) where the killer's are the ones who actually bring the camera into the situation out of a general love of documenting their heinous crimes. Still, there came a certain point where I felt that even these vicious hate crime thugs would abandon the whole video-recording thing, but... eh...

On the plus-side, the performances are mostly strong. The big body-builder guy (named "Three" - all of the bad guys code-named themselves 1, 2 and 3) was good as the real unpredictable SICKO of the group, even as he was occasionally over-the-top.

So, like I said, "Hate Crime" reminded me a lot of the much more violent and disgusting "August Underground" series as well as the awesome Spanish film "Kidnapped". I don't think the POV shit really worked with this film. However, I know there are people out there that really dig brutal 'faux-snuff' themed films who would probably like to check this out.
http://www.psykikjunkypictures.com/

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989, Shinya Tsukamoto)

One of the forerunners of the Japanese Cyberpunk 'scene' of the 80s and 90s; "Tetsuo - The Iron Man" is surely the best of it's kind and certainly lives up to any hype you may have heard. This thing is a completely chaotic head-trip from start to finish and is a total fucking cavalcade of deranged and surreal imagery...

A guy who is seen inexplicably inserting a metal rod into a giant maggot-infested gash in his leg is hit by a car while running in the road. The couple who hit him end up dumping him in the woods and having sex against a tree while the hit-n-run victim looks on. From there, it appears that the guy wants revenge and pulls this off by turning Joe Vehicular Manslaughter and some other folks into bionically mutated messes of mangled metal with nasty pus oozing growths. Eventually, the two "metal-fetish" beasts have their big showdown.

This flick is a whacked out agglomeration of industrial craziness and morbidly phallic visuals, including a big spinning drill cock and a chick with a vicious worm-cock that plunges up a dude's ass at one point. Ya got weird animated effects sequences and cool metallic, industrial sounds accompanying the unique and highly experimental tone of the film. Also got a great chase scene involving a woman with a spazzy robo-claw causing her to tweak out in a train station, a cat being welded to a paint can and, by the end, the two rivals morph into a giant mushroom... Or a cockhead... Again, lots of phallic imagery.

So, overall, there's not much to really dislike about "Tetsuo - The Iron Man". Top notch Cyberpunk-style, 'body-horror' insanity. Definitely a film I find myself revisiting rather frequently. Just don't expect any kind of conventional narrative or anything that resembles linear story telling. Just wild, filthy David Lynch-esque Japanese awesomeness.

Devil Fetus (1983, Hung-Chuen Lau)

I had heard a few good things about "Devil Fetus", but unfortunately it didn't live up to any of the hype for me. Pretty much Dullsville without all the gore people had mentioned in the reviews I had read a while back.

There's something to do with a vase that is bought at some Chinese auction. The chick who buys it starts getting all horned up and when her businessman hubby comes home to find her getting boned by a demon, he smashes the vase and his face gets all rotted and maggot-covered. Then he jumps out the window. Cut to years later, there's some spells, a couple of brothers who were around when the shit at the beginning went down and a love interest. One of the brothers becomes possessed by the malevolent demon from before and some random shit happens...

The plot of this thing was SO fucking arbitrary and disjointed. Definitely a weak example of CATIII cinema that did nothing for me. You got a worm-filled birthday cake, a dude munching on the guts of his dead German Shepherd and some ridiculous 'showdown' between the possessed guy and a samurai wizard - complete with laser-beams shot from eyeballs. It's all just so stupid and boring. Avoid.

Citizen X (1995, Chris Gerolmo)

"Citizen X" is a pretty tenacious made-for-TV serial killer joint, based on the investigation leading up to the capture of Soviet murderer/cannibal, Andrei Chikatilo. He was considered "The Butcher of Rostov" and was responsible for over 50 killings throughout the 80s.

The film follows a Russian coroner who is brought on by officials as a forensic detective after his autopsy room is flooded with the mutilated remains of 8 children. The hunt for the culprit lasts an inexcusably lengthy amount of years due to Soviet 'red tape' and Communist glorification hindering the manhunt significantly as the body count rises. The details concerning the search for the killer is occasionally broken up by glimpses into the madman's depraved world - showing his stratagem of luring young, vulnerable children from the train station to the woods and how he was a impotent motherfucker unless he was stabbing a kid or a hooker...

Strong performances all around and a pretty factual and engaging cinematic rendering of this series of brutal crimes. Not an overtly 'graphic' flick, though you get the uncompromisingly gruesome depictions of child murder once or twice, but for the most part, it's usually implied. In all, "Citizen X" isn't the greatest, but if you're looking for a good biopic on Chikatilo, you can't go wrong here. Also, check out "Evilenko" with Malcolm McDowell - a later film that takes a slightly more violent approach...

Maniac (2012, Franck Khalfoun)

Bill Lustig's original serial killer examination piece, "Maniac" (1980), is one of my favorite slasher films of all time. Violent, misogynistic, gory and just flat-out sleazy as all hell. It was ruthlessly attacked by ignorant, pansie-ass critics and feminist groups whose panties were incessantly knotted over the film's depictions of whore-stalking/mutilating, as well as the theatrical poster and accompanying tagline. It's just a kick-ass flick that's got a great history of controversy attached to it - not to mention dishing out some great gore effects, a great performance by Joe Spinell, filthy look and feel and just a wonderfully straight-forward approach to delineating on a serial killer's day-to-day, night-to-night compulsory murder habits...

And, of course, it's been remade. Right off the bat, the whole Elijah Wood thing had me a bit dubious, as well as it having Alexandre Aja's name on it as a writer/producer... But, as one would expect, I had to see it just to know how pissed off I can truly get from a film. What were my thoughts? Meh...

Wood plays Frank Zito - the owner of a mannequin restoration shop who moonlights as a spastic spree killer. Like the original, he's got mommy issues up to his eyeballs and has a 'thing' for hacking off women's scalps and tacking them to his precious mannequins. They carried over the whole concept of him meeting and becoming obsessed with an artsy, foreign photographer.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much of anything from this 'retelling' and I really didn't get much of anything out of it. However, it IS somewhat interesting how they went about filming the majority of it from the killer's point-of-view. At certain moments - usually during a murder - he 'leaves his body', so to speak, and we see him and the victim together in the frame as he brutalizes her. This is an alright idea, but I thought it kinda left the movie limited on what it could pull off in terms of suspense. Still, it works fine at a few different points, but overall I felt it wear thin and kinda get in the way as the film went on.

As far as performances - particularly, Elijah Wood - he's decent in this if you just think of it as a completely stand-alone film without any ties to the 1980 flick. He is nowhere near as threatening and powerful looking as Spinell, but, of course, you don't see a whole lot of him aside from mirror reflections and the intermittent non-POV scenes, which is probably for the best considering Wood's physical presence really isn't teeming with menace. That said, he's certainly not awful as a more 'twinkish' type of schizophrenic.

The kill scenes also aren't on par with the original - lacking the cruelty and overall goriness of the original film, aside from a specific scene in which Frank tears the scalp from the skull of a hogtied older woman. That moment was nice and mean and fairly realistic looking.

To sum it up, "Maniac '12" is a pretty ineffective remake, considering it made huge attempts to showcase some potentially innovative tactics. If I were to judge it on it's own merits - omitting the "remake" stigma - I would say that "Maniac" is just alright. Not the worst thing I've ever seen, but far from the perverse, gritty, sleazy, mean-spirited Lustig flick.

Room 237 (2012, Rodney Ascher)

About a month ago I reviewed a little documentary on the 'unknown' called "Angel, Alien and UFO Encounters from Another Dimension". There is no direct relation between that film and "Room 237", as far as I know of, though I just found it somewhat interesting that these last two docs I have seen have been a few of the most vacuous and audaciously REACHING "hunt for the truth" themed keynote breakdowns I have ever witnessed. This one is a tad more watchable than "Angel, Alien and UFO Encounters", though it still left me grinding my teeth and emitting audible "Ugh!" noises throughout the majority of it's unnecessarily long run-time...

What "Room 237" does - or TRIES to do - is provide an analytical thesis on Stanley Kubrick's supernatural horror masterpiece, "The Shining", and point out some of the alleged subliminal messages and meanings peppered in throughout the film. A panel of... "experts" (?) were assembled - via shitty home-made audio recordings - to supply their interpretations on a number of ridiculous speculations surrounding Kubrick's intentions with the supposedly symbolic detail around the Overlook Hotel set, in terms of the disappearing/moving furniture between shots, the often impossible layout of the hotel's hallways and rooms, the Native American decor and references to the Holocaust and the Apollo 11 moon landing.

There's some obviously undeniable and interestingly enigmatic characteristics of the film that many would just chalk up to as your run-of-the-mill flaws, though it is these people's belief that Kubrick was way too meticulous of a film-maker to overlook some glaringly obvious things such as Stewart Ullman's 'impossible' office window and the disappearing chair behind Jack as he yells at Wendy about being distracted from his writing. These might have been on purpose. I don't rightly know, but when these dipshits start babbling about Kubrick's involvement in the faking of the Apollo moon landing footage is when I completely tune out. I've heard this shit before and I don't buy it. Then, at one point, one of these idiots starts playing the film forward and backward, simultaneously, in some kinda cross-dissolve form. He then proceeds to point out how at certain points in this retarded 'sequence' of rolling the film, things tend to match up in a peculiar and interesting way. Dark Side of the Moon and "The Wizard of Oz"... maybe. "The Shining" forward and backward... no. These desperate, over-analyzing assholes are truly an irritating bunch. The same kind of nuts who swear they see Christ's face burned into their grilled cheese sandwich or that a ripple in the water is an elusive, prehistoric creature.

Also, just the quality of this flick is annoyingly terrible. The people involved in the analysis seem unprepared most of the time and do an all-around shitty job of convincing the viewer of any of this stupid bullshit. At one point, when one of these guys is babbling about what the Torrence's suitcases represent or whatever the fuck, his baby starts yelling in the other room and he has to go tend to it. And they DON'T even edit this out!! They just pause the scene!

If you're curious at ALL about ay possible cryptic material that may be contained within Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", there is a pretty interesting 21-chapter assessment written by Rob Ager that you can find online. It's often far-reaching as well, but it has a lot more of an intelligent rundown of some more believable possibilities than what was featured in this moronic film, which runs WAY too long and gets extremely repetitive. This is just another lousy documentary that should only be watched if you need something completely ridiculous to laugh at.

The Lords of Salem (2013, Rob Zombie)

I'm not one of the Rob Zombie haters. I've dug his films since "House of 1000 Corpses" up to his "re-envisioning" of John Carpenter's "Halloween", which I also didn't mind. Sorry. However, I could see why people hated his dogshit sequel, of course... Anyways, following that incredibly phoned-in mess of putrid Weinstein vomit called "Halloween 2", I was a bit eager to see what Zombie would come up with next, since it was apparent he was going to detach himself from the overbearing Hollywood studio system for his next feature. Then, "The Lords of Salem" started getting mentioned and put on hold and teased and all the other uncertain bullshit and I awaited with relatively high hopes... So, how is it? Fucking disappointing.

First off - here's a plot synopsis: a small time Salem radio DJ, named Heidi, receives a mysterious wooden box containing a record labeled The Lords. Her and her radio partners play it on the air a few times, as well as in private and each time, she reacts strangely to it - eventually going off the deep end and experiencing strange visions and demonic nightmares. She eventually gets mixed up with a coven of old witches - one of whom happens to be her landlord. As this goes on, a Salem writer who was on the radio show as a guest when the annoying Lords song first played, attempts to figure out it's origins in connection with the DJ...

What really sucks is that "The Lords of Salem" had SO much potential and should've been pretty fucking cool considering this overall COOL idea! Problem is, it's NOT. It's actually incredibly boring, desultory and hollow looking/feeling. I guess what it really comes down to is that Rob Zombie CAN direct, but seeing him shift from his usual brand of white-trash, violent serial killer-themed shit, to a more subtle, 'spooky' and... I guess, more MATURE style of film just didn't 'hit' this time around. I was actually onboard early on when I saw what Zombie was doing. More supernatural-ish looking scenes with obvious inspiration derived from "The Shining". That's all fine and I didn't mind what I saw, even though it was more 'traditional' horror elements. Then, the film seemed to lose sight of all of this when Heidi starts having her bad dreams every 5 seconds. I was really getting tired of seeing her wake up startled... When the modern day witches come into play was when shit REALLY got laughable (Dee Wallace saying "cunt" was alright, though) and they introduce, what I assumed to be, 'the devil' and... Holy shit... This fucking thing had me giggling like a lunatic for the rest of the movie! It was like a fucking misshapen midget-baby with a potbelly and tentacles! Absolutely terrible! And I was at least expecting Rob Zombie to really NAIL IT with the outrageous and macabre imagery with this flick and that shit fails on top of the plot being completely shallow and directionless. Hell, people will probably want to burn ME at the stake for saying this, but I thought he did a much better job of combining whacked out, morbid, Satanic visuals to a plot with "House of 1000 Corpses" then with this! Again, I saw what he was trying to do with "Lords" and I still really think he is capable of coming up with a really powerful and crazy surrealist horror film with a more 'arthouse' aesthetic like this, but he needs a bit more focus on fitting it all together WITH a storyline without it falling apart like it did here. And, perhaps, a better lead than Sheri Moon Zombie. This broad cannot carry a film...

So, yeah. It appears that Zombie is on the decline when it comes to quality. He's certainly not doing a great job of showing much versatility outside of his usual cinematic earmarks that tend to include copious amounts of foul-mouthed redneckery and harsh violence; all of which, "The Lords of Salem" lacks. I wouldn't mind that at all if it was, at this point, possible for him to make a decent film without all of that. Doesn't seem to be the case. Still, you can always tell it's a Rob Zombie film because every wall has a skull spray painted on it...