Evil Dead (2013)

Directed by: Fede Alvarez

Writers: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues

 

Will you look at that poster? Just look at it. Try to spot the name of the movie. Not easy, huh? Yes, it's down there, written in a rather tiny font compared to ALL THE PRAISE IN CAPITAL LETTERS that takes the whole damn upper half. See, this crap pisses me off. This movie is neither astonishing, nor awesome, nor near perfect. At best, it's bearable. Isn't there some kind of punishment for false advertising?

When it comes to horror remakes, there seems to be a tradition to only retain the original story, while stripping off everything else that gives soul to the movie. For example, the remake of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water didn't contain any of the scary scenes, effectively turning it into some kind of supernatural psychological drama instead of a ghost horror. The movie was still good, but completely different. The remake of Shutter, which happens to be one of the scariest movies ever made, also ripped off all the horror scenes, effectively turning it into a completely unwatchable piece of crap. And here?

First of all, all the characters are idiots. There's a junkie, her brother, a nerdy guy with glasses, a black nurse and some blonde. Their mission is to help the junkie one get off the drugs, by keeping her completely isolated in the wilderness. Can't see how that can go wrong. The junkie's brother has some kind of guilt trip, he wasn't present when his mother was dying, so his junkie sister is pissed off at him. I mean, come on, bitch! Leave this crap to Edward Burns! Screw you and screw your personal problems!

Fortunately, all that is thrown aside when the nerdy guy reads aloud from Necronomicon and summons some evil demon, who promptly takes possession of the junky girl. But here another problem immediately steps in - the junkie girl starts seeing a scary ghost-like being (that happens to be a witch of some kind who was killed in the prologue). She informs the others, but guess what - they don't believe her (!). Would you believe a stupid story like this, coming from someone with abstinence crisis? Of course not. But the problem I'm trying to mention is that these apparitions are completely unnecessary - is this the remake of The Evil Dead or Ringu???

As crap keeps happening, the movie throws at us more and more unnecessary references to some legendary horror films, mostly The Exorcist and the aforementioned Ringu. OK, Fede, we get it! You watched some classic movies! Good for you! Fortunately, while we don't care about characters one bit (the lead guy, the junkie girl's brother, is so insanely irritating that I can't even begin to describe it), the way they hurt themselves and others is more often than not really violent. There are chainsaws, nail guns, limbs chopped off, self-mutilation, all that with buckets of gore and it really looks good. But it would've been even better if the scenes were brighter. I'm not saying the movie is frustratingly dark - we do see quite enough, but when it comes to gore, it's the more the merrier.

The screenplay sucks, with all that drama mumbo-jumbo and the unnecessary witch (or whatever) subplot, but that's partially corrected by Alvarez's competent direction that provides some rather nice images, not only the gory ones, but also the views of the cabin, surrounding forest, etc. However, the movie commits the mortal sin of disrespecting the two key scenes from the original. The legendary rape scene is technically present, but it's turned into something completely different that barely bears (hehe) any relation. And the wonderful scene with cards is completely absent! Who in their right mind would remake The Evil Dead and leave out the most wonderful scene, that in my opinion (and I'm certain I'm not alone in this) is one of the top 10 scenes in any horror movie? And they also left out the "the" in the title.

If this movie had any other name, I would have gladly concentrated on its superiority to the majority of recent horror movies. This way, it's a remake of something that's vastly superior in every possible way, and that has to be taken into account.

When you watch the movie (and I recommend you do that, despite all I've said before), make sure to watch the credits all the way. You'll get a pleasant surprise.



Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Directed by: Richard Raaphorst

Writers: Chris W. Mitchell, Miguel Tejada-Flores, Richard Raaphorst (original idea)

At first I was very skeptical about this movie - at least 95% of found footage films are pure crap. This lasted until the first monster appeared, when I thought "Hey, actually this doesn't look so bad!". After that came a "Wow!" and then another one and another one and this lasted to the very end.

 

The story follows a group of Russian soldiers, who face some really horrifying Nazi monsters in Eastern Germany towards the end of the second world war. The ever decreasing group of (anti)heroes stumbles upon a secret Nazi lab, where they find the explanation for the monsters' existence. Of course, one of the soldiers carries a camera and records everything.

 

As usual, the film gains nothing from being made in found footage style. The atmosphere is not improved one bit, while at the same time it imposes severe limitations on the narrative. Found footage films generally suffer from the "let's film everything even though we're dying left and right" and this one is no exception. The excuses the characters make to keep filming get progressively stupid. At the same time, it appears that monsters never attempt to attack the person holding the camera.

 

I also didn't like the portrayal of the soldiers. The film seems almost decidedly anti-Russian, so there are no sympathetic characters here. Everyone's either a murderer or simply insane or generally doesn't give a damn about anything. The identification with the protagonists is absolutely essential for this type of film, and yet they fail over and over again. Given this fact, some plot twists that follow (related to the identity and secret plans of some of the group members) have minimal to no impact. It's also interesting that none of the group members are played by actual Russians, so you can imagine what their accents sound like.

 

Having said all this, the movie simply wipes out all this weak points with its complete and utter coolness. You simply won't believe what kind of screwed-up creatures you're about to see here. I won't even attempt to describe them, my English is not good enough, though I suspect much better writers than me would have problems with that. The picture on the poster gives you some idea. Then, there's almost no CGI here, everything is done with the good old make-up effects. All those insane monsters, streams of blood flowing around, piled-up dead bodies, dirty old secret labs, mutilations, it's all real (so to speak). With all its drawbacks regarding the story and screenplay, visually this is a stunning work and deserves to be seen on a screen as big as possible. Thumbs up!

V/H/S 2 (2013)

Directed by: See below

Writers:  See below

 

The first V/H/S movie was pretty much a disappointment, at least given the names of some of the people involved. However, due to its anthological nature, it never got really boring, so I can't say watching it was a waste of time. Something similar goes for the sequel, but the quality of the stories varies much more here. Since there are only four stories (compared to 26 in The ABCs of Death), we'll look into each one of them briefly:

TAPE 49
(Written and directed by Simon Barrett)

The one that connects them all. Some people get into some house (which might or might not be the one from the first V/H/S, I don't remember), find some tapes and watch them. At the same time, we are made aware that something sinister is happening in the house, leading to a "shocking" twist at the end. Boring.

PHASE I CLINICAL TRIALS
(Directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett)

A filthy rich guy (played by Adam Wingard himself) gets a supercool fancy eye-camera implant, which unfortunately makes him see dead people (Haley Joel Osment, eat your heart out). He spends most of the time running around completely terrified after a huge number of jump scares, which creates some pretty funny moments. Then he's visited by a girl who hears dead people. And then bad stuff happens. This one is told completely in the first person POV, has some nice humor in it, so I guess I'd call it not bad.

A RIDE IN THE PARK
(Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, written by Jamie Nash)

A guy goes for a nice bike ride in the park, only to fall victim to some zombies. He then wakes up as a zombie, forms a zombie party with some other guys and together they crash some child's birthday party. This one is also rather funny at times and it's interesting to see the events from a perspective of a zombie (the lead character has a camera on his helmet), however it drags in places and the birthday party chaos is not nearly as effective as it could have been.

SAFE HAVEN
(Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, story by Timo Tjahjanto)

By far the best story in the movie is also one of the most insane things I've seen in a long time. A film crew somewhere in Indonesia is making a documentary about a mysterious end-of-the-world sect, led by some obviously insane bastard. First they interview that insane bastard in a café or something, where he gives them a piece of his philosophy and then they persuade him to let them visit the place where his followers abide. Big mistake! After a somewhat slow intro, this quickly turns into a bloodbath of epic proportions, where randomly crazy stuff happens every few seconds. None of it makes much sense, but I guess the directors weren't exactly concerned about that - they wanted to give us a hilarious thrill ride, and boy did they succeed! This story was co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, the director of the mightily successful Raid, and I'm so glad he gave a shot at directing a horror. Let's hope he does a full feature one after Raid 2.

SLUMBER PARTY ALIEN ABDUCTION
(Directed by Jason Eisener, written by Jason Eisener and John Davies)

Some kids are playing pranks on each other and then they are attacked by aliens and everything goes to Hell. The stupidest and most boring story of them all, it consists solely of irritating kids screaming "Oh my God, did you see that, what is that, we're gonna die, woe are us!!!!!" and pointlessly running around trying to escape some equally boring aliens. I don't know why in the heck did they put this one at the end, to ruin the entire impression. Jason Eisener had previously made a great little short called Treevenge, which had a terrific idea and execution, which makes the complete lack of imagination in this one even more surprising. 

Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers:  Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

The third part of the best trilogy in the world picks up right where the previous one left off. The survivors from the roof finally manage to get into the jail and they meet another charismatic hero who promptly takes the lead. Their troubles are far from over, however. However strong the monsters, there's always a way to hurt them. But there's no defense from two insane and sadistic screenwriters who take every single opportunity to bring pain and misery to the group.

 

Feast III again brings the spirit of the second part, meaning - more humor and even more gruesome deaths than in the first part, but far less star power and a weaker overall look, especially when it comes to monsters. Of course, when you are enjoying the heck out of it with your friends, you'll hardly pay attention to it.

 

This part brings some more "heroes", most prominently a young martial artist called Jean-Claude Seagal (I kid you not) who spends most of his screen time with the Bartender, which doesn't have a good effect on his health. Their scenes are hilarious, particularly the now legendary Rambo III scene. Other characters also bring their share of fun, but I won't describe any of it lest I spoil it for you. If you liked Feast 2, there's absolutely no way you won't like this one. To freshen things up a bit, apart from the monsters we loved in the first two parts, the survivors also run into some kind of zombies.

 

I have only two small objections here. First, the movie is too short. Barely over an hour for something this good, that's simply unacceptable. Second, a large part of the movie takes place in the sewers and it's very claustrophobic and poorly lit, so most of the time you have no idea what's going on, which takes all the fun out of people dying. Okay, it's not that bad, you get used to it quickly, but still the second part was much brighter and cleaner (in terms of visibility, not the content).

 

We finish the story of this amazing series with one of my favorite quotes ever:

"You only need legs to kick ass, baby boy!"

Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

 

Feast II takes place right after the first part, in which, as we remember, a group of bar patrons was assaulted and pretty much wiped out by some disgusting monsters of unknown origin. To give a quick reminder, the only survivors were Honey Pie, who screwed the others by stealing the truck that was meant to be used as a means for escape, and the group who bravely fought the invaders throughout the night - Bozo, Tuffy and Hot Wheels. Unfortunately, we don't see those latter three in this sequel, so their destiny remains a mystery. Generally, Feast II is a bit short on stars, but that's perfectly OK, since deep characterization isn't exactly the point of the whole thing.

 

Biker Queen (Diane Ayala Goldner) arrives in the vicinity in the search for her sister Harley Mom. Unfortunately, we'll remember that she was earlier blown up by Bozo (Balthazar Getty), so the only part of her that Biker Queen discovers is a severed hand. Harley Mom was also played by Diane Goldner, but since she's John Gulager's wife, it would be a shame if she didn't appear again, so she got a new (but essentially the same) part. Instead of her sister, she discovers the Bartender, who also died in the first movie, but since it's Clu Gulager (John Gulager's father), it turns out he was only heavily wounded. He informs the Biker Queen about what happened to her sister, so she and her gang tie him up and they all set out for a small neighboring town of Smalltown so she can find Bozo and wreak horrible vengeance of him.

 

Smalltown is in the meantime completely devastated by the monsters and there are only a handful of survivors. By chance, the gang runs into none other than Honey Pie, so it's the Bartender who gets the first opportunity for revenge. He immediately starts beating the hell out of her and he bites her ear off. Then the gang shoots some other people and are finally united with the other survivors, who are an even more colourful bunch than the one from the previous film. They include Slasher, a used cars salesman and one of the most entertaining characters in the series, Secrets, his cheating wife, Greg Swank (her lover, played by Tom Gulager, John Gulager's brother), Thunder and Lightning, the midget wrestlers and the owners of the local key shop, their grandmother and some other minor characters. Throughout the movie, the group tries to reach the only safe place in town and that's the jail. However, they can't reach it because of the monsters, and besides an old drunk has locked himself in and won't let anyone inside.

 

Feast II is certainly an acquired distaste (I almost said taste). While the first part wasn't exactly shy about gross outs, the sequel takes things to a whole new level by introducing such beauties and monster raping a cat, a dissection scene with monster fluids of various kind flowing everywhere, another child being explicitly eaten, a dwarf cut in half whining about his penis being cut off, a decomposing elderly lady and the infamous catapult scene which I won't spoil, but it's certainly one of the most insane and disturbing things you've seen in your life, and yet at the same time so hilarious that you'll spend almost the whole time rolling on the floor with laughter and hating yourself at the same time because there's nothing funny about it. Yeah, right!

 

The best thing about Feast II is the complete disregard for human existence. While there was some teamwork in the first part, here it's almost nonexistent. Slasher is perfectly happy to throw Greg to the monsters, not as a means of escape, but simply for revenge. Greg at first tries to save an infant trapped in a car, but then he throws it in the air and runs off while monsters eat the baby. At the end of the "successful" test of the catapult (resulting in the death of the midget grandma), Slasher sings and dances. The whole group simply throws an injured biker girl to the monsters, et cetera. This is precisely the reason why people who should know better dismiss it as being "poorly written", "having undeveloped characters", "not being scary" and similar crap, completely missing the point of the whole thing.

 

And the point is to be entertained while watching people suffer and dying. Well, not exactly "people", the characters here are one-dimensional caricatures, and that's the way we love it. They are not likable and we are not supposed to feel any kind of connection to any of them or to root for them. They are simply there to die and amuse us. And their deaths are unpredictable and almost without exception hilariously funny. Some are the result of the work of the monsters, some happen by pure accidents and sloppiness and there's also a handful of scenes of people killing other people. It doesn't make sense to talk about "leading" and "supporting" characters in the traditional sense because literally anyone could be dead at any minute. This whole series is notorious for its violence and monster bodily fluids, but for me it's this total disrespect for our fellow man (both by the writers and the characters in the film) that makes it so unique. This could have been made with far less explicit violence, maybe even without the monsters, and it would still retain its charm.

 

Sloppy Seconds is not as claustrophobic as the first movie. While the main theme is similar (some people locked in some place, fending off the monsters), it has more locations and more outdoor scenes, which is a welcome change.

 

If you are lucky and still haven't seen this film (provided that you love horror and comedy and are a bit crazy), do yourself a favor and assemble a group of equally bloodthirsty friends and enjoy like you've never enjoyed before.

 

A few words about the DVD. Unlike the previous one, this one is seriously lacking in extra material. The subtitles are missing again, and there are only a two short featurettes - the 10 minute making of, which is quite informative and entertaining, but obviously rather short, and the five minute "Meet the Gulagers", which is a nice look at the way the three generations of Gulagers appear in the movie. John is the director, his father Clu, wife Diana and brother Tom play some of the "lead" roles (put in quotes because of... just read one of the earlier paragraphs, dammit!) and the baby that meets an unfortunate demise at the hands of that bastard Greg is none other than Tom Gulager's infant son. So it all gives quite a funny perspective on some of the events - like Diana Goldner beating her father-in-law, or Tom Gulager throwing his own son to the monsters.

 

Feast II and Feast III were shot back-to-back and in fact pretty much constitute one movie, which was split into two simply for the running time. So, unlike the first part, this one ends more abruptly than the Lord of the Rings movies. Since it's in essence just one movie, everything I said for the second part also goes for the third part, so I hope its review won't be this long and boring. Over and out.

Feast (2006)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

Disclaimer: If you're expecting an objective review of this movie, you came to the wrong place. Feast (the whole series) is one of my favorite things ever and I love it to death. Every single second of each of the three movies. Okay, almost every single second (we'll come to that later). I pity people who are unable to enjoy it, because in this world there's nothing like Feast, never was and probably never will be, unless by some miracle we get Feast IV, and chances for that are really slim, seeing as how Dimension screwed up the Piranha franchise. Oh, well...

 

Now that we got that out of the way, what's this thing about, anyway? The plot is the simplest possible - patrons in a bar in a middle of nowhere are forced to fight off the invasion of some horrifying man-eating monsters of unknown origin (which is, strangely, explained in the trailer, but not in the movie). The bastards are fast, strong, ugly, extremely hard to kill and show zero regard for human life. This last thing also goes for some of the humans.

 

Surely, we have seen similar stories before, but its treatment is what elevates Feast and its sequels to the level of a masterpiece of modern cinema (note that I'm not saying "in my opinion". Feast is a masterpiece, it's a fact of life and people who think otherwise are simply wrong.) Basically, it all boils down one main thing: This is a perfect combination of horror and comedy and it succeeds where its more famous predecessors like An American Werewolf in London and Shaun of the Dead failed.

 

Simply put, this is the way to do it. An American Werewolf in London has some masterfully directed horror scenes (the beginning in the woods, that amazing subway sequence which makes you shiver, etc.), but it also has comedy (the porno movie scene, for example) which takes a lot of the impact of the horror scenes, so we end up with a movie that's too scary to be a comedy and too funny to be a horror. Similarly, Shaun of the Dead, even though it has zombies, is essentially a drama with some elements of comedy and horror, which are again clearly separated. For me this simply doesn't work (I'm one of the minority that prefers The Howling to An American Werewolf and I've never been a big fan of Shaun). If you already have great horror scenes, why downgrade them with comedy instead of making a pure horror? I think the real horror-comedy is just like a regular comedy, except it's too gruesome for you to show it to your grandmother. It has to have the same tone from the beginning to the end, where the comedy and horror scenes are not separated, but the comedy is contained in horror. So, the goal is not to have a scary scene where a werewolf kills a guy and then a funny scene where someone is telling a joke in a bar - you're supposed to have a funny scene where a werewolf kills a guy.

 

And Feast is that movie! It's a pure comedy from start to finish, and quite original at that. Right at the beginning we get a supercool infodump where each of the characters is introduced by an onscreen title, stating his or her name (or, rather, nickname), some fun fact and life expectancy. The real fun begins when we meet The Hero - he's handsome (I guess), charismatic, immediately takes the leadership, organizes the defense, gives orders and his life expectancy is, quote, "pretty f***ing good". And he dies two minutes later! So we are left with a leaderless motley crew of seemingly completely incapable losers and there's more than 80 minutes of the movie left! So right from the beginning you are aware that you're watching something different.

 

The non-stop fun here comes mainly from the movie's unpredictability. Melton and Dunstan simply avoided all clichés in their screenplay and in some scenes they made deliberate fun of them. For example, in all movies of this type (where a group of different people are forced to unite in a fight against a stronger enemy) there has to be a scene where someone takes the spotlight and starts to talk about working together, helping each other and similar crap. Here, Henry Rollins has the honor of having the opportunity to give an emotionally charged motivational speech to the others (all while he's wearing pink underpants) and while he encourages them, one guy rolls his eyes and Balthazar Getty simply asks "Are you gay?". This is just one example and the movie's full of them. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about, and if not - take my word for it, because I'm not spoiling more than necessary. Anyway, the fact that you simply have no idea who's going to die next and that everyone is primarily thinking of saving his (or her) own ass is a source of almost endless fun.

 

In addition to having brilliant and unpredictable characters, Feast is also a truly action packed movie. I've said that the monsters are deadly, so survival is the primary (and only) goal. Finally we have a film without stupid drama and stupid romances and big speeches and similar crap that almost always pops up and ruins everything. Not here. If the characters are not dying (which is pretty often), they are arguing with each other and making plans for the action, so we don't know who lost their father in Vietnam and who was left by their boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife etc. - and we don't care! We only want to see another horrifying death (man or monster, it doesn't matter) and the movie flawlessly delivers. In short, watching people die has never been this fun (except in Feast 2 and 3).

 

Another thing where Feast is different than (most of) the other horror films is its gruesomeness. It's not just that the monsters are eating people, crushing their heads, tearing off the limbs, et cetera - there are other things that will make you think "Now did I just see THAT?". Just one example is when people in the bar decide to show one of the monsters they've killed to other monsters, to demonstrate the human superiority (another brilliant idea by Henry Rollins). So, what do the other monsters do? Naturally, they eat the body and immediately proceed to have monster sex, resulting in another small monster a few minutes later. Some of the things they do to people are even worse (for example, I could live without the head rape scene, but this "could / could not / live without this or that" discussion will be an important part of my upcoming review of Feast 2, so I won't elaborate further here).

 

John Gulager's direction perfectly fits Melton's and Dunstan's screenplay. The pace is extremely fast, the camera frantically flies all over, but manages to catch everything important (makers of found footage films, take note!) and it doesn't shy away from violence. If there's a scene where a head is supposed to be crushed, we see a head being crushed. When a heroine is beating a trapped monster's head, we see monster teeth flying all around. Nothing is left to our imagination and I'm grateful for that. Speaking of monsters, we get the opportunity to see them in full glory and they are really well made and horrifyingly ugly, thanks to some great make-up work by Gary J. Tunnicliffe.

 

Feast, while being innovative, original and unprecedentedly disgusting,  still retained some conventional storytelling elements (for example, most of the characters are not completely insane), which proved to be a winning combination for most horror fans. It's rightfully considered a cult classic now. However, the sequels inexplicably managed to surpass it in insanity, so I enjoyed them even more (!). They will be reviewed here shortly and at the end of the review for Feast 3 I'll bitch a bit about the wasted potential of the Piranha series (I'm not exactly sure what does that have to do with Feast, but it crossed my mind, so...)

 

Just a quick note about the DVD - it contains about 40 minutes of additional material, including deleted scenes, outtakes, the making of feature and some interviews. John Gulager, Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton (who's very thin and looks like a total nerd, just like me, hahaha! :-) ) and some of the producers offer some interesting information about how the movie was conceived and realized, but my favorite part is the interview with Gary J. Tunnicliffe, the mastermind who designed the monsters (and even played one of them). He's a really funny English guy, totally interesting to listen to. Look for the funny story about the way he told his father that he wanted to do make-up. If you're one of the two regular visitors of this blog, you might remember him as a co-writer and co-director of the horribly bad movie called Megalodon . Fortunately, his special effects are spot-on.

 

Anyway, this movie is brilliant. Get it. Seriously.

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura

Writers: Shungicu Ushida (manga), Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Yoshihiro Nishimura has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw the wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. I definitely prefer him to his colleague Noboru Iguchi, who (with the exception of The Machine Girl, which I loved) reaches for vulgar toilet humor too often, and besides, in my opinion, he harbours a bit unhealthy obsession with human ass.

 

Strictly speaking, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is primarily a Naoyuki Tomomatsu movie, but Nishimura is credited as a co-director and he also did the special effects, so he had a huge influence on the visual side of the movie, if not for the story. Speaking of Tomomatsu, his name wasn't familiar to me before, but after this movie I'll give him a chance, though titles like Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead and Eating Schoolgirls don't promise something that would be my cup of tea.

 

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is a successful J-sploitation splatterfest, which works simply because it's so damn entertaining. If you've seen any of Nishimura's films, you'll promptly find yourself on familiar ground when some cheerful pop music starts to play while fountains of blood flow and severed body parts fly around in slow-motion.

 

Basically, it's a story of a high-school love triangle, where a poor young boy called Jyugon is sandwiched between Keiko, the vice principal's daughter and (I guess) the most popular girl at school, and Monami, an extremely cute newcomer with mysterious background, with both of them wanting him to be their boyfriend forever. So, why the hell did I just call him "poor"? Well, for one, Monami is a vampire and wants to turn him into one, and Keiko is a bitch, at least at the beginning. Then she dies, is revived by her father (who, in his free time, is an insane Dr. Frankenstein wannabe) and turned into a horrifying cut-and-paste monster made of body parts stolen from different people. And she's still a bitch! Jyugon chooses the lesser of two evils, so he and Monami are forced to fight the disturbingly enhanced Keiko and her mad father throughout the rest of the movie.

 

As with other similar films, the plot is just there to serve as an excuse (heh, like we would need one) for hilarious over-the-top violence, body parts abuse and colourful characters which never get boring. To list everything would be impossible (not to mention undesirable), but some of the highlights are a wrist cut competition, a club of black wannabe girls (this alone in America would probably put the author in jail for a long time due to racism), vice principal who dresses like a witch doctor, inventive body part combinations (a severed arm used as a propeller, eyeballs instead of nipples, to mention just a few trivial examples) and of course endless mutilations whose crowd pleasing potential is immense.

 

It's recommended to see this in the company of your male friends, especially if you can pair it with a similar but longer film, like Nishimura's Helldriver. You can also play it to your girlfriend if you want to get dumped quickly. Whatever you do, don't miss it.

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Directed by: See the review

Writers: See above

You've all watched numerous films that consist of three (sometimes four) stories, but sure as heck you haven't seen twenty six different stories in one movie before! Apparently, some producer, whose name I forgot, came up with a brilliant idea to make some kind of horror alphabet - for each letter of the alphabet one short story whose title is a single word beginning with that letter. Each story was done by a different director - they were given only the letter and the title and of course the story were entirely up to them.

 

Good thing about this concept is that stories follow one another so rapidly that the movie hardly ever gets boring. The bad thing - well, it's not the fault of the concept, but the fact is that today it's hard to find twenty six (or even six) good horror directors to fill the space. Of course, it's impossible to please everyone - I could bitch about the absence of Alexandre Aja, David Bruckner, Marcus Dunstan, Darren Lynn Bousman, Hideo Nakata etc., but on the other hand I have to be pleased with the presence of Yoshihiro Nishimura and Ti West (even though he failed miserably). Even if some of them were present, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have failed miserably like Ti West.

 

OK, anyway, on to the movie itself. I won't even try to describe each story separately (I've forgotten most of them, anyway), so just a few general remarks: The quality in general is below average and the lack of good ideas is horrifying. There are no vampires, werewolves, Japanese long haired scary ghosts (even though at least four or five directors are Japanese), or even ghosts of any kind, no decent (post)apocalyptic story (even though the first one is titled A is for Apocalypse) etc. What have we instead? Two stories are actually meta-movies about their directors' lack of inspiration, at least three of them heavily feature toilets, one is about farting (directed, not surprisingly, by Noboru Iguchi), one contains masturbation competition (this one is actually well done, but it's sick beyond words), one about (and titled) orgasm, many other aren't even horror and... you get the idea. If "toilet humor" is an appropriate term to describe most of today's comedies, then "toilet horror" is sure fighting for its place in our favorite genre.

 

The style and quality vary considerably, there are "normal" stories, some of them are animated, one contains stop motion animation, some (like O is for Orgasm) are so heavily stylized that it's hard to tell what the hell's going on, some feature traditional Japanese bloodbath insanity, but it's all at best watchable and hardly anything will make you go "Wow!", except...

 

... for better or worse, there is a story called D is for Dogfight, directed by Marcel Sarmiento (previously known for Deadgirl, which was an OK movie with an interesting idea, but not terribly spectacular), which is so above everything else story-wise and execution-wise that it's simply unbelievable. It's like putting Akira Kurosawa next to Kevin Smith. The story is about some guy, obviously a prisoner of some kind, who is forced to fight with a particularly vicious dog. Some nasty people are watching, placing bets, etc. So, the fight starts, the dog is biting the man, the man is hitting the dog, you know, standard stuff, and then... something clicks between the two of them and we have what's pretty damn close to a best ending ever. I was literally overwhelmed with joy and wanted to kiss Sarmiento (in a totally non-gay way, of course) on the forehead. Story aside, you simply won't believe how well this was made. Shot almost entirely in slow motion, it features probably the most realistic man-animal fight scenes ever, with close-ups of dogs teeth biting the man's flesh, but also of the dog's head being hit by the man, all of which will probably make you extremely uncomfortable for all the right reasons. Moreover, without a single spoken word, the story will make you feel sympathy for both the man and the dog, which makes the ending even more brilliant.

 

So, what's the problem? Well, the stories go in alphabetic order, so this one is the fourth from the beginning. That means that after something that's probably one of the best short movies ever made, something so seriously and professionally devised and executed, after that glimpse of brilliance you have to sit through twenty two mostly lame half-assed uninspired attempts. It would have been better if Sarmiento hadn't been there to remind us what the true greatness looks like.