Last Blog On The Left

It´s been a while but I´m back and that´s all there is to it… Let´s get it on!

If I´m not mistaken, Stephen King is the now living author who has had most books adapted into films. That´s quite an achievement! Some of these films are pretty good, a few of them are magnificent and many of them downright suck… Another horror writer that I´ve been a fan of for a long time is Jack Ketchum. Most of the time he writes hardcore horror, filled with gore, brutality and twisted sexuality, inspired by true crime-cases. His books are not an easy read, most of the time. They are brutal and harrowing and probably one of the most brutal and captivating of his books are “The Girl Next Door”. This was inspired by a true case back in the 60´s and it has finally been turned into a film. I remember reading the book and I never in my wildest imagination thought that this could ever be turned into a film. But the times they are constantly a-changing and thanks to a couple of determined filmmakers, it was released on DVD earlier this year.

Make no mistake, this is a cruel movie. It deals with violence and sexual abuse. To make things even worse, it deals with sexual abuse perpetrated by children towards other children. It´s not an easy watch and it´s definitely not “torture”-porn (I hate that label). I can understand that some people absolutely hate this film. It´s not easy to sit through and it will definitely shake you up. If it doesn´t, you might wanna check your pulse. The real Sylvia Likens-case that the book was based on was even more brutal in reality and another film called “An American Crime”, based on that same case starring Catherine Keener, was also released last year. I haven´t seen that one yet but I will definitely check it out when it hits DVD. “The Girl Next Door” is one of those films that you really take a risk when you recommend it someone. It´s an excellent film but it´s not fun to watch. Some scenes are nearly unbearable. But that´s what horror is supposed to be all about, right? It´s supposed to challenge you, right? Well, this one does that and I urge you to see it, if you´re up for it.

So here you go all these years without a single Ketchum-adaptation and what happens? You get two in the same year. Anchor Bay recently released “The Lost” on DVD. This one was produced by Lucky McKee, which I´m a big fan of. His debut feature “May” is one of the greatest horror films of recent years. His friend Chris Sivertson took the directing reigns for this one and does a pretty impressive job. He surrounds himself with a perfect mix of newcomers and old seasoned acting pros, like Michael Bowen, Ed Lauter and Dee Wallace Stone. Newcomer Marc Senter does an excellent job bringing Ray Pye to life. Ray is a guy in his early twenties, stuck with a dead-end job, he can´t stand anything being denied him and he puts beer cans in his boots just to make him look taller. He also has sociopathic tendencies. Not the guy you wanna hang out with. But someone always does because after all, Ray is a pretty charismatic guy. Senter captures this perfectly. You can understand why some people are drawn to him. He´s a goofy, funny and charming kind of guy. Unfortunately, sometimes he erupts into brutal violence. That´s how the violence in this film is portrayed: brutal and realistic. It´s not funny and like “The Girl Next Door”, “The Lost” also packs a punch and I think it´s pretty safe to say that the ending will not leave you untouched. Director Sivertson also does a pretty impressive job hiding the fact that this film had an extremely low budget, from what I have read about the production. After this one, he directed the critically maligned “I Know Who Killed Me” starring Lindsay Lohan. I haven´t seen that one but I´ll definitely be keeping an eye to see what Sivertson will be up to, in the future.No one is happier than me for the fact that Ketchum adaptations finally have started gracing the silver screen. Later this year I´m looking forward to seeing McKee´s take on Ketchum´s “Red”.

Now if they could only get around to making a movie out of his inbred-cannibals-in-the-backwoods-magnum-opus “Off Season”… A book so over the top, so gory and so gloriously demented that it is released in an “uncut” version. That´s what I call a book!

All hail Jack Ketchum!

As you might have noticed, I like horror. I like horror films, I like horror books and I like horror punk. When it comes to horror, I´m there!

 But, when it comes to horror movies there are a lot of different subgenres, as I´m sure you are familiar with. We have the cannibal genre, the slasher movie, the torture porn and so on… It´s hard to keep up with all the different labels that are being slapped on horror films these days. I´ve mentioned earlier in this blog that I love the giant-monster-runs-amok-genre. It´s definitely a subgenre and I can find pleasure in even the most low budget installments in this genre. I think that this has to do with seeing “Jaws” as a very young boy. It left a mark, so to speak.

There is also another subgenre that I love just as much. It may be my favorite one, I´m not sure. The genre I´m talking about is the one that contains inbred hillbilly-cannibals in the backwoods. I can´t help it. I´m a sucker for these kinda movies.

I´m not sure why, but now that I think about it it´s pretty obvious that as much of a mark as “Jaws” (1975) left on my impressionable young mind, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) might´ve left an even bigger one. That is definitely one of my favorite films of all time and I don´t know how many times I´ve seen it. It still holds up. It´s still scary. I love the second one, too. It´s so outrageously over-the-top and gory that you can´t help but love it. When I was about fourteen years I devoted my life to getting my hands on an uncut copy of that movie. I hadn´t seen it. I had heard how insanely gory it was, so I refused to watch the cut version. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” (1986) was banned here in Sweden and let me tell you, fiends… That is the ultimate seal of approval for a fourteen year old horror freak! As a matter of fact, I guess it still is. Some things never change. Hell, I even like third one. Viggo Mortensen is hilarious and I think it´s demented enough to warrant its existence. When it comes to the fourth one, I´d rather not talk about it. I remember the expectations I had for that one and how they were brutally crushed and stomped into the ground. How we had chased that film. I mean, I think we were about sixteen years old when a friend of mine finally got a hold of a Japanese laserdisc (remember those?). It was too good to be true, a new “Texas Chainsaw…”! Finally! Too bad it sucked. Oh, how it sucked. The one good thing about it is Matthew McConaughey´s portrayal of Wilbur. The memory of that still makes me laugh. However, how bad “Texas Chainsaw 4″ may be, I still have the DVD in my shelf. Why? Cause I´m a sucker for inbred hillbilly cannibals in the backwoods, didn´t I tell you that? I can look at the DVD cover for a new film, and I know that it will probably be awful. Everyone who have seen it, says so. But you see, sometimes I just can´t help myself. If it has the words “inbred”, “mutants”, “cannibal” or “demented” on the cover that´s when the process of self delusion starts. I´ll start telling myself that “Maybe it´s not that bad… What the hell do my friends know anyway? I can´t trust them. I have to see it for myself! Damn straight, I´m gonna buy this one”. 

The last couple of years, there have been some pretty decent entries into the inbred cannibal family-genre. I really liked “Wrong Turn” (2003). I thought that movie had some of the best make-upp effects I´ve ever seen in a movie of this kind. The inbred family looked fantastic! More recently we got a sequel in the form of straight-to-DVD “Wrong Turn 2: Dead end” (2007). It wasn´t as good as the first one, but what it lacked in the story- and make-up-department it made up for in the gore-department. It´s perversely funny film, in a comic book-kind of way. We were also blessed with Alexandre Aja´s brilliant remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” (2006). And let´s not forget the remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (2003) and it´s prequel, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” (2006). Do I need to tell you that I liked both? “Savage Island” (2003) was a production with extremely low budget but it made up for that with some solid acting. I haven´t had the time to check out “Bloodlines” (2007) yet. It got torn to pieces in all its reviews but like I said, if the plot description contains the words “inbred” and “mutants”… 

So, what will the shape of things to come be in this glorious gory genre? Do we have anything to look forward to? I´m still hoping that they´ll make another “Chainsaw”. If they can churn out a new “Saw“-film every year, they oughtta be able to make one of these every now and then. R. Lee Ermey has to pay the bills, too. ”Timber Falls” (2007) is hitting DVD in May and it´s about, guess what? A couple of teenagers being terrorized by deranged locals. A while back Germany had the sense to finally issue a DVD of the fantastically underrated “Rituals” (1977), a Canadian spin on “Deliverance”… only much more brutal, gorier and better, if you ask me. But the one film that I´m really looking forward to right now, is the French “Frontiéres” (2007). It seems that good old US of A isn´t the only country in the world that produces inbred maniacs and for that I am forever grateful… 

The western genre has had a bit of a revival lately and I´m all for that. I loove the western genre. I thought that the last nail in its coffin was Clint Eastwood´s masterpiece “Unforgiven” (1992). I´m happy I was proven wrong. I liked “3:10 To Yuma” (2007) a lot. I haven´t seen “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (2007) yet, but I have high expectations. It also seems that the horror western (a genre that haven´t had nearly enough installments over the years) have risen from the grave. Albert Pyun directed his take on the genre, “Left For Dead” (2007) and a while back “The Quick and the Undead” (2006) was released. “Undead or Alive” (2007), starring Chris Kattan (!) also hit the shelves recently. I´ve only had the chance to see “Left For Dead” yet and I´m sorry to say that it was so utterly awful, so infernally bad that Ed Wood is spinning like a merry-go-round in his grave, as we speak. I have no illusions of these other films being any masterpieces but they cannot be any worse than Puyn´s incoherent mess of a film. However, I still have hopes for this genre. It hasn´t yet been used to its full potential. Apparently, Wesley Snipes has a zombie-western in the making, “Gallowwalker”, that´ll be released in 2009. Rumor has it that John Carpenter will direct an episode of Mick Garris new anthology-series “Fear Itself” and this is also supposed to be a horror western. If that doesn´t whet your appetite, maybe you´d better have your pulse checked. The thought of John Carpenter finally directing a western makes me tremble. I don´t care if it´s for television and that it´ll only be an hour long! Give this man some money to expand it to a feature, for God´s sake! Anyway, the reason I started ranting about this genre, is because I saw a very strange film tonight: “Sukiyaki Western Django” (2007), directed by the one and only Takashi Miike. I assume that you´re familiar with the demented genius that is Miike (and if not, watch “Audition” (1999), “City of the Lost Souls” (20000) and “Ichi The Killer” (2001) immediately) and I´ll try to lay it out for you: Akira Kurosawa directed “Yojimbo” way back when. That film served as inspiration for Sergio Leone when he decided to remake it as a western called “A Fistful of Dollars” in the 60´s and thus creating what we call the Spaghettiwestern. A couple of years later, Sergio Corbucci (who later went on to direct many of Terence Hill & Bud Spencer´s movies), made “Django” which is a classic Spaghetti western. It´s not as critically acclaimed as Leone´s films but just as good… and much more violent and that is never ever a bad thing! Now, Takashi Miike has remade the Italian “Django” in Japan (with Japanese actors speaking English) and it´s a pretty fun flick. It doesn´t reach the dizzying, demented heights of some of his previous films. Actually, for a Miike-film it´s pretty down-to-earth, if you can use that expression about a Japanese homage to the Spaghetti western genre… It still has some obvious Miike-touches like wild gunfights, homosexual cowboys and of course, he manages to include a rape. The only American actor in the film is one Quentin Tarantino and he´s actually pretty funny in this one. I don´t hate Tarantino as an actor, like so many among us do. I thought he was pretty funny in “Planet Terror” also. In “Sukiyaki Western Django” he gets to portray the wise man who trains a younger protégé.

As you might have guessed, this is all done very tongue-in-cheek. It´s a ridiculous, over-the-top, exaggerated, fun film and the story isn´t that important.  We´ve all seen it a thousand times before, but we´ve never seen the western genre filtered through Miike´s sense of style. I´ll tell you, I really enjoyed it. I wouldn´t be sorry of this jumpstarted a whole series of Japanese westerns. I would absolutely love that! Miike have done some horror movies in the past but he leaves those elements out of this one. This is a hilarious celebration to the Italian way of making westerns and if you get the chance, see it!

I guess that´s about it for today, but as long as we´re on the subject of western and horror movies… A forgotten, underrated gem in that genre is “Into The Badlands” (1991), starring Bruce Dern. If I remember correctly it was made for American cable. Check it out!

Stay ghoul, stay sick & stay in touch!

Hello, ghouls! 

I´ve been getting a lot of feedback from you, my dear readers, lately and I really appreciate it. It´s a lot of fun and I really enjoy hearing your take on things so keep ´em coming. Now, let me tell you what happened the other day…

 Some things in life are hard and some things in life can make you nostalgic and sad at the same time, right? There are a couple of things in life that you know you will never get the chance to experience again. It´s pretty rough when you realize that that time is over. For instance, you will never ever get the chance to experience what it´s like to fall in love for the first time again, right? That time is way over. Lately I´ve also come to realize that I will probably never hear music that will influence me in to the same extent as the Ramones or the Misfits. Some things pass and that´s the way of life. That doesn´t mean that it´s easy to come to terms with those facts. This weekend, another thing became brutally apparent to me. I sat down with an old friend to watch a horror movie. A B-movie, if you will. I knew that it was a B-movie. That was why we choose to watch it. Maybe you´ve seen it, It´s called “Megalodon” (2002) and it´s a straight-to-DVD-opus about the ancient, giant shark with the same name. Now, I love giant-monsters-on-the-rampage-movies. Especially if it´s about sea creatures. However, it became painfully clear to me, while watching this one that the age of enjoyable, watchable, monster B-flicks is over. I have nothing against CGI, if you have the budget to do it right. The thing about those old B-flicks that I loved to watch when I was younger was the fact that you know that it was a man in a suit or a model that got destroyed. The fact that someone had built that model of the town that got destroyed by Godzilla makes it a whole lot more fun that knowing that someone have been sitting in front of his computer and creating it. I have a real problem with the computer game-feeling you get nowadays when you watch a straight-to-DVD-movie.

I´ll give you an example to illustrate what I mean: Just imagine if you sat down to watch a movie like “Tremors” (1990), “Alligator” (1980) or “Humanoids From The Deep” (1980) and you realized after a couple of minutes that the giant worms and the alligator were computer generated? That would have destroyed much of those films charm. Hell, I´ll even watch “Alligator II: The Mutation” (1991) any day before I sit down to watch Tobe Hooper´s “Crocodile” (2000) again. To take another example, have anyone of you seen the recently released “Lake Placid 2″?  I liked the first one a lot, but I couldn´t even make it through the first half hour of this horrible sequel. CGI have killed one of my favorite genres, the straight-to-DVD-monster-movie! There´s no heart and soul in the CGI-effects. Just remember those awesome matte-paintings in a movie like “The Thing”? I know they´re probably a hell of a lot more time consuming to create but I don´t care. They look so much better. I have come to terms with a lot of things in my life but I´m not sure if this is something I´m ready to accept yet. I have accepted the fact that I´ll never become a teen idol and that my plans of living a life of decadence and fame won´t come true, but that´s ok! I´m ok with the fact that you grow old, sooner or later. What I am not ok with is the fact that CGI has managed to kill my child-like enthusiasm for the genre. Does this mean that I´ll never again sit down to watch a fun STDVD-monster movie? I hope not. If you have any recommendations of more recent installments in the genre, feel free to comment and let me know. Is it possible to get away with CGI-monsters? Will they ever evoke those feelings of joy that you felt when you were younger?

Stay ghoul, stay sick & stay in touch, fiends!