Last Blog On The Left

Ever noticed that the business of robbing graves and selling corpses can be a grim one? Forget Wall Street or advertising, kids, this is where the real backstabbing takes place. So if you´re currently in high school or college and considering dropping out to start your own grave robbing business: don´t do it! Stay in school, kids! And stay off the drugs, as well. That shit will fuck you up. However, if you´ve already made your mind up and have your heart set on being a grave robber despite my warnings, you might as well start in on the drugs, too. Trust me, you´re gonna need it. The world can be a cruel place for a grave robber. Just ask Larry Fessenden.

There are a couple of horror movie directors out there today who are truly interesting, who make movies that really manages to transcend genres, in order to create something extraordinary. Larry Fessenden is one of these directors. He´s made a couple of pretty great flicks, including his take on vampirism “Habit”, the ecological cautionary tale “The Last Winter” and the magnificent “Wendigo”. I really like this guy. He keeps making interesting films within the horror genre, movies that are squarely aimed at an adult audience and that doesn´t treat the audience as retarded ten year old. We need more of that in today´s day and age. The fact that he´s missing one of his front teeth and appears to refuse to have it replaced deserves some credit, as well. But you see, the thing that really makes this Fessenden guy such a cool cat is because he´s founded his own company, Glasseye Pix, and they´re responsible for some pretty cool independent flicks over these last couple of years. They released Ti West´s “Trigger Man” and “The Roost” as well as Douglas Buck´s “Sisters”. Not only that, Fessenden also acts as well! You might remember him as the guy who robbed the convenience store in Jodie Foster´s ode to Charles Bronson “The Brave One” or as the redneck who knocks out Bill Murray in “Broken Flowers”. In other words: Fessenden knows his shit!

And it´s in the form of an actor I wanna talk about him today. You see, he has one of the leads in “I Sell The Dead” and it´s a role tailor made for him. Fessenden plays Willie, who has quite a successful business peddling corpses to the local doctors and scientists. His partner in crime is Arthur Blake (played by Dominic Monaghan). Unfortunately, justice has catched up with them and on the eve of Arthur´s execution, we get to hear his life story as he confesses to Father Francis Duffy (played by Ron Perlman).

The first thing that “I Sell the Dead” has going for it is its title. I mean, just say it out loud: “I… Sell… The… Dead!” It rolls pretty nicely on the tongue, doesn´t it? A movie with a title like that can´t be all bad.

Anyway, guess what: Fessenden´s name continues to be a guarantee for quality. I think he´s proven himself enough now. Let´s face it, horror fans: if Fessenden´s name is attached to it, the movie is worth catching. I´m not saying that this particular one is a masterpiece but writer-director Glenn McQuaid has managed to create a solid, little horror comedy. One of the things that I like about it is that McQuaid seem to know his limitations and doesn´t outstay his welcome. It´s quite an entertaining flick that zips by and clocks in at around 85 minutes. God knows we need more of those today when every god damn director out there seem to think they´re the new James Cameron and seem hell bent on making every movie over two hours long! We need more 80 minutes-movies today! It´s as simple as that and this McQuaid fella seem to have realized that so I reckon he deserves some kudos for that.

He´s also managed to cast the movie perfectly. Fessenden and Monaghan makes for an entertaining screen couple and their banter works pretty well. It´s not like they´re the new Jack Lemmon and Walther Matthau but it works. He´s also got The Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm as a doctor in there and the fact that he has cast Ron Perlman as Father Duffy is close to genius. To see Ron Perlman in a robe again makes my heart sing. Remember “In The Name of the Rose”, anyone? I always say that if you can get Ron Perlman in your movie, you should! And if you can get Ron Perlman in a robe, you definitely should!

Now, this isn´t the kind of horror movie that´s out to genuinely frighten you, ok? This is McQuaid´s homage to the Hammer movies of the 60´s and it´s pretty impressive how he has managed to capture the feeling and the design of those movies. He didn´t save any money on the studio fog, if you know what I mean. The scenes in the graveyard comes across as a cross between “Sleepy Hollow” and “Re-Animator” and there´s a lot worse movies to be compared to, let me tell ya!

To be honest, it feels like McQuaid has taken certain elements from the movies that he loves and decided to create a movie around them: he´s got the black humor from the scenes in “Re-Animator” when Herbert and Dan are stealing the corpses from the mortuary, the fog drenched graveyards from the Hammer movies and the kind of rowdy tavern scenes that reminds you of “The Slaughtered Lamb”-scene from “An American Werewolf in London”. And I guess that it works. This isn´t the most original movie out there, but it is entertaining, but like so many other horror movies today it lacks that feeling of an original vision.

What McQuaid is doing is that he´s giving us his version of other films. This is beginning to be quite a problem among filmmakers, if you ask me, and especially when it comes to the horror genre. Whenever a new director comes along today, he has grown up with VCR´s, Laserdiscs and DVD´s and Internet and all the technology you can imagine, which means that kids who are into movies today are extremely cine-literate. I mean, they have all the information in the world and every movie ever made available through the internet which basically means that you can send yourself through film school without actually ever attending one. Just think of all the commentary tracks with directors on DVD´s! They´re a goldmine for a budding filmmaker but I think there´s a downside to this, as well. It´s because of this that there´s not that many original filmmakers out there today! They keep making the same movies over and over again or “their” version of another movie. Just ask Tarantino. Someone should set up some ground rules for horror directors so we can get some original work out there.

But you know, I don´t wanna sound like a bitter old man and complain too much about this movie because I really did like it! But sometimes tough love can be good for you, right? I hope that you can forgive me someday, Glenn McQuaid. Hey, I noticed that your first name is Glenn… What´s it like being named “Glenn”? In Sweden there´s this ongoing joke that everyone in Gothenburg (my hometown) are named Glenn but that´s not true. There are other names here as well. However, you do get a few laughs if your name happens to be Glenn for real and you are from Gothenburg. I guess that´s why I´m curious about what it´s like. I don´t know if you´re familiar with Glenn Danzig but he´s pretty cool. You should check him out. Maybe you could start a club or something…

Until next time: take scare!

Thomas

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 11:08 am and is filed under Comedy, Film, Horror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.