Rogue (2007)

The trick with doing a movie about a killer crocodile, alligator, shark or octopus is just to make sure the thing doesn’t look fake. There are a ton of these movies and, particularly with the croc/gator films, the monster usually looks like fifty dollars worth of latex being operated as a puppet off-screen. The Si-fi Channel has, in recent years, proven that computer generated aquatic monsters can look even faker than latex, which is probably vindication for those puppeteers. Finally, for the record, the best of these movies ever, in my opinion, is Alligator, with Robert Forrester and a gator that emerged from the sewers to eat a kid in a swimming pool, among other great things. That was a combination of a real gator on a miniature set and a latex gator that didn’t look real either, but fuck the movie was so nutty that you didn’t care. Ah the 80s.

Anyway, in Rogue the croc is effective because the filmmakers keep it off screen through much of the movie. It’s the Jaws trick- all you have to show is the fin for most of the film and the shark at the very end and you can scare the crap out of people. In the last ten minutes or so, there’s a CGI crocodile that looks a wee bit goofy (seriously, you can’t escape CG looking goofy unless you have Industrial Light and Magic money), but by that point, you don’t care because the rest of the film has been so effective.

Rogue was made by the same Aussies who made Wolf Creek, a slasher film set in the Australian outback that basically pulled the “Psycho switch”- the storyline shifted radically after about half an hour- in addition to being much crueler than expected. I remember actually being shocked when the character we’ve come to expect will fight for survival in the movie is killed early and brutally, throwing the whole film off-balance. The ending of Wolf Creek was a bit of a disappointment, but at least they were willing to fuck with the audience.

This is another Aussie horror story- apparently, crocodiles really are this big and mean in Australia and the filmmakers explain in the making-of documentary that they’re just adopting true stories of croc attacks. In this case, the story is about a river tour boat that pisses off a very big crocodile and gets wrecked on a small island with the tide coming in, and they have to figure out how to get off the island.

Rogue is more a popcorn movie than Wolf Creek (which was not-at-all a popcorn movie), and the thrills are fairly effective without the story getting as rough as that film. They’ve definitely taken notes from Spielberg about how to utilize animals and kids and make minor characters believable and likeable before menacing them with the monster. Like early Spielberg, you could also see this one playing well at a drive-in. As for gore, it’s a bit tame, although a few people get chomped up good, and overall the thrills are effective. So, score one for the Aussies.

Frozen (2010)

Basically an extended riff on “what would happen if you got stuck on a chair lift at a ski resort? and they closed for the week? and then there were wolves below? huh?”, Frozen is pretty scary for a movie about three people sitting in a chair for a few days. It’s also educational- I learned quite a bit about frostbite, wolf packs, and ski lifts- particularly that they all can suck.

Adam Green previously made the film Hatchet, a movie that suffered from what we can call the "Quentin Tarantino Law": if a filmmaker has seen all of the same exploitation movies you have, your enjoyment of their own movie will diminish in direct proportion to the number of times they reference them. Hatchet was less a slasher movie than a mix tape of cool things from actual slasher movies and considerably less enjoyable than it was intended to be.

So it’s a relief to see Green crank out an effective movie that is actually somewhat original. The three characters are young college kids (they’re always college kids, aren’t they?) who are on a ski trip together. Dan (Kevin Zegers) has a girlfriend Emma (Parker O'Neil) and a pal (Shawn Ashmore) who is clearly feeling like a third wheel and acts like a bit of a douchebag as a result. I’m not sure that filmmakers realize how often sarcastic characters start seeming like dicks- maybe it’s something with college kids today actually being dicks, but I don’t think so. I suspect the point is to build tension between the characters and then get them stuck on a ski lift. But, we’re not exactly talking an Ingmar Bergman level of characterization here.

Actually, the ski lift is the most developed character in the film. The lift is way off the ground, so jumping is a bad idea, very cold which leads to some really gruesome skin irritations, and fairly rickety. I was truly glad that the filmmakers realized it would be much more effective to film a real ski lift and not a lift in front of a green screen- this added a layer of realism to the proceedings. You can really tell they’re way up there. And there was a nice attention to details. Did you know that the wires holding those things are razor-sharp so it’s difficult to swing across them hand over hand? Apparently this is true. Did you know that frostbite itches, but you can’t scratch it without removing your skin? The film is educational!

Green has since made another Hatchet film that was booted from theatres because it was too much of a niche movie and the economics of the multiplexes are brutal. It’s a shame, but I’d much rather see him do more movies like Frozen and someone figure out a way to put the multiplexes out of business.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1977)

I first heard of this 1977 Samuel Z. Arkoff presented slasher flick by way of a newspaper ad from that year, which I found preserved in the trunk of a junked car in the woods. The painting of a bag-masked killer looking down on a town at night piqued my interest: what was this movie and why hadn't I heard of it before? I made it my mission to track down a copy, fully aware that it might turn out to be terrible. Finally, I got my hands on a VHS edition at London, Ontario's Shock Stock Convention. And you know what? It 'aint half bad.

The Town that Dreaded Sundown is a police procedural about a slasher who terrorized a Texarkana town in 1946. The film does a good job of contextualizing its story in the time and place and detailing how the killer's reign of terror drove residents to the gun shops and locksmiths. The police deputy Norman Ramsey (played by Andrew Prine) leads the operation with help from Captain J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson), the "most famous ranger in the history of Texas". Ultimately, however, it's an unsolved crime, which means we never find out who did it or why and he could still be out there!

The film suffers a bit from a problem common to most crime docudramas: we find out what the characters did to solve the crime, but almost nothing about who they were. Johnson in particular is great as always, but he doesn't have much to do aside from riding around in cars chasing people. Since this is a 70s drive-in flick, there is a superfluous car chase scene with a car flying through the air and landing in a lake. There is also unfunny comic relief provided by the rookie cop 'Sparkplug'. Oh, that Sparkplug!

Nevertheless, the scenes with the killer are effective. I liked that the teen boy killed in the opening scene was named "Sammy Fuller" in reference to one of the great B-movie directors. Also, the killer's tendency to tie up women and bite them all over if pretty creepy. There's a particularly unique scene in which he kills a woman via knife-rigged slide trombone. And horror fans who have ever watched Gilligan's Island and asked themselves, "Who would you rather see stalked: Ginger or Mary Ann?" can see Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) flee in terror during a home invasion scene. Finally, the fact that the killer is never caught is frustrating and unnerving, and probably true-to-life.

Somebody should give The Town that Dreaded Sundown a better DVD release. It's not a lost classic; but it is an example of solid, never showy filmmaking of a kind that we seldom see anymore.

Resurrection County (2008)

Ah, rednecks- they've been the staple of many horror films ever since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre forced us all to consider how terrifying it might be to share dinner with them. In this direct-to-DVD survival flick we're firmly in the backwoods of Creepy County, where the radio only plays fire and brimstone preachers with molasses-thick accents and the general stores sell chewing tobacco right next to the sleeveless flannel shirts.

Into this stere-o-typeecal hick town come traipsing some strangers from the city, which is problematic because characters in these towns typically hate strangers from the city nearly as much as they hate sleeves. The strangers from the city are two couples out for some touristy fun racing off-road vehicles, camping, and tresspassing on hillbilly land. The deeper into the backwoods they go, the more the characters look like illustrations from a 1920s argument for eugenics. The movie does a good job of making the backwoods seem menacing and the characters are sort of engaging, even though they should be wearing signs from the beginning reading, "I will fight for my survival" and "I will be killed by the hicks first".

And wouldn't you know it? The off-roaders ride right onto trailer trash land. There's a melee, a ruckus if you will, and one of the hicks winds up dead bringing a whole mess o' trouble down on our heroes. If none of this sounds very original to you, you're right. Just like in Texas Chainsaw, the hicks in town all know each other and work together. And they're led by a menacing preacher straight out of Night of the Hunter. The only thing missing is the child-like, pregnant hillbilly girl whose baby is clearly a product of incest. Maybe in the sequel. As Iwas watching the movie, I kept thinking that the only two groups you can make fun of with relative impunity are rednecks and Italian Americans. You would have problems if this film was about kids running afoul of inner city blacks, although that was the plot of nearly every Charles Bronson film in the 80s.

Also, I'm sort of old school; I can't look at anything on digital video without thinking of cable access. Resurrection County doesn't escape any of these problems, but it does have a certain je ne sais what the fuck that is enjoyable. The acting is serviceable with Robert Miano's Parson character being a standout. And it gets some mileage out of the Wolf Creek tactic of being meaner than expected. So, it's worth a two dollar rental. Just don't believe the crap on the box about it being "horrifying".

If a Tree Falls (2010)

It’s funny that so many low budget horror filmmakers are now trying to imitate the 70s grindhouse flicks, because so many of those vintage grindhouse epics were themselves imitations of bigger budget Hollywood movies of their time. At some point, I imagine Hollywood will be shooting faux-faux digital video grindhouse epics in homage to this time period. Every cultural item will eventually be a subject of nostalgia.

Of course, I’m also a fan of those old grindhouse movies, so I imagine I’m the target audience for these homage films. When a Tree Falls is an example, taking one of those old chestnuts, in this case “this group of young people went camping in the woods and ran into some backwoods psychos”, playing it straight, and using various effects to make the digital video look like scratched and faded old film stock. There are also some visual and music cues that recall the films of that era as well as a generally high level of brutality in line with the subgenre.

The young people in question are a brother and sister (played by Ryan Barrett and Jennifer De Lucia) and their two friends (played by Breanne TeBoekhorst and Daniel Zuccala). They’re going out into the wilds of Canada for a weekend trip. The acting is decent for a no-budget movie and there are some interesting subplots indicating the filmmakers’ intention to draw us into the characters before placing them in peril, which is nice. Unfortunately, one of the characters, Will (Zuccala), is a stock horny douche bag of the sort that are becoming common in these movies. Does every group of friends now have one friend who’s a dick weed? Is it a generational thing? None of my friends were dicks. Of course, that probably means I was the dick!

Anyway, the backwoods mutants are much more interesting. The filmmakers had the inspired idea to give them no dialogue until a pivotal scene, so they’re silent and all wearing nylons over their faces and behave like small and violent children; it’s a creepy touch. I guess Ils sort of did the same thing, but there was a lot less interaction between the pshycho kids and the victims in that movie. These psycho kids are a lot weirder. I liked the unnerving bit in which they stroked the characters' faces like they were pets. There’s also a fair amount of mystery and tension in the film, as opposed to reaching immediately for heaping buckets of gore. The film does bring the viscera eventually but the buildup leads us to the payoff as opposed to so many no-budget horror films that are all payoff.

The creators have been self-distributing their movie and it’s worth a viewing; it definitely shows potential. Their intention seems to be to set up a series of films about the nylon-masked killers, but it would be more interesting to see them do something totally different instead. For me, the most enjoyable old exploitation movies were the ones that pulled something out of left field instead of paying homage to the old chestnuts.

Mayhem (1986)

A direct-to-video crime saga that suffers from being fairly competently made: if there had been an incompetent writer, director, or actor involved, it could have become a minor cult classic. As it is, the film is a bit amateurish and very low budget- everything shot on video looks low budget anyway- and good for some sleazy thrills, but nothing terribly memorable.

Dino (Raymond Martino) and Ziggy (Robert Gallo) are two hitmen in Los Angeles, both with lady problems. Dino’s girlfriend Rachel (Wendy MacDonald) left him for another man and he’s still obsessed with her; Ziggy’s girlfriend Misty (Pamela Dixon) and one-woman escort service has been taken hostage by kidnapping pimps. In order to straighten all of this out, they’re going to have to shoot a lot of people. There’s also a lot of detective work, via montage, in which they scour the city, instead of just looking in the building into which she was dragged. Luckily, lots of people get shot up real good, and the squib effects are pretty effective. There’s also some decent nudity, ridiculously slimy hoodlums, and an incredibly sleazy scene in which an evildoer who’s been running a pre-school pedophile ring is shot in the vagina with a shotgun!

Both Gallo and Martino are decent actors for this sort of thing and the dialogue is always on this side of silly, aside from a reoccurring subplot in which one hitman wants to move to Alaska (movie hitmen and strippers always want to be doing something else with their lives). There is the common problem with very low budget films in which the camera doesn’t move or even cut between shots as often as it could. There are also some story problems. The character of Dino is supposed to be a jealous, macho and haunted male, akin to Jake LaMotta; but instead comes off as an insufferable misogynist and constant whiner, so we’re sort of rooting for him to get killed off. There’s also a third-act twist for him that pushes past credible, and a twist-ending that makes even less sense. Really, it’s just hard to watch two characters when one is boring and the other is insufferable. The two female characters are sort of non-entities. Finally, it’s still unclear why there was so much detective work involved in finding a girl who was dragged into a building in front of our hero’s eyes.

But, let’s be honest: given that the thing was probably made for three dollars and some change, there are so many other things that could have easily gone wrong.

Laure (1975)

This is a movie that was not just made in the 70s, it was made by the 70s. The 70s should have a production credit of some sort, or one of those notices like they have on PBS- "This movie was made possible by the 70s". Everyone in the film seems stoned at all times, dresses in very comfortable-looking leisure clothes and swaps sexual partners. I'd like to live there.

Set around a research university in Manilla, the film stars the lovely Annie Belle as Laure, the free-spirited daughter of the University Director who meets the similarly free-spirited Nicola (played by Al Cliver who is in half the Italian movies I watch). We know she's free-spirited because while she's operating the slide projector during a professor's lecture a hippie girl under the podium licks her pussy. Luckily, Nicola is also free spirited and would like nothing better than to watch her have sex with lots of men, which works out fine for her. They're clearly an ideal match.

For most of the movie, there is little in the way of plot. Nicola is making a documentary about love and they sort of wander around having sex with various people and speaking pretentiously about open sexuality. Much of the dialogue is along the lines of:

Him: You want everything and think everything is possible.

Her: And you what is your dream?

Him: I should like to see you doing impossible things.

(And delivering impossible dialogue!)

The open-marriage lifestyle was, of course, detailed in the Emmanuelle films, and Emmanuelle Arsan apparently wanted to take a more active role in the filming of one of her books than she was with those films- she's a supporting actress here and actually has a few sex scenes, including a very silly one with girl-girl and flower sex. Her involvement sort of explains the otherwise inexplicable American title "Forever Emmanuelle" since nobody in the film is named Emmanuelle. I'm still confused about who directed this movie- different sources say Arsan, her husband, or herself under another name. Apparently, the production fell apart and everyone disowned the film.

This is a shame because the movie's got some advantages over the real Emmanuelle- for one thing, the main character is much more in charge of her situation and less of a borderline victim than the character in the French Emmanuelle- in this, she's more akin to Laura Gemser's Italian character. Also, Laure is a prettier movie to look at- the locations are more lush and the direction more adept. Finally, Annie Belle is a truly lovely actress, probably moreso than Sylvia Kristel.

Whatever else you want to say about it, Laure is a strikingly beautiful movie. The Philippine locations are well-photographed, the visuals are evocative, and there's a dreamy/druggy vibe to it all that makes this a pleasant movie to watch- given the era it was made, it's likely that plenty of audience members watched it while stoned and that would certainly suit the film.

The drawbacks? The characters are very one-dimensional, really just there to express the writer's ideas about non-monogamy. The plot is a bit silly- a story in which the characters go searching for a tribe who is "reborn" annually is interesting but only shows up in the last 20 minutes. A story in which Laure screws a transvestite in a helicopter while her boyfriend films and nobody flies the thing is pretty silly. Finally, there's not a great deal of chemistry between Cliver and Bell, which is strange considering they were an item during the filming.

But, I think a movie like Laure should be watched in the spirit it was intended- so, get really stoned and be enchanted by the beautiful tropical locales and naked people, and maybe the psuedo-philosophical dialogue will sound deep, man.