31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 12: THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996)

Surprisingly NOT an outdoor Gwar concert.

Though slagged off by critics upon initial release (and by me at the time, if I'm being honest), the 1996 version of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is today mostly remembered as the movie where a late-career Marlon Brando finally went full-tilt pants-crapping insane, but I urge audiences to give it a second chance. I've seen the film several times since its original release and I have to admit that I've come to love it for a number of reasons. 

Big pimpin' with Marlon Brando (and friend).
 

Few films capture complete and utter madness in the way that this one does, as the audience identification character (David Thewliss) is dragged headlong and unknowing into a remote island kingdom ruled over by the completely mad Dr. Moreau (Brando). The not-so-good doctor is a scientist whose unethical and immoral experiments on animals transform them into sentient, speaking horrors that simply should not be, while fashioning himself into more or less their living god and laying down unbreakable "laws" intended to curb his creations' irrepressible animal natures. The lush island environment is rendered dark and foreboding as the scientist has crafted an almost Bruegel-meets-Bosch land of strange, misshapen creatures whom he and his veterinarian assistant (an extra-loony Val Kilmer) keep happy and tripping balls out of their minds on injected cocktails of sedatives and hallucinogens, and other than the welcome presence of Fairuza Balk as the doctor's most flawless creation, the place comes off like we the audience were likewise dosed off our tits. Val Kilmer is a singular standout in a role whose understated yet wholly over-the-top performance is a masterwork of weird flamboyance — which is REALLY saying something when paired against the balls-out-crazy Brando as Moreau — and he utterly steals the movie as the veterinary assistant/"candy man" for the humanimals. And don't get me started on eerie-eyed Fairuza Balk as Moreau's daughter Aissa, a sexy woman who is by far the most successful of Moreau's chimeras, this one being a splicing of human and big jungle cat.

Anyway, I was reminded of all of this while recently puttering around my studio with the film running as background, and it was a lot of fun seeing it again. Though my pick for the definitive version of this H.G. Wells story goes to the superlative and downright fucked-up ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), the 1996 version is a worthy modern take that is deserving of a fair reassessment well after the fact. Just be sure to have indulged in copious amounts of alcohol and/or cannabis products before you dive in.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 11: HALLOWEEN II (1981)

"The night HE came home" continues.

Perhaps the most inevitable release during the avalanche of slasher flicks in the 1980's, thanks to its 1978 predecessor being an unexpected box office smash that birthed a slew of imitators, chief among which was the gory mega-hit FRIDAY THE 13th (1980), HALLOWEEN II was hotly anticipated by the newfound legions of young gorehounds who wanted to see seemingly superhuman murder machine Michael Myers return to once more wreak havoc upon the silver screen. Picking up right where the first film left off, we find traumatized survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) receiving attention at the local hospital as the unstoppable hulk that is Michael (Dick Warlock) continues his seemingly random pursuit of her. As Laurie fights to stay one step ahead of the Shatner-masked juggernaut who rampages through the halls oif the hospital facility, Inspector Loomis (Donald Pleaseance) seeks to put a stop to his murderous former patient once and for all.

Landing in the midst of charnel house cheapies dominating the box office without creative genius John Carpenter at the helm (though he did co-write), HALLOWEEN II is a serviceable sequel that, lacking Carpenter's flair for suspense and clever camerawork, gave the audience what the studio thought the audience wanted, namely an abundance of graphic gore. The original film was famously terrifying without being gory at all, but that goes to show what one can accomplish with creativity and a meager budget. Aping the gruesome body counts of other entries in the early first wave of '80's slashers, the film provides some nasty shocks, but the tone and flavor of the proceedings just cannot touch the magic that was the original, and at the time the film was widely derided as a rote disappointment. But over the past couple of decades, the film has undergone something of a reappraisal and is now seen as a pretty good continuation of Carpenter's classic,  as well as what was obviously intended to be a finite conclusion to the story. Unfortunately, the greedy studio and the sequel-hungry audience kept the franchise going with 12 more sequels and remakes featuring Michael Myers and (sometimes) Laurie Strode, nearly always to diminishing returns, so HALLOWEEN II kind of automatically takes on a greater luster when stacked up against the majority of what followed from the franchise. 

If watched back-to-back with the original, HALLOWEEN II gives us a (rather contrived) motivation for Michael's obsession with Laurie, and it concludes with a satisfyingly apocalyptic conflagration that in any sane universe would have been it for both Michael Myers and Inspector Loomis, so you'd be okay if you didn't bother to proceed any further in the cinema of Myers. The sequels range from slightly better than average all the way down to rock-bottom awful, with the unrelated HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH being a gem that was reviled for decades due to it not being more the familiar comfort food that the audience demanded. If you must see another film with the HALLOWEEN label, turst me and check out SEASON OF THE WITCH.

Poster from the theatrical release

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 -Day 10: WHEN ANIMALS DREAM (2014)

A teenage girl's burgeoning sexuality coincides with the awakening of an inherited curse.

Shy sixteen-year-old Marie (Sonia Suhl) lives in a bleak Danish fishing village and works filleting flounder in a fish processing factory, when not taking care of her wheelchair-bound catatonic mother. Marie has begun exhibiting rashes and patches of coarse hair in unwanted places, so she seeks treatment from the doctor who also treats her mother for the same unnamed genetic illness. Though allowed to live among them, Marie's family is ostracized by the rest of the community, thanks to there having been issues with her mother before the mother became catatonic, and it's readily apparent that Marie is headed down the same path as her mom. Nothing is ever explicitly stated and the narrative lets the audience figure it out, but it's clear that what's going on here is a lineage of lycanthropy, and the locals are willing to do whatever needs to be done to prevent the possible threat of a werewolf in their midst. It is alluded to that some Russian fishermen "did something" to Marie's mother that rendered her a helpless invalid, and as Marie finds first love with a young co-worker (Jakob Oftebro), her awakening womanhood coincides with more hair growth, increasingly erratic and self-destructive behaviors, and the sprouting of sharp claws, so it's only a matter of time before the villagers take lethal action.

The rigors of lycanthropic feminine puberty.

WHEN ANIMALS DREAM is a Danish production that bears the glacial pacing of a lot of Nordic cinema, so it is the slowest of slow burns. It's well-made, it looks great (or as great as so bleak a setting can look), has realistic performances, and a pervasive bleak and depressing atmosphere, but I have to be honest and admit that I found it a boring slog to get through. I'm apparently in the minority with that opinion, as the film is generally well-regarded, but I'm a werewolf guy who prefers his lycanthropic entertainment to be as savage and visceral as a lupine shapeshifter can get, and WHEN ANIMALS DREAM features zero action, gore, or even a neat werewolf suit or animatronic. What we do see of Marie during the throes of transformation are the most subtle of glimpses, and she remains fully clothed during the climactic wolfing-out.

The concept of lycanthropy as a metaphor for female puberty/coming-of-age is nothing new and it was handled to far greater effect in 2000's classic GINGER SNAPS. I got everything I needed and more from that one, while I found WHEN ANIMALS DREAM to be a plodding trudge that didn't really amount to anything. It's an arthouse werewolf movie, though thankfully unpretentious, so it simply was not for me. Which is not to say that it's a bad movie. Your mileage may vary, but don't be surprised if you nod off.

Poster for the Danish theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 9: THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF (2010)

 When your sister is a bitch. No, SERIOUSLY...

The Sands brood is the picture of the typical American family unit, albeit slowly recovering from the recent death of the unit's mother. 17-year-old Jordan (Victoria Justice) is an awkward bespectacled nerd who endures the usual rigors of high school girlhood, while her brother Hunter (Chase Ellison), who recently turned fourteen, is absorbed in horror movies and monster lore. While struggling with the loss of his wife, their father (Matt Winston) is also faced with the reality of dwindling finances that will likely see the family lose their home. But just as things look their most dire, the family receives a notice that they have inherited a Romanian castle from the deceased mother's great uncle Dragomir Vukovic, so they head to the Romanian village of Wolfsberg to check it out. Upon arriving, the Sands find the town is in the middle of an annual festival celebrating the Beast of Wolfsberg, a legendary werewolf that appears once per year to howl as a warning to all vampires who might seek to do the village harm. They also find that the castle is inhabited by the eerie Madame Varcolac (Brooke Shields), who has been the housekeeper for her entire life, and she fills the family in on bits and pieces of the lineage's history. The family explores the village, and while dad looks into negotiating the sale of the castle with chirpy Paulina von Eckberg (Brooke D'Orsay), a real estate agent who operates on a nocturnal schedule, Jordan finds herself attracted to local butcher Goran (Steven Grayhm).

Hunter snoops around the castle, finding a secret laboratory hidden within a passage behind a wall, and when Jordan finds him she accidentally breaks a vial label labeled "LV-217," an abbreviation for "lycanthrope blood," and cuts her bare foot on  the glass, thus infecting herself. In no time Jordan begins exhibiting the onset of full-blown werewolfism, such as developing a lust for meat where she had previously been a vegetarian, inhumanly swift reflexes, impossible agility, the sprouting of claws and fangs, and spontaneous growth of copious amounts of body hair. (There are allusions to lycanthropy as a puberty allegory, but nothing anywhere near the level of that explored in 2000's classic GINGER SNAPS.) From there events spiral and complicate as the secret of the late mother's family is revealed, geneological  destinies are confronted, and hostile vampires enter the picture.

Horror for a childrens' audience is a tough balance to achieve and it is seldom done well, with 1987's THE MONSTER SQUAD arguably being the exemplar of the genre. That said, THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF — thankfully no relation to the 1973 dud of the same name — is a fun entry into the field for the 2000's. The story and performances are solid, rooted as they are in general werewolf lore (with a few surprises) and also the tropes and feel of the classic films from Universal's golden era of foundational monster shockers, and it's all accented with a very dry and appropriately funny sense of humor. Brooke Shields pretty much steals the film as the ominous Madame Varcolac, the mention of whose name invariably prompts the howl of a wolf in the background, a gag very much referencing the classic Frau Blücher bit from Mel Brooks's YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974).

Brooke Shields, stealing the film as the simultaneously subtle and over-the-top Madame Varcolac. 

The film features family-friendly action that's not overly violent, so there's no gore or bloodshed, so instead the films gets by on a clever and engaging script and werewolf effects that are far better than one would expect from a Nickelodeon children's confection. 

Jordan in the early stages of lycanthropy. I would show you her final look, but I want you to watch the movie and experience it in context.

A truly pleasant surprise, I only first heard of this movie maybe three days ago and was intrigued, so I checked it out. Some love vampires, others gravitate, toward zombies, but I am unabashedly a werewolf guy, so I will always give movies with savage, ravening hairballs a chance. I get burned more often than not, but every now and then I encounter a werewolf film that makes my devotion worth the effort, and THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF was worth every bit of the time it took to sit through it. A minor hidden gem that is very much recommended as a fun film to share with the family. It's not really scary, which is in no way a strike against it, so even the littlest members of your pack will be likely to enjoy it.

Promotional image from the original cable airing.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 8: EATEN ALIVE (1976)

A rundown hotel in a rural Texas swamp serves as a warped nexus that connects several characters in a web of Southern Gothic madness.

Director Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE is not at all what I expected. It's basically a Southern Gothic full of fucked-up people for whom an insane man's remote and run-down swampside hotel will prove their undoing, and there really isn't much of a story to speak of. Assorted relatively innocent individuals arrive, say or do something to cause the already unstable hotel owner to snap, he chases them around with a scythe, and if he doesn't simply hold them captive, he dispatches them with the scythe and dumps them into the swamp (which is conveniently just off the front porch) where they are eaten by Rocky, an African crocodile obtained from a local zoo.

The ball gets rolling when a young runaway who has found employment in a whorehouse refuses to take it up the chocolate starfish from abusive local bad boy Buck (played by a young Robert Englund, some eight years before he gained horror icon status as Freddy Krueger in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET). 

Young Robert Englund as Buck, whose introductory line of "My name is Buck...an' I'm rarin' to fuck" was borrowed by Quentin Tarantino in KILL BILL: VOLUME 1 (2003).

The madame (Carolyn Jones, a long way from Morticia Addams in the 1960's iteration of THE ADDAMS FAMILY)  

kicks the girl out, so the poor thing makes her way to the remote Starlight hotel, which is run by Judd (Neville Brand), a clearly insane veteran, whose instability tips over the edge when he realizes the girl was a worker at the bawdy house. 

Judd: a time bomb about to go off. 

He beats her and chases her out onto the porch, where he stabs her with farming equipment and feeds her to Rocky. And from there it's a revolving door of people who end up as victims of Judd's madness. After the failed prostitute comes a family of three — a married couple with a disabled little girl , and their dog — with the father apparently being insane himself (this is never explained), then the father and sister of the dead hooker arrive, as they have been searching for her since she ran away from home. The aforementioned Buck, the up-the-shitter-critter whose unwanted anal attentions against the runaway lit the whole powder keg, also joins the party with an underage girlfriend in tow, with all ending up running afoul of ultra-wacko Judd.

EATEN ALIVE looks and feels like Hooper's THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE re-imagined as a Tennessee Williams stage play, replete with endless redneck histrionics, sleazy behavior, and an overall sense of misery in a decaying hick landscape. The set pieces quickly become repetitive, and though the film runs 91 minutes, you may find yourself checking your watch from time to time. And, much like CHAIN SAW before it, EATEN ALIVE concentrates more on the creepy/disturbing factor than gore (the blood here is minimal and the crocodile attacks are about on par with animatronics at a cheap amusement park), and it maintains a nervous, disturbing energy throughout. There is much screaming from the victims and lots of muttering from Judd, which gets quite tiresome, and by the time it all winds up, what we are left with is just an hour and a half misery with very little by way of legit scares. 

As a successor to the brilliant THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, EATEN ALIVE leaves a lot to be desired, and I do mean a lot. That said, the film does have its supporters and it has gone on to garner a minor cult following in the nearly fifty years since its original release, so your mileage may vary. But unlike TEXAS CHAIN SAW, I will not be revisiting this chapter of Hooper's filmography.

Poster from the original theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 7: EVIL DEAD RISE (2023)

 Nothing like a mother's love. And I do mean NOTHING.

An earthquake in the Los Angeles area opens a sinkhole beneath a building slated for demolition, and within the sinkhole is a bank vault that has been sealed for a century. Returning to the building with the evening's pizza meal, the hole is discovered by a tween boy and his older and younger sisters. Against the warnings of his elder sibling, the boy enters the vault and opens a chest containing the Book of the Dead and a recording made by the priest who sealed the vault. The kids go up to their mother's apartment, where the mom and her sister have been catching up on their less-than-ideal situations, and when the boy retires to his room he unseals the book and plays the recording. A sadistic and unstoppable demonic entity is promptly unleashed, and a battle for the souls of the family and those of the building's remaining residents begins in earnest.

This latest installment in the four-decades-old EVIL DEAD franchise shakes things up by eschewing the usual cabin in the woods location, transplanting the proceedings to a rundown tenement building that somehow manages to be just as remote as any lakeside retreat. It's a bleak setting for an ultra-bleak scenario in which all bets are off when it comes to anyone's survival, with the stakes being raised by adding three children into the mix. The story is basically the same as the other EVIL DEAD flicks, but minus the humor of the first three, so the tone is one of utter hopelessness from the get-go, with no laughs to relieve the considerable tension. I'm a lifelong seasoned horror junkie, so I am a hard room to shock, but there were moments of gore and nastiness in this one that made me shriek at what I was witnessing. The characters deserve none of what they go through, and though they give it their best, there is simply no way to defeat the entity, and it is one very mean motherfucker. The possession of the mother comes first, and she is just downright terrifying. By far the scariest of the titular creatures seen thus far in the franchise, she is utterly relentless and actively revels in the torment she wreaks upon her family.

I'm glad the filmmakers kept the proceedings firmly in R-rated territory, yielding what is arguably the bloodiest installment to date. If you came for blood, gore, and agonizing violence, you will not be disappointed. I very much recommend EVIL DEAD RISE for any and all who are tired of toothless so-called horror crapped out by studios who keep things "safe" in order to get the almighty teen dollars at the box office. Not a feel-good movie in any way, this one's a solid winner for those who can take it rough.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 - Day 6: CAGED VIRGINS (1971)

Scooby-Doo this ain't. 

After committing a murder (that we are told of in retrospect) while dressed as party clowns (don't ask), we meet our two lesbian protagonists (Marie-Pierre Castel and Mireille Dargent) as they, and a male accomplice, flee the authorities along the rural back roads of France. A gun battle ensues and the male is killed, so the girls leave the body in the car, which they then set ablaze, after which they set off into the desolate rural fields with no idea where they are. Their wanderings eventually lead them to a remote and apparently abandoned chateau that turns out to be the home of a cabal of vampires, their slaves, and several chained-up and naked women whom the slaves merrily molest, torture, and violate. After being bitten and mind-controlled by vampire bats, the girls witness the considerable debauchery perpetrated upon the prisoners in the dungeon only to awaken the next morning, themselves unharmed. When they attempt to escape, no matter which direction they may run, all paths lead back to the chateau. What horrible fate will befall our heroines, and why is the influence of the chateau keeping them there? Can they make it out alive, or is there a more sinister purpose at play? 

Originally released in its native France as REQUIEM POUR UN VAMPIRE, CAGED VIRGINS plays like a modern day Grimm's fairy tale for adults, as its story is a simple tale of two girls lost in the middle of nowhere and menaced by baleful forces. It has very little dialogue and allows the audience to witness the events without too much unneeded exposition, which renders roughly the first third of the film to be a very slow burn with the girls endlessly and silently wandering until they run into the vampires. But once the vampires show up, whoo-BOY, it's off to the races as the slaves avail themselves to the shackled nubiles. There's an extended sequence of softcore groping of damned near every inch of the prisoners' bodies, which are rendered naked as the slaves gleefully tear the meager clothing from the women. I can't speak for the rest of you, but I always find it comforting to see displays of Euro armpit hair and shaggy '70's bush, and this film is not stingy with those elements. Short of graphic closeups of genitals or penetration, anything goes, including flagellation and torment with lit candles, so keep that in mind if your tolerance runs more toward the vanilla. 

I should also mention a now-infamous shot of one of the captive being orally pleasured by a vampire bat, which brings up a number of ideas that even this film saw fit not to explore further. My first exposure to this film was seeing an image of the cunning linguist bat going to work in a coffee table book on Euro horror owned by a friend — an image his parents had no clue about, I can assure you — and it blew my mind. It took nearly fifty years for me to finally witness the movie for myself, and that image remains indelible. Hell, they even saw fit to include it in the trailers shown in U.S. grindhouses back in the days, and the sight of it must have gone over a treat with the regulars.

Shaggy '70's bush and a friendly vampire bat. Just another evening in the Gallic countryside.

Dripping with atmosphere and very European in its flavor and frank approach to sex and nudity, CAGED VIRGINS is definitely worth a look for the curious, but don't go into it expecting any scares or gore. All that's on its mind is its eerie dreamlike vibe and getting away with as female nudity and sex as possible. I have nothing against prurient material, but when I'm given what's supposed to be a horror film, I expect at least a bit of dark frisson.  Then again, this is reportedly typical of the output of director Jean Rollin, for whom this is but one of his forays into blending the nighttime world of the undead suckface with that of the softcore tenderloin cinema. Prior to this I had seen only one of Rollin's other vampire films, namely LA VAMPIRE NUE (THE NAKED VAMPIRE, 1970), which I found to be a crushing bore, but Rollin redeemed himself to me with this effort, and I now look forward to seeing where else he goes when exploring this niche of fetishistic horror. I mean, how do you top a pussy-eating vampire bat? I, for one, am quite curious to find out.

Poster for the U.S. release.