Episode I: The Crapapalooza Menace

So, this is my first post throwing the alphabeticism (I don't know if that's a word, but if not, I like it) out the window.

Over the Easter break myself and the beloved significant other sat down with a mission: to watch horror movies good and awful over the long 5 day break.

Here are the edited highlights (and many, many lowlights).



Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

Following on from the 'Blair Witch mania' engendered by the original film, 'the Blair Witch Project' the sequel ditches documentary stylings to give us a straight dramatisation, with a slight dash of handycam badness for flavour. We have 5 main characters - Nutbar A-Hole leads a 'Blair Witch tour', and has along as his guests on this, his first outing, the following: Academic Research Husband, Academic Research Wife, Jaded Cynical Goth Chick with minor Psychic Tendencies, and Fer Reelz Wiccan Witch Hippy Gal. The five saunter off into the Maryland woods, get absolutely shickered, then pass out.

Waking up, the campsite is a mess. Going back to Nutjob A-Hole's abandoned factory/house, things slowly fall apart as characters a) have miscarriages, b) die, c) disappear or d) go crazy-eight bonkers. Reviewing footage, they realise they; a) got really drunk, b) stripped naked, c) had mad orgy f#ck-lunacy with each other, d) killed the other tour group nearby and e) reversed time with black magic.

Yeah, I've been to a few parties like that. The hangover's a killer.

Is it any good? You know what? No, it isn't. The immediacy and engaging creeps of the first film have been replaced with a glossy, low-budget cash-in of a follow-up. However, there are some sneaky hints, clues and buried visual teasers in the film that spell out a message that runs backwards through the film, which - credit where credit's due - is pretty clever.

1 Star



The Exorcist (Director's Cut)

Ever seen a devil horror film? No? Then start here. This film is amazing. This is THE seminal horror film about the devil and possession. The pacing is measured and the horror builds in a determined, incremental way.

Regan McNeil's descent into full-blown possession is incredible, and even though the voice of the demon was dubbed on, Linda Blair's performance is just amazingly scary. Similar props have to be given to Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller as Fathers Merrin and Karras respectively.

Is it any good? Oh, hell yeah. You won't regret it, SEE THIS FILM.

5 Stars


Eternal Blood

Set in modern day Chile, the story revolves around Goth college student 'M' (as in Fritz Lang's 'M'?) who runs a game of 'Sangre Eterna' or Eternal Blood, a vampire roleplaying game, which, if it isn't meant to be White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade, I'll eat my own bottom. His mates Elizabeth (Bathory perhaps?) and Martin (like the Romero movie?) are then joined by new girl Carmilla (Karnstein perhaps?), who is the favourite student of professor Romero (you see where this is going, yeah?).

The gang of crazy Vampire: The… uh, Eternal Blood players are all such Gothy Goths, they may even shit bats. Seriously, from the clothes to the music, to the drugs, to the taffy-pulling/fly-swatting dance moves, to the casual sexual libertinism, to the Goth club that looks like every Goth club I've ever seen after 2am, these guys are either the most overt caracitures of Goths I've ever seen, or the most faithful and literal representation of Chile's clichéd Goth scene.

M and his band of Camarilla… uh, sorry Eternal Blood players, meet up with Dahmer (is that a shock?), a local Elizabethan ruff wearing Goth-man, who gives them really cool drugs. Oh and he has a Punk/Goth/Rivethead as a tough, kickass offsider.

BUT! Is Dahmer a fer reelz Vampire? Yes! No! Maybe! Who's a liar? Who's insane? Who's really truly back from the dead? It's anyone's guess!

Is it any good? No, unless you're a vampire movie fan with very forgiving tastes (like Twilight fans), a Goth who likes seeing films try to represent Goths, or a roleplayer of vampiric games into the Telling of Stories TM, who got the shits watching Kindred: The Embraced.

2 Stars



The Return of Count Yorga

And now let's jump in our trusty TARDIS/DeLorean and travel back to the heady days of 1971. The Return of Count Yorga (hereafter TRoCY for short) is a sequel to Count Yorga, Vampire (or CY,V) made the previous year in 1970.

Count Yorga has moved into a new castle, and is immediately smitten with a woman who is so much of a cypher, I'm calling her Victim Girl. This should raise alarm bells immediately for any one who's seen CY,V, because at the end of that cinematic classic, Yorga kicks the old blood-filled bucket.

Still, his return sees him doing what vampires normally do when in love - kidnap his beloved, brainwash her and hold her captive, and brutally murder her whole family. Vampires seem to have an unusual, and possibly not fully orthodox definition of the word 'love' (yes, I'm looking at YOU Cullen). And of course, it ends the way these things often end - not good for pretty much everybody.

Is it any good? Yeah, no, not really. The first one was a bit better, but honestly, if you're after a cheesy vampire movie set in the 70's, go see Blacula or The Velvet Vampire, or anything with the name 'Jess Franco' attached to it. TRoCY is just a little bit pants.

2 Stars

Lycanthropy

This was a blind purchase from the $2 movie bin in my local supermarket - the same place I buy cans of Mother to recover from the casks of goon I also buy there. Obviously then, I expect anything from the local supermarket to occasionally bring me some measure of pain.

I purchased this lemming of a film on the mistaken belief that it may have been a werewolf movie. It's not.

Is it any good? No. I think I got burned to the tune of $1.76 watching this. Oh and it's got the guy who plays Argus Filch from Harry Potter in it.

1 Star

So, see you in Part 2.

Amityville Sequels

Amityville Horror II: The Possession
1982 • Dir: Damiano Damiani • Some folk, meh

Okay, so I'm going to keep the reviews short for each of the three Amityville sequels I've got.

Amityville II is (very) loosely based on the original DeFeo murders. Substitute DeFeo for Montelli and Ronnie for Sonny, add demonic possession, badda-bing badda-boom, you got Amityville II.

As supernatural horror, Amityville II is kind of silly. As a portrait of a brutally dysfunctional family, it's pretty much spot on. Some of the intra-family violence in the film is reputed to actually have occurred in the DeFeo family, which lends a very nasty frisson to the film. Ronnie's dad is supposed to have beaten up Ronnie, and Ronnie's mother quite often. Ronnie DID pull a rifle on his father at one stage. There the similarity pretty much ends. Amityville II was based on well-known parapsychologist Hans Holzer's book on the Amityville house and name-drops a few of the other 'theories' - indian burial ground, witch, etc - as to why the house on Ocean Avenue is 'haunted'. By the way, no Indian burial ground has ever been found under or near the Amityville house, no evidence that a witch ever lived on or near the site has likewise ever been found.

Amityville II is pretty much a battle of wills between the 'demon' that is 'possessing' Sonny, and the local priest Father Adamsky. The battle of wills is pretty much at the end of the third act, and is meh, okay.

Quite possibly the biggest ick in the film is the incest between Sonny and his younger sister Patricia. I feel oogy just thinking about it. The only thing that made it a meagre fraction more bearable was learning that Diane Franklin who plays Trish Montelli was 20 yrs old when she did the film, because boy howdy does she look about 15. Ick. Until today, I didn't piece together that she's the french chick in 'Better Off Dead' - one of my favourite 80's teen films. Cool.

As a devil film, Amityville II is highly derivative of The Exorcist. If you've seen both, you'll know what I mean. As a domestic abuse film, the supernatural content cheapens it. As a dramatisation of the DeFeo murders it's highly fanciful, and too saturated with Hans Holzer's peculiar theories.

The only thing that scared me in this film was the incest. The rest made me nearly go to sleep. When I have to go outside in the 5º cold to have a cigarette to wake up, I know the film is seriously boooooring.

Stars: 2 out of 5

Amityville III: The Demon aka Amityville 3-D
1983 • Dir: Richard Fleischer • St: Tony Roberts, small role w/ Meg Ryan

I'm well into hating Amityville by now. This film was the 3D entry into the series. In a nutshell, reporter for mysticism debunking magazine and friend unveil seance fraud at Amityville house. Reporter later buys house and moves in. House tries to kill him and family with standard Amityville hauntedness. Well/gateway to hell in basement. Flies. Spooky photos. Stuff. Drowned girl seen in house moments before reveal that she is dead. Oooooooooooh!

I felt lightly brain damaged after watching this fiasco. Tony Roberts looks like Frankenstein with jug ears and poodle hair.

No point, no meaning, lost, lost in world of Amityville shittiness. Please rescue me before I lose my mind. When I'm done with this project, I'm taking a hammer to this disc.

Stars: 1 out of 5

The Amityville Curse
1990 • Dir: Tom Berry • St: Kim Coates

This time we're still in Amityville, but not at the famous shack on Ocean Avenue. We're apparently drawing from a Hans Holzer book still. The set up for this, the SIXTH Amityville film (yeah, seriously, I know), is a bunch of yuppies invest in a house - you know, to clean it up and sell it on for more cash - before falling victim to the spoo-doo-dookiness of life in the quiet town of Amityville.

Two couples and a single have many spooky experiences - dreams, visions, sounds. Oh and one of them is going seriously bonkers.

The background is that their house was once a parochial house for the local dog-collar sky pilot. He gets killed in the confessional booth, and all the stuff from the local church, where he died, is now stored in the basement of his old house. This includes a haunted confessional. Yes, go back and read that again. Why would you be a priest in Amityville? It has to suck major dog's balls. "Well father, we're shifting you to Amityville." "What in the FECK!"

Murders happen, and the sins of the past are about to be exposed.

I'm not going to reveal the ending, but what I will say is simply this: This one wasn't that bad. It suffers from having the Amityville tag attached, and could easily be set anywhere else, and be a mildly pleasant little horror film.

I may spare this one the hammer of filmic justice.

Stars: 2 out of 5

The Amityville Horror

1979 • Dir: Stuart Rosenberg • St: James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger

Premise: George and Kathy Lutz move into their new home, but no sooner than they do, than the usual raft of 'my house is possessed by satan' phenomena begins occurring. This is based on a true story. Though the truth of the story is more than a little dubious...

Analysis: The Amityville Horror is the scariest movie in the world... about mortgage fraud. Like Altered States, I saw this film when it first came out when I was a kid. I was 8 when I first saw The Amityville Horror at a drive in, and at the time it scared the living shit out of me.

But I'm 30 years older and wiser now, and The Amityville Horror just seems kind of... hokey to me now. Let me first say, that I don't get 'house haunted by satan' films. Why? If you're the 10,000-odd year old rebel Lucifer, why in the name of all that's shitty would you want to haunt a house and scare the bejeezus out of a surveyor, his wife and her 3 kids by a previous marriage? Why would you appear to the little girl as a walking on two legs pig motherfucker called Jody? Why would you manifest to a priest as the strong scent of feces? I would credit the Devil with a little more integrity than that.

Of course, the house was never haunted. Yes Ronnie DeFeo did kill his family. Yes, he did say he heard voices in the house telling him to kill. But snorting all that coke, like 'Butch' DeFeo did provides an alternate reason. Satan or drug psychosis? Why not let Occam's Razor decide kids!

The families who've lived in the Amityville house since have never had a problem, apart from incessant armies of gawkers and amateur exorcists and ghost hunters wanting to 'investigate' the house. It's up for sale now if you're curious, at the sweet price if 1.5M US$.

Here's what many believe to be the true story of the Amityville house. Drugfucked, bullied son Ronnie DeFeo decides to kill his mum and dad one night, with help from the older sister. She kill their younger siblings as well. Ronnie cracks, kills his sister as well. Ronnie gets dragged off to the booby hatch. Here's a hint kids, don't push for an insanity plea if you're actually crazy. Someone might believe you and sling you in a rubber room for the rest of forever.

Sometime later, George and Kathy Lutz move in to the Amityville house, now with a nice price reduction due to the 'a multiple murder happened here' discount. George, whose business is doing poorly, and has just taken on the expense of a new wife and family, ever so wisely massively over-extends his finances with a crippling mortgage as well.

George and Kathy want to default and bail after a month, but Mr Bank Kill-Joy says 'No'. With the help of their lawyer and several rattan-covered bottles of 1970's chianti, they concoct the 'my house is haunted, so, er... by the way, I shouldn't have to pay off the mortgage' story.

The end.

There's really a lot that's terrible about this film. James Brolin's limp attempt at crazyeyes, Rod Steiger's ferocious, hammy scenery-chewing acting, and just the sheer nonsense of most of the phenomena - 'Hey there's a glowy eyed pig standing in the window waving at me, better axe it to death! Who wants bacon?' - makes The Amityville Horror a film that massively suffers from a nostalgic re-viewing. Do yourself a favour and watch instead the documentary that comes with most versions of the original film, the documentary that makes out what big-ass LIARS George and Kathy were.

Stars: 1 out of 5