6 Weeks of Halloween

Last year, I went on a big martial arts kick, loading up my Netflix queues and Amazon watchlist with all manner of wacky martial arts flicks. Thanks to a neglected Netflix DVD queue (yes, I still get physical media from Netflix, don’t @ me) an action/horror hybrid disc showed up in my mail just before the Six Weeks of Halloween officially began. What to do? Look, the 6WH is really just a convenient excuse to binge horror movies, but it’s not like I’m not watching horror year round. So I’m cheating a bit, as I watched these two martial arts/comedy/horror hybrids during the preamble to the 6WH proper, but I thought it would be fun to mention these. Neither are notably “scary”, per say, but there are a couple of spooky moments and a heaping helping of rather bonkers elements. Let’s dive in:

• Spooky Encounters (aka Encounters of the Spooky Kind)- Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao co-directed this little slice of cuckoo bananas about a pedicab driver (played by Sammo Hung) whose reputation for bravery makes him susceptible to all sorts of dares, leading to several encounters with the undead. It turns out that one of his clients is having an affair with the Hung’s wife, and thus hires a supernatural assassin/witchdoctor to kill Hung. It takes a while to get up to speed, at first feeling a bit disjointed as Hung goes from one goofy supernatural situation to another, but eventually the action starts to rev up and the last half hour works really well. The supernatural bits are really quite bizarre, featuring weird twists of things we would normally be familiar with. Zombies, voodoo dolls, hopping vampires (!), Taoist wizards elevating their alters on top of pillars to make their magic more powerful and shooting literal balls of energy and lasers and shit? This movie has it all. Including one of the all time greatest and most bizarre freeze-frame endings ever. I mean, super problematic to modern eyes, I’m sure, but still utterly amazing. The action is also pretty fantastic, and indeed, one of the better examples of Sammo Hung’s unlikely prowess and uncanny acrobatic ability.
  

  I particularly enjoyed the fight with the hopping vampire (the technical term for this is Jiangshi, which describes reanimated corpses that we’d probably call Zombies, but which the Chinese call “hopping vampires”), an undead zombie-like creature that moves by hopping around with its arms outstretched, but which naturally has pretty keen kung-fu abilities. The concluding battle between two Taoist wizards, one of whom uses what appears to be a portable hydrolic lift to elevate his alter to the level of his stationary opponent, represents a worthy action finale. This is not exactly fine cinema, but it’s entertaining af and well worth checking out for fans of martial arts (and horror comedies). This was supposedly the first modern Jiangshi film (though previous martial arts/horror hybrids existed, they often took inspiration from the west, particularly Dracula), and many others followed, including the below film. **1/2

• Encounters of the Spooky Kind II (trailer)
• Tokyo Zombie (trailer)
• Mr. Vampire (trailer)
• Kung Fu Zombie – Billy Chong plays Pang, a man who inadvertently foiled a criminal that has escaped from prison and vowed revenge. Rather than just fighting Pang, the criminal hires a Taoist monk to animate some zombies to do the job for him. It goes horribly wrong, and the criminal dies in the process, returning as a ghost looking to reincarnate himself in a recently deceased body. Yeah, that old chestnut. There’s more to the plot, but you don’t really need to know any more about it. This is not as good as Spooky Encounters, but offers many of the same charms. Billy Chong is a suitably talented martial artist, and he even fights some hopping vampires in this one. The story drags a bit at times and some scenes feel like filler, but the action is well choreographed and entertaining, and there’s enough of a story to justify the action, even if it all feels a bit perfunctory. Still worth checking out for martial arts aficionados (and to a lesser extent, fans of horror comedies). Chong was nowhere near as prolific or charismatic as Hung (or other contemporaries like Jackie Chan), but he carries the day well enough here. **

There you have it. The Six Weeks of Halloween marches on this weekend with a trio of flicks from an quasi-obscure 80s scream queen.

Summer is in its final death throes. The temperatures are dropping, cool, bracing winds are blowing, leaves are turning brown and falling, crushed underfoot like the hopes and dreams of foolish mortals. Grocery stores now sport mutilated pumpkins, styrofoam tombstones, and decorative corpses. And of course, the pumpkin spice must flow. These and other nominally ghastly signifiers of the season can mean only one thing: It’s Halloweentime! To celebrate, we embark upon a six week long marathon of horror movies and associated media. Why six weeks? Because that’s, like, two weeks longer than most celebrations, and we’re better than most people.

On this first week of our marathon, we will tackle three movies from The Criterion Collection. I suppose I could just use Filmstruck to watch these movies, but in this age of disappearing digital purchases, I want to harken back to the days of physical media. This will be part of a larger, multi-week theme, but for this week, I want to focus on the OG physical media masters.

For the uninitiated, The Criterion Collection began in 1984 as purveyors of laser-discs, a storage medium that never quite caught on except with major cinephiles with cash to burn. They really came into prominence with the DVD. The movies are always presented in their original aspect ratios and are painstakingly restored, remastered, and/or transferred (a process often overseen by the filmmakers themselves), ensuring a high quality experience. Furthermore, they pioneered the use of extra-features like audio-commentaries, much of which is disappearing again in the age of streaming. Heck, one of the more underrated aspects of the Criterion treatment is the frequent inclusion of a booklet featuring new essays, concept art, and other ephemera. The artwork and packaging is always top notch and warrants prominent display on your storage shelves not just because they indicate that you are a connoisseur of good taste, but because they just look great.

The copyright regime being what it is, Criterion doesn’t always have the access to the films fans might be most attracted to (studios want to keep those profits for themselves), so they focused on forgotten but influential older films, foreign movies, or art-house classics that, while important to film history, are often overlooked by modern audiences. Early Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Jean Renoir, and so much more; the collection is riddled with classics, often things that would be lost to the annals of history, were it not for their diligence.

As time goes on and streaming increases its stranglehold on the industry, physical media is both dying… and paradoxically flourishing. Since studios can no longer count on the cash cow of DVD/BD sales and have moved on to streaming, they are a little more open to making physical media rights available to niche, specialist outfits like Criterion (and a few others we’ll cover later in the marathon), who give these films the love they deserve.

In terms of Horror, the Criterion Collection has a few small corners of the genre sewn up. Some favorites that we won’t be covering today including: Sisters, The Blob, House, Rosemary’s Baby, Scanners, Night of the Living Dead, The Silence of the Lambs (just recently reissued on BD!), not to mention a bevvy of Hitchcock and other horror adjacent thrillers. Today, we will be covering three moderately obscure entries from the collection, so let’s dive in:

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XIII: The Island of Dr. Hibbert
• Splice (trailer)
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (trailer)
• Island of Lost Souls [Criterion] – An early (indeed, the first non-silent) adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, it might also be the best. Judged against it’s contemporaries, it stands out (though I don’t think it beats the best of the classic Universal horror pieces). A story with some level of depth, good performances, nice production design, and solid cinematography anchor a very effective production. The story of a mad scientist who attempted to convert animals to humans using perverse, brutally painful medical procedures disgusted audiences at the time and led to various censorship schemes and bannings. To modern eyes, it’s a bit more staid (originally banned in the UK, then rated X, it’s now rated PG), but even still, some elements distinguish this from its contemporaries. In particular, Charles Laughton’s performance as Dr. Moreau is great. He plays the character as a sadistic schemer, convinced of his own god-like superiority and willing to justify all manner of horrors in service of his scientific curiosity. Laughton could have certainly hammed it up in the role and there’s a bit of that here, but there’s also a sort of chilling restraint, with much of his sadistic intent conveyed through his eyes, winks, smirks, or a slight, almost imperceptible smile.
  

  Moreau is a classic villain largely due to Laughton’s performance. Bela Lugosi also shows up as one of the beast men; buried under hairy makeup, but able to imbue the sad creatures with humanity and compassion (“Are we not men?”) Clocking in at 70 minutes, the film is short and sweet and the climax in which Moreau gets his comeuppance works well (spoiler for a century old story). Apparently H.G. Wells hated the movie, perhaps due to liberties taken with the adaptation, notably the introduction of the lurid (for the time, ahem) Panther Woman and fears of miscegenation, which distracted from his themes anti-vivisection and animal cruelty (which, to be sure, are still in the movie, and still relevant today). Not sure if Wells’ distaste kept the film buried, but it’s only recently re-emerged thanks to the likes of Criterion (and it was included in a DVD box set for Universal, which actually owns the film now), and it stands alongside the great Universal monster flicks of the 30s. Well worth checking out for fans of the era. Special features include an insightful and knowledgable commentary track by film historian Gregory Mank. There’s also a discussion with director John Landis, makeup artist Rick Baker, and genre expert Bob Burns, in which they discuss the film’s influence, why it never really caught on, and H.G. Wells’ distaste for the adaptation. Another interview with film historian David J. Skal, which gives a good overview of horror of the time and he makes a good argument for the differences in filmic adaptations. Richard Stanley, the director of the infamously ill-fated 1996 adaptation gives his take (also worth checking out: Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau). Finally, the founding members of Devo also give an interview about the influence (their first album: “Are we not men?”) on their music and videos. It’s a handsome little package, and fans of classic horror like myself would be enamored. ***

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror IV: Bart Simpson’s Dracula
• What We Do In The Shadows (trailer)
• Is that a whip? (Robot Chicken)
• Cronos [Criterion] – Guillermo del Toro’s first feature length film is a modern-day spin on the vampire that remains distinct to this day. The story begins with the creation of the Cronos device, an intricate mechanical bug created by an alchemist in the 1500s; cut to present day when the alchemist, having lived 500 years, dies in an accident. The Cronos device, hidden in a small statue, winds up in an antique shop where mild-mannered Jesus Gris (and his granddaughter) discover the device. Meanwhile, a dying millionaire has discovered the alchemist’s journal and wants the device to extend his own life. I think you can see where this is going, but it’d doesn’t quite play out like you might expect. This is a vampire film where the term vampire is never spoken; it mixes hoary old tales of alchemy with vampire myths, and filters them through del Toro’s conception of fairy tales, yielding a unique take on classic horror themes. For instance, once our hero inadvertently triggers the device and comes under its spell, he craves blood. But while lesser films would, for example, make him threaten and almost kill his granddaughter out of hunger, this film never goes there.
  

  Nor does it glamorize or sensualize the craving, instead portraying a melancholy and sad man crawling on the ground to slurp up a bit of spilled blood. This is a movie that could be schlocky, but that was not del Toro’s goal, and the film has lots of thematic depth if you look for it. It’s a slow burn, but never drags. In the end, it’s a unique take on vampire myths, with del Toro’s distinct voice. Special features include two commentaries, one from del Toro, and another from three producers. A video tour through del Toro’s house that plays like a horror nerd’s episode of Cribs (he has all sorts of horror memorabilia, and room hidden behind a bookcase). A bunch of interviews with the actors, an old del Toro short film, and standard stuff like trailers and stills are also on the disc. The booklet that comes with the disc includes a new essay and del Toro’s production notes, which are rather interesting. Another handsome package, with lots to chew on. ***

• The Fly (trailer)
• The Human Centipede (trailer)
• Halloween RARE Deleted Scene 1978 (short)
• Eyes Without a Face [Criterion] – While this week’s theme was based around the Criterion Collection, I could very well have called the theme “Mad Scientists”, as this is the third film that prominently features such (I suppose the alchemist in Cronos is arguable, but go with me here). An obsessive doctor specializing in transplants attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore his daughter’s face (recently disfigured in a car crash). Once again, a schlocky premise with a more artful execution, this story is filled with common tropes. While not specific to a face transplant, there are lots of stories about a grief-stricken scientist sacrificing everything to save or otherwise reconnect with a loved one. In this case, the imagery is what sets this apart from similar tales. The daughter Christiane wears a smooth, hard white mask to conceal her deformity, a clear prelude to other, more famous masks that would later pepper the horror genre.
  

  The reveal of her true face is quite effective. There is a dog kennel that is well composed and creepy. The actual, grueling face-lifting scene is quite unsettling. So it’s visually impressive, and the performances are pretty good too. The score immediately turned me off though. There’s something too plucky and playful about it, almost like a calliope, such that it doesn’t really fit with the tone of the film. It turns out that this tune is only played during certain scenes though, so the rest of the film has a reasonable score. There’s a whole subplot involving the police that doesn’t quite fit. Perhaps it’s a commentary on this sort of thing (common enough in Giallos and other such flicks), but that doesn’t make it particularly fit any better. This is a really interesting film, with clear influence to this day, and there are bits of it that I love, but it doesn’t quite hold together as much as I’d like. Special features include archival and new interviews, excerpts from documentaries that involve this film, and a documentary the director made about the slaughterhouses of Paris. There are less special features here than the others, but they’re decent enough for what they are. This does seem like the sort of movie that would really benefit from one of those film historian commentaries though! As per usual, the packaging and artwork is great. **1/2

One week down, only five to go. Stay tuned for next week, where we’ll revisit one of last year’s weekly themes, obscure scream queens. After that, we’ll return to physical media-land for a few weeks, with some bonus concurrent themes.

Is Found Footage dead? For the uninitiated, it’s a sub-genre in which a film appears to be assembled from actual camera footage recovered from an event. More broadly speaking, I suppose you could slot it in as a type of fake documentary (mockumentary) as well. While its origins run deep (the ur example usually cited is the 1980 Italian schlock-fest Cannibal Holocaust), the genre didn’t hit the big time until The Blair Witch Project became a sensation around the turn of the century.

Since then, the sub-genre has waxed and waned a few times, at least in the mainstream, as low-budget contenders come and go, with the occasional revitalizing effort keeping the concept alive. The J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield hit a solid 8 years after Blair Witch, but it was Paranormal Activity that really kept this approach on the radar. All through that time, though, Found Footage has remained a constant in the horror niche. The reasons of this are varied, but they aren’t going away. The unending march of technology, social media, and our compulsion to document everything we do goes a long way towards answering one of the frequently begged questions of the sub-genre: why the hell were they filming this crap? The approach can lend a sense of verisimilitude to an otherwise hoaky concept (though let’s be honest, that’s still easier said than done). It’s a low budget aesthetic that will continue to be a mainstay of horror cinema.

The approach doesn’t come without its challenges. The aforementioned issue of motivation still remains a key question (why would you keep filming!?) For the most part, you have to be willing to cut the filmmakers a little slack when it comes to this sort of thing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it emphatically does not. The handheld aesthetic, while imparting a sense of realism, is also easy to overdo. I can’t think of anyone who really likes shaky cam, even if you can occasionally justify its use. Funnily enough, I think a big part of the Paranormal Activity series’ success is its innovation of using a tripod through the majority of the films. Another thing this approach tends to rely on is improvised dialog, which often turns out abysmally. I think it was fine in the original Blair Witch Project (though I get that a lot of people hate it for that), but they walked a fine line in that movie, one that most found footage can’t pull off.

Found Footage may not be making current waves at the box office, but it continues to be common amongst indie horror offerings and is here to stay. For this installment of the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon, I caught up with three lesser known examples of the sub-genre, so let’s dive in:

• Willow Creek (trailer)
• The Bay (trailer)
• The Last Broadcast (trailer)
• The Poughkeepsie Tapes – The FBI discovers hundreds of video tapes in an abandoned house in Poughkeepsie, NY. The tapes depict decades of a serial killer’s exploits, especially focusing on one victim. Last year, whilst revisiting The Blair Witch Project, I mentioned that it was odd that most found footage movies simply consisted of the footage itself and no context, no interviews with experts, etc… Well this movie is exactly what I was talking about. It’s a mock documentary that is roughly split evenly between the eponymous tapes and talking head interviews with investigators, experts, victims’ family members, etc… For the most part it’s an effective approach, and the film is genuinely unnerving.
  

  It does come off a bit disjointed, but that’s to be expected given the conceit and actually serves to reinforce the feeling that what we’re watching is real (I mean, it’s not, but still). Some of the individual episodes are very well done. At one point, the killer approaches the mother of one of his victims and tells her to “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help” and at first, the woman just politely responds, but then you see something dawning on her face and the killer runs away, giggling. Some of the stalking and torture sequences got under my skin as well. There’s one segment in which 9/11 plays a part that is surprising and effective. One bit with a victim that was recovered after years of being the killer’s slave is very disturbing and sticks with you. There’s no real jump scares or gore, just a general tone of dismay that serves the film well. There’s lots to like here, but some flaws drag it down a few pegs. The actual video footage is very poor quality. I realize this is supposed to be VHS from the 90s, so the quality isn’t going to be great, but I think they overdid the wavy VHS distortions. Also, every clip is preceded by an annoying audio buzzing click noise that is distracting. I get what they’re going for here, but it’s just weird. For one thing, the video is presented at 1.85:1 (just like the rest of the movie), while most video cameras of the era would be 4:3. Why do that, but keep the quality so crappy? Some of the acting in the interviews is a bit off as well, but nothing too jarring. Sometimes it feels like we’re being told to be scared than we’re actually seeing something scary, but on balance, the film works. It’s a genuinely unnerving film, even if it doesn’t feel particularly satisfying in the end. **1/2

• Paranormal Activity (trailer)
• Paranormal Pactivity (Robot Chicken)
• The Last Exorcism (trailer)
• Lake Mungo – A young woman disappears and her grief-stricken family begins to think she’s haunting their house. Another faux documentary comprised mostly of talking head interviews and various other recordings. The proportion is more focused on the interviews than the actual footage that was found, and since all of this has clearly happened in the past, there’s not much tension (and some of the footage turns out to be less reliable than originally thought, which also puts a damper on things). The video footage is mostly better here, though it’s still quite unclear at times (but at least that has to do with zooming in on an image rather than the whole thing being manipulated to look poor quality).
  

  Unfortunately, most of this doesn’t add up. The film is well made, but lacks a bit of focus on what it really wants to get at. It does a reasonable job exploring the grief the family is going through, but there’s a lot of tangents that open more questions than they answer. In fact, the titular Lake Mungo doesn’t even show up until pretty late in the movie, and while we do get a couple of interesting developments there, it still feels anticlimactic. The movie never really coalesces beyond the grief plot, despite trying for some supernatural angles (that can get mildly creepy at times, but are almost always undercut by some other development, with the notable exception of the ending which attempts something kinda weird). On the other hand, I suspect that this will stick with me more than originally thought. Only time will tell on that front though, for now I’ll just stick with this is a decent exploration of grief with some neat supernatural speculation. **1/2

• The Blair Witch Project (trailer)
• How the Blair Witch Project Should Have Ended (short)
• Troll Hunter (trailer)
• WNUF Halloween Special – Imagine discovering a long lost video tape of one night’s local TV station’s Halloween broadcast, complete with a full news program (with the anchors in costume and everything), commercials, and a “special” where a film crew enters the infamous Webber house, the site of a gruesome local legend. This is a fascinating format for a movie and a novel approach to the sub-genre. It captures the 80s-style local broadcast shockingly well. I doubt it’d really convince anyone it was real (too much of a focus on the local environs and businesses with no mention of anything else), but on the other hand, they did an astonishing job imitating the period and its tropes and excesses.
  

  A certain type of viewer will definitely appreciate this nostalgic tone; the types that go hunting for cheesy old commercials on YouTube will also get a kick out of it. Some of the news segments are great (the one with the dentist is pitch perfect), the commercials are dead on, and the trumped-up exploration of a supposed haunted house is a good idea. Unlike the previous two films, this one takes a more comedic tone. Local television personality Frank Stewart is fantastic and mostly hilarious, all while playing it straight. The husband and wife paranormal team and priest are a little less successful, but Stewart keeps this all on track, even as unexpected things start happening. There are, perhaps, a few too many commercial breaks, the video quality ain’t great (still better than The Poughkeepsie Tapes though), and the finale goes a bit off the rails, but everything fits together in the end. This is a unique, nostalgic take on the Found Footage genre and worth checking out. **1/2

Maybe I was being too hard on these movies, but I had a lot of fun with this weekend. These weren’t perfect, but they were certainly interesting… Up next is another book/film adaptation combo on Wednesday, followed by, hmmm, I don’t have a theme for next weekend yet (and frankly, I haven’t done a “no discernible theme” week in a while…)

The “Video Nasties” were a group of 72 horror movies that were banned in the UK for… reasons? There didn’t appear to be any real criteria for inclusion on the list, though it’s generally cited as just “Violent content” or some such thing. It partly had to do with loopholes in home video laws that let some of these movies sneak onto shelves without going through the UK’s normal censorship regime, but even then, it seems like a rather odd list. Odd, but certainly interesting from a horror historian’s point of view, as it’s a neat little time capsule of the era. The lurid titles (Killer Nun!) and tantalizing video covers that promised oh-so-much are a good encapsulation of what it was like to peruse the horror section of your local mom-and-pop video store in the 80s (not that I had a ton of experience at that, to be sure, but still). Ultimately, like a lot of censorship schemes, the films on the list ended up gaining an allure not otherwise earned by their actual quality (another example of the Streisand Effect). The movies on the list range from “Why would they ever ban that?” to “Dear Lord, why isn’t this still banned?” Or so I’m told, as I’ve only seen about 15 of the movies on the list. Let’s increment that number a few times, shall we?

• Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
• Driving Lessons – Halloween Deleted Scene (short)
• The Boogeyman (trailer)
• Nightmare (aka Nightmares in a Damaged Brain) – An escaped mental patient heads back to his childhood home as he struggles to recall the trauma that set off his murderous impulses. A sorta hybrid slasher/serial-killer film, it does drag significantly for most of the running time, but it has a decent, slasher-ish finale. It doesn’t really follow the slasher rules though. No real final girl (the protagonist is a little boy that no one likes), the killer actually murders a kid at one point (I mean, like, sub-ten-year-old kid, though at least it doesn’t really happen onscreen), he only puts on his mask in the finale, and so on. For all its tedium, there are some memorable bits. The kills are few and far between, but most earn the “Video Nasty” designation with their explicit gore. As a fan of fake movie computer setups, this movie has a phenomenal example. It’s got five monitors, four of which are just constantly displaying the same mugshot of our killer.
  

  The fifth is a computer screen that shows text in, like, 72 pt font (it only fits 5 lines per screen). The computer is basically an all-powerful AI too. At one point he’s reading a police report about a stolen car that mentions that the driver is presumed dead. Our policeman asks it “Why presumed dead?” and it proceeds to answer. It does all sorts of cross-referencing and even predicts where the killer is going (Florida!?). My other favorite bit was the scene in which the Mother’s boyfriend tries to comfort her by explaining the plot of Blow Up (then realizes that, no wait, this isn’t comforting at all). Overall, I don’t think these bits really make up for the bland plotting and pacing of the film. It’s interesting in some ways and maybe worth checking out for students of the genre, but that’s about it. *1/2 (Also of note, the Amazon Prime version of the movie is a craptacular pan-and-scan transfer that is awful – I could see this being a bit better if it were better presented).

• Hardly Working: Slasher (Short)
• How Scream Should Have Ended (short)
• Bay of Blood (trailer)
• Bloody Moon (aka Die Säge des Todes) – A guy with a deformed face kills someone at a party,

  but does his time at a mental hospital and is discharged in the care of his sister. They go back to her language school, where, naturally, a bunch of kids start disappearing/dying. This is another sorta slasher/giallo hybrid, though at least this one has a few twists and turns and a genuine whodunit component (it’s pretty obviously not the deformed face mental patient guy, even though he does a bunch of creepy stalker type stuff). The kills aren’t as creative or gory here and the pacing is still pretty languid, but it hits more slasher tropes and ends strong. Like with Nightmare, there are some really odd bits that are memorable. The costume party starts off with a killer wearing a Mickey Mouse mask (I have no idea how they got away with this).

  

  The one kill with the wetsaw is cool, though they perhaps drag it out too long (and it ends with the killer running down a witness with his car – but the witness was a little boy! I guess they don’t call these movies “Nasty” for nothing…) This was made in Italy and that does add some flavor to the slasher tropes, but it’s ultimately still not particularly accomplished. Interesting in some ways, but not really worth going out of your way to see. **

• Jack Chop (short)
• Evil Dead (trailer)
• The Toolbox Murders (trailer)
• Absurd (aka Monster Hunter, aka Horrible, aka Zombi 6, aka Anthropophagus 2, aka Rosso sangue) – This movie has at least six different titles. It’s directed by Joe D’Amato, but he uses a pseudonym here (Peter Newton). All in service of a pretty hacky Halloween ripoff. Supposedly a sequel, but one that seems to rely very little on its predecessor, this one is about a man given strange, X-Men-like healing factor in an experiment run by the Catholic Church. Naturally, the process instilled him with murderous rage, so he hacks his way through town until he sets his sights on one particular house, all while a cop and a priest try to track him down. I was kinda interested in this whole Church-led genetic experimentation program, but that bit is pretty much dropped after the first act, in favor of poorly paced stalking and kills. Some interesting stuff, but at this point, all these movies are starting to blend together. Like the above mentioned movies, there are some memorable bits, including a sequence where the killer holds a woman in an oven and bakes her face. It’s cross-cut with a young girl removing some bed restraints, but it goes on for, like, ten minutes. Insane.
  

  The very last shots are also pretty spectacular and ultimately made me like this more than anything else I watched this weekend. I’m pretty much spoiling it with the screenshot, but since no one reads this blog and since even those few that do will probably never watch this movie, I don’t feel bad about it. Not a particularly great film, but you could do worse. **

Phew, that was not a particularly enjoyable series of movies. I like a good, gory sleazefest as much as the next person, but these just didn’t weren’t doing it for me… Hopefully next week’s theme, Found Footage, will fare a little better. In the meantime, we might hit up some book/movie adaptations. After that, who knows? I don’t have a plan for the last week of the marathon yet…