6 Weeks of Halloween

I love The X-Files. I revisited the series last year, mostly focusing on the one-off creature-of-the-week type episodes (someday, I will go back and revisit the continuity episodes, but that day is not today). Now, we could quibble about it, but to me, The X-Files is a horror show, and it’s probably my favorite horror TV show of all time. Sure, there are plenty of Twilight Zone or Tales From the Crypt episodes that I think are great, but they’re anthologies and are more uneven experiences than The X-Files, where I generally enjoy spending time with Mulder and Scully, even in lackluster episodes. Since the X-Files has gone off the air, I have often found myself jonesing for this type of show. There are, in fact, many pretenders to the throne, but they never seem to scratch that itch perfectly. This is partly just the nature of the beast: the show I think I want would be seen as derivative and probably very boring. These pretenders, shows like Fringe, Warehouse 13 (which has the added bonus of also being a sorta reprise of that old Friday the 13th series (you remember that, right? The one without Jason?)), and Supernatural (amongst many others), all have their merits and indeed have carved out an identity of their own (as well they should), but they just can’t seem to hit that sweet spot the X-Files so consistently targeted. Despite that, I do still find myself checking out shows, new and old, in the hopes that they’ll fill the X-Files shaped hole in my media consumption. And what better time to try this out than during the 6 Weeks of Halloween? Here’s a few shows/episodes I’ve watched recently:

• Miracles – Episode 101 “The Ferguson Syndrome” – Described by the series creators as a “spiritual version of The X-Files”, which sounds promising. The premise is interesting too. Paul Callan (played by Skeet Ulrich) is a modern-day investigator of alleged miracles for the Catholic Church. The only problem: Callan is so good at his job that he finds mundane explanations for every supposed “miracle” that comes his way. He gets burnt out and goes on a sabbatical, but it isn’t long before his mentor, father “Poppi” Calero (played by Hector Elizondo) calls him and asks him to look into a local kid who may have healing powers. Spoiler alert: the kid’s for real, but when he heals someone, he only hurts himself. Convinced that he’s witnessed a true miracle, he excitedly reports back to the Church, who brushes the whole incident aside for lack of evidence. Well screw that noise, Callan quits and starts up with Sodalitas Quaerito (“brotherhood in search of truth”) who look into all sorts of wacky crap. Yay! Suffers from typical pilot episode issues, but it’s all promising enough. And creepy too!
• Miracles – Episode 102 “The Friendly Skies” – Ah, now we get into real X-Files territory. A plane on approach disappears right in front of the tower’s eyes. About a minute later it reappears. The authorities are baffled, and the passengers are all telling weird stories and displaying weird symptoms. Who you gonna call? Sodalitas Quaerito! So it doesn’t roll off the tongue like “Ghostbusters” but I guess it’s good enough. Decent enough episode, with a bunch of hokey aspects, but it works well.
• Miracles – Episode 103 “The Patient” – Another very X-Filesy premise here, a doctor working with totally paralyzed patients starts to see signs of intelligence. Is his treatment working, or is it the work of… a demon!? I’ll give you one guess. For the first time, the series tries to show a sense of humor (it’s been very stoic so far), and it’s not quite as effective as it wants to be. There’s also a “twist” that you can see coming, oh, within the first 10 minutes. Still, it’s fine, if not a prized episode. Thus ended disc 1, and I’m on the fence as to whether or not I’ll move disc 2 up in the Netflix queue. It’s certainly not a home run, but it ain’t bad and there’s some potential here. Of course, there’s only 13 episodes and this thing got canceled after 6, but it might be worth burning through the rest of them.
• Haven – Episode 1 “Welcome to Haven” – Based (perhaps loosely so) on a Stephen King novel (The Colorado Kid), this seems to start very much like the X-Files, it even follows an FBI agent! Special Agent Audrey Parker gets sent to the small town called Haven in Maine. Naturally, all sorts of weird crap is going on, like oddly specific weather patterns and whatnot. It’s a bit loose, but as a first episode, I think they’ve set up the main players and it seems fun enough, if not particularly horrific. It’s on Netflix Instant, so I’ll probably check out at least a few more episodes.
• Hemlock Grove – Episode 1 “Jellyfish in the Sky” – Hoo boy, this Netflix Original series from Eli Roth is pretty horrible. This first episode is damn near unwatchable. There are some interesting elements, but on the other hand, there are a lot of pointless elements. There’s some sort of werewolf thing going on right now, but I get the impression that there’s lots of other supernatural junk going on. And gypsies! Again, it’s no Netflix Instant, so it’s possible that I’ll check out another episode… but not likely!

And that’s all for now. Stay tuned for some long-shelved movies on Sunday!

In 2006, while grappling with the film Hostel, NY Magazine critic David Edelstein coined the phrase “Torture Porn” to describe the emerging focus on explicit scenes of torture and mutilation, as presented in not only Hostel but in films like “The Devil’s Rejects, Saw, Wolf Creek, and even (dare I blaspheme?) The Passion of the Christ.” Since then, the debates have never really stopped. On the one hand, “Torture Porn” is a poor descriptor because it is applied to widely and it implies a pejorative that isn’t even really present in Edelstein’s original article (He describes Hostel as “actually not a bad little thriller” and gives it a lot of credit for things like “the mixture of innocence and entitlement in young American males abroad”, even while poo pooing the torture). That being said, the sub-genre went on to be almost universally reviled (at least, critically) for most of the aughts. In that way, I feel Torture Porn shares a certain kinship with the (also almost universally reviled at the time) slashers of the early 1980s. This immediately endears me to the sub-genre (and makes me think it a fertile ground for analysis in the future, what with the very real torture being debated out here in the real world, etc…), but it’s still a tough sell.

In general, this revulsion isn’t that controversial, even amongst folks who seek this stuff out. Movies agreed to be in the sub-genre are unpleasant affairs (to put it mildly), and will frequently prompt me to wonder why on earth I’m actually watching something like this. This isn’t a new thing for me, I’ve often wondered why I’m attracted to the lurid sadism of horror films, but when I look closely, I find it’s not about “horror” at all. Unless you consider various bits of culture, ranging from frustratingly difficult video games to Shakespearean tragedy, to be “horror” as well… Why is it that we, as humans, seek out and engage with pieces of culture that steep us in failure, tragedy, and/or pain? In attempting to explain paradoxical popularity of Greek tragedy, Aristotle argued that while we experience negative emotions in the course of our normal life, empathizing with fictional tragedy helps to purge those emotions from us in a cathartic way. That may be true of works like Oedipus and Antigone (or Shakespeare’s work), it may even be true of a lot of horror films, but something about torture porn makes me question that thesis. I feel no real catharsis when watching Martyrs, I just feel dirty and, well, bad. Man, that movie is a downer, and I have a lot of respect for it, but I can never recommend it, nor do I ever want to watch it again. Perhaps the other philosophical approach would apply here – one cannot know happiness without experiencing sadness. Or something. What am I, Plato?

There were plenty of movies before Saw that could be considered Torture Porn (like Audition, which is fantastic, and Ichi the Killer, which is not), but Saw seems to be the real flashpoint of the sub-genre, not to mention its most (surprisingly) successful franchise. I actually think it’s a pretty good movie. Clearly low budget and a bit sloppy, that kinda works in its favor, and while its influences are clear (notably Se7en and The Abominable Dr. Phibes, amongst others), it carved out an identity of its own. I have seen the second movie before, and while I was impressed with the continuity (a theme that will continue below), I found it to be less approachable (i.e. more “why am I watching this?” than catharsis). From there, I sorta opted out of the franchise. I’ve somehow seen the first few minutes of Saw III a few times, but never really followed through. Well, that ended this weekend:

• Sawed by the Bell (Robot Chicken)
• Saw (trailer)
• Saw II (trailer)
• Saw III – Picking up right where Saw II leaves off, this film proceeds to fill in some backstory from the previous films while moving ahead with its own tale. I like the effort they make to maintain continuity in all these movies (something franchises of the 80s rarely did), though I’m not entirely sure if this is just a good retcon job or if they really did plan this stuff out. Given the franchise’s obsession with well laid plans, that might not be that far fetched. On the other hand, I’m not sure if this is really something to be that proud of in the first place. The frequent flashbacks and byzantine narrative of this movie work well enough, provided you’re actually interested in that sort of thing. Personally, I like puzzle movies, so while the resolutions to these movies tend to be faintly ridiculous, I enjoy that part of it well enough. And they do try to change things up a bit here, putting one man named Jeff through a series of trials meant to help him deal with his son, who died in a tragic car accident (rather than groups of people, like in previous movies). Various other people who played a role in his son’s death are put into traps, and he has to make the decision to save them or let them die. I like the approach, and there are some effective bits here (I felt for the dude when he had to incinerate his son’s toys and whatnot in order to progress to the next phase of Jigsaw’s test), but on the other hand, he wrings his hands and emotes in exactly the same way for every victim, which is too repetitive (not to mention annoying). The traps and gore are mildly creative, and while one twisty trap is pretty crazy, it never quite hit the ick factor of the needle pit in part II.

  

  Visually, this isn’t exactly breaking new ground and pretty much all of the movies have that same aesthetic; it looks dirty and grimy, as it should. I was a little surprised at the ending, even though I was pretty sure I’d heard about this before. Spoiler alert: Jeff kills Jigsaw. And Jigsaw Jr., Amanda, dies as well. Given that there are 4 movies left in the series, this seems like an interesting approach, no? On the other hand, given Jigsaw’s superhuman ability to plan for every eventuality, that’s maybe not so surprising. Heck, even as he’s getting his throat cut, he whips out a tape recorder and plays the appropriate message. I’m sure he has a few other mini-me Jigsaw Jr’s hanging around. All in all, it’s an entertaining enough film, even if the varied plotlines and flashbacks are getting a bit unwieldy.

• Se7en (trailer)
• How Saw Should Have Ended (Parody)
• Hostel (trailer)
• Saw IV – So Jigsaw really is dead, and yet, we see as much of him in this movie as we ever have, thanks to the power of flashbacks! Lots and lots of flashbacks! We get more backstory here than we have in the previous three films, actually, seeing the events leading up to Jigsaw’s eventual obsession. But back in the present, we’ve got various detectives and FBI agents trying to pick up the pieces from part III, and Sgt. Rigg comes to be the main victim that Jigsaw is targeting here.

  

  The puzzle here works better than I thought, though I’m not sure if I really got the ending. The pieces fit, but maybe the concept is just getting a bit old. And we do find out that there is indeed another Jigsaw Jr. out there, though he seems to be following through on Jigsaw’s plans. It’s surprising that these movies are still working and fitting together, even if this isn’t exactly awesome.

• The Abominable Dr Phibes (trailer)
• The Muppets: Saw (Parody)
• Paranormal Saw (Funny or Die)
• Saw V – And here’s where the series finally derails (you could make arguments for earlier, but this seems indisputable). Jigsaw Jr. is continuing his ways and covering his tracks, and there’s yet more flashbacks, and obsessed detectives, and there’s a bunch of people in a series of Jigsaw traps, and blah blah blah. The folks in the traps don’t seem to be related to all the wrangling outside the story, even if they are all related internally. For what its worth, the very end of this does tie some things together in a way I found mildly clever, but that’s just the same puzzle structure as all the other movies. And Jigsaw Jr. doesn’t quite have the anti-hero charm of the original Jigsaw. When Jigsaw wins in the end, you can kinda see the logic and even ethics behind it. When Jigsaw Jr. wins? Not so much. He’s just a dick, and I’m actively rooting against him. Which is odd, because, you know, he’s the “villain” and I should be rooting against him. So this movie is inverting the inversion of the series? Maybe, maybe not. It is repetitive, and the flashbacks are just getting annoying, and it’s also repetitive. In the end, the series is getting a bit long in the tooth at this point, and the entries are starting to blur together in my head (even having watched them in relative proximity). It’s just not holding together very well in this movie. My understanding is that VI and VII are actually better, so I guess we’ll have to check them out sometime. But not right now.

So I don’t love these movies, but I can see why they are popular (and I do like the byzantine, puzzle-like nature of the plots) and I like the notion of having a sorta Slasher movie equivalent in aughts. In 20 years, some dork will be marathoning these movies in much the same way I marathoned Friday the 13th movies or Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and I think that’s pretty cool.

And if you’re worried about what the popularity of these Torture Porn movies means, fear not, as the movement is largely over, having been displaced, oddly enough, by the relatively bloodless Paranormal Activity style ghost story (at least, in my mind). These are definitely more my style, to be sure, and we’ll see some in the coming weeks. I hope!

The most awesomest time of the year has arrived, bringing with it stuff like decorative corpses, mutilated pumpkins, bite sized candy, pumpkin beers, and a whole host of other nominally ghastly objects that suddenly become socially acceptable. Halloweentime is so fun, and it’s the horror movie nerd’s high holiday, so in honor of this most glorious of seasons, I always buckle down and watch a bunch of horror movies.

Inspired by Pacific Rim, I’m kicking the festivities off this year with a bevy of Kaiju movies. The Japanese term Kaiju literally translates to “strange creature”, but to us yanks, it basically means “monster”. I’ve seen bits and pieces of these over the years, and I believe I’ve even watched some in MST3K form (I definitely remember a couple of Mothra flicks from that era), but I’ve never given them a serious, sustained look. So let’s do that:

• King of the Monsters (Robot Chicken)
• King Kong (1933 Trailer)
• Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (trailer)
• Godzilla – The granddaddy of all kaiju, Godzilla is one of the most recognizable creations of Japanese pop culture, appearing in upwards of 27 films, not to mention video games and other ephemera. This 1954 film is, to my knowledge, the first official kaiju film and well worth a look. The Japanese have a unique perspective on technology, particularly nuclear technology, so while this isn’t the first (cinematic) giant monster created by nuclear testing, it’s the most famous.

  

  Watching it now, the special effects don’t really hold up so well (that’s clearly a dude in a suit and those exploding trains are clearly toys), but the thing that surprised me most about the movie was it’s sophisticated sense of responsibility in the face of new technology. There’s the obvious commentary on nuclear testing, but when the eyepatch wearing Serizawa discovers a new weapon, there is a great deal of (deserved) hand-wringing about the use of a new and terrifying weapon. What’s more, there is also a sense of responsibility around Godzilla itself. Should we destroy the beast, or is it merely a force of nature that begs for study and understanding? Sure, Godzilla lays waste to Tokyo and there’s all sorts of tanks and planes and explosions, but it’s the morality of the tale that makes this an enduring film, and it’s well worth revisiting for that side alone. I was really not expecting this sort of ethical and moral sophistication, and I’m really happy I went back and watched this movie. ***

• A Ruined Nation (Robot Chicken)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VI: Attack of the 50 foot Eyesores
• Mothra (trailer)
• Rodan – Rodan is a mutated prehistoric reptile, caused by (you guessed it) nuclear testing, but it was also uncovered by a mining operation, a wrinkle on the cautionary nature of these tales. Unfortunately, none of the subtlety or sophistication of Godzilla are present here; no moral conundrums, and only a minor retread and tweaking of the cautionary themes. The plot is barely worth elaborating. Workers in a mine start disappearing; one survivor witnesses a giant egg hatching to reveal Rodan, a flying monster whose main weapon seems to be the wind caused by it’s acceleration and supersonic speed. Unfortunately, the movie barely does anything with this. Plenty of destruction and mayhem, but little human conflict to anchor that to. After the pleasant surprise of Godzilla, this was a big disappointment. *
• Pacific Rim (trailer)
• Godzilla (1998 trailer)
• Godzilla Returns (Robot Chicken)
• Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster – So Godzilla is the king of the monsters, but then, what can stand up to him? Enter the “big bad” of the kaiju movies, Ghidorah, a fire-breathing monster of extraterrestrial origins that is so powerful that Godzilla can’t take him on alone. Instead, we get Mothra convincing Godzilla and Rodan (formerly enemies) to put aside their own petty squabbles in order to defend their planet. Godzilla had been portrayed as a villain or a force of nature, but now he makes the transition to hero. All of the sudden, these monsters became likable and we started applying anthropomorphic traits to them. The challenge of featuring these giant monsters teaming up to battle another giant monster is that humans are sorta extraneous, so we end up with a very disjointed tale of a princess who thinks she’s from Mars, warning the planet about Ghidorah and dealing with a hit squad from her homeland. Or something. This is certainly an improvement over Rodan, but not quite to the level of Godzilla. Still, I certainly had enough fun with it, so it may be worth a watch if you’re interested. **1/2

And so the first week of Halloween is in the books, only 5 more weeks to go. Stay tuned for a look at some of the Saw sequels next week.

One thing I’ve noticed has been missing from this year’s Six Weeks of Halloween festivities is, well, craziness. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched some weird stuff this year, but let’s just say the batshit insane quotient has been lacking. This sounds like a job for Italians! They may not make any sense, but that’s what being batshit insane is all about. Things kicked off well this weekend, though they gradually got less and less wacky as time went on. Ah well, there’s always next week.

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VIII: Fly vs. Fly
• Kingdom of the Spiders (trailer)
• Black Sheep (trailer)
• Phenomena – This is the most bonkers movie I’ve seen in a long time. Let’s count the ways in which this insanity manifests. Ok, so first we’ve got a girl (played by a very young Jennifer Connelly) who can commune with bugs attending a prestigious academy in Switzerland (they refer to this area as the Swiss Transylvania on multiple occasions), a pre-CSI entomologist who uses bugs to date murders, a razor-blade wielding chimpanzee that fights crime, and a scene where someone realizes they’ve taken a poison drug and induces themselves to vomit (a scene that goes on for about 5 minutes). And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

  

  It’s a little slow to get going, but all of Dario Argento’s quirks are on display here. I’ve already mentioned the school, which is a common trope for him, as is the obligatory girl falling through a window death scene. The music is interesting, though a little too tinged by the 80s to be effective, but Argento has always had a way of matching music with his long, slow tracking shots that works well. Again, it takes its time at the beginning, but the last half hour is quite the awesome bit of gloriously loopy stuff. And the whole thing ends with craziest scene of all. The crime fighting chimp, having vanquished its enemies with a razor blade he found in the garbage somewhere, throws away the weapon like he’s fucking Gary Cooper in High Noon. Not really a “good” movie, but I kinda loved watching it. ***

• Honest Zombie (Robot Chicken)
• Slither (trailer)
• Scourge of The Undead (fake trailer)
• Demons – Ostensibly about a demon who opens a movie theater, invites in some victims, then starts converting the audience into more demons, it pretty much plays out like a typical zombie movie (Italians love zombies). You’ve got the monsters themselves, which are kinda mindless, and they spread by scratching (infecting) their victims. I’m a little unclear on who or what was orchestrating this movie thing, but like a lot of zombie movies, there’s some blatant symbolism going on here. It’s set in a movie theater that’s showing a movie that’s and at one point, a demon literally jumps through the canvas screen and starts attacking the audience.

  

  Despite the metaphorical possibilities, there’s pretty much no plot here at all. People go to movie theater, get attacked by demons, try to get out of movie theater. Lots of blood and gore, some interesting makeup effects (including a particularly disturbing demon teeth replacing human teeth thing, and the Italian favorite eye gouging gags), but that’s pretty much it. Zombie fans would enjoy it, I found it a little on the meh side, though I was entertained enough. **

• Lotion in the Basket (Robot Chicken)
• Suspiria (trailer)
• Deep Red (trailer)
• Tenebre – Another Argento mystery thriller type thing, this one was distressingly normal, though as Giallo films go, it was fun enough. This one plays on that old saw of the killer tormenting an author by killing people in the manner described in the books. There is a sorta whodunnit element to the story, though like all Argento mysteries, you really can’t figure it out based on the information you have. Still, there are a couple of nice twists and a bravura crane shot that marks the visual centerpiece of the film. This was engaging enough, but I find I don’t have much to say about it. So there. **1/2

That wraps up Italian horror week. I think next week will end up being a “No Discernible Theme Week”, depending on what Netflix can get me… Stay tuned, still plenty of horror and mayhem on the way.