The Skin Crawl

So let’s talk about elements of fear again.  Today’s topic: the skin crawl.  The skin crawl is vastly different from real fear.  The skin crawl makes you wiggle in your seat.  Your spine gets itchy and you find your ass scooting up the back of the couch trying to get the hell away from the TV.  Real fear, on the other hand, is paralyzing.  Real fear, which I’ve found rarely on the screen (mostly it just rears its ugly head in dreams), roots you to the ground leaving you unable to function in the face of pending doom.  Except for your bladder.  That fucker has an operating system of its own.  So what do you think will be easier for a movie to accomplish?  Bring on the creepy crawlies!

Forget Me Not

nailed the skin crawl.  How?  Well, first they kept the creepy things just out of sight.  When you can’t lay eyes on the creepy thing… when the danger is just beyond what you can fully perceive it’s always scarier.  You hear vicious barking behind a closed door and your scared your about to get your head torn off.  You open the door and see a puntable ankle biter, not so much. Forget Me Not kept the scary just out of sight just enough to get a “what the fuck was that?”.  And then there’s the freaky crawly dead thing.  You know the shit that got really popular with The Ring.  Dead folks that are both ghastly white and decaying dark. 

And they move way too fucking fast.  Nothing all crooked and outta wack like that should be able to move that quick.  Just isn’t right.  Those bastards give me the creepy like nothing else. 

The premise of the movie unfolds slowly like a good story should.  The movement of the story begins as a group of friends graduate high school.  Main character Sandy and all her peeps are stoked to be getting out of school and hitting the resulting party and celebration trip.  After said party the gang heads to the graveyard to play a tricked out scary version of hide and go seek (‘cause leaving your graduation party to go play in the cemetery is a great idea.  Really).  As they begin they are joined by an unfamiliar girl who is under the impression that our leading lady should remember her.  Sweet Sandy is lost, not remember mystery girl but is quite upset when mystery girl dives over the edge of a cliff and disappears.  The action builds as members of the group are offed one by one in fairly grisly fashion (not very bloody or vicious but a solid R).  The twist is that after their untimely demises no one seems to remember them but Sandy. I appreciated that the viewer had to put two and two along right with Sandy.   After each death there were changes in “reality”.  With each death the severity of the changes mounted.  I’m only a little ashamed to admit it took us a couple dead teens to catch on to what was happening. Without spoiling the shit out of everything I’ll just say that this is a past coming back to haunt you kind of flick.  

So what’s the downside?  Bad acting.  The kind of acting that makes critic turn up their noses.  But not so bad that I was hoping characters would die quickly so that’s something.  

Bottom line, we caught this on Netfilx but I think I’ll have to add it to the collection at some point.  It’s worth a rewatch.

Excuse Me, I Have to Feed My Gator

Funny thing about movies, horror in particular, you know from the opening when a movie is set in Louisiana.  I mean, everyone knows there’s nothing but swamp here and everyone’s Grandmama knows voodoo or hoodoo or something to that effect.  And we all row around in pirogues all day.  In fact that’s how I got to work today.  But I digress. 

Venom

is a supernatural slasher flick set right here in my home state where everything is all swampy and scary.

To be brutally honest, it’s a lame movie.  It probably won’t rank among the top ten in my worst horror flicks ever but it’s pretty damn bad.

The cast hit a few of modest notes with the appearance of Jonathan Jackson (Riding the Bullet, General Hospital), Laura Ramsey (The Covenant), and Bijou Phillips (Hostel II, Bully).  It’s a cast of people you know but you don’t really know where the hell you know them from.  I talk a lot about stock characters and this film takes it to the extreme.  Not only was every character an idea that’s been done a million times but it seemed as if the actors even felt it and threw in the towel.  Phillips death scene as the about to be shattered Tammy was ridiculously unbelievable.  I honestly wished she would have been offed about two minutes before it actually happened just to shut up the insanely fake wailing.  And quite frankly the gay guy should have been much much gayer. 

Along with the halfass performances there was a pile of played out story line.  It began with Grandma creeping around in the graveyard in the middle of the night digging up some evil.  Then we moved on to the development of the villain… you know, the one that never meant to be a villain but happened on some unfortunate circumstances that made him evil.  And of course there was the heroine with the hard life, desperate to leave the small town behind.  If I didn’t know better I’d be half inclined to believe that a couple of twelve year olds wrote this screen play after reading too many Fear Street books.

What kept this rubbish from being completely meritless?  Well,  I saw to the end just to see if my original assumption that the pretty boy boyfriend would never make it was right.  And, of course, I was.  Sorry, Lucky, you’re a little too cute to live, here’s a screwdriver to the dome.  There were some other high points as well; watching snake guy Ray wreck shop with his tire iron was fun.  Also you can pretty much guarantee you are fucked out of luck when you try to flee only to find your car (your bug) on its top.  If you find the wheels of your car in the air you are destined to fail at horror movie survival.   It says a lot that humor , not scare factor, made this bearable.

I would suggest buying this if you find it in the five dollar bin…in a combo pack… with two other, better movies.

Childhood Memories

Don't call it a comeback, I've  been here for years.  Why, yes I did just kick this off with cheesy early 90's rap lyrics.  It makes a fitting intro to not only my return to blogging but also to the subject at hand.  Nostalgia.  Horror nostalgia.  Tales From the Crypt . 

Aw, the memories.  The creepy slow mo intro, the squealy puppet, the snark.  Like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and similar series, Tales from the Crypt is a fond cinematic childhood memory.  As is the spin off movie Demon Knight.

From the opening sequence of the actual movie (not the Crypt Keeper intro, that's just fun stuff) you see that this one is going less for scary and more for splashy/edgy.   You've got an epic high speed car crash in the middle of nowhere.   Two dudes exit car crash  with little to no injury, all the while "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Filter is screaming along in the background.  Splashy and edgy.

After the explosive (I really just can't resist a good pun.  I apologize.) beginning, the story progresses with the intro of the cast of characters.  This is made up of a shit ton of archetypes.  You've got the sheriff and his bumbling sidekick,  the friendly old drunk, the cute kid, the sweet hooker, the motherly yet stern older lady, the hapless dork (who doubles as the wackjob postal worker.  Two stereotypes in one, that shit deserves some props!), the douchey boyfriend, and the trying to make a new life heroine.  I think the writer may have drawn up a list of most often used horror characters and decided to slap every single one of them in one script.   And while that is fairly cheesy, it's countered with snappy yet believable dialogue.   And we do get a dash of real ambiguity during the exposition in determining which of the epic car crash (at least 100 mph!) survivors is the hero and which one is the villain. 

After we establish that Breaker (played by William Sadler, who never fucking fails.  One particularly note worthy performance being Karl 'Red' Cooper in the CSI episode  "Killer") is our hero and The Collector (Billy Zane, aka the most charismatic bad guy ever) is our villain, the real action begins.  Heads roll (literally), demons sprout from the ground in the only semi-scary scene in the whole movie, people are possessed, and an old lady gives the finger with a phantom arm.  In with all this action and good times twists the story of a key that Breaker must protect.  Said key returning to the hands of the demons that seek it would curse the world to darkness.  The key also contains the blood of Jesus which provides protection in the form of seals on doors/windows/openings and just like in any night of marathon drinking the goal is to not break the seal.  

This movie is so cheesy it could have come from the pages of the comics just like the television show did. But it's not a loss.  While it did take a shot at being edgy, it also relied on the elements that made the show so successful; a damn good sense of humor and over the top gore.  And then there's that whole thing where Billy Zane is so awesome at playing a bad guy its hard to take your eyes off him.   It's another one of those films that you can't go into expecting gold.  It's most enjoyable when looked at as a light hearted romp or if your just nostalgic for a good old Crypt Keeper story.