the zero boys

the zero boys follows a group of 'weekend warriors' - three young men who like to spend their free time shooting guns in simulated combat scenarios to impress their non-participating girlfriends. however, the zero boys soon have an opportunity to put their skills to the test in real life when a weekend retreat turns into violent conflict with the local crazies.

the central concept of zero boys is actually pretty cool. yes, this is a film about six young people deciding to stay the night in an abandoned cabin in the woods only to be picked off one by one by machete wielding killers. even in 1986 this idea must have been starting to feel old, and now, after scream de-constructed the slasher and cabin in the woods de-constructed it even further, watching a movie with that particular setup can be tough going. however, the fact that our protagonists are wannabe war heroes and are going into this armed to the teeth does put a different spin on things.

pacing in a slasher film is one of those things that's really tough to get right (i have begun to realise this having just started writing one myself). start the kills to early and we don't know enough about the characters to care, start too late and we're bored by the time it kicks off. personally i think the latter approach can work brilliantly if the characters are well-written and we are made to care about them. the best recent example of this was in the norwegian movie cold prey, which doesn't add anything to the genre in terms of originality but the characters are so interesting and likeable that we want them to survive, which adds a huge amount to the tension. the zero boys attempts a similar approach with the violence not really starting until around forty-five minutes in, but unfortunately the characterisation isn't there to justify spending so much time with these guys. the three men are basically the same character - they even look the same. the women are only more diverse in that one of them has a plaster cast on her leg, otherwise they are pretty much indistinguishable. the only story we have to hang onto is that kelli maroney's character has been forced to go on the trip because the lead guy daniel hirsch's character won her in a contest. she goes along reluctantly, and that's the only real drama we have for the first half of the film.

that said, kelli maroney is the only one in the cast who really stands out and actually for a slasher film blonde her character is pretty interesting. she mentions studying anthropology at one point and later on there is a moment where she and the other girls change into army gear, which made a nice change from the way women are usually treated in slasher movies. also, both times the bad guys are bested it's down to the women in the group and overall the men are portrayed as being pretty pathetic. in that respect perhaps the zero boys is a more forward-thinking slasher film than it first appears, although i'm not sure carol clover would approve.

i did wonder if there was some hidden anti-war message here too because the zero boys does bear some similarities to the far superior walter hill movie southern comfort (if you haven't seen southern comfort first of all fuck you, and second of all what are you doing still reading this? go watch that film right now and don't you dare show your face around here until you're finished. then we can talk). ultimately, for all their training and preparedness the heavily armed zero boys fare pretty badly against two hicks with a machete and a crossbow.

one element that works really well is the idea that the bad guys are making snuff films and when the heroes first discover the camera set-up it's actually quite disturbing. unfortunately when the killers do eventually reveal themselves they are kind of disappointing, and mostly look like guys from the crew, like kane hodder and gunnar hansen pulled out at the last minute so they pulled in a couple of grips to take their place. there is, however, a brilliant shot of one of them at the end of the film that's so great it actually feels like it's from another movie. hard to describe without spoiling it, but trust me the final shot is amazing.

for a film we've all seen a thousand times before the zero boys actually has some really unique ideas and a few nice moments to make it stand out. unfortunately the main characters really let it down and the film feels incredibly slow-moving at times as a result. that said, it's certainly an interesting watch and you will want to watch the extras afterwards just to figure out what everyone on the crew was thinking.

arrow video release the zero boys on dvd and blu-ray on 25th april 2016

blood rage

blood rage is a film that’s so bad it’s really hard to recommend, except for the fact that i kind of loved it.

the film opens at a drive-in where twin boys todd and terry sneak out of their mother’s car, steal an axe from the back of a pick-up truck then butcher an unsuspecting young man. ten years later, terry is the most popular kid in the neighbourhood while todd is still locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the murder. when todd escapes it’s not long before the bodies start piling up at the apartment complex where terry lives with his mother.

like any great slasher it’s all about the kills, and blood rage has some great ones. from the first scene where the guy at the drive-in is hacked to pieces with an axe to the doctor who is cut in two, no limb is safe in this film. the kills ramp up quickly, with nearly half a dozen characters losing their lives as well as various body parts within the first half an hour. that’s kind of where the problems start.

to say that blood rage lacks subtlety isn’t quite enough; whatever the opposite of subtext is, this film is full of it. this is a shame, because the idea that we as an audience don’t know which twin is the killer could have been really effective. instead, we are shown very early on that terry has a big problem with his mother having a relationship with anyone other than him, so we immediately know we’re in pseudo norman bates territory, and that terry is the killer. in case we have any doubts, terry kills his mother’s boyfriend in the very next scene, amputating his hand. we’re less than twenty minutes in all hope of intrigue has been butchered as brutally as terry's victims.

while it is kind of refreshing to watch a film this determined to not bury the lead, it causes major problems later on. after the blood-drenched first act, the film slows to a snails pace as the unlikable survivors, now only a handful of them left, trip over each other trying to figure what’s going on whilst occasionally stopping to fuck or play videogames, like what teenagers do. meanwhile, terry and todds’ mother drinks herself into a nervous breakdown. at this point it almost loses the all-important so-bad-it’s-good quality, but luckily there is some truly awful dialogue to make up for it. also, while mark soper does a decent enough job as a saturday morning cartoon serial killer, the other performances are either overblown or just bad. the only other thing that’s really great about the film is the synth score.

that said, i enjoyed every minute of blood rage, even the dull parts. when i was little my dad was obsessed with car boot sales. he’d always come home with these weird, knock-off films on vhs that my brother and i had never heard of then and have never come across since. we loved the horror films in particular. there seemed to have been an infinite number of slasher films released in the 80s and no matter how many times i thought i’d seen them all, my dad would always manage to find another. these are films that maybe a handful of people saw at the time they were released and perhaps deserve to have been forgotten, so the fact that we were there watching them as a family made it feel like kind of a unique experience. watching blood rage gave me that warm, cosy feeling of watching teenagers being hacked up on vhs with my dad and my brother. i don’t know if that’s something anyone else will relate to, or that other people have versions of, but it certainly helped me enjoy a film that is very difficult to enjoy otherwise.

what is cool is that arrow have put together an exhaustive and incredibly thorough selection of special features that even includes an interview with ted raimi, who is in the film for all of twenty seconds. it is truly fascinating to delve into the thought process behind a film like this and to find out more about the people who made it. special features on bad films are way more interesting than those on good films anyway, so giving blood rage such a wealth of extras is a real selling point.

less appealing is the theatrical cut, titled nightmare at shadow woods. deleted scenes restored from a 35mm print are re-inserted into the film, whilst other moments, including some of the more violent kills, are cut. there’s an overlong and completely unnecessary swimming pool scene that adds some redundant exposition and sets up a baby that appears later, and some extended moments to other scenes that don’t add much either but otherwise there's nothing new of note. there’s also a composite cut on the disc that takes the best elements of both versions, should you wish to watch the film three times. to be honest, the alternate cut would only really be of interest if you had seen the film in this form originally, but here it feels so inferior to the uncut version that it adds little value.

as much as i enjoyed watching blood rage, it is difficult for me to recommend it as a film, but i would recommend it as a curiosity. and if you’ve ever wondered how something like this got made and what was going through the minds of the people making it when they stepped onto set each day, the abundance of extras will certainly answer those questions.

blood rage is available now on dvd and blu-ray from arrow video

the town that dreaded sundown (1976)

have you ever wondered what it would look like if you took jason voorhees from friday 13th part two and put him into a police procedural with realist/documentary elements reminiscent of zodiac, along with some peckinpah-style slo-mo action and the occasional moment of broad comedy? because that’s kind of what this is.

the town that dreaded sundown is based on a series of unsolved murders that occurred in bowie county, texas in 1946. the film fictionalises some of the events and moves the location to texarkana, arkansas, but the story is roughly the same and follows the attempts of a small town police force to apprehend a vicious and calculating serial killer.

there are a number of interesting aspects to discuss here, but most prominent is where it sits in horror film history. the film was made in 1976, two years before halloween and two years after black christmas (widely regarded as the first real slasher film). given how early in slasher history it was made it’s amazing how much typical slasher iconography is on display here. we have a seemingly unstoppable masked killer, long scenes of torture and murder and increasingly bizarre and inventive methods of killing people. the murder scenes would be at home in any of the friday 13th or halloween films and it seems that in some ways this film was a bigger influence on the genre than the more infamous titles. the murders even span the entire evolution of the slasher film, moving from the basic (shooting someone with a gun) to the brutal (we thankfully don’t see it, but one of the victims is described as being covered in bite marks) to the just plain weird (stabbing someone by playing a trombone with a knife attached to the end). yes, there is a scene in this film in which someone is killed by a trombone. it is worth seeing for this scene alone.

the police procedural aspect of the film also works really well, following a young deputy sheriff (andrew prine) as he teams up with a seasoned texas ranger (ben johnson) to catch the killer. the film really captures the desperation and futility of their task, trying to catch a killer in a town surrounded by countryside with only the basic policing methods of the time at their disposal. they do at one stage consult a criminal psychologist for a profile on the killer and are basically told that they will never catch him. added to this is a deadly serious narration which heightens the gravity of the situation and highlights the plight of a population scared to leave their houses after dark.

what doesn’t work as well are the occasional attempts at humour, usually at the expense of hapless police officer ‘sparkplug’ played by the director, charles b. pierce. pierce isn’t the problem exactly, and in a different film the scenes of his terrible driving or getting irate with people trying to report crimes might even be funny, but here they really grate against the overall tone. this is a film about a real life serial killer it seems an odd choice to have the scenes of murder and cold, hard police work interspersed with moments of slapstick and absurdity. it reminded me of the comedy moments in the last house on the left, another rather grim film with awkward comedic interludes. maybe it was a seventies thing?

overall though the misjudged attempts at humour don’t detract from what is a fascinating and suspense-filled horror film. there are some genuinely terrifying moments alongside some genuinely exciting ones and the cast really do a great job at selling the authenticity. in a way it’s the perfect crossover film, because there are enough cool horror moments for slasher fans but these are balanced out by the police procedural elements. as with all eureka releases the picture looks great and there are some nice extras including a commentary and cast interviews. if you’re interested in checking out a more obscure but essential piece of cinema history this is certainly worth watching.

eureka entertainment release the town that dreaded sundown will be released in dual format (blu-ray and dvd) on 24th august 2015

smiley

smiley is a film about a scary internet meme that turns out to be real and comes after a bunch of teens. except it's not really that. anyway, seeing as i'm being stalked by my own internet weirdo (check out the comments on this blog) i thought i'd check it out.

so the legend goes that if you're in a video chat and you type 'i did it for the lulz' three times, smiley comes to get you. the story follows ashley, a nerdy but nice college girl played by caitlin gerard. ashley falls in with a crowd of hackers and after discovering that the smiley legend is real she finds herself stalked by the killer himself.

the first half hour of this film is really strong. the kills made me jump and the premise is interesting. there are these philosophy lecture scenes in between the main storyline with roger bart, him off of hostel 2, being a creepy genius professor and through these scenes the film tries to be more than a run-of-the-mill slasher film. it tries to be a film about ideas, and you know how much i like those. there are lots of big questions in there, about the nature of evil and about how the internet ultimately represents the next evolutionary phase of humanity and our computers will eventually destroy us. these are great and almost slide into the main narrative, but it doesn't quite work as a whole.

the first problem is, once we've established that smiley is probably real and coming after ashley and her friends it kind of runs out of steam. the second act is mostly ashley trying to convince everyone she's not crazy, and that gets a bit dull after a while. the other problem is i guessed the twist twenty minutes in, and i never guess twists so it must have been heavily signposted. not just the twist, i guessed how the rest of the film was going to play out. it felt like the filmmakers had this great idea, but they didn't really have the confidence to fully commit to it, so the film really lags for about 45 minutes in the middle.

that said, there are still some really interesting ideas in smiley, caitlin gerard is fantastic in the lead and for the most part it is an enjoyable, if predictable ride. it's just a shame there wasn't more to it as this had the potential to be a really innovative horror film. maybe there will be a sequel.

husk

husk opens with a group of friends whose road trip is ruined when their car crashes next to a corn field with a spooky house in the middle of it (in the middle of the field, not the car). so far, so texas chainsaw massacre (i can't believe i just wrote that but i didn't delete it so i must be okay with it on some level). there are the usual archetypes - the chess team nerd (who actually uses chess to explain what's going on later in the story), the typical jock, his girlfriend, and a sketchy guy who is only sketchy so later on he can hotwire a car. and there's their other friend who runs off into the field immediately. based on that, it sounds like it should be awful, but it's not. it's actually kind of cool.

so what they soon realise is that if you're in the corn, something gets you. they end up stranded at the spooky house, surrounded by corn with no way to get back to the road. unless they can figure out what's going on.

what's going on is where the film get interesting, so if you're going to watch it you may not want to read this bit as it might get spoilerey. so the house was owned by a guy and his two kids. one of the kids went crazy and killed his brother. he hid the body by dressing him up as a scarecrow and stringing him up in the cornfield. the dead brother then came back from the dead and killed everyone. now what happens is that the dead brother kills whoever enters the field, possesses their bodies, makes the possessed body drive nails into their hands and sew their own scarecrow mask, then takes them into the field too. so the field is full of dead people dressed as scarecrows and this guy can possess any of them at any time. it's crazy and convoluted but it's actually kind of a cool idea.

part of the way we get to his idea is a bit dubious, with the nerdy guy randomly getting flashbacks to what happened in the house, but the other stuff is really interesting, particularly the dead bodies sewing their own masks. this happens three times and each time it's really creepy, especially when you don't know what's going on. of course, i've just told you what's going on so i've probably ruined it but i feel like you have to understand how messed up the idea is to get what makes this film work.

the other interesting thing is that the token girlfriend character is killed off in the first act. oh, spoiler, sorry. anyway, this means that the film follows the three guys. now as a feminist you'd think i'd be all like 'where are all the women?' but the thing is i know where all the women are, they're in all the other horror films. it's actually kind of refreshing to see a horror film that's just about these three guys. the filmmakers do still manage to adhere to the rules of the slasher film; they give all the characteristics of the final girl to the nerdy guy. so he's the one who's probably a virgin, he's kind of 'feminised', he's the only one with any sensible ideas but no one listens, he's the one who figures out what's going one and ultimately he's the only one left at the end, although i won't go into whether he survives or not.

the thing is, this is the second time i've seen this done recently, with see no evil 2 being the other example of a male character occupying the role of the 'final girl'. let's compare that to other recent slasher films, like you're next or no one lives. in those films the 'final girl' exhibits more behaviour typically associated with men than the men in the film do. i guess what i'm trying to say is the women in those films kick ass. i mean, the final girl has always kicked ass, that's what they do, but sharni vinson in you're next kicks ass from minute one.

so in the last five years there have been at least two films in which the 'final girl' is a man and two films in which the 'final girl' is more empowered and more physically capable. i don't know if this is representative of some kind of change or progress, or whether it's just a few isolated incidents that i'm trying to connect, but it has to be a good thing.

check out husk anyway, it's a neat 80 minute slasher film with some cool ideas.