The Witch’s Hat’s one year anniversary episode
Episode 8
The Witch’s Hat is celebrating it’s one year anniversary with a thank you to all the supporters and contributors to TWH… And, a very special thanks to The Witch’s Hat crew for doing what you do.
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Posted in Root Rot Content, The Witch's Hat Vidcast
Written and Reviewed by: Eric R Lowther
Infection (2010) aka “Infection; The Invasion Begins”
Written by: Bryan Brewer
Directed by: Howard Wexler
Hey kids! It’s your old pal Eric R Lowther aka biguglyhairyscary crawling across your screen once more with 2010’s “Infection”, or, as the full title says, “Infection; The Invasion Begins”. After watching I can see why they chose to use the shortened title. I’m here to tell you we don’t need any allusions to this thing having a sequel somewhere down the line.
Our story opens somewhere in the future with a reporter researching what has come to be known as the “Modern Plague”, a horrific illness of a sort that started way back on 9/9/2009. Her search leads to an old woman, Sarah, who has been locked away in a mental institution for decades. Sarah says she knows how the plague started and claims the government has kept her institutionalized for her entire adult life to keep her from talking and blowing out their carefully-crafted conspiracy. Now that her time is short, she wants to tell the tale in a movie-length flashback…
We begin Sarah’s story with our hero, Deke (writer Bryan Brewer) returning to his tiny hometown after a 10 year stint in prison for killing his stepfather. He finds his mother has disowned him to the point of cutting him out of family pictures, his high school sweetheart Sarah (Kelly Pendygraft) is dating the local failed high school jock Billy (Brian Guest), and a sheriff who looks just a little like a younger and less-sociopathic Nick Nolte (Lochlyn Monroe, who carries a surprising list of genre credits to be involved with this movie) that wants nothing more than for Deke to drop off the face of the earth and trouble his town no more. After finding all this, Deke tries to do the hero-type thing and leave town for the selfless benefit of all but runs afoul of Billy and his townie crew. This our first of many run-ins with the “I wrote the damn thing so I get to be a badass” syndrome from Brewer, and the fight goes on just long enough for us to get that point before everything really starts going to hell.
It seems a meteorite has crashed in the area, and it also seems the guy who finds it and reports it to the sheriff, and even the sheriff himself, have never seen a movie where a meteorite crashes. If they had, they’d know that it always brings trouble. This time, it brings hyper-intelligent parasites that look like penises that have been flattened by a steamroller. The townies get infected (hence the title) with the parasites during their fight with Deke and Billy demonstrates his own multi-appearing fighting style; runaway-like-a-little-bitch. Meanwhile, the guy who first found the meteor turns up dead, causing the sheriff to lock up Deke on suspicion of yet another murder in his town.
Hey kids! Fun fact; this has been turning up in a lot of the movies I’ve watched recently, too much in fact. Now, typically a sheriff is a county or parish’s top law enforcement officer as well as being charged with the task of collecting county taxes through his office. But in most horror movies that use the office the guy never seems to leave the little town. Most counties, even those with the sparsest populations, have more than one town in them. The sheriff is also an elected political office, and even in the smallest or least-populated counties the sheriff is typically far too busy with administrative and political duties to be personally out in the field hassling movie heroes and chatting with a town’s riffraff. I guess “commander” or “chief deputy” just aren’t impressive enough titles these days…
Anyway, the zombies finally break in and Ben locks himself in the cellar, where he’s forced to shoot Cooper again when he turns… oh, wait… sorry. I guess I needed a little break from talking about this movie. Deep breath… focus…
The parasites seem to sense that the movie’s badass hero has been taken off the streets and in a matter of what can only be an hour or two have infected most of the townsfolk. Even though Deke doesn’t know anything more about the flat, interstellar penises than anyone else does, the people know he’s the only one that can save them. It’s also possible the rest of the cast realized if they didn’t set the writer free to continue hogging the screen and spouting silliness he’d write them out of the film, but I’ll try to take the high road here and think the best of everyone. Once free, Deke and Sarah manage to convince the sheriff of the phallic danger besetting the town and get scientific counsel from another old high school friend, a science geek that manages to give them a powerful weapon against the invaders. From here we alternate between standard siege and escape movie modes that place us in constant danger of swooning under the intense gaze and staggering awesomeness that is Deke until at some point the thing finally ends back with future Sarah and some silliness that makes us think the threat of a sequel will only be quelled by someone making sure Brewer stays the hell away from his macBook.
Now let’s have a peek under the hood, shall we? Technically speaking, there’s not much wrong with the movie. It’s competently shot and looks as good as about any other indie shot-on-video film. The biggest technical failure would be in the oh-my-fucking-god-that’s-shitty CGI fire that pops up here and there. I’m pretty sure I could create more convincing flames with Microsoft Paint. But the movie’s real failing is in its plot and accompanying script. There are tons of plot holes here, with the first being; why would the government let Sarah live in the first place? There would be no reason to keep her around, and arranging for an “accident” decades ago would’ve been far easier and more secure than letting her sit around. But let’s just suppose keeping her kicking made sense. In that case, why the hell is a reporter allowed to just stroll in and start talking to her now? This is the very opening of the movie, and the plot holes and goofiness just go on from there. The rest of the cast does try hard to make the movie watchable, but they just can’t seem to get a scene that doesn’t have Brewer in it making wisecracks or going forth to bravely sacrifice himself in one way or another.
Of course, he never actually does sacrifice himself. Since he’s, like, a badass and all he just cocks an eye to the camera or smacks someone around and mumbles “This just isn’t my day” a few times and he lives through the scene. This is compounded by making virtually everyone else around him a flaming coward just to make Deke’s character (and by extension Brewer) look even more badass. We talked about Billy, who at one point is so afraid and distraught that he sits in a corner of a room blubbering until Deke talks him down. That’s not the only instance, though, as Billy is shown running away from even the slightest chance of harm. Problem is, Billy’s character at the start of the movie was more than ready to throw down on Deke for being a murdering sum-bitch come back to town to steal his woman. It just doesn’t fit. Hell, at one point even the sheriff’s deputy is so afraid of what’s going on he actually hands Deke his gun to go and search a room because he’s too afraid to do it himself. For fuck sake’s even the parasites are just flattened penises, because if they were shown in their normal dimensions they may have been larger than Deke’s own, and you just know there’s no way Brewer would’ve allowed that to happen. Outside of this, the dialogue is overall flat and doesn’t really give the actors much to work with, making the viewing painful at times to watch.
So, now we can get to the real question; is it any good? The only people that will really like this one will be Brewer and his family and friends, and even they watch it just to appease him. If you really need to see alien parasites create zombie-like people just pick up “Night of the Creeps” instead, ‘cause I’m sure that’s exactly what the writer did here. This is just a vehicle for a megalomaniac to live out his daydreams in a way that he can make others watch them, too. Oh yeah, and that’s another thing, too. This thing is being marketed as a zombie movie. It’s not. Not even close. Still, if for some reason you just need to see the equivalent of someone masturbating to a picture of themselves for an hour and a half you can pick it up from Amazon and your usual online sources for anywhere from $3.00-$18.00… wait… $18.00 fucking dollars? Really, Amazon? You can also rent or stream it from Netflix, and if you still actually want to see this thing I would definitely suggest renting or streaming before buying.
Time for me to ride off into the sunset, unless of course Brewer’s around and then I guess I would just be riding off into the light cast off by his machismo. Make sure you’re staying abreast of all the great content here on The Witch’s Hat blog (yes, Misfit Boy, I said “breast”. You can stop snickering now.) and stop by and see us sometime in our forum over at Killer Reviews. There’s also all the mind-blowing audio sweetness from The Witch’s Hat family of podcasts to consider as well. With a tip of my imaginary hat to Keely, Kyle, Root, Grey and Misfit Boy (J.B., I said that was enough with the snickering), this has been biguglyhairyscary saying see ya, kids.
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Posted in Authors, Eric R. Lowther Content, Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews, Reviews
This contest has ended, but watch out for new Witch’s Hat contests!
**The winner of this Witch’s Hat contest is Floridapossum!**
The host of The Witch’s Hat Horror Discussion Misfitboy, has generously donated a copy of the 2009 documentary Autopsy of the Dead as a prize in the latest Witch’s Hat contest… All you have to do is listen to episode 5 of TWH Horror Discussion and answer the trivia question asked by Misfitboy at the end of the show. The first person to answer the question correctly wins the DVD. All answers must be posted in the comment section at the bottom of episode 5 TWH Horror Discussion’s post (Click here for post).
Make sure you leave your name/handle and a way to contact you along with your answer in the comment section. If you’re the winner, please send any further information such as shipping information to thewitchshatblog@gmail.com …
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Posted in Misc Witch's Hat Stuff
Tagged blog, contest, discussion, documentary, horror, movie, podcast, zombies
Reviewed/Written by: Tor2600
Posted by: Root Rot
Fight for your Life (1977)
Directed by: Robert A Endelson
Ok so, a redneck, a Mexican, and a Chinese guy rob a liquor store after escaping from prison. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke right? Well this is actually the first 10 minutes of Fight for your Life the 1977 action/Blaxploitation flick. Now the beginning might sound cheesy but it gets better. Although the movie was extreme and even banned in a few countries, the movie was not as extreme as I was expecting. It may have been the pace of the movie, or just that compared to today’s standards it seemed unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong there are some horrible things that go on including a ton of racism especially from the redneck. It seemed that every other word coming out of his mouth was a racial slur. There is rape, revenge, and even a child murder. The rape scene in Fight for your life was not as intense as the original Last House on the Left or I Spit on your Grave. Probably because a lot of it was off camera, it still was terrible.
So when the 3 escaped convicts rob the liquor store they take a hostage a young black girl sent to the store to get some wine for the family dinner. The cons take the girl back to her house is full of her and family including her preacher father getting ready for dinner. The cons plan to hide out in the house for a while, until some of the heat from the liquor store incident blows over.
The redneck (obviously the leader) becomes very demanding and disrespectful to everyone around him, especially when he has a few drinks in him. Little by little he starts pushing the boundaries of the preacher. Calling him and his family names and questioning his faith. All humans including preachers have a breaking point and it was reached. What probably pushed him over the line was when the redneck requested that he “turn the other cheek” while continuously beating the preacher in the face with his bible.
The movie came to a really expected but well deserving end, which I will let you find out when watching it yourself. I would not give say this is a must see, but definitely worth a watch. If you’re going to pick up a copy I suggest the Blue Underground released copy. One of the cool things I found on the Blue Underground disc is the trailers. While this movie is not the typical Blaxploitation film, in my opinion it still fits the subgenre. The trailers on the disc have 2 separate versions one “White version” and one “Black version”. The “Black version” I found extremely entertaining because of the obviously ethnic commentator talking about black power and the alternate title card “STAYIN ALIVE”. The “White version” trailer has the typical exploitation trailer feel. From what I’ve read Blue Underground disc is not the most complete version of the movie. The VHS clocks in at 89 minutes while the BU disc is 82.
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Posted in Authors, Exploitation Film Reviews, Movie Reviews, Reviews, Tor2600 Content
Reviewed by: Eric R Lowther
Posted by: Root Rot
Near Dark (1987)
Written by: Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Hey kids, it’s Eric R Lowther aka biguglyhairyscary popping up on your screen again with a real classic this time, 1987’s “Near Dark”, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Eric Red and Bigelow. 1987 also gave us another little vampire movie you may have heard of; “The Lost Boys”. Between them, these two films established many of the “violent-yet-cool-vampire” genre archetypes, stereotypes, and plot elements that continue to influence today’s genre efforts. But where “The Lost Boys” showed us how just oh-so-fucking-cool it would be to be a vampire, “Near Dark” gave us a much more gritty, harsh and violent depiction of a vampire cell. Basically, the kiddies and the 80’s hip had their vampire movie in “The Lost Boys”, the traditionalists had 1985’s “Fright Night” to fall back on, and the rest of us violence-loving, gore-hounding social misfits had “Near Dark”.
Synopsis
Caleb (played by television veteran Adrian Pasdar) is a young and rowdy cowboy-type out for a night on the… er, well, “town” may be too far-reaching a description for an Oklahoma night, so let’s just say he runs into hot little blonde number Mae (Jenny Wright of “Lawnmower Man” and “St Elmo’s Fire” fame). Caleb senses there’s something different about this girl, though that doesn’t stop him from taking her out for a drive in the country where she waxes poetic about the night and scares the shit out of his horse. Now, guys, we’ve all had at least one night in our misspent youth where we had the one hook-up or attempted hook-up that we knew was going to go horribly, horribly wrong right from the get-go, and even though we figured out very early that we were dealing with a psycho-slut from hell we just kept going. Well, this is Caleb’s turn for that little life lesson. Their date drags on until almost dawn causing Mae to freak out and run off, but not before she bites him during a passionate embrace. Of course, Mae’s a vampire. Caleb doesn’t seem to suspect this, even though her musings about eternal life was only missing a line about wolves and the night music they make. He still doesn’t get it when she bites his neck, and he still doesn’t get it when his truck won’t start and he’s forced to walk home across a bunch of farmland while the rising sun fries him. He almost makes it home and is even spotted by his veterinarian-father (the instantly-recognizable Tim Thomerson) and his young sister, Sarah, as he stumbles across a field towards them with smoke rolling off his burning body. But just before he can reach the family farm a Winnebago roars in out of nowhere (I bet you didn’t think a Winnebago could roar in from anywhere, huh?), scoops him up and drives off into the sunrise.
Mae is there, of course, but we also get to meet the rest of our bloodsucking clan. There’s Homer, a decades-old vampire forever trapped in the body of a pre-adolescent, the group’s de facto leader, Jesse (Lance Henrikson in my most favorite Lance Henrikson role ever), his mate Diamondback (best known as tough-chick Pvt. Vasquez from “Aliens” but this time sporting an 80’s chick funky two-tone teased ‘do) and Severen (played by Bill Paxton). Now, normally I would give the honor of being the last listed to Henrikson just out of respect alone, but Paxton’s Severen completely steals every scene he’s in. All our vampires save perhaps for Mae are homicidal sociopaths that revel in their kills and blood, but where Henrikson’s Jesse is a much more layed-back and cobra-like killer, Paxton plays Severen as a wild-eyed, hell-raising, barely-controlled thrill-killer. After Mae reveals to the rest that she turned Caleb, they reluctantly take him into their clan. We do get one half-assed escape attempt out of Caleb, but he’s brought back into the fold so the clan can teach him the ways of the undead.
Hey kids! Fun fact; the smoke effect showing how Caleb’s body was getting fried in the sun was done with several lit cigars and rubber tubing hidden under his jacket. Damn but I miss the old-world craftsmanship and ingenuity of real physical effects artists…
Over the next few nights, Caleb tries to embrace his new world though he still can’t bring himself to kill for his supper, which forces Mae to limp him along from her own veins. We also get a montage or two of how the rest of the vampires procure their own meals, and these are well-done and speak more about the characters than any of their dialogue can. Meanwhile, his father and little sister embark on a multi-state search for Caleb and have no clue their son/brother has become a vampire. This leads us up to the two scenes that made this movie famous. The first of these is the attack on redneck dive bar that is completely, totally and 1000% owned by Paxton’s Severin. I’ve seen Paxton in a lot of movies over the years, and this is by far my favorite of all his performances. You really have to see for yourself just how he lets this character just take over. Henriksson also has a few shining moments in the bar, but he keeps it low-key. Severin is just a psychotic, balls-to-the-wall killer, but Jesse is just plain and simple evil. At the bar, Caleb is given his first real taste of the physical power he now holds as a vampire but also screws up and lets one of the patrons escape because he still can’t bring himself to kill.
Now with a witness to their murders, the clan flees into the night to hole up in a dingy hotel room to rest through the day and decide what they’re going to do with Caleb. This brings us to our second iconic scene; the shootout in daylight at the hotel after the police track them down. The interplay between Jesse and Severin alone is worth the watch and Caleb gets a chance to prove himself to the clan by being the catalyst for their escape while bullets punch deadly, sun-streaming holes in the walls. The scene could have become just another gunfire-siege segment popular in action movies, but the dialogue keeps us entertained and the piece is shot and edited nice and tight to keep the action going while not letting it drag on too long. But, just when it seems Caleb has made up for his sin in letting the witness escape and has full accepted his place in the clan, his human past catches up with him…
Hey kids! Fun fact; though we have 5 ½ vampires running around in this movie, the word “vampire” is actually never used in the dialogue. Go ahead and check for yourself, the rest of us are moving on.
So now we’ll move on to the nuts and bolts of the thing. This was only the second feature-length project for director Bigelow (the first being motorcycle movie “The Loveless” starring a very young Willem Dafoe) and the first with a “real” studio, the DeLaurentis Group (which went bankrupt right about the time “Near Dark” came out, robbing it of a lot of studio backing and virtually guaranteeing the film a poor box office run). I mention these things because even though this was her sophomore outing as a director she and her DP still understood how to shoot in the dark better than many of her more-experienced contemporaries. I’m sure having a cast with the likes of Henrikson, Thomerson, Paxton and Goldstein could only have helped make her job easier as well. I mean, look at that cast. With a cast like that in the 80’s, you would almost have to be an idiot, or, have producers that were idiots, or a production company that was going bankrupt to… fuck… that… up… oh, ok. Anyway, the acting is anywhere from above-average all the way up to Paxton/Hendrikson here, with even the young actress playing little sister Sarah putting in a good performance. The effects are well-done and not over-used, with just enough blood and skin burning/melting to get the point across without going overboard. In all, this is perhaps one of the better looking, sounding, and acted movies of its genre and era you’ll find.
So, on to the real question; is it any good? My only real problem with it is, frankly, the end and a few components of this vampire mythos relating to it. I don’t want to spoil this for anyone who, and I can’t understand why you would exist, hasn’t seen this one yet, so I’ll just say to watch it for yourself and see if you get the same anti-climactic and forced-ending fell that I did. Now, aside from that caveat just about any horror fan out there will find something to like about this movie. Even non-horror people that follow one of the many longstanding cast members would probably be able to get through it based on the strength of their favored actor’s performance alone. If you’re a vampire fan and you haven’t seen this one yet I would tell you that you really can’t be much of a vampire genre fan if you haven’t seen this, one of the progenitors of the modern, violent vampire tale by now. Fans of 80’s horror will eat this one up, but oddly enough save for Goldstein’s hair and a few pop culture references (such as the movie theatre marquee in town showing the movie “Aliens” which starred several of the cast members from this movie) the movie doesn’t have the “dated” quality like so many other 80’s horror films and holds up well. I think this is more due to the strength of the performances and the script than anything else. If you haven’t seen this one yet, you really need to get off your lazy ass and get to it. You can find it on Amazon and your regular online outlets for anywhere from $6 – $25 (including the Blu-ray release and a special edition with a better quality transfer and new special features), where you can also stream it for a few bucks. The movie is available to rent through Netflix but is not available for streaming there.
Well, I’m done for now. Make sure you’re checking out all the super-neato items stuffed all through this blog as well as on The Witch’s Hat family of podcasts. You can also stop by our forum over at Killer Reviews where you can chat about the shows and blog, sign a virtual get-well card for Root Rot (he left the duct tape over his nipples too long after a run and had to have it surgically removed), and let me know what movies you’d like to hear me slap around and make my bitch. So with a tip of my imaginary hat to Keely, Kyle, Misfit Boy and everybody’s favorite Carebear, Root Rot, this has been biguglyhairyscary saying see ya, kids…
(PS – Hey Kids! Fun fact; I used 47 hyphens in this review. That may be a record.)
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Posted in Authors, Eric R. Lowther Content, Movie Reviews, Reviews, Vampire Movie Reviews
Download Episode 1
Show notes
- New bi-monthly show brought to you by The Witch’s Hat
- Introduction of host’s Horrorcore Bart from The Horrorcore Podcast and Root Rot from The Witch’s Hat
- Bart and Root Rot discuss a lot of different topics covering horror, Detroit, rap, World War II, and ……
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Review by: Eric R. Lowther
Posted by: Root Rot
Severance (2006)
Written by: James Moran & Christopher Smith
Directed by: James Moran
Hey kids, it’s Eric R Lowther aka biguglyhairyscary dropping by ye olde Witch’s Hat once again to bring you 2006’s “Severance” starring Danny Dyer, Laura Harris and Tim McInnerny. We’ve all seen more versions of the “psycho killer in the woods” than we can shake a stick caked with eye gore at, but I’m happy to say my long run of reviewing movies that blow turtles has finally hit a brighter spot with this one.
Synopsis;
A marketing team for the Palisades Defense company, a big-time weapons manufacturer, has been sent to a luxury resort in Eastern Europe as both a team-building exercise and a reward for their recent successes. It’s obvious right from the opening scenes of the bus ride to the resort that our group is showing the stress of their recent success. Nerves are frazzled and the various members of the team’s little personality ticks and raw spots are coming out and have started grating on each other. It doesn’t help these Brits (plus one American member of the team, Maggie, played by the much-underrated Laura Harris) that their bus driver doesn’t speak a word of English. To further complicate things, he becomes so stymied at a tree in the road of his mapped route that he drops them all off in the middle of nowhere in a hail of Slavic cursing rather than trust the leader of the team, Richard, and his dubious map-reading skills to take a different route through the deep woods. We can already see disasters approaching in the form of odd animal sounds from the foreign woods around them and in the goofball of the group, Steve (Danny Dyer in a great yet reserved comedic performance), and his need to be as high as possible for the duration of the team-building weekend.
With nothing left to do, the group decides to try and find the resort on foot which, according to Richard’s pioneering skills, is only a mile or so down a dirt road. Of course it’s much more than that, and when the group does arrive they find not the sprawling, 5-star luxury resort promised them but rather a very quaint yet large and rough-looking hunting lodge. Richard tries to convince everyone that they are, indeed, in the right place and not a victim of his poor map skills and further claims Palisade sent them to this dilapidated lodge on purpose as another facet of their team-building weekend, forcing them to “rough it” while learning reliance on each other. Almost from the moment they set foot in the lodge, weird things start happening around them. Glimpses of a strange man in a balaclava start popping up while others experience odd dreams and other disturbing events.
Hey kids, fun fact; despite the quality of the production there are more than a couple of continuity errors that pop up in the production, such as a scene where a character’s leg is stuck in a bear trap but the trapped leg keeps changing from left to right as the camera cuts to reaction shots of the others. This one would almost have to be intentional, but there are others that I think would be considered less so. See how many you can spot.
Eventually, one of the team finds a stack of files in the basement pointing to the place’s former identity being an asylum for the mentally insane, leading to a few great imagined sequences of what the lodge had been like in its heyday. But it’s Jill, a designer of “humane weapons systems” for Palisades that finally coughs up the proper nugget of company history. The lodge had once been an asylum of sorts, a place where the government placed their soldiers that had gone too far over the line and had taken killing from occupation to lifestyle back in the 1990’s. While Palisade had nothing to do with the asylum itself, it had come in and used nerve agents to quell a patient riot at government request, killing most of the inmates in the process. A company legend sprung up around the event and claimed there was a survivor of the toxic cleansing, and that the sociopathic, well-trained soldier vowed to kill any Palisade employee that ever dared show themselves at the site again.
You can probably see where this is going from here, but it does throw in a few surprises as well as some good kills. The characters are very well-done here, and the acting is top-notch. Most of the principals in the cast have very long and varied pedigrees, especially with our leads. I love Dyer in just about everything I’ve ever seen him in, especially the infected zombie tale “Doghouse”, and Laura Harris, who as a member of the cast of “Dead Like Me” (one of my all-time favorite shows ever) will always hold a place of esteem. In fact, most of the cast have huge lists of credits stretching back into the 90’s in many cases, and their seasoning and experience really brings what could’ve been a humdrum genre project to the next level. The writing is tight and the direction keeps the pace and energy up to the point there really isn’t a slow or meaningless spot anywhere in the movie. The entire production runs along at a steady pace, fast enough to keep your attention yet not so fast that the thing ends up losing you in its own cleverness. And rest assured there’s quite a bit of cleverness in which to get lost here. The plot twists don’t feel like “twists” at all, and when they’re revealed you’re more likely to face palm because you failed to make the connection than you are to feel like the movie fooled you off-screen. The effects are used sparingly but are of high quality and are placed just right to move the story and even the score and music are well-suited.
So, is it any good? First and foremost, this is Brit humor. If you can’t stand that at all, this won’t be a good choice for you. It’s not as dry as some other examples, and if you enjoyed Doghouse or are a Dr. Who or Black Adder fan you’ll not only see a few familiar faces here but will really enjoy the style of this one. The whole humor of the movie is less “dry wit” and much more of the “laid-back situational” variety. You won’t get Benny Hill, but you won’t get Mr. Bean, either. It’s a great mix of the dark humor, suspense, action and slasher genres and takes itself just seriously enough to keep you engaged in the story, even when it dips into lampooning the corporate world. If this sounds like your kind of flix, you can get it from Amazon or your usual online outlets for anywhere from $7-$14, with Amazon also offering digital copies to either stream or purchase. You can also get it through Netflix though it won’t be available for streaming after 5/31/11. I can fully recommend this one to Brit humor lovers out there, and feel confident that most of the rest of you will find something to like about it as well.
That’s a wrap for me. Make sure you’re filling your earholes with all the Witch’s Hat podcast goodness we have floating around out there. And while you’re at it, stop by our forums over at Killer Reviews and talk about any damn thing you please. So with a tip of my imaginary hat to Keely, Root, Grey, Misfit Boy and all the rest, this has been biguglyhairyscary saying, see ya, kids.
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Review by: Eric R. Lowther
Posted by: Root Rot
Salvage (2006)
Written and Directed by: Jeff & Josh Crook
Hey kids! It’s your old pal Eric R Lowther aka biguglyhairyscary sitting down with you once more on the Witch’s Hat to talk about 2006’s “Salvage”, written and directed by the brother team of Jeff and Josh Crook. So let’s take a look at this “Groundhog Day” on acid and see what we can see, eh?
Synopsis;
Claire Parker (Lauren Currie Lewis) can’t seem to get out of her rut; literally. While many of us have a hard time distinguishing what day of the week it is because so many of our days mirror so many other of our days, she seems literally stuck in the same day. Unfortunately for her, the day she keeps reliving is the day she dies. A strange man keeps showing up, sometimes masquerading as a friend of her boyfriend’s, sometimes as a straight-up homicidal maniac and sometimes just as a lurking menace. No matter how he shows up, the end result is always her gruesome death at his hands. Each time she relives her death-day, she learns a little more about her mystery stalker, and each time she finds herself starting over she edges just a little closer to madness. No matter how she alters the day each time she revisits he manages to find her. Who is he? Why is he stalking her? How does he have the power to turn her into Bill Murray with a nice ass and make her relive the day over and over again? Since the nature of this movie would force me to throw spoilers at you if I went more in-depth, you’ll have to check it out for yourself for those answers.
So, how about the nuts and bolts? The movie is low budget but well put-together. It’s clear the Brothers Crook know a thing or two about making movies and they’re not afraid to flaunt that knowledge with great lighting and camera angle choices and a pretty solid grip on the production as a whole. The set direction and use is also good, especially when we find ourselves at our killer maniac’s hovel. The acting from our leads, especially from the resident homicidal nut-job (Chris Ferry) is better than one would expect for the budget. The effects are minimal but are done well when needed, and our menacing maniac seems to really enjoy his work. However, while the script starts out fairly tight it starts to unravel just a bit as we near the end. I’m not sure exactly why since it gave no intention through the first two-thirds that it would peter out, but it’s there all the same. Perhaps they went to the well too many times and maybe should’ve cut one of the less productive do-overs to tighten things up. We do have a few plot holes, which you almost expect in any paradox-based movie, but these and the issues with the later part of the script can be forgiven when viewing the overall package.
Hey Kids! Fun Fact; the movie uses her boyfriend’s beat-up old pick-up truck and its inability to start without coast-starting as both a humor point and late in the story as a plot point. As most of you should know, you can often start an older-model, standard-shift equipped vehicle by coasting and “popping” the clutch. Unfortunately, it’s obvious the truck used has an automatic transmission…
And now we get to the real question; is it any good? Well, I will give that question a conditional answer of “yes”. You have to be willing to sit through all the restarts of the day, and you need to be able to pay attention so you don’t miss anything. This isn’t one of those flicks you can put on in the background while you’re doing housework or skinning badgers. A healthy respect for indie-styled tension building would also help, meaning you have to allow a little leeway for the director(s) and the actors to try and impress you with how edgy and tense they can be on purpose. The ending is a decent piece of work, but unfortunately it happens at the end and suffers from the script degradation previously mentioned. It’s not bad, but you’ll likely figure it out before you get there. All in all, if you like tense pix that try to play with your brain you could do worse than this one, just be warned that it bogs down a bit in the middle and you may need to take a break to keep your interest up. If this sounds like your cup o tea you can find this 2006 Sundance Festival Selection at Amazon or your usual online sources for anywhere from $2-$8, and I’d say it’s worth at least that much. It’s also available for rent through Netflix, though not available on instant.
Well, that’s enough from me for now. Make sure you’re keeping in touch with your inner child by following all the other blog and podcast goodness the ‘Hat has to offer, and for God’s sakes jump on in here with me and throw some reviews, articles or other gory, bloody content to Mr. Rot for inclusion on one of the many Witch’s Hat incarnations. Come on… you know you wanna…
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Posted in Authors, Eric R. Lowther Content, Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews, Reviews
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Reviewed by: Eric R. Lowther
Posted by: Root Rot
Shadow Hunters (2004) (aka “Shadowhunters”)
Written and Directed by: John Johnson
Hey, kids! It’s Eric R. Lowther aka biguglyhairyscary back on the Witch’s Hat with my review of 2004’s ultra-no-budget “John Johnson’s Shadow Hunters”, aka “Shadowhunters” depending on if you can find the movie as a separate offering or in one of those “50 movies for $5” deals. The reported budget for this shot-on-video indie job was only a few thousand dollars but I was pleasantly surprised by the end product.
The movie opens with a flashback to five years before to show us the last time our four trench coat-wearing, fedora-bearing demon hunting heroes faced their greatest threat, Malphaedor. Malphaedor is one bad demon mo’fo, with the ability to manifest in the flesh, possess the bodies of mortals and raise the dead to do his bidding. He can also shoot lightning bolts, which I can only guess were easier to do with cheap CGI than the more appropriate flames would’ve been. During this epic battle, Malphaedor possesses an innocent and our head demon slayer, Hudson, guns her down.
We come back to the movie’s present to find the death of the innocent still weighs heavily upon the group. Our heroes have come together again to take down a demon that has managed to take over a hospital to the point that it had to be closed and abandoned due to the unexplainable murders, suicides and other demon goofiness afoot. We also find out that Ray, the youngest of the group and a priest in his own right, is an empath able to feel emotions and sense the presence of demons. Ray admits that he tried to perform an exorcism, alone, on the hospital, but it not only failed but may have given a way for Malphaedor to return. Along with shotgun-toting Goose and all-around bad-ass Murphy, they decide to go to the hospital and finally put Malphaedor in his place.
But, like all these kinds of movies, there’s a catch; the same night the shadow hunters decide to put the smack-down on Malphaedor a group of eight nubile little sorority pledges are sent into the hospital wearing nothing but their Underoos to spend a night in the “haunted” hospital as a hazing ritual. Under the watchful eye of two sorority sisters and their boyfriends, the girls are armed with only a few flashlights, an Ouiga board and perky breasts and made to enter the hospital. The plan is to have the boyfriends roam the halls in Halloween masks and scare the co-eds. This plan gets interrupted first by Malphaedor’s possessions of the various girls and then by the arrival of the Shadow Hunters. By the time the Hunters get the gist of what’s happening in the hospital, several of the girls are already dead, and by the time the Hunters realize that Malphaedor is in fact the one behind it all it’s too late to do things the quick and easy way. The Hunters do have some help though, in part from an ancient book of incantations and in part from one of the girls, a practicing Wiccan and font of knowledge on the forces of darkness. The bodies stack up quickly and eventually serve as the raw materials Malphaedor needs for his undead army. The climax to this one is drawn out over fully the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, but here that’s not a bad thing. And though, as my Constant Readers can usually do right along with me, you’ll see the twist coming some ways off it’s still fairly well-presented.
Hey kids! Fun fact; John Johnson does have a bit of legend surrounding him. Not only does he have a fairly long list of directing and producing credits with the “Skeleton Key” films, “Alucard”, “Deceptors” and others, this is the guy you’ve heard about that tries to incorporate ketchup bottles into scenes as a tribute to his teen years making backyard movies where ketchup was the preferred material for blood and the bottles always seemed to get left in-frame in the rush to shoot.
So, for the nuts and bolts of the thing. I was fully expecting this to be another piece of crappy, poorly-acted, scripted and shot garbage. And for the first 20 minutes or so it didn’t let me down. The opening flashback is poorly done, acted and shot, and the use of really cheesy photo-negative presentations really took away from it. I know shooting at night is difficult, and proper lighting on this kind of budget is next to impossible, but… come on. Once you get through the history lesson, though, the movie changes before your eyes and becomes a passable and, at times, even enjoyable.
The cardboard cutouts that are our heroes and Malphaedor in the opening flashback actually flesh out a bit. No, the acting isn’t Oscar-caliber, but pretty much everyone involved does a decent job with what they’re given. Malphaedor becomes almost a treat to watch in his limited screen time, especially during the little additional twist moments he gets with Shadow Hunter/priest Ray. The girls also turn in some good low-budget performances and in a few spots even surprised me. The story and concept were fairly solid if not a little overdone, but the presentation and the little tweaks used in this demon possession story come off well. This is especially noticeable when Malphaedor jumps back and forth from body to body when the transference and possession occurs between two people having sex. This is a very effective device for one particular scene where, in mid-thrust, Malphaedor jumps from the man into the woman without missing a beat. Overall, the girls that suffer the possessions handle the switch between their characters’ and Malphaedor’s possession of them quite well. The effects are all, thankfully, physical (except the silly lightning bolts) and are about as good as you can expect for this kind of project. I should also note that the abandoned hospital locale was truly an old, abandoned hospital and the makers took full advantage of it. It was just about as perfect a location for what they were doing as could be had.
So, the real question; is it any good? First you have to have a soft spot for shot-on-video indie horror. If you don’t have the chops for it already then this probably isn’t a good one to start with. The movie starts out painfully slow, and the flashback bit could’ve been done a lot more cleanly, quickly and with less silly after-effects editing. I do like the noire feel of our Hunters, from their snappy suits, ties, fedoras and trench coats down to their very practical weaponry and no-nonsense approach to their jobs. The girls make sure to show plenty of skin and there’s more than enough T&A here to keep genre fans happy. The action sequences surprised me in their clean, uncluttered choreography, and the spots where the script gets a little bumpy are at least partially made up for in the Hunter’s 30’s-era gangster sensibilities and style. The little twists are easy to see coming, but they don’t hurt anyone and don’t try to beat you over the head with their supposed cleverness, either. This one has a little something for everyone; noire, T&A, demon possession, zombies and would be perfect fodder for a group watch or a contender for a “so bad it’s good” nod from those less-into the ultra-no-budget genre. Give it a chance, it may grow on you. If this sounds like your kind of movie, you can get the stand-alone DVD through Amazon and your other usual online outlets for $5.00 or less as well as for rent through Netflix. You can also find it in various multiple-movie packs for varying costs.
Well, that does it for this one. Make sure you’re keeping up with the rest of the Hat, and for God’s sake get off your ass and jump in here with us. The Hat is always looking for reviews, columns, articles and even audio for its family of podcast offerings. And don’t forget, if you have a movie you’d like me to review, either on the blog or as an audio review for the blogcast, hop over to Killer Reviews and hit up my thread. Let me know what you’d like me to see, and I’ll do what I can to talk about it. So, with a tip of my imaginary hat to Mr. Rot, Keely, Creepy Kyle, Misfit Boy and all the rest this has been biguglyhairyscary saying, see ya, kids.
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Posted in Demon Movie Reviews, Horror Movie Reviews, Movie Reviews, Reviews
