Monster Scholar

I was checking out the latest DVD releases at Evil on Two Legs and noticed that the cover art for "(Lesbian) Vampire Killers" looks suspiciously similar to that of Zombieland. After the True Blood/Jennifer's Body debacle, I figured this must be a recurring phenomenon and after some digging, I found some startling horror poster look alikes. While some may be unabashed rip offs of more successful films, in some cases great minds just might think alike. I personally enjoy the similarities between the poster for the Black Christmas remake and Rambo. Who knew?  

In most horror films, the source of fear is usually something external seeking to harm and or kill the protagonists we identify with at the center of the action. Think about the chestburster from Aliens, Michael’s homicidal rampage or any zombie movie you’ve ever seen and you get the idea. But the dynamic at work in these horror films is not the same software running beneath Kurosawa’s bleak thriller, Pulse. Instead of the fear of being attacked or annihilated, the fear that drives Pulse is the simple terror of being alone. The film opens on Michi Kudo, a young woman who works for a plant sales company with her friends Sasano Junko, Toshio Yabe and Taguchi. Michi goes to check on Taguchi at home as he works on a disk of compiled sales data. When Michi arrives all seems well but in the middle of their conversation, Taguchi retreats to a side room and hangs himself abruptly. Junko, Yabe and Michi are baffled by their friend’s sudden suicide and turn to the disk for answers. What they fi

I’m on a serious J- Horror trip, so for this month’s monsters I’ve chosen Kayako and Toshio from the Ju-On films and the Grudge series of American remakes. This mother and son team of spirits haunts the house where they were murdered and cause the disappearance or death of anyone who enters the abode. Though the particulars of Kayako and Toshio’s deaths change from film to film, the foundation of their narrative is essentially the same. Kayako falls in love with another man and writes about her romantic obsession with him in her diary. Upon discovering this diary, her husband Takeo flies into a fury. He murders his wife, stowing her body away in the attic and drowns his son Toshio along with the child’s cat, Mar. Takeo dies after committing these horrible acts and his death is often ruled a suicide. As far as the curse goes, from then on anyone entering their house is doomed to fall victim to the powerful grudge born of Kayako and Toshio’s vengeful rage. Kayako is easily distinguishe

Now that the New Year is approaching, it’s time to make resolutions for 2010. While for some that means buying a gym membership or finally cleaning out the garage, below are some of my resolutions as a horror blogger for the year to come. 1) Watch more classic horror. Would it shock to you know that I watched The Black Cat and The Raven for the first time in 2009? I resolve to watch more classic horror in 2010 starting with films like Son of Frankenstein, the Mask of Fu Manchu and Old Dark House. 2) Watch more slashers. My experience with slasher films is limited to the Sorority Row and Friday the 13th remakes. On my hit list for 2010 are films like My Bloody Valentine, the original Friday the 13th and Halloween. 3) Watch more foreign horror. While I’ve caught the J-Horrror bug I have yet to watch pivotal foreign horror films like Inside, Martyrs, and High Tension. The only French horror film I saw this year was Frontier(s) and I have barely scratched the surface of J-Horror with

To be honest, I have never really been able to grasp the complexity or perhaps the simplicity at the heart of Takashi Miike’s films. I first saw Audition at a conference screening and I left the room with feeling of unease and confusion. This same feeling returns to me when I watch Takashi Miike’s Box . Box is by far one of the quietist horror films I’ve ever watched. The silence is so profound that for a moment I thought my surround sound was on the fritz. As a watcher of American horror films I am used to being bombarded visually and aurally, whether it’s with a splash of bright red gore or the sickening sound of a knife as it slices through flesh and scrapes the bone. There is none of that here. Miike’s film is placid, almost serene, an environment which makes the events unfolding that much more horrifying. In Box , Miike tells the story of Kyoko, a young writer who experienced a horrible tragedy in her childhood and has recurring dreams of being buried alive in a box. With the

And then there she was Like double cherry pie Yeah there she was Like disco superfly I smell sex and candy here… Mama this surely is a dream —Sex and Candy “Playtime is over. It’s time to wake up.” —Hayley, Hard Candy While it may be taboo for a grown man to be sexual attracted to a teenager, films like Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, express the forbidden fantasy of having sex with an underage girl. Nabokov’s novel tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle aged writer who becomes sexually obsessed with Dolores Haze or “Lolita” the twelve year old girlchild of his impromptu fiancé. Along with the media’s sexualization of teenage girls, films like Lolita blur the line between fantasy and reality, between innocent love affair and sexual abuse. This is the kind of sexual dynamic at play as we watch fourteen year old Hayley played by Ellen Page and thirty something photographer Jeff get to know each other online in the opening scene of Hard Candy . Usi

Today I graduate with a masters in English and to celebrate I'm presenting a video smorgasbord from the 80s Slasher flick Graduation Day (1981). After the success of slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13th, Hollywood cranked out a slasher film for just about every holiday and milestone there was, including Mother's Day (1980) and birthdays (Happy Birthday to Me). Graduation Day follows this trend and chronicles the grisly murders of a high school track team by a killer in a fencing mask. The list of suspects is long and with only seven days until graduation, will they discover the killer in time? Graduating from high school has never been so deadly... Graduation Day also features the lovely Vana White , who played a frightened teenage victim years before she would turn letters on Wheel of Fortune.

Chan-wook Park’s Cut opens up on a vampiress with long black hair and flowing robes sucking on the neck of her unfortunate victim, who is frozen in place. Finishing her meal, she answers her cell phone and is suddenly ill. With a flourish, she throws up her dinner in a splash of red while the camera retreats behind the crew to focus on the director as he watches the events with his production team on a remote monitor. This tricky camera movie reveals that the vampire film is just the first layer of a short film concerned with celluloid illusion and gut wrenching reality. After seeing Chan Wook-Park’s latest film Thirst , I was primed for a vampire tale, but got something much better instead. The opening scene is merely a distraction and the real horror comes after the director yells “cut!” Byung-hun Lee, of recent GI Joe fame plays a premier director who is kidnapped along with his wife by a psychotic extra. Said extra has snapped with the realization that his director idol has it all