Monster Scholar

Promotional artwork and a US trailer have been released for Final Destination Five and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a teensy bit excited. The number one cause of my glee is the slammin’ promotional artwork. All silver and black, a dangerously sharp number five knifes its way through a human skull. Metal meets horror in this killer image. Second is the appearance of Tony Todd aka the Candyman as Bludworth the mortician now coroner who appears to explain death’s master plan. Todd plays the same character in the original Final Destination, but now it looks like he’s out of the funeral parlor and on the streets describing the carnage like the narrator from Faces of Death . The teaser deaths provided by the trailer are all notably cringe-worthy. Anything having to do with eyes and eye trauma has bothered me since I was forced to watch Opera and the opening scene is of a young woman on an operating table awaiting laser eye surgery. This seems like a bad time for her doctor to...

When the tagline to a film is “Two classic monsters. One fucked up movie” your expectations for gore and silliness are high. Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl fulfills all those expectations and more with a Japanese high school that has a mad scientist for a vice principal, a wrist cutting competition and a showdown between the two title characters on what looks to be a life sized replica of the Eiffel tower. Though it’s a little out there, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl gives the gift of gore that keeps on giving in hilarious spades. At its core Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl is a love story. Keiko is the school’s queen bee with an entourage of fashion clones that remind me of Gwen Stefani's harajuku girls. The daughter of the school’s vice principal, Keiko can have any man she wants, and she wants Jyugon Mizushima played by former CK model Takumi Saitô. Jyugon is torn between Keiko and the transfer student Monami, or the Vampire Girl. When Monami is caught feed...

We’ll tear your soul apart!--Pinhead Hellraiser is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Clive Barker creates his own mythological world of horror that is both seductive and cruel and keeps you wanting more. In this first film of the series, Barker introduces us to the realm of the cenobites, god-like beings with a taste for your pain. They are released when someone solves an intricate puzzle box and, like some nightmarish jack in the box, they pop out and tear you to pieces. Larry and his wife Julia are moving into their old family home in the opening of the film. There is no sign of Larry’s brother Frank except for a pallet bed, some risqué photos and piles of rotting food in the kitchen. The final member of the family is Larry’s daughter Kirsty who turns down her father’s offer to live with them. All three have no idea they will soon be pulled into the horrifying world of the cenobites. Hellraiser is preoccupied with the horrors of sex in a new and complex way. In one scene, ...

Earlier tonight, I had the chance to get cozy with Mikita Brottman’s essay “Mondo Horror: Carnivalizing the Taboo” in Prince’s anthology The Horror Film . In it, Brottman discusses the place of mondo films like the well-known Death Faces, which show scenes of real life horror—grainy footage of assassinations, bloody crime scenes, horrific accidents and other material deemed too disturbing for television—accompanied by documentary style narration. These films are definitely on the fringes of the horror film industry and have always intrigued me as a fan of the genre. It was this interest in the reality of the mondo film that drew me to the horror documentary S&MAN or Sandman that documents filmmaker J.T. Petty’s search for a real snuff film. J.T. Petty takes us along for the ride as he shoots a documentary for HDNET. When his idea to interview a Peeping Tom from his old neighborhood flops, he takes the question of voyeurism and turns to the underground horror film industry as he ...

I had to resist the urge to name this post Snore-ian Gray or Bore-ian Gray, but this film, by any other name, would be as bad. With agonizingly slow pacing, poor dialogue and an utter lack of tension Dorian Gray falls far short of its literary and filmic predecessors. Dorian Gray is the story of a young man who has is portrait taken by artist Basil Howard. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian comes to embrace the “art for art’s sake” aesthetic lifestyle that preaches sensation over morality. When confronted with his beautiful portrait he wishes that he will remain always beautiful while his portrait bears the brunt of time and sin. In Oscar Wilde’s version, Dorian indulges in a life of hidden debauchery causing his portrait to age and decay until Basil discovers Dorian’s secret and Dorian murders him. It ends with a cataclysmic showdown between Dorian and his painted soul. In this film, Ben Barnes strikes a less than compelling caricature of the eternally beautiful you...

When I first heard about The Collector after reading a review from Freddy in Space, my expectations were lackluster at best. A fan of the Saw series, I had been disappointed with the declining quality of its sequels. Coming from the writers of the Saw sequels, I figured The Collector would be like that dreaded fruitcake you receive every Christmas only to repackage it and give it to your cousin. I was wrong. I absolutely loved this film. Though there are definite strains of the Saw series present (i.e. the traps) The Collector avoids the common pitfalls of its predecessor to produce an unsettling and moody horror flick. The film follows the progress of Arkin, a handyman working to make things better for his daughter and a wife who is in debt to some loan sharks. There’s one big problem: the honest money he makes working on some rich guy’s house won’t pay the bill. So what does he do? He decides the rip the guy off and steal a precious diamond he knows is locked away in the house sa...

If you’ve been clicking around the internet lately, there is good chance that you have at least heard of A Serbian Film. Primed to be the next Antichrist or Cannibal Holocaust, this film has been described as the most ungodly, violating piece of work to ever splat onto the silver screen. Forget the psychological tortures of Saw or the bloody violence of Hostel, A Serbian Film blows them all away with the harrowing story of a former porn star who is drawn into an abyss of debauchery, incest and necrophilia. Milos is the aforesaid ex-porn star with the legendary ability to hold an erection in the most adverse circumstances. Though he quit the business long ago to start a family and embrace clean living, demented director Vukmir wants Milos and his amazing member to star in his art house porno. On the verge of poverty, Milos agrees to Vukmir’s terms: he will participate in the porno without any prior knowledge of the scenes he will be performing in. Thus begins Milos’ traumatic d...

Pontypool is the kind of film that gets me excited about the horror genre. It has been described by some as a zombie film, but Pontypool largely ignores many of the conventions of such films to bring something new and fresh to a movie about the “walking dead” It does this by challenging the zombie film’s stock and trade: guts and gore. Unlike the horde of flesh-eating dead made famous by Romero’s “_____ of the Dead” films, in Pontypool the enemy is unseen. For most of the film we are locked in the claustrophobic church basement where Grant Mazzy and his production team broadcast the news on Radio 660: The Beacon. That’s not to say the world outside the cold, dark basement of the world is any better. On Grant’s way to work, all we can see is a vast blackness swirled with flecks of snow, a desolate landscape devoid of human habitation or connection. This atmosphere heightens our connection to the characters that run the show, the charismatic Grant Mazzy, the voice of the Beacon; hi...

It’s the classic love story. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl get married and punch out 2.5 kids. With Japanese horror, nothing is ever that simple. In Tomie (1999), boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy falls into a homicidal rage and kills girl as well as other men who have fallen under her spell. Boy hacks girl to pieces and disposes of the body. Girl regenerates from a single body part and looks for new victims to carry out the same grisly pattern. This is the premise of Tomie, the story of a school girl/demon who returns from the dead to inspire others to murder her in the most violent ways possible. Talk about a masochistic complex. The idea is fascinating and a little more than disturbing, a serial victim instead of your garden variety serial killer. Score one for director Ataru Oikawa. The opening scene is a subtle punch to the gut. A mousy looking boy dressed in a baseball cap trolls the crowded streets of a city like Tokyo. Sudden...

Many of you, like myself, have been visually raped by the trailer for the horrific spectacle that is the Human Centipede. I had the unfortunate pleasure of watching the trailer yesterday and was literally at a loss for words. For those of you not in the know, the Human Centipede chronicles the quest of a psycho German doctor to create a human centipede by connecting three subjects together via the gastric system, creating a Siamese triplet. It means what you think it means. He surgically grafts them together, mouth to anus, and removes his victims’ kneecaps to prevent their escape. Though I am repulsed, sickened and downright disturbed by what writer and director Tom Six has created, I am also fairly impressed by how this film has gotten under my skin. The answer to why that is lies in the film’s exploration of surgical de-evolution and its echoes of Nazi medical crimes during the Holocaust. The Human Centipede plays with fears of species de-evolution as Dr. Heiter turns three indi...

I’m back boys and girls. After a long hiatus and some soul searching I’ve returned with a new attitude and whole lot to say on our all-time favorite subject--horror. Today it’s some observations on Splice, the upcoming genetically mutated thriller about a pair of scientists, Clive and Elsa, who clone a humanoid creature to further their research and get around bans on human cloning. Mistake with a capital “m” The resulting mayhem falls somewhere between Species and Frankenstein, as the ambitious tinkerers try to put the creature, named Dren, back in her box. Firstly, I’m thrilled by the filmmaker’s dedication to practical effects. In an interview with FearNet.com, Vincenzo Natali justifies his brilliant decision to avoid an all CG creature: “As brilliant as Avatar is, for example, I still don't think you can replicate the subtly of that kind of performance with a fully digital character.” Natali’s commonsense take on CG already bodes well for this film, and it ensures that the au...

For those of you who remember, I was against a new Final Destination from the start, but since no one ever listens to me they went ahead and released the latest film in the FD franchise anyway. That said filmmakers did what they could considering that they were following an established formula. Enjoying a day at the racetrack with his friends, Bobby gets vision of their fiery and violent deaths caused by cataclysmic crash. Interestingly enough, this latest film follows the formula of the original more closely than any other. Bobby experiences his vision and while trying to get his friends out, causes a fight which gets his buddies as well as a larger group of people thrown out of the arena. He saves their lives but death starts coming for them one by one. The extra people who get thrown out are used by the film as “death padding,” so we can enjoy their gruesome ends before we get close to the core group of friends--the same formula at work in the first film when Devon Sawa’s frea...

I’m not usually one for big nature horror movies like Godzilla or Eight Legged Freaks, but when I picked up Primeval on a lark I was not disappointed. Primeval follows a group of journalists who travel to Burundi, Africa in search of Gustave, a giant crocodile who has been feeding on humans along the banks of the Rusizi river. They find him, but this giant croc isn’t the only thing on the hunt as the crew find themselves in the middle of a violent and bloody civil struggle. Primeval is ultimately a film about the monsters we create, commenting on race and the media in the process. The figure of Gustave, the monster croc, can be read as a natural parallel to the bloody conflict taking place in Burundi. Just as Gustave claims the lives of hundreds of unsuspecting Africans, so does the war. This parallel is made clear in the film’s opening scene as an excavation is under way to unearth a mass grave. When the expedition’s lead forensic anthropologist ventures too close to the water, she ...

I caught a screening of the much anticipated Wolfman remake while I was attending a conference in Albuquerque this weekend. This latest debut of the werewolf in 21st century cinema seeks to offer fans a more enjoyable, adult alternative to the buff, exploding werewolves of the Twilight franchise. But while The Wolfman had some decent horror elements (heads, arms and other appendages fly when the lycanthrope gets loose) at its core, it is essentially a romantic pastiche of a horror film. To give an example of what I mean, think Bram stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola. While Coppola’s film employs definite aspects of horror (bloodletting and monstrous transformations included) everything is peripheral to the love story between Dracula and his reincarnated beloved, Mina Harker. The same is true of The Wolfman. Lawrence Talbot returns home after many years abroad to discover the cause of his brother’s sudden and violent death. Once home, he meets his brother’s intended, the bea...