FTP: Red Letter Day (2019)

JANUARY 7, 2020

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

With four films (and counting) plus a TV series, you'd think we'd know most of the nitty gritty about The Purge by now, i.e. "How often do people retaliate during non Purge hours?" and "Does anyone just use the occasion to rob Gamestop?", but there are still many things about the concept that aren't clear, and probably always will be left that way. It can be a bit frustrating, so one thing that works in Red Letter Day's favor is that it's a stripped down, localized version along similar lines: everyone in a small planned community gets a letter one day that instructs them to kill a certain target or else they will be killed. Of course, they can all stay home and do nothing (the inverse of the "they can't expel the whole class if we all skip school today" idea), but then there's no movie - some people will inevitably embrace this strange version of self-defense killing.

With a more thought out script (and/or better actors) this could have been a solid paranoia thriller in the 10 Cloverfield Lane vein, as for all they know it might be a prank and nothing would happen if they just ignored it, but unfortunately they make a pretty big blunder the movie never really recovers from. In order for the "these are regular normal people forced into something extreme!" concept to land, the writer/director opted to have the characters act as pleasant and good-natured as possible for the first 20-25 minutes, with moms who are best buds with their teenager children, and everyone's constantly teasing each other in a loving away, and neighbors all wave to each other... it's the right idea, but it goes too far in that direction, to the extent that no one actually comes off as a normal person. To me, they feel more like robots mimicking the human behavior they witnessed in daytime TV ads for cleaning products and brew-at-home coffee.

And even later they don't really act natural; the mom of the central trio (dad's out of the picture) occasionally really feels like a mama bear protecting her cubs, but more often than not I found myself wondering if the actress had ever once seen someone worried about their child before. At one point, when both of her kids are in danger (one badly injured, the other missing) a woman (Tiffany "Violet" Helm from F13: New Beginning!) from a church offers to bring the son to the hospital, and rather say "Oh perfect, thanks!" and rush off to find her daughter, she stops to talk about perhaps donating to her church or volunteering at one of their events to make it up to them, as if that would be the first thing on her mind just then? It's one of a few examples where I couldn't buy into the movie's scenario because I was being kept at bay by how unnatural everyone was acting.

On the plus side, there are some terrific practical gore FX (highlight: a very fucked up jaw on a very deserving "victim") and at 76 minutes with lengthy credits (the director credits themselves three times) it doesn't wear out its welcome and is only asking you for a little bit more of your time than an episode of a pay cable TV show. And if you have the blu-ray, you get some excellent Creepshow style artwork on the menu, though it curiously draws the protagonist's son as a jock when in the movie he's like a dorkier Ron Weasley. If you can get past the forced "nice people" performances it's a decent enough timekiller, though these "What would YOU do?" kind of movies really need a more natural setup for the payoffs to land.

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FTP: The Devil Rides Out (1968)

JANUARY 3, 2019

GENRE: CULT
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

When The Devil Rides Out arrived from Scream Factory over two months ago I threw it in the "pile", because I thought I had seen it already. But when looking for something to put on a few nights back when it was late but I wasn't tired enough to go to bed, I read the synopsis said "Hmm I don't remember this at all?", and only then did I realize I was thinking of To The Devil A Daughter, the OTHER Hammer movie with Christopher Lee based on a Dennis Wheatley novel. That one I did see, and it's an OK enough movie (per my nearly eight year old review, it's a bit dull and the central mystery doesn't work very well), but this one turned out to be a total delight to me, so I'm happy I picked it out of the ever increasing number of movies in/around that overflowing box next to my couch where all the random screeners and trivia winnings go in hopes of becoming an FTP review someday.

In fact I liked it enough to read the book to compare for a future Collins' Crypt piece, so I won't use up all of my thoughts on the film here. But I will say that a big part of why I liked it was that Lee was not playing the cult leader - he was actually the hero for a change, one of two older men who were trying to save their pal from the satanic cult he had joined. But he doesn't do much action heroics; he leaves that to Leon Greene as the other (younger) guy. Instead, Lee hilariously smirks his way through the film's thoroughly enjoyable opening sequence, where the two men visit their pal at his home unannounced, on the night where his cult has gathered under the guise of an astronomy meeting. Lee knows damn well the guy's mixed up with satanists, but he plays along with the ruse, marveling at his friend's newly redecorated floor (satanic symbols) and such. Honestly I could watch an entire movie of this stuff, sans any horror at all.

Luckily, those elements work well, too. Since Lee is usually a villain and is occasionally vague about certain things (he gives Greene some chemically based protections, but says he has "other protections" without divulging what they are), I spent a good chunk of the movie thinking he was merely pretending to be a hero but in reality trying to build Greene's character up as an eventual sacrifice or something. So that adds a layer of intrigue that for all I know was never intended by the novel or script (adapted by Richard Matheson), and the direct/obvious horror stuff is pretty successful to boot. Late in the film, our heroes have to endure a ritual and fight off the temptations of the black magic, which reminded me of A Dark Song (something no less an authority than Kim Newman points out on an interview, making me feel a bit proud for having noticed it), another strong sequence. The effects aren't that great (Lee hilariously trashes them on the commentary) but the general ideas come across just fine, and the unusual three male hero setup (Lee, Greene, and the guy they were trying to save, played by Patrick Mower) adds much suspense as you're pretty sure one of them will probably die, but who?

The villain is played by Charles Gray (yep, two future Bond villains square off in this!), quite possibly the most sinister looking man alive. Sadly he is kind of sidelined for big chunks, focusing on Lee and Greene's attempts to free their pal (plus Greene's love interest, played by Nike Arrighi) instead of whatever the cult folk are doing in between their sacrifices. But he casts a long shadow even when he's not on screen and gets some great bits, including a hypnosis scene and a climactic scene where he nonchalantly plans to sacrifice a child. Perhaps Wheatley's book has more for him to do (it's 300 pages in very tiny font size, and the movie is only 95 minutes, so obviously they had to excise a lot), though if there's a direct confrontation between his character and Lee's I'll be disappointed it wasn't filmed, as the men rarely interact directly (Greene gets to punch him out though).

Scream's blu is packed, of course; the Lee commentary (shared with Sarah Lawson and a moderator) is older, along with a few old making of specials, but there's a new track with historians Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr, plus Newman's interview and another exclusive one with Jonathan Riby. And the film has a new transfer, which looked quite good though of course I can't compare it to any previous releases (it appears to be the first Blu-ray release in the US, with an Anchor Bay DVD being long out of print). They have a few more Hammer movies on the way (including Rasputin, which this one was paired with on the Anchor Bay DVD) so I hope it's a sign they are being diligent about acquiring as many as they can - sure, there are some duds in that mix, but I'll sit through a few chores like The Reptile if it means occasionally getting a real treat like this.

What say you?

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FTP: Undertaker (2012)

DECEMBER 5, 2019

GENRE: ASIAN, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I have no idea where Undertaker came from - I assume I won it at trivia since it's from a company I don't often receive review copies from, but it's a perfect movie to restart the "From the Pile" reviews. And that's because if someone were to ask what an ideal "pile" movie was, it'd be this: a reasonably entertaining but forgettable movie that I won't ever need to watch again, and certainly won't need to make room on my permanent shelf for. It'll go to a good home, I won't have to reorganize my collection to make room for it (though as a "U" film it wouldn't take long; it's those "A" and "B" films that REALLY need to win me over to be kept), and I get a little bit of quick HMAD content for you all. Everyone wins!

The concept is pretty interesting, one I'm not sure I've seen before in the other 8,000 zombie movies I have seen. Our hero isn't a mortician per se - he's a zombie hunter who is hired by families to locate their loved ones (who have since become zombies) and put them to rest, so that they don't have to live wondering if their beloved son or daughter is out there being a monster. Having been watching Mandalorian on Disney+, it's an interesting parallel to that guy's MO for bounty hunting - there's something kind of compelling about him tracking a specific zombie in a world overrun with the damn things. I could easily see this being an ongoing series, or perhaps a comic.

A comic would also carry the benefit of not being restricted by the budget, something that was clearly an issue here. It's all well done for what it offers, but it just doesn't really offer that much. After a really good opening sequence and setup, the movie suddenly feels like a real time account of one particular mission - with almost no dialogue (let alone other characters) to boot. The movie is only 65 minutes long with credits (and the pre-title sequence is 16 of those minutes), and nearly half of it is basically one long sequence of Ryouichi wiping out an area's supply of zombies (not a lot of them, mind you - a half dozen or so) until he finds the one he's looking for. It starts to feel like there were loftier ambitions at one point and they had to just draw out what might have been the first act of a more engaging story. Maybe that isn't even remotely the case, but that's how it came across.

But again, for what it is, it's well done. Ryouichi doesn't use a gun to kill zombies, preferring a sharpened shovel that he wields like a blade, and he puts on a show for the audience more often than not - when you don't have thousands of zombies, you gotta make the kills count! There's some decent splatter to go along with the kills, and the zombie makeup is solid to boot. But there's also an animated butterfly that looks pretty goofy, however, so I feel I should warn you about that. Synapse's disc comes with a making of piece that runs almost as long as the film, some deleted scenes, and the original short film "On Your Back" that director Naoyoshi Kawamatsu made earlier and, amusingly, actually has a more complicated story despite running less than a third of the time of the feature.

Basically if you like Japanese zombie movies, there's enough here to recommend, but the brevity of the film and its threadbare narrative might be hard to get past, especially on a purchase, and this doesn't seem like something you'll find at Redbox. Hopefully director Kawamatsu can expand on his ideas someday if he hasn't moved on - the concept deserves something with a little more meat on its bones.

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FTP: Redcon-1 (2018)

JULY 18, 2019

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I'll give Redcon-1 this much: for an independent zombie movie, it has better production value than I'm used to seeing. The cast is huge, the zombies are plentiful, and the characters are almost constantly on the move, so in terms of scope, it's clearly not a "hey we have this office building and my buddy knows how to do makeup so let's make a zombie movie" kind of deal like you unfortunately can run into in this post-Walking Dead world. Unfortunately that also ties into its most crippling flaw: it's kind of an overlong mess, too - they could have saved some money on the budget AND had a better movie if the script was reigned in a bit.

Coming in just under two hours, the movie is another "there's a scientist who might have the cure for zombieism and we need to rescue them" men on a mission movie that any good zombie movie fan has seen before (possibly seen *enough* by now)... but only for its first half, by which point most of the men (and one woman) are dead. Then it becomes a more "personal stakes" kinda deal, as our hero is trying to save a little girl who might also be the key to the whole thing, but they're both targeted by an evil human (sigh) who wants to wipe them and the rest of the area out to contain it. This is another scenario you've seen countless times, but the two don't blend together as much as director Chee Keong Cheung (who also wrote with two others) probably hoped - it's more like the movie just changes gears entirely.

This means that the rather action-packed first half slows down for flashback scenes (many of which exist to re-contextualize things we have already seen) and an increasing absence of zombies, which is an odd choice for a fairly long film. You'd think they'd want to go the other way, slowly building up to an all-action second half and sending us out pumped (or at least, forgiving of its slower first hour) but instead I found myself getting restless at the point where my investment should be at its highest. It doesn't help that the characters are largely generic stock characters and the constant movement means we're still meeting new people in the 3rd act (a woman who plays a crucial role for the finale is barely seen beforehand; she's like 12th billed but if one were to just watch the final 15 minutes they'd assume she was the 2nd lead). Maybe it was a planned TV show that got scaled down for a movie?

But again, it looks pretty good (save for some bad digital blood - they have a lot of the real kind too thankfully) and was rarely flat out boring, so if you're in the mood for some mid-grade zombie action it should suffice. And if you're a fan of the cinema of 1997, you should be happy as it has what seems to be a direct homage to Con Air as well as "Female of the Species" from Austin Powers over the end credits, for some reason (a song that's most recognizable line is "the female of the species is more deadly than the male" is a weird choice for a movie where a female is the key to humanity's survival and the men do the majority of the ass-kicking). However, this just reminded me of a time when zombie movies were much harder to come by - had it COME OUT in 1997 maybe I would have had more fun with it on novelty alone. Nowadays, there's just not a lot here to separate it from the others.

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FTP: Imitiation Girl (2017)

JULY 10, 2019

GENRE: ALIEN
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Some folks complained that Imitation Girl was a knockoff of Under the Skin, but I didn't see the latter so I can't support/refute those claims - I only bring it up so that you, internet commenter, don't bother to make the same comparison. Even if it was intentional... so what? Friday the 13th was an admitted attempt to cash in on Halloween, and both of those are loved by horror fans, so I think we can accept two movies about aliens taking the form of a human woman. And from what little I know of the other film, I can tell they have different plots entirely - while that one had a rising body count and a sole performance for its lead, Imitation Girl has no violence and is more of a drama about the alien woman and the regular human whose form she clones.

Both roles are played by Lauren Ashley Carter, who was so good in Jug Face and is even more impressive here playing the two roles. As the alien one, she spends the movie adapting to a human life, seemingly not possessing any traditional movie alien traits (i.e. she doesn't want to kill everyone) and making her way around the southwestern US - Starman may come to mind, and that's probably fine with writer/director Natasha Kermani, since it's similarly about what it means to be human and also reaffirming that maybe not every alien that comes to earth wants to kill us. The other character is Julianna, an model/adult film actress whose magazine spread gives "Imitation" her inspiration for human form (the alien is seemingly made of black goo otherwise). Her life, as we quickly learn, kind of sucks - she's doing films that are bad even by porn standards, selling drugs to make ends meet, and basically having trouble making one meaningful connection with another person.

It only takes about a half hour (if that) of the film cutting back and forth between their day to day life to see where it's going - they're going to meet up and fill in the missing pieces for the other. So it's unfortunate that (SPOILER!) the movie is practically over by the time this actually happens, as I could have happily watched another movie of them palling around or doing... well, anything really. The film ends so abruptly after their first encounter that it's not even clear what either of them might have done with the other had they any time to do so. Carter's dual performances are so good that I never minded when it would cut from one to the other, as I was equally compelled by both of their single storylines, but part of it was my excitement for what would happen when they finally met, and the payoff for that wasn't as fulfilling.

Until then, good stuff. Kermani's got a great eye, and her music elevates many of these scenes to boot. There's one around the halfway point (if that) where Imitation is learning to cook and learn Farsi (an Iranian man finds her in the desert and lets her stay at the home he shares with his sister) that I found quite moving, completely forgetting that I actually started watching this thinking it was about an alien woman presumably doing movie alien things (i.e. TENTACLE MURDERS!), and by the end I actually forgot the character started off as a puddle of black goo. The filmmaker also does a fine job balancing the two narratives; the risk of tonal shifts is quite high since Imitation's scenes are generally uplifting while Julianna's life continually gets worse, but it never feels that way at all. If one character's path wasn't interesting, the movie as a whole wouldn't work - thankfully it's not an issue.

I should be clear that this isn't even remotely a horror movie - no one is trying to harm anyone, nothing is particularly scary, etc. It's a straight up character drama with an unusual premise involving an alien. But it's part of Dread Central's label, and while the movies have been hit or miss, I do like what they're doing and wanted to make sure horror fans are aware of the steadily increasing line of titles (most of which are indeed full blown horror). The discs all have extensive bonus features and there's a healthy variety of sub-genres being represented (including documentaries - they put out the one about Kane Hodder that I quite liked), plus reversible art for those who like to have options. I assume it's Carter's experience with the genre and the keyword "alien" that got it on their radar, but I'm glad they branched out of their comfort zone to present it as I might not have seen it otherwise - which is really the main draw of these specialty lines, far as I'm concerned. If this came out from IFC or A24 or whatever I probably wouldn't have seen it, but being part of a budding line that I'm naturally inclined to take an interest in meant it got to my eyeballs. And hopefully yours too, if it sounds up your "not in the mood for traditional horror" alley.

What say you?

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FTP: The Binding (2016)

MAY 8, 2019

GENRE: RELIGIOUS, THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

It must really suck to be a devout Christian. Despite being raised Catholic I don't follow much of it these days (though "Thou Shall Not Kill" is a pretty good idea, I must admit), so if I came home one day and my wife said that God told her to murder our kid, I wouldn't hesitate to grab him and get the hell out of that house as quickly as possible, then call the cops and tell them a crazy person was in my home and please have them removed. But the heroine of The Binding, married to a minister who indeed tells her that God wants him to kill their child, chooses to stick around and try to get him some help, while usually leaving the child right there in the home with them - because the rules of her religion basically tell her to obey the minister and have faith in what he's saying.

Thankfully, the movie is more or less about her growing concern that maybe he's a nut and, furthermore, some of their religious ideas are a little insane, rather than go along with it blindly. But it doesn't change the fact that it's dreadfully dull and hard to get into, because it takes her so long to finally put her foot down; it's one thing to yell at Laurie Strode for dropping the knife at the end of Halloween, because she's been smart up until that point and now you love her and want her to survive. But when the main character (Amy Gumenick, who played young Mary Winchester at one point on Supernatural) is "dropping the knife" (so to speak) for the entire runtime, there's no real "in" to the story. Perhaps to devout Christian viewers this would be more terrifying or at least involving, because they might have trouble reconciling their long-standing faith with an immediate danger they can see with their own two eyes, but I spent 85 minutes rolling my eyes at her for not leaving, calling the cops, etc. I just don't understand the mindset of anyone who'd put religion over their child's well-being; quite frankly I was hoping child services would come and remove the poor girl from both of these morons.

Anyway, the movie is more or less in a loop until the final 10 minutes: the wife has a vision or nightmare of something happening to the child, the husband comes home from work or whatever and says something cryptic, they bicker, they talk to someone (a fellow priest, a shrink, etc) to try to help him, it doesn't take, a truce is called, and the cycle begins anew. She briefly lets her mother take the kid out of the house for a bit, but before long she's back in danger in her own home. For a thriller there isn't a lot of thrills outside of the obvious nightmare scenes, and most sane viewers will have checked out long before the husband finally decides to start acting on the plan he's convinced God has tasked him with. Oh, for those not caught up on Bible stories, the title refers to Isaac, a tale in which God commands Abraham to offer his son (that'd be Isaac) as a sacrifice, to which Abraham complies by binding him to an altar and then murdering him. Luckily, he only gets through the first part - God just wanted to see if he had enough faith to actually go through it, and stops him just in time.

Well (spoiler ahead) the husband chickens out at the last second and stabs himself instead, letting the baby live... but turns out he wasn't crazy after all, and God, apparently pissed off, brings upon the end of days (or at least shuts off all of the electricity in Los Angeles) as punishment for the guy not having more faith, I guess. Had this been the halfway point of the movie they might have been on to something, but why wait until the last 10 seconds to do something interesting and daring? This could have been an indie horror Knowing, instead of a lifeless thriller where most viewers won't be able to connect to its main character. I admire the "he was right all along" approach (shades of the underrated End of the Line), but it's too little too late - a cherry on top of a gross ass salad instead of delicious ice cream. Oh well.

What say you?

P.S. Rare for Scream Factory's modern indie releases, the Blu-ray has commentary and deleted scenes. However, "pile" movies need to be better for me to bother with their supplemental stuff, so I didn't watch any of them. Just letting you know it's a special edition should the above have you thinking it might be worth checking out!

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