FATHER'S DAY (2011)

FATHER'S DAY (2011) (NR) Dirs. Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Steven Kostanski, and Conor Sweeney

aka THE FATHER'S DAY MASSACRE
99 mins.

Like House of the Devil and Hobo with a Shotgun before it, Father's Day is recorded with the aesthetic of a late 70's or early 80's grindhouse flick. Specifically, it 's made to look like it was taped off the TV with a VHS, channel bumpers and all. There is even a fake trailer halfway through the film, a la the movie Grindhouse. Everything looks authentic; the film's frames are scratched and linty, the colors are saturated to a ridiculous degree, there are jittery splices in the footage, and the score is pure Moogy deliciousness.

 

The story revolves around the legend of the Fuchman. Chris Fuchman to be precise, an obese necrophile who likes to kidnap fathers, rape and kill them. When Fuchman kills a priest and kidnaps stripper Chelsea from the club she works at, it's up to three intrepid heroes, film noir reject and Chelsea's brother Ahab, male hooker Twink, and Father John, to rescue her and stop the Fuchman.

 

They follow in hot pursuit of Fuchman and Chelsea following the abduction, chasing Fuchman's truck, but ultimately lose him and fail to rescue Ahab's sister. The day is fading, so they pitch camp until morning. During the night, Twink and Father John eat hallucinogens and fuck.

 

The next day, they follow Fuchman's trail to a waterslide park, where they discover a corpse and a terribly wounded Chelsea. Ahab engages a fleeing Fuchman, unleashing a flurry of handgun rounds and shotgun shells into his body. After Fuchman falls, Ahab stomps in his skull and hurls the body off the side of a ledge.
 

 

The trio's victory is short-lived, although, as it is discovered that the Fuchman is actually a demon of sorts, a spirit that is reborn each generation. He has Chelsea's soul and is using her as his vessel. Yet Fuchman is in Hell. So Hell ahoy! Ahab and the boys load up a pistol and prepare to kill the Fuchman, on his home turf, and end his reincarnations.

 

Father's Day is vile, disgusting and hilarious. It revels in breaking taboos and making the audience uncomfortable. Male on male rape, Catholic homosexuality, abortion, genital mutilation, and incest, all make their appearances. The gore is both cartoonish and gruesome. The whole movie is brilliantly shot and edited, and the comedy mostly hits its mark. The acting is hammily self-aware and the many homages and parodies (i.e. Escape From New York, Twin Peaks, Phantasm) are clever and respectful.

 

Easily recommendable to gorehounds, Troma fiends, and fans of black humor. It's a goldmine, but as with most of Troma's fare, it's definitely not for the squeamish. 7/10

 

THE BLACK 6 (1973)

THE BLACK 6 (1973) (R) Dir. Matt Cimber
94 mins.

After a white girl's brother discovers that her boyfriend is black, he and his biker cronies beat the man to death with chain links. Later, the victim's estranged older brother Bubba, leader of the Vietnam vet biker gang the Black 6, receives the news. He makes his way home with his gang in tow to reconcile with his family and find out what happened to his little brother, Eddie.

 

Since the murder occurred on the local high school's football field, Bubba first questions the coach. The coach is little help, so Bubba petitions the police to no avail, but he does learn that the murderers were bikers. What does he do next? He goes bar-hopping, of course.

 

Bubba meets up with an old drunkard at the bar #1, who tells him that his high school sweetheart Lucille might have some answers. Bubba leaves to find her. He finds and threatens her pimp, Copperhead, in bar #2. Copperhead spills her whereabouts and off goes our hero. Bubba finds Lucille and she informs him that Eddie's girlfriend was named Jenny King. He drops Lucille off with his mother and heads for Jenny's workplace: bar #3.

 

 

This has got to be the breeziest investigation ever, as at the bar the gang responsible for Eddie's death are all there. It's quickly revealed to Bubba that Jenny's brother and his friends are the killers (they practically brag). The rest of the Black 6 arrive to back Bubba up against the gang, but before they can scrap, the police enter and break up the ruckus.

 

Later, the white gang meets up with another biker gang run by a strange fellow called Thor. The two gangs form an alliance to bring down the Black 6. They send two envoy riders to invite the 6 to meet up and talk things out, in what is clearly a trap. Yet the 6 bite, and they head off on their bikes much to the dismay of Bubba's mother and sister.

 

What follows is one of the most frustrating endings I've seen in a while. The lighting is so terrible, I found myself gazing at the screen in wonder for roughly ten seconds before I realized that I was looking at the front of a motorcycle. Shitty lighting, shitty fight choreography, and the sudden piss poor editing make the whole climax pretty incomprehensible. After killing many dozens of his fellow racist bikers, a desperate gang member rides his bike, with a flare in its gas tank, at the Black 6.  The motorcycle explodes in (what I assume is) midair, and the movie's over. It's so sudden, so abrupt and it really squanders all of the momentum built up during the first eighty minutes. A shame.

 

 

The actors portraying the 6 were all NFL stars of the day (their teams are listed in the opening credits), so understandably their acting is a bit wooden at best. Gene Washington is clearly the most charismatic of the bunch and he basically carries most of the film. The supporting cast is great though, and the actors portraying Lucille, Bubba's mother, the Coach, and Jenny all stand out for their strong performances.

 

The Black 6 dwells in the realm of comedy for its first third and but gets a bit darker as the film progresses. The transition is not handled well and all of the plot's setups do not pay off. Unfortunately, what could have been a great murder/revenge film is marred by bad pacing, a lack of any mystery surrounding the killers, slapstick segments (mostly early on), and most of all, a muddled and unfinished climax. Yet is has so much potential. If any cult classic should be remade, it's this one. 4/10

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1912)

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1912) (NR) Dir. Lucius Henderson
12 mins.

Though there have been a couple film adaptations of Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde before the 1912 version, this is the only one to have survived, so far. Directed by Lucius Henderson and starring future director James Cruze as the doomed doctor, the film serves as a cornerstone to not only horror, but to narrative cinema itself.

 

Dr. Jekyll is in his lab, reading up on the effects of different drugs. He is a able to concoct a new substance that separates the good half of a person from his/her evil half. Upon testing the formula, Jekyll turns into his criminal shadow-self, Mr. Hyde. He checks out his new visage in a mirror, and having succeeded in his experiment, ingests an antidote and returns to his Jekyll form. Jekyll immediately jots down his results.

 

However, experimenting with the drug over the course of a few months, Jekyll begins to transform into Hyde unwillingly. While studying one day, Hyde emerges. It's interesting to note that you can physically see Jekyll struggling for control over the Hyde personality. Kudos to James Cruze for being able to portray that in a matter of a few seconds. Hyde wins out and, after tearing Jekyll's notes, runs amok in the town streets, where he attacks a little girl. He scurries off, evades capture, and using the antidote reverts back into Jeckyll.

 

Later, when meeting with his fiancée, Jekyll begins to suffer from one of his spells. He runs off out of sight and transforms. As Hyde, he attacks his wife-to-be, and when her minister father intervenes, Hyde strangles him to death.

 

A policeman chases a fleeing Hyde to Jekyll's house, but when he reaches it, Hyde has already ingested the antidote. Dr. Jekyll appears and reassures the officer that Hyde is not there. Knowing now that he will never rid himself of Hyde, Jekyll arranges to meet his fiancée and break it off. During their meeting, he must again run off to avoid endangering her. He gets back to his house in time and morphs.

 

Inside Jekyll's home, Hyde finds that he has run out of antidote and must remain in this form indefinitely. Hyde trashes the lab and Jekyll's butler fetches the police. In desperation, as police ax down the laboratory door, Hyde drinks a flask of poison and dies.

 

Even at twelve minutes there is a lot going on in the adaptation. The pacing is very fast, especially for its time. Blink and you will miss scenes. The Hyde makeup is excellent, I can imagine very creepy for 1912 audiences, and the big dissolve used to show the initial Jekyll's initial transformation is groundbreaking. At this point, horror cinema is still in its infancy, but its teeth are starting to come in. 7/10   

THE EXECUTION OF MARY STUART (1895)

THE EXECUTION OF MARY STUART (1895) (NR) Dir. Alfred Clark
aka EXECUTION aka THE EXECUTION OF MARY, QUEEN OF THE SCOTS
18 sec.

This is arguably the very first horror film ever made, and it was produced by American inventor Thomas Edison. The idea that Edison invented the horror film is mind-twisting. Why didn't they tell me that in elementary school? The Execution of Mary Stuart consists of only one scene and runs about eighteen seconds. Interesting enough, you could also call it the world's first exploitation and splatter film.

 

It's 1587. A group stands around a blindfolded Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots. The blindfold is removed and she kneels at a chopping block before her. The executioner raises his ax and beheads Mary for treason against Queen Elizabeth. He then picks the head up and holds it aloft.

 

That's it. Through clever early editing (this is oft considered to be the very first edited film), the actress playing Mary is substituted with a dummy, so that the decapitation can occur on camera. Wow. A hundred, and almost a quarter, years have passed since then and directors still use that dummy trick. Sorry H.G. Lewis.... the dynamic duo, Clark and Edison, did it first. 8/10

DON'T GO TO SLEEP (1982)

DON'T GO TO SLEEP (1982) (NR) Dir. Richard Lang
93 mins.

This made for TV movie is brought to us by none other than Mr. 90210 himself, Aaron Spelling, and was originally aired on the ABC network. The plot follows Phillip and Laura, a married couple with three kids. Well, two kids now, because a year ago, a car accident left their eldest, Jennifer, deceased. The two surviving children, Kevin and Mary, leave the city with their parents, who have decided to make a fresh start and settle into a new house in a more quiet, rural setting (house number 13666, no less). Along for the mooch is also Laura's mother, who makes a sport out of taunting the newly sober Phillip.

After the five move in, the youngest, Mary, starts hearing noises and a gravely voice calling her name at night. She screams for help, and the alarmed parents burst in her room to find Mary's bed aflame. She is rescued, and the fire squelched. Lacking any clear explanation for the occurrence, the couple have Mary retire to her brother's bedroom for the evening, but it is not long before the disturbances begin anew. Mary starts convulsing and yelling for help. When Kevin retrieves the skeptical Phil and Laura, they find Mary sound asleep and with no evidence to corroborate Kevin's story. Kevin vows payback.

So the next day, Kevin makes some (allegedly) spooky sounds on his tape recorder. That night he plays them to torment his little sister. He smirks as he feigns sleep and eavesdrops on Mary being scolded for her outburst.

On the third night, as Kevin runs off to tattle on his sister for freaking out again, Mary musters her courage and investigates the noises, which seem to be originating from beneath her brother's bunk bed. There she meets the apparition--her dead sister Jennifer, smiling intently.

 

 

When she is discovered by her parents, Mary tries to convince them that she saw Jennifer, but to no avail. Not knowing how to deal with their daughter's apparently increasing break with reality, the parents argue about seeking psychiatric help. Meanwhile, a spectral Jennifer continues to visit the confused child. She is able to convince Mary that not only is she indeed real, but that if she wants Jennifer to stay for good this time, Mary's going to have to dispose of any person that gets between them. This does not bode well for the other members of the family... who are all growing weary of Mary's antics.

As time goes on, Mary becomes more and more possessed by the spirit of Jennifer. She starts to rationalize her previous supernatural encounters. She cleverly eludes her psychiatrist's inquiries during their visits. By night she is concocting schemes with Jennifer to eliminate her pesky family members. Grandmother first, then that snitch Kevin. It's not long before she sets her murderous sights on dear ol' Dad. Laura eventually discovers what has been going on and is able to escape. Young Mary is hospitalized. During the film's denouement, we see what really happened to Jennifer the night she died in that car accident, and ladies and gents, it's fucked up. This is grim stuff for television, especially for 1982.

 

 

Don't Go To Sleep, like Dark Night of the Scarecrow, is a great example of less is more. In lieu of elaborate gore or special effects, we instead get fleshed out characters, great acting and a legitimate creepiness that is far more tangible here than in horror films that have ten times the budget. Dennis Weaver and Roth Gordon are excellent per usual, but Robin Ignico's Mary is superbly executed. Her fear during the initial hauntings is vividly pronounced and totally believable, and her frenzied, schizophrenic monologue at the climax of the film would be impressive for the most veteran of actors, let alone a child of her age.

 

Another great early 80's TV movie. Sort of like a fleshed out Twilight Zone episode meets an episode of Dark Shadows. The music is full of melodrama. It's soap-operatic. The cinematography is average for television, but the lighting is very well done, and the film's arguably scariest moments are accomplished by lighting (and good acting) alone. The conclusion is a near-Shakespearean tragedy. I mean, I truthfully feel bad for the mother, Laura. Jesus, lady. Sucks to be you. 7/10

SCHRAMM (1994)

SCHRAMM (1994) (NR)
aka SCHRAMM: INTO THE MIND OF A SERIAL KILLER
Dir. Jorg Buttgereit
65 mins.
Germany

 

 

The only other Jorg Buttgereit film I've seen so far is Nekromantik, and as much as I enjoyed that film, Schramm is easily the better of the two. The production values are higher, the acting, much more somber and realistic, and the camera movement and projection effects are incredible. The movie feels like a mixture of William Lustig's Maniac and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, with a few drops of Fulci-esque gore. It's invasive, grim and uncomfortably personal, as we follow the sad life and death of the Lipstick Killer, Lothar Schramm. 





We are introduced to the titular character, a prosthetic leg-wearing cab driver, who, when he's not running in marathons or driving his prostitute friend Marianne to various jobs, is in his apartment, ejaculating onto Sears catalogues or cleaning the semen out of his inflatable vagina. Fortunately for society, Schramm is now dying, having fallen off of a step ladder while painting over some bloodstains in his apartment. Seems his prosthetic came loose, and he snapped his neck upon impact with the floor. As he slowly departs this coil, Lothar's brain floods with flashbacks of his life and the events leading up to his fall.
 

 

These flashbacks are apparently random at first, but as the film progresses we begin to flesh out a timeline. We see Lothar doing normal things like showering, going to dinner or seeing his dentist. We also see him nail his foreskin to a table... and drug and rape Marianne (his only friend, mind you). The juxtaposition of everyday tediums with his shadow life of criminal perversion is striking, to say the least. Lothar's increasing levels of delusion lead to the double murder of two Christian missionaries in his apartment. It was their stains he was painting over. Towards the climax, as the dying killer's consciousness finally dims, we see some final flashbacks to Lothar as a boy, playing with crabs by the shore with, what I assume, is his family. And we see the wildflowers that grew there, suggesting that Luthor used to be innocent once, too. It begs the question, what happened to this guy that made him so fucked up? There are no real answers, you are left to speculate, and this makes him much more interesting than your average Norman Bates clone.

There is also a quasi-afterlife scene that I don't know what to make of.

The story is simple, but interesting, the writing and acting are up to par, and the special effects are effective and fun, but the real standout in this feature is the direction and editing. It looks as though Jorg projected the movie onto a piece of warping plexiglass, creating motion blurs, trails, and proportional distortions that make for a very psychedelic experience. Even the subtitles stretch with the picture. It's an incredible way to force the audience to sympathize with Lothar's condition, as the camera emulates his own hallucinatory view of his environment.

Schramm is definitely a splatter movie, but it's equally an art film. If you're into disturbing and disorienting films, this is like foie grois. Definitely an benchmark work for the genre. The visuals are amazing, the actors are fearless... and there is a rubber vagina monster, with teeth and tentacles, living in Schramm's lipstick drawer. Can't forget to mention that. 8/10

THE REDEEMER: SON OF SATAN (1978)

THE REDEEMER: SON OF SATAN (1978) (R) Dir. Constantine S. Gochis
aka THE REDEEMER aka CLASS REUNION MASSACRE
84 mins.

This is a weird movie. It's been speculated to be a religious film, but that's debatable. Six adults attend their ten year class reunion at their old high school, only to find there's no one there but them. They enter the banquet hall, pig out, and it begins to dawn on them that something might be wrong. They begin to investigate, and soon the former students realize they are locked and barred inside the school, with no way out, and there is a killer after them.... for SOME reason.

 

Seriously, they can't figure it out, and even after the denouement, I couldn't either. There are both a prologue and epilogue to the movie that just discombobulate the plot further. Basically, a thespian/priest, who had attended the same school and grade as his victims, is attacking them for living sinful lives. One girl is a lesbian, another is vain, one man is a lawyer, another is gay, etc. Apparently that is the motive. I kept waiting for a "you picked on me in high school" motive, as even the characters speculate that to be so. But no, unless I somehow missed it.

 

 

The editing is atrocious, but it fits in context with the grainy footage, muted yet oversaturated colors, and choppy narrative. It's surreal, if anything, and it does add a certain dream-like atmosphere to the clichéd slasher proceedings. There is little gore, but one scene in the school lavatory is brutally violent and well-executed. Props to both actors in that scene. The ending is impenetrable. Once the redeemer is finished with his work, there is a prologue that not only reveals his identity (as if the audience didn't know by now), but suggests he might have accomplices as well. Oh, and something about a curse involving a third thumb. An odd final note to end an odd movie.

 

 

The killer is played by T.G. Finkbinder, who is now a high school teacher, and although some of his performance is heavy-handed, some it works as well. As an actor, I'm sure he jumped at the role, as the redeemer dresses differently in almost every scene he shows up in, and every costume the killer wears is like new personality.

 

The movie also begs the question, 'do the writer and director sympathize with the priest?' If so, is this a Christian horror movie? Like the ending, this question will probably never be answered. I do know that the original title of the film was simply The Redeemer, and it was filmed in 1976. However, it was not released until 1978, after The Exorcist made a huge splash, so the producers added the 'Son of Satan' subtitle to cash-in on the Satanic horror boom late that decade. In reality, the concept of Satan has nothing to do with this film; if anything, it deals with sin and redemption.

 

 

Would I recommend this film? Perhaps to hardcore horror completists and fans of the surreal. It's not particularly well written, shot or acted, but it does have a feeling that separates it from other no-budgeted films of its time. It's a shame the director Gochis didn't make more films after this one, because as flawed as it is, it shows promise. 5/10