Cold Film Club Prey

I feel an itch. More like a burn. And no, I’m not leading into a cowbell joke. 

It’s my not-so-secret society ring sending an alert! Stacie Ponder’s Final Girl Film Club is back in session, and today’s movie to be reviewed by myself and a whole lot of other bloggers is the Norwegian horror, Cold Prey.

Quick Plot: Two couples and a fifth wheel drive up a mountain to the middle of Norwegian nowhere to do some free-spirited snowboarding because of course, nothing bad has ever come from avoiding the tourist hubs and exploring the frozen wilderness on your own. 

Right?

Within two minutes, the single Morten breaks his leg. A token ‘no cell service’ shot leads the gang to settle in for the night at an abandoned inn filled with aging booze and, whaddya know, lots of bloody secrets.

We’ve got an axe monster! Or more specifically, a very tall man who slices through any Hansel or Gretel that dares to sip his whisky. The kids--I think, though one couple discusses moving in together while the other features a high schoolish virgin, making me completely confused whether they’re 15 or 25--are quickly separated and hunted down in typical but sufficiently gory ways.

There’s virtually nothing original about Cold Prey, something you may notice from my lack of energy in this review. Excuse me while I take some speed Twizzler Nibs.

Back. Great. Energy kick has KICKED and so the killer is kind of scary but we don’t know who he is until the end so it’s hard to know or care and I liked the winter setting because it felt very cold but so did Dead Snow and that one had Nazi zombies and twists and this one had no Nazi zombies or twists but very proficient gore and it looked quite good but was I in the mood for something more? I think I just rhymed but let’s not dwell on that so instead to figure out what I wanted I’d have to go back in time and check that and Nibs don’t have a time machine flavor but if they did that would be AMAZING but then every movie would probably be amazing and how could I still write reviews if all I could say was THIS WAS AMAZING BUT THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BECAUSE I WAS HIGH ON NIBS.

Crash. What’d I say?

Cold Prey. Good. Nibs. Even better.

High Points

Final girl Jannicke (Ingrid Bols ‘oh with a cross through it’ Berdal) totally sells the last half of the film by being strong and smart enough to keep her friends alive as long as possible (SPOILER ALERT: it’s not very long) 

Low Points

Oh Netflix, on top of nearly doubling my rates, do you have to put dubbed versions of good films on Instant Watch? Do you know how distracting it is to hear overly American accents using names like Ingunn and Mikal?

Lessons Learned, Norway Edition

1 out of 4 Norwegians spend Easter in the mountains (according to statistics)

In Norwegian, “This is going to hurt a little” translates as “This will cause searing pain that will make you wish you were dead”

Superglue is to Norway what maple syrup is to Canada

Rent/Bury/Buy

Cold Prey is a more than competent winter slash ‘em up. It offers just about nothing new, but what it does it does quite well. As an instant watch, it’s perfect for a night when you want a slick, fast-moving horror that won’t hurt your brain. I personally don’t see a buy being necessary, since there are plenty other films out there that would give you the same exact results should you have an urge for good hunts, but hey, I’m not telling you what to do.

Oh wait, yes I am: head over to Final Girl to read a roundup of other Cold Prey reviews. That my friends, is an order.

Film Club + Reader Recommendation x Jumpsuits = The Sweetest Hill of All

“See, in Canada we don't get Netflix. And because of that, I don't have access to all these movies. And I'd LOVE to be able to finally see it. The radio ad for it is one of my favourites. "Roses are red. Voodoo is blue. Sugar is sweet. Revenge is sweeter".I mean, foxy mamas, voodoo and zombies? Come ON! So you have to watch it for me. Do it for me. Do it for the Canadian who can't watch it.”--Ghoul Friday

1974’s Sugar Hill has been on my radar for several years now yet somehow, I never felt quite hip enough to watch it. Putting aside my pasty whiteness and general nerditude, the film’s cult status genuinely intimidated me. But as a fortune cookie once told me, fear is just excitement in need of an attitude adjustment and when Stacie Ponder announced Sugar Hill as December’s Final Girl Film Club pic, my fate was sealed.

I would walk the funk.

As would others.

Quick Plot: Diana “Sugar” Hill is enjoying a glittering night at her fella Langston’s nightclub, partially because her beau is wearing a suit that actually glitters. Note that he’s the most sedately dressed man in the room.

The evening gets a whole lot less starry when evil real estate tycoon Morgan and his racist crew (plus a Fabulous henchman named Fabulous) beat Langston to death. It’s a bummer, but Sugar has the luck of having a voodoo priestess in the family who knows a thing or two about summoning a vengeance smart demon. With a few pieces of jewelry and an IOU soul, Sugar has the gloriously tophatted Baron Samedi and his pinball eyed minions hunting down each of Langston’s murderers with innovative homicide on their zombie minds.

The story, you see, is quite simple. Sugar wants revenge. Sugar gets revenge.

The beauty of Sugar Hill, however, is that how she gets it is simply a joy to behold. A rundown:

-bait ‘n switch at Le Whores Massage Parlor

-eaten alive by fasting hogs

-knocked down by a hopping disembodied chicken leg

Dig it?

Sugar Hill is a fairly infamous gem of the blaxsploitation era and having FINALLY watched it, it’s easy to see why. While the racist dialogue that rings out of every white character’s mouth is squirm-inducing, the film itself never feels racist or uncomfortable to watch. We WANT these bigoted jerks to lose, and an audience of any color can appreciate a smokin’ hot, well dressed and groomed chick directing scenes of carnage like Tyra Banks at an ANTM photo shoot.

This being horror, I suppose it’s worth asking and answering whether Sugar Hill is actually a scary film. At times, sure. Though Samedi is closer to Sweet the dancing demon from Once More With Feeling than anything terrifying, actor Don Pedro Colley brings an interesting (and, am I strange, sexy) creepiness that we can’t be sure will spare our spunky heroine. With their spider web wrapped bodies, his zombies have a memorable strangeness that works despite (or perhaps, because of) the film’s overall lack of gore. Some pretty rough violence is suggested, and even though we’re pretty much all for it due to the sliminess of the villain/victims, director Paul Maslansky (who sadly directed nothing else) is wise to not beat us over the afros with blood and guts.

High Notes

In her early scenes, Marki Bey feels way too classy and sweet to possibly turn into the hell-breathing vengeance madam she becomes. After a surprisingly disturbing suicide induction, however, Bey makes a subtle but perfect transformation into a woman in full control of all her tools, from her bargaining business abilities to the easy chemistry she sparks up with virtually every one of her male costars. It's not necessarily as fun a performance as you'd expect from this era, but it's still enigmatic enough to keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Lessons Learned

Always be sure to wear a nude nylon stocking over your face when planning on killing a high profile businessman. Sure, your flashy one of a kind zoot suit might be a giveaway, but it never hurts to add a tad of discretion

White people suck

If there’s one sad fact I’ll humbly accept from this movie, it’s this: in no way do I possess a mere pinkyful of the coolness it would have taken to flourish in the 1970s. Sigh. Perhaps I should be thankful that I grew up in an age where role models were ET and Jem.

I must use dynamite as a synonym for great way more often than I do now

Rent/Bury/Buy

For whatever crime of mankind, Sugar Hill isn’t officially available on DVD in the US, though you can enjoy it through the wonders of Instant Watch and Midnite Movies. It’s certainly a treat worth tracking down and/or calling upon your favorite sharply dressed voodoo  demon for a wide release. In the meantime, bulk up your sugarcation with a trip to Final Girl for a roundup of other reviews.

Film Club Funhouse!

When Final Girl Stacie Ponder announced The Funhouse as this month’s Film Club choice, I smiled wider than the laughing fat lady who so eloquently frames the movie itself.

Love. Her.

And almost love The Funhouse, Tobe Hooper’s 1981 slasher is a perennial Doll’s House watch, one I grew up with via the USA Network and a well watched VHS tape. Though it never ascended to Killer Klowns-levels of adoration territory, this was something of a classic (by my definition) and one that I was excited to watch from a reviewing point of view.

Quick Plot: Two naughty teen couples (including one halved by Elizabeth “The Cop From The John Larroquette Show” Berridge as goodish girl Amy) decide to spend the night in a traveling carnival’s funhouse. Really, who can blame them? Between the dancing skeleton, horrifying animatronics, giant eyeball and comfy Alice In Wonderland-like grass, who wouldn’t want to lose their virginity inside?

Unfortunately, there’s the unpleasant business of catching the funhouse barker’s son breaking the neck of the sexy (to some) old fortune teller, played with great trashiness by an Academy Award nominee who in my heart, will always be Meryl Streep’s mom in She-Devil.

Have I told you lately that I love She-Devil?

Before you can pass the douche on the left hand side, the quartet is being hunted by the mutant murderer and his abusive pops, played with the same hatable Irish American charm actor Kevin Conway brought so devilishly to his role on Oz.

Rewatching The Funhouse for the first time in a few years, I was struck by a few happy factors I’d somehow never noticed. Primarily, as a horror film, it’s kind of awesome.

Now, I’m not calling The Funhouse a wrongly underrated masterpiece, but it is something of a dusty diamond in the rough of sleazy cinema. Hooper takes his time establishing the carnival as a seedy, potentially evil setting rich with cooky old crazies (at least three by my count) and mutated cows. 

At the same time, Larry Block’s script never quite ascends past typical. We know pretty quickly who will make it to the morning, even though Hooper does manage to squeeze some intense tension from a few key chases. Likewise, we get a mini-subplot involving Amy’s little brother and his Halloween-like hobbies, but where does it really go other than a brief scene of irony? And another fabulous scene with his and Amy’s grouchier than Oscar wet towels of parents, which in fairness, is super.

So as for story, The Funhouse could certainly use a stylish haircut. Something unexpected and new, like The Rachel highlighted with snakes. We don’t get that, but that doesn’t necessarily take away from the eerie atmosphere or lingering ickiness of a messy psuedo-rape scene. The film succeeds in making you tense and upset. I just wish it did a tad more.

High Points

We’re all agreed that the opening credits are about as perfect as anything in this world could possibly get, yes?

Tobe Hooper gets his share of sometimes deserved criticism, but jiminy jippers is this a well directed and shot film (extra kudos to cinematographer Andrew Laszio, he of Newsies, Southern Comfort, and everybody’s life-changing classic, Ghost Dad). You can pull out quite a bunch of stand-alone scenes that show just how effective his style is, including a few minutes following Amy’s rascally little brother that are done in complete, utter, and rather terrifying silence

An imposing score can sometimes kill a not too deep horror film, but John Beal’s music--a catchy blend of ominous circusness--amplifies the tension to pretty fabulous levels

Low Points

I know this was the early ‘80s, a time when strong women were confined to jobs that required shoulder pads, but did final girl Amy have to be such a helpless coward who could only stand and cry while her date’s being stabbed in front of her eyes?

Lessons Learned

You risk the ire of blonds when you preach...especially in bathrooms

Things most college aged girls of the 1980s didn’t like seeing with their sweethearts: preserved displays of mutated fetuses, nudie shows, and murder

Yet another reason not to smoke (you know, dropping a lighter upon the monster you’ve just seen kill a woman with his bare hands)

If you play your cards right on a first date, you can lose your virginity. If you play them wrong, you can be dry humped by a mutant

Rent/Bury/Buy

Though not without its problems, The Funhouse deserves a viewing from every genre fan. What it lacks in story innovation it more than makes up for with incredible mood, from the titular carnival ride to the effective stalk ‘n slash sequences underneath its floors. Sadly the DVD offers nothing but subtitles, making it not the best investment of your cash. At the same time, this is a film that you can go back to quite often. The brisk pacing and circus-like atmosphere makes it inherently rewatchable, at least if you have a soft spot for scantily clad middle aged fortune tellers and dark rides.

So rent the movie if you dare, but first, head over to Final Girl to check out all the other kool kids and their reviews. If you’re lucky, they just might wiggle and dance. 

That’s right, they wiggle AND they dance.

Film Club Monday: Onibaba

As many of you know, I do love a good clubbing.

Oh wait. No I don't.

But a Final Girl Film Clubbing, that's one act of unitarity I'll sign up for!

This month's pick was a film I watched about a year and a half ago, Kaneto Shindo's Onibaba. Sadly I once again slacked off and didn't get a chance to revisit it, but here's my ancient review, born in the early days of this here Doll's House (the one month anniversary, to be exact). Enjoy if you can, but be sure to head over to Stacie Ponder's Final Girl blog spectacular for her, plus many more deliciously millet filled reviews.

One of the things I love about post-apocalyptic fiction is how human beings are so quickly turned into ravenous scavengers. Without the comfort of modern society, the consensus seems to be that our daily lives will consist of finding what’s edible and tearing it apart with our bare hands. Sleep. Hunt. Repeat. Not nearly as much fun as it sounds.

Set in feudal Japan during a chaotic (offscreen) civil war, Onibaba tells the hellish story of two desperate women with fierce survival instincts and incredibly primal appetites. Left alone in the grassy countryside, the only way to eat is to slaughter renegade samurai and trade their military garb for meager rations from the general store (or hut). Life is bare existence, as the pair--an old woman and her dutiful daughter-in-law--toil through the days, shoveling rice into their mouths, sleeping nude amongst the sweltering heat and aggressive drum beats, and filling deep Freudian holes with warrior corpses. The closest they come to joy is the rabid and successful hunt of a meaty puppy.

Enter Hachi, a surviving veteran of sorts (he went AWOL in a war no one seems to be keeping track of by dressing like a priest) who promptly (well, after a free meal) informs his hostesses that the man they share is dead. There’s little time for mourning as Hachi lusts after the widow, the widow coordinates nighttime trysts with Hachi, and the mother plots to keep her only companion. The highlight for most viewers comes in the third act, when a wandering samurai meets the increasingly embittered mother-in-law. Their odd little walkabout is intriguing in itself, but what follows is a wonderfully wicked ending ripped out of a Buddhist morality tale.

Like The Virgin Spring, Onibaba features a medieval setting, internal religious conflict, and a female deeply enslaved to her animal nature. Where Bergman's film explored the weakness of Christianity in the face of primal rage, Shindo Kaneto's story seems less concerned with religious karma and more intent on bringing our basic human needs and desires onto the screen. Our nameless (anti)heroines are the creatures of myth, but one of the brilliant aspects of Onibaba is just how believable their hunger is. With their lives boiled down to survival, what more can they want but a full meal and a gratifying roll in the tall grass?

High Points

A soundtrack filled with frantic drums and the occasional scream is extraordinary in establishing a world without order

Despite the dark nature of Onibaba,  the film also contains some genuinely great humor, particularly from the magnetic Kei Sato as Hachi

Low Points

I won’t go into spoilers, but one of our characters has a more definite conclusion than the others, and it’s so sudden that its significance feels lost

Lessons Learned

Just in case you had any doubts, living with your mother-in-law is not a good idea

Never put something on your face when you don’t know where it’s been

Sex in a bad economy is worth one bag of millet

Rent/Bury/Buy

Any DVD issued by the Criterion Collection is automatically worth the splurge (based both on quality of film and loaded features), and Onibaba is no different. The visual design is both horrifying and haunting, the score is uniquely violent, and the performances create memorable--if not overly likable-- characters that fill their archetypal roles while maintaining genuine charisma. This is a classic that earns its ranking.

Dusting off the archives for Film Club Day

Pop quiz hotshot.

What's the best way to be cool?

A. Get a tattoo of the Chinese characters for "iPad"

B. Cruise through town on a Segway covered in environmentally concerned bumper stickers

C. Participate in Final Girl Stacie Ponder's Film Club 

If you're reading this blog, you're already hip enough to know the answer. Savvy readers will remember that I reviewed Ti West's well-received The House of the Devil earlier this year but since I'm sad to say I haven't had to chance to revisit it, what follows is merely a reprint of past work. So in a sense, this marks the first official summer rerun of The Doll's House. For fresh perspectives, order some questionable pizza, head to http://finalgirl.blogspot.com/ and catch a few more posts by fellow club kids.

Ti West’s The House of the Devil is the new darling of the horror community which meant I was hesitant to watch and review it because a) many others have already done so and b) my expectations are rarely met (I’m sorry Trick ‘r Treat. I really like you but can we just be friends?). Hearing such mountainous heaps of praise from nearly every blog and podcast I respect left me no choice.

I had to enter The House of the Devil.

Quick Plot: College student Sam (Jocelin Donahue) is about to rent an adorable two bedroom home, mostly to escape germs and her promiscuous roommate’s date nights. Unfortunately, she suffers the condition shared by many coeds by not really having much in the bank. To earn a few bucks, Sam answers the mysterious ad for a baby$itter posted on a campus corkboard.

After much hesitation, girlfriend chatting, and pizza not-eating, Sam accepts the job. BFF Megan (Greta Gerwig) drives her to the secluded home of Mr. and Mrs. Ullman where things are, not surprisingly, not quite what they seem. 

They’re weiiiiiiiiiiird. You should know you’re in trouble when Tom Noonan, that 10’ tall enigma of fine thespianhood with genre cred, opens the door with painful politeness and far too much gratitude. Plus, Mrs. Ullman (the fine Mary Woronov) wears fur and the local pizza guy is more polite than a Jehovah’s Witness on a Saturday morning. I’ll cease any more detail on plot to protect the house of the virgins, but honestly, most of the story ends just about there anyway.

Other stuff happens, but The House of the Devil succeeds--and yes, it truly does--based on atmosphere. West clearly went to great lengths to ground everything about The House of the Devil in that golden age of creepiness known as the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, when Satan made more cameos than Christopher Walken. From the high-waisted jeans to grainy cinematography, every second onscreen is a new form of retro.

Also, it’s a damn scary movie, providing you accept a film primarily built on the oft used term, rarely mastered format, ‘slow burn.’ There are a lot of viewers--solid genre fans among them--who will say The House of the Devil doesn’t work, and they’re not necessarily wrong. Like The Haunting, Rosemary’s Baby, or even The Others, The House of the Devil is more about atmospheric buildup than blood (which is not to say there is none; a few fantastic practical effects practically drip goo off the screen). It might pull you in. It might not.

It got me, and I’m extremely happy that it did. The Ullmans are creepy, also quietly polite in a way that makes you believe Sam would accept their mysterious job. The actual house is a classic example of haunted gothic, made all the more eerie by the impending lunar eclipse. While we as an audience long to pull Sam’s flip-out bangs out of a situation that simply HAS to be wrong, Donahue does a perfect job at conveying smart caution mixed with simple monetary need. Like us, she enters the house sensing something off, then slowly lets her guard down as the jump scares prove groundless. By the time hell really starts burning, it’s incredibly jarring because we’ve already survived countless ups and downs. The payoff might seem a little too quick, but that’s only because we’ve had so much fun getting nervous with an hour’s worth of carefully constructed tension.

High Points

Gold stars to the whole cast, from Donahue for centering the story to Gerwig adding sassy and believable humor and the perfectly pitched Noonan and Woronov for being the definition of eery awesome

Guns are generally not that interesting on camera, but The House of the Devil finds several ways to make them truly frightening

Low Points

Um. I’m coming up short. If there’s any fault in the seamless direction of The House of the Devil, it shows somewhere in the bloody finale, which is simply not quite as stand-out as the masterful buildup.

Lessons Learned

Massachusetts is home to really awful pizza

Hard candy from old people is always gross, even when said elderly are Satanists

Don’t smoke. Seriously. Just don’t.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Every fan of the horror genre should give The House of the Devil a fair chance, but I do fully expect a vocal portion to find this an underwhelming and boring film. However, if you’re tired of self-aware slasher satires and just want an old fashioned spooky flick, this is a definite watch and, once proven, a solid purchase. The DVD includes some featurettes and an informative filmmaker and crew commentary (which, considering the skill at work, is a great investment for those interested in the technical side of filmmaking). Playful performances, masterful atmosphere, and an energetic throwback spirit makes it something truly special.