More Revealing, More Silent, More Hill

Michael J. Bassett’s Deathwatch was a fresh and frightening entry into the horror genre, so it was great news to hear this British writer/director would be handling the second installment of the potential-filled Silent Hill franchise.

Quick Plot: When last we met the Da Silvas, mother Rose and daughter Sharon  were trapped in some sort of Nether-reality that separated them from dad Ned Stark—er, Sean Bean’s Henry. 

At the start of Revelations, Sharon is now an 18-year-old blond renamed Heather living a nomadic existence with a non-Nether-separated Henry and the belief that she lost her memory and mother in a car accident. The pair rarely stay in one town long because, as far as ‘Heather’ knows, her dad is on the run from the law due to a self-defense murder. It doesn’t explain the increasingly surreal nightmares-dripping-into-daily-life-visions she has, but Heather seems well-adjusted enough for a surly teen.

On her first day at a new school, Heather catches the eye of another new kid/Game of Thrones refugee named Vincent (aka You Know Nothing Jon Snow) who quickly becomes her ally after a private detective tracks her down and gets murdered by a monster-woman-thing at a shopping mall. Heather and Vincent return home to find her dad gone and a blood-written invitation on the wall calling her back to the place of her nightmares, Silent Hill.

After that, it’s all cotton-tailed bunnies and bulldog puppies of course!

Or horrifically mutilated corpses, murderous religious zealots, stabbers wielding knives bigger than Shaquille O’Neal's idea of an oversized novelty item, and Malcolm McDowell.

I appreciated Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill for being something significantly different from the standard studio horror film you’d find in a major release. As someone who’s never played the video game (Super Nintendo’s top left and right buttons were where I drew the line, thank you very much), I didn’t necessarily have a preexisting attachment to the world, making some of the fuzzier touches rather confusing. Though it apparently is bursting with easter eggs for loyal gamers, Revelations is also much more appealing to newbies like me because it doesn’t necessarily feel as though it’s trying to replicate the PlayStation experience.

This is not to say that Revelations makes total sense, but unlike its more style-over-substance predecessor, the film adheres to a simpler, more straightforward narrative that the atmosphere effectively supports. We primarily follow Adelaide Clemens’ Heather/Sharon on a sort of Alice-In-Wonderhell trip of Silent Hill, and because the narrative is fairly simple (girl find dad), most of Revelations moves at a much better pace. 

Not that I wasn't baffled again as to what was actually happening once Heather/Sharon reached the final reel. There’s a muddled confrontation with goth girl other half Alessa that translates extremely poorly from 3D to standard def, followed by a cooler, if MORE confusing showdown with the real villain who never really feels that important. 

Could I poke holes in most ends of this movie? Certainly. But can I find a gigantic Shelob-style spider composed of human limbs and mannequin heads in just any big screen genre release? I WISH!

Silent Hill: Revelations is a messy film. But dagnabbit, I had a pretty great time watching it. It’s easy to be lazy when working with surrealism, and Bassett keeps the reins tight to deliver an effective ride. This isn’t game-changing horror, but in the realm of wide release studio horror, it’s a big win.

High Points

In what’s essentially a cameo, Malcolm McDowell brings full energy and wackiness to his role

I mean, SCENE OF TENSION INVOLVING ROBOTICALLY MOVING BLIND NURSE MONSTERS STABBING AWAY AT WHATEVER MAKES A SOUND. That’s some groovy stuff

Low Points

I know 3D sounds like a great idea when you’re marketing a big screen release and can bank on that higher ticket price, but please, filmmakers, please remember that eventually, those effects are going to be seen on a good old fashioned television screen. It’d be nice if they didn’t look terrible

Lessons Learned

When filmed in close-up, even a Pop-Tart can be frightening

People from mystical orders in netherworlds have trouble deciding what type of accent to use

Fitting in at a new school can be tough, but fitting in when a lot of your day is spent seeing images of no-faced Jacob’s Ladder refugees following your every move can be REALLY tough

Sometimes, everybody needs some Pyramid Head to help them out of a jam

Bean There, Done That
SPOILER FOR THE OPENING SCENE OF THE MOVIE: You have to admire the film's wink to kill off (dream sequence style) Sean Bean within five minutes of starting. It's almost as if someone pointed out that no matter what, the audience was going to be counting the minutes until the inevitable, so why not just give it them immediately so they could check it off their list and watch without distraction

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was very pleasantly surprised by Silent Hill: Revelations. While I appreciated the first film’s ‘otherness’ and dedication to NOT being another slasher or messy action-riddled video game adaptation, the gooey pace and lack of any strict focus made it something of a slog. Revelations is a much tighter film filled with neat visual touches and an incredibly unique soundtrack that actually works WITH, not FOR the action (unlike the majority of modern horror films that believe a crescendo equals a scare). Now on Instant Watch, it's well worth a visit.

Just Skip the Hospital & Hit the Morgue

No intro today. Just nurses. That are sick. And Thai. And in a lot of trouble.

Quick Plot: This won't be easy. Somewhere in Thailand, the worst run hospital in Asia hosts an underground corpse trading business, where a handsome and horny young doctor enlists the aid of seven sexy nurses to help sell some bodies. Within the very first scene of the film, we learn that Dr. Taa has been cheating on his marriage-obsessed fiancée Tawan with her little sister. She's mad as hell and won't take it anymore, especially after her sister nurses body slam her onto the operating table as the next item of dead sale.

What follows is a sort of grownup 20something form of Hausu, as Tawan's evil angry spirit hunts her murderesses one night in the, as horror movie tradition dictates, complete empty hospital. Tossed in is a truly shocking twist that doesn't *quite* make sense, but is sure fun to see. Especially since it’s followed by an even campier one.

OH! And weird and bizarre death scenes. LOTS of them. See, all the beautiful nurses are terribly flawed human beings, and most--much like Hausu--have that one character trait (be it bulimia or materialism) that makes them both easy to remember and fun to kill. And yes, such quirks can lead to great death scenes that involve, well, bulimia and materialism.

Sick Nurses is a strange film and all the better for it. It never asks us to invest anything in its shallow characters, a move that could easily turn off some filmgoers who like to, you know, LIKE the people they watch onscreen. Our default heroine is a woman who stole her older sister’s fiancée. Her fellow victims are easy on the eyes but empty in the brain. You know the type: the kind of girl who will squirt shampoo in her hand and not notice that instead of Pantene, she’s now massaging her scalp with a handful of killer hair.

Yes, killer hair. This movie has killer hair. And yes, you should be quite pleased about that.

As Tawan plays with her pretty victims, we get treated to odd, almost Silent Hill-ish transformations of freakery. The chatty lesbian becomes something of Cellphone Face, the clothing obsessed twit, Fancy Pocketbook Head. It’s good stuff.

I was more than surprised by how much I enjoyed Sick Nurses. It’s visually inventive, taking a typical J-horroresque ghostess and giving her plenty of spins. Most importantly, the movie seems to have quite a bit of fun with itself. From the twisty weirdness of the plot to the cheeky death scenes, the viewer gets the feeling that Piraphan Laoyont and Thodsapol Siriwiwat enjoyed the process of making the film. Now THAT’s a refreshing dose of medicine.

High Notes

Initially, I was slightly annoyed by the film’s insistence on rushing past its basic character development and plot to get straight to the killing. You do lose that emotional connection that was never built with its stars, but ultimately, it makes Sick Nurses surprisingly spry. We’re never REALLY going to like any of these people, so the odd setup (plot! Kill kill kill side plot kill kill kill REVELATION kill) actually works weirdly well.

Low Notes

It’s a Doll’s House rule: any film that shows feline abuse must be marked. While the kitten tosser does indeed suffer a gruesome fate, it’s still infuriating

Lessons Learned

In Thailand, it is traditional to not remove any clothing when taking a shower

Virgos shouldn’t work in hospitals 

Pregnancy tests in movies are 5x faster than real life ones

The Most Unsettling Image Ever

Ew ew ew I say! As the bulimic brushes her teeth, she stuffs a Homer Simpson style pink donut into her throat, then brushes over it. I don’t consider myself squeamish, but this sight prompted me to wash out my eyes.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Fans of the bizarre will probably really dig Sick Nurses. It starts quickly and continuously delivers plenty of strange horror and amusing black comedy. The film WAS streaming on Instant Watch, but seems to have expired for the time being. I can't speak to the DVD quality, but it's certainly a film worth keeping on your radar for a breezy yet disturbing watch. 

Rock Me! Shock Me! Paracineme!

Yo, Wuhstah! You know what goes down this weekend? 

Clearly all sorts of amazing things, if a still from A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is involved. So dig out your Revolutionary War memorabilia and Red Sox gear for Massachusetts' annual horror convention, Rock 'N Shock!*

*Yes, I've been told that Worchester is actually not near Boston, but what else does Massachusetts have going on that I'm supposed to know about?


The point is, if you're anywhere near the DCU Center & Palladium this weekend, come on over to meet the likes of Robert Englund, Lance Henrikson, Roddy Piper, Gary Busey AND his son, and the aforepictured Mark Patton or really, ME!

Don't worry. I'm no longer blond. Or sporting a Jareth bulge.

I'll be heading up with my GleeKast cohostess Erica, The Podcast Podcast's Fozziebare, and Buried In a Book Crypt's Ashlee to roam the floors on Saturday and Sunday.  Outside the Cinema will be streaming all weekend with an open chat room, so if you can't make the trip, pop on there to see the festivities. It's sort of like watching Joan and Melissa Rivers on the red carpet, but with clown makeup and rubber masks.

Which is sort of like watching Joan and Melissa Rivers on the red carpet anyway.


If you're heading to Rock 'n Shock, be sure to say hullo or else once I find out you were THERE and didn't, I'll fear that I fell into a Silent Hill-esque alternate dimension that will forever keep me away from Sean Bean. No one wants that. 

Stop by the Outside the Cinema table or shoot me an email (deadlydollshouse at gmail.com). Now that I have an iPhone, I can know about the Interverse when not connected to my computer. Although I also just upgraded my settings and will probably not actually be able to work it so if nothing else, look out for the short brunette with the loud voice and Merrell Sneakers.

Greatest shoe design of all time.

But juggalo sighting and bootleg DVD shopping isn't all you have to look forward to this weekend. Over yonder at Paracinema, the makers of the greatest genre magazine of our time are feeling awfully generous. If you purchase any issue between today and Sunday (October 16th) you'll be entered to win a free (and awesome) t-shirt! THIS ONE!

I own one myself, and it's comfy AND kickin'. Plus I also own A LOT of Paracinema magazines and they're smart, funny, informative and fascinating. Head to their website and skim through back issues for one that catches your eye, or pick up the new one complete with writeups on Inside, Bela Lugosi, censorship, Turkish ripoffs and much much more. Travel back in time to The Women's Issue (#11), composed entirely of writing by females (including my own take on George Romero's misplaced feminism). Issue 8 is a Tommy Wiseau fan's own bouquet of roses, while Issue 10 has perhaps the writing I'm personally most proud of, my article on Victor Salva's Clownhouse. Browse your choices and pick your raffle ticket, or get an actual subscription to keep you clothed and smart for years to come!

Excitement! 

Death Chair: The Chair That Drags You Into a Hell Dimension

The more closely I watch films, the more pretentiously observant I come to think myself as being.

Damnit! In typing that sentence, I just broke another monocle. Good thing I get these things in bulk!

What I was trying to say--sorry, I should pause the Chopin so you can hear me--is that lately, I’ve been paying closer attention to things that make a film rather than just the film itself. I started thinking about this back when I watched Fabrice Du Weiz’s Calvaire and continuously thought, “this is an incredibly well-made film sitting inside a mediocre one.” Full thoughts on that over on episode 18 of the Girls On Film Podcast. It made me want to seek out more from the director, and now having seen his fairly incredible followup Vinyan, I get why.

I bring this up because last year, I watched a frustratingly nasty but quite well-constructed torturesome flick called Broken, made by Adam Mason and co-written by Simon Boyes. It made me miserable, but I couldn’t deny it bore the promise of an intriguing filmmaking team with better work ahead.

Hence, today I test that theory with their 2007 feature, The Devil’s Chair.

Have a seat.

Quick Plot: A pair of horny drug doers named Nick West and Sammy head to an abandoned lunatic asylum to pop some LSD and have kinky sex in a mysteriously rusted torture-ready chair. 

Some of us call such events ‘Thursday.’

It’s all very sexy in a grungy and not actually sexy way until the titular apparatus closes on Sammy, tearing at her flesh before evaporating the screaming addict into thin air.

Flash forward a few years to West as a patient in a mental asylum. Experimental psychologist Dr. Willard decides to cure his delusions by bringing West back to the site of his lady love’s disappearance, dragging a few assistants along the way.

Before you can hum the opening bars to “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat,” everyone is taking turns popping a squat and subsequently getting sent into an alternate Hellraiser-ish dimension where a freaky demon is on the hunt.

Different, right? Throughout the film, West narrates with an amused tongue-in-cheek attitude, something that rounds The Devil’s Chair in a self-aware state. We don’t quite know how seriously to take the Silent Hill-esque horrors lurking on the other side and while it might subtract something from the scare factor, it also gives the film a unique and wicked sense of humor that pays off well in a rather horrifying finale.

High Points

To go into too much detail on the performances may lead to spoilers, but I will say some of the hammier acting might be more clever than you think and throughout it all, lead Andrew Howard (the sheriff from the I Spit On Your Grave remake) is pretty fantastic

Low Points

Though the hell side of The Devil’s Chair has its moments, it also, unfortunately, has a whole lot of shabby CGI

Lessons Learned

A typical psychological research team will, without any question, include exceedingly attractive females

British people have odd ideas of pajamas, unless skeleton t-shirts, white riding pants, and boots are actually comfortable

In alternate hell dimensions, it’s very hard to hear giant monsters sneaking up on you, even when there’s nothing else anywhere near you making a noise

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Devil’s Chair is quite a confident little slice of genre fare that has some mean fun with tried and true conventions. Like Broken, it’s not for the faint of heart but it hits you hard with an interesting lead character, brutal imagery, and an effective twist that will most likely divide its blood-covered audience. It might not be for you, but if the style and story sound like your grog, have a seat (not in anything with rust) and give it a try.

Something On a Stick Day's Eve's Eve

Mark your calendars, one and all, for a holiday rarely celebrated yet full of pointed possibilities. That’s right: March 28th is none other than Something On a Stick Day! Imagine a whole 24 hours randomly assigned to celebrate corndogs, cotton candy, ice cream bars, Salem With Trials, protest signs, and a whole lot of sharp things itching to cause some very painful horror movie deaths.

To name a few:

11. Jeepers Creepers 2

Not a great--or even good-- film by any means, but I’ll extend a tip of my hat to the opening scene, where a young farmboy catches a glimpse of one scarecrow that just doesn’t look the others, and not just because he’s a little too comfortable hanging out on that stick. Sadly the film only goes downhill from here, but it's an excellent early image worthy of at least one toothpick

10. Trick ‘r Treat

Don’t mess with a kid’s candy, particularly if the sweet tooth belongs to a pumpkin-headed, mangled face Halloween enthusiast with no tolerance for cranky candy bar swipers or snotty and insecure neighbors. Naturally, little Sam’s weapon of choice is none other than a juicy lollipop, the perfect something on a stick for autumn or spring. Or summer. Or winter. Or autumn again. 

9. The Hills Have Eyes

Poor Papa Carter spends his silver anniversary blackened like catfish while tied to a stake while his daughter gets raped, wife gets shot, and granddaughter kidnapped for a possible shish-ka-baby served on another family’s dinner table.

8. Children of the Corn

More effectively drawn in Stephen King’s short story, but the 1984 film does retain a few striking images of people staked out in the Nebraska cornfields. No one is safe, not a rotting corpse of a policeman, pre-Sara Connor Linda Hamilton, or man-child preacher Isaac. Bonus points for the implied itchiness of being tied to dried out cornhusks, particularly if have allergies.

7. Silent Hill

Poor Alyssa. Shamed by the community. Raped by a janitor. Burned at the stake at the encouragement of her Borg Queen aunt. All that's really left to look forward to is a future of blackness, annoying hourly alarms, ashy snowflakes, and the opportunity to watch others burned at the stake. The last part ain't so bad when said burnt-at-stake is infused with your blood (or the mother of someone that looks like you's blood, or something that supposedly makes sense to someone) and can therefore extend unending spools of barbed wire from her crispy appendages to gruesomely (by CGI standards) tear apart all the puritan-like townspeople that killed you first.

6. Wolf Creek

True, there’s no shrimp on a stick-headed barbie, but there sure is a head on the stick! Kind of. According to John Jarratt’s bush-wacked wacko in this 2005 shocker, the best way to use a knife--a real knife--is to jam it in a tourist’s back and sever her spine, rendering said backpacker a metaphorical head on a stick. It was definitely cuter in Lord of the RIngs.

5. Scarecrows

The life of a scarecrow probably isn’t all that great. Bird poop. Sunburn. Straw innards. And spending eternity dangling from a splintery stake in the middle of farm country. Luckily for the titular monsters of this 1988 chiller, the occasional crashed plane of bandits can call upon some sort of evil corn-infused mojo that lets them throw their voices and gleefully slaughter trespassers. 

4. Happy Birthday to Me

Not the best slasher, but easily one of the greatest movie posters of the ‘80s (and that’s a more competitive field than your average Iron Chef). Most of this 1981 film’s infamy comes from its cover art that captures the true glory of death-by-shish kabob. Painful, but delicious.

3. Zombi

You know the one contingent that actually observes Something-On-A-Stick-Day? Zombies, at least the Italian ones that hang out with Lucio Fulci. When not battling sharks or chomping through island natives, the retired conquistadors of this 1979 not-sequel-with-a-sometimes-sequel-title find innovative ways to kill alcoholics without taking a single nibble. Hence, the infamous splinter-in-the-eyeball scene. Not in zombie character, but the highlight of this zombie film.

2. Two Evil Eyes

Some guys are just asking to be impaled via log at a pagan festival. It’s only fitting if you’re a grumpy Harvey Keitel who tortures cats, hacks up his girlfriend, and generally acts like giant jerk worse than any bad lieutenant. True, the aforementioned cross-your-legs-and-wince stretch 'n stab is only a dream, but this Dario Argento directed adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story stakes itself in your memory long after Keitel wakes up.

1. Cannibal Holocaust

The ultimate woman-on-a-stick film, so great in its woman-on-a-stickiness that director Ruggerio Deodato was actually investigated by the authorities and suspected of murdering the actress famously shot in a state of impalement. Really it’s just a simple parlor trick involving a unicycle and some tasty balsa wood, you know, the kind of thing your uncle does at family reunions. If he's awesome.