Uza-Makin' Me Dizzy

Last week I did something for the first time in about 18 years, an activity many fine fellows I know are required to make an annual requirement. 

I had an eye exam.

Strange setup, eh? Stare at pointy objects as they move towards your nose. Put your chin in a weird dipped bowl slightly reminiscent of a baseball player’s cup. Feel as though someone is staring into your eyes without actually looking you IN the eye. Be told that you process stress too intensely and need to change your lifestyle...of vision.

As a person whose previous experience with glasses was getting a headache from Avatar’s 3D, this was odd. Naturally, the best possible followup was to watch Higuchinsky’s 2000 surreal J-horror Uzumaki (aka Spiral). Appropriate since my eyes were already looped out. Also appropriate because with my newfound soon-to-be four-eyes nerddom, it was time to turn in a makeup assignment for Stacie Ponder’s Final Girl Film Club .

Quick Plot: In residential Nagano, sweet teenager Kirie and boyfriend Shuichi (although I prefer Netflix’s description, paramour) begin to notice their increasingly wacky neighbors. Shuichi’s father spends most of his time videotaping anything with a slight spiral shape, from snail shells to pottery bottoms and washing machine spin cycles. Classmates act out in other ways, like grooming themselves with Bridgett Bardot sized hair curled like a French Poodle on steroids or stalking crushes and committing suicide when spurned.

You know, it’s just another cutting edge trend, like Giga Pets or The Jersey Shore.

Except this one is slowly dragging an entire town into a puce-hued purgatory of eery imagery and increasingly nauseating camera angles.

Kinda like The Jersey Shore.

Uzumaki is based on an epic manga (to the non-nerds, that’s, to my understanding, a medium more respected than comic books but less esteemed than graphic novels) and was considered fairly groundbreaking for its modern surrealism. Ten years later, it’s...damn creepy.

I often find myself in trouble for not praising the work of David Lynch. While I run hot and cold with his films, I’ll easily concede that Inland Empire is a strong example of dream cinema. Which is fine and not nearly as important as its three hour running time wants it to be.

Uzumaki is a perfect nightmare, from its oddly distant non sequitur dialog to random spurts of overanxious gore. Moments of horror--like a well-directed millipede and an open earlobe--mix well with eerie weirdness, including a haunting, humorously awkward scene where a slow moving high school outcast moves like a gooey snail. The result is incredibly distorting.

Something is happening in Korouzu because something is happening in 1999, or Japan, or the world in general. Like another avant garde Japanese horror Suicide Club, Uzumaki throws a lot of smoke (literally) and mirrors at its audience while casually capturing a little real world horror. High school students want to fit in. High school students want to stand out. Small towns slowly eat up the ambitious young who are dying to escape. We want nothing more than to help out parents and are horrified and disappointed when we can’t.

And so on.

There are a lot of themes floating (or spiraling) throughout Uzumaki, whether fully intentional or not. Some viewers may find the film to be an empty exercise in visual experimentation, while others could interpret the story as human and deep. What’s great about the film is that it works either way.

High Points

Kirie doesn’t have much more depth than your average final girl, but newcomer Eriko Hatsune is a sweet presence that helps to give what could be all style some heartfelt substance

Though it wasn’t the most pleasing sight to my already strained eyes, Higuchinsky’s camerawork--from upside-down surprise entrances to slight swirls spinning nearly out of frame--more than succeeds at pitting the viewer smack in the middle of a nightmare

Low Points

Don’t, as I did, take a 20 minute break from Uzumaki to make some dinner and answer the phone. This is a film meant to be absorbed in one unsettling sitting and I do worry that my failure to do took something out of my experience.

Lessons Learned

Not all girls are charmed by jack-in-the-boxes being thrust in their faces

Good hair makes a good gymnast

The best way to divert an uncomfortable conversation is to eat some very goooooood melon

Keep all power tools away from the insane

Rent/Bury/Buy

This is definitely a film worth seeing for any genre fan, and one I’ll eventually add to my collection as its rewatchability is high. That being said, I imagine its oddness and atmosphere are fairly polarizing and could prove annoying to a lot of viewers. Try it out first and go from there. 

Let the Sunshine In. Then Die.

Daylight Savings is a cruel calendar trick and a reason to distrust farmers, but we can be thankful for  one thing: sunshine. Bright, warm, orange hued illumination a whole 60 minutes ahead of schedule.

As I walked home this week and actually saw things, I started thinking about the effectiveness of daylight and its underuse in horror. Sure, there’s some primal fear and easy camera tricks to harvest in midnight cinema, but today, let’s take a look at films not afraid to let the sunshine in.

In rough chronological order:

1. The Wicker Man

Some of the earlier eeriness occurs in that sexy witching hour, when snails cuddle and Britt Ekland’s body double booty shakes, but Robin Hardy’s 1974 classic enigma truly comes to pagan life in its last terrifying act set during a beautiful fall early afternoon (well it starts in the morning, but those choral parades take forever). With the bright glare sometimes forcing you to look away, the film bypasses any of the tricks of night vision, letting all the weirdness of bunny masks, pancake makeup, and group singing hang out in full view. When (SPOILER ALERT) Sergeant Howie screams his final hymn from a blazing, goats a’fire filled sacrificial structure, the glory of the natural sun shines straight through to the audience.

2. I Spit On Your Grave

Brutal gang rape is horrifying any time of day, but this 1978 shocker is made all the worse by its fully lit cruelty. Filmmaker Meir Zarchi doesn't shy away from showing you the horrors experienced by lead Camille Keaton, filming her pale body with a matter-of-fact detachment that simply lets the crime speak for itself.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Spanning dusk to dawn, Tobe Hooper’s classic set the bar for all-out backwoods psychohorror. The introduction of Leatherface--silent, husky, and full of gutty grime--is shocking not just because of his untamed violence, but also due to the sudden appearance of such a grotesque human in full light. It’s fitting then that TCM ends on such a memorable, sun-lit shot as our chainsaw-wielding madman swings his roaring sword across a slowly waking Texas morning landscape.

4. Jaws

Quint’s account of the USS Indianapolis may be told in haunting shadow, but his lower half gets crunched on what may otherwise be a perfect July beach morning. 

5. The Brood

Generally, kindergarten days begin with the Pledge of Allegiance and one kid vomiting in the morning circle, but leave it to David Cronenberg to capture a different sort of start to alphabet games and adding practice. This 1979 chiller features many fine sequences, but it’s the schoolteacher slaughter that truly horrifies anybody with a pulse. A sunny winter morning turns exceedingly bloody as two evil gnomish creatures bludgeon Ms. Mayer with kiddie tools...right in front of a classroom full of 6 year olds. Time for milk and cookies yet?

6. Friday the 13th

A good deal of this series benefits from those summer days, fitting when the entire concept is based on camping. Since we already know what Jason Voohres looks like by Part III, there’s really no more point in hiding his face in the nighttime shadows (something the misguided remake didn’t seem to understand). All this sunny machete action began in its ‘80s glory with the initial film, where several counselors met their end before they got the chance to put on their pajamas. More notably, the 1980 hallmark of dead teenager movies ends with one of the best jump scares in horror history, when final girl Alice survives into the early morning, only to get a terrifying wake-up call with a dozen and counting sequel potential.

7. The Burning

Yes, George Costanza himself--with hair--handing out condoms to camp counselors intent on seducing underage high schoolers is reason enough see this not-so-good 1981 slasher, but the real highlight is a raft massacre of a dozen kid campers via sharp, rusty garden shears. A great scene of gruesome cruelty and refreshingly timed for all to see.

8. Day of the Dead

Not the best Romero installment by any means (or at least, mine), but it’s hard to argue with those opening five minutes, where scabby, rotting zombies shuffle through an abandoned Florida street on what could otherwise be a fine day for a jog.

9. The Devil’s Rejects

The perfect flip side to the rave-colored black-lit House of 1000 Corpses (look close enough and I’m sure you’ll find some velvety neon posters of wizards hanging on Dr. Satan's walls), Rob Zombie’s matured throwback followup is dripping with the sweaty grime from a hot southern sun. From the daytime hotel massacre and truck scramble to the slow-motion Freebird finale, The Devil’s Rejects makes you feel the heat, one stabbed banjoist at a time.

10. Dawn of the Dead

Zach Snyder's surprisingly spry reimagining of zombies gone shopping smartly avoids the better-in-the-dark style of so many other modern films by opening and closing with two beautifully spring-like sunny days...that just happen to include Olympian trained sprinting undead. Before Johnny Cash's Man Comes Around or Ving Rhames' cool rears its shiny bald head, Dawn of the Dead starts so innocently in a bland, postcard worthy suburb of middle America before waking up the next day to neighborhood shootouts and helicopter crashes. It's fitting that the film ends at its titular time of day as our survivors make their way to a new--probably very short--life sailing a yacht on what would otherwise be an expensive mini vacation.

11. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Sure, the bulk of this still unjustly unreleased slasher takes place overnight on a blood-soaked ranch, but its grand finale gets the hot desert morning treatment, making its stunning twist all the more jarring. See it to believe it...when it actually gets legally put into theaters.

12. The Strangers

While the majority of this unofficial Ils remake occurs in the quiet midnight hours, the real horror is saved for sunrise. To avoid spoiling a fairly recent film, I’ll tread softer than the barely audible whispering of star Liv Tyler and simply say that in this surprisingly vicious minimalist slasher, the terror doesn’t end just because it’s time for waffles.

13. 28 Weeks Later

Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later offered a few effective AM shots, but it’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s underrated sequel that takes full advantage of the rare British sun with one of the most terrifying opening sequences of recent years. There’s a reason you have to seal yourself indoors in the event of an infected cannibal rampage, and all it takes is one open eyehole to let the chaos destroy any safety you’ve built with fellow survivors. Watching a horde of infected chase after Robert Carlyle, operatic classical music playing maniacally in the background, is enough to make you turn out the lights.

14. The Ruins

Most vacationing college students traveling to Central America want nothing more than to surround themselves with hot people and work on their tans, but that gets taken a little too far in this 2008 adaptation of Scott Smith’s novel. Five fresh-faced young folks find themselves trapped on a mysterious Mayan structure, battling the threat of homicidal vines and--cue the sound cue--each other. While the film’s screaming plants lurk inside darkened caves, most of the more disturbing action occurs under the dry, scorching sun to ill-prepared twentysomethings running low on water and high on tequila. Nearly everything is fully visible, and all of it horrific in a way rarely seen in your typical pretty-people-in-trouble flicks of the 21st century.

15. Carriers

Highly contagious disease is ravaging its way through America--and presumably, the world--but you’d never know it if you just glanced out your window. The gorgeous weather offers an intriguing contrast to the increasingly tense atmosphere of this 2009 thriller as humans die off and plague erodes the line between morality and survival. There’s something disturbing, and yet perfectly fine about nature’s continuance in the face of human obliteration, and Carriers captures it with sunshine to spare.

and a few Honorable Mentions via some fine folks on Twitter

Cabin Fever

The Crazies

Drag Me to Hell

Let the Right One In

Martyrs

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Rosemary’s Baby

plus & Recommendations I Haven’t Seen:

And Soon the Darkness

The Children

Curtains

Dead Snow

Horrible Non-Horror! Little People, Big Mess

Welcome, leprechauns, leprechaun hunters, corned beef enthusiasts and Irish hating readers. I have not one drip of emerald blood in my bones, so in honor of this day after the day after the Ides of March holiday, I've decided to celebrate the first of what I hope to be a regular (and by regular I mean random) new segment here at the Doll's House called Horrible Non-Horror! The exclamation point is included.


Basically, I watch a lot of movies that are not what you, your blind grandmother, deaf Dalmatian, or illiterate water bottle would consider quality entertainment. Even though some may not fall under the horror banner, they are indeed horrifically wonderful in ways that are just selfish of me to not share with you. Hence, Horrible Non-Horror!


Enough explanation of a self-explanatory title. On to today's special (and by special, I mean especially horrendous) feature, Tiptoes! (exclamation provided by me; I'm just really excited).

For most actors, the term “chameleon” is a compliment of the highest order, a power of transformation many charisma sweating superstars can’t even fathom. Bruce Willis may be subdued in The Sixth Sense, but he’s still John McClain (just with cleaner feet), while even someone with unusual bone structure like Hilary Swank can disappear into a role, whether she’s an awkwardly in love transexual in Boys Don’t Cry or a hot single mom on Beverly Hills, 90210.

So what do you get when you take one static, stubbly actor with the range of a beach volleyball and cast one of filmdom’s most unique and versatile actors as his limping twin dwarf brother?

The answer, of course, is 2003‘s Tiptoes, an epically awful, manically confused, and amazingly entertaining high profile flop with massive identity issues. 

Quick Plot: Matthew McConaughy plays Steven, a fireman instructor with a signature twang and dark family secret: he is the only over 5 footer in a family of dwarves. This could almost remain under wraps if it weren’t for two great excuses to plot a movie: a) the arrival of Steven’s twin brother Rolfe (Gary Oldman in what the trailer calls “the performance of a lifetime; whose lifetime it refers to is not specified) and b) the surprise pregnancy of Steven’s artist girlfriend Carol (Kate Beckinsale, constantly bewildered).

For most of his life, Steven has been rather ambivilant about his height and family’s lack thereof. We know this because Carol later questions the ambivilant Steven about his ambivalence while using the word ‘ambivalent’ about 19 times. His ambivalence is further emphasized when he inexpilcably brings a few tall ladies to a little person’s pool party, as if to imply an impending affair that is never referenced again.

In case you couldn’t guess from the intro, trailer, premise, or fact that you may never have heard of this movie, Tiptoes really not very good. At all. Directed by Freeway’s Matthew Bright, this bizarre direct-to-DVD enigma tries its little hands at a love story, slapstick comedy, human drama, and message movie while making a mess of just about everything and anyone that came near the film set. I’m at a loss for where to even begin, so in no particular order, here’s a list of what makes Tiptoes the first entry in my new series of Horrible Non-Horror!:

• Characters have what seem to be relationship-ending fights, only to inexplicably appear together and happy two scenes later.

• Peter Dinklage, playing a French Marxist, comes off as a really terrible actor

• The film’s best scene is a round table What To Expect When You’re Expecting A Little Person how-to wherein Beckinsale’s character asks the president of the Dwarf Society “If I do have this baby and turns out to be little, what does this mean for me?”

• The opening credits list each A-list actor before the title, probably because the editor was so amazed that such a collection of celebrities appear in this film

• The film finds the opportunity to feature big-on-little sex with none other than David Alan Grier doing some (thankfully) fully clothed thrusting

• Patricia Arquette plays a “free spirit” hitchhiker and somehow makes Juliette Lewis’ Mallory Knox look stable

• Every character that is not a little person or major celebrity has a thick Eastern European accent

• In a major confrontation, Kate Beckinsale heads to fireman training grounds in pajama pants, wedge heels, a tanktop, and winter hat

• After the birth of the little man, McConaughy taunts his wife by begging her to admit that “He’s a dwarf!” over and over again, which means we get this scene:

Which is actually a wonderful thing

What went wrong? Aside from the fact that this movie was written, one itching issue is the casting of Gary Oldman--no 10’ tall Tom Noonan but an average height fella--as a dwarf, which seems akin to modern blackface or Jonathon Pryce taping back his skin to play a Vietnamese pimp in Miss Saigon. Despite the fact that there’s marriage and a baby plus aftermath, it never feels like anything actually happens in the film. Beckinsale speaks as though she’s slowly emerging from light anesthesia, McConaughy’s character is written as a frustratingly bipolar jerk, and poor Peter Dinklage has no better line than “I am French!” 

Lessons Learned

Food is free because God wants us to eat

When attending a party hosted by little people, try to avoid sporting a gigantic updo that adds about 6” to your already towering height

For a smooth drink, mix some French cough syrup with cognac

Becoming a truck driver will turn a man evil

Winning Line

“You had a circle jerk with little people? I would’ve loved to see this!”

Wouldn’t we all Carol, wouldn’t we all.

Conclusion:

If you, like me, enjoy earnestly awful cinema like fine wine, then scoop Tiptoes from your local library and enjoy the strangely saccharine ride. Sadly, the DVD offers no behind-the-scenes insight or director commentary, but the very inclusion of the hysterically random trailer and fact that clear subtitles let you actually absorb all the horrendous dialogue is, in itself, something to thank the mini gods of movies for.  


Don't believe me? Enjoy the trailer and come back when you agree that when the going get tough, it's only the size of your heart that counts.

What Goes Best With a Tux? Flesh Eating Bacteria, That’s What!

Cabin Fever was one of the oddest theatrical releases of the early 21st century, an overexcited, occasionally refreshing and often annoying mix of over-the-top gore, crass comedy, ‘80s homage, and pancakes. Perhaps then it’s only fitting that its sequel comes with a bucket of offscreen controversy and onscreen sloppiness.

In case you didn’t have your hopefully still attached ear to the horror news networks these past few months, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was directed (near completely) by House of the Devil  golden boy Ti West, who pleaded fruitlessly to have his name removed from the credits. Word on the virtual street is that West disagreed with producers over the final cut during the post-production process, eventually stepping away from the project and letting the Powers That Be Lionsgate finish the film as they saw fit.

It shows.

Quick Plot: Top-billed Rider Strong reprises his quickly rotting role as he flees the titular cabin and gets splattered by an early morning school bus. Familiar local cop Winston (Guiseppe Andrews) misdiagnoses the gunk as moose and an animated credits reel reveal the town water soon to be bottled is infected by that same flesh-eating virus that tore through many pretty people in Eli Roth’s original.

We quickly move on to typical high school politics, where smart senior John (Deadgirl ’s jerk Noah Segan, still traveling via bicycle) pines for pretty, popular, and recently-broken-up-from-her-samurai-wannabe-psycho-boyfriend Cassie while chubby pal Alex smoothly enjoys a quickie--real quickie--from a randomly easy classmate. A frog dissection and near suspension later, it’s prom night (cue the song! seriously) and the high school’s a’hoppin’ with a disco beat.

If you’ve heard anything about Cabin Fever 2, it’s probably that this is not the film to watch while eating nachos. See, there’s a lot of blood, and guts, and viral warts on private parts, and bloodier semen than Wilhem Dafoe’s Antichrist  climax. That being said, it’s also really not that...well...disturbing.

Or particularly good.

As the school dance kicks in, Cabin Fever 2 kicks into gear with a gymnasium-full viral spread that starts with a poisoned water, infected urine-spiced punch bowl. An awkward sex scene between the prom king and token obese outcast in a pool seems only to hint at something interesting, while the dance floor erupts into a lightning fast bloodbath before the prom queen can give what was sure to be an Obama-esque speech. In almost no time (the movie is under 80 minutes, after all), we’re left with John, Cassie, Alex, and a few unexplained gun-toting officials trying to survive amid lots of gooey grossness.

Oh! And of those 80 minutes, about 28 or so are randomly assigned to Winston’s Adventures as the enigmatic, if also annoying and baffling cop hangs out with Judah Frielander and hits the road in his cousin’s van. While I enjoy the pure weirdness of Andrews’ oddball character, nothing in this storyline (if you can really call it that) ever feels in line with the rest of the film, making the many diversions to his aimless lollygagging an incredibly wasted amount of screen time with no real payoff.

On one side, we have a humorous, but also occasionally heartfelt teenage gorefest built on occasional suspense and realistically drawn characters. On the other, a simply bizarre and directionless tale of a dimwit. I kind of enjoyed the persistence Cabin Fever 2 had in NOT being your typical by the numbers sequel, but it was, much like its basis, all over the place, further scattered by a tacked-on, far too long 10 minute epilogue following a high school stripper.

I can’t really say where Ti West’s involvement ended, but the lack of a strong directorial touch in the editing finish is uncomfortably felt in the latter half of Cabin Fever 2. Honestly, I don’t know that this would be anywhere near a classic had he stayed on board throughout, but the messiness of plotting--much like the original--makes the viewing experience simply strange.

A recent article in Shock Till You Drop offered one tidbit by producer Lauren Moews explaining how fitting it was that Cabin Fever 2 was edited by the same woman responsible for several John Waters’ films, and there are indeed some similarities. West gives us plenty of gratuitously ick-heavy moments that dare the audience to look away, like a prematurely ended-by-puke lap dance or intensely detailed fingernail peel (the only one that got me wincing). There are plenty of refreshing little quirks that keep the film fun and it’s hard to argue with any movie that recycles the only great thing about Prom Night (namely, Jamie Lee Curtis’ disco tune). At the same time, it’s impossible to care about anything when the film seems so insistent on not taking itself seriously.

High Points

There’s some nifty practical effects at work, like an early diner scene featuring a blood-squirting voicebox

West tows a careful line with his high school characters, using honored archetypes but imbuing them with interesting enough spins, like the ex-boyfriend’s Japanophile quirks and John’s surprisingly refreshing honesty with his dreamgirl (not deadgirl)

Low Points

An overly headache inducing fire extinguisher attack would be impressive if we hadn’t seen it before in The Signal or Irreversible

We don’t need--or really want--a huge backstory in fluffy romp like this, but the fact that the army or FDA or FBI or whoever the men with guns and gas cans are never explained is one more missing piece in a film not fully put together

A few moments of tension are broken when you realize how ridiculous they play out. Would the soldiers--or whoever it is patrolling the school, see previous Low Point--really not hear the kids escape an empty classroom 4 seconds after exiting themselves?

Lessons Learned

William Katt’s Carrie tuxedo never goes out of style

Bitches value spite and money

If getting a touch of infected blood on your skin will infect you, then running said hand through a buzzsaw and watching the blood squirt all over your face will surely be the cure

Rent/Bury/Buy

Cabin Fever 2 is a manic viewing experience, but not completely devoid of charm. Fans of the original will probably get a kick out of it, as it shares much of the crass humor, all-out gore, and smarter-than-your-average teen sensibilities. If I believed in officially rating films, this one would fall in the negative side. I can't say I liked it (mostly because I didn't like it) but it's not a complete waste of 80 minutes, especially if you're simply too curious to let it pass you by.