Diary Of A Movie Watchin' Madman, Vol.II, Part 2 - Revenge Of The Madman

     It turns out I was probably being a little overly optimistic in thinking that only two parts of this year's Diary Of A Movie Watchin' Madman would get the job done.  I'm watching too many movies and writing too much about them to cover everything in just two parts.  This just turned into a trilogy, folks.  Vol. II, Part 3 is forthcoming...

(10/14) See No Evil 2 (2014)  Watching See No Evil 2 was an odd experience.  I suspect I'm not alone when I say that my interest in this flick stemmed almost entirely from the fact that it was the Soska Sisters' first directorial effort since the stellar American Mary (2012).  Then the news came that the cast of See No Evil 2 would include Katherine Isabelle and Danielle Harris, two talented veteran sweethearts of genre fans everywhere.  Now I was really jonesin' to see this.  Rarely, if ever, had I found myself so excited about a sequel when I cared so little about the original.

     I suppose that's both the movie's blessing and its curse.  No one is going to be watching See No Evil 2 because they liked the first one so much, but it will find its way in front of a lot of eyes because everyone wants to see if the Soska Sisters are the real deal.  If they can work enough cinematic magic to make this belated sequel to a franchise non-starter worth seeing, then they're definitely filmmakers to watch.  Poor Kane.  See No Evil 2 isn't a Jacob Goodnight movie, it's a Soska Sisters movie.  Even if it's good, he'll get no credit.

     But is it good?  Well, yeah, it's pretty good.  It's not good enough that I'd want to see another if the Soska Sisters aren't involved, but it is good enough that I was impressed by what the sisters accomplished when playing in someone else's sandbox.  The characters display some personality, the performances are better than average, Kane makes an imposing bad guy, his character's mythology is deepened, and the whole movie is obviously more carefully constructed and artful than fans have come to expect from movies of this type.  The Soska Sisters have acquitted themselves nicely, and I'm sure a reinvigorated Jacob Goodnight will return to kill again thanks to their efforts.  Everybody wins.  (First Watch)

(10/16) American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014) -  Yeah, I'm counting this again this year.  I'll spend at least the length of a movie watching American Horror Story during Pre'Ween, so why not?  After growing irritated with the fact that no action seemed to have any lasting consequence in last year's Coven, I was looking forward to the fresh start.  Seriously, what kind of dramatic stakes could Coven possibly have had when almost no primary character that died ever stayed dead?  Witches just kept conjuring everyone back to life... 

     Freak Show sounds like horror story gold though, right?  It pretty much was save for one heinously anachronistic misstep that totally pulled me out of the moment.  Jessica Lange's character performs the David Bowie song "Life On Mars" - a song dating back to only 1971 - in a scene that ostensibly takes place in 1958.  It appears from the previews that the show's producers will repeat the miscalculation in the second episode with a performance of Fiona Apple's "Criminal".  Why would a show that otherwise lavishes so much attention on period detail choose - repeatedly - to break the spell with anachronisms?  I'll keep watching, though, to see if there's a method to the music madness.  (First Watch)

(10/17) Halloween 6: The Curse Of Michael Myers, Producer's Cut (1995)  After hearing for years about the mythical Producer's Cut of this movie, I was tickled to death to finally see it.  Does it redeem the movie at all?  Does it make it anything more than the worst Halloween sequel after Halloween: Resurrection (2002)?  No.  No it does not.  

     I hadn't watched any version of Halloween 6 for well over a decade.  It makes me sad to see an old, frail Donald Pleasance trying as hard as he can to make something worthwhile out of this turd.  Also, even though I've come to enjoy Paul Rudd over the years, I seriously don't know how he ever booked another acting gig with this terrible performance being the first on his resume.  And why the hell would you make a movie that hinges upon the appearance of Jamie Lloyd, a character we've been following now for three movies, and recast the role?  I'm sure there's a reason for that one, but I don't even care.  Danielle Harris dodged a bullet.

     All things considered, I still feel the same way about Halloween 6: The Curse Of Michael Myers as I feel about Twinkies.  You think, "Hey, I haven't had a Twinkie in a long time."  Then you have a Twinkie.  Then you remember why you haven't had a Twinkie in a long time.  The Producer's Cut is still a stunningly bad Twinkie.  (First Watch)

(10/18) Curtains (1983)  After suffering through Halloween: The Steaming Pile just a couple of days ago, it was encouraging that the very next horror flick I watched exceeded my expectations.  I didn't even realize I possessed a void in my life where a Canadian giallo was supposed to be.  I'd never really watched Curtains before because all the bits I'd seen led me to believe it was stylish enough to warrant a better presentation than a crap public domain copy.  I'm glad I waited.  

     If you're wondering, the new Blu-ray release of Curtains from Synapse looks fantastic.  The movie itself is pretty damn entertaining too, as long as you realize from the outset that it actually has loftier ambitions than most of the early eighties slasher movies with which it's usually associated.  I was surprised several times by how stylishly composed much of it is.  I mentioned to Adrienne - who also enjoyed it - how much the shot compositions and color palate frequently put me in mind of Suspiria (1977).  Of course, Curtains as a whole isn't as good as Suspiria, but it was a lot better than it really needed to be to ride the slasher wave.  A pleasant surprise.  (First Watch)

(10/20) Witching & Bitching (2013)  I've somehow managed to live to a ripe old age without seeing a single movie by Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia even though I've been hearing about his critically lauded film Day Of The Beast since it was released in 1995.  His recent feature The Last Circus (2010) has been sitting in my Netflix queue unwatched for months.  Subtitles, you know.  Don't get me wrong - nothing ruins a foreign flick faster than a bad dub (Blood Glacier, anyone?), but I still have to be in just the right mood to want to read a movie.  I'm so happy I found myself in the right mood when Witching & Bitching turned up on Netflix this week, and I'll probably end up finally watching The Last Circus before the week is out.  Added incentive: the lovely lady with the broomstick in the pic above, Carolina Bang, stars in The Last Circus as well.  I had so much fun with this one that I'm hungry for more from director Alex de la Iglesia.  Also, I've got a pretty big crush on Ms. Bang now, too.

     The tough part here is trying to explain to others exactly why Witching & Bitching was such an exhilarating watch for me.  The Netflix synopsis describes the movie as follows:  In this heist film turned horror fest, a gang of thieves lands in a coven of witches who are preparing for an ancient ritual -- and need a sacrifice. That synopsis is accurate insofar as it goes, but it does the movie a disservice by failing to even hint at the sense of pure anarchy that permeates the film.  It's a crime caper, a comedy, and a horror film all at once, and each of those components is carried to absurd and exuberant extremes.  I realized what an almost unclassifiable delight Witching & Bitching was when I tried to describe to a friend why she should watch it and words failed me.  They still do.  Believe the hype this time, folks.  Witching & Bitching may not the scariest movie you'll watch this Pre'Ween, but there's no doubt in my mind that it will be one of the most entertaining.  Recommended.  (First Watch)

(10/22) The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)  Who'da thunk it?  The Town That Dreaded Sundown crept up on me like The Phantom Killer of Texarkana, and it turned out to be a fairly decent potboiler.  Don't be fooled by the title, though.  It isn't so much a remake as a kind of meta sequel to the 1976 Charles B. Pierce movie of the same name.  

     This follow up exists in a world where the citizens of Texarkana are still haunted by the real life unsolved mystery of the Moonlight Murders, a series of brutal killings perpetrated over the course of three months in 1946 by a hooded assailant who came to be know as The Phantom Killer.  The Phantom was never captured, the mystery never solved.  Each Halloween the locals gather to watch Pierce's 1976 movie about the murders at a local drive-in - pretty tacky, huh? - and last Halloween the murders resumed (fiction, not fact).  Since it couldn't possibly be the same killer some sixty-five years later, who's responsible for the new rash of murders that rock the community and eerily mimic the particulars of the old Moonlight Murders? 

     The Town That Dreaded Sundown chugs along pretty effectively for most of its run time, and it doesn't play it's self-referential scenario for laughs.  It "remakes" many of the murders as depicted in the 1976 movie, but it's very much its own beast.  It boasts beautiful cinematography, solid performances, and an intriguing premise.  Sadly, its one big misstep is a resolution that fails to satisfy and seems as though it was airlifted in from a different movie.  That's not enough to completely derail an otherwise effective thriller, but it unfortunately compromises the good work that precedes it to some degree.  The story might have been better served by a more ambiguous ending.  Still, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is better than one would expect from a quasi-remake/sequel to an obscure low budget horror movie now nearly forty years old.  I look forward to the next installment some time around 2054.  (First Watch)

The Dog Farm's Pre'Ween 2014 Video On Demand Wishlist - Why Is It So Hard To Find A VOD Release Schedule?

      I'm an audio/video snob when I watch movies at home.  Given that I never see most of the movies I watch in a proper theater, I do my damnedest to insure that I'm seeing as good a presentation as possible.  I have a reasonably nice home theater set-up, so the bigger issue is usually poor picture and sound from the source.  That being the case, I don't watch many movies that I actually give a damn about seeing via streaming services.

     That is, I didn't until I recently treated myself to a new renderer.  At last the picture and sound quality - though still not as good as a pristine Blu-ray - is usually pretty solid.  I've been burning through loads of movies on Netflix recently, and when it came time to make my stack of movies for Pre'Ween this year I decided I'd try something new.  Rather than going the traditional route of spending way too much money on discs this October, I've chosen instead to watch most of this year's new releases via video-on-demand.  Now that so many genre movies see release on VOD before disc (and in many cases either prior to or concurrent with their theatrical runs), it seemed a good plan.

     What I didn't count on was just how difficult it would be to find release dates for upcoming VOD premieres.  While it's possible to find release dates piecemeal on a title-by-title basis, almost no one curates a complete release calendar.  The best I came across for genre movies was at The Horror Club, which the site's administrators do an admirable job of keeping updated.

     Since they're already doing a fine job of it, what follows is simply a truncated version of their release calendar encompassing only the upcoming releases I'm jonesin' to see.  Each entry offers a release date and key info, and you can click the movie's title to check out the trailer.  Please remember, what follows is only a list of movies that captured my attention.  I've not seen any of these movies yet, so don't mistake a title's inclusion as an endorsement.  I suspect many of these titles, as well as my thoughts about them after I actually watch, will turn up in this year's edition of Diary Of A Movie Watchin' Madman near the end of October.

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Motivational Growth (2013)
Available 9/30
Director: Don Thacker
Stars: Jeffrey Combs, Adrian DiGiovanni, Danielle Doetsch

     A depressed, reclusive thirty-something finds himself taking advice from a growth in his bathroom after a failed suicide attempt.  Is the growth helping the troubled man, or does it actually have less than altruistic motives?

     I can find almost no substantial information about Motivational Growth online save for a handful of early reviews that I'm determined to avoid until after I've seen it for myself.  All I do know is that horror icon Jeffrey Combs voices a sentient bathroom fungus in this dark and disturbing festival darling.  Honestly, though, that's all I need to know.  Shut up and take my money already.

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Open Windows (2014) 
Available 10/2
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Stars: Sasha Grey, Elijah Wood, Neil Maskell

      An actress refuses to have dinner with a fan who wins a date with her in a contest. The shunned fan is persuaded by a man posing as the star's campaign manager to begin keeping tabs on her from his computer.

     Nacho Vigalondo, director of the segment entitled Parallel Monsters in the upcoming V/H/S: Viral (see below), tackles his own full-length feature starring porn star Sasha Grey and budding horror icon Elijah Wood.  The hook here is that the story unfolds in real time, with the titular open windows referring to the open windows on a computer screen.  Early reviews have been harsh, but I'm intrigued by the concept as well as the casting.  

     And yes, I am familiar with Ms. Grey's other work.  Attention must be paid to any actress who goes from a starring role in Anal Artists (2012) to a starring role in an Oscar nominated director's mainstream horror movie in just two short years.

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Housebound (2014)
Available 10/17
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Stars: Morgana O'Reilly, Rima Ti Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru

     A young woman is forced to return to the house she grew up in when the court places her on home detention.  Does she have an overactive imagination, or is the house actually possessed by a hostile spirit who's less than happy about the new living arrangement?

     Housebound earned universal praise when it premiered at the SXSW festival in March, and it went on to claim the audience award at the Dead By Dawn festival in April.  New Zealanders have displayed a knack for comedic horror in the past, so let's hope Kiwi director/writer Gerard Johnstone's first feature film lives up to the hype.

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See No Evil 2 (2014)
Available 10/17
Director: Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
Stars: Glenn Jacobs, Danielle Harris, Katharine Isabelle

     A group of friends pays a late-night visit to the city morgue to surprise a morgue employee on her birthday.  The one-eyed corpse of a brutal psychopath unexpectedly rises from the slab and resumes his savage rampage using hooks, surgical knives, and power saws. 

     The first See No Evil (2006) could elicit only a shrug from me, and it seemed like it must have been a franchise non-starter given how long it took for talk of a sequel to materialize.  Then came the announcement that Jen and Sylvia Soska, hot off the success of the fantastic American Mary (2012), had signed on to direct See No Evil 2.  Suddenly I'm interested again.  

     Have the Soska sisters just taken the paycheck, or will they succeed in injecting some new life into the tale of Jacob Goodnight's ongoing killing spree?  The presence of genre stalwarts Danielle Harris and Katherine Isabelle in the cast seems encouraging.  The Soskas will either be credited with reviving what appeared to be a moribund horror franchise solely on the strength of their own prowess as filmmakers, or they'll ruin their well-deserved genre cred with one high profile flame-out.  No pressure, ladies. 

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V/H/S: Viral (2014)
Available 10/23
Director: Justin Benson, Gregg Bishop, Todd Lincoln, Aaron Moorhead, Marcel Sarmiento, Nacho Vigalondo
Stars: Lots of people - it's an anthology, man.

     This third entry in the successful series of horror anthologies follows fame-obsessed teens who unwittingly become stars of the next internet sensation.

     Is there still gas in the V/H/S tank?  New directorial talent for each successive entry keeps things fresh, but anthologies are notoriously hit-or-miss.  So far though the good has outweighed the bad, so the franchise earns at least one more look.  Never mind the fact that video cassettes don't go viral.

     This year's iteration offers segments featuring the story of a deranged illusionist who obtains a magical object of great power, a homemade machine that opens a door to a parallel world, teenage skaters that unwillingly become targets of a Mexican death cult ritual, and a sinister, shadowy organization that's tracking a serial killer.  That final segment, entitled Gorgeous Vortex and directed by Todd Lincoln, was not included in the movie's early screenings, and so it remains to be seen whether or not it will be included in the V/H/S: Viral VOD release. 

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[REC] 4: Apocalypse (2014)
Available: 10/31?
Director: Jaume Balaguero
Stars: Manuela Velasco, Ismael Fritschi, Maria Alfonsa Rosso

     A television reporter is rescued from the quarantined building featured in the franchise's first two entries and is taken to an oil tanker for examination.  The soldiers manning the tanker are unaware that she carries the seed of the mysterious demonic virus within her.

     Will [REC] 4: Apocalypse be available on VOD this Halloween?  Truth is, I don't really know.  The Horror Club says yes, but I've been unable to confirm that elsewhere.  The movie releases theatrically on October 31st in Spain, so...maybe?  I suppose the bigger question is whether or not we should even care after the hugely disappointing [REC] 3: Genesis.  It's a testament to just how good the first two entries are that they engendered enough goodwill to insure that I do.  

     Director Jaume Balaguero returns, as does the narrative thread that follows Manuela Velasco's traumatized television reporter Angela Vidal.  That's promising.  The found footage angle that made [REC] and [REC] 2 so viscerally compelling is still absent, though, so who knows?  Reviews from the premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival are encouraging, so I still maintain hope that this is a satisfying conclusion to the now somewhat tarnished franchise.  If [REC] 4 does, indeed, show up on VOD this Halloween, I'm there.

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     A handful of other titles caught my eye, as well:  The Houses October Built (2013) - available 10/10, The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014) - available 10/16, Life After Beth (10/21) - available 10/21, and Horns (2013).  The Alexandre Aja directed Horns is listed as being available on VOD either 10/3 or 10/31 depending upon the source.

     EDIT 9/30 - It appears as though the VOD release date for Motivational Growth has been pushed back to 10/21, and  [REC] 4 has been removed entirely from the VOD release schedule at The Horror Club.