The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed surely must have been one of the first films to not make the monster of the story look like one, but rather be a blond and blue-eyed perfect little girl.

When a little boy, who had recently one a medal at school - much to the chagrin of little Rhoda Penmark, drowns during a school picnic, suspicion soon falls on the girl because not only was she the last one to be seen with the boy and the medal he wore so proudly went missing. Soon, Rhoda's mother finds the medal in her little girl's possession and remembers an elderly neighbor falling to her death some while back and leaving a snow globe that Rhoda liked so much to the girl.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, there is also a lot of philosophizing about evil and the shapes it takes and are people born bad? and stuff You see the Penmarks socialize with smart people and Rhoda's grandfather himself wrote real crime stories. Also, Rhoda's mother has always had that creeping suspicion that she may not be her father's daughter and remembers some dreams she had as a child. Turns out, she is really the daughter of a legendary female murderess, making Rhoda a direct descended of evil.

Eventually, the mother decides to bring down the final judgment on her child and herself (but fails). Something I would imagine also rather rare in 1950's films. Ultimately, justice does come for the little killer.

It's dark and smart and the kid is perfectly creepy.

The downer of it all is the insufferable 'Aunt' Monica, who is around way to much and who's relation to anyone in the story is a mystery. She is extremely annoying and loud and overbearing.

The highlight is the constantly drunk Mrs. Daigle, the mother of the little boy that drowned. This is by far my favorite performance of the entire film.

A rather unusual choice, but very charming, is the way the cast members are brought in front of the camera at the end. Their names are read out as each one appears in the doorway and gets a moment of their own. And the very last frame is this:

7/10

Ghost Ship

Last Sunday's horror film bonanza (see my previous posts) concluded with Ghost Ship. Sort of as a way to calm down after The Collector/The Collection we needed something blood free and relatively calm. It was....fine. Not really scary.

Some guy contacts a group of what can only be described as ocean teasure hunters because he saw a seemingly deserted ocean liner in the middle of nowhere while flying over and, who knows, it may be worth something. The group is beat and ready to go home but the promise of financial gain prompts them to join in.

When they find the ship it does hold what they were hoping for - gold. And lots of it. It is also haunted by seemingly all the passengers that were on it when they 'mysteriously disappeared' in the 1960s. The disappearance, of course, was not so mysterious after all. Most were killed for the gold the ship was holding.

The new arrivals also find a pile of bodies that could only have been there for a few months. And they start seeing things and miscalculating dangers and people die. (Of course they do.)

Not too surprisingly, the guy that first alerted them to the ship's existance has something to do with all the eery things that have been happening. Turns out he is not a human but once was a very bad man and has to collect souls for his boss (the devil, one assumes) and the ship seemed to be as good a hunting ground as any, but he needed to get someone to fix it agains because it was in danger of sinking.

In the end, the lone survivor is straped to a gurney, because she is badly injured and as she lifts her head she sees the boxes of gold being loaded onto another ship and the bad guy boarding with them.

Oh, well.

4/10

Sinister

A true-crime writer, who apparently gets a kick (or "inspiration") out of moving into homes where crimes have been committed, tries to reignate his faded flame of stardom by writing this one book that will change everything.

For that purpose he moves his family into nice suburban house. Of course, this home is no different, never mind what he tells his wife. Right at the beginning of the film, we see a super 8 film of a family 'hanging around'. In this case, this translates to a group hanging of every family member but one - a little girl disappears and is never heard of again.

Soon, our writer finds a box in the attic holding a number of home movies from different decades and shot in far apart locations. What they all have in common is that on each we see a family murdered. The manner changes but from each family one child goes missing.

The connection? Bughuul. That is some sort of demon, only few drawings of it remain. Along with the videos, the writer finds drawings of the different crimes, seemingly done by children and naming all the victims and putting an extra figure next to the dead bodies, called 'Mr. Boogie'.

What connnects the victim's families is that each has lived in a house that was once occupied by one of the other families. So, when the writer finds that out, it is already too late for him and his loved ones, even though he did get the hell out of Dodge when weird occurences and sounds in the new house had spooked him out enough.

They die by the hand of their young daughter. After she is done, she is picked up by Mr. Boogie and carried into another super 8 film.

In normal films this would all be weird but in horror films this sort of works. It would have been great except for one thing that bugged me throughout - they never turn on the lights. They even have dinner in the near dark. While this may add some suspense to the viewing experience if you stop and think about it it is just plain stupid.

6/10

Village of the Damned

A blackout hits the people of one small town. They all pass out for a while. When they come to, all the women of child bearing age are pregnant. They all deliver the babies on the same day.

The children are intelligent beyond their ages and have 'special powers', meaning they can make the adults do what they collectively want them to. The ultimate plan is to form a colony and multiply. Presumably to take over the world, eventually.

Similar events have happened in different remote parts of the world. But, wherever they children survived, the communities have been wiped out by their respective governments in surprise bombings...nobody in those towns was informed because the children can read minds (unless you block them out effectively by thinking of unrelated things rather intensely say, an ocean, for example).

Creepy kids. Creepy, creepy kids.

6/10

Dark Shadows

Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), owner of a blooming fishing business, gets cursed by a witch for turning her away. After his parents die in an unfortunate accident, his love throws herself off a cliff, he himself becomes a vampire. But the witch is not done with him. She turns the town folk against him and they bury him alive - or, rather, undead.

Some 200 years later, his coffin is uncovered at the construction site of a McDonald's. Barnabas returns to his family home, not quite getting the hang of the new era, also known as the 1970s. Everything technical he regards as being of the devil.

He reconnects with his ancestors and works to put the family business back on its feet - once again fighting the witch, who is the new big fishing business owner.

The look of the film is classic Tim Burton - as goth as it gets. It clashes heavily with the garishness of the 1970s, in which Barnabas looks hilariously out of place.

The film is based on a 1960s TV show, that - quite honestly - I had never heard of. It does have its flaws, obviously, but it sports an impressive list of actors in roles big and small.

"Ugliest woman I've ever seen."

6/10

The Innocents

The 1961 film The Innocents is based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Originally, this was adapted for the stage and there is a theatrical feel to it. The setting is as ghostly and gothic as it gets in black-and-white British horror films - a country estate, way too big for its few inhabitants.

The focus of the story is on the new governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) and the two children she is hired to care for, Flora and Miles. The previous governess has died about a year before. Later we learn that she took her own life after the accidental death of her abusive boyfriend, who also worked on the estate as a valet.

Both, the former governess and the valet, appear to Miss Giddens as ghosts and she concludes that the children are possessed by the spirits of the lovers.

She takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of it all and - ultimately - save the children from the peril they are in. The two youngsters do appear to be rather mean spirited, especially the little boy. Miss Giddens' solution is to send off the staff and Flora and stay behind with just the boy, to help him freeing himself from his demon by facing him. It ends in tragedy.

Wonderful, classic film. The feel and setting was much later imitated in The Others, which I also recomend wholeheartedly.

8/10

Moonrise Kingdom

Hilarious!

The latest offering from director Wes Anderson is a film set in a pathfinder summer camp in the 1960s. The camp division is run by the hapless Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton) who "loses" one of his Khaki Scouts (and eventually all of his scouts). The only police officer on the island the film is set is one Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), who - together with the at this point remaining scouts - sets out to find the missing Sam Shakusky.

The eventually learn that Sam is on the run with his beloved Suzy Bishop, daughter of the local couple of lawyers (played brilliantly by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). The journey they take is as awkward as both young kids. And really everything and everyone else in this film. They are first hunted and later aided by the other Khaki Scouts and run off to the HQ camp to get married.

I love the narrator (if you will) played by Bob Balaban. He is placed in different sceneries, sometimes on the very edge of the picture, dressed in a red coat and a greenwool hat, which makes him very much look like a garden gnome. The rest of the cast is wonderful, as well. Short appearences included are by Harvey Keitel (Harvey Fucking Keitel!) as the commander of the scouts, Jason Schwartzmann (normal sight in any Wes Anderson film) and the ever brilliant Tilda Swinton as "Social Services" (her name, apparently).

Aside from The Darjeeling Ltd. possibly my favorite Wes Anderson film.

8/10

Coraline

Coraline Jones is annoyed with her parents and their lack of attention. The both just hover over their computers writing about gardening rather than do some. So when one night she discovers a door into another world where her parents appear to be just what one would wish for, she has no quarrels about going back the next night.

Everything is different there - her mother cooks (imagine!), her father plays the piano and tends to a wonderous garden and her annoying neighbor boy can't talk. Fun!

Of course, something about all this is not right. For starters, everyone has buttons instead of eyes. Soon enough. Caroline realizes that they want her eyes as well and replace them with buttons.

Eventually, Caroline gets lost between her two worlds and must find her real parents again and escape. Interestingly weird.

Fun fact: when the false mother turns into her real self she looks just like Terri Hatcher, who voices the mothers.

4/10

Chernobyl Diaries

This film is crap. So much of it does not make sense.

I get why one would get a kick out of going to the site of the Chernobyl disaster. I wouldn't but I do get it. There is probably some excitement to going there illegally with a freelance tour guide called Yuri.

However, why this Yuri character would run off in the dark because people are bothered by a sound that may or may not be a baby is not as cut and dried to me. Especially, why he would speed off in some random direction is beyond me.

Even more baffling is one of the Americans going after him for no apparent reason, and unarmed.

What follows is a lot of running to and fro and getting hunted by wild dogs, that turn out to not be the actual menace hiding at the site.

No, when radioactivity comes into play, cue the mutants. Human mutants, that is. There are also the experiment-happy doctors to 'treat' them. And they wonder why the survivors of the Chernobyl disaster would be upset by the film. Seriously? You portray them as fucking mutants. Of course they are upset.

Then we never even get a good look at the mutants because everything is all dark and quickly cut and obscure.

But the most irritating thing is the ending. The military comes in and shoots one of the two survivors but takes the other one to their hospital to - wait for it - feed her to the mutants. What? You couldn't just have shot her, as well? Or offer both up as food?

Makes. No. Sense.

On the plus side, this features the cute guy from $#*! My Dad Says.

1/10 (and I'm being generous here)

Sleepaway Camp 1+2

Today you get two reviews for the price of one: Sleepaway Camp 1 + 2. Why bother splitting them up when the bad guy is the same one in both?

I'll tell you right away: Angela is the killer.

Sleepaway Camp

Ah, good old trash-y camp horror!

In the the final scene, when the killer's identity is revealed - it turns out to be little Angela. You can see it from a mile and the big surprise is not who the killer is but what the killer is.

Angela and her overly protective cousin are sent to camp by the weirdest aunt (to Angela) in horror film history. Angela is very, very shy and spends her days just staring at people, refusing to swim (hint!) and generally freaking people out by her mere presence.

So, anyway, kids die. And in the end we learn that Angela is a boy! See, back at the beginning of the film, a father is in the water with his son and daughter and gets killed in a freak boating accident. We were then led to believe that the girl survived, but really it was the boy.

Yes, it's bad.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers

Angela (played by Pamela Springsteen, as in "sister of...") is back at camp (another camp, but near enough to the original camp for kids to tell the grisly story of the previous murders by the campfire) - this time she works there. For some reason, the kids here are older than in the first part. Back then, the average age appeared to be 12, 13 years, now we have young adults with chesthair and breasts (that classy girls don't have to flaunt, mind you).

This time there is not even the slightest attempt to keep the killer's identity secret. Angela is now an actual woman, after having spent time in an institution and having had a sex change. Yes, I know...

Apparently, she just loves the camp life, crappy songs about happy campers and all. People die in various grisly ways, they get stabbed and cut with knives/Freddy Krueger gloves/drills, burned alive or even drowned in the outhouse (eww!).

In the end, she has killed off everyone and gets away scott free.

There are several more films in the series...
Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland
Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor
Sleepaway Camp V: The Return (aka Return to Sleepaway Camp)
Memorial Valley Desaster (aka Son of Sleepaway Camp)
...and why not? The options are endless, apparently.

Angela's run lasts until part IV.

Sleepaway Camp: 1/10
Sleepaway Camp II: 1/10

Mil gritos tiene la noche (Pieces)

Let's talk about Pieces for a minute. Specifically, let us talk about the sheer crappiness of it.

What happens after the intro scene happens forty years after the incident pictured above. Now, here is a major spoiler, so if you really don't want to know who the grown-up bad guy is, stop reading now: The murderer of many a female college student still has the same hair color and a similar haircut.

For a while, however, pretty much everyone is a suspect. There is the gardener, who likes to wield his chainsaw and just generally looks suspicious. There is the smart, popular kid who is about to meet up with a naked blonde in the indoor pool - the very site of her untimely demise. There is the anatomy professor who is - OMG! - gay. There is also the dean, who speaks in a curious English accent (this is New England, mind you).

So, the police have their hands full. So full, in fact, that they recruit the aforementioned college kid (no, really) and a blonde, female tennis player (no, really) who will be undercover as the college's new tennis coach (no, really).

Everything about the film is so quintessentially 1980s, it is almost painful to watch.

*shakes-head-sadly*

1/10