Tagarchief: Horror

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

OT: Zombi 2

Director: Lucio Fulci
Written by: Elisa Briganti
Cast: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver

Year / Country: 1979, Italy
Running Time: 91 mins.

Sun, sea and zombies in Lucio Fulci’s unofficial sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which is weird considering that was a sequel itself (to Night of the Living Dead). Also, this film has nothing to do with Dawn. Well, it’s about zombies obviously and it pretty much kicks ass as well.

A seemingly abandoned sailboat is found in the New York harbor with a zombie on board (zombies are called ‘zombies’ in this flick. Cool huh?). A reporter and the daughter of the missing boat owner head for the Atlantic to find out what happened. Along with two friendly sailors they meet in St. Thomas, they head out for the supposedly cursed island Matool. Already underway they stumble upon a zombie who is fighting a shark underwater. This is a spectacular scene: classic stuff!

On the island, the struggle for survival really begins. The horror starts with the infamous eye splinter scene, another classic moment, but perhaps not so brutal if you see it coming. From then on it is kill or be killed for the main characters. Fulci is not known for delivering a subtle underlying message. Neither is he specialized in directing actors to towering heights. No, he is a man of the gore. And he does what he does best with this movie.

Compared to Romero’s classic to which this is supposedly a sequel, it is done in a more low budget style. There are fewer zombies and it certainly misses the intellectual layer. But, the tropical location is almost as cool as Dawn’s shopping mall, the make-up and special effects are far out, and the music adds to a creepy atmosphere. This might just be Fulci’s best film. Definitely a must see for zombie aficionados.

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Biography: Lucio Fulci (1927, Rome – 1996, Rome) originally studied medicine but quickly turned to filmmaking instead. He started his film career with directing comedies, musicals and spaghetti westerns. Later he turned to Italian shock horror films and made a name for himself as the goriest director ever. His international career came off the ground in 1979 when he directed Zombi 2, an unofficial sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which had been released in Italy under the title Zombies. Fulci died from diabetes in 1996.

Filmography (a selection): The Thieves (1959) / The Jukebox Kids (1959) / Getting Away with It the Italian Way (1962) / The Strange Type (1963) / The Maniacs (1964) / 002 Operation Moon (1965) / How We Stole the Atomic Bomb (1967) / The Conspiracy of Torture (1969) / A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) / Don’t Torture Donald Duck (1972) / White Fang (1973) / Challenge to White Fang (1974) / Four of the Apocalypse (1975) / Silver Saddle (1978) / Zombi 2 (1979) / City of the Living Dead (1980) / The Beyond (1981) / The New York Ripper (1982) / Evil Eye (1982) / The New Gladiators (1984) / Dangerous Obsession (1986) / Zombi 3 (1988) / Demonia (1990) / Door to Silence (1991)

The Hills Have Eyes

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Wes Craven
Written by: Wes Craven
Cast: Dee Wallace Stone, Michael Berryman, Robert Houston

Year / Country: 1977, USA
Running Time: 86 mins.

A lesser known movie by horror master Wes Craven is The Hills Have Eyes, the shocking account of a family (the Carters) trapped in the desert and attacked by a family of cannibals. It reminds very much of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both in story as in creepy execution.

Craven builds the tension up steadily. The cannibals are not seen for a long time (only heard) and then, during the nighttime, they appear and deliver a tremendous blow to the Carter family. Afterwards, the surviving Carters strike back and eventually become as brutal as their attackers when they seek revenge.

The movie is based on the legend of Sawney Beane and his family, a feral clan who inhabited and roamed the highlands of Scotland’s East Lothian County, near Edinburgh, in the early 1400s. They captured, tormented and ate several transients. They were eventually captured on the order of Scotland’s King James and brutally executed without a trial, inspiring the aspect of the film that the Carters become bloodthirsty themselves.

This is only Craven’s third movie after the horror movie The Last House On the Left (1972) and The Fireworks Woman (1975), an adult movie he directed under the alias Abe Snake. The Hills Have Eyes is very raw and contains violence that is still shocking by today’s standard. Some of Craven’s fans even say it is his best movie. It might just be true.

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Biography: Wes Craven (1940, Cleveland – 2015, Los Angeles) is the maker of a number of classic, genre bending horror films. The debut was the gruesome The Last House On the Left in 1972. In 1984 he reinvented the youth horror genre with A Nightmare on Elm Street, which became a genre classic and a popular horror franchise. Twelve years later, he again created a commercial and critical success with Scream. This film also spawned many sequels, three of them directed by Craven and all successful. Craven also occasionally worked within other genres, such as drama/music with Music of the Heart in 1999.

Filmography (a selection): The Last House on the Left (1972) / The Hills Have Eyes (1977) / Deadly Blessing (1981) / Swamp Thing (1982) / A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) / The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985) / The Twilight Zone (1985-86, TV-episodes) / The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) / Shocker (1989) / The People Under the Stairs (1991) / New Nightmare (1994) / Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) / Scream (1996) / Scream 2 (1997) / Music of the Heart (1999) / Scream 3 (2000) / Cursed (2005) / Red Eye (2005) / Paris, je t’aime (2006, segment: ‘Pere-Lachaise’) / My Soul to Take (2010) / Scream 4 (2011)

Bad Taste

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Peter Jackson
Written by: Ken Hammon, Tony Hiles, Peter Jackson
Cast: Terry Potter, Pete O’Herne, Craig Smith, Mike Minett

Year / Country: 1987, New Zealand
Running Time: 88 mins.

The Lord of the Rings isn’t the only movie-project Peter Jackson worked on for years. His debut Bad Taste, an amateur movie turned cult classic, took him four years to complete. Jackson and his friends shot it on weekends. The title says it all; a clan of extraterrestrials, under management of Lord Crump of Crump’s Country Delights, land in New Zealand because they think that with the delicacy of human flesh they will conquer the universe. But the government sends an anti-alien force and it’s splatter galore.

Bad Taste was filmed with amateur cameras and it shows. Still, because of Jackson’s dedication and perfectionism, the movie runs like clockwork; the steadicam shots and editing are done excellently. Also the improvised – no budget – special effects are very impressive. It’s even got an exploding sheep! True New Zealand style. You don’t have to look very closely to see that Jackson is a young master at work here. With his very own airbrush I might add. The gore is definitely not suitable for all stomachs.

Jackson felt he couldn’t let his friends do all the acting, so he took on one of the main parts himself. Derek (“Derek’s don’t run”) is a twisted maniac, who’s so devoted to saving planet Earth, that he is willing to kill and torture as many aliens as he can in the process. He is having as much twisted fun as his creator is. Jackson said in an interview one time that he would love to make Bad Taste 2. Let’s hope that he does, because it will be a blast to see Derek and the boys take on a new Lord Crump. “Those bloody bastards!”

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Biography: Peter Jackson (1961, Pukerua Bay, New Zealand) started making films at around the age of eight. His early short films already featured special effects that would become one of Jackson’s trademarks. Together with friends and family he worked on his first feature length movie Bad Taste which took him four years to complete. What had started as a joke became a cult classic and opened many doors for Jackson. He then made a number of professional horror films, including genre classic Braindead. Then he embarked on one of the most ambitious movie projects of all time; The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson succeeded with glory and the three LOTR films were enormously successful. He continued with a remake of the film that inspired him the most as a filmmaker: King Kong.

Filmography (a selection): The Valley (1976, short) / Bad Taste (1987) / Meet The Feebles (1989) / Braindead (1992) / Heavenly Creatures (1994) / Forgotten Silver (1995) / The Frighteners (1996) / The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) / The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) / The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) / King Kong (2005) / The Lovely Bones (2009) / The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) / The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) / The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) / They Shall Not Grow Old (2018, doc) / The Beatles: Get Back (2021, TV Mini Series)

The Addiction

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Abel Ferrara
Written by: Nicholas St. John
Cast: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco

Year / Country: 1995, USA / Argentina
Running Time: 79 mins.

In Abel Ferrara’s take on the vampire genre, vampirism is a metaphor for drug addiction (and Aids). Together with regular collaborator Nicholas St. John, who wrote the screenplay, Ferrara explores the mean streets of New York once again. Amidst dope peddlers and junkies listening to Cypress Hill, the philosophy student Kathleen is bitten by the sardonic vampire Casanova (Annabella Sciorra).

Her turning into a hungry vampire is a path filled with suffering. While she is searching for relief from her addiction, she finds that her addiction is her only relief. In a memorable one-scene appearance, vampire Christopher Walken teaches here a few things about addictions (have you read ‘Naked Lunch’?). He practices abstinence and teaches Kathleen that like Tibetans, we can learn to survive on a little. But Kathleen must first go through a massive feeding frenzy at the end of the film before finally finding some relief through religion.

Besides being an unusual, but brilliantly effective genre film, this is also a work of art that deals with deeper questions. Most urgently it asks how we can resist evil. The movie features many references to historical acts of greater evil and – typical for Ferrara – deals with guilt, redemption and Catholicism. The black and white cinematography is beautiful and the cast, not in the least lead actress Lili Taylor, is impressive. But how much you will enjoy the final result will depend on your tolerance for philosophical and religious subject matter. Either way, this is one of Ferrara’s finest works to date.

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Biography: Abel Ferrara (1951, New York) is a New York artist and filmmaker. He started making amateur films on Super 8 in his teens before making his mark as independent film director with bloody underground films such as The Driller Killer. Ferrara has an independent way of working, uses low budgets, but is still able to attract Hollywood talent for his movies, such as Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel. His raw, realistic style and controversial content has earned him a position as an important voice in American cult cinema.

Filmography (a selection): Nicky’s Film (1971, short) / 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976) / Not Guilty: For Keith Richards (1977, short doc) / The Driller Killer (1979) / Ms. 45 (1981) / Fear City (1984) / Cat Chaser (1989) / King of New York (1990) / Bad Lieutenant (1992) / Body Snatchers (1993) / The Addiction (1995) / The Funeral (1996) / The Blackout (1997) / New Rose Hotel (1998) / ‘R Xmas (2001) / Mary (2005) / Go Go Tales (2007) / Chelsea on the Rocks (2008, doc) / Napoli, Napoli, Napoli (2009) / Welcome to New York (2014) / Pasolini (2014) / Alive in France (2017, doc) / Piazza Vittorio (2017, doc) / The Projectionist (2019, doc) / Tommaso (2019) / Siberia (2019)