Category: horror films

Gasparilla International Film Festival: There Will Be Blood

February 19th, 2009
Last year, the Gasparilla International Film Festival paid tribute to gore meister Herschell Gordon Lewis, with a 45th anniversary screening of his notorious Blood Feast.

This year, the fest honors another Florida filmmaker — William Grefe, the 78-year-old director of such classic so-bad-it-might-be-good horror fare as Stanley and Jaws of Death.

Grefe, a Miami native, will be on hand at the Gasparilla International Film Festival for a screening of his Death Curse of Tartu, released in 1967. The movie plays Saturday, Feb. 28 at 8:10 p.m. at Channelside Theaters. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Grefe, led by St. Petersburg Times film critic Steve Persall.

According to a review posted at DVD Drive-in, Tartu “concerns the title character, a 100-year-old witch doctor resting in an ancient burial ground in the Florida swamps. A professor, his wife and four students come along and desecrate the place. Tartu comes back to life to bump them off, converting himself into a snake, a shark and an alligator to do so. The makeup on the mummified Tartu–created by Doug Hobart, who also plays him–is pretty memorable. There’s some cheap gore (a mutilated human arm) and some laughable props (a phony spider in a cave), and the soundtrack is extremely grating on the nerves.”

Bonus extras at the screening:
- (Vintage) William Grefe coming attractions
- The premiere of the trailer for new sci-fi/horror flick Brainjacked, brought to you by Film Ranch International, an independent film production and marketing outfit based in the Tampa Bay area. Film Ranch International was responsible for bringing Grefe to the fest, according to Persall’s blog post on the appearance.
For more details, check the festival site.
Valentine’s Day Weekend at the Movies: Gore Beats Love Stories

February 17th, 2009

Is this another sign of the Apocalypse, or just a suggestion that the down economy is good for extreme escapist fare?

Friday the 13th, the “reboot” of the washed-up slasher movie franchise, bloodied its way to $42.2 million over the weekend, a record for the horror genre.

For the details, check the AP story.
Cronenberg Lives: Crash Kicks Off IFC Series

February 15th, 2009

It has always been annoying that filmmaker Paul Haggis so cavalierly “borrowed” the title of David Cronenberg’s freaky 1996 car-wrecks-as-sexual-fetish drama Crash, an adaptation of the even more bizarre novel by J.G. Ballard.

Haggis’s film of the same name, released in 2004, less than a decade after Cronenberg’s far more intriguing and far more visually accomplished film, is an Altman lite examination of crisscrossing lives in Los Angeles; Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), based on the Raymond Carver short story collection, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) were superior films, also set in SoCal and taking similar approaches.

Adding insult to injury, in 2006 Haggis’s movie won Oscars for best picture, best original screenplay (Haggis) and best editing.

Haggis followed Crash with the bomb In the Valley of Elah, a heavy-handed anti-Iraq War film, while Cronenberg has fared well in recent years with critical and commercial triumph A History of Violence, a sort-of newfangled Western built on mythic themes, and the generally well-received drama Eastern Promises.

Cronenberg gets lots of love this month with a series at the IFC Center in Manhattan, showing the next seven Friday and Saturday nights at — appropriately enough — midnight. Scroll down to see the schedule.

Cronenberg’s themes of body horror and man-machine mutations have fascinated film students and scholars, and for good reason — the filmmaker offers plenty to chew on.

But the academics may have overstated the case for Cronenberg’s significance as a film artist, New York Times writer Terrence Rafferty observes in a piece published today (I disagree).

“The mind-body-machine games Mr. Cronenberg plays in movies like ‘Videodrome’ and ‘eXistenz’ are elaborate, suggestive and inventively worked out, but they are games, not deep philosophical statements,” Rafferty writes. “He always wins them, too, in part because he’s a terrific bluffer: he has the knack of convincing academics and other lofty-minded viewers that he’s holding better cards than he is.

“A midnight audience isn’t as easy to fool, and will probably see these films for what they are: funky, macabre science fiction comedies that tease the brain without effecting any significant alternation in its structure, or causing permanent damage.”

Cronenberg at IFC Film Center, 323 Sixth Avenue, New York City:

Feb 20-21: CRASH (1996)

Feb. 27-28: SPIDER (2002)

Mar 6-7: THE FLY (1986)

Mar 13-14: EXISTENZ (1999)

Mar 20-21: THE DEAD ZONE (1983)

Mar 27-28: VIDEODROME (1983)

April 3-4: NAKED LUNCH (1991)
Tampa Movie Weekend – 2.13.09

February 13th, 2009

Opening this weekend:

The International – Global banking and murder make natural bedfellows in Tom Tykwer’s thriller, with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Read my review.

Friday the 13th – The long-running horror franchise gets a reboot, in a slasher flick directed by Marcus Nispel (2006’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake). See my blog post on horror remakes. Nathan Lee (NY Times) writes, “Fun? Granted, most people’s notion of entertainment doesn’t involve watching sexed-up, beer-guzzling morons impaled, decapitated or burnt alive. But there’s an itch for this kind of material, and here it is scratched — to the bone.”

Confessions of a Shopaholic – A chick-flick antidote to the recession blues? Stars Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers). Writes Betsy Sharkey, in the L.A. Times: “If you’re looking for a serious examination of the staggering credit-card debt so many in this nation carry and the families and lives destroyed by it, watch the nightly news . . . don’t look here. But if a knockabout farce of a thousand ways to outwit that persistent, pesky and downright unpleasant debt collector, played by a decidedly annoying Robert Stanton, while falling in love might amuse you, then feel free to indulge.”

Under the Sea – Jim Carrey narrates an IMAX documentary on ocean critters.

I’ve Loved You So Long – The French drama stars Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as sisters reunited afte 15 years apart. Tampa Theatre only, through Thursday, Feb. 19.

Hell Walks the Earth – The off-brand zombie movie was directed by Terrence Muncy III, who recently relocated to Pinellas Park from Indiana, according to a story by St. Pete Times film critic Steve Persall. The Southeastern premiere of the movie, to be presented by Muncy, plays the Beach Theatre in St. Pete Beach on Friday, Feb. 13 at 11 p.m. For more information, check out the theater’s web site.
Gasparilla Intl Film Festival: Terry Moore is Special Honoree

February 13th, 2009

A bit of Hollywood screen history comes to Tampa when the Gasparilla International Film Festival honors Terry Moore.

The actress, 80, made her film debut at 11, and was 18 when she co-starred with Ben Johnson in 1949’s Mighty Joe Young, the era’s other giant-ape movie. She will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award during opening ceremonies of the third annual fest, Feb. 26 at Tampa Theatre.

Moore, a Los Angeles native whose career includes appearances in 77 feature films, received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for her performance in 1952’s Come Back, Little Sheba, below, opposite Burt Lancaster. She also appeared in another box office hit, 1957’s Peyton Place, as a rancher’s daughter in 1962 NBC Western drama Empire, and as Venus Flytrap in three episodes of television’s “Batman,” in 1967.

During the ’70s, Moore made headlines when she revealed that she had secret married Howard Hughes in 1949, on a yacht off the coast of Mexico. Claiming that they had never divorced, she received an undisclosed settlement in 1984.

Gasparilla Film Festival board members considering honoring a number of veteran actors and actresses — including Charles Durning and Gary Busey — before meeting Moore late last year at a film festival, and deciding to bestow the special award on her, according to a spokeswoman for the fest.

Moore made a cameo in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young. In recent years, she has stayed busy promoting a book, How Do You Stay So Young?, published in July 2008, and appearing in “Old School with Terry & Gita,” a reality show.

Here’s an audio interview with Moore, conducted in 2006.
Friday the 13th — Another Horror Reboot

February 11th, 2009

What happens to horror-film franchises that seem to have run their course?

D’oh! They reboot.

No need to come up with an original concept when an old idea means instant brand recognition and — thanks to low overhead on script and talent — a really impressive ROI (return on investment).

That’s the thinking, one guesses, behind Friday the 13th, opening this weekend (Fri, 2/13, naturally), the latest in a series of new horror films boasting familiar titles and tried-and-bloody plots.

Why start all over with the tale of Jason, the killer wearing a hockey mask, and the pretty but promiscuous teens he murders at Camp Crystal Lake?

Because the zig-zagging direction and creative dead ends of the existing franchise left filmmakers no other sensible options, as horror specialist Devin Faraci (Chud.com) told the New York Times.

“These films have a ridiculously convoluted history,” Faraci said. “Jason barely appears in Part 1. He shows up in Part 2, gets killed in Part 4. There’s an impostor in a Jason mask in Part 5. Jason comes back as a zombie in Part 6. Toxic sludge turns him back into a child at the end of Part 8. He gets blown up in the opening minutes of Part 9 and then becomes a body-hopping force of evil that gets sucked into hell. In Part 10 the earth is destroyed, Jason becomes a cyborg and lands on an alien planet. Where could the series possibly go at that point? A reboot is the only sane answer.”

The reborn Friday the 13th was preceded by 2001’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 2006 prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which together reaped about $120 million at the U.S. box office; 2005’s Amityville Horror, which scored $65 million; and 2007’s remake of The Hitcher ($16 million).

Just around the corner, due on March 13, is The Last House on the Left, a remake of Wes Craven’s chilling horror thriller of the same name, released 37 years ago. Craven is a producer of the new film, along with Sean Cunningham, director of the original Friday the 13th, released in 1980 and a producer of several more in the series, including the remake.

Toby Emmerich, head of New Line Cinema, home to the new Friday the 13th, said his studio also plans to remake Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, released in 1984.
Oscar Talk: The Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film Should Go To …

February 10th, 2009

Let the Right One In, a horror film from Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, is one of the best — and most disturbing — movies of 2008, a coming-of-age story that doubles as a truly creepy vampire film.

The movie works so well, in part, because it follows the rules of movie vampires, beginning with the one alluded to in the title: A vampire can’t do his, or, in this case, her, dirty work indoors unless specifically invited to cross the threshhold.

The film follows the relationship between a lonely 12-year-old boy named Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson), the old, but forever young, vampire who moves in next door.

Alfredson makes superb use of the icy, snowy setting, and the script, penned by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own novel, draws heavily from themes of teenage alienation and isolation, and family dysfunction. It’s a strikingly original, and creative piece of work.

Spoiler alert: Ultimately, little Oskar abandons his own fractured (divorced) family, and embraces one of his own choosing, as is revealed during the sort-of funny final scene. The film’s penultimate sequence, though, centered on a gruesome act of revenge, has to count as one of the most disturbing moments I’ve experienced at the movies in recent years.

Let the Right One In, oddly enough, did not pick up an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

What accounts for this oversite? Blame Sweden.

St. Petersburg Times film critic Steve Persall explains, in his blog: “Alfredson’s home country didn’t put it up for Oscar consideration. Each year, selection committees in foreign nations choose one – and only one – of its eligible films for submission to the academy. Sweden chose Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments, a sentimental choice since the movie is about Troell’s mother, and he created one of the nation’s finest Oscar showings: best picture, director and writing nominations for The Emigrants in 1973. The result? Everlasting Moments was bypassed by the academy’s committee, and Let the Right One In – which may have had a better chance of winning – was left out in the cold.”

This nominees in the category: The Class (France), Waltz with Bashir (Israel), The Baader-Meinhof Complex (Germany), and Revanche (Austria).

Interesting, and worthwhile choices, although it’s surprising that Cannes Grand Prize winner Gomorrah, an acclaimed crime-film saga from Italy, isn’t on the list, either. I’m calling for a do-over.