The Bad Batch

Title: The Bad Batch

Director: Ana Lily Amirpour

Released: 2014

Starring: Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Yolonda Ross, Giovanni Ribisi, Jayda Fink, Diego Luna, Cory Roberts, E.R. Ruiz

Plot: In the near future criminals and other society rejects are dumped in a fenced off area of desert wasteland outside of the Texas. The latest addition to this community is Arlen (Waterhouse) who soon finds herself having to traverse the landscape of scavengers, cannibals and cultists if she is going to survive this dangerous and lawless world.

Review: Following on from the critically adored “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” director Ana Lily Amirpour chooses to follow it up here with this sun soaked dose of dystopia while at the same time seemingly channelling the cinema outlaws Harmony Korine and Greg Araki to craft a fiercly unique vision which will likely prove too abstract for the mainstream movie goer but there is unquestionably something here.

Bringing to mind Richard Kelly’s fiercely diversive “Southland Tales” here Amirpour clearly sets out with a vision for her sophomore effort, though at the same time its one which will either enthral or bore you depending on your own opinion of the film the former of which I certainly found myself in even if at times its hard to actually know what is supposed to be happening other than a whole lot of cannibalism and desert wandering and this of course makes it the sort of film as a critic you kind of dread encountering. I mean how are you supposed to write about nothing? Still as I sit here writing this two days after I first watched it this is a film which continues to run through my head so that I feel compelled to get something down about it.

Opening to Arlen being dumped into this world we are mere moments into the film before she is set upon by one of the resident cannibals who quickly relieve her of one of her arms and a leg before she sets out to escape across the desert on a skateboard reminiscent in a scene reminiscent of the opening of “There Will Be Blood” whose record of no dialogue for the first 14.5 minutes this film smashes by none of the characters actually talking till we are 30 mins in. Its also during this sequence that we are introduced to the Hermit played throughout the film in complete silence by Jim Carrey just one of a series of interesting casting choices which also sees Keanu Reeves showing up as the cult-like leader of the town Comfort known only as “The Dream” who runs a sideline in pot with his harem of pregnant ladies.

Across the desert landscape we encounter a number of settlements which has sprung up with Amirpour following in the footsteps of George Miller as the residents have constructed shanty towns out of aeroplane parts and broken down trailers, creating a new society for themselves and one seemingly styled by the same costume department Harmony Korine uses from Arlen’s winking booty shorts to Jason Momoa’s “Miami Man” chest tattoo which serves like an alt-culture name tag, though why she went with that name like so much of the film is a complete mystery.

Arlen though is quick to adapt to this world as the film skips forward six month once she arrives in comfort to were has she gained a prosthetic leg and spend her time wandering the wasteland which is were the main story of sorts begins when she picks up the Miami Man’s daughter Honey (Fink) after killing her cannibal mother. From here though its really a lot of wandering as Miami Man tries to find his now missing daughter before further wandering with Arlen when Honey gets picked up by Keanu Reeve’s cult leader “The Dream” during an acid infused rave sequence.

Miami Man on the other hand is a slightly more complex character as Momoa spend the film wandering around shirtless and looking like he was carved out of wood, a cold warrior hardened by the enviroment around him, who feels nothing about keeping a woman chained up in his yard to use for food, inbetween painting detailed paintings of his daughter, though its a connection more confirmed in the wikipedia plot summery than in the film, were she comes across like a girl from his camp. He however like the other characters is a fascinating to watch on screen with Amirpour only giving us small hints of details about these characters and leaving us as the audience to figure things out, which while certainly a bold choice is also the kind of thing which put off audience not wanting to sit through something so abstract.

Now if any of this is sounding like a confusing mess then you probably would be right and yet its a fascinating mess which Amirpour allows you to get lost in using minimalistic dialogue and instead attention grabbing visuals to tell her story if you can even really call it that. Instead what it often feels like is more of a snapshot of these characters lives as we follow them like ghosts in this world and much like with “Ghost World” we are just along for the ride as events play out acting more like the observers than actually being part of this world. Of course if David Lynch can get away with telling a story on the latest season of Twin Peaks over 18 episode when he really only needed four, then why can't we enjoy a visually arresting and minimalist desert romp? Yes this really isn’t going to be for everyone and already I can see this film ending up like “Southland Tales” as its as hated as its adored.

MBDS Showcase #49 - Dog Soldiers / Cannibal Holocaust

Fellow Brit Zoe (Zobo With A Shotgun) joins me for this latest episode to share her love of all things dark and twisted which formed the basis of her site. 

On this episode we look at British horror with Neil Marshall's "Dog Soldiers" aswell as the notorius former video nasty "Cannibal Holocaust"

We also discuss the censorship and the darker side of horror, living near horror movie sites and Zoe reveals which horror icon she'd most like to take for a pint.



You can find the full MBDS Showcase movie list here

Opening Theme: "Hyperfun" - Kevin Macleod (http://incompetech.com/)

End Theme: "Out of Limits" - The Marketts

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The Green Inferno

Title: The Green Inferno
Director: Eli Roth
Released: 2013
Starring: Lorenza Lzzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Sky Ferreira, Magda Apanowicz, Nicolas Martinez, Aaron Burns, Ignacia Allamand, Ramon Llao, Richard Burgi

Plot: Justine (Lzzo) joins a group of her fellow student activitists on a protest against the timber industry in Peru. However when their plane crashes into the jungle the group soon find their trouble are only just beginning when they are captured by a tribe of cannibals.

Review: Once hailed as the savoir of modern horror its taken less than the course of three films for the general opinion of Roth to plummet to ever increasingly lows especially as “Hostel” spawned a host of unneeded copycats. At the same time for some reason he has chosen to believe that everyone else is in the wrong, as recently highlighted during his appearance on the “Bret Easton Ellis Podcast” where in an always interesting move he proclaimed that critics weren’t “qualified” to critique his films while going on to rave about his love for Pauline Kael who I’m pretty sure wouldn’t have got his films either. Still since he made his debut one thing he had constantly talked about doing was a cannibal movie, let alone his love for Ruggero Deodato’s “Cannibal Holocaust” from which he draws the title for his own stab at the genre which hit its grimy heights of popularity in the early 80’s with only the occasional title such as 2007’s “Welcome To The Jungle” turning up as it seemed that film makers where happier to use Zombies to fill their people munching needs.

While it might be a cannibal movie for the most part, Roth here seems to also have an axe to grind against the armchair protestors the smart generation has spawned who happily use hashtags to fight for causes they know little about. Here we get to see this with out group of unwitting students who head out with grand plans of shutting down the local loggers by broadcasting their protest virally. This of course though is really just a plot device to set up their capture by the cannibals which follows their impressive crash landing in the jungle. Unfortunately its around this point that like the plane the film also takes a nosedive for once the cannibals turn up the film quickly descends into gratuitous splatter and misguided frat humour with Roth wasting little time in establishing the intentions of the tribe as they quickly hack to pieces and cook the most portly surviving member of the group, while the others are tossed in a cage to presumably await their turn in the cooker.

Shot on location in the Peruvian jungle and casting local jungle natives who if we are to believe Roth’s mythology surrounding the making of the film had never seen a movie which he choose to correct by showing them “Cannibal Holocaust” which seemingly they thought was a comedy rather than a horror film. Unquestionably though it adds an air of authenticity to the film as both the village and suspicious surrounding rainforest makes for a fantastic background to the grim slaughter throughout the film.

While the natives themselves might with their full red body paint might be for the most part interchangeable, Roth does however ensure that we do get a pair of memorable central villains (if they could really be classed as such) with the imposing lead headhunter (Llao) and Antonieta Pari as the village elder while adding to the “Aftershock” reunion which looking at the assembled cast seems to be what he was aiming for here. The downside here though comes from Roth continuing his love of having characters speak in their native tongue without subtitles which he first gave us in “Hostel” and there it worked as it was kept to short bursts with the characters animated enough for it not to matter. Here however we have large sections with multiple characters meaning that like the group we are never sure what is supposed to be happening or just why the tribe are so bloodthirsty towards them.

Confused might actually be the best way to describe this film as while it starts off strong enough, it really all goes out of the window when they arrive in the village, the plotting from this point falling into a vicious cycle of failed escape attempts and gory demises which for the gorehounds might be enough but for those of us wanting something a little deeper with their horror it makes for a frustrating experience. Roth only further detracts from the film by once more attempting to fuse frat boy humour with horror with the usual hideous results and giving us such random moments as one of the girls suddenly feeling the urge to take a dump in the corner of the cage (complete with stupid fart sounds) and the group believing that getting the natives stoned will help them only to spark a case of the munchies!!

In terms of the gore its kind of a mixed bag with some of the effect proving effective while other despite the veteran effects team come off looking surprising amateurish at times. Still the creativity is there at least with limbs hacked and eyeballs removed, while their version of a temporary tattoo is pretty inspired and helped to balance out the moments which didn’t work, such as the death by painfully obvious CGI ants, the quality of which I’m sure even “The Asylum” would be embarrassed by and leaving a potentially standout moment leaving very much like an afterthought.

Due to distribution issues it meant that despite being originally set for a 2013 release it was only this year that the film finally got a release creating an unitentional double header for Roth as we also got “Knock Knock” released around the same time, a film I’ve as yet to see to see if he anything changed for him as a director in the time which passed between the two films being finished. Right now though Roth is very much a director whose initial promise has long since faded leaving us wondering what that original appeal was as certainly its hard to find here.

Black Christmas (2006)

Title:  Black Christmas

Director:  Glen Morgan
Released:  2006

Starring: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, Crystal Lowe, Kristen Cloke, Andrea Martin, Oliver Hudson, Karin Konoval, Dean Friss, Robert Mann, Jessica Harmon, Leela Savasta, Kathleen Kole, Howard Siegel

Plot: Bily Lenz has been locked up in a mental asylum for the last 15 years after murdering his mother and her lover aswell as gouging out the eye of his sister. Now on Christmas Eve he escapes and returns to his former home only to find that has in the time since his incarcinration

 

Review:  Yet another remake while one which chooses to tackle Bob Clark’s 1974 original which as I covered in my review of the original was also one of the first slasher and one which would have a much more subtle tone than the slashers which followed in its wake. The remake however is very much a different beast as here director Glen Morgan tackling his second remake after “Willard” attempts to update the plot of the film by adding a back story for Bily while also upgrading the body count and violence seemingly in an attempt to craft a more traditional slasher out of the original.

As a result of this Morgan spends the first hour of the film attempting recreate the setup of the original film while cutting out some aspects such as the abortion dilemma and the fact that everyone seemingly was a drunk. It’s also within this first hour that Morgan also randomly attempts to work in a back story for Billy as we are treated to a series of flashbacks to his childhood and the events leading up to his incarceration, however these are not shown as one sequence but bizarrely spaced out into three separate segments which are clumsily dropped into the film often at the most random of moments. What makes this worse is the fact that none of these flashbacks really add anything to the film and seemingly were only included as a way to explain why Bily is the way he is, much like Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake only with much less successful results.

Here the character of Bily still makes his unique prank calls, only now he inexplicably suffers with severe jaundice due to liver disease and which in turn means that we now have to deal with a killer who looks like he’s auditioning for a live action version of “The Simpsons”. If that wasn’t bad enough his sister Agnes is a product of his mother raping him after she locks him in the attic to stop him revealing the fact that she had killed Billy’s father. When it comes to the kills he now also has a fetish for removing the eyes of his victims. Needless to say this is a much more gratuitous slasher we have this time around as subtly is thrown out the window in favour of splatter and a healthy body count.

Surprisingly Morgan had originally planned for this film to be closer to the original, having been friends with Bob Clark and only tackling the remake when he’d got Clark’s permission to do so. However during the production he frequently found himself clashing with producer Harvey Weinstein who insisted that he make the film more gory and part of the reason why Morgan has since disowned the film. Its equally worth noting that the fact that this film was a flop along with his remake of “Willard” caused Morgan to retire from directing which as of the time of writing has yet to change.

Despite Morgan’s feelings about the gore in the film it is one of the stronger aspects of the film when it works, as several moments in particular those involving eye balls being gorged or munched on. The other kills however all come with a high level of creativity which includes a death by ice skate and a falling icicle. This film also might be one of the only occasions I can think of where someone is killed by impaled on a Christmas tree more so when most Christmas trees only have to be looked at wrong to fall over so you have to excuse my scepticism that someone could actually be impaled upon one. Most of these deaths come after the hour mark for this film and once they start happening they quickly start to rack up with no real spacing between them which would be more of an issue if they weren’t so entertaining to watch.

The other main issue here is that none of the girls are particular distinguishable from each other, as they all share seemingly the same personality while once more seemingly been cast for their looks than their acting abilities as unlike the girls of the original I couldn’t really tell who anyone was especially when none of them really have any sort of basic character to define any of them. Infact the only character who gets any sort of character is our crazed killer Billy and that’s more down to the gratuitous amount of flashbacks we get more than anything else.

Consider that Morgan gave us the wonderfully daft Final Destination 1 & 3 I was expecting more from this film, hoping that the critical lashing it had received had been uncalled for. Sadly though this film fails to improve upon the original, though its hard to say if the fault lies with Morgan or the interference from Weinstein, more so when the finish film is left so uneven as it tries to find a place between the two ideas of how the film should be shot.  As such this is now just another failed remake while one scattered with hints of how much better it could have been.

Cannibal Holocaust

Title: Cannibal Holocaust
Director: Ruggero Deodato
Released: 1980

Staring: Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, Perry Pirkanen, Luca Barbareschi, Salvatore Basile, Ricardo Fuentes, Carl Gabriel Yorke, Polo Paoloni

Rating: 4 / 5

Plot: A documentary film crew disappears in an area of rainforest known as “The Green Inferno”, while searching for the tribes of cannibals which live in the area. Professor Monroe (Kerman) an American anthropologist heads up the search party to find the crew, encountering two tribes the Yanomamo (The people of the trees) and the Shamatari (The people of the swamp), two tribes locked in an ongoing war with the other. However when they discover the remains of the film crew along with their missing film, the grisly and shocking truth is only then discovered.

Review: “Cannibal Holocaust” is a film whose reputation tends to proceed it, which originally made me weary of actually watching it, much like the rest of the cannibal genre, which proved to be especially popular with Italian horror directors in the 70’s and 80’s, with the genre peaking between 1977 and 1981 with this film in particular being one of the genres most notorious entries, whilst also marking the beginning of the end for the popularity of the genre, it still manages to cover all the main areas familiar with the genre including rape, torture, castration and animal cruelty in one grisly offering.

The film is essentially split into two parts with the first half focusing on Monroe and his team, searching for the missing film crew, while the second half focuses on the footage itself and while it’s true that either half could have stood up on it’s own, the blending of these two halves complement each other perfectly, whilst also helping the viewer to gain a true understanding of the two tribes, who upon first impressions seem savage and quick to violence, especially when one of these first encounters see’s Monroe and his team bearing witness to a native girl being violated with a rock by her husband, before being bludgeoned to death by in a ceremony we are informed, is being performed as the result of the girl committing the crime of adultery, a scene which sets the tone in many ways for some of the horrors yet to come. Despite witnessing this brutal act, Monroe approaches the tribe in a scientific manor as he attempts to win the trust of the Yanomamo, a method which includes him running around naked with several female members of the tribe (apparently played by girls hired from the local brothel) and even joining them in a feast were the main course turns out to be the body of a member of the rival Shamatari tribe. Thankfully it pays off as the tribe revel their grotestque totem made up of the remains of the missing film crew, as well as giving Monroe the footage which the team captured, which the natives also believe to be a source of black magic.

With the footage taken back to New York to be studied, the film enters its second half as we learn more about the film crew, whose director Alan Yates (Yorke) has built a reputation for staging scenes to create more exciting footage, with his last film “The Last Road to Hell” despite being claimed in the film as being fake footage, was actually created using real news reel footage of public executions. Still it’s this desire for more exciting footage which ultimately proves to be the down fall for Yates and his crew, as we soon discover as they butcher their way through the rainforest, gleefully killing various animals on their journey to find the cannibal tribes, who upon finding the tribe, find them perhaps a little to sedated for their liking, as they proceed to set out on a mini rampage, setting fire to the village, while raping and shooting the natives, with the only member of the crew who actually bothers to protest their actions being Yate’s fiancé Faye (Ciardi). Faye constantly proves to be the innocent in the group, being shown protesting the group’s actions frequently, aswell as most notably throwing up in disgust, when they kill a turtle on film.
It is unsurprising that the Yanomamo take these actions of the crew, rather badly and proceed to hunt down the crew, murdering them in an orgy of violence and gang rape which disturbingly Yates continues to film from the safety of the bushes, even when his fiancé is being killed. Thankfully he soon also meets a suitably grisly end and having seen what they have done to provoke this reaction, your almost cheering on the natives.

Despite the numerous scenes of violence, which feature so predominantly throughout, it is really the scenes involving animals being killed, which prove to be the most disturbing, in particular the killing of a turtle by Yates team, which is not only shot with an unflinchingly voyeuristic style, but also appears to have been filmed in real time. The fact that all the animals being killed are very much alive, only adds to the disturbing and monstrous nature of the footage, comparable to slaughterhouse footage used so readily by animal rights groups and it is no doubt these images which will stick with you, more than any of the scenes of violence being committed against the human cast. These scenes would prove to be a source of much regret for director Deodato and would also lead to the film being banned in Deodato’s native Italy, were it was mistaken for being a snuff film, which is only really true if you happen to be a turtle.

One of the most effective parts of the film, belongs to it’s score by Riz Ortolani, which essential switches between two main themes, with one being it’s main theme which is a nice laid back orchestral track and really highlights the beauty of the surrounds, while the flipside of this soundtrack being the darker synthesised theme, which appears during the more shocking scenes, on occasion several times without warning, appearing part way through a scene and only makes these scenes all the more darker and chilling.

The cast all give convincing performances, even if Porn star turned actor and genre regular Kerman proves to be the main draw here, while the rest of the cast give more than convincing performances, especially with those playing members of Yate’s team, which in a way explains why so many people found their footage so realistic, especially with so many of their scenes appearing largely improvised, only adding to this illusion.

Although not an enjoyable viewing experience, with it’s every attempt to disgust and shock the audience, it is still however an important film for not only the cannibal genre, but the horror genre on a whole, as it’s influence can be seen especially with films such as “The Last Broadcast” (1998) and “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) both of which used the same grainy documentary style, which Deodato adopts for the footage shot by Yate’s team and it’s an incredibly effective way of telling the story of how they met their demise.
The film contains so many memorable moments, though the chances are that you won’t want to remember most of them (and if you do perhaps you should be seeking some help) but even as sick and twisted as it gets, it still proves to be a gripping ride until the end, as you find yourself strangely drawn to see it out until the end, which is perhaps the one credit which it holds above so many of its gratuitous genre cousins, as it remains at it’s heart a powerful piece of film making and an interesting comment on how civilised a society we really are.