Anthology Schmanthology: Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)

Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)
Various directors (20 short films)

I often have a hard time tackling anthology films. It is difficult for me to accept shifting directorial styles within what is supposed to be thought of as a conceptually bound set of films. This is especially true if there is a really strong short up front that makes me wish that the more substandard ones that follow didn't take the earlier film as an example. This is a ridiculous thought, of course, because these films are not (in the vast majority of cases) churned out on an assembly line, nor can quality – and especially an instant classic – be triggered automatically whenever one wishes. Even the greatest directors have their small (and sometimes major) misfires.

In recent years, the anthology flick has made a strong comeback with titles like The ABCs of Death and V/H/S becoming quite popular amongst the horror aficionados. None of the titles have really captured my attention thoroughly, but I chalk this up more to the hit-or-miss nature of these affairs than anything else. It's just the way things go. If you take any famous anthology series, such as The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, while there may have been a very high bar set for excellence in the series overall, every once in a while, you ran across an episode that was only so-so. This is true of most television series, but in a weekly series where the characters recur each episode, you can gloss over a dud episode a little easier than an anthology. In an anthology, each new film starts from square one and works forward, and usually has little or no connection to previous stories. It has to stand on its own, but it is still going to be identified with that which preceded it in the collection.

It is for this reason that I had to adopt a new strategy when watching anthologies. I couldn't just watch them straight through and let the entire piece wash over me, because in most cases, none of the films really have anything to do with the others. There might be an overarching theme that the producers draped over the proceedings to make it look as it there were a common theme, but I have to watch them as individual short films and judge them that way. It is much the same way that I watch collections of cartoons. It's not the collection that is important, but the individual films.

And so it shall be with the first volume of Fun Size Horror, a creepy little anthology that came out last year and which is playing currently on platforms like Hulu and Amazon for the Halloween season. No really big names in this, though favorites of mine like Lance Reddick and John Ennis do show up briefly, Fun Size Horror takes its name to heart, delivering chunks of dark devilry each no more than a few short minutes in length. Enough time to take a good, bloody bite and move on to the next one.

To stay true to my word, I am going to assign each short piece a temporary rating based on how it came off for me independent of the others. Then I will average out the ratings, and modify the result (only slightly) based on how all of the shorts played together as a collection. It might not seem fair since they don't seem designed to play off each other (and they aren't), but Fun Size Horror was released as a collection, so the final rating will be in how it played that way.

There are twenty shorts in this 85-minute feature:

When They Say You're Alone 
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 6/9
Kind of a pretentious start, though I know these weren't planned to go in a certain order. This one certainly hits the "creepy" factor, as it would be hard for any of us to fall asleep if we knew for certain that things like this might occur when we were at our most vulnerable. I like director Grant Olin's (who did the animated opening for the collection as well) use of time lapse and the lack of any dialogue, and those strange sticky flowers are a nice detail. A nice way to tell a story with the briefest of information but still squeeze every inch out of the visuals. Very simple but effective.

Knock Knock
Dir.: Anthony Lund
Rating: 5/9
An asthmatic kid attempts to do battle with a monster in his closet but loses his sword on the way. This one is really built around its final shot, which is fine, I guess, but leaves the clip a little dull and a little standard. So much more could have been done with this and it left me pretty cold. Not bad, and fairly well shot... just generic.

Happy Birthday
Dir.: Erin Stegeman
Rating: 6/9
I am kind of wrestling with this one in my head. It's solid "sick" humor of the sort in which E.C. Comics specialized and its nice to see it practiced in these politically correct times. However, the "sick" punchline involves puppies, which does make Mr. Animal Rescue me a tad squeamish, so consider this a warning if you don't want to see such a joke taken a little too far. (Don't worry... as far as I know no actual puppies were harmed, but I would not be all that upset if I found out if a certain overly precocious child actor got really horrid nightmares from the experience.) There are a couple of dialogue lines and details in the party that do not ring true given the outcome, so it almost ruins the party for me upon reflection. It should be acknowledged, however, that they do go for the comically gruesome in this one, and I do appreciate that. (By the way, the dog that plays the "puppy" is almost a dead ringer for my beloved dog Trouble when I was a kid.)

Entity
Dir.: Matthew May
Rating: 4/9
A guy helps two girls move into a new place, but the lights are out. For whatever reason, they end up looking in the attic with flashlights and find a creepy doll. Soon, they hear a thump, and then weird stuff starts happening in quick order. The three actors actually aren't bad, and almost make you want to settle into a longer story with them, but then it is over before it even started. As for the scary stuff... move on, please. That aspect is not even worth further mentioning except to say it is thoroughly bland, though in line with current tastes. Tastes that are not mine at all, I'm afraid.

Bad Eggs
Dir.: Max Isaacson
Rating: 6/9
A very silly sight gag that kind of works, especially in the payoff of what comes out of where. Señor Wences-type humor taken to the Lovecraftian level (but, you know, without the ventriloquist in sight, thereby making it mere puppetry). It feels the sort of thing that might have shown up in something like Spike and Mike's back in the '80s if it had just been animated instead. Very slight and sophomoric, but I rather wish that I had thought of it.

The Screaming
Dir.: Dick Grunert
Rating: 5/9
I really hate the final shot on this one, but I am having a hard time discerning just why. I just know that I don't like it. Until then, this mostly dialogue-free quickie is based around the notion of a "chain" horror, that quickly seems to cascade closer and closer to the person perceiving a certain sound but trying to understand the possible (?) growing terror. It's an interesting concept that I wish were handled better in its closing.

Persephone
Dir.: Lisa J. Dooley
Rating: 6/9
On a personal level, I was instantly on a protective edge with this short because the title is also the name given by two of my friends to their recently born daughter. Strange how we react that way to something as simple as a name. And I haven't even met the baby yet. Outside of that, this is a mostly successful short that follows the efforts of a young woman to free herself of a coffin. She's not the Bride in Kill Bill, but she still has to figure a way out. But will it be enough if she does? A decent payoff and acting in this one.

Voice
Dir.: Mali Elfman
Rating: 3/9
Either this one is a clever spoof of a community theatre acting workshop or it's actually a short play developed in a community theatre acting workshop that was put onto film that never should have been. I am going with the latter scenario. Awful acting from the beginning took me straight out of the only barely interesting premise. I mean, really subpar "I don't know what to do with my hands" acting. This is a shame, because the director is the daughter of Danny Elfman (she also has a small role in Persephone and is a producer on other shorts), and one of the actresses is Diva Zappa. Because of these factors, I gave Voice another shot – and yet another shot – and it still came up short for me. Ugh. Easily my least favorite of the lot.

Somebody's Watching You
Dir.: Ben Rekhi
Rating: 4/9
A reality show with murderous consequences, from which we are always about fourteen seconds away in real life anyway. I was willing to go along with this for a little bit, however staid the idea already is to me. The forced drama does ring true to what we expect from such shows, but that doesn't mean that I want to see it replicated onscreen. Didn't want to see such phoniness the first time, why do I need to see someone double down on it in an even falser version? Drama, drama, drama, drama, drama... splat. Done.

Trust
Dir.: Jerry Pyle
Rating: 6/9
I was loving this short for the first five-sixths of it, and thought it was well shot and the reactions of the two actors to each other were divine. It was, to this point, the first time in the film where I was genuinely thinking that someone was on the way to a great short... but then the final gag failed me. It didn't kill the film, because I knew that was exactly where the film was meant to go from the start. I just wish it had cleverness to match the wit of the rest of the short to that point. A really nice try, though the final gag knocked my rating down a peg.

The Lover
Dir.: Anisa Qureshi
Rating: 7/9
And then The Lover showed up next and showed 'em how its done. Probably the best composed cinematography of the lot thus far. A much better showcase for Mali Elfman, who is extremely effective and believable here as the spurned girlfriend who slightly self-destructively seeks to clear her life of all traces of her former lover. A really evocative character piece with a great ending.

The Creepy Fucking Kid in Apartment B
Dir.: Eric Pereira
Rating: 7/9
For the truly fun and original, turn to this one. The little psychic kid hanging around next door is indeed creepy, but not so creepy as what he portends. This is the first one that got a genuine "aha" moment out of me, though I wish the ultimate payoff were handled a little more deftly. It's another example of what used to be called "sick" humor, but the less said about the details, the better for your enjoyment.

A Dog and His Boy
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of Harlan Ellison's controversial short story (and its subsequent cult classic film) A Boy and His Dog. My first guess was that Mr. Pinheiro had not read Harlan Ellison, given that this short is similar in ultimate outcome, albeit without the post-apocalyptic trappings. Then my second guess is that Mr. Pinheiro was at least made aware of Ellison and his litigious tendencies, and so transposed the title elements thusly. But this film is not about Ellison at all. It's a tribute to an entirely different source, one that I won't reveal here. Does it work? Well, I have some serious problems with the hows and whys of what occurs late in the film, and how even the location plays into those hows and whys. On the tribute and black humor levels, it almost works. But not quite.

Quad
Dir.: Ali Presley Paras
Rating: 6/9
No, it's not about a slasher in a wheelchair who has a murderous mind-meld with his helper dog Rottweiler. Four characters and four camera angles. You would think four different POV, but you would be wrong... almost. A pretty inventive short, based around three friends watching a slasher flick – and a secretive love triangle to boot – while something is wandering about the house around them. Because I have been rewatching The Wild, Wild West series recently, the images of the split screens constantly changing and sometimes combining reminded me of that show's graphics for going to and coming back from commercials. A packed little film that is actually a nice addition to the slasher canon. I don't know if it would work as a longer film, but for an experiment, it's pretty cool.

Let Me Go
Dir.: Glen Murakami
Rating: 6/9
This one gets the Super Overly Arty award for this movie. Gorgeously shot, though the effect comes off suited more for a Chanel No. 5 ad than an horror anthology. I almost wish that this dialogue-free piece were done fully as a silent film of the old school, because some of its imagery is entirely suited to the style. It's a lovely piece, but it is as ethereal as its ghostly female lead, and wisps away from the mind in direct contrast to how she doesn't depart from the mind of her former lover.

Mother
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 7/9
Ooh, boy... I like this one. So, if you were expecting a baby, and the ultrasound revealed a whole bunch of spiders inside you instead, how do you think you would act? And what do you think would happen to your mate? That's what I thought. Very quick and very different, but the creepiest film in the entire bunch, especially if my wife were to have watched it (which she never would). Nice job, Mr. Pinheiro. (Don't worry, he's going to show up one more time here.)

Evil Voices Lie
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 5/9
Someone watches a videotape of a man being interviewed who had been the captive of a famous serial killer. But something strange is happening during the tape. A very odd piece, and I honestly don't have much of an opinion on it. The film almost seems like it is a clip out of a longer piece, which may be its intent, but I don't really have an angle on this one. I may have to watch it again.

Paramnesia
Dir.: Michael May
Rating: 5/9
This one is far more ambitious but also more pretentious than director May's other short (Entity), and it is nicely shot for the most part. Once again, though, stiff acting undoes some of its effect, and there is just not enough here overall to really intrigue me.  

Bitter
Dir.: Ned Ehrbar
Rating: 6/9
A comedy short that at first seems like it has a nice reference to Richard Bachman (i.e. Stephen King) when one character seems to mockingly curse another much larger character with the word "Thinner" at the very beginning of the film. Then we discover it is a battle of two witches who each use single (or near single) word curses ending in "-er" at each other: the title word "bitter," "liver," "Hitler," with generally comic results in most cases. My favorite is "The Millers" and then the other character discovers to her horror that her entire DVR is now filled with nothing but recordings of the movie "The Millers". (I guess somebody had it in for that film; I still haven't seen it, but I like the joke.) Very light but a nice tonic after so much darkness.

Mr. Hendrix
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
Another monster in the closet tale, this time with a scared kid who enlists his parents to check out the fiend. When the kid mentions that the boogeyman goes by the name Mr. Hendrix, this triggers bad memories for the father, who encounter the boogeyman in his youth. For me, this short is enhanced briefly by the presence of John Ennis (from Mr. Show) who plays the father's dad in a flashback, and the acting is solid throughout, even by the kid. But it is just too predictable a riff on previous work with the boogeyman character, including Stephen King's.

The Collection
Dir.: Josh C. Waller
Rating: 7/9
The director of Raze (the female fighting film, which I thought was a solid drive-in-style film, starring Zoe Bell) helms this short, which features Fringe's Lance Reddick as a professional photographer who has an agenda that goes beyond being merely sleazy. It turns out he has an antique camera that takes a "special kind of picture"... but what type of picture would that be? That's what innocent models with their eyes wide shut are for, silly... As far as a polished, finished piece goes, this one is aces.

And don't forget to sit through the credits...

Overall TC4P Rating: 6/9
The twenty films averaged out to 5.3 for me overall, but in discarding the films that I rated as "5", which is my middle rating, it turns out I enjoyed more of these films (11 films rated as "6" or "7") than I actively disliked (only 3 films rated as "3" or "4"). I am greatly surprised by this, as I honestly expected to dislike and even outright hate more of them. As a viewing experience, I have to rate this film a small success, and bump its rating up to a "6" overall, which is "good" on my personal ratings chart. I hope that Volume Two, which I will be reviewing in the coming weeks, will turn out so well.

RTJ

Drooling Over Gravy (but Please Mind the Gags)

Gravy (2015)
Dir.: James Roday
TC4P Rating: 6/9

When Jen and I were finally ready* to move past the December loss of the second of our beloved pair of rat terriers last year, one rescue cat already had an in with us. A friend of Jen's mom was fostering a cat in Denver named Muffin, who was born to a feral mother who had figured out pretty early that her kitten was an indoor cat. We had known about her months earlier before we were ready, but when the time came in April to finally take the next step, Muffin was still up for the taking. She still needed her "forever home," as they say in rescue pet vernacular, though I prefer to be more realistic and call it an "8-14 year home".

After setting up a transport system through the Underground Railroad Rescued Kitty Network, which included our meeting a transfer agent at the airport in Las Vegas, we finally got our Muffin. Except we really couldn't call her Muffin. Cats don't know their name most of the time anyway, but Muffin? Ew... The problem wasn't that it was too cutesy; it just wasn't our cutesy. And we preferred to use a name that we decided upon, even if it was still cute. Her name briefly changed to Blueberry Muffin, and then in no time at all, to just The Blueberry.

If you are a fan of the show Psych, then you know the name. The Blueberry was the tiny Toyota Whatever that co-lead character Burton "Gus" Guster (played by Dulé Hill) drove throughout most of the run of Psych from 2006 through 2014. It belonged to the pharmaceutical company for whom Gus served as a customer rep, and Shawn Spencer (the other lead played by James Roday) and Gus would use the car mostly to investigate crimes for their psychic detective agency, obtain obscene amounts of fast food, or both.

We came to Psych a little late, a couple of years into its run. We were on the USA Network to watch our boy Bruce Campbell on Burn Notice, and there was this weird other show about a fake psychic bouncing around the fringes whenever we watched the spy show. Every once in a while, one or both of us would watch an episode. Or a pair of episodes. Or a mini-marathon of episodes. The show was catching on with us, even if it was subtle at first. I still remember a conversation where one of us said, "It's OK... kinda funny." And then -- overnight it seems -- it became really funny to us both. We were all in from that point. Psych became a permanent part of our schedule and it became rather common to find a day we both had off where we would rather just stay in bed watching Psych for eight hours than step outside for a breath of fresh air. The wacky antics of Shawn and Gus had taken over our lives.

And then it is seven years later and we are renaming a cat after a car in a TV show about a fake psychic detective and his pill-slinging best friend. Our cat doesn't seem to respond to the name The Blueberry any better than if I said "kitty" or "doormat" to her, but she is the right cat at the right time, and our lives are better for her intrusion into them.

But I came here to talk about a new film named Gravy.

It has been well over a year since Psych aired its last new episode. There are talks of possible TV movies reuniting the cast (or at least the two main characters), and everything ever created by the show is readily available on streaming, download or DVD. We have much of it. Reruns show sporadically on a couple of cable channels as well, and we catch them when we run into them. But Psych -- new Psych, that is -- for the foreseeable future is out of our lives. We had to move on to other shows, other pastimes, other distractions.

And so too did the cast and crew of Psych. Most noticeably missing from our routine is the relaxed, brotherly (sometimes a little too close) gab between stars Roday and Hill, and my immediate question was going to be whether they would do another project together. Such attempts can be dangerous, especially when actors have become pretty well-known as a team on a successful project. Such attempts can destroy legacies, and rarely work out for the better. But I, like many people, not only didn't want to see an end to the adventures of Shawn and Gus (though admittedly, the last season was pretty up and down in quality), we want to believe that Roday and Hill are a team. We want to believe they are best pals in real life and do everything together.

Taking that out of the equation, the real question is "What next?" Actors move on to new roles; so too must our star pals. There are few actors, like Campbell, that I do follow through every single iteration of their careers. Was I going to follow the stars of Psych to their next stop? Would it be like David Duchovny, where following him over to Californication was a no-brainer? (There would at least be ample amounts of nudity and swearing on the show.) Or would it be like Kelsey Grammer, where even the slightest whiff of Patricia Heaton on Back to You sent me packing right away?

And here now we come to Gravy, a film that has just come out on disc via Scream Factory after limited theatrical showings early in October. After wondering what Roday and company might do next, the answer it appears is this, a very bloody, quite violent horror-comedy that has no intention of tricking you for even a second, apart from some casting, that it might be a comfy fit within Psych's somewhat limited range of light comic sensibility. In fact, just from its opening sequence, and the setting up of its plot, Gravy is more intent on showing that as a director/co-writer, Roday is capable of journeying far beyond what he showed with already established characters on Psych (he directed eight episodes and had a hand in writing sixteen episodes of the show through its run). And Gravy, despite some clumpy moments, did help establish that impression with me.

The film takes place (primarily) on Halloween at a small Mexican eatery and bar west of nowhere. The restaurant's crew is casually cleaning up after what has been a busy but festive evening, and most of the characters are dressed in the Halloween costumes in which they served their shift. Bartender Kerry (Sutton Foster) is a quarterback princess, itty bitty diva waitress Cricket (Molly Ephraim) is a beauty contestant, and busboy Hector (Gabriel Luna) is a boxer. Big changes are on the way for the staff. Security guard/bouncer Winketta (Gabourey Sidibe) is about to graduate school in a week, and Kerry is just about to leave to start a new career as a paramedic. Boss Chuy (Paul Rodriguez in an effective cameo role) wants the staff to gather to celebrate before they close for the night. It seems to be just another closing on just another night for everyone concerned.

Enter the cannibals. Brothers Anson (Michael Weston) and Stef (Jimmi Simpson), along with Stef's batshit insane girlfriend Mimi (Lily Cole) have been sizing up the place (making special note that the restaurant has no windows), and before anyone can catch their breath, they have the doors welded shut, the mouthy French chef Yannick (a wonderfully caustic Lothaire Bluteau) chained at the neck in the kitchen, and the rest of the staff tied to chairs and forced to play games to keep them from being turned into the next course. Anson and Stef are gourmands with a taste for human flesh, and spend each Halloween capturing a small assortment of people, and then torture and devour them until they are completely stuffed.

It is not the sort of premise you would expect from one of the driving creative forces behind Psych, and especially not his first big project after the show was put to bed. Yes, Psych did have many gruesome murders and occasional serial killer plotlines that went beyond the show's usual light tone and the regular slapstick antics involving Shawn and Gus. And some of their most popular episodes were the Halloween-oriented episodes where they would tackle hoary cliches of the horror genre. (These same episodes, despite the mystery solving, would often have Shawn and Gus running around in the dark screaming like little girls.)

But I had no idea what to expect from Roday in Gravy, and he truly sticks to his guns. The dialogue and situations are definitely funny, but he and co-writer Todd Harthan (himself a writer and producer on Psych) have done themselves proud in keeping the horror the most important element here. Once you have settled in to the cast, which is also made up of many performers who appeared on Roday's show (Foster, Simpson, Weston, Kate Rogal, and Ethan Sandler) and therefore makes you anticipate that you will get more of the same, the violence between the characters as they fight for survival can be more than a little shocking. Thankfully, Roday keeps a steady tone throughout the manic proceedings (and it gets truly crazy in the second half). He also shows a nice touch for counterpoint using follow-up shots and soundtrack cues. (The inclusion out of nowhere of the children's song Farm Animal Friends early on is a special favorite moment for me.)

For the most part, the cast is up to the task as well. Jimmi Simpson, a favorite of Psych fans for his portrayal of the memorably named and tragic Mary Lightly (though he comes back for a swell song in the musical episode), is having a field day as Stef, and imparts both control freak leadership and villainy in equal amounts. Michael Weston, another Psych cult hero, carries the film on a wave of non-stop babble as the brother who is more than a tad jealous of his brother's girl. His pairing up with Sutton Foster, the multi-Tony Award winning actress, throughout the film is nicely underplayed and never goes for the obvious notes. There is a silly wraparound cameo part for Sarah Silverman (wearing a bunny costume) that seems to be bigger given her prominence on the DVD cover, but that is obviously to help sell the film. 

My one gripe (and it is a minor one) is the commitment to the gore implied in the premise. While there are a few body parts displayed in the film, the intention of the villains to have dishes creatively named after each of their victims is given short shrift, and largely gets forgotten. The film is bloody, bloody, bloody, but it is not very gory. Practically every room and character gets soaked in the red stuff, but the film becomes more focused on the multiple fight scenes or bickering between the characters, and less on delivering the promise that a cannibal orgy on Halloween night bodes. If there is a failing in Gravy, it is on this promise. And especially so since the title of the film itself is food-based. Yes, the big night in Big Night turns out to be a twist on that which is anticipated at the start of the film, but the chefs still deliver an amazing meal. Maybe Anson and Stef should have gotten a little more help for Yannick in the kitchen so we could get more than just a couple of dishes out of their endeavors.

It is hard to say how I am going to feel about Gravy in a couple of years. I just watched it for a second time this afternoon, and there are indications that I am going to grow to like it even more over the coming years. However, the small errors were more glaring this go-around too, so who knows? Minor annoyances can turn into big, unavoidable itches after a while. And I haven't even shown the film to Jen yet, my partner in all things Psych (and otherwise). Jen is not a horror movie fan for even a second, though she will watch one if there is something interesting to it or has been so critically acclaimed that she can't avoid it. (She loves The Silence of the Lambs, for instance, but approaches it as more of a mystery film than a horror film. And she adores the Evil Dead films.) I bought the Blu-ray of Gravy, and was going to spring it on her right away, but then decided to give it a shot myself first. It may be a touch too bloody for her tastes, but she can make the decision to watch it on her own.

Oh, and those Psych pals, Roday and Hill? They show up onscreen in Gravy as well for a cameo turn, but it is very brief (and kind of funny). They don't show up in The Blueberry, but they make it to the party all the same. And so their first big project after their long-running hit show is together as a team after all, which is just what a Psych fan would want. Whether my wife ends up wading through the oceans of gravy in Gravy and seeing our old pals in it is up to her.

*[Note: We will never be ready.]

Crashing into The Green Inferno

Click image to enlarge

The Green Inferno (2013)
Dir: Eli Roth
TC4P Rating: 5

I felt kind of dirty going into the theatre to watch The Green Inferno yesterday. Sure, it was in the multiplex down the road, and The Green Inferno is meant to do ticket business there like any other movie. And the ticket girl didn't even bat an eye when I said "One for The Green Inferno, please" (pretty much as if I was a cartoon penguin buying a Sprite). Not even a flinch or a cringe or a disapproving shake of her head, just "And do you have a Regal Crown Club Card?" (Which I did...)

And The Green Inferno is certainly not a porn movie, even though I have read a couple of reviews that questioned the viability of the R rating given to it by the MPAA. But I still felt like a raincoater; sneaking off to see a movie of questionable moral virtue in the middle of the afternoon, low-keying my actions, not telling the wife I was going to go see it that day (though I had expressed my intentions to go to it at some point). My purposes yesterday were to get out to have some lunch, work on some notes, and see a movie that fit in with my Countdown to Halloween drive for October. But I just felt dirty... a lone guy buying a ticket to go sit alone (most likely) in a theatre to watch extreme gore, nudity, and people being eaten by native tribespeople.

Luckily, I was not alone. There was a couple sitting in the back of the postage stamp box doing who knows what in addition to eating popcorn. I took my customary first row, middle seat in the stairs section (the area with the handy bars) that we have all grown used to since the old style of movie theatre days. I had a nice cool water in hand, and that stupid pre-movie ad section with supposedly "special" behind-the-scenes sneak previews junk was running on the screen. But, even after the regular trailers came and went, I still felt a bit weird about the experience. 

However, once the movie started, that mood went away, and another one started... and it was... confusion?

I have a hard time settling Eli Roth in my mind. Just who is he? I have seen three of his main feature films to this date on the big screen (Cabin Fever, Hostel, and this one; I waited for DVD for Hostel 2, a wise choice). I enjoyed huge sections and much of the dialogue of Cabin Fever, but really hated the wandering tone of the thing. I liked Hostel much better as a straight on horror flick, and that was where I thought, "He's going to do something amazing soon." I adore his fake Thanksgiving trailer in Grindhouse (how I wish he would have delivered on that). But I found Hostel 2 really just... OK. It tried to push the Hostel series a bit further, but really came off as a lesser cousin. (The less said the better about Part III, in which he was not involved at all.) 

And then, except for the acting thing (a prominent appearance as "The Bear Jew" in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and a few cameos) and his name popping as an executive producer and writer here and there (the underwhelming The Man with the Iron Fists), he sort of laid low for a while. At least in my purview. And my perception of him, and perhaps quite wrongly, is that he was going to be horror's Tarantino. My perception was that, like his famous friends Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, he was able to take something tired and worn out, throw it in a mixmaster, toss in some other scattered influences and some sharp dialogue, and bring us something shiny and exciting. Something that had a new movie smell even if, at its core, we were really just seeing a very clever remix attuned to our now more ironic sense of genre and the world.

My feeling was that because Roth had been included in with the Grindhouse boys' club of Tarantino, Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, and Edgar Wright, it was a sign he was the real deal, and was just about to steer horror to incredible new heights. But that didn't happen. Other filmmakers have come along in the past few years and have brought that same promise to the genre. And now in The Green Inferno, while the film is bright, bloody and visceral as hell, and really gets in your face with its horror sequences, I feel it is a serious step backwards in Eli Roth's development.

The prime culprit is his scattershot screenplay, with some very cynical and confused politics at its core that never come off as believable for a second. An impressionable college girl (Lorenza Izzo) follows a charismatic douchebag to the Peruvian jungle to save some trees from ruthless and greedy land developers. Her crime (and that of her fellow students) is merely that she was really not well informed enough about her supposed cause, and has now jumped into an extremely dangerous setting far beyond what they imagined. I won't disagree that this is fine as a set-up -- the world is certainly full of college students following endless causes du jour -- but when Roth reveals his take on the connection between the developers and those battling them, I nearly spat water across the room. 

When you laugh at loud in the theatre at lines which I assume were meant as profundities, that's a problem. Another problem is spending half your time laughing at the film, and the other half laughing with it. Yes, there are some genuinely funny lines here and there in the film, but is The Green Inferno meant to be a comedy? If it is, it is a truly sick one, considering that not only is the subject of female genital mutilation broached in one of the college classes in the film's opening, but the subject rises again much later on in the jungle. I was not offended by it (exceedingly hard to do that for this boy), but was merely confused as to the filmmaker's intentions. [And the filmmaker's intentions were apparently to marry the girl, because he and starlet Izzo wed not long after the production of the film. Some crazy sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing at work here?]

Obfuscating the issue even more are the diarrhea sequence (the instance starts as serious but is clearly played for laughs), Alejandro's masturbation scene (which I thought was hilarious when someone starts to choke him to make him stop, as he just gets off even more from that), and a scene when the survivors stuff one of their friends' corpses with marijuana to get the natives high. The scene is absolutely meant as comic relief after the torture and death we have seen, but is done so broadly (natives just falling flat out of their tree perches onto their faces), it rather took me out of the movie for a few minutes. They should have just played Low Rider on the soundtrack.

The gorier scenes in the movie are exceedingly well done. The plane crash sequence is both thrilling and shocking, mostly because you know not everyone is going to make it, and waiting to see how the cast will get pared down adds excitement. Since nearly all of the college students in the plane, save one, are pretty much shown to be callow idiots from the start, having just one survive would be a bonus for me. Unfortunately, some will make it, but that's alright... you need someone for the cannibals to dine on in later scenes. Those sequences, especially the complete dismemberment, cooking, and devouring of one character, are astounding. 

Not so successful is the scene where a victim is tied to a stake (after his knees have been smashed in) so that CGI ants can run amok all over his body. Also not successful are Roth's inclusion of a very cheesy dream sequence late in the film, which leads to an even cheesier tag which points to a possible sequel. While I generally hate dream sequences in most cases, I wouldn't object to the tag if it made sense within the reality of the film, but all it does is come off as crass and outright dumb. It made me flip off the screen.

As an acknowledged tribute to Italian cannibal films from the '70s and '80s, The Green Inferno is savage enough to certainly show it fits in with the crowd. The end credits even list about 15 of the major films in the genre to help inform the public. Those same credits finish with the words "Per Ruggero," referencing (I assume) Italian horror director, Ruggero Deodato, who helmed the "masterpiece" of the genre, Cannibal Holocaust (1980). I have seen many of the listed films, and while I am not necessarily a fan of them or the genre, unlike the college girl in the movie, I knew exactly what I was in for when I stepped into this jungle. 

The movie does deliver on its promise of gory thrills, so if that is your sort of thing, you will enjoy this. Just don't try to examine it beyond that, and you might get out alive. Me, I needed a shower. Still felt a little dirty.

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Ups and Downs of Title-ation

Raw Meat [Death Line] (1972)
Director: Gary Sherman
Rank/AIP, 1:27, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

If you type the title Raw Meat into the Internet Movie Database, you get five immediate options, known otherwise as "exact matches," to your inquiry. The first, the entry for the actual movie for which I was at the site to gather information (I will get to in just a short moment). But the four following entries, three of which were appended by a (V) which generally stands for "straight to video," were for gay porn flicks. At first I considered the option that perhaps the movie I was looking up, without my being aware of it, had been remade at some point in the 35+ years following its release. But, after clicking on each of the next four entries, and scanning the all-male casts and the genre types, it didn't take long to surmise that if indeed the original Raw Meat had been remade, it surely only did so with a drastic change of plot, and also perhaps with an incredible amount of product placement from Astro-Glide.

Sometimes, despite how we are told ceaselessly since childhood not to judge things this way (even if your "betters" hardly ever practice it themselves), one cannot help but to occasionally let the title of a film influence your decision whether or not to watch it. And I am no stranger to this myself. You see, I put off watching this film for years, simply because of the title Raw Meat.

Anyone who knows me is well aware that there is little from which I shy away as regards the film industry. My circle of friends know full well that I will watch just about anything, from the sappiest romance to the clunkiest action film to the grossest of gross-out comedies, simply so I can have an opinion on it. This even extends to the book world, and before I wish to either discuss logically (or as more often happens, render insufficient) someone else's glorification of a certain author, I will dive into the writer's works for a brief period myself to educate myself on their style. Back to movies, I have always lived by the maxim that I will see any movie at least once, though naturally, due to personal preferences and much like any person, I do happen to prefer some genres over others.

One of these, almost absurdly, is the horror genre. As you might know already from reading this website, I will endure even the most vile piece of dreck as long as it falls into this category. And while I prefer mood, implication, and subtlety over more brazen effects such as a veritable rainstorm of arterial spray, outrageous gore can be a most handy weapon in the filmmaker's arsenal when employed judiciously, or if the film is designed to be brought to cartoonish levels of blood and guts. So, I am not a prude by even the loosest definition of that abhorrent term.

And yet, I have avoided Raw Meat for the past three decades, even while having numerous chances to view it. Perhaps it is merely what the name itself connotes in my mind, and I take the ever rougher style of that particular period of films into account -- the Texas Chainsaw-Last House on the Left and early (good) Argento era -- and even though I am well-versed in those films and know that gore is really not the endgame in any of them, my brain Frankenstein's together a film that I am not quite sure I can endure. I imagine a film featuring the worst sort of ravenous butchery. I picture a slaughterhouse setting or rendering plant, naturally there exists some hidden form of cannibalism, and I create a sordid range of scenarios in which a butcher of this type could place his fellow human beings/victims. Those two simple words themselves -- "raw" and "meat" -- (and this goes far back before the day I had ever considered their manipulation into sexual terms) denote a certain nausea to one that constantly struggles himself with even eating beef (and cannot cook it on his own because of this) -- and I know that I do not want to sit through ninety minutes of that on my even most melancholy and sociopathic day. Thus, owing to my own queasiness, and without having even an ounce of evidence to the contrary, I have passed up a series of chances to see the filmic Raw Meat.

But now my ongoing Psychotronic Ketchup project demands its viewing, and I also now have a compatriot in the office whom my fellows and I delight in calling "Raw Meat" as a pet name. Apparently, I can avoid it not a moment longer. I rented the film late last year from Netflix twice, only to have it arrive snapped in twain the first time, and cracked, and therefore unplayable, the second. I flirted with just buying it outright (it's a relatively cheap buy), but then decided I should go rent it at a local store instead. But then it showed up on Turner Classic Movies' Underground show this weekend, under its original UK title Death Line. My chance had arrived. The change of name, too, allowed me to quash those oddly nauseous images briefly out of my head and watch the film undeterred.

Yes, there is a horrible creature that lives in the London Underground, and yes, he is a cannibal. There are frequent gushings of blood, and some nasty closeups of the creature's cauliflowered ear, which gets punctured a couple of times and spews out some disgusting pus to good effect. Numerous body parts are scattered about the creature's lair, and there is an impaling here and a shovel into the head there. It's the stuff that normally draws me to these films in the first place, and here I was avoiding it all this time, simply because I found its American name unpalatable for obscure and deeply contentious personal reasons. If it had been released here in the States as merely Death Line, I would have looked at the box and said "Oh, lookie! Some horrible fiend or fiends are killing people in the train tunnels! I've have just got to check this out!" Instead, they release it as Raw Meat, and I lump it into the pile of flicks that may be entertaining in some aspect but for which I have yet to find time, like Luther the Geek or Street Trash, because the titles do nothing but evoke a mood of "Geez, I just do not want to deal with that right now..."

Let me be the first to say that while this film is no missing genre classic, it is such a near miss as to be devastating once you reach its climax. In fact, it's that rare near miss in which one can point out exactly what would have elevated it to classic status: about twenty more minutes involving Inspector Calhoun, portrayed delightfully by the often misused Donald Pleasance, and also including what appears to be his nemesis, an MI-5 agent played with a biting, mysterious air in one single scene by that other oft misused horror giant, the great Christopher Lee. Pleasance is such a joyful, rambling nuisance as an Inspector of Missing Persons in this film, flinging non sequiturs and sneaky logic alike at his foes, suspects and friends -- at times, there almost seems to be a bit of Clouseau lurking within him, and other times, Holmes himself -- that I felt Pleasance is wasted tremendously in the film's later sections, where he disappears nearly until its resolution.

Lee is so compelling in his lone scene, in which he springs unannounced upon Pleasance and sidelines the good inspector with some underhanded higher government interference in the case, that it's a shame of the first order that they don't meet up later in the film. Their scene is thick with the implication that this pair has many clashes ahead of them, and I wonder if perhaps another film was intended by the studio as a follow-up, building on this relationship. Of course, I also wonder if the director really didn't know what he had here, and the feeling only arrives due to some playful sparring between Lee and Pleasance that really isn't in the script at all.

All of the elements are there, but it never quite fully gels. Shot on location in London around the Russell Square Tube Station, the atmosphere with the locals and the pubs is cozy enough to make the desolation of the pitch black tunnel scenes seem a world away, even if it is only a hundred feet below the surface. Director Sherman and his camera crew were obviously in love with the perspective shots of the tunnel archways, though they use this effect perhaps once too often in the end. The idea of Victorian tunnel workers getting trapped below ground and having to resort to cannibalism, and then surviving to create new generations of underground murderers is arrived at a little too easily for my taste, even if the idea is really sort of tossed off as a side-note. I wish there had been more investigation into the idea, especially on Pleasance's part, but all he really does is torture the male protagonist over and over with ridiculous questions, instead of doing the detective work. It's a filmmaking cheat, and it damages the film as a result.

Me? I'm in love with the leading lady. Sharon Gurney, an actress of little consequence overall in the film world, is extremely fetching, even if her period hairstyle makes her look like the guitarist from an all-female cover band of the Bay City Rollers. (Come to think of it, most of the actual Bay City Rollers looked like they belonged to an all-female cover band of the Bay City Rollers. Well, except for Derek...) Norman Rossington, as Pleasance's stolid sidekick Sergeant Rogers, does his best to get his job done under the onslaught of his boss' barbs, and still manages to convey some sense of amusement at the whole enterprise. I just wish David Ladd were in on the joke, as he seems stifled at times in his nothing role as Gurney's American boyfriend. I also wonder what the hell Hugh Armstrong, as the mutant underground cannibal, is yelling all the time. Armstrong is fine in the role, especially in the realm of physical menace, but because I didn't have subtitles with my viewing, I am left wondering if anything he screeches is actually meant to be of any importance to his character. (Perhaps it is for this reason that I will purchase the DVD, though I am sure the subtitle will read "unrecognizable yelling.")

Overall, the film is so close to being terrific, that I am tempted to give it a "good" rating (a "6" on my scale), but ultimately, it disappoints. Pleasance enthralls, and Lee is intriguing, but their limited presence only points out where this film went wrong in the production process. It breaks my heart to give it only a middle-of-the-pack "5", because I do want my friends that are horror fans to check it out. If you are a horror fan, even if you are not my friend, I do stress that you should see this, if only to know what might have been (or to see how these things were handled in the pre-CGI days, and especially before Hollywood does finally remake it). You will still have a good, basic scary time in what is such a near miss of a horror classic. But so much more could have been pounded out of Raw Meat.

Which brings me back to the title problem. Really, the surprise regarding the IMDB title search is that there aren't more videos on the list with Raw Meat in the phrasing. You'd think Raw Meat would be a natural for a whole series of gay porn flicks, and it really wouldn't shock me to discover that it was the case. After all, IMDB doesn't have every porn title on it, and really, I can't figure out why the other Raw Meat titles (and some other equally hardcore fare that came up as "near matches") are on IMDB in the first place. Deep Throat, The Erotic Adventures of Candy or Insatiable I understand... those "landmarks" of porn actually garnered theatrical releases, and I don't dispute the fact that on rare occasions, releases with hardcore content can be considered "films" in the same breath with, say, The Searchers. Certainly, there is a place for them in the discussion of the history of cinema, no matter if a certain close-minded proportion of our society would prefer not to see it that way. And it doesn't bother me in the least that they appear on IMDB.

But Ramon Is Packin' Meat 2?

So, what's in a title? Depends on how you're sitting, I guess...