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Friday, November 21, 2014

CC: The Books of Blood and Dread (2009)

Books of Blood are a series of horror fiction collections written by the British author Clive Barker.

There are six books in total, each simply subtitled Volume 1 through to Volume 6, and were subsequently re-published in two omnibus editions containing three volumes each.  Each volume contains four or five stories.  The volume 1–3 omnibus was published with a foreword by Barker's fellow Liverpudlian horror writer Ramsey Campbell.  [ed. Who by the way is also a Mythos author so we are inline with the whole Cthulhu thing again.]

They were published between 1984 and 1985.  With the publication of the first volume, Barker became an overnight sensation and was hailed by Stephen King as "the future of horror".  The book won both the British and World Fantasy Awards.

Although undoubtedly horror stories, like most of Barker's work they mix fantasy themes in as well.  The unrelentingly bleak tales invariably take place in a contemporary setting, usually featuring everyday people who become embroiled in terrifying or mysterious events.  Barker has stated in Faces of Fear1 that an inspiration for the Books of Blood was when he read Dark Forces in the early 1980s and realized that a horror story collection need not have any narrow themes, consistent tone or restrictions.  The stories could range from the humorous to the truly horrific.

 

Volume Two

Dread

A young student, Steve, becomes acquainted with an older student named Quaid.  Quaid is an intellectual with a morbid fascination with fear.  He eventually shows Steve how he, Quaid, kidnapped a vegetarian woman and imprisoned her in a room with merely a steak for sustenance, only releasing her when she finally overcame her dread of eating meat to prevent starvation; she eats the meat even though it has spoiled.  Steve becomes Quaid's next candidate for his experiments, held captive in a dark, silent room, forcing him to relive a childhood period of deafness that terrified him.  Steve is driven insane by this forced sensory deprivation and eventually returns to Quaid's house and butchers him with an axe.  Quaid's experiments, all along, were to try to help him understand the nature of fear, but ironically his experiments in phobias made his own worst fears come to life.

This story has been made into a film, with Jackson Rathbone playing Steve.


Dread (2009)

  • Genre: Drama – Horror – Thriller
  • Directed: Anthony DiBlasi
  • Produced:
    • Lauri Apelian 
    • Clive Barker 
    • Peter Bevan 
    • Jeremy Burdek 
    • Joe Daley 
    • Anthony DiBlasi 
    • Robert How 
    • Nadia Khamlichi 
    • Micky McPherson 
    • Adrian Politowski 
    • Richard Reiner 
    • Karl Richards 
    • Jorge Saralegui 
    • Nigel Thomas 
    • Charlotte Walls
  • Written:
    • Clive Barker (Short Story "Dread") 
    • Anthony DiBlasi (Screenplay)
  • Starring: Jackson Rathbone, Hanne Steen, Laura Donnelly, Jonathan Readwin, Shaun Evans, Vivian Gray, Carl McCrystal, Derek Lea, Siobhan Hewlett, Kieran Murphy, Cheyanne Raymond, Zoe Stollery, Elspeth Rae, Erin Gavin
  • Music: Theo Green
  • Cinematography: Sam McCurdy
  • Editing: Celia Haining
  • Studio:
    • Essential Entertainment  
    • Matador Pictures 
    • Midnight Picture Show 
    • Cinema Three 
    • Regent Capital  
    • Newbridge Film Capital  
    • Entertainment Motion Pictures  
    • Motion Investment Group  
    • Pepper Post Production  
    • Plum Films  
    • Le Tax Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral de Belgique  
    • uFilm
  • Distributed:
    • After Dark Films  
    • Audio Visual Entertainment  
    • Deltamac Co.  
    • E1 Entertainment Benelux  
    • Echo Bridge Entertainment  
    • Noori Pictures  
    • Reel DVD  
    • Sunfilm Entertainment
  • Rated:
  • Release Date:
    • 14 July 2009 (Canada) 
    • 30 August 2009 (UK) 
    • 29 January 2010 (USA)
  • Running Time: 108 minutes
  • Country:
    • United Kingdom 
    • USA
  • Language: English

At a small college, Quaid and his friend Stephen do a "fear study" as a school project, recording people talking about their greatest fears.  Quaid however is quite insane and wants to take the fear to 'the next level'.  Quaid had seen his parents killed by an axe murderer as a child; this is his greatest fear, and he wants to learn what makes others afraid and what it takes for them to overcome their fear.  Stephen's brother had died while drunk-driving, and Stephen wonders if his brother would still be alive if he had driven instead.

Cheryl, who is the project's editor, was molested by her father as a little girl.  He worked at a meat-packing plant and smelled of meat while molesting her; to this day, she can't stand the smell of meat and refuses to eat it.  Quaid kidnaps her and locks her in a room with a slightly salted, well cooked beef on a plate.  After about a week, she finally eats the entire piece of rotten beef.  Joshua is a student whose fear is becoming deaf again because he temporarily lost his hearing after a childhood accident.  The following night, Quaid knocks him out and fires a gun next to his ears, shattering his eardrums and leaving him deaf again.  Abby, another student, has a dark birthmark covering half her face and body, which she doesn't want anyone to see, terrified of being teased or shunned because of it.  Quaid sets up video footage of her stripping naked before sex on every TV on campus, showing her naked and covered in birth marks.  Humiliated, Abby fills her bathtub with bleach and starts scrubbing off her skin with steel wool.  Stephen finds her naked and bleeding and gets her to the hospital.  He then goes after Quaid with a fire axe.  Joshua follows him, assuming Stephen and Quaid are working together.

When Stephen confronts Quaid, he is knocked out and awakens tied to a chair.  He manages to break free but runs into Joshua, who stabs him with the fire axe.  Quaid shoots Joshua, killing him, and watches Stephen die from the axe wound.  He drags the body to a room in the basement, where Cheryl is.  He throws Stephen's body in along with a switchblade and says, "Let's see how hungry you have to be to get through that."  He leaves her crying with Stephen's dead body with only a matter of time before she starts eating his flesh from hunger.

The 104 page script was shot in just 28 days.  The paintings in the film were created by Nicole Balzarini.  The film had its world premiere at the 2009 Montreal Fantasia Festival, where it picked up a distributor in After Dark Films.  It was announced that Dread would be included in the films in the fourth After Dark Horrorfest in 2010.  The film was released on 29 January 2010 in US Cinemas.

Allan Dart of Fangoria called it "a mixed but overall positive" adaptation of Barker's story.  Scott Weinberg of Fearnet called it "a clever balancing act between basic scares, a creepy concept, and something a little more (dare I say) cerebral."  Paul McCannibal of Dread Central rated it 4/5 stars and called it "a well made adaptation of the short story" that "is well worth your time."  Dennis Harvey of Variety said that the film "intrigues, even if it doesn’t entirely satisfy".  Noel Murray of The A.V. Club called it "overwritten and more than a little pretentious".  Brett Cullum of DVD Verdict called it a good Barker adaptation that is "certainly worth checking out".  Ian Jane of DVD Talk rated it 3.5/5 stars and called it "a nasty, twisted little thriller that features some good performances and stand out set pieces that help you look past its low budget." And most importantly Mike at Monster.Movie.TV found it to be not much more than the of equivalent of fast food for horror movies and bordering on torture prom but if that is what you want than that is exactly what you’ll get here.


Notes:

1.  Faces of Fear is a World Fantasy award-winning book (Berkley Books 1985, revised 1990) where writer, critic and lawyer Douglas E. Winter interviews seventeen contemporary British and American horror writers about their life and art.  The writers are V. C. Andrews, Clive Barker, William Peter Blatty, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, John Coyne, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, James Herbert, T. E. D. Klein, Stephen King, Michael McDowell, Richard Matheson, David Morrell, Alan Ryan, Whitley Strieber and Peter Straub.  The book was a finalist for the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book.

 

Sources:

All Images Found Via Google Image Search

Thursday, November 20, 2014

WTFW: Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam (1982)

In the history of freaky, incoherent movies one name bubbles to the surface of the steaming pool of crap films over and over again.  Above I have referred to that film by it’s one true name, in an attempt to steal it’s power, most people don’t actually know the plot or story behind that film.  That film will be the subject of tonight’s article, and no three word title is as infamous and freaky as my choice for tonight.

Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) is a 1982 Turkish adventure film commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious use of unauthorized footage from Star Wars worked into the film.

Directed by Çetin İnanç and written by Cüneyt Arkın, a well-known Turkish actor whose works span the last five decades, the film also starred Arkın in the leading role.  Other actors include Aytekin Akkaya who later starred in the Italian film Sopravvissuti della città morta, as well as Hüseyin Peyda and Füsun Uçar both of whom remained in Turkey.

The musical soundtrack is entirely lifted from popular hit movies.  The main theme used is "The Raiders March", composed by John Williams, from the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Other scenes incorporated the music of Moonraker, Ben-Hur, Flash Gordon, Giorgio Moroder's version of Battlestar Galactica1, Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, Moses and Disney's Black Hole.  In the scene where Cüneyt Arkın and Aytekin Akkaya find the graves of old civilizations, the director selected Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata to play.

Upon its initial release, the film was panned by critics for its incoherent storyline, poor performances, and use of stock footage and music from other films.  Despite this, the film has gained a significant cult following over the years.  Louis Proyect of Rec Arts Movie Reviews called the film "classic midnight movie fun."  Phil Hall of Film Threat gave the film a perfect 5 stars, calling it "jaw-droppingly insane ... a film that makes criticism moot."


Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam (1982)

  • A.K.A. Title: The Man Who Saves the World
  • A.K.A. Title: Turkish Star Wars
  • Genre: Action – Adventure – Sci-Fi
  • Directed: Çetin Inanç
  • Produced: Mehmet Karahafiz
  • Written: Cüneyt Arkin
  • Starring: Cüneyt Arkin, Aytekin Akkaya, Füsun Uçar, Hüseyin Peyda, Necla Fide, Mehmet Ugur, Kadir Kök, Aydin Haberdar, Yadigar Ejder, Hikmet Tasdemir
  • Music: Various, Mostly without permission
  • Cinematography: Çetin Gürtop
  • Editing: Necdet Tok
  • Studio: Anit Ticaret
  • Distributed:
    • BijouFlix Releasing  
    • DVD Rulers
  • Rated:
  • Release Date: November 1982 (Turkey)
  • Running Time: 91 minutes
  • Country: Turkey
  • Language: Turkish

The film follows the adventures of Murat and Ali, whose spaceships crash on a desert planet following a battle, shown by using footage from Star Wars as well as Soviet and American space program newsreel clips.  While hiking across the desert, they speculate that the planet is inhabited only by women.  Ali does his wolf whistle, which he uses on attractive women.  However, he blows the wrong whistle and they are attacked by skeletons on horseback, which they defeat in hand-to-hand combat.  The main villain soon shows up and captures the heroes, bringing them to his gladiatorial arena so they can fight.  The villain tells them he is actually from Earth and is a 1,000 year old wizard.  He tried to defeat Earth, but was always repelled by a shield of concentrated human brain molecules, which looks like the Death Star from Star Wars.  The only way he can bypass this impenetrable defense is to use a human brain against it.  The heroes escape and hide in a cave full of refugees who already fled the villain's tyrannical rule.  Murat develops a romantic connection with the only woman there, who looks after the children.  (The romance is shown through many long eye-contacts and smiles from the girl, but nothing more.)  Zombies of the dark lord attack the cave and turn several of the children into zombies, their blood used to renew the evil wizard's immortality.  The three then flee the cave and find a local bar, lifted directly from Star Wars (the Mos Eisley Cantina).  The two men quickly get into a bar brawl, but the villain suddenly appears and captures them again.

The wizard separates the men and tries to convince them to join him.  He sends his queen to seduce Ali, while he orders Murat to be brought before him.  He offers Murat the chance to rule over the earth and stars if he joins him.  He possesses the power of Earth's ancestry in the form of a golden brain, and all he needs to conquer Earth is a real human brain.  After Murat declines, the wizard shows that he has the woman and child in captivity.  Enraged, Murat fights the wizard's monsters and skeleton guardians.  Meanwhile, monsters attack Ali when he is about to kiss the queen.  He defeats the monsters and joins Murat's fight.  They are both disabled by laser-armed guards and then unsuccessfully tortured by the wizard.  Finally, the wizard pits Murat against a giant monster in the arena.  Murat defeats the monster and flees, taking the woman and the child with him.  Ali is left in captivity.

Murat finds out about a sword made by "the 13th clan," who melted a mountain thousands of "space years" ago.  Murat later finds this sword, shaped like a lightning bolt, in a cave defended by two golden ninjas.  He takes the sword after dispatching the guards in an uncharacteristically short fight.  Renewed by the sword's power, Murat goes to free his friend from the sorcerer's dungeon.  However, Ali becomes envious of the sword, knocks out Murat and takes both the sword and the golden brain.  The wizard then uses trickery and deceit to make Ali hand over the artifacts.  Having touched these items, the wizard now has increased powers and traps Murat, Ali, the woman and the child.  Ali is killed in a foolish attempt to escape.

Grief-stricken, Murat decides to melt down the golden sword and the golden human brain and forge them into a pair of gauntlets and boots.  Equipped with magical gloves and super-jumping boots, he searches for the sorcerer to avenge his friend's death.  After fighting monsters and skeletons, he comes face-to-face with his nemesis and karate chops him in half.  He then leaves the planet for Earth in a ship that very much resembles the Millennium Falcon.

Foleyvision, an Austin, Texas-based comedy troupe who showed films with the original soundtrack off while providing dialogue, music, and sound-effects live in the theatre, used Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam as one of their performances in 2004, providing what troupe leader Buzz Moran said was "the first English translation of this film ever in the world."  During the introduction to the show, Moran stated that the translator had told them that "It doesn't make any more sense in Turkish."

After many attempts to gather the original actors in the film to create a sequel to The Man Who Saved the World, a sequel, The Son of the Man Who Saved the World (Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam'ın Oğlu), commonly known as Turks in Space, was shot in 2006.  It’s not very good even by the standard set by it’s source material.

It’s worse than you can even imagine.

Notes:

1.  "Saga of a Star World" (or "Battlestar Galactica") is the pilot for the American science fiction television series of Battlestar Galactica which was produced in 1978 by Glen A. Larson.  A re-edit of the episode was released theatrically as Battlestar Galactica in Canada, Australia and some countries in Europe and Latin America before the television series aired in the U.S., in order to help recoup its high production costs.  Later, in May 1979, the feature-film edit was also released in the U.S.

 

Sources:

All Images Found Via Google Image Search

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

ICFIFC: The Children (1980)

Certain tropes in horror resonate better than others and one that works almost every time is the creepy kids as a plot device.  Tonight is one of the freakier uses of that premise.  The Children (a.k.a. The Children of Ravensback) is a 1980 low budget horror film, written and produced by Carlton J. Albright.  The movie is about five children in a small town who, thanks to a yellow toxic cloud, who got transformed into bloodless zombies with black fingernails who microwave every living thing they put their hands on.  The surviving adults of the town must attempt to put a stop to them.  The film is currently being distributed by Troma Entertainment.


The Children (1980)

  • Genre: Horror – Sci-Fi
  • Directed: Max Kalmanowicz
  • Produced:
    • Carlton J. Albright 
    • Max Kalmanowicz 
    • Edward Terry
  • Written:
    • Carlton J. Albright 
    • Edward Terry
  • Starring: Martin Shakar, Gil Rogers, Gale Garnett, Shannon Bolin, Tracy Griswold, Joy Glaccum, Jeptha Evans, Clara Evans, Sarah Albright, Nathanael Albright, Julie Carrier, Michelle La Mothe, Edward Terry, Peter Maloney, Jessie Abrams, Rita Montone, John P. Codiglia, Martin Brennan
  • Music: Harry Manfredini
  • Cinematography: Barry Abrams
  • Editing: Nikki Wessling
  • Studio: Albright Films Inc.
  • Distributed:
    • World Northal  
    • Pan-Canadian Film Distributors  
    • Vestron Video  
    • Troma Team Video  
    • Videoasia  
    • Alpha Video Limited  
    • Intervision Video  
    • Rhino Home Video  
    • Showtime
  • Rated:
  • Release Date: 13 June 1980 (USA)
  • Running Time: 93 minutes
  • Country: USA
  • Language: English

The movie is set in the fictional New England town of Ravensback.  After a couple of local chemical plant workers named Jim and Slim decide to call it a day and head for the bar.  Unfortunately a large build up of pressure causes a yellow toxic cloud that drifts across the ground from a leak in one of the pipes to form.  Meanwhile, a school bus is taking children home.  After dropping one child off, Kathy, there are only five children left on the bus: Paul MacKenize, Jenny Freemont, Ellen Chandler, Tommy Button, and Janet Shore.  Kathy's mom arrives to pick her up and drives pass the school bus.  She waves to the children, as they are singing road songs.  Suddenly the bus passes through the toxic cloud.  Kathy arrives home, but the school bus is detained somewhere.

After Billy Hart, the local sheriff, finds the idling bus abandoned near a cemetery, and the children's possessions still there, he radios to his deputy Harry Timmons, and Molly, an older woman who works at the local general store and acts as the part-time police dispatcher.  Reluctantly, Timmons sets up a roadblock at the intersection of the main highway and the lone road leading into town, recruiting a couple of armed locals, believing that the children were possibly victims of kidnapping.

Meanwhile, Dr. Joyce Gould, Tommy's mother's female lover, who's hostile towards the sheriff for no reason goes with him to investigates.  She hops on the school bus where she finds Tommy's things onboard.  She ends up at the cemetery, goes looking for him, but she ran up to a nearby gravestone and falls over on the bus driver's badly burnt corpse.  Soon after, when Tommy approaches Joyce she gives him a hug.  When they embrace, Joyce suddenly screams while yellow steam comes from Tommy's hands, and burns Joyce alive before Tommy finally releases her corroded body and trudges on.

Later, Ellen sneaks through the woods near a road where John Freemont, father of Jenny, is working on his car.  Sheriff Hart gives him a lift home, while Ellen, after watches them unnoticed and decides to move along, and finally goes home where she encounters her mother, Rita to the door to Ellen's outstretched arms to hug her—before being incinerate and roasted to death.  Her father, Bob, then comes to the door and is shocked at the spectacle.  Ellen goes to hug him, but he backs away from her into the house while she follows.

Paul MacKenize comes home and startles his sister.  He then starts walking towards her with his arms outstretched while she backs away from him, she slaps him in the face, trying to rouse him from his apparent trance.  They wind up in a workroom part of the house where, off-camera, he kills her as she screams.  Paul's father, Cyrus, is then killed after discovering Paul with her body.

While John and Billy are on the road, they encounter Janet Shore standing in the middle of road, who is dazed like the other zombified children, pale-faced and apparently stunned.  They put her in the car to drive her home.  It turns out that Janet has not yet fully transformed into a radioactive zombie, but she gradually changes into one during the ride (as evidenced by her fingernails shown turning black).  After they stop, she attacks Sheriff Hart, who is able to dodge her while she flees the vicinity.

Eventually, the zombified Ellen, Tommy, and Paul meet and walk together to congregate.  They are spotted by Deputy Timmons, who radios the station, but is soon killed.  The three children converge in front of the general store where an overjoyed (and misguided) Molly comes outside to hug them—and is (in typical form) roasted to death.

Meanwhile, John and Billy are checking other homes in the area, finding the occupants dead in much the same way.  They go to John's home to meet his pregnant wife, Cathy and his younger son, Clarkie.  They are relieved that Cathy and Clarkie are unharmed.  John begins to give orders, but does not divulge any information to Cathy or Clarkie.

The five wandering little zombies approach the house once they spot the people inside.  Jenny attempts to hug Cathy, but John runs out of the house and pulls her away in time.  Meanwhile, Paul climbs to the upper level of the house and is let through the window by Clarkie (who does not realize what Paul is).  They play a quiet game of tag, after Clarkie hides in his closet, Paul kills him in typical form.

Billy shoots the zombies with his pistol, but the bullets have no effect on them.  Cathy, who is still not aware of the children's zombified state, knocks Billy out with a glass object, in order to stop him from shooting them.  She then finds Clarkie's roasted body, and tells John, who runs upstairs and tearfully puts the child's body back to bed.

Paul then attacks the little monsters, while Billy instinctively picks up a replica Katana and chops off both Paul's hands as he howls in pain, which kills Paul while the fingernails on his severed hands reverts back to normal.  Ellen then breaks through one of the windows with one hand, which is immediately severed by Billy, causing her to apparently die.  Billy and John then go outside, with the sword in hand, to find the rest of the zombies.  The remaining three zombies—Tommy, Janet, and Jenny—converge at the upper level of the barn on the property, where they are found by John and Billy who, despite Jenny's pleas to John, are promptly dismembered and killed.

While an exhausted John collapses to the ground near the barn, Billy wearily goes to his car to radio for help—while Ellen suddenly rises from the back seat who grabs Billy by the neck and roasts him to death.  John hears Billy's screaming and approaches with his sword to finish Ellen, after which he flings his sword in disgust, and collapses into a deep sleep next to Billy's corpse.

The next morning, Cathy yells to a still-sleeping John that "it's time", he wakes up and runs frantically into the house to help her deliver their third child.  As they are delivering the baby, the camera pans over all of the dead bodies (except Clarkie's) showing Sheriff Hart's corpse, all five of the unfortunate children laying peacefully and hacked up.  After the baby is delivered, John is aghast and wide-eyed as he notices that his newborn child has black fingernails.

And you just thought little kids had sticky hands.

Sources:

All Images Found Via Google Image Search