Among the curated horror movies currently available on SHUDDER is the mid-70s ‘erotic’ (read, naked women) horror flick Vampyres.

Hailing from the UK, Vampyres centers on a pair of lesbian vampires living in a dilapidated country manor, the same used for the exterior shots of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and many Hammer productions, where, with carnal seduction, they lure unsuspecting victims.

One weeknight after I have finished my writing for the evening, I usually like to relax by watching videos before bed and I have watched at least the first act of Vampyres and witnessed perhaps the worst serious sex scene committed to celluloid. I literally laughed out loud when the couple began ‘making out’ because it looked so clumsy, so fumbling that I was immediately remined of the comedic version of the scene in Syfy’s series Resident Alien, and yet this was supposed to be titillating rather than laughable.

What is crystal clear is that the film has no characters. Oh, actors come in, deliver lines, and fumble at each other nude bodies, they do not portray any sort of actual person. “Ted” in the first act picks up one of the vampires, Fran, while she pretends to be hitchhiking. We are supposed to believe that she seduces him but without any convincing dialog it’s just two people who decide to go to her house and screw. Ted has no motivation beyond his supposed attraction to Fran. He wasn’t coming from anywhere, or going to any place on his drive, he exists only to have scenes with a vampire. Scene after scene is devoid of any motivation on the character’s part. People do things to achieve goal that serve their needs the exterior reflecting the interior here they just get wine glasses, drink, and screw without anything beyond the walls of the set existing.

I can see why I have never heard of this movie.

As part of the Ozploitation cycle of cinema 1979’s Thirst is low on budget but big on concept.

The film centers on Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) a successful businesswoman about of take a several week vacation but instead is kidnapped by a mysterious cult-like organization, The Brotherhood, taking advantage of her expected absence to indoctrinate her into their lifestyle of modern vampirism.

The Brotherhood is riven by factions, all who wants Kate to fully embrace their lifestyles, but who differ in what methods that consider acceptable with Dr. Fraser (David Hemmings) more reverential of Kate’s ancestry while Dr Gauss (Henry Silva) and others are willing to using dangerous conditioning methods even if Kate’s sanity shatters.

Directed by Rod Hardy and photographed by Vince Morton Thirstis competently made and achieves quite a bit on tis limited budgets. It never answers the question of The Brotherhood are gaining actual benefits from their dietary choices or if they are simply mad as such considerations are actual incidental to the thrust of the story and Kate’s struggle to retain her agency and identity. It is a pleasure that unlike several other films of the cycle there was no attempt to disguise the characters or the setting as American but instead the film is presented as natively Australian.

With an extended dream/nightmare sequence dominating the film’s second act Thirst is not a horror movie that relies upon ‘kills’ or ‘jump scare’ to provoke a reaction from its audience. Its sedate pace and its emphasis psychological threats over physical ones means it is not a film for everyone but its thematic treatment of industrialization and the wealthy literally cannibalizing the lower classes make this a very interesting movie that will have strong appeal to some.

I have now added to my ever-growing Blu-ray and DVD collection David Lynch’s 2001 protean production Mulholland Dr and it has been considering the nature of logical order in film and fiction.

Fiction generally behaves in accordance with its own internal and decipherable narrative logic that allows the reader or audience to suspend disbelief and accept the characters and events are credible representations of some reality. This spans the gauntlet from grounded ‘realistic’ dramas such as The Remains of the Day to fantastic and physics defying spectacles like Avengers: Endgame. The cause-and-effect logic of the story dictates the progression of the characters actions, emotions, and growth with a clear and understanding relationship between event and outcome.

Mulholland Dr abandons all sense of narrative logic in favor of dream logic. The audience is denied a firm, clear, foundation of logical rules by which the film operates leaving them swept by the currents of imagery, raw emotion, and sound into a whirlpool that each individual is solely responsible for interpreting. The film is most often compared directly to a dream where major events and sequences have only the barest of connecting narratives flowing freely from one to another with a logic that feels present but is forever just beyond discovery.

I cannot tell you what Mulholland Dr is about. I cannot give to you a definitive interpretation on what maybe reality and what may be dream if such a distinction even exists within its narrative. It is like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but with is cold clinical style replaced by one that is unsettling, disturbing, and even horrifying.

I have seen this film called the best horror movie of the early 2000s and it is hard to argue with that assessment. Horror works best when not only the characters but the audience is forced to face threatening events that defy understanding. The dead do not rise and feed upon the living, magical beasts do not prowl the night, and science has not produced monstrosities savaging the countryside. But eventually in horror films and fiction the new rules are discovered, the vampire must rest on earth from its grave, the uncompleted tasked finished so the spirits my rest, the nature of the beast is understood and through that defeated returning the world to an order that again rational. Mulholland Drnever resolves its internal logical, the world unbalanced is never again rational, and the unsettled horror of a cold uncaring universe that beyond understanding remains, haunting the audience far beyond the film’s 146-minute running time.

I do not pretend to understand Lynch’s vision but I do feel it and that I think that was his intent all along.

The 80s were a good time and a bad time for horror films. The monumental success in the late 70s of Halloween inspired innumerable low budget film makers and studios that a cheap slasher was the sure path to box office riches producing a crop of under-funded knockoffs that possessed none of the style of the films they were following. 1980 brought the rip-off production Prom Nightwhich had the benefit of starring Jamie Lee Curtis who had starred Halloween but other than that had precious little to offer.

Six years later a wholly different production under the title The Haunting of Hamilton High retooled and retitled itself in Hello Mary Lou; Prom Night 2 a story without any connection to the first Prom Night save that take place in the same high school. Both films are Canadian productions that attempt to present their locals as standard Americana but I could swear that in Prom Night 2 when money is flashed it has a clearly Canadian appearance.

The plot of Prom Night 2 is fairly straight forward, Mary Lou Maloney, an enthusiastic sinner of a high school girl, is killed in an accident on Prom night 1957 before she can be crown as prom queen and 30 years later her vengeful and still sinful spirit descends on the high school thirsting for sex, violence, and her crown.

This is film is a mess.

It rips off so many themes and shots and concepts from other movies that there is scarcely anything in it which it can claim as its own. Trying to merge ideas from The Exorcist, Carrie, and Nightmare on Elm Street proved to be a fool’s errand and aside from Lisa Schrage as Mary Lou and perhaps Michael Ironside there is little to praise in the acting presented to us. The lines are delivered without conviction or credibility while being shot in a flat over-lit video style. There is nothing to recommend this film and its gratuitous use of female nudity reveals not only the actresses but the production desperate attempt to drawn in an audience as low class as the production itself.

Hello Mary Lou; Prom Night 2 is currently streaming on Shudder.

With Saint Patrick’s Day fast approaching I was in the mood for some Irish themed horror and something a little more authentic that any film of the Leprechaun franchise. Sunday night I treated myself the 2017’s Irish Gothic horror The Lodgers.

Set in the Irish countryside following World War I the story centers on fraternal twins Rachel and Edward who live in an isolated and decaying manor trapped by a family superstition or curse that compels them to always be in their beds by midnight, never admit a stranger to the home, and never abandon one another. The film opens on their 18th birthday and an unrevealed expectation that is linked to their coming of age. Into this creepy atmospheric situation comes Sean recently returned home from the war facing the dual challenges of having lost a leg and being seen as a traitor for her service to the hated English. Rachel’s blossoming sexual desires, Edward’s terror of leaving the house day or night, the family’s non-existent finances, and Sean’s attraction to Rachel combine for an explosive mixture that threatens the twins with the exposure of their actual natures.

There are many styles of horror films, rampaging monsters, murderous masked killers, and the slow burn mood piece of which The Lodgers falls neatly into. The film is not one with an exaggerated body county and the effects are there to create unsettling imagery rather than memorable kills. It is a film that unwinds with its characters and as each secret is pulled unwillingly from them. Directed by Brian O’Malley The Lodgers takes it’s time in revealing its truths trusting that the audience will be intrigued by the mystery and the dreamlike haunting imagery beautifully photographed by cinematographer Richard Kendrick. The performances by Charlotte Vega and Bill Milner are suitably internalized, matching the gothic nature of the story’s themes of isolation, both physical and social, and repressed nature of the characters.

With a brief running time of 92 minutes The Lodgers does not overstay its welcome nor needlessly meander but rather tells its tale with clean plotting that doesn’t disrupt its sedate pacing. While some reviewers have complained that the films has few ‘scares’ I enjoy a film that expects moods to carry more than a suddenly startling image or sound.

The Lodgers is not for everyone. If your tastes in horror expects more excitement than slow tension it is likely not to your taste but for people who enjoyed Robert Wise’s The Haunting this may be more to their liking.

Update: The Lodger is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Streaming Review: House (1977)

On paper the plot of Japan’s 1977’s unique horror film House is deceptively simple. Seven teenage girls spending their summer vacation in a remote and isolated house face deadly supernatural peril. Variations on this set-up have prompted everything from competent well crafted horror film to direct to video exploitive fare but nothing is like Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House.

Most movies take extraordinary care to never spoil the illusion of reality they are trying to achieve, to never remind the audiences that there are in fact watching a film but written by Chiho Katura and directed by Obayashi House, leaning heavily into the artifice of filmmaking, never lets you forget that this is fact entirely artificial. From obvious stages, painted backdrops for landscapes, animated sequences, to characters interacting with a diegetic backstory flashback House revels in shattering the facade between the art and the observer.

The artificiality is further enhanced by the names for the seven teenage girls with each only referred by a nickname that typifies that girl’s defining characteristic, Gorgeous for the beautiful daughter of a film composer, Prof for the girl drawn to intellectual talents, Kung Fu for the martial artist and athlete, Fantasy for the dreamer and so on. The characters are deliberately

Kumiko Oba (“Fantasy”), Masayo Miyako (“Sweet”), Eriko Tanaka (“Melody”), Kimiko Ikegami (“Gorgeous”), Ai Matsubara (“Prof”), Mieko Sato (“Mac”), Miki Jinbo (“Kung Fu”); seated: Yoko Minamida (“Gorgeous’s Aunt”)

drawn in the most simplistic terms existing as archetypes versus fully realized and motivated people but it is clearly a deliberate choice by the writer and director rather than a deficit of talent on either of their parts.

The resulting film is unique, frenetic, and hallucinatory, as though the filmmakers were simultaneously riding a sugar-high while tripping on LSD.

House is a difficult film to either recommend or to dissuade anyone from watching as it is so unique and unlike any other horror movie that everyone person watching it is liable to have a reaction as unique as the film itself. It is the truest melding of ‘art house’ with the horror genre I have ever experienced making such films a Midsommar or The Wicker Man appear as sedate and conventional as 70s prime time dramas. If you have a taste for experimental film and the description ‘Lynchian’ is familiar and not a turn-off then Obayashi’s House may be just right for you.

House is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

One of my recent podcast discoveries, Junk Food Cinema, recently dedicated an episode to the 1983 slasher movie Sleepaway Camp. Near the start of the episode the hosts recommended if you had not seen the movie to watch it before diving into the podcast and since I knew it was currently streaming on Shudder that is exactly what I did. It should be noted that the hosts do not consider Sleepaway Camp  a good movie, in fact they were covering it per a patron request, but they praised it final 10 seconds.

Sleepaway Camp is very much like Friday the 13th in that people at a summer camp are being killed by an unknown person and part of the film’s twist is who is the killer. Much like that original Friday film the killer’s motivation is tied to events years earlier seen at that start of the film. Unlike Friday every single person killed is a horrible human being which in many ways places audience sympathies, if there are any, smack on the killer’s side.

Save for the final shot the film has no originality in the cinematography with flat lighting, uninspired composition, and no real use of depth of field. The writing is terrible with some of the least lifelike dialog that has ever assaulted my ears and with character actions and reactions utterly disconnected from any semblance of actual human behavior. None of the performers have the skill to make the lines sound even close to credible.

In an unusual twist for this sort of production the women and girls are not filmed in a fetishistic manner but there is certainly the impression that men and boys are.

I have heard that this film has become a cult staple among the gay horror film community and on one level I can understand it. The killer’s eventual motivation is revealed to be in part revenge for gender identity bullying and that sort of revenge fantasy could be enjoyable in a power claim manner. However, the revelation of the killer and their motivation walks the familiar ground of transphobia.

Sleepaway Camp is not a film I can recommend other than as an exercise in understanding aspects of cult cinema. If you decide to watch it you may want to have twitter or a book handy to read while you wait for the next kill to take place.