Galaxy of Horrors

This sci fi horror anthology really delivered some interesting stuff, I have to say. It was really solid and held my attention throughout. As with most anthology films, there were some hits and misses. However, the overall experience was positive, engaging, and presented some concepts and storylines that I had not seen before. I love that.

I'm very happy that these folks had a vehicle to get their short films out into the world and I was happy that the Exploding Heads Horror Movie Podcast gave me the heads up about it.






Wraparound Segment (dir. Justin McConnell)
Maybe notthe most engaging segment - it was really just a throughput to the end goal of seeing the videos. However, it was still interesting and did what it was meant to do.

Eden (dir. Todd Cobery)
Dystopian future fun with some interesting visuals and both practical and 3D effects. Pretty solid. 










Iris (dir. Richard Karpala)
High concept goodness. A grand and simple morality play with heavy big brother overtones.





Flesh Computer (dir. Ethan Shaftel)
Not really my cup of tea, but it had enough interesting visuals to keep me engaged even if i didn't find the story to be to my liking.



Pathos (dir. Fabio Prati, Dennis Cabella and Marcello Ercole)
Very BRAZIL in feel. One of those, "I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm interested," sorts of segments.





Eveless (dir. Antonio Padovan)
Another that slipped a bit, but this two man act was interesting for sure.

They Will All Die In Space (dir. Javier Chillon)
Reminded me of OUTLAND (1981) a bit. Solid sci fi.




Entity (dir. Andrew Desmond)
Whoa. That was really strange. I liked it. :)







Kingz (dir. Benni Diez and Marinko Spahic)
Wild visuals, cool action choreography, and a odd little plot made this a fun watch for sure. Pretty wild.







 All in all, I believe this is well worth a viddy. Currently available on AMAZON PRIME.

XX

>> AS SPOILER FREE AS I CAN BE <<

 

I was finally able to sit down and watch XX - the film shouted about A LOT before it came out.
"LOOK! A film with nothing but FEMALE DIRECTORS!"

I TOTALLY get it, but it made me sad to think we live in a world where we need to do this sort of thing. A world where it's not just DIRECTORS WHO ARE GOOD. I think it's a sad state of affairs, to be honest. It's another sign that humans are still fighting ridiculous battles that really should have left us ages ago.

Know what's NOT ridiculous however? This film. XX was a fun and entertaining watch that I really enjoyed. 

This anthology had five main stories directed by five different directors:

Roxanne Benjamin ... (segment "Don't Fall") (screen writer / Director)

a writer and Director on SOUTHBOUND and a Producer on the VHS series. 

Karyn Kusama ... (segment "Her Only Living Son") (screen writer / Director)

Director of Aeon Flux, Jennifer's Body, and a few episodes of Man in the High Castle

St. Vincent ... (segment "The Birthday Cake") (as Annie Clark) (screen writer / Director)

relatively new to the game, really. Mostly known for her St Vincent music work

Jovanka Vuckovic ... (segment "The Box") (screen writer / Director)

writer and Director of several shorts and former Big Wig and writer over at FANGORIA magazine.

The film went with a somewhat chilling little Brother's Quay-like stop action creepfest as it's wrapper instead of having another story wrap the whole of it. This really worked for me. It was fun to see the little strange narratives play out in between the stories.

The stories themselves were solid overall, though I think only on of the segments was classic "HORROR" while the others were more...disturbing than anything else. Again, well done and engaging - they all really held my interest.

Maybe this was the "female" feel of the story writing and direction? I'm not sure. All but one of the segments was very "female-centric" as far as the main character and their journey. Well...all of them had that, really. It's just that one of the destinations was...more feral than the others. :::grin:::

I don't even want to go into story lines for this spoiler free review. That would ruin some of the stories for sure. I'm just going to say that I loved something about every story and that the acting was strong in every one as well. 

I was happily surprised to see Melanie Lynskey in here. Fantastic and interesting as usual.

I also enjoyed seeing Angela Trimbur. I saw her DANCE LIKE NOBODY'S WATCHING segment and I have to say that I have a little crush on her. :::sigh:::  :)

I think your best bet for watching this film is going into it expecting something more along the lines of "chilling" rather than "horrifying" for the most part. The stories are strong, the acting is grand, and the direction is interesting in every case. I wish i purchased the VOD version as soon as it was available instead of waiting so long. I would not have been disappointed.

Currently available on NETFLIX.

Southbound

THIS IS A SPOILER FREE POST - AS USUAL.

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I've been sticking to my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheHorrorSho/) and my Twitter page (https://twitter.com/TheHorrorSho)  and leaving the blog alone for the most part.

However, last night I saw SOUTHBOUND and I thought I'd write a little short post about it. Not that anyone reads this blog, but.....  :::grin::

I really enjoyed this new format for a VHS-style anthology. While I loved most of the VHS saga, I was starting to get a bit jaded with the format. It was starting to become a bit repetitive. This Southbound style is fun and equally based in storytelling and the anthology style, but the flow was much stronger - going from story to story seamlessly without stopping at the "station" every time between segments. Loved that aspect. I was thinking that this story style could be played out in various places in future releases (...he said, hoping they make more!) and not just out in the desert, though that was a fun little spot. This could easily work in a rundown area of a city, some snowy wasteland, or even in a jungle paradise.

If you have not seen the trailer yet, don't watch it! While it doesn't give anything away, it had to show a lot to get viewers hooked in, so I would have preferred to go in a bit more cold than I did. It would have been fun if they shot something special for the trailer that tied in with the film, but didn't give the goods of the stories within. But...you know...I went looking for it because I thought the trailer was so cool, so....


Southbound is a rather standard horror anthology for the most part. Folks are introduced (again, seamlessly) and you watch as they go through their own little, nasty story. The writing is fun and entertaining. The characters are a good mix of likable and unlikable, so you don't get caught up in a "set 'em up, knock 'em down" mentality.



The film was made by some familiar folks. The Directors this round were Roxanne Benjamin,  David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath, and Radio Silence - many of the same folks involved with the VHS series. The writers were many of the same folks as well. Roxanne Benjamin, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, David Bruckner, Susan Burke, Dallas Richard Hallam (as Dallas Hallam), and Patrick Horvath.

I just like calling out these folks when I like a film. :) Credit where credit is due.

So...the honest part now that all the sycophantic, butt kissing is over. hehehe

When I finished the film last night (mind you, after tons of yard work both Saturday and Sunday that wore me out physically)  I said, "Well...yeah...that was good, I guess. Not super strong...but good. I feel good about dropping $7 on it and would probably do it again if I had the choice." I wasn't blown away like I was when I saw VHS in the theater, but I wasn't demanding my 90 minutes back, either.

HOWEVER, when I woke up this morning and thought about it again when describing it to a Horror Friend of mine, I told her that it really stuck with me. In that haunting, mind worm way. The visuals and situations swam around in my brain and I re-thought a few things and had myself a few chuckles whenI remembered how things played out. Most of my malaise about the outcome of watching was due to me being SO excited about the film - especially since it was being released on my birthday. I over-hyped it in my head. Thinking back, it was a super strong film with a great story, good acting, and some scenes that had me wincing and bashing my foot on the floor. (...in a good way.) :)

My suggestion -  
Go into SOUTHBOUND as cold as you can, avoiding the trailer and other reviews that go deep into the stories. Let it wash over you and pay attention. It's a great film and well worth a watch. 

Great work, Folks!  I'm looking forward to revisiting this style in the near future!

Tales of Halloween

A huge thank you to the makers of TALES OF HALLOWEEN. Huge.

I had a lot of fun watching this film. Many laugh out loud moments. Some grand horror moments. I'm super happy about making this purchase and...carving out some time to watch it.


Like many films before, this is a classic horror anthology. Ten tales to thrill. It's not super dark. It actually has many comedy moments and is kept light throughout. Out of the 10, only one didn't fill me with absolute glee - it only filled me with 80% glee. :)

I won't bore you with more. Suffice it to say that I love this film and will be adding it to my Halloween film watching list every year along side TRICK OR TREAT, CREEPSHOW, and my NIGHT GALLERY BluRays!!! :)

Do yourself a favor - watch this RIGHT AWAY. Invite friends! Order pizza, make popcorn....maybe serve a few adult beverages and have a ton of fun.  So good!

Keep an eye open for the amazing cameos as well!

Great work by some great people including.....

Directed by

Darren Lynn Bousman ... (segment "The Night Billy Raised Hell")
Axelle Carolyn ... (segment "Grimm Grinning Ghost")
Adam Gierasch ... (segment "Trick")
Andrew Kasch ... (segment "This Means War")
Neil Marshall ... (segment "Bad Seed")
Lucky McKee ... (segment "Ding Dong")
Mike Mendez ... (segment "Friday the 31st")
Dave Parker ... (segment "Sweet Tooth")
Ryan Schifrin ... (segment "The Ransom of Rusty Rex")
John Skipp ... (segment "This Means War")
Paul Solet ... (segment "The Weak and the Wicked")

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)

Axelle Carolyn ... (segment "Grimm Grinning Ghost")
Andrew Kasch ... (segment "This Means War")
Neil Marshall ... (segment "Bad Seed")
Lucky McKee ... (segment "Ding Dong")
Mike Mendez ... (segment "Friday the 31st")
Dave Parker ... (segment "Sweet Tooth")
Ryan Schifrin ... (segment "The Ransom of Rusty Rex")
Clint Sears ... (segment "The Night Billy Raised Hell")
John Skipp ... (segment "This Means War")

Recent Anthology Films

I love a good horror anthology film. Love love love 'em.
Some past faves have been...


 BLACK SABBATH - The Drop Of Water still haunts my subconscious. So grand. Fantastic Bava.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) - Cushing. Peter Cushing. :)

 THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD - Waxwork love. Oh...and more Cushing, Lee and Pitt! 

CREEPSHOW - "Where's my cake, Bedelia?! It's Father's Day...and I want my CAKE!"

I'm sure I could go on if I wasn't being sleepy and lazy, but you know the drill. You have a central tale and several small tales wrapped within it. When done properly, you get a "campfire tales" feel going. Scary stories told to get the goosebumps going. I love them.



Well, this recent crop of campfire tales that we have rolling in now fills me with a similar feeling. Sure, the general feel has been updated and usually involves some sort of tech - smartphone or hand held cameras all the rage, of course. But, when the story is solid and the overall tale is well told, it can be a lot of fun.

There is a bit of backlash going against them now. I, of course, blame the internet in general. People are safe behind their computers and tick-tack their hate behind a mask of anonymity. I admit it - I've done it myself, but I've cured myself. How? I simply say, "Well, at least THEY have something completed and out in the world to VIEW. You can talk crap about their work when your work doesn't consist of corporate logos and business magazine adverts, Johnson!" That seemed to do it for me and I have far more compassion for creative works now. :)

The VHS movies make me happy. I mean, come on. You have the creepy house thing going for the wrap stories, then you have a series of nightmares that unfold one after one telling tale after tale of horrific goodness. Hell, nothing wrong with that. Now, I get that some people can't take the camera work and that's fine. But...just don't watch it. To me, it's like someone saying, "I fucking HATE movies about dogs!" Then, they watch Benji and just rail against it. LOL!   They point out that there is a Skype conversation in the film and wag their fingers at it and say tisk tisk. Um...do you mean the same segment that has a woman thinking her house is haunted and seeing some HELLA CREEPY CRAP in her apartment?!?!?!  WHY are you bringing the format into play here? It's creepy ghost coolness! Gimmie more and stop bringing formats into it. What if one of the segments was really BETA and not VHS? Who gives a shit?  :)

Sign me up for more of these, man.

And THE ABCs OF DEATH was a lot of fun as well. I'll be right there when the second one comes out. 26 letters. 26 Directors. Numerous, nasty ways to die with very creative story lines and styles. Awesome. Yet, there were people that said, "There were 26 little stories in this film - some were like five minutes long!" Uh...yeah....2 hour film....26 films based on the alphabet....get it?  Did they expect a 13 hour film packed with 30 minute movies? Again, I loved this format and thought it was energetic and interesting. My only regret was that I didn't make it out to a theater to see it with a crowd...though watching it on VOD at home around 11pm with my home made popcorn and a glass (...or two...) of good whiskey was a fun way to watch as well.

The Theater Bizarre was a fun ride as well. A slightly odd wrap segment with fun and entertaining short tales unfolding for us to view. Sure thing - give 'em to me.
 

While I do love a 90 minute story format, these small anthology films allow for some fun horror exploration on a smaller level. This allows for a story to get in, tell it's tale and get out. Tight ideas that are in and out like nightmare ninjas. I totally dig the format. It also allows for a different flow. A faster delivery of the message or punchline.

Long and the short - you have some super talented folks making films. They love making these films and love that we love to watch them. They long to entertain us. They make a real effort to create things that we like while holding on to the spark that makes them who they are.

You have the right to dislike the work, sure. You could hate it as well. However, keep in mind that these are just works of fiction meant to entertain. Save the venom for people who beat people and animals, perhaps.

Let's celebrate the fact that people can give us genre goodness and that we can see it in the theater or the comfort of our homes. I, for one, love that...so very much.

I'll hop down off my soapbox now. I think I'll go stream some of the VHS segments again.

The Theatre Bizarre (2011)

The Theatre Bizarre was another Netflix special - tossed on as a background film while I was doing other things. It turned out to be another one that I stopped and put on when I could actually sit and watch it.

We have another anthology venture here. A woman gets drawn to this strange theater and slips inside. Mannequins and dummies populate seats here and there. She takes a seat herself and Udo Kier walks onto the stage in some of the most creepy dummy makeup I've seen in a while. He introduces the first act and additional dummies come to life on stage...and away we go.

I won't go into much more. We have a series of short horror films presented well, shot well and written well for the most part. The stories are interesting and engaging and well worth a viddy. Sort of like the old HITCHHIKER HBO show from back in the day. Nothing "brilliant", but nothing I wish I had my life back from either.

On Netflix streaming at the time of this post.  Check it!


Directors:

Douglas Buck ... (segment "The Accident")
Buddy Giovinazzo ... (segment "I Love You")
David Gregory ... (segment "Sweets")
Karim Hussain ... (segment "Vision Stains")
Jeremy Kasten ... (framing segments)
Tom Savini ... (segment "Wet Dreams")
Richard Stanley ... (segment "The Mother Of Toads")

S-VHS (V/H/S 2)

Sooooo....who else is super excited about S-VHS?!?!?!  Honestly, I was sad about the negatives being bantered around by some about both V/H/S and THE ABCs OF DEATH. Here we finally have some people trying to do something new and interesting in the horror realm and people railed against it.

But, as my wife says, people LOVE to hate things. Especially in this antiseptic, hidden world of the internet. Look at any site where people can put up photos or videos and you'll have a group loving them and another group ripping them apart. I guess that's why we live in America, right? :)

 

ANYWAY, give me more of this goodness any day! It's right up my ally and so much fun to watch.










This round features the directors:

Simon Barrett (segment "Tape 49")    Also featured in V/H/S and ABCs of Death

Jason Eisener (segment "Alien Abduction Slumber Party") Grindhouse / Hobo / Treevenge

Gareth Evans (segment "Safe Haven")

Gregg Hale (segment "A Ride in the Park") Blair Witch / Lovely Molly

Eduardo Sánchez (segment "A Ride in the Park") Blair Witch 1 & 2 / Lovely Molly

Timo Tjahjanto (segment "Safe Haven") ABCs

Adam Wingard (segment "Clinical Trials") Horrible Way to Die / You're Next / ABCs

http://bloody-disgusting.com/film/3201286/vhs-2-vhs-2/

The ABCs of DEATH

I'm a parent of two in house and another two "offsite", so my time is rather limited these days. A 2.5 year old and 8 week old will tend to crush your time management skills with ease. However I managed to carve out a little time for The ABCs of DEATH and I'm glad I did!

I was waiting for this little nugget to come out for a long while. The concept excited me and I really wanted to see how it all turned out. 26 different directors each taking a letter of the alphabet and coming up with a death cause that starts with it. I was in. It's wild and strange and epic in scope. While some may find it hard to watch, I thought it was a fun little ride.







Now, I know for a fact that many people will find things to hate about the film as a whole or the sum of it's parts, but I have to defend it 100%. There are so many things that go into making something of this nature. You get a letter - let's say it's C - and you have to come up with a cause of death that fits it. You can go with the obvious, like CHAINSAW and have a madman kill someone with it, but where's the fun in that? :)  The directors and writers really managed to come up with some interesting items here.




And the reveals are fun as well. The title card and director for each little story comes AFTER the story plays. This way, you're not sure WHAT you are going to see before you see it. You know what letter you're on, but don't know what was chosen. I loved that. Some of them were real wild choices and I dug them.

 

Slight spoiler warning here - I'm going to talk through some of the stories.






There were some stand outs in my mind. Some that really were wild, gross, or well shot. D is for Dogfight really got me. Slow motion and fantastic lighting with no dialogue. Really dug it even though I'm not sure I totally got it. It really didn't matter - it was interesting. I think that happened a lot in this film. There were times where I really didn't understand what I just saw, but I was still happy that I saw it. :)



F is for Fart fell into that range. It was SUPER light and SUPER silly, but as a fan of the super-gore films MUTANT GIRL SQUAD, MACHINE GIRL and TOKYO GORE POLICE, this was something I could still watch and grin at even though it fell towards the weaker end of the ABCs spectrum.




The stories ran the spectrum for sure. Serious, disgusting body horror at one moment switching to strange, furry anthropomorphic animals in another moment, then right into a gore filled nightmare or artistic surreal vision in another.

While this film is NOT for everyone, it's well worth a viewing for those with a penchant for the strange, new and different. Be warned, however - you're not going to be seeing a narrative, straight horror film. This is an anthology of 26 - yes, TWENTY-SIX - short films strung together by one thing only - Death.

Do you dare watch? 
Can you take it? 
Are you artsy enough to get it?  :) 

I viewed this through Amazon Streaming and it worked like a dream. Check it!

If you get a chance to watch it, do let me know what you think!