AM1200

Well this was a nice little find for a rainy Sunday. And thanks to my crazy, motorcycle metal moshin' kangaroo man Craig for making me aware of this film, which I had never heard of before today, which is weird because it's Lovecraft inspired and how the hell does someone make a Lovecraft film without my knowing about it? This came out, like, three years ago and I'm just now hearing about it. I have fallen out of the loop, big time. 

However, in my defense, I have seen all of the other films on this list, the link to which Craig posted earlier today. Well, all but one, the one called Nobody. Never heard of that one either.

Anyway...

Potato-faced, balding businessman Sam Larson has just embezzled the shit out of some Silicon Valley bigwigs or something and bugs the fuck out of Dodge after his partner in crime sticks a gun under his chin and repaints the ceiling tiles. Sam is guilt ridden, but not so very badly that he considers turning around Marion Crane style and turning himself in. Shit, who'd miss him anyway? He has all the sex appeal of an orphan sock, his solid whitebread body about as memorable as a Pink Pearl rectangular eraser, the kind of guy who habitually wears khakis on his day off and has no clue how weird his butt looks.

After driving into the foothills of Northern California, Sleepy Sam nearly blows a guardrail due to the lack of Braille Bumps on the old dusty highway. Striking out on foot after stalling his car, he comes upon this radio station:

Now, Sam has just heard a distress call being transmitted from this very radio station not five minutes earlier, begging anyone within earshot to respond to an immediate medical emergency. Sam couldn't possibly care less about anyone's well being and has no plans to respond to anyone, emergency or no. However, the radio station has a phone, and Sam needs a tow truck STAT. Sam, who apparently knows nothing about ancient oceanic deities or anagrams,  heads on up the hill instead of staying inside of his locked car and waiting for daybreak.

For those playing along at home, Mount Zephon is mentioned in the Bible and was/is the home of a storm god. Also KBAL = cabal, and the use of "our" should immediately alert the astute that this ain't no fucking Happy Sunbeam Bible camp shit going on around here.

Moving on.

Sam gets to the radio station and finds this:

A seemingly dead DJ handcuffed to a chain link fence. Except he's not dead. Unfortunately, he's also not Rush Limbaugh. But he comes to and starts blathering incoherent, psychotic drivel... which means he may actually be Rush Limbaugh after all. He's insistent that none of this was his idea, or his fault. He didn't want to do "this." The transmission has summoned something. Power surges and psychic shockwaves rumble through the building. Undead DJ Dude becomes a possible threat. Sam is on the defense. And the Something that's been summoned is getting very hungry...and tired of waiting. 

I need a better term for the type of intestinal distress this movie, and other well made films, inflict upon my bowels. I call it "diarrhea panic" because that's exactly what it does. It builds and builds, and the unease creeps in through your navel and lodges in your colon and squeezes it, and you sit there thinking:"Am I going to make it through the movie, or will I be forced to pause it for a bathroom break?" It's a feeling that precedes many a slasher movie jumpscare, but the major difference here is that the jumpscare never comes. This film is only 40 minutes long, and it doesn't have time to waste on cheapshit sucker punches. It's a Lovecraft film, and as such, it rightly prefers to slowly, inexorably build and never once releases. It's an exercise in Dread. And I don't mean it as an insult when I say that it's plain, simple and straightforward. It has a story to tell and does so efficiently. 

I haven't been this creeped out by a radio station since Pontypool. 

Remember kids: AM Radio is evil.