Baskin (2015)

"Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light."

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Yesterday I learned that if you were to place a map of the European and Asian continents - from England to Japan - on top of a map of the United States, I would be living in Turkey. Therefore, I am totally qualified not at all to review this film.

In lieu of a donut shop, five Turkish cops gather at the Fatty Flesh BBQ Tiki Cookout Hut all-you-can-eat chum bucket buffet. Seven minutes into this film and I can already feel a profound disturbance, as if a million militant Vegans all petulantly whined at once, and were suddenly exiting the theater in droves.

Seems like a typical night, five cops sitting around a seedy diner, swapping lies about how much sex they get...from transvestites, and chickens, and elephants. No I'm not kidding. They're boasting about losing their virginity to chickens. And elephants. But they're not gay, so don't you dare laugh at any miniscule suggestion that they might be, or the feisty curry pepper cop will beat the shit out of you.

There's a frog in the soapdish. Behold, the twenty minute mark! Turkey don't do lame jumpscares, homie. Turkey is doin' the Harbinger Of Doom all up in here at Shit O'clock on Fuckday afternoon, and frogs are some bad juju. Although I once found a frog in a laundry room, covered in pink lint and looking distinctly humiliated. I picked it up and carried it to the nearby river, and that's why the demons have not dragged me off to Hell yet. Truth.

Wow, Turkish synth-pop is way superior to the American crap. Whodda thunkit? Seriously, I'm kinda digging this tune. So are the guys, who have finished their food, capped their aggression and stowed the tall tales of sexual prowess back beneath their belts. It's Go-Time. A call for back up comes in and the guys are off, down a dark and seemingly endless road into the Turkish countryside towards a place called Inceagac.

Nice to know that drawing dicks is a universal thing. I guess. 8========D

Anyway, Inceagac doesn't seem to be an actual place. It's not a town or a nightclub or even a street. It's just a slight bend in the dirt road by the river. Despite its lack of landmarks or distinguishing features, Inceagac is generally believed to be a "bad place" where "bad things" happen. Exactly what those bad things are is never made clear. But the cops are in agreement - one does not simply walk into Inceagac, unless one wishes to henceforth wear his guts for garters.

But the cops don't walk into Inceagac. They drive into it. Actually, they crash into it. Actually actually, they hit someone standing in the middle of the road, full on fenderslam meaty thunk, and the van goes headfirst into the river. Our chicken fucking cops seem fine, not a scratch to be seen among them, but the radio is dead and they are forced to seek help from the Turkish cast of Deliverance who are chilling on the riverbank. Deliverance leads them to a Turkish Chainsaw Massacre shack which was once a police station and is now an abandoned shit-dump. Turkish Chainsaw shack is also sitting right on top of Hellraiser, which the guys discover the second they stupidly descend an endless spiral of stairs down into the deep dark below.

And then, holy shit. It's Silent Hill meets Caligula down there! Legless torsos swinging from meathooks in the ceiling, garbage bag-wrapped bodies being gangbanged doggystyle, snarly tangles of teeth and hair and eggs leaking black viscous shit all over the entrail splattered floor. It's full on Cannibal Ferox grossout zombie skullfuckers on squirty sex parade! It's the ultimate pig wallow in the filthiest shit pit in the lowest circle of Hell's composting toilet.

The guys are captured, tied to pillars in a large chamber and forced to take part in a ritual designed to force them to accept their fates. Oddly, the Master Of Ceremonies - a dwarfish, deformed monk who is revered by his tortured followers - seems to genuinely want to help the men find the path back to the light, but his way of "helping" them is brutal, degrading and filled with pain.

And I can't give away too much more or there would be no reason for you to watch it. Granted, if you have the constitution of a wilted pansy, you may not want to watch Baskin (which means "raid" in Turkish, btw) anyway. It looks like unapologetic snuff gore porn to the untutored eye, but stick with it and you'll realize you've just sat through Dante's Inferno via Triangle. And if you have no idea what that means, stick with James Wan's cornucopia of crapola. Yeah, I know that sounded arrogant. Fucking sue me.

The Monster (2016)

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47 Meters Down

Okay kids, time for another "Review As It Happens." This time out, it's Shorty Heaven Peters Abound Forty Seven Meters Down,.

Great. Someone drops their cell phone case and lit cigarette into the pool and tries to pass it off as an opening sequence.

And for some reason, the spilled Bloody Mary in the water spells out In The Deep. What, did Quentin Tarantino take over in post?

Okay, we've got an insecure, recently dumped brunette and a party-crazy blonde in Mexico. Who's going to die first? And who will remain to be sold into sex slavery by a Tijuana drug cartel?

Oh god I fucking hate this music. What is the proper name of the genre to which this stale, unimaginative, recycled synth shit is officially categorized under? Electronic Bubble Gum? Loser Jazz?

"Does my butt look okay?"

Okay, chicks meet hot Mexican guys, they make a diving date, you're pretty sure at this point that you've nailed Mandy Moore as the sole survivor because she doesn't kiss her date goodnight. But then, last minute tongue action! Mandy body slams the Mucho Macho Muchacho and rams her ovipositor down his esophagus! All bets are off!

Now it's the next day, and Mandy once again appears to be the chosen final girl as she frets over the shark infested waters and tells her blond friend how stupid and unsafe this is. Blond honey badger girl don't give a shit. Eye roll "like omg who cares about getting killed, Debbie?"

Oh god it's Matthew Modine and his weird face. Hey Matt, remember when I suggested Married To The Mob 2: Electric Boogaloo as your comeback vehicle and you blocked me? Shoulda taken my advice, home slice.

And our cast can't out-act a bucket of chum.

"Fish heads, fish heads,
roly-poly fish heads.
Fish heads, fish heads, 
eat them up, yum!"

Oh wow, we're in the ocean! And there's fish! Neato! Hey, lets go find Nemo and Dory!  But first, let me drop this borrowed digital camera straight down into a sharks mouth!

And we have our title! The winchy-thingy snaps, the cage plummets and the girls go screaming down into the darkness which is a whopping 47 meters deep! And all of the heavy stuff falls right on top of their shark cage, trapping them inside! And there's blood in the water and Mandy is hyperventilating and there's no sign of Spongebob anywhere! This totally blows, you guys!

Emaciated blond squeezes her way through cage bars and attempts to clear the debris away so fatass Mandy can escape. Like they're not both totally stick-thin enough to disappear if they turn profile, right? Matthew Modine demands that Blonde Bitch get back in the cage or he'll play Radiohead's The Bends. At least that's what I think he said.

Forty minutes in. Time to bare our souls to one another about our flaws and screwed up relationships and form a deeper bond as we sit blowing bubbles in the bottom of this fucking cage, waiting for Nacho Libre to save their girl-bait butts.

I'm beginning to suspect that this entire movie was created just so the director could point his camera up at the girls wet-suited, crack-flossing thongs and all of the jiggly white buttock flesh it cannot contain.

Fulci's Zombi 2.

Oxygen, draining! Sharks, hungry! Bars, breaking! Heart pumping determined percussion starts! It's HEROIC SACRIFICE TIME! And I have no idea which girl has just left the cage because this film is darker than a woodchucks asshole! Honey, just follow the glow of your whiteass legs up to the surface.

You know what this film needs? A zombie. I mean, besides Modine.

And the first kill clocks in at the 54 minute mark! And of course, it's a minority! Sharky don't like whitebread.

Okay, I'm pretty sure it's Mandy Moore who is making a swim for it. After all, she got dumped by her boyfriend and has been the voice of reason throughout the whole entire one hour so she has to prove how brave and strong and capable she is so she can return to the beach next summer for the sequel with total amped up feminine fearlessness! Right?

You're gonna need a bigger butt.

Who the fuck uses Home Depot hemp rope to pull a one ton cage up through the fucking ocean? No wonder you're all shark chow, stupid white people.

"Okay, Kate? We can't afford anymore CGI sharks, so we're adding a nitrogen narcosis subplot now. You will soon start hallucinating sharks because it's cheaper. Here are your spare oxygen tanks. Your buttcheeks will also serve as a flotation device."

Peachy. I'm running out of oxygen, I can't reach the spare tank and I've punctured my hand, releasing more blood into the water. What's next? Jeez, why didn't I just pull on a short skirt and some high heels and lose my virginity on the way down here too? Maybe if I ask nice, the shark will put on a hockey mask for the final scene?

The Shallows this ain't. Not even a wading pool.

Hmmm, die from decompression or die by being ripped apart by the razor sharp teeth of a great white shark? Guess which one I'm choosing?

Okay, 5 minutes apparently means 30 seconds when you're underwater. Oh wait, it was all a hallucination? Cop out piece of crap DooDoo Ex Machina BS. What is this, The Descent but with sharks?

Wow, okay, you're gonna end your movie like that? Well fuck you too, movie.

Beyond The Gates

Christine and I are back, having a cyber-slumber party in our internet pajamas. We may be 500 miles apart, but the smell of popcorn and nail polish is palpable. A recent and mutual appreciation for 2016's homage to John Carpenter's The Thing (and several thousand other horror movies, but mostly The Thing) made us nostalgic for the gritty, grainy horror movies of the 80s, with their garish covers tucked inside of sticky clamshell cases. We had so much fun, we decided to do it again. Christine suggested Beyond The Gates, a totally retro 80s groovin' horror flick if ever there was one. Starring the color scheme from Stuart Gordon's From Beyond, a Casio keyboard with the demo button stuck in the ON position, Barbara Fucking Crampton and a sweet, old school video rental shop stuffed to bursting with dusty, dogeared VHS tapes.

The Beyond, 1986

Me: I miss old school video stores.
Christine: Me too, so much! Just the smell of them! 
Me: And the sticky wire racks.
Christine: I can still smell it if I think about it!

Indeed, video stores did have a signature scent. Old bookstores smell like vanilla dust, dead talcum powder and gently mildewed paper. Video stores smelled like plaster dust, industrial grade cleaning fluids and tiny pools of Coca Cola that have hardened into jellied lumps of amber. Sigh ~ If only Jurassic Park scientists could extract the DNA from such a specimen.

John & Gordon, Beyond the Gates - 2017

Anyway, the movie...
Long ago, in the land of 1992, geeky dad opens up a video rental store and stands admiring it with his wife and two boys and everything is slo-mo Kodachrome perfection. We get a GREAT opening credit sequence with the absolute cheesiest synthesizer music which, if played long and loudly enough is guaranteed to open a wormhole in the time/space continuum and transport you straight back to 1982, with full on legwarmers, feathered hair and the smell of copious amounts of Aqua Net hairspray.

With the credits out of the way, we are shoved ahead 20+ years into the mumblecore milennial present day, where John and Gordon - the aforementioned sons of geeky dad - have arrived at Ye Olde Video Store to close up shop, pack up the tapes and move on with their lives. Their dad has disappeared. Again. Geeky dad was also apparently Drunk Dad and has a history of wandering off and abandoning his family.

Glen & Terry, the original John & Gordon.  The Gate, 1987.

Son John is the scruffy slacker, Gordon is the drywall offspring of Elijah Wood and Harry Potter who Used to Drink but Has Gotten His Shit Together. Despite the fact that he has the personality of a sheet of styrofoam, Gordon has a reasonably hot girlfriend named Margot, who loves him so much that she has stuck with him through his alcoholism and his abusiveness.

Me: He's got the personality of a piece of burned toast.
Chrsitine: I know, SO DULL.

Anyway, the sons slog through some limp, stale dialog, looking for all the world like they both just slammed a six pack of Nyquil. They halfheartedly pack up some video tapes.

Why is there a caricature of H.P. Lovecraft hanging on the wall?

Me: There's an awful lot of bootleg tapes in there. Was he renting shit he taped off of HBO?
Christine: I know - who would rent them?
Me: Besides a Japanese reporter looking for The Ring?
Christine: this is like The Innkeepers - SO slow in the beginning!
Me: That movie sucked. Hard.
Christine: Thank you, why do people like that one? I don't get it, nothing happens.
Me: Because mumblecore is cool, apparently.
Christine: bah

After a lot of long scenes of them being stiff and awkward around each other and having very forced, clipped conversations, John trots the Obvious First Victim into view. A guy named Hank who has a weird and very lazy mohawk.

Christine: Hank's hair, what is up with dat?
Me: If Vyvyan Basterd and Dicko Baker had a baby.

After wondering aloud why the hell Jeffrey Combs isn't in this, we move onto the main plot: the discovery of a board game called Beyond The Gates (Yes, we have a title!) with a videocassette guide hosted by Barbara Crampton as Ingrid Pitt in the Siouxsie Sioux story.

We get a couple of other characters thrown in superfluously: Dahlia (as in Black) the slightly whorey waitress, the cop who looks like young Ray Dennis Steckler and David Duchovny's illegitimate offspring, and an 18th century mortician who looks like - and is every bit as intimidating as - the Emcee at Club Scum in 1988's Hobgoblins.

John, Gordon and Margot decide to sit down and play the game, because they have absolute fuck-all to say to one another and no cable. Half an hour drags by. Gordie Potter finds a Marauders Map, a voodoo doll is dug up, Bad Mohawk Boy bites the dust Captain Rhodes style and a very unimpressive gate appears in the basement, surrounded by fog.

Midian, this ain't.

Christine: That would make a great bed headboard.
Me: Or a Spinal Tap prop.

Stuff kinda sorta happens. There's sleepwalking and goofy nightmares and badly choreographed fight scenes. At one point, Mortiis shows up to scream in Gordon's face. I've never been so confused in my life. The film quickly becomes a metaphor for Gordon's alcoholism. Cellar Dweller, Witch Board, Videodrome, Evil Dead 2 and Fulci's Gates Of Hell leak out of the frames. Everyone has red on them. And I totally spotted that copy of House Of Leaves on Gordon's bookshelf. Finally it ends with everyone happy and ready to face the bright, brave future, and waxy mortician guy greets another prospective buyer of Beyond The Gates in the form of yet another Indie Hipster douchebag. The end.

Christine: I don't always pick bad movies, but when I do, they have voodoo dolls and gates from hell! 
Me: It's not UTTER garbage. It' still better than Insidious.
Christine: I almost can't wait to see how badly you trash it! Sorry I made you sit through that. Please remember I didn't say it was "good." 

I totally forgive you, Christine.

Summation?

The Void (2016)

So I came home from work the other night after an exhausting nine hour shift and decided I needed to watch a horror movie before bed, because I'm masochistic like that. Someone had mentioned The Void on Facebook, maybe Caitlin Kiernan, I don't know. I have a lot of Lovecrafty friends and mention of this movie has been popping up like fat, greasy, meaty bubbles in a pot of fish stew. So I popped open Netflix, saw it was streaming and thought: "Well fuck me, it's right there and the playback is so much better now that my cable isn't being stolen anymore" so I hit play.

Holy SHIT! Hellraiser Reanimates the Evil Dead Prince Of Darkness Xtro Thing from The Beyond! Perhaps it was the late hour, possibly my own sheer exhaustion, definitely a little bit of "I haven't seen a decent horror movie in over five years" frustration, but I damn near exploded. This flick moves faster than curry diarrhea through a greased up asshole, and is almost as gross to look at. This is season 1 of True Detective, starring Skinless Uncle Frank as Herbert West, directed by John Fulci and Lucio Carpenter and filmed on location in Silent Hill, Carcosa. I was absolutely, utterly and immediately and hopelessly infatuated with this film. I wanted to be its best friend, paint its nails and stay up all night giggling with it.

I immediately gushed about it all over Facebook. If I could have carved its initials inside of a heart on an oak tree, I would have. And I found a Void Buddy in Christine Hadden, editor-in-chief at Fascination With Fear, who agreed to humor me when I asked if she would be interested in watching the film with me and discussing it via FB messenger as we did so. Here is the result:

Me: Is it weird that I find Shotgun Dad to be kinda hot?
Christine: Well, he looks a little like Donald Pleasance, but ok.
Me: Well that killed it.

Shotgun Dan is actor Daniel Fathers, who was also in Pontypool, a fact which automatically makes him cool. Shotgun Dad has no name, so I'm sticking with Shotgun Dad. He's supposed to be a Red State militia type in a cowboy hat, rootin' tootin' and shootin' his way through the crackhouse full of weirdo pervy cultists who may have killed his wife and baby daughter and gave his halfwit son a half assed tracheotomy. But when he gets really pissed off/stressed out his Midwest tough guy speak slips away, revealing a British accent. Okay, so he kinda sorta looks like Donald Pleasance a little bit. But he has way more hair and is far more badass.

Christine: Dude is relatively hot...is he not?
Me: I'm sticking with Shotgun Dad.
Christine: The cop, not the junkie, by the way. 

Not Barry Pepper & Not Lily Taylor

Aaron Poole is the "star" of this cosmic skullfuckery. The cop, not the junkie. I've never seen him before, in anything, anywhere. He's from Canada and kinda looks like Barry Pepper, the end. Oh, and the junkie looks like Peter Lorre circa The Maltese Falcon, the end.

The small cast - Shotgun Dad, Halfwit Son, Cop and Junkie arrive at the Marsh County Hospital (total Lovecraft reference) to join the rest of our cast - Cops ex-wife, Grandpaw, Pregnant Teen, Asian Intern, Some Guy, Head Nurse and Kind, Elderly Doctor. The clothing is serviceable, the colors are neutral, the hairstyles simple. Timeless is the best description. And nary a cell phone nor a laptop to be seen. This could be anytime, anywhere...although I believe Christine and I settled on Iowa, 1980s, because we could and why not?

Me: Where the hell does this take place, do you think? What state?
Christine: Probably somewhere like Ohio. No ocean to speak of...no mountains...hell, could be anywhere.
Me: Red State fer shure.
Christine: IOWA!
Me: Sounds good.

Prince of Darkness

Then suddenly and with no warning and out of freaking nowhere, the gore hits the fan with a solid, meaty slap. In rapid succession, at least three classic horror movies are thrown right into our faces:
*Session 9 - a long, silvery implement is pulled slowly out of a now deflated eyeball.
*Prince Of Darkness - a blond woman turns her face to the camera...except there is no face, just a raw and bloody ruin where her face skin used to be.
*Nightbreed - She continues to tear at her face as cop screams at her to stop, tearing the skin mask away from her skull in bloody ribbons.
Christine also claimed it smacked of The Crazies, but it's been many years since I've seen The Crazies and I forgot to ask her for specifics, so I suck.

I opine at this point that Cops Ex-Wife looks a little like Lily Taylor. Christine votes for Zelda from Pet Sematary. Christine wins. NEVER GET OUT OF BED AGAIN!

Dafuq is that?!

As a dark and rumbly storm moves in across the sky, and the plot moves into the morgue, and a mysterious force silently cuts the isolated hospital off from the rest of the world, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe comes to mind. Outside, The Strangers appear to perform their own version of Kill List. A briefly stunned Cop slips into dreamland for a few seconds and hallucinates stock footage from Hellraiser and Event Horizon. But when he wakes up, he's right smack in the fuck in the middle of The Thing, as Nurse McRipFace unleashes an unholy bellow and begins hemorrhaging tentacles out of her mouth and eye sockets. After a long, frantic, harrowing round of axe chopping and pus squirting and tentacle waving and demon screaming and Expendable Sheriff killing, Shotgun Dad and Halfwit Son - whose name turns out to be Shaun - both have red on them.

Halloween 2 gets a Suspiria color palette as we check on the Cthulhu KKK out front. Meanwhile, the cast of The Mist heads into the spider pharmacy and Cop gets a phone call from Lost Highway. While Cop talks to Simon (who lives in the weak and the wounded, Doc) about his ex-wife's fate, Shotgun Dad flips through some True Detective (season 1) Polaroids and realizes that a trip downstairs to Silent Hill to confront Dr. Satan is unavoidable. Heh, un-a-VOID-a-ble. See what I did there?

Christine: This is like Jurassic Park on the walkies.
Me: See, this is why I hate basements. Velociraptor Zombies!
Christine: This (basement) is like Silence of the Lambs - goes on for miles!
Me: And into the abortion scene from Creep. (also) Dead & Buried.
Christine: They should have called this LOOKING FOR CTHULHU.
Me: Or "Hellraising The Thing Alien From Beyond."
Christine: Definitely The Resurrected.
Me: Re-Animator!
Christine: Walking Dead right there.

Xtro

Me: The Road! (referring to basement full of zombies)
Christine: Nightbreed again.
Me: Audition! (referring to a bloody, moving sack on the floor)
Me: Headdesk zombie! (referring to gif above)
Christine: That's so awesome!
Me: Upside down zombie! Very Xtro!
Christine: GODDAMN! So creepy! I LOVE XTRO!
Christine: The Shining! (as Kim stumbles about with an axe) 

Cop ventures into the bowels of the basement and straight into the Alien Queen's egg chamber, without Ripley or a flamethrower to help him. He takes one look at what Skinless Uncle Frank has done and goes full blown Ash from The Evil Dead. The axe rises and falls, rises and falls. But unlike the first axe dispatch scene - full of ferocity and meat-thudding and inhuman screeches - this one is somberly silent, drawing away from itself in sorrow.

Prince Of Darkness

But there's no time to mourn! Cop wanders into Skinless Uncle Frank's personal chamber in Hellraiser 2, filled with sheet draped corpses. Skinless Uncle Frank has gone full blown Martyrs and is now determined to summon the Prince Of Darkness, figuring it's safe this time around because Shotgun Dad is NOT Donald Pleasance, does NOT have the axe, and therefore cannot possibly stop him.

Christine: OWA TAGU SIAM!
Me: You watch your mouth!
Christine: This is just wild...WILD

And indeed it is! Pregnant teen pulls a Polonious on Cop and kneels before the Void, ready to birth the baby, which turns out to be Skinless Uncle Frank's baby, his own resurrected dead daughter Sarah. However, it looks like the cloner in Pregnant Teen's womb scanned only the inside of Sarah's colon and part of her nostril, because what comes ripping out of Pregnant Teen's womb in a gorrific bucketslap of blood in the face looks more like Xtro up there fucked a pork roast, put a skull on its face, waited until it was half finished with its first plate of spaghetti and then rammed some rabid rhino DNA right up its ass. Baby Pork Roast is on the rampage through Freddy Krueger's boiler room, snorting and squealing and slamming skulls into bone and brainjuice with one mighty stamp of its grasshopper drumstick. More people die. Cop tries to shut the doorway. Halfwit Shaun battles the pork roast. Kim locks herself inside of a Halloween slat closet and gives herself away by loudly whimpering. The Pork Roast reenacts the Engineer chasing Kirsty down the corridor scene from Hellraiser and the final scene is an eerie matte painting by H.R. Giger for Lucio Fulci's The Beyond as seen through the eyes of the crew of the Nostromo before LV426 was even called LV426!

Me: The Thing, The Fly, Necromentia!
Christine: Silent Hill, slight bit of Pumpkinhead, and some LOTR orcs.

Yes! YASS! All of that and more! So much, so gross, so crazy skullfucking batshit cosmic insane! Exceedingly throwback! So 80s! Much clamshell! Very wow! More of this for me, please!