V/H/S - Movie Review - SHOCKTOBER 2015 - Movie #10

Doc Manson returns to B-Movie Geek this October to take the #SHOCKTOBER Horror Movie Challenge! The goal? 31 films in the 31 days of October. We're up to movie #10, the highly regarded horror anthology V/H/S (2012). So, how does this one hold up under the watchful eye of the B-Movie Geek?

Quite well, actually! Each of the five stories told in the film is directed by a different director, adding a bit of variety to the proceedings. The film also has an over-arcing story, revolving around a group of hoodlums that have taken to filming themselves committing petty crimes. They are hired by an unknown party to break into an apartment and steal a VHS tape, although its contents are not specified to the audience. The hoodlums find a dead man in the apartment, and they spread out to search for the tape. One of the vandals sits down in front of a television and plays one of the nearby VHS tapes, beginning our first story.

Of all of the tales spun in V/H/S, the first, Amateur Night directed by David Bruckner, might be my favorite. It's a tale as old as time; a bunch of college-age bros go to the bar to pick up loosely-moraled women for a night of casual sex and they record themselves using a camera hidden inside a pair of eyeglasses. Like I said, a tale as old as time. It turns out that one of the women they bring back to their hotel room is way more woman than any of these boys can handle. Amateur Night tells a complete, compact story and features a visually striking monster design.

My second favorite tale is titled Tuesday the 17th, an obvious ode to the Friday the 13th series. In this short, a survivor of a massacre returns to the wooded lake where it occurred in an attempt to discover the true nature of the killer. The twists here are two fold: 1) the girl has brought a group of friends with her in an attempt to use them as bait for the killer; 2) the killer has some sort of metaphysical presence, where he can appear in multiple locations at once and, when harmed, can simply sort of phase in and out of reality and be healed. Supplementing this latter point, the killer also causes some sort of artifact to appear on film, so we never get a clear look at him/it. I thought this short was a exceptionally cool modern interpretation of the classic slasher story.

There are a few other shorts, but I think the only other one I want to mention is Second Honeymoon, directed by Ti West. West is a known horror director, and he has a number of well received throw-back style films on his resume. Offered as context, I am a pretty big fan of his slow burn haunting picture, The Innkeepers. This short might have been the least interesting in the film. It isn't bad, necessarily, and it fits thematically, but there's really nothing especially unique about this story. I honestly felt it could have been elimated from the film without any great loss. Sorry, Ti. Better luck next time.

All said, V/H/S is 116 minutes well spent for any horror fan. I don't often find competent anthology films, but when done correctly they can be very engaging thanks to their oft-quickened pace. V/H/S is no exception, and is easily a film that every horror fan should at least check out.

Four out of four Bruces.

Read more

See No Evil 2 - Movie Review - SHOCKTOBER 2015: Movie #2

It's October and the B-Movie Geek, Doc Manson, is back to take the #Shocktober challenge! The quest? To watch 31 horror movies in the 31 days of October. Movie #2 is the WWE Studios produced slasher film, See No Evil 2. Full disclosure, this entry into my SHOCKTOBER journey was chosen due to its relevance to my current online activities as co-host of an online talk show about professional wrestling, the NAIborhood podcast.

As mentioned, the film was produced by WWE Studios and stars the Big Red Demon, Kane (Glen Jacobs). I actually thought that the first See No Evil was an OK slasher film, and that Kane's portrayal of Jacob Goodnight -stupid name aside- made for a great slasher antagonist. Kane, after all, is a legitimate 300-lb, 7-foot tall, muscular monster of a man; to say that he is physically imposing is an understatement.

In the sequel, Jacob Goodnight is now missing an eye (the result of the climax of the first film), and wears a clear mask. This provides a more distinctive, iconic look for the killer. Goodnight also makes less use of his chain-hook weapon in the sequel, which in theory ought to help increase variation in the kills. In reality, Goodnight tends to use his bare hands a lot more, and only occasionally makes use of some sort of amputation knife/bone saw combination weapon. Oddly, it also seems that the filmmakers felt as though the violence ratio of the film had to be increased, as nearly all of the kills from the first film appear here in flashback sequences.

I enjoyed the first film, but not everything about it worked, and some of that carries over to See No Evil 2. The whole God's Hand Killer moniker and the underlying religious motivations for the Jacob Goodnight character never quite gel. The religious undertones to the killings just don't seem justified in what is otherwise a standard slasher film. This is material better suited to a headier film.

Beyond that, I continue to think that Glen Jacobs is a fantastic choice to play a horror movie slasher. I say give this guy the hockey mask and give him a go as Jason in the next Friday the 13th (Come on, we all know it's coming sooner or later). I also loved the performances put in by Danielle Harris (Halloween, Hatchet II) and Katharine Isabelle (American Mary, Ginger Snaps).

Terrifying Hot Dog Action - See No Evil 2

Credit goes to the screenwriters, Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby, as they've woven in a couple of great moments into See No Evil 2. The standout is a scene in which one of the legs of a paraplegic man is skewered by a hook on a chain. This moment stuck out to me because, as would be expected, the man doesn't feel any pain in response to the violence against him. There's an odd sort of detachment in his reaction that the directors really translate to the audience through the deft use of visual and audio cues. It's a small moment, but it works well.

The Soska Sisters have directed a finely produced film, coaxed good performance from their actors, and delivered some above average cinematography. Seriously, the use of colors and clarity in certain shots of this film are way above the level of a direct to DVD film. In light of the many things done so well in this film, it's all the more disappointing then that the end sequence is so poorly executed.

In the film's final moments, Jacob Goodnight is stabbed by a large surgical needle and pumped full of embalming fluid. The embalming fluid sequence is just poorly shot; too much time elapses between the stabbing and the activation of the fluid pump mechanism. The scene lacks any sort of proper cadence, marring the tension in what is otherwise a fulfilling and creative end to the antagonist.

That said, I'll watch another one.

I guess you could say, I'd be glad to See More Evil.

OK, that one was funnier in my head. Three out of four Bruces.

Read more

Spirit Camp - Movie Review

It's been awhile since I sat down and watched a fun slasher flick, and I'm happy to report that Spirit Camp (2009) is a perfectly serviceable film that helped scratch the itch. The set-up is similar to countless other genre films: a group of teenage girls attending a secluded cheerleader camp are stalked and picked off one by one. There's the usual cast of characters, including the Bitch, the Slut, the Ditz, the Fatty, and the Loner. This roster is joined by a handful of  characters with the convenient purpose of doubling as red herrings.  Over the course of the hour and thirty minutes, we will watch as these unfortunate souls lose their dignity and their lives at what should have been a fun summer romping around and getting laid at Cheerleader camp.

Spirit Camp is a fairly paint by the numbers experience, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Let's be honest for a brief moment- the formula is one of the reasons why we fans continue to watch these films. Sure, they're predictable, but that's just part of the fun. I love watching these films to see how they deviate from the expected, to see just how they intend to carve out their own niche. Spirit Camp does this by making the loner character the main protagonist. Played ably by the attractive Roxy Vandiver, the conflicted Nikki is the only character written with any depth and is thus the only character the audience ever really cares about.

 
The film hinges on Nikki's likability, given that she's the only competent character that displays any use of logic. This is an interesting juxtaposition since the character's loner punk-aesthetic and criminal background seems initially intended to distance the audience from her. The beginning of the film is written in such a way as to reinforce this feeling as she is the last of the primary characters to be introduced. Further toying with the audience's expectations, Nikki is one of only two characters to appear bare-chested, and she does so twice. This subliminally helps cement her bad-girl attitude and is really trying to make you doubt whether the character will survive or not. It's both an interesting and a refreshing approach to the Final Girl concept.

The main group of girls arrive at the camp and it doesn't take long for the killings to begin. It's sort of odd when characters start disappearing and no one really questions where they've gone. This is of course mentioned in some passing dialogue, but the subject is quickly dismissed by the disinterested characters. As I've pointed out before, directly addressing a plot hole does not excuse lazy writing. Still, given the overall quality of the film and its low budget nature, I'm inclined to give them a pass on this minor nit-pick. Just be aware that some of the standard slasher tropes definitely still apply.

As long as we're on the topic of the standard slasher tropes, there are so many red herrings in this film it's laughable. There's the old, eccentric gas station attendant, the pervy local sheriff, the backwoods camp handy man, the elder mother whose own child died at the camp years ago, and so on. Red herrings are part of the slasher formula, and the screenwriter wasn't shy throwing them about. Sadly, I felt like the final reveal was telegraphed a little too early in the film, so most of these false leads rang a bit more hollow than they maybe should have.

On the technical side of things, I feel like I have to acknowledge all of the hard work that filmmaker Kerry Beyer poured into this movie. This man acted in, directed, wrote, edited and did the cinematography for this film. There's good use of lighting and composition, and some creative editing that make good use of several composite matte shots. Given how well made the film is technically, I'm very interested to see future projects from Mr. Beyer. My only request would be to work on the make-up effects. Many of the kill sequences were repetitive and I'm fairly sure I saw the exact same axe-wound appliance used on more than one actor.


The Bottomline: Spirit Camp is a predictable but solid slasher film. It is well made and competently acted. Definitely worth a rental for genre fans. Three Bruces.

Read more

Camp Utopia - Movie Review

Released in 2002, Camp Utopia is a low budget slasher film centered around a group of five teens on a camping trip. The movie begins with a flashback, laying the ground work for the history of the the titular camping grounds. The name Camp Utopia refers to a hippie commune that existed somewhere in the backwoods of California during the 1960's. Their free-love community was led by a Manson-like, former rock star named Timothy Bach (played by Ratt frontman, Stephen Pearcy). Together, they all lived at Camp Utopia as a group of free spirits, reveling in a culture with its foundations firmly rooted in the indulgences of sex, alcohol, and pills.

As the legend goes, Bach takes a hit of some bad acid one night, prompting him to embark on a murderous rampage. His first victim is a random hippie girl with whom he was engaged in the physical act of expressing one's love for another. Ahem. Sex. The way the scene is presented, I'm not sure if it was truly the bad acid that caused Bach to lop off her head with a machete; it may have been the fact that, by all accounts, she was merely a lousy lay. At any rate, the killings don't end with the girl, as Bach takes the machete (and her head) back to the camp proper and hacks up the majority of his followers. After he's done, Bach takes his head and machete and disappears into the woods. NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN!!

Cut to present day and we meet a whole bunch of really unlikable guys driving around in a van. Although you would probably never guess, they're all supposed to be in high school. In addition, they're apparently all Wall Street prodigies because they talk at great lengths about day trading, and how awesome day trading is, and how much money they've made from day trading, and how you should buy low and sell high when you're day trading, and how they're not going to go to college because they make so much money day trading.

Yeah, the dialogue is kind of like that.

Did I mention day trading is a recurring topic of conversation throughout the film. Yeah. To be fair, there's actually two topics of conversation that the guy characters in this film alternate between: day trading and sex. The female character's dialogue isn't much better, as their choice of topics seems to switch back and forth between being catty bitches and sex. Now I know what you're thinking; isn't this a horror movie cliche that, being the B-Movie Geek, I should be rejoicing and celebrating over? While the short answer is yes, I much prefer everything in moderation. When your characters are incapable of broaching any subjects other than those centered around the penis and the vagina it starts to get a bit tedious for the audience. After about five minutes I get it. They're teenagers. They like sex. Let's move on, shall we?

As it turns out our Wall Street prodigies are picking up their twenty-five-year-old high school girlfriends to go on a camping trip because... because... daytrading? In addition to the two couples, a third female, whom has only just moved into town, is going to tag along with the group for the weekend. The guys allow this because the New Girl is hot and they think they each have chances at having a threesome. The girls allow it because... daytrading?


The lead female character, Bitchy Cheerleader (Jessica Jordan), decides to enforce a strict no cell phone policy on the trip in order to distract the guys from their stocks long enough to sex the girls up. As if that were really going to be a problem for this particular group of characters. This, of course, conveniently places the group in the middle of nowhere with no way of contacting the outside world for help. Really quite brilliant when you're heading out to the cursed camp grounds of a legendary mass murderer whose body has never been found.

Oh yes, did I mention that the kids are quite aware of the tales of the Camp Utopia bloodshed? Well, they are! Their first night in the woods the lead male, Bizzaro Kevin Bacon (Collin Stark), relates the tale of the massacre to the others as the sit around the campfire. From a story perspective, this sequence is meant to inform the New Girl character of the local legends. From a filmmaking perspective, this sequence is meant to inform the audience of the local legends. The only problem is, they already showed us everything that happened in the flashback sequence that opened the film. Even worse, all the footage they use to overlay the campfire story is take directly from that flashback sequence. Oh joy, the filmmakers get to pad out their hour and twenty minute run-time by showing me the same footage twice!

The tempo of the film is also a bit off from your typical low budget slasher. Very little time is spent on the kills or the sequences leading up to them. Outside of the flashback at the beginning, there are no deaths until over forty minutes into the film. Instead, the audience is treated to rather surprising amount of nudity from the relatively small, unknown female cast. There's nothing that particularly stands out about any of the nude sequence except for the sheer number of them. Almost all of the female actresses in the film go topless at one point or another. I'm not exactly complaining, but it seems like the nudity is just there to help pass the time until something actually happens.

As hard as I'm being on this film, there's actually quite a bit here to like. While I'd have preferred that the characters had been less two dimensional, this is a fault of the writing not the actors. All of the acting in Camp Utopia is actually pretty good for a film of this type. The comic relief character, Ranger Rogers, is a bit over the top, but is played well by Adam Minarovich. His humorous and lecherous antics serve well to identify him as the Red Herring of the proceedings. New Girl (Alexandra Westmore) in particular does a commendable job with some of her later scenes that might have come off much hokier if not for her performance. While I may not have been impressed with the dialogue, the writing involving the story does eventually do some interesting things as well, which I won't spoil here. Let's just say that the sequence in which the Last Girl discovers who the Slasher is (the identity of whom is telegraphed a bit much for my liking) plays out like it usually does, but then we get another fifteen minutes of story that also happen to the film's strongest. Although there's nothing unpredictable or particularly original in the content of this last section of the film, the writers deserve mention for following a story path that I didn't expect them to take.

The Bottomline: Camp Utopia is a solid low-budget title that will appease most fans of the horror and exploitation genres. The movie suffers from poor dialogue and timing issues, but still manages to be enjoyable. If you like direct-to-video titles, you might do well to give Camp Utopia a look. 2 Bruces.

Seen this movie? Got a question? Disagree with the Geek? Leave a comment below!

Read more