Tenebre

Tenebre is the story of American crime novelist Peter Neal promoting his book in Rome while there is a serial killer on the loose who is murdering women in the same way people are murdered in his latest book, Tenebrae. The police somewhat inadvertantly ask for his help in solving the crime, and with the help of his assistants, he investigates as the killer starts closing in on his circle of friends.

I first saw Tenebre about 7 years ago when Anchor Bay released it in the same DVD set as Deep Red.  I adored Deep Red (and still do), but the angry young feminist I was at the time abhorred Tenebre just because it introduced a lesbian couple only to kill them off almost immediately. Somewhat more mellowed out and watching it last night, that wasn’t exactly the case. One half of the lesbian couple was given somewhat of a small backstory, so I guess it makes some sense in the scheme of the movie why she was murdered. Honestly, a lot of characters and actors were completely wasted in this movie. John Saxon especially, with Daria Nicolodi being a close second just about. For a chunk of the film, the story does come off as extremely sexist what with all women being brutally murdered, but at the same time, the film does seem to be making some sort of weak attempt to provide social commentary on the victimization of women. It just never seems to make it there.  In the end, there are 6 women dead and 5 men dead, all from extremely violent deaths. Admittedly, straight razors freak me out, so I kept my head turned for a lot of deaths in this film.

Like Deep Red, Tenebre is a good mystery, but (somewhat) unlike Deep Red, there seems to be a lot more filler shots in this film. The lesbians, for example, lived in a extremely well designed (and ahead of its time) house. At least 3 minutes of the film, during which Goblin’s awesome theme song is played, is devoted to partially showing the women through the windows of the house, but also showing really tight close-ups of the roofing tile and the side of the building. It makes no sense at all, and I don’t think they were all POV shots, considering the killer ultimately makes his entrance through a first floor window.

Much to my surprise, Tenebre was made in 1982, making me inadvertantly break my rule established after watching Inferno of ” watching no Dario Argento movies made after 1980″.  I always thought that this was made after Deep Red and Suspiria, but before Inferno. While Tenebre does have some good bits and again, is a good mystery, a lot of it just comes off as lazy. I haven’t done much research on it, so I don’t know if there are multiple versions floating about, but the version Netflix sent me was not the Anchor Bay edition, but one by Westlake Entertainment. The quality of the DVD was terrible, and probably taken off some old VHS copy of the movie - shaky, you could see the video lines, and at one point the words “VIDEO CALIBRATION” were on the screen over a scene for 5 seconds. I tried to get a screenshot of it, but nothing is working right now.

 

Night of the Demons 2

Ever since the Night of the Demons remake was announced recently, I keep seeing the original referred to as a “horror-comedy”, which puzzles me to no end. The original NotD seemed to be trying to be a horror-comedy but vastly failed. Oddly enough, the horror and comedy come off way better in Night of the Demons 2, a 1994 direct-to-video sequel. While the first NotD caused me to get completely hammered before any of the actual horror started happening, the sequel gets going right away.

The connection to the first movie is thus: Angela’s newly orphaned younger sister Melissa (a.k.a. Mouse) is sent to a Catholic boarding school after her parents commit suicide. She has frequent nightmares about her sister, and has to deal with constant teasing and bullying from her classmates about her sister. While the adults believe that Angela just ran away, even Mouse believes that she just resides in Hull House, possibly as the bride of Satan. On Halloween night, Mouse is dragged to the house along with some unsuspecting classmates by Shirley, the token mean girl.  The twist in this one is that while when they get spooked and leave Hull House, Angela is able to follow them back to the school. Both sections of the film feature the better gross-fun or funny moments, including a special effects creation that can best be described as “handboobs”. There’s also a nun in the same vein as the priest from Dead Alive who claims “I kick ass for the Lord!”

This movie is perhaps known for featuring one of Christine Taylor’s early film appearances, about a year before her breakout role as Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie. On Netflix, she is given one of the top billings, whereas in the film she’s given eighth or ninth.

What I find odd is that between this series and the Sleepaway Camp series, both of the villains of the series are females named Angela. There weren’t and aren’t too many female villains in horror film series, but I’m thinking that considering the meaning of the name “Angela” (”messenger of god” or “angel”), it’s meant to be ironic in these movies.

While Netflix, nor likely any video stores around here seem to have the 1997 Canadian-produced Night of the Demons 3, possibly Night of the Demons 2 is the only worthwhile movie in the series anyway.  Hell, if I found a copy for $5 somewhere, I might buy it. The remake looks as though it’s changing the plot around a bit, although I have to wonder with the casting of Shannon Elizabeth as Angela, if the main characters are still going to be teenagers or adults.

 

NoWo600Wo: The Signal

The Signal is a cautionary tale about what happens when you listen to a shitty Joy Division cover with big-ass headphones during a time of crisis.

To it’s merit, at least it’s not another shitty cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

 

Night of the Demons (a.k.a when misplaced nostalgia goes wrong)

Past perhaps my taste in music, I don’t consider myself a particularly nostalgic person. I never gave into that trend some years ago where people my age (usually younger) were sporting t-shirts of 80s cartoon characters. Would I wear an Ghostbusters t-shirt if I could find one in my size? Hell yes, but only because it remains one of my favorite movies, not just because I loved the movie when I was 4.

Trying now to get back into blogging, I wanted to write about a horror series. After hearing a podcast wherein the hosts watched every single Friday the 13th movie ever, I thought of tackling that series too, although it would probably be from the perspective from someone who has never really liked the series all that much. Instead of that, I decided to cover a smaller series that I never read much about and kind of wanted to revisit, Night of the Demons. Downside? I can only get the first two movies from Netflix. I have no clue where I could get the third film.

I was first introduced to the Night of the Demons series when I was a teenager. The movies were usually on cable, late night HBO or Cinemax. I’m pretty sure I saw the films completely out of order, but I liked them in all their fairly sleazy glory. To add to the backstory, I also saw all the films anywhere between 1-3 years before I saw the first and second Evil Dead movies (Army of Darkness was occasionally on the Sci-Fi Channel though) - copies were hard to come by in the area I lived in.

It is because I did not see the first two Evil Dead films until I was 18 that I probably liked the Night of the Demons series way more than I should have back then. While I am not getting the second film in until tomorrow, I watched the first over the weekend. My reaction was not pretty. I basically downed two rum and cokes within the space of an hour. It is because of that that it’s hard for me to say whether Night of the Demons is a film that wears its influences on it’s sleeve or if it’s outright ripping off Evil Dead with a dash of Romeroism thrown in towards the end (both outwardly when a character is suddenly revealed to have the last name of “Romero”, as well as who lives).

The plot is that a group of friends/frenemies go to a Halloween party thrown by gothy outcast Angela and her friend played by Linnea Quigley (seriously, this movie has so many characters that I don’t know all their names) at Hull House, a former funeral home at the edge of town with a dark and murderous past. The characters vary from obnoxious assholes to a few goody-two-shoes (although two of them have the most sense to try to get out when things start to get rough in the beginning) to a few in-between characters. The cast has fairly decent racial diversity, I guess. At the party, they decide to communicate through a found mirror (not the “Bloody Mary” game, but something else) and one of the nice kids sees a demon and her death while everyone else argues and sees nothing.

You think that would get the ball rolling, but while this movie is only about 90 minutes, nothing much happens until minute 50. It is then that you really start to see the physical Evil Dead influence more than past just cribbing off of its plot. Night of the Demons and Evil Dead 2 came out within a year of each other, but I get the feeling that this movie was completed before Evil Dead 2. Otherwise, you probably would witness some attempts at gross-out humor. Any attempts made at humor in this movie mostly fail and are mostly centered around dudes unapologetically looking at Linnea Quigley’s ass.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

One thing I will admit is that the makeup for Angela, iconic on the series video covers, is pretty damn creepy. I get uneasy if I think about it too much. It did pop in my head that night after watching it when I woke up in the middle of the night.

 

Podcasts: Because if you had my job, you need something to drown everything out too.

I recently received a hand-me-down I-Pod from my boyfriend. It’s temporary until I finally decide and can afford whatever MP3 player I want. Since I’ve been working under heavy deadlines lately and currently share my office with a delusional 57-year-old woman, I’ve taken to listening to podcasts lately at work.

The majority of the podcasts I listen to have been about films, while others have been about the environment, gardening, and personal finance (I’m currently downloading some that concern knitting). I guess like most media you have to take the time to weed out the good from the bad. As it stands now Mondo Movie is still my favorite, I’ve been listening to it for some months anyway whenever the boyf and I run errands. It’s a British-based podcast, and while they seem to be in some weird transition phase that I don’t quite understand yet, the guys there continue to churn out good work. Mondo Movie also seems to have the best sound quality, possibly because I’ve been told those guys work for CNet. Cinema Diabolica is pretty good, but all the morning zoo sounding mess before the show and in the middle throws me off sometimes. They have been covering some interesting movies and having some good debates as of late though, so I feel compelled to stay subscribed. Other than that, I have a few I haven’t listened to yet, and a couple of more I’m already considering unsubscribing from.

Also, if you’re interested in hearing more about the Richmond Zine Fest, which I’m still currently organizing, one of my co-organizers was on the Zinecore Radio Show last week. The episode is here. The episode also features Andrew Shearer of Gonzoriffic - he blogs about horror films as well as making them.

What podcasts do you listen to?