Cinema Du Meep - October Slasher month

Check out Meep's blog; during the month of October he's reviewing a slasher a day.  What a bodycount!  Tell him Cropys's Cryptkeeper sent you packing from the morgue!


http://www.cinemadumeep.com/

SYNEGOR!

SYNGENOR!

In the abysmal, black, soulless heart of cinematic tinkering lies a beast so unscrupulously dumb that it makes the higher brain functions of a California peach seem like sonnets from the world’s finest poet. Well, maybe that’s taking it a bit too far. Syngenor isn’t that terrible of a film. Its stupidity is actually kind of endearing in some ways and brutally unforgiving in others. If you’re in the mood for a complete reality zone out session lasting roughly a couple of hours, then this is your bacon wrapped enchilada. There is something about a film that has no qualms dancing in the sewer of bad taste, really kicking up the brown stuff and never looking back to see who gets sprayed that gets to me every time. It’s got lunatics, corporate yuppy greed, drug abuse, and synthetic monster soldiers whose weakness includes….well….everything. Even water burns them. That’s right, water. That’s something I never thought I’d see since hanging out with the Neon Maniacs. Bravo Syngenor! You’re my new best, worse friend.

The plot is basically about a company that’s run by complete morons that happened to create some sort of sentient spinal fluid sucking soldier. Every stereotypical megalomaniac is present, plus it’s got every standard bad horror flick character you can possibly imagine. There’s a nosey reporter. There’s a lazy, borderline retarded detective. There’s the woman trying to find revenge for her uncle’s untimely death. There’s a scientist that blows up oranges. It’s got it all, and sure, some of it is entertaining to the lowest denominator of all bad tastes. It’s so dumb it comes around the bend and becomes funny, then becomes dumb, and then becomes painful, then you just don’t give a shit anymore and your mind enters this dumb, lethargic state of blissful ignorance. Maybe the purpose of the film is to transform the audience’s mentality into that of the slow moving, grumbling, stumbling, Synegors on screen by pummeling your mind with one idiotic antic after another.

Unstoppable soldiers these are not; the advertising was greatly exaggerated. The Syngenors are really kind of weak. Their combat tactics include standing there and letting themselves get riddled by bullets until they die, or standing in front of cars and letting themselves get run over, and that’s about it. I’m pretty sure some of them even died off camera, probably from something really lame like high blood pressure or Parkinson’s disease. Their special move is basically just picking people up and throwing them against the wall and they never move faster than say, the speed of smell. The fact that they suck ass is conveyed within the first fifteen minutes of reel time when a flower pot full of water slows one down, melting some of its skin off. Then you realize that water fucks them up., thereby eliminating any kind of threat these things may have posed. God forbid it rains outside and they forgot their umbrellas. The rest of the movie is kind of a loose string of sci-fi and b-movie clichés gone horribly wrong. I could spend a long time talking about all the ways this movie wraps in on itself and implodes, but the art of being this bad really needs to be seen and experienced to truly sink in. I’m afraid if I think about it for too long my brain will become hungry for nourishment and eat itself.

What’s truly amazing about Synegor is its persistence at contradicting and defying its own logic at every turn. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more derivative or silly something else happens that leaves you feeling like you just got slammed in the brain pan with a megaton of stupid. What is that green shit that the CEO of the company keeps shooting into his neck? Why does everyone insist on parking in the handicap spot when the parking lot is clearly empty and it’s not even the closest spot to the building? How is a company smart enough to develop laser weapons but not smart enough to teach the Syngenors how to use them? Why does everyone keep following the orders of a man that is clearly out of his fruit loops? What happened to the Synegors that escaped right at the beginning of the film? How did the reporter and that chick end up crawling out of the building through a ventilation shaft that was clearly leading them down when they started out in the basement? What did Stan Armbrewster have to do on his Saturday besides eat donuts and become vaporized by a laser beam?

And maybe that’s why I ended up liking this movie; it just doesn’t give a flying fudge how it may hold up to any ounce of critical review. It basks in its own warm glow of dumb and never lets up with the craziness. You can’t gauge what’s going to happen from one moment to the next. It’s wild, untamable; like chimpanzee with Down syndrome and a perchance for tossing shit at anyone that comes close to it. Fuck you Syngenor…..I love you!

THE DEMON

THE DEMON

The Demon was created in a supernatural dimension where Halloween was actually filmed and produced in South Africa.  I can imagine the theatres were packed during its theatrical run and it subsequently inspired a slew of other South African slasher films.  It plays all the same cat and mouse, stalker-in-the-background games as Halloween and features a faceless killer that is described as an inhuman demon by his “Ahab” (Cameron Mitchell), but as it is from another dimension there are many key differences.  The demon wears gloves with razor tipped points but many times he chooses to choke his victims or body slam them rather than stabbing them.  I could only imagine that he chose to suffocate people rather than stab them to death because in this supernatural otherworld metal is really, really flimsy.  The claws must have been made out of the equivalent of aluminum, but I can’t really be sure.  Cameron Mitchell plays a psychic Sherlock Holmes (ironic if you know the Halloween series), but his tele-pathetic powers end up boiling down to smelling pillows and drawing shitty pictures and getting shot in the face.  There’s an odd subplot involving a budding courtship between two minor characters that might eat up too much screen time if you’re a picky sissy pants; I thought it paid off in adding a certain emotional weight to their subsequent deaths at the gnarled hands of the demon.  I was almost sad to see them go.

Scenes come from nowhere and pop and fizzle out of existence.  There’s a club named Boob’s Disco.  Gratuitous nudity and awkward, almost completely nonsensical cuts round the whole shebang out.  Written and directed by the immortal Percival Rubens, whom I’m sure is a big name in dimension-X, be sure to pop this bloke into a rusty old VCR on a rainy day if you want Halloween but tire of convention. 

         

Humanoids from the Deep

Hope all you crusty cretins out there enjoyed some of the HALLOWEEN 2 slop I had to offer from the crypt.  I'm dragging up some B-grade reviews from the icy abyssal depths of the ocean for your viewing pleasure...hope the season of rot is treating you all well. 

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP

The creature rise; a hulking mass of seaweed and entangled hermit crabs, it throws its head back gurgling slime and salt through a thousand unseen gills, its struggled breathing sounding like a scuba respirator full of sludge, and you can see in wide mouthed horror the fin stretch, the dark thin skin between expand, the twisting veins pumping dark blood in this fold of flesh is backlit by the gleaming moonlight, and this impossible monster becomes real.  Before it was too silly to consider, a child’s nightmare, something the adult mind can’t spend time seriously pondering, there were other things to worry about ,like taxes, gossiping neighbors, your bank account, whose your friend and who isn’t your friend; adult matters, no time to entertain fancies of magic fairies, or Santa Claus, or sea monsters.  But here it is, like an exclamation point negating everything you thought you knew, and your final thoughts as it digs it’s black claws, black as plaque, into your neck, severing your arterial vein, is how absurd it is, to be killed by something that can’t exist…..

From the cold and smothering black depths of cinematic depravity comes a movie unashamed to deliver the creature gore that gushing red blooded horror freaks truly relish. Humanoids from the Deep is a Corben flick that delivers all the scaly, slithery, slimy mayhem your eyes can suck up into your cortex. Plus the crux of the plot centers around fish-men raping chicks; mull over that one in your scrub tub late at night.

The story takes place in a sleepy fishing community where a big bad corporation is coming in to give everyone jobs at a newly proposed fish hatching plant. A local Native American sees through this ploy, notices the subtle changes in the wildlife, like dead dogs and giant humanoid fish men, so naturally he opposes this plant. There's a lot of conflict between him and a bunch of racist rednecks, leading to wacky black and blue brawls where uppercuts go "bamf" and have the heavy sound of bare knuckle punching raw meat, but that soon takes a backseat to the real issue at hand; mermen are raping their women and by golly they got to do something about it. The cool headed main goody two shoes fisherman and main protagonist Jim, sides with the Indian after he sees some evidence indicating something is amok. They team with a hot body scientist named Dr. Drake (these type of flicks always have a beautiful babe biologist, don't they?), who seems to know a little bit too much about these new creatures. After locating a hive of the humanoids and filling it with buckets of bullets and spear gun darts, they retrieve a fish monster cadaver and one of their recent rape victims, a girl who is still covered in fresh humanoid man spunk. Dr. Drake ends up revealing that the new plant, or cannery, is the source of these creatures, and that they are attracted to big tittied buxoms. Naturally. This sets the stage for the sea men's big offensive push out of the water and on to land at an annual carnival. Chaos ensues, women are taken as sex slaves, men are made into sushi, but eventually the people rally together and repel the onslaught of horny amphibians.

The humanoids are sufficiently slimy, there’s a bodacious boob count, and the gore is on par with slow decapitations, face rips, and torso tears; this has the right mix o' cheese to keep most B-flixsters happy. I love how un-reactive, and stone faced everyone in this film seems to be after discovering what could be the find of a century. It's all dealt with in such a matter of fact manner that it makes me wonder how many times monsters from the ocean venture to this place to inseminate some poor lady, so obviously the acting is pretty much what you'd expect given the type of flick this is. I really dug this slop. Anything that capitalizes on the fear of rape with creatures from the murky depths of the ocean should be checked out at least once.

Halloween 2: rare pics

Some rare Halloween 2 pics I've yoked....

Halloween 2: The Novel

The Halloween 2 novelization by Jack Martin is a worthy item for any collector or fan of the film.  The descriptions of Haddonfield around Halloween really took me away to the icy steel air of October.  The candy wrapper strewn gutters and the cold pale moon pitched high in the sky; beaming its indifferent face in all directions and nowhere all at once, all of these things really sucked me into the moment and perfectly encapsulated that atmosphere of a typical autumn night in suburbia as described in the text.  The novelization is also of particular interest to fans because it includes entire sequences cut from the film that, in my humble opinion, makes the story flow in a more logical progression.  It details how Michael kills the electrical power to the hospital (thus answering those nipping questions about why it’s so dark in the hospital during the film), and it also includes the death of a new reporter only briefly seen during the film.  The death of the reporter also ties into how The Shape enters the hospital, which is slightly different than what is shown in the film.  The novel does a good job of adding a layer of extra characterization to cast, fleshing out the players before they shed blood at the hand of The Shape.  The ending is also slightly different; reconciling the fact that her life is completely different following the events of that Halloween night, Laurie tells the ambulance driver, upon asking where to drop her off, that she truly didn't know.  Her life has been turned inside out and upside down...she feels homeless and off center and those additional lines at the end demonstrate that.

 I highly recommend this book, it’s cheap and relatively easy to track down, and the text is easily readable and flows fast.  Even after watching this movie all these years I can find extra things to take note of or think about while watching Halloween 2 and his book only multiplied what I saw or thought about during the film.  Definitely a good purchase for the Halloween nut.

Halloween 2: Scaring up some observations...

 Halloween 2

 Beware for beyond lies spoilers....

Halloween 2 has recently come out on BOO-ray, scaring up sInematic musings from my trash entrenched mind.  Halloween 2 is sugary slashtastic fun; although the film is a direct follow up to the original Halloween, taking place during the same night, I consider the two separate, stand alone films with entirely different styles.  The original’s meaning changes when bounced against the revelation that Laurie is actually Michael’s sister.  The revelation implies different things that the film makers never anticipated when committing the film to that white hot light coming out of the projector, thus it is better to consider the movies separate.  Even the continuity from the onset of the film is inconsistent from the ending of the original; Michael falls from a different room in the house and the gun shots are miscounted.  When considering Halloween 2 one must keep these ideas in mind, and view the sequel as the series first foray into franchise territory, where the original was created with the intention of a stand alone film, ending with the boogeyman’s whereabouts “Unknown City, anywhere-town USA”.

 

Ben Tramer and Omens of the Future

By watching Ben Tramer die, engulfed in flame, was Dr. Loomis seeing a future vision of the demise of The Shape at the end of the film? Maybe not, but it does make a lot of sense when considering Loomis’s speech about the festival of Samhain and the made up Pagan tradition of burning criminals and outcasts in baskets to receive visions of the future.  Ben Tramer (the very person Laurie said she had a secret crush on in the original film, singing to herself as The Shape watches from the shadows “I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us”); is even dressed up as the Shape.   This kind of alluding to future events happens again in the story when Michael suffocates the nurse in the hot tub by bobbing her head in and out of the scolding water after overhearing her talking about how she would never bob for apples again for as long as she lived.  Irony is one of the Shape’s strong points; in another scene the Shape, the living embodiment of evil and death, a modern day grim reaper, chooses to hide in the hospital’s maternity ward, standing over rows of innocent newborn babies.   It’s apparent that the film makers intended for Michael’s actions to be deviously ironic, like a good trick or treat prank.

Both Ben Tramer and Myers die by fire and Dr. Loomis gives a completely made up explanation about what happens during Samhain.   Dr. Loomis’s talk about witches and ancient Pagan ritual sounds spooky, but it is done with a greater intention within the context of the movie, it connects the Shape to the holiday, and eludes to the fact that Myers is more conscious about what is happening around him than a mere madman motivated by pure instinct.  The connection between Loomis’s speech about Hallow’s Eve and what happens at the end of the film is undeniable and definitely adds another layer of complexity to the story that most people seem to miss.  A point that Dr. Loomis doesn’t seem to miss however is that “2,000 years later we’ve come no further”; we are still as superstitious as our Celtic ancestors from long ago.  Despite being a man of science Dr. Loomis recognizes “pure evil” and speaks of Myers as if he were a mystical force.  He simply isn’t human.  Loomis abandons pure scientific endeavor and must rely on superstition to explain Myer’s existence.   

I don't think that the audience sees these connections right away because at the end of the film you aren't thinking about what Loomis said twenty minutes ago. You're thinking about Laurie and Dr. Loomis getting away and eradicating the threat of the Shape, but when you take the movie in as a whole it makes sense and explains why the writers (or writer John Carpenter), would make up some false explanation of Samhain.

Alice

Why did Myers kill Alice?  She was not in his way to getting to the hospital, so what was the point (besides padding the body-count?).

 

Alice was a nubile teenage girl (much like Judith), alone in her house on Halloween, the cops were on Myers trail, he was already switching up some of his MO with the infamous Bob kill from H1, why not toss another body on the pile to really toss the police off? When they start finding bodies in household after household on the same street they will start seeing Michael "on every street corner", which fits perfectly with the Ben Tramer death and might also explain part of the reason he broke into the elementary school to etch “Samhain” in blood. 

Myers turned his attack on Laurie into an attack on Haddonfield itself. He wanted the police jumping at their own shadows, spreading the police force out thin in a panic, leaving The Shape free to pursue his own dark intentions. Alice's death was a means to an end. He needed the police shaken up enough to start running over their own citizens in patrol vehicles. That sick irony is something Myers thrives on.

Dr. Mixter

I enjoyed the fact that Myers used a syringe to kill him after his last scene was with Laurie, tapping her vein, drawing her blood with a needle. Nobody taps Laurie but Michael. How Freudian.  The shower represents purification, like the "baptizing" shower from Psycho. Dr. Mixter never made it to his shower. He was never absolved of his sins, or at least his drunkenness.

Blood on Black

While Laurie dreams in her drug induced nightmare, recalling memories long buried in her psyche, perhaps shaken loose from the night’s terror, we are shown intercut shots of blood splattering against a flat, black surface, like crimson tears in a void.  The terror of remembering is a powerful, sometimes terrifying thing, and perhaps on some sort of animalistic level Laurie felt her repressed memories and nightmares boiling to the surface of her psyche after suffering from the shock of being attacked by The Shape, whom through musical cues is also alluded to as “Mr. Sandman” in the film.

The very first thing Laurie tells any hospital personnel is to not put her asleep.  On the surface it would appear that she wouldn’t want to sleep out of fear of Myers attacking her in her vulnerable state as she slept, but if you interpret the “Mr. Sandman” song by The Cordettes as an allusion to Michael Myers (within the context of the film), then Laurie’s fear of sleep takes on a duplicate meaning.  She not only is fearful of the vulnerability associated with sleep, she is afraid of seeing “Mr. Sandman”, or Michael Myers in her sleep, a fear that is soon realized when recollecting the time she first saw him in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium during a nightmare.  As the jagged memories come flowing back to consciousness and Laurie recalls her relation to pure evil, the spots of blood on black becomes a still lake of blood, perhaps representing the nightmare struggle she finds herself drowning in.  It’s interesting to note that the next time she sees Myers (or anyone for that matter) she’s drugged and dazed, her sight unclear, the Shape appears to her as if in a vision, offering a fresh kill for his muse, further eradicating any sense of security Laurie might have. 

The blood on black lake is revealed to be from the slow bleeding of Mrs. Alves.  The same blood is what Jimmy later slips in and bumps his noggin; makes sense, after all Jimmy was always slipping up around Mrs. Alves…..