The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #6: "The Entity"

Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is an independent woman and proud of it. She's a single mother of three, works all day, and attends typing school at night, all with her sanity intact. But on a night no different than any other, the unspeakable begins to take place in Carla's home. An invisible force barges in and violates Carla in the worst ways, before disappearing as quickly as it arrived. Overcome with distress as is, she's further angered when it seems that there's no logical solution to what's happening. The more well-meaning psychiatrist Dr. Sneiderman (Ron Silver) delves into Carla's past, the more frequent and intense her attacks before. Whoever or whatever Carla's assailant is, it's real, though it'll take something special to bring it down in our world.

Schindler's List. United 93. The Passion of the Christ. These are very admirable films, from artistic and thematic standpoints, though it's a little weird to say I "like" them. They reached their respective aims as effectively as they could have, but it'll be a long time before I pop any of them in on a rainy afternoon. As much of a sore thumb as it looks stacked against these pictures, The Entity is just the same, ostensibly a mainstream creepfest that deals in unexpectedly mature and very disturbing concepts. Just as startling is that the film, having been released when most moviegoers based their image of the supernatural off of the Amityville clunkers, makes it to the end without a scratch on its overall dignity. The Entity is a tough sit, but it survives by servicing its characters more so than the gorehound crowd. There are images of sexual assault that are difficult to watch, but the absence of some simplistic objective on which to hang these sequences spares the film the ravages of crass exploitation.

From shocking beginning to harrowing end, The Entity is firmly focused on Carla and never once wavers. Psychologically and physically, she's put through the mother of all wringers, savaged by a demonic aggressor and tortured by the fact that there's sound way to deal with it. A wrenching scene in which Carla breaks down and ponders submitting to her assailant is as riveting as the more showy attack sequences, both of which are still tastefully handled. Things do start to come apart in the third act, when the story edges away from mimicking its real-life basis and throws in a climax with Carla being pursued by a possessed freeze gun. It's never skipping hand-in-hand through a field of silly alongside The Manitou, but it definitely shows how the biggest pyrotechnics show you can muster is no match for a performance like Hershey's that encapsulates all manner of torment most of us can only imagine.

I hadn't known The Entity was such a hot commodity before I hit it up, with new discs on Amazon beginning at $110 as of this posting. I tracked my copy through the library, so unless you have a chum who's up on his '80s horror collection or a dusty VHS of your own laying somewhere, chances are you've seen the last of this ditty for some time. In any case, I'm dying for a current viewer's take on The Entity -- after so many films have instructed us when to be scared like good little puppies, I'd like to see how they do with something that actually has a reason.

The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #5: "Dying Breed"

If Dying Breed is to be believed, Australia in the early 1800s resembled a primeval version of Escape from New York. Once a penal colony housing England's undesirable, the most notorious of them all was the Pieman, a criminal who fed on human flesh to survive. Centuries after his death, the Pieman's legend lives on in a remote area of Tasmania, where a group of pals have come to in search of a rare tiger. What they instead run into is the set of The Aussie Chainsaw Massacre and a village that swears by the Pieman's cannibalistic cookbook. The locals take to hunting down the tourists in short order, but having reached the bottom of the gene pool some time ago, the residents plan to replenish their bloodline before the feast truly begins.

Few horror movies concern themselves with surprising viewers anymore. We know what to expect, as do they, so nine times out of ten, it's a matter of the inevitable being delayed. But how a flick passes that time before the foregone conclusion is what separates a fan's ecstatic elation from their profanity-laden dismay. I'm not so disappointed that Dying Breed falls into this line so easily (which I am, but that's another story) as I am in it providing nothing to really watch in the meantime. It's a film that lays down all its cards from the word go, foreshadows everything you could possibly expect from a premise like this, and still expects you to be gobsmacked when its world turns exactly as planned. What was I supposed to carry away from this? That cannibalism is icky? Thanks, movie, I never would've guessed. Excuse me while I fill in the cast of Alive.

Dying Breed isn't big on creating tension, sustaining it as the narrative progresses, and upping the suspense ante when necessary -- it's all about characters learning things the audience figured out twenty minutes in, until the movie feels like stopping. The mood is dour enough (as cannibal stories that don't involve dudes named Raoul tend to be), so waiting for Dying Breed to finish having its way with you makes you more hostage than paying customer. Adding further drudgery to the proceedings are characters who go endure routines their respective archetypes have dictated they go through since the dawn of time. But Nathan Phillips as the king of the douchebags aside, the lead performers, which include Saw screenwriter Leigh Whannell, do turn out fairly appealing performances. Plus, as dark as the overall tone gets, the few hints of self-aware exploitation help it feel less bleak and hopeless than fellow Aussie fright flick Wolf Creek.

Would I go so far as to call Dying Breed stupid? Well, it's not good at all, but it's less constructive with its time than it is outright idiotic. It has the makings of a taut survival thriller, one that could make good use out of Australia's urban legends. But just as the film's characters have consigned themselves to biting the dust by the final reel, viewers can anticipate an abysmal ride out of Dying Breed before the Pieman's first big bite.

The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #4: "Cold Prey"

In the terrifying tradition of Extreme Ops and Ski Patrol, Cold Prey takes place during a wintry jaunt gone decidedly awry. Norway's picturesque mountains are the order of the day, and despite a small whiff of sexual tension in the group, five farm-fresh stereotypes are prepared to party themselves purple. But the good times are cut short when the token nerd (Rolf Kristian Larsen) takes a dive a busts up his leg somethin' awful. The gang finds shelter in an abandoned ski lodge, where they discover that their ordeal is just beginning. Someone's been watching these kids ever since they took to the slopes, and while they wait out the bad weather before searching for help, this cunning killer plans on serving as their own personal tour guide to hell and back.

Cold Prey's back cover comes adorned with promises of intelligence, intensity, and other terms that are hard to come by in the horror genre. Lord knows how many mainstream movies get the hell hyped out of them just for not sucking, so imagine what happens when horror fans wheel out the pedestal. But since Cold Prey is particularly ballsy and insistent that it's not typical slasher fodder, the fact that it totally freaking is comes as even less of a shock. I've previously mentioned how I always assume that other countries know better and avoid the mistakes America's movies are built on making. But with some Japanese ghost movies tailored to fit our perceptions of the genre, I guess it's no surprise that Cold Prey is extra careful that it never develop something as silly as an actual identity.

That's not to say there's no audience for Cold Prey, as its accolades and two follow-up features have demonstrated there is. But even Prom Night made a profit, and while Cold Prey is cut from less neutered, intelligence-insulting cloth, there's almost zero entertainment value here. The film is minimalist to a fault and cuts corners wherever possible, be they in the location or dialogue departments. Characters milling around is mistaken for tension, grumbled rants about one's love life is what passes for character development, and a half-assed wraparound twist is meant to leave us with one last surprise (which it might have, were it relevant to the story in any shape or form). There's just nothing here that other, superior horror movies haven't executed with more style, imagination, and energy. This doesn't even have the self-referential edge of a Dead Snow (which was shallow, yes, but it was there).

I'm not mad that Cold Prey didn't live up to Ain't It Cool News' claims of perfection; I'm mad that it didn't even try. Sure, the self-promotion didn't help, but the lack of a drive to do anything except C+ its way through Slashers 101 did even more damage. Like the countless other thrillers that shooting dark hallways is a one-way ticket to suspense, Cold Prey is dull, derivative, and, worst of all, sorely mistaken.

The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #3: "The Boogie Man Will Get You"

When Winnie Slade (Miss Jeff Donnell) bought a dusty old country house, she thought a few creaky floorboards were the worst she'd have to deal with. Sure, the farmhands are a bit nutty, and weird Professor Billings (Boris Karloff) carries on some funny business in the basement, but they're just some harmless eccentrics. But little does Winnie know that the professor's experiments in turning men into super-powered beings have left her with a few well-preserved corpses tucked in the cellar. Not only that, but some shady houseguests check in, there's a mad bomber on the loose, and a killer has taken to stalking the premises. The Slade estate is getting screwier by the minute, and Winnie's ex-husband Bill (Larry Parks) is the only one sane enough to try and figure out what's going on.

Anyone who says that old movies are boring can put The Boogie Man Will Get You in their pipe and smoke it. A surplus of subplots is tough for any movie to handle, but this one clocks in at 66 minutes and still whips itself into entertaining shape. But it should be said that this isn't a true horror movie. There's no ordained "Boogie Man" to speak of, and that Mothman guy on the poster is nowhere to be seen either (what, did the artist think the flick wasn't busy enough?). We have Peter Lorre gussied up like the Reverend Harry Powell, but even he gets in on the goofiness pretty quickly. Nah, Boogie Man isn't an official fright film but rather a farce with a cheerfully diabolical sense of humor. In tone, it's closer to Arsenic and Old Lace than Frankenstein, with Karloff's nutty professor humorously lamenting many a human guinea pig lost in the name of science.

Still, the light approach works best for Boogie Man; with a workload like the one it takes on, truly sinister overtones would've killed its charm. As it, the movie has some trouble keeping up with itself, occasionally dishing out gags and side bits for the sake of having something to do. But with its short running time, Boogie Man wraps up long before it has the chance to really wear out its welcome. It's too cheery to hate, especially when you see the actors having just as much fun. Karloff has a blast defying God's will any chance he gets, but I was even more impressed with Lorre's performance. To be honest, I'm not as up on my Lorre as I should be, but he was wry comic gold here, playing the town jack-of-all-trades who joins up with Billings to make a few quick bucks. Donnell and Parks are just fine as the prototypical bickering lovers, and Maxie Rosenbloom enjoys some good-natured goofs as a particularly dimwitted shuckster.

The Boogie Man Will Get You comes packaged with Boris Karloff's Icons of Horror set, where it's easily the least frightening of the bunch. It's not the first time this has happened, but it's of more respectable quality than Karloff's lighter material tends to be. Sunny and amusing over campy and intolerable, The Boogie Man Will Get You is the very picture of macabre hilarity.

The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #2: "The Addiction"

Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor) just doesn't understand evil. On the eve of completing her dissertation, she struggles to comprehend how mankind's cruelty towards itself has lasted so long. But a brisk evening walk in the Big Apple brings our girl face to face with her innermost demons. An encounter with a seductive vampiress (Annabella Sciorra) results in Kathleen's own transformation into a creature of the night, and it ain't a pretty sight. Along with her growing thirst for blood, Kathleen's moral outlook begins to warp, as she blames her victims for being at the business end of a set of fangs. Night by night, the addiction claims what's left of Kathleen's soul, leaving a seasoned bloodsucker (Christopher Walken) to set her on the path to salvation before it's too late.

Boy, does it stink being a vampire. But you knew that, unless a certain pop culture behemoth has you convinced that vampires are the worst Marvel characters Stan Lee never created. Compared to the genre's most fantastic examples, The Addiction is as grounded as vampire lore has ever been explored onscreen. It's as far removed from glamor as possible, with director Abel Ferrara (Body Snatchers) chronicling Kathleen's story as he would a junkie's. But while her ethical breakdown is coolly tragic initially, The Addiction loses its punch pretty fast. This is mostly due to Kathleen, who we really don't know much about when the bite is put on her, and after she turns, she just spouts off angsty rants best suited for someone who must own a lot of Jack Skellington merchandise.

The Addiction is the sort of movie that thinks knowing who Sartre and Kierkegaard equates to understanding their teachings. Ferrara has a philosophy in mind that's not altogether bad, but it's a matter of viewers just not caring rather than it being too cerebral. "Free will" (or the lack thereof) is the flick's favorite buzzword, with much made about Kathleen passing the buck to her victims while her condition reflects her own dark soul. But again, we don't know nearly enough about Kathleen to make any real judgements about her personality -- for all we know, she's just some grad student who went full emo when the Jungle Fever gal started feeling peckish. Taylor's a treasure of an actress, but not even she can breathe life into her morose monologues or help her supporting cast do anything but add to the body count. But leave it to the man, the myth, the Walken to steal all ten minutes he's onscreen, exhibiting equal parts authority and WTF-ery as a longtime vamp who's curbed his hunger.

For however short they last, The Addiction has moments that work, and I can see why it's earned the cult crowd it commands. Shot in smooth black-and-white and set amidst New York's meanest streets, Ferrara's story embraces a style that few other vampire flicks (if any) have taken to heart. The Addiction gets an A for carving out its own identity, but it script and soul are as transparent as Kathleen's reflection.

The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #1: "7 Mummies"

En route to the stony lonesome, a prison transport van crashes in the middle of the desert. Taking a female guard (Cerina Vincent) with them, the surviving cons flee into the wasteland, where an old Apache (Danny Trejo) grabs their attention with a mighty tall tale. Legend tells of Spanish gold in the area, buried beneath an Old West town and guarded by seven Jesuit priests sworn to fend off would-be thieves. Sure enough, the criminals find the town, but come sundown, the residents (all apparently members of the High Plains Drifter Re-enactment Guild) transform into bloodthirsty ghouls who set to make meals out of the cons. With some searching for the gold and some searching for a way out, the crooks only have hours before they too join the ranks of this real-life ghost town.

7 Mummies is a more curious case than I expected. Of course, I didn't expect much, if anything at all, but from that cover art, who would? It looks like any other straight-to-DVD venture that wrangled its quota of recognizable faces to dine on the horror leftovers their careers have unceremoniously led them to. Well, it pretty much is just that, though instead of the battle of attrition I dreaded, 7 Mummies offers enough cheesiness to let it go down smoothly. Essentially, it's a take-off on From Dusk Till Dawn, with prisoners on the run making their way to a desert bar, where they proceed to get more than a little red on them. That's all well and good, but here's where you start to wonder just what the filmmakers were thinking. These are modern-day convicts we're dealing with, but once they wander into Hill Valley circa 1885, no one bats an eye; it's not until some vampire hookers help dwindle their numbers that they suspect, hey, something's not quite right here.

You also come to question why 7 Mummies even included the cons to begin with. It has the costumes and rootin' tootin' stunt show set, so why not ditch the stereotypical thugs and make a name for itself in the Old West horror subgenre alongside Dead Birds or The Burrowers? But that would take a certain degree of ambition, and with dialogue consisting mostly of f-bomb variations, moxie is something 7 Mummies is fresh out of. I even had the sneaking suspicion that it wouldn't even make good on its titular promise -- sure enough, it's not until 11 minutes before the credits that you see hide or hair of a wrapped one. I'm still not sure I even saw seven to begin with, but when they turn out to be kung-fu mummy priests, it all seems to be strangely worth the wait.

Yeah, 7 Mummies is crap -- flatly-directed, badly-acted, lazily-written crap. But it's not a washout of any proportions worth getting riled up about. At not even 80 minutes, the pain doesn't last long, and while the flick as a whole can drag like the dickens, there's enough hilarity to have you chuckling your way through the really dull patches. This isn't a recommendation by any means, but should an inebriated pal haul this home from the video store, save your punishment for the guy who brings back a Dark Harvest sequel.

Red Eye -- Round Two

Greetings, salutations, and multiple apologies, Red Eye Report fans! After months of unfulfilled promises and false starts, I'm ready to get back into gear by kicking off the second year of my October Horrorthon! Once again, I'll be watching and reviewing a horror flick I'll be seeing for the first time every single day throughout October. But this year, I'm adding a little twist to the movie madness -- for the first 27 days, I'll be taking them on in alphabetical order. That's right, from 7 Mummies to (hopefully) Zombi 2, expect a new horror review of every letter, with a special Asian horror week for letters I through O. The four after that will be a random mix of whatever I can get my hands on, save for the 31st, on which I'll review a genre classic I have actually yet to see (and I'm embarrassed I haven't).

Swing by later today for a write-up on the first Horrorthon selection, 7 Mummies. Until then, stay scared! Red Eye rules!

-A.J.