City of the Living Dead / Paura nella città dei morti viventi (Italy, 1980)

"The city of the dead. The living dead. A cursed city where the gates of hell have been opened."
Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl)

(Massive spoilers.) More like Small Town of the Living Dead, but that is the smallest quibble with the film, the first "installment" of Lucio Fulci's unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy – followed by the great The Beyond (1981 / trailer) and the entertaining The House by the Cemetery (1981 / trailer) – and arguably the least satisfying of the three.
Could it be that Fulci was actually sitting on three different films, all featuring the same stars and the same wardrobe so as to save money, all started at different stages of the given plot, and then all desperately edited together when the productions fell through so as to create the semblance of a complete film? Or could it simply be that the concept of a coherent plot and the semblance of any logical, consecutive narrative structure interested Fulci far less than the visual effect of the various memorable shock scenes and, occasionally, the establishment of a surreally disorienting sense of absurdly non-sequitur horror?
Needless to say, any fan of Fulci – or Italian horror films of the Golden Age of Grindhouse in general – knows that the latter is the fact of the matter. But, likewise, the common fan of such Italo-trash is also more than willing to overlook the broad lack of coherent logic or narrative and/or directorial acumen innate to the genre far beyond the limit that would drive them to mercilessly rip apart an exploitation, trash or horror film by a US director. And City of the Living Dead is no different: one of the many popular horror films of the Italian "Godfather of Gore", with the exception of its special effects – re: gore – and cinematography, it is a dud in all things that generally make up a professional production.

"Will you check her out? Talk about a 'box lunch'."
Blonde gravedigger (Perry Pirkanen)

Not that this has ever hampered the film's popularity and wide-spread acclaim: it is, in all intents and purposes, an accepted and indisputable classic of the Golden Age of Grindhouse. A position it holds, possibly, due to the fact that despite its lack of the commonly accepted denominators of professional filmmaking, City of the Living Dead nevertheless achieves a sort of surreal rhythm that, peppered with the shock sequences, not only makes the numerous flaws of the movie easy to overlook but also makes the movie oddly fascinating if not extremely compelling. (Unlike the other two films of the Gates of Hell trilogy, however, City of the Living Dead is never really all that scary – although, as is common to most of Fulci's film, it does often make you squirm.)
The film opens with a levitating priest, Father William Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine of Fulci's The Psychic [1977 / trailer]), who kills himself by hanging in the graveyard of Dunwich, a small town built upon the ruins of Salem, MA.* (OK, so we never see the priest levitate, but how else does he manage so easily and effortlessly to hang himself so high? There is no ladder or chair or anything below him upon which he could have reached the noose, much less tie it in the tree.) Meanwhile, at a séance in NYC, the psychic Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl of Hawk the Slayer [1981 / trailer] and both other entries of the Gates of Hell trilogy) has a visions revealing that his death has opened the portals to hell – and promptly dies. This leads to a prolonged scene with a NYC detective and the other participants of the séance in which the conversation continually returns to "The Book of Enoch", which, as the rather unnecessary character Theresa explains, "[....] Provides the explanation in every detail of a crime, before it has been committed." Swell – only the book has nothing to do with the rest of the film and is never mentioned again.

"Mr. Bell, if those gates are left open, it could mean the end of humanity. We've got to get them shut again. At midnight on Monday, we go into All Saints' Day. The night of the dead begins. If the portholes of hell aren't shut before, no dead body will ever rest in peace. The dead will rise up all over the world and take over the Earth! You must get to Dunwich, Mr. Bell. You must reclose those gates!"
Theresa (Adelaide Aste)

At Mary's funeral the next day, to which only the reporter Peter Bell (Christopher George of Mortuary [1983 / trailer], Graduation Day [1981 / trailer], Pieces [1982 / trailer], The Exterminator [1980 / trailer] and Grizzly [1976 / trailer], seen here eating watermelon as the centerfold in Playgirl's June 1974 issue) shows up, she revives in the coffin and he frees her.** Soon they are on their way to Dunwich to close the gate before All Saints' Day, for otherwise all hell will be on earth.
In Dunwich, where not only do blow-up sex dolls inflate themselves by themselves, but girls puke their guts out and teleporting zombies are ripping the brains out of the hapless townsfolk, they hook up with the shrink Gerry (Carlo De Mejo, also seen in The Dead Are Alive [1972 / trailer], Contamination [1980 / trailer] and Guardian of Hell [1981 / trailer]) and his neurotic but sexy blonde patient Sandra (Janet Agren of Ratman [1988 / trailer], Hands of Steel [1986 / trailer], Mystère (1983 / trailer], Eaten Alive! [1980 / trailer] and L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone [1974 / trailer] – seen here not as she appears in the film) and the little boy John-John Robbins (Luca Venantini of Exterminators of the Year 3000 [1983 / trailer]) to dawdle and delay until Emily and many others are dead.

"Don't tell me. You're a newspaper reporter. I can smell you guys a mile away."
Policeman (Robert E. Warner)

Finally, after it is theoretically too late because All Saints' Day has dawned, they enter the crypt of Father Thomas to destroy him – as powerful as the teleporting dead are, they can be killed by simply stabbing them in the stomach with the nearest sharp object. But wait! Just when you think everything is ending well and John-John is skipping happily to the survivors exiting the crypt, Mary grimaces in horror, freeze frame, scary noises, cheap scraggly lines on the image and the film ends on a note of unknown dread...
The City of the Living Dead is a fun film, but not necessarily a good one – it is very much an obvious stepping stone to the two Gates of Hell films that followed, both of which are far more moody, surreal and successfully nightmarish than this. City has some long dry spots and the whole NYC part seems extraneous (it would seem to make more dramaturgical sense to have simply scripted everything into one location), but the flaws of the film only add to the film's overall goofy appeal.
In turn, the goofiness of the film is easily balanced by some true highlights of grindhouse gore, in-particular: the infamous gut-puking scene and the later equally infamous head-drilling scene in which a minor character named Mr. Ross (Venantino Venantini of Bandidos [1967 / trailer] and Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye [1973 / trailer]) kills the town's simpleton Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice of dozens of films, including Stage Fright: Aquarius [1987 / trailer] and The Church [1989 / trailer]), who initially appears to be a much more important of a character than he turns out to be. (His death may stand out as a highlight of the film, but it also stands out as typically extraneous to the overall plot of the film – not that something like that has ever stopped any Italo-trash master from inserting a possibly memorable scene when if given the chance.) Add bad dubbing – including the screeching of jungle animals in a New England forest – wild zooms and crazy pans, oft-inspired (and oft-idiotic) editing and a meandering, logicless script, and you have some prime Eurotrash grime.
The City of the Living Dead – a flawed but memorable classic of Italo trash from the Golden Days of 42nd Street. Well worth seeing, perhaps even required viewing if you are into Eurotrash, but not the masterpiece so many claim it to be. It is more like, dunno, Van Gogh's Siesta to his Irises or Bedroom in Arles or Starry Night or Night Café: good it is, with all the common stylistic features of the artist that you know and love, but simply not fully up to par with the best of the work. But in the end, it doesn't matter, because it is still a joy (of sorts) to see...

*One assumes that Fulci, a foreigner, simply did not know that Salem, MA, is not only still standing but is also a popular tourist town. But, perhaps, more likely, he simply didn't give a rat's ass.

** How did she survive the embalming? The autopsy? Why do none of her friends show up? Do funerals happen that fast when the death is considered suspicious?

The Terror Within II (USA, 1991)

"A mutant sperm of some sort, forcing its way into the embryo, fusing with it, battling for genetic dominance!"
Kara (Stella Stevens)

Once upon a time there was a sexy lass named Estelle Caro Eggleston who changed her name to Stella Stevens and tried to make it as an actress but whose career really didn't go so hotly; then she demurely posed as the January 1960 Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine and her career took off – according to Wikipedia, she also became one of the ten most photographed women in the world during the 1960s. Her acting career included a number of memorable films of progressively less note, including Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor (1963 / trailer), The Silencers (1966 / main title), The Poseidon Adventure (1972 / trailer), Slaughter (1972 / trailer), Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975 / main title), The Manitou (1978 / trailer) and Chained Heat (1983 / trailer), but by the time she had her superfluous nude shower scene in Monster in the Closet (1986 / trailer), her heyday and drawing power were long gone.
Prior to Playboy, however, she found the time to have a hunky son named Andrew Stevens – anyone remember Massacre at Central High (1976 / trailer), Day of the Animals (1977 / trailer) or The Fury (1978 / trailer)? – who, before becoming a B-film producer to be reckoned with, acted in a lot of bad B-films. One of the more memorable (or less memorable, depending on your tastes) was the 1989 Roger Corman cheapie The Terror Within (trailer), yet another Alien (1979 / trailer) rip-off but set in an underground laboratory in a decimated post-apocalyptic future. It did well enough to warrant a sequel, and Andrew, as David, the only surviving character, was not only back on board as actor but was even given a shot at directing and scriptwriting. (Leave to Roger Corman to save where he can – besides, Andrew had already proven his mettle as a screenwriter the previous year with the erotic thriller Night Eyes [trailer].) So, two years after The Terror Within, part two hit the screens – or at least the lowest shelf at the video store. And was it any good? As if you really have to ask.
The Terror Within II is bad as a low budget, post apocalyptic film shot in the Mojave Desert can be, though in all truth it is less crappy, cheesy, exploitive or laughable than it is simply unbelievably cheap – hell, it almost makes David DeCoteau's Creepoziods (1987 / trailer) look like a Hollywood A-production. Not only does everything about part two – sets, monsters, locations, costumes, effects – look cheaper than the cheap first film, but the script is so cheap creatively that it basically recycles whole aspects of the first film. The result is that if you have seen the first film, you not only suffer from an extreme case of déjà vu but also get the feeling that the character David (Andrew Stevens) must either have the worst memory in the world or be suffering some form of amnesia, for he walks straight into some of the exact same mistakes as in the first film – the result: if you've seen one, you've seen both.Worse, perhaps, is that the budget for blood in part two was obviously lower than in part one, so the gore factor is more ketchup than stage blood, with all other effects being of a similar quality. And although we do get two gratuitous female nude-torso scenes – the modest mounds of Ariel (Clare Hoak of the laughable Corman version of Masque of the Red Death [1989 / trailer]) and the much more impressive love pillows of Sharon (Barbara Alyn Woods of Delusion [1991 / trailer] and Ghoulies IV [1994 / trailer]) – when it comes to skin, The Terror Within II is almost puritanical in comparison to, say, prime Roger Corman Alien rip-offs such as Forbidden World (1982 / trailer).
The Terror Within II opens at two locations: an underground lab somewhere in Colorado where the inhabitants are dying one-by-one of the plague that decimated mankind many a year earlier because the needed plant for the vaccine is in short supply, and somewhere in the middle of the desert where David and his dog are making their way to Colorado as they gather the plant materials. In Colorado, an above-ground confrontation with a mutant results in an amputated mutant finger finding its way into the lab, while in the desert David manages to save a delectable dish named Ariel (but not her bother) from a mutant attack. With her now in tow, he continues on his way – and one night of unprotected sex later she happily announces her pregnancy. But during their travels they hook up briefly with a duplicitous tribe of survivors and by the time David catches on and kills all the duplicitous tricksters, he is too late to stop Ariel from being raped doggy-style by an invisible-dicked mutant. Less than a week later, in the safety of the underground lab, Ariel looks 8 months pregger and ready to drop – but David still acts as if it's just another day in the neighborhood. Before long, the baby is born and within hours it is an adult mutant-human crossbreed that looks exactly like the now-grown mutant finger, which has evolved into a second full-grown mutant-human crossbreed (because it ate a human while growing). Needless to say, though the humans know that guns have no effect on the monsters, they go a-hunting for the critters with pistols and other common weapons and one-by-one get cheaply decimated until (apparently) only Ariel and David and their offspring are left and they all get together for some family time – as Ariel tells their critter kid when he goes after his half-daddy: "Stop! Stop right there! Don't hurt him! You're part of him! You're part of me!"The Terror Within II is cheap and cheesy and pretty funny, but not funny enough to make it a truly enjoyable and fun turkey. If you've seen part one, there is really no reason to see this rehash – not that you would probably want to. And even if you haven't seen part one, there really isn't any reason to see part two. Andrew Stevens was nice enough to give his aged mother work by putting her in the film, but neither her presence nor that of R. Lee Ermey (as Von Demming, the compound head) do much to make the film any more palatable – though they are the two best actors on screen.If absolutely nothing else is available to watch, there are more painful films out there than The Terror Within II – but on the other hand, you could also do something fun with your time like, dunno, take the in-laws shopping at Wal-Mart or for dinner at McDonald's...

Red Rock West (USA, 1992)

Red Rock West is too much of a four-person ensemble film to legitimately be called a Dennis Hopper film, but like the previous year's Deep South drama Paris Trout (1991 / trailer), it is definitely one of most unjustly overlooked films around featuring Denis Hopper in a meaty role. And along with Blood Simple (1984 / trailer), the Hopper-directed The Hot Spot (1990 / trailer), the blackly funny Miami Blues (1990 / trailer), A Simple Plan (1998 / trailer), Bound (1998 / trailer), L.A. Confidential (1997 / trailer), U-Turn (1997 / trailer) and the sci-fi noirs Blade Runner (1982 / trailer) and Dark City (1998 / trailer), Red Rock West is also one of the best neo-noirs of the last quarter of the 20th century. In comparison to all the films named, however, it is undoubtedly the most traditional of the bunch – so traditional, in fact, that it could almost be a parody, only nothing of the wryly funny and suavely serpentine film comes across as burlesque. A post-modern cocktail utilizing all the conceits of the classic age of noir that one knows and loves, Red Rock West nevertheless never feels calculated, needlessly derivative or stupid. It is simply a well-made film knowledgeable of its own roots that is sure to entertain any and all people who happen to chance upon it.
The familiar narrative is of the desperate but basically moral everyman on the skids who, driven either by his desperation or his innate sense of morality, makes one wrong decision after the other and slowly but surely gets sucked into a whirlpool of doom. It is a tale that easily could've bogged in its own mundanity were it not for the smooth and effective direction, the excellent acting of the well-chosen cast, the perfect soundtrack and the many unexpected circumvolutions of the extremely tight script. Red Rock West is pure wowtastic.
But as remarkably interesting and involving as the movie is, John Dahl's second film remains oddly overlooked and forgotten – rather unlike his third film, the idiotic but incredibly well received neo-noir The Last Seduction (1994 / trailer), which actually posits at one point that African American males are eager to show strange white women their wieners just to prove that chocolate lollipops are bigger than vanilla lollipops. That Dahl's third film got all the attention is a typical injustice of film, for in comparison to Red Rock West, The Last Seduction is some lazy filmmaking. (But unarguably not as lazy as John Dahl's follow-up to The Last Seduction, a laughable turkey entitled Unforgettable [1996 / trailer].)
But then, Red Rock West was hardly given the chance to prove itself: originally deemed not worthy of cinematic release by Columbia Tri-Star, the flick ended up becoming a minor art house hit after its initial run on HBO, but though well received in Europe and both on the tube and during its brief and limited screen run in the US, the film was quickly relegated to the lowest video store shelf. A shame, for it is a movie that truly deserves a wider audience — and had it been given a decent chance, it surely would have gotten one.
Michael Williams (played by some guy called Nicolas Cage, who is also found in Lord of War [2005 / trailer], Face/Off [1997 / trailer], Wild at Heart [1990 / trailer], Vampire's Kiss [1988 / trailer] and Raising Arizona [1987 / trailer]), an itinerant, jobless and broke ex-Marine with a bad leg, ends up in the hick town Red Rock, Wyoming, when his last hope for a job dissipates in his face. Having a beer at the local bar, he is mistaken by the bar owner Wayne (J.T. Walsh of Breakdown [1997 / Italian trailer], Black Day Blue Night [1995 / trailer] and Needful Things [1993 / trailer]) as "Lyle from Dallas [...] here for the job"; in hope of work, Michael doesn't correct the false assumption and before long is $5,000 richer and saddled with the job of killing Wayne's wife Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle of Happiness [1998 / trailer], The Road to Wellville [1994 / trailer] and The Dark Backward [1991 / trailer]). Instead of doing the job, Michael warns Suzanne of her husband's intentions; she responds by hiring him to kill Wayne. Pocketing all the money, Michael decides it's a good time to leave town, but try as he might he just can't seem to get out of Red Rock...
To reveal more of the plot would require giving away to many of the unpredictable twists that the narrative takes, for little in the film proves to end up being what it initially seems. But to put it simply, things really get complicated with the arrival of the real hitman Lyle (Dennis Hopper of Basquiat [1996 / trailer], True Romance [1993 / trailer], The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 [1986 / trailer], Rumble Fish [1983 / trailer] and Night Tide [1961 / trailer / full film]) and the budding of romance between Michael and Suzanne.
On one level, it is understandable that Columbia Tri-Star didn't know what to do with this film and dumped it so unceremoniously: Red Rock West is simply to good, too different, too much of an exquisite filmic gem for brainless company men who want their films to be as bland and predictable as Wonder Bread. Next time you go to your local DVD rental, bend down to the lowest shelf and rent this flick – Hey Mikey! You'll like it.

Short Film: Logorama (France, 2009)

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

"This guy sucks hairy balls"
Big Boy about Mr Clean

Written and directed by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain of the Parisian design studio H5 and six years in the making, Logorama is a wonderfully caustic animated film that appropriates virtually every logo you can think of – take your pick: at least 2,000, according to imdb, or more than 2,500 according to Wikipedia – and transplants them within a typically exaggerated Hollywood blockbuster scenario complete with a car chase, Tarentinoesque dialogue (supplied by Hollywood screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and Gergory Puss, according to the website Short of the Week), a major shootout and a devastating earthquake. That the film walked away with the 2010 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film is not surprising; what is surprising is that none of the international companies have made problem for the use of their corporate symbols – in this film, for example, both Big Boy and Ronald McDonald are notably less than the shining examples of citizenship than one would expect the respective corps to stomach. Mean and violent and with a vocabulary that renders the film NSFW, Logorama is a visual delight, a nasty laugh and wonderfully enjoyable.
Enjoy this ode to the pervading presence and power of the brand name and global consumerism, A Wasted Life's Short Film of the Month for June 2011.