Okay, so you’re at a seance. And naturally you go into a deep, deep trance. In this trance, you have a horrible vision of the dead rising out of their graves and the gates of Hell opening up and of the evil, hanged priest lurking behind this whole mess of trouble. The vision is so shocking, so horrifying, you go into convulsions, blow snot and drool out of many orifices…and you die. You die. YOU ARE DEAD!
A few days later, when you wake up from your actual death, you’re trapped in your coffin about to be buried. So, you claw your fingers bloody trying to get out. Lucky for you, some manly retrograde sexist reporter frees you and you tell him the whole weird story–You absolutely must get to Dunwich (what’s up, Lovecraft?) before All Saints Day and rekill the dead priest or the gates of Hell will open, pouring out every horror imaginable. All Saints Day is two days away.
What do you do?
Why, you dawdle around New York for a day and a half and show up literally two hours too late after poking around town and stopping for snacks.
C’mon, doesn’t your OWN DEATH give you a clue that you should hustle it up and stop this oncoming Armageddon?

Last night, Netflix streaming wouldn’t let me watch episode three of The Kingdom, so I opted for some old style ’80’s Italian horror, The City of the Living Deadin high- def. It’s the first of Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy. The second film in the trilogy, The Beyond, is my favorite of these two movies and one of the best non-Argento examples of the genre. I haven’t seen the third one, but I’ll certainly search it out.
I’m a sucker for Italian horror movies and their close brethren, the gallos. I love their style, camera use, seriousness, inventive gore and general visceral feel. Yea, they can seem extremely dated and cheesy at times, but unlike many American horror directors of the time, the Italians try and treat their films as art.
Sometimes a dreamlike quality supersedes narrative and resolution. I seem to have a lot of horror-based dreams in the twilight hours of my sleep cycle. I usually don’t mind, I’m generally not the main character in my own dreams, but an involved secondary character. Weird. My dreams are often in the style and even plot of many Italian horror films of the ’80’s. I should probably see a psychiatrist, but at the end of most dreams, I generally feel like I’ve resolved some intangible problem much like a good horror movie.

Okay, some highlights from TCotD: generous eye bleeding like crying, maggot covered undead with real moving maggots on their faces, in fact the principle cast spent two minutes of the film being pelted with live maggots from head to toe with what must have been and insect filled snow blower, plenty of unnecessary cigar chomping, a woman pukes up HER ENTIRE INTESTINAL TRACK—slowly, three people were killed by the undead squeezing their brains out of the back of their head toothpaste tube style, mucho wood paneling, beer signs and ugly perms, an unnecessary and annoying kid, bad art, an unnecessary pervy janitor type, a temple to temple high-powered drilling, and, oh yeah, they were totally too late to stop the gates of Hell from opening. No boobs (boo), 15 dead bodies, Joe Bob gives it three stars.

Thinking about it, here’s a short list of themes or, if I’m in a bad mood, cliches of many Italian horror films of the 70’s and 80’s:

Plodding, throbbing, hypnotic Prog rock (These movies are the only place Prog rock should ever appear)
Weird unexplained animal noises in the back ground (Monkeys in the city?)
Lots of close up shots of eyes
Nobody blinks in the movie, ever
Eyes are ALWAYS the victim of some horrible impaling, I mean, these movies hate and are obsessed with eyes
Super saturated primary colors and lighting that make the colors both bleed onscreen and pop off the screen
Most of the horror is in the daytime
Hot, Italian women, usually wearing some strange Italian couture
Art galleries integrated into the plot or prominently displayed
One C or D-list American actor slumming it in the second lead role. They almost always die. (TCotD had ’70’s character actor Christopher George)
Pulpy, meaty down and dirty, lingering gore
Redubbed English dialogue. That is, they’re speaking English, but the mouth movements still don’t match.
Solid, fluid camera work that aren’t as dependent on editing as American horror movies
And lastly, a dream-like logic that guides and permeates both the characters and the action. While this sometimes leaves me scratching my head, more often than not it leads to surprises and the WTF moments you look for in a good horror movie.

I can think of a few more cliches, but I want to see the third film of this trilogy and then see how it compares to Dario Argento and Mario Bava’s work.

Also, enough writing for today.

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These two Korean movies (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269743 and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216496/) were written and directed by the same person. And while very different, both films remind me of American movies of the 1970’s. More on that in a bit.

In a week, I hope to turn this blog into a daily review exercise for my to flex and build some writing muscles. I’ve been in constant consume mode for about two years now. Direct TV, Netflix streaming, a bourgeoning board game addiction, some mild anti-depressants, emusic, a not at all challenging job and basically an acceptance of who I am and what I believe have all led to a lessening creative output. And honestly, I’m okay with this. I enjoy consuming other people ideas, sifting through to find the truth and just letting things be. I no longer feel the need to pursue or justify any kind of ideology or agenda. Also, a need to write and create often stem from an obsession and I’ve been pretty obsession-free. General happiness and letting go of the uncontrollable can crush success. So, hoo-ray to my lack of success.

So, after failing to write for obsessive and even negative reasons, I wanted to get back to writing as a method for refinement. This blog is an exercise in refining why I like what I like and all of the semi-related topics the popular and not-so-popular culture are in relation into what makes up an interested or even negative response in my tastes. Huh? Basically, after developing a philosophy, I’m now interested in exploring and defending my likes and dislikes.

I do hope along the way, you’ll find some new interesting movie or game to play or what ever.

Yea, originally, this blog was going to be a game a day blog. A new board game played and reviewed every day. But, seven games played (with Seeshells) and reviewed would become a real grind. Funny thing is, I think we have enough games to go a whole year without repeating a game. Like I said, a board game addiction. I decided to scale that back to three games a week and fill the other four days with movies from Netfix streaming. I do like Netflix streaming, it’s a bargain. I may also do comic and music reviews as well.

This starts in ernest next week, the day after my 44th birthday and hopefully runs a year. (Hint, old man birthday a-comin’) If I like it, I may go another year with just movies. Technically, I received my new iPad for this birthday and each post will be written on my new-ish Apple girlfriend.

So, next week….
For now, a warm-up.

I’ve been watching a lot of Korean movies. The ones I’ve seen, including film The Chaser and the two titular flicks, remind me of ’70’s American movies. After Watergate, movies got darker and institutions started to fail on film. South Korea, as a country on film, seems to be going through much of the same growing pains. The populace is highly suspicious, distrustful, flawed, and uninterested in building community or improving their neighborhoods. It’s strange, all of the locations are crumbling and cramped, but the people themselves seemed to be dressed well to off-set their poverty. Individual over society. And they highly distrust every institution. The social services, police, church, academia and the politicians are either extremely incompetent or blandly corrupt. It’s just the way of life the young assistant professor has to bribe his boss to get a better job. Rumors abound everywhere, but conspiracies don’t exist. I like this because I’ve always thought conspiracies to be a uniquely American obsession and even have a positive side because it implies that the conspirators must be super competent, hard-working and ingenious to pull off their complex Machevellian plans.
That said, in these Korean movies, every one is angling for some personal gain with little regard for laws. They only cross the line at either the abhorrent or extremely, personally unethical. In all three of these movies, a bad guy is the good guy, the protagonist. He or she does some pretty bad things, sometimes not even for the best reasons, but only wins through personal sacrifice. And, in something and American movie wouldn’t do, another no-so-innocent, but unlucky person takes the fall for the protagonist’s crimes. There’s quite a bit of noir and dark absurdist comedy there. The lines aren’t drawn as heavy as they are in American or even western films. That’s not to say there isn’t any fairness doled out to the characters, there is, it’s just of the bittersweet variety.

As you can tell, I haven’t gone into story or even really classified what the two films are. Since I’m recommending them, I don’t want to spoil. And as far as the type of movie each of these films are, I think at once, they could be interpreted as both dark comedy or drama or thriller or farce. Tonally, I was thrown for a loop and I mean that in a good way. I didn’t see the end of Mother coming, but on reflection, man I should have. Tonally, tricks were played and like the best noir, the clues were all there. I should’ve seen it.

And that’s an awesome thing.

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A quick word about why, why am I writing short, loose random reviews. A few years ago when I became a full-on skeptic, I felt I kind of had to re-evaluate my ethics and standards. I felt I needed solid reasons for my positions and beliefs. Because it’s what every one else believes isn’t a solid enough reason. Every one used to believe the earth was flat. I wanted to believe as many true things and as few false things as I am aware of. This lead to developing systems for evaluating information and determining it’s validity. It’s nowhere near perfect because emotions and subconscious leaps can be a real bitch to weed out.
Now that I feel solid about where I stand belief-wise, I’ve felt the need to explore why I like what I like and don’t like what I don’t like. Movies—and coming soon, games—seem like a nice tangential way to codify and examine what strikes me. This blog will probably be poorly editing and not researched. I used to do a lot of that and for these purposes, slow and methodical will kill my willingness to write. I’m old enough to no longer feel the need to impress or even strive for perfection. Just doing it is always more important. That said, I hope to write about movies I mostly like and how they strike me. I do like a lot of horrible horror movies and may write about that as well because there’s usually some diamonds in the pile of manure. I probably won’t write about mainstream movies because they’re almost always just plain boring. Good can still be boring.
Enough jibber-jabber…

Browsing through the half-off Criterion collection at Barnes and Noble, I made a mental note of many of the titles also playing on Netflix streaming. One hook of this movie blog is that every movie reviewed can be streamed on Netflix or through a Roku box. Another is my commitment to shoddiness. Wait, that’s not a …
Revanche (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173745/) is an Austrian film released through Criterion on DVD. I’d seen it mentioned in a few of the movie sites I peruse, so why not.
I’m not going to say much about the plot because I want you to see it. At first I thought It’d be one of those Eastern European slice of life pictures about how hard and crappy life can be. You know the type, people eat a real thin soup and stare out windows into a rainy, cruel world a lot. The unhappy couple in the film is a down on his luck brothel handyman and enforcer and his secret Polish girl friend. They have sex and make plans a lot. Pretty typical stuff.
Then the BIG mistake happens, that defining event that sets the rest of the film in motion. Although the event is different than what would happen in a dramatic American movie; it’s still fairly standard stuff, albeit well constructed and filmed.
It’s the remaining two-thirds that movie builds a slow and steady tension. Call it the Fargo Gambit, if you see a wood chipper in the first act, someone’s going to get shredded in the third. The handy man chops a lot of wood. A lot of wood. At first it’s slightly boring, then builds into a foreboding omen. You know the next scene, he’ll be at that lathe and dread it.
More so, the limited split narrative muddies the audience’s sympathies and creates some opportunities for some interesting confrontations.
American movies have trained us for certain beats, especially in dramas and thrillers. You see a clue out in the open, you know it’s just a matter of time before the wrong character will see it and set-up a confrontation.
I like this movie because it knows what my expectations are and doesn’t pay them off like a thousand other movies would in the genre. Plus, the pay-off isn’t a cheat, that trick or ‘mind blowing’ ending that an American would pull to make itself edgy. I’m thinking of the American remake of the French thriller The Vanishing. The French version had an unexpected ending that, upon later reflection, was an extension of the movies themes of obsession and lurking evil. The American remake was fairly faithful to the French version and even had the same ending. Sadly the ending came a full half-hour before the movie actually ended. The last half hour was tacked on to undo the themes of the French version and make everything all better, using every trope in the book. U-G-H.
And I was thinking about a fictional American remake of Revanche while the credits were rolling and that bullshit third act of this imaginary remake just made me angry. That’s how much I liked the ending, I was already pissed about someone fucking it up.

Oh, and the characters in Revanche were complex and well-acted in a low-key, non-glamourous way and blah, blah, blah and so on.

Plus, the lead looks like the actor who played Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and is Monk’s boss on TV. So,my crappy American version is already half cast.

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Netflix Streaming has really changed the way I watch movies. Before I used to do a little research on a movie and try to find the weirdest and best little movies to watch.
With streaming, I’m now actively searching for films I know nothing about. If the movie is useless or unwatchable, I can move on after 10 minutes or so. The payoff, of course, is when I find a riveting film I knew nothing about. Last week it was the Swedish film, Perfectly Happy, and this week it’s the J-horror film, Retribution. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0843302/

Like most J-horror a raven-haired pale ghost is involved, but the set-up and tone is pure noir. A detective soon realizes he may have committed the murder he’s investigating, but doesn’t know how or why he did it or even who the victim is. Then, similar murders start piling up and, of course, everything goes strange.
Unlike most films in the genre, the film making is mostly realistic. The dreams are played straight and the setting is post-industrial between the decay of Japan’s better days and the building up of a future that obviously will never really arrive. I like films that seem to take place entirely on the edge of town, no matter how far you go. Yea, the fantastical and blurry happens at the edge of the screen, the drives are needlessly green screened and the red-dressed succubus is often mirrored or partially blocked, but the forefront is drab and persistently downbeat to highlight the psychological over the supernatural.
Also, most of the movie takes place in the day time which is different than most of the muddy and too dark offerings of the genre.
Plot-wise, I saw a lot of the payoff coming, but the movie had enough going on tonally to keep me unsure of the outcomes.

Overall, hoo-ray! The movie has the effect of a slight nyquill overdose or a thick-headed day and that’s a good thing.

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