REVIEW: THE TUNNEL

I have one eye keenly focused on Australian horror. And while Wolf Creek came out to great acclaim several years back, and that same director’s Rogue was a fun splash of giant alligatorism, found footage movies are a whole horse of a different color (as is always the case with me). To date, I have seen two Australian found footage movies: Lake Mungo, and now, The Tunnel. To date, both have rocked.

I really can’t get into the actual mechanics of The Tunnel without first shedding light on something important: its marketing campaign. The Tunnel prides itself on being almost entirely fan-funded—an honorary (and sole) member of the self-proclaimed “$135K Project.” A pledge was made to send each person who donated money to the production at least an individual frame of the movie; and the higher the pledge, the bigger the reward/accolade. A goal of a $135,000 production budget was set in place…and it was matched. But why is this important enough to mention? Because upon the film’s completion, it was uploaded to the web for a limited time…by the filmmakers…for free consumption. It was downloaded over a million times. For a major studio, this would be a crushing blow. For a small, grassroots campaign, this is a victory.

I don’t know about you, but if I read somewhere that I could download someone’s movie for free—with no legal ramifications whatsoever—I would be a little hesitant. Thoughts of shoddy movies sold in those cheap slim line cases spilling off dollar store shelves and Target end caps come to mind. I mean, have you seen some of the awful dreck some studios actually paid for, and want YOU to pay for? So if the filmmakers of The Tunnel were just giving this thing away for free, how good could it be?

Pretty good. Great, actually.

Its setup won’t exactly knock your socks off with its originality—every movie of this ilk owes its existence to The Blair Witch Project, which will always be the watermark in the found footage sub-genre—but The Tunnel is told in a not-so-traditional manner. Much like Lake Mungo, The Tunnel is not just 90 minutes of characters wandering around in the dark and being terrorized by an off-screen monstrosity. Sure, that happens, but layered through the movie are sit-down interviews with our characters discussing their harrowing ordeal. As the movie draws out, and we take mental attendance of each character giving an epilogue-ish interview, we already know who will survive the events down in the tunnel…and who won’t. Some might see this as a detractor; others not. In the case of Lake Mungo, which depended on an entirely different story, I did not find this technique to be a detractor—in fact, it was a strength. It allowed the characters more time to convey just how the events of the film affected them on an emotional level. With The Tunnel, which is supposed to be a more visceral, in-your-face experience, I’m not so sure the technique works in its favor…

Investigative journalist Natasha Warner leads a three-man film crew down into an unused tunnel system beneath the streets of Sydney to follow up on plans suspiciously abandoned by the government to utilize an untouched water source in order to combat an ongoing drought plaguing the city. The death knell for these plans seemed to immediately follow the city's process in locating and removing the many homeless who had made the underground tunnels their homes, and the suspicious nature in which the plans were scrapped set Natasha’s journalistic mind reeling. In the movie she states: “When something goes unspoken, I have to ask why. That’s my job as a journalist.” And so her investigation begins.

Upon interviewing a homeless man named Trevor, whom she deduced was living in the tunnels, the crew is startled by his extreme emotional outburst that sends him running from his chair and into far corners of the room, crying and ripping at the walls with his fingernails...all in response to the question, “Has something bad happened to you down there?” It’s a great moment that lets both the audience and our characters know that there’s something under those streets the government does not want to deal with, nor even acknowledge.

With her production crew behind her (Pete, producer; Steven, cameraman; “Tangles,” soundman), she leads the descent into the darkness…and to the unimaginable thing that begins to stalk them one by one.

Our story-chasing news crew feels genuine, and we learn about each character in a very organic manner. It’s important for this kind of movie that each of them are likable, and that the actors playing them are believable. The Tunnel nails this with ease, introducing each character and detailing the relationships they all share with each other—which is to say, complicated. Natasha’s desire to descend into the tunnels is fueled by the notion she needs to prove herself as a journalist, and this impulse to do so may very well be clouding her judgment. Steve considers her to be a flavor of the week, never considering her to be a “real journalist.” He also alludes to Natasha having had a sexual relationship with both Pete as well as their boss, and while this is never verified, Steven is all too willing to believe it with a cocksure smile on his face.

Lazy exposition is a detriment to a film, and that is never a fault in The Tunnel. Through the aforementioned sit-down interviews, the POV footage, as well as news broadcasts, we learn the ins and outs of the story—all of it is presented in a very believable manner.

Now that our conflict is firmly established, we now ask ourselves: do our characters have a valid reason for doing what they are doing? Have they provided enough reasoning for going down into the icky, gooey sewer that makes homeless men cry? Well, being that they are journalists and they see the chance to blow the lid off a government conspiracy (and what journalists out there don’t want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein?) then yes, they have perfectly suitable reasons for going down into the dark. Steven states in the movie: “As a film crew, it’s our job to film and get coverage. It’s not our job to [question orders].” So in this case, we don’t need to be force-fed the reasoning behind their descent into the dark. What we’re given is more than suitable.

Once down in the tunnels, the action respectfully and believably escalates. The noises begin, as do the blurry “what the fuck was that?” sightings of something whisking past a corner. The characters become unfocused, lost, and pissed off. Tensions begin to rise. And then the creature makes its appearance. Here we come to the biggest complaint about found footage movies: Why, when the movie's antagonist makes its appearance, does the cameraman keep filming? Why don't they just drop the camera and run screaming from their adversary? Why do they still hold the camera even when they are trying to help a friend who is being violently attacked by their stalker? Well, as Steven explains earlier in the film, the act of going down into the tunnel never jibed with him—especially after Natasha attempted to bribe the security guard to allow them access, leading them to have to basically break in—so he decided then and there to film everything that happened, making Natasha liable for any legalities they may have occurred. Whether you like and accept that argument or not, at least the filmmakers thought far enough ahead to acknowledge it—something most found footage movies leave undisturbed.

Speaking of the creature, here is where my second and last real complaint of the film comes into play: The Tunnel is inconvenienced by not having more shots of the slimy thing slithering around in the dark. And I don’t mean the film needed a well-lit shot of the creature in all its glory—so clear and focused that I could count its testicles. I didn’t need to SEE the thing clearly. I just needed to see it more often. When the cameras capture brief glimpses of the creature in the dark—and its eyes glow green in the camera’s night vision—it’s creepy. The creature’s visage is captured just enough for you to get a basic idea—something almost human, yet not—but not enough so that it destroys the image your imagination has created after filling in the gaps. For me personally, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up during these scenes…and I wanted just a bit more. And while this may not be entirely accurate, when I think back, it seems as if the creature isn’t featured all that much. And when that feeling becomes more and more insistent, it feels as if the movie missed a huge opportunity to be more memorable. Despite this, and for such a low budget, the movie is remarkably well made, well acted, and creepy at times.

As previously mentioned, once you can see what kind of technique the movie is employing, the presence of the majority of our main characters during their sit-down interviews ruins some of the tension created in the tunnels. “Oh, so-and-so lives,” etc. Lake Mungo gets away with this technique because 90-95% of that movie is created with sit down interviews; The Tunnel depends on more traditional POV thrills to tell its story, and so it becomes a different monster altogether.

The filmmakers have openly stated they chose this technique in order to differentiate it from other films in the sub-genre, and I can truly respect that. However, I think it’s okay for your movie to be a little more familiar, so long as you're not sacrificing tension and scares. A strong story and strong characters can make even the most tired of premises come alive in a fresh new way, and The Tunnel accomplishes this handily.

While I can honestly say I look forward to the future endeavors of these filmmakers, part of me selfishly wishes they would make another found footage flick. They are clearly capable of creating something really god damn good, and while The Tunnel doesn’t quite reach that level, it comes pretty close.

The Tunnel has been available for some time in a hard-copy 2-disc format (for the more ardent supporters of the film), and comes with a bevy of special features (which can be bought here). Also available is a single-disc release, featuring audio commentary by the director and producer, which can be nabbed here.

GRADE: A-

PANZRAM

A part of me wishes I could have met Carl Panzram…preferably with an inch of steel or reinforced glass between us. He was a dark man—some might say evil—and the world is probably better off without him.

Despite that, I can honestly say I’ve never read about anyone so intriguing. He was a man without emotion, empathy, or reason. He existed only to bring torment to those he felt deserved his wrath. But he was, also, a shattered end result of a broken society—physically abused by almost every person that was supposed to bring him love, guidance, and attention. 

Panzram spent time in and out of jails and detention centers like most folks take vacations. But all throughout, he was continually mistreated by those in power positions. He was chained to pillars, his arms and legs stretched to painful extremes; he was even placed in a tub of water and methodologically electrocuted.  And it was because of this that whatever thing festering inside Panzram infected his mind—any human semblance within him simply vanished. He had finally decided: since he was unable to hurt those who had hurt him his whole life, he would hurt others, instead. In a mad paradoxical moment, he decided that society's insufficiency in preventing people like Panzram from committing evil acts was the very reason people like Panzram even existed—that there was no karma, no God, and no reason for anything. The world was chaos' playground, and Panzram would gleefully play. This was something he stated in his memoirs, Panzram: A Journal of Murder (originally released as Killer: A Journal of Murder), a collection of diary entries written by Panzram himself, and pieced together with objective recreations by authors Thomas Gaddis and James Long. Panzram was a murderer, pedophile, rapist, arsonist, robber, con artist, and all around bitter-barn curmudgeon. 

“I don’t believe in Man, God, nor Devil. I hate the entire human race, including myself.”

Though the man will never be cited as a positive role model in anyone’s life, one can’t help but lend a little respect to the man’s tenacity. As far as his hatred towards everything in existence went, he was exceedingly unflinching. He did terrible things—deplorable and perverted and sick—but he never made any apologies for who he was. In this day, if someone cracks an off-color joke, or says something crass without realizing their microphone is on, public apologies are then offered, and poor, sympathy-reaching reflections on a misspent childhood are brought up. When Michael Vick was charged with cruelty to animals—with hanging dogs by their legs and slicing their throats—he fell back on the whole “I wasn’t raised any better” defense, instead of him just outright stating his truth: “They’re just dogs and I don’t care. They have no value to me.” But he did the dance society demanded of him—he made apologies and paid his fees and served his time. And now he is an extremely well-paid athlete. Would his life (and finances) currently be the same if he had just told everyone the truth? Of course not. People like Vick memorize these apologetic lines and look forlorn because society demands they do. Carl Panzram—though he hated himself more than people hate their own worst enemies—never faltered in that. He never broke down and he never whined about the injustices he endured in his youth. He never outright said "I blame my family for abusing me and for the institutions for not raising me right." He blamed society, as a whole, altogether. He blamed my ancestors and yours. He blamed the intangible face of The Man, who in his eyes, was responsible for all the wrong in the world. He blamed every living thing that's ever taken a breath. If a surfer gets bit by a shark, he blames the shark—not the ocean. But Panzram did. He merely accepted that those injustices shaped who he became—and since no one person could be blamed, neither could he be for his own actions.

“When I was sitting there, a little kid about twelve or thirteen years old came bumming around. He was looking for something. He found it, too. I took him out to a gravel pit about one-quarter mile away. I left him there, but first committed sodomy on him and then killed him. His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him, and he will never be any deader.”

There is neither apology nor sick glee present in his words. He merely recounts what he did to the poor child. He makes no excuses, and panders to no easy scapegoat. Arguments could be made that the purpose of his bluntness is to shock—for sensationalistic reasons only—but those making that argument truly do not understand what kind of man Carl Panzram was. He didn’t want to shock you. He wanted to kill you. And he would have, if given the chance.

After a temporary scheme in which Panzram "hired" ten men for assistance upon his recently purchased yacht (bought with stolen cash) and eventually killed them, he was finally charged with murder. Wanting nothing more than to have his life ended, he warned the jury that decided his verdict: “If I live, I’ll execute some more of you.”

He was then sent to Leavenworth, where he was to live out the rest of his days. Upon arriving, he told the warden, “I will kill the first man who bothers me.” That first man turned out to be a guard named Robert Warnke, who Panzram later beat to death with a lead pipe in the laundry room. He was charged with the murder, and in defiance to Kansas State Law—which had previously outlawed capital punishment—he was sentenced to execution by hanging.

When the Society for Abolishment of Capital Punishment caught wind of this sentence and fought to have it overturned, Panzram literally looked through his prison bars at them and said, “I wish you all had one neck…and that I had my hands on it.”

To ensure his state-sanctioned demise, Panzram even went so far as writing letters to President Hoover, explaining that in no way was his death sentence to be overturned, and for no one to intervene in his favor at the zero hour. Not just according to his own wants, but in conjunction with everything society had always preached, he deserved death, and would not let anyone stand in the way of that.

Interestingly, Panzram’s drive towards death was not just due to his own misery in life, but also because he believed justice would not be properly served unless he was dangling at the end of a rope—and this is something he also states in his book several times. If he were to go on sucking air, it would only showcase the weakness of the judicial system. If anyone were to deserve death, it was he—and if that did not happen, then the system was flawed.

“I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill 'em.”

On September 5, 1930, Carl Panzram was hung by the neck until dead. His last words were to his executioner: “Hurry it up, you Hoosier Bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling around!”

His last will and testament stipulated that his earthly remains be left to a dogcatcher in his native Michigan…and a curse bequeathed to all of mankind (which I'm sure Panzram wrote with a wry smile.)

A film based on the book/Panzram’s life was made in the mid-90s called Killer: A Journal of Murder, starring James Woods as Panzram and Robert Sean Leonerd as Henry Lesser, a guard to whom Panzer spoke, confided, and eventually handed over his journal scribblings that would soon become his book. While the film is not bad in any sense, most of the more lurid details from his exploits are omitted. His crimes against children are mentioned just a single time, and his claim of 1,000 acts of male sodomy is never mentioned at all. Much of Panzram's original writings are repeated by Woods almost verbatim, but so much was excised that the very thing which gave the book its power—Panzram’s own voice—wasn't as prevalent in the film; thus, it never had the chance in being as equally harrowing. The filmmakers might have been afraid of making a movie focused on an unlikeable and unrelatable monster. If that's the case, why even bother making it into a film in the first place?

Over time, Panzram: A Journal of Murder has grown to become my favorite book. Not because of the lurid murderous details that appeal to my fascination win the ugliness of humanity, or Panzram's wry fashion in recounting them, but because it presents proof positive of the bond that developed between two very unlikely people: a murderer convict and a prison guard. For a long time, Carl Panzram was inhuman—a man whose human attributes stopped at his inherited anthropomorphism. But the respect he develops for Henry Lesser—perhaps even considering him a friend—proves that perhaps even the most hardened man isn't beyond redemption. Perhaps it's not possible to entirely kill off a person's humanity.

“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry. I have no conscience, so that does not bother me.”

Further excerpts from his memoirs (thanks to Serial Killer Central for the transcriptions):

"It is the nature to be deceived very easily by those who wish and have the power and the intelligence to do so. People believe what they want to believe. Truth isn't liked .. Torquemada, chief inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, was known as the world's greatest torturer ... I have been to Spain and while there I have visited their museums and big cathedrals where some of those old-time implements were on view. I looked 'em all over. I have read many books which told of the methods then is use. The rack, the wheel, red hot irons to burn out the eyes, pinchers to pull off parts of the body, fire to burn and water to drown ... Everything I have ever seen or read on this subject makes convinced that, though time and methods have changed, men are the same and the actual results are the same ... Torture, pain and agony is a relative thing. When pain reaches a certain point, then it has reached the limit and can be no worse ... The history of mankind goes back only for a few thousand years, but men lived an died on this earth for uncounted thousands of years before the dawn of history as we know it today. Yet in all these thousands of years men have learned little. The men of the world today are doing the same things that their ancestors did ages ago. Men have always had intelligence which has never increased. Only knowledge has kept advancing."

...

"In my life time I have broken every law that was ever made by both man and God. If either had made any more, I should very cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few people even consider it worthwhile to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think is necessary to do is to catch me, try me, convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and then turn me loose again. That is the system that is in practice today in this country. The consequences are that anyone and everyone can see crime and lots of it. Those who are sincere in their desire to put down crime are to be pitied for all of their efforts which accomplish so little in the desired direction. They are the ones who are deceived by their own ignorance and by the trickery and greed of others who profit the most by crime. Much depends upon the point of view of the persons who express themselves on the crime question. Those who roar the loudest and are therefore the most heard are the writers, judges, lawyers, and would-be expert criminologists. All of these people make a nice, soft living out of crime. Therefore, they are directly interested in the subject. They don't produce a damn thing. All they do is shoot off their mouths and push a fountain pen. And for doing this they live nice and soft. They wear good clothes, eat the best foods, live in nice homes, have the best of everything the world produces. They have a nice, soft graft, and they know it, too. They are not a lot of chumps like the criminals. Don't think for a minute that they are going around really meaning to do as they say they wish to. Put down crime. Not a chance. There will be no pick and shovel for that sort of people. That's what would happen to them if they really did put down crime. There is two sides to every question. My point of view is just as plausible and a damn sight more probable than all of the hot air that has been published about this question. Others who have expressed their ideas in print on this subject have all been either directly or indirectly interested in receiving some sort of profit or benefit of some kind from what they say or write or do about this crime question. Some have good jobs which they want to keep or perhaps they are trying to get a better one or perhaps they are merely incensed and prejudiced against criminals because they or their friends have been robbed or murdered. I, on the other hand, have not a single thing to gain by writing this. My life and my liberty are forfeited. I cannot gain a single thing in any way for writing this."

NINJA CLOWN

 

Watch and learn.

LEVITY

SHITTY FLICKS: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT: PART 2

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

The first Silent Night, Deadly Night is an unremarkable, yet fun and unapologetically gimmicky slasher movie whose late-1980s presence at theaters was very brief; lame parents with lame ideals protested the movie’s depiction of a killer Santa offing “naughty” people and had the movie successfully banned from all theaters. The victorious parents then turned their protesting to the local gay (probably). For a long time, SNDN was a mirage until it was released on VHS years later and became a cult favorite.

Silent Night, Deadly Night isn’t groundbreaking in any way, and compared to today’s standards, where we’re able to see testicles ripped off a man and fed to wild dogs in theatrical films (preceded by commercials for Fanta), the idea of a man in a Santa costume offing people doesn’t just pale in comparison—it’s become its own punchline.

A few years down the road, morons decided that Silent Night, Deadly Night—the movie that no one saw—needed a sequel, anyway. And with an entire first film from which to haphazardly pluck footage, a lazy and monotonous wrap-around story was written so audiences could see the original movie that disappeared from theaters, but in a new way.

Our story begins on Christmas Eve with Ricky, a young man currently residing in a mental institution. He smokes, casts hard glares, and makes black men nervous.

Dr. Bloom, a man who looks eerily similar to the dad from "7th Heaven," sets up his tape recorder and introduces himself.

“Fuck off, doc,” Ricky snarls, and with this first line, the acting for the movie is already pitiful.

“Who killed your parents, Ricky?” Dr. Bloom asks.

Ricky’s eyebrows dance all over his face as he smiles and answers: “Santa Claus.”

And we hit our first flashback.

"Say, Ricky...I don't mean to sound jive, but, gee whiz,
why not pray to Christ?"

Ricky, merely a baby in a car seat, and his older brother, Billy, are on their way to visit the kids’ grandfather. Billy, who is disgustingly adorable, looks precious and asks kid-like questions about Santa Claus. The parents play along until they come across Santa Claus himself in the middle of the road. Santa waves the car down, and when they pull up next to him, he pulls out a gun and shoots Dad in the face. Billy runs off into the bushes as Santa Claus makes Mommy’s boobs tumble out of her sweater. Then, for good measure, he cuts her throat. Ricky bawls in the car as Billy loses his shit in more ways than poop.

The boys are shipped off to an orphanage, where Billy can’t help but get himself into trouble by drawing pictures of an evil Santa, and I can’t help but notice that Billy goes from being an adorable five-year-old to a slightly older boy who looks like his face was fucked by a lawnmower.

Billy is carefully watched over by two nuns: Mother Superior, whose idea of growth and development is to dispense justice, and Sister Mary, who fears that Billy’s mind has been ass-fucked by the massacre of Christmas past.

The boy is punished for his bad drawing of Santa, but Sister Mary frees him from his room and coerces him to go outside and mingle with the other children. On the way there, Billy hears fucking, so he does a bit of spying through a keyhole. He sees tits, freaks out, and fleas. Mother Superior later catches up to Billy outside and tells the boy that what he witnessed was naughty. She tells him that people like that must be punished—that “punishment is absolute.” Then she whips him on the ass with his belt, even though he didn’t do anything.

“Do you dream, Ricky?” Dr. Bloom asks.

Ricky turns and glares. “I DON’T SLEEP.”

Well then.

Billy’s time at the orphanage isn’t the best time anyone’s ever had. Not only does Mother Superior constantly pick on him, the other children inexplicably tie him up at night and beat him with stuff, a la Full Metal Jacket. On Christmas Day, Mother Superior forces Billy to confront his demons and sit on a visiting Santa’s lap. Well, Billy cold-clocks Santa with an admirable right hook, sending Santa sailing to the floor.

Say what you will about Paul Walker, but he's always ready to party.

When Billy turns 18, he leaves the orphanage and works at a job that Mother Superior found for him: Santa Claus at a local toy store. Yeah, she's a dickhead like that.

Billy threatens each child that sits atop his lap, and he handles them with great zest: “You’re being naughty. I don’t give toys to naughty children. I punish them. Severely.”

Later that night at the employee Christmas party, Billy smells sex, and he follows two employees to the warehouse where he spots another tit.

“Naughty!” Billy screams, strangling one of them with a string of Christmas blinkies. “Punishment good!” he shrieks, stabbing the other in the stomach.

The store manager, hearing the disturbance, enters the warehouse and immediately has his head caved in by a claw hammer.

That Billy works fast!

He then grabs a bow 'n' arrow and shoots the last employee: an old bitty woman who attempts to smash the front windows of the store and flee.

We flash forward again to even more titters, where Billy amusingly dispenses justice to a girl with a pair of deer antlers before strangling a dude and tossing him out the window.

Later, while fleeing from the cops, Billy stumbles across two sledders who are just asking for it. He takes their heads and leaves, having fulfilled his expectations for this scene.

Thanks to the help of Sister Mary, the cops make it to the orphanage before Billy does. A cop dashes out of his truck, takes aim at a Santa Claus reaching out to the children, and shoots him.

“One problem,” Ricky says. “It was Old Man Kelsey, the janitor" (although according to the first film, it was actually Father O’Brien).

Billy unsurprisingly pops up and barely farts out “punish!” before killing the cop. He also kills a snowman, because my god, Billy really hates Christmas.

A stupid kid unlocks the door and lets Billy in as Mother Superior stands her ground. “There is no Santa Claus!” she bellows, as Billy raises his axe. Another cop shows up just in time and they’re finally able to shoot the real Santa. (Well, you know.)

“You’re safe now,” Billy says to the kids. “Santa Claus is gone.” And he dies right in front of Ricky, who then says, “naughty.”

Ricky continues his story, which is finally new material.

Soon after the massacre at the orphanage, Ricky is adopted by a Jewish couple who obviously don’t celebrate Christmas. Out on the street, Ricky’s simmering madness flares at the sight of a red drape in a store window, as it reminds him of Santa’s suit.

Five years later, Ricky’s stepdad dies, leaving just Ricky and his mother. After the funeral, he wanders off to be alone where he, just like his brother, effortlessly stumbles across breasts.

“I never told anyone this before, but, HERE IT COMES!” Ricky promises directly to the camera, his eyebrows quivering.

He creepily watches the couple for a few minutes until the man becomes a bit demanding. He slaps her and goes to his jeep for some more beer. Ricky figures he’ll do a solid for the poor girl, and so he drives the jeep over the man, over and over, until it becomes ridiculous.

“Thank you,” the girl stammers, not at all afraid or upset, and stumbles off into the woods.

RICKY FACE # 1: Angry + Found Some Money

Dr. Bloom scrawls

RED CAR!

in his notebook.

“Good point!” Ricky says, spying over his shoulder.

“My old lady couldn’t afford to send me to college,” Ricky bitches. “So I got a JOB instead!” The amount of disdain present in this statement either reeks of genuine disgust or severely tepid acting.

Dr. Bloom gears up for another round of Ricky’s over-acting, but Ricky promises him, “You’ll like this next part, Doc. It was like a squirrel getting its nuts squeezed.”

During this job, Ricky spies one man accosting another over some owed money in a back alley while taking out some garbage. The man after the money takes out a red handkerchief and wipes his face, thus setting off Ricky’s rage. He finds a random umbrella in a trash pile and runs it through the man, snarling “naughty” and opening up the umbrella to punctuate this newest murder.

Dr. Bloom whips out a photo and throws it across the desk. “Who is this?” he asks.

Ricky turns and sees the photo of a reasonably attractive blond, a former flame of his. “Jennifer. She was a knock-out. I never wanted to lose her.”

And so we flashback again so we can meet Jennifer, who has a laughable car accident with our unfortunate lead, and the two kids immediately rub skin. After a tepid love scene, comprised only of side-boob, they go to the cinema to see a film. That film? The first Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Why—oh.

The movie begins, but a rowdy movie-goer in the back row gets on Ricky’s nerves.

“Faggot!” the rowdy man shouts at Ricky.

“Well, we know that’s not true,” Jennifer retorts, as if Ricky might have actually been worried about his sexuality for a moment.

“What’s this movie about, anyway?” Ricky asks.

“Oh, it’s great. It’s about a guy who dresses up as Santa Claus and kills people.”

“What?!” Ricky shrieks and quickly becomes enraged.

Why would you go see a fucking movie without knowing what it is, Ricky, you dickhead?

Ricky then beats the living shit out of the rowdy man.

After the cancellation of Arrested Development,
Executive Producer Ron Howard just couldn't deal.

In his absence, one of Jennifer’s previous lovers, Chip, an extremely unnatural blond fellow who presents himself as the generic cocksure rich boy we all know doesn’t have much time left on Earth.

The next day, while taking a walk, Ricky and Jennifer run afoul of Chip, who immediately oozes with douchebag residue. Chip acts the cock, makes a reference to his “red” car to set up his death, and then has his face melted with the aid of a car battery.

Jennifer shrieks at Ricky that she hates him and tries to flee, but Ricky makes quick work of her with a car antenna.

“Uh oh!” she unrealistically yells before meeting Elvis.

And thus begins the best sequence ever shot for a movie that starred Ricky as the lead.

A cop rushes in, gun in hand, to take care of the murderous Ricky, but he soon has his own brains blown out with a quick flick of Ricky’s wrist.

Now armed with the cop's gun, Ricky strolls down the street, shooting a man who comes out of his house, demanding to know why all the noise. “Motherfucker,” Ricky mutters, and laughs.

He then spots a hapless man putting out cans of trash.

“GARBAGE DAY!” Ricky shouts, shooting him in super cool slow motion.

Ricky continues his stroll down the street, and after allowing a moment to capture the entire film crew in the shot...

...he meets a little girl with a red ribbon in her hair. Despite the red, he lets her go, even smiling at her. And since the movie is making up its own rules, Ricky figures he’ll shoot randomly at a car coming at him until it overturns, crashes, and explodes. In what is actually a legitimately cool stunt, and in a single take, the car flips and narrowly avoids hitting Ricky by seriously only a few inches, had it not been for a quick turn of his body.

Ricky giggles in his typical Ricky self and then continues on with the massacre, or at least tries to. But alas, his murdering was not meant to be. Ricky eventually hits a road block of cops and tries to turn the gun on himself. A look of disappointment crosses his face when he is greeted with an empty click.

"JOKES AND DREAMS COME FROM MY IDEA BALL."

Ricky, it seems, is done reminiscing, since at some point during this story he has opted to murder Dr. Bloom, yet keep talking, anyway. He then flees the hospital to see to some unfinished business… to rent Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Or...

Sister Mary tells the cops that Ricky is most likely going after Mother Superior, now wheelchair-bound thanks to a stroke and living in isolation.

Ricky finally dons a Santa suit for the first and only time in this movie, but sans beard, and calls Mother Superior to let her know “Santa’s back.”

She nervously hangs up and wheels her puny body over to the TV and watches the Christmas parade and babbles typical Christian “Bah, blasphemy!” remarks at the big balloon animals on the screen.

Not too long after, Ricky begins to chop his way through Mother Superior’s front door (which is unsubtly numbered 666) and chases her from one room to the next, smashing doors and delivering really bad one-liners.

RICKY FACE # 2: Angry + Lemons

Mother Superior, who is clearly played by a different actress than the woman in the first movie's footage, wears prosthetic scars on her face that are allegedly caused by strokes. She gets booted down the steps, somehow survives, and escapes in yet another wheelchair.

She grabs a knife from the kitchen and then suddenly grows a pair of nun balls. “You must be punished,” she screams. “You are being very, very naughty!”

“Naughty this!” Ricky nonsensically screams before delivering an admittedly satisfying, yet off-screen blow to Mother Superior’s nun head.

The cops enter and spy Mother Superior sitting motionless, her back to them. I bet you a sawbuck she’s just aces.

A cop gently shakes her and her head falls off a very cleanly cut neck, even though Ricky’s ax thrust was a downward blow. Sister Mary (who is there for some reason) screams at the head and falls down and almost becomes Ricky’s next victim.

The cops shoot Ricky, who is so insane at this point that he can't even feel bullets. One more blow to the chest does the trick, however, and sends Ricky flying through a glass patio door.

“He’s gone, sister. It’s over,” says the cop.

And then Ricky’s eyes open as Sister Mary screams at a head.

Please, no head jokes. A real nun has died.

Ricky further continues his adventures in Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, where he is brought back to life by a mad scientist, and suddenly played by Bill Moseley.

God bless us, everyone.

MEMENTO MORI: PART V

I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I lov'd, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell,
'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well. 

- Lord Byron, And Thou Art Dead, As Young And Fair

UNSUNG HORRORS: RAVENOUS

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre.

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time.

Dir. Antonia Bird

1999

Fox

United States

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster…"

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Eat me."

- Anonymous

I’m not sure how a movie like Ravenous ever received a wide release. It surely wouldn't today – not even with more immense star power. The film’s budget was a moderate one, being estimated at just twelve million (in late 90s terms), and despite the relatively low budget, the film was a box office disaster upon its release. It received warm notices from critics, notably Roger Ebert, who called it “clever in the way it avoids most of the clichés of the vampire movie by using cannibalism, and most of the clichés of the cannibal movie by using vampirism. It serves both dishes with new sauces.”

I applaud FOX for releasing the film, for today they are a studio known as troublesome and bullying; they have gained a reputation for meddling in the productions of some of their tent pole films, neutering some of their harder franchises (Alien, Die Hard ) for the PG-13 crowd, and for being unreasonably fan unfriendly. How a movie like Ravenous ever managed to slip past their radar I’ll never know, but I’ll be forever grateful it did.

Ravenous was one of Guy Pearce’s immediate post-L.A. Confidential roles, and it was certainly a bold one to take on. There is very little dialogue for his character (he does not utter a full onscreen line of dialogue for nearly the first third of the movie), and his role as Captain Boyd, the disgraced war hero of the Mexican-American War, did not stand a chance against Robert Carlyle’s truly maniacal Colqhoun. The role of Boyd is understated and unorthodox – for much of the film he is a weakling coward, and then later, something comparable to a drug addict desperate for a fix.

But make no mistake – this movie belongs to Robert Carlyle. Had Ravenous received more attention upon its release, Carlyle would have certainly been nominated for Best Actor/Supporting Actor (and why couldn't he? Another famous cannibal was honored just eight years prior). His portrayal as the two-faced Colqhoun alernates from helpless and terrified to downright bloodthirsty and savage. Trainspotting’s Begby (another Carlyle role) does not hold a candle.

The rest of the cast is comprised of recognizable and respectable character actors (another detractor in the weird world of cinema, where money talks and bullshit walks). Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ) plays Colonel Hart (ho ho), the even-tempered and fatherly leader of the U.S. Army outpost where the bulk of the film takes place. He reads world literature, eats walnuts, and has graciously accepted his niche as keeper of a bunch of misfits. This role could have easily been written as the typical overbearing army superior fuckhead, but it wasn’t, and Jones bring a real humanity to what could have been a one-note role. Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan ) plays Private Toffler, a possibly autistic, God-loving ball of nervousness. Neal McDonough (Minority Report ) plays Private Reich, and despite his short crop of screaming blonde hair, he fits right into the role of the soldier with far too much testosterone and very little reason. Finally, David Arquette plays Private Cleaves, and despite being fresh off the success of 1996’s Scream, his part is minor and perhaps underwritten.

Our plot is a relatively simple one: During the Mexican-American war, Captain Boyd fakes dying during battle in order to spare his life. He is thrown into a pile of dead bodies – at the very bottom – and has no chance at escaping, due literally to the dead weight piled above him. However, blood from his commanding officer’s “half shot-off head” leaks into his mouth, and he gains the strength to crawl out from under the dead and take out several enemy soldiers. He is hailed a hero, but military superiors know the truth of his cowardice. He is banished to Fort Spencer under the guise of being promoted, and here he remains with the above-mentioned characters until someone comes calling late one night – someone with tales of wintry survival and inhuman appetites.

A strange man named Colqhoun collapses just outside the fort’s main cabin, freezing from the cold, and ready to drop dead from malnourishment. He is brought inside and cared for by the fort’s occupants. He soon awakens with quite a story:

We left in April. Six of us in all: Mr. MacCready and his wife, from Ireland. Mr. Janus – from Virginia, I believe – with his servant, Jones. Myself. And our guide: a military man, coincidently. A Colonel Ives. He professed to know a new, shorter route through the Nevadas. Quite a route that was. Longer than the normal one. Impossible to travel. We worked very, very hard. By the time of the first snowfall we were still one hundred miles from this place. That was November. Preceding though the snow was futile. We took shelter in a cave. Decided to wait until the storm had passed. The storm did not pass. The trails soon became impossible, and we had run out of food. We ate the oxen. All the horses. Even my own dog. And that lasted us about a month. After that, we turned to our belts, shoes, and roots we could dig up... but, you know, there's no real nourishment in those. We remained famished. The day that Jones died I was out collecting wood. He had expired from malnourishment. And when I returned, the others were cooking his legs for dinner. Would I have stopped it had I been there? I don't know. But I must say. When I stepped inside that cave... the smell of meat cooking... I thanked the Lord! I thanked the Lord!

He goes on to explain that the consumption of human flesh gave him almost supernatural strength…and unnatural appetites. These words give Boyd pause, as he remembers his own experience on the battlefield — when all seemed lost until dripping blood from the corpses above him gave him unnatural strength…

Colqhoun, we soon come to realize, is not who he seems, and when the men trek to the cave to search for survivors, he reveals his true face. With the help of a buried dagger, he picks off the men one-by-one, leaving Boyd for dead. Out of desperation, Boyd slices off some of Private Reich’s dead flesh, gaining enough strength to make it out of the wilderness and return to Fort Spencer. As does Colqhoun…under the guise of Colonel Ives, one of the alleged murdered. No one believes Boyd’s wild stories about murder and cannibalism and he is shackled.

One of the fort’s occupants, Martha (a Native American), warns Boyd that the only way to defeat a wendigo – an evil force that devours men and absorbs their spiritual and physical strength – is to “give” … because all the wendigo does is “take.”

At movie’s end (this should come as no surprise, but, spoiler), Boyd and Colqhoun battle to the death by falling into an awaiting bear trap, which snaps them both together, six-inch spikes stabbing into their flesh. Boyd is victorious, having “given” his life to stop Colqhoun from “taking” further lives. Before he dies, Colqhoun challenges Boyd: “If you die first, I am definitely going to eat you. But if I die first, what will you do?”

What Boyd chooses is ultimately left ambiguous, but I think it’s safe to say he opts to fast.

At the end of the day, the plot of Ravenous is gleefully and unashamedly stupid – it amounts to no more than a bunch of men stabbing each other, getting blood all over pretty much everything, and eating human flesh. The movie really just wants to have fun, and that it does. Director Antonia Bird knows the movie’s true strengths lie in the atmosphere that can be created – that of a stark winterscape draping across a barren military outpost. Despite this – and as unusual as it may sound – none of the murder and the mayhem ever feels mean-spirited. If made today by a different director, the movie would be a bloody show set in dingy basements or laboratories. Men would be locked into rooms and forced to eat each other. And there would be no humor in the proceedings at all. And this is where Ravenous truly shines.

The onscreen events are horrifying – not just the notion of death, but of your earthly body being consumed after you check out – but director Bird keeps the levity going. And she was smart to. (Credit must also be given to screenwriter Ted Griffin, who would go on to write more straightforward comedies like Ocean’s Eleven, Tower Heist, and Rumor Has It…) Most of the humor comes from the wry dialogue between the characters, but also from the film’s score by Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn (a rare foray into film music from the frontman of Blur and Gorillaz). Hillbilly fiddles play as Colqhoun chases Private Toffler through the woods with a dagger, ordering him to “run;" poorly performed military music squeaks in the beginning of the film, during which a hundred men sit down to their post-war meals of bloody steaks, showing just how ridiculous it all really is. The musical score utilizes found audio, native vocalizations, and wildly diverging tones to create one of the most frenetic (and frankly, best) film scores I’ve ever heard. It effortlessly rotates between goofy, to dreamlike, to pulse pounding, to downright creepy.

And creepy the movie is.

Colqhoun’s descent into newfound madness, and his frenzied digging at the dirt where his dagger is buried; the rapidly increasing cuts that begin when Boyd and Reich descend into the cave; the close-up shot of Reich's dead and dirt/blood-covered grinning face, tinted blue under the light of the moon – it's all incredibly and effectively unnerving, even on repeated viewings.

As for the movie’s “moral”? Take your pick: During the film, Colqhoun muses on the idea of manifest destiny—of the infant country’s citizens as they expand across the land with their voracious appetites. And while they are consuming the natural resources of the country, in the end, it is the country that is consuming them. Meanwhile, the backdrop of the movie is set against the Mexican-American war, yet another conflict involving stolen land and the United States, who in an effort to consume even more territory and grow stronger, killed a lot of their own men in the process. And lastly, there is the Native American element (two of whom live in Fort Spencer), and worn of the “wendigo.” Interesting that this warning would come from them, being that it was their people who were displaced when our ships first breeched their shores so many years ago – in an effort to consume, dominate, and grow stronger.

"McDONOOOOOOUUUUUUUGH!!!!!!"

Most importantly, however, is that Ravenous is just a great movie, whether or not you want to dig beyond the surface and examine the themes below. It boasts great performances, great atmosphere, and amazing music. The red stuff flies, as do limbs and bones. The chemistry between the cast is pitch perfect, and it's truly a shame this movie was not more appreciated upon its initial release.