THE HORROR

This isn't horror related. Not at all. But that doesn't mean it's not horrific.

Something terrible happened to the world last night.

Are you brave enough to see the truth for yourself?

If so...click the mushroom cloud...

I AM A GHOST (2012)

I Am A Ghost is not your typical ghost movie. You should definitely know this before sitting down with it. It emphasizes the expression “slow burn,” and very little action propels the story forward. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an engaging watch, because it definitely is.

Emily is a young ghost haunting her former home. Years ago (how many exactly we’re never told) she was murdered in her room, stabbed to death on top of a carpet at the foot of her bed. A large portion of the movie is comprised of snippets of her day-to-day life. She wakes, stretches, makes breakfast, looks through drawers, gazes at photographs, and stares into the mirror as she cries out in pain, her wrapped wrist spotting blood. Occasionally she takes trips to the nearby market place. Every so often she’ll look into her bedroom and see something ghastly – enough that it sends her running down the hallway, her mop and bucket abandoned on the floor behind her. We’re not sure at first the relevance of these scenes, or why we’re seeing them repeated as often as they are. But it soon all makes sense…which worsens Emily’s post-life in unfortunate and horrifying ways.

The time period in which the story takes place is kept purposely vague, but based on the décor of the home, the photographs we see, and the lack of any electronic gadgets whatsoever (no computers, no TVs, and definitely no cell phones) intimates that this story is set in the past. Emily’s housedress is antiquated in its design, and the nearest clue we have to a time period is the old tabletop radio that she listens to while preparing her breakfast.

I Am A Ghost is a rarity in that the audience spends their entire time with a ghost. There is no cutting back and forth between her and the family that resides in that same house and wants to see her go. And there is no Sixth Sense/The Others third-act twist that let’s us discover she’s been dead the whole time. We know this pretty much from the start, especially when the disembodied voice of the very much alive Sylvia, a clairvoyant, sounds through the house and demands that Emily repeat after her: “I am a ghost…I am a ghost…I am a ghost.”

Working on behalf of the family, Sylvia wants Emily to move on, and by actively communicating with her, she is attempting to collect enough information to trigger a connection. She needs Emily to realize that not only is she dead, but there’s absolutely no reason for her to stick around. It would be best for both her and the family in the living world that she move on. A tough conflict, to be sure, but once Sylvia gets things in motion and begins to communicate with Emily more and more, a revelation rears its head that threatens to make the removal process much more complicated. This twist is often used to death in more mainstream fare, so at first it was a momentary let down in the sense of “oh, they’re going to do this now...”

But that disappointment lasts only so long, because it soon shapes the events for the remainder of the film, and in a strangely abstract way makes perfect sense. And once the physical embodiment of this twist materializes, well…look out. It’s unexpected and definitely creepy. This is when I Am A Ghost transcends the experimental character study into full-on horror.

Anna Ashida as Emily has a tough job. She spends 99% of her screen time talking to a ceiling. She has very little interaction with other beings, and no one really to bounce emotions off. It’s, for all intents, a one-woman show. It's difficult for performers to attempt an emotional connection with their audience when they have very little opportunities for character interaction and exposition, but she makes us care for her plight all the same.

What writer/director H.P. Mendoza was able to accomplish on a shoestring budget is something to awe over. While there are no immense set pieces or special effects, his ability to effectively capture on film such an unusual approach to a horror film is a thing worthy of praise. It was a "what if?" movie. And it works.

While the patches of film that contain dialogue are few, the dialogue itself is engaging, natural (despite the situation), and occasionally amusing. All of our exposition comes from the information swapped between Emily and Sylvia; along with everything we’ve observed about Emily thus far.

The film is described as being an experimental horror film, and while I suppose that’s true, I Am A Ghost remains very accessible. It might not quench the thirst of the hardcore exploitation crowd, but willing fans of Kubrick and Polanski will be highly rewarded with an oddity of a film. In keeping with the current trend, I Am A Ghost is shot to look like a 1970s low budgeter. Beyond simply an attempt to associate itself with the films of those aforementioned filmmakers, I wonder why Mendoza made this decision. Perhaps one day I'll have the opportunity to ask him.

I Am A Ghost is currently playing the festival circuit, and as far as I know, has not secured any kind of distribution, which is a shame, but one I’m confident is a temporary problem. For developments, keep an eye on the film's Facebook page, and subscribe to H.P. Mendoza's status updates.

IT'S TIME, LORD

 

Pretty much the only reason to sit through this movie: this creepy track.

SUDDENLY MILLENNIUM

MadTV was never really that funny. But man...they nailed this one.

REVIEW: SCREAMING IN HIGH HEELS: THE RISE & FALL OF THE SCREAM QUEEN

For a person to say they like horror movies is kind of a misnomer. While it’s easy to break down films into horror, action, comedy, etc., that really only scratches the surface of the multiple sub-genres and mini-divisions of each of those basic genre groups. But within the horror genre, there are so many of these aforementioned subsections that it’s easy to become lost, and even intimidated. Somewhere down this rabbit hole exist the B-horror comedy, the B-horror softcore, the B-horror exploitation, and on and on and on.

So again, when a person says, “I like horror movies,” does that automatically include stuff like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, or Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers? Who knows? Probably not. But while they may have been shot in 5 days and cost $50,000, they’re still horror, through and through.

For those of us old enough to remember the mom-and-pop video stores that provided most of us horror-loving sociopaths our fixes in the ‘80s and ‘90s, these titles may sound familiar. Their cover art featured glorious cartoon cleavage, belonging to a group of blondes and brunettes cowering in terror from a monstrous thing. I personally recall wandering down row after row of gigantic VHS cases like these, transfixed by the chesty ladies right before my eyes, terrified my mother would catch me leering at the halfway-pornographic images when I should have been in the Kids section. 

Screaming in High Heels: The Rise & Fall of the Scream Queen celebrates that gone-but-not-forgotten subgenre of horror: the cheap, low rent, trashy, direct-to-video movies that overflowed video store shelves during their reign. The doc begins, literally, with an ending – that of the heyday of drive-in theaters – and explained the tactic behind their programming, something I’d previously not known and found incredibly interesting. Many drive-in theaters would show not one but two films in order to appeal to the entire family unit. The first, the A picture, was the one with more appeal, and the more family-friendly tone. But somewhere during that A picture, the kids would fall asleep, leaving the parents alone with the B picture, featuring the types of films celebrated in High Heels. The films were fun and titillating, and because they were cheap to produce, they should have made an instant profit. But because of the questionable investors and release companies involved with these types of films, the filmmakers hardly ever saw such profit.

But that all changed once drive-ins became a thing of the past, and filmmakers realized they could make films directly for video stores, and with moderate publicity, rake in the profits.

For fans of the cheapest, most low-rent horror films that could be found in said video stories, Screaming in High Heels: The Rise & Fall of the Scream Queen is an endlessly fascinating piece of entertainment. While the skeleton of the doc is centered around the three scream queens of the ‘80s – Linnea Quigley (The Return of the Living Dead), Brinke Stevens (The Slumber Party Massacre), and Michelle Baur (The Tomb) – the doc really covers the genre in which these ladies worked and prospered. Featuring additional interviews with known trash-makers Fred Olen Ray (Jack-O, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) and David DeCouteau (The Tomb, Puppet Master 3), this unheralded and looked-down-on subgenre is explored and discussed with great, but not at all deluded, admiration. The filmmakers and actors interviewed know they were making trash, but there is not a detected ounce of shame in regards to their films, which they recollect with fondness. Nor should there be, really.

This is Fred Olen Ray.
He directed Alien Dead.
He says, "you're welcome."

The doc makes great and clever use of hundreds of clips from films being discussed, not just as reference material, but to fill in the on-screen gaps and keep the study moving forward. Even as the interviewees explain the video store era, or recall specific anecdotes, appropriate scenes from these cheapie movies are spliced into the doc to complement the information we're being provided. It was a clever tactic and one I appreciated. The quality of sources from which the doc's film clips are grabbed range from crisp to 37th generation VHS. Personally, the first time I saw The Slumber Party Massacre was courtesy of a previously viewed VHS with hundreds of miles already on it, so the degradation of the film clips weren't a distraction at all, but rather strangely appropriate and indicative of the many films like it that I watched in my youth.

Our ladies start at their beginnings—with their upbringings, their exposure to the biz, and their highs and lows affiliated with their careers. They speak candidly about being comfortable with their bodies (though Quigley shocking admits to having been been very shy and self-conscious about her body during her youth) and how they had eventually become known for doing such movies. In the same way Schwarzenegger and Stallone became the default choice for action films during the late '80s/early '90s, these ladies, too, had soon become the default choice when a film needed a lead character to have a little fun, get a little dirty, and kick a little ass.

I was interested enough to sit down with this doc and give it a watch, being that I love watching documentaries based around horror movies, but admittedly I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate High Heels’ focus. I consider myself pretty well-versed in the horror genre, but I’ve only seen a handful of films featuring Linnea, one with Brinke, and hadn’t even heard of Michelle. Despite that, High Heels proved an immeasurely interesting watch, as it covered not just their careers, but the subgenre for which they skyrocketed to B-movie stardom. Not only that, but I came away looking at all three ladies in a different light; they were no longer just “those girls” who took off their clothes for whatever array of films in which they appeared, because in High Heels they had been humanized, explored, and celebrated in a way that most people never would have even considered doing.

Hats off to director Jason Paul Collum for this little endeavor. While a few more talking heads to fill out his cast of interviewees would have been nice (where the hell was Jim Wynorski?), those who did sit down and discuss their careers more than made up for the absences.

Strap on some High Heels, people. It's a hell of a lot of fun.

HOLY SHIT!

GONE SONNIN'

Taking a break to catch up with the latest from Sam Crow.

Are you watching S.O.A.? If not...why not?