Elves

 

Elves

1989

Director-  Jeffrey Mandel

Cast- Julie Austin, Dan Haggerty, Deanna Lund, Borah Silver, Laura Lichstein, Stacey Dye

            The film begins with Kirsten (Julie Austin) and her girlfriends out in the woods on a cold winter night. They fancy themselves as a kind of witch’s circle and Kirsten is trying to enact an occult ritual using one of her grandfather’s old occult tomes. The ritual doesn’t work but unbeknownst to the girls they have inadvertently summoned a bloodthirsty elf.

            Kirsten’s home life is pretty miserable. Her grandfather is a mix of abusive and absent minded. Her little brother is a perv and her mother (played by Deanna Lund from Land of the Giants) is a real bitch.

            Meanwhile, Mike (played by Dan Haggerty who most people over 45 will remember as Grizzly Adams) is a former cop now down on his luck thanks to his alcoholism. He’s managed to string together a few months of sobriety and gets a job (and is living) in a local department store.

            The elf stalks Kirsten and (unknown to her) attacks anyone who does her wrong, including stabbing a mall Santa in the dick after he gets fresh with Kirsten. But this elf is no guardian angel. He has his own plans for Kirsten.

            As it turns out, Kirsten’s grandfather is a Nazi who, during WW2, worked on a project involving the murderous elf. The elf was either created or summoned (the movie is not quite clear) to be the vessel for some perfect Aryan genes. The plan was for the elf to mate with a perfect Aryan woman during an occult ritual on Christmas Eve, thus ushering in the Fourth Reich. Kirsten’s grandfather, it seems, has engaged in some perverted eugenics creating his granddaughter to be the receptacle of the elf’s seed.

            Grizzly Adams discovers the plot and does his best to protect Kirsten not only from the elf but from a group of modern day Nazis that are after her.

            One’s reach exceeding one’s grasp is characteristic of low budget and independent cinema. That’s part of what makes it enjoyable; filmmakers who don’t know that they can’t or shouldn’t try to do certain things. Elves is far too ambitious for its meager budget. The elf actually is pretty well sculpted but has limited movement. I’d say, in terms of quality,  it’s  somewhere between the imp  of Sorority Babes in the SlimeballBowl-O-Rama and Ghoulies. I’m usually not a fan of remakes, but Elves could use one. The idea is very original and I’d love to see someone with access to resources help the story realize its potential.

            If you’re interested, Elf shouldn’t be hard to track down. The bad news is, as far as I know, it hasn’t made its way to DVD or Blu-Ray. The good news is that you can probably find it on Youtube (albeit a grainy straight from VHS transfer). Maybe someone like Vinegar Syndrome will take an interest and pick it up (and maybe put out an easier to watch version).

            Don’t watch if you’re wanting polished or even scary. On the other hand, if you life WTF stories, this will be entertaining.

Hellbender

 

Hellbender

2021

Director- John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser

Cast- Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams, John Adams, Rinzin Thonden, Khenzom, Shawn Wilson, Judy Rosen, Rob Figueroa

            Izzy is a teenage girl, home schooled by her single mother in a remote house in the wilderness. She is forbidden from having friends or going into town because she has a rare immune deficiency (or so she has been told).

            During a chance encounter with another girl, Izzy decides to make a friend which leads to the inevitable invitation to a party. A drinking game that ends with Izzy eating a live worm results in a brief psychotic break where she realizes that her mother has been lying to her about her illness and a whole lot more.

            Izzy’s mother is the latest in a long line of women called Hellbenders, zoophagous witches that power their spells through the consumption of the life force of living creatures, obtained by eating those creatures alive (which begs the question, are they witches or vampires). Izzy wonders, if the eating of a mere worm could grant her powerful insight into her mother, what power might be gained from eating something larger?

            After an awesome opening, the film moves pretty slowly through the first half but stick with it and you’ll be rewarded. It has a very tiny cast so there is plenty of opportunity to get to know the characters. There is infrequent but well done gore. Probably the highest compliment that I can pay the film is that it did not go in the direction that I was expecting and I was pleasantly surprised.

            The movie looks good with some artistically framed shots. The film’s two principal actors turn in convincing performances. Most importantly, its occult mythos seemed intelligent and informed. It sticks its toe into a little bit of Folk Horror, if you’re a fan of that genre.

Forget the name which sounds like either a bad Image Comics character from the early 90s or a speed metal band, Hellbender is a pretty clever, independent horror film. Recommended for fans of withes and witchcraft.

I Drink Your Blood

 

 

I Drink Your Blood

1971

Director- David E. Durston

Cast- Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, Jadin Wong, Rhonda Fultz, George Patterson, Arlene Farber, Lynn Lowry

            Rabid Satanists; that sums up the plot of this film in 2 words. It’s an idea so bizarrely funny, I can’t believe no one had thought of it before!

            A cult of Satanic, LSD tripping hippies breaks down on the side of the road and takes refuge in a nearby rural community that’s on its way to becoming a ghost town. The cult is headed by Horace Bones (great name!), a charismatic, Manson-inspired, autocrat.

 

   

            The cult holds up in an abandoned house where they go about torturing one of their own members for kicks. The town’s apparent patriarch, an old man who happens to be the town veterinarian, sticks his nose into their business and gets beat up. If you ask me, he got off light. If horror movies have taught me anything, its to stay away from hippies. The old man’s grandson decides to take revenge.

            The kid works at the only remaining store in town, where the Satanists have been buying their groceries (the Prince of Darkness doesn’t supply everything you know!). The kid kills a rabid dog, drains its blood, and injects that blood into meat pies sold to the Satanists. I have to say, that’s a pretty devious plot. Maybe that kid missed his calling and should have joined up with the hippies.

            The Satanists partake of the tainted meat pies and soon show signs of infection. In short order they become rabid, murderous maniacs that start killing each other and the locals. At one point, one of the female Satanists goes down to the local mining camp for a gang bang which results in a whole bunch of rabid miners (no, rabies it’s not sexually transmitted, lol).

            The movie is silly in places as its depiction and description of rabies is laughably inaccurate. However, since the hippies were also on acid, I guess we can chalk up any inaccuracies to that. Besides, if you’re watching I Drink Your Blood as prep for your microbiology exam, I guess you’re already in trouble.

            The movie was released as part of a double feature with I Eat Your Skin (a previously unreleased zombie film that had its name changed for the purpose of creating a memorable double billing). It has developed a cult following and despite any shortcomings, has a lot to recommend it.

 

            About 30 years before “diversity” became a buzzword, the Satanic cult in this film was made of brown, black, white, east  Asian, and Indian members (I guess Satan has always been egalitarian). Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury’s performance as Horace the cult leader is very good. He has Hollywood level good looks and you have to wonder why he never went on to a bigger career. There is some memorable gore that looks pretty convincing. Animal rights advocates may want to skip the film. There are a few scenes involving animals and given the film’s age and low budget, I assume they were using the real thing. If you can handle that, I Drink Your Blood is a fun addition to your grindhouse collection.

Fun fact- Scream Queen Lynn Lowry made her film debut in this movie as the sexiest member of the hippie cult. Two years later she would star in George Romero’s The Crazies (another movie about people driven homicidal by an infection) and then two years later she would star in yet another film about homicidal infection, David Cronenberg’s Shivers.

The Hexecutioners

 

 

The Hexecutioners

2015

Director- Jesse Thomas Cook

Cast- Liv Collins, Sarah Power, Timothy Burd, Tony Burgess

            So right off the bat lets acknowledge that Hexecutioners is not a very good name. Sounds like the title of a GWAR song. Now that that’s out of the way we can talk about the movie which is actually pretty original.

 

            The film operates under the premise that euthanasia is now legal across the land. Malison (Liv Collins) is a lowly technician who gets dispatched to carry out the life ending procedures.  She had aspirations that it would be a dignified way to end people’s suffering but she soon runs into the degrading realities of profitable death. Her bosses are less concerned with dignity than the bottom line.

            To cure her of her naiveté, she is paired with Oliva (Sarah Power), a cynical technician who isn’t above skipping the niceties and ending her client’s lives with a bullet to the head.

 

   

            They are sent out to the country to take care of a special client; a millionaire who has paid a hefty sum to have his death carried out in a very specific manner. The client, horribly disfigured, seems to be almost catatonic. Their only other human contact is Edgar (Timothy Burd), the lone care taker and servant. The women find that they have been lured into a house haunted by cursed spirits and they are now unwilling participants in an elaborate occult ritual.

            Hexecutioners is a character driven story that focuses on the personalities of the two women and their relationship. It has a small cast which allows for plenty of character development. It’s a competent horror film that seems informed in regards to its occult elements. There’s no attempt at a happy ending so don’t expect one.

  

Lords of Chaos

  

Lords of Chaos

2018

Director- Jonas Åkerlund

Cast- Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Sky Ferreira, Jack Kilmer, Anthony De La Torre, Valter Skarsgård,  Sam Coleman, Jonathan Barnwell, Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht,  Lucian Charles Collier

            

     Based on real life events, Lords of Chaos centers around some shocking events during the birth of Norwegian Black Metal music, specifically involving the band Mayhem. The film follows Øystein Aarseth, better known by his stage name Euronymous, a guitarist who was one of the pioneers of Black Metal. He espouses a nihilistic form of Satanism endorsing a grim and extreme view of humanity. He finally meets a singer whose obsession (devotion?) with darkness rivals his own; Per Ohlin, better known by his stage name, Dead.

            

     Dead’s obsession with death goes far beyond theatrics. He seems to think of himself as already dead. He is obviously depressed and engages in self harm on stage. All of this finally reaches its logical conclusion when he decides to kill himself. He cuts his wrists, his throat and then blows his head off with a shotgun. Euronymous finds his friend’s corpse and decides to take pictures of it. The images of his dead friend, head half blown off, eventually become the cover of a Mayhem album, adding to the band’s shocking reputation.

            

     Euronymous’  fame and influence grows, and he opens a record store (called Helvete, or Hell) and starts his own record label. He gathers a small group that he calls the Black Circle, a group devoted to Euronymous’ special brand of nihilism. He meets a fan, Kristian Vikernes, that Euronymous initially spurns as a poseur. Kristian is eventually welcomed into the circle, under the stage name Varg, because Euronymous sees that Varg has some real musical talent.

            

     The film presents Euronymous as a showman and it’s never clear how much he buys into the evil image he is selling. Whether he bought into or not, Varg certainly did, and begins a series of arsons, burning down churches.  A kind of antisocial competition begins within the Black Circle, as members try to prove they are really devoted to evil. Things begin to get out of control when they progress from arson to murder.  A member of the circle ,Bård Eithun, (drummer for the band Emperor, known as Faust), murders a man by stabbing him to death. Euronymous is at first  surprised by this but then sees it as a sign of his own influence.

           

     Egos clash and Varg and Euronymous seem to be on a deadly collision course. Euronymous is ultimately concerned with making music and Varg is committed to his goal of social upheaval. Their already tense relationship strains until, in a final confrontation, Varg stabs Euronymous to death, bringing the film to a close.

           

     I’m not a music historian and my love of metal never got any heavier than Megadeth so I won’t claim any special insights about the characters portrayed in the film. Whether the portrayals are accurate or not is matter of opinion, but the basic events in the film all really happened. Dead did kill himself, the picture of his suicide did become an album cover, Faust really murdered a stranger and Varg really murdered Euronymous.

           

     As far as the portrayals, the characters are presented as celebrities who begin to believe their own press. They are also mostly presented as anti-social personalities, which makes it a little difficult to identify with any particular character. Rory Culkin, as Euronymous, does a good job of presenting a morally ambivalent character as likable. I think this character could have taken up a whole movie in and of itself trying to discern how much of the image was real and how much was show.

            

     The only real complaint I have is that even though the film is supposed to center around the progenitors of a music genre, you’ll leave this movie knowing little more about Black Metal than you did going into it. Unlike other music centered biopics like The Doors or Walk the Line, Lords of Chaos has very little music. This is surprising given the director’s background was in music videos.

            

     The film’s depictions of violence are disturbing, not because of their graphicness but rather their matter of factness. They are brutal and without theatrics, especially Dead’s suicide.

            

     The most disturbing thing however, is not the film’s depiction of violence, but the real life fates of those involved. Varg, a professed arsonist and neo-Nazi who was convicted of 1^st degree murder only did 15 years in prison. Faust, who murdered a stranger by stabbing him 37 times, only did 9 years in prison. If the movie has a lesson, I guess it’s that if you’re going to murder someone, it’s better to do it in Norway.

 

 

The Black Gate

The Black Gate

2017

Directors- Guillaume Beylard, Fabrice Martin

Cast- Jeanne Dessart, Nicolas Couchet, Jonathan Raffin , Fabrice Martin, Antony Cinturino, Benjamin Combettes, Michel Coste, Patricia Flecher, Charles Gréa, Carl Laforêt, Jaques Langlois

From France

            

     Sarah and David (Jeanne Dessart and Nicolas Couchet) are orphaned siblings. They have an uncle, Simon, who was known to be a little weird and Sarah receives word from him that hints that he may know something about the death of their parents. They journey to the picturesque remote village where he lives to find out what he knows. They soon find out that not only is their uncle dead, they realize that he was involved in something sinister.      

           

      In his youth, Simon found an ancient grimoire in a cave. In the years since he had devoted his life to unraveling its mysteries. He discovers that he book holds the secret to opening a gate to a dark dimension. He opens that gate and evil cloaked entities pour through, killing the members of the town.

            

     Thrown into this mix is Jeff (Jonathan Raffin), one of a trio of murderous bandits that are on the lam after a heist in which they killed a cop. His two fellow thieves soon meet with grisly ends and Jeff has to strike an uneasy alliance with David and Sarah.

            

     Sarah decodes the mysteries of the grimoire and realizes that to close the gate they will have to do it on the other side. They journey to the other dimension filled with zombies and more of the mysterious cloaked beings.

           

     Even though this is French, not Italian, there seems to be a heavy Lucio Fulci influence. First there is the whole gate to hell theme as seen in his Gates ofHell trilogy. There is also a fascination with corpses with no eyes, and people getting their eyes gouged /poked out.  The zombies, in their design, are very Fulci-esque. And last but not least, we get some gross maggots (though not nearly as many as a Fulci film). I think a good way to characterize this film would be what if Lucio Fulci had made The Evil Dead.

           

      This is a low budget, independent film and the viewer needs to go in with that in mind. It’s made by people with limited experience and resources, but they make the most of what they have. Some of the action scenes look cheap but they obviously devoted their budget to the gore and make up effects which look as good as anything in any big budget film. The cinematography needed some help. It was too dark to see what was happening in some scenes and so bright it was distracting in others. Some of the individual scenes ,though, were well shot with interesting angles and colorful lighting.

           

     

     The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is more interested with being entertaining than thoroughly realistic. David carries a samurai sword for most of the film and even after two viewings I can’t figure out where he got it. There is even a brief 80’s style montage complete with some hair metal in the background.

           

     I really liked the idea of traveling through the gate to the alternate dimension.  It reminded me of the sequel to the 80s movie,The Gate. If The Black Gate ever gets a sequel, I hope they explore this more.

           

      Over all, the movie has some forgivable flaws, but it’s gutsy and takes chances. And in my book that goes along way.