Category — Movies

Stop motion animation of any kind is a labor of love. Sure, computers have made some aspects slightly less tedious but the technique still involves taking hundreds of pictures and moving figures thousands of times. So even on a merely technical level this short claymation video is impressive.

But also consider the sheer quantity of gore in this clip. It would be impossible or at least highly cost prohibitive in most other kinds of video. The storyline too is fine. The same producer made earlier pieces that are much rougher.

Part One

Part Two

Occasionally, I’ll happen upon indications that the human species isn’t doomed. For instance, the bright minds behind the Zombie Squad are preparing for the zombie uprising *now* while there’s still time. For those who remain skeptical of the zombie menace, only because it hasn’t yet reached epidemic proportions, the Zombie Squad also performs acts of contemporary assistance, particularly disaster relief. I’m serious. They have canned food drives, donate blood (their own, presumably) in addition to having occasional movie nights. There are several chapters across the US and Ontario and it sounds like other chapters are forming.

Zombie Squad Public Service Announcement

(The Grim Gnome) I don’t like vampires, generally speaking. The whole rule-bound / old-world / invitation-only aspects make them about as scary as a supernatural Certified Public Accountant. Except for the ones in “30 Days of Night.” If you haven’t heard of this series you either have been moldering away in a casket or you’re metaphysically immune to the effects of horror-culture. A few years back, writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith wove together a freshly twisted premise with spattery exuberant artwork and pumped life back into the genre of the horror comic. The fresh twist on the vampire rules that gets “30 Days of Night” rolling is obvious from the title; if vampires hate sunlight, then what if they attacked a place that didn’t have much of it, say, a city located near the Arctic circle? What if a whole ragtag clan of vampires threw a party of sorts during the month of darkness and attacked the whole town. Add human hero. Stir well. Garnish with a nasty skewer at the end and, heck that’s what started the juggernaut. I really have to recommend it. Quite highly.

A sequel picked up the storyline and propelled it forward, again ending with a sickening little twist. And a third, completing a classical trilogy, right? If I understand the chronology correctly, the movie started development around this time and the comics kept coming. A collection of tales appeared, including a rather dumb one about vampires in space. Some of these feature artists other than Templesmith and honestly, I feel cheated with those issues, especially cheated when the artist is attempting to make work that sort of / kind of / almost resembles Templesmith’s art. So though I can’t highly recommend them all — one reason I can’t is because they’re STILL making new ones — I still have to confess I’ve bought and savored every one of them.

Niles’s other comics are nothing to ignore… but for the moment I WILL ignore them, or to be more exact I’ll postpone looking at them until another post. Who knew that comics would work so well for horror? I sure didn’t. I thought the EC’s Crypt Keeper was just weird and, OK, so I was afraid of “The Tomb of Dracula” but I was kid back then. I even thought “Dark Shadows” was scary.

And then there’s the “30 Days of Night” movie. I admit that I felt an actual quiver of excitement when I first heard Sam (”Army of Darkness”) Raimi’s name connected with the project. Alas, it was only as a producer. There are parts of the movie that are very good. For instance, some of the shots are very haunting, like an aerial tracking shot that shows the carnage of the initial attack. And throughout the movies human faces seem to have unusually de-saturated color which makes everyone look cold .. and then also makes the blood really pop out. And I really appreciated that at least a couple times when humans were standing outside in sub-zero temperatures that there were clouds of condensation when they breathed or spoke. As curmudgeonly northerner, I can’t STAND fake winters on screen. My comments don’t sound like a love-fest, though do they? Perhaps I’m grumpy for paying good money to see the movie in the theatre. I’m a stingy curmudgeon. But furthermore, I can’t help but thinking that the comic book was scarier. There was a LOT of back story in the comic book that was simply removed for the movie, so much that there doesn’t seem to be much possibility for a sequel. I was honestly pretty shocked that so much editing was required because I don’t usually consider comics to be that dense when it comes to story line.

“30 Days of Night” - the movie - comes out on video this week. Though I don’t feel unusually COMPELLED to see the movie again when it comes out on video, if I’m honest with myself, I’m pretty sure I will. If for no other reason than it will remind me of how much I loved the original comic.

(The Grim Gnome) A couple weeks ago I linked to the first episode of Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, a delicious satire on horror TV. Here’s episode two.

Garth Marenghi’s “Dark Place” Episode 2

This week’s Friday Night Movie is a rib-tickling, er, I mean CHILLING series from across the pond, Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place. The set up is that a famous horror novelist Garth Marenghi, created a television series about a haunted hospital back in the 80’s that only now is getting aired. It’s an enjoyable, self-aware satire with all the trimmings: wooden acting, not-so-special effects, self-important narrator and a slew of humorous continuity errors. There are only a half dozen episodes and they were collected on DVD in 2006 but alas, that disc is in the European format PAL. Watch them now before they get yanked from Youtube.

And if they have already been yanked, as least check out the official Garth Marenghi website: http://www.garthmarenghi.com/

Or read about ALL the details on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Marenghi’s_Darkplace

Watch ‘em while they’re there:
Episode One Part One

Episode One Part Two

Episode One Part Three

When I was a kid, before the birth of syndicated talk shows, one of the local networks ran something called “The 4:00 Movie.” A movie could be hacked to bits, pumped full of commercials and still get over in time for “The News.” Periodically, there would be a whole week of giant monster movies (Gamera and Mothra were my favorites.) And this meant that you could get home from school — if you didn’t fiddle around TOO much in the playground — in time to watch the “whole” movie. Two movies it seems like they were ALWAYS showing on the 4:00 Movie were “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” and “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.” My pre-teen estimation of them was “bo-o-oring.”

But I’ve just seen both of those movies again, uncut, as an adult, and I think they’d make a dandy “Creature Double Feature.”

“Sweet Charlotte” features just about every thing we white Yankees fear about the South — that it’s a place of decaying plantations, murder, hysteria and small-minded small-town-ers with bad accents. It was “A Rose for Emily” ground-up and mixed with a pastiche of Tennesee Williams. On top of that, I find the title virtually impossible to say out loud. But it’s delicious too. I cut Joseph Cotton so much slack not because he’s a great actor, which of course he was, but because he always looked so suave. He doesn’t even look like an ass while he’s lip-syncing the utterly vapid “theme song.” And it has a nice mood of decrepitude and a few good runs at, albeit slightly overwrought, suspense.

The ideal double feature for “Sweet Charlotte” is the far superior, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” In addition to being in black and white, the obvious link between these movies is Bette Davis. I’m sure writers more observant than myself have remarked how intriguing the choices she made late in her career, when her beauty faded and allowed her acting abilities to come to the fore. It’s really gutsy to play parts where, well, where you KNOW folks are going to hate you. Forget the clunky prologue that really doesn’t explain much and the “surprise” ending; the meat of the movie is the tortured interplay between the two sisters, both of whom have had their time in the spotlight, a time long past. It’s a great set up full of nasty psychological torture and suspense, one that would even work as a stage play, I think, and Davis and Joan Crawford play it for all it’s worth.

Watch ‘em together, perhaps while sipping a mint julep on the veranda.