Tonight at Lena, in downtown Ann Arbor, the editorial board of the DailyNightmare had a serious sit-down with seven of the Corpses behind The Three Corpse Circus. Over plantain and blackberry infused liquor, we plotted the future, mused about world domination and, of course, we confided the winner of the first annual “Impy” award for cinematic excellence in Midwest Snob Horror. The Corpses were aghast. Threats were made; bribes proffered. Tears, blood and a bit of red wine all were spilled but in the end, we of the DailyNightmare stood valiantly behind our decision. At the end of the evening, we shook hands and parted of one mind. No fatalities. Few deep wounds.
Three Corpse Circus in proud conjunction with DailyNightmare.com announce “The Impy,” an award for cinematic excellence in short horror film, to be awarded at this year’s Three Corpse Circus, September 28, 2013 at the Historic Michigan Theatre in downtown Ann Arbor, MI
Like its sponsor, DailyNightmare.com, The Impy celebrates achievements in Midwest Snob Horror, as represented among the short films selected to screen at the Three Corpse Circus.
• Midwest • What wickedness dwells in the heartland? The Impy will go to a work whose core production team is based in a region directly touching one of the Great Lakes (Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario, New York, Pennsylvannia with the possible exception of Ohio.)
• Snob • Excellence transcends genre. The Impy recognizes works that employ all the tools of great film-making, including exquisite cinematography, suspenseful montage, insightful themes while avoiding the cliches of the genre. No jump scares need apply.
• Horror • Scare us in a new way. Fear is part of the human condition, running the gamut from uneasiness and dread to outright terror, and our fears are too often manipulated for crass ends. The best horror lets us examine our fears explicitly before we fall victim to such exploitation… while thrilling our socks off.
The Impy itself is a solid, 9″ tall statue sculpted by Jeremy Haney. The figure is based on the painting “The Nightmare” (1781) by Swiss artist Henry Fuseli (1741 – 1825). This imp — sometimes referred to as the “grim gnome” — is the mascot of DailyNightmare.com. Contributing Editor James Frederick Leach explains “Nightmares are like short horror movies that your mind creates just for you, for an audience of one. It seemed totally appropriate that DailyNightmare should sponsor an award like The Impy.”
What local film will receive the first annual Impy award? Attend Three Corpse Circus, September 28th, 2013 to find out.
Last weekend, I uncrated a care package from sculptor Jeremy Haney. Inside were three test castings of an award statue commissioned by the DailyNightmare.Com. We’re sponsoring an award at this year’s Three Corpse Circus, the annual festival of short horror films held at the Historic Michigan Theatre in downtown Ann Arbor. The award, like DailyNightmare.com, celebrates achievements in Midwest Snob Horror. The winner will receive one of these statues — Elsa has nicknamed it “The Impy” — as well as a modest cash prize. I’m sure a press release will appear sooner or later either here or at Three Corpses Circus website. (Note to Film-makers: submissions are open until August 2nd over at Three Corpse Circus)
Jeremy used a good heavy resin, so the statue is quite an impressive blunt object, suitable for causing closed head injuries or public display. My task this week was to bronzify the little critter. I started by trimming away a bit of mold flashing and then I gave the figure a good wash to remove any mold release agent. When dry, I lightly dusted it with a bit of Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer just to provide a good base color. Next came a light wash of Burnt Umber to enhance the shadows, followed by a light dry brushing with bronze paint and an even lighter coat of silver just to coax the hightlights to pop. Next up is another wash to tie together the colors and a couple layers of satin top coat. Here’s a snap of the work in progress:
It’s probably best not to say too much about “One Day” (2012), a short film by Korean director Duc Nguyen, except that if you like what we like here at the DailyNightmare, you’ll love this very visual, very moving tale. I’ll be on the look out for more by the director and his ShadowPlay Films.
A feature length adaptation of this tasty short — courtesy of one Guillermo del Toro — is popping later in January. But the integrity and craft of this original short is exactly the kind of thing we love here at the DailyNightmare.
Had enough of the Holidays yet? Does it ever feel like holiday cheer is drilling into your brain? Then this delicious little clip might be just whatcha need!
My thoughts on the delightful Rare Exports are already known and it was fun to watch the film again. Notable highlights for this crowd were our horrifying ignorance of world geography, the revelation that folks above the Arctic Circle subsist entirely on reindeer meat and gingerbread and of course, the anatomically correct monsters. Ah yes, the Europeans. Rare Exports is hardly a “bad” movie so it was somewhat difficult to ridicule — but this crowd certainly rose to the challenge.
The GingerDead Man was far easier to supplement with witty commentary. From what I was able to figure out, it is a heart warming tale of a family-owned bakery threatened by a chain store… and then more directly threatened by an animated gingerbread man. SPOILER: it sucks — but in that charming bad movie kind of suckage. Our refrain became: And exactly why aren’t you leaving the bakery right now? This tale of baked goods gone bad, er, evil was a perfect stinker.
But the highlight of the evening, for me at least, was Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. By this point in the evening, the crowd was warmed up and raucous so the actual dialogue was difficult to piece out. Assessed as a purely visual document, the work is superb experimental cinema if for no other reasons that the bold acting choices of the spree killer protagonist and the work’s extremely avant-garde story structure. Actor Eric Freeman brilliantly interprets the rigorously non-psychological lead character in an act of pure performance. In particular, Freeman punctuates his lines with a highly mannered, post-semiotic semaphore of eyebrow gestures, often animating every syllable with a separate flick of his brow. The effect is unnerving and erects a portrayal of the unhinged murderer in a way that never resorts to simplistic realism. I checked wikipedia for Freeman’s later work but his whereabouts is listed as unknown. A pity.
Even surpassing Eric Freeman’s tour de force performance is the daring narrative structure of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. The work forsakes a pedestrian linear narrative, going beyond traditional non-linear tropes to what I would dub an “anti-linear” story structure. This brief post can hardly do adequate justice to its innovation. For the first 50 minutes of the film, the younger brother of the original spree killer recounts the events of the first movie to a psychologist. These incidents are illustrated through scenes purporting to be flashbacks to the first film. If this was a work of psychological realism, we might be tempted to ask why Billy is able to have such detailed memories of events he didn’t witness. This apparent conundrum can only be resolved when these “flashbacks” are read as purely dissociated psychotic fantasies; that is, read Part 2 as is Part 1 didn’t exist. The key to this interpretation involves a sequence where two policemen are called in to apprehend a man dressed like Santa, presumably the Santa killer but who turns out to be a father dressing up for his kids. The only possible explanation for this scene given the wrap-around situation of Billy narrating to a psychologist, is that this whole event is a deranged fantasy, specifically a psychotic power projection. Step aside, Hitchcock; Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is truly psycho.
Elsa and I left warmed as much by the fond friendship and clever repartee as by the glow of the plasma TV — but I’ve come to expect such merriment from the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers. Given the staggering number of scary films with holiday themes, I can only wonder what horrors will await us at next year’s party.
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: I think humor mixed with horror should be in the same proportion as vermouth to vodka in a perfect martini, that is, just the barest hint. HOWEVER, this adorable profile of a daycare for supernaturally afflicted children left me with the perfect wry grin.
Thanks to io9 for tipping me off to Bloody Cuts, a producer of high quality, short horror films. They’ve got a good handful of films created and posted so far and thematically they run the gamut from urban folk-horror to zombie apocalypse to, well, my personal favorite is the supernatural child-terror of “Suckablood.” The camera work is sharp and the special effects are for the most part effective. In perusing the credits, there seems an oddly large number of folks with the last name “Franklin” involved — maybe they’re like the Ramones…
Bloody Cuts have run an Indie-Go-Go fundraiser but if you enjoy quality short horror as much as I do, feel free to use the “Donate” button to slip ’em a bit of cash.
The character design is great even on its own as it whimiscally re-imagines the inner structures of various creatures as if they all possessed human-like skeletal structures. Then there’s the effective choice to depict these designs in monochrome to give an old-timey x-ray feel. Then there is the clever narrative about a day in the life of this bizarre little world, one that is portrayed through very effective shots and pacing. But my absolute FAVORITE part of this lovely little clip is the fact that it features all the credits at the very end! By the time I’ve been wowed by the animation, I WANT to keep watching just to see who was responsible.
“Stake Land” hit me like a hammer of wonderful. I was not expecting to love it. Any hopes I had for the end of the world soured months ago and I officially declared the apocalypse so “yesterday” However, this indie horror flick makes me add an exception. What first struck me were the visuals. The film felt like film both due to image quality and the thoughtful establishing shots that plumped out the locations. The milieu felt really familiar, really rust belt and post industrial. It wasn’t shot in the Midwest technically but except for a few mountains, it felt like home.
The main characters were all strongly conceived and portrayed. Obviously the heroic “Mister” is the defining core — yeah, yeah, structurally speaking the kid he saves is the protagonist– and yeah, the overall thrust of the movie is a bildungsroman for this youngun, complete with separation from natal household, learned independence, sexual awakening and (spoiler) re-establishment of a new household. The kid character is good, central even but damn, Mister is da MAN. Supporting characters are excellent. There’s a rescued nun, a pregnant singer, an ex-marine… and what compelling narrative would be complete without an ape-shit bad guy?
Religion and its bizarre perversions formed an essential thematic strata of Stake Land a detail that made it particularly vivid. America is daft already when it comes to the variety and ingenuity of our faith-based practices. The end of normal society could only make those oddities accelerate outward. I particularly enjoyed the suggestion of a suicide cult during one scene since it was nicely understated, not to mention that it goes in a completely different direction than I’d expected.
“Stake Land” compares favorably to the film version of “The Road.” Both are beautiful to look at. Both chronicle the decay of American civilisation and the desperate attempts to retain a sense of family in the face of such devastation. Both films end on at least a whisper of optimism. But I’ll take “Stake Land” over “The Road.” It comes down to something that I believe Nick Mamatas noted when explaining the difference between genre and literary fiction: in genre stories, something happens. Too often “literary” writing and “auteurist” cinema specifically repress story and plot as they focus on the elements of mood, character, theme. A film like “Stake Land,” modest though it may be, is a strong reminder that movies can be both poetic AND entertaining.
And if all that weren’t enough already, there were no zombies. Aren’t we over zombies yet? The vampires in “Stake Land” provided different levels of threat. They weren’t quite the über-beasts of “30 Days of Night” but they were happily far from the urbane and decadent artistocrats of “Interview with a Vampire.” I loved the sense that there was a taxonomy of vampire types known to the hunters; “scamps” were young ones, “berserkers” were older, more dangerous. Perhaps my favorite touch was how Mister collected the fangs from his kills and better, how those fangs functioned as currency.
I have no idea what angel of dark cinema spirited “Stake Land” to me but I am deeply grateful. I had been wallowing in a morass of joke-ridden, childish home movies masquerading as horror. “Stake Land” reminded me that mature and reflective grown ups make scary movies too.
This little video gem popped up around the web (io9.com, boingboing.net, etc) but I loved it so much I just had to share it here too. Double plus good, eh? It’s the proper length, not too long, not too short. The animation effect is smooth enough. The frame composition is nice to have the face AND an item in the background. And it goes beyond being a simple makeup test. About the only thing I can say of a critical nature is that there aren’t anywhere near enough maggots and that there would have been a great “bloom” of them long before our hero turned to bones. But quibbles. Enjoy!
If you read this blog and you’re near mid-Michigan next weekend, stop in to the Second Annual Flint Horror Convention, right down town at the creepy Masonic Temple kitty corner from the original Halo Burger. Vendors, Movies, Panels and all so close to the center of this mitten-shaped wonderland. TV horror celebrity Wolfman Mac is playing host and, among many other guests, my friends from the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers will be on a panel. Last year’s inaugural convention was a blast and this year promises to be bigger and better.
This year the Three Corpse Circus really hit its stride with polish and panache and easily the best crop of short horror films they’ve screened yet. The whole evening was enjoyable… for those, of course, who enjoy an evening of gore and terror. A few touches were tasteful, like the costumed vampires who handed out programs while others were simple but greatly appreciated, like projected list of films shown between each movie that reminded viewers of the title and country of origin. The evening was preceded by a zombie walk and the lobby was filled with tables for the local chapter of Zombie Squad, The Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers and the Flint Horror Convention which rounded out the sense of an actual horror community in Michigan.
The films were the stars as it should be at a film festival. I was struck by the “freshness” of the offerings since all but one were made within the last year. Those who have read my reviews of the previous festivals (year one and year two) will remember my embarrassment that so few exceptional films came from the US. I am pleased to note with a quiver of patriotism that this year the domestic product was clearly dominant. U-S-A! U-S-A!! Overall, the movies themselves were of such a generally high quality, a loud disagreement broke out among myself, Elsa and Igor when it came time to choose our favorites.
Igor particularly enjoyed the taut Spanish short “Refuge 115,” a beautifully shot tale of mysterious disappearances in a bomb shelter. The location was spot on perfect and was exceptionally well lit, a necessity since darkness in the tale seethed with malevolence.
Elsa agreed that Refuge 115 was the most consistently scary piece, but she also quite enjoyed “Saw Misgivings” a British farce that depicted the dark hilarity resulting when a housewife discovers a torture-porn head vice and gets it stuck on her head… just as company is expected for dinner. The acting was spot on and its comic timing was immaculate. It was the kind of droll comedy we expect from the British Isles.
I, however, don’t like to laugh.
I am a purist and a snob when it comes to horror and I tolerate only the lightest touch of comedy and only when it’s used to heighten the overall tension of the piece. Otherwise, I’d be extolling the obvious virtues of “Zombie Factor,” a locally produced piece about reality TV after the zombie apocalypse. Its tone perfectly captured the feel of survivor-type television with a healthy dose of the undead. The director was on-hand and answered questions during intermission and he should be justly proud of his work. It really felt like a professionally produced product. Honestly, the only thing I can say against this film is that is was funny, quite effectively so… and with horror at least I am not amused by humor.
With that prejudice in mind, let me highlight the three films that rocked my world.
“Tarnished Gluttony” (2012), a music video, told an eerie Lovecraftian tale of sacrifice. Gorgeous visuals and convincingly bloody with good, yet tasteful gore, this short piece left just enough mystery and wonder unexplained to whet my taste for more. Igor, that grouch, couldn’t get past the soundtrack.
“Familiar” (Fatal Pictures, Canada 2012), the final piece of the night, was a well-shot and perfectly acted tale of middle-aged quiet horror that spirals downward into more Cronenbergian body terror. The effects were nicely achieved and the whole tone of domestic desperation was masterfully portrayed. Damn those Canucks and their National Film Board!
But my favorite piece, the one that I would like to watch again, was the brief gem titled “Green Glass Door,” which depicted a grisly parlor game directed by a serial killer. (It can be watched in its entirety here.) Elsa, Egor and I were talking about it as we left the theatre, puzzling it out. Pay attention to the closing credits if you’re still in the dark. It was for my money the most consistently brutal piece cramming a fist full of convincing executions into its scant seven minutes. The horrific deaths were unsettling, immaculately shot but framed so as not to show too much. And if all that wasn’t enough, I discovered that “Green Glass Door” was entirely shot and edited in 48 hours as part of a Lousiville, Kentucky project. I expect great things from Antonio Pantoja.
I could keep going since there was something interesting about each of the films this year. I left eager for more but quite satisfied. I felt that last night, Three Corpse Circus really started to its promise as a rallying point for the Michigan horror community. I can hardly wait for next year.
The historic Michigan Theatre in downtown Ann Arbor MI, keeps one Halloween tradition I heartily endorse: their yearly showing of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” complete with a LIVE ORGAN accompaniment. This year it happens on Thursday, October 25. If you’ve never seen a silent movie with music performed on an honest to goodness theatre organ then treat yourself to this special showing. A theatre organ has the complete range of an orchestra and I should note, they are actual instruments, not digital copies. And take a look around the place too. The Michigan theatre was restored to its ancient glory a decade or so ago and its lobby is worth a gander as well. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the butter on their popcorn is actual, REAL butter.
Nosferatu remains an enduring classic, if for no other reason than how it resolves the central problem of all vampire movies, that is, how can an undead creature of the night do something as ungainly as crawl out of a coffin without looking like an awkward scramble. Lugosi’s Dracula, as I recall, resolves the problem in a different, far less cinematic way with a demure cut-away, but Nosferatu’s full-figure, effortless rise is worth the price of admission. Sure, you’ve seen it in a hundred other movies, but this is the original and for my money the best.
http://www.michtheater.org/shows/nosferatu/
If you just want to watch the movie, however, it’s up on the You-Toob:
What better way to start off a month of Halloween celebrations than with the third annual festival of short horror films known as Three Corpse Circus? It’s earlier than past years which I consider a plus. October gets so cramped with horror events.
This year there will be two blocks of programming which seems like a good idea. Gluttons like myself reveled in the four hour marathon but I bet more casual viewers will appreciate the segments. The list of films is already posted: http://www.threecorpsecircus.com/line-up/ and as usual there looks like there will be something for everyone.
Wanna an idea of what to expect? Check our my reviews of the First Year and of the Second Year.
Those purveyors of premium schlock, Troma, have released a whole slew of their full length movies on YouTube. Great fun. They might not be exactly fitting with our “snob” reputation here at the DailyNightmare, but Troma has a full four decade legacy of producing authentically independant films… or at least movies. Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s an impressive track record. And they’ve released films that they distribute too like “White Zombie” with Bela Lugosi, considered the first zombie movie.
Word dropped into my InBox about “The Selling” a film making the festival circuit about the difficulties of trying to sell a haunted house. The trailer at least makes the film look like an enjoyable and amusing tale.
Watching the spritely actors cavort in this quite enjoyable trailer made me realize what stinks about most straight horror movies: wooden acting. Perhaps it comes from a reliance on special effects, that is, the external aspects of gore and spectacle, the kinds of things that can be “fixed in the mix” that is added in during post-production. Real acting — even the exagerated cariacatured comedic acting in the trailer — obviously takes place during production but the groundwork has to be laid firmly in pre-production, dare I say it, even before the script writing occurs. We so often hear — and are supposed to be amazed by — reports of films that were written in one booze-drenched weekend. Yawn. I want the story that is deep and mature like a well cellared wine. Creep me out during the movie, sure but keep me scared long after I’ve gone home. I know grown men who were afraid to take showers after seeing “Psycho.” I digress, of course. Critics will note that it’s far easier to get a laugh than to inspire genuine fear. Maybe. There are cheap laughs and cheap scares. The richer experience in both genres, I believe, depends upon deep characterization (not necessarily deep characters) and actors capable of depicting them.
“The Selling” looks to be a blast, like a well-done comedy-horror film that wasn’t afraid to do a little work.
Mars might need women but it also needs Santa, at least according to the 1964 special Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. To be fair, the martians in this classic tale aren’t really all that monstrous, though a case could be made for the mean spirited Volmar. Second string bad-guys include a polar bear that looks like a reanimated rug, and maybe Torg, the martians’ robot that appears to be made of paint cans and cardboard boxes spray-painted silver. The real reason why they collectively appear on this list of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters is because “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is quite likely the most horrifyingly weird Xmas special there is– simply a must see.
Too many snobs misread SCCTM as being simply “bad.” It is rated obscenely low on the IMDB and frequently makes lists of the worst films of all time. Mystery Science Theatre mocked it – an honor of it own, sort of. Yet, and I say this as a snob myself, many of these same critics ooo and ahhh over the style of Mad Men and camp of the Pee Wee Herman’s Christmas Special. “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” should be seen squarely in the context of those two works.
But make no mistake, there’s something seriously weird about SCCTM. Certain elements of society are extrapolated as in normal speculative fiction but here, they’re just strange. For instance there is a critique of automation that now some fifty years later appears quaint if not bizarre. The low budget production for the most part enhances this effect from the curious face paint of the martians to the set dressing of the martian spaceship. What the HECK is a “radar box???” Sure, you could go insane while contemplating the words of Lovecraft’s forbidden tomes — or you could pop in a video of SCCTM for a similar brain scramble.
But for the record we should go through the checklist. Are they monsters? Well, they’re definitely not human. And since they kidnap Santa Claus, the martians can be considered antagonists of Christmas, even though I suppose they’re more concerned with importing than eradicating the practice. But it’s mostly the work as a whole that earned the martians from “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” slot 9 on the DailyNightmare’s Ten Best Christmas Monsters.
If you believe that Christmas, like youth, is wasted on the young then “Rare Exports” is a film you must see. Elsa and I caught it last night at the historic Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor and though there are a couple more showings today, I suspect “Rare Exports” is destined to become a holiday classic especially among fans of snobbish, dark fantasy.
The setup? An excavation team discovers the resting place of Santa Claus deep within an icy Finnish mountain but Santa ain’t the jolly old soul you might expect. “Rare Exports” is told through the perspective of Pietaari, a young Finn who is just old enough to start questioning the existence of the red suited holiday gift man. At its root, “Rare Exports” is Pietaari’s coming of age tale, where he sets aside his stuffed animal companion to perform an act of heroism that he is still child enough to accomplish. It’s also a father-son story that doesn’t get mushy. The world depicted, in fact, is harsh with no women and little possibility for forgiveness, grace or redemption — but for crying out loud don’t we get enough of that stuff this time of year?
I can’t see how the film warrants an “R” rating — apart from the terrifying elves (complete with full frontal male nudity,) the slaughter and butchery of reindeer and the mid-twisting revelation of Santa’s true being. And a bit of naughty language. “Rare Exports” is not a horror movie by any stretch, more dark contemporary fantasy told with enough wit to keep it amusing. And since much of the dialogue is in Finnish, the mere presence of subtitles earn it high marks on the snob-o-meter. The scenery is gorgeous, well worth seeing on a big screen, even if the big screen also makes the CG look a bit rough. Honestly though, if you’re going to fault a film as inventive as “Rare Exports” for not-so-special effects then you’re simply NOT in the holiday spirit.
Treat yourself this Yuletide season and remember the REAL Santa with “Rare Exports” — and ditch the kids at home with the X-box and the internet.
Tonight at Lena, in downtown Ann Arbor, the editorial board of the DailyNightmare had a serious sit-down with seven of the Corpses behind The Three Corpse Circus. Over plantain and blackberry infused liquor, we plotted the future, mused about world domination and, of course, we confided the winner of the first annual “Impy” award for cinematic excellence in Midwest Snob Horror. The Corpses were aghast. Threats were made; bribes proffered. Tears, blood and a bit of red wine all were spilled but in the end, we of the DailyNightmare stood valiantly behind our decision. At the end of the evening, we shook hands and parted of one mind. No fatalities. Few deep wounds.
. To be fair, the martians in this classic tale aren’t really all that monstrous, though a case could be made for the mean spirited Volmar. Second string bad-guys include a polar bear that looks like a reanimated rug, and maybe Torg, the martians’ robot that appears to be made of paint cans and cardboard boxes spray-painted silver. The real reason why they collectively appear on this list of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters is because “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is quite likely the most horrifyingly weird Xmas special there is– simply a must see.
and camp of the 
. “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” should be seen squarely in the context of those two works.