Best of the Wretched Part II: This Time, It's The Second Part

Grindhouse
So I thought I’d start off Part II with a little flick called Grindhouse. Pals Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez dreamed it up when they realized that they both owned the same double-feature exploitation poster. And being the impulsive guys that they are, they decided to make a double feature (For those who don’t know, Tarantino and Rodriguez are, like, the best directors ever. Like, oh my god.). They each directed one new-age exploitation film (Robert Rodriguez did Planet Terror, and Quentin Tarantino did Death Proof), and then put them together to make Grindhouse. And I was blown away.
Zombie-soldiers, bullets, Bruce Willis, demented doctors, go-go dancers (not strippers, there’s a difference), Tom Savini, testicles…and that’s just Planet Terror. Death Proof features a serial killer who uses a car instead of a knife. Spiffy shit. And I haven’t even brought up the fake trailers. Machete, Werewolf Women of the SS, Don’t, and Thanksgiving, were trailers made specifically to enhance the movie experience, directed by Robert Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth, respectively. I could write a whole other entry on the trailers alone.
In some Canadian theatres, another trailer was also shown. Jason Eisener, winner of the South by Southwest Grindhouse trailer contest, made it. It was called Hobo with a Shotgun. It was the single best thing I’ve ever seen. Jason Eisener lives in Dartmouth, right across the bridge from where I’m typing this very entry. It brings a tear to my eye to know that something so awesome could come from somewhere so close to my own home.


At the end of the day, all I can say is ‘See the muthertrucking movie’.



The fact that there are 4 Saw movies
The thing about the Saw movies is that the first one was great, the second one was okay, the third one was better than the second but not as good as the first, and the fourth one I haven’t seen yet. But that’s neither here nor there. They’re kind of repetitive, but they’re solid. And there’s a bunch of ‘em.
Back in the day, every horror movie seemed to have a franchise tagging along behind it. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, and Halloween all had their day, but for a while it seemed that this generation wouldn’t see the start of a decent horror franchise. Until Saw came along. Delightfully bloody and even pretty clever, Saw was a wonderful little film that people and enjoyed, but never expected to go anywhere. They were sadly mistaken about Saw’s potential. The movie was a hit and spawned a slew of sequels that have been coming out every year around Halloween for the past 4 years. Talk about being diligent.
And that’s the story of how our generation got its horror franchise. It will probably go on for far too long, but let’s just enjoy it while it’s young…ish. It’s about a pre-teen now, I’d say.
Side-note: I might have missed a franchise that’s started recently, but I’m not looking that hard and not counting series with only two entries. Them’s bitches.


When things happen to eyes
It’s common knowledge that a lot of things have eyes. I do. You probably do too. But what’s a-little-less-common knowledge is that eyes can be creepy as hell. And hell’s pretty creepy.
Picture a guy standing in a dark alley facing a blank wall. Against your better judgment, you decided to see if this guy’s running on all cylinders. You tap him on the shoulder, and he pivots around to reveal that his eyes are COMPLETELY WHITE! (And not just blind-person type white, but possessed type white). Now, picture that same scenario, but replace ‘COMPLETELY WHITE!’ with ‘COMPLETELY BLACK!’ or ‘HE HAS NO EYES!’ or ‘HIS EYES ARE BLEEDING!’. Terrifying, no?
Eyes tend to be a good body part to base disturbing violence around to boot. Check out the videos from our first post: when you see a girl getting a large splinter of wood forced into her eye, you’re watching one of the more gruesome eye-related kills, courtesy of Zombi 2.



White Eyes clearly knows what's good in da hood




Little girls with black hair that move quickly and patternlessly and/or slowly and patternlessly
Microsoft Word is trying to tell me that ‘patternlessly’ isn’t a word. I beg to differ.
Anyway, to most people, the image of a creepy black haired, occasionally inexplicably soaked, little ghost girl is mainly associated with Americanized remakes of Japanese movies. These girls are, yeah, kinda eerie, but they don’t hold a candle to the original versions. Watch Ringu or Ju-On, the original versions of The Ring and The Grudge respectively, and you’ll see what I mean.
Even when watching the American shit-basket remakes of these chillers, you have to remember the first time you saw one of those ghost kids spaz-walking down a hallway. You were like ‘What the fuck, that doesn’t even work!!’, much in the same vein as when Linda Blair upside-down crap walks down the stairs in The Exorcist (see last ‘Best of the Wretched’ post).
, especially when they’re dead and moving in inhuman ways. It just ain’t natural.





Horror Remakes (The concept of such things)
Remakes…I don’t even want to get too deep into this one. It’s sick, it’s morally wrong; it’s not even good.
Some things are best left untouched, like minors, and oh, say, every horror movie EVER! Remaking them just produces films that just about every movie critic refers to as ‘a steaming pile of crap’, thinking that they’re being clever and original. They’re not, but that doesn’t make them any less right. I normally disagree with a lot of things that movie critics have to say about horror movies, but here is where we see eye to eye.
Okay, so maybe I’ve jumped the gun a little. I actually enjoyed the remakes of Cape Fear, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Thing, but that’s about it. Think about every time you’ve started to watch a trailer, and you’ve been thinking ‘This looks awful…but familiar…’. It’s like having a twin brother who’s lost at birth, and later on is scarred in a tragic motorcycling accident, and then you meet him years later at a rave. Can you picture that? Maybe yes, maybe no? Either way, it all amounts to remakes being to horror movies what pissing in holy water is to Catholics.



Now that's an intelligent rating system if ever I saw one


Pancakes (Cabin Fever)
It’s not really grotesque, creepy, or clever, it’s just fucking hilarious.


I don’t know what Eli Roth was thinking, but it was probably influenced by pot. And I’m glad.


John Carpenter
"In France, I'm an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain; a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum."

If you love horror, thrillers, or action, and you haven’t heard of Mr. Carpenter, you’re sadly out in the cold. He’s great, just great. He’s influenced so many people in so many ways. He brought the slasher genre into the mainstream. He composed awesome synthesizer music for his movies. John Carpenter is, in many ways, the man.
John Carpenter makes movies that everyone else wants to be making. He remade The Thing back before remakes were the annoying ‘it’ thing. And it was genuinely terrifying and became a cult classic. He made Halloween, which defined slasher movies (it wasn’t the first, but it was close). He directed They Live, which had the line ‘I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.’ Which is just awe-inspiring.
Johnny-Boy inspired generations of filmmakers; Escape from New York was the movie that inspired Robert Rodriguez to start making films. He also actually avoids showing gore, which makes the fact that his movies are so macabre all the more impressive. Man, what a guy. I’ve gotta go change my pants.


"Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience."


When the Alien comes out of John Hurt’s chest
You might think it’s over-used, but there’s a reason. This scene stands out to hundreds of people as a defining moment in not just horror, but in cinema as a whole. Ridley Scott’s Alien came out in 1979, and still has what it takes to shock and horrify even today. You all know the scene I’m talking about. If you don’t, then you might as well die.
A clingy alien life form latches onto John Hurt, and it lays eggs or some shit like that in his chest cavity. The catch is that he, as well as the other crewmembers of his space vehicle (this flick takes place in the future, FYI), doesn’t know this. That is until the little bugger decides to make it’s presence known.
In a scene that makes even the worst indigestion seem like mild gas, the alien bursts out of his chest and runs off, leaving the crew to ponder ‘Who’s going to clean this up?’ as well as ‘Where did that speedy little thing that looks like a bloody dildo attached to an R.C. car go?’.
Over the course of the film, the alien proceeds to slaughter the rest of the crew and grow at an alarming rate. Kids sure do grow up quick.













There may be a part III coming soon, ya never know. Maybe this will be my horror franchise.

-Alex

Return of the Sub-Sub-Genres

Hello children. Let’s dive right in.

Italian Cannibalism

Sigh. Yes, it does exist as a film genre of its own, and yes, it is disgustingly intriguing (why else would it be mentioned?). I don’t need to take time in explaining it because the title describes it down to a tee. The movies are made by Italians. The movies are about primitive beings (usually) engaging in the act of cannibalism. The genre spawned in the early 70s. God knows why the Italian directors had this fixation of cannibalism all around the same time, and damnit, they are brutal; almost always featuring rape, killing (with various methods), beating, and just overall torture. I feel deranged having to explain such things, but when you watch them you get a rude awakening from seeing what has existed since the beginning of time. The epitome of Italian Cannibalism is Cannibal Holocaust. With such a name, you should know that it holds some weight on its shoulders. Still to this day, it is banned in multiple countries (and as a side-note, these films all will have on the cover "Most controversial movie of all time" or something to that effect, so there won't be too many accidental viewings I hope). If you thought the Hostel movies and the Saw movies were gruesome, have fun with this one. I won’t go into description, but. It’s filthy.

The thing is, the most disgusting parts to me are the animal deaths. Watching these make me want to become a vegetarian, because I know this is how most meat really is prepared, still for us today in factories (maybe workers don’t exactly slay chickens by impaling them with a stick they simply break off a tree, but you get the point). And with these films, they are so bare-to-the-bone and simply real that they help you not forget how humans still exist to this day; the methods and actions necessary to prevail through time. These films are a study of the human in its most stripped down model, and also what could be if we didn’t follow the morals and ethics we’re told to follow in society.

And I still love meat.

If you’re still interested, check some of these out:

Cannibal Holocaust, as mentioned early.

Cannibal Ferox

The Green Inferno

Heroic Bloodshed

You may be thinking Gladiator. You may be thinking Die Hard. You may be thinking of any Pauly Shore movie. You’d be wrong, wrong, and retarded. I’m talking about movies that make you think at least once while you’re watching them: “hehe, whoa. It feels like a video game”. I’m talking about the movies where characters have unlimited ammo; your enemies can be shot 5 times and still engage in a dual-pistol wielding gun fight; the majority of action scenes in the film are in slow-motion.

I’m talking about John Woo.

If you’ve never seen a John Woo movie, leave the computer now and go rent one. Actually, wait, read, support this wonderful site we’ve got going... And then go rent one. John Woo knows and shows exactly what we want to see. We want an engaging, coherent story that gives us the important concept of good versus bad. Good fights the bad. A few of the good members get shot and die, but they go unforgotten in their battle for the greater good of mankind for years to come (in the fictional world). He also gives us the most entertaining action movies ever captured on film [and edited and put into slow-motion].

One more thing he gives us is Chow Yun Fat kicking some ass.

Which is obviously awesome.

Check these out NOW:

Hard Boiled

The Killer

A Better Tomorrow

City On Fire (note Reservoir Dogs)

And Face/Off, just for good measure.

P.S. I forgot about Giallos, but I’ll post about them another time, turd-burglars.

-Ryan

Sub-Sub-Genres: Part 1

Damn homies. I thought I would lay down some info on your asses today, give you the low-down on some of the coolest sub-(sub?)-genres you can find in film. Watch my ass step up to the mic.

Let’s start it off with a favorite of mine:

Arterial Spray

Right there you’ve got a prime example of A.S., put into effect by the Japanese Ultraman. The origin of the Arterial Spray is unknown (to me), but the 60s is a good estimate for the birth of this disgusting concept (This is George Romero’s cue). Arterial Spray though finally came to life in the eighties with the help of gorehounds like Tom Savini and Peter Jackson who gave us some classic moments of blood spraying. But where Arterial Spray is at its prime is in Japan. To me, if you mention the name Takashi Miike (the Japanese Director), the first image I get basically is an Asian girl turning her head, initiating a torrent of blood into the air from her jugular (See: Ichi The Killer). Takashi takes pride in his artistically arranged spraying of blood. As you can probably remember, Tarantino took this wonderful concept and inserted it into his masterful Kill Bill.

Blood never looked so cool.

Check out anything by Takashi Miike rated at least R, Braindead, Battle Royale, or just check the Japanese movies in the foreign section, you’ll know one when you see it.

Cyberpunk

Here exists a little alleyway in cinema and novels alike. Simply put, it is known for its focus on "high tech and low life", and that’s basically the core of everything Cyberpunk but intensified beyond your imagination most likely. One of the earliest pieces of cyberpunk literature would be William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which touches on virtual reality, cyber space, and all that fun stuff. But in cinema one of the earliest pieces is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a story set in the dystopian America which should take place in.. 12 years from now, but hopefully I see no signs of it coming true any time soon.. This is all beside the point though. Why this genre is even in the list is because of one cinematic overlord: Shinya Tsukamoto. Shinya has starred in many of his friend’s films (Ichi The Killer, Marebito) and most of his own (except Vital and maybe something else). He excels in atmosphere, which is a crucial part of Cyberpunk. His earlier films are perfect manifestations of the concept of Cyberpunk: gritty, sleazy, erotic, industrial, mechanical, technologically advanced, black and white, accented jagged features (sound effects, visual effects). If you feel like squirming in your seat while watching something so.. oddly mesmerizing check out:

-Tetsuo: The Iron Man

-Bullet Ballet

-Tokyo Fist

And some others by a friend of Shinya, Shozin Fukui’s:

-Rubber's Lover

-964 Pinocchio

Here’s just a fragment of Tetsuo: The Iron Man’s insane chaos:

Coming up later this week:

-Italian Cannibalism

-Heroic Bloodshed

-Giallo

bye for now

-Ryan

Best of the Wretched: A list of not only the good, but also the grand

Zombies
Let’s start things off with a BANG! * splat * (You’ll laugh later…).
Okay, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that zombies make an awesome movie. Some things are just common sense. Just ask George A. Romero, he based his whole career on zombie flicks (And he made a killing…you’ll laugh later…).
The most widely used type of zombie is the slow-moving, rotten type. And whenever they’re brought up as being terrifying, some jackass always challenges that fact with something along the lines of ‘But they’re so slow’ or ‘I could out run them’. Well, I’ve got news for you, buddy: you can run all you want, but you’re eventually gonna get tired. And when the whole world is zombified, as it usually is in these movies, that means that you’re bound to run into a few while you’re staggering around panting, probably looking for some Gatorade. And…come on…they’re the un-friggin’-dead! Who cares how slow they are?
Be they the lumbery silent type (Night, Dawn, Shaun?, Day, Land, Zombi 1 and 2, etc.), or the speedy humany type (28 Days and Weeks Later), zombies creep the pants off me. And hopefully ya’ll too.

Eli Roth
Say what you want about him and his movies, but I think that Eli Roth is one of the most gritty, knowledgeable directors out there. Yeah, you heard me. A lot of people out there hate on him, saying that his movies are crap and are just there to showcase blood n’ guts and that he’s probably a disturbed individual.
All right, first thing: He directs horror movies, what do you expect, a remake of Citizen Kane (Oh, god forbid…)? If you want to see a nice, calm, pleasant movie about daffodils and whole wheat, then you got lost in the video store.
Second thing: He’s probably a whole lot more sane than some of the people out there who aren’t in the horror movie business. He gets all his shit out there, instead of keeping it bottled up and then driving a tractor through his neighbour’s front wall (It was a funny image, just sayin’). I think it’s the people who take what’s in his movies to heart that are messed up. Like, if Hostel made someone think ‘Hmm…yeah, torture sounds good’, then they’ve got issues up the wah-zoo (sounds like ‘kazoo’…sound it out, it’s a real term).
In the end, Eli’s just a guy who loves horror movies, and is doing what he loves. Those who like him are gonna like him, and those who don’t aren’t. Personally, I think he’s doing something great for the genre, but maybe that’s just me.

That one part in Scanners
If anyone’s ever seen David Cronenberg’s Scanners, then I’m sure you know the scene I’m talking about. A certain characters’ head goes through a certain trauma, and ends up all over a certain wall.
Okay, so a newscaster who’s name I don’t care to remember has his head blown-up (psychically) by Michael Ironside’s Darryl Revok, a renegade scanner (someone with telepathic and telekinetic abilities). The rest of the movie doesn’t matter. The head explosion makes it. I even made it into an emoticon so I should show everyone on MSN. I lost a lot of friends…
What makes the effect even more badass is how they pulled it off: they stuffed a latex head full of dog food and rabbit livers (see your local grocer), and then blasted it with a 12 gauge shotgun. Fun stuff, for all ages.

Session 9
A little known fact: this movie is scary as shit. It’s one of the only recent movies that I can recall that creeped the hell out of me. It’s about 4 guys in an asbestos cleaning crew sent in to work on an abandoned mental institution. And weird-ass shit starts going down.
Now, you’re probably thinking ‘Been there, done that’. But this movie is different than all those Houses on Haunted Hills. It has a genuinely disturbing, bleak feel to it. And having really only 4 characters, it gets you close to these guys. You’re bothered when unfortunate things happen to them (as they usually do in these movies).
It gets under your skin; it confuses you, and makes you pee a little. And it has David Caruso before he went on CSI: Miami and started putting his sunglasses on in slow motion. What more could you want?

Scream
Let’s face it; Wes Craven hasn’t done anything good in years. I’m sorry for the guy, he used to be one of the masters. Kinda. Anyway, not only was Scream his last great movie, but it was also his most clever. It’s a spoof of slasher movies, without really poking fun at them; it has an actual DECENT PLOT, OH MY GOD, and WHAT THE HELL; and it has not one, but TWO killers! It’s obviously not the only movie to do this, but when you’re dealing with average humans (crazy averages humans, mind you) as opposed to hulking man-beasts with machetes, there’s safety in numbers. Plus you get two overly extravagant finishing deaths for the price of one.
Anyway, it’s a fun ride, the kills are pleasant, the plot is decent, but isn’t worth posting here, and you’ll hopefully enjoy yourself as much as I did when I tried on a BAPE in the mall (they’re the hoodies that zip up ALL the way. Why do they exist? I dunno, but they’re hilarious). Props, Wes. Props.

The bag in Audition
As much as all of Session 9 got to me, this one scene got to me even more. Audition is a film directed by Takashi Miike. That alone makes it F’d up. The plot centers on a widower looking for a way to meet a new wife, so he holds auditions via his friend, a casting director (or whatever that’s called) to find one. He meets one he likes, but there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Hint: she’s nucking futs.
The widower calls her home, looking for a date, and the scene in her apartment is a tad…off. Can you spot what’s wrong?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuVXe6gRICE

If you said ‘The fucking bag moved!!’ then you’re correct.

The bit in The Exorcist where she crab walks down the stairs

People shouldn’t be able to DO that!!

Ash from Evil Dead
We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound "fine"?. No, not at all, but we love you anyway Ash.
Ashley ‘Ash’ J. Williams is the main character of the Evil Dead movies, directed by Sam Raimi before he went all Spider-Man. The movies center around a demonic book called the Necronomicon, and Bruce Campbell kicking ass as Ash. But mainly the latter.
Ash quickly became a cultural icon, spouting quips as he offed baddies and blasting shit away with his ‘boomstick’. He even got a chainsaw to replace his severed possessed hand. It makes sense when you watch it…okay, no it doesn’t, but it’s still great. He’s spanned 3 movies, different time periods, and has even made the leap into the video game world. All the games sucked, but he gets cred for trying, right? Yes, he does.

Retards who wield sharp things
Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers. All killers; all armed with different pointy instruments of death; all mildly to severely retarded, all terrifying to be chased by. It sounds mean, but horror movies have brought us all up to fear and respect these people.
Michael Myers is probably the least handicapped of the three. He’s pretty much just a big, quiet, crazy dude, but I put him in this section after my co-writer urged me to using the example ‘But I’m sure you’d consider him a ‘tard if he was sitting next to you on a bus’. I had to agree. He’s like a wall wearing a jumpsuit and a William Shatner mask that just never stops coming, even after you’ve shot him, stabbed him, blinded him, and shoved him through, over, and off of all manner of things. But he’s also a family man, just out to reunite with his sister…and murder her. Why was this cute again?
Jason would be right in the middle when it comes to smarts. He was a deformed, mildly special child who was raised by his mother near Camp Crystal Lake. That turned out to be a problem, because out-of-control campers with no parents around and counselors who were too busy banging each to pay attention to them pushed Jason into the lake where he presumably drowned. To make a long story short, he survived and grew up to kill people, first while wearing a pillowcase mask, and later turned to his trademark hockey mask. He chops people up for the usual reasons: sex, drugs, rock n’ roll (not really), saying ‘I’ll be right back’. Side note: If you say ‘BRB’ instead, will you still die? Hmmm.

And then there’s Leatherface. Ah, Leatherface…you’d be hard-pressed to actually find someone this mentally messed up outside of cinema. All he does is skin people, make masks, swing around a chainsaw, and grunt. Mr. Face was raised by a family of cannibals, which didn’t help him any. You’d think someone might be pretty harmless when they’re brain activity is about equal to that of a rock, but you’d be wrong. It’s amazing how much damage a chainsaw can do when wielded one-handed. It’s a balance thing, I think.

Part II, Coming Soon
- Alex

Hail to the king, baby

Salutations and welcome to our brand-spankin’-new-blog. This is Skinny Pigs’ (Alex and Ryan) first time combining forces for the greater good of man-kind and hopefully we can spark something on this here interweb. Like I mentioned, we’re new to this whole thang so I’m going to make this short and sweet so I can catch up on reading the thesaurus and finding some witty adjectives for some later posts to help all you countless readers out there soil yourselves slowwwlyyyy.

So lets start off with a bang and test all your might, you cowardly bunch.

Here are a couple compilations of some of the most classic, wonderful, horrible, talented, untalented works of special effects in horror movies ever.

I’m kind of hungry now.

-Ryan