Cemetery of Terror

Cemetery of Terror

Original title: Cemeterio del terror

Directed by: Ruben Galindo Jr

Mexico, 1985

Horror, 88min

Opening with a shot that crawls up on a sweaty Hugo Stiglitz (spelled Stieglitz in the credits) as he has a nightmarish vision, is a great way to present the initial attack of Cemetery of Terror: Stiglitz dreams of a terrifying man-beast brutally slaying young woman!

Stiglitz is Cardan, a Doctor convinced that his recently deceased patient, and killer of seventeen people, Devlon [José Gómez Parcero], has prior to dying found a way to come back from the dead and continue his violent rampage. Obviously both Police and colleagues laugh at his absurd theories…

Cue the bunch of clueless students  destined for their Halloween party and silly “scare the chicks” pranks up their sleeve spending the night in an “abandoned” house. Being rejected by their girlfriends simultaneously, the lads turn their attention to other things, such as mooching around the dark cobwebbed house.  Jorge [Servando Manzetti] finds a strange book in the attic, and Blissfully unaware of the connection between the leather bound cover with “Devlon” embossed on the cover and Dr. Cardan’s creepy theories, they start reading aloud from the pages of the book. The taunting of the girls and reading of the book gives them the sick idea of stealing a corpse from the cemetery – all as a joke to freak the chicks out of course.

After a soaking wet "reading of the pages" over the corpse in the middle of the rainy cemetery - and a decent snog session for all parts - Devlon arises from the dead and starts to prey on the youths. Classic tale of don't make out in abandoned houses, or you will get snuffed… oh, and raising serial killers from the dead is a bad thing too. Time to bring Dr. Cardan back into the plot, as time is sparse if he’s going to catch up with his old foe, and put him to rest for a final time!

There’s a subplot with a bunch of younger children – one of them Tony [Eduardo Capetillo], happens to be the son of police chief Ancira [Raúl Meraz] who’s escorting Stiglitz all over town in the search for Devlon – whilst the children trick or treating at the cemetery! At first it just seems to be a set up that will lead Stiglitz and Ancira to confront Devlon, and would have worked great as a tool to convince the sceptic Police chief. But it’s not and the children are just as annoying as you would imagine them to be, and pretty soon, for reasons I never will understand, they become the main protagonists of the piece.

As the children ponder the cemetery, flames burst out of a crypt, which makes them run for their lives, right into the house where all the youths where slaughtered earlier... So the focus shifts, the kids are the new protagonists but at the same time we get a treat when Zombies arise in the cemetery! There are some great moments here and the zombies look just as I would want Mexican exploitation film zombies to look.

But that kiddies in peril last act just totally bummed the movie for me. Up to then I was really into it, but when the children started running from the monster it became Scooby Doo. The movie turns into something completely different and in all honesty there’s really nothing that makes me give a damn about the children. It’s obviously where violent death stops too and all you have to look forward to from here on out, is kids running back and forth screaming whilst Hugo Stiglitz takes on his nemesis and actually warding off zombies with a large silver cross…

Despite it all Cemetery of Terror is holds a pretty good atmosphere – yes even after the children start running from the dead. It sports some splendid in-camera tricks, classic shock tactics, and some delightful special effects  - special effects man Ken Diaz , does good with the low budget, coming up with some cool old school gore and some really neat zombies, and against all odds the film manages to hammer down a last moment shock. (Dare I speculate that this is the same Diaz who worked his way up to the top league of Hollywood makeup artists via his early work with Rob Bottin?)

There’s some creative crosscutting of Stiglitz on his way to the morgue with the intention of having Devlon’s corpse destroyed whilst the kids break into the morgue and… yeah you guessed it, unknowingly stealing Devlon’s rotting body. Basic and easy, but it works effectively and helps build some sort of tension and suspense.

The way classic horror, supernatural magic and slasher aesthetics (subjective camera, killer stepping round corners in the background during long shots, supernatural strength) all come together in a cheap Mexican exploitation fajita is pretty entertaining, and at least the first three quarters of the film are decent generic horror.

The movie also features Rene Cardona III in the cast as Oscar. Yes, it’s the grandchild of legend René Cardona and son to equally legendary Rene Cardona Jr. Even though he doesn’t really get much screen time t’s great to see the third generation of Mexican Exploitation filmmakers on screen. Only a few years after Cemeterio del terror, Cardona III was making movies on his own merits and has enjoyed a pretty decent career. As for first time director Ruben Galindo Jr., he followed Cemeterio del Terror with Don’t Panic (1988) another teen oriented shocker before unleashing his seminal work the far superior Ladrones de tumbas (Grave Robbers) 1990.

Blood Tracks

Blood Tracks

Directed by: Mats Helge Olsson

Sweden/USA, 1985

Horror, 95 min

Distributed by: Studio S Entertainment

Mats Helge Olsson’s rock’n’roll horror, Blood Tracks finally hit's Scandinavian DVD. Yes the “infamous” Swedish slasher that stars pseudo famous rockers Easy Action, skanky naked English birds, cheap eighties effects and a family of mutant cannibals stalking and killing the cast…
It’s The Hills Have Eyes with hairspray, death and loads of snow.

It’s a Mats Helge Olsson film! You shouldn’t really need any more reasons than that to check this out. Mats Helge Olsson director of low-budget backyard productions such as The Ninja Mission, The Forgotten Wells, Russian Terminator and Fatal Secret to name a few. And you should never forget that Mats Helge worked on several flicks with David Carradine, who just kept on coming back for more cheapo action! Many refer to him as the Swedish Ed Wood, but that would be kind of unfair, as Mats Helge Olsson stands in a league of his own… I’d rather say, the Swedish Bruno Mattei if I was going to pull a parallel to someone else. One of the last productions Mats Helge worked on officially was part one of a proposed TV serial called Nordexpressen 1992, which was produced by the company I work for and starred several of my long time colleagues in key roles. The guy who shot it, and also worked with Mats Helge on his final TV movie: Grottmorden (The Cave Murders) 1994 doesn't want to talk about Nordexpressen and instead hides behind his rather successful series of Swedish Police flicks. But, Oh the stories the others have told me, it would make you laugh till you puke!

Blood Tracks is already something of a cult movie due to the fact that it’s been pretty hard to find uncut before this DVD premiere. It was available on oldschool VHS back in the day and it has a reputation to live up to. This release seems destined to become a cult classic in it’s own rights as the disc, wait, TWO DISC set comes packed with hilarious time period documents. Among the bonus time capsule of shitty rock, unbelievably high hair and obscenely tight pants supplements, you’ll find the complete illustrated guide to Easy Action’s discography, A gallery of Blood Tracks cover art through the years, a rock video, the original trailer, a surprise Easter egg, A Hot Summer Night which is a fantastic “eighties” promotion movie for Blood Tracks - with the cast in character! And theres a unique never previously released bonus single with the band on the second disc. But what may be the cream of the crop is the 26 minute newly recorded interview "Blood Tracks - Easy Action cover their trail" on the making of the movie. This was shot just a few weeks back, and edited by yours truly, My first editing gig for almost ten years it paid nothing, and took way too much time from my other projects. But it was fun and all in the spirit of independent filmmaking. Rallying up a couple of mates, Fast Eddie B. and fellow blogger Ninja Dixon on cameras, my mate and film trivia savant Stefan Nylén whipped this production into action for real when he got Peo Thyrén and Bo Stagman to sit down with journalist Stefan Malmqvist and talk about the good old times. If nothing else it’s a great study in how two people who participated in the same film, have two completely different opinions about the movie and making it. Hopefully not the last supplementary feature 2 Geeks w/ Glasses get to make for Scandinavian discs.

Blood Tracks is somewhat required viewing, as it is such a fun little oddity - a Swedish Slasher, quite unlike anything made here before… well not really, there where other films that dabbled in the genre too at the same time, but there’s something about the movie that is highly entertaining. An enthusiasm and drive, which a lot of Swedish movies these days lack. A big Hell Yeah to the staff at Studio S Entertainment for their enthusiastic restoration, and deluxe packing of this final presentation of Blood Tracks in its uncut, uncensored version. Oh, they all speak English and play some tracks between posing and dying. Blood Tracks is perhaps best seen in the company of your mates on a Friday night somewhere between the crate of beer being emptied and you coming down off the high from the fumes of your glam rock hairdo.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

Directed by: Declan O’Brian

USA/Germany, 2011

Horror, 93min

Tut, tut, tut… Twentieth Century Fox… You bastards. Tut, tut, tut, Declan O’Brian. Despite the fact that I every now and then can enjoy franchise fare –which in more than one way is the elevator muzak of horror cinema – it really rubs me the wrong way on occasions because of it’s predictability, ridicule and wafer thin plots. Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings is one such movie, and although I try not to trash movies here, I just have to give a few pointers as to why I feel this one didn’t’ really make it work.

Being part four in an on-going franchise, which basically rips off The Hills Have Eyes and sticks it in a slightly different context, naming this entry “Bloody Beginnings” is a goddamned joke. The movie opens with a short “way back in 1974” pre-title sequence where two doctors gawk the caged up freaks, and gives minimal insight into the three disfigured inbreeds known as the “Hilliker Brothers”. A hand full of dialogue lines are strewn about and then as through magic – or a stolen hair pin – the boogeymen break out, release the other freaks, and slaughter the Doctors… Then it’s rapidly back to 2000now, and I’m still waiting for the bloody beginnings as a few lines of dialogue, some gory effects and torture machines constructed by what I thought where inbred freaks, not rocket scientists, don’t’ really give any insight into the genesis of the Hilliker brothers at all. Hell, at least Platinum Dunes had the decency to try giving some insight into the tormented life of young Leatherface in their shit feast Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - didn't work, but they tried. The main question is why the hell do we need to explain evil every goddamned time? Don't you think the horror would be even deeper if you didn't know WHY?

Then credits, and there’s a fast cut to not one, but two couples fucking. One heterosexual and the other, which is most likely supposed to shock us in the way it’s shot and edited, is a homosexual couple. Oh, lesbians, not gays, gays would be way too alienating for the conventional genre audience.

Guess what, they buzzing from post coital buzz when clueless Kenia [Jenny Pudavick] stomps into the room telling them to get ready for their weekend in the woods, without making a single remark about the four naked people or the rancid musky smell that must linger in that room.

Further ridicule is added to the “plot” when one of the gang members has a premonition that something bad will happen… or was he the only one to pay attention to the weather report that flagged for sudden shock snowstorms?

Following a shitty snow scooter sequence – which has the leading lady Pudavick – grinning moronically as if she’s in a Tampax commercial – the gang in an attempt to avoid the storm by taking the wrong trail – doh, never saw that one coming – and when they are midst white out, they bump into the abandoned – but strangely still heated – Glenville Sanatorium of the opening sequence. They bunk up for the night, find a couple of bottles of thirty year old whiskey and then oh my fucking god, the obligatory “do any of you guys have cell coverage” moment! I have to force myself from ramming my note pen right into my eye as to never have to sit through another by the book generic horror flick ever again. Why, oh why do we need to have cell coverage scenes in every fucking movie? You loose me completely at that point.

Stereotypical characters – such as the lesbian couple who despite what’s going on, make out and have it off at least three times during the ninety minute film, dorky pot smoking dudes, third base girlfriends, nerdy guy and quirky virginal heroine hardly create empathy for any of the characters what so ever, and make’s the movie feel agonisingly tedious for long times. When shit hit’s the fan – almost 40 minutes in – it becomes routinely run, run, run, chase, chase, chase, where ever second scene feels like a “Oh you go that way, I’ll go this way”, “If we split up we hold a better chance of finding blah, blah…” you get the picture. It’s as if the screenwriters never watched Wes Craven’s Scream, because all the jokes he was shooting off where aimed at the bullshit which had become generic horror! 

There’s never a real moment where it lands and generates emotions for anyone at all, and something that really felt out of place was the melancholic music every time a character dies… strange, and totally out of place, as I still don’t give a fuck about them, and this far in they are merely lambs to the slaughter and I want to see them die terrifying deaths. At best it feels like a gory episode of Scooby Doo, and perhaps this is why the sudden quick-fix ending doesn’t really do anything for me either. The only thing missing is that the gang – the few left – round up the inbred monsters, rip off their masks and reveal Dr. McQuaid from the opening segment to be the real villain! Zoinks Scooby!

 Special effects are pretty cool, the mutants look awesome, and even pass close-up in strong light scrutiny. In line with the Scooby-Doo referent, the blood flows almost cartoonish, and albeit being violent and supposedly sensitive scenes – thanks melancholic music cue! - many of them are right out funny, which I guess they should be. After all this is all about escapism in more than one-way.

Despite the pie-tossing above, and my annoyance of arrogant, insulting filmmaking, yeah, I find it arrogant, as said this is what gives genre films a bad rep, the cooperate hotdog factory of terror turds, I’m sure that Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings will find it’s prime audience. I’m not the target for generic horror anymore, it was way over two decades ago I was in that niche. After all if you want a few shots of tits’n’ass, water thin plot that plays by all the rules and conventions, shallow characters and a lot of cheap jump scares, some really cool and brutal special effects, then you know that this move is right up your street… which is why Wrong Turn 5: Bloodbath is already slated and Doug Bradley is supposed to star… "Jesus wept!"... wait, that's another franchise they took to hell already isn't it?

Hell’s Ground

Hell’s Ground

Original Title: Zibahkhana

Directed by: Omar Ali Kahn

Pakistan/UK, 2007

Horror, 77min

Distributed by: Mondo Macabro

Generic horror - despite how predictable and cheesy it can be, you still have to admire the power that the simplest of structure can have for a genre movie. Omar Ali Kahn’s Hell’s Ground is generic horror with obvious nods to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974, Friday the 13th 1980 and the zombie flicks of George A. Romero. But apart from using a generic formula, the originality here is that it’s a coriander flavoured Urdu-English movie from Pakistan.

A bunch of stereotypical characters, the flirty, the momma’s boy, the dopey yeah, you get the picture are presented one by one as they lie, trick and deceive their parents and take off on a road trip with getting stoned and shagging as their final destination. Their road is obviously one long series of ordeals such as, finding the right road, making it there before dark, fleeing from mutant zombies and later fighting off a Burqa clad murderer. You know the drill, one of them goes to look for something and after a while the others go searching and true to formula they start getting killed off one by one and the ending comes with a by the book last moment surprise twist and one last scare.

Apart from some obvious nods to US genre films with a Maniac poster in an early scene there ‘s also the product placement showing covers of Mondo Macabro DVD’s Bandh Darwaza (The Closed Door) 1990 and Zindra Laash (Dracula in Pakistan/ The Living Corpse) 1967 from which a clip also is seen on the dopey genre fan’s television. That scene is also a great build for a small part by Dracula in Pakistan star Rehan who later turns up in the movie as the traditional “town imbecile” warning off our young band of protagonists. Every generic flick that plays by the rules needs an omen character, Rehan is Hell’s Ground’s demented voice of reason.

It’s a fun movie that plays with a lot of generic slasher film traits. Remember that you never ever drink liquor or do drugs or get laid because that’s gonna put you right on top of the shit list and it’s exactly what happens in Hell’s Ground. Not that anyone get’s laid, but you know from convention that dope fiend O.J. [Osman Khalid Butt], cocky jock-type Vicky [Kunwar Ali Roshan] or sexpot, Roxy [Rubya Chaudry], are amongst the first to meet their maker. Nobody get’s their kit off in Hell’s Ground, but I’ll write that off as playing it safe for a Muslim audience. Finally it’s down to the innocent and kind of helpless Simon [Hadier Raza] and there’s always a final girl, Ayesha [Rooshanie Ejaz]. It’s a rather predictable, but enjoyable dot-to-dot puzzle that has a few really fun tricks up its sleeve.

Getting back to those generic slasher horror traits… This movie is filled with smaller ones too, like sneaking off to be with mates, hiding the “sexy” clothes, lying to the parents, watching horror flicks and smoking dope. We all know that lies, deception, drugs and sex are under penalty of death in generic horror.

The movie opens with an obligatory intial attack setting the tone of the movie and declaring the genre we are in - horror. There’s the genesis of evil – a tricky one as Hell’s Ground has two protagonists, both the toxic waste created zombies and the killer in the woods. There’s a warped family back-story, here it’s the tale of a woman who see’s one of her sons become a cross dresser “you loose a son, but gain a daughter” and being a Muslim themed movie, I would say that the non-acceptance of cross-dressing is what drives him to the edge and makes him kill anyone who comes near him, or her, as his secret could lead to his, or her, own death.

A favourite highlight among many, is “brother” Baley [Salim Meraj] hitching a ride from the young kids and completely taking over Edwin Neal’s Hitchhiker character from the original TCM, and making it his own in a fantastic way. It’s an excellent moment and a brilliant homage.

As with most generic horror the movie relies on a morality complex, of which it would be true to say that Hell’s Ground has two that it builds off. The first being industrial pollution that creates a lethal army of undead-like zombies, even a dwarf zombie. Obviously this could be a comment on industrialism in areas like Pakistan and India, where conglomerates exploit the area and dump there waste where ever the hell they want causing serious damage to land and people. The second a fair warning – Don’t do drugs, don’t mess around, don’t have sex (or fool around with gender roles) or else you will end up dead! It’s generic horror storytelling, it works like clockwork, and it’s a complete fucking fun rush of gore, death and Punjabi beats.

Apart from a majority of brilliant traditional music featuring artists like Noor Jehan and Nahid Akhtar there’s no disadvantage of featuring Stephen Thrower & Simon Norris Cyclobe on the soundtrack, fittingly enough their Strix Nebulosa is used under the scenes of chemical waste and protesting Pakistani people - industrialism in more than one way.

The pacing of Hell’s Ground is fast and ferocious as the movie never really lingers on too long in any moment, and the camerawork is delightful with the most inventive use of a fisheye lens I’ve seen in ages.

The mondo macabre connection is obvious, and who better to get into the field that dvd company and book author Pete Tombs and Andy Starke. After all they have been distributing and writing the definitive texts and releases of weird world cinema for the past decades.

Two fun pieces of trivia concerning Hell’s Ground: Director Omar Ali Khan runs a couple of organic, homemade ice-cream shops in Pakistan where the interior is mostly horror memorabilia oriented and he’s currently in pre-production for a second feature to be shot in the last quarter of 2011.

Final note: rumour has it that Swedish wildcat’s NUJTAFILM will be releasing a double feature with both Hell’s Ground and Dracula in Pakistan, a release to look forward to if there ever was one!