In short: Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls (2023)

Bedraggled and just plain weird burger flipper Marcus (Andrew Bowser) is trying to reinvent himself as occultist Onyx the Fortuitous, following the teachings of YouTube occultist, rock star, and Satanic fitness video guru Bartok the Great (Jeffrey Combs). Onyx, let’s use his chosen moniker, is not very bright.

So he is exceedingly happy when he is one of the five Chosen invited to help Bartok with a ritual that will gain everyone involved immortality. Obviously, Bartok’s plans are mite more sinister than he’s letting on, and Chosen might actually be short for Chosen Sacrifices.

Andrew Bowser’s Onyx etc is a bit of an acquired taste, to say the least. Or really, if one is in the wrong headspace for it and particularly its high maintenance protagonist who never shuts up making noises with his very unpleasant voice, this could be a bit of a chore. Particularly during the film’s first half, Onyx the character is just a bit much, and his “funny” loser shtick never really loses those quotation marks. But then, I’m not a great candidate for appreciating this kind of awkwardness-based comedy at the best of times, and Onyx is really, really awkward. The situation isn’t helped by the sluggishness of the beginning of a film that takes ages to get to its early and most obvious beats.

On the other hand, even the film’s early stages are well shot, and well edited, and, even if you don’t like the tone it is going for, clearly well acted – it featuring Barbara Crampton, Olivia Taylor Dudley and Combs certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

Once the preliminaries were finally through, Onyx actually won me over, though. Suddenly, ideas became silly but clever instead of completely obvious, character relations were rather more interesting than they at first looked, and the film demonstrated a likeable, big heart, while still having fun with movie Satanist clichés. Even the jokes in the later stages hit better – there’s nothing that isn’t funny about a seduction scene in form of a fake Meatloaf video with not-Thundercats.

Three Films Make A Post: The mission that changes everything begins.

No Time to Die (2021): This very long final entry in Daniel Craig’s stint as James Bond – by far my favourite Bond version – as directed by the often great Cary Joji Fukunaga is a pretty dignified note for the series to end on, continuing, varying and actually finishing the themes that have run through the whole of the Craig Bond cycle while also delivering highly entertaining crazy SpyFy nonsense, a large handful of great, usually imaginative and fun action set pieces and even quite a bit of character work that actually, well, works on the heightened level this sort of blockbuster needs to get up to.

The film really has only two problems in my eyes. First, there is Rami Malek’s inexplicable decision to play his villain as a mediocre Klaus Kinski imitation; but then, Malek is one of these actors whose ego bark to my eyes often promises more than his acting bite can deliver. Secondly, the way the script telegraphs the film’s ending beforehand is glaringly obvious even for the world of the blockbuster where things for understandable reason do tend to be telegraphed with the dumbest parts of the audience in mind.

Castle Freak (1995): Despite featuring house favourites Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, this is by far my least favourite Stuart Gordon film. Sure, the castle location is a pretty fantastic looking setting, and some of the suggested and portrayed nasty gruesomeness is somewhat diverting, but otherwise, this simply lacks the energy, the spirit, and the depth of the director’s other films.

In the Devil’s Garden aka Assault (1971): From time to time, this Sidney Hayers thriller seems to suggest a malign influence from some kind of outside force on its somewhat sordid tale of rape and serial murder. It mostly creates this mood by shots of the – always female – victims staring at the woods, the sky and overland electric lines in desperation. The rest of the film never turns these suggestions into part of the narrative and plays out as a plodding police procedural with some stiffly realized social criticism and skirts the edges of exploitation cinema via theme and very mild sleaze, but not with its storytelling. It’s not a terrible film – Hayers was nothing if not a pro – but one of those films that always seems to shy away from its most interesting impulses.

In short: (The) Guyver (1991)

Trying to help out his crush Mizky (Vivian Wu), Sean Barker (Jack Armstrong) stumbles into the way of the plans of an evil corporation connected to ancient aliens using monstered-up people to do classical evil stuff like murdering Mizky’s father. During the proceedings, Sean fuses with an ancient organic battlesuit known as The Guyver, which will turn out to be very useful, kinda awkward, and a bit icky. Government man Max Reed (Mark Hamill) assists.

Quite a few of the people involved behind the camera – particularly co-director Steve Wang and the stunt team – of this Charles Band production would be or were involved in the US versions of Kamen Rider and various Super Sentai shows, so it comes as no surprise that this is very much an attempt at making an American tokusatsu (even with Japanese involvement on the production side). Since Wang’s co-director is special effects maniac Screaming Mad George, the monster design and some of the transformation designs (just watch what happens to poor Mark Hamill!) are often on the very grotesque and bizarre side with a bit of body horror thrown in. That’s most definitely one of the film’s strong points, as is the generally tokusatsu-level fighting.

Problems arise whenever nothing transforms or fights – Armstrong and Wu might as well not be on screen, so little about their performances is memorable, the dialogue is horrible throughout, and there’s a line of painfully unfunny humour running through everything. A particular low point in that regard is the character of Striker (Jimmie Walker), a borderline racist “black guy who randomly raps, even when he is transforming into a monster” caricature, someone involved in the production must really have liked, so often he pops in to make a viewer cringe, curse, or shake their fists at the screen.


On the positive side, there is a lot of transforming and fighting going on, so things never become completely unbearable. People like me will also be happy about the presence of Michael Berryman and a smaller role for that maddest of scientists, Jeffrey Combs, indeed playing a mad scientist, as well as dear old Linnea Quigley.

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Evelyn Stockard-Price (Famke Janssen) has decided that the ideal place for throwing her next birthday bash is the titular House on Haunted Hill, a former psychiatric institution once under the charge of a mad man (Jeffrey Combs, as a matter of fact), and claiming a history of death and destruction during and after that particular stint. Despite their marriage having come down to the point where it is a series of entertainingly bitchy dialogue sequences and murder attempts, her husband Stephen Price (Geffrey Rush), a stinking rich carnival barker style rollercoaster tycoon, obliges. Well, sort of, for Stephen invites rather different guests to the party than Evelyn had in mind, because he has decided to run with a gimmick for the evening - survive the night in the house and get a million dollars! – and does consequently go for a rather more desperate clientele than the rich friends of rich people.

The victimsguests who eventually show up at the House – as played by Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher and Bridgette Wilson – aren’t the ones Stephen had invited either, though, for some mysterious force has changed the guest list yet again. It comes as no surprise to the audience when the guests, the Prices and the owner of the place (Chris Kattan) soon find themselves locked in the mansion by a neat mechanical lock-up device, nor that things will get rather dangerous for everyone involved.

It’s not just that Stephen has rigged up the house with all kinds of spooky contraptions so the guests have to work for their million, there are also quite real, and very nasty, ghosts to cope with, as well as a little murder conspiracy, and…the Darkness.

When it comes to remaking films, going for something like the great William Castle’s original House on Haunted Hill makes a lot of sense: it’s a well loved film to some – like me – but it’s not well-loved for being particularly artful, nor deep, nor complex, nor important to the development of genres or lives. Rather, it’s loved as an extremely fun example of the movie as carnival ride, made out of funny and sharp dialogue, some hokey yet great effects, Vincent Price, and Castle’s very distinctive impresario personality and all that it brought. Apart from Price, these are things a film in the late 90s could provide.

And while Geoffrey Rush certainly is no Vincent, his performance, which is about in equal parts a homage to Price and one to William Castle himself, is pretty damn fun. Particularly so in Rush’s scenes with a Janssen who clearly also gets the joke and enjoys herself.

I’m fond of director William Malone’s decision to set the film’s first half hour or so mainly up as an extended Castle homage, be it through the very Castle-like prominent billing of people like James Marsters and Jeffrey Combs who barely have cameos, or through the sheer insistence of Rush’s character on the sort of gimmickry and overcooked showmanship Castle loved so well.

Once that part of the film is over, things settle down to a competent horror romp through some very cool looking sets - mechanical gothic by way of art deco style in design –, hokey yet fun scares, and featuring a bit too much late 90s shock rock music video editing. The whole affair is scandalously lacking even a single moment of depth but fully delivers on all promises of cheap thrills. As a little extra, this House on Haunted Hill does also belong to the tiny minority of horror films whose shared main sympathetic character is a black man who even survives the movie.

Doctor Mordrid (1992)

Extradimensional sorcerer supreme Dr. Mordrid (Jeffrey Combs) is spending his time on Earth awaiting the earth-shaking attack of his arch enemy Kabal (Brian Thompson). I’m not sure that’s the best use of his time, seeing as he himself imprisoned Kabal in a magic space castle and knows very well where the guy is, so he might look out for him there, but what do I know.

Obviously, Kabal does break out of his decrepit space castle prison and starts spending his time stealing silver, diamonds and other elements useful for his plans to free a bunch of demons from said space castle prison and rule Earth with them, like the most overpowered petty criminal you’d care to imagine. Once he finds out, Mordrid probably would do something against Kabal, but before he can, he gets arrested for a sacrificial murder Kabal committed, on proof so non-existent the film doesn’t even bother to make anything up, but mostly because his love interest and neighbour Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar) – who works for the police as an advisor – sends her cop friends over to him to ask him for clues in the case. Nope, I have no idea, really.

Eventually, Samantha helps Mordrid break out and there’s a kinda-sorta show down in a museum. The End.

In the dark times of Marvel cinema licenses, the option for a Doctor Strange movie did actually land with Charles Band’s Empire for a time. Fortunately, that option expired before Band could actually make the film. Not to be discouraged by little things, Band re-tooled what already existed of pre-production materials into a project called “Dr. Mortalis”, which - with the end of Empire - then again got retooled into the Full Moon production we have here, which may or may not have started out as an all ages project that grew some breasts and mild ickiness.

Given that history, it’s no surprise the resulting film is a wee bit uneven. One would think, though, that all that reshuffling and rewriting might have convinced some of the people involved, let’s say Band who is co-credited as a director together with his father Albert, to include a plot that at least tries to hang together instead of delivering the series of scenes with little actual connection we get here. Now, I’m really not asking much of my movies, but I do prefer a film about battling extradimensional sorcerers to not take a twenty-five minute plus detour into a police station without any need apart from making the film longer. Bonus points would be available for a plot that would hang together a bit more, and a villain who’d be doing something mildly more interesting than stealing stuff.

As it stands, this is the most pedestrian use of its set-up imaginable, with a handful of pleasantly strange (sorry) scenes unable to keep one’s interest awake during all the boring tedious bits.
It’s too bad, too, for Doctor Mordrid does have some things going for it. First and foremost, Jeffrey Combs gives his character with an admirable lack of irony, so much so I’d be okay with having watched this thing just for the sake of seeing a man treat things with dignity and seriousness I wouldn’t have believed you could react to without hamming it up. I bet he’d even have been able to talk about the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth with an impression of absolute sincerity.

The production design has its moments too, particularly when it comes to Mordrid’s space sorcerer age bachelor pad and the space castle prison (the film doesn’t even bother to give that place a snappy name). There’s also a very mild tyrannosaurus versus mammoth skeleton fight in the finale, but there, the fun idea is – as is so much else in the film – buried under a half-hearted execution that spends more time in a police station than on a sorcerous duel.

In short: Necronomicon (1993)

Every couple of years, I re-watch the Brian Yuzna-produced Necronomicon, asking myself – making a ridiculous and puzzled face, I suppose - why I don’t remember anything at all about it beyond the fact that Jeffrey Combs plays Lovecraft in the film’s wrap-around segments. Then, having watched the film, I realize I don’t remember anything about it because it’s far from a memorable movie, which in turn will of course lead to another round with it in five years time, unless I take a look at this useful post right here.

Because I’m a rather relaxed person when it comes to that sort of thing, I can’t even get angry about a film supposedly based on three Lovecraft tales generally having fuck all to do with the stories. I’m really rather more interested if the segments in themselves are any good. Alas…

Yuzna’s wrap-around tale is a good bit of fun, with Combs being Combs, Lovecraft being a rather two-fisted version of himself that is as much Indiana Jones as the old gent from Providence (pretend I’m now blathering on for ages about the man’s racism, because clearly that’s relevant and worthy of burning hatred when talking about a man who died in 1937), and the plot being silly, short, and with neat monster designs.

Christophe Gans’s highly gothic tale of a man (Bruce Payne) mourning the death of his wife, and nearly repeating the mistake of an ancestor (Richard Lynch), is probably the high point of the film. Sure, it has nothing whatsoever to do with The Rats in the Walls which it is supposedly based on, but the motives – if not its emotional base in love, one of Lovecraft’s least favourite emotions – it uses are very much Lovecraftian, and Gans is pretty great at building a mood that does resemble Corman’s Poe adaptations to a pleasant degree, until everything is wrapped up with fine monster designs and a shift towards nearly swashbuckling action that is the sort of thing the later director of Le Pacte des loups did already so very well at the time this was made.

I am a big admirer of Shusuke Kaneko’s 90s Gamera, perhaps the best kaiju eiga made after the original Gojira but his segment here is just a mess, finding neither a visual, nor a thematic nor even just a plot focus, with little happening in it that isn’t obvious, and nothing at all that’s interesting, unless you were always dreaming of watching David Warner in an awkward sex scene. On the more positive side, this segment does actually use plot elements of Lovecraft’s Cool Air, just not sensibly or to any effect.

Last but not least, we have Brian Yuzna’s segment, which is a very typical series of ever more grotesque effect scenes, the kind of thing I find entertaining enough as long as I’m in the process of watching it – particular with creature and, well, stuff design like it is here – but that not really makes for a satisfying climax when the grotesque isn’t in service of anything. Again, it’s no surprise I won’t remember any of this in a few years.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,lovecraft,christophe gans,brian yuzna,shusuke kaneko,jeffrey combs,david warner

In short: Felony (1994)

A D.E.A. raid on a supposed drug house in New Orleans goes horribly wrong, and a good dozen of cops is blasted to high heaven by chewing-gum fan Cooper (David Warner) and his well-armed goons. Cooper is a rogue CIA operative who, together with his boss Taft (Lance Henriksen), has gone into the drug business to acquire enough money to free some operatives imprisoned in some unnamed South American country.

Unfortunately for Cooper and Taft, Cooper's rather impolitic slaughter has been filmed by TV reporter Bill Knight (Jeffrey Combs) and his Vietnam vet hippie buddy Robby (Patrick J. Gallagher). Bill, clearly not the brightest bulb in any chandelier, decides to not give the resulting video tape to the cops investigating the affair, Detectives Kincade (Leo Rossi) and Duke (Charles Napier).

This turns out to be something of a mistake, and soon enough the cops, Cooper and Taft and their men, as well as Cowboy spy "mediator" Donovan (Joe Don Baker) are all after Bill, some of them with rather murderous intent, others with more ambiguous ideas. Bill's only help is nurse Laura Bryant (Ashley Laurence), because we really needed at least one female character on our hero's side (otherwise, there's only Taft's evil girlfriend played by Corinna Everson to represent half of the human population), plus hey, it's Ashley Laurence.

But will that be enough for Bill to survive various shoot-outs, car-chases and double-crosses?

Ah, post Action International David A. Prior films are always something of a wonder to behold. Prior, once an utter weirdo director, had at this point in his career learned so much about the art of filmmaking he was perfectly able to just make a straightforward and cheap little action movie of the type that can never completely deny its cheapness but works so hard making the most out of what it's got it's impossible not to be at least a bit charmed by it.

That alone would be enough to recommend Prior's movies of this period (and really, most of his even cheaper Action International work too). However, it doesn't seem to have been enough for Prior himself, so Felony and its brethren not only feature the affordable amount of action but also scripts which are ever so slightly - or sometimes completely - skewed into the direction of the outré and the weird.

The script of Felony is full of Prior's typical curious mixture of just plain silliness (just try to make sense of what happened in Felony once the last act plot twists have made a mockery of sense and sensibility) and ironic self-consciousness that should really result in the sort of self-ironic winking nonsense I can't stand at all. In Prior's weirdness-experienced hands, though, what should be annoying turns charming with many a scene that is just as funny as it is fun.

Of course, given the low budget movie heaven that is Felony's cast, it's not a complete surprise that even the silliest line in the script is delivered either with scenery-chewing relish or just the right amount of self-consciousness. Everyone involved, from Combs over Laurence to Warner and Henriksen, obviously knows that much of the plot is utter nonsense and their characters aren't actually characters, yet still delves into the whole affair with a palpable sense of fun, projecting none of the bored "just cashing a cheque here, buddy" feelings you sometimes encounter in film's of Felony's price class.

As I always like to say about Prior movies: what's not to like?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,thriller,jeffrey combs,ashley laurence,leo rossi,charles napier,david warner,joe don baker,lance henriksen,david a. prior

Three Films Make A Post: A Blood Chilling-Gut Spilling Challenge To The Death

The Strange And Deadly Occurrence (1974): Totally solid mid-70s TV thriller by totally solid TV (and otherwise) director John Llewellyn Moxey. Lawyer Robert Stack (still using his Eliot Ness voice like in the old days), Vera Miles and her teenage daughter move into their dream home in the country. Strange (and later deadly) things occur that suggest the family's house may be haunted. Or is human interference behind everything?

Despite using one of my least favourite tropes in all of cinema as if it were an Old Dark House movie made in the late 30s, Moxey's film is still pretty entertaining, if not particularly exciting. You can see how it could have been much more effective if it hadn't gone all Scooby Doo on its audience, for the seemingly supernatural moments are clearly playing to Moxey's strength the most, but it's a nice enough way to waste 70 minutes of one's life.

I, Desire aka Desire, the Vampire (1982): Ironically, this later attempt at being all-out supernatural by Moxey is less successful than the older movie. A female vampire working as a hooker and as a nurse (and how's that for mixed signals and/or fetishism?) collides with overly nosy law student and morgue attendant David Naughton. It might be the fact that the script is often rather clumsy and obvious where it seems to think that it's clever and subtle, or that Moxey makes more than one directorial decision that hints at self sabotage (wildcat noises for the vampire? Really?), or that the whole affair just drags a bit too much; in any case, while it's certainly not a horrible effort, the film is nothing to write home about in its inoffensive TV movie way.

The film does, however, contain a bit of choice scenery chewing by good old Brad Dourif, so Dourif completists (I know you're out there) will need to have a look anyhow.

The Attic Expeditions (2001): I can see why and how this film has gained a certain amount of cult traction over the years, what with it playing like a homemade horror film version of David Lynch adapting Philip K. Dick with eternal fan favourites like Jeffrey Combs, Ted Raimi and Wendy Robie in the cast. Unfortunately, the whole affair never really gels for me and seems to assume that being weird for weirdness' sake while pretending to be clever and profound is enough to make me overlook less than elegant direction, an atrocious lead performance by Andras Jones, and the fact that the film really isn't as clever and profound as it would like to be. Of course, even in its state of not being very good at all, The Attic Expeditions is at least trying to be different and clever instead of - say - going the ultra-generic gore route, which makes it difficult to be all that annoyed about it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american tv,american movies,in short,john llewellyn moxey,jeremy kasten,robert stack,vera miles,david naughton,brad dourif,jeffrey combs,ted raimi,wendy robie,horror,thriller

In short: The Horror Star (1983)

aka Frightmare

Elderly horror actor Conrad Radzoff (Ferdy Mayne) does seem to identify a bit too much with his roles, spicing up his life with a little murder here or there, as it seems without anybody ever thinking those deaths to be anything more than accidents. Even on his death bed, he's still smothering a director to death.

After the actor's slightly bizarre funeral ceremony, with special egomaniac dead guest host Conrad Radzoff on a large video screen, his career of being a nasty piece of work should by all rights be at an end.

Unfortunately, a group of rich and bored fans of Radzoff's work (among them a very young Jeffrey Combs) decide that it would be quite a bit of fun to steal his corpse and party with it in an old dark house where some of the man's films have been shot. At first, it's all fun and games and kissing corpses, but just the next day, Radzoff's wife Etta (Barbara Pilavin) finds her husband's dead body missing from his mausoleum. She does the obvious for inhabitants of the planet horror movie, and holds a séance to a) ask hubby where his corpse has been stashed and b) incite him to murder his kidnappers.

Keeping with the character of someone who has a poison gas trap in his mausoleum (which will find its uses during the further course of the movie), the old dead guy prefers b) and begins to murder the stupid, annoying kids, mostly by sneaking around and staring at them.

Norman Thaddeus Vane's The Horror Star isn't as good a movie as The Black Room which he'd make one year later. The film starts strong, with a nice "Christopher Lee as a murderous maniac" performance by Mayne, and a mood somewhere between a very black farce and an homage to classic horror actors with the unspoken promise of future nastiness, but soon begins to drag terribly.

As soon as Radzoff is dead, there just isn't anybody interesting on screen anymore. The grave robbers are an utterly characterless bunch difficult to keep apart, and the grown-ups appearing from time to time are neither interesting nor important for the plot nor do anything worth watching, with the séance as a hysterically melodramatic (aka highly entertaining) exception.

But even once Radzoff revives again, the film only partially manages to win one's interest again. The killing scenes just aren't all that interesting, unless you're excited by seeing a girl knocked-out by a levitating coffin, and the last third of the film only consists of the killings and Mayne walking around in more fog than was in Carpenter's The Fog.

The film still has its moments, thanks to sudden attacks of the surreal and the macabre as demonstrated by the charming scene of a raven landing (and nibbling on) Comb's bodyless head.

Vane also has the ability to give his film a look that's much slicker than you'd expect from the budget, even if he's really overusing the fog to get there.

The problem is just that the The Horror Star's first twenty minutes promised a more complex and original movie than the rest of the film manages to deliver.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,horror,in short,norman thaddeus vane,jeffrey combs,ferdy mayne