VAULT VLOG: Indie Horror Edition! News on Chemical 12-D & The Commune

Chemical 12-D debuting on YouTube Sunday, July 25 at 12pm EST
The Vault's review
Water Cooler Productions home page

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Bleedfest Film Festival - Sunday, July 18, 12pm - 5:30pm PST
Two Roads Theatre
4348 Tujunga Ave.
Studio City, CA
Admission: $10
Elisabeth Fies interview
Bleedfest Facebook page

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Iron Sky Footage: Nazis in Space!!

By Paige MacGregor

First there were Nazis. Then, there were zombie Nazis. Now, thanks to director Timo Vuorensola and writers Antti Hukkanen and Jarmo Puskala, we have Nazis invading the next logical film frontier: Space.

Vuorensola’s film is titled Iron Sky, and according to the plot synopsis on the movie’s official website, it concerns a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity which the Nazis made towards the end of World War II. In this piece of alternate history, they began launching spaceships from a secret base in the Antarctic in late 1945. The ships’ mission was to found a military base known as Schwarze Sonne, or Black Sun, on the dark side of the moon. The inhabitants were tasked with building a powerful invasion fleet and returning to Earth to take over the planet. Now it is 2018, decades after the countries of the world wiped out the last of the Nazi party (or so they thought), and the Nazi invasion is underway. Earth is in for a very rude awakening.

The first footage from the film was released this week, and contrary to my expectations and much to my delight, it looks really good. While the storyline grabbed me right off the bat due to my inexplicable fascination with Nazis (Død Snøw being one of my favorite horror films), the special effects featured in the trailer are really impressive for a film not backed by a major motion picture studio. The cast includes accomplished German TV and movie stars such as Udo Kier, Julia Dietze, Götz Otto and Tilo Prückner.

Iron Sky is set for release in Finland in January 2011, but the film’s website has a feature that allows visitors to enter their location and request that Iron Sky be released in their country/area. The site also offers various other ways for visitors to help promote the film, including ordering an Iron Sky Support Kit. Fans can also join the Iron Sky community and follow the film via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.

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The Family Tie: If Dali Made a Revenge Flick...

The word "absurd" has come to be pretty much a universally negative term in the English language. But I'd like to bring back the more literal meaning of the word, if I may...

ab·surd (ab-sûrd', -zûrd'): Of, relating to, or manifesting the view that there is no order or value in human life or in the universe.

Having gotten that out of the way, I'd like to declare that Matthew Glasson's trippy 40-minute featurette The Family Tie is totally absurd. And I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Together with his school buddy, Scott Greene, Chicagoland native filmmaker/musician Glasson had the idea to make a brutal, darkly comic revenge movie that turned the subgenre on its ear and injected a '70s exploitation horror sensibility to the proceedings--and this is the germ that led to The Family Tie, which began life as a short video made in college.

In late 1997 and early 1998, the two men got together a rag-tag cast and crew and shot the thing in the suburbs of Chicago. Unfortunately, amateur editing capabilities being what they were at the time, the multiple hours of footage sat on the proverbial shelf for eight years, until Final Cut Pro finally enabled Glasson to undertake the grueling tasks of editing the footage into workable form, adding narration and shooting extra FX shots. The film was finally completed in 2007.

Shot on a veritable microscopic budget, The Family Tie tells the story of Dave Buglesias, a poor young man whose family is destroyed by a maniacal gun-runner. Filled with a thirst for vengeance, Dave embarks on mission to wipe out the man responsible for it all--a mission that pretty defies any and all expectations that watching movies of this kind would ever foster in your mind. The word "surreal" does not even do justice to the blood-drenched proceedings which follow...

The order of the day here is hyper-realism, and once you accept that, it's quite an amazing bit of fun. The acting is completely over-the-top to the point of total hilarity, with Greene taking on the role of the villain with a level of nihilistic insanity that has to be seen to be believed. Non-actor Phil Anzelmo is also game as Dave, whose obvious lack of experience only adds another level of absurdity to the film.

As Tenebrous Kate points out in her just-posted review over at Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire (great minds think alike, especially when encased in the bodies of people who have copies of the same screener), the highlight of the film's delicious weirdness may be the scene in which poor Dave must pay a visit to the unthinkably perverted gangster "Brass Balls" Benigno in order to extract some much-needed info on the whereabouts of his nemesis.

Quentin Tarantino meets Slime City, The Family Tie literally had me laughing out loud at the utter ridiculousness of it all--a level of ridiculosity that only continues to escalate just when you think it can't get any more bizarre/random. This flick is clearly a product of Glasson and Greene's absolute passion for film and filmmaking, tempered by some serious filmmaking sensibilities. The teensy-weensy budget is quite evident (it's shot in Video Hi8), and one (one being me) wonders what they might be able to accomplish with some serious scratch to work with. There's no doubt the raw talent is there.

Oh, and did I mention it even has a gosh-darn training montage, for crying out loud? If for no other reason, please see it for that. In fact, you don't even have to sit around wondering how to see it, because thanks to the miracle of the YouTube, here it is, right below, for your viewing pleasure!



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And while I have you here-- You may have noticed that big honkin' graphic at the top of the sidebar (reproduced here). Well, it's Rondo time again--that's right, the nominations for the 8th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards were announced yesterday, and I'm proud to say that The Vault of Horror has been nominated in the Best Horror Blog category for the second year in a row!

Run by the folks at the Classic Horror Film Board, the Rondos are pretty much the most legit, big-time genre awards on the Internet--I'm talkin' press releases, an awards dinner, and best of all, actual statuette awards, in the image of the unmistakable noggin of vintage film baddie, character actor and acromegaly sufferer Rondo Hatton. They've been endorsed by the likes of geek overlords Guillermo del Toro and Harry Knowles, and since 2002 have been recognizing excellence in every area of horror/genre entertainment you can think of, from film, TV, books and magazines to art, music, collectibles and culture in general.

Last year, they introduced a blog category for the very first time, distinct from Best Horror Website. The Vault was lucky enough to make it to Honorable Mention (for which I received a yummy congratulatory cake from the fam), and I'm honored and humbled to be mentioned again alongside some terrific blogs. If you have an opportunity, proceed to the official ballot page and make your selections (ballots are accepted by email only, to taraco@aol.com). Vote in as many categories as you like. It's a lot of fun, and you're likely to discover a lot of cool stuff you never even knew about.

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I Sell the Dead: Fiendish, Funny, Fantastic

If you happen to have a theater near you that's hip enough to be showing the indie horror comedy I Sell the Dead, go and see it right away. It's already been out in limited release for over a month, so you might have to wait for DVD. In any event, this is a film that seems to have slipped under the radar somewhat, and that's unfortunate, because it's a real hoot.

Dominic Monaghan of Lord of the Rings and Lost fame stars as Arthur Blake, a young graverobber in 18th century Europe who's been apprehended and faces beheading. On the eve of his execution, he tells the whole sordid tale of his illegal exploits to Father Duffy, played by genre stalwart Ron Perlman, who gives the best performance in the picture.

Turns out that during their graverobbing tenure, Arthur and his ghoulish mentor Willie Grimes (played by Larry Fessenden, who incidentally, will be helming the upcoming American remake of The Orphanage) stumbled upon a whole underground trade in the undead. Seeing as how this is far more profitable than the plain old selling of exhumed bodies to shady doctors, the boys delve into a macabre world of zombie-hunting, finding along the way that the competition is even more dangerous than the revenants they're digging up.

Angus Scrimm, a.k.a. Phantasm's Tall Man (how old is this guy??) turns up in a small but memorable role as Dr. Vernon Quint, the robbers' original, overbearing employer, who meets a grisly end when his disgruntled lackies send the unwitting doctor a staked vampire as a specimen. Doc removes the stake and... well, you can figure out the rest.

The film is creatively shot by one Richard Lopez, with an almost Evil Dead 2 feel to the proceedings at times. Basically, it's a lot of fun to watch, with tons of inventive composites and compositions to be found. Sam Raimi would certainly be proud. Add an absolutely delightful score by Jeff Grace, who learned his craft assisting Howard Shore on the LOTR films, and you have some damn fine entertainment.

You've basically got it all here. There's genuine scares and genuine laughs. The makeup work on the monsters is quite impressive and frightening, and there's even some bits of zombie gore to enjoy. The script is smart and clever, and filled with intentional anachronisms that only serve to make the film more unique than it already is.

IFC picked up the American distribution on this baby, a production of Glass Eye Pix, a minor horror house probably best known for 2001's lackluster Wendigo. That aside, they've struck gold with this one, and it's a pity it hasn't gotten a wider distribution. It is a rather quirky film that's not likely to appeal to the more casual horror movie viewing audience, I suppose. But worth a look for those seeking out unusual, clever horror that breaks away from the boring status quo.

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