REVIEW: ABSENTIA

Absentia is a cool little movie. The story is unique, the acting is genuine, but the best part? Abundant creep. The budget was obviously small, but for such a contained story, a large one would only have been a hindrance. I love movies like this—movies that come out of nowhere and land with a soft thud on video, usually courtesy of a home video label whose other acquisitions are tepid at best. It’s a selfish thought on my part that movies like these usually suffer such horrid company, but for people like me, it only serves as a welcome surprise. (The reason I mention this: a preview for a film called Forget Me Not was in front of Asbentia, and one I eventually sought. For a film which probably had three times the budget as Absentia, it was laughably bad—a hodgepodge of all the “cool shit” from better horror films haphazardly mixed together in a silly mindless mess. It was a perfect example of movies that belong in the realm of direct-to-video. Absentia does not.)

Callie (Katie Parker), during what sounds like a cross-country tour, stops in on her sister, Tricia (Courtney Bell). Tricia is very far along in her pregnancy, but who the father is remains a secret from both the audience and Callie as well. Several years ago, Tricia’s husband Daniel mysteriously disappeared one day. No sign of him had ever been found, nor had he ever reached out to contact his wife. Tricia has now decided to declare Daniel “dead in absentia,” and Callie has stopped in to help her sister with the process. Tricia seems genuinely okay with it until she begins making preparations to move out of the home she once shared with Daniel. Then she starts spotting him—his face pure white and his eyes and mouth dark, black holes. And not just in her nightmares, but in her waking life where he does not belong—in the darkness of her living room, or crouched in a coat closet.

Callie, meanwhile has experienced odd occurrences on her own, mainly during her daily jogs through the city…and through the creepy tunnel directly across the street from Tricia’s home. There she finds a derelict man (genre regular Doug Jones), his body bent and twisted, his clothes bloody and torn. Callie, meaning well, leaves some food for who she assumes to be a homeless man. With what she thought was only an act of kindness, she has no idea what she has set in motion.

All during this, Detective Mallory (Dave Levine), who has been investigating a rash of missing people (including Daniel), seems to have a closer relationship with Tricia than your usual detective and civilian do. His love for Trivia and his job as a cop causes his alpha male tendencies to kick in once shit really hits the fan…especially after it’s discovered that Callie’s past drug habits aren’t so past as she says. And her claims of things skittering around the floors and in the walls sound like nothing more than the ravings of a needle user.

Absentia’s plot is very unique—one whose effectiveness will be determined by the audience’s willingness to think outside the box. There is no clear-cut villain in the film, and most of the questions you will have will not be answered. Despite this, the movie is deeply satisfying—in fact it’s one of the most satisfying I can recall whose own motivations are barely explained.

Each and every sighting of Daniel’s apparition is effectively eerie, and director Mike Flanagan definitely understands the “less is more” technique. No previous knowledge of the movie’s plot will have the viewer trying to guess just where the hell the movie’s story is going. What seems like your basic ghost/haunting movie devolves into something far more unique and unusual.

As previously mentioned, the acting is genuine, and even better, the actors look like real, believable people. 

The direction is quite assured. I would personally love to see what Flanagan can do with a high concept/high budget genre film.

But what is the movie really about? Addiction? Mourning? Resigning yourself to a life you hadn’t planned for? Trying to overcome the notion that instead of embracing this new life, you’re trying to make do with it?

Check out Absentia and find out for yourself. 

SHITTY FLICKS - BURIAL GROUND: THE NIGHTS OF TERROR

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Released in Italy in the early 80’s as Le Notti Del Terrore, this Italian grindhouse trashterpiece is hailed as such for one reason and one reason only: a midget thespian named Peter Bark. But, we’ll get to that in a few minutes.

An archeologist digs below in a crater, his beard the size of a small inland. Heavy Beard, human name being Professor Ayres, narrates to us about “the incredible secret” that only he knows about. What this secret is remains that way, because the narration abruptly stops.

In the crypt, or whatever he’s in, he begins to hammer away at a section of rock, but oh no! He is immediately accosted by large, sweater-wearing zombies that he mistakenly unleashed earlier in the dig.

"It's Tuesday, beard. You know what that means.
Wrasslin' time."

“Stay back, I am you friend!” he lies, trying to save his beard from their gnashing teeth. The zombies fall on him and remove healthy sections of his abdomen and feast on warm man meat.

We immediately cut to our title, complemented by some amusing and mood-breaking light flute jazz, and then we meet a small family. They pull their car through some fancy schmancy gates and stop outside a glorious villa, followed by a few other cars containing their friends.

Master of the house, George, makes idle chatter with his house staff as his wife, Evelyn, and their freak-looking son, Michael—who is supposed to be ten but looks the retarded kind of 30—walk into the house. It’s clear that a freak adult (Peter Bark!) has been cast as a child, but what’s not clear is why…at least for now. He then goes to bed, I guess, since he's a real child, you know. And not a freak adult man.

In the next room, James and Leslie make immediate whoopee and then begin a fuck session after Leslie parades around in her skimpy little sex outfit.

"You look just like a little whore, but I like that," James says romantically. Leslie doesn't seem to mind, because why would she? Don't be such a square.

And speaking of fuck sessions, George and Mommy Evelyn have one too.

During their show, the door to their bedroom is thrown violently open, and the shadow of a figure grows larger and larger, soon so big that any second one might expect a shuffling monster six feet high to enter.

And a monster sorta does.

It’s Michael, their freak son.

“Mommy,” he cries, spying her delicious body.

“Michael, get back in bed!” she responds, and instead of merely staying in the bed to cover herself from her son’s eyes, she jumps out of bed, buck naked, and runs halfway across the room to sloppily throw on her clothes, all the while revealing even more breasts and vagigi.

Michael flees the room to jerk away this sight.

MAN CHILD FREAK THING is available for parties,
bar-mitzvahs, job conferences, and terror.

 

And yet in another room over, Janet begins hastily packing her suitcase and crying.

“We’re all in danger!” she bellows, as her husband, Mark, tries to calm her. What scary event that preceded this scene to lead to such behavior remains momentarily non-existent, but after a bit of bullshit, we find it’s because she had suffered a nightmare of their impending doom. Mark quickly allays her fears, probably with his cock.

And in the next room over, lazy ghouls in their comfortable looking over-sized wardrobe shuffle to the exit of their tomb to see if they could find one of those all-night men to eat.

Gathered in the dining room, everyone discusses their night of sleep, as freak son Michael complains about being cooped up in the house and wishes to go outside. Soon all the couples disperse to explore the ground, and Michael stares freakly as they go.

Mark and Janet—the ones plagued with nightmares of doom—romp around the bushes as the man takes photos of his wife.

“You’re getting to be quite the model!” he says, laying the foundation for a boner joke.

“Then you getter give me a raise,” she says, accepting this groundwork of the boner joke and facilitating its path to a flaccid punch line.

“Oh, I’m giving you a raise all right, but it’s nothing to do with money,” he says, seeing the boner joke through to its completion, all the while not amusing anyone on Earth.

I’m sure it sounded much more romantic in Italian.

Inside the mansion, Nicolas and Kathy—the house staff—look spooked as all the light fixtures blink on and off, and then begin to explode.

Why those freak occurrences?

Beats me.

Maybe someone in this movie would have a clue if they weren’t all busy having clothes-on sex outside.

Speaking of clothes-on sex outside, Mark is still busy squeezing his wife’s ass, so he remains ignorant of the zombie who is pulling itself from the wormy ground to begin its painfully slow attack on them. It grabs Mark, who easily kicks himself free, and as the couple skirts backwards along the ground, the zombie doesn’t move a solitary inch, merely watching them recoil in fear.

“It’s a walking corpse!” cries Mark.

“I’m terrified!” cries Janet.

They flee back to the house as their robed and rotted adversaries slowly follow.

Back in the house’s cellar, George shows off the mansion’s statue collection to Evelyn—and then promptly shoots at them with his trusty handgun. We’re not sure why. Stupid wops.

“Mommy, this cloth smells of DEATH!” Michael oddly cries, having picked up an old rag off the ground.

“You have the strangest ideas,” Mommy states, moments before zombies burst in on them.

George takes aim with his gun and fires, shooting holes in all of their canvas outfits. Naturally, the zombies don’t die, their wounds emitting spurts of chocolate.

"George, I'm sorry... We ate all the pancakes."

Mommy and Michael flee as George gives all of his organs to the zombies.

Meanwhile, James and Leslie, busy necking and moaning out in the bushes, also remain unaware of the zombfoolery going on just beyond a garden wall.

The woman spots zombie hands reaching over as she blathers in fear.

“It’s a joke!” cries James.

“No, they’re real!” cries Leslie.

They make a break for it.

Mark and Janet, still fleeing in fear, make it to the inner garden and slam the heavy stone doors behind them. Just when they think they’re home free, the woman dumbly gets caught in a bear trap. The pain is intense, but at least they got away from the zombies.

Oh wait, there they are.

Mark attacks them with a pitchfork, stabbing them one at a time. When that fails almost instantly, the zombie grabs the man and begins to strangle him. Amusingly, it almost looks as if the actor playing Mark grabs the hands of the zombie to make it look like they’re fighting each other, but may have been actually guiding the otherwise blind zombie actor’s hands directly to his throat.

Either that or tepid acting.

What do you think, audience?

Mark, bored with his life, decides to take a series of
"mostly bad-ass" pictures.

Luckily, James and Leslie show up with some decent rocks and smash the heads of the attackers, and we’re treated to some serious rock-on-skull damage in full, slow-mo close-up.

Back with mother and freak son, they continue to thwart attacks from their own small horde of ghouls.

Backed into a corner with some nearby paint supplies, freak son points at something and says, “Mommy, we can set it on fire!”

And that they do.

All the couples meet up and make it back into the main part of the house. Once inside, the house staff begins to talk excitedly of how the bulbs had flickered and exploded, yet not a single time do any of the others respond with, “Monsters tried to eat us.”

The boarding of windows and doors ensues as Kathleen the maid investigates the house to look for any more unguarded weak spots. Welp, she spots one, and when she leans ALL the way out to close the outdoor shutters, one of the zombies flings a spike into her hand, pinning her to the outside. With the aid of a convenient scythe, the maid loses her head into the awaiting hands of the ghouls.

They then all take turns kissing it with their teeth.

James discovers Kathy’s headless body, and after briefly mourning, tips her body up and out the window, feeding the zombies and securing his own place in Heaven. He then boards up the window as the zombies search the maid’s body for the wettest of foodstuffs.

The zombies arm themselves with various gardening tools—including axes—and begin to chop their way through the door.

Ravenna's most notorious of zombie frats was rounded up by police,

and despite their hellish reputation, they surrendered fairly quickly.

“They can only be killed by blowing their heads off!” James deduces, and begins doing just that.

“Give me some more cartridges,” he says to Leslie, and kills a few more. He shoots an impressive number of them, but since we’re never given a master shot of the attacking ghouls, we don’t know how many there are.

“Give me some more cartridges,” he says again to Leslie, but no need, it seems. The zombies turn and run off in fear, but in the way that zombies do it, so, slowly.

Thinking they are safe for the night, Leslie opts to aimlessly wander through the house, but that decision is rewarded with the smash of a window and the grabbing of her head.

By zombies.

The dastardly ghoul drags Leslie’s Play-Do face across the glass, cutting her up and killing her instantly.

The occupants in the house arm themselves with various blunt objects as the zombies finally smash their way in. Janet begins to desperately stab at one of the zombies, but obviously that results in nothing.

Luckily THE MEN show up and beat the zombie heads to smithereens.

Freak Michael gets trapped in the corner by one and he shrieks “Mommy!” in his freak adult voice.

Question: Seriously, since the movie is making a concerted effort to make Michael seem younger, and since the entire cast has to be dubbed into English anyway, why wouldn't you take this opportunity to dub his voice with that of a young boy?

Mommy kills the zombie, and Michael, obviously grateful, sits down with his Momma on a bench and does what any thankful son would do: goes for the tits.

“I need to touch you,” Michael coos. “When I was a baby, you used to hold me to your breast. I need your breasts so much, Momma.”

Momma, disgustingly receptive, is okay with this until he goes for the momgina. A single slap breaks them both out of this incestuous tryst.

“What’s wrong?! I’m your son!” he exclaims and runs off, his outburst the sterling definition of a paradox.

During the grossness, the men agree on a plan to escape and set it in motion, so Mommy Evelyn goes to retrieve Michael. She finds him in the bathroom, his insides somewhat splattered on the floor, but mostly splattered in the mouth of the recently resurrected Leslie.

Michael's parties were known for being
the best on campus, but they always seemed
to end the same way.

“My son!” she screams, slamming Leslie’s head repeatedly into a pipe until turning it to a goo egg.

The zombies use a battering ram to enter the house and they continue their pursuit of arrogant and incestuous Italians.

Nicolas the butler is sent on a quick assignment to gather some supplies, but instead of following through with that task, he figures it might be better to be eaten by a ghoul (the suddenly-appearing Professor Ayes)!

The group becomes separated once again as James chases what he thinks is a priest. Well, he’s half right. He stumbles into a large group of hooded men sitting around a table.

If you weren’t born sideways, it’s already obvious to you that these hooded figures eat people.

James is eaten fairly quickly and the ghouls once again go after the remaining survivors. James wakes up minutes later, eager for some of that greaseball flesh.

Janet, Kathleen, and Mark flee down a small path and stumble into what “looks like some kind of model-builder’s workshop."

Luckily, someone is there to greet them: zombie. Once again, these hapless fools find themselves surrounded by their ghoul adversaries, and as the women barricade the front door, Mark attacks the one behind them with what looks like a large bone. Instead of going for the head, which would work, he goes for the shoulder, which doesn’t. But no matter, Mark flips the ghoul over the stairway and it hurdles to the ground in completely unnecessary and awesome slow-mo.

And just when things can’t get any more horrifying, Michael shows up! Evelyn welcomes him into her arms as Mark screams, “Don’t touch him! He’s a zombie!”

Michael, eye-level with Evelyn’s breasts, unleashes those beauties from her blouse.

“Oh, yes, Michael. Just like when you were a baby. Go on, Michael. You used to love it, so.”

Mark and Janet, despite the ghouls hammering their way in to eat them, still need to stop, understandably so, and just wonder what the fuck it is with those two.

Michael, sucking on Mommy’s boobs, takes a nice bite, borrowing a nipple for just a short time, as the rest of the zombies attack Mark and Janet.

And THAT'S why they cast a 30-year-old freak man boy thing for this role—he's gotta get tits in his mouth.

And, you know, the movie ends with everyone having just a really good time:

Michael continues to chew on his Mommy’s boobs.

Evelyn dies from being a nippleless pervert mother.

Mark gets shoved into a table saw.

Janet is torn apart.

And the ghouls go back to Macy's and return their sweaters because they're just way too big.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE? VOLUME ONE

SHITTY FLICKS: AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

After a highly-publicized series of bizarre encounters that the Lutz family of Deer Park, New York, allegedly experienced during the early 70s, it was only a matter of time before their debacle was made into a high-profile Hollywood film.

The Amityville Horror, starring a heavily-bearded James Brolin, a soon-to-be-crazy Margot Kidder, and the all-around loveable Rod Steiger, assaulted audiences in 1979. The movie contained terrifying scenes of buzzing flies, glowing-eyed ghost pigs, and multiple takes of James Brolin chopping wood and shivering. That's...about it. The movie that people now hail as a classic, frankly, is pretty fucking stupid. It’s quite boring, and for long periods of time, nothing happens, but it’s a premise that has somehow stretched on for eight films and one remake.

For years, debates between the former owners (now deceased), ghost hunters, lawyers, and occultists have long debated over the facts of this case. Did the Lutzes truly experience these ghostly happenings they had claimed, or did they overly-sensationalize a boring house that they realized far-too-late was well out of their budgetary means? The "was it/wasn't it?" debate to this day remains more interesting than any of the films it inspired.

Speaking of uninteresting, this particular installment was the first to introduce the idea that all future "plots" didn't have to involve the infamous house at all; instead, various objects acquired from the house itself could be the reason for the bumps in the night. What sort of objects, you ask? Oh, I dunno... perhaps a stupid lamp.

- "Ugh, there's a demon in it. Let's take a ride so I can return it."
- "Where to?"
- "IKEA."
- "Fuck that. Just keep it."

Our story begins with carloads of priests pulling up in front of 112 Ocean Avenue, the mailing address for TERROR. As three priests wander through the house with their arsenal of crucifixes and holy water-flingers, attempting to purge the evil from the house, it's okay for you to laugh as you remember this house was blown to bits at the end of the previous Amityville film. They walk through the house as shutters bang, doors open and close, chandeliers swing, and blood drips from the wall. While Father Kibbler dodges flung rocking chairs, Father Manfred deals with a wacko-jacko kitchen chock-full of flaming stove tops and banging cabinets...for the house is haunted by the spirit of Kevin McCallister.

As Father Manfred takes over Father Kibbler’s station and purges the evil, we see a small bulge pop from the plug of some unseen household device, which travels up and up the cord until blowing its evil load in...a lamp.

A cloud of really mean flies come and knock over a priest, so they all flee. Despite this, they believe they've exorcised the house of its evil, anyway.

Speaking of evil, Patty Duke's in this movie.

"I'm sorry, son. I didn't mean it when I called you Blockhead.
Now take your blocks upstairs, Blockhead."

Now that the house has been cleansed of all evil, the priests decide to have a random yard sale of the house’s content, since they own all the stuff...right?

Say, I have a question: who the frig is going to buy junk from a place that once housed a brutal mass murder, various supernatural instances, and a vortex? Helen Peacock, that's who.

Yes, that's right, the nearby community that grew more and more terrified of the house from hell over the years now paw eagerly through its contents like beavers looking for…oh, say, delicious beaver candy that beavers eat.

So, Helen Peacock—

“Wait, stop. Her name is Peacock? Who wrote this movie, Parker Bros.?”

Well, though they're referred to as Leacock during the movie, the DVD I very temporarily owned called the family the 'Peacocks' in the summary, so 'Peacock' it shall be for me because that lends me joy.

Helen Peacock eagerly ponies up $100 for The Lamp, which had bore witness to a long list of atrocities, and crates it off to her sister, Alice, in California. Also, she cuts her finger on The Lamp, which gets infected with whatever - Hell, maybe - and she dies.

Score 1 for The Lamp.

Granny Alice receives The Lamp at the exact same moment that her daughter and grandkids come to live with her after the death of their husband/father/plot device. So, luckily, all of The Lamp’s trouble-making bullshit antics can be easily blamed on her three stupid grandchildren.

And The Lamp? Well, it’s an asshole. For serious. And it’s also hideous. It's a bronze tree with two arm things, and it contains one large non-shaded bulb which may or may not contain a demon troll from Ernest Scared Stupid.

The Lamp has hobbies, like making Nancy’s young son, Blockhead, pick up a chainsaw and thrash him around the fruit cellar as he inadvertently slices and dices Granny Alice’s precious jams and preserves.

The Stupid Fat Blockhead Kid Massacre

Or it will shove Granny Alice’s pet parakeet into the toaster oven. (And Granny Alice even goes so far as to blame herself for her pet bird ending up brown and toasty, insinuating that the bird opened its own cage [using its hands], set the toaster dial to crispy [using its hands and previously existing knowledge of kitchen appliances], opened and then shut the oven hatch behind it. However, that idea lasts for about two shakes before she begins to suspect that maybe it was one of her evil grandchildren performing all these random acts of "horror" that so far have not even surpassed the level of a mean-spirited camp prank.)

The Lamp oozes a sort of magical black goo - magical because it possesses the ability to get in a girl's mouth, or kill a plumber.

Speaking of that plumber, after he gets slapped in the face by a rubber hand and drowns in the goo, The Lamp spirits promptly drive his van away as Granny Alice looks on, clearly being able to see that no one is driving. It's a good thing she doesn't care. I don't, either, believe me.

Billy was really sore that he had been grounded,
so he figured he would let Mom know that.

Nancy’s youngest daughter, Annoying Brat, continuously upsets the family as she speaks to The Lamp, insisting it contains the spirit of her dead father. In fact, the family is so upset about the loss of their husband/family that he isn’t mentioned a single time outside of a brief “why they had to move out” exposition (bad debt).

As The Lamp begins to take control of the Annoying Brat, she begins to go “crazy” and smile wickedly as if she could somehow pull off being threatening instead of simply irritating. At one point in the movie, the housekeeper is strangled by The Lamp's Haunted Power Cord of Doom, relegating everyone else to ask the little girl where she is over and over. And the annoying brat just smiles in her annoyingly evil manner and tells everyone that she’s “gone home.” She's so - in fact, wait. Stop. Fucking look at this:

Get your slapping hand ready.

After some tedious lolly-gagging, there is a brief moment when the family is separated, so Annoying Brat runs up the stairs to the attic, where The Lamp now resides. The door slams shut behind her and she fucks The Lamp.

No, I’m kidding.

I guess The Lamp is trying to possess her or kill her or whatever the TV was trying to do to Carol-Anne in Poltergeist, because this film is clearly trying to rip off the other.

Father Kibbler, who has attempted to contact Nancy several times during the movie to warn her of The Lamp’s evil intentions (haha, that's weird), performs a half-assed exorcism on The Lamp. And when that doesn’t work, he does what I’m sure tens of people were shouting at their televisions when this movie premiered years ago:

“Throw the fucking thing out the window.”

And boy, does he.

The Lamp sails down over the rocks of the neighboring shore-line and dies (maybe). The family rejoices and they trade hugs for hours and hours.

Then Granny Alice's cat sticks its cat face into the shattered lamp, and as it looks at the camera, its eyes grow red and promises another sequel that would have actually been more interesting than what we ended up with: teens in a non-Amityville haunted house.

"And in 1947, I sewed a whole mitten-NO, KEVIN!"

REVIEW: ZAAT

 

One day, a man named Kurt said "fuck humans" and turned himself into a giant, moss-covered fish monster. After doing so, he proceeded to swim around the Florida Everglades, murder, chase cute blonde girls in teeny bikinis, and be an all-around pain-in-the-fish. A special arm of law enforcement called INPIT (Inter-Nation Phenomena Investigation Team) is dispatched to the area to investigate the multiple slayings-by-fish that have occurred. This team consists of Agent Walker Stevens (the dude) and Agent Martha Walsh (the chick). The chick likes the dude, but the dude's obsession AND his near-brushes with death caused by said obsession cause the two non-lovers certain levels of stress. See, the chick loves the dude, and the dude just may love the chick, but the fish man of Florida often gets in the way of the two beginning a romantic courtship. (Somewhere, Chris Carter, creator of the ever-enduring "X-Files," is sweating this new DVD/Bluray release of ZAAT.) When Fish Monster isn't killing, or the agents aren't necking, there's a random dude – a prototype for the original hippie – singing entire acoustic tunes directly at the camera. It all, in the end, doesn't amount to much, and I'm sure in some alternate universe, my copy of ZAAT is still playing.

We'll just get quickly to the point: ZAAT is a pretty terrible movie. There's a reason that it's not only been mocked by our favorite human/robot team combination on an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," but also enjoys a current user rating of 1.7 out of 10 on IMDB. The movie is just atrocious, and anyone who has visited this blog in more than just passing knows that I love a good train wreck—the more incompetent, the better. All a bad movie needs for me to like it is this: take your premise seriously, even if your audience doesn't, and do not be boring. That's it. ZAAT, while taking its premise seriously (and vetting a serious cause), was mercilessly boring. That I even made it through the thing without falling unconscious is some kind of half-miracle, being that I once famously fell asleep in theaters during the plane crash scene in Castway—a scene filled with nonstop carnage and jarring noise in a movie that I truly loved.

But the tedium of ZAAT is not the reason I chose to forgo putting this review under my Shitty Flicks banner. No, I am choosing to highlight this movie on its own because of one important element: this completely undeserved, and frankly, pretty damn good little home video release.

ZAAT's history of home video releases is spotty at best. There are claims that ZAAT was released once prior to DVD in various titles, and not just in the aforementioned MST3K's Volume 17 in which the film was duly ripped apart. However, a quick search for "ZAAT" does not turn up any prior video releases of the film, not even on VHS. Whether this is accurate or not is not the point; no, my point is that this new release of ZAAT is just remarkable. Even without watching a brief side-by-side comparison of the film both pre-and post-remastering (one of the special features), you can easily see that a picture of this budget, reputation, and from this era, should not look as good at is does.

In a world where some movies with more prestige, talent, and critical acclaim (in comparison, anyway) have not yet enjoyed even a DVD release (William Friedkin's Rampage, for one), I have to ask: Who on earth puts this much effort info fucking ZAAT?

The fine folks at Film Chest, Cultra, and HD Cinema Classics, that's who. Not only was the picture remastered, but an audio commentary consisting of director Don Barton, co-writer Ron Kivett, actor Paul Galloway, as well as a film historian, is also provided. In addition, there is an audio interview with the film's monster (Wade Popwell), a theatrical trailer, and even a friggin' postcard!

All for ZAAT!

ZAAT gets points for making a film, albeit one as misguided and unintentionally hilarious as it may be, that tried to highlight the dangers of pollution that was occurring during the late 1960s/early 1970s in America. Recollections of ZAAT tend to lump it into the paranoia-fueled monster movies of the 1950s, which were all mostly reactions to "the bomb" and the dangers of radiation that could ensue should that bomb ever be dropped. Even today, innocent films like The Lorax are witch-hunted as liberal propaganda whose sole purpose is to brainwash the minds of children. Like the black-and-whites of the 50s, ZAAT, too, was a reaction to the current landscape of that time. And while anti-pollution movements and going-green initiatives are finally coming to prominence, know that efforts were made as far back as forty years ago to show you the threat was real. As goofy and dull as it may be, it was trying to do a hell of a lot more than most of the movies coming out today. Because of that, I'll give ZAAT all the credit in the world.

Go green.

UNSUNG HORRORS: FRAILTY

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre.

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time.

Dir. Bill Paxton
2001
Lionsgate Films
United States

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.”

— Albert Einstein

Frailty is a sobering look at the impact of religion on the American family. On its surface it’s about demons that may or may not exist, and one man’s belief that he was chosen to slay them with God-given weapons. But at its core it’s about the family unit. It’s about a man and his two sons, and how they are torn apart when one son follows the father, and one does not. And who is right? The son who follows unconditionally, or the son who questions orders and rebels at all costs? The movie is about free will verses destiny. It’s about knowing when to think for yourself, and when to recognize that you’ve become a man. And it’s about realizing everything you know is wrong.

There’s a scene in the beginning of the film where the family sits down to share dinner together. The younger son spoons a large helping of peas onto his plate.

Dad exclaims, “Whoa, Tiger! Save some for us!”

“I sure love peas!” the son shouts.

“I bet! You better be careful or you’ll turn into one!” Dad replies.

Yes, the dialogue exchange is unbearable corny and clichéd. You may even roll your eyes, and that’s fine. That's the point. It’s supposed to come across that way. The filmmakers are willing to embarrass themselves by showing you that this is a typical, American, drama-free, completely undiluted, and ably functioning family. There is not even a hint of something dark and seedy simmering under the surface. Dad is normal. The kids are normal. Life is…normal.

Until God talks to Dad...

It’s a fierce, black, rainy night when Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) confesses to FBI Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe) that he knows the identity of the serial murderer plaguing rural Texas who the media has dubbed the God’s Hands killer. Fenton confesses that it’s his own brother, Adam, who earlier in the night took his life because he couldn’t stand what he had become. Being that Fenton has stolen the ambulance containing his brother’s dead body and driven it directly to the FBI headquarters in Dallas, Agent Doyle is understandably wary of anything Fenton might have to tell him. But as the night grows late, Fenton reenacts the past for Agent Doyle, explaining that the events that led up to this night were set in motion long ago…by the boys’ father.

In this past, Bill Paxton plays Dad, the aforementioned father of two sons: Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter). The boys’ mother died years ago, and so it’s been just the three of them against the world—which suited them fine. As Fenton says in the movie, “we didn’t need anyone else.” Dad worked as a mechanic during the day, but always came home to his sons in the evening and spent as much time with them as he could. Fenton and Adam, separated by only a few years, lived fairly typical lives, though Fenton was tasked with some of the duties his deceased mother likely would have handled (cooking dinner for the family, keeping an extra eye on Adam). The three were close, and despite the loss of their mother, the boys were happy. They went to the movies, laughed about girls throwing up, and did other things brothers/boys do.

It all changes the night Dad wakes them up in the middle of the night and explains to them both that in a strange vision, in which he was visited by an angel, he learns he was chosen by God to slay demons living amongst humanity in human shells. His weapons in this crusade consist of an ax named Otis, a lead pipe, and a pair of work gloves. To determine who is a demon and who is not, he is to lay his hands upon them, and their sins will be revealed.

Understandably, Fenton immediately doubts his father’s claims, wondering if the stress of single-fatherhood has finally taken its toll. Adam, however, is quick to believe; his young age makes him prone to easily accepting such claims, and if his own father believed them, then why shouldn’t he? Why would his own father lie to him?

The hunt soon begins. Dad orders Fenton to take part, and the boy at first refuses…that is until he realizes that he really has no choice. As much as he believes that his father has gone insane, he still loves him and does not want the family to be torn apart.

It all leads to shocking conclusions that cap off the past sequence as well as the present. Additionally, Frailty ends with my favorite kind of twist—which I won’t reveal here. But those who have seen the film know exactly what I mean.

Bill Paxton does a fantastic job with his meaty role in front of the camera. It’s a tough one to pull off, as he has to bring humanity to a role that audiences will have no choice but to vilify and fear almost from the very beginning. To make the role of Dad clearly villainous and cartoonish would have been a disservice to the smart story by the Texas-born Brent Hanley. Of course it would’ve been easy to root against the “antagonist” as he slithers around grinning ear to ear like Nicolas Cage, covered in blood, punctuating each kill with a truly bad pun. But it’s the strength of Paxton as an actor that he can make Dad flawed, human, and sympathetic—all the while making you feel uncomfortable and hesitant whenever he is on screen. (This is something I often bring up in reviews. I always find characters that skirt the line between antagonist and protagonist to be the most interesting, and the role of Dad is no different.) Put yourself in young Fenton’s shoes: how far would you be willing to go to follow your father? For you, what would be the line between real life and insanity? To our eyes, what Dad is doing is clearly wrong, but he doesn’t believe it to be. He believes he is doing God’s work, and it’s because of this that his work is carried out with care and concern. Like Abraham from the Bible, Dad loves his sons more than anything, but it’s the love for his God that will determine his actions.

Matt O’Leary and Jeremy Sumpter do commendable work with their roles. Let’s be honest, child actors are always a gamble. Their inability to grasp the concept of the kind of movie they are making is always reflected in their performance. Luckily, these two know what they’re doing.

O’Learly puts more work and effort into his role than most established adult actors. He sweats and bleeds and suffers with his character—it gets to the point where you wish you could pluck him off the screen just to get him away from all the misery his life has become. The movie rides on his shoulders, and he pulls it off gracefully.

Younger Sumpter, too, has a tough job. He is reciting lines that, at his young age, must have little to no meaning. The real-life complexities of the idea of a “God” and what people who believe in him are willing to do, even things that seemingly violate basic tenets one learns early on in life—it’s a tough thing for even adults to work their mind around, let alone a child of Sumpter’s age. But he plays his part with great confidence and assurance.

The young actors’ chemistry as brothers is believable, and especially in the case of Sumpter, their performances are utterly in line with how real people would react to such a trauma. As Adam begins to follow his father more and more, he, too, does not become comic bookish and antagonistic. He avoids turning into The Bad Seed. Adam wants nothing more than to follow in his father’s footsteps, even going as far as producing his own “demon list” that God allegedly gave to him—filled with the names of people that have bullied him in the past. The scene in which Dad explains the difference between destroying demons and killing people is morbidly funny. From Fenton’s disbelieving point of view, Dad is clearly out of his mind, and so this explanation between destroying demons and killing humans is hypocritical. (Additionally, there is one sequence in the film where Dad is forced to take the life of a human being in order to protect “the mission”—and upon doing so, he immediately vomits and begins to sob as his sons bury the body, lamenting what he was “forced” to do—that he has only just now become a murderer.)

As Fenton suffers through one punishment after another for not following orders, Adam urges his brother to conform—to believe in his family and accept his own responsibility. He does so with the love and admiration a younger brother has for his older. In his mind, Adam is unable to see why Fenton just won’t join them. It’s intelligently and realistically done.

Powers Boothe will always be a dependable bad ass, no matter the role he is playing. And while he might not have much to do during the first 2/3rds of the film, it’s the last act that shows even as someone as deeply intimidating as Boothe can be shaken under the right circumstances. He so rarely gets to play someone with weakness that when it does happen, it makes the events causing his transformation that much more disturbing.

Despite his slew of truly brainless rom-coms, Matthew McConaughey will always be an actor who makes me turn one eye towards whatever project he has in the works. Yes, he’s made a shit ton of truly inexorable movies (most with Kate Hudson), but his roles in A Time to Kill, Lincoln Lawyer, and even We Are Marshall proves he has the chops to pull off a great performance, so long as he’s got the passion to do so. His role in Frailty is one that’s quite understated, dark, and disconcerting. Like O'Leary, it’s up to him to make this movie work, and it’s because of him that it does. His performance is supposed to make you think he’s insane, but at the same time, possibly telling the truth—all at once. You’re supposed to question what you are seeing and hearing at all times, because as McConaughey looks at you with his thousand-mile stare, and as his eyes shimmer from the appearance of tears despite the lack of emotion on his face, you have to know that there’s something not 100% right about Fenton Meiks. What filmmakers call an unreliable narrator is the one leading us on this journey into the past—so everything you see on screen must be doubted. Nothing is to be believed.

Lastly, we have Otis, who plays the ax. Yes, the odd choice to have a random name carved into the ax's handle might seem erroneous until you realize that the ax really is a character. Never in the movie is it just a random household tool, but rather something that has the power to tear apart whole families. It comes to represent what Fenton believes to be the lie – the insanity – his father insists on perpetuating. 

The direction by Paxton is quite assured for a first time director. Most actors can make that leap successfully and Paxton is no different. The first appearance of the Meiks house – a former and very isolated residence of the gardeners who tended the Thurman Rose Garden, where the bodies of “demons” are soon to be buried – is haunting, nostalgic, and saddening all at once. As the brother burst from the trees and their large, white, farm-style house looms into view, the music (a subtly simmering score by the usually bombastic Brian Tyler) ceases, and the sounds of cicadas fill the screen. It’s perhaps the most beautiful shot in the film—a fuzzily recollected memory from childhood.

Another sequence that deserves special mention is the taking of the second “demon,” where Fenton is forced to play the part of an upset and crying boy whose dog, Trixie, won’t come out from under the demon’s car. What the soon-to-be-victim thinks are tears of sadness coming from this boy are actually from fear, as Fenton knows what’s about to happen.

(As an aside, the movie also makes awesome use of Johnny Cash’s “Peace in the Valley” in two very well done and connected sequences.)

Frailty is a movie whose ending I am desperate to dissect and explain in all kinds of tangential ways why it’s so awesome, but to those who haven’t yet seen this film, I would hate to ruin it. What I can say about Frailty, however, is that above all, it’s terrifying…because it could happen. And it does, every day. Even today entire wars are begun over the belief that God speaks through his followers and orders them to destroy the unclean and the infidel. And really…what’s scarier? Jason Voorhees wielding an ax and coming at you…or your own father killing someone else in front of you as you beg and plead him to stop?

Most films based on faith, religion, and peoples’ ties to both tend to come down on one side of the fence: either religion is good, or bad. Frailty manages to show you that it’s both. It shows you what it’s done to a simple family that, after losing their wife/mother, has already suffered enough. But it also shows you that sometimes you’re right to have faith, and you’re right to follow it, no matter the circumstances.

SHITTY FLICKS: CRIMINALLY INSANE (AKA CRAZY FAT ETHEL)

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

 

Long ago, when Ingmar Bergman was making films actually about something, a filmmaker named Nick Millard (or one of his eight aliases) set out to make a chillingly effective horror film—a film that would raise the bar on how much utter terror audiences could tolerate. Criminally Insane, which for the remainder of this review will be referred to as Crazy Fat Ethel, in keeping with the far superior title chosen for the sequel, was a critical delight and box office smash...if you take into consideration that I am a sarcastic prick. Instead, Millard ended up making this first of four truly abhorrent horror movies featuring the very gargantuan Priscilla Alden (star of Birdy as 'Woman on Bench'). Watch as she eats piles of snacks and occasionally stabs obvious mannequins covered in reddish-orange goo. Yes, there's many reasons why you've never heard of Nick Millard, dear reader. Crazy Fat Ethel is one of them. As an aside, I feel it necessary to inform you that all of the "films" Millard made around this time were produced by Frances Millard, his mother...who at that time was also working as a porn star.

When she was 83.

Some titles of her films: 92 and Still Bangin', Aged to Perfection: Part 20,  and lastly, My Grandmother is a Whore: Part 8, which I can assure you is not a joke.

One year for Halloween, Ethel trick-or-treated as "hideous."

At the start of the movie, we meet our fatagonist (LMAO), Ethel Janowski. Her time spent at the Nappa Valley Mental Institute, where according to fuzzy flashbacks she was forced to have electro-shock therapy while unnecessarily revealing the most horrid of sexual extremities, is now over. After the audience suffers through said flashback, in which her shock-therapy session plays out in real time in order to pad out the running time of this movie (a whopping 61 minutes), Grandma Janowski checks Ethel out of the hospital and brings her home to San Francisco, land of the trolley car, TV's the Tanner family, and the gays.

Once home, Grandma tries to put Ethel on a diet, because the sheer girth of her rotund belly enrages whole planets. Ethel glares at her grandmother, somehow gaining weight as she stands in place. Instead of agreeing to these terms, she demands a snack. Grandma says no, explaining to her that excess food could prove detrimental to her heart.

“My heart is just fine, so long as my stomach’s not empty,” Ethel gurgles, citing from her favorite book, I'm Fat, You're Fat: Let's All Eat Dinner Again.

Ethel's mind eventually takes a shit over her inability to fill her mouth with popcorn and cow meat, and so she stabs Grandma for locking up the refrigerator. Grandma dies clenching the only key in her old, old hand, as Ethel repeatedly stabs her and screams, "I want that key!"

The Ethel we had all previously knew and loved is gone. Meet the new Ethel: just as hideous...just as fat...but twice as crazy.

With a whore and a fat-ass psychopath for her granddaughters,
Granny stops to reflect on if she had made the wrong choices in life.

Ethel, looking to stuff her fat mouth with cheese cubes and bacon bits, dials up a local grocer to place an order for delivery. She fidgets on the phone, impatiently agreeing to pay off Grandma’s previously established debt, as she doubles the amount of ice cream usually included. Ethel grins, dreaming of all the drippy food that will soon be covering her moomoo, but she runs into a problem when the delivery boy refuses to accept $4.50 to pay for the $80 bill. Ethel is a good problem solver, however, and stabs the boy a billion times with a broken bottle.

It is at this point that Ethel's sister, Rosalee, rapes herself into the plot. She's a divine little minx who fucks for money, and looks so uncannily like a horse that Sarah Jessica Parker is actually a little jealous. Rosalee's first appearance consists of ringing the doorbell over and over until you'll want the whole world to explode. Ethel finally lets her in after having dragged the delivery boy's body upstairs and into Grandma’s room.

Rosalee barely asks, “What’s all this blood all over the floor?”

Ethel responds, “I cut my foot on some glass.”

To see how much blood is on the floor, and to see Ethel’s pudgy, uncut foot, would draw suspicion from even a retarded infant with a candy-filled brain, but no worries here. Rosalee merely walks past her sister and explains she’ll be staying there for a while and occasionally renting her vagina. You see, it's not unusual for Rosalee to bring home an ugly, strange man to wrap her clam around, but sometimes that's just John, her pimp/boyfriend. But in keeping with her profession, Rosalee will also bring home "johns," on whom she will perform sexual favors in exchange for some financial compensation, or some "nasal medicine." What's deeply frustrating about Rosalee's lack of attractiveness is that her johns, also, are definitely of the "ugly tree" variety, so viewers can't even get temporarily lost in some attractive sex; there is nary an un-ugly face to be seen.

Sure, Rosalee brought home the big bucks... but at what cost?

It's not long before a cop comes sniffing around, trying to solve the case of the missing food delivery kid who recently made a food delivery to a place where a very fat, food-loving woman, fresh from the mental institution, has taken up residence. The cop fires question after question at Ethel, demanding to know the boy's possible whereabouts, but this master deflector provides just the right answer to throw him off track:

“He went left.”

The cop deduces that the boy must have “gone to Tijuana” with the money and leaves, failing at life like everyone having to do with this movie.

It's right around this point where we finally meet John, Rosalee’s horse jockey/lover/abuser. He shows up at her favorite watering hole to insist they continue their relationship of love and domestic violence. For every second he is onscreen, he appears to be on at least five 1970s-bred hallucinogenics.

Despite Rosalee telling him to bugger off, he follows her back to the house, where she continues her cold shoulder technique of avoiding his kisses, even though she has ended up naked on a bed with him on top of her. John proclaims his love, and Rosalee asks, “If you love me so much, why do you beat the shit out of me?”

John retorts, “You need a good beating every once in a while. All women do. Especially you.”

She then welcomes him into her equestrian vagina, I guess deciding he has made a good point.

John had gotten his promotion, found $5 in the street,
and was about to complete the trifecta.

John meets Ethel the next morning at breakfast after she walks in holding a plate piled high with Hot Pockets. He appropriately says, “Jesus…” and looks genuinely taken aback.

Rosalee orders him to be nice, and John agrees, asking for one of Ethel’s treats. She hesitantly hands him one and is about to sob over the loss of her food when that pesky cop from earlier returns to gather further information about the missing delivery kid. Having found out that the boy was apparently a pillar of the youth community, he is no longer satisfied by his own Tijuana theory. He again questions Ethel, and again she shows of her bravura for master manipulation.

"I saw someone with a gun follow him," she says dumbly, staring at the floor.

"Why didn’t you tell me this before?" the cop inquires, suspicious.

"I forgot," she booms in response. And for good measure: "The robber was black."

A black robber in San Francisco is enough for the cop to leave Ethel alone for the moment. She relievedly pats herself on the stomach for a job well done, leaves to “go watch Gunsmoke,” and probably celebrates her cunning with a wheel barrel of hot dogs.

And the movie continues.

"Hey, Ethel...Are you gonna pass the jam or what?"

Ethel eludes Rosalee's curiosity as to where Granny is, why her room is always locked, and why it smells like death. “Grandma must’ve shit all over the bed before she left,” she deduces.

Hideous John threatens to break down Granny's bedroom door, but Ethel uses her noodle and brilliantly suggests, "Do it tomorrow." John agrees and takes Rosalee back to their bed, where he participates in bestiality.

Rosalee’s mounting suspicions eventually catch Ethel's lard-ass attention, but the potential conflict is soon alleviated when Ethel kills her with a large plastic cleaver—the special kind that makes a dull wood-on-wood sound when striking anything.

As we watch in boring anticipation, Ethel sneaks into John and Rosalee's bedroom and raises the mighty cleaver with her meaty arm. She brings it down across John's head, and though its pretty much obscured by some cleverly awful editing, his face explodes into a thick layer of red wall paint. Rosalee manages to sleep through the hundreds of swings Ethel applies to John's head, as depicted by the past-faced cutting. She finally wakes up and neighs to Ethel for mercy. Ethel says something fat and then kills Rosalee, setting in stone her future as horse glue.

Spoiler.

Phew... we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Ethel's Crisco-fueled crimes of passion have saved her tremendous ass for the time being. She continues to kill mannequins that we're supposed to accept are people, eats, and has a dream she is wearing a nice robe and running by the bay. Once waking from her nap, she gets up, kills, and eats.

Much fun can be had witnessing Ethel attempt to hide her ever-growing amount of bodies in Granny's room, all the while spraying air-freshener directly on their dead faces.

And when I say 'much fun can be had,' I don't mean it. Not at all.

After realizing Granny's bedroom is rapidly filling up with bodies, Ethel loads them into a car trunk and drives out to a sea-side cliff in hopes of dumping them into the water. She takes her sweet, fat-ass time performing this task, and we have no choice but to watch the entire trip unfold in real time, because we're watching this fucking movie for some reason.

Upon getting there, Ethel sees that there are far too many witnesses for her to get away with dumping bodies into the bay. She feels it would be in her best interest to get back in the car and drive all the way home, leaving the trunk lid hanging wide open because she's a fucking dickhead. And we get to watch all of this return trip, too, because this movie seriously has more padding than a pre-teen girl.

Once home, Ethel smashes up the stairs, eager to eat something covered in heavy cream. Nosy Neighbor, who catches a whiff of something fierce, wanders over to the trunk Ethel ingeniously left hanging open and sees a mannequin hand douched with blood.

That pesky cop shows up again and randomly enters Ethel's house. If he has done so because he was alerted to the hand in the trunk, it’s definitely not evident, for he walks slowly up the steps without any alarm, and without taking out his gun. He opens the door to Granny's room and sees Ethel EATING the dead bodies that have accumulated, because her belly can hold a lot.

The end.

(Two be followed by three sequels).

TRIVIA!

Priscilla’s role as the fat woman killer was originally offered to Anthony Hopkins, but he passed politely, saying, "you are fucking ridiculous."

"Cake cake cake," Ethel happily sang, moments
before her heart attack.

What I Learned from Crazy Fat Ethel:

• Ethel is larger than your average bear.
• Saying derogatory things like "that Jew doctor" is a-okay, so long as your dinner is your hand and an entire jar of peanut butter.
• Blood can be faked with the most unrealistic of substances.
• Nick Millard makes movies based on the fact that he knows someone with access to free mannequins.
• A 61 minute movie can feel like an eternity if you know how to craft something awful.
• Nick Millard is not affiliated with a single attractive person.
• The desire to eat normal food and then commit murders naturally leads to cannibalism. (Additionally, dead human bodies are made of chocolate.)
• Nick Millard's prior history of shooting pornography is unsurprisingly prevalent. However, this time, the ridiculous and tedious set-pieces that would normally lead up to hardcore sex turn out to just be the actual movie.
• Ethel likes to eat 'Nilla Wafers, pudding, iced cream, eggs, people, milk, pancakes, more pudding, and your time.