Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067341/An aging hippy couple, accompanied by their close friend, move out to the country to begin a new life, living off the land, surrounded by nature. The trouble is that baggage follows you everywhere you go, and that's especially true for Jessica, a psychologically fragile woman who's only 6 months out of the nut house.
Zohra Lampert puts in a pretty convincing portrayal of a woman close to the edge, you're never quite sure if the strange things she's seeing are real or the product of her psychosis, resulting in a genuinely unsettling scenario of isolation. Unfortunately Lampert's performance is about the only thing to recommend here, as the rest of the characters are of no great shakes, they exist simply to disbelieve her and the story plays out rather predictably.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075342/Directed by Charles B. Pierce, this period proto-slasher is based on a series of real life murders that occurred in 1946 in the rural South, the city of Texarkana (on the border of Texas and Arkansas) Following the first killing, where the masked murderer dispatches a young couple parked up in 'Lover's Lane', the Sherrif's Dept. call in Texas Ranger Captain Morales, a famous criminal investigator to work the case.
There's a real heavy handed use of VO in this one, with the narrator explaining the events to the audience, rather than showing them unfold. The film has this 1940s retro feel to the dialogue and performance that just doesn't gel well with the low production value and bland, cheap-looking color photography, it would have worked a lot better in black and white. The kill scenes are grand, but the movie stumbles with some poorly judged comedy featuring the bumbling efforts of Morales' police chauffeur named 'Spark Plug'. All in all a pretty uninspired movie, one that suffers from that Zodiac-Killer style ending, I was mostly bored throughout.
The Changeling (1980)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/George C. Scott plays John Russell, a grief-stricken music academic who moves from New York to a big old house in Seattle in an effort to get his life back on track after losing his wife and daughter in a motor accident. The long abandoned mansion is the ideal place for John to work on his composition, but it isn't long before doors are closing by themselves and mysterious noises are heard in the night.
Slow building, suspenseful and intensely somber, The Changeling is quite the effective haunted house movie, made more so when you consider that it's based (supposedly) on the real-life experiences of the actual screen writer, John Russell. Personally I don't believe in any of that sort of shite, but it can work to the film's advantage (I'm thinking The Excorcist, and even Blair Witch Project) Scorsese apparently listed this on his 11 Scariest Films of All Time, personally I wouldn't agree with that, by the end of the film, I found it teetering right out on the edge of silliness, the plot is over-worked, a little too serious for its own good. Still, worth a look.
Brain Dead (1990)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099173/No, not the Peter Jackson splatter classic, but the very reason that Braindead is confusingly known as 'Dead Alive' in the United States. This psychological horror tale was produced by Roger Corman's wife Julie and directed by Adam Simon. Essentially playing out like an extended episode of the Twilight Zone, it's a pretty drab tale of Dr. Rex Martin, a top neurosurgeon who's study of mental illness brings him to the attention of medical corporation Eunice who task him with probing the mind of one of their former employees, a genius mathematician now committed to a mental asylum.
The film is slow to start but picks up round the mid way mark as Dr. Martin begins to experience his patients paranoid delusions first hand. Despite a stellar cast, two of the three Bills: Pullman and Paxton and the always watchable Bud Cort, the movie hasn't got much to recommend. It's hard to be engaged when a movie has such a god awful muzak soundtrack and overall, it felt like a bit of a slog.
Brain Damage (1988)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094793/By far the best film I watched this week, directed by Frank Hennenlotter (of Basket Case fame) is horror comedy gold. Rick Hearst plays Brian, a young punk who unwittingly becomes host to a parasitic being known as Aylmer, basically a distended mutant cock-like-worm thing that latches onto its victim's neck before stabbing them with a needle-like stinger, depositing a highly addictive blue fluid directly into their brain which causes all sorts of awesome hallucinations, leaving victims in a state of total euphoria and utterly unaware of their surroundings. By using the host as a mode of transport, the Aylmer can easily access fresh victims, jumping onto their heads, burrowing through skull to devour their brain flesh. Hell yeah!
The Aylmer itself is sentient (voiced by John Zacherle, known for hosting horror movie broadcasts on American TV) and speaks in polite, mannered tones with an air of smug superiority. After just a few shots of the blue fluid, Rick becomes totally addicted to the stuff, to the point where he stops going to work and holes up in his bedroom, alarming both his younger brother Mike and loving girlfriend Barbara.
I won't say much more about the plot for fear of spoilage, but I will say that the Aylmer origin reveal is especially satisfying. The genius of Brain Damage lies in the subtext of Ricks dependency on the Aylmer as a metaphor for the smack epidemic that surrounded the punk scene in the Lower East Side at the time. With some crazy-inventive visual effects, decent score and genuine laughs, I highly recommend it.
Aftermath (1994)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094793/What happens to your body after a fatal car accident? Well in Spanish director Nacho Cerda's 30 minute short Aftermath, it's taken to a morgue where an assistant pathologist in a surgical mask and pronounced eyebrows slices you up, removes your organs, becomes sexually aroused, locks the door, stabs your genitals with a kitchen knife, masturbates, sets up a camera to automatically capture him climbing up on the remaining bloody mess and violently fucks your corpse. Then he cleans up the mess with Cilit Bang, brings home your heart in a paper bag and feeds it to his dog. As stomach churning as it sounds, and about a hundred times more disgusting than Nekromantik. Recommended.
Ha, I shit you not man. Well, all of it except the Cilit Bang, had that in for effect.
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