From Robert Morgan, the creator of the wonderful animated horror short The Cat with Hands, comes the feature-length debut Stopmotion, a film exploring the unraveling mind à la Videodrome or Possession. The film centers on Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi, The Nightingale), a stop-motion animator helping her arthritic and overbearing mother, Suzanne (Stella Gonet), finish what will likely be her final film.
Ella’s tumultuous but structured life gets thrown for a loop when Suzanne has a stroke and falls into a coma, leaving Ella to potentially finish the film on her own. The problem is, she struggles to come up with ideas — she’s a brilliant animator, but not much of a storyteller. So when a mysterious little girl begins showing up at Ella’s apartment and dictates a new story about a girl lost in the woods being chased by a grotesque figure called the Ash Man, Ella reluctantly listens, and begins making the young one’s narrative.
The new story is much darker, with figures made of mortician’s wax and spoiled meat, creating visuals that give ’90s-era Tool videos a run for their money. The little girl proves to be just as demanding as Suzanne, and this combined with the disturbing nature of the work begins to effect Ella’s sanity and her already fraught relationship with her boyfriend (Tom York).
Featuring stunning stop-motion animation from director Morgan, appropriately moody cinematography from Léo Hinstin, and a skin-crawling score by experimental sound artist Lola de la Mata, Stopmotion is a masterful slow-burn horror film with genuinely creepy imagery and a thoroughly shocking explosion of violence in its third act. Franciosi delivers yet another psychologically complex performance, proving herself to be one of the most dynamic actors in the horror landscape right now. Fans of Cronenberg, Zulawski and the eerie stop-motion films of Jan Svankmajer will not want to miss this one. —Christopher Shultz
Meth makers of America, c’mon: If you’re so paranoid that you’ve rigged your drug den with, say, a door tied to trigger a shotgun, maybe make sure the head it blows off doesn’t belong to the brother of a short-fused cop?
That’s advice from Flick Attack. First one’s free, kid.
Because if you don’t, here’s what happens: Trap House, motherfucker! Police detective Grant Pierce (Jaime M. Callica, 2021’s Hypnotic) is that cop — so fierce, he has the mystery of his dead sibling solved by minute 7. It’s the doing of the gas-masked man Lethan (Bruce Crawford, Alter), who cooks up crank in an abandoned slaughterhouse.
To dissuade authorities, thieves and basic lookie-loos, Lethan and his foxy partner (Gigi Saul Guerrero, V/H/S/85) have fashioned the place into a veritable Temple of Doom! Consider such booby-trapped built-in features as: • a glue floor • a room full of broken glass • swinging cinder blocks • spiked ceilings • bear traps in the hallway • mousetraps in the air ducts • jets of scalding steam • an invisible fence • and more!
Aiding Pierce in his penetration of Lethan’s lair are a teenage dealer named Dibs (Peter Bundic, Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), a terrifying skinhead (a bonkers Michael Eklund, 2014’s Poker Night) and a couple other tweakers who exist for the sole purpose of allowing director Nicholas Humphries (2014’s Death Do Us Part) to demonstrate the aforementioned amenities.
Let’s not pretend that anyone watches Trap House for any other reason than to see the house do some trapping. It certainly was mine. (It sure wasn’t for crackerjack background dialogue like “Oh, man, I’m high.”) Blood and gore aside, it plays like series television, but for a testosterone-laced slice of Sawsploitation, one can do much worse.
Hell, for a “Tubi original,” one can do much, much worse. Humphries keeps this one watchable and, perhaps inadvertently, closed-captioning readable; as Pierce is pursued by addicts moving en masse like cannibal zombies, “[junkies grumbling]” appears as a subtitle — my new favorite subtitle, that is. —Rod Lott
Master criminal and master of disguise Mr. Smith (Keir Dullea, 2001: A Space Odyssey) hatches a master plan to top them all: Take over the Eiffel Tower, befit it with stolen laser weapons, and hold it for a $30 million ransom to be delivered within 12 hours or it’s detonation time.
To carry out this felonious feat, Mr. Smith hires three professional crooks, each exhibiting a specialized skill: • a cat burglar (Billy Dee Williams, The Empire Strikes Back) • an ex-CIA weapons expert (Peter Fonda, Race with the Devil) • a woman (Ms. Octopussy herself, Maud Adams) who flees the scenes of her heists on roller skates
Who better to bring Alistair MacLean’s adventure story to the tube than Claudio Guzmán, director of Linda Lovelace for President? Hundreds, I’m sure, but he actually does a great job, yielding high rewards from a small-screen project. Thanks are due to the well-constructed plot and unique setting upon an international landmark. The Eiffel’s geometric compositions are irresistible to the eye, making Guzmán’s job that much easier.
I’m not sure why Fonda and Adams are in The Hostage Tower since their characters barely register once they arrive at Mr. Smith’s chateau for training on some scaffolding in the yard. Of the trio, Williams gets the most to do, from donning a Chef Boyardee hat to scaling down the Eiffel with an old woman (Rachel Roberts, 1978’s Foul Play) on his back. Speaking of the elderly, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1981’s Ghost Story) mans the intelligence community’s efforts from the ground, exclaiming “Jolly good, ol’ chap! What a pip!” Not exactly those words, but close enough. —Rod Lott
What differentiates The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema is author Nikolas Schreck used to practice the Black Arts. That granted the original 2001 edition a seal of credibility, but this new, considerable update — courtesy of Headpress — allows him to cover dozens of titles that didn’t exist, like Megiddo: The Omega Code2, in a hilarious review that alone is worth the price of purchase. In his intro, Schreck asks, “Who the hell is the Devil anyway?” then answers with a thorough history lesson spanning the life of cinema. Yes, horror films abound, but Satan pops up in costumed dramas, British comedies, kiddie matinees, mondo docs, animation, pornography and even an “all-Negro musical” from Vincente Minnelli. From Kenneth Anger to Irwin Allen, Ingmar Bergman to Ed Wood, our writer proves to be the authority of the evil one’s vast filmography. Surrender!
Another year means another McFarland & Company publication from Roberto Curti. As prolific as he is, his subject this time makes him look lazy by comparison: cult icon Jess Franco. Co-authored by Francesco Cesari, The Films of Jesus Franco, 1953-1966 examines the works of the Spanish director from his start — his pre-OB/GYN cinema, one might say. As is Curti’s wont, each pic — from puffery like Attack of the Robots to artistic triumphs like The Diabolical Dr. Z — reliably devotes coverage so in-depth, they may as well be a submersible. What really makes this Jesús text special is how heavily it goes into Franco films we’ll never see, from his university short Theory of Sunrise, a debut “ignored” by other Franco texts, to Treasure Island, an abandoned ’64 adaptation/collaboration with Orson Welles. One Yank’s quibble: The movies are listed in Spanish, so unless you know your Red Lips from your Labios rojos, keep the index bookmarked.
I thought my own book did a decent job of mining some obscurities … then along comes Lowest Common Denominator: The Amateurish Writings of a Failed Film Critic to show everybody up on that front. Written by David John Koenig, aka “A Fiend on Film,” the self-published paperback might review as many movies I’ve never heard of as it has pages! That’s because Koenig’s tastes lean toward the Asian, underground, microindie and black-and-white crime pics as old as my grandparents. Needless to say, my Tubi list grew exponentially as I read. And read. And read! From A to Z, I didn’t miss a word and, as a result, got exposed to a whole new world.
When a movie gains a fervent, coast-to-coast cult, multiple books on it inevitably follow. That’s certainly the case with Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. I reviewed two of them a decade ago, and now it’s time to add a third with CLASH Books’ release of Accidental Genius: An Oral History of The Room. Think the world doesn’t need another? Think again. Andrew J. Rausch, whose workIlove, goes deeper on the topic than any medium before him. With dozens of people weighing in, his task as curator and craftsman couldn’t have been easy, but as a read, it sure is. The anecdotes are as crazy as a Room viewer could hope for, from using Greg Sestero’s facial hair as a guide for editing the nonsensical scenes into something watchable to Wiseau’s desire to perform his sex scenes unsimulated. On purpose, Accidental’s a lot of fun, as entertaining as it is thorough — enough to make you want to exclaim in joy, “Hai, doggy!”
Enjoyed the historical aspect of Vincent A. Albarano’s recent Aesthetic Deviations: A Critical View of American Shot-on-Video Horror, but wish it also had room for reviews and interviews? Then you’re going to love Justin Burning’s Hand-Held Hell: The Outbreak of Homemade Horror. With a title like that, how could you not? Well, quite easily, were we in the hands of a poor writer, but that, Burning is not. Covering a mind-boggling 40 years’ worth of SOV projects, he gives great insight about movies I’ve not only seen (Video Violence), but seen more than once (Black Devil Doll from Hell), wish I could unsee (The Burning Moon) and absolutely never will see (August Underground). Interspersed among these 44 movies are interviews with nearly two dozen directors — including such household Hanekes as Tim Ritter, Bret McCormick and Donald Farmer — and full-color photos, all in a trade-paperback package heavy enough to challenge your wrists’ strength. For the right type of person (like you and me), this trip through Hell feels like heaven.
As someone whose film knowledge began on watching movies on UHF channels and read the Sunday paper’s TV listings supplement in full, Armchair Cinema: A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981 stirred nostalgia in this American. It’s a shame the Edinburgh University Press title costs such a pretty penny, because I suspect like minds would find it catnippy, too. Leslie Halliwell (he of the Halliwell’s Film Guide) emerges as a hidden hero as Sheldon Hall looks back at when the tube saw movies as wasted space, then slowly changed their minds. Yes, the book contains numerous data tables of airdates and whatnot you might find useless, but Hall packs his pages with so many compelling stories. Learn how the Carry On comedies doubled box office after broadcast, how sneaky U.S. distributors passed off Edgar Wallace and Sherlock Holmes flicks as TV shows to get around a limit, and why a UK exec was “utterly revolted” by 1933’s King Kong. King Kong! —Rod Lott
If there’s a saying I wish social media could ban, it’s, well, hundreds. But “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” vies for the top spot alongside fellow bandwagon comments as “All the feels,” “I’m not crying, you’re crying” and, of course, “This.”
At least the movie Stupid Gameshas good reason for plopping the sentence on a title card, as what follows is a literal depiction of the adage.
Three young women host a dinner and game night at their apartment. They invite three guys, oddly insisting on the 1:1 gender ratio. We know something is up — we’re just not sure what. By candlelight, the assembled six play a board game whose rules mix Truth or Dare with Two Truths and a Lie; Fuck, Marry, Kill; and a bag of Scrabble tiles.
And by “play,” I mean it, as the flick devotes nearly an hour to watching them do so in real time. As proven, that can make for some serious screen boredom, yet Stupid Games might be the exception. Although the acting is inconsistent and its visual palette overly dependent on blah hues of brown, we keep watching because of Tanner Adams’ script: For nearly two-thirds of the running time, we’re not quite certain where it’s going, but we genuinely want to see the destination.
How co-directors Nicolas Wendl and Dani Abraham (both helming their first feature) handle the eventual “bogeyman,” so to speak, is eerily effective for something so simple. Sometimes, having a $10,000 budget that makes CGI cost-prohibitive is a good thing. —Rod Lott
