Horror

The Company of Wolves (1984)

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companywolvesOnly Neil Jordan’s second feature, 1984’s The Company of Wolves can be viewed as Gothic testing ground for his eventual epic blockbuster in Interview with the Vampire one decade later. For all its here-and-there hiccups, however, I find Wolves to be the far superior film.

Visually sumptuous and rich in detail, Wolves is a remarkable adaptation of Angela Carter’s dark fiction, written with Jordan by Carter herself. Almost all of it takes place within the feverish, fairy-tale dreamworld of young, blossoming Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson, 1987’s Snow White). In a sequence that’s one of the screen’s best-ever representation of nightmares, her older sister dies; to let her parents properly mourn, Rosaleen goes to stay with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury, The Manchurian Candidate), who shares some seriously macabre bedtime stories. Like Alice plummeting down Wonderland’s rabbit hole, the picture keeps drilling into deeper levels as Granny’s tales are depicted.

companywolves1In one story, a newlywed man (Stephen Rea, The Crying Game) skips consummation in order to answer the call of nature, only to reappear years later. In another, a spiteful witch (Dawn Archibald, Caravaggio) turns a wedding reception turned into a circus of Canis lupus proportions. Eventually, Rosaleen and Granny take part in a twisted update of Little Red Riding Hood.

Horror fantasy at its classiest, The Company of Wolves uses its once-upon-a-time canvas to explore budding sexuality, just as the Brothers Grimm did in their original, unexpurgated tales. The film’s purposeful artificiality, created by production designer Anton Furst (an Oscar winner for 1989’s Batman) is seductive in its own right, drawing the viewer into a surreal existence of the filmmakers’ imagining. The werewolf transformations are superb in their grotesque nature, and when Rosaleen’s real and unreal worlds collide at the end, the effect is chilling. The material works so well, it’s a shame more of Carter’s works weren’t brought to life, especially by Jordan. —Rod Lott

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Martial Arts

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

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ninjaIIBeginning as a 1940s-era newsreel for some strange reason, Ninja: Shadow of a Tear picks up after the events of 2009’s flatly titled Ninja, with Caucasian gaijin Casey (Scott Adkins, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning) living a happy life in Japan with his wife, Namiko (Mika Hijii, Alien vs. Ninja). Their marital bliss is short-lived, however, when Namiko is murdered while Casey’s out procuring Chocolate Thunder ice cream to soothe her pregnancy cravings.

Seeking respite at a Thai dojo run by Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, Pray for Death), Casey is much too grief-stricken to stay put, so with a slew of homemade ninja weapons and ninja potions, he flees to the Burmese jungle to take revenge on the persons responsible for Namiko’s death. All paths lead to Goro (Shun Sagata, Ichi the Killer), an aging drug lord who dispatches his victims with an infernal contraption of lassoed barbed wire. A lot of people die.

ninjaII1Very ’80s in its execution (no pun intended), Ninja: Shadow of a Tear — aka Ninja II — is a serviceable but unremarkable sequel from returning director Isaac Florentine (Undisputed III: Redemption). Its story is the least fulfilling factor; its martial arts sequences, superb. Looking more than a tad Affleckian, the charismatic Adkins is the real deal. He deserves to have a shot at a big-screen career that Jean-Claude Van Damme did, and if he had been born 20 years earlier, he likely would have. His ass-kicking skills make the action scenes easy for Florentine to shoot — all he has to do is keep his star within frame. Easy enough! —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System

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11billionyearIn her first book, The $11 Billion Year, intrepid film journalist Anne Thompson takes the reader through the annual life cycle that awaits Hollywood studios’ products and scrappy indies: a circus of festivals and awards in which a movie’s success is far from a sure thing. No matter a film’s fate, its story is never dull, and the book serves as a time capsule of those projects vying for supremacy — critically and culturally, but above all else, financially — in 2012.

In its structure, her book reminded me of Peter Bart’s The Gross of 2000, which chronicled the hits and flops in the summer slate of 1998 with a juice-packed insider’s view. The difference is Thompson’s scope is IMAX-sized compared to Bart’s.

It’s also more than just a tale constricted to a finite timeline. The author utilizes the gaps of months between such chapters on Sundance and SXSW to insert essays on other factors driving the way Tinseltown works today. Thus, we get essays that delve into the game-changing rise of digital streaming, the kowtowing to rabid fanboys at Comic-Con, and the ever-increasing importance of the almighty franchise, focusing on what went right with The Hunger Games and what went wrong with Disney’s $200 million write-off known as John Carter.

She also uses the release and subsequent controversy of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty to examine the extra challenges awaiting women directors who dare play the Hollywood game, where the clubhouse door still all but sports a “boys only” sign.

Regardless of the film being discussed — from Silver Linings Playbook to Safety Not Guaranteed — Thompson’s account of each reads like a mini making-of article, taking the reader from conception to, ultimately, fortune or failure. You can appreciate The $11 Billion Year by individual pieces or as a whole — either way, its 320 pages prove deliciously addicting.

My only quibble with it is that appears to have gone through a rushed editorial process. I can forgive the rare occasional misspelling of a name (whether Nicolas Cage or Paul Feig can, I do not know), but other errors are far more egregious, from referring to the animated Mars Needs Moms as Mars Loves Moms, to this statement: “Films that have nabbed both Best Actress and Foreign Language nominations belong to an elite club indeed: Life Is Beautiful, Z, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Not a single one of those pics earned a Best Actress nomination. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1980)

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hollywoodstranglerSeemingly made with whatever loose change was found on the streets where it was shot, Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher is a real trial by ire. Remember, you can’t spell “Ray Dennis” without “ADR,” because the entire movie is dubbed — the least of its troubles — and as if embarrassed of its inherent shoddiness, he directed under the nom de plume of Wolfgang Schmidt. Rhymes with what he made.

The title serves as a near-encapsulation of what little happens within its 72 interminable minutes. The Hollywood Strangler (Pierre Agostino, Steckler’s Las Vegas Serial Killer) spends his days answering sex ads in sex newspapers so he can photograph weather-beaten women in shorts so short, one practically can see the STDs. After clicking off a few shots, he strangles them to death.

hollywoodstrangler1Meanwhile, the Skid Row Slasher (Carolyn Brandt, Steckler’s Rat Pfink a Boo Boo) works in a pitiful used bookstore where the occasional — which is to say “daily” — wino stumbles in clutching a bottle of hooch and bothers her scant few customers. After following the drunks outside, she slashes them to death.

Eventually, after a little stalking, the two killers face off in a fatal duel. Who wins? Not the viewer, that’s for damn sure. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Drive-In Madness! (1987)

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driveinmadnessDrive-In Madness! doesn’t quite earn the exclamation point it gave itself, but it’s a nostalgic look at an American pastime that was well on its way out when this was made: during the home-video boom. And by “look,” I mean a freeform compilation of vintage coming attractions with pointless interview segments serving as glue.

Narrated by Poltergeist real estate agent James Karen, the 84-minute quasi-documentary leans heavy on the films of Al Adamson, with six of his flicks represented with full trailers, from Satan’s Sadists to Naughty Stewardesses — not a complaint. I don’t know if any rhyme or reason were present in director Tim Ferrante’s choices of what clips to include, but for the most part, it’s an unpredictable bunch that touches upon sci-fi (The Human Duplicators), mondo (Macabro), action (Girls for Rent), comedy (The Booby Hatch) and, oddly, made-for-VHS trash that never would play drive-ins (Psychos in Love).

driveinmadness1To no one’s surprise, horror makes up the most, from the overplayed (Night of the Living Dead) to the opposite (Deadtime Stories). None looks as terrifying as what passes for hot dogs in ye olde concession-stand ads.

The aforementioned interviews include scream queen Linnea Quigley, effects master Tom Savini, collector extraordinary Forrest J. Ackerman and Mausoleum MILF Bobbie Bresee, who has no qualms appearing before Ferrante’s camera in an outfit designed to bare at least her left nipple. Only a fraction of what they share is related directly to the drive-in experience; the rest struck me as pandering to the fanboys, albeit before the word existed. Those faults were not enough to keep me away from Madness!, however, nor should they to you. —Rod Lott

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