It’s
Halloween this month. Horror blog time I reckon.
So,
obviously I won’t finish the review, but I have been inspired to think about
this genre I love.
People are always
saying there’s no originality in horror any more. That its golden days are long
behind us and that truly iconic villains such as Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger
and Jason Voorhees are a thing of the past.
Sometimes
these people have a point. Major studios are certainly playing it safe most of
the time, but I feel too many people are a little afraid to dig deeper. Take a
chance on some of the little seen, direct to dvd or independent fare out there.
There’s a whole host of terrifying boogeymen waiting to be discovered. Don’t
believe me? Well allow me to enlighten you.
All of the
following bad guys have appeared in films released over the last 10 years.
While not all of them feature in great films, they have elevated those films
through their sheer creepiness or bloody awesomeitude (it’s my blog, I can make
up words if I want)
Let’s start
in an obvious place, shall we?
Leslie Vernon
(Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon,
2006)
As much as
these blogs have become a bit of an ongoing love letter to Scott Glosserman’s
fantastic deconstruction of the slasher film, I cannot ignore it’s fantastic
lead.
The titular
Leslie (played brilliantly by Nathan Baesal) is a marvellous creation. When
depicted ‘out of character’ Leslie is likeable, enthusiastic and earnest.
But when it
comes to his big night, Leslie is an entirely different beast. A cold and
ruthless psychopath with his own carefully plotted ‘backstory’, Leslie is
terrifying.
A lot of
credit for this undoubtedly goes to his design (the childlike, blank mask is
particularly unsettling, while the scarecrow-like garb and use of a sickle just
add to this), but let’s not play down Baesal’s work in the role or the gorgeous
camera work during his rampage at the abandoned farmhouse and orchard in Glen
Echo, Maryland.
If the team
behind the first film were to all get back on the same page, Leslie’s
inevitable return and take on deconstructing horror franchise sequels would be
all too welcome here at the House of Horrors.
So here’s
the massive pain in all this — the team ARE all on the same page and DO want to
do the sequel. But they can’t get the funding.
As I previously covered here on this blog, they even set up a kickstarter page to
get this film made, they’re so desperate to get it done. Sadly it was unsuccessful.
So where
does it stand now?
They are
still working at getting the film off the ground but it has been very quiet re:
progress for some time.
Will we
ever see what happens after Leslie’s post-credits ‘resurrection’ in the morgue?
Who knows.
At least
this isn’t the case for the next fictional boogeyman on my list…
Jacob Goodnight
(See No Evil, 2006; See No Evil 2, 2014)
When 2006’s
See No Evil was announced, I don’t
think many people held particularly high hopes for it. It was a micro-budgeted slasher
film, produced by WWE wrestling’s own studio, starring a wrestler and some
budding tv actors/actresses, and directed by a man with a lot of music videos
and soft-p0rn titles on his CV.
This could
have been an absolute car crash.
So imagine
my surprise when I watched this back-to-basics bit of popcorn horror and found
myself caught up in its bleak little story.
As
implausibly good looking young offenders were put through the wringer on the
screen, the real star of the piece was Monday Night Raw’s own Kane, Glen
Jacobs.
Much like
Tyler Mane in Rob Zombie’s Halloween,
Jacobs as Goodnight is a walking special effect. A real beast of a man, billed
as 7ft tall and 23 stone, Jacobs doesn’t have to do much more than glare to
frighten people. So it was a pleasant surprise to see him actually do much
more!
However you
feel about wrestling and the men that do it, they are entertainers and have
decent acting ability and athleticism. And Jacobs proves to be up among the
best of those to take the switch from the squared circle to silver screen.
Furthermore,
the character had a suitably grim and twisted story, a penchant for
plucking out his victims’ eyes, plus Jacobs used his hulking frame and a
meathook on a chain to devastatingly gory effect to make Goodnight a memorable
villain.
And I wasn’t
the only one impressed. When WWE Studios announced it was planning to release a sequel (due out later this month), it was able to attract top scream queens
Danielle Harris and Katharine Isabelle as well as the critically acclaimed
Soska sisters to direct. This looks like one to watch, and if it does well as
it should, surely Jacob Goodnight will be appearing on the screen again in the
future.
Doll Boy
(Doll Boy, 2010; Circus of the Dead, 2014)
Speaking of
slasher villains appearing onscreen soon, only this past week I discovered
‘Bloody’ Bill Pon’s brilliant short, DollBoy. Essentially a slasher film pared down to a lean mean 27 minutes (plus
two completely jaw-dropping trailers… ESPECIALLY that second one that I refuse
to spoil, it needs to be seen to be believed!), it follows the plight of
several people kidnapped by the horrible Noodledome the clown. This group are
dragged from Noodledome’s yellow van, then promptly thrown into an abandoned
West Texas Mexican fleamarket that has become home to Doll Boy.
A very big
man in childish attire with a creepy mask and sledgehammer as his weapon of
choice (making him a smasher instead of a slasher!), the silent Doll Boy stalks
his victims through his labyrinth-like home. The building adds to the
creepiness, it’s full of eerie toys, a record player blasting out old-time
songs, a projector screening cartoons and the physical remains of Doll Boy’s
previous depravities.
I’d say
that is about it, but Doll Boy is so
much more than the sum of its parts. The atmosphere is incredibly unsettling
while the unique look and horrific intensity of Doll Boy (as played by the
imposing Sergio Gracida) make him a sterling villain.
Bloody Bill
clearly impressed the right people with this effort as he is all set to release
Circus of the Dead in the coming
months. Once again featuring Noodledome as well as an equally grotesque group
of killer clowns, it will also feature a confirmed appearance by Doll Boy
himself. Here’s hoping this means the big, bad, baby-faced brute will be
appearing in his own feature-length effort soon.
For those
looking to see Doll Boy doing his thing in the meantime, the short (plus some
very cool merchandise), is available to buy here. You will NOT regret it!
‘Craig’
(Creep, 2004)
I’ve got a
couple of confessions to make here.
1)
Creep was finished and first screened a little over 10
years ago. But as it didn’t receive a wide-release until early 2005, I feel
comfortable with including it here.
2)
The film itself, is actually not very good. The director, Christopher Smith, has gone on to give us the surprisingly funny and very, very
dark Severance and the quite excellent Triangle, but here it doesn’t quite come
together. I don’t think this is anything to do with his film-making so much as
the story being told – and the fact that most of the characters in this film
are massive wankers. Especially Franka Potente, the ‘heroine’.
So, with
that in mind, let me explain why I’m including this film on this list.
First, I
can’t help but love the setting. I travel on the London Underground on a daily
basis (on the Northern Line no less, the same line on which Creep was filmed)
and seeing the dark, dirty old tunnels that crisscross under the city used in a
horror film makes it all a little more personal for me.
OK, the
idea that somebody could fall asleep on a tube platform and A) not wake up when
a train rumbled through and B) then end up locked inside the station as nobody
checked the platforms before closing up, is pretty far-fetched (although I did
once get off a tube into a closed station).
Second, the
villain is great. A grotty and horrible cross between Gollum and a bald rat,
Sean Harris (under a lot of prosthetics) bosses the role.
A deformed,
mentally ill, cannibalistic hermit, ‘Craig’s’ name comes from a dirty old
hospital wristband he wears. We see that he captures and stores people in the sewage
system near Charing Cross Station, and has something of an affinity for rats.
In fact, he is seen to feed them with any leftover body parts of his victims.
The
character’s origin is strongly hinted at yet never spelled out. We discover
a mysterious ‘Surgery Site 12’ underground, filled with cots and jars of
foetuses. Pictures on the walls show a mysterious doctor and what looks like a
deformed boy.
Furthermore,
during the film’s most disturbing scene, Craig brutally murders a young woman
in a horrifying imitation of an abortion. He follows surgical procedure prior
to this, including the donning of gloves and robes and even places a (broken)
anaesthetic mask over his victim’s face. Clearly he’s seen all this before
somewhere…
Can I
recommend this film? Well, us horror fans are used to picking the gems from the
sewage, as it were, and this film boasts a fair few gems. Harris’s Craig is
really unnerving; the Tube as a backdrop to worse horror than the usual
slack-jawed gathering of tourists at the bottom of an escalator; some quite
visceral gore effects and the chance to see a Holby City regular play an
attempted rapist that gets chopped to bits.
That has to
be worth 85 minutes of your time on a dull and rainy Sunday?
Sam
(Trick ‘r Treat, 2007)
Remember
those fantastic portmanteau horror films of yesteryear? Amicus’ awesome 1960s-70s
efforts such as Vault of Horrors, Asylum or Tales from the Crypt, or the Stephen King-penned Creepshow and its sequel from the 80s?
The
long-delayed Trick ‘r Treat took a page from the book of these old school
classics and gave us a fantastic and well-shot film that really captures the
feel of Halloween (to such a degree that I now watch it every October!)
With a top
cast including Tru Blood’s Sookie
Stackhouse, Anna Paquin; the fantastic Dylan Baker and THE Brian Cox, it may
come as a surprise to hear that the real star of the film is actually a masked
child without a line of dialogue.
Cameoing in
each story of the film, Sam (played by Quinn Lord) is the tiny, cute yet creepy
mascot of the film. The iconic little demon in orange pyjamas and a Burlap sack
mask first appeared in director Michael Dougherty’s animated short Season’s Greetings, and has since
appeared in short films Halfway to
Halloween, Father’s Day, Sam’s Going Back To School and Making Friends.
The reason
I (and many others) love Sam, is because he’s so different to everybody else on
this list. He’s small but scary, with a very cool design and a compelling air
of mystery along with a great gimmick — he violently enforces the ‘rules’ of
Halloween. He’s clearly a popular little chap, there is plenty of merchandise
out there and it sells very well indeed.
Sam is due
to return in a long awaited sequel, but first Michael Dougherty is given us
another seasonal scare with Krampus,
a film about Santa’s decidedly less jolly chum. Until then, I THOROUGHLY
recommend adding Trick ‘r Treat to
your to-watch list this Halloween.
The Collector
(The Collector, 2009; The Collection, 2012)
From
frivolous fun to something altogether grimier — now let’s talk about The Collector. Written as a prequel to
the Saw films, when the studio turned it down Marcus Dunston and Patrick Melton
tinkered with their script… and The
Collector was born.
Very much a
reaction to Saw and Hostel’s torture-p0rn, the first film saw
a burglar trapped in the middle of house booby trapped by a psychotic killer. A
spooky, glinting eyed Collector stalked the house, bloodily disposing of the
family who lived there before revealing exactly what it is that he collects
during the film's shocking climax. Played by Juan Fernandez in this film, the sadistic
Collector was different to slasher villains in that he was less physically
imposing (his lean limbs reminded me of an oversized spider) but intelligent
and cunning.
The first
film did well enough financially that a sequel soon followed. Upping the ante
quite significantly, the second film decided to fly in the face of any realism
that might have slipped into the first (there wasn’t much to be honest) and
just went mental. From the opening scene in which a nightclub is turned into a
giant meat-grinder, The Collection is
more fun and FAR bloodier. With Randall Archer under The Collector’s gimp mask
this time, he added a different type of physicality to the role: he is bigger
and seems more of your typical slasher villain, albeit one prepared to open
fire on his victims with a machine gun or send trained attack dogs (or drug
addled brainwashed humans) to run them down. To what purpose? Well, that revelation takes
The Collector to a whole new level of bonkers!
What makes
this villain stand out from the crowd (other than those very, very creepy eyes)
is his unique M.O. The traps, the cunning, the hand-to-hand combat prowess —
it’s like dealing with some kind of Special Forces soldier gone right off the
deep end. Combine that with his ‘art’ and the Collector is a real monster.
A third
film, titled The Collected has been
penned, but following somewhat underwhelming box office takings from The
Collection, that seems at risk.
I hope it
is made, but until then The Collector
and The Collection tell a story of
their own that is well worth your time.
Let me know
your thoughts on my picks so far below, plus feel free to send me any
suggestions for those you think I may have overlooked.
If you haven’t already, do please check out and like the Hickey’s House of Horrors Facebook page, which you can find here. Alternatively, follow me on twitter: Hickey@HHouseofHorrors. It gives you a nice quick link to any new posts on this blog, plus regular news updates from around the web. I check the internet so you don’t have to!
Until next time, I hope you enjoyed your stay.
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