Dear Internet,

I’m sorry that we don’t like the same movies. I’ve let you down. After all that you’ve given me, from the questionably legal pornography, to the gory photos of car crash victims and dead celebrities, to the endless hours spent trolling creationist message boards and acupuncture websites, I’ve done nothing but bring you pain.

And it’s my fault, really. I should have known better. After all, while you were invented decades ago, your most familiar incarnation only developed in the mid-nineties, which makes you about 14 years of age. So, it makes sense that you get huffy when you encounter differing opinions regarding Tim Burton, and don’t know how punctuation works.

But that doesn’t make it okay for me to voice my opinions when they are so obviously wrong. Clearly, I know nothing about film. Sure, I may be a professional critic. But the subtleties of certain films, which behind-the-times dinosaurs like myself might criticize as having the depth of a Souja Boy ringtone, escape me. When it comes to b-movies, which I love, I stupidly don’t conflate ‘fun’ with ‘genius.’ And instead of liking The Nightmare Before Christmas, I apparently spend my time sucking my father’s cock in a trailer park (Seriously? Not liking an animated goth musical makes me gay?)

Internet, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, ruffle your feathers, or make you misspell quite so many things. But I understand why you’re upset. My standard Cult of the Week MO, which is to pick a movie with an undeservedly high imdb user rating and exaggerate my reaction to it, is admittedly deliberately irritating, mainly because nothing pumps up my stats like angry fans. But I didn’t mean to insult you, personally, Internet. Just because you like a bad movie doesn’t mean I think you’re stupid, unless it’s Passion of the Christ. I like plenty of bad movies. I just don’t, you know, shit my pants quite so aggressively when someone disagrees. Of course, you have raised some good questions. What films do I like? (I’d suggest listening to some of our wonderful podcasts for the answer to that.) Why don’t I write about movies I actually enjoy? (I do that in my day job. Here, I do something different.) And instead of answering, I’ve just gotten worse.

But I want to make it up to you, Internet. I couldn’t bear to keep fighting. How could I go on without catching viruses in the seamier parts of 4chan, or keeping up to date with what Perez Hilton thinks of Fergie? So, to make it up to you, I’m officially, and publicly changing my opinions. Your movies are great. Love ‘em. Each and every miserable minute. And my upcoming Cult of the Weeks are going to be nothing but positive. Dark Knight? Totally deserved an Oscar, even if Christian Bale sounds like a Cannibal Corpse roadie trying to be scary. And you know what’s fun? Quoting Pulp Fiction, because you never know when a Simpsons line might fail you at a party. Boondock Saints is now one of the best movies ever made, based solely on the fact that Irish guys showing off their Celtic cross tattoos during slow motion gun-fights is a perfectly acceptable substitute for coherent thought. Fight Club is groundbreaking, not a lengthy music video based on the Spike TV philosophical manifesto. And 300 isn’t an Army recruitment ad for morons. It’s a work of art.

I hope this helps, Internet. I want to be friends. But even if we can’t, I hope you know I still respect you, love you, and quite frankly, need you. Or at least your pornography.

Love,

Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Comic courtesy of www.xkcd.com

Cult Cinema: Volume 12

It’s tough to be straight-edge. By virtue of being drug- and alcohol-free, the whole world thinks you’re some Christian hardcore kid from Boston who only speaks in Minor Threat lyrics. But on the other hand, you do get to picture the whole world as some sort of decadent, liverish imbecile, lounging about in its own sick while giggling moronically at passing shadows and shiny reflections.

In this eternal struggle, we straight-edgers are blessed with mental clarity, rarefied by haughty elitism and unmarred by dignity-sapping Facebook photos of drunken Nickleback sing-alongs. But the bleary-eyed masses have a secret weapon: the drug movie.

There are two main types of drug films. The first is the stoned, peace-and-love, cars-that-run-on-organic-hopes-and-smiles hippie bullshit, like Dazed and Confused, Easy Rider, and every documentary that uses the phrase “quantum theory of possibilities.” Thankfully, while annoying, these films are fairly harmless, primarily because their fans tend to drift into a stupor mid-sentence before saying anything too irritating.

The second variety, the focus of this particular article, is much more dangerous. These films, primed on illegal stimulants, seem to believe that the entire world is not only fascinated by recipes for cooking meth, but is also either suffering for ADD or frequent Grand Mal seizures. The whole point of these movies seems to be to simulate a drug trip, but a remarkably unpleasant one that appears to be the Ludovico technique with a shitty techno soundtrack. The perfect example of these twitchy, narrative nightmares is Spun.

Cult : Methamphysical Society for Research, Development, and Tweaking
Basic Tenets: Pacing, plotting, and narrative aresecondary tothemetallivinginmyteethandwouldn’tthat clockradiolookbetterifitwerei nsideoutandsolderedtoavibratorfuckmymouth
Adherents: High school students trying to look edgy, anyone who has ever been on A&E’s Intervention.
Example: Spun (2002), directed by Jonas Akerlund, written by Will De Los Santos and Creighton Vero

If, and only if, your primary form of entertainment as a child involved paint fumes and the spins, there’s a lot to like in Spun. But for everyone else, including the meth heads this ode to tweaker culture is marketed towards, will likely be confused, annoyed, or just plain angry after this film.

Spun follows Ross (Jason Schwartzman), a speed freak, and his various adventures as he tries to win whatever video game the screenwriters were hallucinating about when they wrote this absolute piece of shit. To say that there is no plot is not accurate; there’s too much plot, all cut together with the subtlety of an Ibiza DJ chopping up coke. Along the way, Ross meets Mickey Rourke, Mena Suvari, Ron Jeremy, Billy Corgan, one of the guys from Yes, and I think maybe China Chow from Frankenfish, but at that point I’d stopped caring. And all this, all this, is not in service to a story, but rather an excuse for director Jonas Akerlund, once a drummer for Bathory, to see if he can out-junkie Trainspotting’s visuals.

The film is all spinning cameras and stupid gags and everything happening at the speed of light with twice the energy. With no dialogue, effort, or attention paid to anything other than giving everyone watching a hangover. It’s enough to make me want to get stoned just to slow everything down.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Cult of the Week: Volume 11

Art imitates life. Until art gets so thoroughly processed by focus groups and marketing departments that it wins an MTV Movie Award. Then, art turns into product, which is imitated by the single-brain-celled form of life that spends a small fortune of its parents’ money texting in random strings of consonants to PunchMuch.

And it’s these creatures that feed off the circle of high school films imitating life imitating art. And what they shit out is what becomes the next film in the cycle.

High school cinema mainly relies on a very simple premise; teen life is entirely driven by social hierarchy and tribal culture. By transforming high school into a cross between The Warriors and Abercrombie and Fitch ads, films like The New Guy and Clueless depend entirely on this compartmentalization of social circles.

Which is, of course, complete and utter bullshit. I have lurked in several high schools while trolling for dates, so I think I know a thing or two about them. 95% of high school students just show up to class, try to surf 4chan in computer class, smoke a little dope behind the Pizza Pizza at lunch, and go home without running some sort of gauntlet of jeering jocks throwing punches. Nor is a new student ever introduced to school midway through the semester, assigned some a buddy/tour guide who scans the cafeteria identifying cliques between reminders to avoid the Mathletes.

Of course, cliques do exist. There are burned out skaters, and guys who think sinking a three-pointer at the buzzer should earn them a blow-job and a fucking crown. But they’re outnumbered by everybody else, despite what Mean Girls would have you believe.

But it’s this kind of nonsense that makes high school a living hell for some people. Hell, if I went to school under the impression that I’d get beaten unconscious if I didn’t like football, I might be a little self-conscious. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, simultaneously created and exploited by 40-year-old screenwriters meeting their deadlines by relying on outdated, oft-repeated tropes. Please, show us again how all a pimply band-nerd needs to do to become a beauty queen is to take off her glasses and let her hair down. And then treat the point guard dating her on a dare as some sort of fucking civil rights hero at the end of the movie, as if inter-clique dating was analogous to miscegenation in 19th century Virginia. Hollywood writers are no longer reflecting reality, they’re inventing it, scripting the various social circles in high school. And if you need further proof of this, take a look at American Teen.

Cult: The Ancient Mystic Order of Homeroom
Basic Tenets: Making friends is impossible if you own neither a muscle car nor an intramural football championship ring.
Adherents: People who need validation for not owning muscle cars and intramural football championship rings; their parents.
Example: American Teen (2008), written and directed by Nanette Burstein

Since Nanette Burnstein’s 2008 film is a documentary, following five teens in their final year of high school in Warsaw, Indiana, it could have been a fascinating look at the student experience. But all it reveals is that teenagers have seen The Breakfast Club too many times. Everything in this film seems to have been massaged to fit the categories and characterizations of previously existing teen comedies. There’s the beautiful but quirky ‘rebel,’ driven by a passion for film and the anti-authoritarian angst of Green Day albums. There’s the spoiled rich girl; Queen Bee of any given Gossip Girl episode. There’s the band geek struggling to find a prom date, the broad-shouldered jock, and the basketball star. And, of course, there’s the scandalous inter-clique romance, a few breakups and cat-fights, and oh so much drama.

What’s irritating about this film is not its characters, who are no more annoying that actually going to high school, but rather how carefully it validates and mirrors standard teen comedies. Add a few snappy one-liners that become dated mid-snark, and American Teen could have easily been scripted by John Hughes after watching a few hours of reality TV. While I won’t presume to suggest that parts of the film were staged (though several critics have), I will take it to task for a construction that aims to make it the 21st century version of Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High book. Ultimately, it has nothing new to offer, other than to suggest that teen comedies have moulded our youth into abominations incapable of social interaction not patterned on L.A. producers’ outdated concept of high school. Which means it should definitely be up for an MTV Movie Award this year.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Cult Cinema: Volume 10

Horror fans are a mysterious, cultish bunch. Or at least, they like to think they are, imagining themselves the vanguard of the underground; Morlocks feeding off pampered, mainstream Eloi dandies with D&G sunglasses and designer perfume. But go to any horror film screening, and see if you’re not surrounded by Blackberry-toting shitheads who got armband tattoos so they look good pounding Redbull & Vodkas at La Boum. Sure, there are the hardcore horror fans, concave chests vainly attempting to fill out Necrophagist t-shirts, keeping the black flame alive on message boards that use crime scene photos as wallpaper. But they’re dwarfed in number by the Friday night date crowd, who wouldn’t dare miss opening night for the latest Rob Zombie movie, provided Fast and Furious isn’t playing somewhere.

And that’s because many horror movies are stupid. Oh, there are many exceptions, to be sure. But for every fantastic script, shot with confidence even on a shoestring budget, there are twenty, thirty, even forty films with nothing to offer by a topless woman getting DP-ed by a pitchfork.

And then, there are the Italians, masters of the horror film in the eyes of underground fans. This is partially true, because no one nation has as good a handle on the visual aesthetics of the horror films as the Italians once did. In the 60s, Mario Bava’s atmospherics led to the adoption of fog as the lead character in any horror film, which probably explained why no one could read the scripts clearly enough to objectively determine their idiocy. A decade later, the films of Lucio Fulci transformed the nature of gore films so much they redefined ‘plot’ to mean ‘loosely connected gore gags interspersed with actors killing time while the director naps.’ Yes, Zombi 2 has a zombie fighting a shark. Brilliant. But the scene is surrounded by Italian women and walking corpses slowly strolling around a tropical island, like Club Med in a leper colony. The Italian horror movie industry had a large role in changing the horror film from nightmarish fantasy to oftentimes mindless drivel punctuated with violent set-pieces.

Cult: Italian Institute of Stupidity Science and Philosophy
Adherents: 17-year-olds who spell cult with a ‘kv,’ bass players in metal bands.
Basic Tenets: Style over substance, provided the style in question takes the form of rhyming couplets from Cannibal Corpse lyrics.
Example: Suspiria (1977), written and directed by Dario Argento

Routinely named among the best horror films ever made, Suspiria certainly is a joy to behold. Provided you’re not listening or thinking, and are amused by flashing primary colours. So, essentially this is a film for deaf magpies and feral children.

The film stars Jessica Harper as Suzy Banyon, an American ballet dancer arriving in Germany to attend a dance academy. Of course, since this is a horror film, the academy itself harbours a horrifying secret. Cannibals? Vampires? Werewolves? No. The best they can come up with is witches, which, provided you weren’t born in Nigeria or home-schooled by evangelicals, haven’t been scary since the 15th century.

Suspiria is a prime example of the Italian approach to filmmaking, which is to string together brilliant scenes with utter nonsense padding out the running time like plaque clogging an artery. A rain of maggots, a room of razor wire, and a horrific murder are masterfully constructed, but everything else is Scooby Doo trying to solve a fairy tale mystery. And the already weak performances by much of the cast (Harper excepted) are dealt killing blows by dubbed dialogue. By horror movie standards, it’s brilliant, but it’s still a film to be watched with the sound off. And through a pair of designer sunglasses.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Cult Cinema: Volume 9

It’s common geek knowledge that Star Trek is a smarter version of Star Wars. However, this should not be the badge of honour that so many Trekkies wear with pride, since Star Wars is essentially what idiot kids dream about when they’ve eaten cotton candy instead of their Ritalin. Here’s the thing: musing on philosophy, ethics, and grander themes of universal morality are not entertainment. They are, at best, university level lectures in one of those disciplines that get you a job interviewing anarchist marching bands for an alt-weekly. At worst, they’re a stoned conversation with an ex-hippie who half-remembers reading A Brief History of Time.

And that’s been the problem with the Cult of Star Trek in the past few decades. For some reason, the adventurous, frontier spirit of the original TV show has been forgotten. In place of karate chops, Cold War paranoia, and murderous aliens, Starfleet has become some sort of bland diplomatic corps that likes to play dress-up, with its members more interested in quoting Moby Dick and facilitating trade negotiations than vaporising interstellar warships and knife fighting. Cerebral, sure, but also fucking boring, unless Henry Kissinger gives you a hard-on.

But yet, Star Trek fans crow on and on about their futuristic paradise, and its eco-friendly, humanist culture, as if it were the natural extension of liberal progressive thinking, rather than a half-baked synthesis of utopian fantasies and old Wired articles. And even though the franchise is ostensibly based in a rational technocratic worldview, it’s still so full of dippy spirituality it just feels like someone brought a laptop to Burning Man. And nowhere is this more apparent than in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Cult: Star Trek Mystic Awareness School
Basic Tenets: Technology will create a paradise, free from disease, strife, and interest of any sort. We’re all going to sit around jerking off to pictures of Marshall McLuhan
Adherents: Hippies with iPhones.
Example: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Directed by William Shatner, and written by David Loughery

This film is a prime example of the heavy-handed spirituality and philosophy that bogged down the franchise for so long. Featuring the now-flabby and grey-skinned cast of the original series, Star Trek V has the Enterprise searching for god at the centre of the galaxy.

After Sybok, a trumped up Vulcan televangelist who resembles Ted Haggard after a night sleeping on a park bench, takes over what appears to be a tired Mos Eisely, Captain Kirk is enlisted to save the hostages. What ends up happening, however, is that Sybok convinces the ship’s crew to buy into his pseudoscientific cocktail of quantum theory and ayahuasca, and takes over the Enterprise.

By the end of this seemingly interminable, rambling film, we’ve all confronted fear (and boredom), and god is revealed to be a giant floating dickhead who lives on a planet that looks like the craggier parts of Arizona. While I certainly appreciate the anti-religious sentiment of the film’s final conclusion, there’s entirely too much spiritual wankery along the way. And, sadly enough, no action to spice any of it up. Ultimately, we’re left with nothing but a whiney diatribe about the nature of the human spirit, which is nothing that can’t be gleaned from community centre seminars on crystal healing. It may be smarter than Star Wars. But it’s a lot more annoying.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Be sure to listen to Part 1 of Sound on Sight’s Star Trek Special here.

Cult Cinema: Volume 8

At their best, horror films hold society up to a funhouse mirror, providing a grotesque yet revealing reflection of cultural concerns, values, and above all, fears. And then there’s torture porn, in which the only insights are gained from peering deep into the vivisected ruins of a woman’s genitals.

The term refers to horror films that revel in the mutilation of their victims, to the expense of all else. It’s a recent phrase, coined around the first wave of Saw sequels, but the history of torture porn is almost as old as horror itself, stretching back to when the first misogynist learned to dress a rape scene up as a plot point.

Of course, the people who enjoy torture porn, from the straight-forward pain worship of Saw to the shiny carnival excess of House of 1000 Corpses, are not the kind of people who are able to defend their tastes. Or even read this article, for that matter. Nor will they be able to tell differentiate between the empty cruelty of torture porn and a horror film, however gory and explicit, with some thought behind it, like the recent extreme horror film Martyrs. But nevertheless, they’ll argue until they’re blue in the face about censorship, quote something from South Park, and then go back to browsing for gore threads on 4chan without a second thought. Though they may take a moment to download Hostel, the quintessential torture porn.

Cult: Blood Worship Doctrine
Basic Tenets: It’s not about themes, emotion, or character; it’s what’s inside that counts. So carve it out with a hacksaw.
Adherents: Internet tough guys, teenage boys, kids who wet the bed and set fire to pets
Example: Hostel (2005), written and directed by Eli Roth

Every once in a while, a horror film comes along that raises the bar. In Hostel’s case, not only is the bar raised, it’s used to sodomize a crying teenage girl. Hostel has got to be one of the most cruelly juvenile films I’ve ever seen, and that’s a lot coming from a guy who has Attack of the Crab Monsters on DVD. This mean-spirited, soulless picture feels like it was made by idiot frat boys for idiot frat boys, complete with nudity, violence, and a complete ignorance of the way anything other than a beer bong works.

Hostel gives us two young American boys, backpacking their way through Europe with a expendable Icelandic sidekick, on the hunt for pussy and drugs. They find both in Slovakia, as well as the titular hostel, which is essentially the gateway to a filthy murder shack for rich business men who love The Most Dangerous Game but refuse to do any running. The first two-thirds of the movie is nothing but boring soft-core titillation, obviously created by someone who’s never been to Europe, but has seen enough Euro Angels Hardball to form an opinion of an entire continent. Then, presumably once the jock audience has blown a load in their $50 sweatpants and lost interest in sex, the final third has a bunch of torture to satisfy the urge to go play Grand Theft Auto.

I’d say this film is xenophobic, but no one even considering seeing this movie would know what that word means, so I’ll just mention that I’ve been to Europe, specifically Slovakia, and the women do not look like leggy supermodels, nor are the men all deformed Deliverance extras. What confuses me most about Hostel is not its ignorance or its stupidity, though I would have expected more from the director of Cabin Fever, but rather how baffling cruel the writing is. It’s not that the macho, violently ignorant main characters are unlikeable; they’re downright horrible. Watching them die is still unpleasant, but in the end you feel grateful that they’ve finally shut up and stopped perpetuating negative stereotypes about American tourists. The whole movie is designed to give us characters we hate, then let us revel in watching them die, transforming the audience into the sick voyeurs the movie ostensibly condemns. If it were a deliberate comment on the torture porn genre, Hostel would be a brilliant film. But sadly, it’s just another bloodsoaked page of Cannibal Corpse lyrics brought to idiot life.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Portions of this review have previously appeared on The 16mm Shrine.

Good comedy is a mix of the familiar, the unexpected, and the shocking. Which is an elaborate way of saying that ending a knock-knock joke with a line about killing a baby is a sure way to get a laugh. Try it some time. At work.

So, it’s no surprise that censorship can stifle humour, imposing archaic, restricting values on a form of entertainment that feeds of the marrow in the broken bones of taboos.

And to a certain degree, this is true. The world would be a duller place without George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words routine, or the drug addled mumbling of Lenny Bruce, which often sounded like a homeless man pretending to have phone sex. And where would comedy be without the racial humour of Chris Rock or Lisa Lampanelli? I know all the guys down at the bunker really appreciate their style.

But when it comes to comedy film, a distinction needs to be made between ‘censorship’ and ‘editing of self-indulgent blathering.’ A confusion between the two is what’s leading to a seemingly endless string of comedy DVD releases with ‘Unrated’ or ‘Uncut’ plastered across the cover.

For some reason, if a comedy doesn’t do well, filmmakers assume that audiences automatically want more of the same, and extend their film by at least an extra 20 minutes.

If a film does poorly, the director leaps to the conclusion that it would have done better if only the studio execs had kept their hands off the final cut, and the DVD is an extra 60 minutes long.

Somehow, this leads to DVDs of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad that run over two hours. Listen, the people who like these types of films have neither the attention span nor the time to spend two hours watching unending gay jokes. Plus, years of soft-drug abuse have ensure they don’t have the lung capacity to laugh for that long without coughing up a ball of hash resin. It’s supposed to be a punchline, not a punch¬waste-a-fucking-week-of-my-time-don’t-you-know-Battlestar-Galactica-is-on-soon.

The most recent offender, and one of the worst, is Judd Apatow’s unrated Knocked Up DVD.

Cult:  The Brotherhood of the Eternal Comedy
Key Tenets: Endless Repetition, Awkward Silences, Similes, Some Sort of Bizarre Mathematical Proof That Declares the Word ‘Balls’ Exponentially More Funny The 800th Time It’s Said
Adherents: People who laugh at their own jokes, Seth Rogan, editors who are paid by the hour.
Example: Knocked Up (2007), written and directed by Judd Apatow

The main problem with this comedy, about a stoned layabout who impregnates a career-minded woman after a one night stand, is that it’s too long to begin with. Already delicately balanced on the tipping point between unhurried storytelling and rambling diatribe, the extra 4 minutes added to the DVD absolutely sinks the film.

I know four minutes doesn’t seem that much, but the movie is padded enough as it is. The film found success with both audiences and critics for its sensitive portrayal of the relationship between Ben Stone, played by Seth Rogan, and Katherine Heigl’s Alison Scott. Believing Ben to be irresponsible and lazy, Alison finds herself unable to commit to him, and their struggle to find their place in each other’s lives is warm, moving, and deeply amusing.

Then there’s a bunch of jokes about cocks, courtesy of Ben’s roommates. And, of course, the never-ending litany of similes, which is a sure sign of a missed editing opportunity. Beards are described as smelling like an old man’s genitals, marriages compared to Everybody Loves Raymond, and defecate described as ‘like a stuffed animal.’ Stop. Just fucking stop. When did comedy become two hours of dirty limericks masquerading as an English lesson example, using ‘like’ or ‘as’? Has no one heard of a metaphor? Why am I watching a movie set up like a stand-up routine composed of jot-notes?

As with many DVD releases of comedies, a decision must be made as to what is essential to the story, and what belongs in the deleted scenes sections. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would like to see the alternate tit jokes that was subbed out in favour of a man doing an impression of a talking vagina. But it has no place in the final cut, unrated or otherwise. Unless it’s a really solid dead baby joke.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Cult Cinema: Volume 6

In the 1980s, author Clive Barker was dubbed the new face of horror. And what a face it was, one that looked like it should be fellating both Lord Byron and Aleister Crowley during a sex magic ritual, all arched eyebrows and smooth cheeks and smoky eyes.

Barker’s 1985 short story collection The Books of Blood was prototypical splatter-punk, hardcore and visceral, which was to horror literature what videos of Ukranian teenagers killing dogs are to YouTube (email me for the link). But what gave his brilliant work a twist was the element of fantasy interwoven with the carnage, soaked in a generous portion of semen smelling of poppers and flavoured lubricant. Barker’s writing is pure decadence, and when he moved into the film world as a director, hopes were high that he would reinvent the cinematic horror genre.

But instead of a re-invention, what we got was Cirque de Soleil with vampires, in the form of Nightbreed. He also made Lord of Illusions which was a film noir about magic where everyone had names that opium-dulled aristocrats would give their snakes in the 1800s.

But though Barker didn’t turn film horror on its head, he did manage to create Hellraiser, on of the most enduring horror film franchises of the 1990s.

Cult: The Barkerians
Basic Tenets: Pleasure and pain are interchangeable, and this should be discussed frequently in a very deep voice with lots of sibilant ‘s’s.
Adherents: Guys at fetish clubs, girls with Cure CDs, people with tattoos of ankhs.
Example: Hellraiser (1987), written and directed by Clive Barker

Hellraiser perfectly exemplifies the sexually charged horror so lustfully pursued by Barkerians. His films, full of twisted sex and inventive violence, attract a peculiar type of horror fan, one unimpressed by vicious high school bullying of films like Saw, but bored of rubbing off to Anne Rice novels and Buffy slashfiction. Instead, they seek stories of sadism, bloody ejaculation, and S&M, the sort of stuff that’s best described when pulling on a nipple ring and sucking air through your teeth.

The film tells the story of Frank Cotton, the type of man who would likely be arrested in Thailand for pederasty, whose quest for ultimate pleasure brings him to a mysterious puzzle box. Inside is a sexually sadistic hell, inhabited by Pinhead and several other pleasure demons dressed like dominatrixes, known as Cenobites.

Cotton dies, but is resurrected in the house of his brother, where he seduces his sister-in-law and menaces his niece, played by Ashley Lawrence.

Though the film is over 20 years old, this first appearance of Pinhead is still an effective chiller. Cotton, who spends much of the film either skinless or as something resembling a crab made of arterial mass, is a horrifying villain, and the Cenobites are truly original creations. And the movie has a sick aura of debauchery around it, a feverish, priapic sexuality that colours everything the yellowish shade of a rotting condom. The perfect mood to bring a smile to the smooth-cheeked new face of horror.

Hellraiser is now available in a special edition Blu-ray from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

Cult Cinema: Volume 5

Quentin Tarantino is every video store clerk’s idol, and every film critic’s nightmare. Venerated by midnight movie buffs and Blockbuster cashiers for his unadulterated love of cult cinema, Tarantino has proved that a film school education is no match for passion, creativity, and kinetic energy.

Unfortunately for film critics, this has inspired every fuck-wit who slings cheap porn and kung-fu movies to make movies, too. And they do. Over and over again, with narratives fractured not by Tarantino’s idiosyncratic logic, but by attention deficit disorder and a screenplay written in misspelled jot notes. Pop culture riffs become masturbatory self-congratulations, odes to forgotten cereal brands and Western TV transformed into long, Dennis Miller-esque monologues footnoted with comic book references. Before you know it, every character in the film is sporting pimp canes, quoting Lee Van Cleef, and wearing vintage Thundercats t-shirts while the director audibly ejaculates off-screen at the force of his own geek-chic.

Thankfully, most of these films never make it far from the shitty pro-sumer DV camera tapes they were shot on, unless it’s to languish on YouTube alongside clips of Japanese girls dancing to Beyoncé songs. But every once and while, one of them shows up on DVD. Even worse, it gets there with “Quentin Tarantino Presents” on the cover.

Such is the case with Larry Bishop’s Hell Ride.

Cult: Academy for Tarantino-Guided Imagery
Adherents: Video store clerks too dumb for David Lynch, Guy Ritchie, teenagers, Quentin Tarantino
Basic Tenets: Talent/Training/Originality unnecessary to filmmaking. Large 80s toy collection and encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Wars trivia sufficient.
Example: Hell Ride (2008), written and directed by Larry Bishop

Now, it must be stated that Hell Ride writer and director Larry Bishop is not a cynical video store clerk. He’s actually the star of many entries in the 60s/70s cycle of b-movie biker films. But judging from this film, which Tarantino produced, he might well be trying to pick up the girl with the nose ring who works at the Blockbuster near Hollywood and Vine.

This story of warring biker gangs follows Pistolero (Bishop), Comanche (Eric Balfour), and The Gent (Michael Madsen), three idiotically named gang members hunting for revenge against a rival gang fronted by Vinnie Jones and his valiant struggle to sound Southern. And if Hell Ride were intended to be a parody of Tarantino films, it would border on brilliance.

The narrative is comically non-linear, an arbitrary stylistic decision that serves no purpose other than to suggest the editor was paid in disassociative anaesthetics. We start at the middle, jump to the beginning, and end up nowhere, entirely too bored to bother reconstructing the plot. Everyone has retro-exploitation movie names, like ‘Billy Wings’ or ‘Dr. Cement,’ easily adaptable to either a porn movie or a white-trash nu-metal band playing the parking lot outside Ozzfest. The dialogue is all gruff, over-wrought catch phrases, like Snake Plissken reading the script from an episode of G.I.Joe. And the performances are stale, tired repeats of prior work, with Madsen and David Carradine, as rival gang leader The Deuce, simply reprising their work from Kill Bill. Even Dennis Hopper shows up, to remind us he was in Easy Rider.

Ultimately, Hell Ride falls into all the same traps as genuine Tarantino films, without any of the redeeming qualities. Though I have no doubt fuck-wits the world over will be inspired nonetheless.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al at www.alkratina.com, or follow him at www.twitter.com/alkratina

Cult Cinema: Volume 4

David Lynch films are a litmus test of intelligence. You don’t have to like them to prove that your cinematic IQ is above the level of a mouth-breather with a Vin Diesel DVD collection. But you do have to realize the films’ artistic merit. And then give lengthy interpretations of their leitmotifs while sitting cross-legged on a porch, drinking a king can of cheap beer and holding court to stoned lesbians you met at a vegan potluck.

So, essentially, your two options when it comes to the David Lynch canon are to be either a shit-head with a brain full of Deuce Bigalow quotes or a pretentious asshole. It’s a tough choice, but what religion is easy? Still, truly worshiping the Philadelphia born auteur is more difficult than most religions. Not only do you have to commit wholeheartedly to films built upon dream-logic and nightmare imagery, but you have to ignore reality itself. While this shouldn’t be to hard for creationists and Pentecostals, for the general population this can be quite difficult.

Lynch’s first film, 1977’s Eraserhead, was a surreal, black and white vision of an infectious, industrial hell, a factory mass-producing misery and syphilis. Blue Velvet (1986) has become a cult classic in its own right, with its bizarre mix of Hardy Boys atmosphere with a depraved drug orgy. And Mulholland Drive (2001), Lynch’s Hollywood film noir, confused audiences with its semi-linear narrative. Nevertheless, he’s beloved by critics, film buffs, and guys trying to lay video store clerks the world over. And rightly so, because the man is a brilliantly charismatic leader of his own film cult.

But if his filmography is an IQ test for cinephiles, then Inland Empire, his most recent release, is the trick question on the exam where you have to count all the triangles in some stupid Escher-like drawing.

Cult: The International Society for Lynchian Consciousness
Adherents: Film students, film students’ long-suffering girlfriends, people who need to justify possessing an entire sheet of blotter acid (“I was gonna watch Wild at Heart!”)
Basic Tenets: Logic is for the weak, cause can go fuck effect
Example: Inland Empire (2006), written and directed by David Lynch

This 2006 film is both the best and worst entry point into Lynch’s work. In one way, it’s ideal, because it synthesises of much of his previous work. Within Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive’s film within a film plays alongside Lost Hightway’s schizophrenic character breaks, accompanied by Blue Velvet’s lounge swing and Twin Peaks’ forever building horror.

But in another, more accurate way, it’s a terrible first Lynch film to watch, because it’s three hours long, makes no sense, and has the video quality of Redtube porn.

Ostensibly, the film is about an actress, played by Laura Dern, who has an affair with her co-star, Mulholland Drive’s Justin Theroux. There also seems to be a Gypsy curse of some kind, a Polish film paralleling the action like a funhouse mirror, and a sitcom cast with rabbits. Also a busload of vaudeville-trained hookers.

Inland Empire is also shot on digital video, and bad digital video at that, rendering it even more of a grueling viewing experience. Normally, Lynch films, as confusing as they may be, at least have the benefit of gorgeous cinematography; here, we’re watching Cops on peyote, if not simply fish-eyed cell phone footage.

Perhaps Lynch’s most difficult film, Inland Empire is certainly the one to watch if you want to challenge your faith in the director. Or simply knock the Deuce Bigalow out of your brain.

- Al Kratina

Visit Al online at www.alkratina.com , or follow him on Twitter.

But the film ended up being an inventive, well-constructed exploration of the tension between fantasy and reality, livened up by humour in just the right places, and a melancholic tone that adds depth without being oppressive. Here’s an interview I did with writer/director Chad Archibald.

Cult Cinema: Volume 3

In the 1950s, a group of French writers revolutionized film criticism with the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. By re-evaluating the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and John Hughes, among others, the critics gave birth to a grand unified ‘auteur theory,’ which positions the director as the ultimate creative force behind a film. This, contrary to all evidence suggesting that films of the 50s were ‘directed’ by turning on the camera and waiting for Elvis to slur something about ‘sweethearts’ and shake his dick at the camera.

Since then, the auteur theory’s focus on thematically linking a director’s oeuvre has allowed every dipshit film buff to trumpet their obscure filmmaker of choice as a forgotten genius. Everyone from Ed Wood to Rob Zombie has been advanced as an auteur, simply because their movies are consistently moronic, as if directed by one of those autistic kids who compulsively rock back and forth and mutter the same math equation over and over.

A director frequently mentioned in this context is William Castle, who has been undergoing somewhat of a critical re-evaluation since the release of the fawning documentary Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007). In the 1950s and 60s, Castle directed or produced a series of low-budget B-movie knock-offs of popular films, many featuring bizarre gimmicks like buzzers attached to theatre seats. Essentially, his films are what results when you let advertising executives make movies: everything becomes a theme park ride with action figure tie-ins and some asshole in a No Fear shirt drinking Mountain Dew, a decade after pre-teens thought that was cool.

The Cult: William Castle
The Flock: Video store clerks with Tarantino fetishes, guys who program retro movie nights
Basic Tenets: Inside every audience member is an young child full of wonder and awe, who happens to have been raised in a fucking box and is impressed by glow-in-the-dark skeletons.
Key Example: Homicidal (1961) – Directed by William Castle. Written by Robb White.

Castle’s most famous film is probably the Vincent Price ‘chiller’ The House on Haunted Hill (1959). But his best film, no doubt, is 1961 Psycho rip-off Homicidal. This is because, as with all ad execs/money grubbing film producers, William Castle had no soul.

He has a sense of humour, to be sure, and an eye for marketing. But this film is shameless, particularly in its transformation of Norman Bates’ Freudian murderer into a trans-gendered psychopath. I’m no fan of political correctness, but even I see the problem with having a post-op RuPaul decapitate old women for 90 minutes in the 1960s. And I have a subscription to the New Frontiersman.

Unfortunately for anyone on a moral high horse, Homicidal is actually an above average film, buoyed by decent performances by Glenn Corbett and Patricia Breslin. For the time period, the level of violence and twisted sexuality makes the film surprisingly subversive, though in the way that leads to hate crimes rather than velvet revolutions.

As for the gimmick, in this case it’s a ‘Fright Break’ that occurs during the climax, when the film stops and theatre patrons were allowed to request a refund if they felt overly terrified. I’m not sure if I’d have taken my money back or not, though I probably could have used the extra cash for an issue of Cahiers du cinéma. Or the New Frontiersman.

- Al Kratina

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The amazing thing about the horror films of Herschell Gordon Lewis is not that they were shocking in 1960s. From what I gather from classic rock radio stations and Partridge Family reruns, vibrantly coloured juice raised eyebrows prior to at least 1975.

No, what’s amazing about films like 1963’s Blood Feast and 1964’s Two Thousand Maniacs is that they’re still shocking. Even in the age of Hostel and Martyrs and the horrific moral atrocities in what Takashi Miike seems to believe are sex scenes, seeing someone fondle loops of intestines like the pottery wheel in Ghost is outrageous.

Don’t believe me? Then head to Fantasia and check out tonight’s world premiere of documentary Herschell Gordon Lewis – The Godfather of Gore, directed by Jimmy Maslon and Basket Case filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, followed by a 35mm print of Blood Feast.

Or, if you’re squeamish, just listen to the interview I did with Lewis, Henenlotter, Maslon and producer Mike Vraney.

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Al Kratina

Religion is a beautiful thing. Provided you’re a Paleolithic savage who needs fairy tales and a lumpy fertility idol in the shape of a BBW centerfold to explain where babies come from. Anyone else still believing in magic and wizards should read a book that wasn’t written before humanity invented paper.

Unless you’re a member of the Cult of Cinema, in which case you’ve come to the right place. Every week, Sound on Sight takes a look at a different saint of the silver screen, or a cinematic genre revered as geek gospel. It’s like going to church at the video store.

This week’s installment: The Church of Campbell, as seen through My Name is Bruce.

Like many religions, the Church of Bruce Campbell is one of self-improvement. Revolving around arguably the most famous B-movie actor of the past thirty years, the church teaches that no matter how large your Firefly fan-fiction library, a lifetime of trolling Internet message boards with stale memes will eventually prepare you with the perfect comeback when rejected by the cute girl standing in line for Watchmen tickets.

Written in snappy patter and one-liners, the gospel of Bruce traces its history back to 1981, and the release of The Evil Dead. The first in a horror trilogy from Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, Campbell’s first film portrayed him as a nerdy but courageous hero, battling his demonically possessed housemates in a remote cabin. By the time the trilogy concluded with 1992’s Army of Darkness, Campbell had transformed into a boorish, caustic ladies man. This hero’s journey is one that all lonely high-school misanthropes hope one day to make, should they avoid being sidetracked by a black trenchcoat and mail-ordered semi-automatic weapons.

Since being canonized as a B-movie saint, Campbell has starred in dozens of low-budget sci-fi and horror films, many of which play off of his macho persona. He’s been immortalized in action figure idols from many of his movies, and been blessed with no less than three starring roles in TV shows (Jack of All Trades, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, and Burn Notice). He’s also written two best-selling books, all while remaining firmly beneath the radar of the mainstream.

But if you’re looking for a way to understand the mythical B-movie hero without having to watch too many of those Sci-Fi Channel movies with spelling mistakes in the TV Guide blurb, look no further than My Name Is Bruce (2007).

Directed by Campbell, and co-produced by Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson, the film stars Bruce Campbell as, essentially, Bruce Campbell. Granted, it’s an exaggerated version of himself, in which much of his time is spent drinking and arguing with transsexual prostitutes, but it captures all the essential qualities of his on-screen personal perfectly.

In the film, Campbell is kidnapped by a rabid fan, in hopes the actor will save his small town from a Chinese war god seemingly weaned on Fu-Manchu novels and those Bugs Bunny WWII cartoons where he fights guys who look like William Hung.

As a film, My Name is Bruce suffers from many of the flaws that beset many low budget films, from shoddy supporting acting to cheap special effects. Even cameo appearances by faces familiar to Evil Dead fans, as well as Sam’s brother Ted Raimi, can’t liven up the film when the pace lags and the tension slackens.

But as a microcosm of Campbell’s heroic journey, as an examination of all the qualities that make the actor a charismatic leader to the B-movie community, the film is near perfect. The wit and sarcasm that Campbell presents in this film is an inspiration to the geek community, and will no doubt help many a nerd find the perfect comeback to handle the harshest of rejections. Provided the Beretta hasn’t come in the mail.

My Name is Bruce is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray

- Al Kratina