Short films rarely get their due, and getting an audience is rarer still. Any opportunity to sit down with a set of shorts that made a splash in the festival circuit is an opportunity worth taking. If arterial spray and laughter are your thing, Hellarious is a chance worth taking.
The compilation contains seven short films, each a horror
comedy. There’s no framing device or theme, simply a collection of sometimes
bawdy, once in a long while sweet, mostly viscous horror. There are a lot of
fluids here.
Like an automatic door to hell, James Feeney’s Killer
Kart opens things. His creeping camera sets a fun tone for an absurd “ordinary
item” monster movie (a la Rubber). An inspired score by Daniel Hildreth,
Christine Rodriguez and Ray Bouchard matches the mayhem nicely.
Robert Boocheck’s charming Horrific—a tale of mutant
varmints, hula hoop porn and besotted tidy whities—lands laughs thanks to Mike
Nelson’s semi-heroic central performance. Likewise the Deathgasm-esque Death
Metal offers a highly enjoyable and sometimes morally questionable
bloodbath with the most delightful practical effects.
A sweet authenticity drives Bitten, Sarah K. Reimers’s
romantic, dog-loving upending of the werewolf tale. (Who’s a good boy? Iggy is!
Iggy’s a good boy!) If you can take your eyes off that adorable dog, you’ll
notice two tenderly funny performances by Francine Torres and Michael Curran.
Director Jason Tostevin, who also compiled the films, helms two of the shorts in the program, both co-written with Randall Greenland. ‘Til Death offers a post-mortem comeuppance tale boasting several strong performances. Born Again, though, is one of the compilation’s two highest points.
Six and a half minutes with the worst Satanists ever exposes you to a really beautifully filmed subversion of expectations. Slyly comical performances top to bottom entertain, but Greenland is a laugh riot in a starring role.
The collection’s second high peak comes thanks to Clarissa Jacobson and J.M. Logan’s sloppy concoction, Lunch Ladies. This is a delirious fantasy about underdogs rising to the challenge and making their dreams come true—becoming personal chefs to “the Depper,” Johnny Depp. Donna Pieroni and Mary Manofsky deliver consistent laughs in a film that almost makes a person want to love Johnny Depp again.
Variety, laughs, mayhem, blood spatter, romance, cheerleader pot pie—Hellarious is a tasty treat of bite sized horror.
Some facial prosthetics and a crap ton of makeup give Jessica Chastain the physical features of Tammy Faye Bakker, but it’s the way Chastain embodies Bakker’s sympathetic garishness that ultimately keeps your eyes on The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
Tammy Faye LaValley met Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) at Minnesota’s North Central Bible College in the early 1960s, but both had to drop out when they got married. Taking their endlessly upbeat sermonizing on the road, they developed a mix of song, scripture and puppet shows that was a perfect fit for television.
After launching The 700 Club for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, Jim and Tammy set out to build their own empire in 1974 with the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club. The show’s massive success led to an entire PTL TV network and then to Heritage USA, a Christian-themed theme park and retreat in South Carolina.
And then, of course, it all crashed in the late 1980s, under a wave of sex scandal, bankruptcy, and Jim’s conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges.
Taking inspiration from the 2000 documentary also titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye, director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, Hello My Name Is Doris) and writer Abe Sylvia (TV’s Nurse Jackie and The Affair) make this an unabashedly sympathetic portrait. And while capitalizing on Chastain’s excellence is entirely understandable, it comes at the expense of developing some other major players (Garfield’s Bakker, Vincent D’Onofrio as Jerry Falwell) that could have deepened the overall context.
Only the great Cherry Jones, as Tammy Faye’s mother Rachel, is given the space for nuance, and it is this mother-daughter dynamic that gives the film its heart.
Though the Tammy Faye persona is outwardly cartoonish, Chastain shows us a woman driven to make others feel the love that she did not; a wife unafraid to fight for her seat at the table; and a Christian committed to loving, helping and forgiving. An advocate for the Gay community in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Tammy Faye also championed social programs for the poor and even brought the subject of penile implants to Christian TV.
And all of those revelations make the moments when Showalter’s tone flirts with patronization all the more curious. Late in the film, Tammy Faye admits to “loving the camera” and a producer simply asks, “Why?” Though it lands as the moment Showalter and Sylvia have been building toward, they ultimately move past it as a frustrating afterthought.
If the goal here was to spotlight an award-worthy lead performance in an entertaining hat tip to Tammy Faye, well then mission accomplished.
But the frequent use of real news broadcasts and headlines – paired with an early look at the strategy behind Republican Jesus – make us eager for a broader context, one that The Eyes of Tammy Faye misses by a false eyelash.
Hidden away at a family cabin, Sam (Jenny Lester) has plans to work on her dissertation when she’s interrupted by her brother, Eli (Britt Michael Gordon), who shows up to check on her. It’s obvious from the beginning Sam is using her dissertation as an excuse to hide. In the midst of a rape trial, Sam mentions to Eli she might have dropped the charges against her rapist. Eli’s reaction is to call Sam’s group of friends to the cabin to stage an intervention disguised as a Friendsgiving celebration.
Written by Lester, and directed by
Amy Northup, What She Said takes a hard look at the far-reaching
devastation of rape.
Sam’s life is in chaos following her assault and the ongoing trial. When her friends, including sister (Paige Berkovitz) and sister-in-law (Juliana Jurenas), show up to help convince her to go through with the trail, Sam is angry and reluctant to accept their interference. Into the midst of this chaotic situation, friend Ruthy (Lucas Calzada) arrives, surprised to find the cabin full of people.
The friend relationships play the biggest role in the movie. Each character has their own way of dealing with what happened to Sam. Some of these characters are more fleshed out than others, but even the characters with more depth at times fall into stereotype.
Because he’s an outsider to the group, Ruthy asks questions that help us understand the character dynamic within Sam’s group. These scenes provide heavy-handed context rather than letting the character interactions speak to the larger relationships.
Ruthy also advocates for Sam when her friends and family don’t, or can’t, understand her choices. This is where the character is best utilized, reminding those who want to help Sam that the best way they can to that is to let her make her own decisions. However, his quips at the end of arguments make you wonder why the others don’t throw him out.
What She Said is not a perfect film, but it tackles a serious issue in both unexpected and important ways. How a family reacts can often leave a woman feeling further disempowered (this is best exemplified in a scene with Sam’s mom), but it also highlights the importance of a support group free of judgment. Sam opens up to Ruthy because he provides that kind of support. It’s a lesson worth learning.
Horror filmmakers have long focused their preoccupations with mortality o the act of death itself, perhaps what happens afterward. But there are those whose real worry is quite the opposite – rather than leaving a beautiful young corpse, it’s the idea of the long, slow death of aging. Here are our favorite movies on the horrors of aging – but first, a little PSA on a movie of our own!
Obstacle Corpse
We also used our latest episode to announce our own movie!
After she gets an invite to a mysterious pro-am obstacle course race, unprepared teen Sunny enters with her goofy best friend, Ezra, in a last-chance shot at proving herself to her survivalist dad. But when bloody bedlam breaks out and the pros start murdering their “plus-ones,” Sunny must finally find her killer instinct before she and Ezra end up coming in dead last.
Please help us reach the finish line and support a woman-led, smart horror comedy!
A fear of aging hangs over this film and story, but not simply of impending death but of the ravages of sin, guilt and shame. Due to some magical mystery, the beautiful young man never ages, although a painting of him not only shows his true age, it shows every ugly thing he’s ever done. As Gray stalks London indulging in debauchery, treachery and all things foul, his painting grows more and more grotesque.
We knew there would be a Dorian Gray somewhere in this list, but we’d originally planned to go with Oliver Parker’s 2009 film Dorian Gray starring Ben Barnes, Colin Firth and Rebecca Hall, mainly because it’s far more of a horror film than the 1945 film from Albert Lewin.
But upon rewatch, there was something so gorgeously unsettling in the way this film avoids specificity. That, and George Sanders, who was better at playing a cad than any actor of his time. Clearly the onscreen personification of source writer Oscar Wilde, Sanders gets all the best lines and delivers the film’s unnerving themes perfectly.
4. Daughters of Darkness (1971)
It was also pretty clear that we’d have to choose a vampire film for the list, as those tales are so very often about the lengths a body will go to fend off aging. It could have been Fright Night, it almost was The Hunger, but in the end we are lured by our favorite Countess Bathory tale, Harry Kümel’s languid classic Daughters of Darkness.
It’s a film about indulgence and drowsy lustfulness, and Delphine Seyrig is perfection as the Countess who drains others to keep her youth.
Seyrig’s performance lends the villain a tragic loveliness that makes her the most endearing figure in the film. Everybody else feels mildly unpleasant, a sinister bunch who seem to be hiding things. The husband, in particular, is a suspicious figure, and a bit peculiar. Kind of a dick, really – and Bathory, for one, has no time for dicks.
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Even though we just talked about this one when we covered librarians in horror, we couldn’t leave it off this list. The Ray Bradbury classic, penned for the screen by the author and directed by Jack Clayton (The Innocents), the movie uses notalgia to its benefit because its very purpose is to seduce those longing for their lost youth.
The movie’s greatest strength, though, is the casting of its true hero, Jason Robards as librarian Charles Halloway, and its villain, Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Dark. (The entire adult cast is amazing, actually.) These two veterans go toe to toe in one scene, where Mr. Dark’s evil and Halloway’s goodness are on full display. It’s the kind of scene talented actors must crave, and these to make the most of it.
2. The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)
Horror filmmakers look at aging in a very specific way. Brilliant movies like Natalie Erika James’sRelic and Bryan Bertino’s The Dark and the Wicked saw it through the eyes of those who are watching their own ugly future.
Adam Robitel’s Alzheimer’s horror does the same. Its horror is less muted, though, and it works as well as it does because of a fantastic performance from Jill Larson as the aging, vulnerable, terrifying Deborah.
Anne Ramsay is nearly her equal, playing Deborah’s daughter who allows a student documentary crew in to make a movie aimed at raising awareness around the disease. What they find is a sometimes clunky but never ineffective metaphor for watching the person who has loved you more than anyone on earth turn into a demon.
1. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
Who wants to see Bruce Campbell play Elvis Presley?! We do.
Director Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) brings Joe R. Lansdale’s short story to the screen to depict the horror and sadness of aging, although its done with such humor that the film is impossible not to love.
Elvis never died, he swapped places with an impersonator who died and ever since then he’s been stuck living someone else’s life. And now he’s been stuck in this low-rent old folks home where his only real friend is a guy who believes he’s JFK (Ossie Davis). Obviously, when they realize that the recent spate of patient deaths is due to a mummy sucking the life from people through their assholes, who’d believe these knuckleheads?
The script is great and Coscarelli knows exactly how to make the most of budgetary limitations. The entire cast soars, but Campbell and Davis have such incredible chemistry that the film delivers not just laughs, message, and some scares but genuine tenderness.
Famous actors often don’t get to choose how the public views them and their careers. A lucky few can bounce between genres – keeping audiences on their toes. More often than not, actors become associated with one kind of film and rarely escape that shadow.
In director Harold Trompetero’s new crime drama Dark Blood, John Leguizamo gets to shake free of his comedic and action past, and deliver one of the best performances of his storied career.
After killing the man he believes molested and killed his son, Misael (Leguizamo of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and John Wick) has just arrived to prison. The blood is still fresh on his hands and clothes when the guards assault him for the first time and throw him into solitary confinement. Misael begins to acclimate to the dangerous life behind bars. Continued assaults from the guards become an almost daily routine, and even other inmates put Misael in their crosshairs.
Prison movies are almost uniformly bleak. These films offer glimpses into humanity at its absolute worst. Dark Blood is no different in its depiction of how morality breaks down behind bars. There’s a code inmates and guards live by, but it’s all wrapped up in bloodshed and despair. Even at a scant 82 minutes, the film paints a vivid picture of the world within these dangerous walls.
Dark Blood takes the subject matter and its characters seriously, but there’s no desire here to be something as deep as Midnight Express. There’s a griminess to the violence that wouldn’t feel out of place in grindhouse movies of the 1970s.
Leguizamo has made a good career playing 2nd or 3rd banana in many of his projects. These were not especially complex films with deep characters, but Leguizamo was good in them. In Dark Blood, Leguizamo gives a near career-best performance. Leguizamo wisely leans into his inherent likeability to help craft Misael as a mild-mannered but passionate man. There’s a simmering rage to Misael that bubbles right below the surface for the entire film.
Dark Blood isn’t the next Shawshank Redemption, but what it is is an expertly made film that walks the fine line between drama and exploitation.
You know how sometimes in an obstacle race everyone starts trying to kill you? Sunny sure does.
Hope Needs Your Help to Make Her Feature Debut!
We all want more good horror comedies. And we want more women-led films. Here’s your chance to have both. Join us in bringing Hope Madden’s debut feature film, the hilarious dasher-slasher Obstacle Corpse, to the big screen. Contribute, and you’ll help Hope make her dreams a reality, be part of a close-knit team making a difference in genre film, and get a smart horror comedy with laughs and kills all the way to the finish line.
A Story to Die For …
Obstacle Corpse is the tale of lovably cranky teen Sunny and her quest to prove her mettle to her dad (and, ultimately, herself) in an obstacle course race that goes totally f*cking insane. Like, The Warriors meets Saw insane. It’s muddy. It’s bloody. It puts the laugh in slaughter. And it’s surprisingly sweet and uplifting … in an off-kilter way.
… and a Creator Worth Supporting
Hope Madden is a celebrated writer, director, film critic, indie film champion and half of the film brand Maddwolf (along with George Wolf). She’s been preparing all her life to write and direct her debut feature film. Now, she’s ready to take all she’s learned writing optioned screenplays, directing award-winning short films and dissecting horror movies on the critically-acclaimed Fright Club podcast, and create a gut-busting horror comedy with heart (and plenty of other organs). All she needs to do it is … you!
The Synopsis
Raised in a rah-rah survivalist family, Sunny was always more into books than backpacking as a clan. But she’s tired of disappointing her old man and getting his beard trimmings for Christmas every year (don’t ask). So she sets out to prove herself once and for all in the invite-only Guts and Glory obstacle course race, where she and her goofball friend Ezra will run alongside some past winners and hopefully show Whitey his daughter can take care of herself.
But all is not as it seems, and soon Sunny realizes she and Ezra are in waaay over their heads, having stumbled into a Most Dangerous Game situation put on by some rich Illuminati wanna-bes. As murderous maniacs begin slaughtering the other “plus-ones” on the course’s twisted obstacles, Sunny must finally spark her survival instinct, or she, Ezra and all the other prey will be coming in — you guessed it — dead last.
With Your Help, We’re Ready to Run
We’ve already been working tirelessly for a year to make sure Obstacle Corpse will be made and that you’ll be proud of it. We’ve invested our own money to seed the production. The script is written, revised and locked. We’ve identified and secured locations. We have a talented above-the-line team with feature-producing experience already in place. We’ve lined up in-kind trades for essentials to reduce cost. We’ve even had initial discussions with distributors.
Now, to make Obstacle Corpse a reality, we need your help. We’re seeking participation from the genre film family totaling $30,000 to directly support production and post-production:
Cast, including a face familiar to horror fans
Crew, including investing in Columbus-based positions
Special effects
Obstacle construction
Editing, sound design and color correction
Deliverables for distributor
No film production is risk-free, but we’ve done everything we can to give ourselves the very best shot of finishing, delivering and distributing Obstacle Corpse. Our intent is to make this film, whether fully funded or not. The level of scale we can achieve, and the degree to which we can bring Hope’s full vision to life? That’s what you get to control!
Rewards Movie Fans Will Love
Because we’re filmmakers and crowdfunding supporters too, we took a different tack on perks. Our goal is to engage and reward the community we love while ensuring most contributions pass through directly to the cost of the film — instead of getting diverted to pay for expensive tchotchke. So we’ve designed the perks for Obstacle Corpse to create memories, insider experiences, a sense of membership and ownership, and even the chance to kick-start your own filmmaking career with the help of our expert team.
On Your Mark. Get Set. Give!
Ready to join the race team and help make Obstacle Corpse? Here’s how to run your leg of the course. First, give what you can and enjoy the sweet perks of being part of the OC family. Next, follow us on social to hear about every development. And finally, share this campaign and brag about your good taste on every channel.
The runaway train wreck that was The Tiger King made Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin into instant celebrities, and overnight, it seemed everyone in America was taking sides.
Retired Ohio cop Tim Harrison kept his focus on the cats, and The Conservation Game takes us inside his relentless but cool-headed mission to expose the shadowy dealings of the animal exploitation trade.
Harrison grew up enthralled by Marlon Perkins on Wild Kingdom, and then by Jack Hanna’s animal exploits on TV. For a time, Harrison even wanted to follow in Hanna’s footsteps. But he was already growing disenchanted with “reality TV mindset” of the talk show animal segments when a visit to an exotic animals auction changed the course of his life.
Wisely, director Michael Webber takes an approach that is the polar opposite of The Tiger King. Though the Baskins make an appearance and Joe Exotic’s threats to Carole’s life are referenced, Webber makes all that mess a logical and organic part of a bigger picture that is well-reasoned and far from sensationalized.
Harrison and his passionate team set out to expose the dirty secrets of the animal expert personalities, and the hidden network of breeders keeping them supplied with cute baby “ambassador cats.”
But what happens when the babies grow up? Where are these “sanctuaries” the hosts talk about on TV?
Harrison puts those questions to wildlife personalities including Jerod Miller, Dave Salmoni, Boone Smith and Grant Kemmerer, and their answers are peppered with evasion, condescension and and even veiled threats.
“Just because you haven’t found them doesn’t mean they disappeared,” one of them argues. “It means you need to learn how to find them better.”
Webber makes a quick cut to the online sleuth of Harrison’s team who deadpans, “Challenge accepted.”
Outside of a few re-enactments of Harrison’s youth, the film trades style for a more guerrilla approach. But the hidden-camera footage rivals both Blackfish and The Cove for sheer bullseye effectiveness. It’s gut-wrenching, heartbreaking and downright infuriating, with Webber employing well-placed edits that call out apparent lies with speed and precision.
I’ve lived in Columbus, Ohio for almost forty years, and much like Harrison, I’ve always regarded our zoo as a national treasure and Hanna as a local hero. Full disclosure: I’ve been to events that enabled me to take photos with these types of ambassador cats.
And because Hanna is the biggest name involved here, the charges against him and the Columbus Zoo land with the most shocking and disappointing force.
Webber is able to include the news of Hanna’s retirement and dementia diagnosis, as well as the Columbus Zoo’s recent decision to reverse course and formally endorse passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act championed by Harrison, Baskin, and scores of other zoos and animal rights activists.
What prompted that specific change is left up to us to decide, but Harrison is much more direct about the changes needed to end the exploitation of ambassador animals.
Webber uses the journey of one committed man to make the message relatable, relying on the power of what he finds to become universal. Will this film fuel the outrage that arose after the revelations in Blackfish and The Cove?
That’s up to us as well. The Conversation Game may be a little more rough around the edges, but its case is nearly as closed.
The damaged man seeking redemption — it may be the most
cinematic concept, or certainly among the most frequently conjured by
filmmakers. When Paul Schrader is on his game, no one tells this story better.
Schrader’s game in The Card Counter is poker, mainly.
But if he tells the redemption story differently than others, you should see
what he does with a gambling picture.
Oscar Isaac and his enviable hair play William Tell, gambler.
Where this film differs from others treading this territory is that, rather
than being a man of a somewhat self-destructive bent drawn to the adrenaline,
anxiety and thrill of the lifestyle, William is comforted by its mundane
routine. When you play the way William plays, gambling is tidy. It is clean. It
is predictable.
William learned to count cards — and to appreciate routine —
in prison.
His routine is shaken up, as routines must be, by two people.
La Linda (Tiffany Haddish) wants to find William a financial backer, put him on
a circuit, see him win big. Cirk “with a C” (Tye Sheridan) wants more from him.
The precision and power in Schrader’s writing come as no surprise, but as a director, he wields images with more unique impact here. There are three different worlds in The Card Counter: prison, casinos, haunted past. Each has its own color scheme, style and mood. The haunted past takes on a nightmarish look via fisheye lens, creating a landscape that’s part first-person shooter, part hell.
Schrader’s on point with visual storytelling throughout, even
though he relies on voiceover narration from the opening shot. Voiceover
narration is rarely done well. It’s often, perhaps usually, a narrative cheat,
a lazy device used to tell us something a stronger writer could convey
visually. Not when Schrader does it. We learned that in 1976 when he wrote Taxi
Driver, and he proves it again here.
It helps that Isaac is a profound talent and essentially
flawless in this role. He is the essential Schrader protagonist, a man desperate
for relief from an inner torment through repression, redemption or
obliteration.
It’s at least the 4th performance of Isaac’s career worthy of Oscar’s attention, which means the Academy will probably deny that recognition again. But you shouldn’t. You should go see The Card Counter.
Yes, Language Lessons is a “Zoom call” movie. But don’t let that keep you from dialing in, or you’ll miss a completely charming two-hander that has plenty to say, with and without subtitles.
Natalie Morales directs from a script she co-wrote with Mark Duplass, one that finds Adam (Duplass) waking up to an unexpected gift: Spanish lessons with an online tutor named Cariño (Morales).
Adam, who’s living a privileged life in Oakland with husband Will (Desean Terry), is already pretty good at Spanish, but revisiting the language reminds him of his days before wealth, which helps to ease his liberal guilt.
Cuban native Cariño came to the U.S. as a child, but now lives a less than privileged life teaching Spanish from her home in Costa Rica.
The duo’s script upends us by dropping a major bomb in the first act, and then settles in to a sweetly touching rumination on the need for cultivating human connections – regardless of the obstacles.
Morales, a veteran actress who only expands on the directing promise she showed with the wonderfully smart teen sex romp Plan B earlier this year, divides the film via classroom appropriate headers ranging from “Immersion” to “Context,” and “Extra Credit” to “Fluency.”
And, of course, these titles also apply to the budding friendship of Adam and Cariño. They laugh, and cry, make assumptions and then push each other away, and the improvisational nature of the two terrific performances is consistently anchored with personality and authenticity. As these two grow to care deeply about each other, it becomes nearly effortless to care about them.
Adam’s sexual identity takes the rom out of this com early, and the film is better for it. The fact that he’s extremely wealthy is all the flirting we need with narrative convenience, leaving Morales and Duplass more room to expand on what the film is really getting at.
Because while we’ve come to associate Zoom meetings with lockdown, the film itself steers clear of it.
And though Language Lessons may have all the markings of a pandemic production, it’s not a “pandemic” film. These two souls are worlds apart due to circumstance rather than quarantine. But they crave to enrich their own lives through sharing them with someone else, and end up giving us a poignant reminder to make more friends and fewer excuses.
