Author: capcom

October Horrorshow: Lockdown Tower, aka La Tour

Horror films are more than just about fear. They run the gamut of distressing emotions. Besides fear there is its more frantic cousin, panic. There is also disgust, grief, loneliness, and, of course, dread. Going beyond fear into these other realms of negative emotional experience can do a lot to rob the fun from a horror flick, but they also introduce realism and honesty into stories that, otherwise, have little more depth than a carnival funhouse. Today’s film dips far into a reservoir of hopelessness, so much so that the experience will linger in a viewer’s mind after the credits roll. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Lockdown Tower, aka La Tour”

October Horrorshow: The Beast Within

In 1964, newlyweds from Jackson, Mississippi, Eli and Caroline MacCleary (Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch), are traveling through lonely Nioba County on a dark night during their honeymoon. A flat tire leaves their car beached on the side of the road, and Eli has to walk to a gas station to get a tow. Caroline stays behind, with no more than a locked car door and a dog to protect her. Out of the woods lumbers a humanoid monster that kills the dog and attacks Caroline. While she lays unconscious in the mud and dead leaves, the monster rapes her, and wanders off again before Eli and the tow truck driver return. They discover her, bruised and battered, carry her to the truck, and drive off in search of aid. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Beast Within”

October Horrorshow: When Evil Lurks, aka Cuando acecha la maldad

From writer/director Demián Rugna comes When Evil Lurks, a kind of dystopian tale, wherein the suffocating threat to humanity is not its own devices, but rather demonic possession.

One night, brothers Pedro and Jimi (Ezequiel Rodríguez and Demián Salomón), hear gunshots in the woods near the family farm in rural Argentina. When they investigate the next morning, they find the mutilated remains of a ‘cleaner,’ a person employed by the government to carry out occult executions of ‘rottens,’ or individuals possessed by demons.

Rottens are an ever-present problem in this film’s universe. Apparently, the charlatanism of organized religion was finally too much for the lord, and churches lost their power to battle evil. Now possession is something of an infectious disease that can spread through a community. The cleaner that Pedro and Jimi found in the woods was on the way to kill a rotten in a neighboring farm. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: When Evil Lurks, aka Cuando acecha la maldad”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner, aka Like Father, Like Son

Lounge crooner and self-styled King of Palm Springs, Duke Mitchell, was proud of his Italian heritage. After the Godfather flicks came out, Duke had some thoughts about the movies, and about how Italian-Americans are stereotyped in this country. So, he scrimped and saved, mortgaged and hustled, and made his very own mafia flick that was violent, preachy, cheap, and played into every single one of those negative stereotypes.

Written, produced, directed by, starring, and featuring songs sung by Duke Mitchell, Massacre Mafia Style tells the story of Mimi Miceli (Mitchell, credited under his birth name, Dominico Miceli). When Mimi was a teenager, his father, crime boss Don Mimi (Lorenzo Dardado), was deported back to Sicily, and the younger Mimi accompanied him. Now, he’s a grown man and a widower with a young son. The siren call of Los Angeles is ringing in his ears, so Mimi decides to head back to the States and make a name for himself as a gangster. He recruits childhood friend Jolly Rizzo (Vic Caesar), and the two begin their ascent by kidnapping and ransoming Chucky Tripoli (Louis Zito), who is the big guy in LA. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner, aka Like Father, Like Son”

Shitty Movie Sundays: 4GOT10, aka The Good, the Bad, and the Dead

Kudos to screenwriter Sean Ryan. The writer, whose oeuvre is full of projects found in DVD bargain bins, penned a very interesting story in the awkwardly-titled 4GOT10. Why it wasn’t titled Forgotten, I don’t know.

The movie takes many notes from Cormac McCarthy, along with various other neo-noir flicks of the era, but cribbing is no sin. Many, many low-budget action and thriller movies have passed before these eyes, and most of those don’t have as interesting a plot. Ryan does make the mistake of piling on a twist on top of a twist at the end, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Without spoiling anything, it’s such a bad storytelling decision that it had to have come from a producer. Only someone counting beans could see an emotional punch to the gut and then discard it thirty seconds later for bland, crowd pleasing chaff. Anyway… Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: 4GOT10, aka The Good, the Bad, and the Dead”