The Conjuring – Familiar, But Scary Horror Story

By Steve D. Stones

If you’re familiar with classic haunted house movies such as The Haunting, Burnt Offerings, Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror – The Conjuring may not have anything new to offer. However, director James Wan manages to create a retro 1970s atmosphere without trying to rehash too much of these old classics. There are enough scares in this film to fill an entire mansion.

World renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, are contacted by Carolyn Perron, played by Lili Taylor, to investigate her farmhouse in Harrisville, Road Island. The farmhouse was once the scene of an accused witch named Bathsheba who hanged herself from a tree in the 1863 after having sacrificed her week old child to the devil. Her spirit possesses Perron to try and murder her children.

The first sign that something is wrong with the house comes when the clocks in the house have stopped at 3:07 am - the time the mother hanged herself. The family dog Sadie is also found dead outside the house.  Perron finds bruises on her body, and her children smell a foul odor in their rooms while being touched by something in their beds at night.

The Warrens keep items in their home that come from possessed places they have investigated. The items are blessed by a priest to keep them from becoming active again.

While doing research on the Harrisville farmhouse, the Warrens discover that the property was once over 200 acres and later subdivided and sold. A number of murders and suicides have occurred in homes built on the divided properties.

Ed Warren suggests to the Perron family that the house should have a cleansing - an exorcism. The Catholic Church has to first grant permission to Warren for an exorcism after evidence of a possession is presented. A priest and friend of the Warren’s, father Gordon, tries to push through the request to have the house exorcised.

The Perron family leaves the house to stay in a motel. Carolyn kidnaps two of her children to take them back to the house for a sacrifice. Carolyn’s transformation into a possessed witch is not nearly as effective as Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist, but it still manages to scare the viewer intensely.

Ed Warren performs an exorcism in front of Carolyn as thousands of birds hit the house – a scene straight out of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Carolyn returns to normal.

Many sequences in The Conjuring have a documentary feel to them, as if they are really happening at the moment.  The film manages to scare without any use of extreme violence and gore. The most effective scare is when Loraine sees an illusion of her daughter Judy moving in the water near where Bathsheba hung herself.

The Conjuring cost only 20 million to produce, and has gone on to gross 318 million worldwide – making it one of the highest grossing horror films of all time.  The film is based on a “true story.”

The only “true” aspect of the film may be the characters. They are all based on real life people. The end sequence shows actual photographs of the Perron family and Ed and Lorraine Warren.

For genuine scares and thrills, see The Conjuring. Happy viewing!

The Grand Budapest Hotel – A Visual Treat From Director Wes Anderson

By Steve D. Stones

This delightful film may be Ralph Fiennes’ finest performance since Schindler’s List.  In fact, all the actors involved give an excellent performance. Some big name stars include Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton and Owen Wilson. Director Wes Anderson gives the viewer an eye candy treat with richly colored, visually ornate European environments.

The Grand Budapest Hotel follows the 1932 adventures of the liberally perfumed Gustave H - a concierge - played by Fiennes, and his lobby boy – Zero Moustafa, played by Tony Revolori.  A much older Moustafa tells his story thirty-six years later in 1968 to a young writer while dinning in the hotel.

Gustave attends the reading of a will and inherits a Renaissance painting entitled “Boy With Apple” from a deceased widow and owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel – Madame D. The Madame is one of many lovers of Gustave. Her son Dimitri refuses to give the painting to Gustave, so he steals it from the estate and replaces it with an erotic painting by Egon Schiele. Gustave cherishes the painting because Madame D felt the boy in the painting reminded her of him.

After the reading of the will, Gustave is accused by the military police of murdering Madame D. He states his innocence to the police, but flees the hotel in a strange yet hilarious scene. He is caught and incarcerated. Some of his jail mates plan a break out. The group manages to escape through a laundry chute.

Meanwhile, Dimitri employs Jopling - played by Willem Dafoe, to murder Deputy Kovacs – the executor of Madame D’s estate. Kovacs’ body is found in a museum coffin with four fingers missing. Jopling also murders Serge X – the Hotel butler, and his sister.

Zero’s girlfriend Agatha goes to the hotel to retrieve the “Boy With Apple” painting. Dimitri chases after her, and a gun battle breaks out on the top floor of the hotel. This is one of the funniest scenes in the film because no one seems to be able to wound anyone, and the gun firing occasionally ceases as the characters argue, point fingers and shout at each other.

A second will is found attached to the back of the painting. The will leaves Madame D’s entire estate to Gustave, which includes the Grand Budapest Hotel. He is cleared of her murder. Zero is appointed Gustave’s successor, and marries Agatha.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is full of clever, hilarious dialogue. In one particular scene, Gustave says to Zero after the military police beat them onboard a train - “you see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant . . . oh, f*ck it!” At the reading of Madame D’s will, Dimitri accuses Gustave of having sex with his mother. Gustave’s response is: “I go to bed with all my friends.”

Don’t miss The Grand Budapest Hotel. The film is a well-crafted, cinematic masterpiece. Happy viewing.

Plan9Crunch re-run -- 'Adjust Your Tracking' review

Review by Plan9Crunch co-blogger Doug Gibson

(Last summer we reviewed "Adjust Your Tracking," a documentary on the glory days of VHS, when the film was in the festival circuit. Now that it is out on DVD/VHS, we repeat the review.) There's a scene in "Adjust Your Tracking," the new micro-budget, partially funded by kickstarter.com, film documentary, from fans Levi Peretic and Dan Kinem, where Zack Carlson, former cult film master of Alamo Drafthouse turned Hollywood creative writer, perfectly encapsulates the addictive obsessions of the true VHS film collector. As Zack relates, he and his girlfriend were walking down a business avenue and observed a former video star, now locked and shuttered with the lights off. Zack observed through the window a few score abandoned VHS movies.

He proposed to his wife that he break into the forgotten store and rescue the VHS films. Because he was with a less obsessed companion, Zack's proposed felony was successfully rebuffed. But if he had been walking alone? Well ...

I'll be 50 in a couple in a couple of months and it's been a joy to experience the birth, rise and fall of the VHS era in my lifetime. I can relate to the two-score plus VHS film fans and collectors who relate the glory era of the neighborhood video store. Thirty years ago you could walk into the local video store and ponder the cover art of "Dr. Butcher M.D., Medical Deviate." Yeah, the film was sort of boring, in that ultra slow, ultra gory Italian Fulci-like style, but as one contributor to "Adjust Your Tracking" recalls, just the box art, with the clam shell, was worth it.

There were treasures in the mom and pop video store, courtesy of Wizard Video, Midnight Video and other long-gone labels. "Bloodthirsty Butchers" promised a gorefest with its clamshell, as did "Torture Dungeon." They turned out to be strange tales of dysfunctional families with fake gore. Today, both "Bloodthirsty ..." and "Torture ..." are among the most sought-after VHS horror tapes, commanding well above $100. (Steve Stones and I. co-bloggers, here, snagged "Torture Dungeon" for about $60 a few years ago.

The 1980s video store was really like a treasure hunt, where early John Waters tapes was next to "Smokey and the Bandit," where "Crazy Fat Ethel," "Criminally Insane" and that long forgotten student films tape of Stephen King stories were found close to "Friday the 13th." Other low-budget films made it on the shelves in those days: "The Lords of Magick," "Cain's Cutthroats," "Gallery of Horror," "Wizard of Mars," etc. I recall those days of leaving a large deposit -- the tapes cost $90 then -- since I had no credit card. I even spent $6 bucks or so renting VCR players at times. Before Blockbuster, the locals needed more tapes to fill up the stores' inventory. Cheap distributors flooded the stores with wonderful kitsch. And there was that section in a back room for, ahem, adult tapes.

Today, a VHS horror collector is more happy to find a VHS of "Woodchipper Massacre" than "Halloween." The more obscure, the more bizarre, the more perverse, are the most sought-after. According to the documentary, a very obscure little gorefest called "Tales From the Quadead Zone" is number one on the most-popular list, fetching $600-plus dollars on ebay.

However, as the interviewees remind us, "Quadead," and other 80s gems can sometimes be fetched for as low as $1 to $4 at a thrift store. To the VHS collectors, it's akin to "Indiana Jones" getting his pants dusty searching through boxes and shelves for hours, passing by 98 percent of old VHS and finally finding that gem. ( I digress here to recall my excitement when I came across a 90s VHS, director's cut, of Jack Hill's "Spider Baby," where Lon Chaney Jr.sings the title song.}

The documentary's interviews flow very well, moving through titled subjects and various idiosyncrasies. The collectors almost caress the films as they move among their VHS tapes' shelves. One fellow recreated, in his basement, a 1980s-era video store. The horror section was his favorite, of course. One fan started a VHS horror collectors fan site on Facebook, and it's great to see the group's growth and success lead to a small but well-attended convention on Pennsylvania.

This is a salty documentary. The F word flows freely, snippets of old tapes are gory enough for NC-17 and there's even some gay porn that finds its way into the film. I won't reveal how, but it's a hilarious anecdote. This genre film, playing in festivals around the nation, will please most viewers. VHS fans will love it. I saw it via a review code at Vimeo.com, but I await its future release ... on VHS, naturally.

Bloody Pit of Horror – Beware The Writings of Marquis de Sade!

By Steve D. Stones

The opening credits of Bloody Pit of Horror (1965) (directed by Massimo Pupillo) mention that the film is based on the writings of the Marquis De Sade. A man known as the crimson executioner is taken to a torture chamber of a castle in the 17^th century. As he is placed in an iron maiden to die, he tells his executioners that he will someday come back to life to seek revenge. Sound familiar? Mario Bava’s 1960 masterpiece -“Black Sunday” also employed a similar plot.

A writer of horror novels, a photographer and five beautiful models stop at an old castle after a long day of traveling. The photographer wishes to have a photo shoot in the castle for book covers. The owner of the castle does not like visitors, so he asks the photographer to leave. After discovering the photographer has a group of beautiful women with him, the owner of the castle asks them to stay, but for only one night.

The photographer, writer and crew are particularly interested in the torture chambers below the castle grounds.  They immediately set up shop and begin photographing the women in the torture chamber.

While posing for a series of cheesecake pictures with torture devices, a male model named Perry is accidentally killed. A photograph of the accident reveals a strange shadowy image of a shirtless man with a red mask in the background.

Another model named Suzy is found dead in the iron maiden used to kill the crimson executioner three centuries earlier.  A third model is found stuck in a giant spider web triggered with poison arrows. Most of the crew is killed off one by one.  The crimson executioner tortures some of the girls in the group in his executioner chamber below the castle.

The crimson executioner and owner of the castle are played by muscle man Mickey Hargitay, who was married to Jayne Mansfield at the time. Hargitay had just put the finishing touches on another Italian film – Primitive Love. The newspaper ads for the film claimed “my vengeance needs blood!”

Bloody Pit of Horror was marketed under eight other titles – Castle of Artena, The Red Hangman, The Crimson Executioner, Some Virgins for the Hangman, Virgins for the Hangman, The Scarlet Hangman, The Scarlet Executioner and a Tale of Torture. Did you catch all of that? Happy viewing.