Evil Dead(2013)

You’d have to think the vast majority of naysayers vs. Uruguayan newcomer Fede Alvarez’s wincingly gruesome spin on the low budget 1981 Raimi cult classic are frustrated fanboys of “The Chin” who didn’t stick around past the credits for his tidy cameo,  or perhaps the ultra-brutal tongue-bifurcating,  self-amputations by electric carving knife, and close ups of syringe needles being pulled out of eye sockets played mostly straight was too close to the spirit of the original ( to which there are a lot of subtle tributes within ) for some, and not close enough to the Stooge-esque slapstick Raimi turned to in the subsequent sequels. I thought it was a pretty respectable success on most levels,  with some genuine moments of eerie atmosphere and harrowing doom purveyed by an able cast and led by a stand out performance by Jane Levy. Gorehounds should also be at full mast at the sheer volume of spilled blood here, rivaling even Peter Jackson’s splattery zomedy, Dead Alive(1992). Behind all the blood-letting is an admirably loathsome display of practical special effects, the likes, I’m pretty sure the major releases haven’t seen in ages, executed with a hint of well-paced comedy in the form of Mercedes McCambridge-flavored demonic profanity, and who doesn’t enjoy that, I ask you. All-in-all, an enjoyable ride for horror fans to embark upon, for sure, considering the number of recent genre remakes that bite the bag.  Keep remaking horror movies like this, and you may be onto something, Hollywood. Three WOPS. 


“We are sooo splitting up, tongue!”

"The Dead"(2010)d/The Ford Brothers

Let the record show that tonight, another matchless evening of proto-metal, high grade disorientation smoke, and new horror flicks for the kid over here, I stand partially corrected about a movie sub-genre for probably the first time since Leonard Nimoy first fell in love with ugly polyester blazers and turtlenecks.Partially, I say, because despite going into the Ford 's foray into flesh-eating ghouls-on-film blind, and still zombie dyspepsic from Romero's last impecunious harvesting off an already depleted reanimated teat, with expectations lower than Prince Randian's ballbag, the British siblings still managed to deliver a pretty standard zed word effort that offers nothing particularly innovative about the subject, and yet somehow entertained the hell outta me, just the same.The filmmakers display solid technical prowess in soaking their frame with atmosphere and dread while showcasing the savage beauty of the dark continent of Africa, where voodoo, zombies, and the like seem right at home, though they wisely choose to avoid ever hanging the living dead plague within on the black arts, or any other hastily slung together expository roots, knowing full well that genius often lies in simplicity.Partially, I say, because despite such a pleasant suprise as 'The Dead' turned out be, I stand adamantly behind my prior assessment that the cinematic zombie needs reinterment for a period of no less than a decade or two(you guys can also hold off until after I'm unanimated myself, too, I won't complain, really.), unless we're talking about a movie like this...

Jam goes on the toast, not the chest.It isn't Vicks' Vapor Rub, ferchrissakes.
Lt. Brian Murphy(Rob Freeman) is a U.S. military engineer looking to reunite with his family, aboard the last evac flight out of an African continent that has become overrun with re-animated, flesh-eating corpses.When it fails to take off properly, the plane is forced to crash land just off the coast, with Murphy being one of two uninjured survivors in a mad scramble for the cover of the treeline as a beachload of ghouls shamblingly converge upon them, while an immobilized remnant is devoured alive.It's soon apparent that travelling on foot across the scorching plains is a near impossibility; though the silent zombies shuffle along aimlessly baby step by baby step, they are relentless in their pursuit of human food, which can be set upon by a magnitude of white-eyed flesh-eaters in a moment's time, as Murphy learns, getting himself surrounded, and ultimately saved by Sgt. Dembele(Prince David Osei), an African soldier who has absconded from his unit to rescue his wife and young son from a nearby village, only to find the aftermath of a bloodbath: his wife, dying, has been partially eaten by the zombies and his son has hitched a ride aboard a military transport headed north.Murphy and Dembele agree to travel together to the northern base in a hastily repaired Jeep, increasing their infinitessimal chances of survival with numbers.

"Medical aid? We're here for the free Philadelphia Yankees t-shirts."
The odds progressively stack on top of the unlikely duo, sacrificing much of their canteen water to keep the rickety radiator from overheating, and ultimately barrelling breakneck into a shuffling corpse along the way, leaving them no choice but to make the rest of the perilous journey on foot amidst a silent, growing army that's seemingly only moments away from wherever they choose to rest and collect themselves.After a lengthy, expository stay at a proud village determined to battle back the mortifying menaces, Murphy is forced to go it alone when Dembele gets himself bitten, chewed, and swallowed by a roving pack of ghouls one night, when neither man manages to awaken to the makeshift tin can/string/rock zombie alert they've set up around the encampment.Murphy close calls his way through miles of treacherous terrain, often packed with patrols of pustulent zombies that he's forced to hide in ditches and up trees from, dodging a gory demise one last time when soldiers from the nearby base give some surrounding shamblers a lead lunch.Murphy is united with Dembele's son and gives his father's pendant to him before they turn to face the approaching shadow of a zombie horde in the African sun.Credits.
 
"I found the problem!My femur is puncturing the gas tank..."
Apart from directing commericals and appearing in Pervirella(2002) as  the Statue of Liberty(!), Howard J. has also directed Mainline Run(1994) and 2000's Distant Shadow, while Jon served as cinematographer on both productions.Freeman, who portrayed Ryan's son in Saving Private Ryan(1998), also appeared on shows like X-Files and Millenium, while scoring another genre credit in the made-for-tv Pumpkinhead:Blood Feud(2007).Osei also turns in an effective performance here as Sgt. Dembele, and I look forward to seeing him in more things in the future.I like that the Fords' zombies move like the classic Romero variant rather than the Boyle sprinting variety, but more closely resemble an update on Fulci's, circa Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), to me.That the tension remains thicker than a lung fulla Sour Diesel throughout a slow zombie production at this stage of the supersaturated living dead ballgame is just one more tribute to the filmmakers' blatant abilities, and let's not forget they did it without relying on a silly titular prefix like "Continent of..." or some such shit, eh.I hope one or both of them choose to remain in the genre game for at least a few more movies, though it's apparent they're destined for bigger things in the industry, for sure.One or two KNB-style zombie chowdowns away from perfection, methinks.Still, it rates :
 
If you let this chap with the Farrah smile shamble into your personal space, you're a Ghana...errr, goner.Sorry.
 

"La Novia Ensangrentada"(1972)d/Vicente Aranda

By 1972, genre filmmakers weren't only making your father's vampire movies anymore, with gothic scenery familiarly chewed by hammy actors with penciled-in widow's peaks and corny accents and women who were little more than busty fang candy or sexy bat-bait.Nowhere was this more obvious than in Spain, where writer/director Aranda had just wrapped this off-beat, surprisingly sexy, uber-violent update on the Sheridan LeFanu vampire short story, Carmilla.Don't let the exploitative international title, The Blood Spattered Bride, ruin your experience with false promise of shlocky fun(despite free 'up-chuck cups' given out at the box office for squeamish and faint-of-heart theatergoers!), this is some potent hardcore imagery here, hauntingly set against a dreary Spanish countryside, and further intensified by the striking beauty of female leads,  Maribel Martin and Alexandra Bastedo, who more than resembled a Spaniard version of Blondie front-chick, Debbie Harry in her prime, at certain angles and under certain lighting to me here, and that's always hot.The original Anchor Bay disc eventually replaced the hulking Gorgon clamshell VHS in my collection(always hard to say goodbye to those, ain't it?), and though it's a bare bones release apart from the uncut widescreen print and the excellent "Berserk at the Bijou" combo trailer, it's managed to satiate my desire to revisit all the graphic genital-hacking, shotgunned nuts, blood-sipping, man-slashing mayhem whenever it arises, which is pretty frequently, to be honest.One of the more timely, thought-provoking vampire movies of the early seventies, fer sure, and one of my favorites.Onward.

Heyyy, this is even better than that 1853 half-dime love token I unearthed with my metal detector last summer.
We meet a delicious young newlywed named Susan(Maribel Martin) and her husband(Simón Andreu) as they stop off at a hotel for the night during a honeymoon roadtrip to his affluent family's sizeable estate in the thickly wooded countryside.As he gathers and checks their bags, she fantasizes about being strangled and roughly taken right on the marriage bed by a stocking-headed rapist, and is unwilling to consumate their vows or evenspend the night there, by the time he gets upstairs.At the manor, her husband becomes little more than a cartoonishly exaggerated libido, constantly pawing his young bride, and pouting like a toddler in the toy aisle when she manages to resist his advances, even locking herself in a pigeon coop and sending the key off into the wild blue yonder around one of the bird's necks, to keep the wolf-in-groovy-euro-turtleneck at bay.Through his creepy young cousin Carol(Maria-Rosa Rodriguez ), Susan soon learns of her husband's family history and their long-standing hatred of the women, as evidenced by the removal of all female portraits from the estate walls as ordered by Grandfather, and stemming from backward ring-wearing newlywed Mircalla murdering her husband on their wedding night, so the legend goes, and probably a major factor in the excising by knife of the striking blonde's grillpiece from her painting in the basement.Susan's mixed feelings about her octo-partner aren't helped much when he begins to show a cruel, sadistic side(though young Carol comments that Susan likes when he hurts her!), and after discovering Mircalla's defaced painting, she begins to frequently dream about her, and butchering her own husband with the woman's dagger, even removing his blood-pouring jewels afterward.When she awakens hovering over her sleeping spouse, clutching the very same blade from her subconscious, the line between fantasy and reality blur, and she begins to question her own sanity.

Doth Lady Mircalla(Alexandra Bastedo) require the G.P.S. estimate for the center of Stefano's goatee, perhaps?
With Susan's husband engulfed in a hopeless game of keepaway with the dream dagger, he decides to bury it at the beach, where he spots a human hand protruding from the sand nearby, and after clearing it all away, he's shocked to discover Carmilla(Alexandra Bastedo) buried naked save for a snorkel and some swim goggles.Back at the estate, Susan immediately recognizes Carmilla as the woman from her brutal dreams and pencil sketches, but her husband is too diplomatic to listen to her warnings, and by then, it's already too late.A physician trails the women to some dilapidated ruins nearby one night and is shocked by their animalistic cries of passion and the psychedelically sapphic blood drinking that follows.She later demolishes a roll top desk to score the aforementioned dagger for to slash said medical practitioner to pieces, and repeatedly shotgun's Carol's father in the face and groin when he finds Carmilla caught by the ankle in one of his animal traps.Eventually, Susan's husband musters up the sac himself to venture out to the ruins, where he's met by Carol, who's already been bitten on the neck, and relates that the women will come back, no matter what he does.She kneels on the ground and parts her hair for him, and he obliges by blowing the back of her head off with his rifle.He then discovers Carmilla/Mircalla's coffin, where he finds both women sleeping nude like the homicidal lesbian bookends that they are.He closes the lid and pumps the corpse box full o' lead before carving into one of Mircalla's lifeless breasts with a dagger.A newspaper headline declares that a "man cuts out three women's hearts".

"What's the big idea?!I was still using those genitals!"
Apart from a lot of Spanish television work, Martin has also appeared in genre fare like The House that Screamed(1969), and 1973's Bell From Hell.Bastedo, who appeared opposite Sean Connery in 1967 Bond flick, Casino Royale, also turned up in 1975's The Ghoul next to Peter Cushing and John Hurt, as well as a recurring character in Jennifer Saunders' comedy series, Absolutely Fabulous, and even a cameo as a Gotham socialite in Batman Begins(2005).You'll find Andreu in everything from Luciano Ercoli's La morte cammina con i tacchi alti(1971), 1979 white fu flop, Jaguar Lives! with Joe Lewis, Donald Pleasance, and Christopher Lee, and even 2003's Beyond Re-Animator.Aranda remains one of Spain's most renowned filmmakers to this day, tackling complex social issues and filling his lens with love, eroticism, and sadism, frequent favorite themes of his.Novia certainly covers all of those with an artistic flair, breathtaking cinematography, women that are beautiful to witness but dangerous to know, and stylized ultraviolence enough for any gorehounds in the audience.On the scale, it merits three Big ones, and comes recommended.Check it out for yourselves!

"Make way, the meat for this sappho-sammy just cracked your crusted coffin lid, you dames, you!"

"Day of the Dead"(1985)d/George A. Romero

I have to admit that I'm a little perplexed at the fact that we've never covered tonight's review here at the Wop, remembering how thoroughly amped I was the first time I caught it, with a couple of buddies in my old man's '79 Impala on a double-bill with C.H.U.D.(1984) at the legendary West Side Drive-In that night in 1985.Having been a hardcore Romero-ite for something like eight years up to that point, I was salivating like Pavlov's dog at the concept of a wrap to his wildly successful zombie trilogy(remember when it was merely a 'trilogy', folks?), and thus, denying Chevy-entry to any backseat-inclined brawds that might have had amorous designs on this momentous event.They'd have to wait patiently for a less pivotal double feature, like Gremlins/Ghoulies the following weekend(keep your eyes peeled for that particular ripper of a yarn in future posts), if they expected to get busted out by the kid himself, on the spacious bucket seats of his father's schooner-on-wheels.Gore guru Tom Savini provides the finger-chompin', gut-splayin', Saturn Award-winning splatter effects(his first coming on 'DOTD') that splash across the screen in bloody spurts between Romero's ambitiously scripted mouth offs and philosophical whimsy that make up the film's dialogue, in attempt to shed some light on communication breakdown and the ensuing anarchy born out of it, perhaps.Forced to scale back his original epic vision when the budget was bissected to three and a half million from seven, Romero's Day also faced a limited theatrical run in the States and opened to mixed reviews before grossing nearly thirty million dollars on the international market and earning lucrative bank in video sales across the globe since.Make no mistakes, this is classic horror we're looking upon...

"Whoa! Shouldn'ta dropped both those blotters before lunch..."
Sarah(Lori Cardille) awakens from a nightmare in the day of the dead, as the only female in a subterranean enclave of scientists and military hopelessly surrounded on all sides by ravenous zombies in the Everglades as they desperately race towards a cure for the zombification process and search the east coast for any potential survivors in a helicopter, as helmed by John(Terry Alexander), a self-centered patois-spitting pilot and his partner, McDermott, a brandy-swilling radio expert.Also along for the ride is Sarah's romantic interest, Miguel(Tony DiLeo, Jr.), a girly soldier in the throes of a mental breakdown.Touching down in Ft Meyers only turns up a shambling army of the undead, and a perturbed alligator.Underground, things aren't much sexier, as Major Cooper has just passed on, leaving the impatient skeptic Rhodes(Joe Pilato) in charge of the operation, which is rapidly dissolving into insults and threats when the head scientist, Dr. Logan(Richard Liberty), whom they affectionately refer to as "Frankenstein", fails to show any discernible progress in his experiments with zombie subjects, haphazardly rounded up on a regular basis by Rhodes' men from the surrounding mines.Sarah holds faith that a cure or reversal of the zombification process can be discovered, while Logan sees learned behavior modification for the pus-fucks as the only feasible option, with his star pupil being a zombie named Bub(Sherman Howard), who displays excellent manners for Frankenstein's company, indeed.The reanimated corpse clumsily shaves his dead skin with a razor, goes through the motions of reading a copy of Stephen King Salem's Lot, and even salutes Rhodes, who's disgusted by the whole display, to say the least.

...and a special cameo appearance by Mickey Roarke.
The problem is, Frankenstein's been secretly rewarding Bub's good behavior with a bucketful of soldier meat-treats, which earns him a short, controlled machine gun burst to the belly and a trip to meet his maker.Miguel gets himself bitten on the arm during one round up, managing to get one of Rhodes' men's throats torn out in the process, but Sarah quickly amputates the infected arm, cauterizing the stump with a torch, as Rhodes and co. make the scene at John and McDermott's place just outside the complex, demanding revenge for the increasing number of dead comrades, and resulting in an intense standoff between all parties involved.In the melee Rhodes wastes Fisher(John Amplas) and locks McDermott and Sarah inside one of the zombie corrals, demanding that John flies he and his soldiers off to safety, while an unhinged Miguel sneaks off to let all the zombies surrounding the complex in, getting dined on for his troubles.Meanwhile, Bub has broken free of his restraints, and shambled upon Logan's dead body, causing the ghoul to groan out loud in a burst of emotion, before picking up a gun and setting off on a course of...revenge?John manages to snag a pair of six guns in knocking Rhodes and one of his men unconscious, and he makes off into the darkened mine passages to search for Sarah and McDermott.Quickly trapped by approaching zombies, Rhodes sells his men out while trying to escape himself, and they're rended limb from limb by the rotting hordes, while the commander's path is blocked by a bitter Bub who shows some serious marksmanship for a dead guy in plugging Rhodes with several rounds before he's set upon by the horde who tear him apart."Choke on 'em!" he spits, watching as his innards are pulled out by the hungry ghouls.After Sarah has a repeat nightmare in the race to the chopper, she awakens on a beach where John and his soused buddy are relaxedly fishing from the shore.She crosses another date off on a makeshift calendar...

"Hold still!Do you want that eyelash outta there or not?!!?"
Look for fellow FX men Taso Stavrakis and Greg Nicotero among the military ranks here, both suffering fittingly horrible on-camera deaths at the hands of their pal, Savini, here.What keeps Day outta the running for the title of Romero's apex zombie opus, for me, is the number of irksome personalities amongst the survivors, especially Miguel, and to a lesser degree, the fake Jamaican, John and his comical dipsomaniacal pal, McDermott.Lengthy discourse from the characters as the story progresses doesn't gain them any advocate in me, I'm patiently waiting for the effeminate hispanic to get chowed upon by zombies by the time Dr. Tongue famously shambles in front of Romero's lens in the opening credits, and bummed knowing that the other two make it okay in the end.Don't get me wrong, I highly dug the characters of Sarah, Logan, Fisher, and Rhodes, especially, it was just a strange experience hating on any of George's roles, a first, really, as much as I ended up doing over the years and repeated viewings.And as much personality and realism the zombies and gore effects here exude, I think Day still could have used more of both in the end for that final boost into legend.Still, it remains one of my favorite zombie movies of the era, with much nostalgia enshrouding it's every aspect for me, and for that, it earns a well-deserved three Wop score on the scale; a must-see for every horror fan.

Rhodes(Joe Pilato) gets treated like the Minnesota Vikings did, on any given Sunday last season.

"Seul Contre Tous"(1998)d/Gaspar Noe

Argentinian-born, French-based director Gaspar Noe openly flirts with brilliance in his 1998 feature-length debut, shot in a combination of 16mm and CinemaScope and known internationally as 'I Stand Alone', a skeptical potrait of the futility and inner turmoils that an unemployed French horse butcher, portrayed by Phillipe Nahon, of "Haute Tension" fame, faces over several brutal days.Noe's lens captures a bleak northern French landscape wrought with poverty and desperation, while his abrupt cuts are like cinematic exclamation points for every statement he makes through the cynical, darkly humorous inner monologues of his lead's voice over.Some directors like to give you a punch in the guts while unveiling their vision to you, while others like Noe prefer to stomp you in the balls repeatedly, an especially effective method of purveying emotion.Though it may be all adrenaline rush and nostrils full o'victory when you're the one laying the boot, it's a humbling, reflexive experience when it's your bag getting pulverized, and a skillful artist like Noe gives you a bit of both here, while touching on sensitive issues like class warfare, immigration, incest, foot fetishes, knuckle-driven feticide, filicide, and suicide, and even giving you, the viewer, a William Castle-style warning card right before the shit hits the fan, so you can decide if that pipe cleaner you call a spinal column can handle what he's about to give you or if you're going to have to use that thirty seconds to flee to the concession stand like a weepy little mealy-mouthed girl with skinned knees.

"...I didn't pay ten francs just to get foot-titted, bitch."
Through some voice over narration and a montage of still photographs, we learn of our butcher's(Phillipe Nahon) disconsolate history, having been orphaned and turned out by a priest at an early age before landing in prison after having stabbed an innocent man for raping his autistic daughter, mistaking her first menstrual cycle for foul play, selling his butcher shop to a Muslim, and condemning her to a life in an institution in the same rueful swoop.While on lock down he engages in some man-on-man prison cellie action, and vows to maintain a selective memory of the experience once he's back on the outside.As if that didn't suck a big enough Hefty three-ply full o'dicks,  he inadvertently knocks up a highly unsexy barkeep upon gaining freedom, and is forced to move to the north of France with the expectant bo-hemoth and her mother on the promise that she'll buy him another butcher shop of his very own once they've relocated.Of course, she renegs on her word and sends him out on increasingly embarrassing job interviews, none of which pan out for our anti-hero.He eventually wigs out and wallops the parturient pig's pup-pouch repeatedly into a mitt-induced miscarriage before checking the fuck out like Keith Moon's Rolls in a Holiday Inn pool and getting his ass back to Paris, where his old buddies can help him out in ducking his criminal responsibility and getting back on his feet, while shacked up at the same flophouse where his institutionalized daughter was conceived years earlier.

Trente secondes? Sacre Bleu! Nous allons prendre nos cafés et cigarettes obtenir nos ânes dans le hall et le faire vite!
Of course, all of his former chums are currently more impoverished and destitute than he is, and he's forced to endure more fruitless interviews because of it, as the last of his money is wasted on drinks and junkie whores.His internal monologue becomes increasingly classist and racist, and after being denied work at a slaughterhouse he once did business with, he decides to kill the manager with a handgun he pilfered while fleeing the lethargic anchor he was married to.He plots the bourgeous boss' demise at the local watering hole, but gets kicked out after drunkenly puffing chests with the owner's son.Upon discovery that he's only got three bullets, he assigns each round to their respective recipient, one for the manager, one for his poor daughter, and the last for his own brainbox.After the whole nasty family reunion culminates in the father and daughter having sex in his room after lifting her from the home, him shooting her in the carotid artery and through the brain afterwards when the first bullet doesn't prove fatal quickly enough, finally shooting himself, before revealing that he'd been playing out the whole thing in his head, afterall.Overcome with the emotion of not committing a murder-suicide in a dirty room that he's behind on paying on, he begins to fondle his daughter and contemplates having sex with her her anyway, remarking to himself that the world only condemns their type of love because it is 'too pure'.Roll credits.

You've gone and spilled all the spaghetti sauce onto the shag carpet, you clumsy girl.
Definitely an impressive effort from Noe, and we'll certainly be checking out some of his other films here at the Wop as time passes on.From a technical standpoint, Alone would score one higher, with Noe's beautifully framed shots, dripping with despair, and inventive cuts, but I'm gonna go ahead and rate the film on enjoyability instead, and though I chuckled at some of the internal dialogue and grooved on the sporadic but shocking violence, it could have used a bit more of either or both to achieve glorious four Wop status.Kind of a polished-up, sleeker Combat Shock(1984) vibe going on, and that's not a bad thing to groove on once in a while, really, is it?Still, a depressingly nihilistic, incestuous, xenophobic, hateful, womb-wallopin' good time to be had by the whole effin' family, in my book.My kinda flick.See it, then watch it again once you've picked your mandible off the floor from the first screening.

Cancel 'The Ainsley Harriot Show' on me, will you, you bastards?!!?