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Author: unkle lancifer
Kinder-Flix:: Watch Satan's Triangle!
UNK SEZ:: Howdy Kinder-citizens! If you're a regular reader of Kindertrauma then you have no doubt heard me mention the 1975 television movie SATAN'S TRIANGLE numerous times. It's the first movie that ever truly scared your lil' Unk to the core and it happens to be the main inspiration and catalyst for this site (and perhaps my love of horror)! Someday I'll write an extensive traumafession to give this creepfest its proper due but in the meantime, I just found it in it's entirety on YouTube! Now, SATAN'S TRIANGLE has been particularly hard to track down over the years and who knows how long it will remain on YouTube so I just had to give you all a heads up. If you enjoy television movies from the seventies this is a must see and if you enjoy scary supernatural mind screws it's a must see too. I gotta say, the final moments of this one still hit me right where I live. I'm going to throw the film into the comments section for your convenience and hopefully you'll check it out and be traumatized for life too!
Scissors
Before she snatched the world's attention in BASIC INSTINCT, a young SHARON STONE (DEADLY BLESSING) starred in what has got to be one of the most amazingly bizarre psychological thrillers ever made. I assume that only the lack of availability on DVD can be blamed for 1991's SCISSORS not being an established cult classic. It's just wall-to-wall insanity and if you get past the obscene improbability of it all and relish rather than reject STONE's comical wide-eyed hysterics, it's a mesmerizing midair collision that mutates into a baroque mad tea party. It's so nuts it might make you nuts too.
STONE portrays peril-prone Angie Anderson, a 26-year-old sexually repressed, virginal freelance doll restorer who sleeps on her couch. One day while returning from shopping for a pair of scissors to add to her vast collection, a man with a dubbed voice wearing a long fake red beard tries to rape her in an elevator while calling her a bitch. She stabs him with her scissors and he replies while exiting, "I'll be back!" She meets and is taken in by her neighbors, twin brothers both portrayed by STEVE RAILSBACK. One brother is a neat and presentable soap opera star named Alex and the other is a scruffy longhaired artist confined to a motorized wheelchair.
Angie and Alex soon develop a thing for each other but their love is curbed by her fear of sex, her fear of his creepy brother and her fear of men with long red beards. Her pushy hypnotherapist Dr. Carter (RONNY COX) who is married to an ambitious politician (MICHELLE PHILIPS) is little help with anything besides dredging up Angie's repressed memories of sexual abuse with a pig puppet. Eventually Angie is invited to a doll restoring job interview in an apartment apparently decorated by DARIO ARGENTO and she finds herself trapped there with a dead red bearded man, a scale model of the city, artwork and television screens reflecting her life and a black raven that keeps screeching, "You did it!" From there things get weird…
I caught SCISSORS on late night cable while I was a young pretentious art student and I lapped it up. It was beautiful, the creepy dolls, the pig puppet, the carnival music, (not to mention the age inappropriate virginity) all spoke to me at the time. I returned to it again ten years later when I was a know-it all -video clerk and could not believe how ridiculous the plot was and how over the moon atrocious the acting was. Seeing the film now (it's on Netflix streaming and it looks fucking amazing) as a cynical, shut-in cat herder I have come to the understanding that I was right on both previous accounts. The movie is beautiful and it is wretched and together those two things equal super awesome. I'm now pointing the blame for my affection of SCISSORS directly on Italian horror films. Italian horror films have taught me that something can be supremely entertaining and still not make a lick of sense. Slap some subtitles on this bronco and presto! A masterpiece!
SCISSORS was directed by FRANK DeFELITTA who authored AUDREY ROSE and THE ENTITY and directed the kindertrauma classic DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW. Who would have ever thought he was such a lunatic? Dude is obviously smitten with HITCHCOCK and DePALMA and must have viewed SUSPIRIA at least once. The story may be all over the place throwing MacGuffins and red herrings about like confetti, but it's always compelling and there is always something indescribably peculiar in the air. When STONE goes to grab the doorknob of the space she shall find herself trapped in, she discovers it is squishy rubber and when it falls from her hand it bounces away. It's a moment of simple surreal dread and it's absolutely aces. Once trapped, there are many such dream logic visuals and the use of color and light wonderfully compounds the unnerving effect.
As I more than implied before SCISSORS can easily be taken in as gonzo b-grade camp. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping you from taking it seriously either. I'll leave that up to you. STONE may be embarrassingly amateurish in this, but if you can take your eyes off her you're a bigger man then me. STEVE RAILSBACK plays twins, can I stress that enough? Twin movies are always of interest and I have to say the twin effects, though not DEAD RINGERS caliber, are still pretty impressive.
Anyway if you want to watch a movie that reeks of crazy and is a smidge trashy but is also undeniably easy on the eyes and you're a fan of overdone set pieces and visuals and can ignore giant gaping holes in logic, you have to check out SCISSORS; it's like visiting another planet for 105 minutes. I'm not sure how long SCISSORS is going to be on Netflix streaming so check it out as soon as possible and spread the word (especially to fans of Italian cinema.) Whatever you do though, please don't run while you watch it!
Hatchet 2
As someone who requires a heavy body count in my entertainment diet, I appreciated ADAM GREEN's first HATCHET movie for its direct approach. It didn't have an original bone in it's corpse but at least it was committed to reveling in gore and rejected the sport of leading the viewer on. A cinematic slasher booty-call, the bloody goods were available for the taking if you were willing to forgo anything deep. The objective may have been to provide a loving throwback to classic eighties slasher films, but the end result was more of an echoing of the fun but diluted sequels that followed them. That's not a jab really, I think I'd take a low budget salute to FRIDAY THE 13th PART WHATEVER over the big budget remake any day of the week. If you want to take me on a walk down VHS memory lane you better be willing to get gritty, get bloody and most importantly drop the gloss. HATCHET II is no improvement over GREEN's first trip to the swamp but it may be slightly more worthwhile. Don't thank GREEN for that though, thank DANIELLE HARRIS.
HATCHET II, like any considerate sequel, begins at the exact point the first movie ended but miraculously, through the art of behind the scenes severed relationships, DANIELLE HARRIS replaces TAMARA FELDMAN as the surviving lead. What that means is that if you're looking for an objective review of HATCHET II, you have to go elsewhere on account of I might dig it somewhat on the HARRIS factor alone. Say what you will about GREEN (and I will shortly), but he knows how to throw horror fans a bone or two. There's plenty of pander casting in the film already (TONY TODD, KANE HODDER, TODD HOLLAND et al.) but HARRIS (who was replaced once herself in HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF YOU KNOW WHO) carts around enough heavy duty meta-baggage to keep this sometimes annoying excursion afloat. Besides the fact that I just respect HARRIS for being a non-bimbo scream queen who embraces her horror heritage fully, she's pretty good in this. She's got a more determined aura than usual and even though it's a humorless role once you get a load of what passes for humor in this movie, you'll be thankful. The catharsis she brings to the film's conclusion is a long time coming and is grander than the film itself.
Remember a while back when I was singing the praises of the writing in GREEN's other effort FROZEN? Well, you needn't worry about a repeat of that. I didn't get the humor in this movie at all. It's alienating and crude and I suppose it could be considered another throwback to bygone days, but it's not really broad or winking enough to work as such. I'm thinking a sick goofy tone similar to the SLEEPAWAY CAMP films would have been perfect but there's nothing in HATCHET II nearly as clever. I don't have a particularly sophisticated joke palette, so believe me when I say in that area the film is a lead balloon factory employed by crickets. In other wonky writing news, there's a painfully long and boring assembling the troops scene and frankly, I expect my killer to not be dead a couple more times rather than an 86 minute runtime. I know that's a cliché but I was of the understanding that that was the point of all this. Maniac Crowley's final stomping out works as wish fulfillment if you ever wanted to see Annie topple Michael in ROB ZOMBIE's HALLOWEEN movies, but this venture is already hanging on too many coattails.
I may be asking too little of movies that sometimes my only requirement is to not feel like I've been mugged in an alley when the credits roll but that's where I'm at with HATCHET II. For me, there's a permeating odious glibness that insures I'll never be passionate about it but it earns a certain space of interest just by throwing every possible horror fan hand job against the wall and watching the Pavlovian puppies roll. Some of this stinks to high heaven, but GREEN is clearly making the film that he as a fan would like to see and I commend that; thankfully some of the stuff he wants to see I want to see too; that would be imaginative no holds barred gore and DANIELLE HARRIS. I'd give him a MERCEDES MCNAB star too but the hermaphrodite joke she's required to utter kind of cancels that out. I guess ultimately this sequel is serviceable filler if you're in need of the red stuff. GREEN's FROZEN makes me know better than to write him off completely but you might be better off not thinking of this as a real movie but more as a complacent, shrug-off goof with the bonus of an upgrade in the final girl department.
The Keep
I always think I'm going to enjoy 1983's THE KEEP a little more than I actually do. I have such fond memories of reading F. PAUL WILSON's novel that I forget just how little of it actually properly made it to the screen. At least a good half of MICHAEL MANN's adaptation thoroughly convinces the viewer that they are witnessing something outstanding but where it fails, it fails hard. I'm not sure how much can be blamed on MANN's artistic tunnel vision and how much can be blamed on clumsy studio interference, but THE KEEP is a sometimes extraordinary looking achievement with massive, cavernous, jaw-droppy flaws. I'm rather in awe of the singular mood it achieves marrying gothic, fantasy and borderline sci-fi elements, but the story is not so much lost as blindfolded and assassinated and the acting swings from woodchip bland to absurdly clownish. I even had a sacrilegious thought during my recent viewing of THE KEEP, its rubber-suited monster made me wonder if CGI was such a bad thing after all.
The story finds a bunch of Nazis crashing a castle in Romania and setting up shop. The castle's volunteer custodian warns that staying the night is not advised. The Nazis, being bossy, pooh-pooh all cautions and end up all kinds of dead. We come to find that the massive stone structure is in actuality a prison housing a supernatural force whose nature is unclear. To some it is a vampiric like soul-sucker, to others it may be a protective, vengeful Golem. A mysterious purple-eyed stranger (SCOTT GLENN) shows up who is linked to the entity and a showdown between the two climaxes the tale.
WILSON's book has an expansive, mythic feel and speaks of the danger and temptation of fighting evil with evil that the film, for the most part, ignores. As intimidating as the castle's dark inhabitant may be, there's a seductive quality as well. You understand why someone might be compelled to swallow its untruths in a way absent from the film. I guess what's glaringly AWOL is the human element; the Nazis though well cast (JURGEN PROCHNOW & a young GABRIEL BYRNE) are flat caricatures, GLENN is a zombie and the father daughter team of IAN McKELLEN and ALBERTA WATSON are routinely unconvincing. The film is almost good looking enough to get away with its crater heart but not so gorgeous as to get away with a midstream switch from backstroke to doggie paddle. Multiple viewings help, but a hole is a hole.
THE KEEP has developed cult devotion over the years and I don't blame anyone for being utterly fascinated by this beautiful malfunction/gorgeous mistake. It's currently available on NETFLIX streaming and I recommend anybody who digs highly stylized eighties flicks to give it at least a look-see in its proper ratio as it has never been released on DVD. As a visual journey it succeeds in wowing the eyes and the counterintuitive soundtrack from TANGARINE DREAM is occasionally spellbinding.
I find myself with a bit of a love/hate attraction here. There's something so frustrating about watching this incredibly unique mood develop and then just dissipate before your eyes like smoke. Even though it loses steam and falls apart at the seams (and the monster often looks silly), it's distinctive enough (good luck finding another movie that mashes up German expressionist imagery with XANADU lasers) to be worthwhile. Gee, you know I'm getting frustrated just writing about this movie. Is it OK to appreciate something that fumbles regularly and not be ironic at all about it? I kind of like this movie and it kind of doesn't deserve it and that's the best I can explain it. What I can't explain at all is how MANN was able to milk such a wretched performance from IAN McKELLEN. That is between MIKE and IAN.
NOTE: There is a graphic novel written by F.PAUL WILSON and illustrated by MATTHEW DOW SMITH that visually captures the book without betraying the story and it's a must read if you ask me. It's crisp, clean and ends up as another reminder of what the film could have been. Rumor has it that there is a three hour plus director's cut of this movie in the universe too and I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that I would purchase and watch it the day it came out. I need help. You wanna talk films that deserve a remake? I'd put THE KEEP right on the top of my list.
