We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
SUBSPECIES (1991)
Decades of Communist rule in Romania came to an end in December of 1989 – and just months after the country’s former ruler Nicolae Ceaușescu (and his wife) were executed and democratic reform began, film producer Charles Band decided to start making movies in the country. Director Ted Nicolaou was the test subject sent off to Romania to make the first Full Moon production there, working from a screenplay by Jackson Barr and David Pabian to bring a vampire story called Subspecies to the screen. Because of course when you get a chance to make a movie in the country that houses the Transylvania region, you make a vampire movie. The Romania experiment was a great success, as Nicolaou was able to get some incredible, unique visuals on film. This movie has a look and feel that only would have been possible to achieve by being made in Romania at the specific time when it was filmed. Given the time of year when Subspecies was being filmed, he was also able to capture a terrific fall atmosphere, all while making an awesome horror movie.
Subspecies begins with Phantasm icon Angus Scrimm making a cameo appearance as Vladislav, King of Vampires. He’s only around long enough to drink some blood and get killed, because his banished son Radu (Anders Hove) shows up after hearing that his brother Stefan (Michael Watson), the good son, has been called home to assume power... which will give him access to the Bloodstone, a stone that drips the blood of the saints. As Vladislav’s firstborn, Radu feels the Bloodstone is his birthright. But his father knows that Radu isn’t content to live in peace; he craves evil, and the Bloodstone would give him too much power to spread his evil across the land. Since his father isn’t giving the Bloodstone over to him, Radu kills him and takes it, then sets up residence in Castle Vladislav.
Soon after Radu’s return to Transylvania, American college students Michelle (Laura Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride) arrive to visit their Medieval History classmate Mara (Irina Movila), a Romania native, and to check out the local ruins. While in the area, they befriend Stefan, who claims to be there to catalogue the nocturnal animal life, but we really know he’s a vampire, and catch the attention of Radu while visiting Castle Vladislav. The Americans are also told the local legend that vampires protected the locals from invading Turks long ago. To repay the vampires, the residents allowed them to move into the ruins outside of town – and also gifted them the Bloodstone, acquired directly from the Pope. Michelle also eventually finds out that Radu’s birth was the result of King Vladislav falling under the spell of an evil sorceress who craved an unusual offspring. That’s why Stefan can pass himself off as a regular human, while Radu has more of a Nosferatu type of appearance. That’s also why Radu has the ability to break off his fingers and turn them into little demonic creatures that do his bidding, then regenerate his fingers. These creatures caused a headache for Nicolaou, who at first attempted to bring them to the screen using Romanian extras dressed up in costumes. That didn’t look right, so they were replaced by stop-motion creatures provided by the great David Allen.
Radu intends to turn the college girls into his consorts, and while he sets out to do that Stefan tries to figure out how to destroy his twisted half-brother.
Subspecies was made during the Full Moon glory days when they had a financing and distribution deal with the major studio Paramount, and it happens to be one of the best movies to come out of that era, which brought us many classics: the first five Puppet Master movies, Demonic Toys, Dollman, most of the Trancers sequels, etc. Barr and Pabian crafted an interesting vampire story with a very intriguing mythology, and Anders Hove proved to be the perfect choice to play the Nosferatu-esque Radu, turning the character into a low-key genre icon. Nicolaou didn’t come up with the initial idea, but he clearly realized he had something special here when he was working on it – which is why he returned to write and direct multiple sequels.
If you’re a vampire fan who has been missing out on Subspecies for the last thirty years, it’s highly recommended that you seek it out as soon as possible.
IT'S A WONDERFUL KNIFE (2023)
Separately, Tyler MacIntyre and Michael Kennedy have delivered two of the most popular cult slasher films of recent years – Tragedy Girls and Freaky. Now they have teamed up to bring us It’s a Wonderful Knife, a film that follows the current trend of giving slasher movies a high concept twist. Happy Death Day was a time loop slasher, Totally Killer was a time travel slasher, Freaky was a body swap slasher. This time, we’re getting a movie that asks, “What if It’s a Wonderful Life had a masked killer in it?”
The first sixteen minutes of It’s a Wonderful Knife play like a regular, straightforward slasher. We’re introduced to final girl Winnie Carruthers (played by Jane Widdop), and it’s established that she lives in a small town called Angel Falls, where smarmy real estate business owner Henry Waters (Justin Long) is planning to build a massive mall called Waters Cove. There’s only one house standing in the way of Waters being able to achieve this goal… so when a masked slasher – a character that’s referred to as The Angel, due to their all-white costume – shows up to murder the owner of that home (played, in a very brief appearance by William B. Davis of The X-Files) on Christmas Eve, we can be pretty sure who’s under the mask. That’s not much of a spoiler, because by the end of the first sixteen minutes, after The Angel has claimed more victims, Winnie manages to defeat the slasher and take his mask off. This would have been the end of an average slasher, but in this film we’ve only reached the title sequence.
Then the story jumps ahead to something rarely seen in horror movies (outside of sequels): the aftermath of the horrific events. One year later, things are going well for the Carruthers family, but not for Winnie personally. She’s haunted by the events of the previous Christmas Eve, she’s mourning the loss of her best friend (who was killed by The Angel), she didn’t get into the college she wanted to attend, her boyfriend is cheating on her, her parents – Joel McHale as David and Erin Boyes as Judy – care more about her brother. It’s so bad, Winnie goes outside during an aurora light display and wishes she had never been born.
Wish granted. From that point on, Winnie finds herself in an alternative universe, getting to see what Angel Falls would be like if she didn’t exist. The Angel was never stopped and continues killing. Henry Waters built Waters Cove and became Mayor – and the town is now reminiscent of the alternative Hill Valley seen in Back to the Future Part II. Things are not good with Waters in power, but he still has his devoted followers who have fallen under his spell. With Waters’ dimwitted brother Buck (Sean Depner) now Sheriff, she can’t count on the authorities to stop The Angel… and since she never existed, she can’t convince her parents to take her in. The only support she gets comes from her aunt Gale (genre regular Katharine Isabelle) and the awkward, bullied girl everyone calls Weirdo, but whose name is actually Bernie, played by Jess McLeod. Winnie and Bernie have barely interacted at all before this, but as “the weirdo” tries to help Winnie figure out how to get back to her own reality – and avoid getting killed by The Angel along the way – the two become quite close.
Slashers are my favorite kind of horror movies to watch, so while I wasn’t a fan of Tragedy Girls (mainly because I hated the ending), I do tend to enjoy the “slasher with a high concept twist” movies we’ve been getting lately. I had a great time watching Happy Death Day, Totally Killer, and Freaky – and overall, I enjoyed watching It’s a Wonderful Knife as well. Just not quite as much as the three movies I just mentioned. Much like Bernie, there’s something that feels inherently awkward about this movie. Some of the attempts at humor don’t quite work. There are some half-baked ideas that should have been either expanded or removed (witness the drones that attend Waters’ “naughty or nice” event toward the end of the film), and there’s an odd murkiness to the cinematography that often makes the movie rather unpleasant to look at.
In a study that was recently released by UCLA, it was revealed that “American audiences between the ages of 10 and 24 (classified as Gen Z) appear to want to see less sex on screen and more platonic friendships instead.” It’s a Wonderful Knife is an instance where I can see where Gen Z is coming from. There’s not an unnecessary sex scene, but there is a kiss that occurs between two characters that didn’t seem necessary to me. George Bailey didn’t kiss Clarence the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, and it seemed forced to have a certain pair of characters kiss in this movie. It’s something else in the movie that could have used a bit more thought. Either dig deeper or drop it.
It’s a Wonderful Knife isn’t wonderful. The script and cinematography could have been improved. But for slasher fans, it will bring some extra fun to the holidays this year. It’s an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes.
The review of It's a Wonderful Knife originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
BABY OOPSIE PART 2: MURDER DOLLS (2022)
Demonic Toys 2 writer/director William Butler returned to the franchise to make the oddball solo spin-off Baby Oopsie, which saw doll enthusiast Sybil Pittman (Libbie Higgins) fall under the spell of the titular evil doll, thanks to her scheming neighbor Ray-Ray (Justina Armistead). Released in chapters as a web series and then collected together as a feature, Baby Oopsie did well enough to warrant more chapters of the web series, which then become two sequels. And Butler came back to write and direct all of it.
Baby Oopsie 2: Murder Dolls finds Sybil and Ray-Ray in the service of Satan, luring victims into Sybil’s home (the Full Moon Manor located in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio) - or, when necessary, going out on the town to look for victims - and offering them up to the homicidal doll they live with. Sybil has given up on her web program All Dolled Up, which was “Cleveland’s only program dedicated to the restoration and preservation of dolls”... but now that she’s not making videos anymore, her show has gotten more popular than ever, going viral. That’s why a company called Twinkle Toys offers her the chance to develop her own line of baby dolls – which she sees as an opportunity to create a whole army of killer dolls that could wreak havoc across the world. She builds a couple companions for Baby Oopsie, Cowboy Roy and Frownie Clownie, and they are also brought to life by demonic entities.
Of course, Sybil and Ray-Ray’s activities are starting to draw the suspicions of the authorities by this point, with Detective Klink (Joe Kurak) snooping around... and while she prepares to unleash evil on the world, Sybil starts to suffer a crisis of conscience, enhanced by visions of her late stepmother Mitzi (Lynne Acton McPherson) where the Baby Oopsie victim encourages her to figure out if she’s truly evil or just stupid.
So, as you can tell from this description, Baby Oopsie 2 is another dose of goofy Butler madness that takes the Demonic Toys franchise in directions no one else would have envisioned, with an odd tone no one else would have attempted to achieve. And a strange fascination with having Armistead deliver the line, “Hey, honey.” Over and over. I guess there’s something positive to be said about the fact that this is so uniquely Butler, but as a fan of the Demonic Toys movies that weren’t made by Butler I have been letdown by his approach to the franchise. Baby Oopsie ended up winning me over, but I didn’t get much enjoyment out of watching Baby Oopsie 2: Murder Dolls. It barely even has an ending. Maybe the next chapters / sequel will redeem it for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment