Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

1966
Directed by Harold P. Warren
Starring Harold P. Warren, Diane Mahree, Jackie Neyman, Tom Neyman and John Reynolds

Mark this flick down in the "movies everyone needs to see before they die" list.  Seriously.  Manos is just so oddball, so unbelievably out-there and downright incomprehensible at times that it simply must be seen to be believed.  The fact that it contains a half-man/half-goat with the most hauntingly soothing musical score accompanying his scenes also doesn't hurt in the least bit.  Combined with a good two dozen moments and/or scenes that truly qualify as some of the best "WTF" stuff in cinematic history and you've got a real winner, actual quality of the film or not be damned.

This movie has a long, bloody history that I'll try to give the short, short version of.  It was financed, directed, produced, written by and STARRED Hal Warren, El Paso fertilizer salesman who made a bet with a friend that he could make a horror film ultra-cheap and ultra-easy.  How easy?  He started outlining the script on the napkin at the restaurant where the bet was made.  Hiring actors from local theater groups and a modeling agency, he hammered out a script involving a family being trapped by a polygamous, quasi-Satanic cult in the middle of the desert, rented his film equipment, and shot this movie.  The complete story is much longer, involving the years that the finished film sat obscure and undiscovered before Mystery Science Theater 3000 came along and made it a cult phenomenon, but I think you get the gist.  By this point, this IS a cult film, with a somewhat ironic but also very real fandom despite its badness.  So, what exactly happens in this movie with such an interesting history?
Manos: The Hands of Fate is the very definition of "less is more."  It's 74 minutes long, it has no opening title sequence, and its music is of the very piano-y mood-filled variety.  Put very simply, it's the story of a family that takes a very wrong turn and finds something bad on the other side, only you've never seen any other movie that depicts the trope quite like this.  Character-wise, we're given Warren himself as Michael, the father, with Dianne Mahree and Jackie Neyman as his wife Margaret and young daughter Debbie, respectively.  Their acting skills, as can be expected, are quite suspect, with Mahree in particular coming across like Wendy Torrance -7000, but I digress.  In search of a seemingly mythical "valley lodge," their wrong turn takes them to a creepy old farmhouse on the outskirts of anywhere lorded over by a strange-looking man named Torgo.

Let me tell you guys a little bit about Torgo.  Played by John Reynolds, he's essentially supposed to be a satyr, as clearly evidenced by his herky-jerky walking style complete with horn-infused "creepy music."  His speech pattern is also all over the place.  Say what you want about Reynolds, but you can't say that he didn't dive into this role 1000%.  As such, I've instantly got more respect for him than I do, say, Rooney Mara.  A LARGE portion of the middle of Manos is given to Torgo, as it first simply seems that the guy is smitten with Margaret.  We also see a strange, Night Gallery-esque painting of a moustached man with a demonic dog that Torgo helpfully informs both Michael and the audience is "the Master," the man who ACTUALLY takes care of the house.

After a creepy incident wherein Torgo attempts to seduce Margaret and tell her that the Master intends to make her another one of his wives, we are taken to the back of the house, where there are a bunch of women tied to wooden poles.  Folks, I am not making this up.  These would be those very eponymous "brides," as the Master - whoever the hell he is - is revealed to be a Pagan polygamist preacher.  Whoa, alliteration alert.  This is the beginning of a long night of decided non-horror as the Master eventually comes to life, and he is none too pleased with Torgo attempting to steal his newest wife.

This is a horror movie, but there isn't much in the way of horror.  The body count is essentially non-existant.  What Warren was trying to do with this movie was disturb audiences, and at that...I think he actually succeeds.  It succeeds despite ANYTHING that the intellectual part of your mind can think about, but I defy anyone to watch this flick and not feel the slightest bit skeeved at the idea of a Satanic dude living in the middle of nowhere harvesting wives and (potentially) living forever.  And one who has the ability to turn people into shriveling, burning husks with the use of his magical burning hand/wand.  He can also hypnotize people, a plot device that becomes very important in the epic finale.  Slight spoiler alert.  Tom Neyman, the guy playing the Master, also dives completely into his role.  He's like a silent film villain cranked up to a thousand, granting the movie tons of unintended comedy with his Freddie Mercury moustache and admittedly ridiculous Pagan get-up consisting of a black robe with red "hands" painted on.  Oh, and he's got a fantastic evil laugh.

What else is there?  Well, there is a bit of drama involved with the Master's wives, who argue about what to do with the recently captured females.  One of them suggests that the young Debbie (who is MAYBE eight years old in this film) will eventually grow into a woman and be one of the new wives.  One of the final images in the film shows this very thing, cranking the skeeviness factor up even further. 

Tension-wise, what we've got from here on out is a game of stalling, and that's where a majority of just how crappy this movie is comes from, as the stakes of the movie are spelled out fairly early on - will Michael allow his wife and daughter to be possessions of the Master - and there's virtually nothing in the way of chases or good jump scenes from that point forward.  A roller coaster, this movie is not.

Still, I CAN'T call Manos a total failure.  This movie is frequently listed by a lot of internet geniuses as being one of the worst movies ever made, and I don't think it's even CLOSE to hitting that.  I've seen Nail Gun Massacre, people, and that has this beat by a long shot.  Is it good?  Definitely not.  Its gamut of bad qualities, from bad editing gaffes to bad acting to a very questionable scripting structure ensure to that.  But it actually does hit on its aforementioned intended purposes to disturb, mainly with a combination of its grainy theater-print look and its soul-destroying piano score.  I'll take a movie like this, an ultra-cheap movie with a simple intended purpose, than...well, pretty much any modern blockbuster, that boast budgets 737 times as large but are so passion-free that it makes bile rise into my throat.  Thus, while this movie IS pretty bad, it's essential viewing for that comparison alone.

* 1/2 out of ****.  If you're looking for a good horror movie that will scare and terrify you, don't look to this one.  For a fun night on the couch with friends, few movies are better.

Whispering Corridors (1998)

1998
Directed by Park Ki-hyeong
Starring (get ready) Choi Se-yeon, Kim Gyu-ri, Lee Mi-yeon, Park Yong-soo and Kim Yu-seok

I've been putting off this review for a while.  Not because I dislike the movie or anything; Whispering Corridors, while it has its faults, is one of those horror films that anyone should see sometime in their life just for the sheer level of patience and atmosphere that it employs.  But the story of this flick is not one that lends itself to an entertaining review.  Since my success rate at those has been hovering somewhere around the 22nd percentile these days...what the fuck, I'll go for it.

Stripped down to its bare essentials, this movie is about a group of students at an all-girls' school in South Korea dealing with a haunting.  It shares this theme with its many thematic "sequels" (and there are four of 'em), all of which explore this theme in a very different way with a new director and group of characters.  From what I can gleam at the ever-accurate Wikipedia, this was actually quite the important movie in South Korea as one of the first films released after the military dictatorship subsided.  Hence, the harshly authoritarian tone of the school's teachers, which, if I was moderately intelligent, would be meant to represent the harshness of the formerly controlling government or something.  But you don't pay me for those details.  Let's get to the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've got another movie in the "get the hell going" category here, with a murder scene gracing our presence within the first five minutes.  The victim?  An old bat teacher at the Jookran High School for Girls, who we see get attacked by an unseen force before being found hanging in the schoolyard.  Creepy stuff, and it gets the ball rolling very well.  Our ACTUAL star characters are two of the young students, and the contrast between them makes for quite the interesting plot device.  Folks, without exaggeration, Choi Se-yeon deserved award consideration for her performance in this film; I can't say I'm familiar with her filmography or anything, but her portrayal of the movie's "timid outsider" character is just simply top notch.  Kim Gyu-ri isn't far behind, with her character being a talented painter whose creations gradually take on a more macabre tone as the weird incidents begin to pile up.  Really, though, just about everyone in this movie is top notch.

For most of the movie, we watch this class as they deal with their dictator-like teacher (Park Yong-soo).  For anyone out there who thought that an authority figure couldn't be more hardcore than R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, think again.  Yeah, this dude chews scenery every time he's onscreen, but it's damn necessary, entertaining, and at times downright riveting stuff.  At the end of it all, this IS a horror film, but there isn't much in the way of death or blood or goblins.  It's more all about the mood, the sheer oppressiveness that the director creates with the claustrophobia of the school and the rumors and gossip that the students partake in.  Hence the title.  Deep stuff, I know.

One more note for those considering whether or not to check this movie out for the first time.  I know I've talked a lot about pace in past reviews, but it's doubly important here, because everything here builds up ULTRA-SLOW.  There are long passages in the movie that casual viewers of Asian horror will think are leading to absolutely nowhere, and the first time I watched this flick, I spent the first 45 minutes desperately trying to think of something else to do.  Take my word for it - all of that build actually does lead somewhere, and the final 20 minutes or so of Whispering Corridors qualify as electric stuff.  Suffice to say, this is the height of what is affectionately referred to as the "Ghost School Trilogy" (of five films - don't ask).

Oh, you want a rating?  *** 1/2 out of ****.  It dodges the perfect rating just because the middle section goes on a BIT too long, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a horror flick from the past 20 years or so with a better atmosphere than this.

Reincarnation (2005)

REINCARNATION
2005
Directed by Takashi Shimizu
Starring Yuka, Karina Nose, Marika Matsumoto, Keppei Shiina and Shun Oguri

Longtime readers of the blog are well-aware of my hard-on for the Ju-On/Grudge series and my reverence for its creator, Takashi Shimizu.  Sparing everyone the excruciating details, I find the original Japanese cycle of films (weird-ass Ju-On: Curse 2 notwithstanding) to be the single finest horror franchise of the 21st century.  Saw can eat a dick, these movies know how to bob-and-weave between multiple storylines - sometimes within multiple films - and keep your eyeballs surgically implanted to the screen the entire time.  All the while, everything just makes perfect sense, and every new twist and wrinkle added to the formula just feels totally right, all ending with evil lil' girl Kayako ready to wreak some vengeance at the end of Ju-On: Grudge 2.  I still go to sleep pissed every day that we haven't gotten the follow-up film to that.

Not long after checking out that series, I sought some of Shimizu's other films.  One of them, Marebito, is one of the single best mindfucks I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, the only other Shimizu flick in my library is the one we're looking at today, and boy, is it an exercise in tepidity.  Reincarnation (known as Rinne in Japan) was one of six movies released by producer Taka Ichise as "J-horror theater," and a year after that was one of the "8 films to Die For" in the inaugural After Dark HorrorFest.  Is that still a thing, by the way?  I don't even know.  I can only assume that it got this attention due to the past successes of Shimizu, because the flick certainly isn't that impressive.  With that background info out of the way, let's get moving.

The movie is essentially one of those "multiple timeline" films that always confuse the holy hell out of me, particularly when I'm dealing with a foreign language.  It opens with what is admittedly a pretty messed up scene as college professor Norihasa Omori goes on a rampage, killing 11 hotel guests, his own children, and finally himself - all while he films the entire thing.  It's not quite up there with last week's Ghost Ship massacre, but it's a a pretty nifty way to start a horror film and really grabs your attention.  Unfortunately, it' all downhill from here.

Taking a cue from Ju-On: Grudge 2, Shimizu's plot device is that of a film being shot about the requisite horror movie "past evil" crime.  Keppei Shiina does a decent job as Matsumura, a horror movie director who wants to make a film about the massacre.  In one of the many sterling examples of many genius ideas in the realm of horror, he wants to film said movie in the very same hotel where the murders occurred 35 years earlier.  His key hire for the movie is actress Nagisa Sugiura (Yuka), and it is with this character that we spent the vast majority of the remaining running time.

With so much camera time, Yuka ranks somewhere between Kimberly Beck and Melanie Kinnaman on the likability scale, but unfortunately doesn't have a whole ot of depth beyond what little the movie gives her in the way of development.  She is starring in the movie-within-a-movie as the Professor's doomed daughter, and a good portion of the first third of this movie revolves around the excruciating details of making a movie.  We even get a good cameo from Takako Fuji as a hotel maid, something that made me mark the hell out, but all in all it's pretty slow-moving in the early goings.

So where are we going?  Well, Sugiura starts having nightmares, visions, and hallucinations about the past massacre, eventually believing herself to be the reincarnation of the character that she is playing.  This is interspersed with a "B" story of sorts involving a college student (Karina Nose) and actress Yuka (confusing, I know, but this one is played by Marika Matsumoto), who auditioned for Sugiura's role at the beginning of the film.  Yuka has her own remembrances of a past life, and these two characters go about trying to piece together just what in the hell is going on.

Watching this movie after several years of it laying dormant on my shelf, I couldn't help but think that the movie had been a LOT better if these two characters had been the focus and scrapping the entire "film within a film" aspect, with Nose's papers supporting the theories of reincarnation and Matsumoto's character showing some psychic prowess being the things that drive the movie forward after both characters spend a night in the hotel and experience some weird, wild stuff (second /Johnny Carson joke in as many months).  Don't say that I don't offer constructive criticism.  This was my favorite aspect of the film, and I definitely could have done with more of it. 

Eventually, Reincarnation reaches a crescendo that shoots for the sort of wild, unpredictable finishes that the Grudge movies are known for.  But everything has been thoroughly telegraphed up to that point, and it just falls incredibly flat.  This is where the lack of emotional attachment to any of the main characters really shows; in Ju-On, we got to know Rika like our own sister, and her fate at the end of the film hits you in the gut like nothing else.  My response at the end of this flick?  "Eh, so that happened."

So it is with Reincarnation, a movie that I have now watched on three separate occasions to see if there is an appeal to it that I'm missing.  Alas, there isn't.  Having said that, there are three more recent films by Shimizu that I will have to check out and review soon.  Hopefully, the guy has found his groove back since this one, and this slow, slow, oh-so-slow burn that doesn't burn was just a hiccup instead of a new trend.

* 1/2 out of ****.  Not especialy scary, interesting, or fascinating.  Avoid.

Ghost Ship (2002)

2002
Directed by Steve Beck
Starring Gabirle Byrne, Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard, Desmond Harrington and Isaiah Washington

By and large, horror movies know how to get your attention, but I still have yet to see any horror flick that tops the opening that Ghost Ship has.  It's one of those things that just has to be seen to be believed, and it goes deeper than just a kill scene.  It's just AWESOME, and I'll never forget seeing it in theaters with more than a few audible "holy shit" comments from the other people in that dark room. 

Unfortunately, there's little else in the movie that warrants quite the visceral reaction that the opening scene does, although I do consider myself amongst the grassroots cult fandom that the film has garnered in the decade-plus since its release date.  For starters, it's got an acting crew that seems to actively give a damn about it, something that can't be overstated when it comes to movies of this nature.  It's also stylishly shot and has a twist leading into the "final girl" sequence (yup, take a guess as to who survives out of that actor list above) that admittedly caught me pretty off guard.  In between, it can get pretty dopey, but we horror fans take what we can get.

Our main characters for this go-round of 2002 horror are a boat salvage crew, with the two principals of this bunch being Captain Murphy (Burne) and Maureen Epps (Margulies).  Most of the others pretty much immediately scream "cannon fodder" from the time we meet them, although it's always nice to see Isaiah Washington in supporting roles.  Suffice to say, I'm a big fan.  They're actually a pretty likable bunch, with Margulies in particular really shining as a tough-yet-relatable seafarer.  Or maybe I've just got a thing for women in thick coats.  Anyway, within the first 15 minutes, we get our exposition that sets the plot in motion as weather service pilot Ferriman (Harrington) gives them a tip about a ship that he saw adrift at sea.  Eager to stake their claim and make a quick buck, the crew heads out to the Bering Sea.

The name of the ship is the Antonia Graza, which (surprise) is the same ship that we saw in the aforementioned amazing prologue, set some 40 years before the events of this film.  The crew quickly find that the ship contains a large amount of gold, but it's pretty safe to ascertain that nobody on board is going to be making this particular claim.  The set designers do a really good job making the atmosphere of the Graza seem dark and forboding, making it all the more effective when their salvage ship (derp) explodes, leaving them stranded aboard the GHOST SHIP (ta-dum). 

This is the section of the movie that drags, which is amazing enough, considering that this is what the producers of the movie considered the "slasher movie" phase of the proceedings.  The characters get picked off one by one due to various nefarious spiritual means.  None of them are particularly creative deaths, and a large portion of this segment of the movie consists of milling around peppered in between occasional conversations that serve as red herrings to who the actual perpetrator of all this madness is.  Fortunately, there's also an unexpected ace in the hole in the form of Katie, played by Emily Browning in one of her first movie roles and the ship's resident "friendly" ghost who clues Margulies in to the murderous past of the Graza just before the action-packed third act begins.  Surprise, surprise, it's actually pretty tense stuff, even though it does have one of those eyeroll-inducing twist endings that I'm sick of to the point of delirium.

With that, it's judgment time.  According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, the early drafts of this script were much more psychological as opposed to the out-and-out body count fest that this movie became.  Even with that knowledge, I think Ghost Ship is an okay little film, despite that near-suicidal 30-minute stretch in the middle.  It's got good performances all-around, some likable characters, and one of the most downright "oh shit" scenes in horror history in the first five minutes.  That should be about enough for a recommendation.

*** out of ****.  Nothing groundbreaking, but it's worth checking out.  Give it a shot.