Author Archives: chillerpop

“31” (Chillerpop at Sundance 2016)

1
Posted on by

31-poster-movie-page

31

Written and directed by Rob Zombie. Starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Richard Brake, Meg Foster, Lawrence Wilton-Jacobs, Judy Geeson, Malcolm McDowell, Jane Carr, E.G. Daily.

(WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Plot: It’s Halloween, 1976, and a group of skeevy carnies are driving their van through the desert. After encountering a sinister roadblock and a gang of masked kidnapper-murderers, they awaken to find themselves in 31, a sadistic kill-or-be-killed game that pits its victims against inventively gruesome psychopathic clowns with motifs like ‘Sick-Head’, ‘Sex-Head’ and more.

 

Like the majority of his work, Rob Zombie’s “31” is an unrelentingly brutal Impressionist white trash nightmare. Meant to be an adrenaline-fueled gorefest, it’s actually haunting and thought provoking once you process it. Maybe it shares themes with other films about death games and gladiatorial combat, but it’s spiritual parent is definitely “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Continue reading →

Pazuzu, Kokumo, Ooo I Wanna Take You: The Chillerpop Exorcist Retrospective, Part 2

3
Posted on by

Htc1

“Once the wings have brushed you, is there no hope?”

I love Exorcist II: The Heretic.

There, I said it. It’s liberating. I have voiced the most shameful secret any horror fan could harbor. I and others like me can now march in the streets with our locust flags flying high, in pride.

I adore this loony, insane, beautiful mess. And a mess it is. Universally reviled, considered one of the biggest turkeys in cinema, Heretic holds up for me as an unintentional comedy and as a weird, original, meta-philosophical bit of art house cinema. It is the perfect example of the 1970’s excesses of visionary egomaniacs with relative carte blanche to make vanity masterpieces, or disasters.

Continue reading →

Trauma At Twelve! The Chillerpop Exorcist Retrospective, Part 1

3
Posted on by

exor1

My first viewing of The Exorcist was at age twelve, which, coincidentally, was Regan McNeil’s age when her possession occurred.

My older sister told me the plot of the film, minus of course the really ugly shocking bits such as the crucifix rape scene.  My sister was great at relating horror movie plots – she gave me a fascinating rundown of Halloween as well.  And she’ll tell you she hates horror movies! I’m not even sure that she had seen it – she may have just been recounting what she heard from others who saw it.  At that point it didn’t sound like something I couldn’t handle.

Continue reading →

Black Mass (2015) (Chillerpop at Telluride)

0
Posted on by

Black_Mass

Growing up in the Northeast, the figure of the tough Boston “Southie” loomed large, although New York City was closer in influence and distance.  The accent, the crassness, the hotheaded willingness to fight over everything, were always intimidating, even if that culture gave us The New Kids on the Block and Marky Mark.

I had never heard of Whitey Bulger or his crimes until I previewed Black Mass (based on the book Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, The FBI and a Devil’s Deal) this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival.  I can’t do a recap or full critique, but I can tell you that it’s excellent, and bloody brutal.  Performances to watch here include Benedict Cumberbatch as Whitey’s brother, former state senator Billy Bulger and Joel Edgerton as Whitey’s childhood friend and corrupt FBI agent John Connolly.

Continue reading →

Taj Mahal (2015) (Chillerpop at Telluride)

0
Posted on by

tajmahal
(Source: Telluride Film Festival 2015 guide)

Writer-director Nicolas Saada offers an incisive, innovative perspective on the November 2008 Islamic terrorist attack on the luxury Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. He focuses on Louise (Stacy Martin, fresh from Von Trier’s NYMPHOMANIAC), a pretty 18-year-old French girl separated from her expat parents (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing and Gina McKee) and trapped in her room in the hotel’s fourth floor, unable to get even the slightest perspective on events, coping with the sudden incomprehensible fact of violence and the likelihood of her imminent death.

-Excerpt from the Telluride Film Festival 2015 guide

I just attended a screening of Taj Mahal  at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival. I’m terrible at plot recaps and I let the blurb above do my work for me. That said, I can’t let it do all the work.  Innovative? Perhaps. Incisive? No.

Taj Mahal was technically well-made, memorable and harrowing.  Yet I somehow ended up frustrated.  On the whole, it was not a meaningful film about the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Continue reading →

Do They Show Horror Movies in Heaven?

4
Posted on by

Wes_Craven_2010

Yesterday, we lost Wes Craven, a pioneer and icon of the horror genre.  There isn’t much I can add about the man’s considerable legacy and his signature work, Nightmare on Elm Street, though some might argue Scream was his crowning achievement.  Elm Street and its surrounding mythology was inventive, original and changed the face of horror cinema forever.  His creation Freddy Krueger, the maniacal, sometimes comical dream demon of the series, is the Elvis of horror movie monsters.

Continue reading →

The Chillerpop Exorcist Retrospective

0
Posted on by

TheExorcistStepsGeorgetown

It’s been a rather possessed August.  When personal misery overwhelms, a supernatural/horror obsession is something of an anodyne.  Don’t ask me why.

I’ve been reviewing criticism of ‘The Exorcist’ and its sequels, reading interview after interview with William Peter Blatty, Linda Blair, William Friedkin and others involved in the most amazing and frightening film ever made.

And you know what?  Many fine minds are weighing in – from this excellent podcast, to this academic who, to my delight, is providing analysis and criticism on the recent wave of exorcism themed films.  I wrote a lot about this recent wave of films when this blog was on Open Salon.

Continue reading →

A Short Intro. Plus: Vampyr (1932)

1
Posted on by

Hello readers!

This blog is what it is. A place for me to spew thoughts, reviews and analysis on horror movies, and more besides. I previously ran this blog on the now defunct Open Salon, starting in 2010, and I had a great time. I even managed to save my work from there into a blogspot. From time to time I’ll dust off old posts.

I’m going through some hardship now which is preventing me from posting regularly, but I hope to pick it back up.

In the meantime, please enjoy the beautiful, gothic, expressionistic horror film ‘Vampyr’.