Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997, Guy Maddin)

Describing Twilight of the Ice Nymphs as anything other than unpleasantly dreamlike is difficult for me to do. This dreamlike quality of the picture feels more like a horrible nightmare to me. Based extremely loosely on the novel Pan by the great Knut Hamsun, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs represents master visionary Guy Maddin at his very worst. Rather than the beautifully rendered representations of classic cinema that we normally get with his body of work, we instead get what represents the technicolor nightmares of Hollywood of the 1940s in which all the costumes, characters, and plot devices are over exaggerated to the point of physical grotesqueness. Saying that those films have aged well is like saying that the smell of skunk is sweet. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs tells a story that is nearly impossible to follow describing the complicated situation of a missing man who returns to his home in a fictional country called Mandragora to an ostrich farm owned by his sister and her husband. His arrival sparks a bitter treachery between the two of them as well as a tragic love affair. All of this is shown in dreamy, over-saturated photography in which the voices are artificially dubbed over and the transitions over rely on fades in order to make the film feel as if the viewer is viewing a dream through the mental perspective of the, what I like to call, victim. Mandragora is loosely related to the the mandrake plant, which resembles twisted human beings. You'll remember them as being what the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth hides under her bed.

Without getting too into my many problems with the film, I will say that the film does kind of work in transporting us into it's plot. What we have here are a lot of interesting concepts that work very uniquely by themselves. We have complicated character interactions and elaborate back-stories that give way to some rather ambitious premises that help really establish what kind of world this film is set in. The universe of this picture is heavily hallucinatory and deranged in it's various philosophical truths and images. Guy Maddin's efforts were not in vain, and so I can forgive him for at least pulling off the impossible in giving us a premise that really isn't interesting in any way and making it rich with detail and style. However, that's also the problem with this film. It's all details, and no payoff. The plot is only vaguely interesting, and when it isn't it's too layered in metaphors and visual trickery to really help us accept the already overly obtuse premise with his inconsequential series of events. The finished product comes off too weak to really grab us, and too overly assured for us to be able to invest ourselves in emotionally. None of these things would necessarily be a problem if the visuals, the voicework, and the plot developments weren't so grating. It's nearly impossible to get involved in what's going on because the visuals are presented with little to no warning much of the time. The mind simply cannot digest so much unorthodox material at once, and that's why this film was made with the intention of the viewer either purposefully choosing to rewatch it over and over again until they get it, or to watch it under the influence of drugs. A lot of the imagery works, a lot of the acting works, and a lot of the script works, but it rarely all works at once. That's my main problem with Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and why I cannot, under good conscience, recommend the film.


However, I am happy that I've finally watched it. I knew that this film was going to be the biggest challenge for me when it came to working my way through Maddin's filmography. Out of all of his films, this was the one that sounded the least interesting. The rest of his work features plenty of liveliness, imagination, energy, and macabre ideas that make him a brilliant visionary. To be fair, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs featured plenty of his signature brand of humor that did help cement a good amount of imagination and character in this, admittedly, daunting vision. The film does work fairly well as a fantasy piece as it has a lot of unpredictable ideas and humorous bits of dialogue that kept me off guard throughout the picture. I may have found parts of the film to be a bore, but they weren't without a lack of personal vision and creativity. It's the kind of film that starts out weak, gets strong, and then gets tiresome again. The same can be said about Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain or Kevin Costner's The Postman. You need to be really ready to accept this artist's vision to be able to get even the least bit involved in the plot. I do think that this film has an audience somewhere, and the sad part is that I don't think that it's audience has quite discovered it yet. I do hope they do though, because I admired this film's balls to basically be a film about an island made up of plants made from human semen that spilled to the ground after the executed bodies of criminals ejaculate. I couldn't do it because I couldn't digest it, but if a few more people can put all of their faith in the storyteller in this case, I wouldn't doubt that it'd be a rewarding experience.

5/10

Killer's Kiss (1955, Stanley Kubrick)

Killer's Kiss, though not quite up to par with most of Stanley Kubrick's proceeding films, is an enjoyable and fast paced romp of a film noir, which manages to blend plenty of unique ideas and images in a way that, while not entirely original, stays fresh throughout most of the picture. Watching Killer's Kiss, you'll gain a good idea as to what Kubrick tried to do most of the time with photographic atmosphere and mood. It is very obvious that Kubrick is a photographer when you watch this film, because there isn't a single shot on the film that doesn't hold some sort of meaning or character texture. The film lacks convincing dialogue, believable character arcs, and exposition, but it makes up for all of that by providing us with a lot of heart and humanity, moreso than Kubrick usually does. The film does have a vicious side to it, but it never draws a whole of attention to itself, which I personally find refreshing for a film that was made in the 1950s. I think, understandably, there's a lot more to this film that could have been fully rounded and structured, and I do think that the film has a bizarre change in tone in the final act, but it didn't really hurt the film for me overall.

One thing that I think deserves to be mentioned, however, is this film's love story. This is a romance film without any real romantic gestures. I think that the approach given to the material worked for the most part, but I also think that it has less to do with the direction and more to do with the charisma of the lead performances of Jaime Smith and Irene Kane, who I think has a very unique look for an actress of her generation. She holds more depth in her stark emotions than most actresses in this kind of film normally did. She has an underlying and inescapable, almost boyish, innocence about her that made her perhaps my favorite thing about this picture. Kubrick would later go on to give us some of the most wonderfully unusual female screen performances in films such as Paths of Glory, The Shining, and Lolita, but here he does a hell of a lot with a rather obviously limited budget. To me, it was the little things that made this film great. If you take the plot, it's pretty typical of film-noir fare. It's an intelligently made picture though for what amounts to rather limited substance. You'll notice that I haven't talked about the plot at all. Well, you see there's a reason why. I couldn't make it sound interesting if I tried. This is the kind of film you really just have to see from start to finish. You'll understand why it works if you do. Killer's Kiss is a very flawed, overly stylish, but ultimately rewarding early film from one of the world's most renowned filmmakers.

7/10

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life (2005, Tom McLoughlin)

Perhaps the most offensive thing about Cyber Seduction is that it claims to know so much about addiction. But it's not just that: it purports itself to be an odyssey of sorts, where the adolescent at the focus of this story falls--through no fault of his own--into the deep, dark sex-crazed pit and must fight for salvation, or shall I say, a life where he can remain as blissfully ignorant to the reality that there's pornography on the internet as before. Our protagonist, a naive high school student named Justin, learns nothing from his experience in the dark throes of addiction, but that's probably because he's secretly laughing over the thought that anyone bothered to take his plight so seriously and chose to document his 'struggle' in such melodramatic fashion. Cyber Seduction wishes to strike a chord with all young boys out there, as if to shame them for not realising sooner that staring at a woman's breasts quite possibly caused their parents' divorce and wishes to strike a chord with every parent out there uneducated enough to take such a grossly exaggerated concoction as the gospel in the first place. It fails majestically, probably because the majority of people who've bothered to write a review on this mess are intelligent enough to know that most films that bear the Lifetime brand exist in a vacuum where there is no such thing as common sense, rather a plethora of knee jerk reactions and outrage from armchair philosophers with the expected Dr. Porn Master, Phd. framed and displayed on their wall.

Justin comes from the perfect household. This is important, because if there were even the slightest hint of dysfunction in his quintessentially suburban upbringing, this blasé health class special wouldn't be nearly as horrifying to the educated and the subtitle His Secret Life would be regarded as useless. Once Justin discovers that pornography exists, everything (and I do mean everything) in his life begins to unravel at startling speed (but would you expect any less?). In an hour and a half of running time, the quality of his schoolwork begins to decline, he loses his place on the school swim team, makes a habit of lying to his parents about where he'll be at any given time so he can satisfy his disturbing urges and begins to neglect his girlfriend, whose clean-cut, studious nature has long earned the approval of dear mother and father, who seek him to be her equal as moral paragon. In one of the film's more hilarious sequences, Justin, far from the charming young man we know him to be, actually sneaks into the family room to look at more porn after he is initially found out, his PC relocated from the privacy of his bedroom. He also begins to steal, getting his hands on his mother's credit card so he can charge porn membership fees to her account (never mind that anyone with a nanosecond of free time can find any of this material for free on any one of the twelve gazillion free porn sites available on the internet; but Justin was normal before all this, how could he know...I suppose I'm a really bad influence).

Cyber Seduction was written by people who take a delight out of scaring the trousers off the same parents who call the sensationalist Megan Is Missing 'necessary' viewing for anyone with any doubt that the advent of new communications in our blossoming information age is destroying our children. These are people with similar fears themselves. They continue to live in a state of fear because they prefer it and it's always easier to enforce ignorance rather than to seek the heart of the problem, dissect it and report back with findings that are far less scary than any nightmarish scenarios an active imagination can provide. But presenting addiction in an honest (and rational) manner would be asking too much and as such, we never get to the root of Justin's problems. We don't know if he was a porn addict and the possibility that he could be seeking an outlet to deal with the rollercoaster of puberty is never addressed because puberty is not a fact of life here; it could never affect such a sweet, moral and perfect young boy. We don't know if he simply had an impulse problem or if he was demonstrating behaviour reminiscent of those with burgeoning anxiety. We don't even know if he simply got fed up with being perfect all the time and just said To hell with it! and opted to do the most risque thing his ignorant little mind could think of (masturbating actually not being one of those things, not once at any point in the film). Simply finding women attractive is a sin in the world of this film as you can actually find ominous music playing while he checks out women he passes on the street. That's not alright. But deflecting his parents with a comment that he wasn't doing anything nefarious, he was only playing Grand Theft Auto can very easily grant him the ability to fly under the radar. There is always money to be made from anti-anything propaganda and scaring teenagers away from sex instead of educating them on the do's and don't's is still a very viable business. If the film were a little bit more ambitious, it'd drop in a few lines on how drugs could very easily send dear Justin (aka, anyone's child) far from the path of the straight arrow student, but Reefer Madness this film is not (to its credit, it is nowhere near as bad as the aforementioned film; if it were, it would be damn near unwatchable).

It soon becomes evident that in order for Justin to save himself from a life of sin and debauchery, he must repent, allowing the fundamentalist authorities that are his parents and the school board to bear witness. There is nothing for him--or us, for that matter--to learn from this experience because there never was anything to learn in the first place. All we know by film's end is that teenagers are stupid and that a firm, watching eye must be kept on them at all times. Even a child as perfect as Justin is not immune to temptation. That's why his mother is justified in obsessing over his sexual activities to the point of actually spying on him and that's exactly why he should fear being ostracized from the rest of his peers. If you're expecting anyone, at any point in this production, to talk to this misinformed young boy and tell him that his urges are normal and to enlighten him on the reality that is adolescent sexual awakening, you're expecting far too much because actually championing education on such a subject is exactly why books like Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret have been banned from school libraries. It's hard not look upon a film that takes delight in shaming a child in front of his family and his friends with nothing but utter disgust. It's even harder to take a film with an agenda such as this seriously at all because it does not seek to place anything on the table that's worthy of discussion. It exists only as another addition to the stockpile of derivative brain frying nonsense that allows parents such as the ones depicted here to believe that their worries are justified, no matter how clear and no matter how damning the truth may be.

I've made no secret of the film's propensity to make light of and even demonise addiction. But that's not even its biggest problem; the plague the film vilifies isn't addiction, be it to pornography or otherwise. The real plague, the film affirms, is information and it should be the duty of authority figures to withhold it from anyone. Once you snag enough a reliable base of automatons, there's no end to the glory the age of misinformation can bring. This has been, no question, a troubling factor in our society. But it's even more troubling, even downright horrifying, to see such ignorance--and willful ignorance at that--in an age where all the answers to our questions are right at our fingertips, where the difference between educated and uneducated, aware and unaware, can be found in a simple click of a button. You'd think that Cyber Seduction's Justin, being the intelligent straight-A student that he is, would make good use of the wealth of information before him--after all, this is the same goldmine that's granting him access to material that his much older relatives had to devise in their own minds or with the help of the Sears catalogue. But he's already crippled and by film's end, you'll witness him go on with his life as if this whole familial debacle never presented itself at all. He, much like his parents, is a victim of the appeal to panic and that's far more seductive than any of the so-called facts the film may claim to represent.

2/10

The Pier/La jetée (1962, Chris Marker)

I've seen The Pier described as a 'thinking man's film' and while I personally find that description to be all too vague, there's no denying that it leaves the viewer with quite a lot on their minds long after the film has ended. It's the type of film that burns images into your skull; time and again, I've had a flashback to the first time I sat down to watch this and I can't help but admire the film's narrative power all the more. The Pier manages to cram a novel's worth of plot into just under thirty minutes so you can imagine that discussions on this piece can become rather analytical, even dense, in a very short amount of time. I'll try to keep these musings in tune with the film--on the side of the short and sweet.

The Pier was once described to me as 'perhaps the most romantic science fiction film ever made,' and I can see why some would see it that way. It is, at its simplest, a rumination on time and love and loss that can't help but strike a devastating chord or two with its rather downbeat ending. But The Pier manages to lure such intense reactions from its audience precisely because it is so committed to its melancholia. Director Chris Marker manages to evoke an atmosphere of sheer sadness and dread, interestingly enough, through the use of little more than still images, which says a lot about his talents as a filmmaker. His experiment is successful because he shows us that movies do not need to 'move' to move us. The enjoyment one gets from watching a film, or the intellectual stimulation and provoking of thought, lies completely in the experience and all the experience needs to do is resonate with the viewer in some way; it is not required for said experience to follow common storytelling conventions. It can be and it should not be afraid of labeled rather unorthodox.

The still imagery employed here is only accompanied by rather sparse narration. Marker, instead of focusing on dialog opts, instead, to channel his energies into the film's sound design to give the story a greater dramatic punch. Disconnected voices follow our male protagonist as he travels back in time. Trevor Duncan's moody score enchants with its slow, deliberate build to the harrowing finale. Turning the volume up to the max will disorient you even further because the story, tragedy that it is, is meant to be disorienting. Our protagonist is disoriented. We fall right in line with his disorientation and with his subsequent agony and sorrow; Marker's stylistic choices serve as an effectively unnerving manipulation of time and space. The senses can only feast.

As for what the story of The Pier implies, well, much like the man, you'll find yourself wishing you never walked to the water's edge, but that's the beauty of this tale: It succeeds at putting you right in the middle of the action. Our stoic narrator's adventure begins when he is sent back in time to prevent a war that has leveled the city of Paris and has forced what few survivors there are to fend for themselves in the city's catacombs. During his trips through time, a childhood memory a man being shot overtakes him to the point of obsession (and the regular appearance of a beautiful and mysterious woman doesn't help matters either). By the time he realises the connection between the two pervading thoughts, it is too late for him. But not for us, for unlike the man at the centre of this bleak story, we are not doomed.

We see the truth in the papers each day; we don't just see proper justice fail to get its dues every day, we've grown accustomed to it. For every good, heartwarming story out there, for every charming report on good deeds being recognised and repaid, there are ten times as many bad stories, depressing stories, stories so sad and unbecoming for many a weak mind, that we often feel like just throwing our papers away, closing down the tab of that website we happen to be on and never bothering with the news again. But something always draws us back. There's one born every minute. A new story on love and a new story on pain.

But one thing is for certain: Life goes on and the past is irrevocable. We can't change anything, Marker says and it is that romantic notion that destroys our protagonist. Because we can't retrieve what we've lost, we must learn to work with what we have. The Pier shows just how complicated changing anything could be. In the face of that cold, brick wall that is the past, noble intentions are and will continue to be damned for all eternity.

8/10

Trilogy of Terror (1975, Dan Curtis)

Trilogy of Terror was destined to become a cult classic. For one thing, it's constructed much in the way of the ever popular Night Gallery, which helped make it one of the most fondly remembered of 1970s horror anthology pieces; for another, it starred Karen Black as the female lead in all three horror segments and Black already had a huge reputation as a cult star thanks to her work on such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces (for which she received an Academy Award nomination) and Cisco Pike. If you think it can't get any better than that, then you'll be glad you're wrong: all three segments are products from the mind of horror great Richard Matheson. Dan Curtis (who'd employ a similar formula in 1977's Dead of Night) directs.

What'll first strike you about this film are the performances by Karen Black in all three individual segments. She is, in all respects, a cult actress and her performances have always managed to be a strangely hypnotic combination of well measured nuance and off-kilter sexuality. Something about her always looks rather off, her eyes seem to hint that she's not entirely there and when she smiles, you can't help but picture her as some sort of demonic black widow. She can best be described as sexy-dangerous; this description doesn't just describe her perfectly--she does, in her own special way, define it, because no other actress has created a career much like hers. These days, you're most likely to find her in small films with no hope of landing any distribution deals at all. But for a while back in her 1970s heyday, she managed to find directors who knew how to employ her looks and her talents to rather unnerving affect. Dan Curtis was one of these directors and she would collaborate with him once again on Burnt Offerings the following year. Though the segments herein vary in terms of quality, there is no denying that Black commands the screen: Without her, there would be no film.

SEGMENT ONE ('Julie'): 'Julie' is Trilogy of Terror's weakest link. A tale of lust and revenge with a dash of witchcraft, it's a clunky, rather amateurish romp that can't separate itself from what is on paper: It's badly written and badly executed. Despite an ending that seems like it was thrown together at the last minute, despite a slew of unanswered questions, 'Julie' is never uninteresting. Black's Julie is the first in a triad of women in peril, a motif that would have made her a perfect candidate for several of David Lynch's films. She's a divine mix of the oh so professional educator meets kooky sex fiend. She glides through the story as if she owns it, which she does. Her hair, relentless tousled, her manner of dress, conservative, yet rather messy and her face, striking, yet sinister in its obvious plotting all contribute to a look that can't help but blend so cohesively with the segment's brooding atmosphere, which, thanks to some nifty camerawork, remains constant. Still, there is no doubt upon watching this that we are watching a cheap production; it may not have been made on the most bare bones budget out there, but it's certainly lacking. For one thing, all of the performances (with the exception of Black's that is) seem to be comprised of the crappiest outtakes from a pile that just had to be sifted through just before the deadline. Robert Burton falters as the sociopath Chad and is criminally underdeveloped. There is no proper introduction here, no rhyme or reason to his madness, but that's not the point--his purpose is to serve as little else than Julie's pawn in her own twisted scheme and he has little to do other than go along for the ride. He is, simply put, the quintessential object of revulsion for those who just can't abide horror films because of characters that make stupid decisions. But Burton can't help but be stupid, because he's getting involved with Karen Black. She revels in playing a character with the ability to plant sick ideas into his head--did Karen Black create Inception before Inception--and he enjoys being a moon revolving around her authoritative planet because, let's face it, it's his destiny. That's one thing 'Julie' gets right and that's high praise, because it doesn't hit the mark anywhere else.

SEGMENT TWO ('Millicent and Therese'): 'Millicent and Therese' is your classic 1970s horror fodder about sexual perversion run amok. As is often the case in these stories, the burden of shame falls upon a young woman, a conservative mouse who doesn't care to display much personality, if any at all. The reason why Millicent is so outwardly cold is because she's made a habit of bottling up her distaste (which has over time grown into outright disgust) for her sister Therese, who is loud, brash, crass and devoutly sex-crazed. Black imbues both roles with high camp, but her Millicent is far more nuanced and intriguing on paper than her bombshell counterpart, who struts around in a rather grotesque blonde wig and looks ready to not just bed every man in sight, but devour them afterwards as well. Much of this story takes place in a crumbling old mansion; the home is a physical representation of much of the familial stress going on within its walls. The house has fallen, much like the relationship between the two sisters, into a state of disrepair. It is cold, uninviting and a replica of days long gone where perhaps a much closer bond existed. The segment's greatest flaw is that it is shot in far too straightforward a manner for it to be as devious as the writer may have liked it to be. The twist here is nothing we haven't seen before, nor can we really watch this without wanting it to hurry up and finish already so we can watch something better. It's your classic run of the mill psycho-family drama with no relieving touches of dramatic flair. It's an empty experience saved only by Black's relentless, outrageous mugging for the camera. Take, for instance, the scene where our resident psychiatrist (George Gaynes) meets the outrageous Therese for the first time. This is the only time during the film where the story displays any signs of life. The camera loves Black. Without her, there's nothing. If you're looking for suspense or chills, you won't find them here. Such moody subject matter deserves a platform that is appropriately moody, don't you think?

SEGMENT THREE ('Amelia'): Now here is where things get interesting. If you know anything about Trilogy of Terror, then you know that this last segment is the one that everyone talks about. How can they not? It's a child's worst nightmare. Certainly I had my own fair share (okay, I lied, perhaps far too many) of the possessed African tribal warrior doll come to life to wreck the life of the naive young woman unfortunate enough to stumble upon it and stupid enough to purchase it at the local flea market as a gift for her boyfriend. Of course, when it does begin to slice and dice her, she can't help but shriek

This can't be happening! This can't be happening!

but it is happening and thank God that the best has been saved for last. 'Amelia' works because it is the one story where we actually see decent character development take the stage for a few minutes before the action begins to roll. Our title character is lonely, repressed and has just snagged herself a new boyfriend. A romantic night with her new man in her lovely new apartment takes a backseat however to a call from her incessant nag of a mother. Amelia, despite looking every bit on the right side of thirty, is reduced to a sniveling child and finds her plans ruined. We're left wondering What is UP with these two? and we can't help but lean in to pay close attention to the phone call, which reveals Amelia to be the child in women's clothing that she, sadly, very much is. Her fear thus takes over any conceivable rationale when the Zuni doll rises and proceeds to smash through everything in her home with all the respect of a runaway tank. She's helpless and...hopeless. She's doomed to die, a lesser organism in the way of a paragon of primal instinct. Isn't she, the hapless prey, meant to be a picture of primal fear? The setting is used to great effect. The segment unfolds smoothly and confidently and lures us into the at first blooming and then oppressive sense of claustrophobia. The apartment is a death trap. Wouldn't you agree that this makes it the perfect setting for  a final showdown before mother and child? Amelia thinks so. Karen Black thinks so too. You can just see that she's enjoying herself a bit too much and is probably screaming to fall out of character.

Trilogy of Terror is one of Karen Black's worthy star vehicles and there are sadly far too few of those. You could say she had a reputation before Trilogy of Terror, but you couldn't call her a B-movie icon until this little gem showed up on her résumé. This film is proof that Curtis knew how to use her--this is her show after all. This film reminds me of P.J. Harvey's stellar video for 'Man Size.' The song is glorious, P.J. at her rough, angry best, but the video is a sight to behold. She does nothing in it but be her strange, alluring self, demonstrating herself to be, in just a few short minutes, very much the uninhibited and fearless individual that she is. It's as if she simply hired a random man on the street, handed him a camera and said 'Film me!' There's a similar magic at work here; Black, the artist and B-movie queen, is at her sinister best when allowed to command the screen with minimal instruction whatsoever. She's that in control.

6/10

The Haunted Mask (1995, Timothy Bond)

Being a 90s kid, I naturally grew up with the television series Goosebumps. However, I was a little late to the party. I watched the series in 1998, shortly after many of the episodes I watched had aired. It was, unfortunately, impossible for me to really see a lot of the best episodes. A lot of the best episodes were two part episodes. The production values and the acting, in comparison to the twenty-two minutes ones I was watching, seemed a hell of a lot stronger. Luckily for me, the best ones were released on VHS. Those tapes, which included some of the best episodes such as Stay Out of the Basement, Welcome to Dead House, Werewolf at Fever Swamp, and Night of the Living Dummy III, were watched over and over again by yours truly. A good example of the show at it's highest quality was the pilot for the series, which was The Haunted Mask. The Haunted Mask, for me, was what cemented the horror genre as a serious genre that left plenty of room for dramatic exploration and emotional quality in addition to scares, jolts, and shocking imagery. While the horror genre is certainly not a genre for everyone, I do think that it is an important genre in art and that there is nothing wrong with a child getting into the horror genre. Getting into a horror genre at a young age, to me, would brighten creativity and personal understanding. Not everyone truly knows what they're afraid of until they see a horror film. That's why, to me, the Goosebumps series was perhaps the best way to introduce children to what horror was, and not the campy kind of horror either. I'm talking about the kind of horror that doesn't always have a happy ending to it. You know, the real kind of horror.

The Haunted Mask is an ideal viewing piece for parents who want to introduce their kids to the horror genre. It tells a story never gets complicated or overly ambitious, with a main character who we care about and appreciate. Her plight is totally easy to relate to for those of us who felt like outcasts who were always getting teased and mocked and made fun of in school for our differences. Carly Beth keeps getting humiliated by these two guys in school named Steve and Chuck. They simply enjoy scaring her and continuously go to more and more extreme lengths to do it They push her too far one day during outdoor lunch, and so she retreats to a nearby novelty shop that just opened. There she intends to buy the scariest mask she can find and then scare them back, come Halloween. She discovers a mysterious room full of hidden masks that are too disgusting and scary to describe. She gets one, despite the shopkeeper's hesitance, and puts it on for that Halloween night instead of her adorable duck costume her loving mother made for her. Soon she discovers to her horror that the mask that she has been wearing won't come off and is now part of her face. Yes, this is not an unoriginal concept. Yes, this plot shares the same plot as a particular Twilight Zone episode. However, The Haunted Mask has it's own share of ideas, scares, and surprises.

I really love this episode and there are several reasons why, the main one being the performance of Kathryn Short. I found her to be incredibly heartfelt and believable for the kind of story this was. Everyone on this show overacts at one point or another, but never enough to draw attention to themselves I feel. The mask transforms this girl into a psychopathic monster who goes out of her way to freak people out. The way she behaves, it's almost like she's getting back at the whole neighborhood. It's reminiscent of Carrie in some ways, the major difference being that Carly Beth has a friend and a family who loves her, thus leaving this girl with more at stake. There's also a reason as to why Chuck and Steve are so aggressively eager to freak her out, and we find out why just at the right time. It makes complete sense in the context of the story, and it's not made into such a huge deal that so much emphasis is put into it. It's the kind of twist that is revealed, but not explored greatly. Not everything is revealed, and we are left with just enough mystery for us to be eager to see the sequel The Haunted Mask II, which, alas, isn't as good as this one though still has it's own surprises. Carly Beth's best friend, Sabrina, is a sympathetic character as well who cannot act in any way other than scared and surprised by what's going on with her best friend. In the end, The Haunted Mask isn't going to be a life changing experience, but it's horrifying enough, emotional enough, and surprising enough to really leave an impression on children, though not the kind of impression that will leave them feeling uncomfortable or worried. No, it's more the kind of fascinated expression that you only wish you could find more of. The visual effects may be fairly cheap, but they still look better than most CGI. Adults will enjoy the various homages and nods to classic horror tropes. The Haunted Mask is as solid as a horror piece can get.

8/10

Combat Shock (1986, Buddy Giovinazzo)

Combat Shock is an unrelenting and repugnant low budget picture that would be unwatchable if it weren't so disturbingly relevant. This film, unfortunately, hasn't dated and is still relevant to today's issues, and because of this I am saddened to say that it needs to be seen. Director Buddy Giovinazzo is only interested in telling stories about people who are completely on the fringes of societal standards. This film depicts a world that transcends even the ones found in the scummiest of kitchen sink dramas. The story involves a day in the life of a deeply deranged Vietnam war veteran named Franky. Franky is a victim of various war atrocities including toxic contamination, torture, and several near-death experiences. He now lives in a dank apartment with his miserable wife and his mutated baby boy. In the span of a day, Franky is verbally assaulted by his wife, is threatened with eviction, is denied by the welfare office, witnesses a former soldier and friend enter the most desperate depths of heroin addiction, and eventually is beaten to within an inch of his life by the mafia who threatens his family. His opportunity for revenge does come around eventually when he gets a hold of a gun, but that ends up making things only worse than they already are.

Good god, is this film nasty. Good luck trying to stomach this one if you haven't seen a whole lot of exploitation horror pictures. This, to me, is one of the scummiest looking films ever. Some folks may point to the Nekromantik films, and to be honest those definitely give Combat Shock a run for it's money. However, what both of those films lack is the utterly hopeless atmosphere that Combat Shock takes place in. I mean, there isn't a hint of happiness in sight, not even in the form of a little girl who is selling her body. Director Giovinazzo has layered his film with so many depths of desperation that it becomes difficult to even try and find something to hold onto. It's established fairly early on that Franky's case is completely hopeless and a lost cause, but unfortunately we, as the audience, naturally want to cling to whatever hope may possibly remain in our minds. We are forced to retreat to our minds, because there isn't an ounce of optimism on display here. Because of this oppressive atmosphere, tone, and story, and because of the graphic and disturbing imagery offered almost endlessly, I definitely cannot recommend this film to people who are depressed in any way or who may be pregnant or with a weak stomach or constitution. Even as a war trauma picture Combat Shock features unrelentingly heavy material, all of which completely collapses into something far worse in the very climax of this film. A lot of times, the hype a film is given about it's content can be exaggerated to the extreme. This wasn't the case for me with Combat Shock. This film, to me, was every bit as ugly and hideous as I had heard. Let's just get one thing straight. The moral tone of a film like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Maniac can make horror films into something that can't really be described by mainstream standards as entertaining. Films like those don't intend to entertain you. They don't even tend to teach you anything that you don't already know. They exist just to disturb you, scare you, and stick ugly and inescapably horrible images into your head forever. Combat Shock is one of those films, one that I cannot comfortably recommend to those who actually want to see something mentally challenging.

The heaviest material comes in the ending, which, similarly to the ending of, I Stand Alone, is like an endurance test. To describe what happens wouldn't be fair, but it's easy to say that it's one that left me feeling quite exhausted. It's an unusual ending for the type of film this is. It's a strangely touching ending that truly was written and directed with a lot of heart and soul and passion for these characters. Certain images and ideas presented in the climax may seem excessive, needlessly grotesque, and extremely over-the-top even for this material. I guess I can understand where those complaints are coming from, although I think that's part of the reason why Lloyd Kaufman picked up Combat Shock as part of his Troma pictures company. Giovinazzo even let Troma edit his original film, which to me was very brave. Troma did re-release the film on DVD, however, with the original cut that I highly recommend folks check out if they are fans of the film. One of the things I loved about the ending, however, is that it was a humongous payoff for a film that didn't even need a whole lot of build-up to begin with. The film's structure is rather reminiscent of Taxi Driver, with Frankie traveling to one disgusting, scummy, sleazy location after another in his quest to try and get even some sort of basic income. His wife may have a rotten attitude, but how can she not? She clearly is very malnourished and hungrier than sin. Of course all of these aspects of the film, all these senses, are heightened by the picture's maniacal energy. Giovinazzo really has pulled off something special here with his cinematic approach. While it would, indeed, be perfected by his later films No Way Home and Life is Hot in Cracktown, both of which are deeply disturbing as well, it's exciting to see this approach put forth in such a bizarre little film that isn't afraid to shove our faces into the gory images.

Combat Shock is a truly gut-wrenching experience that offers us a no-holds-barred portrait of masculinity gone wrong. Internally, this is an assault on the senses, but on the surface you still get a lot of unique developments in the fearless approach to the material. Not a whole lot has really changed since this film has been made, and it's painfully obvious that more needs to be done to keep society from rejecting people like Frank who fight for our country in world situations that nobody knows enough about to truly justify. That's ultimately the greatest tragedy of this picture. Many of the locations featured in this picture have not changed a whole lot, and some of the ones that have haven't changed for the better. One could easily view the film as pessimistic. I do think that perhaps certain elements of the film are, but it also features a rare kind of truth to it. The apocalyptic tone of the film can be seen as a genuine reaction to what's been going on in this country, and really can anyone blame the director and the cast and crew for feeling so angry? Honestly, I'm okay with this kind of approach because there's a distinct certainty to it that I can't find myself entirely doubting. Mankind is capable of abject stupidity, and there's no greater kind of stupidity than homicide. However, if you put a gun in a man's hand and tell him to either kill or go to jail, does that still make his stupid? Picture an entire country being told to do that, and you'll begin to see what I mean.

8/10