The HorrorBull Podcast

Phantasm V: Ravager is the Evil Dead II of the Phantasm series, and that is saying something. You can easily dismiss it as a last gasp for relevance, but you’d be wrong. It’s a smart, funny, gory, and self-referential BLAST of a film. I wish I understood more of it, but that has nothing to do with the film’s quality. It’s just that I don’t do well with nonlinear timelines, I guess, and that can explain quite a lot of why I spent most of the movie just going YEAAAAAAH!

Here’s a synopsis for Phantasm V: Ravager that does a better job of explaining the movie than I could ever dream of doing:

Small-town friends Reggie (Reggie Bannister), Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), and Jody (Bill Thornbury) continue in their quest to stop the evil, dimension-hopping schemes of The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and his armada of killer Sentinel Spheres. This time, the fight becomes a multi-dimensional battle across multiple timelines, alien planets and altered realities, where no less than the fate of Earth is on the line.

There are only a few unfortunate aspects of the movie. One of them is that Don Coscarelli, though he wrote the screenplay, did not take over the directing duties this time around. David Hartman does a good job with the material, making it feel all Phantasm-y, but it would have been interesting to see what Coscarelli would have done with it, given the chance.

The other misfortune is Angus Scrimm’s sort of limited role in the film as the nefarious Tall Man. I think he might have been in poor health during the filming of the movie, but either way, the iconic villain does not make as much of an impact on this particular sequel as one would think.

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This week’s episode revolves around Ken Russell‘s controversial 1971 historical drama / horror, ‘The Devils.’ The film is particularly controversial due to its commentary on the Catholic Church and its  Inquisition-era policies. Here’s a brief summary of the plot:

In 17th century France, hunchbacked nun Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) lusts after the town’s priest, Father Grandier (Oliver Reed), a sinful but ultimately just man. But when the priest marries, jealous Jeanne accuses Grandier of using witchcraft on her convent, and the other nuns play along, behaving as obscenely as possible. Ken Russell’s savage portrait of religious hypocrisy earned the film the top spot on the list of most controversial horror films ever made — and an X rating.

The movie, it should be known, is based on both the 1952 book The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley, scribe of the essential Brave New World, and the 1960 play The Devils, by John Whiting. It combines the historical backdrop of the 17-century French plague and themes of unrequited sexuality. Honestly, it’s quite a lot like The Crucible, what with the false accusations of witchcraft and whatnot.

Controversy extends the life of art. Such is the case with The Devils, which is STILL missing two-and-a-half minutes of its final cut. (The fact that it might involve some crucifixion-diddling is why…but still.) The Devils is a good movie, and well-acted. It’s a shame that it is on display mostly for being a weird lightning rod, rather than an interesting horror artifact.

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Plug: Pick up Tyler’s newest book, Dirt Merchant, on sale at his Selz page and elsewhere. It’s the third novel in the Rolson McKane series, and Tyler would say it’s kind of like ‘Boyz in the Hood’ meets ‘Silence of the Lambs.’ Or something.

The Synopsis: In The Void, police officer Carter (Aaron Poole) discovers a blood-soaked man limping down a deserted road and rushes him to a local hospital with a barebones night shift staff. As cloaked, cult-like figures surround the building, the patients and staff inside turn ravenously insane. Trying to protect the survivors, Carter leads them into the depths of the hospital where they discover a gateway to immense evil.

Writers / directors Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski (assistant art director and special effects artist on Suicide Squad and Hannibal) evoke movies of an earlier generation, namely John Carpenter’s The Thing and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. The movie slides along at a hellacious clip, and though the acting is great, the performances are outshined by the practical effects. Though it takes place in an enclosed space, The Void never grows stagnant because Gillespie and Kostanski give the characters plenty to do within the walls of the mostly abandoned hospital.

Without giving away too much of the second and third acts of The Void, suffice it to say that the movie takes a turn from being a kind of schlocky-but-quiet creature feature to something of an existential horror picture. The characters turn from bewildered innocents in this confusing, almost opaque plot to horribly knowledgeable of its dire outcomes.

On a purely surface level, too, the movie is completely enjoyable, and by enjoyable, I mean gross. Fluids spew from gaping wounds, and blood flows freely when necessary, but The Void never quite overstays its welcome with the gore. There’s just enough to make the average horror fan happy it’s there, but it doesn’t revel in it without proper cause.

Redolent of the 80s, The Void makes a great addition to the resurgence of small budget horror movies, and if they are even half as good as The Void, we at the HorrorBull Podcast will gladly continue to endure them.

The Devil’s Candy is more than a Marcy Playground. It’s a 90s reference that you’ll have to listen to the episode in order to understand.

The basic premise for The Devil’s Candy goes likes this: Ethan Embry paints less-than-metal murals to make a living, but he and his daughters are fans of punishing, guitar-driven rock.

The family ends up buying a home that happens to be haunted…by the devil? Okay, so here’s where I have to admit that I don’t totally understand the whole premise, but the dude who used to live at the house is definitely possessed, and Ethan Embry becomes possessed, so there’s that.

Anyway, the malevolent force running Ethan Embry’s life starts to divide the family, to the point that even a kick-ass red Gibson Flying V can’t solve their problems.

What is interesting about the movie are the subtle references to metal. Metallica is mentioned more than once, and Kirk Hammett is mentioned specifically in The Devil’s Candy. There’s a kick-ass use of Pantera’s By Demons Be Driven, from Vulgar Display of Power. They manage to snag Metallica’s cover of Diamond Head’s Am I Evil? and there are a few other things I probably didn’t even catch.

Tyler’s wife Kate calls the movie’s star, Ethan Embry, ‘The Devil’s Eye Candy.’ (She’s had a crush on him since she was fourteen years old, so it’s totes understandable.)

Beyond the Gates sounds like a kick-ass death metal band — probably from Sweden — but it’s actuality a 2016 horror movie about VHS cassettes, board games, and standing around. Lots and lots of standing around. This one was difficult to sit through. We’re pretty sure you’ll hear that on the recording, though.

The movie is ostensibly about two brothers reconciling to split up their dad’s stuff in the wake of his (?) death (?). Included in this is the dismantling of the old man’s nostalgia-ridden video store. In this throwback to a be-kind-rewind era of American society, the two brothers — Gordon and John — find a VHS board game (a la Nightmare) and decide What the hell? We don’t need to get rid of this shit anytime soon, even though it’s the whole reason we reconciled.

Perhaps the best part of Beyond the Gates is the opening sequence. Jackson Stewart very clearly possesses a love for the 80s, analog culture, and duty old video stores — as do we all on the podcast — but that love quickly subsides and is replaced by a stilted film full of melodrama and confused narrative devices. Most of the film takes place in a house, when it obviously should be set somewhere in the video store. As the movie progresses, Beyond the Gates feels less like a horror film than it does a domestic drama with a few heaping helpings of gore.

Still, if you listen to this episode, you get to hear us flail at our own version of the script for this movie and put our own goofy spin on what a HorrorBull-directed Beyond the Gates would be.

Beyond the Gates Details

Director: Jackson Stewart

Writer(s): Stephen Scarlata, Jackson Stewart

Stars: Graham Skipper, Chase Williamson, Brea Grant, Barbara Crampton

Synopsis: Two estranged brothers reunite at their missing father’s video store to liquidate the property and sell off his assets. As they dig through the store, they find a VCR board game dubbed ‘Beyond The Gates’ that holds a connection to their father’s disappearance and deadly consequences for anyone who plays it.

‘Train to Busan’ is the kind of zombie movie we’ve been looking for. Namely, one that isn’t cringeworthy. I mean, we’re not opposed to zombies, but there’s so goddamned many of them. Movies. Not zombies. There’s always a lot of zombies.

The weird thing is, we don’t quite know why we like it so much. The movie is definitely good, but we spent most of this past episode in deep discussion about what, exactly, drew us to this Korean horror movie involving a solitary trip to, well, Busan.

What this Korean horror movie does, above all things, is make you care about the characters. The characters themselves are merely archetypes — absentee father; innocent, beleaguered child; young, pregnant couple; selfish, businessman — but somehow the plot and its execution forces you to care about whether or not they will be bitten.

Here’s some details about the movie, including a precise synopsis from Wikipedia. (Though you can basically say ‘Two people go on a trip.)

Seok-woo, a divorced fund manager, is a workaholic and absentee father to his young daughter, Soo-an. For her birthday the next day, she wishes for her father to take her to Busan to see her mother. They board the KTX in Seoul. Others on the same train include tough working-class husband Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong, a high school baseball team, rich but selfish CEO Yon-suk, elderly sisters In-gil and Jon-gil, and a homeless man who is experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Here’s the cast:

Yoo Gong — Seok-woo

Soo-an Kim — Soo-an

Yu-mi Jung — Seong-keyong

Dong-seok Ma — Sang-hwa

Synopsis:

A father and son, both coroners, are pulled into a complex mystery while attempting to identify the body of a young woman, who was apparently harboring dark secrets.

Cast:

Emile Hirsch

Brian Cox

Ophelia Lovibond

Michael McElhatton

Olwen Catherine Kelly

Director:

* André Øvredal

Tagline: Every body has a secret.

This week’s episode is brought to you by The Autopsy of Jane Doe.  Presumably, you think we’d discuss the movie and whether or not it is of a high quality — it is — but instead, we spent mot of it talking about how we think we have cancer.

That’s not to say it isn’t a great discussion. Lona doesn’t have cancer and Tyler doesn’t have cancer, but seeing someone perform an autopsy makes us think A LOT about mortality, so naturally the topic came up. You can’t stare at an autopsy in basically real-time and not bring your own organic husk gliding toward decay into the mix.

Oh, and speaking of horror and autopsies, Bryan jumped in with some real-life TALES FROM NECROPSY this week. It’s a gross, disgusting, and ultimately fascinating discussion of what happens behind the scenes at an animal mortuary.

We also managed to discuss Jack the Ripper, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, 1888 Whitechapel, and the excellent Bob Clark film, Murder by Decree, all of which have something to do with Springheel Jack.

In all seriousness, though, we dug The Autopsy of Jane Doe. The movie approaches the technical aspects of performing an autopsy with fidelity and verisimilitude. Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch have great on-screen chemistry as they attempt to discover the Jane Doe’s cause of death. We get a scene featuring a severed tongue, some footage of the subject being split open, and then some spooky shit happens.

Truth is, this movie is better when it is creating atmosphere than when it is attempting to be an out and out horror movie. STILL, it’s a ride worth taking, so we highly recommend The Autopsy of Jane Doe.

With Resident Evil: BioHazard and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter coming out soon, we thought it would be a wonderful way to get 2017 started. Think of it as our very own transition, nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Drew and I sat down to talk about everything Resident Evil, from our very first experiences with the video game series to our thoughts on the movies. (At least the ones we watched.)

And, if we’re being honest, Resident Evil is to the video game side of things that Halloween is to movies, with regard to horror. There’s a near-direct connection between the first Resident Evil game, what with its zombies and haunted house themes, to everything that came after.

In a lot of ways, Resident Evil sparked the new zombie movement. Everything had kind of died down in the late 80s, after the release of Day of the Dead and the few Return of the Living Dead flicks to come out. Then, in 1995 / 1996, Capcom unleashed an undead hell on the rest of us.

It wasn’t perfect. The dialogue was hokey, the controls were maddening, and the save systems could actively drive you insane. But in there was something really very special. That’s perhaps why we still care, over twenty years later.

Now, the world of the Umbrella Corporation got unwieldy somewhere along the way, so we can’t totally vouch for the entirety of the Resident Evil oeuvre. The non-canonical games can be train wrecks, for sure, and the movies are…well, they are things unto themselves.

BUT, there is certainly something about the world of the games that keeps bringing us back. Otherwise, we wouldn’t seem so excited about a new game coming out. You can’t remake history, and you very often can’t start a second revolution, but we hope sincerely that the new Resident Evil 7 will be good. Please, God. We don’t believe, but we do hope.

Scream doesn’t need an introduction. Simply put, one of the best and most innovative horror movies of all-time. RIP Wes Craven.

This week’s episode is Bryan Bertino’s The Monster. As a podcast, we will probably always cover Bertino’s films, if for no other reason than he made our FAVORITE movie of the past decade, The Strangers. For that reason, he has our respect and attention.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

The Monster is a 2016 American horror film written and directed by Bryan Bertino. It stars Zoe Kazan, Scott Speedman, and Ella Ballentine. The film was released through DirecTV Cinema on October 6, 2016, before opening in a limited release on November 11, 2016, by A24.

Well, Hell. That wasn’t really much of a synopsis, now was it? Okay, so here goes. The movie is about a mother and daughter who get trapped in their car after slamming into a wolf while driving toward the husband / dad’s house.

What they encounter on the road is something straight out of a Joe Dante movie. It’s a monster in the most literal sense of the word, but we surmised that there might be a little bit more going on here. We wouldn’t be much of a horror podcast if we weren’t able to literature the shit out of these movies, now would we?

What the film ends up being is a pretty quiet and unsettling portrait of addiction and overcoming it for the sake of family. I (Tyler) actually ended up liking the movie more than the rest of the podcast, which is totally all right. Even I found some problems with the pacing, though. It SEEMS like if you think a movie has been going for 90 minutes that it be true, but that’s not the case with Bryan Bertino’s Monster.

FaceBook:

* The FaceBook Page: Facebook.com/horrorbullpodcast

* Tyler’s Rolson McKane Series: Facebook.com/BoogieHouseNovel

* Tyler would also like to plug his newest novel, Dirt Merchant, which is available for pre-order on Amazon right now for $5.99!

Twitter:

* The Podcast: @horrorbullpcast

* Bryan: @bryncntr

* Tyler: @blakebraddy

* Drew: @moviegoer878

* Lona: @mizzpanter