Abulele (2015) - Soundtrack

There are a couple of reasons for why I would buy the soundtrack for a movie I have not seen. 

First would be my being a fan of the composer. That does not apply here, though. I was unaware of Frank Ilfman prior to this release.

Second would be the genre of the film itself. If the score is for a horror, science-fiction, or fantasy film, well, chances of me buying it are pretty damn high. Abulele is fantasy film.

I did waffle about whether or not to buy the soundtrack for Abulele when it was first released. But after listening to some of the sample clips provided by Intrada, I knew that this score would be a welcome addition to my collection. 

Ilfman's music is a scrumptious blend of magic and melancholy, capturing the film's central themes of grief and loss with bittersweet perfection.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #2

The Blair Witch

In 1785, several children in the township of Blair, Maryland, accused an elderly woman named Elly Kedward of luring them into her home to draw blood from them. Edward was found guilty of witchcraft, banished from the village during a particularly harsh winter, and presumed dead.

Front: An early rendering of the Blair Witch.

I cannot be alone in thinking that this "early illustration" of the Blair Witch was designed to invoke the cover illustration of Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, right? 

Considering just how detailed the fictional legend of the Blair Witch was, and how the project itself was inspired by the likes of pseudo-science shows like In Search Of... and fabricated documentaries like The Legend of Boggy Creek, I do not think it being intentional is all that big of a stretch to make.

Halloween II - A 500 Piece Puzzle from Aquarius

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) - Soundtrack

When composer Basil Kirchin first met with Vincent Price about working on The Abominable Dr. Phibes, he inquired as to how the actor would play the titular role. Straight or comedic? "Straight, of course," was Price's response. 

Kirchin's original music also played it straight. An approach that disappointed Robert Fuest, the film's director. While Fuest liked Kirchin's themes, he felt the orchestrations were too austere and understated for the film's overtly comedic tone. Enter composer John Gale, who, in Kirchin's words, "spoofed it up."

Because the original masters are lost, the "spoofed up" variations I am familiar with are absent from this soundtrack. Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 14 are from Kirchin's personal recordings and are the "serious" variations he intended for the film. Tracks 7, 8, and 9 are from the 1971 American International LP released with the film. Tracks 1, 11, 12, and 13 are from the film's actual soundtrack.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #1

The Blair Witch Project

What you are about to experience is an overview of events surrounding the still unsolved disappearance of three student filmmakers in 1994. Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams ventured into Maryland's forbidding Black Hills to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, a local legend steeped in blood. They were never heard from again, but their footage was discovered a year later, reigniting interest in the car and the Blair With legend itself...

I did see The Blair Witch Project during its theatrical run, and even had it on DVD at one point, but I cannot remember that last time I actually watched the film. It has been a couple of decades, at least. 

Wait. 

Just. 

A. 

Minute. 

I need to double check the math and... Yes. It has been almost 20 years since I last watched The Blair Witch Project, from start to finish. Where the hell did all that time go?

Never mind. I also remember how fascinated I became with the film's fabricated mythology and viral marketing campaign, which managed to erase the line between fact and fiction. For a little while, at least...

Zombie Island Massacre (1984) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune - October 27, 1985]

On the lower right hand side of this ad, clipped from the Oakland Tribune, are the listings for the screenings in San Francisco. At the very top of the listings is the Electric Theater. That is where I saw Zombie Island Massacre.

It also marked my first of what would be many trips to an actual, honest-to-goodness grind-house movie theater. Each week offered a different triple bill. A mix of whatever current movie was about to end its theatrical run, some moldy oldie, and the occasional first run low-to-no budget exploitation flick. Zombie Island Massacre is a lackluster example of the kind of first run flicks that 'debuted' at the Electric.

I regret not staying for at least one of the other two films on the bill. If my memory serves me well, those might have been Terminal Island and The Howling. So it goes.

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - October 26, 1975]

I would not make it all the way through the novel 'Salem's Lot until well after the broadcast of the 1979 mini-series, which is what the "major Warner Bros. film" promised in this ad eventually became.

Terrifier 3 (2024) - Review

After Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) recovers from his decapitation, he takes a five year rest before picking up where he left off with Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her brother, Jonathan (Elliot Fullam).

Before the release of Terrifier 2 (2022), I decided to give All Hallow's Eve (2013) a watch. Because that was the very first appearance of Damien Leone's evil trickster, Art the Clown. I was unimpressed and quite bored with that collection of short films. A fact that makes my decision to watch Terrifier (2016), Art the Clown's first feature length adventure in torturous carnage, the very next day something of a minor miracle.

While I thought there was a moderate amount of technical improvement with the feature, aided in no small part by David Howard Thornton's casting as Art the Clown, I was still bored. Very, very bored. It takes more than copious amounts of gore and special make-up effects to maintain my interest and enthusiasm with a film. I need to be engaged with the material on either an emotional or intellectual level. Neither film did that for me. So it goes.

But the word of mouth, despite a great deal of that word being gloating over how people were throwing up and/or passing out at various screenings, I decided to give Terrifier 2 a big screen test and was both surprised and delighted at how entertaining I found the sequel to be. Sure the gore and sadism were insanely over the top, but Terrifier 2 had something the previous films did not. Interesting characters that I enjoyed getting to know... before most of them were viciously slaughtered, of course.

Terrifier 3, at first, does a commendable job of doing the exact same thing all over again, only this time at Christmas, instead of Halloween. A whole bunch of new characters, every bit as doomed as the ones in the previous entries, are introduced and developed as if their stories and lives actually mattered. There is also some interesting and intriguing world-building that occurs. Which I liked, a lot.

I admired both Leone's dexterity at setting up and paying off several plot elements as well as his ability to create a palpable Christmas atmosphere in this entry. The "pass the rice" scene was, I think, a terrific way of showing just how bad Sienna's PTSD is. Just how traumatized she was by the events of the previous film. I also liked how the True Crime podcast storyline played out.

But those upswings were not enough to keep the film's narrative motor gunning for a two hour runtime. In the film's second half that narrative sputters and stalls. Which makes what should be a climatic smackdown between Art and Sienna nothing but an interminable and seemingly endless torture sequence. I began to squirm in my seat, somewhat from the discomfort of watching the torture, but also from the frustration of waiting for something interesting to happen.

Something interesting was teased and promised... for the inevitable Terrifier 4. Which had me walking out of the theater feeling disappointed, used, and abused. At this point there will need to be actual confirmation that Terrifier 4 bothers to deliver on that promised something before I agree to pay to see it on the big screen.

Italian Horror Movies by Antonio Tentori and Luigi Cozzi - Review

No visit to Rome would be complete for me without a visit to Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso store. While there I purchased a fistful of books. One of them being this informal guide to and perfunctory history of Italian Horror Movies.

Although the translation is attributed to one Roberto Curti, there were numerous times while reading Italian Horror Movies that had me thinking that, perhaps, Google Translate might have done most, if not all, of the actual translating here. The plethora of odd syntax and uneven structure suggests that this is a direct, word-for-word translation from the original Italian into English. A direct translation that does not account for, or even acknowledge, the many syntax and structural differences that exist between the Italian and English languages.

Here is one prime example, from the first paragraph of the first chapter, regarding Italy's very first horror movie: "Unfortunately we don't have many informations on this prototype, which nowadays is lost..." Said prototype is a 1920 film titled Il mostro di Frankenstein (The Frankenstein Monster), which was directed by Eugenio Testa and starred Luciano Albertini (as Dr. Frankenstein) and Umberto Guarracino (as the monster).

While the wonkiness of the translation had my reading experience vacillating back and forth between distracted irritation and amused bafflement, the lack of any and all true critical or contextual depth to the text itself proved both irksome and disappointing.

Tentori and Cozzi, in their introduction, state that Italian horror revolves around transgression and cruelty. That its "identification of the female gender with evil allows for an eroticism which is morbid and macabre at the same time, in depicting the most extreme sexual tendencies: sadomasochism, lesbianism, voyeurism." [Italian Horror Movies, Antonio Tentori and Luigi Cozzi, Page 11.] Too bad that, after making this observation, they do little to no exploration or investigation of their point(s).

The book is broken into three parts. Part One covers the general history of the genre, with individual chapters focusing on either a particular sub-genre (i.e. Gothic Horror, Psychedelic/Pop, Exorcism movies, Zombies, or Cannibals) or miscellaneous films or filmmakers that were briefly "contaminated" by horror genre tropes or atmospherics. Part Two covers the output of the genre's acknowledged Authors (Auteurs): Mario and Lamberto Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Michele Soavi, Luigi Cozzi, Antonio Margheriti, Joe D'Amato, Umberto Lenzi, and others.

These first two parts are mostly just a litany of titles and plot synopsis with an occasional surface level gloss of commentary, critique, context, or personal insight from either Tentori or Cozzi. I was hoping for a little more steak to go with all the sizzle, though.

Part Three, titled A Close Look and Other Memories Regarding Italian Horror, appears to be mostly by Cozzi and consists of reprints of interviews he conducted in the early 1970s with the filmmakers and actors making science-fiction and horror films at that time. He also shares his fond memory of meeting Lucio Fulci, his nightmarish experience working with Klaus Kinski on Nosferatu in Venice, and other personal and professional anecdotes.

The book closes with two narrative treatments for unmade movies. The first is the story Cozzi created, in 1974, for a version of Frankenstein that would have been set in the late 1920s or early 1930s Germany. Dario and Salvatore Argento were to produce, but the project failed to ignite the interest of financiers. Too bad, because this movie would have been wild.

The second treatment was written by Dardano Sacchetti for Lucio Fulci, who wanted to do a variation of The Mummy. It is also a period piece, set in 1922 Turin, that would have provided Fulci ample opportunities to indulge in his trademark combination of rich atmospherics and gruesome bloodletting. It might not have been as wild as the Frankenstein project, but it still would have made for an interesting Italian horror movie.

We could always do with more of those, I think.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage [ L'uccello dalle Piume di Cristallo (1970)] - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - October 6, 1970]

Dario Argento's impressive feature film debut was an atmospheric jolt of terror and suspense that caught the attention of both critics and audiences. I was unable to see it for myself until the mid-to-late 1980s, when it was released on home video.