SHOCK CINEMA Magazine goes YouTube!

I've spent the last several weeks fiddling around with my brand new computer and, now that I have 15x the storage capacity of my old Mac, decided to set up a Shock Cinema Magazine YouTube channel for some of my favorite old TV and movie clips... I'll be uploading add'l videos as time permits, as well as clips from films that I've reviewed in the pages of SHOCK CINEMA Magazine.

Documentary Derby brings you Best Worst Movie!

Best Worst Movie (2009)

I haven’t seen TROLL 2. Have you? I’ve seen enough of it, though, to know I can live the entire rest of my life without having to sit through it. On the other hand, BEST WORST MOVIE, the documentary made about TROLL 2, its cast and its fans is worth the watch. Directed by the now-grown child star of TROLL 2, Michael Stephenson, it focuses mainly on Dentist George Hardy, who once wanted to be an actor, went to an audition, and ended up in a truly poor film. He then went on and had a career in said dentistry without anyone knowing his past. Well, until Stephenson showed up with a camera. Hardy is a likable ham. He embraces the fandom of this regrettable film with gusto and always seems to be in on the joke. Well, until he starts doing the autograph circuit and discovers what an ugly, humiliating scene it is. Actually, I think the thing I enjoyed most was his arc from oh-my-god-I’m-a-cult-celebrity to oh-my-god-these-people-don’t-know-who-I-am-and-they-creep-me-out at a horror convention. Besides Hardy, we also get TROLL 2 fans who hold viewing parties (including one at the UPRIGHT CITIZEN’S BRIGADE in my own, dear, home town of NYC), the narcissistic director who STILL thinks he’s made a great piece of art, and a home visit with actress Margo Prey that is haunting to say the least. Stephenson really holds the whole thing together with the right strokes of humor, honest affection, and disgust, going as far as reenacting scenes with cast members and interspersing them with moments from TROLL 2. Far better than I expected going in, this is my Netflix recommendation of the moment.

Pre-order the new issue!

Shock Cinema #39 is at the printer. Right now! Soon enough our offices will smell like fresh ink (so will the car, and me) and we'll be sending out crisp new issues to everyone who has a subscription or put in a pre-order. That's right, you can go ahead and pre-order it right now! On the main page of the official Shock CInema Website!

The year is finally winding down for me, and I'm looking forward to giving this blog some real attention again. I even have some films to review that are not (yet) available through Netflicks, as well as the usual available on DVD titles I usually cover. Now I just have to watch them...

MIA?

I'll cop to it. My involvement in Shock Cinema of late has been purely technical. I'd apologize, but proofing and printing and shipping is what gets the issue into your hands. I have a stack of unwatched films to show for it, too! But we're already picking out titles for me to review for both this blog and issue #39.

Every now and again I do manage to squeeze a film in while I'm working away at deadline pace on my freelance-gig-of-the-month. This week it was Pontypool. It reminded me of Kiyoshi Kurasawa's Pulse, in so much as it uses horror/genre settings to say something bigger about society. It's a small film, it takes place in one room of one building and rarely gives a glimpse of anything further -- but still implies devastating impact. It's a stunt many low budget films try to pull and fail. In the case of Pontypool, illustrating the chaos would only have taken away from the claustrophobic character study that is it. It works. On every level it works perfectly. Bruce McDonald never falls too far on the shlocky end nor sways too artsy. It helps that novelist Tony Burgess adapted his own book for the film. Stephen McHattie keeps everything moving and holds attention right through to the end. Lisa Houle manages not to be as annoying as the role calls out to be in the wrong hands. I haven't read Pontypool Changes Everything but I have a feeling I will....

So that's it, my Netflicks pick of the moment.

On a related thread, wow - Stephen McHattie is in everything I have watched over the last ten years!

Shock Cinema #38

Yes, we have a new issue. Go get it! http://www.shockcinemamagazine.com/

"House" gets a New York Times Slideshow

I reviewed Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 film House in an issue of Shock Cinema not so long ago. Surreal, colorful, weird and trippy, it's not exactly the sort of thing I expect to find an entire slideshow of while trolling nyt.com on a sunday morning. There are some great visuals here for the viewing. Enjoy.

House Slide Show

New on DVD: Deadgirl

Deadgirl 2008 Dark Sky Films (Dir: Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel)

In many horror movies, the sequence of events is kicked off by teenagers doing stupid things, and DEADGIRL is no different. Two scruffy high school losers skip classes to drink warm beer and break windows at an abandoned mental hospital. After getting chased by a stray doberman, Rickie and JT find themselves lost underground in the bowls of "The Nut House." Prying open a rusted door in the hopes of finding a way out, they discover a naked, unconscious woman bound and cuffed to a mattress, with a sheet of plastic covering her. The boys quarrel over calling the police (Rickie) or "keeping her" (JT) and part ways, only to have JT resurface a few hours later to drag Rickie back to the hospital. There he confesses he killed the girl, only to have her wake up, again and again. JT wants to use her as a sex slave, Rickie isn't convinced, but agrees to go along with it if JT keeps his involvement, and her, a secret. Even with this new supernatural element, Rickie's life is pretty grim: His mother's alcoholic boyfriend is staying over indefinitely, he has a crush on a girl at school who won't give him the time of day, his teachers are smug, his friends are lame, his masturbatory fantasies are interrupted by images of the dead girl (Jenny Spain, who looks like vaguely like Bjork if you stretched her taller by half-a-foot and stained her teeth yellow) and the jocks at his school are acting like, well, jocks. While Rickie wrestles with his inner demons, JT has started to bring other scummy friends down to fuck this zombie sex doll -- justifying their behavior by insisting she is not a real person (being dead). Only Rickie still refuses to join in, but he doesn't go to the police either. Instead he tries to set her free... and then things really get nasty. Nicely handled and well shot, by all rights DEADGIRL should have dissolved into adolescent silliness or outright sleaze by the first half hour, considering the subject matter. Instead Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel (neither with a notable project on their scant resumes) transcend the obvious pitfalls and deliver a quiet, mean, sometimes funny film about teen angst, morality, mortality, and sex. The relatively young cast all rise to occasion: Shiloh Fernandez (who gave a solid performance in RED) anchors the rest of the actors and is never too pretty nor too emo to lose the viewer's attention. Noah Segan's JT plays a stupid hick and demented maniac with grace. Even Jenny Spain as the Deadgirl treats writhing and gnashing of teeth like a serious role. I admit that DEADGIRL well exceeded my (probably low) expectations, and reminded me why I like a good B-horror film in the first place. If only they were not so few and far between.
www.deadgirlmovie.com