Cult of Chucky Review

So I have mentioned how I came to horror before and how I used to grab pretty much whatever was available to rent for 50pence a night from the middle of my old Video Rental store, well one of the games I grabbed one weekend was Childsplay. Now the first Childsplay absolutely blew me away I thought it was an awesome film, it was just such a neat idea and Chucky was so well done the way he moved the voice they had given him, back then the second I had finished watching the film I wanted more, little did I know that years latter I would be watching the 7th film. Not only have they reached the 7th film they have actually done it without either going in to space or hell, recasting the main killer or rebooting it.

So with this being the 7th film in a series despite it not having a number in the title do you need to have seen all of the other films for it to make sense? Well it would certainly help if you had seen a few of them, the original so you know who the character of Andy is, Bride so you know who Tiffany is and Curse of Chucky as Nica (played by Fiona Dourif) returns from that film and well its also very obviously a continuation from that film. In general the more you have seen the more in jokes and references you will understand so the more you will get from the experience. OK so now before I go further I want to say that there will be some spoilers in this review but I will try not to go too far into all of the twists and turns or give too much away.

So this film continues a short while after the end of  Curse Of Chucky (A great film I highly recommend) all of Mica's family are dead apart from her niece and she is locked up in a psychiatric hospital as everyone believes that she is responsible for the murders. Nica’s has been receiving therapy including the electro shock kind and has been pretty much convinced that Chucky is nothing but a figment of her imagination, that she was/is mentally ill and her mind dreamt him up as a coping mechanism so it could try to protect her from the knowledge that she sliced and diced everyone else who died in the last film due to jealousy over the fact she was stuck in a chair and her sister could walk and had a partner and a child. We join her just before she is transferred to a medium security mental health facility.

Well if you watched Curse you will know that right at the end an adult Andy Barcley (the child from the original Childsplay and Chuckys oldest nemesis) showed up and blew Chucky to pieces , so where is Andy during all of this and where is Chucky? Well Andy has his own place and well he is basically the caretaker of Chuckys head which is still alive swearing threatening and laughing away. Andy watches Chucky talks to him and even tortures what is left of him, why he doesn't simply burn whats left who knows maybe its partly because he feels if he killed Chucky there would be no proof of everything that he and Nica had gone through (we do latter see a Video of him tyring to use the head to prove Nica Innocent) but still personally I would have burned the living crap out of that head. Still I need to say I love the stuff between Chucky and Andy I think they have this fascinating relationship there is some degree of respect as well as hate there, they both push each others buttons and they both know that the other has fucked up there life/plans. It also made me wonder if in some way the whole experience of dealing with Chucky had warped Andy not making him evil but certainly blurring the edges of his moral compass what with the fact that he seems to enjoy torturing Chucky so much, still who am I to judge Chucky has killed or been responsible for pretty much everyone who has ever cared about Andy leaving his life in one way or another.

The majority of this story is really Nica's though we get to see her moved to a medium security unit, we get to see her meet and begin to get to know her fellow inmates and then Chucky is introduced to proceedings at first the Doctor brings in a Good Guy doll which happens to be a Chucky, he informs everyone that there were around 50 different good guy dolls and that a certain percentage of the dolls where Chuckys and that he purchased this one for well therapy reasons. We then get to see how various people react to both Chucky and to Nica, once again Chucky is a master at knowing who to use how to use them and how to make the audience laugh.

OK so that's as much of the story as I am going to give away so lets get into what I thought about the film. Well I really enjoyed it but I did feel like the film brought new ideas to the table but then didn't fully develop them as much as it could have. The film was good I would give it a 7 out of 10 but  I really felt that there was so much more there which was left unsaid or unexplored. I could have had a lot more of the Andy and Chucky interactions, I would have liked to have seen a scenario which was a much more sort of cat and mouse battle of both brains and will between them with each thinking they had the upper hand on the other. I guess the most important thing is that this film has made me want to talk to other fans about it and it has left me wanting more, I want an 8th Childsplay, I want it soon and I want it to link to this film, I want to see what happens next and I want it to expand on some of the possibilities that I feel that this one did not fully grab ahold of.

Horror Review: Pin (1988)

Pin was released in 1988 its an 80's horror film hence the reason why I am talking about it on this blog. I also think that its a very interesting film to talk about because it contains some very interesting ideas. To simplify the plot of the film its basically about a family, you have the two children Leon and Ursula, their mother and there father. The mum is very obsessed when it comes to cleanliness she seems to care far more about having a spotless show piece home than she does about her own children. The father is a doctor and he is basically always at work. The dad seems to care about the children in fact you see that he often takes them to work with him. The dad has a medical anatomy dummy and he uses ventriloquism to make it seem like it is talking to the children teaching them and offering words of advice. The kids are quite fond of the dummy who is called Pin and believe he is really alive, the son in particular has a real attachment to the dummy looking to it whenever he is in need of guidance or friendship.

The film is at first glance quiet a strange one but I also think its a very good one, I really like a lot of 80's stuff but some of it can be a little cheesy and a little over the top where as this film feels like something quiet different. This is the point where I would basically say that I recommend you give this film a watch. If I have sold it to you then give it a bash and stop reading right here as I want to talk about the film some more in the next paragraph. I will end up going into spoiler territory but I don't intend to give away every turn and I certainly wont be talking about the ending.

The start of the film is very much focused on the children's early years and showing how they were treated by there parents and by the world around them and the part Pin played in there lives. At about the 30 minute mark the parents die, its at this point that all of the scene setting is done and things really start rolling.

The character of Leon is sort of a Norman Bates type character, the things he went through in his early life have effected him on a psychological level, he has an obsession with Pin, he doesn't see Pin as just a doll he see's him as a friend, as a member of the family. The acting in the film is darn good  David Hewlitt in particular does a great job of playing Leon, he shows a massive range of emotions he can be vulnerable one moment and terrifying the next, he acts with everything he has, its not just in what he says or how he says it, he looks confused or hurt or angry just with the slightest bit of facial movement. Cynthia Preston is also pretty darn good in the role of his sister. 

This film is one of those films that proves that horror movies can be darn creepy and get under your skin without having to be particularly gory or violent. It is one of those movies which pushes its way deep into your  subconscious making you ask questions and making you wonder what is really going on inside the characters head. I didn't initially realize that this film was adapted from a  novel of the same name by author Andrew Neiderman (he also wrote The Devil’s Advocate, which also became a  film). If I listed off all of the things in this film like a creepy medical doll, ventriloquism, a remote house, and a mentally unbalanced individual who is sexually-repressed and has all kinds of strange and dark obsessions then it would probably sound like a whole bunch of other spooky tales but I find the film to be a thing all of its own and well worth a watch. There are a few things I would change, I would have left things a lot more uncertain, I feel that in someways the film plays its own hand a little too soon where as I would have left things much more up to the viewers interpretations, I would have wanted to keep people asking and questioning what they have heard and seen. Still as it stands I rate this film very highly.

DPP72: Tenebrae

Tenebrae is a film by the Italian Director Dario Argento. I am obviously talking about it because it is on the DPP72 list of banned films but unlike some of the films on the list in my opinion this is not a film thrown together just for shock and awe, I actually believe that Dario Argento is a great writer and director, I could easily write a post about him even if this film wasn't on the DPP72. In fact I wrote about him a few years ago when talking about one of my favourite horror films Demoni which was part written by him. If you didn't read that post and would like to read it you can follow the link below.

http://kerr9000.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/demonsdemoni-and-world-of-fake-italian.html

Tenebrae is what I would describe as a stalk and slash thriller an interesting one at that. It stars Anthony Franciosa as a an American novelist who goes to Rome to promote his new detective novel. Once there he finds himself embroiled in a series of grizzly murders, as one of his readers starts to imitate the killings from his book. The author is then bombarded with threats as well as pictures from the murders, murders which include amongst other things stabbings, garrotings and razor slashings. I find this deeply interesting maybe its because of the fact that I am an author myself or because of my interest in the whole Video Nasties thing but it basically feels like it is dealing with the idea of whether or not the creator of a piece of fiction has any responsibility for what someone may or may not do because of what he views or what he hears or reads. I think horror works at its best when it plays on peoples very deepest fears. Now I know that not everyone is a writer but all of us are in one way or another creators we all create ideas and we push these out in to the world be they in the form of a piece of work or in the way in which we present ourselves in the things we say, our thoughts and feelings constantly seep out of us and everyone will at some time worry that these will get us in to trouble or cause someone else to say or do something that we don't agree with that something terrible will grow from the seeds we have planted. To me this film is a manifestation of that very fear and that's what I feel all great horrors are, they are films which bring a fear to life in an interesting way, and that is something I feel Argentino is a Master of.

 

Some people have claimed that Tenebrae is a sexist film and I do agree that the killings in the film are almost all inherently sexual. The authors book within the film is all about “human perversion and its effects on society,”. The murders in the film are largely erotocised, two women are killed in a state of undress, another being force fed as she’s throttled and while I do not wish to spoil everything lets just say that it is penetrating in more than one way.

 I would give this film a very strong 9 out of 10, I can not get across my appreciation for this director or for this film any more than I have without fear of spoiling it. I think that this film is and was a piece of art it was wrong that this was banned it was not a case of violence for violences sake or gore for the sake of gore it is a deep story which happens to contain violence , as far as I am concerned this is a piece of art in much the same way the works of Shakespeare is, if you need to see a good horror film then watch this it might be on the DPP72 but it is not one of the films which tried to use gore to cover up a none existent plot, to try and push a hastily put together piece of rubbish into profits it doesn't really deserve, it is an actual brilliant film expertly crafted which deserves every bit of attention it has and could get.

DPP72: Cannibal Holocaust

So today I am going to be handling a second Cannibal film from the DPP72, this film is called Cannibal Holocaust. The film caused a scandal in Italy when released. Ten days after premiering the film was seized and the director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested and charged with obscenity first and then eventually murder, there was allegations that it was in fact a snuff movie. For those not in the know the term Snuf film refers to a movie in  which a person is actually murdered on camera in reality, now its debatable if this kind of film has ever been made as far as I know every film to ever be accused of being a snuf film has been disproven, the FBI have been involved in investigating some of them and every time they have found proof that people have merly thought something was real that wasnt in fact real.

Despite it being proved that Cannibal Holocaust was not a snuf film and was instead an actual regular movie the film was still banned in Italy, the UK and several other countries because of its extreme gore, sexual violence, and the fact that a fair amount of animals were genuinly killed on camera. I have already talked about my oppinion on this when talking about Cannibal Ferox but I feel I need to state it again because I have strong feelings about this. I disagree with the idea of killing animals for the purpose of making a film, I wouldnt care if it was a low budget horror or the work of the most renowned director in the world I simply think killing any sentient living creature for pure cinematic entertainment is wrong; as I previously stated if you can simulate the deaths of people using effects then you can either simulate the death of an animal or merely offer up enough to suggest what has happened. I wont however judge the film based on this, I will for the purpose of reviewing it as a film without bias pretend that these deaths are artificial and not real (I really hope no film ever does this again as I hope we have evolved somewhat as a society).

Ok so I will try and briefly explain the plot without running the film. An anthropologist is sent to South America find out what happened to a previous film crew. His team on arriving are assigned a guide at first they meet one tribe and see several of their practices before meeting another tribe and helping them. This second tribe seems nervous of them despite the help they have given. It would seem that the tribe had killed the first crew but the anthropologist manages to barter for the crew’s films footage and leaves with it. He then views this footage so that he can learn what became of the first film crew. 

There are lots of opinions about Cannibal Holocaust. There are those who feel that the film is a sick piece of filth which should be banned. You can point to the murder and cruelty directed to animals or the level of gore or even the sexual violence. Then there are those who would argue that the film has a political message which it tries to put across to the viewer; that it is in fact a piece of social commentary about civilized society. Then there will be those who just simply enjoy violent, films full of gore and sadism because they happen to enjoy it. So which camp do I fit in?

I think that there can be an argument made that there is a degree of social commentery in the film, that the director is asking questions about if modern man is more or less civilised than the tribes that we look down upon, but this point is a little ruined by the animal crulty and on top of this the reports that the film maker treated his cast and extras like shit. The film is  a 7 out of 10 in my humble oppinion. It took a lot of supressing biases to score this film so highly though, I cant stand that animals were killed for it or the strong proof that the person behind it was suge a massive dick to those who worked for him. Also I guess I should have said this a long time ago when I did the first of these reviews but please remember that I am scoring these with fans of horror in mind, if you dont like horror and you have found my blog then you would most likly not get 7 out of 10 enjoyment out of something like this, I would rate them far more harshly if I thought I was communicating to the overage viewer who is more into hollywood style films.