__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

Blood River

A surprisingly good movie, Blood River has a vibe that makes it a cousin to the recently reviewed Farmhouse. A young couple passes a stranger on the road. Clark, the husband, wants to stop and pick him up — they are in the middle of some interminable American desert — but wife Summer is adamant that they drive on. So on they drive.

They spend a night in a fleabag motel in a no-name little town, but the stranger is there ahead of them. In the morning we see that the stranger has the slightly scuzzy young woman who runs the motel and bar terrified. The last we see of her, she is slitting her wrists.

The couple leaves the town only to suffer a blowout 50 miles later. Now they are stuck in the middle of nowhere and must make it on foot to a spot on the map called Blood River. It is in Blood River that all debts will be paid.

Who’s that in the trunk?

Summer, played by Tess Panzer, is pregnant. She has a five-year-old son from a previous relationship, back home or so she supposes. Husband Clark (Ian Duncan) seems a solid sort of citizen, a bit uptight, but normal enough.

The stranger, however, is another matter. Joseph (Andrew Howard) is a low-talking cowboy-type who reminded Your Humble Reviewer of a young Ed Harris. He has a quiet menace that demands attention. He walks into the ghost town of Blood River with an empty gas can in one hand and a big hunting knife on his belt. Summer is charmed by the cool, calm stranger, but Clark is on the defensive, suspicious and annoyed that this guy has swaggered into their life and so easily come between him and his wife.

There is nothing to be done but leave Summer in the empty town while the two men walk back to the car to retrieve gasoline for Joseph’s vehicle. The walk to the car gives Joe time and opportunity to strip Clark to the bone, leaving him shaken and scared, forced to confront some sort of skeleton of the past in the trunk of his car.

British cool

If I’m making Blood River sound as if it’s a mystical experience, it sort of is. No simple thriller about yet another dopey young couple faced with surviving a maniac with a penchant for sharp objects, Blood River is unsettling in an entirely different and more satisfying way.

Each of the three leads — and there are only four characters in the entire movie — is excellent. Director Adam Mason has created a very spooky little flick that delivers much more than one expects. Mason co-wrote the movie with Simon Boyes, his co-writer on 2006’s The Devil’s Chair as well. That movie also starred Andrew Howard. (Mason and Boyes worked together on Broken and Luster, too.) Much to the surprise of this viewer, all three of these dudes are British. Considering the American West setting of Blood River, I expected this to be a Made in U.S.A. film.

This one is definitely worth seeing. And I’m making a point of seeing Mason and Boyes’ other movies asap./JE

DVD extras: Minidoc, The Making of Blood River. No commentary track.

out of a possible five.

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

The Exorcist

When The Exorcist was released in 1973, Your Humble Reviewer was a 13-year-old attending a Catholic boys school. We had a teacher, Brother Estrada, who filled our heads with stories of his time as a missionary in tropical climes and how he had seen those possessed by demons doing bizarre, unbelievable acts — levitating, for example.

While I came to some understanding about religion and superstition in the next few years, at the time it was hard not to give credence to these stories that Estrada, at least, believed wholeheartedly.

I was too young to see The Exorcist on my own, but I went with my father and found it hard to enjoy the movie for a couple of reasons. First, I wasn’t sure if this was fiction or more of a documentary. Second, I was worried that such an intense movie was going to give my father a heart attack. That might sound silly, but the hype surrounding this movie when it was new cannot be overstated. The Exorcist was a very big deal when new, based on a huge bestselling novel by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the screenplay.

Linda Blair’s vomiting is a career high point

Arguably “the scariest film of all time,” The Exorcist is about a 12-year-old girl, Regan MacNeil, who becomes possessed by a demon. Her mother, Chris, is an actress working on a movie in Washington and has moved her small household to an old red-brick house near the Georgetown campus.

Just around the corner, Father Karras is suffering a crisis of faith. And another priest, old Father Merrin, is finding the clues that he will be forced to battle a literal demon from his past.

These four (or five, including Pazuzu the demon) characters, along with a police detective, make up the core of this movie which starts slowly and picks up speed before its breakneck final 30 minutes.

Ellen Burstyn stars as Chris, shaken to her core by the horrifying changes in her young daughter. Linda Blair starts the movie as a likable adolescent and never loses the viewer’s sympathy as an innocent trapped by a demonic force. Jason Miller as Karras is a shaky shoulder for Chris to cry on, but this character has so many doubts that the demon for him is almost a welcome friend.

What can one say about the great Max von Sydow as the venerable Father Merrin? He steals every scene he’s in, with a quiet dignity that comes, I suppose, from being Swedish.

About the character of Father Merrin: known to his priestly colleagues as a great and good man, it makes one wonder why he’s still just a priest. I’d expect at his advanced age that he’d have made at least monsignor. Ah, the mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church are difficult to penetrate.

A wasted opportunity

With all the disgusting hurt caused by Catholic priests over so many decades and so much in the news in recent years, it’s perhaps impossible today to view the priests in The Exorcist as out-and-out heroes. Not so in 1973. Those were more innocent times, by which I mean more gullible times.

Today this movie, directed by William Friedkin, still chugs along at a pretty good clip, though the first half might seem slow to young viewers used to special effects and gore from the start of a movie. The version reviewed here is the Extended Director’s Cut and the few brief additional scenes, sadly, do not add much to the overall experience.

Friedkin offers a commentary track, but it is the worst kind of director’s commentary, a wasted opportunity. He merely tells us what is taking place on the screen, as if he was describing the movie to a blind person. There are no anecdotes, no interesting asides, no technical info. I’m assuming Friedkin is not asked to be toastmaster at too many functions.

Horror fans who have not seen The Exorcist should fill this gaping hole in their movie-watching experience./JE

DVD extras: Dreadful director’s commentary, TV and movie trailers.

out of a possible five.

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

Dark House

One of Fangoria magazine’s Frightfest features, 2009’s Dark House is worth seeing if only for the wonderfully hammy performance of Jeffrey Combs, star of Re-Animator and the equally entertaining From Beyond. In the opinion of Your Humble Reviewer, Combs was the best thing in two of the Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

In this bit of froth, Combs is a businessman who builds haunted house attractions in cities across the U.S. His latest bit of spooky fun is the transformed Dark House, formerly an orphanage in which seven children were murdered by their religious nutjob of a caregiver. The holier-than-thou loon is played by Diane Salinger; comedy fans might recall she played Simone way back in 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

This is an Eeeee! ticket ride

Meghan Ory plays Claire, a witness to the orphanage slaughter. Fourteen years later, she’s still haunted by terrifying memories of the tragedy and when her entire acting class is offered the chance to work for Combs’ character in his new Dark House, she accepts in order to confront her debilitating fears. She should have stayed on her psychiatrist’s couch.

The ensemble of young actors are adequate to their task, which is mostly acting snide and then getting chopped, stabbed, bludgeoned and shot. Ory is fine, but it is Salinger as the ghost of the mad murderer and Combs who steal this show.

With more than a nod to other horror and science fiction movies, writer/director Darin Scott’s flick calls to mind House on Haunted Hill, with its mix of attractive young victims and loopy, nitwitted entrepreneur.

Dark House is lightweight stuff, but fun nonetheless./JE

DVD extras: Director’s commentary.

out of a possible five.

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

Mark Elf, that amazing prognosticator and all-around swell guy, has deigned to convey his forecasts for the coming week. Mr. Elf’s Horrorscopes are brought to you by the good people of Spuzzum. “When considering your next Canadian getaway, think Spuzzum.”

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

 

Hi everyone.

Just wanted to drop a note to everyone and let you all know that the new Horror Forum is up and running. Please take some time to join the conversation.

Look forward to seeing you all here soon.

HMpod.com Team

__________________________

Limited Time Offer - Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!