Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

I can tell you something about this place. The boys around here call it "The Black Lagoon"; a paradise. Only they say nobody has ever come back to prove it. --Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the boat captain of the Rita regarding the mythos of the lagoon and the danger that exists in paradise. I think you can see how Creature from the Black Lagoon leaves its definite influence in the structure of the Creature Feature. Not showing the monster completely, but yet establishing the Gillman’s presence and the possible danger involved in “invading” its home uninvited. The Gillman’s webbed, clawed hand emerging from the lake, ever-so-slowly, creeping towards human feet standing close to his reach. That fabulous iconic score that accompanies the hand pronouncing imminent harm. The swimming ballet as the drop-dead gorgeous heroine/damsel-in-distress is enjoying her time underwater as the Gillman follows slightly behind as she unknowingly could be a victim at any moment it might cho...

* My personal dislike for Beneath really has nothing to do with Larry Fessenden as much as the characters in his film and the laughable monster fish, a joke that wouldn’t even scare my kids. It is right out of the 70s. Maybe that will be part of this film’s charm…Lord knows the film needed some charm considering the loathsome characters we must tolerate for 85 minutes. Granted they are brats right out of high school, self-absorbed and debating each other’s worth when a hole in their boat causes leaking, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get on my nerves. And they really are an endurance test, I think.  I personally really liked Habit , and Wendigo might just be his best film, but Beneath did him no favors. If anything it seems to discredit his directorial talents. Still, with these cretins in a boat, stuck out in the middle of a lake with a silly rubber monster fish (which looks even less convincing in all the many close up shots), Fessenden had nothing much to work ...

** ½ A beautiful lesbian (with a mother that doesn’t approve of her lifestyle) contracts a wicked sexually transmitted “virus” (a little wasted, she at first agrees to a one nightstand with some guy at a party held at her buddy’s house but tries to stop him but he forces himself in her) and the film follows her down the dark road of a diseased “makeover” until she’s basically a zombie. Allegories on AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are nothing new, and once again the zombie genre is the means to explore the slow-moving virus caught through an act of sexual contact. Contracted was not in any way an entertaining experience. I was quite unsettled as the lead’s condition worsens and her increasingly miserable sickness rears itself physically. Najarra Townsend is Samantha, the protagonist. She is in love with a chick full of “fuck you” attitude and total disregard for the male species. Nikki (Katie Stegeman) is her name, and she doesn’t really seem all that in...

 ** I won’t be quite as critical towards SX_Tape as its most ardent detractors, as I think the abandoned hospital has a wealth of atmosphere, history, wreckage, and decay to exploit for all its worth. However, besides the “young couple trapped in a hospital and besieged by a ghoulish former abused patient” premise, it seemed to drag on and feel longer to me than it really is. I will say that the location is exceptional, a real find for filmmaker Bernard Rose (Candyman), with plenty of “age candy” to get on camera. Found footage is used here to document what should have been just a tour of a possible gallery showing of Jill (Caitlyn Folley) by her cameraman boyfriend, Adam (Ian Duncan). Within the walls of the hospital is the spirit of a “cutter” in 1982 who endured molestation from her doctor. Jill is of interest to this spirit who can serve as host. Now you might be pissed off at me right now for revealing this, but truthfully SX_Tape sledgehammers this home to ...

  *** When I read about how “horror is dead” and such nonsense, I see a cool little flick like Afflicted and consider such fatalistic thinking hogwash. From Canada, a country quickly becoming a burgeoning horror juggernaut, releases this found footage “evolving vampirism” flick about two childhood buddies in their twenties embarking on a global tour (mostly Europe), encountering an absolute nightmare. Derek Lee has always been a traveler, but for five years he was working behind a computer and yearning to return to his adventurous ways. Documentarian pal, Clif Prowse plans to shoot their “ends of the earth” odyssey, but this set of fun trips is cut horribly short when Derek is urged to find a girl to shag at a club where two of their musician buddies are currently touring / performing. The girl he finds is actually a vampire (not of Bram Stoker legend; it isn’t the least bit romantic; the vampirism of this film is presented as a type of infestation that ruins your life, ca...

  **** What do you get with Nurse 3-D ? This is a bloodbath. Paz de la Huerta has here probably a cult part to be remembered years down the road. Just her willingness to lose herself in such a role that requires sheer acts of diabolical pre-meditated savagery and faux seductive techniques to “test” the nuptials of married men, noticed by her as adulterous philanderers, most of the time provided reason (their attempt to shag her) to execute them. She considers herself right in the role of destroyer, validated by the male victims’ guiltless desire to bed her as proof that they deserve to die horribly. Motivated by what happened to her mother by her father when caught in the act at his office as a child, Paz is convinced that cheating husbands/fathers need to be taught a lesson…and that lesson is death at her hands. Paz spends a lot of time nearly or altogether nude. When she does wear clothes, they tightly hug her amazing body and she walks in a way to make sure her curves ar...

  *** “That Crellick…he’s a few rosaries short of a crucifix.” “He lies beneath ever hungrier for souls… ..Now I see the perfect hideous logic of the orphanage. I may have a new master now.” “Now it has returned…like weeds that creep through an abandoned building.” After a debunking in Brazil goes awry, a “miracle investigator” for the Vatican is partnered with a “New Age Catholic Priest” (one of those skeptical of anything remotely considered a “miracle” believing that all this does is drag The Church back into the “Middle Ages”) and a tech wiz (cameras and audio/video equipment are his expertise/specialty) to disprove (or, if it is at all possible, successfully prove) a miracle in this village church located in British countryside quite off the beaten path. Through historical investigation it is soon learned that the church was built upon a pagan property once devoted to a specific yet unrecorded god that seems to have recovered from its dormancy. With secu...