Bloodbath & Beyond: DARKNESS

It may come as a shock to those familiar to this site, but I have my limits.  There are some movies so amateurishly bad even I can’t sit through them.  I have a natural aversion to shot on video (SOV) stuff, because video is such an ugly, flat, and lifeless format (even untreated HD video).  DIY horror can also be hard to take.  Often, it’s just a bunch of bored gorehounds whose idea of a movie is stitching together a bunch of repetitious, blood drenched murders over a skeletal plot.  You can only see fake intestines pulled out so many times before it loses its impact.  On the other hand, I’m a sucker for an ambitious, creative story, no matter how cheaply done or successfully accomplished.  A shining example is the late ‘80’s vampire splatterpunk epic, DARKNESS.

The Capsule:

After witnessing a violent slaughter at a convenience store (which extends into his family’s trailer park), Tobe (Gary Miller) hits the road to track down Liven (Randall Aviks), the bloodsucker responsible for the carnage.  Along the way, he must wipe out all the goth metal vampire dens Liven leaves in his wake.  Things may be a little more than this shotgun toting teen can handle when he catches up with lord vamp.  Liven has created a small army of the undead, and Tobe must team up with a batch of aimless stoners in order to survive the night.  For in this small, unnamed Kansas town, Death walks the streets in acid-washed jeans.

I first heard about Leif Jonker’s DARKNESS in the mid ‘90s in the pages of Film Threat magazine.  It wasn’t a review, just a blurb in the back with a single, phenomenally gross picture.  The movie had the legendary cult status that came from inaccessibility.  A “I knew a guy whose brother’s friend had seen this tape…” kind of thing.  Various crappy looking VHS cuts floated around the horror underground since 1993, but it was finally made widely available (and viewable) when the restored DVD special edition was released in 2006.  This is when I finally saw it.  It lived up to the hype.

For those who watched Kevin Smith’s first film, CLERKS, and thought everyone looked too Hollywood, this movie is for you.  It is dead on in its portrayal of small town suburban teens in the late ‘80s (it was shot in ’88 and 89).  If I didn’t know it was shot in the Midwest, I would have been sure some of those kids went to high school with me.  I owned the exact same Hard Rock Café tee shirt that one of the main characters wears.  If you were a teen in those years, so did you.  One of the kids actually looks (and acts) like a prototype of Jay of Jay and Silent Bob fame.   One of the advantages of this totally average looking cast is that there is no guessing who is going to be a survivor.  The playing field is wide open.  It also avoids the standard horror movie caste system (the Jock, the Nerd, the Party Girl, the Nice Girl, etc.), making it really feel like anyone could go at any moment.  

A lot of the undead hoard is taken from Kansas’ apparently abundant pool of goth metal Fangoria readers.  They saved a lot of money on make-up, since most of those kids were trying to look like vampires to begin with.  I counted at least three different people in Iron Maiden tee shirts.  Some of these guys went all out, looking absolutely thrilled to be covered in fake blood.  There is also a wide selection of distinctly late ‘80s suburban punk/industrial hairdo to be seen.  It is interesting on an anthropological level.

Aside from few adult exceptions, this is solely a teenaged opera.  It’s almost like CHILDREN OF THE CORN, except that they try to pass off kids in inappropriate professions.  The girl playing the cop in the opening looks like she is just out of middle school.  The story also has that kind of romantic, “us against the world” feel that only a teenager would write.  When Tobe’s family is killed, he hits the road, alone, looking to take down the vampire responsible.  I don’t think it ever occurs to him to tell the cops, or perhaps just stay the fuck away from the vampire who slaughtered dozens of people in front of his eyes. In the end, when [SPOILER] Liven gets away, the traumatized survivors who just barely escaped death load into a gun filled Civic hatchback and head after him.  There is zero consideration given to school, jobs, other family, money, or perhaps going to the hospital.  I think they changed clothes, at least.  I know the adults aren’t going to believe their crazy vampire story, but they should at least leave a note.  The entire town was wiped out.  That’s going to raise questions.

Also, no one seems that broken up over the death of their parents.  They get more emotional over losing someone they just met an hour ago.  Kids today, or 30 years ago, such ingrates. 
 

The movie plays fast and loose with the vampire rulebook.  Vampires can be killed by sunlight, holy water (carried in a two liter Coke bottle), or normal bullets (or machetes) to the heart.  Also by having their heads explode.  People who are bitten will turn into vampires in anywhere from several minutes to 30 seconds after the bite.  These vampires have no interest in subtlety or deception.  They are practically zombies, running straight towards any warm body.  Most of them don’t have fangs, so they compensate by using guns, knives, and power tools.  They also don’t have much regard for self-preservation.  None of them seems to realize they should avoid sunlight until they are all melting in a field.  This is why there needs to be vampire orientation classes.  Liven is the only one smart enough to burrow into the ground to avoid being cooked.

Another great thing about this movie is that all the time of day text counts down to sunset (11 Minutes Until Sunset, 28 Minutes Until Sunrise, Three Days Later and 1 Hour Until Sunset, etc.).

Like everything in DARKNESS, the gore effects are amateurish.  They make up for it in sheer volume.   It doesn’t hit the dizzying heights of DEAD ALIVE, but it comes close.  Every penny of the movie’s $5,000 budget must have gone to fake blood, squibs, and latex.  The climactic vampire melt down must have used a pumper truck worth of blood.  

Calling these practical effects is a bit of an understatement.  It’s not to say they aren’t impressive, though.  The director had an ingenious method for achieving the exploding head gags (it held the record for the most exploding heads in a movie at the time).  They built a model head, filled it with blood, and shot it with a shotgun from off screen.  Again, this is a testament to the dedication, ingenuity, and stupidity of teenage filmmaking.  It didn’t stop there.  One scene has a vampire chasing the hero down a flight of stairs with a working chainsaw.  I’m astounded this didn’t turn into an accidental snuff film.

This was director Leif Jonker’s only film, which is a down right shame.  DARKNESS cannot be considered high art, but compared to what a bunch of teenagers normally come up with on a $5,000 budget, it is pretty remarkable.  Jonker has a good eye for dramatic staging.  The shot of Liven rising from the earth at sunset is intercut with the chilling stare of a lifeless girl’s unblinking eye.   It’s surprisingly effective.  Jonker gives nods to his cinematic influences.  Bits of sound design and camera work have a Sam Raimi feel, some locations echo Argento, the minimalist score (when not pelting out death metal) sounds a bit like Luci’s ZOMBIE.  Alas, it took all his efforts just to get DARKNESS out to the world, and his proposed sequel, VAMPIRE FEROX (!), never materialized.  The cast grew up into regular non acting people, though judging from the DVD special features, everyone seems to have very fond memories of running around town at night, covered in blood and shooting guns (hopefully with blanks).  I’m glad to have this one, at least, but I’ll always be curious to know if Jonker could have topped himself.  

Worse yet, it means that Liven is still out there somewhere.  I can only hope there will group of angsty, reckless teens around to take him on.      

C Chaka

Stop Explaining: NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (2009)

Terrible movies were so much more fun in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.  These days, instead of being enjoyably awful, terrible movies just tend to be boring.  They either try too hard to be clever or they lack the weirdness or obliviousness that makes even the worst movie interesting.  There are a handful of modern, entertainingly terrible movies out there, but the numbers pale in comparison to the old days.   I have a few theories as to why this is.  

One is the SCREAM curse.  SCREAM was a great movie, but heralded the grim dawn of the self-aware film.  Characters began referencing clichés in older movies that resembled their current situation, usually derisively.  A little bit here and there is fine.  Too much and it becomes a snarky put down of the referenced movie.    The characters imply that they are smarter than the ones in those dumb old movies, although they usually only wind up making different dumb mistakes.  It mostly happens in horror movies, but it can leak out into other genres as well (Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger should have been forced to do community service for their roles in THE EXPENDABLES 2).  It isn’t always that blatant.  Some movies try way too hard to be clever.  Sometimes the script just self-consciously tries to over explain why something isn’t really stupid when it clearly is.  You can’t be in the middle.  Either write a script that isn’t stupid, or own it.  

I admit, I’m biased.  I will give almost any old horror movie the benefit of the doubt.  I recently became aware of a 1984 horror movie starring Alice Cooper called MONSTER DOG.  I will likely get this on Blu Ray sight unseen, because it stars Alice Cooper and is called MONSTER DOG.  When it comes to modern indie horror, though, I can barely get through the pop up description on Netflix before moving on.  I know I should take more chances, because some of them have to be halfway decent.  Like the 2009 remake of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, which I bought thinking it was the 1988 original.    

Capsule:

A bunch of obnoxious college kids go to a Halloween party.  Two of them are dressed like slutty cats.  One is dressed like a goth/emo boy (not sure if it’s a costume).  One is dressed like a victim from a hospital horror movie (possibly X-RAY, but I doubt it).  One might be a zombie, but looks more like she just got drunk and fell into a rose bush.  Edward Furlong also shows up dressed as the kid from TERMINATOR 2.  The party is hosted by Angela, who is dressed like a girl soon to be possessed by a demon.  For that authentic vibe that only people in horror movies care about, the party is in an abandoned, supposedly haunted New Orleans mansion.  After the cops bust up the festivities, Angela and her pals find themselves locked in the spooky old house.  They discover some decayed bodies in a hidden room in the basement and Angela is bitten by a skeleton when she tries to pull out its gold tooth.  It’s not a reanimated skeleton, just an ordinary 85 year old corpse with a snap jaw hidden in a basement, so no one freaks out or anything.  It is enough for Angela to catch demon rabies, though.  While the other kids drink and screw around, the demon curse spreads among them through traditional methods like a bite, a kiss, or – less documented – anal sex.  As the unpossessed to possessed ratio dwindles, spunky heroine Maddie and her friends fight to survive the night.  Of the demons.

This movie does not start off promisingly.  The opening prologue is done in bullshit silent movie style, complete with sepia tone and dialogue cards.  You know, to give you the feeling you are watching an authentic film from 1925, except with more decapitations.  Then it springs into the present with an equally horrible, oversaturated, quick cut Bourbon St. party montage.  There is a cheap looking CG title, worse than the simple grindhouse title cards or even the Eighties two-tone video titles.  There is a completely pointless and embarrassing cameo by Linnea Quigley (Trash from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD deserves so much better).  Luckily, it gets all the worst shit out of the way early.  We meet our vacant young adult crew, who are knuckleheads but not as aggressively annoying as ones from an Eli Roth movie.  They all seem to like each other and there’s not a lot of bitching and backstabbing.  I wasn’t praying for their deaths, but I wasn’t broken up when they happened.  Final Girl Maddie is played by Monica Keena, who I liked in FREDDY VS JASON and is similarly likeable here.  She keeps a cool head and gets a chance to be badass later in the movie.  Ed Furlong looks way older than he should, either to be hanging out with these youngins or just in general.  Time has not been kind to him.  He does a good job of playing a loser drug dealer, though.  It’s a good mix of world weary and desperation.  I could have sworn that one of the dudes was on VERONICA MARS, but it turns out he’s just the kind of dude who you think would be on VERONICA MARS.

My favorite part of the movie is when the few possessed partiers are still trying to play it cool and seduce the normal folk.  Apparently these demons would consider the behavior in SPRING BREAKERS to be subtle, because their technique is ridiculously over the top.  Even the horny single dude is kind of disgusted.  One demon demonstrates a neat trick of making a lipstick tube disappear through her nipple and produces it from her hoochie.  Warning to parents, DO NOT hire demon magicians for your kid’s birthday party, even if they are cheap.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it will not shut up with the explanations.  There are three separate backstory exposition dumps.  I felt like I was on a New Orleans ghost tour.  At one point Maddie reads from a bunch of gibberish scrawled on a wall.  She makes the surprising discovery that the demons who have been trying to kill them are, in fact, demons.  You can skip that part, we got it.  It’s in the title, for crying out loud.  Listen movie, I don’t need your cockamamie hypothesis on why rust hurts demons.  No one is wondering that.  “For some reason” is perfectly fine.  Any reason we the audience cook up probably makes more sense, anyway.  

The movie is at its best when it loosens up and just rolls with the insanity.  One of the characters suddenly falls through not one but three floors for no discernible reason.  Maddie shoves iron nails down the barrel of a shotgun and fires them like she was Elmer Fudd.  Everyone is trapped on the deadly property because the outer gate is locked.  It’s not an electrified gate or covered in snakes or anything, just a regular gate.  Yet no one even suggests climbing over it.  Maybe their costumes were rentals and they didn’t want to risk tearing them.  I even like the little moments of stupidity, like how the bathroom is always vacant during a party with a hundred drunken revelers.  Or how Angela charges for admission, but has spent at least twenty times the total cover on an open bar and ridiculous lighting and sound systems.  Or why Furlong’s scary New Orleans drug connection is British.  

One not so great weird thing is the way they criminally underused the N.O. setting.  They have one (terrible) establishing shot of Bourbon St. in the beginning, then it’s all sound stages.  Due to the drabness, I actually suspected it was filmed in Bulgaria, like every DTV action movie made in the last fifteen years.  I was surprised to find it really was filmed entirely in New Orleans.  

They do a much better job with the soundtrack, including an exceptional use of Concrete Blonde’s “Vampire Song”.  I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to point out the movie is about demons, not vampires, though.  Just in case we were confused.  The theme song is by 45 Grave, of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD fame.  It’s no “Party Time”, but it’s a nice touch.  I didn’t recognize any of the other music, but the soundtrack has a handpicked quality and works thematically.  Plus, one of the bands is named Goatwhore.  I approve.

The make-up work is justifiably the highlight of the movie.  There is some CG enhanced (?) shots, but most of it is practical.   The opening decapitation is nice and blood spurty, even if it is in sepia tone.  There is a bathtub of blood, which I always appreciate.  The demons in particular are well done, with a lot of weird and asymmetric touches.   Someone gets her face ripped off and her demon form remains faceless.  There are boob tentacles.  Any movie with boob tentacles is worth your time.

So despite its self-conscious self-awareness, I found the movie charming.  It has a lot of heart.  You can tell director Adam Gierasch is really into ‘80’s horror and wanted to give it that fun feel.  There’s nothing mean spirited about it, just gory and goofy without becoming a parody.   Not a bad job.  I haven’t seen (or recognized) any of Gierasch’s other movies.  I’m not sure I’m going to actively seek them out, but if I flip by them on Netflix one weekend, maybe I’ll give it a shot.  Hopefully he’s learned to loosen up and embrace the stupidity. 

C Chaka