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Lawrence D. Foldes' YOUNG WARRIORS (1983)

“What do you get if you cross Animal House with Death Wish?"

That previous statement is not a phrase found in the satirical online newspaper The Onion but comes straight off of Young Warriors video box copy. Young Warriors remains the favorite of director Lawrence D. Foldes’ earlier features, cramming in lots of production value, action sequences, name actors and challenging themes. While technically polished, Young Warriors also tends to overreach itself in the manner of Foldes’ much-dismissed Don’t Go Near the Park (1979). Never released to DVD, Young Warriors can be found in the rare store that still carries VHS tapes.

James Van Patten stars as Kevin, a petulant film student attending college in Southern California. He hangs out with his frat buddies, whose chief concerns are getting laid, drinking beer and subjecting pledges to sadistic, homoerotic hazing rites. Van Patten’s hedonism comes to an end when his teenage sister Tiffany (April Dawn) is brutally raped and killed on the night of her prom. Enlisting the aid of his friends to bring the killers to justice, the collegiates begin hanging out in waterfront bars in order to stakeout the city’s various underworld connections.

Alas, Van Patten and company fail to heed Friedrich Nietzsche’s admonishment, "Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster -- and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Things go from bad to worse, innocent people die and Van Patten kills himself and the remaining cast members by dropping a live grenade into an ammo box, sending the frat house up in a fiery conflagration.



An American and Canadian co-production, Vancouver’s skyline very unconvincingly stands in for Los Angeles during a funeral scene. Foldes was so impressed with Linnea Quigley’s friendly demeanor on the set of Don’t Go Near the Park that he rehired her over a young unknown by the name of Vanna White, who was willing to do the nudity required for the role. Foldes would later kick himself over the potential residuals lost with that casting decision.

Two aspects of Young Warriors would return in a big way to Foldes years after the film was shot. While the film has definite camp appeal, the rape scene at the beginning is as harrowing as the ones shown in Irreversible (2002) and I Spit On Your Grave (1977). The sequence is so potent and relentless that it originally tagged the film with an X-rating.

Foldes enlisted the help of teachers and clergy to write letters to the ratings board arguing that the act of rape is ugly and horrifying, and needed to be depicted as such in the film. Controversy also swirled around the fact that actress April Dawn was underage, although the more revealing parts were accomplished with a body double. The ratings board let the film slide with an "R" rating after a few token cuts.



Adding to the film’s production value is a scene of a helicopter crashing into a used car lot, setting off a series of explosions. Foldes and crew accomplished the scene with the aid of a junked helicopter found by former wife Victoria Paige-Meyerinck in Oregon. Shot on an exterior set built near Valencia, the sequence only lasts a few seconds but cost Foldes $50,000 to shoot.

The aforementioned scene would later haunt Foldes and company when the ethically-challenged producer Menachem Golan would use this scene whole cloth in Exterminator 2 – but that, as they say, is another story …

O, SUZZANNA!

Southeast Asia's reigning horror diva



The death of Indonesian actress Suzzanna in 2008 went largely ignored by the western press. Interest in her films had gained a foothold with Pete Tomb’s Mondo Macabro book, which breathlessly told of all the very special treats that Indonesian horror and exploitation films had to offer the adventurous viewer. Described by Tombs as "southeast Asia's reigning horror diva," Suzzanna starred in a series of pictures involving an evil goddess from folklore, "The Snake Woman" or "Snake Queen."



Suzzanna called to mind Imelda Marcos crossed with later-day Elizabeth Taylor, radiating evil and sultry sex appeal. Tragically, she left the world far too soon at the age of 66, after starring in her comeback feature, Hanta Ambulance (2008) shortly before her death. Her many fans were reportedly cheated a final glimpse of their heroine with a funeral that did its best to block public access.



While acting in films as a teenager, the first notable time Suzzanna was introduced to the English speaking world was Queen of Black Magic, also known as Black Magic III, in 1979. The film was retitled Black Magic III in order to associate it with the successful Shaw Brothers’ “Black Magic” series, Hong Kong horror that found a welcome home in grindhouses showing martial arts movies.



Directed by J. Sudjio, Queen of Black Magic opens with the wedding of a village prince. The ceremony is interrupted by mysterious winds and his bride-to-be is beset with horrifying visions. Black magic is to blame, and Suzzanna, who plays the secret commoner concubine of the prince, is singled out, her mother murdered and her house set on fire. Left to die in the jungle, she is befriended by an evil wizard who arms her with incantations and spells to attack her tormentors. A visiting Muslim priest, goody-goody in the extreme (remember, Indonesia is a curiously Islamic nation in the middle of Asia) is impervious to her charms; like in all films of this type, those who use live by black magic die by black magic and those who fight evil with evil all die terrible, protracted deaths.



Queen of Black Magic has silent movie melodrama to spare and some extreme gruesomeness akin to the old Hong Kong school, i.e. cursed people develop bleeding boils and puke up scorpions and maggots. Entertaining on its own terms, it lacks the distinctive "voice" that films from Indonesia had yet to develop, but fans of old-style Hong Kong horror will find plenty to enjoy.



Suzzanna would strike again in Hungry Snake Woman (1982), the most lavish Indonesian genre picture this writer has come across, with wild special effects, elaborate sets and go-for-broke set pieces. The Snake Woman of the title offers her followers wealth and prestige in exchange for human sacrifices. Our ne'er-do-well anti-hero Brian agrees to her terms, which includes the murder of three women concluding with a feast off of their breasts! At this point, Brian affects a pale face, a Dracula cape and vampire fangs and goes about Jakarta biting women on the neck -- and then biting their tits off!



Our first glimpse of the Snake Woman is when a passageway magically appears inside a grotto. Her throne glides through a series of alcoves that light up in different colors, ending when her throne is held aloft in the air on a cushion of billowing smoke. She asks the brash human interlopers, "Why have you interrupted the concentration of our meditations?" As the 'bots would exclaim in "Mystery Science Theater 3000," "this looks like the most boring ride in Disneyland!"



Snake Woman’s glitzy visuals recall the excesses of Hindu art, and a scene where the hero consummates his relationship with the queen on a revolving round bed has all of the odd poetry of Jean Cocteau. The film remains an absolute must-see on the Indonesian terror tour.



For an infinitely darker take on the same material, Suzzanna would repeat her role Snake Queen. In this continuation of the series, Suzzanna plays three roles: the Snake Queen of the title, the worldly second wife of a rich man and a grotesque old crone. This film has a definitely nasty edge to it; this is NOT your father's Snake Queen. As usual, the Lizardly One promises riches and fulfillment beyond her follower's wildest dreams in exchange for human sacrifices.



In one especially gruesome vignette, an unemployed lay about seeks the Queen's services; she bids him to eat the severed hand of a baby as down payment. He rushes home to tell his wife the good news ("Did you get a job?" she hopefully asks) -- when, wait a minute! What's wrong with the baby....?

These strikingly indigenous morality tales offer the viewer a sharp lesson: Work hard, pay your taxes, be a good citizen and you WON'T have to use the services of the Snake Queen!

Another film starring Suzzanna this writer has seen is the other-worldly White Crocodile, a delirious mélange of special effects and set pieces. The chief beastie would raises the level of the similar monster spied in Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive (1975) to CGI levels! Unfortunately, the only print I have seen of this particular title was without English subtitles or dub track, so much of the film – which includes scenes Suzzanna snipping off the graying pubic hair of an older gentleman as part of some arcane ritual – remains “lost in translation.”

Along with Barry Prima, Suzzanna offers a friendly, familiar face to brave Westerners taking their plunge into wild and zany Indonesian fare. You’ll laugh, you’ll be amazed, you will be dazzled, but you certainly won’t be bored!

THE SLIT-MOUTHED WOMAN (2005)

(aka Kannô byôtô: nureta akai kuchibiru, 2005)

Directed by Takaaki Hashiguchi

Whenever horny doctors and nurses have sex in a disused plastic surgery clinic, this spooky Japanese ghost with long black hair and a Black Dahlia-like smile comes along and scares them. Why? I don’t know. This very same ghost comes along and disrupts other couples who are having sex who are not connected in any way with the plastic surgery hospital. A plucky female journalist is out to find out, and traces the fish-mouthed phantom to a big-time politician. The poor young woman in question turns out to be the daughter of said politician, who was addicted to plastic surgery who became tragically maimed in an accident that her surgeons were unable to repair. Huh? The doctors can remake her face to her heart’s content but when push comes to shove they can’t even take care of a few superficial scars? The plucky female journalist quells the restless demon with a few kind words of encouragement, until she too, tries to have sex and – WHOA! Nobody saw that coming, chiefly because most viewers will have given up on this title well into its brief running time …

Redemption U.S.A. has come out with some rather weak entries for their initial forays into the stateside DVD market (see also The Witching Hour). Director Hashiguchi films all the sex scenes with a detached, indifferent style and all the scenes involving the ghost try really hard but just aren’t that scary. The budget for this outing appears on the same level as the most poverty-stricken Hong Kong Category III three-day wonder, with a normally bustling, densely populated Japan depicted as a ghost town with about 15 people.


Before the disgruntled customer reaches for this DVD as a hot drink coaster, be aware that among its extras is the remarkable short film Birds of Prey (1998). This short subject follows the plight of a persecuted British old age pensioner who secretly tends to his pet falcon in his dismal soundproofed flat. When he returns one day to find his beloved birdie gone and his apartment ransacked, the pensioner traces it to a flirty stripper at a nearby pub and enacts his revenge. It’s a very depressing short, but succinct and to the point – quite unlike the main feature.

With vengeful Japanese wraiths at an absolute premium, you can certainly skip The Slit-Mouthed Woman. Read a book instead!

THE BOOK OF LORE with GRAVE MISTAKES (2010)

Directed by Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina

Shot-on-video (SOV) horror is a genre unto itself. Cluttering up shelves along with their shot-on-film, but still straight-to-video horror brethren -- in addition to shot-on-film, then went-to-cable horror movies, these aforementioned titles are essentially “fanzine” features. Usually made by fans for fans without money, these projects have a fresh eagerness to entertain game viewers. Simultaneously, one can’t totally discount these features, as they are tapped in to the deeply personal, no-frills frissons they’re capable of generating. Both The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007) were cut from the exact same cloth as these camcorder features, and both raked in millions of dollars with audiences eagerly waiting in long lines around theaters to see them.



The home-brewed horror feature The Book of Lore, along with its companion anthology feature Grave Mistakes is a shining example of all that is good and bad about SOV horror. Lore is heartfelt, ambitious and has an earnest story to tell – but its makers are far too young (in the DVD interview supplements, directors Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina don’t look a day older than 20) and inexperienced to mount a wholly successful feature film.



Lore focuses on community college student Rick. Things are not going that hot for him; he’s living with his loving but dotty aunt after both of his parents have been incarcerated for methamphetamine production. Even worse is that his girlfriend has turned up missing and the unshaven, doo-ragged sheriff is none too enthusiastic about finding her. His girlfriend is later found horribly mutilated, and a friend points him to the Book of Lore – a handmade composition book that foretells the town’s murders. Years earlier, a killer by the name of the Devil’s left hand (known as “DLH” to his friends) had blown through Rick’s one-horse town and abducted and killed eight newborn babies … is there a connection?



The Book of Lore is to be commended for corralling a fair amount of amateur actors and locations to tell its complex, twisting story, but it suffers the same fate as many other projects of its ilk. Namely, it doesn’t know when to quit. Working with largely unpaid talent, the directors left a lot of talky scenes of exposition that doesn’t further the story, making for a dull viewing experience. Having worked in semi-amateur film projects such as The Book of Lore, this writer suspects these scenes were left in because the producers didn’t want to hurt the actor’s feelings.

Grave Mistakes, the anthology second feature included in the DVD is more successful, largely due to the abbreviated nature of its stories. The four stories and wraparound tale that comprise Grave Mistakes ain’t no big thang, but they benefit from much better acting, including a part for perpetual indie horror ham George Stowver, Mr. Gravel in John Waters’ Desperate Living (1977) as well as countless Don Dohler features. There are plenty of non-actors in important roles, seriously hampering some sections, and the brevity of the stories don’t always work in the film’s favor. One segment, involving a vampire infestation at a hospital ends abruptly at the halfway point without explanation!

There are extras aplenty on the Camp Motion Pictures DVD. Both LaMartina and George contribute commentary tracks for both films. There is also a gallery of stills for The Book of Lore, a radio interview and a making of feature from a local cable TV station. There is even an Easter egg, a promotional video that the filmmakers made in order to entice local restaurants to provide catering services.



The best extra feature on the DVD are trailers for Camp Motion Pictures’ many other SOV horror films, the type found in Mom-and-Pop video stores in the Eighties. Time has been kind to such deteriorating magnetic tape features such as Video Violence, Video Violence 2: The Exploitation (both 1987), Woodchipper Massacre (1988) and Cannibal Campout(1988). These once woebegone semi-movies, usually found at the bottom of video store rental shelves are now questionably called “retro-chic” and even have the word “classic” applied to them in some circles. The Book of Lore and Grave Mistakes can be cautiously recommended to the die-hard horror fan that they’ve already seen much, much worse, pal!

AFTER LAST SEASON (2009)

AFTER LAST SEASON (2009)

Directed by Mark Region

“The end of a season means … the beginning of a new one.”

Characters are framed in the camera dead center, overwhelmed by surrounding blank space, lit harshly full-on with floodlights. “It’s been many years since I’ve been in the area,” one performer says. Plastic boxes are pulled across a rug with fishing wire. A ruler hangs in the air, held aloft by dental floss. “Oh, I've never been to that town, but I've been through it,” another character says. One female actor has her hair brushed in front of her face in an attempt to disguise her participation in the motion picture at hand. “There are some printers in the basement you can use,” says the male lead. There is no musical score, mostly just the faraway sound of gurgling on the soundtrack that recalls a toilet flushing two doors down in an apartment complex. Mostly, there are lots and lots of crude computer animation as composed on an Amiga computer circa 1986. Lots and lots and lots of it.

The viewer has stumbled into the bizarre world of After Last Season, one of a quartet of films that is hot on the current WTF? Circuit. The midnight movie has recently enjoyed resurgence in the 21st Century, but audiences this time aren't flocking to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) or El Topo (1971). A new type of film is lighting up the nights at ye olde repertory movie theater – misguided, personal projects from renegade filmmakers who don't get that the joke is on them.



The late John S. Rad's Dangerous Men (2005, covered extensively in Screem #12), James Nguyen's Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008) and Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003) are all drawing hipster crowds to laugh hysterically at beyond bad motion pictures. Free of major studio constraint, these film-fans-turned-directors crank out monumentally inept flicks that have to be seen to be disbelieved. Happily, these self-proclaimed auteurs adopt positive attitudes, delighted that their films have found audiences and enthusiastic theatrical play.



Of this current crop of motion pictures, After Last Season is by far the most obscure, difficult to see and the least accessible. It's unquestionably the most bizarre of the four films. Minimal in the extreme, the shot-on-35mm epic played in only four move theaters in the United States (Lancaster, California, North Aurora, Illinois, Rochester, New York and Austin, Texas) for a single week, with exhibitors allegedly told to burn the prints in lieu of sending them back to save on production costs.

Season first garnered interest in a trailer posted online that posed more questions than it answered. Many had assumed it was just part of a viral campaign for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are (2009).



After Last Season's first scene, involving an MRI machine that is most decidedly is not an MRI machine sets the tone of what's to follow. The machine is a cardboard box, cut with scissors and dressed with butcher paper. Furthermore, the paper is affixed with highly visible masking tape. The room is a spare bedroom with pink walls and a ceiling fan. As if to hammer home this fact, the ceiling fan is awarded its own close-up. The final bit of art direction is 8 x 10 pieces of paper taped to the top of the wall to obscure wallpaper borders, affixed sloppily and threatening to fly away with a gust of wind from the aforementioned ceiling fan.



Contrary to what has been written about the film, After Last Season does have a story, albeit one told so ineptly it's easily obscured. There are a plague of murders affecting a small college town. The Prorolis Corporation (an indifferently framed building with the words burned into the film) is conducting mind experiments. Season's two main characters, Matthew (Jason Kulas) and Sarah (Peggy McClellan) commence to experimenting and stumble across the brain waves of the killer. The majority of After Last Season's running time consists of Matthew and Sarah’s mind experiments that are represented by the aforementioned computer animation. Countless Internet reviewers have tried to wax eloquent on Season’s allure, the most accurate being that is “an accurate representation of how an autistic person sees the world.”

Baffling, obscure and enigmatic, Season – now on DVD thanks to its production company Index Square entrances the viewer in the hopes that the audience’s patience will be rewarded with a coherent conclusion. There is a conclusion, but told so ham-fistedly it’s easy to miss. Think of the old “avenging ghost” story and listen carefully to the gal with her hair brushed in her face at the very end and you will “get” the film, but don’t feel like it was worth wading through the preceding to reach it.

An interviewer with director Mark Region appeared online in Filmmaker Magazine, and again, the interview raised more questions than it answered. “We made the sets simple,” Region told Scott Macaulay. “I used shots of walls to show the passage of time in some scenes and to show that something is happening at a different location in other scenes. For the rest we tried to keep the sets simple because of the budget.”



As for explaining the beneath-Edward D. Wood Jr. quality of the film’s MRI machine, Region says the “way it happened, first we made the MRI, and it looked pretty good from far away. We couldn’t tell it was made from cardboard or bits of plastic – it also has plastic. But when you shoot with 35mm, and sometimes because of the light, some lines across the front of the MRI became visible. When we shot, we couldn’t tell, but on film the lines are darker — you see it’s not a polished surface. That’s how the MRI came to be.”

To this writer, I was struck by Season’s striking resemblance to Paranormal Activity (2009) with its shared threadbare supernatural elements and mundane, ugly settings. However – whereas Paranormal Activity raked in millions of dollars on a budget for $14,000, After Last Season was produced for – gasp, choke -- FIVE MILLION DOLLARS, incurred largely by the investors who insisted on four-walling the movie to theaters.

After Last Season can be recommended to those on the search for something different – not good, mind you, just very, very VERY different.

Director Ti West is in THE HOUSE

Director shares memories of helming his indie horror hit THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

Eager to leave her dormitory to acquire her own apartment, cash-strapped coed Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) takes a baby-sitting job from an eccentric couple (Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov) at their isolated Victorian mansion. Once there, the husband confesses to her that the job involves caring for an elderly woman, but she “won't have to do anything” in exchange for a hefty fee. As the evening wears on, she does her homework, watches a little TV, orders some pizza ... but since this film is called The House of the Devil, things are not what they seem, bodies begin to pile up, horrible secrets are revealed and there's a blood-drenched climax followed by an abrupt shock conclusion.

In a genre marketplace cluttered with “torture porn” and self-reflective remakes of classic grindhouse fare, The House of the Devil earns its scares the old fashioned way, i.e. through story, characterization and suspense. Set in the Eighties, The House of the Devil takes pains to recreate a world of dial telephones and analog tape players but does so in the service of a story wracked with tension and nail-biting dread. House's director Ti West is especially proud of the film's credit sequences, which invokes a television movie-of-the-week circa 1973. “We worked very hard on getting those titles just right,” West beams.




With a budget set “under $1 million dollars,” West made sure that House's small cast included a lot of genre favorites such as Woronov, Noonan and Dee Wallace Stone (E.T., The Extra Terrestrial, The Howling). “I love Dee Wallace Stone, and although she has a very small part at the film's beginning, we were able to convince her to come up to Connecticut for one day's shooting and it was great to put her in a movie where she wouldn't be doing anything gross,” West says.

A longtime admirer of cult film queen Mary Woronov, West had to take a special approach in getting her to appear in the film. “She wasn't really acting anymore, she was concentrating on her painting and writing, but I was adamant that she appear in the film. I got her phone number and we met at her apartment. We had a really nice conversation, and I talked a lot about her Warhol days. Since we had a much more intellectual conversation, concentrating on her artwork and her association with Warhol, she agreed to do the part.”

Actor Noonan had worked with West prior to Devil, and actively sought out the director to sign on to the project. While his character plays the leader of a Satanist cult, Noonan and West agreed to play his part as that of a “nagged, hen-pecked husband.”

West says the project was something of a personal film for him, with a special identification for the film's hapless, down-on-her-luck heroine. “I had these friends in college whose parents paid for everything, and I had no money, just barely scraping by doing these movie projects. A lot of the film deals with what they call a 'quarter-life crisis,' when one is done with college and has to deal with the harsh realities of the real world,” West says.



While generally positively received, there have been some grumblings among some fans that the film has a long buildup until the final payoff. Characters do mundane things in almost real-time. West says that this is intentional. “We were playing with audience expectations. Instead of a character wandering into a room and making a horrific discovery, we have the characters go into a room, nothing happens, and we build up audience expectations even further.

“It kind of causes your imagination to do a lot of the work for me. It makes the audience active participants. Everyone is really post modern right now, they kind of know what's coming in a movie. Once the audience doesn't know what's coming next, it's kind of an exciting experience.”

In a bid to relieve the film's oppressive Gothic atmosphere, Donahue takes time to strap on her Sony Walkman to dance around the gloomy manse to the Fixx's Eighties classic, “One Thing Leads to Another.” In spite of House's limited budget, West saw to it that the music rights for this track were included. “That was in the script. I was very adamant about that. The person who owned the song, we called and begged and begged and begged.

“The title of the song has special significance. She knocks over the vase, the reason she's there. One thing really does lead to another. The song also had the right vibe also,” West explains.

“I was really nervous about that scene. It's sort of a bold moment in the movie, and thankfully it's everyone's favorite moment as well. It was something that we were shooting, where I thought 'I really hope this works.' We were sort of embarrassed to rehearse that, so we rehearsed everything except for that scene. I didn't know what the dancing was going to be like. She comes dancing through the door, and she had all these dance moves planned out, and at the end the whole crew got up and applauded.” The scene calls to mind Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear to the strains of Bob Seger's “Old Time Rock 'n' Roll” in Risky Business (1985). West says that it was totally unintentional until a crew member brought it to his attention.

West states that one shot in the film, where the headlights of a car are seen traveling by a window, after an atmosphere of isolation from the outside world has been meticulously established, is a happy accident. “We could have dipped into our CGI paint box and brushed that image off of the film, but we left it in.” When this writer points out that the headlights imply that the car – or the car's occupants will play a larger part of the story, West says that this added to the overall feeling of isolation. “Terrible things are going on in the house, and cars are just driving by as if nothing is happening.”



While set in the Eighties, this writer argues that there are elements of 21st
Century horror film elements in The House of the Devil as well. I point out that the film's extended scenes of tension-wracked silence seems to evoke recent Japanese horror films. West disagrees. “Mainstream American horror films are aimed at the lowest common denominator, with test screen audiences. There is just one scary moment after another, they sort of become like porn, it's just 'get to the good stuff every few seconds.' I'm not particularly intersted in that. I think J-horror, when that had a good run, it was because those films were very serious, and very original scary movies. They weren't elbowing the audience in the ribs, they were genuinely terrifying.”



An original work with a fresh, daring approach, The House of the Devil is best appreciated by an audience going in without expectations. West does admit that the film's shock conclusion is a homage to “the greatest devil movie ever made .. .” For those who have yet to see the film, it includes a bit of business that occurs offscreen, and something that the heroine had assiduously avoided up to that point.