Editorials
It Came From Up North! A Beginner’s Guide to Canadian Monster Movies
Kevin Smith’s Canada-set Yoga Hosers opens in September, and while the monsterpalooza isn’t a Canadian production the film’s appreciation for all things True North got me thinking about some of my favorite home-grown creature features.
As you’ll see in this primer, David Cronenberg is not the only Canadian filmmaker who’s contributed to the country’s sick and twisted genre fare over the years. In fact, from giant brains to heavy metal demon slayers, Canada has a rich tradition of weird, wild and often woefully underappreciated monster movies that are worth looking out for.
The Pit
Probably the weirdest film on an already weird list is 1981’s The Pit, a film that plays like a sadistic afterschool special about a creepy 12-year-old boy named Jaime who discovers four troglodytes (or “tra-la-logs”) living in a mysterious pit in the woods. At the behest of his only friend, his teddy bear, he begins feeding the monsters whoever he feels has mistreated him.
Originally titled “Teddy”, the film was supposed to be an exploration of the troubled inner life of an autistic child until director Lew Lehman saw potential for a more traditional horror film. The results remain one of the strangest Canadian entries into the horror genre.
The Gate
Yet another movie involving a pit, The Gate needs no introduction. A Canadian/US co-production shot entirely in Ontario, the film is about two friends who unwittingly release a batch of trouble-making, pint-sized demons from a hole in a suburban backyard. With their parents out of town, it’s up to them and their older sister to defeat the evil threat.
The film, which gave the world Stephen Dorff, was successful enough to spawn a sequel three years later (also filmed in Canada). To this day it remains an 80’s staple and a remake has been in development hell for many, many years.
Jack Brooks Monster Slayer
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost ten years since Canadian director Jon Knautz burst onto the indie horror scene with Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, a horror/comedy hybrid with old-school sensibilities and a ton of inventive monsters to boot.
Full of practical make-up and man-in-suit effects, the film is about regular guy Jack Brooks who finds himself confronting old demons when professors and students in his night class start turning into ancient monsters.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare
Starring Jon Mikl Thor, real-life metal musician and subject of the acclaimed documentary “I am Thor”, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare is one of the most legendary Canadian productions of all time. Taking a page from Evil Dead, Thor and his band, The Tritonz, travel to a secluded farmhouse recording studio where band members start getting picked off one-by-one by the most wonderfully campy foam demons imaginable.
While it’s a borderline disaster, the straight-to-video cheapie is bizarre enough and features enough great Thor music to have gained a massive cult following of the years and a sequel, Intercessor: Another Rock ‘N’ Roll Nightmare was even produced in 2005.
The Thaw
Despite Val Kilmer toplining this parasite shocker from 2009, The Thaw remains a little seen Canadian export. A thinly veiled commentary on the potential dangers of global warming, the film follows a group of ecology students who unearth a prehistoric parasite from the carcass of a Woolly Mammoth.
While mostly generated in a computer, the wormy parasites are no less a squirm inducing creation. There are also a couple of genuinely violent moments that elevate the experience overall. For some reason director Mark A. Lewis has yet to direct a follow-up film which is too bad as the director showed promise with this one.
WolfCop
Lowell Dean’s WolfCop is something of revelation. A hilarious tongue-in-cheek play on the hardboiled cop genre, the film is colored by 80’s nostalgia and some of the best werewolf transformations this side of American Werewolf in London. Like the panels of some lost indie comic book come to life, this outrageously high-concept Canuxploitation masterwork is a must see.
The best news? They’re already filming the sequel.
Splice
Hugely divisive when it was initially released, I’d like to think Vincenzo Natali’s Splice has gained a bit more credibility with horror fans over the years. Something of a morality play about the responsibility of a creator to its creation, it is also an anxious meditation on parenthood, which I think accounts for why certain moments in the film drew gasps from audiences expecting a more generic monster movie.
Splice stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as two genetic engineers who successfully create a human-animal hybrid for medical purposes. But as “Dren” grows, it quickly becomes clear that they may not be able to control their creation. Produced in partnership with Guillermo del Toro and shepherded into theatres by Hollywood heavyweight Joel Silver, Splice none-the-less failed to ignite the box office.
Ginger Snaps
Produced by Steve Hoban’s Copperheart Entertainment, Ginger Snaps might arguably be the most successful Canadian horror franchise due to the boom in DVD in the year it was released. It’s hard to imagine now, but a werewolf flick with two teen girls at the center was, at the time, something new and the film struck a chord with young audiences who connected with its .
The darkly irreverent film spawned a sequel and a prequel and there continues to be rumblings of more Ginger Snaps in the future.
Decoys
In the wake of Ginger Snaps’ success Canada *almost* got itself behind the teen horror boom by pushing the sci-fi horror flick Decoys through production pretty quickly. Sort of a “Species for teens” flick, Decoys concerns an alien organism that hides in human form and seduces its victims.
The film’s monsters were mostly tentacles bursting from the chests of naked college girls, which seems like a recipe for success, but what the makers of Decoys failed to glean from Ginger Snaps was the basic human conflict at the centre of that film. As a result, Decoys is something of an empty experience.
Things
Video Nasty fans are no doubt familiar with Andrew Jordan’s Things, Canada’s most notorious entry into the VHS trash cinema era. A brief journey through the firm’s IMDB reviews reveal a lot about the experience of watching it. It’s not for everyone, clearly, but Things is representative of a certain cinematic underbelly that I’m not sure exists anymore and, from that, a legion of fans have sprung up around the film.
Things is about a man who makes his wife undergo a procedure to have children. She does, but instead of children they’re, well, things. Stupendously amateurish and shot mostly on 8mm it’s an experience unlike any other. Recently re-released on Severin’s short-lived Intervision revival, it has found something of a new life. Watch at own risk.
Monster Brawl
Only in Canada would eight of the world’s most public domain monsters fight-to-the-death in a secret wrestling tournament. This horror goof-em’-up is not for everyone, but it’s worthy of mention due to Brendan Uegama’s impressive cinematography, the practical visual effects on display and the overall production design.
For the initiated, Monster Brawl director Jesse Thomas Cook went on to direct one of Canada’s ickiest horror films, Septic Man.
End of the Line
Canadian filmmaker Maurice Devereaux took home Fantastic Fest’s Next Wave Special Jury Award in 2007 for his unsettling vision of Armageddon cults and the monsters they worship in the underground subway systems of Montreal. As with many Canadian genre films, End of the Line is a low budget affair, but a film that fans of particularly Japanese cinema will appreciate, I think as it has a similar surreal quality complimenting the aesthetic.
Luckily, End of the Line is easy to find as it was picked up for distribution in most territories and can be found on DVD or Blu-ray.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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