Editorials
‘Banshee Chapter’ Director Selects “5 Awesome Conspiracy Horror Films”!
Blair Erickson’s conspiracy horror Banshee Chapter, which stars Katia Winter (Showtime’s “Dexter”, “Sleepy Hollow”), Michael McMillian (HBO’s “True Blood”) and Ted Levin (Silence of the Lambs), opens limited theaters on January 10 XLrator Media.
“The pic centers on a young, female journalist (Winter) who follows the mysterious trail of a missing friend (McMillian) that had been experimenting with mind-altering chemicals developed in secret government drug tests. Levine plays the role of a rogue counter-culture novelist with a penchant for substance abuse and firearms who leads the journalist into the mystery of dangerous chemical research. A fast-paced blend of fact and fiction, the film is based on real documents, actual test subject testimony, and uncovered secrets about covert programs run by the CIA.”
Also available on VOD, Bloody Disgusting caught up with Erickson who chatted a bit about conspiracies, while also sharing his picks for “5 Awesome Conspiracy Horror Films”!
“How do you have a violent, unstoppable haunting in a newly constructed cookie-cutter suburban development of a California neighborhood?
That’s the question most wonder when they first begin watching 1982’s horror classic “Poltergeist.” Somewhere in the story you get so wrapped up in the evil clowns under the bed and tree arms grabbing through the window that you almost forget that there’s almost no logical reason for the newly built housing development to be haunted in the first place. Almost none… Then in the last act, the suburban father finally uncovers a banal conspiracy of capitalist corruption at his own real estate company that’s so obvious it defies doubt.
When the real estate agent father finally realizes the terrible cost-saving scheme the Cuesta Verde development company pulled on him and the other neighborhood families, it’s too late. The corpses they built the homes on top of are already ripping through the floor. He grabs his soon-to-be-ex-boss and screams “You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn’t you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! Why!? Why!?”
As delightfully morbid plot twists go, it works perfectly. Especially since Spielberg’s story makes sure to thoroughly setup the ruthlessly profitable 1980’s era real estate development business and the oily salesmen running it in the background of the entire tale.”
“John Carpenter’s blood-stained love letter to H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorites in his impressive collection of work. A truly imaginative and vivid journey full of mind-bending insanity, great performances, and tentacled monsters.
The always enjoyable Sam Neil delivers a colorful performance as an insurance investigator on the trail of a vanished hit horror writer. Was it faked? Suicide? Murder? Or something beyond comprehension. The conspiracy takes him from axe-wielding book fans in New York to a town full of demonic children that doesn’t seem to exist. And as each and every fascinating Lovecraftian horror surfaces (I’m still dying to know what exactly “The Hobbs End Horror” is) the story rips apart more and more until our poor protagonist is left babbling like a lunatic at the end of the world.
The most meta line of dialog in the film is the moment where Neil tries to warn his editor that Sutter Cane has somehow written a novel called “In the Mouth of Madness” literally designed to induce paranoid schizophrenia in readers. ‘This book is going to drive people absolutely mad!’ Without missing a beat, his editor ironically snaps back, ‘Let’s hope so… the movie comes out next month.'”
“It’s been called “The Citizen Kane of Horror Movies” by some critics. A movie so weird and bloodless, it almost shouldn’t even work. Yet the setup and payoff work so incredibly well together the film retains a kind of power rarely matched. Forty years later horror fans still talk about it. (Please everyone forget the ill-advised Neil Labute remake with a shouty Nicolas Cage in a bear suit punching ladies) The original still works because it has a kind of strange creepy magic of it’s era that isn’t easily replicated.
The story follows a buttoned up Christian policeman in England who investigates a missing child on an island of bizarre bee farmers. As he slowly unravels the conspiracy of the child they claim never existed, he starts to realize that he’s among an entire population of pagan worshipping psychos who plot human sacrifices for their harvest. The final images of the film are so cinematically beautiful and terrifying at the same time, the film burns itself into your brain as the flames slowly wind their way up the Wicker Man.
Come for the loopy naked dance rituals of the pagans, stay for the delightfully creepy performance of Christopher Lee as the sinister village patriarch, Lord Summerisle.”
“For the first time since ‘Scream’ a horror movie had the brains to intelligently play with their audience by taking the old conventional horror setup of teens lined up for killing at a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and then twisting it into a lunatic global conspiracy of the evil unleashed from an anonymous military facility. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have a blast venting all of their entertainment industry angst into a hilarious script with one of the most applause-inducing bloodbaths ever placed in a horror movie.
Sweet innocent young folks are going to be carved up, but here the slaughter is all being supervised by cynical middle managers part of some mysterious organization. They bitch about co-workers, complain about foreign offices, and make office pools wagering on the gruesome death of these innocents. It’s the little touches that make the horror take on the shape of something more.
When you realize these young people are being sacrificed for a bloodthirsty audience watching quietly in the dark… Could it be the film is saying something about our entertainment and our values as a society? Why do these unseen creepy audience members need to watch “the whore” die gruesomely and painfully, but not before first seeing her nude? Why do these tired desk jockeys executing people from the comfort of Staples swivel chairs and watching mass killing on video monitors seem so familiar to us?
As a twisted commentary on our own perverse desires and social structure, this is one hell of a ride. When ‘The Director’ finally shows up to justify the conspiracy, you finally realize how elegantly the film has slit the throats of so many slasher films of days past, while lovingly tipping its hat to them. And like the best crazy horror tales, you get glimpses of an incredible universe lurking in the shadows that leaves you dying to know more.”
“Here’s a masterpiece of film that defies genre categorization. Is it a horror film about a Vietnam veteran who was the subject of a terrible military experiment? Or is it a drama about a man putting his life together as the horrors of war still haunt his daily life? Like the scene in which Jacob Singer is dunked into the ice bath as his rising fever threatens to boil his brain, there’s no easy answers here. And no easy escape. We never know any more than Jacob does about who or what was done to him during the wary. But the film is unique and breathtaking.
One of the rare other horror films to deal with the MK-ULTRA chemical experiments, This film was very near and dear to my heart when I created ‘Banshee Chapter.’ Bruce Joel Rubin’s brilliant script walks a fine line between a tale of nightmarish demons, tragedy, and Vietnam military horror. What works so amazingly well in this film is the absolute fever nightmare feeling it exudes as it flickers wildly between moments in a life torn apart by war and creepy government chemicals. It could’ve easily seemed silly, but Adrian Lyne masterfully exercises one of horror’s best weapons: restraint.
The result is a film that creates haunting imagery and powerful moments of emotion as you watch one man’s hauntingly lonely descent into the U.S. military’s chemical nightmare. It’s impossible to forget those faceless doctors waiting to operate as Jacob screams “I’m not dead!” in the blood stained back rooms of the veteran’s hospital in hell.”
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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