Friday Night Fulci Cameo at Cinezilla

I just want to recommend this series of posts at the excellent blog called Cinezilla. Every Friday there's a new screenshot of Fulci in one of his cameos or bigger acting parts. For me it's one of the highlights on Fridays. Here's a direct link to just this section, but of course the whole blog is great reading!

Hey, do you want a DVD for free?

Hey, do you want a DVD for free? Yes, a real movie! Well, I would like to give away a couple of DVDs, but I have some demands on you before that. But first some short background history.

In 2004 me and Markus Widegren decided we wanted to make a movie. None of us is newbies when it comes to movies, but we wanted to make something with more freedom. No one to tell us what to do, what to write, what to say... nothing. So together with a lot of good friends, new and old, we prepared Kraftverk 3714 for one-two months and then shot it in thirty days. It became a monster of a movie. I never cared about "kill your darlings" and in this case I don't think Markus cared so much about that either.

Anyway, we had a big, juicy release with party and everything, and a little DVD-company released it in a special edition here in Sweden, but with english subtitles on everything. It won some prices too:

Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre (Brazil) - Best director, best actor
Il Ritorno dei Corti Viventi (Italy) - Best special effects

Not bad, eh? It also got a lot of good and positive reviews (and toured festivals everywhere!) outside of Sweden, you never become a prophet in your own country as the old greeks say.



So I recommend you to read the synopsis and check the trailer... and then you might own yourself a copy of this rare OOP movie.

"Surrounded by endless forest, close by a river, a small community exists where everyone seems to lead idyllic lives.

After a few years away, Johanna returns to the village, and becomes aware that things have changed.

William, a writer, has inherited his grandfathers house. Gradually, he starts to get the feeling that the circumstances surrounding Vladimir’s death are more complicated than they initially appear.

For unexplained reasons, villagers have been disappearing. Johanna’s mother, Elisabeth, seems to be losing her mind. Fear is spreading through in the community, and strange things start to take place in William’s basement.

Someone has opened the portal to another world, a dimension not easily understood. And in the middle of the village lies the old power station and its thundering water-turbines.

"Kraftverk 3714" is a movie that defies being put into a category or genre with ease. The film contains powerful, potent, and persuasive imagery. Prepare yourself for a couple of hours of entertainment that will remain in your body and your mind for a long time after."

So, how can you get this DVD? Filled with tons of extras and of course English subtitles? I will send anywhere in the world. Don't be shy. Here's my suggestion:

Email me and I will choose a couple of persons from different countries - write your country-name in the head of the mail, and please see if you fit into my profile:

1. You should be a blogger and we would love if you wrote a review of the movie. Please.

2. To be honest, you don't have to like the movie. You can loath it. But try some constructive critism :)

3. Write in your own language if you want to. We would LOVE if someone from Asia wrote about it, because thats the only area in the world where no one knows about it (but Takashi Miike owns a copy of it, but that was the last thing we heard from him!).

That's it. And remember, don't expect Evil Dead. This is quite arty. But it includes huge explosions, flying people, nudity, some gore, dreams and hallucinations and a couple of to talky scenes.

So, I'm waiting for your mails! Mail to poppy.kohlberg@gmail.com! 

AND just so you know, I can't send to everyone (I don't have SO many DVDs) - but if there will be to many, I'll just grab a couple and send - so it's nothing personal you don't get a copy! :)

Sincerely,

Fred

Lost in New York (1989)

Jean Rollin is one of the most poetic and personal filmmakers that ever graced the big screen with his presence. High with integrity (except when he's shooting pointless zombie-inserts for Franco's A Virgin among the Living Dead) and always with his trademarks: female love, with or without sexuality, graveyards, ruins and vampires. Lost in New York includes all these, but are much more odd. It tells the story of to little girls that gets draw into a book of adventures, ages and travels to New York where they get lost... and meet each other again. It's really nothing more. Rollin shot the scenes in NY more or less impromptu and afterwards tied them together in this sad little love story. 

But is it any good? Oh yeah, it's a damn fine little movie but far from commercial in anyway. It's obviously a very personal work, and it's length of 52 minutes don't indicate that it was meant for a wider distribution. It's basically poetry in motion. Beautiful shots of New York - which makes me wanna go there again - and Rollin has perfectly caught that classic, but yet so realistic movie-New York in the camera. It's both a tourist-movie and an artmovie at the same time. Some stuff is also shot in Rome and in France, of course, but the main bulk - and the most spectacular one - is in the Big Apple.

So there's no special story, just footage of (all together) six actresses in different ages walking around. But it's the rhythm, the atmosphere that makes it. Rollin has a story, but the story is not built on intrigue, it's built on emotions, which is something a lot of stories lack. Sure, people can laugh or cry, but is that something that makes them human? Lost in New York has three parts that I will always remember. First of all, a montage of drawings from adventure, crime and thriller-books. Those cheap ones, sold for a penny or two in the nearest kiosk. Over this is a voice over where one of the girls is telling us who they became through the books, which places they visited and where they went after that. The last example is Jean Rollins own Fascination. Brilliant. 

Then we have a stunning location on top of a house in the middle of New York. There's skyscrapers all around it, which makes it looks unreal. What a place to shoot a movie. And in the end, when the two young women finally finds each other in NY it's on top of the same bridge where the zombies walked in Fulci's Zombie Flesh-Eaters. At exactly the same place. For me it's a sign of where the love for eurocult has made me travel. From Fulci to Rollin, and everything in between. 

Included in the new DVD from Njuta Films is also a short movie by Rollin, Les Pays Loins. The cinematography is fantastic, black & white of course, and it's very, very arty and very very French. It's a minor work from Rollin, and shows us that Rollin was a director that got better and more mature in his work over the years. 

If you like your poetry in cinematic motion, this is the movie for you.

[Rec] 2 (2009)

[Rec] is one of my favorite zombie-style movies ever. It's a rousing, violent, original and scary horror movie made with the concept of found footage. The US remake, Quarantine is actually okey, better than it's reputation - but still, it's a total copy of the original masterpiece and gets a bit boring after a while. Finally [Rec] 2 is here and I'm happy to say that it's well worth the wait. This time we're follow a SWAT-team that are sent into the house right after the first movie ends, together with a doctor to try to find survivors. From the beginning we see everything from both a cameraman's view, he's there to document everything for research - but also from all the soldiers cameras, attached to their helmets.

Inside the house everything is to quite. The bodies are gone, and there's just one or two dead bodies to examine. But after a while they realize that the doctor isn't what he seems to be, and they discover more non-infected people hiding the the house. Both some familiar faces, and a new bunch of victims. But I don't want to reveal to much...

The only bad thing with [Rec] 2 is that the surprise-moments are gone. We know what to expect when it comes to zombie-attacks, we saw that in the first movie. But except that, this is a great horror movie which explains a lot of questions from the first movie and gives us some more to think about. In an ordinary sequel the filmmakers would have tried to make everything bigger and grander, but not here. We're still in the house, in the exact same locations with more or less the same amount of people and zombies (or are they zombies? are they even infected...), and still the production makes something new with the story.

Violence is raw and brutal, just like the first movie, no long boring shots of gore. This is fast and bloody, and if you don't like to see child-zombies get their heads blown of you shouldn't watch this movie. The effects are of course excellent, but it's the make-up effects that's really fantastic. Three zombies/infected people show their faces in longer shots, and it looks extremely creepy and weird. Almost unreal. All this violence in combination with the cramped corridors and dark apartments makes it an adrenaline-kick, and I love every minute of it.

The only thing that bothers me is the intensity, the shocks that the first movie showed us. It was all about surprise, to show us something we never seen before. I wished there was more of that stuff in the sequel, but in the end the story is fine, the acting is good, the violence is brutal and the zombies are scary. So what's there to complain about really?

A package from Sergio Donati...

It's always nice to come home after a terrible day to be met by a gift at your door. This time the packaged was sent from a certain "S. Donati" and I could almost guess what it was. Some years ago I found the first US edition of Sergio Donati's crime novel The Paper Tomb, printed in the late fifties or so. I mention this to Sergio on Facebook (yes, where else?) and shortly thereafter he asked for my adress... and here it is, the new Giallo-style edition of Il Sepolcro Di Carta! 

This was actually filmed by Tinto Brass in 1967, Deadly Sweet, but what I understand it's very, very loosely based on the book. For you who's not familiar with Sergio Donati's writing, here's a couple of the scripts he's written during the years: Too Beautiful to Die (one of the most underrated giallos of the eighties), Sergio Martino's Island of the Fishmen, Joe D'Amato's Tough to Kill, Alberto De Martino's Holocaust 2000 (which is a personal favorite of mine), Orca, A Fistful of Dynamite and THE best western ever made: Once upon a time in the West! You can check his filmography here. 

Thank you Mr Donati for this great gift. I can't read Italian, but I will read The Paper Tomb again in English and write a little review here sooner or later :)

Invitation to Hell (1982) / The Last Night (1983)

You know, I have a very high tolerance to movies. I like indie-movies a lot, maybe because I made a lot of them myself during the years. But overall, I just always find something good in a movie and rarely becomes mean. I will not become mean in the case of Michael J. Murphys Invitation to Hell and The Last Night, but I can't say I will recommend these movies. At all.

Both movies features pretty standard stories, something about Satanism at a farmhouse and a hostage-situation in a theater. Invitation is almost unwatchable. The storyline is confusing and drawn-out... but most of all, damn boring. I mean, a movie could really silly, crappy... whatever, but if it becomes boring, it steps over the line of what I can bare. And it's only 50 minutes long! Except one scene at the end, the it's virtually goreless - but has a very bad and uninspired demon showing up trying to look scary. The acting are even bad for being an indie-flick, and it's just plain bad.

The Last Night has a good concept that I really like - this is something I could have seen a more professional remake off - a hostage situation where the actors are forced to finish the play on stage, while their friends are being terrorized and killed off-stage. This there's also older actors, which make the characters more credible and the acting is overall better. Nothing fantastic, but I can live with it. But the last third of the movie totally looses it's energy and I was fingering on the fast forward-button a couple of times - and this movie is also under one hour. Two good kills though, but that don't make  good movie.

I admire Michael J. Murphy for churning out his indie-flicks with micro-budget and doing something instead of just talking about making movie (like me nowadays, I confess...). But it's just that he don't have enough talent or vision. It's just a kid (this was the early eighties, when he was a kid - and I have no idea how his new movies are - but I guess they are in a different league) with a camera and some friends pretending to be grown-ups. 

Invasion (2005)

Have you seen an Albert Pyun-movie lately? If not, then check out Invasion (or Infection, it depends on where you get it and both titles are fits good anyway) and I think you will be very happy. It obviously had a very small budget and don't expect any fantastic effects or mindblowing revelations about movie making, but prepare for an hypnotic and creepy sci-fi thriller in one single take!

Officer Brick Bardo (played by Scott Paulin, and the character-name is also one of Pyun's favorite-names, it shows up in a lot of his movies) gets a call to check out a meteorite that some old man has found out in the wilderness. When he arrives the man attacks him and gives him a bug, yes... a big, or a worm. Something crawls into his ear and takes over his body. He continues his trip until he found a couple at lovers lane, that he attacks. The girl escapes, steals his police car and now we follow her during the rest of the movie. At the same time the infection is spreading, taking over more and more people until she's all alone...

The concept with Invasion is that it's shot in one single take, with one single camera - the security camera in the police car. So what you see is what's happening in the front of the car. Nothing else.You'll hear the dialogue of the person inside the car with other people through radio, and on a couple of occurences there's also a picture in picture, showing the person handling the communication at the police station. 

Now, this could have been terribly boring in the wrong hands, but Pyun actually makes this work. I can't say it's boring, when it feels like something need to happen it happens, and the dialogue is not bad at all. It's sometimes a bit to on the nose, but to explain certain things it's something that's needed. The music is atmospheric (it sounds inspired by Morricone's score from The Thing) and spices things up during those stretches of dark road that has to be filmed sometime without anything special happening. 

What Pyun really succeeded with here is to show us how creepy a dark road can be. I don't like dark roads, and I think it's scary sitting in a car out on a forest road, in our own little island of light with the dark unknown around us. You always gets that feeling that someone (or something...) is watching you from the darkness, and that's exactly that eerie feeling that Pyun creates in this movie. One of the best moments is also when something ghostly is coming towards the car on the road, almost floating in the air, dancing a confusing dance. It's poetic and surrealistic, and make takes us away from the typical alien invasion-movie, but it's a great sequence and one of the best in the whole movie. 

Invasion is a pearl of a movie, a pearl that most swines just don't appreciates. But I do, and I'm sure many of you do if you give it a chance.