All Girls Weekend (2016)

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

“All Girls Weekend” isn’t anything that the cool poster promises. It’s an ensemble, is set in winter, and is not really a slasher movie. Lou Simon’s horror movie is actually a film in the vein of “The Descent” and “The Ruins” where a group of young female hikers going away together for a fun weekend end up getting lost in the middle of the woods. Before long their hike turns in to an endless trip in to insanity where the woods are seemingly sentient, and hell bent on driving them mad. What keeps “All Girls Weekend” lackluster and the aforementioned movies white knuckled horror entries is simple: The characters.

While the all female cast seem to do their damndest to pull in great turns (and many of them look like they can potentially dominate horror down the road), the concept of being lost in the woods and going hungry and thirsty never seems to dawn on them. At all. When another of their friends is stabbed in the leg with a branch and is seemingly so wounded she can barely breathe, the friends do nothing but apathetically mock one another. When she dies, it has no punch dramatically and adds nothing. After leaving her corpse behind one of the characters literally asks aloud “Aren’t we all upset?” to which the other replies, “Of course. God I’m thirsty. Anyone have any water?”

Compare that with the devastating claustrophobia and the delirium of running around in a dark cave in “The Descent” and the difference is apparent. What should have been a mind fuck about falling victim to a sentient natural landscape comes off as a mere nuisance to the characters most times. By the time they realize they’re in deep dung, it’s too little, too late. It’s a shame since I really enjoyed Simon’s previous horror outing “HazMat,” and I love her idea of filling these genre entries with more minority characters of great importance to the narrative. Sadly, “All Girls Weekend” is filled with truly vapid and unlikable protagonists, feels stretched thin, and is under developed.

Available on VOD.

Five Reasons Why You Should Buy “In Memorium”

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

I am proud to say that ever since Amanda Gusack sent Cinema Crazed her found footage film “In Memorium” back in 2006, we’ve been fans and have tried to spread the word about it to everyone who would listen. Amanda Gusack’s found footage horror film is a brutally eerie and creepy take on the sub-genre. I received an email from Ms. Gusack recently that “In Memorium” can now be rented on Amazon. If you’re a fan of “Paranormal Activity” when it was still a creepy ghost movie with an air of mystery and mystique to it before the sequels bogged it all down, “In Memorium” is right up your alley. It’s a creepy, well directed ghost tale and one I still boast about, and these are five reasons you should give it a shot.

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Psychonauts, the Forgotten Children (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

I think audiences will enjoy the incessantly dreary and bleak tone of “Psychonauts, The Forgotten Children,” but for me it felt a step too heavy and morose and undercut a lot of the attempts at whimsy and absurd humor. “Psychonauts” is adapted from Alberto Vázquez’s independent Spanish language graphic novel “Psiconautas,” which featured the character Bird Boy, who starred in his own award winning short film from Vazquez. Bird Boy returns in the film as a side character who is relentlessly pursued by local officers, both of whom want him dead and will do whatever it takes to kill him, despite his seemingly innocent habit with “Happy pills” he’s dependent on to keep demons at bay.

Meanwhile mouse Dinky is desperate to run away from her adoptive family that pressures her to become an engineer, oblivious to the landfills outside of their town that involve rats. These rats look for copper to survive, and the tensions rise as the space for survival grows smaller. I had a love hate relationship with “Psychonauts.” Originally I was so excited to see it since the animation is absolutely beautiful, but it’s such a heavy handed and dire metaphor for poverty and conformity I was actually not entertained all that much. Granted, when I savored the brilliant animation style, I loved what Alberto Vazquez and Pedro Rivero had to offer audiences alike.

But once I dug in to the story, it was a pretty miserable experience with tales about scavenging rats, drug addicted bird boys, and young teenage mice with dark voices tempting them to murder their friends and family. Alberto Vázquez and Pedro Rivero’s “Psychonauts” is a haunting, very heavy animated film with stark political and social overtones. Those themes hobble it in some instances, sadly, muddying up the excellent animation, and richer more complex tale about madness, and looking for a purpose in a land where opportunity involves murder and or conformity.

Novaseed (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Director Nick DiLiberto’s animated science fiction epic could be considered a part of a new “Heavy Metal” anthology if we ever get a remake any time soon. DiLiberto’s animated epic owes a lot to Ralph Bakshi and the sensibilities of the original animated movie, except without any of the exploitative and misogynist overtones. “Novaseed” is a classic hero journey tale of a mastermind rising to power in a post apocalyptic wasteland and one hero stepping up to stop him and save someone very special. When the world is threatened by the maniacal Dr. Mindskull, the government begins looking for champions to step up and challenge him.

DiLiberto pulls a switcheroo on us and a clever turning of the cliché, as he features a gladiator match with a lion-man who automatically becomes the film’s hero once he manages to step forward and prove his courage against his sword wielding foe. From there, hero Nac claims the enigmatic prize that everyone in the world is searching for, and is confronted with Mindskull who challenges Nac’s opposition. DiLiberto’s animation is very low budget and apparently seemed to be based around rotoscoping much in the way Ralph Bakshi exercised for his epics. While the apparent style is hard to discern at first glance, it becomes apparent and tends to elevate the material well.

Due to the low budget our hero Nac is, for the most part, mute for his time on film. Through this drawback, his character presents an action speaking louder than words movement with his character exposition until the very end. “Novaseed” is a strong and unique science fiction animated adventure that relies a lot on simplicity and recognizing its own limitations during the narrative. It has a very “Mad Max” and Bill Plympton sensibility to it with massive desert wastelands and futuristic warriors roaming the land and plundering while Nac seeks to escape the clutches of the government and battle Mindskull. All in all, it’s very much a tribute to the eighties underground animated films and one that I enjoyed, simply for its understanding of why Bakshi’s films stand out among the other animation in the medium.

If you love briskly paced, action packed, violent post apocalyptic sagas and with a rough around the edges sincerity, “Novaseed” will win you over as it did me.

Never Tear Us Apart (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Sid Zanforlin’s short horror comedy is a fantastic bit of gruesome, grue, and slapstick comedy that will definitely strike a nerve with folks that like HG Lewis. I am shocked how much Zanforlin is able to squeeze in to in only seven minutes in length. And considering this is a proof of concept for a potential feature film, I think Zanforlin has enough material for a potentially bonkers splatter horror comedy down the road. Filled with amazing special effects by Justin Tripp, Zanforlin centers his film on two young men traveling to meet their family who stop alongside the road.

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The Toxic Avenger (1984) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

The character that helped build Troma in to the company we know and love it as today, is still a wonderful and fun anti-hero who finds himself dropped in to fate’s door after a mean prank pulled on him one day. In Tromaville New Jersey, Melvin is a young janitor for a local health club dominated by a pair of muscle bound bullies. By day, the bullies roam around the club taunting Melvin and hanging around with their busty girlfriends, but by night they’re vicious hit and run murderers that take joy in killing children and helpless animals. After Melvin accidentally runs afoul one of the bullies, his girlfriend invites Melvin to a private rendezvous on the condition he wear a pink tutu.

After realizing he’s been the victim of a prank, Melvin crashes through a window and falls in to a drum of toxic ooze. Disfigured and transformed in to the muscle bound Toxic Avenger, he roams the streets of Tromaville murdering criminals and rapists, and laying down the law with his handy mop. Despite the very low budget, “The Toxic Avenger” works as a simultaneous superhero action tale and monster movie. A lot like “Robocop,” Troma’s superhero gets the job done in the most violent manner possible.

Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman are never above being as splatterific as possible, showing off a ton of gruesome moments including Toxie taking off a thug’s nose, and tearing another’s arm clean off. Of course a lot of the movie doesn’t reserve the grue for the bad guys, eliciting genuine cringe inducing moment when Melvin is turned in to the Toxic Avenger. Even for an indie film in 1984, the sight of Melvin’s skin pulsing and bulging from the toxic waste is grotesque and you hate to see such a goofy protagonist be reduced to this monster. Toxie is kept in the dark for most of his introduction, as he begins feeling his way around his strengths and weaknesses, and realizing his mutation allows him a chance to fight evil.

He begins to take on the bigger nemesis when he realizes the local police force is run by a corrupt chief and his sergeant whose attitude is very Nazi like. Herz and Kaufman give Toxie some time to even fall in love with a beautiful blond girl, and do battle with the villains from the gym. “The Toxic Avenger” is still a fun and off the wall action horror movie with its own twist on the superhero sub-genre. Leave it to Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz to take typical superhero tropes and twist in to something wonderfully gruesome and absurd.