Montreal Magnum

Have you ever been walking late at night, and, as you travel your route, you hear someone following. . . the sound of their footsteps, slowly gaining, the ‘thud thud thud’ of their slightly quicker pace penetrating your deepest fears – your heart starting to palpitate as you pray that this is just mere happenstance and not some sort of psychotic stalker. This is the premise of the 2013 horror short: 2AM: The Smiling Man. Directed by Michael Evans (and based upon a Creepypasta – something I was unaware of until writing this article. . . it is a horror legend or image that has been copy and pasted around the Internet), the audience is placed in the shoes of a late night Roamer (Sean Simon), a twenty-something ‘anyman’ who is making his way home at 2 A.M. one night.

Twenty-first century film studios have a very strict checklist as to which movies they produce. Sequels, spinoffs, crude comedies, reasonably priced horror flicks, animated fare, name/brand recognition, award hopefuls. . . all of this meaning that very few adventurous, risky projects get made anymore. Gone are the days (for the most part), when adult oriented features like Basic Instinct and Body Double graced the silver screen, or edgier family films such as Adventures in Babysitting, The Neverending Story, and Home Alone were made – whether you love them or hate them, they did not fit your prototypical mould. So, when a 2018 motion picture that is so far outside of the stratosphere gets a thirty-two million dollar budget (thank you 20th Century Fox – which may soon be snapped up by Disney. . . a worrisome acquisition for moviegoers, as the bloated studio already owns Lucasfilm, Marvel, The Muppets Studio, and Pixar), it is an exciting day for cinephiles and adventurous moviegoers. So, welcome to the El Royale. Bad Times at the El Royale is an R rated gem written and directed by Drew Goddard (co-scribe and director of Cabin in the Woods; adaptor for the screen of The Martian), the type of dynamic thriller that resembles a sharp British crime flick (one where we do not expect everyone to survive). As twisted as it is twisty, Goddard designs the most fascinating of settings (its own character). . . a neon-glowing, mid century modern gambling den of a motel, hidden on the outskirts of Reno, a building that straddles the Nevada/California border (and has one of those tacky red lines that indicates the boundary between states).

A Psycho inspired Hammer Horror motion picture (a British film production company based in London, founded in 1934) set in the rural British countryside, 1963's Paranoiac finds a wealthy family in crisis, struck by a long streak of bad luck – parents dying in a plane crash (eleven years ago), eldest brother committing suicide at the age of fifteen (eight years ago), the rest of them struggling to pick up the pieces after these multiple heartbreaking hits. Written by Jimmy Sangster (loosely based upon the 1949 crime novel Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey) and directed by Freddie Francis (two time Oscar winner for Best Cinematography – Sons and Lovers and Glory), the pair builds mystery upon mystery. With Tony Ashby having committed suicide, Simon Ashby (Oliver Reed) is next in line for the fortune. . . an alcoholic – angry, confused, irrational and frustrated, he constantly spends the money that is supposed to remain in trust. The family lawyer, John Kossett (Maurice Denham), has finally developed a backbone, telling the youth that he will get no more money until he comes of age in three weeks.

Full disclosure here: the film that I am going to review today is by no means a great movie. . . it is one of those rare pictures that transcends its low budget faults, somehow equating to late-night, cheesy goodness. A cult classic out of 1984, Douglas Cheek’s C.H.U.D. is a sci-fi film parading as a horror film, or is it a horror film parading as a comedy? Opening with a spectacular wide angle shot of a grimy, New York street in the middle of the night, a lady walks her dog, the camera slowly moving in until we only see a sewer grate, the canine and her feet (her shadow covering most of the shot). Dropping something, she reaches to retrieve it. . . and, in an instant, a giant monster-ish hand pops out from the metal cover, pulling both of the nightwalkers into the underground abyss.

Ah, the mysteries of the Black Panther. . . not Wakanda, vibranium, or the ever growing Marvel franchise, but rather, the enigma that is those giant cats that have been rumoured to be part human. First explored in the 1942 classic B horror film Cat People, reviewed here on Filmizon last October, director Paul Schrader remade it in 1982 under the same title, finding his own unique spin on the tale. Starting a little earlier than normal this year, this will be the beginning of a number of horror reviews leading up to Halloween (if you are not a horror fan, fear not, there will still be several non horror related pictures reviewed).

Children: those cute, innocent little scamps that bring a smile to our faces get a frightening makeover in Colm McCarthy’s The Girl with All the Gifts – a 2016 zombie horror flick out of Britain that finds some interesting new ground within the sub-genre. Finding a place somewhere between Day of the Dead and 28 Days Later, a small group of people have kept some normalcy at a military base (much of which is underground – similar to the former film mentioned above). . . mostly armed soldiers, the men fall under the control of Sgt. Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine), who only answers to Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) – a military scientist who has been tasked with researching the fungal outbreak that has caused a worldwide zombie-like plague (only the creatures are excessively fast, much like the latter feature referenced above).