‘Tis the season to rent scary movies and cuddle with your girlfriend. Or, if girl friendless, ’tis the season to masturbate, masturbate, masturbate. Regardless, you’re still probably interested in renting some horror films this year due to the seasonal thang. Well, I have three recommendations for you. They are all below both par and radar. Meaning they are three films with good horrific stuff made in the past five years that you may not have seen or heard of for different reasons (oh, um; did I say different reasons? I meant poor distribution and marketing, poor distribution and marketing and lastly, poor distribution and marketing). But enough of this introductory crap, here they are:

May (2002) - This horror film always caught my eye in the video store with it’s “Carrie meets goth” video cover, but I’m simply not as adventurous as I should be because I don’t have the time to sift and sit through the 95% of shit that goes straight to DVD and arrives as the single film on the Blockbuster shelf. May, however, is apparently not shit, and my first clue to this occurred while reading an interview with Robert Englund for the Onion’s AV Club, where he made this quote about May:

“A lot of these guys don’t want to make a horror movie. [Adopts British accent.] “Well, I’m not really making a horror movie. I’m making a psychological thriller.” Well, you have to get your hands dirty. You’ve got to really deliver the goods, and when you do, you can get something really special. I just saw this movie in Edinburgh called May, starring Angela Bettis and Jeremy Sisto. It’s a great movie: It’s sexy, it’s smart, it’s nasty, it’s gruesome, it’s gory, it’s scary. It’s all those good things. And it was made for nothing. The tragedy is that it’s one of the best horror movies of the last three or four years, and no one’s going to see it.”

Well this got my attention. So I began mentioning it to friends with the intent of watching it with them. Due to my complete inability to follow through on plans, both friends I suggested it to eventually watched it on their own over the past few months in frustration over my inability to simply show up when I’m supposed to and sit down and watch a fucking movie. Regardless, they both have now watched May and forwarded interesting opinions.

Dan, found May to be unbearably uncomfortable, very interesting and recommended I watch it. Rich, found May to be very enjoyable, thought it had great goals but failed at some of them, and purchased it on DVD for himself. I respect the opinions of these two enough that when either of them tell me I should see something, I see it. When they both tell me, I make sure to. May is my “pre-Halloween snuggle with my wife rental” for this Friday. Maybe it should be yours too.

Ginger Snaps (2000) - I’ve recommended this one before, back in the good old days when we had a forum only and no blog milk crate to stand up on and shout our opinions to our fellow unwashed masses. Well, it’s Halloween goddammit so I’m recommending it again.

Ginger Snaps is the surprisingly well written straight to DVD story of two pubescent, death obsessed, goth sisters who have the bad luck to come upon a werewolf one day. Of course, one of them gets bit. The fun twist of Ginger Snaps is it just so happens that this sister is in the throws of puberty, so the frantic warnings to adults of her younger sister that her former best friend in the world is “changing” and “acting differently” and “growing hair in weird places” is met with condescending nods and placating advice from the clueless adults.

This rather novel twist on the werewolf genre and it’s clever implementation along with its generally above the bar characterizations get you through the first two acts of Ginger Snaps quite well, leading you into a third act that is surprisingly suspenseful, action packed and downright scary for a film that is operating on such a limited budget.

Ginger Snaps is not perfect. It’s budget occasionally shows on it’s sleeve at times through substandard performances by minor players and scenes that it seems they shot after they totally ran out of money. But these are smaller quibbles for what Ginger Snaps does well. If not maybe a DVD purchase, Ginger Snaps is a must see rental.

Audition (Oodishon) (2000) - And here I find myself, in a strange coincidence, blogging about a film JackUzi blogged just a few hours before. When I first recommended Audition on the forum it had be viewed via a Japanese import DVD on a region free player. This is not true in America anymore (nor I believe, the UK) where Audition has been officially released for these regions. So now you have no excuse.

Audition is a fantastic horror film and maybe the most seen so far of the three films I’m suggesting for this spooky time. The premise is rather simple: A grieving widower, a director, takes the advice of his friend and holds a fake “audition” for a “role,” the “role” actually being that he would like to find a new wife. The perils of viewing women in an objectified way like this, and of seeing them strictly in terms of what makes “a good wife,” is brought to some rather startling consequences by the climax of the film.

Of course, it’s best to walk in to Audition not even knowing that it fits into the elements of the horror genre, as it’s genre jumping, like in the classics “Something Wild” or “Vampire’s Kiss,” is part of it’s charm. Oh well, I have to try to convince you to see this flick somehow so I’m letting you know - it’s a fantastic horror film. Actually, maybe you SHOULDN’T see this one cuddled up with your significant other, you may not look at them the same afterwards…

Happy Halloween!

From the NME website

Singer-songwriter ELLIOTT SMITH has died, according to reports. Fan websites and various radio stations claim that the singer passed away yesterday (October 21) at the age of 34. The official cause of death is currently unclear.

Born in 1969, Smith loved music from an early age. He released five albums, the most critically acclaimed in the mid-90s, titled ’Either / Or’ and ’XO’.

Takashi Miike

Ok, I’ve watched 3 movies by this guy so far and it’s 3 movies enough to convince me that this guy is something special. He used to be part of a Japanese trial bike gang, then seemed to wonder into movies almost by accident according to this interview. He’s somewhat of a hack, he makes two or three movies a year, romantic comedies, action movies and even musicals.

But it was the psychological thriller Audition that broke him world wide. It’s a movie that kinda reminds me of Hitchcock’s The Birds (in a way), a sweet (albeit melancholic) romantic story at first until the rug is pulled from under your feet and you’re delved into bizarro psychotic fetish land. Audition is quite different from his other movies. The story unfolds at a stately pace, almost like an European arthouse flick. It’s more moody and sensual than the other movies which are more B and bloodily sensational (this is a compliment btw) and contain at least one argh-no-stop!-ah-jesus-no! moment.

He’s got a talent for unexpected endings. Dead or Alive being an example. The plot is reasonably straightforward (good cop chases bad guy) but it’s told at a delerious jabbering pace and the intro is just a tour de force of brutal cinema. One guy gets shot in the back of the stomach only to have warm digested noodles splatter all over the camera lens. Apparently the movie stars Japan’s two biggest action stars, even the bad guy looks like an Asian Steven Segal. So Takasi Miike didnt know how to end his movie and which of these two action stars should die first…cue one of the most preposterous endings I’ve ever seen.

Ichi The Killer is a squeamish, genuinely disturbing tale of a bullied kid who’s now grown up (yet still damaged) and is used as a pawn to start a gang war. So there’s sort of a link there between him and the girl from Audition in that they are damaged people who can’t interact with the world around them and their emotions are all confused and warped. Lots of Manga style ultraviolence here. Ichi has a blade which ejects from his heel and literally slices folks in half. Some guy’s mouth is held in by pins, there’s vomit-enducing torture scenes and yeah maybe it’s sickness for sickness’ sake but there’s so much energy in this movie and he creates his own (creepy) universe you can’t help but admire this movie. Apparently there’s loads of other Takashi Miike movies I’ve yet to see. House of the katakuris, Visitor Q and City of lost souls to name but a few. Gotta catch ‘em all!*

*my apologies for that lame Pokemon reference

Ichi the Killer

Early Doors is a sitcom set in a Manchester pub written by Craig Cash, who co-wrote The Royle Family with Caroline Aherne. It’s also the best british comedy since the Office, better even as the characters are more rounded and their relationships more sophisticated. It carries on the Royle Family’s tactic of using the total realism style of the old ‘kitchen sink’ dramas that used to expose the plight of the poor (the poor, poor, miserable, poor) back in the fifties but with an inverted purpose of exposing the sublime joys of the utterly mundane. Like Chekov if he was any good and had a sense of humour. You think I’m joking, Chekov exposed the mundanity of the mundane. I digress, what the fuck am I talking about Chekov for? O yeah, because Early Doors is so well acted, written with such a light touch and sharp insight it’s what a play should really be, play in the literal sense of the word.

As you watch it the show floats around you like melody, within a minute of watching it you’ve known the characters all your life. The comedy arises naturally from the lives of the characters, as it does everybody’s life. Seriously, Early Doors, it’s the Mozart of sitcoms.