Wolf Creek (2005)

A review, and for that matter a viewing, of Wolf Creek was for me long overdue. I was 13 when it came out - that special age where you deliberately seek thrills way beyond your maturity level - and everyone was talking about it, and how brutal it was. Of course, 13 year olds spread not an ounce of detail in terms of the movie's plot, only about its levels of violence. Last night, I got to its IMDb page for reasons I don't recall, and inevitably turned to Ebert for his opinion, and it seemed to back up, in greater detail of course, what my teenage classmates had claimed some nine years ago.

As is typical with this kind of hype, I had conjured my own vivid and frankly stupid versions of the movie's infamous scenes, which turned out to be far worse than anything contained on that shiny disc. Ebert said that "When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking." With this, I imagined some poor girl's lonesome head attached to nothing but a spine, with the rest of the body somehow removed. A proper head on a stick. What I was confronted by was a gritty stab to the back and some haunting allusions to Nam. Disgusting, cruel and disturbing, certainly, but in the Creativity Race, it's definitely Mind 1- Movie 0.

Opening with the now wrung-out-and-hung-out 'Based on true events' title card, we are told that 30,000 Australians are reported missing each year. 90% are found within a month. Some are never seen again... This loose statement is about the extent of movie's link to actual events. The supposed inspiration was the tragic story of British backpacker Peter Falconio, who was attacked by a driver in the Australian outback as his girlfriend eventually escaped. She, inside the car, heard a gunshot from outside, then was blindfolded and bound, and never saw her boyfriend again. He is presumed dead. This is nothing like Wolf Creek, but even if it were, is it very ethical to make a movie based on the real pain of a real victim, in order to entertain? And when I ask this, I refer mainly to the horror subgenres, which aim to disgust and sicken its audience, without addressing any deeper issues within its material.

Wolf Creek makes no attempt to address deeper issues within its material. If I'm honest, its surprisingly sudden wind-down and wrap-up gave off a totally unsettling vibe, which - as much as I hate to go there - seemed a little...misogynist. The movie starts off with British tourists Liz (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) and their Aussie mate Ben (Nathan Phillips), dedicates the majority of screen time to the ordeals and eventual deaths of the girls, and ends with Ben having been unconscious throughout, pulling himself down from the nails on the wall, and escaping, where he is rescued by two Swedish tourists. After both girls had been taken out, and the film suddenly got back to Ben again, I literally said, "Oh yeah, that guy!" It had been so long, I'd almost forgotten about him. His escape seemed like an afterthought. 

But anyhow, the start of the film is quite strong. Cinematography and locations are beautiful from the start, taking advantage of those vast dusty Australian sunsets and their every colour of the spectrum. The trio are doing some cross country trip and naturally cannot avoid pulling into a diner/gas station populated by the outback's most beardy, baccy-chewin', denim- and leather-clad weirdos, who promptly set about the young outsiders and soon scare them back out of the doors on typically petty and aggressive terms. At this point, I found myself thinking, "If these hicks are going to be the aggressors, and this tiny moment in their day is enough to prompt the massacre, then they really need to get a life!" Thankfully, these weren't the aggressors, they were just false alarms who are never again heard from. I guess they did have lives after all.

En route the buddies decide to stop in at a massive meteorite crater walking trail at Wolf Creek, and there are some spectacular aerial shots of the real Wolfe Creek in Australia. When they return to their car, it won't start and it starts raining, so they sit tight and wait for the morning. Except in the night, headlights ominously approach, and reveal themselves as that of Mick (John Jarrett), who is like Crocodile Dundee without a sense of humour. In fact it happens that Crocodile Dundee is exactly where his sense of humour lacks. Anyway, out here in the middle of the night, he offers a tow back to his to fix the automobile, and the girls are hesitant, but of course Ben, who in horror terms is dubbed 'Male Idiot', is quite open to the idea, even when they are towed off the road and further out into nowhere.

Back at Mick's (wasn't Dundee's name Mick too? I guess every Aussie man is named Mick, just like every French man is François and every Mexican man is Juan) the friends sit around his campfire and drink his 'rainwater,' while he tells them stories of his life. Then they make the stupid and frankly rude decision to mock him with the Dundee "this is a knife" line (which of course is later sarcastically repeated in appropriate context). Mick is visibly displeased, and they soon fall unconscious, the water having been spiked. From this, if not also from his aimless driving up what was a dead end at the crater, it is made known that Mick has little logical motivation for his subsequent abuse. When one of the girls later comes across camera footage of other families having their exact same experiences at the hands of Mick, it is made certain that this kind of thing is just a hobby of his, like growing sideburns or collecting flannel shirts.

Now these girls (remember, Ben is out of the picture for the majority of the action) display an overwhelming level of stupidity in the face of threat. Sure, they wouldn't be thinking straight through the trauma, but in the decisions they make and seem to put some thought into, are real misuses of the energy. For instance, after succeeding in overpowering Mick briefly, he is hit twice over the head, and the girls stagger off, leaving his probably-not-dead body next to a loaded shotgun, which they strategically decide against taking with them. Later, having succeeded in jacking a perfectly good car, they decide to roll the thing off a cliff to convince the not-dead Mick that they are dead. However, he was far behind them, and they should have used the car to get away. No two ways about it. They just make one idiotic move after another, so often that it becomes one of those Scream at the Set movies.

What is there to really say from here? The girls die, the guy lives because he slept through the whole fucking ordeal. And then...no traces of the girls were found, no one was ever taken down for the crimes, the killer is still at large, and nothing has changed. What's the point in there being a survivor if the killer is still at large? Oh yeah, Wolf Creek 2, that's the point. Except I haven't yet seen that, but a quick Wiki search reveals that Jarrett reprises his role, so there we have it. Acting is all right, nothing particularly special. The victims' stupidity really detracts any need for good acting. Jarrett is very good for how his role is written, which is not very intimidatingly. His oncoming headlights are really more menacing than his presence.

Wolf Creek is tense in places, predictable in more, and downright stupid in most. It's not particularly scary, and it won't be one that particularly stands out in my memory.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Quite possibly the most infamous title on the list, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust took filmmaking, exploitation and suspension of disbelief to a whole other level. I sought out a DVD copy at the age of fifteen (what a rebel!) having heard of it on a Top Scary Movies list, and apparently being on some hardcore teenage horror-high at the time, was glad I'd watched the movie, but didn't see it as anything insanely upsetting. In the seven years that have since passed, I have continued to study film, and gone on to write about it a whole bunch. And the launch of my Video Nasty page was the perfect excuse to revisit Cannibal Holocaust. This time around, it affected me in an entirely different way.

Not only was I veritably disturbed by its content, I also found myself pondering its ideas and motives and themes. There's no doubt that Deodato has always been something of a sensationalist in his work, and so I'm sure at least a fraction of his reason for making Cannibal Holocaust was essentially to be gross. But, it addresses other matters, and at least he does gross with utter conviction, and never stops short. He also managed to find himself a cast who evidently had few inhibitions and were suitable for manifesting the material. As a now serious observer of film, I saw this movie in a new light - one which I'm sure echoes, in part, what audiences in 1980 saw too.

Cannibal Holocaust is staged in two acts: Act 1 introduces us to Dr Harold Monroe, a New York anthropologist who leads a rescue mission into the Amazonian rainforest in hopes of finding a young film crew, missing in action. The crew went to film a documentary about an indigenous tribe of cannibals, and never returned. Although their expedition involves gruelling on-screen animal killing for food, Monroe's motives are ultimately peaceful, and when they reach the tribe's camp, he makes peace with the people. He then finds an altar made of human corpses and decorated with film reels. Bingo.

The reels are brought back to NY, where a guy from a broadcasting company wants to make the footage into a documentary. However, Monroe has already examined the films himself, and knows what horrors they contain. He insists on showing the reels, to prove just how unwatchable they are. The footage of the young film crew is Act 2, and is disgusting, reviling and quite brilliant. An absolute shining example of cinematic realism. The oldies are usually the goodies, but I don't think even Blair Witch captured such mind-bending horror from a handheld camera perspective. The continuous use of only two separate perspectives at any given time is a tough trick to keep up realistically, and Deodato pulls it off with utter fluency, to the point where it surely cannot be just a film.

Upon this second viewing, it became utterly apparent to me just why Deodato was formally charged with the murder of his cast members. Act 2 is a parallel universe to Act 1 in terms of behaviour. In his trip, Monroe makes a sign of peace by stripping naked and bathing in the river, which attracts the friendly attention of a group of naked native ladies. He integrates himself into their society, even reluctantly accepting their offering of human meat. He quickly succeeds in his mission by doing so and gets home to New York alive. The filmmaking gang are director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye and cameramen Jack and Mark. They all quickly succeed in proving themselves utterly depraved assholes with out of control sadistic tendencies. They start off by herding a tribe into a straw hut and setting it on fire, they then take turns in raping a local woman while Faye stands by and yells about wasting film.

The crew's treatment of the tribes is senseless and utterly cruel, and so one really wonders what they imagined would occur as a result of their behaviour. This is perhaps where the theme of media cruelty hits home the hardest: the crew film all of their shenanigans, with the aim of editing it all to look like warfare between two opposing tribes. One need only glance at any Daily Mail Online article to see not only atrociously below-standard spelling and grammar, but also ridiculous sensationalism created out of deliberate distortion of source material. An actress exits a restaurant with a suitably full belly, and suddenly she's 'fuelling pregnancy rumours'. A musician is  photoed looking 'worryingly thin' despite the warped coffee table and wine glass courtesy of Photoshop. The media is increasingly deceptive in its depictions of everything, and often unethical in its methods. This is clearly a theme constant throughout Cannibal Holocaust.

Act 2, or rather, the film crew it follows, goes wild in its depravity. Firstly, their guide Felipe is bitten by a snake, and in an almost seamless sequence, his leg is hurriedly amputated and cauterised against his will by the crew, and the snake hacked up. The intense mixture of fiction and reality worked into the production of each scene is what makes the lines eerily blur. The amputation, even by today's standards, is entirely convincing effects-wise, and so quickly followed by the obviously real footage of a snake being cut up, there's little in our subconscious to convince us that any of it is faked. The documentary-style shooting only heightens this.

The crew continue to slaughter animals (again, for real) and people for seemingly no other reason than to have fun and assert their dominance. They come strutting into the village with guns over their shoulders like rockstars walking onstage, so full of their own perfection. When a neighbouring tribe launch attack on the crew, they are soon made to look very foolish. It is admittedly good to see comeuppance for these degenerates. Cameraman Jack is impaled with a spear, and ringleader Alan barely hesitates to shoot him dead, so that they can film the tribe ripping him apart. There's team spirit for ya! This is one of those really exceptional sequences that I cannot figure out no matter how much I think. The tribe grab Jack's body, face still partially visible, and cut off his penis. I think I remember reading somewhere a theory that the body of a recently-killed cyclist was used. It doesn't really seem beyond any of them, all things considered. But looking closely at the still (the shot is continuous), that does not look like a prosthetic, especially by 1980 standards:

The now hysterical Faye is captured, gang raped and decapitated, while her loving caring boyfriend Alan looks on, filming the whole thing from behind the trees. The entire cast must have had it rough out in the jungle, but all the dragging around and struggling entirely naked through mud and forest must have been an absolute nightmare on many levels. I bet a long hot bath was in order when they each got back home. Having had their way with Faye, the cannibals see the fellas, advance, and we are given our first ever, in the history of cinema, 'camera lands in front of fallen cameraman' shot...

Back in the reality of NY, the thoroughly disturbed broadcaster people concede and Monroe orders the footage burned. End of movie.

This is definitely, alongside Last House On The Left, the most provocative and well made picture to grace the Video Nasty list. It is probably the nastiest too. In many of the other titles, my pre-imagined versions of infamous scenarios I'd heard of turned out to be far scarier than anything I eventually saw in the actual movies. Cannibal Holocaust is just as grizzly as it promises to be. It is totally there, in your face, inescapably real and brutal. The movie also caused a probably record-breaking plethora of controversy, firstly over the frequent animal cruelty, and secondly over the apparent torture and murder of an entire cast. People were convinced it was a snuff film, and Deodato was facing life imprisonment for the actors' deaths, and was forced to produce them all, alive and well, in court, as well as to reproduce several special effects, such as the infamous Impalement, to prove it had been faked.

The movie remains banned or heavily censored in some countries, and the wide outrage and trauma the movie caused is definitely testament to its effectiveness. And thankfully, the population of intellectuals out there recognised the film's social commentary. Monroe concludes, 'Who are the real cannibals?' All of the cruelty the crew filmed in order to edit into alternative narratives, incriminate them all as sadistic numbskulls with absolute lack of human emotion or empathy. Ironically, they went to the Amazon to document a supposedly cruel tribe of cannibals, who were backwards enough to kill and eat their own kind. But what does it say about three grown men from a civilised country, who laugh and holler while taking turns raping a girl, all whilst rolling around in the mud like animals? The very act plays out animalistically.

Monroe's initial visit to the forest demonstrated that peace is rewarded with peace. The crew's nihilistic cruelty was met with nihilistic cruelty. Cannibal Holocaust really examines the cycle of cruelty as human nature dictates it. Are the tribespeople the real enemies, or the real barbarians? It could be argued that the scariest thing about the movie is what the Everyman is capable of inflicting upon the innocent, and it is a bold move to cast the typical native antagonist in an anti-hero light.

Can I condone the animal cruelty? No, I just cannot. I spent all my teenage years as a strict vegetarian who once threw up after accidentally ingesting a gelatine-containing product, and I abhor animal cruelty in any form. That said, I do not spend my days and nights planning the hijacking of animal testing labs either. I have to say that every scene of animal killing in Cannibal Holocaust turned my stomach and unsettled me greatly. What especially struck me was how long the animals took to die. I don't know if this was recognised and used as some kind of metaphor, but it upset me greatly. Far more so than any scenario played out on humans. Probably because of the element of innocence in an animal, and perhaps that is another point to linger on. What we are to recognise is the senseless suffering of an innocent at the hands of a barbarian, and how (whether with animals or humans) once violence is initiated, it becomes a brutal cycle.

Cannibal Holocaust is a brilliant, pioneering and overwhelmingly effective film. Deodato cemented himself as a horror maker with real balls, and launched a horror subgenre that is now a well and truly flogged dead horse. His will always be the reigning supreme.

Curse of Chucky (2013)

I wondered, as the latest incarnation of a serial killer in a doll's body played out, whether creator Don Mancini had any idea, some 25 years ago, that his cheesy little slasher flick would go on to become one of the biggest cult horror franchises ever. He must be darn proud of himself. Indeed, generations have now screamed with laughter at Chucky's increasingly wild antics, which have surely been deliberately comical since Child's Play 2. And now, for the first time, a Chucky installment has gone straight to DVD, which I am having trouble working out the reason for. The legendary Brad Dourif yet again reprises his role as Charles Lee 'Chucky' Ray, in voice and in person; original mastermind Mancini writes and directs; we are even treated to a brief re-appearance by the insatiably hot Jennifer Tilly (now into her 50s and still rocking mega cleavage and fishnets) as Tiffany. I can't understand, given Chucky's cult status, and all the creative criteria present here, why Curse didn't show in cinemas. 

Anyhoo, as always, Chucky arrives in the mail from a mystery sender, cooing "Wanna plaaaay?", in the palatial home of a young, wheelchair-bound woman Nica, and the unstable mother who 'cares' for her. When the mother is found dead the next day, Nica's pushy, Bible-bashing sister and her husband and daughter come along to convince her to sell up and go to a care home. The young daughter, naturally disinterested in such adult matters, wanders off and comes across Chucky, who she quickly becomes fond of. But if we've seen any of this movie's predecessors, we know the score: he's found another gullible-and-for-some-reason-not-scared-of-scary-things kid whose body he can possess, so he can live as a human once more. Except this time, the kid is a girl. Good luck with that one, fella!

Of course, mayhem ensues, and Nica spots little clues left in the scattered remains of her family - nothin' a trusty old Google search can't fix! Old news stories involving the previous movies' incidents soon give away the doll's identity, which in the grand scheme of things doesn't really help much. She is still stuck in a house with a doll that's killing people, but at least she knows that the doll is just possessed by a serial killer, rather than there being some maniacal plan by the Good Guy company.

But the point of the movie, as ever, is for our beloved Chucky to spew a load of expletives in his husky drawl and kill people in interesting and hilarious ways. After 'Bride of-' and 'Seed of-', the series seemed to be heading in an increasingly comedic direction, with a flashy, ironic and exaggerated style. But 'Curse of-' takes Chucky back to his roots, with dark spooky mansions, fleeing priests and mysterious shuffling behind curtains.

Performances are about as good as they need to be, with the aforementioned Dourif (Brad, that is, in light of his daughter Fiona starring as Nica) and Tilly roles standing out from the rest, as usual. They make a really great pair, in whatever combination of doll-human-actress form. Plot is noticeably simpler here than previously, with no real action between the credits except as a means to an end. The former movies had more attention to character, detail and creativity. I appreciated, for example, the slimy cop and gay best friend in 'Bride of-', and the interaction of the Doll-Ray family, and weird parallel dimension narrative of 'Seed of-'. Curse of Chucky contains no padding so effortful.

One thing I had a major bone to pick with was Chucky's makeover. He has looked largely the same throughout the series, but here there are drastic, unpleasant facial differences which make Chucky look less doll-like and more child-like. Perhaps this was the intention, but it hits the fans' eyes wrong, and is just too far removed from the doll we've come to know and love.

(Fans: see what I mean?!)

A Chucky fan has to see this movie. A non-fan probably does not. As a horror film, Curse of Chucky does not stand out, but as a part of a beloved series, it is obligatory viewing.