FILM GHOUL

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Kim Henkel, 1994)

I will not even bother with this abomination of a rehash, and will rather point out the fact that this film stars pre-fame Renée Zellweger and a post-Dazed and Confused Matthew McConaughey - who give a (and perhaps the sole) great unhinged performance in this otherwise almost completely unbearable 4th instalment of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, written and directed by Kim Henkel, of all people, who co-wrote the original 1974 film with Tobe Hooper and had the terrible idea of making this 20 years later.

3 notes

Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College (John Carl Buechler, 1991)

Starting my foray into the Ghoulies franchise with this film was probably a mistake, because I have a hard time imagining Ghoulies and Ghoulies II matching the idiocy and unbridled fun that Go To College proved to be. I had built up this film as legendary in my mind, and I am glad to inform it did not disappoint; remarkable for a early 90s second sequel.

3 notes

Wisconsin Death Trip (James Marsh, 1999)

This solemn and beautifully haunting docu-fiction from filmmaker James Marsh (who has been recently getting much praise for films such as Man on Wire in 2008 and Project Nim in 2011) adapts Michael Lesy’s 1973 unadaptable photo book of the same name into, as Greil Marcus puts it in the essay accompanying the film’s DVD release “a progressively horrifying portrait of one small town, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, crumbling – socially, morally, physically, emotionally – under the impact of the great depression of the 1890s”. Vibrant display of the Gothic notion of the community as destined to disintegration and bearer of macabre secrets (see Thomas Ligotti’s 1996 short story The Shadow at the Bottom of the World for more on that subject as well as countless others), Wisconsin Death Trip structures itself around seasons to recount the strange happenings -murder, mental illness, hints of the supernatural and so on - that befell the inhabitants of Black River Falls at the turn of the century. Based on actual news articles from the local paper at the time, Marsh adapts the book in appropriately photographic montage sequences, most of which are captured in gorgeous black and white. Narrative upon narrative pile upon each other to eventually form a pathological portrait of America, which is uncannily doubled when Marsh cuts to contemporary Black River Falls a hundred years later, which he does not explicitly paint the same way but which one fills with similar dread and a just-found knowledge history. Unconventional and highly recommended, seeing this on the heels of reading Stephen King’s decent 1922 novella (2010; for which this film served as an inspiration) proved a great complement.

9 notes

Scissors (Frank De Felitta, 1991)

Erotic thriller veteran Sharon Stone stars in this terrible film from the screenwriter of The Entity (1982) which plays out, for most of its duration, like an American giallo film - without the stylistic rewards and effective atmosphere, that is. Nonsensical, ridden with clichés, yet unintentionally hilarious and not totally unbearable, this was my first film of 2012 and I’m not sure that’s a good omen.

14 notes

Trees Lounge (Steve Buscemi, 1996)

Step 1: Write a film. Step 2: Cast yourself as the main protagonist. Step 3: Cast a young Chloë Sevigny as your love interest. Step 4: Kiss, repeat; success. [Note: this film was watched in a cropped 4:3 aspect ratio, hence the capture.]