Motern Media — Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh — make movies that seem to be horror on the outside but are wonderfully strange movies on the inside, explorations of the darkness — and light — within small towns. Like here, in a small New Hampshire town, Farley Wilder (Farley) is the son of talk show host Rick Wilder (Kevin McGee), a near-universally beloved celebrity who spends his days ridiculing his son and forcing him to take constant tests.
Freaky Farley lost his mother at a young age and never found out why; that combined with how his father treats him — this is a comedy, even though everything in this sentence seems horrific — has left him stranded in adolescence, through puberty but still afraid of women, often just peeping around town yet not meaning anything wrong by it. He might have a love interest in Scarlet (Sharon Scalzo), who wants to be a reporter, if his father didn’t hate her. And oh yeah, the town also has a witch (Steff Deschenes), bullies like Air Force Ricky (Kyle Kochan), a ninja (Roxburgh) and woods that are so dangerous that Farley’s dad won’t even talk about them. Surprise — they’re filled with troglodytes.
There’s a dark omega to even town’s light alpha, the kind of clandestine meetings that find a young killer getting conscripted into battling prehistoric cave people. Or maybe there are just bribes in your town, I don’t know.
What I do know is that this movie is just right. It hits all my buttons — low budget horror as the Halloween mask under which a funny yet dramatic movie with heart beats inside — and made me laugh out loud at least twice. That’s more than a win.
Freaky Farley is playing as part of the Burnt Ends part of Fantastic Fest. This is part of Molten Media, which has produced independent feature films since the late 1990s. According to Fantastic Fest, “the idiosyncratic cinema of Charles Roxburgh and Matt Farley pay homage to the regional low budget horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s as they unravel bizarre tales set in and around lightly-fictionalized small New England towns. Akin to the manner in which John Waters and Kevin Smith cultivated their cult universes out of tight-knit communities of vivid personalities, Charlie and Farley’s films imagine a unique portrait of Americana as they recruit an eccentric ensemble of folksy friends and family to endearingly perform the offbeat vernaculars and campy melodrama of their wittily verbose scripts.”
Fantastic Fest Burnt Ends has awarded the filmmakers with the first annual Golden Spatula in recognition of their creative spirit, and a partial retrospective of their inventive catalog which includes Local Legends and Metal Detector Maniac as well as more contemporary works which pursue a distinct, but just as wonderfully eclectic and wry comic sensibility.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on December 22, 2018 but since it played Fantastic Fest live, I can’t miss the opportunity to talk about this movie that is more about male love than sharks.
When I was a kid in the 1970’s, I was sitting in a B. Dalton’s reading — parents routinely dropped kids off places to read without any fear of kidnapping back then — and discovered a copy of Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex on a shelf. I had no idea what it was at the time, but the drawings (by Chris Foss, who would go on to work on Alien, Flash Gordon and Jodorowsky’s Dune) were upsetting to me. Hairy soft focused seventies post-hippies getting it on didn’t jibe well with my single digit mind.
I forgot what that feeling was like. And then I watched Tintorera…Tiger Shark.
This movie is based on the novel of the same name by oceanographer Ramón Bravo, an undersea explorer who studied the 19-foot-long species of shark known as “tintorera” and also discovered the sleeping sharks of Isla Mujeres. You may know him better for his role as the underwater zombie in Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.
Here’s the thing — this is a shark movie, but it’s also pretty much a softcore adult movie about the three-way relationship between the heroes. As such, this is the only shark movie I’ve watched all week with full frontal male nudity, which is something of an accomplishment.
Hugo Stiglitz from Nightmare City plays Steven, born in the US but a Mexican businessman here in Cancun for vacation. He falls for Patricia (Fiona Lewis, Dr. Phibes Rises Again) but breaks up with her when he can’t decide whether or not he’s in love with her. Ah, the 1970’s.
Jealousy ensues when she starts hooking up with Miguel (Andrés García, a real-life former diving instructor who is also in Bermuda: Cave of the Sharks), the swimming instructor at the resort. After those two dance the devil’s dance and Steven gets all misty-eyed, she goes skinny dipping and ends up being eaten by a tiger shark that seems to have breathing problems, judging by the soundtrack.
The two fight over what happened to Patricia, but neither ever learn that she was devoured by a shark. That night, the two hook up with Kelly and Cynthia Madison, two American college students looking for fun, and swim to Steven’s yacht as the heavy breathing shark follows them. They swap beds all night long before heading back to the resort and the shark decides to leave them alone. Kelly is played by Jennifer Ashley, who was also in Phantom of the Paradise, Chained Heatand Guyana: Cult of the Damned, while Cynthia is Laura Lyons, which is her real name and not a stage name inspired by the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. She was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for February 1976 and actually led a strike amongst the club bunnies that led to better wages and rights for them. Other than an appearance on TV’s Love, American Style, this is the only other acting role in her career.
Steven and Miguel decide to partner up both in a shark hunting business and in being womanizers. They start shooting all manner of sharks, but Miguel warns Steven that if they ever meet a tiger shark that they must immediately get out of the water.
The guys meet Gabriella (Susan George, Die Screaming, Marianne) and take her shark hunting. She hates it, but falls for both men. They decide to form a triad relationship where they can’t be with any other woman or fall in love with her. Remember those The Joy of Sex drawings I mentioned earlier? Get ready to watch the play out as the three make love, make omelets and sightsee the Mayan ruins.
Sadly, the next time they go shark hunting, the tiger shark reappears — surprise! — and bites Miguel in half. Gabriella is so upset that she leaves, never to return. Steven vows revenge on the shark and beats up every shark he can find, upsetting even the most hardened fishermen. Surely, they tell him, he has killed the tiger shark by now.
Nope. It’s still out there, killing fishermen and lying in wait for Steven. At a beach party with Kelly, Cynthia and two new American girls (one of them is Priscilla Barnes from TV’s Three’s Company and The Devil’s Rejects), everyone skinny dips. As Steven and Cynthia make out nude in the water, the tiger shark comes back and tears the woman literally out of his embrace. Everyone is injured by the shark’s attack and Steven makes a promise to kill the shark himself.
You may be wondering: how will Steven go about killing this shark? If you guessed “he’s going to blow it up” then congratulations. You’ve been watching just as many shark movies as I have. Are explosives the shark’s natural predator?
Anyhow — Steven uses a devilfish to lure the shark close and then he hears its breathing, because that’s how sharks work. He succeeds in turning that shark into a million pieces, but loses his arm in the process. He wakes up in a hospital bed, minus an arm but filled with happy memories of the sexy times he shared with Miguel and Gabriella.
Keep in mind when you seek out this film that there are two versions. One is 85 minutes long and is more of a shark film. Then there’s the 126 minutes long cut that’s chock full of swinging Mexican resort sex. Also, a warning for those of you sensitive to these matters: many of the scenes of fish being caught and killed underwater are unsimulated. That should be no surprise to anyone who has seen a René Cardona Jr. directed film, as he threw live birds through windows in Beaks: The Movie and a cat over a wall in Night of a Thousand Cats. He’s also responsible for the borderline insane film Bermuda Triangle, as well as the scum-ridden cash-in Guyana: Crime of the Century.
Tintorera…Tiger Shark is one of the stranger films I’ve watched, not only in my shark obsessed week of trying to watch every single pre-Sharknado film of this genre, but really in all the films I’ve watched. I have no idea who it is truly for, yet appreciate its willingness to indulge in spectacle and scum, whether that be people hooking up or being eaten in front of your very eyes.
Directors and stars Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Benson also wrote the script) also made Spring, The Endless, Synchronic and Resolution — as well as episodes of Marvel’s Moon Knight and Loki as well as Archive 81 and The Twilight Zone together.
This time, they play Levi and John, two neighbors in a Los Angeles apartment building who discover a paranormal event and decide to use what they’ve experienced to become rich and famous. The only problem is that dealing with the unknown — whether supernatural or between two people that barely know one another — can be dangerous.
This is a small movie with big ideas, a way of filming necessitated by being created in COVID-19 isolation, but what emerges is the idea that within ourselves and the world that there are so many layers yet peeling back those very same layers can have destructive results.
Shot with a crew of three — Benson, Moorhead and producing partner David Lawson Jr. — this is a hang-out film of two people confronting a gravitational anomaly within the walls of a no-lease apartment complex that seemingly also keeps them within its gravitational orbit, too focused on making it or working to escape but trapped forever within the same four walls.
From seeing the same shape throughout Los Angeles to followers of Pythagoras and cats using parasites to increase mental illness, there are secrets within every story told. There are even conspiracies between the two leads, as Levi has a criminal record that he doesn’t want to discuss and John is part of a religion that could very well be called a cult, even if his homosexuality may not allow him to be fully part of the sect he’s grown up in.
I saw someone comment that this is Under the Silver Lake for poor people and that makes sense. It never reaches the mania of that film, but it does expand in ever stranger circles, using multiple film techniques and media — even old home movies — to get to the truth, which even by the end of the film is only known by one of the leads and there’s no way he can explain it to the other.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on January 20, 2021. It’s back as it played during Fantastic Fest.
In 2009, director Quentin Tarantino placedJSA amongst his top twenty films since 1992. Directed by Park Chan-wook, who also made Oldboy, this film tells the tale of a fatal shooting within the DMZ that exists between the borders of North and South Korea.
At one point the highest-grossing film in Korean history, JSA is the story of the fragile friendship that starts between four soldiers who are on opposite sides. Yet why did two of the North’s soldiers get killed and why are the stories so inconsistent? That’s what a neutral Swiss team of investigators wants to figure out.
Sergeant Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun, Storm Shadow in the G.I. Joe movies) is a South Korean soldier who has run back to his own country, rescued by his own troops and potentially guilty of shooting three North Korean soldiers, leaving two dead. He claims that he was kidnapped.
One of the dead, Jeong Woo-jin (Shin Ha-kyun, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) was shot eight times, which doesn’t seem like self-defense. And one of the other South Korean troops, Jeong Woo-jin (Shin Ha-kyun), suddenly tries to commit suicide.
The truth is that for some time, the men had all been friends. In fact, the surviving soldiers and Woo-jin were attempting to protect one another, something that had been happening since Kyeong-pil and Woo-jin saved Soo-hyeok from one of their land mines.
Yet can even the truth — once discovered — save anyone? This is a tense exploration of the divide that exists between people who are not all that different.
This is a tense watch and one that will anger you by the close. I have no idea how to save the world. All I know is to watch movies.
The Arrow Video release of this film is available from MVD. You can also watch it on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, this just ran on the site a few weeks ago. However, this played live at Fantastic Fest and my Letterboxd list must be complete!
The Florida-based director William Grefe has brought many swamp-tinged bits of exploitation goodness — or badness — to the screen, such as Alligator Alley, The Wild Rebels, The Hooked Generation and so many more. As one of the first films made to take advantage of the shark craze in the way of Spielberg’s success, this film’s sympathetic view of sharks as victims is a pretty unique take on the genre.
Marine salvager Sonny Stein (Richard Jaeckel, who pretty much had a one-man war against nature with him battling bats in Chosen Survivors, bears in Grizzly and, well, any and all beasts with a chip on their shoulder in Day of the Animals) is given a medallion that allows him to communicate with sharks. He becomes increasingly disconnected from humanity — easy to do, everyone in this movie is scum — and uses his sharks to take out those who go against his beliefs.
One of those people is an incredibly chubby club owner who is using high-frequency sound to train his sharks, as well as kind of pimping out his wife Karen (Jennifer Bishop, Bigfoot) to get Sonny on their side. Have you ever seen a movie where strippers have been trained to swim with sharks? Who would want to see that? This movie provides the what, if not the why.
Another is a shady shark researcher that murders a shark and her pups. You will stare unbelievingly at the screen while Jaeckel overly emotes as he clutches a dead baby shark in his mitts. Oh yeah — Harold “Oddjob” Sakata is also in this.
The stunt footage is pretty amazing and even gets a mention before the movie even begins. Other than the weird premise and a few good scenes, you can nap through most of this and not feel bad.
You may have grown up afraid of Chucky but you didn’t live the life of Kyra Elise Gardner, the director and writer (with Jason Strickland) of this documentary, as she’s the daughter of special effects master Tony Gardner, and in her house were the half-built parts of Chucky and Tiffany from the movie Seed of Chuckie onward.
She told Entertainment Weekly: “My mom said when I was leaving preschool (one) day, I told my teacher that I couldn’t go home because the bad people were there. My teacher almost called CPS on my parents because she thought that they were hitting me. I didn’t understand that it was dolls. It was scared of Chucky, so it was absolutely frightening.”
Building on the short Dollhouse that she made in college, Gardner has filmed moments with her father, as well as interviews with creator Don Mancini; producer David Kirschner; actors Alex Vincent, Lin Shaye, Marlon Wayans, Abigail Breslin and Jennifer Tilly; Chucky’s voice Brad Dourif and his actress daughter Fiona Dourif (who has been in two Child’s Play movies and the new TV show); and even John Waters, who gleefully recalls having his face burned off by acid in Seed of Chucky.
Beyond serving as a much needed documentary about this horror series, it’s interesting to get into the shared experiences and family feeling — Fiona Dourif and Gardner bonded over childhoods with often work-absent fathers — that have grown along the way. I’d also love a doc that tries to get to the bottom of how Jennifer Tilly stays so perfect all these years, if anyone would like to make that.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on March 30, 2020. It played live at Fantastic Fest.
Shortly after Gamera vs. Zigra was completed, the film’s production studio, Daiei Film, went bankrupt. As a result, the film was distributed by another company called Dainichi Eihai. It only cost around $97,000, which is pretty amazing (Around $621,000 in today’s money).
This time, Earth is under attack by aliens. Well, we’re under attack by aliens again.
The Zigrans have enslaved a female astronaut to do their bidding and have a monster named Zigra which can stop the cellular activity of Gamera, who sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Luckily, the children, some dolphins and a bathysphere come to the rescue.
This movie has one of my all-time favorite Gamera moments, as the giant turtle uses a giant rock to play his theme song on the fins of Zigra before setting the beast on fire, because as we have all learned, Gamera does not play.
This would be the last Gamera movie for nine years, which is a shame. I knew none of this as a child, as I began watching these movies probably in 1977 and had no idea of their history. I wouldn’t have seen this one anyway, as it’s the only original Gamera film to not be released in the U.S. It wouldn’t come over here until the VHS era.
Once, Jacky (Thomas Parigi) was content to wander the village and record sounds to use in ths songs that he made in secret. But after the death of his grandmother Gisèle, who was known to be the village healer and magnetizer, he finds himself developing her powers. Just in time — wolves are attacking and a young girl named Elsa has shown up either suffering from a mystery disease or possession. Or maybe she’s doing Blood On Satan’s Claw cosplay.
Lucas Delange, who directed and co-wrote this with Olivier Strauss, has an eye for beauty. Jacky has an eye toward dreams and miracles, which may not work outside the world of fantasy. It’s an interesting film that definitely will get you thinking.
The Strange Case of Jacky Caillou is playing at Fantastic Fest.
The same people who made this made the equally wild Lake Michigan Monster. Let me sell you on this: it’s a Merrie Melodies-influenced black and white no dialogue movie about an applejack maker whose life is ruined by beavers, so he fights back against them as a trapped and finds himself up against, well, hundreds of them.
Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who co-wrote this with director Mike Cheslik) must survive a brutal winter, then learn how to trap fur, selling the dead beavers to The Merchant (Doug Mancheski) while making eyes at his daughter The Furrier (Olivia Graves).
All the while, the beavers are planning to destroy mankind.
This movie is an absolute joy, a quick moving living and breathing cartoon in which one man challenges the odds and the beavers and the snow and the sharp objects and oh man, this was great.
Hundreds of Beavers is playing as part of the Burnt Ends part of Fantastic Fest.
After the loss of his wife, Satoshi has nearly lost everything, including his table tennis club. All he has left is his daughter Kaeda. He’s become absent-minded, becoming lost in a fog and even getting arrested for stealing in a grocery store. So when he tells Kaeda that he just saw a serial killer named Terumi, she thinks he’s in a fantasy all his own. But after he disappears, she realizes that things have become very real.
Director Shinzo Katayama has worked as Bong Joon-ho’s assistant director and this film shows that he’s been studying and working as his craft because this is a very assured film.
Kaeda has been forced to grow up, not just because of the loss of her mother, but because her father is drifting away. All he can do is drink and dream and cry and she has also become almost a mother to him. Terumi, the killer that her father is trying to capture, tells his victims that he’s helping them with their suicide, but he’s actually a heartless killer who commits these acts because he feels that life has lost any sense of beauty.
This is a bleak film and it might be too much for some. Yet if you love movies that explore the bonds between fathers and daughters, as well as man’s inhumanity, it’s worth your time.
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