POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Subject (2022)

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Instead of going to jail, Willem (Stephen Phillips) takes a different sentence, in which he has to stay all alone in an isolated facility. Phillips takes on so much in this, because he’s largely on screen all by himself for the entire run time.

While watching the monster, Willem reflects on his life, like how everything went downhill after the death of his wife Carrie (Cecilia Low), a return to heroin and the loss of his two daughters. We also actually see his memories in the form of what looks like actual home movies.

However, Willem isn’t alone. There’s some kind of creature, one that he’s sure is just in his head, that is watching him. Is it his past pain come to life? Is it how he sees his addiction? Is it going to shred him when he goes to sleep? And why do the government agents keep asking so many questions, none of them about this monster, and shock him when he lies?

Directed by Tristan Barr (who also plays Dalesky) and written by Vincent Befi, this is a movie that puts its lead through hell yet so much of that is of his own making. This is unlike any movie I’ve seen and worth your time.

Subject was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Sorry, Charlie (2023)

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Charlie (Kathleen Kenny) is a remote helpline volunteer who comes into the grip of The Gentleman, a sinister being that uses the sound of a crying baby to lure people into his destructive embrace. One night, while home alone, she realizes that she is anything but when she hears an infant outside her home.

Directed by Colton Tran and written by Luke Genton — who also worked on the horror film Snow Falls together — Sorry, Charlie was based on a true story of a man who used recordings of children to get women to leave their houses.

Nearly nine months ago, Charlie was raped by someone — on Halloween — who left her pregnant. Now, she tries to help others from her home, a place she rarely leaves if only to go to the doctor and to tend to her garden. As for the house, it was her grandmother’s and her pregnancy doesn’t leave her much energy to fix it up any further than she got before the attack. But for now, she’s surviving. Then the calls start, calls that sound so much like the man who assaulted her. And then, The Gentleman shows up.

Sorry, Charlie may seem to be made in the cloak of the slasher, but it’s more about grief, adjusting after a horrific event and trying to move past it. We don’t all get to so violently deal with our trauma, but Charlie sure does.

Sorry, Charlie was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Anak ng dilim (1997)

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Anak ng dilim (Child of Darkness) proves that director Nick Lizaso and writer Bong Ramos know that if you’re going to copy, copy from the best. Based on Carrie, this Philippines-shot horror movie is pretty much the same story. A young girl named Adela (Gladys Reyes) tries to go to public school and all the cool kids pick on her, yet she gets no love at home from her aunt Magda (Amy Austria).

“Pagtatawanan ka nilang lahat,” you know?

Where this differs from the Carrie we know and love is that there’s also a grandmother named Lola Pura (Gina Pareno) who is locked in the attic by the evil aunt and at the end, as Magda tries to strangle Adela with a chain, the old woman drags her evil daughter into hell and we get a happy ending.

Yes, Adela just got pig’s blood all over her and destroyed the school.

We still get a happy ending. Not as many split screens, though.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Vahset Kasirgasi (1985)

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Vahset Kasirgasi (Brutal Storm) was directed and written by Kadir Akgün and is the story of Naide (Nur Incegül) and Cahide (Leyla Akin), two sisters who own the Gul Hotel in a beautiful tourist town in the South of Turkey. I don’t know what type of guests the sisters were expecting, but the loose moral fiber of their lodgers really starts to get to Naide and Cahide (more Naide, to be honest) and Hale, a nude sunbather, is shoved down the steps and impaled on a statue. To dispose of the body, the girls slice it up, cook it and serve it to the rest of the vacationers.

Soon enough, Nalan shows up looking for her dead friend and won’t give up. She gets a room just as more murders happen, like the always drunk and frequently loud Dilek, who make as lesbian pass at Naide who responds by stabbing her and Songül, who dares to be a single mother. Nalan gets kicked out for asking too many questions, but soon brings her friend Kaya as her fiancee and moves back in.

In case you didn’t guess, this movie is at times a shot for shot remake of It Happened at Nightmare Inn AKA A Candle For The Devil and I’m surprised as you that a 1970s Spanish horror movie by Eugenio Martin was remade in the 1980s in Turkey.

The other big star of this movie is the soundtrack which is literally a K-Tel Records best of your favorite horror soundtracks, lifting the disco theme from Friday the 13th Part 3, the drums from Cannibal Holocaust and pieces of Rambo: First Blood Part II, Suspiria, Deep Red and a dance party set to the theme from Ghostbusters.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Night Gallery Season 3 Episode 10: She’ll Be Company for You (1972)

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Henry Auden (Leonard Nimoy) is dealing with the loss of his wife, who died after years of a prolonged illness, a time in which he played caregiver. All he can feel is relief, but it’s a strange place to be in, a man who has been more nurse than a husband to a woman who was once his lover.

Barbara (Lorraine Gary) is Margaret’s best friend and she’s unconvinced that Henry is grieving enough. She leaves her orange tabby Jennet for company, which he claims he doesn’t need. And then he hears the bell that his wife used to use to summon him.

Now sure that a gigantic cat is loose in his house, Henry starts to sleep at the office. At every turn, his dream of a single life does not appear. The secretary he planned on being with, June (Kathryn Hays), seems to savor the idea that now that he can finally have her, she wants nothing to do with him.

Henry goes home and battles two of the big cats that are loose around his house, but finally realizes that he has to die. He walks to his room and when we see him again, he’s covered in blood and Jennet is licking a red pool in the carpet.

Directed by Gerald Perry Finnerman (the director of photography for sixty episodes of the original Star Trek) and written by David Rayfiel (Lipstick) and based on a short story by Andrea Newman, this is a story that really goes nowhere and has a resolution that makes no sense. It feels like someone just threw together some ideas and hoped that it would make more sense than it does.

Papi Gudia (1996)

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Zapatlela is not the only movie from India that was inspired by Child’s Play.

Directed by Lawrence D’Souza and written by Talat Rekhi, Papi Gudia starts when a criminal named Charandas (Shakti Kapoor) escapes the police and runs into a toy store. Before he dies, he transfers his soul into a doll named Channi which is sold on the street to a young boy who needs a friend and gets a killing machine that throws his babysitter out the window.

You know, Child’s Play.

Yet it also has some of the weirdest song and dance moments I’ve seen in some time, as Alka Yagnik sings “Music I Love The Beat” at a talent show and it breaks whatever reality — yes, I realize this is a movie where a girl’s doll with a jaunty cap becomes a walking and talking murder puppet — exists and takes over the movie for nearly ten minutes of happy pop bliss. If you have issues with the zooms of Italian cinema, get ready to lose whatever is left of your mind or lunch.

Also, it has the following mission statement, in English no less (thanks to Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!):

“The story idea of the film is to create positive feelings in children which will make them careful against similar situations in the future and also to warn them against blind faith or surrender to alien things be it a doll or computer toys, robots, etc.”

I mean, just look at this doll.

Bring on all the remix remake rip-off Chucky clones and allow me to hold them.

You can watch this on YouTube.

GET READY FOR POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023!

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The Popcorn Frights Film Festival is here! Established in 2015 by Miami locals Igor Shteyrenberg and Marc Ferman, it has quickly grown into the leading international genre film festival in Southeast United States.

The Festival is hosted at the O Cinema South Beach, located just across the street from the world-famous Ocean Drive boulevard in the heart of Miami Beach, as well as the Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale, a historic theater that was originally built as a Methodist Church in the 1940’s after the first building was blown away by the monster hurricane of 1926. To learn more, visit the official site and see the schedule of movies and events to discover all the amazing things playing.

It also has a virtual component. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20.

To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Get ready! I’m excited to watch as many films as I can from this fest!

Passionate Killing in the Dream (1992)

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Directed by Kuo-Chu Huang and written by Chi-Hua Liu, this stars Michiko Nishiwaki (In the Line of Duty 3) as Sha Sha Lee, a fashion photographer who keeps having visions of Chit Chit (Gordon Liu), a former kickboxer with brain damage who now stalks the streets of Thailand taking photos of women before he kills them.

Yet Sha Sha isn’t some frightening girl who needs saved. In one scene, she and her boss Queen (Cynthia Lam) fight a gang at a food stall while continuing their conversation. The problem is that Chit Chit soon figures out that she’s inside his mind and decides to kill her before she can figure out who he is and tell the police.

I’m used to see Nishiwaki as a villain and Liu as a monk hero, so this is definitely a big change. I also find it amusing that so many reviews call this a giallo — which it totally is! — but don’t remark how much it takes from The Eyes of Laura Mars. Instead of fashion and eroticism, you get fight scenes. And Queen being in love with Sha Sha, but can you blame her?

You can watch this on YouTube.

Intikam Kadini (1979)

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Directed by Naki Yurter and written by Recep Filiz, Intikam Kadini (Revenge Woman) is the story of Aysel (Zerrin Dogan), One evening, four men had their car break down and her father generously allowed them to stay at their home. Later that evening, their assaulted her and killed him.

By the end of this movie, Aysel will have cut, chopped, broken and burned four men beyond recognition… but no jury in Turkey would ever convict her! That’s because Intikam Kadini is inspired by the film whose tagline I just quoted: I Spit On Your Grave. Well, by inspired, I mean that Aysel goes to the city and seduces and kills each of the men one at a time. She doesn’t race a boat or castrate a man on camera like Camille Keaton did before her.

This film barely survived the purge of Turkey’s seventies sexploitation films and all that survives is a multiple generations removed videotape that has been uploaded to the web again and again.

Between the Muzak-sounding “Penny Lane” and Vangelis’ “Pulstar,” this has the music thievery that I demand in my movie watching. It’s just that I’ve never really gotten into rape revenge movies. The act itself is a real-life horror and so often, it seems like the movies wallow in the crime more than than they show the retribution. They should be empowering but they come off as shallow; I get that this is all exploitation but I have no interest in seeing women get treated this way unless they’re going to set people ablaze and go even further.