I like The Replacement Killers. It isn’t a great film. Hell, it isn’t even a particularly good film. But it’s stylish. And the two leads (Chow Yun-fat as John Lee and Mira Sorvino as Meg) are great. But the story is stupid and it depends upon the viewer thinking like a gamer. None of the characters are real except for those primary to the plot. Everyone else is a non-player character (NPC).

As is typical of action movies, we have a professional assassin who has ethics. In this case, he isn’t willing to kill a cop’s kid. In the film, a cop kills a crime boss’ son, so, in retaliation, the crime boss hires an assassin to kill the cop’s son. It’s very Code of Hammurabi.

In general, we don’t like the idea of a kid getting killed for what his dad did. But this is an action film, and there are two ways that make the idea more palatable.

1. The cop (Detective Stan Zedkov) is played by Michael Rooker. He’s a fine actor and works great in hateable roles. But Hollywood has spent a fair amount of effort trying to get audiences to like him. And it just ain’t there. And in The Replacement Killers, he plays an asshole. Even Alan Rickman couldn’t have made the character likeable.
2. The kid is annoying in the extreme. It’s hard to imagine that Zedkov would be all that upset to lose him.

Of course, the film gets worse. It isn’t enough to simply not kill the kid. Meg convinces Lee that he must protect the kid. And thus begins the bloodbath. Most sources claim that there are 38 total on-screen deaths. Some of these are not the direct result of John Lee’s refusal to kill the kid. But there are more deaths. I once tried to count the deaths myself but I gave up because of the theater scene, which implies but doesn’t show any actual deaths.

But let’s consider that one scene. If the heroes didn’t show up at the last minute, one person would have died — the kid. Instead, I believe several died. It doesn’t matter that we don’t see them. In fact, it makes the point clearer: it doesn’t matter than other people died because none of them are real.

There are also two characters who we care about: Eddie Rawlins (Frank Medrano) and the priest (James Wing Woo). And they are both killed off-screen because the filmmakers also see them as NPCs — just ones who need to provide a small amount of exposition.

And the truth is, I don’t think any of this matters. As I’ve said, I enjoy the film. Thirty seconds of Mira Sorvino sexily counterfeiting documents to “Makes Me Wanna Die” is worth the price of admission. So I wouldn’t even bring it up except for one thing.

The film takes its conceit seriously. It cares about that kid. But it doesn’t care about any other character. In fact, it’s kind of surprising that John Lee and Meg don’t end up dying — but happy knowing that the annoying kid will grow up to be as big an asshole as his dad.

But again: The Replacement Killers is fun. And the extended cut (about 9 minutes longer) includes more dialogue scenes, which improves the film immeasurably. (But my criticisms stand.) Here is the extended cut, if you are in the mood.

The Replacement Killers (1998) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

John Carpenter is a great director, but his power harmed They Live and We Live with it to this day.

The old saying goes, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And this applies very well to film directors. Stanley Kubrick’s later films are among his weakest. I once thought Martin Scorsese escaped this when, in his middle career, he used his power to make exceptional off-brand films like Kundun and Bringing Out the Dead. But his recent work is so self-indulgent that I wish he would simply stop making films.

Fight Scene

I watch They Live every year or so. I like it a lot. But that’s really just because I like its politics. And the truth is that I know a lot of people with horrible politics who think the film justifies them. Whatever. The only problem I’ve had with the film as narrative art is that ridiculously long fight scene in the middle.

Last week, I went through all the special features on the Shout Factory Blu-ray of the film. It includes a recent interview with John Carpenter. Here’s a transcript:

Carpenter: A lot of people said at the time this is excessive, the fight was excessive, but I loved it!

Interviewer: Was there ever any concern when you finished the scene in terms of shortening it?

Carpenter: Fuck no!

But the fight scene in They Live is six and a half minutes long. That’s seven percent of the run time (credits included) of the entire film!

And here we are, four decades on, with a solid film that grinds to a halt right before the third act starts. I guess that’s what the fast-forward button is for. The truth is, no fight is even necessary but it works well enough to propel the action. But six and a half minutes? That’s a director’s blind hubris.

Collaboration Is Necessary

This is why directors shouldn’t have too much power. The fight scene works well on its own. True, it isn’t realistic or gritty — the way the film is. It’s very much a pro-wrestling kind of fight — including a piledriver. It doesn’t go too far. The problem is that the fight stops the film just as it moves into high gear.

Carpenter understands this. I’m sure he even sees it today. But his ego stops him from admitting that the fight scene is too long in the content of the film. So instead of admitting the error, he doubles down. But if he’d had a powerful enough producer, he could have been saved the public embarrassment. Larry Franco is a fine producer, but he owes his career to Carpenter. He wasn’t going to stand up to the man.

This is not to say that producers should be all-powerful. Indeed, powerful producers have destroyed many a great work. Blade Runner and Dark City come to mind as examples of producers fatally harming films because of their convictions that audiences are stupid. Clearly, there needs to be a balance.

Have you noticed that most directors’ cuts of films are longer than the release cuts — often much longer. This is ego. But it isn’t always the case. Scott’s Blade Runner cut was actually a couple of minutes shorter. And that’s while adding the unicorn dream scene! Dark City is longer, but it is in service of keeping the story mysterious.

John Carpenter Forgot About Us — Briefly

I like John Carpenter as a director. And a big reason for that is that he’s good to the audience. But this is an example of how even the best directors can fall into this trap of fluffing themselves and not working for the good of the whole film. Too bad we will never get a Franco cut of They Live “with four and a half minutes you don’t have to sit through”!

They Live (1988) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

The broken man you see before you now is doubtless the result of my older sister sneaking me into drive-in movies that I absolutely should not have seen and, more importantly, Bob Wilkins, the strangely intellectual host of Creature Features. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still think horror films are cool. And as I do my anti-cholesterol walks through the neighborhood, sporting odd T-shirts and weather-inappropriate short pants, I know that I see reality more clearly than those around me. Because at the age of seven, I survived The Last Man on Earth on Creature Features!

It’s lucky for me that I lived in the Bay Area. Had I lived in the Northeast, I might have been stuck with John Zacherle. Brilliant as he was, he was no intellectual. With him showing the way of horror, I might be focused on art films now!

Regardless, the hosted TV horror show was important to a lot of people of my age. What Saturday Night Live was for people of the following decade, these shows were to us. But in this regard, I might be a bit out of time. I was watching this way before I should have. Most of my friends look back on SNL, not Creature Features.

Vampira and Shock Theater

The prototypical hosted TV horror show was The Vampira Show. It wasn’t the first. Murder Before Midnight on WBKB with Drana Badour the Swami was probably the first. It was successful — running three years. But it didn’t have the impact of The Vampira Show, which had the advantage of featuring a sexy woman and being in Los Angeles. People noticed both these things!

As a result of the success of the show, in 1957, Screen Gems released Shock! (normally referred to as Shock Theater). This was a syndicated collection of 52 films that were sold to regional TV stations — explicitly to be used as hosted TV shows in the vein of The Vampira Show. And the films included in the collection are pretty awesome! They included the Universal hits Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Wolf Man.

As a result of Shock Theater, local stations all over America created their own shows. Most were not exactly great. Many of the shows were simply titled “Shock Theater.” And few stations had anyone of the charisma of Maila Nurmi. But there were notable hosts:

The Anti-Horror Host

Bob Wilkins had a totally different take on this theme. He hosted Creature Features in the San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years across three stations: KCRA (1966-1970), KTVU (1971-1979), KTXL (1970-1981).

The show was more of a straight copy of Vampira. But instead of her silly routine, he was kind of an academic. He made jokes. But they were dry. He smoked a cigar (a pipe would have been better for the brand). And he interviewed notable psychotronic celebrities. These included Christopher Lee, William Marshall, John Carradine, Ray Harryhausen, and John Landis. He also interviewed the primary cast of Star Wars and Star Trek.

He was more or less what I am today: someone who loves horror but takes it rather more seriously than most, at the same time that he realizes it is all kind of silly.

Son of Shock

After the 1957 Shock Theater collection, Screen Gems put out Son of Shock. It included only 20 films, but it completed the Universal horror collection with Bride of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and more.

Clearly, the idea was to repackage these old films in a way that they would appeal to a new audience. It was just a cash grab. But it was a great one. I love these films — largely because I first saw them on Creature Features. And Columbia (which owned Screen Gems) deserves all the money it got.

Shock Theater With Jim Ross on KGUL-TV poster via IMDb under Fair Use.

Hide Your Crazy is one of those fantastic horror shorts that make you wonder why you even watch features anymore. Irina Slepneva led the production with fully 24 other producers listed because of the Indiegogo campaign for the film.

The base idea here belongs to writer-director Austin Kase. He is a graduate of Yale. And he has a great track record as an independent writer-director.[1] He isn’t a psychotronic filmmaker. His work (as in Crazy) is much more thoughtful than that — even though it is often quirky. He peppers his films with little insights that you just don’t see much in film.

He also consistently gets excellent performances out of actors. That’s well on display here with the only two actors in the film, Amy-Helene Carlson and William Lawrence Toussaint (although they are clearly both pros).

The film also looks great. Making a suburban apartment look interesting is hard — especially in a horror film. Here, the apartment looks perfect for the story. A big part of that is the lighting by veteran cinematographer Chase Bowman, who is also the camera operator. Pate Sanders did a good job as the production designer making the apartment look real but attractive.

Veteran Tony Snegoff was the stunt coordinator, which was much needed. The fights look real! Finally, Santino Ferrese did the excellent special effects makeup.

You might call Hide Your Crazy a Romantic Comedy Horror film. It has all the elements of a standard rom-com: two people destined to be together who must overcome obstacles in order to secure their happiness. You see, they both have secrets. He has bipolar manic depressive disorder. And she is the daughter of a witch and a demon, and now she must consume pig’s blood or she turns into a monster. (More or less; it’s complicated.) Can these crazy kids get past their issues and find true love?!

The film is incredibly sweet. And it’s a testament to the power of horror. If it were a standard rom-com (especially as a feature), I’m not sure I could take it. But here I’m near tears of joy at the end. (Vomiting has never been so beautiful!)

So forget Anne Rice and The Twilight Saga and all those “sexy” monsters. I find all that stuff pretty banal. Hide Your Crazy shows you can have engaging romance, funny comedy, and scary horror — all in one package. I’m not sure it could be maintained for 80 minutes. But at 13 minutes? It couldn’t be better!

[1] I only found one other Austin Kase film online, which is well worth watching, To My Son. But I contacted Kase, and he shared unlisted links to Kvetch and Another Girl. The latter film shares a theme with Hide Your Crazy, but it isn’t horror. They are all really good and worth a watch!

Hide Your Crazy via IMDb under Fair Use.

Back on 2 March, Bruce Campbell announced he had cancer in an X post. He said it was “‘treatable’ not ‘curable’,” so I figured a bad kind. And then, exactly six months later, he announced on The Adam Carolla Show that his doctors give him five years.

Based on this, I’d have to say that I have no idea. I won’t be surprised if he’s dead in a year. And I won’t be surprised if he’s alive in ten. So I’d prefer if I knew nothing about his diagnosis. But I understand why he had to make it. He’s a big draw at the conventions and he had to cancel appearances. If he hadn’t said anything there would have been ridiculous rumors — maybe a “Bruce Campbell Is Dead” conspiracy.

I think Campbell is a solid actor. But I’m not that interested in him as an actor. I think that Evil Dead II kind of limited his career. He has breadth as an actor. But mostly, people want to see him play a maniac. I thought The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr was great. But most fans I know never took much to it. And I understand. I too enjoy Maniac Bruce. Ash vs Evil Dead was fantastic. And Man With the Screaming Brain is one of my favorite films. But he was capable of so much more.

Ernie & Emma

I’m much more interested in Bruce Campbell as a writer and director. And that’s the hidden good news of all this cancer stuff. He has said he has backed away from work on the Evil Dead franchise. That started before the cancer diagnosis but it seems to have now accelerated.

His new film, Ernie & Emma, is the first one he’s directed since My Name Is Bruce back in 2007. And it is the first he’s written since Screaming Brain. I haven’t seen Ernie & Emma, of course. It isn’t playing in my backwater. But based on the trailer, it looks very “Bruce Campbell.”

I’ll be sad to see Bruce Campbell die. But if we get a couple of independent films from him as a result, that will be an major silver lining.

Afterword: Alternative Take

There is another possibility. Some may consider it in poor taste to even mention it. But I love it!

Maybe Campbell knew about his cancer diagnosis long ago — maybe as far back as 2018 when he announced he wouldn’t play Ash again. In that case, he might have only gone public with the diagnosis to goose interest in Ernie & Emma.

I hope it’s true. He would be perpetrating one of the greatest things ever done in exploitation filmmaking!

Bruce Campbell by Gage Skidmore under CC BY 2.0.

East Hell is a short comedy-horror film from 2017. It tells a simple story. Two goth girls try to summon a demon to curse their high school tormentors. Meanwhile, they are babysitting a boy who tries to stop them. Eventually, a female demon shows up and she thinks the girls are just as lame as the bullies are. She gives the boy a loaded gun, like demons do. You see: the boy is way cooler than the girls!

The film was produced by Carver Diserens who seems to have a successful career working in various capacities of production. It stars Alexandra Noland, Allison Winn, and Lauren Cipoletti, who all seem to be doing well in the business. The little boy is played by Cole Krell.

But East Hell seems like Callum Smith‘s baby. He wrote and directed it. Looking at IMDb, you’d think he mostly disappeared. But like most talented filmmakers, he is simply doing work that doesn’t show up in that database. He seems to work primarily in the gaming industry where he focuses on directing the voice actors. He’s also made a science fiction short, Haxxors, which I have not been able to find.

Films like East Hell present Christianity as a war of good versus evil. This is one reason I especially love Catholic horror. It’s clean. What stops me from following the religion is that it’s silly. The world is imperfect because God gave humans free will. But God also created the Devil to temp humans because apparently it isn’t acceptable to just give humans a fair choice with their free will. And God knows everything so he doesn’t actually need to do any of this. And humans are actually so clueless that they would make deals with the Devil. So, as religion: stupid. As film, stupendous!

Of course, East Hell also works as an allegory of high school outcasts. But I try not to think about this kind of stuff too much. The moment you try to make a film an explicit metaphor, you lose the film and gain a George Lakoff lecture. So my advice: just watch the film!

East Hell (2017) via IMDb under Fair Use.

I love Samuel Fuller’s work. And it occurred to me that, in terms of cinematic technique, he’s very similar to Alfred Hitchcock. And it’s interesting that he doesn’t get more attention. It seems that every master’s student in film studies wants to write a thesis about Hitchcock. But not so much Fuller.

That’s not to say that Fuller isn’t also a darling of critics. But there is much less of that sort of thing. And what’s really weird is that Fuller has a far stronger case to being an auteur. After all, he wrote most of his own films. He had a clear vision — both artistically and philosophically. The man had things to say!

Hitchcock? He really didn’t have anything to say. Of course, that does work to his advantage. I don’t re-watch Fuller’s films nearly as much as I do Hitchcock’s. Frankly, Fuller asks so much more of me as a viewer! The Big Red One is a great film. But it ain’t easy!

The Look of a Fuller Film

But look at the films of the two men! They look very much the same. And why not? The truth is that most directors create films with a fairly general look. When people think of Stanley Kubrick, they mostly think of his later films — after he had made something of a fetish of a couple of techniques.

There really isn’t much of that in the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Samuel Fuller. They were both just trying to tell stories in an effective way. And they were both very successful at it! But really: critics should be embracing Fuller and leaving Hitchcock to me! Because Hitchcock wasn’t an auteur. And Fuller was.

Just the same, Fuller’s work is so raw! I always care about what’s going on. I care about the characters. There’s something very base about the stories he tells. But I find myself consistently outraged by the injustices that he presents.

A great example of what I’m talking about is Fuller’s 1969 film, Shark! It’s a wonderful bit of genre filmmaking. But Fuller just can’t help himself and not make it about something. Hitchcock is purer. But I can’t think of a time when he matched Fuller’s heart. So if you’re not feeling up to emotion but you want a fun film, watch Family Plot. But if you want that with some emotional depth and moral clarity, watch anything from Fuller. Today, let it be Shark!

But before you do, notice that the plot setup is as clear as anything you will find in Hitchcock.

Afterword: Burt Reynolds stars in this film. He really is great. He doesn’t get enough respect as an actor. And I say that as someone who doesn’t especially like the films he’s best known for. But everybody’s got to pay the bills. It speaks well of a man who doesn’t just sleep in the rest of the time.

Samuel Fuller by Roland Godefroy under CC BY 2.5.

Finley is a 2019 short horror-comedy produced and directed by J Zachary Thurman. He co-wrote it with Maddison (Maddie) Stroud. It’s a pretty well-known film with 17 million views on YouTube. And I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t love it. If you haven’t seen it, scroll down to the link below and watch it.

Finley is one of many examples of how short films are more consistently good than features. And that’s especially true when it comes to horror. There are many reasons for this. But this little masterpiece highlights one of the more obscure reasons: simplicity.

One Great Idea

A short film can have one idea and work beautifully. Finley is very simple: Evil ventriloquist dummy is incompetent. Finley himself isn’t deep: he likes the cat and wants to kill everyone else. The three human principals could easily be interchanged. They have no defining characteristics. The film works because the idea is brilliant.

Of course, Finley could be so much less! But the plot is outstanding. The first part establishes Finley as incompetent as he tries to kill the main characters. The second part shows Finley finally able to use those skills successfully against home invaders. And the third part finds Finley finally accepted by the family but still being homicidal and killing everyone.

Lesser storytellers (like the writers at SNL) wouldn’t have moved past the first part. So it’s more than just a good idea. It’s working that idea for all it’s worth.

How to Ruin Finley

But imagine turning Finley into a feature film. Now the humans would have to be better defined. But why? There is nothing in the plot that requires we know or care about them — other than the fact we have to put up with them for an hour and a half. A feature would almost certainly provide a backstory for Finley, which would make his character less interesting. And now that I think about it, why did those criminals pick this particular house?! There is so much that could be explained!

But Finley is pure. It has one idea. It mines it exquisitely. And it is over. To be frank, I’m shocked they get 25 minutes out of it. It speaks very well of the filmmakers that they get that much time out of this material. But any longer, and the film would suffer.

And this is one of the big reasons that shorts tend to be better than features. Most ideas don’t lend themselves to feature length. And so the ideas need to be expanded. But most ideas don’t lend themselves to expansion. And other things features require (like complex characters) can hurt an impactful story.

What this all means is that you should watch more short films. They will reward you!

J Zachary Thurman

J Zachary Thurman is not a one-trick pony. He has made a handful of excellent short films. They don’t have the broad appeal of Finley, but most will appeal to horror fans:

• Lik Daddy: A heartwarming film about a father teaching his son how to be just like him!
• Don’t Feed the Cat: The granddaughter of a man with dementia comes to put his house in order. He leaves a list of things to do. The last is “Don’t Feed the Cat!” But does she listen?
• The Demon Core: This is a drama about Louis Slotin. It is horrifying! But not horror. It’s also true, even if it romanticizes Slotin and presents him as far less reckless than he actually was. If you liked Oppenheimer, check this one out. It’s excellent!

He’s made other films, but I haven’t seen them. I assume he will eventually be scooped up by TV. Or maybe be given a feature. Or maybe he’ll go into academia. The last seems reasonable because he makes extremely well-crafted films, and I suspect he would be great in an educational environment.

Regardless, check out his films!

Finley (2019) poster via IMDb under Fair Use.

Dig Your Own Grave is a comedy short release 6 March 2019 at the Sarasota Film Festival, followed a week later at the Riverrun Film Festival. Greg Kindra produced it. Kirk Larsen directed and co-wrote it. And it stars Amos Vernon and Henry Zebrowski. Vernon co-wrote the script. It’s one of a surprising number of short films I see that are as professionally made as anything you will see in the multiplex. But that are also generally a lot more interesting. (Some day soon, I will write about why short films are more consistently good compared to features.)

“Dig Your Own Grave” Trop

The idea is very simple: digging a grave is hard work, but films make it out to be trivial. Screenwriters throw it into stories because it seems very badass. But would a murderer actually hang around for hours while their victim digs a grave? (Under the best of circumstances, professional grave diggers take between one and two hours!) In addition to the bordom, you might get caught.

In the film, the first sign that something is wrong is that the hitman brought a square shovel. That would be fine in some soils but not the rocky ground where this takes place. The joke for the first part of the film is that this is an unreasonable task. Even asking professionals to do it is unreasonable. There? You really want a backhoe.

Moving on, the film plays with different ideas of kindness. I’m with the hitman: making someone dig their own grave is much worse than murdering alone. I’d rather just be murdered than tortured and then murdered.

Watch It!

Dig Your Own Grave reminds me a lot of the work of Chris and Jack. They too deconstruct common film tropes like selling your soul to Satan and the ridiculous future dates in science fiction. (I was just watching Johnny Mnemonic, which hilariously takes place in 2021!)

I don’t mind movie tropes. In fact, they are necessary because there just isn’t time to do otherwise. But it is always welcome when talented people go after them in an insightful way. Check out Dig Your Own Grave!

Dig Your Own Grave (2019) poster via IMDb under Fair Use.

When I talk about “pure horror,” I’m talking about horror that includes nothing else. It is pure terror. Think of the final sequence of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as Sally runs from Leatherface as he waves his chainsaw. The context doesn’t matter. It just is horrific. But I don’t think a feature film could maintain this. As it is, first-time viewers of Chain Saw are generally worn out. (In fairness, you could justify moving the pure horror all the way back to the dinner sequence.)

Curve

No film to my memory is as good an example of pure horror as the short film Curve. It premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. It is the product of three principals: writer-director Tim Egan; producer Ahren Morris; and actor Laura Jane Turner. And it runs about nine minutes.

You should watch it! But I’ll provide the overview here. Basically, nothing happens. A woman awakens on the curved edge of a concrete wall. As soon as she gets her bearings, she slides down. She stops her slide and moves back up. We see blood on her fingers. She is used to being in this position. But there is literally nothing she can do except maintain her position. Up is impossible; the further up she goes, the steeper the wall. And down is death. That goes on for eight more minutes — only interrupted by mounting evidence of unseen others who have fallen.

Avoiding Meaning

The whole thing reminds me of a Samuel Beckett play in its unrelenting bleakness. But also in how it almost dares the viewer to find some concrete meaning in it. And if you look around the internet, you will find a lot of people trying to understand it. But I think that is a mistake.

It is much like the ending of The Conversation. You know the scene where Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) goes mad looking for the bug that he thinks is in his apartment? People love discussing where the bug must be. But it just doesn’t matter. It isn’t the point of that scene.

And here, there is no point to this woman on a ledge. What is this ledge for? Who is she? How did she get there? I don’t care; I simply empathize; I share her terror!

If you want meaning, you can certainly see it as a modern version of Sisyphus. But I think that tells us a lot! After all, pretty much everyone knows who he is: the guy who pushes a rock up a hill over and over. What few know is why he was cursed to do this. Why? Because no one cares. What matters is his punishment, which we all identify with.

And so it is with pure horror and Curve. We are affected in a deep and powerful way. Go read Schopenhauer if you want to think about it. Otherwise, go watch a great horror film!

Image cropped from a frame of Curve via YouTube under Fair Use.