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!

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[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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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

Denholm Elliott was born on 31 May 1922.

He was more what we consider a serious British actor. Had he lived longer, he certainly would have starred in Hot Fuzz and the Harry Potter films. Today, people remember him best for the Merchant-Ivory film A Room with a View. In it, he plays the sweet and liberal Mr Emerson. But I know him best for the brilliant comedy A Private Function. In it, he plays the vicious and snobby Dr Swaby.

But Denholm Elliott is widely known for many American films like Trading Places where he was the very proper and helpful butler Coleman. And, of course, he was the museum curator Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

This would be enough to mention him today. But I’m most interested in him because of two Amicus films and another with Hammer. These were: The House That Dripped Blood, The Vault of Horror, and To the Devil a Daughter. The first two are anthology films. In the first, he plays a horror writer who thinks his psychopathic strangler character has come to life. In the second, he plays a dishonest art dealer who gets his due.

To the Devil a Daughter was the last Hammer horror film. It is along the lines of The Devil Rides Out. I’m not that fond of these films, but they’re fine. Elliott plays a father trying to save his daughter from a Satanic cult.

The House That Dripped Blood is by far my favorite of these three films. And I most like Denholm Elliott when he plays a nice guy — as good as he is at playing a terrible guy! So let’s watch it now to celebrate Elliott’s birthday!

Other 31 May Anniversaries

Filmmakers

• Clint Eastwood (1930-): Actor everyone knows. We especially like A Fistful of Dollars and High Plains Drifter.
• Jim Hutton (1934-1979): Star of the Ellery Queen TV show.
• Gregory Harrison (1950-): Star of the short-lived Logan’s Run TV series. He was also the star of Don Coscarelli’s first film, Jim, the World’s Greatest.
• Jonathan Tucker (1982-): Actor known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Ruins, and more.
• Colin Farrell (1976-): Actor known for Seven Psychopaths, some superhero films, and lots more.

Films

• The Black Raven (1943): Old dark house murders.
• Horrors of the Black Museum (1959): A journalist has crimes committed to make his stories more interesting.
• The Evil of Frankenstein (1964): One of the essential Hammer Frankenstein films.
• Invaders From Space (1965): Superhero saves Earth from space invasion.
• Fletch (1985): Investigative journalist chases down drug trafficking conspiracy.
• The Arrival (1996): A scientist contacts space aliens but they have a secret.
• DragonHeart (1996): A dragon and dragon-slayer team up.
• TheCampusHouse.com (2002): College students document their lives online in a murder house.
• DeVour (2005): Young people play a game that gets out of hand.
• Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove (2005): Pirate ghost is unleashed.
• American Mary (2013): A young medical student is forced to do illegal surgeries, and the authorities are after her.
• Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear (2013): Anthology horror.

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Denholm Elliott via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Michael J Pollard was born on 30 May 1939 in beautiful Passaic, New Jersey. He died at the age of 80 in 2019 in equally beautiful Los Angeles, California.

Pollard is a great actor and he has been in a lot of great films. I will get to that shortly. But there is one role I most associate him with. He’s great in it. But it really is almost insulting. I always think of the Star Trek episode “Miri.” Despite being 27 years old, he plays a (barely) prepubescent boy. And he steals the whole episode. But nothing new there! He tends to steal every scene he’s in everywhere!

Right around this same time, he guest-starred as another boy on an episode of Lost in Space, “The Magic Mirror.” If you get a chance, check it out. It is poignant in a way the show was rarely.

Pollard had an excellent career in TV up to that point. But he had a breakthrough the following year in the 1967 feature film Bonnie and Clyde. It was a pretty typical role for him. He tended to be typecast as a likeable idiot.

He next starred in the motorcycle film Little Fauss and Big Halsy. But he mostly provided spice as odd characters for films he was in. He did this in a number of notable films: Melvin and Howard, Roxanne, Scrooged, and many more — including House of 1000 Corpses.

But my favorite Pollard film is Four of the Apocalypse. It is also probably my favorite Western. He plays a weak drunk who can’t be counted on. But he’s ultimately a good guy. You can watch the whole thing at the link. If you haven’t seen it, I hope you do!

I know of only one film that Michael J Pollard starred in. But it’s a good one! Dirty Little Billy. It tells the story of the early days of Billy the Kid. Leslie Halliwell hated it (of course), but rightly noted that “it presents its hero as the mentally retarded delinquent which history says he was.”

So let’s celebrate Michael J Pollard’s birthday by watching Dirty Little Billy.

Other 30 May Anniversaries

Filmmakers

• Howard Hawks (1896-1977): Director of tons of notable films. He directed one of my favorite non-psychotronic films, His Girl Friday. And, of course, he directed the classic The Thing From Another World.
• Mel Blanc (1908-1989): Voice actor known for voicing most of the iconic Warner Bros characters like Bugs Bunny.
• Clint Walker (1927-2018): Actor who worked a lot and played the title character in the long-running TV western Cheyenne.
• Keir Dullea (1936-): Actor known most as Dave in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He also starred in Black Christmas.
• Mark Sheppard (1964-): Actor best known to me as Badger, the ruthless but insecure crime boss with a Cockney accent on Firefly.

Films

• Undersea Kingdom (1936): Atlantis-based serial.
• Fright (1972): A babysitter is attacked by the child’s insane father.
• Embrace of the Vampire (1995): Vampire romance.
• Wrong Turn (2003): College students get stranded in the woods and attacked.
• El Chupacabra (2003): Animal control officers find a gored dog and figure it is the title monster.
• Cemetery Gates (2006): A genetically modified Tasmanian Devil is on the loose.
• The Strangers (2008): Home invasion film.
• The Italian Job (2003): Heist film with none of the charm of the original.

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Michael J Pollard via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Empire Pictures released Dolls throughout the United States on 29 May 1987.

It was the third of the Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon films. The first, of course, was Re-Animator. Then they made From Beyond. Both of those films were loosely based on HP Lovecraft short stories, although the latter at least maintains the tone.

Dolls is a departure. I wouldn’t say that it was better than Re-Animator. But I watch it a lot more. Because I enjoy it more.

As I recall based on the writer-director commentary on the Shout Factory Blu-ray (now ridiculously expensive), Charles Band had the poster made first. This was incredibly common in those days. He then asked Ed Naha to write a script for it. And he wrote a perfect script!

But the film is more than the script. Everything works in this production. The casting is great. The production design and art direction create the perfect old dark house. David W Allen’s stop-motion animation is as good as anything he ever did. And the filming and editing are energetic enough to keep things interesting. It is, after all, a single-location story.

Of course, the film could be rendered much worse and I’d still like it. Over the years I’ve come to see the world as utterly devoid of justice. Evel Knievel died at 69 from breathing problems and not one of his many stupid (some would say calculated) stunts. Children commonly drown because of tsunamis. People can increase their chances but that’s all: increase their chances.

So I love Dolls because everyone gets what they deserve. The horrible people become dolls (and that doesn’t seem like such a bad life). And the good people live happily ever after. And the “gods” in this case (really a witch and a warlock) are simply beyond charming. What’s not to like?

This is, of course, why a lot of horror works!

If you haven’t seen it, you must. Right now! Here it is!

Other 29 May Anniversaries

Filmmakers

• Bob Hope (1903-2003): The best part in all those road pictures.
• Kevin Conway (1942-2020): Actor known for The Funhouse and as the evil doctor in the excellent TV movie The Lathe of Heaven.
• Danny Elfman (1953-): Lead singer of Oingo Boingo and composer of all the films you already know.
• Tony Randel (1956-): Director of a number of horror films including the second and third Hellraiser films.
• Ted Levine (1957-): Actor best known for Monk but also the films The Silence of the Lambs, The Fast and the Furious, and The Hills Have Eyes.
• Rupert Everett (1959-): Actor who starred in Cemetery Man.
• John D LeMay (1962-): Star of Friday the 13th: The Series.
• Ashley Laurence (1966-): Actor known mostly for the Hellraiser films.

Films

• Dial M For Murder (1954): Hitchcock film about a man trying to murder his unfaithful wife.
• King Kung Fu (1976): Hilarious combination of King Kong and the Kung Fu TV show.
• Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh (1997): The sequel to Witchcraft VII. Really! Witchcraft VIII was a one-off. Here, the ghost of William Spanner (played a second and final time by David Bynres) must protect his girlfriend.Witchcraft X will again not feature the series’ main character.

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Dolls (1987) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.