Every Frog Has His Day

 

I can never resist a Lou Reed reference in my titles (if you haven't heard his 2003 release The Raven, stop reading this and give it a listen now). After you do, definitely seek out the 2023 found footage cryptid horror film Frogman, which I found refreshing, quirky, and oddly fascinating. 

Based on the legend of the Loveland Frogman, Frogman emphasizes quality acting and character development, which makes for an engrossing watch. Yes, there is a very real history to supposed sightings of this rural Ohio cryptid that date back to the mid '50s. And to add to this wonderful weirdness that took me down way too many fascinating cryptid rabbit holes, the city of Loveland recently made the frogman the official town mascot. When a filmmaker like Anthony Cousins (Scare Package) eschews the more standard Bigfoot/Slender Man/Sea Monster horror approach and chooses a Midwestern legend about a humanoid frog with purported telepathic powers and a penchant for theatricality (some say it carries a magic wand), I take notice.

And notice I did, with great approval. While using the standard "failing filmmaker sets off to document a cryptid" trope, this film has a deeper level: the question of how the online community treats people who claim to have seen something inexplicable and uncanny. The impact of viral bashing comes through quite strongly here, something that lends an ethical dimension not often seen in found footage films. For having captured footage of the legendary frogman as a child and posting it on the net, Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk) lives the rest of his life the butt of jokes from countless vloggers who heap vicious accusations of fakery on him. Eventually he sets out, cheap Hi8 camera in hand, on a quest of redemption with two friends Amy and Scott as they head out on the road to Loveland to prove the creature's existence.

What endeared this film to me was the overall vibe of good-natured weirdness in the three main characters as they reveal their oddball personalities in genuine ways. I'm deliberately using the word weird a lot, and I mean it in the best possible sense. This is the kind of weird that covers everything off-beat, eclectic, alternative, and appealing. Something to celebrate when served up appropriately.  The trio's documenting of the cottage industry that has sprung up in Loveland surrounding the legend is one of the fascinating and often hilarious parts of this film (including a visit to The Sticky Tongue, a store that sells more Frogman-related memorabilia than one thought possible). There's a compelling authenticity here not often found in this sub-genre. 

As the trio wander the streets of Loveland, interviewing citizens and tourists, Cousins' pacing slowly transitions from amusingly goofy to a bit odd to deeply paranoid as some residents seem a bit too obsessed with the frogman. Rumors of a cult and a vast network of caves connected to the river surface. Investing time in allowing the character's personalities to become fully fleshed-out pays off when the horror arrives (and there's some fairly gruesome body horror by the end). Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that the finale goes full-on Lovecraftian (hinted at quite well early in the film) in very welcome ways. 

Is this a perfect film: well, no. There's a particularly awkward moment when Dallas finally declares his love for Amy at the least likely time. But if that's my only quibble in a micro-budget film, it says a lot about the quality of effort here. Frogman is one of the most wonderfully weird film experiences I've had in a while. This is why I love digging around in the found footage genre bin. If you dig found footage, DIY filmmaking, and cryptids you'll have a ball with this one. Give it a watch!

Five More Tunnel Horror Films to Dig Into

 As an extension of my previous post on the tunnel horror classic Deathline, here are five more films that take the horror underground. I’ve overlooked the bigger films (The Descent, Mimic, As Above So Below, Midnight Meat Train) to highlight some that aren’t as well-known. So grab a flashlight as we head down into the subterranean darkness for some claustrophobic horror.

 

Dwellers (2021)

I’d heard a bit of buzz about this film and upon finally giving it a watch, I found an unexpected found footage tunnel horror gem. Finding films like this, films that are so micro-budgeted that they appear to have been made on the barter system, are a large part of why I love indie horror. Produced by Megadeth’s David Ellefson (who appears as himself in the film) and directed by star Drew Fortier, Dwellers is a refreshing ride through the underground tunnels of Cleveland as an unlikely trio of documentary filmmakers investigate the disappearance of the local homeless community. 

 

Fortier said that he was influenced by both The Blair Witch Project and cult classic C.H.U.D.,  but rather than going the cheap rip-off route, he  spends his time developing characters that are quirky, a bit shady, and always compelling. In addition to the well-done cinema verité approach, the creature effects are sparsely used but very effective, and the acting is far, far better than found in most found footage films. One of the things I enjoyed most was the seemingly genuine relationship between the three friends, a refreshing respite from the usual “group of annoying assholes with a camera” that plagues much found footage. If you haven’t caught this one yet, I give it a very high recommendation.

 

 

Absentia (2011)

Mike Flanagan is one of the best-known horror directors working today, but not enough people have seen his first film, the wonderfully creepy Abesentia. A bottle-picture that takes a short tunnel beneath a street overpass in Glendale, California as the locus of some truly disturbing interdimensional horror. Fans of Flanagan’s better-known films will find much to love here, as his signature deep emotional investment and flawed but extremely compelling characters ground the otherworldly aspects of this horror film in a compelling context. The film has an effective sense of slowly creeping dread that builds to full paranoia over its run time. As the title suggests, a woman is faced with having her husband declared dead in absentia after he disappeared seven years ago, part of a series of disappearances surrounding the bridge tunnel. As the mystery unfolds, the horror deepens as Flanagan constructs a unique type of urban folk horror. To say more would spoil too much, and the less you know about this film, the more you’ll enjoy it.

The emotional relationships and the haunting sense of loss and grief that drive the narrative ground the horror of what lurks in the tunnel in an uncomfortable landscape. Like most Flanagan films, there are almost no jump scares, just a growing sense of dread that lingers for a long time after the film ends. Absentia scared me mostly because it made me think and feel. I think it was novelist Charles L Grant who coined the term “sunlit horror,” something that applies so well to this film. I’m truly impressed by filmmakers who can devise scenes of uncanny horror in stark daylight. The only other thing I’ll say about this gem is that it’s what may have happened if H.P. Lovecraft had written The Three Billy Goats Gruff. And if that’s not enough to entice you, I give up. When it comes down to it, this is my absolute favorite of these five films.

 

Marebito (2005)

 Perhaps the oddest film in my list, Marebito was directed by Takashi Shimizu (who gave us the Ju-On series) and stars director Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man). A team-up like that was bound to result in a seriously disquieting film, and Marebito is just that. Tsukamoto plays a psychologically unstable camera man who films a graphic suicide in the Tokyo subway tunnels and descends both deeper into the tunnel system and his own madness. He encounters ghosts, odd interdimensional beings, and a vampiric woman known only as F. When he brings F home, the already unstable film goes fully off the rails.

This is J Horror at its quirkiest and most Lovecraftian. Shimizu’s pseudo-documentary approach adds a level of coldness that seeped under my skin in the most deliciously uncomfortable ways. When I first saw this film, I was more confused at the end than I was going in, so I immediately rewatched. For me, that’s a high compliment to any filmmaker.  If you’re a fan of Koji Shiraishi’s Noroi: The Curse and Occult, you’ll love this one.

 

The Strangeness (1985)

 

What to say about The Strangeness, other than it has one of the worst titles in movie history? An even better question is why am I writing about it?  In fact, if it weren’t available on Amazon Prime right now, I wouldn’t be certain if I hadn’t just imagined seeing this back in the late ‘80s, a product of my  teenage experimentation with booze and psychedelics. I guess what Poe called the “imp of the perverse” nudged me to include this bad, bad slice of aged cheese here. 

If you’re a stickler for tight plots, excellent cinematography, well-done special effect, and actors who actually make their living acting in real movies… run. Run as far and as fast as you can. If, on the other hand, you appreciate cheesy, shlocky, zero-budget ‘80s horror, you may find something to revel in here. I just finished rewatching less than an hour ago, and I’m not even sure what the hell’s going on in this movie other than it involves a cave system with a dark history, several random explorers, and a surprisingly interesting, tentacled Lovecraftian horror lurking in the darkness. The experience of watching is much like drinking an entire bottle of dirt-cheap tequila: disorienting, hallucinogenic, a lot of fun at times, but with one hell of a cognitive hangover by the end. An excellent choice for a bad horror movie night with friends.

 

 

The Tunnel (2011)

 

I’ve saved a personal favorite for the last.  Like Dwellers, The Tunnel combines two of my favorite sub-genres: found footage and tunnel horror.  A somewhat desperate journalist who is willing to do whatever unethical things it takes to get a “gotcha” story leads a team into the vast underground tunnels beneath Sydney. Since the city had proudly trumpeted tapping into an abandoned reservoir to address the growing water crisis but abruptly canceled the project without comment, the news team smells government cover-up. What the city government is really trying to cover up is something decidedly nasty and downright horrifying.

What really sells me on this film is how seriously it takes the mockumentary approach. The performances are wonderfully realistic, the interpersonal drama believable, and the hints of government conspiracy are handled with restraint rather than paranoia. There’s actual pathos in this film, and that serves to highlight the creeping horror of what lives in the underground darkness. This is one of my top five found footage/mockumentary films for a reason. It’s what happens when someone takes the genre seriously and uses the conventions to explore issues much more deeply than most found footage creature features.

Going Underground: Why Deathline (aka Raw Meat) is my Jam

 

Movies that I call “tunnel horror” are solidly in my wheelhouse.  You set a horror film in an abandoned subterranean train station, a metropolitan subway line, underground city, or even a short traffic tunnel, and odds are I’ll enjoy it. There’s something about the claustrophobia, the perpetual darkness, the horror of buried secrets and things that cannot dwell in the sunlight that gets under my skin. And if you take such a film and add iconic horror stars Donald Pleasance and Christopher Lee into the mix, you have the makings of a classic.

 Released in the U.S. as Raw Meat with some of the gore excised to avoid an X rating, Deathline is a cult classic that touches heavily on history and class in London in the early 70s. The four minute opening title sequence featuring a bizarre Will Malone electronic jazz/blues score emphasizes the sleaze from the get-go.  It’s music that announces that the glamourous swinging 60s have come to a crashing end and all we’re left with is cheap porn where the actors have b/o, bad teeth, and leave their socks on. I mean that as a compliment by the way, as the soundtrack couldn’t be better for this film.

 

The drawn-out opening follows a bowler-hatted man-about-town as he struts arrogantly from peep-show to peep-show on a personal tour of the London sexual underbelly only to find a gruesome end in the Underground. As it turns out, this particular sex-craved gentleman was an OBE (Order of the British Empire) which pits MI5 against the local police as his disappearance becomes a most inconvenient state secret thanks to the intervention of two university students who stumble across the body. Donald Pleasance gives one of his great oddball performances as the harried, bitchy police inspector who cares little for the ministrations of Christopher Lee’s ominous, arrogant MI5 chief. 

As it turns out, the killer knows nothing of politics or anything else relevant to the times, as he is a surviving descendent of a 19^th century tunneling group who died (or so people assumed) in a tunnel collapse while building the London Underground. In true capitalist spirit, the construction company decided it was more cost effective to simply leave the bodies buried in the rubble than excavate them and cause an even bigger scandal.  An unwise choice indeed, as it seems this chap has been knocking off those subway passengers unlucky enough to take the subway late at night and devouring them with his wife or sister/wife or whatever unseemly relation she may be. The long, deeply unnerving tracking shot of their underground lair/crypt/abattoir is as lurid and grimy as anything in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was released two years later. Hugh Armstrong’s portrayal of the gangly, disease-ridden killer is both thoroughly revolting and oddly emotional. It’s one of the film’s strongest elements.

Despite the killer’s total lack of political motivation, the tensions between the working class, the petite bourgeoise, and the London upper-crust provide the driving force of the narrative. Cannibalism and capitalism make for strange bedfellows indeed. Deathline is what I imagine would have happened if early-70s Wes Craven had read E.P. Thompson’s The Making of The English Working Class and decided to make a horror film. And it’s fitting that this was in fact directed by an American living in London (Gary Sherman, who would go on in the next decade to direct the classic Dead and Buried). Sherman saturates the film with corruption, apathy, and a sleazy grime that is hard to wash off once the film is over. Yet the witty screenplay and political deep structure turn this film into something special. It’s sleaze, but “cultured sleaze” (a phrase I’ve never used before and am not fully sure what it means, but when you watch the film, you’ll get it).

 

Dinner and a Movie: Argentine Horror and Cuisine (or, Nihilistic Noshing as the World Ends)

 A double-dose of Argentine horror and cuisine was on the menu tonight. Pairing two of Demian Rugna’s spectacular horror films with some Argentine food made for a winning, shuddery night that I heartily recommend. 

 

Rugna quickly became a filmmaker I put on my must-see list a few years ago. I’m resisting the temptation to liken him to better-known directors (Ok, I lied… If you like Ari Aster and early del Toro, you’ll dig him) because he has a style that infuses gorgeous cinematography and meticulous mise en scene with a philosophically nihilistic overview that is mesmerizing.

 

First course: Provoleta and Terrified (2018). When Rugna released Terrified six years ago, it quickly became a favorite smart, slow-burn cosmic horror film of mine. And believe me, it more than holds up on repeated viewings.  A suburban neighborhood in Buenos Aires is beset by a series of horrifying events that seem isolated at first, but eventually coalesce as a trio of paranormal investigators begin to piece things together. They soon discover, as one investigator suggests, that it’s best not to meddle in things not of this world.

 

Voices emanating from a kitchen sink, inexplicable pounding on the walls, and the proverbial thing under the bed very quickly escalate to a shocking scene of horrific violence in a shower as Rugna deftly balances the slow-burn approach with scenes of startling violence. And that’s just the first fifteen minutes. But beyond the stunning set-pieces, Rugna excels at conjuring a smothering sense of dread that pervades the film and lingers long after. 

 

I’m a sucker for paranormal investigation films, and the oddball trio of investigators here really sells this film. Rugna does little to explain the paranormal/scientific approach the investigators bring with them, and that’s one of the highlights of this film. In this universe, ghosts, interdimensional beings, and the reality that the dead don’t always die are treated with an incredible realism. For here, it seems that this particular suburb lies at a point where the dividing line between different dimensions is particularly thin. And what lies in wait in that other dimension is restless, hungry, and particularly nasty.

 

In one scene in particular (that I won’t spoil), nothing happens. But it’s the anticipation that something might happen at any moment had me so on edge that I said that if that thing even flinches, I’m diving out the window. Yes, it’s that good. You’ll know it when you see it.

 

I’m solidly impressed by directors who can evoke an unbearable tension and aura of dread and sustain it for the entire course of the film. Terrified is a film that will leave a stone in your shoe for a while, nagging at you in those quiet moments when you’re alone at night and everything is silent… or mostly silent, for what was that rustling in the walls and why is that faucet dripping? And did that shadow just move, or am I imagining things?

 

Provoleta (stunningly easy to make a absolutely yummy) added a comfort food element to ease the creeping horror of the movie.

 

Second Course: Sopa de mariscos and When Evil Lurks (2023). Rugna claimed that this film operates in the same world of Terrified, but it’s not a true sequel. It does certainly feel like a kind of spiritual continuation of the uncanny goings-on in Terrified, though.  Much more of a folk horror film involving a case of a “rotten” (a person who has become possessed by an evil spirit) releasing a cascade of horror on the local rural community as well as the neighboring city. The film opens in darkness as two brothers on a farm hear gunshots in the night and, unwisely, set off down a path in the woods to investigate. What they find is a heady mix of paranormal evil and personal/governmental corruption that spirals out of control at a terrifying rate. And, as with Terrified, this film is as smart as it is bone-chilling.

 

 What knocked me out with this film was how fully-realized the mythos surrounding possession and the protocols to avoid a full-on infestation are. I’m impressed by any horror film that doesn’t waste time with characters debating the obvious for most of the film. Here, it turns out there’s even an official government protocol to be followed in case a “rotten” should appear. And in Rugna’s hands it’s all so damned believable.

 

And again, Rugna pulls no punches in this film. Every time a scene appears where you think, “no, he wouldn’t do that… he couldn’t possibly go there,” he does, and he does in glorious excess. If you feel a sense of safety from established horror conventions (including things that are taboo for filmmakers), then you really need to watch this one. In Rugna's hands, nothing is off the table, no one is safe, and emotional gut-punches will leave you reeling. 

 

The best things I can say about When Evil Lurks are that it works solidly as a terrifying film with excellent performances, some truly stunning set-pieces of horror, and a fascinating folk history.  It also works very deeply on the level of subtext, and the nihilistic tone that the film embraces is what lingers long after the final credits. It’s ironic that the possessed are called “rottens” here, as everything in this film is in a rotting state of decay: love, family relationships, the economy, any possibility for hope. Frankly, it’s the most emotionally and spiritually horrifying film I’ve seen yet this year, and that’s saying a lot.

 

Sopa de mariscos is a favorite of mine, and this paired nicely with a juicy Malbec, although you may not want to eat for a while after viewing this one. You may just want to crawl under the bed and not come out until the sun comes up. If it ever does…heh heh heh.

 

 

Dinner and a Horror Movie: Happy Birthday to Me (1981) and Some Decidedly Uncreepy Pasta

 Tonight I took a plunge into a film that's been on my watch list for decades now and paired it with some delicious blood-red and hearty penne puttanesca for a very satisfying combination. Dinner and a horror movie nights are one of my favorites, and pasta puttanesca (which crudely translates as "whore's pasta") seems appropriate for a film dripping with sexual secrets and violence.

In the rush of slashers to come out in '81, the downright oddball Happy Birthday to Me stands out as one of the weirdest. And weird can be a very, very good thing. The film had a lot going in its favor out of the gate: directed by the legendary J. Lee Thompson (Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, and a host of other classics), starring Melissa Sue Anderson of Little House on the Prairie fame in her first leading film role and acclaimed actor Glenn Ford, bloodied up by award-winning special effects/makeup artist Tom Burman. What could go wrong?

Well... nothing really goes wrong, but completely rewriting the ending in mid-production didn't do the movie any favors, either. More on that later.

What could have been another by-the-numbers slasher becomes something downright gonzo (in the best of ways) in Thompson's hands. The bare-bones of the story involve a group of ultra-rich kids at  exclusive prep school Crawford Academy who begin disappearing one by one while Virginia (Anderson) tries to reinsert herself in the social milieu after recovering from a mysterious accident on her birthday years before that left her with no memory of what happened. Without spoiling anything, the details of the accident slowly come to light as Virginia's memory slowly returns in fragmented pieces as the film progresses and the clock ticks towards her upcoming eighteenth birthday.  Giving the central character a decidedly unreliable memory and an inability to separate trauma reactions from reality keeps the narrative off-kilter, bringing a surreal tone to a film that's absolutely swimming with red herrings, grotesque practical jokes... and blood.

Thompson goes whole-hog into the gore and creative deaths here. In fact, the deaths by shish kabob, weight bench, and the famous scarf-in-a-spinning-dirtbike wheel were used prominently in the trailer and tv spot back in '81. I clearly remember the tv spots when I was in 8th grade and the movie lived in a kind of limbo for movie commercials that scared the crap out of me as a kid that I'd never gotten around to seeing. But besides painting the walls red (literally in one scene involving a fireplace poker), Thompson takes the time to develop the characters in more detail that the average slasher and creates some truly disturbing scenes of surgical and psychological trauma. 

And like several other slashers of the time, the tensions between the haves and have-nots make up the political economy of the film. As off-the-wall as the film can be at times, it's ultimately the class distinctions that underpin both the backstory to Virginia's accident and the motive for the murders. The Top Ten (the elites at the school who make up the victim pool) seem to be majoring in macabre practical jokes and setting themselves violently apart from the working class members of the community. Their rabid obsession with class boundary-maintenance points to the vast emptiness of their lives and speaks to a generational class divide that haunts the town. The fact that the one place where the wealthy and working class rub elbows with each other is a pub at an inn called The Silent Woman speaks volumes about the gothic secrets of sex and violence in this town. But Thompson spends considerable time developing these characters rather than just serving up the usual annoying rich jerks lined up for the slaughter. 

I'm keeping this as spoiler-free as possible because this is a terrific example of a movie to go into as coldly as possible, but a word about the ending. The original screenplay delved wildly into the supernatural for its conclusion (something that is hinted at throughout the film). But mid-filming, the paranormal was scrapped in favor of a "realistic" killer which is still no less bonkers as the film goes cheerfully off the rails during the wild, grand guignol conclusion. It's a bit of a stretch in credulity (well, more than a bit), but it works in its own gleefully illogical way. Let's just call it a birthday party to remember.

Overshadowed by the bigger slashers of the 80s, Happy Birthday to Me holds up far, far, better than most and is deserving of a watch. So get the water on for the pasta, pour yourself a nice Chianti or Barbera, and settle in for a wonderfully weird, smart, and downright nasty horror movie.