Should not have Gone to the Cock-a-doody Car!

Should not have Gone to the Cock-a-doody Car! by Roxanne McDonald

After showing us what we missed last week (argh), On the Lot shows six of the filmmakers’ attempts at horror.

Guest judge is Eli Roth, writer, director, producer, and actor—with such credits to his name as the Hostel pics, Cabin Fever, and Grindhouse (with the brilliant Tarantino).

Up for the Blockbuster Challenge tonight are Kenny, Jason, Andrew, Sam, Mateen, and Shira-Lee.

Kenny is up first: his biggest challenge was communicating his vision.
His horror short is “The Malibu Myth,” which in true Luby fashion is po-mo with characters alluding to past “brutal murders,” but less true to his avant garde style is a short film we can at least follow. Has one scary enough moment, and a cute tag—with the ghouls (bloodied from chomping their victims) Googling on the dead woman’s laptop.

Carrie calls it his most accessible film so far, and says she thought it was good, compared to his other stuff.

Eli says Kenny did a great job, and advises on how the most difficult to nail are tone and mood, which he thinks Kenny did well…not with imitation but originality. The build-up was a problem, but the framework was good, he concludes.

Gary says that we see different things, and while he usually likes (or is used to) seeing indoor horror, the outdoor horror works. Gary also liked the visuals, the monsters with their bad teeth, and the good tempo…all coming from what he calls a “unique mind”.

Working on his short called “Anklebiters”, Sam says he gets the rules for working on one’s first horror film: not to work with 1) kids; 2) animals; or 3) puppets. He is using all three, breaking all the rules.

“Anklebiters” has a kind of tongue-in-cheek” Rod Serlingesque voiceover, and the scenes are pretty damned terrifying if you have ever had an actual animal bite your ankles (those little pocket dogs, for instance) or if you have any phobia about things that come alive in the night, in your bed.

Carrie believed the puppetry, saying Sam did well with it. The prologue was problematic for her, but when he got the action, it was great—the kid was great, etc..

Eli agreed with Carrie, and said that while he thought Sam was going to go the Peter Jackson way (the attack terrific), the prologue and tag gave away and badly impacted the story.

Gary again quoted someone well-revered in the biz (but I missed the name, as he did it as an aside to Carrie and Eli and I couldn’t hear)—saying how in Hollywood, passions turn into monsters of the darkness of your mind. Sam scared him, he continued, and even though the mother ran away and the dog bailed, “you stood your ground and made a solid film,” he concluded.

Andrew is excited about “Midnight Snack,” telling us that it has a fantastic tone, lightning and other awesome effects, and he is giddily looking forward to selling the horror concept. I love the use of a tired older woman who is nonchalant and ignorant of the really creepy (I mean Grudge creepy) entities stowing away, reaching out and just missing the woman, etc. Great twists and great visuals: beautiful and horrid at once.

Carrie liked it, though it wasn’t so much horror, she decided, as Rocky Horror. But she also liked the authenticity of the kind of Truly, Madly, Deeply ghosts and ghouls.

Eli stressed how difficult it is to serve up comedy and horror in the same piece, and decided it was “neither fish nor fowl”—not funny and not scary—but…competently put together, nevertheless.

Gary said he is a sucker for comedy in anything, but would have loved to see something like Dr. Phil on the TV. Still, he said Sam did a good job filming it.

While Jason works on “Eternal Waters,” he gives us an insider trick: when using a child actor, try to get twins so you don’t wear just one out. But his child actor is so good, until it is time to get in the coffin—which the boy is terrified of doing for a bit, there. I really like this short, for all the water

appearances (even though a couple other horror films of late—The Ring; Dark Waters; the swimming pool flick–have played on the water theme/symbolism); for the realism of the mom’s perpetual mental re-visits to her dead son’s image (even the dream is not used as a cop-out); but was a bit taken away, off-story, when a guy with a big old Scream knife appears. However, it makes sense by the film’s end.
Carrie says it is the first really scary thing in a movie so far, is really interesting visually, and is her favorite of all of Jason’s pieces thus far, as well.

Eli acknowledges how very concerned with the kids Jason was, but that the concern should have been with the mother: blonde, big breasts…none of these convincing enough and therefore hard to take seriously. Eli also gets how Jason was going for the John Carpenter Scream thing, but shouldn’t have ended in a close-up, as that, he adds, he didn’t buy either.

Gary says he has two words for Jason: “Sen-sational.” Sam is gonna give everybody a nightmare, he adds, including the kid he put in the casket.

“Open House” will be Shira-Lee’s first horror film, and she knows she is taking a big risk…for she is going with a psychological thriller. My favorite of the creepy genre!

While it is obviously super difficult to set the tone and get the effect in three minutes, I love this piece: it contains the phantom only seen by the pregnant wife, a phantom “normal” person who fades in and out. I love the warning, the succinct backstory as told by way of the phantom mother, and, while I was worried the deus ex machine might come in to close the too-short short (as per requisites), Shira-Lee saves the couple getting the hell out of that house by having the husband excitedly tell his pregnant wife he has decided on a great name for their kid—the name the phantom mother had for her murdered kid!

But you know the judges are going to raise hell about how the couple just flees in the car the-end style:

Carrie says Shira-Lee got a good performance out of her actors (which is what Shira-Lee had said would make or break her psych. thriller). But it didn’t scare Carrie that much, and was a hard sell what with the ghosts out during the day, and all.

Eli reminds us that in The Grudge there are long sequences with no music, and he finds Shira-Lee’s film forcing the music…though, he adds, the tag was well done.

Gary says that what he liked was Shira-Lee didn’t use a lot of gore. It bothered him that they said ‘Let’s get out of here,’ though, as that meant there was no conflict. He suggests Shira-Lee stick with her thing—comedy.

Mateen announces that with his piece, “Profile”, he will offer a new twist on horror genre—incorporating the everyday horror that happens to the average citizen, which he says is more important to them than fantasy. Uh-oh. Political. Tearing us away from our need to escape into fantasy and away from everyday horrors. The film is too disgusting to appreciate for any genre (other than some underground news expose).

Mateen takes racial profiling to literally horrifying place—having a white cop pull over a black driver, having three white cops beat the black guy bloody and give him the royal flush… though it all turns out to be in the driver’s head. It is just too disgustingly “real”, the kind of everyday horror that I cannot even watch in simulation…in Missisppi Burning, for instance, where those of us sensitive to all human beings have to turn our heads. What Mateen could have done is get some play on the Hitchcockian kind of thriller where the cops are terrifying without ever laying a hand on the citizen?

That’s my suggestion, but I aint no filmmaker, so….

Carrie relies on her “you got a good performance out of your characters” compliment. But, then, she didn’t understand…was it a premonition? A flashback? It wasn’t, she concludes, a particularly horror film.

Eli focuses in on another element, saying that while the strength of the piece is in the performance of the lead actor, with such volatile subject matter and shifting point of view, Mateen loses the audience, who get disconnected because of the five or six pov shifts.

Gary calls it more horrifying than horror, and says that for more people to get engaged it had to get a little more complex. [Yeah, make the central character morph into the Candy Man and kick their ignorant asses, even!]

Mateen makes it kinda worse by arguing (politely) that these things happen every day and he wanted to make it more drama. [Yeah, these everyday things are what we horror-goers want to evade! I’m yelling at the screen Mateen. And it wasn’t scary in a welcomed way; it was just disgusting.]

One of the judges responds that he should then stick to a crime drama instead of this, or calling this a horror piece.

Hell, pull a Spike Lee any other time, man! Go Hitchcock for this genre, and incorporate “everyday” fears the way he does with the fear of cops.

Anyway.

Next week, the assignment will involve “when two collide”. Hmmm. Intriguing.

SirLInksAlot On the Lot links

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