Tags
Cliff De Young, Halloween, Horror, I Madman, Jenny Wright, Joey Lawrence, Michael Dougherty, Mystery, Paul Golding, Pulse, Shallow Ground, Sheldon Wilson, Suspense, Tibor Takacs, Trick 'r Treat
‘The Unsung’ is an ongoing series looking at overlooked or forgotten films, actors and filmmakers.
Here’s four fantastic and unjustly little known horror-suspense films to try and track down for the Halloween night (if you can). Even if you can’t find em tonight, any night is a good night for a scare.
“Pulse” (1988)
This is a film that impresses with its attention to detail. It preempts “Final Destination” in its Rube Goldbergian personification of everyday objects trying to murder the lead characters. In this films case, it’s an unexplainable electrical force that forces its way through a suburban neightbourhood and delights in killing the occupants of the household and then concealing the crime as an accident or suicide. It’s a malicious force and the film does a spectacular job of giving it life with intense macro-level photography, to such a degree that we really feel we’re witnessing an alien being. But that’s the films purpose, to show us how alien and strange the mundane and accepted lifestyle we lead is. We accept it and are complacent with it, but we don’t understand it in the least. Writer-director Paul Golding makes us feel like we’re living a life of constant Russian roulette. It’s only a matter of time. Cliff De Young anchors the film well, in a rare lead role, and Joey Lawrence is convincing as his estranged son. A solid, intense, non-exploitive horror film.
“Shallow Ground” (2005)
As much as I love independent horror, the awful truth is that it is often the place where aspiring filmmakers, with little or no talent, try to make their mark. The landscape is littered with the shells of marketable independent horror titles with absolutely no substance to speak of. No scares either.
“Shallow Ground” from 2005 is something different. This is the kind of horror that scares you with what’s right in front of you, not with what’s lurking off camera. It’s a horror film with ideas and a good, solid mystery plot to back up the rich photography and way, way above average makeup effects. The film concerns a mysterious boy, covered head to toe in blood, arriving at a remote police station, one year after the brutal unsolved murder of a local girl. This arrival opens up all emotional wounds with the locals, particularly with the sheriff, played with haunted eyes by veteran actor Timothy V. Murphy. The film keeps changing form, shifting under our feet, and the murder mystery effectively motors us from one end to the next, culminating in a nice visual flourish. This is what successful independent horror looks like.
“Trick ‘r Treat” (2009)
And this is what unjustly abandoned studio horror looks like. The storied history of “Trick ‘r Treat” is well known to horror hounds. They screamed from the mountain tops to secure a release for this film, but it fell on more than deaf ears. What “Trick ‘r Treat” does is successfully resurrect the type of anthology horror that has been a staple for decades in Hollywood films, right up until the cynicism of the late 90s kicked in. These type of anthologies are like reading a great book of short stories, or sitting around a campfire and telling the best tales you’ve accrued over your years. Writer-director Michael Dougherty scripted four separate, and tonally different, tales, and then ingeniously interweaves them without us noticing. The way these stories wrap around themselves is one of its many pleasures. It’s a small film, but at times it seems ready to burst at the seems with extravagant visual design and giddy macabre. Especially in the creation of the diminutive Sam, a demonically playful faux child, with a sack strung around his head. He figures in the climactic tale, and it’s well worth the wait. Criminally underseen.
“I, Madman” (1989)
My personal favourite of the bunch.
I’ve already written a lengthy review, detailing my love for this concoction (full review here), but let me just reiterate what a small miracle this film is. It defies categorization and it challenges all to keep their feet planted in the real world. Director Tibor Takacs (of “The Gate” fame) does such a bang up job of blurring the line between fiction, dream, imagined reality and the real, that we almost give up trying, and just succumb to the dream-like horror presented to us. It’s romantically in love with cinema, and with horror in general. A masterpiece.
That’s it for this Halloween kids. See you all next year.
