Vengeance of the Zombies

Vengeance of the Zombies (1973) aka La rebelión de las muertas

Dir. León Klimovsky

Written by Paul Naschy

Starring Paul Naschy, Rommy, Mirta Miller

            Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina Álvarez) seems like a good guy. He was the kind of dude who tried his hand at a lot of different things in his youth; he was a pro weightlifter, a comic book artist, a Western paperback novelist, an album cover designer, and was alternately working as a wrestler and actor well into his 30’s. But it was when he sold a script about an errant werewolf titled La Marca del Hombre Lobo (THE MARK OF THE WOLFMAN) and ended up getting cast in the title role (the Wolfman, not the Mark) when Lon Chaney Jr. turned the part down* that he saw his true destiny: he would become “The Spanish Lon Chaney,” a horror icon of many faces, and a genre icon in his native Spain and around the world. And so it was. He was a prolific worker; nearly always writing his own scripts, often producing and occasionally directing as well, over the course of a lengthy career he cranked out dozens of low-budget horror and action pictures, including no less than 16 werewolf movies. I like this guy.

            I like him so much that I wish I liked his movies better, especially since I spent something like a hundred bucks on his two available Blu-Ray anthologies and am now doomed to watch them all. Which is not to say that they’re completely worthless; there’s a lot to like about them! In keeping with his Lon Chaney image, they usually have Naschy himself in some kind of weird makeup or disguise, there’s almost always a couple scenes of nasty (though unconvincing) gore, and there’s never any shortage of pervy, leering nudity. In theory, all that should add up to fun, feisty little slices of Euro-sleaze, but in practice his movies tend to be oddly inert, somnambulant experiences, grinding in slow motion through deadening scenes of generic noncharacters sitting around in poorly-lit apartments droning on about nothing, only occasionally punctuated by a few minutes of weird, dreamy horror footage.

            Alas, that describes VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES pretty much exactly. There’s enough effort being made that it doesn’t feel like a total insult, but not enough to ever add up to much. It’s the kind of movie that you finish, and then your girlfriend asks how it was, and you try to describe it but you just feel like you’re relating some kind of hazy, half-remembered dream, and the more you try to explain, the more confusing it becomes until now you’re not really confident about what you just saw, and she’s trying to be polite but it’s clear this is not interesting and so you just kinda peter out in embarrassed frustration.

            Speaking of which, the plot is pretty simple and easily explained, because basically there’s this woman Elvira (Romy [no last name, and amusingly misspelled “Rommy” here], THE KILLER WITH 1,000 EYES) who has a nightmare about her father being killed, and then he is killed, and then for some reason she goes to live with some kind of Indian guru (Naschy, in unfortunate Indianface), at his estate, run by his intimidating second-in-command (Mitra Miller, EYEBALL), but then there’s also some kind of giallo-esque killer going around wearing a cape and black fedora with his face obscured by variety of unfortunate ethnic stereotype masks, and sometimes he stabs or strangles people or just kind of lurks around various London locales, and sometimes he also seem to use Voodoo to command a couple of female zombies to kill people? And there’s some guy, (Victor Barrer, credited as “Vic Winner,” IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH and a Naschy regular) who’s always wearing suits, he’s definitely going to nondescript rooms and talking to people, I know that much, and then I think there’s like a scene in a morgue where the masked guy comes in and murders a guy eating a sandwich, and then all the corpses sit up and they’re all women wearing transparent gowns, and they run off with him, and um, let’s see, there’s this part where someone has a dream where Paul Naschy is a bare-chested goat-horned devil, that was cool. I think there’s a twist where he has an evil twin or something? There’s definitely at least one more Paul Naschy in there, I’ll tell you that much, and also an indeterminate number of pretty European women who sit or stand in sparsely furnished rooms and take their clothes off, or maybe it was just one and she does it a couple times? And I seem to remember they’re trying to do something with Voodoo, and wasn’t it because they wanted revenge on the British because of colonialism or something, it seems like it didn’t make a lot of sense but it struck me as probably pretty racist, I remember that much and... um, I think something else happens to, I’m not really sure. Yeah. Hmm. Anyway, did you have any dreams?

            There’s definitely a few highlights in there, but even on Blu-Ray, looking about as pristine as you’re ever going to see it, a lot of photography is way too dark for you to really make out what’s going on (and the rest is ugly), the sound mixing is a muddy mess, the music (by Juan Carlos Calderón, who has a song in TOMMY BOY?) is all wildly inappropriate funky jazz-fusion (it might even be a fun score in livelier movie, but in something this slow it just highlights how much fun you’re not having), the story is vague to the point of nonexistence, and even the subtitles have a bunch of grammatical errors which reduce the already incoherent dialogue into nonsensical gibberish. It’s not like we’re translating from Nepalese to Cherokee guys, you’re telling me it was too hard to find someone fluent in both Spanish and English? I don’t think that’s too much to ask here.

            In a lot of ways this is, then, a pretty objectively bad movie, and yet, there’s something there. Maybe it’s just because I’ve already invested so much in collecting Paul Naschy movies that I’m lying to myself, but Naschy himself remains a compelling presence, and the movie definitely picks up whenever he’s on-screen (in fact, a big part of the problem is that even with three roles, he’s not around nearly enough). And even if the direction fails to make much of it, I can’t fault his instincts for solid horror imagery. His masked giallo slasher is totally standard, but an effective design, his dream sequence devil is an inspired creation, and his treatment of the chalk-faced Voodoo zombies (while obvious deeply rooted in some very problematic straight-up racist tropes) is about as classic as horror iconography gets. It’s also kind of interesting in itself to see the ol’ Voodoo zombie model --a relic of a handful of astoundingly racist black-and-white cheapies from the 30’s and 40’s which were never particularly prevalent and had been almost entirely killed off by the advent of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD five years prior-- show up in swingin’ 1973 London. If nothing else, the addition of nudity adds a queasy psycho-sexual dimension to the otherwise decidedly old-fashioned images of glassy-eyed ghouls rising from their graves.

            Like many Paul Naschy movies, when you type all that out, it seems like you must have just described a good movie, or at least a fun one. Alas, everything good about the film is almost completely negated by its draggy, flat direction (by León Klimovsky, an Argentinian dentist who had emigrated to Spain in the early 50’s to become a director, and had become Naschy’s go-to guy since 1970’s La Noche de Walpurgis) and its aimless anti-narrative. This final complaint falls squarely on Naschy; from what I’ve seen of his work, his intuitive grasp of horror tropes was consistently hobbled by his total inability to craft even rudimentary narratives to showcase those horror tropes. The whammy is actually mostly there, but it desperately needs better structure for it to have the impact that it ought to. His movies tend to lack even crude, vestigial character arcs, completely neglecting any kind of framework that could meaningfully be called a “story.” In some cases, such as HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, this is taken to extreme, almost absurdist levels, where not a single character from the film’s first act appears in the climax. In this case, it just means that there's no identifiable protagonist of any kind, and even though the film begins and ends with Elvira, she never actually accomplishes anything or has any conflict, she's just sort of around being vaguely menaced by who-knows-what-exactly. Finely-tuned writing is a rarity in the horror genre, and seldom particularly germane to a film’s success, but without any story structure at all, films like VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES struggle to build momentum, resulting in a ungainly string of largely disconnected moments which end up being less than a sum of their parts.

People often complain about the horror genre being too derivative, but frequently the ability to draw from a basic story template (slashers, for example, with their rigid story structure**) allows the genre faithful to focus on the monsters and murders that are their real interests and their real talents, without getting bogged down in reinventing a formula that works. Naschy largely abandons basic horror formulas; the result is some genuinely unique plots (can you think of another horror movie about a Hindu cult leader who may or may not moonlight as a Voodoo zombie avenger?) but, unfortunately, not too many that actually work.

But oh well. I’m still rooting for Naschy, and with 100+ movies in his filmography, there’s sure to be at least a few where it all comes together. Even Jesus Franco had a couple of good ones. This one’s more miss than hit, but it’s an interesting enough oddity to be worth my time, if not yours.  

* Or was passed over because of age, illness or infirmity; sources seem to differ

** See Vern’s “Blues Theory of Slashers” 

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	A Modern Day Gothic Tale Of Horror And Fear.
TITLE ACCURACY	If I understand the killer’s motivations correctly, Vengeance does have something to do with it, though the Zombies are just henchmen who aren’t really getting vengeance on their own behalf.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	Naschy made a handful of other movies with Zombies in them, but none seem directly related to this one.
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	Spain, though shot in England
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Zombies (Voodoo variety), Slasher, Evil Cult
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Naschy.
NUDITY?	Yup
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	He impales two people while they’re doin’ it
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Zombies
POSSESSION?	Yeah
CREEPY DOLLS?	Voodoo dolls, though they’re more practical than creepy.
EVIL CULT?	Yes, though ironically if I understood this correctly (spoilers) the main cult guy is actually an innocent victim of a different cult.
MADNESS?	None
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	No
VOYEURISM?	Maybe, I dunno.
MORAL OF THE STORY	I think I’d have to understand the story better than I do to come up with a moral.

Jess Franco's Dracula

Jess Franco’s Dracula (1970) aka Count Dracula

Dir. Jesus Franco

Written by Augusto Finocchi

Starring Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski, Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams

Jesus “Jess” Franco did not make good movies. Let’s just put that out there to start with; this is not a good director, this is not even an interesting director, this is a guy who put his name on multiple films which were just incoherent Frankenmovies composed of grafted-together bits of unrelated footage. And that was in his prime, before he moved on to no-budget shot-on-video softcore pornos. But he was prolific. George Carlin once quipped, "I never fucked a ten... but one night, I fucked five twos." Well, Jesus Franco never directed a ten-star movie... but in 1970 alone, he made at least five twos. Surprisingly, though, this isn’t one of them. I mean, it’s not a ten, obviously, oh dear god no. But it’s a solid five, maybe even a six if you’re feeling generous. As my buddy Dan P put it, that in itself makes this “possibly Jess Franco’s least terrible movie.”

This becomes somewhat miraculous when I mention that not only is a Franco movie, it’s also a Dracula movie. And Dracula movies are, as a rule, not good. Considering the ubiquity of the character, he’s got an absolutely dismal track record of appearing in good movies, especially when they’re directly based on the original Bram Stoker novel. Which is sort of understandable, because Stoker’s novel is nigh-on unadaptable; its epistolary structure, army of minor characters (just how many fuckin’ suitors need to get involved in a plot about an amorous vampire for fuck’s sake?!), and somewhat lackluster ending have defeated everyone from Dario Argento to Guy Maddin over the years. I’ve never seen the Martin Landau or Jack Palance versions, but judging from the apparent consensus on them, I’m prepared to suggest that Hammer’s 1958 HORROR OF DRACULA might well be the only adaptation which could legitimately be called great, or close to it.*

Franco’s version is not close to great, because if it was it would not be a Jesus Franco film. But it is a surprisingly effective retelling of the classic tale, this time with Christopher Lee reinventing his definitive role by wearing a mustache. I’m not really sure why Lee would take this part --for all intents and purposes, a remake of the film that kicked off his career as a horror icon-- especially while he was still appearing in Hammer’s Dracula series (it came out the same year as SCARS OF DRACULA). But perhaps it had something to do with making an attempt at a slightly more faithful version to Stoker’s original novel. I’ve read a few accounts which suggest the movie was sold that way, though I can find no primary confirmation of that. There are a few details which are more faithful -- the mustache, Drac’s history as a warrior, his appearance getting more youthful as he drinks blood-- but overall it’s not so much more rigorously faithful that it stands out amongst its many peers. Like all adaptations, some consolidation of characters and locations becomes necessary, but, unexpectedly, herein lies its strength. Of all the Dracula adaptations, this may well have one of the best narrative structures. I know that's a weird thing to say about a Franco movie, but there you have it.

The screenplay, by Augusto Finocchi (EMMANUELLE ON TABOO ISLAND, the Ruggero Deodato-directed Spaghetti Western I quattro del pater noster) actually does something rather smart. After the initial confrontation in Dracula’s Transylvanian castle --inevitably a highlight of any Dracula adaptation, and one which doesn’t disappoint here-- Jonathan Harker (Fred Williams, minor parts in JULIET OF THE SPIRITS and A BRIDGE TOO FAR, good for him!) is taken to a sanitarium, where he is confined when no one believes his story. At this very same sanitarium is one R. M. Renfield (Klaus Kinski, who himself would play the Count a decade later in Herzog’s NOSFERATU), who is cared for by Dr. Seward (Paul Mueller, NIGHTMARE CASTLE, I VAMPIRI, FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD, VAMPYROS LESBOS). And of course, Harker’s fiancé Mina (Maria Rohm, the 1972 Orson Welles TREASURE ISLAND, which now that I look also featured Mueller) would want to come and visit the poor fellow, and she brings along her friend Lucy (Franco muse Soledad Miranda, VAMPYROS LESBOS) and eventually Lucy’s fiancé, Quincey Morris (Jack Taylor, how cow, Mr. Sporting Apparel Magnate himself from GHOST GALLEON!). And would you believe the whole place is run by none other than Mr. Abraham Van Helsing (Herbert Lom, ASYLUM, THE PINK PANTHER)? And you’ll never guess who ends up moving in across the street.

See what happened there? All the main characters, save the omitted Arthur Holmwood, have been transplanted to the same location! This nifty little bit of story economy makes it infinitely easier to organize our many protagonists and corrall Stoker’s meandering narrative into something a little more direct. I’m not saying this is a work of genius or anything, but it really streamlines the whole narrative in a way which naturally includes all the major players and events (though alas, it necessarily omits my favorite part, the tale of the doomed vessel Demeter). As an effective synthesis of a very tricky winding work of literature, I really find it a rather astounding success. The dialogue itself is nothing too special, of course, but it also smartly avoids dialogue when it can, particularly in the character of Renfield. Kinski gets second billing here with only one spoken word of dialogue, but he earns it through his intense, sensitive portrayal of the bug-eating madman, driven insane by a previous encounter with Dracula. Where other actors have gone gleefully mega --see the manic Tom Waits in Coppola’s version or the giggling Roland Topor in Herzog’s-- here, Kinski, an actor who could out-mega anyone, instead goes small, inward; his Renfield is a man who’s stormy inner life is unknowable to us, but his big, haunted blue eyes scream out his wordless torment. It’s a rather magnificently tragic performance, particularly notable in that he interacts with the main characters virtually not at all, and spends the entire movie in a single padded room, mostly alone, silently immersed in an all-consuming alternate reality entirely in his own head.

As is customary for a Dracula movie, the first act, at Dracula’s castle, is the strongest. The leadup is pure atmosphere, and the tiny budget actually works to its benefit, resulting in a stark minimalism that highlights the coldness and agoraphobic enormity of the nearly-empty castle rooms. Fred Williams does about as well with the generally useless Jonathan Harker role as anyone ever has (which is to say, he’s not actively bad) and Lee is obviously enjoying his older, somewhat chattier version of the Count, who expounds at length about his ancestral history in a great dinner sequence. Once Harker heads back to civilization --closely followed by Drac-- things very gradually kinda peter out, as the predictable notes of the vampiric visits on Lucy and eventually Mina are played out in serviceable but hardly inspired standard form. Lom seems half-asleep as Van Helsing, and though Kinski is mesmerizing, he’s a small part and quite isolated from the main plot. But at least there’s enough going on to keep the story moving along at a decent pace. Meanwhile, expect plenty of dated zooms in and out; no new fact can pass without Franco individually zooming in on each actor’s disarmingly placid non-reaction.

But the movie does have one other high point: Drac, it seems, had a penchant for decorating his new digs with poorly-mounted taxidermied animals of every variety, which results in the movie’s best scene when our heroes arrive at his castle to have the morbid menagerie begin twitching and caterwauling at them. It’s possible the movie intends to suggest the animals actually come to life and incorrectly believes this can be communicated by jiggling clearly stuffed animals in front of the camera, but I prefer to believe its exactly what it looks like: the sawdust-saturated animals skins just start shaking and squawking stationary in place, maybe less aggressive than they are simply horrified at their own unnatural half-life. At any rate, Franco does much better with his approach to dead animals than he does with “live” ones; the bat puppets that occasionally crop up could not look more comical. Say what you want about CG, but flying animals are not a great medium for puppetry.

Like all Dracula films, this one struggles with Stoker’s finale, which always suffers from a strange sense of deflation. One minute, Drac is exsanguinating pretty women at his leisure and our heroes are powerless to stop him (here, he even drops by Van Helsing's study to gloat) and the next minute, he’s fleeing London in terror and getting dispatched in his sleep. He kinda goes out like a chump, and there’s never a satisfying sense of when the balance of power shifts. At least in this case they also throw his flaming corpse off a huge cliff, which demonstrates some hustle. It’s no surprise a Franco movie has a less-than-inspired ending, but at least there’s a little hustle here. That’s not exactly high praise, but it’s unexpected enough it’s worth pointing out. Considering the sheer volume of Dracula adaptations out there, I cannot, in good conscience, call this anywhere close to essential viewing. That much was pretty well assumed going in; the fact that it actually does offer the Dracula completist a few genuine pleasures is a welcome surprise. If you absolutely must watch just one Spanish Dracula adaptation where Christopher Lee has a mustache, you could do a lot worse.

*Excluding, of course, the two NOSFERATUs, which adapt a good bit of the Dracula story but clearly have their own thing going.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• TAGLINE: None that I can find
• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Yes, of Stoker's Dracula
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: Bringing Lee back puts it very close to a direct remake of Hammer's The Horror Of Dracula from 1958
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: Spain
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Lee, Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, I guess Franco, maybe.
• BOOBIES: None
• MULLETS: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: None
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: Vampire!
• POSSESSION: Drac definitely has an effect on the mind's of Renfield and Mina.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: N
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: No
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Vampire to bat
• VOYEURISM: Drac enjoys watching ladies sleep.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid-high.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Mustaches are game changers.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Definitely an actual Dracula here, and was definitely directed by Franco.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

Witching and Bitching

                   

Witching And Bitching (2013) aka Las brujas de Zugarramurdi; ("The Witches of Zugarramurdi")

Dir. Álex de la Iglesia

Written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría, Álex de la Iglesia

Starring Hugo Silva, Mario Casas, Terele Pávez, Carolina Bang, Carmen Maura

WITCHING AND BITCHING begins with a Jesus Christ smothered in silver body paint, a toy army man, Minnie Mouse, the Invisible Man and SpongeBob SquarePants leaving their jobs as costumed sidewalk impersonators* to pursue an armed robbery. While still in costume. (The guy in the Spongebob costume clearly didn’t think through the mechanics of attempting crime while wearing an oversized rigid rectangle, so that’s the last you’ll hear of him). Believe it or not, this is probably the most mundane twist in this refreshingly outrageous and twisty caper-horror-comedy from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia (DAY OF THE BEAST, THE LAST CIRCUS). Heck, the witches that show up out of the blue in a FROM DUSK TIL DAWN-esque sudden hard genre pivot aren’t the most outrageous twist. Neither is the skinny guy with the skin falling off who lives in a toilet. The most outrageous might be the 50-foot tall naked… well, you’ll see.

Despite the title, the focus of the first third is definitely on the bitching, rather than the witching. Things go awry in the armed robbery because the guy playing Jesus, whose real name is José (Hugo Silva, TO THE HELL WITH UGLY), brought his young son along and mistakenly leaves his homework behind to identify them (he has custody today, and will be damned if he lets a little thing like a pawnshop shoot-up stop him from spending some quality time). Before long, the gang is on the lam, making a break for the border (with France) in a hijacked taxi. They use the time on the road to complain bitterly about the women in their lives, especially José’s ex, Silvia (Macarena Gómez, Stuart Gordon’s DAGON), who is so pissed at the poor parenting skills José is displaying that she hops in the car to chase them. José is so eloquent in his rant about how bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks that the kidnapped cab driver is inspired by the power of his words to join the gang, if only so he can share his own gripes.

Before long, though, the crew comes across a mysterious diner with a bunch of sinister carnival floats and stuff outside, staffed by an intergenerational coven of women rather significantly worse than the ones they’ve been bitching about (including Terele Pávez from EVIL EYE (1975), Carmen Maura from a ton of Almodovar movies, and Carolina Bang, who has an amazing name and rock n’ roll haircut). They’ve got some rather extravagant plans for the bumbling criminals, including but not limited to cannibalism, torture, and ritual sacrifice. Which not to be all political or anything, but I’m against, even if it is a time-honored tradition in their culture.

As a whole, this cheerful and outrageous horror-comedy probably relies a little too much on cranky banter for comedy, and takes a smidge too much time to get where it’s going, but man, when it finally gets there things get really fucking crazy. Witches are nothing new in horror movies, but as things go along de la Iglesia seems to get progressively more and more confident and imaginative, filling scene after scene with frenetic jaw-dropping weirdness and culminating in a gigantic set piece/musical number which has to be seen to be believed (and even so, you may not believe it because of the dodgy CG, not that realism is really a high priority here). For all the standard men-are-from-mars-women-are-satanic-she-devils sitcom bitching that opens the movie, the witching, once it arrives, is of absolutely top quality, delivering a suite of splendidly repugnant goods you simply aren’t going to get anywhere else.

I wonder a bit about the movie’s strange, fractured perspective on gender. I try not to bore you guys by delving too deep into the subtext of every no-budget bigfoot movie or whatever that passes by my eyeballs, but there’s no getting around it here, this is clearly the topic the movie wants to bring you to. The men here are constantly --constantly-- bitching about women, and we’re not given much evidence that they’re wrong. In fact, if there’s a problem with their complaints, it seems to be their failure of imagination on just how much trouble women really are -- José’s ex immediately sides with the witches instead of trying to free him. And the witches’ priorities read like the Gamergate guys stayed up all night getting paranoid and high with the top brass from ISIL and a couple sexually repressed Puritans, and came up with a laundry list of everything women want to ruin: they hate men, worship an evil mother goddess, fastidiously use sex only to manipulate, and want to spread mayhem and disorder and matriarchy. That sounds pretty bad, especially when we consider the long history of actual brutality against innocent women because of these very mistaken beliefs --which continues to this day, looking in your direction Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, Central African Republic, Romania, Iran, and others -- which is admittedly a problem for all Witch genre movies, but seems particularly noteworthy here, considering how outrageously they exaggerate the scale of the villainy and how inescapably the script links it to gender.

I don’t really know how to interpret all that. It’s broad enough that you could convince me that it’s more of a parody of men’s misunderstanding and paranoia about the fairer sex than a condemnation of the witches. It certainly has some parallels, both overt and subtle, with the 2006 Neil Labute/Nic Cage WICKER MAN remake, which depending on how you look at it is either the most incompetently misogynistic film in living memory (or it was until JURASSIC WORLD came out) or a hilarious parody of clueless men utterly failing to comprehend what’s really going on in the minds of women and stumbling headlong into disaster. It’s tone certainly suggests something satiric, though I’m hard pressed to identify something specific it’s satirizing. On the other hand, you could also convince me that it’s just meant to be broad and over-the-top, drawing inspiration from witch mythology and exaggerating it to grotesque and comic effect without any particular thematic intent. Either way, though, the film’s tone overall seems genial and the women playing the witches look like they're having a blast, so I guess it’s all in good fun. And even if it wasn’t, I don’t know that any amount of bad politics could spoil a cast this energetic and a vision this ceaselessly inventive and elaborate. Pound for pound, this has to be one of the most wild and brazenly entertaining efforts this whole month. Even if its provocative gender battle doesn’t quite coagulate into something distinct enough to constitute a point... like its hapless characters, you can’t help but be whisked away for a wild and unpredictable ride.

* Is there an actual title for this profession? What do they put on their taxes?

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: No
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: Spain
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No, quite handsomely lensed by BLANCANIEVES and SEX AND LUCIA cinematographer Kiko de la Rica.
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: I don't know if she's exactly A-list even in her own country, but Carmen Maura worked with Pedro Almodovar enough times that I think it's a coup to get her in a crazy horror film.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None
• BOOBIES: Yeah, just wait for the end, buddy. You're gonna be real surprised.
• MULLETS: No
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Carolina Bang gets pretty aggressive with our hero.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Yeah, one poor guy gets his fingers cut off.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: Yeah, you'll have to wait for it though.
• THE UNDEAD: Are witches undead? No, right?
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: Definitely
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: None
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: You'd think someone would get turned into a frog or something, but no.
• VOYEURISM: Yeah, two guys perv out on a young witch suggestively pose on a broomstick in her underwear (I feel like she knows they're checking her out, though; otherwise this is an odd activity to engage in alone). Also, a weird guy watches you poop. Which is as good a time as any to address this little issue I have: how many times in a horror movie do you see someone go to the bathroom, drop trow, and then get surprised by some kind of killer or something and run off, but you never see them actually use the toilet again? I mean, sure you can hold it for a few minutes as you make your getaway, but sooner or later that call of nature is gonna get too loud to ignore. Horror movies, you're on notice. The next time I see this little scene play out, I want the person who didn't relieve themselves to be in constant bladder pain for the ensuing chase scene.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Medium, looks like a pretty big movie in Spain, but didn't crack theaters here, which is a shame because I think it would have been a hit. It's streaming on Netflix right now, though, so you've got no excuse.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: More witching, less bitching.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Both activities confirmed. It's Spanish title, "The Witches of Zugarramurdi" is even more accurate
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.