The Sewer Rocking the Boat - THE GHOULS (2003)

If you're like me you're a big fan of the Gyllenhaals (and pine for more movies with both Jake and Maggie, preferably playing siblings a la Donnie Darko) and shrieked with delight, as well as fear, at Jake's amazingly creepy turn as the petty-thief-turned-TV-news-stringer Louis Bloom in last year's brilliant Nightcrawler.  Arguably 2014's best mainstream film after Birdman, Nightcrawler did an unbelievable job introducing the world to the horrific possibilities of gathering lurid footage for local news outlets...or so the producers thought.  That's not a knock on Nightcrawler's quality, just a note that it wasn't the first movie to look at L.A. news stringers in a less than flattering light.  A much smaller film, The Ghouls, snuck out on video a decade earlier after modest festival circulation and never became well-known enough to be forgotten.  I would've never seen it if not for a handy positive review by Fred Adelman over at his indispensable genre film review site Critical Condition.  With only a few days left before Halloween I felt it a welcome obligation to get the reviews back up and running to spotlight a few horror flicks that needed more recognition, and The Ghouls is a sucker-punch way to get into the spirit.  While Nightcrawler drew its viewers into its creeps gradually and got a lot of unsettling material with great restraint, The Ghouls leaps right for the jugular and then sells it to the 6 A.M. block for easy ratings.

Eric Hayes (Timothy Muskatell) scratches out a living filming grisly crimes and their aftermaths for sale to local news outlets, and less than two minutes into the movie is found filming a man stab his naked girlfriend to death while their baby cries in the corner.  Almost everybody he knows despises him, including the producers he sells his tapes to and possibly even his girlfriend Sue (Tina Birchfield).  One night while stumbling to his car after a good boozing he sees a woman being dragged into an alley, and he runs to her with his camera expecting a juicy mugging or rape.  What he sees instead is a bunch of dirty, barely human beings eating her alive, and not only does he barely make it out unscathed but he had the misfortune of forgetting to put a tape into his camera.  Desperate to get evidence of urban cannibals on film, he promises big results to one of his news clients and decides to follow any lead he can to find his perps.  The only thing is, the only people willing to talk about them are scared to death and lead him into the sewers, and not even the news is ready for what he might find...

Shot on grainy digital video and drowning in unpalatable subject matter and visuals, The Ghouls is one of the bleakest and grimiest films I've ever seen about the dark side of media.  Eric Hayes is about as anti as a hero gets, more than willing to let people get attacked and even killed for a chance at profitable footage and lashing out at people who criticize him for it.  What's so fascinating is how the film makes you sympathize with him despite his obvious flaws, his curiosity and willingness to plunge into darkness to find out the truth about L.A.'s seediest underbelly making him compellingly human against a decidedly inhuman threat.  Let's be clear here - this film could easily be pitched as Nightcrawlers meets C.H.U.D. and in no way is that a bad thing, as it manages to synthesize the better themes of both films and carve out its own identity in the process.  You might be thinking that a 2003 movie shot on digital video, and exclusively at night, might be unpleasant to look at, but thankfully writer-director Chad Ferrin, has a fine eye for shot composition and remembered to bring some good lighting.  A lot of movies shot on video can't help but look like the director secretly shot his friends goofing off using a hidden camera in his glasses, but Ferrin manages to shoot The Ghouls so professionally that it's easy to forget you're watching a medium that wouldn't start looking really good for years.  Ferrin, a Troma graduate, managed to write a script that's both intelligent and engaging but also allows for the production to be as cheap and minimal as possible, as all its characters live and work in hovels and the actors probably wore their own clothes while shooting.  What he saved on sets and costumes he made up for in good gore effects and a good casting director, as with a film this cheap everybody needs to be pitch perfect right away and there's not a whiffed performance in the house.  Especially notable is Timothy Muskatell as Eric, an actor whose most mainstream role has been a supporting role in  Deadgirl yet he brings a real intelligence and heart to a role that desperately needs its empathetic qualities proven rather than just shown.  There's also an eerie-yet-minimal free-jazz-meets-tomandandy to heighten the caustic danger of the story, with most of the film letting the droning din of a nocturnal urban landscape immerse us in dread.  And then there's that soul-crushing last line.  I mean, damn.

With its graphic violence and depressing story, The Ghouls might look like a hard sell - don't let it be.  The smart script, solid direction, excellent acting and good pacing all make The Ghouls way more enjoyable than you might be expecting, crafting a minor horror classic out of limited means and stark realism.  Is it better than Nightcrawler?  No, but what recent movie is?  Is it better than C.H.U.D.I?  Well, I don't know, but C.H.U.D. wasn't exactly perfect, either (but was still way better than C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud).  You've got a little more time in your Halloween viewing block, don't you?  Here, I'll sweeten the deal - its distributor threw it up on YouTube in full for free.  How's that for grabbing your attention?

~PNK

The Legend, the Magic, the Chickens - FURIOUS (1984)

OK, OK, I know this is an unusual choice for this blog, if anybody reading this has even heard of this flick.  Released in a pocket of extreme obscurity on VHS in the 80's, Furious has recently become a minor cult phenomenon, and not just because there are plenty of 18-34 demo fools like myself willing to give any obscure genre flick from the 70's and 80's a shot.  It's a life-changing experience, a singular cinematic entity that blows open the Martial Arts genre into stunningly bizarre new possibilities, and it was made on a budget that wouldn't even fund the afterparty of a Hollywood premiere.  The filmmakers had a small budget to start with and originally wanted to make a slasher movie, but their distributor said that he could move Kung Fu flicks by the pound.  What followed was sheer and glorious lunacy, the kind of unabashed shoestring ingenuity I can only dream about.  I'm certainly not the first person to sing its jawdroppedness: Trash Nite and Bleeding Skull have good reviews and I couldn't add any substance to them even if I tried.  For those who don't like clicking links, here's a taste: alien warlocks who can shoot chickens from their fingers.  Comedic post-punk rock band interjections during a crisis situation.  Flaming skeletons.  The most impressive helicopter photography you'd never expect in a movie this small-time.  The list goes on, but I don't want to spoil the flick for you.

The real ace up my sleeve is two-fold.  One, a story.  The film's co-director, Tim Everitt, actually lives near Seattle, and some enterprising young gentlemen connected to the great Scarecrow Video tracked him down.  I attended a packed screening of Furious (though sadly not from an original tape) in Scarecrow's event room and promptly had my pants blown off, along with everybody else in the room.  Everitt was kind enough to answer questions afterwards, and it turns out he's a pretty normal guy who made a career as a visual effects supervisor in Hollywood for some time.  I snagged a poster for the screening and got his signature, probably making me the only man alive who has a Furious poster signed by the director.  Look!

On a less cripplingly nerdy note, the second fold is much more valuable: I found the flick on YouTube.  A channel I've never heard of before uploaded the movie two months ago this very day, making him a national hero if I ever saw one.  The gab must cease, and you must watch.  Drop whatever you're doing, even if it's CPR - you've got 71 minutes to witness a great and beautiful madness.

~PNK

The American Dream Is Alien - INVADER (1992)

There's two kinds of direct-to-video product: theatrical movies that sat on a shelf before being pooped out onto video to avoid massive losses, and movies made to be direct-to-video.  It's uncommon for the latter to appear on recommendation lists, and often there's good reason, but some transcend their supposed limitations and become classics in the field.  For my money, Philip Cook's Invader is not only my favorite DTV sci-fi flick, it might be my favorite move ever made to premiere on video.  It's fast-paced, wickedly funny and very smart, featuring impressive special effects and good performances all around.  After I tell you all of this in more detail it may be time for you to dust off your VCR and give this one a go-round.  (Don't expect the guys on the poster to show up, though; they're not in the movie).

Frank McCall (Hans Bachmann) is an ace reporter at the National Scandal, an Enquirer-styled rag that specializes in flying saucer and mutant baby fare.  He stumbles across a bizarre multiple homicide scene where soldiers were fried to a crisp while on a routine bus ride.  He is met by Capt. Harry Anders (A. Thomas Smith) of the Department of Defense, and Col. Faraday (Rick Foucheux) who operates the Air Force base the murdered men were stationed.  The incident couldn't come at a worse time, as Faraday is unveiling a new fighter jet at a show that night, which McCall sneaks in to.  During the test flight, the autopilot switches from normal flight mode to attack mode, and eventually crashes, killing the pilot.  As people scramble, McCall gets whisked to a back room by robotic men in sunglasses, who strap him into a chair with the intention of injecting a green glowing liquid into him.  They're stopped by Anders, and the three men convene to hear the truth: the ship's onboard computer, A.S.M.O.D.S (Asmodeus), was recovered from a crashed alien vessel, and now has grown a mind of its own, taking over the base's men and working tirelessly on a sinister plot to take over America's defense systems for a hilariously unwise ambition.

While this may seem a bit boil-in-the-bag in its setup, Invader is far more intelligent, funny and accomplished than the majority of its peers.  The dialogue is hilarious, containing some of the best one-liners I've heard in a DTV flick ("Why is it that every time somebody tries to photograph something spectacular it's with a shitty camera?!").  The odd couple of the snarky, disobedient McCall and the no-nonsense, bureaucratic Anders is a joy to behold, with both actors nailing the parts and making the film's glue.  While the concept of an alien ship gone rogue isn't new, the payoff is, and the film transforms from routine sci-fi popcorn-muncher to freewheeling satire on military excess and unchecked nationalism.  It's one of the few movies I know of that exposes the bureaucratic red-tape of the military, making it a surprisingly comedic environment.  The special effects are excellent for a low-budget movie like this, featuring some impressive stop-motion and some of the most vast and detailed models I've seen since Total Recall.  WARNING: the DVD special edition decided that the accomplished practical effects of the original release weren't good enough for the 21st century and revamped the film Lucas-style with hideous CGI monstrosities that would cause Douglas Trumbull to dig himself a grave and roll in it.  Let's pray for a re-release of the original, at the very least for the legacy of practical effects.


Either way you see it, Invader is a wild ride, full of laughs, action and satire, a shining beacon for B-moviedom.  If you're going to make something entertaining this is how you do it, and the flick far outshines its DTV limitations (or assets, depending on how you're counting it).  This is the kind of movie that Saturday nights were invented for, so get out the VCR, snag a copy and get to watching.  If you're disappointed you may as well be shuttled off to Asmodeus for "retraining".

(Ignore the CGI!)

~PNK