The Descent was the best horror film of 2006. Did you need us to tell you that? End of discussion. Oh and the good names of The Omen, The Wicker Man and When a Stranger Calls were shat up by unnecessary remakes. And that French director proved that a remake can be well acted, well photographed and well directed and still be a pointless bore (The Hills Have Eyes). Eli Roth continued to divide and conquer the horror fan base with Hostel. Whether you believe he’s the real deal or a talentless hack he’s still better than you. And after the powerfully streamlined mayhem of Saw II, we got the weepy soap opera that was Saw III. It’s a slasher franchise boys, cut it out. Michael Bay paid off his gambling debts with Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning then promptly flew back into the Hollywood Hills on a broomstick, cackling maniacally at the clueless fanboys who keep falling for it. And speaking of clueless fanboys falling for the machinations of Hollywood PR, Snakes on a Plane was released. IMDB geeks cheered. The rest of the world decided to do the laundry. M. Night Shymalan got Opie’s daughter wet for no good reason. Slither was good. Some movie producer thought people still cared about The Grudge and Underworld. They were wrong. Feast surprised everyone by not melting thier eyeballs with terrible-ness. Good job Gulager. The long awaited big screen version of the classic video game Silent Hill is now available for five bucks in the discount bin of your local video retailer. What else happened in horror movies this year? I don’t remember. But what I do remember are those handful of flicks that reaffirmed my love for the genre. This is Horror Yearbook’s Class of 2006.
Now these titles may not all be considered great filmmaking, to be honest a few are a mess, but they all contain some aspect, some detail, some element that we feel are missing from most horror movies today.
THE WOODS
The best of the lot was Lucky McKee’s The Woods, a stunning exercise in visual composition and baroque imagery. Basically it’s a style freaks dreams. The colorful cinematography, the sensual camera movements, the intense sound design and odd characters all harken back to the glam horror days of Mario Bava. And McKee draws some extraordinary performances from Agnes Bruckner, as the rebellious heroine, Patricia Clarkson as the evil headmistress and Bruce Campbell as Bruckner’s father. McKee creates a dense atmosphere of malevolence that is absolutely riveting. No other movie this year held me in such a thrall.
EVIL BREED: The Legend of Samhain
Now to praise a film that looks like utter shit. Atrocious so-called acting, nonexistent plotting, sub-par writing and directing can be overcome when you offer up some of the most offensively extreme gore of the year. A man’s intestines are ripped out through his anus, Jenna Jameson’s chest is ripped open and her guts thrown to the floor and Richard Grieco roasted over a spit are just some of the gory sights to behold. Writer/Director Christian Veil is at least upfront about his ambition to make a bloody, gory, over the top slasher movie with naked girls. I at least applaud him for aiming low and delivering and not trying to make his film “about” something. There is enough pretentiousness in modern horror films.
ABOMINABLE
Abominable introduces us to a major new talent in writer/director Ryan Schifrin. The Bigfoot legend has always needed a really first class treatment and it gets it with this fast, funny, scary rampaging monster flick. It also boasts some of the best kill scenes of the year. I’ll never forget the naked woman snapped in two, Bigfoot stomping a screaming woman’s head to mush or the climactic face chomping. But what really impresses amongst all the great gory violence is Schifrin’s solid characterizations and plotting. He could’ve just gone the easy route and wowed us with the great gore effects but he ups the ante by making us actually care about Matt McCoy’s wheelchair bound hero as he desperately tries to save the day. Not many directors can make a low budget horror title that is breathlessly suspenseful, funny, scary and touching but Schifrin does. He’s one to look out for.
VAMPIRE WARS: Battle For the Universe
Vampire Wars is the worst acted movie of the year. Watching the untalented cast screaming at each other during a climatic confrontation scene was oh so painful. But we stuck in their for the grisly violence. Writer director Matthew Hastings fashions a story about a ragtag crew of intergalactic vampire hunters whose battles with disgusting alien vampires leads to some really effective blood splattered and gruesome imagery. I was impressed by what Hastings was able to do on such a clearly limited budget. It was no Blade II, which it was obviously trying to be, but Hastings talent is evident. Since he also directed the solidly entertaining Decoys we know that with more money and a more talented cast Hastings can and will make a truly kick ass movie someday.
CREEP
It may not technically be a 2006 release but that’s when I saw it so there. Creep is the little subterranean, albino, cannibalistic monster movie that got away. Franka Potente gets trapped in London’s Underground Subway System overnight and runs into Castle Freak’s brother. This dark, somber little movie has a nasty edge as we watch the Creep engage in some teeth grindingly unpleasant “surgeries”. The scene in which he gleefully tortures a pregnant woman with a set of rusty surgical tools has to be the most horrifying scene of the year and alone qualifies it for the Class of 2006. Pick this sleeper up.
2001 Maniacs
The party movie of the year. A true delight for fans of gory, over the top violence and offensive un-PC black comedy. 2001 goes for the throat as limbs are torn from torsos, poles are shoved through men’s asses and out their mouths and Asian women scalped and their brains eaten with chopsticks. If you’re easily offended then rent Crash. 2001 Maniacs not only captures the crude spirit of H.G. Lewis’ drive in classic, it expands on it, not leaving many social groups unscathed. It’s gleefully outrageous violence and sharp comedy make it an entertaining romp with some great performances by vets Robert Englund and Lin Shaye and cast of talented young no names who are all in on the joke.
Call over a couple of friends, order a pizza and your favorite alcoholic beverages and have a ball. And the techno version of “The South Will Rise Again” is the best horror theme song of the year.
SEE NO EVIL
Every one seems to love a good slasher movie. If it was made twenty years ago, that is. Apparently it was easier to appreciate the simple slasher movie set up from a distance than it is when new. So it is that the fair weather horror fan writes off perfectly good slasher movies that don’t star a twenty year old Jaime Lee Curtis or Amy Steel. So maybe in 2016 people will appreciate the simple charm of See No Evil. Yes, it’s clichéd, Yes it’s badly acted, Yes, it’s stupid. And My Bloody Valentine wasn’t. So if you say that you like slasher movies there is absolutely no reason on earth not to like See No Evil. Dumb kids are trapped in an abandoned hotel and are picked off one by one by a hulking, mother fixated killer who rips their eyes out of their skulls and plunks them in jars for safe keeping. It’s garish, over the top, slasher nonsense. If you like that sort of thing. Enjoy. If you don’t shut the fuck up and let me like what I like. Go rent one of those “intelligent” Asian horror movies you like so much. I’ll be having fun, watching See No Evil, then maybe I’ll pop in Wrong Turn after that, then maybe a bit of Malevolence, yeah that’s it. You go fuck yourself. Thank You.
EVIL ALIENS
In a year full of great splatstick horror Evil Aliens proved to be the most outrageous. This movie had us screaming in disbelief at the hilariously brutal tortures on display. When a movie opens with a guy spewing diarrhea after a particularly nasty ass probing you know what your in for. Director Jake West piles on the sex, carnage and mutilations for the most crowd-pleasing horror comedy in a long time.
MORTUARY
Remember how “comfortably watchable” many direct-to-video horror movies were? You know movies like The Curse series, or Cameron Closet, or The Unborn, movies that were in no way perfect and would automatically be hated on by non-horror fans but turn out to be a perfect way to waste a lazy Saturday afternoon. That’s the “comfortable watch,” a low budget horror movie offering a few modest scares, some okay acting and a few laughs along the way. Well the best comfortable watch of the year was Mortuary. Its critical drubbing all over the web was probably due to it being Tobe Hooper’s next film after his comeback success with The Toolbox Murders. So it’s not up to Hooper’s prior achievement, it is, as I said a good “comfortable watch”. Yes, the story is dramatically muddled, as if the writers had tired of trying to pull all the many threads of plot together and just went crazy. But it does boast some fine performances by Denise Crosby, as the new owner of the mortuary, Dan Byrd (from The Hills Have Eyes remake) as her son, and Lee Garlington as the kooky owner of the local diner (though the seemingly mildly retarded girl playing the younger sister gives the most unintentionally funny performance of the year). And Hooper does create a nice creeping sense of doom and packs a few really wild scares in for good measure. And the production design of the disgusting, rotting, moldy old house the family lives in still gives me the ickies. So kudos the number one “comfortable watch” of the year, the best way to spend some leisure time in between walking the dog and going to work.
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