Movie Review: Maximum Shame (2010)
Teacher: Carlos Atanes
Students: Ana Mayo, Marina Gatell, Ignasi Vidal, Paco Moreno, Ariadna Ferrer, David Castro, Eleanor James
High School: Fortknox Audiovisual
Study Guide: www.carlosatanes.com
I first became aware of Carlos Atanes’ third feature film Maximum Shame because its cast included, among others, the British scream queen Eleanor James, whom I really enjoyed in films such as Colour From The Dark and Forest of the Damned. I was even fortunate enough to meet her on the sets of Unrated – The Movie and Karl The Butcher Vs. Axe. Elle’s scene in Atanes’ movie, however, is rather short and weird… and to be honest it didn’t help much to aid my viewing pleasure of what’s most likely one of the strangest, most fucked up and unfortunately least entertaining flicks I’ve seen in quite some time.
If I understood correctly, the film tells the story of a husband and his wife who somehow end up in a nihilistic parallel world, which is basically an abandoned warehouse or factory. Stranded in that awkward scenario, the two lovers try their best to escape the cruelty of that place’s eccentric ruler, the so-called Queen, who gets kicks out of torturing her lackeys by poking them with sticks, eating cakes in front of their hungry eyes or singing to them in a shrill, annoying voice.
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Indie horror director, Patrick Rea, has shown great promise through his darkly dramatic collection of short films. They have style and substance, slowly built up to explore an unexpected yet all encompassing personal horror. His feature, Nailbater, shows much of this same promise. It has great atmosphere, production values, and performances. Still, it felt like it fell short of the potential it held.
SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH is about a couple, Julie and Nick, who are on some kind of road trip and run afoul of good ol’ sasquatch. The film starts out with a photographer taking pictures of this hot chick in the woods when he suddenly spots something hairy and humanoid off in the distance.
After releasing his magnum opus Mutilation Mile last year, underground auteur Ron Atkins now gives us the release of his long awaited The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, a story of two psychopaths who meet up in a post-apocalyptic world.
In 2011, there have been very few horror films that have actually delivered the goods. In fact, over the last decade, it has seemed that the best films have been coming from across the pond, most notably from Spain, France, and jolly old England. The English has been exporting plenty of quality programs to American audiences over the last few years spanning from The Mighty Boosh, both versions of the Office and an American remake of Shameless on Showtime to miniseries/films such as Dead Set, Colin, and the new film Panic Button which has definitely lived up to the hype it has had before this review.
If you’ve been a horror fan for longer than the last five minutes, the title THE THING should be very familiar to you. It’s John Carpenter’s aliens-in-the-arctic masterpiece, one of the best horror films ever made. And now there’s a different The Thing in theaters. Yet, Universal has been insisting this is not a remake, but a prequel to Carpenter’s Thing.
A couple years ago on a Wednesday morning, I sat down in a tiny, almost empty theater, on the highest floor of the IFC Center in New York City. I was there to have an experience I had been looking forward to for months, after relishing in the promo images, the rants of sickened critics, and most of all, the online film community’s obsession with the mad scientist who stitches his victims ass to mouth.
Eric Stanze has been one of the indie horror scene’s most prominent and influential filmmakers for at least 20 years. His production company Wicked Pixel Cinema has given us low budget wonders such as the 1994 shot-on-video demonic possession picture Savage Harvest, the 1998 Super 8 surreal, experimental art house horror film Ice From the Sun, one of the most disturbing and graphically brutal serial killer movies, Scrapbook, released in 2000 and introducing viewers to frequent Wicked Pixel leading lady Emily Haack, the Severed Head Network short films compilations, and the chilling psychological horror outing Deadwood Park in 2007.
Do you still remember the heighday of the drive-in cinemas, when hundreds of thousands of American teenagers sneaked out of their bedroom windows at night, short-circuited their daddy’s factory-new Buick convertibles and took their high school sweethearts to the local drive-in, where the two love birds made out on the leather-upholstered backseats while trashy terror flicks like Humanoids From The Deep, Sadomania and I Drink Your Blood flickered across the giant screen in front of them? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t recall that time at all, because not only was I born too late but also on the wrong side of the ocean to ever have been able to take part in this wonderful era. Thus, I’m always more than happy when I stumble upon a movie such as Chillerama which lives and breathes the reckless exploitation spirit of yesteryear throughout each and every second of its playing time.
For as long as he can remember, life’s not been kind to Frank D’Arbo (Rainn Wilson). Beaten by his father, harassed by bullies at school and ignored by just about every girl he’s ever had a crush on, he ekes out a dreary existence as a cook in a run-down, barely frequented diner. The only shining light in his otherwise depressing life is his beautiful wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), whom he loves more than anything else in the world. When she leaves him for an arrogant strip club owner Jock (Kevin Bacon), Frank is crushed beyond repair and willing to let go of whatever tiny bit of self-respect he had left.
With the age of digital filmmaking and the style and sub-genre of films like The Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity it really makes it so anyone can make a film. Especially with films like these a lack of budget or visual composition can be written off as a stylistic choice. If you can deliver with the content and suspense to back it up this can work wonders. Films that have done this well have been the largest profiting box office films. Even the best within this sub-genre are more the exception than the norm. The norm is Evil Things. It really looks like an unscripted home video. I guess you can say it paints realism, but if there’s nothing interesting to offer it becomes painfully dull and just pointless.
Films about the walking undead are a dime a dozen. Every Joe Schmo can make a zombie feature length film with his Hi-Def hand-held camera and a modest budget, but this indie ambition in trying to be the next George A. Romero is a false Godsend sent straight from God knows where and seeks what most (ignorant) people crave in horror movies – a good amount of blood and guts. Eventually, the needle in the hay stack will be found, but the agonizing scrambling and digging through endless projects can wear a person down and make their eyes tire of bad taste and boredom. However, a zone lies in between that sole most glorious needle and that vast amount of crap.
Barry J. Gillis, the Toronto based indie filmmaker who brought us the micro budget 1989 Super 8 gorefest Things, which he starred in and was directed by his partner Andrew Jordan with whom he co-wrote and co-produced, has recently unleashed upon the world a project that has been in development for the last 20 years.
The latest release from Pittsburgh’s Michael Todd Schneider of MagGot Films (I Never Left the White Room, A Tribute to Sanity, …And Then I Helped, etc.) is this fun, psychedelic-styled horror anthology with an orangey VHS hue video quality and a “grindhouse” opening.
When horror fans aspiring to be horror filmmakers wait too many years to make their first feature, it normally turns out like Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever; a movie with a little bit of everything thrown in it. It’s like banging a virgin; he’s so excited that he wants to do everything at once, and before you realize what is happening, he blows his load and falls asleep. The Millennium Bug falls into this category. Is it a monster movie or hillbilly horror film? Well… it’s both.
