"MOVIES THAT WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER"

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THE ATTIC
starring Carrie Snodgress, Ray Milland, directed by George Edwards, Color, , 1979
CRAWLSPACE
starring Klaus Kinski, Talia Balsam, directed by David Schmoeller, Color, , 1986
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Double DVD Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

This is another one of MGM’s Midnight Movies Double-feature discs, and it’s the usual win-one/lose-one situation. The Attic is just lucky that Crawlspace is on this disc, too, cuz otherwise it would be languishing on those DVD shelves at Best Buy for a long, long while.

The Attic is more psychological drama than actual horror. Carrie Snodgress plays the shat-upon daughter of wheelchair-bound tyrant Ray Milland. She cooks, cleans, takes care of him, and of course he appreciates none of her sacrifices. She dreams of getting away, but is too scared. You know the deal.

This has been done so much better so many other times before and after. The Attic is boring beyond belief. The direction and writing are so lackluster that you almost feel like you’re just stuck watching some poor middle-aged woman’s home movies. Snodgress is good, but isn’t given anything to do with her character other than cringe and smile awkwardly all the time. The only interesting point in the movie is when for no real reason she decided she wants a pet, and dammit, she wants a MONKEY!!!!

Milland is functional in his role, but it’s nothing even close to what this great actor is capable of. One of my favorite moves of all time is X-The Man With The X-Ray Eyes and he’s awesome in that one! Go get that one, it’s on DVD, too. Problem here is, his character is supposed to be unbearably tyrannical, but he just sorta sits there in his wheelchair scowling and bitching, but without any flair. There’s just no bite to his performance whatsoever. I kept yelling at Snodgress to just push himout of her way and tell him to go to hell. What’s he gonna do? Scowl at you? Come on, girl!

There’s kinda of cool twist to the ending but after and hour and forty some odd minutes of this, you’ll be hard-pressed to care.

Whereas, the other movie in this package, Crawlspace is pretty damn cool. Not great, ok? I didn’t say “great.” I just said it was pretty cool. Mainly because it has no pretensions. It just gets on screen, does its duty and gets out of your way when it’s done. I like that in a B-movie.

Klaus Kinski is the landlord in a building with only female tenants, whom he snoops on through strategically placed vents in the building. Oh, and he also keeps a toungueless girl locked in a cage in his attic. See, he used to be a Nazi doctor, and he’s having a hard time shaking those homicidal urges.

Crawlspace moves along quickly and has several campy set pieces that make this worth the purchase. Kinski is a treat! (Isn’t he always?) At one point we see him smearing lipstick all over his face while goose-stepping to old Nazi propaganda films (Ian McKellan’s performance in Apt Pupil have been more serious, but Kinski’s has got to be the most absurd and hilariously demented portrayal of a Nazi since Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS.) And the climax, where he’s chasing one of his potential victims through the ventilation shafts on a sled is priceless! There’s also a scene that gives great new meaning to the term “having a stick up your ass.”

Cheap, sleazy 80’s slasher fun. I’m sure we all saw this one back in the day (I know I saw it at pretty much every video store I went into as a kid, sitting right there close to Critters and Creepers), and it’s probably better now than it was then. So if you saw it before and hated it, give it another shot. Just have fun with it. Someone like Roman Polanski or David Fincher (or hell, even Abel Ferarra) could probably have made a really disturbing flick out of this material, but what are you gonna do? This is what you get. And I love it!

Skip The Attic and slip Crawlspace in instead. In fact, it’s be cool if someone like Anchor Bay or Blue Underground took Crawlspace and gave us a special edition out of. I would LOVE to see some Kinski outtakes!

Anyway, happy haunting, folks!

I feel bad about this film because this is a company that was born out a company that used to send us movies to review all the time. Well, let's get to it...short and sweet-like. This is a remake of Dracula, but set in (what I think is suppossed to be) modern times in the deep south (which has never been in "modern times" as far as I've seen throughout modern history). The "Dracula" of this film is one Klaus Vogel who has participated in a cannibal slaughter in Africa (and manages to mumble every one of his lines making it impossible to understand him most of the time). He comes to the states and becomes enamored with a woman named Lucy. Things seem to go crazy and nowhere at the same time until an old southern doctor comes to the aide of Lucy and her friends. Anyway, you'd think that the point of this film is to be the gore or nudity, or even both, but this film deliveers little of either in a fashion that would make it worth being made in the first place. Oddly enough, the main female lead is the chestiest of the cast, but a body double is used for her nude scenes. THAT, my friends, is a crime if you saw the female lead in question. In general, the quality is not up to snuff. The camera is reliable most of the time (during the scenes shot during the day), but if you can't hear the main bad guy's dialogue because he mumbles it, what's the point? And what the hell is up with that totally unrelated cover art?!? Ah, it pains me to say this because these are nice guys, but I gotta say pass this one up if you some across it.

This is another one of those movies that doesn’t really need any new reviews written about it. Like it or hate it, love it or loathe it, it’s established itself as enough of a classic that …well … those who know, know … and those who don’t, probably don’t care anyway.

The last time I spoke about this movie in the “pages” of No-Fi, I had been blessed with the chance to see a recently struck print of it on the big screen at the 24 Hour Horror Marathon in Columbus, Ohio. And to be honest, I didn’t really pay much attention to the movie itself, only that I was seeing it on a big screen, something I never thought I would do in my lifetime.

A year has passed since then and now, thanks to Shriek Show’s ghoulishly delightful 25th Anniversary Special Edition, I have had the chance to revisit the flick one more time. And let me tell you kids, it’s still got the goods. However, I must confess, I did notice a few things about this movie this time around: stuff I probably always noticed before, but never really wanted to admit to. Some cracks in the façade, if you will.

OK, so Zombie was never perfect anyway. We all know that. But as I watch it again, I notice that, yeah, there are times when this movie is, well, pretty dumb. There I said it. Just let me get through this here, ok. It isn’t easy.

The dialogue is pretty damn awful in spots. And the dubbing is horrible. Maybe that’s what makes the dialogue bad, I don’t know. And I realize part of the fun of these Italian splatter flicks is the bad dubbing. I’m not saying any of this is necessarily bad; I’m just saying these are some observations I made upon watching this movie for the 20th time.

And while I really hate to say this, I’m not so sure that some of these things I used to find cool about this movie really work for me now. I mean, yes, I’ve seen it 20 times, ok, so bear that in mind here. But those zombie POV shots (with the cascade of dirt over the lens as they rise up from their shallow graves) are kinda silly. Fulci constantly changes viewpoints in this movie, and that’s fine. And I even like the times he cuts away to the scenes of lone zombies walking around. But the POV shots, no. I’m just saying I wish he hadn’t done that. It’s jarring, and it takes me out of the movie.

And the infamous, zombie vs. shark scene. While this scene is often the subject of much debate at the bar amongst my friends and I (“Do you think that shark became a zombie and made more zombie sharks?”) it just gets goofier and goofier every time I see it. I was never all that enamored of this sequence, even from the first time I saw it. But over the years, it started to grow on me a tad. Now, what little charm it had, is starting to wane. Sorry.

God, is this just Ryan Lies pissing all over a sacred landmark? Is he gonna shut up now, or do we have to storm his house with torches ablaze and pitchforks raised?

No, relax. I’m just venting a couple minor grievances I have. For the most part, I think this movie still kicks some serious ass. While I love the Romero zombies more for so many reasons, I still think Fulci makes the creepiest zombies. Those shots of the zombies slowly making their way to the church/hospital where our “heroes” are holed up, as the wind blows ghostlike at their feet, are some of the most disturbing and haunting images ever captured on film. Watching them mindlessly yet unerringly bang their decrepit bodies against the barred doors of that church still makes me shudder. The zombies in this movie never looked human to me. The Romero zombies always maintained their humanity, no matter how gory things got, but Fulci’s actually look like moldering, worm-ridden corpses brought back to life. (In fact, there’s an interview on this DVD with the actor that played the very first zombie in the film, and seeing him out of his makeup kinda ruined the fun for me, so I shut it off.)

The music still bumps, the gore is still red and juicy, and the that closing sequence, where the two lone survivors turn on the radio to hear that New York city has been besieged by the undead, despite it’s inherent cheesiness, still chills my blood. All those shambling corpses crossing the Brooklyn Bridge is still worth the price of admission.

I love Fulci and have always maintained that deep down he was a gifted filmmaker. If you don’t believe me, go watch his western Four Of The Apocalypse. It’s actually an incredibly moving film. And I still place Zombie in my Top 20 list of all time best horror films, although I have always thought that House by the Cemetery was his scariest.

So don’t inundate me with hate mail over this review. I love this friggin’ movie, I truly do. I love it more than I’ve loved some of my pets and ex-girlfriends. I just wanted to clear the air. I just wanted to publicly acknowledge that one of the movies I love more than anything in the world is, alas, showing some of it’s weaknesses as it, and I, get older. That’s not a bad thing. A true, loving relationship is built on, among other things, an acceptance of one another’s faults. And not only an acceptance, but a deeper understanding of the other, for I believe it’s through imperfection that one’s true character is most profoundly observed. If Zombie wanted to write a list of my faults, I’m sure it would ramble on longer than I have already.

Yes, the shark scene is dumb. Yes, some of the dialogue is insipid. Yes, I hate those zombie POV shots … But dammit. I love this son of a bitch. You know? I really love it. I love it because after 25 years, it’s still Zombie. And, ultimately, that’s all that matters. It’s Zombie and it’s just being itself. Frustrations aside, you gotta respect that.