For fuck’s sake.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been a year.<\/p>\n
I said I was going to keep up, but I didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Look, it’s just been fucking chaos.\u00c2\u00a0 Some good, all sorts of bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Even a fracture.<\/p>\n
It hasn’t been easy, but we’re trying to keep the faith.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, I offer proof.<\/p>\n
One of the more challenging aspects of producing “Afterhell” is sharing inspiration.\u00c2\u00a0 Jamie isn’t a die-hard horror freak, like I am these days.\u00c2\u00a0 She has a limit.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s only so much gore and weirdness she can take.\u00c2\u00a0 And she doesn’t see the same things I do, even when it’s something she can look at.<\/p>\n
Now Jamie loves monsters and weirdness as much as the next gently warped individual.\u00c2\u00a0 But she could barely get through the first two of George Romero’s Dead flicks, for example.\u00c2\u00a0 “Hellraiser?”\u00c2\u00a0 It was a revelation for me.\u00c2\u00a0 For Jamie?\u00c2\u00a0 Outta the question.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff like Lucio Fulci’s notorious entries into the horror genre, tarred in European circles as video nasties?\u00c2\u00a0 All mine, baby<\/p>\n
Not that I’m the biggest Fulci fan.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve seen only a few of his movies.\u00c2\u00a0 And it turns out I’m a lot more demanding than the average horror fan.<\/p>\n
So when a local theater ran a Lucio Fulci freakfest, she and I debated the merits of going out to see it.\u00c2\u00a0 Jamie is nursing a fractured ankle.\u00c2\u00a0 (There, see?!\u00c2\u00a0 Fracture!\u00c2\u00a0 Real and everything!\u00c2\u00a0 Shut it!)\u00c2\u00a0 We decided to stay home and put her foot up, but we were still curious about the movie.<\/p>\n
I took it upon myself to find it online and see for myself.\u00c2\u00a0 Curious, Jamie asked me to tell her about it later.<\/p>\n
The results were… interesting… so much that Jamie insisted that I post here, for your amusement and bemusement, my notes to her.<\/p>\n
Horror fans might be stunned.\u00c2\u00a0 Movie aficionados might lose their monocles.\u00c2\u00a0 Defenders of Lucio Fulci’s genius, maybe you should go out for drinks or something.<\/p>\n
Okay, here’s the edited version of the notes I sent to Jamie about this movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Just accept it.<\/p>\n
Yeah, this was pretty much the splatterific slogfest I was expecting.\u00c2\u00a0 I admit, I rather like the idea of Lucio Fulci actually being Italian for, “We can’t have nice things.”<\/p>\n
“Zombie Hellhouse” aka “The House By The Cemetery” aka “The House Outside The Cemetery” aka “Freudstein.”<\/p>\n
(Alias John!\u00c2\u00a0 Alias Johnny!\u00c2\u00a0 Alias Jack!\u00c2\u00a0 Alias Jackie!!!<\/a>)<\/p>\n
This was part of Fulci’s horror trilogy in the mid- to late-80s.\u00c2\u00a0 All of his work is fairly infamous, especially in the UK during their video nasties moral panic.\u00c2\u00a0 Some fans consider it one of his weaker entries into horror.\u00c2\u00a0 Others disagree, for reasons that I’ll get into later.<\/p>\n
Most people just figure this is nasty shit that makes not one lick of sense.<\/p>\n
I don’t hate the film, but I hardly consider it a classic either.\u00c2\u00a0 It drags in places and dangles plot threads that rarely go anywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 The story logic is weak.\u00c2\u00a0 The characters are unintentionally silly, so much that it undermines everything else.<\/p>\n
We start with a rather titillating teaser, some T&A followed by a really over-the-top knife kill that supposedly impales someone<\/a>‘s skull.\u00c2\u00a0 The butcher knife apparently becomes a kukri because of the way it curves halfway through — piercing the top of the girl’s head<\/a> and then coming out of her mouth<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Because… reasons.<\/p>\n
Enter Bob<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, Bob<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I have to say again, who the hell calls their son Bob?\u00c2\u00a0 Not Bobby, not Robert, not soulless homonculus.\u00c2\u00a0 Just Bob.<\/p>\n
He’s a blond, blue-eyed moptop that looks like a cross between Billie Piper and a Cabbage Patch doll.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not his fault.\u00c2\u00a0 I get that.\u00c2\u00a0 But he stares at everything with that empty expression (probably because none of the adults on the set have adequately explained half the nonsense going on in this film.)<\/p>\n
And he shrieks the dumbest dialogue through some poor VO actor’s voice, probably hired because he\/she can scream really really well.\u00c2\u00a0 And when combined, all those things turns little Bob into a genuinely unsettling, often irritating presence<\/a>.<\/p>\n
And he carries the film.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole damn thing.<\/p>\n
According to the film’s biggest and intellectually ambitious fans, Bob is the bubbleheaded Danny Torrance knock-off that ties the whole film together.\u00c2\u00a0 They argue that the whole story is from this child’s psychological POV, that this is all filtered through a child’s understanding of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Is the movie a nightmare or the pipe dream make-believe of a disturbed child?<\/p>\n
Or maybe he’s just a Danny Torrance clone.\u00c2\u00a0 In a movie that rips off “The Shining.”<\/p>\n
So yeah, we meet Bob while he stares deep into a picture of the very house his family is about to move to.\u00c2\u00a0 With his microscopic x-ray vision, he sees a girl<\/a> screaming at him through the front window.\u00c2\u00a0 (This ties into the child’s POV theory, that Bob is puzzling together this strange fantasy from the slightest of inspirations around him.)<\/p>\n
This girl<\/a> turns out to be Mae<\/a>, who lives in that old house.\u00c2\u00a0 Only Bob can see or hear her.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently she’s been shouting at him, warning him not to come.<\/p>\n
But of course, Bob is a wetbrain.<\/p>\n
I say this because most children can quite capable of sharing a message with a grownup.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially if it’s a warning.\u00c2\u00a0 “You shouldn’t come here.”<\/p>\n
But Bob is dumber than a pita pocket full of Tic Tacs.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m serious.\u00c2\u00a0 His first reaction is to stare for hours and idly ask, “Why would she tell me not to go there, mommy?”<\/p>\n
Dumbfuck.<\/p>\n
And then when Bob meets Mae for the first time, he actually thinks that was a sufficient warning.\u00c2\u00a0 “I did my best, only Mommy wouldn’t listen to me!\u00c2\u00a0 Parents never listen!\u00c2\u00a0 They always do what they want!”<\/p>\n
What a whiny little shitbag.\u00c2\u00a0 He speaks in riddles, thinks with his freakin’ hands like a toddler, and he wonders why no one understands him.<\/p>\n
He’s so dumb.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 When Mae calls out to him by name and introduces herself, he says, “My name’s Bob!”<\/p>\n
She just called you Bob, you mop-headed snot factory.<\/p>\n
And he’s the heart of the film.\u00c2\u00a0 Our focal point for the whole damn thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Too stupid to be Cassandra.\u00c2\u00a0 Too derivative to be Danny Torrance.\u00c2\u00a0 Too irritating to be a panty liner.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck, I hate this kid.<\/p>\n
So yeah, sweet little Bob is pissing me off.<\/p>\n
The truth is that his parents<\/a> aren’t bright either.\u00c2\u00a0 At the real estate office to get the keys for their new haunted house, they leave him in their car to wander off and talk to ghosts.<\/p>\n
Later, while trying to unlock the cellar, his father<\/a> cheerfully accepts a butcher knife from the boy.\u00c2\u00a0 And uses it to force the lock.\u00c2\u00a0 (Instead of putting it away, telling the kid not to do that again, and looking for a crowbar or something.)<\/p>\n
And when his wife<\/a> — with a history of mental illness<\/a> — stresses out about weird shit going in the house, the father tells her, “You’re just tired.\u00c2\u00a0 You really should take those pills your baker prescribed.”<\/p>\n
PILLS<\/a>.<\/p>\n
From the BAKER<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Welcome to Doctor Chad Feelgood’s Bakery and Illegal Compounding Pharmacy!!!\u00c2\u00a0 Lick the brown corner of your receipt and try our new flavor of the FSCKING OWLZ<\/a> CLAWIN AT TEH WINDOZ OF MAH MIND!!!!<\/p>\n
Oh, it gets worse.\u00c2\u00a0 A little research reveals that Fulci deliberately gave the film no structure, only some over-arching themes to hold it all together.<\/p>\n
And it shows.\u00c2\u00a0 Really does.\u00c2\u00a0 Character motivations change with every scene.\u00c2\u00a0 People<\/a> are creepy for no reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Doing things for no reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Ideas are thrown in like random spice.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’ll help, maybe it’ll make everything taste even weirder.\u00c2\u00a0 Who cares?<\/p>\n
There’s my problem with the film.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it delivers on spectacle.\u00c2\u00a0 But Lucio Fulci didn’t really care.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a horror movie Shake ‘N’ Bake.\u00c2\u00a0 Fulci slapped a bunch of crap together and didn’t care how it came out.<\/p>\n
![piercing the top of the girl’s head<\/a> and then coming](\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-892JVgyvZHM\/Vh85nwOOVvI\/AAAAAAAAAfo\/2tqCtXbkHN8\/s1600\/ouch.jpg\"){kind=link}
![out of her mouth<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Because… reasons.<\/p>\nEnter Bob<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, Bob<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I have to say again, who the hell calls their son Bob?\u00c2\u00a0 Not Bobby, not Robert, not soulless homonculus.\u00c2\u00a0 Just Bob.<\/p>\nHe’s a blond, blue-eyed moptop that looks like a cross between Billie Piper and a Cabbage Patch doll.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not his fault.\u00c2\u00a0 I get that.\u00c2\u00a0 But he stares at everything with that empty expression (probably because none of the adults on the set have adequately explained half the nonsense going on in this film.)<\/p>\nAnd he shrieks the dumbest dialogue through some poor VO actor’s voice, probably hired because he\/she can scream really really well.\u00c2\u00a0 And when combined, all those things turns little Bob into a genuinely unsettling, often irritating presence<\/a>.<\/p>\nAnd he carries the film.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole damn thing.<\/p>\nAccording to the film’s biggest and intellectually ambitious fans, Bob is the bubbleheaded Danny Torrance knock-off that ties the whole film together.\u00c2\u00a0 They argue that the whole story is from this child’s psychological POV, that this is all filtered through a child’s understanding of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Is the movie a nightmare or the pipe dream make-believe of a disturbed child?<\/p>\nOr maybe he’s just a Danny Torrance clone.\u00c2\u00a0 In a movie that rips off “The Shining.”<\/p>\nSo yeah, we meet Bob while he stares deep into a picture of the very house his family is about to move to.\u00c2\u00a0 With his microscopic x-ray vision, he sees a girl<\/a> screaming at him through the front window.\u00c2\u00a0 (This ties into the child’s POV theory, that Bob is puzzling together this strange fantasy from the slightest of inspirations around him.)<\/p>\nThis girl<\/a> turns out to be Mae<\/a>, who lives in that old house.\u00c2\u00a0 Only Bob can see or hear her.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently she’s been shouting at him, warning him not to come.<\/p>\nBut of course, Bob is a wetbrain.<\/p>\nI say this because most children can quite capable of sharing a message with a grownup.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially if it’s a warning.\u00c2\u00a0 “You shouldn’t come here.”<\/p>\nBut Bob is dumber than a pita pocket full of Tic Tacs.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m serious.\u00c2\u00a0 His first reaction is to stare for hours and idly ask, “Why would she tell me not to go there, mommy?”<\/p>\nDumbfuck.<\/p>\nAnd then when Bob meets Mae for the first time, he actually thinks that was a sufficient warning.\u00c2\u00a0 “I did my best, only Mommy wouldn’t listen to me!\u00c2\u00a0 Parents never listen!\u00c2\u00a0 They always do what they want!”<\/p>\nWhat a whiny little shitbag.\u00c2\u00a0 He speaks in riddles, thinks with his freakin’ hands like a toddler, and he wonders why no one understands him.<\/p>\nHe’s so dumb.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 When Mae calls out to him by name and introduces herself, he says, “My name’s Bob!”<\/p>\nShe just called you Bob, you mop-headed snot factory.<\/p>\nAnd he’s the heart of the film.\u00c2\u00a0 Our focal point for the whole damn thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Too stupid to be Cassandra.\u00c2\u00a0 Too derivative to be Danny Torrance.\u00c2\u00a0 Too irritating to be a panty liner.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck, I hate this kid.<\/p>\nSo yeah, sweet little Bob is pissing me off.<\/p>\nThe truth is that his parents<\/a> aren’t bright either.\u00c2\u00a0 At the real estate office to get the keys for their new haunted house, they leave him in their car to wander off and talk to ghosts.<\/p>\nLater, while trying to unlock the cellar, his father<\/a> cheerfully accepts a butcher knife from the boy.\u00c2\u00a0 And uses it to force the lock.\u00c2\u00a0 (Instead of putting it away, telling the kid not to do that again, and looking for a crowbar or something.)<\/p>\nAnd when his wife<\/a> — with a history of mental illness<\/a> — stresses out about weird shit going in the house, the father tells her, “You’re just tired.\u00c2\u00a0 You really should take those pills your baker prescribed.”<\/p>\nPILLS<\/a>.<\/p>\nFrom the BAKER<\/a>.<\/p>\nWelcome to Doctor Chad Feelgood’s Bakery and Illegal Compounding Pharmacy!!!\u00c2\u00a0 Lick the brown corner of your receipt and try our new flavor of the FSCKING OWLZ<\/a> CLAWIN AT TEH WINDOZ OF MAH MIND!!!!<\/p>\nOh, it gets worse.\u00c2\u00a0 A little research reveals that Fulci deliberately gave the film no structure, only some over-arching themes to hold it all together.<\/p>\nAnd it shows.\u00c2\u00a0 Really does.\u00c2\u00a0 Character motivations change with every scene.\u00c2\u00a0 People<\/a> are creepy for no reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Doing things for no reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Ideas are thrown in like random spice.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’ll help, maybe it’ll make everything taste even weirder.\u00c2\u00a0 Who cares?<\/p>\nThere’s my problem with the film.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it delivers on spectacle.\u00c2\u00a0 But Lucio Fulci didn’t really care.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a horror movie Shake ‘N’ Bake.\u00c2\u00a0 Fulci slapped a bunch of crap together and didn’t care how it came out.<\/p>\nI can’t help comparing it to “Hausu<\/a>.”\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a surreal take on girls growing up, at least in my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 It comes off as bizarre and incoherent, but they’re going for a specific effect.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s disorienting, creepy but goofy, with an odd sense of understated sexual tension.\u00c2\u00a0 Boys aren’t unwelcome, just far outside their purview.<\/p>\nBut Fulci’s film, by whatever fucking name, comes off as irritating and self-absorbed.<\/p>\nStuff happens.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck you, that’s why<\/a>.<\/p>\nSorry, I think this descended into a movie review screed.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t hate the film nearly as much as Fulci’s attitude about it.\u00c2\u00a0 At least with other Italian filmmakers, they had a goal and a desire to defeat the limitations of their embryonic industry.\u00c2\u00a0 When asked whether Fulci was a genius or a hack, the female lead of this film said he was both.\u00c2\u00a0 And that really nails it.\u00c2\u00a0 He was talented, but he was a lazy fuck.<\/p>\nHow might Afterhell<\/em> figure into this equation?\u00c2\u00a0 I’d love Afterhell<\/em> to approach the levels of lunacy and perversity that Fulci could.\u00c2\u00a0 But when we reach them, I want it to be for a reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the characters had to go there.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the story demanded it.<\/p>\nIf gore was the end-all be-all of horror, I’d be cranking out chickenshit versions of Afterhell<\/em> every few months.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d just record foley people tearing and smashing melons for days on end, then base the scripts around the results.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to do that.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to write about what frightens, shocks, amuses, and outrages me.\u00c2\u00a0 About what tears at my insides.<\/p>\nTo do anything else — in my mind, deep in my heart of hearts — would be lying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For fuck’s sake.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been a year. I said I was going to keep up, but I didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Look, it’s just been fucking chaos.\u00c2\u00a0 Some good, all sorts of bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Even a fracture. It hasn’t been easy, but we’re trying to keep the faith.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, I offer proof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,27,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-personal","category-production-notes","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/40.media.tumblr.com\/0bedb9bb81848b175c971a912dd50748\/tumblr_mx61d9ZsRC1qmemvwo1_500.jpg\"){kind=link}