Vacationing with Vlad

This week, we have a review of the new independent horror film A Dark Souvenir, but first, we were also lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview the movie's writer, director and editor, Matthew Pillischer, who has some insights about his movie, other movies, and what new artists could face when venturing into the realm of moviemaking.

Midnight Channel: Why a horror movie? Have you always been a fan of the genre, or was it just this one idea you found interesting?

Matthew Pillischer: I love horror, scary movies. I remember making haunted houses for my mom in my room when I was like 8 years old. Not sure where that love of scary came from, but it's always been there.

MC: My sister and I were both into horror at a pretty young age as well. Night of the Living Dead, The Thing, anything that was on TV back then. What are some of your favorite horror movies you’d recommend?

MP: Well some of them are typical: The Shining, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween...I also really liked foreign films that are generally creepy: Michael Haneke, and Ingmar Bergman has probably been my biggest filmmaking influence over the years.

MC: Hour of the Wolf was pretty creepy.

MP: Yeah, love Hour of the Wolf-- that's gotta be his scariest. But also just love the humanity in his films, the characters, the pain and sorrow, the realness of life. Lately I've really liked Ti West (especially House of the Devil), Pontypool, Resolution and The Dawning for low budget indie horror. Also love Rosemary's Baby-- that sort of slow build movie is one of my favorites.

MC: A Dark Souvenir has a “based on true events” disclaimer at the beginning, which always makes me wonder which events a movie is referring to. Do you mean the history of Vlad and the sea fort, the Copenhagen honeymoon, something totally different?

MP: Honestly, I just put it in there because it creeps so many people out. It's a little overplayed to do that.  It's also kind of an inside joke because truly the movie features a lot of our real lives-- like all the European footage and wedding footage, which of course was real and our wedding and our honeymoon.

MC: So it’s not referring to Dracula’s spirit hitching a ride back to Philly.

MP: Hopefully no. But I like that as a catchline for the movie....

MC: Did you get the inspiration for the movie from visiting the sea fort, or did you already have the movie in mind when you went there and film all the fort footage with that in mind?

MP: No, I got inspiration while we were at the fort. It was so creepy and cool. I'm always writing movies in my head, at least once a day, and I'm always taking photos or videos with my iPhone too.  So, as I'm shooting the footage at Trekroner Sea Fort and thinking of a movie idea (my movie ideas are typically horror, though sometimes drama), that's where it began. I started writing the story on the plane ride back from our honeymoon and it evolved slowly over the next 2 years as we shot it.

MC: It’s part of the whole Vlad the Impaler myth that I had actually never heard of, which leads into the whole movie being a pretty unconventional take on Dracula’s curse. That one particular image, the waterspout face, seems to be a sort of iconic image of the movie, on the website and the Facebook page, and so on. Did it just stand out as something especially creepy?

MP: Yeah, the reason the Vlad story is a little different is because I sort of squeezed it in after writing the idea of a general haunting coming back with this couple after their honeymoon. It wasn't Vlad the Impaler at first, but then I had the idea that maybe I could work that in. So I asked some people, some twitter followers and friends, and they all said, Why not? That's where that came from. The image of the fountain head is just some of the creepy footage I collected that yes really stood out as something creepy. And all the things I've chosen have symbolism to me on many levels.

And I should say, this movie has been a bit of a one-man-band. The marketing images I've used thus far have all been my creation, though I just hired a friend artist Jay McPhillips to design the real cover art and poster. It's not going to be that image, but a cross of the forest (where Frieda wanders after popping some pills), and a mixture of "freaky Frieda." The two images faded into each other. Should be done and up on our sites and social media soon, Jay's almost done.

MC: What other sort of symbolism and thematic elements should people pay attention to in the movie? There are a lot of things that stand out — the statue face, the waterspout, the recurring circle on the ground — and there’s that quote that starts it off….

MP: Right. Well, there's a lot of themes I was working through. The quote in the beginning is a clue. We are Jewish (my wife Karen was raised Jewish, and I've become very involved culturally since she came into my life), we are deeply involved in our synagogue, and we are deep social justice people-- activists, organizers. A lot of the movie explores some very controversial things within the American Jewish community that are taboo to talk about -- the trauma of the Holocaust, and how that victimization has led to extreme fear in many American Jews of another mass pogrom always around the corner (somewhat justifiable based on history of the oppression of Jewish people). But that fear has led some to the point of being willing to further victimize other communities-- namely Palestinians. So all that is in this movie too, underneath.

But not many people may get that unless I point it out, and it doesn't need to be about that to enjoy it, I think. It's just an added layer that I needed in the process.

MC: Do you have any advice for other new filmmakers hoping to break into the industry? Particularly for horror or science-fiction films, as there’s that whole other thing that comes into it, the special effects and makeup and so on, which you don’t necessarily have to worry about in, you know, a romantic comedy. Even in a horror movie that’s focused primarily on dialogue and atmosphere — like you said, a slow build.

MP: Hm. Good question. I think aspiring filmmakers have to ask themselves a couple of questions: why do I want to make movies? Usually it's a combination of art (self fulfillment, or therapy in my case) and wanting to make money doing something cool. That's how it is for me, but more because I just NEED to make art to feel alive. If you really want to make a career out of this, it requires more calculation, more of a business plan and sense. I don't really have that, and this is an awful, awful business to break into. The biggest advice I could have is focus on keeping costs ultra ultra amazingly low, so that any money made is almost instantly profit.

Work with friends to start, which is what I've been doing. They'll invest in your idea even if they're not sure what the fuck it is, because they like you. But on the I NEED TO MAKE ART side of things -- just go out and do it. Figure out what kind of story you can tell based on the resources you have. Make something. It won't be perfect, it might not even be good.  But a bad completed film is better than a great film idea that is never made. Know what I mean? It's easier said than done, but if you want to make movies in your life you should make sure to go out there and do it before you're dead in the ground.

And find great people to work with. Surround yourself with amazing people who are inspiring. I don't have anything particularly great to say about effects. I did all mine myself, super no budget.  They look decent I think. I am super lo-fi, and you can make things work.  Sound is more important than image in many ways. That's crucial to remember in horror/sci-fi genres. Get great sound, you can't fix bad sound.

MC: The sound stood out. On watching the movie again, there were bits of dialogue and sound effects I didn’t catch the first time because of our heater running insanely loud when it comes on. And the music was creepy — I’ve seen several indie horror films now with some exceptional music that heightens the atmosphere. The part where John is attacked at work, in particular — when I first watched it, I don’t think I heard Frieda’s voice.

MP: Oh cool -- yeah, that whole scene is the sound obviously. And the main climax where Frieda is on the 9-1-1 call, obviously is mostly sound. I like movies that do that, cut the lights, and it's actually dark, hard to see. And you're hearing people fumbling around in the dark. Some of it is music, some of it is sound design, some of it is sound effects. I actually recorded my cat when he was sick and making horrible noises, at first to show the vet and then later I slowed it down and that's a lot of the sounds when the spirit is around.

MC: Lastly…where do you go from here? After the initial release of A Dark Souvenir is over and done with, do you already have another movie in mind?

MP: I have a couple in mind that I'm developing -- "Tila's Last Halloween" would be a mixture of a coming of age movie about a teenager going out on her last trick-or-treating mixed with a horrifying satanic cult movie (that tries to steal her newly adopted baby brother, and she has to grow up and save him). "Brown's Blood Massacre for Christ" (or something equally ear-catching) would be a horror movie where the Abolitionist John Brown is the killer, and it's all slavemasters being slaughtered (would play on identifying more with the killer than with the killed). And as I said, I'm basically always thinking new ideas in my head, but these are the two I'm most drawn to, that could also have subtle political undertones.

MC: Thanks for talking with us, Matthew Pillischer! Writer, director and editor of A Dark Souvenir. We look forward to seeing your next work.

MP: You're so welcome!  Max, thanks so much for the work you do on your blog, I enjoy reading it, and I'm looking forward to future posts and staying in touch.

A Dark Souvenir (2014)

A Dark Souvenir is our second sort-of-vampire movie in a row, though in this case, as noted in the interview, it's partially autobiographical, as well as featuring a new and unusual take on Count Dracula's curse. We start out with John and Frieda, a newly married couple enjoying their honeymoon in Scandinavia. During the course of their vacation, they end up taking shelter in an old sea fort during a rainstorm and learn something of the place's dark history, which is tied up with the defeat and capture of Vlad the Impaler.

Upon returning to Philadelphia, the two of them find their lives unraveling thanks to a series of ominous occurrences. They receive threatening letters from the former owner of the house, who claims that they are living on stolen property. The house is broken into, but nothing is taken. Their pets start to vanish. John develops a strange rash on his side which seems to be an animal bite, and he's attacked at work -- something he has no memory of when he returns home. Shadows seem darker, and a mysterious black-robed figure with the stone face of a waterspout gargoyle roams the halls of their home at night.

Like Absentia, A Dark Souvenir finds most of its horror in broad daylight, and in a slowly mounting dread, rather than in gory spectacle against a backdrop of blue-screen night. There's an unsettling sense of a house fracturing from within under the stress of everyday hardships as well as the intervention of outside forces. It's a long time before anything actually horrific happens, and everything before this establishes John and Frieda as a likable, intelligent, artistically-inclined couple in their 30s, making it all the more disturbing when their behavior starts to become erratic and the intrusion of the spirit that's caught a ride home with them becomes more aggressive and direct. You know things can't end well for them, but you want them to somehow manage to escape their dark houseguest.

A Dark Souvenir is super low-budget, and as with most indie horror movies to come out in the last four years or so that are worth watching, this works to its advantage. Absentia was a monster movie whose monster is all the more frightening because we never see it head-on. The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh was a slow-boiling movie where very little even happens, but manages to keep you on the edge of your seat all the same. A Dark Souvenir is similarly spare in its presentation, and just as strange, explaining none of its recurring symbols and dreamlike imagery outright. Its final minutes, a confrontation with the unknown in the pitch-black house, are as creepy and tense as anything I've reviewed in recent months.

Available On: A Dark Souvenir is not currently available on any of the usual streaming services, but here's some information about how to see it online or order a physical copy on DVD. It has recently become an Official Selection at the 2015 Maryland International Film Festival.

Official Site: http://www.adarksouvenir.com/
Email Address: ADarkSouvenir@gmail.com
On Facebook: http://facebook.com/ADarkSouvenir
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/ADarkSouvenir

Hugh Grant, Vampire Hunter

Before the review, I think I should write some personal stuff. Partly to get it off my own chest, but mostly just in case anybody reading is in the same boat, or has been in the same boat, and might find it helpful in putting things into perspective.

I've been struggling with acute depression for a long time now -- not knowing it until the last couple of years, and, not knowing it, not doing anything about it either. Restarting this blog with a different concept and structure in mind was one thing I did last March or thereabouts in order to fight that, so this isn't entirely unrelated. Depression is like watching a horror movie. You watch someone going up the attic stairs with nothing but a candle or a flashlight, and no matter how many times you tell the doomed idiot onscreen not to go up there and get herself murdered, the movie will inevitably play out the same way every time. She always goes upstairs. She always finds her boyfriend's mangled corpse. She always dies. Only in this case, the person doing all this is you, and still...all you can do is watch. You're perfectly aware that you should be doing something else, and you're also aware that it will play out in the same way it always has -- and knowing that somehow makes it worse.

Other people try to help. They tell you not to be angry, or sad, or to let the things you can't control get under your skin. Naturally, at this point, you're probably stuck between wishing your own emotions had that convenient on/off switch that other people seem to have, and asking, "Well, that's brilliant, why didn't I think of that before?" Don't be sad. Problem solved. As frustrating as this is, you can't even blame them, because they're just trying to help with something they don't understand. This also makes it worse. You can't blame them, so, as with everything else, you blame yourself. (Note to anyone else reading who may have a friend who suffers from a depressive disorder: don't tell them to get over it, don't tell them to just be happier. It does about as much good as stabbing Jason Voorhees.)

So, how do you get over it? You don't, really, but getting rid of the worst of it, reducing it to a sort of background radiation, is down to you, and only you will know when this is even a possibility. Two things happened to coincide that made me realize that if I didn't change my perspective, I was going to end up jumping in front of a bus someday after work. One of these things was that a coworker who really needed to be fired was fired. This coworker reminded me entirely too much of myself. She was angry all the time, constantly complaining about everything, eventually talking at great length, out loud, about punching out her supervisor and everyone else in the office she didn't like (well, all right, that last part was something I never did). For a while I had been thinking, My God, is that what I sound like? Do people think of me the same way? After she was fired, morale improved in the office. My morale improved. My own complacent cynicism and constant petty misery, which I saw reflected in this other person, made the office a better place through its absence.

This was a sort of curtain lifted from my eyes. At the same time, the other thing that made me realize what a boring, worn-out pessimist I was (and still am, though not to the same extent, and not for lack of trying) aired on TV -- True Detective. This is probably the best new show to air in the last five years or so. It's the closest thing we'll ever get to a Call of Cthulhu TV series. Rust and Marty, the two protagonists, are kind of terrible people, but you end up caring about them anyway. Again, I heard too much of myself in Rust, and while his world-weary, misanthropic nihilism was funny at first, I eventually realized what a wreck it had made of him. I decided, in a moment of clarity, that whatever sort of person I ended up, it would not be a miserable, alcoholic, self-hating shell of a human being, waiting for an excuse to give up on life. I wouldn't let the little things get to me. I wouldn't be sad -- not all the time, anyway.

Of course, like I said, you can't just get over it. After you decide to keep going another day, another year, instead of jumping in front of the nearest truck, you may be out of the woods, but you still need something to keep your mind off of it so you don't keep looking back toward the tree line. I need more of these distractions, but resurrecting this blog was the first. Even when you think you're done with it, you're not. Like the Stephen King story says -- sometimes they come back. As long as your brain is a mix of chemicals, electricity and meat, and depression is causing that particular machine to function imperfectly, you're going to need a distraction. I stopped writing this blog for a couple of months, and I doubt it's a coincidence that I find myself criticizing myself more sharply, looking back toward the edge of that pit.

Anyway, that's enough out of me about depression. Let's get this back on track with one of the classics.

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

The Lair of the White Worm is a trippy 1988 horror film from the master of trippy horror films, Ken Russell, who was also responsible for Altered States and Gothic, the latter of which is really weird. Lair stars Peter Capaldi -- who you might recognize as the twelfth and current Doctor on Doctor Who, except that here he looks like he's about eighteen years old and has the most ridiculous hair ever -- as Angus Flint, a Scottish archaeologist who finds an ancient reptilian skull in the backyard of his landlords, the English sisters Eve and Mary (get it?) Trent. It also stars an equally baby-faced Hugh Grant as James D'Ampton, heir to the property and new Lord of the Manor. He's basically a bored, rich playboy with nothing to do but be bored and rich; he certainly doesn't care too much about his legacy, as one of his ancestors supposedly slew the legendary white dragon, the D'Ampton Worm, a bit of backstory explained to Angus at a party thrown by D'Ampton. There's also a pretty awesome folk rock song about it.

Lair is a vampire movie -- sort of. Here, vampires are snake-people who worship the Roman snake god Dionin. They're still seductive, and they still turn you by biting you, but they can also spit acidic venom that makes you hallucinate. The chief vampire is Lady Sylvia Marsh, another recent arrival in the area. Lady Marsh has just moved into a long-deserted local manor, Temple House, which happens to be near the entrance to Stonerich Cavern, where the Trent sisters' father vanished while exploring. She spends most of her time indulging her fondness for black leather, Snakes and Ladders, and eating wayward schoolboys. As master vampires go, Lady Marsh is gloriously campy, one of the best you'll find on film.

The Doctor forgot his sonic screwdriver, 

but at least he remembered his bagpipes.

The entire movie is pretty ridiculous, actually, which is mostly why I recommend it. It's fully aware of its absurdity, with its unabashedly kinky sexuality, acid-trip vampire bites and the monsters' weakness not to garlic and sunlight, but bagpipes, mongooses and snake-charming records. It also has Hugh Grant chopping a snake-lady in half with a claymore, then falling into a set of drums. If that doesn't make you want to watch something, I don't know what will.

Hugh the Barbarian.

Trivia: Lair of the White Worm is loosely based on a novel of the same name by Bram Stoker -- his final work to be published (in 1911).

Available On: Netflix.

"Frankenstein! So Good Of You To Come Back!"

Well, it's been a while. Apologies for that. Long story, but from now on, I'm going to update the blog twice a month instead of four times. Partly to give myself a couple of weekends off, but mostly because I'm going to run out of watchable movies available on Netflix or Amazon Prime a lot faster if I keep going at the usual rate. So, without further ado, let's examine one of the great cinematic achievements of our time, a classic that deserves a place on your shelf alongside Citizen Kane, Ran and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I, Frankenstein (2014)

You know, I don't really know if I, Frankenstein can technically be classified as a horror movie, but it's got gargoyles, demons and Frankensteins, so I'm going to give it a pass. I love this movie, because it's terribad, and I was glad to see it pop up on Netflix in the past week or two. It's a spiritual successor of sorts to the Underworld movies. Actually, the title was probably originally Underworld with Demons and Gargoyles Instead of Werewolves and Vampires, but they changed it when they realized it was too long. The plot is pretty simple, but it still doesn't make any sense, because it's stupid. So at the end of "Frankenstein" -- the fact that this movie sets itself up as a sequel to the novel, much as the Castlevania games are supposed to be a sequel to "Dracula," is just one of the many things about it that amuses me -- the monster kills Victor's wife and runs off to the Antarctic wastes, where his creator pursues him in search of vengeance.

It turns out Victor freezes to death in Antarctica, and I have to admit that was kind of a poorly thought out plan on his part. The monster brings back Victor's body and buries it in the cemetery outside their mansion, but then he's immediately attacked by demons and has to defend himself. Two gargoyles show up out of nowhere and, after the demons have been taken care of, decide they should take the creature back to the big church where all the gargoyles live. Leonora, queen of the Gargoyle Order, tells the creature, "My name is Leonora, queen of the Gargoyle Order," and decides to let him live for now, because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. They also give him some weapons, and he picks a couple of beating sticks which one of the gargoyles tells him are too blunt and cumbersome to use -- which makes me wonder why they had them there in the first place. The gargoyles want the monster to help them fight demons, since there's apparently been a war going on between gargoyles and demons for a while now.

He doesn't anything to do with it, so he tells them off and then strikes out on his own for a couple hundred years, only taking out demons who come after him in the wilderness. When he comes back to civilization, he winds up in what I'm fairly sure is the city from the first Underworld movie, since it's vaguely gothic, dimly lit and nobody seems to live there. The demons, led by Demon Prince Naberius (Bill Nighy), want Frankenstein -- because it's a lot funnier when someone shows up and yells "Frankenstein!" than when the gargoyles call him "Adam" -- for totally stupid reasons. It has to be said that the demons and gargoyles have the dumbest weaknesses ever. The gargoyles can only be killed by something without a soul, which if you're going by Biblical terms, means basically anything but a human. Including demons, so they're pretty much tailor-made to be killed off by the people they're specifically fighting. The demons are even worse, as they can only be killed off by something engraved with the symbol of the Gargoyle Order. Frankenstein's metal sticks have the symbol carved on them. I assume you could carve the symbol into a ham sandwich, slap a demon in the face with it and send him back down to hell, I don't know.

Anyway, the demons want Frankenstein because they want to basically reverse-engineer the process used to create him so they can resurrect a big army of knockoff Frankensteins which can then be occupied by the demons who have already been sent back to hell during the war. I don't know why the demons in hell can't just come back without the benefit of a Frankenstein body, but I guess that's the rules or something. To that end, Bill Nighy has enlisted the aid of a couple of scientists, apparently the only two humans living in the entire city, to resurrect his army, but he needs Frankenstein to do it, since he's the only one the process has ever worked on, apparently. Naturally, Frankenstein ends up going on the run with the hot lady scientist (played by Yvonne Strahovski -- no stranger to being in charge of a shady, well-funded corporate project with the intent to bring the dead back to life).

All this sets up Frankenstein for a big fight with Naberius at the end. He picks up some even more ridiculous weapons along the way. The first Underworld movie had some of the goofiest weapons around. Some friends and I actually designed a bare-bones Underworld tabletop pen-and-paper RPG with skills based on the movie, like "Remove Trenchcoat," "Improbable Weapon Use" and "Push Civilian." I, Frankenstein doesn't ever get quite as silly on the weapons front as dual whip-swords and sunlight bullets, but it's still pretty funny.

This movie is dumb in basically every way it's possible to be dumb. That's why I like it. It's one of those movies where, if you watch the trailer and have no desire whatsoever to see it "because it looks stupid," I can't help you understand. I'm kind of tired of trying to explain the whole concept of "so bad it's good" to people, because I get the feeling it's one of those things that you either "get" or you don't, ever.

I, Frankenstein has all kinds of stuff that tickles my funny bone. Slow-motion walking with hard rock music in the background, really clumsy expository dialogue, demons who look like businessmen wearing rubber masks from Halloween Adventure, and most of all, Bill Nighy, the man, the myth, the legend. I love basically any movie with Bill in it, and I have to wonder, given his acting chops, if he sometimes does this kind of movie for laughs; so he can just cut loose and chew the scenery without worrying about it. (Actually, the first movie I ever saw him in was Underworld.) Among the funnier things, to me, is the fact that Frankenstein is still "made of twelve different pieces of eight different corpses," but he just sort of looks like Aaron Eckhart after a bar fight.

I can't explain why this movie is worth watching. If you're like me, and you enjoy a bad movie as much as a good one sometimes, this is one of the best-worst around. Just check out this trailer. (I'm also including the Spanish-language poster for it, because the title is so much better.)

Trivia: The creator of Yo, Frankenstein and co-creator of Underworld, the comically deep-voiced (and awesomely named, it must be said) Kevin Grevioux, can be seen here as Naberius' henchman Dekar, and in the Underworld movies as Raze. He apparently also based this movie on a graphic novel he wrote. Must be small-press, because I've never seen it anywhere, but still, something to watch out for.

Another bit of trivia: The people who made this movie weren't all stupid. Naberius is actually the name of a demon marquis named by Dutch demonologist Johann Weyer in the late 1500s, who may or may not be a personification of Cerberus. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Available On: Netflix.