Premiering in 2015 at the South X Southwest  festival The Corpse of Anna Fritz  is a Spanish Language thriller/horror film about  morgue attendant Pau (Albert Carbo) who finds himself alone with the body of a young and extremely popular actor Anna Fritz (Alba Ribas.) Pau texts photos of Anna’s corpse to his friends Ivan (Cristian Valencia) and Javi (Bernat Saumell) who join Pau in the morgue to ogle the actor’s corpse. Being men of low character and with their inhibitions eradicated by cocaine the word of the day becomes necrophilia. A bad and immoral idea turns disastrous when Anna awakens from her unexplained comatose state and the three young men are faced with the serious criminal charges but lack the moral fortitude to do anything approaching what is right.

Anna Fritz is a horror film that presents no supernatural elements existing in the continuum of thriller and thrillers turns on their characters and their acting. This film does an admirable job at both of these factors. The young men with their limited intellect and obsession with partying are sadly not outside of the bounds of reality and their divergent reactions to Anna’s living state drive the dramatic conflict at the heart of their relationship. Alba Ribas as Anna is phenomenal, her character at times is paralyzed leaving the actor with only her eyes to express her terror and shock and she is terrific at it. The most empathetic character in the small film Alba’s Anna is the emotional heart that beats the movie’s lifeblood of tension.

With a brief running time of just 74 minutes Anna Fritz  does not overstay it welcome, moving directly into the tense plot and telling its story with economy.  Currently streaming on Shudder  Anna Fritz  is not a film to everyone’s tastes but it successfully captures the terror, tension and idiocy of its character without devolving, despite prominent nudity, into titillation with the real horror always centered in Anna’s experiences.

I love a good documentary and that is only amplified if it is a documentary about films or filmmaking. After all two Christmases ago my sweetie-wife got for me the 13 hours documentary The Story of Film  and I was thrilled. So discovering that the streaming services Shudder  is offering the massive 6 hour and 40 minute Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13^th  was exciting news.

Crystal Lake Memories  covers every installment in the successful franchise from the first film in 1980 through the most recent re-boot and including the 90s television series and the monster match-up movie Freddy vs. Jason.

Each installment gets it’s own chapter in the documentary, part of the reason why it is so massive in its extended running time, with cast and crew interviews and a history of the writing and production decisions surrounding the films. This makes it very easy to watch the documentary over several viewing. Full disclosure I am not the most engaged fan of this franchise. I have not seen every entry; I did enjoy the series though it had nothing to do with the main storyline of Jason and killed campers. I still enjoyed this documentary quite a bit and for people who are fans this is a rare glimpse into the decisions that shaped the franchise and why some of the most controversial calls were made in the manner they were.

Shudder  has become one of my favorite streaming services and gives in my opinion fantastic value for the low monthly cost.

Released in 2017 to a limited theatrical run The Void is a modestly budgeted cosmic horror film set in a rural besieged hospital.

Daniel Carter is a sheriff’s deputy in a small rural community when late one evening while on patrol his discovers an injured man, bloodied and disorientated on an isolated back road. He takes the men to the closest hospital, one that is in the process of closing down after a fire devastated most of the building leaving the facility this night with a skeleton staff and only one patient already admitted. Daniel’s wife Allison works at the hospital as a nurse and though they are not estranged it is clear a tragedy haunts their relationship. Before long Daniel, Allison, and the small collection of characters are besieged when masked cultists willing to murder anyone who attempts to flee the building surround the hospital. Strangely, the cultists seem uninterested in invading the facility and it quickly becomes apparent that the real horror is already inside the hospital.

Avoiding second tier digital imagery and boasting practical creature effects The Void  makes the most of its limited budget. Inspired by but not based upon the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this film starts itself grounded in a real and recognizable world before sliding into a scenario of monsters, madness, and unimaginable horrors from beyond. Competently acted and directed the film is not perfect but works overall as an entertaining horror movie that is perfectly willing to leave questions unanswered and matters to audience interpretation. While there is plenty of gore and injury effects the heart of this movie is about loss and how loss transforms us into people we may have little understanding of. There is a slight cinematic trope of ignoring serious injury after a few scenes but overall the movie is fast paces, enjoyable and for fans horror well worth their time.

The Voidis currently streaming on the horror service Shudder.

This year was the 10^thannual Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival. For the second year, the festival has been hosted by the non-profit theater The Frida Cinema and this year I managed to attend 2 of the 3 day run time. I am sad that I missed Friday but day-job commitments are paramount.

Saturday started with a block of short films programed around the theme ‘A Shock to the System’ where the horror lies more in systemic and cultural issues than a beastie or man with a knife. There were 11 films in this block and many were quite compelling. The film that most disturbed me was Off Fleek  which centered in a young woman and the terrible effect of the cyber-abuse she endured. It is a film that haunts the mind well after its brief running time has ended. Per haps most entertaining  was Kathy  a film about growing up gay in a fundamentalist household where demons and possession are common dinnertime discussions. And most artistic visually striking of the block was LVRS a film without dialog that symbolically explored the nature of abusive relationships.

The next block continue the theme with the longer films Conversion Therapist  and What Daphne Sawand included a panel discussion about the issues of ‘reparative’ therapy and human trafficking. We rounded out Saturday with two feature films but the one I enjoyed the most from that evening was Reborn  starring Barbara Crampton and Michael Pare.

Sunday again started with a block of short subjects, this time the theme being Monsters, Sci-Fi and Beyond. Nest  was a ‘found footage’ style short that understood brevity if powerful in that model of filmmaking. How to be Alone  was a wonderful exploration of isolation and the mental toll that can take on a person while Ulysses  presented perhaps the best mermaid design I have ever watched.

Then we were treated to a long form short film block where instead of running times between 2 and 12 minutes the films were along the lines of a half an hour including a lovly film about a séance in the White House at the height of the Civil War. Though perhaps my favorite of that black came from Brazil For My Cat, Mieze  where justice comes paired with a fine wine.

We rounded out the day with two feature films, Antrum – the Deadliest Film Ever Made  which included as part of its conceit a mini-documentary about the fictional film Antrum  and the deaths associated with it, but the film struck me as more gimmick that story. The final feature was Pornoa movie about religious teenagers who accidentally summon a succubus in the theater where they work. It’s over-the top, bloody, sexy, and funny, providing one of the festival’s’ most memorable line of dialog; “I’m not going to get excited by your exploded testicles!”

All in all the festival was a grand time well worth the 3 hours of drive time each day.

Hailing from 1972 and currently streaming on the specialized horror service Shudder, All the Colors of the Dark  is a giallo,  a genre of Italian cinema that specialized in sensation lurid tales often centered on aspects of sex, sexual perversion, and violence. Part of the global exploitive cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, giallos  are colorful, have amazing photography, and bold art direction, the best of them are usually associated with the noted directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Though an Italian film All the Colors of the Dark  was filmed and set in England.

Jane (Edwige Fenech), while recovering from a car crash that injured her and killed her unborn baby, is tormented by terrifying visions of a knife-wielding attacker. The vision manifest most often when Jane and her boyfriend Richard (George Hilton) attempt to be sexually involved. Richard insists she needs vitamins, while her sister Barbara, who works for a psychiatrist presses for psychiatry. Jane’s neighbor, Mary, introduces Jane to a satanic coven and the events explode into debauchery, assault, and murder with Jane’s visions becoming apparently real as she loses connection with reality.

With plenty of blood and nudity All the Colors of the Dark is not a film for the young, sensitive, or easily offended. The final act of the movie ties things together with an explanation, but this, as with most giallos  in my opinion, is more a perfunctory move providing only the barest of rationales that allow the dream-like and nightmarish imagery to play out.  This sort of movie you do not watch for logical consistency or carefully interlocking plotting but rather for the surreal nature of the visuals and the emotional punch of the scenes. I find the style reminiscent of David Lynch albeit with a much more conventional approach.

As we wind down into the end of August and the end of summer, I can look forward to two different fantastic film events.

First up, starting on August 30^thand running for three days is the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival. Started ten years ago by my friend Miguel Rodriguez the festival is dedicated to horror films of all stripes. Miguel and his team cast a wide net using a liberal definition of horror that includes everything from neo-noir crime thrillers to surrealist experimentations exploring deadly vampire clay. Started in San Diego with a tiny venue, the festival now is hosted in Orange County California at the wonderful art house theater The Frida Cinema, and while the locale has added about an hour and a half of travel time, it is still well worth the effort. Sadly, because August 31^stis the first day of a long holiday weekend and I do not yet have 15 plus years of seniority at my day-job I will be missing the first evening’s festivities including what looks to be a fun film Satanic Panic. Seriously, at my job people rarely leave once they get in the door, and that is understandable, but to get any time off around the holidays is neigh impossible for anyone with less than 15 years of seniority. I do miss the days when the festival was located in San Diego and I could simply drive down to the Museum of Photographic Arts to catch the first evening, but the Frida is a great venue and I would rather the festival thrive than wither simply because it would be easier for me.

The second film event is on September 28^thand is The Secret Morgue 2. Created by our local film fanatics Film Geeks SD, of which Miguel is a founding member he’s responsible for in part or in whole for a whole lot of good film stuff in San Diego, this is a 13 hours marathon of horror film hosted by the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park. Last year at the first Secret Morgue the theme was 70s and 80s horror, the sort of title you would discover in video rental stores, if you remember what those were. The titles were secret and I rolled the dice and attended the screenings. What fun I had! Every film was one I had never seen, and while some were tedious than entertaining, I don’t regret attending. This year the theme is SF Horror and I suspect I will have seen some of these titles before but I could be wrong. Film Geeks SD has a deep cinematic knowledge and their choice can be quite surprising.

Last night I completed a two-night re-watch of the South Korean zombie film Train to Busan.I originally reviewed this movie January 2017 when I had the good fortune to see it in a local micro-theater. At that time I gushed over the film and for Christmas my sweetie-wife gifted me with the Blu-ray edition. So, how does it hold up two years later? Have scales fallen from my eyes and have flaws now made themselves suddenly prominent in the bit of cinema?

No.

Off the top of my head and without digging deep into the history of zombie movies I’d place this film within the top three zombie movies of all time. Mind you I am speaking of quality and not importance. Train to Busan ranks along side the 1978 Dawn of the Dead  and 2004’s Shaun of the Dead as zombie movies that transcend genre and move into the realm of art. Where Dawn  using it’s time to slyly comment on consumerist culture and Shaun  uses it’s rom-com format to address life when it is unexamined, Train with its passengers slicing through the various strata of Korean society, comments on the nature of individuals and their relationship to each other, most exemplified by the estrangement between the lead and his daughter, but the theme echoes in interactions throughout the cast with no character, not even the self-serving and villainous business man, lacking in human depth and need for connection with those they love and cherish.

Re-watching the film I am thunder-struck by the performances. Not simply the leads, who are all fantastic, but every small part if played with the life and vitality of a serious performance. Simple expression and single lines of delivery suggest complex interior lives for characters that are never even granted to the honor of being named. Not to be overlooked are the amazing mime performances of the actors portraying the zombies. Twisting and contorting their bodies the actor exude a sense of inhumanness that turns what had become a tired and standard screen monster into something that again can truly terrify.

By the heart wrenching ending of the film I was thoroughly engrossed in the characters fully invested emotionally, Train to Busan  is a fantastic film.