Film Review: MURDER PARTY (2007)

It’s Halloween Eve and everyone is out to party, except Chris (Chris Sharp) a recluse who is a fly on the wall until he finds an invitation to a “Murder Party” that he thinks is for him.  This is the start of the satire of writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s Murder Party (2007).  Chris is a simply man who has spent his life avoiding conflict of any kind.  He even lets his house cat win all the arguments between them.  When he’s given the invitation he decides to come up with his own costume and attend. 

Chris travels across the city to this underground party filled with lots of the artistic types only to learn that the “murder party” is his own.  He is quickly subdued and tied up as the group decides the most artistic way to torture and/or kill Chris.  Chris finds himself in a world of people who are trying to be the best in their own respective mediums (one is a filmmaker, one a photographer, one a painter, etc.).  Chris is naïve to the artist world but soon he becomes one with the idea when he has to find a way to survive.

The great thing about this film is that Chris is no hero and he really doesn’t have much of a clue as be bumbles his way from one incident to the next.  He’s like the average Joe who might be a tad bit slow on the up take but so are his captors who each have their own agendas and will stop at nothing to rise to the top.  I do have to hand it to Saulnier and his excellent cast that they know how to balance the comedy with the horror and gore because by the end it is a total artistic bloodbath.  This is actually a much better film than expected that is never predictable and always funny.

Graphic Novel Review: SOMETHING MONSTROUS

For fans of The X-Files and Steve Niles, Niles’ (with R.H. Stavis) graphic novel Something Monstrous will be a revelation.  Niles has already done an official X-Files story with The X-Files/30 Days of Night crossover but now he’s done his own homage to the iconic franchise.  This story follows siblings Cody and Alexis after Alexis returns home to the small town she grew up in to bail her brother out of jail and to get over the death of her father.  It also just so happens that at the same time several of the town’s citizens have been meeting untimely and gruesome deaths at the hands of some giant shadow like creatures.  When the locals are unable to handle the murders two FBI agents are brought in but the murders keep happening and the bodies keep piling up and Alexis and Cody soon realize that the murders may have something to do with something that happened in their past and that they may be more responsible than they know.

This is one of Niles’ darker stories as it has to do with child abuse and how it can affect two people in completely different ways.  Whereas Alexis fled her hometown to get away from what happened to her as a child, her brother Cody decides to remain at home and drink himself to death and become revengeful and bitter.  This plays into the story as when these two sibling finally come back together as adults they accidently release something conjured up from their past that will destroy everyone who was involved with the abuse from their past.

The two FBI agents are Niles’ version of Mulder and Scully and even make several comments about it.  Niles does have more fun with these two characters as they are also the comic relief of the story despite the fact that they are responsible for uncovering most of the mystery that surrounds the story and all the characters.

Along for the ride on this story in terms of art is Stephanie Buscema whose style may turn a few people off (as it did me at first glance) but after reading the story it perfectly complimented the story.  Buscema was a great choice for the story and her take on the so-called shadow monsters of the story works well.  Between Niles, Stavis, and Buscema Something Monstrous is one of the more interesting monster stories out there because it has more to it than meets the eye.  This is one that monster fans should definitely take a look at.

Book review: Meat is Murder! An Illustrated Guide to Cannibal Culture by Mikita Brottman

 If cannibals and cannibal culture is not your thing than you should skip author Mikita Brottman’s book Meat is Murder! An Illustrated Guide to Cannibal Culture as it may be too much for you.  Despite the fact that the cannibal film was quite popular in the late ‘70s to ‘80s cannibal culture has always stayed under the radar, at least as far as the mainstream is concerned.  Brottman’s book changes all of that.

Brottman’s book is an invitation to everything in regards to cannibal culture which includes films but is not exclusive to films.  In fact, most of the first half of the book has nothing to do with cannibal films.  The first part of the book deals with the anthropology of the cannibal as well as a look at all the real life criminals and cases involving cannibalism from all over the world.  This part of the book will be most interesting to non-film scholars as it delves deep into where and how cannibalism came to be part of our society noting cases in which it was forced upon a group of individuals (as seen in the story of the stranded rugby team who crash landed into the Andes mountains in 1972 as depicted in the film Alive) as well as a cultural phenomenon as seen in some third world countries.  The book then touches upon some of the most infamous real life cannibals such as Ed Gein, Edmund Emil Kemper, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, among many others.

The exploits of these real life cannibals segways into these real life caanibals both real and exploitive.  Everything from Psycho to the Texas Chain Saw Massacre makes as appearance in this book and Brottman makes sure to emphasize where all this fits into the pantheon of cannibal culture.  A whole book could have been dedicated to cannibalism in film but Brottman wants to discover how and why audiences have been so fascinated by both real life cannibalism and its film counterpart.

Brottman provides a wealth of information and photographs for everything in the book (earning the title of being an “illustrated guide”) and readers will learn more than they should about cannibal culture and how it has defined not only a sub-genre of horror film but pop culture and anthropological culture as well.