It's All Ancient Greek to Me

Kolobos (Daniel Liatowitsch & David Todd Ocvirk, 1999)

Being a Gen X'er, the most memorable highlights from 1999 were the following: a total solar eclipse; the first airing of The Sopranos series: the beginning of Eminem's world domination; being more gutted with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace than breaking up with my girlfriend; and the world on tenterhooks over the Millennium Bug. The meta-horror Kolobos was also released that same year, and became a Blockbuster Video staple apparently, gaining a minor cult following ever since. Late pass! I only discovered it this month.

Beginning with a bloody woman stumbling in front of a car in the pooring rain, muttering the word "Kolobos". She awakens in a hospital bed with her face completely bandaged. The majority of the film from this point onwards is told via a series of lengthy flashbacks.

The premise of Kolobos is five young strangers are paid to live in winter retreat (looking like a Poundshop Overlook Hotel) together for a social experiment film. While habiting there, they'll be filmed via cameras installed throughout the premises, à la Big Brother.  Taking its cue from the MTV reality series The Real World, we're presented with entertaining demo reel introductions from our collective. These individuals include: Tina, the extrovert fast food employee who urinates in impatient customers' drinks; Tom, a stand-up comic; Erica, a horror actress from  The Slaughterhouse Factor series of films; Gary, the sensitive, pseudo intellectual; and finally, Kira, the artistic introvert, possessing all the final girl descriptive qualities you would come to expect.

Since Kolobos is a horror film, you don't need to make an educated guess about what's going to occur..

Kira has absolutely no business leaving the safety of her care facility, or as Tina the Drink Spiker calls it "the whacky shack", (which happens to be run by the legendary scream queen and fitness goddess Linnea Quigley in an all too brief cameo) as she's prone to slashing herself and having psychotic visions of faceless people and a disfigured maniac. Have you guessed who the villain is yet?

Kolobos suffers from many significant flaws which would turn away many serious film heads. With the exception of Amy Weber, who plays Kira, the performances are quite poor. Kolobos's co-directors were fresh graduates out of film school and their inexperience is very apparent. The writing is very muddled and convoluted at times. Much of what occurs on screen exists for superficial reasons rather than offer any real coherent sense. From a bonus feature on the film's blu-ray, the film makers admitted to naming their film after the Ancient Greek word for mutilate Kolobos, because it sounded cool.The antagonist has way too much plot armour which logistically makes little sense. Even with a huge suspension of disbelief, the writing has a significantly detrimental affect for the finale. Also, LOL @ the R&B snippet following on from the Lidl brand Suspiria theme during the end credits.

What makes Kolobos blogworthy however, is how unique it ostensibly is for its era: one, it preceeds other early reality TV based horror films I recall by a few years, e.g My Little Eye (2002) and Halloween: Resurrection (2002); two, the house is booby trapped with laser trip wire, metal shutters, acid plumbing, and robotic machines throwing circular razor saws, predating the Saw (2004 - ∞) franchise; and three, it's heavily inspired by both classic giallo and Italian horror way before the renaissance for them became noticeable a decade later.

You don't need to wait very long for the obvious influences either as Kolobos's main theme by William Kidd sounds like a complete rip-off of Goblin's theme from Suspiria (1977). Other than the Argento lighting, my favourite of the homages is the eye gouge scene, which takes obvious inspiration from Lucio Fulci's notoriously graphic eye gouge scene from Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979).

None of the main cast and crew seemed to have had significant career after Kolobos, with the exception of Amy Weber. She briefly went on to become a WWE diva back in the day, and also tried her hand as an budding popstar, covering Girls Aloud's Something Kinda Ooh! and dueting with Sean Kingston. I was going to add, on another alternate Earth, where Kolobos was a major hit, Weber might have never bothered with the wrestling and the singing and been on the same career path as Neve Campbell, but even she kind of faded out, too.

Kolobos is way better than some of the absolute trashfests I adore, but it's also way too burdened by major flaws to enter any kind of serious objective discussion of hailing it a good film; even by many horror film enthusiasts. Having watched this film a couple of times this month, I do understand the reason for its mini cult-following. It's got a lot of heart and ingenuity for what's essentially a low budget slasher and I admire that about it. Kolobos comes across as a freak of nature, as it's an obscure and forgotten, gory forerunner to the types of horror films that would become so prominent in the noughties. Film critics dubbing it as Saw meets Big Brother are kind of spot on about it, however. It's also one of the few films I've watched lately that's lingered with me after its end credits and that's a surprising feat in itself considering the amount of films I watch on the regular.

Come Die With Me

The Invitation (Karyn Kasuma, 2015)

Watching Candy Land (2023) earlier this year had me hungry for another religious cult themed movie that wasn't burdened with tired and recurring folk-horror tropes. It was great when Robert Eggers unleashed The Witch in 2015, but eight years later, I'm officially at Mr. Creosote's bursting point with all that pagan shite. Thankfully, The Invitation (2015) fulfills this film craving.

Set in the upmarket Hollywood hills of L.A, Logan Marshall-Green, alternatively known as Lidl brand Tom Hardy, plays The Invitation's protagonist, Will. Bizarrely, he, and his new lady Kira, are invited to his former home for a lush dinner party hosted by his ex-wife, Eden and her new husband, David. Call me old fashioned, but what kind of person would even attend any kind of party event hosted by an ex?

With John Carroll Lynch, the creepy looking bald giant from the de riguer thriller for millennials, Zodiac (2007), and a half-naked (the bottom half in case you were wondering) hippie chick called Sadie, à la the Tate-LaBianca murders, turning up as odd guests, it's not hard to predict that things are probably going to go sour for this swanky soirée. And things definitely go south when hosts Eden and her second husband David announce they're members of a religious cult along with the two other aforementioned nutjobs. What follows is the consumption of ultra expensive Châteauneuf-du-Plonk, truth games and watching a video of a dying cultist ascending to the afterlife. Oh, what an atmosphere! I love a party with a happy atmosphere!

As a slow-burner, The Invitation's pacing might try the patience of some viewers, but it happens to be a rare example where the played out cliche of continuous gas lighting towards the protagonist's paranoia genuinely works; which wouldn't have been the case if there weren't any supportative scenes devoted to Will and Eden's back story - before and after their shared tragedy. Also, watching LA hipsters, bereft of any intelligence with regards to their self presevation, enduring a multitude of strange and worrying occurrences while still treating Will as a miserable party pooper, is laughably entertaining to me.

Kasuma's film reeks of hipster mumblecore, which would be an automatic turn-off usually, but in the context of bourgeois and narcisstic thirty-somethings at a poncey dinner party, it's positively part and parcel with providing a degree of realism. The Invitation is also part of a mini-wave of films from the 2010s pertaining to all things Hollyweird, supporting the notion of LA being a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. It's why I also feel so drawn to the ambitious mess of the conspiracy noir, Under the Silver Lake (2018) and the slept-on, body horror Starry Eyes (2014); now even more thematically relevant after the #MeToo movement.

First caught The Invitation by chance while casually browsing Netflix. Going in knowing absolutely nothing about the film, it was one of the few rewarding discoveries on that awful streaming service. A tense and suspenseful psychological thriller, laced with enough atmospheric dread to make it feel completely compelling. So chuffed this was given a nice physical media release eventually. 

I've had the misfortune of catching some of Karyn Kasuma's other films and The Invitation is the only one genuinely worth revisiting ever again; not even a demonic Megan Fox in her prime in Jennifer's Body (2009) is worth the time. The feminist-themed horror anthology XX (2017) was completely forgettable. Kasuma's most recent feature film, Destroyer (2018), was a soporifically dull neo-noir. Only memorable part was an unrecognisable Nicole Kidman giving some invalid bloke a hand job! Despite all those duds in her repertoire, it only goes to show that a bad film maker like Kasuma is still potentially capable of churning out a rare gem like The Invitation at some point in their lifetime.

Vampire in Braddock

Martin (George A. Romero, 1977)

Ought to precede this by stating that my first impression of George A. Romero's slept-on vampire film, Martin (1977), was a mostly negative one. Romero's modern update of such a traditional supernatural foe, festooned with indie art house sensibilities, was stark contrast to Hammer's traditionally, gothic bloodsuckers which your pre-teen host was accustomed to back in the day. This was new wave before I even knew new wave. Much like our taste buds maturing as we get older, the same is also applicable with film. For this blogger, Martin has gradually improved for the better.

The youthful Martin, played by John Amplas, is apparently an eighty-four year old vampire who has come to live and work with his elderly cousin Cuda in Braddock, Pennsylvania. The superstitious old man isn't afraid to reveal his contempt for Martin; right from their first meeting at a railway station, he ominously professes to him, "first I will save your soul, then I will destroy you!" From this point, their relationship is set in stone. It's old world meets new world.

Martin dispels many myths regarding vampires: sun light doesn't burn our protagonist, although his eyes are sensitive, however; crucifixes and garlic which Cuda has adorned all over his house to protect him and his daughter Christine from Martin, have no power. You begin to wonder why he would even allow Martin in his home. It's revealed that Martin's condition is a hereditary curse, which is countered with outsiders assuming he is suffering from either being an eccentric oddball. Drugging his victims and cutting them with razors are how Martin goes about feeding his lust for blood. The first kill, set on an overnight train travelling to Pittsburgh, illustrates Martin's predatory instincts and his methodical approach to killing. A disturbing scene, in my opinion.

As a character study, the film's titular protagonist, isn't the first new take on vampirism to emerge, but it is one of the more well realised examples. Amplas, a minor cameo actor in everything I've seen him in thus far, does a sterling job in playing Martin as a complex individual. Romero was supposedly so impressed by him, that he rewrote the titular character to look much younger than he really is.

A cool element of the film is Martin regularly calling a talk radio DJ, where he's been dubbed as "the Count". He nonchanontly describes how being a vampire isn't all that cracked up as it's meant to be. Of course, the DJ and his audience openly mock him, labelling him as another one of the city's freaks, but they're some of my favourite scenes from the film, and really serve to get even further inside Martin's psychological state.

Romero uses an effective feature where he edits black and white flashback style scenes into the film. These juxtapostions completely contrast between Martin's romanticed fantasy of what is about to transpire and the ugly reality of how they never do. 

Since it's such a very modest budget film, Romero makes economic use of his cast and locations, by including family and freinds, along with filming in their homes. Romero even improvises scenes by taking advantage of a street marching band playing in the local street and having Martin trying to blend in with the crowd. Tom Savini makes an appearance as Arthur, boyfriend to Martin's other cousin, Christina, played by Christine Forrest, who married Romero a few years after the film. Romero also has a small part in the film as the liberal catholic priest; in one scene he bigs up William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) in what appears to be an improvised scene.

As mentioned earlier, the film was way over my head, initially. Decades on, when I've since discovered other regional seventies horror gems, like Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971), Messiah of Evil (1973), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), films which arguably follow in Romero's independent footsteps with the seminal Night of the Living Dead (1968), it's the reason why I've grown to appreciate Martin since then. Would I have loved those movies if I had watched them at such a young age as I did with Martin? Probably not, in all honesty.

Today, Martin's legacy is perceived as an under appreciated horror classic. It's Romero's last hurrah as a somewhat unorthodox film maker, even his follow-up, the god-tier Dawn of the Dead (1978) is a much tighter offering with far more mainstream appeal. This would be a good reason why Romero struggled to get his non-zombie films made; especially in the twilight of his film making career.

Apparently, there is an extended version of Martin. Boutique label Second Sight unsuccessfully tried to obtain the distribution rights, but the current owner of the film demanded a sky high price allegedly, thus the extended cut remains largely unseen. That's a real shame for film aficionados, sadly.