FOR DYING OUT LOUD 666

JAYSUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!



GRABBERS (2012)
Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley, Lalor Roddy, Russell Tovey, David Pearse, Bronagh Gallagher, Pascal Scott
Directed by Jon Wright
A sailor at sea is on his boat at night. As he swabs the deck, a zooming blue light passes overhead and crashes in the distance. Thinking it's a distress flare and acting as skipper, he and his 2-man crew reach the location. As the fishermen investigate, both shipmates are fatally pulled overboard by a lethal hentai-ish tentacle in the water. Having sent an SOS on the wheelhouse CB radio, the skipper arms himself with an axe but is ambushed by something unseen from above. In the morning, garda (police officer) Lisa Nolan arrives by ferry to Erin Island (off Ireland's West Coast) to meet her new colleague, Ciarán O'Shea, who's coming off one of his regular hangovers. She's on temporary loan from Dublin while the Chief is on 2-week vacation and had flippantly stated 'the town will be dead' with everyone going on holiday. Oh, if only he could know what's in store with that ominous statement... Cynical veteran O'Shea is a grumpy hard drinker who resents his female cohort for being an enthusiastic & dedicated straight arrow which has impressed the bosses. He feels he should naturally be in charge. The tourist island's small rural community is soon abuzz after mutilated whale corpses wash up on shore which are not the work of JAWS but of bloodsucking squiddy aliens. Paddy Barrett, the town wino, survives an attack after first removing one of the creatures from his lobster trap (which he then dumped in his bathtub as a souvenir only to have it get loose, then facehug him like John Hurt in ALIEN before detaching itself, and die from being stomped). Paddy brings the dead creature [which if I'm not mistaken suddenly seems smaller] to the lab of dorky British marine biologist/ecologist Dr. Adam Smith who has the hots for Nolan right away, and determines that Paddy's high blood alcohol level was toxic enough to withstand the "grabber" -- Paddy's dubbed name for it which everyone thinks is dumb -- which needs blood & water to survive.

The creature is also an adult female, and an intrigued Paddy wonders if he can sell the dead remains on eBay. When O'Shea and Nolan check out the house of a woman pulled up a chimney (while her husband was watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD right at the part where Johnny utters his famous last words, they then grab Paddy and the trio head to a beach cave. There, they find a nest of eggs buried in the sand and flee a large grabber, the adult male. Back at Dr. Smith's lab, O'Shea survives an attack from the female originally presumed dead but revigorated from a sprinkler. Saved, thanks to the literal brewery saturating his body, O'Shea and his 2 companions stomp the female to death. Startled from the encounter, O'Shea tries to contact the mainland for help but he is dismissed by the Coast Guard, and an approaching massive storm cuts off both communication & help. Further adding to the dangerous grabber threat will be the rain allowing the grabbers to traipse about the island with more ease. Inside a church, he & Nolan have the locals rounded up to take shelter (a "lock-in") at a pub where the tavern attendees from relative safety start to relax when the owner, Brian Maher, dishes out free drinks. Everything seems legit and as O'Shea takes the initiative to stay sober so he can organize the island's protection (and for him this is a big deal to not get stumbling tanked), the remaining inhabitants -- including by-the-book bubbly Nolan who's never been soused in her life -- all get sloshed in mass binging as the downpour hits. With the Stout & ale flowing-a-plenty and the beer goggles chugging on in the piss-up, Nolan confesses in their patrol SUV that she came to the island to breakaway from her sister who got all the family attention, and although yin & yang opposites, she tells O'Shea she is attracted to him inspite of rebuffing him earlier while he was shitfaced when putting the moves on her.

When Una the raunchy pub landlady (alongside bar patrons all citing Nolan's prettiness) tried to hook up both gardas, Nolan wasn't having any of it but as she now makes a pass at him, in a class act he skips the opportunity to take advantage of her. He also reveals that the reason for personally drowning in alcoholism from heavy benders is due to his wife having run off with another bloke. Una incidentally is also Brian's wife and under the impression that all the patrons are there to celebrate her birthday. If only. When the creatures gather from the wetness increasing their activity, little sluggy newborn grabbers unsuccessfully swarm a physician named Jim who is outside urinating. He's briefly rescued by the 2 gardas only to be killed by the male which also destroys the patrol vehicle, forcing the duo inside the pub. Dr. Smith attempts to take a picture of the male and believes being fueled up on booze will make him resistant to being dinner, but he is swatted into the air, clear across the horizon and killed. With the taps run dry and kegs outside, the assembled group take cover upstairs (as the pub also serves as a hotel) as the maggoty baby grabbers burst in. A wasted Nolan in her giggly blotto state, inadvertently causes panic for revealing the danger everyone is in, while invalidatingly saying they are all fine. As the gardas devise a means of escape, Nolan accidentally torches the pub while fighting off the male. In the ensuing flames, she and her partner distract it from attacking the upstairs and it proceeds to follow them both as they take off in Brian's pickup truck to a nearby quarry. Figuring they can destroy this big ugly rolling sack of sushi once n' for all, their plan is to use a construction digger to hold the grabber off ground and leave it exposed to the sun where it will die from dehydration. Murphy's Law has other plans for their trap and the male shows up. Nolan uses a bulldozer where quite unexpectedly for her, she angrily calls it a cunt(!) and pins it to the bottom of a gravel pit.

With its flurry of fleshy multi-limbs, the creature grabs O'Shea by the waist and pulls him towards its maw but he drops a bottle of Paddy's homemade liquor into its mouth. The highly potent moonshine repels the grabber which lets him go. Nolan uses a flare gun to set off an explosion of oil barrels and the male is killed in the blast. With the storm clearing up, both gardas walk back to town in the morning and kiss, with a new O'Shea having thrown his flask away. Goodbye swigging and hello sobriety. Unbeknownst to all on Erin Isle is the extent of spawning & multiplying by the parent creatures that took place, and we close to the hatching of more little bastard grabber eggs on the shoreline. GRABBERS is a funny sci-fi horror comedy whose grippy, entertaining B-movie irreverence is a happy marriage of The Cornetto Trilogy, THE BLOB, ATTACK THE BLOCK, SLITHER, CRITTERS, GREMLINS, a less-refined but more energetic Kang and Kodos, and quite blatantly Ireland's version of TREMORS. And for all the abundant references, still manages to find its own distinct niche and avoid being a premature ripoff even as its tone also plays like a slick hidden tribute to the many 1950's drive-in sci-fi classics (and turkeys) that featured interstellar behemoths and deformed oversized gargantuans. And theme wise, there's a clever winking role reversal here in regards to the belligerent outer space aliens of old: As alcohol is the Achilles heel to the vulnerable grabbers and proves their undoing, this is infact a twist on INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN (1957) wherein the bulbous-headed & bug-eyed 'little green men' of that picture used retractable needle fingernails to inject people with pure alcohol so humans could die from blood poisoning. [The movie was remade in 1965 as THE EYE CREATURES and in both low-budget versions, the aliens die from the bright glare of car headlights].

Besides the heavily played-up shameless stereotype of getting rip-roaringly plastered, also on display is a longstanding separate UK tradeoff: the common Irish are seen as talkative and relaxed though quickly prone to excitement and colorful profanity, while the stuffy egghead Brit is a stiff-upper-lipped and privileged elite. [No doubt any Scots would have been volatile countrymen with parallel inebrious consumption matched by their purported tight-fisted penny pinching]. These provincial parochial idiosyncrasies however are all in good jest making satiric fun of cinematic cultural notions regarding compatriots. There is a curious paradox when it comes to international drinking: No nation likes being accused of being a population of perpetually intoxicated and obnoxious slovenly drunkards, but when it comes to bragging rights, that same nation is not immune to taking celebratory pride with copious next rounds in how much they can drink everybody else under the table. For stein and country! Still, nothing is deliberately depicted in an inconsiderate mean-spirited manner to evoke any real offense, so hopefully none is taken. With a mixture of humor & gags from played straight and light hearted to full-on hilarious, the dialogue and character interactions also come off as a cross between Father Ted meeting THE GUARD. As citizens disappear and severed heads turn up, it's interesting to note that there are no guns. And the closest thing to "arms" are a nailgun, a board with a nail in it, a pellet gun with no pellets, a frying pan, and petrol-filled super soakers to act as flamethrowers which are unconventionally lowbrow yet hurriedly improvising for these amateurs as the isolation & tension takes hold. The idea of alien aquatic sea monsters (looking like toothy Lovecraftian Cthulhu octopuses with whiplashing tongues) that are severely allergic to alcohol is perhaps equally akin to the martian invaders from WAR OF THE WORLDS being defeated by bacterial flu (whose immune systems were mortally weakened by sickness).

What could have failed as a stupid, full of slapstick one-joke premise for GRABBERS actually works and has that near-believability component thanks foremost to the great chemistry of the garda duo who predictably put aside their differences. Their forged relationship is the anchor here that verges on quirky rom-com because of the unlikely mismatched pairing, but the affection is genuine and free of being sentimentally sappy. As alcohol is easily positioned as the mighty slam dunk, defense mechanism-champion that saves the day, O'Shea and Nolan are themselves heroic from the situation turned nuts. When both are not generating faint sparks as love interests [whereas 2 men would have made this another "buddy film" about bonding], Nolan is a professional stickler who does initially disagree & disapprove but she's also that stick in the mud who succeeds in winning you over because she's so damn adorable in pulling her weight. And her clumsy fall down a flight of stairs and declaring herself fine is actually one of her finer moments. O'Shea demonstrates how effective and responsible he can be when the urgency calls for it. In addition are endearing commendable performances from the feckin' gobshite residents who embrace being three sheets to the wind; a decent pace albeit a little pedestrian; beautiful quaint scenery (filmed in County Donegal); and slimy CGI monster fx which are very good and detailed [SyFy Channel take note, this is how it's done]. The rainstorm not always convincingly stormy enough, and the relative no-gore zone are the movie's small weaknesses. And speaking of weather and background, filming took place during one of Ireland's worst winters causing regular delays. For whatever external problems, incredibly none of those complications show. In closing, GRABBERS is firmly tongue in cheek and definitely worth raising a couple pints of Guinness to. [Whether or not you stay sober or get blackout hammered is entirely up to you].




RAWHEAD REX (1986)
David Dukes, Ronan Wilmott, Niall Toibin, Kelly Piper, Heinrich von Schellendorf, Niall O'Brien, Cora Lunny, Hugh O'Connor
Directed by George Pavlou
RAWHEAD REX is based on Clive Barker's same-titled short story from the 3rd volume of his 1984 'Books of Blood' anthology. [The story itself is based on a 16th Century English tale called 'Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones' sometimes aka 'Tommy Rawhead' with both renditions meant to frighten children. The mythos also has origins in the Missouri Ozarks, and a foothold in African-American roots]. Howard Hallenbeck is an American photojournalist who has traveled to the small remote countryside village of Rathmorne in Ireland with his wife and 2 kids to research sacred Celtic neolithic sites for his historical book. While he visits the church with permission to photograph in a cemetery, 3 local farmers are trying to raise a large phallic-looking megalith in a field. At its base are engravings but if the writing is some kind of warning that speaks of a curse, it is ignored. When 2 of the men call it a day, the other's on-going labor causes a sudden freak thunderstorm. Thick smoke begins pouring from the ground and gives rise to a jacked-up pagan demigod known as Rawhead Rex. Howard's wife, Elaine, is not enjoying the stay in town. Inspite of her Irish heritage, she's bored of the trip and would rather be shopping in Dublin. Daughter Minty(!) [who was obviously named after a spearmint gum commercial] and son Robbie are restless brats. When Howard stumbles across the murdered farmer, he tells the police who believe the deceased to have been slain in a revenge killing. After Howard first meets the Verger, the curmudgeonly Declan O'Brien, and is then introduced to the friendlier Reverend Coot, Declan experiences strange visions from touching an altar. Later, the son of an arguing couple in a forest, finds an earlier kill by Rawhead. Seen also by the parents, the fearful trio race out of the woods with only Mom & son making it out alive. Later, townsfolk Dennis Nicholson and his pregnant wife Jenny are in their cottage home and disturbed by a racket outside. Rawhed shows up from refuge in a barn, kills Dennis, and drags his body through the forest. As police are called to the Nicholson house, Rawhead stops infront of a trailer park.

Teenager Andy Johnson is getting frisky with his girlfriend and the young lovers head into the woods oblivious to the waiting danger. They are chased by Rawhead whom Howard, during a late-night stroll, later spots in the distance as the creature stands on a hill holding Andy's decapitated head. With Rathmorne's inhabitants panicked over the creature having massacred the trailer park caravan as well, the bumbling police (except for Detective Larkin) are not swayed by Howard's description of a monster on their hands, and Howard suspects that suspicious Declan is the culprit behind the slayings. As Declan grows unstable & hostile, Howard asks to look into the church's parish records which Coot allows to arrange. Following up with Coot, Howard is then told the parish records have been stolen, and has his camera broken by Declan, causing him to hit the road with his family. When their van pulls over so Minty can pee by a tree, her screaming brings both her parents while Robbie stays in the vehicle. Rawhead emerges killing Robbie and drags his eaten body into the forest. A devastated and furious Howard blasts the police for failing to get Rawhead, and he returns to the church seeking revenge where he is drawn to the cryptic stained glass window featuring the image of a faceless victor casting down a devilish creature. He concludes that whatever can kill Rawhead must be hidden on the grounds. When Howard leaves, Coot touches the altar and struggles to succumb to the temptatious visions he undergoes. Rawhead noisily arrives at the church and in the movie's pre-eminent WTF boffo scene, baptizes an insane kneeling Declan with a graveyard golden shower(!) [Hey, if Linda Blair can chunder pea soup and masturbate with a crucifix, hold my beer]... Shocked and disgusted by the sight, Coot flees into the basement as Rawhead trashes the church. Coot finds the missing parish records which feature a blueprint of Rawhead [which fails to explain his presence other than offering a vague ecclesiastical knowledge of his existence] but is found by Declan. The corrupted apostate turned zealot (who steps up in dropping f-bombs) forces Coot upstairs to be sacrificed by Rawhead.

The police arrive at the church ready to gun down the creature but hold off when they see Coot. The police eventually open fire resulting in Rawhead using mind control to hypnotize Inspector Isaac Gissing to douse gasoline around the police cars which he ignites during the shooting, burning all the officers and himself to death. Howard leaves Elaine & daughter to again return to the church where he finds a dying Coot telling him that Rawhead is scared shitless of an object in the altar which stands as the antithesis to evil. He finds Declan burning books, kicks his ass, and uses a candlestick to pry open the altar where he retrieves the weapon -- a holy stone carved as a pregnant woman. In the cemetery, deranged Declan snivels back to Rawhead and tells his angry master of Howard's find. Howard faces off with the creature but uses 'little miss preggo' unsuccessfully, and is tossed aside. Rawhead kills an orgasmic Declan by ripping his throat out as a terrified Elaine watches from having followed her hubby. When Rawhead tries to kill Howard, Elaine picks up the 'bun in the oven' figurine and in the vein of She-Ra, holds it above her head where it activates with a ray of light that beams onto the creature hurting it. It has to be a woman wielding the weapon to trigger its power. The spirit of a woman then materializes from the gravid gizmo along with zapping electric rays that pierce into a bawling Rawhead, knocking him to the ground and severely wounding him as he now endures hair loss, premature aging, and Howard hitting him with a shovel. Fatally ill from the magic laser light show, Rawhead collapses dead and falls back into the ground where he's crushed under broken slabs of tombstone, completely finishing him off. Elaine has dropped the weapon in with the creature and runs to Howard, with hubby & wife making their exit from the cemetery. Farewell once-impending Armageddon. Sometime later, a boy from the trailer park is putting flowers on Andy's grave and when he leaves, Rawhead pushes up in the foreground and roars in quick monstrous return.

Rewatching this over 30yrs later, RAWHEAD REX is not so much a truly terrible movie, as it is just not a very good one at all. The idyllic Irish landscape/ambience on display is made splendid use of, there are some effective scares, and a decent violent gore factor is in tandem with off-screen kills that were treading carefully in the then-surrounding UK controversy over video nasties. But the major negative outweighing the few positives is the lousy cheap monster design of Rawhead in rubber mask & Mad Max suit; played by muscle-bound Schellendorf (aka Heinrich von Bünau) in his only screen performance who was a 19yr old bodybuilder that would make Schwarzenneger proud. [Peter Mayhew aka Chewbacca was first approached for the role but he wanted too much money]. Equally cheesy and embarrassingly bad (and very laughable), the crux of the problem is that Rawhead unfortunately simply doesn't hold up. It was always a given from the short story that his physical form was imposing and unusual. And as a savage brute force of nature who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, he may not be a typical slasher but he's not exactly out of place in the splatter arena either. Almost werewolf-ish, Rawhead looks like a shaved mutant ape on steroids with a near-mohawked mullet; an extended/exposed lower jaw sprouting fangs in fixed puppet expression; retractable fingernails; and has possible strabismus issues. Imagine what the offspring of Rammstein and Gwar would resemble -- a conceived penile demon-baby born out of a nightmarish hair metal hell fused of pyrotechnics and sorcery. That little bugger is an adult Rawhead. And the mind swirls wondering what Rawhead could have been in the hands of Tom Savini, Rick Baker, or Stan Winston. Vicious and fast in unleashing his carnal fury, Rawhead's animalistic killing spree is impressive and he shares a primal similarity with Molasar from THE KEEP: both are ancient pre-Christian hulking beasts that are close to 9-10ft tall; have glowing red eyes; are steeped in folklore superstition; and each ready to slaughter when unintentionally released from centuries of sealed imprisonment after the removal of a confining marker.

But just how unconvincing is Rawhead's description you may ask? Well, consider Barker's own words: He first said, "Basically, I wrote a story about a 10-foot prick which goes on the rampage." After seeing the portrayal, he called it "Miss Piggy in combat fatigues." At his core, Rawhead is a giant peeled & sunburnt walking erect penis with his very name of "rawhead" having a sexual tint standing for over-aggressive male libido that would make Manowar jealous. If we remove all of the masculinity and alpha cock symbolism ["Rex" incidentally being Latin for "king"], Rawhead is reduced to being a Halloween-dressed marauding menace in shredded shag carpet; a cartoonish badass berserker who with better artistic altering, would fit more in a setting of early Iron Maiden album covers. To the annoyance of many, the movie further deviates from the more elaborate short story and wimps out mainly in ditching a lot of religious subtext; moving the locale from London; changing the depiction of Rawhead's look; eliminating Rawhead's larger propensity for butchering children; leaving out Rawhead's inner thoughts explaining his ambivalence towards humanity; tinkering with the Hallenbeck family; and making Rawhead's death different. One exception that proves quite fun is the expansion of wayward Declan's breakdown into a full-blown lunatic disciple. He's hysterically over the top. There's also a curious gender & fertility observation going on here: a purity in the female weapon needed to defeat Rawhead when the whole while, none of Rawhead's victims were women as he has no dominion over them. And in keeping with the era's penchant for gratuitous topless moments, an attractive victim has her clothes flagrantly torn off. Barker would go on to have several of his baroque writings adapted into movies but vehemently and notoriously disowned this flawed film treatment (which was banned in Iceland) citing his hatred due to the improper representation of his screenplay being not just diluted but with plenty of what he envisioned being scrapped altogether. He wasn't even allowed on the set(!)

It was RAWHEAD REX's disappointing dumbed-down compromising, undermined translation, and poor reception that led Barker to have a more adamantly hands-on control in the director's chair when it came to later productions of his work. A remake was slated in the years after but abandoned as his involvement with the HELLRAISER franchise grew. [Oddly enough, Rawhead's leatherwear predates the Cenobites]. I wonder by 1987's PREDATOR, if that movie's creature fx, prosthetic, and costuming department had seen Rawhead and studied firmly what not to get wrong. In total, RAWHEAD REX is actually not unwatchable. If everything previously described makes it sound like a shoddy joke and painful mess, think of it more as a psycho cousin of LEPRECHAUN. It's just the kind of past recollection to pull from the shelf should you feel the need to breakout a dose of something rather peculiar -- especially a long unseen & less-celebrated hokey relic of the 80's that is impossible not to find ridiculous. So yeah, not garden variety but it deserves a revisit after 3 decades, and a recent blu-ray release from Kino with a 4K restoration does give it a sharper enhancement. It's nice to have the visibility looking cleaner than it ever has. Honestly though, while full of shortcomings and a misguided path which lost its way [the 1993 EC Comics graphic novel is more faithful to Barker's original story with an almost sympathetic Rawhead appearing Xenomorph/Slenderman-ish], the movie is not without justification for being an off-the-wall one trick pony hampered by budgetary pitfalls. Nevertheless, we can however particularly cut it some campy popcorn slack because it's still a glimpse from a then-upcoming new author whom Stephen King famously praised as the future of horror. And Barker's prolific output and memorable contributions of far better visceral titles to the genre, both in book & on screen (NIGHTBREED, CANDYMAN, LORD OF ILLUSIONS), were just around the corner. If RAWHEAD REX ever comes up for a reboot, maybe Guillermo Del Toro could give it a go.