Review: The Puppet Monster Massacre

Text © Richard Gary / FFanzeen, 2011
Images from the Internet



The Puppet Monster Massacre
Written, puppeteerd, edited, executive produced, and directed by Dustin Mills
MVD Visual, 2010/2011
70 minutes, USD $14.95
MVDvisual.com

There is a sub-sub-genre of puppet-charactered horror and exploitation films that goes back a few years. Some titles include Mad Monster Party (okay, that one was rated G), Peter Jackson’s early Meet the Feebles, parts of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (reviewed in an earlier blog), the all-out hardcore Let My Puppets Come, and now this new splatterfest. These are hardly Puppetoons you would show along with Frosty the Snowman to the kiddies.

With tongue in cheek (and hand in felt) writ large, Dustin Mills does an homage to the early plethora of cheesy video-era horror flicks; this one takes place in 1985. Some of the puppets, which look similar in style to the Henson variety, were created by Dustin’s mother, with varied and imaginative looks. It’s not just the gore (of which there is plenty, some of it CGI splatter), the nudity or the sex, it’s the writing that that truly makes this something worth seeking out...other than the novelty of an all puppet exploitation film, of course.

The central theme is that the evil scientist Dr. Wolfgang Wagner (voiced by Steve Rimpieri) and his sidekick penguin, Mr. Squiggums (aka, the comic relief), has built himself a monster parasite that he plans to feed through inviting some town teens to come stay at his house under the premise that if they spend the night, they get… one million dollars.

The first teen (and main character) is Charlie (Ethan Holey), who is afraid of his own shadow, especially compared to his apparently loony World War II hero grandpa (supposedly, grandpa kicked Adolph in his Hitlers…actually – and I doubt this would make Final Jeopardy – the German leader actually only had one testicle, FYI); shame Grandpa (Bart Flynn) couldn’t have been in the movie more as he is so much fun (the crusty and vulgar old man film stereotype that Alan Arkin has embodied so well), though he is actually in the film just the right amount for the story. However, Charlie wants to restore the family honor by reopening the family dollar store (what, you’re looking for sense in a horror puppet movie? What is wrong with you?).

Also invited is Gwen (Jessica Daniels), the hoodie-wearing girl Charlie has been in love with since kindergarten and is now his best/only friend, but is afraid to ask out. We all know where that relationship is heading (some cliché’s remain true), if you’ve ever seen any of a thousand Sixteen Candles kinds of flicks. She comes across smarter, braver and more logical than him, but remains unassuming.

Third is Raimi (an obvious tribute, voiced by Mills), an Elmo-colored film geek/freak who talks in quotes and references. He is buck-toothed, has what I’m assuming are pimples (though they could be blotches; they move from one side of his face to another in different scenes), and has a Wolowitz kind of relationship with his mother (also unseen here). Actually, his oversexed, under-experienced annoying nature is also similar to the Big Bang Theory character, but is hardly a rip-off.

The fourth invitee is a bald tough guy named Iggy (of course) with a too-thick Cockney accent and lots of piercings, who is obviously monster fodder (ah, but will he have a comeuppance? Or is that a comeupuppetance?). Iggy (also Bart Flynn) brings his uninvited gothic, mohawked girlfriend, Mona (portrayed by Mills’ real-life girlfriend, Erica Kisseberth; also the voice of Raimi’s mom), who supplies the “nudity” in a couple of occasions. She is tough as nails and has more than a larcenous streak to her.

The five show up at the Rocky Horror-inspired house, turrets and all, of course on a rainy Friday night. Plot-wise, what happens from then is highly clichéd, but there are moments of lunacy equivalent to the Bugs Bunny cartoon where a horse is walking in the middle of the air who states, as Bugs flies by in Superman style, “A rabbit? Up here?” There are bunny farts (actually there are a lot of farts from numerous characters) and, well, isn’t bunny farts enough? But there is more.

It’s all very amusing, and I can understand why this won the 2011 Motor City Nightmares Film Festival’s Best Animal Film award. In the end credits, Mills lists some who inspired him to make films, such as Guilliamo Del Toro (imagination), Kevin Smith (zippy dialog and lower-level humor situations; even in Smith’s best film, Dogma, there’s a shit demon, or “poopy-boy,” as Muse/Selma Hyack calls it), Robert Rodriguez (action pacing and editing; his Planet Terror is a joy to watch for that), the aforementioned Peter Jackson (certainly not for his Lord of the Rings work, but rather his also excellent early films), and Jim Henson (well, that’s kinda obvious, doncha think?). Bugs Bunny (hey, bunnies run through the film, so why not this review?) and/or Scooby Doo can be added in such scenes as when Raimi and the monster duck around each other in varied directions.

There are two commentaries, one by Mills alone, and one by him and assistant director Brandon Salkil. While Mills mentions that he feels the one both of them is better, in actuality, they are both excellent. In either/or, he details how the film cost $3500 (for copyrights, camera, computer, software, felt), and goes on to explain that “An average day of filming was two Jackasses [Mills and Salkil] in my living room with a green screen and bunch of puppets.” Two of the characters are portrayed by professional (i.e., as Mills explains, they’ve done it for money before) voice actors: Rimperi and Flynn; they emailed in their readings, and Mills has never actually met them at the time of the commentary).

Mills goes on to explain why he made the film, his plans for the future, scene by scene his finest and least favorite (a certain CGI shot) moments, and the experience as a whole. He does a better job than most in keeping in the moment on both tracks, which is appreciative as so many other commentaries are wastes of time (including by one of his inspirations, Kevin Smith). There are also two short examples of monster styles that were not used, the second not too bad.

You really have to be of a certain type to like this kind of film, and I’m fortunate that I am, because I had a lot of fun watching the whole she-bang, and listening to all of the two commentaries. Whether there is a sequel or not (there is a typical ‘80s-style hint of it at the end), I hope these guys keep going. Texas Puppet Massacre? Last Puppet on the Left? Night of the Puppet Dead? Puppetzilla (Mills mentions that he has a thing for giant monster films)? It! Puppet From Beyond Space? The Puppet of Gore? Incredibly Strange Puppets Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Marionettes? Okay, I’ll stop now while you order this film…

This review was originally published HERE

Review: Creature Lake (Gitaskog)

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2017

Images from the Internet

Creature Lake [aka Gitaskog]

Directed by Drazen Baric

BaricFilms Productions / SlevinArts /
Wild Eye Releasing / MVD Visual

80 minutes, 2016 / 2017

www.wildeyereleasing.com

www.mvdvisual.com

I kinda like the sentiments behind this film a lot, which is: respect the land and its guardians. In a time when the government is bullying aboriginal people for their own profits with pipelines and possibly making the area uninhabitable, there is a meta-message here.

Ivan Simanic

We meet five friends who are total greedy tools, not to mention racists (“C’mon, we were just joking…” types) that take a trip into the deep woods “up north” (this Canadian release was filmed near Mississauga, Ontario, which is just outside Toronto). It seems one of them, Jason (Ivan Simanic), has plans to build vacation houses around a lake that is sacred to the local indigenous people. Of course they don’t care about them; it’s the ka-ching that is their focus. They have no problems alienating the locals at a diner, and hell, they even turn on their one black friend Conrad (Brandon Dhue), all in good fun. Yeah, they’re douches.

For example, during a drunken night by the fire, when not insulting their only Black companion, one whines that “Women are never satisfied.” Yeah, if you say that, there is a reason why that is true, and it’s because of you, not them. But it’s important that they be douches for the story, so they can become fodder for both the titular lake creature, and the natives who have no patience (and rightfully so) for those who have no respect for their beliefs to a killer entity, echoing a theme from the overrated Jug Face (2013).

So there are a few elements here that take on other current films, such as the cabin in the woods, and, sadly, the overused found footage motif. If I may be permitted a brief rant here, please, if there is no end to this format, can we at least have a moratorium for a year or two? Found footage is so passé already, though there is a nice spoof here of the snot scene from the granddaddy of this style, The Blair Witch Project (1999; I’ve referenced this so much lately, I even know the year without looking it up).

Anyway, getting back to the meat of the matter, I’m grateful that the guys are their own age, rather than trying to pass them off as teens or college students, as is so often the case with the cabin in the woods trope.

As is typical, not much happens in the first half of the film, other than a cameo by Miss Canada of 2010, Elena Semikina, though to be fair there are two or three good moments that lead up to the fate that awaits.

Some of the effects (mostly digital) are pretty good, and the creature looks great. When it makes its appearance toward the end, it’s kind of worth the wait, even though it’s short. Plus there is a disappearing nude woman and a younger (dressed) one that they do the dark eyes and stretched mouth that has been used often, if I’m correct, starting with Grave Encounters (2011). You can see it in the trailer below.

Speaking of the creature, the original name of the film is Gitaskog, which is actually a real First Nations (the Canadian term for Native Americans) name for a tentacled lake creature (HERE); it seems to be more common to find indigenous names for beasties in films lately, such as with Stomping Ground (2014, which dealt with a Bigfoot). 

One of my big gripes about found footage films that seem to be somewhat consistent is that the cameras never seem to run out of juice, the way guns keep firing in old westerns. These guys are at a cabin/shack with no electricity for three days, run their cameras often during that time, and yet my camera dies after a couple of hours. Suspension of disbelief? I have less trouble with a fantastical tentacled lake creature than I do with dubious camera power. What does that say about me?

I found it amusing that during the introduction of the characters at the beginning, one of them, Todd (Greg Carraro) has a strong Canadian accent (yes, that is a thing), though it’s not really present during the rest of the film. Not a complaint in any kind of way, just a bemused observation.

As found footage films go, this is better than most I’ve seen recently, even with the running through the woods shots (at least it’s during the day and not at night by the camera’s light, or worse, the green “night vision” effect). There is no sadness in the loss of these guys, as they don’t endear themselves to the viewer at all, but that did not hurt the story. I would have liked to have seen the First Nations characters be more sympathetic, to explain why they were doing their actions, but that kind of gets lost (possibly because we are seeing it literally through the eyes/lens of the five-some).

Also, I found it interesting that some of these guys are dispatched by the gitaskog, and some by the creature’s guardians, giving it a more human touch. But there are questions I have, of course. One is, what is the purpose of the younger woman spirit that keeps popping up? The naked woman (siren) makes sense at first, but in later appearances, further from the lake, it’s of more questionable purpose. And lastly for now – and this is more an observation than a question – this is the second found footage film I’ve seen this month where the guy with the camera keeps focusing in on his (female) partner’s ass.

The extras are a nice collection of Wild Eye Releasing trailers (including for this film), and a nearly three-minute slideshow of drawings that would eventually become the titular creature.

As found footagers go, as I said, this one is decent and the effects are well done, so you might get a hoot out of it. Since the acting is pretty respectable and naturalistic, considering this is the only listing for most of the cast on IMDB, that’s also a bonus. It’s not rocket science, but it’s a nice way to spend a rainy/snowy weekend afternoon.