31 Days of Horror: Hellraiser

Hellraiser (1987)

There are some movies that despite their age - never stop being nasty pieces of work. After several failed adaptations of his stories into film - Clive Barker decided to adapted his own novella The Hellbound Heart into this film which he also directed.

Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) is a sick and twisted fellow who finds and opens up the Lament Configuration - a puzzle box that links this world with another dimension filled with demons called Cenobites whose specialty is pleasure and pain. Your pain - their pleasure. Frank's skin is ripped off with chains and he is torn apart as a result of opening the box.

Later Frank's brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his new wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move into Frank's house. Larry's daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) dislikes Julia. When blood is spilled on where Frank died - it brings him back - well mostly. Julia who has had an affair with Frank finds him and helps him. Frank needs blood to become whole. A lot of blood. And then Kirsty discovers what Frank and Julia have been up to along with finding the box.

Hellraiser is just one nasty gory movie. It's great to watch it with a large group of people who are all squeamish. As bad as all the chains and all the hooks and all the skin removing -that doesn't seem nearly as bad as when Julia whips out a simple hammer and goes to town on a victim for Frank.

Like all popular horror movies - this film spawned eight sequels. Part two wasn't bad but the rest are all a waste of film. And now there is rumours of a remake. It's to be expected I suppose but why bother when there's a perfect film right here that will tough to top. You can't really make it any more suspenseful, more terrifying and more gorier than it already is.

Alternate Pick of the Day: LeE HARVeY OsMOND

Don't feel like hanging with Greg at Garnet Rogers? Come with me instead to see LeE HARVey OsMOND, and remember the good old days when the Cowboy Junkies played at the BeeBop Cafe every other weekend. At the Abbey, 8:30p.m., proceeds to the Regina Food Bank. Come for dinner and get in for free. See Bim. Remember the BeeBop again. It's the prairie dog office now. Regina is so weird.

Ward 3 Candidates Debate Tonight

At the risk of being accused -- again -- of being too Cathedral focused, thought it worth mentioning the second Ward 3 All Candidates Forum takes place tonight. The fun starts at 7:30 and is happening at the Cathedral Neighbourhood Centre, 2900 13th Ave. (Apologies to the Heritage Community Association. They held the first Ward 3 forum last Thursday and I didn't announce it. My only defense is I forgot.)

For those with questions for incumbent Fred Clipsham or who want to see what the other candidates -- Don Young, Shirley Dixon and John Conway -- are made of, this is your chance.

I suspect there are other all candidates forums out there in buildings I don't pass everyday on my way to get groceries. If anyone wants to pass details along, please do.

While I'm on the subject, I was speaking to one councillor last week (who didn't know I'd use this on the blog so I'll leave his name out of it) about why there was no debate in his ward. He pointed out that generally it's up to the local community associations to organize such events and the one in his ward wasn't going to this time around.

But, he also talked about how such forums can be really unfair to challengers as the incumbent has a serious advantage by dint of having at least one term in city politics. He said that at the municipal level, for some candidates it's their first time running for any kind of public office and while they may prove a capable councillor once they're in the job, they're not always aware of the details of how municipal government works or even the minutiae of what council's been up to lately -- and that can make them look very bad in a debate.

Interesting points, I thought.

Probably not going to be a problem in the Ward 3 debate tonight as all four seem pretty seasoned at politicking. Fred's been a long-term councillor, Don Young's run for his job twice before, Shirley Dixon has experience in union campaigning, and, John Conway has long served as the squeaky wheel on Regina's Public School Board.

All in all, should be a good chance to hear some of the more divisive election issues get fleshed out and argued over.

Rosie LaRose's Top Six on Tuesday

1. CANADA’S TEAM, EH? The nearest I have been able to figure out, the Saskatchewan Roughriders set, if not a record, something noteworthy during Sunday’s 44-44 tie against the Calgary Stampeders at McMahon Stadium. All the Riders' points were scored by Canadians. Fullback and Regina city councilor wanna-be Chris Szarka scored three touchdowns, Chris Getzlaf scored one and Andy Fantuz scored the other. Placekicker Luca Congi kicked four extra points and two field goals. (cfl.ca)

2. YOUR CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT IN ACTION The fact that someone installed a doorknob at a Charlottetown RCMP detachment is proof that Stephen Harper’s stimulus plan works (cbc.ca). Well, there are a lot of doorknobs on that side of the House of Commons, you have to admit.

3. UP, UP AND AWAY Arianna Huffington pwons American celebrity culture and Balloon Boy’s parents. (Huffington Post) Oh yeah, these parents look like real winners. (CNN)

4. CHINESE DEMOCRACY CANADIAN STYLE My money’s on Axl not showing up (Leader-Post).

5. GETTING THE VOTE OUT Here’s an idea – instead of begging people to vote, why not have a political system where people’s voices are more important than businesses and self-appointed don’t-tax-me-don’t-tax-thee groups? (cbc.ca)

6. I WAS OLNY FOLLOWING ORDERS! When the Second World War ended, there was a host of surviving German generals who wrote their memoirs, blaming the loss on Hitler and the Nazis’ incompetence. Admittedly, such books are more interesting than hearing from the winners (Winston Churchill’s six-volume History of the Second World War notwithstanding). But at the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, former Canadian top soldier Rick Hillier is starting the same blame-the-politicians campaign in today’s Toronto star (Toronto Star). After spending $10 billion and losing nearly 140 men in an unwinnable war, he’s now doing what I was doing in 2003 – questioning why Canada has troops there in the first place.

Pick of the Day: Garnet Rogers

This gig by Garnet Rogers tonight at the Exchange is presented by Grassroots Regina. They've been around for a couple of years now, and seem interested in more traditional forms of folk music than what the Regina Folk Festival's been serving up for the last decade or so. That's not to say that the RFF never presents an old school singer-songwriter. But the bulk of the performers at its annual summer festival, and the RFF's companion concert series, tend to favour a more robust (and eclectic) approach to music-making.

Younger brother of Canadian folk legend Stan Rogers, who perished in a fire aboard an Air Canada jet in Cincinnati in 1983 at the age of 33, Garnet Rogers has carved his own niche in the pantheon of Canadian folk artists. Here's video of him performing "All That Is" at the Rose Garden Coffeehouse in Massachusetts in 2008. (YouTube)

31 Days of Horror: The Fall of the House of Usher

Roger Corman is the master of the low budget quickie. Over the years he has as a producer produced some of the cheapest pieces of crap to grace the screen. But he also helped start the careers of several of biggest names in Hollywood (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson). And as a director he has made some very entertaining films. When Corman teamed up with novelist Richard Matheson (I am Legend) and actor Vincent Price in the 1960's to adapt some Edgar Allen Poe's stories- it created some of the best Poe adaptations to hit the big screen.

The first collaboration resulted in this film The Fall of the House of Usher (or just House of Usher) which is easily the best of the eight films that Corman made (or seven if you consider The Haunted Palace to be a name only connection to Poe - the story was from H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.) Corman and Matheson would only collaborate on four of these films.

There has been at least thirteen adaptations of The Fall of the House of Usher. Most of them are terrible - but Corman and Price have managed to create a stylish and creepy film.

Price's Usher is a demented shell of a man who is obsessed with his sister(Myrna Fahey). And when Mark Damon shows up at the House of Usher to marry Fahey - Price doesn't takes the news to well. Price informs him that the line of Usher is cursed - that they all go mad eventually. Damon doesn't believe him. And then the fun really begins.

Pick of the Day: Young Galaxy w/ Bend Sinister

I kind of lucked out with this post. Typically, you'd think a Monday night in mid-October in Regina would be pretty slow, and I'd be reduced to picking something lame like oh ... I don't know, polkaing-out to the Western Senators at Casino Regina's month-long Octoberfest celebration. Instead, it turns out that Montreal indie popsters Young Galaxy are in town tonight for a gig at the Exchange.

Originally a duo when formed by Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless in Vancouver in 2005, the band released a self-titled CD on Arts & Crafts in 2007. Since then, they've added three members to flesh out their sound, and in August of this year independently released their sophomore album Invisible Republic. If you're a beer drinker, you might recognize their song "Come and See" which was featured in an Alexander Keith's commercial this summer.

Regardless, here's the video for their 2007 song "Outside the City" (YouTube)

Backing them up is the Vancouver band Bend Sinister. They've played O'Hanlon's before and, if I'm not mistaken, take their name from the title of a 1947 dystopian novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Here's video of their song "The Same Things" off their 2009 album Stories of Brothers, Tales of Lovers. (YouTube)

31 Days of Horror: Phantasm

Writer / director Don Coscarelli made this low budget horror film in 1978. He would later bring to the big screen such cheesy masterpieces like The Beastmaster and Bubba Ho-Tep. Here he tries to actually create a horror film that scare the crap out of you.

The story has two orphaned brothers (A. Michael Baldwin and Bill Thornbury) looking into the mysterious deaths of the residents of the small town that they live in. They suspect that the local creepy mortician they call the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) is behind it. And it's not to hard to figure out that the Tall Man is behind it. There aren't too many other tall, creepy and sinister looking suspects to choose from. With the help of his evil jawa like minions - he has very some very sinister plans for our heroes.

This horror film has a huge cult following and Coscarelli has made three sequels so far but this is the best of the bunch. With the terror of the Tall Man and the shiny metal ball that he uses to zip around through the air looking for a head to impale - along with numerous twists and turns - this movie has an unsettling creepiness about it.

Pick of the Day: Little Red Riding Hood

Not to be confused with the popular Sask-Tel advertising campaign (pictured at left), this post concerns a special kids' concert that the Regina Symphony Orchestra is presenting this afternoon at 2:30 p.m. at Conexus Arts Centre.

In the past, the RSO has presented similar concerts showcasing child-friendly works like Prokofiev's Peter & the Wolf where different musical instruments are used to represent different characters. Like the aforementioned Sask-Tel ads, which you're surely familiar with since they run constantly in pretty much every media outlet in Saskatchewan except for maybe two, this concert isn't a literal recreation of the famous fairy tale. It dates back to the Middle Ages, after all. There were no cell phones back then. No high speed internet. Stuff like that.

Similarly, this RSO concert is based on an imaginitive retelling of the fairy tale by Roald Dahl -- the author responsible for such children's classics as James & the Giant Peach and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. All the familiar characters are there, perhaps even the coded reference to female sexual awakening via the girl's red cloak which symbolizes the onset of menses, it's just that things have been twisted around a bit. Just like in those Sask-Tel ads.

To conclude, here's another imaginitive retelling of Little Red Riding Hood courtesy of Monty Python. (YouTube)

31 Days of Horror: The Seventh Victim

Producer Val Lewton managed to make some of the more interesting horror movies of the 1940's. He went for a more ominous approach to the stories rather the lets show everything approach that Hollywood typically makes.

The Seventh Victim (1943) is almost a precursor to Rosemary's Baby. Young Kim Hunter goes to the big city to look for her sister Jean Brooks who has disappeared. Hunter finds the apartment Brooks has rented empty, except for a chair and noose. With the help of psychiatrist Tom Conway (who's playing the same character he played in Lewton's earlier masterpiece Cat People) Hunter discovers that her sister is involved with a group of Satanists.

Stylishly shot with a dark foreboding feel, The Seventh Victim is easily my favorite of Val Lewton's productions and there are quite a few excellent ones. The ending is a shocker and is definitely in contradiction to the Production Code that governed and censored movies then. How they got away with it - I'll never know.