HALLOWEEN FOODS

X-TRO (1983)

Marketed as the ANTI ET – THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL (which was released a few months earlier) ”X-TRO” is a bizarre British horror film that is subtle in its brilliance. Dismissed as a TRASH CLASSIC, a ”video dirty” (across the pond), X-TRO is actually an arthouse film that has atmosphere for DAYS and is genuinely disturbing. Roger Ebert famously called it “mean-spirited” and “depressing.” It IS strangely ”depressing”, but that’s why it’s brilliant.

It is also a snapshot of the deteriorating state of Britain in the early 1980s. The Cold War turns WHITE HOT again, Thatcher tries to make Britain competitive again (after decades of failed state socialism), there is an undercurrent of threat and alienation (no pun intended).

This movie starts out as simple, body-horror-on-a-budget, but then becomes something… DIFFERENT.

The PLOT is simple: a family man with wife and young son in the English countryside inexplicably disappears one afternoon in the wake of a bizarre astronomical weather event. He returns years different, but has changed. What remains of his human intelligence drives him to reclaim his son – and transform the boy into what he HIMSELF is becoming. If this movie doesn’t confuse you, you have no imagination.

FOUND (2012)

Based on a sleeper novella by Todd Rigney, “FOUND” is a slow burn, but the payoff is brutal and shocking. This movie is NOT for the squeamish. The story is simple: Marty is a pre-teen living in ANYTOWN, a 1990s suburb. He is obsessed with horror and slasher films and comic books. His young parents seem like a cross-section of white America at the time. His somewhat ”ethnic” father and his still very attractive mother are clearly struggling with marital tension. But the real conflict at home takes place between the parents and the 19-year-old metalhead, who is not doing well as firstborn ”Steve”.

The film is narrated by Marty and from his perspective. In the opening scene, he explains the horror of the day he discovered Steve was a serial killer – after ‘FOUNDING’ the severed head of a black prostitute hidden among Steve’s belongings. Steve kills people (often black women – although he doesn’t discriminate. The implication is that Steve kills people he can easily catch and kill, but he begins to lose control of his murderous impulses).

Marty laments that “Old Steve,” who was his hero and protector, is largely gone – and only the monster remains.

There’s a “movie within a movie” subplot – where Steve and Marty both watch a VHS tape of a gruesome, grindhouse slasher simply called “Headless.” (Intentionally) crude as the Headless segments are, they are VERY disturbing. Snuff filmy. Director Schirmer later filmed a full version of HEADLESS in 2015 – and it’s one of the few slasher films that I found genuinely disturbing. It’s disgusting, but it’s more the atmosphere and the eerie surrealism that makes it hit hard.

View ‘FOUND’ alone and with dim lighting. If it doesn’t grab your attention, you’re not an independent film junkie.

FANTASM (1979)

PHANTASM (and director Don Coscarelli’s oeuvre in general) is something like that Velvet underground – his films never made it big, never had big budgets or studio sponsorship (with the exception of PHANTASM II – which dropped in 1988 during the height of big studio horror films), but directors from Wes Craven to Nicholas Refn have paid direct tribute to his films and he remains hugely influential in cult films.

PHANTASM came to Coscarelli in a nightmare. He dreamed that he was being chased through a morgue by glassine balls. This dreamy surrealism is reflected in every aspect of the film.

On the surface, it’s a story about a young boy coming to terms with DEATH. But it is much more than that. It raises questions about what is the true nature of EXPERIENCE? If events in the mind are things we actually experience, and if something is “real” to the person experiencing it, does it matter if it is a purely psychological event?

On the surface, it’s about a sinister UNDERTAKER (known only as ”The Tall Man”) who appears to be a grave robber and possibly a murderer. But later it becomes clear that he is some kind of interdimensional entity.

The setting is rural California in the late 1970s, and it captures that culture perfectly. This was also a time when young boys (and girls) were hunted, abused and torn apart by real life devilish such as William Bonin, John Wayne Gacy, Larry Eyeler and other human monsters.

There is a MENACE subtext in this film that anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s remembers all too well. Before HI TECH, during the peak of the VIOLENCE epidemic, you were hunted as a child. – and you knew it.

PHANTASM is great SCI FI/HORROR – even the (unintentional?) comedy is great (see the KILLER in the garbage disposal scene).

Fans will know Coscarelli as the director of ‘BUBBA HO TEP’ – which, despite the film’s ridiculousness, portrayed ELVIS PRESLEY and the MEMPHIS MAFIA in truly reverent terms. EVERY Peckerwood who loves Elvis has a soft spot for Coscarelli for this reason alone.

MORE TO COME between NOW and ‘WEEN 2024!