Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973) 1h 28m

This comes to us from the same collection that held Night of the Death Cult.  I'm beginning to suspect that all of the films on that set are just obscure 70's horror films from Europe that they were able to purchase for cheap or compile for free.  Keeping that in mind, I might just throw this entire thing in the trash.  I haven't decided yet.

Horror Rises from the Tomb starts in the past where a "warlock" and his "witch" lover are going to be killed for their crimes against god.  As punishment, and in keeping with older religious beliefs, their heads will be severed from their bodies and buried in secret locations.  Before this sentence can be carried out the warlock and his lady friend curse the families of their accusers and threaten to return!  Now in present day, a bunch of white people think it would be a good idea to ask a psychic where the warlock's head is buried.  An intense table tipping event happens and they set out the next day to dig up a Legend of Zelda style treasure chest.  Once opened, there is just an illustration of Astaroth and a sickle.  Killing ensues, warlocks come back, and I fell asleep at some point and couldn't be bothered to care.

It's weird to watch this after watching Night of the Death Cult because the two feel very similar in their cinematic structure.  Some previous event setting up the backstory for whatever lame hijinks are now happening, and it's all incredibly boring.

Alright, let's watch zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

What was really off-putting was the story telling structure of Horror Rises.  If you've ever read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics there is a brief section in which he outlines how sequential art works best.  In his examples he has a simple scene which is told in three parts: one using too many panels which explain every minute detail, the best paced use of panels and information, and a two panel which omits too much info.  Each still tells the same start and end, but how we get there is dependent on the information given.  Horror Rises... does the last example where we are just to draw our own lines between scenes and story progression.  What I did watch of this film left me confused because of this.

Horror Rises from the Tomb isn't worth the time you would put into it.  Unless you use that time to nap, in which case it works out well.  Otherwise do yourself a favor and pass on this.  Also, if you ever come across a 10 movie set entitled Deadtime Stories then don't buy it.  I got it for something like $5 and I want that money back from 2009.

I give Horror Rises from the Tomb 0 copies of Marvel's The Tomb of Dracula out of 5:

Pay the Ghost (2015) 1h 34m

I've been spending a lot of time recently looking into prop design, especially when it comes to stop motion animation.  One of the main things you need when doing any stop motion is a foundation.  Normally it consists of a table-like structure so you can make sure your puppet doesn't fall on its ass every time you pose it.  The foundation is extremely important because it's going to hold your set, your characters and, at its essence, your story together.  I mention this not because I would like to work for Laika in their design department (but seriously, Laika, that would be my dream job, hit me up) but because this film, stripped down, had a really interesting story concept for the foundation.  Unfortunately, instead of making interesting characters and a great setting they chose to whip out their collective parts and piss all over the foundation.

Pay The Ghost is Nicolas Cage being a distant father while attempting to get tenure at his university.  He misses trick-or-treating with his family and to make up for it he takes his son to a Halloween carnival around the corner.  His child promptly vanishes after asking Mr. Cage if they can "pay the ghost."  Skip to a year later and ol' Nickleback has put together a crazy board of missing kid cases and finds connections between Halloween, missing kids, the phrase "pay the ghost," and eventually a poorly constructed witch story where they take actual pagan symbols and give you half stories about them while they make a bunch of shit up to fit their narrative.

I'm probably not doing it justice but as I said, the foundation of the story was good.  Witch woman steals three kids everyone Halloween to avenge her lost children from a time when people didn't wash their ass regularly.  I'm on board with that.  From there though it starts to get muddy.  There are some great scenes where the witch absolutely wrecks people with some sort of ghostly Falcon Punch but mostly it's Nicolas Cage playing a crazy Nicolas Cage character and everyone else is along for the ride.  I was expecting a "he saves his son but sacrifices himself" ending but nope, everyone's happy, except me because I watched this and because the sequence after the first credits made it seem like they had a sequel in mind.  Fuck that!  I'll pay a ghost to not have another of these movies exist!

I give Pay the Ghost 1 piece of Joss Paper out of 5:

The Damned (2013) 1h 27m

I've learned a lot of odd things from horror film logic.  One of them is the following:  If you come across someone locked/chained up in basement, then don't jump to conclusions as they might be there for a legitimate reason.  The odds of me ever having to apply this lesson are pretty slim but it's definitely something that I will keep in mind should I come across such a situation.  You know, for safety reasons.

Set in Columbia, The Damned follows a man/father, his second wife, the daughter from the first wife, and two other young persons.  After getting caught in a landslide they survive and come to an old inn.  The old man living there refuses them entry until he finds out the daughter is injured and her father is trying to get her help.  Once inside the inn some of the group find a young girl locked in the basement.  They let her out only to later discover that she is possessed by the spirit of a Bruja that was killed by old descendants from the village.  Everyone is fucked.

I want to like this movie more than I do.  I thought that the spirit's backstory was flushed out well enough.  The the spirit could never "die" because if you killed the body hosting it then the spirit jumped to your body.  This is only a step above Horror 101 but I can look past this because of how well it fit the film.  There are some good practical effects present here as well, like the woman cutting her face with the knife or the hands in the fake stomach.

On the flip side, The Damned took a page from the "shit I'm tired of seeing done poorly in horror" book by letting a majority of this film exist in a blue-grey tonality.  Yes, it's raining.  Yes, this film is spooky.  You can do these things for atmosphere but when you're not offering me anything as a visual juxtaposition it just makes me feel bored.  These are colors we associate with sadness and melancholy more than we associate them with horror.  Even the blood in this film was incredibly dark in color.  So I ask myself, would I watch this again?  Nah.  I've got better things to do.  Like lock people up in my basement...

I give The Damned 1 copy of The Damned's s/t album out of 5:

Day 3: Mercy (2014) 1h 19m

Finally, 30 Days of Plight has come back to the United States for 2014's Mercy.  I feel like at this point in my life I should know that when I see either A) a star-studded cast, or B) "based on a work by Stephen King," then great fuckery is afoot.  Also, why is Mark Duplass seemingly cast as a creep and/or jerk so much?  Is it typecasting for how he is in real life?  I want to think Mark Duplass is a cool guy in real life. #Iwanttobelieve

Mercy is based off the Stephen King short story "Gramma" which I have never read.  Although, it's now added to my list of things that I say I kind of want to read but probably never will if I'm being honest with myself.  This movie starts out pretty strong with a man walking into a room with an axe, spinning it around in his hand, and promptly splitting his own skull with it, all in front of his wife.  This movie could have ended here and I would sing it's accolades from the highest of mountain tops.  Too bad there was still another hour and 17 minutes to go.

Our main character is George (Chandler Riggs of The Walking Dead fame and "hey Carl" memes).  His grandmother has a seizure and is put in a home.  Then, a year later, she has a stroke and George and his brother and mother return to fake West Virginia to take care of their ailing family member.  We meet George's creepy asshole uncle (Mark Duplass) and this married friend of George's mom that both George and his brother state they have no problem if this dude (Dylan McDermott) and their mom banged.  I feel like Dylan McDermott hasn't changed his look since the first season of American Horror Story and everyone is afraid to tell him to with each passing film.  To pull this back to the film, the long and short of it is that the in her youth the grandmother found this made-up witchcraft item known as a "weeping book" where if you cry on the pages while thinking of your wish it will make the ink appear.  She made some agreement with a demon named Hastur and had triplets.  The beginning scene with the axe was her and her husband.  Now Hastur has come to apparently try to use her body to possess George.  I'm kind of confused on the whole Hastur thing here, especially since I know that name from the Cthulhu mythos, and when they show him he looks nothing like the rad drawing of him they showed earlier.  He looks more like a dark variant of Moss-Man from the He-Man toys.  George defeats Hatsur by being brave and crying on the book while stating that he loved his grandma.  For real, the big "saves the day" thing is that weak.

Mercy was very good visually and talent wise, but I feel that the storytelling of it could have been done much better.  What it lacked in substance it tried to make up for with suspense-by-omission.  In this case it came off as poor writing, at least to me.  I can't really damn this film just because I didn't really like it all that much, but technically I can as this is a horror film review blog... so, suck it, Mercy!

I give Mercy 1 Dylan McDermott ass shot out of 5: