A CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canucks Unleash Grim, Ghoulish, Darkly Hilarious Yuletide Omnibus Horror Picture - 2015 Toronto After Dark Film Festival

Is William Shatner the GREATEST Canadian Actor?
Is he the GREATEST ACTOR, like, ever? Period!!!
Well, he sure fits his alcoholic radio D.J. role like a glove.

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Dir. Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, Brett Sullivan
Scr. James Kee, Sarah Larsen, Doug Taylor, Pascal Trottier
Starring: William Shatner, George Buza, Zoé De Grand Maison, Michelle Nolden,
Amy Forsyth, Oluniké Adeliyi, Adrian Holmes, Jeff Clarke, Julian Richings,
Alex Ozerov, Shannon Kook, Corinne Conley, Debra McCabe, Jessica Clement

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A Christmas Horror Story is so much damn fun, I feel like the Grinch for needing to employ the simple, but necessary act of wanting to like it so much better than I did. So fuck it, let me be Cindy Lou Who for awhile.

This Canadian Yuletide horror treat has many things going for it. The picture bestows the twelve following gifts over the twelve, so to speak, days of Christmas:

a. Babes
b. Elves who turn into the living dead
c. Santa Claus battling dwarf zombies and Krampus
d. Krampus
e. Babes
f. Changelings
g. William Shatner as an alcoholic graveyard shift D.J.
h. Blood, viscera and more blood
i. Hostage-taking in a mall
j. MILFS
k. Have I mentioned babes yet?
l. Happy shoppers and clerks mass-murdered in mall

These elements are clearly undeniable and go a long way in masking the film's flaws whilst accentuating several positive attributes that will delight and tantalize.

Though clearly a horror omnibus picture with four grisly tales plus a wraparound story, the filmmakers have made one near-fatal error. Instead of relying upon the tried and true, established so many decades ago in Dead of Night from the legendary Ealing Studios, they've attempted to mush everything together as if it were a multi-charactered drama set in the same locale (the fictional locale "Bailey Downs" of Ginger Snaps and Orphan Black fame) and on the same day.

Alas, it doesn't quite work and has a tendency to queerly bog down the pace and add an occasionally confusing herky-jerky feeling to the whole thing.

The four stories involve some fairly tried and true elements.

KRAMPUS, SANTA & BABES
'Tis the season to be DEADLY!!!

First and foremost, we get to meet Santa in his magical workshop as he preps for a night on his sleigh dispensing gifts. Alas, a virus begins to affect the elves and soon, the North Pole is turning into George Romero's Pittsburgh.

Another story involves a cop on mental health leave after discovering a gruesome murder in the local high school the previous Christmas. He wants his wife and child to enjoy a quiet old fashioned Christmas and takes them out to cut down their own tree. Unfortunately, he chooses to trespass on someone else's land which results in an unholy possession consuming the couple's child.

Somewhat related to the aforementioned, we follow a group of teens into the very same high school as they attempt to get to the bottom of the murders, which were never solved. Once in the bowels of the old building, they discover some truly gruesome secrets which go beyond their wildest expectations and result in an orgy of blood, sex and Cronenberg-like viscous explosion.

Finally, a greedy family attempts to bamboozle an old, rich aunt into forking over wads of cash. Their actions release the horrifying demon, Krampus (a kind of antichrist figure to Santa Claus). This is not a good thing - for anyone in Bailey Downs.

The wraparound involves William Shatner pulling graveyard duties on his annual all-night Christmas broadcast on the radio, getting progressively sauced as he tries to report on a hostage-taking during a charity drive at the local mall.

This all sounds like fun, right? Well, it is, but only to a point. By throwing the omnibus structure to the wind results in a movie that constantly feels like its struggling against itself and as such, has a tendency to exhaust you rather than thrill you. This is a shame since there's a lot of fine genre writing in the piece, wonderful special effects and not a single performance is any less than delightful within the context of the picture's qualities of insanity.

The biggest disappointment is the big surprise at the end, which comes as no surprise at all, but is one of those annoying revelations you see coming early into the picture, but pray and hope that it won't come to pass. It does and your heart sinks. First of all, because it removes a gorgeous delightful sense of magic the film is imbued with and secondly, because it's a lost opportunity to go the distance into the truly perfect territory of genuine, horrific tastelessness. The movie had the potential to be an omnibus yuletide answer to such outrageously hilarious recent pictures as Bunny The Killer Thing and Canada's own High School Shooting - The Musical. Alas, it falls short.

Stylistically, the picture feels all over the place. With three directors handling the chores for the whole film, their voices (mostly) get lost in the proceedings; firstly because the picture tries to betray its omnibus roots, but secondly and most especially since the overall picture lacks the sustained vision of the Ealing Studio on Dead of Night, the directorial aplomb of Freddie Francis and Roy Ward Baker respectively for the Amicus productions of Tales from the Crypt and Asylum, then last, but not least, the very strong unifying vision of Axelle Carolyn in the flawed, but effective Tales of Halloween.

All this said, the story involving the kids in the school stands out as having the strongest sense of personal voice - the creepy, sexy and nasty qualities are inherent in the writing, but the story itself goes the added distance in terms of its stellar mise-en-scene and directorial proficiency above and beyond the call of duty.

A Christmas Horror Story is not without merit and is begging to be a franchise, but it's frustrating to watch a picture that has so much potential that's been unnecessarily buried; not allowed to blossom and breathe to the fullest extent.

For a much fuller description of omnibus horror cinema, feel free to read the first few paragraphs of the Tales of Halloween review HERE.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two-and-a-Half-Stars

A Christmas Horror Story, from e-One plays TADFF 2015

TALES OF HALLOWEEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Mixed wheelbarrow full o'pumpkins, half of them are plump. ripe and juicy, the other half remaingreen and not fully grown - Toronto After Dark Film Festival - TADFF2015: ***

Amply endowed milk maid assailed by psycho.

Tales of Halloween (2015)
Dir. David Parker, Darren Lynn Bousman, Adam Gierasch, Axelle Carolyn,
Lucky McKee, Paul Solet, John Skipp, Andrew Kasch,
Mike Mendez, Ryan Schifrin, Neil Marshall
Starring: Barry Bostwick, Pat Healy, Booboo Stewart, Clare Kramer, Alex Essoe, Lin Shaye, John Landis, Caroline Williams, John Savage, Greg Grunberg, Barbara Crampton, Adrienne Barbeau, Grace Phipps, Kristina Klebe, John Savage, Keir Gilchrist, Sam Witwer, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Graham Skipper

Review By Greg Klymkiw

An omnibus film (a feature-length anthology) is only as good as its wraparound story (the tale that holds it all together). Tales of Halloween doesn't have one.

The classic example of this structural necessity to the omnibus is the immortal 1945 shocker Dead of Night by the UK's legendary Ealing Studios. It introduces us to an architect who joins an assemblage of guests for some tea and crumpies in an old house in need of a structural makeover. He notes that all the guests mysteriously made appearances in his nightmare the previous evening. At their urging, he recounts the guests' respective roles from his trip to the Land of Nod.

One of the stories is the famous Cavalcanti-directed segment involving Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist having a nervous breakdown. Each of the recounted stories (save for one odd-duck in the Ealing comedy tradition) are absolutely chilling, but all the more so because of the wraparound story which, is cleverly integrated into the omnibus structure and as such turns out be the best of the lot (save for the bunyip puppet master and his creepy wooden dummy tale which, is utter perfection).

Joan Collins & Psycho Santa in
1972's "Tales from the Crypt"
Herbert Lom & deadly mechanical
alter-ego in 1972's "Asylum"
Michael Redgrave and dummy
in 1945's "Dead of Night"

In the 70s, the Amicus company began adapting E.C. comics as omnibus features. All these had wraparound stories. Tales From The Crypt (1972) by Freddie Francis was endowed with a simple, but effective wrap-tale involving the great Ralph Richardson as a mysterious crypt keeper. Roy Ward Baker's Asylum (also 1972) had a wrap, but it turns out to be so perfect that I'd argue it rivals Dead of Night in this respect.

In it, Robert Powell (Ken Russel's Mahler), plays a young psychiatrist applying for a position at an asylum. As part of the job interview process, he meets a number of inmates (including the stellar likes of Charlotte Rampling, Herbert Lom, etc.) and listens to their grotesque stories in order to provide his analyses. As the clever conceit of this wraparound continues, both it and the other tales get creepier and creepier. By the end, we've enjoyed an omnibus picture which really kicks some serious ass.

That Tales of Halloween does not bother with a traditional wraparound story for the ten Halloween-themed short chillers is, perhaps, the film's biggest mistake. Leading us through the proceedings is an All Hallows Eve radio D.J. (delightfully played by Adrienne Barbeau, in a reprise of her role in John Carpenter's The Fog). It's wonderful to have her in the picture, but narratively, she just doesn't seem all that integral to the whole and it certainly doesn't feel like there's anything here resembling a solid narrative attached to her character.

Being bereft of a proper wraparound story might be the most egregious offence, but Tales of Halloween has plenty of other problems wafting through it - notably, a number of the stories that are simply not up to snuff.

A Babe is stalked in "Tales of Halloween".

Basically, we get what the title, Tales of Halloween, tells us we'll get - E.C. Comics-like tales of madness, retribution, murder, myth and magic. Each tale has a different team of filmmakers, though in the feature's favour, the picture has an overall stylistic unity which keeps it from being a total patchwork quilt. This is due mainly to the work of creative producer Axelle Carolyn, horror-journalist-turned-horror-filmmaker, who was the driving force behind the overall concept and final product.

At the end of the witching hour, though, some tales are better than others. This is to be expected. Even the virtually perfect grandaddy of horror omnibus features, Dead of Night, has one dud. Tales of Halloween, has quite a few.

Let's concern ourselves with what works.

Some people need to wash up before they eat.

"Sweet Tooth", written and directed by Dave Parker is a solid opener dealing with a little boy teased by his baby sitter and her boyfriend about a demon that kills kids who don't share their candy. The monster not only eats what little candy might remain, but disembowels his greedy victim to eat the candy not yet putrified by the digestion process. Needles to say, this urban myth is for real, and it comes a calling. Lots of genuine tension, shocks, a great monster, a couple of babes (one of them a yummy mommy), copious amounts of blood and viscera, plus a delightful E.C. Comics-style button-snapper at the end.

"The Night Billy Raised Hell", directed with aplomb by Darren Lynn Bousman and superbly written by Clint Sears, is a dazzlingly joyous bit of mordant wit and mega-blood-letting. On All Hallows Eve, a little boy is shamed into pelting the house of a creepy, old recluse with an egg. The recipient of his aim is, uh, Satan (Barry Bostwick, "Brad" in Rocky Horror Picture Show) and our plucky little hero, under the expert tutelage of the Dark Lord himself, spends a glorious night committing mass murder and other heinous activities. This short film had me soaring like no other in this entire anthology. Too bad Bousman and Sears opted for a disappointingly safe (and predictable) twist at the end. Happily, it didn't detract from the overall sheer orgasmic pleasure I received whilst watching it and, just thinking about the high points of this segment, I get giddy.

"Grimm Grinning Ghost", written and directed by the feature's primary creative force Axelle Carolyn scared the crap out of me. Uh, kinda literally. We observe a young babe on her Halloween evening walk home as someone, or something is on her tail. The creep and suspense factors mount ever-so insidiously, eventually offering solace until… well, just wait and watch, making sure you're wearing adult diapers. Conjuring feelings similar to the walk-through-the-park sequence in Val Lewton's production of Jacques Tourneur's The Cat People is no mean feat. Ms. Carolyn pulls it off admirably.

Lucky McKee's "Ding Dong" sees the remarkably versatile mega-babe actress Pollyanna McIntosh as the "better half" of a childless couple who cruelly abuses her milquetoast husband and, one fateful Halloween, she experiences a completely psychotic nervous breakdown as neighbourhood children are visiting in record numbers to get their fair share of candy. We're either in a living hell or the real thing as McKee's grim tale dives into unexpected viscera.

The Descent's Neil Marshall serves up "Bad Seed" wherein a tough babe cop (Kristina Klebe) faces a most formidable adversary - a pumpkin which goes on a killing spree. This is one great short film - original, scary, funny and edge-of-the-seat suspenseful. Marshall tosses in one astounding visual frisson after another until the picture builds to one of the most gorgeous and horrifying images I've had the pleasure to experience in quite some time. It's dazzling!!!

Poor thing has escaped from Hell's petting zoo.

And there you have it - five terrific horror shorts amongst a total of ten. The cellar-dwelling remainders are simply just that. They're the dross we must sludge through to get to the gold, but it's an especially tough sludge to get to the good stuff. (One segment involving a large-breasted Dorothy-Gale-like milk-maid fighting a Jason-Voorhees-like killer has some amusement value, but wears out its welcome pretty quickly.)

Then there is the matter of the key missing element. Other than a few tiny, tenuous strands supposedly linking the anthology together (the best being Adrienne Barbeau), I'm still scratching my head over the choice not to include a solid wraparound story. Doing so would have probably inspired better work amongst all the short films, especially the ones infecting the whole film with the debilitating added burden of being well below the bar set by the films that work.

This has got "franchise" written all over it, but hopefully Tales 2 will endeavour to include itself amongst the very best. This, of course, means it will require a wraparound story as solid as all the others.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Tales of Halloween is an Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada picture which had its Toronto launch at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2015.

DOOMSDAY BOOK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2012)

DOOMSDAY BOOK

3 Apocalyptic SF visions

2 of Korea's finest directors

Doomsday Book (2012) ***
dir. Kim Jee-woon and Yim Pil-sung

“A Brave New World” ***
“Heavenly Creature” ****
“Happy Birthday” **

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The omnibus film, the portmanteau if you will, or, if you're not fond of a cool monicker for this interesting genre, the anthology film, can be a mixed blessing as it's comprised of several short stories linked by theme and for a variety of reasons, not all of them are going to be as good as some, while others can be downright dreadful.

Seeing short films - one after another - can often be downright exhausting. This is always a problem at film festivals that present short film programs or, for that matter, short film festivals period. You watch a film. Let's say it's terrific. It runs an intense 15 or so minutes. As soon as it ends, no matter how thematically linked the overall program is, you need to reboot yourself and get into a whole new headspace for a whole new story. Sometimes, you see a short and it's so damn good that anything that follows it is, even if it's genuinely good also, can actually pale in comparison. It's the tough-act-to-follow syndrome. Shorts worked in the old days of film exhibition because there was always a variety of programming - two feature films, a short "drama", a short "musical", a cartoon, a newsreel and, of course, previews of coming attraction. These days, a perfect place for one short is just before a feature and ideally, shorts - in and of themselves - are best viewed with breaks between theml

Watching shorts within the context of a feature is just as difficult, if not more so. When you watch a feature, there's the expectation of following one set of characters through one primary narrative thread, but within an omnibus feature, its makers have to construct an overall arc with several separate stories.

The best features of this variety tend to be linked with a wraparound story. A simple example is the 70s Amicus production of Asylum. Directed by the famous cinematographer Roy Ward Baker, the story begins with a young psychiatrist being interviewed for a job in an asylum. He's given a test - interview several inmates and render a series of diagnoses. He visits each inmate and they each have a horrific story to tell. Through the film, we follow the psychiatrist. What will he discover? Will he get the job? Or, will this job interview unexpectedly culminate in something as horrific as the tales told to him. Along with several films made during this period, it's a corker of a tale and one fine example of how an omnibus film should work.

One of the best omnibus items is the classic 1945 Dead of Night. The whole picture is wonderful, BUT, one story involving a ventriloquist and his dummy is so brilliant, so expertly performed by Michael Redgrave, one leaves the theatre thinking only about the one story. Everything else, admittedly fine, falls by the wayside.

Thematic omnibus films are much trickier to pull off and frankly, I don't think any of them work perfectly. Cristian Mungiu's Tales from the Golden Age works best in recent memory as it's tied into a specific historical period and we get to experience a number of recurring incidents and character types within the context of the whole. Mungiu also crafts the tales to provide an overall arc.

The new Korean film Doomsday Book is a thematic omnibus film in the science fiction genre. Focusing upon apocalyptic visions, it's a very mixed bag since it begins with a solid story, dovetails into a genuinely great story and ends with a mildly engaging, but in comparison to the middle story, the feature's crowning glory is anything but.

All this said, the film is worth seeing. The first story, “A Brave New World”, is a darkly humorous and terrifying tale of a zombie epidemic. We follow a central character, a sort of nebbish type who's browbeaten by his domineering mother and his search for love. He unwittingly is responsible for a deadly virus and we chart its growth along with his own tale of emancipation and finding love. It's an entertaining bauble and it sets us up for what we believe will be a terrific overall experience.

The second tale, “Heavenly Creature”, is so powerful, so emotional and so profoundly moving, that the first film is almost erased from our memory banks. It's a simple evocative tale of a robot that develops feelings. We chart the robot's journey to a high form of spiritual enlightenment and the eventual distrust amongst extremists that such a "machine" will be a threat to humanity.

The final tale, “Happy Birthday” is a chaotic, stylistic mess about a family sniping at each other in a fallout shelter during armageddon. It's overwrought and not especially funny. Most of all, it's positioning at the end of the portmanteau is a big disappointment as it comes close to tainting the sublime qualities of the middle tale.

I suspect, on the whole, Doomsday Book might - even with this disappointing final story - have worked so much better with a solid wraparound story instead of placing so much faith in theme to tie it together.

Once the film hits DVD, I highly suggest turning the player off just after the middle tale. Better yet, though the first story is not without merit, you might be better off making use of the menu screen to select the first two stories and watch them, if possible, as separate entities.

Speaking of shorts, Doomsday Book during its TADFF 2012 presentation was preceded by Frost, a fine Canadian short drama directed by Jeremy Ball that expertly told a haunting, mysterious tale against the backdrop of Canada's northern aboriginal peoples. This story of a young woman confronting a terrifying spiritual presence linked to her ancestry had enough of a subtle apocalyptic subtext as well as narrative elements dealing with both quest and familial acceptance that made it fit perfectly into the Doomsday Book omnibus. I should have left after “Heavenly Creature”. In retrospect, Ball's short and the first two shorts in Doomsday Book made for an excellent feature film.

"Doomsday Book" screened as part of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2012). For further info, feel free to visit the festival's website HERE.