Day 15: Eddie The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Excision, and Night of the Bloody Apes

Gotta keep things brief for a few days, otherwise I will never get anything written. My streak is about to come to an end as I head to San Francisco to spend time with family visitors. Life can't be all movies.  I am learning that it is difficult to write every day. I would like to get caught up before I head out of town. It's been pretty wild. I can't believe I have seen 29 films in the theater in the past 15 days. Ranging from the 1930's (Vampyr) to 2012 (The American Scream and all the Screamfest movies). Half over with. The second half will be liter as I will likely see few films the week of the 20th. Not sure if I will break the 50 count or not.

Day 15 --- 3 films. Eddie The Sleepwalking Cannibal and Excision at Screamfest and Night of the Bloody Apes at the Cinefamily.

Eddie The Sleepwalking Cannibal

A decent little comedy from North of the Border.  Sadly only about 30 or 40 people showed up, while The Collection amassed a sold-out crowd of over 300, even though Eddie was a much better film.  It's a comedy that executes the comedy in a serious manner. It's never tongue in cheek or full on goofy. It's just the situation that is funny.

Here is the situation --- Lars is an artist who has lost his inspiration and hasn't painted anything meaningful in over ten years. He's invited to guest teach at a university that is in desperate need of funding. The University is surviving on it's sole private donor who passed away and left the school to take care of the donor's mute son, Eddie.  It's in her contract agreement. Lars volunteers to watch Eddie as Eddie takes a liking to him. Eddie has a few quirk's, one of being he's a sleepwalking cannibal. Ouch! Lars gets a thrill out of all the murder and gets his inspiration back. Just a few more murders and he should be able to create his masterpiece!

Good performances. Dark humor. Good characters. Nothing overdone, just a solid little movie. Worth checking out when it gets an official release.

Excision

This film pulled out all the Indie Actor stops for casting. Traci Lords plays the religious overbearing mother. Malcolm McDowel plays a teacher. Ray Wise plays the principal and probably the most fun is John Waters as the priest. Throw in Roger Bart (Hostel 2) as the dad and AnnaLynne McCord (Haunting of Moly Hartly and Day of the Dead remake)  and you have one of the most Indie/Horror derivative casts that you could possibly have.

The film is based on the same short that played screamfest 2008. Its about a very disturbed high school girl who lives with her religious overbearing mother, distant father, and her sister who has Cystic Fibrosis. She has reoccurring bloody fantasies in her sleep. You just know it's a matter of time before she snaps.

The film has it's moments. The fantasy sequences are good. Traci Lords gives a great performance. AnnaLynne's performance seems a little forced, but I think that is more to do with the direction and script and makeup. She plays this ugly pimple faced girl with bad posture, but AnnaLynne in real life has the beauty of a model. The makeup seems forced. Pimples, clumpy hair, bushy eyebrows, intentionally bad posture. It just didn't work for me. They needed to cast someone who was more physically right for the part. You could see the real Anna behind the performance and the makeup. This was the major downfall of the film.

One of Pauline's many deranged dreams

The other issue that I had was that it didn't seem to move along at a good pace.  It felt like 2 hours and it was only 81 minutes. It was basically scene after scene of AnnaLynne's character, Pauline being unstable.  You get a scene showing her unstablity. Next scene you get another reason why Pauline is unstable. Next scene and next....so it felt a little long and felt like it would have been a better short. It may have been as I missed it when it played that year. Not a bad film, but could have been executed better. I am still interested in the directors next film. He definitely has a sense of style.

Night of the Bloody Apes

What does this film have. Well, it has Mexican Wrestling! It has women mexican wrestling! It has nudity. It has excessive gore. It has ACTUAL footage of open heart surgery and boy was that graphic. They actually remove a beating heart from the body. I felt a little feint. Most of the nudity, gore and the open heart surgery was added later once the american distributers picked up the movie.

The film was pretty bad, but the extra footage and the absurd situation made it bearable. This was part of the Video Nasties series at the Cinefamily. The series has definitely made a turn toward the depraved. It only gets more gritty from here.