Killer Cuts, Part Five

By DC Green
Part Five of a Series
 

Killer Cuts #10  - Videodrome

David Cronenberg is an admittedly weird breed of Canadian, and his movies are always interesting, if not always successful. Videodrome manages to be both of those things, as well as a prophetic treatise on the increasingly plugged-in-yet-tuned-out world we currently live in. In Videodrome, the voyeuristic and disconnected nature of technology literally dehumanizes us (here in the form of television), leading us to sexual (and other) depravity, mental breakdown and finally something altogether worse. Despite hitting theaters 27 years ago, Videodrome remains as exciting, disturbing and relevant as ever.

Killer Cuts #11 - Undead

This visually-stunning-yet-low-budget Australian horror-comedy from 2003 has to be one of the more "unique" zombie pictures ever made, what with the meteor showers and space aliens and killer undead fish. Written, produced and directed by the Spierig brothers (who also crafted the VFX out of their garage), Undead is the sort of movie that holds nothing back in terms of throwing wacky sci-fi/horror concepts at the audience, and if wacky horror is your thing (fans of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead aka Dead Alive comes to mind), you'll find Undead to be crazy, gory, hilarious, and guaranteed to satisfy.

Killer Cuts #12 - Pontypool

Based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything, and the subsequent radio drama of the same name, Pontypool manages to take a single-set, dialogue-heavy screenplay and turn it into a tension filled horror treat. Imagine the original War of the Worlds radio drama filmed a la Hitchcock's Rope, and that should give you some idea of the conceit and tone of Pontypool; the story of a news radio DJ who struggles to stay on the air despite the fact that the world (or at least a small borough in Canada) is going to hell in a hand basket.

I'm not going to give away the method by which all hell breaks loose, as this is part of the mystery and intrigue of Pontypool, and even though the catalyst of this chaos seriously strains credibility, it works as an effective fear mechanism if only because of the environs in which the narrative takes place.

Though Pontypool can drag on a bit, it maintains a high level of tension throughout and manages to deliver scares that may not make you jump or cringe, but ones that get under your skin and stay with you well after the end credits have rolled.