Cronos: All magic comes at a cost. Magic that brings immortality is expensive, indeed.

Cronos is the first feature length script written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. It unveils the twisted stories to come in his career of thrills and horror. The story starts with a preface. 

In 1536 an alchemist named Fulcanelli flees Spain for the New World to avoid persecution during the Spanish Inquisition. Upon his arrival in Mexico he attains the position of watchmaker to the Viceroy. He soon begins work on a bio-mechanical device that will unlock the secret of eternal life. Fast forward to 1937 when a structural collapse destroys an old home, killing its strange elderly old man. The ruins of the home are raised and it's contents sold at auction. The story opens in modern day (1990) Mexico. Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi), his daughter Mercedes and his young granddaughter, Aurora (Tamara Shanath). 

After breakfast Jesus and Aurora go to Jesus' antique shop where he and Aurora play games while awaiting customers.  A scruffy looking young man enters the shop and starts poking around at old statues. He stops at a statue of St. Michael, the Archangel approaches and asks him what he's looking for the young man says nothing and immediately leaves the store.

he next scene opens in a factory where we meet two Americans, Angel de La Guardia (Ron Perlman) and  Uncle de La Guardia (Claudio Brook). Uncle has terminal cancer and is desperate to find the Cronos device which he believes will cure him of the cancer and give him life everlasting. In his pressurized clean room, Angel walks down a long aisle,  dozens of angel statues hang on either side. He tells his nephew to buy the latest. He instructs his angry nephew to purchase the lates statue. 

Meanwhile, Jesus discovers a hidden chamber in the base of the statue. He opens it where he finds a strange gold wind-up toy. Soon he discovers the strange secret of the device. Angel arrives at the shop to purchase the device sans the the golden toy.

Thus begins the brutal struggle for possession of the golden toy.

 The director uses Aurora, the little girl, to create an underlying state of tension that is there in almost every scene she's in which she appears. Jesus starts as a very kind, level headed  and loving family man; he soon finds his character tested by the promise of immortality and tempted by the restoration of youth. His struggle is within himself as well as the outside world

The de la Guardias on the other hand are petty and twisted from the get-go. Uncle is a bitter  old man who thinks of no one but himself. His ruthless pursuit of the Cronos device he  makes a thug  his not-so bright nephew. He's in it for the inheritance  yet doesn't realize that should his uncle ever attain possession of the device he will never inherit a penny; he will always be enslaved to the man he loathes. Guillermo del Toro said in an interview he created the pair as evil, two dimensional characters in  retribution for the way Mexicans are portrayed in Hollywood movies. 

This is a great film. I really find I prefer del Toro's  Spanish language work to his English films.  Good characters, script and acting are what make the film work. The English films come with big budgets ans special effects   

This film deserves my highest recommendation. There's a reason it won all those awards.! 

Angels of Darkness AKA Styria REVIEW

I had high expectations for this movie which made my disappointment all the worse. Maybe it was cognitive dissonance because of my familiarity with the story it's based upon, Carmilla. First, the things that were right about the film. The acting was very good.  Eleanor Tomlinson (Lara)  does a great job  portraying of the dark and disturbed teenager who accompanies her father, Stephan Rea (Dr. Hill) an art restoration expert, on a journey to the Hungarian town of Styria.. It's 1989 and both of them carry dark secrets when they arrive at the deteriorating castle that had served as a tuberculosis sanitarium during the early part of the 20th century. A renowned muralist had been a patient there and painted his 

final murals on its on its walls. 

It's not the actors that disappoint; rather it's the characters they portray; the gruff and sullen Dr. Hill has shunted his now teenage daughter off to a boarding school since the age of six following the death of her mother whose early demise remains a mystery till late in the movie. Lara for her part accompanies her father on this trip only because she'd been expelled from the school for her alleged involvement in a violent act against another student which she denies. Neither of these characters are very likable except to the extent I felt pity for the girl. 

The scene takes place at the end of the Cold War and has the heaviness we usually associate with life behind the Iron Curtain. The rotting castle and gloomy scenery create an atmosphere ripe for vampires. 

Upon their arrival tLara and her father are introduced to the villainous General Spiegel (Jacek Lenartowicz), a very creepy guy who rules over the town and exploits his subjects, especially the women. It is through this that we are introduced to the mysterious Carmilla (Julia Pietrucha). 

Carmilla and Lara immediately form a bond because of their mutual isolation. From there the mysterious events and strange dreams begin for Lara, usually ending with Lara waking up on the floor and not knowing what happened. Scary events ensue and dead girls begin to accumulate.  

The story violates a lot of the conventions of vampire fiction which is fine so long as we know what the vampire universe looks like. Here it is introduced as-it-happens which left me confused a good deal of the time. The original LeFanu story also contained a lot of sexual tension between Lara and Carmilla which was largely lacking in this modern adaptation.  

The acting and production values and some of the vampire world it introduced made it worth a watch but it created more questions than it answered. Watch it on a raining Saturday afternoon. It should keep your interest. 

The Haunting of Cameron House - A San Francisco Legend

   

San Francisco has a long and rich history related to Chinese immigration to America. One of the toughest tales to hear about is the history of young Chinese girls who immigrated to the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

During this period of time it was only the single men of China who were able to experience relatively easy immigration into the United States.  Women were excluded and relations with white women were excluded so it set the stage for the exploitation of Chinese women. 

Rich Chinese men could easily get exemptions for their families The poor men would pay them  a fee,  so their families would be sent over and they would all live "happily ever after". It was essentially just a business transaction. 

Tthe history of humans is littered with exploitation. This part of that history is no exception. More often than not the process did not go as simply as it did for the few women who immigrated here with business-like ease. Instead what would happen was the poor women would arrive and the rich men would hold them hostage. They would demand a higher sum of payment from the poor men who had already struggled to secure the funds to bring the women over. The women, living in the country illegally, had no recourse. The families often failed to pay the increased fees. When that happened, the women were usually sold in to slavery.  The younger girls would be sold as house slaves, a task which they would perform throughout their young adolescence. They worked for families all throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. As these girls aged into puberty, they would be sold into sex slavery. Women kidnapped who were at or older than puberty were automatically made into sex slaves. 

However, there were a few angels working to make changes to this terrible situation. Donaldina Cameron one such an angel. Originally from New Zealand,she had lived in the San Francisco  most of her life. As a young girl she embarked on her lifelong pursuit of social justice.Her primary social service focus was to aid the Chinese women who were suffering this terrible fate. She worked in the services of the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood. 

By the turn of the twentieth century, Donaldina Cameron was the superintendent of the home for girls. It was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires ravaged the area. Taking in to consideration the unique situation of Chinese slave women, a new house with built with secret passageways and sealed doorways to hide them. The women would be safe and anonymous until a time when they were legally allowed to begin a new life in America. 

The basement of the home created to be a place where the Chinese women could rest in peace while figuring out what their next move. To keep the basement room secret both from slave traders and the San Francisco police there was no entry from inside the home. Instead there was a secret underground passageway leading from the street directly into the basement of the  home.

For a little while, the new home served as a safe place for the women. Sadly, it wasn't too long before a new tragedy struck. The house caught fire. With no escape except for the secret passage, numerous Chinese women died, suffocating to death in the home's basement. 

The dark past of the home remains present in it's walls. Many people say that the building is haunted. The doors to the basement are sealed. There are gold and red charms hung there to ward off the evil spirits. Nevertheless, the ghosts of the women killed in that basement's fire remain there to this day. Photographs show white figures floating in the background. The tortured spirits of the past remain within the building.

Thanks to Rand Richards

Angels of Darkness - Carmilla in a modern setting.

Okay! A new vampire movie based on my favourite vampire story, Carmilla. Set in the 1980s at a Hungarian town called Styria., the harsh Cold War setting adds to the film's dark Atmosphere. Newly released on Showtime, it's available for streaming on Amazon, iTunes and Google Play. $4 SD, $5 HD on Amazon. Haven't seen it yet but I will tonight!

MONSTERS _ review

MONSTERS _ review

In the not too distant future an American space craft is returning to Earth with specimens from another planet. Something goes wrong and the craft goes out of control, crash lands in Mexico and spills it's contents into the environment. As fate would have it the samples contain alien life forms. The life forms are released into the environment and proceed to grow into very large creatures inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhus Mythos. 

The governments of the US and Mexico launch an effort to contain the creatures to a large swath of Mexican territory and prevent the contagion from spreading to the United States. We learn during the film just how challenging a task this proves to be.  

The story begins when photo journalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) arrives in a Mexican city, intent on taking pictures of the destruction the creatures have caused as well as a living specimen. Soon after his arrival he receives a call from his boss. The daughter of their publisher, Sam Wynden (Whitney Able) has been injured in the recent attack on the town. Andrew is ordered to get her out and on her way home. What seems like a simple task becomes more complicated since air transport isn't available. A journey down the river is the only way out and that route will also be closed in the next 24 hours. Of course Sam misses that boat and our heroine is left up shit creek without a paddle.  Thus begins the story of their journey home. 

Monsters is not your typical creature feature. Yes there are some scary creatures and battles but it's much more than that. It's about the impact the war has on the lives of the people who live in the restricted zone as well as Sam and Andrew. It focuses on the sadness of the survivors and how it effects our heroes, Andrew in particular. This is more of a drama than the action adventure story one usually gets in a sci-fi horror film. There is much more to it and all the actors do an excellent job of carrying the story. My vivid imagination can see analogy in the relationship between the 2 countries. At the end I found myself asking who were the bad guys? 

Plan of Attack o Plan de Ataque

As I mentioned in my previous post I plan on watching and reviewing Spanish language horror movies both for the fun of watching them as well as review them to help me learn to speak, read and write in Spanish. 

Como mencioné en mi post anterior yo planeo mirando y revistar peliqulas de terror de la lengua españolas ambos para la diversión de ver así como los examino para ayudarme a aprender a decir, leer y escribir en español.  Todos las peliqulas son de Guillermo de Toro, un director de mexicano  famoso por sus peliqulas de miedo.

Primero;  Pan's Labyrinth, Segundo : The Orphanage, Trecero: Cronos

Segundo: The Orphanage - El Orfanato

Trecero: Cronos

The House at the End of Time - La Casa del Final de los Tiempos

Last night I watched a movie titled The House at the End of Time. It was a haunted house story with a few twists to it. Time shifts are involved and it all comes together at the end. It's creepy with some thrills but lots of psycho drama. It's complicated and in Spanish with subtitles. It reminds me more of The Awakening or Saint Ange (House of Voices) than Poltergeist.

On the whole I liked it but if you're looking for a Steven King story with lots of action and things that jump out of the dark you may not like this film. The story goes back and forth through time but the characters remain the same. Much of it is set in the 60's and the film makers did a great job recreating the past in a gritty semi-impoverished town. I did catch a costume error near the end but it's not important. I didn't exactly love it as I did The Awakening, but I it's worth a watch if you like paranormal interpersonal drama.

I'm learning Spanish and I'll be reviewing Spanish language horror movies, something that Mexican film makers do rather well.

Dulce sueños!