The Cabin in the Woods

CABIN_in_the_WOODSHorror comedies are a funny thing, at least colloquially speaking. They’re frequently neither horrific nor funny. It’s a rare beast, spotted as frequently as a whale shark. Hope you brought that underwater camera as the plankton-eating behemoth is floating by.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and Re-Animator stand tall in the horror comedy world, and you can add The Cabin in the Woods to that list — at least the bulk of it — before it stumbles across the finish line, overtaken by silliness.

A for Effort though and definitely an A + for Innovation.

The Cabin in the Woods is one of those variants on subject matter already covered by The Twilight Zone, ahead of its time, even with its 80s reboot, specifically, its episode entitled Special Service. In the show, a service technician doing maintenance work in a suburban home interrupts the owner’s morning routine with this bombshell, re: an acronym on his bathroom wall: “You see those letters JSTV? It stands for John Selig Television. You’re on television!”

In Cabin in the Woods, there’s even a moral conscience figure named Truman, as a tribute to The Truman Show, itself inspired by The Twilight Zone.

Poster_Cabin_in_the_woodsFive unwitting college kids head up to a dilapidated cabin. The group comprises two football jocks, both of whom surprisingly packing as much grey matter as muscle, a somewhat ditzy blonde, her innocent ginger friend and a conspiratorial weed-fiend. They’re all well-rounded, believable and funny. 

One of the jocks finds a two-way mirror in his room, just as one of the girls is doffing her top, but he’s gentlemanly about it; this alone puts The Cabin in the Woods ahead of much of its competition in the horror space.

Soon, there are other clues that suggest the cabin is not as it appears.

And they’re right to be concerned. The five-some is actually the subject of a nefarious experiment, being run by what looks like Houston’s Mission Control, in which they’re all exposed to mind-altering chemicals to see how they fare against life-threatening scenarios. And what’s worse (OK, this isn’t really worse — just crass) the evil “puppeteers” behind it all are betting on survivor outcomes. It’s a twisted fantasy pool with life and death metrics instead of yards and touchdowns.

Redneck zombies are released and they’re soon breaching the walls of their cabin castle and no reinforcements are coming (if you’re wondering why the group can’t hop in their RV and drive away…wait and see).

The first two-thirds of Cabin is a master class in writing and buildup as its heroic antagonists must rise to the occasion to battle both evil creatures and their evil creators. The back-end misstep is more than forgivable.

***1/2 (out of 5)

The Undertaker and His Pals

Undertaker_and_his_palsGreasy spoon motorcycle goons join forces with a corrupt funeral director in the 60s curiosity The Undertaker and His Pals, a film clearly indebted to Herschell Gordon Lewis’s early blood work.

There’s no budget, rickety sets, pastels, and lots and lots of gore in what is ostensibly a comedy (even if many of the yuks fall flat, the WAH-WAH-WAAAAA…trumpet squawks after a deflated zinger not helping matters).

There’s even a bit of slapstick zaniness courtesy of spray-on deodorant that is as unfunny as it is bizarre.

Diner operators by day (one of whom bearing an uncanny resemblance to Iron Chef Bobby Flay), the cook duo knife nubiles by night, dressed head-to-toe in leather, dragging vics back to their kitchen to put the parts through a meat grinder.

As a result, the daily specials frequently change. In one risque instance, the chef/killer, after murdering an African American interloper, asks a customer if he prefers “white or dark meat.”

The beneficiary of the carnage though is the scheming Mort, who runs Shady Rest Funeral Home and up-charges clients because of the state of the bodies, trying to get them to avoid the fine print in a text-heavy contract.

undertaker_and_his_Pals_stillSoon though, much like Blood Feast (the films are of similar length too — just over an hour), detectives  get wind of things. They begin an investigation after an enterprising friend of one of the victims grabs a revolver out of a living room drawer and fires the license plate off the back of one of the bikes.

Viewers may recognize co-star James Westmorland from the proto-slasher vetsploitation Don’t Answer the Phone! After Undertaker, fellow co-star Ray Dannis got back into the business of corpse grinding with…The Corpse Grinders.

The gang’s leather aesthetic is pretty creepy-cool and their MO is darn fantastic, especially for the mid-60s. Unfortunately, things veer too far to the side of “funny.”

**1/2 (out of 5)