Crumbs

Trail At The
End Of The World

Crumbs
Spain/Ethiopia/Finland 2015
Directed by Miguel Llansó
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B
Second disc in Arrow’s Blu Ray set
of Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway

Warning: Very mild spoilers, of a sort, kind of...

Well this is a strange movie, I’m glad to say. I realised that Crumbs, the first feature by Miguel Llansó, was included on the second disc in Arrow’s presentation of Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway (the same director’s second movie). Being as I suspect that any reissue they do of this one will probably not include the Crumbs disc, I decided to watch the trailers for both movies to see if they were my kind of thing. Those two trailers were ticking all the right boxes and so I bought this limited edition version of the release while I still could. So glad I did.

The film starts off with the information that we are in a post-apocalyptic, future version of our world. A devastating war has left the remaining humans interested in surviving only for any kind of future generations. The population has dwindled to almost nothing and a few people are scattered in this landscape, trying to just enjoy their days and maybe find some meaning.

Not that meaning is in any way forthcoming in this surrealist melange of broken people and the lionisation of ancient artefacts. The back story, which is in itself a quote from something else, seems to be a frame to hang together some almost logical story beats into something which, in all honesty, defines categorisation and takes you to a point, perhaps, where the attempt to find something more clearly defined in the story content might leave you clutching at straws... or at the very least clutching at various pop culture objects in an attempt to make sense of it all.

We have two main protagonists in this movie, which is almost a surrealist road movie in some ways, although the quest which seems somewhat central to the future of the two is cross cut with the incidents which make up the days of one of the two who is left behind, waiting for her man to return. These two are Candy, a hunchbacked person of small stature played by Daniel Tadesse and Birdy, played by Selam Tesfayie. Candy spends his days scavenging the wasteland for artefacts which Birdy can use in her found sculptural art works.

However, the spaceship left over, apparently, from the war... which hovers in the skies all day and night and has a large arm with a giant hand coming out of the top of it... has started to show signs of activity. Candy notices that a version of Santa Claus is living in the underside of the machine in the bowling alley (which keeps activating by itself) so he goes on a journey to track down Santa so he can get his wish for him and Birdy, reserving a seat on the spaceship before it takes off. On his way he encounters a mouse masked Nazi, a horse backed bandit, a train driver and various other people and objects such as the local witch, played by Shitaye Abraha, who gives him a clue as to where to find Santa. Of course, when he finds Santa and confronts him in his deserted, lion decorated theme park, Candy has to peel off his clothes and reveal that he is really Superman... but this doesn’t prevent Santa Claus from hitting him with a bicycle. Of course, this encounter is watched by Birdy as she looks through the mechanism of the bowling alley.

And it’s an interesting and certainly entertaining movie. The pacing is very slow and the ponderous establishing shots of the colourful landscapes and locations in deep focus are absolutely beautiful. There are some amazing little sequences too. For instance, a local ‘fence’ character buys the ancient artefacts found by various scavengers, as they have become valuable currency in this dwindling world. Artefacts such as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle amulet, a plastic Max Steel sword (which Birdy gives to Candy to protect him) or a vinyl copy of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous album. A little while after such artefacts are found or lost, there is a beautiful sequence of each artefact spinning in slow motion in space, as the fence mis-identifies and mis-explains the history of the object in question.

If you do want to impose some meaning on the film then a sequence of ‘mistaken identity’ when Candy goes into a deserted cinema which has been showing the same movie non-stop for the last 40 years (it’s the so terrible it's good Turkish Superman, which I have seen and own and, yeah, perhaps one day I’ll review it for this blog). In a scene a little later, he is seen throwing away his Superman suit and it gives you pause for thought on the true history of the character, who has been telling everyone he is an alien trying to get back to the spaceship with his lover.

And that’s that. Crumbs is a wonderful surrealist movie with a certain level of emotional atmosphere to it, in spite of the way the ideas and scenes are threaded together in an almost throw away but mesmerising fashion. Recommended for anyone who is interested in the art of cinema, for sure. Oh... and if you want to find out the final fate of the spaceship, stick around until about half way through the end credits.

Violent Night

Slay Ride

Violent Night
USA 2022
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
87 North

Warning: Very slight scene detail spoilers.

Violent Night is the latest movie from Tommy Wirkola, the director behind three of my favourite, gory films of the last 13 years, namely Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel - Witch Hunters (reviewed here) and Dead Snow 2 - Red Vs Dead (reviewed here). This film sees David Harbour from Stranger Things... see various series review links in the TV section of the index... the third Hellboy movie (reviewed here) and Black Widow (reviewed here) take on the role of Santa Claus... the real Santa Claus.

The film starts off with Santa hanging out and getting drunk in a bar on Christmas Eve, disillusioned with what the spirit of Christmas has come to mean and thinking that this might be the last year he does this. However, one of the houses he visits, a rich mansion belonging to the multi-billionaire grandmother of a little girl on his ‘nice list’, Trudy (played by Leah Brady), is having a Christmas gathering attended by the whole family, including Trudy and her estranged parents. However, a villain played by John Leguizamo (who’s always great as a villain but I wish they’d give him some proper ‘nice guy’ roles for a change), kills the security team in the mansion and his team hold the family while they break into the main safe. Santa gets caught up in the events and, before you know it, he becomes a brutal ‘action Santa’, intent on saving the little girl from harm and, due to various things that happen, as you kind of know will transpire, he ends up believing in the spirit of Christmas again and, of course, his important role in it.

And it’s a great movie, it has to be said. The whole thing plays out just like a 1980s action movie, it would be fair to say, with Dominic Lewis’ Christmas music infused score sounding a little like one of Michael Kamen’s old action scores for a movie like Die Hard (reviewed here) or Lethal Weapon. The only difference between this and an 80s action movie would be the ramped up brutality of the violence, which fully keeps up with Wirkola’s earlier movies, in terms of the goriness on offer, including the inventiveness behind it. For example, when Santa attempts to take out a thug with a Christmas Tree star through the eyeball and he’s still coming for him, there’s a definite nod to the face off between Odd Job and James Bond in Goldfinger (reviewed here). Looking for a way out of his situation, Santa notices the star is still plugged into the tree lights and flips the switch, electrocuting the guy and setting his head on fire.

There’s also some nice stuff, just a couple of moments, where this version of Santa’s backstory is explored from many centuries ago. Let’s just say that, if such a thing were around then, he would definitely have been on the ‘naughty list’, with the aid of his favourite hammer skull crusher. What’s more important though, is the beating heart of the movie in both the relationship between Santa and the little girl and, also, the hard side swipes at the greed driven commercialism that Santa is, in fact, aiding... in his delivery of the Christmas spirit. Also, although I’ve not seen the Home Alone films myself, there’s a nice homage to these in one sequence in the movie which I think will resonate with people who liked those flicks.

I have two things which are less easy to forgive but they certainly aren’t deal breakers. One is the ‘science’ behind Santa’s supernatural magic not being exactly consistent in places. However, Harbour delivers a certain ‘get out of jail free’ line in regards to the ‘Christmas magic’ which just about manages to cover the inconsistencies in the script and, since it’s such a joyous movie... I’m gonna go with it. What’s more worrying though is the sound mix. One of the more enjoyable lines of the movie, one which featured heavily in the trailer, in fact, is so overwhelmed by the Christmas song playing in the foreground that it’s barely audible. I mean, I guess it could have been the sound system at the cinema I was watching it in but... yeah, I suspect not.

Still, all that being said, fans of 1980s/90s action movies and those still happy enough to maintain the myth of Santa and the spirit of Christmas should find a lot to love in Violent Night which, in spite of the obvious, unorthodox surface detail of the genre, actually buys into the spirit of the season a lot more than it detracts from it... which is what I was hoping for when I saw the trailer and, fortunately, that’s exactly what I got. I hope this one does well at the box office and, yeah, I can’t see this one doing badly at all. This one’s a definite crowd-pleaser and has all the earmarks of being a franchise starter. I’d be surprised if a sequel to this one wasn’t already being prepped and I hope we see David Harbour back in this role again soon. Well worth a visit to your local cinema, for sure.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer - DC Limited Collector's Edition

 


Deer Pressure

Rudolph
The Red-Nosed Reindeer
DC Limited Collector's Edition
Issues C20 (1972), C24 (1973),
C33 (1975), C42 (1976) & C50 (1976)

For a couple of years now for the blog I’ve been wanting to read through the annual Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer comics published once a year by DC between 1950 and 1962, specifically to review those issues for this blog at Christmas. Alas, this is not... quite... that review. Once again, with Christmas blog deadlines fast approaching, I realised there wasn’t a way I’d be able to make myself read through all those issues in time but, I did think I would manage to read the five, giant sized DC Limited Collection Editions of the title put out by the company between 1972 and 1976.

The DC Limited Collectors Editions, of which there were many, was that companies rival to Marvel Comics famous Treasury Editions. Being a tabloid size with card covers and a much bigger page count. Because of their size and the fact that they would get folded to travel through the post etc, a lot less of these larger format comic books survived the 1970s and early 80s... the time in which they were most prevalent. These five specific ones contained a mixture of mostly reprints of the earlier, regular DC issues mentioned above plus, it would seem, a smattering of new material on occasion (which look like they were handled by the same artists and writers who were drawing the strip in the 1950s... it’s a pretty consistent tone throughout, it has to be said).

Asides from the majority of Rudolph’s fellow reindeer, who are not in these specifically selected stories as much other than as supporting roles, the strips seem to have had six regular characters. There was Rudolph himself, of course... and, as importantly, his best friend who would continually get him in or out of trouble, Grover the Groundhog. Then, of course, there was their boss, Santa Claus. There were also two chief elves who helped run Santa’s workshop where the toys for all the children of the world would be manufactured... Winky and Blinky. And lastly, there was a sometimes villainous but never too mean spirited or unhelpful bad guy... err... bad bear character, succinctly named... Baddy Bear.

Okay, so each of these contains either two very long stories or one long story and two shorter ones, in addition to the various puzzles and games pages and the cut out diorama found on the back covers (which was often the case with these things) and all but one story would deal with how that year’s Christmas trip by Santa would be placed in peril by some kind of accident or intervention and then the rest of the story would be how to solve the problem and fix things so Christmas could go ahead after all...usually with Rudolph applying the powers of his famous nose to good effect in some capacity or another. Which is one of a couple of small problems I had with the strip...

In total these treasuries have 13 stories, 12 of which are all set on Christmas Eve... but it’s also clear that none of them are set on the same Christmas Eve as the previous story. Which makes no sense because, nobody in the strip seems to have aged over the years... let alone Rudolph. I looked it up and the average lifespan of a reindeer is just 15 years (20 if they’re in captivity)... so I either read the whole of his lifespan in these stories, more or less, or... something else is going on here. Santa Claus or no... Red Nose or no... these characters should at least show some kind of entropic deterioration over the years, it just makes no sense. So, yeah, the characters in this are suffering from the same bizarre disease of fiction that has also plagued characters like James Bond over the years. There’s no science to this at all.

The other minor quibble I have is that... okay, the stories are a bit formulaic and you kind of expect that to an extent... but they do seem to be hitting exactly the same spots in most stories. For example, Winky and Blinky will always bump into each other and have a blame game argument for a panel. Now you could argue that’s just re-enforcing the characterisation but it’s almost the same thing every time. The thing is, I remember reading a lot of Harvey Comics when I was a kid, probably intended for the same kind of audience as these and, the Harvey Comics were way superior in the writing department, as far as I can remember.

Okay, another common thing to the formula, though, is also a very interesting approach. For a kids comic about Rudolph and his pal helping out Santa, it gets very experimental with the format. For instance, one common thing is that, at some point in about half the stories here, the plot relies on Rudolph and Grover taking an alternate form of transport to try and get to their destination, as opposed to the standard ‘Santa sleigh’. So this can be anything from a new experimental plane to a rocket ship but, usually once their journey begins, we are then treated to a splash page where the favoured mode of transport goes all over the place, shown in different positions and in all orientations on the page along with a visual trail marking out that journey. This is augmented by continual comments from Rudolph and Grover in speech bubbles which match whatever the orientation of the craft is at that time... so you will have a load of speech bubbles on the page also, at varying angles, meaning you will be doing a lot of sideways and upside down reading. So, yeah, a common element but at least it’s a fun one.

The other thing is that the fourth wall gets broken occasionally by one character or another... which I found strange for a kids comic. So when the characters are looking for something in the bottom panels of a page, for instance, one of them says “Let’s look on the next page! I bet that’s where they are!” Or, when a plan is coming to fruition in one issue, Grover peers out of the panel and says “Ha! Didja hear that, reader - - my trick is working!” Or in another one... “I saw this trick work in a TV cartoon.”, followed quickly by “Well whaddaya know? - - It works in Comic-Books too!”, literally drawing attention to the media format in a bit of mind bending metatextual shenanigans. And in another panel in a different strip, after Rudolph makes a ‘floor yo-yo’ for Baddy Bear, Santa even calls Rudolph's attention to the presence of the audience by saying to him... “Rudy, look at our readers out there! - - See their faces? They’re dying to know how you made that yo-yo!” So, yeah, even though the stories are a bit one note, there is a certain degree of sophistication in the writing on occasion. Rudolph is even aware he’s a famous reindeer on account of the song which inspired this comic book rendering.

And that cleverness in concept (if not dialogue or set up) extends to Rudolph’s nose. They obviously wanted to broaden the range of things a Reindeer with a glowing nose can bring to the table to open up their story possibilities... so at various points Rudolph can be seen utilising his most famous asset in new ways such as melting snow, generating an electric current as required, using it as a backlight to reveal the message on ruined, paint covered letters and even picking up a shard of glass to hone the glow of his nose through the makeshift lens into a laser beam.

But, for every innovation, there’s a heck of a lot of bizarrely silly stuff happening in the comic too. For instance, when Baddy Bear hitches a ride from a passing eagle, you have to ask yourself how a small bird can possibly carry the weight of a large bear. Or how Rudolph’s mum is possibly dextrous enough with her hooves that she is seen knitting.

However, all that aside, I did find these treasury sized editions of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer a refreshing brain cleanser alternative to some of the other stuff I’ve been reading lately and it’s certainly something that can’t help you catch the Christmas spirit at least a little. Not exactly a recommendation for the majority of my readers, perhaps... but I certainly had a good time with it, in spite of the various scientific holes in the stories. I think I still need to go back and read the original 1950s/60s run at some point now. 

Sint (aka Saint)

Sint-illating Santa

Sint (aka Saint)
2011 Netherlands 
Directed by Dick Maas
Metrodome UK DVD Region 2

Warning: Very slight spoilers in this one.

It was due to the phenomenon known as Hypnogoria on Twitter that I first heard, maybe a year ago, about Sint. When he tweeted about the movie again this year, I realised this could be my Christmas movie to rival Rare Exports (reviewed here). Well, while it’s not as whimsical or compelling as Rare Exports in certain respects, it’s still a Christmas themed movie with a fairly dark edge to it and I was kinda pleased to be watching it, I have to say.

The plot involves the original St. Nicholas and his motley crew of pirates (?) who were burned in their ship by villagers for horrendous “rape and pillagey” crimes against them. However, there is a curse connected with this event and so, every 42 years, when the moon is full on December 5th, St. Nicholas, his helper Black Pete (a Dutch part of their Santa Claus myth, apparently), and their bunch of friends, return as ghostly/zombie versions of themselves and kill various people while stealing their children... plundering the infants and lugging them away, after their chimney penetrations, in big sacks.

This is exactly what happens in a scene we see set in 1968, when a whole family is wiped out in a gory and violent manner (which is pretty much the tone throughout the whole film) but with the boy in the family escaping through his absence of checking out the pigs in the family barn. We then cut to present day Amsterdam, where the rest of the action of this movie takes place, and the young boy is now an older police inspector, still embittered by his experiences as a child and thought a bit of a loony for his strange beliefs in a St. Nicholas killer.

We are slowly introduced to younger cast members whose job it is, mostly, to die in various violent scenes throughout the course of the film, along with various other, much less zombie fodder, people. The movie is all about a College aged teenager and his dealings with the Santa Claus zombie and how he pitches up in the company of the not-so-deranged Police Inspector, helping him out on his hunt to destroy the zombie St. Nicholas and his merry horde.

Which all sounds fantastic and, though not the most addictively watchable of movies, it does have a certain something to it... I think, especially in the pacing. This film moves incredibly fast. The speed is often because the action cross cuts between various incidents happening at the same time but mostly, I think, due to the enthusiastic rush of the camera work in some sequences. This is not a hand held, jerky shake-fest... which is a route a lot of horror movies seem to be going down just recently. Instead we have some very smooth and fluid camera work which tends to stick with a character and follow him/her for a bit, before cutting to the odd establishing shot which are often taken from an unexpected angle and compositional choice than what you may be expecting. In fact, the shot design gets downright Hitchcockian in some sequences, it has to be said.

It’s probably been noted before but the plot of the film bears more than a passing resemblance to John Carpenter’s beautiful horror movie The Fog (reviewed here) but, alas, the execution and the end game are not anything like that one. It does have a very 1980s feel to it, however, with lots of old school practical gore effects coming into their own as the St. Nicholas reincarnation slices and dices his way through various people... at least, they seemed less CGI orientated to me, at any rate. It also features an interesting car chase where some policemen chase St. Nicholas from ground level as he rides across the various rooftops of Amsterdam. This is almost a parody of the famous car chase sequence in The French Connection but, well, you know... with a zombie version of Santa on horseback, as opposed to the train tracks from the Friedkin classic.

The film is kinda curious in the end in that it doesn’t actually tie up all the loose ends in the story. For starters, we have no idea what has happened to the kids in the film and can only assume they’re gone for good. In addition to this, one of the more important main characters seems to be treated in a more haphazard and unsympathetic way than you would have hoped for by the end of the story. There’s also an issue, which I think a few people have picked up on by the looks of it, that some of the story flow doesn’t quite make sense in an annoying contradictory manner... almost like scenes of dialogue were kept in after other scenes which were referenced by them were deleted or, in some cases, rewritten without thinking about the plot consequences at other parts of the movie. Unfortunately, that is something which tends to happen a lot in modern movies so this is pretty much par for the course for a film of this nature but... still a little bit sloppy, I believe.

This is a short review, I know, but I have nothing much more to say about Sint other than I was really pleased to find a more deranged Christmas movie than the normal fair on offer ot me in my “film archive” and, if anything, this movie is quite a bit of fun which, when all is said an done, is probably as much as you can ask from a Christmas movie in this day and age. I can’t say it’s my favourite seasonal movie by a long chalk but it does entertain in a, kind of, comfortable way and it’s not something you have to think about too much if you just want to switch your brain off after the wine and pudding on Christmas Day. It’s not one I’d go out of my way to recommend but, equally, it’s one that I think a lot of horror afficionados would enjoy to a certain extent so, maybe if you are into festive fantoms and seasonal shocks, it’s something you might like to check out. Come on in... the weather outside is frightful.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Clausferatu

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
2010 Finland/Sweden/France
Directed by Jalmari Helander
Icon Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some slight, seasonal spoilers in here.

To say that Rare Exports is a movie about an intimidating killer-Santa is to do it somewhat of an injustice. I was looking forward to seeing this since it came out two Christmases ago but, for one reason or another, this is the first time I’ve been able to get a look at it. I finally picked up a cheap Blu Ray of it (why are Blu Ray discs cheaper than DVDs now?) and gave it some time. I have to admit, I was expecting something highly comical and camp from a film with this basic kind of premise of a group of people trying to trap some kind of “menacing Santa” but, as it turns out, this is not some piece of fluff which trades in laughs, mistletoe and wine... it’s actually a pretty decent stab at a Christmas themed horror film which doesn’t quite go the whole hog, perhaps, as I might have liked, but is certainly worth some of your time.

I have a slight problem with the ending of the movie but that’s only because the first two thirds of this thing were done so well that he ending felt a little flat after the intensity of the build up. I might be wrong but I suspect the ending could have been a lot more what I’d wanted if the film had gotten a lot larger budget... as it is, it just didn’t quite live up to my expectations of it when it came time for the “final showdown”, so to speak.

The film starts beautifully with 24 days to go until Christmas and an archeological team finding something “big”. The sponsor behind the expedition gets all excited about what he thinks they are going to find in some ice, packed in sawdust, deep within a mountain. Cut to the main protagonist, Pietari and his “friend” watching the team of archeologists. They have an argument about Santa Claus and return to their town, not far from the mountain. Pietari lives with his dad, Rauno, and they are getting through the days since the loss of Pietari’s mother and attending to their annual business with a small group of co-workers, ready to round up the year’s reindeer and slaughter them for meat.

The opening credits roll and we are treated to images from Pietari’s research into the Santa Claus legend. These show a grim portrait of Santa from a time when he wasn’t the benevolent fellow that the passing centuries have made him out to be. He tracks down the naughty kids and gives them a good, bloody scourging or dumps them alive into cauldron’s of boiling oil etc. The illustrations on display paint a nasty portrait of the “real” myth of Santa and after this, the film continues with Pietari and the gang investigating a large number of butchered reindeer and the disappearance of the archeological team.

The tone is amazing in this movie. Although there are some small laughs to be had, I think it’s true to say that the film eschews a humorous approach to the subject matter in deference to a much straighter, horror film approach to the material. This took me by surprise and really worked well. I was reminded more of David Slade’s 30 Days Of Night or John Carpenter’s The Thing while I was watching the intense build up as opposed to anything lighter, although there is actually a thin strand of dark humour weaved throughout... the film manages to establish some true moments of suspenseful terror in its short running time and even has a little trick up it’s sleeve in terms of the identity of the real Santa Claus... but I’ll leave that aspect for you to find out for yourself.

It’s really well put together, very cleanly framed and edited... you won’t have any trouble following this from a visual standpoint and there are no jumps or stutters in plot logic or fictional duration to jar you out of the action. This, combined with a very nice, almost classic 70s Hollywood style scoring by composers Juri and Miska Seppä ensures that you are both entertained and kept on the edge of your seat right until the end of the movie. This is one of those kinds of films which pull you in and keep you there until the director’s done with you.

My one real complaint is, I expect, due to financial reasons. I was waiting to see a run, jump and chase fight between our bunch of “out of their depth” heroes and what I can only guess is a giant Santa-monster. Instead, what you get is a very budget conscious third act where the true face of our legendary antagonist is not actually seen and, in the end, is fairly quickly disposed of. There’s a series of little sequences comprising an epilogue of sorts, by which time the film is now going for full on laughs, which also reveal the reasoning behind the title of the movie which are quite good, on the whole, and have an irresistible charm to them... it just doesn’t make up for the full on, gory Santa carnage I’d been led to expect from the rest of the film. Still, a slightly unsatisfying ending is no real problem for a movie that maintains such a high standard of excellence all the way through and I’m really glad I went along for this particular celluloid sleigh ride.

Rare Exports is a truly great little movie and is not to be considered a trifle of a Christmas film by potential viewers. True, there are no women in it, for some reason, but I have a feeling that this movie is going to be shown a lot on late night TV as part of one channel or another’s Christmas package for a great many years to come. More than just a piece of tinsel designed to cheer you up, Rare Exports has a real bite to it that you’ll want to sample for yourself. Make sure you get around to taking a look... and checking it twice.