'Dead Collections' has too much of a good thing

Dead Collections (2012)
Starring: Caitlyn Fletcher, Roberto Lombardi, Edward X. Young, Linnea Sage, Jerry Ross, Samuel L.M. Cole, and Suzi Lorraine
Director: John Orrichio
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

 Sara (Fletcher), left with a broken heart and a mountain of debt following her husband's suicide, moves in with her senile uncle (Cole) to regain her footing. But strange events start occurring in the house, indicating the house or Sara herself might be haunted by a ghost, even as a creepy funeral director (Young) and a homicidal debt collector (Lombardi) begin stalking her. The question becomes which will Sara lose first--her sanity or her life?

 "Dead Collections" is an entertaining and chilling film that features a talented cast that is supported by a script that features enough material for two or three films. And that is its downfall.

 As mentioned above, there are three perceived threats that close in on the main character as the film unfolds. That's not atypical for a film like this, but generally one or more turns out to be a red herring or ends up working in the main character's favor. The film doesn't exactly go in that direction--which I appreciate, as fresh approaches are needed in the horror genre these days--but the presence of a funeral director with more dark secrets than a shelf full of gothic romance novels, and a psychotic debt collector who won't take anything but payment in full as an answer in the same movie is too much of a good thing.

 Roberto Lombardi gives a consistently frightening performance as debt collector Thomas Callan, and I could easily see myself giving this film a rating of Seven if he had been the major villain and the funeral director had been reduced to a minor threat or completely removed.

 Edward X. Young is equally menacing in his part, and I could likewise see myself giving a film featuring him as the major villain (perhaps titled "Wake" or "Vigil") a rating of Seven.

 Heck, I could even see myself possibly giving a Seven rating to a film where Caitlyn Fletcher, as Sara, is trying to put her life back together while living in a haunted house and dealing with the harassment of either a creepy funeral director or a pushy bill collector, who ultimately turn out to have played a role in her husband's death.

 But having all these elements, and two intensely evil characters receiving equal play as they zero in on the same target becomes too much of a good thing and loads this single story with way more than it can bear. It means more characters than is good for a film of this kind, and, perhaps worse, it leads to a muddling of timelines and plots. (The passage of time is a real issue in this film... some events that feel like they occur days apart--and probably should--must happen within the same afternoon from the way the film flows. Similarly, events that seem like they happen at the same time don't, as it's must be one time of day at the house where Sara is while another time of day elsewhere in the world.

 For all my griping, there is a lot to like about this film--and that's WHY I'm griping. As mentioned, I like the entire cast. There's lots of nice camerawork and the effects are decent for a movie at this budget level. The film is trim and free of padding, always a welcome thing. The music soundtrack is subtle and well-deployed. The film kept me engaged all the way to the very end, which is the greatest praise I can give a movie considering the seemingly endless backlog of DVDs that are forever awaiting my attention. In fact, the film is strong enough that the "shock ending" didn't bother me half as much as it usually does... but it the end, "Dead Collections" falls victim to being too much of a collection of characters and plot-threads.

It's still better than the majority of horror films being released these days... and far FAR better than the only other movie I can think of that I felt had a similar problem of colliding stories and villians--"Scream and Scream Again". (Which I reposted just before putting this review up, so you can read my take on that film, too, if you like.)

Saturday Scream Queen: Suzi Lorraine

Because there can never be enough pictures of cats on the web, here's actress and model Suzi Lorraine with Loki the Cat.

East Coast born-and-raised, Lorraine has become a familiar and appreciated presence in low-budget horror films in recent years, and she is featured in over a dozen different films slated for release during the second half of this year and through 2014. And I can only assume that even more projects will be added to her very busy schedule.

Saturday Scream Queen: Suzi Lorraine

Actress and model Suzi Lorraine has for the past decade been one of the best thing about numerous low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, whether appearing under the name of Kelli Summers in soft-core port spoofs like "Lord of the G-Strings" or "The Erotic Time Machine", or under her own name in chillers like "Torment" or "She-Demons of the Black Sun".

Born in 1978, Lorraine is one of a handful of actresses who has emerged from a New Jersey-based hub of low-budget genre film producers who has both the talent and looks to be destined for bigger and better films. A couple of years ago, she co-hosted MonsterFest on AMC, and she has parts in six movies in varying stages of production, ranging from early pre-production to just-about released. She is a talent to watch for many reasons, including the obvious ones.

Destined to make you look at the clock

Destined to Be Ingested (aka "Holocaust Holocaust") (2010)
Starring: Kitty Cole, Kris Eivers, Noshir Dalal, Theodore Bouloukos, Manuel Fihman, Suzi Lorraine, Bill Weeden, and Randall Heller
Director: Sofian Khan
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

In 1987, four Yuppies (Bouloukos, Cole, Eivers, and Lorraine) were stranded on a South Island. The title of the film gives away part of what happens next--and even if it didn't... has there ever been a south sea island that wasn't home to cannibals or people-eating monsters?--but it won't prepare viewers for the Tarazan-esque love story, nor the arrival of the zombies.


First off, let me admit that I may be ill-equipped to review this film. I may even be committing the sort of Reviewing Deadly Sin that I ranted about in this article(and numerous others), because I have seen very few of the movies in the cannibal horror/jungle savage subgenre this movie belongs to,and I've reviewed even fewer.

And that could be the reason why I'm not entirely sure how I was supposed to take "Destined to Be ingested". The title and the preview for the film both scream comedy, but the execution is straight-laced and so restrained that I can't help but think it was intended to be viewed as a straight horror movie, perhaps even a homage to films like "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Slaves of the Mountain God". The fact its set during the 1980s--when many such films were being made--can be used to support either approach, as can the sound mixing. Like many films where quick and cheap dub jobs were done, the dialogue is crystal clear and obviously recorded in studio; either the filmmakers were doing it intentionally, or the soundtrack needed to be mixed better.

Whether it's to be taken seriously as a homage to the cannibal and zombie pictures of the 1980s, or viewed as a spoof of those movies, the film's flaws are the same. First off, it takes entirely too long in getting to the violence and mayhem everyone knows is coming--nearly one-third of the movie's barely over an hour running-time. The movie spends one-third of its running time on setting up characters that never rise above the level of cliches, setting up sex scenes that we don't get to see because the scene cuts away, and setting the stage for some of the most tepid violence you'll ever see in a horror flick featuring cannibals (unless the Hallmark Channel decides to make one).

But even when it gets going, it moves in fits and starts. We have a burst of violence and suspense as the cannibals make their first attack on the hapless Yuppies, but then we're treated to another stretch of nothing... where boring characters wander around doing boring things. Even though in theory there are vicious cannibals in loin clothes and body paint lurking nearby, we get the feeling that the greatest threat facing the characters is that they'll run out of beer before they are rescued.)

It isn't until one of the cannibals falls in love with Kitty Cole's character in violation of the traditions of this culture, and gets her knocked up, that the film starts to get interesting. By this time, however, the film's well over half gone, and there's really no saving it. It gets even more interesting with the hints dropped about the background of the cannibal tribe's chief, but nothing at all ends up coming from that.

The film's one redeeming feature is the way it introduces the zombie aspect. As I do with the vast majority of films I watch and review, I came to this one with no real knowledge of what it contained beyond a little blurb supplied by the distributor. I truly did not see the zombies coming, until they were chowing down on the cast members. (Yes, they're set up their arrival through ominous dialogue about the village being cursed because of Kitty Cole becoming a baby mama instead of a human sacrifice/finger food, but I hadn't expected the curse to be manifested as zombies.)


Unfortunately, the zombies also come to represent the film's biggest inconsistency and the most clear example of how its various pieces--cannibal horror, love story, zombie rampage--don't quite fit together. It's hinted that the cannibal chief is a product of a forbidden union, just like the child his son's outsider love will give birth to. But if this is the case, then why didn't the zombies destroy the village then? Did the curse come to be later? The film doesn't even provide a clue to that question, so as enlivening as the sudden appearance of zombies were, they ultimately end up making the experience of viewing this movie an unsatisfying waste of time... the only benefit you'll gain from this film is the opportunity to check your watch. First, you'll be looking to see if it's working because time seems to be passing slowly, and when the end credits start to roll, you'll be double-checking the movie's length, because it has to be longer than an hour. (It's not, though.)

And that's too bad, because "Destined to be Ingested" is actually a fairly well-done movie as far as the cinematography goes, and the acting is pretty decent all around. With a more focused and better developed script, this could have been a decent movie. (Unless I'm missing something, due to my basic unfamiliarity with the cannibal horror genre.)

"Destined to be Ingested" has been kicking around since 2008, but it will receive wide distribution on DVD through Midnight Releasing on October 5, 2010.

Evil Clown knocks them dead in 'Torment'

Torment (2008)
Starring: Suzi Lorraine, Tom Steadman, Ted Alderman and Lucien Eisenach
Director: Steve Sessions
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A young woman (Lorraine) is released from a mental hospital into the care of her alcoholic husband. The two go to an isolated house so she can continue her recovery and they can renew their relationship in a quiet environment. Unfortunately for them, a psycho in a clown costume (Eisenach) is capturing and torturing people in the area.


This movie was hard for me to assign a rating to. While there is much about it that I like, there is much I don't like. It's one of the better psycho clown movies I've seen, but it's got some serious flaws.

Suzi Lorraine gives an interesting performance as Lauren, a former mental patient who spots a psychotic killer as he picks out his next victim, but who is disbelieved due to her history of mental illness. The way the script sets up the chain of events that leads Lauren into the worst possible danger is well executed and her confrontation with the Killer Clown (called Dissecto in the credits but unnamed in the film istself) is very suspenseful. Unfortunately, these strong parts of the movie are undermined and outweighed by the weak parts.

"Torment" feels like its two halfbaked scripts that have been combined into one film. They weren't necessarily BAD scripts... they're just unpolished and they work against each other and ultimately end up undermining what suspense and tension they could have produced if they had been two different movies.

The clunky dialogue at times made up for by some well done lines, and the few overlong and even redundant scenes in the film are likewise counterbalanced by some truly creepy, scary and startling moments. (For example, the repeatative expository scenes and dialogue of the fact that Lauren is fresh out of mental hospital are annoying, but they are more than made up for the scene where Dissecto invades her home, or when she is hiding in his.) As far as this goes, the good counterbalances the bad.

However, the way the film makes it crystal clear from the outset that Lauren isn't hallucinating the spooky clown lurking in the bushes-- the extended scenes of him torturing a pair of missing Mormon missionaries is most definately not something she's imagining--and so there is no real tension produced by the "is she crazy or isn't she" question... although it does make her husband come across like a grade-A asshole. If you're into "torture porn", I suppose you might enjoy those aforementioned scenese of Dissecto performing for and upon his victimes, but I'm too squeamish for that sort of thing--having recently experienced my own encounter with excruciating pain has made that sort of material hard for me to watch--but the sloppy costuming of the "Mormons" can't be anything but a strike against the movie. (It's bad enough one of the "Mormons" had a shaved head, but none of their missionaries would EVER sport a soul patch/jazz dot!)

Bad costuming (and the sloppy direction that allows it to happen aside) it's the absolute certainty the audience has of Dissecto's existence that undermines Lauren's story. It makes us dislike her husband to a disproportionate degree and it makes everything leading up to her encounter with Dissecto feel like it goes on and on, because we know the real action won't start until he dispatches the husband and starts stalking her.


And that's too bad. Suzi Lorraine gives an good performance, but my impatience with wanting the movie to get to where the real action was made it hard to notice. Tom Steadman likewise gave a decent accounting of himself as Lauren's moronic husband... and I think that if he had been given better dialogue to deliver, he might have been even better. (To a large extent, he's The Amazing Redundant Exposition Man, and this reduces his role to something less that what it could have been.)

"Torment" is a movie that has a lot to recommend to fans of thrillers, slasher movies, and "torture porn". Unfortuantely, the thriller elements and "torture porn" elements are at odds with each other and between them they almost manage to make the slasher element moot and make the ending seem false and forced because it doesn't feel like a natural outgrowth of anything. These, plus the stilted and clumsy nature of some of the dialogue and the excessive exposition in certain scenes drag this down to a low end of average, despite its strong points. (Speaking of excessive exposition... one thing the film never even hints at is the Who and the Why of Dissecto. Part of me would like to know more about him, but another part of me likes the "senseless evil" aspect this presents. I think the fact I'm torn is another sign that the script needed more work.)

Despite its flaws, though, "Torment" is worth checking out if you're into killer clowns, or if you enjoy small-scale horror films.