HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: All About Evil (2010)

Our sponsor

Today’s sponsor is a great podcaster, a good friend and fellow Queens resident Patrick K. Walsh.  Patrick’s podcast, Scream Queenz is an amazing listen, addressing horror films and television from an LGBTQ perspective and I’ve been enjoying it for years.  Right now Patrick is neck deep in his annual Countdown To Halloween Pod-A-Thon to benefit New Alternatives NY, a great organization that helps homeless LGBTQ teens find housing, get job training, and otherwise provide emotional and physical support.  Please go to the Official Funraising Page and donate.  It’s a good cause, and you’ll be getting a lot of entertainment!

Patrick chose All About Evil, a 2010 film about a very unstable woman who inherits a movie theater.  Now, in full disclosure, I am in the process of writing a script with a movie theater as a back drop, but I suspect this has little to nothing in common with mine.  For one, this film stars Natasha Lyonne.

I really, really have a thing for Natasha Lyonne, years before a lot of people got into her for Orange Is The New Black and/or Russian Dolls.  So there may be some gratuitous squidging here.

Patrick could not have chosen a better film for this day, as it’s a natural companion piece to Theater of Blood.  but whereas Theater uses Shakespeare as its hook, All About Evil embraces Herschell Gordon Lewis.  And much like yesterday’s entry, this film exists in a slightly heightened--one could almost say ‘theatrical’--reality that dances nimbly on the line between camp and tatt.  This is close enough to what a Theater reboot would be like if the medium was film and not Shakespeare as we'll ever get and have me happy with it..

Debbie (Lyonne) has just inherited her father’s old theater, The Victoria...at least she has after she murders her mother who tried bullying and torturing her into signing a document selling it to a developer.  The murder was caught by the security cameras on a night the theater is showing Blood Feast and is accidentally shown before the feature...and the sparse audience of gorehounds think it’s an underground film.  As word of her ‘art’ spreads through San Francisco’s Midnight Movie scene, Debbie transforms herself into ‘Deborah Tennis’ (pronounced De-BOR-ah TEN-nees) and begins making snuff films with the aid of the equally bloodthirsty projectionist Mr. Twig (Jack Donner).  Before you know it, Deborah has created a whole ‘film crew’ that includes a creepy drifter (Noah Segan) and a bloodthirsty set of Wednesday Addams-esque twins (Jade and Nikita Ramsey)...and has brought suspicion on young gorehound (Thomas Dekker), who has been getting flack for his attraction to extreme horror from his school, his maybe-girlfriend (Ariel Hart), and his mother (Cassandra Peterson of Elvira fame...who is still very hot at the age of 59 when this was made).

This movie was made by Joshua Grannell, perhaps better known as the drag queen Peaches Christ, and this is his only feature film, which is a pity because he is very good.  It manages to be well shot while still remaining close enough to emulate the HG Lewis esthetic.  Grannell seems to know the best way to be camp is to take things seriously; there’s none of that winking 'it’s all in fun’ bullshit attitude that is rampant in the neo-grindhouse subgenre.  Characters that could have been parodic and wince-worthy end up being dramatic and grand in a way I really found intriguing.  Somewhere around the end of the second act, I got the sense that Debbie and her Pals were the ghoulish inheritors of The Ed Wood /John Waters Tradition of an Outsider Family Making Movies.

The gore is not surprisingly over the top and operatic, so I never took it seriously--except for the one sequence where Deborah sews shut the lips of her old co-worker Evelyn (John Waters mainstay Mink Stole) which is uncomfortable to watch.  The cast is all uniformly good; I particularly like how the relationship between Steven and his mother develops, as she initially is following the trope of ‘Da Parent Who Don’t Get It’ but does make attempts to understand her son’s fascination with this genre.  It’s a very horror-positive film, while also acknowledging negative views of the genre in a respectful way through the character of Ariel Hart’s Judy. 

And yes, Natasha Lyonne is Two Barrels of Smoking Hotness once she remakes herself as Deborah.  Supposedly she utilized bits of classic Hollywood actresses like Mae West, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to come up with her moviemaking persona, and you can see some of that in some of her acting choices.  Lyonne wears a succession of flashy-to-the-brink-of-gaudy dresses and looks magnificent with an increasingly wide streak of white in her bronze hair.  She is definitely of the same mold as Edward Lionheart and Anton Phibes (it’s a shame there’s no possibility of a crossover, because Lionheart and Deborah would make a perfect Murder Marriage).

I suppose I should also mention that after seeing the Ramsey Twins’ deadpan performance, I am writing a movie in my head where there’s a turf war between them and Electra and Elise, the Crazy Babysitter Twins of Robert Rodriguez film fame.  Maybe I can get the Great and Powerful Soska Twins to direct!

This is what neo-grindhouse should be--it doesn’t try to cram far too much stuff into its hour and three quarters running time and nudge us in the ribs so we get every reference; it tells a coherent story that utilizes those elements of grindhouse cinema that can be used to enhance the story they’re telling.  It is a great example of what this subgenre should be.  Grannell should make more of these films--I’d particularly like to see some of the mock-movie posters that roll during the closing credits made into features.  I enthusiastically recommend it.

Tomorrow as we move into the final stretch of this year’s Horrorfest, there is no sponsor.  I have turned to the Randonizer, which chose 2008‘s Pontypool.  On one hand, it’s a zombie film...but on the other, it’s a rather unusual zombie film headed by Stephen McHattie, who I’ve always liked.

If you want to join the Patrick, Theresa and Jim Moon, Nicholas Kauffman and other great Horror Luminaries in getting me to watch a movie of your own choice during the Halloween Horrorfest, please consider joining the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 Tier or greater.  Each new patron gets a free slot in this Gauntlet of Ghoulishness!  There are still two open slots left, so act fast!