Schmollywood Babylon

Are You in the House Alone? (Walter Grauman, 1978)

Deep inside I’m one of those guys that really don’t want that much from a movie. When all comes around I prefer a good script and maybe a cute guy to look at, but that’s about it. I think we all can agree that Dennis Quaid was a piece of candy as a young man, and if you don’t like the movie itself, he will deliver in pure cuteness. Anyway, that has nothing to do with this TV-movie pretending to be a horror film, because even if Are You Alone In The House? echoes of every thriller from the time it’s actually more a stalking-drama with a little mystery-twist to it. Not bad either, so don’t be afraid.

Kathleen Beller is Gail, a normal schoolgirl who one day starts to get threatening notes, mysterious phone calls and and it all ends with her being raped - and that’s where we begin the story. What follows is an extended flashback telling us what lead up to this… and at the end, also who’s the perpetrator. But in this cold world, still a cold one - it should be noted - it’s up to Gail herself to find and catch the guilty party, because as usual in this sick, sick world, it’s the victim of stalking, especially if it’s a woman, who must blame herself for letting this happening to her!

Yes, Are You Alone In The House? is both a thriller wrapped in a mystery and a big angry letter to those standing on the side of the criminal. It never goes as far as being a revenge film, but if it had been 30 minutes longer we might have seen something like that. Like yesterday’s The Possessed this is a made for TV movie, which means nothing controversial - and this is a movie dealing with rude, nasty written threats and rape! Surprisingly enough, and it’s nice to see a film in this genre that doesn’t feel exploitive, the script is so good and keeps the viewer on the edge of the sofa (or just very comfortable deep down among pillows and snacks) it really doesn’t matter.

This is a quality production and it knows it. I’ve seen some critical comments regarding Kathleen Beller’s performance but I can’t understand that at all. She’s not the typical all-american girl, at least in her looks, which is fantastic. I’m so tired of blondes in peril. She gives some edge to a complex part. Around her is an army of red herrings: is it the nice boyfriend of hers? Or the hunky Dennis Quaid? Or maybe her father who acts weirder and weirder and hides the facts he has no job anymore? Hmm, or does her weird teacher with the strange accent have something to do with the threats?

Maybe the big revelations isn’t that big anyway, but I felt quite surprised and liked how the writer played with our expectations and some cleverly written dialogue. I fully understand you out there who expected something else - I did also - but if you can toss away those expectations and instead go for that “I would love to see a stalker-themed TV-thriller without any kind of nudity and violence”-vibe, you WILL like this movie a lot.

It’s out together on a nice double feature from Shout Factory called TV Terrors, together with the fun The Initiation of Sarah. Also worth watching, by the way.

Interior. Leather Bar. (James Franco & Travis Mathews, 2013)

With Interior: Leather Bar on the living room table, teasing me with it’s presence I had to watch William Friedkin’s Cruising again, just to prepare me for James Franco’s and Travis Mathews experimental docu-drama. I love Cruising so much, it might be one of my top twenty favorites of all time actually, and I think I’m pretty sure of that after seeing many times over the years. The big thing has always been the lost 40 minutes, minutes even Friedkin claims to have been shot and included in the first cut, but was cut on the orders from Warner Bros - who probably was shocked to see graphic sadomasochistic gay sex in seedy leather bars in New York splashed up on the screen.

Friedkin wanted it to be real. And Pacino is said to have been in these scenes to. Awesome is the only word I can find. But this footage have never been found, maybe it’s destroyed or rotting in some storage somewhere and will never be found in our lifetime. Here’s where Franco and Mathews comes in, wanting to examine both the rumors about the lost footage and make a short movie about dealing with non-mainstream sexuality. Franco feels he have been raised to think a certain sex and love is unnatural and he wants to get over it once and for all. He hires Val Lauren to play Pacino’s part, a bunch of actors with experience from pornographic films and sets out to shoot the lost 40 minutes.

First of all, don’t expect 40 minutes of footage from Cruising, which some people seem to have misunderstood. This is a drama with the actors playing themselves, but still playing actors, improvising and discussing sex, personal dilemmas with dealing with gay sex and just the world around them and the reaction they will get. Franco is there as a hyperactive producer/director, often discussing with others what meaning this movie has, but no one is really sure. Which is also part of the criticism it’s gotten in reviews - but I think it’s just a part of Franco’s game. He wants that to happen.

Because why do there have to be a clear meaning with movie, as long it shows something, long it tells at least part of a story.

Interior. Leather Bar is actually very similar to Cruising: both men slightly reluctantly signs up to do a job they don’t know so much about, going more or less undercover, having a steady contact with their boss and the reflects over what they really are towards the end. The big difference is how Franco more or less abandons Val here, while Paul Sorvino is there, somewhere, in the background at least.

So make no mistake, this is an experimental piece of cinema. I personally loved it, G didn’t. He liked it, but felt it didn’t feel finished. There’s a poetry in something that’s not dealt with completely. We’re left alone with our thoughts (much like in the orginal movie by Friedkin, which some viewers finds frustrating), and that can make us feel quite helpless in a situation like this. Oh, and also expect graphic sex - not overly nasty, but there’s enough cock in action to make John Travolta happy.

A curious, quirky film. And very good.

Caligula (Tinto Brass, 1979)

When the Gore Vidal scripted Caligula finally was released after several years in production it earned a lot of money on the box office. The rumour says it took in around 20 million dollars that first week, before it was pulled back into what the critics hoped to be obscurity. That didn’t happen, of course. It became one of Penthouse most bestselling productions and still lives on through new releases. I sincerely think it’s a good, maybe even great, film. It’s far from perfect, but it’s also the beauty marks what makes it what it is today.

When Tinto Brass left the production, producer and professional smutpeddler Bob Guccione cobbled together the film in the way it wasn’t meant to be. He used outtakes, stuff that was out of focus, scenes where the actors and extras just was taking a break, edited scenes in the wrong order and sometimes even creating scenes that didn’t exist in the first place, from combining footage not meant to be near each other. This means the film has a very special atmosphere. Just like Robert Altman, Tinto Brass prefers to stay on a distance with his cameras, never letting the actors know what’s going on. With Guccione’s way of putting together the film it feels even more intimate, even more voyeuristic. It takes away some of the stylishness Brass gives to his films, but also adds to the quality in an odd way.

The impressive sets, reminding us of theatre stages, gives the film a dreamy, outworldly look. Most scenes are often only blocked from one side, which gives us the impression there’s an audience sitting on the other side - so basically, with it’s big and bold words and tasteless scenes of sex and carnage - Caligula IS a stage, a perverted opera with the sounds of screaming instead of singing. Malcolm McDowell, still the hottest actor of the time, makes the movie his own - but look at him, look how he always gives the other actors - from the extra to the veteran stars - attention. That’s acting my friends, not the ego show it could have been with any other actors.

I don’t give much for Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud not being aware of the pornographic nature of the film. Both are fantastic, but you need to be blind not to see what’s going on right behind their backs in a lot of scenes. There’s some graphic stuff there, both violence and sex - sometimes simulated sex, sometimes not at all. Then, I mean, this was still a sexual revolution at the cinema and it being funded by Mr Porn himself, well, how could they don’t know? I think they had a blast - and a big paycheck - and spending time with other Shakespearean actors in Rome, not bad at all. Even I would say yes to that.

Caligula could have been the first movie I saw together with G (he fell asleep), even before Night of the Lepus and Food of the Gods 1 and 2. It was in 2007 and it was the very impressive Imperial Edition from Penthouse Films/Image, which still is the ultimate release. Today I saw it on blu-ray from Arrow Video, which looked fine - but still a bit rugged and murky. But I’m not complaining. It’s after all the worlds most expensive sex film, recut a million times, loathed and loved. It’s been alive all this years, and it’s visible. Isn’t that a beautiful destiny of a film?

What’s extra fun is that many years later both Gore Vidal and Helen Mirren...and a bunch of other famous people (including the AWESOME Karen Black!)… starred in “Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula”, a special short movie/fake trailer made for the art exhibition Venice Biennale. It’s a lot of fun, check it out:

Demeking (Kôtarô Terauchi, 2009)

When I was a kid most of my time outside was spent looking for treasures, solving mysteries, pretending to be somewhere else. I remember how I once found a big pile of coins hidden in the ground in front of my school - coins from the fifties, so they had no value. Another time we found a skeleton in the forrest and ran home to tell our parents. It was a deer of course. I lived close to a castle, so the grounds was filled with history, old rusty metal objects and maybe most important: stories, lots of them. One was about the secret tunnel leading from the castle to... I don't know where. Maybe some kind of escape route. Everyone knew about it but no one knew if it was real. It was a constant search for something else, something that could trigger our imagination.

Demeking is about the search for something. Whatever it may be. In a bit of a false advertising Demeking is sold as a Kaiju movie. And yeah, some parts of it is Kaiju, but it's mostly a coming-of-age story, set between 1970 and 1972 in Japan. Kohei Kiyasu is Kame, an older kid spending a lot of time with some younger boys, maybe because he doesn't have any other friends - or maybe because he's a bit naive and fits better with the younger guys. One day he and his little troupe of explorers meets Hachiya (Takeshi Nadagi), the local madman - or well, maybe not mad, but he's just not like everyone else. He talks about Demeking and how he will fight this... monster. One day he leaves the little town they're all living in and leaves a map and a letter to Kame and his friends. They go out on a treasure hunt and discover a prophecy, Hachiya's propechy. In 2019 a giant monster will attack earth, a huge snail called Demeking...

I honestly thing Demeking is a brilliant drama, a very touching and sometimes arty story about growing up, about dreams and wishes. It's simple in it's storytelling, the characters are on the surface very uncomplicated and the visual style of the film is very traditional. What makes it so powerful is how it triggers the imagination, it really never give any clear answers and the ending is as open as it can be. But wow, that what really gets my brain working. I want to having something to think about afterwards - sometimes it's frustrating, but here it's just very humane, very poetic. Combined with fine acting and intelligent dialogue, Demeking is a fantastic little movie. I say little, because it never pretends to be something else. Well, except when the marketing comes around. But I would blame that on the distributors. 

Sure, there's a huge monster attack in this film. The monster Demeking is so awesome. But it's not what it seems, so be prepared. But still, after all is said and done... maybe our characters are on to something anyway? It might just be the imagination of a couple of dreamy guys who's grown up with Tokusatus shows on TV and Godzilla and Gamera in cinema. But on the other hand, it might not be that at all. I'm not gonna write anything more, but I just want you to understand that this is not a monster movie. This is a childhood drama. And I'm so damn curious how these characters turned out as adults. 

That is maybe the true power of Demeking, the characters continues to live on outside the movie, outside the Manga it's based upon. That's magic, my friends. That's true movie magic. 

The Battery (Jeremy Gardner, 2014)

It seems like The Battery has been out in the festival circuit since 2012, but it’s not until now it’s gotten proper distribution - so I consider it a 2014 production. A decision that will cause a lot of confusion in the future and when people are putting together their best-of-2014 movie list in the december. So that’s my gift to the world wide web, I hope you all are happy.

Go to the Internet Movie Database and take a look at the user comments for acclaimed genre movies with very little graphic gore and you’ll find the same snobby opinions in every one of them: Ohhh, it’s so nice with a horror movie that never lower itself by using splatter or special effects and yada yada yada. You know the deal, some idiot is trying to be a bit smarter and everyone else and earn some I’m So Important-points in filmsnob heaven (just like the fools a Fangoria does in every issue nowadays bye the way, but that’s a completely different story). I love special effects and gore, no shame in that. I mean, no one whines about when your favorite band do some solos - that’s what special effects are in movies, something a little bit extra to give the audience some extra fun.

The Battery on the other hand is a perfect movie without special effects. The lack of zombies, splatter, gore, whatever you call it, just makes it focus on what’s important in this story: the not so lovable bromance between two dudes (Jeremy Gardner himself and Adam Cronheim) who’s survived the zombie apocalypse (so far) and is traveling without a plan through New England and spend most of their time picking fights with each other. One day Mickey (Cronheim), who hates being out on the road, hears a girl on his radio, Annie, and falls in love with her - without having no idea who she is. Ben (Gardner) is not happy about this and warns him it could be a disaster talking to her..

Let me describe The Battery: two dudes in front of the camera arguing. That’s it, if you’re a lazy movie critic. The Battery is so much more, it’s an intimate drama set to the background of the zombie apocalypse, with some humour and a few (very few) actual zombies here and there. We spend 100 % of the time with Ben and Mickey and their relationship, the ups-and-downs of two baseball players trying to find a home. It’s very well-acted, even if it feels like the two actors are playing more extreme versions of themselves. It feels human and real, which for me is the most important thing. Here and there there’s also small clues to what has happen and where Annie belongs, but don’t expect any answers.

The zombies is just the MacGuffin of this this film, it could be basically anything out there - from a nasty winter to an alien invasion, as long as we follow Ben and Mickey. What makes The Battery even cooler - and it’s a brave, brave decision - is the final act. I won’t spoil it for you, but imagine the anti-version of a zombie siege. It takes a while to understand that well, this is it. This is how it will be and maybe end. And it’s such a great move. Some would say it’s gimmicky, but I think it just proves what a fine drama The Battery is until the end.

I can’t say it’s the best zombie movie in recent years because it’s not a zombie movie. The living dead are just extras in the drama, but as a drama (dramedy? buddy comedy?) it’s stellar, one of the best in long time. Shout will release it on DVD and Blu-ray during 2014, it’s a movie you need to own and protect and love and pet and everything else between. Even the dirty things. It’s a beautiful story about friendship and sweaty men who never have time to wash themselves.

Nails (Andrey Iskanov, 2003)

Sometimes you run into a movie intense, so mindfucking unbelievable awesome it will change your world. Nails is like discovering Eraserhead or Tetsuo again - with a dash of Alphaville, a feverish, bizarre and very personal journey from Khabarovsk-based filmmaker and cat-lover Andrey Iskanov. Iskanov has been outside just outside my range of viewing for quite a while - even if I heard good stuff about Philosphy of a Knife and Visions of Suffering, so when I had the pleasure to watch it this weekend I couldn't say no. Nails is basically a story about a hitman (Alexander Shevchenko) who's kills slowly starts to creep up on his mind and he starts to hit nails into his head, to make the thoughts go away. But his state of mind becomes increasingly strange and surreal and soon he's not sure what's reality or not. 

You know, it's totally impossible (at least for me) to recap the story of Nails, but I guess what I wrote above could be one way to interpret it. But Nails is more about visual madness and that weird idea that it seems to want to enter your mind with so many out of this world moments, rapid editing - I wonder if there's some subliminal messages hiding in there? - and an interesting mix of very, very good performance - especially from leading man Alexander Shevchenko - and more amateurish moments. Nails is a typical first movie, a first epic from a genius. It has the enthusastic experimental style almost all filmmakers began with, but like with Lynch and Cronenberg, Iskanov goes all the way, throwing away every idea of making a commercial, sellable production, and instead follows his own unique path. 

As a genre movie it's quite hard to grasph, it's all over the place - which seems very deliberate. You have everything from weird hallucinations and dreams, gore and splatter, social realism, nudity and that wonderful form of pretentiousness that you can't dislike it. Nails IS art because it wants to be art and somewhere along the way it has something to say. I'm still not sure what or why or when or was - I need to watch it again sooner or later - but it's one of those flicks which stays in your mind for quite a while afterwards. Iskanov does something I admire very much: he films a story that actually needs a much bigger budget to attract the mainstream geeks out there, but he just doesn't give a shit! He makes HIS movie and he makes it the hard way. The ideas used is so far out, wow, I mean man, I wonder how this flick would be under the influences of some kind of mind-altering drug? Would it open doors previously locked?  I have no damn idea, but I love, Love, LOVE Nails and now I can't fucking wait to work myself through Andrey Iskanov's filmography. 

Andrey Iskanov's Nails is an unforgettable film about a dude hitting nails into his brain. It's so much more than an gory indie-movie. Nails places itself together with Eraserhead and Tetsuo in the shelf of awesome artyfartyness. And I'm sure Lemmy Caution is smiling somewhere, at this insane, fucked-up version of what could be Iskanov's version of Alphaville. 

The Last House On Dead End Street (Roger Watkins, 1977)

This is one movie that has escaped me for the main part of my movie collecting career, so when I found the Barrel release at Stockholms no. 1 video store Monkey Beach a while ago, I of course took the chance to see it and judge by myself! I can understand how this film attracts sleaze monglers and people obsessed by very, very regional and cheap horror films of the seventies. The Last House On Dead End Street is a wannabe Taxi Driver before Taxi Driver was made, mixed with a very gritty 42st cinema approach - badly lit and amateurish acting. This of course doesn’t mean it sucks, far from!

This guy, Terry, is terribly bitter after being in prison once again. So he comes out with a rage towards the society which means he decides to make his own snuff movies and yeah, kill people for the real in front of the camera. He gets a small crew and the start to find their victims…

Its not much of a story to talk about, but it’s strangely effective and artistic. We follow Terry’s struggle to make his first real movie mixed with some truly surreal and strange scenes, both in this movie alone and in the movie-in-movie. Somehow it feels like a nice bunch of New York intellectuals trying to make the sleaziest, grittiest exploitation movie they could make - but never scene. This makes The Last House On Dead End Street almost too cynical for its own best. But it keeps it together until the end - until the unnecessary voice over at the very end. There’s some truly impressive shock scenes - all to the wonderful - no! - MASTERFUL score by...a stock music archive. There’s some use of a low-key, brooding opera during one of the kill scenes that alone makes this movie a lot better than it should be.

At the same time it’s just another exploitation movie, a bit fancier version of Michael Findlay’s Snuff. Those two also share the snuff-myth. The Last House On Dead End Street was made with alias for everyone involved, which started rumours that it was a snuff movie. Roger Watkins, who later admitted to be the director, never really knew until 1979 that it got a cinema release - when someone stopped him on the street, recognize him from the movie. And it’s a grim and very cheap film, with lots of unconvincing gore and boobs and asses and everything in-between. Most of it is quite arty, not sexy (which I’m sure is the deliberately) and entertaining. The short running time of 77 minutes is perfect - I can’t even imagine what the rumoured 175 minute version could have delivered (probably more boring scenes) to its audience!

Surprisingly stylish and freaky, The Last House On Dead End Street is a minor exploitation masterpiece. So if you want to see a man giving blow-job to a hoof and a half-naked woman in blackface being whipped by a retarded hunchback, this IS the movie for you.

Good luck.

Poor Preddy Eddie (Richard Robinson & David Worth, 1975)

Poor Pretty Eddie is one of those movies I picked up just because it seemed interesting - I do that way too often, that’s why I have a collection of +4000 discs and boxes here at home. But I have a fondness for twisted, small dramas - and this felt just like it, but with a regional exploitation twist. Also, it stars Shelley Winters - a lady I love more than my own mother. No, not really, but I do love her a little bit. My mother that is. No sorry, Shelley IS awesome, but my mom is more awesome. Some say she’s dealing with the fine art of over-acting, but I honestly think she acted more realistic than a lot of other people out there did.

Leslie Uggams is Liz Wetherly, a famous afro-american singer on her way from a gig. But unfortunately for her her car breaks down close to an old backwoods town where the big star is Bertha (Winters) and her young lover Eddie (Michael Christian) rules. Bertha is a former starlet, a singer and celebrities - far from her glory days. Eddie is a wannabe-singer (a bit Elvis-esque) who directly gets the hots for Liz...and rapes her. Now Liz is stuck in this little shithole and all the retards in it!

Poor Pretty Eddie is bascially a moral nightmare for Liz, not that she does something wrong - it’s like she stuck this hellhole of raping, unintelligent rednecks - where she’s forced to live their life after their rules. This film is also darkly comedic, like a send-up on countryside dramas mixed with the grittier, sleazier, 70’s cinema. Slim Pickens as the sheriff delivers both a very funny and disturbing performance, one of those characters you never can trust. The more I think of it, Poor Pretty Eddie feels more like a art film, trying to fuck your mind up where to put your support. Because Eddie on one hand is a rapist, an idiot, but still somehow cares for Liz and actually saves her from getting raped by half the village - but he’s also the typical abusive man, a person who wants to control his woman. And therefore despicable.

It’s so hard to define this film and I can fully understand how it was more or less impossible to find for a number of years. How could the distributors market this film? It’s not a thriller, it’s not sleaze, it’s still too sleazy for some people, it’s quite fun and it’s quite disturbing and still have that arthouse touch you only could find in 70’s exploitation cinema - but is it exploitation? I’m not sure you would call the Swedish black comedy classic Rötmånad for exploitation, even if it quite similar in atmosphere as this one. It all depends on the distribution I get. In drive-in’s it probably was exploitation, while it easily could come off as something else if it was shown at Sundance.

If you love wide angles lenses, slow-motion and some absurdly complex characters, Poor Pretty Eddie is something for you. I really liked it, but I don’t know how to describe it. It gets darker, more weird and odd the longer it goes, boarding to surrealism in the middle of the rural melodrama.

Poor Pretty Eddie is not for everyone, but it would fit like an absurd double feature together with The Klansman, which also have the same bizarre light-dread and misdirected serious melodrama and a spectacular killer ending. Not sure what to say more, but I liked it.

Stockholm Stories (Karin Fahlén, 2013)

Lets get one thing over with, I work quite close to director Karin Fahlén, she’s actually sitting one meter from me right now - but if I didn’t like Stockholm Stories I just wouldn't have an opinion about it. That’s me, I rather stay quiet and say nothing instead of giving constructive criticism ;) But the truth is, Stockholm Stories is a damn fine dramedy, one of the best Swedish movies in quite a while. And this comes from a dude who usually dislikes modern Swedish cinema.

Based (kinda) on a short story collection written by actor Jonas Karlsson, it’s not totally wrong to say it’s a Swedish Short Cuts. There’s a lot of haunted personalities floating around in Stockholm, and all of them are somehow intertwined with each other. We have the stiff government secretary who one day spots his name on an envelope inside a car. He can’t stay away from this mystery and starts to investigate who’s car it is and gets obsessed (which is a kind word, he’s more or less a stalker) by the woman who wrote it, an even more anti-social and strange woman who happens to have a pointless beef with a comedian over a delicatessen basket he stole from her. Nearby we follow a stuttering young man who fights with a conservative father who want to control his life, include the girl he meets - who happens to be the lover of a certain politician and also the sister of a young and naive writer who want to get out of his father’s shadow. And the rest I leave up to you. You get the point.

There’s a lot of emotions going on in Stockholm Stories, and thankfully everyone and their story is tied together in the end - not necessary for the best of the characters, at least if you see it a traditional dramaturgical way. I’ve always felt that there’s more good ways to end a movie than with total happiness, sometimes a bit of bad luck can be happy in it’s own twisted way.

Director Karin Fahlén and screenwriter Erik Ahrnbom carefully avoids the clichés - just the detail with the naive writer actually NOT being especially talented is a brilliant idea, because that’s probably a lot more realistic than him being a brilliant writer like his genius, dead father. Now he’s just a pretentious wannabe who just wanna get published by all means necessary. A nice pretentious wannabe, but still. Cecilia Frode, who plays Jessica, almost makes an alien character, totally unattached to the society around her, with odd (and fantastic) clothes and a talent for starting fights just because she can’t let it go.

Another favorite character is Peter Carlberg, who plays the conservative father. With eyes so empty (imagine the eyes of a shark) and so emotionally disturbed I instinctively started to hate him the first time I saw him. This in contrast to Pia Halvorsen, who plays his wife - also excellent - but a bitter-sweet, humorous sadness, walking the line between comedy and true drama. I could watch a whole movie with these two personalities - and their stuttering son of course, played by Filip Berg.

But the true star of the show is Karin Fahlén, who tells the story with steady hands and perfect pace. I adore how she deliberately stays at a distance from her characters, visually that is. Kinda lurking far away, almost spying at them -. and gradually comes closer the further the story goes. She shows a part of Stockholm we rarely see, far from the typical yellow picturesque houses and landscapes with famous landmarks place in the middle. There’s no Globen, or Town hall… no castle or the typical churches. It gives as more realistic view of the south of Stockholm (“Söder”) than before, not the usual tourist footage we’re treated with in millions of other movies shot in this wonderful town.

Stockholm Stories are far away from what I normally review at Ex-Ninja, but this is one of those Swedish movies that needs a boost at the box office. It’s released tomorrow Friday in Sweden, go and see it in the cinema and thank me afterwards. I promise you’ll like it! 

Rammbock (Marvin Kren, 2010)

A couple of days ago I watched Blood Glacier, an odd and very European take on the traditional creature feature á The Thing. I never seen anything like it, in some ways - and still it was extremely familiar. It takes courage to make a movie like that and therefore I had to see Rammbock, the one hour long take on zombie movies from 2010 - also directed by Marvin Kren of course. The English title is so silly I've stayed away from it - SIEGE OF THE DEAD - which makes it sound like yet another cheap-ass zombie film we've all seen before, but my buddy Jason loaned it to me the other day and there where was nothing stopping me anymore.

Michael (a very impressive performance by Michael Fuith) arrives to Berlin to give the keys to his ex-girlfriend Gabi. But just when he steps into the apartment a zombie epidemic breaks out and he's trapped there together with  teenage boy in the same apartment and some other neighbours holding out on the opposite side of the courtyard. But Michael just wants to get in contact with Gabi. In the meantime the stories around him unfold, from infected neighbors to suicides. 

Rammback is a darkly comedic - on the verge of not being comedic at all - tale of the undead that cleverly mixes European arty farty with traditional zombie mayhem. The strength in the story is the realistic characters, which is far from the typical stereotypes. Michael is a man somewhere between 30 and 40 who slowly is loosing his hair, obsessing over his girlfriend and just being very, very pointless. But when the zomes arrive he's probably more effective than he's ever been. Kren is always delivering everything we want to see in a movie like this, but it's still very far from any kind of clichés. How the hell does he do it?

Imagine a zombie movie partly shot like Hitchcock's Rear Window, but later feels more like the inside of a huge and bizarre - and pretty gruesome - dollhouse. It's a touching love story in the middle of it all, free from the normal stupidity. I love it when people dare to do something like this, to step outside the usual shit and do something different. 

It feels - and looks - like a well-made European TV-movie, not just because of the length, but because of the focus on characters instead of gore (even if it has some of that to, don't worry!). It's not just a story about a zombie epidemic, it's about breaking up a relationship and realizing it never will be the same again. Or, to boilt it down to less words: to be a nice human being. That's powerful storytelling.

Rammbock is a mature and intelligent zombie movie, something we haven't seen in many years. It deserves a hug for being so good.