Greetings from the depths.
Thanks to everyone who wrote asking me to please write some more. I had the best of intentions, but the situation has been pretty miserable here at the homestead and everywhere else which didn’t help. Got furloughed from my government job until the new fiscal year began on Oct. 1, and I’m still digging out from that financial catastrophe. (I’m a good American, I live from paycheck to paycheck) Did I use that time to write? Ha! No. That time was obviously meant for doomscrolling (again, that seems a pretty American pastime these days)!
It’s getting better, I think. I hope. I’m hoping Election Day brings better news, and I don’t think that feeling is limited to Americans.
I wanted to get something up for Halloween, at least. It was going to be much longer, covering two movies, but that takes time, and here it is, October 31st.
Have a Happy Halloween. I hope to see you again soon.
Now for our main event
I’ve made it no secret that I enjoy found footage movies. There are reviews in my backlog that will prove that. And if there’s a stable franchise for them, it’s been the V/H/S/ series, which have been, ummm, uneven in its various incarnations. The last one I loved wholeheartedly was Beyond. I didn’t care for Halloween. The only opinion I posted for that was on Letterboxd, which said basically, limiting an anthology to a comparatively narrow subject didn’t do anybody any favors.
Which brings us to Mixtape.
It has a more expansive theme this time – Music. First off, your appreciation for Mixtape is going to depend largely on your opinion of the theatrical metal band GWAR, who serve as the connective tissue between the stories. I’m not a fan, but I do respect their overblown imagery and longevity.
My major criticism, overall, was echoed in a post by @kreadsthings on Threads: “…horror and gore aren’t the same thing, and simply relying on gratuitous gore does not make for a good horror film.”
Look, I get gore. I was a hardcore horror fan in the 80s when Chas Balun was publishing The Gore Score. Hell, I wrote one. But Mixtape pushes the gore button early and then keeps tapping on it like a rat that learned pushing the button gets him a treat.
The first real story is “Dance Dance Dance Dance” which concerns the hand puppets from a bygone children’s show that’s up for a reboot. The producer wants to scan the original puppets so they can be recreated as CGI, but the scans keep showing much more malevolent images than the puppets themselves present. That’s a good horror movie moment, which is almost immediately discarded for the gore sluices to open up.
The only story that utilizes gore well – as in, actually being relevant to and advancing the storyline – is RZA’s closer, “Death Tone”. Though it’s also basically torture porn, which I hate.
Saddest of all, there’s a pretty decent adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann” trapped in there. Even then, after the point Lovecraft’s story ends, the adaptation continues, allowing them to open up the firehoses full of stage blood, because it’s seemingly expected.
So. I guess I won’t be buying the blu-ray of this one, either. Maybe for that Lovecraft segment. If it’s on special.
