Chillerama review

Since the inception of the horror genre, one of the main staples has been the anthology movie, where several scary stories, which generally have a common theme, are put together to make one film .During the 1980′s, considered to be one of the greatest generations for producing horror classics, many of these films hit the screens. Since then they have been largely overlooked, until this year and Chillerama is a helluva lot of fun.

This is a homage to films such as Creepshow and those B-movie type horrors that were shown regularly at the drive in movie theatres. There are four directors involved in Chillerama and together they gleefully skewer together and celebrate those classic schlocks from days gone by; think Grindhouse with a hefty dose of Psycho Beach Party thrown in for good measure.

So to the movie; its the last night before a drive in closes and is the owners last hurrah so he shows 4 very obscure splatter films. He sits in front of a portrait of Orson Welles lamenting the death of the movie thanks to home video and theatre systems. The first film shown in Wadzilla,with director Adam Rifkin at the helm, and is a quirky mash of a spoof 50′s monter movie and a school sex eduction film. It centres around the mild mannered Miles Munson, played by Rifkin, who has abnormal sperm.

His doctor convinces him to try out a new and experimental medicine, the downside is that whenever Munson gets aroused, he suffers excruciating pain in his balls. He invariably goes on a date with a hot, buxom blonde and produces a giant sperm that grows into a godzilla sized monstrosity and wreaks havoc inNew York. With crude CGI it intentionally looks fake, the cast play it straight and its a lot of fun.

Next up is I Was a Teenage Werebear, directed by Tim Sullivan. This sends up those teen horrors from the 50′s whilst also having a heavy dose of satire aimed at the Twilight films. Ricky is a James Dean Wannabe who is a typically frustrated teenager, but isn’t sexually attracted to his girlfriend however, like is towards the swaggering Marlon Brando-esque biker named Talon.

They bond in a wrestling class but after Ricky has been bitten on the bum by Talon, he starts getting strange urges and finds himself turning into a werebear. The sexual subtext of those 50′s movies is in the forefront here, and takes the form of the homoeroticism of these two good looking guys who fancy the pants of each other. It’s a lot of fun when they break into a terrible song and dance routine to express their feelings for each other.

Adam Green is the director of the next offering; The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, and merges Frankenstein with a film about the exploitation of women by the Nazis and a dose  of Mel Brooks thrown in for good measure. Hitler finds Dr Frankenstein’s diary and decides to patch together different parts of dead Jews to create a Hassidic monstrosity.

In the style of Planet Terror, this segment has been intentionally made to look like an old, grainy print and even has splices in the soundtrack. Its shot completely in monochrome and is subtitled as everyone speaks German, and Joel David Moore is a revelation as the ridiculous and inept Hitler, while Kane Hodder shows an unexpected talent for comedy as the hapless monster.

The final segment of Chillerama is Joe Lynch’s Zom-B-movie. This brings us back to present day, and one of the employees at the drive in mentioned at the beginning is now a zombie and is infecting several patrons thanks to his contagious gunk getting into the butter for the popcorn. We then have a mini zombie apocalypse to deal with and plenty of opportunities for and orgy/slaughter littered with famous movie quotes.

Chillerama takes no prisoners and makes no apology for shocking or offending. There are some nice features on the DVD, namely an audio commentary by the 4 directors involved and an insight into how they came up with their respective segments as well as several deleted scenes. It’s clear affection for the drive-in movie is evident and it stays this side of puerile thanks to this affection.