If you were a horror fan in the video
store era, there is a chance that you might remember the VHS box art
for 1999's Kolobos. More specifically, there's a chance you
might remember the box art for Kolobos being pretty terrible,
and like most viewers you probably skipped over the film. The
late-90s was not a great era for horror, and especially not for
straight-to-video horror, as the market was flooded by a bunch of
bad, nondescript, shot-on-digital-video cash-ins on the teen-horror
revival sparked by the success of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's
films like Scream, The
Faculty, I Know What
You Did Last Summer, and Cursed.
And in the days before we all had the internet in our pockets to look
up reviews in-store, movies generally lived or died by how well their
box art lured people in; meaning both that we all suffered through a
lot of bad movies with intriguing covers, and that some better movies
fell through the cracks because their unremarkable marketing got them
lost in the shuffle. Kolobos
was definitely one of the latter: the front cover made it look like
some kind of bad ripoff of The Relic,
while turning the box over immediately revealed the deceptiveness of
the artwork (it is not a monster movie, and never pretends to be
one), but instead made it look like one of a million bad Scream
knockoffs with a premise cashing
in on the then-new trendiness of The Real World.
No one can be blamed for writing this off as probably a terrible
movie and not bothering to rent it; I am certainly one of those
people who assumed this, and rented something else. So I was very
surprised when Arrow Video announced a special edition blu-ray, and
proclaimed the film to be an unfairly overlooked
should-be-cult-classic. It turns out that they are (to a degree)
right: while there are ways in which Kolobos
betrays its low-budget straight-to-video production values, this is a
surprisingly very fun, atmospheric, nasty, and deliriously
off-the-wall film, which borrows far less from Scream than
it does from Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. We were missing out in
1999: with better marketing, this really could have been a
fan-favorite of the era even with its flaws, as it contains not only
a lot to like, but a handful of genuine surprises that managed to
catch me quite off-guard.
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| "Well, we may be dying one by one, but at least this isn't hosted by Flavor Flav." |
The Film:
On its
face, this absolutely sounds like a cheesy – and very 1999 –
slasher version of The Real World:
five twentysomething (most of whom are pretty obvious 90s character
archetypes) agree to live together in a house where their every
action will be recorded by hidden cameras, but it soon becomes clear
that there is a killer in the house, and they are actually the stars
of an elaborate multicam snuff film. But we quickly realize that we
may be in for something very different when the film begins with a
strongly Argento-influenced opening sequence: Goblin-inspired music
over a credits montage of very creepy drawings and paintings, shots
of black gloved hands setting up the hidden cameras, and menacing
steadicam shots as a bloody would-be victim runs for her life through
dark alleys. It's a strong beginning, and not the beginning that you
would expect. After that, though, Kolobos
goes back to being basically just what you would expect for its first
half-hour or so. Aside from our main character, Kyra (Amy Weber), a
troubled young artist whose mental health struggles have, until
recently, manifested in self-harm and horrifying hallucinations, the
other “contestants” on the reality-show-turned-bloodbath are
basically a bunch of stock 90s-twentysomething archetypes. There's
the party-girl, the obnoxious dude-bro, the self-serious
sweater-wearing film student, and the B-movie actress who just wants
to be taken seriously; all people we've seen in countless other films
of the time, and there isn't as much postmodern humor in the mix as there was in Scream (though there is some). In keeping with the film's straight-to-video production,
most of them are saddled with pretty cheesy dialogue, and most of
them are pretty poorly acted, with the exceptions being the
Ben-Stiller-ish John Fairlie as the film student, and Amy Weber, who
gives a genuinely strong performance that makes the script's more
outlandish elements work.
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| "This jam won't wash off, no matter how hard I scrub!" |
While
Kolobos took me by
surprise with how wild, unpredictable, and fun it is, there is no
denying that it is a deeply uneven production with a lot of flaws.
When it is good, it is quite good: the 35mm cinematography is very
strong, the score (while derivative)
is very effective, and the practical gore effects are outstanding.
But in other ways it cannot escape the reality of being a
straight-to-video film made for just half a million dollars,
especially where its acting and characterization is concerned. The
greatest love and care was without a doubt put into the atmosphere
and the gore, and aside from the impressive Amy Weber, the real stars
are the cinematographer and the effects artists. That approach works
in the film's key moments, and allows it to rise above the average
quality of its direct-to-video contemporaries on the strength of its
set-pieces, but it also lets down other parts of the film. Its strong
points are, however, worth the price of admission, and twenty years
after its release its kitschy 90s qualities really just add to the
fun. I'm not sure how much I can say that Kolobos
is a genuinely good movie in total, but parts of it are very strong,
and the whole is definitely a lot of fun. I can happily recommend it
as a very enjoyable, well-crafted B-movie that, even when it's pretty
cheesy, is always a really good time. If you're a fan of low-budget
horror, and especially if you love the Italian masters of the 70s and
80s and have a taste for over-the-top gore effects, Kolobos
is well worth seeking out. Arrow is right that it deserves some kind
of cult-classic status, and I'm very glad that they've given the film
some love, and convinced me to take a chance on it after years of
writing it off.
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| "The horror! It's a pan-n-scan transfer!" |
Given
the film's low-budget nature and level of obscurity, it's kind of
amazing just how great Kolobos
looks in its new 2k remaster; or rather, it's pretty amazing that a
film like this got a 2k remaster at all. The mere fact that Arrow set
out to give this movie such a level of love and care simply because
they see it as an underrated gem and think that horror fans would
agree goes a long way to show what genuine cinephiles and genre geeks
they are. They really went the distance: Kolobos
looks beautiful. In the film's extras, the co-directors talk about
how, despite the low budget, they stretched to be able to shoot on
35mm, and were insistent that the film required a great
cinematographer who understood the visual sensibility of Dario
Argento's classics. As such, the film's visuals really benefit from
this remaster; the pan-n-scan VHS and non-anamorphic letterboxed DVD
(which were the only ways in which it had ever been seen in America)
just don't do it justice. The stylized colors look vibrant, details
are fine, and the print has a heavy presence of film grain that makes
it feel very distinctly like 35mm. The sound mix is also strong, with
the sound effects and score really shining. This film could not look
or sound better than it does, and it's wonderful that Arrow gave such
love and care to probably the most obscure title they've released in
a while.
The
Extras:
Arrow
likewise went the distance to assemble a very thorough and extensive
array of extras, once again inspiring disbelief that such a
previously-forgotten film has somehow been given such a wonderful
special edition. Leading the pack of extras is a very interesting and
thorough 25-minute making-of doc featuring the filmmakers. There are
also interviews with the composer and the actor who plays the film's
villain, a featurette covering the theatrical premiere of Arrow's new
transfer, and an early (very early – like when he was a teenager)
short film by one of the directors. The film also features a
commentary by the two co-directors. Both filmmakers look back on the
production fondly, and have clear memories of the
experience, and it is very entertaining and informative to hear from
them both in the commentary and the doc. We get some great
behind-the-scenes info – including an answer to just how they got
away with packing so much intense gore into an R-rated film in 1999.
The answer is, they didn't – the MPAA imposed cuts, which they
made... but then they gave the distributor the uncut version anyway,
and no one ever caught them. Well-played!
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| "It's Father's Day - where's my cake?" |
While
it is certainly a flawed low-budget film, Kolobos
is a very entertaining one, and B-movie horror fans will find a lot
to enjoy in its well-crafted visuals and effects, and its unashamedly
insane plot. Arrow may be right when they argue that this overlooked
little movie deserves cult classic status, and they make a strong
case for it with their unexpectedly excellent and thorough special
edition blu-ray. This has got to be one of the more obscure films to
ever get the Arrow special edition treatment, but they certainly
didn't skimp out; if anything, they really went the distance to show
their love for it. This has got to be a personal favorite movie of
someone high up at Arrow; the disc really feels like that kind of a
horror-geek passion project. If you like your low-budget horror as
gory as you do silly, and if you have a taste for a bit of 90s
kitsch, check out Kolobos;
you may wish you'd done it sooner.
Score
for the film:
Score
for the blu-ray:
-
Christopher S. Jordan
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