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So I cancelled my netflix disc subscription what with PRICING, but apparently I still get to ride it out until the 8th because it was the 8th of some month when I first started. That's nice of them. It does mean the totally random stuff sitting at the bottom of my queue I never really planned to watch keeps bubbling up though, like Beneath Still Waters here. Actually, this one I recently added to see if it'd make the cut after a preview on somethingorother. It looked like a low budget horror movie from the very late 70's or very early 80's, but is secretly from like, 5 years ago. It's ridiculous really. Even these kids here totally look like kids from 1981. I don't mean how they're dressed, just their faces. If they were dressed 80's style that'd be weird, because this here is a flashback to Spain in the 60's. Anyway, these sorta nerdy kids are vandalizing this flooded town, with the extra nerdy one carrying around a lamer than average wooden sword. It's not even blade shaped, it's two round sticks tied together. Anyway, they hear people in this house here and go to check it out, with the less nerdy kid getting a head start. Inside, there's a bunch of Satanic stuff, and a bunch of people chained up in the middle about to die. There's also one dude bound and hooded and clearly evil incarnate in the corner, so guess who Less Nerdy kid frees first? Yeah. His reward is having his head torn off, then the less obviously evil people eat him. Then the whole place really properly floods. Like, it's now a lake not a valley, 40 years later.
Look out Present Girl! That coffin is haunted! Anyway, we're starting right off with our main character one assumes having some dream about her grandfather (Extra Nerdy Kid we can safely assume) warning her about Clearly Evil Guy there, who I'm just going to assume is Satan. Then Grampa's face melts Raiders style. Nifty. So anyway, Main Character and her blond friend are hanging out at the lake this town is under apparently and... this is not an American movie. The flashback kids sounded like they were British, Friend there sounds French, the main character's boyfriend who just showed up sounds Italian, and I'd uy the main character being from New Zealand. All of these people of course speaking English, in a movie set in Spain. Anyway, we've got like... 12 consecutive "something under the water is grabbing me! Nah, just pulling a prank" bits in a real short period, but one in the middle really is Friend being grabbed by a seaweed monster, and in the end Boyfriend dies.
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And now here's some guy who kinda sounds Australian. That's it. New rule. I'm naming every character after what country they sound like they're from. Aussie here is a reporter of some sort, as is this Belgian gal, but they don't work together. Belgium gets called away from doing a piece on this dam here because something horrible happened apparently. Possibly Italy dying. So that crew leaves, while Aussie goes all SCUBA to check out the cool underwater village. Some creepy dude watches. The Hell building still seems to be lit from inside with a bunch of torches and such, which is kind of a bad sign since there's no glass in the windows. Still people screaming too. Aussie doesn't care though, he's just heading in, taking pictures of the cool paintings on the walls and such, getting attacked by a malevolent hair clog isn't even enough to deter him. Severed forearm grabbing at him from behind doesn't even stop him. This guy is just really determined to be stupid here. Old guy sees the dam leaking, goes to call it in, hears his creepy dead wife on the phone asking him if he can keep it a secret. I think. Real thick accent there. And, aha. Belgium is NZ's mother it seems. Also I had to stop and check. This movie is made by a combination of British and Spanish folks, so apparently all these accents are secretly Spanish, or British. Oh and Aussie was almost killed by the seaweed/hair monster.
Anyway, apparently Aussie and Belgium are going to team up and investigate stuff for investigation's sake.To start off, they're going to interview Old Guy, who vaguely sounds Russian, now that he's talking.They all climb down to check out the dam, when there's a sudden earthquake. Aussie's all "so let me guess, this was a rushed emergency job and there's a bunch of dead workers just sealed up in the walls, right?" Russia says "Yup." Then that crack widens some. Now here's Aussie having a dream about swimming towards someone trapped under some ice. He wakes up, and here's another earthquake. NZ's kinda freaked out. Wandering out to the kitchen, she sees the fridge is full of EVIL, and has a sudden flash of her grandfather mumbling unintelligibly and offering forth the necronomicon. Also, here's Satan pulling into town freaking out... OK, I guess Gramps ISN'T a grown-up double nerd. Double nerd is all in Renfield mode it turns out. Also, here's NZ mentioning to France that she doesn't believe in an afterlife. Which is kinda weird for the one character who's been talking to a ghost.
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More exposition I can almost make out through Belgium's accent seems to say Gramps used to be the mayor. Also, Satan's all mwahaha, now that you're dead, nothing can stop me at his grave. And OK, he wasn't quite in town yet I guess... or maybe he was. Someone in a black car ominously drives past NZ on her bike. Then Russia pulls a bottle of booze on a string up from the flooded basement of the dam, and is suddenly attacked, or, I guess just menaced really, by a super nasty waterlogged zombie version of, I assume, his wife. By the way, when I said this looked like it was made in 1982 or so, I need to make it clear that I mean that as the highest of compliments. Sure, everyone is phonetically reciting lines unintelligibly, but this whole movie looks just amazing. Seriously, this is the best looking horror movie I've watched since... well, The Cell I suppose. Highbrow types who are into stuff like this really need o see this one.
Anyway, a couple police divers, still looking for Italy's body, find a severed head underwater, and encounter the seaweed/hair clog monster, which drives one of them insane by contaminating his face, and causes him to jump back in and be killed. Now here's some kid, possibly NZ's little brother, playing with a balsa wood plane. That odd distraction over, the cops are now examining the recovered body of Dead Cop. He was kinda sliced into many many small chunks. At this point, Aussie is totally cool with the idea of getting the heck out of this horrible cursed town, but Belgium piques his interest by describing that flashback at the beginning a little. NZ notices Little Brother is missing, and finds him off in the swamp playing with some Deadite under the water's surface. She doesn't notice that though. Meanwhile, Aussie explains to Belgium about that time his sun fell through the ice and drowned, and how that inspired him to get all dive-y apparently. Then they start making out as they pull into Nerdy's place. Nerdy will henceforth be Romania by the way... and he now has a super dorky hat, and better toy sword. Also, Police Captain America (not like, Captain America, he just sounds American) just met Satan. Also, Gramps is apparently Van Helsing, at least according to Romania.
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Now here's a random flashback to when he was dying, calling NZ over and warning her that once he's dead, she's going to have to take over protecting the town from Satan there, who is probably going to come to kill her. Oh, and I guess Italy was France's boyfriend, because she's super upset and apparently off to go kill herself now. Also, Romania's exposition says Satan isn't Satan. He's a Satanist who studied under Alister Crowley. You know, I have a book by him around here somewhere. I should read it some time. Anyway, he used his evil black satan magic to heal the sick and raise the dead and such, but people started having two headed snake tongued babies and the seaweed/hair ball monster appeared and killed all the crabs, and other miscellaneous evil things started happening, and Mayor Van Helsing eventually figured the thing to do was just drown the whole Satan cult or somesuch.
And I guess Little Brother is just someone NZ was babysitting, because here's his mom freaking out looking for him He's just under his bed, but for some reason she's running off to the swamp and... wow, that was pretty neat. Short answer, she gets killed by the swamp, but... it's a really neat looking scene. Aussie's reaction to this whole story is "... yeah @#$% that I'm out of here. So Romania holds Belgium hostage. Meanwhile France is throwing bears at the water for Italy, because, priorities. Then she takes her clothes off and goes to jump in after him and kill herself. I had a feeling we'd be seeing her boobs eventually, but frankly I thought it would have been back in paragraph 3. Anyway, right before she jumps in, Italy rises up from the water. He's pretty clearly a zombie. I mean, he's like, half skeleton... OK, one amusing scene at a time movie! Let me pause this a sec. So, clearly a zombie Italy gets out of the water, and France is just super glad to see him. She isn't one of those stuck-up judgmental types who always assumes zombies are going to rip throats out or scared or anything. She just jumps his exposed bones right then and there, to have some on the beach zombie sex... at which point he rips her throat out, because that is kinda what zombies do.
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Then while riding around in a car with Aussie and Belgium, Romania is rambling on about comics he likes, when... OK, if I'm not calling him Satan what am I calling him. He kinda looks like a cross between The Tall Man from Phantasm and John Glover (the CEO from Gremlins 2). Anyway, he uses telekinesis to yank Romania out of the car, use his little fakey sword to sever the tendons of both his legs, then just kinda flips him around doing areal cartwheels for a while. Eventually Romania slashes Tall Glover's throat with his sword, causing him to bleed maggots, which angers him enough to make Romania just kind of explode. The other two are just watching all this from the car all "Huh." And "Yeesh." Eventually, when he's ripping his head open to eat his tongue, Aussie gets out and says "Hey!" Tall Glover just points at him and goes "This is none of your business. You're a pathetic drunk who let his son drown, and you're a stupid floozy out here chasing after this guy while your daughter's back home probably getting killed. You two are pathetic," and then he leaves. And that was pretty much word for word what he really said too. I just kinda get a kick out of the super evil dude being all "Hey, don't judge me!" while horribly killing someone.
So... Apparently agreeing with his totally valid points, Aussie goes back to looking for a way to end horror underwater, and Belgium goes to check on her kid. Along the way she hits some guy with her car. Don't know if he was a zombie already, but he definitely is when she goes to check on him and he attacks. Meanwhile, the kids go looking for Swamp Mom, and find her, and freak out, and it's particularly creepy, because as she pulls her wet swampy mass towards them, she's all "Wait! Come back, it's me!" and such. They also find a now totally evil Captain America trying to kill them. Meanwhile Aussie finds where Mayor Van Helsing chained up the necronomicon, unchains it, and just kinda makes things worse. A bunch of old zombies get up, and suddenly we cut to a party that was apparently being thrown for the 40th anniversary of the dam turning into some crazy Satanic orgy. Someone just mashed her boobs in a cake, some guy goes and grabs a goat to make out with, someone just randomly tackles the guy on stage with a guitar, someone points at the cracking dam and laughs... at least everyone seems to be having a pretty darn good time.
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Belgium eventually gets home and.... things have pretty darn well gone south. There's some cop just sitting on her back porch laughing his head off while he cuts off all his own limbs. She grabs his gun from a severed hand, shoots him to no effect, and flees, while he hobbles along on stumps and shouts happily, "You're under arrest!" Anyway, the kids have been brought to see Tall Glover. There's three kids here by the way. NZ, Little Brother, and Some Other Girl. Tall Glover explains to NZ what happens when you die, and yeah, no afterlife according to him. Which... doesn't seem to jive with all these ghosts and zombies. He also says "but the good news is, you can become totally evil like me and live forever. She says "Well, I don't want to die, sure." And I mean, honestly... all these people embracing evil and becoming zombies seem to be having a ton of fun, so, really, what's the problem here?
Meanwhile, Aussie is trying to burn the book, and getting distracted by a fake version of his son, Belgium's trying to shoot Tall Glover, and oh hey, Ghost Gramps appears to remind her "OK seriously. You're not supposed to go evil here, remember?" Fake Kid eventually blows the whole deal by specifically saying "Please don't burn the book Daddy!" which is kind of one of those don't think about a pink elephant sorta deals. Anyway, the whole temptation bit was going on while walking on water, so, Aussie gets to redeem himself by saving a drowning NZ after he finally burns the book. Also, all those Satanic Orgy folks kinda snap out of it and, rather embarrassed, start putting their clothes on, and like... immediately after NZ coughs up a lung full of water and reveals herself to not be dead, Little Brother just gets this sudden super evil scowl, says "I hate her." (British by the way) and uses the evil mind powers he apparently has to cause the dam to explode. Credits IMMEDIATELY. Again, I have to stress that this isn't the standard "everything's OK... or is it!" horror ending. This is like, the very instant things look like they potentially might be OK, "#@$% THAT!" BOOM!
So yeah. That was pretty much what I look for in a horror movie right there. I mean, not so much the nudity and the unintelligible Spanish actors, but all kinds of weird crazy stuff happened with really nice pacing, everything looked just great, both in that that's how I like my zombies to look sense, and the no seriously, there were some really gorgeous looking scenes, particularly during all the diving. Plus I am absolutely serious, if you stripped out any references to dates from this movie, and showed it to someone who'd never heard of it, I don't think anyone would think it was anything other than a really nicely done horror movie from the early to mid 80's they'd just never come across. I'm rather annoyed that there aren't any special features on this DVD because I'd really love to hear a bunch of weirdos yammering on about how and why they went to the effort to achieve that.
