RATLINE (2011)
D. Eric Stanze
Underground Auteur Eric Stanze and the Wicked Pixel crew are back after
the success of their last film, the very spooky and ambitious DEADWOOD
PARK. This time Stanze is back into the grittier blood soaked territory a
lot of his fans may feel he is comfortable in. But don't let
appearances fool you, RATLINE is in a lot of ways his slickest, and most
challenging work. Stanze is still bending genre conventions at will,
here he does it in a roller-coaster fashion, never letting the audience
get a good foothold long enough to know what hit them. There is enough
story, gore and character in RATLINE for several movies and Stanze keeps
all the balls in the air surprisingly well.
The film begins
with two sisters played by Wicked Pixel regular Emily Haack and Alex Del
Monacco in a jam. They are ripping off some thug at a car repair garage
for a large sum of money and have killed him. After cleaning up they
are on the run. They head to a small town in Illinois to hide out where
an innocent young woman named Penny Webb (Sarah Swafford)
has offered them a boarding room. She is working for her Grandfather in
the city offices helping him relocate the city graveyard since urban
sprawl is setting in and many of the ancient graves belong to be people
long since moved away.
Elsewhere in the city there are what
appears to be a series of occult oriented crimes being committed, people
turning up missing, pets disappearing, and sexual assaults all related
to what appears to be Satanism. We find this out from a series of
newspaper clipping on the walls of the Self styled satanists themselves,
a rag tag group of teenagers including another Wicked Pixel Regular
performer Jessie Seitz as the girl who video tapes their crimes.
***do not read the next two paragraphs if you do not want spoilers to the plot of RATLINE***
The Satanists are killing neighborhood dogs and bathing in the blood in
moonlight sex rituals to try to bring about their lord and master, but
the action is just not good enough. So they set a plan in motion to grab
a person for slaughter. They set a trap to grab a passing motorist and
almost get the two sisters from the beginning but their streets smarts
prevent it. They do however convince a good Samaritan played by Wicked
Pixel regular and producer Jason Christ to stop and help. They quickly
kidnap him and take him to an abandoned warehouse for slaughter. But
things don't go as planned. When he in fact VICIOUSLY turns the tables
and kills every single last one of them in a stand out scene that will
have gorehounds on their feet.
Seems that the Satanists were
just a plot red herring, and that Jason Christ as Frank Logan is the
real villain of the film. As the plot unfolds we discover he is in fact a
supernatural killing machine from World War 2, created from Nazi Occult
experiments, and he has returned to find the other scientists involved.
Seems they have the ritualistic Nazi "Blood Flag" used to create him
and with it he can secure his continuing immortality. Penny's
Grandfather was involved in those experiments and has the flag. So Frank
will stop at nothing to get it. But there may be other connections to
the sisters as well.
What Eric Stanze has done with RATLINE is
take a complex story and weld it to a Saturday afternoon exploitation
style framwork and make both styles work with ease. The film spends the
first third being basically a grindhouse horror movie filled with
splatter and naked people, basically speaking loud and proud to the
horror kids making sure they get their fix. Then the REAL villain of the
piece arrives and knocks everyone's dick in the dirt. That's when the
plot is allowed to get moving and to everyone's credit the movie does
not slow down, it only get's more interesting thanks to a dynamic story
and good acting all around.
Stanze's films always have a lot
of complexity to them, and he usually delivers a lot of information in
one fell swoop. Case in point how ICE FROM THE SUN stops for the main
character to hear all about how the rules of the game to work, or the
lengthy flash back in DEADWOOD PARK (that is a incredible and dynamic
sequence). In RATLINE he finds an almost brilliant way to get a lot of information into the open in one fell swoop by having a character watch a
declassified government film on the Nazi Experiments. The film is one
the filmmakers obviously produced themselves but the replication of the
era is astonishing and it is a fascinating artifact. Once that scene is
over we know exactly what is transpiring.
Though RATLINE is
not all blood and fire. One of the best elements of the movie is that
there is a lot about relationships. There is an eroding relationship
between the sisters because of the crime they have committed. Emily
Haack's character has an emotional issue's dealing with her estranged
Father. Penny has a nice relationship with her protective but
conservative Grandfather and best of all there is a rather touching and
very well handled love story that develops between Emily Haack's
character and Sarah Swafford's. Seems that Swafford's Penny is a Lesbian
but hiding because of the conservative community she lives in and Haack
is a bit older and been through a lot more hard times and they fall for
each other. In the middle of this rough and tumble horror film there is
this amazingly toughing, very soft-hearted love story subplot that
really works. So much that I kind of wish it had gotten more screen time
as both actresses are really good together.
In some
ways this is one of Eric Stanze's best films. It is lean, and free of
fat. While I love all of his work, a lot of horror fans have trouble
connecting to his more esoteric work. This one is much more trimmed
down, and accessible to mainstream fans. While still keeping the things
that make his work great. There are no compromises here, but the story
telling is great, the film-making technique is top of the line and the
actors are all on board.
RATLINE is available on
Amazon.com as a streaming or direct download rental or purchase and as a DVD directly from
Wicked Pixel themselves. The newly released DVD has two commentary tracks one with just Eric Stanze, the other with the lead actors and Eric, an hour long behind the scenes documentary and of course the WPC trailer reel. So if you are a fan of Eric Stanze's other work
or just really solid Indie horror films, you should do yourself a favor
and just check this out. It is yet another winner from the WPC cannon.
Review © Andrew Copp
Ratline - Trailer by dreadcentral
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