You know, when you go into a YouTube short and it starts actively comparing itself to Eraserhead, you know you’re in for a real puzzle box of a time.
And indeed, that’s what we’re in for here, when a clown doll decides it’s had entirely enough of being a cheerful adorable plaything and instead divorces itself from its head and uses the spike that held its head on as a murder weapon instead. From here, the clown doll embarks on a journey that can only be described as “weird”.
That’s about all the plot I could recognize here, if you were hoping for character development or even for a rational description of the plot, well, you can forget it RIGHT NOW because any guy who’s actually TRYING to imitate Un Chien Andalou probably doesn’t give a wet fart in a stiff wind about things like “making sense” or “being entertaining”. No, he’d clearly rather just shout at an empty room about things that don’t make sense, in a strictly metaphorical fashion.
Oh, and special note–when you’re filming in black and white in mostly dark environments, the result isn’t “creepy” or “weird” so much as it is “illegible”. So congrats on making a movie that I mostly couldn’t see despite the fact that I sat through the whole thing.
The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this sad little tale a three out of ten, mostly for effort, because the end result just hit me all the wrong ways.
When you read the comments of a short film on YouTube, as I like to do to figure out where things are going before I even start watching, and you see a comment that starts talking about D&D monster manuals as they relate to the plot, you swallow hard. Will this bring down the movie?
The plot, however, is a lot simpler than D&D–it’s all about a blind date that goes terribly wrong.
First off, for a three minute YouTube short, this sucker’s got some fantastic effects. Seriously, my mind is quite thoroughly blown. Second, the plot is also fairly decent if a little disjointed, but in short film terms, that’s almost necessary. They’ve thrown out the ballast of character development and plot development to make the main thread go fast as possible. And fast it is indeed.
The Screenhead Ten Scale applauds this little surprise and hands over a seven out of ten for doing its job well but not going quite far enough, which is something of a necessity given the nature of the film itself.
When I first saw this short swim up out of the depths of YouTube to give me a small coronary, I just about lost it. Seriously…I mean, Carvel is the name of a line of ice cream treats that seems pretty much limited to around the New England area. Featuring ice cream treats in the shape of such characters as Cookie Puss, Fudgie the Whale and Cookie O’Puss, this is not exactly the kind of thing I expect to see in a tale of mystery and horror.
Which is a good thing, in all honesty, because ice cream treats have nothing to do with this at all. In fact, I had a tough time even piecing together what exactly was going on, but frankly, that’s almost all right. In this case, anyway–because the lack of coherence gives it an extra creepy edge.
The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this little frightener a six out of ten for being weird, but still creepy.
I love YouTube short films. I really do. They’re so ACCESSIBLE. Any putz with a camcorder can get on here and whomp up four minutes of something. Whether it’s scary, funny, or an odd mix of both, the sky is quite literally the limit.
And today, we’re talking Bloody Mary, the online short that’s really more pathetic than it is scary, but still brings a few good laughs on the side.
A young man’s been taunting the ghost of Bloody Mary for a long time now…and now, that it’s Friday the 13th, he means to have it out with her once and for all. But it’s not going to go how he’d planned.
It’s creepy, sure, but it’s not really that scary because these clear amateurs really don’t know how to extend out tension. It’s over too quickly to be particularly scary, and since there aren’t a whole lot of “jump-scares” here to be had either it loses some punch on that front.
The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, hands over a six out of ten to this fairly solid short and looks forward to the next one.
Short films are a notoriously mixed bag. What will I dig up next? Some new and tasty little short? Or will I find the dumbest thing YouTube’s managed to offer yet?
Today, appropriately, we’re taking on Feeding, a little short that at least promises to mesh with the season. And the answer is, a lot more like the second thing.
A young woman wanders far afield, carrying a plate of pancakes. But she’s not alone. Whats following her?
The problem with this synopsis, of course, is that we won’t get an answer. I have absolutely NO idea what’s following this chick around, why it wants her dead, or anything like that. Maybe it hates two-tone hairstyles. Maybe it hates pancakes. Maybe it’s just an asshole–I don’t know, and no one’s in a hurry to tell me.
It’s never a good idea to leave a movie like this, especially when the audience is so clearly left hanging. The Screenhead Ten Scale really hates this sort of thing and reacts accordingly, offering up a three out of ten for this attempted short film that never went anywhere.
It’s always kind of interesting to review short films from the college set. After all, you never really know what they’re going to come up with next. You could get something wildly entertaining or just something godawful, but chances are real good it will not be merely boring.
And in the case of Lake Corsiar (which I keep wanting to read as Corsair, like the pirate), it will definitely keep you awake.
It all revolves around one big surprise–frankly, it’s not so much a short film as it is one scene FROM a good sized film. It’s basically focused on one event and if I tell you what that event is I’d render the whole film moot.
It’s very short and there’s a good laugh involved, so there’s really not much of a reason to skip it. If you had to pay to see it, I’d be absolutely torqued, but since it’s free, so much the better.
The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this short, slick, sharp schlockfest of a shocker a five out of ten for doing a relatively unimportant job without screwing it up to the point of irredeemability.
Join us! Join us as John Newcombe takes us on a tour of the outer regions of our minds into mysterious tales and unexpected horror!
If that all sounds a little breathless to you, it’s really because it should. This is a kind of strange Twilight Zone / Outer Limits knockoff / parody that will introduce you to exactly what the title says: mysterious tales and unexpected horror.
It may sound a little cheesy to you, and rest assured, it will be. But Mysterious Tales of Unexpected Horror not only contains plenty of laughs, but one really nifty scary surprise, too. I won’t spoiler, but man…this one’s a pure doozy.
The Screenhead Ten Scale knows better than to disagree with me lest I feed it to the gremlin that’s on the plane wing right this second. Don’t believe me? LOOK FOR YOURSELVES!
And as such, we’re going To Serve Man by handing Mysterious Tales of Unexpected Horror a seven out of ten.
So today I’ve come in contact with one of the first ever examples of Screamkings online videomaking–the question is, is their short title For Indoor Use Only any good? Let’s watch!
A young man, working with some Christmas lights, curses the holiday in a moment of frustration. And when that happens, Christmas decides to take its revenge.
Admittedly, Christmas horror is in fairly short supply. But this particular example is kind of sparse. Sparse like the needles on Charlie Brown’s tree. Oh, sure, what’s here is done fairly well, but it’s not very satisfying. It’s almost like the Christmas mashed potatoes, or shaped sugar cookies without frosting. Far from the best, but not necessarily offensive.
The Screenhead Ten Scale shrugs in the general direction of this lackluster title and awards it a five out of ten. While there isn’t anything really wrong with it, it lacks the necessary force to be called good. The best you can say about it is that it’s merely mediocre.
I’ve sampled horror flicks from all around the world, and I’ve found that most of them have a pretty regional flavor to them. The Japanese and Koreans, for example, love ghost flicks. The Europeans favor the theme of man’s inhumanity to man. And most horror I’ve come across from other lands is at least fairly good. Joining the ranks of the best, however, is a little title from Poland, The 206.
It’s about a guy who wakes up in a stairwell, semi-conscious, unable to figure out what’s going on. As he sets out to reconstruct his life, he finds out there more going on here than he realizes.
The best part about this one? There’s NO DIALOGUE. The story is being told entirely through the actor and through the background music, both of which are quite thoroughly awesome. The ending, however, is somewhat unclear and can be interpreted several ways, something I never like.
However, the rest of the film is enough to wrangle a rare eight out of ten from the Screenhead Ten Scale, who was sufficiently on edge through most of it to appreciate its sheer Hitchcockian tendencies.
So I found another interesting short on YouTube to take a run at, and it’s the hardest sort of film to discuss–the movie that’s so confusing that it’s downright scary.
It’s actually hard to give you a plot synopsis without spoilering, mostly because this film is only about two and a half minutes long. But suffice it to say, anyone with a fear of clowns need not apply. And anyone who’s not fond of unusual dinner choices should also stay waaaaaay far away from this.
It’s pretty awesome, in one sense–a lot of really creepy stuff is going to happen here, but the only real problem with it is that not much of it will make sense. It’s pretty scary in that regard, because nothing here will exactly be expected, but at the same time, it’s SO far off kilter that it’s kind of tough to follow, and any coherence in the plot is just SHOT.
The Screenhead Ten Scale gives a quizzical look at the whole thing, shrugs, gives a hearty meh and hands A Kid At Heart a six out of ten. It’s scary, sure, but it’s also really, REALLY, confusing.
