David DeCoteau

The Brotherhood VI: Initiation (2009)

Starring Aaron Jaeger, Tyson Breech, Bryan McMullin, Sasha Formoso, Burke Carter, Dominick Monteleone, James Preston, Josh Yeo, Austen Dean Jesse, Jeremy Ray Simpson, Rebecca Zoe Leigh, Arthur Roberts

Directed by David DeCoteau

Expectations: Fingers crossed it’s one of the good Brotherhoods.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

The Brotherhood VI: Initiation is the (so far) final entry in David DeCoteau’s Brotherhood series, and he really pulled out all the stops. The heartbeat is on the soundtrack, there’s a lumberjack killer, and nearly the entire cast spends most of the movie in their underwear! The film doesn’t take place in one of his trademark thunderstorms, but DeCoteau makes up for this by hosing down his underwear-clad actors, all in the name of fraternity initiation. Do real fraternities do these sorts of homoerotic initiations? They do in the DeCoteau-verse!

Depending on your tolerance for DeCoteau films, this either sounds like a good time or your worst nightmare. My love of DeCoteau’s unique brand of filmmaking is well documented here, so, of course, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It definitely isn’t a movie I’d want to explain to someone who walked in and saw everyone getting hosed down in their underwear, but it has a charm and a feel unique to horror movies. I will always value unique expression to cookie-cutter, corporate filmmaking, no matter what the state of undress the main characters are in. Besides, most reviewers wouldn’t bat an eye if the cast was female, so I don’t feel like it should matter.

Witchouse (1999)

Starring Matt Raftery, Monica Serene Garnich, Brooke Mueller, Ashley McKinney Taylor, Dave Oren Ward, Ryan Scott Greene, Marissa Tait, Dane Northcutt, Kimberly Pullis, Jason Faunt, Ariauna Albright

Directed by David DeCoteau

Expectations: I feel like this is going to be rough.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Witchouse is just like any number of Full Moon movies. It’s directed by David DeCoteau, it’s relatively short, and it carries a lighter tone than your average horror film. Where the conflict arises is that DeCoteau’s style has really settled into my heart over the course of writing about all these Full Moon films. Witchouse isn’t a great example of a DeCoteau film — it actually feels like his heart wasn’t in this one (even if his trademark “heartbeat on the soundtrack” is 🙂 — but regardless, I had a very fun time watching it.

Elizabeth (Ashley McKinney Taylor) lives in the Gothic mansion her family has inhabited for hundreds of years, and she’s throwing a party for her old school friends. The first couple to arrive, Bob & Margaret, find the mansion deserted, though. Like all good horror movie characters, they decide to check out the basement and fornicate, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re savagely murdered by a shadowy figure. And now, the party can begin…

Voodoo Academy (2000)

Starring Debra Mayer, Riley Smith, Chad Burris, Kevin Calisher, Huntley Ritter, Ben Indra, Drew Fuller, Travis Sher, Rhett Wilkins

Directed by David DeCoteau

Expectations: Hopeful, the cover is promising.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

I never quite know what I’m getting myself into with a B-Movie, but I have developed a fond familiarity with the films of David DeCoteau after seeing about 30 of them. Voodoo Academy is an unexpectedly important film in DeCoteau’s filmography, so I’m glad it ended up in the final stretch of my Full Moon review series. If I had seen this a few years ago, it would be a homoerotic curiosity, but after seeing almost all the Brotherhood films, and a number of other post-2000s DeCoteau films, the resonance of Voodoo Academy is felt all the more. To put it bluntly, Voodoo Academy is basically the film that launched DeCoteau into the “hot guys in boxer briefs” genre, and honestly it’s one of his best movies.

The Carmichael Bible College is just about as unique as a college can be. The school only accepts six students at a time — it’s in an experimental phase — and its focus isn’t simply on bible studies. The good Rev. Carmichael (Chad Burris) heads the NeuroCystic Christianity Church, a new take on Christianity that recognizes God created both man and science. A main tent of the religion asserts that only through technology can man ascend to a higher closeness with the Lord. Rev. Carmichael also believes in the Catholic practice of confession, but his confessional is equipped with an electromagnetic device. Conventional confession relieves the burden of sin from the penitent man, but Rev. Carmichael’s device allows the sins to be eradicated from the mind, as well. He seeks to heal the soul through electromagnetic means, similar to the way that Scientologists go through auditing to clear themselves of past negativity.

The Brotherhood V: Alumni (2009)

Starring Brett Novek, Arthur Napiontek, Preston Davis, Maria Aceves, Nathan Parsons, Oskar Rodriguez, Lindsey Landers

Directed by David DeCoteau

Expectations: Hopeful. I like most of this series.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

After the high quality of The Brotherhood IV, I came into The Brotherhood V: Alumni with hope for another great Brotherhood film. There were four years between entries… maybe that time was spent looking for a story worthy of the renowned Brotherhood name! My hopes quickly fell when I saw the locker-lined hallway of a high school, though. In this moment, director David DeCoteau certainly inspired horror within me, but not the horror intended! 🙂 The Brotherhood V: Alumni is more like The Brotherhood III, although thankfully it’s more entertaining than that bottom-of-the-barrel film. That isn’t apparent in the film’s intro, though, where a nerdy teenager on prom night is stalked through the impossibly blue, locker-lined halls by perhaps the least urgent stalking killer in film history. The nerd is tracked into the girls’ locker room, where he undresses, showers, and is ultimately murdered. The sound of a heartbeat plays the entire time, like a meditation mantra pulling you down into a state of sweet oblivion. This all plays about as slowly as is humanly possible, taking up the first 15 minutes of the movie.

It is here that we meet the brotherhood of this film, a completely down-to-earth group without a shred of the supernatural to be found. They bond over their shared promise to never speak of what happened on prom night in the girls’ locker room, not from any altruistic ideal, but because their prank on the nerd kid went wrong and someone stole the video tape that recorded it for posterity. One year later, the friends all receive a blue envelope containing an invitation to a school reunion, or to a one-year prom reunion or something. I don’t remember exactly, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they have been called back to the school, and whoever called them there is terrorizing them with the threat of releasing the tape.

The Brotherhood IV: The Complex (2005)

Starring Sebastian Gacki, Graham Kosakoski, April Telek, Aleks Holtz, Brody Harms, Brett Viberg, Adam Dodds, Andrew Butler, Emrey Wright, Mike Cleven, Charlie Marsh, Matts Aasen, Chad Rook

Directed by David DeCoteau

Expectations: Hope it’s not like the 3rd one.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

On one hand, The Brotherhood IV: The Complex is derivative of the original film, albeit with less interesting characters and milder sexual energy. But on the other hand, it hits all the notes I want out of a Brotherhood sequel, and it does it with style, methodical pacing and a healthy dose of dudes running around in their underwear. DeCoteau may have been off his game for The Brotherhood III, but he came back with a vengeance for the 4th entry. The Brotherhood IV: The Complex is a solid, well-told film about homoerotic Naval cadets, and who doesn’t want to see a film like that?

As is standard for the Brotherhood films, a new kid comes to school and is immediately singled out by the resident brotherhood: the Black Skulls. They are a long-running secret society founded at Port Nathan Naval Academy (AKA The Complex) and rumored to exist in small groups around the world. I’m not sure how true these rumors are, though, since we see a list of the group’s alumni and it’s literally no more than 8–10 people. 🙂 Anyway, Lee Hanlon (Sebastian Gacki) arrives at school a few days after a student has gone missing. The faculty can’t explain his disappearance, but it is the subject of the film’s prologue, so we know that he was consumed in a flurry of lightning while pledging the Black Skulls.

The Brotherhood III: Young Demons (2003)

Starring Kristopher Turner, Paul Andrich, Ellen Wieser, Julie Pedersen, Andrew Hrankowski, Landon McCormick, David Johnson, Matthew Epp, Carl Thiessen

Directed by David DeCoteau

Expectations: Moderate. I liked the first two.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

The Brotherhood III: Young Demons is a disappointment in every way, and I say that as a fan of David DeCoteau’s brand of B-Movie. Those looking for something along the lines of the first two Brotherhood films will find only a shred of similarity, and while I love originality and films that dare to take their own journey, The Brotherhood III: Young Demons isn’t forging any new paths. It is literally almost entirely composed of people wandering through darkened school corridors. There is a slight plot to facilitate the characters’ wanderings, but even that is far from fresh.

Lex (Kristopher Turner) runs “The Game” after hours at his school. The players dress up in medieval fantasy garb and hunt through the school for clues, while Lex monitors them on the security cameras and taunts/helps them over the intercom. But tonight’s game is slightly different, because Lex has been given an ancient book of Egyptian magic. It’s a fun premise for a horror film, changing up the traditional “trapped in a location” story line… the only problem is that I’ve seen this specific variation before in 1990’s Shakma.

The Silver Emulsion Podcast: Ep. 28 – Ashes of Time

Episode 28! Talkin’ about Wong Kar-Wai’s 1994 wuxia film, Ashes of Time!

Also on the show:

Sammo Hung’s Wheels on Meals
Dimitri Logothetis’s Slaughterhouse Rock
David DeCoteau’s Nightmare Sisters

Intro:

Black Sabbath – Neon Knights
- Heaven and Hell (iTunes, Amazon)

Outro:

Black Sabbath – Neon Knights
- Heaven and Hell (iTunes, Amazon)

If you’ve got feedback, throw it into the comments below or email it to me via the contact page! I’ll include it in a future show!

The podcast is embedded directly below this, or you can go directly to Podbean (or use their app) to listen. If you want to subscribe, paste http://silveremulsion.podbean.com/feed/ into whatever reader you’re using, such as iTunes.