DVD Artwork
The box was pretty. Shiny. Almost silky. I swooped towards it like a crow towards a glinting piece of broken mirror. I picked it up. Stroked it for a moment. I gazed lovingly at the cover art, at the Goth chick with hair like spider legs, at the barely perceptible creature lurking behind her. I knew this one would be mine. I gladly threw down the money for this movie and, running my fingers across the slightly raised letters of the title, took it home, intending to watch it immediately. That was three years ago. I just watched it this week.
You know those nights where you’re staggering through an alley, bleeding profusely, having terrifying flashbacks and collapsing directly in front of an oncoming car? Kyra (Amy Weber) is having one of those nights. The folks whose snazzy little compact she keels over before call the ambulance. Kyra awakens in her hospital room with more bandages on her face than Claude Rains. Dr. Waldman (Simms Thomas, who comes across as the robot version of Dee Wallace Stone) is concerned for a few reasons. First, Kyra’s facial lacerations are pretty deep, but they’ll heal okay. The main thing is, who did this to her? And why, when she was admitted, did Kyra keep repeating the word, “Kolobos?” What does it mean?
Luckily, the movie is told in flashback. Kyra, who has had some mental problems in the past, answered a classified ad seeking actors for an experimental film. All she has to do is be herself while the miniature cameras roll. She wins the part. The other participants are Tom (Donny Terranova), the smooth funny guy who tells blonde jokes at the Society for Empowering Women meeting; Erica (Nichole Pelerine), the actress who has already been in a few horror films as the killer; Gary (John Fairlie), the black turtleneck wearing college film geek who just wants to experience life and Tina (Promise LaMarco), the punk rock ditz who thinks everything is super and wears blue lipstick. The stereotypes are set, now on with the show!
The house the kids get to stay in is, of course, quite bitchin’. It’s in a ski resort town and it is furnished to the gills. There’s even a disco ball in the downstairs pool room. After some preliminary meet and greet, everyone seems fairly comfortable with each other, except for Kyra. Kyra stays in her room, doodling dark, disturbing drawings depicting death. Not only that, but Kyra is seeing things. Men stand behind her in the mirror, only to vanish as soon as she turns. She’s popping anxiety pills like Breath Savers.
The director, a nice man named Carl (Jonathan Rone) shows up with pizza. He tells the kids just to act normally and not put on a show for the camera. This is cinema verite, the real life stuff. He leaves and Erica forces Tina, Tom and Gary to sit through a marathon of her shitty Z-horror films. When Tina goes to the kitchen for a snack, she hits a trip wire or something, and she is sliced across the stomach by a weapon that pops out of the kitchen cupboard. As she staggers back, she stomps on another trigger and a buzzsaw blade whirs out of nowhere and slices her again. This gives the viewer one of the most disturbing intestine shots I’ve ever seen. Yeesh.
Suddenly, the windows are covered from the outside by metal sheets, snapping shut like armor plating around the Batmobile. The door is locked from the outside and the panic begins inside. The kids are trapped, one of them is bleeding to death in the kitchen, and dozens of little cameras are recording it all. Who holds the keys to this slaughterhouse? And what is a “Kolobos” and how is it connected? I’m not telling you. I ain’t sayin’ shit about shit. Because if you haven’t seen this movie, you need to hustle your ass out to the video store and get it now.
If Kolobos starts off as a standard “let’s-kill-all-the-dumbasses-in-the-house” movie becomes something more and better. All the characters start off as stereotypes, but they somehow turn into real people as the story progresses. As an added bonus, there is gore galore and directorial style to burn.
The story is twisted, as you would expect, but veers off into places I never saw it going. I’m not an easy mark. I like predicting horror movie “twists” and I’m good at it. But I didn’t call too much of Kolobos, and that was a treat for an OSM like me. Make sure you’ve got all the beer you need for ninety minutes with you, and save one of the empties to piss in. Leaving the room or not paying attention will cost you later.
The acting is not so hot. Even a five-line guest shot from the Queen Herself, Linnea Quigley, isn’t great. But the best thing about the actors, as an ensemble (and forgive me for using that word), is that most of the time you can’t tell they’re acting. I don’t know if the directors just threw shit at them and let them react or what, but the performances, while being neither polished nor professional, are at least somewhat raw and realistic. In a horror movie, that compelling kind of work beats slick pro work every time.
Kolobos has two directors, Daniel Liatowitsch and David Todd Ocvirk. If they did anything after Kolobos, I don’t know about it, and I think I’d remember names like those. These guys were obviously working on a miniscule budget, but they managed to crank out atmosphere like crazy. Strangely colored lighting, things fading in and out; for the love of Kim Cattrall, they even have scary mannequins. Even if it is a tad threadbare, Kolobos is a good-looking film.
The Goth chick on the front of the pretty box is not in the movie at all. But it’s still a pretty box, and I like to look at it late at night, by myself, with a dartboard and a bottle of Corn Husker’s Lotion. Even with its faults (in fact, I am taking away an entire star for an opening theme that manages to noticeably rip off Goblin’s main themes from both Suspiria and Profondo Rosso; that, dear readers, is a sin, and calling plagiarism an homage will not save your musical soul), let me say this about Kolobos. This is the first movie in a long time that made reach over and turn on the light. I was creeped out and uncomfortable. I haven’t felt that little crinkle up my spine since the first time I watched The Ring, and being all alone, here in the house, well… let’s just say I was grateful for that lamp.
There are four DVD iterations of Kolobos that I know of. I’ve seen it in a four-pack of horror movies. You can buy it as a double feature with some sci-fi shitball called Area 51, starring Heidi Fleiss (who also starred in the sequel, Bikini Area 69) and a double feature with Tail Sting. If you can get it solo, do that. Although there aren’t any extras, you don’t need anything else distracting you from this movie. Hopefully, someone will put a decent SE of Kolobos out at some point in the future. It needs the special treatment.
As far as late-nineties low budget horror flicks go, this is one of the better ones. In fact, if you’re one of the poor souls who has had to sit through dung-biscuits like My Little Eye or House of 9, those movies are dry-heaving mutated descendants of Kolobos. This is how those movies should have been done. Even with the stolen musical ideas, I wish I had watched this movie sooner. Or at least kept the box in my bedroom. Pretty.
