Horror Holiday! (May Contain Spoilers)

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 01: Counselor Superior


Sleepaway Camp 2:
Unhappy Campers
(1988 / director: Michael A. Simpson)

½★

Let me run this by you as though you're a movie fan with the power to greenlight a film, here's the idea: after the brilliance of 1983's Sleepaway Camp which mixed the setting of Friday the 13th with the dark subversion of Carrie, what would you think of doing a no-budget, direct-to-video sequel in the spirit of Police Academy and turning the killer from a bullied girl getting revenge to a Nazi who ruins the party for everyone and then kills them because they don't agree with her uptight, puritanical values? Surely, you'd say the same thing I was thinking: why on Earth would we want a sequel that makes former victim Angela the bully? The movie's answer: relentless T&A, AIDS insensitivity, homophobic slurs, bad acting (although, in fairness, Renee Estevez - yes the sister of both Charlie Sheen and The Breakfast Club's Emilio Estevez - is okay), non-existent writing (I'm not kidding- this movie's numerous attempts at character conflict are as sloppy and jittery - and these are kind descriptions - as all the dialogue in Street Trash), bargain basement-quality special effects (these are by far the cheapest looking gore FX you're likely to see in the entire 80's output of the genre), and the chance to make Angela into a one-liner-spouting female Freddy Krueger.

What can one say about something like that? Here's what: Serial Mom mastered this formula brilliantly 6 years later. And Unhappy Campers doesn't belong on the same planet as Serial Mom, let alone at the same table as the original Sleepaway. And if all this has to offer is some T&A, why wouldn't you just watch a porno instead? Or, better yet, go to Spring Break? Nevertheless, this sequel works like gangbusters on 80's horror hounds with no standards and has gone on to become a minor cult hit. Some even think the novelty of having Bruce Springsteen's real-life sister rack up such a huge bodycount or beefy male counselor T.C.'s Dave Coulier-styled frizzy mullet are enough to put this in the same league as the first film. However, it's movies like this that serve as a reminder of just how much insufferable shit populated the 80's. Which is bizarrely viewed as a precious decade by many hardcore horror fans (I mention this because many of them attacked Scream for no good reason and fail to realize how influential the 90's were to horror, to say nothing of how vastly superior they are to the last 12 years in the genre). Most of the time, excess is just plain stupid.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 02: Any Last Words?


Sleepaway Camp 3:
Teenage Wasteland
(1989 / director: Michael A. Simpson)

★★

A rare occurrence in the world of sequels: they actually realized the mistake they'd make previously and decided to fix it. Color me shocked! Angela is finally a camper again rather than a counselor and this time, they strive to find some kind of balance between her role as a victim in the first film and as a judgmental vigilante terminator in Unhappy Campers. She still kills a lot of people for moral reasons, but this time she actually gives them all a chance to "do right" by her first. Best of all, instead of going ape shit at the end and killing anyone in her sight, she doesn't even target a single person who doesn't viciously insult, threaten, or try to attack her first. And, hey- the plot actually has some ambition too. First of all, the cast of wrongdoers are either spoiled rich brats or desensitized jerk criminals. Secondly, the dialogue is a lot smarter. The plot revolves around Angela's entry into a kind of social diversity mix group- half the kids from the city, the other half from the suburbs. She disguishes herself as a Latina (after dispatching her) and they head out to the woods to do various "sharing and caring" exercises. Only, things don't turn out so well as the husband and wife who run the place are lazy, selfish, tax-cheating fornicators. Angela won't have that.

The secret to the movie's half-success is that it really is very clever in comparison to the crapfest to come before it. Angela doesn't just change a little- she changes a lot. In addition to killing people for having sex, she also kills them for being racists, polluters, and violent thugs. As she dispatches a guy who aspires to become a politician for insinuating that she must be a slut because she's poor, she remarks: "thank God there'll be one less idiot in politics." I'd like to think she was referring to a republican (but in times like this, you really can't read a screenwriter's mind). Angela really is a much more likable and sympathetic character. There's a great scene where she walks out to the old main lodge-cabin from the second movie and reminisces on the happy day where she sang the "Happy Camper" song with a cheering crowd of...happy campers. A memory which obviously never took place (since she was so intolerable in the 2nd movie). It's actually a better scene than her blue-tinted nightmare from Unhappy Campers (a nice break from the onslaught of stupidity that was the rest of the movie). And finally- dear lord, the acting is greatly improved. I actually can't count on one hand the number of actors who are doing a genuinely good job (especially Mark Oliver and Cliff Brand, as Tony and Officer Whitmore).

Like Renee Estevez in Unhappy, Teenage Wasteland (great title, by the way, and wonderfully fitting) continues the series' tradition (this eventually became a huge thing in direct-to-video flicks of the early 90's) of casting the siblings of huge stars. In her place as good-girl Marsha is Tracy Griffith, the beautiful, vivacious redheaded sister of Melanie (Working Girl, Something Wild). As previously mentioned, Angela in both sequels is played by Bruce Springsteen's sister, Pamela. But, back to Marsha. The greatest surprise of the movie is that there's a twist. No, it's not that Angela is somehow again able to survive a brutal stabbing without even screaming and ends the movie sitting in a triumphant position with a large grin on her face. It's that Marsha's not actually the girl you think she is. I know that's a bit of a spoiler but I'm not sure most people appreciate it. There's actually a lot right with the movie. I'd like to be able to give it a passing grade somehow but the special effects are so bad and again, the movie isn't scary. I hope I mentioned that with the last film. I guess you have to look at it this way: just because it's so much better than the last movie doesn't make it a classic. It's just a lot better than it gets credit for being. Some people call it worse than the 2nd film and that simply isn't true.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 03: What's Cooler Than Being Cool?


Masters of Horror:
We All Scream for Ice Cream
(2006 / director: Tom Holland)

★

The saddest thing, of course, about Season 2 of Masters of Horror is watching so many once-great directors fall from grace. Now, the 90's were harsh on many of the old masters (none moreso than John Carpenter, if you ask me) but the new millennium (aka- the aughts) was a slaughter. Season 1 was a redemption for many (especially John Carpenter, but also Don Coscarelli, Larry Cohen, and William Malone- who previous to the series failed to turn in a film making him worthy of the show's title). Season 2 only did one favor for anyone. And that's the guy who did Right to Die, by very far the best of the season (Rob Schmidt- previously director of the awful Wrong Turn). But, I want to take you back with me, further than Season 1. Back to one of the worst pre-new millennium horror films I'd ever seen. Back to the 90's. Now you won't believe whose name was in the director's seat but Tom Holland, director of this morning's feature: We All Scream for Ice Cream. Sorta started out in horror as the screenwriter of the excellent Psycho II, then a couple of years later made his eternal mark in horror as the director of Fright Night, one of the very best vampire films ever made (and for one to be able to claim that is a true honor, believe me). His name might not carry much prestige, but he also holds credit for directing Child's Play, so he's 2 for 2 in only a few years working as a horror director. Again, though, I gotta bring you away from that. To 1996's Stephen King adaptation that never-should-have-been, Thinner.

When a Stephen King adaptation goes wrong, people love to bring it back to King and say 'maybe it's the source material'. I've never cared much for his work myself anyway. Carrie and Misery are masterpieces, though neither director would be caught dead on the Masters roster. Creepshow is one of my favorite films of all time, so you know what I'm going to say about that one. I have a lot of love for Mick Garris's adaptation of Sleepwalkers, because that's the action-horror film Wes Craven should have made. And I'm bound to forget a couple of other classics (Salem's Lot, one of the films that makes giving Tobe Hooper another shot over and over again worthwhile), but I want to give one last shout out to the film Tom Holland should have made, 1997's The Night Flier. Some projects are too hard to screw up, however Thinner was shit from the start. What good is a lot of dread if everything you're watching is insulting to your intelligence? And with that, I find a great opportunity to segue back into Holland's We All Scream endeavor.

You could say this one spurred a wild hair in my ass. But the thing that makes me complain is that it, coming from a director who did make Fright Night, a guy who should be going the Season 1 route and making something extraordinary, is that it's the same kind of crap everyone else is doing. I'm talking about mind-numbingly bland characters who are living a totally ideal version of the American / Canadian Dream except for one thing [insert one-thing here]. I'm not freaking kidding: in Washingtonians, you have a perfect 3-person family with no problems except the gang of Rosemary's Baby old-folks who want to raid their McPlantation for forks made out of human bone. Repeat with Screwfly Solution but add epidemic of misogynistic mass murder. In Family, there are no kids, but everyone is living in ideal surroundings. By their standards, though none of them stop to wonder if the horrible things that happened to them were in any way made possible by their ideal, upwardly almost-yuppie (maybe yuppie) lifestyle. Even the killer is religiously inclined toward happiness through artificiality. Minus religion in-the-home, repeat with Right to Die. In V Word (the single most deeply offensive piece of the season), the kids (with no parents?) are again living high by modern American standards. Until they're bit by a vampire. They've got the latest video games, hip clothes, and look perfect. It goes on like this throughout the season ad nauseum. With the exception of Pelts (shockingly one of the season's most tonally interesting pieces), there isn't a piece about characters who aren't at least upper-middle class. Ad-WTF?! (I wasn't aware Canada was this fantasy Disney World of nations, where almost no crime or poverty existed.)

Now, maybe the genre was this way in a lot of other movies too from the better decades past. But you'd barely know it. They may have been light on serious issues (which I'm not advocating, one way or the other) but most of the time, the new millennium horror movies feel like commercials telling you this is the way normal people are and you need to buy into their lifestyle. Advocating conformity. We have more people than ever before, more things than ever before- and yet, the members of the human race probably haven't looked so much alike since the 60's (taken out of context, but I can't quite get Rosemary's Baby out of my head). I know I've trailed off but I've been dying to really dig into the new millennium here for a long time and I think I've finally sharpened my claws enough to get a decent hook in. You truly can't tell the difference between commercials, movies, and television these days. And I'm not just talking photography. When everything seems exactly the same and there's no variety, how can the genre survive? It can't. It can only slowly die.

Although I wouldn't exactly say We All Scream is a sign of the endtimes (seen too many before). As a matter of fact, it's another omen that the filmmakers can't let go of the past as well. Either John Farris (the guy who did the story this 57-minute film was based on) or David Schow (screenwriter, also of the vastly superior Season 1 effort, Pick Me Up) have a huge thing for Stephen King- who himself had a huge thing for cars but "Papa Joe" here has a car that will instantly have you recalling John Carpenter's Christine whether it's even close to the same make of that film's bitch-in-heat. This might be a Schow-specialty (I do know for sure that King dabbles in it fairly often) but this thing is filled to the brim with stupid slang. It's bad enough when it's coming from the youth (, silly Lucky Capt'in Rabbit King) but with King it's always from the tragically can't-come-to-grips-with-the-changing-times (I miss the 90's but you sure as hell don't see me trying to bring back "chillin'" or "hangin'," do you?) elders (although most of the pushing-40 set here have aged beautifully, none moreso than chest-you-can-eat-off-of Oz stud, Lee Tergesen). But, please, somebody get the wife a freaking muzzle (masking tape stretched tight enough will do). Even in moments of intense confrontation and high emotional debate she's blurting out her arguments with Wacky Adjectives where they don't belong ("wait a hot second" being the most painful). Is she insane? She well could be but we never find out. So, if it isn't part of the essential framework of the film - NIX IT! It isn't even quirky, it's just stupid.

Inevitably, I have to grant Scream some praise for a few strengths. One is the broadness of its' usage of the voodoo doll theme. Unwitting participants in a makeshift zombie voodoo ritual bite down (with apple-biting sound effect, which you'll never ever hear after you chomp upon - not a wise decision, by the way; your teeth won't thank you - a brick of frozen creamed milk and sugar) on a human-shaped ice cream bar which results in them killing their own parents (again, an idea that cries Stephen King- Children of the Corn). This is acted out through hypnotic suggestion, the ghost-zombie Buster the clown plays upon their inherent feelings of rage against the parents for anything the kids are still mad about (abandonment, grounding them, probably yelling too much, telling them they can't wear a belly-shirt to school). Oh yeah - the parents die by melting to the ground in a puddle of swirled, sherbert-colored cream (which looks a lot like pastel paint). Which is an image a lot of people are hardwired to complain about but I found refreshing. Especially in the death scene that I'll only describe as "the tub."

I did say a few strengths, so I'll go on: the little boy playing Turgesen's kid is scary as hell!!! Way more than William Forsythe who plays the film's killer clown (with "spooky" contact lens' and the whole nine). So, of course, he's not in nearly enough scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if this kid was going to become a serious actor one day and rise to be the next (whatever amazing 20/30-something male actor you can think of) because he's also amazing in the scenes where he's not playing creepy. And finally, this is the most minor of the redeeming qualities but, there's some freaky Charles Manson-esque guy playing a mountain hobo who lives in a junkyard. It's surprising how much he livens things up (though I was most impressed at the inclusion of a detail like: he raped one of Turgesen's male childhood friends / I say that because this season has a real thing for sexual predators and at least this way, the guy would screw anything that moves and it isn't at all a condemnation of homosexuality). Bill Moseley looks the part better and this guy stutters, but I hate him for it much more than this guy. It's obvious and cliched anyway, so I'd actually rather see the K-Mart version (it reveals a touch of innocence on the part of the screenwriting - don't ask me how).

However, these are matters of simple aesthetic. The heart of this thing is either in trying to revive the classic frightshow (which in the new millennium is going to be impossible - ask most people who saw House of 1,000 Corpses) or in being hard-edged and realistic about a small town boy fighting to save his family from old demons (more King for ya: Sometimes They Come Back). Is it successful? HELL NO! For a multitude of reasons. One because this family is not country, let's say. Or city. The kids are middle-America, the wife is almost metro, and daddy-kins is some kind of Southern cowboy (in direct contrast to the bullshit Stand by Me kids stuff we see in his flashbacks / any more Stephen King and this thing will burst like a balloon). For another / in conjunction, it doesn't feel real. It feels like new-millennium trying to be realistic (which if you like, I feel pity for you). It's just cliche, which amounts to constipated readings of most of the dialogue. Especially from Turgesen, who completely phones-in his performance here (though, for showing off his torso, I can forgive him). Lastly, it's too goofy trying to be spooky. Forsythe is completely wasted, if you ask me. And who even needs this when there's a Tales from the Crypt episode that is at least 8-times better: "People Who Live in Brass Hearses."

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 04: Power of the Bite


Critters
(1986 / director: Stephen Herek)

★★

In the 80's world of the 50's throwback, one film reigns supreme. We all know that is Killer Klowns from Outer Space. But that film might not have been - certainly not in the form we've come to embrace it - without the body of work the Chiodo brothers amassed while and before that film was in production (whether that inlcudes the revelation that Philo from Weird Al's UHF was an alien or not, another job by them that I'm sure lead to all the TV work they did in the 90's, is unknown by me). And why does Killer Klowns slay all other competition? Because nothing was made to feel sacred - probably much the same reason the likes of The Return of the Living Dead and An American Werewolf in London before it had been such stellar fright films with a slice of comedy. Then, of course there was Gremlins. And though that film is much closer to Klowns (since they share placement within the oft-dreaded by horror fans PG classification group), especially for reasons of a sharp-edged view on the world it was throwing back to, it also has the sole distinction among its' class (including the sillier Monster in the Closet and the quite dull Strange Invaders) of pushing the boundaries of filmmaking. Outraged parents were so adament about Gremlins being too extreme for a PG, the MPAA were practicaly forced to come up with a new rating: PG-13. That film spawned quite a few rip-offs (if not the entire "little creatures" subgenre that gave us 90's offerings such as Leprechaun and the franchising of 1989's Puppet Master). None more blatant than Munchies, a two-way rip-off of Gremlins and 1986's Gremlins' rip-off, Critters. Is your head spinning yet?

This film might have been a passion project for Stephen Herek (whose career later blasted into orbit for a few years of fame with the successes of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead - one of my favorites, Mr. Holland's Opus, and Disney's The Mighty Ducks and their live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians) but it was certainly an obvious excuse for New Line Cinema to launch another franchise (notice how no Freddy Krueger movies made their way to theaters in '86, despite his huge rising fame at the time?). It's hard for me to not be cynical about this film. I hold zero nostalgia for it since New Line's stuff rarely played for late night movie shows on the channels I watched (UPN38, USA, TNT, TBS - not to mention in the 90's, HBO & Cinemax were only playing the hell out of their Poison Ivy and Friday rather than any of the Nightmare on Elm Street films), therefore as a growing horror fan, I missed all New Line's franchises completely and had to catch them as a teenage VHS renter (before I stubbornly sold my soul to DVD and began collecting those). Even then, few PG tapes ever made it to the counter that weren't comedies. Somehow, though a distant attraction was there (mostly for the possibility that they might indulge in the kind of gore that was missing from the Gremlins films), Critters just doesn't look right in a handful next to Children of the Corn Part III: Urban Harvest, Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2, and Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger, of course) in The Phantom of the Opera.

Critters is truly an aimless throwback. It doesn't seem to have a clue what it's doing. Is it a loving look back at the old Leave It to Beaver days of Americana? If so, than why the distinctly 80's soundtrack (they clash like a vampire and a cross)? Is it perhaps a damning look at pop culture? If so, than why is their Rick Springfield rocker guy's "latest smash-hit single" so freaking dorky (check out his epic stagedive... how're you gonna finish the song, genius)? Is it a spoof of something? If so, A) what is it spoofing, and, B) why isn't it funny? Is it an allegory to... terrorism? Nuclear bombing? Rampant commercialism? Probably not. More likely an appetizer to some merchandising scheme (speaking of: props to the E.T. moment- it's cute). The movie inserts a boring family, where you don't care about anyone. Then it mixes in some minor conflict (between the brother and sister) and traces of social commentary (the father won't shut up about how noble he thinks farming is and how great all guys who do it for a living are, the daughter dates a guy the father gives a very subtle evil-eye to). Then you get the sci-fi intro to the creatures (and congratulations go to the incompetent security team transporting "The Crites" to jail, since they didn't even try to stop them), they invade the family's farm and home. Along the way, we meet a nerd who's also a drunk who's also a washed-up "I coulda been a contender" loser, a frigid gossip-hound secretary who refuses to boink the cute nebbish deputy who's always calling her, and for whatever reason- a church congregation sitting in on a sermon of "Sodom and Gomorrah."

If any of that sounds interesting- you're welcome to it. The movie is ultimately able to generate a little excitement, thanks again to some amazing special effects by the Chiodo's. The Critter design is one of the genre's finest monsters. Which just begs for them to really be given something to chomp down on, not merely the cattle leftovers from The Howling. They have terrifying red eyes that glow in the dark, a truly scary mouthful of teeth (comprised of what look like 4 separate rows - on just the bottom half) that look like they could reduce a sprawling doll's mansion to a pencil in 15 seconds (they're basically chainsaws with fur!), can roll around in a ball and hide in strange places, and can even grow after feeding on flesh to enormous sizes (another element that could have been used for big results but is, like everything else here that works, underplayed). Ultimately, this thing couldn't be more predictable (though I do give it points for tearing the dad a new one, damn he was annoying). It ends happily and with almost Wizard of Oz implications, despite the fact that I'd go insane in this example of idyllic middle-America tranquility: the hot-rodding, big city boyfriend - who coughs all the way through dinner and is allergic to the hay that fills the lofts of their shed, lines the chicken coop out back, and hangs around all over the property in bails - is dispatched and the only threat to truly modernizing this hamlet is vanquished. All are free to live out the remainder of their boring destinies. Good for them. Pass me the remote, please.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 05: The Bitch is Back


Hellbound: Hellraiser II
(1988 / director: Tony Randel)

★½

So, as we all know, horror was considered a very strong and thriving genre for a long time - until the late 80's, when every single studio decided they wanted a piece of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchise pie. No, this is actually true. Because although Halloween birthed a million and one scummy American and Canadian rip-offs (while Romero's Dawn of the Dead did the same overseas), the genre was still booming with creativity. As the slasher genre was dying its' last death, Carpenter gave us The Fog, Raimi gave us The Evil Dead, Cronenberg gave us Videodrome and The Fly, Romero gave us Creepshow, Cohen gave us Q the Winged Serpent, and 1981 gave us the finest werewolf films the genre had ever seen with The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. This is still to say nothing of the classics to come which would establish the new careers of Stuart Gordon (who will come up again in later paragraphs), Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case, Brain Damage), Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Dead Alive), Tom Holland (Fright Night), and a few others. No, the genre wasn't dead in the early 80's. It was just in a slump. And for awhile, the one constant throughout the years of questionable returns was guilt-free fun with the Jason and Freddy films. I mean, after all, Evil Dead II and Prom Night II weren't exactly good but they weren't nearly enough to call time-of-death on horror. Then, the clock struck 12:00 AM on January 1st, 1988, and everything went to hell. Literally. Although the year gave us 2 highly important film releases, Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Brain Damage (both high quality, must-see), people didn't flock to see those films. Probably because the big money went into pimping sequels. Critters had nothing to lose when it spawned a sequel that year, but Nightmare on Elm Street did. Part 4: The Dream Master was disappointing at best. But it was merely Child's Play compared to the one-two punch of Phantasm II and Hellbound: Hellraiser II.

Phantasm II is another disaster for another time (as is the traumatically awful Scarecrows, just to show you how much original ideas were suffering that year as well). Hellraiser II may be superior to that trainwreck. Though it certainly makes some of the same fatal mistakes. Namely- flashbacks and a continuation on the same story with a couple new pieces. I don't know about you but I don't want the same story. With sequels, unless there's no story in the first place (Friday the 13th), I want something new with some of the old pieces. Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and Prom Night II delivered this. But that was '87. In '88, it was in-vogue to incur memory loss and change details that were set-in-stone from the year before. For example, at the end of Clive Barker's Hellraiser, the box was gone. And so was Larry and Julia's house. Yes, the thing set alight and burnt to the ground. Not in this film. And so, now there's an excuse to put Kirsty in an asylum (where she spews forth silly bullshit about fairy tales, leading to awful, sternly spoken one-liners which you can smell coming from miles away), have something cursed from the old house make its' way onto the stage of our new hell arena (a dungeon of jailcells with cliched screaming crazy mental patients, mostly victims of psychological brain-scrambling, ala- a Re-Animator lobotomy by way of Nazi experimentions performed by poetic madman, Dr. Channard - but as kinda handsome as Kenneth Cranham is, he's no match for David Gale's Dr. Carl Hill on the sinister scale), and more devious games of cat and mouse with the new pieces. Or, should I say- new rules? Because this film really wants to get to that big Labyrinth you probably remember if you crossed paths with this thing while flipping channels. That's almost cool. But for us to get there, this movie speeds up the montage of killings to get Julia her new skin. Then, the movie tosses in some motivation (Kirsty's mission to rescue her father - wherever he is - meanwhile, the evil doctor and Julia are hatching their own plan - whatever that is) to take us into the world of hell the Cenobites live in. The place where all the "sights" are that Pinhead wanted to show Kirsty before- though almost none of them are up to snuff.

When we finally get to the Labyrinth, we quickly see what this movie could have been in a sequence where mute female patient Tiffany runs into a section of the maze that looks a lot like a circus. Yes, Hellbound has a lot of great imagery scattered around. And a great deal of it is bundled up in Tiffany's story. Although we never find out anything about that, we do get great shots of her putting together various puzzles, flashbacks into her mother's surreal murder (a recurring image of a Stepford-like woman with lifeless eyes whose mouth is stifled by a black-gloved hand leaving the sound of a final squeak from her throat to echo over a shadowy shot of the girl all alone), and a few creepy clowns who appear in mirrors before they shatter. And that's all we get there. The other thing that keeps this movie from being a total shitfest is an even more delicious turn from Clare Higgins as Kirsty's wicked stepmother. This movie is too ugly to be a fairy tale, but almost every second with Higgins onscreen is a breath of fresh air. Her resurrection via a roomful of corpses hanging from chains (an image that looked a lot better in Nightmare on Elm Street 3) gives the movie opportunity for some wacked Universal-classic moments. Her bloody membraned husk wrapped up in The Mummy bandages until her glorious Bride of Frankenstein unraveling. And her confrontation scene with Kirsty finally makes good on the movie's underscored bitchy tension as Higgins lays some groundwork for the great Sigourney Weaver to later follow (in 1997's Snow White: A Tale of Terror) with the classic: "I'm no longer just the Wicked Stepmother. Now I'm the Evil Queen. So come on- take your best shot, Snow White!" Though thankfully, this sequel does away with ugly orange worms and Kirsty is given a far more attractive doomed love interest (William Hope), there has to be a point in returning to hell. A few improved effects and a story with promise of higher stakes is not going to do it. The horror genre suffered greatly for stupid stories like these with their painful predictability and sappy attempts at fleshing out characters. You'd do much better instead with a double feature of Barker's original paired with Stuart Gordon's goopy near-masterpiece, From Beyond.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 06: Wrong Way


Trick 'r Treat
(2009 / director: Michael Dougherty)

½★

Every day since 1999 has been a sad day to be a horror fan. But even with that in mind, the genre has seen better schlock in the Halloween-themed vein than this jaded, idiotic heap of shit. We owe the utter erosion of the genre partly to Rob Zombie, but even his films score higher on the satisfaction meter than the horror-fest circuit hit, Trick 'r Treat. In fact, someone really owes me a jumbo bag of Kit Kats for sitting through this thing. If it's possible to be scholarly about something as personally, deeply disheartening as this pointless collection of shitty shorts- then I should probably mention its' influences. There's a distinctly Tim Burton-esque vibe, highly reminiscent of Sleepy Hollow (if the music isn't directly Scream or Urban Legend-inspired). Combine that with the comic book style throughout Romero's fantastic Creepshow (or even Mick Garris's much superior 2005 TV-movie production of Stephen King's Riding the Bullet) and the quaint costumes of 1988's sadly very underseen Lady in White. Yeah, stir all that together... then stick your fingers in its' eyes, scoop out its' brains, rip out its' guts, and rape it 'til it has no soul left. That's when you arrive at this film.

You want to know more? Ah-right. You asked for it. Why is Trick 'r Treat no fun? First of all, because it takes place in an entirely perverted universe where everyone and everything is worth nothing. No one has any morals or values. This was used somewhat effectively in Hostel, but that's because the idiot backpackers unwittingly sold themselves into a slave trade. Here, characters do whatever they want for the hell of it. And it wears out its' welcome immediately. Tactless crude jokes and ten-a-penny sex "comedy" hijinks are pissed all over the screen by way of unskilled "writing." Secondly, it's a highly judgmental plate of artificial user-unfriendliness. If you're ugly, old, or fat- you've either killed someone or are a jerk trying to ruin everyone's holiday. If you're a woman- you're either a jealous shrew, mentally handicapped, a drunken whore, or will have the camera glued to your ass or climbing up your skirt (nice to see where the women's rights movement has taken us, and that the pro-woman sentiment of Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Ridley Scott's Alien hasn't been forgotten). This thing enacts ghostly revenge on all wrongdoers, so you'd think knowing that there would actually be some attempt at fairness as victims are racked up. Right? Think again. Other than the tacky sticker of an intertwining ending that explains all the bits that previously didn't make any sense, the motivation for all the horror here is ill-conceived and head-bashingly stupid. Anna Paquin - who won a FUCKING OSCAR at age 11 - is the only professional here and gyrates by campfire light to Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" in a wretched music video-styled dance sequence as she burps up a one-liner before turning into a werewolf (a concept that co-rips off the similarly-themed Company of Wolves along with Robbie Williams' video for "Rock DJ"). Her parents must be really proud to see where her career ended up. If you haven't seen this, you're lucky. Skip it and just rent Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses instead. Yes, it's better.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 07: Come 'n Git It!!


Critters 2: The Main Course
(1988 / director: Mick Garris)

★★½

"Hey, little buddies, come gather 'round,
This here's the very best eatin' in town,
The Hungry Heifer's the place to be
Lip-lickin' good, you can take it from me
Try a Polar Burger and some Buffalo Chips,
Wash it all down with a Mooo Shake
You'll pat your tummy and smack your lips,
Suck for hours on your fingertips
At the Hungry Heifer, we won't give you a bum steer."

And with that, the table is set and the dinner bell rung for the sequel probably no one was waiting for. But they should have been, because The Main Course really is just that- what the first film was working toward. Something with meat on its' bones. A tasty appetizer that really forsaw 1990's heaping helping of creature features to come, Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Tremors. A full plate, indeed (especially with Arachnophobia and There's Nothing Out There topped on for dessert). Since this is a sequel, let's get the boring stuff out of the way now: what did they do better in the first film? Very little. However, when the bounty hunters show up and prove not all that helpful, you do wonder what they're actually there for. The townsfolk are forced to band together and come up with their own solution. Which is good because now we know they're there for more than just bait. And this also gives Charlie - the manchild nerddrunk from the first film - a reason to be in the movie. But the townspeople are still doing all the work and the remaining bounty hunter just sits in one of the church pews. By the way, did anyone else have a hearty chuckle when you put their names together? "Ug" and "Lee." This film also recasts the former sheriff. And they couldn't have done a better job than Barry Corbin, but you do miss M. Emmet Walsh just a little.

Enough of that. This movie is an improvement on the original in so many ways, you wonder how the hell this scores lower on the IMDb (other than the fact, as we all know, that place attracts idiots like a flame gathers moths). It hasn't exactly shifted into the awkward area of teen film, but none of the kids are given characters to play. Little redhead Bradley from the first film is in college (I believe) and has no one-liners or mouthfuls of speedy kidspeak to spit, nor is he ever played for cuteness factor. This time, he sort of picks up a girlfriend who is completely self-reliant and doesn't get stuck playing cutesy either. He goes to visit his wacky vegan grandmother who seems to live in a tricked-out schoolhouse. She just hates "meat eaters," although the town would be thriving off the local fast food eatery, the above-mentioned Hungry Heifer. Meanwhile, it's Easter break and the town's getting all hopped up on the children's easter egg hunt. And yet, you'd still expect them to do a bunch of stuff with the kids. Blocked. Though it's worth mentioning that the little sweary girl from Shocker makes an appearence here. On a tricycle, no less (the same thing she was riding when we first saw her in Craven's film), which she uses to wheel her idiot self into harm's way in one particularly forehead-slapping moment. But, the audience is left to decide for themselves if that's funny. I rather thought so.

Of course, the real reason to come to this movie is... more critter action? And how! Get ready for a whopper: they actually bite this time. Or, more accurately, they take bites out of you. After munching off the toe section on a crusty old garage-sale guy, the camera lingers so we get a decent view of the damage. Gore! Later, a man is actually shredded to just a bloody skeleton and for a PG-13 movie- it's quite a sight. More like a gag, but it works. There are a couple offscreen victims (we're made to figure) but the real murder set-piece (closest to it) involves the punk town sheriff dressed up in an Easter Bunny costume thrown through the church window. As another gag-oriented kill (made to elicit clever chuckles), you'd probably find yourself more amused with the "Bingo!" sequence in Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice. We get to see the critters as baby hatchlings, which we never did in either Gremlins film. They're mighty ugly. But not to worry, they grow fast. Which brings me to the real cherry on the top of this cake: The Critterball! The first film had a great idea- that the critters would grow huge. They even found a creepy way to do it. In shadow. But then, the characters never had a chance to be scared by this. Thusly, neither was the audience. Well, that is corrected here. Now, the "crites" (as they're still called in the improved sci-fi opening which serves up moody lighting and a couple real thrills for a change) can pack themselves into a very, very large ball that runs through the town square. And guess what? It even knocks people down as though they're bowling pins.

Score one for Critters.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 08: Your Princess is in Another Castle


Waxwork
(1988 / director: Anthony Hickox)

★★½

So, one of the reoccuring themes in 80's horror was the classic spookshow. Fright Night had their oldies-horror host, Peter Vincent. Ghoulies II had their retro haunted house circus attraction. And Thriller had Michael Jackson's references to sci-fi monster flicks. This is basically working side-by-side with all the throwback films which were an 80's constant and reached their peak in the dying hour of 1988- when people really wanted grittier, less stylish stuff like Child's Play and Pet Sematary (though they had to wait another year for that one). Somehow, another somewhat unheard of gem popped up with 1988's Waxwork (just successful enough to spawn a minor sequel in the early 90's). An interesting film for a few reasons. One is that it's the directorial debut of the son of Douglas Hickox (director of the horrid 1973 Vincent Price flick, Theater of Blood), Anthony, whose brother - James D.R. Hickox - also became a horror director with 1994's wacky Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest. Weird family (between the two sons, they resurrected the mass-massacre scene 1976's Carrie invented, as Anthony later directed Hellrasier III: Hell on Earth). Also, it pulls a bit of an April Fools Day and casts hip actors with notable horror pasts: Zach Galligan from Gremlins, Patrick Macnee from The Howling, David Warner from The Omen, Michelle Johnson from an ill-fated TV series called Werewolf (she would go on to a more lucrative future later in the genre: Tales from the Crypt, Dr. Giggles, and Death Becomes Her), and Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl. Oh, wait; that's not a horror film. That's where everyone will remember those gums of hers' from (I don't mean that to sound mean- she just flashes her gums a lot), though you won't recognize her without her blonde mullet-'fro (it took me nearly 45 minutes to finally pinpoint where I'd seen her from). She managed to carry-over into here from April Fools Day.

Another reason this is so interesting, though this is to the film's detriment- it's not scary. And... it doesn't even try to be. With its' often clever sense of humor, it would seem a parody in ways. Though it hides this pretty well on occasion by having certain characters take it completely seriously, it's practically Airplane! with gore (and rumor has it, a good chunk was removed and never put back in). The biggest flaw is the music score. Even the ending, which turns into an orgy of one-liners and pirate movie sword-fighting would be in good step if they could do something about that music score. Which seems like it wants to turn this film into The Princess Bride at times. References abound- from 1968's Night of the Living Dead to 1986's Little Shop of Horrors. And the cast are all playing knowing stereotypes: the slut, the jock, the virgin, the cool guy, and the class clown. Best? Foreman, easily, as the virgin- in a performance that shockingly puts Barbara Crampton's uptight bondage-freak buttoned-down doctor in From Beyond to shame! Worst? Again, easily: Dana Ashbrook as class clown "Tony," who becomes a blabbermouth - talking to no one in particular in his truly boring cabin-in-the-woods werewolf scenario - to overemphasize sexual frustration. Also good is ultra-luscious Winona Ryder-lookalike Johnson (though she's far less awkward and more outgoing in all her roles than Ryder), here rocking a blonde 'do rather than her usual, shorter, brunette. Also not-so-good, as usual, is Galligan (though as one of my recent Facebook photo albums can attest to: I love him anyway). The tie-breaker is Warner as a handsome sights' salesman (though, with so much of his ears showing- he reminds me too much of the displeased chemistry teacher from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory).

It's a hit-or-miss series of gags. Most of the humor is hit (it's a lot more fun than Night of the Creeps), most of the horror is miss (though the vampire segment is very inventive and wonderfully bloody). So, again, the tie-breaker: camerawork and editing. Really sets the opening 15 minutes with the college kids on fire. And, despite the unbelievably silly ending- you will walk out of the film with a smile on your face. A very fun time.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 09: Low Rent


The House of the Devil
(2009 / director: Ti West)

★½

Depressing, isn't it? When the best thing I can say about a new-millennium horror film is that it didn't completely suck. And this one had so much potential too. Right off the bat, in case you haven't seen or heard of this film before, you need to know that this is a surprisingly well-done attempt at recreating a genuine late-1970's, early-1980's spooky horror film. Can you believe some directors making "horror" in the last decade actually like those films? But, here's the thing- not all the films from the late 70's and early 80's were so great. Specifically, the kind of film this one seems to have in-mind: a combination of "someone's in the house" and... well, the title really gives the ending away, so I'm going to have to spoil this one for you: occult films. The 70's was a horribly overbearing, heavy-handed time for occult films. Basically; there was one classic (The Exorcist), one film with Satanic undertones (Carrie, a masterpiece- of course), and the rest were dull as dishwater (especially The Omen and The Amityville Horror: this is closer to the latter than the former). At first, this just screams Black Christmas and The Brood (the cold winter setting, the heroine's hat and mittens). Then, when she gets to the house, things take an obvious and dread-inducing turn for Burnt Offerings and Fright. Dread-inducing, naturally, for the wrong reasons: the introduction to the movie's main villain is good for its' opening shot (the movie's Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder stand-ins meet him at the door and they're uneased while we don't get to see his face), but damn did they stretch it out for "weirdness" factor. Weirdness in the new-millennium is little more than quirkiness without brains and nuance without range. In other words- a cliche. Just add "weirdness" and suddenly, your scene can get by the Psychological-Horror Customs.

Other moments are flawed because they just waste great opportunities. One of the movie's best opportunities arrives when Hussey-stand-in "Samantha" puts on her headphones and starts dancing around the house. She's now alone and the music's a'blarin' and we the audience are being set at-ease. Cliche dictates that something could happen... but usually, nothing does. The great opportunity here is to actually deliver something. Anything could happen. We could notice that something is out of place or someone is watching her through the window. A door or window could open. The phone could ring or someone could knock on the door and she wouldn't hear it. What happens? What's the climax to this action? The character knocks over a vase and has to clean it up. Um... okay. What's the true impact of this action upon the story? Samantha's being paid $400 by the weird couple who live in this house to take care of it, so now she might owe them a hundred back or something. But, since this is the new-millennium and you have to figure that she'll be dead by the end of the movie (as is the usual outcome for all protagonists in new-millennium horror), what the hell does this matter? It doesn't do anything for the story whatsoever. At best, it pads the running time (95 minutes- much too much for a movie where it's just one impossibly long build-up to the ending). This film would seem to have one great purpose: to bring back the style of 70's and 80's horror. But instead, it's just a remarkably pointless excuse to throw cliches in our face. Which is much more true to new-millennium horror than the decades it's homaging.

Next on the chopping block: casting. Jocelin Donahue as Samantha is doing that thing you know I hate in movies: TV-acting. She rushes through all her dialogue, all her emotion, in a chirping manner that makes her look petite and cute and like a little bird. Which is how all young, thin actresses looking to get a part in the latest USA-original series behave. Thankfully, the movie lacks any obvious comic "cool guy" dopes stuck in as her love interests or sidekicks. However, what we get instead is almost as bad: a wannabe-Jack Black as the movie's token stalker killer / creepy caller (ooh, how creepy: he has brown eyes - which look black during night scenes - and a beard, CALL THE POLICE, HURRY!). We are lucky that throughout the first 70 minutes of the movie- he's rarely seen (that changes, sadly, in the final 20 pre-credits minute ending). The saving graces are Dee Wallace (who's only onscreen for the first minute) and Greta Gerwig as Kidder-stand-in, best friend "Megan." She's also a very TV-creation, something of a cross between Dawson's Creek's Busy Phillips and American Pie's Alyson Hannigan. But, man, at least she gets it done in half the time. Donahue is just grating. Cult icon Mary Woronov (Rock n' Roll High School, Night of the Comet, The Living End, Warlock) is wasted. Don't even get me started on the ending. I'll just say that I've never been forgiving when it comes to Rosemary's Baby rip-offs (even scenes that steal pieces from that immortal film and which this film isn't even worthy to worship at the altar of, beside the other munk-robed freaks). The film would actually be mildly successful had the final half-hour not been crap. Especially since the music score (which mostly lights up the first 20 ultra-slow minutes).

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 10: Even Dwarfs Started Small


Screamtime
(1983 / directors: Michael Armstrong, Stanley A. Long)

★½

There is one truly great surprise in this 1983 anthology flick (not the slightest bit reminiscent of 1982's masterpiece Creepshow, as the advertisements would have you believe). No, it's not the shock that someone actually decided to adapt Punch and Judy into a slasher-styled horror film. It comes at the end of the 2nd "movie"- the intertwining bits show a couple American freeloaders stealing a trio of VHS tapes, they put each one of the segments of this film into their player and watch them (more like Tales from the Crypt episodes, going by the film's perfect 89-minute running time, so each is about 27 minutes long). The first "movie" is a psychological styled slasher (and easily the worst of the three) featuring an angry, angsty British youth and his put-upon family. His mother remarried a puppeteer sometime before the movie starts and all he cares about is his puppet show, while the punky kid cries about it and launches into emotional tyrades. Oh, and then the Punch doll goes on a murderous rampage (apparently, you can tell who will die when if you know how the play turns out- an interesting idea which does nothing for me since I have never seen one of the P&J shows). Which should be funny, however I never laughed.

The second "movie" is actually very good. Featuring a sweet newlywed couple moving into the house his father recently built for them. She begins having horrible visions of a family of people's dead bodies showing up in various places around the house, getting blood all over the place. You'd be surprised how clever this one actually gets. Killer twist- I could have never seen that one coming!! The third "movie" seems to look like it's going somewhere when another punky British kid (this time a motorbike racer) is looking for a way to make money. He takes a job as a gardener to a couple of seemingly crazy old women who tell him that their house is guarded by an army of mythological creatures with bags of tricks up their sleeves. Anyway, he tries to rob the house when he finds out they're loaded with riches (cash, jewelry, silver- you name it). He and two friends break into the house at night and things get mighty ridiculous. I think the twist here will inspire some huge "WTF?!"s from anyone with a pulse. Although, I give this credit as being the 2nd best of the three because the tension of watching them try to get away with their crime is remarkably palpable.

What else do you need to know? It's only available on Netflix: Watch Instant, it has never been released on DVD (and maybe not on VHS in the U.S. either, I can't confirm that). The acting is terrible from almost everyone, except the people playing the most eccentric characters- the two old women in the third "movie" and the quirky psychic the newlyweds call in to inspect their house for spirits from the second. And the... third Punch attack scene has to be seen to be believed. It's one of the stupidest things I have ever witnessed. Outside, of course, of the hysterial Shakma trailer. If you even try to watch this all the way through, I promise you that you'll shut it off about 25 minutes in. Max. But, if you want to see the surprising second segment, just skip to 32:11 in the time counter. The budget is almost non-existent but it's still good.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 11: Delayed Reaction


From a Whisper to a Scream
[aka- The Offspring]
(1987 / director: Jeff Burr)

★★½

Well, I hesitate to say this but I think it might be true. The 80's were a very desentized and numb decade for horror. This is not me suggesting that the films were bad or anything. But after the revolutionary 70's, in a way- there wasn't much new ground to cover. Things got stale. Again, in a way. There were a lot of ideas but few of them had any power, bite, or shock to them. Moments where you can sincerely claim you stood up and said: "I've never seen that before in my life!" How does that relate to this 1987 anthology film? Because if my trip back to the 80's for Horror Holiday and The Book of Horror has revealed that many of the movies I missed were as pale as the movies I caught, I can honestly say I've never seen anything like this film before. This little film I think all of you missed has power, bite, and shock to spare! I don't know if the segment ideas are rip-offs of the Tales from the Crypt series when they were just comic books (this applies mostly to the 3rd segment here, which is very much in the style of the "Food for Thought" story, which you'll recognize if you ever saw the horrible HBO adaptation for Crypt's 5th season), or films that came before it (the 1st segment here seriously resembles 1973's Deranged and the 4th will have everyone saying, Children of the Corn). But this film is trying to "push the envelope" (as Mick Garris would say) big time. And, for the most part, it succeeds. With great voracity.

In fact, I intend to cut the analysis short and just move on to flattery because I'm still in awe. The wrap-around idea is a little too Bad Seedy for its' own good and the movie slips up a few times along the way. Mostly in the first and second segments. A bad twist actually kills the first, which features Return of the Living Dead's sexy and virile Clu Gulager as an old, lonely man who lives with his sister. He becomes so starved for female attention that he turns to corpses, which leads this film to go quite a bit further in showing us his romance with one than Deranged. The second segment features a lousy performance by Terry Kiser who almost ruins it by saying "old timer" about 2.5 dozen times in under 10 minutes (that's about 3 times a minute), but some great music, some WICKED and moody as hell camera angles, and a nasty twist fish it out of the mud. The third segment features some freakish carnival people being pushed around by Tales from the Hood's haggy Rosalind Cash who goes over-the-top here as a voodoo priestess running the carnival who threatens her performers to never defy her or else they'll be sorry. REAL sorry as we learn in one of the most stunning death scenes I have ever witnessed in my entire movie watching career- having seen nearly 1,000 horror films or more. Even if the whole ugly drama in the segment's story is just a build-up to this death, it's worth it! Though it does leave you feeling hollow afterward... But no problem. Because the 4th segment will more than satisfy your potential thirst for revenge. My cup of blood-thirst was running over and so, I was really in the mood for what comes next. A story of a demented, soulless team of civil war soldiers shooting anyone (even their own friends) just for the fun of it. They then stumble upon an army they couldn't have prepared for: killer children. Who seem innocent and even laugh and play in the yard around their Southern plantation home shelter. But they don't fuck around and go to sadistic lengths to prove they can be as evil as adults are.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 12: Drinking Game


Blades
(1988 / director: Thomas R. Rondinella)

★★★

As a horror fan who has a deep love for low-budget films and has seen almost everything the genre has to throw at us, I see pieces of other movies in every movie I watch. The temptation to label any film a rip-off is only there because of these pieces, which are typically very slight familiarities at best. Blades however is probably the first time I've ever experienced total déjà vu. While a lot of folks on the internet may cry rip-off at anything, this film actually does want to be a scene-for-scene copy of Jaws. And, can I let you guys in on a little secret? I just despise that 1975 Spielberg film. Which in the case of a movie like this can (and does) mean 1 of 2 things. Either I'm going to love it because it's nothing like what I don't like about Jaws or hate it because it's exactly like what I don't like about it.

Well, both films are pitched seriously (Blades only succumbs to childish jokiness once: the "your name" bit during the cop's American flag speech). But Jaws' humor was flashed right out in the open and Blades expects viewers to not be paying attention (it should have- this would be considered boring in the 80's, though perhaps not had there been channels like Lifetime or Oxygen back then), so it goes for very subtle jokes (did anyone catch the full Friday the 13th reference?). In fact, if it weren't for the (completely bloodless) stalk and kill sequences, the first 40 minutes of this movie would be considered either a social satire or a very lowkey attempt at campiness. Victoria Scott, for example, is a hilariously bad actress who had the ability to make me start cracking up just by her tongue-biting angry staring. Which she does a lot of in this movie.

The original part of the plot (yeah, for the most part, until the 40-minute mark it only copies Jaws occasionally) involves a hunky washed up golf pro (there's no nudity in the movie, but he supplies some tight t-shirt scenes with fully-erect nipples) who accepts a job at an unusually non-stuffy country club, pissing off the assitant golf pro, aforementioned Victoria, who had been working there for something like 5 years waiting to get his job. She gives him a hard time, meanwhile (in an amusing Dirty Dancing-like development)- he's being sorta-blackmailed by the club owner's wife to sleep with her or else she kicks him out. And he goes along with it because either he's a major doormat or because to refuse or argue with her just wasn't in the script.

Another Jaws deviation is that the gruff, facial-hairy Quint character is replaced by a sexy skinhead who at first plays a creeper / stalker and then is taken prisoner by the film's lynch mob as the only suspect. This could be seen as a lift from any generic horror film, it's a classic red herring and even his whole look is very traditional for the creeper / stalker role. If there is one undeniable Jaws touch kept in-tact through the beginning, it's that everybody drinks. A lot. They drink, they talk about drinking, they tell everyone when they'll be drinking, and muse about how they wish they had a drink when there ain't a bar in sight. That's where the maybe-satire part comes in. Yeah, this isn't a typical country club but the members and staff sure do like their drinks.

Inevitably, the film will also be compared to Caddyshack -mostly by afficionados of bad films who will try to paint this very fun film with that brush because it has no budget and the acting isn't exactly strong. But it couldn't have less in common with that flick. Actually, that's not completely true. Some of the humor is obviously derived from the "you've gotta be kidding me!" quotient. For example- we are not allowed to see the film's monster / killer until the last 20-something minutes and the big reveal (when you finally see the whole body) is not disappointing, it's ridiculous. You might even decide to up and quit on the film right there. But you shouldn't. Well, I didn't. Admittedly, when the film decides to go into the hunt and capture section of Jaws, I started to really get bored. But there are a couple good cracks worth staying awake for. And Jeremy Whelan as the creeper / stalker turned macho hero is not as angry or tough as Quint, but he's actually more fun for me. A quality fit for a no-budget horror comedy.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 13: Flaccid Candy


My Bloody Valentine 3D
(2009 / director: Patrick Lussier)

★

Apparently, no one loves beating a dead horse more than I do. Why I even choose to sit through another new-millennium action flick pretending to be horror is anyone's guess. But for some reason, I couldn't resist this one. A remake of a movie that truly was never a classic. Well... a cult classic, yes. But I promise, the majority of horror-viewing mainstream had only ever heard of the 1981 original during discussion of the far-superior Halloween, whose success paved the way for a hundred and one holiday-titled rip-offs and copycats. After viewing this remake, however, a horror fan with any sense of taste is forced to reconsider the original's status as a classic. Because it is so much better than this unbelievably cheap video game (not only is it pretending to be horror when the gore and jump scares are the only two minor pieces of a horror film found here, and aren't nearly enough, it's pretending to be a movie as well). In fact, the very best quality this remake has to offer (a nude shot of skinheaded husky hunk screenwriter Todd Farmer's - the mastermind behind Jason X, which not-so-surprisingly also had an affinity for video games - glorious rear end) tastes just about as sweet as the original film's parade of Canadian beef boys (who disrobed in a fairly tame but still intriguing group shower scene).

Typically, the film offers a far longer (about 5 minutes) nude scene to a naked chick. Just so you remember this is an R-rated movie, because this film is so juvenile, you will need the reminder to know you're not watching another lame TV show. Which is the exact hoop this film is shot through- the casting of Dawson's Creek heartthrob Kerr Smith will never have edge to it. The guy is G-rated, all the way. As is the hulking stud cast as his nemesis, the Ryan Phillippe-lookalike: Jensen Ackles. And what would an action film be without one of them being cast as a character in a position of authority. It's practically a miracle the old cop cliche - "This is MY jurisdiction!" - was never uttered. This really is a hero movie. Kerr Smith has facial hair, so of course that makes him Bad Cop. Ryan Phillippe is always the saint, so his lookalike of course is the James Dean outlaw with a heart of gold (which he gets after being guilted by the film's younger version of Lili Taylor: whiny, plain but pretty and ultra-moral girl angel- making the two of them an obvious pair). And the killer is the same steroid-hopped up Superman he was in the original film.

In fact, this remake has no confidence in itself (must have been reading my mind) and can't help ripping off at least 6 different key scenes from the original film. I will never understand why remakes do this- are the filmmakers braindead? In the case of Patrick Lussier, a truly sweet soul with a soft voice, geeky glasses, and quiet demeanor who served as editor on the original Scream trilogy, the guy is clearly just a schlock kinda guy. But remakes already have a bad reputation for trying to steal the legacy away from the originals, copying scenes from the first movie is not an homage- it's an insult! And it proves that if remakes can't steal from other movies, they don't have anything they can pretend is their own. If this director were anyone younger than Lussier, I would definitely think they were having a fantasy of being the original's filmmaker. In this current era of legacies being sold by rights' holders (almost never the same people who created the original screenplay, song, whatever people are trying to sell or steal), the re-makers never have to work as hard as the people who gave the original its' reputation. This film proves they can just hand a scene over to someone sitting at a computer to finish it off for them. Whether it be a guy who presses a button to make a character's eyeball pop out of their socket or someone who approximates an orchestra filling the sonic field. It doesn't sound like music anyway.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 14: Can't Get Lucky Every Time


The Funhouse
(1981 / director: Tobe Hooper)

★★

After re-watching Tobe Hooper's follow-ups to his genre-grinding masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, namely- 1976's flaky and batshit crazy Eaten Alive and 1981's pervy and funless The Funhouse, it's kinda easy to see why he places so low on everyone's favorite directors list. Were it not for 1979's still impressive Salem's Lot, this guy probably wouldn't have continued a career in the genre- even though he was officially typecast after Poltergeist when every critic, journalist, and film buff around claimed it was Spielberg's masterpiece. Claims I always scoffed at in the past but which I don't even try to rebuke anymore. Though he's spent nearly 30 years trying to prove all these people wrong, coming up short in delivering another pressure cooker by getting so overly ambitious that everything he touches blows up in his face (basically: he used to be an under-cooker, now he's an over-cooker), he's failed to find a voice in the genre. A vision all his own. Any kind of message he wants to convey. A film like this proves his sense of visual spectacle is not to be sneezed at. But since film is a visual medium, anyone can get a career on the basis of turning in a good looking product. What's special about it? Well, before he decided to tackle Stephen King, Hooper used to be the master of films about rednecks, yokels, and hillbillies (oh, my). Sadly, this one is not an exception.

A mix between a good old fashioned "hey- let's all go to the carnival!" nostalgia piece and a depressing, disturbing psychosexual freakshow, Funhouse is definitely an eye-opener. Though for the wrong reasons. If you can honestly believe this, the film starts out in the home of the movie's "Us" (not the freak mutant killers) where we get a twofer rip-off of Halloween and Psycho. Typical American Teenage Girl is getting ready for a date when her little brother in trenchcoat and clown mask tries to scare her by playing Norman Bates / Michael Myers and spooking her in the shower. Harmless little prank, we've seen it in plenty of movies before. Right? Well, here's where it gets sick: she's completely naked, he's holding the obviously phallic knife which he wants her to think is real, she thinks it's real, a struggle ensues where she actually has to hold him back to keep him from touching her (um... isn't this where it ceases being a prank?), all the while he is leering at her from the mask's eyeholes (I honestly never wanted to believe incest was this common), and when he finally breaks through her hold to "get her" with the knife- he aims for the closest he can get to her vagina (her pelvis). Yeah, someone needs therapy NOW. All little brothers are "creeps," but this is taking that kind of thing way too far.

The movie tails this idiotic and highly dysfunctional opener with a truly stale continuation of the Halloween formula: big sister is apparently a big prude who is berated by her friends with thinly-veiled insults, joints shoved in her face, and a parade of "would ya loosen up?!"s. So finally they get to the carnival and they try to loosen her up by suggesting they go gawk at the mutation exhibits and naked dancer shows. Oh, and they go on a few rides but the movie thinks the unpleasent sights are more interesting. So, we see them gawk at the freakshows. The only semi-flattering thing I can say about this section of the movie is that they read my mind when they were looking at the cows with double faces. It's a truly disgusting sight and after we finally get out of there, I started tearing up. I realized at that moment that even though Lady Gaga's been "Born This Way"ing for nearly half a year now while we all pat her on the back for her messages of accepting everyone no matter what they look like, I could only feel bad for the cow for being deformed instead of thinking it was in any way beautiful for being different. But that's human nature, just as ugly as anything inherently animal. And even if that's what this movie had in mind, in execution it's nothing more than crass. And in the case of the virginal heroine, whom everyone keeps checking up on to see if she's loosening up yet, pretty damn rude.

Do I even need to tell you the rest? Since horror movies are the cinematic equivalent to a carnival, I'll just say you'd be better off and have a lot more fun going to a real one- carnival, fair, circus, or amusement park.

[nopersonality]

Party Favor 15, Grab Bag 1:
Annie Get Your Ax


Fear Itself
Episode 1 - "The Sacrifice"
(2008 / director: Breck Eisner)

★½

Okay, so the purpose of Masters of Horror was for seasoned directors to basically clear the path of all the young filmmakers who'd been making a mockery out of the genre since the mid-to-late 90's and show them how it's done and how they got to be masters in the first place. It was in many ways the genre's last hope to save itself. And, after what overall amounted to a promising first season, it tanked big time the next year. CGI overkill, bad ideas, bad acting, and only maybe 2 out of 13 offerings didn't suck. That's depressing. So, fast forward 2 years later, and a major cable network is offering Masters' creator Mick Garris and any of the directors who want to jump on board the chance to do it all over again. On NBC. A channel which surely will cut most of your language, all of your sex, and more than half of your violence. Well, if there's money to be made, you can be sure Mick is game for a challenge. So network restrictions prove to hardly be the wall this series has to blast through. Instead, it's creative boundaries - set mostly by cliches gone wild and poisoning the waters - that prove to be the biggest obstacle.

Typically- the better Masters offerings were handled by younger or less proven directors. Men without a reputation to live up to, like the almost unheard of Lucky McKee (thanks to an ultra-obscure release of the mind-numbingly awful The Woods, but also the director of the excellent indie hit May), Feardotcom's William Malone, and Wrong Turn's Rob Schmidt (if only Right to Die had been a feature instead of a 1-hour "short film," he just might have had the success of a Greg Mclean or Neil Marshall). So, unproven Breck Eisner (a guy without a feature credit to his name in '08) had nothing to lose agreeing to do this show. But, as almost a premonition to how his remake of George A. Romero's The Crazies would ultimately fail, he delivers this debut episode which couldn't be more predictable or less interesting. It starts off well enough- with decent acting and a lot of natural wintry coldness about the setting (a kind of pilgrim pioneer reservation lodge where 3 beautiful blonde, simple folk Amish-esque sisters cook stew and use downhome remedies and medical cures on a group of modern travelers when their car breaks down on the lonely road) to get us into the spirit of despair.

That feeling of brokedown weariness and curious isolation doesn't last, of course. The story first tries to complicate a satisfying formula with who-cares manly drama between two criminal brothers (one a jabbermouth pretty boy, the other a tough lone-walker type) who live the way of the gun (blah blah blah): one's a screw-up and the other one doesn't want to be his protector. We don't care whether this is here for just one scene or if it will come back later in the story, it's lame. That's the main concern. Then, the sisters have no contact with the outside world yet one of them has no trouble using terminology you know the people of this recluse common just wouldn't be comfortable with. Her ample breasts are exploited for "maybe you can trust her if she wants to fool around with you - but wait, she's got something behind her back" manipulations. The 4-man traveling team start dwindling down to 2 and then it's revealed that there is a gymnast, ceiling leaping vampire sucking people's blood and it will need to be stopped via a gun shootout and barn fire. Neither horrific, tense, or cinematic. But, who cares, right? That mother leaps like a frog!

I would say that with only 45 minutes to tell a story (and one which will end at this point so a new one would begin the next week), perfectly drawn characters are not essential ingredients here. This is perhaps why it's at first refreshing to see decent actors in these small and potentially thankless roles. Yay for that. But can this series give us what the genre really needs? Staid storytelling and visual slickness aren't good enough. We need experiments, we need episodes that take risks. Any risk. This episode doesn't do that, rather it's just content to rest on all the technical aspects that get young guys like Eisner a job for studios. Studios who don't know what the genre needs but rather are focused on what is already proven to make money. This episode showcases Eisner's talent for steady stock but no ability to rock the boat. The characters here, clearly modeled after familiar tv cliches are unfortunately quite annoying with their outback survival philosophy (why do I care about "making deals" and "closing" them??). Their contrived conflict is boring. Oh, and gun trading (definition in my book: gunplay without the necessity of firing bullets), real important to a horror story ...not.

And one of my greatest pet peeves: whatever could have built up here in terms of atmosphere and creepy feeling is ruined by stock, standard music score. You won't be able to tell this apart from the generic studio product. Which kind of goes against what Masters of Horror was aiming for. Offsetting period story with modern characters wasn't a bad idea. In fact, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning tried this too. In some ways, failing worse. Also, for what is essentially a one-by-one formula, the time and events playing out within the 45-minute time limit are out of balance. Without getting any information as to how evil the sisters are, we begin seeing the travelers attacked. We know there's a monster and the sisters are being set up as red herrings. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and well before this is half over, instead of clearing up the story before jumping into the boring part (the semi-shaky camera, orchestral score booms, and predictable danger set pieces) we're treated to a long series of (of course- boring) kill and potential torture set-ups. Not to give the writing too much credit, the characters were wearing us down before a completely undisturbing and poorly lead-up-to lip sewing scene.