Halloween (1978)

Director: John Carpenter
Writer(s): Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tony Moran

What makes a “classic” horror film?  Great acting?  Great special effects?  Great writing? A terrifying atmosphere?  Of course, such a question is subjective; what’s great acting to one person, another might consider lazy, and on down the line.  But think about your favorite horror film.  Now analyze it:  What makes it so great for you?  Maybe it has some great performances, which help to bring out the intensity and tension.  Or great writing, which is capable of making even the most ridiculous story at least somewhat believable.  Or maybe it impressed you with its dazzling special effects.  Chances are good that it meets several, if not all, of those, and probably then some.

Like with any genre, horror has their own list of films widely regarded as “classic”, and John Carpenter’s Halloween generally ranks near the top of every such list.  It’s frequently been cited as one of the scariest movies of all time. Its influence can be felt to this day, as it helped to create the blueprint for the American slasher film, which was a popular subgenre back in the early eighties and continues to be even today, following its resurgence thanks to the Scream series.  It also started its own successful franchise, giving Michael Myers the chance to return to theaters by killing horny teenagers every few years.

All this praise and admiration it has accumulated ever since its release seems to conveniently forget one small detail:  Halloween is a terrible film.  It really is.  And I’m not saying that in a “It’s technically bad, but it somehow manages to be good” kind of way.  I’m saying it in a way that suggests if you somehow could find someone who had never seen it, or heard of it, or knew anything of the hype, and made them sit down and watch it, they would tell you the same thing.

I’ll skim through the plot quickly, because chances are you know it by heart:  As the movie begins, Michael Myers kills his sister in Haddonfield, Illinois.  Shortly thereafter, he is placed in a psych ward over in Smith’s Grove, Illinois, which is 150 miles away.  But, surprise!, he breaks out, and returns to Haddonfield to stalk Jamie Lee Curtis and her friends.  That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.

With that in mind, let’s revisit my checklist:  The acting is amateurish and cringe-inducing; ditto that for the writing.  The characters were generic back when they were created, and they are generic now.  Special effects are basically nonexistent, so that remains neutral.  The atmosphere certainly has moments of chilling effectiveness; I like how when Myers shows up early on in the film, the soundtrack pays him no attention.  Unlike movies that need a string swell every time something happens so you know to be scared, “Halloween” actually assumes that you’re smart enough to know what’s going on.  That, along with the music, are the film’s strongest suits, and that is by a country mile.

And should we really be heaping such praise on a movie that has helped to create one of the most lazy subgenres in all of horror: the American slasher film?  I specify “American” because the Italians were killing people with reckless abandon long before Halloween was made (sure enough, Carpenter has cited one such Italian film, Dario Argento’s Suspiria, as an inspiration in both the score and the lighting).  But those movies, while certainly having their fair share of graphic gore, were also part whodunits, inviting viewers to engage in the movie by guessing the identity of the killer.  Halloween and, by extension, most of the movies inspired by it (and the dozens released as sequels after it), are frequently exercises in banality; we watch the killer hack and slash a few teenagers or young adults, until he is eventually “killed”, an act that is either temporary, or permanent, depending on how much money the film makes.     

I’m not going on some moral tirade, because trust me, I enjoy a lot of crude and/or violent, and/or amoral films.  That is not the issue.  It’s just how little there is on display here:  There’s no style, with the static camera shots and standard visual compositions.  There’s little substance, with the lack of fleshed-out characters and constantly below-average writing; only a couple fantastic scenes of Michael Myers stalking (or attacking) his victims leave any sort of visual impression.  How a movie this bland became a blueprint for an entire subgenre is beyond me; how it’s still revered as a classic is simply confounding.

RECAP: Halloween is a terrible horror film, helped along only by a great score, some creepy scenes, and enough unintentional comedy to keep you laughing throughout its duration.  How anyone can watch it with a straight face these days is beyond me; how it achieved “classic” status is mind-boggling.  The acting is godawful, to the point of self-parody, the writing is terrible, and the visuals are bland.  It might have been good forty years ago, but then again, slavery seemed like a good idea at one time, too.

SCORE: 3/10

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The Gallows (2015)

Directors: Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing
Writer(s): Cluff and Lofing
Starring: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos and Cassidy Gifford

You know what?  I’m going to be completely honest here:  I did not hate The Gallows.  I heard the reviews, saw all the hate for it online, pretty much went into it expecting to despise it, and yet I didn’t.  At first.

It begins with an accidental death of one Charlie Grimille, who dies during a performance of a high school play called “The Gallows” back in 1993.  I easily could have started to hate it here; what play, high school or otherwise, is going to put a noose around an actor’s neck, and build a working trap door underneath where he stands?  If that’s not inviting disaster, I don’t know what is.  But you know what?  I was in a forgiving mood, and decided to give it a pass.

Then we go to the present day, where I could have, and should have, hated it even more:  There is absolutely no reason for this to be a “found footage” movie.  None.  It was a nice touch during the intro, where Charlie’s parents are filming the play (that’s natural), but once we are introduced to Ryan, a high school kid who takes a camera with him wherever he goes, and makes annoying comments about everything, it normally would have been enough to send me off the deep end.  What can I say?  It got me on a rare good night. 

But there’s only so much I can take, and The Gallows does nothing with its already-weak premise, but squander it over and over again. 

If you’ve read even the briefest of plot summaries for this, or watched the trailer, you know all you need to know going in: The modern-day high school class wants to put on another performance of “The Gallows”, which is a very logical choice; after all, a student only died, on camera and in front of dozens, performing this piece twenty years ago, so why not give it another go?  Somehow, I’m still not hating it.

Then Ryan talks his girlfriend, Cassidy, and his friend, Reese (who is reluctantly playing the lead in the play) into sneaking in to the school at night.  The reasoning?  To destroy the set, so the performance will be canceled and Reese won’t have to worry about messing up his lines.  They get in easily, courtesy of a broken door.  But getting out is another matter, and before you know it, Charlie Grimille starts hunting them down.

By this point, dialogue is thrown out the window and replaced almost exclusively with screams; high-pitched, annoying screams.  I have to admit that the frights, for the most part anyway, try to avoid relying on jump scares, but in territory this familiar, we are well prepared for whatever lazy attempt it throws at us; anything that can help the students escape are just written out of the script (literally, they disappear as the characters go to use them), while we should also know that a wide-open door leading outside is too good to be true.  Then there’s the little matter of the camera, which becomes more and more irritating as the film wears on; even though these characters are panicking and in distress, one of them always has the presence of mind to make sure at least one camera is perfectly framed and still filming. 

That brings us to the ending, where the filmmakers finally reveal their intent to sabotage their own movie, at any costs, by throwing in a terrible finale.  (SPOILER WARNING) Gee, who would have thunk that the random, strange older girl that showed up at the beginning of the movie and was never seen since might have some kind of tie-in to the original play? (END SPOILER)  But then it takes it even one step farther than that, with a godawful final reveal that is simply implausible, even for a stupid, generic horror movie.  As if that wasn’t enough, it still has one more (less?) trick up its sleeve, adding in an unnecessary final scene that simply hammers home its embarrassing revelation, as if we didn’t already understand. 

Really, about the only critique I’ve seen that I disagreed with were the performances.  Maybe it’s because I’ve seen far worse, but I thought the acting was uniformly above-average all the way throughout, especially taking into consideration that this wasn’t initially a big studio movie; it was distributed by a major studio, but was actually shot, on a low-budget, as an independent feature.  That reason alone had me fearing the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I shouldn’t have to specify that we’re not talking Oscar-worthy renditions here, but they were more than passable, particularly given the material.

In other words, as hard as I tried to give it a chance, believe everything you heard about this one, because The Gallows is awful.

RECAP: It got me on a good night, and I initially forgave a lot of its flaws.  But my reward was only to get overwhelmed with so many of them that I simply could not ignore the film’s gaping imperfections any longer.  The Gallows, which is needlessly forced into being a “found footage” movie for no other reason than to capitalize on the trend, seems to be intent on annoying the viewer when it’s not shoving obvious scares in our faces; pair that up with an awful finale and you’ve got enough reasons to stay far away from this one.

RATING: 2.5/10

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Evil Dead Trap (1988)

Director: Toshiharu Ikeda
Writer(s): Takashi Ishii
Starring: Miyuki Ono, Aya Katsuragi, Hitomi Kobayashi, and Eriko Nakagawa

I’ve seen so many movies over the span of my thirty years on Earth that I tend to forget a lot of them.  I generally don’t forget that I’ve seen them, but it becomes harder and harder to pick scenes out of certain films.  For example, I saw 28 Weeks Later in the theater with my friend back when it first came out, and I couldn’t tell you a single scene from that movie.  But then again, the ADHD might also be at least partially to blame for that…

On the other hand, there are scenes in certain films that I won’t ever forget.  Evil Dead Trap has one of those scenes; a death so creative, intense, and bloody that it singlehandedly is better than the entire cumulative deaths of a dozen direct-to-video slasher “efforts”.  I saw this movie for the first time about a decade ago, and decided it was time to revisit it, that death still fresh in my mind as if I’d seen it a month ago.  The rest of the movie I didn’t remember at all, so it would be like watching it all over again.

Nami is the hostess of a late-night television show.  She urges her viewers to send her original VHS tapes, with the idea that she will air the most interesting videos.  Then a mysterious tape ends up in the newsroom, packaged in an unmarked padded envelope.  Intrigued (and curiously, completely alone), she pops it in the VCR and is horrified by what she finds…a woman, tied up in an abandoned warehouse, is screaming in terror, right before being killed in a cringe-inducing sequence of brutality.

Horrified by this, she wants the station to help her investigate the murder, but they’re not interested in the least.  So she rounds up four of her closest friends, with a man coming along just to be a chaperone, and together, they all head to the warehouse to try to solve the mystery.  It won’t be a spoiler to reveal that they are picked off one-by-one, as this is the norm for films of this nature; what would be a spoiler is to ruin the absolutely insane ending, which I wouldn’t dream of doing. 

On paper, Evil Dead Trap is a pretty fun movie, in which characters are mostly killed via booby traps within the warehouse.  It’s a unique twist on the slasher flick, though there’s still a masked man with a very sharp knife that likes to show up every once in a while, apparently just to remind us that this is, in fact, still a slasher flick, no matter how the characters are dispatched.

The problem is in the execution:  Pretty much all of the characters die within the first hour, leaving an excruciating gap in the middle where nothing happens, save for characters making several stupid decisions that only serve to elongate the viewer’s agonizing torture even more. 

For example, there is a scene late in the movie (about the point it should have ended) where Nami has an open chance to escape.  She’s got a running vehicle, and even starts to open the gate to leave.  But we’re lead to believe that, even though all of her friends were just brutally murdered, and she narrowly escaped with her own life, that she is so curious as to the identity of the killer, that she literally shuts the gate behind her, and voluntarily walks right back into the place she just escaped from.  It got so bad, that even by the time the absolutely bizarre ending rolled around, my wife and I barely even batted an eye; yet the movie still manages to go on another twenty minutes beyond that, despite saying everything that it had to say within the first hour.

Also elongating the torture is the awful score, by Tomohiko Kira.  Actually, that’s being unfair to Mr. Kira—the main theme, which is highly reminiscent of a Goblin score (no doubt intentionally; director Toshiharu Ikeda wears his inspirations on his sleeve), is actually pretty catchy, albeit a little repetitive.  The problem is, it becomes increasingly less and less catchy during each of the next thirty times you hear it.  Sometimes, there are slight additions to it (such as an organ placed in the background), but the theme itself remains unchanged, and starts to stick out like a sore thumb.

Toward the end, we’re treated to an explanation of what occurred, and there’s the obligatory cliffhanger that sets the stage for a second one (that shouldn’t be any kind of spoiler, because they’ve already made one), and there are some admittedly good ooey-gooey effects that would feel right at home in a David Cronenberg movie.  But none of it is interesting enough to justify wasting an hour and forty minutes of your time—and it doesn’t matter how you were going to spend it.

RECAP: The first half is very intriguing, with some graphic and creative deaths (including one of my favorite kill scenes ever), but all that gives way to an intensely boring middle section that makes everything drag on way too long.  Tomohiko Kira’s Goblin-inspired score starts off interesting, but after hearing the same track (with occasional minor additions) at least a dozen more times, it ends up being grating.  The finale has some good effects, but chances are good that, by then, you’ll be long past the point of caring.

OVERALL: 3/10

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Housebound (2014)

Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writer(s): Johnstone
Starring: Morgana O'Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, and Ross Harper

Kylie Bucknell (played by the peculiarly beautiful Morgana O’Reilly) is a junkie and a thief; she is easily caught after her attempt at robbing an ATM amounts to little more than a comedy of errors.  Her lawyer recommends to the judge that she be sent to a rehabilitation center, but the judge points to a long list of attempted rehabilitation that seems to have done nothing for her.  Instead, he suggests that what she really needs is some stability, so he has a different plan for her: Sending her off for an eight month house arrest at the home of her mother.

Of course, they don’t really get along; Kylie ran away from home and the thought of returning isn’t her ideal situation.  But without any other options, she is more or less forced to deal with it.  But something isn’t quite right in the home.  There are noises, for instance, that seem to come from inside the walls, doors open and close, seemingly of their own volition, and electronics turn off and on, at random.  In other words, it’s your typical haunted house movie--only it isn’t.

“Housebound” twists and turns its way from one dumb plot revelation to another, and when it’s all said and done, it doesn’t really amount to much.  We learn fairly early on (SPOILER WARNING) that there is no actual ghost in the house, and with that little revelation, the element of the supernatural and mysterious is thrown out the window and, along with it, so are the scares. (END SPOILER)  Eventually, the truth is revealed, and the final thirty minutes basically devolve into your typical slasher movie.

A handful of reviews I’ve read claimed the ending is super violent and bloody; don’t go in expecting that, or you will be sorely disappointed.  I sure was.  After an overlong, fairly predictable first half, I was looking forward to seeing gallons of the red stuff flowing everywhere, figuring it would be the movie’s way of rewarding us for sticking with it.  Instead, there are a couple near-bloodless deaths, a couple more attacks, and then that’s about it.  Housebound doesn’t even have the audacity to throw us any curveballs: it ends way too tidily for my liking, and adamantly refuses to kill off any of the main characters.  To put it bluntly, everyone you expect to live, lives, while the only characters that die are the minor ones that are clearly expendable.

Its main saving grace, besides the fact that it never sucks, is the seamless mix of humor and horror.  While I didn’t find the movie particularly scary (it uses the same fright tactics that most horror films utilize), it did make me laugh at a few parts. I was initially baffled as to how director Gerard Johnstone drew comparisons to Peter Jackson, the indie auteur that specialized in low budget gorefests (before becoming a Hollywood darling by helming The Lord of the Rings trilogy), until the ending, when he throws in the same style of slapstick physical humor during the film’s final confrontation.  Johnstone undoubtedly has talent, and I will be anxious to see future efforts from him, but if Housebound turns out to be his biggest accomplishment as a director, I’d say his career is a huge disappointment.

RECAP: It’s not very scary, and it gets more and more predictable as the story rolls along, but if nothing else, Housebound shows that writer/director Gerard Johnstone has loads of potential.  The performances are pretty good across the board, and it’s clearly well-made, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it’s all been done before, and much better, elsewhere.  Of course, that’s true of most movies, but for a movie that’s at least 20 minutes overlong, there is simply not enough of a reward for sticking this one out.

RATING: 5/10

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The Company of Wolves (1984)

Director: Neil Jordan
Writer(s): Jordan and Angela Carter, based on her own novel
Starring: Sarah Patterson, Angela Lansbury, David Warner, and Tusse Silberg

Where does one even begin with Neil Jordan’s In the Company of Wolves, a collection of fables and tales that all take place in the mind of a sleeping girl?  Or, more accurately, how does one even begin to classify it?  It features werewolves and some downright nasty special effects, yet focuses more on its story than shocks; to call this a horror movie just seems terribly misleading, but fans of dramatic storytelling will more than likely be turned off by its ghastly images.

The Company of Wolves begins in the present day with a girl named Rosaleen asleep in her bed.  Her dreams take her back to a previous century, as her sister is attacked and killed by a pack of wolves, an act that no one seems particularly disturbed by.  Following the funeral, Rosaleen goes to stay with her grandmother (“Murder She Wrote”’s Angela Lansbury) for a night, where she proceeds to tell her a story—and so begins the curious setup to a curious little film.

Ignore the DVD packaging’s tidy little blurb about how Rosaleen must make it to her grandmother’s house while narrowly avoiding wolves along the way—while this section does factor into the movie, it’s such a teeny-tiny part that it would no doubt disappoint those expecting this to be a full-on horror-themed retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”.  Instead, The Company of Wolves is made up of four stories, all about wolves in some capacity:

In the first, a traveling man marries a woman, only to be “summoned by nature”, where he turns into a werewolf and runs off.  Years later, he returns to her, only to find she has remarried and now has three children; enraged by what he feels is a betrayal of their marriage, he turns into a werewolf, only to be promptly killed by the woman’s new husband.  In the second, a young man receives a potion from a mysterious man traveling in a Rolls-Royce; the boy promptly begins to rub the potion on his chest, causing him to sprout hair.  Unfortunately for him, are the potion’s side effects, which cause nearby vines to wrap around him as he screams.  In the third, a man’s wedding reception is wrecked by the man’s former lover, who turns the entire wedding party into werewolves.  Lastly, a wolf wandering through a village is shot by a villager.  The wolf escapes, ending up on the door of a chapel, where she is bandaged up by a priest; she then returns to the safety of her world through a well.

If all of them sound pretty random and unconnected, that’s precisely because they are.  But between these stories, there’s an actual narrative involving Rosaleen trying to avoid the affections of an “amorous boy” (that’s actually how he’s listed in the credits), who eventually discover that the local cattle are being attacked by wolves—when the villagers shoot the wolf responsible, the corpse turns into that of a human!

Meanwhile, Rosaleen is seduced by a stranger on her way to her grandmother’s house.  Upon learning of her destination, he makes a bet with her that, using the help of his compass, he can make it there before she does.  Who is this mysterious stranger, and what does he want with Rosaleen? 

This is one of the few films I’ve seen where the individual parts are better than the film as a whole; when put together, it all just feels so random and unsatisfying.  I kept watching, thinking maybe the end was leading to a revelation that would somehow tie everything together, but it only ended up adding more questions while somehow managing to provide any answers. 

That’s not to say that The Company of Wolves is a bad film; it’s far from it.  The photography (by Bryan Loftus) is absolutely incredible—it seems as though you could take a snapshot of every single frame, and it would make a perfect picture.  The fog-laden woods occasionally approach the visuals of Mario Bava at his peak, with the added benefit of being shot in color.  Also astonishing, assuming you can stomach them, are the film’s special effects.  I’m genuinely shocked that the creature transformations in movies like American Werewolf in London and The Howling get all the attention; the violent, disturbing mutations on display here are the stuff of nightmares, and I would even argue that the execution here is better.  I thought the scene on the DVD cover was just a metaphor for the inner beast of man trying to get out…nope, that’s an actual scene from the movie, and it’s even more horrifying in action.

I really just can’t shake the lack of a more straightforward structure—as presented here, too many of the stories feel totally out of place.  As standalone tales, they are interesting, but when blended in with the main narrative, they just feel like pointless departures that offer nothing to the main narrative.  One could argue that, since they are all supposedly part of a dream, that any inconsistencies with reality could simply be dream logic; but I honestly didn’t feel like the movie was even going for a dreamlike atmosphere.

On the acting front, it’s hilarious seeing Angela Lansbury inside a horror tale, but her grumpy grandmother character is over-the-top; her hatred and distrust of every single man gets old pretty quickly.  However, Sarah Patterson as Rosaleen is the perfect blend of looks (she’s absolutely gorgeous, a statement that kind of becomes creepy when evidence suggests she is just 14 years old here) and talent—while her performance doesn’t require many advanced techniques (she is barely required to emote), she has an authentic innocence about her that is perfect for her character, and could have been perfect for Hollywood. 

Strangely, Ms. Patterson went on to star in a film adaptation of Snow White, as the titular character, just three years after this one, and when that failed commercially, she retired from acting altogether.  She came out of her retirement to star in two films for filmmaker friend Lisa Gornick: 2002’s Do I Love You?, followed up by Tick Tock Lullaby in 2007, and that is where her credits end.  That’s a shame, because she was the kind of actress that, given the right picture, I feel really could have “caught on” and become a household name.

RECAP: If you’re in the mood for something different, and don’t mind a movie that feels like it has an identity crisis, The Company of Wolves could be right down your alley.  The photography is stellar, and the transformation scenes are unbelievably grotesque, especially for their time (both are available on Youtube, for those interested).  However, the film’s narrative structure, which focuses on four separate tales told by two different characters, aren’t connected in any way to the film’s main story, and thus feel like unnecessary departures.  There’s definitely enough here to keep the average viewer engrossed and entertained until the end, but as a whole, it doesn’t feel very satisfying.

RATING: 6.5/10 

Starry Eyes (2014)

Director: Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer
Writer(s): Kolsch and Widmyer
Starring: Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan, Fabianne Therese

As great as Netflix can be (and I hardly even use it; anything that can keep my wife silent and entertained for hours at a time is good in my book), there’s one genre that’s sorely lacking:  Horror films.  Yes, I’m fully aware it has a couple classics, like Rosemary’s Baby, and The Exorcist, and a few passable modern horror films, but it’s mostly just a cesspool of direct-to-video junk.  It is for this reason that I largely stay away, and stick to the library, or other sources on the internet, when I’m looking for good horror flicks.

I was reading a list of the “Top 60 Horror Movies Streaming on Netflix” and, while Starry Eyes didn’t get so much as a single mention in the actual article, it came highly regarded by several users in the comments.  Considering any list that promises you more than ten great horror movies on Netflix is clearly lying, let alone one promising six times that, I decided to ignore the author, and go for the users’ pick.

The plot is straightforward, and breaks no new ground: A woman desperately wants to be an actress so bad, that she’s willing to do anything to get a part.  That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.  Of course, bad things happen to her, or we wouldn’t have a horror movie; much of the stuff you will see coming.  A few of the things, you might not.

I thought the first half (give or take a few minutes) was enthralling; the focus on Sarah’s ambition was fascinating, and the acting was solid.  (I was also surprised to see Fabianne Therese, who I fell in love with (also figuratively) in the terrible TurboTax commercials that aired a couple of years ago.)  In fact, one of the things that surprised me most, is that this had the feel of a wide-released theatrical horror film, rather than one that’s only getting attention from its Netflix release.  It’s competently made, competently directed, well-shot, and, for the most part, well-written.  It captured my attention perfectly, and really had me guessing where it might go next.

Then comes the second half:  Sarah does something bad in exchange for being promised the lead in a film, and that’s when it all starts going downhill…and I don’t just mean for Sarah, but the picture in general.  That’s when it goes from a fascinating character study, to a by-the-numbers slasher flick.  I must admit, the deaths are nasty and bloody, and part of this section definitely appealed to the gorehound in me, but I couldn’t help but feel they were completely unnecessary.  I’m sure others will argue; they’ll say it was necessary to show her drive and determination, but I thought it was just a cheap tactic, like the writers had run out of any original ideas and just resorted to murder.

Even after this section, the movie just doesn't seem like it's going to stop, like a friend who keeps babbling on, despite having nothing to say (or, as defenders of the film will likely say, me).  We learn the origins of those that took advantage of Sarah.  We’ll think about how this happens every day; about how women are taken advantage of all the time, or, at least I think that’s all this was trying to say.  I thought about how this was not telling me anything I didn’t already know, or showing me in a way I had not seen before.  Let’s just say, by the end, I was glad it was over.

Despite its flaws (which mainly take up the entire second half), I still must say that if garbage like Saw 10 (or wherever we are with that one right now) can play in theaters, I have no idea why this one couldn’t.  Sure, I didn’t approve of the ending, or everything as a whole, but it was certainly well-made, and it was at least different from most of the repetitive, pointless dreck that fills theater screens.  But at least it’s getting some recognition somewhere.  That’s more than some movies ever receive. 

RECAP: The first half is fascinating, if not entirely unpredictable, but then the second half degrades into a thoughtless typical slasher flick; the gore effects are bloody, and well done, but they feel like a cheap gimmick when compared to the gripping first act.  Despite its flaws, though, it’s still a welcome addition to Netflix’s horror collection, which is short on even above-average horror fare.  If you’re into this sort of thing, it’s worth a watch.

SCORE: 6/10

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Demons (1985)

Director: Lamberto Bava
Writer(s): Bava, Dario Argento, Dardano Sacchetti, and Franco Ferrini, from a story by Sacchetti
Starring: Urbano Barberini, Natasha Hovey, Karl Zinny, and Fiore Argento

It can be amazing how the human mind can evolve over time.  Naturally, we outgrow certain things, like our propensity to play with tiny cars or dolls; that’s not really the part that’s confusing.  I’m focused more on how certain memories—not just from childhood, but from any earlier point in life—can remain held in such high regard for so many years, but upon revisiting that memory, it can take a complete 180-degree turn in a matter of minutes.

Exhibit A: Lamberto Bava’s Demons, a movie which I had nothing but fond memories of from my teenage years.  Now, even in my young naïveté, I was always aware that this was a bad movie.  There’s no real way to deny that; the characters are so ignorant that they don’t even resemble actual humans, the dialogue is atrocious, and the plot is half-assed and pointless.  But there’s one area where the movie excels, and that’s in the special effects department.  I always remembered that the demons looked cool, and the gore effects were strong.

Revisiting it today (and showing it to my wife for the first time) was one of those times when nostalgia felt like it stabbed me in the back; as bad as I knew the movie was going to be, it was even worse.  Don’t get me wrong: Demons can be a very entertaining movie.  It might be for all the wrong reasons—it feels like you’re watching a joke that everyone is in on except the filmmakers—but at the very least, it’s not boring.  Well, not at first.  The characters are so inept that there are many classic nuggets of unintentional hilarity, which help to hold your attention until the demons come, and the killings start.

This isn’t one of those movies where a plot discussion is even necessary, but here goes: Cheryl (the beautiful Natasha Hovey) is given a random movie ticket by a bizarre, mute stranger.  Frightened by the ordeal, she does what any other normal person would do:  request another ticket for her friend, Kathy.  The ticket has nothing but the name of the theater on it (the Metropol), which no one has ever heard of.  Not to be off-put by such a small mystery, like how a huge theater gets put up in the middle of a very busy city essentially overnight, Cheryl enthusiastically talks Kathy into going with her.

We get a wide cast of stereotypical characters, though none of them really belong.  Like a pimp with two of his hoes, one of whom just has to try on a decorative metal mask and nick her face, and a blind man, who apparently enjoys going to movies so he can annoy the people around him when he constantly requests his daughter to describe everything that’s happening on the screen.  Once the movie-within-a-movie begins, we get our first glimpse of the similarities between it, and the action inside the theater:  It’s every bit as poorly written and acted.  Then, a short while later, we catch a glimpse of another resemblance to the two movies: What’s happening on the screen, is very similar to the events happening in the theater itself!  It all starts when a character in the movie nicks his face on a metal mask that they find in the tomb of Nostradamus (?).  Uh oh, sound familiar?  One of the pimp’s hoes cut her face on a metal mask outside of the theater, too!

This turns her into a demon.  I’m not quite sure how, and neither are the writers (characters go from thinking it’s the movie, to the theater itself, before abandoning any interest into what’s causing it shortly thereafter), but I guess it really doesn’t matter, because for a little while, we get some much-needed gore!  As remembered, the effects really are great, as are the makeup effects.  The demons look appropriately threatening and aggressive, and we are treated to such scenes as a woman being scalped, and a man getting his eyes gouged out.

The only problem is that the movie just keeps going on, and on, and the characters only get dumber and dumber.  For example, the survivors spend several minutes tearing up the seats in the theater, and using them to block any way in, hoping they can hide out until help comes.  Then one character simply hears a noise on the other side of a door, and is somehow not only convinced that it is someone that’s come to help them, but easily manages to convince everyone else.  Whoops!  Turns out it wasn’t a police officer or friendly person after all, but a group of demons!  Oh well.  It was a simple misunderstanding that could have happened to anyone.

It’s just under 90 minutes long, but it felt like two full hours by the time it was done; about ten minutes of that comes courtesy of an ending that needlessly rambles on, merely enforcing a point (and diluting the effect of said point) that it already made completely clear.  It does attempt one final twist (cleverly after it starts rolling credits and we have put our guards down), but it easily could have done the same thing a lot sooner.

I get that old-school Italian horror movies are not known for their intelligence, and just about all of them are shining examples of style over substance.  I enjoy a good number of these films (with Lucio Fulci’s Zombie and Dario Argento’s Suspiria springing immediately to mind), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all should be given a pass for complete stupidity; when nobody is being killed in graphic ways, Demons manages to get tiresome pretty quickly, and the predictability of its plot, and long, rambling ending, certainly don't do it any favors. 

RECAP: Well, my teenaged memories of this movie didn’t quite live up to those of my 31-year-old self.  Demons is awfully, terribly bad; thankfully, this actually works to its advantage, at least early on in the film.  The dialogue is so completely inane, and the plot so terribly conceived, that the movie almost manages to approach its own brand of genius.  Then the characters get irreconcilably stupider as the movie goes on (and the best character gets killed), and so it goes from being entertaining, to just flat-out frustrating.  The 90-minute run time feels more like two hours as the ending drags on and on, long after making its point, only so it can attempt one more (admittedly cleverly-timed) twist; but the payoff is not worth the wait.  The only legitimate pluses: The special effects, from the gore sequences to the makeup on the demons, are pretty darn good, and there are a couple of excellent sequences of the monsters stalking their prey.  Overall though, I’d say it fell pretty far short of the mark for me.

RATING: 5/10

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Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Director: Shin'ya Tsuakamoto
Writer(s): Tsukamoto
Starring: Tomoroh Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, and Shin'ya Tsukamoto

There aren’t very many movies like Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and for most of us, that is a good thing; it eschews any form of narrative structure, instead presenting us with a series of abstract ideas, and letting us put everything together, based on what we think they mean.  And aside from a few repeating sequences, we are not given much to go off of.  In other words, this is definitely not something that will appeal to the masses, but for anyone looking for something different, this is a movie you need to see.

I won’t bother much with “plot”, because this basically comes off as a series of random scenes, loosely intertwined by theme.  Also, it’s very hard to say what, if anything, is an absolute, concrete occurrence, as its bizarre format very closely resembles that of a dream.  But just for the sake of being thorough, I’ll try my best:  Shin’ya Tsukamoto (also the film’s writer and director) plays a man known as “metal fetishist”, and as the film opens, he cuts his leg open and inserts a piece of metal, which soon becomes infected, and infested with maggots.  In a panic, he runs out into the road, where he is run over by an unnamed man, played by Tomoroh Taguchi, who then finds himself, and often those around him, turning into living pieces of scrap metal.

If it sounds weird, that’s because it is; it’s one of only a couple of movies that I’ve watched with my wife, that she absolutely refuses to finish.  But there’s no denying that, no matter what your opinion of this film is, it’s a thoroughly original, daring work.  It doesn’t concern itself with what anyone else will think, nor does it cater to any sort of audience whatsoever; like all of the best works of art, it was created solely for the amusement of its creator, and it forces us, the viewer, to internalize it, and make of it what we want.  The best “logical” explanation that I’ve seen is that this is a metaphor for how we, as humans, rely on machines too much, and how they will one day overtake us.  I’m not sure how much of that is true (I’ve not seen Tsukamoto himself weigh in on the subject), but it’s an admirable interpretation.

On a technical level, Tetsuo is pretty superb, given the film’s low budget.  As such, many of the more difficult effects utilize stop-motion animation, a dying art form; while this will probably turn off some (even by the standards of the time, the animation comes off as rather crude), it actually serves the material well.  The makeup and gore scenes are very well done.  It was also smart of Tsukamoto to shoot the film in black-and-white, giving the picture an urban grittiness that, especially within its financial confines, wouldn’t have been possible in color.  The acting is sufficient but almost a moot point, considering the limited number of lines in this movie; it’s largely visual-driven, but the actors certainly do a good job of sweating, and looking like they’re in pain for large stretches, which are about the only physical requirements.

In the end, all that I ask for in a horror movie is that it dares to be unique, push the envelope, and at least try to show me something that I’ve never seen before.  I’ll gladly take an interesting failure over a well-made cliché any day, but Tetsuo is the best of both worlds, and even if the manic creativity seems to slow down a bit in the second half, it’s still a gripping motion picture that should be required viewing for those that share my interest in the unique.

RECAP: It does slow down a bit in the second half, but Tetsuo is a brilliant, confusing work of art.  Those that require narrative structure will be completely lost—it basically functions as a collection of loosely intertwined scenes—but anyone looking for a one-in-a-million film should look no further.  Makeup effects are fantastic, taking into account the film’s miniscule budget, and its scant duration ensures it can’t overstay its welcome, while its cyberpunk, fever dream atmosphere is assisted by the gritty black and white photography.  Highly recommended.

RATING: 8.5/10

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Director: Charles Laughton

Writer(s): James Agee, from a novel by Davis Grubb

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Billy Chapin, and Sally Jane Bruce

The first time I saw Night of the Hunter, I must have been a teenager; I rented it after hearing all about what a terrifying movie it was.  But back then, I didn’t have much patience for anything other than gore, and I spent just about the entire movie in a state of constant boredom.  Flash forward a decade, and after seeing it still get brought back up in “scariest movie of all time” discussions, I wanted to give it another chance.

Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, a traveling preacher who only stops in towns to seduce women, and then murder them for their money, all in the name of God.  While serving some time in prison for vehicular theft, he’s placed in a cell with Ben Harper, a man who killed two people while robbing a bank of $10,000, and was subsequently sentenced to death.  Since the two have nothing but time to talk, Ben casually suggests that he has hidden the money somewhere in his house, though he doesn’t specify where; doesn’t matter, as this is already music to Harry’s ears.

After he is released, Harry heads to the house of Willa Harper, Ben’s widow (by this time, his sentence for hanging has been carried out), where he “seduces” her, getting her to marry him very shortly after meeting him.  John, Willa’s young son, dislikes the preacher right from the outset, but he’s having problems convincing his younger sister, Pearl, to do the same.

I’ll start off with an honest inquiry: How is a reviewer supposed to approach “classic” movies from the past?  Should he review it as if it were released in this day and age?  Should he transport himself back to the year it was released, and pretend as if he’s watching it for the first time?  Or should he simply conform to popular opinion, and just profess that it’s a good movie, whether or not that’s what he truly believes? 

Well I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that, even ten years after originally viewing it, Night of the Hunter is still boring.  It was no doubt shocking when it was released back in 1955, but a lot of things have changed in 60 years—for the most part now, it feels incredibly dated, which dilutes many of its climactic scenes.  The acting from the two main child stars, most notably the little girl, is completely nonexistent; she just throws out her lines with reckless abandon, and apparently no one behind the camera cared if her tone matched her mood.  The writing is quite terrible, with characters frequently behaving simply at the whim of the script, with little logical framework to back up their actions.  Many reviews dismiss these problems by claiming the film was attempting a dreamlike atmosphere, which feels like a cop-out to allow them to like a movie that they otherwise wouldn't.

The only aspect where the film manages to succeed are in the visuals, courtesy of cinematographer Stanley Cortez; this is a movie that’s gorgeously, brilliantly shot.  Even by today’s standards, there are several scenes that will stay with you for the rest of your life, like Willa’s lifeless body floating underwater, or the scene of the preacher riding a horse across a sunset, his body seen in silhouette as the kids watch him from afar.  While I found the score to be just an average example of early orchestral fluff, the use of the Christian hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” as a motif for terror is quite an inspired, and another absolutely genius, artistic decision.

But while there’s no denying that Cortez’s images will sear themselves into your brain, and hymns make a great backdrop to attempted terror, the problem is everything else will drop out instantly.  I will not remember a single scene of Willa Harper alive, and the only way the children remain memorable, is for the sheer stupidity of their performances.  That might sound harsh to say about the acting chops of a six-year-old girl, and slightly older boy, but come on—pretty much the entire movie is centered around them, so you would think they would have gotten children that could actually emote.  And if you think I’m exaggerating, the fact that both of their careers were over by the end of the ‘50s (while both of them are still alive today) is only further proof of their inability to carry a picture.

RECAP: Night of the Hunter is considered a “classic”, and by badmouthing it, I think I have just rejected my American citizenship.  But I don’t care; while this might have been a perfectly frightening movie 60 years ago, just about everything, save for its extraordinary visuals, and its excellent use of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms", are incredibly dated today.  Clearly, I’m in the minority in my beliefs (it frequently holds a spot on the IMDb’s top 250 list), so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but the acting (mainly from the two young leads) is atrocious, and the writing leaves a lot to be desired.  Maybe it’s just not my cup of tea, but I found Night of the Hunter to be an overrated horror "classic".

RATING: 5/10

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Dead Ringers (1988)

Director: David Cronenberg
Writer(s): Cronenberg and Norman Snider, from the novel "Twins" by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland
Starring: Jeremy Irons (x2), Geneviève Bujold, and Heidi von Palaske

The back cover of the Dead Ringers DVD had me thinking that 1980s David Cronenberg went and made a “normal” movie; the way it sounds, twin brothers, (Elliot and Beverly Mantle), who are both gynecologists, fall in love with the same woman, thus sparking the deterioration of their once-close relationship.  Many films have been done with themes like this, and I didn’t really have high hopes.  I must admit to being thankful that the studio’s synopsis is rather misleading, and so a movie that I thought I could figure out going in left me guessing what was going to happen next, often to no avail.

The reality here is that one of the twins (Beverly) does fall in love with a woman (actress Claire Niveau, played by actress Genevieve Bujold).  As is par for the course between these two, Elliott, who has always been the dominant one, had sex with her first, makes plans to see her again, and then sends Beverly on the ensuing dates, until he also gets his fill.  The hapless victims never tend to notice, until Niveau is alerted to the twins’ behavior from a friend.  The basic outline sounds kind of like a Hallmark movie, though if you think Beverly begs for forgiveness, earns back her trust, and they live happily ever after, you would be sadly mistaken.  Actually, if you even think this movie has much to do with a woman at all, you would also be missing the mark.

The twins are both played by a single Jeremy Irons, who is unbelievable in both roles.  I would think that the toughest part of assuming two characters would be giving them each their own identity, but Irons gets it down in such a fantastic way that soon, even though they look almost exactly the same, you’ll be able to tell which is which just from their mannerisms, or their personality.  Not that I would expect anything less from him; at his peak, he was one of Hollywood’s most consistently mind-blowing actors, portraying everything from “Die Hard” villains, to Humbert Humbert himself.  Here, though, he doesn’t just put on a performance; he puts on an absolute clinic.  If you don’t believe me, just watch the final thirty minutes, when not just one, but both of his characters go completely off the deep end.  It would have been easy to overact those scenes, but he hits it with such authenticity that it’s almost terrifying.

Also impressive is David Cronenberg’s restraint:  For a man who essentially built his reputation on excess and “body horror”, there are very few gross visual effects throughout the entire movie.  While this will no doubt disappoint some (as it did me upon my first viewing), it still provides some unsettling scenes, mainly courtesy of some custom-made, and threatening-looking, gynecology instruments.  Yet even beyond these scenes, there’s a certain uneasiness that runs underneath each frame, slowly building until its gripping finale.

I hate to admit it, but I will:  I have an incredibly short attention span, and any movie that’s made up of mostly dialogue for two hours is very tough for me to get through (pretty sure it’s ADHD, but you have to jump through so many hoops just to get diagnosed for that, that it’s not really worth it).  But Dead Ringers managed to hold my attention, especially in the final hour (where I’m more prone to dozing off).  The surefire, confident direction of Cronenberg, as well as the solid writing (by Cronenberg and Norman Snider) certainly helped, but it all comes back to Irons, who steals the scene in every one he’s in. 

It’s far from a perfect film:  I thought Bujold’s performance was hit-or-miss, and even question if her character was necessary in the first place, while the twins’ gradual spiral into madness does tend to get a little more predictable as the film goes on (if you can’t see the ending coming, you haven’t been paying attention).  But if you’re looking for a more subtle “horror” movie, Dead Ringers could be for you.  It doesn’t have any haunted rooms, or masked madmen on the prowl, but its effectiveness lies in its chilling realism of two brothers, almost exact in appearance, but vastly different in personality, who nevertheless are destined to share the same fate.

RECAP: Great writing, solid direction, and an out-of-this-world performance are the cornerstones of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers.  It’s far from a perfect film, but if you’re looking for a more subtle brand of horror than your typical blood and guts slasher film, then this could be a welcome change from the norm; this is horror for the thinking man, and that’s not something you can say for many films in the genre.

SCORE: 7.5/10

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Would You Rather? (2012)

Director: David Guy Levy
Writer(s): Steffen Schlachtenhaufen
Starring: Brittany Snow, Jeffrey Combs, Sasha Grey, and June Squibb

The only reason I was interested in seeing this is because we used to play a similar game at work.  Our point was to be as graphic and disturbing as possible, which I figured was the entire point of the game, and so with that in mind, I figured that would basically be the whole point of this movie.  It kind of is.  But what I didn’t expect from a film based entirely around cold, calculating violence, was one so predictable and formulaic; going in you already know there can only be one survivor: (SPOILER ALERT) Could it be the woman who is billed first in the credits, and the only one whose backstory is fleshed out in the beginning? (END SPOILER)

Even beyond that, the final twist is foreshadowed long before it actually happens, and both my wife and I called it well before it was revealed.  In a good movie (and I have one in mind to use as an example, but don’t want to reveal it for fear of giving away too much) such a twist can have a profound, draining effect on the viewer; in a movie like Would You Rather, it just feels like the filmmakers were throwing around cynical ideas, and hoping one of them would stick.

But in order for something to resonate with the viewer, there needs to be at least one prerequisite:  You must have characters that the audience can cheer for.  The bland writing does nothing to further that agenda.  Sure, we have characters (well, mainly one) that we’re supposed to cheer for, and they certainly try their darndest to follow every little detail in the “How to Create a Likable Character” guidebook, but they only succeed in creating a sugar-coated, one-dimensional stereotype, rather than a fully fleshed-out character.  She’s plain-looking; not so gorgeous that women will get jealous of her, but not so ugly that people will laugh at her, either.  She has a heart of gold, which we can tell from the way she holds the door open for a lady in a wheelchair.  And she’s such a great person that she takes care of her sick brother, despite the financial and emotional strain it takes on her.  There’s not really a problem with any of this stuff, except that they cram it all into the only ten minute block they allow for character development.  We get it, she’s such a perfect little angel who does nothing wrong, so we’re supposed to cheer for her.

I didn’t.

That girl is Iris (Brittany Snow), and just a few minutes into the movie, she gets an invitation from a rich man, Shepard Lambrick (Jeffrey Combs), to join him for a dinner party.  He knows that she is taking care of her brother, and is desperate for money, so he explains that she will be playing a game, and if she wins, he will take care of her, and her brother, for the rest of their lives.  Her own doctor, who was a previous winner, pushes her into accepting, which she eventually does.

We already know where this is headed, and so she’s joined by a cast of characters ranging from terribly unlikable (Amy, loosely played by Sasha Grey), to annoying and unlikable (old paralyzed Linda), and slight variations, or combinations, of each.  In the only genuinely shocking thing about the movie, John Heard is in it—no doubt to get people to say “Oh wow, John Heard is in it!”—but he knows how to game the system; he’s the first one killed, and probably the one that was the most handsomely paid.  I guess that’s a perk of having a 40 year career in Hollywood.

Not surprisingly, things start of relatively tame: Contestants are given the choice of either shocking themselves, or shocking another contestant, then, also not surprisingly, gradually get worse from there.  It all develops exactly the way you think it will; there are a couple attempts at curveballs for the viewer, but they’re as sloppy as a fast food burger, and won’t fool you even for a minute.

The performances are wildly uneven, with Jeffrey Combs good, if not maybe a little overboard, as the sadistic party host, while former pornstar Sasha Grey is embarrassingly bad as Amy.  I like my women trashy, so I thought her “mystery woman” persona was pretty hot, in a sleazy kind of way.  But every time she opens her mouth…well, you can see where the whole “acting in porn” jokes come from.  They do kind of combat it by not giving her many lines, instead letting her personality develop by mostly showing her reactions to the various events, but when she does say something, it’s nothing short of cringe-inducing.   The rest of the cast, save for ol’ paralyzed Linda (who reminded me a lot of Charlie’s mom in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, though that character is played for laughs), give at least passable performances; Brittany Snow, in the lead as Iris, is no better or worse than your average horror movie heroine, screaming and crying a lot, without being given much else to do.

Whether or not you will like this depends on your predisposition to bland, lifeless horror movies.  There are actually a few people I know who don’t mind clichéd predictability in their films; this kind of person might find something to like here.  Those that want a little kick with their horror, should definitely look somewhere else.

RECAP: Predictable, with the typical gradual increase in horror, and an overreliance on shock attempts, Would You Rather takes an interesting premise, and puts it through the “Hollywood Formula Machine”; the occasional moments where it attempts to counter the banalities of the horror genre are clumsy, and rather transparent.  In other words, it’s a shocker, only without the shocks.  Sasha Grey, as Amy, is also notably bad, though the other performances are mostly passable.  Speaking of “pass”, take one on this.

RATING: 3/10

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