3615 Code Pére Noël (aka Game Over; Dial Code: Santa Claus; Deadly Games; Hide and Freak) (1989)

Director: René Manzor
Writer(s): Manzor
Starring: Brigitte Fossey, Louis Decreux, Patrick Floersheim, and Alain Lalanne (as Alain Musy)

The perfect movie for the Scrooge in your life.

3615 Pere Noel first came to my attention late last year (2018), when some publications mentioned it was a darker version of Home Alone…made one year before that holiday classic. Even though it seemed to garner attention in the media, I still couldn’t find a way to watch it…until this year, when those darlings at Shudder finally made it available for all to see.

But let’s just get one thing out of the way, for those of you who go into a viewing of the movie with the same mindset my wife and I did, expecting a mostly-lighthearted holiday romp: this movie is unrelentingly grim. It’s not very violent, per se, but it almost seems to revel in breaking the spirit of its characters, whether it be an adult, an elderly man, or even a child—the end result is a film that’s every bit as heartbreaking as it is intense.

Alain Musy is Thomas, a particularly smart 9-year-old who is left at home on Christmas Eve with his ailing grandfather, while his mother goes off to work as manager of a department store. The family is apparently atrociously rich, as they live in a ridiculous castle-style mansion, complete with caretakers who live on the premises. She is only supposed to be gone for a few hours, but that’s as long as it takes for Thomas to get into trouble thanks to their Minitel system, France’s early version of the internet: he enters an early version of a chat room, attempts to make contact with Santa Claus, and instead gets the attention of a ne’er-do-well, who attempts to get the kid’s address before the connection is dropped.

What he does learn, however, is that the kid’s mother works for Printemps, a popular French department store; the vagabond wanders his way over there to apply for a job as Santa Claus, gets it, and then is promptly fired by Thomas’s mother after smacking a kid in the face (in his defense, the child did kind of deserve it). He goes to the personnel department to finalize the termination, when he overhears the worker—who conveniently has his back turned to the door—mention details about Thomas being home alone while is mother is at work. He hops in the back of a Printemps van, and hitches a ride to the unwitting child’s home, at which point he kills the delivery driver, in a scene that removes all doubts about his intentions.

Thomas isn’t just some normal kid, however: he’s a huge fan of action movies, and spends his free time playing “war” with his lovable dog, J.R., and keeping his diabetic, nearly-blind grandfather entertained by using him as target practice. He’s going to need all of his smarts and cunning to outwit a madman who seems hellbent only on terrorizing and murdering anyone he can…

It's a fairly thin setup, which all-too-conveniently feeds the madman all the information he needs to know—from several unrelated sources—and without anyone so much as even noticing he's around, but hey, it's a horror movie, so I suppose it's par for the course.

The movie definitely earns its comparisons to Home Alone in parts—mainly the beginning and end—but the frequent use of the term “fun” to describe this movie by many critics and cinemagoers alike make me wonder if we saw the same movie. Sure, there are some stand up and cheer moments when Thomas gains the upper hand on the intruder, but that sense of fun is destroyed in the many sequences where he displays genuine fear…an almost fourth-wall breaking taboo that really brings the film closer to reality than I was expecting (and, in some ways, hoping for). Ditto that for Thomas’ childlike sense of wonder, which remains intact, despite his unusually high IQ, leading to some rather sad scenes of anguish when his world—and everything he believes in--starts crumbling around him, including the murder of his own dog right in front of him as he hides under a table waiting for Saint Nick to arrive…this clearly isn’t a movie with “fun” on its mind.

Assuming you can shift gears, though, or that you're actually prepared for what you're in for, this is an occasionally brilliant horror tale that definitely deserves the attention it’s been garnering lately. POV scenes of legally-blind grandpops struggling to make out shapes and figures lend some credibility, and intensity, to the proceedings, while the motives of the evil Santa Claus are just as depressing as everything else in this bleak, anti-Christmas thriller.

Supposedly, the director, Rene Manzor, sued the producers of Home Alone for “ripping off” his idea. Whether that was more of a marketing stunt than an actual defense of his own material is debatable, but it's certainly unfortunate that this little gem of a movie has fallen into relative obscurity while little Kevin McCallister, and much of the cast and crew, have probably pulled in enough royalties to comfortably retire.  

RATING: 7.5/10

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The Dead Next Door (1989)

Director: J.R. Bookwalter
Writer: Bookwalter
Starring: Pete Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Michael Grossi, and Jolie Jackunas

For whatever reason, J.R. Bookwalter's The Dead Next Door was a mild obsession for me when I was still in high school, and that was before I'd ever even seen it. All I remember was that I was going through a zombie-movie phase (this was back in the late 90s or early 2000s, a few years before Hollywood got hold of the undead and ruined them forever), and would constantly visit the official website in my ninth grade keyboarding class. I honestly don't even remember how I initially heard about it, but I was a wannabe amateur filmmaker at the time, and so it wouldn't surprise me if I took to it because of its humble origins, as well as its ties to my home state.

The Dead Next Door was produced over the span of four years (also the timeframe it took for Peter Jackson to make Bad Taste) in Akron, OH, which is about two hours northeast of Columbus, the state capital and also the city in which I was born. It is known as one of the most expensive home movies ever made, a title it received because it was shot on Super 8 cameras, which were strictly consumer-grade, with director Bookwalter estimating that the total budget was a whopping $125,000 (a high figure, no doubt, but also kind of misleading, as it was raised in small increments over that entire span, so he never had more than a few thousand to work with at any given time). But what it lacked in financial resources, it made up for in sheer ambition: the film features an incredible 1,500 Ohio residents playing the part of zombies. That's pretty epic for what amounts to little more than an amateur film.

It also has some pretty great special effects, but the two footnotes to this claim are: 1.) it also features some terrible special effects, and 2.) a majority of the better ones are used up within the first thirty minutes, meaning there's a dwindling amount of reasons to keep watching as the minute count goes up. However, it's still amazing to see what Bookwalter was able to do with such a subpar video format, as well as very limited resources—some of the effects, especially the neck bites, still look impressive even today, and were pulled off by a special effects team with no notable names (at least none that I recognize).

Well when you're working with a shortage of resources, there has to be a trade-off somewhere; in other words, for every area that excels, chances are there will be more that suffer. In the case of The Dead Next Door, it's everything else. I had always had fond memories of this movie (which I bought on VHS when it was released) thanks to the copious amounts of bloodshed, and vaguely remembered the acting was bad, but I didn't remember just how shoddy all the other areas are: the story is rambling and pointless, biting off more than it can chew; “bad” doesn't even begin to describe the performances, which were worse than I remember, and range from terrible to positively atrocious; and no time or effort went into developing any of the film's many characters—even most of their names are simply plucked from the last names of popular horror film directors (Raimi, Commander Carpenter...you get the point).

I do feel kinda crass rating this on the same level as a polished feature; it's like trying an immature 12-year-old as an adult for a crime that he didn't even commit. But a bad movie is a bad movie no matter how it looks, or how epic the production might have been, or how ambitious the original idea was; and let's be honest here, The Dead Next Door is a godawful film. When blood isn't spurting, when the movie actually starts to believe that the story it's presenting us is one that's actually worth presenting, it's almost terminally-boring. Seen through these eyes—that even if the budget was tripled, or quadrupled, it still more than likely would have sucked—certainly makes me feel like less of an ass.

If this were a straightforward zombie film, where most of the budget was spent on the blood and gore effects (all of the “actors” worked for a deferred salary) we might have been on to something; for the first thirty-or-so minutes, that's essentially what we get, as members of the local “Zombie Squad” drive around, and attempt to thwart zombie attacks on the living. The leader of the gang is Raimi (Sam, the real-life namesake and director of the Evil Dead trilogy, was also the film's main financier, using his compensation for Evil Dead 2 to fund this one), who is supposed to be a no-nonsense tough guy, though his acting makes it hard to tell for sure. The other “ground members” are Mercer, Kuller, and Richards—during a routine call, Richards ends up getting bit, and so the crew is suddenly down to three.

There are other members of the squad: the scientists that are hard at work trying to figure out a way to kill the zombies. See, the undead here are rather unique in that: a.) they can run, and b.) they are impossible to kill. Now, “unique” here is used as a synonym for “uncommon”, because, like many facets of the film, it's an idea lifted directly out of another zombie feature: in this case, Return of the Living Dead. Still, it's a fascinating decision that gives Bookwalter and Co. the opportunity to try some pretty advanced effects; as I alluded to earlier, they don't always look convincing, but got to give them some points for trying. So the scientists, lead by Dr. Moulson, finally create a serum that speeds up the zombies' decomposition process, thus effectively killing them within a couple of hours.

Now here's where things really start to go a little overboard: Mercer is bitten and is used as a test subject for the new serum by Moulson. The problem is, Mercer isn't quite dead yet, so instead of decomposing him, it turns him into some sort of vengeance-seeking super-zombie; he can't run like the rest, but he can speak. This is a decision that once again bears problems for the production, because his voice is so low that it's often impossible to decipher his words, at least without cranking up the volume, which we never bothered to do. On top of this, there is a cult, lead by a Reverend Jones, who believes that the zombie invasion is God's will, and they will stop at nothing to put a stop to those, like the Zombie Squad, who are attempting to get rid of them. Even within this convoluted framework (another thing to keep in mind: all of this has to play out within a scant 78-minute duration), there are other subplots, like the paternity of one of the cultists, and frequent mention of a Dr. Bo, who created the zombie virus for reasons unknown, before being killed by his very creations.

It's all a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas, which is really what does the film in: not enough time is spent focusing on any of the major plot points, meaning the story just feels like an improvised, careless mess. Add this into the myriad of other problems that I have mentioned, and that means large portions of The Dead Next Door are dull. If it would have had the presence of mind to at least lessen its grand visions in one category, it would have been, at the very least, a serviceable film. Unfortunately, sometimes less really is more, and in the case of The Dead Next Door, more is unequivocally infinitesimal.

RATING: 3/10

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Society (1989)

Director: Brian Yuzna
Writer(s): Rick Fry and Woody Keith
Starring: Billy Warlock, Devin DeVasquez, Evan Richards, and Ben Meyerson

Society had been on my to-watch list for about as long as I can remember Having enjoyed Return of the Living Dead 3, which he also helmed, as a teenager, I naturally traced his roots back to his one, his debut film. It's known for its ending, featuring a plethora of ooey-gooey special effects that wouldn't feel out of place in a Cronenberg feature, but then, like many other things it eventually just dropped off my radar. That is, until it made an appearance on a streaming service I use, at which point I rounded up my wife and we buckled ourselves in for a wild Friday night ride.

I always thought it was curious that any mention of Society would invariably wind up talking about the effects and not much else, but now I perfectly understand the reasons why: because the rest is just a typical '80s horror film. That probably strikes glee in the hearts of many, but I've personally always found it shortsighted to be loyal to films from a certain time period; I just don't understand the thought process behind it. I guess it's the cheese- and camp-factor that's present in a lot of them, and while that can make a film more enjoyable for obvious reasons, I'd much rather be enjoying a movie the way it was meant to be enjoyed, rather than adding the context of unintentional laughter.

My main qualm with Society is the ridiculousness of its singular, overblown premise, the gist of which can be summed up essentially in a single sentence: that the rich derive pleasures both from reveling in their own excesses, and for reveling in the things that “commoners” are without. And it goes through some rather painstaking lengths to make sure that there are no possible doubts that we, as viewers, could possibly misunderstand that. It's a heavy-handed approach that will probably alienate more viewers than it will inspire, and it certainly lost us.

Billy Warlock (who has since gone on to star in just about every soap opera ever produced for television) plays Bill Whitney, a man who lives in an upper-class home, with his rich upper-class parents, and rich upper-class sister. He feels the effects of his family's wealth in the world around him, like at his high school, where of course he runs around with the popular kids, and is a favorite for election as class president. It's almost as if his wealth has predetermined him to have an easy life, or something!

But Bill just doesn't feel like he belongs in that circle. He feels like he is an outsider, that his family isn't really his family, and that something isn't quite right with the other rich people that are constantly surrounding him. Unfortunately, he just can't quite seem to put his finger on it. Sessions with his therapist, Dr. Cleveland, don't seem to do much in the way of quelling his suspicions, and his paranoia and distrust of everyone around him is slowly magnified, until a family friend, and an ex-boyfriend of his sister, presents him with some clear-cut evidence.

His name is David, but he is known to friends as Blanchard. He functions as the typical “sidekick”, pudgy in appearance and with all the grace of a one-legged swan; since he is a “commoner”, he was forced to break off his relationship with Bill's sister, making him the frequent butt of jokes for the rich. He also felt that something wasn't right, so he set up a microphone to record his sister's “coming out party”, something I had never heard of, but that is apparently a real thing rich families do. He presents the recorded evidence to Bill, who of course is at first outraged that this low-class peasant would spy on his family, but all it takes is a brief listen before he realizes his worst fears have been realized: her “coming out party”, which sounds like something gay and lesbian couples will have in the future after announcing their sexual preference, quickly degrades into a disturbing psychosexual orgy.

Not long after this, and as horror fans are already expecting, poor whistle-blowing Blanchard winds up dead in a mysterious single-car accident. Those pesky rich folk using their considerable powers to make the innocent, and the middle- and lower-class, suffer! Where do they get such nerve? Oh yes, from a society that not only condones their behavior, but seems to actually encourage it. Of course!

Some other stuff happens: Bill has sex with Clarissa, a rich girl that he is starting to like; we meet Clarissa's mother, a large mute woman who has a strange obsession with hair; Bill accepts an invitation from his opponent for class president for a secret meeting, only to discover that he has been killed, too; and Bill spends some time in a mental hospital, which is an obligatory plot-stop in a film where a character is regarded as crazy, just so we understand how crazy everyone around him thinks he is.

And all this sets up the film's finale, in which Bill is held captive in his own home, and forced to watch as Blanchard (who did not die after all) is attacked by the rich, who literally feed off of him, their limbs entering his skin and their bodies intertwining with him in a special effects sequence (by Screaming Mad George) that is impressive both in its scope, and execution. Thankfully, Bill avoids this certain fate by fighting a rich boy, and then getting help from Clarissa, who overcomes her rich lifestyle to realize that she is also developing feelings for Bill. See, who says true love can't cross financial classes?

Society is a tired film, and I can't even recommend it for the effects work, as great as they are, because we had lost pretty much all interest in the film by that point. It's evident that it's striving to be a hallucinogenic, surrealistic nightmare, with dead characters that seem to magically “return to life”, but the atmosphere and images never quite match with its ideology. In the end, it just feels like your standard attack on elitist culture that doesn't bring anything unique or interesting into the fold. It bludgeons us with the same tired cliches of class warfare over and over again, hoping that it's enough to keep viewers entertained until it gives us its grand finale, but it is just a one-dimensional film that flatlines about an hour in, and is dead on arrival by the end.

RATING: 4/10

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National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)

Director: Jeremiah S. Chechik
Writer(s): John Hughes
Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Juliette Lewis, Johnny Galecki

The hardest movies to look at subjectively are the ones that we gather around the fireplace to watch every year: yes, I am talking about Christmas movies.  A lot of them are simply tradition; I don’t doubt many people get yuletide joy out of watching the same movies over and over again during the holiday season (hence the 24-hour A Christmas Story marathons), but I’ve just grown numb to a lot of them.  I don’t want to sound like a Scrooge—I like the holiday season and enjoy the atmosphere, so it has nothing to do with that—but once I know every joke and can recite large portions of dialogue from memory, that’s a sign it’s time to skip five years.

And so it can become kind of unfair to review a movie like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, long after the events have permanently etched themselves into my brain.  Most Christmas movies I manage to avoid watching annually, but considering this is my wife and her family’s favorite one, I think I have literally watched it for at least seven out of the last nine years we’ve been together…very little joy remains.

By now, I think everyone knows the story, so I will severely abridge this: It’s Christmastime at the Griswold house, “lead” by Clark (Chevy Chase), a caring father but hapless dolt of a man who screws up everything that he touches.  Things don’t get any better when the rest of the immediate family show up; covering every comedy stereotype from the hard-of-hearing grandma, to the sour in-laws, and just about everything else in between, it’s ensured that no one has even an ounce of fun between all the bickering and cartoonish hijinx.  Save for the viewer, of course!

It should come as no surprise that, by the end, they all learn a thing or two about the spirit of Christmas.  Well, not so much the actual biblical meaning of Christmas, but that it’s a time for loving, and giving, and gathering with loved ones and friends and family.  Thankfully, all that happens after we have had our fill of hilarity, and we can flip off the DVD player (or Blu-Ray, or VCR) with a renewed sense of holiday cheer.

Christmas Vacation is obvious, the way all Christmas movies are, but it’s also funny; the jokes come fast and furious, and it’s all lighthearted and silly stuff.  There is a surprising amount of swearing that I had completely forgotten about (the “s” word is mentioned around five times, and even “gd” makes an appearance once), so it’s probably not suitable for young kids, but then again, that’s why it’s rated PG-13.  The cast is perfect in their roles, especially a pre-insane Randy Quaid, who steals the show as Clark’s completely-white trash cousin-in-law, and a pre-egotistical Chevy Chase as Clark himself.  Julia-Louis Dreyfuss also has a hilarious role as the Griswold’s rich and stuck-up next door neighbor.

Its only crime is that it’s a holiday tradition, so all the excitement of sitting down to a viewing has been worn completely thin.  But even with this complaint cast aside—even if this was just a typical movie that wasn’t glued to holiday tradition—it would still be too obvious and predictable to be any kind of classic.  So even though I’ve seen it a dozen times, and I’m sure the future holds at least a dozen more viewings, I’m confident in saying that my rating would stay more or less the same.

RECAP: Christmas Vacation is certainly a funny film, and although years of repeat viewings have kind of worn the excitement thin for me, even if it wasn’t required annual viewing, the jokes are too predictable and obvious to be any kind of comedy classic.  Still, it’s great for what it is, with the whole cast delivering solid performances, and Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss standing out as the best amongst all of them.  At the very least, no matter how terrible your latest Christmas was, chances are it will always be better than the Griswold’s, simply by default.  A pleasant time-waster that will deliver some yuletide laughter.

RATING: 7/10

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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