Halloween Horror Marathon 2020

[AndyDursin]

Hey I'm contributing to this thread this year, in September no less!

HIGH SPIRITS
5/10

It's always unfortunate when there are things you can love about a movie -- its look, score, cinematography, cast -- and the movie itself just gets in the way.

That's the problem with Neil Jordan's ghost comedy, released by Tri-Star to middling box-office before Thanksgiving '88, which offers gorgeous production design by future "Batman" Oscar winner Anton Furst, Alex Thomson's crisp lensing, Derek Meddings' old-school special effects, and a rousing, glorious George Fenton score. It also benefits from a lively Peter O'Toole performance as the proprietor of a dilapidated Irish castle, who hopes to score with American tourists (Steve Guttenberg, Beverly D'Angelo, Jennifer Tilly, Peter Gallagher) by pretending the place is haunted. Turns out, it actually IS haunted, with two spirits in particular (Daryl Hannah and Liam Neeson) eventually causing trouble -- the romantic kind in particular.

This is a great concept for a supernatural comedy, but "High Spirits" starts off on the wrong note and never recovers. There's no way the film's script could've been written in the fragmented manner the picture plays out in -- indeed, Jordan lamented he had scant involvement in the film's editing and his actual cut is still sitting in a vault somewhere. That's completely plausible, since simple things like a basic plot line are missing from the film (why are the guests still hanging around the castle in the film's second half?), characters come and go with no or little point, and the movie underscores every laugh with a sledgehammer (Fenton's score is outstanding, though tends to undercut the humor, especially in the movie's opening half hour, which seems especially fractured in terms of pacing).

With more character development and editorial work that made sense, "High Spirits" could've been something -- yet the final product is one of those head-scratching efforts where you can only guess what the point was supposed to be. Still, it looks so good (especially in Koch's German Blu-Ray which offers a spectacular transfer) and works in fits and starts, that I revisit it every now and then.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the end credits give "Special Thanks" to a myriad of people who must've been involved to some degree in the picture, including screenwriters Steven Kampmann and Will Aldis, "Beetlejuice" writer Michael McDowell, and actor Kenneth Mars, who one imagines ended up on the cutting room floor -- along with the material that might've made "High Spirits" a truly worthwhile effort.

[Paul MacLean]

High Spirits remains my favorite George Fenton score, and listening to this music today, it strikes me as a great shame he was not recruited for any of the Harry Potter sequels (as his score basically plays like an "Irish Harry Potter").

Given the heavy re-cutting and studio interference in post, it's a miracle Fenton's score was not thrown out. Had this film been made 5-6 later it probably would have been.

I still have never seen High Spirits, although I started watching it when it was on TV once -- and quickly shut it off, because it was so bad it was starting to ruin the score for me!

[Monterey Jack]

Night Of The Living Dead(ites)…

-The Evil Dead (1983): 8/10

-Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987): 10/10

-Army Of Darkness (1993): 8.5/10

-Evil Dead (2013): 9/10









Had a groovy kick-off to this year’s October festivities by going through one of the most lauded horror franchises of all time. Sam Raimi’s directorial debut, 1983’s The Evil Dead is simplicity itself…five attractive college students (including cult movie icon Bruce Campbell, in his film debut) take some R&R at a secluded cabin in the woods, read from the “Necronomicon”, aka The Book Of The Dead, and find their souls and bodies overtaken one by one by Kandarian demons, who turn them into puddles of multicolored goo.

Closing in on forty years later, The Evil Dead may no longer be “The Ultimate Experience In Grueling Terror”, but it has the same kind of manic creativity and low-budget energy that fueled Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi a decade later, Raimi taking a little and spinning a lot out of it, with wild camerawork and editing (some courtesy of Raimi’s fellow film geek Joel Coen, before and brother Ethan kicked off their own long-running careers) making the film’s bare-bones plotting and characterization besides the point. The only real thing that hasn’t worn well is, surprisingly, Campbell’s performance as the film’s “final girl”, Ash. Compared to the lovably dim hero the character would evolve into across the following sequels (and the excellent TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead), watching him here is akin to watching Linda Hamilton’s performance as Sarah Connor in the original Terminator as opposed to her ‘roided-up turn in the sequel, Judgement Day…he’s just there to survive. Still, there’s no denying how influential this film was for the Fangoria generation, and it remains a blast.

Still, the first of its sequels, Dead By Dawn, manages to trump it. Kind of a more-elaborate remake than a straight sequel (the opening ten minutes or so just reprise the entirety of the original movie, only omitting the other characters aside from Ash and his re-cast girlfriend), DBD is the ultimate cinematic game of whack-a-mole, with Campbell finally settling into the wiseacre Deadite slayer we’ve known and loved and Raimi taking his love of the Three Stooges and Tom & Jerry shorts and turning this into the greatest-ever “splatstick” horror/comedy. It’s disgusting, overwrought, and uproarious from beginning to end, a phantasmagoria of popped eyeballs, disembodied hands, bad dubbing (“Workshed…”) and contorted camerawork to choke a horse.

1993’s Army Of Darkness thankfully mixes things up, because DBD’s manic pace could never have been matched. Having made his moody comic book thriller Darkman in-between films, Raimi came prepared with a considerably larger (yet still charmingly ramshackle) budget and the determination not to repeat himself. Less a gore-drenched horror film (the film could almost qualify for a PG-13 by today’s standards) than an old-school Ray Harryhausen-style fantasy epic, AOD finds Ash propelling backwards in time to the year 1300 (give or take a century or so), wherein he comes to the aid of medieval townsfolk locked into a looming war with the Deadite army, while not pitching woo as a comely peasant lass, played by Embeth Davidz (“Gimme some sugar, baby”).

Looser, goofier and spoofier than the first two, Army Of Darkness may disappoint those used to the geysers of gore from the previous two films, yet it’s an irresistibly silly and rousing adventure film, with Campbell’s wry 20th century putdowns making light of the sword & sorcery clichés and Raimi having fun with his skittery legions of bloodthirsty yet adorable skeletal soldiers. Just avoid the “director’s cut”, with a needless bummer of a conclusion that was thankfully axed by Universal for a far more apt bow wrapped on Ash’s cinematic adventures. Hail to the king…


After the increasingly comedic tone of the Raimi films, 2013’s remake of the original film, dropping the “The” and just presenting itself as Evil Dead, is a film that really dials the “horror” aspect up to eleven. Director and co-writer Fede Alvarez pushes the film’s violence to astonishing levels, and it’s all bracingly blunt and nasty (and done with a minimum of CGI trickery). And it’s thankfully not content to Xerox Raimi’s film, with the quintet of twentysomethings relocation to that obligatory cabin in the woods to help Mia (a terrific Jane Levy) quit her drug habit cold turkey in the most isolated setting possible, before those perky Kandarian demons start turning the lot of them into raw hamburger. Set to a sprightly score by Roque Banos and a boasting a number of truly groady kills, Evil Dead stands as one of the best horror remakes of the last two decades.

-The Woods (2006): 7.5/10



Eerie period shocker (set in 1965) about a trouble teenage girl (Agnes Bruckner) who – following a bout with pyromania – is relocated by her parents (Bruce Campbell and Emma Campbell…no relation to the Chin) a to secluded boarding school lorded over by a stern headmistress (Patricia Clarkson). There she’s subjected to the unwanted attention of the local bully (who dubs her “Firecrotch”) and becomes embroiled in a mystery involving her fellow students vanishing that may be connected to a trio of witches who were forced out into the nearby woods by the school over a century earlier. Director Lucky McKee (May) may not have that coherent of a story to tell, but he delivers the good when it comes to shuddery, inexplicably imagery, and Bruckner holds the film together with her sullen gravitas. Shame the film basically went straight-to-DVD, as it deserved a wider audience (check it out on Amazon Prime at the moment).

-You Should Have Left (2020): 4/10



Tedious slow-burn haunted-house melodrama about a retired banker named Theo Conroy (Kevin Bacon), his much-younger second wife, Susanna (Amada Seyfried) and their adorable moppet of a daughter (Avery Essex) who relocate to a new home in Wales when Susanna’s career as an actress brings her to Europe for a shoot. Once there, no one really feels settled, with old resentments bubbling to the surface and odd occurrences leaving everyone on edge and things begin to get steadily more sinister. Reuniting with writer/director David Koepp (with whom he had made the middling 1999 supernatural shocker A Stir Of Echoes), Bacon delivers a solid enough performance as a man slowly eaten alive by guilt and suspicion, but the film surrounding him is leaden, ponderous and builds to a conclusion that’s wearyingly predictable.

[Monterey Jack]

Rock out with Hitchcock out…

-Psycho (1960): 10/10

-Dressed To Kill (1980): 9/10





Master and disciple team up tonight to deliver the biggest – and most controversial -- chills to kick off the 1960’s and 80’s with a bang. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has been endlessly analyzed, referenced and copied over the last 60(!) years, and Universal’s gorgeous new UHD release brings it to life as never before. The tale of a wayward amateur thief, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), and her very unpleasant stay at the out-of-the-way motel run by the nervous and awkward Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is a film that should have lost its punch decades ago, considering how the once-shocking violence and plot twists have been crassly Xeroxed and one-upped in terms of on-screen gore, yet Hitchcock’s razor-sharp narrative and visual precision and the power of the film’s performances continue to pay dividends when other, more obvious films have faded into obscurity. And a current of pitch-black, distinctly Hitchcockian wit bubbles just below the film’s placid surface. One of the greatest and most iconic thrillers of all time for a reason, no musty film school class museum piece this.

Meanwhile, if Hitchcock had wedged his fingers into the door separating the buttoned-down cinema of the 1950’s and the more permissive, adult situations allowed in the 60’s. filmmakers like Brian De Palma threw that door wide open in the 70’s and 80’s with levels of violence, sexuality and perversity that Hitch could have only obliquely hinted at in his day. Yet few of the filmmakers working in that era updated Hitchcock’s cinematic techniques with the joyful, shoot-the-works stylishness of De Palma. Basically doing improvisatory riffs on Hitchcock’s films like a jazz artist, De Palma fused the Master of Suspense’s precise camerawork and narrative economy with his own brand of playfully sinister virtuosity, and Dressed To Kill is the ultimate example of the myriad of techniques he utilized to goose the audience in that era and even to this day. Slow-motion, spilt-screens, deep-focus diopter shots, long, elaborate camera takes…De Palma wields these like a virtuoso, in this overheated suspense melodrama about a sexually-frustrated housewife, Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), the kindly psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), helping her work through her issues with her selfish lout of a husband, Kate’s whiz-kid teenage son, Peter (Keith Gordon) and a street-smart call girl, Liz Blake (De Palma’s wife, Nancy Allen), who are all stalked by a straight-razor wielding killer blonde named “Bobbi” for reasons revolving around casual pickups and unsatiated lust.

While De Palma obviously owes a great deal to Hitchcock’s Psycho for the overall narrative spine of Dressed To Kill, he brings his own perverse sense of humor to the taut proceedings (especially funny is a wonderful visual gag involving an overheard conversation about a graphic description of a certain medical procedure), and, bathed in Pino Donaggio’s voluptuously overpowering score, crafts a thriller that brims with nasty shocks, unexpected narrative cul de sacs and performances that treat the lurid material with the right mixture of impassioned melodrama and sour, early-80’s NYC cynicism (Dennis Franz basically established his entire cinematic persona with his amusingly blunt, profane turn as a jaded detective on the trail of the film’s killer). And De Palma’s florid visual pyrotechnics are at the height of his creative powers, taking what would have been a routine slasher picture of the period and polishing the proceedings to a high gloss. De Palma may never get the respect he deserves for riding Hitchcock’s coattails for decades, but the man knows how to dress the old suspense clichés up in so much delicious frosting only the biggest nitpicker could possibly object.

[Monterey Jack]

-Dark Shadows (2012): 8/10

-Beetlejuice (1988): 8.5/10





Blood is thicker than water, and the ties that bind families together also connect tonight’s merrily macabre looks at familial strife from director Tim Burton. Dark Shadows was birthed from the popular – and insane – soap opera created by Dan Curtis that had the majority of its run in the early 1970’s, and which spawned a pair of theatrical feature spin-offs. The tale of Barnabas Collins, cursed to everlasting life as a vampire and boasting one of the most eccentric family trees imaginable, it was a series lauded for its bizarre narrative twists and turns (if not for its amusingly ramshackle production values), and was one that L’il Timmy Burton and his frequent leading man, Johnny Depp, gorged on in their formative years. Their 2012 take on the material is a winningly sly satire, with Depp taking on the role of the accursed Barnabas, whose family travels from Liverpool, England to the New World in the late 1700’s and prosper in the fishing industry, eventually building their lavish mansion of Collinwood. Barnabas ill-advisedly spurns the affections of a maid, Angelique (Eva Green), and, in a fit of scorned anger, the witchy Angelique “gifts” Barnabas with the Scarlet Letter of vampirism so his “suffering will be never-ending”…after she snuffs his parents and new love, Josette (the willowy Bella Heathcote), of course. Buried alive for almost two centuries, Barnabas is released from his subterranean purgatory by a construction crew (the scene where he viciously slakes his thwarted thirst upon them is authentically frightening) in the year 1972, the era of miniskirts, mood rings and lava lamps. Returning to his now-dilapidated family mansion, he finds only a few surviving branches of his withered family tree, including Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Lee Miller as single-parent siblings looking after their sullen daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) and troubled son (Gully McGrath), respectfully. Nonplussed by this strange new era, the dandified, courtly – and deeply uncool – Barnabas nevertheless vows to restore the Collins name to its former glory, even as he pitches woo at their comely new governess, Victoria Winters, who’s the spitting image of his lost love Josette (Heathcote again), and clashes with the ageless Angelique, who has prospered in the centuries Barnabas spent underground and continues to make his undead existence into a living hell despite still desiring him with a fervent lust.

Dubbed a fizzle when first released, Dark Shadows is a film that’s slowly become my favorite of the movies Burton has made in the last decade. While it glances off the surreal highs of Burtons best work, it nevertheless offers enough of his perverse kookiness to satiate any ardent fan of his style, coasting along on a deadpan drollness that makes even the bigger groaners in Seth Grahame-Smith’s screenplay go down like a draught of fresh-from-the-vein plasma. It’s all there in Depp’s delightful performance, where he never allows you to catch him winking at the viewer. He actually means it when he delivers the “best” line from Erich Segal’s Love Story with the Shakespearian diction of Anthony Hopkins, and the fact that he doesn’t play up the absurdity of the moment is what generates and authentic laugh. The film isn’t perfect – I could have done with another scene or two of Barnabas wooing his reincarnated love Josette, which would have made the film’s denouement really hit with the emotional force it deserved – and yet it’s always consistently amusing, and the gorgeously gloomy photography of Bruno Delbonnel fuses with Danny Elfman’s rich score to create the perfect backdrop for the film’s narrative. Plus, the 70’s setting also allows Burton to play around with “the music of the day”, with most groovy interludes from The Moody Blues, The Carpenters and Alice Cooper (cameoing as himself, which elicits the dismissive response from Depp, “The ugliest woman I have ever seen”) punctuating the soap opera shenanigans. A real underrated minor gem in Burton’s more recent filmography.

Meanwhile, skipping back to the beginning of his career, Burton’s 1988 supernatural comedy Beetlejuice offers the director at his most cartoonishly creative. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis star as the Maitlands, Adam & Barbara, whose car plunges into a river in their idyllic small town in Connecticut and who take a while to realize they perished in the crash. Stuck in purgatory as restless – and invisible -- spirits, they’re forced to sit by helplessly as the horrible Deetz family moves in and starts turning their homey abode into an art-deco nightmare, with only their sullen goth-girl daughter, Lydia (a young Winona Ryder) able to see and hear them. Unable to frighten away her parents (Jeffery Jones, Catherine O’Hara), the Maitlands turn in desperation to a self-described “Bio-Exorcist”, Betelgeuse (a thoroughly obnoxious and hilarious Michael Keaton), a grimy spectral con artist who uses their unhappiness as a way to worm his way into the “real” world and become the ultimate unwanted house guest.

In only his second feature, Burton establishes a number of his usual recurring tropes and visual motifs (why yes, we do have pasty-white characters with dark-ringed racoon eyes), but he’s rarely been as rascally and blithely inspired as here, before megabudget bloat and middle-aged repetitiveness set in. Keaton plays his titular ghoul like the ultimate used car salesman huckster, and he’s clearly having a blast, aided by Burton’s super-duper special effects (the makeup team earned an Oscar for their efforts) and Danny Elfman’s infectious, much-copied musical score (in itself augmented by several classic Harry Belafonte tracks). It’s rude, crude and frequently uproarious, and Burton still manages to insert a nice message about unusual family connections amongst the silliness. It’s the ghost with the most, baby.

[Monterey Jack]

“Quick, somebody get a really big applesauce jar with holes poked in the lid…!”

-The Fly (1958): 8/10

-Return Of The Fly (1959): 4/10

-Curse Of The Fly (1965): 4/10

-The Fly (1986): 9/10

-The Fly II (1989): 3/10











Had a creepy-crawly marathon today with the 1958 sci-fi horror classic The Fly, its superb 80’s remake, and the disappointing follow-ups to both. In the 1958 original, a brilliant scientist named Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) discovers the process to instantaneously transfer matter from one location to the other, which would revolutionize the transport of goods across the world. One catch: it only works on inanimate objects (a test with the family cat results in the poor kitty evaporating into the Twilight Zone). Emboldened by his progress, Andre tests the technology on himself, not realizing the transport tube he uses also contained a common housefly, and he comes out the other end with a fly’s head and skittering claw in place of his normal appendages, forcing his distraught wife (Patricia Owens, who gets to deliver one of the greatest screams in horror history when he yanks away the sheet draped over her husband’s face, revealing his ghastly visage to the audience for the first time) to assist him in finding the fly that now possesses his head and arm, so he can hopefully reverse the process.

One of the more iconic entries in the 50’s sci-fi/horror cycle, The Fly has its pokey and dated elements today, yet still offers some genuine chills and authentic pathos as Andre finds his human rationality slowly being eaten away by his new, insectile mind. The climax, with Vincent Price (as Hedison’s brother) making a horrific discovery in the garden, is simply unforgettable.

Naturally, there were a pair of cheapjack sequels churning out to cash in on the film’s success. The quickie Return Of The Fly (released within a year of the first) finds Andre’s now-grown son, Phillipe (Brett Halsey) finally learning of his father’s work from Uncle Francois (Price, gamely reprising his role), in the wake of his mother’s funeral, and determining to succeed where he failed. But – you guessed it – he ends up with a fly head, and goes on the obligatory rampage. Downgraded to B&W from the original’s full-color Cinemascope, Return Of The Fly has little of the original’s tension or style, and the makeup on Halsey looks silly, with a ridiculously oversized fly noggin that makes him resemble a Funko Pop replica of the original’s more convincingly realistic design.

1965’s belated Curse Of The Fly is somewhat dishonestly titled, because there’s no actual fly monster in the movie! Instead, it skips ahead another generation (meaning it realistically should be set around the year 2000) and finds Andre’s son(?), Martin (George Baker) continuing to futz around with his grandad’s teleportation tech, resulting in a handful of former, pitiable lab rats locked away behind his oversized mansion. The continuity that connects this to the first two films is shaky at best, and even as a stand-alone effort, it’s pretty rote Mad Scientist stuff. Only the film’s opening credits -- a surprisingly stylish, slo-mo sequence of a young woman, played by Patricia Stanley, escaping from a mental hospital clad in nothing but her knickers – have any distinction, the rest is weak sauce.

Almost three decades after the original movie, The Fly was remade by Canadian auteur David Cronenberg in a bold new vision that was scary, emotionally-gripping and extremely gross. The scientist this time is Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), who entices an attractive reporter, Veronica (Geena Davis), back to his ramshackle loft with promises of a discovery that will change the world. After demonstrating his teleportation tech like a party trick, Seth asks Veronica to document his progress as he works out the kinks even as their relationship gradually evolves from professional to intimate, yet his drunken decision to step into the transporter himself results in a transformation that –unlike in the original – is gradual rather than instantaneous. At first Seth seems fine…in fact, better than fine, with improved reflexes, dexterity and an insatiable sexual potency. But soon his body and mind start to deteriorate, Seth learning to his horror that a fly entered his transporter, causing the computer to turn itself into a de facto gene splicer.

As a state-of-the-art gross-out machine, The Fly is quite the queasy feat, with Chris Walas’ gruesome, Oscar-winning makeup effects chronicling Goldblum’s gradual devolution into a fusion of two distinct species with ruthless intimacy. But taken as a metaphor for a terminal wasting disease (the 80’s being ground zero for the initial outbreak of the AIDS epidemic), it’s also a piercing romantic tragedy, as Davis’ character is forced to sit by helplessly and witness the man she loves gradually losing his body and mind to the corrosive effects of his mad experiment. Set to a mournful Howard Shore score, The Fly stands as one of the best remakes of a classic horror film ever made.

Yet – with money to be made! – 20th Century Fox couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the 1989 sequel The Fly II was born, with Seth’s son, Martin (Eric Stoltz) raised from infancy by a cruel scientific team (overseen by a sneering Lee Richardson) and who grows to full manhood by the time of his 5th birthday. Curious about his father’s work, he agrees to help work out the bugs in the system and get his dad’s teleportation machine in working order, even as he enters a relationship with a young employee (a cute, Spaceballs-era Daphne Zuniga) of the sinister Bartok Institute. But their blossoming romance is cut short when Martin starts to develop the same degenerative symptoms as his late father, and starts mutating into a hideous new form.

Makeup designer Chris Walas rode the success of his Oscar win for the first film into the director’s chair of the sequel, and while he conjures up plenty of icky imagery, he shoots blanks when it comes to narrative, characterization and subtext, content to turn the material into a Fangoria geek show. When Martin reaches his final, insectile form, the design and articulation of it is still impressive, yet the remainder of the film is tiresome, disgusting and mean-spirited, and despite the services of no less than four credited screenwriters (including future Stephen King faves Mick Garris and Frank Darabont), the resulting movie is an insult to what came before. The 1958 and ’86 versions of The Fly remain as classics of the genre in their respective decades, but the three sequels to both films can go buzz off.

[Monterey Jack]

Family-friendly frame-by-frame fights…!

-Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005): 9/10

-Corpse Bride (2005): 10/10

-ParaNorman (2012): 10/10







A trio of delightful, lightly creepy stop-motion animated features were the perfect chaser for yesterday’s Fly gross-outs. In Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, Co-director and co-writer Nick Park’s titular creations (voiced, respectfully, by Peter Sallis and, as always, nobody), an addled-brained, cheese-loving inventor and his faithful, intelligent pooch as they run the successful “Anti-Pesto” service that protects the gardens of the locals from the ravages of ravenous rabbits. Running out of room for their Lapine prisoners (as they have a strict “humane” philosophy), Wallace gets an idea to rehabilitate the rabbits to no longer crave green, leafy things…and accidentally taps into a far darker part of the bunnies’ inner nature, unleashing the furry menace of the Were-Rabbit to wreak terror amongst the populace in the days leading up to the local vegetable competition. Complicating things are Wallace becoming smitten by the comely Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), with her fetching crunchy Cheeto puff of hair and red Spaghetti-O of a mouth, and “Totty”’s snobbish would-be paramour Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), who wants to bag the rampaging rabbit with a 24-“carrot” golden bullet.

In their feature-length debut, W&G (who previously appeared in a series of Oscar-winning shorts from Britain’s Aardman Animation) remain a winning team, Wallace’s daffy eccentricities perfectly offset by Gromit’s deadpan, silent-movie reactions, and their resulting film offers up plenty of laughs, ranging from broad slapstick to witty verbal and visual puns to gratuitous in-jokes. It’s the perfect way to introduce tots to the rules of cinematic Lycanthropy without freaking them out too badly, and adult viewers will be delighted by the meticulous plasticine craftsmanship of Aardman’s animation team. Sweet, funny and charming.

Meanwhile, the same year’s Corpse Bride (which I was lucky to see theatrically today) has stop-motion enthusiast Tim Burton crafting one of his finest features, a supernatural love triangle involving Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), an elegantly nervous Victorian gent betrothed to Victoria Everglott (Emily Watson), a willowy beauty who is being offered up by her parents (Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney) in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves from the poorhouse. Terrified at the prospect of wedding himself to a woman he barely knows, Victor flees from his wedding rehearsal and, whilst practicing his vows in the woods, inadvertently finds himself wedded to Emily (Helena Bonham Carter again, the Claymation Queen of the fall of ’05), a deceased yet perversely lovely woman who whisks him away to the Land Of The Dead, and in this fabulously gnarled subterranean wonderland, Victor must choose between his living betrothed and undead wife.

Burton is always at his best as a filmmaker when it comes to playfully dark fairy tales, and Corpse Bride is full of eye-popping delights (sometimes literally, as in the case of the snickering maggot that lives inside of Emily’s eye socket, given a Peter Lorre-esque rasp by Enn Reitel), the gorgeous, near-B&W gloom of the world of the living vividly contrasted with the vivid color and movement of the far-livelier world of the deceased down below. Danny Elfman’s lovely score and upbeat songs are the frosting on the wedding cake, and the film has one of the most touchingly bittersweet conclusions of any of Burton’s films. Terrific.

Finally, 2012’s ParaNorman (from the geniuses at Laika Studios) offers a wonderful throwback to the kind of “80’s PG” adventure films from that Reagan-era of fantasy filmmaking. This chronicles the travails of Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a sensitive, spiky-haired young lad who, like Haley Joel Osment before him, “Sees dead people” everywhere, in the form of chatty spirits who remain invisible to his disapproving family members and his teasing classmates at school. But when Norman’s crazy bum of an uncle (John Goodman) tasks him with ridding the town of a centuries-old curse, he and a gaggle of Spielberg-esque fellow kids and teens have to band together in order to put down a zombie uprising and dig into a mystery that has fueled the economy of his hometown of Blithe Hollow for years.

Gorgeously-designed, featuring a fantastic voice cast (including the vibrant talents of Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and others) and a perfect blend of light frights and boisterous humor, ParaNorman also hides within itself a startlingly emotional second half. It’s not often a movie aimed at a Goonies-level of kid-friendly thrills can dig into one’s Feels and make you want to Ugly Cry, but ParaNorman clears this narrative hurdle – which could have so easily tripped up a lesser filmmaking team – with such understated elegance that the adult viewer will beam with pleasure at how seamless it all is. A genuine masterpiece for parents wanting to share the Halloween horror season with their kids in a responsible manner, and for anyone with a taste for the playfully macabre. Just wonderful.

-Eight Legged Freaks (2002): 7/10



Lightly-amusing horror-comedy about a small Arizona town overrun with oversized arachnids when a barrel of toxic waste leaks into the local water supply, and how the sexy sheriff (Kari Wuhrer), her two children (Scott Terra and an on-the-cusp-of-celebrity Scarlett Johansson) and her old flame (David Arquette) have to warn the populace before it’s...too…late!

This crossbreeding of Tremors and Arachnophobia lacks the wry characterizations of the former and the creepy-crawly chills of the latter, and the special effects are nothing special (even at the time of the film’s release they must have seemed quaint, and the near two decades since then have done it no favors in that respect), yet Eight Legged Freaks (originally titled Arach Attack before the early-00’s War On Terror made it sound too close to Iraq Attack!) exudes a lazy Saturday-afternoon matinee charm. Anyone who grew up on the Big Bug sci-fi/horror films of the 1950’s (or at least watched the TV reruns courtesy of the Creature Double Feature in the 80’s) should find much nostalgic enjoyment here as the rampaging arachnids lay waste to the townspeople before they fortify themselves inside the local mall. Set to a lively John Ottman score (with some witty arrangements of “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” woven into the fabric of the music), the film might have been a tad better with some more memorable dialogue and more creative creature carnage, but it’s hard to entirely dislike a movie as cheerfully silly as this. Look for an unbilled Tom Noonan as a local spider-wrangler who becomes the first to get knocked off.

[Monterey Jack]

“Cover your faces, cover your eyes…!”

-The Birds (1963): 10/10

-Bats (1999): 3/10





The flutter of thousands of wings signal death from above in today’s double-feature kick-off. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds – sold immodestly but accurately by Hitch as “Possibly the most terrifying film I have ever made” -- depicts the nightmare that descends upon the small seaside California community of Bodega Bay when birds of every possible variety start attacking human beings, pecking, clawing and gouging with mindless avian fury. A small cadre of survivors (including “Tippi” Hedren in her film debut, plus Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy and a very young Veronica Cartwright, who would continue to be terrorized into the late-70’s in genre classics like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Alien) manages to barricade themselves inside their remote farmhouse, but the odds don’t look very good for them in particular and humankind in general…

Hitchcock’s follow-up to Psycho is, if anything, an even more viscerally frightening experience, the closest to a traditional “monster movie” that the Master Of Suspense ever came. The never-explained spate of feathered mayhem – a literal murder of crows, if you will – is depicted with what was then state-of-the-art optical techniques, and while the F/X seams definitely show by today’s standards (despite some top-notch matte work by Albert Whitlock), it doesn’t really detract from the film’s ghoulish shocks, which prove just how permissive horror cinema had come in the mere three years that separate this films and the earlier Psycho. A B-movie premise executed with the panache and skill of a master craftsman.

On the other end of the quality spectrum, there’s 1999’s Bats, a witless compendium of “nature runs amok” clichés with a flock of genetically-enhanced super-bats descending upon the obligatory Small Town in Texas, and how the sheriff (Lou Diamond Philips) and a comely zoologist (Starship Troopers’ Dina Meyer) team up to eradicate the threat.

My recent viewing of Eight Legged Freaks proved that moldy old 1950’s B-movie tropes can still be fun when delivered with a jolt of sly, affectionate humor, but Bats is po-faced and routine to the core, and the awful direction – filled with shaky-cam, distortion lenses and step-frame printing – makes this a visual eyesore. It’s an ugly film to look at, and spins through its wan collection of stock characters and situations with a minimum of style and wit. Hard to believe that screenwriter John Logan would be contributing to the following year’s Best Picture winner Gladiator based on his work here.

-The Messengers (2007): 5/10



Well-made but routine rural shocker about a strained family unit (including terse dad Dylan McDermott, stressed mom Penelope Ann Miller, sullen teen daughter Kristen Stewart – just before Twilight fame – and her toddler kid brother) who re-locate to a small farm town and try to sink the last of their savings into sunflower farming(!) when restless spirits start to manifest themselves inside their ramshackle home, where something terrible happened years before. Awash in 2000’s horror clichés (yes, the B&W ghosts have long black hair and move all jerky), the film is reasonably competent and well-acted enough, but never catches fire.

-The Mutilator (1985): 3/10



Tedious 80’s slasher about a young boy who, while cleaning his father’s gun collection, accidentally kills his mother. Years later he and his friends relocate to his father’s beachfront condo ostensibly to winter-proof it, but mainly to engage in the usual bouts of gratuitous 80’s T&A before getting knocked off one by one by a masked slasher…no, wait, they show you right off the bat who the killer is! Taking away even the pretense of the usual Agatha Christie Whodunnit? structure most bad 80’s horror films utilized to makes themselves seem more like Real movies, The Mutilator is just a makeup F/X geek show, and while some of the kills have a certain gross enthusiasm, the movie has no atmosphere, no likable characters, and no real scares. Shown with its original, more generic and misleading title, Fall Break, on Amazon Prime.

-Ruby (1977): 3/10



Sixteen years after a gang of prohibition-era mobsters blow away a compatriot and leave his body for alligator chow in the swamps of Florida, his betraying ex-moll (Piper Laurie) is making a living operating a 1950’s drive-in theater when he employees – consisting mainly of said mobsters making a quiet, post-crime living in a more legit manner – start showing up dead. Has their old chum – left for chum – come back to settle the score, and is he starting to possess the daughter (Janit Baldwin) born the night he was gunned down? The idea of a haunted drive-in theater has a cool certain novelty (especially in an era when it’s looking like the majority of theaters will be abandoned ghost towns a few years from now), but Ruby is plodding, poorly-made and drags even at a scant 85 minutes. It would have been more fun to watch Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman being projected on the drive-in screen than sitting through this wan supernatural shocker.

[Monterey Jack]

He ain’t the Ghost Who Walks…

-The Phantom Of The Opera (1925): 8.5/10

-(1943): 7/10

-(1962): 7/10

-(1989): 7.5/10









Gaston Leroux’s 1909 novel The Phantom Of The Opera was pretty much destined for the movies, a story full of stark horror, thwarted passion and Grand Guignol music underlying the churning melodrama at its core. While it’s best-known today as the basis for the wildly popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical first staged in the mid-1980’s (and adapted into a 2006 Joel Schumacher film that was less-than-well received by fans), it has also been the basis of a series of dramatic features that have haunted audiences from the silent era up until the 80’s slasher-movie boom.

1925’s Phantom is the silent version whose legacy hangs over every version since, with Lon Chaney’s unforgettable turn as the Phantom, a masked specter named Erik who haunts the Paris Opera House at the turn of the century and who sets his sights on a dazzling ingenue named Christine Daae (Mary Philbin), whose angelic voice is the only one he deems fit to perform the lead part in the house’s production of “Faust”, causing Erik to stop and nothing – including murder – to insure her place.

While obviously dated, the 1925 Phantom hasn’t lost its ability to chill, with the reveal of Erik’s face when Christine rips away his mask remaining one of the great, iconic jolts in cinema history. Chaney was dubbed “The Man Of A Thousand Faces” in his day, and the proto-method actor lengths he went through to realize his makeup illusions would make the young Robert De Niro or Christian Bale take pause. His facial features stretched into a ghastly rictus, his burning eyes popping out like demonic ping-pong balls, Chaney is the freakiest, ugliest Phantom of them all, and his visage remains one of the greatest horror monsters of them all. For the record, I watched this in the 78-minute, 24 fps 1925 edition, as there are numerous different edits of the film (including a 1930 sound version only portions of which survive today). No matter which version you watch (usually with their own unique musical accompaniment), it’s a highlight of the pre-sound horror era, and still packs a punch almost a century later.

The 1943 Phantom is a comparatively lavish, Technicolor effort (making this the only “Universal Monster” film of the 30’s or 40’s deigned a color release), with Claude Rains as Erique Claudin, an accomplished violinist whose 20-year career at the Paris Opera House is finally coming to an end due to the deterioration of the fine motor skills of his left hand. Anonymously pouring most of his earnings over the past two decades into vocal lessons for promising soprano Christine DuBois (Susanna Foster) has left Erique nearly destitute, and when he believes, mistakenly, that his other lifelong project, his new piano concerto, is being stolen from him, he flies into a rage, murdering his would-be publisher and getting a faceful of acid for his troubles. Now horribly scarred and hunted by the police, Erique takes refuge in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera, looking to see his “stolen” music performed by Christine…or else.

This handsome production really shines in the “opera” side of the film’s title, with some beautifully-staged and sung performances. As far as the “horror” aspects go, it’s okay, with Rains’ marvelously corroded voice issuing from behind his mask (which looks the closest to the eventual 80’s musical production). I could have done without a needless, too-upbeat epilogue, yet this is a fine version of the oft-told tale.

1962’s Phantom (from Britain’s Hammer production house) features Herbert Lom as Professor Petrie, a musician whose life’s work is stolen by Lord Ambrose D’Arcy (a suitably oily Michael Gough), and whose attempts to destroy said work so that D’Arcy cannot profit from it results in yet another ruined face hidden behind a mask from which one burning eye balefully stares. Like all Phantoms, he sets his sights on another young lovely (Heather Sears) to be the one to bring his work to life.

More graphic than previous Phantom productions (one unlucky rat-catcher gets knifed in the eye, and a stagehand get hanged during a production in a memorably shocking scene), the Hammer film is suffused in the studio’s usual lush, period atmosphere and is well-acted all around, yet it stumbles in the home stretch. A final reckoning between Petrie and D’Arcy is remarkably rushed-through and unsatisfying, and the manner in which the film depicts the famous “chandelier” scene brings it to an incredibly abrupt finish. It’s like the filmmakers were locked-in to an 86-minute runtime, and had to cram at the last minute. Still, weak conclusion and all, it’s another fine version of the story.

1989’s Phantom veers the farthest from the original text, starting with a modern-day prologue in late-80s’ New York (Tower Records…!), with an untested young opera singer, Christine Day (lovely 80’s genre babe Jill Schoelen), finding the tattered, burnt pages of a manuscript, Don Juan Triumphant, and finding herself propelled backwards in time to 1885, where she is re-invented as an backup singer who is stalked and seduced by Erik Destler (Robert Englund, in-between Nightmare On Elm Street sequels), who wants her to perform in Faust and realize his own magnum opus.

Tied into the 80’s slasher craze, this unusual take on the material was too gruesome for fans of the 80’s musical, and probably too tony for people hoping to see Freddy carve up some Victorian flesh, and the film fell through the cracks at the box office. Yet it’s far more interesting and elegant than you might expect. Yes, it’s certainly graphic (this Phantom – his face rendered hideous by a deal with the Devil so that “only your music can possible be loved” – sews flaps of the skin of his victims onto his ruined face and covers up the seams with liberal applications of pancake makeup, giving him the mighty jawline of Bruce Campbell), and the modern-day wraparound segments seem forced and awkward, yet the ’89 Phantom nevertheless is handsomely-produced, well-acted (Englund is tasked with a few shoehorned-in quips, but overall plays the role with admirable restraint and poise, and Schoelen has a beatific presence) and bracingly gruesome. It’s also fun to see a very young-looking Bill Nighy in the cast. It’s not a great film, or an overlooked classic, but as far as late-80’s studio horror flicks go, it’s worth a reappraisal.

[Monterey Jack]

-Darkman (1990): 8/10



While not “pure” horror, Sam Raimi’s grandiose 1990 comic-book revenge thriller taps into the adolescent masochism that fuels a great deal of horror cinema – as well as featuring a “hero” who’s certainly a gristly mess -- closely enough to be definitely in the ballpark (plus, I just wanted to re-watch it again). A mash-up of elements cribbed from The Phantom Of The Opera, Batman and countless other sources, it’s the lurid tale of Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson), a brilliant scientist on the verge of creating a new, synthetic skin substitute that would allow terrible burn victims to emulate a “normal” appearance again. The catch is that it disintegrates and falls apart after being exposed to the light for more than 99 minutes (“What is it about the dark?”, Neeson muses in the kind of purple prose that comic books were made for, “What secrets does it hold?”). His happy life outside the lab with his devoted girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand) unfortunately comes to an abrupt end when nasty gangsters out to retrieve papers that would implicate Julie’s boss (Colin Friels) in some shady land development dealings violently assault him and destroy his lab, leaving Peyton horribly scarred in the process. Thankfully, a revolutionary medical procedure has cut him off from the pain receptors that would have left him in a state of unending physical agony for the rest of his life…but with the caveat that now his one remaining stimuli – his emotions – run unchecked, surges of adrenaline coursing though his body giving him greatly augmented strength even as he flies into irrational bouts of rage and sorrow. Escaping from the hospital’s burn unit, Peyton swaddles his ruined face in dirty, tattered bandages and his body in a stylin’ fedora and coat that billows off him like a superhero’s cape, reinventing himself as The Darkman, looking for violent payback against head gangster Robert G. Durant (L.A. Law’s Larry Drake, doing a neat Edward G. Robinson impersonation) and his array of cronies even as he attempts to woo the distraught Julie – who believed him dead -- by hiding his ugliness behind a rubberized likeness of his unblemished face.

Raimi’s first big studio feature, Darkman is a film he directed with the same jackhammer ferocity of his Evil Dead pictures, taking it’s pulp comic inspirations and flooding the screen with overheated colors (thanks to ace DP Bill Pope), canted angles and loop-the-loop camerawork, all set to a richly melodramatic score by Danny Elfman. It’s not very substantive from a narrative or subtext standard, but on it’s intended revenge movie level, it’s constantly fun, filled with memorably eccentric and/or ghoulish touches (baddie Durant likes to snip and collect the fingers of his victims, keeping them in a satin-lined box in his study) and a number of exciting, well-staged action sequences. Neeson is dynamite in the lead role, with his imposing frame and off-kilter line deliveries (even his attempts at disguising his natural Irish accent often make him sound like that kind of italicized lettering you often read in comics), and Darkman remains one of the few superhero/comic book movies to come out in the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman in the 90’s that really had a unique auteurist stamp on it.

-The Invisible Man (1933): 9/10

-The Invisible Man (2020): 9/10





It’s see-thru shocks in this double-feature about science run amok. Adapted from the classic H.G Wells novel, 1933’s The Invisible Man remains one of the crown jewels in the original run of “Universal Monster” movies from the 30’s and 40’s. Claude Rains is memorably mad as Jack Griffin, a Brilliant Scientist[tm] who has developed a serum that, when injected under the skin, allows his body to fade away into apparent nothingness. Hiding his invisibility from the public with his face covered in bandages and goggles or wraparound sunglasses, he toils away at discovering the way back from his invisible state as his sanity begins to erode under the drug’s effects, even as his worried fiancé (a young and beautiful Gloria Stewart, over 65 years before she became immortalized as “Old Rose” in the James Cameron blockbuster Titanic) tries to reason with him and end the reign of terror as his mad delusions of power have him engaging in all manner of illegal activities, up to and including murder (in one memorable scene, he causes the derailment on an entire train into a nearby river, just for kicks!)

Directed by the gifted James Whale, and boasting special effects by John P. Fulton that must have seemed like the work of sorcery to Depression-era audiences and still impress today, The Invisible Man delivers crisp chills, a mordant sense of humor and a performance by Rains that revels in his corroded mutterings about the “fools” holding back the advancement of science, often breaking into a high-pitched titter that’s pretty much the definitive “mad scientist laugh”.

Sadly, few films since have managed to tap into the naughty power-trip potential afforded by invisibility. A series of increasingly wan and comedic sequels to the 1933 film petered out in the 40’s, John Carpenter’s 1992 film Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, starring Chevy Chase(!), was a wasted opportunity, and Paul Verhoeven’s technically-spectacular 2000 feature Hollow Man (with Kevin Bacon delivering the ultimate Invisible Man joke in a memorable scene) offered up super-duper visual effects yoked to a wearingly routine slasher-movie screenplay. It took all the way up until this very year to finally give audiences a film that taps into the shivery, disturbing possibilities of invisibility. 2020's The Invisible Man is unrelated to the H.G. Wells novel or any previous film adaptation, yet stands as a deviously smart new take on an old idea. Elisabeth Moss lends a wounded, tremulous conviction to her performance as Cecilia Kass, a young woman fleeing a relationship from a domineering, controlling cad named Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Living in a constant state of anxiety about her ex finding her as she lives with a sympathetic cop friend (Aldis Hodge), she finds it hard to believe when she learns that Adrian apparently committed suicide shortly after she fled in the night, and when a series of increasingly-alarming events start happening (including a violent assault from an ghostly assailant), Cecilia becomes convinced that Adrian is not dead, and has found a way to torment her from beyond the grave…or perhaps more grounded, high-tech approach.

Writer/director James Whannel knocks this one out of the park, a richly disturbing psychological shocker offering a number of viscerally jolting setpieces, anchored by a superb, empathetic performance by Moss. It’s easy to read a #MeToo-era subtext into the screenplay involving a woman victimized by a nefarious assailant who turns every accusation back upon her in the court of Public Opinion, but thankfully the film doesn’t overdose on being more of a mouthpiece for social criticism than a cracking thriller (like last year’s absurd re-remake of Black Christmas did), and Whannel, in his third feature, directs the film with a masterful eye for ominously empty compositions and sinuously elegant camera moves. It’s a terse, scary, violent shocker that’s one of the best studio horror films in a while, and, as a potential kick-off for Universal’s 15th attempt at establishing a “Cinematic Universe” of its iconic stable of classic monsters, wipes the floor with the charmless, cluttered Tom Cruise version of The Mummy from a few summers back.

-Inseminoid (1981): 1.5/10



Lousy sci-fi shocker about a group of astronauts investigating a pyramid left behind by extinct aliens on another planet when one of them (Judy Geeson) becomes impregnated by an alien force, and starts developing strange cravings…for the human flesh of her fellow scientists. You could imagine David Cronenberg having a field day with this kind of pulpy material, but Inseminoid boasts no style, bad acting and chintzy special effects. This is pure torture to sit through, even at barely 90 minutes.

-Abominable (2006): 6/10



Lightly amusing rural riff on Rear Window stars Matt McCoy as a wheelchair-bound man named Preston returning to his remote cabin near the mountain peak where a tragic accident cost him the use of his legs…and his wife. Checking out the gaggle of nubile young women in the cabin next door, he witnesses one vanish before his eyes…and a pair of baleful glowing eyes in the woods. Naturally, the local sheriff (played by The Breakfast Club’s Paul Gleason) doesn’t believe his wild tales of a monster abducting pretty young thangs, forcing Preston to take matters into his own hands to rescue the dwindling supply of women from the hairy clutches of a Bigfoot-like monster. Co-written and directed by Ryan Schifrin (son of great film composter Lalo, with Daddy Schifrin providing the movie’s score), Abominable isn’t terribly noteworthy, but offers an adequate mixture of gore and in-jokes (replete with cameos from genre favorites like Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs and Dee Wallace Stone), and caps it off with an amusingly ominous final shot.

[Monterey Jack]

-The Eyes Of My Mother (2016): 7.5/10



Eerie, slow-burn shocker about a young girl named Francisca (Olivia Bond) who loses her beloved mother to a violent home invasion inside of her remote farmhouse. Years later, the now-adult Francisca (Kika Maghalhaes, sporting the aristocratic cheekbones of Gal Gadot) has also lost her elderly father, and yearns for human connection and a new family, going to increasingly brutal lengths to achieve both, utilizing her barn to conceal her most grievous crimes from the world...

Writer/director Nicolas Pesce -- shooting the film in elegant, satiny B&W -- crafts a horror movie that's "arty" without ever bogging down in navel-gazing pretention, thankfully keeping things brisk and to-the-point (the movie runs an economical 76 minutes) and not allowing scenes to spin out into the kind of agonizingly protracted "mood-setting" of art-house bombs like The Lighthouse. It's an accomplished little flick, and it's a shame that the obviously talented Pesce followed it up with this year's deeply unnecessary and leaden rehash of The Grudge. But that sadly seems to be the gold at the end of the Hollywood rainbow for indie filmmakers...get just enough critical buzz to establish a "brand", and use that to worm one's way into an established, big-ticket franchise.

[AndyDursin]

Took the opportunity to revisit THE EXORCIST on Blu-Ray last night for the first time in a few years.

While we eagerly await a 4K UHD of this, the disc holds up pretty well, the transfer is superb (if could be improved with AVC or HVEC encoding) and wow, the sound is just outstanding. What a beautiful remix they produced on this -- directional and enveloping, this is one of the best remixes you will hear, just spectacularly layered and effective.

I get something out of this film each time I see it, beyond the supernatural horror of it. Blatty's theological components lend an enormous amount of weight to the film, and along those lines, I continue to appreciate the longer version Friedkin produced in 2000 -- unlike the Lucas and Coppola recuts of their movies, the added scenes Blatty always wanted restored to the film add a great deal. Not just the conversation between Merrin and Karras at the climax, but the scenes of Regan being tested early set up the story and take their time developing the early going. Her mother's increasing concern and panic are better established through these sequences, as mundane as they initially may come off. The shock moment of the "spider walk" comes at a climactic moment after the director's death, so it plays very effectively as well.

For whatever reason I find the end of the movie enormously moving in its own way, more so as the years pass -- not just Regan's quick recognition of Dyer's clerical collar (amazing how profound that moment is, as quick and restrained as Friedkin plays it) but that added ending some people don't like with Kinderman and Dyer talking as the film ends. It plays more effectively on repeated viewings, setting up how tragedy and sadness can create life, establish a through line for goodness despite loss -- it's what Blatty wanted in that beat and the more you see the film, the more that moment becomes clear. It enriches the film and balances the picture's message.

A truly great movie that showcases the power of cinema -- the taut, no-nonsense, unadorned direction; direct writing and serious performances -- and kind of disgraces so many horror films that it's hard to group in with the usual genre exercises of its ilk. (And that said, I'll be going through the sequels next week, especially because the troubled Schrader/Harlin films are being reissued with new transfers from Morgan Creek)

[Monterey Jack]

-A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984): 7.5/10



Had a chance to see this on the big screen today, so why not? The kick off for New Line Cinema's most profitable franchise not featuring Hobbits, the original A Nightmare On Elm Street still offers a number of chilling sick-dream images, memorable kills and a surprising dearth of the jokey quips that would come to cement the character of spectral child-killer Freddy Krueger (billed as "Fred" here) in the public's imagination ever since. When a cackling, invisible Freddy tosses a screaming teenage victim (Amanda Wyss) all around her room, butchering her with ruthless, bloody savagery, it's a disconcerting moment that would rarely be matched in the sequels to follow for dread-inducing power. Sadly, for all of writer/director Wes Craven's visual élan is depicting Freddy's dreamscape stalkings, he flops and stumbles when it comes to the "real world" drama in-between these setpieces, with a wooden performance from Heather Langenkamp as the most resourceful of Freddy's would-be victims and some leaden, flat-footed dialogue (I always chuckle at Langenkamp's delivery of the line, "SCREW SLEEP...!"). And while it's fun to see a baby-faced Johnny Depp receiving an "And introducing..." credit in his film debut, the film's awkward, sequel-baiting ending wrecks a lot of the goodwill generated by its tense, well-staged Cat & Mouse climax, with Langenkamp's Nancy pulling Freddy out of his dream world and into her ingeniously booby-trapped domicile that would make Kevin McCallister proud. All-in-all, the original Nightmare On Elm Street was never a classic and has plenty of clunky elements, but it has still weathered the years a lot better than most of its 80's slasher-movie contemporaries, and it's visually-imaginative premise would fuel one of the better horror franchises of the period (part 3, The Dream Warriors, remaining the high water mark).

[Monterey Jack]

-Little Monsters (1989): 2.5/10



Thoroughly unpleasant kid's movie about a young boy (a Wonder Years-era Fred Savage) who discovers a monster lurking under his younger brother's bed, a particularly obnoxious one named Maurice (Howie Mandel), who introduces him to the monster world underneath the floorboards of kids' beds everywhere, and the pleasures of being a prankish oaf. This charmless, ugly little number was obviously looking to emulate the creative comic anarchy of Beetlejuice, but lacking the distinct vision of a Tim Burton, comes across more akin to the overproduced likes of Drop Dead Fred, one of those movies that equates "frantic" and "loud" with "funny". It's way too disturbing to appeal to younger kids, and not clever or amusing enough to appeal to anyone over the age of twelve, with Mandell doing a poor-man's Michael Keaton throughout. Here's a typical, delightful scene...Mandell chugging a jar of apple juice, then urinating it out into the same container for a lunchtime surprise. Some of the makeup designs are somewhat creative, but if you want a family movie that takes the premise of a monster world lurking just outside the bedrooms of unsuspecting kids the world over, stick with Pixar's delightful Monsters, Inc..

[Paul MacLean]

Looser, goofier and spoofier than the first two, Army Of Darkness may disappoint those used to the geysers of gore from the previous two films, yet it’s an irresistibly silly and rousing adventure film, with Campbell’s wry 20th century putdowns making light of the sword & sorcery clichés and Raimi having fun with his skittery legions of bloodthirsty yet adorable skeletal soldiers.

When I lived in LA, my housemate worked on this movie. For about two months he'd sleep all day, and then leave for Palmdale at about 4:00 in the afternoon and get back at around 6:00 am. A lot of shows were filmed in Palmdale...




He started off as the assistant to the "Craft Service" (i.e. snack table) guy, but after chatting with one of the stunt coordinators and revealing he'd had fencing experience, he was offered the chance to play one of the army of the dead. The Craft Service guy wasn't very happy about that!