Halloween Horror Marathon 2022

[Monterey Jack]

Is there a new Army of Darkness bluray? I just watched the old Screwhead edition, and the picture was ok.

There's a new 4K from Scream Factory that's an upgrade from their previous collector's edition. The transfer on the (superior) theatrical cut is lovely. Review coming tonight...!

I had forgotten it was rated R! Not sure why, as it was so goofy, and only a few swear words. Compared to Super 8, which I watched with my kid for the first time and it was foul language city!

It blows my MIND the MPAA originally slapped it with an NC-17(!!). Nowadays it'd barely qualify for a PG-13.

[AndyDursin]

Universal wanted a PG-13 for ARMY OF DARKNESS. The theatrical cut was intended for one, but didn't get it. I guess the MPAA had a problem with one specific shot which got a NC-17 which is ironic considering the lightness of the movie's tone -- either way the movie barely qualified as R rated in 1993 and certainly would be a PG-13 today.

I loved the movie, saw it twice in theaters even though I had to sneak in some under-17 friends by buying them WAYNE'S WORLD tickets. In fact, I think for a period of nearly 4-5 months back in '92 they kept buying WAYNE'S WORLD tickets to get into the R rated movie we were seeing (which might explain how that movie kept making money for months on end lol).

[Monterey Jack]

Let the screaming...commence.



Sam Raimi in the Multiverse Of Madness...!

-Army Of Darkness (1993): 9/10

-Drag Me To Hell (2009): 9/10





Having returned recently to the big screen - after a nearly decade-long absence - with a mercenary Dr. Strange sequel (hey, if it gets him back in the saddle again...), it was high time to return to director Sam Raimi in his proper wheelhouse of low-budget, high-imagination schlock horror. 1993's Army Of Darkness found Raimi capping off his Evil Dead trilogy in high style, evolving the series from its claustrophobic Exorcist-in-the-boonies roots in the original to the live-action Itchy & Scratchy splatter cartoon of Dead By Dawn to a film that evokes old Ray Harryhausen adventure films of the 1960s. The redoubtable Bruce Campbell is back as wiseacre hero Ash, propelled backwards in time at the end of his previous adventure into a medieval milieu wherein he becomes the obligatory "Chosen One" who has been propecised to lead the grubby peasants of the era to victory over the armies of drooling, skeletal Deadites massing for an attack on the castle. Ash wants nothing to do with these "primitives" (well, there's a comely lass played by Embeth Davidtz he forms an attachment to), but he needs the Necronomicon - the book of the Dead - in order to get back to his proper time, so he begrudgingly agrees to whip these farmers and slapdash soldiers into a proper army of his own to beat back the tide of darkness and save the people...and maybe get l'il sugar on the side, baby.

The most elaborate and "expensive" of the Evil Dead movies (courtesy of funding from Dino Di Laurentiis), Army of Darkness is a much lighter take on the material Raimi had set up in the previous movies. With a noticeably reduced level of spurting grue, it's a film that, frankly, would probably be re-rated a PG-13 if re-submitted to the MPAA today. But that's okay...I like that this trilogy of films has a clear evolution from one installment to the next, and this entry may be the funniest and loosest of the three (if not quite scaling the ferocious, manic highs of Dead By Dawn). Campbell is the key...he finds an endless array of ways to turn physical punishment into comedy, and is the master of the sarcastic aside ("Good, bad...I'm the one with the gun"). With his handsomeness slightly offset with his cartoonish, thrusting chin, Campbell is a natural comedian, and his physical spryness during the film's bouts of violent slapstick would make the Three Stooges envious. Set to Joseph LoDuca's best score for the series (with an additIonal "March Of The Dead" theme courtesy of Danny Elfman), Army of Darkness is big-time fun, and an ideal "gateway drug" for younger horror fans and older viewers who are wussies about gore and nastiness.

Following AOD, Raimi would stretch himself into a myriad of genres...westerns (The Quick & The Dead), psychological thrillers (A SImple Plan, The Gift) and straight dramas (For Love Of The Game) before hitting the big time with a trilogy of expensive, wildly-popular films featuring everybody's favorite wall-crawler, Spider-Man. But, following a dissatisfying experience on the compromised third entry, Raimi needed a palate-cleanser, and returned to his old horror stomping grounds with his terrific 2009 entry Drag Me To Hell. Alison Lohman stars as Christine Brown, an ambitious young loan officer in an L.A. bank who's angling for a promotion when she's faced with the unpleasant task of denying a third loan extension for Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), a cadaverous old woman who begs her, literally on her knees, to keep her home. Incensed over being "shamed", Mrs. Ganush assaults Christine in the parking garage after her shift, tearing a button from her coat and cursing it with the spectre of the "Lamia", a Gypsy spirit who will torment Christine mentally and physically for three days, with increasing fervor, until it finally takes her soul straight to Hell where it'll writhe in agony forever. With the help of her skeptical but supporting boyfriend Clayton (Justin Long), a fortune teller (Dileep Rao) who informs Christine of her encroaching fate, and a psychic medium (Adriana Barraza) who lost a young soul to the Lamia's curse four decades earlier and has been aching for a rematch ever since, Christine must fight tooth and nail to find a way to avert the curse's methodical terrorization and avoid a toasty ensconcement in the Underworld.

Co-written with brother Ivan, Raimi's Drag Me To Hell is a rare example that, sometimes, you can go home again. His jackhammer ferocity with the camera and kinetic editing style remains undiminished after all this time, and aided by aggressively elaborate sound design and Christopher Young's superb score, he keeps the film's tension at a maximum while still delving into his trademark spasms of eccentric humor (yes, someone dances a jig). And Lohman sells the material with her carefully-plotted descent into madness, making for a horror heroine you're rooting for the whole way even as Raimi takes influence from the E.C. horror comics of the 1950s to end it with a fittingly bleak sense of moral justice. Terrific stuff.


-Smile (2022): 8/10



Eerie psychological shocker about a young doctor, Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick), in a psychiatric ward who witnesses first-hand the graphic suicide of a young woman convinced that she's being haunted by a grinning specter. Soon, Rose begins to witness strange visual and auditory hallucinations of her own, leading to a swift dissociation from her job, her worried fiance (Jessie T. Usher), and her sister Holly (Gillian Zinser). Initially terrified that he may have inherited a genetic madness from her late mother (over whose death she has been guilt-stricken for decades), Rose soon comes to realize she's the latest link in a chain of violent suicides, each one requiring a witness to pass the curse onto.

An effective throwback to that spate of early-00s horror thrillers - often remakes of Japanese movies - about curses passed along like a strain of the flu and the festering mental frailties that allow them in, Smile is a film that features a strong central performance by Bacon (inheriting her dad's eyes and her mom's mouth) and several squirmy, sustained sequences of dangling suspense (broken up with a handful of well-time jump scares). It would have been nice to know where this daisy-chain of suicidal death originated...it's kept purposefully vague. Yet Smile is still creepy and effective, a great way to kick off the scary season in multiplexes right now.

Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971): 7/10



Zohra Lampert stars in the titular role of this slow-burn suspense film as a young woman - recently released from a stay in a mental institution who, along with her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman) and his friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor) have travelled to a recently-purchased rundown farmhouse, which they hope to fix up nice and proper. But once there, they discover a squatter, Emily (Mariclare Costello), who they amiably agree to let stay one for a few days until she can get situated elsewhere. But Jessica finds herself haunted by ghostly, hushed whispers, seeming to emanate from the nearby lake where a young bride-to-be drowned almost a century earlier. This is not to mention the unfriendly townsfolk who all seem to have odd scars on their necks, or the mute, young blonde woman (Gretchen Corbett) who beckons to Jessica and leads her to an apparent murder...but did she really see a body? Are her visions of the sodden bride emerging from the lake to be taken as face value, or are they the products of a diseased mind slipping back into insanity?

Directed by John Hancock (who was later famously fired a few weeks into shooting Jaws 2), Let's Scare Jessica To Death is a film with many more questions than concrete answers, open to a myriad of interpretations. Is the young stranger Emily a temptress, or some sort of vampire? Are the townsfolk merely stand-offish around strangers from the Big City, or is there some sinister conspiracy afoot? I'm not quite sure, but the resulting film definitely holds you in its sway as it unspools, with a rural, autumnal atmosphere that sucks you in. Does it all add up in the end? Not quite, but it's a good, creepy ride while it lasts, and it thankfully doesn't overstay its welcome with a brisk 90-minute running time.

[Monterey Jack]

"Red...I should have known it would be Red."

-Body Parts (1991): 7/10

-Bad Moon (1996): 7.5/10





After writing or co-writing a series of genre favorites in the 1980s (The Hitcher, Near Dark), Eric Red turned to directing by the end of that decade, turning out a couple of interesting exercises in horror before personal issues caused him to resign from filmmaking. 1991's Body Parts (adapted by Red and three other screenwriters from the novel Choice Cuts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac) stars Jeff Fahey as a psychologist named Bill Chrushank, who works at diagnosing the neurosis that drive convicted killers to commit their heinous crimes. But following a horrible car accident, Bill is left clinging to life, his hopelessly mangled right arm amputated and replaced with one from a suitable donor. Bill makes a gradual recovery and returns to home life with his adoring wife (sexy Kim Delaney) and two young children. But Bill is soon beset by vivid visions of mayhem and blood, and looking into his new limb's origins is aghast to discover it belonged to a serial killer who ended the lives of over twenty people. Growing steadily more alarmed at his new arm seemingly having a will of its own, Bill seeks out two other men who received limbs from the late killer (Peter Murnik and veteran horror oddball Brad Dourif), and soons comes to realize that the doctor (Lindsay Duncan) who performed all three grafting operations finds their shared symptoms of sporadic violence to be less important than the scientific breakthroughs that led to them.

Body Parts is a film I didn't much care for the first time I viewed it a few years ago (on an ancient DVD transfer), but it plays a bit better with foreknowledge how it all stitches together (sorry). It's a tidy, updated Frankenstein riff that brings up some intriguing notions about the origins of evil...does it originate in the mind, the soul, or the flesh, and can said flesh retain its old owner's murderous tendencies even when separated from its host organism? That said, it only pays lip service to these philosophical quandaries in service of a slickly-shot, gristly pop horror flick, and Fahey's growing desperation at his situation gives the film a strong dramatic backbone. Red also has fun playing with genre conventions, like an Obligatory Car Chase that finds Fahey handcuffed to an antagonist in another car, and the frantic attempts to keep both cars parallel in mid-pursuit. It's not great (the gruesome climax is handled somewhat clumsily), but it's still a well-tooled thrill machine, supported by a fine orchestral score by Loek Dikker that utilized the keening warble of a musical saw to lend it a pleasing old-school sci-fi vibe.

1996's Bad Moon , meanwhile, locates to Nepal, where photographer Ted Harrison (Michael Pare) witnesses his girlfriend slashed to ribbons by a ravening wold right before he blows its head off with a shotgun. After recovering from his wounds, Ted returns to the U.S., and reaches out to reconnect with his older sister Janet (Mariel Hemingway) and nephew Brett (Mason Gamble), setting up his mobile home in their backyard. But family pooch Thor (portrayed by "Primo") a handsome German Shepherd, senses something...off about Uncle Ted. He's stealing off into the woods as the sun sets, only returning after dawn...and often bruised, bloodied and disheveled. Yep, Uncle Ted has a lycanthropic curse on his head, and his attempts to utilize the love of his family to suppress his ravenous lunar-induced impulses are slowly eroding, leaving Thor in a position to defend the woman and child in his care by any means necessary.

Adapted from the book Thor by Wayne Smith), Bad Moon was the victim of a wan advertising campaign and a theatrical release that landed it on the day after Halloween. D'oh! It's a shame, as it's a brisk (under 80 minutes) yet impactful werewolf thriller, with top-notch practical suit effects by Steve Johnson (although a key transformation sequence is marred by some seriously terrible mid-90's CGI) and a rousing climax that pits dog against wolf in a bloody battle for canine territoriality. Set to an alternately lyrical and aggressive score by Daniel Licht, Bad Moon is modest, but tremendously satisfying monster-movie fare, with a great doggo performance at its core. Good boy...!

[AndyDursin]

Quick thoughts on a few of your always-astute reviews MJ:

BAD MOON - Saw that by myself at a matinee the day after Halloween '96...had the same basic reaction of enjoying it. Wish they had taken out the dumb last scene but it was otherwise well done. Also seems to be little-seen by the masses.

BODY PARTS - Even though it's from the same anicnet master, the Imprint disc is a little clearer than Shout's, glad I plucked that out of the bargain bin. I liked this movie, and I did enjoy the over-the-top finale, which the movie seemed to be building towards as a major switch-up. Nicely shot in scope, and Loek Dikker's "singing saw" score was good too.

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH - Nice "mood piece" but that's kind of it. I enjoyed seeing it, but just not enough development in there -- one of those purposefully "vague" '70s movies that's a little too coy for its own good.

[Monterey Jack]

It's-a-me, Dario! It's Argento week...!

-The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970): 7.5/10



Suspense shocker about an American writer, Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) who, while on vacation with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) in Rome, witnesses a violent altercation between a young woman and a mysterious figure clad all in black while walking by a local art museum. His witnessing of the crime in process causes the killer to flee, leaving the gravely-wounded young woman behind. The police confiscate Sam's passport while they investigate the crime, causing Sam to engage in his own private sleuthing into the incident, coming to realize it's one of a spate of brutal murders of seemingly-unrelated women in the area. And now that he's intervened in the killer's latest, thwarted murder attempt, it's put Sam and Julia in his sights for a bit of bloody retribution.

The directorial debut of Italian horror specialist Dario Argento, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is rife with his trademark visual and narrative tics and obsessions, including black-gloved killers, key murders witnessed by a powerless-to-interfere spectator, spectacularly graphic death sequences and an overall atmosphere of baroque, surreal oddity. Plumage doesn't reach the fever pitch of tension and strangeness of later efforts like Deep Red or his masterwork Suspiria, yet it's a remarkably assured debut, set to a sighing, breathy score by the maestro Ennio Morricone.

Prime Chuck...

-Child's Play (1988): 7.5/10



A mortally-wounded serial killer, Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), in a fit of desperation, uses a voodoo incantation in order to transfer his soul into the only vessel at hand...a "Good Guy" doll in the toy store he's been cornered in by Chicago police detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon). Soon, said doll has made its way into the possession of a harried single mother, Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks), who gives it to her six-year-old son Andy (chipmunk-cheeked Alex Vincent), who thinks his new "Friend to the end" is the bee's knees...until his babysitter falls to her death from the window of his high-rise apartment in a freak accident. But this was no accident...seems like Andy's new doll (who dubs himself "Chucky", chased with a chirpy "Hi-de-ho, ha-ha-ha!") has been re-animated by Charles Lee Ray's spirit, and unless he wants to spend eternity trapped within his new, plasticine body, he needs to transfer it to a new, human host, and fast...young Andy himself. Nobody believes young Andy, of course, until Chucky leaves a string of deaths in his wake, causing the distraught Karen and Detective Norris to team up to end Chucky's reign of terror once and for all...or at least until the sequel.

Director Tom Holland (no, not the Peter Parker one), who co-wrote the screenplay with Jon Lafia and Chucky creator Don Mancini, takes a gimmicky, potentially silly premise (as many people who don't like these movies attest, "Why not just kick him across the room and run...?") and fashions a surprisingly effective pop thriller out of it. He generates genuine suspense out of the surefire gimmick of a child in danger, as well as audience sympathy for Andy's protestations as to his innocence as bodies keep piling up around him ("No, Mommy, Chucky did it...!") and Karen's growing suspicions about the doll (nicely modulated by Hicks' fine performance). And the animatronic and puppetry wizardry of Kevin Yager and his tech team bring Chucky convincingly to life, aided immeasurably by Dourif's enthusiastic vocal performance. Profane, hard-boiled and yet laced with an infectiously devious cackle, Dourif is having the time of his life, and it's no wonder this became one of the signature roles of his career. Hey, there are worse ways to earn a living...

[Monterey Jack]

-The Cat O'Nine Tails (1971): 8/10



A break-in at genetics research center - and the subsequent death of one of the employees, an "accident" that turns out to be the first in a string of vicious murders - embroils a reporter (James Franciscus) and a blind, ex-reporter (Karl Malden) in the investigation of what turns out to be a cover-up involving a sinister conspiracy within the company. Dario Argento's second giallo thriller is still advancing its way toward the more gruesomely baroque flourishes and bonkers plot twists to come in his later work, yet it's an engrossing, elegant mood piece, set to another evocatively sinister score by Ennio Morricone (Quentin Tarantino would crib a cue for the soundtrack of his film Death Proof)

More Chuck for the buck...!

-Child's Play 2 (1990): 8.5/10



Sorry, Jack, Chucky's back, in this improved second installment of the long-running franchise. Alex Vincent returns as young Andy Barclay, separated from his mother and put into foster care by the courts following the violent events of the previous movie. His sympathetic foster folks (Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham) try their best to help Andy settle into his new home, even if fellow housemate, sullen teen Kyle (Christine Elise), merely tolerates his presence. But the soul of Charles Lee Ray remains tethered to the charred remains of the Good Guy doll left at the climax of the previous picture, and when it's reconstructed by the toy company in order to determine just what went wrong with it (and stave off a series of lawsuits), Chucky returns to worm his way into Andy's new domicile and wreak bloody havok until he can transfer his soul into Andy's unwilling body.

The late John Lafia (who made significant contributions to the first movie's screenplay) steps into the directors chair here, and aided by the excellent cinematography of early-90s Tim Burton favorite Stefan Czapsky, crafts a film that is more archly stylized than its predecessor. Lafia has clearly studied the mechanics of how to generate and release tension, and his film is both more suspenseful and more darkly funny than the more conventionally-shot original. It's also where "quippy" Chucky was clearly born, and Brad Dourif continues to deliver a series of ace wisecracks with his particular brand of cracked enthusiasm (his dispatching of a stern schoolteacher, played by Beth Grant, is especially amusing). Best of all is a marvelous score by Graeme Revell, giving the movie a lush, foreboding-yet-fun soundscape that elevates the material immeasurably. The events all build to a socko climax set inside the "Play Pals" warehouse, which is like the Buzz Lightyear aisle from Al's Toy Barn in Toy Story 2 turned into a garishly byzantine labyrinth of boxed dolls and conveyor belts leading to any number of potential, mechanized demises. This was the high water mark of the franchise, and sadly it's all downhill from here...

[Monterey Jack]

-Tenebrae (1982): 8/10



Anthony Franciosa stars as Peter Neal, author of a string of graphic suspense novels often criticized for perceived misogyny. While promoting the new book that gives the film its title on a book tour in Rome, a series of real-life murders occur, the killer sending anonymous notes to Peter likening the deaths to ones in his books. Peter is now on the hot seat of controversy, guilt-ridden that a psychopath may be getting his kicks using his fiction as a springboard.

Dario Argento returns to his brand of grue-soaked mystery/suspense thrillers (following a brief detour into more supernatural shocks in films like Suspiria and Inferno) in this taut entry, full of grand guignol shocks, sinuous camerawork and set to a throbbing rock score by Claudio Simonetti and his "Goblin" cohorts. One could quibble about the convenience of certain narrative connections (especially one character literally being chased into the killer's hideout by a pissed-off Doberman Pinscher!), but Argento is a filmmaker more concerned with ratting a viewer's cage with graphic shocks and engrossing/convoluted plotting than making sure all of the finer details hold water.

Time to Chuck this franchise in the bin...

-Child's Play 3 (1991): 4/10



Wan third entry in the series skips ahead eight years, as the long-dormant Play Pals manufacturing plant where Chucky was left as a puddle of melted plastic goo at the climax of Child's Play 2 is refurbished for a new launch of the Good Guy doll line. The first doll off the line is given to the company's CEO (Peter Haskell), and, of course, turns out to be inhabited by Charles Lee Ray's pissed-off soul (he strangles the old man with a yo-yo string). Chucky then uses a computer search to locate Andy Barclay (now played by the bland Justin Whalin), who's matured into a sixteen-year-old burnout bounced from foster home to foster home and about to enter Kent Military School. The Chuckster mails himself to the school in hopes of locating his old friend-to-the-end, but then reconsiders, instead setting his sights on eight-year-old cadet Ronald Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers), figuring one body's good as another to transfer his soul into ("Chucky's gonna be a bro...!"). Now it's up to Andy to face his childhood fears one last time and bring Chuck's reign of death to an end as he works his way through the cadets and faculty on his way to eliminate Andy and claim young Tyler as his new vessel.

Directed with faceless efficiency by Jack Bender (who would go on to small-screen success directing numerous episodes of programs like Lost, Game Of Thrones and The Sopranos), Child's Play 3 is a film I found mediocre thirty years ago, and the passage of time has done it no favors. This is reheated leftovers all around, not as surprising as the original nor as stylish and taut as the second. Even the animatronic and puppetry effects seem second-rate, probably due to an accelerated production schedule that saw this hitting theaters only nine months after its predecessor. The military school setting seems like it has promise (at least it's different than the more homey settings of the first two), yet it basically devolves into a lot of sub-Full Metal Jacket basic training cliches...ones so weary the climax throws in a detour into a generic carnival! Set to a chittering "electronic woodchipper" synth score by Cory Lerios and John D'Andrea that does the film no favors, it's a film bereft of memorable shocks or even any good quips for a clearly-coasting Brad Dourif. It's an tremendously skippable movie, not as awful as the wack "meta" comedy approach of the overpraised Bride Of Chucky or the ghastly Seed Of Chucky (which is legitimately one of the worst horror movies I have ever sat through), yet leaving behind nothing other than a sense of one's wasted time.

[Monterey Jack]

-Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022): 7/10



Obligatory October Netflix adaptation of a Stephen King story stars Jaeden Martell (from the It movies) as a teenage boy named Craig, who agrees to read to a elderly - and wealthy - recluse named Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland) three times a week due to the his failing eyesight. The money he gets for his job is fine, but the relationship he develops with the elder man becomes more important over the middle and high school years, and he reciprocates their friendship by buying Mr. Harrigan a new iPhone. Harrigan scoffs initially, denigrating the new tech as a slippery slope, but quickly becomes enraptured by the device (even having his face buried in it during their thrice-weekly reading sessions). When Mr, Harrigan finally passes away (leaving Craig a significant monetary trust in his will to be put towards his college education and what lies beyond), the bereaved Craig slips his cell phone into Harrigan's pocket as he lies in his casket...only to begin receiving a series of strange texts from his old friend's number (and hearing the strains of Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" as Harrigan's ringtone at odd times). Is Mr. Harrigan completely settled in his new position six feet under? Does he still have gifts to bestow upon Craig, ones that may give into his darkest desires for frontier justice?

Not at all one of King's usual pop bone-chillers, Mr. Harrigan's Phone is more of a character drama with a light glaze of spectral spookiness hovering around the edges, and thus may disappoint his fans expecting an all-out scare show for the Halloween season. But if you go in with adjusted expectations, director John Lee Hancock (who also penned the screenplay based on the novella from King's recent collection If It Bleeds) turns it into a character study that's quietly compelling, anchored by fine performances by Martell and Sutherland (and set to a fine score by Javier Navarrete). It certainly won't give anyone nightmares, but as a study of bereavement and moving past personal trauma, it's a worthy film.

-Phenomena (1985): 7.5/10



Especially bonkers Dario Argento thriller about a teenage girl named Jennifer (a young Jennifer Connelly) who arrives at a luxe school for girls in Switzerland, arranged by her famous actor father. Soon, she's having sleepwalking spells, and vivid visions of brutal killings by a mysterious figure who has been committing murders for the past eight months. Did I mention that Jennifer also has the ability to call forth the insect kingdom to her aid when the mood strikes? With the help of a local entomologist (Donald Pleasence) - and his helper chimpanzee! - she's soon embroiled into her own investigation into the ghoulish crimes, which may be connected to events that transpired in a local mental institution over a decade earlier.

Often playing like three separate screenplays smushed together, Phenomena (which was slashed to pieces for its U.S. debut in 1986, and retitled Creepers) is a film full of Argento's usual fetishes (killers cloaked in inky blackness, surreal dream sequences, a pulsing rock soundtrack, victims taking a header through plate glass windows in luxurious slow-motion), as well as a penchant for shuddery gross-out imagery (dismembered body parts squirming with maggots and larvae are photographed in loving closeup). It's all fairly insane, even by his standards, but it's gruesomely compelling all the way, and the spectral luminosity of Connelly's presence helps make up for amusingly stilted acting that is as flat as the rest of her is not.

[Paul MacLean]

Poltergeist (9/10)



Sorry, didn't get around to jotting down my thoughts on revisiting this movie until now (thanks to my day job's 47 hour work week crammed into Mon.-Thurs, and then a video shoot during last weekend!).

Anyway, despite the terrible projection and sound issues (which I detailed here -- viewtopic.php?t=7747), Poltergeist remains a hugely impressive dynamo of a film. We've all seen it, there's no reason to go over the plot details again, but I wanted to note some of the things that leapt-out at me.

Poltergeist is an incredibly well-acted film, with JoBeth Williams giving arguably the best performance. Her role as a mother who is terrified but bravely resolved to protect her children, is both convincing and compelling. She deserved an Oscar nomination as far as I'm concerned. Further on that, one of the reasons Poltergeist works so well is the human element. Yes, we have ghosts and slithering pork chops and corpses emerging from the ground, but it is the film's ability to draw us into the characters' plight that makes the experience more affecting -- and frightening.

Poltergeist offers-up not just one, but two climaxes: the rescue of Carol-Anne (which could have been a perfectly satisfactory way to wrap-up the story), and then tops that with the wildly violent (and visually stunning) final sequence where the ghost vengefully destroys everything in and around the house. (Funny story -- when I saw Poltergeist in the theatre back in the 80s, these three kids actually got up and left toward the end of the moving van scene -- because they obviously assumed the film was over! )

Amidst the scares and emotional intensity, Poltergeist finds time for some hysterically funny moments as well -- Craig T. Nielson getting his tie stuck in the phone cord, the Hulk action figure riding the horse, Diane and Tangina's brief "You've never done this before!" argument before Diane enters the "netherworld", etc.

I was struck by the film's heavy reliance on practical effects. Even in 1982, there were quite a few effects which could have been executed optically, but I was impressed with Spielberg's decision to do a lot of them on-set. The whole "Carol-Anne rescue" scene relies almost entirely on a lighting effect, with virtually no opticals (save for the "smoke bursts" and the giant skull). Deploying Hitchcock's old Vertigo "push-pull" (i.e. zoom-dolly) to elongate the corridor was ingenious (and convincing). The "throat / birth canal" from hell, with the menacing tentacle is far-more scary and disturbing (and realistic) than a composite model / animation effect could ever be. The rotating set was also quite ingenious, creating the perfectly convincing effect of the characters being sucked towards the "throat".

Jerry Goldsmith's score is one of his best, and helps create much of the emotional resonance and terror. Goldsmith originally wanted to use a lot of synthesizers with the orchestra in the score, but Spielberg (who does not like electronic music) didn't want that kind of sound. I like a lot of Goldsmith's synth work, but I say Spielberg made the right call in this case. Goldsmith was forced to rely on acoustical solutions, some of which he'd used before -- like the waterphone and rubrods (previously used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and the bass slide whistle (from Planet of the Apes), and he even uses even saw (!) in one cue, but I think they work better than synths would have. (The word is one of the reasons Spielberg didn't work with Goldsmith more often was because Goldsmith loved synthesizers and wouldn't give them up.)

One final observation: I find it hard to believe Tobe Hooper directed this film. Could the man who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Lifeforce really have drawn such nuanced and believable performances from this cast (in particular the kids)? Moreover, the establishing shots of the Freeling house at night with the diffusion fog look identical to the night shots of of Elliot's house in E.T. (Jerry Goldsmith also said that Tobe Hooper was not involved with post-production and he worked exclusively with Spielberg.)

In any case, regardless of who "called the shots", Poltergeist, all said and done, is one of the best films of the 1980s -- a near-flawless picture which holds-up incredibly well even forty (!) years later, as both scary thrill-ride and touching family drama.

Looking forward to that 4K disc (and a proper viewing!).

[Monterey Jack]

-The Watcher In The Woods (1980): 7/10

-Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983): 7.5/10





Hey, remember when Disney experimented with making lite horror movies in the early 80s? Hard to believe in this day and age of megabudget IP blandness, but they did, and though the movies were compromised by reshoots, both stand as interesting, sporadically creepy time capsules of an era that Disney has tried to sweep under the rug. 1980's The Watcher In The Woods (adapted from a novel by Florence Engel Randall) tells the tale of an American family who move into a lavish mansion in the English countryside they get for a steal. Peter and Helen Curtis (David McCallum and Carroll Baker), as well as their young daughters, Ellie and Jan (Halloween moppet Kyle Richards and a pre-For Your Eyes Only Lynn-Holly Johnson), are charmed by the rustic settings, but soon a number of spooky manifestations begin to occur. There's a mysterious glow emanating from the nearby woods, younger daughter Ellie hearing eerie, whispering voices and elder daughter Jan seeing images of a blindfolded teenage girl her own, age, holding out her hands mutely in a pleading gesture. How do these connect to the mysterious disappearance of the daughter of the house's elderly owner, Mrs. Ayleswood (Bette Davis), some forty years earlier?

Directed by John Hough (who made the terrific 1973 chiller The Legend Of Hell House), The Watcher in The Woods is effective in the early passages in setting a tone of rural chilliness, and there are many effective passages depicting the hovering presence of...something lurking in the woods with impressionistic, voyeuristic camerawork and Stanley Myers' atmospheric scoring (which makes the grating lead performance by an overly-demonstrative Johnson somewhat easier to stomach). However, when it comes to actually letting the audience know What It All Means, the film stumbles to a heavily-modified ending that's awkward and unsatisfying. It's probably the "best" of the three(!) ending Disney shot during the film's protracted post-production (the first ending was previewed in 1980, then the movie was yanked from theaters fast after mediocre test screenings and the final cut didn't hit theaters until the fall of '81), and yet it doesn't live up to the effective build in the movie's first two thirds. Maybe it makes more sense in the original book, but that tome is long out of print and impossible to get for a reasonable price today, so what he get is muddled and vague. Still, for a while, Woods delivers an effective suspense vehicle for younger kids who want to dip their toe into "scary movies" beyond the bland Disney likes of Hocus Pocus.

1983's Something Wicked This Way Comes (adapted by Ray Bradbury from his celebrated fantasy novel) takes place in in the small town of Green Town, Illinois, during an October season where a travelling carnival creeps into town in the dead of night. Run by the elegant yet sinister Mr. Dark (the great Jonathan Pryce), the various carnival attractions promise the townsfolk the realization of their deepest desires (for female affection, for money, for the long-vanished bloom of their youthful beauty)...but exacting a terrible price for each person who gives in to temptation. Two young boys, Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) and his best friend Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) see through Mr. Dark's agreeable facade to the beckoning, supernatural con artist underneath, and find themselves hunted by Dark's carnival cronies (including his right-hand woman, the Dust Witch, played by the alluring Pam Grier), even as Will's elderly father (Jason Robards) must push through the regrets of the past in order to save both boys from a truly dire fate .

Directed by Jack Clayton (who made one of the all-time great haunted-house films, 1961's The Innocents), Something Wicked This Way Comes does an adequate job of capturing the nostalgic poetry of Bradbury's text, and the film has a lovely, autumnal atmosphere expertly captured by cinematographer Stephen H. Burum and composer James Horner (providing one of his best early efforts, replacing a lovely but morose score by Georges Delerue). Yet another Disney production plagued by post-production tinkering, it's less distracting here, save for a reshot sequence where the boys are assailed by hundreds of hairy black tarantulas (which was a shot a year after principal photography wrapped, and it's painfully obvious the two young leads are a year older) and a climax filled with snazzy F/X that turn a tale of adolescent growth and adult nostalgia into an ILM light show. That said, it's one of the few "Dark Disney" efforts from the late 70s and early 80s that really holds together for the most part, and the fine performances by the two young leads anchor it nicely.

-Werewolf By Night (2022): 7/10



D+ MCU special (presented in nostalgic B&W) about the hunt for a the titular monster (as well as another Marvel Comics beastie) at a remote manor, all in order to gain access to a "Bloodstone" with mythical properties. Directed by composer Michael Giacchino (who, naturally, provides his own music), this is a neat little 55-minute snack, stylish and with spurts of uncharacteristic-for-the-MCU gore (which is probably half the reason the special's in B&W to begin with). A neat little seasonal diversion for MCU fans.

[Monterey Jack]

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea...

-The Fog (1980): 8/10

-Dead & Buried (1981): 8/10





Seaside shivers in today's twofer of terror tales involving small seaside communities facing terror from without and within. 1980's The Fog is set in the small California community of Antonio Bay, where exactly 100 years ago, on the night of April 21st, the founding fathers of the township lured a colony of lepers hoping to build a nearby community for themselves to crash upon the rocks, smashing their ship, the Elizabeth Dane, in half and causing it to sink with all hand aboard, all in order to steal their cache of gold and allow their own community to flourish. This unsavory aspect of the town's foundation comes to the attention of Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) during one of his customary late-night alcoholic binges, and he's ashamed that he's a direct descendant of the bloodline that conspired to murder in order to prosper. But then, on the anniversary of that terrible night, a spectral fog rolls into town, one containing the half-glimpsed cadavers of the Elizabeth Dane's waterlogged crew. They're rightfully miffed at their their watery entombment, and looking to terrorize the town (including the local DJ played by Adrienne Barbeau, a hitchhiker played by Jamie Lee Curtis and the town's selectwoman, played by Curtis' mom, Janet Leigh) until they take the souls who are directly linked to the bloodlines of the original six conspirators and allow them to finally rest.

DIrector John Carpenter's direct follow-up to the smash success of 1978's Halloween, The Fog (which he co-wrote with producer Debra Hill) is a film that positively drips with atmosphere, Dean Cundey's gorgeously moody lighting (beautifully rendered on Scream Factory's excellent new UHD release) contributing immeasurably to the movie's campfire tale eeriness. You can practically smell the salt and seaweed in the air and feel the cold, dank, rotted hands of the film's supernatural slashers as they close around your throat...and squeeze...

The plotting and characterization is fairly rote, but the film's talented cast rises to the material with enthusiastic unease (and Curtis earns her Scream Queen stripes, even if she's more of a supporting player, Barbeau taking much of the lead in reporting the Fog's advance through the town from her lonely, isolated perch in the town's lighthouse/radio station), and Carpenter provides one of the best scores he ever penned for one of his films, lending the proceedings an appropriately chilly mood.

Set in another quaint seaside community, 1981's Dead & Buried relocates to Potter's Bluff, a small town where strangers receive a less-than-friendly reception from the locals, left bludgeoned, stabbed, burned and worse while the townsfolk take pictures and films of their inexplicably ghoulish crimes. The local sheriff, Dan Gillis (James Farentino) is baffled by the rash of deaths and disappearances, while the town's mortician, WIlliam G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson) works his magic restoring the buildup of fresh cadavers to the semblance of life and vitality. What sinister conspiracy is afoot?

Directed by Gary Sherman (from a screenplay penned by the Alien team of Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett), Dead & Buried is a film that develops the paranoid dread of a 70's conspiracy thriller enclosed within the structure of a gross-out 80s pop horror flick (with top-notch makeup effects by the great Stan WInston). The movie boasts some truly shocking kills, and the ultimate explanation for what's going on has the ironic chill of a top-notch Twilight Zone episode. An overlooked little horror gem.

[BobaMike]

Goosebumps (7/10)
Mars Attacks (6/10)

Watched these 2 with my 10 y.o. this week, in what turned into a Danny Elfman (and Jack Black) double feature

I had forgotten how decent Goosebumps is- for a kids' movie, it is pretty well made. Good FX, humor that isn't stupid, and the kid actors hold their own against a relatively restrained Jack Black. Elfman's score has a good theme, but it doesn't get used enough. (Suprisingly, the sequel, scored by Dominic Lewis, is a worse film, but a better score!)

Mars Attacks fit the spooky theme, because I think my son was creeped out by all the skeletons and sewn up body parts. I hadn't seen it in years, and I only own this on DVD (a very early one that was in the cardboard case!). I guess the FX held up, but it was all pretty blurry on our big tv. I like the *idea* of this movie- the stars look like they are having fun, the music is a nice Herrmann/1950s homage, and it has some kooky Tim Burton stuff, but it just isn't that funny! It needed more zany stuff, and less characters.

[Monterey Jack]

"Quit playin' wit'cherself, Hoopah...!"

-The Funhouse (1981): 8/10

-Poltergeist (1982): 10/10





Two recent UHD upgrades for two of director Tobe Hooper's best films made for a terrorific twofer today. 1981's The Funhouse was his first major studio feature, the tale of a quartet of small-town teens (Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, Largo Woodruff and Miles Chapin) who decide on a whim to stay the night hidden inside the local carnival's voluminous, elaborate funhouse for a little secluded nookie, but witness the death of the carnival's fortune teller at the hands of a grunting, inarticulate carny who wears an old-school Frankenstein mask. When said mask is removed by the carny's belligerent father (Kevin Conway, one of three carnival barkers he portrays) when Madame Zena's death is revealed to him, the teens are shocked by the hideously deformed face underneath (courtesy of makeup whizzes Rick Baker and Craig Reardon). When they inadvertently give away their presence, they're hunted relentlessly through the no-longer-funhouse's endless array of moldering, cobwebby nooks and crannies by the monstrous progeny of The Barker, trying to find a way out before they become another in a string of unsolved murders that have been left in the wake of the carnival's small-town comings and goings.

The Funhouse is a movie that never re-invents the wheel, hewing to the obligatory formulas and cliches of early-80s teen schlock horror (including an opening fakeout with Berridge's kid brother playing a prank on her in the shower that owes an obvious debt to Halloween), and yet Hooper - aided by Andrew Laszlo's excellent Panavision lensing and John Beal's fiendishly playful score - gives the proceedings a stylish kick that makes this modestly-budgeted production feel much grander and lusher. The cast is likable enough for this kind of thing, the monster design is suitably freaky, and the overall tone is scarifying without being needlessly sadistic in the gore department. A modest but highly enjoyable calling card that no doubt got Hooper his next assignment...

...which would be the spectacular 1982 Steven Spielberg production Poltergeist). A dark mirror image of Spielberg's other summer-of'-82 tale of suburbia encroached upon by an outside force, it's the story of the Freeling family, Mom & Dad Diane (JoBeth Williams) and Steven (Craig T. Nelson), children Dana (Dominique Dunne) Robbie (Oliver Robbins) and li'l Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), and doggie E-Buzz. They're happily ensconced in the Cuesta Verde estates when Carol Anne awakens the house one night as she converses with the static on the television set late at night. Soon, the "TV People" reveals themselves to be spirits who whisk away Carol Anne to another spectral plane, causing her distraught parents to seek out the assistance of a trio of paranormal investigators (led by Beatrice Straight) and a professional "house cleanser" (the diminutive Zelda Rubinstein), who determine the girl - whose disembodied voice cries out from every corner of the house - is still somewhere in the house. Now, it's just a matter of determining a way to access the "Other Side" and rescue Carol Anne from a premature trip into "The Light", where she will be lost forever.

A lavish updating of the old Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost", Poltergeist is a film blessed with spectacular visual effects, immersive sound design and one of Jerry Goldsmith's most brilliant scores. And yet it's giving the audience a likable family unit at the core that lends the film's shivery shocks real dramatic and emotional heft. Williams, in particular, delivers a superb performance, her Momma Bear instincts kicking into overdrive as she fights to rescue her youngest child from her supernatural kidnappers. There's genuine anguish underneath the obligatory roller-coaster shocks, and it makes the narrative genuinely moving (never more so than when Williams - her hair blown back by a wind machine - gasps and cries out, "I felt her, I felt her...she went through my SOUL...!"). Debate has raged for the last 40 years over who "really" directed Poltergeist, and will probably continue for the next forty. Spielberg's guiding hand is evident in every frame (and the film no doubt would have not had the same lavish production values without him calling the shots), and yet there are fleeting moments of rusty gristliness that are pure Hooper (like one of the paranormal investigators, played by Max Casella, imagining he's graphically peeling his own face off during a late-night hallucination, a classic example of "80's PG"). Whoever is responsible doesn't ultimately matter...the resulting film remains one of the greatest haunted house chillers ever made, one that hasn't lost on iota of its ability to freeze the blood and warm the heart over the past four decades.

[AndyDursin]

Yes Poltergeist bears all the hallmarks of the man who brought us Spontaneous Combustion, Invaders From Mars and The Manger!