Children of the Corn (2020)

JUNE 20, 2023

GENRE: CULT, KILLER KID
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Stephen King’s short story “Children of the Corn” is only 30 pages long, and yet it has somehow inspired a lengthy short film (retitled Disciples of the Crow, and worth seeing!) and three (3) feature films, not to mention all of the sequels. The 2009 version was more faithful to King’s story than the 1984 one, but both suffered from being clearly drawn out from a 30 page story (Disciples had no such issue, as it ran the same length in minutes). The two best films in the series were both sequels; 1994’s Urban Harvest and 2018’s Runaway, which was curiously a sequel to the remake despite being part of the Dimension brand (the 2009 film was a Syfy one), as if being free from King’s not particularly expansive story allowed the filmmakers to come up with something that worked as a genuine feature film. But in Children of the Corn (2020)’s case, writer/director Kurt Wimmer tossed out King’s story entirely in favor of something that… doesn’t work as a feature film. Weird tack.

To be fair, the one line synopsis is close enough: the kids in a Nebraska town kill all of the adults and worship a corn-dwelling monster called He Who Walks (the “Behind the Rows” part is dropped). But this all happens within the present day timeline of the film, as opposed to something that happened years ago like in the story/previous movies. The unsettling idea of stumbling into a town that’s been adult-free for the better part of a decade is a big part of what gives the story its power, so to toss it in favor of having it happen within the story (and without any outsiders) is an odd choice. And maybe it’d work as a prequel of sorts, fleshing out the briefly seen events from the other movies as a film of its own, but with the different town name (Rylstone) no Malachi or Isaac, etc. it doesn’t fit into anything, so it stands alone as a total reimagining.

Which would be fine if it was, you know, any good. But even though it’s reworked from the ground up it feels more padded than ever. The film opens with an older teen walking into an orphanage and killing all of the adults who work there, which prompts the sheriff and some local “good ol boys” to pump some lethal gas into the place to take him out, shrugging off that it’ll also kill the children who were staying there (and not being targeted by the older boy). The lone survivor, a 12ish girl named Eden, then rallies the other kids in town to wipe out their parents, but they attribute their anger to the parents ruining the corn with some experimental growth hormone, killing the town’s economy and now planning to take a buyout from the government, which (per the kids) “steals their future.” An interesting idea, sure, but… why the orphanage massacre, then? It’s basically forgotten after the first few minutes, and robs the film of a dozen potential cult members. Then again the whole “angry at the parents for selling the town out” angle barely factors into anything either after a while, so it’s just part of the random plotting that Wimmer keeps relying on throughout the film’s seemingly endless 93 minutes.

My favorite example happens around a half hour in or so, when our hero Bo (Elena Kampouris) and her brother decide to have a mock trial at the town hall to plead their parents not to agree to the government buyout. To do this they tie their father’s hands together while he sleeps, then wake him up and tell him he needs to come to the town hall (added hilarity: they keep saying the trial is at 10pm, but don’t even wake him up until 10:30, so they will be an hour late for their own idea. Stupid lazy kids), adding not to wake up their mother, who they’ve already bound as well, But then they cut outside and the mom is with them anyway, with both of them just sort of wearily going along with this kidnapping the way a parent might humor their kid by laughing along with them at Paw Patrol or something. Then they see signs of violence, and do they cut their parents loose? Nope, they just act like Eden’s being a little weird, despite crashed cars and the like. It’s like ten straight minutes of the film where no one acts like a human being, all so the plot can work. That it’s never clear what Bo was going to do if Eden hadn’t already started killing everyone in town just adds to the “Why are we watching this?” feeling.

It doesn’t help that Kampouris is noticeably older than the character she’s playing. We’re all used to seeing much older actors portraying teens (Kampouris was 22, 23 at the time of the production, playing 17), but it has a much different effect in this particular story, where the kids are the evildoers. Bo and her two friends (same age, if not older) aren’t on board with Eden’s wrath of terror, but it should come off as same-aged kids (KIDS) realizing right from wrong. Instead it’s like a trio of camp counselors catching their charges in the act of wrongdoing – of course they’re not going to go along with a bunch of 10 year olds! They look like grad students! Not that I hold Carpenter’s Village of the Damned up in high regard (though it isn’t nearly as bad as its rep), but David’s hesitance to join the others always played out perfectly, because you could feel his struggle between knowing what was right and wanting to fit in with his peers. There’s no such suspense here; Bo and her pals just kind of fret for nearly an hour until they finally do something. At least if they were the same age as Eden and the others, it could read as “well she’s a little kid too, she doesn’t know what to do!” but it’s impossible to believe such a thing when the character seems old enough to go ahead and have a kid of her own.

And as an Isaac substitute, Eden isn’t particularly scary – the most intense she gets in the entire thing is early on, right after the orphanage sequence, when she freaks out over being unable to fit a piece into a jigsaw puzzle. She also dons a “Red Queen” persona for a bit, which amused me because it reminded me of the Resident Evil movies, and it was all the interference on Ultraviolet (also starring Milla Jovovich) that led Wimmer to retire from directing for a while. Why he came back for this is beyond me, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the Red Queen thing crossed his mind as well. Either way, it’s dropped after about thirty minutes for some reason; I was kind of into the idea of Eden having two personalities (a more innocent one and the more sinister “Red Queen”) but it, like most of the movie’s odd plot points, ultimately doesn’t mean much.

I also thought of Deadly Friend, though not because of any particular wacky death scene (it’s actually a pretty tame movie; most of the carnage occurs off screen and when we do see something it’s usually pretty phony looking anyway). At the end, a character seemingly wins the day and escapes, only for a burnt/decaying Eden to reappear for one final scare, and it’s just as absolutely WTF as the ending of Craven’s misfire, where the robot tears itself out of Kristy Swanson’s body. Eden looks like some kind of messed up Good Guy doll in the scene, and it makes zero sense whatsoever, but honestly it’s probably the best part of the movie, since it’s at least kind of memorable. It’ll take years before I forget that shot, whereas I’m already hazy on the film’s interminable middle section. And as for the villainous corn god, he basically looks like an Asylum Mockbuster version of Groot, which is kind of amusing at least but they (as is often the case in this series) only show him in brief glimpses, so he fails to become much of a genuine threat. Wimmer ought to have gone full Sharknado and embraced how silly it looked so we could at least generate some “get drunk and laugh” entertainment out of his scenes, but they’re so brief they only remind us of how plodding the rest of the movie was (and also wonder how it is the adults managed to ruin all these crops with this genetically engineered stuff without encountering a 15 foot tall beast that is angry about it).

It's a shame too, because there are glimpses of an interesting movie here and there. The shots of the dying town, the idea that the heroine actually agrees with the villains but just doesn’t want to go about fixing the issue the same way (her ideas are much less murdery), the occasional moment where the kids are just being kids among all the atrocities – this all works! And I applauded the use of a particular Twilight Zone clip, even if it was kind of on the nose it was still funny. But Wimmer’s screenplay continually settles for introducing interesting ideas only to drop them just as quickly and revert back to the protagonist being kind of dumb, or at least not proactive enough (though the former takes precedence; at one point she tasks Eden – who is currently painting the crops with fresh blood from *something* – to meet the reporter coming to town that has promised to help, instead of asking one of her friends who were part of the plan to get her there in the first place). I kept thinking that it felt like the first 20 pages of the script were tossed out, which would explain/help some of the film’s issues, but not the fact that its hero stands around doing nothing for most of the runtime and the villain rarely delivers any real menace. There are certainly worse entries in this series, but they tend to suck from the ground up – it’s far more frustrating to see one that seemingly has some ideas (and Wimmer has done some good work in the past!) but never do anything with them. I suppose it’s possible he got micromanaged or even replaced by producers (reshoots would certainly explain all of the dropped ideas; did anyone who saw it in 2020 notice anything different when it was finally released for the rest of us this year?), but I can’t imagine there was much second guessing on Children of the Corn 12, during a pandemic no less.

There are two deleted scenes of zero interest and a trailer reel for RLJE releases, including Mandy which I found amusing – it’s been like four years since that came to disc and they’re still pushing it! But who can blame them, it’s a great movie and they probably want to remind folks that they put out good stuff, too. I bought the disc at Target because I was just tickled that they had it at all in their increasingly tiny movie section (which is otherwise just pretty much blockbusters and TV show boxed sets) and I liked seeing in my cart next to bananas and cat food, but if you’re somehow still curious enough to watch the damn thing, it’ll be on Shudder next week. I doubt it’ll help increase subscriptions. Speaking of buying it, even though it was already on clearance, it still cost more than this site has generated in revenue all year, so it's very possible that this is the last time I ever write a Children of the Corn review, which makes me kind of sad in a weird way. Whenever I make self-deprecating jokes about what I do, I frequently make the Corn franchise the target (i.e. "I haven't seen Raging Bull, but I HAVE seen all twelve Children of the Corn movies, so it evens out."), so it's like the end of an era, possibly!

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Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (PARAMOUNT PLUS)

Like most people in the world (including its crew, more on that soon!) I was disappointed with The Ghost Dimension, the alleged "finale" of the Paranormal Activity franchise that didn't really tie anything up and if anything just added more plot threads to the already overburdened canon for the once simple franchise. So when I heard that the revival film, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (no relation to Patrick Swayze OR Australian sugar cubes) would be a standalone entry with no ties to Katie, Toby, etc, I was kind of relieved. Not only would I get to spare myself a refresh of the last few entries to properly arm myself for the storyline, but maybe there would be a "back to basics" kind of approach that would allow the series to actually be scary again.

Alas, my hopes went out the window in the first scene, when I saw that the film was presented in widescreen. As I've said before, the appeal of the "found footage"/POV aesthetic is that, when it works well (i.e. the first film) you can believe you're watching something that actually happened, which doesn't quite work when it looks exactly like every other movie out there. Some scenes don't even bother to try to sell the illusion of a first person perspective and present their moments in a traditional 3rd person manner, which isn't the worst idea (if anything I've called for it to be tried), but without changing the aspect ratio or putting up a timestamp/red dot "recording" kind of overlay, there's often no real way to know if you're watching POV footage or not. As with IMAX sequences in otherwise standard films, or Freddy's Dead with its "put your glasses on now" gimmick, there needs to be a clear "break" to prime the audience for this kind of change, but that never happens here. There's a dinner scene that is either switching back and forth between the two, or suggesting a very nimble cameraman - the fact that I'm not sure is kind of a problem.

So the movie curiously hamstrings itself with the found footage approach, but "cheats" out of it on occasion with no discernible rhyme or reason, and I spent half my viewing wondering why. The plot calls for cameras, of course; our heroine, Margot, is making a documentary about her search for her mother, who abandoned her as an infant and left her not knowing any of her family. Via 23andme she discovers a relative in an Amish community, so her and her cameraman (plus a kooky boom guy they hire) head there, and thankfully it only takes about nine seconds after their arrival for things to not seem right (I'll give it this much, it doesn't drag out the spooky goings on as much as some other films in this sub-genre). And apart from a few snafus with the POV approach (like an early scene where there is clearly two cameras filming the action but only one has been established), so far it's all more or less in the usual wheelhouse for this sort of thing - but it's at this point it seems that it would have made more sense if the characters dropped the cameras and the filmmakers presented the rest of the story traditionally, with perhaps one or two cam sequences for good measure and also trailers.

In fact, given the religious/demon elements that the film centers on, I couldn't help but think of [Rec] at times, and in turn, think about how that series' 3rd film took this approach, starting off with cameras and then switching out of that mode in order to give the story its ideal presentation. That's not what happens here; the narrative is actually pretty interesting (SPOILER: you might be reminded of The Sentinel), but it's constantly being held back by the needless POV structure. The best of the other films had their characters set up mounted cameras to avoid us in the audience having the "why are they filming this?" questions (no one will question why an oscillating fan is still filming!), but there's no such luck here. As a result, in order to get key information the characters have to film themselves doing everything, even going to the auto parts store to buy a car battery (considering they're in Amish country and have to rely on a tempermental generator to charge things, you'd think they'd be a little choosier with when they turned the cameras on). With every interesting story reveal, I kept thinking how much more engaged I'd be if I wasn't forced to constantly wonder why the cameras were being brought out, or - given that the cams WOULD be abandoned at times - why the director wasn't switching out of it there as well.

And yeah, you can "just go with it" the way you did for things like Parks & Rec (which aped The Office's documentary structure but never actually had a camera crew present in its narrative), but that doesn't quite work for a horror movie. By constantly being flip flopped between being a fly on the wall or being "in their head", the scare potential is constantly being betrayed by (attentive) viewer confusion. When a character descends into a long shaft, it could have been an atmospheric creepfest, and a typical horror film would have a very wide shot to illustrate the depth of the hole and how isolated the character was, but instead we get her POV... sometimes. Sometimes it goes up to her friend's POV, who is sure to grab his camera and look at the hole as he operates the winch. As a result, it ends up being kind of a dull scene (not helped by the fact she goes back up almost instantly), hampered by nonsensical character decisions being made in order for us to see all of it. There's another scene where they have to restart the generator during a snowstorm, and I couldn't help but think how tense it might have been with traditional angles and editing, instead of me wondering "Don't they have flashlights? Why are they risking dropping their expensive camera in the snow to film themselves trudging through snow? Do they plan to use this footage in their family documentary?" It's that sort of thing, over and over, until I just kind of checked out. As with 3D, the POV aesthetic is a tool, and a good one when wielded correctly, but when misused it's just a turn off, at least for me. If you're going to ask me to deal with shakey camerawork, a lead character who we rarely see, etc., there should be some benefit to the approach, but I could find no such thing here.

Which is a shame, because the climax is great. If you participated in any of the "drive thru" haunts that cropped up last year due to covid, you might feel right at home when two survivor characters attempt to escape the burning farm as various possessed (or just angry?) townsfolk chase after them, as does the film's new demon - it really felt like one of those Halloween Horror mazes that I drove through last year because doing them in person wasn't possible. Also the final scene is pretty chilling, as is the implication for what could happen next if this film proves to be a success for Paramount Plus (and yes, I AM annoyed I couldn't see this in theaters; it's actually kind of ironic given its widescreen presentation that this is the first one that actually went direct to video). But alas, too little too late.

Not to mention that this is a weird way to try to revive a dying franchise after six years. Someone from the film likened it to Season of the Witch, and while that is an acceptable point of reference in theory, it doesn't quite work the same way. Halloween III came out one (1) year after Halloween II, a film that seemingly finished off the Michael Myers story for good. This film is coming after a narrative that was riddled with unanswered questions, and after several years to boot, so the fact that it's unrelated AND doesn't even really FEEL like an entry in the series (they don't even do "Night #1"!) makes the Halloween III comparison a poor one. What the series needed was something like H20, a soft reset that brought back the elements and characters we enjoyed and got things back on track while ignoring specific beats that weren't working. I mean, even Spiral had more connection to its older franchise than this had - this often felt like an unrelated movie entirely that was slapped with the PA name.

It was released alongside Unknown Dimension, a documentary about the franchise thus far, covering each film in sequence. One might think it's too new of a franchise to warrant the "Crystal Lake Memories treatment", but one should consider that the films' blu-rays have been noticeably bare bones so far - no commentaries, no behind the scenes pieces, etc. Some have deleted scenes or extended versions (sans any commentary explaining why the scenes were excised), but that's been about it, so this doc is really the first time we've gotten to hear the cast and crew (pretty much everyone of note is here) talk about how their film(s) came together. One entry was basically shot and reshot up until the release date, which finally explains why its trailer had so much footage that wasn't in the film itself. In fact it might have even been the first time I actually saw what any of the directors looked like besides Oren Peli, because I've met him (a good place as any to note I am in the film as well, as a "horror expert" or whatever the hell they call me when I do these things).

It's also refreshingly candid; the director of Ghost Dimension alludes to there being too many cooks in the kitchen and having the 3D element forced on him, and Jason Blum flat out says that one and PA4 are bad. And that makes me wish they had waited a bit longer so they could be frank about the new film as well; the cast and crew appear near the end, speaking from the set about how they want to bring the series back, but noticeably absent from this section is the film's writer, who has noted (via Twitter) that there were unfortunate compromises on this new one as well. If the IMDb is to be believed (...) another film is on the way, apparently (subtitled The Other Side, so we might get someone filming their trip to the dentist to get braces), and will return to the world of Katie and Kristi. But honestly I don't care so much about that as I do the producers taking a good hard look at what made the first film as good as it was and trying to revive THAT, with or without video cameras.

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Blu-ray Review: The Brotherhood of Satan (1971)

SEPTEMBER 5, 2021

GENRE: CULT
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

My memory is getting better! Well, maybe not. See, when I requested a review copy of The Brotherhood of Satan from Arrow, it was because I was sure I hadn't seen it and it sounded up my alley. But when I popped the disc in, something about the first scene triggered deja vu, so I did what I should have done in the first place and checked to see if I had indeed seen it, discovering that I had and wrote a review, not even eight years ago (it was actually a post-daily selection! You'd think I'd be able to remember those better!). Want a kicker? Not only did the scene not turn out to be the one from the movie I was thinking of (turned out to be the opening of Hell High, where the girl accidentally kills a pair of teen lovers), but nothing else in the movie really rang a bell.

On the plus side, that's great, because it was like seeing it for the first time, and it's like, really good. Better than my original review lets on, in fact! It's the kind of '70s horror I really love, where on the surface it seems like any other B movie that probably played second at the drive-ins (indeed, per the IMDb, it played with THX-1138), but has that little extra pep in its step that gives it more personality and helps it stick with you. I originally noted director Bernard McEveety's "matter of fact" approach to his job, but failed to note one of its key examples (minor spoiler for 50 year old movie ahead), that the movie's villain is identified relatively early but then returns to act as an ally to our heroes, without the sort of squinty faced/raised eyebrow/dun dun DUNNNNN kind of music that usually accompany such things. If you missed the in between scene where he was clearly established as the villain, there is nothing to point to his true nature in the later scene, which is kind of chilling in a way.

Also, I want to point this scene out for another reason. If you've seen the movie, it's the one where the priest, the doctor, the dad, the sheriff, and the deputy are all in the sheriff's house trying to figure out what to do next. McEveety lets most of the five-ish minute scene play out in a master, with lots of cross talk and all five men in the frame doing something. It was probably a time/money saving measure, but the actors had to all be in sync with their blocking and dialogue to make sure it didn't turn chaotic, something that couldn't happen if the director just stuck a camera in the corner and called "action" on five amateur performers. It's legitimately impressive filmmaking from a technical/logistics point of view, something you don't often find in these sort of things (indeed, as I noted before, the plot setup is very much like that of Manos, a film without one impressive technical aspect).

It also doesn't spell out what is happening right away, and even though it came before things like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, will "mislead" a new audience a few times before it shows its full hand. Things start off with a family driving through the southwest and seeing the aftermath of a grisly accident, only to be accosted by locals when they try to report it. So it seems like a "run afoul of a creepy town" movie, but later we learn what's got the townsfolk riled up, and realize that they're actually innocent. And due to the likely impossibility of the FX it would need to pull off, it's not until we've seen a few deaths that it becomes clear that (spoiler again) it's the toys doing it. Later developments almost give it an Under the Dome type feel, so I can't help but wonder if Stephen King is a fan (or at least saw it and subconsciously got inspired by it).

If he was, I wish he was on the disc, because they seemingly had trouble locating anyone of note to contribute an interview or a commentary. There is an interview with two of the kids, but as it's been fifty years and they were, you know, children, you'd be a fool to think their memories are either that strong or plentiful - they seem to remember having fun and getting to eat as much cake as they wanted during the filming of the party scene, and one of them remembers playing spin the bottle with the others, but the other one doesn't. I guess I can appreciate that it's a fairly brief interview instead of a commentary?

There IS a commentary by Kim Newman and Sean Hogan though, and it is as entertaining as the film. They're fans but do not consider it an unassailable masterpiece, so the track is mostly them kind of giggling at some of its wackier elements (like the cult leader's robe) while pointing out how it fits into the larger cult/devil movie canon, particularly the pre-Exorcist ones that weren't so beholden to more traditional religious iconography (indeed, the priest here is ultimately kind of useless). And there's even more of that history to glean from the video essay by David Flint, as well as the included booklet which devotes one of its two essays to the sub-genre (pre and post-Exorcist). The other is about producer/writer/co-star L.Q. Jones, a Peckinpah regular who apparently also wrote a tie-in novel for this film! Adding it to my wishlist ASAP.

I often wonder how I'd feel about this or that movie from HMAD past that I can now no longer remember much about (even some of the ones in my book, now written six years ago about movies I watched as many years ago then, trigger "Wait, what was that one about?" kind of reactions). How many other gems like this are out there, forgotten and/or written off in my head as decent timekillers at best? I am cursed with generally seeing little reason to revisit a non-favorite film unless I plan to write about it (my stance is that it's time being taken away from watching something new), which means if I remembered seeing Brotherhood I probably would have shrugged off this Arrow release with a "Seen it, eh, nothing special" kind of reaction. My tastes change, my mood may differ... there's any number of reasons that I could be much more endeared with something that was essentially site filler when I take another look at it a decade (give or take) down the road. At any rate, while I usually curse my poor memory, this is one time that it worked in my favor.

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Satan's Blood (1978)

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

GENRE: CULT, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

One fun thing about the various Rosemary's Baby/Exorcist knockoffs of the 1970s is seeing what particular things the filmmakers deemed necessary to recycle for their own version, as if they felt explicitly tipping their hat would keep them safe from plagiarism ("it's an homage!"). For example, I've always been tickled about Beyond the Door having their weird kids drink pea soup straight from the can, and of course my beloved Cathy's Curse certainly seemed to think a swearing little girl was essential. In Satan's Blood (Spanish: Escalofrío), director Carlos Puerto lets you know that we're in Polanski territory instantly by having the elderly neighbors of our heroes stare at them in a knowing way, as if to say "Yes, these people are the Minnie and Roman of this film" before anything else remotely spooky has happened.

In fact the only other thing that might remind you of Rosemary by that point (only about five minutes into the film) is that Mariana Karr's character Ana is pregnant, a plot point that has no bearing on pretty much anything that follows. Despite the similar vibes, her pregnancy ends up being a total non-starter in the grand scheme of things; her husband Andres (José María Guillén) tells her she shouldn't go dancing, but that's about it - she spends the rest of the movie smoking and drinking without any concern. And she isn't even remotely showing (at four months! Bless her!) so if they snipped out the quick conversation about it early on I don't think it'd even cause any continuity or plot hole issues.

It also provides a very flimsy excuse for why Ana is bored, so much that when another couple pulls up next to them at a stoplight and the man claims that he went to school with Andres, she quickly agrees to their invitation to come over their house for a while ("We have wine and cheese" the man's wife offers, sweetening the deal to hang out with strangers). They barely even flinch when the drive turns out to be an hour away, and let's not discount the fact that Andres has no memory of the man whatsoever. I myself wouldn't accept this sort of out of nowhere invitation from someone I DID remember, but that's why I have never found myself as the lead in a Spanish horror film.

Or why I've never gotten to be in an orgy. See, they don't care about the baby, but the new couple is... well, horny. I'm not exactly sure what other motives they had (I'll get into spoilers in a bit for one possible explanation), but they sure enjoy having lots of sex with our heroes. After playing with a Ouija board (per 1970s supernatural movie law) all four of them disrobe and begin enjoying one another in all possible combinations except male on male (though we do see a penis or two, so they're not THAT conservative). Later when it's time for bed the couples enjoy each other on their own, as if reinvigorated by their little foray into group sex. And the woman (Sandra Alberti from Trauma, also recently released from Vinegar Syndrome) tries seduce Andres AND Ana on separate occasions, for good measure. These people would be absolutely miserable if they were still alive to deal with covid!

But in fact (spoilers here!) they're actually already dead. After a number of weird things happen, most of which are never explained (why is there a random would-be rapist hanging out in the house? No one - even the woman he attacks - ever really looks into his whole deal), our heroes finally escape the house and return home, only to discover their belongings are gone. The couple from next door - apartment 66 by the way, because subtlety - invites them in to calm down, and when they enter they see all the people from the house they just escaped. Everyone surrounds them and stabs them to death, and then we cut to a new couple who is out for a drive. At a stoplight, the couple looks over and sees... Andres! Telling the driver they're old friends. So the cycle begins again, which is cool, but I couldn't begin to tell you what the purpose of any of it was. If the only goal was to kill these people why did they drag it out for so long? Can't even say it was "to have more sex" because the horniness dies out by the next morning and there's still plenty of time left (and thus, chances to kill them).

That said, please don't take this as a criticism on the movie, at least from my perspective. I found the whole thing delightful, and - as noted on the historian commentary by Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger - it's part of the "anything goes" mentality for Spanish horror that makes them so appealing. Unlike (most, not all) American films that have similar setups, there's really no way to predict how this one would end, even with the telltale shifty eyed look from the neighbors early on. Even when I was rewatching with the commentary I found myself surprised on occasion, like "Oh yeah, I forgot there was a random bit of possible cannibalism at one point." There's even a random evil doll element in this movie that would cause enough nightmares for a specific killer doll movie, but instead it's just one of the many oddities you'll find. I love that!

Apart from the historian track (which echoes some of their earlier ones in that it spends a lot of time on the general sub-genre as opposed to anything about the specific film) the disc also offers a lengthy retrospective documentary featuring Alberti, writer/director Carlos Puerto and editor Pedro del Rey. Alberti appears more than the other two combined, I think, but it makes sense since she has the most colorful anecdotes, discussing the film's nudity, a ripoff she saw (she doesn't say the title; from the historian track I THINK she is referring to Black Candles), the other actors, etc. For his part, Puerto sighs about some of the changes that producer Juan Piquer Simón (yes, the Pieces genius) imposed on the film but also takes responsibility for the film's lapses, so that's refreshing. An English dub track - which apparently changes the tone of some scenes by sounding more comical - is included for the film as well, for those who don't want subtitles.

Deighan and Ellinger point out that so many of these films are hard to find nowadays (and even those that are available are often presented shoddily), feeling that Spanish horror has never been given as much reverence from these companies as genre efforts from other European countries (namely Italy and France). So I'm glad Vinegar Syndrome has been focusing so much on it lately; it's a pretty sizable hole in my own viewing history (due in part to the aforementioned availability issues) and I've been having a blast diving in with their nearly monthly releases (I missed the second volume of their Forgotten Gialli boxed sets though, so I gotta pick that up to do my part to help convince them for a third volume). I can see a younger version of me hating this movie for its hazy plot details, but as I get older and more mellow, I find myself drawn to this kind of thing more often, and I look forward to more.

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Hack-O-Lantern (1988)

OCTOBER 26, 2020

GENRE: CULT, SLASHER
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

I assume it was in Fangoria that I heard about Hack-O-Lantern, probably close to thirty years ago now, and it sounded... well, bad. It sounded bad. But over the years, I've developed an admiration for a particular brand of bad horror movie. I can't stomach too much of the Sharknado-y kinda of stuff, or all that faux-'70s crap that came along post-Grindhouse, but bad movies in the vein of Silent Night Deadly Night 2 or Things (or yes, Cathy's Curse, which this was actually compared to in a Red Letter Media episode) are very much appreciated in my house, and I'm happy to say that Hack-O-Lantern definitely fits within that group.

I think what separates this sort of thing from Syfy trash is, believe it or not, the fact that the former examples are shot on film, but not because it "looks better" (which is a matter of opinion). Unlike today's "You can shoot a movie on your iPhone and edit it on your laptop" thinking, if a movie is shot on film that means there has to be at least two people on the crew who really know what they're doing: someone to load film into the camera, and someone who knows how to edit on a flatbed, both of which aren't exactly things you can just guess your way through and still come out with something watchable. So even if the director is a total novice and the actors are... less than award-worthy, there will still be someone around who took the time to learn these fundamentals the right way (presumably in a film school or extensive workshop) and can guide the amateurs on the crew into getting usable footage and fashion something coherent out of it when all is said and done. Long story short, some people had to take it seriously enough to properly learn how to do it. Nowadays, that's not a guarantee, and it often shows.

Anyway, I knew this movie belonged to that "special" group almost instantly, when a kid named Tommy is playing with a pumpkin and his mother doesn't really consider "Where did the pumpkin come from?" until he accidentally cuts himself trying to carve it. THEN she realizes that the arrival of a pumpkin meant his grandfather (her father) has been over, something that is apparently forbidden, and it's not too long until we find out why the man has been ostracized - he's part of a cult! The kid's dad is murdered by one of grampa's cohorts when he goes to their "church" (a barn) to tell him off, and then we cut to 15 years later, with Tommy falling in with the cult and about to undergo his final initiation on Halloween. Naturally, the mom and his two younger siblings (one of whom is now a cop) aren't thrilled about this, and when the matriarch confronts her father about it and begs him to leave Tommy alone, we learn (icky alert!) that gramps is actually Tommy's real father, having raped his daughter on her wedding day.

(Tommy is the only one that Gramps seems interested in, so we can assume this was a one time thing and the other two kids were actually from her husband, thankfully.)

After this bombshell the movie tones down its insanity a bit, but remains as beautifully awful. As the various characters go about prepping for Halloween, a cult member in a mask starts offing people who are connected to the now grown children, and we are seemingly supposed to assume that it's Tommy carrying out some final tasks for his initiation, but then there would be no need for the mask, so you can spend 11 or 12 seconds guessing who the actual killer might be (it shouldn't surprise anyone). By tracking Tommy as well as his siblings, Vera and Roger (and their own respective love interests) we get to meet several not-great actors throughout the day, all of whom seem to be on different wavelengths from each other as they run through the hilariously awkward script. Few people act normal in this movie, highlighted by a sequence where Vera grills Roger's girlfriend about their recent hook up (because all girls want to hear about their brother's sexcapades!), prompting the girl to, I kid you not, bring her to the outdoor location where it happened so she can point it out! If I ever even imagined a scenario where my brother in law showed me the spot where he first had sex with my sister, I would likely want to die, but for these people it's an exciting adventure.

But my favorite part was a rather pointless scene where Tommy's lover goes to the store to buy beer and some other supplies. The cashier rings her up and says "That'll be 40 dollars," which already piqued my amusement because wow, what an exact amount! The girl hands over a few bills, and normally that'd be the end of it because almost literally any combination of bills you might have to equal forty dollars would be... forty dollars, right? Two twenties, four tens, whatever (if she handed her *one* bill it would be a fifty or a hundred, so change would indeed come into play, but she handed a few over). And then the lady rings it in and says "15 dollars is your change," which means the girl inexplicably handed her $55 for her $40 charge. It's a total throwaway moment, but that's the exact mix of peculiarness and incompetence that makes me love such things.

The movie also contains a full music video in which Tommy is one of the band members, who are wiped out one by one by some kind of devil woman who isn't seen anywhere else in the film. Honestly, that's all you really need to know, and since I couldn't find a proper trailer I have included it instead. This is exactly how it is presented in the film, and it is never referred to again.

Most of the actors in the film are unrecognizable and would never be seen again (though the guy playing Tommy had some bit parts in action flicks like Cliffhanger), but Gramps is played by Hy Pyke, who played the bar owner in Blade Runner and the bus driver in '70s weirdo fave Lemora. He seems to be the only one who is aware of what kind of nonsense he is in, and gives 110% manic eyeball energy to all of his scenes. It's a shame he's not onscreen more often (most of the focus is on the three siblings), but man, when he appears you know you're in for a treat. I particularly like that he seemingly drives around town with a truck bed full of pumpkins at all times, and began imagining how bummed out he must be when they're not in season.

Basically it was a perfect movie for this particular Halloween, where joy is in short supply and watching the standards (i.e. the Halloween movies) just kind of bum me out because normally I'd be seeing them at screenings with friends. Here the holiday is almost incidental to everything; the town's big party is only seen near the end and looks about as populated as the makeshift gathering at the mine's cafeteria in My Bloody Valentine, and the decor is pretty much limited to Gramps' pumpkins. There was just enough random weirdness to keep me engaged, the innocently bad acting (particularly a guy named, yes, Brian!) was sublime, and apart from the killer's identity I can honestly say I could never tell where the movie was going, right until the very end which throws in a twist that makes no sense whatsoever. Bless. If you're a Shudder subscriber, you can watch it now (or maybe you already did with Joe Bob interrupting it) and I highly recommend that you do if you're a fan of such awkward fare.

What say you?

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The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020)

OCTOBER 12, 2020

GENRE: COMEDIC, CULT
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

When I finally got around to watching 2017's The Babysitter a few weeks ago I promised to watch the sequel soon, and look! I am a man of my word! Alas, like most straight comedy sequels, The Babysitter: Killer Queen rehashes a number of gags and beats from the first movie, so my advice would be to give yourself as much distance between them as you think your brain can handle. Like, if you are so attuned to your memory that you know you'll completely forget everything about the first movie by the time you wake up on Tuesday, then watch it pretty late on Monday night.

Because otherwise I think the deja vu will detract from the experience, and if you're like me you know it wasn't exactly a knockout the first time around anyway. The entire cast returns (yes, even the dead ones), and everyone seems happy to be goofing off again, so that gives the movie some of its juice, but the sameyness is kind of a drag - once again the cult needs Cole's blood, once again they chase him around as their number gets whittled down thanks to Final Destination style ridiculous deaths, and once again Cole has to "man up" and find some inner bravery to save the day. Maybe with all new characters going after him the repetition wouldn't be as big of a deal (sequels are, traditionally, remakes to a degree) but with only three new characters of note and the aforementioned brief period between the two viewings, I must admit I found very little to really pull me in here.

It doesn't help that the movie confusingly says it's only been two years, when it's clearly been more. Not only has the young actor playing Cole aged *four* years since the original (which sat on a shelf for a while before being sold to Netflix) but he's also in some later year of high school, when he should only be in eighth grade or, at best, a freshman, since he was only 12 in the first film. I'd argue that saying it's been the actual 4-5 years would actually make some of its ideas work better as well; not only would the "party by the lake" concept apply more to a junior/senior life, but Cole's continued status as a virgin would be more of a point of contention since that's more around the age where they start feeling self conscious about it. Who's that concerned when they're only 14?

(To be fair, the original movie is partly to blame by saying he was only 12 when the actor was clearly around 15 then, in order to make the "still needs a babysitter" plot work, but it still doesn't excuse them for not jumping further ahead here.)

The other thing they bungle - and I dunno if this counts as a spoiler so be warned - is that they clearly only had access to Samara Weaving for a day or two, which not only limits her interaction with her co-stars (there are several very awkwardly blocked shots of her standing with the other cult members that I would bet good money are just composited together) but robs the movie of the original's best asset. She only finally shows up in the present in the movie's final ten minutes, but you know all along that she'll be back because Weaving appears in a few previously unseen flashbacks, showing how she recruited Bella Thorne and the other cult members from the first movie. Even a child could probably understand that they wouldn't go to the trouble of getting her back to appear in four random quick shots, so you're just endlessly waiting for her to finally return and bring her considerable energy back to the proceedings. Alas, her awkward and limited contact with her co-stars doesn't even allow for much of that, and she spends most of her screentime standing still.

Instead (again, kind of a spoiler, but revealed fairly quickly) the main antagonist this time is Melanie, the girl next door crush of the original. Now she's a cult member as well, and has a few helpers of her own along with all the returning ones. It might have been fun to have them at some kind of war with Cole (and new girl crush Phoebe) caught in the middle, but her own little posse doesn't leave much of an impact, and the script (by four people, including McG but none of them original writer Brian Duffield) is too keen to have the old ones go through the same things again (Bella Thorne is once again shot in the boob). And they apparently missed the fact that part of what made Bee such an interesting villain is that she had a genuine affection for Cole, yet Melanie - his best friend for years - just turns on a dime and becomes a one note ice queen, without as much of a shred of remorse for what she's putting him through despite their longtime friendship. It's... just weird.

However it does get two things right. One is that Ken Marino is given more to do, and that's always a good thing. Leslie Bibb returns as well but is written out rather quickly while Marino goes looking for Cole, joined by Melanie's stoner dad, and scores most of the movie's best laughs ("Call her back" is one highlight, with the context). The movie's odd decision to have all evidence of the first film's events disappear along with Bee means everyone thinks Cole's just crazy, but it's worth it for Marino's reaction when he sees something to prove Cole was telling the truth, providing the movie with something closer to the emotional core that the first one had with Cole and Bee's final scene together. The other is that McG has drastically toned down the hyperactive onscreen graphic stuff, limiting it to a few callbacks and one fight scene that is given Mortal Kombat style health bars.

But, overall, it's just kind of more of the same. The timing was perhaps bad; for the past week I've been rewatching the Alien and Predator movies for a podcast, and those are films that knew how to blend the repetitious needs for a sequel along with new ideas and characters (to varying degrees of success, yes, but they shot for the fences more often than not), so to go from those to something this samey back to back did it no favors. Then again, there are people who want their sequels to be comforting and with a bare minimum of new ideas and approaches, so for them I'm sure this is just as good as the original (though I'm not sure how reducing Weaving to a mere cameo could be anyone's idea of a smart move unless they just don't like her). For me it just kind of made me appreciate the original a little more; at least it had the element of surprise and a villain you kept hoping would redeem herself.

What say you?

P.S. Since Netflix doesn't release discs but HMAD only survives on Amazon referrals, here's Ready or Not, which also offers gory deaths for cult members but also 10x more Samara Weaving and better jokes.

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All The Colors Of The Dark (1972)

OCTOBER 9, 2020

GENRE: GIALLO, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

Considering Rosemary's Baby's importance in the horror genre and the Italians lengthy history of "paying homage" to successful American films, I'm surprised to realize that All The Colors of the Dark (Italian: Tutti i colori del buio) is one of the very few I've seen that appear to be directly inspired by it. While Exorcist and The Omen got cribbed from mercilessly, for whatever reason (perhaps just dumb luck with my selections) the plight of Rosemary Woodhouse didn't seem worthwhile to rip off all that often, making this 1972 film a novelty for me.

I also haven't seen too many of Sergio Martino's films, a blind spot I keep half-thinking "I need to fix that" but (obviously) fail to take the initiative; the only ones I've seen are Torso and Blade of the Ripper, both of which I quite enjoyed. But they were more traditional giallo types, whereas this one blends the sub-genre not only with Rosemary's Baby's satanic cult elements, but also the sort of "Is this woman going crazy or not?" stuff that was, in turn, an escalation from his earlier Repulsion. So it kind of feels like this is the next logical step, because it has those elements plus knife wielding maniacs and - woo! - a "murder someone to steal their inheritance" plot, of which I am usually endeared.

Edwige Fenech plays Jane, who has recently lost an unborn child in a car accident and is still traumatized from her mother's murder when she was a child - fair to say she's got every right in the world to lose her mind. So it certainly doesn't help that she starts being menaced by a guy with piercing blue eyes (contacts, I hope; I don't want to live in a world with people whose eyes are THAT blue!), who seems to be trying to kill her but is thankfully not very successful. But is he even real, or a figment of her frazzled imagination? And who can she trust to tell about these things, especially when one friend's advice is "hey maybe you should check out a black mass", which results in her being terrified by ANOTHER guy and increasingly unsure of who to believe about these things.

It's an interesting approach taken by Martino and his writers; there is so much stuff going on it's almost impossible to believe all of it could be really happening, so you just start wondering *which parts* are real, if any. But, thankfully, it doesn't take until the final scene to get our answer, as the script is nice enough to occasionally offer a scene between characters where Jane isn't present, which confirms that at least some of what she is saying is true even though the movie isn't quite over yet. There's a Psycho style epilogue where someone rattles off a lot of exposition to fill some holes, but until that point I think it's well balanced - it never gets too confusing, but the mystery remains more or less compelling throughout.

It can get a bit exhausting though, as Feneche is seemingly chased and/or attacked every ten minutes, with the score from Tarantino fave Bruno Nicolai bombarding you throughout each one (and the scenes between). The plot is largely inconsequential, this is more of an "experience" that only took me about fifteen minutes or so to start thinking that it was a big influence on Cattet and Forzani's films Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (the latter actually has a piece of Nicolai's score, so there's no "deduction" necessary there). I almost wish I had saved it for a big screen/large crowd viewing, as it would probably benefit from the enhancement, but since my most recent giallo experiences were more low-key, the change of pace was nice.

But the thing I loved most requires a spoiler for this 48 year old movie, so skip this paragraph if you want to remain pure! For those who are still here - I absolutely adore the fact that George Hilton' male lead, who has the hilarious name of Richard Steele (think of nicknames for "Richard"), was the rarest of things in an Italian genre film from the era: an actually decent guy. Not only does he spend the movie trying to help his fiance (even when she starts suspecting he may be part of the problem), but when a female villain tries to seduce him with her body AND the promise of riches, he shoots her down (literally!), whereas most of his peers would, if not go all the way through with it, at least enjoy the sex being offered him before regaining his nobility. I try not to judge films for their "dated" content because I know they are products of their time, but it can be difficult at times to enjoy these things when the guys are such monsters while serving the role as "hero", so it's just a relief when one comes along that doesn't require a disclaimer or an apology.

Hopefully Shudder keeps adding more of these films to their increasingly impressive lineup; I'm sure they don't sell subscriptions the way exclusives and big gets like Halloween (I believe they're the only ones who have it on their lineup without an additional charge) can, but to me this is the kind of stuff that will keep me renewing - movies I missed along the way when I know I'll never be able to keep up with all the modern options. Every day there's like five new movies coming along across all these services, and it's just daunting to try to even put a dent in that lineup. But I CAN get through all of Martino's genre output, which has a finite number of options - doing that will make me feel accomplished, instead of trying to stay on top of the newer stuff, which is akin to trying to stop a boat from sinking by cupping my hands together and spooning the water out. And I'll probably enjoy the films more to boot.

What say you?

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The Babysitter (2017)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

GENRE: COMEDIC, CULT
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

There have been a few comedic horror movies about satanic cults over the past few years, and The Babysitter is... one of them. I mean, it's fine, and technically came before the others (Satanic Panic and We Summon The Darkness are the ones coming to mind, there might be others), but I don't know if there's enough material there to keep mining. Guess I'll know if/when I watch the sequel to this one, which just hit Netflix and served as a reminder that I never saw this one. And to be fair, I never planned to, but two things got me to change my mind (well, three if you count the fact that HMAD is back for a bit and thus I can't be as choosy as I've been over the past 6-7 years).

The first thing was a recommendation from one of my longtime readers (hi Cat!), which is always an easy way to get me to watch something since I aim to please. The second is that (thanks to the sequel's existence and its accompanying press) I realized I had the cast mixed up - I thought Bella Thorne was playing the title character, and this added to my indifference since I find her pretty annoying. But no! Samara Weaving plays the sitter, and she is great! (Thorne, as anyone who saw it already knows, plays one of her pals, and to be fair she's actually pretty funny as a vapid cheerleader who worries no one will want to motorboat her after she is shot in the boob) So I dove in, still not expecting much (I correctly remembered it was directed by McG) but at least more hopeful than I was at any point in time before.

And it's fine! It's unfortunately one of those movies where going in totally blind is a help, as there is nothing to indicate that it's a horror movie until something horror-y happens 30 minutes (more?) into the runtime, so watching it with knowledge of who is still around for the sequel is even less helpful, so if you haven't seen it yet and have remained even more in the dark than I was, I'd say go watch it now before reading any further. Then you can come back and tell me it's better than I had you thinking, and I can ask "but do you feel that way because you got to go in blind and I didn't?" and your mind will be BLOWN, man.

For everyone else - the element of surprise is kind of the draw here, and it's easy to see why the script ended up on the black list for a bit. For the first half hour it's just a standard coming of age kind of deal, with a bullied nerdy kid named Cole crushing on his cool babysitter, who is spending the night when his parents go out of town on a romantic getaway. The babysitter invites some friends over and he plans to stay up and spy on them to see if they're having sex and/or can maybe inadvertently teach him something he can do with the girl next door. Instead, he witnesses them sacrificing a nerd (not unlike himself) as part of their Satanic ritual, only to discover he's their next target. Can he outsmart them all and escape with his life? And maybe kiss his crush and/or stand up to the neighborhood bully in the process?

That's actually the best thing about the movie - it doesn't stop being a coming of age film once the horror element is introduced. If anything, the horror stuff charmingly intersects with it; at one point Cole is being chased by the douchey guy cult member (they're all kind of stock *victim* stereotypes: the it girl, the douche, the cheerleader, the weirdo, and the (I didn't write the movie so don't yell at me) the Black guy) and realizes that his bully is nearby. Rather than kill them both or whatever, the cult douche actually gives Cole a little pep talk and some advice on how to fight back, then lets him go on ahead while he watches. It's sweet in a weird way, and I wish the movie had more of it, with *all* of the members realizing Cole had enough shit to deal with and didn't need to add their nonsense on top of it, or something. But as the occasional surprise button to an otherwise routine chase, it's refreshing.

And by chase I mean "Cole runs in or out of his house", because for some reason he acts like a shopping cart that will lock up if he gets 50 feet beyond his front door. More than once I couldn't see any discernible reason that he couldn't keep running to safety, making the film feel a bit cramped as he repeatedly runs back to where the bad guys are instead of the opposite direction (perhaps they could have had a pet he wanted to rescue or something?). Also, Weaving's Bee is weirdly sidelined for a while, limited to just rolling her eyes at her cohorts or hanging out in the background as one of them chases Cole somewhere, only to return full throttle for the final ten minutes or so. By now it's clear she's the real deal and a huge asset to a film, so I hope the sequel utilizes her throughout instead of reducing her to glorified extra for a sizable chunk in the middle (don't tell me either way!).

The other issue I had was with some of the half-assed Edgar Wright/Joseph Kahn style flourishes, which I can barely tolerate when they do it let alone a... let's just be nice and say "not as inventive" type like McG. Text on screen and the occasional slow/sped up shots pepper the film, thankfully not to the point of overloading it, but it has the opposite effect of simply being intrusive because they're so intermittent. Best to just not use such things at all, if you ask me. McG also inexplicably stages a car crash that both driver and the person he is hitting manage to survive like it was one of the epic ones he presented in Charlie's Angels*, instead of what the script probably called for (i.e. something less visually spectacular). Sometimes less is more, my good man.

But it's cute, surprisingly gory, has two great leads, and has the always welcome Ken Marino in a bit part as Cole's dad (and his mom is Leslie Bibb, another charming presence - I'm glad they are among the ones returning for the sequel). There's a breeziness to it I appreciated for sure, though I couldn't help but be somewhat disappointed that it occasionally flirts with being something even better only to scale back again. I'll get to the sequel in a couple weeks, promise! Also, since it's not available on disc I put the classic Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead in there instead. Dishes are done, man!

What say you?

*Remember when Joey rented it for Dawson thinking something fun/goofy would cheer him up after his dad died in a car crash and then there's like all these insane car crashes in it so Dawson's like "uh..." and Joey's mortified? Man, I miss the Creek. Wonder how my man Pacey is doing.

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Blu-Ray Review: Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

JULY 13, 2020

GENRE: HAMMER, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Troubling. When I got a press release about Kiss of the Vampire, I replied saying "I haven't seen this, I'd love to review!" and then I watched it when it arrived, formed my opinion, and got ready to write up my thoughts. Part of my prep for such a thing involves looking at the Wiki and IMDb pages for the film, and it was on the former that I saw a note about how it had been released in an eight-film Hammer Horror set. "I have that set and used it for HMAD!" I thought to myself, "Why did I skip it?" So I searched HMAD and, as you might have guessed by now, I *didn't* skip it - I watched and reviewed it in 2009. And at no point during this viewing in 2020 did I even get a slight sense of deja vu. Sigh.

The good news is, my opinion didn't change, so you can read that old review and spare me the trouble of writing it all out again. However, thanks to the new Scream Factory release, I have a little more context for some of its weaker points (if you're too lazy to click over, my overall feeling on the film is that it's "fine", basically), which warmed me to the film a bit. For example, it was originally designed to be a third Dracula film, following the Drac-less Brides of Dracula (which was also on that same set), but those elements were written out. When a movie starts off as one thing and is overhauled, it can never really get around the disconnect caused by the rewrite - it lost its reason to exist (i.e. make big sequel money) and thus is just kind of there, without any of that creative spark you'd normally find in an original.

I also had to laugh at my old note that the vampires don't really do all that much in the movie, because it's From Dusk Till Dawn-level violent in comparison to "Kiss of Evil", which was the television cut of the film. While removing the bloodshed isn't too surprising (though the movie was hardly gory to begin with, even by 1960's standards), the television version removed all violence and references to vampirism - even just shots of one of them baring fangs! - making the movie somewhat incoherent at times as we get people reacting to things that were completely excised. For example, one of the movie's cooler moments is when the hero is wounded in the climax, and he smears his own blood into a cross shape to ward off the vamps as he makes his escape. But the TV cut removed his quick thinking action, and all the vampires come off as human cult members or something, so the climax is now... the lot of them just simply letting him go for no apparent reason.

The censors removed so much of the footage that they had to shoot new scenes in order to get the film back up to a proper running time. But unlike the similar situation with Halloween (where the cast and crew were back together to shoot the sequel, so the new scenes, while still awkwardly placed, at least had some legitimacy), they didn't have the actors, sets, or (as far as anyone can tell) same people to create them, so they are not only clumsily shoehorned into the narrative, but ultimately serve no function. These scenes tell the story of a family living in town, whose of-age daughter is potentially falling under the spell of the film's villainous Ravna (the Dracula replacement), who the family is acquainted with because the mother is the one who makes the robes for all of his disciples*. To blend these scenes with the movie, they have one of the new actors look out their window and see, for example, the hero's carriage passing by, then comment on it while carrying out their own little stupid subplot, while never once interacting with any of the other characters.

Hilariously, these scenes manage to be even duller than the rest of the film, even in its violence-free form. The movie doesn't really start getting interesting until a (too-late) development where the vampires try to gaslight the hero into thinking that his wife (who they've inducted into their ranks) didn't exist and that he had arrived in town by himself, but none of this new footage involves that (if it were me I would have tied it in by saying that their home was where they hid all of the wife's belongings). So the new scenes just make you wait longer for the best part, before then cutting up the climax and making it incoherent. Oh well.

As usual, Scream Factory has put together some bonus features, including the ability to watch the new "Kiss of Evil" scenes on their own and a pair of brief tributes to the film's composer and production designer, respectively. And there are three commentaries, though they are confusingly split across the three different versions of the film that are available. The first is an old one with two of the actors (Edward De Souza and Jennifer Daniels), which is moderated by Peter Irving and is presumably from some laserdisc or DVD special edition, and it's fine - they're not as catty as some of their British peers so it's mostly complimentary about everyone, which gets a bit dull.

The other two tracks aren't listed in the "Extras" menu however, so you have to look for them. One is by Constantine Nasr and Steve Haberman, and it's only available on the 1.66:1 version of the film (which is 1.85:1 by default). Why, I don't know - there is no explanation for why the movie is presented in two aspect ratios, let alone why they couldn't just put the track on the default version. The 1.66 one also omits subtitles, which is annoying since sometimes they comment on a bit of dialogue that you can't hear OR read, though at this point I have given up hope SF will ever match most other companies and put subtitles on everything (hell, some of them even subtitle their commentaries! I don't ask for that much, but it's still nice). It's a good track though, especially the awkward parts where one will contradict the other (one guy will say "Polanski didn't mention this film specifically as an influence on Fearless Vampire Killers..." and the other will reply "Actually, in this one interview he did," heh. Fight!), plus they note the same thing that I did in my old review, which that the movie is curiously devoid of any of the big Hammer regulars. Nice to know I'm as observant as the licensed historians!

The other track is by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, and that one's only available if you opt to watch the complete "Kiss of Evil" version, which is basically presented as a curiosity (in fact, I only found it because I clicked it by accident - the track isn't even listed on the packaging) since you can watch the extra scenes on their own rather than sit through the film, now cropped to 1.33:1 and taken from an ugly standard def Sci-Fi Channel broadcast. It's a great track though; they explain the new footage for this and a few other Hammer films that had similar treatment, plus (as Nasr and Haberman did) go into the film's "Dracula 3" origins and some other trivia, as well as offer the usual biographical info. And, as I did in my old review, they also swoon about costar Jacquie Wallis, so I feel better about my 2009 thirst (when I was only a few years older than her!) when these much older dudes are panting about her in 2020. We don't do things like that anymore, gents!

All in all, if you're a fan of the film I think you can agree that it's a terrific package despite some bizarre decision making as to how it's all presented, where the best bonus features are buried in sub-menus in places you wouldn't think to look. I wouldn't say it's a top tier Hammer movie, even if just limited to their vampire films, but Don Sharp's direction is solid and the climax is worth most of the wait. When it hits 4K UHD in 2031 and I get a copy for review I'll do my best to remember I've seen it before.

What say you?

*Watch this version back to back with Us for a "We didn't care how they got their matching clothes!" double feature!

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FTP: The Devil Rides Out (1968)

JANUARY 3, 2019

GENRE: CULT
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

When The Devil Rides Out arrived from Scream Factory over two months ago I threw it in the "pile", because I thought I had seen it already. But when looking for something to put on a few nights back when it was late but I wasn't tired enough to go to bed, I read the synopsis said "Hmm I don't remember this at all?", and only then did I realize I was thinking of To The Devil A Daughter, the OTHER Hammer movie with Christopher Lee based on a Dennis Wheatley novel. That one I did see, and it's an OK enough movie (per my nearly eight year old review, it's a bit dull and the central mystery doesn't work very well), but this one turned out to be a total delight to me, so I'm happy I picked it out of the ever increasing number of movies in/around that overflowing box next to my couch where all the random screeners and trivia winnings go in hopes of becoming an FTP review someday.

In fact I liked it enough to read the book to compare for a future Collins' Crypt piece, so I won't use up all of my thoughts on the film here. But I will say that a big part of why I liked it was that Lee was not playing the cult leader - he was actually the hero for a change, one of two older men who were trying to save their pal from the satanic cult he had joined. But he doesn't do much action heroics; he leaves that to Leon Greene as the other (younger) guy. Instead, Lee hilariously smirks his way through the film's thoroughly enjoyable opening sequence, where the two men visit their pal at his home unannounced, on the night where his cult has gathered under the guise of an astronomy meeting. Lee knows damn well the guy's mixed up with satanists, but he plays along with the ruse, marveling at his friend's newly redecorated floor (satanic symbols) and such. Honestly I could watch an entire movie of this stuff, sans any horror at all.

Luckily, those elements work well, too. Since Lee is usually a villain and is occasionally vague about certain things (he gives Greene some chemically based protections, but says he has "other protections" without divulging what they are), I spent a good chunk of the movie thinking he was merely pretending to be a hero but in reality trying to build Greene's character up as an eventual sacrifice or something. So that adds a layer of intrigue that for all I know was never intended by the novel or script (adapted by Richard Matheson), and the direct/obvious horror stuff is pretty successful to boot. Late in the film, our heroes have to endure a ritual and fight off the temptations of the black magic, which reminded me of A Dark Song (something no less an authority than Kim Newman points out on an interview, making me feel a bit proud for having noticed it), another strong sequence. The effects aren't that great (Lee hilariously trashes them on the commentary) but the general ideas come across just fine, and the unusual three male hero setup (Lee, Greene, and the guy they were trying to save, played by Patrick Mower) adds much suspense as you're pretty sure one of them will probably die, but who?

The villain is played by Charles Gray (yep, two future Bond villains square off in this!), quite possibly the most sinister looking man alive. Sadly he is kind of sidelined for big chunks, focusing on Lee and Greene's attempts to free their pal (plus Greene's love interest, played by Nike Arrighi) instead of whatever the cult folk are doing in between their sacrifices. But he casts a long shadow even when he's not on screen and gets some great bits, including a hypnosis scene and a climactic scene where he nonchalantly plans to sacrifice a child. Perhaps Wheatley's book has more for him to do (it's 300 pages in very tiny font size, and the movie is only 95 minutes, so obviously they had to excise a lot), though if there's a direct confrontation between his character and Lee's I'll be disappointed it wasn't filmed, as the men rarely interact directly (Greene gets to punch him out though).

Scream's blu is packed, of course; the Lee commentary (shared with Sarah Lawson and a moderator) is older, along with a few old making of specials, but there's a new track with historians Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr, plus Newman's interview and another exclusive one with Jonathan Riby. And the film has a new transfer, which looked quite good though of course I can't compare it to any previous releases (it appears to be the first Blu-ray release in the US, with an Anchor Bay DVD being long out of print). They have a few more Hammer movies on the way (including Rasputin, which this one was paired with on the Anchor Bay DVD) so I hope it's a sign they are being diligent about acquiring as many as they can - sure, there are some duds in that mix, but I'll sit through a few chores like The Reptile if it means occasionally getting a real treat like this.

What say you?

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