Night School (1981)

JULY 11, 2014

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (BORROWED)

I don't know if we can ever get a definitive list of all the post-Halloween/Friday the 13th slashers from 1980-1982/3 - there were so damn many, and many of them independently released by distributors who are long since defunct - for every well known entry like My Bloody Valentine or The Burning, there are probably a half dozen To All A Goodnights (a Christmas slasher even an astute fan such as myself only heard about a few years ago). But I'll keep trying to see them all, and I'm happy to report I can finally cross Night School off my list, as it's been on my radar for years now. The reason I've been dodging it is simple - it's only available through Warner Bros "on demand" DVD service, which I find to be a ripoff as the titles are often 20 bucks and come barebones (maybe a trailer) on a disc that might not even play on your player model.

However my good friend Jared has no such bias, and has a similar "gotta see em all!" attitude, so I just borrowed his. Sucker!

As it turns out, it's a pretty decent entry in the slasherganza that elevated or marred the period, depending on your point of view. I will admit some Boston bias, but even if it was Chicago or whatever I'd still give it an extra point for being a rare metropolitan based slasher film - 99% of them stick to the woods, suburban areas, or a general single location (a school, hospital, whatever) but the killer here gets chased down major Boston streets, with dozens of people/potential victims around - plus you get a kill at the legendary New England Aquarium. We've all seen a head end up in a domestic fish tank, but a giant, multistory one with a big ass turtle nipping at the disembodied head as it floats to the bottom and terrifies an old lady and her grandson? Only in Night School, far as I know!

The non-isolated setting also means that the movie is slightly more logical than most slashers, and by that I mean there's a police presence. In fact the hero cop is the actual star of the movie - we're with him far more often than we are with any of the film's victims, most of whom only have a scene or two before their death scene (and they're all women - only one male is killed in the movie, and it's mostly by a cop's hand). It's actually more like a Giallo than an American slasher in that regard; there's no central "group" of characters per se, despite the "Night School" premise. Like Scream 2, the movie explains the connection between the victims before tossing it out - they're "all" students of this one dickhead Professor at the titular night school, but the next death after the cops figure that out is of a waitress who flirted with him.

It's because of this kill that the identity of the killer becomes painfully obvious, assuming you hadn't already figured it out. The movie makes the mistake of having the cop zero in on the professor and also introducing a weirdo busboy, so any intelligent viewer would know it couldn't be either of them... but that only leaves one other character as a legit choice, and even their motive is pretty clear. So it fails miserably as a whodunit, despite the best efforts (the killer drives a motorcycle and wears a face-covered helmet during the kill scenes, plus gloves and a leather jacket, making it impossible to even tell if it's a man or a woman), but still works thanks to the varied kill scenes (the opening one, on a merry go round, is fantastic) and unique-ish setting for this sort of thing (then again, all the Gialli took place in big cities too).

It's also got a few impressive sequences, such as a fun bit in the diner where we know a victim's head is SOMEWHERE in the kitchen but director Ken Hughes (of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame!) teases it out for eternity. Is it in the giant soup pot? The fridge? On top of the fridge, where a box of melons falls down for good measure? There's also a pretty good chase scene, one that's kind of a cheat since the person being chased is actually the killer, but in context it works - another plus of the big city thing, it's actually reasonable that a budding killer might be targeted by the average city menace if they happened to be walking alone at night. Plus it has some little quirks, like the two blue collar construction guys who apparently want beef stew for breakfast, or the cop's partner, a man who is ostensibly a cop but never seems much interested in solving the case or even listening to ideas about who the killer may be. He also advises a perp in the backseat to "go on the windshield" when the man says he needs them to stop so he can pee.

And when they go to the red herring's apartment, he's got a hockey mask sitting there on his dresser. A casual horror fan will probably see this and assume it's a little nod to Jason - in fact it even got me for a second, but it's important to know that Night School came out before even the 2nd (baghead Jason) Friday, in 1981 (it actually has a 1980 copyright at the end) - the hockey mask didn't come along until Part 3 in 1982. Was Night School - with one of the least scary costumes in slasher history - an influence on the most iconic one of them all? Probably not, but it's still kind of weird that they have that mask sitting there, it's pretty much the only thing that sticks out in his entire apartment.

Another weird thing requires a SPOILER.... the killer not only goes free at the end, but the cop knows it! He confronts him/her and asks (via metaphor) if they're done killing, to which they say yes. And that's it! There's a final scene where it seems like the killer might go do him in just to tie up that loose end, but it's actually just his wacky partner playing a gag (another Giallo thing - inappropriately timed comic relief). If there was a Night School 2 I bet the killer and the cop would team up to find a new killer. Maybe this time it'd actually take place at the Night School (seriously, there's like one brief classroom scene and a couple of faculty offices, but that's the extent of the title's prominence), or we can find out how the cop fared with his girlfriend, who he has to cancel plans with to investigate the first murder... and then we never see her again. It's like she was supposed to be a target eventually but then they forgot all about her. Heh, what a goofy little movie. Have I mentioned the paint-based shower scene?

What say you?

P.S. The film was known as Terror Eyes in the UK and was on the Video Nasties list, so I was able to cross another one off on THAT list as well!

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Don't Go In The House (1979)

OCTOBER 31, 2012

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

While you can get nitpicky with the exact order, the OVERALL scheduling of the Video Nasties midnight series at the Cinefamily this month was intended to be a gradual decline into true depravity. Thus, the first week would be the tamer efforts, while the final selections would be the ones that truly deserved the scorn of censors, which is why I Spit On Your Grave was given the next to last slot (with Cannibal Holocaust taking the coveted "Nastiest" title). However, some unknown issue (print availability, I assume) forced them to swap out Grave with Don't Go In The House, and I pity the person who sat down assuming it was equally depraved.

Really, if you take out the infamous blowtorch scene (the movie's original title was The Burning; thanks Cropsey!), it's hard to imagine a censor batting an eye at the rest of the movie even back in 1979, let alone today (whereas Cannibal Holocaust largely remains a "How did this even get MADE?" affair). Indeed, this scene is pretty hard to watch - the FX are solid, and even if it was clearly a Barbie doll in closeup or something, there's no way that a chained up and naked woman being immolated with a blowtorch doesn't make you feel a bit dirty for watching it.

But that's only a half hour or so into the movie, and it's also the only, er, "nasty" bit. The rest is a pretty tame Psycho wannabe (making this big/only shock's placement, roughly at the end of the first act, just another influence from Hitchcock's film), with our "hero" Donny going about his day and occasionally trying to pick up women to bring home to kill. He fails as often as he succeeds, and at least one other kill isn't even on-screen. Please note - I'm not pointing this out to complain, merely to stress, again, that the British censors were insane to outright ban some of these movies.

Thus, because of this one 30 second scene, British audiences were robbed of an imperfect but peculiar psycho killer movie in the vein of (fellow Nasties) Maniac or Driller Killer. Dan Grimaldi gives a solid performance as Donny; he's got a bit of a Dustin Hoffman demeanor to him, and is on-screen for pretty much every second of the movie, so if he was a shit actor the movie would be unbearable (or hilarious). He doesn't talk much though. Unlike Norman Bates, who would get pretty chatty at times, Donny keeps pretty quiet; he offers quick responses to those who talk to him and you can practically see him wince whenever he has to talk first, like in the scene where he goes to buy a new outfit in order to go to a disco with his pal. Having no idea how to clothes shop, he waits until someone leaves and then asks the clerk to look at the same thing they were! It's pretty awesome.

Speaking of his pal, this guy is somehow scarier than the murderous Donny. Despite the fact that Donny is a standoffish weirdo (we meet him as he watches/doesn't help a coworker that is burning alive due to an incinerator mishap), the guy forces himself into Donny's life, calling him all the time, encouraging him to go have beers with him or maybe just come over to talk. At first I thought perhaps the guy was gay and interested in him, but the whole disco thing comes about because he wants to meet up with some girls (without his wife knowing). And after something ugly happens there, he tracks down Father Gerritty, Donny's priest, and begs him to help him find Donny before it's too late. All of this for a guy he saw at work sometimes? Whenever I see someone from work out in public, it takes me a few moments to even recognize them. I sure as hell wouldn't look for their priests.

Another interesting thing about the movie is the New Jersey setting. You'd think there would be a lot of horror movies filmed there, given its proximity to (presumably more expensive) New York and variety of locations (woods, beaches, small towns, cities) in a relatively small area, but then and now it's actually pretty rare to see one. Donny's house in particular looks like a great horror movie house - it's almost a shame that they don't set most/all of the movie there, as it sort of resembled the Spider Baby mansion.

I also wish the movie wasn't so repetitive. We get a number of flashbacks to the mother abusing him (with fire, of course); they're all pretty much the same and don't tell us anything new. And the girls all blend together, which I'm sure is part of the point, but doesn't help make the movie any more exciting when the climax revolves around whether or not he'll kill a girl who we just met five minutes ago. Psycho's switch of focus worked because Norman was sympathetic (and we didn't know he was also the killer, just covering it up), but here only a sociopath would root for Donny to get away. It gives the movie a sort of matter-of-fact feel, and the goofy epilogue does it no favors as it practically suggests that there's a supernatural element at play. I'd say cut it, but if you took that and the repeated flashbacks out, the movie would only be like 60 minutes long.

If you're a fan of Psycho ripoffs, you can certainly do worse. The title makes no sense and it can be a bit too slow for its own good, but a solid performance and above average filmmaking are enough to make it worth your while. AND it has some awesome disco tunes, so there's something.

What say you?

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Nightmare (1981)

OCTOBER 26, 2012

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

It's always a shame when a bit of notoriety is the only thing people really remember about a particular movie. More than once I've heard the story about how Tom Savini was originally credited as the makeup man behind Nightmare (aka Nightmares in a Damaged Brain - the UK title that will likely appear on a Video Nasties list), but sued to have his name removed and refuses to talk about the film in interviews. But rarely have I heard anything about the movie itself, so I was happy to see it on 35mm as part of the Nasties series.

Even better, it's probably my favorite of the new ones I've seen thanks to Phil's nightly program, or at least tied with Night Warning. It's a bit slow at times, but it's an interesting blend of slasher and serial killer film, filtered with a touch of the usual Italian silliness of the period - when a kid comes home from school sulking because the other kids at school picked on him re: his brother being a potential murderer, you know you're watching an Italian production. I also loved the random bit where his stepfather randomly explains the plot of Blow Up, and when their angry mother instructs them to get into the living room and watch TV, in the same manner and tone of voice a mother would usually say to turn OFF the TV and go to bed early as a punishment. I'd say every 10 minutes or so produced another such moment that seemed to be written by someone who had never actually spoken to a human being before, so it was quite enjoyable.

The killer plot was a bit lax, however. Most of the action in the film comes courtesy of a flashback scene of a young man chopping off a woman's head when he catches her having rough sex with his father. We see this part of it a few times, but it's not until the end of the movie that we get the complete story, i.e. what he does AFTER dispatching this woman (a prostitute, I think), and he doesn't kill too many in the present day either. However, the "Nasty" label is appropriate; not only are the gore scenes elaborate (if a bit fake looking - there's photographic proof that Savini was at least on set, but these are in no way his FX), but there's a touch of sleaze as well - kids covered in blood, a guy going to a strip show booth and freaking out, etc. It's not really SLEAZY, like Maniac, but it's got a whiff of it, if that makes any sense. Like a contact high, but for being exploitative.

It works, though. There's a touch of psychological horror too - the film begins with our murderer having nightmares, and one of his doctors asks about dreams and whether he sees himself in the dream as another character. And given the flashback structure and a key bit of info that they try to make into a twist (doesn't work, though the way it's "revealed" is pretty hilarious), I actually started wondering if the entire movie was a dream, and that the adult killer we were seeing was actually a kid the entire time (like, he was dreaming about his past but putting his present day form into the story). Luckily, it wasn't that convoluted - the nightmare stuff is pretty straightforward. Dude has nightmares about the time he killed his dad's hooker, got it.

However, this stuff DOES give the movie an excuse to pad itself a bit with a few scenes of his shrink and a cop trying to figure out where he's going after he got out of the hospital. The cop in particular is a delight, he has this really whiny voice (it sounded like a guy doing a Richard Drefuss impression) and a computer that is incredibly advanced for 1981. At one point he finds out about a stolen car in South Carolina that is also the site of a possible homicide, and rather than consult the file or even click "more info" or something, he types in "WHY POSSIBLE HOMICIDE?" and the computer explains it to him! He also uses it to project where the guy is going (and it's right), so it's a wonder he didn't just put legs on the damn thing and let it go out and find the guy itself.

And there's a legit great slasher finale, with the guy donning a creepy old man mask (he's unmasked through most of the film) and stalking the kids' babysitter and boyfriend before turning his attention to the children, one of whom finds a gun. He then displays a Myers-esque resistance to gunshots, which allows for a good "he's not dead yet!" moment as well as the kid realizing perhaps he needs a bigger gun. For a movie that was kind of slow up until the final reel, writer/director Romano Scavolini sure knows how to reward our patience - Mr West, please take note. I do wish the silly cop got involved a bit more, but if he did he'd probably get killed, so I can take comfort knowing he's still out there, using his amazing computer and shrieking like a 5 year old about minor inconveniences...

Speaking of outbursts, I feel I should congratulate Phil Blankenship and the Cinefamily for seemingly reversing their ways with regards to audience management. I've barely gone to the Cinefamily for years because I can't stand the crowds there, who MST3k every movie (even Robocop was heckled!) and use their cell phones without anyone from the theater keeping them in line so they don't ruin the experience for everyone else. But Phil was quite diligent, giving a guy a warning and then having him come outside for a full explanation of why he shouldn't be a dickhead (not common sense to some, unfortunately). Dude seemed a bit "off", so maybe there was more to it than the simple (ill-conceived) wish to draw attention to himself, but either way I'm happy to see that ANY disturbance is being dealt with. I dig the programming there, but I don't care if they're showing London After Midnight - I can't bring myself to go if I think I'm going to be constantly annoyed by a heckler or cell phone obsessive. If things are turning around (not sure how it works when Phil ISN'T there), I'll be happy to add them back into my "rotation". MOVIES!

What say you?

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Axe (1974)

OCTOBER 5, 2012

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Each time I've gone to the Cinefamily for a Video Nasty this week, I've had to explain to someone where I was going and why it was important, plus a brief history of the Nasties as those folks weren't privy to this "legend" of horror mythology (because if they were, they'd probably join me rather than go to bed or whatever it is people do at midnight if they're not watching obscure horror movies). And to keep it brief, I just say "About 75 horror movies that were banned because they were too graphic or violent for a regular rating", which isn't true but true enough for someone who doesn't care much anyway. However, there IS a stigma about these films that they are somehow the depraviest of the depraved or something, and titles like Cannibal Holocaust or Last House On The Left certainly help that idea. But then there are movies like Axe, whose inclusion suggests that the censors were sleeping through these things and just assuming the rest was too violent for them.

Seriously, what is this movie doing on the list? Witch Who Came From The Sea was kind of tame compared to the "Cannibal _____"s of the world, but the icky incest/rape subject matter and number of castrations would certainly be enough for these obviously weak-willed stuffy Brits, but what exactly set them off here? There's an (attempted?) rape, but it's not explicit (nor are the characters related this time) and she kills the guy during the attack - not to draw Ebert's ire again by "grading rape scenes", but it's one of the tamest I've seen (all things considered, obviously) and not exploitative in any way. So unless they simply banned ANY movie with a rape element, it doesn't make any sense - Lipstick was far more upsetting and that wasn't on the list; hell, I'd even argue that Martin's pseudo-sexual assault scene was more disturbing. Judge for yourself - the footage in the trailer is pretty much the entire scene.

And that's as extreme as the movie gets - another guy is killed with the "titular" Axe (the movie's original title was Lisa, Lisa, and I will let you make the "Cult Jam" joke because I'm too tired), but it's half off-screen, and the 3rd bad guy is just shot by some cops. Halloween II is more violent than this (random example, but a. it also escaped the British censor's anger and b. I just found out it will be the next HMAD screening at the New Beverly! October 27th!), so I really pity the person who goes in expecting something on par with the more notorious films on the list. Luckily we had some warning from Cinefamily's programmers - will all hopeful horror fans be so lucky? I picture some kid like, getting a copy of this movie and having to hide it under his bed and wait until his parents are out of town before watching it, so they don't catch him watching something so sick and twisted.

Now, I want to be clear here - I don't care that the film isn't graphic or shocking. I just find it even MORE offensive that people actually WENT TO JAIL for distributing these movies because some self-righteous snots said it was "obscene", and to this day I think all ratings boards suffer from a complete lack of standards. I'm sitting here watching this movie and wondering the entire time how it managed to end up on the list over others, and feeling so guilty about anyone persecuted because of it.

Because even if those occasional murders were gory enough to make HGL squirm, the real problem with this movie is that it's just deathly dull, and thus isn't worth much of anything, let alone going to jail over. Our heroine barely speaks, our villains are poorly defined (why did they want to kill that guy at the beginning?), and it's a home invasion movie where the heroes never make any attempt to escape. Even after she kills one of them without alerting the other two, does she leave? Try to get help? No, she goes to sleep, and later makes her captor breakfast the same as she did the day before, eventually killing him more or less in self defense. And again, the third guy (played by the film's director, Frederick R. Friedel) just runs away, something I'm not even sure she notices. It's a movie where none of the characters ever seem too concerned about anyone else, which isn't the best way to go about a horror/thriller film. SOMEONE'S got to be pro-active about the alleged dangerous situation, or else it's just a bunch of folks dicking around for 90 minutes.

Or, 65, because that's how long the movie runs - they shockingly couldn't stretch its lack of an actual narrative or fully populated cast (most of the actors in the credits are being credited for doing voiceover work for the radio or whatever) into a traditional runtime. Not that you'd notice, it certainly FEELS like 90 minutes (or more) since nothing is happening, which made me think of something the genius Film Crit Hulk said the other day in regards to Universal Soldier 6 (just stay with me, here):

THE REASON IT FEELS BORING IS THAT THERE ISN'T A SINGLE MOMENT IN THE MOVIE WHERE YOU UNDERSTAND ANYONE'S CHARACTER. CHARACTER MOTIVATION IS THE KEY TO DRAMA: "THAT PERSON WANTS THIS." "THIS PERSON WANTS THAT."

Indeed, that applies here. Take our heroine - did she actually want to kill these guys? Would she have happily made them breakfast forever if one of them hadn't tried to rape her? And again, I didn't understand what the three villains were up to at the beginning of the film, and the main two (not Frederick) never really distinguish themselves from one another, so you don't even get the joy of seeing colorfully unique villains facing off against our hero or each other. You can tell which one is in charge (thanks to an early, pretty great line from the boss, where he tells the other guy "Go get me a glass of water. And then drink it yourself so you have something to do."), but that's about it - they both seem like the henchmen for a more interesting boss that we never see.

Oh, and the drums! I'd say at least half of the movie is drowned out by its "score", which is literally just someone banging away on some drums. There's no rhythm to it at all, it sounds more like a kid who just got his first set going through a bunch of standard beats, poorly. So it'll sound kind of tribal one minute, and then jazzy the next... the only consistency is that it always sounds obnoxious.

In short, I'm sure there are worse movies on the Video Nasties list, but I'm pretty sure none are this dull. The simple, matter-of-fact way everyone in the movie goes about doing their thing is kind of charming in a weird way, but not nearly enough to make up for the film's complete lack of tension and dull villains. For Nasties completists only.

What say you?

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The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976)

OCTOBER 4, 2012

GENRE: HERO KILLER, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Was incest a running theme throughout the Video Nasties? I haven't seen a lot, and there are others that I can't really recall too much, but it's odd that the two entries I've watched this week for the Cinefamily's series on this infamous list both featured family members being very inappropriate with their children. But while Night Warning's mom on son stuff (just a few smooches) was perversely funny, The Witch Who Came From The Sea deals with something far more disturbing - a father molesting his adolescent daughter. Yeah, not funny.

However, that didn't stop some creeper from laughing during the scene. Now, I admit I laugh at inappropriate stuff in movies, but it's mostly based on really bizarre dialogue or just completely strange moments, like the scene in Witch when an Asian man and his son are suddenly seen watching other characters fight in their driveway - the two of them have never been seen, they're apparently just chilling in these folks' yard, and we never see them again - it's ridiculously odd, and thus it makes me laugh. The rape scene, however, doesn't have any such qualifications - it's upsetting and sad, and you really have to be a special kind of asshole to start laughing at it.

As you might expect, this one is a bit of a puzzler. For 75% or so of its runtime, it's a perfectly sleazy psycho-drama about a woman with sexual hangups that strikes back at a few of the men in her life, usually going after their manhood (off-screen). So it's sort of like a proto-rape revenge film, setting the stage for later movies like I Spit On Your Grave and Ms. 45, but with the rape being kept as a "surprise" until the film's final reel, where the brief flashes we've seen of some childhood trauma are seen in full, once a bunch of relatively innocent dudes have been castrated/killed.

OR HAVE THEY? We know Molly has killed one guy, because a pair of cops are after her (one played by George "Buck" Flower, who plays the most normal character in the film - how's THAT for a plug?) for a murder. But some of the others, I'm not so sure about, as it's a very scattershot movie - the number of flashbacks and dream scenes make it difficult to tell what's happening now vs. what happened in the past (if it ever happened at all), so I wouldn't be surprised if the others were just part of her fantasies. Add to that the film's curious approach to editing, which is to simply cut to something else as soon as any character says anything, and you have a movie that demands 100% focus. Which, of course, it won't get at the Cinefamily with everyone laughing at every other line while trying to ignore the pain in their bottoms from those torturous seats (no, the pillows don't help).

But those lines I DID hear? Oh man. The screenplay almost seems like it is comprised exclusively of non sequiturs - rarely has the phrase "You'll never know what they'll say next" been so apt. Randomness seems to be the order of the day; when someone needs to get out of town another character suggests going to "Daphne's, or Bakersfield", and I guess I should point out that Daphne is not a character we've ever met. When an actor character's less than glowing reputation is being discussed, a colleague explains that they did a western together, and that even the horses hated him - in most movies that would be enough, but he continues on with this puzzler: "And not because he couldn't ride. He can." OK, so then why did they hate him? Just because he's an asshole, as was already established? Why this extra bit of go nowhere dialogue? That's a question I'd ask any other movie, but in this one it's just one of many that will cause your mind to melt if you try to find some logical reason for their existence.

Some make sense but are just as funny, like the repeated references to shaving (the object of her desire was in a shaving commercial), or the actress who claims she's too sexy to play wives in commercials but that Molly would be perfect. But the highlight (assuming a better one wasn't drowned out by laughter at the line before it) has to be when she's getting a tattoo of a mermaid on her chest, with the tail ending just below the belly button, or, as the tattoo artist describes it, "above the curly black sea". I mean, that is just pure gold right there, the sort of line we just don't hear often enough in today's films. Of course, there's almost nothing in this movie that you'd see often in a modern movie, and that's not always a complaint.

As for the violence, it should satisfy anyone who came in expecting the sort of schlock that the poster suggested, but then again there are only a few kills (and again, some might just be hallucinations, if that matters to a gorehound). There's a truly horrifying bit with a razor that starts at the neck and ends (again, off-screen) in the guy's groin, a frequent target for our deranged "heroine". And I should warn prospective viewers that none of that violence comes at the end - it seems like a bloody showdown is coming between Molly, the cops, and other characters, but it just ends on a real violence-free downer; a character ODs and dreams of an afterlife while the other characters either cry or watch. It's a fitting ending for the film itself, but it's hardly what you'd expect from something described as a horror movie.

Despite being the kind of movie that you'd expect would be on a Mill Creek budget pack and looking like shit (it actually reminded me of Haunts in a way, which is odd since it was five years ago yesterday that I watched it), apparently this is actually on a special edition DVD, featuring commentary by director Matt Cimber, Millie Perkins (Molly) and the film's DP, who happens to be none other than the legendary Dean Cundey (misspelled "Cundy" for one of his credits), plus a transfer that's said to be pretty good (probably better than this faded, occasionally broken print, at any rate). It's an unpleasant movie (save for the weirdo dialogue) and thus not something I'd like to watch again, but I'd love to hear that track someday. There should be a Netflix that just has commentary tracks!

What say you?

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Night Warning (1982)

OCTOBER 2, 2012

GENRE: THRILLER, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

A while back I said I'd try to watch all of the Video Nasties before the end of the year, and obviously I didn't accomplish that. But hopefully I can catch em all before I wrap up the site, and thanks to Phil Blankenship and The Cinefamily I will be putting a pretty good dent in that "unseen" part of the list, as they will be screening 30 of its entries, one per night (midnight), including several I haven't seen alongside the big guns like Evil Dead and whatever you want to call Fulci's zombie movies (I can't keep track anymore). Kicking things off is Night Warning, aka Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker - it doesn't matter which title you use as neither of them have a damn thing to do with the movie.

As Cinefamily guru Hadrian pointed out during his intro, they've tried to pace the films so that they start off relatively tame and ramp up to pure insanity, so that at first you'll say "Why was this banned?" and by the end you'll ask "Why isn't this STILL banned?". So it wasn't surprising that Night Warning was actually pretty tame; there's a gonzo car accident in the first few minutes (one partially shot by none other than Jan De Bont!), and some icky brushes with incest (brief kisses that are in no way proper between family members), but otherwise it's a pretty tame sorta-slasher about a deranged woman who kills anyone that threatens to disrupt her lonely life with her nephew, a basketball star who is about to start applying for colleges. There aren't many kills, and they're not particularly gory (most of the impact shots are off-screen, in fact), so if you know of its "Nasty" status and settle down for Cannibal Holocaust levels of depravity, you'll be very disappointed.

However, if you're up for a minor classic in the realms of WTF cinema, this will hit the spot (and then some), mainly courtesy of Susan Tyrell's unhinged turn as Aunt Cheryl. Even when she's doing something like pouring a glass of milk or giving her nephew a birthday card, she excels at making you uncomfortable in the process, and the script thankfully lets her get more and more insane as it goes. By the third act she's chopping off half her hair, making cat noises, poisoning her nephew, and murdered a few innocent folks. There's a touch of Betsy Palmer/Mrs. Voorhees in these later scenes (especially when household "weapons" come into play), but Tyrell is on a level of her own - if there were awards for playing the crazy in a horror flick, she'd even beat out the posthumous nominees.

And in terms of scenery chewing, she's nearly matched by Bo Svenson, who has the thankless role of one of the most homophobic characters in film history. Early on, Cheryl kills a repairman who rejects her advances, and somehow Svenson gets it in his head that Billy (the nephew) was the actual murderer, killing him after a lover's quarrel. He then proceeds to call him a "fag" about 395 times, and even when his partner (played by Britt Leach, best known (to me) as the clueless manager from Silent Night Deadly Night) starts finding plenty of evidence that proves that a. the kid isn't gay and b. Cheryl was most likely the killer, he ignores it all - he's hellbent on taking this kid down, mainly because he seems to hate gay people. Even for sleazy early 80s flicks, it's a pretty weird subplot, topped only by its denouement, which I had to confirm actually happened because it seems like something I'd make up in my sleep. I won't spoil it, but this film has the best surprise "on-screen text epilogue" since American Graffiti - even the damn TEXT in this movie is nuts.

The pacing is a little off, however. After the great opening and the death of the repairman a few minutes later, the middle doesn't have a lot going on, to the extent where I wondered if this was actually a horror movie (not all of the Nasties are). The final reel or so makes up for it with a few kills in rapid succession, plus Tyrell's transformation into full blown loon, but to get there you gotta watch a lot of repetitive scenes where Billy tries to have a little independence, only to get caught by Aunt Cheryl. A fight will break out, then she'll apologize and do something creepy, and then it all starts up again. There's a subplot about his rivalry on the basketball team with a young actor named "William" Paxton (his biggest role to date), but he never meets a grisly end courtesy of Cheryl, so this stuff is just padding. Oh, and then Svenson/Leach will pop up from time to time to discuss who they think killed the repairman, but we know the answer so it's not exactly exciting when they find clues. There's still a lot of weirdness in these scenes (Leach has a great bit where he talks to Billy's girlfriend), but in terms of horror, there's a good 30-40 minute chunk that really could have benefited from a kill scene (or even a full blown Cheryl freak out) to give it a shot of adrenaline. The climax has a meddlesome neighbor AND the girlfriend sneaking around - the neighbor should have been dispatched much earlier, as now she's just kind of in the way since we know she's a goner, whereas the girlfriend is a bit of a wild card.

Of course, this is only an issue for those watching at home. In theaters, the crowd never stops reacting to the weird dialogue, complete lack of political correctness, Tyrell's occasional looks (or actions) of lust toward her nephew, etc. As a crowd movie it's damn near perfect, but those lulls might be a bit of a concern if this deranged curio ever finds its way onto legitimate DVD. However, if you can't wait that long, Amazon actually has a novelization for the thing (under the Butcher... title), which I've linked below and will most likely buy on Friday once I get paid. If the book is from Cheryl's perspective... oh man.

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Eaten Alive

AUGUST 31, 2012

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I have a buddy who claims that Tobe Hooper has never made a bad film, which is contrary to what most sane people think (which would be that he's only made a couple that were any good). As of this writing, he has yet to reply to my Facebook wall post asking him to explain how Eaten Alive (aka Death Trap, and pretty much every combination of two English words you can imagine - it has more titles than an Italian zombie flick) could be considered good by any reasonable measure.

I mean, sure, it has a certain batshit charm that would probably make it a hoot to watch with a crowd, but that's also how I'd describe The Room, and fuck anyone who claims that's not a bad movie. To be fair, Hooper says he was at odds with his producers throughout production on this one, and as legend has it, walked off before filming was completed (and thus presumably had no presence in post-production), so you can't chalk all of this film's faults up to him. The fact that it was his followup to Texas Chainsaw Massacre also probably put some unfair expectations on this one, not unlike Carpenter's Halloween followup, The Fog, which has only started getting the respect it deserves in the past 5-6 years.

But even factoring that in, this is just a mess. Horribly disjointed and populated exclusively with assholes and degenerates (William Finley is one of the more normal characters - let that sink in), there is precious little to enjoy here. Most of my amusement was generated by realizations, such as the fact that the movie turns into a Manos remake during its second act. Not even joking - a bickering couple with a quiet girl gets lost and stops at the main locale, where the girl's dog is killed almost instantly and the family is terrorized by the owner of the place. Sound familiar? That the production value and professionalism on display here is only slightly above that of Manos just makes the similarities even more apparent.

I also chuckled at the irony, as I was watching this to wash away the stink of Texas Chainsaw 4, which I covered for my Badass Digest column this week - I figured an old-school Hooper flick would even things out. Not only did this not help (it's better, of course, but barely), but I got an unexpected reminder of the flick, as both of them were apparently an influence on Rob Zombie when he made House of 1000 Corpses. There's a subplot here about a dad coming to the place looking for his daughter that was killed earlier, and it plays out almost exactly like it does in Zombie's film. Plus the main location is the sort of backwoods "tourist trap" that the characters in Corpses would have visited, so the similarities can't be coincidence.

But I could forgive all (OK, some) of that if the movie ever generated any suspense at all, and that's where it fails most miserably. The opening kill is a decent enough surprise if you're expecting the girl to be the hero (yeah, it's not only a reprise of Chainsaw and Manos, but Psycho as well), but too much of the back half revolves around the little girl, who is trapped under the house and under threat of the crocodile that the owner keeps in a swamp. Sorry, but even though the girl is Kyle Richards, whose sister Kim played the ill-fated vanilla twist enthusiast in the previous year's Assault on Precinct 13, there's no way in hell I believe that she's going to get chomped, rendering all of this stuff a waste of time. And since everyone else is kind of despicable or just plain weird, there isn't any real concern when they're in the vicinity of the croc's jaws, either. Go ahead and kill them all so we can get home early.

It's also poorly made, so even if Hooper didn't shoot all of it, it's not really much of an excuse since all of it kind of looks like ass. Despite having something like 7x the money at his disposal, it actually looks cheaper than Chainsaw. The production design is lousy, the lighting often murky, etc. There are some scenes that are tinted red, which looks cool but means nothing, and just sort of adds to the film's erratic feel instead of sticking out as an actual stylistic choice. It's also gory, which is a shame in a weird way as Chainsaw was so effective and scary without any real gore at all, but here we get blood spurting out of necks and such, adding to the movie's overall crudeness and further making me wonder if Steven Spielberg didn't actually direct Chainsaw as well (OK that's a cheap shot, but come on, it's a FUNNY cheap shot). I was charmed to later learn that the movie was shot at the Raleigh Studios on Melrose - not only was I right across the street from it earlier today (it's across the street from Greendale Community College, where I wish I could enroll for night classes), but it's also where the Shriekfest Film Festival occurs every year. Having seen a lot of similarly shoddy, inept movies there, it was sort of endearing to think that one was actually made on the premises.

Despite all of that, it's not even his worst movie. I'd take it over Spontaneous Combustion or The Mangler, and his Masters of Horror episode Dance of the Dead (which also had Robert Englund, who plays an asshole hick here) is still one of the absolute worst things I've ever seen in my life. I'd even entertain watching it at the New Beverly or something, where its many, many lapses in logic and amateurish production would provide a lot of entertainment thanks to the infectious energy of a bewildered crowd. But by myself on a computer monitor? Yikes.

What say you?

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The Deadly Spawn (1983)

MAY 15, 2012

GENRE: ALIEN, INDEPENDENT, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Nothing beats having the wrong idea about a movie and having it turn out to be way better than the one you imagined. For some reason I thought The Deadly Spawn was a comic-horror film along the lines of Killer Tomatoes or something, where its low budget was used to its advantage (intentionally cheesy monster, purposely bad acting, etc), but in reality it’s a straight up alien/monster movie with a ton of gore and FX that mostly hold up quite well (all things considered). At times it even rivals the original (best) Evil Dead for inventive low-budget techniques, and is a must-see for anyone who appreciates old-school, practical FX and/or independent horror.

The thing I liked most is that it starts fast - in the first 10 minutes we’re treated to three gory deaths, which has to be a record for this sort of thing. I figured after the opening kill we’d have to watch a bunch of character stuff for a while before the next one, which makes it a great surprise when a guy that could conceivably be the hero gets munched moments after his introduction. Then his wife goes downstairs and gets killed as well! And it’s actually a well done scene; I loved the little reveal of the blood splatter on the rafters over her head (which she doesn’t see) as she walks around looking for her husband. Again, I was expecting some dated spoof flick, so this helped get me on board, fast.

Plus the monster is awesome! It’s a giant worm with a ton of teeth, which it uses often and to great effect. Lots of bodies are mangled over the course of the flick, with faces being torn apart, heads ripped off, etc. Sure, you can spot the dummy heads or whatever, but I defy anyone to tell me that it’s preferable to have some waxy CGI effect in its place. Not to mention all the great fake blood being splattered around, instead of digitally implemented (poorly) like, oh, EVERY MOVIE MADE TODAY. This movie’s 30 years old and it looks better than 90% of its modern counterparts, all because the filmmakers actually gave a shit and/or didn’t have the option of being lazy.

Another highlight was that the characters were pretty smart, another rarity. We have two heroes, essentially – an older teen who is a budding scientist and thus can make reasonable assumptions about the enemy and figure out how it lives (along with his girlfriend, who explains the ridges on its skin), and then his little brother. The brother is the main draw for horror fans, as he’s basically us – he wakes up his aunt early in the morning because of the loud screams from the horror movie he’s watching, he reads monster mags at breakfast, makes masks and simple FX with blast powder and such, and is generally pretty awesome. And he’s not a weirdo; when his uncle asks if he realizes that Frankenstein and such aren’t real, he answers “yes, that’s why I like them.” Hell yeah! He’s also the one that figures out that the things can’t see and go only by sound, which makes for a few fun moments.

There’s also enough variety to forgive its occasional pacing issues. There are a couple of monsters, and they grow, so you have little worm versions, big heads with tentacles, one that seemingly can’t move but is huge (think the evolution of Audrey II in Little Shop Of Horrors), and even a house sized one that we see at the end. The isolated house setting and abundance of teenagers (a study group) gives it a bit of a slasher feel, but instead of a killer using different weapons to keep things fresh, we get a variety of monsters. I’ll take it!

The DVD comes with a decent selection of extras, though half are a bit of a waste of disc space. An alternate opening has no discernible difference other than the font of the titles, and the comic prequel is too short to be of much use (it’s basically “There was an alien planet that exploded and a few survivors crashed on earth”). The outtake reel is fun though; it lacks sound but it’s great to see behind the scenes footage of the filmmakers touching up or operating the monsters, or setting up blood tubes and such. I also dug the over-selling trailer which tries to sell it as a followup to Alien, and it’s quite beat up so you can appreciate the film’s transfer, always a plus. Then there’s some audition tapes and a home movie taken at the time of production that’s kind of in-jokey and thus not particularly useful.

Then there are a pair of commentaries, one with producer Ted Bohus and the other with pretty much everyone else of note from the production. Ordinarily I would only listen to one (the latter) but since I sensed some bad blood between Bohus and the rest I figured it’d be fun to hear both sides of the story. The story isn’t entirely clear, but director Douglas McKeown was basically shut out of the production when he ran out of money (to live) and it was finished without him, and didn’t even know it had been released until he saw it in the papers. Bohus, on the other hand, explains that the distributor screwed him out of money throughout its release, which I assume means McKeown got even more screwed being that the film was released without his involvement or knowledge. So yeah, I can kind of see why they may not want to be in a room together. At any rate, the group commentary is far more enjoyable – they point out little mistakes and talk about how nutty the shoot was and such, while Bohus just drones on about whether or not certain shots are in focus or how the print lab screwed him out of 500 bucks or something. If you have the time for both, fine, but if not, definitely pick McKeown and co’s over his.

Apparently the Blu-ray has different features but a shitty transfer, so that’s your call. I think it looks pretty damn good on this Synapse DVD from 2004, and the Blu-ray apparently drops the group commentary, so I’d say it’s not worth the upgrade if you already own this one, and probably isn’t worth the extra couple bucks if you don’t already own it. But no matter what you’ll get a pretty damn great, charmingly lo-fi monster movie made by people who really gave a shit about what they were doing, which is exactly the sort of thing I need as a morale booster when confronted with so much soulless DTV crapola.

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Killer Nun (1979)

APRIL 20, 2012

GENRE: GIALLO
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

With a title like Killer Nun (or Suor Omicidi, its Italian moniker), I was expecting something a little more exploitative and fun than the film actually delivered, and I hope someone can point me to a better "nunsploitation" movie to enjoy - with only a year of HMAD left, I can't imagine the opportunity or drive to see too many others in this most peculiar sub-genre will arise. But a man shouldn't go through life without seeing one really good nunsploitation movie. Jesus even said so.

Now before anyone gets on my ass for making a sacrilegious joke, I will remind you that I went to Catholic school for 8 years; uncomfortable shirt, ugly green tie, excessive mass going... the works. I was also referred to as an idiot by one of the nuns because I was/am left-handed, and one of them whipped a piece of chalk at me for an offense I can no longer recall, but most certainly didn't involve risking injury to another human being. In other words, I understand and respect the religion and those who devote their lives to it, but let's just say I wasn't exactly enamored by my perception of it during my formative years.

Thus, I was excited about the idea of a movie where the nun actually was the villain I perceived a few of them as, instead of a "sub-antagonist" like in Silent Night Deadly Night, where Mother Superior is a horrid nasty woman but it's really the killer Santa that may kill a character we care about. But alas, the movie is actually more a giallo, where the killer may or may NOT be our main character, Sister Gertrude (Anita Ekberg), who had a brain surgery early on and is hooked on morphine. Is she killing people in a drug induced haze? Is someone trying to frame her? More importantly: will this movie ever get entertaining enough to care?

Well, yeah, in the last 20 minutes, when this movie's version of a killing spree finally begins. Until then it's just an endless and snail-paced account of Gertrude more or less losing her shit, which gets tiresome after a while as there's really nothing else to the plot. There aren't any interesting characters, there's very little mystery (it's obviously either Gertrude or one other character), and even the occasional interesting bits go on for so long that they just become as obnoxious as everything else. At one point a crippled guy is relieved of his crutches and has to make his way up the stairs, and this goes on for what seems like 4 full minutes. Even if this was our hero it would be in dire need of an edit; that he's a rather anonymous character just makes it all the more excruciating.

It's also a very disjointed film; plot points are introduced with a shrug, other things (like the guy on the stairs) go on forever when they could have been cut entirely. Writer/director Giulio Berruti never worked on another narrative film after this as far as I can tell, and it's not hard to see why he wasn't much in demand. It's technically proficient, I guess, but there's no soul to it - it's just THERE. The most interesting elements are subdued - the religious angle doesn't even really have a bearing on anything; it might as well have been set in a hospital or nursing home, since that's what it resembles anyway.

Indeed, the old folks that Gertrude is supposed to be caring for provide the best parts of the flick. The highlight of the film is when she yells at one for taking out her dentures at the dinner table and proceeds to smash the things into bits as the old lady cries - THAT'S the sort of behavior I expect from all nuns, let alone one named a Killer by the film's title! A few of them get knocked off in the final reel, where Berruti finally remembered what kind of movie he was making and offs like 4 people in 20 minutes, with some of that Giallo flare that had been absent throughout the film. Even though it didn't make a lick of sense, I quite liked when Gertrude looks above her and sees a corpse dangling, blood dripping over her as she screams. And of course, the rope holding the body snaps and the body comes down. Alas, Berruti than haphazardly cuts to the next scene, killing the moment.

See that's the thing - it's like he figured the title (which translates to Sister Murders - close enough) and maybe a scene or two were enough for an audience to accept the film. No! You gotta commit to your killer nun movie! I mean, if you cheat on your diet, you don't just nibble some cake or an Oreo - you eat half a goddamn pie and wash it down with a milkshake. There's only enough bad taste and depravity here to justify maybe 20 minutes of boredom, when there's close to 75. But at the same time, those bits of nuttiness keep this from ever being taken seriously, so it just ends up satisfying me on either level.

I was happy with the interview with Berruti, however. In the disc's sole extra, he talks a bit about the cast and how the movie WAS actually based on a real person; a nun who was stealing from the old folks she was hired to care for. He also tells a funny anecdote about how they tricked a real convent into letting them film there by showing them fake script pages, and fiddling with lights and camera setups if a priest came over to see what they were doing (so he'd just get bored and leave). He's not as candid as some of these other Italian guys; he has nothing but nice things to say about everyone - the closest he gets to "dishing dirt" is saying that one of the supporting actresses didn't understand some of her character's actions, which is nothing. But it's a good interview nonetheless, and I'm glad Berruti has opted to stick to documentaries as he seems much more comfortable doing those (though it's odd none of them have found their way to his IMDb page, which stops which this film).

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Bloody Moon (1981)

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

What the hell? Two brother/sister incest subplots in as many days? However, thankfully that’s pretty much the only thing Bloody Moon (German: Die Sage Des Todes*) has in common with the woeful Creature, which is just one of those movies that I hate more and more as I think about it. No, Moon is the sort of movie I could eventually grow to love if I had time to re-watch it a few times; it’s not as endearingly batshit as Pieces, but it’s the same vein of slashers made by people who weren’t really concerned with logic. Also a fascination with tennis.

It does have one up on Pieces; as ridiculous as that one got they always kept track of its killer and red herrings. But in Bloody Moon (spoilers ahead), a seemingly retarded man quite clearly tries to kill our heroine, only to be saved by a red herring character with a huge scar on his face (this guy killed someone in the opening scene; he’s OK now, I guess). However the retarded guy subdues scarface and resumes his chase of the heroine... and then just disappears. As it turns out, there really isn’t a lot of reason for the real villain to be killing ALL of these girls, because he’s working with Scarface’s sister to screw the brother out of his share of an inheritance. I guess the plan is to blame him for the murders and have him sent off to jail or executed, and keep the entire inheritance themselves, which is fairly original for this sort of thing, but it doesn’t quite explain why they needed to kill so many of the girls, and it certainly doesn’t explain how the retarded handyman figured into things, or where the hell he went in the middle of the damn climax.

Otherwise I was kind of impressed with the mystery. It’s almost like there’s two plots going on and then at the end they tie together, Johnny Gossamer style. And I also like that it ultimately had nothing to do with the main girl – by this point in the slasher cycle we had gotten to the point where the Final Girls were often directly targeted by the killer (even if he usually killed everyone but her), but this goes back to something like Friday the 13th where the motive was more general and she just happened to be the last one left alive. But unlike Alice in F13, she’s very much the main character, so that it comes down to a plot that didn’t really have anything to do with her is almost sort of a cool non-twist twist. And the fact that this probably wasn’t intentional but the result of the typically slapdash plotting makes it equally amusing.

But for the most part, its charms are subdued; while I was enjoying it I rarely felt compelled to laugh out loud or applaud. I think with a big crowd this one could play like gangbusters, but it’s missing that certain something that makes a movie like Pieces or Things work just as well at home by myself as they would with a crowd. In fact I was only driven to an actual outburst twice; once for the hilariously awkward name of the school (“Europe’s International Youth-Club Boarding School Of Languages”), and another involving a kid who comes out of nowhere and witnesses a murder. I won’t spoil its pleasures, but if you think that it won’t get any better than the kid kicking the murderer in the shin and then running away, you’d be very very wrong.

It doesn’t help that the girls are a rather dull and interchangeable lot; apart from the main girl I had trouble telling them apart, which made their deaths – most of which had little build up – less interesting/exciting than they should be. Some of the stalking bits are pretty good (the one with the girl bringing back some beer in particular), and the “find the dead friends” sequence is well above par, but for the most part the kill sequences weren’t any more exciting than the talk scenes.

In fact I would even argue they were LESS exciting, because they were often low on dialogue – this movie has some of the strangest dubbing I’ve seen in a while. If I had to guess, I’d say that the dubbing folks were trying to match the lips of the actresses as close as they could, which meant that they were speaking very awkwardly, putting pauses in odd spots. Also, the lines often seemed to be longer than the native (German, I guess?), so people frequently spoke over one another or replied to inquiries that they couldn’t have possibly had time to formulate a response to. Added to the wannabe Pink Floyd score, and you have a film where the audio track provides more entertainment than the visual component (not that the obvious dummy head isn’t funny).

And now we come to the part of the review where I just rattle off a bunch of things that I didn’t think much of, but if I don’t mention them someone will leave a comment berating me for not mentioning them, as if my reviews were meant to be thorough, Wikipedia level entries about each film. So: Mickey Mouse killer mask, snake beheading, ugly ass sweater (one that appears due to continuity error to boot), old lady “on fire”, falling rock, girl pretending to have sex, and kid offering flowers. There, that should cover it. And note to those people – especially for movies like this, sometimes I like to leave some of the highlights for those folks who have never seen the movie and were inspired to do so after reading my review. So if you want to bring up a favorite/memorable part in your comment, I encourage it, but starting it off with “I can’t believe you didn’t mention ____” is somewhat obnoxious.

In addition to the trailer (which spoils a lot of the kills, of course), there’s a nice 20 minute interview with director Jess Franco, which begins with his wife (?) walking out of the house to do errands or something, at which point he immediately lights a cigarette – it’s quite amusing. It’s a very entertaining interview; he’s not as crass or candid as some of his peers (Umberto Lenzi, for example), but has a great memory and explains that he hates the music and how the producers forced him to put in things that they wanted to see in the movie. He doesn’t say much about the cast beyond leading lady Olivia Pascal, who is gorgeous and, I’m happy to see, still working regularly in her native Germany, but he does talk about the FX for a bit, and also explains that the movie is not supposed to be taken seriously, which is a shame. These things are way funnier if you’re under the impression that they weren’t aware of how ridiculous they were. I should also note that Severin’s disc is seemingly uncut, with gore shots obviously reinstated from a different source during a few of the kill scenes, though the run time is still a bit shorter than the IMDb reports (85 minutes, IMDb claims 90). Could be an error, I don’t know. But barring an entire character who was cut out (and killed), if there’s anything missing it doesn’t seem to be related to gore or nudity, so who cares?

What say you?

The Spanish title, on the other hand, is Raped College Girl, which is just all kinds of terrible. For starters, as Franco points out, the movie doesn't actually have any rape.

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Visiting Hours (1982)

JULY 1, 2011

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

If you notice, I have finally tagged all of the "Video Nasties" that I have reviewed thus far, so I can keep track as I attempt to watch them all before the end of the year (as there are 42 to go, I better get cracking!). It's a bit of an obscure "genre", but it's one I am fascinated by, especially when you watch an entry like Visiting Hours, which is about 10 frames shy of a PG-13 by today's standards, and even then must have confused its makers when they saw it listed along with movies like Cannibal Holocaust and I Spit On Your Grave.

In fact, it's one of the few slashers on the list at all; most of the films are zombie, cannibal, or rape films. There is an off-screen rape in this movie, unlike the rather graphic Lipstick (not on the list), and the gore is kept to a shocking minimum - the most we see is on a self-inflicted wound on the killer! Yet the same year gave us Friday the 13th Part 3, with eyeballs popping out of heads and what not, and that is also not on the list. In short, whoever picked the movies on this list was just as inconsistent and erratic as the MPAA, and I have to wonder if they even saw this movie in its entirety.

Because I pray no one watches this movie specifically for its "Nasty"-ness, or else they will be even more bored than I was. I figured it would be on the more "classy" side of things considering its cast (Lee Grant and William Shatner aren't exactly the types of folks you expect to see in a Friday the 13th wannabe), but I didn't realize it would also be so terribly unfocused. There are times when they almost seem to be trying to make us sympathize with killer Michael Ironside, though his tendency to kill a few folks at random prevents us from doing so. They also introduce a friendship between Grant and a nurse (Linda Purl, aka Pam's mom on The Office), but then more or less write her out of the third act, so what seems like an interesting addition to the usual material is actually just padding.

The structure is also too damn wonky for my tastes. Ironside tries to kill Grant in her house early on, and fails, so she is brought to the hospital. What follows should be a Halloween II ripoff (albeit with better actors and hopefully a less nonsensically small staff), but instead Ironside fails to kill her, goes home, tries again, goes home, and finally returns yet again. A slasher works best when it's compressed into a day or two, or at least all comes down to a giant, half a movie setpiece (like Scream with Stu's party), but by the time Ironside returns a final time there are only like 20 minutes left of the movie, and with Purl out of the picture (he tried/failed to kill her too), it's just too anticlimactic. You know he's not going to get her, and there's no one else around of note. Shatner's role in the film is so perfunctory it's a wonder they didn't just edit him out of it entirely.

And that's the other thing - it's too damn long. 105 minutes is fine if you have a mystery (again, Scream) or a complicated plot, but it's basically "Michael Ironside hates women so he wants to kill this particular feminist". 85 minutes MAX would have been plenty, and there are a number of things that just don't serve much of a function. The blond girl with the crimped hair, for example - her scenes take up 10-15 minutes and the only purpose they serve is finding out Ironside's name and address (which is how they get rid of Shatner and some of the cops for the climax, they head to his apartment when he's already at the hospital again). Why couldn't they have just given Shatner something to do by having him get his address off of one of the letters Ironside sent to the news station (Grant is a reporter, he is her boss/lover)?

One of the random subplots kind of pays off with a nice scare though. Purl's nurse friend goes on and on about the guys she dates and how she has come up with a new rating system (one guy is a "2" because he cries in bed, for example), which I thought was building toward a twist of sorts where you find out Ironside is one of her lovers. But instead she gets killed like a half hour in, so that was a nice little surprise. Since every other kill in the movie comes as no surprise, it's good that one of the few that worked came early enough to buy the movie some goodwill.

And again, it's classy. They steal the score from Halloween, and Ironside's dress habits are a bit out of left field, but otherwise it operates more like a traditional stalker thriller, boosted by actors who deserve better than Brian Taggert's (Poltergeist III, and, I shit you not, Trucks, the "remake" of Maximum Overdrive) script. Some of the suspense bits are pretty good, such as the initial one inside Grant's house, and even though it killed the pace it was sort of fun seeing how Ironside had to keep coming up with different ways to get into the guarded hospital. I also quite liked the chilling bit where Ironside cut a woman's air tube (he thought it was Grant), and instead of just leaving (or pressing the call button, for some more of that sympathy vote), he sits on her bed and watches her die in a most painful way.

However, ultimately the poster (recreated in the trailer) is probably better than anything in the movie, which is sort of a problem. It was modified a bit for the DVD, but basically the lights in the hospital's windows form a skull face, which is awesome. But it also suggests a more traditional "fun" slasher, not the melodramatic, occasionally grim thriller that it really is. Hell, even Shatner seemed to be playing it straight for once. You know, they've remade every other goddamn slasher from this period, why not remake this one and do it right?

What say you?

P.S. This movie's title resulted in "Not The Doctor" from Alanis Morissette being stuck in my head the entire time ("Visiting hours are 9 to 5 and if I show up at 10 past 6 then I already know that you'll find some way to sneak me in..."), and also reminded me of how much I used to listen to that album. On that note, the bonus track "Your House" is creepier than anything in this movie.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Maniac (1980)

FEBRUARY 20, 2011

GENRE: EXPLOITATION, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (ONLINE RENTAL)

One of the several thousand bonus features on the two disc blu-ray for Maniac is the full Q&A session from a screening at the New Beverly, conducted in March of 2008. For the life of me I can’t remember why I didn’t go, but I assume I was stuck at work – same as I was a few months ago when it played at the Nuart (both times with director Bill Lustig in person). As for why I hadn’t already seen it before those screenings happened anyway, well I have no excuse. It’s just one of those movies that I never put my foot down and finally saw. Until now!

Unfortunately, I HAD seen the trailer a couple times, and that shows pretty much every kill in the movie, which would be fine for something like Scream, because there’s still a lot of story and plot twists to enjoy. But Maniac? There’s really not a lot to it beyond the death scenes. The story is thinner than even Halloween’s, the heroine doesn’t really enter the movie until the 3rd act, and worse, it’s cripplingly repetitive at times. Perhaps if Caroline Munro’s character was introduced earlier, there could be some fun at the idea of him trying to have a normal relationship with her in between scenes of him killing folks, but that isn’t the case. Instead, her scenes come so late, and their friendship so out of nowhere, it just seems like you’re watching a different movie all of a sudden. Even Joe Spinell’s performance changes; throughout the movie we have seen that he doesn’t really have the ability to converse normally with anyone (especially women), but all of a sudden he’s a charmer, making self-deprecating jokes, buying stuffed animals... it’s just really jarring.

But it’s also the best part of the movie. Until she arrives, it’s just an endless series of scenes where he kills someone, and then talks to himself/their “corpse” (a mannequin with their clothes and, in at least one case, their scalp) for a while, before heading out to kill again. He doesn’t seem to have any sort of job, no clueless friends, nothing. And it’s padded as all hell; at one point he chases a girl into a bathroom, and there’s a full THREE minutes of her just sitting in the stall hoping he will give up. There’s a difference between stretching out the tension and simply stalling, and this movie’s scare scenes often fall into the latter category. And, like I’ve said a million times, when you introduce a character right before they are killed, there’s not a lot of suspense there for me (even without the trailer having ruined it anyway), and with the exception of Munro, I don’t think a single character in this movie besides Spinell appears in two non-consecutive scenes. But unlike say, Friday the 13th Part V, the murders are too cold and gruesome for any of it to be any fun, so they don’t have that going for them either.

The craftsmanship seen on the kills is great, obviously, thanks to the efforts of Tom Savini in his prime. He recycled a lot of stuff from his other shows (look for Mrs. Voorhees’ bloody stump in the finale), but so what? They were great FX, why not reuse them? I particularly loved the opening kill with the guy on the beach, with loads of blood splashing over the sand (plus a nice throat garroting), and Savini’s head being blown apart is terrific as well. On that note, I won’t get into it too much, but it’s kind of ironic that all these women’s group protested the movie saying Maniac’s existence was simply an excuse to kill women, but the most iconic kill in the movie is that of a man.

I also dug the old-school New York vibe, as I did with Basket Case and some other indie horror films of the period. It’s not as prominent as in some of those other films, more or less confined to the first few scenes, when Maniac picks up a hooker, but it still makes me wish I had a time machine so I could go visit the city when it wasn’t as overrun with hipsters. The rest of my enjoyment largely stemmed from things that probably weren’t meant to be funny, like when Spinell tells Munro that she’s the most beautiful woman he has seen since his mother. The two cops at the end of the movie killed me too; they rush in, see him lying in a pool of blood on his bed, and simply shrug and leave without checking the body, looking around for any potential victims, or even calling it in.

Whether you love or hate the movie (or just think it’s OK and a bit overrated, like me), you have to be impressed with the supplemental package that Blue Underground put together here. Even the first disc is pretty impressive; the 2nd disc is just icing on the cake (and maybe a bit of overkill). The main draw on disc 1 is probably the pair of commentaries, one recorded in 1995, another recorded last year. Lustig appears on both, he’s joined by Savini and some others on the 1995 track but the other two guys don’t say much, and one of the co-producers on the new track. He repeats a lot of the same information, so overall I’d say the older track is more essential since Savini’s comments are far more valuable than the producer’s on the newer track. However, on the newer track, he points out that the end credits style was stolen (font, layout, even crew order) from Halloween! Other than the sting-heavy score, this is one of the few post-Halloween slasher films that doesn’t really seem influenced by that film in any way, so it’s kind of funny that they copied the credits instead of the structure or setting or whatever.

Then there are four new featurettes; one with Munro (who doesn’t think much of the film, but loves Spinell), one with Savini (where he tells a pretty funny story about two young kids asking him to watch some footage from the movie they were working on – the kids were Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert; the movie was The Evil Dead), one with the composer (where even HE chimes in about the film’s controversy with women’s groups), and a goofy little piece where Lustig goes to talk to the songwriters behind the song “Maniac” (from Flashdance) and gets the real story on the myth that their song was based on the film. All told, this stuff, plus a promo reel for Maniac 2 (which, as far as I know, was an in-name only sequel, with Spinell playing another guy), totals about an hour. Add in the commentaries, plus the usual trailers and TV spots, and you’re looking at nearly five hours of bonus material on the disc.

And then there’s disc 2! The big draw is “The Joe Spinell Story”, a 50 minute doc about Joe’s life, featuring anecdotes from a ton of folks – his sister, Lustig, Robert Forster, Exorcist star Jason Miller, etc. Don’t look for a lot of “dirt” here, because everyone seems to have the same opinion of Joe – he was a great, extremely loyal guy. At least three times on the set we hear how the “set” for Maniac’s apartment was built by a Russian guy that Joe was trying to help out, and there’s also a story about how he turned down a well paying role in one movie because he promised Stallone he’d do Rocky (for free). Then there’s about two hour’s worth of archive material from the film’s release, including Lustig’s appearance on something called Movie Madness (48 minutes), a cable call-in show (inexplicably in black & white) that is prone to feedback noise and other technical glitches, not to mention some morons calling in that proves that “talkbacking” always attracted trolls. I was most entertained by a selection of news broadcasts from the time of the film’s release, with footage of protesters and even Gene Siskel weighing in, claiming that all slasher movies are intended to tell women to “stay in their place, don’t go outside or a man will kill you”, and also ponders whether or not showing scenes from the movie can be considered disturbing the peace. There’s also an Easter Egg of Spinell doing standup, which... well, Joe sure was a nice guy, huh? Anyway, all in, disc 2 will take you about another 3-4 hours to go through. Again, some of it is overkill (the news broadcasts are all pretty much the same; the trailers don’t really differ much), but you gotta respect the effort here, and with the exception of maybe deleted footage or makeup tests (if any exist), there really isn’t anything else you could want from this package.

Ultimately, I appreciate the movie more than I enjoy it. Grats to everyone involved for putting something so extreme (and yet relatively well made) into mainstream theaters, when many films of this extreme nature (i.e. Henry) more or less went straight to video, but it’s hardly a great film. If anything, I enjoyed the bonus material more than the movie, which is kind of ironic – the movie’s only worth a rental but the wealth of bonus material makes it worth a purchase.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...