HMAD Screening: LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III

Die-hard HMAD fans (let's pretend they exist) will recall that there have been TWO HMAD screenings of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 at the New Beverly, which is fine because it's awesome. However, for as far back as we did it the first time, I've been wanting to do the 3rd film, which I actually prefer. However, a previous inquiry turned up nothing - it seemed New Line didn't have any prints (understandable as it was not a very big, and certainly not a very popular, theatrical release), and I'd be denied yet another of my dream screenings. It's actually the only one I haven't gotten to see theatrically; I saw the two Dunes and the 3D movie during their initial runs, and I saw TCM1 via a couple of repertory screenings (and, obviously, I hosted TCM2).

Well score one for persistence! We tried again, and unless they're just being dicks, a print of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III has been found and will be shown in glorious 35mm this Saturday, April 5th at 11:59 pm! And, I'm guessing for many in the crowd, it'll be the first time they saw it on film, as the release was even smaller than (the unrated!) Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and was pretty much gone from theaters after two weeks, ranking as the lowest grossing of the six Chainsaw films. The advertising budget was also seemingly atrocious; I was only 10 at the time, but I remember being confused that on the day it opened it was given the "also playing" type listing in my newspaper's movie showtimes section, usually reserved for movies that had been playing for weeks or even months to make room for big ads for the films that were just opening.

Then again, maybe they just spent all of the dough on this incredible teaser, which I remember scared me the first time around:

Whatever the reason, the movie found most of its audience on video, and clearly didn't kill the series: three films have been made since. Yes, the MPAA did quite a number on the movie, rendering at least one kill scene incoherent, but the movie still works despite that, unlike some other late 80s franchise entries (cough, New Blood, cough). The cast is terrific: Joe Unger, Tom Everett, and a fresh faced Viggo Mortensen are entertaining enough to (almost) not miss Bill Moseley or Jim Siedow, and RA Mihailoff made for an imposing Leatherface. As for the heroes, you got the lovely Kate Hodge and the immortal Ken Foree (this was actually the first of his films I had ever seen and I was impressed at what a badass he was; it's like thinking Bill Murray is funny based on his cameo in Little Shop of Horrors and THEN discovering Ghostbusters or Stripes). And TCM2's Caroline Williams pops up somewhere in there for good measure. The family unit is solid and the black humor ("F-O-O-D") is spot on, and at a scant 81 minutes, the fast pace keeps things exciting throughout, unlike the occasionally laggy part 2.

All of which should make for a kickass screening. I'm doing my best to get a few of the above out for Q&A; director Jeff Burr (who was the first "horror" celeb I met when I moved to LA!) has relocated to Georgia and thus won't be around, but I've been in touch with him and he is stoked about the screening and might be sending some goodies for the pre-movie trivia! Keep your fingers crossed! As always, the screening is at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, located at 7165 Beverly Blvd, two blocks west of La Brea. Street parking is plentiful, and tickets are a mere 8 bucks cash or card at the door, or online via Brownpapertickets. We kick off at 11:59 on Saturday the 5th - be on time so you don't miss a second of Leatherface goodness!

And give props once again to Jacopo Tenani, who designed the sweet poster below! If you'd like to post about the screening on your own site/Tumblr/Facebook, feel free to use the image - just be sure to give him credit and maybe include the link to his site to see all of the other great art he's done for us over the past couple years!

See you there!

P.S. Yes, I know you think I'm "wrong" about there only being six movies. The one with McConaughey does not exist as far as I'm concerned.

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Machine Head (2011)

MARCH 26, 2014

GENRE: SLASHER, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Look, everyone around my age bought a Bush CD in the 90s. No judging, it's just what happened. And so anyone from that group will probably do the same thing I did when I saw the title of Machine Head, which is make a dumb joke about how it was based on a Bush song. But here's the kicker: your joke, and the damn song, is infinitely better than the movie, and you'd be better off dusting off Sixteen Stone (or even Razorblade Suitcase) and listening to it twice instead of watching this almost comically dull and clunky slasher/home invasion hybrid. I've seen worse movies this year (hence the lack of a "Crap" tag), but I don't know if I've seen one where I was constantly wondering if I was just having a rather bland dream. Surely no one actually MADE a movie this botched?

If I knew beforehand that it had been on the shelf for 2-3 years I wouldn't have been so optimistic. But then again, sometimes you just know within minutes that something is amiss, and this is one of those times. An opening sequence that has no bearing on anything else in the movie features a poorly executed first kill, and then we cut to our heroine, who has the shittiest tan I've ever seen (it reminded me of watching Star Trek in HD where you can see the Spock makeup falling apart around the ears) and is offering all of the exposition over her phone. Yadda yadda spring break, yadda yadda her dad's client's house (which looks a lot like the one she lives in, so I'm not sure what the appeal was), yadda yadda no boys allowed but of course her boyfriend and his two idiot friends are coming... etc. It's no more/less generic than any other slasher film, admittedly, but there's something abrasively phony about the whole thing; I kept expecting someone to yell CUT! and reveal that this was an INTENTIONALLY fake movie within the world of our real movie. That feeling never really went away throughout its 80 minutes.

The body count is 9 or so, but nearly all of them occur off-screen. I advise you not to put much stock in the cover, which has the trio of girls (or A trio of girls - their faces aren't seen so it could be anyone) all dirtied and with one carrying a bloody axe - they're all killed pretty quickly and cleanly, as the R rating for this film is due to language and brief nudity. And note I said nudity, not sex - the guys are all killed at once en route, so there's no sex after the intro where we meet the heroine and her boyfriend. Not that I'm the sort who needs a healthy dose of T&A to enjoy my slashers, but why bother with the spring break backdrop if you're not going to indulge? This could have been anything - even one of their birthdays - for all the point it had to the movie, which exists in a bizarrely empty universe. Even establishing shots are seemingly filmed in a ghost town, a peculiar approach for a slasher that is sort of set up as a whodunit (the killer is rarely seen, and his motive, even though it's meaningless when revealed, is hidden).

But that's nothing compared to the bizarre introduction of the heroine's two little sisters. They're played by actual sisters, making the fact that they look absolutely nothing like the main girl even more distracting. Worse, there's two of them but only one seemingly has any sort of presence, as if there was only one in the script and the other girl just kept stepping into frame, which just makes their inclusion even more distracting and odd. One of them is said to be a "demon seed" but apart from being bitchy there's nothing really "evil" about her, and besides ALL of the characters are kind of insufferable, which is a given since this is a modern slasher film made by people who clearly hate and/or have never seen a good one. The only saving grace from the guys getting killed before showing up at the house is the fact that if they DID arrive, there would almost certainly be some infidelity subplot to make us hate them even more.

And then there's the actual horror element of the movie, more broken than anything else. At times it's almost like witnessing a shared psychosis of some sort, as there's no physical presence for the killer until the final 10 minutes (beyond the opening, pointless kill and the quick bit where he offs the boyfriends), so you're watching a movie about a bunch of girls freaking out at every door creak or car engine outside or whatever. There are no stalking or chase scenes, the killer has no physical presence (you maybe see an arm or something), and the "twist" at who the killer is (or at least, why he's doing it, since again the killer himself is a non-entity) is ridiculous but not crazy ENOUGH. It's also the sort of reveal that would usually come along with flashbacks at how it all worked (like a Saw movie), but instead it just ends right then and there. "Oh, by the way, ____ is the killer." *Credits*

Fear not, the direction is just as bad as the script. My favorite example would have to be what sets off the movie's idea of a plot, which is when our car full of girls gets harassed by a cool muscle car on the road. It's like an early bit from Duel or Joy Ride or whatever; he's on their ass, tries to pass, they shriek "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" or whatever, and then he zooms off. What makes it special is that none of the footage matches at all - the wide shots showing both cars are clearly shot in a different area than the road we see in the closeups, and other cars behind the villain appear and disappear from shot to shot. It's bad enough when this happens with expensive 35mm cameras, but when they're using sub-par digital, there's no real excuse for it - they could have had 3-4 cameras shooting the sequence simultaneously to ensure some continuity when they cut it all together. This stuff almost appears to be from different movies entirely. Ditto for the lengthy scene of a cop walking around, possibly seeing the killer, realizing he's gone, and then driving off. We never see him again, so it doesn't even count as a red herring - it's just a weird way to kill 5-6 minutes in your 82 minute (with lengthy end titles and an admittedly decent opening title sequence) movie that has maybe 2-3 minutes' worth of entertainment in it.

In short, save your money for Glycerine or Little Things.

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Return To Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 (2013)

MARCH 23, 2014

GENRE: MUTANT, SPLATTER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Overall, my biggest complaint about Return To Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 is hinted at in the title - this is very much a volume 1 in that it just sort of stops at one point, without any real climax to tide us over until volume 2 comes along. Kill Bill definitely works better as one unit (and no, simply watching volume 1 and 2 back to back isn't the same - there's a small but key difference in "The Whole Bloody Affair" that makes the whole thing work so much better), but it had that big showdown at the restaurant, and the inciting action for volume 2. This has a weird sequence with some action, but hardly counts as a showdown, and then the movie just sort of hangs out with itself for another 15 minutes before the titles roll. Maybe if we had a firm release date for Vol. 2 (which is in post) it'd be less of a bummer, but leaving us in limbo is mean-spirited!

Because otherwise, this is actually a pretty delightful romp that lives up to other modern Troma productions and, in my opinion, easily tops the original Nuke 'Em High, which is one of my least favorites. I'm no expert on their stuff, mind you - I've only seen about half of their films (I don't count the ones they picked up; only the ones Lloyd directed himself or at least had a heavy hand in production), but of those this seems to be the most consistently entertaining and on point in quite a while. The benefit of splitting it up is that it would have been 2.5 hours or so, which sounds ridiculous but in reality isn't too farfetched an idea: Terror Firmer is 2 hours, and I feel I walk away from nearly all of their films saying that they were too long. This clocks in at a perfect 85 minutes, enough time to let the story (such as it is) breathe a bit, but without lagging all that much or going off on pointless tangents.

I truly enjoyed how it updated the scenario and more or less stayed in continuity with the original film (which we are given a brief recap of early on, earning a huge laugh by skipping over the sequels), even if it's sort of a remake. The school has been rebuilt and the power plant is gone, with a food conglomerate (Tromorganic) taking its place and offering healthy alternative food that is seemingly just made out of the leftover toxic waste. It doesn't take long for the student body to start turning into mutants; after a few isolated incidents (including a terrific sex scene gone awry, with melting bodies and such) the Glee Club is turned in its entirety into Cretins, and the usual sort of awkwardly paced but gloriously insane Tromatic carnage begins. It's been a long time since Kaufman helmed a feature himself (I believe Poultrygeist was the last one), and as I've said before - the movies he makes for the company are almost always infinitely better than the ones they pick up or that he merely produces (Cannibal: The Musical being a rare exception), so you know you're in good hands.

The humor is also on point; there are some truly tasteless jokes about Sandusky and the Colorado movie shooting, but as with South Park, pulling punches in some areas just make the other jokes more offensive in a way. I was laughing pretty often, particularly at the "so idiotic it's brilliant" bit where a bit of foreshadowing is followed by the shadow of a number 4 on a wall. I also particularly enjoyed the pair of teachers who are inexplicably arguing about Justin Beiber, pause to look at a burning student running down the hall, and then continue their argument. As always, you have to be in the right mood for it, but some of their films don't even work when you ARE in such a state, so when they nail it, it's worth noting.

It's also, I think, Lloyd's first digital film, and I'm happy to say it actually looks better than a few big budget digital films I've seen (Kaufman > Mann), not to mention offers more vivid colors than usual - all the better for any scene involving dismemberment or puke. The plot may be gibberish (and incomplete), but any scene taken on its own has every dollar of its meager budget on screen, qualifying it as a success. The only drawback: I was kind of sad to see that the shitty Troma logo has been retired in favor of a new high def one - why did they splurge when it was part of the charm? But fear not - even if it matches worse than usual, we still get to see the Kabukiman car flip, and everything else about the film lives up to Troma tradition (Lemmy pops up, male nudity is as common as female, Toxie makes an appearance...). It's a fine mix of old and new, and since digital is cheaper/faster (not better!), it proves to be a good fit for the brand.

I say that because as always, the extra features aren't exactly congratulatory - most of them focus on things that went wrong, Lloyd getting annoyed at one crew person or another, etc. There are three such pieces, and while they skip over the film's actual production (presumably being saved for Volume 2), it's almost amazing they got that far considering how many issues arose with figuring out effects, casting (poor Asta Paredes, the star of the film, is seen having to test chemistry with about a dozen actors. Translation: making out with a lot of random dudes), and having to use an old morgue as the film's production office. The two commentaries (one with the cast, the other with Lloyd and select crew) back up these issues with even more stories, thought it's not in an angry or bitter way - everyone seemingly knows what they signed up for and are proud of the finished result. In short, the tracks are fun and useful; there's no better way to learn about filmmaking than being a PA, and these tracks can give a glimpse of what you can expect if you wish to join the Troma team on their next production (if they ever came to Los Angeles, I'd probably do it). A quick teaser for Volume 2, a music video and a highlight reel of Lloyd's other films round things out - it's not as jam-packed as other Troma releases, but again I assume they're saving some of the meatier behind the scenes stuff for Volume 2.

Hopefully the 2nd installment comes sooner than later; not only am I legit excited about seeing it, but I suspect it'd be easier to sell audiences on this one if they knew when they'd get the rest of the story (The Hobbit made more money than it deserved, but I wonder if it'd have done as well if audiences weren't told in advance when parts 2 and 3 would be arriving). It's the first time they've attempted something akin to a serialized narrative (previous Troma sequels, such as Toxic Avenger 2, can't even decide if they're direct followups or parodies), and I'd love to see it pay off - maybe it can get Anchor Bay or someone to back an Avengers-style teamup with all the Troma heroes in one film (instead of quick cameos), offering a true celebration of the past 30+ years of their specific brand of demented horror comedy. With Lloyd pushing 70, I fear he'll retire without ever getting to make a true Troma epic, with a crew of passionate fans that have also had the benefit of 10-15 years' worth of DVD/Blu-ray special editions to prepare them for the less than stellar working conditions that have led to underwhelming productions in the past. I think it'd be glorious.

What say you?

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Want to watch me die (twice)?

Since I'm being lazy with my Nuke 'Em High review, enjoy this trailer to tide you over! It was for something called Drexel Dance, which is a fake movie trailer competition that just had its 6th iteration. I was told to wear my most 70s-ish clothing and come to a dark alley in downtown Los Angeles, where I had to mimic a bunch of stuff I didn't quite understand - all I knew is that it would eventually look like I was getting killed by Brea Grant, so I was sold. So now I get it! And it looks pretty badass! It's the work of Jason R. Miller, who also directed/edited/did FX for the "Infected" short film I posted a while back (where I played a monster), and also just released his debut feature film Unidentified, which boasts end titles from yours truly.

Check it out below, and if you like it let him know on Twitter!

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Dark House (2014)

MARCH 15, 2014

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

It's a shame Victor Salva is a deplorable human being, because it will forever overshadow the fact that he's got some strong ideas and is a technically proficient filmmaker. Remove his horrible past, and he's probably one of our "masters of horror" - but that's not ever going to happen. And so Dark House (formerly Haunted, as if that was any better) is the latest of his films to get a nothing release years after it was shot (2011 in this case), and unlike his last (Rosewood Lane) which I saw at a festival, this time I had the entire theater to myself. No one else wanted to take the plunge at 4:10 on Saturday afternoon I guess, and so I had one of my rare "private screenings" - the first one for a movie I actually somewhat enjoyed.

To be clear, it's not a great or even good movie. The plot's a mess, there's a bizarre, Dead Zone-y "if I touch you I will see the future" subplot that spoils nearly every kill (and, possibly inadvertently, the identity of one man's murderer, which should have been a shock), and this being a Salva movie you're often being subjected to young shirtless dudes, which is fine on its own but takes on a skeevy meaning when you consider his past (his victim in Clownhouse is introduced sans shirt). But there are some interesting ideas here, and the scare scenes that AREN'T completely spoiled by the flash-forwards are often suspenseful and exciting - the bulk of the menace stems from a group of shadowy "Axemen", who lumber around dragging their titular weapons and prove to be experts at throwing them into a target from dozens of feet away.

They're led by Tobin Bell, decked out in long brown hair (and a beard!), which gives him a more youthful appearance than horror fans are probably used to since he was always so sickly in the Saw films. Part of the fun is not knowing if he's a hero or a villain, so I won't spoil the answer here, but I will say that it's a shame he's not in the movie more - he disappears for a stretch after his introduction and only pops up intermittently after that. He's a commanding presence that is seemingly more choosy with his scripts than his modern horror icon peers (cough, Tony Todd, cough), as this is the first (released) film he's appeared in since the Saw series wrapped up in 2010. Good to see him again, especially since he's the only one in the movie I recognized besides Zach Ward and a cameo from the psychic lady from Jeepers Creepers, who runs a diner that our heroes stop at early on to get directions and a giant gob of exposition.

I got to thinking at one point, Salva is a lot like Wes Craven in that he has some really cool, fairly original ideas for horror movies but lacks a strong writing partner to get those ideas out clearly, since this movie approaches My Soul To Take-ian levels of "Whaaa?" at times. And like Wes, he has a crippling dependency on something that shows up in his films time and time again; with Wes it's the booby traps - with Salva it's out of nowhere exposition dumps and people who can see the future. The movie hides its true plot for a while and so I won't spoil it here (though I will say it seems Salva has been watching Supernatural), but the hero's ability to see how someone will die never really has much to do with it, far as I can tell. Yet the film stops cold early on to (sort of) explain how it works, with the obligatory "it doesn't always happen" explanation that keeps us from asking too many questions about how he's been able to go through life like this since he goes into near seizures when it happens (he wears fingerless gloves as well - I guess the power is in the palm?). As for the exposition, it happens over and over throughout the movie - someone will just offer up an entire history of a house or a mythological demon out of nowhere, and it's never NOT awkward. Library scenes, Victor! Let us read along with the characters!

Back to Jeepers, I couldn't help but wonder if he was cribbing some ideas from the seemingly never to be made third film. In addition to the future-seeing person (the old lady in the first, the girl in the 2nd), there's a strange obsession with the number 23, akin to that series' silly "Every 23 years for 23 days he feeds" thing. Our hero is 23, the route that they drive along is 23, someone says "23 is magic!", etc. At times it's more invasive than in that Jim Carrey movie, and much like the death visions, I'm not entirely sure what it had to do with the movie's actual plot. More successful is the forming of the group - our hero, his girlfriend, and their roommate are on the way to the house (which he just inherited) when they run into a group of surveyors (including Ward), who join them through thick and thin for the rest of the movie. It's the sort of thing you see in a lot of horror movies, where people tag along with total strangers and often get themselves killed rather than just be like "Hey, this is your problem, and I don't know you - goodbye". But here, there's actually a reason for it all, so I liked that, as it showed Salva actually puts some thought into justifying some seemingly unavoidable horror cliches.

Again, it's a shame he's a scumbag. I try my best to separate the "art" from the man, and it usually works - I know Chevy's an asshole, but I can still laugh at his role on Community even if I know he likely said something awful to a crew person before or after the camera started rolling. But Salva's crimes aren't forgivable (though, it should be noted that he did plead guilty and serve time for his crimes, unlike some others), and he seemingly dares you to be recalled of them with his frequent topless male characters (never/rarely females) and creepy sexual overtones (like in Powder when Goldblum says being touched by Powder was like the best sex he ever had), making it nearly impossible to separate the crimes from his films, which, if nothing else, are never cookie cutter genre filler. They might not be perfect (even the first Jeepers has problems), but they're always memorable, which is more than I can say for any number of other filmmakers in the genre. I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to support this or any of his other films (in fact I almost wish they were awful so it'd be easier to write him off entirely), but if you can reconcile your feelings about him and what he's done, you'll find something that's nowhere near as generic as its title suggests. That alone is (quite sadly) enough for some mild appreciation these days.

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In Fear (2013)

MARCH 9, 2014

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

It's a good thing In Fear had a making of that explained that the bulk of the movie was improvised, because otherwise this entire review would be based on my belief that this had a lousy script. There are some terrific little set-pieces in the movie, but overall it's a repetitive rehash of a few other films (Dead End, The Hitcher, Ils...) with a dumb reveal I'll get into later. It's a fine technical exercise (the majority of the movie is in the car) and the two leads aren't as obnoxious as some folks tend to get in such things, but is that enough?

For me, no. I mean, I was engaged for the first 40 minutes or so, enjoying the simple but effective tale of a couple (Tom and Lucy) driving to a hotel that is off their GPS, with their map being useless and the signs pointing to the hotel seemingly sending them in circles. But after a while it became clear that there wasn't really much to it beyond what we already saw, and my interest kept dwindling. They also blow their "running low on gas" wad way too soon - the light comes on relatively early, and they keep driving and driving without it ever really being an issue. At one point they pull over because they're supposedly just about out, but then something comes up and they drive more! Later the killer actually puts a can of gas in the car for them (heh), but by then they had already strained credibility far too much for a movie that's borderline documentary.

See, as we learn on the making of, there was no real script, just a basic outline. The film was shot chronologically, and the actors didn't know when they'd be pulled out (sort of like Blair Witch, but thankfully without the POV aspect). Director/story-writer Jeremy Lovering even tells of an incident where they got a flat tire and stayed in character as they made an attempt to fix it, assuming it was something that was set up - but it was an honest, unplanned accident. That's kind of a fascinating way to make a horror movie, and perhaps with a bit more of a structure (or more characters) it would work better. Alas, this scene isn't even in the movie anyway - instead we mostly get the two of them driving in circles as we in the audience wait for the next legit scare scene.

The scares are of the Michael Myers' stalking variety - their tormentor plays tricks on them (setting off the car alarm when they get out for a bit - watching the movie late at night as I did, this one was a good jolt) and sticks to the background. In my favorite bit, Tom (played by Fitz from Agents of SHIELD) goes out to take a leak and the killer starts approaching him, only to turn and recede into the darkness when spotted by Lucy. And he makes an aggressive move much quicker than I expected, so that provided another good scare. Alas, it all falls apart soon after that - skip the next paragraph if you don't want anything about the villain spoiled!

A few minutes later, they hit a guy in the road, and he claims to have been previously attacked by the same guy who is after them. If you've ever seen a movie before (even like, Toy Story or something would suffice) you'll know that he's lying and is in fact the bad guy (a real twist would be that he was telling the truth). No more kind of creepy white mask, no more stalking - just the usual mind games that lack any real weight since there's not much to the movie or the characters he's tormenting anyway. There's some incident at a pub that keeps coming up, and the full explanation isn't worth the wait - though it's still an improvement over the reason that they kept going in circles: the bad guy was swapping the signs around! I'm sorry, but most people have an innate sense of direction that should prevent this kind of thing from happening more than once, so I don't buy it. Plus at one point they give up looking for the hotel and decide to drive back to town and STILL end up returning to the same spot multiple times! All signs point to a supernatural explanation, so this was a letdown (a rare occasion where I wish they were ripping off Carnival of Souls again).

It's a bummer. This is the sort of movie that could have been a classic if the third act had delivered, but it just crumbles at that crucial moment, and what Lucy finds at the hotel seems way too elaborate for anything less than a full team of rich geniuses (which this movie doesn't have). I don't know if their improv skills just weren't up to the task or if Lovering didn't have a good idea for the finale to begin with, but either way it just didn't work for me. The Halloween/Strangers fan in me really dug the idea of a stalker/home invasion type scenario in a car, but I can't walk away satisfied from a movie just because the first 40 minutes were hitting my sweet spot. I'd be open to seeing Lovering (or anyone) taking this approach to another film, however - and again, kudos to them for doing something in a documentary fashion but without resorting to found footage. There's hope yet!

What say you?

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LA: Lethal Ladies of Horror fest!

In 2011, I hosted a midnight screening of Drag Me To Hell, because it's an awesome movie that deserves to be seen with a big crowd - and no one showed up. To date I think it was one of the lowest turnouts I've ever had for one of my shows (Dr. Giggles was lower, but it was raining that night which is actually a thing that causes people to stay inside in Los Angeles), which bums me out because it's such a great movie. But, maybe it was just too soon - it was only two years and change after its theatrical release.

Well is five years enough? I hope so, because it's one of the three movies showing at the Lethal Ladies of Horror festival in Los Angeles, which is happening on March 29th at the Crest Theatre in Westwood. Doors open at 5:30, and the first movie starts at 6, providing a full night of retro horror goodness, with a plethora of special guests, giveaways, and other goodies. In addition to Drag Me, you'll get a 35mm screening of Night of the Comet in time for its 30th anniversary (with both of the lovely leading ladies in attendance), and (my favorite), John Carpenter's Christine - with an actual screen-used Plymouth Fury on hand for you to ogle and take a zillion pics of all night! It's a pretty great triple feature: all of the movies are fun and tackle different sub-genres, and in Drag and Christine's case at least, represent under-loved movies from genre titans.

You can get your tickets HERE and read more about the festival over at JoBlo, who is putting this event together (via Arrow In The Head) for all you fine folks. Should be a blast, and a relative steal at a mere 30 bucks (25 if you're SAG or a student!). Hopefully they can make this an annual (or bi-annual?) event with a different lineup every year. The "Lethal Ladies" concept certainly lends itself to plenty of options, and I like the mix of older films with newer ones you might not have caught in theaters during their original run (while Drag did OK, it certainly didn't break any records - nor did it do well enough to convince Raimi to stick around before heading back to blockbusters). Enjoy!

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Blu-Ray review: Slumber Party Massacre

MARCH 6, 2014

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

While everyone focuses on streaming avenues and stripped down, "hit movies only" Redbox type affairs, god bless Scream/Shout! Factory for continuing to deliver top notch special editions of even the junkiest movies, catered to hardcore horror fans and pretty much no one else. Most companies probably wouldn't have even bothered to release Slumber Party Massacre on DVD at all, let alone put together a new retrospective and commentary track (which they did in 2010, along with the two less-good sequels), but they've gone back and put together a new transfer (and a new bonus feature!) for a BLU-RAY release of the movie. That's commitment to the customer.

SPM is definitely a love or hate entry in the slasher boom of the early 80s; the film's confused production history inadvertently created something quite unlike anything else at the time, even if on the surface it seems like one of the most generic offerings in the lot. Depending on who you ask, the movie was either written as a parody of such movies but filmed straight, or was a horribly cliched script that was given a comedic makeover during production - either way it resulted in something that toes the line between parody and straight even better than Scream in many cases. I'm more inclined to believe the former version; screenwriter Rita Mae Brown is renowned for her feminist work and doesn't seem the type to do something like this unless she was actively commenting on it. I suspect director Amy Jones (who lays claim to the 2nd version) just missed the joke and realized it later, rewriting history to save face. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems to me that if they were trying to make it funnier during production, it'd be more overtly comic, rather than just occasionally weird.

Ultimately I don't really care - we have a slasher movie where a character puts a pizza box on its dead delivery man to use as a makeshift table while she grabs a slice. Whatever strange combination of "comedy" and "horror" it took to get us there, it was worth the effort (likewise for the hilariously over-the-top shower scene, where the camera lingers on each girls' breasts and rear end for an eternity - again, this is a movie written and directed by women). At 77 minutes with credits, the movie doesn't have much time for a real narrative or deep characterization; in fact it's actually a lot like Halloween in many ways, albeit without the stigma of a real franchise hanging over it (the first sequel is barely related, and the 3rd isn't at all if memory serves). Russ Thorn escapes from an institution and sets his sights on a few girls, kills many of them and their boyfriends, gets killed twice, and the movie ends. There's even a few moments that seem directly swiped from the film, like when the killer partially steps into the right side of the frame as one of the heroines walks off to school on the left - on the commentary Jones claims the script was a Friday the 13th ripoff, but it's plainly clear that Brown was borrowing from Halloween first and foremost.

It's also somewhat overpopulated - there are SIX girls (four at the party, two next door) and three boyfriends, plus the world's most dedicated gym teacher and a goofy neighbor (the pizza boy is dead when we first see him, so we can't really count him as a character). And that's not counting the two ladies Thorn kills at school before the party even begins (our body count is 11, which is pretty excessive for the time as most - including the first Friday - were under 10), which gives the movie a bit of a disconnect. The late Robin Stille is more or less the Laurie Strode character who sits out on all the fun and finally goes next door when things start looking suspicious, but during all the pre-party scenes, it's Michele Michaels (possibly late as well, she disappeared off the face of the earth, it seems) who we follow around, see talking to her parents, etc. Stille's involvement is minimal, and the climax has no choice but to make her AND Michaels the heroine (plus a 3rd character, Courtney - who was the one to appear in SPM2, albeit played by a different actress since this one disappeared as well). Nothing wrong with letting more than one character live for a change, but when she's barely been in the movie or interacted with the other characters, it feels disjointed and sloppy.

I know it sounds silly to make a real critique about this particular movie, but I only do so because I think they were close to hitting a legit home run here. First off, Michael Villella gives a great performance as the murderous Thorn; he had some method actor idea of acting like a peacock, and goofy as it sounds on paper, it works like gangbusters. He creates a memorable character despite not being given a costume or mask - he's just wearing regular guy clothes, with only his drill and peacock-esque head bobbing to set him apart from any other male character. And the girls are all likable and seem to genuinely care about one another, rather than the sort of backstabbing and squabbling that you see too often today. The kills are hit or miss; I loved the guy getting drilled from behind and the shock kill when the girl gets it to the throat when she opens the door. Pointedly, most of the female kills are off-screen, or the impact is below the camera frame - while nearly every male death is shown in all its glory. Maybe it only works subconsciously, but this approach keeps the movie from feeling too sleazy (after all, the drill is quite obviously a phallic symbol), always staying on the side of fun even when they're not actively joking about this sort of thing.

As mentioned earlier, this special edition was released on DVD a few years back, and this Blu debut carries over those bonus features: a commentary with Jones, Villella, and Debra Deliso (she plays Kim, the one in the basketball shirt), moderated by the guy who runs the fan page, and a retrospective featuring the same plus a couple others (again, of the three leads, two of them have vanished and the other is deceased, so don't go looking for too many of the girls). The commentary is fine; the fan page guy could use some tact with regards to Ms. Stille's suicide (he comes off like he's complaining that the details aren't public) and occasionally just butts in with nonsense about someone's hand position or whatever, but otherwise he keeps Jones and the others talking about the usual stuff you'd discuss about a movie you made 25 years ago (meaning, vague memories about where things were shot, things people have said to them about the movie over the years, etc). Jones sometimes gets her facts wrong ("I'm the only female that's ever directed a slasher" she claims, then is reminded that the sequels were directed by women - no one mentions Freddy's Dead) but they're all good sports about the whole thing, with Deliso proudly telling stories about how some of her students (she is a dance teacher) saw the movie where she bares all, while someone else points out that one of the other girls had the film removed from her IMDb at one point. Never got why some folks are so ashamed of their horror past - if George Clooney can laugh about being in shit like Return to Horror High (or Batman & Robin) then there's no reason someone can't admit to being in Slumber Party Massacre when what they're doing now is hardly much better.

The only new feature, besides a top notch transfer (a few Scream releases of late have been a bit disappointing, but this one is glorious - the aforementioned shot of Thorn on the right of the frame watching Michaels walk to school looks like it could have been shot 30 minutes ago instead of that many years), is an interview with Rigg Kennedy, who played the neighbor. I wouldn't dare to spoil what the piece is like; I'll just say it's like nothing I've ever seen on one of these releases, and will likely never be topped. Holy shit. There are also trailers for all three movies (probably carried over too, I can't recall); the first is worth a look to A. appreciate how good the film's transfer is in comparison and B. enjoy a brief appearance from The Cars' "Moving In Stereo", which obviously doesn't appear in a cheap Roger Corman production. Hopefully they'll see fit to do the same for the sequels down the road - if I recall the transfers on those left a lot to be desired, and they've clearly improved their ability to find people they couldn't get last time (even if they're completely fucking nuts), so upgrades would be worth the time if this one proves to be a moneymaker.

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The Den (2014)

MARCH 1, 2014

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, SLASHER
SOURCE: STREAMING (ONLINE SCREENER)

As much as I love gizmos and tech stuff, I've never found much use for webcams and the like; my laptop came with one built in and I've never used it, and my work phone has one that I turned off. It's not a privacy thing (though I AM afraid of them turning on when I'm sitting there in my underwear, or talking to my cat in a baby voice), but just a lack of interest really - and movies like The Den sure as hell don't make it any more enticing. The title refers to an online service not unlike Chat Roulette, which our heroine is doing a study on when she starts getting weird messages and people start dying. So it's sort of like Smiley, but with one key difference: it's actually pretty good.

Oddly, heroine Melanie Papalia also appeared in Smiley (as the main girl's roommate, if the memory I try to block is correct), so it makes the comparison even more fun. Part of what makes it work (and this will sound ironic coming from me) is that it takes on the guise of a POV/found footage movie, in that just about everything we see is from a web-cam or a cell phone - you'll be looking at a desktop for hefty chunks of the movie, with Papalia chatting over the video thing while also IMing or sending emails. This made the movie a delight to watch on my computer (via screener link - no one will send you a DVD anymore, sadly), as I often had trouble telling her desktop apart from my own (as I was also multitasking on occasion), which was probably part of the point. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the random video chats she stumbles on (and quickly exits from) were legit strangers, or at least, recreated encounters with people who signed a release form. It's even how plot points get introduced - when she needs a gun, she looks up a Youtube video on how to load it, which plays in one corner of the screen while we watch her try to do it in her chat window.

If you haven't used Chat Roulette, it's kind of fun - you basically sign on and get connected to any random person also using the service. Some folks are there to chat, but most play pranks (guys love to jerk off or dance around in drag, for some reason), which feeds into the narrative of the film. Papalia's character, Liz, gets connected to a girl who mysteriously doesn't have a video but just a photo for her chat sessions, and the encounter is a bit strange. Later, the account shows her what appears to be someone's murder, but given all the pranks she's not sure whether to believe it or not. Of course, when she DOES start believing she's in danger, no one believes her for the same reasons she initially had, so you get a pretty typical paranoia-driven horror thriller, and anyone who saw Smiley will of course be dreading the fact that it IS all a sham. Luckily (inverse spoiler?) it's not - and the body count is pretty impressive by the end, driven up by a couple of effectively unnerving slasher scenes where we can see behind people, or THINK we saw a person in the corner as the camera/phone is waved around by the person holding it.

Having seen some eleven million slasher movies in my life, I'm always impressed when someone tries a way of doing them that essentially paints them into a corner. A traditional slasher sequence will have cutaways, POV from the killer, long shots... this doesn't usually have those luxuries. One in particular is from a woman who is awkwardly holding up a cell camera to her face as she walks around the house, and part of what makes it so scary is that you CAN'T SEE ANYTHING. So instead of the usual "Don't go in there!" type things you want to yell at the screen, you might find yourself shouting "Zoom the camera out!". Plus, and this was something Smiley failed miserably at, the "Den" plot device has a built in way of relieving tension - after a death, whenever Liz signs back on to her computer, there's always another prank or goofy image (a penis puppet makes several well placed "cameos") to lighten the mood a bit.

I just wish it didn't get all torture-y near the end. Even though the MO has been to kill people in their home or whatever, for some reason the villain opts to tie up Liz and another character and bring them to a dungeon. I've seen a found footage torture movie (The Butcher), and I'm not saying it can't work - but it seems out of place here, as if they didn't know quite how to end it but had blown their wad with slasher scenarios in the first hour (it's a pretty short movie, by the way). Another grip is the occasional moment that feels like a supernatural element is in play - I swear a camera just floats itself around the room at one point since the only other accounted for character is in the frame. They also should have introduced the idea of remote desktop control in a normal way, since when the villain does it it just seems like he must be in the room (if you're unfamiliar, it's possible for someone to take full control of your machine from another location - even typing out an email in real time). She has a web-savvy friend that pops up a few times - maybe if he had used the RDC for something legit (it's for IT services) it'd be a smoother transition for when the villain uses it.

Otherwise, I found it to be a pretty effective little movie. Papalia is a lovely presence and easy to sympathize with, and again the base similarities to such a bad movie made this one look all the better. I also loved the epilogue, which does away with the POV stuff entirely in favor of a pretty chilling little stinger that hammers the point home (may be a bit on the nose, but it's nowhere near as much overkill as Serbian Film's final dialogue exchange, which treads the same water). As with Smiley, I don't think Chat Roulette type things are really popular anymore, which dates the film a bit, but with so much anonymous connecting still happening via Facebook, Twitter, and everything else, the general idea is still quite relevant, and unlike say, Chain Letter, none of the tech on display is noticeably dated at the time of release. In five years, The Den might be a relic, but for now - it's a pretty inventive way to worm into the "found footage" craze while actually having something to say.

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The Returned (2013)

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I've only been to the Music Hall 3 cinema in Los Angeles a few times, but everything I've seen there has been a really bad horror movie. It's where I endured The Lost Coast Tapes, Don't Go In The Woods, and last week's Ganzfeld Haunting; the closest I came to having an enjoyable experience there was Frankenstein's Army, which at least offered some great monster designs (in a bad movie). So when The Returned played there in similar fashion to those (one late show per day, for one week only), I didn't have much hope - I was mostly going out of my weird obligation to see every theatrically released horror movie that I am aware of, regardless of interest. But lo and behold, I liked it! The Music Hall 3 curse is broken!

It's ironic, then, that it'd barely even count as a horror movie. Sure, it's a zombie film at its core, and there are a couple of scares (though a broken plate in a non-zombie scene provided the biggest jolt), but it's really more of a drama that takes a grounded, realistic (well, relatively realistic) approach to a zombie outbreak scenario. As with many a zombie film, a cure is attempted, but there's something that I don't think I've seen before - a medication that keeps the zombie-isms at bay for infected patients. Like a diabetic taking his insulin, the titular Returned have to give themselves a shot of this certain protein every day, and if they do that - they'll be fine. It's those who miss their doses that you have to worry about - something we see once or twice just to sell the danger (and get a few typical zombie shots for the trailer), but otherwise it's a pretty zombie-free world. The outbreak was contained, and the Returned all take their medication, allowing the world to carry on as more or less normal.

So what's the hook? Well, for the first half, there's a focus on folks who fear the Returned aren't as normal as they are said to be, and want to kill them all. It's treated very much like a disease - we even get a conservative blowhard type suggesting that they ship all of the Returned off to an island compound, not unlike his counterparts did in the early days of AIDS. There's a fear among the Returned of even telling their loved ones and friends about their condition - hero Alex (Kris Holden-Ried) tells his best friend over dinner in a manner not unlike someone admitting they have cancer, or "coming out" to their parents. Protesters harass the doctors who work to find a permanent cure, some folks use "the returned" in a derogatory manner... the movie's budget isn't very big, so it's not exactly the most fleshed out scenario - but director Manuel Carballo and screenwriter Hatem Khraiche provide enough to sell the basic concept, which is more than I can say for most indie zombie films.

The other storyline involves Alex's wife Kate, played by the very lovely Emily Hampshire. She's a leading researcher on the cure, and is secretly stocking up on the protein in order to keep Alexfrom zombie-ing out - which we soon learn is a necessity as there is a worldwide shortage looming. This stuff reminded me a bit of Deranged, the Korean virus thriller that also focused on the lengths people would go to for vaccines and medication (Steven Soderbergh's Contagion also dealt with this to some degree). When the stock completely runs out, Kate is attacked for her tiny supply, and there's even some morally gray material to chew on: SHE was hording supplies, knowing that the shortage was coming (sort of like insider trading in a way) - so how is what she's doing really any better than a man trying to save his child or wife? Is it better to let several Returned live an extra week or so, or let just one live for a few extra months?

HEAVY STUFF, in other words - this isn't a movie that starts with medication running out so that we can have a typical zombie outbreak, but focuses on the looming threat of such a thing happening. By focusing on a handful of characters (adults at that!), we get to know and actually care about them and their plight, making us question what we'd do when things get desperate. It's funny, I watched the latest episode of Walking Dead before I left for the theatre, and while I've never been as hard on the show as some of my peers, I found this one to be a particularly frustrating and obnoxious episode, the sort of thing that makes me understand why folks hate on it so much. It's season 4 of the show, and not only do I still not really know much about most of the characters (it took me 20 minutes to even remember Beth's name, and she was the focus of its first half!), I still don't really have much of an attachment to them - when they built a sequence out of the possibility that Glenn had died and turned zombie, I found myself not really caring either way. And that's a guy that's been around for all 40 episodes or whatever it's been! Here, it only took 80 minutes for me to care about Kate and Alex - I was legit upset when it looked like all hope was lost and he started making preparations to keep himself isolated from others should he turn.

I really only have two complaints about the film. One would be that it could use some tightening - there were a couple of lulls, and too many shots of people driving somewhere or walking from their car to the office or whatever - not really padding, just filler that could have been tossed from a movie that didn't have a lot of action in it. I know there will be many who find the movie simply boring, and that's their loss - but the film definitely isn't rushed at any point. The other would be a rather stupid, unnecessary epilogue that I would encourage you to skip, unless you're one of those nuts who liked the idiotic microwave scene at the end of the Last House on the Left remake. I won't spoil its content, but you'll know it when you see the movie, and I hope you can agree that the character would probably have better things to do with his/her time than what is being suggested. It seemed tacked on to give the movie a less dreary ending, but for me all it did was leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Otherwise, I was really impressed. I'm always looking for a new angle on the zombie movie, and while it does share some basic similarities with Les Revenants (aka They Came Back, which has been turned into a TV show called The Returned, confusing the hell out of everyone), I think they're different enough to consider this pretty original (for starters, at least in the movie, there was no traditional zombie stuff). I don't know if I can honestly enjoy yet another ripoff of Day or Dawn of the Dead, with evil humans and survivors holing up in some ____ to yell at each other until the inevitable zombie siege in the final reel - but I can definitely appreciate another movie that looks at it from another, serious point of view. Good job, everyone!

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Blu-Ray Review: Bad Dreams (1988)

FEBRUARY 17, 2014

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I didn't think much of Bad Dreams when I first saw it way back in the early days of HMAD (yes, I had missed out on it as a kid), but after giving it another look I realize I was a bit harsh. It's not a great movie, but it's trying something new and is fairly well made for a debut, plus offers a strong cast of genre faves and solid character actors - including many adults, which was pretty rare for horror in 1988, especially in a "slasher" movie like this. And my only other viewing was on a pan & scan cable transfer, so I certainly appreciated this high-def second go around whenever the lovely Jennifer Rubin (one of my first actress crushes thanks to Nightmare 3) was on screen.

The problem with the movie is that it takes a sub-genre that's mostly known for its relative playfulness (the slasher) and uses its motifs for a plot about suicide, which isn't so fun. I dig the mystery/twist angle that (spoiler for 25 year old movie ahead) everything in the movie has been the result of psychosis and medication, and not the ghost/supernatural presence of a long-dead cult leader - but that really undermines the hook of the movie, and makes you realize in its final moments that everything you have witnessed has been a series of suicides brought on by (intentionally) mixed up prescription pills. That's a huge bummer of a reveal, especially when you consider that the victims all had real problems and were trying to get help, but got caught in the middle of their evil doctor's plan that was instigated by the arrival of a new patient who survives.

Of course, one could look at Nightmare on Elm St 3 the same way - Kristen shows up and people start dying, and she's one of the few to live. But we learn that the kids already knew about Freddy and thus we can assume he would have gotten to them eventually, which isn't the case here. The villain was able to use the idea that the cult dude was somehow doing this stuff, but the other patients wouldn't even have known he existed unless Rubin's character hadn't joined the group. So once you realize this, it makes it hard to get into the movie that's spent the previous hour building up the idea of a new horror icon that blends Freddy Krueger with Jim Jones (hey, more suicide!). I mean, maybe if it was a hardcore serious horror film, they could pull it off - but when you have Dean Cameron mugging in every other scene, and even occasional one-liners from Richard Lynch (as the cult guy), it's hard to really take it serious.

So it's a tonal misfire, in other words - but there's still some merit to the proceedings. Again, there's a great cast here, and watching them bounce off each other during the therapy scenes is entertaining every time. There's a sequence where two of the patients fall (jump) into a giant turbine fan which causes blood to spray out of all the vents and air ducts - a delightfully icky setpiece that you can enjoy a lot more nowadays since you know it was real fake blood being sprayed on all of the actors (including Rubin), not a bunch of pixels. Lynch's burn makeup (a 5 hour process, according to the bonus features) is also pretty spectacular - again, it's clear they were trying to launch a new Freddy icon (Lynch also says he was signed on for 2 sequels), but I'm not sure how a franchise would work considering he's basically a figment of everyone's imagination.

It's also got a nice turn from Bruce Abbott, in the Craig Wasson role as the group's handsome shrink. I never understood why Abbott didn't become a bigger star - he's got a very charming everyman presence, something that pays off here as he's pretty much the only normal guy in the movie. But he briefly gets in on the fun, during a weird hallucination scene where he imagines himself repeatedly running over his boss, and also gets to enjoy the longest rooftop rescue in history (seriously, he's hanging onto Rubin - with one hand! - for like 3 minutes). His boss is played by Harris Yulin, another solid character and one you don't often see in junky horror movies (one of his few others is My Soul To Take!), so again, the cast alone is enough to warrant a view.

All of the bonus features here are ported over from their 2011 DVD release; there's a pretty fun commentary with Andrew Fleming, who is proud but aware of the flaws in his first movie and thus has just the right attitude about it (he also shares a hilarious anecdote about being so young/broke when he took the meeting for the movie that his mother drove him to FOX and waited outside - heh). Then there's a then-new collection of interviews with Cameron, Rubin, Abbott, and Lynch (not long before he died), where they go through the usual paces of such things (except for Lynch, who is seemingly pissed off about something and seems like 2 seconds away from completely freaking out). The rest of the stuff is vintage EPK and behind the scenes material, as well as the original ending which drags on forever and sets up the sequel that never came to pass, so it was a pretty good call on their part to cut it.

This is the film's first release on Blu-ray, and it's paired with Visiting Hours, the hospital-based sorta-slasher with Michael Ironside. I have no desire to revisit that one any time soon, but for what it's worth, it DOES have some new interviews, including one with screenwriter Brian Taggart, so if you're a fan of that film you can justify the upgrade for sure. Some Scream releases are must-own sets even if you're not a big fan of the movie (I've held on to The Burning and Night Of The Comet), but this release is definitely a fans-only affair. However, I'm glad I gave Bad Dreams another chance; it's not great, but it's one of the better Freddy cash-ins, and given that it came out in 1988, when the Nightmare series officially reached parody level (Miami Vice Freddy!), it's admirably restrained in comparison.

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The Ganzfeld Haunting (2014)

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

GENRE: GHOST, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Before Moviepass changed their program, it was pretty easy to find surprise theatrical releases like The Ganzfeld Haunting through their service; their website would list all currently playing movies in your area, sorted by popularity - you just had to go to the last page and work your way back to find these "gems". And of course, by "gems" I mean they were almost all awful (Lost Coast Tapes and Amber Alert were found this way, if memory serves), so it hasn't exactly been a big loss that the app ONLY shows you the popular movies now. To find stuff like this, you gotta go theater by theater and look, which is more trouble than it's worth. But I was stumbling around on the theater's website for a different reason, and came across this thing - a theatrical horror movie starring Billy Zane, Dominic Purcell, and the gorgeous Taylor Cole? SIGN ME UP!

And as a bonus, it actually sounded kind of interesting. In fact, I'll paste the synopsis I read below:

"Trying to prove the possibility of psychic communication, a group of hard-partying psychology students mistakenly unearth a grisly series of murders from their forgotten youth. As ghosts from the past become increasingly violent, the students must solve a 20-year-old crime before they are driven insane - or become murder victims themselves."

Sounds pretty good, right? I figured Zane (or Purcell) played their professor or something, and it would have some of the cool scientific-based horror that I enjoyed in The Stone Tapes or The Apparition (neither of which are perfect movies, mind you - but belong to a sub-genre I wish had more entries). Alas, while that plot synopsis wasn't exactly WRONG, the movie focuses almost exclusively on the "hard partying psych students" aspect - I would estimate nearly half of the film is nothing but one of the four snorting coke, drinking hard liquor from a bottle, smoking a joint, or "letting themselves go", i.e. fooling around at random with one of their fellow students (including a brief lesbian encounter between Cole and Rumer Willis). Maybe another 10% or so is just them yelling at each other. The epilogue, where Purcell finally shows up (as a cop, along with Hoyt McCallany), adds another 5 minutes or so where they just wander around the house saying "Look", pointing at a drug or a bloody weapon, and muttering "What the fuck...".

I'm not going to do the math, but that doesn't leave a hell of a lot of the 85 minute movie for anything involving "increasingly violent ghosts", and no one seems particularly interested in solving any crime (including the cops!). Willis literally spends the entire movie either snorting coke or wandering in and out of the room where the others are, never taking an active role in the experiment or even SAYING anything much of value beyond "What the fuck was that?" or similarly brief, often profane outbursts (what little enjoyment I got out of the movie, besides appreciating Cole, was from imagining Rumer's dad having to sit through this fucking thing). As for the backstory that provides the "mystery", it's completely incoherent - Cole realizes that she is one of the little girls seen in the fragmented flashbacks that pop up whenever they try the experiment (which is a real life theory involving projecting thoughts into another person), but it's not until the end credits that it becomes perfectly clear that all FOUR of them knew each other as children and were witnesses (I guess?) to a murder committed by Billy Zane.

I actually felt bad for Zane. The guy co-starred in one of the biggest films of all time, and both of his co-stars are currently starring in Oscar fare (Leo's being more successful than Kate's) while he shows up in awful horror movies that get single screen releases a week before they hit Blu-ray. His character is a total cipher; he takes home movies (molestation might be an issue, it's too jumbled to know for sure), says nonsensical things while looking out of a window, and plays War with one of his daughters. He's not really in any full SCENES, just scattered shots, and I don't even think his character was given a name. I mean, every single person on screen in this thing deserves better, but Zane in particular could really use a hug for his trouble.

However, it's possible that he was in it more originally. I mean, I'm not surprised that his role was brief, because that's how these things go - a few names are used to get the movie sold, but their screentime is brief. It's just the WAY his role plays out leads me to think that there was more to it; the same way you could tell Donald Pleasence's screentime had clearly been chopped up/reduced in the theatrical version of Halloween 6. And I thought this long before the end credits popped up and listed not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR editors! I read a lot of credits (it's my job!) and I swear, I have never once seen a film with more than 3 credited editors (not counting assistants and such), and the ones I have tend to be giant blockbusters, not random low budget horror films. It also starts in a very jarring manner; the four of them arrive at the house to start an experiment we know almost nothing about (and never really learn) and almost instantly start bickering and talking as if we had already known these people for 20 minutes. There's also a timestamp motif (the movie takes place over 24 hrs) that starts off telling us every hour (6 am, 7 am, 8 am), and then stops until 1 am - another sign of a jumbled up, re-edited mess.

And it's a shame, because there IS a good movie to be made from this concept. They are supposed to go to a neutral place to ensure that any flashes or images they get won't be of their own memories of the place, and they fuck that up (Cole's character says her family owns the house but she has supposedly never been there), but I can buy that contrivance (the fact that they have apparently ALL been there and were friends as kids is too ridiculous to even begin to critique, however) if it was serving a scientific-based approach to the usual "long buried memories of a tragedy resurface" plot. The ghost element is rather interesting too; the girl appears more or less in the same spot and doing the same thing every time, which obviously limits its use but is kind of cool in its own way (I'm sure it's not the first example of a ghost being stuck in a loop of sorts, but it's certainly not OVERused), though it's pretty benevolent - why couldn't Zane's ghost be around as well? Or is he even dead? Ah, who knows.

Hilariously, nearly all of the problems were the same ones I had with The Traveler, which was also directed by Michael Oblowitz (something I just learned 5 seconds ago). Like that movie, which also featured an actor who is REALLY slumming it (Zane here, Val Kilmer there), the plot was obtuse and repetitive, the ending was baffling (one of the four just wanders out of the movie, I guess), and it featured horribly misguided music choices (some angry loud guitar stuff in Traveler; here we get some Skrillex type shit performed by someone who obviously hates humanity). At first I thought maybe this was one of those deals where a filmmaker got a movie taken away from him by producers and would give him the benefit of the doubt, but when he has two different films that suffer from the exact same problems, I have no choice but to believe that maybe he's just not a very good filmmaker (he's also behind The Foreigner, one of the worst Seagal films I've seen, which is saying something). I won't forget his name again - it will serve as a warning that not even Moviepass should be paying to see this guy's nonsense.

What say you?

P.S. The movie got a little bit of press last week when Corey Feldman inexplicably showed up at the premiere pretending to be a journalist, hoping to get mock interviews with Zane and Willis for some online TV show he has. But neither of them showed up. That anecdote is far more interesting and entertaining than the movie, I assure you.

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Lover's Lane (2000)

FEBRUARY 8, 2014

GENRE: HOLIDAY, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Post-Scream (or, more truthfully, post-I Know What You Did Last Summer), the slasher movie was as hot as it was in the early 80s, and we were treated to several over the next couple years until it died out again. But there was no such thing as "VOD" back then, so a movie either played theatrically (Urban Legend, the sequels to the above, the "back to basics" H20, etc), or it went direct to VHS (!) and/or DVD and was more or less lost. Such is the case with Lover's Lane, which would probably remain obscure if not for Anna Faris, who plays a cheerleader (!) and shot this thing before becoming much more famous the following year parodying such films in Scary Movie.

And that's what makes the film are the more interesting - it's actually the most straightforward of the bunch. I Know... was played less "winky" than Scream and Urban Legend, but it still had some of Kevin Williamson's hyper-aware dialogue. So it's amusing to see a Scary Movie star earn her chops by appearing in the only one that wasn't very funny to begin with - there are a couple of hilariously bad lines*, but otherwise it thankfully acts as if the post-modern elements of Scream had never existed. That sort of stuff dated poorly (even Scream - a classic - hasn't aged perfectly), so it's better in the long run to just take it seriously.

However, it DOES have a heavy Scream influence in pretty much every other aspect of the movie, in that the backstory involves our heroine's dead mother, who was believed to be having an affair with the father of one of the other characters. Also (spoiler for 15 year old movie ahead!) there are multiple killers, and while it's not too surprising who they are, I WAS impressed at their attempt to distract us away from the obvious. See, one of the killers is seen in a car with a date, and claims to hear a noise. Later, two of the protagonists play a prank and scare the others, and it's fresh in our minds when two other characters run over, screaming about a killer. At first the others think it's another joke, but then the date runs over, covered in blood, and dies. Everyone screams and the slasher carnage begins, and no one thinks twice about the fact that we never saw the other body. Good trick.

Another spoiler ahead!

It also, somewhat hilariously, actually has the escaped mental patient as a real antagonist. You've seen this scenario in a bunch of movies (My Bloody Valentine and Prom Night come to mind); everyone thinks the killer is the urban legend character they've been afraid of, who has escaped or is unaccounted for in some way, so the real killer can hide in plain sight. Usually it ends up being explained away before the real killer is identified; a cop will explain to the sheriff that their suspect has been caught (or in Harry Warden's case, died years before) and then the real threat will be exposed. But here, in addition to the two killers using his notoriety for their own deeds, the actual escaped mental patient shows up and tries to kill our heroes! It's kind of genius in its own stupid way.

It's just a shame that these inspired ideas weren't being used in a better overall movie. It's serviceable, but the complicated motive requires way too much exposition (upon finding his wife's body in the film's opening flashback, a man is comforted by his brother, who rattles off a bunch of backstory, awkwardly, which tips you off to the modern day killer's identity before he/she even appears!), and such things continue throughout the movie. The heroine (a lovely actress named Erin J. Dean who appeared in several things before this but seemingly gave up the business after)randomly explains the other characters' relations to each other to Faris for no real reason, and the parents of both protagonists repeatedly tell each other things that the other probably knows.

Worse, it takes a while for the killer to really get going, and the kills aren't exciting or interesting enough to make up for the wait (not that you can see them clearly anyway - the full frame DVD is very dark). The most creative bit actually comes from the male hero, who uses a stove, a box of matches, and some tape to rig up a makeshift bomb that will go off once the killer bursts through a door and inexplicably shuts it behind him (the door strikes the match as it slides across the floor). Not sure why he knew how to do this in the first place, let alone thought of it as he was in immediate danger of being stabbed with the hook, but at least he was putting more effort into things than the killer. Speaking of which, his costume also blows; yet another late 90s slasher that settles for a hood, though at least he throws on a ski mask as well to add a touch of Prom Night to the proceedings (not the best movie to honor, really, but hey, it's well intentioned).

As for Faris, it's not much of a surprise she found more fame than her co-stars (the only other one I recognized was Sarah Lancaster, who was Chuck's sister on Chuck), playing the rare cheerleader in a slasher who is actually pretty nice and personable instead of a complete bitch (Lancaster covers that ground). It's pretty much a four piece for the majority of the slasher stuff - the two heroes, the requisite dork, and Faris - and she repeatedly becomes the best part of any scene where they're all arguing or running around trying not to get killed. She even flashes the nerd (we don't see it, it's another Scream homage I guess) to distract him when the heroine has to snap his broken leg back into place, which works for pulling off a bandaid (I usually recall a memory of prurient interest) but probably not so much for impromptu leg surgery.

Basically, it's worth a look if you're a slasher completist like myself, but otherwise you shouldn't be surprised that it's remained obscure. I found it at my local CD/movie shop during a Buy 2 Get 1 on used DVDs, and it was worth about that much effort; I've already put it out in my building's "Free" pile (need to make room for the baby - can't be keeping so many junk DVDs I'm never going to watch again). Hopefully whatever curious neighbor I never talk to that notices it when they go down to do their laundry (the cover even has a Ghostface type image for extra eye-catching action) will find more to love!

What say you?

*When the two heroes find a person laying in the road, the male asks "Who is it?" and the girl replies "I don't know! Everyone we know is dead!". It's bliss.

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