IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019)

 

(Contains spoilers.)

IT: Chapter One, which I guess is what we’re now calling the first half of this saga, was a mostly successful horror flick, if not an overly loyal adaptation of Stephen King’s legendary tome. Though the troubled production, began by True Detective director Cary Fukunaga and concluded by Mama director Andres Muschietti, culminated in a better genre picture than most people were expecting, certain audience members (including me) were a little disappointed that King’s novel wasn’t adhered to a little more faithfully. Still, the essence of the novel remained, and that was the most satisfying part. 

IT: Chapter Two always seemed like the more dubious gamble of the saga, for several reasons, but mostly because the portions of the IT story that deal with the characters as kids are far more interesting, empathetic, and nostalgic than the portions that catch up with their adult counterparts, and this applies to the novel or the original miniseries. Not to mention that the adult portions of the story lend themselves more to the mystical and the strange, including the very odd “ritual of Chüd,” which IT: Chapter Two utilizes and which feels too foreign and unusual when following the fairly straightforward normality of IT: Chapter One. While doing a better job of faithfully adapting the second half of King’s novel, IT: Chapter Two still feels overstuffed at times, and ironically offers a critical flipside reaction when compared to its predecessor. This time, IT: Chapter Two is more faithful to the source material, but suffers at times from offering an inconsistent horror experience, leaving this second half of the saga merely satisfactory. 

Even with the film running at a staggering three hours(!), IT: Chapter Two still feels like it’s in a hurry. It wouldn’t be right to say the introduction to the adult versions of the Losers Club feels perfunctory, but it's awfully streamlined, and Muschietti doesn’t provide enough time for audiences to catch their breath in between meeting each adult counterpart. Beverly (Jessica Chastain), especially, gets the short straw, with the film hurtling through a major part of her character’s background – that she’s matriculated from an abusive relationship with her father to an abusive relationship with her husband. Her character’s reintroduction not only downplays her husband’s mind games that exist in canon, but the film tries to be “slick” by falsely introducing him as a kind man to try and fool the members of the audience who already know he’s an asshole. Meanwhile, Bill (James McAvoy) is writing screenplays for the Hollywood system based on his novels, which star his wife, Audra, but after receiving "the call" from Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), he immediately blows town, leaving Audra behind… never to be seen again. (If you’re familiar with the novel or the previous miniseries, you’ll note this is a major change.) Eddie Spaghetti (an excellent James Ransone, Sinister) is no longer driving cars for the rich and famous, but instead cites his job as a “risk assessor,” which rightfully sounds like the kind of job that a young, neurotic Eddie would grow up to obtain. (I have to give major props to Muschietti for re-using the actor who played Eddie’s mother in Chapter One to briefly play his wife in Chapter Two – it’s somehow both subtle and super on-the-nose, but it works.) The rest of the cast are introduced in the same rapid way, with none of them suffering the kinds of dramatic “Remember that time we were almost killed by a monster clown?” floodgates of memories you’d expect (unless you count a constantly vomiting Bill Hader), and before you know it, the Losers Club are back at the Jade of the Orient Chinese restaurant screaming at demonic fortune cookies. But not Stan, though! Poor Stan (Andy Bean, Swamp Thing); he barely registers as a blip in this new take. By film’s end, when he’s essentially speaking to his friends from beyond the grave, it feels far too late for his character to have the kind of significance the film is asking for, and audiences almost have to remind themselves who he was again. (Poor Stan!)

The criticisms I had for IT: Chapter One remain, mostly in that the changes made from the source material seem unnecessary and useless, feeling especially wrong when arguably significant events from the novel are chucked out in favor of brand new creations that the story, frankly, didn’t need. Whether it's Bill trying to save the life of a young boy who lives in his old childhood house, or the out-of-nowhere revelation that Richie has spent his life running from the fact that he’s gay, there’s nothing wrong with these new subplots, but they just don’t add anything new or constructive to the mix, and this in a movie where there’s already a lot going on. And, again, the humor – for the love of Bob Gray – the humor. Muschietti is fully capable of establishing a creepy and dreadful tone, but he seems intimidated by letting that tone sustain, too often subscribing to the philosophy of setting the audience up with scares and then deflating the tension with a joke. IT: Chapter One had its fair share of this, but IT: Chapter Two’s three-hour running time really accentuates this technique to the degree that it becomes frustrating. Sure, some of the gags are funny, but some are face-palming tone killers, and I’m still trying to figure out which I hated more: Eddie being vomited on by the cellar leper set to ‘80s pop, or the too-long scene where Richie and Eddie are terrified by a Pomeranian. If this were any other property, I’d be more forgiving, but this is a story about a demonic, intergalactic clown who EATS children – who tore off the arm of an eight-year-old kid in the first scene of the first movie – so maybe things shouldn’t be so hilarious. Maybe it’s okay for horror films to retain constant horror instead of the constant up and down emotional ride Muschietti likes to curate. Admittedly, though, some gags do work. The constant references to writer Bill botching the endings to his novels are amusing on both a surface level as well as a meta one, and King, who has been criticized for years with that same claim, was a good sport for letting Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman (the Annabelle series) throw that in. (King cameos as an antique shop owner and shares a scene with McAvoy's Bill, where he tells him that same thing.) Ironically, however, after flinging this joke toward Bill several times, the flick’s own ending feels anticlimactic and silly, being that our cast of heroes literally bully Pennywise to death.

Unless Warner and New Line decide to go ahead with IT: Chapter Zero and explore the town of Derry’s morbid, dangerous history from King’s novel (or if Muschietti assembles his “director’s cut” and resurrects much of the unused footage he shot for both chapters), then this is all she wrote for this long-mooted IT saga. Like the miniseries itself, or the novel before it, or hell, even the kind of idealistic childhood as suggested if not experienced by the young versions of the Losers Club, this new take on IT starts strongly and ends satisfactorily, resulting in an above-average horror epic that manages to be scary, touching, imaginative, and conclusive, even if it’s not definitive. 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

THE ‘HELLRAISER’ TRILOGY (1987-1992)

Hellraiser, at its start, seemed like the least likely horror film to spawn a franchise for many reasons — the first of those being the extremely odd and daring subject matter. Though Hellraiser was released in the ‘80s – the very decade that saw the first installments in what would become major horror franchises – Hellraiser wasn’t simply about a maniac with an unforgettable appearance mowing down the innocent. Halloween, though made in 1978, officially became a franchise in 1981 when its sequel was released; many would argue that, though it was not the first official slasher film ever made, it was the first that would kick-start the genre and inspire a storm of imitators, which directly led to the creation of the Friday the 13th franchise. But whether you’re talking about a legitimately classy film like Halloween, or a slice of popcorn escapism like Friday the 13th, neither film would be fairly labeled as complex. Their concepts could be broken down into one sentence.

Hellraiser's couldn’t.

Hellraiser was sicker, slimier, angrier, and more depraved. On its surface it was about a mysterious puzzle box that had the power to open the gates of hell and allow demons (to some, angels to others) to emerge. But below that it was about sexual depravity, about the limits one kind of individual wanted to reach. It was about finding that straddling line between pain and pleasure. And honestly, it introduced certain taboos into the mainstream (well, the semi-mainstream) that had never been discussed in such a public way...unless you had read director Clive Barker’s writing at that point. The mastermind behind “The Hellbound Heart,” which was later fleshed out into the screenplay for Hellraiser, had been having that discussion for years.

Following the groundbreaking original film, eight sequels (!) would eventually follow, more and more shifting Pinhead – originally just one of many demons (called Cenobites) who was never intended to be the focal point – into the limelight. And, as was usually the case, his character would appear in each subsequently diminishing entry, soon becoming DTV franchise fodder like Puppetmaster and the Corn kids. Like many other horror franchises, how they play out in their latter entries seldom resemble how they looked in their earliest days. In the first Hellraiser, Pinhead appears fleetingly – not the main antagonist, but a monster whom one must face when seeking the ultimate pleasure. By the final entry (at least the final one with Bradley), Pinhead had become a ghost haunting a website (or something) and swinging machetes into teens’ necks, cutting their heads off with a snarl. (Seriously.) He became the very thing Barker hadn’t intended, as Pinhead’s introduction into pop culture grouped his Hellraiser in with all the other horror properties…where it didn’t belong.

Made with a very low budget, Hellraiser was the horror film no one was expecting. By the time its release year of 1987 rolled around, the Friday the 13th franchise was already on its seventh entry; Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street, their fifth. And already their concepts were starting to wear thin. Clive Barker, after having had no success with a handful of short experimental films based on his own short stories, wrote and directed the ’87 horror cheapie about a shaky marriage with a history of familial infidelity and a desire for a new beginning, both shaken by the reappearance of a familiar face. (Well, kind of.) Not at all your typical ’80s horror (despite the hero being a plucky teen girl, played by Ashley Laurence), Hellraiser was about the limits of desire, the consequences of self-destructive behavior, and the lengths one will go for what they perceive to be love. The faces remain the same in Hellraiser, but the real faces behind them often change. Larry Cotton (Dirty Harry’s Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Clare Higgins) have moved back to Larry’s old family home (never given a specific location, but one which was originally meant to be London). It’s the same house that bore witness to the former immediate scene of Larry’s brother, Frank (Sean Chapman) having opened the puzzle box and being ripped apart by the Cenobites for his troubles. It’s there, following a bit of unexplained bloody voodoo, that Frank is resurrected as a slimy skinless humanoid, whom Julia discovers living in the attic. Being that Frank and Julia had engaged in a bit of coitus prior to her wedding to Larry, she still desires him (either emotionally or sexually), so when Frank orders her to bring him blood by any means necessary in an effort to continue reforming his body, Julia agrees. But it’s when Larry’s daughter, Kirsty (Laurence) comes to visit that Julie and Frank’s scheme gets a little complicated.

It goes without saying that the first Hellraiser is the best in the series, though many fans would point to its immediate sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, as the superior entry (more on that in a bit). Celebrated for its inventive practical effects in the same way as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Hellraiser plays out like a doomed romance, with Julia becoming a murderess to reform Frank in hopes that they would again be together. In spite of all the grime and grit and spilled blood, it’s actually a sad story – a Greek tragedy that unfolds with equal levels Shakespearean drama and EC Comics irony. And yes, despite the original intention for Julia to actually be seen as the main villain and the takeaway face of Hellraiser, it would be Doug Bradley as Pinhead who would inadvertently walk away with the final association with the Hellraiser brand. His impressive appearance, along with fellow Cenobites Chatterer, Butterball, and “Female Cenobite” (she got the short stick in the names department), though limited to roughly ten minutes, would be powerful and effective enough to not only spawn a franchise but inherit the mantle of the main villain going forward.

Call it the return of New World Pictures as financier, or the short amount of time between films, or the returning of much of the creative force (sans Clive Barker, who only provided a rough outline of the story), Hellbound: Hellraiser II feels like not just a natural sequel, but the second half of the overall Hellraiser story. Following Uncle Frank and Julia’s comeuppance, Kirsty, understandably, now finds herself a patient at the Channard Institute for the mentally ill as police try to piece together what exactly happened in that house. Very unfortunately for Kirsty, Dr. Channard himself (Kenneth Cranham), harbors the same blood-thirsty need for the next level of passion-meets-pain, and has been researching the puzzle box for years (and who seriously looks like Old Tom Hardy). In one of the most uncomfortable scenes to ever appear in a horror film, which sees a mentally ill patient slicing himself with a straight razor to kill the bugs he believes are crawling all over him, his torrential blood flow leaks onto the stolen mattress on which Julia had perished in the previous film, resurrecting her, and she becomes Channard’s guide directly into the pits of hell. Meanwhile, Kirsty does stuff involving a mute girl at the hospital who just so happens to really enjoy puzzles; for their troubles, they also end up in hell.

Aesthetically, Hellbound: Hellraiser II really does play out like a natural second half, but in doing so also becomes somewhat lost in its own story. Unsure of what it wants to be, it sacrifices some of its sexual daringness in favor of focusing much of its journey on its descent into hell, where Kirsty believes her father to be, and who’s in need of rescue following a dream in which he appeared to her in skinless form, scrawling bloodily on the wall, “I AM IN HELL HELP ME.” Julia (a returning Clare Higgins) is certainly sexier and more diabolical, but compared to the conflicted iteration of herself in the first film, she comes off less interesting. Once she’s reborn and her skinless ass groped by Dr. Channard, she’s given absolutely nothing to do except walk around and grin big.

By this time it had become apparent that Doug Bradley’s Pinhead was the star, and though his screen time in the makeup isn’t necessarily increased, his character is fleshed out, being ret-conned as a former British soldier during the first World War who opens the puzzle box and subsequently becomes the pointy-faced demon we all know and love. Hellbound: Hellraiser II boasts some interesting and impressive visuals from first-time director Tony Randel, taking over for Barker, but also a few asinine “twists” – such as “Satan” being a gigantic puzzle box which shoots lasers, or — my favorite  — Frank revealing himself as the one who appeared to Kirsty and wrote her the bloody note, all in an effort to lure her into hell so they could bang.

This was Frank’s big idea.

Way to go Frank.

And it’s with Hellraiser’s third film that Pinhead is made the front-and-center villain, receiving a boost in screen time and a copy of Freddy Krueger’s Official Guide to Awful Ironic Puns. Screenwriter Peter Atkins, who returns from duties on Hellbound: Hellraiser II, again scripts this entry – one that he admits isn’t very far removed from the original intention, but who is also happy to admit that the new rights holders of the Hellraiser franchise wanted different things from what came before. Basically, they wanted their own horror villain to turn into a sadistic sidesplitting bad guy to lure in a different kind of audience (the kind who thought Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare was just a total hoot). They got their wish.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth focuses on a reporter named Joey Summerskill who stumbles ass-backwards into a Pinhead-like situation after witnessing a poor guy stabbed with rusty chains being wheeled into an operating room one night at the hospital, putting her directly on the bloody path of Pinhead, recently freed from a statue (?) by a New York playboy who fancies himself worthy of sitting at the right hand of the king of Hell. (He’s basically the new Julia, only intensely punchable.) If there’s a reason that logline sounds stupid, it’s because it is. Very much so. Except for watching Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth turn a once-frightening demon into a pun-dropping pain in the ass who – no bullshit – turns people into Cenobites that have cameras in their heads or can fire CDs like saw blades – this second sequel doesn’t offer much depth, daringness, or really anything at all besides yet another example of diminishing returns. Pinhead’s sad transition into Freddy Krueger-lite was inevitably completed, aided by a more than willing Anthony Hickox (the Waxworks series) stepping into the director’s chair for Tony Randel, who wisely opted not to return.

Dimension Films would maintain their hold on the franchise, turning out one entry after another, but after the spectacular failure of Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (credited to phantom director Alan Smithee, which in movie talk means RUN), ironically, non-Hellraiser related horror scripts would be picked up by the production house, rewritten to include Pinhead and Hellraiser elements, and would then actually offer far more solid one-offs than the series’ earlier official sequels. (I’ll defend Scott Derrickson’s Hellraiser: Inferno from now until the end of time – the first sequel to go direct to video, but the best since the original.) The Hellraiser franchise continues to chug along, with a new entry—Hellraiser: Judgment—released in 2018. It’s the tenth film of the franchise and the second subsequent sequel on which Doug Bradley has passed, so that probably tells you everything you need to know. For almost ten years, Dimension Films have been trying to bring a proper remake of Hellraiser to life, and all kinds of interesting people – from Inside's Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury to Drive Angry's Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier – have taken a crack. Currently the task rests in the hands of super hack writer David S. Goyer, but word has been quiet, so who really knows what's going on? One thing is certain: you can't keep a good bad guy down, and Pinhead will return – one way or the other.

BLOOD RAGE (1987): A GORE-NUCOPIA OF THANKSGIVING MAYHEM!

Don’t listen to that blowhard Eli Roth. Despite his self-aggrandizing fake trailer for Thanksgiving sandwiched in between the two mini features that comprised Grindhouse, which he purported to be the first to exploit the previously unexploited turkey day, Blood Rage (aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) had beaten him to the punch by roughly twenty-five years. And what a twenty-five years it’s been. Long considered an obscure title, available only in compromised hack jobs found on VHS and DVD releases, the true, intended, and uncut version was finally unleashed last year by Arrow Video in all its “that’s not cranberry sauce!” glory. And it is a sight to behold.

Blood Rage offers everything the hardcore slasher fan could possibly want: a gimmicky but forgivable premise, a charismatic but quirky killer, tremendous violence, a nice helping of T&A, an array of flying limbs, and not a single unwelcome minute of stagnation. Blood Rage moves at a clip, only hanging around long enough to commit bodily mayhem against its cast before zipping to its “seriously, what is this?” ending, cutting to black, and rolling credits.

In the subgenre of the slasher film, it’s easy to love many titles strictly via irony. PIECES, for example, is an absolute favorite, as well as The Mutilator, but I could never in good conscious call either of them actual good films. But Blood Rage is different. So different. On the Blood Rage scale, I give it five out of five cut-off hands holding a beer can. Because, you see, one film is not less good simply because it’s striving toward a different goal. JAWS is not less of a good film because The Godfather exists. Mad Max does not pale in the majestic shadow of Mad Max: Fury Road. Blood Rage is as good at killing teenagers as Quint is at captivating a crew with his wartime stories, or Sonny Corleone is at personifying agonizing death, or the Doof Warrior is at rocking out on a flaming fucking guitar. In fact, Blood Rage is better at what it wants to do because it exists in an entirely uncategorizeable box – an entity unto itself, and only itself. 

And I love being able to say that.

Its plot, such as it is (or ain’t), is so sinfully simple and rife with logic errors that it transcends ineptness and becomes charming. A family receives word that their so-called psychotic family member has escaped an asylum and could be heading their way, but…no one cancels Thanksgiving dinner. 

No one cares. 

No one looks alarmed. 

Not a single person says, “Gosh, maybe we should drive our functioning cars to safety.” 

In the land of Blood Rage, it’s don’t worry, be happy. There are no cars that don’t start, there are no phone lines that are cut. People just…willfully choose to stay in the place where the murderer seems to be heading, without concern. And it’s glorious, because someone’s HEAD gets hacked in half and you can see his entire BRAIN. That’s Blood Rage, people.

That’s what you’re getting, and like a slice of pumpkin pie after a big turkey dinner, it’s delightful. 

What Blood Rage gets right, effortlessly, is its willingness to be fun. The premise alone lets the audience off the hook in the sense that they’re not left wondering for the entire film just who it is behind the mask that’s cutting of everyone’s knees and faces, inevitably leading to an underwhelming conclusion bound to satisfy only a fraction of the audience. At no point is Blood Rage‘s audience left to theorize about the mysterious identity of the killer responsible for all the carnage.

It’s Terry. The one in the striped shirt. He’s…right there. 

The acting’s about the caliber you might expect from a low-budget slasher film made in the early ’80s but not released until the late ’80s. It’s doable, passable, and certainly entertaining enough. Plus Ted Raimi appears as “Condom Salesman.” He has one line: “Condoms?” (I think. Memory’s hazy on this one; I think Blood Rage broke my brain.)

Maintaining the slasher film tradition of featuring one lead actor who makes you say, “Wow, he/she’s in this?”, Blood Rage features the unexpected appearance of Louise Lasser, who began her career in many of Woody Allen’s earlier films, and who most notably appeared in Requiem for a Dream as Ada, friend to Sara Goldfarb, who eventually breaks my heart as she sobs uncontrollably on a city bench. Her role hovers somewhere between normal and Mrs. Bates, suggesting that she’s mostly grounded, but also a bit too…attached to her sons. But she plays it well, and her crazy role is just one of many crazy things that make Blood Rage so crazy good. The scene in which she sits Indian style on the kitchen floor in front of her open refrigerator and begins eating Thanksgiving leftovers with a depressed look on her face because her crazy son has escaped a lunatic asylum and may be on his way to kill her and everyone else – so what else can she do? – is the stuff of cinemafantastique. 

Blood Rage is the movie that unaware slasher fans never knew they needed. Everything about it is pure and lovable – even the detestable violence and gore that our mothers would absolutely despise contains an intangible charm that’s become ingrained with this oft forgotten era of horror. For a film about a psychotic teen cutting down his friends and family with a machete in violent ways, it’s the most harmless slice of escapism yet that hails from the golden era of hack’em-up cinema. Its intentions are as innocent as the on-screen killer is murderous, but they both want the same thing: to cover everything in blood, and to make every minute of it as enjoyable as possible. And both succeed, so hard. 

If you consider yourself a fan of old-school slashers, have never seen this, and are still on the fence, then give me a break – YOU NEED THIS. Cut from the same mold as My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, Intruder, and the entire Friday the 13th franchise, Blood Rage demands to be part of your yearly Thanksgivings or else you’re just a big turkey ha ha. 

Blood Rage is hereby awarded:

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Reprinted from the Daily Grindhouse.]

TURKEY EVE

It's coming...

BRAINSCAN (1994)

You can tell just from watching Brainscan that its makers were desperate to create their own money-printing Freddy Krueger slasher villain. Considering that Brainscan ultimately comes off sillier than Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, the nadir of that series and ultimately the end result of a softening/sillying of its lead boogeyman that eventually killed the franchise, it’s no surprise audiences weren’t eager to see Brainscan’s lead techno-monster come back for additional installments.

Besides, it’s difficult to generate any real fear when your villain, called Trickster, resembles the lead singer of ‘80s Eurodisco band Silent Circle:

The ‘90s were a ripe time for film exploring mega-overblown concerns about computers. Just ask Brainscan lead boy Edward Furlong, who put himself on the map as the very first John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But for every major title like that, there are dozens of B-movies that were begging audiences, “Be afraid of your personal computer!” The Ghost in the Machine explored similar tactics, as did an outlandish sequence in the otherwise sex thriller Disclosure, during which Michael Douglas, while VR-ing into a private network, is pursued by a Michael Myers-like 2D avatar of Demi Moore. Then there was Hackers, The Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Virtuosity, and more than one episode of The X-Files. And let’s not forget The Net, which, to its credit, started out as unbelievable tripe but eventually became sadly prophetic in our new age of rampant identity theft.

Brainscan stands head and shoulders above these titles as being the absolute stupidest, but I’ll be — the filmmakers seem to be taking this concept seriously. I don’t know what’s stranger: that a humanoid manifestation of a murderous video game begins stalking an underage boy while simultaneously eating all his bananas, or that Frank Langella is in this at all.

If Brainscan has anything going for it, besides how hilariously dated it already is, it’s the grisly violence, which can come off at-odds when juxtaposed against a silly concept (and sillier villain). I almost wish it had been a box office hit because I’m dying to know what a Brainscan 6: Virtual Mortality would look like.

If you yearn for ‘90s horror cinema, you’re weird, but you’re also in luck, because Brainscan is the most ‘90s horror title there is: the computers are just blocky enough, the soundtrack just Butthole Surfers enough, and the visual effects just terrible enough to make you stand up and scream, “the ‘90s are back! Someone get me my cordless phone!”

TALES FROM THE HOOD (1995)

The granddaddy of all horror anthologies will always be the George A. Romero/Stephen King collaboration Creepshow, released in 1982, which was a loving homage to the EC Comics line of the 1950s. Borrowing its format from the previous Amicus anthological films, released under the branded titles of those same EC Comics (Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, specifically), Creepshow presented a handful of stories tied together by what’s become known as the “wraparound” story – at first an introduction to the anthological format, which is slowly revealed to be yet another story with a typically unfortunate resolution for its characters. Anthology films are a tough nut to crack, because their nature leaves them vulnerable to an inconsistent experience. The construction of mini stories will have them pitted against each other for best and worst, scariest and ickiest, etc. No one anthology can claim flawlessness. (Not even the aforementioned Creepshow, because the “meteor shit!” story starring not-at-all-an-actor Stephen King is still one of the worst things of all time.) Creepshow 2 would continue the legacy of its predecessor, dialing back on Romero’s purposeful comic book direction and focusing on a more straightforward horror experience while falling victim to a hampering amount of Capra-esque schmaltz.

Years later, and produced by Spike Lee, Tales from the Hood would come down the pike and result in — quite honestly — the best horror anthology since then...if not ever. Written by X-Files/Millennium writer favorite Darin Scott and director Rusty Cundieff, Tales from the Hood would borrow the same basic construction from the Amicus films of the early ‘70s, along with minor elements from a host of other anthologies, and infuse a detectably angry tone that examines an array of African-American issues. The segments touch on urban crime, drug use, and – depressingly relevant even today – racism within police and political culture. Tales from the Hood, unlike many other urban horror films, wasn’t intent on pandering. It didn’t play up to stereotypes or fall back on cliché. Every story contains both a darkness and a hard truth about being a black man, woman, or child in America. This approach can, at times, make it hard to watch. But, having said that, make no mistake: Tales from the Hood also wants to entertain – in the same way the anthological horrors before it endeavored to do.

“Welcome to My Mortuary” sees a trio of teens dropping by a rundown mortuary where its owner, the mysterious and eccentric Simms (with an incredible performance by Clarence Williams III), apparently has come across a load of drugs and is looking to sell. (Every time he refers to it as “the shit,” it’s undeniably hilarious.) Williams III serves as the de facto Crypt Keeper, in that as they descend deeper into the bowels of the house where “the shit” is stored, he pulls back the lid of a random coffin to reveal the corpse inside – and the insidious tale of horror that put them there. For anthologies that try to beef up their wraparound stories, they generally come off as perfunctory, but the concept of a mortician telling stories about the corpses in his funeral home is a stroke of genius and is the best use of the device I can think of in the genre.

“Rogue Cop Revelation” sees a “routine” pullover of a prominent black politician (played by Creepshow 2’s Tom Wright) by racist white cops (among them Wings Hauser) go very wrong. Similar to the very story from Creepshow 2 which starred Wright, his character is killed and his perpetrators flee, assuming they’ve gotten away from it, but he returns from the dead to set that record straight. And his undead politician manages to be more unnerving than his undead hitchhiker. (Maybe because said undead politician lacks a gigantic flailing puppet tongue.)

“Boys Do Get Bruised” (featuring a role for director Rusty Cundieff) is the only story that doesn’t lend itself specifically to the black experience, instead presenting a young boy named Walter who tells his teacher that “the monster” at his house hurts him at night, which is soon revealed to be an abusive stepfather (played by comedian David Alan Grier). Where it lacks in one regard, that being a uniquely African-American experience, it makes up for with an intense and unflinching look at in-home domestic abuse, with Grier playing an unbelievable and legitimately intimidating bastard. Though the intensity of the story is a little undone by its end, falling back on a sudden and inappropriate silliness, it still results in being the most realistic of the bunch, leaving it very difficult to watch.

“KKK Comeuppance” feels the most traditionally EC Comics – a take on the Zuni doll story from another horror anthology, Trilogy of Terror – which sees an openly racist politician wonderfully played by Corbin Bernsen being stalked through his newly acquired plantation home by a handful of “pickaninny” dolls allegedly possessed by the spirits of all the slaves who died there. As suggested by its name, this story is the most daring, with the audience seeing an obviously racist politician pander to his similarly racist would-be voters in public, producing campaign videos lambasting affirmative action and nearly using the word “spook” in front of reporters. This story’s moral/warning is the most direct, but if you still need convincing, then just wait for the (multiple) scenes where Bernsen’s politician beats paintings and dolls reflecting African Americans with an American flag. It ain’t exactly subtle, though not to the detriment of the film. Much of this story’s power comes from the audience constantly asking, “Should I be enjoying this?” — especially when Bernsen is chasing slave dolls around the house while shouting “you little nigglins!” In 1995, seeing a character portrayed as a former KKK member operating from a plantation house and referring to the black protestors on his lawn as a “damned minstrel show” running for political office might have seemed a bit too over the top – as how could anyone in his or her right mind ever vote for such a sleaze? – but then the 2016 election happened and a tidal wave of self-avowed white supremacists oozed from the cracks, so…let’s move on.

The final story, “Hardcore Convert,” is by far the angriest and carries with it the most significant message of them all...and not one you'd expect. A young black youth nicknamed “Crazy K” is wounded in a street shootout, and after recuperating in prison, agrees to take part in a highly experimental rehabilitation program in exchange for early release. Heavily influenced by the horrors of Jacob’s Ladder, Hellraiser, and A Clockwork Orange, “Hardcore Convert” is little concerned with entertainment value and more focused on nauseating and angering its audience with very real historical images of the massacres committed against black men and women since their earliest days as natives in America, the message being – after all the horrors they have faced – black-on-black crime needs to stop before everyone wipes each other out. Because of the streets-based hook for this story, it also contains the most vibrant use of the film's soundtrack, including the track "Born 2 Die" by hip-hop group Spice 1, which plays during the aforementioned compilation of African-American lynchings and genocide.

Tales from the Hood concludes with a return to the wraparound story, which unfolds in a not-so-surprising way, but also unfolds with a degree of cartoonish insanity that, as the credits roll, will leave a smile on your face. In spite of the anger, frustration, and depravity you’ve already witnessed and experienced, overall, that was the point of Tales from the Hood in the first place – to entertain. And it certainly does.

I have no qualms with saying that Tales from the Hood – easily dismissible thanks to the influx of cheap and trashy urban horror films saturating the DTV market, including its own sequels – ranks as one of the best horror anthologies ever made. Funny when it wants to be, dark when it’s willing to go there, and depressingly more relevant than ever before, Tales from the Hood packs a punch to an almost punishing degree, as each story reveals not just a horror in the streets or of the unknown, but within the mortals who brought those stories to life and who, mostly, succumbed to their own morality. A pseudo-blaxploitation meets horror anthology, Tales from the Hood takes an old approach, injects it with some ingenuity, and creates from it an excellent addition to the genre that has the balls as well as the brains to speak some hard truths. If ever I'm in the mood for anthology horror, I reach for Tales from the Hood almost every time, because it's, quite frankly:

THE GREASY STRANGLER (2016)

Sometimes you watch a film. Sometimes a film happens to you. The latter is far less common, but when it does occur, it often makes for an unforgettable experience, regardless of whether you love it or hate it.

The Greasy Strangler is not a film you watch. It’s a film that happens to you.

A quasi would-be love child between Rubber and Wrong director Quentin Dupieux and Adult Swim icons Tim and Eric, The Greasy Strangler is earnestly, joyfully, and relentlessly insane — a smorgasbord of absurdism, gross-out humor, and violence so purposely stupid that it barely registers as offensive. (Oh, and let’s not forget all that disco.) Odd characters wearing odd clothes, saying and doing odd things, and looking like every repulsive “people of Walmart” meme you ever saw — that’s The Greasy Strangler.

Making his feature film directorial debut, Jim Hosking had absolutely no interest in transitioning from the world of short films into a project a bit more traditional. Along with co-writer Toby Harvard, Hosking has created one of the oddest and quirkiest films in recent and not-so-recent memory, filling it with a collection of absolutely loathsome and selfish characters engaging in a Fight Club-ish love/sex triangle so nauseating but conflictingly funny that it actually has the power to make every sexual act known to man kind of silly, and almost an embarrassing activity in which to engage even for the super beautiful.

And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the patriarch of this queasy threesome, Big Ronnie (a very brave Michael St. Michaels) just also happens to cover himself in thick sheens of homemade grease before taking to the streets to strangle an array of people who apparently had it coming until their eyes pop out of their skulls like Judge Doom in the finale of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The choosing of Ronnie’s victims are hilariously superficial, and despite being the walking humanoid opposite of Hannibal Lecter’s esteem, grace, and opulence, the good doctor would very much approve of Ronnie’s going after those who exhibited rudeness. There’s no motive to Ronnie’s choice of victim beyond they were dicks to him — either by their nature, or in response to how much of a dick Big Ronnie had been to them during a previous interaction. The motivelessness of Ronnie’s murders would hinder literally any other kind of film, but this is The Greasy Strangler we’re talking about — it simply doesn’t matter.

Caught in the middle is Big Ronnie’s son, Big Brayden (Sky Elobar, a doppelganger for Eric Wareheim of the before mentioned Tim and Eric comedy duo), who wrestles with whether or not to report to the authorities that his father is “The Greasy Strangler” — that is until he meets his “girlfriend” Janet (Elizabeth De Razzo), after whom Big Ronnie also begins lusting. It’s when the love triangle portion of the conflict comes into play that Big Brayden decides it’s time to act.

And so many old, red-tipped, uncircumcised dicks (“it looks like a big mouse head!”) will be flashed.

Attempting to properly review The Greasy Strangler to an unsuspecting readership is like trying to describe a Bosch painting to a person born blind. You can try — and it’ll take forever — but there’s no use. The only way to appreciate the majestic lunacy of The Greasy Strangler is to see it for yourself. 

Do you enjoy the exploits of Adult Swim? An unfettered fan of Check It Out with Dr. Steve Brule? Were you fascinated by the plotless/beplotted killer tire horror satire Rubber? Do you have a strong stomach and enjoy the sight of plump bodies in all kinds of sex positions? The Greasy Strangler might be your new favorite film; it might also be the absolute worst thing you ever see in your life, leaving you cursing the people who made it, distributed it, and recommended it (like me). A very adult version of Napoleon Dynamite but without the irritation (depending on your particular brand of humor, that is), let The Greasy Strangler happen to you and make up your own mind.

Just don’t forget to shower in the car wash afterward.

THE BARN (2016)

Halloween is the top day of the year for me. And when a filmmaker sets out to not just set his or her story on Halloween, but make Halloween a driving part of the story, looking back to its many myths and origins for its conflict, well, you’ve got my attention. And I want nothing more than for these filmmakers to succeed, so I may add it to my yearly pile of must-watch October viewing.

Strictly judged on this criterion, writer/director Justin Seaman succeeds.

The Barn, the newest in a long line of throwback slasher films, has its heart in the right place, which allows it to transcend the problems that most low-budget filmmaking inevitably displays. Featuring bit roles for ‘80s horror icons Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead) and Ari Lehman (Young Jason from the original Friday the 13th as a hilariously strange television horror-host), The Barn takes place on Halloween night, 1989, and feels every bit like it. After its excellent opening, which lays down the legend of Hallowed Jack, Candycorn Scarecrow, and the Boogeyman (aka the Miner), we cut to “the present” and meet our usual group of kids who will get into kid hijinks and come face-to-face with an array of evil Halloween spirits.

If The Barn gets anything right, it’s the loyal devotion to Halloween. The first five minutes alone exude more October ambiance than all of Trick ‘r Treat, and the somewhat party store design of its movie maniacs easily call forth Conal Cochran’s trio of now-iconic masks from Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. When the screen is filled with costumed kids, cornfields, pumpkin fields, and those mid-western small town surroundings ripped straight from images conjured by the abstract term “Americana,” Halloween permeates through every square inch of the screen.

The Barn also makes good on its promise to present itself as a long-lost ‘80s horror slasher, from its VHS-warped opening logo, to the artificial grain and cigarette burns, to the Carpenter-ish synth score by composer Rocky Gray – but most satisfying, the wonderfully rendered practical effects. Heads are crushed, throats are cut – more people bite the big one in The Barn than in the first three Myers Halloween films combined. And every single death is done physically, in-camera. There’s no amateurish Final Cut Pro CGI to offend the eye. The last thing you should be doing when seeing a head get ripped off is smiling big-time, but damn it, the gruesome exploits of The Barn make you smile big-time.

Where The Barn falters is where many other low-budget films made by inexperienced filmmakers tend to falter. None of the performances are particularly note-worthy, with the few appearances of adult actors (including Linnea Quigley) coming off less convincing than that of their younger counterparts. (None of the cast seem to be teen-aged in reality, but they at least look the part, which is another plus.) This, along with the occasional overwrought line of dialogue, a lack of confidence behind the camera (some quick action shots don’t provide a clear picture of what’s going on), and some sequences of loose editing are what keep The Barn from being truly great.

Still, during weak performances or eye-rolling dialogue, what continues to keep The Barn powering through and overcoming these obstacles is its intent on being a fun and clever film and loyal to the holiday its honoring. It wants to be more than just another low-budget horror film, which by now feels like a rite of passage for any burgeoning filmmaker. Everyone involved with The Barn really, really worked hard, and that – above all else – comes across in every frame. And that’s what makes it consistently watchable.

The Barn may not stand toe-to-toe with its Halloween-inspired brethren, but it’s a worthy addition to the sub-genre and a more-than-welcome guest at the yearly Halloween party. With more money and resources, I am eager to see what writer/director Justin Seaman concocts next. I say check it out, and if you like what you see, throw some money toward the film crew as they embark on--you guessed it--The Barn 2.

THE WITCHES (1990)

[Contains spoilers for the film and book, The Witches.]

Whether you’re a genre person or a typical cinephile, certain films leave an indelible impression on you, especially at a young age. And if you’re a genre person, certain titles with a slight horror bent have the power to stick with you—especially if said film, though marketed as being kid- and family-friendly, doesn’t necessarily feel like something a kid should be watching. Depending on your sensibilities, those kinds of titles can differ. (I still get nervous when Christopher Lloyd’s eyes go cartoon-3D in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) One of those titles, for me, is definitely The Witches, an adaptation of the novel by famed author Roald Dahl, himself no stranger to seeing his works adapted into certain kinds of other so-called kid-friendly insanities. See: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Starring Angelica Huston as the German-bred Miss Ernst, the Grand High Witch of the world’s entire witch population, and unexpectedly directed by Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now), The Witches, on its surface, is your typical kid-friendly adventure story. A young boy, Luke (Jasen Fisher), while on holiday with his Swedish grandmother, Helga (Mai Zetterling), discovers that representatives of witches all over the world have gathered to have a witches’ convention in their very same hotel. After Luke crashes the closed-door convention, he overhears that Miss Ernst has a plan to disappear the children of the world: she orders her fellow witches to open up candy shops in their homelands and spike their delectable sweets and deserts with her magical potion called Formula 86, which will turn the children who eat them into mice. Naturally, Luke is discovered eavesdropping, and after attempting to escape, he’s caught and turned into a mouse himself—along with a fellow adolescent hotel miscreant, Bruno (Charlie Potter). Now trapped in mouse form, Luke and Bruno work together, along with Luke’s wily grandmother, to save the day—and, hopefully, return themselves to boyhood. 

Along the way, so many disturbing mouse mutant puppets will be wrangled.

And that right there is what caused so many childhood nightmares, courtesy of the puppet effects from the legendary Jim Henson Puppet company, not to mention the overall themes of the story itself. The most disturbing aspect of the film is that witches, though it’s never explained why, utterly abhor children—not just enough that they’re planning a near mass-extermination of them, but that, beforehand, witches have been known to kidnap children and do dastardly things to them behind closed doors. Granted, by comparison, the scheme to essentially kill the world’s children is worse than the errant kid kidnapping, but that scheme is only ever a scheme—an idea—something that’s said out loud, but could never be depicted. However, the film opens with a story of witchcraft, and of kidnapping, and of seeing a young girl disappear while her parents scream her name in the streets and police investigate a missing pail the young girl was known to be carrying.

A girl that is never seen again.

Helga, her past which is also kept a little vague, knows an awful lot about witches, schooling her grandson Luke during the opening moments, showing off the nub where her little finger used to be that she lost while confronting a witch at some point in her past. Take that, and add some double-parental vehicular death, and bam—you’ve got your first EIGHT MINUTES of the movie.

The Witches has always been a personal favorite, and that likely has to do with the hard, somewhat maniacal, and whimsical edge that the film shows off. This isn’t what one would call a “safe” flick to put on for kids. It’s certainly not violent—at least not till the end, but even then, the impact of violence tends to lessen when violent acts are being committed against non-human beings, and that’s how The Witches ends. No, the real disturbing moments come from the witches’ utter hatred of children, and the diabolical schemes they hope to enact to rid the world of them for good. More disturbing, however, are when the witches shed their human disguises when in shared company, sliding off their wigs and peeling off their faces to reveal live-action versions of cartoon witch faces: long, peppery noses, terrible complexion, large bulbous eyes, and totally bald. 

Angelica Huston has a blast with the role, despite having to undergo long and grueling make-up sessions to put her into full-on witch mode, and with her German accent, she very subtly calls forth allusions to other, real-world events in which a race of people were nearly exterminated off the face of the earth. Whether or not this was intentional, the association is there all the same, and this only adds to the dark tone. Mai Zetterling, largely unknown to American audiences, also does admirable work in a role that’s more restrained, and in a film with a concept as ludicrous as witches turning children into mice. Granted, she’s a tired, elderly woman hampered with diabetes, but she’s also Luke’s protector, and a fierce one at that. 

Amusingly, Dahl was distressed and angered by the film, calling it mean-spirited and scary, even though the adaptation had mellowed some of the novel’s darker tone. (The ending of the book even has Luke, still in mouse form, postulating that a mouse’s brief lifespan means he and his grandmother would probably die around the same time. (Yikes.) This ending was shot but not used, as Roeg had vied for the happier end instead, which angered Dahl, causing him to boycott the film’s release and dissuade audiences from going to see it. )

The Witches is now on Blu-ray from Warner Archives in time for the best, witchiest time of year, and for those of us who grew up with the film, but are old enough to have kids of our own, it’s the perfect time to introduce a new generation to this weird, wacky, and somewhat morbid tale of witches, mice, and cress soup. 

Besides, Rowan Atkinson’s in it, and if kids love one thing, it’s Rowan Atkinson! 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

ANNABELLE COMES HOME (2019)

The haunting and deeply questioned career of demonologists/paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren seemed like the very last thing that would lend to a cinematic shared universe, but after the two main Conjuring entries, an army of spinoffs has pervaded theaters since—all of them based on otherwise insignificant details from the series. 

After The Conjuring, Warner Bros. moved forward with Annabelle, directed by The Conjuring’s director of photography John R. Leonetti. It made for only a mediocre experience due to its weak script, weaker ending, and uninspired casting, although it managed a handful of creepy scenes. Following The Conjuring 2, Warner then announced two spinoffs: The Nun, based on the creepy visage of demon nun Valak (which was only ever a machination of in-film Lorraine Warren’s imagination) and The Crooked Man, which is dated for a 2020 release. (If you can’t wait, there’s a direct-to-video knock-off starring Michael Jai White!)  Following that came Annabelle: Creation, the prequel to the prequel to The Conjuring, directed by Lights Out director David F. Sandberg. To say that it’s better than Annabelle would be an understatement. It was actually one of the most frightening films of the year. Following that came The Curse of La Llorona, which didn’t have squat to do with the series, minus a small part where a familiar character shows up to influence that connection. (It doesn’t work, but that doesn’t matter, as the film itself was very bland.) Now there’s Annabelle Comes Home, the third and purportedly final entry in this particular offshoot of the Conjuring series, which comes under the helm of longtime series screenwriter Gary Dauberman (IT: Chapter One; IT: Chapter Two) making his directorial debut.  

The Annabelle series rides kind of a stupid concept: a creepy looking doll that demons like to hang out with. That’s…primarily it. Though the first Annabelle wasn’t by any stretch a “good” film, it didn’t turn the doll into some kind of living Chucky doll murderer that sprang to life at night and set up booby-traps around the house. It respected the maturity and class of the Conjuring series by maintaining the idea of the doll being used as a conduit by demonic entities and it didn’t take any ridiculous liberties. Annabelle Comes Home follows that same mold, with results more effective than the first film, though not as successful as the second. However, to be fair, Annabelle Comes Home is designed differently than the previous outings. Annabelle vied to feel as much like The Conjuring as possible but without being able to rely on ghostly visages. Annabelle: Creation, however, pushed supernatural horror to its breaking point, turning the events in that isolated farmhouse into something disturbing, in part due to some graphic violence the consistently R-rated series had otherwise avoided. Annabelle Comes Home is The Conjuring meets Poltergeist (aka Insidious) – a fun, spookshow experience designed to feel like you’re walking the narrow halls of a haunt during the Halloween season. It’s the highest concept yet of the series, one built on pure scares, and made with the mindset of, “Hey, let’s just have FUN.” A horror version of Night at the Museum, Annabelle Comes Home literally brings to life previous cases (allegedly) investigated by the Warrens, or artifacts tied to said cases, and these come in different forms. 

Not to pull my hipster card, but as someone intensely interested in the paranormal, I’d read about the Warrens years before The Conjuring became a phenomenon, chief among them a book called The Demonologist, which delved heavily into the Warrens’ background and many of their cases. To my memory, none of the specters that appear in Annabelle Comes Home are based on the reality confined to that book and the Warrens’ body of work—not even in exaggerated forms. Basically, the creepy things that stalk our characters reek of Hollywood hokum, even if the Warrens “worked” a case involving a werewolf, which was rumored to be the plot of the third Conjuring. (Oh, I’m calling it now: Warners is going to announce The Ferryman within the year.) Again, Dauberman’s approach is to create a pure, horror-based environment where nightmares walk, all to thrill his audience, and he mostly succeeds. 

Warmly, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson make brief appearances that bookend the film, notably at the beginning that sees them bridging the gap between the opening moments of The Conjuring, during which they take possession of the Annabelle doll, to Annabelle Comes Home, which sees them bringing the doll home and experiencing spooky things along the way. It’s nice to see them, as these spinoffs have lacked their appearance (some for obvious reasons) and it grants this newest spinoff a touch of legitimacy. However, it’s a trio of kids who become our main characters, led by Judy, the Warrens’ daughter (Mckenna Grace, who excelled in another recent superior horror effort, The Haunting of Hill House, and who replaces previous Conjuring actress Sterling Jerins), along with her babysitter, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), and her mischievous, trouble-making friend, Daniela (Katie Sarife). Despite the typical horror-movie carelessness that causes Annabelle to become free of her mystical, magical glass prison and animate the evil in the Warrens’ Occult Museum, it’s founded on an honestly touching moment, which helps to offset that it’s one of those face-palm moments where a character makes a stupid decision and starts a whole bunch of shit. 

Annabelle Comes Home isn’t the best of the series, but it’s the purest and makes for a fun, inconsequential watch during the coming Halloween season. The series has been all over the place, chronologically, and used up seemingly every timeline in which to tell a story, but if the audience demands it, there’s no keeping a good doll down. (Technically, a film could be made about the three college students featured in the opening moments of the first Conjuring who started all this trouble in the first place – Warners, please send a check to the DG offices to my attention.) As someone who prefers original horror to endless sequels, I do hope this is the final entry, but based on what this series has offered so far, I’d certainly see what else Annabelle has up her tiny sleeves. 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: BORDELLO OF BLOOD (1996)

Bordello of Blood is bad bad bad. There's no getting around it.

The anthological nature of HBO's Tales from the Crypt series allowed a rare leg-up over its television show colleagues: besides maintaining a basic skeleton design for the show (and I don't mean the Cryptkeeper! heeee haaaa haaa haaa haaa haaa!!), every episode was allowed to start from the ground up, building a brand new story with a brand new cast every week, while also inviting different writers and directors with different sensibilities to make the show as varied as possible. Looking to EC Comics' 1950s run for inspiration, the stories were either faithfully or loosely adapted, but all maintained the tongue-in-cheek nature, the macabre set-pieces, and the ironic but predictable twist. Because of this, some episodes of the show turned out much, much better than others. 

And that's okay! The show was designed to appeal to as wide of a horror-loving audience as possible, and just like any other audience types, they all have their preferences. Some prefer an approach of the horrific, others more cheeky and campy, while sometimes it's a combination of both. Tying it together, always, was a touch of seedy erotica and a nasty/funny conclusion that usually saw the main hero/heroine (aka the villain) receive their just desserts, either poetically or literally. Much like the comic books that preceded it, the television series were morality tales. Sometimes the heroes escaped unscathed and sometimes they didn't; meanwhile, the villainous almost always suffered, and that was part of the joy. If someone were flat-out unlikable, it was only a matter of time before they were taxidermied and mounted on a wall, or cut exactly in half with a chainsaw.

Which brings us to the abysmal failure that is Bordello of Blood - one of those "bad episodes" of Tales from the Crypt - and not because the story's design wasn't fully in line with the Tales from the Crypt aesthetic. It did, after all, feature unscrupulous characters, sexiness, bodily explosions, monsters, and cheeky humor. No, it fails because there are very few likable people in the cast. Let's start with Dennis Miller, who apparently rewrote all of his dialogue (which made several scenes incomprehensible, considering that the other actors against whom he was acting were forced to recite their dialogue as originally written), and who tries to make every single thing that spews out of his mouth funny or sarcastic in some way. And not just in-general, every-day funny, but Dennis-Miller funny, which equates to overbearing, exhausting, and not at all funny. 

In Miller's defense, so little about Bordello of Blood works that he's just one more body adding to the huge pile of not-working. Corey Feldman is on screen long enough for you to dislike his human version, and then flat-out abhor his vampire version, which is so over the top and stupid that I'm mystified he's mystified he couldn't find work for five years following Bordello of Blood's release. Erika Eleniak gets by with a marginally acceptable performance, but at times her disdain for the material definitely shows through. Angie Everhart, who gave what's become a legendarily terrible performance in her first acting role, does seem to be trying, but ooh boy, so little of what she does actually translates well to the screen. Tales from the Crypt often relied on hot and handsome actors and Bordello of Blood is no different, but sometimes those hot and handsome actors could act. Everhart could not, and maybe she still can't. (Apparently she was really, really nice on set, and that's all that matters.) 

The only one in the cast doing anything worth watching is Chris Sarandon, slumming in what would be one of his final theatrical film appearances. The enthusiasm and energy he injects into his Reverend Current is utterly wasted, and deserving of a much better film. The sequence during which he kills a room full of vampire prostitutes with a holy water super-soaker, causing them to explode into guts, bones, and fire, also deserves to be in something far more deserving. The fact that it's Chris Sarandon doing it makes it ten times as awesome.

Likely due to the production's necessary reshoots, the editing of Bordello of Blood is extremely awkward at times, suggesting the film were being stapled together rather than fluidly designed. Not helping this theory is the unsubtle distinction between Eleniak's real hair and the obvious wig she's forced to use during certain sequences. For a film born out of mistreatment of the Tales from the Crypt brand (story writer Robert Zemeckis basically blackmailed Universal into buying this script), it's no surprise that the final product is a chore to sit through.

Universal Studios had originally intended on creating a Tales from the Crypt-based film trilogy, beginning with the very successful Demon Knight (almost continuing with the Tarantino/Rodriguez collaboration From Dusk Till Dawn before Tarantino asked for too much money), and ultimately concluding one film early with Bordello of Blood, a film that even its star, Dennis Miller, ordered his audience to avoid while it was in theaters. That it was a box office bomb assured further tales spun by the Cryptkeeper would be relegated back to television screens, which is a shame, because the brand has carried a lot of weight since the comic book's introduction back in the 1950s and has been sitting dormant way too long.

And it's all your fault, Bordello of Blood. Thanks for nothing.

Bordello of Blood is atrocious. Even those who like the film have to admit it ain't at all that good. Fun and gory violence and a story that really does smack of that ol' EC Comics aesthetic aside, so little of it works that it's almost amazing it ever saw the light of day - and from a major studio, no less.   

TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: DEMON KNIGHT (1995)

It was the summer of 1995. I was about to enter the fifth grade, but by then I was already a total horror junkie, much to the chagrin of my very worried mother. Efforts on her part to prevent my delving into the horror genre were met with refusal, dismissal, and probably a lot of whining. By this point in time, I'd worked my way through the entire Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises and was halfway through Hellraiser. But such viewings had to be done in secret. Should my mother throw open the door to our finished basement and descend the stairs to put in a load of laundry, I had to quickly shut off the tape of whatever horror VHS I'd been secretly watching and pretend instead to be watching one of those courtroom television shows or whatever happened to be on during that 3:00-5:00 weekday block. I was fooling exactly no one with this maneuver, but she was likely satisfied by my attempts. In her mind, at least I knew I wasn't supposed to be watching it.

My parents decided they wanted to take an overnight trip during that summer, sans kids, so my brother and I were dropped off at my uncle's for the weekend. It was a pretty cool and relaxed affair - my uncle's ideas on what were suitable movies and TV shows for kids were a bit more liberal than my mother's - so when my cousin announced she would go to the video store and rent some movies for us, I jumped at the chance.

"Can you see if they have Demon Knight?" I asked. Chronologically, I don't remember what came first: my devotion to HBO's Tales from the Crypt television series, or my obsession with collecting the 1990s' reprint run of EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. I just knew that Demon Knight was out there in the world on blocky VHS, and I needed it in my eyeballs, stat.

"There's nothing bad in that, is there?" my uncle asked, merely out of obligation.

"It's about dummies," I lied. (Although it was kind of true. There was a dummy in there, after all.)

And so my uncle gave my cousin the nod of approval and off she went. She later returned with a pile of junk food and a big plastic VHS rental case for Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight.

And we all watched it together: my uncle, my brother, a few cousins, and myself.

What followed was ninety of the most exhilarating minutes of my life, as my straight-edged, non-horror-loving family sat in total slack-jawed shock that little unassuming me was into such ghastly things: body mutilation! heads being punched off! clomping dummy jaws! electric sex! a room filled with tits! Dick Miller!

The room was astounded that such a movie even existed in their world; and had it not been for me, in what circumstances would they have ever laid eyes upon it?

Never. 

But what permeated through that room for one of the silliest, ghastliest, most taboo-shattering communal experiences ever to happen among unsuspecting family members was tantamount to how the theatrical experience must've been prior to the invention of the cell phone.

How crazy would this movie get?

How far would it go?

Is that Lowell from Wings?

Nudity already?

The horror genre has been a big part of my life, and there are certain titles I will always hold in higher regard than others, for they were my gateway films. They were the titles that made me realize horror was my life, and no matter how good or bad they got, I would love them in equal measure.

Demon Knight is one of those titles.

Never had there been such a successful leap from small screen to big by the time Demon Knight wrenched free from its 30-minute constraints to unleash on audiences a full feature film of demonic debauchery, gruesome violence, the blackest of gallows humor, and wobbling dummy heads. Nothing was lost in translation. The chaotic sensibilities of the show, the unashamed look at violence and pulpy storytelling, and the nudity - oh, heavens, the nudity! - all survived that trip from television screens to theatrical exhibition. Demon Knight has everything: unrestrained violence, thrilling action, sexual titillation, excellent performances, and C.C.H. Pounder throwing up directly on the camera. Who wouldn't love this?

Director Ernest Dickerson, who only had two films under his directorial belt at this point (he'd been a longtime DP for Spike Lee), seems like he were born to take on the horror genre. (Well, sort of.  He's also responsible for Bones - the awful Snoop Dogg urban horror film, not the awful forensics show for white people.) Dickerson's visual design is fully informed by the comic book aesthetic: blues for dusky interiors, browns for the war flashbacks (the staging of which seems heavily inspired by the covers of Frontline Combat, EC Comics' lesser known imprint), and let's not forget the neon green demon blood. Nearly every frame of Demon Knight is decked out in bold and vibrant comic book colors, tending to favor blue more than anything else. Brief flashbacks to the Christ crucifixion, or the marauding demons with their glow-in-the-dark eyes creeping around like raptors while set against the blue/black desert night sky, enforce his talent for capturing compelling images. He also chose a hell of a cast. There are no signs of the typical executive producer throwing his cast-preference weight around (more on this during the Bordello of Blood review). When William Sadler plays the hero and a pre-Titanic Billy Zane plays the villain, you know these were actors chosen specifically by the director for their talents and their appeal. They weren't chosen because of their box-office draw or their recognition among audiences. Additional names like C.C.H. Pounder, Thomas Haden Church, Charles Fleischer, and a pre-fame Jade Pinkett (Smith) confirm that the best possible actors were chosen for their roles, and not for their marquee value. And that's amazing, because that hardly happens anymore.

Demon Knight, to this day, remains an absolute favorite. The perfect flick to play on Halloween, or late at night when the whole world is quiet, Demon Knight is one of the funnest horror films to come along throughout the entire horror movement. Only when horror films turn the tables on their viewing audiences and take on a full-meta approach (Scream, The Cabin in the Woods) are when it seems safe for these audiences to admit they had fun at the theater. But there were no self-awareness gimmicks needed to tell Demon Knight's story. It didn't need to be in on the joke to be fun. Based on grisly comic books from the 1950s, Demon Knight isn't ashamed to be what it is, and doesn't hide from its point of origin. It exists only to be thrilling and entertaining and titillating, and that's exactly what it does. Don't even fight the smile that forms at the corners of your mouth when watching it. Don't act like you're above seeing demons drip glow-in-the-dark neon blood all over the ground as they shriek and smash in all the windows. When Billy Zane is out in the desert doing his best Beetlejuice impression and calling his soon-to-be victims "fucking ho-dunk, po-dunk, well-then-there motherfuckers!," just ENJOY IT, because this film was made for all of us.

Films like Demon Knight barely exist anymore. And when they do, they're called "throwback" and "homage" and "grindhouse," because of the rarity in which they come into being. Tales from the Crypt is a solid brand with a built-in appreciation, and so it's a shame that the second attempt at bridging the gap between television and features would be with the miserable Bordello of Blood - a film so heinously bad that it would spell the end for Crypt-branded features. While there has been an ongoing attempt by M. Night Shyamalan to reintroduce Tales from the Crypt to a new generation, so far nothing has manifested, so all we have is what's come before: the comic line, the British feature adaptations, the HBO series, and then its subsequent features. There's a lot of good in that legacy, and some not so good. Demon Knight is among the best.