BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON (2006)

Rightfully so, 1996’s Scream gets a lot of credit for being the first post-’80s slasher craze to acknowledge sub-genres tropes, stereotypes, and mythologies that had spent a decade+ accumulating and solidifying. That it managed to do all this while also being a solid slasher that could stand on its own feet was a magical feat achieved by director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson. Ten years later would come the release of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, a film festival darling that took horror audiences by storm. Following in the same footsteps, Behind the Mask was another loving ode to the slasher films of yesteryear, but this time being more on the nose than its hip ‘90s predecessor. Where Scream would occasionally say the name “Freddy” or have Halloween playing on a television in the background during a party, Behind the Mask would actually join all of those film franchises together in one universe while also existing within it, and it does so by looping in another horror element that would postdate Scream by three years: the faux-documentary gimmick as reinvigorated by 1999’s The Blair Witch Project.

Shot to look like a documentary, Behind the Mask examines its subject, Leslie Vernon, a serial killer in training who strives to be as well known and infamous as his inspirations Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, “Mike and Chucky.” If Christopher Guest had applied his mockumentary forte to the slasher genre, it would look a lot like Behind the Mask. It’s a parody, a satire, an ode, a dark comedy, a light comedy (sort of), and an old school slasher flick all in one. Its from this nutso combination where it derives most of its strength, but which also leaves it feeling somewhat at odds with its nature during the final act.

Right off the bat, it’s obviously a slasher fan’s dream to see the different worlds of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child’s Play (and more, I’m sure) existing in the same landscape. The very streets on which Nightmare and Halloween were shot appear in cameos (along with a very brief appearance from Kane Hodder, aka Jason in several Friday the 13th sequels, as the newest and creepiest resident of beleaguered Nancy Thompson’s former home). Robert Englund plays a small part very much in the Dr. Loomis mold of Halloween (whose character name, Doc Halloran, is a direct nod to The Shining) with Poltergeist's Zelda Rubinstein also appearing in a pint-sized role as a pint-sized librarian. 

As you can see, writer David J. Stieve and co-writer/director Scott Glosserman are wearing their inspirations and it results in an often clever and often amusing horror/comedy that is proudly affiliating itself with an era and specific franchises birthed during that era that had previously been written off as silly and dismissible. Scream clearly adores Halloween but merely mentions other infamous titles matter-of-factly; Behind the Mask embraces every bloody installment of every bloody franchise with equal aplomb without passing judgment on those titles not as critically well regarded as others. (Of course, I would never take away Craven’s desire to include a line in Scream about the first Nightmare being good and scary “but the rest sucked.”)

Behind the Mask loses a little steam during the final act as it drops the documentary approach and switches to a straight narrative, losing much of the quirky humor that derived from said approach. Don’t get me wrong, the film remains smart, as the film’s remaining victims look to the rules established by the slasher genre to figure out how they can survive the night, but without the more amusing humor, it then feels like Behind the Mask is taking the events it had spent most of its time sending up just a little too seriously. It’s obvious this was by design, cemented by one scene in which one of our supporting characters meets his bloody end at Leslie’s hands, but who tries to reason with him by telling him over and over, “Come on man, it’s me,” as if suggesting their prior friendship should be enough to neutralize Leslie’s murderous wants and goals. Well, it’s not, and it’s actually a really conflicting scene, because up to this point, Leslie had been a fun, well-mannered, and even lovable character whose goals of which the audience was very much aware, but whom they all liked, anyway. With him now being a dedicated mass murder, the change in his character is as abrupt as the change in tone. Again, this was intended and not some kind of accident, but upon my first viewing of Behind the Mask fifteen years ago, I felt conflicted about it, and I still feel conflicted today. And if there’s one thing a slasher shouldn’t be, it’s conflicting.

Despite that, Behind the Mask is an easy recommendation, a solid addition to the slasher sub-genre, and a love letter to the genre as a whole. Fun cameos, respectable performances, and some decent (but restrained) gore gags only add to its enjoyment. Glosserman has been talking up a sequel for years, and like all of Leslie’s murderous and masked colleagues, hopefully he can transcend from one-hit wonder and cross over into successful franchise territory.

CULT OF CHUCKY (2017)

The Child’s Play series has been one wild ride. After the classic, humorless first film, the series – like most horror franchises – devolved into your more typical slice and dice (though I unabashedly love Child’s Play 2). After exhausting its straight-up horror experience, series writer Don Mancini (who also directed the three most recent entries) served up a mini-reboot with 1998’s Bride of Chucky, directed by Freddy vs. Jason’s Ronny Yu, which allowed the series to deviate in a more knowingly comical manner. Things got meta with Seed of Chucky, which saw a Hollywood film being made about the “real” killer doll’s exploits, and once John Waters’ face melted off, and, in a gag that hasn’t aged well, Chucky ran Britney Spears’ car off a cliff, it seemed like the series had found itself in a creative corner.

Well, Mancini took the opportunity to, again, softly reboot the series with 2013’s Curse of Chucky, which dropped the broad humor, the meta winking, and everything Jennifer Tilly, steering the series back to the darker tone established by the original trilogy. It was a worthy effort, and certainly better than Child’s Play 3 and Seed of Chucky, but it wasn’t quite a return to form. Still, Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif was back, and his real-life daughter, Fiona Dourif, played the lead “final girl” and became quickly beloved by fans, so it had some positive things to offer.

Cult of Chucky serves as a direct sequel to that film, and just might be the most ridiculous and insane entry so far (and I am totally including Seed of Chucky in that – ya know, the film in which two plastic killer dolls give birth to a child doll while rapper Redman is directing a fake movie about their lives). Original Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent, making a return to the series after 28 years) is back, and he’s keeping a living Chucky doll head in his isolated cabin home for nightly torture sessions. And Jennifer Tilly is back as well, again playing Tiffany, murderous girlfriend of Charles Lee Ray (or, maybe she’s just playing Jennifer Tilly. Who knew a horror series about a killer doll could get so esoteric?).

It’s also strikingly directed. Mancini, who wrote several episodes of NBC’s short-lived Hannibal series (“I can’t believe they canceled that show,” Chucky grumbles at some point), embraced that series’ ultra-pretentious approach. Cult of Chucky is the most interesting looking film in the series – one might go as far as saying artfully directed  –  with one murder sequence in particular looking straight-up Hannibal inspired. Cult of Chucky actually looks phenomenal, and Mancini’s earlier mentioned Hannibal-inspired directing is largely to credit for that. Cult of Chucky takes place in the fanciest and most aesthetically pleasing asylum ever in cinema. It’s very white and institutional, but without being depressing, and everything is meticulously designed.

Cult of Chucky is also often very funny, mostly deriving from Chucky’s one-liners, which completely dwarf any that have come before. Dourif has been voicing this character for thirty years now and hasn’t lost his spark — not to mention gaining creative mileage from the asylum setting, a clear callback to the actor’s Academy-Award winning appearance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are multiple references to this, from Juicy Fruit to Chucky outright mumbling half that film’s title in his typically profane manner. And like the previous films, the callbacks to other horror films are numerous, even including an unexpected nod to The Witch.

However, there are portions of Cult of Chucky that don’t work. Nearly all of the characters beyond Fiona are either inconsequential, irritating, or serve no purpose other than to make the loony bin loonier and eventually die bloody. The gore gags are great in concept but not in execution. Chucky looks cheap – not quite Spirit Halloween-cheap, but close. It’s appreciated that the film leans more on puppetry and practical effects than CGI, but its results are still unconvincing. The return of Alex Vincent promises something big, but after some really interesting implications are made regarding his post-Chucky psyche, his character plays out with no point whatsoever, except for setting up the inevitable next sequel – or TV series? (Although the post-credits stinger has me legit excited.) Jennifer Tilly, too, seems shoe-horned in, and with an especially off-kilter performance, as if her character’s appearance here is more about fan service, and the dispatching of one character in particular is more about tying up loose ends rather than creating drama. Lastly, Cult of Chucky alludes to a really interesting, psychologically-based new direction very early on, but what’s set up here doesn’t come to fruition by the end, resulting in a missed opportunity.

And speaking of “that end” – yeesh.

By now, Chucky is on his seventh entry and the series has gone direct to video. Budgets have been cut, and multiple concepts have been explored. And I can name several other horror franchises that became completely lifeless before their seventh entry. If Mancini is on board for Chucky 8: Your Soul, then of course I am, too. By now, Chucky has become a horror hero to audiences, almost the good guy. And you can’t keep a Good Guy down.

Chucky is back in a mostly enjoyable sequel — one that towers over the last two entries, at the very least. It explores new territory (without much explanation) and slowly ties back in earlier events from earlier films in an effort to group everyone together. Is the next Chucky sequel to come the one where they finally get it totally right? Probably not. But that probably won’t make it any less fun to watch.

PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN (2020)

Say, I have a question: why isn’t EVERY movie PG: Psycho Goreman?

The latest horror-comedy from the creative team formerly known as Astron-6, Canada’s beloved cult filmmaking group, marries together all of their go-to trademarks for outrageous gore, very specific humor, practical effects, and homage to ‘80s and ‘90s Hollywood sensibilities, resulting in their best collaboration to date. Written and directed by Steve Kostanski (his latest was the better than expected solo effort Leprechaun Returns), who helmed most of the group’s other titles like Manborg, Father’s Day, straight horror The Void, and episodes of their web series Divorced Dad, PG: Psycho Goreman can best be summed up as: What if E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial were actually a horrifically violent monster movie but still aimed at kids? What if it contained all the stalwarts of ‘80s/’90s Spielbergian filmmaking like childlike awe and absentee fathers, mixed with Lucas-like galaxial politics, and finished with a healthy dose of Cronenbergian/Verhoeven-ish bodily horror? PG: Psycho Goreman is what would happen, and it would be an utter fucking joy.

With nods to iconic horror titles like Phantasm and Videodrome (as well as Astron-6’s own beloved short film Biocop), and one particularly hilarious homage to Jurassic Park, specifically Sam Neill’s wardrobe, PG: Psycho Goreman embraces the entire horror genre and is seldom unfunny to an alarmingly selfish degree. PG: Psycho Goreman is that scene in a self-serious movie where the hero looks upon the technological creation or mystical conjuring of the main villain and remarks, “This is too much power for one person,” but this time, the power in question is Kostanski’s confident grasp on such strange, unrelenting, and consistent hilarity. Nearly every line of dialogue, confused reaction shot, or extremely strange behavior from one of its characters aims for the funny jugular and always hits its mark. PG: Psycho Goreman is so obsessed with making you laugh that it willingly sacrifices several of its own jokes along the way because there’s no way you’re still not laughing over them from the most previous gag. It’s a smorgasbord of surreal, absurd humor that after a while borders on emotional abuse.

Staying true to its premise, our very young main characters are Mimi (a glorious and all-in Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (a perfectly put-off Owen Myre), two otherwise normal kids who spend their time playing video games or their own recklessly complicated version of dodge ball called Crazy Ball. After a very strange bet, they inadvertently dig up an alien craft in their backyard, retrieve a glowing gem, and resurrect an imposing and horrifying alien warrior from the planet Gigax, whom the kids name Psycho Goreman, “PG for short” (embodied by Matthew Ninaber and voiced by Steven Vlahos). Now under Mimi’s control, the kids begin using PG as their own personal action figure, forcing him to play with them or perform various feats of strength for their own amusement. But after his awakening catches the attention of Pandora (Kristen MacCulloch, Anna Tierney, and Roxine Latoya Plummer), a member of a purposely unclear and corny intergalactic council, PG finds himself in danger, along with Mimi, Luke, and their parents, Susan (Alexis Kara Hancey) and Greg (scene-stealing Astron-6 member Adam Brooks). With the fury and might of a galaxy far far away about to rain destruction down over them and their entire planet, this dysfunctional family must band together to save their new friend Psycho Goreman, an angry and bitter alien menace who very willingly discloses that he’s going to kill them all anyway at the next possible moment. You know, for kids!

Every performance in this madness is pitch perfect, especially from the two kid leads. If you’ve explored the depths of every genre, then you know kid actors can run that gamut from great to grating, but not only do the very young Nita-Josee Hanna and Owen Myre do capable jobs, each of them perfectly encapsulates not just PG: Psycho Goreman’s overall approach but the experience of letting it into your brain and embracing its cinematic lunacy: Hanna’s Mimi is fully on board with everything happening, and she throws an unstoppable enthusiasm and exuberance into her character not seen since the earliest days of Jim Carrey; meanwhile, Mimi’s brother, Luke (Myre), is the audience – the one looking around at everything Mimi is doing and asking two things: “What the fuck is happening?” and “Isn’t this a really, really terrible idea?” It may sound like small praise, but he can rattle off a “…what?” with the perfect amount of confusion.

Also helping to bring PG: Psycho Goreman to joyous life is the blistering soundtrack by Blitz//Berlin that’s equal parts Carpenter synth, ‘90s mega-metal, and over-the-top epic orchestral, not to mention a handful of lyrical additions that are each a play on obscure soundtrack selections from ‘80s hits – like the closing-credits original rap song “Psycho Goreman (P.G. for Short)” straight out of The Monster Squad and the power metal mash-up of “Eye of the Tiger” and Commando’s concluding track “We Fight for Love” called “Two Hands, One Heart.” (I’ve also been listening to “Frig Off!” on a very loud loop in my car all week and staring hard at anyone who looks at me weird.)

Along with an unending line of genuinely imaginative and intricate physical costumes, makeup, and monstrous creations, PG: Psycho Goreman is exactly what it set out to be and is exactly what my broken, post-2020 soul needed. It’s the only comedy I’ve ever temporarily turned off during play because I was afraid I was going to pop a blood vessel in my brain from laughter. If there really is such a thing as killing someone with comedy, PG: Psycho Goreman is the closest I’ve come yet.

Though I’ve rattled off a thousand words that utterly gush over PG: Psycho Goreman, you have to know going in that you’re in for a very specific comedic experience and it’s absolutely not going to be for everyone. If you’re unfamiliar with Astron-6’s previous work, which also includes their giallo spoof The Editor, you can start right here with their Biocop fake trailer. If you’re not in on the joke, stay far away from PG: Psycho Goreman, but if you find yourself laughing and want to see more, then your whole life is about to change for the better.

PG: Psycho Goreman is now on Blu-ray from RLJE Films, and thank fuck for that.

FREAKY (2020)

The slasher sub-genre has been around for almost as long as the horror genre itself, with elements found as far back as 1920’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Ever since then, crops of filmmakers have been content to do one of two things with the slasher film: present a dependable, uncomplicated tale that relies on its simplistic foundations, or concoct a clever take on the concept that spins the sub-genre on its head. Halloween (1978) and Scream (1996) are two perfect examples of this dichotomy. The first took all the slasher elements that had existed at that time and finally planted them into an environment that most audiences could relate to – suburbia – whereas Scream, which gleefully embraced its Halloween inspirations, masterfully took all the elements that had existed by that time and blessed its characters with a working knowledge of how the sub-genre worked, theoretically making them savvier in the face of danger. Following its release, Scream was foretold to be the harbinger of the slasher flick’s ultimate demise. Because a film had come along that called out the tropes and pitfalls of the sub-genre, critics said there would be no going back to standard slasher films as we knew them. Thankfully, filmmakers went back anyway (and Scream wasn’t even the first to go full meta – see 1991’s, albeit terrible, There’s Nothing Out There), and though this new generation of slasher fodder may have been savvier, they still ultimately fell victim to the same pitfalls as before. Like many of their masked villains, slasher films had proven they will never truly die, with most of their future offerings eagerly going back to their roots of simplicity and watered-down mythology. (Ironically, enter 2018’s Halloween.)

Last year’s Freaky, directed by Happy Death Day’s Christopher Landon, is the latest twist on a well-worn concept, taking both its concept and its namesake from, of all things, Disney’s family-friendly Freaky Friday films (the remake which stars, ironically, Halloween’s Jamie Lee Curtis, and which is GREAT – YEAH, I SAID IT.). Landon’s dedication to the genre is well established by now, having written most of the Paranormal Activity sequels along with another similarly quirky horror-comedy, Scouts Guide to the Apocalypse (2015); those stationary-camera haunted condo movies aside, his body of work proves he understands the workable balance between horror and comedy, with his scripts never coming down too prominently on one side versus the other. Freaky, which is brimming with homages to slasher films of old, clearly takes its cues from the aforementioned Scream and Halloween, while also throwing in some Evil Dead, The Shining, and Friday the 13^th for good measure. (Enjoy the homage to that latter title while it lasts, too, because thanks to all the lawsuits the series is currently saturated with, Freaky may very well be the final slasher flick to show you the below words on a movie screen…)

Though Freaky isn’t as innovative as something like Scream or Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, its concept is a clever one, mashing up two utterly disparate genres to create what amounts to a solid, entertaining, bloody, funny, and genuinely touching contribution to the horror-comedy sub-genre…and believe me, that ain’t easy – just ask…well, most horror-comedies. Freaky also offers just enough buyable aspects to its plot that the circumstances under which high school teen Millie (Kathryn Newton, Supernatural) and the town of Blissfield’s very own mass murderer, the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) end up switching bodies never gets too mired in its own mythology to the point where the plot overcomplicates itself. Once the body-swap happens, Millie, as now played by Vaughn, relies on her two best friends, Nyla (the forthcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s Celeste O'Connor, giving off strong Olivia Cooke vibes) and Josh (Misha Osherovich, NOS4A2) to track down the Butcher, re-swap their bodies before the switch becomes permanent, and save the town from the Butcher’s Voorhees-esque massacre. (His mask is one fresh coat of paint and few air holes away from being Jason’s hockey mask.)

By the sheer nature of the story, even though Newton does most of the killing, she’s not given the opportunity to lean into the new personality of her Butcher character as much as Vaughn has to somehow embody a teenage girl dealing with this absurd conflict. To be clear, it’s not a fault of Newton’s performance and it’s a joy to see her exact bloody revenge on all the dicks who made her high school life hell, but one “swap” was always going to be more interesting and entertaining than the other, and with that comes Vaughn’s triumph. Freaky, somehow, offers enough situations for Vaughn to sidestep the surface-level silliness of what he’s doing (and don’t get me wrong – he’s very funny, especially whenever there’s a longshot of him running like “a girl”) to present some honest emotional moments in which Millie can finally communicate, for the first time ever, the pain of losing her father and the angst of struggling to know herself to those closest to her. In those same kinds of absurd movie moments where the audience cries over Tom Hanks and Wilson becoming separated at sea or an aging Elvis slowly dying following a battle with a soul-sucking mummy at a convalescent home, Freaky generates handfuls of moments where the audience is sincerely touched by Millie’s emotional awakening even while wrapped in Vaughn’s serial killer body. (And if you’ve ever wanted to see Vaughn lock lips with a teen boy, well…) Luckily, thanks to Vaughn’s previous work in darker genre stuff, like 1998’s Psycho remake or 1999’s Clay Pigeons, he’s also able to convincingly play a deranged and sinister serial killer, saving his best and bloodiest for his final scenes. It’s the best of both worlds, and he’s never been more fun to watch.

Given that Freaky exists in a post-pronouns world, it’s not unfair to say that audiences might be expecting to drown in the film’s “wokeness” agenda, generated by its body-swapping plot, but except for subtly touching hands with the concepts of gender, gender roles, and cross-sexuality, Freaky never perches itself on a soapbox to offer any heavy messages – not because it failed to, but because that was never its mission statement. The characters weren’t designed to experience alternate perspectives based solely on their new bodies of the opposite sex – it was more so Millie could realize she didn’t have to be wearing the body of a tall imposing man to discover her inner strength, and so the Butcher could realize that prey was much easier to come by when the predator wore an unassuming form…even if it became much harder to kill. This careful balance of silliness and sincere conversation is just as finely tuned as its balance between horror and comedy, making Freaky not just a genre highlight of 2020, but one of the best horror-comedies to come down the pike in quite some time.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

SATANIC PANIC (2019)

Maybe I’m just a blowhard, but I’m a tough sell when it comes to horror-comedies. In my experience, most people don’t know how to straddle that line. Thirty-plus years later, I still point to The Return of The Living Dead as not just the ultimate horror-comedy, but the sterling example of how to marry the two genres. Call it comedy-horror or horror-comedy – regardless of the order, the horror genre is a heavy presence, and you can’t only dip your toe into the horror pool. A horror-comedy should still be mostly scary, and when lacking that, at least mostly gory. Even the genre term “horror-comedy” suggests a fifty-fifty experience, but ideally, if your horror-comedy isn’t mostly horror-based, you’re doing it wrong, and if I had my druthers, filmmakers would be forbidden from name-dropping the H word when pitching their movie. I hereby decree it.

Satanic Panic, the latest horror-comedy to come down the pike, isn’t scary. I’m not sure it’s trying to be, as its visuals lean mostly toward robed cult members committing body violence against unsuspecting victims. While it does shy away from anything overtly supernatural given its demonic design and influences (although there are some black magic flourishes), it’s still quite gory — the fun, rubber, practical kind of gory, instead of the very poor looking CGI that lots of low budget horror productions present and can almost never afford. Another thing to its credit is the very likeable lead, Sam (Hayley Griffith), an atypical final girl for this kind of genre. Griffith, as Sam, fully embraces the manic, neurotic, and nervous tone of her character as she begins facing off against, basically, Beverly Hills 90666. Through director Chelsea Stardust’s design, Sam is aware of the ridiculous situation in which she finds herself, and her bumbling and shy personality brings a lot of humor to the various and deadly situations that come her way. Her character successfully channels the audience watching this totally nuts fiasco, and she exudes much of the same disbelief and frustration regarding the conflict as much as the audience does when seeing it all unfold.

Even with all the carnage, violence, humor, and stunt casting, Satanic Panic actually gets the most mileage from the friendship between Sam and Judi (Ruby Modine), the target of her Satanist mother’s diabolical and demonic deeds. Sam is the meek and bumbling virgin, while Judi is…definitely not that; as their uneasy alliance builds towards a believable friendship, it adds a lot of unexpected emotional weight to the flick and helps to heighten the stakes once things really become dire for them both. (Also look for A.J. Bowen, who has become one of my favorite horror personalities. Like director and actor Larry Fessenden, filmmakers seem to cast him if their script has a character who has to die violently, and Bowen is always eager to fulfill that role.)

Though it’s not entirely successful, Satanic Panic is an amusing horror-comedy, mostly due to its cast, especially with Romijn in a role that’s very outside her normal oeuvre. The humor doesn’t always work, and can feel forced at times, but there’s enough genuine emotion to fall back on so it doesn’t leave Satanic Panic feeling like a wholly empty experience. Enough of the humor works, and the bloody effects will certainly satisfy the gore hounds. Take that, add in the emotional element (ignore the conveniently tidy ending), and there should be enough to satisfy the horror fan looking for something grisly and amusing. (And if that’s not enough, don’t forget the DTF Jerry O’Connell!)

COOTIES (2015)

Cooties is one of those films that, as you're watching it, you almost start to dislike just because you want it to be better than it is. And that's not to say Cooties isn't good, or very funny, because it is, but it's because the film was nearly there - immortal status - that it starts to suffer for it. The cast have remarkable chemistry, each providing a dose of their own real personalities (the reason they were cast in the first place), with Rainn Wilson's Wade playing an even more exaggerated version of Dwight from The Office, while Elijah Wood gets to show off his rarely seen comedic chops beyond Wilfred, where he generally plays the straight man, anyway. (Him telling his students to read pages from his unpublished manuscript as he sits down, closes his eyes, and places his hands over his smiling mouth, as if he wants to take it all in and bask in the inevitable appreciation of his elementary school students, is unexpectedly hilarious.) 

Much like any horror-comedy, or any comedy in general, some jokes land and some don't, but the ones that do are frequently funny. Co-writer Leigh Whannell (screenwriter for the Saw and Insidious series) absolutely steals the show as Doug, the socially awkward and possibly serial-killing biology teacher who rattles off all the film's best lines (especially during the Breakfast Club-ish confessional scene).

Directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, in the midst of all the carnage, manage to show off some pretty striking directorial flare, most notably in the slow-motion sequence somewhat reminiscent of another zombie opus, World War Z, in which the audience gets a ground-zero look at how quickly the zombie virus can spread, when a zombified student tears across the playground scratching deep wounds into the arms of other students. The surreal but savage and brutal construction of this sequence, despite it taking place in a cheeky black comedy, wouldn't feel out of place in a more traditional horror film. The tremendous musical score by Bulgarian composer Kreng marries bits of John Carpenter to traditional orchestra and sounds fantastic.

Where the film fumbles is with its use of Jorge Garcia as an acid-dropping crossing guard who spends most of the film isolated in a van hallucinating from the drugs he's taken. While this does mostly come off as entertaining, it also feels like it belongs entirely to its own story; it could have been fully excised without affecting the film, even improving its pace. Cooties also falls victim to a Return of the King-ish too many endings. Once the film embarks on a change of location during the third act (and following a dispatching of a certain character), Cooties feels like it's just around the corner from ending, but when it insists on continuing, it starts to feel dangerously close like overstaying its welcome.

Not since Troma's terrible Beware: Children at Play has a film so unashamedly both put children in danger and made them the adversaries, and thankfully Cooties, despite its very recognizable cast and mainstream release, doesn't relent when it comes to bloodletting and bodily carnage. The nice thing about Cooties is that, unlike Beware: Children at Play (or anything from Troma), you get all the mayhem with none of the desire to take an immediate shower. 

Though the zombie comedy thing has been done to death, Cooties proves that there's still life in the concept yet. It boasts an engaging and amusing story, more good jokes than bad, and a cast whose chemistry is infectious makes Cooties worth catching.

DEAD SHACK (2017)

The zombie comedy. People are still making these!

But you know what they say: you can’t keep a chuckling ghoul down.

To its credit as a zombie comedy (a zombedy, if you will), Dead Shack is at least funny. Not consistently funny, with most of its gutter-mouth Superbad-inspired humor landing very flat, but I’d at least say that Dead Shack spends more of its time being funny than not funny. Donavon Stinson as Roger, the family’s patriarch, is hands-down the biggest purveyor of the film’s best humor. His interactions with Lisa, his hard-drinking girlfriend, especially, are tremendously dry and strange and often very funny.

Being that we’re dealing with a zombie movie, Dead Shack is also violent. Very violent. And it’s that wonderful old school practical violence that I’ve really come to miss in genre entertainment. Heads come off, neck wounds spurt geysers of blood, axes fly into and connect with bodies, etc. It’s a joyful romp of gore — this, at the very least, won’t disappoint genre fans.

Since I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one who thinks the zombie market has become saturated, you’ll be pleased to know that Dead Shack at least has somewhat of a unique concept, mostly in the form of Neighbor (she’s never given a name) played by Lauren Holly, who suits up in SWAT gear and corrals the hapless directly into the mouths of her zombified family. It’s interesting in that she’s clearly the villain of the piece, yet the audience develops empathy toward her anyway because she’s clearly not in her right mind and is having tremendous difficulty dealing with the death of her family.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Dead Shack never turns into one of those …of the Dead scenarios where shit hits the fan in the final act and hordes of zombies begin stampeding through shopping malls and underground military bases. Dead Shack keeps things pretty intimate in that regard, though the stakes still remain fairly high.

If you’re a fan of the zombie genre, Dead Shack certainly ranks as one of the better titles you should seek. Lord knows the zombie thing has been done to death (ha!), but every so often there’s a reason to not completely dismiss it out of hand, either. You can thank Dead Shack for that newest slice of redemption.

BURYING THE EX (2014)

Max (Anton Yelchin) has a problem. His girlfriend of many years, Evelyn (Ashley Greene), is driving him crazy, and for the longest time he has stalled in breaking things off because he didn't have the guts to do it. One day a bus changes all that - by knocking Evelyn out of her shoes and the life out of her body, allowing Max time to sigh in relief and grow close and cozy with Olivia (Alexandra Daddario), the punky and quirky malt shop owner/operator. Things seem to be going pretty well...until Evelyn inexplicably rises from the grave and returns home, hornier and gooier than ever, leaving Max in an even worse conflict: not only is she back to make his life hell, she's now a member of the living dead. He once promised her they would be together forever, and she was going to hold him to it.

As you can imagine, brains jokes.

Burying the Ex was the third comedy of 2014 to mix teen love and zombies, following on the heels of the superior but uneven Life After Beth and the well-meaning but dull Warm Bodies. Why this is so disappointing is because Burying the Ex is the latest feature effort from beloved genre filmmaker Joe Dante, he of the cult classics Gremlins and The Howling, whose involvement should have resulted in a slam dunk. Though an overused concept, if anyone was going to waltz in and do something unique with it, surely it would have been him, as his sensibilities as a storyteller and talent as a filmmaker have set him off from his colleagues during his entire career. But it's the broadness of the film's comedy and the unoriginality of the conflict that stunts his ability to infuse it with his identity, thus robbing us of a new Joe Dante film and leaving us with yet another forgettable title in the "uh oh! zombies!" sub-genre.

After 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Joe Dante took a long break from feature film-making, only returning in 2012 for the solid genre effort, The Hole. However, that didn’t mean he was taking all that time off from directing, as he also contributed the episodes “Homecoming” and “The Screwfly Solution” for the short-lived Masters of Horror, as well as a segment in the horror anthology Trapped Ashes. Generally, when a director is missing from the feature-film game for that long, the eventual next output isn’t normally great. (See John Carpenter's The Ward.) The Hole, which played film festivals for a long time, struggled to find national distribution, and that didn’t bode well, either. But The Hole would go on to prove that not only was the film worth the wait, but that Dante was able to buck that trend and prove one thing: time away didn't necessarily mean he was off his game.

Much as it pains me to say, perhaps Mr. Dante should have stayed away just a bit longer this time around.

Burying the Ex just might be Dante's broadest comedy yet (this being a director who's made a Looney Tunes movie), and it's almost entirely the fault of the screenplay, which relies on obnoxious humor, cliched situations, and tired dialogue. When you can sense what line any particular character is going to utter, or guess the punchline to the groan-inducing joke soon to come, you'll know you're in the presence of a story that's not trying to break new ground, nor trying to find new ways to entertain. 

This is probably the most disappointing aspect, as the film's concept alone is well within Dante's wheelhouse, it being a marriage of horror and comedy, and not afraid to get a little bloody. What it is afraid to do is go for earned laughs. Instead, we see the same recycled gags set to a musical score by Joseph LoDuca (the Evil Dead trilogy) that telegraphs ahead of time what you should find funny or pensive, dramatic or horrifying - and it all sounds cheap.

The cast manages to turn in varying work. Yelchin as Max comes off as likable, as he usually does, but there's something about his performance which suggests he doesn't quite understand the kind of film he's making, or the sensibilities of his director. A subdued performance in the midst of this madness causes the audience to constantly reel back, unsure of how they're supposed to be feeling and what exactly they're experiencing. Greene, on the other hand, embraces her role to maximum effect. Even before she's laid to rest, her Evelyn is overly peppy with quixotic expectations - the cause of her and Max's relationship issues in the first place. She's a green-going liberal to the analth degree, quipping about fluorescent light-bulbs and food additives and vegan tofu. It's mildly amusing until you realize the film is cheating by manipulating its audience into disliking her, transforming the conflict from torn young love - a conflict of substance worth exploring - into something akin to "Run, my zombie ex-girlfriend will bite you!" Daddario, perhaps most recognizable from her role as your heart attack in HBO's stellar first season of True Detective, plays the horror-comedy version of Garden State's Natalie Portman, in that she's bubbly and strange and adorable - an outwardly positive and enthusiastic person, and the kind of character with whom you can't help but fall in love, until you realize that a girl that beautiful who shares all your same interests and still has her baby teeth and somehow owns her own malt shop only exists in the movies. Max and Olivia's ensuing romance is the only aspect that drives the story forward and makes it interesting - and this in a film about a zombie ex-girlfriend at home falling apart in the bathtub.

As a director, Joe Dante has always been successful at “the Joe Dante aesthetic,” and it’s something he’s been rightfully exploiting ever since his first major blockbuster, 1984’s Gremlins. He has the ability to create something that, on the surface, seems to appeal to the younger demographic, but offers a bit more bite than that audience might be anticipating. His films exist somewhere in a chasm between children's fare and adult entertainment. In the Gremlins films, you have the adorable Gizmo as that conduit to perceived accessibility, though little mutants are soon shoved down garbage disposals while elderly women are heaved out windows. In The Hole, early-teen characters are facing their fears head-on, some childlike in their appearance, and some based on some very real-world dangers. But Dante isn’t satisfied with just creating something and presenting it to his younger audiences on a platter; instead, he wants to take his concepts and up them, just a little, beyond his audience's normal comfort level. He wants to challenge them, just a little bit, more than his creative colleagues. He wants “his” children to face facts and understand that this world contains real dangers, and though he may rely on typical horror tropes to establish this, that doesn’t make them any less relevant or emotionally affecting - or any less funny, which, as they say, tragedy often is. Burying the Ex is unique in that it's Dante's first R-rated film since 1981's The Howling, which is surprising considering his Masters of Horror efforts are quite brutal...and yet, meanwhile, Burying the Ex is not. In fact, beyond one scene of violence, the rating is befuddling, as the film comes off as rather tame and closer to his line-straddling aesthetic, only this time, instead of a boundary-pushing coming-of-age, it's a somewhat lame and toothless film geared toward, well, no one specifically.

Burying the Ex feels like one big missed opportunity. It's one thing for a film to be disappointing, but that disappointment is worsened when it comes from a filmmaker so highly revered in the horror community and who has consistently proven to be capable of so much better. A new film from the likes of Joe Dante will always bring with it a certain amount of expectation, which has been fully earned, but as Burying the Ex has proven, sometimes an intelligent director can make something without any braaaaaaaains.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 2 (1988)

Like all other horror franchises, Return of the Living Dead eventually lost its way, succumbing to straight-to-Sci-Fi-Channel sequel oblivion stocked with actors you’ve never heard of (and Peter Coyote) and with budgets so low that they made even Night of the Living Dead feel opulent. Some folks who profess to be horror fans don’t actually know there are a total of five films in this franchise. I don’t blame them. After the classic original film, which I consider to be the quintessential example of how to make a horror-comedy, the trajectory of the ensuing sequels were tonally all over the place, vying sometimes for a straightforward horror experience, and sometimes vying for extreme, unmatched, unprecedented stupidity. Return of the Living Dead 2, the only sequel to be financed and distributed by a major studio (Warner Bros.), is desperate to achieve the same magic tonal balancing act as its predecessor but isn’t nearly as successful.

Return of the Living Dead was very much a product of the ‘80s, filled with a bevy of absolutely delightful special effects and make-up, an inspired punk soundtrack, and a gleefully unrestrained Dan O’Bannon, who strived to push both genres to their breaking points. The teenage faction of the main cast were additionally punked out: mohawks, big hair, neon and pastel colors, leather, chains – you name it. It was very ‘80s, but a different kind of ‘80s.

The sequel wisely chose to eschew this particular punky approach (as it would have seemed even more derivative) in favor of another series of ‘80s tropes: the plucky boy hero, aerobics, and Michael Jackson. What results is a movie that feels more like its own entity rather than something sequalizing something else; Return of the Living Dead 2 is part and parcel with many other horror flicks with this sort of tone that pervaded theaters back during this magical decade. Titles like Night of the Creeps, Night of the Comet, The Blob, Neon Maniacs, and more offer a very playful tone juxtaposed against creepy imagery, with all kinds of fun violence to boot. I genuinely believe that Return of the Living Dead 2’s reputation would be far more celebrated had it been released under a different title. Compared to its predecessor, it’s not nearly as fun, funny, vicious, or by default, original. But it’s not a totally dismissible effort, either. (That wouldn’t start until Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis.) Much of the humor still works, the entire cast is game (including Twin Peaks’ Dana Ashbrook and my longtime childhood crush, Suzanne Snyder), and the gore gags, though somewhat neutered when compared to the original, are still pretty icky/gooey for a mainstream studio release.

In an odd bit of stunt casting and surreal humor, James Karen and Thom Matthews (the doomed warehouse workers from the previous film who most certainly did not survive their encounters with the undead), appear as different characters: Burke and Hare-ish grave robbers who can’t quite put a finger on why their new zombie perils feels so…familiar. It’s a weird gag and sort of groan-inducing in its unsubtlety, but it’s still a delight to have them, and frankly is a joke that should have kept going well into the series.

Return of the Living Dead 2 is an example of a very middle-of-the-road sequel. It harps on all the high points of its predecessor without mastering any of them, but it’s still worthy of attention. I’d even go as far as to call it a highlight of the ‘80s, if you can put aside its lineage and look at it as a standalone brain-munching romp.

DEATH BECOMES HER (1994)

In a crucial scene during the first act, Meryl Streep's Madeline Ashton saunters out of her mansion shared with her husband, Ernest (Bruce Willis), whom she stole from Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) to meet up with a young stud for a routine tryst, only to see that the man with whom she's been cheating has also been cheating on her. After she confronts him about it, he tells her, "You should find someone your own age, Madeline." Cue the rain that immediately pours down, the kind of poetic timing that only exists in film. Within the span of just a couple minutes, we discover so much about the type of woman Madeline Ashton is: vicious--in that she blatantly packs an overnight bag and exits the house in front of her husband; a paradox--in that, though she's willfully cheating on her husband, she becomes enraged that someone would dare do that to her; and finally, deeply sad, afraid, and alone--in that the only worth she could ever measure was her beauty, and now without it, she feels completely useless.

Beneath the EC Comic vibes of horrific violence and very black humor, there is a pretty potent discussion the film wants to have about the blood thirst between women vying for what they think they deserve, as well as the cog-machine-like machinations of Hollywood, which uses up actresses like Madeleine Ashton and then deposits them once they have out-aged their purpose. It's the kind of conversation that's being had right now, but one that director Robert Zemeckis, and screenwriters David Koepp and Martin Donovan, wanted to have nearly 25 years ago.

Even if we wipe away all the context on display and examine the film for what it is, Death Becomes Her is simply a hell of a lot of fun. Seeing the '90s-era versions of Streep, Hawn, and Willis take on such a goofy, gonzo approach to a film and screaming to the rafters with their performances is what makes Death so enticing to watch. Streep, especially, who is likely the most esteemed actress still working today, seems to be having a ball playing not just a bitch (which she'll do again famously in The Devil Wears Prada and The Iron Lady), but an undead bitch. With Death Becomes Her being Streep's sole contribution to the horror genre (she admitted during a Wes Craven retrospective that, prior to working with him on Music of the Heart, she opted not to watch any of his prior films because she didn't have the stomach for it), she lets it all hang out and leaves it all out on the field. Likely the chance to skewer Hollywood and its ageist approach is what led her to sign on to the film in the first place, but she is totally down with the more gruesome aspects of the story. Seeing someone so high-brow bring her usual level of Streep to something that might appear as if she's "slumming it" is one of the best aspects on display.

And not to leave Goldie Hawn out of the lovefest, who matches her co-star pound for pound, but can we all just sit back and enjoy Bruce Willis giving one of the best performances of his career? The man who famously sleepwalks through one direct-to-video action film after another is almost operatic as Ernest Menville. He's a shrieking, boozing, wide-eyed, scheming drunk, and it is so so so much fun to watch. He's never offered as much energy and actual performance, ever--not even during his five-time run as John McClane--and it's a shame we'll probably never see it again.

Rumors abound that Death Becomes Her was intended to be the launch of the Tales from the Crypt film brand, and being that the picture was released by the eventual distributor of Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood, as well as directed by Tales director and executive producer Robert Zemeckis, it's an easily believable one. It certainly has the make and model of the EC Comic aesthetic down: brutal violence, murderous schemes, ironic twists, sexytime, and gallows humor.

And also the special effects.

Zemeckis has always been a filmmaker, though talented, accused of letting his interest in special effects drive the narrative, instead of the other way around (which purists will tell you is the proper hierarchy). Death Becomes Her is no different, and though its the visual effects that take precedence, the physical ones are equally impressive. Hawn's temporary transformation into a bloated, overweight, cat-hoarding shut-in, for one, is still impressive even ten Eddie Murphys later. But it should come as no surprise that some of the visual effects, though not all, haven't aged well, which has always been one of Zemeckis' shortcomings as a director. In the same way I'm sure the effects for Back to the Future looked tremendous in 1985, and Contact looked tremendous in 1997, the effects in Death Becomes Her are coming up on twenty-five years old, and they wear their age appropriately.

Shortcomings aside, Death Becomes Her is just fun. It's hilarious in all the right places, and equally gruesome in others. Watching the likes of Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn--two legendary and respected actresses--do battle with axes, with one's head being smashed down inside her neck while the other has a broken handle speared through the giant hole in her stomach--feels like a novelty, but not the extraneous and ultimately forgettable kind. Despite all the goofball charm and somewhat limited appeal (mothers weren't quite prepared for this Meryl Streep film), Death Becomes Her feels like it's not just from a bygone era, but feels like a miracle that it was ever made at all. This type of concept is still made today, only they star actors who make a living in churning out straight-to-video rubbish, but that this time it involved the likes of Streep, Hawn, Willis, Koepp, and Zemeckis is what continues to make it such an event. Its appeal--much like Madeline and Helen--will never die.

Death Becomes Her feels like one of those films they don't make anymore, and they probably don't. With all this talk in Hollywood of unbalanced opportunities between men and women, and especially with the ageist issue that seems to dog some of our older actresses, Death Becomes Her is actually more relevant now than it was back in 1992. It's a delight to see its wicked cast take part in something so loony and dark, and it's also a delight that Shout! has resurrected it for a new life on blu-ray. In the same way people don't talk enough about Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her deserves more accolades and attention than its received over the years. 

GET OUT (2016)

Within Get Out’s opening moments, writer/director Jordan Peele manages to homage both John Carpenter’s Halloween – as the camera glides across leafy, suburban streets and an obscured humanoid threat shadows an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time – and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, as this same person remarks about how those same suburban streets are “like a hedge maze.” This opening concludes with a simply done but expertly executed sequence which doesn’t linger long enough for its suspense to grow tedious; it’s over before you fully realize it’s begun, and as you see this play out before you, you’re taken with the bizarre notion that not only are you about to watch a horror/thriller from one of television’s best and underrated comedians – but that the guy knows his genre shit.

When critical praise for Peele’s directorial debut began rolling in – and for an entirely different genre from which he was previously known – it was during these commendations that reviewers insisted on downplaying the different aspects of comedy that were still pretty prevalent in what was marketed as a straight horror/thriller. From the more obvious broader moments of white-meets-black-culture clash, to the severe black comedy aspects of the admittedly over-the-top twist, Get Out’s creator was smart enough to know that making a film as still inherently angry as it was would go over better so long as it could rely on these multi-layered approaches to humor. That’s something that only the comedy genre – and especially the black comedy sub-genre – allows. That’s its biggest strength: that it can still reflect the anger and fears and frustrations of its writer or director, but without sacrificing the good time and titillation that audiences still want to experience in the theater. If you’re watching Get Out and not recognizing it as a black comedy, then you’re risking your enjoyment. Yes, it’s a horror film, but it is a comedy as well – just one very different than what Peele and his comedian partner Keegan-Michael Key farmed so well during their successful run of Comedy Central’s Key & Peele.

Get Out, a sort of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, exists in a post-Black Lives Matter and post-Trump world. Up to now, the stain of racism that will sadly always permeate throughout this country, had been dormant – not altogether extinct, but quiet. And then wave after wave of controversial police shootings began; and, like almost anything else in the era of Modern America, they became politicized. Liberals backed the victims; conservatives backed the police. It just became one more line drawn in the sand. And politicians seized on this. Trump fanned those flames and made hate speak socially acceptable. It’s no coincidence that hate groups have felt empowered following not just his victory on election day but since the earliest days of his presidency. As I write this, white supremacists are gathering – proudly – in New Orleans, bearing torches, to protest the removal of state symbols representing hatred and a “once”-divided nation. Drunken Texans are shouting slurs on beaches at Muslim families. Racist incidents are surging in schools. 

Schools! 

What the fuck is happening! 

For so long things weren’t racially perfect (nowhere near), but it was put back in the closet — only taken back out for special occasions or the random, isolated incident. But these days, it’s apparently not just okay to be a proud, outspoken racist — it’s your American duty. And those in the community who represent the target of this hate are speaking out against it. Everyone is finding their own outlet to do it. With Get Out, Jordan Peele is using his usual brand married to a horror approach — and if nothing else, the horror genre has proven time and time again that it can be used to tell (while disguising) the angriest stories told by the most frustrated filmmakers.

Some people – in their undying drive to become fake outraged via the Internet whenever they read something they don’t agree with — probably won’t like that, but this is a matter that has to be confronted if Get Out is to be fairly appraised and explain why it’s so relevant. [And the remainder of this paragraph gets into spoiler territory, so if you’re a Get Out virgin, then GET OUT…to the next section.] The idea behind Get Out – the crux behind the motivations of the Armitage family (I’m sensing another Carpenter reference there) – is absurd: the harvesting of strong and vibrant black men and women for their more desirable traits, with the leftovers being turned into soulless automatons serving their white owners in whatever ways they’ve been programmed. Taking that silliness from the film and examining the concept under the microscope of the real world, is it really that absurd? Society chooses to worship certain African Americans as athletes, as actors, as musicians. We adopt certain aspects of their culture and fashion and leave others behind. Sometimes we even elect them to political office so we can feel really good about ourselves and we can pretend that racism is that thing which died in the 1960s. (Yet we get annoyed that black Santa Clause decorations exist because THE REAL SANTA MIGHT BE OFFENDED.) But even as we shower our chosen few with adoration and celebrity worship, we discard the rest. We change the channel mid-news report about an unarmed black man or boy being shot by the police in a sketchy shooting. “I’m no racist, but,” begins the guy in your family who is obviously racist. “They’re not ALL bad, but,” begins the woman at your office who thinks they’re all bad. Get Out's message isn’t anything new, but it is conveying it in a different way. And the message is that racism hasn’t gone away — will probably never go away — and for all the time it’s here, those affected aren’t going to take it sitting down.

These days, in America, everyone is angry. I am, and you are. Even if you got the president you wanted, chances are good that you’re either feeling buyer’s remorse, or you were angry to begin with and voted for the orange Hail Mary hoping his magic wand would reverse everything you think is wrong with our country. But the thing to remember is you don’t have exclusivity on anger. No one does. Jordan Peele is allowed to be as angry as the rest of us, but while we all complain on the Internet behind avatars bearing anything other than our real faces and nicknames bearing anything other than what’s on our birth certificate, Peele is at least out there, first, contributing a solid title to the horror genre, but second, crafting something that kicks at the hornet’s nest in a way that’s both playful as well as furious. Though Get Out falls victim to predictability in certain areas and laziness in others, its uniqueness and bravery more than make up for it – and, above all, it wants to start a conversation that many of us aren’t ready to have.

THE EDITOR (2014)

More and more, filmmakers, especially those in the horror genre, are looking to the past for a bout of inspiration. Throwback horror films have become a popular movement over the last decade, with the amount of output increasing as filmmakers' love for the '70s and '80s becomes more and more pronounced. Canadian filmmaking group Astron-6 (Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Jeremy Gillespie, and Steve Kostanski) count themselves among the Quentin Tarantinos and the Ti Wests whose own films have attempted to both homage and recapture what made certain sub-genres of that era so entertaining, and so ripe for re-exploration.

With The Editor, the latest send-up from the guys who previously brought us their grindhouse ode Father's Day, their "run, robots!" homage Manborg, and the greatest thing of all time, Biocop, our filmmaking sextet have pointed their loving fingers at the mysterious, beautiful, and nearly-pornographic movement known as the giallo . Named for the cheap pulp, crime, and sex novels found on the bottom shelves of bookstores and newsstands during the early '70s (the name "giallo" derives from their uniformly yellow covers), this unusually alluring movement was a mostly European affair, beginning life in Italy with Mario Bava and Dario Argento before moving over to the United States (in a less obviously artistic form) to eventually inspire the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma. The movement was more known for the fluidity of the camera, frank and unobscured sexuality, and healthy doses of grisly violence made beautiful through a purposeful filter design constructed by bold colors, rather than its ability to tell an original story.

Refreshingly, The Editor manages to do both.

Rey Cisco (Brooks) is an aging film editor with a wooden hand, a result from a freak accident one night in his editing suite. While dealing with the undeniable realization that his is an art being slowly left behind, things grow worse for him once a killer begins stalking members of the cast and crew, dispatching them in violent ways and removing four fingers from their one hand - which matches Rey's own malady, naturally incriminating him as the obvious red herring. Investigating these murders is Detective Porfiry (Kennedy), husband to a victimized and now-blind member of the cast, and whose hilarious wardrobe and wild facial hair seems to be invoking every early-'70s iteration of Donald Sutherland that ever existed. Rey's wife, Josephine (Paz de la Huerta), a former and now irrelevant film actress, doesn't make things any better, consistently reminding him that he barely qualifies as a man, nearly forcing him into the arms of his young and doe-eyed assistant, Bella (an adorable Samantha Hill, with whom, after one film, I am already in love). With all eyes on Rey and his seemingly approaching mental breakdown, the killer continues his bloody kill-list one stab wound at a time, leading to a finale that combines one particular character's descent into madness with the beautiful construct and the often unexplored potentials of the giallo sub-genre.

With its painstaking recreation of the giallo movement, right down to the primary-color lighting design, the hideous '70s fashion, and its eclectic soundtrack of new-wave synth artists working to homage that iconic Goblin sound (special shout-out to Carpenter Brut), The Editor should and perhaps will go down as being the most accurate and lovingly engineered throwback that exists so far in the world of the horror homage. Forget Death Proof or the Machete films, and hit pause on House of the Devil (oh no he din't!) - Astron-6 not only has their assured hands all over their concept, but they're not afraid to see those concepts through to the end, even risking isolating the very audience to whom they might be trying to appeal. An oft-used expression is the devil's greatest trick was convincing man he didn't exist, but The Editor's greatest trick was making its audience think they were sitting down with a straightforward parody of the giallo movement before pulling the shag rug out from under them and forcing them into something unexpected. It's through the surprises offered by the unique story that lifts it beyond a simple who-done-it and transplants it in a world that includes additional loving homage to the body-horror era of Cronenberg's early filmography, Nicolas Roeg-era Don't Look Now, and more, with references to horror mainstays (the D'Argento apartment complex; the famed Italian director with the first name of 'Umberto') ever in place.

Not content to just send-up this short-lived and quirky horror sub-genre, Astron-6 continue to rely on the dream-like and abstract world of the giallo while also tapping into that dreamy concept to carry forth its story. From there, The Editor becomes less about a black-gloved, knife-wielding killer and more about the wooden-fingered man who sets out to find the killer's identity, but soon becomes lost in a nightmarish world where he begins to question everything he sees, especially as that world becomes crashing down around him.

All that aside, and also speaking of, The Editor is consistently hilarious; its absurd and at times bizarre humor is used in short spurts. It doesn't offer a laugh-a-minute mentality, but only because it wasn't designed that way (although Kennedy's unhinged detective, as well as his extremely unusual sexual habits, likely walk away with some of the film's most absurd and biggest laughs). Sure, there are some minor digs at the sub-genre's less admirable attributes (the atrocious acting, the poor dubbing, the unrestrained look at sexuality), but The Editor is more concerned with reminding audiences why the giallo movement was such a temporarily captivating time in horror history. The closest thing there ever was to visual poetry within the genre, the giallo proved you could marry grisly content to striking images and create for the audience a ballistic ballet of blood and beauty that, if done correctly, should leave its audience titillated, horrified, and sexually charged all at once. The Editor has managed to do this, all while offering a healthy dose of humor.

One thing that may come as a surprise to someone expecting a more straightforward horror spoof is how strikingly eerie some of the concocted images manage to come across: the blue-eyed phantom who appears intermittently bathed in the blackness of a darkened editing suite actually has the power to send a river of chills down audience spines, and this in a film where one character says to another, "Hey, nice penis! I had a feeling this would be a good night for me!"

Where The Editor falters is during the third-act climax into one character's loss of reality: subplots are introduced that could have easily been removed from the final edit without effecting any significant change to the film's ultimate conclusion. Though the scenes themselves offer a fair bit of humor and homage, they only prove to slow the momentum that The Editor had successfully been building since its face-smashing opening. Not helping is the uneven performance from de la Huerta, an actress whose work has always had one foot firmly planted in the camp of quirk and eccentricity. Her approach sometimes works for a film with purposely heightened sensibilities, but at times just comes across as distracting.

These scarce issues aside, The Editor is a masterful film - not just in the sense of how successful a giallomageTM it manages to be, but also how it circumvents all expectations and manages to add a sense of sincere artistry on top of everything else the audience had already been anticipating. Though it momentarily stumbles during its own storytelling devices, and only when branching off and attempting to inject a new direction into this gone-but-not-forgotten cinema movement, The Editor proves to be yet another unique and unrelentingly entertaining offering from Astron-6.