MATINEE (1993)

Lots of filmmakers, especially those in the horror genre, were just kids during the 1960s when the Cuban Missile Crisis was a real threat to the existence of America and stability of the overall world. (If you’re a fan of the horror genre but have never seen the documentary The American Nightmare, you absolutely should, as this topic is discussed by all its horror director participants.) Living through this experience, while at the same time escaping to the cinema to see an array of B-pictures made by filmmakers eager to exploit this fear with their tales of gigantic insects or mutants caused by radiation, directly inspired many of them to become filmmakers. Joe Dante is definitely among them. 

Matinee is Dante’s ode to both that era of filmmaking as well as the turbulent political times of unrest that inspired it. Primarily known as a director adept at mixing horror and comedy, Matinee is more removed from Dante's generally utilized horror/comedy hybrids, though the genres are still a huge part of the overall experience. What results is an almost Capra-esque look back at what’s still considered to be the height of American exceptionalism, despite the recent memories of World War II still looming large in the minds of citizens and the threat of nuclear annihilation. America (especially the Baby Boomer generation) looks back on the 1950s and believes this was the last time society made sense. Dante captures that blemish-free illusion in spite of the international unrest, and like the fictional Lawrence Woolsey (based on the very real William Castle, director of the original House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, and The Tingler), he looks to the power of cinema as escapism, especially in a genre that would allow Americans to exorcise their fears of the real world and lose themselves in a silly monster movie romp.

In this regard, Matinee is a success; where it falters, however, is in trying to tell too many stories and involving too many characters. Along with the international tensions, the drama of a young boy dealing with his father being stationed on a battleship, and the delight of John Goodman hamming it up as a shuckster filmmaker/promoter, we get not just one, nor two, but three teen love antics, a pair of shadowy and mysterious men covertly subduing crime while working on behalf of Woolsey, and a last-act “destruction” sequence that feels more perfunctory and confusing than it does exciting or thematically appropriate. Dante’s original intention for Matinee was much more mystical and esoteric, and much more firmly rooted in the horror genre, so that the finished product seems unfocused isn’t a surprise.

As a nostalgia piece, Matinee is a delight. As a cohesive narrative, it’s less effective, but Dante’s love for the time period and the silly radiation monster movies of the 1950s’ and ‘60s definitely comes through. This is Joe Dante at his most nostalgic and mature, so with that in mind, Matinee is easy to recommend.

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.

THE BURBS (1989)

Next to The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters, The Burbs is probably my favorite all-time comedy. It’s one that I’ve been watching and laughing at since I was a kid — right around the time when I was also developing my love for the horror genre, which made The Burbs feel like an ideal way to also get in my comedy kicks. The script, naturally, conveys that blending of genres (make no mistake, though — this is much more comedy than horror, with the slightest twang of a western), but it was also thanks to the sensibilities of director Joe Dante, who has worked in every genre there is, but who has also directed some bonafide horror classics (the Gremlins films, The Howling). 

Because of this, and aside from the obvious morbidness and murderousness of the plot, The Burbs is a Rear Window parody rife with nods and homages to horror titles from The Exorcist to The Sentinel, and the underrated Race with the Devil. (Tom Hanks’ character, Ray Peterson, even suffers a nightmare straight out of that latter satanic thriller.)

Hanks and Rick Ducommun (who didn’t quite get along during filming), along with Bruce Dern, make for an absolutely wonderful and hilarious trio — Hanks’ Ray is the dry and glib straight man slowly sucked into the mystery, Ducommun essays childlike immaturity with next-door neighbor Art, and Dern plays, basically, your wacky conservative uncle — a gun-loving military nutjob with an all-fatigue wardrobe — and he’s a fucking delight. Dern, especially, wraps his limber arms around his character of Mark Rumsfield, clearly having a great time playing such a broad archetype. (The actor has mellowed during his later years, keeping closer to dramatic roles, although he did appear in another Dante effort: 2009’s The Hole.) Corey Feldman also appears as a sleuthing neighbor, rejoining Dante after Gremlins, and basically playing the Greek chorus for the audience. Wendy Schaal as Bonnie Rumsfield plays the most undervalued member of the cast, often deserving big laughs that go unnoticed, especially during the neighbors’ intensely awkward first meeting with the mysterious Klopeks. Her alarmed or mystified reactions to Hans Klopek are some of my favorite scenes in The Burbs’ entirety.

The Burbs is one of those rare pre-90s comedies that never feels dated, and everything that was funny about it thirty years ago is still just as funny today. (The frantic zoom-in/zoom-out of Hanks and Ducommun screaming at a human leg bone, which purposely goes on for just a hair too long, is still one of the best gags any film has ever had — period.) And there’s every kind of comedy on display: slapstick, sight gags, and — my favorite — the surreal and the absurd. The Burbs is at its best when it’s almost self-aware, such as the aforementioned leg bone scene, or when our characters recognize the sheer madness of the conflict in which they are engaged. (“I’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen someone drive their garbage down to the street and beat the hell out of it with a stick. I…I’ve never seen that.") 

Dante, who has built a career on horror-comedies, uses perfect timing and dramatic camera angles to accentuate the more amusing aspects of the script’s concept. At one point, when Art and Mark appear on the driveway of Ray’s house to collect him so they can continue their spying on the creepy new neighbors, Ray’s wife, Carol (a wonderful Carrie Fisher), tells them from an upper balcony that Ray won’t be joining them. Dante shoots this scene from both perspectives — from Carol looking down on them, and Art and Mark having to look up. As intended, it presents Carol as the mother figure, telling two neighborhood “kids” that her son isnt allowed to come out and play. And for good measure, Art kicks the ground as the two walk off in disappointment. Meanwhile, Ray cowers in the background half obscured by a doorway. If The Burbs were to be directed by anyone else other than Dante (and okay, maybe John Landis), then it shouldn’t even bother existing. Its DNA is too intertwined with Dante’s ease at this kind of humor and his willingness to poke his audience in the ribs and say, “Isn’t this just a gas?”

Hanks had a tremendous run in the ‘80s with a string of successful comedies, including Bachelor Party, Big, and The Money Pit (I’ve still never seen Splash — sorry), but The Burbs remains the most underrated. A combination of its somewhat morbid content and its offbeat humor has prevented it from being as celebrated as Hanks’ more obvious titles, which is a damn shame, but new collector’s editions of films like these only prove their enduring legacy and offer the chance to become reacquainted with yet another lost classic.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID SCHMOELLER – PART 2: TOURIST TRAP

Tourist Trap (its Unsung Horrors entry here) is the most insane movie you likely haven't seen. I'd attempt to explain exactly what it's about, but I would become lost in the subplots and sub-sub-plots and I'd question if I were actually remembering everything significant to mention, and then I would likely wander away to satisfy my impulse to watch the film again. Simply, it is a 1979 oddity about a group of stranded kids, living mannequins, a man with telekinesis, and a lot of nightmarish imagery. It is terrifying and absurd and hilarious and disturbing somehow all at once. It is a mind-blowing film that offers dozens of questions with little answers. If there's one person who could shed light on this unheralded little beauty, it would be the film's director, David Schmoeller, returning again to The End of Summer for a frank discussion on the film's origins, a little about Puppetmaster, working with Charles Band, and the 1970s.

The End of Summer (TEOS): I think the best way to start off is for you to provide the genesis of Tourist Trap. This is a film that I saw for the first time several years ago and just did not know what to think. It was horrific and strange and alternately kind of hilarious. I've revisited it several times since then, and not only does it hold up, but it gets better – and I find more to appreciate about it – with each viewing. This isolated man's nightmarish house seems to exist in its own world and with its own rules, and nearly all of it defies explanation. How on earth did you come up with this concept?

David Schmoeller (DS): There is a “why” and a “how” aspect to this question. The “why” – why did I come up with this idea? The answer is a very practical one. I had just graduated from film school and was looking for a way to break into Hollywood as a feature director. When I was in grad school at the University of Texas at Austin shooting my thesis film, Tobe Hooper was in Austin shooting The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a low-budget hit that launched his career. So, I decided to do a horror film in the same vein.

The “how?” My thesis film – The Spider Will Kill You – was a "Twilight Zone" short about a blind man and mannequins. I thought the aspect of mannequins coming alive – and their ability to scare you (or creep you out, at least) – was a good ingredient. So, I used some of the basic structure of Chainsaw (van full of young victims) and the lone madman who appears to be okay (Psycho).

TEOS: Tourist Trap exists in a very surreal and nightmarish landscape – if I had to compare it to another film, I would cite Phantasm, due to its dreamy tone and its lack of explanation in regards to the film's more oddball offerings. It's this kind of dreamy tone that makes Tourist Trap stand out from its other late-1970s counterparts. At what point in the production phase did you realize you wanted to push this kind of surreal and unusual approach?

DS: I think that dreamy quality was in the script, and also in previous short films I had made. (The Spider Will Kill You* and Lora Lee's Bedroom* – those are just two of my shorts that had the same quality.) And the tone of those short films probably came in part from my literature studies from my days living and studying in Mexico – the influence of magic realism. And of course, the main influence of The Spider Will Kill You was this bizarre line of mannequins I found in J.C. Penney’s that was so perversely surreal, it makes me laugh to this day (this was the late 1960s). The infant mannequins had some facial features – eyes, nose, mouth, ears – but parts were starting to disappear. As you went up the age-representation of the mannequins – say, the three-year-olds – they started losing whole features – maybe just a single eye. It was just smoothed over. As the mannequins aged, they lost more and more features – until you got to the adults, and all their features were just gone…all smoothed over…so that they almost looked alien. They were so highly stylized; they just didn’t seem to belong in a place like J.C. Penney’s – very surreal and very bizarre. That was when I came up with the story for The Spider Will Kill You.

TEOS: There is a wonderful juxtaposition of legitimate terror and strange, almost absurd humor. I'll cite the "dinner scene" – when Slausen and his "brother" share a meal of soup, which ends with the brother's head falling off – as an example. Noticeably, the film doesn't inject any humor until the kids are already in peril. Because of this, the humor seems to come out of nowhere and feels unexpected. Was this a conscious choice?

DS: Well, I certainly hope the humor was intentional. Although, at the first cast and crew screening in L.A., there was some unexpected laughter in places that surprised me – I remember asking the person next to me, “Why are they laughing?” It could have been nervous laughter – or they could have been laughing at the absurdity of it all. Or, maybe they just thought something or other was just so awful that it was laughable. L.A. cast and crew screenings are full of people who are very cynical – not at all like the cast and crew screenings in Las Vegas, which are nice love-fest screenings. In L.A., they have seen and worked on everything and they tend to judge film work much more harshly. It’s like: “Show me what you got, sucker. I am not very easily impressed.” By the way, that is not the brother in that surreal dinner scene – because he is dead. It is a figment of Slausen’s imagination – it is not real; it doesn’t really happen; it is a dream…it is Eileen, in fact, as far as Slausen is concerned.

TEOS: In a movie like Tourist Trap, especially after a point, I feel like anything could happen, and I stop questioning what I'm seeing and I just kind of hold on for the ride.  I guess that's the beauty of Tourist Trap. About that dinner scene, I need to know: How did you manage to concoct such a strange exchange between these characters? Were you channeling "Abbot and Costello" as you wrote that scene?

DS: This particular exchange just came out almost in whole – as is. Writing generally is very easy for me, but in this case, I think it can be explained this way: the scene is completely organic. Slausen is having a meal with Eileen, who is just a mannequin with Eileen’s face-mask, scarf, and clothes. Slausen has a conversation with her and she responds in Davey’s voice, which is just Slausen slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss of his madness. And at the very end, the lines get crossed (Eileen/Davey gets ahead of the question) and then her head snaps off. It was one of those scenes that came to me in its entirety, and I just had to type it out…the best kind of scene.

TEOS: The character of Slausen possesses incredible superpowers. He has the ability to move objects with his mind, and because of this can seemingly bring mannequins and dolls to life. Yet, there is absolutely no explanation for this. Why did you choose to leave his abilities vague and unexplained?

DS: The power of telekinesis was suggested by Charlie [Band, producer]. It was his only contribution to the script, which was complete when we submitted it to him. At first, I really didn’t like the idea, because the story was entirely psychological. Giving Slausen the power of telekinesis actually explained a lot of the occurrences – not directly, but just vaguely. The audience may assume that the mannequins move because Slausen is making them move with his T-powers. I thought I was already explaining too much, so I certainly didn’t want to explain how or why he had this power. The historical figures in his museum (Custer, Sitting Bull, et al.) are automatons; they are mechanical creations and move because of science. If [audiences] think they move because Slausen is making them move with his telekinetic powers, that’s okay with me.

TEOS: Tell me about the film's musical score.

DS: How Pino Donaggio became the composer was just a stroke of luck. I was asked to be an interpreter by Joe Dante, who had hired Pino Donaggio to score Piranha. Pino did not speak English, so Pino and I spoke Spanish. After we finished spotting the film I asked Pino if he would score Tourist Trap. We screened it for him and he agreed. Charlie Band had spent much of his childhood in Italy, so he was fluent in Italian and he and Pino hit it off immediately. Somehow Charlie came up with another $50,000 dollars for Pino’s fee and the entire orchestral score, which was recorded in Rome. The budget rose from $300,000 to $350,000. I learned so much about scoring a movie from Pino.

TEOS: Charles Band has a somewhat divisive reputation in the horror community. You collaborated with him on this and your 1989 film Puppetmaster. How would you describe your working relationship with him?

DS: For me, Charlie was a very good producer to work for, because he left you alone for the most part. And for most of my movies, we had enough money to make a reasonably good movie. He was not an on-set producer at all. He didn’t pay very much, and sometimes it was hard to get paid, but in my case, I always got paid – until I left his employment. He owes me money for Puppetmaster, and when I tried to collect it he took my name off the movie and put his name on it. (He took my "A Film By David Schmoeller" credit off, and put his name above the title: Charles Band’s Puppetmaster.) That’s a real shitty thing to do – and very petty and small-minded. He’s starting to get old and I think the business is more of a struggle for him, so he feels the need to crib credits. So be it.

TEOS: I don't suppose you're lucky enough to receive any royalties each time a new Puppetmaster film is made, are you? I believe the series is hovering somewhere around ten entries, now...  

DS: Yes, that’s the money he owes me – Puppetmaster residuals.

TEOS: One could argue that the 1970s produced some of the best genre films to date, and Tourist Trap was released at the end of its run in 1979. What was it about this ten-year period that resulted in films like The Exorcist, Halloween, Phantasm, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the many more?

DS: The '70s also produced some of the most original mainstream movies, too, so it wasn’t just genre films. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that filmmaking was considered more of a director’s domain, and the writers and directors were not interfered with as much as they were in later decades, when the cost of movies started to rise considerably. While The Exorcist was a big studio movie, William Friedkin was just coming off winning an Oscar for directing The French Connection, so he had almost complete control. There is a very funny story of how these three studio executives were assigned to The Exorcist and when Friedkin was way over schedule and way over budget, one of these executives finally had had enough. So he picked up the phone and called Friedkin on the set and said, “Billy, this has just got to stop, it has to stop. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m just going to have to pull the plug.” And Friedkin said, “Okay, go ahead – pull the plug.” And the executive quickly backtracked and said, “Well, Billy, I don’t mean I would REALLY pull the plug.” At which point, Friedkin hung up. Back at the executive’s office, when HE hung up, one of the other executives said, “That was the most expensive phone call you have ever made.”

Halloween was an auteur film, made by Carpenter with no interference from anyone. Same with Phantasm and Texas Chain Saw. The budget [of The Exorcist] greatly eclipsed the budgets of these other three films, but they were all directed by extremely talented filmmakers.

TEOS: Shout Factory is revisiting another of your earlier films, Crawlspace, for a special edition re-release. Has there been talk about seeing a similar release for Tourist Trap?

DS: Catacombs was released by Shout Factory in October with a new director commentary, and Crawlspace comes out on blu-ray in December with a director’s commentary. I was contacted by the person doing the new blu-ray of Tourist Trap to do a new commentary of the movie, but I haven’t heard back from him, so I suspect Charles Band killed the idea (even though I was perfectly happy to pay for the recording myself). It is supposed to come out in December.

TEOS: Now that Little Monsters*, your newest feature, is available on video, do you have anything next in the pipeline that fans can look forward to?  

DS: Yes, I am writing a new horror film called Dead Angels (from the children’s refrain: “When angels fail, they go to hell.”) It’s about dead people whose souls are stuck in the netherworld until they can track down and kill the person who killed them in the first place. It deals with who is really the living dead among us and how many times do you have to kill someone before they stay dead. It’s horror film noir.

 

* David Schmoeller's new film, Little Monsters, is currently available on DVD here, and the director's early short films are available on DVD directly from his official website. 

Follow David at his website and Facebook. 

CHRISTMAS 5

Ah, Christmas. The time to suffer the obligations of gift-buying, family-seeing, traffic-enduring, and other such unavoidable traditions that go along with said day. And after the turkey or seven fishes or whatever Christmas food staple nestles warmly in your tummy, the inevitable will happen: You will plop on the couch, flip on the tube, and you will have three options: watch 24 hours of A Christmas Story, 24 hours of Scrooged, or 24 hours of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Or…you could try something different. Consider these five alternative films to enjoy during the Merry Yuletide whatever.

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GREMLINS

It’s Christmastime in Gremlinstown, and the snow is falling like insane crazy. So much snow falls in this film that it almost feels like it takes place on another planet, and when poor Zach Galligan is unable to start his VW Bug that looks like a gigantic marshmallow, you can almost feel the biting cold nipping at your nose…and every other part of you. But it is Christmas, after all, and one present in particular is going to change his life: Gizmo, the adorable Mogwai who can purr, sing, dance, and spawn monsters out of his back.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A traveling salesman buys a mystical animal from a funny little shop for his son for Christmas. The animal, a Mogwai, is not to be fed after midnight, is not to touch water, and is not to be exposed to bright light. If any of those things happen, all hell will break loose. Well, hell does break loose: Old crippled women are thrown out windows and science teachers are stabbed to death with syringes.

You know! For kids!

Here’s the thing about Joe Dante: While he and his colleagues Spielberg and Lucas became famous for their films that danced in the nether regions between PG and R (it was Temple of Doom that gave the world the PG-13 rating) before moving on to a more distinct age group, Dante never really left. His films have consistently been way too dark for PG/PG-13, yet still lighthearted enough not to be saddled with the R. The 'Burbs, Gremlins, and even his most recent effort The Hole all exist in such an unsellable place (by Hollywood standards) that studios don’t even know what to do with him. In this day and age, films that should be R are neutered down one rating lower. The Die Hard and Alien series come to mind. Because it’s easy to market films with a clear idea of a rating. But Joe Dante consistently blows the lid off that establishment, almost with mischievous glee, happy to remain in that oblivion-like rating of PG-15½.

People die like whoa in Gremlins. And the gremlins themselves are boiled, burned, fried, exploded, and chopped into bits. Chunky gore flies every which way, and you can't help but feel conflicted that you're enjoying a film with so much viscera juxtaposed against the fucking adorable Gizmo.

But this is Dante's playground, after all.

Christmas Lesson: Don’t buy mystical animals from the Chinese.

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BLACK CHRISTMAS

This is one I appreciate more and more every time I watch it. The first time I saw it, I knew very little about it. I was expecting a cheesy flick about a stupid gimmicky killer riding the coat tails of Michael Myers, a la April Fool's Day or New Year's Evil. I expected heads rolling down steps and candy canes shoved into eyes. I was ready to love it because of the so-bad-it’s-good mentality.

But Bob Clark’s 1976 Canadian thriller (pre-dating Halloween by two years) is actually pretty classy, not terribly violent, and especially eerie. Simple and uneventful though they may be, the opening credits as the camera hovers on the front of the sorority house, and as a very somber choral version of “Silent Night” plays, it’s so effortlessly ominous that it always sticks out in my head. This is one title I make sure to watch every year, and when I slide the DVD into my player and let it rest on the main menu for a tad, that same eerie rendition of “Silent Night” fills my house and gives me goosebumps.

For those not in the know, Black Christmas tells the tale of a sorority house assaulted by perverted and threatening phone calls from an unknown person. Though the first phone call of the film is shocking to us, seems as if they’ve been getting them for some time. Most of the girls, including the incredibly cute Olivia Hussey, thinks it's disturbing, but another – a very young and pre-insane Margot Kidder – acts indignant about the whole thing. Plus she drinks a lot.

College!

My favorite thing about Black Christmas, other than the very confined setting and actual attempt at setting up as many motives as possible, is the ending. Ambiguous endings often rile up audiences, but us horror fiends hardly ever get one. More than anything we get cheap, last-second “twists” that insinuate the problem our protagonists spent the last 90 minutes trying to solve hasn’t actually gone away. And the end of Black Christmas isn’t just ambiguous, but it punches you in the face with how unresolved the story is left.

Take that, ADD-addled modern audiences. Speaking of, see the remake! I think heads explode or something! (I’m just kidding – don’t see the remake.)

Christmas Lesson: If someone calls you on Christmas, tells you it’s Billy, and then calls you a fucking cunt, just tell them you’re Jewish.

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INSIDE

If I had a nickel for every time an insane women tried to break into my apartment and cut my baby out of me with a pair of scissors…

The French, man. We like to laugh at them and call them frogs and make fun of their fey men, but they do not fuck around when it comes to horror. I have seen an awful lot over the years. I am not the type of hardcore splatter fiend in that I will watch Z-grade gore films where people are disemboweled, but I like to think I have a pretty strong stomach. After all, I came out of Cannibal Holocaust somewhat disturbed but relatively unscathed.

Inside, though…is fucked up. It’s so absurd and gonzo that it transcends violence into cartoon territory before heading back to violence again. You don’t know whether to laugh, scream, or physically hold yourself as you witness the torture bestowed upon poor Sarah by her attacker.

It’s Christmas Eve. Sarah, recently widowed, is at home and very pregnant. There are rioters in the street setting cars on fire and creating all-around havoc (for reasons never made clear, though the country in actuality was besieged by “civil unrest” at that time). Unfortunately this will keep the police rather busy when Sarah begins to call for help…when that mysterious figure makes their appearance and begins to terrorize her…getting worse with each attack.

It builds to something very bloody, very disturbing, and very fucked.

Though I love Inside, I’ve only watched it once. Part of me believes I don’t have the balls to sit through it again. Maybe that will change this Christmas…but I doubt it.

Christmas Lesson: Don’t be pregnant at Christmas.

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CHILD’S PLAY

As a child, I knew Child’s Play 2 and 3 by heart. It wasn’t soon after when Bride of Chucky came out, and I adopted it into the “watching them over and over” club, which also contained several chapters of Friday the 13th and Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead.

So then what to my wandering eyes should appear, a commercial for TNT’s now-defunct "Monstervision" airing the first Child’s Play the approaching Saturday night. Somehow never having seen it, I popped in my tape to add it to the collection and off I went, expecting bad puns, Chucky’s way-too-quick footsteps running all around, and his use of very unorthodox weapons to dispatch his victims.

I can’t say I was prepared for what I saw. And now, as an adult who can appreciate the craft and suspense of the genre over the cheap thrills and animatronics, I really wish I had seen the first film…you know…first. Because while it still is an effective and well-done little movie, the “more is more” approach the later sequels would take have rendered the original a little less surprising.

Child’s Play, again, take its time. You’re well into the second act before Chucky the doll commits his first doll murder, and we’re damn near into the third before he comes to life before our very eyes. Up until then, the movie tries its hand at suggesting that Karen Barclay’s son, Andy, is the one responsible for the murders and mayhem occurring in wintry Chicago. Of course, even though this was not a concept the film ran with long enough to make it a significant plot point, insofar as cluing in the audience but not the characters as to the “real” killer, knowledge of the later sequels in which the doll is very much alive renders this red herring pretty much obsolete. Still, it’s a nice touch, and showed an attempt to do something different. Chucky spends much of the pre-murders portion of the film waving, nodding, and asking if someone wants to play, using his fake Good Guy voice. This is all well and good and only minorly creepy in the sense that Chucky is fucking ugly, but after Andy’s constant claims that Chucky is responsible for all the wrongdoings, his mother tears open the hatch on Chucky’s back to see there are no batteries (OMG run!). It’s very creepy, and made even creepier when the doll’s head spins a 180 in her arms as she threatens to throw him into the roaring fireplace.

Child’s Play might have one ending too many, but it’s a minor classic that, like many iconic films which spawned a franchise, can sometimes be misremembered as being like all the rest.

Christmas Lesson: Don’t buy Christmas presents from the homeless. Seriously, I don’t care how much your kid wants something. Leave it be.

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INVASION U.S.A.

 

Not horror, I know, but…try telling Chuck Norris he’s not welcome here. Besides, there are many reasons to include Invasion U.S.A. One, above all else: it is violent. Not in the sadistic sense (though the film pulls no punches) but in the sense that it’s constant, and hard-edged. Chuck Norris, while playing the hero, goes very much against type here. He doesn't defeat bad guys with a wink and a smile. Though he is doing the country a remarkable service and fighting back against terrorist oppression, he has, in a sense, become the killer. Like Michael Myers hiding in the shadows, he lunges out of nowhere and offs whoever’s nearby. In Commando, you see Arnold run up to a man to stab or shoot. In Invasion U.S.A., you see the opposition only. And then you see Chuck pop up and dismantle them permanently. It very much turns the table of the action hero and makes him very atypical. In one particular scene, in which a small group of terrorists tucked away in an alley is trying to detonate explosives inside a nearby church, it would seem they are experiencing some kind of technical difficulties...because the suitcase of explosives has somehow gone missing from the church's front steps, even though every single one of them had their eyes trained on that same spot. Chuck appears above them on top of a building.

“Not working, huh?” he asks and drops the explosives he has retrieved down on top of them. With barely restrained maniacal fury, he grits, “Now it will.” (Cue explosion.)

The look in his eye is near sociopathic. In fact, he looks completely out of his mind, as if there is no humanity left in him at all.

Make no mistake, every action star has their one film in which they kill a ridiculous amount of people in a ridiculous manner while truly epitomizing what we love about the bygone action genre, before, of course, Jason Statham and gigantic alien robots came along and changed the genre forever. For Arnold, that movie is Commando. For Van Damme, it’s Hard Target. And for Norris…Invasion U.S.A.

As far as our plot, Richard Lynch leads what appears to be the entire Russian army (and some Cubans!) across America, intent on invading and taking over the entire country on Christmas Eve, when most people will be saddled with food and drink, and completely distracted. I suppose because Russians are communists, and communists hate consumerism, and King Consumerism = Christmas?

No idea, really. But it doesn't matter – not when Lynch is firing a fucking bazooka through an outdoor Christmas tree and blowing up its occupying house...and then another...and another.

All seems to be going quite well, and it would seem taking over America is pretty easy stuff.

Not so fast.

What these Russkies didn’t count on…was Chuck Norris.

Invasion U.S.A. is directed by Joseph Zito, the man who brought us Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, The Prowler, and another Norris film, Missing in Action. Zito brings the unrelenting, slightly grimy edge to Invasion U.S.A. present in his other films. And from what I have read, Invasion U.S.A. has sold more video units for MGM to date than any other of its library titles…second only to Gone with the Wind.

My personal favorite part of this film is when main baddie Lynch suffers nightmares in which Chuck Norris kicks him in the face. He does not fear being killed or tortured by Chuck, mind you...but is terrified of being kicked directly in the face.

It's good for a laugh.

Christmas Lesson: Don't be Russian, anti-Christmas, and near Chuck Norris.