HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU PIECE OF SHIT: FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)

We're briefly hitting pause on Carptember in honor of today's date: Friday the 13th. And on this day, I like to kick back, watch a few of my favorite Friday titles from the Paramount era, and also talk about how fucking shitty the 2009 remake is. Plus it's somewhat Carpenter-related since he gets name-dropped in this piece while recognizing that the Friday the 13th series wouldn't exist were it not for him, anyway. 

Either way, let's get hatin'.

I’ve been watching Jason Voorhees murder human beings ever since I was a wee one. Too young and poor to own actual copies of the films, I was reduced to watching versions recorded off television from ABC’s “Million Dollar Movie” and USA’s “Up All Night.” The gore was heavily edited, the nudity had vanished, and even benign lines of dialogue like “thank God” were edited down to “thank ___.” But at that time, I took anything I could get, and I wore out those tapes without much effort.

Jason Voorhees, both pre- and post-zombie, was kind of my hero. He was a monstrous force of nature with which to be reckoned. He crushed heads and introduced axes to bodies without prejudice. He cared little for the half-naked nubiles that were helplessly straddled on the floor in front of him — he wanted nothing more than to throw them out the window, bash them against a tree, or stab them…you know…down there. The Friday the 13th series was even, in essence, my first exposure to sex (and in a largely overblown way, its consequences), since it predated my father’s birds-and-the-bees talk, the 37th-generation porn tape that circulated among my friends, and my public school’s laughably tardy sex ed class. No sir, I learned all about female anatomy from The Final Chapter.

Funny and inappropriate as it may sound, the series was a large part of my childhood, but despite my adoration, I would never describe the series as art — not even the first film. Slasher movies that result in legitimately good cinema are a rarity — John Carpenter's Halloween naturally comes to mind. Sure, slashers are “good” in the sense that you like them, and they are certainly entertaining, but they’re not written to trigger any emotional response other than screaming. They don’t want to push you to question society. They just want you to laugh as the fat chick on the side of the road gets a pick-axe through her neck, or to fear for Final Girl who is completely alone, knowing the masked maniac could be around any corner. Post-Halloween slashers were willing to show you anything to earn that response. They are buffalo wings and beer: they’re an option, they really hit the spot, but at the end of the day, they’re junk. (But that’s okay!)

Unlike Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th isn’t a series where most fans point to the first film as their favorite, simply because the series didn’t really come into its own until the sequel, which introduced a masked Jason as the primary maniac. Now that the baggage of “the original” was no longer on the table, fans were free to choose which chapter was their favorite. Pretty sure it’s The Final Chapter, and also pretty sure that’s because of all the Crispin Glover dancing. (It’s my preferred entry, anyway.)

Despite the lack of “quality” in each successive sequel, insofar as could be expected of Friday the 13th, and despite the stick-in-the-mud claims that each sequel was the same movie over and over, you can’t claim that each entry following The Final Chapter wasn’t trying something new.

A New Beginning pissed off fans by removing Jason from the equation and replacing him with a copycat killer. Luckily, the movie boasts a healthy amount of the red stuff, and director Danny Steiner leans on a slimy yet effective grindhouse aesthetic that feels right at home in the franchise. Even with the disappointing fake killer reveal, it’s a natural continuation of the Tommy Jarvis saga, which began in The Final Chapter. It’s effectively directed, and if the real Jason had actually been the killer, I’m confident A New Beginning would be considered a series high-point.

Jason Lives is the “funnest” of the series, with its tongue firmly planted in cheek, and it shows on both the page and the screen. Having said that, (and putting aside the goofy but lovable James Bond-esque opening title sequence), let it not be said that Jason Lives doesn’t live up to the Friday the 13th brand. Jason, newly resurrected, is back with a vengeance. People are smashed through RV walls, ripped apart, and bent in half. Heads are stabbed and triple decapitations are on the menu. “Fun” tone notwithstanding, the threat is still very real. Thom Mathews (Return of the Living Dead) caps off the Tommy Jarvis story with the best iteration of the character and puts Jason back in the lake for good (haha, not). Director Tom McLoughlin keeps things light, channeling Joe Dante and Amblin Films, delivering a hoot-and-a-half of a Friday. With a diverse cast that doesn’t just focus on teenagers, McLoughlin manages to make Jason Lives feel less like a slasher flick and more like an honest-to-gosh horror film geared toward everyone. (It actually got some decent reviews, too, which in the land of Friday the 13th is usually unheard of.)

The whole Jason vs. Carrie gimmick of The New Blood is a little absurd, but most fans have been pretty forgiving of that plot point. It’s what the MPAA did to poor director John Carl Buechler, and all his gory set pieces, that they can’t forgive. Still, despite being tame with the gore, The New Blood is fun, and if nothing else, depicted the most bad-ass Jason so far (played for the first of four times by fan favorite Kane Hodder) — exposed spine and all.

Jason Takes A Cruise Ship Toronto Manhattan would unceremoniously serve as the last entry produced by Paramount Pictures (the same studio that gave the world the Godfather trilogy), who had distributed the original and funded every sequel. Following the series’ declining box office receipts, Jason Takes Manhattan would prove to be the studio’s last go-around with their hideous and embarrassing cash cow. Unfortunately, what sounded like a clever and exciting script was hacked apart to reduce the budget, forcing writer/director Rob Hedden to sacrifice much of his vision, which included scenes in Madison Square Garden (where Julius was supposed to get his head punched off), a chase scene on the Brooklyn Bridge, and a finale in the Statue of Liberty. Instead, Hedden shifted most of the action to that goddamn cruise ship, where Jason miraculously negotiates tight hallways and cabins without anyone ever seeing him. (In case you were wondering, 34 minutes of the movie’s 96-minute running time “takes place” in New York, and two minutes of that time is actually shot there.) What Hedden can be blamed for, however, is shitting the Friday the 13th mythology bed by impossibly suggesting that Final Girl and Jason were children around the same time period, making Jason either both a zombie killer AND a lake-haunting boy ghost, or Final Girl the oldest high school senior on record. Also, while Jason’s uncanny talent for taking lives has always bordered on absurd, Jason Takes Manhattan takes it one step further and bestows on him the completely ludicrous ability to teleport.

At film’s end, Jason screams like an elephant and drowns in toxic waste.

It had a really fun teaser poster, though:

 

Once the Paramount reign of Friday the 13th ended and New Line Cinema stepped in to adopt the rotting hulk, Jason went to Hell, space, and Elm Street. Most would agree none of them were a return to form for the masked killer (though it’s easy to love Freddy vs. Jason).

And then 2009’s Friday the 13th happened to us all, which came out ten years ago.

Happy birthday, you piece of shit.

When the soulless production team of Platninum Dunes, headed by Michael Bay, announced the remake of Friday the 13th, every horror enthusiast and their decapitated mother knew they weren’t actually remaking the first film. Instead, they were remaking the concept of Friday the 13th —Jason, with mask, cutting down teens in the woods. But I’ll admit, when the remake of Friday the 13th was announced, I was excited. By this time, Platinum Dunes had already given the world the remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which was shockingly good, along with The Amityville Horror and The Hitcher, which…weren’t, but each announcement in regards to Friday the 13th really seemed to indicate they knew what they were doing: the writers of Freddy Vs. Jason would be writing the script, Chainsaw director Marcus Nispel would be getting behind the camera, and Jared Padalecki, star of Supernatural, would be playing the lead role of Clay — basically a reiteration of Jason-hunter Rob from The Final Chapter. This trio of creative decisions tickled my horror fancy. In my eyes, that was some promising horror street cred all involved in this hotly anticipated remake, and this was only Friday the 13th — fucking that up would be like burning water. The movie was soon shot, set visit reports showed enthusiasm from all those involved, and the trailer masterfully captured the tone of the original movies, even going as far as mimicking the “thirteen deaths countdown” as the trailer for the original film did 30 years prior.

But the audience was doomed. They were alllll dooooomed. And on Friday the 13th, 2009, nothing would save them.

After all that, I have to ask…why? Why was the final product so awful? How did they get all of this seemingly so right and then flush it right down the toilet? How did the Friday the 13th flick with the highest budget, made by a studio finally unashamed of its ownership, and created by people who purported to love the franchise, become the worst entry in the series?

Let’s start with the script.

You’ll never (ever) have me bemoaning the lack of character development in a Friday the 13th because I don’t need that, and it’s not what I expect from a movie that’s essentially Part 12. Instead, I would have preferred a group of characters to be, in the most effortless way, at least a little bit likable. Ripping off my own face and begging for Jason to come down off the screen and vivisect me was tolerable compared to watching Funny Dick Guy say one putrid “the obnoxious character is always a gas!” line of dialogue after the other. Meanwhile, writers craft scripts like this and then grin at you and say, “These kids feel like real kids!” If Friday the 13th’s kids are based on real kids, Planet Earth is doomed.

And what’s with these kids and their utter masturbatory obsession with smoking weed? What’s with this needless, overbearing crusade to really reinforce that kids not only smoke week, but that smoking week is hysterical? Yeah, I get it. Teens smoke weed. Teens have always smoked weed, and will always smoke weed. You know who else smoked weed? My parents. And yours. We’re not doing anything new here, people. But Friday the 13th seems intent on beating their audience over the head with a thirty-pound bong. Not only does the movie open with kids hunting for a pot field, later on, an entirely different group of kids come along and smoke weed and laugh a lot, because weed is the BEST. Listen, the original Friday the 13th entries are horrendously dated, I’ll freely admit it. The environments are free of cell phones and flat screens. Kids dance “the robot” and have gigantic hair. The guys wear shorter shorts than the girls. For an entry or two, punk was “in.” But they were still way cooler than the kids of Friday the 13th 2009. They didn’t make their bongs and pipes do puppet shows. They didn’t go “awwww yeaaaah!” when someone took out an ounce and waved it around like a Polaroid. They didn’t say “this is some good shit!” or bellow “I am so stoned!” for comedic effect. They passed the joint, smoked, and played some acoustic. The end.

And if you think the film’s immature look at marijuana is the last of the pitfalls, think again.

Why does every single character in the film lack the social skills of a zoo-born gorilla? Did you really just take your tits out for no reason, Dumb Girl? Were you seriously going to do some common-area masturbating since no one was around, Other Kid? Are we really watching a redneck about to masturbate all over a naked mannequin as he feels its chest? To quote that YouTube child, is this real life?

Worse, most of the deaths are incredibly lazy, while some border on the kind of discomfort-causing dispatches from the world of Saw, Hostel, and all of those imitators so popular during the 2000s, which ain’t the Friday the 13th way. As a result, the deaths look merely unpleasant and somehow simultaneously boring. Case in point: Stoner Kid wanders around a dark garage looking for god-knows-what, spending almost five straight minutes talking to himself. The music is mounting, and you know Jason’s about to pop up and give this moron a death we all hope is glorious. And then…

Jason shoves a screwdriver into his neck.

Slowly.

As Stoner Kid begs for his life.

It’s not fun, but boring — and uncomfortable. That’s not why we’re here. We’ve come for titillation, not revulsion. For the first time in a Friday the 13th, watching teens get slaughtered isn’t…fun.

As far as Jason’s killing capabilities go, I’m a little more lenient than some other fans. If Jason wants to shoot an arrow into some girl’s skull, that’s fine. In previous entries, I’ve seen him throw spikes directly into people’s faces from afar with deadly precision, so I won’t complain about the method, but to then flash to Jason’s old room and show us an archery trophy? Who fucking cares? Astoundingly, the writers thought they were clever enough to “explain” why Jason is good with a bow-and-arrow, yet when it came time for him to find his hockey mask for the first time — in a moment that should have been iconic — they write a scene where he literally finds the thing on the floor. Come on guys, really? That’s like Bruce Wayne deciding what his Batman costume will look like by buying a fucking Batman costume on Amazon.

Not helping matters is the lifeless “bum-bum-bum-bum” film score by Steve Jablonksy, who unfortunately sees fit to keep “ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma” and toss the rest — unaware of the effectiveness of Harry Manfredini’s original music. Manfredini’s awesome original score isn’t music you can hum, like Halloween, Phantasm, or JAWS. Notes are all over the place, and hardly repetitive — more Herrmann than Carpenter—and the collection of harsh strings, harps, and low brass is what made the not-that-scary events unfolding on screen seem pretty scary. It’s a superior film score that deserved just as much respect as Jason himself, but given the complete lack of understanding as to what made Jason a great character, it would seem the score never had a chance. (For an example of how to do this the right way, see Graeme Revell’s score for Freddy vs. Jason, which effectively marries Manfredini’s Friday stuff with Charles Bernstein’s Nightmare stuff, all while writing original compositions.)

The only worthy kudos is entirely dedicated to Derek Mears as Jason. A longtime fan of the series, he understood that — despite what people think — Jason Voorhees really is a “character,” and he did a great job bringing him to life. 

After a great opening weekend, Friday the 13th suffered such poor word of mouth that the following weekend saw a severe drop-off in box office, thus killing any plans for a follow up. (It takes a special kind of talent to make a lot of money from a Friday the 13th movie and not parlay that into an immediate sequel.)

Fans all have their own ideas for what makes or breaks a Friday the 13th entry, with many of the criticisms leveled at the remake being things I don’t have the time to care about. Jason runs and that’s weird? I don’t care, and no, it’s not, because he ran in the first three Jason chapters. How does he know how to keep his electricity running in his childhood home? I dunno, ask the Jason who had a working toilet in the second entry. I tend to overlook these details and focus on things that are obviously dumb, like establishing that the town of Crystal Lake knows that Jason is running around in the woods, but aren’t that concerned about it. Or that Jason doesn’t kill one particular female character because she resembles his mother, yet he does chain her up in a dungeon, which seems like a very bizarre way to treat a mother. Or that an abandoned summer camp is infested with a series of underground tunnels which the screenwriters couldn’t be bothered to explain with one line of dialogue.

How did making a Jason film get so hard? Why is the concept of a masked killer cutting off heads so uncrackable? (How did a bunch of kids make the Friday the 13th fan film Never Hike Alone with a fraction of the remake’s budget, resources, and Hollywood talent, and still create something vastly superior?)

Guys, this isn’t Don Corleone we’re talking about here. Nor Indiana Jones, John McClane, or the aforementioned Batman. It’s Jason Voorhees. Put a mask on him, dump him in the woods, give him some unannoying kids to kill in clever ways, add a twist of lemon for freshness, and holy shit, make it fun. As a lifelong Friday the 13th fan, who was able to find merit in every single entry up to Jason X (and I really had to reach for that one), 2009’s Friday the 13th was the first time I ever recall feeling embarrassed by my love for the franchise.

To all the folks who mucked this up: this is such an easy wheel to keep turning, and somehow, you totally blew it.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

GIRLHOUSE (2015)

 [As Girlhouse has spoiled my night, I have now spoiled Girlhouse. Read on with caution.]

Kylie Atkins' father has recently died, so it's porn for her.

After giving it some very little thought, she accepts the offer of a well-dressed stranger to appear on the porn-centric website "Girlhouse," a Big-Brother sort of set-up where a group of people live away from civilization in an isolated house with cameras in every room that broadcast their every move, only instead of "people" it's "girls," and instead of "every move" it's "every orgasm, fuck show, and methodical soaping of breasts." Once she's dropped off at the super-secret "Girlhouse" location, she meets all her costars, all of whom eventually take off their clothes, and none of whom are particularly memorable or developed.

As Kylie begins her show, she "meets" an online user by the name of Loverboy, whom all the girls know and call a sweetheart. Loverboy soon fixates on Kylie after he sends her a photo of himself and she doesn't throw herself out the window in response, but later on, after another "Girlhouse" performer finds Loverboy's picture and shows it to everyone and they all laugh and mock his not-so-ideal appearance, Loverboy loses his mind and decides there's only one fair way to handle this: murder. (He's also really good at computers, BTW.)

A film that manages to ape its concept from Halloween: Resurrection while somehow resulting in something worse, Girlhouse was written by Fred Olen Wray, directed by Jim Wynorski, and produced by Roger Cor-ohman, none of that is true. It wasn't a wrong assumption to make, however; add some corny self-awareness and even more exploitative nudity, and Girlhouse would have felt exactly like product from the 1980s -- more specifically, from the team who brought us Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and Sorority House Massacre 2, only with a hip and modern shot of adrenaline (which means now it has internet, cell phones, and terms like "IP address" and "firewall"). An important distinction, though, is that when Corman et al. made those deliciously stupid B-movies, they weren't trying to impart any kind of wisdom or moral stature on their audience: they were more concerned with finding girls with ample breastage who could fit into all that old wardrobe recycled from their last several hundred movies that had "slime" or "massacre" in their titles. They weren't trying to be socially relevant or needlessly (and, inexplicably) preachy and indifferent all at once. They were just trying to make their films fun. And that's where Girlhouse really misses the boat. For actually managing to bring to fruition such an absurd concept as "house of slutty website performers become locked inside by one of its users who gets all pissed off because they called him ugly," only to try and turn it into some kind of disturbing or visceral experience -- well, that was the first misstep of many.

The reason it's neither disturbing nor visceral is because we just don't care.

At no point is there an attempt to devote background or development to any characters. Kylie's sole decision to become a pornographic actress is because "the money is good" and she wants to send some home to her mother. Because her motivation for her decision is to be considered selfless and done out of love and worry, we're supposed to forgive her for getting into porn, but it would have behooved our filmmakers to, perhaps, include a scene where Kylie and her mother actually share a conversation -- in person would have been nice, but over the phone would have been acceptable -- to enforce the significance of this relationship. At least once. As it is, their entire relationship is confined to them leaving voicemails for each other, and the word "MOM" appearing on Kylie's cell phone when it rings...which Kylie doesn't answer.

As for Kylie's pornsemble: two of the girls are (quite quickly) established as lesbians involved with each other, one of the girls as threatened by Kylie's appearance in the house, and another girl, who it would seem was once an actress in the house before her heroin addiction resulted in her getting the ax, makes a surprise return. Pity that NONE of these characters' subplots offer anything to the film rather than cheap thrills of girl-kissing and an additional body to hammer.

Kylie is an irritating character, a girl who willfully gets into pornography, but for whom we're expected to sympathize -- not because of any attempt at her inner conflict with the job, but because she tells anyone who will listen that her father is dead and that's really sad and then equal sign pornography. Not terribly likable, Ali Cobrin still manages to give an okay performance, but as you watch you'll suddenly realize her remarkably similar appearance to actress Rose Byrne, who tends to make good movies, and then you'll become irritated all over again because instead of watching a good movie that stars Rose Byrne, you're watching Girlhouse.

I feel intensely bad for rapper-turned-actor Slain, thanks to his appearance in this mess as Loverboy, and not just because he's the only one attempting to bring actual depth to his performance (which vanishes following the start of the third act, unless we're being asked to believe that it was the actor himself and not an underpaid body-padded stuntman who wore the jumpsuit and girl mask to stalk his house of whores), but rather because he got a pretty good head-start on a career 2.0 when Ben Affleck cast him as the revered Bubba Ragowski in Gone Baby Gone. Affleck subsequently cast him again in his box-office and bank-smashing crime thriller The Town before director Andrew Dominik chose him to play a minor role in his Brad Pitt-starring Killing Them Softly. And here, in... sigh... Girlhouse... Slaine is slumming it, with the kind of bravery needed to play a role of someone who dwells in a basement, subscribes to and depends on pornography, and who feels ostracized because of his physical appearance. The only problem is he's going through all that effort for the film Girlhouse. The actor deserves better.

Ironically, the makers of the film are selling Girlhouse as a "Halloween-type slasher," and by god are they testing the durability of the word "type," for the only thing these two films have in common is that someone wears a mask and kills some girls. Kylie is supposed to be Girlhouse's version of Laurie Strode, only instead of her character being virginal and pure by abstaining from acts and behavior that would force her to retire those traits, she instead embarks on her pornographic webshows where she willfully shows off her naked body to her viewers, but with the camera never showing her breasts: according to these filmmakers, that makes her virginal and pure. Added to Halloween are the nauseating references to Rear Window and its director, Hitchcock, who as you know reveled in cinema in which girls played strip-poker or strip-billiards and performed dildo shows on websites for users named "Tugboat" and "Cream_Slinger." Hitchcock would be sincerely proud. No, that's not sarcasm - not at all. I mean that, you idiots, he would love your dumb fucking movie.

Girlhouse is violent and filled with nudity, if you're into that sort of thing. I am, normally, but only when the actual movie surrounding the violence and nudity is worth a damn. Girlhouse isn't. Girlhouse is about as subtle as a truck carrying fireworks driving through a fireworks factory. It makes no bones about clearly endeavoring to satirize the "art" of pornography, but then doing absolutely nothing to either support or condemn it. Girlhouse offs a character by beating her in the head with a dildo before shoving it into her mouth and sealing her head with packaging tape so she suffocates. Girlhouse offs another character by having her commit suicide after her confrontation with the killer has left her mutilated because OMG, without pornography, she is, like, of no use to anyone. Girlhouse fucking ends with Kylie beating her killer to death with a camera. If that's not a failed idea at clever subtlety, ladies and gentleman, I don't know what is.

LEPRECHAUN RETURNS (2018)

Despite rampaging through dozens of horror franchises over this long and broken life, I can’t say the Leprechaun franchise was ever one of them. Having seen and shrugged at the first film a couple times, I only ever saw bits and pieces of the next two sequels before stopping for the sake of my health. Unregrettably, I never followed Warwick Davis to space, or to the hood, or…back 2 tha hood. Except for the Puppet Master series, I’ve never cared less for a long-running horror fiasco. 

With the series being softly rebooted several years ago (for television), and with Davis declining to return to the role for personal reasons, it seemed like the franchise was on its way into further obscurity. Still, with the announcement of the latest entry in this series, titled Leprechaun Returns, there was one thing about the production keeping my interest: director Steve Kostanski, one of several members of filmmaking/comedy troupe Astron-6. So far, these Canadian gents have been responsible for the horror comedies Father's Day, a send-up of satanic sex thrillers from the ‘70s, and The Editor, also a send-up, this time of the giallo sub-genre…and also from the ‘70s. To each production, they brought their appreciation for genre filmmaking (and its history), their absurd sense of humor, and—my favorite—their preference for practical effects over CGI. Kostanski served as director for both of those films, along with The Void, the troupe’s crowd-funded, non-comedic horror flick that served as an homage to the likes of Clive Barker and H.P. Lovecraft. Though I’ve remained ambivalent regarding the Leprechaun franchise for equally as long as I’ve known of its existence, I opted to give it a spin to see what Kostanski could bring to the pint-sized table. 

While I can’t say this is a flick I’d ever watch again, I fully admit to having a better time with it than I expected. After all, Kostanski was riding solo, not bringing any of his troupe members along for the ride, nor did he originate the screenplay (as that duty went to Ash Vs. Evil Dead screenwriter Suzanne Keilly). Despite that, Leprechaun Returns boasts a fairly consistent and dependable sense of humor, some of which rides an air of self-awareness with respect to the genre, the series specifically, and current culture at large. (Once you “get” the joke that a bunch of college students are trying to turn a small soon-to-be sorority house “green” (hey, like a leprechaun!), you will groan groan groan.)

Taking a page from the likes of Halloween ’18, Neill Blomkamp’s abandoned Alien 3, and the forthcoming Terminator: Dark Fate, Leprechaun Returns delouses the entire series and serves as a direct sequel to the very first Jennifer Aniston-having flick. Generally, this approach can bother series loyalists (to this day, fans are still hoping for a new entry in the Halloween series that directly continues the events of 1995’s Curse Of Michael Myers --  I’m sure Paul Rudd is achingly awaiting that call), but at this point it’s doubtful even the most die-hard Leprechaun fan is worried about such richly accumulated lore being discarded in exchange for a clean break. Solidifying this “direct sequel” approach is the return of Mark Holton, reprising his role of the slow-witted Ozzie along with a small reappearance by Jennifer Aniston…sort of. In addition, the original set—a house in the middle of a sandy nowhere—has been faithfully rebuilt.

Taking over for Aniston is Taylor Spreitler, who plays Lila…the daughter of Aniston’s character from the first film. Normally these sorts of moves are rife for eye rolls (the latest entry in the Tremors series, A Cold Day In Hell, pulls a similar move by introducing the daughter of Kevin Bacon’s character), but with Leprechaun, I’ll allow it, because this franchise exists within its own rules when it comes to suspension of disbelief. It also helps to create tension among the cast once Lila confesses within fifteen minutes of movie time that her mother was insane…but that she’s also seen a tiny leprechaun stalking around, so maybe her mother wasn’t insane. Spreitler isn’t your typical “final girl.” While she satisfies the requirements of being somewhat of a loner, not interested in the same kind of debauchery of her friends, and the only one with a backstory that offers her some additional characterization, she’s also keenly aware of how absurd their threat has become—especially once a familiar face returns to offer her some ghostly help. Leprechaun Returns frequently comments on the genre and overwrought movie making, nearly surrendering to certain tropes that we expect to see in movies of this type before noting—literally out loud—that, in fact, certain things are actually terrible ideas. It’s not exactly Scream-caliber commentary, but it’s appreciated all the same, and Spreitler offers the kind of dry delivery that’s required to drive this meta-approach home.

Linden Porco takes over for long-time series presence Warwick Davis and also for pro wrestler Dylan Postl, who appeared in 2014’s Leprechaun: Origins. Under all the heavy make-up (the Leprechaun gets an eerie makeover with a more Krueger-esque approach), and his voice disguised by a thick Irish brogue (and all the terrible puns), Porco seamlessly transitions into the role. Series die-hards will know the difference, but the more casual horror fan will neither notice nor care. 

The real star of the flick is the reliance on practical effects. Except for a fiery third act and some very slight digital addendums used for touch-ups, Leprechaun Returns’ effects are done practically, bloodily, and very gooily. Despite having debuted on television for Sy Fy (a video release wasn’t even planned until the fans demanded one), the flick is gruesome and gives most theatrically released slasher flicks a run for its pot o’ gold. Kostanski’s background proves this was a purposeful choice, along with his amusing nods to other horror properties (there’s a Jaws nod that is both stupid and charming). 

Leprechaun Returns isn’t enough of a triumph to cause a wild reversal and convert me to series loyalism, but I’m glad I watched it. It was good for a handful of laughs, a bigger handful of bloody carnage, and despite not being a fan of this series, the nods to the original still manage to work on that nostalgic level. Franchise fans will likely enjoy this, along with non-fans who still enjoy a bawdy, bloody, and broad good time.

[Reprinted from The Daily Grindhouse.]

DOUBLE-BILL THIS: 'SUPERSTITION' AND 'THE HOUSE ON TOMBSTONE HILL'

[This article contains minor spoilers for each title.]

The concept of a haunted house and slasher hybrid, which sees your typical masked slasher villain take a backseat to a murderous house filled with ghosts and/or demons and/or witches doling out the bloody comeuppance, wasn’t exploited nearly enough. This brief movement likely came in response to how well haunted house flicks like The Amityville Horror and its sequel, The Possession, along with The Shining and The Changeling, were cleaning up at the box office during the ‘80s era of the slasher, which made the concept of combining the sub-genres into one film very alluring. Sure, haunted house flicks are a dime a dozen, and sometimes they off a few cast members, but how many can you name where a hapless victim gets chewed literally in half by a window?

While I want to believe there are many more, I can only name you two: 1982’s Superstition and 1989’s The House on Tombstone Hill.   

Superstition was completed in 1982, but sat on the shelf for four years before it opened in the UK, preempted by a trailer that retitled the film As The Witch and which featured narration by eccentric actor Brother Theodore (The Burbs). Helmed by cinematographer James Roberson, it’s clear right away that Superstition is intent on mining from the stalwarts of the slasher, opening with a teen couple doing some car kissing in the middle of nowhere. “You said you loved me,” the boyfriend says, his hand solidly on his hesitant girlfriend’s chest, but there’s no time for love, because a monster head is suddenly thrust into the car’s open window, sending the teen couple speeding off.

Turns out the monster head comes courtesy of a couple prankster teens who have chosen the house—a house, mind you, that’s infamous for its bloody past involving the drowning execution of a witch—to just…hang out in, I guess. (Don’t miss the Unsolved Mysteries-caliber wigs and stick-on facial hair during the flashback witch scene, by the way – they’re hysterical.) The teens don’t have long to celebrate their successful prank, as the house comes to life and dispatches them in graphic and gooey ways. 

After firmly establishing its slasher roots, Superstition moves on to steal its plot from The Amityville Horror, including having a priest out to the house to bless it, only for the house to, er, politely decline the ceremony. However, this time, instead of hordes of flies, a wayward circular saw blade detaches from a table saw, bounces across the floor, and slices directly into the priest’s chest, magically and impossibly spinning/cutting the entire time. Before you can say Father Pieces, we meet a trio of young people, including a pair of girls who wear the skimpiest of summer attire. Despite a cast of mostly adult actors, the presence of young people helps Friday the 13th the proceedings a bit, being that, in this genre, if you’re old enough to drive but not legally drink, you’re probably a goner. As expected, everyone begins to die very graphically. 

Despite a pre-credits running time of 82 minutes, Superstition still runs a hair too long, falling victim to second-act lag as many horror films of this pedigree tend to do. Still, the pace is mostly assured and there’s always a fresh body drop to liven things up when the story begins to stagnate. Except for one off-screen kill (likely because the victim was a child), every death is fully shown, very bloody, and, when we’re lucky, relies on a dummy—my favorite kind of kill. 

As for The House on Tombstone Hill (originally titled The Dead Come Home, and later retitled on home video as the far superior/far stupider Dead Dudes in the House), well, I fucking love it with equal parts sincerity and irony. One of maybe three watchable titles produced by Troma Entertainment (home of The Toxic Avenger), The House on Tombstone Hill inspires the same feelings of enjoyment, awe, amusement, and total bewilderment as 1979’s slasher Tourist Trap, entirely because the oddness factor. As The House On Tombstone Hill unfolds, you honestly can’t tell if director James Riffel (hey, another James!) is in on the joke or not, and that’s my kind of jam.

During the film’s opening/prologue, we see the murderous Abigail Leatherby, who has just killed a man, walk back and forth across the living room, hunched over her cane, apparently coming to terms with what she’s done, all while her teenage daughter sits on the couch completely nonplussed and sipping a drink. You’ll watch Abigail walk back and forth so many times, uninterrupted, in one single shot, without a single line of dialogue, as jaunty piano music plays on a loop, that you’ll realize you’re about to watch something very, very special. 

Like Superstition, The House on Tombstone Hill wasn’t released right away following its production in 1988, though it was eventually relegated to cable and VHS under its new title. (Like most Troma productions, it was shot in New Jersey, easily confirmed by one character, Joey, repeatedly saying, “Hey, yo!” to his friends.) And despite being a Troma production, The House on Tombstone Hill plays things straightforward, which makes the flick come off very weird, as it strives to be a ghost story, a slasher, and a zombie flick all at once. Speaking of ghost stories, The House On Tombstone Hill is happy to homage/rip off an all-time classic in an extended scene where a recently killed college yuppie returns from the dead, possessed by the house’s bad mojo, and begins threatening his girlfriend, demanding to know, “What about my responsibilities?” as she slowly backs away swinging a large 2x4 at him. (Sound familiar?) All during this sequence, you honestly won’t know whether The House on Tombstone Hill is purposely honoring The Shining this long, or if it’s simply ripping it off instead. I don’t know and I don’t want to know; ambiguity is all part of its charm. 

The characters are your archetypal young adults, and though most of the actors give underwhelming performances, Victor Verhaeghe, who plays Bob the carpenter, is tremendously over the top, very overbearing, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. Dialogue doesn’t exit his mouth, but slithers out—with the kind of disdain that makes him sound like the most hateful man alive. (“I ALWAYS have a cigarette before I start a job,” he tells another member of the cast wanting to know if he has to smoke. “It’s a RITUAL with me.”) That Bob is a dick from his first minute to his last makes The House on  Tombstone Hill much more entertaining, and seeing him act the asshole to every single person he evidently calls a friend is glorious. (He’s also the one that resurrects the spirit of Abigail by purposely breaking her tombstone, so every bloody thing that happens to him and all his friends is literally his fault.)

The House on Tombstone Hill’s odd retitling on video wasn’t the only attempt by Troma to market the film to a different kind of crowd, packaging the VHS with completely brand new cover art: 

Falling back on a marketing scheme that will never make sense to me, Troma leaned on aesthetical designs calling forth Home Alone, House Party, and, evidently, the New Kids on the Block, even though none of the dudes depicted on the cover are actors in the film, nor do they come close to representing what the actual characters look like. (I hope you noticed that one of the dudes on the new cover is holding a pair of nunchucks.) 

Previous synopses for the flick referred to the teens as “heart-throbs” and “hip-hop yups,” along with their “groupie” girlfriends, solidifying that Troma was obsessed with selling these characters as musicians/singers. That wasn’t me putting those words in quotes, but Troma themselves on their own VHS releases, as if they were acknowledging they were fibbing about the movie’s plot. (Example: Troma is a “professional” company that exercises “good judgment” in their business practices.)

Having said all that, I’m totally fine with it. It’s all part of what makes The House on Tombstone Hill so great.

Both flicks have recently enjoyed solid high-def releases, with Shout! Factory tackling Superstition and the glorious Vinegar Syndrome knocking it out of the park with The House on Tombstone Hill, which includes reverse artwork with the Dead Dudes/“hip-hop teens” cover that I love so much. To approach either or both titles as mere haunted house films will inevitably lead to disappointment, as “proper” ghost stories work much better with frightening images, suspense, and the establishment of a creepy, ambient environment. However, if you are fully aware of the hybrid you’re getting, I can’t imagine how you could ever be disappointed. Basically, if you’ve marathonned a handful of Friday the 13th sequels and thought, “this would be better if Jason were a HOUSE,” now’s your chance to live out your weird fantasy, you weirdo. (Just remember to invite me over.)

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS (1980) & ABSURD (1981)

 

“There’s evil on this island. An evil that won’t let us get away. An evil that sends out an inhuman, diabolic power. I sense its vibrations now. The vibrations are an intense horror. It will destroy us! The very same way it did all the others!”

“SHUT UP, CAROL."

Italian filmmaker Aristide Massaccesi is more commonly known as Joe D’Amato, the most prominent of his many pseudonyms. Like his colleagues Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Michele Soavi, Bruno Mattei, Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lenzi, and the Bavas — Mario and Lamberto — D’Amato was a director and producer primarily known for gross-out, gory horror that featured the kind of gags you’d never seen during the same era of American filmmaking. I guess it’s because Italians are inherently fucked up (I’m allowed to say that), but even during the video nasty era of Britain, or when Reagan et al. were cracking down on R-rated movies and profane lyrics in music, Italian filmmakers were also pushing back on violence and gore — but in the opposite direction. They pushed violence and gore to the breaking point — beyond “this is fun!” to “I’d like to vomit!” D’Amato was the hardest working one among his colleagues, averaging FIVE feature films a year; he directed EIGHT in 1981 alone. (To put things in perspective, similarly “boundary-pushing” horror director Eli Roth has been making features for 16 years and he currently has only seven features to his name, which is a mercy.) By the time of his death at 62 years old, D’Amato had 197 directorial credits. Granted, a lot of this was porn, but hey, a movie’s a movie. (Top title goes to Robin Hood: Thief of Wives.)

1980’s Anthropophagous (aka The Grim Reaper) is one of D’Amato’s most famous efforts, which would be one of several collaborations with actor/screenwriter Luigi Montefiori (pseudonym George Eastman), who wrote Anthropophagous and its sequel, Absurd, while also playing the maniacal cannibal/killer in each. Anthropophagous was one of many titles infamously included on Britain’s official Video Nasty list, which  declared this and films of its ilk illegal and was pulled from video store shelves. I won’t go as far as calling it “tame by today’s standards,” which is a go-to line for retrospectives on once-infamous films, but it’s not a constant collection of gross-out gore, either. For much of its running time, it unfolds as your fairly typical slasher flick: a group of attractive youngins go where they ought not to have gone and run afoul of a cannibalistic madman who begins to kill and semi-eat them one by one. 

At film’s end, the villainous Man Eater suffers a fatal blow to his stomach, out of which flow his intestines, which he promptly sticks in his mouth and begins to eat as he stares into the eyes of the man who wounded him, which is the greatest spite-suicide I’ve ever seen.

Sure, Anthropophagous is definitely gross, and its infamous fetus-eating scene is one of the grossest things from this genre, but it’s also more well made than you might expect based on its reputation. For much of the first half, in spite of the intermittent murder scenes, D’Amato is much more interested in creating tension and setting a mysterious and creepy mood. A night-brought storm rages, dumping buckets of rain on the crumbling structure where the friends are hunkering down and filling its darkened rooms with blazes of lightning flashes. He also sticks Eastman’s killer, Man Eater, in dark corners and other faraway places nearly offscreen, revealing him in small bursts like a bearded Michael Myers. Reputation aside, D’Amato was a competent director, and it’s to his credit that he was able to work in every genre beyond horror, and especially beyond gross-out horror, even if the horror genre would come to define his legacy. (Eastman, who never minced words regarding his work or the work of others, called Anthropophagous, a film he wrote and starred in, “shit.”)

A soft sequel to Anthropophagous, called Absurd, followed just one year and ten more D’Amato-directed films later, and traveled much of the same path, although this time, Eastman’s script borrowed heavily from the first two Halloween films: Eastman, this time given the name Mikos Stenopolis, is your de facto Michael Myers; Edward Purdom (from the legendary slasher flick Pieces), though his trench coat may be black, is the regretful Sam Loomis; and young bedridden Katia is doomed to act as the film’s beleaguered Laurie Strode. There’s even a subplot of a babysitter watching two kids while the parents fuck off to a party, both of whom having to contend with a killer in their house. (The babysitter, however, isn’t so lucky this time.)

The reason I call Absurd a soft sequel to Anthropophagous is because it doesn’t feature any returning cast members beyond Eastman, and even then he’s playing a brand new character that's also basically the same as his previous Man Eater. The film also finds a way during its opening scene to replicate the fatal wound that Eastman’s Man Eater is dealt in the final moments of Anthropophagous in an additional effort to tie the films together. However, Absurd isn’t nearly as successful as its predecessor, surrendering to a more common and less interesting setting and falling back on a less assured pace. In Anthropophagous, tension built from having our characters wander a desolate location where we know the killer to be and slowly put together the events of the dastardly deeds that have gone down there. In Absurd, we spend way too much time watching a bunch of middle-aged party-goers standing around watching American football on TV and eating spaghetti. That sounds like I’m making a joke, but I’m not — that’s really what happens. (Spaghet!) Obsession with American football must’ve been at an all-time high in ‘81 because every character beyond Eastman (who never speaks) mentions football at least once. Like Antropophagus, the murder sequences in Absurd are top notch, but they all occur so far from each other that we’re forced to spend most of our time with the police investigation side of things, led by Sgt. Ben Engleman (Charles Borromel, who looks freakily like Robin Williams).

Interestingly, though Absurd seems to borrow heavily from the plot of Halloween, both Absurd and Halloween 2 were released in October of 1981, and both feature a finale in which the maniacal killer is blinded and the final girl begins throwing off the path of the coming killer by creating false signs of her presence around the room using anything that makes noise, allowing for someone else to come in and dispatch the killer. The very ending even predicts that of Halloween 4, which wouldn’t be released for seven more years, so apparently Eastman piped into some kind of wormhole that allowed him a glimpse of the next decade of official Halloween canon.

Fans of Italian horror should see each title at least once. I wouldn’t go as far to call them cult classics, but they do feel like necessary viewing for those who have a predisposition toward “extreme” Italian horror cinema.

SKINNER (1993)

Stemming back to when I was a young video-store junkie, I’ve heard of the Ted Raimi-starring slasher flick Skinner, mostly due to two things: its slimy, gory reputation, and its inclusion of Traci Lords, whom the genre and genre fans were enamored with during the early ‘90s. (Ricki Lake’s involvement was a novelty back then, but hardly means anything these days…unless you’re a purveyor of ‘90s pop culture.) Watching Skinner with 2019 eyes, and coming from someone who has just seen it for the first time, I can understand why it gained such an infamous reputation upon its release all those years ago. Moments of it still seem shocking today -- one absolutely more than any other, and for wildly different reasons than you’re thinking. (If you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) However, some of it has bypassed any previous levels of bad taste and now comes across almost charming, thanks to its usage of daring practical effects and an all-around “fuck, let’s go for it” independent mentality.

Skinner charts the exploits of Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi, brother of superstar Spider-Man director Sam Raimi), a drifter who has a habit of hiring prostitutes, killing them dead, and skinning their dead bodies while reminiscing about his shitty childhood. One of these former streetwalkers, Heidi (Traci Lords), who previously survived an encounter with Skinner, has been hunting him down to take revenge for her mental and physical torture. Meanwhile, Skinner has rented a room from Kerry Tate (Ricki Lake) and her awful husband Geoff (David Warshofsky, an actual actor from stuff like There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, just to name a couple). Geoff’s job as a trucker has him on the road a lot, leaving Kerry behind to grow chummier and chummier with the aloof but innocent-seeming Skinner. (Also, I have to point this out: Laurie Strode uses the alias ‘Keri Tate’ in 1998’s Halloween: H20, so are we expected to believe that uncredited writer Kevin Williamson wanted to homage, of all things, the ‘90s video nasty Skinner and attach it to the genre’s ultimate final girl? The world gets weirder the longer it turns.)

The interplay between Skinner and Kerry makes for an interesting dynamic, in that both of them are lonely souls in their own way and could potentially find meaning in each other’s company, and it’s additionally affecting that Raimi and Lake don’t look like typical movie actors – they instead look like real people, adding to the approachability of this subplot. Raimi, too, despite his history of having appeared in his brother’s Evil Dead series in various costumed rules, has generally made a lot of garbage, but he often proves to be a capable actor, and Skinner is no exception. Lords’ subplot as a ruined Heidi, however, leads to absolutely nothing, which is a shame, being that the idea of Skinner’s unfinished business having potentially created its own monster could have been very interesting, had it been handled in a more assured manner. Lords gives her all in her performance as well, and though it never quite gels, in the end it doesn’t matter because it’s ultimately wasted on a go-nowhere character.   

The best friend to the horror genre there ever was, Ed Gein--after inspiring the likes of Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and both Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill in The Silence Of The Lambs--has again lent his visage to Dennis Skinner. For you see, Skinner doesn’t just skin his victims, but he refashions their skin into a full body suit, leading to the astounding sequence that I wasn’t going to get into, but my lord, I think I have to.

For newbies to Skinner, feel free to skip this entire paragraph. Your viewing experience will go off much better if you’re not expecting it. BEGIN SPOILERS: At Skinner’s new job as a maintenance man, he runs afoul of a fellow coworker named Earl (DeWayne Williams), a former (and black) boxer that immediately emasculates Skinner in front of another coworker. Well, as you might expect, Earl doesn’t last long, soon finding the sharp end of Skinner’s blades. However, Skinner not only slips into Earl’s skin, but takes it one step further by turning his costume pageant into a horribly offensive display of racial monstrosity, using a “black” voice and minstrel slang like “Mammy” as he chases down his next victim. This sequence goes on for nearly ten minutes, during which you will be making the post-aftershave Home Alone face the entire time. END SPOILERS.

Skinner is a wild ride, with plenty of gore and over-the-top insanity and it should entertain less discerning horror fans. 

Just leave your political correctness at the door.

HALLOWEEN (2018)

Multiple franchises have been quick to prove that long-delayed sequels are hardly ever worth the wait, and this ranges across all genres. Twelve years after Die Hard with a Vengeance came a bored, bald, tired, and profanity-free John McClane in the anemic Live Free or Die Hard. Seventeen years between Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights proved that studios could reuse a film’s title, but they couldn’t make ’80s-era zeitgeist relevant in 2004. Even the horror genre, where sequels are king, and thus have more opportunities to create a worthy follow-up, often shit the bed. Just ask the The Rage: Carrie 2 (and don’t even mention Phantasm: Ravager in front of me).

This year’s Halloween isn’t technically a forty-years-later sequel, considering the franchise has remained active since the 1978 original, but it does embark on the ballsy move of pushing aside alllll those other sequels and remakes and pretending they never happened (something many fans already do) in favor of branching off from the best and least complicated entry in the franchise. (Easter eggs abound, however, for the sharp-eyed franchise fan — there are nods to every single Halloween entry, including the much maligned Halloween: Resurrection.) It’s additionally ballsy because 1978’s Halloween is so beloved — by both critics and fans of the genre and film in general. Halloween is that rare title that transcends its place in horror — a title that most people would say is simply great, and not just great “for a horror film,” which is like saying that cheeseburger you just scarfed down wasn’t bad “for McDonalds.” (Horror don’t get no respect, I tells ya!) If a director says he’s going to make Halloween 11, expectations are pegged pretty low from the get-go. At that point, most fans just want a solid slasher. But when a director — scratch that, a filmmaker (yes, there is a difference) — enters the scene and says he wants to make a direct follow-up to a legendary title, expectations are reset. There’s less franchise baggage and mythological mud to wade through, and when said filmmaker doesn’t come from a world of music videos but rather a world where his previous films have been released by the snooty Criterion Collection, that’s a big deal for a slasher series. That’s unprecedented territory.

Halloween ‘18 isn’t as good as the original, but only because that’s an impossible feat — not because the original is a flawless endeavor, but because it became the new watermark to which all subsequent slasher flicks have been compared. Halloween didn’t create a handful of the tropes and techniques for which it’s celebrated, but it did perfect them, popularize them, and marry them together in a splendid genre film that was part slasher, part supernatural terror, and part haunted house spookshow fun. Halloween wasn’t the first slasher film, but it was the first to take the world by storm. John Carpenter’s film endures because it’s pure, well-made in the face of a meager budget, and contains horror’s most iconic masked killer whose creepiness has yet to fade. For a long time, most fans felt that 1998’s Halloween: H20 was the last respectable entry in the franchise, which saw a returning Jamie Lee Curtis once again doing battle against the boogeyman, who in that timeline was still her brother. Halloween ’18 has now rendered H20 as being near-irrelevant, proving to be the best entry since the original.

In these last forty years, cinema has changed, including the horror and slasher genres. Audiences have different expectations. Charming, near-bloodless thrills just won’t do — not in a film where the bad guy wears a mask and carries a huge knife. Halloween ‘18 is obviously the bridge that connects the classy and pure intent for terror of the original with modern-day audiences, who expect a certain amount of viciousness and grue in their slasher offerings. Yes, Halloween ‘18 is violent — perhaps as violent as Rob Zombie’s gritty, immature, and white trashy take on Haddonfield. But (head stomps aside), the violence in Halloween ‘18 works to its favor, because this isn’t Zombie’s take on Haddonfield — it’s still Carpenter’s, and now Gordon Green’s (and co-writer Danny McBride’s). Their Haddonfield is idyllic, quaint, even boring. In their Haddonfield, murderous rampages aren’t supposed to happen, and it makes those moments — like that gorgeous, unbroken tracking shot which sees Michael walking and slaying from one house to the next — much more shocking. In Zombie’s Haddonfield, where everyone is terrible and exists in a pit of despair, we’re waiting for the violence to unfold. In Gordon Green’s Haddonfield, where the events of 1978 are barely a memory and life seems just fine, we’re hoping the violence never comes, because we’re not sure if we can take it.

Halloween ‘18 is being referred to as the series’ #MeToo entry, and while that wasn’t the intention, that’s not wrong, either. It’s one thing to see, and to have become accustomed to, the “final girl” in the slasher genre, but we don’t often get to see that final girl return for another bout of bloody murder committed by her foe, and we certainly don’t see an adult actor return to her teenage stomping grounds as a haunted, ruined shell of a final woman. Halloween ‘18 is absolutely, positively, without question, Jamie Lee Curtis’ movie — one that honors and acknowledges her legacy in the horror genre, cements just how underrated of a performer she is, and boasts quite possibly her greatest performance in any genre. The Laurie Strode of 2018 is not the Laurie Strode you remember from the original; she’s now a grandmother, baring her scars both physical and emotional from her Halloween encounter forty years prior. She’s the genre’s ultimate defacto heroine, so naturally she’s still strong and tenacious, but only to a degree. It’s not often you see your hero break down in tears throughout his or her journey, and in Halloween ‘18, you’ll see that more than once. If you’ve invested yourself in Laurie’s struggles over the course of the franchise, and in Curtis’ real-life struggles over the years, your heart will break seeing her steely resolve crumble, leaving her a heaving mess in the arms of her somewhat estranged granddaughter. Judy Greer and a new-coming (and an excellent) Andi Matichak also bring life and complexity to their roles as next-generation Strodes, with the latter naturally drawing the most parallels with circa-1978 Laurie. They’ll prove essential to the inevitable sequel, and it would be to the series’ continued betterment that they return for another round of Halloween carnage.

As for Laurie’s pursuer, Michael Myers, aka The Shape, he’s scary again — not because he’s nine feet tall or cutting off entire heads and throwing them down the stairs, but because Gordon Green utilizes him the way he should be. For the most part, he’s back in the shadows, and he’s also back to playing his cat-and-mouse games — but sometimes he’s captured in blinding, brilliant light, mask or no mask, as a reminder that evil exists all the time, everywhere, and not just in the dark. The aforementioned tracking shot puts you directly at Michael’s back as he walks, unnoticed in his mask on Halloween night, up Haddonfield’s sidewalks, eyeing its people for his next target. You witness his decision-making in real time and see him veer off his path like a great white shark spotting an easy meal, and this extremely eerie and pulse-pounding sequence reinforces what made the original so disturbing: Michael’s murderous motivations weren’t based on him and Laurie being siblings, or because he was being controlled by an evil Celtic cult, or because there were a bunch of MTV douche bags wandering around his house and only Blackberries and the internet could save them. The original Halloween was horrifying because Michael’s motives were unknown, and his attacks were utterly random — the horror came from the not-knowing-why. It came from Michael watching Laurie approach the front door of his long-abandoned childhood house as he hid inside its dimness and thinking, “Okay. Her.”

Bolstering Michael’s presence is the phenomenal score — the best since the original and perhaps the best of the franchise — by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies. It’s a marriage of old themes and new, which perfectly complements Halloween '18, because that’s exactly what the film is, too. The original’s film score, by itself and without any visual representation of Michael Myers’ mask or knife, is scary. Appropriately, free of its haunting visuals, the score for Halloween '18 achieves the same result. (Don’t believe me?) Not to mention, Carpenter and sons have pulled off the unthinkable: during the climactic showdown between good and evil, they’ve taken the most recognizable horror theme in cinema history (respect to JAWS) and re-imagined it to be free from fear and tension and re-orchestrated it to sound almost…hopeful. If music has ever made a moment work, it’s this one.

Though not without its problems (the Dr. Sartain subplot should have been entirely dropped, as it deviates the main story to a distracting degree), Halloween '18 gets so much right that to laundry-list its faults seems like salty tears. The fact is, a slasher sequel forty years in the making shouldn’t be as good as it is, so instead of dictating faults, let’s instead celebrate that this Halloween dream-team of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Jason Blum, Jamie Lee Curtis, and John Carpenter have achieved the unthinkable: they revitalized one of cinema’s longest-running horror franchises and rebooted not just the property, but the respect it once carried. I’d give anything for this to be the final entry in the series, as it’s doubtful such a sequel could ever live up to what Gordon Green et al. managed to do, but they’ve proven one thing at least: if anyone can do it, they can.

[Reprinted from The Daily Grindhouse.]

REVIEW: HAZMAT

One might think that the slasher formula has been done to death, and maybe it has. Having just watched (out of morbid curiosity) Texas Chainsaw 3D, I remarked to a friend during the first twenty minutes, “Critics are absolutely right to disrespect the horror genre when this is the kind of output that filmmakers and studios are giving us.” And I still feel that way. If you’re going to go back to the same well, whether it be the same tired character of Leatherface, or the same tired well of “get kids, put them in location, let loose the bad shit,” for the love of Tobe Hooper, please do something the least bit original, or clever, or hell, just inject a bit of life into it. More often than not, studios are proving that they are simply not up to this challenge, but yet it’s the smaller productions that are.

“Scary Antics,” a riff on the real life show “Scare Tactics,” (which, last time I looked, was hosted by Tracy Morgan), isn’t doing so well. Despite having made it to its third season, the network is keen to pull the plug, leaving its creator David (Todd Bruno, the love child of Jason Bateman and…Jason Bateman) struggling to find a way to keep it afloat.  Then you’ve got co-creator/make-up girl Brenda (Aniela McGuiness) wanting to leave the show behind just as much as the studio wants to kill it, her excuse being professional growth, but really, because David probably won’t commit to her ever since they were, are, or had, a thing. And meanwhile, David’s trying to produce an episode in which a kid named Adam (Reggie Peters) is setting it up for himself and his friend Jacob (Norbert Velez) to be on "Scary Antics" in an effort to get Jacob, who became obsessed with the paranormal following his father’s death, to snap the fuck out of it and be Adam's BFF again. With hidden cameras around nearly every turn, the “skit” begins – that of Jacob leading his friends around an old abandoned factory where many years earlier a fire had broke out and killed everyone. Convinced the place is haunted, Adam allows Jacob to guide them through and tell them his ghost stories, knowing that the “antics” portion of the show will be kicking in soon.

And then Murphy’s Law happens.

Conceptually, HazMat is very similar to 2001’s Halloween: Resurrection, but that’s about where the similarities end, because while Halloween: Resurrection is a giant piece of cinematic shit, HazMat is not. I admit that I was ready to write off HazMat from minute one, just because I’m embittered and cynical, and based on the synopsis, I said, “Oh boy – here we go again.” But as HazMat played on, I found myself actively engaged in the events unfolding. The ensemble cast was solid, at the very least, though there were a couple performances here and there not entirely ready for prime-time.  And I was pleased to see actual thought had been put into the script. Attempts at drama and development are present and accounted for, though I’m not entirely sure every character arc was ultimately fulfilled. I especially appreciated every attempt at closing a potential plot hole was made. ("Why don't they just use their cell phones to call for help?"  "Why don't they just wait it out, knowing the network will eventually send out the police of their crew doesn't return?")

And can I just say, despite my earlier condemnation regarding the asphyxiation of the slasher genre, that a part of me is secretly pleased movie maniacs are still finding new costumes and masks to put on before separating heads and limbs from torsos? There’s something about that I  find strangely comforting. It harkens back to a similar time in the genre when filmmakers just wanted to have a bit of fun, gimmicky and played out though it may have been.

Triple threat Lou Simon (writer/director/producer) has done a fine job making something out of nothing. The shooting location lends as much as it can, despite it having been a much smaller set than the film lets on. The film isn’t terribly violent, as most of the deaths are obscured by quick cutaways before we cut back to see the damage left by the maniac’s blade, though we do get a money shot or two, and they are pretty excellent. Since we focus on a small group of characters, more time is spent with them, and some of them last longer than you might suspect.

No one ever wants to watch the credits roll on a film and say, “That was terrible,” because all that equates to is having wasted 90 minutes of your life, so while it’s obviously preferable to think the opposite, it can be even more rewarding when a film comes along that defies nearly all of your expectations.

HazMat will be available on DVD come April 1.

DVD REVIEW: SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT

Before Michael Myers ran rampant on Halloween night, and before Billy began picking off sorority sisters one Christmas weekend, there was another slasher film unleashed upon the world in which a mysterious killer wreaked havoc one dark Christmas Eve. Though Silent Night, Deadly Night gets all the (undue) love, it was the similarly titled Silent Night, Bloody Night (aka the oddly spelled Deathouse) that beat all these folks to the punch. It's a title that for one reason or another has eluded me for all the years of my horror-lovin' life. In my youth, the obscurity of the actors involved likely turned me off, and as I approached my "adult" years, bad word of mouth/reputation likely continued my disinterest. 

So when I received this screener of Film Chest's upcoming restored edition of the film, I thought, "Yes, damn it - we're finally going to do this."

The film opens with a somewhat docudrama approach, complete with voice-over filling in the audience on the history of the Butler home. One Christmas Eve, an accidental (?) fire claims the life of Wilford Butler and the house is left silent and empty. Years later, the house is inherited by Wilford's grandson, Jeffrey, who is only interested in selling it. The townspeople aren't too keen with that, as they just know there's something not right about the old place, and they'd rather people just stay away. Jeffrey's lawyer takes up temporary residence in the house with his wife while he awaits the decision of the townspeople whether they want to outright buy the house to keep it unoccupied. And don't you know it? The house isn't as empty as everyone thought. And that's when the bodies start to drop.

Look out!

Though Silent Night, Bloody Night is, if we're being honest, rather poorly made from a technical standpoint, it does get points for endeavoring to create a creepy tone established on mood, the harsh wintry conditions, and a disturbing mythology. It's worth watching for that reason alone. And it's interesting to see infamous horror tropes show up in cinema history far earlier than expected. Halloween gets a lot of credit for showing the killer's point of view, though that was previously explored in Black Christmas...which created a lot of tension by utilizing mysterious made by a whispering caller...which earlier appeared in this, Silent Night, Blood Night.

But sadly the film falls victim to so many other low budget film-making pitfalls. This is the kind of film where the musical score cuts-out the same time that the scene ends; where the audio track doesn't always match the action on-screen; where the direction relies almost exclusively on point-and-shoot techniques; and whose own rickety and inconsistently colored picture suggests that this was a film that wasn't really worth treasuring.

Which is kind of a shame, because Silent Night, Deadly Night had potential. It satisfied my own personal requirements for a quality horror film: an isolated location, a moody atmosphere, an intriguing mythology, and a cast of (gasp) adults! There is a chilly Hammer-esque approach using darkness and shadow, and at times an unnerving feeling...there's just not enough of it.

As the ad above boasts, this version released by Film Chest was harvested from an original 35mm negative. I don't know the history of the different releases this film has seen, but being that I believe it's in the public domain, there have been dozens. This particular version, impressive picture or not (and it's merely okay), might be the first time ever the film is appearing in widescreen on a home video format. That, alone, should warrant a purchase from fans of the film. 

This Film Chest restored edition of Silent Night, Bloody Night streets December 10. Give it a whirl and see if I'm wrong.