DER BUNKER (2015)

There's only one thing you should really keep in mind while watching Der Bunker. If it comes to certain points where you don't know if you should be laughing or not, you should be; and if it comes to certain points where you're certainly laughing, you should be disturbed as well.

This is Der Bunker's design.

Der Bunker is film without a genre. You could start by labeling it horror, but you'd almost certainly have to back it up with comedy, and then psycho-sexual thriller, and then drama, and then even science-fiction, and after a while it gets to the point where you realize to saddle it with one or several genre labels is fruitless. Der Bunker makes the case that a new genre label should be created just to help categorize it. Perhaps schizofreude--an erratic, unpredictable, dangerous film from which an audience can derive pleasure by their witnessing extremely discomforting scenarios that straddle the line between obviously funny and vaguely disturbing.

No matter your genre of choice, Der Bunker is easily watchable. Everything about it so oddly fascinating--like watching a car accident in reverse, and in slow motion--yet at the same time competently grounded. As strange as it gets, this strangeness constantly revolves around this makeshift family unit, which is something that the audience already has an innate sense to relate to. Once "The Student" joins them, at first only interested in renting a room, what's been commonly considered "the nuclear family" is complete. Father, Mother, two children. (Kind of.)

Of all the obviously insane moments peppered throughout, there's one that's a bit more subtle than most, and it's one that somewhat drives the plot forward. When "The Student" begins tutoring Klaus, as ordered by his landlords, Klaus confides in him that his parents are striving toward him becoming "President" (of the United States of America). In the middle of everything completely nuts about this family--who they are, how they appear, where they live, how they treat each other--Klaus' parents still maintain for him the same kind of high-reaching dreams that our parents held for us when we were children. To one day become President was that symbolic goal for us all--it wasn't so much actually becoming President as it was us being able to obtain whatever goals we set for ourselves. As utterly dysfunctional as this family is, there's a strange love and support system that's indefinable, but certainly present--bastardized though it may be.

"The Student," as played by Pit Bukowski (who also appeared in another incredibly oddity, Der Samurai), is close to being the German equivalent of our dearly departed Anton Yelchin. He has a soulful look, and the actor leans toward appearing in quirkier and riskier projects. Der Bunker is no different. He exhibits a wonderful air of someone desperately trying to coexist peacefully with his very odd landlords, agreeing to go along with their strange requests (or orders) simply in an effort not to make waves. But seeing him adapt to his surroundings, and give in to certain...urges...is brought to life by Bukowski's interesting ability to transform his character from meek and mild-mannered into someone of strength and even menace.

As Father and Mother, David Scheller and Oona von Maydell embrace their insanity with no reservations whatsoever. Maydell, especially, has some rather awkward scenes to film with her son, and which are performed with utmost confidence. But Daniel Fripan as Klaus walks away with having contributed not just the film's best performance, but an all-time memorable character (assuming, of course, that audiences gradually come to learn Der Bunker exists in the first place). His somewhat dopey, Beetles-inspired haircut and his cartoon wardrobe give him an easily amusing head-start, but his performance utterly indicative of an eight-year-old boy bored with school and who only wants to please his parents is, again, both disturbing and amusing in ways it probably shouldn't be. Seeing this "family" interact provides for the most uncomfortable of joys.

Despite taking place underground, Der Bunker manages to boast a somewhat diverse color palette--probably because of how insane it is! Even in the "classroom" (or should it be Klausroom? :D), the puke-colored bricks and spines of the books manage to, if not offer an attractive look, at least add some life to the screen. The "house" portions of the bunker look quite busy--likely purposely so--as if its quirky owners were trying to compensate for the fact that they don't live in a normal, every-day...you know, above-ground house. 

Odd. So odd I don't even know what to say. Some might be tempted to call Der Bunker "quirky," but that's not the right word. "Quirky" suggests it's a little off the beaten path, but not so off the path that mothers everywhere couldn't enjoy it. "Odd" is a better term, because while it's certainly off the beaten path, it's also--just the least bit--dangerous. With Der Bunker, and as cliched as it sounds, at no point do you know where the story is going to take you. The various aspects to the film which make it so strange cannot and will not be divulged here for fear of ruining its intentionally misleading construct. Der Bunker comes highly recommended for seekers of the strange.

MOVIE MOMENTS: WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988)

"Which scary movie moment freaked you out the most as a kid?"

Oh, give me a break. No contest. Judge Doom, as brought to manic life by Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, is the stuff of kid nightmares. One of the all-time great movie villains, Judge Doom, in his all-black, Gestapo-like suit, is an eerie menace from his very first appearance in a 1947’s version of Los Angeles where “real” human beings coexist alongside walking cartoon characters. And he hates ‘toons. Vilifies them. Wants to dip them all in barrels of paint thinner (“the dip”) until nothing is left but colored grease. The evisceration and erasure of Toon Town. A full-on cartoon holocaust – that’s his endgame. That’s all bad enough.

And then the classic film’s lunatic finale happens.

Judge Doom is flattened under the wheels of a steamroller, only to resurrect, stick a gas tank nozzle into his mouth, and inflate his pancake body. His glass eyes pop out of his head to reveal he is, in fact, a ‘toon wearing a human façade. In pure, unfettered mania of which only Christopher Lloyd is capable, he embarks on a tirade in which he proudly, insanely, over-the-toply admits to Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) that he was the one who killed Eddie’s brother – the crux of the movie’s conflict – and as his confession becomes more and more unhinged, his voice reaches a cartoonish high pitch like a whistling teapot before his cartoon eyes turn to daggers and springs burst from his feet, which he uses to launch across half a warehouse after a fleeing Eddie – and the whole time, his animated eyes are bubbling in his plastic face like a witch’s cauldron.

You know, for kids!

Watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit today, I’m still amazed director Robert Zemeckis was able to get away with the ghastly images that appear throughout the finale of his cleverly plotted Chinatown spoof. If the seed for horror hadn’t already been planted in my brain when I first saw it in my youth, then Who Framed Roger Rabbit was definitely one of the influences that cultivated it. (I also had an unhealthy crush on Jessica Rabbit, but that’s for another time.)

[Reprinted/excerpted from Daily Grindhouse.]

HAUNTED HOSPITAL: HEILSTÄTTEN (2018)

You can’t keep a good gimmick down, which is why, ten years on from the release of Paranormal Activity, found-footage horror flicks are still trickling in. Thankfully, theaters are no longer inundated with them, but quieter and lower key productions are continuing to use the tactic – hence we now have the awkwardly named Haunted Hospital: Heilstätten (which, come on, I will DEFINITELY be calling Triple H for the remainder of this review).

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of kids take an array of filming equipment into an abandoned hospital believed haunted for sensationalistic reasons but then – plot twist – turns out the place really does have ghosts! (Or demons, or witches, or the pit of hell, or, you know, something that HMOs will write off as a preexisting condition.) Along with this, the Germany-lensed Triple H opts for a modern update by presenting all the trespassers as hosts of their own very disparate Youtube channels, some more successful than others, which has led to some tension between them all. (I think they used to be friends in real life before or during their Youtube fame, but that’s never made clear). There’s Betty (Nilam Farooq), whose channel seems to consist of her sitting on a bed and talking about makeup but never applying any (accurate); Emma (Lisa-Marie Koroll), who helps participants face their very specific fears; and lastly, there’s Charly and Finn (Emilio Sakraya and the amazingly named Timmi Trinks), who host something called Prankstaz, which is exactly what it sounds like, and which is the most obnoxious thing you have ever seen. (Also accurate). Joining them are Theo (Tim Oliver Schultz), the level-headed worrywart, and Marnie (Sonja Gerhardt), a psychic and Theo’s former squeeze. (I’m going to be honest, I’m not 100% of that breakdown because all the girls, bundled up in hats, scarves, and big jackets, kinda look the same, and most of their names are barely spoken aloud during the entire running time. Girls just sort of keep showing up, making you go, “oh, guess I missed her the first time.” Just know that this movie is basically Hellstätten 90210.) The kids all figure that cross promoting with the sadly successful Prankstaz will boost the number of theiir Youtube followers, and that’s all that matters on the entire planet.

For the first two acts, Triple H unfolds exactly as you would expect: the characters are introduced and established as: the main one who will probably live, the “silly” ones who definitely won’t, and the window dressing ones whom no one will especially care about. Dark hallways are wandered, fleeting creepy things in the dark are glimpsed, fights break out among the cast, and bodies begin to drop. During this time, Triple H is very okay – it’s absolutely every other found footage flick you have ever seen, but it’s well made enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re watching anything offensive. In addition, there’s a scene where Theo berates the two Prankstaz hosts for peddling idiocy on their channel and contributing to “the stupidity of our youth,” so you might be thinking, “Oh, wow, Triple H has a message.” Once the third-act twist happens, whatever credit you were willing to lend toward Triple H goes totally out the window and you will groan, groan, groan. To its credit, you’ve never seen anything like it in a found footage flick, but that’s because the twist is nearly as ridiculous as, say, if it’s revealed that the haunted hospital had been under the hellish influence of an evil cantaloupe named Jeremy.

Haunted Hospital: Heilstätten is every found-footage flick you’ve ever seen – that is, until it’s not, and that’s when it’s worse. If you’re among the breed of fan who devours these kinds of flicks regardless of budgets or reputations, you’re likely to find a few worthy yuk-yuks within. For everyone else, avoid.

SLASH OF THE TITANS: THE ROAD TO ‘FREDDY VS. JASON' (2018)

As a horror genre nutball, there were two films — held high above all others — whose statuses still remain as my top two most anticipated releases of all time. The first was Halloween: H20, released when I was a wee 14 years old. The second was Freddy vs. Jason, the ultimate mash-up dream movie combining the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street series' boogeymen. Unlike the former, an idea that came together pretty quickly, the genesis of Freddy vs. Jason, released in 2003, dates back to the late ‘80s, when both franchises were starting to suffer from box office fatigue and needed a shot of adrenaline. I even had in my possession, for a long time, a very small newspaper clipping announcing the film’s pre-production, then called “Jason vs. Freddy,” due to be released in “the summer of 1997” and would be directed by none other than special effects maestro Rob Bottin (The Thing).

This, obviously, did not happen — along with many other iterations which included different cast members, writers, and directors. Names like the departed Brad Renfro (The Client, Apt Pupil) and a pre-career revival Jason Bateman were once mentioned. Established characters from both franchises were to appear — Alice from A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 4 and 5, along with Steven, Jessica, and a grown-up version of baby Stephanie from Jason Goes To Hell. That latter portion, especially, makes sense, given that Jason Goes To Hell’s shock ending included Freddy Krueger’s infamous glove pulling Jason’s mask down, essentially, into Hell. That’s how quickly New Line Cinema believed Freddy vs. Jason would come together, rather than the decade it actually took.

So, after all its false starts and legendary production hells, how did Freddy vs. Jason fare? Well, it lit up the box office opening weekend, and accumulated $115 worldwide by the end of its theatrical run. It was so successful that a sequel called “Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash,” which would have brought The Evil Dead series’ Bruce Campbell into the fold, was seriously discussed. Not bad for a very R-rated horror film consisting of franchises whose previous solo trips to theaters resulted in pitiful returns. Critics (genre ones, anyway) were split, but fans were mostly happy with the final product. Personally, I loved it, warts and all — and, holy shit, are there some warts. Kindly, and like Halloween: H20, the version of it that lives in my memory plays a lot better than on the flat screen of my present, but it still offers bloody violence, a reasonably clever plot, and a winking/knowing sense of fun. The creative talent behind the cameras of Freddy vs. Jason took the concept just as seriously as it deserved, and it shows (which is not a slight at all).

Not long after its release, Fangoria dedicated two whopping issues to feature a very long article about all the different iterations of Freddy vs. Jason that had been discussed over the years, along with interviews of those involved. It was reasonably in-depth for what Fango’s page count would allow, but was retold in an anecdotal nature. The morsels that were shared by previous screenwriters of unmade scripts hinted at far larger and more wild stories, some or most of which seemed destined never to have their stories realistically told.

From Dustin McNeill (interview here), author of Phantasm Exhumed: The Unauthorized Companion and Further Exhumed: The Strange Case of Phantasm Ravager comes Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs. Jason, the definitive look at the crazy-long and very troubled production history of not just the film Freddy vs. Jason, but the idea of “Freddy vs. Jason.” For those familiar with McNeill’s previous literary examinations of the Phantasm series, it comes as no surprise to hear that Slash of the Titans is a meticulously researched tome on the culmination of fandom’s favorite franchises. Some of the rejected concepts were admittedly nutty and ill-advised (Jason is arrested and goes to court; Jason and Freddy box in hell, refereed by Ted Bundy, and many more) but some of them make for some pretty interesting what-if concepts, such as Freddy having been a janitor at Camp Crystal Lake who had actually been the one to kill Jason as a young boy to keep him quiet…after having molested him. What’s interesting about the many different concepts is that they all seemed to share one thing in common: the screenwriters’ inherent bias as it pertained to either Freddy or Jason as characters. Much like how the final version of Freddy vs. Jason is more Freddy centric, each screenplay showcased a preference for one over the other — from their screen time to what they were given to do.

McNeill has done his due diligence, interviewing as many screenwriters of the many unused Freddy vs. Jason iterations as he could, as well as leafing through all the scripts and providing his own detailed breakdowns of their plots. Though the topic being discussed is light, it’s not exactly a breezy read. Small font covers nearly 250 pages, and it jumps back and forth between these script breakdowns, interviews, and the author’s own musings piecing together a timeline. It’s a dense book and there’s a lot of information to take in; as you read one plot breakdown after another, which particular detail belonged to which script starts to get hazy. Mainstays will remain in your brain (the kind of wacky stuff one might not forget), but some of the smaller details will fade. The book is best consumed in multiple sittings and consuming one unique script-dedicated chapter at a time. (Put it this way: the author’s previous book, Phantasm Exhumed, focused on four Phantasm films, as well as earlier films from director Don Coscarelli. And it’s only 20 pages longer than this one, a book that focuses on one film.)

Fans of the film that eventually came to be, or even fans of either franchise but not necessarily their long-mooted team-up, should absolutely snap up their own copy of Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs. Jason. It’s easily the most comprehensive source that will ever exist on the subject and will keep you busy for quite some time.

Official book stuff:

From the author of Phantasm Exhumed comes Slash of the Titans, a revealing look at why it took New Line Cinema nearly ten years and four-million-dollars to find the right screenplay for Freddy vs. Jason. Featuring new interviews with the original writers and filmmakers, Slash details the production’s troubled history from the surprise ending of Jason Goes to Hell all the way to the crossover’s red carpet premiere. Read about the many rejected storylines and learn how the project was eventually able to escape from development hell. This is the story of one film, two horror icons and seventeen screenwriters!

SLASH OF THE TITANS includes:

• Comprehensive looks at ten different versions of the screenplay
• Info on early crossover attempts by Friday the 13th filmmakers
• Exclusive details on the never made Freddy vs Jason: Hell Unbound video game
• Insights from producers, executives and developers including Sean Cunningham
• An examination of why the Shannon/Swift script was finally greenlit
• Summaries of the four endings considered for the 2003 film
• Coverage of the never made Freddy vs Jason vs Ash sequel
• New comments from the titans themselves Robert Englund and Ken Kirzinger
• Appendices full of story details including the outcomes of all ten versions

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1972)

The word giallo immediately brings to mind the names of horror stalwart directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento, the former who gave birth to the popular European sub-genre movement during the late 1960s, and the latter who took what Bava had done and ran with it. Argento turned the giallo up to eleven with more sexuality and more gruesome killings, but also more experimental camera techniques and more dreamlike atmosphere. Many, many other directors soon followed suit, eager to leave their own mark on the sub-genre, and each going about it in many different ways. Some vied for artistic, some vied for pulpy thrills (which would be mirrored by the slasher movement in the U.S. following the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween). Soon, the giallo, whose etymology is traced back to yellow-covered pulp fiction novels from the early 20th century, would be applied to many different concepts: straight-up murder mystery, psychological horror, supernatural slice-and-dice, or a combination of the three.  (They sometimes shared their elements with another non-horror sub-genre known as poliziotteschi – think Dirty Harry reimagined as an Italian production, but with gorier killings.)

Director Sergio Martino enjoyed a career every bit as prolific as the filmmakers named above (which includes titles like Torso and The Case of The Scorpion’s Tail, along with a fair number of sex comedies), but he never managed to find the same kind of mainstream success as his contemporaries. Ironic, given that his 1970 film All the Colors of the Dark is considered to be a quintessential giallo and clearly inspired Argento once it came time to helm his masterpiece, Suspiria.

Starring the unrealistically beautiful Edwige Fenech, All the Colors of the Dark is about a woman named Jane, possibly suffering a psychological breakdown, who believes that a mysterious blue-eyed man in a trench coat is stalking her…with a dagger. Naturally, as the genre demands, no one believes her, and those in her life instead offer armchair analysis and advice, believing it to be a figment of her imagination. Her boyfriend, Richard (George Hilton), tells her to take vitamins; her sister, Barbara (Susan Scott), suggests therapy; and her neighbor, Mary (Marina Malfatti), suggests the most outlandish cure of all: a black magic ceremony to purge her of her fears. Jane tries each one, finding success in none, but after taking part in a black mass, things really go south.

From its opening frame, Martino is quick to inject some nightmarish (literally) imagery into what so far had been a straightforward sub-genre dedicated to murder mysteries. The opening moments present something not seen in gialli up to that point, and that same sense of unease carries through to the entire film, leaving you to wonder just how much trust you can put in Jane’s eyes, or if she’s your classic unreliable narrator. There are just enough fantastic elements that help the film and Jane’s frenzied journey feel just the least bit surreal, often making you question if what she sees is for real, or if the double-whammy of her mother’s murder when Jane was young, and Jane losing her unborn baby in a car accident, has warped her mind. And given that it’s right there in the title, Martino plays around with colors; in a pre-Shyamalan show of sneakiness, Martino hides blue – the same shade as the mystery man’s eyes – in plain sight, subtly suggesting that the person wearing that blue sweater or driving that blue car is not to be trusted.

All the Colors of the Dark has long been considered essential giallo, and I won’t disagree. Don’t miss it.

THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE (2018)

 

The Possession of Hannah Grace is founded on an admittedly clever concept: what would happen to the body of a person who had died during an exorcism if the ritual hadn’t been completed? Well, naturally, it would become the morgue attendant’s problem, and there’s nothing creepier than the idea of being haunted by a possessed dead body in a basement morgue. Although I’ve always professed that I have no problem if plots are borrowed from previous movies so long as the one doing the borrowing does so with good intentions, it’s hard to ignore the fact that The Possession of Hannah Grace exists beneath the behemoth shadow of 2016’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Not only do both ride on the same plot — a cursed body causing supernatural havoc in an isolated setting — but The Autopsy of Jane Doe did it so well without relying on corny visual effects or borrowing creepy set pieces from other flicks. (The Possession of Hannah Grace borrows from everyone, naming The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Ring as just a few.) The Autopsy of Jane Doe was gory, of course, but it felt classically done, anyway – a horror movie made by adults for adults. The Possession of Hannah Grace, despite the few good intentions it has, was clearly made for teens, and while I won’t issue a blanket statement condemning all teen-targeted flicks, let’s just say that when it comes to the horror genre, the odds are hardly ever in their favor. The Possession of Hannah Grace only wiggles a single dead finger in rebellion to that assembly line, teen-horror mindset, twitching to life every so often in an otherwise ho-hum horror offering that’s DOA. 

To its credit, what with this being a Screen Gems release (purveyors of the Resident Evil and Underworld franchises), The Possession of Hannah Grace never gets too stupid in trying to scare its audience. Yes, there are lots of jump scares, and the reliance on CGI for even the most everyday things seems unnecessary, but there’s at least an intent for scares leaning on pure genre tradition. Also like The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Possession of Hannah Grace blends supernatural shock with gory images, earning its R rating with repeated usage of the titular character’s twisted, wounded, burned corpse. (Several characters meet grisly ends as well.) In spite of its strong points, the movie falls victim to the usual kinds of lowest common denominators that plague mainstream horror releases, including a lead character (played by Shay Mitchell) whose magazine-cover beauty laughs in the face of her being a former police officer and a current morgue attendant. I’ve also never seen a more attractive and trendy looking city morgue, ever—the neo-gothic, art deco-inspired set looks more appropriate for Jack Napier’s penthouse in Tim Burton’s Batman than it does for an actual place where, at some point, a brain has definitely fallen onto the floor.

The Possession of Hannah Grace is a movie. That sounds like “no shit” level evaluation, but that is its biggest problem. It’s not good enough to warrant revisitation or critical praise, and not bad enough to leave behind a distinct impression. The movie, ultimately, is just there. (If you haven’t, see The Autopsy of Jane Doe instead.)

GWEN (2019)

With Gwen being marketed as a Shudder Original, and released to video from the genre-friendly RLJ Entertainment, it would be easy to assume it’s an out-and-out horror film. Its own synopsis includes the words “malevolent presence,” and the cover alone shows a gloomy and dim image of a young girl clutching a crucifix in front of a roaring fire. Having watched the film twice now, I’m hesitant to label it as a horror film, though the act of watching it definitely conjures horror (in a good way). Thanks to its period setting, its ease at earning and establishing dread, and its focus on the slowly dissolving family unit, Gwen comes off as a cinematic soulmate to 2015’s The Witch, another film I was hesitant to label as horror…and Gwen contains even less horror than that.

Despite that, Gwen is a solid, well-made, and eerily authentic feature from writer/director William McGregor. Every inch of its running time feels absolutely genuine. The actors, especially young Eleanor Worthington-Cox (The Enfield Haunting) as the title character, sell the desperation and despair of this poor family undergoing every possible hardship: the father is missing in action, the mother, Elen (Maxine Peake, Black Mirror), is suffering from a strange illness that causes her seizures, and the family is barely making enough money to scrape by. Bureaucrats in town continue to pressure Elen into selling off the only asset they have left — their house and farm — but she refuses, saying it’s all they have left — that it’s their home. Meanwhile, Gwen takes over her mother’s duties and tries to sell some of their farm’s produce in the town’s marketplace, but shoppers avoid her as if she has a catchable curse.

The moment Gwen begins, the viewer too easily slips into that world, and at no point does something “movie” happen to rip you out of the world that McGregor has created. Again, similar to The Witch, the dedication to making that world feel as genuine and realistic as possible is a total success, and it’s every bit as effective as A24’s eerie romp with Black Phillip. From the wardrobes to the accents and especially to the production design, it’s one of the most authentic period horror films you could ever see.

As for the horror aspect, where Gwen may lack in more typical horror scares (The Witch comes off damn near mainstream when comparing their horror content), it more than makes up in wallowing despair. Make no mistake: Gwen is certainly not a feel-good movie. If you have patience for slow-burn tales, you’ll enjoy watching it, but you won’t enjoy how it makes you feel. At times, it feels like a triathlon of how poorly things can go for a single family. Its ending, as well, comes off abrupt; when the screen cuts to black at the end, you’ll be waiting for it to fade into the next scene instead of directly into the closing credits.

The sound presentation might actually be the sleeper agent of the movie; the quiet ambience and low-key score by James Edward Barker infests your brain and lays most of the groundwork for the film’s focus on despair and futility. Gwen is one of those flicks where the sun never shines, where the world is draped in rainy gray. The picture only ever fills with life a single time–when Gwen is at the doctor’s office begging him for medicine to take home to her mother—it’s the only time the film feels hopeful, and that things might be okay for the family.

If you want a good-time, party-like horror movie, run as fast as you can from Gwen, but if you’re someone who prefers to wallow in the dark, or if you’re especially into period dread, Gwen and her family are waiting for you.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 'JINGLE ALL THE WAY' FUCKING BLOWS AND YOU KNOW IT

Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is the worst father on Planet Earth solely because he has a full-time job. His wife and son make lemon faces and complain that he’s never around, even though I don’t see Mrs. Langston throwing out her jewelry or tailored wardrobe, nor do I see Boy Langston donating all his toys and sealing off the door to his bedroom that looks like one entire daycare center. Despite Howard being a profitable salesman whose job is to follow trends in the marketplace, he somehow remains entirely ignorant of that year’s “hot” Christmas toy: the Turbo Man action figure, which has since become impossible to find. “Whoever doesn’t get one is going to be a REAL loser!” his awful son states, therefore establishing a very wrong message to convey to America’s youth.

Awful Son: I want the Turbo Man action figure with the arms and legs that move and the boomerang shooter and his rock’n roller jet pack and the realistic voice activator that says five different phrases including, “It’s Turbo time!” Accessories sold separately. Batteries not included.

If you close one eye, squint, turn your head, and pound five shots, you might mistake something like the above as pretty funny.

It’s clear that Howard has one option: locate this pretty-hard-to-find toy for his son to make up for the fact that he hasn’t been around to actually raise him. Howard’s desperation to obtain this toy possesses him, mind and body, leading him on a path of destruction from which he’ll never recover. Oh, along the way he meets Sinbad, played by Sinbad in a mailman suit. They’ll start off as enemies, become friends, go back to enemies again, come to some kind of mutual understanding (I think), and then you’ll remember that one time you saw that really awful surveillance video footage of that person dying in the waiting room of a hospital where none of the personnel noticed for hours and you’ll realize that was still less soul-crushing than Jingle All the Way.

Despite being a total flop with critics, Jingle All the Way somehow managed to make $130 million at the box office by the end of its run; some figures even put that gross somewhere around $183 million. Thanks, civilization.

There is exactly one redeeming thing about Jingle All the Way and its name is Phil Hartman – not because he was given all the best lines, and not because he gives a stand-out performance, but because he isn’t forced to reduce himself to the agonizing depths of embarrassment that nearly everyone else involved in this fiasco ably stoops to achieve. All he does is sit in a car, drink hot chocolate, and look awesomely smug, and that’s why we’ll forever love Phil Hartman.

Not even Arnold Schwarzenegger, with whom I will always have a heterobsession^TM, can overcome the awful pedestrian humor in which people slip on bouncy balls and fall down, trip over remote control cars and fall down, or get caught in crowds of Christmas shoppers and fall down. Along the way a reindeer is punched, Arnold screams, “Put the cookie down,” a lesser Belushi makes an appearance, and we all die a little.

Jingle All the Way is a piece of shit. It’s a horrendous, abhorrent, shameless piece of human, corn-peppered shit. Regular pieces of shit look upon Jingle All the Way and think, “We’re not shitty enough.” Or maybe they think, “Boy, that’s TOO shitty.” I don’t know. I don’t know how shit thinks because I am not the feature film Jingle All the Way.

Jingle All the Way exists because we’re a horrible people. We’ve done wrong – perhaps since the beginning of time – and we’ll never vanquish the darkness in our souls nearly enough to will Jingle All the Way out of existence.

Know how I know that?

Because this:

MOVIE MOMENTS: BLOOD RAGE (1987)

"What's your favorite dinner scene in a movie?"

Blood Rage isn’t just a slasher favorite, but a yearly Thanksgiving tradition. Frankly, it’s as much a Thanksgiving movie as Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and I will fight to the death anyone who disagrees because that’s the kind of mood I’m in.

For those unaware, Blood Rage is about an amorous mother (Louise Lasser) who has a penchant for auditioning new fathers for her clingy twin sons, Todd and Terry, with the latter being a homicidal killer even at a very young age. In the film’s opening, which takes place at a drive-in theater, the two young boys fail at sleeping through their mother’s car sex and Terry loses it and carves up another theater-goer. However, the wrong son, Todd, is implicated and he spends a solid decade locked up in a mental hospital until he escapes and beelines right back to his family, who are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. After mom receives a call from the hospital warning her about Todd’s escape, they…decide to go ahead with hosting Thanksgiving anyway, but she asks Terry not to say anything, to which he agrees. Moments later, as they all sit back down at the table, Terry very casually says to his mother’s fiancé and their numerous other dinner guests, “Looks like you’re gonna get the chance to meet the rest of the family—my psychotic brother just escaped.”

Cut to this face:

If Blood Rage weren’t a slasher movie, it would be a sitcom. The laugh track was created for this kind of cutting comedic timing. Still, the revelation of a homicidal maniac coming to dinner is probably less awkward than enduring that uncle of yours who can’t wait to start talking politics.

[Reprinted/excerpted from Daily Grindhouse.]

SATANIC PANIC (2019)

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

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

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

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

THE STAND (1994)

The Stand was a big deal when it premiered on television twenty-five years ago. Stephen King was still knocking out books and short story collections, and adaptations of his work had reached a fevered pitch. Between the start of the 1990s through 1994’s The Stand, eleven feature films or miniseries bearing the author’s name were released, among them Rob Reiner’s Misery, considered among the best thanks to Kathy Bates’ Academy Award-winning performance as the deranged Annie Wilkes. Back before the days of the multi-volume feature film, King’s longer novels were depicted in the miniseries format, and had seen success with Salem’s Lot, IT, The Golden Years, and The Tommyknockers (the latter which is currently being developed as a feature by producer James Wan). The man who brought King’s epic tale of good versus evil was director Mick Garris, who had previously collaborated with King on Sleepwalkers, and who would go on to collaborate with him again on titles like The Shining (1997), Quicksilver Highway, Bag of Bones, Desperation, and Riding the Bullet.

The Stand, about a super germ plague that wipes out nearly all of mankind, rendering the survivors to either band together or divide on the sides of good and evil, respectively, has been hailed as King’s masterpiece and is overwhelmingly considered the fan favorite of the author’s long career. Though there is a certain grisliness to the themes and some of the imagery, it’s been among the most accessible of King’s works while still falling comfortably into the horror genre. Depressingly, it’s only become more relevant since its publication; as the planet begins to see real and catastrophic changes from global warming, the reemergence of diseases that were long thought to be in remission, and obviously the years-long pandemic wrought by COVID-19, let’s just say post-apocalyptic stories are back in a big way. (Not to mention The Walking Dead has been ripping off The Stand for years.)

With King handling scripting duties, The Stand is largely faithful to the source material thanks to its six-hour running time while also preserving his voice. One of the most consistent and unique aspects to King’s writing can be simplistically described as his cornballism. He has a penchant for folksy writing and bad Dad jokes, both deeply rooted in the same kind of pure childhood haze in which Ray Bradbury used to excel. Most directors who adapted his work would find ways to level this cornballism, keeping it down to subtle levels or excising it entirely. Garris, however, doesn’t just preserve that cornballism but elevates it, rendering many of their collaborations as the corniest of all the King adaptations. (Quicksilver Highway and Riding the Bullet, the latter based on a short story from King’s Everything’s Eventual collection, are among the corniest.) The Stand is no different, and the cornballism shines through, from the characterization to the actors chosen to play them to the limits of a network television budget. Along with the corn, certain elements of the story have not aged well, including singer Larry Underwood’s mother telling him he “sounds black” on his latest single, to which the white singer responds by putting on a “black” voice and bellowing, “that brown sound sure do get around!” (We likely won’t be seeing this exchange in the forthcoming adaptation by Josh Boone for CBS’s All Access streaming service, considering the actor playing the new Larry is, indeed, black...but they’d be wise to reconsider. If nothing else, it would serve as an amusing homage to The Shawshank Redemption, in which Morgan Freeman’s Red tells Andy Dufresne that people call him Red “maybe because [he’s] Irish,” a verbatim line from King’s short story where Red was presented as a white character.)

The cast of The Stand is massive for a TV budget, not just in quantity but quality, and it features several actors who had worked, or funnily enough, would work on another Stephen King project at some point in their careers. In no particular order, the ensemble boasts Gary Sinise (The Green Mile), Ed Harris (Creepshow, Needful Things), Kathy Bates (Misery, Dolores Claiborne), Rob Lowe (‘Salem’s Lot), and Miguel Ferrer (The Night Flier, The Shining), not to mention a host of Garris regulars who appear frequently in his other works, like Shawnee Smith (The Shining) and Matt Frewer (Quicksilver Highway). Along with bigwig horror cameos from directors John Landis (An American Werewolf In London), Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead), and Tom Holland (Stephen King's Thinner), Garris and King also take small roles, with King forced to deliver one of the film’s most emotional moments and which he blunders gloriously. Naturally, despite its ensemble nature, The Stand primarily belongs to Gary Sinise, as his Stu Redman represents that typically American aw-shucks good ol’ boy who only wants to do good for the people that depend on him. Among these people is Frannie Goldsmith, brought somewhat controversially to the screen by Molly Ringwald (there was fan blowback following this casting choice, and her performance didn’t do much to make those fans eat their words). Jamey Sheridan does fine work as the all-denim Randall Flagg, utilizing his unusual features and his wide, Joker-like smile to full advantage, though his performance is occasionally undone by the awful monster make-up he’s saddled with during certain scenes.

As is typical with most King works, The Stand’s conclusion is underwhelming, feeling rushed, unrealistic, and poorly executed. The “God’s hand” sequence is still laughed at to this day (deservingly), and is probably more infamous than the “wtf?” spider finale of the IT miniseries. After a five-and-a-half-hour buildup, the ending to this years-long conflict is handled too quickly and too cleanly, not giving any of its main characters time to resonate emotionally with the audience regarding their fates. Between its execution and the mere idea of God’s magical, glittery genie hand coming down from heaven to smack a nuclear bomb, it’s not the ending most people were hoping for, even if it’s loyal to the book.

The Stand is back, ladies and germs (get it?), and just in time. We’re not just in the midst of a King-aissance, thanks to the massively successful two-volume IT adaptation, but The Stand will be coming back to haunt a new generation in the form of Josh Boone’s upcoming take on the material, which premiers tonight on CBS All Access. Though 1994's version of The Stand may not be perfect, and it bungles the horror elements with some questionable effects and imagery, the drama of the story and the character interactions are enough to keep the viewer engaged.

BLOOD VESSEL (2020)

Is there any more consistently popular movie villain than the Nazi? Began with the horror and exploitation films of the 1970s with stuff like Ilsa: She Wolf of the S.S. and Shockwaves, Spielberg and co. picked up the ball and ran with it by choosing them as the primary villain in not one but two Indiana Jones movies in the ‘80s, and the trend continued to the present, mostly in the horror genre. (It’s hard to make a comedy about Nazis, unless you’re Mel Brooks or John Landis.) Nazi Germany’s atrocious part in history almost demands that their presence be treated with seriousness and sincerity, out of respect for the millions of lives lost, even if the movie that surrounds them is completely ridiculous. 

Occasionally, these Nazi-and-monster hybrids turn out to be pretty good, like 2018’s Overlord, 2013’s Frankenstein’s Army, and 2001’s obscure franchise starter The Outpost, but sometimes they’re pretty terrible, like whatever the Puppet Master series has been up to lately. In the middle of those extremes lie a pretty wide swath of very okay offerings, which can be found clogging up every streaming service there is (The Devil’s Rock, War of the Dead – I could go on and on). Existing among them is Justin Dix’s Blood Vessel.

A hodgepodge of Ghost Ship, (and Death Ship), 30 Days of Night, Aliens, and a tiny bit Evil Dead, Blood Vessel opens with a group of military personnel stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Among them are Sinclair (Nathan Phillips, Snakes on a Plane), an Australian soldier and former prisoner of war; Jane Prescott (Alyssa Sutherland, Vikings), a British medical officer; Alexander Teplov (Alex Cooke, Preacher), a Russian sniper; Jimmy Bigelow (Mark Diaco), your Ed Burns-ish yank soldier from Brooklyn or Queens or whatever sounds the most New York; Lydell Jackson (Christopher Kirby, Iron Sky – another Nazi horror thing), a Navy cook; Gerard Faraday (John Lloyd Fillingham), British intelligence; and Captain Malone (Robert Taylor, Kong: Skull Island). After spending an unknown amount of time stranded at sea, they hitch a ride on a passing Nazi warship and climb on deck to see that the ship appears abandoned. After doing a little investigating, they find a little Romanian girl named Mya (Ruby Isobell Hall), a creepy journal of incantations and drawings, an ancient coffin chained shut, and a whole lot of dead Nazis. If you’ve ever seen a horror movie in your life, you…probably know what happens next.

At no point does Blood Vessel feel like something unique or groundbreaking, even though it tries to freshen the ingredients by exploring underseen dynamics in World War II-era movies. Phillips, a native Australian, plays an Australian soldier, to which Bigelow’s smarmy New Yorker says, “I didn’t even know you people were fighting this war,” and in a modern cinematic rarity, Cooke’s Russian soldier is a good guy. Beyond that, Blood Vessel soon becomes your fairly standard vampire flick as each survivor falls victim to the bloodsucking scourge. (And may I quickly editorialize by saying Dix really missed the boat, forgive the pun, by failing to name his movie Naziferatu – no forgiveness required for that pun.) There’s nothing inherently wrong with Blood Vessel, and it’s perfectly entertaining in that superficial Hollywood-ish kind of way, but there’s something about it that prevents the audience from fully engaging in the conflict or sympathizing with the characters. 

Phillips’ Sinclair vies to be the typical hero type with Man With No Name/Snake Plissken vibes, and it mostly works, although the script occasionally does him a disservice and neutralizes some of his swagger. (On the tail end of his explaining that he was a P.O.W. for three years, he shows off a picture of his wife and talks about how she was told he was killed in action and she’d since remarried and had a baby…but how does he know all this if he was locked up for three years?) Each character is given a “thing” to offer them forward action, but most of their motivations feel more like convenient contrivances than anything that lends the movie context. Bigelow’s a dick so he does dick things, Prescott’s a medical officer so she keeps offering to take people to “sick bay,” and Faraday is British intelligence, which means he never saw real combat, which means he’s a worm and acts fragile and wormy the whole time. Dix works well with his obviously limited budget, putting most of his resources into the good-looking practical effects and wisely falling back on visual trickery only when it’s called for. There’s a sense that everyone involved is doing their best with the material while also not taking things too seriously, and that derives in Blood Vessel’s biggest success.

Blood Vessel doesn’t have the budget or scope of Overlord, the creepiness of The Outpost, or the ingenuity of Frankenstein’s Army, but it’s definitely worth seeing if you’re up for some comic book-styled B-movie horror. The acting ensemble is mostly capable (even though everyone botches the accents they’re going for), there’s a fine amount of blood and grue, and the Nazis-meet-vampires concept is certainly a twist on the formula, even if it unfolds the same way that other monster movies tend to do. You won’t come away saying Blood Vessel is a new favorite, but it definitely sucks in the good way. (Best pun you’ll read all day.)

Blood Vessel is now available on region free Blu-ray from Umbrella Entertainment, which you can purchase directly from their website.

BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS (2020)

The concept of everyone existing in their own bubble is becoming more and more prominent as time goes on and the world/culture/politics finds increasing ways to divide us. Where one person hears verifiable facts, another hears flagrant falsehoods. Where one person sees hate, another sees freedom. Now more than ever, for reasons right or wrong, people are seeking communities where they can be themselves, express their own ideas without judgment, and have those ideas validated by those who think like them. Whether they’re safe spaces on campuses or hate threads on 8chan, people are seeking commonality, and if they look hard enough, they’ll find it.

The Roaring ‘20s, formerly a dive bar in Las Vegas, Nevada, was one of those places where people could meet, thrive in each other’s company, exchange ideas, trade regrets, and find a little hope while staring down the empty bottom of a bar glass. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, a documentary by filmmakers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross (colloquially known as the Ross Brothers), takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to a bar’s last hurrah in operation as its patrons filter in for one final morning/day/night of drinks, laughs, chaos, tension, and tears. As we meet them, we sense the history they have with the bar and its other regulars. They’re not random folks who wander in for a spritz. They each have a name, a personality; for them, this is routine, a part of their lives, a haven for their worries and whiskey wisdom. And the things that come out of their mouths are unexpectedly poignant, hilarious, offensive, or downright befuddling. 

“It’s a place you can go [when] nobody else don’t want your ass.” 

There’s Michael, whom we meet trudging to the bar first thing in the morning, where he offers a hello to Marc the bartender before heading into the bathroom to shave and put himself together. A bit-part actor (whose only credit you’ve likely heard of is the Will Ferrell Comedy Get Hard), Michael is brutally honest in his hungover self-assessment: he’s an alcoholic and failure (which his fellow patrons don’t refute in an act of empty support), but that, to his credit, he didn’t become an alcoholic until he’d already termed himself a failure.  

There’s Bruce, a Vietnam War veteran, who has the saddest eyes in the room. He talks of losing his fellow soldiers in his platoon, the pain of that moment, and the pain that haunts him to that day. He breaks down in tears over how his country treated him after he came home. The bar is all he has, meaning its patrons, and with it closing down, he has no one left – no friends, no family. Bruce later leaves the bar toward the end of the night, unspotted, with no proper on-screen goodbye, spilling fresh tears. The only witness to his slow descent into the darkness of night down a lonely alley is the camera. 

I could keep you here all day with all the different “characters” of the Roaring ‘20s. There’s Ira, an aggressive, antagonistic, gravelly-voiced drunk who tells one of his fellow patrons to “get a pistol and shoot yourself in the forehead” – and this before his anonymous place of employment actually knows to call the bar when he fails to show up for his shift. There’s John, a young Australian, a bringer of donuts, and wielder of a mysterious brown bag that’s referenced a few times during the doc, to which John says “don’t worry about it,” but when its contents are finally revealed, it’s hilariously perfect. (John later dabs a full tab onto the tip of his tongue once the party really gets going, and then soon acknowledges, “That was too much acid. The number of acids needs to be less.”) There’s Pam, a 60-year-old bar maiden who is quick to flash her breasts multiple times in hopes that someone else will remark on their youthful appearance. Slinging them drinks are first- and second-shift bartenders, Marc, a bearded guitar-player, and Shay, a quick-witted mother of unscrupulous son Tra (pronounced Trey), who sits outside the bar with his two friends sharing joints, sneaking beers, and eavesdropping on all the chaos that leaks out from the back exit. 

“Hey Paul, could you bring me the toilet paper? 
I got a bad situation in here.”

From their outward appearance, these are the people you pass in the street whom you would so easily judge. We see Michaels and Bruces every day – people with missing teeth, scraggly hair, prematurely aged features, military service baseball caps – and we can tell they’ve lived long, tough lives…but we judge them for it. If it’s a Michael, we write in our heads all the poor choices he’s made; if it’s a Bruce, we see the military emblems and assume that he’s sad and broken from a war that stole his youth and his joy. We don’t know their story; we just know they’re taking too long in front of us in line at the store, or they’re trying to engage perfect strangers in conversation because of their loneliness and their desire to feel worth. What Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets reinforces is that, in this small bubble of the Roaring ‘20s, these are real people with real relationships. They’ve lost family, traveled the world, served their country, forged relationships. They fight, they flirt, they trade advice and regrets. For whatever reason, the outside world has rejected them. Their friends and families have left or died or never existed at all. For many of them, this is the only world that matters to them, and with the documentary filming the bar’s final day, we see this world coming to an end and how everyone reacts to it. 

Once a viewer catches a glimpse of all the different drunken characters slurring profanities, flashing aged extremities, and nearly getting into physical altercations, that viewer might blithely describe the Roaring ‘20s as the anti-Cheers, but that viewer would be wrong. It’s not the anti-Cheers. It’s just Cheers. Full-on Cheers. At the Roaring ‘20s, everyone knows your name, what you drink, what troubles you; they know your history, your sadness, your triumphs, your pain. They drink together, naturally, but they dance together, too; they hug and catch up. They watch Jeopardy, shout their answers to the TV, get nothing right, and good-naturedly curse “smarmy fuck” Alex Trebek for always knowing the answer. They watch talk shows about planning the ideal cruise ship vacation, perhaps knowing that they aren’t just the last people on earth to be caught dead on a cruise, but they probably couldn’t afford to go anyway. And it’s no coincidence that, later on in the night when the rambunctious crowd hits a fevered pitch, the camera happens to capture that same TV now showing a ‘50s dramatization of the sinking of the Titanic, the most famous shipwreck in history. Because whether they be majestic “unsinkable” ships, or periods of youthful happiness, or local dive bars, things come to an end. The most magnificent creations die slow deaths. Nothing is forever.

 “You just tried to fight a man with tattoos on his eyelids.”

It’s both ironic and appropriate that the very bar whose last day we’re witnessing happens to be called the Roaring ‘20s – perhaps the most infamous decade of American history, which began with promise following the advent of the automotive industry’s assembly line, kickstarting production of Henry Ford’s Model T and changing the world, along with the beginning of the suffrage movement that led to a woman’s right to the vote, but ending with the Great Depression of 1929, which saw the loss of millions of jobs and homes, and which saw, sadly, a massive increase in suicides. It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a long period of suffering and hopelessness where people felt aimless, useless, and without a place to go. 

Unlike that infamous abrupt ending of American history, 1929, the patrons of the Roaring ‘20s were at least allowed to pre-mourn an ending they knew was coming. Because of this, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets feels like the last episode of a TV show that was on for years, which saw cast members come and go during its many seasons, and for which every one of those characters came back for one last appearance, acknowledging the part they’ve played in its history and reminding audiences they will always be part of it – even if their memories of it aren’t always so rosy. At one point, Michael, the self-confessed alcoholic failure, drunkenly embraces a younger patron named Pete and begs him to choose a different path – one that doesn’t end in finding another bar once the Roaring ‘20s closes its doors. “You need to get out of this bar and don’t go into another one, and don’t go into another one after that,” he tells him. “You can still do something other than what I’ve done. There is nothing more boring than…a guy who used to do stuff who doesn’t do stuff no more because he’s in a bar.” 

When Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets comes to an end, the viewer will no doubt have a variety of different interpretations on how to feel. What did we just witness? Was it a collection of losers for us to gawk at, feel emboldened by the explicitness of their failures, all to feel better about our own lives? Was it a glimpse into the lives of a bunch of down-and-outers who have nothing left but a place in which to drown their woes? Was it the dissolving of the only family many of these patrons have ever known? Was it a tale of hope that there exists out in the world a community for every kind of person, scrubbing reality of any indication that we’re all actually alone? That, ultimately, will be up to every viewer to decide. What I do know, however, is that what I witnessed was beautiful, that you can find beauty in places you’d least expect to find it, that it does offer hope, that these men and women from every different possible walk of life – age, race, gender, sexual orientation, profession, political ideology – found each other, and in doing so, found comfort with each other. They found a community that lifted them up, or tore them down when they needed it, or offered a place to escape, to exorcise their demons, confess their sins, do penance, and amend their lives. They found a place to dance and sing and laugh and cry and to be utterly themselves without judgment. Can you honestly say you have that? Because I’m not sure I can.

“This was a real nice place you had here.”