Suspiria

Suspiria doesn't waste any time in getting started.  American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives in Germany to attend a prestigious dance academy.  When she arrives at the academy, she witnesses a frantic young woman screaming and fleeing from the school into the deep darkness and pouring rain.  The young woman finds refuge at a friend's place - or so it seems, until someone or something tracks her down, brutally stabs her, hangs her, and throws her body through a stained-glass ceiling window.  And all this before Suzy even arrives at school!  Things only go downhill from there, and Suzy begins to suspect that her new school may be more than just a simple dance academy.

The plot is interesting, but hardly developed.  The film plays out like a nightmarish journey in which no one - the characters, the viewer, perhaps director Dario Argento himself - knows where they're going.  Odd scenes involving maggots and bat attacks are included without explanation.  The death scenes are implausible and don't hold up well under scrutiny.  After the fact, questions like, "Why would a school have a room dedicated entirely to housing nothing but barbed wire (which looked surprisingly free of barbs anyway)?" will surely pop up, but when you're in the moment, those questions will be far from your mind.  Suspiria is more about the visual impact anyway.

Much has been said about Argento's brilliant use of color.  Many of the school's long and winding hallways and rooms are awash in bright reds, strong greens, and deep blues.  This adds a whole other dimension to the film, making it a feast for the eyes.  And ears; it's impossible to discuss Suspiria without mentioning the soundtrack by Goblin, which consists of creepy, chanted "La la la la"'s over a background of sinister bells, punctuated by growls of "Witch!" and bursts of synthesized keyboards.  It adds much to the film; I doubt it would be as effective without the music.  As for the spoken audio, I know it was the norm for films of this type, but the English dubbing is somewhat distracting.

Suspiria is very light on plot development, and the character development is pretty much nonexistent.  Instead, the film is a progressively over-the-top build-up to a somewhat rushed and tacked-on conclusion.  Suspiria is certainly not without its flaws, but the visuals and audio make for an eerily atmospheric, surreal experience, one which you surely won't be able to forget.


The DVD from Anchor Bay contains a good amount of extras, including theatrical trailers, TV and radio spots, biographies of the major players, a still gallery, and a rather entertaining Daemonia music video.  The biographies are more in-depth than the usual DVD bios, which consist of nothing more than a list of film credits, offering some interesting information; for example, Harper turned down a role in Annie Hall to star in Suspiria.

 

Deadly Friend

One of director Wes Craven's lesser-known films, 1986's Deadly Friend is the story of Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux), a teenager who moves to a new town with his mother Jeannie.  He's studying brain surgery at a local college and seems to know more than the professor, teaching the class at one point.  He's also built BB, a talking, artificially intelligent robot.  When he's not busy doing genius stuff, Paul is making new friends in neighborhood kids Tom and Sam (Kristy Swanson).  Paul and Sam like each other, but their romance never really gets started thanks to Sam's abusive alcoholic father.  When Sam shows up on the Conways' doorstep, bloodied after taking a punch to the nose, both Jeannie and Paul do nothing to stop the abuse. 

Eventually, Sam ends up dead at her father's hands, and BB ends up blown to bits after a Halloween prank goes wrong.  Tom blames himself for BB's demise, as he was the one who handed BB the basketball, which the poor robot then tossed into the yard of the shotgun-wielding neighborhood crazy Elvira Parker (Anne Ramsey).  To redeem himself, he agrees to assist Paul in drugging his mother (apparently saying they were hanging out at Tom's house wasn't a good enough excuse), stealing Sam's body, and implanting BB's microchip into her brain in order to bring her back to life.  Tom is perhaps the truest friend in the history of cinema.  After the surgery is completed, and the zombie/robot Frankenstein monster has been unleashed, Tom actually asks Paul if they're even now.  Paul confirms that they are.

The potential for a good story is there, but it fails for a number of reasons.  First of all, there's really no sense of romance between Paul and Sam, just a feeling that they're good friends.  In fact, Paul seems more upset about BB's "death," hysterically sobbing and wailing, than he does about Sam's demise.  The makeup is laughable, with Swanson sporting blue eye shadow around her eyes to show the audience that she's dead.  Interestingly, she still has a full head of hair following the brain surgery.  Even though he's a marvel of modern science, BB knows only one word - his name; the rest of the time, he splurts gibberish, sounding like a robotic Tasmanian Devil.  Naturally, he speaks almost the entire time he's on screen.

Furthermore, and reportedly due to studio interference, the tone is all over the place; it's a tragic love story with a few Nightmare on Elm Street-lite dream sequences, random comical murders (including a basketball which shatters a woman's head as if it were a bloody piñata), and a baffling final shot which seems to set up a (thankfully, never-realized) sequel.  The tacked-on finale is doubly disappointing because, had it ended a scene earlier, it would have been predictable, but effective.

Ultimately, Deadly Friend's biggest flaw is that it just can't decide what it wants to be.  Is it a warning against the dangers of technology, a sad tale about child abuse, or a hilariously campy cheesefest?  Um... yes?

Slashers

Released in 2001, but originally conceived in 1998, Slashers' premise was ahead of its time.  An extreme Japanese reality/game show called $la$her$ invites contestants to compete for fabulous cash prizes.  The only catch is, they have to elude the masked murderers trying to do them in.

This time around, there are six contestants, all Americans, and three killers:  wild redneck Chainsaw Charlie, twisted priest Preacherman, and psychotic Dr. Ripper.  The contestants include law student Megan (Sarah Joslyn Crowder), level-headed Devon (Tony Curtis Blondell), preppy Michael (Kieran Keller), model Brenda (Sofia de Medeiros), tough guy Rick (Jerry Sprio), and tough girl Rebecca (Carolina Pla).

Slashers' biggest flaw is in its characters and acting.  The contestants are clichés; most are grating and annoying, while some are okay - not well-developed or interesting, by any means, but relatively inoffensive.  The worst is Megan; Crowder whines, scrunches up her eyes, and delivers each line, taking deep breaths in between words as if it pains her.  The killers, though, fare better.  They're introduced as celebrities, with throngs of cheering, banner-waving fans welcoming their arrival.  Each has their own distinct personality, especially surprising considering that two of the three (Chainsaw Charlie and Preacherman) are played by the same actor (Nick Napier).

Slashers is shot on video, but this works in the film's favor, adding to the feeling that the audience is actually watching a cheesy reality game show on TV.  Adding to the effect are the sugary, upbeat theme song, with its cheery refrain "They're never gonna last!" and the peppy, perky host Miho, who wears a Statue of Liberty get-up, complete with headdress and torch.  The action even pauses for commerical breaks - literally, as the contestants and slashers must freeze in place until the break is over.

It's also worth mentioning that Slashers is filmed in a way that makes it seem like one continuous shot with no cuts, adding to the illusion that cameraman Hideo is traveling with the contestants.  Because there are only six contestants, most of the blood and guts are displayed in the show's opening montage.  The effects are low-budget, but there is plenty of blood splattering and spurting, spilling guts, and even a body sawed clean in half.

Writer/director/editor Maurice Devereaux comes up with some great ideas and seems to have a real love for filmmaking.  Budget constraints prevent Slashers from being as legitimately good as it could have been, but, as it is, it's a very fun guilty pleasure, a brilliant premise with a flawed execution.


The DVD is loaded with special features, including an in-depth making of documentary, deleted scenes, director's commentary, trailers, and some oddities, such as an Inside the Actors Studio-style interview with Chainsaw Charlie and an interactive soundtrack that allows the viewer to pick and choose which tracks they want to listen to.

Jason X

I finally watched Jason X.  I'd seen all of the Friday the 13ths in the '90s, but skipped Jason X when it came out.  I saw Freddy vs. Jason and the Friday reboot when they were released, but still I didn't give Jason X a chance.  Now that I have, I must say I'm glad that I did because that means I can review it and never watch it again.

While the earlier Paramount sequels were basically the same thing over and over again - Jason stalking and slashing a bunch of camp counselors - New Line's first venture, Jason Goes to Hell, which attempted to do something new, was full of fail.  In Jason X, the indestructible zombie mongoloid is cryogenically frozen for 400+ years.  He is presumed dead, but when two teenagers on a space ship start bumping uglies, Jason awakes to fulfill his duty to kill them immediately.

The futuristic setting really does not work for Jason.  This feels very much like a Sci Fi Channel (or Syfy, as it's called now for some reason) original movie, with lousy acting, effects, and story.  The body count is high, but few of the kills are interesting.  The best involves Jason shoving a girl headfirst into some liquid nitrogen, then smashing her face.  In a fun take on the "sleeping bag kill" from Part VII, Jason beats two drug/alcohol/premarital sex-loving girls to death while they're still in their sleeping bags.  Unfortunately, the rest of the 20+ kills are forgettable.

Only a fool would go into a film about Jason in space expecting it to be good, but it's not even bad in an entertaining way.  A film featuring David Cronenberg and an android whose nipples fall off should not be boring, but somehow Jason X manages to be just that.  And now I'm suddenly thinking about the possibilities had the movie featured David Cronenberg as an android whose nipples fall off...

Instead, we are subjected to watching a bunch of people we don't care about wandering around a cheesy-looking space ship set.  Jason X does get one thing right - it has a character deliver a line of dialogue which summarizes the film perfectly: "This sucks on so many levels!"

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

After Paramount sold the Friday the 13th franchise to New Line, one might think the studio would do a Freddy vs. Jason crossover, as both Friday and Nightmare on Elm Street were now owned by the same studio.  Instead, New Line gave audiences... this - 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.

Jason is taken out by the FBI (there's even an airstrike, prompting me to wonder just who in the hell authorized such things), and his body is blown to bits.  However, a coroner is entranced by his blackened heart and chows down on the thing (the heart, not Jason's penis, although we do get a view of that).  It is soon revealed that Jason is actually a shapeshifter who must hop bodies when his current vessel gets weak.  And he is unstoppable, because, as we discover, only a Voorhees can kill him.  Fortunately, Jason just so happens to have a sister (never mentioned in the eight prior installments), Diana, whose daughter Jessica (Kari Keegan) is separated from Steven (John LeMay), the father of her baby. 

Jessica is dating Robert, a newscaster who landed an interview with Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), the also never before mentioned Jason expert/bounty hunter.  Duke gives up some vital information in exchange for the opportunity to break some of Steven's fingers.  Now Steven must convince Jessica that she is the only one who can stop Jason with a mystical dagger during a final battle in the Voorhees house.

It seems like no one involved with the production of this film had any idea just what to do with it, so they just threw in everything they could think on, hoping it would somehow gel together.  The story gets increasingly more ridiculous as it goes along, and it really doesn't feel like a Friday the 13th film thanks to the almost complete absence of Jason in his own body.  Which might be a good thing actually, as the normally-silent Jason grunts and groans like a monkey during the film's opening. 

The original script didn't include any teenagers getting slaughtered in the woods, but one sequence was added based on test audiences' demands.  This scene includes what is easily the best kill in the film, as a girl is sliced right up the middle as she rides her boyfriend.  The rest of the violence comes about when Jason is transferring his essence (read: grimy slug monster) to his victims so he can take over their bodies.  At one point, this involves Jason strapping some dude to a table, giving him a nice clean shave, and leaning in for an open-mouthed kiss.

I could go on about the inconsistencies and stupidity, but I'd be here for days.  This film is pretty much a complete waste of time.  None of the details from the convoluted plot are mentioned in any of the previous or follow-up Jason flicks (yes, shockingly, this was, like 1984's The Final Chapter, not so final), so it's best to just skip The Final Friday and pretend it never happened.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

After seven movies featuring teenagers getting slaughtered at Camp Crystal Lake, it seems the filmmakers finally decided to change locales with 1989’s Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  However, the title is misleading, as Jason doesn’t arrive in Manhattan until more than an hour through the film, and even then, it’s Vancouver doing a poor job of standing in for New York.

The film begins with a brief prologue in New York, but quickly moves to Crystal Lake, where Jason offs two teens, then commandeers their boat and heads up the river to the ocean.  Yes, Crystal Lake somehow leads to the ocean.  Once there, Jason climbs on board a cruise ship that’s carrying a high school class to New York for their senior trip.  Rennie (Jensen Daggett) is our obvious Final Girl, a writer who has visions/hallucinations of Jason as a child.  Also along for the ride are Rennie’s boyfriend Sean (Scott Reeves), who feels pressured to live up to his captain father’s expectations; rocker chick JJ (Saffron Henderson), who has apparently not mastered the art of actual guitar-playing or air guitar-playing; b!tchy blonde Tamara (Sharlene Martin), who tries to blackmail her teacher with a biology project which consists of her getting half-naked; and Rennie’s uncle Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman), who’s also the biology teacher Tamara attempts to seduce. 

Interestingly enough, the crew consists only of two people, both of whom are killed early on, leaving Sean to take over as captain.  McCulloch doesn’t give him time to grieve for his dead father before criticizing his lack of nautical knowledge.  McCulloch also accuses the deckhand, who’s been popping up to warn the travelers that “this voyage is doomed,” of committing the murders.  Richman really makes you hate this asshole.  At least he inspires some emotion; words cannot describe just how dull Rennie is.

When the survivors finally make it to Manhattan (side note: one is positively jubilant, singing a song, completely unperturbed by the bloodbath that claimed nearly all of his classmates), it is revealed to be a cesspool.  Rennie is almost immediately kidnapped, drugged, and nearly raped by some gangbangers; a hulking zombie killer doesn’t turn heads on the street; rats swim in barrels of toxic waste; and said toxic waste empties into the sewers every night at midnight.  Bafflingly, Jason has a smorgasbord of potential New York victims, but ignores them all, only interested in the survivors from the ship.  He even turns down the chance to take down a group of street punks, opting instead to simply lift his mask to frighten them away.  At least he destroys their awesome boom box.

As usual, Jason Takes Manhattan was censored by the MPAA, but there are still some memorable death scenes, such as a rooftop boxing match between Jason and a tough guy which ends in a decapitation, a dirty syringe through the chest, and a hot sauna rock to the torso.  Kane Hodder returns as Jason, and he succeeds at standing and looking menacing.  The role no longer requires much walking, as the character seems to have become an expert at teleportation.  Unfortunately, the climactic final battle is pitiable, and it’s best to chalk it up as another of Rennie’s hallucinations.

For all its flaws, this movie doesn’t really get boring, and it is refreshing to see Jason away from Crystal Lake.  His reaction to the billboard which he spots upon arriving in New York is priceless.  Of course, I wish the title weren’t so misleading, but I suppose no one would have turned out for Jason Takes a Cruise or Jason Takes Vancouver.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

Despite its title, there's nothing particularly new about Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.  The film gets off to a bad start with a cheesy voice-over narration accompanying flashbacks to the previous movies.  (The flashback montages were mercifully absent from parts V and VI.)  Jason remains in his underwater prison, and all is well at Camp Crystal Lake.  That is, until telekinetic psychic Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) accidentally revives him while attempting to use her powers to dredge up her dead father from the bottom of the lake.  Tina blames herself for her father's death, and she's at Crystal Lake with her mother and doctor to get better.  But her doctor doesn't seem like he has Tina's best interests in mind.  Oh yes, and there's a group of teenagers next door waiting to throw a surprise birthday party.

At least The New Blood gets rid of the Tommy Jarvis character (after three films, there wasn't much else to do with his story).  Unfortunately, the teenagers are the very definition of interchangeable.  I was thoroughly bored watching their antics, and, for the most part, I didn't know who was who or why I should care.  Lincoln has to be one of the worst Friday girls; she's either whining incessantly or looking completely confused (sometimes both).  The climactic final battle between Tina and Jason, during which Tina keeps throwing stuff at Jason using only her mind, is a joke.  Equally uninteresting is her romance with Nick (Kevin Blair), who's known her for, what, a few hours, and knows nothing about her except that she thinks she killed her father, she has telekinetic powers, and she's spent a good part of her life in a mental institute.  Yeah, I can see how he'd be won over.

Direction by John Carl Buechler is similarly uninteresting, with bland visuals, uneven pacing, and a climax no one really wanted to see.  The death scenes were heavily edited to obtain an R rating (not Buechler's fault), and as a result they're among the most neutered, bloodless kills in the franchise.  The excised footage can be found on the deluxe edition DVD, and it's an improvement, but certainly not enough to make the film worthwhile.  Jason gets a couple new weapons this time around, including a sleeping bag and a party horn.  Joy.

The New Blood is notable because it marks the first appearance of Kane Hodder as Jason.  Hodder would go on to reprise the role until Jason X, making him the only actor to don the hockey mask for more than one installment.  Hodder is masterful in the role, proving he can... stand and walk with the best of them.  I must say I don't understand why his Jason receives so much praise from fans.  Not that he doesn't do a good job, but it's not exactly the most demanding of roles.  The Jason makeup is impressive at least, showing evidence of his numerous "deaths" over the years.  Aside from that, there's nothing else to recommend here.  Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is among the most dull and uninteresting entries in an unimpressive franchise.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

1985's Friday the 13th Part V took the franchise in a new direction by having someone other than Jason don the hockey mask. However, Paramount decided to bring Jason back for the next installment, which necessitated ignoring the previous entry.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives begins with Jason's resurrection at the hands of Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), the boy who killed Jason in Part IV. Never mind the fact that Jason's body was cremated, or that Part V ended with Tommy going completely insane and preparing to follow in Jason's footsteps. Here, Tommy has gotten out of a mental institution and made his way to Jason's grave to make sure that his enemy is still lying dormant. Upon seeing the maggot-infested corpse, Tommy rams a metal pole through it for good measure, but lightning strikes, reanimating Sir Voorhees, who immediately punches clean through Tommy's friend. Now Tommy must try to convince people that he's not crazy and stop Jason once again.

Writer/director Tom McLoughlin seems to have given up on trying to scare people, instead relying on heaping doses of humor to entertain. One character comments, "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly." A drunken groundskeeper rants about the sh!theads who've dug up Jason's body, looking directly at the camera as he comments, "Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment." He later asks, "Do I look like a farthead?" The camera cuts to a group of children screaming, "Yeah!" There's an interminable sequence involving a group of businessmen (and woman) playing a game of paintball in the woods. One is very hungry, one is upset that a woman gets to play the game, and one engages in Charlie Chaplin-esque shenanigans with a tree branch. Eventually, the men wear bandannas around their heads that say, "Dead." I almost expected one of them to break the fourth wall to say, "Ha! We're so clever! Do you get it?"

This entry deviates slightly from the previous films by actually having children at the camp, but of course, we know that none of the children will actually be killed. However, their presence does lead to a nice moment where one of the kids asks, as Jason rampages through the camp, "So, what were you going to be when you grew up?" The small children are actually much smarter than the teenagers. When one of the children tells the counselors she saw someone outside her window, a counselor tries to reassure her that it was just a dream. "No," she insists, "it was real, just like on TV." Later, she presents one of them with Jason's blood-stained machete as evidence, but is told that the other counselors must have been playing a joke.

Usually, in these types of movies, the kids are either completely oblivious or running around like idiots, never thinking to get the police involved. Refreshingly, Tommy goes straight to the cops here, but they don't believe him; in fact, Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) locks him up, enabling Tommy to meet the sheriff's cute daughter Megan (Jennifer Cooke), who bafflingly is attracted to this jailed mental patient. These are the only three noteworthy characters; everyone else is there to die (usually relatively bloodlessly, due to MPAA cuts). There's also a surprisingly effective moment where we don't see the actual kill, only blood spatter hitting the window, with the bloody aftermath revealed later. The best death scene involves a body being broken in half, but the rest of the kills are pretty forgettable. The RV kill itself isn't particularly memorable, but the character's reaction is; as a woman is screaming and kicking, trying to fight off Jason, her boyfriend comments, "Sounds like you're having fun back there! Mind if I join you?" As the struggle continues, he again asks, "Mind if I join you?"

The over-the-top humor might work for some, but I felt that it was too obvious and really not very funny. The characters weren't memorable or likeable, the death scenes were tame, and even the conclusion was unsatisfying. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives really makes me wish he hadn't.

Food Porn

I realize that my blog has been severely lacking in pictures of delicious food, so this post is dedicated to showcasing some of the things I experienced at Blackbird Pizzeria, one of my favorite vegan spots in the city.

Slice of Hawaiian pizza with seitan bacon and pineapples and a chocolate peanut butter cupcake! Yum!


Slice of Red Dawn pizza with roasted red potato, roasted red pepper, smoked shallots, and kalamata olive tapenade, and a peanut butter brownie! The pizza was okay, but I'm not a fan of olives, so I'm not the target audience.


Habanero citrus seitan wings with cucumber dip! Spicy, but delicious!


Chocolate peanut butter brownie and cookies and cream brownie! Party in my mouth!

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

In 1984, Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter seemingly killed off machete-wielding hockey-masked murderer Jason Voorhees for good.  However, the flick made millions, and Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning hit movie theatres just one year later, in 1985.

Corey Feldman returns as Tommy Jarvis, the boy who killed Jason, but then, because Corey was busy appearing in The Goonies, we skip ahead a few years to find an older Tommy (now played by John Shepherd) on his way to the Pinehurst Institute, a halfway house for troubled teens.  Tommy is still being haunted by visions of Jason, but hopefully life at the halfway house will stabilize him and prepare him to re-enter society.  Unfortunately, just after Tommy's arrival, one of the residents is brutally murdered by one of the more mentally unstable youth (who was, for some reason, permitted to chop wood with an axe despite being clearly psychopathic).  For some reason, the institute is not shut down, and more bodies start piling up.  Has Jason returned from the dead?  Is Tommy in fact behind the murders?  Or is it the shifty, bug-eyed bit player whom the camera lingers on just a bit too long during his few scenes?

(spoilers ahead!)
That's right, the killer in part five is not Jason, which is a major reason franchise fans hate this one.  Honestly, I didn't think it was that big a deal.  The guy's motive really doesn't make sense once you think about it, but we still get to see a guy in a hockey mask running around hacking up teenagers, and it's easier to believe that there's a copycat killer than to buy the resurrection of Jason in every damn movie in the franchise (which didn't die, even after another "Final" Friday).  Part five also reveals that Jason was cremated, making his resurrection in part six even more questionable.
(/spoilers)

There is a lot of nudity on display here, but only one oddly tame sex scene, which was apparently heavily cut by the MPAA, along with many of the death scenes.  There are the usual stabbings and decapitations, along with some nasty stuff like hedge clippers to the eyes.  It's a shame we'll probably never see an uncut version, but with around twenty kills, the body count is probably the highest in the series.  There aren't that many kids at the halfway house, so the film starts introducing characters for the sole purpose of killing them off, leading to some truly bizarre scenes.  One involves a pair of foul-mouthed greasers who seem to have wandered in from a '50s movie; another involves a couple singing to each other through the walls of an outhouse in which the male is taking a dump.

As our hero/possible killer, Shepherd says maybe 25 words during the entire film, but he does a good job of appearing twitchy and uncomfortable, understandable given the events his character has experienced.  No one else is particularly memorable, except for Tiffany Helm as the goth/punk rock chick who enjoys doing the robot to new wave music alone in her room.

Ridiculous moments like this are fun, and, while it's never really scary, there's definitely a mean streak running through the film.  With its high body count, abundant nudity, and delightful musical interludes, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning isn't entirely deserving of its poor reputation.

Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter

In 1984, Paramount Pictures released Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, which, as the title suggests, was intended to close the book on hockey-masked serial killer Jason Voorhees.  Of course, that was not the case, as this film's box office success led to another six sequels (eight if we're including the mashup Freddy vs. Jason and the Friday the 13th remake).

As much as I love horror movies, I'm really not a fan of the Friday the 13th flicks, but if I had to pick a favorite of the sequels, this would be it.  This time around, in addition to the cabin full of horny young adults, there's a family next door - Mrs. Jarvis, daughter Trish, and son Tommy (Corey Feldman).  Trish is our obvious final girl, while Tommy... is something special.  He takes pride in his carefully crafted collection of monster masks, inviting a strange man up to his bedroom to "show him something" - a brown monster head on a stick which Tommy controls by moving its eyes and mouth whilst making little growling sounds.  Aside from that, he's just your average preteen boy, reacting to the sight of a naked woman by squealing, wiggling his fingers, and twirling around in his bed as if in the midst of a seizure.

If this were any other Friday the 13th, Tommy would easily be the most entertaining character of the bunch, but this installment boasts Crispin Glover as Jimmy, one of the vacationing horny young adults.  In his first appearance, Jimmy questions why he continually strikes out with women.  His buddy Ted taps his knees, running it through his imaginary computer, and replies, "Computer says you're a dead fuck."  I didn't count, but I can safely guess that the words "dead fuck" are repeated at least ten more times during the course of the film.  Fortunately, when a woman shows some interest in Jimmy, he gets to tell Ted, "Run that through your computer."  And then of course there's the most glorious minute in the entire Friday the 13th franchise, in which Jimmy wins a chick over by performing his mating dance, a full-out arms flailing body spasm set to an obscure '80s metal/new wave track.

The body count is high, and gore is in good supply, with makeup and effects work courtesy of Tom Savini.  Some of the more memorable moments involve a speargun to the groin, a corkscrew to the hand (followed by a machete to the face!), an axe to the chest, a throw from a window, and (spoiler) Jason's demise at the hands of bald Corey Feldman.  It seems we are to believe that the dude who's hunting Jason to avenge the death of his sister will face off against Jason in the climax, but instead, dude gets jumped by Jason and screams, "He's killing me!  He's killing me!" before taking a breath, then adding, "He's killing me!"  (On the downside, the death scenes are obviously cut, but the extended versions can be found on the Deluxe Edition DVD.)

Dead fucks.  Imaginary computers.  Banana drool.  Old school peep shows.  Pot smoking.  Premarital sex.  Dog through window.  "He's killing me!"  Bald Corey Feldman.  The Crispin.  Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is clearly the must-see hit of 1984.

Friday the 13th Part 3

A year after Friday the 13th Part 2, Steve Miner returned to helm the inventively-titled Friday the 13th Part 3, becoming the only person to direct more than one entry in the franchise.

The action picks up where the second film ended, as the ending of Part 2 is the beginning of Part 3.  After a few minutes, a disco version of Harry Manfredini's score rears its ugly head, and the opening credits appear, plunging us into the third dimension.  Oh yes, this sucker's in 3D, and the Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu Ray come equipped with two pairs of 3D glasses, so the home audience can experience the thrill of seeing joints, yo-yos, popcorn, TV antennas, and baseball bats shoved towards them in glorious shades of red and blue.   Far too much time is spent on this ridiculousness, including an extended scene in which two guys juggle, and the scariest effects are a rubber snake on a cord and an eyeball popping out at the screen.   When objects aren't being shoved at the camera, the glasses make the already drab picture even more murky and blurry, and if the glasses aren't worn, it negates the purpose of having said objects shoved at the camera.

This time, the setting is a farmhouse instead of a camp.   Jason's potential victims include a chick who experienced something terrible years earlier, a guy who walks around on his hands, some middle-aged stoners, and a chubby prankster.  There's also a biker gang made up of two guys and a girl, who decide to cause some mischief in the barn, where two of them run afoul of Jason.   Inexplicably, the other one apparently decides to hang out there until the climax.  By that point, Jason has a machete, so perhaps he was just waiting to ensure he'd get a cool death scene, as opposed to being ambushed while taking a dump.  Oh, and in addition to the machete, Jason dons his soon-to-be-trademark hockey mask for the first time.

Part 3 doesn't deviate from the formula established by the first two films: "teenagers" go to the woods, ignore the loony guy who warns them of their impending doom, have sex, do drugs, and are horribly killed.   Even the ending is a blatant rip-off of the first film's.  The film is also surprisingly light on the gore and nudity (most likely due to MPAA censorship), so unfortunately, unless you're a huge fan of 3D, Friday the 13th Part 3 really isn't all that exciting.

Friday the 13th Part 2

The success of the first Friday the 13th ensured that a sequel would be rushed out, and Friday the 13th Part 2 is basically a remake of that film, only this time, there's a different killer.  Following her decapitation of insane murderess Pamela Voorhees, sole survivor Alice (Adrienne King) is stalked and slain within the film's first five minutes.  The action then jumps to a new camp, located unsettlingly close to Camp Crystal Lake, where a bunch of teenagers get together to have sex, do drugs, and tell scary campfire tales of Mrs. Voorhees' son Jason, who may still be lurking in the nearby woods.

The plot is pretty much the same as the first film's, and the death scenes are imitations of what was done before; they're also heavily edited, with lots of trimming and cutaways.  Even Crazy Ralph is back, still trying to warn the kids of impending doom by wandering around the camp alone.  With the exception of Tom McBride and Lauren-Marie Taylor as, respectively, a wheelchair-bound guy and the girl who harbors a crush on him, who have some cute scenes together, the teens are paper-thin and forgettable, existing only to be gruesomely murdered by Jason, who's not yet sporting his trademark hockey mask; instead, he is wearing a burlap sack over his head.  He's also a bit different from the average horror villain; he has the chance to kill a dog and doesn't.  So for what it's worth, F13 Part 2 holds a special place in my heart as an animal-loving horror film.

That's about the only thing this has going for it.  Director Steve Miner alternates between countless shots from the killer's point of view and simply pointing the camera at stuff and filming it as blandly and straightforwardly as possible.  There's not a shred of suspense or atmosphere to be found here, which, combined with the lack of blood, proves quite problematic in a slasher flick. 

Plot holes and logic mistakes are plentiful.  How does a deformed backwoods maniac successfully track down Alice, stalking and making threatening phone calls?  Why does the heroine toss a working chainsaw aside in favor of hitting Jason with a chair?  If Jason was alive all this time, why didn't he step in to help his mama before she got beheaded?  However, this is a slasher, and these kinds of issues can be overlooked as long as I'm getting some decent kills, scares, and entertainment out of it.  Unfortunately, Friday the 13th Part 2 offers none of this.  Skip it.

Friday the 13th

Originally conceived as a Halloween rip-off for the purpose of making some quick cash, director Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th would inspire ten sequels, a TV series, a remake, and an army of imitators.  The original holds up well enough all these years later.

After a brutal double murder in 1958, Camp Crystal Lake was shut down.  Attempts to reopen the camp were met with strange happenings, including fires and poisoned water, leading the locals to term the place "Camp Blood."  For some reason, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), the son of the original owners, thinks it's a great idea to reopen the camp, and recruits a group of teenagers to assist him in this endeavor.  Steve takes off to run some errands in the nearest town, leaving the teens to brave snakes, the rainy night, and a murderer who's determined to dispose of every one of them.

There's not really any character development, but the teens are, for the most part, believable and likable, if totally oblivious; it isn't until the very end of the film, when there is only one survivor, that she realizes everyone else is dead.  The actors are adequate; I particularly liked Robbi Morgan as the cheery Annie, who at first appears to be the Final Girl, until she gets her throat slit before even making it to the camp.  Jeannine Taylor and Kevin Bacon display the film's only nudity, which is nice because Taylor is easily the most attractive of the ladies.  Walt Gorney is fun as Crazy Ralph, who tries to warn the kids of the impending danger.  His approach - lying in wait in a cupboard until Alice happens to open it, emerging, and raving, "I'm a messenger of God.  You're doomed if you stay here!  Doooomed!" - is probably not the best, but it's an admirable effort.

The music rips off Psycho in a big way, but adds its own distinctive touch with the "ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma" sounds signaling the killer's arrival.  Makeup master Tom Savini does the effects work, and the teens die in inventive ways, including an axe to the head and an arrow through the neck.  The uncut DVD restores some excised gore, amounting to a few seconds of footage.  The identity of the killer is kept secret, leading to a nice surprise revelation and twist ending.

Friday is not without its mistakes - supposedly dead bodies move, and Annie mentions that she'll "be cooking for 50 kids," then, in her very next scene, complains, "I've always wanted to work with children.  I hate when people call them kids.  Sounds like little goats" - but, overall, it does quite well for a low-budget production.  Friday the 13th isn't as good as those other genre classics, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it is one of the more entertaining, definitive slashers.

Slumber Party Massacre II

Slumber Party Massacre II picks up a few years after the events in the original.  Valerie, one of the survivors, is now in a mental hospital, while her sister Courtney Bates (now played by Crystal Bernard) is plagued by nightmares involving a supernatural leather-clad rockabilly killer (Atanas Ilitch) who wields a spiky red guitar that doubles as a drill.  Courtney plans to celebrate her seventeenth birthday by heading to a condo with her all-girl rock band for the ultimate slumber party weekend.  The festivities begin with a feast of corn dogs and champagne, followed by a synchronized dance routine which eventually results in one girl taking off her bra and slapping her friends with it, before the inevitable slow motion pillow fight, witnessed, of course, by two guys who've shown up to crash the party (one comments, "I didn't know girls really did this").  However, Courtney's nightmares are starting to encroach on reality and may mean real danger for her and her friends.

Slumber Party Massacre II has to be one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen.  The driller killer shakes his hips, breakdances, flails his arms, and engages in full-blown musical numbers while stalking his victims.  The nightmares include flashbacks to events from the first movie which Courtney wasn't present for, but they also incorporate footage from later in this very movie, so at least they're consistently inconsistent.  Eventually, in addition to the nightmares, Courtney begins having waking hallucinations of exploding zits (kinda gross) and flying frozen chickens (freaking hilarious). 

If none of this sounds delightfully off-the-wall to you, you're not going to like Slumber Party Massacre II.  This was writer/director/producer Deborah Brock's first feature film, and it shows, to put it mildly.  There are numerous out-of-focus shots, along with some really odd camera angles (Courtney's crush Matt is shot in extreme closeup so that his dialogue looks like it's directed not at the characters, but the audience).  The script makes absolutely no sense; in fact, if you don't shut your brain off while watching, your head may explode.  The ending is a triple-twist copout.  The film is barely over an hour, yet it's poorly paced, with the killer appearing in the real world (suddenly and without explanation) around the 50 minute mark.

I'm able to overlook the film's many flaws because it's just so darn weird.  The sheer insanity of the proceedings is enough to hold my attention.  And of course there's the best/worst killer in the history of cinema.  Atanas Ilitch hams it up, cackling madly, speaking directly to the camera, and busting out some truly epic dance routines.  An explanation for such things would be insufficient and unnecessary.  This is mindless entertainment at its best, and as such, Slumber Party Massacre II is recommended for the most devout fans of cheesy slashers and bad, bad movies.

The Mutilator

The Mutilator is quite good for a 1980s slasher.  It suffers from poor acting and laughably bad moments, but it also has some surprisingly graphic gore.

The plot is the standard teens go to the beach and get slaughtered deal, with a few variations.  When he was a young boy, Ed decided to surprise his father by meticulously cleaning all of his pa's rifles.  Somehow, this brilliant plan took a tragic turn, resulting in Ed accidentally shooting and killing his mother.  At that moment, Ed looks out the window and sees his father's car pulling up.  Daddy is understandably pissed, and Ed flees, leaving his father to crack open a bottle of alcohol and have a drink, but not before pouring some down his dead wife's throat.  It sounds morbid and disturbing, but it plays out differently, as the entire sequence takes place without any dialogue, save for Ed's cries of "Mama, mama," which sound overdubbed anyway.  Watching Ed's father slowly move in towards his son, then shove him without a single word, comes across as goofy rather than menacing.

No matter, though, for the film jumps to a few years later, when Ed and his friends are trying to figure out how to enliven their boring fall break.  Ed gets a call from his father asking him to come clean out the old beach house, but he's reluctant to do so since he and his father have never gotten along since the unfortunate incident.  Caving to peer pressure, Ed relents, and the group head to the beach for some fun and sun.  When they get there, they discover daddy's battleaxe is missing, then some of the kids start disappearing.  Is Ed's father finally having his bloody revenge?  Has Ed snapped and decided to murder his friends?  Or is someone else the mutilator?

The identity of the killer is painfully obvious from the get-go; just from reading this review, it should be easy to guess.  But The Mutilator's strength was never intended to be in its mystery.  Where it does succeed is in its death scenes.  There are a couple of really nasty ones here, including an oversized fish hook going into a sensitive body part and a truly hilarious death by chainsaw that has to be seen to be believed.  Each kill is unlike the others, employing a different weapon and method of attack, but all are original and twisted.

As is typical in movies of this type, the acting is terrible.  Morey Lampley as Mike is the worst offender, contributing one of the most ludicrously overacted performances I've seen in a good while.  The script is full of plot holes and inconsistencies, and there are many laugh-out-loud moments:  Ed's friend picks up a framed picture of a mutilated body; Ed explains, "My dad ran over him when he was jet-skiing," this explanation is accepted, and no more questions are asked.  Also adding to the movie's charm is the cheesy, upbeat theme song.

In its uncut version The Mutilator is a fun, forgotten '80s slasher, which is unfortunately not yet available on DVD.  Those who are willing to content themselves with old VHS copies or ripped-to-DVD transfers will find much to love about The Mutilator.

Slumber Party Massacre

Slumber Party Massacre is a true '80s slasher classic.  Refreshingly, the film doesn't pretend to be something it's not.  It incorporates all of the usual slasher cliches, but with a healthy dose of humor.  As a result, it's a lot of fun.

The story is simple and familiar - an escaped mental patient is stalking a group of hot young things.  This time around, the killer is a short dude with an oversized drill, and his victims are frequently topless "teens" (who look to be in their mid-to-late '20s) at a slumber party hosted by popular chick Trish (Michele Michaels), whose parents have left her alone for the weekend.  The invitees include a select group of Trish's athletic basketball teammates, but not the new girl Valerie (Robin Stille), whom Diane dislikes because "she drinks too much milk."  Coincidentally, Valerie happens to live next door to Trish, so she and her disturbingly horny little sis Courtney are right in the midst of the action.

Interestingly, the screenplay was written by feminist Rita Mae Brown, who intended for her script to be a parody of the slasher genre.  Instead, it was filmed as a straight-up slasher, so it both follows and subverts the rules of the genre.  The guys are weak and ineffectual, with serious manhood issues, and their onscreen deaths are more brutal than the girls'.  Most of the girls are likeable, and they're not complete weaklings as they band together to fight back against their attacker.  There's even humor to be found in the requisite nude scenes.  The camera lingers just a bit too long on one girl's butt, and the dialogue includes "I think your tits are getting bigger," to which a chorus of girls excitedly ask, "Mine?"

There are plenty of hilariously quotable lines and darkly humorous moments.  For example, as the girls gather around one of the driller killer's victims, a dead pizza delivery guy, one murmurs, "He's so cold."  "Is the pizza?" asks another, before picking up the pizza box, plopping it down on the corpse, and chowing down on a slice.

Even if the deaths aren't particularly gory, the body count is high (with the word "massacre" in the title, it has to be), and there are some memorable moments, including severed body parts, some eyeball-gouging, and plenty of driller action.  Some of the scenes, notably a pre-slumber party stalk through the high school, are actually rather tense and creepy.

Though Slumber Party Massacre appears to be just another sleazy, low-budget slasher, it's funny, entertaining, and smart, with a good balance of humor and horror.  It never elevates itself above its B-movie level, but it's everything a campy slasher should be.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a film that knows what its audience expects, but does the exact opposite.  It takes place in the woods, with a group of college students and some hillbillies, but this time, the hillbillies are not psychos; in fact, they're genuinely good guys who wind up being terrorized by the kids.  It's a film that had the potential to be either a really funny spoof or just another stupid horror film; fortunately, it falls firmly into the former category.

Tucker and Dale are two friends who are looking forward to spending a weekend at their new vacation home, doing repairs, going fishing, and having some beers.  Also vacationing in the woods is a group of college students, who, through a series of comic misunderstandings, come to believe that Tucker and Dale are crazy hillbillies.  As they try to avoid being murdered, the kids end up slaughtering themselves in front of the shocked hillbillies, who come to the conclusion that the kids have made some kind of suicide pact.

This is writer/director Eli Craig's first film, which is surprising, as he gets so much right.  The movie cleverly pokes fun at the genre, with great dialogue and so many hilarious scenes.  Much of the humor comes from the parties' misperceptions of each other.  They first cross paths at a gas station.  Dale is taken with Allison, and Tucker urges his friend to go over and talk to her, reminding him, "Whatever you say, smile and laugh.  That shows confidence."  So Dale approaches the kids, carrying a scythe, and asks if they're going camping, his voice inflecting as he chuckles nervously.  Later, Tucker and Dale are fishing and witness Allison fall and hit her head on a rock.  The two rescue her and pull her into their boat, calling out, "We got your friend!" to the terrified kids, who assume that Allison has been kidnapped.  One kid later claims, "It was really dark, but it looked like one of the guys was... eating her face off."

As the kids attempt to rescue their friend, they end up dying as a result of their own stupidity.  Dale witnesses one impaling himself with a spear, while Tucker sees another dive headfirst into a woodchipper.  The deaths are certainly bloody, but they're made hilarious by the horrified reactions of the hillbillies, who must fight for their lives against the crazed kids.

The acting is another of the film's strengths.  Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk are both excellent in their roles.  Tucker is the more outgoing and sarcastic of the two, while Dale is a gentle, sweet guy.  They have a great chemistry and are obviously the stars of the film.  Katrina Bowden is cute and likable, while Jesse Moss overacts as the increasingly deranged leader of the college kids.  The other kids aren't given much to do except act scared, which they do well.

I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed Tucker and Dale.  It's hard to remember the last time a movie made me laugh so hard.  Horror-comedies are really hard to get right, but Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is hilarious, clever, and great fun from start to finish.  Definitely one of the best horror movies of the last few years.

Senseless

American businessman Elliott Gast (Jason Behr) is kidnapped and imprisoned in a completely white cell.  His captors reveal that they are broadcasting Elliott’s imprisonment on the Internet to raise money for their terrorist activities.  They don’t plan to kill him; instead, they want to change him by taking away what means the most to him – his senses. 

As Elliott, Jason Behr must carry the film, a difficult task as he spends almost the entire movie in a (rather large) cell, with nothing to do besides wait for the next act of violence to befall him.  It is an impressive performance.  His character is flawed but sympathetic, and his visible deterioration throughout the experience is realistically difficult to watch.

Presumably, the audience knows what the five senses are, so we know what is going to happen to Elliott.  Thanks to the movie poster and DVD cover, we also know the method used for eliminating his last sense.  This is disappointing because, aside from the torture, there is not a whole lot going on in Senseless.  It is never really clear what exactly Elliott’s captors stand for.  It seems that they chose Elliott as their victim because he’s a capitalist American businessman, but the group is only too happy to capitalize on his suffering by using him to raise money for their operations (exactly what these are is never explained).

I get that it’s a commentary on reality TV culture and desensitization, but the fact that the torture is being streamed on the Internet is preposterous.  I don’t mean that it’s unbelievable that people would watch it (sadly, I’m sure they would), but his imprisonment lasts for more than a month, with newspaper articles and campaigners calling for his release.  Surely someone would be able to trace where the Internet transmissions were coming from and step in to save him. 

Director Simon Hynd makes some interesting choices, but doesn’t fully commit to them.  When Elliott is stripped of his hearing, Hynd alternates between entirely silent passages, sequences where the sound is muffled, and scenes where… the sound is completely normal.  It would have been much more effective if the sound design had remained consistent.  Ultimately, Senseless has an interesting premise, but the movie is too flawed to really recommend.

Gremlins

1984's Gremlins is an interesting blend of horror and comedy which doesn't readily fit into either of those categories.  I consider it a comedy, but a lot of the humor is too dark for some; it has scenes of little creatures getting diced up and nuked in the microwave, but it's probably not going to keep you awake with nightmares.  It's the perfect blend of evil and cute, in other words, the movie equivalent of me.

Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton), an inventor whose inventions never quite work out the way they're supposed to, is on the hunt for that perfect Christmas present for his son Billy (Zach Galligan). He makes a deal with an antique store owner's (Keye Luke) grandson and leaves with a Mogwai, a cute little furry pet who looks like a Furby.

All is happy and well when Gizmo is introduced to the Peltzer household, that is until the three cardinal rules of Mogwai care -- keep him away from bright lights, don't get him wet, and never feed him after midnight -- are broken.  Things get really bad when Billy's friend (Corey Feldman) spills water on Gizmo, causing a bunch of Mogwai to pop out of Gizmo's back.  These new guys are different from Gizmo and deceive Billy into feeding them after midnight, causing them to go into a pupal stage from which they emerge feral Mogwai.

And these critters are bent on destruction. Stringing family dog Barney up with Christmas lights is nothing compared to plowing down the local nutcase who's insisted that there are gremlins in the machinery.  Or getting revenge on the teacher who took a blood sample from one of the critters by sticking a needle in a choice place.  That's one of my favorite things about this film -- there are so many deaths, but none of them feel scary; they're so appropriate and twisted that you just have to laugh.  Same goes for Billy's romantic interest Kate (Phoebe Cates), who relates to Billy how she stopped believing in Santa with a tale that's disturbing yet funny.

Now, Gremlins is not quite a perfect film.  There are some plot holes (if water spawns gremlins, why can they run through snow without multiplying?), and the majority of the actors are outshone by a group of animated creatures.  But it's easy to ignore these faults when you get to see the gremlins watching and singing along to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or terrorizing the townspeople, including the local DJ ("You're not a Rockin' Ricky fan!").  Of course, a lot of the humor is dark, and there is quite a bit of violence (particularly the gremlin deaths), making its marketing as a kids' movie questionable, but it's an excellent film for anyone who likes the idea of a completely warped, evil version of It's a Wonderful Life.

Killer Workout

Capitalizing on both the aerobics and slasher crazes of the era, writer/director David Prior unleashed his 1986 masterpiece Killer Workout, also released under the equally appealing title Aerbocide, with the tagline, "They came to get their bodies into the best shape of their lives... too bad they'll never have the chance to enjoy it."

The story begins with a model receiving the news that she's gotten a job shooting for Vogue magazine in Paris.  She rushes off to the tanning salon, but our young lass is soon sizzling and crackling, the victim of a tanning bed malfunction.  Cut to Rhonda's Workout, a successful gym with a clientele consisting of many scantily-clad, busty women and one fat person on an exercise bike (who is, of course, only shown for about ten seconds). 

Things are going great for Rhonda (Marcia Karr), until dead bodies start piling up in her gym.  Actually, the dead bodies don't really have an effect on business, as the gym continues to open every day, and the same clients keep returning, risking their lives to get their workouts in.  Also returning is the lone cop assigned to the case, the super angry Detective Morgan (David James Campbell).  Sample dialogue: "Get over to the lab and tell that college boy that if he doesn't have that report in thirty minutes, I'm going to come over there and do an autopsy on his face!"

The body count is pretty high, reaching into the double digits, and the kills come in a variety of ways: throat slashings, stabbings, shootings.  However, the murderer's weapon of choice is one of the most simultaneously lame yet awesome tools of destruction in the history of slashers - a large safety pin.  That's right, an item which should cause no damage aside from a slight irritation at being poked, and which could easily be snatched out of the murderer's hand.  Hilariously bad death scenes, including a Psycho-styled shower, alternate with leering closeup shots of women, boobs jiggling as they gyrate and lunge.

Killer Workout doesn't waste time on silly things like character development; more often than not, characters are killed in their very first scene.  However, this flick is rarely boring; there's always some kind of nonsense going on to hold the audience's attention.  For example, there are numerous guy-on-guy fistfights, one of which incorporates a rake; a girl who keeps a red corded telephone in the middle of her outdoor garden; a mortician who chirps, "See you tomorrow!" as he totes away the latest victim; an employee who fails to prevent a murder because she's too busy playing with some dude's jock strap; a relentless bubblegum synth-pop soundtrack, including a title track with the lyrics, "Aerobicide, workin' out until you diiie;" and a guy who tries to stop a car speeding towards him by pulling out his gun and shooting at it.  He does not succeed.

Obviously, Killer Workout is never scary, and it's impossible to take seriously, but it's also ridiculously cheesy and good for a laugh.  Recommended for slasher die-hards, although the film is unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) not currently available on DVD.

Curtains

After a three-year production involving rewrites and reshoots, Curtains was finally released to theatres in 1983, where it was largely ignored.  While it’s far from perfect, it deserves better than to languish in slasher obscurity.

Famous director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) is preparing to direct “Audra,” a film about an actress who goes mad.  Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) wants the part so badly that the two concoct a plan to have Samantha fake insanity to get committed to a mental institution so she can really get into character.  Being tormented by giggling madwomen who tickle her and steal her jigsaw puzzle pieces takes its toll on Samantha, and Stryker abandons her in the asylum and moves on with the production, inviting six women to spend a weekend at his mansion to audition for the part.  When Samantha discovers his plan (via a friend whose face is never revealed), she is furious, and, with the help of her unseen friend, she breaks out and makes her way to the mansion, where, as it turns out, only five young starlets have arrived; the sixth never made it to the casting call.

Curtains has a truly spooky, unsettling atmosphere thanks to its isolated setting and some effective imagery.  A creepy, sad-looking doll appears before some of the murders, while the killer herself is equally creepy and memorable under an old hag mask.  In the film’s most effective sequence, a woman is pursued through a snowy landscape by the killer in broad daylight.   

The final chase through a labyrinthine prop house is also well done and suspenseful.  However, the impact was lessened as I tried to figure out just who it was who was being chased.  Some of the women are given no background and barely any lines and as such are completely indistinguishable from one another.  The whole thing with Samantha’s faceless friend is bizarre; I thought maybe she would turn out to be one of the actresses or the killer, but she doesn’t appear again.  Additionally, one guy is introduced and soon forgotten, killed off-screen at some point.

There isn’t much blood or gore, aside from a decapitated head in the toilet, which one of the women discovers and reports to Stryker.  He comforts her with his penis.  This is after he’s auditioned several of the other actresses by having one seduce him with her eyes and another play the role of a man seducing a woman.  There isn’t any nudity, aside from a bare breast, but there are more than a few strange sexual situations.  Aside from the sleaziness that is Stryker, the sequence with the actress who doesn’t make it to the mansion reveals that she is rather kinky.  Her boyfriend pretends to be a rapist intruder, but this bores her, as does his offer to play a pizza delivery boy – “The pepperoni always gets stuck to my ass,” she complains.  Finally, he suggests one sex game that they haven’t tried – Pac-Man, but that is too much for her, and she draws the line.

The troubled production results in a flawed final product, but the unique setting, disturbing killer, murder mystery, and video game sex fantasies are enough to differentiate Curtains from the many other slashers out there.

The Psycho Legacy

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho has seen its share of special edition releases packed with bonus features (and rightfully so, because it's an excellent film).  The sequels, on the other hand, received no such attention (until the recent Blu-Ray releases of Psychos II and III).  Psycho fan Robert V. Galluzzo sought to correct that with 2010's The Psycho Legacy.

The documentary examines the original film, as well as its three sequels.  I suppose it can't really be called comprehensive since there is no mention of the remake, but the remake was awful and deserves to be forgotten.

Sadly, most of the players from the original have passed on, but Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, and Hitchcock appear in archive footage.  Assistant director Hilton A. Green is interviewed, and it's interesting to hear about his involvement with the series (he also served as producer on all of the sequels).  Mick Garris, who directed the fourth Psycho, is the series' only surviving director, but all of the films are well represented by other cast and crew members who show up to share their recollections.  Psycho II screenwriter Tom Holland expresses his admiration of the original and his desire to do a decent job in one of his earliest gigs.  Psycho III actor Jeff Fahey is a lot of fun as he explains just how his bizarre lamp foreplay scene came about.

 

Most people have fond memories of the series, but the documentary is not merely a piece of PR fluff.  Garris mentions the tension between himself and Perkins, who wanted to direct Psycho IV, and he discusses the difficult yet rewarding experience.  Perkins apparently didn't get along with Meg Tilly, who played the female lead in Psycho II, but she unfortunately doesn't appear in the doc to comment.

The Psycho Legacy moves breezily at a lean 87 minutes, and it doesn't waste time with plot summaries and clips from the movies, which is a common pitfall of these sorts of documentaries.  Instead, the focus is on interviews with the key players - and some random commentators, such as Joe Lynch, director of Wrong Turn 2.  What is with this guy?  He also popped up in His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th, and he didn't have anything interesting to say there either.

The occasional odd interviewee choice aside, The Psycho Legacy is solid, and when it was over, I was left wanting more.  Fortunately, the DVD release comes with a bonus disc which is packed with extra features.  These include a visit to the Bates motel and house, a look at one fan's legit collection of memorabilia (fun fact: the "Mother" corpse from Psycho II comes equipped with pubic hair), and an interview with Psycho II cinematographer Dean Cundey, who does not appear in the documentary itself.  The best extra is a 1980s Q&A session with Perkins, who is candid, funny, and charismatic.  This delightful feature is worth the cost of the disc alone.

The Burning

At first glance, 1981's The Burning appears to be another Friday the 13th ripoff, with a disfigured killer targeting a bunch of kids at a summer camp.  In fact, the film is actually based on the urban legend of the Cropsey maniac, a New York boogeyman figure.

A group of campers plays a prank on their mean caretaker, Cropsy.  And what a prank it is.  These kids somehow obtain a human skull and place little candles inside it, then set the skull by Cropsy's bed and knock on his window until he wakes up, freaks out because there's a human skull with little candles inside it, and knocks it over, resulting in poor Cropsy sustaining some severe burns.  He spends the next five years in a hospital, where he is attended to by a staff member who describes him as "a fucking Big Mac - overdone!"  Eventually, Cropsy is released and makes his way back to camp to have his revenge (on a bunch of kids who had nothing to do with the prank, but they'll do in a pinch).

A bit of trivia: The Burning was one of the first films from Miramax's Harvey and Bob Weinstein.  The film's young cast includes Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter in a blink-and-you'll-miss-her appearance.  Alexander is the comic relief, while Brian Backus is the weird kid who spies on girls in the shower.  I'd assume most guys at the camp would do the same thing, but apparently not.  Most of the kids are fairly likable, so we almost don't want them to die. 

Tom Savini's special effects are impressive, with Cropsy's preferred weapon - a pair of garden shears - creating some gruesome aftermath.  The highlight of the film is the raft sequence, in which five kids are massacred in under a minute.  Cropsy makes for a pretty cool villain, and while his makeup might not be the most realistic, his horribly burned visage is memorable, and he'd be a sympathetic character were it not for the occasional murders.

There was no shortage of slasher movies in the '80s, but The Burning is an enjoyably nasty little number that stands out thanks to its memorable villain, great gore effects, and awesome soundtrack by Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman.  Even the trailer is entertaining and must have served as inspiration for the Grindhouse "Don't" trailer.