The Dentist

Following in the grand tradition of casting L.A. Law actors as psychotic medical personnel (see also: Dr. Giggles), The Dentist stars Corbin Bernsen as Dr. Alan Feinstone, a successful dentist with a beautiful wife and a seemingly perfect life.  However, he has to worry about dodging the IRS, and then he discovers his wife having an affair with their tattooed, grungy pool man!  Already obsessed with cleanliness, these latest events push the good doctor over the edge, causing him to spot dirt and decay everywhere he looks. 

He first takes his frustrations out on a dog who got in his way while he was creeping around in backyards and hallucinating.  He makes his way to work, where he imagines that his young patient's teeth are rotted, going bonkers and slashing the boy's gums.  Things only get worse from there for his patients, his staff, and anyone else who crosses his path.

Bernsen gives an absolutely manic performance, prone to screaming fits while spittle trails from his mouth.  He delivers some ridiculous rants, such as "I am an instrument of perfection and hygiene.  The enemy of decay and corruption...  A dentist.  And I have a lot of work to do " and "You don't know what it’s like. The discipline, the long hours, the lack of respect! And a world that goes on ignoring dental hygiene!" 

The supporting cast is largely forgettable, though Mark Ruffalo does pop up as the agent of one of Feinstone's patients.  And Ken Foree does well with his small role as a cop investigating the death of the pooch.  When asked by his partner why Feinstone would want to shoot a dog, Foree's character replies, "Because he's a dentist, and they're capable of anything."

The action moves fairly slowly, with a lot of hallucination sequences showing Feinstone's downward spiral.  Even when it becomes obvious that the dentist is off his rocker, his staff remain quiet, aside from the occasional observation that the patients are "dropping like flies."  The flick is definitely more campy and comical than it is scary, though the torture scenes are definitely unnerving, especially to those who already fear going to the dentist.  Gums are slashed, teeth are drilled away to nothing, and a tongue is cut out, all in closeup.  It's gross stuff.

The Dentist is a total cheesefest, with a low budget, over-the-top acting, ludicrous dialogue, decent effects, sick humor, and gratuitous nudity (Lisa Hoffman bares her breasts numerous times).  In other words, it's exactly what its audience expects.

Terror Train

Terror Train begins in a manner similar to Prom Night, also released in 1980 and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, with a prank gone wrong.  This time, a group of obnoxious frat guys play a trick on one of their pledges, the nerdy Kenny (Derek MacKinnon), making him think he's going to lose his virginity to the beautiful Alana (Curtis).  She tells Kenny to come kiss her, but when he approaches, he discovers he's in bed with a cadaver and understandably freaks out.  Three years later, the students are celebrating their graduation with a New Year's costume party aboard a train.  The festivities are interrupted, however, when someone starts killing the passengers.

The train is a good setting for a slasher, as it really traps the characters, leaving them with no way out.  And because the action takes place during a costume party, the killer dons various disguises, making it easy for him to pretend to be someone else and gain his victims' trust.  The villain remains masked for most of the film.  I'm not sure whether his identity was supposed to be a mystery, but it's completely obvious who he is long before the big reveal.  The film isn't very suspenseful, and gore is kept to a minimum, with most kills taking place off-screen; the big effect is a decapitated head that looks really fake and is shown for approximately one second. 

With the possible exception of Alana, none of the characters are very sympathetic.  The most annoying is Doc (Hart Bochner), a loud, arrogant asshole who cares about no one but himself.  And his friend Mo; there are some serious homosexual undertones here.  Doc deliberately gets Mo in trouble with Alana, telling him, "If she dumps you, you've always got me, you know.  I mean it."  When Mo is found dead (the killing having taken place offscreen, of course), Doc takes it harder than Alana does, shrieking and sobbing uncontrollably as he paws at Mo's body.  

As expected, Curtis does a fine job of screaming her lungs out, and she goes head-to-head with the villain in a well-done, intense chase scene.  Interestingly, it is not her character, but Ben Johnson's Carne, the conductor, who first discovers the bodies and tries to convince others of the danger onboard.  David Copperfield is woefully out of place, playing - what else - a magician, whose tricks seem to take up roughly half the film's runtime.  Pacing is an issue here, with lots of time wasted on magic and passengers dancing to disco music.  The first hour especially is very, very slow.

Terror Train has a few things going for it, most notably its setting, but turns out to be a by-the-numbers slasher with very little slashing.

Hatchet

One of Hatchet's taglines is, "It's not a remake.  It's not a sequel.  And it's not based on a Japanese one."  While this is technically true, it's not really anything new either, as writer/director Adam Green does his best to make this feel like another '80s slasher.

After the opening, in which a fishing trip turns deadly for a father and son (Robert Englund and Joshua Leonard in the first of many cameos by horror film vets), the action shifts to the streets of New Orleans, where Mardi Gras festivities are in full swing.  Ben (Joel David Moore), despondent over a recent breakup, is tired of drinking and looking at boobs.  His friend Marcus (Deon Richmond) reluctantly joins him for a haunted swamp tour.  Unfortunately, the boat sinks, leaving the tour group to discover that there is some truth to one of the local legends when they come face-to-face with deformed backwoods madman Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder).

Crowley is not a particularly unique villain, a mix between Cropsy and Jason Voorhees.  There are no chase sequences here; Crowley appears out of nowhere, howls loudly, and begins slaughtering people in gruesome ways.  This is one area the film doesn't skimp on, as heads are ripped in half and twisted off and limbs are torn off and tossed around.  The victims are shown no mercy, as Crowley goes for the overkill every time.  Not content with simply taking a belt sander to a woman's face, Crowley then impales her.  After ripping off one guy's arms, he grabs his body and slams it against a tombstone.  Refreshingly, the effects are traditional prosthetics and buckets of fake blood rather than CGI.

It's worth mentioning that the group doesn't actually encounter Crowley until more than halfway through the film's short 84-minute runtime.  Rather than playing it straight and using this time to build suspense, Green injects a lot of humor into the script.  Some of it works (Tony Todd's "chilling" story of why he no longer does haunted swamp tours at night), but most of it doesn't.  The dialogue spewed by the two Girls Gone Wild-esque aspiring actresses is the worst.  One doesn't realize that the cops and the police are one and the same and wonders whether 911 is the correct number to dial to reach them.  They also trade insults such as "Brush your teeth much?" and "Your nipples are dumb."  Making the dialogue intentionally stupid doesn't make it funny.  Equally bad are those occasions where the characters take time to explain an already unfunny joke rather than letting us try to forget it.  At one point, Marcus calls the Asian tour guide "Jackie Tucker," then goes on to clarify, "Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker."

However, Richmond is pretty funny as Marcus, and he hits more than he misses.  I got a kick out of the scene where he asks Ben to spot him some money for the swamp tour.  Ben asks, "Why, you don't have any cash?"  Marcus drops the pretense of looking in his pockets and replies, "No, I'm just not paying for this bullshit."  Parry Shen is also hilarious as the faux-Cajun-accented guide who clearly has no idea what he's doing.  Tamara Feldman is the weakest link, a shame because it soon becomes clear that her character is the heroine.

In the end, Hatchet is an odd one, attempting to be both a throwback to the slashers of the '80s and a self-referential parody, but not excelling at either.

Going to Pieces

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film is a 2006 documentary adaptation of the book of the same name.  Through a combination of narration, interviews, and film clips, the documentary takes a look at the slasher sub-genre that was so popular in the '80s.

The list of interviewees is impressive, with all of the big names in the genre - John Carpenter (Halloween), Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) - represented.  Also on board are Herb Freed (Graduation Day), Amy Holden Jones (Slumber Party Massacre), Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp), and John Dunning (My Bloody Valentine).  It's refreshing to see some attention given to slashers not featuring Michael, Jason, and Freddy, especially because the supplements to these films are usually lacking or nonexistent.

Among the most interesting segments is a look at the controversy surrounding the Christmas slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night, which created an uproar thanks to its ads emphasizing a killer dressed as Santa Claus.  Protestors succeeded in getting not only the ads pulled, but the film itself.  Other films up for discussion include The Burning, April Fool's Day, Happy Birthday to Me, The Boogey Man, and The Prowler, which makeup/effects maestro Tom Savini considers his best work.  Countless films aren't discussed in any depth, but featured in clips.  These include Alice Sweet Alice, Terror Train, Student Bodies, and The House on Sorority Row.

Going to Pieces is mainly concerned with Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th, which makes sense, as they are heavy hitters within the genre.  Unfortunately, that means that fans will have heard most of this material elsewhere.  Nor is this documentary really good for new fans of the genre, as the endings to many, many films are spoiled.  These include some of the bigger names, but also many of the lesser-known slashers in which the twist ending was a highlight of the experience.  For some reason, the documentary doesn't identify which films the clips are from, which makes it difficult for viewers who might want to track down potentially interesting slashers.

Some potentially meaty material such as the criticism of the sub-genre is glossed over, while highly influential films are not given their due.  Peeping Tom and Psycho are briefly mentioned, while an interview with Black Christmas director Bob Clark has been relegated to the DVD bonus features.  (These extra interviews are certainly worth checking out, as they also include informative sessions with Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano and My Bloody Valentine producer Dunning, among others.)  However, there's plenty of time to discuss Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, along with Saw and Hostel, not necessarily films that come to mind when one hears the word "slasher."

Though it's flawed, the documentary is well-presented, and it's obvious that those involved truly love slasher films.  Perhaps Going to Pieces is best for lovers of the subgenre who wish to have their appetites whet for revisiting some favorites.

The Final

2010's The Final was released as part of the After Dark Horrorfest, which, each year, presents audiences with the chance to see eight films which never made it to theaters.  The entries I've seen have been for the most part mediocre or just plain awful, so I usually steer clear of the series.  However, I came across The Final on Netflix and gave it a chance, and I have to say it's easily one of the better After Dark films.

Whereas most of the Horrorfest films probably couldn't find distribution because they suck, the issue here is most likely the subject matter.  A group of high school outcasts, sick of being bullied by the popular kids, decide to get revenge on their tormenters by drugging them, torturing them, and teaching them a lesson they'll never forget.  As ringleader Dane (Marc Donato) says, "Think of this as the final, and there's only one question:  What did I do to deserve this?"

It's a disturbing premise, one which writer Jason Kabolati and director Joey Stewart wisely treat with seriousness.  It's easy to sympathize with the outcasts early on, especially in one particularly effective scene where Emily (Lindsay Seidel) quietly tells the mean girls that she thinks they would really like her if they just gave her a chance.  However, once they put their plan into action, it's impossible to condone their actions, nor do I think the filmmakers want us to.  Even after one of the bullies has obviously learned her lesson, the outcasts continue to torture her, and they even turn against each other, with Dane killing one of his supposed friends for deviating from the plan.  They become even worse than those against whom they're seeking revenge.

The torture scenes are grim and effective, even though they're not especially graphic.  We don't actually need to see the knife severing one character's spinal cord to be affected by it.  The film is technically well-made, with interesting camera angles and lighting work helping to mask the film's low budget.

However, Donato's performance as the lead outcast is painfully over-the-top and threatens to pull the viewer out of the film.  In fact, during one of his preachy, interminable monologues, I actually fell asleep and had to rewind the film once I awoke.  Many of the characters are little more than stereotypes, so the actors don't have much to work with.  Seidel is the standout here, managing to be both sympathetic and chillingly sadistic.  His performance was a bit uneven, but I did like Jascha Washington as Kurtis, one of the popular kids who is probably the most decent person in the film.

There are also some odd scenes which I hope were included to convey just how insane the outcasts were.  One involves the crew asking God to show that he approves of their plan by not taking any action to tell them otherwise.  Unless these scenes were intended to illustrate insanity, they were really misguided.  It's definitely a flawed film, but The Final is well-made, unsettling, and surprisingly worth watching.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5

When Silent Night, Deadly Night was released in 1984, Mickey Rooney was one of the film's most vocal critics, writing a letter of protest in which he called the makers "scum" for desecrating Christmas.  Ironically enough, seven years later, Rooney went on to star in the franchise's fifth entry, The Toy Maker.

Rooney is Joe Petto, who owns a rather unsuccessful toy store.  He and his son Pino (Brian Bremer) also live in the shop since their house was foreclosed on.  The house is currently occupied by Sarah (Jane Higginson) and her son Derek (William Thorne), which may or may not explain why Pino decides to break in and hide in Sarah's bedroom.  As if that weren't enough to deal with, the two are trying to cope with the loss of man of the house Tom, seen in the film's opening being attacked by a Santa toy that showed up addressed to Derek.  Pino also tries to give Derek a Larry the Larva toy, but it is instead bought by Petto's most frequent customer Noah (Tracy Fraim), who winds up giving it to his landlord, advising him, "It's to die for."

So the film continues, with mysterious presents being left for Derek, the kid refusing to open them, someone else getting hold of them, and killer toy mayhem ensuing.  The film is poorly paced, and it gets very tedious very quickly.  The effects by Screaming Mad George are surprisingly disappointing, consisting of crap like a rubber snake, roller skates with rockets, or a Santa ball that sprouts little arms.  Most of the toys don't actually kill anyone; instead, people just overreact to them and flail around until they're impaled by fire pokers or hit by cars.  More than one character returns from the dead, as well.  A chick is shot by an army of toy soldiers with guns, leaving her a bloody mess, but she shows up alive and well later on.

It all seems like just another bad horror movie with nothing to make it stand out - aside from some truly insane moments, like a bizarre ending involving attempted rape by a robot that lacks genitalia and cries while screaming, "I love you, Mommy!"  And we get the chance to see Mickey Rooney in a Santa suit holding his sack (of toys) while watching two teenagers screwing.  It doesn't get much better than this.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 is obviously not scary, and it's too boring to be much fun.  However, those who do decide to watch it will be left with some indelible images.

Slaughter High

Slaughter High was released as part of LionsGate's Lost Collection, boasting the dubious subtitle, "the best movies you totally forgot about."  Odds are, most people have never seen this one, but somehow Slaughter High gained itself a nice little cult following over the years, and someone borrowed a fan's old VHS copy, transferred it to DVD, and released it to the masses.

Slaughter High was released during the slasher frenzy of the 1980's, and it has all the ingredients for a cheesy, low-budget slasher.  There's a token black character who's the first to die, actors who are far too old to be playing high school students (I think the youngest was 29), gratuitous nudity, a masked killer, a high school prank gone awry, and an insane amount of plot holes (including a mind-boggling twist-within-a-twist ending).

It's April Fool's Day, and nerd Marty (Simon Scuddamore) is about to get it on with the sexy, popular Carol (Caroline Munro).  Of course, it turns out this is nothing more than a setup for the cool "kids" to get Marty naked, hose him down, dunk his nude body in the toilet, and capture the events on film, until the coach shows up to drag the bullies off to detention in the school gym.  Unfortunately, the gang plays one final prank on Marty, one which culminates in Marty being splashed with nitric acid and horribly burned.

Now, it's some time later (the film never says how much later, but the trailer reveals it's five years, though the actors look the same age they did in high school: OLD).  They've been invited to their high school reunion.  Never mind the fact that the only attendees are those who bullied Marty.  And the fact that the school's locked, run-down, and abandoned doesn't raise any red flags.  The group, after sitting for hours on the grass outside the building, decides to break into the school, where they start getting picked off one by one by a killer in a jester costume.

Has Marty returned to seek payback?  Or is someone else to blame?  Is it all an April Fool's Day prank?  How is the killer able to predict when and where his intended victim will be, and stage elaborate traps for them?  When more than one victim is in more than one designated death area, how does the killer manage to be in both places at the same time?

Most, if not all, of these questions will remain unanswered.  Slaughter High is definitely a leave-your-brain-at-the-door kind of experience.  Plot holes and inconsistencies abound, with even the setting being questionable.  What high school includes lounge areas, bathtubs, garages, and beds, yet has no lockers or classrooms?  The acting is always bad, sometimes hilariously so.  Perhaps some of the actors were speaking so slowly and awkwardly in an attempt to hide their British accents, which crept through more often than not.  I don't think he was trying to hide an accent, but the best moment is provided by one guy who falls off his bike (a gleefully awful bit of acting there, as the actor throws himself to the ground), then delivers the line, "Man, that. bike. has. to. go.", with slow, deliberate pauses between each word, as if he has no idea what word will come out of his mouth next.  It's that bad.

One good thing I can say is the death scenes are actually reasonably memorable.  The low-budget effects include a gut-busting explosion, a mid-coitus electrocution, and some other cool stuff I don't want to spoil.  Unfortunately, the film's low budget is also apparent in its DVD transfer.  I wasn't kidding when I said it looks like someone copied it from a VHS.  The audio quality suffers as well; I watched it with the subtitles (surprisingly, there are English or Spanish subtitles, a rarity when it comes to low-budget slasher DVDs).  It's not a huge deal, though; Slaughter High is not one you're going to want to watch on your wall-size HDTV anyway.

I simply must mention the soundtrack.  The score was done by Harry Manfredini, so there's a nod to Friday the 13th, complete with the distinctive "Ki-ki-ha-ha" sound.  I don't know if Manfredini was responsible for the theme song of sorts, a hair-metal/synth-pop hybrid with some nut cackling madly and screaming, "April Fool's Day!", but, if so, I must thank him for the hearty laugh I got out of that one.  Even better, it begins and ends the movie, in addition to playing at different points throughout.

Slaughter High is an absolute mess, but it's so bad it's almost good.  Those who are entertained by bad movies should definitely get a kick out of it.  I enjoyed it because of (not in spite of) its flaws.  Die-hard (and I mean die-hard) slasher fans could certainly do worse than this one.  It's hard to call Slaughter High "the best" anything, but, to a certain audience, it's entertaining in its ineptness.

Black Sheep

Unique villains in horror movies are becoming increasingly rare.  All the classics - vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, masked madmen - have dominated countless films.  Even killer sharks, alligators, dolls, snowmen, and plants have made their appearances.  But one thing the genre was lacking was an army of killer sheep.  Fortunately, writer/director Jonathan King realized this, and gave us Black Sheep with its genius tagline "There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand... and they're pissed off!"

Henry (Nathan Meister) returns home to find his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has been experimenting with genetically-engineered sheep.  Of course, the experiments go awry, resulting in a flock of mutant sheep who are hungry for human flesh.  It's up to Henry to save the day, an intimidating task since Henry's been suffering from ovinophobia, or, as he puts it, "just a completely unfounded and irrational fear that one day this is gonna happen!"

The effects are done by WETA Workshops, known for their work on the films of Peter Jackson; Black Sheep, in fact, is reminiscent of some of Jackson's earlier work, like Dead Alive.  Blood and guts and limbs all fly freely, literally at some times:  a man throws his own severed leg at an approaching sheep.  The gore is well-done and fun in its over-the-top way, and it leads to more laughs when you think about the fact that sheep are causing this mayhem.

In one intense sequence, a sheep attacks the driver of a vehicle, with a fierce battle ensuing before all the passengers escape onto the back of the still-moving truck; one character belatedly wonders, "Who's driving?".  Cut to a shot of the sheep behind the steering wheel.  To top it off, as the sheep is about to drive off the cliff, the people jump off the truck and into a field; supposedly, their dog does as well, though he is obviously thrown into the shot.  Other highlights include "menacing" shots of a single sheep, ominously shadowed and bleating, staring down its potential victims, and a vegetarian hippie, the first human to be bitten by the sheep, who tries valiantly to resist his urge to eat flesh.  There are also fart jokes and sexual innuendos ("Fuck the sheep!"  "No time for that, bro!"), but not enough to be tiresome.

Black Sheep is immensely funny and entertaining, succeeding in balancing its horror and comedy elements.  The film does run out of steam a bit, relying mainly on its ludicrous premise for laughs, but it's still a fun ride.  Black Sheep is a silly, knowing send-up of horror films and clichés, never taking itself too seriously, but providing good laughs and splatter.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

Marla:  Oh, come on, Sam, we don't even know if it's Jack Frost.
Sam:  No, Marla, it's probably some other walking, talking snowman that everybody's talking about. 

A title like Jack Frost 2:  Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman offers viewers all the information they need to know whether they'd even consider watching such a film.

The first Jack Frost saw a serial killer coming back from the dead as a mutant killer snowman to terrorize the policeman who caught him.  Fortunately, good triumphed, and Jack is dead and gone.  Now, Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport, returning from the first film) is having trouble getting over last year's massacre, and, with Christmastime approaching, fears Jack's return.  His wife Anne (Eileen Seeley, also returning) suggests a vacation to a tropical island to take Sam's mind off things.  Even if Jack were coming back, a snowman couldn't survive in hot weather anyway, right?

Well, thanks to some shady experiments by government scientists, Jack's been genetically modified so that antifreeze and hairdryers no longer work against him.  Jack is also now somehow psychically linked to Sam, so he makes his way to the sunny island and starts disposing of the vacationers in rather odd ways.  A bikini model's head explodes after sucking on an ice cube with essence of Jack, a cameraman is stabbed to death with a carrot nose, and a boy has his frozen tongue ripped from a pole, with Jack yelling, "Cowa-tongue-a, dude!"

Things really get dangerous when the islanders realize Jack's not alone; he's spawned a whole bunch of baby snowballs who are just as hard to kill as he is.  Even mixing one of the babies in a blender doesn't harm it; instead, the little guy chirps, "That was fun!"

There's actually quite a bit of blood, as limbs are hacked off by deadly snowballs.  The effects are cheap-looking; the baby snowballs are obviously puppets that were purchased at the nearest thrift store.  The purchase price of the DVD is probably larger than the film's budget (check out the "Snowmonton International Airport," quite clearly nothing more than an average home with an open front door).  But this is not a movie that's trying to break new ground in effects work; this is a completely silly movie that never takes itself seriously.  Neither should its viewers.

The DVD surprisingly offers some bonus features.  These include an audio commentary, behind the scenes feature, interview with the director, trailer, and a ludicrous "music video" featuring the cast singing, with no musical accompaniment, what must be an improvised song about Jack (the best part is a rap about the snowballs, culminating in the line, "Not even antifreeze can take the suckas out").