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Off Season Nights of Horror: You Can't Just Turn it Off (part 1)

OFF SEASON NIGHTS OF HORROR OFF SEASON PART 1

The 50 Nights of Horror Challenge of 2012 seeped its bloody way into 2013 and has been slowly dripping and permeating throughout the year.  After tapping into a geyser of dismembered, squishy things during the 50 Nights of Horror Challenge last year, nothing was over.  I couldn't just turn it off!  It kept coming.  And to maintain a running record, a documen
t of this heinous use of my free time, I decided to save a massive amount of blogstuff.  Here it is.

The Sleeper (2012)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Sorority Slasher

During last year's challenge, whenever I purchased a movie from Amazon, The Sleeper kept cropping up as a recommended purchase.  In hindsight, I get it.  I had been buying or previewing loads and loads of slasher films.  This movie is supposed to be an homage to the hey-day of slasher movies.  I get it.

I purposefully did not read any reviews on the movie itself.  The intention there was two-fold.  Retro-horror is hit-and-miss, and some movies that I've really enjoyed have been critically panned.  Homage films are inherently made for a target audience (in this case, an audience in which I participate).  I wish that I had read the reviews in their entirety.  I hope you find this review useful.  Don't bother.

One aspect that made the Grindhouse double feature so enjoyable was the use of scratchy cuts and a dedication to "authenticity."  Planet Terror is "missing" an entire scene because the print of the movie/VHS cassette has been rewound/rewatched so many times that it's no longer viewable.  Quentin Tarrantino and Robert Rodriguez made the extra effort to make their movies both kitchy and enjoyable.  The Sleeper did one thing very right with itself.  The box/poster:

Looks pretty legit, right?  Right down the "HORROR" sticker in the upper right corner.  Damn that's awesome!

Unfortunately, that's about as good as the movie gets.  The film is shot in high definition shaky cam, but nothing to make it scratchy or aged.  The acting is decent.  Just about right for an 80's slasher, actually.  But the actresses all seem to be a little too modern for a film that's supposed to take place during the Carter administration.

The gore is decent.  The pacing is methodically set to a cumbersome 80's slasher tone.  The music is really good.  There are boobs.  The killer is intimidating (though I really wish we had never ever ever seen his face) (SPOILER ALERT:  The killer's face is shown).

so, soo bad

I did a bit of reading, the film was made on an incredibly tight budget in a very short span of time, so maybe I ought to give the writer/director/producer/sound editor more credit.  He did a lot with very little.  That being said, one thing he did was God awful.  Right in the middle of a scary, brutal movie there's some half-assed, stupid line dancing scene.  The characters all break the third wall and dance for some reason to what I
assume is an original song for the movie.  I was on the fence with this movie for a good while, but after that shark jumping, I knew that as soon as the movie was over I would be trading the DVD in for credit somewhere.  I will not be watching this again.

I have high hopes and expectations for the man behind the camera here, but his initial offering was left wanting.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Camp Slasher

Cool bro.  Clammy cuz.

Meatballs meets Psycho.  Whoa.  This movie seemed like a really slow slasher flick starring a cool street-wise dude cousin and a terribly insecure, introverted cousin.  From the first scene, one that takes place before the story gets going, we're introduced to a broken, tragic family.  After the credits, we realize that someone or something is protecting the insecure girl.  There's something sinister at play, but you just can't quiet put your finger on it.

boiled off all his palm hair

When we're not seeing the girl get tormented or seeing the young bro take his licks while defending his dweeby cousin, we're treated to some very run-of-the-mill slasher murder scenes.  Bow-and-arrow kill we saw in Friday the 13th.  Shower kill we see in every other camp/slasher movie.  Boiled alive just like we've seen in...well...not too many movies.  Halloween 2?  This was actually pretty good.  My point is that there's not too much during the first 1.5 hours that sets this movie apart from anything else being made around the same time.

But for all of the faults of this film - and there are some definite faults - the ending is absolutely awesome and brushes a lot of crud under the carpet.  Whatever you thought about the first 1.5 is flipped on its head at the end of this movie.  I have come to find that it is an iconic ending among the cult film fanatics.  Check it out.  Do yourself a favor.

The Gate 2:  Trespassers (1987)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Demons

This movie has none of the good aspects of the first The Gate.  Instead it is really poor.  The special effects are on the level of Power Rangers episodes.  Terry is even less likable that he was in the first movie.  In one scene the bad guys witness their money turn to poop as they dine in an expensive restaurant, and then they fling it everywhere (poop fight highlight reel - where are you?).

Terry...dude...seriously?

That scene encapsulates what is so wrong about this movie.  In the first The Gate, the boys tepidly tap in to the dark arts but try to turn them off, realizing there will be consequences.  In this movie, Terry (the bad influence from the first movie), is now the sympathetic hero (not really).  The bad dudes are the villains, and when they achieve ultimate power they decide to....eat at a nice restaurant.  huh?

The first Gate scared me bad as a kid.  The only really saving grace about this film is its female lead babe Pamela Adlon (voice of Bobby Hill in King of the Hill, Louie, Californication, etc.).  She's really cute and fun and the only person you want to see in the movie.

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Slasher


This was not a terrible remake of the original My Bloody Valentine.  I'll leave it at that.

The Possession of David O'Reilly (2010)
Format:  DVD
Genre:  Haunted House


I think I see where this movie was trying to go, but it just didn't for me.

When a Stranger Calls (1979)
Format:  VHS
Genre:  Slasher


This movie has a really neat back story to it.  The first twenty minutes of the movie are fantastic.  You've seen them before in some iteration, but they're acted, paced, and shot terrifically.  And they were originally a stand alone short film.  It makes sense, then, that when the film picks up after the first 20 minutes it feels already dated and tired.  The first 20?  A work horse.  A clinic in suspense.  The rest of the movie?  A sequel.  A second guess.  It's not terrible, but it certainly doesn't pack the wallop that the first act has.  But there's a reason for this.  The short film (23 minutes) was shown all over the place to critical applause.  After Halloween became a hit, someone got hold of the film's creators and convinced them to make a feature length movie out of it.  So the second and third act of the movie truly are the sequel!  Weird, but cool.

The story of the first act can be summarized as follows:  babysitter is alone in a house with children, she gets a creepy phone call, and there's danger.

Everyone knows Charles Durning

The second act of the movie stars Charles Durning as an obsessed detective trying to track down the menace from the first act of the film.  And the menace is...menacing.  About as menacing as he can be.  At this point he's on the lam and desperate and honestly a little sympathetic.  That might be a flaw in the plot...in the first act he embodies fear.  In the second half of the movie, he's a loose cannon, but nobody seems to fear him anymore.  In fact, Charles Durning becomes the menace to the menace.  I almost wanted the menace to go on with his life, close the book on his obsessions, and get on with it.


Dark Tower (1987)
Format:  Netflix Streaming
Genre:  Haunted House (building in this case)
Believe it or not, but no trailer exists for this movie on YouTube.  Sure, if you do a quick search for it, you can find some Japanese cut that lasts for about two minutes and shows you the only semi-scary part of the movie, but what fun is that?

Kind of good-looking, right?

I'll tell you exactly why you SHOULD do that.  This movie is a steaming pile of mess.  Kevin McCarthy is in here, and he plays an alcoholic psychic medium/ghostbuster dude, but his part is teeny tiny.  Jenny Agutter plays a very sexy babe in the movie, and you find early on that she's being haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, the man that built the tower she's working in.  Michael Moriarty plays an American detective working in Spain (why? no clue) who falls for this haunted babe.  A quick google search showed me that Michael Moriarty may be certifiably insane.  I don't know how that makes me feel about this movie. I kind of like it less for it.

Michael Moriarty pretty much sucks.  Kevin McCarthy, though?  Always good.

Theodore Bikel played the one character I enjoyed, a researcher who has been made fun of by his colleagues for believing in ghosts.  He has a weird relationship with the drama unfolding at this tower.  On one hand, he wants to help his American cop buddy save the babe.  On the other hand, he wants to document as much paranormal activity as he can so he can legitimize his life's work.  Don't get wrapped up in the character.  Even though his character arc could/should have been at the center of the movie, he's given limited screen time, and [SPOILER] he doesn't meet a happy ending.  His colleagues will never appreciate him.

Theodore Bikel

I'm a stubborn old cuss, and I hate walking away from a movie that I've started.  That is the only reason I watched this one through to the end.  A smarter person wouldn't suffer through it like I did.  I don't understand how movies like these were ever made.  The disparate characters in the movie are all coincidentally Americans and/or English-speakers, despite the fact that the film takes place entirely in Spain.  Nobody thought to use stock footage of outside location from America or Britain?  Why would someone so stubbornly insist on using Spain as the location when none of the characters belong there?  So odd.

Oh well.  On to the next one.

Friday the 13th Part VIII:  Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Format:  TV
Genre:  Slasher

So, to be fair, I only watched the last thirty minutes of this ditty.  But if they were any indication of what the first hour was like, I managed this one just right.  I witnessed zero gore, but multiple killings.  The murders here were all off screen and/or goofy.  There was some convoluted story about an old man setting up his step daughter to lure Jason.  To scare away (SCARE AWAY!  NOT MURDER!) a gang of street punks in Manhattan, Jason takes off his hockey mask and scares them away.  It's a real shame that some of the most iconic horror franchises of the 80's faded away into not-funny horror or just cheap, nasty remakes...all shadows of their former selves.

One quick note:  I watched the entire Nightmare on Elm Street franchise just to study its ups and downs.  I'm going to need to do the same for Friday the 13th.  I'm not sure why, but at the end of this movie, Jason Voorhees is immersed in toxic waste (in the NYC sewer..) and before he completely dissolves, his psycho strong man body melts away to reveal a scared little kid.  Not figuratively.  Literally.  Very weird.