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| 50 NIGHTS OF HORROR CHALLENGE: WEEKS 2&3 |
Just Before Dawn (1981)
Genre: Slasher
Format: Borrowed
"Keep breeding in the same family and something's bound to snap."
This movie is criminally difficult to attain a copy of. I couldn't get a copy from Netflix, and neither Amazon.com nor eBay had reasonably priced copies of the movie on DVD or VHS. I have to keep my fingers crossed that someone like Anchor Bay or Shout Factory re-releases this gem soon. Because it really is a nice, gory little gem of a lost-in-the-woods slasher. The scenery is top notch, the gore and horror are solid, and the killer is solid. It's not a heavy affair like the movies it draws inspiration from (The Hill Have Eyes, Deliverance, etc.), but it's not a waste of time, either.The movie starts as many slashers do: a group of teens/college kids head out on an adventure and run into trouble. Here, a van of kids drives into the woods, slams beers, drive past some Appalachian poverty twins, they hit a deer (or do they?), the women folk shriek, and then a drunk bursts into the scene. At this point, I was reminded of the Queens of the Stone Age music video for No One Knows.
George Kennedy shows up as a park ranger that apparently never leaves his cabin. He's not familiar with the local yokels, and he's only marginally familiar with the grounds he's supposed to be protecting. That being said, he does have a horse, so... George Kennedy must have had an odd career in the late 70's - late 80's. I had recognized him from his roles in the Naked Gun movies, but now I've seen him in Just Before Dawn, The Terror Within!, and Demonwarp. His agent must have been a bit nutty.
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| Big. Old. Forehead. |
There were only two points that I didn't like about the movie. On a camping/adventure/hiking trip, all of these dudes are looking to hook up with a girl. The problem is that there are three dudes and two babes. You couldn't drag me on an excursion like that. No way. Also, it looks like the scales might get balanced when we're introduced to a redneck babe in short shorts, but she disappears and doesn't play enough of a part to make her significant. Bummer third dude.
The movie has some decent babes, some nice scares ("something underwater just brushed past my leg!"), and even though it was one of the oddest final kills, this was still a satisfying ending. It could have done with more gore, but more is not always better. The last scene features some pretty wimpy looking effects (offal picked up from a grocery store?), but overall, this one is worth watching. I rank this one pretty high. Extra props for one of the creepiest churches I've seen in a movie in a long time. I read that the crew built this church specifically for the movie, which is pretty incredible.
Twins are evil.
Hardware (1990)
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Cyber Terror
Format: Netflix Streaming
"Machines don't understand sacrifice - neither do morons."
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| shit is about to get real |
Follow the premise to its conclusion: the vagabond returns from work with a piece of junk metal for his girlfriend. The scrap metal is revealed to be a part of some self-healing, advanced government cyborg weapon. The scrappy couple has a spicy intimacy scene. They're spied upon by some cyber-perv IT neighbor. There are overtones of political discontent. And buckets of satisfying gore!
Then it hit me, this was something that must have been some British comix something-or-other. It came from 2000 AD (which also spawned Judge Dredd). I read some negative reviews about the movie, but when you recognize the source material and accept that it is going to be similar to an issue of Heavy Metal, it gets that much better. It's trippy and dark and violent and sexy. [SIDEBAR: Dermot McDermott! I love this guy! Seriously, I've been learning to enjoy Dylan McDermott more and more since American Horror Story aired, and since SNL ran a parody game show whose only objective was to differentiate between Dermot Mulrooney and Dylan McDermott, the name has taken on a life of its own.]
The Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1986)
Genre: Slasher
Format: Netflix Streaming
"Momma, you've got to kill them. They know you're crazy. They're gonna send you back to the hospital. Everyone must die."
Despite having one helluva menacing cover, this movie is a real stinker. Normally, I'd leave it at that and just plead with you not to waste your time on it, but I want to rub this one into the ground a little bit more.
The premise here actually has promise. A crazy woman is released from the mental hospital and returned to her family business, a motel. Why is there no adult to supervise her? Why is she left alone with her daughter? We don't need no stinkin' answers to these questions. The batty old lady swiftly takes a turn for the crazy. Ok. So far so good. She's haunted by the daughter she killed in a fit of rage. Better... She's going to murder anyone and everyone in her hotel, and each room is connected by a hidden, underground tunnel. AWESOME!
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| Here is the killer. She....sucks. |
However, when the "killer woman" begins emptying paper bags of rats, cockroaches, and snakes in the room, things get too silly. A newlywed couple, some old bachelors, a leading man (actually something of a crooked rapist with a bad mustache), and some plain "babes" round out the potential victims, and I couldn't care less if any of this bunch makes it out alive.
The scares are absent. The gore exists, but it's very tame. The ending redeems a portion of the movie, but the entire thing drags. I know it was meant to be something of a Psycho movie, but it falls severely short. Anthony Perkins was menacing. This old woman looks like she would have to sit down, breathless, after putting on her shoes. There is so much that just doesn't work here.
The Blob (1988)
Genre: Creature Feature
Format: DVD
"Chew on that, slimeball!"
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| Goodbye, Sheriff DeMunn |
Right from the offset, IcyJones and I noticed that Frank Darabont helped cowrite the movie. And you can see his fingerprints all over the movie. You can also see Jeffrey DeMunn as the sheriff for about 30 minutes. I don't think I'm ruining much by revealing that DeMunn's sheriff gets some character development, but he doesn't last long.
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| So awesome |
Chuck Russell directs the movie. You may remember him from a Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Or you may not. I'll write more about the Nightmare series later on down the road. We're also treated to significant characters getting artfully dissolved and absorbed and in various stages of digestion. Kevin Dillon plays the character Steve McQueen played in the original. We even get to see half-eaten corpses and a kid gets killed.
This absolutely could have been another throw-away creature feature from the 80s. The combination of superior special effects, aggressive story-telling, and nostalgia (both for the local VHS rental store and the 1950s classic monster cinema) mixed a cocktail of superior monster material. This is one that would be worth purchasing if it came out on Blu-Ray. I would happily add this to my collection some day.
V/H/S 2 (2013)
Genre: Anthology, Found Footage
Format: Borrowed
Like the first installment of V/H/S, this sequel sets up a premise where the audience is shown several different found-footage horror situations. And like the first V/H/S, I thought these were each done very well. The movie is split into four different situations with one overarching narrative story. I wasn't quite as scared during this second installment as I was in the first one.
- There's a neat, spooky story not unlike the movie The Eye in which a man begins experiencing ghostly happenings after having an eye transplant. You've probably seen this movie before, but it's done well here, and there are boobs.
- The next installment is a zombie tale. Nothing too original here, but still really enjoyable.
- Next, one effed up story about a news crew visiting a cult. Think [REC] meets Rosemary's Baby times eleven.
- Finally, an alien abduction story that leaves the viewer feeling really bad for the family dog.
As much as I enjoyed this movie, there's a sense that everything that's happening is real, and we're experiencing it as if it were genuine found footage. If nothing else, the characters that are living in the overarching narrative are supposed to believe it to be real. That was one of the factors that made the first V/H/S so good. Here, each section is done excellently, but topics such as zombie invasions and demonic cults surely would have generated some news reports. The characters "watching" the videos are unphased by what they're seeing on these tapes, and that takes away from the spooky atmosphere here more than it did in the first movie.
Ultimately, I really enjoyed this film, and I love what these movies are accomplishing. I'm a sucker for both horror anthologies and found footage, so this works for me on a lot of levels. Here's hoping for V/H/S 3. Now if someone would get off their ass and make Trick 'r Treat 2, I'd be a happy dude.
The Psychic (1977)
Genre: Murder Mystery?
Format: DVD
I really tried to get into this movie. I turned it on and fell asleep on four different occasions. I just could not get into this. I will say that right off the bat we're treated to a very cool-looking scene of a woman jumping off of a cliff. Fulci certainly had a way to make terrible things look beautiful (read my review from last year's horror challenge of House by the Cemetery). I regret that this one couldn't stick with me. I'll have to give it another shot some day.
Tourist Trap (1979)
Genre: Slasher
Format: DVD
"We're going to have a party!"
I hate to say it, but I don't remember how I stumbled upon Tourist Trap. One morning it was just delivered to me via Amazon. And for a Full Moon DVD release, it holds up surprisingly well. I plopped this movie in the ol' DVD player at my parents' house, and good gracious was I surprised by how much I liked it.The film isn't scary by any means. It plays like an old Hammer or Amicus release, but it's thoroughly American. A bit of quick research shows that the Art Director from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Robert Burns handled the special effects here, and that makes sense. Our bad guy looks like a PG-13 Leatherface, although he's unhinged in a very different manner. And he lives in a very Leatherface kind of abode.
There are a lot of factors here that make this movie different from your typical slasher. First, we're shown that the killer wears a mask so this movie could play out like a murder mystery. We're also shown lots of creepy mannequins. Still not a terribly original horror invention. The masked murderer also has telekinesis. THERE WE GO! Carrie had been out for three years, so this isn't the first telekinetic killer that American horror audiences have seen. BUT this IS the first deranged, masked telekinetic murderer that we've seen, so that should probably count for something.
If nothing else, one of the very cool, very creepy props in the movie is the mannequin head. I won't get into the excellent props or effects used throughout the movie - that would be giving too much away - but every once in a while we're treated to mannequins that seems to come alive when their jaws unhinge and let loose some very weird-sounding moans.
Also of note, there's one actress whose breasts are constantly on the verge of popping out of her tube top. They are never exposed, and for that matter, I don't recall ever seeing any nudity or gore. I read that this movie didn't do well in theaters but really developed an audience when it was shown repeatedly on cable TV. It makes a lot of sense that a) this was a cable sensation and b) like Texas Chainsaw Massacre much of the dread is left to the imagination. It's going to be tough to decide where this sits in regards to the challenge. I really enjoyed it, but I also liked Hardware and Just Before Dawn...
From Beyond the Grave (1974)
Genre: Anthology
Format: DVD
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| You'll never look at antiques the same way again. Well...scratch that. You probably will. |
Anyhow, this anthology contains four episodes with one overarching narrative story....not unlike V/H/S 2. (interesting) The "narrator" for the movie is played by the wonderful Peter Cushing. Here, Cushing is the proprietor of an antique shop whose odd baubles and trinkets have certain mystical attributes. Each one of the four stories concerns an item purchased in the shop and the mayhem it bestows to its new owners.
- The first story is about a magical mirror that basically turns David Warner (wacky scientist from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, evil propietor in Waxworks, decapitated photographer in The Omen, etc.) into Jack the Ripper. Warner was a pretty shrewd, nasty character before he's possessed, so we don't feel terrible when he succumbs to the ghostly entity inhabiting said mirror.
- Next we have some shlubby white-collar worker who is seduced into being a proper, distinguished gentleman because he can't find any satisfaction from his family at home. He is tempted by a poor veteran and his amply-bestowed daughter to pretend to be more than he is, and his illusions and lies catch up to him in a way that the audience never sees coming.- For the third installment we have another shrewd collector who is cursed when he short changes Cushing's antique dealer. The curse? An elemental attaches itself to the man, and this causes the invisible imp to wreck havoc on the man's home and family. Some really neat special effects work their way into this chapter.
- Finally, we have a story about a haunted antique door. A husband purchases the haunted door, installs it in front of a cabinet that houses paper (why), and every once in a while the door opens to a ghoul-infested castle instead of the paper cabinet. Terror ensues. Silly premise, but fun execution.
This movie certainly didn't reinvent the horror anthology wheel, but it is certainly a fun addition to the genre.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
Genre: Slasher, Dark Comedy
Format: Blu-Ray
"It's the meat. Don't skimp on the meat. I've got a real good eye for prime meat. Runs in the family."
Really, that's what this sequel is, a family reunion. It is in no way, shape, or form comparable to the first installment of the TTCM because at this point the first movie had taken on a life of its own AND because Tobe Hooper, from what I can gather, did not intend to make a movie similar to the first TTCM. The way I found myself comparing the movies is this: the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre is like Tim Burton's Batman movies. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is Joel Schumacher's Batman movies. Apples and rotten oranges.
That sounds worse than I mean for it to sound. I enjoyed TTCM2, I really did. But for reasons very different from why I enjoyed the first movie. Well, I think I did. I couldn't help but catch myself comparing the two movies, even though I knew going in that I should not. I had heard that Hooper wanted to focus on the humor of the first movie, an aspect that he felt many people overlooked. But I also heard that Hooper never really got what he wanted out of the movie because the studio took it out of his hands before he was done shooting and editing. So we don't really get to see Hooper's vision.
What can be inferred is that this is, as I typed earlier, a family reunion. Leatherface is back (though filtered through another actor in a severely less-menacing way). The head of the family is back, and it appears he now runs a successful food truck. The hitchhiking brother is back...kind of. And Grandfather is back, as much as he can be. The meat of the movie surrounds the family. Anyone else is just kind of, well, trimmings.
The first ten minutes of the movie reminded me very much of the first TTCM. Two Texas Longhorn-loving, testosterone-blaring, a-hole, loudmouth college guys are zooming through the state before the Red River Rivalry game. Excited for the big game, they call up a local radio station and decide to be as obnoxious as hell. Soon, they're playing a game of cat and mouse with a menacing truck because they're assholes, and that's what assholes do. What they don't know is that Leatherface is in the bed of that truck, and he's wearing his dead brother's body as a shield, and he has an extra-long chainsaw now!
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| trying to hard on Leatherface's mask |
The two beefcake Texas fans meet a grisly end (thank God -- I could only hear "hook 'em horns!" so many times), and soon we're introduced to Dennis Hopper (whose story arc surely would have been better with more of Hooper's time) and a couple of employees at the radio station: one a babe, the other another obnoxious Texas redneck who loves to spit.
PAUSE: I get the impression that Tobe Hooper really wanted to stick it to the state of Texas in this movie. I'm not sure where this beef originated, but I didn't really care for any of the Texas residents here. The fact that they endorse a maniac cannibal's food truck, the fact that people would order chili from a food truck, the fact that everyone seems to love the Longhorns almost as much as they love denim and chew tobacco, the fact that the killers live in an abandoned amusement park...it all makes Texas look pretty stupid. UNPAUSE.
Dennis Hopper plays a comical lieutenant named "Lefty" (for reasons unknown). He's out to get revenge for the murders of his niece and nephew, both murdered in the first movie. We actually don't see much of Lefty, but when we do, good gracious it should have been more significant.PAUSE: To get a better sense of what's going on here, consider that the movie poster for this film was modeled to look like the movie poster for The Breakfast Club. Funny? I'll let you be the judge. But audiences surely should have known better than to attend this movie thinking they were going to be as shaken as they were while they watched the first movie. UNPAUSE
My biggest take away from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is that Tobe Hooper had a neat, well-rounded mythology for these characters. There's a lot of backstory hinted at throughout this movie, but none of it is executed. We only get hints at what happened to the Hitchhiker character from the first movie (his corpse is being worn and played with by his brothers). He's also featured on the movie poster, but if I hadn't done research on the movie, I wouldn't have picked that up. Chop Top (seriously his name -- and another clue that I think this was supposed to be a cartoon or toy line), is the Hitchhiker's twin brother who was stationed in Vietnam during the events of the first movie. I had to look that one up, too. Much of the family is back, and their story is pretty interesting.
Ultimately I wish we could have seen more content here and fewer chase scenes. The end seemed very sudden, and I know Hooper said that the end product was unfinished. I would be very interested in seeing/reading what his vision was for all of these characters. I have TTCM3 queued up for viewing during the challenge. And I can get a copy of "Next Generation" easily enough. Although I don't believe that the first movie warranted or needed any sequels, I'm very curious to see where the saga of Leatherface and his family goes. PAUSE: Growing up, my family lived in the middle of a wooded area far from the road or from neighbors. My mother, a young woman, was often left home alone with my sisters and I. I don't know how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre got on her radar, but the thought alone of the scenario always scared her. For as genuinely scary as her scenario must have been sometimes, it always cracks me up that she referenced the movie as TEXAS CHAINSAW MURDER GANG. If she got freaked out, she told dad, "but what about the Texas Chainsaw Murder Gang?!" Even when I sat down to watch this one night, she came in the room, saw Leatherface, and shrieked "ARE YOU WATCHING THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MURDER GANG?!" God Bless my mother. UNPAUSE
!!!FIFTY NIGHTS OF HORROR TRIPLE FEATURE!!!
I'm going to go ahead and group a slew of movies together that I think share similar themes.
The three movies share artists that are dealing with conflicts at home and at work.
Trust is a big issue in the movies, as is the fear of failure.
I do not recommend watching all three in one sitting. If you're having a hard time dealing with work or with trust issues, I don't recommend watching any of the three. You might run the risk of murdering a loved one afterward (one of the themes of these movies). Here goes.
FIRST MOVIE
The Hand (1981)
Genre: Psychological Horror, Mystery
Format: DVD
Michael Caine hit a point in his career in the 70s and 80s where he only made films so he could afford additions to his homes and furniture and art to fill them up. That's equally depressing as it is cool. This movie features a bit of nudity, a bit of violence, and a pace so deliberate and clunky that it feels like it didn't know if it wanted to be an art house mystery movie with a creature feature twist or a horror movie with an arty violent twist. Oliver Stone directed it in one of his first stints as director. You can see some aspects of his work here that he would later flesh out and use better.
The premise: Caine plays a writer/illustrator/publisher for his comic book character Mandro (a Conan-type character who is actually drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith). He's in a strained marriage, and he and his wife are debating about whether or not to move from Vermont (his place) to New York City (her place). They have a daughter together. He has a temper. On a ride into town, the two get into a loud argument in the car, they get into a car accident, and Caine's hand is GRUESOMELY ripped off. BLOOD EVERYWHERE!And that's the most exciting thing in the movie. For the rest of the film, we see Caine doing his best to deal with the fact that a) he cannot continue to do the thing he was best at (drawing) b) he can't trust the people he was closest to anymore c) people in his life are being murdered and d) his hand has never been recovered.
The underlying theme here is really that Michael Caine is dealing with the self-conflict inherent in any mid-life crisis. Yes, his hand is brutally removed from his body and replaced with a bionic hand that crush metal (weird). And yes, there are scenes of a dismembered crawling through grass (think Thing from Addams Family). I really like Michael Caine and Oliver Stone, but I did not think that this was a good entry for the challenge.
SECOND MOVIE
Secret Window (2004)
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Format: BluRay
"You strike me as the kinda guy who's on the lookout for a head he can knock off with a shovel."
This movie sits in a weird spot for Johnny Depp's career. He had been acting in some pretty dark movies at this point (Ninth Gate, Nick of Time, Sleepy Hollow, From Hell, etc.), but he had also broken through to huge audiences with his performance as Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I remember it was only because of the Sparrow character that my roommate at the time dragged me to the theater to see this. And I have to say, I was very satisfied, not just with the movie bu also with how disgusted my roommate was. He was looking for a popcorny, light comedy with charming Depp. What we saw was a creepy, disheveled Depp. I loved it.
Stephen King knows how to write creepy stories about authors meeting their deadlines and dealing with dark passengers (to coin a phrase from Dexter). In Secret Window, Depp's character lives alone in a secluded, lakeside cabin. He enjoys sleeping on the couch, wearing his bath robe, and being a waste all alone by himself. Good for him! I can relate to this guy! His only vices appear to be that he sneaks junk food and cigarettes.One day, his quiet bachelor pad is shaken when John Turturro's character shows up on the doorstep claiming that Depp stole his story and published it in one of Depp's collections of short stories. Turturro promises to resolve the issue his own way, without cops or legislation. He's a menacing, determined force throughout the movie, and we learn early on that he's not afraid to resort to violence.
As he works to clear his name and avoid confrontation, he's also dealing with an unfaithful wife and her turd of a new boyfriend (Timothy Hutton). While Turturro is wanting to remedy their situation directly and bluntly, Depp's wife and boyfriend skirt around the issue of her adultery and the property ownership issues that come with messy divorces. It's an interesting contrast for the movie. On one hand, you have a fast-acting, direct menace, and on the other we have a pleasant, attractive "love" interest that dances around her problem with Depp.
There were some neat scares here, and I remember jumping a couple times in the theater. There isn't any nudity here and only sparing gore, but it's still a fun, spooky movie to have in the collection.
THIRD MOVIE
The Dark Half (1993)
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Slasher
Format: DVD
"[The police] wanted me to confirm that you were a man of good character. I lied and told them that you were."
Another movie based on a Stephen King story about a tormented author. This one, like Secret Window, also features Timothy Hutton! I'll have to get to the bottom of how Hutton worms his way into these movies like he does. George A. Romero directs the film, so I automatically liked it that much better for his involvement.
My first interaction with this movie was on the back cover of many of my comic books back in 1993. I always wanted to see it, and it wasn't until I re-subscribed to Netflix to kickstart this challenge that I realized a twenty year old goal. And I wasn't disappointed.Right from the get-go, we're treated to a pretty gruesome scene when a young boy begins having seizures and the doctors decide he needs a bit of brain surgery. What comes next was so gory and cool that I don't want to spoil it for anyone.
Years later, the boy has become a successful horror author using the pseudonym George Stark. Why he didn't use his real name, Thad Beaumont is beyond me. Well...no...Thad Beaumont is a pretty weak-sounding name. Anyhow, Thad is again set upon by seizures, and around the same time people close to him are getting murdered. His alter ego, George Stark, has become a realized person through some dark magic we assume happens off-camera, and he's pissed that Thad isn't "using" him anymore.
If anyone other than Romero was handling this source material, I imagine the movie would play something very similar to The Hand. More drama and less tension. This movie was solidly entertaining, and I'm glad that I was finally able to watch it, albeit twenty years later.
Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Walking Dead, Slither) shows up as a bullying police officer, and that's pretty cool, too.
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