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11/17/2023 0 Comments the 2023 aero all-night horrorthonThe 18th annual all-night Aero Horrorthon took place on the Saturday before Halloween and, as usual, it was one of my favorite nights of the entire year. However, in a scandalous turn of events, the organizers elected *not* to announce the lineup beforehand! A lot of people prefer a mystery reveal - which is how the New Beverly, among others, traditionally operates - but I am most definitely not one of them. I like to know *exactly* what I’m in for so that I can mentally prepare… and not knowing basically sent me spiraling in the week leading up to the event - to the point that I was half-tempted to hysterically accuse the Aero of committing fraud by selling tickets under false pretenses. The good news is that the organizers at least saw fit to release a series of “cryptic clues” the morning of, and a group of enterprising sleuths managed to unravel the entire lineup over social media while we were waiting in line. 20 minutes advance notice was honestly all I needed to get my head straight and in we went (Aero membership, meanwhile, ensured we had our best seats ever). The skits, pre-show interstitials, and overall vibe were top-notch as usual (though the traditional serving of “soylent pizza” appears to well and truly be a thing of the past now, sadly)… with the overall pace between screenings feeling particularly and deliberately tight this year. Anyway - on to the films!  In a rather amusing turn of events, Dolls was the last remaining film in my Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams box set from Arrow Video… and I had actually penciled it in for Halloween night. Well, so much for that plan! See, this is precisely why I need to know what the titles are going to be in advance! One of the more iconic 80s efforts from Charles Band’s prolific Empire Pictures and director Stuart Gordon (see my Robot Jox review in the Arrow Video section), the film follows a little girl named Judy, who finds herself stranded in the English countryside with her louse of a father and witchy stepmother. The trio is forced to take refuge for the night in the nearby gothic manor of a kindly old dollmaker and his wife, where they’re joined by likable schlub Ralph and two female hitchhikers of dubious moral fiber. Long story short - the dolls are alive and those who are dicks end up dead (or worse). A really solid dose of fairy tale-flavored fun, with nifty stop-motion special effects and a surprisingly endearing bond between Judy and Ralph, who lend the film a surprising amount of heart. Not *quite* the stone-cold banger you typically look for to kick things off (it would have been a perfect second film, especially with its 78-minute runtime), but an appreciably lively opener nonetheless. Burn Level: 1 (finished off a Ghost Cherry Limeade (my new go-to energy drink of choice) and it basically had me functioning like Pacino in Heat - keeps me sharp… (*snap*)… on the edge… (*snap*)… where I gotta be)  This 1990 cult farce from director Frank Henenlotter is a darkly comic riff on the classic Frankenstein formula, featuring James Lorinz (who’s like Dana Carvey’s edgy younger brother with a touch of James Spader) as Jeffrey… a tightly-wound power plant employee (he performs self-trepanations with a power drill to manage his anxiety) and amateur mad scientist, whose fiancee Elizabeth perishes in a freak lawn mower accident. Able to salvage her head, Jeffrey sets about trying to build her the perfect body by targeting New York street walkers… who he attempts to lure with lethal “extra-strength crack” he whipped up in his lab (yes, I’m being serious - just wait until you get to the exploding orgy scene). Things only get nuttier when the title character (played by Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen) is reanimated and inadvertently unleashed upon the city. A bit shoddy from an actual filmmaking perspective, but wildly inappropriate in the best way possible. The Horrorthon should really screen more horror-comedies like this. On a side note, I saw a girl wearing a Frankenhooker t-shirt and if that was strictly coincidence, then I tip my cap to her. Burn Level: 2 (minimal fatigue, senses sharp, echolocation functioning at a peak, Morbius-level efficiency)  I must admit to having a bit of a soft spot for this film. The notion of turning Hitchcock’s suspense masterwork into some sort of belated 80s horror franchise is obviously beyond cringe… and yet, director Richard Franklin (who also helmed prior Horrorthon offering Link) manages to chart his own compelling path, narratively - due in no small part to a genuinely sad and sympathetic performance from Anthony Perkins as a reformed Norman Bates who just wants to live a normal life. Franklin was never going to go toe-to-toe with Hitch stylistically (in color, no less), but even with its more muted visual approach, the film manages several sequences of well-crafted suspense (and if you’re a fan of the subsect of De Palma films that feature sleazy Dennis Franz performances, this one’s got a humdinger). The main issue is that the story delivers a pretty respectable twist about two-thirds of the way through, but then has to cook up an additional twist to pull everything together, and that’s where the movie wobbles… the plot seams definitely start to fray, though the resonance of the final shot is undeniable. On a side note, I think it’s all but impossible not to fall in love with Meg Tilly in this movie - she’ll break your heart anew every time you watch. Burn Level: 4.5 (holding up surprisingly well, definitely aware that the event is now officially pushing two AM but no significant signs of fatigue)  A suitably gonzo effort from the prolific (and slightly mad) “Ed Wood-esque” auteur Jesus “Jess” Franco, and co-starring Horrorthon cult hero Telly Savalas, this late-80s French slasher functions as a very loose update of the 1960 classic Eyes Without a Face. Helmut Berger plays a plastic surgeon whose sister is disfigured by acid (meant for him, courtesy of a disgruntled patient)… who subsequently joins forces with a Nazi war criminal (as one does) to attempt a radical facial transplant. Unfortunately, one of the models he abducts as a potential “candidate” happens to be the daughter of Savalas’s New York bigwig, who dispatches his old war buddy turned gumshoe (played by Chris Mitchum) to investigate. With its bad dubbing, mediocre acting (Savalas excepted, of course), lurching tonal shifts (it switches almost indiscriminately between genuine horror and borderline soft-core porn), and weirdly incongruous theme song (see below), the end result is a narrative Jackson Pollock piece (to put it kindly)… and yet it kinda, sorta rocks? That might be the Rockstar Silver Ice talking, it’s hard to say. Burn Level: 6.5 (my customary two AM Rockstar Silver Ice gave me a second wind... a few restless moments, but never in any significant danger of nodding off, unlike years past) Up next was the John Carpenter classic Prince of Darkness (a surprisingly modest slot for a film that easily could have - and probably should have - kicked off the entire evening), which totally rules but I’ve also seen a zillion times… so even though I was still in relatively good shape physically, we once again decided that four films was our limit and packed it in. Maybe next year. For the record, #6 was Primal Rage, which I watched on Shudder a few days later - a great hunk of 80s cheese about a research chimp that unleashes a rage virus on a college campus. The sort of movie where the band that wrote the deliriously peppy pop song that plays over the opening credits (see below) shows up to perform it live at the climactic Halloween dance. Like Slaughterhouse Rock last year, I imagine the screening was a total hoot… assuming anyone was still awake enough at that point to enjoy it. UPDATED HORRORTHON RANKINGS
01. The Entity 02. Jason X 03. The Blob 04. The Hidden 05. House of Wax 06. Critters 07. Maximum Overdrive 08. Halloween II 09. Psycho II 10. In the Mouth of Madness 11. Dolls 12. Link 13. Frankenhooker 14. Horror of Dracula 15. Faceless 16. Phantasm II 17. Lord of Illusions 18. Mortuary 19. Nightbeast 20. It’s Alive 21. Body Melt 22. Devil Fetus 23. Ruby At first glance, this would appear to be a disappointing lineup, with no titles in the top-8 (though I contemplated putting Psycho II as high as #6), but I would actually argue this was the most *consistent* Horrorthon lineup to date, with four really solid films and no duds to speak of. If you factor in Prince of Darkness and Primal Rage, it might have been the best overall from top-to-bottom. Can't wait until next year!
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11/6/2023 0 Comments streaming horror: no one will save you, pet sematary: bloodlines, and five nights at Freddy's If movies were judged on degree of difficulty, No One Will Save You would receive extremely high marks. Writer/director Brian Duffield starts with a cool elevator pitch (what if a home invasion thriller doubled as an alien invasion thriller?) and ratchets up the creative challenge by staging the film with no supporting cast to speak of and virtually zero dialogue. Working within those restrictive parameters, he nonetheless does a deft job establishing key details of world and character - Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is a young woman who lives a solitary life in the isolated farmhouse where she grew up, and appears to be ostracized by the neighboring townsfolk for reasons unknown. One night, she’s alerted to the presence of an intruder in her home - a gray-skinned alien humanoid with telekinetic abilities - and from there Duffield keeps his foot firmly mashed to the accelerator, keeping the audience off-balance as his script begins zigging and zagging in unexpected directions. This proves to be tremendous B-movie fun… for about 45 minutes or so. In spite of the propulsive pace, it’s incredibly difficult - even for a talented filmmaker - to keep upping the narrative ante while avoiding repetition (there’s only so much fresh cat-and-mousing you can stage throughout the house and in the neighboring forest) and doing enough character-wise (again, without the benefit of any dialogue) to knit it all together convincingly. The rules and inner logic start to feel fuzzy after a while. Nonetheless, Dever proves insanely, compulsively watchable - it’s the mark of a truly gifted actress when you strip away every tool but her own expressiveness and it remains more than enough for her to single-handedly carry an entire picture. Duffield, who wrote such films as The Babysitter and Underwater, is known for his innovative approach to screenwriting (a sample page from this movie features terse, bolded action descriptions embedded in a wall of text that reads “she can’t move” over and over again). No One Will Save You is ultimately too much of a high-wire trapeze act for its own good, but I seriously dig the way Duffield’s creative mind works.  I doubt even the most ardent fans of Stephen King’s 1983 novel Pet Sematary would suggest the concept is remotely compelling enough to build an entire cinematic universe around. And yet, following Mary Lambert’s original 1989 adaptation (and 1992 sequel) and the largely indifferent 2019 remake presided over by Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch, we somehow have this nonessential prequel - which presents itself as the origin story you never knew you needed (or wanted) for Jud Crandall (the character memorably played by Fred Gwynne in the original and John Lithgow in the remake, and mostly portrayed here as some wide-eyed goober by Jackson White). Crandall is preparing to leave the town of Ludlow for good with his girlfriend Norma (the scorchingly photogenic Natalie Alyn Lind) in 1969, but events conspire to keep him put… right as the reclusive Bill Baterman (David Duchovny - what in the world?) reveals that his son Timmy recently returned from Vietnam in one piece. Of course we catch on pretty quickly that Timmy did not, in fact, return from Vietnam in one piece, and almost certainly took an ill-advised detour through the pet sematary… the ancient and sinister burial ground that resurrects the dead, but brings them back, well… not quite right (this is actually based on a story Jud tells in the novel, though Timmy served in World War II). Timmy (played by Jack Mulhern from Mare of Easttown) doesn’t necessarily act as if he’s been infected with malevolence; rather he appears to be suffering from a form of PTSD (something one imagines that director Lindsey Anderson Beer was attempting to grapple with on some vague thematic level). Pet Sematary: Bloodlines delves into the dark history of the town, but like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, it’s really just an excuse to rehash the original like a slightly reshuffled deck of cards. There’s nothing revelatory to be found here. “Sometimes dead is better,” Jud says, in one of the novel’s more iconic lines. That goes for people, and for IP as well. Some things needn’t be continually resurrected.  Five Nights at Freddy’s is based on the hugely popular video game series, and those who haven’t been indoctrinated will likely be left scratching their heads over what’s essentially a Chuck E. Cheese version of The Black Phone (infused with a healthy dose of Nightmare on Elm Street dream logic). Josh Hutcherson stars as Mike Schmidt (no apparent connection to the baseball legend), who has no choice but to take a gig as the night security guard at the long defunct pizza parlor Freddy Fazbear’s, which garnered significant notoriety back in the 80s after several kids went missing (Mike is tasked with caring for his socially withdrawn younger sister Abby - a slightly more intriguing dynamic than if he’d simply been given a daughter). Mike, who attempts lucid dreaming each night in the hopes of unraveling his brother’s childhood abduction, soon comes to realize that Freddy and his animatronic pals (Bonnie, Chica and Foxy) come to creaking, lurching life after hours… their intentions unclear (though if the fate of Mike’s predecessor is any indication, probably not great).
Five Nights at Freddy’s has been demolishing box office records (I took the coward’s way out and simply watched it on Peacock), but it’s hard to see it as frankly much more than the rough skeleton of a movie. The dramatic tension remains slack and largely ill-defined until the third act (the script has to contrive antagonists - such as a group of would-be looters, who receive their just desserts in the film’s best sequence - for fear that nothing would happen otherwise). The main reason to see the movie is the marvelous job Jim Henson’s Creature Shop does bringing Freddy and friends to life in all their clanking, tactile, grubby-felted glory - every time they’re on-screen, the film sputters to life. Hutcherson has an easy, appealing chemistry with Elizabeth Lail (who looks like Jennifer Lawrence’s peppier younger sister who did more extracurriculars in high school) as Vanessa, a cop who stops by Freddy’s every night and appears to know more than she lets on. The mythology feels tenuous yet oddly overwrought (an extension of the games and their supposedly convoluted lore). It’s unlikely this adaptation will convert many newcomers, but the Five Nights faithful seem well-pleased, for what it's worth. |
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