6 Weeks of Halloween

As usual, this week is something of a cheat since most of these aren’t exactly playing at a theater near you. On the other hand, the advent of OnDemand and other streaming services means you can watch these in the comfort of your own. Truly, we are living in wondrous times.

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: Nightmare Cafeteria
• Ravenous (trailer)
• The Necronomicon (short)
• Bone Tomahawk – I guess Kurt Russell figured that if he was going to make the effort to grow a bitchin frontier beard (for Tarantino’s upcoming epic Western, The Hateful Eight), he might as well leverage it to make another Western. This one decidedly more dark.

  

  Picture The Searchers, but with more cannibals and slightly less racism. A posse of cowboys rides off to rescue a group of captives from what appear to be cannibals. There’s not much of a plot, and yet the 2 hour plus runtime doesn’t feel too long either. There are some serious deficits facing our heroes, but they make due, and while tensions sometimes rise, there seems to be a grudging respect granted between each other by the (gruesome) end. The film is buoyed by a fantastic ensemble cast, lead by the aforementioned Kurt Russell, but also including an injured Patrick Wilson, an almost unrecognizable Richard Jenkins, and Matthew Fox (who manages to ham it up without going too overboard, well calibrated). It’s hard to call this a “fun” movie, but it is captivating and worth a look (unless you’re squeamish, but if you are, why are you even reading this?) ***

• Thursday the 12th (Robot Chicken)
• Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
• How Scream Should Have Ended (short)
• The Final Girls – This movie puts a new wrinkle into the clever, self aware slasher sub-sub-genre by not just having its heroes steeped in slasher movie knowledge, but by actually inserting them into the movie (Last Action Hero style). As such, it comports itself well, with a nice ensemble cast, a few clever references and laughs, and plenty of dashed expectations. Most slasher tropes are hit hard here – tragedy in the past being revisited upon the present (with multiple, Inception-like levels), a masked madman, a machete and some gore (though still a distressing lack of variety in weaponry/kills), no real nudity, but plenty of pretty faces.

  

  Including Malin Akerman, who can somehow pass for both a mother of a teenager and… a teenager herself. Also of note, Nina Dobrev, who plays the typical “bitch” character, but knows exactly what happens to such characters and charmingly leverages her bitchosity to move things along. The stereotypical final girl is played by Taissa Farmiga, and Alia Shawkat (of Arrested Development fame) plays her best friend. Thomas Middleditch plays the “Randy” type character who knows a lot about the movie they’re stuck in, and Alexander Ludwig rounds out our regular cast as the hunky love interest. This has some nice tweaks on a played out theme and is wholly enjoyable, though perhaps not quite destined for big recognition. Still, very enjoyable and recommended. Great ending too! ***

• It’s the Gifts That I Hate (Robot Chicken)
• Tucker & Dale vs Evil (trailer)
• Just Before Dawn (trailer)
• Cub – Belgian film about troubled youngster Sam as he heads off on a weekend camping trip with a group of Cub-scouts, only to find… something lurking in the woods around them. Part slasher, part hillbilly horror, this is a short one that comports itself well enough and then goes to some very dark places. I’m especially not sure what to really make of the ending, which is rather bleak. It appears there are actually two killers, one a big dude who we’re lead to guess was laid off when the local factory shut down (a common feature of hillbilly horror: soft, capitalistic city dwellers head out to the countryside only to be the subject of rural revenge). Lots of stalking and sneaking, a la a slasher, but the kills are generally done with elaborate and increasingly improbable booby traps, as befits most cinematic hillbillies. Also, kids are involved. It’s amazing how many “summer camp” horror movies there are that don’t actually feature young kids. Teenagers, usually councilors, are the cannon fodder of such movies. Here, we have a bunch of 12 year olds, including our protagonist, Sam. Even one of the killers (spoiler, there’s more than one) is a kid. It’s a little odd, and gives the movie a serious edge. I learned about this movie from a couple of folks talking about Fantastic Fest last year, and this is a movie very well suited to that atmosphere. Which I sometimes love, but which takes a certain mindset that isn’t particularly common. I can’t see this one being particularly crowd-pleasing, at least, not with that ending. That being said, I’m glad I watched it and it might even be something I’d revisit, because it’s got a lot to chew on. **1/2

Phew, hard to believe it’s been 6 weeks! Do not despair, as we’ll still have a wrapup post on Sunday, along with the usual “Speed Round” of stuff I watched but haven’t yet covered. Also look for a book review on Wednesday. And don’t forget about Kernunrex and Zack, who continue to rock the Six Weeks like no one’s business.

It’s funny how many horror sub-genres are derived from harmless entertainments of years past. Most infamously, clowns are pure nightmare fuel these days, but this week, I focused on a more goofy sub-genre, that of dolls and dummies, particularly of the ventriloquist variety. For the most part, when you see a doll or dummy on screen these days, chances are that it’s being played for scares. And it’s not hard to see why. Dolls often seem to occupy the same Uncanny Valley territory that CGI characters, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and pretty much any other politician inhabit (zing!) Ventriloquist dummies, in particular, have lots of metaphorical potential – a body that must be occupied from the outside just begs to be filled with something supernatural, right? So let’s take a look at some dolls and dummies:

• Chinga (The X-Files)
• The Dummy (Short)
• The Inheritance (Friday the 13th: The Series)
• Magic – This movie has the most weirdly impressive pedigree of anything I’ve watched for 6WH this year. Directed by Richard Attenborough, written by William Goldman, starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, and Ed Lauter, none of whom are particularly well known for horror movies (except perhaps for Hopkins’ turn as Hannibal Lecter over a decade later). While a lot of “Demonic Dummy” type stories have an element of goofy irony to them, this movie plays the whole thing completely straight, not even a trace of ironic winking. What’s more, this approach actually works. Anthony Hopkins plays a talented stage magician that doesn’t really have any stage presence. Cut to a year later, and he’s a big star, doing Johnny Carson and talking to the networks about a series of specials. What happened? How did he turn it all around? With his ventriloquist dummy, named Fats, of course!

  

  A shy, timid man, he gets scared of his sudden success and packs his bags to return to his hometown and visit with his old crush. Soon, though, we begin to suspect that Fats has other plans. This is a surprisingly effective movie. It’s hard to really call it horror, but there are several very suspenseful, Hitchcockian sequences. Fats is suitably creepy, and the movie does an excellent job maintaining plausibility (Fats never really speaks or movies unless Hopkins is in he room with him). Things do get a little more farfetched as the film moves along, but by that point, we’re wrapped up enough in the characters to give it a pass. Hopkins is excellent here, and I don’t know that the movie would work without his performance. A surprisingly decent film! ***

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III: Clown Without Pity
• Buffy Season 8 (Robot Chicken)
• Child’s Play (trailer)
• Bride of Chucky – I’ve never been a huge Child’s Play/Chucky fan, but the franchise has some serious legs, and this fourth installment had a surprisingly good reception back in the day. Clearly influenced by the self-referential Scream, this film took the series in a decidedly more comedic direction than the first three films. The Chucky doll is liberated from the police evidence locker (where you get glimpses of a bunch of other horror icons and their masks and whatnot) by his former girlfriend Tiffany, played by Jennifer Tilly, who immediately sets about trying to repair and revive the “dead” doll (using a “Voodoo for Dummies” book, obviously) Tiffany and Chucky have an argument, and Chucky throws a TV (which is playing Bride of Frankenstein, obviously) into her bubble bath, then uses his own voodoo to transfer her spirit into another doll.

  

  From there, they employ some unwitting teenagers (one of which is played by a very young Katherine Heigl) to drive them to Chucky’s grave, where they can retrieve the amulet… you know what, it doesn’t really matter. It’s all in good fun, and Chucky/Tiffany do a good job framing out unsuspecting teen heroes. This isn’t exactly deep stuff. The references are ham fisted and superficial, Jennifer Tilly’s voice has always grated on me, and the whole mean-spirited black comedy bit is overplayed, and yet, it worked well enough, and somehow manages to entertain for the full running time, and it ends pretty damn strong, with the only real unexpectedly interesting tidbit in the movie. It’s fun, but nothing more than that. **

• Living with Jigsaw (short)
• Sawed by the Bell (Robot Chicken)
• Annabelle (trailer)
• Dead Silence – James Wan must have something for creepy dolls. Saw employs a creepy doll, as does The Conjuring, not to mention other movies he had less involvement with, like Annabelle. Then you have this film, his follow up to Saw, a film about a man who receives a mysterious ventriloquist dummy in the mail. Shortly after that, his wife dies in suspicious circumstances. He returns to his hometown to investigate a local urban legend about a ventriloquist who gets you if you scream, and quickly starts to unravel. Wan is visually talented and that’s the best part of the movie; it looks great. Lots of well constructed sequences with the dummies, some very creepy imagery, and nifty enough twists late in the story. Some of the beats are a bit tired and predictable, but there’s always room for good execution in my book, and Wan certainly manages that. There’s no real irony here either, but it does rely on the supernatural quite a bit, so perhaps not as effective or as metaphorical as Magic, but still a creepily entertaining sit. **1/2

There you have it. Stay tuned for a horror quiz and next week, we’ll tackle some recent releases (I think).

It occurs to me that this year’s Six Weeks of Halloween movie marathon is about as long as possible (assuming the six weeks begin on a Sunday) because Halloween falls on a Saturday this year. As such, we’re just a hair over the midway point of the marathon, and after last week’s batshit insanity, I decided to go a more humorous route this week. Some genre mashups go together like ink and paper (numbers on a calculator), but balancing horror and comedy is a tricky beast that few films manage to tame. Some figure it out by accident; the fabled “so bad it’s good” type of movie often runs on an engine of unintentional comedy. But intentionally mashing these genres up takes a deft touch, and even the best examples often veer hard in one direction or another. I’m hard pressed to think of two better examples than Shaun of the Dead and Ghostbusters, but you already knew about those, didn’t you? So let’s troll the depths of Netflix in search of more.

• Shining (Fake Trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning
• What We Do In The Shadows (trailer)
• Housebound – After a hair-brained attempt to rob an ATM machine, Kylie is sentenced to house arrest by the judge. The catch is that it’s her childhood home with her step-father and frustratingly talkative mother. Also, apparently, ghosts! With the aid of the security officer who monitors her ankle-band (he is an amateur paranormal investigator, naturally), Kylie transitions from selfish punk to mildly-interested in figuring out what is going on. Apparently, house arrest is quite boring so you could argue otherwise, but Morgana O’Reilly plays Kylie with such aplomb that you can’t help but fall in love with her, despite her curmudgeonly sneering and initially self-absorbed whining.

  

  We are spared any romantic subplots, allowing that central performance to really shine through, and O’Reilly doesn’t waste the opportunity. I don’t want to say more about the plot, especially as it really starts to twist and turn later on, but it’s quite enjoyable, with a good proportion of creepy atmosphere and just enough of that quirky New Zealand weirdness to win you over. Of the movies I watched, this one is the clear winner. Great central performance, just enough humor to carry the day, and the best use of a cheese grater ever. Recommended! ***

• The Ring Video Dating (Robot Chicken)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror: Bad Dream House
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Murder (short)
• Out of the Dark – Stephen Chow’s made a career out of genre mashups, and this early one works reasonably well for fans of the genre, even if it isn’t nearly as seamless as Chow’s best work (Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer are excellent and worth checking out). The Looney Tunes-like slapstick is the highlight of the film, mostly driven by our intrepid hero, played by Chow, a literal mental patient who dresses up like Leon The Professional and fancies himself a ghost hunter ever since he visited a circus and confused the paper mache monsters for the real thing.

  

  The scenes with him training the security personnel of a haunted building are delightfully well structured and build on the humor with each variation. The romance is a little less successful, though one can’t help but appreciate her pluck when she goes to visit Chow’s character by dressing up like Natalie Portman in The Professional. There are one or two decently creepy moments in the film, but the balance tends to favor the more slapsticky side of things, which gives the film less coherence than you’d usually want. The plot, concerning a haunting of a high-rise, is pretty standard stuff and doesn’t really hold much interest. This is a fine movie, but Chow doesn’t quite hold it all together the way he managed later in his career. Worth checking out for students of the genre. **

• Tremors (trailer)
• A Ruined Nation (Robot Chicken)
• The Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc. (Short)
• Grabbers – An Irish monster comedy that plays into the stereotype, this one mashes up several tropes and sub-genres to get to the finish line. You’ve got your typical monster movie conventions, then we’ve got the the by-the-book cop gets assigned to a rural town and falls in love with the local whilst solving a string of mysterious murders sub-genre (yeah, that old chestnut), and then a good old-fashioned drinking film, a stereotypically Irish sub-genre. Our hero is played by Ruth Bradley, a charmingly prim and proper young woman who is partnered with the generally drunken, curly haired local cop. She looks askance at his general approach, but unlike Out of the Dark‘s romance, this one works reasonably well.

  

  The monster works well too, all tentacles and goop. When it’s discovered that the attacking monsters can’t process alcohol and thus avoid drunk victims, our intrepid heroes endeavor to get the whole town together in the pub to tie one on. You know, for their own safety. This isn’t quite as uproariously funny as you’d hope, but it’s got plenty of laughs balanced out by solid monster movie execution. This isn’t the sort of thing that feels the need to reinvent the wheel or to go particularly deep, but it knows what it’s doing and it does it well. Definitely worth checking out, if for no other reason than to see Ruth Bradley’s adorable drunken bravura. **1/2

Also of note, What We Do in the Shadows, a movie already covered on the blog (ever so briefly), but highly recommended and hilarious (would make a great double feature with Housebound)! A generally successful mission in Week 4, and you know, Shaun of the Dead and Ghostbusters are pretty much annual rewatches at this point, but you already know about them so I don’t need to go over them, right? Good. Stay tuned for next week’s theme, scary puppets. Or something like that.

The “Obscure Horror Auteurs” theme continues with the grossest auteur yet, Frank Henenlotter. With his trademark combination of shameless bad taste and an almost complete lack of self-restraint, Henenlotter made quite a name for himself in the 80s and early 90s, after which he became involved with Something Weird Video, a film distributer specializing in rescuing obscure exploitation films (most notably the gory films of Herschell Gordon Lewis). He made a brief return in 2008, but has essentially remained silent since the early 90s. In terms of what he goes for, it’s, uh, difficult to really encapsulate. His movies are generally set in pre-Giuliani New York, they go for sleazy melodrama, often touching on the intersection of sex and gore, and they are, of course, very low budget. I can’t say as though I love his aesthetic, but it’s sometimes fun to spend some time in the gutter, you know?

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VII: The Thing and I
• Horror Movie Daycare (short)
• The X-Files: Humbug
• Basket Case – As mentioned above, Henenlotter is all about the seedy New York city before it was cleaned up in the 90s, and this movie revels in that setting. A naive young man named Duane Bradley arrives in town with a wad of cash and a locked wicker basket, quickly taking up residence at the Hotel Breslin. You see, Duane was once part of a Siamese twin that was separated against his will. Now he’s reunited with his deformed brother Belial (who lives in the titular basket) to take revenge upon the doctors who so rudely performed the operation. Along the way, Duane meets a woman who, er, comes between him and Belial.

  

  This is clearly pretty silly stuff, but while there is some sense of perverse humor here, Henenlotter is mostly playing it straight. The other folks at the hotel are colorful, Belial’s an amusing little monster, and Duane is weirdly, like, under-the-top naive. It’s one of those so bad it’s good kinda things here, which is good because it doesn’t really work without that added level of ironic detachment. You really just have to go with the flow on this one. Looking for meaning in these films is probably a fool’s errand, but hey, separation anxiety is a thing, so let’s go with that. The ending gets to be a little on the ridiculous side and one character is unnecessarily dispatched (rumor has it that Henenlotter’s crew walked out on him before filming that scene), which leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, but then, I’m pretty sure that’s what Henenlotter’s going for. All that being said, this is the “tame one” of his films, so if this is too much for you, you might not want to explore more of his work. I find it impossible to rate these movies, so I’ll just use question marks instead of stars: ??

• Shivers (trailer)
• Slither (trailer)
• Bad Milo (trailer)
• Brain Damage – This is probably the Platonic ideal of a Henenlotter movie. It’s all here, sleazy melodrama, gross sex metaphors, perverse dark humor, psychadelic drugs, disturbing gore… This movie has it all, and while I wouldn’t say restraint was involved, the elements are kinda proportional here. Brian is just your typical guy with a girlfriend and a roommate… until he unexpectedly encounters a smooth-talking, brain-eating, slug-like parasite named Aylmer.

  

  Aylmer injects a highly addictive blue hallucinogen directly into the brain in order to control Brian, who takes Aylmer out to find unwitting victims. It’s an incredibly gross movie, featuring another infamous scene in which Henenlotter’s crew walked out on him (this one much more taboo than the previous instance, I must say), but there’s something at the heart of this movie that kinda clicks. As mentioned above, looking for thematic heft is probably a bad idea, but this is probably a better anti-drug movie than anything kids are likely to see at school. While the budget is still microscopic, this one actually looks pretty good, with some decent shots and not wholly incompetent acting (I mean, it didn’t win any Oscars, but it’s a big improvement over Basket Case). The voice of Aylmer, played by famed television horror host John Zacherle, is utterly brilliant, and it’s a testament to the performance that his generally evil actions don’t seem to matter much. We’re even treated to a quick history of Aylmer, who seems to have originated in the Fourth Crusade (though it’s implied he was a lot older than that) and passed from host to host.

  

  The ending goes to some batshit insane places (including, once again, the death of our protagonist’s girlfriend – one wonders about this recurrent motif in Henenlotter’s work), but the final shot is actually pretty fantastic, even if I have no idea what the hell is going on. ????

• Bride of Frankenstein (trailer)
• Frankenstein’s Fiancee (Robot Chicken)
• Frankenweenie (trailer)
• Frankenhooker – Yeah, so you know pretty much exactly what you’re in for just from the title alone. A mad scientist’s girlfriend dies in a freak lawnmower accident, so he seeks to bring her back. The only problem is that the lawnmower did a number on her body, so he’ll need to find some more viable parts to rebuild her… but he only has a short time to put all this together, so where’s he going to get the parts? Yep, let’s take a trip to New York and pick up some hookers. A pretty despicable premise actually, but Henenlotter’s in on it this time, and the ironic ending of the film puts a nice cap on it (even if it probably doesn’t actually make up for what came before). Not as balanced or gross as Brain Damage, this one leans pretty heavily on the comedic side of things. There are actually a lot of great lines here, and our mad scientist’s plan to lure crack-addicted hookers to him with his “supercrack” is inspired lunacy (if, again, totally disgusting). Here’s an example of some dialog:
  

  Jeffreys Mother: Oh Jeffrey! I’m worried about you.

  Jeffrey Franken: Yeah, well so am I, Ma. Something is happening to me that I just don’t understand. I can’t think straight anymore. Like my reasoning is all twisted and distorted, you know? I seem to be disassociating myself from reality more and more each day. I’m antisocial and becoming dangerously amoral. I’ve lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad. I’m scared, Ma. I mean I feel like I’m plunging headfirst into some kind of black void of sheer, utter madness.

  Jeffreys Mother: You want a sandwich?

  And another, from the news broadcaster describing the girlfriend’s demise:

  In a blaze of blood, bones, and body parts, the vivacious young girl was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad… a salad that police are still trying to gather up… a salad that was once named Elizabeth.

  So yes, lots of absurdist dark humor and even one-liners here. What initially seems like a deeply misogynistic is at least somewhat mitigated by the ending, if not completely. Like I said above, looking for meaning here is probably not wise. It’s fun batshit insanity, but yikes. ???

Well that was fun? Lets, uh, take a break from this whole Obscure Horror Auteurs thing and maybe go a little more lighthearted next week, shall we? I’ve got plans for some horror dummies and comedies, and perhaps even a currently playing post in the works. Stay tuned!

Continuing with the theme of “Obscure Horror Auteurs”, this week we tackle Larry Cohen. As B-Movie filmmakers go, he’s pretty successful and some of his films have become well known. He made his name with some blaxploitation flicks like Black Caesar, but pretty quickly transitioned over to more traditional genre fare like the films we’re looking at today. There are a bunch of other Cohen movies worth watching that I won’t cover, like The Stuff or Q: The Winged Serpent. In general, Cohen likes to mix his sleazy premises with social commentary and while it’s not often subtle, his pet concerns do give his films a veneer of relevance that, um, keep them relevant today. Let’s get started:

• Pet Sematary (trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: Time and Punishment
• It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (trailer)
• It’s Alive – I don’t have kids, but I’m beginning to suspect that pop culture has given me a false expectation as to how births normally go. I mean, yeah, I assume 25% of births occur in cabs on the way to the hospital, another 25% happen at the workplace, and the remaining 50% are just regular frantic rushes to the hospital during rush hour, but there’s got to be more variety than that, right? On the other hand, It’s Alive goes in the complete opposite direction. I’ve never seen a more leisurely trip than the one portrayed at the beginning of this movie. We open on the mother waking her husband to let him know it’s time. They smile and share a tender moment before he yawns and walks into the closet to pick out his ensemble. What does one wear in the waiting room? I mean, all the stuff they do are sorta natural consequences of a trip to the hospital, but the lack of urgency here is notable. Anywho, once at the hospital, the father hangs out in the waiting room with a bunch of other guys as they BS on environmental catastrophes and pesticides and poison-resistant cockroaches and whatnot (no social commentary here, move it along) while the mother begins to experience… difficulties. We don’t see the actual birth, but we do see the aftermath wherein it appears our intrepid heroes’ baby has murdered all the doctors and nurses in the room and escaped the confines of the hospital. From here, we settle into a bout of angsty hand-wringing as the cops begin their manhunt (er, babyhunt). It appears the father has taken a hard stance on his son, namely that he’s an abomination that should be destroyed at the first opportunity. Things pick up again in the third act, where our father has a sudden, Grinch-like transformation into a good father (but not before, you know, shooting his son). It’s not exactly great storytelling, but it’s got just enough trashy elements to be fun. If memory serves, the sequels cash in a little more on the sleaze factor (I have a distinct memory from the third movie which, come to think of it, starts with a birth in a cab, and what I remember is someone saying something like “Oh no, it’s one of them!” while pulling out a gun and blasting away.) A modest effort, but maybe worth checking out for students of the genre. **
• M. Night Shyamalan’s The Twist (Robot Chicken)
• The Fourth Kind (trailer)
• The Exorcist (amazing unreleased trailer)
• God Told Me To – If you thought killer mutant babies were weird, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This movie starts with a sniper gunning down random pedestrians in NYC (super pleasant way to start a movie, though in all seriousness, some notion of relevance here). When asked why, the gunman simply states “God told me to…” After a spate of other, similar incidents where the perpetrator simply states that God told them to do it, our intrepid detective hero begins to put some pieces together. And then it gets really weird. Not completely batshit, but I also don’t really want to ruin it. What initially seems like it could be an exploration of faith and religion goes in a completely different direction, turning towards science fiction and conspiracy thriller territory.

  

  Some plot machinations are tough to swallow, but look at what we’re watching here. Good central performance from Tony Lo Bianco (most famous for The French Connection), and some nice visual elements too. It’s got all the makings of a cult classic and I can see why it has a following even to this day. Great B movie flare, and the new Blu-Ray transfer is actually a dramatic improvement over the previous DVD that I saw many moons ago. Hey, look, I mentioned this in the 6WH from 2008, though I was not quite as impressed then as I was this time around. Upgrade to: ***

• The Stuff (trailer)
• Night of the Creeps (trailer)
• White Zombies (Key and Peele)
• Maniac Cop – It turns out that I’ve never actually seen this one before. Maybe parts of it, but what I remember most is stuff from Maniac Cop II or III (which, to be fair, I probably never saw from start to finish either). What we have here is the Face versus the Chin. Yes, this movie stars a veritable plethora of B-movie icons, including Robert Z’Dar (aka The Face), Bruce Campbell (aka The Chin), horror icon Tom Atkins, even folks like Richard Roundtree and Sheree North pitching in.

  

  This was only written by Larry Cohen, and it sorta represents his take on the vaunted slasher film. Most of the elements are there, except that our Maniac Cop sometimes uses a gun. Directed by William Lustig, who, come to think of it also directed a quasi-slasher movie called Maniac where the killer also uses a gun. Must be his thing. Anyway, Maniac Cop is actually a guy named Matt Cordell, an old school cop framed by corrupt police chief and mayor and sent to prison, where his admiring public gets the chance for revenge (in the shower, naturally). Declared legally dead, his body nevertheless disappeared or something (don’t kid yourself, it’s not that important) and now he’s out to avenge his wrongful prosecution. And also, apparently, anyone who runs across his path, including innocent pedestrians and other cops. Speaking of which, Maniac Cop somehow manages to almost inadvertently frame another cop for his spree. This guy is played by Bruce Campbell, who goes about trying to clear his name and uncover Cordell’s tragic origins. Robert Z’Dar is absolutely perfect in this movie, mostly because of his physicality. Lustig keeps his face pretty well hidden in shadows for most of the movie, but you know, with a face like that, all you need to see is the silhouette in order to identify him (plus, he’s a big dude to start with).

  

  Atkins and Campbell are fine, but don’t really have anything to do that is as good as the roles that made them famous (except, I guess, for that scene where Atkins smiles. That’s awesome.) You know what else also works for me? The theme is actually really nice. I mean, it’s not going to win awards or anything, but it perfectly captures the enduring glory that is Maniac Cop. I’m only being slightly facetious, I swears! It’s all in good fun, and strikes a particularly relevant chord given all the police abuse showing up in the news these days. I had a lot of fun with this, even if it isn’t doing anything particularly noteworthy. **1/2

• Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (trailer)
• Honest Zombie (Robot Chicken)
• Hell No (fake trailer)
• Maniac Cop 2 – Bonus! Since a lot of what I remember about Maniac Cop comes from the sequels, I figured I should check at least one of them out, and this did not disappoint. Generally more of the same, only a little sleazier. Campbell, whose character has just officially been exonerated from the tragedy of the first film, is dispatched fairly quickly. His female partner in non-chrime has a better go of it, including a wonderful setup where she takes on Maniac Cop with a fucking chainsaw.

  

  Alas, it doesn’t work out quite as awesome as that sounds, and she is thus dispatched pretty quickly. In their stead, we’ve got two new characters; one played by Robert Davi, who I must admit, does a much better job as a brooding badass than Campbell or Atkins did in the first movie, and the other played by Claudia Christian playing a psychologist (you nerds probably remember her from Babylon 5). And this time around, Maniac Cop makes a friend! A serial killer who stalks strippers and talks way too much gives Cordell a place to stay for a while, and for some reason Maniac Cop breaks him out of prison when he finally gets caught. Or something. The plot makes no real sense, and once Davi and Christian suss out the commissioner’s corruption and force him to confess in public, Cordell can rest in peace. Or something. This is getting ridiculous and the whole thing makes no sense, but like the first movie, it’s a whole lot of trashy fun. **

Another common theme that emerges out of all these movies? Cohen loves a good media leak. Whether it’s initiated by our heroes (both Maniac Cop movies and God Told Me To) or whether our hero is simply suffering from the consequences of a leak (It’s Alive), it’s always there. And the consequences of the leak are always ambiguous. In Maniac Cop, no one trusts the police and we even see one random pedestrian shoot a cop in a panic. Heck, media leaks even play a role in The Stuff. Larry Cohen clearly has some thoughts on news media influence. I think I might just have to rent Maniac Cop III tonight to see if the pattern holds. Anywho, stay tuned for more obscure horror auteurs next week!

These days, we tend to look askance at reboots and remakes, but it’s not like it’s a new thing. In the mid-80s, CBS revived the beloved 50s/60s classic Twilight Zone television series, and looking back on it now, they managed to assemble a pretty impressive amount of talent at the time, including: Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clarke, Joe Haldeman, Robert McCammon, Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Robert Silverberg, John Milius, Joe Dante, William Friedkin, George R.R. Martin, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, heck, even the Grateful Dead performed the new theme song. To kick the series off, they tapped Wes Craven, hot off the success of Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven would go on to direct seven segments of the show (mostly in the first season), most of which I have not seen, so I thought it would be a fitting tribute. Each show has two or three segments, so here’s some assorted thoughts on each segment:

• Shatterday (S01E01) – The opening salvo of the new series was this character piece starring Bruce Willis in a dueling role, directed by Craven and written by Harlan Ellison (which was a big deal, given how dismissive Ellison always was about TV). It features one of the pure Twilight Zone ideas. Willis accidentally dials his own phone number, but is then surprised when… another, better version of him answers the phone. Some back-and-forth cat-and-also-cat follows, Willis doing an admirable job in both main roles. It’s an introspective piece, and a bit of a departure for Craven (in fact, all of these episodes are a bit of a departure for Craven; I’m guessing he relished the opportunity to work in the spooky but bloodless realm after mastering the raw, bloody slasher or hillbilly horror sub-genres). The ending is a bit anticlimactic, but it works well enough. A good opening to the series.
• A Little Peace and Quiet (S01E01) – This second segment in the episode doesn’t quite boast as much starpower, but it’s Craven branching out again, this time looking at a frazzled housewife with the worst family evar (she’s played by Melinda Dillon, who you may remember as the mother in A Christmas Story). They all scream at each other and her and Craven does a good job playing up the unbearable nature of her situation. All she wants is a little peace and quiet, and whilst gardening, she finds a box with a nice looking necklace on it. Later in the day, while her family is once again acting crappy, she gets fed up and screams “Shut up!” and everything freezes (er, sorta, it’s clearly a bunch of actors just trying to stand still, but it works well enough). It turns out she’s able to press pause on the world, then resume it whenever she wants. This comes in handy at a busy grocery story and in a few other situations, then the hammer drops with the ending. I won’t spoil it here, but it’s a pretty dark one, fitting for the Twilight Zone. A fitting end to the series opener…
• Wordplay (S01E02) – I should probably stop referring to these premises as very Twilight Zoney, huh? In this one a salesman (played by Robert Klein) starts to hear people substituting words for other words. For instance, suddenly people are referring to lunch as “Dinosaur”. At first, it’s only a couple isolated words, but by the end of the episode people are talking full on in this new style (which is weird because it’s not quite gibberish… words are generally the same, they just mean different things). The ending is perfectly bittersweet, and Klein really sells it well. It’s interesting to contrast a segment like this with, say, Tales from the Crypt, which almost always ends with comeuppance or darkness. The Twilight Zone can make that work when it wants, but it can also make a story like this one, with an almost uplifting ending and everything.
• Chameleon (S01E02) – Ah, well, I guess this one is less Twilight Zoney than your typical episode, so there’s that. A shapeshifting alien returns with some astronauts on a shuttle mission and starts absorbing some humans. It’s an interesting segment, though it doesn’t really do a whole lot. Some mysterious stuff happens, and then it ends. I would have expected to like this one more than I did, but hey, they can’t all be brilliant pieces of work, I guess.
• Dealer’s Choice (S01E08) – Now this is the stuff! Craven directs a Murderers’ Row of character actors playing cards. Included are Morgan Freeman (you know him), M. Emmet Walsh, Dan Hedaya (a little Blood Simple reunion with those two, not to mention a gazillion other movies each), Garrett Morris (of SNL fame), and Barney Martin (probably best known as Seinfeld’s dad). Four friends and a strange newcomer who’s having a streak of luck. In fact, his hands always hinge on having a three of a kind… three sixes each time. Yes, our intrepid heroes are playing cards with the Devil, who’s very sorry he had to put on a ruse about filling in for a regular, but he just wanted to get a few hands of cards in before moving on to his next job. Oh and one of the other players is that job. A final, double or nothing bet is made over a hand of cards… dealer’s choice!

  

  This is a darkly humorous segment, perhaps my favorite so far, and it tickles one of my soft spots. I love it when larger-than-life evil is personified as a blue collar dude just doing his job, and the segment wrings a lot of humor out of this inherently goofy premise. I like the idea of the Devil really just doing his job, not being all that into it, and welcoming the opportunity to let the puny humans win one every now and again. It turns out that the Devil is actually a pretty good sport, not to mention a good loser. In fact, the Devil comes off as the most likeable character of them all.

• Her Pilgrim Soul (S01E12) – Two scientists working on a holographic system suddenly find the spirit of a woman displaying without having been programmed to appear. What follows is surprisingly tender, another example of The Twilight Zone’s ability to shift gears and go with a different tone. It is perhaps overlong, and the surprises not quite as snappy as your typical segment, but yet, they are more emotionally resonant. (Also, while not directed by Craven, definitely watch the other se segment in this episode, “I of Newton”, one of my all time favorites and one that obviously made an impression when I saw it as a youngster way back when…)
• The Road Less Traveled (S02E07) – A Vietnam draft dodger begins to see visions of an alternate history where he did go to war. Interesting exploration of guilt, written by George R.R. Martin (who would go on to work on some other stuff you may have heard of), and it resolves itself well, once again finding a tone not normally reserved for such stories. Not the best episode, but still an effective one.

This was a pretty good run for Craven, and as mentioned above, allowed him to branch out and try something other than gruesome slashers or Swamp Things. He would go on to work on a few other shows, but nothing of quite this caliber. I’m glad I made the effort to watch these episodes though, and will almost certainly be posting about some other episodes in the coming weeks of Halloween! RIP Wes Craven, you will be missed.

The most wonderful time of the year has rolled around, bringing with it the requisite leaf piles, mutilated pumpkins, paper skeletons, pumpkin spiced abominations, decorative corpses, “fun” cobwebs, and other oxymoronic traditions that are nominally ghastly but suddenly become socially acceptable during this season of seasons. To celebrate, I always embark on a six week long horror movie marathon. That’s like two weeks longer than most Halloween movie marathons, because we’re pretty awesome, that’s why.

Today we examine a trio of films from Mario Bava, the godfather of Italian horror cinema and one of the more influential visual stylists of the 20th century. Bava is famous for his Gothic works and for popularizing the Giallo sub-genre (plus numerous pre-slashers), thus inspiring other Italian horror maestros like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Bava is the first of what I’m calling “Obscure Horror Auteurs”, though he’s probably the least obscure of the ones I’m tackling (then again, he’s obscure enough to general audiences, I think). Others will follow in the coming weeks.

It should be noted that I’ve already seen a good deal of Bava’s work, so the below is actually filling in some gaps, rather than an ideal collection of his films. If you’re looking for a good intro to Bava, go for Blood and Black Lace, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, or A Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve). I’ve covered some of these in past Six Weeks of Halloween posts. Several of these are available to stream on Netflix, and upstart horror streaming service Shudder recently had a big event. Check out this gif from Kill Baby, Kill:

So let’s get into it, here’s three of Bava’s lesser-known works:

• Alien (Trailer)
• Doctor Who: State of Decay (Episode)
• Alien’s Acid Blood (Robot Chicken)
• Planet of the Vampires – This movie is perhaps best known as a precursor and influence on Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon’s classic film Alien, and yes, there are definitely some similarities here. A group of astronauts find themselves on a mysterious planet and begin to turn on each other as they are influenced by mysterious forces native to the planet. The most Alien-esque sequence involves the crew investigating an old spaceship wreck (dare I call it a derelict spacecraft?), discovering the long-dead remains of a species of giant creatures who must have succumbed to the planet’s spooky inhabitants.

  

  

  You could also argue that some of the visuals also influenced Alien, though Bava’s tone is a decidedly more pulpy, Flash Gordon style of vivid colors and ulta-low budget cheese. There the similarities end. Bava’s film starts off a bit talky and the plot is minimal, but there are some neat visual flourishes, such as when a number of buried crew members rise from their hasty graves or the aforementioned trip to a derelict spacecraft.

  

  Bava’s no-budget effects, all done with lighting, miniatures and forced perspective, are pretty interesting, though some don’t hold up so well. Also of note: the distinct lack of vampires. There is nothing even remotely vampiric in the film, just some sorta space ghosts. Ultimately a film that is probably only of interests to students of the genre, though perhaps some of you normals might find something to like here (Like those bitchin leather uniforms!) I had a decent enough time with it, but wasn’t super impressed either. **

• Grindhouse: Don’t (Fake Trailer)
• Black Sunday (Trailer)
• The Pit and the Pendulum (Trailer)
• Baron Blood – Modern-day gothic horror, a young man named Peter visits his ancestral home in Austria, a castle that once housed a sadistic Baron who was cursed to a violent death by a witch the Baron had burned at the stake. Peter has found a series of incantations amongst his family belongings and decides to read them aloud in the castle not once, but twice. The first time, he and his lady friend hear strange noises and bumps in the night, so he reads the incantation to reverse the summoning spell. But that wasn’t enough, they do it again the next night, only this time he drops the paper into a fire, thus losing the ability to fight the Baron, who is now free to roam about the castle and get up to murderous mischief. Yeah, so not a particularly clever setup, but there’s some gorgeous and elaborate production design here, and Bava crafts a few decently suspenseful sequences. The ending almost turns into a dark Scooby Doo episode, which I actually appreciated, though the film as a whole never really took off for me. Lesser Bava and probably my least favorite of the weekend… *1/2
• Village of the Damned (Trailer)
• Young Frankenstein (Trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror IV: Bart Simpson’s Dracula
• Kill Baby, Kill – Now this is more like it. A more traditional gothic horror tale, this one is set in a cursed town. A doctor arrives to assist an inspector looking into several mysterious deaths. In performing an autopsy, he discovers mysterious coins placed inside the corpses. Meanwhile, a mysterious young blond girl is seen about town (often peering through windows and laughing), and the local witch is also on the case (interestingly, the local witch is actually a protagonist, and she’s pretty awesome).

  

  An altogether more successful tale than Baron Blood, this one contains some similar elements, but it is executed much better. Again with the gorgeous production design, and Bava’s use of vivid colors, camera movement, and zooms are quite effective. Not really his best work, but this does seem to be one of the more underrated films in Bava’s oeuvre, and worth checking out for fans of gothic horror. **1/2

That wraps up the first week. Stay tuned for another obscure horror auteur next week, the films of Larry Cohen! Also check out fellow practitioners of the six week marathon at Kernunrex Six Weeks of Halloween and Film Thoughts. Lots of fun stuff to come!

As per usual, I’m a week late to this post, but Wes Craven passed away on August 30 after a fight with brain cancer. I’m not normally in the habit of writing this sort of thing, but since we’re heading into my favorite time of the year, the fabled Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon, I figured I should look at Craven’s oeuvre and perhaps find something of his I haven’t seen before (or, perhaps, something to revisit).

As genre filmmakers go, I’m hard pressed to think of a single, more influential horror director. I mean, maybe Alfred Hitchcock (do you consider him horror?) or Mario Bava (probably too obscure for most folks), but that’s fine company to keep. You could make an argument for Craven’s contemporary, John Carpenter, as he does have two classics to his name (Halloween and The Thing), but he also veered away from horror and managed to produce a string of mediocre (at best) films later in his career. Craven, though, has directed three of the genre’s most iconic and influential films. Oh, and he did it across three decades.

The Last House on the Left was Craven’s first film (1972), and in some ways it shows. But it’s also a clear example of what Craven always manages to do. It’s a crude, nasty film that taps into something dark and raw. That’s, uh, a good thing when it comes to horror movies. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is slicker and more commercial, but no less effective because of that. Indeed, its brilliant premise is the purest distillation of horror ever committed to film: a monster that gets you in your dreams. Inescapable and supremely terrifying (especially to my childhood self, who was stricken with fear before even having seen the film), the film’s inferior sequels only serve to illustrate Craven’s ability to tap into something elusive and terrifying. Craven’s X factor only returned to the series when he retook the reigns for New Nightmare, a winking, fourth-wall shattering exercise that was really more of a dry run for his third genre classic: 1996’s Scream. Another winking, self-referential exercise, this one captured audience’s imaginations and revived a flagging genre right when it needed it the most. It wasn’t the first film to attempt this sort of thing, but it’s the best.

Man, if you didn't make your very own Freddy Krueger glove with steak knives and get yelled at by your parents, you didn't have a childhood.

— Alex Riviello (@alexriviello) August 31, 2015

Craven’s also got a large catalog of underrated works that are often more effective and influential than you’d think. Stuff like The Serpent and the Rainbow or The Hills Have Eyes are relevant to this day. Even his out and out failures contain that Craven X Factor that gets under your skin and never lets go. I mean, yeah, My Soul to Take isn’t his best work, but man, I could see that thing garnering a cult following someday (and apparently, Shocker already does!)

Yet by all accounts, he was one of Hollywood’s kindest, sweetest fellas. He had a rough childhood, but apparently worked that out on screen, rather than by lashing out at folks.

After a publicist cut off my phoner with Wes Craven for RED EYE, he called me back personally. "We're just getting started!" Craven said.

— Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf) August 31, 2015

For an example of his good-natured spirit, check out this story from Edgar Wright:

The intertextuality of ‘Scream’ was a surprise to some, but in reality there was a winking side to Craven’s movies that goes all the way back to 1977’s ‘The Hills Have Eyes’.

That film began a series of funny intertextual references between horror film directors that became a game of one-upmanship. In the first ‘Hills Have Eyes’, there was a ripped poster for ‘Jaws’ on the wall of a ravaged trailer, as if Craven was saying ‘that’s not scary, this is scary’. Then in response Sam Raimi featured a ripped ‘Hills Have Eyes’ poster in the cabin in ‘The Evil Dead’. Craven’s reply to this was to have his characters watching ‘Evil Dead’ on television in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’. Finally Raimi responded once again by putting the iconic razor glove of Freddy Krueger, in the basement of the cabin in ‘Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn’.

I loved this running gag between horror directors. So you can imagine my answer when we got word that Craven wanted to use a clip of our film ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ in ‘Scream 4’.

Horror is a weird genre that often forces viewers to grapple with tough questions, not the least of which is often “Why the hell am I watching this depravity?” If you’ve ever seen an interview with Wes Craven, you’d get a pretty eloquent response. He’s always a welcome sight in horror documentaries and was even compelling in his short appearance on Project Greenlight’s third season. I can’t put it any better than Scott Tobias:

Wes Craven made many great horror films, but he was also the genre's most articulate defender. He affirmed its social and artistic worth.

— Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) August 31, 2015

My initial plan for this year’s Six Weeks of Halloween was to cover a series of “obscure horror auteurs”, and while Craven is certainly an auteur, he’s anything but obscure. Still, while I plan on tackling those other, obscure directors, I may have to dedicate some time to finding something from Craven that I haven’t seen (there are only a handful, if that). In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this:

See you in my nightmares, Mr. Craven.

— ChristopherMcQuarrie (@chrismcquarrie) August 31, 2015