Campfire Scary Stories: My History with Friday the 13th

Quick - name the movie that has had the most profound effect on your life.

If most people were asked this question, they would probably wrack their brains for some intellectually stimulating, deep, culturally enriching film that fits into...well, the stuff that makes Roger Ebert masturbate. Like, oh, I don't know, The Social Network, or something. If someone were to ask ME that question, however, I could only have one answer. I'd give very brief consideration to Reservoir Dogs or River's Edge, two movies that I watched countless times during middle school and thus have a sentimental, almost parasitic bond to your host since they accompany some very lonely years. But as for sheer impact...I've gotta go with Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.

Yeah, not the first one. Or the second, or the fourth, which fans typically think are better (and I've come to agree with that sentiment since, by the way). Nope, the movie that has altered the lifescope of Jon Lickness more than any other is the SIXTH sequel in a slasher movie series about a demented, mentally challenged backwoods killer who wears a hockey mask and dispatches of copulating teenagers in ever-inventive, ever-bloody ways. So what the f*** does that say about me?

That I'm awesome, that's what.

Kidding aside, Halloween day of 2011 is a scant five days away. The holiday has always had a strong importance to yours truly, since I live on a street that is just unreal for atmosphere on October 31st. We get more than 500 trick or treaters at our door every year. It's just like TV, and it's incredible. And while every Halloween is special, it just isn't quite AS special without one additional thing in the background as I pass out candy to the countless Marios, Disney princesses and other assorted crap (example: I saw one kid last year dressed as a CELL PHONE) parading around. Namely, a Jason movie.

Word of warning: don't expect any sort of analysis with what you're about to read. I've already reviewed EVERY movie in the Friday the 13th franchise. More than once, in fact. If you want the best versions of those reviews, just go to the February and March of 2010 sections of the blog (and if you're reading this on the FAN or on Facebook, said blog is located at http://bloodgutstears.blogspot.com). There also shouldn't be anything in the way of overall series description, because, let's face it, if you don't know that Friday the 13th is about a bad motherf***er in a hockey mask and his holy quest to avenge his mother and/or be the best damn spokesperson for waiting until marriage there ever was, you've been living under a rock. This is going to be more personal.

Ladies and gentlemen, Friday the 13th the way I experienced it. Odds are nobody will find this interesting...but tough. You are all my therapists now. [/Freddy Krueger]

In retrospect, my brother introduced me to a lot of things that I have a passion for. Old-school hip hop, Denver Broncos football, and, by proxy, horror films. The first scary movie I ever saw was Gremlins, but, for some reason, I never really saw that flick as an out-and-out horror movie. Hell, I thought Stripe was cool, even as a snot-nosed five-year-old. But the first movie that I saw that actively scared me was a movie that my older brother taped off of local television sometime in 1991 - Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. See? We're coming around full circle. I was eight at this time, and for a couple hours one Saturday afternoon sat enthralled watching this big, hulking guy in a blue suit and hockey mask knock off person after person until finally meeting his match - a young girl with telepathic powers. Since hockey mask guy terrified me to my very core, I was oh-so-firmly on telepathic girl's side all through that amazing third act, as she threw obstacle after obstacle at this monstrous brute only for him to keep coming!

Of course, it also had a scene where hockey mask guy whipped a girl head first into a tree that made me laugh my ass off, only adding to the movie's cool factor.

I had never seen anything like this...ever. It was a roller coaster ride that I had loved, no doubt, but one that I didn't want to experience again for a while.

Flash forward three years. By this point, I'd seen a few other horror movies (Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the original Corey Haim Watchers were favorites around this time), and now knew that the actual DAY Friday the 13th had negative, superstitious connotations to it. Well, sooner or later the day rolls around on the calendar, and as I'm perusing the TV listings...the USA network is having an honest-to-goodness MARATHON of movies all sharing the title of that awesome flick I'd seen a few years back in the basement with my brother. A whole marathon! It didn't get any more awesome than that.

Well, those of you in my age bracket (I was born in 1983) may remember that Friday the 13th movie marathons used to be a much bigger deal than they are now. For an indication of just HOW big a deal they were, the good folks at the USA network gave us a whole WEEKEND's worth of the films during that May 13-15 time frame of 1994 (yeah...I did some research on this). And over the course of 72 hours, I got all six of the movies that were broadcast on tape - all in glorious EP speed and all gloriously edited for content. And man, you have never seen a sadder sight in your life than 10-year-old Jon Lickness half-watching, half fast-forwarding his way through F13 movies. All alone in the basement, constantly looking at the stairs to make sure my parents wouldn't catch me watching these nasty flicks, watching the boring talking and sex scenes (remember...sex scenes were boring to a ten-year-old, and I guess technically we're talking "making out in bed" scenes since these were TV edits) and either leaving the room or outright fast-forwarding through the most gut-wrenching stuff. It wasn't the kills. Oh, no - it was the stalking and music stingers BEFORE the moments where Jason would gut someone. That stuff was the WORST.

For those who want to keep score, the six movies shown that weekend were Parts I, II, III, V, VII (got to see it again! Alright!) and VIII. That's an education you CAN'T get in Catholic school, bitches. For starters, I was quite shocked to learn that Jason wasn't always the bad guy. In fact, back then, I thought the back story and tragedy involved in the creation of Jason Voorhees was both terrifying and heartbreaking. But that was just one of many things that seemed so EPIC about this series. The first movie with the demented mother, the genesis of the hockey mask in the third, that wacky fifth movie that made no sense considering that I hadn't seen the fourth, the reincarnated terminator-like Jason in the latter movies...it all added up to one gargantuan, interconnected tale that would make J.R.R. Tolkien piss himself.

It was also due to these movies that I saw a very different representation of high school (and, in some of the movies, college years). As a kid, I had a fascination with high school. If there's one thing Saved By the Bell taught me, it's that young adulthood was just this amazing time where everyone got to hang out in hip diners and talk endlessly with a comically mismatched group of friends. Friday the 13th movies often showed this same high school archetype to me with the variance of characters (almost every movie in the series has a jock, a good girl, a nerd, etc.), only now some very bad things were happening to them. I felt for these people, I really did, and masterfully conveyed my empathy via the following bit of dialogue from myself to a friend at the time - "Yeah, I like Jason in these movies, but I like the people who kill Jason, too." Yup, my ability to provide EXPERT analysis goes back pretty far. ;)

Really, though, EVERYTHING about these movies was awesome to me at this time, and I couldn't get enough of them. Action movies had nothing on this stuff - every one of these films ended on such a cliffhanger! And not in the BOO-SCARE variety that horror films attempt to provide us with nowadays just before the credits. They'd leave us with these tantalizing hints that Jason was still alive - the ripples of water in the lake where he supposedly "drowned" in the early movies, the "eyes opening" thing at the end of Part VI, that same familiar "ch ch ch ch" music heard over the ending credits, and whatever it was, they would ALWAYS deliver on it in the next movie as I'd sit there and PRAY that Jason wouldn't be resurrected, yet secretly hoped that he WOULD to give me another round of "half-watch/half fast-forward through the bad stuff." I loved noticing the differences in Jason's look through each film, as well, and patted myself on the back for catching that the unmasked Jason in Part VII had wounds from the axe to the head in III, although I still had no clue what the hell the big, long, running gash on the side of his face was from. Perhaps something to do with that ever-so-mysterious Part IV: The Final Chapter that USA NEVER seemed to air? More on that later.

Shown above is the evolution of Jason Voorhees in films I-X, from dream figment demon child in the first film to half beast/half cyborg in the tenth.

These things were my Star Wars.

Unfortunately, if you're expecting some big epic conclusion to this story of my losery ten-year-old self's love affair with Friday the 13th, there isn't any. The truth is that I kind of grew out of the phase...well, actually, that's a total lie. The REAL truth is that I finally scared myself so damn much, and cost myself so much sleep that I swore the movies off and vowed to NEVER watch them again. And I didn't. For about four years.

FORTUNATELY (capitalized because...just look at the first word of the previous paragraph - parallelism, dammit), it was now 1998, meaning that I was now 15, had seen quite a few horror movies, built up an excellent gore and scare tolerance, and even done some reading up on the genre by this point. And just like if you were a kid in 1994 you knew what Friday the 13th on the USA network meant, if you were a teenager in 1998 and you were a horror fan, you knew what Saturday nights were all about.

Oh yeah - Joe Bob Briggs. Check this one out, aardvarking, "fu" being the substitute word for "kill," and approximately 78,000 other awesome phrases all brought to life live and in person by my beer drinking uncle every Saturday night on TNT. It was here where I REALLY got my education, as classic horror movie after classic horror movie played out before me all with a guy who was funnier than most stand-up comedians giving the totals and straight-up info on the films in question as if we were old chums.

During that mystical year of 1998, Halloween day fell on a Saturday. What I expected from Joe Bob was more of the same - maybe a couple of the Michael Myers flicks in place of his usual fare. What we actually got was the greatest thing that anyone has ever done in the history of man. A mammoth Friday the 13th all nighter, from 7:00 p.m. until dawn the following morning, all hosted by Mr. Briggs. I made quite the spectacle of this ordeal, inviting a couple friends over and setting my VCR to tape the whole thing (I had to switch tapes sometime around 12:30 a.m.). To say that I was excited was an understatement; I'd finally get some insider info on these movies...and best of all, I'd finally get to see Part IV!

The marathon didn't disappoint, as Joe Bob put in, in the humble opinion of this writer, his absolute best performance as a movie-show host. All the drive-in totals were spot-on, the comedy skits were a riot, and the rant about why Part IV wasn't included in the marathon...legendary. This is something that confounds me to this day - they show The Final Chapter on TV NOW whenever these sporadic mini-marathons pop up. Why was it SO taboo to broadcast it back in those days? Alas, my quest to see the final movie with "Human Jason" remained unfulfilled, but that night was absolutely perfect other than that.

And then, once again...nothing. For whatever reason, Jon Lickness fell off the Friday the 13th wagon, becoming a huge Quentin Tarantino fanboy and then becoming obsessed with the rival Nightmare on Elm Street franchise to the point where I once wrote a (horrible) fan script that would have featured Freddie Prinze Jr. as Freddy Krueger's honest-to-christ SON. Folks...I wish I was making that up. All throughout high school, other things occupied my time, and it wasn't until my first year of college (so we're talking 2002 here) that Jason Voorhees resurfaced in my life. The date was, of course, Friday the 13th, and out of nostalgia I took a gander at the TV listings to see if any movie channel would give in and show a few F13 movies. And one did. Only ONE, and I'll admit to being saddened by the fact that what had once been a HUGE deal on TV was now limited to a showing of Parts I-III on a late night block on Cinemax. Of course, Jason X (a.k.a. Jason in Space for the uninitiated) had just been released earlier that year, so I partially chalked it up to some sort of TV rebellion as a result of that flick's...uh, quality.

Nothing new in the viewings of the first three movies in the series came about, but it did result in one thing...it whet my appetite to FINALLY see the movie that had eluded me for all these years. I could have just ordered it on Amazon...but no, I had to do it the REAL way. The ONLY way. The BEST way to watch a Friday the 13th movie, and that's on an old, dusty, dirty, grainy, watched-a-thousand-times rental copy. So, after almost ten years of waiting to see it, I trekked out to one of the local video huts and located a copy of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (note to you non-horror fans - that actually is the title, despite the fact that it's the fourth movie in the series and approximately 19 movies proceed it).

I knew a little about this movie, but not much. I knew that Jason had been human in the opening cycle of films, and technically died in this movie before being brought back to life as an undead zombie in Part VI, and I had read in a few places that it supposedly had the absolute BEST gore makeup and effects in the entire series. With a pounding heart, I popped that sucker in the ancient VCR and let it whir, and for 93 minutes I was 10 years old again. Not including the deleted footage from Part VII, it IS the bloodiest movie in the series...but that's not what makes this flick memorable. The kills in the movie are just BRUTAL, and look like they really friggin' HURT. It's "Human Jason" at his most pissed off, and strangely enough, we really don't even SEE him that much until the final act.

One thing I didn't count on was just how FUNNY and ENTERTAINING the film would be. It's helped immensely by a cast that seems to actively give a damn about it despite the expectedly inane script, with Corey Feldman (Mouse from The Goonies) as a young child who somehow winds up being the one to draw the "Jason slayer" honors away from big, buff, outdoorsy Rob Dier. And it's got Crispin Glover, one of my three favorite actors ever, playing the most goofy, oddball horny teen-ager in ANY Friday movie. Once you've seen his legendary dance scene in this movie, you will never forget it, for better or worse.

And Jason's death? While I'd seen more extreme things happen to him in later films, by that point he was superhuman and NEEDED bigger deaths. As a fitting end to the non-supernatural version of Jason's evil exploits, Corey Feldman stabbing Jason headfirst with a machete, only for him to fall onto the ground and slide down the blade ever-so-slowly...graphic, long, absolutely perfect.

And still one of my ten favorite movies of all time.

With my love for the Friday the 13th films now fully restored, I embarked out onto the interwebz and found a lot of other fans of this silly slasher movie series from the 1980s. Fans that I didn't even know the series HAD. And, man, does this series have fans! Dedicated ones, even. This coincided with the time when the main topic of discussion for Friday freaks (other than the upcoming Freddy vs. Jason movie, which was loads of fun) was the ever-present question of the BOX SET. See, Nightmare on Elm Street had a BOX SET - a nice, big, snazzy one with loads of special features and nifty packaging. All the Friday movies got was bare bones DVDs released singularly. We wanted a BOX SET, and we wanted it now!!

Two years after that, we got the BOX SET, and I got my best friend.

At the time, many horror fans hated this set (which promised "EIGHT FILMS, FIVE DISCS, NO MERCY!!" on the back). Upon its release, I wasn't especially pleased with it either - compared to the Nightmare set that we'd used as a template during the constant message board discussions, it was indeed pretty short shrift. The extras, while informative, were a little scarce. The first four movies, considered by many fans (including yours truly) to be the best movies in the series, only featured one commentary track between them. And two movies per disc?? How cheap were these guys??!

That didn't stop me from enjoying it, however, as every so often I'd dig the set out and give the movies a quick gander. I didn't even care that the New Line movies weren't a part of the set. The Paramount movies were (and still are, really) the series to me. The set was also a MUST during Halloween season - atmospherically, they just radiate falling leaves and harvesting even more than the series starring that guy in the William Shatner mask. You know the one.

Then, in 2007, my entire world was rocked, and the event that would quite literally make this box set my best friend transpired when my big brother - the one who had introduced me to this madness in the first place - passed away.

I really don't want to go into specific events of this or the inner details of my mind during this time, but in many ways, it made me regress. My present world didn't make sense anymore, and as a result, I reached increasingly into things from my past for comfort. While I'd grown from Friday scaredy-cat to fan to genuine aficianado over a period of almost 15 years, I was about to become legit obsessed.

The DVDs went into my player almost every night for the better part of six months, and I'd fall asleep with the films on repeat, looping over and over like some kind of never-ending blood-soaked soap opera. Oddly enough, the thing that most fans hated (and that I had, too, at one point) - the two movies per disc format - was now a Godsend, as I could sit through one movie half-asleep and switch to a new one without having to get up. I'd seen countless films during the several years prior that were technically scarier, and my tolerance had reached its peak - the Jason movies of my youth were fun to me now, and as a result, they became my therapist.

Without exaggeration, that box set saved my life.

Which is really what prompted this whole sad story in the first place. Over the past couple of years, Paramount has been re-releasing those first eight classic Friday the 13th movies in "Ultimate Edition" DVDs, chock-full of special features, interviews, documentaries...hell, the third movie is even out there in 3D! I realized that eventually they would release all of these discs in a new box set, and also realized that eventually I would buy said new box set, but in some way I wished this day wouldn't come.

But...well, it did. Just last week, as I snatched up a copy of the Ultimate Edition DVD set for a scant $32. THIRTY-TWO FREAKING DOLLARS. That's even less than I paid for the "two movies per disc" set. Eat me, Blu-Ray - because everyone else is paying $25 a pop for your goddamned HD picture, I'm getting Jason F'n Voorhees in his prime for thirty bucks.

So that's where we're at now in this long journey, and if you don't mind, allow me to play like Lance Storm and be serious for just a moment. It's always fashionable to say something along the lines of "I don't know WHY these movies fascinate me," and apparently I'm not too sexy for my shirt because I know EXACTLY why these movies fascinate me.

People have different definitions of what a horror story should be, and none of them are inherently wrong. Some want all sorts of unfair treatment and disproportionate punishments, and, in essence, maximum sadness and true-life horror. Some want as much red stuff as possible. Me? I want a good, simple campfire scary story where we also get the morality play of "be a good person or else bad things will happen to you." And that's what the Friday the 13th movies are all about. You have a past evil in the form of Jason's drowning setting the whole thing in motion, you have a cast of rowdy young people in the woods partaking in sex, drugs and all other manner of immoral behavior, and you have the unscrupulous characters getting picked off one by one by the unstoppable villain while a virtuous character is able to survive the unholy night.

The story of Jason - a handicapped child left to drown by inattentive counselors - is one of those things that is just so inherently tragic that it is almost impossible for someone to not feel SOME degree of sympathy for him. But he becomes a monster, irredeemable, and complete, absolute evil. And it was up to the one or two GOOD teens/college students to stop him. Even as a child, those were the kinds of scary stories that hooked me the most - simple, uncomplicated good versus evil. Less is more, after all. Obviously, the formula must work on many others, as well. How many sequels again?

And it's the reason why, to this day, I can still watch a lame movie about a guy in a hockey mask gutting people every time it's on television despite the fact that I have the DVDs sitting within ten feet of me.

Happy Halloween, and may your days be as long as the surviving final girl in one of Jason's movies...assuming you've been avoiding the pesky sex and drugs, that is.

Remember when vampires were EVIL? If you don't, check out Christopher F'n Lee in "Dracula: Prince of Darkness"!!

I've gone through many phases in my many years of horror fandom, and Hammer films are my most recent passion. Hammer studios, for its time period, was very cutting edge stuff; the Universal monster movies of the '30s and '40s left a lot of the bad stuff up to your imagination, but Hammer gave us full color, gore in droves, and plenty of big breasted lasses to stare at. So, I guess you could say that this British film company was the precursor to slasher cinema. The hallmark of Hammer, though, was its love for the classic literary monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein, and their never-ending movie series that featured said characters behaving in ways we weren't used to seeing them behave.

The Dracula films that Hammer produced definitely rank right up there with the best that the studio has to offer. A little over a year ago, I inducted the original film in the series Horror of Dracula into the now-defunct International Horror Registry. See, to get talk on Jon Lickness' blog site in the month of October, a few parameters must be set in place - it has to be genuinely scary, it has to be atmospheric, and it has to lend itself well to Halloween season viewing. That movie definitely fits all those criteria, and this flick isn't too far behind. While the second movie in the series (titled Brides of Dracula) had the plot thread of Peter Cushing as famed vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing laying the smack down on a few of Drac's disciples, Dracula: Prince of Darkness is more or less a direct sequel to the first film, and in a few ways tops it.

The film opens with a few shots of the closing moments from the original film, as Cushing disintegrates Count Dracula (Christopher Lee, still to this day the definitive Dracula in my book) into dust. Nearly ten years later, a young woman's dead body is being carried away by a small group of villagers for a precautionary staking before burial, as she is believed to carry the curse of vampirism. That's the thing about these Hammer Dracula films; vampirism is treated as either a cult, with small bands of hardcore vamps plotting to control Europe, or something, or as some sort of curse that people are destined to have. It's a refreshing change of pace from the way it's usually portrayed on film, at any rate.

Well, before the staking can be performed, Father Sandor (Andrew Keir) rides up to stop what he dubs a heresy. Immediately proving himself to be the Peter Cushing of Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Sandor warns four English tourists (two husband-and-wife combos, made up of brothers Charles and Alan and their wives Helen and Diana) staying at a local inn not to go to Carlsbad castle. Since this is a horror movie, you know how warnings from eccentric old priests work, and the four set out for Carlsbad. Along the way, their stage coach driver becomes frightened when the castle is visible and promptly dumps them in the middle of the woods before a driverless carriage shows up to take them to the creepy old castle in the distance. All signs pointing up for our heroes, huh?

There's a whole tedious section here where the Kents skulk about the castle and strange things pile up (a table set for four people, and their golly-gee briefcases, which had been left on the carriage, located in the guest quarters). Soon enough, a mysterious man named Klove (Philip Latham) appears and serves them dinner in a way very much befitting the classic creepy butler character. He also admits that his former master (who is "dead now") was Count Dracula. The other thing that this scene is noteworthy for is that the female Kents finally remove their proper Victorian hats revealing that the actresses portraying them (brunette Helen, played by Barbara Shelly, and especially young blonde Diana played by Suzan Farmer) are perfect busty Hammer hot chicks.

In the middle of the night, Helen's husband Alan (Charles Tingwell) investigates a strange noise emanating from somewhere deep in the house and goes to investigate. Yes, this staple of bad horror film decision-making goes back pretty far. He's stabbed and killed by Klove, who then turns his body upside down and reveals that he has saved the ashes of Dracula from the original film. Then, in a move that had to be considered VERY shocking by 1966 standards, Klove slices the throat of the deceased Alan and watches the blood pour down onto the ashes, which resurrects the Count in a very Freddy Krueger-like sequence. He immediately makes quick work of Helen, giving her the ever-popular transforming bite before the screen fades to black.

Much as he is with pretty much all of the Hammer Dracula films, Christopher Lee plays your main villain and does an amazing job. He actually has ZERO spoken lines in this particular movie, and there's conflicting stories out there as to why this is. Lee himself claims that the scripted dialogue was horrible and refused to speak it, while writer Jimmy Sangster says that the character himself was badass enough that dialogue was unnecessary. My words, not his. At any rate, considering that we're in the middle of an era of romantic vampires who are (1) dreamy, and (2) sympathetic, it's always nice to go back and watch an unapologetically evil vampire the way that Lee portrays him in these films. A+++ for him.

Soon enough, the remaining couple Diana and Charles (Francis Matthews, who kinda-sorta looks like Jude Law) do some deep searching for their traveling companions that lasts all of one minute before Klove shows up in disguise to transport them away from the castle. Of course, Klove has tricked them, promptly taking them back to the castle where they run into reanimated Dracula and Helen (who just like all women in this series is MUCH hotter in vampire form) for the first of many tense sequences. In short, the duo escape, and eventually make their way back to the monastery where Father Sandor (remember him?) resides, setting up the final act of the film.

The director of this movie is Terrence Fisher, a pretty well-known luminary to fans of British horror in general. He also helmed the two films that precede this one in the Hammer Dracula chronology, as well as many other films in the Hammer canon. I touched on it in the review for Horror of Dracula, but the guy is just ungodly when it comes to creating atmosphere, making the European countrysides and dark castles that make up the settings of this movie seem vibrant and alive when they need to be and all-consuming and constricting when the time comes for things that go bump in the night. As a result, this is definitely a film series, as a whole, that lends itself especially well to Halloween season viewing; it's the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (the short story, not that interminable Tim Burton movie) of the movie world in terms of atmosphere.

Of course, for more well-versed Hammer fans, this movie is a treat by doing many of the same things that other films in the series do. Watching this series was very much akin to the '80s Friday the 13th experience; you knew what you were getting, and you knew it was gonna be good. Much of it has to do with Lee; in the mind of this reporter, he's the definitive big-screen Dracula, as I've always found Bela Lugosi's portrayals to be very overrated. This guy is seductive without being emo, and in the many scenes where he seems to have some kind of hypnotic power over the big-breasted women who populate the Hammer universe (see above for photographic proof), you buy it completely, because the guy's presence is just that strong. And he's a bad motherfucker in scenes where he's beating the crap out of the stodgy character actors who make up his enemies. It's a delicate balancing act, I tell ya.

Not to say that this movie is perfect. The two guys playing Charles and Alan Kent, while doing their damndest, come across more as pale imitations of the immortal Peter Cushing and Michael Gough tandem from Horror of Dracula. In addition, the storyline isn't quite as compelling overall; Horror is fascinating in the way it that it twists around the characters and roles from the novel, while Brides deals more directly with the "cult of vampirism," which makes the movie a little bit more interesting in and of itself. Dracula: Prince of Darkness is an exercise in simplicity; it's the most badass of the badass Draculas vs. Victorian times films once again, but as we see in the good moments of this film (and there are plenty - the resurrection scene, the battle in the castle crypt, and the finale where Dracula gets his being standouts), sometimes familiary isn't a bad thing.

*** 1/2 out of ****. In a movie series consisting of nine feature films and being the virtual [i]Friday the 13th[/i] of its time period, it's still the best sequel in the series and a prime slice of classical vampire action.

Horror Nerd Cinema Bonus: "The Thing"

First things first - I'm a huge fan of John Carpenter's seminal 1982 film "The Thing," still to this day the best horror remake of all time. It's a study in two things - (1) paranoia, and (2) the art of making an original film your own, as Carpenter took the VERY loose framework of the 1956 creature feature "The Thing From Another World" and transformed it into a tale of almost unimaginable internal and external threats. Yeah, the American research team in that flick may be up against a big, bad alien and everything...but it's the battles that they fight amongst themselves, playing a fascinating game of "who's the bad guy?" for much of the latter half of the film, that truly make the movie unforgettable, with Kurt Russell, Keith David and company giving the paranoia power with their great portrayals of the doomed characters. In short, it was awesome stuff in pretty much every way a horror film could be.

Having said that, the producers made an excellent decision to make this particular film a prequel rather than another remake. Yes, it's very similar to the 1982 film, but in one key way (which we'll be getting to later) it's very different. Is it perfect? No. Not by a long shot. But it's got good intentions (the producers realized early on that trying to do a straight-up remake of Carpenter's film was like "painting eyebrows on the Mona Lisa"), some solid performances, and good execution. I'll also give it this - see it in a packed house with a bunch of other dedicated horror fans and it's a damn fun time in theaters, not only for its numerous jump moments but for its connections to Carpenter's film that pop up every so often throughout the flick's 102 minute running time.

The movie opens with three Norwegian researchers traversing the Antarctic ice and eventually stopping when they find a strange frequency emitting from somewhere below the surface. As the signal becomes stronger, their vehicle suddenly crashes through the ice and unearths a gigantic otherworldly ship hiding underneath the ground - and nearby, frozen in the ice for many years, is a VERY unwelcome visitor...

Those who have seen the 1982 film know the basics - group of professionals on location in Antarctica have to deal with a malevolent alien being with the power to copy and hide in other living beings. That much is kept intact in this film, with a few characters immediately establishing themselves as our main draws. Our central character this time is Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an American paleontologist brought to a Norwegian science station to assist with the unearthing of the alien body. For a movie of this nature, Winstead does a more than passable job playing the lead protagonist, smart when she needs to be in the middle chapters and not transforming into too overt of an ass-kicker by the finale. Really, what it comes down to is that I bought John McClane's daughter as a paleontologist. What more do you need to know?

Anyway, the operation to gather scientific information on the alien body is being led by Dr. Sander Halverson (Ulrich Thomsen), who fulfills pretty much every horror movie scientist cliche imaginable as he constantly makes dumb decisions about how the research must be continued despite the countless bodies cropping up around the proceedings. Yeah, it's a flaw, but Thomsen is so slimy and believable in the role that it can be forgiven. His assistant is Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen), an American who draws the assignment of inviting Kate to the expedition. Rounding out the main batch of characters are the two helicopter pilots - Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton), a Vietnam vet with a penchant for Cleveland Cavaliers basketball, and Derek Jameson (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), the man who gets the honor of witnessing the alien burst out of its ice prison after being brought to the camp. Since these are the characters that I remembered by name after leaving the theater, this is where I'm stopping, but rest assured, there's a good half dozen additional technicians and miscriants lying in wait to serve as alien shapeshifter fodder.

Plotwise, here's all you need to know about "The Thing": Act One - scientists find alien and take it back to station, Act Two - All hell breaks loose as the alien kills a few of the scientists off and makes its replication powers be known, Act Three - Paranoia sets in and final confrontation. I'd like to make it seem more complicated than that, but really, what more is there to say? Fortunately, this is one aspect of this particular movie that works quite well; while it follows the same blueprint that the 1982 movie set, it actually creates its own style.

To me, this is where the film really shines. It's less about the games that the characters play with each other and the guessing game that goes on between the all-male cast (or mostly male, in the case of this one, as there is actually one additional female in the station apart from Winstead), because the movie smartly realizes that it can't top the Carpenter movie in this aspect. Instead, it carves out an identity fairly early on as a straight-up monster movie. Yeah, there is a section right before the s*** hits the fan at the 3/4 mark where we get a sabotaged blood test and some newfound makeshift ways of playing "who's got the alien bug?", but for the most part it's a fairly straightforward game of cat-and-mouse between the ever-crafty replicating alien and the arguing survivors, with the otherworldly life form taking on much more forms in this movie than it did in Carpenter's.

Does it work better than the 1982 film? No. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., the director of this film, is no John Carpenter. But it is different, and while different doesn't necessarily always mean good, the decision to not outright copy Carpenter's film was much appreciated by yours truly. Is it a scary monster movie, which is what the movie makes an honest attempt at being? In small doses, yes. Not only because I saw this one in one of the most state-of-the-art theaters I've ever set foot in, but also because it plays a few clever games of misdirection with its reveals; midway through the film, there is a sequence where a scientist who has incurred injuries in a fight with the creature is being helicoptered away. I'll leave it at that - suffice to say, the flick more than fooled me with this one.

More than anything, it was just good to see a modern take on a classic horror film that seemed to have tons of genuine reverence for the source material. Marc Abraham and Eric Newman, the AFOREMENTIONED producers who championed the prequel idea, weren't talking out of their ass; the script has plenty of respect for the rules that Carpenter laid out for his alien villain, the characters are set up in a fashion very similar to the original film (with scientists, pilots, and technical crew making up our cast of victims), the out-of-nowhere moments where the alien makes its presence known, the smooth transition into the events of that transpire at the American camp...hell, even that legendary Carpenter two-note score is kept intact. Compared to Rob Zombie's Sequel That Shall Not Be Named, where ANOTHER Carpenter score wasn't even used ONCE until the closing credits, this movie comes across as a tribute. Granted, you won't find anything new in the 2011 reiteration/prequel of "The Thing," but what's there is certainly a fun, engaging way to spend a couple hours in a theater. And it WILL whet your appetite to watch the immortal original. I know, because it's on in the background as we speak.

*** out of ****. A little predictable and familiar at times, but solid monster action, good performances from Winstead and Thomsen and plenty of love for Carpenter's classic are all pleasant surprises that make "The Thing" a solid outing at the multiplex for fellow horror nerds everywhere.

An unapologetically over-the-top, gory, goofy movie about a murderous human glob - it's Frank Henenlotter's "Basket Case"!!

The career of Frank Henenlotter is one of those things that can really be classified as one of a kind. For you non-horror aficianadoes out there who might be reading this, I won't bore you with the entire filmography, in part because I don't think you'd care and in part because I stopped trying to be super horror researcher guy years ago when I realized that the world already has Uncle Creepy and really doesn't need another one. And if it does, I certainly couldn't be it. Suffice to say, Mr. Henenlotter makes WEIRD friggin' movies...this one being first and foremost.

I first saw "Basket Case" a little over ten years ago, and hated it, finding the acting "crappy" and the story too "out there." Or maybe I just wasn't in the right mood that day. At any rate, after talking to a few other horror junkies, I finally decided to track down a used copy and give the flick another shot. Long story short, I'm glad I did, as the flick is a lot more fun than I remembered and one thing's for certain...check this one out, and you will never forget it. It's definitely not a movie for horror beginners (which is probably why I was so butthurt over it back in 2001), but if you've built up some solid gore tolerance and are looking for a good trashy time-waster, look no further.

In a move that is always appreciated, this movie - once again with a budget that might be slightly less than a Filet-o-Fish value meal - wastes little time getting going, giving us death scene #1 within the first five minutes. Dr. Lifflander (Bill Freeman) spends several minutes being stalked by something outside of his house before having his face ripped off by a disfigured hand. Money. Even better, said doctor delivers some truly Laurence Olivier-esque acting directly toward the camera in his final moments before screaming like a woman. Good unintentional comedy? No, it's GREAT.

From here, we cut to New York City, where an unassuming young man named Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck, and man, you have not seen cinematic charisma in action until you see this guy operate) walks the mean streets of the Big Apple carrying a wicker basket with him. These early scenes establish the sleazy underbelly of the city as its principal setting, and I'll give Henenlotter credit, he's really got a great eye for the seamy side of city life throughout this movie. After meeting some Patchuli-soaked characters and checking into a hotel (in never-ending dialogue sequence #1, which Van Hentenryck shares with the proprietor of said hotel), he buys some burgers and feeds them to whatever inhuman thing resides in his wicker basket.

The movie then gives us never-ending dialogue sequence #2. The woman in the above picture is a doctor's receptionist named Sharon, played by Terri Susan Smith in a horrible blonde wig, and - proving that there is hope for everyone - she displays romantic interest in Duane as they converse prior to his appointment with Dr. Needleman (Lloyd Pace, who kinda-sorta looks like Luigi the plumber). I should also point out that she imitates a mouse during this scene, and that this act is yet more comedic gold. Combine this with Van Hentenryck's "fighting the frizzies" hairstyle and this movie is like ten Richard Pryor albums combined.

Soon enough, the movie gives us its second murder scene, as the thing contained within Duane's basket - an inhuman beast that bears a slight resemblance to Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - brutally attacks and murders Dr. Needleman in an extremely bloody scene. If it made me wince, it's pretty out there. Amazingly enough, this movie only gets more extreme as it goes along.

In a Jack and Rose from "Titanic"-like sequence, Duane and Sharon begin their stirring romance (including such amazing dialogue as "I only said I wanted you to show me around the city to be with you!" "Really? I only said I wanted to give you a tour of the city for the same reason!") - which makes Duane's basket resident a very unhappy camper. It seems to be jealous of Duane's love life, and as he goes in for the kill and envelops Sharon's mouth in one of the sloppiest movie kisses ever, basket thing goes nuts, killing one of the fellow tenants of Duane's hotel building.

Here he is, folks - your star villain of "Basket Case." It has been said that Frank Henenlotter likes his dope, and I won't dispute that claim.

And just because I felt like I needed to show it for all to enjoy, Van Hentenryck and his legendary hair having a heartfelt conversation with his brother in a toilet.

Yup, after the police question Duane about the dead body found in his hotel room, he pours his heart out to the friendly local prostitute (not because he wants to get laid, just because he wants to be her friend), and we get our classic past segment flashback that explains who the basket demon is. And it is indeed Duane's brother. Turns out that Duane is a Siamese twin, and the monster (named Belial) is a conjoined mass entity, at one point attached to Duane at the side, who shares a strong telepathic link with his sibling. After their separation, Belial keeps the telepathic abilities, and of course is none too happy with the doctors who performed the operation, hence why they are presently on their gruesome mission of exterminating said doctors.

Oh yeah, spoiler alert.

One more thing on this flashback - it contains a scene where the twelve-year-old version of Duane is being dragged by the doctors to the operating table and the actor playing child-Duane has to protest strongly while the doctors shove him around. And it...is...hilarious. The comedy reaches Eddie Murphy levels here. Even more amazing, it's taken us an hour to get to this point. But believe me, all the weirdness that's been contained in this movie thus far is just the pregame show. No matter how bizarre you think this flick might be during its first two acts, trust me, they top it.

Firstly, it's back to the present day for more s**ts and giggles, where Belial cops a feel on the hotel prostitute (and steals her panties, holy christ). This scene even manages to work up some genuine dread, as the simple Casio keyboard soundtrack does a fairly decent job setting up anticipation now that we know what Belial truly is. From here, the dynamic duo of Siamese twin rage make their way to the final physician on their hit list, Dr. Kutter (Diana Browne) and make quick work of her in an awesomely over-the-top sequence. How over-the-top? Take a gander.

Incredibly, the movie just keeps throwing more sickness our way, as Belial's newfound lustfulness exerts itself. Sharon shows up at Duane's hotel, and before long the two are making out forcefully. As an added bonus for him, Duane gets to grope Sharon's boobs during this scene. Just as the action starts getting heavy, Belial bursts out of his basket, and Duane saves Sharon from certain doom. Shortly afterward, Duane has a dream where he is running (naked, no less) through the curiously non-crowded streets of New York toward Sharon's apartment, eventually making his way inside and giving us the audience the opportunity to see Sharon's giant breasts for the first time. And it's cinematic mastery at its finest.

Of course, in a TWIST, it's really Belial who is hovering over Sharon's naked body, as the monstrous twin is controlling his slightly more virtuous sibling via telekinesis into having the dream, or something. Belial first strangles Sharon to death, and then - are you ready for this? - has sex with her recetly-deceased body. At least that's what's implied, since when Duane bursts into the room, Belial is very slowly yet rhythmically nudging against her groin in a manner that suggests that this evil Siamese monster twin has just completed having coitus with this dead woman. "Basket Case" is some movie.

Anyway, time for this movie to hit the bricks. After Duane tracks Belial down at Sharon's apartment, he drags his pint-sized brother forcefully back to the hotel where an argument takes place between them. Belial attacks Duane, and they both go tumbling out of a window. There's a kinda-sorta touching moment where the twins look at each other while dangling from the hotel's neon sign before they both plunge to their deaths. Roll end credits.

You know...at the time of my AFOREMENTIONED first viewing of "Basket Case," I still had a fairly simplistic view of horror movies. It was too weird for me then; hell, watching it is still a bizarre, almost demeaning experience even today. This is a movie that proudly features a malformed devil child having lustful sex with a dead body. Thus, it didn't fit into my definition of what made a "good" movie (good characters, acting, screenplay, etc.) in 2001.

In the ten years since, however, my definition of what makes a "good" movie has changed. Now, I define a good film as one that is able to hook your emotions. I can overlook a MOUNTAIN of flaws if a movie is able to do this simple task. Most definitely, "Basket Case" has a huge gamut of terrible qualities...but somehow, some way, I cared about it. After watching the movie a second time, I agree with the sentiments of the horror fans who consider this film to be a cult classic that Kevin Van Hentenryck, while quite the terrible thespian, actually manages to pull off being a shy, awkward, semi-relatable dude precisely BECAUSE he's so terrible at his craft. This might sound like some sort of impossible feat, but trust me, it's the truth. Almost defying itself, "Basket Case" manages to be a semi-emotional movie.

This movie was also made long before CGI and all of its soul-destroying qualities were on prominent display, meaning that we get several awesome death scenes full of stage blood and decent makeup effects. Ironically enough, the work done on Belial himself is quite atrocious. He is brought to life mainly through the art of stop motion photography, and while this sort of thing can look incredibly fluid and lifelike when given proper care, here it's stilted and awkward to the point of being laughable. Yet another thing that, in a crowd setting, would make watching this movie quite entertaining.

Which, in the end, is what "Basket Case" was at the time of its release - a goofy, gory, entertaining exploitation film. Does it succeed at this? Yes, it does. It's a movie that wants to entertain and shock. It makes no concessions or apologies for this, it doesn't try to shove any political message down your throat, it isn't interested in trying to justify its buckets of fake blood and gratuitous nudity. It is utterly pointless. And you know what? After ten years of absorbing zombie movie after zombie movie with the same "human beings are no better than flesh-eating zombies and are probably even WORSE" message...that's just the way I like it.

*** out of ****. It may be for all the wrong reasons, but damned if this movie wasn't a fun watch.

"Dr. Giggles" - it's puntastic!

Here's one that I've been waiting to see for quite a while. "Dr. Giggles" was yet another of those movies that occupied shelf space in The Greatest Video Store Ever. Of course, the video box art scared the ever living crap out of me then; now I've seen this movie, and had I known then what I know now, I would have thought myself quite the moron for being so piss-terrified of watching this flick. It wasn't even an option in 1992. Now? Hell, I was half-asleep the entire time.

To be sure, this movie isn't scary. Not even in the "jump scare" variety. In slight defense of director Manny Coto and the rest of the filmmakers, they clearly weren't aiming for scares anyway; the movie fits more into the "winking at the audience/black humor" subgenre of horror alongside such undisputed classics (/Patrick Bateman) as "Night of the Creeps" and "Return of the Killer Tomatoes." Only this one is nowhere near as good. In terms of viscerality it's decent - there's definitely plenty of opportunities for good splatter from a "psychotic doctor on the loose" plot - but in terms of impact and comedy, it's sub-par.


Meet Dr. Giggles, played by Larry "The Man" Drake. I can't remember where I read it, but someone summed up the career of Mr. Drake perfectly by saying he was the guy that a director hired if they wanted their flick to seem like a big deal and not ACTUALLY have to pay big-actor salary. A notorious "that guy" character actor, you might have seen him as Durant in the first two "Darkman" movies or as Psycho Santa v 2.0 in the awesome "Tales From the Crypt" episode "And All Through the House." Here, he's your star character - an insane, murderous dude obsessed with medicine and with making medical-related quips. Yup. The opening sequence of the movie shows this guy (whose "identity is unknown," according to one of the anciliary characters) brutally gutting two doctors at an asylum before making a daring jettison.

A few more words on those quips - "Dr. Giggles" might feature more bad punny jokes before, during, and after death scenes than the entire "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise combined. Somebody warned me about this going on, but I wasn't prepared for just HOW badly this flick tries to be funny. There is such a thing as trying too hard when it comes to comedy, and "Dr. Giggles" is definitely it. With ONE exception (more on that later), they failed to elicit even a smile from yours truly. While Drake is definitely game for this role (as always), the script definitely didn't do him any favors. I should also point out that he's quite aptly named, and giggles in delight whenever he's inflicting pain or experiencing it himself.

Moving right along, we are quickly taken to the town of Moorehigh and meet our resident cast of annoying college students. Well, mostly. Our heroine in this film is Jennifer Campbell, played by Holly Marie Combs of later "Charmed" and "Pretty Little Liars" fame. Considering the material, she actually makes a fairly resonant and sympathetic "final girl" character, having just lost a mother to a mysterious illness and quite pissed off that her dad is shacking up with somebody else immediately following the mother's death. She has also been diagnosed with a heart condition, and the resulting angst is played fairly well. Definitely the best aspect of this film.

The rest of the characters? Not so much. Her boyfriend Max (Glenn Quinn) and the rest of the disposable cast (including Doug E. Doug - remember him? - and a dude who looks like Pauly Shore's evil twin) don't do much in the way of making me care about/remember them. Mostly because I don't. Since the middle sections of this movie largely consist of Giggles coming back to his hometown and stalking/eliminating these people, there's a large portion of this movie that went in one ear and out the other.

Having said that, there's a few bits here in these middle sections that give us the background of this medical monster. Admittedly, since I was half-asleep I probably didn't absorb it as well as I should have, but apparently Giggles (real name Evan Rendell) is the son of a genuine accredited doctor, and as a child, Giggles and his father went on a murderous rampage killing the father's patients and taking their hearts in an attempt to bring the elder Rendell's dead wife (and by extension Giggles' mother) back to life. In a Freddy Krueger-esque twist, the town eventually got wise to the father-son terror duo and stoned the father to death before Evan Jr. escaped, hence why he's coming back to Moorehigh as an adult. Or something. It probably makes more sense while actually watching the movie.

Anywoo...wrapping up this dog and pony show, after all of the annoying secondary characters are killed off, we get our Final Girl sequence as Giggles kidnaps Jennifer and attempts to replace her "broken" heart with one of the hearts that he took from his recent slew of victims. How many? There are 17 onscreen deaths in this movie. In stark contrast to the rest of this movie, this aspect of the film works quite well, as I was firmly on Jennifer's side and wanted her to survive. This segment also contains the movie's one funny joke, as Giggles, in the act of chasing Jennifer and her boyfriend, looks off-camera and says "Time to do what doctors do best!" before grabbing a golf club. Yeah, I laughed. Even better, the movie ends without a twist, something so rare in horror films that it's almost a twist in and of itself. If only the rest of the movie had been executed this well.

So now it's time for the all-important summary paragraph. Really, what more is there to say? "Dr. Giggles" is a kinda-sorta horror parody that fails miserably for the vast maority of its running time, as it is neither funny nor scary. Having said that, Drake is very game for his role as always, and it's a shame that this guy never got a shot to play a serial killer in a good movie, while Combs manages to mine her character for every bit of emotion that it's worth. However, for a movie about a crazy psycho doctor obsessed with medical puns...I'm having trouble remembering much of it at all a mere 24 hours after witnessing it for the first time. Something has to be said for that.

* 1/2 out of ****. A good final girl and by extension a terrific final girl sequence doesn't make up for the rest of the Batista-esque botching contained within "Dr. Giggles."