Creepshow 2 (1987)

1987
Directed by Michael Gornick
Starring Lois Chiles, George Kennedy, Dorothy Lamour and Tom Savini

For some mysterious reason, I never got around to watching Creepshow 2 until my college years.  The original flick is one of the most downright fun horror movies you'll ever see; all five stories in it are somewhat lesser degrees of each other, but the sum total is fantastic.  Coupled with enough genuinely WTF moments to have you and your friends giving it some good-natured chiding (Ed Harris' dance FTW) and we're talking one of the all-time great party movies, brought to you by your friends Stephen King and George Romero. 

Upon seeing the sequel for the first time, I actually liked it BETTER than the original.  After some repeat viewings, my rose-colored glasses/nostaligia for my college days have been tempered somewhat, because there are portions of this flick that qualify as downright dopey.  Fortunately, those portions are a little few and far between, peppered in between some pretty good atmospheric stuff.  Well, except for the first story.  That one is pretty dopey all around.  With that, let's get to the movie.  Much like the original, this movie is anthology to the core; three tales of terror, all held together with a wraparound story involving a kid reading a comic book that the stories come from.  Just like the original, we've also got Stephen King as the inspiration, with Romero (who directed the original) penning the screenplay.

If nothing else, I've got to hand it to this movie as far as the sequence goes, because they lead off with what is undoubtedly one of the more tedious segments in any anthology movie I've seen in "Old Chief Wood'nhead."  In it, we have George Kennedy as the proprietor of a general goods store in some nondescript Southwestern town that finds itself under siege from the local group of street hooligans, led by a man with the most luxurious mane of rock and roll hair I've ever seen.  And folks, this section of the story REALLY drags; we get a long, not terribly tense series of events with Kennedy and his wife dealing with the thieves followed by the murder of Kennedy.  Fortunately (or unfortunately), the store's resident cigar store statue has recently received a visit from a mystic Shaman, and I think you know where we're going from here.  Anyway, this segment isn't particularly scary or memorable, and you're much better off skipping ahead.

When I was in junior high, "The Raft" was one of my favorite Stephen King short stories, and the film version that follows in Creepshow 2 is only slightly less awesome.  The story this time concerns four college students who decide to go swimming in a lake that is far, far away from civilization.  Great idea alert.  Upon reaching the titular raft in the middle of the lake, they see a mysterious oil slick floating toward them.  It seems harmless enough...until it absorbs one of them in its gooey mass, never to be seen again.  This segment is everything that "Old Chief Wood'nhead" isn't, in that it ramps up the tension halfway through and never looks back, boasting this palpable sense of claustrophobia and entrapment at its core.  It's also got some very nice titshots and one of hell of an ending twist an added bonus, so sports fans of the world take note. 

The third segment isn't quite as strong.  Entitled "The Hitch-Hiker," it's about - you guessed it - Frank Stallone.  Nope, it's about a ghostly hitch-hiker, more specifically one who tails adulterous wife Annie Lansing (Chiles in a decent amoral protagonist performance) after being run off the road in a hit and run accident by Annie.  To be sure, this segment is a little predictable and repetitive, but it's also got a lot going for it in the atmosphere, the ungodly creepy look of the reappearing hitch-hiker itself, and a pretty fun little cameo from King in the process.  It's also got a line of dialogue that might just stick in your head long after the film's running time, but that's a different story altogether.

And...that' all folks, from there, we hit another segment of the wraparound story as Comic Kid's bullies get one hell of a comeuppance followed by the ending credits.  Longtime readers (and savvy horror fans) undoubtedly know that the original Creepshow contained five stories, while this one takes the "lean and mean" approach of three stories.  It turns out that the length cut was due to budgetary reasons, and I've got to believe that the powers-that-be were kicking themselves after this flick turned out to be a modest hit with a $14 million box office take from a mere $3.5 million investment.  Come on, guys.  Throw another $5 million at your movie and shoot for the moon.  One of the planned stories, "Cat From Hell," would eventually be filmed for Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, so not all was lost.  Still...man.  Just, man.
 
Creepshow 2 is nowhere near the classic that it's original film is.  Very few movies can top that one, both for atmosphere and for impact.  Indeed, "Old Chief Wood'nhead" had this one limping out of the gate from the get go while the first film had us all wanting our damn cake already, but the movie manages to regain its footing pretty well in the latter chapters.  In addition, it's also the only movie that I've seen that contains the moral lesson to not fondle a hotty coed's tits when attempting to evade a murderous oil slick in the middle of a lake. 

*** out of ****.  Skip the first story and you should be alright from there; otherwise, stick to Creepshow 1.

D-Tox (2002)

2002
Directed by Jim Gillespie
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Tom Berenger, Charles S. Dutton, Robert Patrick, Polly Walker, Jeffrey Wright and Kris Kristofferson

Folks, the flick we're looking at today has to be nothing short of one of the most infamous flops in horror history.  Boasting an absolutely mammoth budget of $55 million and the star power listed above, D-Tox (perhaps better known by its video title Eye See You) qualified as a finished product that the studio quite simply had no idea what to do with or how to market, making it sit on the shelf for three years after completion before finally turning it loose on video shelves.  There, it died a quick death, and the only evidence that I have that anyone has ever seen the film is the one wintry night back in 2002 when myself and a couple friends spent 90 minutes chuckling at the TV screen. 

I'm not quite the research nut that I used to be with movies of this nature, but this is what I can gleam.  Stallone was in that VERY rough period of his career in 1999, long before the irrefutably awesome Rocky Balboa would resurrect his career and when he struggled to get his movies screened theatrically.  This script must have seemed like a good idea at the time.  Horror was still relatively hot in the wake of Scream, and Jim Gillespie, the director here, also did the duties for I Know What You Did Last Summer.  Big problems: all of the main characters were dudes and decidedly old, a clear lack of gratuitous nudity (which, given the aforementioned factoid, is a big plus), and a plot that qualifies as cliched and hackneyed to even the most seasoned slasher movie fan quickly ensure that Universal pictures saw the whole project as a big wash.  With that, the movie.

Stallone plays FBI agent Jake Malloy, a guy who has been tracking a serial killer who targets law enforcement officials.  The dude's method of operation is actually pretty cool, as he prefers to ring a doorbell, wait for his quarry to look through the peephole, and insert a drill through said peephole.  The killer has a grudge against Jake, as he informs the officer via the ever-popular late-'90s taunting phone call plot device that the agent pursued him several years back for some prostitute deaths, and he is out for revenge.  This results in the movie's first real money scene, as the killer does a lobotomy job on Jake's girlfriend Mary (the certifiably hot Dina Meyer).  Jake chases the killer down, finding him dead from an apparent suicide and setting us up for the rest of the movie.

The movie gets its title from the setting for the remainder of the movie.  Jake descends into alcoholism after these incidents and promptly tries suicide (preferably right after listening to Titanica's "Try Suicide"), making his supervising officer Chuck Hendricks (Charles S. Dutton) send him away to a rehab center specifically for law enforcement officials.  It's a nice little stronghold out in the wilderness, surrounded by snow and trees as far as the eye can see, and populated by what is admittedly a pretty damn good group of actors playing Jake's fellow rehabilitators.  Check that list above for proof.  They're actually all given fairly fleshed out backgrounds as well, with Robert Patrick's character standing out amongst them as one of the better red herring suspects.

Red herring, you ask?  Well, it isn't long before a snowstorm hits and bodies begin piling up.  Having just watched the movie again after more than a decade of forgetting its existence, I'm having trouble remembering any of them.  They aren't very creative deaths.  There also isn't much emotional weight going on here, because while the flick did do a decent job establishing character traits for all of its actors it was nowhere near as admirable when it came to making the characters sympathetic.  Jake actually is sympathetic, and Stallone did not appear to be mailing it in.  Not having a box office hit in many years will do that to you.  But the setup to D-Tox is just a lot more interesting than its payoff.

I will give the movie this - it has take on the "take group of characters and isolate them" slasher movie trope that, while not unique in the least bit, at least FEELS new with all of the characters being tough guy cops.  The movie's big budget also shows, as Gillespie shoots the movie with plenty of love and affection that $55 million can easily afford you.  But emotional bearing is a big deal with me, and that's where the movie is sorely lacking.  Coupled with the fact that it just feels as cookie-cutter as all get out for the vast majority of its second and third acts and we're talking criminal boredom.  Although it does have a scene at the end where Sylvester Stallone gorilla press slams the villain onto spikes, so +5 points to the movie there.

** out of ****.  It has moments, but moments are just about it.  Good early-afternoon falling asleep fodder and little else.

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

1990
Directed by John Harrison
Starring Deborah Harry, Christian Slater, David Johansen, William Hickey, James Remar and Rae Dawn Chong

I was a late bloomer to the charms of Tales from the Darkside, the 1980s TV series that spawned the movie in question today.  Most of my childhood was taken up with the Crypt Keeper and the Midnight Society, and trying to get the few classmates unlucky enough to share a room with me that gathering in the middle of the goddamn forest and telling scary stories wasn't a losery thing to do on Saturday night.  When I found it later in life, though, I made up for some lost time.  Rest assurred, it's an awesome series, and this flick that serves as the de facto climax of it is a pretty damn good movie.

While it was a modest success in theaters, this is definitely one of those movies that qualifies as a cult classic.  It has small pockets of fans, an those pockets run very deep.  So deep.  So deep, it could put her butt to sleep, but Ice Cube is putting it better than I ever could.  It's also got one of the more ingenious framing devices of any anthology film I've seen, with a young kid played by Matthew Lawrence (yes, folks, the brother of Joey "Whoa" Lawrence) reading three stories to a witch who is about to eat him, Hansel and Gretel style.  Remember, kids, if you're ever captured by a cannibal, reading stories is the ultimate weapon.  It worked for Shawn Hunter's older brother and it can work for you.

With that, let's get to the stories.  First up is "Lot 249," an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story of the same name.  This segment has some cast, with Steve Buscemi playing a vengeful graduate student who utilizes a mummy to exact revenge on two other students (Julianne Moore and Robert Sedgwick) who framed him out of a scholarship.  The scares are few and far between in this segment, but the beauty of it is in the acting, with the name actors (plus Christian Slater in full Jack Nicholson mode as Moore's older brother) giving everything they've got to the proceedings and adding plenty of emotion to the admittedly pretty out there story.  It's also got one hell of an ending twist that is right up there with anything we would get on Tales from the Crypt, and that's never a bad thing.

Next up is "Cat From Hell," based on the story from Stephen King's collection Skeleton Crew.  Much like pretty much everything King wrote before...oh, 1991 or so, the whole story is filled with this amazing sense of foreboding.  The story concerns a rich pharmaceutical magnate (William Hickey) who hires a hit man (David Johansen) to kill a black cat that he believes to be evil incarnate.  The background of the hit is explained, and it is the stuff that campfire scary stories are made of with just the slightest bit of a modern touch.  And folks, if you thought the last segment had a good ending twist, wait until you see how this one kicks you in the nuts in the final third.  Both Hickey and Johansen are aces in their roles, and the material doesn't disappoint.  A home run of a segment for sure.

Finally, we've got "Lover's Vow," a story that felt very familiar as I had already seen the classic J-horror epic Kwaidan.  Lo and behold, the story is indeed based on the story of the Japanese yuki-onna ghost.  Instead of a spirit in the woods, it's once again back to the mean city streets, as down-on-his-luck artist Preston (James Remar) witnesses a hideous helldemon committing a brutal murder.  The monster agrees to let him live, just so long as he never speaks a word of what he saw to anyone.  And I think you know where this is going.  The segment may be predictable, but it doesn't matter, because this segment is all about the emotion.  Once again, the actors are more than game, with both Remar and Rae Dawn Chong owning it as a seemingly happy couple before a telegraphed-yet-effective final twist.

There were some talented people associated with this flick (Doyle, King and George Romero, who wrote the screenplay for the "Cat From Hell" segment), and it shows.  This is the kind of horror movie that we almost never get these days, one where the love of dark stuff, spectral boogeymen and all things paranormal is celebrated with no hint of cynicism.  All the stuffy trappings aside, this is just a really, really fun movie that every horror fan should seek out at some point in their life. 

*** 1/2 out of ****.  The first segment might be a bit below the others, but the sum total of Tales from the Darkside can't be ignored.  Check it out.

Nail Gun Massacre (1985)

1985
Directed by Bill Leslie and Terry Lofton
Starring Ron Queen, Beau Leland, Michelle Meyer and Rocky Patterson

I've mentioned this flick a few times in passing here on the blog, but never launched into the full-fledged review for one simple purpose.  No amount of typing can possibly do this movie justice.  You might have seen some bad movies before, but almost nothing that I've seen before or since has managed to achieve the sheer levels of ineptitude that Nail Gun Massacre aspires to be.  For that reason only, this is a movie that everyone should see before they die.

Watching this movie today actually makes me a little sad, because they don't make movies like this anymore.  Most modern horror films tend to shoot for "passable at best, mind-numbingly boring at worst" as a benchmark, and that's a damn shame, because movies along the order of Nail Gun Massacre are infinitely fun to watch.  We don't get train wrecks of this caliber hitting the Netflix queue, and I doubt we'll ever get anything remotely like it again.  And no folks, I don't count the SyFy original pictures and their ilk, because those things are so soul-free that they might qualify as some sort of nightmarish bizarro-James Brown clone.  Horrible metaphor alert, launch.

All I've got to say is that if you're a fan of literal titles, this is the movie for you.  It delivers the goods when it comes to nail guns and then some.  The movie starts with a dingily-shot gang rape scene at a construction site and never looks back, promptly launching into a series of murder scenes involving the various perpetrators of said crime.  People, for years, I never dreamed that it was possible for a movie to have more disposable stock characters than Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, but this has it beat by a long shot.  Even more amazingly, it came out the SAME YEAR.  Freaky.  Our star character, if you want to call him that, is the local doctor (Patterson), who along with the Sheriff (Queen) put together a very Keystone Cops-esque effort to stop the murderer.  No, you will not remember the faces or names of anybody that eats the nails in this movie, but it doesn't matter.  Because the beauty of Nail Gun Massacre lies in the things they do.

For starters, there's plenty of female nudity to be had.  Unfortunately, it's also accompanied by plenty of male nudity, usually with large, hairy-backed men who look like they would likely own any prison that they ventured into.  And then there is the star character himself...the killer.  The various murder segments that make up the film all star this dude, a leather-jacket-wearing psycho wearing a motorcycle helmet and utilizing a voice that sounds like a cross between Cookie Monster and the Black Scorpion.  Every time he's onscreen, it prompts nothing short of hilarity that make a group viewing of the film nothing short of Eddie Murphy early years spectacular.  Combined with the finest score that a ten dollar Casio keyboard could grant and we're talking Richard Pryor quality.

What else is there to know?  Not much.  This really is just your standard revenge movie with a heavy slathering of slasher.  The identity of the killer isn't even really that much a mystery; once we know the background of the woman who was raped in the prologue, tracing the breadcrumbs together is fairly straightforward.  It all just kind of comes together in the third act after the movie gives us essentially 70 minutes of "introduce characters and then promptly kill them off, likely just after doing something annoying" followed by the exposition and the big mystery reveal.  And...that's all folks.  There's no depth, no scares, and no real joy to be had in Nail Gun Massacre.  But then again, why would you expect it?

I suppose I should wrap this review up into a nice little bow.  I've said in the past that people watch horror movies for different reasons.  Generally, I watch them because I enjoy being scared.  This one won't scare you in the least bit, nor will its characters compel you to follow their story.  If you get the impression that this movie is bad from this review, I've done my job, because this is some bad movie.  Still, you can't appreciate just HOW bad until you take it in, its gamut of bad qualities running a gauntlet so long and tough that it somehow becomes watchable as a test of endurance and a test of just how loud you can laugh in the company of others. 

1/2 * out of ****.  This is an EXCELLENT movie for some MST3K-style riffing, but by yourself...yikes.  Stay away.  Stay FAR away.

Final Destination (2000)

2000
Directed by James Wong
Starring Devon Sara, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith and Tony Todd

Looks like we're headed back to school for this week's review.  High school, that is - the high school years of one Mr. Lick Ness Monster.

There have been a few horror movies in my lifetime that set off a huge wave in the teen crowd.  Scream was that way a few years before this, and The Ring would do the same a short time after.  But in the spring and summer of 2000, if you hadn't seen the movie with the plane crash, creepy shadow-stalking death, the whipped-cream bikini girl and the chick who got hit by the bus...you were out of it, man.  And you can rest assured that I was there on opening Friday.

My reasoning was probably a bit different than most at that time.  Originally written as an X-Files spec script, it was ironically enough picked up as the directorial debut for one James Wong - the same James Wong who, along with writing partner Glen Morgan, was one of the early season featured writers for The X-Files.  The same show that long-time readers of the blog will recognize as my favorite TV show of all time, regardless of how much of a Vince Russo-esque clusterfuck it turned into during its later seasons.  That connection was enough to sell me on the idea, and it's a decision that I never regretted, as the flick was a big success and spawned a franchise that - even at its worst - has managed to stay fun and relevant throughout a few goofy incarnations.  In that regard, this really is the Friday the 13th for the 21st century that  could never, ever dream of being.  With that, let's get to the movie.

Of course, most people know the basics of Final Destination by now, and this movie that started the trends doesn't do much different.  It begins with slightly squirrelly high school student Alex Browning (Sawa, a guy that I'm truly surprised never made it bigger, because he had loads of charisma and acting chops) anticipating a class trip to Paris, France when a premonition involving the entire plane being engulfed in flames.  Lo and behold, a series of events starts once on board the plane that seems eerily familiar to his premonition, leading to himself and a group of mismatched classmates being led off the plane to await a following flight.  When the plane actually does explode, that sets our plot in motion.

Quick, spoilerific information for those who haven't seen any of these movies.  The flick doesn't have an out-and-out villain in the way that most horror movies do.  Instead, what we have here as the kids start getting picked off one by one is a sort of "world at large" villain where everyday objects, particularly things that are as sharp and nasty as posssible, suddenly become evil.  It seems that death has been cheated by Alex's vision, and now it's snapback time to correct the mistake.  Having said that, this flick DOES differ from later movies in the franchise in a couple key ways.  For starters, the Goldberg Variation-esque methods that death employs aren't quite as intricate as they would be almost immediately after this one.  Secondly, death itself seems to be a smart, sentient thing in this film that does its best to cover its tracks, a plot device that was completely forgotten starting with the first sequel when it became clear that it would be a bit more fun to have massive, gory set pieces filled with lots of weird, wild stuff. (/Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson). 

Anyway, that's what we've got from Final Destination at this point onward, and it more than delivers the goods on a visceral level.  Which brings me to element #2 when it comes to my horror movie scale - emotional involvement.  To be sure, this movie has some collection of actors.  In addition to Sawa, there's Ali Larter (she of the aforementioned whipped cream bikini, which sadly did not occur in this movie), Kristen Cloke, Daniel "Samson Tollet" Roebuck, Seann William Scott as the requisite douchy jock character in the role that he has down to absolute perfection and Amanda Detmer of Saving Silverman relative fame.  Oh, and Tony Todd as the creepiest coroner in the history of film.  Really, with the exception of Scott and Todd, though, every character is pretty disposable - up to and including our main protagonist in Alex.  From an emotional standpoint, this movie is a bit of a letdown, and this is one aspect where I actually really do wonder what this movie would have been like as an X-Files episode, with Mulder and Scully investigating these deaths and the high school students serving as the B-story.

In the end, that doesn't really matter.  This is a flick that proves that a great concept and solid execution can cover up some pretty substantial flaws.  The excellent atmosphere that Wong manages to serve up doesn't hurt, either.  Since this movie gets pretty regular airplay on lazy Saturday afternoons, there's definitely much worse ways that you can spend wasting away in Margaritaville.  That, and there are some deaths in this thing that are still just outright cringeworthy a full decade-and-a-half removed.

*** out of ****.  A very solid start to a solid series.  Recommended.

Child's Play 2 (1990)

1990
Directed by John Lafia
Starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Christine Elise and Brad Dourif

When the original Child's Play was released, I don't think that ANY of the wizards of smart could have predicted exactly how successful it would be.  By horror movie standards, it was an absolute blockbuster, with both the character of Chucky and the concept proving quite formidable with the public at large.  Thus, while the original flick had a budget that was marginally higher than a #7 value meal, it didn't take long for Universal to order up some sequels.  It ALSO didn't take long for writer Don Mancini to crank out what I consider to be the best movie in the entire series.

Moreso than any of the other films in the franchise, this flick really is all about yin and yang.  It's got its serious moments, sure, but it also brings in the humor that the later entries would crank up to the nth and sometimes annoying degree.  The balancing act that Mancini scripted out here, however, is pretty close to ideal.  Once again, it was a big hit with the public, making its budget back in the opening weekend alone and making those very same aforementioned later sequels possible.  With that, let's get to it.

I'll be the first person to admit that most horror movies that bring back characters from earlier installments are asking for trouble.  The Nightmare on Elm Street series managed to pull it off with Kristen Parker and Alice Johnson, but others...not so much.  Andy Barclay, the little kid whose body Chucky was trying to possess in the first film, is back here as your star character.  He's still played by Alex Vincent, and the kid still does an admirable enough acting job.  This time around, he's in foster care, his mother having been taken away from him due to her lack of deductive reasoning skills in not going against her kid's story that the doll that killed babysitters, teachers and other assorted characters was alive.  Quick word of advice to all mothers who find themselves in this situation: lie.  You'll be doing yourself a favor.

Before the end of the first act, we meet Andy's new foster parents, played by Gerrit Graham and Jenny Agutter (she of many tasty nude scenes back in the day - Google it, kids).  Also present in his new home is Kyle (Christine Elise of 90210 relative fame), requisite "bad girl" teenage character who serves as your veritable final girl in this entry.  The character isn't exactly a classic, but Elise does anything but phone it in, managing to make the semi-big-sisterly bond that she forms with Andy semi-believable.  Three hyphens in one sentence.  I'm really starting to suck.

ANYWAY...the fine folks at the Good Guys toy company have taken a big hit due to all the bad publicity that Andy's possessed doll story gave them.  In a plot that screams "great idea" to anyone who happened to be in this board room, they decide to reconstruct the burnt-up doll to prove that the story was untrue, and it isn't long until Chucky is back, once again voiced by Brad Dourif and headed for Andy's home in an effort to claim his soul.  A few words on the C-man in this flick: my review of the first film had a long bitching paragraph about just how cheesy the doll looked whenever it was moving around in that film, but that problem has been more than rectified here.  He might be shown a lot in close-up, but the animatronics had come along nicely by this point.  Combined with what is nothing short of a HUGE by time period and horror movie standards $13 million budget and we've got a pretty cool Chucky. 

The "rule" of the series, as it goes, is that Chucky has to claim the soul of whoever was the first to learn his true identity, meaning that Andy is still his prime target.  The parents have bought Andy a brand-new Chucky doll in the process, but the REAL Chucky (confused yet) promptly buries it when he reaches their household and swaps himself out.  What follows is a second act consisting of some pretty damn suspenseful stuff as Andy barely averts certain disaster and having no penis in doll form for the remainder of his life, combined with a couple of classic death scenes.  My favorite is the bit involving Andy's teacher and the ruler, although it IS a little unclear just how Chucky manages to get around everyone's neighborhoods so easily.  Maybe the dude is just really, really good at speed-walking.

As the film goes on, eventually we get down to Andy and Kyle.  As opposed to the first film, this one has done a much better job making its climactic scenes seem like a big deal.  The budget doesn't disappoint, either, giving us a finale in the Good Guys toy factory itself that drives firmly into silly territory at times but manages to stay suspenseful.  That, and it might have one of the longest "NOOOOOOOO"-s in cinematic history at the moment Chucky realizes that it's too late to escape his doll form.

No closing words for this flick are needed.  Everything spelled out above should make it pretty clear what to expect from Child's Play 2, and it's a pretty damn fun time in front of the TV.  If you're up for a taste of the ol' Chucky series before it went full-on spoof, look no further.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Recommended, brutha.

Puppet Master II (1991)

1991
Directed by Dave Allen
Starring Elizabeth Maclellan, Collin Bernsen, Gregory Webb and Charlie "Tits McGee" Spradling

One killer doll movie deserves another, I guess.  A long, long time ago, I inducted the original, old-school Charles Band micro-budget classic Puppet Master into the IHR, but it's been literally years since I've even thought about any of the sequels.  And folks, this fact really confounds me.  There was a period of time where this was my FAVORITE horror series.  Then again, this was also during high school, when I also thought that Freddie Prinze Jr. was going to be a superstar actor of the highest caliber.  Sometimes, the Lick Ness Monster accuracy rate is decidedly less than stellar.

Don't get me wrong - Puppet Master is a fun series, but it's MILES away from being anywhere near my favorite horror series these days.  The first one is a legit good movie that manages to take the "killer doll" movie trope and throw the twist in that the weaponified killers were probably the GOOD guys.  Don't ask.  I'll do my best to explain later.  A couple of the sequels (Parts III and VI, a.k.a. Curse of the Puppet Master) are also pretty worthwhile in their own right.  This flick, released on video store shelves via the amazing Full Moon Features direct-to-video empire in 1991, falls somewhere in the middle.

The first thing you should know about the movie is that it picks up almost RIGHT after the first one ends, so seeing that movie is imperative.  In it, we were treated to the admittedly low-budget but very fun action at the Bodega Bay Inn, a place where Andre Toulon - a man hiding from Nazi officials in the 1940s - mastered the art of transplanting souls into inanimate objects.  Three guesses as to what happened from there.  You'd never guess that a group of psychics would descend upon said hotel and that the vast majority of them would be sleazy bilkers trying to use the hotel for monetary gain and that the majority of the dolls' killings would be cheered by the audience.  Well, the psychics are gone and the dolls are back for this go-round, and they re-unite their dead master Toulon before the opening credits can even roll.

The victim characters in this film aren't quite as interesting as they were in the first movie.  This time, we're blessed with one of those pre-TAPS groups of paranormal researchers who have heard about all of the shenanigans and goings-on at Bodega Bay and want a piece of the action, even going so far as to stay overnights at said hotel where tons of violent unsolved murders took place.  Critics of horror movies who say that its characters are stupid have plenty of ammunition here.  Our star character is Carolyn Bramwell (Maclellan), established as our lead by the amount of time the camera is focused on her.  Also along for the ride is the movie's resident beefcake couple, Lance (Jeff Weston) and Wanda (Spradling, whose nude scene in this movie used to get me through some lonely nights), as well as Camille (Nita Talbot), who gets kidnapped midway through the movie by the resident army of still-cool puppets.

Dave Allen, the guy who did the special effects for the first movie, is the director this time around.  It shows in the puppet effects.  For the time period, this stuff was actually pretty cutting edge.  For a $780,000 budget, it was downright high-tech.  They're still brought to life mainly with the art of stop-motion photography.  In the first film, sometimes it looked like they were warping across the room at something akin to light speed.  For my money, Blade is still the coolest of them, although the new addition in this film - Torch - has his share of cool moments.  Unfortunately, most of his stuff occurs during a damn-near suicidal sequence in the middle of the film with an old couple living in the nearby wilderness.

Anyway, what we have here storyline wise is a kind of twist on Beauty and the Beast, with a mysterious stranger wrapped entirely in bandages showing up at the mansion midway through the movie.  This stranger, of course, is the reanimated Toulon in disguise, and he sees Carolyn as a reincarnated version of his own deceased wife.  Since Carolyn is in the process of getting romanced and eventually banged - well - by a fellow paranormal researcher, you can imagine how well this is going for the poor mummy's psyche.  All of it builds toward a finale in the mansion with Toulon attempting to transmogrify souls into two life-sized mannequins.  Note to all horror and action movie villains: any plan where the final step is horribly comlicated, i.e. the magical formula will only be activated at a certain time of day or at a moment of total eclipse, is destined for failure. 

The cool stuff in this movie has already been spelled out.  A decent plot, a good, solidly unnerving villain in Toulon (who would undergo a pretty baffling babyface turn in the further sequels), Charlie Spradling's breasts...there's plenty to like about this movie.  I know that I've thrown out this complaint with other movies, but it goes doubly for the Puppet Master series.  When they drag...they really, really, really drag.  When I can't come up with any compelling metaphor for the level of draggage that these movies manage to achieve, you know it's bad.  Long bits of scientific mumbo jumbo that serve no purpose other than to pad the movie's length, the endless bit with the aforementioned old couple, a couple monologues by Toulon...I think you get the idea.

What else is there to share?  Not much.  The movie delivers the goods on its intended level, as do the vast majority of movies that Charles Band produced during this time period.  It's a pretty damn good movie to watch if you're half-awake, as its just dark and atmospheric enough to keep you awake but intermittently boring enough to keep you in a terminally zombie state.  What?

** 1/2 out of ****.  Not as good as the first, and a black sheep in the series in many regards, but still worth checking out.

Child's Play (1988)

1988
Directed by Tom Holland
Starring Catherine Hicks, Alex Vincent, Chris Sarandon and Brad Dourif

Add this one to the "I can't believe I haven't reviewed this movie yet" file.  Child's Play is one of those movies that it seems like damn near just about everyone has seen an interation of - either this original flick or one of the many sequels, all of which are always crop up in the regular rotation of October AMC fare.  If you grew up in the early '90s like me, watching Chucky films were virtually a rite of passage; much like HBO's Tales From the Crypt, watching one of these films granted you a cool card for the upcoming school day. 

Released in 1988, the movie was nothing short of a gargantuan hit for United Artists, grossing more than $44 million off of an initial $9 million investment and prompting a long series of sequels that continues to this day.  Now, before we get started, I'll wholeheartedly admit that I'm well aware of the criticisms that I've read of these movies online.  That the villain is lame, that nobody would ever take Chucky seriously as a villain, and that all you'd have to do is kick the damn thing.  All valid criticisms, mind you.  It really doesn't matter all that much, because the presence of Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky in this movie trumps all of that.  To this reporter, anyway.  When this guy drops the word "fuck," it was as much of a crowd-pleasing moment to the eight-year-old version of me as Motley Crue's "Smokin' in the Boys Room" was.  Stand up and cheer, kids.  Such is this guy's ability to project bad intent with his mere voice that he actually manages to sell the threat of the stupid Good Guys doll as a menacing presence.  With that, the movie.

It is my belief that Don Mancini, the scriptwriter here and the guy who would direct (I believe) every sequel, knew that his laugh-worthy premise would have lasting appeal when he crafted the origin story for Chucky, because this origin story ranks right up there with Jason and Freddy in the eyes of this reporter.  Meet vicious serial killer Charles Lee Ray, played in human form by Dourif, chased into a toy store by the police.  It isn't long before he is shot and nearly killed, and, again, it isn't long before he unleashes the now-trademark voodoo incantation (that I can still recite from memory, by the way) that transmits his soul into the nearby Good Guys doll.  It is also worth noting that the cop who shoots him is played by Chris Sarandon.  So +10 points to the movie there.

In a move that won't surprise any horror fan or anyone reading this review, the doll is soon snatched up by Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks, who was smokin' hot here and later went on to marry make-up artist Kevin Yagher), single mother desperate to find a cheap copy of the Good Guys doll for her son Andy (Alex Vincent, who actually does a very good acting job considering his age here).  Both characters are fleshed out pretty well, with Hicks projecting as a hard-working mother and Vincent doing his best in the precocious kid moments. 

A good portion of the middle of this movie falls into the "build suspense" M.O. that sadly is missing from a lot of modern horror films.  Much of the time, we're looking at Chucky putting on his best poker face, doing little other than standing still in Andy's arms.  We see him spring to life on a couple occasions during death scenes; the best of these bits occur during Chucky's battles with Andy's babysitter, who does her best to come between Chucky's attempt to find a new human vehicle for his soul.  Granting the movie some bouts of melodrama, the authorities blame Andy for the deaths, and seem to be looking at Karen as an even bigger nutjob for supporting her son throughout all this.  As such, the movie is firmly in the "three act structure" camp of films that I've grown to love so much since it seems to be so rare these days, making this also - by far - the most conventional horror film in this entire series.  First act, establish threat.  Second, build suspense.  Third, all shit hits the fan.  I love it.

Everything in this movie builds up to Karen finding out the true identity of Chucky.  The scene where she does this, almost ready to throw the doll into a fireplace, is one of the best-executed jump scares in movie history.  It really is something that Dourif's movies boast two of the best couch jumpers in motion picture history (the other being Exorcist III - youtube it).  These attributes, combined with the acting, make this movie worth watching, even as it occasionally sheds into dopey territory.

Make no mistake, there are some things and moments in Child's Play that WILL make you shake your head.  The people online who gripe about a doll being so damn badass are correct, something made even more clear here since the Chucky animatronics/stop-motion photography hadn't quite come along yet.  The logistics of how this dude is able to get around so well is also something admittedly headscratching - at times, it seems as if he's moving around at light speed, especially in the third act chase-and-slash scenes.  There are also some issues with pacing, as the middle sections get to be a little "choppy" in the mixing and matching between Andy's melodrama, suspense, and the sporadic kill scenes.

All of the above would be fatal sins for any other movie, but it doesn't make a difference here.  Folks, Brad Dourif in all of his sadistic, evil-laughing glory covers up a multitude of sins, and it's his presence that carries this movie from the Z-grade aisle and made this the launching point of a franchise.  That, combined with some good invention by Mancini from the screenwriting end, make this worth watching, no matter how much head-nodding is required to make it through.

*** out of ****.  A minor classic, check it out.

Watchers II (1990)

1990
Directed by Thierry Notz
Starring Marc Singer, Tracy Scoggins, Timothy Marlowe, Jonathan Farwell and Irene Miracle

A few months back, I reviewed the original Watchers, the Corey Haim-ified 1988 adaptation of Dean Koontz' rip-roaring book of the same name.  Reaction to it was, by and large, was pretty damn awful.  Most of the complaints seemed to stem from two things.  One, it just wasn't all that much like the novel.  Two, it starred Corey Haim.  Really, I've never seen what is so bad about it.  If you're judging it based on the merits of whether or not it stuck to the source material, yeah, it was indeed the ultimate failure.  As a fourth grader watching it, though, none of that stuff mattered, as it was a movie with some nifty gore effects and Corey Haim.  Yeah, I was a mark for Corey Haim, but that admission doesn't mean much.  My coolness card expired long ago, anyway.

So...Watchers II.  Released a mere two years after the original, it really isn't a "sequel" in the true definition of the word rather than a complete, total redux.  Set free on video store shelves in 1990 (theatrical? not hardly), this Roger Corman-produced flick frequently gets compliments for being more faithful to the source novel than the original, which is something that continues to befuddle me to this day.  Does it have older lead characters like the book?  Yeah.  But that's about it.  It's also got a much flatter, dingier look and a MUCH more ridiculous, rubbery-looking monster.  With that, let's get to it.

For the uninitiated, the standard Watchers formula is as follows: the government has created two genetically-engineered animal weapons.  One is a vicious, murderous baboon, the other an angelic golden retriever.  Both have super intelligence.  They share a psychic link, and the baboon really, really hates the dog and wants to see it dead.  This movie doesn't deviate too far from that formula, with the exception of making its main hero Paul Ferguson (Singer, who does a decent enough acting job given the material) a military man at all sorts of odds with his employers.  When both of the animals escape (in a pretty damn ludicrous plot by The Government involving letting some animal rights activists into their facility to cause havoc, because you know that's going to end well), Paul finds himself with a new pet and hunted by the far more homicidal, far less cute beast.  I will give it to Dean Koontz here - this plot device, with a homicidal-inclined genetic super baboon being able to psychically track a dog and his human companion leaving breadcrumbs of death scenes in its wake, was a stroke of genius that rivals anything Stephen King has come up with, and it's a concept that is interesting no matter how rough the execution can be.  More on that later.

Now for some more of the movie's good stuff.  Much like the original, this movie has some fun with the dog's super smarts in the sequences where Singer gradually discovers just what the hell he is dealing with - they're actually some of the best bits of the film.  Insert your own Beastmaster jokes here when it comes to this guy bonding with his furry costars.  Along the way, he reunites the dog with its trainer at the facility (Scoggins, who is still red hot no matter how much the costume designers tried to nerdify her with the standard "thick glasses" treatment for this movie), and the two of them wind up on the run not only from the creature but from the authorities, who are pinning all of the monster's killings on Paul.  Screenwriters of the world, take note.  Stakes are important, and this flick has loads of it.

That's the good news when it comes to Watchers II, as it has a human side peppered in between some admittedly cool death scenes.  Unfortunately, it's also got a much less interesting group of supporting characters than the original.  That movie had Michael Ironside as this kind of ruthless government hitman given added menace by the fact that, well, he's Michael Ironside.  This time around, we've only got the shadowy government scientist (Farwell) responsible for this whole mess doing his best to track down both animals.  The character is a BIG step down from the slimy douches that we grew to know and loathe in the original film. 

In addition to that, this movie was filmed on the cheap, and it shows.  Now, a movie's budget is never a reason to see it.  Hell, these days I would MUCH rather spend money on a film with a sub-$1 million budget than anything the major studios churn out.  This movie, though, is cheap, and looks it - particularly the monster.  He may not have been a Stan Winston-esque creation in the first film, but it was Bruce the Shark compared to what we're given here.  Namely, a very, very phony-looking bigfoot creation filmed almost entirely in shadow to disguise the fact that the construction of the costume was indeed so crappy.  It isn't scary at all, and it's exacerbated by the very flat direction from Thierry Notz.  He seemed to be going for a dark, dank motif, kind of similar to what Joseph Zito did with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.  Here, it just makes the film look INCREDIBLY second-rate, especially in the film's finale sequence done in the big city streets and tunnels.

I think that about covers it.  Watchers II, just like the original film and the book that both movies are based on, has a killer concept and a couple of fairly likable lead characters.  Both Singer and Scoggins really dig into their roles and do an excellent job getting you on their sides.  The problem is that the human villains come off as cartoon characters, and the nonhuman villain is even more of one.  Oh, and it's got a middle section that REALLY drags.  You've been warned.

** out of ****.  Worth a watch if you catch it on SyFy one lonely Saturday afternoon, which is exactly how I watched it.  Otherwise, avoid.

Ghost in the Machine (1993)

1993
Directed by Rachel Talalay
Starring Karen Allen, Chris Mulkey and Ted Marcoux

I can still remember the commercials for this movie.  10-year-old Lick Ness Monster had just discovered the Friday the 13th series and was in the midst of watching the HBO-recorded lent copy of Watchers something like 77 times when the nonstop barrage of ads started.  You can't run, you can't hide, you can't win.  That was the dialogue elivered in the freaky-deaky electronic voice by this flick's villain, and suffice to say, it all seemed very intriguing to a slightly losery, more-than-slightly nerdy fourth grader.  Lo and behold, a year later, I made sure to catch the flick when it aired on HBO.  Thus concludes this week's epic introductory story.

Back then, I really liked the film.  It could have been the worst movie ever and I would have forced myself to like it given the insane amount of hype that I had given it in my own brain.  Alas, the years since haven't been too kind to Ghost in the Machine, and that's a damn shame, because there's some talented people involved in the production.  First and foremost is Rachel Talalay, a woman who rose up through the ranks of the Freddy Krueger films and eventually got to kill the bastard off once and for all.  We've also got Karen Allen of Indiana Jones fame (one awesome movie, one insanely crappy one) and deliverer of some '80s movie nude scenes that got me through some lonely nights back in college.  Too much information?  Perhaps.  That should be enough background information.  Let's get to it.

Remember Wes Craven's Shocker, where a serial killer is able to transmogrify himself into the world of electronic beings just before he gets the chair?  Well, this movie basically takes that motif and repeats it verbatim, only this time, it occurs before the human characters are able to ascertain the dude's identity.  The opening chapters of the film introduce us to Karl Hochman, relatively mild-mannered skeevy dude by day and vicious serial killer by night who has a definitive MO.  The press in their infinite wisdom have dubbed him the "Address Book Killer" due to his propensity to - you guessed it - steal people's address books and conduct his mass murder sprees from said books.  For what it's worth, Ted Marcoux does a decent enough job as Hochman, although he's nowhere cose to Mitch Pileggi's menace in Shocker.  I swear that is the last I'll compare these two films.  As hokey as Craven's half-hearted attempt at re-starting ANOES for the TV generation was, it's still loads better than anything we get here.

Setup time - early in the film, Hochman managed to steal relatively likable (how's that for a lazy character description?) Terry Munroe's address book, mere minutes of screen time before he is almost killed by an oncoming truck in one of the funnier examples of "derp"-ness displayed on celluloid for all to enjoy.  Minutes after that, we get the aforementioned transmogrification scene where Hochman's essence is transported into the land of electronics, where the now demonic and very, very ghostly Hochman goes about killing everyone that Terry knows. 

A good portion of the movie focuses on Terry Munroe, and while Karen Allen is indeed more than game for the part, the character unfortunately falls short when compared to even average horror movie heroines.  It really didn't matter how well Karen allen portrayed Terry Munroe; given some of the material we're given in this flick, Meryl Streep herself could have flown in from London (I think - I can't be bothered to look it up) and induced large degrees of insomnia.  There is admittedly a pretty long sequence in the middle of this film as everyone Terry knows is offed in pretty damn creative ways.  My personal favorite is the bit where a hapless dude gets his face burned off by a supercharged hair dryer, a scene that made me turn away when I first saw the movie and still qualifies as cringe-worthy to this day.  Unfortunately, a lot of these characters are complete, utter nonentities, making this a kind of Friday the 13th Part V over the electrowebz.

There really isn't a whole lot more to be said about this movie.  Really, you should know where it's going by now, anyway.  Terry, along with help from her somewhat doofusy son and a cool computer hacker (and watching this movie will remind you of the days when this character was present in every movie that involved this fancy little thing called COMPUTERS), get into a big scrum with Hochman, leading to a thrilling conclusion and somewhat ambiguous ending.  Been there, done that, and in 1993, it felt like even more been there, done that than the usual.  Thus it is with Ghost in the Machine.  As a ten year old, it felt really fresh to me, and combined with the movie's slick advertising campaign, it was coolness personified.  20-some years later, it's barely passable at best.

* 1/2 out of ****.  Some fleeting moments of good acting aren't enough to cover up a multitude of story sins.

Children of the Corn (1984)

1984
Directed by Fritz Kiersch
Starring Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong, John Franklin and Courtney Gains

So, we're up to the final review of Lick Ness Halloween Season 2014.  You know, a little over a year ago when I resurrected this here blog from the ashes of extinction, I had a goal in mind of being able to do a weekly review for three months.  Here we are, more than a year later, and I've kept it up for a full calendar year.  So three cheers for me.  In all seriousness, these reviews really are a joy, and hopefully my (extremely limited) audience feels the same way.  Thus concludes the extremely lame awards show acceptance paragraph, and you all have permission to write me scathing emails the next time I attempt something like this.

Which means that we're up to yet another movie of my youth, seen for the first time during Halloween season of either 1995 or 1996 - I'm not quite sure.  Either way, I was in my tween years back before that was even a word, and Children of the Corn was a damn scary movie to bratty, X-Files-obsessed Lick Ness Monster.  Unfortunately, I missed out on the legendary night years earlier when my brother scared the ever-loving crap out of my sister by hiding in her closet and screaming "Malachai!" in the middle of the night after they watched it.  Thankfully, nothing that traumatic/awesome happened to me.

Quick background info: The flick was released in 1984 and was a big financial success, grossing more than $14 million off a sub-$1 million investment.  While it doesn't star anyone who is a household name, it's got a pretty good list of respected actors to its credit, as any movie with Sarah Connor, Pruneface and Hans Klopek has a cast that George Clooney himself would be damn proud to cast in any number of his preachy polemics.  It also spawned a seemingly never-ending series of sequels and remakes, and I have seen exactly zero of them.  Well, scratch for about twenty minutes of the Stephen King-endorsed 2009 SyFy film which, for my money, is yet more proof that "closer to the book" definitely does not equal "better."

Stripped down to its bare essentials, Children of the Corn is a variation of the age-old "drive down the wrong side of the tracks" horror/thriller, where Burt (Peter Horton) and his girlfriend Vicky (Linda Hamilton) are passing through the heartland en route to Burt's new physician gig in Seattle.  Both of the actors do a good job making the characters relatable and sympathetic.  Now that I think about it, Hamilton really should rank in the "slightly below main event" tier of horror movie heroines - for all intents and purposes, the first Terminator really was a horror movie.  It's a shame she never got to do more of them.  Anyway, they wind up hitting a small boy in the Nebraskan countryside, and it isn't long before a country mechanic guides them to the small town of Gatlin, where all kinds of weird happenins' are going down.

The movie (and by proxy, the King short story) really does have a pretty damn slick concept, as the children of the town formed a kind of "death cult" three years before the incidents of this main story.  Under the watchful eye of their leader Isaac (John Franklin) and his mysterious "He Who Walks Behind the Rows," the kids murdered all of the adults in town and have been running a kind of scary version of TV's "Utopia" ever since, with the aforementioned mechanic (played by R.G. Armstrong, no less) guiding every adult passing through the area to the town for sacrificial purposes.  There's your setup, kids, as Burt and Vicky wind up in the town and face off against the kids in a pretty suspenseful game of cat, mouse, and really, really spooky bloodthirsty deities.

The A-story of Children of the Corn is fairly entertaining although occasionally dopey (particularly in some of the action movie stuff with Peter Horton, mega hero) but it's in the side stories where the flick shines.  Burt and Vicky befriend the young Job (Robby Kiger) and his sister Sarah (Anne Marie McEvoy), who did not wish to be in the cult and have existed outside of it ever since, forming a surrogate family that somehow manages to carry the movie's babyface quotient.  In between, we also witness a sort of power struggle between Isaac and his chief lieutenant Malachai (played by Courtney Gains, one of my favorite '80s child actors with one of the most distinctive looks in cinema history). 

Now, it's not a big grand statement to say that casting the wrong kids in this movie would have been suicidal - it's tough to find good child actors in normal roles, let alone villainous ones.  Somehow, this movie reversed that trend.  Both Franklin and Gains are menacing, memorable and mean to the core, and by the end of this movie, you really want these murderous trolls (and their Satanic God) to get what's coming to them.

It should come as no surprise that the flick was absolutely trashed by critics.  If you're a successful, visible movie critic, trashing movies like this is probably a prerequisite for your cinema snob card.  Amongst horror fans, the movie is a bit more of a mixed bag; some like it, some absolutely hate it.  I for one, thoroughly enjoy this movie, and find it to be not only a pretty good piece of '80s nostalgia but a movie with some genuinely good performances, especially from Franklin and Gains.  And if you live in the middle of corn country like I do, it can make you feel a little weird on those nighttime drives.

*** out of ****.  Not going to win any awards, but it's a solid B+ affair in the horror realm.  Check it out.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

1988
Directed by Dwight Little
Starring Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Donald Pleasence and Michael Pataki

Ahhh, Halloween 4.  I've probably seen this flick at least once every Halloween season since, like, 2002, and I still haven't gotten bored with it.  It may not be any high piece of art, but it's got plenty of chutzpah and entertainment value.  Combined with what is easily the best opening credits in cinematic history, with eerie shots of Halloween decorations swaying in the wind of what I can only assume are Midwestern farmhouses that have been abandoned for something like a hundred years (you know, kind of like things that are outside of the town that I'm typing this in at this exact moment), and you've got atmospheric background noise like no other.

I also hasten to point out that I think this is a pretty good movie.  I've never been a big fan of Halloween III, the black sheep of the series (for reasons that have nothing to do with OMG it ain't Myers, which, by my experience, is the primary comeback that fans of the film throw at anyone who doesn't like it), and they bring Myers back with a VENGEANCE for this go-round.  It had been seven years since theatergoers had seen the dude, an entire slasher craze and seven Friday the 13th films later.  As such, fans were expecting a very high body-count, high-gore, brutal movie that fit the times.  Surprisingly, this movie actually dials back the blood and guts from Halloween II, instead bringing in a little more teen soap-opera elements and a few more money action scenes.  Anyway, enough intro.  Let's get to it.

It's ten years after the events of the first two movies (which, for my money, have yet to be topped by any horror movie...well, ever).  We've got an unbelievable opening sequence here, with Myers, catatonic since the explosion that rocked him from limb to limb (/Scott Steiner) in Halloween II, is being transported to Smith's Grove Sanitarium.  In the process, he springs to life at the mention that he has surviving family and kills the dick out of the poor saps in charge.   It should also be mentioned that this occurs on October 30th.  Because, you know, choosing this date for the operation seemed like a fantastic idea on paper.  

Cut to Haddonfield, Illinois, quaint Midwestern town that hasn't changed much in the past ten years where we meet Michael's lone surviving kin.  Halloween 4 has an excellent, likable girl-next-door heroine.  In fact, it's got two of them, in the form of Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), Laurie Strode's daughter in foster care after the death of her mom, and Jamie's foster sister Rachel Carruthers (Ellie Cornell), an interesting little number who has a sidebar romantic plot with her philandering boyfriend that easily qualifies as the worst part of the film.  That bit of bitching aside, Rachel is a perfectly serviceable main heroine who kicks it into high gear with aplomb when the climax hits and she has to protect her younger sister, with Cornell being more than game for the "relatable girl with an inner toughness" archetype.  The character of Jamie would stick around for the next two entries in the series, and for good reason - she really makes an impact here.  This is one of the rare horror movies that prominently features a very young girl in peril, and the then-11-year-old Harris has the charisma and acting chops to back this up.  She also grew up to be smokin' hot, but that's beside the point. 

Alan McElroy, the guy who got the screenplay job, was also smart enough to bring back the single best thing that any Halloween movie has going for it in Donald Pleasence, giving us a mea culpa for the ages as yes, sports fans, Dr. Loomis did not die in that same explosion that left Myers in a roasted stupor.  He's got a pretty gnarly facial scar that would stick with him for the rest of the semi-canon series, and he's lost none of his ability to chew scenery and sound really, really scared whenever the subject of Myers comes up.  Anyway, insert dialogue here.  What the hell were you doing moving Michael without my permission, I'm going to Haddonfield, begin Act Two.  Before you know it, Myers shows up in the town, making his presence known to both Jamie and Rachel, and we're firmly in screaming actress territory.

The stalk-and-slash portion of Halloween 4 gives us some pretty good stuff.  Most of it takes place with the principal characters barricaded inside the town Sheriff's house, with Jamie, Rachel, Rachel's boyfriend, the Sheriff's slutty-hot daughter and a couple ensign Rickys present.  There are a couple admittedly tense scenes set to that iconic John Carpenter piano music, something that you wouldn't think possible given that we are dealing with a really closed-off area, but director Dwight Little really managed to squeeze every last drop out of tension during the flick's famed rooftop chase.  In between all of this, there is unfortunately a sideplot that goes off the rails with a very militia-esque group of townspeople looking for Michael, prompting more than a few unintentional laughs in the process.

Fortunately for everyone, that is a very B-story.  Much like he did with Jamie Lee, Pleasence has fantastic chemistry with both leading ladies while losing none of his ability to make a guy in a plain white mask seem like the most dangerous man in the world.  That's what made Halloween work, and that's what makes Halloween 4 work.  It's got a really good trio of characters that we're fairly invested in, and stuntman George P. Wilbur ranks right up there with the best guys to don the Myers costume. 

It's also got a GREAT ending that, much like Friday the 13th Part V, would have resulted in a VERY interesting remainder of the series had they actually had the balls to follow through with it.  And it would have saved us all of the WTF directions that the series would go in from this point on, with mystery boot guys, keystone cops, weird cults, and that really, really stupid scene in the sixth movie where an older Jamie Lloyd gives birth and is summarily killed by her brother.  Don't ask.  Trust me, kids, you really are better off just quitting the series after this one.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  It's got it's flaws, but for sheer Halloween time atmosphere, you can't get much better.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

2007
Directed by Michael Dougherty
Starring Dylan Baker, Rochelle Aytes, Anna Paquin and Brian Cox

Already?  It's October already?  It feels like just yesterday when I was setting out my ghost stakes and Freddy Kruger window decoration, but now, here we are again, with all kinds of witch and superhero costumes dotting the aisles and glorious horror flicks...um...flickering on the TV.  All in all, it's glorious, and I'm happy the best holiday of the year is approaching.

Which brings me to Trick 'r Treat, the movie in question today.  It's a pretty substantial cult favorite in the genre, maybe even THE biggest cult favorite of the past decade.  It was filmed in 2007 and summarily sat on the shelf for two years, a fact that actually doesn't surprise me.  If I were a big-time movie producer, I wouldn't know what to do with this movie, either.  No big name stars (this was before Anna Paquin's "Twilight for adults" TV show hit it big), a pretty out-there concept and mostly INCREDIBLY dark subject matter doesn't lend itself well to mass consumption. 

Upon its official release to DVD shelves in 2009, it exploded in popularity - at least with a few people.  I don't share the sentiment.  I enjoy the film, but it's not what I would call fantastic; it's really more middling, with occasional glimpses of greatness.  Still, for a classic example of "lean and mean," look no further.  It's INCREDIBLY lean at only 82 minutes, cutting out pretty much every bit of extraneous bullshit from its four primary stories, occasionally bobbing and weaving in and out, and some great sicko stuff that should stick out in your mind long after watching it.  Enough backbiting.  THE MOVIE.

As already mentioned, Trick 'r Treat is an anthology flick, all based around one hell of an October 31st in some unnamed town (as far as I can remember).  There's admittedly a very creepy opening scene where Leslie Bibb gets murdered the hell out of, and this is summarily followed by Segment #1 - "The Principal."  Our star hero is Dylan Baker playing, you guessed it, a principal, and an extraordinarily homicidal one at that.  This segment has a couple genuinely creepy scenes in the form of Baker's relationship with his son, but viewed in the grand scheme of things, this segment is really a setup for what is to come later.  As such, it's a little forgettable.

Next up is "The School Bus Massacre Revisited," and for my money this is THE segment of the flick.  It actually made me feel a little nostalgic, since films featuring a group of kids are at an increased premium these days, and anything that reminds me of the Goonies and the Monster Squad is very welcome.  The segment tells the story of a group of trick or treaters who go to the site of the titular massacre to play a prank on one of their friends - a prank that summarily comes back to bite them in the ass.  There's lots of great stuff to be had here, including a very creepy, satisfying ending.

Moving right along, we get "Surprise Party," a.k.a. the Segment With Anna Paquin.  Yup, ol' blue eyes herself plays a woman whose virginity is mentioned all too often for it to actually be her inability to have sex, with everything building toward a shock climax that, while I can't say that I saw it coming a mile away, felt like a letdown simply due to the idea that a swerve was so expected.  It does, however, feature the return of the Principal from the opening segment, who gets his just desserts in a move that should make the WWE universe rise to their feet.

The finale is titled "Sam," starring the cute little guy that you see in the film's poster.  Sam himself has enjoyed a fair bit of popularity online since this movie hit DVD, and for good reason - he definitely has an unnerving presence about him.  The segment is about a Halloween-hating man named Kreeg (Brian Cox), briefly seen in "The Principal," who finds himself locked in a death battle with Sam, a would-be trick-or-treater who just might be the living embodiment of Halloween.  It's an extended segment of cat-and-mouse, but it works well, mainly due to the outstanding acting of Cox and Sam himself.  This segment is followed by a finale that ties everything together.  For what it's worth, it works really well.

Now for my judgment.  I've already stated that I don't like this movie as much as many on the interwebz do, and the reason lies in the satisfaction factor.  There are definitely PARTS of this film that feel satisfying, but I'm fairly old school when it comes to anthology films.  In that I want my single stories to have a definite setup and payoff.  "The School Bus Massacre" definitely does, and bits of "Surprise Party" and "Sam" also do.  For me, though, the constant shucking and jiving between stories is a bit off-putting.  Call it the Lick Ness Monster "Maybe I'm just an Idiot" syndrome, which is getting to be a statement that I've echoed repeatedly every week to the point that it's rapidly joining my ever-expanding cliche list.

Having said all that (cliche #7,000), there are definitely some things to enjoy in this movie.  Sam is completely unforgettable, as are a couple of the story endings and the overall atmosphere of the movie.  For those reasons, this DVD is definitely worth checking out.  It's dirt cheap these days, anyway.

*** out of ****.  A bit of a challenge by anthology film standards, but well worth some October viewing.

One Missed Call (2003)

ONE MISSED CALL
2003
Directed by Takashi Miike
Starring Kou Shibasaki, Shinici Tsutsumi, Kazue Fukiishi, Anna Nagata and Renji Ishibashi

I remember sitting in the theater sometime back in 2008 watching the American remake of One Missed Call.  It really did seem like a more innocent time back then.  I was still working my crappy fast-food job, hadn't become completely destroyed by the endless stream of explosions-over-emotion dumbass Hollywood blockbusters quite yet, and still went to just about every horror offering to hit the multiplex.  Coming out of One Missed Call, I believe my exact words were "man, that was a piece of shit."  So there's your big epic conclusion to that story. 

I didn't see the original version until 2012.  By that point, I'd already absorbed all of the big stalwarts of the J-horror genre, and quite a few of the anciliary flicks that the highly ghost-centric culture had to offer.  At the time, it really did feel like more of the same, and I'm not surprised to find out that the critical reception to this movie agreed with me, as the similarities to the many like-styled movies to hit Japanese cinemas in the previous years had grown a little stale by 2003.  It's a little surprising, considering that Takashi Miike is the director here.  For those that aren't familiar, this guy directed Audition, one of the two or three best horror movies ANYWHERE released during the last 20 years.  That movie is anything but conventional.  This flick, while definitely better than its American counterpart, is conventional to a fault.

Stripped down to the bare essentials, what we've got here is a group of college students who all find themselves under the kind of death curse that J-horror is so find of.  The twist this time is that it's strongly technology-centric.  Remember the conversation in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a.k.a. the only time that Russell Brand has ever been remotely funny or likable) about the killer cell phone movie?  Yeah, it was inspired by this.  To be fair to the movie, it has a pretty impressive opening thirty minutes, as we get a good rendition of the Psycho-style false heroine.  Yoko (Nagata) is your Janet Leigh in this flick, as her character gets a voicemail that plays an eerie jingle before ending with the sound of screams.  As the first quarter of the movie unfolds, her friend Yumi (Shibasaki) realizes that several of the sounds on the message are being replayed through the following days until...surprise...Yoko turns up dead after a big fall, the screams that were heard on the message being replayed for us in a truly subtle "gotcha" moment.

There are a couple more character deaths done in this fashion, the most interesting of which being the fact that we're witness to a horrible reality show exorcism gone horribly wrong (/double word alert).  The story seems to kind of zigzag in about eighteen different directions, between the woman on the reality show (named Natsumi, if you're unable to live without these details) to the back story of Yumi, involving an abusive mother.  This serves as a kind of juxtaposition to what the characters gradually discover about the message, which (surprise) involves an abused child carrying forth a kind of eternal punishment, complete with the characters spitting out a red candy as they die as a repeat of the way that our star villain lived her own life.  For her part, Mimiko - the evil little girl who is directly behind all of the death and (sort of) dismemberment - is a pretty cool villain, and the twists and turns that we go through as the victim characters discover more of her background make up some of the best stuff in the movie.

The big problem with this movie is that it's all just too much.  Too many characters, too many storylines, too many flashbacks.  Compare this flick to any of the four Japanese Ju-On flicks, which are classic examples of "lean and mean" played out to perfection.  Everything served a purpose, everything that didn't was cut out.  This same theory really does go for horror movies at large, not just this one.  There's very few of them that are longer than 90-or-so minutes that don't feel like bloated messes, and that's unfortunately what we have with One Missed Call.  Scaled back even 20 minutes, we would have had a really enjoyable, creepy movie.  By the time the ambiguous ending hits, it just feels like overkill shoved onto a sandwich with about fifteen too many ingredients.

That's not to say that the movie isn't worth checking out at least once.  As aforementioned, the performance by Shibasaki as the main heroine is top notch, and the scenes where Mimiko is onscreen (ghost form or otherwise) definitely hold your attention.  Particularly that TV exorcism scene - that thing as dynamite.  Still, after Sadako, Kayako and Mitsuko, Mimiko really did feel like just more of the same, just in a much longer package.

** out of ****.  Worth a rental only, because it's far too slow-paced and deliberate for anyone else.

Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)

1971
Directed by Mario Bava
Starring Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli and Laura Betti (lots of vowels in there)

Whoo boy, Twitch of the Death Nerve.  Without a doubt one of the most influential horror movies of all time, coming from a guy whose decidedly much more-restrained tone had practically become a hallmark.  Mario Bava has a good many films that qualify as classics of the genre (Black Sunday and Kill, Baby, Kill being preeminent among them), but this one...it's a classic, alright, but for entirely different reasons.

For starters, almost every slasher movie to come out during the '80s owes a debt to this flick.  Going through my own horror viewing chronology, I can't place a single film that was released before this one that featured this degree of sicko violence.  While it would be topped countless times throughout the slasher movie's reign at the top of the heap, the film raised the standard of what was acceptable for onscreen, graphic violence.  For that reason alone, this movie is worth seeing.  When it comes to story, however, what we're in for is something decidedly tedious peppered in between some pretty damn historically significant kills.  Let's get moving.

As simply put as possible, Twitch of the Death Nerve is a movie about a large group of characters competing over a large inheritance.  The amount of backbiting and murder that Bava manages to pack into the very lean 84 minutes of running time and this barebones concept is pretty damn impressive, but it's just a damn shame that so much of it is so uninteresting, but let's recap. 

Frank Ventura (Chris Avram) and his girlfriend Laura (Anna Marie Rosati) are essentially in one corner vying for a primo slice of bayside property, while Renata (Auger, a.k.a. Domino from Thunderball, and she's just as beautiful here) and her husband Albert (Pistili) are the primary opposition.  The reason that the property is open for murderous negotiation is shown in the flick's prologue, where both principal owners are killed in very different ways - both of them shown onscreen, although they aren't quite as graphic as what we'll get a bit later.  It's ALSO worth noting that Renata is the daughter of the couple and has a personal stake in the game.  Along the way, there are a whole bunch of wrinkles thrown in as Frank (a real estate agent) also has an ace in his hole in the form of the illegitimate son of the murdered Countess.  Negotiations take place, sides are chosen, and we get a whole bunch of house visits, attempted murders, and double crosses.  Kind of like a much shorter, much less boring (but still relatively boring) and much bloodier version of Pirates of the Caribbean.

If you can't tell by the previous paragraph, this is a movie that requires you to pay some pretty close attention.  The first time I watched it, I was half-distracted by my game of Hoyle Casino 2006 and lost out on half of it, meaning that I had to start watching the damn thing again after I was graced with the movie's truly "huh?" ending.  Call me an ugly American, but I'm used to the fairly simplistic slasher formula.  Group of kids/young adults goes to remote location, meet some past evil, violence ensues, final confrontation.  Now, this formula hadn't quite come to fruition at the time this movie was released, but this movie has a LOT of false finishes.  It's also got a pretty large group of dislikable characters, robbing us of the opportunity to hop on anyone's bandwagon as this game develops.

No, folks, what makes Twitch of the Death Nerve so influential and even worth watching despite its numerous faults is a rather brief section after the prologue as four perfectly happy and perfectly horny teenage kids make their way to the scenic bay for a good time, only to get offed by a (briefly) mysterious killer in ways that I'm certain hadn't been seen by ANYONE in movie theaters at the time of the 1971 release.  For about 15 minutes, this movie is absolutely electric, the tension rising to a fever pitch by the time we get the double-sex-impalement scene that would later be repeated beat-by-beat in Friday the 13th Part 2, but just like that, it's over, and the four characters that have been wiped off the screen are essentially never spoken of again.  Movie premature ejaculation penalty confirmed.

Alas, for 70 of the 84 minutes, this isn't a very fun movie.  Without a doubt it's historically significant, but ultimately it fails as a horror movie since the characters that take up the vast majority of the screen time are so uninteresting and/or dislikable.  As aforementioned, it also requires you to be a pretty active watcher, meaning that you'll be reading those subtitles pretty damn intently while you're attempting to keep your eyes awake.

** out of ****.  It's definitely worth checking out for curiosity's sake, but it's strictly a one-time watch.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

1977
Directed by John Cardos
Starring William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode and Lieux Dressler

I've always been a big mark for "nature run amok" horror movies.  So many directors past and present have tried to get cute and jokey with slasher villains, but if you make things like spiders and sharks threatening, you'll get me every single time.  Well, ALMOST every single time.  My intense dislike for the SyFy original pictures has been documented here on blog, and a large part of it is due to the over-jokification of the subject matter.  Trust me, folks, almost nothing in the real world is scarier than big creatures that can make you their lunch.  There's a reason why I rarely venture outside my own house.

When I was a kid, UPN (and I refuse to Google whatever it's called now - is it still MyTV?) used to show Kingdom of the Spiders fairly regularly, along with a bunch of other insect-centric horror films in regular Saturday afternoon blocks.  As such, I've probably seen it well over a dozen times.  I loved it as a kid, finding William Shatner's character to be coolness personified and Tiffany Bolling (his love interest) to be hotter than liquid magma.  These days, I own the DVD, and while it's not the undisputed masterpiece that I heralded it to be back in the early '90s, it's still got a lot going for it and one of the better natural horror flicks out there.

Released in 1977, the flick had a pretty damn impressive box office showing, grossing a cool $17 million off of a $1 million investment, proving yet again that horror movies rule and modern blockbusters that need to spend $250 million just to be seen as moderately cool can suck it.  Shatner plays Rack Hansen (not a typo - it's what everybody in the movie calls him), a slick veterinarian from rural Arizona who finds himself at the center of the spider apocalypse.  It all starts innocently enough, with a bunch of locals complaining about various livestock dying from mysterious ailments.  Cue the arrival of Diane Ashley (Bolling, who I remember from episodes of Night Gallery and The Sixth Sense, sexy arachnologist who pronounces the deaths to be from venomous spiders.  Like, extremely venomous.  So venomous that Eddie Brock would be damn proud. (/bad joke)

That introductory plot is well and good, but the real star of this movie are the tarantulas themselves.  Yeah, we're dealing with tarantulas in Kingdom of the Spiders, a species of spider that is not particularly poisonous.  They're just really big and scary looking.  I forget the exact number (and I'm writing this review from memory without re-watching it; that's how many times I saw it as a kid), but I believe that these spiders are said to be 20 times as venomous as the average tarantula.  So we're not just dealing with big spiders; we've got really dangerous ones.  Live ones, mind you, that find themselves covering the actors in the film in scenes where the screaming stars CAN'T be stunt doubles.  Now, I've done my fair share of complaining about actors in the past, but they earned every bit of their paycheck on this movie for this aspect alone.

It doesn't take long for this movie to effectively become spider-mania, with the damn things taking over half the flick's fictional Arizona town.  The menace seems to stem from this giant "spider hill" out in the country that serves as the insect's hive.  Every time we see this thing, there is admittedly a pretty substantial feeling of dread - I know, because it's accompanied by dreadful, dreary synthy music whenever it's seen on screen.  A few of the anciliary characters (a fairly engaging farm couple, Shatner's sister-in-law, etc.) find their way in and out of the movie, usually biting it in fairly creepy and inventive ways.  The final hour of the film is basically Tremors, with the remaining townspeople barricading themselves inside against the spider threat and trying to figure out a way to escape.  Only in this case, as was the case with a LOT of '70s horror films, we're not blessed with anything resembling a sunny ending.  And it feels totally appropriate.

Now, I'll fully admit that a lot of the acting in Kingdom of the Spiders is anything other than pedestrian.  Shatner would eventually master the whole "I'm bad and I know it" style of endearing acting, but here he was still playing it dead serious - badly - and it shows.  Bolling, while very nice to look at, isn't much of an actress either, while most of the townspeople come across as the cheesehead hicks from Giant Spider Invasion (Youtube that episode of MST3K if you haven't seen it - it's dynamite).  No, folks, story and character isn't what this flick has going for it. 

What we've got here is atmosphere, and we've got it in spades.  The dreary, grainy print that I saw countless times as a kid stuck out in my mind immediately, giving this admittedly silly movie the feeling of a documentary about spiders run amok.  That atmosphere carries this movie through some pretty suspect material, and if you've got some tolerance for hokiness, you'll find more than a few scenes that will genuinely creep you out and leave you holding your breath.  At least if you're like me, a guy who has a natural aversion to insects and an Honest-to-Christ PHOBIA of grasshoppers.  That atmosphere along with some good sustained bits of tension is enough to heartily recommend Kingdom of the Spiders for a DVD buy, particularly since you can find it dirt cheap these days.

*** out of ****.  It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's a classic way to kill a Saturday afternoon.