Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)

Last week, I reviewed Hide and Seek, the promising-on-paper but disappointing-in-practice 2005 flick that left me dejected after a really, really dumb ending swerve.  A frustrating experience, for sure, but the movie in question today makes that film look like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

A little bit of background first.  I'm a huge fan of the original Sleepaway Camp.  I've bumped into my fair share of people in online debates who hate it, but that's to be expected.  Technically speaking, it's not a "good" movie.  The acting is a little...suspect, and the narrative more than occasionally veers into dopey territory.  For all its faults, though (and they are quite numerous), I find that the movie has this amazing ability to suck you in to its middle school drama and make you care about its characters.  And then it hits you with that unreal finale, as sweet little Angela Baker - the most likable character in the movie - winds up being a freakin' psychopath of Albert Fish proportions.  To say nothing of the psychosexual circus that the ending also implied.  Admittedly, the fact that the ending comes after such an endearingly stupid movie makes it all the more effective.  It's like an episode of The Simpsons that ends with the snuff murder of Lisa.  The sequels, for all intents and purposes, are also all kinds of fun, although they are VERY different in tone from the original.

All that said, I was pretty excited when I found out about Return to Sleepaway Camp, the movie released direct to DVD in 2008 that served as the first "official" direct sequel to the original and marked the return of original writer-director Robert Hiltzik along with main stars Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten.  Such great ingredients on paper.  If only I'd known the shit sandwich that I was about to eat.

PLOT:  Oh, the plot of Return to Sleepaway Camp.  If I'm already exasperated, that should be a pretty good clue as to how the rest of this review is going to go.  Anyway, we're back in a summer camp some 20 years after the events of the original film.  Much of the movie is a long series of incidents involving Alan (Michael Gibney, who both looks and talks like a much more punchable Josh Peck), the resident loser of the camp who is bullied relentlessly by his peers.  Much like how the original film had every character who harassed and/or wronged the shy (and that's putting it lightly) Angela meet an untimely end, this movie does the same thing in regards to Alan.  At various intervals, camp owner Frank (Vincent Pastore) and counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo, who was also in the original film) do their best to solve the mystery.  There's nothing wrong with the plot in principle, but the execution of it fails colosally.  More on that, right after this.
PLOT RATING: * out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  To be sure, the original film was peppered with dislikable characters, many of whom met an untimely end.  At its core, though, it had Angela and her cousin Ricky.  Their story was easy to latch onto, an unpopular shy girl and her protective cousin who does his best to deflect the torment inflicted on his relative.  This movie, though, has what may be the most collectively assholish group of tools I've ever seen in any horror movie.  Even Alan - the guy that we're supposed to (I think - there are some people who think otherwise) connect with, comes off as an annoyingly grating dope who deserves what he gets from his bullies.  The only people in the film with redeeming qualities (Ronnie, Frank, a grown-up Ricky during his three-minute cameo) are used sparingly, leaving us with a completely detestable group of people from top to bottom.  I've never been a fan of horror movies that leave us ROOTING for mayhem and death, reacting to every murder with elation that another annoying face has been wiped off the screen, but that's what we've got here.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: I award zero points, and may God have mercy on their souls.

COOL FACTOR:  On paper, this is a movie with some pretty out-there death sequences, and many of them are indeed cringeworthy.  I'll give this movie one thing - it's the only flick I've ever seen involving hooking a guy's junk up to a rope and yanking it off with a truck.  OUCH.  At any rate, it's hard to get invested in any of the mayhem involved for the reasons already stated.  Oh, and this movie also has a final twist that tries to shock you just as much as the original did, only the mystery killer in this film can be spotted the second they show up on screen.
COOL FACTOR: * 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  I remember reading the intial series of reviews in the days following the DVD release.  They weren't good, but I didn't let it waver my excitement over the movie.  I chalked it up to overexuberant nostalgia on the reviwers' parts, going ahead and ordering it off Amazon anyway and popped it in with much anticipation.  90 minutes later, I was able to report that all of the reviews were right.  Folks...this is a movie that is just impossible to connect with in any way.  It's a bad movie with bad execution, and it's not even bad in the funny kind of way.  There's a reason why there haven't been that many jokes in this particular review.  This flick borders on unwatchable at times, and it's a shame, because they had a chance here after what the original movie served up to really hit a home run and struck out swinging.
OVERALL RATING: * out of ****.  Everything you've heard about this one is true.

Hide and Seek (2005)

Oh boy, here we go.  I distinctly remember seeing the ads for Hide and Seek and being quite excited about the prospects.  A horror/thriller film starring one of the legit three best actors of all time and a very talented rising young star whose sky was the limit?  And bonus Famke Janssen and Elisabeth Shue boner fodder?  Count me in.

Alas, the reality of the movie was far from the holy grail of coolness that I had pictured in my head.  What I got was a pretty by-the-numbers mystery flick with a pretty ridiculous slasher movie-style ending.  While it might have been far from the first movie to suffer from "M. Night Shyamalan" Syndrome - the much-maligned aftereffect of the dude who was ever-so-fond of Vince Russo-ish swerves, wherein damn near every thriller movie since he hit the scene has to have some wackamaroo twist ending - it might have arguably been the most annoying, as it demolished a movie that boasts some pretty impressive acting and turned it into an eye-rollingly stupid ride. 

Having said that, the movie was a huge financial success, so huzzah for horror in that regard.  On with the show.

PLOT:  Following the suicide death of his wife, psychologist David Callaway (Robert DeNiro) heads out to the country with his daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) to start over.  Par for the course, said country house is one of those interminably creepy places with nooks and crannies in every crevice (redundancy alert).  Even better, it's got a HIDDEN CAVE located on the premises.  Man, I would have killed for one of those as a kid.  While David gets a little chummy with neighbor lady Elisabeth (Shue), Emily begins playing with an imaginary friend named Charlie.  Things escalate quickly, as angry messages written on the wall leads to the death of the family cat - all of which the child blames on the eponymous Charlie.  Any fan of horror movies should know where this is going due to all the ominous synthy music that this movie throws at you.  Eventually, Charlie's actions escalate to the point of murder, leading to a final act consisting of some of the most baffling and unintentionally hilarious scenes I've ever seen.
PLOT RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  It goes without saying, but DeNiro is an awesome actor.  The guy really does throw his all into every movie role, and this is no exception.  Even during the third act when the movie flies off the rails, he's 100% invested and convincing.  For a brief period of time in the mid-oughts, Dakota Fanning really did seem like she was on the verge of becoming a major star, then summarily dropped off the face of the Earth once her advisers told her that filming the controversial-just-for-the-sake-of-controversial indie film Hound Dog was a good idea.  A shame, really, because she has charisma and likability in spades, both of which are well on display in this film.  In addition to Shue, we've also got Famke Janssen as a family friend and fellow psychologist who periodically shows up to be an endearing mother figure to Emily.  In short, while the characters occasionally veer into laughable territory, the movie is populated by some very talented people who give this very suspect material their all. 
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Hide and Seek isn't a body count movie, or a ghost movie.  That's all well and good, because some of the coolest horror movies of all time fall in the horror/suspense/thriller subgenre (Silence of the Lambs, anyone?).  Unfortunately, there isn't much to remember in Hide and Seek.  The movie's "money" death scene (and I'll leave it up to you, loyal reader, to figure out which character of the ones mentioned above is the most disposable) comes out of nowhere to the point where it prompts laughter instead of sympathy, and the final chase sequence feels like it belongs in another movie.
COOL FACTOR:  * out of ****.

OVERALL RATING:  This is a starnge beast of a movie.  I will admit...it sucked me in the first time I saw it, and while I was able to call the character that would bite it first, I was very emotionally invested in the two lead characters (especially Fanning as Emily) and very intrigued by the prospect of this "Charlie" character and the various directions that screenwriter Ari Schlossberg could have gone with it.  Instead, we get what is BY FAR the least interesting thing that could have come from the concept, and it's because of this decided lack of payoff that the "Plot" and "Cool Factor" ratings took a big hit.  Because, you know, my three-point rating system is very scientific.  I don't think there is much more to say about this movie, except that shovels are a motherfucker.
OVERALL RATING: * 1/2 out of ****.  A promising start leading to a trainwreck of Gigli-esque proportions.

Brides of Dracula (1960)

1960
Directed by Terence Fisher
starring Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur and David Peel

The few people who actually follow my writing likely know about my various obsessive fandoms.    Friday the 13th and Ju-On definitely rank at the top of the list.  It's hard to argue with watching something over and over for six months and writing goddamn fanfiction and say that you're anything other than a sad-sack obsessed fanboy.  But what many don't know is that I hold the Hammer Studios Dracula films in almost as high of a regard.  For my money, Christopher Lee is the definitive version of the character.  Yes, he's less talkative than Bela Lugosi (at least as much as I remember).  Yes, he may not be the Daniel Day-Lewis-annoying level method actor that Gary Oldman was.  But when it comes to being sheerly menacing and memorable, this guy has it all covered.  And he's badass enough to refuse to say lines that are too cheesy - a true story in several of the later films in this very series.

So yeah, I love the Hammer Dracula films.  The first movie Horror of Dracula is my personal favorite adaptation of Stoker's original novel and was inducted into the Registry back in the day.  The third - Dracula: Prince of Darkness - is an epically gory (for the time) and satisfying sequel that was reviewed on the blog during my Halloween Scare-a-Thon in 2011.  What many people don't realize is that the movie that took place between them which did NOT feature Christopher Lee (or even the character of Dracula himself) is also pretty damn good in its own right, and that's the film we're looking at today.

PLOT: The movie first introduces us to Marianne Danielle (played by the gorgeous Yvonne Monlaur), a schoolteacher en route to a new position in Transylvania.  Which, of course, sounds like a Sunday afternoon in the Park that Van Halen themselves would be damn proud of.  After her traveling caravan abandons her, she is taken in for the evening by the mysterious Baroness Meinster (Marita Hunt), and it is in her castle where Marianne runs across the vampire leader for this particular go-round of Hammer Stake-and-Crucifix goodness.  It seems that the Baroness' son is a vampire that the mother has kept locked up for years, encouraging the townspeople below to believe the rumors that he is dead while she sneaks a constant supply of nubile wenches for him to feast on.

Before you know it, the younger Meinster is free, prompting a very rousing game of cat-and-mouse between the small but expanding cult of vampires and the guy who has made it his life's mission to stamp out vampires.  And he's damn better at his job than Hugh Jackman.  If you can't tell by now, Brides of Dracula is a simple story with a great three-act structure - the opening where the evil is sprung free, the middle where the evil grows, and the ending where the evil is defeated.  Color me a big fan.
PLOT RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS: One of the hallmarks of Hammer Studios was their ability to craft memorable heroes and villains and find just the right people to play them, and this film is no exception.  Hunt is sheer perfection as the Baroness Meinster, finding just the right balance between unnerving presence and friendly host.  Monlaur is both scorching hot and infinitely likable as the main heroine Marianne.  David Peel takes on the main villain role of the Baron Meinster and enjoys going completely batshit crazy in the final trimester just as much as Christopher Lee.  Andree Melly and Marie Devaureux are quite awesome as the two main conquests of the Baron (and the titular "Brides," if you want to get technical).  If there is one thing I can complain about, it's Freda Jackson as Greta, the keeper of the Meinster family who serves as the main "human" villain in the film, but it's a minor complaint.  You won't find a much better group of 19th century protagoists and antagonists than the one you've got here.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR: Of course, there is one key guy that I haven't even mentioned yet.  I am a huge fan of Peter Cushing and his portrayal of Abraham Van Helsing in these films - in fact, I enjoy the role and the actor just as much as Lee himself.  Cushing is without hyperole a fantastic actor; when he launches into various soliloquys dealing with the weaknesses of the vampire and tells various disbelieving characters about the spread of this strange cult that any sane person would shake their head at, you completely believe him.  When he's required to be a man of action, he is also quite kickass - which is a pretty tall orer considering that his age was already fairly advanced at the time of this flick's 1960 release date.  In between the scenes involving Van Helsing tracking down the cult of vampires and cutting his vampire slayer promos, there's plenty of good scary goodness to be had in the form of the Baron Meinster seducing his victims.  Fonzie-esque coolness in this movie all around.
COOL FACTOR: **** out of ****.

OVERALL: This film isn't quite the universal classic that Horror of Dracula is; while Marianne is an excellent heroine, she can't quite compare to the excellent trifecta of Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling and Carol Marsh in that film.  That, along with the actress playing Greta, are my only bitching points with this film.  That should be enough to satiate all those people who still continue to hurl the "contrarian" complaints at me (the GALL, I tell ya!).  Terence Fisher was a master of both atmosphere and getting the most out of his actors, and both of those traits are well on display in this flick.  Oh, and it's got a final trimester to die for.
OVERALL RATING: *** 1/2 out of ****.  Highly recommended for horror fans at large, and an absolute must-own (along with the rest of the "Hammer Horror Series" 8-movie DVD set that my copy came from).

The Exorcist (1973)

1973
Directed by William Friedkin
Starring Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow and Jason Miller

Now here's a review that I've been very dubious about for a long time.  You know, there are people on this great planet of ours who have the gall to suggest that THIS GUY (*the douchebaggy thumb gesture returns*) is a contrarian just for contrarian's sake.  GALL, I tell ya.  My favorite horror movies of all time are Carpenter's Halloween, the Ju-On series, Jaws and Suspiria, and I think it's safe to say that all of those things qualify to being as close to "universally lauded" as you're going to get.  I love Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock just as much as all the snooty film profs do.  But when it comes to the movie in question today...

In the event that you peruse a couple dozen of the literally thousands of reviews of The Exorcist, the 1973 film based on William Peter Blatty's novel, you're likely to read several phrases over and over.  "Scariest movie of all time," "harrowing," "seminal," the list of superlatives, big words and flat-out verbal orgasm that reviewers spew out about this film is staggering.  It was the first horror movie to be nominated for Best Picture, it grossed the GDP of a small country and - most impressively - it's one of the very few horror movies out there that seems to be okay for "normal," non-horror-mutant people to like.  Now is about the time when you can call me an annoying contrarian, because I've just never seen what the fuss is all about with this flick, hence why I rarely talk about it and why it was never inducted into the Registry here on the blog (a fact that, amazingly enough, a couple people actually noticed).

Hopefully, this review gets a few people talking and elicits some Prince-style controversy because, quite frankly (/Stephen A. Smith), it's January in Minnesota and I'm really freakin' bored.  But not as bored as this film makes me.  *rimshot*

PLOT:  Little Regan McNeil (Linda Blair) begins showing some very strange behavior.  Frequent swearing, abnormal strength, vomiting pea soup...all slightly off.  Regan's mother, a famous actress (Ellen Burstyn) living in Washington, D.C., spends a good portion of the opening third of the film getting Regan tested, but as the girl becomes more and more afflicted by whatever is wrong with her, the agnostic actress begins to take heed to the suggestion that her daughter may be possessed by a demon.  We also periodically get glimpses into the life of Father Karras (Jason Miller), a Priest who has lost his faith in God after the death of his mother.  As fate would have it, it's Father Karras who is called to the case when the time comes for Regan to be exorcised of her demon, leading to a final showdown of epic proportions in the final trimester.

This aspect of the film actually works for me.  It's a classic setup of skepticism vs. religion on many fronts, as Burstyn's character is an avowed Agnostic who takes all of the "demon" talk with a grain of salt...initially.  When your daughter starts masturbating with a Crucifix, it's always time to start taking those words a little more seriously.  The film is also a good example of classic three-act structure played out and written very well, and if there's one thing that I mark the hell out for in this day and age of 57 false climaxes, it's three-act structure.  See?  Little things can impress me.
PLOT RATING: *** out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  I've always responded to the story arc of Father Karras the strongest out of any of the threads of this movie.  Miller is aces as the troubled Priest who goes back and forth about just what he believes.  Of course, Blair is also pretty damn memorable as Regan, and since I've conscientiously avoided the sections of onlne reviews that delve into the backstage happenings of this film, I'm guessing that this could not have been an easy role to play. 

The remaining characters are played by very talented people.  This is doubly true for Father Merrin, another Priest brought onto the case by a local Bishop when it becomes clear that Karras is in over his head.  Merrin is played by Max von Sydow, an esteemed and venerable (because vocabulary words are impressive) Swedish actor who has appeared in no less than 11 films directed by Ingmar Bergman in addition to one the slam-bang true-life serial killer film Citizen X - one of my favorite movies ever.  Unfortunately (which is rapidly becoming a constant word in this section of my reviews), I'm just not into all of the other characters in this film.  Burstyn's Chris comes across, to me, as clueless and not very sympathetic, while Merrin is cold and unrelatable.  Or maybe I'm just a moron.  I will state, however, that the opinion isn't uneducated, because I have also seen not just one but two crappy prequel films that delve into the epic backstory that is Father Merrin.  Since this guy is present for most of the movie's money scenes...it just falls flat for me.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: ** 1/2 out of ****.

COOL FACTOR:  Sometimes, life can be funny.  After watching Sleepaway Camp for the first time, getting sucked in to its admittedly cheesy story and fun atmosphere only to be shocked into oblivion by THAT ending, I had trouble sleeping.  And had nightmares.  For whatever reason, I can watch this movie - a movie of infinitely more artful execution and sharp storytelling - and sleep like a baby immediately afterward.  The strange thing is I really can't explain why, which is pretty much sign #1 that I'm not an esepcially good reviewer. 

By all accounts, The Exorcist SHOULD frighten me.  A good online friend once told me that the frightening power of this film comes from how religious the viewer is, and that because many of the film's original viewers in 1973 were devoutly religious people, this film was repulsing and disturbing to them.  Hopefully saying this in a public forum doesn't piss people off (and I don't think it will), but I am a VERY religious person.  Hell, I'm the only person I know in my age bracket who attends an organized Mass every week.  As such, I'm extremely wary and scared of demons and demonology, and yet, this film does nothing for me.  Maybe it's the fact that the styles of the film are so jarring; the slow pacing of the scenes with Karras followed by such deliberately over-the-top theatricality with Regan's various disturbing incidents (and her voice, no less).  That's as good an explanation as I can think of for why I do not find this film particularly frightening.  But then again, I'm a devoutly religious guy who loves stage blood.  Much like the British Bulldog, I'm BIZARRE!
COOL FACTOR: * 1/2 out of ****.

OVERALL:  I don't know what else to add to this section, other than just sum everything up.  The story of The Exorcist is one with a great setup ut one that falls flat with me for several reasons.  The acting is great but the characters are one-note; the scare scenes are visually appealing but trite and over-the-top; the ending, while emotional, smacks of "poetic just for poetic's sake."  Amazingly enough, one of this very film's SEQUELS manages to do this story infinitely better - the creepy, atmospheric and genuinely scary Exorcist III, directed by William Peter Blatty himself and based on his novel Legion.  It should also be noted that this film has the single greatest scare in the history of scares - type "Exorcist III nurse station scene" into Youtube and get ready to jump. 

This film, however, is instant Nyquil for yours truly.  

*takes breath*

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking ot it. (/Colin Quinn)

OVERALL RATING: ** out of ****.  Well-directed and acted, but ultimately a flick that isn't all that effective.