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.