Prophecy (1979)

1979
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Starring Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire and Armand Assante

Not to be confused with THE Prophecy.  You know, the one with Christopher Walken.  It's not hard to figure out, what with the decided lack of "...'s" floating around the premeses.

Like a lot of the movies that I review on the blog, I have a lot of nostalgia for the flick in question today.  Prophecy got a hell of a lot of airplay on the Turner stations back when I was a kid.  Every so often, TBS would occasionally get a big boner for movies about nature run amok, and this movie was always one of the featured pieces of cinematic mastery.  Sometimes, the TV Gods would even REALLY smile on 8-year-old me and have a whole slew of movies strictly focused on bears.  It goes without saying that this was the one that I saw the most.  Oh yeah, this movie is about a giant killer bear.  Spoiler alert.

I don't know what it is about "killer animal" movies that are so scary to me, but they get me nine times out of ten.  Maybe it's just the realism factor.  Prophecy is an out there movie; it definitely would never be confused for having biting realism on any level, but it's the IDEA of a giant killer bear that gets you.  Who knows.  Way out there in the forests, there are still sections of the globe that haven't been explored.  It's not outside of the realm of possibility that something like this could be out there.  Thus, if you make things like spiders, sharks or bears scary, I'm there.  Unless it's on SyFy.  Then I couldn't care less.  Since this movie was released exactly 14 years before that channel hit the airwaves, we're safe here.  It was also a pretty big deal back in the day, with a big-time action director in John Frankenheimer attached, a $12 million budget and a box office gross that made it a big hit.  I suppose that's enough nonsensical jibber-jabber; let's get to the show.

Meet Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth), newly hired worker for the Environmental Protection Agency who is hired to write a report on a paper company operating in the woods of Maine.  Since this is a horror movie, it also means that we have to have a bunch of people either tagging along with or following Dr. Verne.  First and foremost, and in the horror movie hall of fame as one of the most endearing characters in all of history, is Dr. Verne's wife Maggie.  Maggie is pregnant, conflicted about it, and played by Adrian Balboa herself.  Back when I was a kid, I thought Talia Shire was the most gorgeous woman on the planet, and with the rose-colored glasses taken off...I was 50% correct, as every time she isn't geeked up to look like Rocky's wife I still think that late '70s-early'80s Talia is scorchin'.  The same holds true here, and she's even a pretty damn good screamer to boot.  A shame she wasn't in more horror movies, because she could have been one of the queens.  As a consolation prize, she later did a movie where she played a woman with a lesbian stalker who hires a man to hold her at knifepoint to force her to make orgasm noises so that she can play it back for...enjoyment.  And folks, I'm not making that up.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the "introduce all potential victim characters" phase of the movie, and the movie doesn't disappoint here.  There's a vacationing family, a group of local natives who are in the midst of a dispute with the paper company, and various workers connected to the mill itself.  Of these, the most important are Hawks (Armand Assante), the most outspoken of the Indians, and mill director Bethel Isley (Richard Dysart, a.k.a. Ben Murphy's boss in the pilot episode of Gemini Man).  Since Prophecy was released JUST as slasher movies were starting to become a thing, it doesn't quite feel as if the characters are being lined up to slaughter; there is a bit of suspense as to who will live and who will die. 

From what, you ask?  Well, we've seen some strange stuff, due to some negligent activity by the paper mill (which is kind of shoved down our throats, to be fair, because everyone knows how much I love social issues stuff in my movies).  A giant fish.  A tadpole the size of your fist.  A VERY ill-tempered raccoon that would make Dr. Evil laugh with glee.  And...the giant, mutated bear creature that soon shows up and begins murdering the f**k out of everyone in sight. 

The bear, dubbed "Katahdin" by the locals, is without a doubt one of the coolest things that movie audiences had seen in 1979.  It's a truly nightmarish creation; just type "Prophecy Katahdin" into Google if you're curious, but if you're too lazy to do that, take a brown bear.  Make it eight feet tall.  And add a whole bunch of gnarled flesh, fur and nasty facial scarring.  And loud roaring.  The chemicals that Evil Paper Mill have been putting in the water have done some nasty stuff, but nothing nastier than Katahdin.  Yeah, this movie scared the hell out of me as a kid, and it was because of this thing.  Admittedly, that build - of which I spent three full paragraphs describing in what was totally not a result of my poor writing skills but a clever allegory to simulate the effect of watching Prophecy - was pretty slow.  But once the giant bear shows up, the movie takes off.

A lot of the deaths in this movie are real crowd pleasers.  It's not a flick that's real big on the "stalk and slash" technique; instead, it's more "blitzkrieg and that's all, folks," with rapid-fire deaths ticking off with little warning and little remorse.  Having said that, after the initial round of slaughter, with the survivors on the run from Katahdin and taking up refuge wherever they can in an attempt to escape it, the movie throws one of the best jump scares in horror history at us.  Picture this: a gigantic bear assaults the entire group of survivors, who hide in an underground cave.  A full minute of agonizing silence ticks by.  Finally, one of the characters gets up the bravery to stick his head out of the hole...and use your imagination.  It was effective back when I first saw this movie in 1991, and it's still pretty damn effective today.

The "shit hits the fan" section of Prophecy is awesome - so awesome that it's enough overcome that criminally slow start.  Admittedly, the main character husband-and-wife duo of Dr. Verne and his wife are also pretty engaging, but the other characters...yeah, I barely mentioned them for a reason.  Effects-wise, the movie still holds up pretty well, but that's to be expected from a director like Frankenheimer.  Not a single digital effect to be found here; this was back in the days when it took some actual ingenuity to make it look like a mutated murderous bear wanted to eat everything in sight.  So puppets and forced perspective photography FTW, people.

Rating time.  Let's give this flick *** out of ****.  It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's easy to see why this was a big box office hit back in the day.  And if you're a fan of monster movies, this one is cause for rejoice.

Hush (2016)

2016
Directed by Mike Flanagan
Starring Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Trucco

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Mike Flanagan, a.k.a. the Next Guy That I'm Going to Curse By Labeling Him as 100% Sliced Awesome.  For some reference, the last two guys that I've deemed worthy of this prestigious honor were M. Night Shyamalan and Quentin Tarantino (circa 2005-ish).  But then again, a lot of people still dig Tarantino's movies, and I seem to be in the minority with the opinion that everything he's done since Kill Bill has been a mammoth disappointment.  But anyway...Mike Flanagan!  So far, we've had Oculus, the first bona-fide four-star horror movie I'd seen in ages.  Scary, dramatic, surprising, it was like the cinematic equivalent of Ninja Gaiden.  Hush, while not QUITE as good, is like Ninja Gaiden II.  So the moral of the story is...the NES rules, and Mike Flanagan is f**ked, because I'm a fan.

If there was an ounce of justice in the world, THIS would be the movie that Blumhouse Productions pimped the hell out of in theaters.  Instead, we get treated to all of the Sinister sequels and the scores of other ghost movies that flood the multiplex while this gets shipped straight to Netflix.  It's a real shame, because Flanagan had a concept here that was aces.  The execution is almost as good, and the villain?  BRRRRRRR.  When I'm breaking out some of my favorite used-to-the-point-of-delirium phrases this early in the review, you know this shit is good.  With that, let's get to the flick.

I've seen movies with deaf protagonists before, but I don't know if it's ever been done as effectively as it is here.  Yes, folks, that's the crux of your story, as we meet novelist Maddie Young (Kate Siegel, who takes on this challenging role like a hooked sturgeon).  She lives like one would expect in a movie like this.  Isolation, loneliness, they're all themes that are broached on but not harped on to the point where you quickly get sick of them.  She's had one book published and is struggling like f**k to get the second one flying, even going to the trouble of typing "I'm a shitty writer" at one point.  I can relate.  I've typed similar things at points, including once or twice while writing reviews just like these.

Anyway, this movie wastes no time getting to the good stuff.  Enter the mysterious masked psycho, or MMP for short.  He claims a victim in Maddie's neighbor/friend, he's proficient with a crossbow, and he very quickly realizes that he's dealing with a new potential victim with a serious disadvantage.  The script shows some great creativity as the dude steals Maddie's cell phone and begins sending her photos of herself.  That's when the psycho unmasks, and it was a good move, because we get the performance of John Gallagher Jr. for the remainder of the film.

Folks, while Siegel is something else as the deaf and very sympathetic heroine...this is Gallagher's movie, hands down.  It's role that would definitely be very prone to overacting.  This guy doesn't.  He comes across like someone who's very happy doing what he's doing, but he never cheeses it like, say, Johnny Depp would do in a similar predicament.  Speaking of...that' actually one role that I wouldn't mind Depp taking.  A totally psychotic mass murdering killer.  It would be miles different from the usual "look at me, I'm goofy!" guy that he does in every other movie, but I digress.  Flanagan's script paints the guy as a totally unrepentant opportunistic killer, and Gallagher makes you hate this guy's guts.  And as the game between him and Maddie escalates, you really, REALLY want this creep to get what he has coming to him.

I'll admit that some of the stuff here is a little hokey.  Essentially, the bad guy could just come into the house anytime he wants.  He doesn't, both for the sake of suspense and for the sake of elongating the running time.  The movie also loses a LITTLE bit of steam when the neighbor's boyfriend shows up.  It wouldn't be that much of a problem, but there's this talking scene that just goes on FOREVER during this sequence where the payoff to it is just a little too telegraphed.  It's a minor complaint.  The way that this movie makes use of Maddie's deafness, amping up the suspense of an already suspenseful situation and actually making us sympathize with characters after he did this extremely well in Oculus...yeah, I'm cursing the guy again.

Finally, I have to give the movie props for another thing - the fact that Maddie is a strong, fighting female, and the script DOESN'T ram it down our throats that she's a strong, fighting female.  She's a character first, female second.  So +2 cool points to the movie there.

Overall, I highly recommend this flick, and it's definitely worthy of a *** 1/2 out of ****.  I just wish that the powers-that-be would give more movies like this a chance.  Creative, genuinely scary and even emotional at points...nope, instead you'll get Ghost Movie #4000 and like it, dammit.  I guess one could compare these tables of Hollywood executives to Vince McMahon, but they're nowhere near as sexy as he is.

Final Destination 2 (2003)

2003
Directed by David R. Ellis
Starring Ali Larter, A.J. Cook and Michael Landes

Final Destination 2, a movie that takes me back way more than a movie that I didn't especially enjoy, don't own, and only recently watched again to write this review that all of 30 people will read.  Nonetheless, this flick holds a lot of nostalgic value for yours truly, because it was - without a doubt - one of the most fun, raucous in-theater audience experiences I've ever had.  Let me tell you something (brother), that night at the cinema was crazy.  Crammed to the gills with teen and early adult fans of gore and mayhem, it was nuts.  Lots of laughs, lots of gasps and more than a few MST3K-style quips being hurled at the screen during some of the more outlandish moments made this a really, really fun time, even if the movie itself is kind of "meh."  With the exception of the death scenes, of course.

Now, I reviewed the original flick long ago here on the blog, so I'll spare everyone the gory details of how that whole idea came to be.  Well, I WILL again harp on how this concept was originally conceived as an X-Files episode.  Looking back...I'm really glad that they decided to shelve that plan and just make it a movie, because picturing that episode is almost painful.
Mulder: I think that what we're looking at here, Scully, is death kind of doubling back on itself and making it right.  And that's why this kid just got sawed in half.
Scully: That's the dumbest f**king thing I've ever heard.

Lo and behold, the first movie was a monster hit.  2.5 years later, we got this.  That's essentially all the background info you need.

Maybe the thing that the FD series is known for more than anything else is the batshit insane opening sequence of death.  And I've got to say...all these years later, and this movie still has the best one in the entire series.  College student Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook, who is serviceable but completely unmemorable - kind of a microcosm of 2000s-era horror heroines, really) is off to spring break with all of her friends.  The highway is the scene this time around, and this is something that I remember vividly from that theater experience 13 years ago.  Cue the main character's premonition, as we get crashes, flying logs, fire, explosions.  A whole lot of visceral stuff, and it was absolutely awesome.

Unfortunately, this is where the movie slows down, and it means that we have to meet our batch of characters.  In addition to Kimberly and her perfectly stereotypical hot friends, we get a mother and her teenage son, some dork who won the lottery, the classic early-2000s movie "stoner" character, a tough-but-sensitive cop, and a few others that are too one note to mention.  When you can sum characters up in something like two words, yeah, you're asking for trouble.  This is one area where the first movie just destroys this one, as both Devon Sawa and Ali Larter were perfectly fine, somewhat memorable characters that we actually, you know, DIDN'T want to see get killed.  In this film...yeah, we're just waiting for the next death scene to hit the entire time, because nobody is particularly enthralling or sympathetic.  Or maybe I was just in an especially bloodthirsty mood when re-watching this movie.

It goes without saying that you're not watching a Final Destination flick for the human element, though.  This movie series is all about the kill scenes and the gore, and all the clever, ingenious ways that death goes about setting things right after that initial premonition is halted.  And in this movie, they took what the first did and amped it up to the nth degree.  Without bothering to look it up, I'm pretty sure that I called the death scenes "Goldberg Variation"-esque, and I'm just going to throw that phrase designed to fool people into thinking I'm smart out there again.  I'll just throw out the two things that I remember best and that still stuck out to me upon watching it again - the airbag kill and the tease where the guy is sticking his arm into a garbage disposal only to get killed by something else entirely much later.  Of course, I should ALSO mention that in the first movie death was this sentient thing that also tried to cover its tracks and...yeah, they pretty much ditched that concept entirely for this movie, realizing that it would be much more fun just to go completely balls-out insane with the deaths.  This would only snowball in later sequels.

Eventually, the characters realize that they need some help in this wave of chaos (/horrible phrase) and seek out the lone survivor from the original movie.  Ladies and gentlemen, Ali Larter.  More specifically, 2003 Ali Larter, back when she was like the hottest woman on the planet.  Of course, in the first two FD movies her name is Clear Rivers, but I refuse to call her anything else.  Somehow, I doubt anyone cares.  Here, Ali has voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric facility to cheat death in her own way.  Once she finds out that it's after a new batch of losers, however, she begins a John Matrix-like campaign to put the Reaper back in his place.  And, IMO, this is where the movie flies into the primordial soup after its promising start.

When you go to a Final Destination movie, you know what you're getting.  Good, old-fashioned R-rated gore and shocks and a human story that is secondary to all of that.  It's all about the execution.  And I think the execution here is a little weak.  For starters, Kimberly is just a really, really weak heroine, and the only other character that I remembered any aspect of later was the dude who liked porn.  Thus, you won't be caring too much when these people get knocked off.  Also, weirdly enough, this flick seemed to be going a lot more for LAUGHS than any other movie in the series.  The kill scenes here are clearly meant to be the "over-the-top goofy/funny" variety, and it's kind of a jarring storytelling method.  The ending, in particular, was clearly meant to get a laugh.  Hey, it made ME laugh, so that counts.  When watching a movie about supposedly innocent people dying, however, laughing isn't the way to go.  So -2 cool points there.

Arguments over.  Let's give this flick ** out of ****.  It's entertaining, no doubt, but for the reasons listed above, I can't recommend it too much for people who aren't hardcore fans of this franchise.

Motel Hell (1980)

1980
Directed by Kevin Connor
Starring Rory Calhoun, Paul Linke, Nancy Parsons, Nina Axelrod and Wolfman Jack

Quick background info: I've only seen this movie once, on MonsterVision back when Joe Bob was in his prime (so we're talking 1998-ish), and re-watched it or the first time in almost 20 years just a few days ago.  Amazingly, I still remembered almost every little story beat and nuance after all these years, a true testament to just how nutty and oddball this movie is.

This is one of those flicks that is truly difficult to categorize.  The creators insist that they weren't trying to make a parody.  Many years later, having seen the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho a bunch of times, I hereby call bullshit on that one.  There's just way too much random weirdness for it to be anything other than a send-up of those two films as well as a handful of others.  See that last sentence?  That's some grade-A quality reviewing there.  All of the goofy stuff aside, it's also a very disturbing movie with some absolutely sickening themes, in between bits where Rory Calhoun turns on his true Farmer Brown charm in the main role of Farmer Vincent (creative naming aplenty in this movie).  Because of that, this movie is a little disjointed, with a tone that's all over the place.  Kind of like this paragraph.  With that, let's get to the movie.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Farmer Vincent, with the aforementioned Calhoun wearing overalls and speaking in a good ol' boy folksy cadence.  Almost immediately, we discover what this dude is all about, as he captures motorists that pass his countryside motel (named the "Motel Hello," but with a lightbulb burned out hence the title of the movie) for nefarious purposes.  The movie does a good job in the early goings gradually revealing his method and the reason; rather than being a serial or pleasure killer, he does it for profit.  Farmer Vincent's smoked meats are known the world over for their delicious flavor.  The secret ingredient?  Human flesh. 

Burying his victims up to their necks in a garden and fattening them up before gutting them, Vincent and his complacent, slightly stupid sister Ida (Nancy Parsons, a slight gem of nuttiness herself, although not quite as good as Calhoun) would probably qualify as the world's most prolific killers if this story were real.  The implication is that they've been doing this for a WHILE.  Like, decades.  One would think authorities would have noticed how many people disappeared around Mudtown, Kentucky or wherever this movie takes place before long, but you don't tune into these movies for biting realism.  And if you do...ah, who am I kidding, nobody does.

First of all, what a nightmarish scenario.  I mean, seriously.  Getting buried in the dirt, having your vocal chords severed and force fed only to be butchered and slaughtered to be sold as meat to the public.  One word:  BRRRRRRRR.   And that's where this movie becomes disjointed, as for the majority of the second act we get...a romance.

Yup, a romance.  See, early on, Vincent shoots out the tire of a passing motorcycle, capturing a young couple in the process.  He buries the male in his garden but takes the female - a pretty young girl named Terry (Nina Axelrod) - back to the motel.  Slowly but surely, Terry actually falls in love with Vincent and his honest country ways.  Even as a kid, I found this section of the movie to be pretty weak and unbelievable.  This is a movie that, I think, definitely could have benefited from simply going balls-to-the-wall with mayhem and made Farmer Vincent a truly loathsome villain (even more than he is).  Also, if it didn't contain this little love story, we would have been left with a more likable hero than we have.  It seems like Vincent's brother Bruce (Paul Linke), who also just so happens to be the town Sheriff (and also surprisingly oblivious to the alarming rate of vehicular incidents and disappearances in the area), wants Terry for himself and doesn't take too kindly to the idea of Vincent sweeping her off her feet.  And this is why we get our big final showdown.

Yeah, I find Sheriff Bruce to be a pretty whiny and ineffective hero character.  But I definitely feel that he COULD have been a cool character had the movie been done differently, and the whole love story aspect been taken out.  See, horror movies that focus as heavily on the villain character as this one does is a dicey proposition.  If you spend too much time delving into what makes the bad guy tick, it can result in one of two things that you DON'T want in a horror movie: engendering sympathy for the villain, or just making it seem like they're so much deeper and cooler than the victim characters that we cheer for them by proxy.  Now, we don't exactly have sympathy for Vincent.  He's a pretty damn unrepentant bastard throughout the whole movie.  But he is far and away the most charismatic and memorable thing about the movie, for better or worse.

Rory Calhoun's performance here really is something to behold, and it's the saving grace for a movie with a multitude of sins.  It's something that everybody should see once in their lifetime, kind of like Christian Bale in American Psycho.  I definitely would call the dude likable; not in the least bit, since we see what he does in such graphic detail.  But it's a truly one-of-a-kind creation, the sort of thing that can only exist in a genre where an undead zombie mask-wearing psycho can spawn a feature film franchise with soon-to-be 13 movies.  Oh, and it has a pretty damn awesome finale featuring a chain saw duel (seriously) and the garden of human victims staging a rebellion worthy of George Washington himself, ending with a moment of pure cheer-out-loud catharsis.  And Rory Calhoun's final line is simply amazing.

*** out of ****.  Folks, this is a movie with a lot of problems.  Fortunately, it's strengths are so strong that it becomes a must-see movie.  Check it out.

Cropsey (2009)

2009
Directed by and starring Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio

A few weeks back I reviewed Killer Legends, a documentary created by Joshua Zeman that explored all of the folklore, mythology, and true life freaky shit surrounding a few popular urban legends.  Proving that truth is a whole hell of a lot scarier than fiction, that movie was all kinds of awesome.  I was prepared for Cropsey to do the same thing.  This was Zeman's first flick released back in 2009, done in the same style but with a different co-host and co-creator in Barbara Brancaccio.  The concept was also the same - take a well-known campfire scary story and explore a real-life equivalent, although this time it's a single story that gets the excavation treatment for 90 minutes rather than the anthology style of Killer Legends.  And while I was entertained by the film, I didn't think it was quite as good as the sequel.  It seems like the majority out there on the interwebz disagree with me, but what else is new.

Reviewing documentaries is a tricky business, because it's difficult without spoiling all of the narrative.  I'll start off by saying this - I was at least a little familiar with the urban legend of Cropsey, unaware that it started it came from Staten Island but knowing the basics.  A maniacal killer living in the woods kidnaps children, brings them to a remote location, and does terrible, terrible things to them.  The stuff of nightmares, without a doubt.  I was also MORE than familiar with the 1981 slasher flick The Burning which uses the Cropsey story as the basis for its way over-the-top killer.  Growing up in the area afforded Zeman the opportunity to hear many different iterations of the story, and that's where this movie comes in.  Yes, folks, there was a real-life Cropsey operating in Staten Island throughout much of the' 80s, and his name is Andre Rand.

Now, Cropsey is a rather convoluted movie, especially for a documentary.  It starts off simple enough, complete with a soul-destroying musical score that will make your hair rise up on more than a few occasions.  Andre Rand was an employee of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island in the 1960s, a haven for special needs children at the time that was decidedly something other than a haven and even the subject of a Geraldo Rivera expose.  Well, Andre stayed behind after the school closed its doors, taking refuge in the surrounding woods.  That's what is known.  Over the years, various children - most of them female, and most of them also handicapped in some form or another - started disappearing after last being seen with Rand.  And this is where the speculation begins.

For starters, it's not known exactly how many victims the dude had.  He was CONVICTED of two of the murders, but there is a strong possibility of five victims - and an outside possibility at much more, considering just how many kids disappeared from the area throughout this time frame.  But the truly strange thing about this story is all of the little side messages and rumors that exist.  If it's creepy, it's connected to Andre Rand.  Satanic cults, sex trafficking, Michael Bay's movie career...it's all here and freely explored.  While a lot of this stuff is indeed chilling, it's also here where I think the movie loses a little bit of steam.  Social issues are much more a part of this film than the later Killer Legends, at least in some of the diatribes that witnesses and theorists of the case invoke.

Fortunately, the movie still has a lot going for it.  The atmosphere that I loved so much in the later film is already well apparent.  Zeman is a really talented film-maker that knows how to make truth decidedly not boring and different from my college history teacher who spoke like a Roman Reigns promo.  Part of it is that music, yeah, but it's also in the presentation.  Again, he's a very likable host who doesn't seem to take sides with the various law enforcement officials, lawyers and Staten Island residents who throw their own two cents in as to the case of Andre Rand.  Brancaccio is also quite the interesting little number, feisty in a completely non-annoying way and tenacious in the bits where she gets to play detective.  I'd love to see her in more films like this.

So...yeah.  That's pretty much all there is to say about the film.  There is a stretch that almost shot itself in the foot with me when the sociology and mob mentality commentary became a little bit too overbearing, but it's still a very enjoyable little documentary and more than worth the click on Netflix.  For that, I'll award it *** out of ****.

Oh, and there's also a very interesting story about the film-makers' attempt to contact Rand himself - still serving time in Rikers Island - but I'll leave it up to you to see how that turned out.