I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

1978
Directed by Meir Zarchi
Starring Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols and Gunter Kleemann

Stop me if I've told this one before.  I've always been obsessed with movies dating back to the days when Han Solo and Indiana Jones were my heroes, but the thing that REALLY put me over the top to the nerdy level that I'm at today was one trip to the library when I was in sixth grade.  That particular trip led me to the until-then forbidden ADULT section and away from the kids' ghost story books that dotted my bookshelf back then, and that trip led me to the arts & entertainment section...and the giant book with Roger Ebert on the cover. 

Yes, folks, Roger Ebert's Video Companion.  'Memba them?  In the days before the internet, these things were THE resource for movie fans, phone book-sized and crammed with reviews and juicy one-liners courtesy of arguably the greatest film critic of all time.  That book was what led to me being able to recognize directors and paying special attention to the opening credits of every film I see to this day.  It's what introduced me to the phrase "I hated hated hated this movie" in response to North.  And then there was what I really came there for: the reviews of horror movies.  Weirdly enough, Roger Ebert didn't seem to like horror films very much, but that was what I was into, and I wanted to know what he thought about them.  Hell, he gave Halloween four stars, so I knew that movie was worth checking out a little over a year later on Halloween night.  But one review that REALLY stood out was the one for the film in question today.

Released in 1978 during the very beginning days of the slasher boom, I Spit On Your Grave might not be an out-and-out HORROR film, but it nonetheless horrified people when it came out.  It's far from the first rape-revenge flick, but it was easily the most controversial and even more easily the most successful.  Filmed on a filet-o-fish budget, it was also another one of those films that was more effective precisely because it was so cheap.  Folks, it probably would have been easier to film this stuff for real and just pass it off as a movie.  I saw this flick for the first time in high school, and I can report that this isn't an enjoyable film.  Not because it's going to make you doubt life or anything, but because it's just THERE, for what it is.  A woman gets raped, repeatedly, and cruelly.  Then she kills them all one by one.  That's pretty much it, and that's your running time.  But I thought it was nonetheless an effective little story, and one that I thought would be worth checking out again.  Does it hold up?  Let's find out.

Meet Jennifer Hills, played by Camille Keaton as the kind of girl circa 1978 that you just know you'd be hardcore crushing on.  She's a writer by trade, and she's on her way to a riverside cabin for some peace, quiet and listening to fingers hitting the keyboard.  Within the first ten minutes, we also meet the local gas station manager Johnny (Eron Tabor), as well as his two unemployed friends Stanley (Anthony Nichols) and Andy (Gunter Kleemann).  Also within that epic ten minute timeframe, Jennifer has her groceries delivered by Matthew (Matthew Lucas), a slightly mentally disabled man who pretty much sets the entire plot in motion just by mentioning that he saw Jennifer's breasts.  I swear on the church, this actually happens.

There isn't much in the way of tension in this movie.  For a VERY brief period, Stanley and Andy cruise by Jennifer's cabin at night, but it doesn't take long for the second phase of this movie to kick in.  And that second phase...it's something else.  And when I say "something else," it's not the kind of movie that you'd want to watch over and over, even in 2017.  Those four characters that Jennifer has passably met in the movie thus far?  They eventually invade her house and rape her.  And then they rape her again.  And then one more time for good measure. 

Brief aside.  You know that Roger Ebert review that I talked about in the introduction?  He gave this movie ZERO STARS, and he told a pretty funny story about the people that he saw this with in theaters, stating that they might have very well been serial killers and said things like "that was a good one" after each rape scene.  Complete with jokes about these guys' appearances.  Despite his general dislike of horror movies, Roger Ebert used to be so awesome.

A few words about the people committing all the raping and pillaging in this movie.  It's a subject that I certainly don't mean to make light of, and the movie doesn't, either.  Make no mistake.  This flick is damn near 40 years old, but by the end of it, you REALLY want these creeps to get what they have coming.  Of the four, the only two who are anything resembling multi-dimensional are Johnny and Matthew, Johnny due to actually has a family that he goes home to, and Matthew due to the "mentally disabled guy that the others are trying to get to lose his virginity" angle.  He eventually does, although he's the one that spares Jennifer's life in the movie's crucial moments.  And boy does he pay for that one, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  A few words about the ACTING by these four jokers: I actually think this flick is a better movie than Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, but the performances in that film from David Hess and Co. were infinitely better.  But there's no comic relief cops in this movie, so take that for what it's worth.

Left for dead, Jennifer is able to recover.  She makes her way to a church, and prays for forgiveness for what she is about to do.  And the final third of the movie is her tracking down each assailant and giving them their just desserts in ways that had to be completely unheard of in 1978.

No matter what your opinion is of horror movies or even movies like this, that are more true crime-based than out-and-out horror based, I don't think anyone could deny that this flick makes you FEEL something.  Camille Keaton doesn't exactly put in an Oscar-worthy performance here, but she's perfectly believable as an innocent victim in the opening chapters.  And when she's getting her revenge, she's one sexy mama.  How this is possible for someone cutting a dude's junk off I don't know, but it's there onscreen for everyone to witness.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  Amazingly enough, Keaton actually REPRISED this role in two sequels.  What say you, readers?  Are they worth seeing?

Now, a few words to you lazy millennials (/Vince McMahon) who might be reading this.  There is a remake of this movie.  THIS movie, probably, is going to make you laugh.  To be sure, it's cheesy.  It's old, and it doesn't look like Michael Bay's Transformers.  These things seem to be mortal sins with the kids these days.  I haven't seen the remake, but I can take a guess what it probably tries to do: "gritty" everything up to the nth degree, show the violence in a lot more graphic detail, and amp up the Jennifer character to superhero status in Act Three.  Sorry, but no thanks.  Stick with this one.  It's way more emotional with probably 1/20 of the budget.  And I base that on having never seen the movie that I'm comparing it to.  +2 points for film criticism.

Since you can't multiply zero, I can't say that this movie is any degrees BETTER than Roger Ebert says.  Nonetheless, I give this flick *** out of ****.  It's definitely worth checking out, but it's not the kind of thing you'll want to have on your DVD shelf to pull out at a moment's notice.  Maybe once every five years.  Maybe.

The Langoliers (1995)

1995
Directed by Tom Holland
Starring Patricia Wettig, Dean Stockwell, David Morse, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Frankie Faison and Bronson Pinchot

The first Stephen King novel I ever read was The Shining.  And if you're a 13-year-old looking to make their first leap into this man's literary library, that's by far the one that I would recommend starting out with, because in addition to inspiring what might very well be the scariest movie of all time, it's one of the scariest pieces of fiction ever written.  After 420 pages of ghosts in bathtubs, mysterious games of roque, and that epic boiler finale, I wanted more.  I bet you'll never guess what the SECOND thing I ever read by Stephen King was...well, unless you're looking at the mammoth poster located just above this review, in which case you're a damned CHEATER.

Yup, it was "The Langoliers."  More specifically, it was one of four separate novellas in a mammoth book called "Four Past Midnight," and to this day, it remains one of my favorite King works.  The story of a small group of survivors on board an airplane that curiously lost 99% of its passengers without a trace, this was some fantastic stuff.  As opposed to knocking you over the head with pure horror, "The Langoliers" was really more of a mystery that unfolded throughout its lean and mean 280-page length (hence the term "novella") that slowly reveals the truth about the flight and what awaits the survivors.  That's not to say that it doesn't have its suspenseful moments; there are plenty, but they're just that.  Suspenseful, but not terrifying.  But the thing that really stuck with me about this story was that I believe it to have the most downright likable group of characters in anything King has ever done.  Even the douchy bad guy was sympathetic, but we'll be getting to him in due time.

Which brings me to this movie.  Released in 1995, The Langoliers was the TV movie version that aired on ABC just in time for May Sweeps.  Written and directed by Tom Holland (a pretty prolific guy in the horror genre, and his Twitter account is definitely worth following), the script is actually incredibly faithful to the novella.  It also has a fairly recognizable cast of actors at its disposal.  Unfortunately, it falls short on execution in one major way.  Thus concludes the introductory film criticism.

As already mentioned, our story starts with a red-eye flight bound for Boston's Logan International Airport.  Blind little girl Dinah Bellman wakes up and begins searching for the bathroom, only to discover that the plane is significantly less crowded than it was when she fell asleep.  In fact, just about everyone is gone, including her Aunt Vicky.  So begins the first third of the film, as we go about meeting the characters on board the flight who are now left to wonder just what the heck happened to everybody in a manner that Rod Serling would be damn proud of.

I'd be fairly willing to bet that King had Twilight Zone heavily on the brain when he wrote this story, and make no mistake about it, The Langoliers is essentially a three-hour Twilight Zone episode.  True story: I was actually going to write a blog listing my five favorite TZ twist endings, even going so far as to scribe my notes for the post during my down time at work.  But then I realized how lazy of an idea that was.  Fortunately, one of those twist endings (if you must know, it was the one at the end of "The Odyssey of Flight 33") reminded me of this film, so here it is.  And now you know, and knowing is half the battle!  That lovely aside is over, kids, so back to the show. 

From here, we go about meeting the characters, and it's a fairly interesting, varied bunch.  There's Brian Engle (David Morse), the Captain of the airplane who has just found out that his ex-wife has died; there's Laurel Stevenson (Patricia Wettig), a school teacher onboard the plane to essentially meet her online date before online dating was even a thing; there's Bob Jenkins (the always reliable Dean Stockwell), mystery novelist whose harebrained theories almost universally turn out to be true; there's Albert Kaussner (Christopher Collet), young violinist whose fantasy "Arizona Jew" character made the book undeniably awesome but is sorely lacking here in this film; there's Bethany Simms, troubled teen on her way to drug rehab and romantic interest for Albert; there's Nick Hopewell (Mark Lindsay Chapman), a goddamned British secret agent who is on his way to KILL SOMEBODY in Boston; and, amazingly enough, several more.  In the book, they were all fleshed out very well.  Here, it almost all feels a bit rushed.  But one thing that ISN'T rushed is the best character in the entire film, one Mr. Craig Toomey.

Ahhh, Craig Toomey.  He's played by Bronson "Balki" Pinchot, Mr. Serge himself, and he's your human villain of the film.  Eventually, the plane lands.  By that point, everyone on board is friendly with each other, with the story already planting the seeds for what is to come.  Bob Jenkins has begun to theorize that the airplane traveled back in time, the romantic roots have been planted for Albert and Bethany as well as Laurel and Nick, and they've all noticed that eerie crunching sound in the distance that seems to be getting closer.  And there is NOBODY ELSE AROUND, seemingly in the entire world.  All throughout, Craig Toomey has been a giant pain in everybody's ass.  He's a businessman with a tragic back story involving the kind of father that everyone has nightmares about, screaming at little Craig for achieving a B (a B!) in school and decrying his son for "scampering" through life.  See, he likes that word, scamper.  It says a lot about how GOOD that book was that I remember dialogue and descriptors like this 20 years later.  Toomey also has the eccentric habit of constantly tearing sheets of paper to alleviate his stress, but it serves no use.  He's on his way to a business meeting, and nothing is going to stop it.  Even if he has to kill to get there.

Craig Toomey is an awesome character, and Pinchot was more than game to play him.  He chews the scenery, but he's the kind of ham that you actually like to eat.  Simply put, this guy was aces in this movie.  Eventually, Toomey goes bat-crap crazy and it's up to the remaining characters to find him before he can kill anybody...but that loud noise is only getting louder.  And once we find out what it is...whoo boy, get ready for some bad CGI, kids.  I'll leave it up to you to discover what awaits these people should their refueling efforts fail.  Non-spoiler answer: the movie's title creatures definitely looked a lot cooler in my mind's eye when reading the book, as this was one of the few King stories that I actually READ first.

So that's what this movie is all about, people.  A group of people onboard a plane travel through a rip in time, one of the surviving passengers happens to be a psychopathic killer, and there are also supernatural beings out to do terrible things to them in the event they can't find a way back to the present day.  It's the crux of the book, and it's also the crux here.  Where this movie fell WAY short of the bar was in casting.  Yeah, Pinchot was boss.  But everyone else with the exception of Stockwell was woefully miscast.  David Morse was Mike Bennett levels of bland as Captain Engle; in the book, he was conflicted and complicated.  Here, he's just kind of there.  The Albert Kaussner of the book was somebody you could get behind; here, he's just a stereotypical dweeb.  Same thing with Bethany, except she's just your garden variety mid-'90s "bad girl" character.  The worst offender is definitely Wettig as Laurel; like Engle, she was charismatic and layered in the novella.  Wettig was just one-dimensional to the core.

Now, I will say this.  The movie DOES hold your attention for all 180 minutes of its running time.  But a lot of it will be spent wondering what different actors could have done in these roles.  Bad casting is a flaw that I can overlook in other movies.  In this one, though, it's enough to knock that awesome story back a whole couple of pegs.  That's a lot of pegs, kids.  There's no shortage of side plots in The Langoliers, and they're thrown entirely off by the off-kilter casting choices.  Or maybe I'm just weird.  It's been a while since I've dusted off this phrase, but call it glandular. 

However, there are two final notes of coolness to be had here: yet another awesome cameo from King himself as Craig Toomey's boss who greets him during the film's harrowing climax, and the fact that the whole damn movie was filmed at and around Bangor International Airport.  Those in the know (like, myself and fellow nerds) are aware that this is also Stephen King's hometown.  So +2 to the movie and Tom Holland on that one.

Rating time.  I'll give the TV movie-of-the-week version of The Langoliers ** 1/2 out of ****.  Like the source material, the story is awesome, but that cast...man.  At any rate, it's an ideal Saturday afternoon time waster if you're half-asleep and aren't paying too much attention to your TV.  Lastly, READ THE NOVELLA!

Ghosthouse (1988)

1988
Directed by Umberto Lenzi
Starring Lara Wendel, Greg Scott, Mary Sellers and Donald O'Brien

If you're ever in the mood for a change of pace with your horror-watching, go to Italy.  Italian horror movies have their own unique flavor with several of my favorite aspects of low-budget cinema: The acting is almost uniformly terrible, stuff very seldom makes sense, and buckets of fake blood.  If this sounds like fun to you, you're in the right place.  If you're in the mood for high quality, you're ALSO in the right place, as some of the best horror directors around are all about having names with plenty of vowels.  Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, get any DVD with those names attached and you're in for a good time. 

Ghosthouse is definitely another movie in this vein.  Directed by Umberto Lenzi, a guy who has made literally dozens of other exploitation films and shows absolutely no qualms here about slathering on the red stuff, this is one of the many unofficial sequels to the Sam Raimi Evil Dead franchise that I'm not a particularly big fan of.  Basically, they took the first two ED films, renamed them La Casa 1 and 2, and then took several more films that kinda-sorta shared the "badass ghosts in a remote location" theme and made them part of the same series in Italy.  Thus, if you find this movie in Europe, it's known as La Casa 3.  Why?  Who knows, but I don't pretend to know the mysteries of the universe.  What I DO know is that this movie, while not particularly GOOD in the traditional sense, was a fun experience that I actually liked BETTER than those other movies starring that dude with the big chin.  Blasphemy, I know.  On with the show.

So, longtime students of the blog, how do a lot of horror movies begin?  That's right, with a Past Evil, and that's what we get with Ghosthouse.  Admittedly, it's also a damn good one, as we get a creepy little girl named Henrietta (played by Kristen Fougerousse, and while she doesn't speak much, her presence is the thing that you'll definitely remember about this movie) who is (a) obsessed with her scary clown doll, and (b) has just murdered the family cat.  After her dad locks her in the basement, we get further spookiness as Henrietta uses the otherworldly powers of the doll to murder her father as well, and it's shown in all of its tomato-sauced glory.  Five minutes in, two bloody deaths.  All in all, the scorecard is getting filled in nicely.

Smash forward twenty years to the present day of 1988, where we meet our two main characters - Martha (Lara Wendel) and her boyfriend Paul (Greg Scott).  To be fair, these two aren't exactly Sir Laurence Olivier-level thespians, and that's putting it nicely.  Wendel in particular is damn near unwatchable at points, but I don't think many people look to Italian horror cinema to see deep Strasburg method acting.  What you need to know is that they're a couple, they have sex, and Paul is really into ham radio.  Yeah, ham radio.  Remember that stuff?  It's this contraption that leads them to a mysterious replaying of the same soul-destroying song that played over the prologue kills (which I just realized that I forgot to mention - yeah, every time Henrietta and her doll are around, this eerie kids' song plays in the background), which means that it's off to find the source of it.  Truly Paul Schrader-esque scripting at work here.

This movie definitely has its fair share of pointless characters.  I'll start with...Pepe.  On their way to the ghost house, Paul and Martha pick up this annoying hitch-hiker who likes to play weird jokes and has a borderline sexual eating fixation.  He's one of the most annoying side characters you'll ever see, made all the more amazing by the fact that he's in the movie for virtually NO REASON.  The same can be said for the three weird squatter people who are ON VACATION at the abandoned house when Paul and Martha get there.  Yeah.  On vacation.  At a run-down house where murders took place.  I like to sit at home and play video games, but whatever floats your boat, bros.  Then there's Susan, played by the certifiably hot Mary Sellers who serves as the token eye candy and is the recipient of the movie's death scene.  Who are these people?  Who cares.  They're here to get killed.  Fortunately, that's an area where Ghosthouse excels.

For anyone who has seen Dario Argento's masterpiece Suspiria, you know that horror that doesn't quite make sense is that much scarier.  This is the approach that Umberto Lenzi takes with this movie.  Every time that kiddie song pops up on the soundtrack, we know that someone is either getting wrecked in a gruesome way or there's going to be some nonsensical event happen that is never explained.  For an indication of some of the latter, this movie contains a murderous groundskeeper whose motives (I think) are never explained.  Yup.  He chases people around with a meat cleaver.  Why?  Who knows.  There's also disappearing ghost dogs and police who conspicuously don't mind that all of Scooby's gang is hanging out in a van near an abandoned house looking for ghosts.  That is what you call script convenience.  Really, though, none of this stuff even matters, because every time that Henrietta shows up, this flick is ACES.

Make no mistake, this is Henrietta's movie.  Again, her motives are never truly explained; we learned in the prologue that her dad, the local mortician, stole the clown doll from someone who was buried in the cemetery.  The implication is that evil spirits possess the doll and also Henrietta.  But that stare...man, that ungodly stare that Henrietta has.  Henrietta's presence is just one of those things that instantly gets under your skin every time she pops up on camera, and f**k me if science can explain it.  So even when the movie is having its characters do very DUMB THINGS (like taking vacations in abandoned houses, random showering in said abandoned house, refusing to leave after multiple people turn up dead, etc.), we can forgive it because this villain is legitimately scary and the payoff scenes are shot so well.

There are movies with great concepts that have terrible execution.  The Will Smith film Hancock comes immediately to mind.  Movies like Ghosthouse are a rarer breed, films with questionable material and shitty writing but boasting all the atmosphere and raw, guttural power to creep you out that you could ever ask for.  That's all you can ask for out of a horror film - to be scared, weirded out, or occasionally repulsed.  Any one of these is just fine on its own; all three is like a 50-point achievement.  Also, the ending is unintentionally hilarious...so much so that I won't spoil it for a change.

*** out of ****.  If you go into this one NOT expecting highbrow entertainment, you won't be disappointed.  It's definitely worth a watch if you're into Italian horror and still worth checking out if you're not a mutant like me.

Frailty (2001)

2001
Directed by Bill Paxton
Starring Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe, Matt O'Leary, Jeremy Sumpter and Levi Kreis

A little over a week ago, we lost a guy who I - no joke - consider to be a national treasure.  Folks, Bill Paxton was IT.  Regardless of the movie, regardless of the quality, this dude was unforgettable.  Legitimately one of my three favorite actors of all time, his filmography reads like a laundry list of coolness.  In Weird Science, Aliens, Predator 2 and True Lies, he made his trademark "hilarious douchebag" character an art form.  Of course, there's also A Simple Plan, a movie that came many years before Breaking Bad and did the concept of "once you head down the wrong road, there's no turning back" better than that show ever could have - and with a more charismatic main star, to boot.  And then there are his contributions to the horror genre - Near Dark, a woefully underrated vampire gem from 1988 that we'll be getting to in due time, and Frailty, the movie in question today and one of only two movies that the man ever directed.

Released in 2001, this flick came about at one of those weird "crossroads" periods for horror.  The luster of Scream and the movies it inspired had started to wear off, and the massive wave of Japan-style thrillers hadn't hit the States quite yet.  As a result, we were getting a bunch of movies that essentially threw crap at the wall to see what would stick.  Frailty was different.  It had a plan, it had a purpose, and it had an execution that managed to achieve near perfection.  It also had plenty of advance critical raves, awesome actors, and an atmosphere cooked up by a first-time director that makes me want to come up with all kinds of spicy words to describe its immersive quality.  And I don't know if you've been keeping up on current events, but that should be enough introduction, pal.  On with the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a movie that has Matthew McConaughey.  Not only that, it has Matthew McConaughey in non-surfer-bum mode.  For many years, this guy appeared almost exclusively in cheesy romantic comedy movies, and it was a damn shame, because he's an awesome actor when he wants to be.  In Frailty, he's small-town boy Fenton Meiks, and he has a story for FBI Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe).  According to Fenton, his brother Adam is the "God's hand" serial killer that Doyle has been trailing for a long time, suggesting that Adam has committed suicide and that his future burial site - a rose garden in their hometown - is also where many of the previous victims are kept.  If you can accept the slight logical leap that Agent Doyle would willingly go along with a single witness here without backup, get ready for some electric stuff, as Fenton begins spinning a yarn about the events that transpired when he and his brother were children.

In Thurman circa two decades ago, we meet young Fenton (Matt O'Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter, who I'm also a huge fan of - why isn't this guy in more stuff these days?).  And then there's the father, never named in the script and appearing in the credits only as Dad Meiks.  As I've already mentioned, Paxton has had a lot of great performances over his career, but this one ranks near the top.  He's menacing without going completely over the top, even coming across as a little sympathetic at times, but always decidedly scary.  See, Dad Meiks is the ORIGINAL "God's hand" killer, and it's gradually spelled out for us how this came to be, as he believes that he was touched by an angel (but not the TV show) to kill unrighteous "demons in human form."  The sons are his helpers, and we're about to see how this goes down.

The routine goes like this - he is given a list of evil people to kill, abducts one of them and kills them in his rose garden.  Before the axe-murder death blow, however, he touches the victim and is granted a vision of all of the bad stuff the person in question has committed.  Frailty is a movie that is all about what you believe.  And make no mistake, Dad Meiks definitely believes in his mission.  The central conflict comes in the form of his sons, as Adam is a willing accomplice in all of this mayhem, while Fenton believes their dad is full of crap.  See that last sentence?  The movie makes it a lot more interesting than that, believe me. 

For an indication of what we're dealing with, there's a "close call" subplot as the local Sheriff becomes suspicious of Dad Meiks, only to summarily meet a gruesome end at the hand of Dad Meiks' axe.  It really can't be stated enough just how aces Paxton is in this role; he was clearly having a lot of fun directing himself, but the emotional element of dealing with his sons is always front and center for the world to see.  As such, this actually is a movie that hooks your emotions.  Things begin to deteriorate from this point on as Fenton's moral crisis gets the front-and-center treatment, leading to an abduction sequence that results in Dad winding up in his own rose garden.  And this is the point where the script launches us into one slam-bang surprise after another that I NEVER saw coming when I first saw this one in theaters in 2001.  Upon re-watching the film a few days ago, I can report that it still holds up.  First-time watchers, prepare to have your world rocked.

Without a doubt, Frailty is effective horror.  It truly is one of those horror films that rises above to become something much more.  Everyone involved here, from Paxton to McConaughey to Boothe to the child actors was more than game for this material and put their all into it, and it shows.  It's also a horror flick that has that "epic" presentation, with the present-day story of Fenton taking the FBI Agent on a little trip interspersed with the story of the Meiks family giving the whole thing a kind of poetic feeling.  The script creates a trio of characters in the Meiks family that we genuinely care about even as we watch them do terrible things.

Those terrible things are given to us in intervals.  There's not a whole lot of gore in this movie, but when the murder scenes hit, they make an impact.  Especially the stuff that takes place during the flick's final act.  *teaser*

I'm winding it up, reaching for it...yup, I can pull out the **** out of ****.  Overall, this flick is just a really fun ride from start to finish, and it's definitely worthy of that old-school TNT "New Classic" moniker.