The Five(ish) Most Expendable "Friday the 13th" Victim Characters

If you're a horror fan, you've undoubtedly heard the news that this is a pretty big year for Friday the 13th.  Not necessarily the film franchise itself - the actual day.  Yes, folks, we get three of 'em this year, the first of which was last Friday, and if you're a mutant like me you've undoubtedly had the single greatest slasher franchise of all time on the brain. 

Come June, the Friday the 13th film series will effectively be 35 years old.  While we haven't had any news (that I'm aware of, anyway, but then again I'm nowhere near the upcoming movie hound that I used to be) about the next movie in the series about the most badass guy with mommy issues in the history of cinema, 2015 amounts to nothing short of a total celebration of this landmark in American horror.  And I'm not just talking about the big guy himself.  I love almost everything about this series, from the creepy backwoods locations to the "faux-Psycho" Harry Manfredini soundtracks to the victim characters and their propensity to engage in incredibly reckless behavior that leads to their untimely deaths. 

It's that latter group that we're going to take a look at today.  These films boast loads of great, memorable characters that stick out in your mind for all of the right and wrong reasons, but one of my favorite things about the series are those characters that get introduced...and then that's pretty much it.  Sometimes, the series goes "body count over substance," and while I'm all about emotional investment, sometimes it's just hilarious when a character gets introduced with what any stuffy English major thinks is the beginning of an arc only to get offed like minutes later.

Thus, I present...

THE FIVE(ISH) MOST EXPENDABLE FRIDAY THE 13TH VICTIM CHARACTERS

5. Vinnie and Pete from A New Beginning
Really, you could pretty much just list Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and be done with it.  The flick is infinitely fun to watch, but if you want to hop on the characters' bandwagons, this one is rough to watch as it brings characters out of the woodwork only to eliminate them with savage voracity minutes later.  Case in point - the two greasers who serve as (SPOILER ALERT) crazy Roy's initial victims on his revenge/all out kill-crazy rampage fest.  Immediately after Vic kills Joey, we're blessed with the bickering adventures of these two retro stylistos in the middle of the woods as their car breaks down, complete with Pete and his signature top 40 hit "Rad-a-Tooie."  There are definitely sequences that go on LONGER in this movie, but these two are the ones that stick out immediately as "cannon fodder" from the get go.

4. Dan and Judy from The New Blood
The crux of Jason's seventh go-round is a birthday party being thrown for Michael at his family's lakeside house, and almost all of the victims have something to do with either this bunch or psychic mover-and-shaker Tina Shepherd.  Except for these two.  Totally random campers who find themselves on a totally random patch of woods that the totally randomly revived Jason just so happens to happen across.  We get Dan doing his best Arnold Schwarzeneggar impression before heading out to get some firewood.  Of course, he's offed, but it's Judy's death that really let fans know that director John Carl Buechler wasn't messing around as he grabs her sleeping bag - Judy fully enclosed - and bashes it against a nearby tree.  To this date, one of the three or four best death scenes in any Friday flick, and legendary anciliary characters.

3. The Hitchhikers from Jason Goes to Hell
I always used to hate this movie, but a few more repeat viewings over the past couple Halloweens has changed my mind.  It's different, but it's also got plenty of chutzpah, and it's also got some of the most hilariously expendable victims that the series has graced our presence with.  In the first trimester of the movie, Jason (or rather his African-American stunt double) has made his way back to Crystal Lake, unbeknownst to the group of hitchhikers who catch a ride with our main protagonist Steven Freeman.  Almost immediately after finding a suitable site and planting their tent spikes, it begets one of the tastier bits of in the series compliments of Michelle Clunie, followed by one of the sickest kills in any movie I've seen.  Awesome stuff.

2. The WOULD-BE Hitchhiker/Banana Enthusiast from The Final Chapter
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is one of the greatest slasher films ever made, bar none.  It's fast-paced and brutal, with a group of characters ranging from funny (Jimmy and Ted) to genuinely intriguing (Corey Feldman as the improbable Jason killer Tommy Jarvis).  Hidden in all that, however, is thais lovely little aside just as the madness is getting started, as the group of vacationing teens head out to Crystal Lake and refuse to pick up to the slightly dumpy woman on the side of the road who wants a ride.  And she doesn't take insults from passer-bys lying down.  I'll admit to feeling pretty bad for this girl, as the fact that she doesn't get the ride leads to her untimely death, compliments of an awesome Ted Savini stabbing closeup.

1. The Random Evil Bikers from Part III
Here we go.  The solid gold Cadillac of expendable F13 victims.  The folks above were hastily introduced.  These guys, conversely, take over the movie for a stretch.  When we first meet Ali, Loco and Fox, they're customers at a convenience store who give our resident nerdy hero Shelly a hard-time in front of his would-be girlfriend.  This confrontation leads them to Higgins Haven where they have every intention of (I think) burning the barn down.  Only...it doesn't quite work out that way.  In a tense, epic sequence that lasts all of five minutes, all three of them get some glorious 3D death, and the characters that we spent the previous 10 minutes of our lives pontificating on what their epic back story was are gone.  More or less. (SPOILER ALERT)

Of course, those are just a few.  To be fair, this series was very successful at getting audiences to feel sympathy for some of its victim characters, particularly in the earlier films when Jason was human and the series wasn't intentionally poking fun at itself or its conventions yet.  Sometimes, however, it's good when the screenwriters and film-makers simply let loose and threw some bodies in there just for the fuck of it.  Variety is the spice of life, after all, and no series did it better than Friday the 13th.

As the year goes on, we're going to be looking at more hockey-masked madness from slightly askew angles.  Stay tuned.

The Top Five Episodes of "Night Gallery"

Anyone who is anyone knows about The Twilight Zone, the game-changing, sometimes mind-bending series created by Rod Serling that gave us enough twist endings to make M. Night Shyamalan cream in his pants.  And not even the annoying kind - the GOOD kind.  But the way I have it figured, every other internet nerd has already done some kind of TZ retrospective.  No, sir, what we're looking at today is Rod Serling's OTHER TV series - Night Gallery, which began with the 1969 pilot movie of the same name before being spun off into its own series a year later.

Now, I've already reviewed that movie (which gave one Mr. Steven Spielberg his big break in the entertainment business), and it's awesome.  The series, as a whole, is almost equally awesome.  They went for broke with the trippy, the bizarre, and the outright macabre, and more often than not hit that target.  Now, to be sure, the series had its fair share of clunkers, particularly the season 2 "blackout" comedic segments that padded the length of a few episodes, and the majority of the Season 3 30-minute episodes that occurred after Serling lost creative control and more or less disowned the series.  Still, the series definitely has some shows that qualify as must-see viewing.

Thus, I present the five episodes of Night Gallery that everyone should buy/rent/search out on Youtube.  Now that's a sterling recommendation.

1. "A Death in the Family"
I've seen some disturbing horror movies and stories before, but "A Death in the Family" has got damn near all of them beat.  The final two minutes or so of this yarn will stick with you long after those credits roll, and that's without a single drop of blood being spilled.  For the vast majority of its running time we only have two performers - E.G. Marshall as a gentle undertaker and Desi Arnaz Jr. as a runaway criminal who finds himself taking refuge at said undertaker's funeral home.  Only this...is no ordinary funeral home (/lightning crash).  The twist in this episode isn't one of those things that hits you over the head - it is gradually revealed, and audiences can take an educated guess as to where it's headed roughly halfway through.  But the final reveal still hits you in the guts like nothing else.  Check this one out, kids.  It's a winner.

2. "A Question of Fear"
Now HERE'S the classic case of a story that floors you with an unbelievable twist.  Leslie Nielsen stars as an Army Colonel who is afraid of nothing - even a haunted house that supposedly drives anyone who spends the night insane.  After accepting a $15,000 bet, the Colonel heads out to the house, where a night full of eerie chills ensues, only for the story to take a RADICAL shift halfway through and become about something else entirely, and one of the characters involved in making the bet turns out to be something that we would never suspect.  This story is a great example of having a message and not beating the audience over the head with it, something very much appreciated in Lick Ness Monster Land.

3. "Green Fingers"
This is the episode that I remember most vividly from actually watching it live on my local retro station.  Rod Serling wrote the script for this one, the story about a brutal tycoon (Cameron Mitchell) who is trying to force an old woman (Elsa Lanchester) off of her land to do some developing.  How bad does he want this to happen?  He hires someone to remove her from the premises forcefully.  The woman's near-obsessive talent for gardening is the focus of the episode, a talent that rears its head in the story's final trimester as Mitchell makes his way to back to the house to claim his property.  Why the guy's assistant drives away and leaves him hanging is never explained, but he's in for one big surprise...

4. "Keep in Touch, We'll Think of Something"
The insanely hot Joanna Pettet starred in four episodes of Night Gallery.  All of them were pretty good with the exception of Season 1's "The House," and this is my personal favorite.  Our main character is Erik Sutton (Alex Cord), a man who has been obsessed with the woman he has seen in his dreams ever since his college days.  When he sees the very same woman that he has imagined in real life so many times in the form of Pettet's character, it starts a chain reaction that results in...wait for it...another pretty damn cool ending reveal.  The real treat of this one is the dialogue sequence between Sutton and Pettet as everything gradually becomes clear, as the writing is absolutely electric stuff.

5. "Lindemann's Catch"
Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere.  Perhaps more than any other story featured on the show, "Lindamann's Catch" has that in spades, with its constantly dimly lit boat compartments and soul-destroying early '70s synthy score.  The story is almost as good, as our titular (what a great word) Lindemann is a sea captain who brings aboard the best catch he's ever had - a beautiful mermaid.  Stuart Whitman is excellent as the borderline obsessive Lindemann who doesn't want to give up his new female companion, eventually finding a way to wish for his charge to gain a body.  Of course, the Monkey's Paw that is Rod Serling writing has different plans for both Lindemann and the mermaid.

Take my word for it, people, this series is well worth the $10 or so that you can grab the season sets for on Amazon.  Atmosphere, scares, twists, and a really badass opening theme equal total coolness, and a series that will stick with you long after that final ending credits sequence rolls.  Check these out.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994)

1994
Directed by Jeff Burr
Starring Andrew Robinson Ami Dolenz, Soleil Moon Frye, Hill Harper and Linnea Quigley

This is yet another one of those flicks that used to beckon me from the video store aisle.  Just check out that video box art.  Perusing my local mom & pop video store as a kid was practically a hobby, and the "new release horror" section was always my favorite.  Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings.  Hell, I didn't even know that there was a Pumpkinhead I at the time.  A demon crawling out of the bottom of the box toward the viewer?  Count me in, although I was sufficiently terrified at that time to not even consider giving this movie a rental.

Flash-forward 10-odd years.  I'd seen the original movie by that point when I saw the mythical flick with the crazy box art come up on the AMC (because apparently this movie was a "Classic" - remember when that channel was primarily about movies as opposed to TV shows that are just so enjoyable in watching dark antiheroes spiral downward to some kind of bittersweet comeuppance? Those were some good days).  And...it kinda sucked.  It wasn't TERRIBLE or anything, but just kind of there, and aside from the presence of scream queen Linnea Quigley, that's an opinion that hasn't changed much for me after watching  my $2.22 DVD copy.

Now, the first movie is pretty damn good, with a DEADLY serious tone to its subject matter and Lance Henriksen turning in a tour de force performance as a father who wants vengeance for his son's death and lives to regret it.  That vengeance comes in the form of an indestructible monster that the local witch doctor is able to call upon.  This time around, our 1958 prologue introduces us to the concept of a weird-looking orphan named Tommy that the eccentric Mrs. Osie is taking care of.  A group of marauding teens happen across said orphan and begin chasing after him with whatever weapons are handy.  Long story short, they are successful...and ladies and gentlemen, that is a prologue.

Flash forward to the present day, where we meet our cast of teenage characters in the town of Ferren Woods.  Our "stars," as they are, are Sean Braddock (Robinson) and his daughter Jenny (Dolenz), recent transplants to town after the former got offered the job of town Sheriff.  A good deal of the preamble consists of Jenny making friends with the local trouble-making hooligans, and I'm guessing that this is the point that a lot of people decided to forget this movie existed the second they returned this video.  Retro-chic wardrobes aside, none of them are particularly memorable or nuanced, with only Danny Dixon (J. Trevor Edmond) standing out as someone with a vague personality. 

As the first act spirals out of control, the teens head out into the woods, where they happen across the same witch seen in the opening scenes.  There's a slightly convoluted series of events that leads to Danny stealing some vials of blood (don't ask) and accidentally-on-purpose resurrecting Tommy as the new Pumpkinhead.  There's your setup.  Commence series of deaths.  That's pretty much your story, kids. 

Well, that's not entirely accurate, as there is a side plot involving Danny's father - the town's Judge who was one of the people who murdered Tommy all those years ago.  Upon the resurrection, it's all of the people connected to the Judge who begin dying in slightly-better-than-boring ways, and Sean reinserts himself into the story by finding out some vital clues from Mrs. Osie about how to kill the Pumpkinhead.  The third act actually does pick up a little bit, particularly after Judge Dixon gets offed and the monster starts going after Danny and his friends.  Not quite enough to lull me out of the half-asleep state that I was in while watching the DVD, but it picks up nonetheless.

Time to wrap up this dog and pony show.  The original movie was something that grabbed my attention; Pumpkinhead II...well, it's just kinda there.  Particularly the characters.  Even Punky Brewster herself couldn't save this one, and that says something.  In addition, Tommy/Pumpkinhead himself doesn't look particularly menacing.  He's more laughable than anything else, and LOADS different from the Stan Winston-created masterpiece in the original.  Pacing-wise, it's also very stilted, going from start-to-stop like WWE booking.  With that, I'm all tapped out.

* 1/2 out of ****.  Vanilla to the core.  Avoid.

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

1966
Directed by Harold P. Warren
Starring Harold P. Warren, Diane Mahree, Jackie Neyman, Tom Neyman and John Reynolds

Mark this flick down in the "movies everyone needs to see before they die" list.  Seriously.  Manos is just so oddball, so unbelievably out-there and downright incomprehensible at times that it simply must be seen to be believed.  The fact that it contains a half-man/half-goat with the most hauntingly soothing musical score accompanying his scenes also doesn't hurt in the least bit.  Combined with a good two dozen moments and/or scenes that truly qualify as some of the best "WTF" stuff in cinematic history and you've got a real winner, actual quality of the film or not be damned.

This movie has a long, bloody history that I'll try to give the short, short version of.  It was financed, directed, produced, written by and STARRED Hal Warren, El Paso fertilizer salesman who made a bet with a friend that he could make a horror film ultra-cheap and ultra-easy.  How easy?  He started outlining the script on the napkin at the restaurant where the bet was made.  Hiring actors from local theater groups and a modeling agency, he hammered out a script involving a family being trapped by a polygamous, quasi-Satanic cult in the middle of the desert, rented his film equipment, and shot this movie.  The complete story is much longer, involving the years that the finished film sat obscure and undiscovered before Mystery Science Theater 3000 came along and made it a cult phenomenon, but I think you get the gist.  By this point, this IS a cult film, with a somewhat ironic but also very real fandom despite its badness.  So, what exactly happens in this movie with such an interesting history?
Manos: The Hands of Fate is the very definition of "less is more."  It's 74 minutes long, it has no opening title sequence, and its music is of the very piano-y mood-filled variety.  Put very simply, it's the story of a family that takes a very wrong turn and finds something bad on the other side, only you've never seen any other movie that depicts the trope quite like this.  Character-wise, we're given Warren himself as Michael, the father, with Dianne Mahree and Jackie Neyman as his wife Margaret and young daughter Debbie, respectively.  Their acting skills, as can be expected, are quite suspect, with Mahree in particular coming across like Wendy Torrance -7000, but I digress.  In search of a seemingly mythical "valley lodge," their wrong turn takes them to a creepy old farmhouse on the outskirts of anywhere lorded over by a strange-looking man named Torgo.

Let me tell you guys a little bit about Torgo.  Played by John Reynolds, he's essentially supposed to be a satyr, as clearly evidenced by his herky-jerky walking style complete with horn-infused "creepy music."  His speech pattern is also all over the place.  Say what you want about Reynolds, but you can't say that he didn't dive into this role 1000%.  As such, I've instantly got more respect for him than I do, say, Rooney Mara.  A LARGE portion of the middle of Manos is given to Torgo, as it first simply seems that the guy is smitten with Margaret.  We also see a strange, Night Gallery-esque painting of a moustached man with a demonic dog that Torgo helpfully informs both Michael and the audience is "the Master," the man who ACTUALLY takes care of the house.

After a creepy incident wherein Torgo attempts to seduce Margaret and tell her that the Master intends to make her another one of his wives, we are taken to the back of the house, where there are a bunch of women tied to wooden poles.  Folks, I am not making this up.  These would be those very eponymous "brides," as the Master - whoever the hell he is - is revealed to be a Pagan polygamist preacher.  Whoa, alliteration alert.  This is the beginning of a long night of decided non-horror as the Master eventually comes to life, and he is none too pleased with Torgo attempting to steal his newest wife.

This is a horror movie, but there isn't much in the way of horror.  The body count is essentially non-existant.  What Warren was trying to do with this movie was disturb audiences, and at that...I think he actually succeeds.  It succeeds despite ANYTHING that the intellectual part of your mind can think about, but I defy anyone to watch this flick and not feel the slightest bit skeeved at the idea of a Satanic dude living in the middle of nowhere harvesting wives and (potentially) living forever.  And one who has the ability to turn people into shriveling, burning husks with the use of his magical burning hand/wand.  He can also hypnotize people, a plot device that becomes very important in the epic finale.  Slight spoiler alert.  Tom Neyman, the guy playing the Master, also dives completely into his role.  He's like a silent film villain cranked up to a thousand, granting the movie tons of unintended comedy with his Freddie Mercury moustache and admittedly ridiculous Pagan get-up consisting of a black robe with red "hands" painted on.  Oh, and he's got a fantastic evil laugh.

What else is there?  Well, there is a bit of drama involved with the Master's wives, who argue about what to do with the recently captured females.  One of them suggests that the young Debbie (who is MAYBE eight years old in this film) will eventually grow into a woman and be one of the new wives.  One of the final images in the film shows this very thing, cranking the skeeviness factor up even further. 

Tension-wise, what we've got from here on out is a game of stalling, and that's where a majority of just how crappy this movie is comes from, as the stakes of the movie are spelled out fairly early on - will Michael allow his wife and daughter to be possessions of the Master - and there's virtually nothing in the way of chases or good jump scenes from that point forward.  A roller coaster, this movie is not.

Still, I CAN'T call Manos a total failure.  This movie is frequently listed by a lot of internet geniuses as being one of the worst movies ever made, and I don't think it's even CLOSE to hitting that.  I've seen Nail Gun Massacre, people, and that has this beat by a long shot.  Is it good?  Definitely not.  Its gamut of bad qualities, from bad editing gaffes to bad acting to a very questionable scripting structure ensure to that.  But it actually does hit on its aforementioned intended purposes to disturb, mainly with a combination of its grainy theater-print look and its soul-destroying piano score.  I'll take a movie like this, an ultra-cheap movie with a simple intended purpose, than...well, pretty much any modern blockbuster, that boast budgets 737 times as large but are so passion-free that it makes bile rise into my throat.  Thus, while this movie IS pretty bad, it's essential viewing for that comparison alone.

* 1/2 out of ****.  If you're looking for a good horror movie that will scare and terrify you, don't look to this one.  For a fun night on the couch with friends, few movies are better.

Whispering Corridors (1998)

1998
Directed by Park Ki-hyeong
Starring (get ready) Choi Se-yeon, Kim Gyu-ri, Lee Mi-yeon, Park Yong-soo and Kim Yu-seok

I've been putting off this review for a while.  Not because I dislike the movie or anything; Whispering Corridors, while it has its faults, is one of those horror films that anyone should see sometime in their life just for the sheer level of patience and atmosphere that it employs.  But the story of this flick is not one that lends itself to an entertaining review.  Since my success rate at those has been hovering somewhere around the 22nd percentile these days...what the fuck, I'll go for it.

Stripped down to its bare essentials, this movie is about a group of students at an all-girls' school in South Korea dealing with a haunting.  It shares this theme with its many thematic "sequels" (and there are four of 'em), all of which explore this theme in a very different way with a new director and group of characters.  From what I can gleam at the ever-accurate Wikipedia, this was actually quite the important movie in South Korea as one of the first films released after the military dictatorship subsided.  Hence, the harshly authoritarian tone of the school's teachers, which, if I was moderately intelligent, would be meant to represent the harshness of the formerly controlling government or something.  But you don't pay me for those details.  Let's get to the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've got another movie in the "get the hell going" category here, with a murder scene gracing our presence within the first five minutes.  The victim?  An old bat teacher at the Jookran High School for Girls, who we see get attacked by an unseen force before being found hanging in the schoolyard.  Creepy stuff, and it gets the ball rolling very well.  Our ACTUAL star characters are two of the young students, and the contrast between them makes for quite the interesting plot device.  Folks, without exaggeration, Choi Se-yeon deserved award consideration for her performance in this film; I can't say I'm familiar with her filmography or anything, but her portrayal of the movie's "timid outsider" character is just simply top notch.  Kim Gyu-ri isn't far behind, with her character being a talented painter whose creations gradually take on a more macabre tone as the weird incidents begin to pile up.  Really, though, just about everyone in this movie is top notch.

For most of the movie, we watch this class as they deal with their dictator-like teacher (Park Yong-soo).  For anyone out there who thought that an authority figure couldn't be more hardcore than R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, think again.  Yeah, this dude chews scenery every time he's onscreen, but it's damn necessary, entertaining, and at times downright riveting stuff.  At the end of it all, this IS a horror film, but there isn't much in the way of death or blood or goblins.  It's more all about the mood, the sheer oppressiveness that the director creates with the claustrophobia of the school and the rumors and gossip that the students partake in.  Hence the title.  Deep stuff, I know.

One more note for those considering whether or not to check this movie out for the first time.  I know I've talked a lot about pace in past reviews, but it's doubly important here, because everything here builds up ULTRA-SLOW.  There are long passages in the movie that casual viewers of Asian horror will think are leading to absolutely nowhere, and the first time I watched this flick, I spent the first 45 minutes desperately trying to think of something else to do.  Take my word for it - all of that build actually does lead somewhere, and the final 20 minutes or so of Whispering Corridors qualify as electric stuff.  Suffice to say, this is the height of what is affectionately referred to as the "Ghost School Trilogy" (of five films - don't ask).

Oh, you want a rating?  *** 1/2 out of ****.  It dodges the perfect rating just because the middle section goes on a BIT too long, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a horror flick from the past 20 years or so with a better atmosphere than this.

Reincarnation (2005)

REINCARNATION
2005
Directed by Takashi Shimizu
Starring Yuka, Karina Nose, Marika Matsumoto, Keppei Shiina and Shun Oguri

Longtime readers of the blog are well-aware of my hard-on for the Ju-On/Grudge series and my reverence for its creator, Takashi Shimizu.  Sparing everyone the excruciating details, I find the original Japanese cycle of films (weird-ass Ju-On: Curse 2 notwithstanding) to be the single finest horror franchise of the 21st century.  Saw can eat a dick, these movies know how to bob-and-weave between multiple storylines - sometimes within multiple films - and keep your eyeballs surgically implanted to the screen the entire time.  All the while, everything just makes perfect sense, and every new twist and wrinkle added to the formula just feels totally right, all ending with evil lil' girl Kayako ready to wreak some vengeance at the end of Ju-On: Grudge 2.  I still go to sleep pissed every day that we haven't gotten the follow-up film to that.

Not long after checking out that series, I sought some of Shimizu's other films.  One of them, Marebito, is one of the single best mindfucks I've ever seen.  Unfortunately, the only other Shimizu flick in my library is the one we're looking at today, and boy, is it an exercise in tepidity.  Reincarnation (known as Rinne in Japan) was one of six movies released by producer Taka Ichise as "J-horror theater," and a year after that was one of the "8 films to Die For" in the inaugural After Dark HorrorFest.  Is that still a thing, by the way?  I don't even know.  I can only assume that it got this attention due to the past successes of Shimizu, because the flick certainly isn't that impressive.  With that background info out of the way, let's get moving.

The movie is essentially one of those "multiple timeline" films that always confuse the holy hell out of me, particularly when I'm dealing with a foreign language.  It opens with what is admittedly a pretty messed up scene as college professor Norihasa Omori goes on a rampage, killing 11 hotel guests, his own children, and finally himself - all while he films the entire thing.  It's not quite up there with last week's Ghost Ship massacre, but it's a a pretty nifty way to start a horror film and really grabs your attention.  Unfortunately, it' all downhill from here.

Taking a cue from Ju-On: Grudge 2, Shimizu's plot device is that of a film being shot about the requisite horror movie "past evil" crime.  Keppei Shiina does a decent job as Matsumura, a horror movie director who wants to make a film about the massacre.  In one of the many sterling examples of many genius ideas in the realm of horror, he wants to film said movie in the very same hotel where the murders occurred 35 years earlier.  His key hire for the movie is actress Nagisa Sugiura (Yuka), and it is with this character that we spent the vast majority of the remaining running time.

With so much camera time, Yuka ranks somewhere between Kimberly Beck and Melanie Kinnaman on the likability scale, but unfortunately doesn't have a whole ot of depth beyond what little the movie gives her in the way of development.  She is starring in the movie-within-a-movie as the Professor's doomed daughter, and a good portion of the first third of this movie revolves around the excruciating details of making a movie.  We even get a good cameo from Takako Fuji as a hotel maid, something that made me mark the hell out, but all in all it's pretty slow-moving in the early goings.

So where are we going?  Well, Sugiura starts having nightmares, visions, and hallucinations about the past massacre, eventually believing herself to be the reincarnation of the character that she is playing.  This is interspersed with a "B" story of sorts involving a college student (Karina Nose) and actress Yuka (confusing, I know, but this one is played by Marika Matsumoto), who auditioned for Sugiura's role at the beginning of the film.  Yuka has her own remembrances of a past life, and these two characters go about trying to piece together just what in the hell is going on.

Watching this movie after several years of it laying dormant on my shelf, I couldn't help but think that the movie had been a LOT better if these two characters had been the focus and scrapping the entire "film within a film" aspect, with Nose's papers supporting the theories of reincarnation and Matsumoto's character showing some psychic prowess being the things that drive the movie forward after both characters spend a night in the hotel and experience some weird, wild stuff (second /Johnny Carson joke in as many months).  Don't say that I don't offer constructive criticism.  This was my favorite aspect of the film, and I definitely could have done with more of it. 

Eventually, Reincarnation reaches a crescendo that shoots for the sort of wild, unpredictable finishes that the Grudge movies are known for.  But everything has been thoroughly telegraphed up to that point, and it just falls incredibly flat.  This is where the lack of emotional attachment to any of the main characters really shows; in Ju-On, we got to know Rika like our own sister, and her fate at the end of the film hits you in the gut like nothing else.  My response at the end of this flick?  "Eh, so that happened."

So it is with Reincarnation, a movie that I have now watched on three separate occasions to see if there is an appeal to it that I'm missing.  Alas, there isn't.  Having said that, there are three more recent films by Shimizu that I will have to check out and review soon.  Hopefully, the guy has found his groove back since this one, and this slow, slow, oh-so-slow burn that doesn't burn was just a hiccup instead of a new trend.

* 1/2 out of ****.  Not especialy scary, interesting, or fascinating.  Avoid.

Ghost Ship (2002)

2002
Directed by Steve Beck
Starring Gabirle Byrne, Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard, Desmond Harrington and Isaiah Washington

By and large, horror movies know how to get your attention, but I still have yet to see any horror flick that tops the opening that Ghost Ship has.  It's one of those things that just has to be seen to be believed, and it goes deeper than just a kill scene.  It's just AWESOME, and I'll never forget seeing it in theaters with more than a few audible "holy shit" comments from the other people in that dark room. 

Unfortunately, there's little else in the movie that warrants quite the visceral reaction that the opening scene does, although I do consider myself amongst the grassroots cult fandom that the film has garnered in the decade-plus since its release date.  For starters, it's got an acting crew that seems to actively give a damn about it, something that can't be overstated when it comes to movies of this nature.  It's also stylishly shot and has a twist leading into the "final girl" sequence (yup, take a guess as to who survives out of that actor list above) that admittedly caught me pretty off guard.  In between, it can get pretty dopey, but we horror fans take what we can get.

Our main characters for this go-round of 2002 horror are a boat salvage crew, with the two principals of this bunch being Captain Murphy (Burne) and Maureen Epps (Margulies).  Most of the others pretty much immediately scream "cannon fodder" from the time we meet them, although it's always nice to see Isaiah Washington in supporting roles.  Suffice to say, I'm a big fan.  They're actually a pretty likable bunch, with Margulies in particular really shining as a tough-yet-relatable seafarer.  Or maybe I've just got a thing for women in thick coats.  Anyway, within the first 15 minutes, we get our exposition that sets the plot in motion as weather service pilot Ferriman (Harrington) gives them a tip about a ship that he saw adrift at sea.  Eager to stake their claim and make a quick buck, the crew heads out to the Bering Sea.

The name of the ship is the Antonia Graza, which (surprise) is the same ship that we saw in the aforementioned amazing prologue, set some 40 years before the events of this film.  The crew quickly find that the ship contains a large amount of gold, but it's pretty safe to ascertain that nobody on board is going to be making this particular claim.  The set designers do a really good job making the atmosphere of the Graza seem dark and forboding, making it all the more effective when their salvage ship (derp) explodes, leaving them stranded aboard the GHOST SHIP (ta-dum). 

This is the section of the movie that drags, which is amazing enough, considering that this is what the producers of the movie considered the "slasher movie" phase of the proceedings.  The characters get picked off one by one due to various nefarious spiritual means.  None of them are particularly creative deaths, and a large portion of this segment of the movie consists of milling around peppered in between occasional conversations that serve as red herrings to who the actual perpetrator of all this madness is.  Fortunately, there's also an unexpected ace in the hole in the form of Katie, played by Emily Browning in one of her first movie roles and the ship's resident "friendly" ghost who clues Margulies in to the murderous past of the Graza just before the action-packed third act begins.  Surprise, surprise, it's actually pretty tense stuff, even though it does have one of those eyeroll-inducing twist endings that I'm sick of to the point of delirium.

With that, it's judgment time.  According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, the early drafts of this script were much more psychological as opposed to the out-and-out body count fest that this movie became.  Even with that knowledge, I think Ghost Ship is an okay little film, despite that near-suicidal 30-minute stretch in the middle.  It's got good performances all-around, some likable characters, and one of the most downright "oh shit" scenes in horror history in the first five minutes.  That should be about enough for a recommendation.

*** out of ****.  Nothing groundbreaking, but it's worth checking out.  Give it a shot.