Five Underrated Halloween Day Flicks

Wait, it's Halloween week again?

Before I get going with this week's manifesto, think back to when you were in, say, eighth grade.  Now warp ahead to being a senior in high school.  Remember that time period?  It felt like it took a f**king ETERNITY to get from point A to point B then.  When you're younger, time moves in slow motion.  These days?  It feels like just yesterday that I was still living in my parents' house and this here blog was under one of its previous failed incarnations.  However, I did crank out that life-time Friday the 13th retrospective, something that I can safely call the best thing I've ever done on here.  So there is that.

But yeah.  Adult life.  It flies by, and it sucks.

Anyway, Halloween falls on a Saturday this year.  If I was a kid, no doubt I would be all kinds of jazzed about that prospect.  These days, I always head back to my childhood home for candy detail to soak in the spectacle on the greatest street in the history of Halloweens, but I've told this story many times already.  If you're like me (and if you're reading this blog, count yourself in my mutant category), October 31st is a day when you soak in horror movies every waking moment.  If you're like me, you have a pretty established playlist.  It always consists of Night of the Living Dead, the first two Hellraisers, and then I close out the day with a Halloween I and II nightcap.  But somewhere in the middle of all that, I always toss in a wrinkle, something that people don't typically think of when it comes to Halloween-day viewing.

And that's what we're looking at today, kids.  Yeah.  Lead-in.  Read up for five alternate flicks to check out on Halloween day.

Trick r Treat (2007)
I don't know if it's entirely accurate to call this movie underrated.  Just about everyone who has seen it loves it, and it definitely has that "cult classic" thing going on, but you'd be surprised how many people don't know about this one.  Sitting on the shelf for a long period of time before seeing the light of day on DVD shelves, this is an anthology horror flick that aims to please, presenting a group of stories all based around Halloween day itself - two things that had been neglected for far too long by the film-makers of the world.  Two of the stories are definitely a lot stronger than the others, and I'll leave it up to everyone to decide which ones those are.  But the atmosphere contained within Trick r Treat, as well as "Sam," the puppet/mascot/villain guy in the costume that you saw on the DVD cover, make this a really good movie to check out to break up the monotony of Freddy, Jason, Pinhead and Michael that typically make up the day.

Jack the Ripper (1959)
This is one that I GUARANTEE isn't on anyone else's "Halloween Day watching" list.  Released during rock and roll fever, this is a very, very, VERY fictionalized version of the legendary English serial killer mystery.  And as goofy as this movie is, it played a big part in me becoming something of a Ripperologist myself.  And when I say Ripperologist, I mean that I own exactly two books on the subject and have read them.  I saw this movie LATE at night on AMC many moons ago, and there's just something about it that I really dig.  As I said before, this is 1959 we're talking about, leading us to the unintentional hilarity of an 1888 detective rocking a 1950s-style Elvis do.  With the writers subscribing to the vengeful "harlot killer" murder theory, it unspools its mystery in a pretty satisfying way.  And it's got one of the most out-there endings to a horror movie I've ever seen that actually had to be edited down to protect everyone's eyes back in 1959.

Bay of Blood, a.k.a. Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)
If you've got yourself a gathering of people on Halloween, this is a good one to show just for the history lesson.  More inquisitive people might wonder where the exploits of all the '80s slasher icons came from, and they owe a HUGE debt to this Italian slasher flick directed by Mario Bava.  One of the first true "body count" movies in existence, this movie shocked audiences in its day with its rapid fire, slam-bang, one gory/graphic murder after another style of suspense.  It lends itself really well to Halloween-day viewing for first-time watchers, something that I can report with my expert eyes (LOL) as I watched the movie for the first time on Halloween day for that very purpose.  Now, I will admit that there is a pretty long section in the middle involving various characters playing and conning each other that almost derails the mood entirely, but the first 20 minutes combined with the final series of shocks are a real crowd pleaser.  Check this out.

House by the Cemetery (1981)
More Italian horror and splatter, courtesy of one of the masters of the genre, Lucio Fulci.  When you're looking at a movie suitable for viewing on Halloween day, it goes without saying that "party movies" are high on the list.  But this is one movie that will just scare the living daylights out of you.  It combines several of the best-known horror tropes out there - we've got a haunted house, a zombie, and a mad scientist all rolled up into one somewhat incomprehensible but always tense entry in Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy.  Of course, a big part of the plot of this movie is something that would have absolutely traumatized me had I see the movie when I was younger, as it gives us perhaps the most literal translation of the "monster in the basement" story (involving a goddamned KID as the victim, no less) in any movie I've ever seen.  BRRRRR.  Give this one a watch if you want to give your Halloween party-goers a serious case of the creeps.

and finally...

Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)
It's highly likely that the original Return of the Living Dead ranks pretty high on most aficiandoes' best-movies lists, and rightfully so.  Charles O'Bannon's movie had a simultaneously humorous and creative take on the zombie movie (and it feels infinitely refreshing these days).  But for mysterious reasons, I've always preferred the sequel, even though I know that it's a FAR less impactful flick.  What can I say?  I just like goofy.  And this is most assuredly one GOOFY movie, complete with zombies dropping one liners and a plot involving a zombie teenage bully that must be seen to be believed.  This flick is just total fun from start to finish - there's no social gobbledygook that zombie movies (and TV shows) typically get way too caught up in, instead going for total entertainment.  Whether it hits or misses for you is a bit iffy, but this movie hits for me in a big way.  And it's even got a punk rock version of "Monster Mash" over the end credits.

You know the drill by now.  No closing paragraph.  Stay safe, have some good scares, and VIVA HORROR.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Series Retrospective

Throughout 2015, I've reviewed R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series and the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" anthologies.  Both of those particular items were ubiquitous with my childhood in the early-to-mid '90s.  Obviously, they were with many others as well, since one of these now has a movie with Jack Black.  But when it comes to the bygone era of actual horror stuff aimed at the youth market, there is nothing that I remember quite so fondly from my youth as Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Ah, Are You Afraid of the Dark?  Airing originally on Canadian television and getting the licensed simulcast treatment on Nickelodeon, this was a kids' anthology horror show that was everywhere during its peak years.  If you weren't watching this on Saturday nights, you might as well have been buying offshoot Skidz pants from K-Mart, because you were out of it man.  Every Monday, there was a group of 4-5 kids in my grade who would gather by the big stack of board games in the back of the room to hash over each new episode.  And when I say hash over, I mean hash over.  Like, it rivaled anything Robin Williams did in Dead Poets Society.  We'd read into these things just as much as we read into pro wrestling, and folks, for my collection of grade school bros...that's a lot.

The experience of watching an episode of this show on Saturday night really was something else.  For starters, it had a framing device to die for.  Taking a cue from The Twilight Zone, what we had here was a "story within a story," as a group of kids - all from different schools, oftentimes with different groups of friends - would gather in the woods every Friday night to tell scary stories to each other.  As a kid, this was one of those ideas that seemed so inherently cool that it hurt not to have your own bunch of friends to do this with.  And man, how awesome were these kids' parents?  Meeting up in the middle of a goddamn forest...at midnight...unsupervised...try this shit today and you'd be turned in to child services.  It's also for this reason that I think we could DESPERATELY go for an Are You Afraid of the Dark? redux.  Put this concept on TV today, kids would still think it was cool.  Especially if you gave the kids distinctive personalities like they did here.

While the stories on the show were the main draw, weirdly enough, me and my group of friends found ourselves talking about the kids a lot more.  First and foremost was the badass name of the club - The Midnight Society.  The rule was simple.  Each member could bring in a new member, who would be pulled in to the meeting place (while blindfolded, holy fuck) and do their best to scare the crap out of everyone else.  If they did, they were in.  This was the setup for the first episode of the series, as resident nice guy David brings his friend Frank to a meeting.  A bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, Frank has an ace up his sleeve in the form of the Dr. Vink character, a mad scientist-y type guy who would show up in all of Frank's stories from that point forward. 

One of the real treats of the series was in noticing how the character traits of the members of the various Society members carried over into their stories.  The founder of the group was Gary, and it's likely this guy that people who watched the show during its initial run remember the most.  Kind of a bookish nerdy guy, Gary has a big interest in magic and sorcery.  As such, most of his stories revolve around magic and a phony-baloney magic shop owner named Sardo.  I absolutely LOVED whenever Sardo showed up in these episodes, if for no other reason than his catchphrase was fun to say (that's Sar-DO - No Mister, accent on the DO).  There was David and Kristen, the resident members with a romantic interest from the early seasons, the latter of which was a prissy princess who liked to tell dark versions of fairy tales.  There was Betty Ann, a sweet girl-next-door type whose innocent exterior hid a dark side, and thus liked to play up the macabre and morbid as much as possible in her yarns.  In the later seasons, we got Tucker, Gary's little brother and all-around bastard kid who told a lot of stories about families facing danger and coming together.  And then there was Kiki, a spunky tomboy and moralist who liked stories that dealt with kids dealing with their own choices while dispensing some African-American flavor.

One story introduction followed by dust being tossed into a fire later, and we were ready to be enthralled.

Random bit from Lick Ness Monster's childhood: When I was in fourth grade, I wrote my own Are You Afraid of the Dark? story where I (yes, I - Jon Lickness) got a stab at getting into the Midnight Society.  The story I whipped out was about one of those abandoned houses that seemingly every small town has where all of the kids are afraid to enter or approach.  One of the early bits had a kid going into said house and being horrified that the walls started to bleed before darkness shot out of the shadows and enveloped him.  Yeah, I was one fucked up kid.  Of course, everyone in the Society loved "The Tale of the Bleeding Mansion."  Especially Betty Ann, who was so impressed with my storytelling prowess and general coolness that she wanted to date me.

Ladies and gentlemen, my first ever attempt at self-serving fan fiction.

With that lovely bit of waxing out of the way, let's go through some of the notable tropes, characters and episodes of the series.

First and foremost have got to be the recurring characters Dr. Vink and Sardo.  Vink showed up three times as a villain in an awesome trilogy of episodes where the doctor would bring his trademark inventions to hapless kids and summarily unleash them.  The best of these is undoubtedly the season three finale "The Tale of the Dangerous Soup," where Vink has managed to find a way to extract the liquid form of fear from his hapless victims utilizing an ancient gargoyle statue, putting the fear into stew concoctions and selling them at his restaurant.  The episode stars a young Neve Campbell as a restaurant employee, and it's got some truly nightmarish bits involving the various characters' fears being played out.  Freaky-deaky Sardo was in four episodes, and this guy was a different beast - not an out-and-out villain, he was really much more of a clown, selling cursed artifacts or powerful magical tools to the hapless kids in his stories while being totally oblivious to the carnage.  These two long-running characters eventually met up in the team-up story "The Tale of Cutter's Treasure," where Dr. Vink makes a babyface turn in an excellent two-parter starring Charles S. Dutton as an evil pirate hoping for one last showdown with a worthy adversary.

Unlike Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark? didn't shy away from moral lessons.  This starts in the second episode, the immortal Betty Ann yarn "The Tale of the Laughing in the Dark."  Kids in my age bracket remember Zeebo the Clown and the main character's dickish reaction to stealing Zeebo's nose.  The third act, with the kid getting his just desserts, was pretty freaky stuff for a ten-year-old to process.  Another good example was Kiki's Season 3 story "The Tale of Apartment 214," where a teenage girl has just moved into a new apartment building and becomes friends with an old woman who lives in an adjacent apartment.  After breaking a promise, she finds out the old woman's true identity and learns a big-time lesson in the process.  But relax people, there's a happy ending.  And then there's "The Tale of the Crimson Clown," where Gary uses a story to teach his younger brother about being a good kid with something that I can safely say was the most horrific thing I'd seen on any medium at the time I first saw it.  Folks...the bratty kid in this story gets such a long, drawn-out, creepy punishment that it really must be seen to be believed.  And they showed this stuff to CHILDREN.  No wonder we're all so messed up.

The episode list really does read like a timeline of my childhood from those years - there are a legit 20 episodes that I would give ***+ if I was grading them on my movie scale, and amazingly enough, they still hold up well through adult eyes. 

"The Tale of the Super Specs" - Sardo's first story, where Gary proves to the Midnight Society that he hasn't lost his touch by giving us the first (da-dum) BAD ENDING in the series.

"The Tale of the Dark Music" - Maybe the single most scary episode of the series, where a friendly paper boy discovers that the door in his basement is a gateway to hell every time that music plays.

"The Tale of the Frozen Ghost" - Three words: Melissa Joan Hart.  Two more words: I'M COLD.  Brrrrrr.

"The Tale of the Watcher's Woods" - A young Jewel Staite guest stars in this episode about a trio of witches who have eternally held up in the woods near a summer camp, and an ancient entity that lords over the wilderness.

"The Tale of the Dollmaker" - Google this episode title and just look at the image that comes up.  This story about a dollhouse that transforms people into living dolls is something else.

"The Tale of the Quiet Librarian" - Proving once again that silence is always creepier than LOUD NOISES, this is a story for every kid who has ever feared their old, crotchery library wench.

"The Tale of the Fire Ghost" - Many of the Are You Afraid of the Dark? ghost stories were particularly strong, and this one is no different.  Don't look into the fire, people.

"The Tale of the Dead Man's Float" - This one came out near the end of the show's run, and what a way to go out.  An undead zombie that drags unsuspecting kids to a watery grave?  Count me in.

It goes on and on.  Without a doubt, Are You Afraid of the Dark? qualifies as one of the finest quality kids' shows of all time.  Its quality is such that I still peruse Youtube playlists or, on the nights when Frontier Internet feels like saying "No Mas" at 7:00 p.m., digging out my season DVDs.  This was a show for children that actually respected its audience, a common occurence at the time it aired but something that is at an unbelievable premium these days.  If they scared the crap out of the kids, the people behind this show didn't worry about it.  They knew that being scared is cathartic, a release of tension that can't be matched by any other type of story.  And if they could make you want to be the cool kids telling the stories in the process of give you a nice little moral lesson, that was just an added bonus.  It's a show from a bygone era that is very sadly bygone, and one that is treasured for a reason.

I guess what I'm saying is that Joe Bob wants you to check it out, people.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

1989
Directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard
Starring Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell (sort of), Beau Starr and Wendy Kaplan

Time for the annual October Halloween franchise review.  Every October, I always toss one more of these out, which means that if I'm still doing this blog a few years from now I'm going to have to watch Rob Zombie's shitfests again, but what are you gonna do.  For those keeping score, here's the rundown of the series up until this point:

1 - John Carpenter presents a lesson in slow burning terror.  Pace, pace, pace, and sheer horror perfection.
2 - Darker and more slashery than the first, not quite as good, but still classic.
3 - Sloppy attempt at going the "anthology" route - no Myers and a haphazard story.
4 - Surprisingly good - Myers is back with a vengeance and plenty of likable characters.

So there you go.  Halloween 4 really was a very effective little mini-reboot for the series back in 1988; they tried to turn the series into an anthology with the third film, but people weren't having it and I can't say I blame them because that flick is really hard to get into.  Not because "OMG it ain't Myers" - just because the movie really isn't all that good or interesting.  Thus, while they went with the familiar formula with the fourth movie, they added just enough new wrinkles to make it seem like something totally fresh.  We had a burned and scarred Dr. Loomis, slight interludes of a teen romance subplot, and a pair of excellent girls-next-door in Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell.  It also had an ending that left us with a major cliffhanger and plenty of promise when the next sequel was announced.

And...we got this.  The mistakes of Halloween 5 were numerous, so much so that all of the momentum that the series regained was lost and it would sit on the shelf for another six years.  So where did it go wrong?  Well, play like Mr. Rogers' third-wall neighbor and come along.

As previously mentioned, the last movie had a twist ending that left audiences shell-shocked.  After resuming his murderous rampage, Michael Myers is cornered by an angry mob and shot multiple times, falling into a nearby mine.  What THAT movie didn't show is that he manages to crawl away from that situation and is found by a hermit, pulled into the guy's house and nursed back to health.  How's that for plot convenience?  Meanwhile, Jamie Lloyd - Michael's eight-year-old niece and the daughter of Laurie Strode - allegedly goes insane after returning home, stabbing her mother as a shocked Dr. Loomis screams "why??" with voracity that Nancy Kerrigan herself would envy.

And that's where we're at today, kids.  A year has passed, meaning that it's October 30th in Haddonfield, Illinois.  Michael springs to life and kills the hermit.  Yes, folks, he's back and he's pissed.  Completely separate from that, Jamie is now in a child psychiatric ward...and she's mute.  Now, admittedly, audiences were still invested in Jamie's story, and Danielle Harris was still up to the task of making her part work in spite of the major hindrance that the script places on her.  But a large part of what made that fourth movie way better than it had any right to be was Harris' everygirl relatability and charm, something rare in and of itself for a child actor and rarer still for a child actor in a horror film.  Taking away her ability to talk until the absolute final moments of the film was a HUGE mistake, and we're already behind the 8-ball.

Which brings me to mistake #2 that the movie never quite recovers from.  In the fourth film, Ellie Cornell was fantastic as Jamie's foster sister Rachel.  Yeah, her plot line with her philandering boyfriend did occasionally veer into melodrama, but she was a nice, tough, classic "final girl" that we were fully into when she was the only thing standing between Myers and Jamie.  This movie *SPOILER ALERT THAT NO ONE CARES ABOUT* gets rid of her in the first trimester with hardly a whimper.  Now, Nightmare on Elm Street 4 did a similar thing by getting rid of Kristen Parker early, but that movie had a compelling side character in Alice Johnson to pick up the slack.  And this movie...has Tina.

Oh, Tina.  Played by Wendy Kaplan, it's kind of hard to describe Tina's character.  She's Rachel's best friend and seems to have kind of a surrogate sister thing going on with Jamie.  The script also calls for her to be all kinds of quirky, but instead she just comes off as Doug Funnie's sister with none of the redeeming qualities. 

Plot wise, it should be pretty clear what we have here.  Donald "King of the Universe" Pleasence is once again here as Sam Loomis, chewing up the scenery in his usual powerhouse performance as he keeps vigil waiting for his proverbial white whale to show up.  It's one of this movie's saving graces, as the dichotomy between Loomis and Myers is one of those things that is wholly unique to the Halloween franchise.  Myers soon shows up in Haddonfield, adding a couple more tallies to the death toll in the aftermath of Rachel's death in the form of Tina's greaser boyfriend and a couple random friends who head away to a shed in the midst of this movie's requisite "costume party" sequence.  We've also got a pair of quite literal Keystone Cops whose antics are accompanied by clowny horns.  No, folks, not kidding.  It's just as compelling as it sounds.  And we've got the added mystery of a mysterious man following Myers around, a guy whose entire proof of existence is in the camera shots of his steel-toed shoes.

Now, according to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, this guy was originally supposed to be Michael's brother.  For whatever reason, they decided to leave his identity ambiguous, so until the ending sequence his presence is entirely inconsequential.  What IS important, however, is that this movie doesn't particularly work as a thriller.  We're still into Jamie, but the anciliary characters here are nowhere near as good as they were in the last film, and that hurts in a big way.  We get the beginning chapter in the "humanization" of Michael as Loomis begins to suspect that someone else is controlling him, something that really hurts the mystique of the character as he was originally conceived as the Shape of Evil.  By the time the finale hits in the Myers house, with the big guy chasing Jamie across three stories (including one admittedly very nifty bit in a heating duct), we're too numbed by everything we've been presented with to care too much.

So yes, folks, this is a mess of a movie.  I was always impressed with the big three franchise's ability to churn out sequels in quick succession that seemed polished and professional, but this one has "rush job" written all over it.  Even more frustrating is the fact that the weird plot elements introduced here, with all of this outside influence and the idea that Myers isn't acting of his own free will, would come back to severely haunt the writers as the series progressed the next time around.  Thus, it's not a surprise to me in the least bit that there were so many different creative directions clashing by the time Halloween 6 went into production.

* 1/2 out of ****.  A sad missed opportunity to really kick this series into high gear after a successful jump-start, and the expectedly good performances from Pleasence and Harris aren't nearly enough to save it from the big mistakes.

What the f**k is that?: Jason Unmasked

Everyone in my age bracket who saw their first Friday the 13th movie as a kid remembers the first time they ever saw Jason Voorhees without the hockey mask.  For me, it was The New Blood, when my reward for laughing and gasping through 90 minutes' worth of this big brute in a blue suit butchering countless teens in the woods was the fantastic makeup stuff that John Carl Buechler and his talented team were able to cook up, complete with a well-deserved "holy shit" from my brother watching the movie with me at the time. 

Every movie in the franchise eventually features Jason unmasked.  Most of the time, it happens at the end, but there are a couple films in the series that give away this money shot at the beginning.  I'm guessing that those particular directors subscribed to Kane Hodder's theory about the character, spelled out in "Crystal Lake Memories" where he expounded that Jason just isn't as scary after he loses the mask.  No matter how grandly unveiled and grotesque they make the guy's face, it's the ominous presence of that mask that makes the character.  I'm actually inclined to agree, but this is nonetheless one of the series' tropes that I'm most fond of.  I admire the various takes that each screenwriter and director had on Jason's actual LOOK; some of them went a bit more human, some of them went for as freaky and gross as humanly possible, and one of them gave him goddamn hair and eyebrows.  Oh, and by the time it was time for Jason to go to hell, he looked like a sponge.  Don't ask.

Thus, it's time for a new countdown in the 2015 35th Anniversary Friday the 13th Countdown of Countdowns.  For the record, this is going to be the sixth such countdown this year, and there is one more forthcoming.  I think seven is a decent number for this thing, because it's just such a great number.  Seven...dwarves, seven.  Seven little chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' all the sunflowers on my uncle's ranch, and you're dreaming of Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby.

THE TOP FIVE JASON "UNMASKED" LOOKS
5.  Initial Undead Jason - Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
There are all kinds of fan theories about just what kind of being Jason Voorhees is, but the most commonly held theory - including by yours truly - is that he is a deranged human in Parts II-IV before being brought back to electrical life in this movie.  As such, director C.J. Graham had the task of showing us the effect that being buried for many years had on Jason, and he doesn't wuss out with the grisly details.  The opening bits of Jason Lives might be the best attention-grabber in the series, and a large part of it is in Jason's look and newfound invincibility.  A+++.

4.  Wet Sponge Jason - Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
A controversial choice, but I'm sticking to it.  I spent many years hating JGTH, but I've turned the corner on it in recent years after multiple viewings on AMC Fearfest.  Unfortunately, it's biggest flaw is still there - we don't see a whole lotta Jason IN the movie, but when he's there, Kane Hodder makes it count.  A few years had passed since the last time we saw him, and the interpretation this time - yeah, it was unique.  Lumpy and weird, big and shambling, this one was something else for the movie where Sean Cunningham decided to rip off The Hidden. 

3.  Farmer Brown Jason - Friday the 13th Part II
Way back in 1981, no one at Paramount Pictures had a clue that Jason Voorhees would grow to become a massive pop culture phenomenon.  Hell, they thought it was only going to last ONE movie, with plans on making the surviving girl the villain in the next one.  Thus, they decided to go as realistic as possible when it came to crafting a guy who had survived in a backwoods shack for over 20 years, giving him long hair, overalls, and a big, saggy drooping eye.  It's not an impossibly disfigured look, and that almost makes it scarier.  Folks...you might actually run into someone who looks like this.

2.  Mongoloid Alien Jason - Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter
I'm sure that people have noticed that TFC ranks pretty high on almost all of these lists, so consider this foreshadowing for the next list of the best movies in the franchise.  But as for THIS category, this is my personal favorite of the "Human Jason" looks.  After Farmer Ted, Voorhees was given a major makeover for the following film in the franchise, and the look was perfected in this one.  Water damage, an expansion on the big drooping eye, and just the slightest hint of stuntman Ted White's face bleeding into the look made the amazing finale to this movie pop even more.

1.  Battle Damage Jason - Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
All these years later, and my first exposure to Jason Unmasked is still my favorite.  Of course, at that time I didn't even know all of the lore associated with his look in this movie.  Nonetheless, John Carl Buechler had a clear goal when it came to Jason's look here - reflect everything that has happened to him.  Thus, not only does he look cool here, he looks like a badass Swamp Thing even in masked form.  When that mask comes off, it was a treat to pick out the details; the axe shot from Part III and the long-ways machete slice from Part IV are reflected in the makeup, and it's simply awesome.

Folks, we're almost there.  Six down, one to go, so stay tuned for that final Countdown of Countdowns the week of the final Friday the 13th of 2015.  Ch ch ch ch...

Wicked Little Things (2006)

2006
Directed by J.S. Cardone
Starring Lori Heuring, Scout Taylor-Compton, Chloe Grace Moretz, Geoffrey Lewis and Ben Cross

It looks like I've already reached the depths of Netflix.  Wicked Little Things was one of the much-ballyhooed "8 Films to Die For" in the original After Dark Horrorfest, which tells this guy several things.  Namely, it was either going to be a woefully underappreciated gem, or really, severely misguided.  95 minutes later, I'm going with Option #2. 

This is just a really STRANGE movie, and one that I'm not entirely sure how to explain.  It's kind of a zombie movie (I know - ugh), but it's one unlike any that I've ever seen.  They're also...ghosts, I guess, which makes this kind of in the same vein as some of Lucio Fulci's weird materializing zombie epics, only about .0000005% as good.  In addition to that, it's got Scout Taylor-Compton a year before she would be saddled with the task of playing Rob Zombie's version of Laurie Strode, getting to play Zombie's Laurie Strode under a different name.  In short, likability = nonexistant.  AND it has Chloe Moretz a few years before hitting it big as Hit Girl and a pair of very well-received horror remakes that will go unnamed, mostly due to the fact that I refuse to watch them out of principle.  Thus, while this isn't a very good flick, it's interesting, so let's get to it.

The flick opens up with one of those flashback sequences that horror film-makers seem to adore, giving us the "past evil" in "show don't tell" form as a cruel mine baron is employing and exploiting a large group of immigrant children in rural Carlton, Pennsylvania.  A horrific accident soon buries all of the children alive in what I'm sure is meant to be some sort of symbolism that I'm too dumb to pick up on. 

Warp forward 80 years, where the mine is long closed and that evil baron was acquitted for his crimes.  Meet the Tunny family - mother Karen (Lori Heuring), teenage daughter Sarah (Compton) and young-'un Emma (Moretz).  The trio have just dealt with a long illness and death of the father, and are moving into his family house in Carlton because reasons.  All of which immediately fitting into the pre-disposed horror movie family roles that should be familiar to anyone reading this.  The mother is protective and concerned, the teen is rebellious and all kinds of pissed off about living in Hicksville, the daughter is percocious and scared by all of the weird local rituals and goings-on.  For her part, Moretz really is the star here, no matter how milquetoast her role, and it isn't hard to figure out why she would eventually be a breakout star and why Compton would soon be doomed to Rob Zombie-land.

And...that's pretty much it.  From here, the family starts to hear sounds at night, Emma wanders off into the forest and finds the old mine, and the strange ritual that many of the townsfolk have involving painting blood on their doors is discussed a few times.  We meet an anciliary character named Hanks, played by Ben Cross in full scenery-chewing mode, who seems to be the guy looking out for the Turner family in between whatever it is he does for a living besides speaking in hushed tones about the ghoulies that go bump in the night.  All throughout, the presentation is just weird in a way that you can't take your eyes off of the train wreck.

The movie essentially has two subplots.  Unfortunately, one of them involves Compton's character, as she adjusts to the teenage life in Carlton.  Taking place in one 30-second scene, she rebukes the advances of the local douchebag while simultaneously becoming interested in his nice guy friend, leading to a few scenes where the group sits around in cars, listens to heavy metal, smokes doobies and partake in some make-out sessions.  It's just as captivating as it sounds.  The other is the rather haphazard way that we find out that, yes, the mountains of Carlton, Pennsylvania are occupied by honest-to-goodness zombie children who come out every night to feed, and that the blood on the doors is way of appeasing their hungry spirits. 

Oh, and both Hanks and the Turner family are related to the zombies, and thus can't be harmed by them.  Don't ask.

If you can't tell, I wasn't particularly into this movie.  I WILL give the movie some credit when it comes to the third act, as the local land developer baron (also conveniently related to the guy who was responsible for that mine accident all those years ago) finds himself locked up with Hanks, Karen and Sarah, leading up to a five-minute sequence that actually consists of some pretty nifty horror and a whole heap o' stage blood literally poured out on the cast.  It lulls the audience out of their stupor, but it's too little too late.  Ultimately, with me, it always comes down to characters, and this movie doesn't captivate you with them.  A fatal flaw in a genre that depends on emotional investment leading up to mortal danger, and it's the fatal strike here.

* 1/2 out of ****.  I suspect that the only reason Netflix coughed up the cash to have this one in their library is Moretz, and it shows, because everything else is an interesting-yet-forgettable mismash.  Skip this one.

The Dentist (1996)

1996
Directed by Brian Yuzna
Starring Corbin Bernsen, Linda Hoffman, Michael Stadvec, Ken Foree, Christa Sauls and Virginya Keehne

The Dentist is one of those horror movies that everyone should check out for an example that the axiom "it's not what a movie is about, it's HOW it goes about it" is almost always true.  The concept of the flick, to me, sounds mind-numbingly stupid.  Dentist discovers his wife cheating on him, goes on murderous rampage.  But the slow burn transformation that Corbin Bernsen goes through throughout the flick is actually very well done, to the point that the final bits actually do bear a little bit of weight.  So score five points for the axiom writers of the world.

Having said that...yes, some concepts are so bad that no amount of dressing up can save them.  Gigli, I'm looking at you.  One final word: I'm writing this review off two hours of sleep, so don't be surprised if it's brief.  The Fun Size Reviews might be making their return.

Bernsen plays Dr. Alan Feinstone, successful dentist who lives in a bigass house and has a hot wife.  Both of those things are about to be threatened, the latter of which when he discovers his spouse Brooke (Hoffman) cheating on him with the pool boy Matt (Stadvec).  The early goings of the movie have Feinstone tracing the movements of Brooke and Matt, getting into trouble by killing his wife's friend's dog, all kinds of fun stuff.  There's also this creepy bit when he begins operating on the teeth of beauty queen April Reign (Sauls - and while it's been several years since I've seen the movie, I remember her being smokin' hot), and then operating on some other stuff if you know what I mean.  It's a weird section - he hallucinates that April is his really his wife, or something, and then goes about fondling her and removing articles of clothing, followed by having a hell of a time explaining that to the woman's manager.  Fun stuff.

Moving right along, it's time to get revenge on the people responsible for his misery.  Without doubt, these are the movie's money sequences.  The "teeth-pulling" scene with Brooke is one of the most cringe-worthy things I've seen in any horror movie, followed by the quick stabbing murder of Matt that shocks us back to reality.  At this point, I would like to say a few words about the performance of Bernsen in this movie.  In short, it really is something.  This movie had a budget of $2.5 million, missed theaters and went straight to video, but it had some solid people behind it and they definitely had a dude in front of the camera who didn't half-ass it.  Bernsen INVESTS into Alan Feinstone, to the point where you don't condone the guys actions in the least bit but you can see the gears turning, slowly grinding to a hault and giving way to total insanity.  Even when he hits that last point, it's hard to laugh at him.  So another five points to the movie there.

In between all of this madness, there are the usual bits of police procedural stuff - this time represented by Ken Foree.  He has a made up name for his character, but I refuse to call him anything else.  Foree is a dude who is well-known to horror veterans as one of the stars of the original Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chain Saw Massacre III, and he's alright here.  Truthfully, though, these bits just kind of bog the movie down.  It's hard to focus your attention on other things when Bernsen is so damn good at being batshit insane, so call it flaccid penis syndrome by proxy.  Whoa, what?

Amazingly enough, the stuff that I've talked about so far has pretty much led us directly to the climax.  Your setup: Paula (that would be neighbor lady who was also enjoying some pool time with Matt) and Sarah (a teenager played by Virginya Keehne in the office to get her braces taken out) both have encounters with Alan that have very different results.  If I remember correctly, this movie has an insanely long "Final Girl" sequence, something like 20 minutes, with Sarah running away from Alan in the office and looking great doing it.  Salacious statement time: women of the world, one look that needs to come back is the mid-'90s short skirt and thigh-high socks combo.  Lick Ness Monster approves.

Awkward summary time:  This is actually a pretty damn good movie, despite those boring cop bits and its admittedly out-there premise, because the execution is spot-on.  Solid direction, an awesome performance from Bernsen and some solid horror stuff raise this material to a level that it really had no right getting to.  Now, there IS a sequel to this movie, and I'm a little hesitant to check it out because this movie had the benefit of the plot device of Alan Feinstone actually GOING insane.  I just can't picture it being quite as resonant having him as a nutjob from the beginning, but that's just me.  Maybe it's really good.

*** out of ****.  Not gonna win any awards or anything, but for a lesson in low-budget film-making with plenty of heart and energy, this is one of those "101" lessons. 

Dead Silence (2007)

2007
Directed by James Wan
Starring Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg and Michael Fairman

Another movie from the "I can't believe I haven't seen this until now" file, although I've gotta admit...I kinda wish it still was.  Dead silence isn't a terrible movie by any stretch, but it's not terribly GOOD, either.  I remember that it was released with a ton of buzz and publicity, as pretty much any flick with James Wan's name attached to it has been since the release of Saw.

Ah, James Wan.  Like him or hate him, I don't think it can be denied that this dude has been the single most influential guy in horror for the past decade.  With Saw and its never-ending series of sequels, in addition to the Insidious films, The Conjuring, Annabelle, Demonic, the list of big-time horror movies with his name attached to them is pretty impressive.  And now he's attached to the Fast and Furious movies, which are as downright terrifying as anything listed above in the fact that they continue to gross as much as the GDP of a small country despite being terrible.  I base that astute analysis on the one movie in the franchise that I've seen (2 Fast 2 Furious) and the bias that I can't stand Vin Diesel and I'm not a car guy.  What CAN'T be denied, however, is that Wan has a unique style that quickly got duped by endless imitators in the spate of "evil ghost" movies that followed in his wake. 

And in between Saw and evil ghosts...there was Dead Silence.  How's that for a segue?

Like pretty much any horror with a brisk 90-minute-or-so running time, this movie wastes absolutely no time getting going, introducing us to James Ashen (Kwanten) and his wife Lisa (Laura Regan).  This loving couple has just received a very curious gift in the mail - a puppet named "Billy" in an unmarked package.  When James leaves to get some take-out Chinese, Lisa begins hearing strange noises emanating from the puppet...and when James comes back, he finds his wife in the kind of severe mutilated state reserved only for the books of Clive Barker.  It's actually a pretty impressive set piece, so +1 to the movie in that regard.

At this point, the character that serves as the proverbial cock blocker of all fun shows up.  Played by Donnie Wahlberg, police detective Jim Lipton exists in this movie solely to be an annoyance to James and the audience, giving his best Keystone Cops-style routine whenever he's onscreen as he smarms it up trying to attach the death to James.  I also need to point out that Ryan Kwanten is just not very good as the lead guy here.  This role - a husband who has just lost his wife - calls for way more emotion than this guy was willing to dole out, so the good will that we got with the set piece is lost in short order.  Unfortunately, the movie only regains it in short bursts from here on out.

James heads back to his hometown of Ravens Fair after discovering that this is where the curious puppet arrived from, quickly meeting his estranged father (Bob Gunton) and his much younger wife Ella (Valletta).  The story of familial ties really is the backdrop to the rest of the story, however, as the movie begins to flip-flop between two alternate story lines.  First, there is James and the odyssey of the puppet, as he discovers that Billy belonged to legendary local puppeteer Mary Shaw - subject of a local nursery rhyme that isn't quite "1, 2, Freddy's coming for you" on the horror movie coolness scale.  Needless to say, the ol' bat REALLY liked puppets.  Story line number two involves Wahlberg sporadically showing up to harass James, believing his trek back to Ravens Fair to be an attempt to bury evidence of his wife's murder.

As you can tell by this point, I wasn't particularly enthralled by the story of this movie.  After countless other James Wan movies, this really did feel like more of the same.  A bit unfair, since this movie preceded the meat of his "ghost movie" output, but what can you do.  That would all be a moot point, however, if I thought the movie worked as a thriller.  It does, but only in short spurts.

See, this is one of those movies that is pretty heavy on back story.  Mary Shaw is your star villain in this movie, with the puppets - Billy and otherwise (spoiler alert) - serving as her revenge against James' family line after she was blamed for the murder of their ancestor Michael, who heckled her during a performance many years ago.  Freddy Krueger-style-mob justice scene later, and Mary is a vengeful ghost.  There are moments when we're supposed to be creeped out by Billy himself, and this effective...sometimes.  Then, there are moments where the ghost of Mary Shaw appears to James, and this is effective...sometimes.  But not really.  In essence, what we get here are a bunch of startling "LOUD NOISES" scares that have become very prevalent in recent years, and it's not any more effective of a tactic here than it is in anything else. 

This is also a movie that likes to pile on the twists and exposition, especially in the final trimester.  By that point, I was tired of story.  Note that I haven't even touched on the subplot involving the elderly couple who were around when Mary Shaw was alive.  You can Paypal me fifty bucks if you really want the dirty details on that - or look it up on Wikipedia, whichever you prefer.

There really isn't much more to share about Dead Silence.  Having seen a couple of Wan's later flicks, he would definitely perfect the formula that he started here in his subsequent efforts.  This movie is a little too scatterbrained for its own good, with too many characters and subplots crammed into its lean running time.  Coupled up with a cast that isn't terribly interesting, and you've got an only intermittently scary movie that's hard to get into.

** out of ****.  Admittedly, the puppets and Shaw are pretty effective villains.  However, everything else lets that premise down.  Avoid this one.