80's American Horror Part Thirty-Eight

HALLOWEEN II

(1981)

Dir - Rick Rosenthal

Overall: MEH

 

As is the case with nearly all sequels to paramount horror films, putting one's thoughts to the side as to how much it takes away from the original is a key component in enjoying it.  John Carpenter's seminal Halloween ended ambiguously, with the Boogeyman possibly still out there.  To pick up exactly where that film left off and show an audience exactly how he is still out there does all the work for us.  With the added narrative twist that Michael Myers and Laurie Strode are siblings, Halloween II makes some unfortunate bogus choices.  Carpenter wisely refused to direct, though he and screenwriting partner Debra Hill were coerced into writing the script and the first film's director later admitted that the story here was concocted under the influence of both alcohol and indifference.  Rick Rosenthal stepping in to mirror Carpenter's style and make the most out of the materiel does in fact do good work.  Most of the scenes play out to total silence and much atmospheric mileage is gotten out of the deserted hospital setting.  It fails to overcome the inherent slasher holdups though, meaning it is primarily just another slow, logic-less waiting game for people to get violently killed.

 

NIGHT OF THE COMET

(1984)

Dir - Thom Eberhardt

Overall: MEH

From a premise standpoint, writer/director Thom Eberthardt's Night of the Comet is rather solid.  A parody of both post-apocalyptic movies and valley girl tropes, (both of which the 1980s shamelessly indulged in), it takes a deliberately silly approach to its subject matter.  This is refreshing in and of itself and makes for some wonderful set pieces like a Dawn of the Dead-styled shopping spree interrupted by machine-gun toting, zombie Goth kids.  Eberthardt's script makes room for some tender moments as well, fleshing out the characters to where the weight of being left to fend for themselves in a barren, lonely landscape does not go unnoticed by them.  The production makes swell use out of the deserted, LA streets and a neon-decorated radio station and expansive military complex are excellently designed.  It is a shame that the movie loses its footing at regular intervals then.  The pacing is quite stagnant, especially during the final act and though the laughs connect when they are attempted, they are very few and far between.  It probably has enough inventive moments to please genre fans and certainly enough style for 80s nostalgia enthusiasts, but it is also unmistakably weaker than it should be.

976-EVIL

(1988)

Dir - Robert Englund

Overall: MEH

There is no bamboozlement at play with Robert Englund's directorial debut 976-EVIL, a horror film almost overflowing with pure, unapologetic schlock.  Expecting anything less would simply be foolish, coming from the guy who turned Freddy Kruger into a rap star and has embraced his genre typecasting like no other would.  Even as a director-for-hire, Englund's B-movie, over-the-top aesthetics from his on screen persona are in full popcorn-munching swing behind the lens here.  There is hardly much else he could do with the cornball material anyway though.  Essentially a nerd revenge movie with such a silly demonic hotline premise, the script is not the tightest in the world.  The characterizations are uniformly weak and when the dialog is not centered on groan-worthy one-liners, it is simply lame.  Tone-wise, the camp level is consistent, but the first half nevertheless drags too much.  When the wheels do come off, it has some fun, bloody set pieces like a limb-removing poker game and a hell-frozen-over house.  Stephen Geoffreys and Sandy Dennis do ham it up appropriately and for a dumb, cheap, far from understated horror outing, it kind of delivers.

70's British Horror Part Twenty-One

THE NIGHTCOMERS

(1971)

Dir - Michael Winner
Overall: MEH

The horror label is quite misleading for Michael Winner's The Nightcomers, a prequel to Henry James' more psychologically supernatural The Turn of the Screw.  Notable as being Marlon Brando's last performance before landing The Godfather which he would shoot soon afterwards, he may not be in peak form, but he is also a far cry from the embarrassing low-point he hit in Candy from three years prior.  That said, the Irish accent here is a bit goofy.  Michael Hastings' script examines the scoundrel aspects of Brando's Peter Quint and how impressionable his behavior in turn corrupts Miles and Flora.  By setting up the questionable shenanigans the two unassuming children would get up to in Jame's novel, the story here takes most of the mystery out of it, which is quite a faux pas on paper.  Even if one is to ignore how it misses the point of the ambiguous spookiness found in the source material, the results are still mediocre at best.  Not much interesting happens despite a few macabre touches and though the ending finally seems to arrive somewhere, it is nowhere as chilling in presentation as perhaps intended.

 

HORROR HOSPITAL

(1973)

Dir - Anthony Balch

Overall: GOOD

 

Film distributor and occasional exploitation director Anthony Balch's Horror Hospital, (Computer Killers), is an adequately humorous horror spoof.  Part of the movie's charm lies in how its presentation is indistinguishable from other strictly serious films of its kind from the same era.  By playing things straight, Balch gets to slyly lampoon some of the genre's inherent silliness.  British horror mainstay Michael Gouh optimizes such dynamics as a fiendish, wheelchair-bound mad scientist who is making a horde of young, attractive zombies for no other reason than to just be an evil asshole.  Most of the humor hits its mark with lines like "There's no reason to get uptight about anything.  I'm not going to rape you." and details like a random goo monster and a limo that decapitates passersby providing some sleazy chuckles.  Balch's directorial skills leave a bit to be desired though as the movie drags in place and the plotting gets monotonous.  It could probably afford to be more ridiculous than it is, but it delivers some proper high-jinks all the same.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

(1976)

Dir - Nicolas Roeg

Overall: GOOD

For his follow-up to the excellent psychological horror film Don't Look Now, Nicolas Roeg chose to adapt Walter Tevis' novel The Man Who Fell to Earth with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg.  In his first lead role, a cocaine-addicted David Bowie is perfectly cast as the emotionally aloof and distraught alien Thomas Jerome Newton.  The story slowly weaves through his doomed life, whose family and home planet are endlessly on his mind yet just as endlessly out of reach.  He physically stays unchanged while those around him grow old, die off or are killed, lose interest in him, or succumb to their own vices.  The performances are strong all around, with Candy Clark being particularly superb as the lone country girl who becomes obsessed and sucked into Newton's aura.  From a production standpoint, the movie is fully realized.  Anthony B. Richmond's photography is quite beautiful and though the story spans a considerable timeline, it seems stuck in the era it was made.  This enhances the rather immortal existence of Bowie's isolated protagonist.  By taking a surreal, deliberately enigmatic approach to exploring the turmoil of loneliness and unfulfilled longing, Roeg made a challenging film quite fitting for the material.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-Seven

SOMETHING EVIL

(1972)

Dir - Steven Spielberg

Overall: MEH

This made-for-television film was the second full-length that Steven Spielberg had done and his third over all.  Debuting on CBS on January 12th, 1972, Something Evil is one of the few straight horror outings for the legendary filmmaker and for genre, (and Christmas) fans, it features none other than Kolchak himself Darren McGavin in the lead opposite Sandy Dennis.  The film may garnish more attention than other similar TV films from the decade merely due to Spielberg's involvement, but the director does show above average skills at regular intervals.  There are some dynamic camera angles, moments of extreme silence, and one or two ominous visuals.  None of this truly disguises the cookie-cutter narrative though, one of untold hundreds where a family moves into a remote house only for the woman to see all the supernatural occurrences and lose her mind while her husband is too busy at work to believe her.  Since the most frightening thing that happens is some extreme wind blowing Dennis' hair around, it is probably more of a curiosity for Speilberg completists than horror fans.

SHANKS

(1974)

Dir - William Castle

Overall: MEH

 

At once, William Castle's final film Shanks doubles as both his weirdest and slowest.  An experimental work in many respects, toying with fantasy elements and silent film aesthetics, it features the movie debut of Marcel Marceau in a dual role.  Sans his famous Bip the Clown makeup, the legendary mime artist is both a mute and deaf puppeteer and a mad scientist, actually speaking dialog with the latter.  It is partly a showcase for Marceau's pantomime, who is one of four actors to play live marionette.  The movie also uses intertitles, an atmospheric graveyard set piece, a large Gothic mansion, and oodles of macabre visuals and situations, including one of the most utterly strange birthday parties perhaps ever filmed.  All of the quirkiness is undermined by a borderline terrible plot and some of the most sluggish, meandering pacing imaginable.  By the time a biker gang beyond randomly shows up in the final act, Castle's odd-ball schtick has well worn-out its welcome, and coherency has been lazily abandoned.  Its daring quirkiness is appreciated, but as a viewing experience, it is quite necessary to watch the whole thing in fast-forward.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

(1978)

Dir - Meir Zarchi

Overall: MEH

The quintessential "rape and revenge" exploitation movie, Meir Zarchi's I Spit on Your Grave had and continues to have one of the most notorious reputations of any film of its kind.  On the surface, the thirty-minute rape scene could be the most gratuitous ever filmed, though this would imply that Zarchi was solely concerned with shocking and disgusting his audience for the mere sleazy glee of it.  In actuality, the filmmaker was inspired by a real life event where he helped a woman in Central Park who had been brutally beaten and raped, only for her to be treated with indifference by the police.  Combining that with the completely unassuming and stark presentation, (slow pacing, no musical score, no comic relief of any kind), one can make a reasonable argument that this is not a movie made to delight anyone, let alone sadists and depraved perverts.  Everything is set up for the unleashed vengeance of Jennifer Hills, (Camille Keaton, in a performance that is brave in the truest sense) and no sympathies for the viewer lie anywhere else but with her.  It is a statement of sorts, but unfortunately one that is so unpleasant to watch that it nevertheless becomes quite difficult to justify its existence.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-Six

NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS
(1971)
Dir - Dan Curtis

Overall: MEH

 

Released a year after House of Dark Shadows and completed after the soap opera was officially off the air, Dan Curtis returns with Night of Dark Shadows.  Though he had initially wanted it to be a straight sequel to the previous film by bringing back Barnabas Collins, actor Johnathan Frid was done with the character.  Instead, vampires are out of the equation and the focus is now on another key member of the Collins family, Quentin.  Utilizing the alternate timeline concept from the series, some actors return playing different characters.  Similar concepts such as resurrection play a major role, deepening the mythos of the supernatural-entwined family.  The results are properly moody and atmospheric at times, even if they are rather void of frights.  Sadly, they are also a bit messy as Curtis was forced to cut thirty-five minutes from the finished run time and allegedly given a single day to deliver a new edit.  It all shows in the finished product, one that is also bogged down by stagnant pacing even in its mangled form.  A disappointing follow-up, but one that is still made with a level of admirable class at least.

DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!

(1974)

Dir - S.F. Brownrigg

Overall: GOOD

 

The second zero-budget, drive-in exploitation film from S.F. Brownrigg, Don't Open the Door!, (Don't Hang Up), has some unnerving and strange qualities to it.  Shot at the House of the Seasons in Jefferson, Texas and primarily with a cast of locals, the performances are better than would be expected.  Susan Brackan in the lead starts off as a sassy, strong-willed protagonist, but her cock-sure attitude does grow a bit forced after awhile.  Robert Farrar's music is quite effective when it is used for sinister purposes, though it is completely distracting and inappropriate in other instances.  Brownrigg indulges in some ambitious camerawork at times, using eerie shadows and focusing on details like creepy mannequins, dolls, sweaty close-ups, and voyeuristic eyes peering through peep holes.  Speaking of perverts, Larry O'Dwyer makes for a genuinely skin-crawling, slow-breathing-on-the-phone creep.  There are elements to the script and presentation that are derivative of more influential horror outings, while other components are quirky and unique.  The overall balance of imperfections and odd, disturbing qualities thankfully leans closer to the latter, meaning there are enough interesting ideas here to take proper notice of.

THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU

(1977)

Dir - Don Taylor

Overall: GOOD

 

American International Pictures made three H.G. Wells adaptations in less than two years, the second of which was the most famous and horror-centric The Island of Dr. Moreau.  Directed by Don Taylor and staring Michael York and Burk Lancaster in the leads, it is quite solid from a production standpoint.  The mostly excellent make-up effects were led by Thomas R. Burman who would go on to create Sloth in The Goonies, amongst much else.  Out of the exclusive club of actors who have played the title character, Lancaster matches the description in Wells' story the most and the actor basically could not deliver a bad performance if he tried, which is certainly the case here.  His Moreau is more calmly and almost pathetically insane than sadistic and his inevitable downfall is fittingly dour.  The script differs significantly from the source material and other versions, changing the fate of certain characters, particularly a rather underused Nigel Davenport as Montgomery.  It all follows a satisfying, self-contained trajectory though.  Things catch on fire, blood is spilled, and real life tigers fight stunt doubles so, not much to complain about.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-Five

THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY

(1972)

Dir - Waris Hussein

Overall: MEH

Directed by British/Indian filmmaker Waris Hussein who is noteworthy to Doctor Who fans for being behind the lens on the very first every story An Unearthly Child, The Possession of Joel Delaney is an adaptation of Ramona Stewart's novel of the same name.  The film is most infamous for its final scene in which a thirteen year old boy is forced to dance naked and his young sister likewise forced to eat dog food.  The unwholesome conclusion appears rather jarringly, having come from a rather plodding ninety minutes where very little of interest happens, least of all something so disturbing.  A-lister Shirley MacLaine does admirable work even with the rather weak material, but the movie does not offer up any unique possession concepts within the annals of horror films.  As a story about a sadistic Puerto Rican serial killer who was abandoned as a child and brought up in poverty who then takes over the body of an upper class, causation woman's brother, there are some borderline themes of race and classicism.  The movie does not explore such things too compellingly though and the predominant lack of scares or tension plus the meandering pacing leaves it nowhere really to go.

THE PREMONITION

(1976)

Dir - Robert Schnitzer

Overall: MEH

A low-budget and quite unusual psychological horror film from Robert Schnitzer, The Premonition has a number of unconventional problems.  The editing is often sloppy, actors fumble their lines, and the plot becomes incomprehensible in its final act.  Schnitzer utilizes guerilla-style, hand-held camera work and flat cinematography, yet juxtaposes these with hallucination sequences that are more oddly ambitious.  At least on paper, there are some effectively startling scenes, but they may become less or more disturbing due to the overall strangeness of the presentation.  The lead characters are quite unhinged, with Richard Lynch making for a menacing villain and both Danielle Brisebois and Sharon Farrell coming apart at the seams as two emotionally traumatized women.  Things take awhile to truly get underway, but the movie's last thirty minutes play off as if the production had run out of money and they were forced to put together an ending based on whatever footage they had already shot.  Stylistically, the amatuerish, technical mistakes and eerie, deliberate tone make for a curious watch, which is more successful in certain moments than in others.

STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE

(1978)

Dir - Wes Craven

Overall: MEH

Wes Craven's third feature-length film and first directorial gig since relocating from New York to Los Angeles was the relatively average Stranger In Our House.  An adaptation of Lois Duncan's novel Summer of Fear, (the title of which it was releases as theatrically in Europe), it debuted on NBC on Halloween in 1978.  Hot off the trainwreck that was Exorcist II: The Heretic, Linda Blair is not blowing any minds with her pretty weak lead performance here, though it is not quite as bad as some of her future, Razzie nominated ones.  For his part behind the lens, Craven does not get to shine much within such sterilized, made-for-TV confines.  The story has some potential, but it mostly just ends up revolving around Blair and Lee Purcell not getting along while it is bright and sunny outside.  By the director's own admittance, it was more of a technical learning experience than an ideal, creative outlet.  A job is a job after all.  Things finally get a little atmospheric and freaky in the last ten minutes, yet not only is this far too little too late, but the ending hardly packs much of a wallop anyway.  Of interest to the curious Craven fan perhaps, though that is about it.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-Four

SISTERS

(1972)

Dir - Brian De Palma

Overall: GOOD

 

Brian De Palma's first fully formed thriller and arguably his most deliberately Hitchcockian in nature and execution, Sisters also remains a darkly humorous and potent critique on women's liberation.  Throughout the film, men are continually ignoring, condescending to, or ogling the females, females who fight back defiantly and in the case of Margot Kidder's title characters, quite violently.  The tone is kept more quirky than preachy though, not getting particularly disturbing until its final act.  While the body count is quite low and the emphasis is hardly on gruesomeness, when it does indulge a bit more on such horror components, the effects benefit greatly from De Palma's controlled and often humorously suspenseful presentation.  Both narrative and cinematic motifs lifted right out of Rope, Rear Window, and Psycho are present and as if the Hitchcock-channeling was not intentional enough, De Palma even got a semi-retired Bernard Herman to score the film.  It is not all just directorial hero worship, but even if it was, there is more than enough substance and style here to carry its copycat/homage nature through.

 

HAUNTS

(1976)

Dir - Herb Freed

Overall: MEH

Though it is persistently undermined by its very rough, amateur production values, Herb Freed's Haunts has a strange sort of charm to it.  There are no shortage of unintended laughs due to the standard, low-rent, independent B-movie shortcomings.  These include but are not limited to lousy performances from both unprofessional and veteran actors, incomprehensible plotting, stagnant direction, choppy editing, meandering subplots, and cheap, budget-less visuals.  Freed does not come off as if he is making anything for sleazy, exploitative purposes as he seems to be going for a dark and sincere, psychological horror vibe.  It is just that his ambition exceeds his finances and technical skills, or lack thereof.  This not only makes the movie's obvious and numerous flaws forgivable, but also interesting for the bizarre way they come off.  Understandably, it does not hold itself together even in a curious way, dragging on for large moments and compromising its off-beat aesthetics to boredom.  Ending with a somber and ultimately confusing expository dialog dump at the end does not really help much either, even if Cameron Mitchell is the one delivering it.

DAMIEN: OMEN II

(1978)

Dir - Don Taylor/Mike Hodges

Overall: MEH

Any film as successful as The Omen was not bound to go without a sequel and two years later, Damien: Omen II dropped.  Even though it is set seven years after the first movie yet still in contemporary times and the Antichrist is now thirteen, never mind that as he is a full-grown adult in 1981's Omen III: The Final Conflict.  For a horror follow-up, the formula is pretty standard which is to basically make the same movie again except up the body count.  Case in point here.  There are some Hollywood heavyweights present once more with William Holden and Lee Grant, Jerry Goldsmith's concocts yet another over-the-top score, and the story by producer Harvey Bernhard recycles the same beats and even some of the same scenes.  Some people are on to Damien's infernal legacy, no one believes them, they meet their end in graphically violent ways, Satan wins, hooray.  Take out all the fun, ghastly set pieces and you are left with mostly humdrum, bureaucratic-centered dialog, but the focus stays primarily on the good stuff.  Director Don Taylor, (and Mike Hodges who was replaced after shooting a number of scenes), do admirable, slick work with the safe material and for those essentially looking for more of the same, the movie easily suffices.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-Three

HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS

(1970)

Dir - Dan Curtis

Overall: GOOD

Filmed while the soap opera series was still in full swing, House of Dark Shadows was the theatrically released film accompaniment.  Utilizing the same actors and basic, be it stripped-down narrative arc of its lead vampire Barnabas Collins, series creator Dan Curtis makes his full-length feature debut behind the lens.  It is a pretty slick, appropriately atmospheric horror outing which is very akin to countless others from across the globe during its era.  Many of the well-established Gothic tropes are fully utilized, (stormy weather, fog, creepy cemeteries, imposing, unkempt mansions, British accents), and the familiar story emphasis the more romantic, love-lorn aspects of the undead mythos.  Several plot-points are lifted right out of Bram Stoker's Dracula and its many re-interpretations, which made for an interesting framework to utilize for the soap opera that bounced between contemporary and older timelines, as well as featuring various other supernatural horror "monsters".  Since everything is naturally far more streamlined here, it feels a bit rushed and does not have the complex world-building of the series to flesh everything out.  That said, it works plenty well enough as its own thing.

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD

(1975)

Dir - J. Lee Thompson

Overall: MEH

 

The Reincarnation of Peter Pound is an interesting, low key psychological quasi-thriller, one that plays out like a mystery even if it technically is not.  Max Ehrlich wrote the screenplay for his own novel of the same name, here adapted by J. Lee Thompson, (Cape Fear, Conquest of and Beneath the Planet of the Apes).  Dealing more with obsession than anything else, the story is one man's quest to uncover the nature of the supernatural occurrences plaguing/possessing him, a quest which puts him on some shaky moral ground.  The plot has some creepy details, (dude dates and romanticizes the daughter of the guy he is reincarnated as, ew), but it has very little typical horror atmosphere going for it.  Not that any such thing is particularly necessary mind you.  Featuring a fair amount of both male and female nudity though not in an exploitative way, Thompson's direction is assured, but he also fails to keep the story particularly engaging as it goes on.  Michael Sarrazin is somewhat too aloof in the lead, but even though she does not get any lines until the final act, Margot Kidder brings some compelling life to the proceedings as a tortured and troubled mother under quite unconvincing old age makeup.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS

(1979)

Dir - Fred Walton

Overall: MEH

Fred Walton's follow-up to his own short The Sitter was his full-length debut When a Stranger Calls.  The film is mostly recognized for its opening twenty-minute scene which served as the basis for the initial short.  Its influence was most famously seen in Wes Craven's Scream, which likewise recreated it as its intro, except that time with Drew Barrymore.  Walton pulls-off some other tense moments after the beginning, where the movie's psychopath avoids capture and almost calmly terrorizes his intended victims.  Typecast sleazeball Tony Beckley makes for a standard, neurotic villain, effortlessly menacing and intense in an appropriately pathetic sort of way.  Carol Kane also turns in a solid performance as the traumatized babysitter.  The overall plotting does not really keep things afloat though.  By stretching the initial premise out to a ninety-seven minute long movie, it is a little lazy and loose with the excuses to let Beckley's Curt Duncan get away with basically everything that he gets away with.  By the time it reaches the final act, the whole thing feels more redundant than spine-tingling.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-Two

THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA

(1971)

Dir - Bob Kelljan

Overall: MEH

 

While Bob Kelljan's Count Yorga, Vampire was an OK entry for such a film, his immediate and final follow-up The Return of Count Yorga improves upon some of the aspects of its predecessor while essentially being the exact same movie.  The humor is more deliberate, yet it is also incredibly dry at times, bleeding into a number of genuinely creepy segments as well.  Kelljan balances the entire movie this way, equally riding the line of silliness and straight, horror movie atmosphere.  Large portions play out to no musical accompaniment, making for stark, chilling sequences where comatose-moving vampires advance on/toy with their prey and Robert Quarry's title character spouts pretentious platitudes only to comically lunge at his victims while hissing.  No explanation is given to the Count's return by the way; it is just another movie where he charms some people, has a horde of undead minions, and the cops laugh at the possibility of vampirism.  Redundant to an extent then, it also suffers from sluggish pacing.  Again, the lackadaisical, quiet flow does enhance some of the macabre mood and makes for one or two effectively startling scenes, but coupled with the identical story, one Yorga movie is likely all you really need.

BLOOD SUCKING FREAKS

(1976)

Dir - Joel M. Reed
Overall: WOOF

 

The infamous exploitation film Blood Sucking Freaks, (Sadu: Master of the Screaming Virgins, The Incredible Torture Show), is basically what you would get if you fused Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom with the splatter-ridden, filmmaking incompetence of Herschell Gordon Lewis.  Featuring all of the weaknesses and none of the strengths of the aforementioned works, (if you can consider Lewis' films to have any "strengths"), Freaks is well-deserving of its lousy reputation.  Deliberately tasteless, its groan-worthy gags are occasionally funny in an embarrassing sense, with most of the laughs stemming from the unflinchingly amatuerish production values.  The performances are pure nonsense, the story is a pathetic social satire on sadism and misogyny, and the endless barrage of nudity and clever-less torture sequences grow more lackluster as things progress.  It is too stupid to be disturbing, certainly by contemporary standards and the movie says nothing about anything; it is just lame, juvenile shock-tactics for the mere sake of it.  An over-the-top cult film in the truest sense.  Well, at least that is what it tells itself it is.

THE EVIL

(1978)

Dir - Gus Trikonis

Overall: MEH

 

Contemporary, haunted house cliches run an absolute muck in Gus Trikonis' The Evil, (Cry Demon, House of Evil).  Characters see things and forget to tell anyone, windows and doors slam shut to trap people inside, men argue with women that there must be some rational explanation to everything, a locked gate to hell is easily found and opened, hysterical women get smacked across the face by men, the Devil shows up in a white suite, etc.  As is also commonly the case, the demonic, supernatural forces at play only adhere to the rules of the script.  They routinely appear all knowing and ever present, yet they can get in someone's head and make them saw their own hand off just as easily as they cannot see someone running at them with an iron cross.  The contradictions are numerous and the incredibly straight tone makes them more jarringly silly than not.  Performance wise, the entire cast is committed and save for Victor Buono as an appropriately hammy Satan, all of them play things deadly serious.  Trikonis throws in a boatload of horror set pieces and keeps the pace running smoothly, but it is all so uninspired and textbook that you are likely to easily confuse it with any other such movie.

70's American Horror Part Twenty-One

DREAM NO EVIL

(1970)

Dir - John Hayes

Overall: MEH

Writer/director John Hayes made a hefty number of genre and exploitation films throughout the 60s and 70s and Dream No Evil, (The Faith Healer, Now I Lay Me Down to Die), is a more personal one.  It was allegedly inspired by his own sister who was brought up in a religious convent only to later suffer from mental illness.  The material may hit closer to home for Hayes, but the movie itself is regrettably dull.  Though it opens with a child having a nightmare, nothing else even remotely of interest to horror fans arrives until past the halfway mark.  For the drive-in movie crowd, that is a pretty generous amount of "making out in the car" time.  Hayes's cinematically toys with some psychological aspects around a troubled woman with severe daddy issues, but his direction is persistently bland.  The talking just goes on and on and on, which would be forgivable to a point if there was an interesting pay-off.  Suspense-less and comatose-inducing, it is as forgettable as they get.

 

THE STEPFORD WIVES

(1975)

Dir - Bryan Forbes

Overall: GOOD

 

The noteworthy cult film The Stepford Wives is Bryan Forbes decently chilling adaptation of Ira Levin's novel of the same name.  The complaints against the movie, (namely its padded pacing), are indeed legit as it takes too leisurely of a time unveiling its more alarming components.  Especially now when the premise and very phrase "Stepford wives" is quite known in the lexicon, it is quite obvious what is happening from the get-go.  In this respect, it is less about the mystery and more about how the film perverts such themes of domestication and female complacency in a disturbing yet fantastical way.  In a lesser director's hands, the material here perhaps could have come off as silly.  Yet Forbes manages to make sunny, upper-class white suburbia seem increasingly unwholesome, forgoing conventional horror movie atmosphere almost the entire way though.  How it manages to make the women nothing but sympathetic and the men quite the opposite even with both sides are persistently being polite to each other is yet another impressive feature.  It could bare to trim twenty-minutes or so, but as a feminist nightmare brought respectfully to the screen, it is quite effective.

 

DEAD OF NIGHT

(1977)

Dir - Dan Curtis
Overall: MEH

 

Trying to recapture the success of Trilogy of Terror from two years prior, Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson collaborate again on the television anthology film Dead of Night, (not to be confused with the outstanding British movie from 1945).  While the aforementioned movie was saved by a demonic Zuni doll, sadly none of the entries here garnish much interest.  The opening, Twilight Zone-esque "Second Chance" is the only one based on a Jack Finney story and it scarcely belongs with the other two, more straight-forward horror outings.  "No Such Thing As A Vampire" is utterly blood-less, but does feature an adequate enough twist.  The last segment "Bobby" is easily the most sinister and atmospheric, with a heart-skipper of an ending, though it works better on paper than it does on screen.  Instead of a two-foot doll chasing Karen Black around her apartment, it has an obnoxious zombie kid chasing Joan Hackett around her house after she toys with occult forces.  While nothing here is remotely bad, none of it rises above competent mediocrity either and save for a couple moments in the last story, there is nothing to linger for the audience after the credits roll.

2021 Horror Part One

WILLY'S WONDERLAND

Dir - Kevin Lewis

Overall: MEH

On paper, Nicolas Cage vs animatronic Showbiz Pizza monsters sounds fool-proof yet Willy's Wonderland rides that one-note gimmick into the ground.  Cashing in on the Five Nights at Freddy's craze, the short film The Hug, and the recent, R-rated The Banana Splits movie, the premise here comes off as pretty lazy to say the least.  For his role as the Janitor, Cage manages to be incredibly Nic Cagey despite the fact that he has no spoken dialog, screaming a few times and having a random dance-off with himself.  The over-the-top, bloody, (and oily), carnage is hilarious to a point, but also tedious and unengaging.  Director Kevin Lewis indulges in lens flairs to a criminal extent and the story is too barren to have anywhere to go.  This brings up the biggest faux pas which is that the plotting is utterly horrendous.  The completely illogical and arbitrary way things progress from point A to point B and how virtually none of the characters are remotely developed enough to explain their moronic and conflicting behavior is way noticeable enough to damper the proceedings.  For some viewers, it may get by on its knowing stupidity and Cage's subdued, yet still gonzo performance.  As a competent bit of filmmaking though, it is rather a failure.

 

HONEYDEW

Dir - Devereux Milburn

Overall: MEH

 

Essentially an arthouse version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or pick your backwoods-weirdo-hillbilly-horror outing, Devereux Milburn's Honeydew can scarcely be seen as necessary.  The presentation is strange before we ever get to our creepy, bible-quoting country bumpkins.  Unorthodox sound design, out of focus cinematography, and split screens show up earlier than the opening credits, at which point we are introduced to an unlikable couple who are also the film's protagonists.  While this is never a good sign in and of itself, things just get more uncomfortable and odd for the sake of odd from there.  Milburn thankfully keeps things shy of going full torture porn at least, cutting away from things no one in the audience could possibly want to see.  He still manages to pull off an impressive feat of making people eating cupcakes and drinking milk far more disgusting than most overt movie gore is.  The film seems to be attempting a quirky and disturbing tone which it certainly achieves.  The only question is who wants to watch something as ultimately unwholesome and narratively derivative to begin with?

 

JAKOB'S WIFE

Dir - Travis Stevens

Overall: MEH

Travis Stevens' follow-up to his effectively amusing and strange Girl on the Third Floor in Jakob's Wife finds him working with genre legends Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden with somewhat equally quirky results.  While Crampton's resurgence on the scene in recent years has mostly been reserved to shameless throwback offerings and Fessenden will pretty much make an appearance in anything with the "horror" tag on it, it is nice to see them in something more singular and interesting.  The film's themes of coming to terms with age, commitment, and complacency are refreshing and ideal for such veteran actors to sink into.  That said, it is a bit of a flawed offering.  Some of the performances are awkwardly weak, including the two lovable leads unfortunately.  A lot of this has to do with the amateur-level dialog though.  It is difficult to tell if it is supposed to be lame in a parody sense, but in any event, the humor falls flat as often as it connects.  It is violently charming in parts and manages to be entertaining for horror buffs without being insultingly nostalgic, but it is a bit clumsy in its approach.

2020 Horror Part Four

GRETEL & HANSEL

Dir - Oz Perkins

Overall: GOOD

 

Three films into his directorial career and it is safe to say that Oz Perkins has established an auteur style of his own.  Working exclusively in the horror genre thus far, his shamelessly stylized take on the Hansel and Gretel Grim fairytale, (here changed to Gretel & Hansel), is arguably the grimmest cinematic interpretation yet.  Hauntingly photographed with some inventive set design, cinematographer Galo Olivares makes imposing use out of literal darkness, which is only contrasted by Autumn colors, (sans one barren and effectively creepy cement basement).  The story primarily focuses on the Gretel title character who is twice the age of her brother Hansel and Sophia Lillis' narration helps provide the film with its story-like vibe.  Alice Krige's diabolical witch is the most imposing figure though, unmistakably creepy from the moment she emerges and only growing more so as things ominously progress.  It is perhaps a little too heavy on its sonic and visual aesthetics at the sacrifice of a more relatable story, but it is still properly eerie and effectively put together.

SPUTNIK

Dir - Egor Abramenko

Overall: MEH

 

While not particularly brimming with originality, Russian director Egor Abramenko's alien horror debut Sputnik is at least respectably made.  Set in the early 80s during the still-swinging Cold War, Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev's script features the standard premise of a joyless, self-righteous military doing top secret experiments on a parasitic alien to use it as a weapon.  The plot then unfolds without any real surprises.  From a production standpoint, the unmemorable creature design and stock soundtrack could fit into any other contemporary film of a similar ilk and the diluted color pallet likewise dates it to the present era.  The performances are uniformly good though and Abramenko manages to muster some suspense within the conventional framework, particularly in the opening scene.  The story is less-focused with gore-ridden action or horror set pieces than it is with the emotional drive of the characters.  Yet this is somewhat of a problem as it inflates the running time a bit too much, becoming a little under-cooked and underwhelming in the process.

THE CURSE OF AUDREY EARNSHAW

Dir - Thomas Robert Lee

Overall: GOOD

The second full-length from Canadian filmmaker Thomas Robert Lee is the relentlessly despairing The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw.  Focusing on an isolated Irish commune in the 1970s, the film may as well be a period piece and the plague-ridden, bewitched characters suffer everything but the modern day comforts of the era they are technically in.  Lee uses rather familiar narrative components besides just a cursed village, with nods to something iconic like Rosemary's Baby to modern day masterpieces like The Witch.  Some of the occult-fueled set pieces may come off as a bit arbitrary to some, but the film does a handful of things decently with such material.  The supernatural mythology is kept completely vague which is admirable though it also teeters on the verge of frustration.  The performances and photography are as uniformly good as any other humor-less horror drama from recent times, but the musical score is quite overbearing.  While the soundtrack does give it an unshakable aura of ominousness, little suspense is gathered as several moments could have eerily benefited from a more quiet, subdued approach.  It is not the most clever film of its kind, but it is oppressively atmospheric enough to largely succeed.

2019 Horror Part Nine

BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK

Dir - Roxanne Benjamin

Overall: MEH

After providing segments in both Southbound and XX, writer/director Roxanne Benjamin's first solo full-length Body at Brighton Rock over-extends itself just a bit too far to work.  The premise is interesting and quite fitting for such a small-scale, low-budget endeavor.  It opens with some retro 80s nostalgia on the soundtrack and Benjamin is quite unashamed to indulge in good ole fashioned camera zooms throughout.  A more comical vibe is also present early on, but things get serious before too long.  From that point on, it focuses entirely on creating the most psychologically suspenseful tone possible, though it only achieves this in fleeting doses.  The story is arguably too simple, allowing itself to spin its wheels while it is trying to wrack-up the tension and create a terrifying guessing game for the audience.  Shots linger long enough to slog everything down and after several moments that turn out to be nothing more than psyche-outs, the intended feeling of dread is ultimately deflated.  There are some good ideas and virtually the film's only actress Karina Fontes does solid work with the material at hand, but it is a near-miss in the end.

DEPRAVED

Dir - Larry Fessenden

Overall: MEH

While Larry Fessenden's modern day re-vamp of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in Depraved is earnest in its serious, mostly humor-free construction, it is loaded with problems.  Filmed in New York and clearly made on a paper-thin budget, the characters are staggeringly underwritten, which is unfortunate as it focuses exclusively on them.  Because of this, hardly at any point does anyone's dialog or behavior seem either natural or logical.  Another issue is the weak performances, particularly a villainous Joshua Leonard who rattles off the bulk of the movie's pretentious dialog.  Fessenden seems to be heading somewhere up until a point, but the film's unfocused nature comes to bonafide trainwreck levels in its final act.  The confused spiral to the finish line is the cinematic equivalent of falling down the stairs while carrying fragile dinnerware, leaving both head scratches and embarrassed laughs instead of thought-provoking intrigue.  Such wretched plot construction and amateur drawbacks are a shame since this could have been an interesting, contemplative, non-genre-pandering take on such over-adapted material.

 

DOCTOR SLEEP

Dir - Mike Flanagan

Overall: MEH

Logically speaking, Mike Flanagan was probably the perfect filmmaker to adapt Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, a decades-later sequel to both the novel and film The Shining.  To his credit, Flanagan keeps many contemporary horror cliches at bay and like it or not, the fanboy reconstruction of the Overlook Hotel and key moments therein are technically impressive.  The director's overt sentimentality and seemingly allergic reaction to even the most minute ambiguity jives perfectly well with the author whose novel he is working with.  In this respect, the resulting movie here is a curious work, faithfully calling back King's seminal novel and Stanley Kubrick's equally paramount, yet wildly different film which King legendarily despised.  Kubrick's The Shining was all ABOUT ambiguity; leaving an audience with mountains of questions and things to obsessively puzzle over and in effect, stay permanently disturbed by.  Well, until now when Flanagan and company wrap everything up quite concretely.  Such an endeavor is certainly not for all tastes and the endless call backs, (particularly during the final act), recasting of key characters, excessive running time, and the expanding of a mythos that was very arguably better off left cryptic is all quite aggressively in conflict with at least the cinematic source material this acts as a follow-up to.  For those more on King's side of the fence though, it is pretty ideally realized.

2018 Horror Part Eight

LUZ

Dir - Tilman Singer

Overall: GOOD

 

One of the most unapologetically strange debuts the horror genre at least has seen in quite some time, Tilman Singer's Luz is pretentious to a fault though startling in its low-key ambition.  A thesis student film for Singer who wrote, directed, edited, and produced, it utilizes a micro-cast and only an equally small handful of locations.  While some of the film's eclectic qualities can be traced back to retro Euro horror, the approach is thoroughly avant-garde.  Multiple, incredibly stagnant takes, a completely incomprehensible story, fantastic yet highly unorthodox sound design, a percussive, ambient score, and trance-like performances make the movie a sensory overload that is relentlessly bizarre.  A few startling sequences are thrown in for good measure, though they are as frustratingly vague from a narrative standpoint as everything else taking place.  Even at a forgivable seventy-minutes in length, Singer ultimately stretches the laborious pacing to a breaking point and too many moments overstay their very weird welcome.  Still, it is a highly impressive work and if anything else, almost shockingly different from any other genre movie in recent memory.

NIGHTMARE CINEMA

Dir - Alejandro Brugués/Joe Dante/Mick Garris/Ryuhei Kitamura/David Slade

Overall: MEH

Predominantly speaking, the anthology film Nightmare Cinema is, well, a nightmare.  Every movie of this kind is uneven by nature and David Slade's excellent entry with the surreal and genuinely unnerving "This Way to Egress" sticks out jarringly amongst the other four hackjobs.  Mick Garris' closing segment "Dead" is textbook for the by-the-books genre enthusiast, meaning it is thoroughly uninventive and mediocre.  Joe Dante's "Mirari" fares little better by comparison, managing to be both quirky and predictable all at once.  As yet another goddamn slasher parody, the opening "The Thing in the Woods" from Alejandro Brugués jumbles its tone and features a truly abysmal performances from Sarah Withers.  The worst of the bunch is thrown smack in the middle though with Ryuhei Kitamura's mind-numbingly awful, laughably derivative and cheap "Mashit", which is pure "shit" alright.  One of the oddest components to this collection is the sporadic presence of Mickey Rourke as The Projectionist.  Clearly available only for about thirty minutes of shooting, he is awkwardly shoe-horned in only three of the five segments as a totally uninteresting Crypt Keeper, except Rourke's own mangled face is in a way far scarier than said Tales from the Crypt host ever was.

THE WIND

Dir - Emma Tammi

Overall: MEH

In her full-length debut The Wind, filmmaker Emma Tammi creates a gradual form of tension while ambitiously utilizing a fractured narrative.  Teresa Sutherland's script focuses heavily on themes of severe isolation, paranoia, and loss, setting itself in the barren, late 19th century American frontier lands.  The supernatural mythology is wisely obscured, forcing the audience to question everything just as the troubled characters do.  The feminist angle is not limited to the writer/director team as the film is also centered almost exclusively around female protagonists who are persistently reminding each other to be respectful and catering towards their men who are either aloof or refusing to believe the supernatural occurrences both insist on experiencing.  Though it is refreshing during its first two acts, the movie looses its compelling grip due to excessive use of flashbacks and flash-forwards and an almost jarring switch to more conventional, hackneyed horror cliches after predominantly having avoiding them earlier.  It is still a promising work, beautifully shot and performed, but the drawbacks come during the final twenty minutes which ultimately leaves the viewer underwhelmed and somewhat disappointed.

2018 Horror Part Seven

THE GOLEM

Dir - Doron Paz/Yoav Paz

Overall: GOOD

 

Utilizing a less-frequented yet once tried and true horror movie monster based off of traditional, Jewish folklore, The Golem is a uniformly good updating of such material.  Nearly a hundred years after Paul Wegener's seminal silent film The Golem: How He Came into the World was released, brothers Doron and Yoav Paz plus screenwriter Ariel Cohen have concocted an entirely original story here, not to mention an entirely different visualization of the title creature.  While the look certainly breaks the long established mythology of a giant, stone/clay, Frankenstein monster prototype, it is still effectively creepy and intimidating.  The Paz brothers stage everything quite seriously and cautiously, which is helped by excellent performances across the board.  Such a deliberate tone gives the film tremendous weight and even when the story indulges in violent set pieces, there is an emotional undercurrent that is never lost.  It is not just the through-line of the historically misguided demonization of the Jewish people, but also the desperation faced by such impossibly hopeless persecution, the loss of a child, and the testing of one's faith both personal and collectively.  The fact that it manages to be a solid and stylish supernatural monster movie on top of everything else is all the more impressive.

BRAID

Dir - Mitzi Peirone

Overall: MEH

 

The rather ardent debut Braid from writer/director Mitzi Peirone boasts a unique premise, but unravels a bit too pretentiously for its own good.  There is style in spades, from the inventive, ADD-ridden camera work, showy set design, twisty narrative, and overall arc of lunacy in the story itself.  Said arc bleeds everywhere into the presentation and unfortunately it makes for a bit of a meandering result.  None of the three lead characters are remotely sympathetic, coming off as both deplorable and insane, depending on when the script needs them to be.  The twist is not as clever as it otherwise would be, appearing both arbitrary and confusing instead.  Tone-wise, it becomes more mean spirited and nasty, even tapping into torture porn in a few instances.  It is a film that does not so much as leave too many open doors in its wake, but one that confuses its themes to the point of being unrecognizable.  Whatever Peirone intended is certainly impressive to look at much of the time, but it is also murky and somewhat aimless in the end.

GWEN

Dir - William McGregor

Overall: MEH

 

Heavily brooding with depressive atmosphere, Gwen is the full-length debut from English filmmaker William McGregor.  Though it only flirts with contemporary horror elements with a small handful of startling shots and images, its oppressively dour tone asserts itself rather dominantly.  A slow-boil with no actual payoff to speak of, things begin rather miserably and only progress in such a direction.  The presentation is utterly void of humor and given such material, the cast pulls off the rather impressive feat of portraying their characters compassionately in such hopelessly dour circumstances.  The technical aspects are all admirable, from the purposely unassuming cinematography to the haunting, cold sound design which only utilizes a conventional musical score in very sparse instances.  Sadly though, the film is just that; sad.  McGregor does not seem to have any other motive than to exhaust the viewer with a gradual and monotonous stream of miserableness.  The movie becomes a chore because of this, instead of perhaps the hypnotic, provoking meditation it may have been designed as.

2012 Horror Part Nine

FRANKENWEENIE

Dir - Tim Burton

Overall: GOOD

 

Arguably the most direct love letter to Tim Burton's childish love of horror movies that the director ever made, Frankenweenie serves as his somewhat inevitable full-length adaptation of his own 1984 short of the same name.  The hallmarks of Burton's work are as ever present as always here, hallmarks that themselves have always deeply been inspired by the genre films that permanently warped his quirky, harmlessly macabre aesthetics.  Misunderstood, outcast characters, nods to everything from Universal monsters, to Godzilla, to Rankin/Bass stop-motion specials, Danny Elfman's incessant and whimsical score, black and white photography with every shamelessly Gothic cliche in the book, etc.  It even has returning Burton alumni Catherine O'Hara, Martin Landau, and Winona Ryder on board, though oddly Johnny Depp for once took this project off.  For any fans of the filmmaker's work or kid-friendly, Disney fare in general, it is pretty impossible to find much fault with Frankenweenie, a film quite pleasing in its safe, predictable structure and auteur vision.

DRACULA 3D

Dir - Dario Argento

Overall: WOOF

 

The opening title sequence in Dario Argento's Dracula 3D sets the stage quite accurately; an incredibly cheap-looking digital intro with cornball music that would fit in something like a retro, dancing vampire toy for Halloween.  The schlock only intensifies from there and boy does it ever.  To be fair, Rutger Hauer is surprisingly understated as Van Helsing, the set and costume design is solid, the screenplay takes a significant amount of liberties with the stripped-bare source material to warrant itself unique enough, and being an Argento film, it has a few splendidly giddy gore sequences.  Every other aspect is pure, unintentionally embarrassing absurdity.  The post-dubbed dialog sounds like it was "written" by people with only the most rudimentary grasp on the English language or how human interactions work, the visual effects are almost inconceivably poor, most performances are sink-in-your-chair awkward, the pacing is oddly stagnant, and German actor Thomas Kretschmann's title character is probably the least memorable Dracula since ever.  Watching a movie like this from an always eccentric though once ingenious filmmaker whose cinematic output has only grown more hilariously clueless in recent times, it is necessary to try and appreciate it as the trainwreck oddity that it can only be.  That is if your want to laugh at it every step of the way which is truly the best one can hope for.

SINISTER

Dir - Scott Derrickson

Overall: MEH

Though it relies far too heavily on predictable and over-used horror tropes, Scott Derrickson's Sinister at least to a point boasts some decent ideas and production values.  Christopher Young's unorthodox soundtrack is a highlight, mixing strange electronics and ambient noises in quite different ways from scene to scene.  The cast and dialog are also stronger and more convincing than usual, particularly the dynamic between Ethan Hawke and Juliet Rylance as a struggling yet supportive couple.  The most promising aspect of Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill's script is the world building which creates an intriguing amount of detail surrounding an entirely fabricated Pagan deity which acts as a stand-in for the Bogeyman and Pied Piper.  Though the name Bughuul and Slipknot-member-look of said deity is rather silly, there are a handful of genuinely creepy scenes early on concerning him.  Things get more derivative as the story progresses when it turns into a "here comes the jump scare" game and ghoulish kids holding up the "ssshhhhh" sign and tilting their heads which are far more hackneyed than frightening.  Despite one or two clever tweaks to the formula, its primary objective is unfortunately that of a cliche work-out.