80's American Horror Part Seventy-Five

THE LAST HORROR FILM

(1982)

Dir - David Winters

Overall: GOOD

 

Notable for being shot largely on location and without permits at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, David Winters' The Last Horror Film, (Fanatic), reunites Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro from William Lustig's 1980 slasher mainstay Maniac.  While the comedic elements are too clandestine at times due to the tongue being planted very firmly in cheek, the guerilla style tactics of Winters and his movie-within-a-movie, meta framework make for some inventive results that are persistently amusing in an intentional fashion.  As an exaggerated, deranged commentary on showbiz obsession and delusions of grandeur, it is on the nose in its presentation, but considering that Winters made such a low-budget horror film about low budget horror films and practically illegally at that, it gives the whole thing an admirable charm that is easy to fall for.  Best of all though, Spinell fully and wonderfully commits to the role of a shlubby, New York taxi driver on a quest to nab his favorite scream queen by any means necessary to make the greatest work in genre cinema, no matter how many wacky hallucinations crack his psyche.   These include yet are not limited to him battling his own pretentious/doppelgänger director, performing a striptease, or fondling himself in front of a projection of Munro's scantily-clad images before kidnapping her to shoot the last scene in his Dracula epic.

THE NEW KIDS

(1985)

Dir - Sean S. Cunningham

Overall: WOOF

 

After a brief detour with the boner comedy Spring Break, director Sean S. Cunningham went back to at least quasi-horror terrain with High School Bullies Are Assholes and Get Away with It for Far Too Long - The Movie AKA The New Kids.  People who have little to no tolerance for witnessing yet another crop of unrepentant douchebag teenagers committing illegal atrocities one after the other while the script does not allow for teachers, parents, or authority figures to do anything about it will find this to be a grueling ninety-minutes.  The 1980s were brimful of this nonsense and using such a hacky premise mixed with the worst country bumpkin cliches for thriller purposes wields annoyingly miserable results.  Though it is not a slasher movie, it may as well be since every act of wickedness is as easily foreseeable as the next, making all attempts at suspense as well as the inevitable comeuppance suffered by the southern-fried antagonists both obnoxious and unsatisfying.  An "I'm gonna stand up for myself and be strong like my dad" montage to one of the most jaw-droppingly terrible songs ever performed, (one of several daft soundtrack choices present), certainly does not help either.  Complaining aside, it has early performances from Lori Loughlin and Eric Stoltz, a cameo from Tom Atkins, (amazingly NOT playing a cop), and most curious of all is a twenty-five year old, bleach-blond James Spader with a hillbilly accent who is his usual, effortlessly sleazy self.

 

SPELLBINDER

(1988)

Dir - Janet Greek

Overall: GOOD

 

The second of only two full-length films from director Janet Greek and the first from screenwriter Trace Tormé, Spellbinder is a mostly engaging, yuppie-centered occult thriller sans a few clunky bits in the third act.  As a dangerous, Satanic coven tries to hone in one one of their escaped flock, (played by Kelly Preston, just a few short months before Twins was released), Greek manages to stage a few creepy moments and maintains an atmosphere that is more stern in its diabolical intentions than the inherent campiness of the material would otherwise dictate.  Hooded figures, the word "Satan" spray-painted on cave walls, goat skulls, fire pits, horned-masks, goblets of blood; the details read more like a laundry list of occult cliches than anything profoundly scary, but the sinister build-up is peppered with solid performances, likeable characters, and has an agreeable pace.  The inevitable plot twists are more foreseeable than intended, (as well as being particularly convoluted for gasp value), yet they are still successful in their rug-pulling agenda due to the sheer bleakness of the finale.  As a contemporary Wicker Man focusing on attractive LA types with some by-the-books, macabre window dressing thrown in, it is sufficient.