1990s American Horror Part Six

BURIED ALIVE
(1990)
Dir - Frank Darabont
Overall: MEH

The directorial debut from Frank Darabont who had written a number of horror screenplays before and would go on to helm Shawshank Redemption four years later, Buried Alive was a made for TV movie that USA premiered in 1990 and has no relation besides its title to Edgar Allan Poe's Buried Alive produced the same year.  This one has Jennifer Jason Leigh and Dickless himself William Atherton from Ghostbusters as a pair straight out of a Tales from the Crypt episode.  The entire film in fact plays as a ninety-minute version of such a thing, with all the proper comeuppance and evil plan reversed on the evil-doers shenanigans those stories frequently thrived on.  It even boasts a silly, sexy Lethal Weapon-esque score that dates it to the early 90s ever so deliciously.  While it passes the test of being an enjoyable thriller, it is incredibly predictable and generic.  Judging by the title alone and the first five to ten minutes of the movie, you can guess almost every detail that is to follow.  Throw in a couple of unnecessary one-liners and a tame, TV friendly presentation and there is just not much to make it standout.

POPCORN
(1991)
Dir - Mark Herrier/Alan Ormsby
Overall: MEH

There is a lot going on in Popcorn, a film with two directors that comes off overstuffed.  Mark Herrier, (Billy in Porkys), was replaced early by Alan Ormsby who was a frequent collaborator with Bob Clark and no matter what scenes where handled by whom, the end product is confused.  The story begins interesting, but ends up making itself less clever as it goes along not only because it regrettably formulates into a conventional slasher movie, but also because plotholes and other obnoxious moments keep getting in the way.  The incidental music is fine and typical, but there is a horror rap and worse yet, a horror reggae song that are just atrocious even taking into account the movie's clear comedic tone.  The death scenes are as foreseeable and as derivative as can be, (they are in a movie theater showing crappy B-movies with William Castle-esque gimmicks so of course, the victims mostly die by variations of such gimmicks).  The villain is a deformed, manically gestured lunatic who ends up being one of the last people you expect, ironically making who he turns out to be expectable.  The script is quite sloppy, often breaks its own rules, and throws supernatural elements at you early on that end up being completely unexplained given what turns out to actually be happening.  Popcorn does come close to being fun in a kind of silly, absurd way, but its issues just keep on piling up.

BODY SNATCHERS
(1993)
Dir - Abel Ferrara
Overall: MEH

The 90's interpretation of Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers by provocateur filmmaker Abel Ferrara follows two previous versions that where of such outstanding quality that a third reworking logically would only disappoint.  This is indeed the case as Body Snatchers is so misguided in some respects that it is nearly a disaster.  Underwritten characters and stiff performances from the non-alien versions of people, (including Terry Kinney and Billy Wirth who comes off looking and sounding like a poor man's Andrew Dice Clay), make things distracting for Ferrara to build any genuine tension with.  Most annoyingly, one of the best, most strikingly visual horror movie moments of all time from the 1978 Invasion is legitimately exploited here with hokey, embarrassing effects that completely undermine their intent.  The ending seems tacked on and almost confusing, plus the narration from Gabrielle Anwar is poorly written and acts more or less as a plot synopsis for dummies.  In another five or so years we are do for yet another Body Snatchers installment, begging the question more as to why not just leave well enough alone and quit while they are ahead.

1990s American Horror Part Five

THE WILLIES
(1990)
Dir - Brian Peck
Overall: WOOF

On paper, The Willies should be a fun, stupid horror movie for kids, but in reality it merely adheres to the "stupid" part.  The sole directorial effort of Brian Peck, (Return of the Living Dead's Scuz), the movie boasts a generous amount of recognizable cameos not limited to Dana Ashbrook and Kimmy Robertson from Twin Peaks, several cast members from Growing Pains, Sean Astin, and Peck's Living Dead cohorts James Karen and Clu Gulager.  None of the star power ends up mattering though since the film is a dreadful, predictable bore.  Utilizing an anthology framework, it is definitely meant to be light-hearted in the vein of what the Goosebumps TV show would do a few years later, but the stories themselves are too simple minded to provide any genuine humor let alone any thrills.  Worse yet, they drag quite a bit and the presentation is sloppy.  Two quick, dumb anecdotal tales are shown before the opening title credits which are followed by only two segments after that, both of which are tediously overstuffed to flesh out the running time.  Trimming each one down and adding a third could have helped, but then again judging by the quality of what is already here, perhaps not.

CASTLE FREAK
(1995)
Dir - Stuart Gordon
Overall: MEH

Once again loosely tackling another H.P. Lovecraft story, (The Outsider), and utilizing the services of Jeffery Combs and Barbra Crampton for another go-round, adored genre filmmaker Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak changes things up by stripping all of the humor away from the proceedings while maintaining plenty of aghast-worthy gore.  The decision to take itself more dramatically serious is fitting to the story though, so the lack of any calculated schlockiness may be missed by the die-hard Gordon fan, but it is not all together necessary here.  Gordon allegedly went with the story after seeing an unrelated poster in producer Charles Band's office titled "Castle Freak" and was told to come up with whatever he wanted if he wished to make a movie out of it.  Though party successful, said plot is easily anticipated and dragged out a little too long with its various connecting themes such as forgiveness and the grieving or abandoning of children also on the obvious side.  The title character looks properly grotesque and his actions likewise are, with a handful of moments that would make anyone less desensitized to horror movie violence feel a bit on the queasy side.  A step down from Re-Animator and From Beyond to be fair, but not too far of a step.

STIR OF ECHOES
(1999)
Dir - David Koepp
Overall: MEH

As fate would have it, The Sixth Sense debuted in theaters mere weeks before Stir of Echoes did and the two film's similar, critical "little kid who sees ghosts" ingredient is impossible not to notice.  Such is also the case with various other cinematic elements that can be traced back to Close Encounters of the Third Kind to The Changeling to The Shining to The Dead Zone to name a few.  The readily noticeable influences are what ultimately ends up making Stir of Echoes more mediocre than it perhaps deserves, especially since it is based off of a novel by Richard Matheson, one of the most prolific and best horror writers of the 20th century.  For his part, Kevin Bacon plays the unwilling suburbanite gone wacky dad, (with a convincing Chicago accent and an unnecessary, chiseled physique to boot), rather solid. even if again his actions are all reminiscent of many protagonists we have seen many times before.  The initial hypnotizing sequence is done well yes, but the standard horror movie moments elsewhere, (ghost with eyeshadow popping up in the mirror, tilting its head, and only adhering to the laws of dramatic tension), are anything but inventive.  Still, it is better than most, just marginally weaker than the best of the films whose shoulders it is standing on.

1990s American Horror Part Four

MANIAC COP 2
(1990)
Dir - William Lustig
Overall: MEH

While it is not an exhaustive waste of time and certainly not bad, William Lustig and Larry Cohen's Maniac Cop 2 is still a bit of an unnecessary sequel.  It makes the common blunder of essentially making the first entry in the series completely pointless from a conceptual standpoint as basically the same story is told with pretty much everything that happened in the first one casually shrugged off in every character's mind.  Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon are back yes, but once again no one believes them and the title character gets to do the exact same things he did before, until law enforcement officials finally, (again), realize it is him.  We are even shown the same flashback explaining Robert Z'Dar's origin once more, taken right out of the first movie.  While this safe and borderline lazy approach is disappointing, the movie itself is entertaining enough, even if nothing new happens.  Familiar character actors Robert Davi and Michael Lerner fit right at home and Leo Rossi is appropriate levels of annoying as a serial, stripper murderer.  Z'Dar is randomly way more deformed, the laws of physics are humorously ignored, and there is fog in a convenient store ala Cobra, (none of which are inappropriate at all mind you), so it still has those things going for it.

THE RESURRECTED
(1991)
Dir - Dan O'Bannon
Overall: MEH

It is unfortunate that one such as Dan O'Bannon adapted a work from one such as H.P. Lovecraft with such flawed results.  Only his second as well as last directorial effort, (his first of course being the paramount Return of the Living Dead), O'Bannon is unsuccessful at creating a terrifying mood in his The Case of Charles Dexter Ward reworking The Resurrected.  The problems are a weak, persistent musical score that never lets up, stiff performances from most of his cast, (leads John Terry and Jane Sibbett most assuredly), and a plodding pace.  Generally, the last act of one's horror movie should provide the most heart-racing intensity, but the one found here involving an exploration of an underground catacomb and then a final mental institution confrontation are both flat-out bores.  Lovecraftian dialog, (never the author's strong suit), seems almost comically out of place even if Chris Sarandon is solid in delivering it hammy enough.  If the presentation is the biggest detriment here where it comes off far too B-movie and direct-to-video-esque, (since that is exactly what it was after all), the special effects and make-up work is still commendable at least even in its dated form.

HABIT
(1997)
Dir - Larry Fessenden
Overall: GOOD

Handling several aspects of production, (including writing, acting directing, editing, and sound design), independent film renascence man Larry Fessenden mostly succeeds with the remake of his own same-titled video from 1985, Habit.  Made by his New York based production company Glass Eye Pix, the movie does have a minimal amount of embarrassing moments, (some clunky dialog, amateurish nightmare sequences, and sub-par performances here or there), and it is ultimately overlong, but the things that end up working are still rather admirable.  Set mostly in Manhattan and lingering on Fessenden's lead character's bohemian lifestyle, all of the handheld camera work, establishing shots, and indie music cues help to create a natural environment far from any kind of popcorny horror movie.  Though his character is complex and not all together sympathetic, (he is rather a slurring slob and alcoholic with a heart of gold more or less), the metaphors surrounding grieving and unsafe sex still hit home as they are supposed to.  Plus thankfully there is just enough subtle creepy moments dashed around to keep things intriguing for the horror movie fan, so any expert on the genre will appreciate some of the conventions dabbled with herein.

1990s American Horror Part Three

TREMORS
(1990)
Dir - Ron Underwood
Overall: GOOD

While giant monster movies are not the most interesting or frightening in the horror field, the good ones can still stand out as innocent and harmless fun.  The first in the Tremors series, (which has had oodles of direct to DVD sequels, prequels, and even a TV show run), reinvents no rules and sticks to the small group of townsfolk isolated and left to their own wits formula and does nothing wrong in the process.  Having a premise of giant sand slugs randomly deciding to wake up and feed on people is hardly anything to take seriously and a wise move was made by making Tremors as much a comedy as anything else.  Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward work fine together as goofy yet proficient handymen yokels and the only thing that comes close to sinking some of the funny is the movie's noticeable PG-13 rating where characters have to routinely say "pardon my French" and for the most part, we know that most of the characters and all of the kids are going to end up just fine.  Not that it needs to be a profanity-ridden bloodbath, but in dire situations such as this one, you would logically assume that there would be more casualties and the word "fuck" might get tossed around more liberally.  Minute complaints though and thankfully this was pre-CGI so the practical monsters look fantastic and get plenty of screen time as well.

TALES FROM THE HOOD
(1995)
Dir - Rusty Cundieff
Overall: GOOD

Director/actor Rusty Cundieff and producer/co-writer Darin Scott's follow-up to the brilliant hip-hop mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat was Tales from the Hood, an anthology horror outing that is taken just seriously enough to be admirable.  Not surprisingly, the film is very topical for the African-American community, using inner city gang violence, domestic abuse, police misconduct, slavery reparations, and institutional racism as its very real backdrops for over the top, rather tongue-in-cheek horror premises.  This melding of both serious and ridiculous themes should come off as messy, but it is consistently engaging, able to laugh at itself when appropriate.  Most of the performances are exaggerated and hammy, (there are lots of characters who are hysterically screaming the word "fuck" at each other for one thing), but some of the segments also play it more reserved, particularly "Boys Do Get Bruised" with a very against-type portrayal from David Alan Grier.  "KKK Comeuppance" utilizes the ole revenge seeking, killer dolls premise while "Rogue Cop Revelation" and "Hard-Core Convert" are the most overtly political in nature.  The framing story with a goofy "host", (because you have to have one of those), is fun and the ending is satisfyingly grandiose, reminding us that in the end it is just a silly little horror movie when all is said and done.

RAVENOUS
(1999)
Dir - Antonia Bird
Overall: MEH

A troubled production behind the scenes, Ravenous had directorial problems resulting in Antonia Bird being brought in as a replacement once shooting had already begun.  Further studio interference continued along the way and though the end result surprisingly does not suffer as much from these issues as one would expect, it still ends up being a tad underwhelming.  Yet another black horror comedy based off the Donnor party and Alfred Packer real life stories, (though it is nowhere near as full-blown silly as Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical), Ravenous mostly benefits from its solid cast and unrelenting gruesomeness, but falls flat due to its half-baked themes.  It neither explores the insatiable cannibal lust that befalls the victims nor the wendigo mythology it borrows from nearly enough, becoming rather one-note in the process.  The reasons some characters embrace their newfound, human meat predicament while others deny it, (or do both, depending on the scene), could have went further than just speech after speech about how powerful it feels to feast on other people.  So though the satirical tone is appreciated, it is just not all there.

1990s American Horror Part Two

CAST A DEADLY SPELL
(1991)
Dir - Martin Campbell
Overall: GOOD

Produced by HBO and therefore a made for TV movie, Cast a Deadly Spell is oodles more clever and fun that it would otherwise appear.  Television writer Joseph Dougherty's script rather sufficiency melds classic film noir with the Cthulo Mythos and does not take itself all that seriously in doing so.  There are giggling gremlins portrayed as a routine, rodent-like nuisances and a sassy, dancing stone gargoyle, case in point.  Future Golden Eye and Casino Royal director Martin Campbell is right at home with the material, creating a textbook mood for each genre that he is playing with.  With all these noir and horror cliches firmly and equally in place, it is a fun experience to see them all play out in such a deliberate, tongue in cheek manor.  The lead is literally named H.P. Lovecraft, (though his first name is Harry instead of Howard), and the concept of all forms of good and evil magic casually existing in 1948 Hollywood is a fascinating idea that translates well with a slew of jokes along the way.  The dialog is just witty enough to work and Fred Ward in the lead seems tailor-made for playing the consistently smirking, smart-ass, tough guy P.I., just as Julianne Moore excels as the singing, sultry, backstabbing femme fatale.

NADJA
(1994)
Dir - Michael Almereyda
Overall: MEH

Part Jim Jarmusch, Werner Herzog, Hal Hartley, and David Lynch, (who acts as an executive producer and actually has an amusing cameo as a morgue attendant), Nadja is an intentionally bizarre arthouse excursion not without some merit.  In toying with the Bram Stoker novel and unofficially remaking Dracula's Daughter, writer/director Michael Almereyda has a solid premise here, but the film is avant-garde for the mere sake of it with incredibly strange performances and dialog mixed with random visuals like pixelated POV shots, the use of stock footage, (including some of Bela Lugosi from White Zombie), and quirky editing tricks.  Besides the stylized look of the film, (a look which Ana Lily Amipour would certainly draw inspiration from with her remarkable A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night two decades later), the use of Portishead and My Bloody Valentine also make the movie a hipster experience before there was such a thing.  The humor is suffocatingly dry yet easily noticeable, like how an intense showdown near the end is undercut with a laughing Dracula Halloween toy superimposed over the eerie Transylvanian sky.  Moments like this are aplenty and also hit or miss.  Not that the plot is particularly important, but it is anything but logical.  Though at least the eccentricities all around still keep things interesting even when they are borderline tedious.

THE FACULTY
(1998)
Dir - Robert Rodriguez
Overall: MEH

Fully acknowledging that movies like The Faculty are forcefully hip, studio crafted popcorn hoopla aimed solely at teenagers and college kids, one does not have to condone them to still not fancy them.  Everything this movie borrows, (cough, steals, cough), from represents certain pinnacles of particular genre cinema, be it John Hughes' stereotype-exploring, high school drama The Breakfast Club, every version of Jack Finney's conformist nightmare Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or John Carpenter's paranoia fueled remake of The Thing.  Yet the finished form simply reeks of blatant, manufactured silliness meant to be quickly consumed and just as quickly forgotten about.  As Robert Rodriguez's direct follow up to the excellent From Dusk Till Dawn, it is disappointing to see him go through the motions and basically just do a solid for the Weinstein brothers who wanted to cash in on Scream's self-aware, R-rated, slasher-esque success.  All this aside, the film is laughably silly and mostly aggravating to watch as every single character is an obnoxious, exaggerated caricature and in a perfect horror film, they would all die horribly and slowly for our amusement.  Instead, they all live happily ever after and you are left with awful grunge covers of "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" and "Schools Out" ringing in your head.

1990s American Horror Part One

FRANKENHOOKER
(1990)
Dir - Frank Henenlotter
Overall: GOOD

Exploitation schlock filmmaker Frank Henenlotter's Frankenhooker is if not the most ridiculous of his movies, could fairly be called the most deliberately silly and arguably the best.  With a title like that, you get exactly what you expect yet somehow even more.  The only complaint one can lodge at it is that James Lorinz' constant narration of his own life becomes far too annoying.  Though just when it comes close to ruining the film, his screen time takes a break and the title character, (a hilarious real life Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen), gets to let loose in the final act which appropriately escalates the movie into classic trash status.  Similar to how other excellent horror comedies such as Dead Alive or Re-Animator become even more memorable as they ski-rocket into over the top terrain, Frankenhooker also excels in this arena with an ending that is as laugh out loud funny and preposterous as can be.  Movies like this have proven to be remarkably tricky to pull off, (such as the work of Troma which is too distractedly amateurish in their production), or oodles of other horror films that are not funny enough and insist on throwing too much seriousness in them as well.  Neither is the case here though and it is a gem because of it.

CANNIBAL!  THE MUSICAL
(1993)
Dir - Trey Parker
Overall: MEH

Released the year before South Park debuted and filmed while studying at the University of Colorado at Bolder, Cannibal! The Musical is ground zero in the filmmaking career of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  Comparing it to all of the duo's further work, there is plenty to make their fanbase gleeful, (including gross-out humor, crud sex jokes, gore, jabs at religion, and of course ridiculous songs), but it is also predictably weak being a debut and all.  Parker's performance is fine, (as is Matt Stones though in a smaller role), but the writing and particularly the pacing is not quite up to snuff.  Honestly, the movie's downright boring most of the time which could be partially to blame on the subject matter.  The real life story of Alfred Packer getting snowbound in the Colorado mountains and reverting to cannibalism is not quite dealt with in a ludicrous, jacked-up enough manner to make the western/musical/semi-horror parody work.  Still, for something that is basically a student movie, it logically should be more uneven than it is and there is enough of Parker and Stone's future greatness on display that giving it a single viewing at some point in your life is certainly fair.

EVENT HORIZON
(1997)
Dir - Paul W.S. Anderson
Overall: MEH

Paul W.S. Anderson has made a career out of hokey, sci-fi and/or horror action films such as Mortal Combat and several in the Resident Evil franchise so not surprisingly, Event Horizon eventually succumbs to such B-movie silliness.  Primarily designed as a haunted house film in space which is a solid idea, Horizon bottoms out in its final act, kicking up the schlock value tenfold and undermining all of its interesting and creepy intent.  The fact that nearly all of the plot points are reminiscent of numerous genre tropes that we have seen before, (there is a distress signal, a mysterious vacant ship, a rescue mission with a crew of badasses, etc), it gives the movie a rather boring foundation.  Yet the psychological elements borrowed from Solaris and The Shining and hellish dimension ones resembling the work of Clive Barker are an intriguing enough mix in parts.  Typical even today, the sets are more impressive than the awful CGI, but the overall look still does not come off unique enough to distinguish itself from pick any Alien film per example.  The dialog is also mostly poor and cliche ridden, ("The ship won't let you leave", "The dark inside me from the other place", etc), and it is all a too popcorny and generic as a whole to achieve anything beyond being another mildly amusing, missed opportunity horror vehicle.

1980s American Horror Part Ten

TERROR TRAIN
(1980)
Dir - Roger Spottiswoode
Overall: MEH

Former Sam Peckinpah editor Roger Spottiswoode's debut as director was an intentional "Halloween on a train" rip-off, very appropriately called Terror Train.  Anything that you could find intriguing about the claustrophobic premise quickly derails, (har, har), into being a pretty dull, tripe experience.  Though it is not necessarily a problem to know exactly who the killer is before the opening credits even hit, it does rather waste our time when the movie is trying to force a twist on us with a red herring that obviously is going nowhere.  Being a deliberate imitation VEHICLE, (more har, har), the movie goes through the motions with a revenge-seeking killer in a mask, shitty, unsympathetic horndog college kids who get picked off, and Jamie Lee Curtis (two years after Halloween and two months after shooting Prom Night), once again as the final girl.  The killer in question is also a lanky, normally built dude who of course miraculously has superhuman strength and stamina and continues to not be dead when characters of course again continue to assume he is.  So, pretty basic stuff.  On the more amusing angle though, both Vanity and David Copperfield of all people have supporting roles and even the most casual Prince or magic fan can get a kick out of seeing them briefly in a horror movie, even if it is a rather generic one.

HOUSE
(1985)
Dir - Steve Miner
Overall: MEH

Things grow a bit witless in Steve Miner's initial House, which spawned three sequels all in the same silly vein.  Producing a solid horror comedy can be a delicate tightrope act and both the more serious elements to Ethan Wiley's screenplay plus the intended funny ones fail to hit their mark.  Essentially, the movie is too goofy and lighthearted for its would-be harrowing elements to work, such as the loss of a child, a marriage falling apart, and a traumatic Vietnam experience.  When emotional moments do transpire, they seem out of place what with all the rubber puppets flying around and near slapsticky set pieces.  Said practical effect monsters do look rather satisfying, (particularly a zombified soldier and a giant, flying bat skull), and a long encounter with a fat, dismembered demon in a dress that will not stay "dead" is somewhat of a hoot.  The pacing is not really kept up though as it takes too long for anything really to happen and once it does, it kind of just becomes a three ring circus act of creatures showing up whenever the plot wants them to and our main protagonist, (a feminine v-neck sweater wearing William Katt), dodging them in mostly comical ways.  As is often the case, more deliberate humor in place of forced drama or a complete 180 into something resembling a very seriously spooky, evil dimensional portal haunted house story could have done the trick far better.

SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA
(1988)
Dir - David DeCoteau
Overall: MEH

There may not be a more "1980s exploitation cinema" movie title than Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.  Made on a unmistakably minuscule budget, shot in twelve days in a bowling alley during after hours, and wrapped up in time to squeeze one more movie out of it with the same cast and crew, (Nightmare Sisters), this would almost be exactly what you would expect.  "Almost" because only the worst predictable elements of B-grade schlock are present instead of ALL of the predictable elements.  The acting is as amateur-hour as you could imagine, the plot is brainless, there is a near insulting lack of gore, and most of the kill scenes simply happen off camera.  When horror stuff does transpire on screen, the cinematography is so poor, (apparently they could not afford to turn any lights on in the location they were using), that you cannot make out what you are even looking at, if anything.  While naked boobs obviously show up, you would be wrong to predict that they are on display every four minutes or so to keep the viewer's attention.  It is mostly just a bunch of people terribly delivering their lines while running around in the dark for over an hour.  All of this said though, the star of the film is really an adorable little Imp puppet, (voiced hilariously by punk musician and fantastically named Dukey Flyswatter), who steals every scene he is in.  The movie is still pretty much a waste of time though.