Killdozer (1974)

JUNE 15, 2021

GENRE: TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (BORROWED)

There's nothing worse than a trailer or ad campaign for a film being very misleading, as it does a disservice to the film by angering the people who showed up and all but ensures it won't find its actual fans until it's been written off as a flop. But it's kind of amusing when the only one to blame is myself, as if I was ever pressed to describe what Killdozer was about, I would have said "A guy makes a tank out of a bulldozer and gets revenge on the people who destroyed his home," but that isn't remotely accurate. Turns out I combined the real life story of Marvin Heemeyer (whose modified bulldozer was indeed dubbed "Killdozer", despite the fact that, miraculously, no one was killed with it in his rampage) and the plot of King/Bachman's Roadwork in my head, somehow, and made up a different movie in my head.

Turns out, the actual movie is about a regular bulldozer becoming sentient thanks to hitting a meteor rock during a job, and proceeding to wipe out most of the crew who is working on a remote, uninhabited island, away from anything else for the bulldozer to do. It was a 1974 made for TV movie, so you'd be a fool to be surprised it had some slow parts, but when not much was happening I was entertained by the gradual realization of how I managed to come up with the wrong plot. The "Killdozer" element was easy enough to figure out (Heemeyer) but between the driverless machine running people down and "meteor shit" to blame I can only assume someone said, at some point, "Stephen King must have seen Killdozer" and I merely managed to attribute a different one of his plots to this. The human brain is fascinating, guys.

Would my imagined movie have been any better? Maybe. It certainly would have been more interesting to look at, as there are only six people in the thing and they manage to kill the distinctive ones off first. One was the lone person of color and the other stood out because it was a young Robert Urich, who my dad knew somehow (I forget the specifics and they're both dead so I can't ask) and was thus a common presence in my early TV watching days, as my parents would gravitate toward things he was in and point him out. I doubt this one was ever one they had me watch; plus he dies first so my horror-hating dad wouldn't have watched any further anyway. Worse, there is literally nothing on the island beyond the men, their makeshift camp, and scattered equipment, so Killdozer doesn't have much to destroy, nor do they have anywhere to hide.

So the movie gets pretty repetitive, as you can imagine. Killdozer shows up and kills someone, they bury him, talk for a bit, try something that doesn't work, and then someone gets killed. Lather, rinse, repeat. One could even think of it as a proto-slasher of sorts, but if you think of the blandest body count movie there's at least some scenery changes to enjoy, which doesn't apply here. Worse, the screenplay (co-written by Theodore Sturgeon, based on his short story) seemingly loses interest in itself as it goes, with the deaths getting progressively lazier. The first one it actually kills (Urich is just sort of fried by its activation and dies later), the guy crawls inside a big pipe thinking he'd be safe, only for the 'dozer to batter it around and send him to his doom - not bad. But by the end, it looks more like that bit in Austin Powers with the steamroller, as the guy is in his jeep trying to get it started while the villain rolls toward him. At no point does the man think to simply get out of the car and run, as the thing isn't very fast and also can't exactly turn on a dime, making escape pretty easy. Nope, he just sits there, even has time for a "Oh shit, I guess this is it..." kind of expression as he literally waits to be crushed. Come on, movie. Try harder.

That said, it's still pretty amusing in its way. It was a 90 minute block TV movie, so it's under 75 minutes (just once I wish one of these would come with the vintage ads that aired along with it) and thus even with the repetition doesn't have time to wear out its welcome, and the extraterrestrial origins were a nice surprise. Whatever remote control type invention they came up with (or hidden compartment for a driver) to operate Killdozer was effective enough; I was surprised how many shots there were of it driving along without a visible operator. And the cast is great: Clint Walker is the lead and he's backed up by Urich, Neville Brand, and James Wainwright (if you name a single television show of note from the '70s or '80s, he was probably in it); the "isolated, all male" grouping is rare in horror (The Thing being the most prominent) and they all play off each other well, even allow themselves to get sad when someone dies. I was also relieved that the Black character wasn't "the BLACK character"; no one ever mentions his race or treats him differently, which obviously wasn't a guarantee at this time and can really sap the fun out of these older films when seeing them for the first time today (this does not mean that they should be JUDGED by today's standards, to be clear - I speak only of how such dated attitudes can distract from the experience).

Kino Lorber's disc (which I found at Target, amazingly; you can't even guarantee that they'll have mid-level box office hits anymore now that their physical media section is so tiny, but they had Killdozer) has an audio interview with director Jerry London (a TV director through and through, which should tell you how interesting he is to listen to) and a commentary by historian Lee Gambin, who provides some insight on TV movies at the time, how the film differed from its source story, etc. He also points out some of the other movies that were shot in the same location (such as Hell Comes to Frogtown), though it looked familiar to me when I watched it the first time so I had already looked it up - same spot as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, which is right around the corner from Six Flags Magic Mountain (eerily, there was a lone bulldozer near the parking lot for a long time I always wondered about). Like the film itself he eventually runs out of gas (vehicle puns!) and leaves with a few minutes left in the runtime, and it's almost never scene specific, so it can be a little less than engaging, but if you're a die-hard fan of this film or any of the actors, there's probably enough in there to warrant a listen. Since the movie's so short and he quits early anyway it'll only take another hour or so out of your life, so you might as well if you bought Killdozer to own forever.

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Bad Ronald (1974)

OCTOBER 5, 2020

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I know by now not to expect too much out of old TV movies that fall into the horror genre; they all have their moments but their rep is largely based on adolescent (specifically, TOO adolescent) half-memories of sneaking looks at them when their parents were watching, or in some cases simply seeing the commercials for their broadcast during something far more wholesome. Bad Ronald is no exception; I can certainly see how a few of its moments would have freaked out an unsuspecting nine year old at a time when the scariest thing on TV was probably Bozo, but it is very much a product of its time and, sadly, doesn't have enough meat on its bones to register as much more than a curiosity today.

It doesn't help that a number of films have taken its basic premise and gone further with it, though as a television film it obviously had its limits. Still, there's no real reason for it to be as anticlimactic and curiously suspense free as it is, as those sort of things wouldn't have triggered the censors. The first twenty minutes are probably the tensest in the movie, weirdly enough. Ronald is your typical weird kid who has a crush on the prettiest girl in school, oblivious to the fact that she isn't remotely interested (even his mother seems to be like "Dude, stay in your lane"), and after being laughed away from her pool party he accidentally runs into a younger girl, who also teases him, and in response he shoves her, which unfortunately kills her when she strikes her head on a stone. Rather than just run away and let it look like an accident, the dummy buries her and leaves evidence behind.

So his mother decides on the most normal thing to do: they work through the night to make a fake wall over the downstairs bathroom, in which he will hide and stay quiet until the whole thing blows over. The cops show up first thing in the morning since it's obvious he was the girl's killer, and the director is able to milk the scene for some tension - will their ruse work at all, let alone when the cops actively start snooping around? Will they notice that there's an awful lot of unaccounted for space near the stairs? And what, er, exactly is going to give this movie the rest of its narrative?

After about a half hour we get our answer - the mother dies while undergoing a surgery, leaving Ronald to fend for himself while still living in his makeshift "lair". Eventually another family moves in, and thus at around the halfway point it finally turns into where most other movies would start: a nice family moves into a house and discovers that something is wrong with it. Here there is no such mystery, it's just a matter of when Ronald will be discovered before he strikes again, and it's about even odds since he's so timid and non-proactive and the family is completely oblivious. Ronald sets up a number of peepholes to keep an eye on the family (parents and three daughters), and somehow they never notice the holes - even the one directly below where they hung some artwork and didn't notice that the "wall" was just a cheap layer of glorified cardboard!

A few minutes into the movie I tweeted a joke about how I identified with Ronald, since he was asking the girl to go to a double feature and she wasn't interested (been there, my man!), prompting someone to suggest that if I read the book I wouldn't find much in common with him. I didn't think much of it until the movie ended without anything else happening (he accidentally scares the nosy neighbor lady to death when she sees him crawling out of his hiding spot one day, but that's not really his fault), at which point I decided to see if I could find a good synopsis of the novel to see what, if anything, was different. Instead I noticed that the eBook was only five bucks, and at 173 pages seemed like something I could skim through in time for this review.

Almost instantly I could see the difference (and what that twitter guy was referring to), as the girl's death wasn't as accidental, and Ronald also raped her prior (she was also younger than the girl appeared to be in the movie). From then on it's basically the same, save for Ronald's inner thoughts (including the reveal that he's racist, when the realtor shows the house to a Black family and he is repulsed at the notion), but the third act goes in a very different direction than the subsequent film since author John Holbrook Vance wasn't restricted by network censors. While movie Ronald just peeps on the girls for a while and eventually locks one up in the neighbor's house for a day, only to be discovered after trying to kill the oldest one's boyfriend and quickly arrested without any real incident, the book version is far more evil.

In Vance's text, Ronald kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and ultimately murders the two younger daughters, after forcing them to write notes that make it seem like they ran away. The boyfriend character - who is also the older brother of the girl he killed at the beginning - starts putting the pieces together and ultimately discovers the girls' bodies (buried under the house's crawlspace), then blocks off Ronald's getaway exit under the house. Then he along with the girls' parents smoke him out of his hiding spot, prompting him to run - on fire for a bit - into the street and all the way back to the house with the swimming pool that kicked off all this tragedy. It's pretty grim; Vance is pretty delicate with his descriptions of the sexual assaults and the girls' deaths (it's basically all implied; he'll write about Ronald approaching the bed the girl is tied to, then skip to "when he finished..."), but it doesn't change the fact that it's about a perfectly nice family losing their two youngest children to a sex pest living in their walls.

Unfortunately, with the movie unable to even broach that kind of material, yet remaining fairly faithful to it, it's just kind of a snooze. Apart from the brief kidnapping of the one girl, Ronald eating their food is pretty much the extent of their "torture", and the cops barely factor into the proceedings once the mother dies. And they don't even bother putting him in a tight spot; I kept thinking of Sleep Tight and how it managed to make nervewracking scenes out of the awful villain perhaps being discovered when he hid under his target's bed after they came home early - there's nothing like that here. Every now and then he'll go out for a snack and someone will come downstairs or something, but he will just duck around a corner and race through his hidden door a few seconds later, without as much as a "What was that?" kind of pause from the family member.

The actors do their best (was delighted to see Dabney Coleman as the girls' father, though he sadly gets written out of the final act when the parents go on vacation), but there's only so much one can do with a thrill-free thriller. Ronald's climactic burst through his fake wall (and, moments before, eye in the peephole, very Black Christmas) probably inspired a nightmare or two back in 1974 and is almost definitely the answer to someone's online query of "Can anyone identify this movie, a guy with glasses was in the wall...", but it is, even by TV movie standards, too uneventful to really serve much of a purpose when we have Hider in the House, The Boy (spoiler), and See No Evil doing the "he's in the walls" thing much better (not to mention comedically minded ones like Housebound). At least it was for a 90 minute block instead of a two hour one; it slags even at 75 minutes (usual 90 minute slot time minus ads), it'd be PAINFUL at 97 or so.

What say you?

P.S. At some point I got the Imagine Dragons song "Bad Liar" in my head and kept singing "I'm a bad RONALD! Bad, RONALD!" over and over. I'm pretty sick of it, so hopefully I've passed this curse on to you, Ring-style.

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Blu-Ray Review: Eli Roth's History of Horror (S1)

OCTOBER 5, 2020

GENRE: DOCUMENTARY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

One of my favorite things about the polarizing The Green Inferno was actually in the end credits, where Eli Roth provided a list of similar movies for people to check out, on the (often correct) assumption that it would be the first of its type that many audience members saw. Inferno was far less unsettling and disturbing than many of its influences (i.e. Cannibal Holocaust), so it worked as a sort of introduction to the sub-genre - if you couldn't handle it, you certainly wouldn't be able to deal with the violence and imagery of the others, but if you enjoyed it for what it was, here was a handy list of what to watch next. The seven episode Eli Roth's History of Horror, which aired on AMC in 2018 and is just hitting Blu-ray now ahead of a second season premiere, serves a similar purpose.

Wrangling an impressive (if anything, overwhelming - more on that soon) roster of horror icons and experts, each episode tackles a different sub-genre (zombies, ghosts, monsters, etc) and treats us to a highlight reel of films from that group along with commentary from the guests, narrated by Roth (who also occasionally appears in more conversational chats with some of the higher profile guests like Jordan Peele and Stephen King). These aren't necessarily linear walks through the sort of rise and fall of any particular, and box office only comes up sparingly - they just pick a half dozen or so examples from each type and link them with some kind of throwaway line from Roth before a commercial break. So (not an exact example) after Elm Street he might say something like "And Wes would reinvent the genre again with a little help from Ghostface!", meaning Scream would be coming up next after AMC ran through fifty more Walking Dead ads.

On that note, don't be too upset or surprised if your favorite _____ movie doesn't come up in that episode's discussion, because it aired on basic cable and thus those hour long episodes are really only forty minutes, and with the aforementioned glut of talent, there's simply no time to get to everything. Even the slasher episodes (yes, plural - it's the only sub-genre to get two episodes, *heart emoji*), still skip over a number of prominent entries, though perhaps there would be more time if the likes of Saw and Hostel weren't included. Yes, in order to cram in as much as possible, some sub-genres are lumped together, so traditional monster movies like The Thing are grouped with animal attack movies like The Birds for "Killer Creatures", and "Ghost Stories" is a mix of ghost films like Sixth Sense and haunted house movies such as Poltergeist.

You, the die-hard horror fan reading this site, can cry foul if you want, but ultimately you and I have to accept that this is not aimed at the hardcores. Sure, it's fun to watch, and only those among us who have pored through all of our DVD bonus features can appreciate that he got Stephen King to sit down for a while, since he is pretty erratic when it comes to showing up for these things (nice to get him talking about Creepshow for a bit since you never get to hear from him on the otherwise exhaustive Blu-ray for that film), but our primary use will be comfort, background viewing. No, this is something I might keep on hand for the (hopeful?) day where my son decides he likes scary stuff after all and wants to know what to watch - these episodes are like "Horror 101" for both movies to watch and people to pay attention to.

In addition to highlighting the milestones of each genre (Halloween! The Exorcist! Dawn of the Dead!), social commentary is also offered, though it's not exactly an in-depth discussion. The AIDS crisis of the '80s giving a new leash on life for the vampire film or the allusions to civil rights movements in Night of the Living Dead are covered briefly, basically just enough to clarify that these movies aren't just scare machines for dummies, and at times I wish the credits had taken cues from Green Inferno and given horror neophytes some additional titles to track down, both feature films and other, more thorough documentaries. Seeing the great Tananarive Due and Ernest Dickerson chime in on things like NOTLD and Candyman is nice, but I couldn't help but think about how they said similar things - with more context and focus - in the excellent Horror Noire documentary, which is a must-see (available on Shudder) for horror fans new and old, whereas this is fun but hardly essential.

No, here the idea is basically to comfort us with clips and highlights from our favorite movies, and smile whenever another beloved face appears. I mentioned King but he is just one of many titans who show up across these three hours of nostalgia-driven television. You get some of the old school Masters of Horror (Joe Dante, John Landis, Stuart Gordon), their heir apparents (Peele, Leigh Whannell, Ana Lily Amirpour, etc), a whole bunch of actors from the classics being discussed (Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bruce Campbell... I could fill a paragraph here), and even a few famous horror fans like Slash for good measure. And that's just on the "from the movie!" side - there are just as many authors and journalists, critics like Leonard Maltin, and even my boy Ryan Turek babbling about Dead Heat or something. The number of people introduced in the first episode would have been impressive enough for a full season, but even by the 6th and 7th episodes you'll still be saying "Oh they got them too?"

But in a way that proves to be a bit of a check against the show, because in the race to get everyone on-screen, it reduces intelligent people who could have probably taken up an entire episode to a few brief sound bites. The presence of certain talent dictates the focus on occasion too; I don't have anything against Josh Hartnett, but it seems his showing up for an interview is the only reason we get a large chunk of the "Vampires" episode devoted to 30 Days Of Night, far more than the likes of Fright Night or Blade are afforded. And Hartnett (along with others who have similar narrow contributions to the genre) rarely appears elsewhere, so it cuts into the time that others could have been called upon to bring their expertise to any subject. I mean, say what you will about Rob Zombie's films, but the man is intelligent and an encyclopedia of horror knowledge, yet barely even contributes to the conversation. His appearance stems from what appears to be a dinner/chat with Roth and Greg Nicotero, but the latter man dominates all of these scenes, leaving Roth and Zombie with little more than "Right, me too!" kind of contributions after Nicotero gushes over seeing Jaws as a kid or whatever.

In fact, as the series continued I couldn't help but wish that the ONLY interview clips were from these kind of sessions; Roth is seen chatting with those two, King, Peele, Slash, and maybe one or two more, while everyone else is presented in a traditional talking head style, presumably talking to director Kurt Sayenga instead of Roth. Nothing against these people or their contributions to the genre or this show, but those "one on one" segments are much more fun to watch; there's something charming about seeing these horror luminaries come off like a couple of horror fans like us, geeking out over watching The Exorcist as a kid or something. Certainly more appealing than a static shot of Harry Manfredini explaining the "ki-ki-ma-ma" motif for the millionth time, at any rate. "Eli Roth sits down with Jordan Peele for an hour to discuss possession movies" would be fascinating, I think, but what we get is "Jordan Peele occasionally says something about a possession movie, and so do fifty others", which is less novel.

Unsurprisingly, the highlight of the bonus features are longer interviews from these sessions, especially King who, again, isn't as likely to appear in these things as some of the others (I believe it's a law that either Dante or Landis has to appear in any modern horror documentary). Here we get more candid thoughts about this or that movie, including The Shining which he likens to a beautiful car with no engine (he's also changed his tune slightly in the wake of Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep, so it's a somewhat dated take from the man). These extended interviews, plus a few other random deleted scenes, run almost as long as the entire season and get their own disc, so you're certainly getting your money's worth. TV shows on disc are an increasingly tough sell with so many streaming options, so it's smart for them to actually make a purchase worthwhile by essentially doubling the content. A shame they continued to censor the occasional profanity though; let them F-bombs fly!

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Beyond The Walls (2016)

OCTOBER 3, 2016

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

It's easy to see how much the landscape has switched from movies to television when almost anyone can tell you that Beyond The Walls (French: Au-delà des Mur) would have worked better as a film than a "TV series" (more like miniseries, as it runs for three episodes that run about standard TV episode length - 45-50 minutes). The "cliffhangers" that end the first two episodes are really just ends of their respective acts, no different than any other movie, and things are quite padded in the first episode to ensure that first big moment comes at the end of its required length. Indeed, throughout the next two episodes I kept waiting for payoffs for those early scenes, distracting me away from what was otherwise a really good take on the standard horror trope of someone atoning for a past mistake via creepy/supernatural elements.

These scenes include some very specific details that have no bearing on anything else, such as the fact that our heroine Lisa (Veerle Baetens) works as a speech therapist, that she pretends to have a husband in order to avoid social encounters, and, in one peculiar moment, is attempting a casual encounter with a guy she met in the bar, only to give him blue balls as she becomes seemingly more interested in an abandoned car in the garage. I kept waiting for these things, given at least half of the first episode, to really tie into what came later (particularly the dusty car), but not only do they not, she never even explains their significance to the other characters. I mean, there's a difference between some character development and seemingly setting up an entirely different kind of movie - if you stripped that chunk out and showed it to someone, they'd assume they were seeing a Repulsion-esque drama about an unhinged woman. Five minutes' worth of screentime is all it would have taken to tell us that she's lonely (partially by choice), which is really all we need out of this material.

The real plot starts (and I should note that this earlier stuff only bugged me in retrospect once I realized it had no bearing on anything - in the moment it's fine, well-acted, well-made, etc.) when she finds out that she has inherited the house across the street after its owner was discovered dead - and had been so for thirty years before being discovered. She never met him and had no connection to his family, so she's obviously a bit confused, but hey - free house! One she can move into by herself (it's not a humorous movie for the most part, but seeing her lug her mattress across the busy street is pretty amusing), and apparently fix up herself too - I don't care if it's "woke" of me to say so but there are fewer things I find more attractive than a woman who knows how to fix some plumbing and wield a sledgehammer in order to knock down an undesired wall. Naturally, she looks the gift horse in the mouth, trying to figure out why this long-dead man would leave her a house (and how he even had her name to begin with), but before long she's got a bigger mystery to solve - who or what is making the noise behind a wall in her bedroom. She knocks that one down too and finds a secret passageway, which leads to a gigantic, rundown ballroom that in no way could have been included in her newly acquired residence.

Obviously, we're dealing with a more fantastical kind of horror here; in fact it's almost tough to really call it horror at all. Creepy moments (including one right after she enters that ballroom) are plentiful, but I was reminded more of things like City of Lost Children and Neverwhere than anything full-blown terror oriented. Not a knock on the "movie", of course - just a heads up for those who might hear "French + horror" and go in hoping for the next Inside. Lisa meets Julien (François Deblock), a mysterious man who says he has been trapped in there for three years, and the two work together in order to try to find their way out once they realize that they can't go back the way she just entered. Julien has been compiling a map on the walls of the little room he has set up as his base/safe haven, and it's MASSIVE - the movie almost feels like a video game adaptation for a bit, as impossibly large structures are their forte (think the first Resident Evil) and mysterious strangers temporarily helping you along is an element of pretty much every "survival horror" game ever made. But again, the story and characters are more important than the scary things they find on occasion, and director/creator Hervé Hadmar offers the right balance: the world he creates here is fleshed out just enough to keep from being incoherent, but never so much that it's more interesting than our characters' respective journeys.

As mentioned they both need to atone for something - as it turns out, they both blame themselves for a death they feel they could have prevented. When they were younger, Lisa's sister drowned because she was too busy flirting with a guy instead of watching her swim, and Julien was forced to leave his best friend to die during the war. But unlike Flatliners or whatever, their ghosts are not angry or vengeful - they just want to be back together with their loved ones in this endless would-be paradise. Of course we don't know too much about what Julien was like before he got trapped there, but if there is one benefit to the over-time spent with Lisa's day-to-day, we know that there's nothing for her back in the "real world" and it wouldn't be too much of a hassle for her to stay there with her beloved sister, who harbors no grudge against her for what she did. I liked this scenario - ordinarily the thinking would be "she has to escape and get back to her life!" but here I found myself kind of torn; would it really be so bad to stay there forever? Or will this place get her to realize that an ideal, drama-free life isn't really a life at all, because we need the lows to appreciate the highs?

Weighty stuff for a movie that features a minotaur, I know, but that's exactly what made it so intriguing (it's worth noting that despite my usual exhaustion for this time of the year, AND the subtitles for a 2.5 hr experience, I stayed awake the entire time!). It's a fairly well-balanced mix of many genres, offering just enough world-building to make it compelling but not over-explaining everything and exhausting all of its potential (i.e. a prequel or sequel could be enticing, but not necessary). There's horror, drama, romance, and fantasy all offered in equal doses, led by two solid actors playing characters you'll easily care about. In short, even if it was in English it could never be mistaken for an American horror movie from Screen Gems or Blumhouse, and is highly worth your time even with its peculiar three episode structure. It will be available on Shudder soon, where you can choose to watch it like a traditional on-air TV series if you want, but in this day of binge-watching I can successfully assume no one will bother to break it up even if it was six or eight episodes. It's unfortunate that the 3rd episode (which largely takes place outside the "house", though I won't divulge how/why as I think of it as one movie and thus spoilers) is the weakest overall, but the closing moments tie it all up nicely and it's more just a testament to how good the first two are that it seems like a lesser entry. If you're already a Shudder subscriber (and you should be), there's no reason not to watch - if you're NOT already a member, take advantage of a free trial to check it out. Either way, it's definitely worth the time (and reading, unless you speak French), and hopefully Hadmar has plans to expand on this intriguing universe in the future. And kudos to Beyond Fest for giving it a showcase alongside the traditional features, because not only was that production design fantastic to see on a big screen, but it also gave a spotlight to something that might have gone under my radar otherwise.

What say you?

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The Monkey's Paw (2013)

JUNE 16, 2014

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around when I see an adaptation of a famous story (particularly one that's been spoofed) is that it exists in a world where that's not a story. Dracula is probably the easiest example to make - more than likely, any non-comedic Dracula film will take place in a world where there aren't 3000 Dracula movies (perhaps even any vampire movies/novels/TV shows/etc at all), so you have to remember that the name "Dracula" has a very different meaning to the characters than it does to us. To a lesser but still similar extent, for The Monkey's Paw to work, you have to remember that the characters aren't already aware that these things are no good and should never be activated, because what you wish for will come with deadly consequences.

But the genius thing about this version is that one character IS aware of this trickery, as it's sort of a sequel to the original story. If you've never read it, the basic gist is that a guy wishes for his house payment, which comes in the form of an insurance check stemming from the death of his son. The 2nd wish is for the dead man to come back, and I refuse to spoil it further for you. But I will say that the character played by Daniel Hugh Kelly more or less plays the younger brother of that dead man, and knows that it's not something to be tampered with. So how does anything happen in the movie? Well, he gets a bit drunk after being laid off from his job, and while he's still kind of foreboding about it, he hands it over to one of his former co-workers. And that's where the fun begins, as he makes his first wish for a new car, and said new car gets his friend (Stephen Lang) killed. Guess what wish #2 is?

What's great is that all of this is the first 20, 25 minutes of the film, allowing the rest of it to play out as a revenge film of sorts; Lang's resurrection follows Pet Sematary rules and thus he comes back as a killer, forcing hero Jake (C.J. Thomason) to try to keep his loved ones safe while avoiding the cops, who suspect him of the murders Lang is committing (such as the husband of Jake's ex). But the cool thing is that Lang has a decent motive for what he's doing: he wants Jake to use up the 3rd wish to help him reunite with his estranged son, whom he is not allowed near due to a restraining order. Jake knows that the wish will backfire in some way, but Lang won't listen to reason, and there's the movie - the paw is just the means of getting the plot started, with wishes and curses left more or less in the background for a while. Indeed, Jake tosses the thing away early on and doesn't retrieve it until near the end, which also helped me forget that none of these people are aware of how these things always work.

Another thing that impressed me was that it, like Dead Souls, was a cable movie (for Chiller) that didn't follow the "rule" that states something exciting or cliffhanger-y needs to happen before every commercial break to keep people from changing the channel. If not for a few fadeouts, you'd probably never even know this was made for TV - it gives the characters and story time to breathe, doesn't toss in random kills for no reason, etc. I know saying "it plays like a real movie" is a weird thing to say, but it's sadly the exception, not the rule, for this sort of fare. Any Syfy monster movie will cut to an anonymous person being munched/stomped if it's time for a commercial, which might be fine for when you're actually watching it live - but it makes for a thoroughly obnoxious experience when watching on DVD. Not the case here; we stick with our core group of 6-7 characters throughout, and know the names of every person Lang kills.

Oh, and it's shot in New Orleans but doesn't dwell on the usual locales. The French Quarter makes a brief appearance, of course, but otherwise it sticks to the outskirts and not as cinematically overused areas in the city (such as Louis Armstrong Park), and focuses on blue collar types that the audience can more likely relate to. The economic hardships in the area play a part, but that sort of stuff isn't the main focus - like the paw itself, it paves the way to the real story, but doesn't take center stage. Director Brett Simmons (who previously impressed with Husk) and screenwriter Macon Blair (currently seen in the terrific Blue Ruin) seem to have understood that we've seen that stuff in a dozen other movies recently, so they do their best to stick to something less cliche and more interesting. Sure, if you were to write a 2 line synopsis it would sound like a typical "Back from the dead to seek revenge" type movie, but by grounding it in things we can sympathize with (the guy just wants to see his kid!) and keeping the supernatural elements to a minimum*, it ended up being far more compelling than I expected.

As this is a Scream Factory release, we get some extras - the trailer and a brief making of aren't anything special, but the commentary by Simmons, Thomason, and DP Scott Winig is pretty entertaining and very much worth a listen. They heap praise on the actors (Lang in particular), discuss the challenges of shooting in the area and within their budget (more than one location was "stolen"), and generally just have a good time - there isn't as much ball-busting as you often hear when there are 3 guys on a track together, but I still found it more enjoyable than average (discussion of Lang's method acting style has a great payoff when after 3-4 real examples they claim he really cut off an actor's head). It's a shame we don't hear from Blair, however - it's his sole feature writing credit and I'm curious if he planned to star in it himself at any point.

I recently lost the Chiller channel when I downgraded my cable package (I wanted to reduce it even further but alas), which is a shame if they're going to be making movies as solid as this. It's not gonna make my top 10 list or anything (actually, maybe it MIGHT since I barely get to see anything these days!), but when stacked against whatever shitty end of the world or shark movie was airing on Syfy at the same time, it's a minor classic. It's got some good actors running through a story that held my attention, a few nasty kills for good measure, and it found a way to make an oft-used story compelling once again - that's a success in my book. Hopefully Scream continues to release their films on disc for those who couldn't catch them on cable - they might look a little misplaced in their line (alongside Sleepaway Camp and Evilspeak, two of their other recent releases that baby-land has kept me from reviewing), but I'm glad that they get that extra bit of exposure, unlike the Syfy films which Anchor Bay often releases to zero fanfare alongside their (of late, often terrible) independent pickups.

What say you?

*There's even a hint that the paw is just junk and that NOTHING supernatural actually happened - I almost wish they went full force with it, but then the movie probably wouldn't have gotten made.

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Dracula (1974)

MAY 26, 2014

GENRE: TELEVISION, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Now that my child is here*, I just have to count the 7-8 years' worth of days until he's old enough to watch horror movies with his old man, giving me a lot of time to think about what I'll show him and when. One thing I definitely want to do is make sure he sees stuff "in order", so that when he sees this pretty good adaptation of Dracula, it will be BEFORE he sees all of the movies (including Coppola's) that ripped off one of its new ideas: retrofitting Lucy (or Mina) into a reincarnation of Dracula's long lost love.

Indeed, since Coppola's film was one of (possibly THE) first one I saw adapted from Stoker's novel, I had assumed it was part of the story until I actually read it in college (especially when obvious inspirations, like Vampire in Brooklyn, carried over this concept). But unless my research has failed me, the idea started with this 1973 film from Dan Curtis, who was basically melding his own Dark Shadows ideas with the source material (way to branch out, buddy!). Coppola also ripped off the Vlad the Impaler idea, so for a TV movie that's premiere got preempted by a real world event (Spiro Agnew resigning), it's had remarkable impact on the undying, always strangely plotted story of a young man who travels to Transylvania and proceeds to disappear within the narrative.

Harker's even more backgrounded than usual here; Arthur Holmwood takes on the bulk of his role (including joining Van Helsing for the final battle), leaving Harker an afterthought before the halfway point. They also skip the Demeter almost entirely, opting for a "5 weeks later" title card and a single shot of the beached ship, so the already clunky shifting of protagonists is even more of an issue as Harker just all but disappears as a result (he briefly returns as a vampire). A voiceover only briefly explains the Demeter's significance ("No one on board", etc), but since I, like probably everyone (maybe even my son - I think I'll start with the Langella/Badham, if not the original Lugosi/Browning) has seen multiple Dracula movies, my mind filled in the blanks and kind of just went with it. Sort of like when you're watching one of the Harry Potter movies and mentally filling in the little side stories and character beats that weren't actually in the film.

Otherwise (and again, this is an issue stemming from the book; it's an ensemble piece where only 1/3 of the characters are worthy of the limelight) this one's pretty good. Maybe a bit TOO straightforward at times, but having just rewatched Nosferatu (Herzog version), I appreciated that element - I don't DISLIKE that film but I have to be in a certain mood to watch a bunch of folks walking around endlessly and what not. Jack Palance also made for a fine Count; I quite loved him in the "human" scenes (i.e. talking to Harker about Carfax), as he brought a fine weariness to it without being all creepy or weird. Another thing about Nosferatu - the makeup is awesome but Harker is way too OK with this bat-ghoul thing talking to him, so it's nice to see this scene play out sans distraction.

The rest of the cast was solid as well. Penelope Horner made for a fetching Mina, and I liked that Nigel Davenport as Van Helsing looked more like a gruff constable than a proper gent like Cushing (or kook like Hopkins). Curtis didn't rope in any of his Shadows stars (at least, none that I'm aware of), so even though he's borrowing some of Barnabas' character beats, I didn't think about that show too much. If anything I was more reminded of Hammer films - their style (sets, colors, lighting, etc) were clearly an inspiration on Curtis here, and since Hammer was kind of floundering at this point it's kind of funny that another group entirely was making something more up to their standards.

MPI released the film on Blu for the first time this week, offering a new transfer that is quite good - it's either funny or sad to see a television production given better treatment than some megabudget Hollywood films (I have a pristine 2K transfer of this but I'm stuck with a non-anamorphic DVD of The Abyss?). There are a few extras as well, obviously from a previous release as both Jack Palance and Dan Curtis both died in 2006, but their interviews are enjoyable all the same. Palance talks about his hesitance to take the role and how he approached it; it's a little dry but it's rare to see this sort of thing with the Oscar winner (though it does seem to be cribbed from a longer, career-spanning interview. Curtis' interview is even shorter but more thorough - he mutters about being ripped off by Coppola and keeps trashing it (when he comments about werewolves, it seems he's just taking another shot at the 1992 film's transformations), so it's pretty amusing. A collection of outtakes and, hilariously, a bunch of TV edits are offered as well (I had to laugh in the latter's case since NBC's Hannibal season finale just topped most R rated fare in the blood department), along with the trailer. The film's subtitles are also a bonus feature of a sort; I had them on frequently (volume low so as not to wake the baby when applicable - this took a few sittings to watch, obviously) and I was consistently delighted that the score was described. "Eerie music" "Sad, romantic music", etc. It's a good score, I should mention - it's even advertised at the end of the movie, rare for a television production.

On that note, I assume this was a theatrical release in some territories; honestly it could have played in theaters here too - it's a bit workmanlike, but again, sometimes it's nice to see a Dracula movie that's just "Dracula", not Dracula in space, Dracula in New York, Dracula turns into a CGI Mantis, etc. And I've never shined much to Curtis' body of work, so I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did.

What say you?

*I know I said I wouldn't be reviewing anything here for a while, but for some reason I thought this Dracula was from 1979 and planned to do a piece on Badass about all four of that year's Drac films (the Langella, Love at First Bite, and Herzog's Nosferatu being the others), but since this was 1974 that wouldn't work. So that piece (minus this one) will go up as the next Crypt, and you guys get a bonus review after all! Everyone wins very little.

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Bates Motel (Pilot)

MARCH 23, 2013

GENRE: TELEVISION
SOURCE: CABLE (A&E HD)

Folks are always asking for me to give the HMAD treatment to one genre show or another, so I thought I'd offer up a few thoughts on the pilot to Bates Motel, which premiered a few days ago. It's executive produced by Carlton Cuse, who was one of the guys behind Lost, but this time we know he can't fuck up the ending, because Bates is a prequel show, focusing on Norman's teen years when his mother Norma was still alive, and when the episode begins they haven't even bought the motel that would become such an iconic presence in the horror genre. So Cuse can't do this to us again!

OR CAN HE? Not 30 seconds into the show we see an HDTV in the background, and a few other modern touches that let us know that this is the present day, and thus it can NOT be a canon "prequel" in any traditional sense - surely Norman would have a lot more trouble picking off victims when they had GPS and cell phones at their disposal at all times. And that's something that excites me; I saw some folks complaining about the fact that it wasn't directly in line with the movies, but (Cuse's track record notwithstanding) this means that the show can surprise us, not to mention conceivably go on forever if the ratings are good enough. I saw someone joke that the series finale would be Marion arriving at the motel, but this is actually a remake that's just using an earlier start point. I hate to use it as an example of anything, but it's more like Rob Zombie's Halloween where we got to see young Michael in the asylum for a while - it's presenting a new angle and building its own mythology, albeit hopefully it's more successful than Mr. Zombie was in terms of quality.

And while some may cry foul, I truly hope it DOESN'T follow the established story to the letter, and opts for something more akin to what Walking Dead is doing with regards to the source comic. It's hitting all the beats (prison, Governor, etc) but changing pretty much every detail (Sophia is still alive in the comic, for example), something that so far Bates doesn't seem to be doing (except for the time period) but doesn't mean it CAN'T. We haven't seen him yet, but Norman has a brother that I'm pretty sure was never mentioned in the movies, and if you compare to Psycho IV, which also had Norman as a teen, we can see that the two versions of the characters are different enough to let this be its own thing.

But on to what's important, especially since I'm sure some viewers have never seen the movies - is it any good? So far, yes. For starters, Vera Farmiga as Norma Bates is terrific casting; she's one of the most beautiful women in the world as far as I'm concerned, but she's also a terrific actress who excels at playing tough women you don't want to cross (see: Running Scared). Psycho IV explored a slightly incestuous angle, with Norman getting aroused when wrestling with her - if they decide to go that route here, we can enjoy the uncomfortable situation of not understanding why a guy would be attracted to his mom but having zero problem understanding why he'd be attracted to Vera Farmiga, letting us be just as confused as Norman. I mean, I'm sure at SOME POINT Norman's going to kill someone, but as of now he's just a confused kid that we root for as our hero (again, assuming someone's watching having never heard of Psycho - there's nothing to tip us off that he's a "villain", at least in this episode).

Norman himself is pretty great too; Freddy Highmore may be best known for the Tim Burton Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, but this can be his defining role if the show lasts. He's got a fascinating voice; it sounds like a mix between a normal kid's and an old man, and almost kind of pained when he's angry or upset. I don't know if it's just an odd side effect of hiding his accent (he's British) or an intentional choice, but I love it either way. It's like a great little tic that helps separate him from Perkins (and, goes without saying, Vaughn), and it didn't dawn on me until later but it's interesting that the other actor who played Norman as a teen - Henry Thomas - was also best known from a kid's movie when he was much younger, and now they've been out of the spotlight for a bit and back as an older teen. I'm always happy to see child actors keep working but also seemingly avoid being batshit insane like some others (ahem, Lohan), and it's just funny to see two of them have now played Norman goddamn Bates.

The new stuff works, too. They waste little time setting up a villain - the house/motel's previous owner, played by W. Earl Brown. He's not too happy about losing his family home to the Bates (via a bank foreclosure), and I hope you don't get too attached to him since he ends up dead by the episode's end. But I'm guessing either his family or the police will be very interested in knowing what happened to him and provide a long-running antagonist for our anti-heroes. There's also a schoolteacher who takes an interest in Norman, something that I'm sure will upset Mother as time goes on as she seems to hate the idea of Norman spending time with anyone except her. And the brother will be an issue I'm sure; we only hear him over a phone where we learn he's a deadbeat and that Mother doesn't want him around, but the actor is listed in the main credits so I'm sure he won't be absent for long.

A couple of things bugged me though, such as the cutesy names - characters named Carpenter and Romero? Come on guys, this is hack humor that belongs in a DTV zom-com, not in a serious show. There's also a rape scene that feels arbitrary and way too out of nowhere; it's the 2nd time we've seen the character and there's no hesitation on his part, even though he was not established as anything but an asshole. There ARE ways of getting us to a. instantly hate a male character and b. establish sympathy for a somewhat overbearing female character without resorting to rape - it comes off as cartoonish, almost. The pilot for Lost is one of the greatest achievements in serialized TV ever, as far as I'm concerned - I expected something a little less cliche and meaty from Cuse. There's also a quick bit at the end that I didn't know what to make of other than "Oh, they saw American Horror Story too!" - I hope it's explained next week as it was completely misplaced.

Otherwise, I'm on board. I can watch Vera read a phone book, so having her as Norma (and an equal presence to Norman's - she's not used sparingly, thank Christ) will keep me around as long as she is, at least. Plus Fringe is gone, so I need a new genre show to fill the hole. Oh wait, Hannibal! Well, in 10 days I'll have a little more free time :).

What say you?

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The Spell (1977)

MARCH 14, 2013

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I was only about 7 seconds into The Spell when I knew it wasn't going to be a very successful attempt at ripping off Carrie. Rita, our tormented, potentially telekinetic girl, is being mocked for being fat by all of her classmates as they make their way to gym class. And I mean ALL - not a single one of the other girls seems to have anything better to do than laugh and point, do the exaggerated, arms outstretched "fat person walking" shtick, etc. But here's the thing - Rita's not going to be on America's Next Top Model anytime soon, but she's not actually "fat" at all - she's maybe packing 5 extra lbs above what is a normal, healthy weight for a girl her height.

So right off the bat I had trouble buying into the movie; Carrie's tormentors may have been a bit ridiculous, but I never doubted that she'd be a target of their scorn - she was awkward, made to look plain, etc. Here, I couldn't understand why they'd even notice her at all, let alone pick on her weight. Sorry for the lack of tact, but couldn't they find an actual fat actress to play the part, so the audience would at least be able to quickly understand what was going on? Honestly, when I saw the girls all doing the fat jokes I wondered when the girl would appear on-screen, because I figured Rita was just some random extra.

Luckily, this stuff doesn't carry through the entire movie. Perhaps to avoid being labeled a complete Carrie knockoff, the school never appears again after this opening sequence (which ends with a gymnastics "accident"), and we instead focus on her family life. She doesn't get along with her younger sister (Helen Hunt!) or father at all, and her relationship with her mom (Lee Grant) is heated, though the closest thing she has to an ally there. But she brings it on herself; whereas Carrie was sympathetic, Rita's just a mean brat, and the targets for the rest of the movie are of no interest to us (assorted friends/business associates of her parents, though she seemingly tries to drown her sister at one point), making it hard to care much about what's going on. I can root for Grant, torn between the love for her child and the knowledge that something is seriously wrong with her, but it's nowhere near as effective as something like We Need To Talk About Kevin or Joshua.

Plus, apart from that brief drowning scene, the family is never in any danger, so there's nothing to really get scared over. It'd be easy to say "Eh, it's a TV movie, they can't really do much", but Don't Go To Sleep scared the hell out of me and didn't shy away from being vicious when it had to be - this just lacks the balls to go all out, opting to just kill some random adult we have no attachment to in order to provide the movie with its action. And they go a step further (spoiler), revealing during the climax that Rita's actually just a pawn for her gym teacher, who also has this ability and wants her to hone her skills. This leads to not one but TWO showdowns of people mumbling chants at each other, which I assure you doesn't come across as cinematic or riveting as it sounds. Even as a TV movie this thing is shockingly dull throughout, and I thought they were just saving the FX/action budget for the finale, but no.

Oddly this is the 2nd made for TV Carrie wannabe that was written by someone who'd go on to make something far more interesting and beloved. Tom Holland co-wrote The Initiation Of Sarah long before he'd join the ranks of the Masters of Horror with Child's Play and Fright Night, and this was written by Brian Taggert, who would go on to adapt Of Unknown Origin (the original novel of which I just got! Can't wait to read), aka the 2nd best Peter Weller movie ever and certainly the best killer rat one. But it's interesting that it was based on a novel, as just about everything else I've seen from him (Poltergeist III, Omen IV, Visiting Hours (which also had Lee Grant)) was underwhelming at best, so maybe he's just not a very good writer unless he has a guide to work from, as all of those others (and this) weren't based on existing books or whatever.

In closing, I'd like to say that if I was around in the 60s-70s, I probably would have had a crush on Lee Grant. She's in her 50s here but still very attractive, and she's got that mix of being a classy lady but with a fiery attitude, not unlike Helen Mirren. We need more women like them in our generation! Most of what we have are dolts like Lohan or manic pixie dream girls. Mirren and Grant could still kick all their asses while drinking their tea.

What say you?

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The Stone Tape (1972)

DECEMBER 30, 2012

GENRE: BRITISH, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: STREAMING (AMAZON ONDEMAND)

I did not know that I could watch Amazon OnDemand on my Xbox until today; I might have to look into their "Prime" service since it apparently comes with 11,000 free movies and I'm guessing a few of them could be HMAD titles. Similarly, I never heard of The Stone Tape until the other day, when I saw it written up in "Rue Morgue" and listed as an influence on Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness, a film I quite enjoy, as you know. Good to know that I can still learn stuff, I guess. I figured my brain was for shit at this point.

Anyway, being a 1970s television movie for the BBC, I wasn't expecting much action or a high body count from the flick, nor did I receive it. It's very talky; I'm not sure how commercials worked back then but if it aired today I don't even think they'd have a scare to show before each break, as they are rather infrequent (one of them is below, since I unsurprisingly couldn't find a trailer). Luckily they're pretty good, all things considered, and like Salem's Lot or (in my case) Don't Go To Sleep, probably warped a few young minds who tuned in and didn't know what they were in for. The final two scares in particular (one involving the film's only death, I think) are pretty bone-chilling, especially when you consider how chatty and generally pleasant the rest of the movie is.

I also enjoyed that Nigel Kneale's script didn't waste too much time on skepticism. Our heroine sees the ghost roughly 8 seconds after entering the room where its trapped, and when she tells the group they all go to check it out and hear/see it themselves as well, as opposed to the "There's nothing here!" nonsense that 99% of all haunting movies feel compelled to include. There's only one guy who doesn't hear it, and that actually has a fun idea behind it - one of the scientists suggests that a haunting works something like an allergy, where the element (dust, smoke, a cat, whatever) is there but will affect everyone differently. It's a pretty great idea, I think, though they don't dwell on it too much. The movie suffers from an overpopulation, so this "control" character who can't hear it like the others doesn't really factor into the proceedings all that much, as there are other scientists to deal with and fight for the remaining 45 minutes of screentime.

The dialogue can also be a bit rambunctious; at one point says that something "gets in the way, like all this jokey talk", and it was an incredibly apt thing to say as I had already noted that the group of scientists spend way too much time ball-busting one another. I actually had trouble following the reasons that they were setting up shop in this location, because when the main guy is explaining it, every other line of his speech is interrupted by some jovial ribbing, either directed at him or another guy in the room. Sure, it makes them more "fun", but with so many of them being rather anonymous in the grand scheme of things (a problem with Prince of Darkness as well, oddly enough), I'm not sure it was worth the distraction.

But again, I'm not familiar with BBC television movies (or plays, I guess - sorry if anyone is against my counting this as a movie. It's 90 minutes long, features a bunch of sets, and has a creepy opening title sequence - video look aside, it seemed like a movie to me), so maybe their audiences were accustomed to this sort of stuff. I assume they were also OK with the casual racism (the scientists are trying to invent a new recording medium to compete with "the Japs" - a comment that is delivered by a guy pulling his eyes into slants)... the point is that it's kind of dated by today's standards, but I can't really hold that against it since at the time they probably didn't have much reason to think it would still be available to watch 40 years later on something called an "Xbox".

Thus, it'd be interesting to see an update (even as a TV movie), since I quite like the idea of doing a Poltergeist type movie without the Frelings - just the scientists who usually show up halfway through (Insidious is another example - imagine a movie with just Specs and Tucker!), and even if some of the science goes over my head, it's at least a bigger stakes scenario than the usual family unit, since a bunch of scientists are easier to kill off than a mom or dad of a family unit (and forget about the kids). And unlike a family, scientists have a built in reason to stick around and solve whatever mystery is at hand, so as long as they refrain from taunting alien snakes or getting high in their spacesuits, such a film would reduce the amount of time an audience spends yelling at the protagonists. More science-driven horror movies!

What say you?

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Moon Of The Wolf (1972)

DECEMBER 7, 2012

GENRE: WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I watched the first few seasons of CSI and enjoyed it more often than not, but otherwise I'm not a big fan of procedural television shows, which favor open and shut cases over the over-reaching arcs that actually give you a reason to come back and watch every week. While basic "mythology" can't help but creep into most of them and thus give SOME sense of a progressing story, for the most part I just find them repetitive, built around mysteries that aren't difficult to solve (or at least guess who the killer/rapist/whatever was) and starring characters that never really change. That said, I was kind of charmed that Moon Of The Wolf resembled one of those shows more than any typical werewolf movie I've seen - it was basically Law & Order: Lycanthrope Division.

Indeed, a hefty percentage of its runtime was devoted to our hero cop (David Janssen, one of several actors in the film with amazing voices) talking to suspects and witnesses of the opening scene kill, a procedural show staple. You can almost expect to see a traditional opening credits sequence after Janssen arrives on scene and does some initial investigation of the crime and what may be behind it. And like most of those shows, the first person he talks to is the killer, or in this case the werewolf, so it's pretty amusing how closely it fit the mold considering this was 1972, long before CBS based its entire schedule around such fare. That it is actually a television movie (which aired on ABC - ironically the least procedural-oriented of the four major networks) just made the connection even more apt.

So yeah, it's a bit boring; if you've never seen a procedural (or even a decent werewolf mystery) it might take you 11 seconds to guess who it is as opposed to the 4 seconds it will take the rest of us, but Janssen's hardass performance keeps it from getting too bland, and at a mere 75 minutes it hardly wears out its welcome. I also enjoyed the courtship between Janssen and Barbara Rush, a childhood friend who has harbored a crush on him ever since (it actually comes off as sweet instead of depressing, I should note), and even though it's obvious who the wolf is they actually DO make a pretty good case for the possibility that there is more than one and that it may be her. It'd actually be kind of amazing if there WERE two werewolves, since Kevin Williamson was behind one of the best "two killer" horror movies ever AND one of the shittiest werewolf mysteries ever (though how much of that film's failure is his fault will be forever a mystery; I'd like to give him the benefit of the Weinsteinian doubt but it's not like it's the only bad movie on his post-Scream resume), but alas, it's just the one.

I also enjoyed how the town didn't seem to be too surprised that a werewolf was loose - once it has been identified, a posse is formed, and while absolutely nothing comes of it, I like how matter of fact the main rabble rouser was about the whole thing, and how everyone just seemed to go with it - no "Come on, there's no such thing as werewolves!" type complaints are heard. At first it seems like Cajun superstition and folklore is going to be a factor (an obscure French word provides a minor subplot), as Jansen consults with the housekeeper and she tells him about legends and such, but like the posse, it's just there for a bit of flavor - it doesn't have much bearing on the story. The climax comes down to Rush being chased around by the wolf with Janssen in pursuit; it's like the rest of the town kind of disappears. At times it feels a bit like an old Universal monster movie, so I guess I was a bit bummed that they didn't follow through and give us a climax with a torch wielding mob, especially with the fine Louisiana geography at its disposal.

It's also a bit sloppy, which I guess was probably common in TV movies in the 70s. At one point the wolf tears apart a jail cell door to get at a young Geoffrey Lewis (!), but when they cut to him reacting you can see the shadow outline of the door, still intact (and no shadow for the supposedly advancing wolf, which you'd think would be the obvious thing to do). The makeup for the wolfman isn't that bad, but you don't see it often enough - the movie definitely could have used either another attack scene somewhere around the 30 minute mark, or they could have lengthened one or two of the existing ones. The "rules" are also a bit hazy - it doesn't seem to be full moon based (that or it rises twice in a week), but he apparently can't just change at will or when he gets mad or whatever, either. Silver still applies though, and the look is in line with the Universal and Hammer versions, so that's good.

And again, overall I enjoyed it, and it made me once again bemoan the downfall of "Horror Movie Of The Weeks". The genre produced few bona fide classics, but still, I like the idea that the networks had enough faith in horror to devote a pretty good chunk of their primetime schedule to such fare. I didn't find it particularly scary, but I'm sure it warped at least a couple of impressionable minds when it first aired, just as Don't Go To Sleep did for me and Salem's Lot did for pretty much everyone who read my review. Plus, I'm pretty sure this is the only werewolf-centric TV movie of that era that I've seen, and I'd rather re-watch it than just about any Syfy channel wolf flick I've caught, so there's something.

What say you?

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Terror Tract (2000)

NOVEMBER 24, 2012

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (BORROWED)

It didn't take long for me to realize I might enjoy Terror Tract at least a little more than the average made for cable horror movie, as it featured a pretty funny "food chain" gag in its opening moments - a bird eats a worm, a cat eats the bird, and then the cat is hit by a car, its remains eaten by a dog. And the driver of the car is the late, great John Ritter, who doesn't seem remorseful about what he did and continues on his way. He's playing a realtor who is in the process of showing a couple a house on the block, and thus provides the framework for this uneven but mostly enjoyable little anthology.

It's actually a pretty cool idea for a wraparound - each time he shows them a house, he is forced by law to tell them about the bad things that happened there, and it seems that no one ever just moves away from this neighborhood. But it also has its own little storyline, as Ritter tells them that he is vying to win a company sales contest, and if he can sell them a house by 5 pm, he will win. We learn there's more to it than that, and while it doesn't quite pay off satisfactorily (who is he talking to on the phone?), it's more inventive than the usual "Hey let me tell you some scary stories and then there will be a twist at the end where I turn out to be a ghost or something" scenario.

It's a shame that the three stories aren't so creative. As stand-alone tales they are fine, Tales From The Crypt-ian pieces that deliver the expected amount of carnage, but the thing is that I felt like I had seen them all before, making it easy to call their twists and thus ruin some of my fun. None are far and away better or worse than the others, which is rare in an anthology film, but in some ways I think I'd rather two (or even just one) standout tales with one (or two) duds than three "Yeah, that was pretty good I guess."

The first is a traditional "love triangle gone bad" tale, with a woman cheating on her husband (Fredric Lehne) with a younger dude. Lehne catches them in the act, there's a scuffle, and he ends up dead. So now the couple has to get rid of the body, but there's complications, and the wife keeps having nightmares (the segment is called "Nightmare") about him coming back as a slimy zombie thing, and Lehne's best friend is suspicious... you know the drill. Like a slasher, it hits all of its beats when you expect them to, but during the lulls you can easily daydream thinking about the other antho-segments or even features that had the whole Diabolique thing going on, albeit without any clever twists. That said, it was nice to see Prison Break's Wade Williams in a bit role (the suspicious friend); in fact the movie as a whole is something of a serial drama fan's wet dream, as Lehne represents Lost AND Supernatural, Reunion (!) star Will Estes and Desperate Housewives' Brenda Strong shows up in the 3rd story, and the second segment has the best coup of all: Bryan "Walter White" Cranston.

"Bobo" is slightly better than the other two, but part of that is due to the pleasure of seeing Cranston, pre-Breaking Bad (practically pre-Malcolm in the Middle, actually; it was shot before that show premiered but aired later), demeaning himself by getting out-smarted by a monkey. As I learned in Dead Space, there's no such thing as a bad Cranston performance - dude gives it his all regardless of the material, which is a big help as the tale is basically the "Cat From Hell" segment from Tales From The Darkside, or a Cliff's Notes take on Of Unknown Origin, but with a monkey instead of a cat/rat. It's goofy enough, and surprisingly grim (I figured the pet control guy would be the only human casualty, alas...), but the monkey is way too crazy to let it go without a back-story. Cranston's daughter finds it - wearing a little suit! - in the backyard and keeps it, but there's no real push to find out where he came from or why he's so psychotically attached to the girl when he hates everyone else. I don't know if I need a full feature about it, but it lacks the "good enough" explanation of Cat, or the full-blown Moby Dick dark parody of Origin, to really live up to either. And if Cranston hadn't ever gotten the fame/respect/roles he deserves, I'm not sure how much of this would work as well as it does.

The third definitely deserves a feature, if only because the Granny Killer would be an amazing addition to the late 90s/early 00s slasher canon - the creepy mask and voice, plus the giallo-inspired kill scenes, are among the best things Tract has to offer. Unfortunately, Granny is sidelined for most of "Come To Granny" (which is also the shortest of the bunch), as it focuses on Estes' character, who has psychic visions of Granny killing people and believes a shrink (Strong) will be the next victim. Strong, of course, suspects Estes himself is the killer, and thus we should too, so naturally (spoiler) he isn't. Part of the thing that bugs me about anthologies (and short films in general) is how many of them go for twist endings, and they're not usually too successful because there isn't enough there to distract us away from seeing the warning signs. Obviously Estes can't be the killer himself, because the story is from his POV - we'd have to see it from Strong's in order to work, or he would have to be telling a really meaty story to draw us in so we miss any clues that lead us to believe he might be the dangerous one (there's a very underrated horror/thriller from 2002 that is a good example of that - I won't spoil the title since I'm still convinced only 29 people have seen the movie). But again, it's the shortest of the bunch (even the wraparound seems to take up more time), so the "twist" isn't one - it's actually the only possibility.

And then we return to Ritter and the couple, which DOES have a decent surprise in store and then a riotous final sequence where a character sees how insane the entire neighborhood is, as if Ritter was only scratching the surface concerning the ridiculous violence that goes on in this "perfect" little suburban block. It got me thinking about how it could have launched a fun little anthology TV series, where each week would be about a different resident, with Ritter as its Rod Serling. Alas, it lives on now only as one of his final films (he died 2 years later) and as the "other movie" on the DVD with Cherry Falls, which similarly had a lot to like but also some dodgy execution. Hopefully the DVD will go back in print someday so it only costs a couple of bucks (as opposed to 30 or more) to check out these little movies that almost could; they're worth a look for sure, but not at THAT much of a cost.

What say you?

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