Television Review: ZUMA BEACH (1978, Lee H. Katzin)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Suzanne Somers (THREE'S COMPANY, SERIAL MOM), Michael Biehn (ALIENS, TOMBSTONE, THE TERMINATOR), Rosanna Arquette (PULP FICTION, AFTER HOURS, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN), P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN, ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, CARRIE), Tanya Roberts (THE BEASTMASTER, A VIEW TO A KILL), Steven Keats (DEATH WISH, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Mark Wheeler (THE CONVERSATION, APOLLO 13), Gary Imhoff (SUMMER SCHOOL, THE GREEN MILE), Delta Burke (DESIGNING WOMEN, WHAT WOMEN WANT), Kimberly Beck (ROLLER BOOGIE, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER).
Tagline: "Her life had suddenly become a long drive to nowhere... so what better place to get it all together than her old stomping grounds, Zuma Beach! Let's get it together with a batch of beach boys and their golden girls... frolic with Suzanne Somers on Zuma Beach!"
Best one-liner: "Have some confidence in yourself." –"I can't. It's 9:30, and the stores stop selling confidence at five o'clock. And tomorrow is a holiday."

"I wrote that for a producer who just said he wanted a beach movie. He ended up selling it to Warner Bros., and soon Suzanne Somers was starring in it. I was going to direct it––for about ten seconds––but one of my mentors, Richard Kobritz, who later produced Christine, helped me see I didn’t want to do it. It was vastly rewritten, so I really shouldn’t have taken credit for it, but I was a little asshole in those days."

–John Carpenter, when asked about ZUMA BEACH by Fangoria in 2013 

 

Almost ten years ago, I did a "Poor Man's Carpy" series on this blog, devoted to John Carpenter marginalia like the co-scripted TV movie SILENT PREDATORS, the Tommy Lee Wallace-helmed VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS, trashy Hallo-sequels HALLOWEEN 666 and RESURRECTION, and the Dennis Etchison novelizations of THE FOG and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. One which slipped under the radar was ZUMA BEACH. So here we are, in the dog days of summer, finally taking a look at this forgotten CBS Late Movie "sort of" written by Carpenter and three other guys.

What can we learn about John Carpenter from ZUMA BEACH? Very little, I'm sure, given his above quote, but I think it's worth looking into. (Says the guy who did a two-part deep dive into John Carpenter's filmmaker-buddy-garage band, The Coupe de Villes.)

It's a straightforward slice of life, giggle and jiggle flick designed to eliminate two hours on a lazy, hazy summer evening. Though it ends with a volleyball game, it never even possesses stakes as high as in SIDE OUT. 

 Suzanne Somers plays a pop star (whose big hit is the fictitious "Silent Whisper"), and she's having a mid-career crisis. 

In need of a reset, she clears her head at Zuma Beach, where she once enjoyed poetry and sand castles as a child. Zuma Beach is populated with a rogue's gallery of horny teens, pre-makeover nerds, beach bums, surfers, football jerks, hot dog enthusiasts, kite fliers, windjammers, cool visor-dudes and the like.

Somers becomes something of a beach elder here, primarily because it's a teenage hotspot. She dispenses wisdom, smiles pensively, and takes in some rays. 

 

Bullies vaguely receive their comeuppance, romances spark and fizzle, and everyone more or less fritters the summer away. This is ZUMA BEACH, ladies and gentlemen. It's so dedicated to its quotidian ensemble that if it were better written and had more interesting characters, it might even feel like an Altman or Linklater flick. As is, it's merely a pleasant time-waster filled with bright 1970s colors and some amusing and unexpected performances. For reference, the real Zuma Beach is in Malibu, about a 70 minute drive from the PRINCE OF DARKNESS church.

If I were trying to draw a real John Carpenter connection, I'd probably compare it to THE FOG, which also sees a strong woman adjacent to the music industry (Adrienne Barbeau as "DJ Stevie Wayne") finding her footing in a California beach community. There are even times that ZUMA BEACH feels like "a Carpenter horror movie, but before the horror begins."

The image of a child playing with his dog in the surf... recalls Stevie Wayne's son finding a plank from the Elizabeth Dane in THE FOG? C'mon, I'm trying here.

Oh, and there is a lot of feathered hair in this movie. Might I remind you that it was shot in 1978.

Mark Wheeler's elaborate feathered coiffure helmet puts Mark Hamill's to shame

With such a bare bones plot, you start focusing on strange details. Like Suzanne Somers' suntan oil, which looks like it's being dispensed from an Elmer's glue bottle.

We have young, Toto-era Rosanna Arquette as a character who tokes a lot of reefer. She's doing that quirky comedic 'Rosanna Arquette thing,' mostly indistinguishable from her performances in AFTER HOURS and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, which is okay!

You have to admire (pre-Reagan) CBS Standards & Practices allowing such casual drug use to slip by without dramaturgical rebuke. 

Michael Biehn pops up, also in one of his very first roles, as a crazy-eyed, eyebrow-indicating lifeguard who uses his lifeguard tower as a bachelor pad.

Here, he's trying to pressure HALLOWEEN's own P.J. Soles into pre-marital sex. It's a good thing Michael Myers isn't around!

HALLOWEEN was released October 25, 1978; ZUMA BEACH debuted September 27, 1978. HALLOWEEN was filmed in May, and based on the look and general disposability of ZUMA BEACH, I have to imagine it was filmed that summer. It's quite possible that P.J. appears here as part of some John Carpenter favor; but given his disconnect to this movie, it's equally plausible that it's pure coincidence. I at least have to hope that John Carpenter was not responsible for a line of dialogue about "extracurricular sex-tivity."

Soles: "I have six pigtails"

As usual, P.J. Soles is a hilarious delight. And she has six pigtails. Count 'em––six! Why would anybody need six pigtails? Maybe she's choosing to pull focus by-way-of ridiculous hair/costume accoutrement––she does has a history of that. You may recall that in Brian De Palma's CARRIE, she established herself as the Queen of Pulling Focus with her big 'ol red rainbow ballcap. Bless.

There are some terrible, copyright-skirting faux-Beach Boys songs which play throughout, Tanya Roberts and Delta Burke wander through the frame, and Michael Biehn gets sand kicked in his face: a sobering experience for Zuma Beach's resident bully/Casanova.

There's a volleyball game and a riding-men-by-the-shoulders race,

and that's all she wrote. Er, rather, that's all John Carpenter and (at least) three other guys wrote. Do you feel like know all you need to about the ZUMA BEACH experience? I hope so.

Now this is a truly inspired feat of cruelty...

Hoo baby. Imagine you're gifted with the "HALLOWEEN collection" on Blu-ray and you open it up to find these three: HALLOWEEN H20, HALLOWEEN 666: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS, and HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION. The only way to make this sick joke any crueler would be to throw in the Rob Zombie HALLOWEENs, too. Hell, I think your average person would be happier to own a copy of HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH––THE NOVELIZATION!

Film Review: VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS (2002, Tommy Lee Wallace)

Stars: 2.5 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Tag-line: "John Carpenter's VAMPIRES took you to the edge of terror...  now get ready to cross the border."
Notable Cast or Crew:  Jon Bon Jovi of "Bon Jovi",  Cristián de la Fuente (BASIC, DRIVEN), Natasha Gregson Wagner (GLAM, URBAN LEGEND, HIGH FIDELITY), Arly Jover (BLADE, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), Darius McCrary ('Eddie Winslow' on FAMILY MATTERS, TRANSFORMERS), Diego Luna (MILK, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN).  Music by Brian Tyler (THE EXPENDABLES, FRAILTY).   Special makeup effects supervised by Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger.  Written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (member of the Coupe de Villes, STEPHEN KING'S IT, HALLOWEEN III, FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2).  Executive produced by John Carpenter and Sandy King (his wife).
Best One-liner:  "Okay, we got a sucker!"

In a familiar, darkened alley, Poor Man's Carpy continues:

"Watch anything good lately?"
–"Well, you know me.  That's all pretty relative."
"Anything worth mentioning?"
–"You saw VAMPIRES, right?"
"We watched it together.  How could you forget!"
–"Oh, yeah.  Well, did you know there was a sequel?"
"What?!  VAMPIRES 2?"
–"Not exactly.  VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS.  Straight to video.  And it was handled by Carpy's grade school buddy, designer of Michael Myers' mask, and general horror sequel champ: Tommy Lee Wallace.  He did HALLOWEEN III, FRIGHT NIGHT 2, and AMITYVILLE II, to name a few."
"I love HALLOWEEN III."
–"So do I.  So.  Do.  I."
"Was Carpy involved?"
–"Pretty much in name only.  He refused to go down to Mexico for the shoot.  Apparently he'd had some bad experiences.  But he and the missus (Sandy King) acted as executive producers."

"Does it have anything to do with VAMPIRES 1?"
–"Sort of.  It takes place in the same modern-Western-mythscape, where the Catholic Church offers bounties for slain vampires.  One character from the first film, Father Guiteau (Tim Guinee), is referred to– as recently killed by vampires.  We even get to see his tombstone.

Other than that, it could pretty much be a standalone piece, though it certainly rips off the plot of the first VAMPIRES:  there's a love interest who is a telepathic part-infected-vampire, a massacre of monks in a monastery, a motley crew of vampire hunters, a sidekick priest, and the main thrust is that a master vampire is looking for the same magical cross that will allow vampires to walk in daylight."
"But no James Woods?"
–"Unfortunately, no.  But instead, we've got someone even better:  Jon Bon Jovi."

[PFFFFFFFT]  "Holy cow!  You just made me do a spit-take!  JBJ?!?!"
–"Shut up, no one actually calls him that.  ...Right?"
"I do."
–"Whatever."
"JBJ in a vampire-hunting western?!  This is terrific!"
–"Well..."
"...I'M A COWBOY, ON A STEEL HORSE I RIIIIIIDE.  WAAANNNNTEEED...UNDEAD OR ALIVE..."

–"Okay."
"You see what I did there?"
–"Yeah."
"...STAKE THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU'RE TO BLAME.  DON'T GIVE CARPY A BAAAD NAME..."

–"You're very clever."
"...GONNA LIVE WHILE I'M ALIVE, I'LL SLEEP IN A COFFIN WHEN I'M UNDEAD..."

–"That's pretty weak.  Did you get all that out of your system?"
"Probably not."
–"Well, it is interesting that you want to linger on Jon Bon Jovi, because this thing–"
"JBJ, you mean?"
–"Because this movie seems tailor-made for him, almost like the script and production were fashioned completely around him.  First off, he plays a vampire hunter named 'Derek Bliss.'  If that's not an ersatz rock star name, I don't know what is.   Then, he plays a Western antihero– just like in the song, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'

JBJ flashes his trademark 'sincere smile' and prepares to shimmy his fringe.


JBJ shows off the acting chops he learned on the Jersey bar circuit and prepares to slay some vampires.


He's always recording stuff with a video camera.  At first, I thought it was just his character's narcissism, but then I realized it might be a subtle nod to the black & white, faux-gritty, 'behind-the-scenes' segments that pop up in a lot of his music videos ('Living on a Prayer,' 'Wanted: Dead or Alive')

Such docurealism.

He's got a surfboard full of weapons (kind of like DESPERADO's guitar case of guns)

and one of his favorite vampire-slaying devices is a long spear, which he hoists around with ease.  I have no doubt this weapon was chosen because– hey: the man knows how to heft a mic stand.  A stake ain't much of a stretch."

"Wow."
–"Oh yeah, and he gets paid for his slays by the Van Helsing Group on 'the internet.'"

"Who else shows up?  Anybody good?"
–"Well, a few quasi-notables show up to crash Bon Jovi's master's class in acting.  First, we have Diego Luna, now an award-winning and respected actor (MILK, Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN) as Bon Jovi's scrappy l'il sidekick."

"I bet he learned everything he knows from JBJ."

–"Yeah, that's it.  We also have Natasha Gregson Wagner as the love interest/part-vampire assistant, fulfilling the Sheryl Lee role from the original.  Ms. Wagner happens to be the daughter of the legendary Natalie Wood, though it seems she inherited the lion's share of her acting ability from her aunt, Lana."

"Who's Lana Wood?"
–"She played 'Plenty O'Toole' in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.  And you'll recall that her line readings were so... creative that she had to be dubbed over in post."
"Oooh.  I see."
–"Eddie Winslow (Darius McCrary) from FAMILY MATTERS shows up, and infuses the movie with some mid-point badassery.

But then, after ten minutes of screentime, he falls victim to a vampire blowjob."


"Seriously?  Would you call that a (J)BJ?"
–"Oh, shut up.  He lurches along for a while after that, but he's already a 'dead man walking' and has already settled into the cliché of 'expendable black guy.'"
"That's too bad."
–"Rounding out the all-star cast is priest/poolboy Cristián de la Fuente, whom I correctly guessed has a more than extensive telenovela résumé."

I could never keep a secret from JBJ.

"Sounds like with this scrappy crew, he's... LIVIN' ON A PRAYER."
–"That's enough."
"So what else?"
–"There's a bunch of horrible CGI 'fast-forward' vampire action..."
"Why do they allow that to happen?"
–"I don't know.  Then the vamps mess up a bar like in NEAR DARK, so that's a nice vampire Western nod, but you'll probably just wish you were watching NEAR DARK instead.  But every once in a while something spectacular happens, like Bon Jovi dropping a one-liner like 'HEY VAMPIRE!'

And I guess it all ends up okay, cause the finale involves a slo-mo flying car and an exploding decapitated head."



"That's the kind of thing I can sink my teeth into."
–"Har har har.  Then I even listened to some of the Tommy Lee Wallace audio commentary.  I might be the only person in the world who'll admit it.  But I had to.  He talks about what it was like to direct JBJ– I mean, Jon Bon Jovi."
"See?  You just did it, too."
–"Hush.  Apparently there were legions of adoring fans everywhere they went.  And he had the problem of Bon Jovi doing a lot of overemoting.  Tommy told him to tone it down, to play everything smaller.  But Bon Jovi apparently learned a lot– he said, 'Tommy, thanks for letting me dare to suck.'"
"Is that a vampire pun?"
–"Stop.  Interestingly enough, Tommy Lee Wallace also goes on at length about how Carpenter makes films about Hawksian heroes, and he made a film about unlikely heroes."
"The kinds of heroes who live on a prayer?"
–"I said, cool it."
"ONCE UPON A TIME, NOT SO LONG AGO
TOMMY USED TO JUST BE A COUPE DE VILLE
CARPY USED TO THROW HIM A BONE
HE'S BEEN DOWN ON HIS LUCK...IT'S TOUGH, SO TOUGH

CARPY'S BEEN KIND OF RETIRED
THANKS TO BAD REMAKES, HE STILL BRINGS HOME HIS PAY
FOR LOVE, FOR LOVE

CARPY SAYS WE'VE GOT TO HOLD ON TO WHAT WE'VE GOT

CAUSE IT DOESN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE IF WE MAKE IT OR NOT

WE'VE GOT TWO VAMPIRES FILMS

AND THAT'S A LOT

FOR LOVE– WE'LL GIVE IT A SHOT

WHOOOOAAA WHOAA, WE'RE HALFWAY THERE
OOOOH WAAA LIVIN' ON A PRAYER
TAKE MY HAND–"

–"Stop it!"

"But don't you get it?  The protagonist of 'Livin' on a Prayer' is actually named Tommy!"

–"I'm cutting you off."

"You can't cut me off– it's the holidays!"

–"Yes, I can."

"You can't stop me from picking the next movie, then:  JINGLE ALL THE WAY."

–"Dear Lord."

(to be continued)

–Sean Gill

Book Review: HALLOWEEN III SEASON OF THE WITCH: THE NOVELIZATION (1982, Dennis Etchison)

Stars:  3 of 5.
Length:  228 pages.
Publisher:  Jove Publications, NY.
Tag-line:  "The night no one comes home.  The new screen shocker by Jack Martin based on a screenplay by Tommy Lee Wallace– a John Carpenter /Debra Hill production."
Back cover blurb:   "Do you know where your kids are tonight?  The streets are quiet.  Dead quiet as the shadows lengthen and night falls.  It's Halloween.  Blood-chilling screams pierce the air.  Grinning skulls and grotesque shapes lurk in the gathering darkness.  It's Halloween.  The streets are filling with small cloaked figures.  They're just kids, right?  The doorbell rings and your flesh creeps.  But it's all in fun, isn't it?  No.  This Halloween is different.  It's the last one."

Happy Halloween, everyone–  Poor Man's Carpy continues!

Using the pseudonym of "Jack Martin," Dennis Etchison brings us another John Carpenter-related movie novelization (he also did THE FOG and HALLOWEEN II) that's better than it needs to be.  In lieu of retreading old ground, if you need a little background on Etchison and his other Carpy-related work, see my review of THE FOG: THE NOVELIZATION.  Also, if you're somehow unfamiliar with HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, allow me to fill you in:

After HALLOWEEN II, John Carpenter was getting sick of this Michael Myers guy, and envisioned the HALLOWEEN series as becoming a series of spooky flicks that merely shared the common holiday setting.  Therefore, he, HALLOWEEN co-creator Debra Hill, and crony Tommy Lee Wallace (who designed the original look for Michael Myers) teamed up to unfold the saga of an evil cult of killer-robot-manufacturing Irish people living in a small town in California who are hell-bent (literally!) on killing the children of America by way of rigged masks that will turn them into rotting piles of snakes and spiders. They are doing this so that people will take Halloween seriously again.  It leads to an absurdist, apocalyptic, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS-by-way-of-James Bond conclusion, and in its own way is one of the great, underrated horror films of the 1980s.

So what does HALLOWEEN III: THE NOVELIZATION bring to the table?  The language isn't quite as florid as in THE FOG, but it's a decently written palimpsest of the screenplay.  Let me give you the rundown– my ten favorite things about HALLOWEEN III: THE NOVELIZATION:

#1.  It begins with a Thomas Hardy quote.

 Remember him, possibly from English Lit?  JUDE THE OBSCURE, THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE, THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE, TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES, etc., etc.?  So let me say that again:  the HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH novelization begins with a quote by Thomas Hardy.

"If a way to the better there be, it lies in taking a full look at the worst."
–Thomas Hardy

Is that a prediction of HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION?  Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.  (Also, I'd like to see Carpy do "TESS OF THE COUPE DE VILLES!)

#2.  Attempts to recreate how annoying the "Halloween Countdown song" is.

Anyone who's seen HALLOWEEN III will never forget the "Eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween... eight more days to Halloween..." Silver Shamrock song, set to the theme of "London Bridge is Falling Down."  Etchison, obviously, makes it an integral part of the novel.

"The insistent refrain, chanted inanely to the tune of 'London Bridge is Falling Down,' was for a few moments everywhere, even cutting into speakers which were set to carry only a steady drone of Muzak around the clock throughout the hospital and, it had seemed to Challis lately, the entire world.  But tonight he was feeling no pain.  '...SIL-VER SHAMROCK!'  At last the advertising jingle wound down, followed immediately by Madison Avenue's idea of an Irish jig."

#3.  Michael Myers fake-out.

Etchison knows that some readers of HALLOWEEN III: THE NOVELIZATION (specifically those who haven't seen the film yet) are going to expect to read about Michael Myers.  Instead of being up front with his audience about Myers' exclusion, he tries to fake them out for the first fifty or so pages.   I find this to be hilarious.

In a marked reference to "The Shape" being Myers' name from the credits to the first film, Etchison tries to fool us while he describes one of the Irish robots:

"It was not a bush that was moving.  It was the shape of a man.  ...He veered to the curb and cut his lights.  The shape was no longer there."

Furthermore, he specifically references the tag-line of the first film by naming the first section "The Night He Came Home Again." As you read on, you realize that this actually refers to "Challis" (the Tom Atkins character).  Additionally, the opening murder (which takes place less than five minutes into the movie) doesn't occur until 53 pages in to this thing!  It almost seems designed to piss people off.  I heartily approve, and find it well-deserving of a slow clap.

 #4.  Challis' (Tom Atkins') alcoholism.

In THE FOG: THE NOVELIZATION, Etchison fills in a few gaps in regard to character development, particularly with Father Malone (Hal Holbrook), the tortured whisky priest.  Here, since Challis is the clear protagonist, Etchison's focus is not divided (THE FOG has an array of protagonists– you could even make the argument that the fog itself is the main character!) and he's free to explore his brooding and alcoholism in great detail.  We see a fair amount of it in the movie, but in the novelization, Etchison describes it quite well, alternating between grotesque Bukowskian flourish,  Raymond Carver-ish straightforwardness, and Amis-style panache.

"'Agnes, tell me you've got a beer stashed somewhere with my name on it.  You were just about to say that, weren't you?  I can tell.  My mouth feels like a bedpan.'"

"He was strangling the glass neck through the twisted brown paper." 

"The day after the funeral he had bourbon for breakfast."  

"He poured beer down his throat.  It tasted bitter, but he knew it would make him feel better in a few minutes."  

"Beneath the wide brimmed hat was an old face, covered with stubble and deeply creased from too many years out of doors and out of luck.  The expression in the eyes was rat-shrewd.  It was a look Challis had seen all his life, in bus depots and skid-row clinics in every city he had worked.  The face was no more than forty years old by the calendar.  But they had been forty long, hard years." 

And perhaps one of my all-time favorite sleazy 1982 sentences:

"Ellie's maroon Cutlass was waiting at the curb in front of the liquor store."

#5.  These sentiments extend to Challis' brooding, which is wonderfully bitter and even more enjoyable if you properly imagine it as Tom Atkins' internal monologue.

"Kids, he thought.  They don't forget– they're too young– and so they don't forgive.  They're the only truly uncivilized beings left on earth, a race apart, a primitive tribe and a law unto themselves."

"The evasions are over.  I thought I could get away.  But I couldn't.  Happy Halloween, he told himself, gunning the motor and roaring away from the house, his house, the house he had built and would continue to maintain forever, undoubtedly even unto death and beyond the grave, if his ex-wife and the lawyers had their way.  Trick or treat?  ...He knew the answer, and would never ask the question again."

#6. Big Ideas.

Etchison tries to work some Big Ideas into this mass market paperback...  and sort of succeeds!  He hammers the point home that men are becoming like machines, that our humanity is being lost as our society becomes increasingly mechanized and detached.  These have become stock ideas and it's nearly impossible to express them without hammering the reader over the head, but dammit– Etchison hammers 'em well:

"They survive, he thought, the slow and the stubborn, the old individualist misfit sons of pioneers who won't allow themselves to be folded, stapled, or spindled.  The revolutions come and go, nations are torn apart and rebuilt, the climate changes to make way for the next millennium; the snow on the wheel turns and the century ices.  Men like machines walk on the moon and machines like men remake the world in their own image; the iron dream rears its head again in a new age; the old tribes fade from sight in the long night of the human soul."

I never thought I would read about "the long night of the human soul" in any movie novelization, much less that of a much-loathed horror sequel written under a pseudonym.  Will wonders never cease?


#7.  A FOG reference?

Apparently Father Malone survived THE FOG and relocated to Santa Mira?

"A signboard reading 'Church of St. Patrick/Rev. Father Tom Malone' was hanging peeled and broken from one upright."

#8.  A Jamie Lee Curtis reference.

The robotic, Big Brother-ish voice which lords over the evil Irish town of Santa Mira is played in the movie by an uncredited Jamie Lee Curtis.  She even gets a shout-out in the novelization:

"'Going down,' said a sensuous female voice."

#9.  The book can also function as a robot-killing manual.

"The graysuit outside her room went into a sputtering death-dance at the first surprising thrust to its soft spot.  The same spot, where the diaphragm would be in a human being, an inch or two below the center of the ribcage.  Challis remembered well his latest anatomy lesson."

#10.  The closing lines of apocalyptic brilliance:

"'STOP IT!  STOP IT! STOP...'  Then there was only the sound of the rain outside in the endless blackness of the long night and, presently, the rising tones of a pitiful wailing within and without, spreading across the station, the town, and the land without end."

Simply fantastic.  That about wraps it up, ladies and gentlemen. Again,  Happy Halloween– and stay tuned:  Poor Man's Carpy shall continue through November!

–Sean Gill

Television Review: SILENT PREDATORS (1999, Noel Nosseck)

Stars:  2.5 of 5.
Running Time:  91 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew:   Directed by Noel Nosseck (TORNADO!, FRENCH SILK).  Written by five people (count 'em!):  John Carpenter, Matt Dorff (CAMPUS MAN), William S. Gilmore (his sole writing credit; he produced THE PLAYER and A FEW GOOD MEN, among others),  Patricia Arrigoni, (no other credits) and Fred Brown (no other credits).  Starring Harry Hamlin (L.A. LAW, CLASH OF THE TITANS), Patty McCormack (the evil little girl from THE BAD SEED!), Shannon Sturges (S.W.A.T., TORNADO!), David Spielberg (Carpenter's CHRISTINE), Beau Billingslea (STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS), Philip Troy Linger (BAYWATCH NIGHTS, THE HUNGER GAMES), and Jack Scalia (DALLAS, REMINGTON STEELE, ALL MY CHILDREN).
Tag-line:  "The hunt is on.  You're the prey."
Best one-liner:  "Hey guys, you haven't seen any snakes, have you?"

We continue the "Poor Man's John Carpenter" series with SILENT PREDATORS, a late 90s made-for-TV movie about killer snakes that was nearly thirty years in the making.

Back in the early-to-mid 1970s, when John Carpenter was a freelance screenwriter, he wrote and co-wrote a number of scripts that would become made-for-television movies, often decades after he'd written them.  These works (ranging from horror to beach movies to westerns) ultimately became ZUMA BEACH (1978), SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME (1978, which he also directed), BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (1979), EL DIABLO (1990, directed by Carpy crony and bandmate Tommy Lee Wallace), BLOOD RIVER (1991), and yes– SILENT PREDATORS (1999).

Originally entitled FANGS, the script that became SILENT PREDATORS was bounced around, added to, edited, updated, and turned inside out until what we see on screen in 1999 bears very little resemblance to Carpenter's original vision.

Carpy's vision:  IN STARTLING, P.O.V. SNAKE-O-VISION!

As such, we can't judge this in any way as a "John Carpenter Movie" but instead must look at it as a "Crappy Curio from Carpy's Cabinet."  Ultimately, what we have here is a bland, "killer creature" movie that uses the blueprint of JAWS as a starting point toward accomplishing bigger, and better things smaller, and worse things.

Carpy's shame immortalized.  There are FIVE credited writers on this project.

Then there's the matter of the title.  Carpy's original, "FANGS" feels very much a product of the 70s, so they decided to update it to "SILENT PREDATORS," which is a perfectly 90s title.  The only problem is that the eponymous "silent predators" are anything but–  half the goddamned movie is the incessant sound of rattlers rattling or the din of hissing snakes!

The film begins in 1979 as a man transporting a "venomous reptile" picks up a hitchhiker and only a few minutes later wrecks, unleashes the beast, and driver and passenger fall victim to the killer snake.  Twenty years hence, the snake has intermingled and interbred with the indigenous rattlers and 35,000 super-snakes are on the loose!  Before we get ahead of ourselves, I would like to ponder the following:


if scientists needed to transport the world's deadliest snake (or whatever), why did they choose the low-rent "Comet Moving Company," and more importantly, why secure the dangerous wooden crate to a flatbed truck with maybe two ropes and a zip tie?  Obviously, these are rhetorical questions, but the amazing blockheadedness of the storytelling very much puts this on par with something like SLUGS: THE MOVIE, and while it's not quite so charming, there's still a lot of fun to be had here.

So twenty years later, this small, idyllic California town has a new fireman on the job (just like Roy Schneider's new job as sheriff of Amity in JAWS):

And, yup, said fireman is Harry Hamlin.  Again, I can't remember if Harry Hamlin is the poor man's Lorenzo Lamas, or if Lorenzo Lamas is the poor man's Harry Hamlin.  It doesn't really matter though, because when you first meet him, you're distracted by the music that can only be described as "comically and embarrassingly derivative ZZ Top... Lite."

Anyway, there are evil, profit-hungry land developers on the outskirts of town:

who awaken an army of 35,000 snakes through their willy-nilly use of dynamite:

Pictured: 35,000 snakes.

The head land developer is this guy (soap opera veteran Jack Scalia)

who is perfectly cast as the pompous suit who answers calls on a big cordless phone and puts the lives of little leaguers at risk.   As in JAWS, he and the mayor try to cover up the danger ("If word gets out we have a snake problem...!") with disastrous results.

We get a nice supporting turn from Patty McCormack, who's best known as the evil little girl from THE BAD SEED back in the 1950s.

Here she plays a sort of warm-hearted, pet-loving hippie and part-time snake enthusiast.  If we're going to beat the JAWS analogy into the ground, I suppose she's the fill-in Richard Dreyfuss until the snake scientist shows up?

Let's get back to Harry Hamlin before I forget.

He takes the material seriously to the extent that Harry Hamlin is capable of taking things seriously– it's perhaps a "BAYWATCH-level" of thespianism.  At one point, he delivers the classic line, "You ever been to a herpetologist?" with some matter-of-fact smarm that would insinuate it means "herpes doctor" instead of "reptile scientist."

It's worth noting that the subsequent visit to the herpetologist takes place at a building entitled: "SCIENCE."

They do science in this building.

Carpenter's original version supposedly contained a scene where a concerned mother checks on her baby's bassinet only to discover that what she thought was her baby's rattle IS REALLY A KILLER RATTLESNAKE!   While I am very sad that this scene does not appear in the movie, at least we get this wonderful scene, whereupon a woman is trapped atop her stationary exercise bike by a number of killer snakes.  This is possibly the only time in film history that this extremely specific scenario comes to fruition.

She can't quite seem to reach that phone.

And this reminds me– I have to give them a hearty round of applause for using 90% real snakes.  This may have been the last hurrah for low-to-mid budget made-for-television reptile horror movies that (mostly) eschew CGI.

Regardless, this whole thing ends the way it ought to:  with Harry Hamlin and co-star Shannon Sturges passionately embracing in front of a blown-out mineshaft filled with 35,000 burning snakes:

I suppose I can arbitrarily give this about two and a half stars.

-Sean Gill