Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1967)

The last thing I expected to happen whilst watching the 1967 film The Revenge of Dr. X is that I'd quickly begin asking myself some of life's deepest, most philosophical questions. You know, stuff like "Would it be better to be dead than to have to watch this movie?" and that sort of thing.

Mind you, it didn't start that way. In fact, when I read the synopsis on the cardboard Chilling Classics sleeve, I was immediately looking forward to it as it sounded like it might be "fun."

A NASA scientist is ordered to take a vacation due to showing signs of stress whiule working on his latest missile project. Traveling to Japan, the scientist decides to indulge in his botany hobby and begins experimenting on a Venus Flytrap he brought along on the trip. Using radical techniques and falling into madness, the scientist eventually creates a plant creature that feeds on flesh and blood, which then sets off to find food in the form of the people of a nearby community.

See? "Fun," right? And technically, the description is totally accurate. But descriptions and descriptions realized can often be leagues apart, and in the case of The Revenge of Dr. X, there are leagues and leagues and leagues separating the two. I think I knew this the moment the title screen appeared, when I immediately had what was a decidedly sinking feeling:

On the bright side (???) of things, the opening credits are actually for another film entirely: a 1969 Philippine film called The Mad Doctor of Blood Island. None of the actors in the credits are in the movie that follows. In fact, the film I watched has such a convoluted shit-show of a history that it took a while to figure out exactly which film I watched. It's sometimes called Venus Flytrap, it's sometimes called Body of the Prey, sometimes The Devil's Garden. The release year might be 1967 or perhaps 1970. It's purported to be based on a lost Ed Wood story, and whether that's true or not the very idea that it might be ought to give you a clue about the nature of this thing.

Of course, none of that would matter a lick if this movie was enjoyable to watch and not a turgid plod. I could easily get over the lack of any revenge or any doctors X if it wasn't about 3 minutes of good stuff trapped within 94 minutes of dullness so dull that again, left me wondering if I'd be better off dead than trying to get through it.

The soundtrack, if such a term even applies, is library stock music trash. One moment it's Bach's Toccata and Fugue (you know, the classic Dracula's castle organ shit), then we get ten minutes of xylophone madness followed by some of the worst stereotypical "Japanese" music imaginable followed by a toddler day care marching band. It's all over the place, and the place is hell.

But the stock footage isn't restricted to your ear holes! There is plenty for your eyes to feast on, including NASA mission control and the same footage of a rocket blasting off that MTV started with and used forever. Hey man, don't get me wrong--stock footage can be cheeky fun! And this is, for about five seconds.

I was rather surprised to find that our leading man James Craig had a lengthy career and massive filmography (dating back to the 1930s) because as Dr. X Bragan he delivers one of the worst performances I can recall. He's boorish, shouting virtually every line and often facing away from the camera completely. The "madness" he supposedly descends into doesn't feel any different than his days in the office at NASA. Maybe I'm missing the point and it's a brilliant performance showing that stress is stress and it's all the same, no matter if you're talking about rockets in Florida or plants in Japan. Yeah, that must be it! At any rate, the most positive things I can say about him are 1) he kind of looks like the guy at the office you think looks like a Silly Putty Clark Gable, and 2) his voice sorta reminded me of Charles Napier, whom I love.

A fucking hour into this padded-as-no one's-business crap we get the world's saddest attempt at a Frankenstein lab scene,  complete with a "lightning" storm, an open roof, a body-hoisting, and the best thing about it, a couple of bzzt bzzt machines.

Bragan has been trying to prove that all human life originated with plants, and to do this he splices a Venus Flytrap with some deep sea plant that is only a deep sea plant so the movie can work in a scene with some topless ladydivers. Say what you will about Bragan's ideas/methods/everything, he does create a plant creature that we finally get to see after the hour mark comes and goes, taking all of our joy and hopes and dreams with it. The plant monster has giant Venus Flytraps for hands and feet, and it kind of waves its arms around sometimes and makes weird noises. 

This movie, whatever it's called, was distributed by Japan's Toei Company, so a dude standing there in a bad costume waving his arms around sometimes isn't completely unexpected. But even so, it's bottom of the bottomest-barrel stuff. I will say that the plant creature accounts for about two minutes and fifty seconds' worth of the three minutes of fun in this disaster. The other ten seconds belongs to one of the shots near the very end, which is a goat standing on what is supposed to be the edge of a volcano.

As you can tell from all the screencaps, especially the color of the sky in that last one, this movie lingers in the depths of public domain heck, which is how it ended up one of the worst offerings in the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. (Honestly, typing out her full name gives me more happiness than this film did.) I'd say it's theeeee worst offering in there, but hey, I've still got like 15 movies to go. Chin up, kids, this could very well just be the worst Chilling Classics Cthursday so far!

Chilling Classics Cthursday: OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1982)

At the risk of being thrown out of both the Real Horror Fans Gang and the Society of Lesbian Vampire Enjoyers, I must speak my truth: I do not enjoy the films of Jess Franco. Female Vampire almost makes the cut, but to be honest I would rather simply partake in the undeniably striking stills of Lina Romay from that movie than watch it again. I wish I could appreciate Franco's work more. If I had the FrancoVision that his fans seem to have, I would see the art they claim is in his oeuvre, you know, the dream-like atmosphere and all that. Sadly, however, I am saddled with FinalGirlVision, and all that allows me to see is NO.

And so it is with this week's Tale from the Mill Creek 50-Pack Oasis of the Zombies, a film I liked better during that minute or two at the start when I misremembered it as a Bruno Mattei joint. And I'm not even wild about Bruno Mattei joints!

A group of French college students heads to an oasis in the African desert (just "African" will do, natch) in search of Nazi gold that was lost when the Nazis were killed in a battle in 1943. But for some reason the oasis is cursed, I guess, and the dead Nazis return as the living dead to eat anyone who gets too close. 

les students

l'oasis

This exceedingly simple tale is told in exceedingly tedious fashion, as we are treated to interminable flashbacks and shots that are repeated ad nauseam, such as this skull and this spider (yes, that golden blob is a spider). 

Franco's style in Oasis of the Zombies seems to be "point the camera at stuff and maybe the stuff you're pointing the camera at will actually be in the frame...oh and don't forget to do all those zooms, you're Jess Franco!" The overall effect is one somehow completely devoid of atmosphere, and frankly (Francoly?) the entire affair feels inept.

The zombies themselves are typical of the European zombie flicks of the era, although they fall a little more on the papier-mâché side of things as opposed to the more oatmeal-faced undead found in a Fulci film. Most of them have a worm or two wriggling around on 'em, which is a nice touch. There's a regular roster of shambling corpses here, and each gets their moment to shine in a rotating series of repeated close-ups.

This guy was my favorite, for obvious reasons:

These close-ups and the few group shots are reminiscent of Fulci's Zombie (1979); as I am an unabashed freak for that movie, I couldn't help but wonder why Oasis of the Zombies boasted several of the same techniques but left me so cold.

Leaving aside the...mmm, let's call the--the repeated still lifes, the unnecessary zooms--"stylistic choices," Oasis of the Zombies is just a fucking drag. It's poorly paced and plodding, and when it's time for zombie action, it's bereft of any action. The victims go "aahhh" and lie down, maybe they get bitten once or twice while they go "noooo" and pathetically slap at the zombies, and then they are dead. 

If these sad scenes were (un)livened up with some gore, at least there'd be some spectacle. However, we get one gore shot which is almost complete obscured. I get that it was likely a budget issue, but hey, I never said the gore had to be good. But if you're making a sleazy European gut-muncher, I think you should add some gut-munching. And some sleaze. Oasis of the Zombies has neither. But it does have a lot of shots of camels and sand dunes, and as a fan of both they pleased me. Also those shots reminded me of the time The Real Housewives of New York went to Morocco and Countess Luann almost got bucked off an ornery camel; the scene is more Oscar-worthy than Oasis is, that's for sure.  

I will give major props to the climax of the film, wherein night begins to fall and zombies slowly trudge over the dunes towards the students' camp. I'm not sure why the zombies are suddenly so far away from the oasis, but it looks cool and gives us the best shots in the movie, so who cares.

There's a little pizzazz during this final showdown as the students surround themselves with a burning ring of fire and chuck molotovs at the undead. But much of the pizzazz is indiscernible as Franco's camera often centers, like, someone's knee instead of anything worthwhile. Then the sun comes up and any remaining zombies fade into nothingness, which is weird because we've seen them out and about in the daylight before this. Oh well.

While watching Oasis of the Zombies, I felt like that famous time-lapse sequence in The Haunting (1963, duh), where we see Abigail Crane morph from a young lass to a withered crone. Like I could feel that happening to me as the movie played out over the longest 82 minutes of my life. The only difference was that I of course started out as a withered crone and simply became crone-ier.

I would say that there's something good in the story, some potential, if one wants to imagine the adventure-horror-zombie flick that could have been. But that's a bit like saying that a house has "good bones" when everything except the bathroom wallpaper needs to be trashed.

It's always a bummer when a horror movie is a bummer, and so it's a bummer that this week's offering from Mill Creek was a bummer indeed. But hey, you know what they say: We make plans, and the 50-pack laughs. Better luck next time!

Mistress Loretta's Bathtub

On the most recent Gaylords of Darkness, Anthony and I returned from a week off to perform a post-mortem on the year that was. The last year that was, I mean. You know, 2018. We gave some cheers, some jeers, and a whole lotta other nonsense. Honestly, the nonsense (as always) is like 99% from me. I don't know what happens, exactly, but whenever we record it seems that I go into a kind of fugue state. In lieu of "making" "points" or "saying" anything "worthwhile," it's mostly just rambling, stories unrelated to the topic at hand, and wasting everyone's time.

Unlike this blog! Which has been nothing but insightful in the 77 years of its existence.

Okay, so it's just like this blog. But the difference is, when I'm editing (HA HA) a post here, I don't have to listen to myself. When I edit an episode of Gaylords, however, I hear myself going on and on about whatever and I get filled with a weird "STOP TALKING, why are you SAYING THAT"...insecurity? Or something? I don't know. I don't know why I'm mentioning it here! Hmm, maybe in 2019 I will just own it.

But enough about what I might do, I'm here to talk about what I done did do in 2018. And what I done did do was like some horror movies, and not like some other horror movies. Some might even register as "meh" on the like-do not like scale. So let's get to 'em!

THE DO LIKES

Suspiria

If you and I are cyberfriends on a social media, or if we are in person friends, or if you've listened to any Gaylords episode since I saw Suspiria, then you know that I am completely in love with / absolutely obsessed with Suspiria and you're probably sick of hearing me talk about Suspiria.

But I won't stop! I love it too much! I'm too obsessed! And with a home video (or whatever it's called these days) release coming at the end of this month, I'll be even more obsessed. I might forego all other movies altogether thereafter! Who can say. But you can tell by all the exclamation marks that my feelings are true!

I was expecting to like it as I am a hungry hungry hippo for witchtastic goodness. (Side note that will probably be explored here at some point: man, I've been crying about a lack of witches in horror forever, but it seems they are finally, finally having their moment.) But I was not expecting to be completely subsumed by this film. As I mentioned on our Suspiria-flavored episode, it was honestly something akin to a religious experience. This shit moved me, y'all, and the...connection, I suppose, that I felt (feel) to it is very rare for me and any movie, never mind a horror movie. It's difficult to explain, but once it's out and more people have a chance to see it and I feel okay about unleashing the spoilers (Amazon really botched the release, particularly when you consider how much promotion it got; the release itself was staggered and small), I'm gonna try to get my feelings about it outta me. With words! Exclamation mark!

Hereditary

What a powerhouse of a movie, anchored by an unbelievable performance by Toni Collette. She should be nominated for every award forever for her turn as Annie, if only for the scene that is the single most heart- and gut-wrenching portrayal of grief I've even seen in a film. And I didn't even see it! It's off-screen, but her guttural howls of abject despair are too much to handle even then. She's astonishing.

I love this movie. I love the way it plays with audience expectations. I love that it's keeping in line with a certain old school horror lineage. I love that it burrowed under my skin the first time I saw it and it's stayed there ever since. I think it's a permanent resident.

Mandy

Mandy and I have what you might call a complicated relationship. It actually made it to theaters (well, a theater) here and I saw it one afternoon with the six or so other people who composed the audience. Two of them were an elderly couple, and I'm not sure what they thought they were going to see, but they certainly weren't expecting the gonzo, trippy bloodbath that is Mandy. They complained about it out loud and often–the film was just too distasteful–but they stayed through the whole thing.

Meanwhile, I had a blast. The film is a heavy metal fever dream, a bootleg Frazetta painting on the side of a van come to life. The last third, in particular, is completely unhinged and off the rails, and it's possible it's not any kind of reality at all. There's a chainsaw fight, spectral cenobite-types, and a battle axe forged in the flames of vengeance. It is exhilarating, a ride and a half. And that's not even counting Cheddar Goblin.

Soon though, my feelings about it began to cool a bit. Heck, even during the film I found my mind wandering to "what if"s: what if, instead of a man getting revenge when his Mandy is burned alive in a sack, what if the genders were flipped? What if it was actually fucking about Mandy? What if she got her revenge? What if it was a same sex couple? What if it felt new beyond the visuals?

It's a Death Wish-style revenge flick. A pretty one. A stylish one, a fun one because it's just plain nuts. But it's also a tale of "man loses woman to outside forces, man kills outside forces," which we've seen plenty of times before. I could go on, about the (largely) gendered online reaction to Mandy versus Suspiria, how what is lauded in one is criticized in the other. There's something to be said about the way Mandy deals with masculinity and sexuality–yeah, there's a tang of homophobia to the whole affair. I find myself talking shit about Mandy somewhat frequently, but it's always followed with a qualifying "But I liked it!" I mean, I must have–here it is on my DO LIKE list. As I said, it's complicated!

Annihilation

Much like Suspiria, Annihilation really got a botched released: extremely limited, then dumped on Netflix. And boy, the sound design of this film was enough to warrant a proper theater viewing. To be fair, it likely still wouldn't have done gangbusters at the box office; it's science fiction that offers few answers, none of which are easy to come by. It's largely inscrutable to the end–particularly at the end, with that climactic lighthouse sequence with Natalie Portman and her mirror image. I love picking apart its puzzles and teasing out meanings, even while being dazzled by the visuals (and that sound design). The bear scene shook me so much that even if I'd hated the rest of it, Annihilation would still be here as a DO LIKE.

(Warning: if you watch it with that one friend who always asks questions during movies, chances are at least one of you will suffer a Scanners-esque exploding head. Whether or not this is a favorable outcome is up to you.)

Unfriended: Dark Web

Get lost, haters! I have a fondness for the Unfriended series that I'm not entirely sure it deserves. I rented the first one out of sheer curiosity, expecting a big pile of trash. Instead, I found a big pile of delight; while it's certainly not, you know, high art, I thought it was a clever update-ening of the ol' (tired) slasher formula. The central conceit, wherein our view is limited to computer screens, is clever and complex, and it also serves to give a bit of tension at times. When it was over, I was shocked to find myself muttering "Wait...that was...pretty good?" And sober!

The sequel, then, became an "Oh heck yeah," one worth paying theater ticket prices for. (I'm not one of those hundredaires who goes to see everything.) Dark Web is more of the same, essentially, with a wider scope and better characters. It's silly–you know it's silly, the film kind of knows it's silly, and it's best if you all agree to just get into it. It's like, I don't know, getting wrapped up in doing the chicken dance at someone's wedding. I mean, I've never done that, but I know it's a thing. You all just do it and you go for it and you have a good time, and then the next day you know what a great time you had and how much you liked it, even if you're a little embarrassed by just how much you enjoyed it. People who did not or do not chicken dance might question your passion–heck, you're questioning your passion–but passion it is regardless.

Do I recommend the chicken dance that is Unfriended: Dark Web? Wholeheartedly and also not at all! Perhaps the Unfriended series and I are private dancers, and we do what we want each other to do. I'm fine with that. And if there's another one at some point about the super deep dark web, well, I'll be there. Any old theater will do.

THE DO NOT LIKES

(or, the cranky pants portion of the show)

Halloween

I admit, I was unenthusiastic about Halloween long before I plopped my butt down in the theater. While my love for parts 1-3 will never wane, I haven't been invested in the series or Michael Myers or any of it for a dog's age. And old dog, that is. I'd completely checked out, and to be honest, I've checked out of all modern slashers with the exception of a few. I'll rewatch a vintage fave or check out a vintage flick I've never seen (such as Blood Rage, which rules!), but it's been a while since it was my genre of choice and as such, new ones don't hold much interest for me. The promotional circuit for Halloween was nuts, with Jamie Lee Curtis everywhere talking up her latest turn as Laurie Strode, and everyone touting how it would be a direct sequel to the 1978 original and a return to that film's style and atmosphere and blah blah blah. We were all to act like parts 2-infinity didn't exist, which was fine as I never liked the Michael and Laurie are siblings angle, and the less said about Laurie's demise in Resurrection, the better. So I wasn't excited, but I was curious.

And yet, I was still so let down. For a movie that was supposed to be about Laurie Strode and the aftermath of that fateful Halloween night 40 years ago, we ultimately know incredibly little about her when it's all said and done. Apparently she "trained" as some kind of survivalist her whole life,  booby-trapping her house and forgoing family relationships in case Michael ever, you know, comes home. But she still interacts with her daughter and granddaughter regularly, and they all live within a couple of miles of each other. Not to mention, Laurie could have, like, left Haddonfield if she wanted to move on. None of it is explained and none of it makes much sense, but it's necessary, I guess, for the promised Michael/Laurie showdown.

Mind you, Laurie has built her entire life around this potential confrontation while Michael simply doesn't care. He doesn't know who she is, he hasn't been thinking about her, waiting to finish the job. He doesn't come after her specifically, he just ends up at her house through a ludicrous plot contrivance.

It could have been a bold statement about what often happens to women in the wake of trauma, how the lives of survivors are completely upended, how the memories and the fear and the everything else are simply a part of their existences now. For the perpetrators, it's business as usual. They remain unscathed by the horrors they inflict.

But Halloween isn't any of that; rather, it's just poorly written and poorly constructed, a film whose best parts are simply carbon copies of scenes from Carpenter's work. (It also cribbed an awful lot from those "bad" sequels we were supposed to forget about.) However, for being a "direct sequel" to the first film, new Michael Myers is vastly different from the original Michael Myers. This one is a spree killer, offing anyone and everyone in remarkably brutal ways just for the fun of it.

Halloween made huge profits, and there are more entries in the franchise to come. If that turns you on, hey, you go enjoy it. But I hope during the next promotional cycle, there's less talk about what a groundbreaking masterpiece it is when, you know, Halloween H20 did all the same shit much better decades ago.

A Quiet Place

Honestly, fuck this stupid movie. It'd been a while since I became so openly hostile to a film as when I saw A Quiet Place, so I guess that's one good thing about it. Also there's Emily Blunt, so that is two good things.

But everything else...it's maybe a great horror movie if you've never seen a horror movie before. Otherwise it's full of crappy clichés and contrivances, from the whiteboard with, like, SOUND=WEAKNESS??? circled to Chekhov's goddamned nail in the basement stair, (a nail that shouldn't have been there??? in the middle of the board?? sticking up?? it had been there forever?? it didn't nail two things together, it was just there?? NAIL=WEAKNESS???), to the soundproofed basement (why didn't they live there?), to the "man provides" bs and HAVING A BABY awful heteronormativity, to the stupid *cocks shotgun* "girl power" ending...I just really, really hated it. Really. In case you couldn't tell.

But if you liked it, as a shitton of people did, that's great! It's good to like things. There is a sequel on the way. I will not be seeing it.

Bird Box

If you just this minute woke up from a coma, let me tell you something, friend: everyone is going goo-goo over Bird Box. I didn't like it, but then perhaps I am not one to judge it for I'd read the book last year and while I have no attachment to said book–I mean, it was fine–I basically knew who was going to live and die and what was going to happen or not happen. While there were some minor changes, this wasn't a radical reimagining or anything, and as such the movie held zero tension for me. But I figured I'd add it here to the DO NOT LIKE because as I said, this is the cranky pants portion of the show.

If you want to hear me and Anthony go a bit more in depth on these movies (and more), check out Episode 14, "Mistress Loretta's Bathtub." If you want to cheer and/or jeer my cheers and/or jeers, feel free! I am nothing if not a know-nothing know-it-all.

Too Many Pazuzuzzzz

I'm sure that you think I sit here atop Mount Horror Blog, all exhausted from having seen every horror-flavored movie and read every horror-flavored book. I get it! Horror blogging is elite business, for 100% experts only. You can't just start a blog because you want to, it takes years of training and education. But here's the truth, dear reader: there's some stuff I haven't seen. There's some stuff I haven't read! For example, can you believe that I, in all of my 83 years on this planet, am only just reading William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist for the very first time? Much like me and a glass of Riunite on ice, the book is a bona fide classic...and yet here we are. Ah well, better late than never, there's a first time for everything, you're only as young as you feel, etc etc.

(aside: now I have "beautiful Mount Horror Blog!" stuck in my head to this tune)

Now then, my telling you all this isn't solely to brag that I do, in fact, know how to read. Nor is it to dazzle you with erudite insights like "Hey, The Exorcist is pretty good," oh no no. I'm telling you all this because the book got my brain all a-buzzin' with The Exorcist (duh) which got me watchin' the movie which got me thinking "Hey, there are way too many Pazuzus in The Exorcist Extended Director's Cut Version You've Never Seen."

The wholly terrifying subliminal demon face is used quite sparingly–and to great effect–in the original cut of the film. It scared me so badly that I really couldn't handle it. I hated it! It was great. Then along came The Version You've Never Seen and the floodgates were opened. Excised footage was unexcised, Friedkin got all George Lucas about it and added a bunch of stuff, like that awful Regan computer face when she grab's the doctor's junk. You know what I mean. It's bad. Heck, I'd just forever opt for the original cut, but I admit: I am a sucker for the spider walk. It's over-the-top and silly but I love it. So sue me.

Perhaps the worst, though, is that the latest editions of the film include a baker's dozen or more new subliminal demon faces. Let's face it (omg "FACE" it lol lol) once this shot happened...

...it was obvious that this was no longer your mama's Pazuzu. It's everywhere! And so it's really no longer scary. Less is more, more is way less.

On my most recent watch, though, I realized just how many Pazuzus are lurking. It is some Where's Waldo shit for real. Look at these screencaps!

Some of those aren't even subliminal! Yes, William Friedkin is a great director and a master of the craft and all that, but to be honest I don't know what he was thinking with all of this.

The Nightmare-ening Day 6: FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE (1991)

Since A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 ends with Super Dream Master Alice and her Super Dream Unborn Child emerging victorious from battle with Freddy Krueger, it's not crazy to think that the sixth film in the series, Freddy's Dead, might involve these characters in some capacity. But no! It is not to be. Instead, this film does whatever it wants to, beginning with this:

Oh. Okay.

So...wait. It's been ten years since The Dream Child? Is that what "now" refers to? And in that time, the entire under-18 population of Springwood is wiped out save one teenager and all the adults have completely flipped out? And we're just going to...skip out on all of that? And there's no police involvement or anything? What a strange foot to start on, Freddy's Dead. What a very strange foot. You've sure got moxie, kid!

But moxie is all you've got because good GRAVY this is a bad movie. I'm not sure where to begin, and quite frankly I want to purge the memory of this film and everything associated with it from my brain as quickly as I can. I want to peruse the Final Girl archives in, say, 2019 and come across this entry and think...huh. The screencaps kind of ring a bell a bit, but I don't remember much about this movie. Did I actually watch it?

And hey, Future Me: if you are getting it in your head to give Freddy's Dead another try in the interests of science or horror movies or remembering or whatever the reason is: STOP. Stop yourself right now. Cut off your own head if you have to, just stay as far away from this film as you can. See? It's bad. You had a bad, bad time watching this.

Aw, but baby Breckin Meyer! And Yaphet Kotto! What if I watch it in 3D this time? Maybe I'll find something worthwhile to it! It's the year 2019, after all. Freddy's Dead is the very rare horror film in which no women are killed...shouldn't I watch it again to see if it's subversive in other ways? Maybe there's meaning in--

NO! No, Future Me. It is not worth another 90 minutes of your life, I promise. Time is running out for you as it is!

Is that a threat?

Not at all, I am just saying. You've already spent 90 minutes with this film. Rather than doubling that, you should spend those 90 minutes watching something you love. Or something you've never seen. You should watch anything else. Why, you could stare at the wall, even! That would be 90 minutes better spent.

Yeah, but this:

I know. Even with that.

Look everybody, I'm not really sure what to say here. Freddy's Dead doesn't make much sense in the ways it plays with the logic of the preceding films in the series (yeah, they had their own logic). People can pull each other into dreams all willy-nilly, rendering Kristen's specialness decidedly unspecial. No one is particularly scared about Freddy, or scared by him when they confront him. If anything, The Final Nightmare seems to want to be a horror-comedy–man, Roseanne is one of the greatest TV shows of all time, but I really didn't need Roseanne and Tom Arnold in this movie–and ultimately fails at both.

Huge amounts of backstory are given to Freddy Krueger. We see glimpses of his childhood, where he is teased for being the product of a gang rape, and his adulthood where oh, hey, he was married and had a kid. This is substantial development for a horror movie icon, and yet it's all waved away quickly. Freddy's child doesn't have any qualms about being the child of a child killer. None of this means anything at all, and when Freddy finally dies after six fucking movies, Freddy's child quips "Freddy's dead!" and everyone laughs and I'm surprised it didn't end on a GD freeze frame. That's it. That's the wrap up for the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Are you kidding me?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to figure out how to bleach my brain so I can forget about this movie and get on with my life. See you in 2019*!

*tomorrow, when I post about the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street

why you gotta test me

Like most cranky, entitled horror fans, my relationship with remakes is a tempestuous one. The trend has been going on for so long–should a ten-plus-year trend actually be called a "trend"? or is it a "wave", maybe?–that it's just a way of life now. I've experienced nearly all the highs, lows, and creamy middles that remakes can bring and I've been left numb. I'm good at ignoring movies and the such if I'm not interested in them, and of course there's that ol' chestnut of an argument: well, a remake doesn't take away from or change the original you love so much, so what's the harm? (The counter to this, of course, is that money spent on shitty remakes is money that could be spent on original stories, that's the harm. But let's let that lie for now.) I just can't get angry anymore. You wanna remake an already-good horror movie? Go for it. You wanna remake a remake? Like I give a shit.

BUT THEN.

There have been a few rumored remakes that angered up my blood (you're going to remake Suspiria come on now), sure, but beyond initial reports they just seemed to disappear. Then one day, a couple of years later "Hey, wasn't Michael Bay going to remake The Birds?" runs through your mind. You realize this has yet to be, and you immediately banish the thought forever in case a mere mental mention is enough to summon it. You know, like it's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man or something.

The point of all this is, you guys I thought the HOW DARE YOU American remake of Martyrs was banished to the Cinematic Negative Zone of Really Fucking Bad Ideas, but now Bloody Disgusting reports that it's already finished. Filmed totally in secret! I'm not sure if that portends good or ill, but in this day and age of endless (pointless) set updates and photos and press releases, I'm shocked. In a good way.

But that's all you'll get from me, Martyrs remake! I'm putting away my wussy "wait and see, who knows, give everything a chance, maybe I'll like it" giant foam finger and replacing it with the one that says FUCK YOU. I'm going to get irrationally, pointlessly irritated about this because 1) come on, it's still a really fucking bad idea to remake Martyrs and you know it is, and 2) it's something to do.

Here are your new martyrs:

Apparently the one on the left (Bailey Noble) hails from True Blood, while the one on the right (Troian Bellisario) is on Pretty Little Liars. Look, I don't watch those shows so for all I know these women could be terrific actresses. All I know for sure is that names like "Bailey" and "Troian" make me feel old and scared.

And YES they look as uninteresting as slices of J Crew pretty white bread, so imagining them in fucking Martyrs is making my brain hurt. However! (What's this "however" shit? JUST BE IRRATIONALLY MEAN AND ANGRY.) Judging from "actress" headshot photos isn't really fair, and also let's not pretend that Mylene Jampanoi and Morjana Alaoui (OG MARTYRS 4 LYFE 5EVER) aren't like supermodel gorgeous. If I judged them the way I'm apparently judging these Designer Imposter Martyrs, I wouldn't have had faith in them, either, and we all know that's stupid.

Here's the thing: I know I'm going to have to see this remake. It's just too much to ignore, isn't it? It's such an outlandish notion, I simply must see how it turns out...because how do you remake Martyrs I have so many Martyrs feelings and YES I KNOW I've yet to write anything about it but it's very difficult for me to even think about trying to try to articulate those feelings okay I just aokjnlklkdnfldskndfdddddddddddddd

and...breathe...

*pshooooooo*

Hey, maybe the remake will finally get me past my write about Martyrs-block! Maybe that's the reason it exists. I guess we'll see. I'm really really going to try to go into it with as open a mind as possible (yeah right) and curb my urge to slap this remake right across its audacious face. RIGHT ACROSS IT I SAY.

Ah, sometimes irrational anger feels good, doesn't it? It's sure warming me up on this cold winter's day!