Halloween (1978)
Dir: John Carpenter
"The night HE came home!"
Well, happy Halloween, readers! This is one of my favorite days of the year, unfortunately, this year I didn't get much time to enjoy it. However, there's one tradition I NEVER break: each and every year on October 31, right before I go to bed, I lay down and watch John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece Halloween. So much has been written about the film over the years, and Carpenter's boogeyman Michael Meyers has become so ingrained in our popular culture that I'm not sure I have much new to bring to the table. That said, I'd be remiss if it didn't get a spin in the goddamn Basement of Sleaze...
The plot of the film is so simple, and by now so familiar, that I won't waste a whole lot of time summarizing it. In 1963, blank-eyed ten year-old Michael Meyers brutally stabs his older sister to death on Halloween. 15 years to the day later, Meyers escapes from incarceration in a high-security mental institution and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Meyers is pursued by his twitchy, gun-toting shrink, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance, Wake in Fright, Escape from New York). As Loomis closes in, Meyers stalks babysitters Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, Prom Night, Trading Places), Annie (Carpenter regular Nancy Kyes, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog) and Lynda (P.J. Soles, Carrie, Rock 'n' Roll High School). In the end, only Laurie survives, but it's a hollow victory; Meyers, too, survives. After being repeatedly stabbed by Laurie, shot several times by Loomis and knocked out of a second-story window, Meyers simply disappears. He has become "The Shape;" the unstoppable, unkillable personification of the boogeyman.
Halloween wasn't, as it's commonly given credit for, the first slasher movie (Black Christmas beat it to cinemas by three years), nor is it Carpenter's best film (Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing both have it beat), but it IS the best of it's sub-genre and one of the most simply effective shockers of all time. Co-writer/director Carpenter distills his story down to the basest possible elements; he eschews the "origin story/revenge plot" that so many slasher films hinge on (even Alfred Hitchcock's legendary proto-slasher Psycho ends on something of a cop-out, expository note explaining away/rationalizing the actions of Norman Bates). In crafting a leanly efficient horror film, Carpenter realizes that it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER how or why Michael Meyers does the things he does (he even embeds a joke about it in the script; when asked how a man institutionalized since the age of ten could know how to drive a car, an exasperated Loomis exclaims "He was doing very well last night!"), he simply does them. No amount of explaining is going to enhance the visceral thrill of a suspense-based narrative. The film is also almost totally bloodless, relying instead on atmosphere, an ever-building sense of dread, Carpenter's own eerie, iconic score and the often sudden appearances of Meyers to instill fear in the audience (pay special attention to the way Carpenter uses lighting and focus; a scene in which Meyers' white mask appears out of nowhere in a completely dark room and another in which the seemingly dead and out-of-focus Meyers sits up suddenly in the background while the camera is focused on Laurie are both classics). Another key to the film's success is it's three female leads. Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill (Clue, The Fisher King) create three-likable, well-rounded characters, and they're all brought fully to life in great performances by Kyes, Soles and Curtis (whose turn as the put-upon Laurie made her a star). I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the performance of future writer/director Nick Castle (Escape from New York, The Last Starfighter) as Meyers; with his imposing physicality and limited, always-efficient body language and motion, he's like a bipedal great white shark.
Halloween was followed by seven (!) sequels and an ill-advised remake by Rob Zombie which in turn spawned it's own sequel. Some are better than others (check out the underrated, non-Meyers-related Halloween 3: Season of the Witch; it's fucking great!), but none of them manages to recapture the tension and dread of the original. A true horror classic!
"It's Halloween; everyone's entitled to one good scare."
Enter...If you dare!
Big thanks to "Diamond" Dave Wheeler for the bitchin' logo!
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Entry 85: Devil Dog-the Hound of Hell (1978)
Devil Dog-the Hound of Hell (1978)
Dir: Curtis Harrington
Revolt-of-nature/killer animal movies, demonic possession movies and real-life "satanic panic" were all big in the 70's, but I can think of only one movie that tossed all three into a blender and added the legendary Richard goddamn Crenna (First Blood, Leviathan) to boot...join me down in the Basement as I attempt to tame Devil Dog-the Hound of Hell!
So, stop me if you've heard this one...A group of suburban satanists purchase a German Shepard and place her in the middle of a satanic ritual (complete with red candles, howl-inducing "sinister" purple bathrobes and sunglasses and an oil painting of Old Scratch himself). Over the main credits, the bitch gives birth to a litter of pups, each one apparently imbued with satanic power! Meanwhile, Richard Crenna's family dog buys it in a hit-and-run and, despite his daughter(Kim Richards, The Car, Black Snake Moan)'s awesomely overwrought protestations ("If something happened to me, would you just get another daughter?!"), Crenna resolves to replace the corpsified canine. R.G. Armstrong (Children of the Corn, Predator) shows up as a traveling fruit salesman (!), who is actually one of the satanists in disguise! His mission? To disperse the cursed canines (born in the intro) to as many suburban homes as possible! As luck would have it, one of the pups ends up with Crenna, and soon strange things begin to occur while the pup is nearby-Crenna's loving daughter turns into a total cunt, dishes fly off the table and break with no provocation, our hero almost loses a hand to an errant lawnmower blade and, in one sanity-doubting sequence, the cute lil' pooch's eyes glow red while ominous music plays and he makes the Catholic housekeeper BURST INTO FUCKING FLAMES! As the devil dog becomes increasingly encroached in the home, Crenna's wife (Yvette Mimieux, Snowbeast, The Black Hole) begins an affair, his children become aloof and distant and anyone who tries to interfere in their lives turns up dead. Well, if you think the man who trained John Rambo to both survive and become war is going to take this bullshit laying down, you've got another thing coming. Once our hero discovers evidence of satanic rituals happening in his attic, he heads out into the desert to shoot the possessed puppy, but the beast mystically dodges every shot. After consulting with mediums of various (and ridiculously stereotyped) ethnicities, Crenna prepares a good supply of body bags and heads into an abandoned warehouse to confront the dog, who's grown into a (ridiculous) dinosaur-like monster.
Devil Dog-the Hound of Hell started with a goofy conceit rendered ridiculous by focusing too long on a cute puppy as the agent of ultimate evil, casting a particularly dopey-looking German Shepard as the adult dog (he actually looks a good deal like my own Shepard, Sheriff; he's a good boy, but likely the least intimidating large dog you'll ever meet) and visual effects on the level of a mediocre episode of The Incredible Hulk. I had fond memories of watching this TV movie as part of the regular TBS rotation in my youth in the late 80s, but it doesn't really hold up. Crenna and Mimieux give better performances than the film deserves. It might make for fun viewing for problem-dog owners...
Dir: Curtis Harrington
Revolt-of-nature/killer animal movies, demonic possession movies and real-life "satanic panic" were all big in the 70's, but I can think of only one movie that tossed all three into a blender and added the legendary Richard goddamn Crenna (First Blood, Leviathan) to boot...join me down in the Basement as I attempt to tame Devil Dog-the Hound of Hell!
So, stop me if you've heard this one...A group of suburban satanists purchase a German Shepard and place her in the middle of a satanic ritual (complete with red candles, howl-inducing "sinister" purple bathrobes and sunglasses and an oil painting of Old Scratch himself). Over the main credits, the bitch gives birth to a litter of pups, each one apparently imbued with satanic power! Meanwhile, Richard Crenna's family dog buys it in a hit-and-run and, despite his daughter(Kim Richards, The Car, Black Snake Moan)'s awesomely overwrought protestations ("If something happened to me, would you just get another daughter?!"), Crenna resolves to replace the corpsified canine. R.G. Armstrong (Children of the Corn, Predator) shows up as a traveling fruit salesman (!), who is actually one of the satanists in disguise! His mission? To disperse the cursed canines (born in the intro) to as many suburban homes as possible! As luck would have it, one of the pups ends up with Crenna, and soon strange things begin to occur while the pup is nearby-Crenna's loving daughter turns into a total cunt, dishes fly off the table and break with no provocation, our hero almost loses a hand to an errant lawnmower blade and, in one sanity-doubting sequence, the cute lil' pooch's eyes glow red while ominous music plays and he makes the Catholic housekeeper BURST INTO FUCKING FLAMES! As the devil dog becomes increasingly encroached in the home, Crenna's wife (Yvette Mimieux, Snowbeast, The Black Hole) begins an affair, his children become aloof and distant and anyone who tries to interfere in their lives turns up dead. Well, if you think the man who trained John Rambo to both survive and become war is going to take this bullshit laying down, you've got another thing coming. Once our hero discovers evidence of satanic rituals happening in his attic, he heads out into the desert to shoot the possessed puppy, but the beast mystically dodges every shot. After consulting with mediums of various (and ridiculously stereotyped) ethnicities, Crenna prepares a good supply of body bags and heads into an abandoned warehouse to confront the dog, who's grown into a (ridiculous) dinosaur-like monster.
Devil Dog-the Hound of Hell started with a goofy conceit rendered ridiculous by focusing too long on a cute puppy as the agent of ultimate evil, casting a particularly dopey-looking German Shepard as the adult dog (he actually looks a good deal like my own Shepard, Sheriff; he's a good boy, but likely the least intimidating large dog you'll ever meet) and visual effects on the level of a mediocre episode of The Incredible Hulk. I had fond memories of watching this TV movie as part of the regular TBS rotation in my youth in the late 80s, but it doesn't really hold up. Crenna and Mimieux give better performances than the film deserves. It might make for fun viewing for problem-dog owners...
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Entry 84: The Sentinel (1977)
The Sentinel (1977)
Dir: Michael Winner
"She is young, she is beautiful, she is next."
Classy, prestige horror pictures had become a big business by the late 70s, thanks in no small part to the overwhelming critical and commercial success of Paramount's Rosemary's Baby, Warner Brothers' The Exorcist and Fox's The Omen. Universal was no doubt hoping for their own slice of the pie when they greenlit this big-budget adaptation of a best-selling novel, however, by entrusting to the hands of sleazemeister (and possible real-life sadist) Winner, they got...something else...
Depressed fashion model Christina Raines (The Duelists, Nightmares), who is recovering from a recent suicide attempt, decides to move into a peculiar old brownstone apartment complex, despite the protestations of her hotshot lawyer beau, Chris Sarandon (Fright Night, the voice of Jack Skellington). She is charmed by garrulous old vaudevillian neighbor Burgess Meredith (Rocky, Magic), but is disturbed when mute lesbian neighbor Beverley D'Angelo finger blasts the shit out of herself to a quivering orgasm during their first meeting. After seeing visions of her dead father, she contacts her real estate agent to complain about her new abode and, wouldn't you know it? The house has been abandoned for years; she's the only tenant! Sarandon does some amateur sleuthwork and it turns out that the apartment is situated on a GODDAMN DOORWAY TO HELL; the "tenants" are all damned souls trying to escape, held back only by old blind priest John Carradine (Shock Waves, The Howling; a real favorite here in the basement!). This decrepit old sentinel is nearing the end of his life and wants Raines to take his place...With no turning back, our heroine is forced to choose: give up her high-fashion existence for a life of solitude as a holy bastion against the forces of darkness, or give in to the temptation of suicide and join her neighbors in a wild party of eternal damnation!
Alright, let's get this out of the way: this movie is a goddamn MESS! The script is filled with a number of scenes that never add up/coalesce/add anything to the narrative. Subplots about Raines' traumatic childhood and first suicide attampt, Sarandon's shady business dealings and investigation by the police and the death by suicide of Sarandon's first wife are either never resolved or don't contribute a fucking thing to the narrative...Despite all that, the movie's just over 90 minutes long! I've never read the book, but I suspect that either a) great chunks of the novel were cut out of the screenplay but the writers felt they had to keep hints of them in there to please the author/readers or b) the film was original MUCH longer and was cut to shit in post-production. That said, The Sentinel is still a helluva lot of fun to watch for two reasons. First of all, Winner slathers the whole production with a veneer of absolute sleaze (unnecessary nudity, a heaping helping of blood and gore, plenty of seedy downtown locations, real-life physically deformed actors used as the denizens of hell in the concluding moments) and manages to wring a few genuinely effective and affecting moments of horror out of the proceedings (Raines' dead, bleeding father appearing out of nowhere, the comatose Carradine moving and speaking for the first time during a quiet moment from a blurred corner of the frame, the final assault on Raines' by her satanically changed "neighbors"). Second, and most importantly, it has an AMAZING MOTHERFUCKING CAST! In addition to the aforementioned actors, you've got Martin Balsam (Psycho, Tora! Tora! Tora!) as a doctor, Jose Ferrer (Lawrence of Arabia, Dune) and Arthur Kennedy (Fantastic Voyage, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) as priests, Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy, The Funhouse) as D'Angelo's lover, Deborah Raffin (God Told Me To, Scanners II) as Raines' best friend, William Hickey (One Crazy Summer, My Blue Heaven) as an informant, Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather) and Christopher Walken (the year before The Deer Hunter made him a star) as cops, Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Inserts) and Tom Berenger (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The Substitute) as neighbors, Jerry Orbach (Universal Soldier, TV's Law and Order) as a sleazy mustachioed photographer and, best of all, Jeff motherfucking Goldblum (The Fly, Jurassic Park) as a swinging, smooth-talking commercial director! Phew...did you get all that?!
Dir: Michael Winner
"She is young, she is beautiful, she is next."
Classy, prestige horror pictures had become a big business by the late 70s, thanks in no small part to the overwhelming critical and commercial success of Paramount's Rosemary's Baby, Warner Brothers' The Exorcist and Fox's The Omen. Universal was no doubt hoping for their own slice of the pie when they greenlit this big-budget adaptation of a best-selling novel, however, by entrusting to the hands of sleazemeister (and possible real-life sadist) Winner, they got...something else...
Depressed fashion model Christina Raines (The Duelists, Nightmares), who is recovering from a recent suicide attempt, decides to move into a peculiar old brownstone apartment complex, despite the protestations of her hotshot lawyer beau, Chris Sarandon (Fright Night, the voice of Jack Skellington). She is charmed by garrulous old vaudevillian neighbor Burgess Meredith (Rocky, Magic), but is disturbed when mute lesbian neighbor Beverley D'Angelo finger blasts the shit out of herself to a quivering orgasm during their first meeting. After seeing visions of her dead father, she contacts her real estate agent to complain about her new abode and, wouldn't you know it? The house has been abandoned for years; she's the only tenant! Sarandon does some amateur sleuthwork and it turns out that the apartment is situated on a GODDAMN DOORWAY TO HELL; the "tenants" are all damned souls trying to escape, held back only by old blind priest John Carradine (Shock Waves, The Howling; a real favorite here in the basement!). This decrepit old sentinel is nearing the end of his life and wants Raines to take his place...With no turning back, our heroine is forced to choose: give up her high-fashion existence for a life of solitude as a holy bastion against the forces of darkness, or give in to the temptation of suicide and join her neighbors in a wild party of eternal damnation!
Alright, let's get this out of the way: this movie is a goddamn MESS! The script is filled with a number of scenes that never add up/coalesce/add anything to the narrative. Subplots about Raines' traumatic childhood and first suicide attampt, Sarandon's shady business dealings and investigation by the police and the death by suicide of Sarandon's first wife are either never resolved or don't contribute a fucking thing to the narrative...Despite all that, the movie's just over 90 minutes long! I've never read the book, but I suspect that either a) great chunks of the novel were cut out of the screenplay but the writers felt they had to keep hints of them in there to please the author/readers or b) the film was original MUCH longer and was cut to shit in post-production. That said, The Sentinel is still a helluva lot of fun to watch for two reasons. First of all, Winner slathers the whole production with a veneer of absolute sleaze (unnecessary nudity, a heaping helping of blood and gore, plenty of seedy downtown locations, real-life physically deformed actors used as the denizens of hell in the concluding moments) and manages to wring a few genuinely effective and affecting moments of horror out of the proceedings (Raines' dead, bleeding father appearing out of nowhere, the comatose Carradine moving and speaking for the first time during a quiet moment from a blurred corner of the frame, the final assault on Raines' by her satanically changed "neighbors"). Second, and most importantly, it has an AMAZING MOTHERFUCKING CAST! In addition to the aforementioned actors, you've got Martin Balsam (Psycho, Tora! Tora! Tora!) as a doctor, Jose Ferrer (Lawrence of Arabia, Dune) and Arthur Kennedy (Fantastic Voyage, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) as priests, Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy, The Funhouse) as D'Angelo's lover, Deborah Raffin (God Told Me To, Scanners II) as Raines' best friend, William Hickey (One Crazy Summer, My Blue Heaven) as an informant, Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather) and Christopher Walken (the year before The Deer Hunter made him a star) as cops, Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Inserts) and Tom Berenger (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The Substitute) as neighbors, Jerry Orbach (Universal Soldier, TV's Law and Order) as a sleazy mustachioed photographer and, best of all, Jeff motherfucking Goldblum (The Fly, Jurassic Park) as a swinging, smooth-talking commercial director! Phew...did you get all that?!
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Entry 83: Savage Weekend (1976)
Savage Weekend (1976)
Dir: David Paulsen
"You have been chosen. You are doomed. Prepare for...SAVAGE WEEKEND."
A movie can't be ALL bad when it opens with a strung-out looking Bill Sanderson (Blade Runner, TV's Deadwood) murdering a woman with a chainsaw, can it? Yes...yes, it can. If you REALLY have nothing better to do, I guess you can come down with me to the basement and "enjoy" the patience-trying tedium of...Savage Weekend.
In this overly-talky proto-slasher, four upstate NY stock brokers travel to the rural countryside for a weekend getaway. Our well-to-do weekenders consist of Robert (Jim Doerr), Jay (Devin Goldenberg, The Last Horror Film), Marie (Marilyn Hamlin, Shaft's Big Score) and Nicky (Christopher Allport, Invaders from Mars, To Live and Die in L.A., here playing a refreshingly ass-kicking gay character. It's the 70s, so he's fey as shit, but at least he gets to beat the fuck out of a bar full of rednecks). Meanwhile, sweaty, stringy-haired local Otis (Sanderson) wanders around a graveyard muttering to himself before directly addressing one of the tombstones. In flashback, we see unbalanced Otis beat his brother to death for fucking his girlfriend. He then proceeds to brand the poor girl with an "H" for "whore ('Otis ain't too bright.')." Otis skulks around spying on these wealthy out-of-towners as they copulate with various ready-and-willing locals. In the film's strangest scene, Nicky cuts his hands on barbed wire while watching Jay fuck a voluptuous local girl. After endless scenes of talking, fucking and one sanity-doubting scene in which a woman jerks off a goddamn COW'S UTTER in an attempt to turn on a distracted would-be lover, someone in a monster mask begins killing off the out-of-town folks one-by-one. Is it crazy Otis? Is it local handyman David Gale (Re-Animator, From Beyond), who doesn't appreciate these yuppies invading his turf? By this point, I didn't give a fuck, and you won't, either.
This is a boring, BORING movie, filled with repellent and thoroughly unlikable characters talking endlessly about a bunch of boring nonsense before being killed off in incredibly boring fashion. If I can give ANY credit at all to this exercise in tedium, it's that it did predate the "promiscuous characters get offed by a masked maniac" formula of slasher progenitor Halloween by two years, and the performances by Sanderson, Allport and Gale are inspired enough to rise above the bland material. Savage Weekend was lensed in 1976, released (barely) by a pre-Golan-Globus Cannon in 1979, then rereleased in 1981 to lure a few bucks away from unsuspecting moviegoers during the post-Friday the 13th slasher boom. I really feel for those folks. For a MUCH better out-of-their-element yuppies versus angry rural folk horror flick, check out 1977's Rituals instead.
Dir: David Paulsen
"You have been chosen. You are doomed. Prepare for...SAVAGE WEEKEND."
A movie can't be ALL bad when it opens with a strung-out looking Bill Sanderson (Blade Runner, TV's Deadwood) murdering a woman with a chainsaw, can it? Yes...yes, it can. If you REALLY have nothing better to do, I guess you can come down with me to the basement and "enjoy" the patience-trying tedium of...Savage Weekend.
In this overly-talky proto-slasher, four upstate NY stock brokers travel to the rural countryside for a weekend getaway. Our well-to-do weekenders consist of Robert (Jim Doerr), Jay (Devin Goldenberg, The Last Horror Film), Marie (Marilyn Hamlin, Shaft's Big Score) and Nicky (Christopher Allport, Invaders from Mars, To Live and Die in L.A., here playing a refreshingly ass-kicking gay character. It's the 70s, so he's fey as shit, but at least he gets to beat the fuck out of a bar full of rednecks). Meanwhile, sweaty, stringy-haired local Otis (Sanderson) wanders around a graveyard muttering to himself before directly addressing one of the tombstones. In flashback, we see unbalanced Otis beat his brother to death for fucking his girlfriend. He then proceeds to brand the poor girl with an "H" for "whore ('Otis ain't too bright.')." Otis skulks around spying on these wealthy out-of-towners as they copulate with various ready-and-willing locals. In the film's strangest scene, Nicky cuts his hands on barbed wire while watching Jay fuck a voluptuous local girl. After endless scenes of talking, fucking and one sanity-doubting scene in which a woman jerks off a goddamn COW'S UTTER in an attempt to turn on a distracted would-be lover, someone in a monster mask begins killing off the out-of-town folks one-by-one. Is it crazy Otis? Is it local handyman David Gale (Re-Animator, From Beyond), who doesn't appreciate these yuppies invading his turf? By this point, I didn't give a fuck, and you won't, either.
This is a boring, BORING movie, filled with repellent and thoroughly unlikable characters talking endlessly about a bunch of boring nonsense before being killed off in incredibly boring fashion. If I can give ANY credit at all to this exercise in tedium, it's that it did predate the "promiscuous characters get offed by a masked maniac" formula of slasher progenitor Halloween by two years, and the performances by Sanderson, Allport and Gale are inspired enough to rise above the bland material. Savage Weekend was lensed in 1976, released (barely) by a pre-Golan-Globus Cannon in 1979, then rereleased in 1981 to lure a few bucks away from unsuspecting moviegoers during the post-Friday the 13th slasher boom. I really feel for those folks. For a MUCH better out-of-their-element yuppies versus angry rural folk horror flick, check out 1977's Rituals instead.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Entry 82: Slaughterhouse (1987)
Slaughterhouse (1987)
Dir: Rick Roessler
"Buddy has an axe to grind. A big axe."
When a movie's opening credits are set to footage of real pigs being slaughtered over a goofy, "Wackety Sax"-style intrumental, you know there's only one place you can be! So c'mon, y'all; toss on your best overalls, wipe the pig offal off the couch and get cozy down here in the basement of sleaze...We're about to spend a little time in the Slaughterhouse!
This Texas Chain Saw imitator begins with a group of obnoxious teens fucking around at a run-down rural farm. When one horny couple intentional antagonizes a pen of swine, they're bumped off by an enormous, bearded, overall-clad redneck with a comically large meat clever (I mean it; it's fucking HUGE!). We then meet teenage sweethearts Skip (the vaguely Rob Lowe-ian Erich Schwarz) and his girlfriend Liz (real-life stunt woman Sherry Leigh, Sid and Nancy, TV's 24, whose very unattractive long perm and masculine jawline make her less an object of desire and more a dead ringer for "Weird" Al Yankovic), hard-working but beleaguered Sheriff Borden (get it?) and local bigwigs Tom (Bill Brinsfield, Death House, the Chuck Norris masterpiece Top Dog) and Herb. Tom and Herb want to purchase the foreclosed local slaughterhouse run by Lester Bacon (Don Barrett, Hobgoblins) to turn into a citrus farm, but the proud meat man refuses to sell to these soft-handed pansies. We're also introduced to Bacon's son, Buddy (who is, in fact, the killer from the beginning); a hulking man-child who sleeps in a pigpen and can communicate only through grunts and squeals. In true Texas Chain Saw fashion, the Bacon farm is decorated with decomposing carcasses and sculptures crafted from animal bones, and it's revealed that Buddy has hung his earlier victims up in the slaughterhouse with meat hooks. Facing bankruptcy and refusing to sell out, Lester decides to sick Buddy on Sheriff Borden (arm messily lopped off), Herb (Buddy crushes his skull with his bare hands in the movie's coolest/ickiest kill scene) and Tom (stuffed alive into a meat grinder in a disappointingly non-explicit scene). After these grisly killings, we get an interlude in which Skip and Liz make out...GAH! Fuck me, this is more upsetting than ANY of the death scenes in the film...imagine Rob Lowe making out with "Weird" Al dressed in drag...Yeah; you're welcome. Of course, these two love birds end up trapped in the slaughterhouse...Will they make it out? Or will Billy turn them into choice cuts?
Slaughterhouse is never anything more or less than a competent homage to/parody of Tobe Hooper's rural cannibal classic, but loses points because Hooper himself did it better a year earlier in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ("It's like death eatin' a cracker, ain't it?"). Still, it's surprisingly well made, seeing as it's the sole effort from writer/director Roessler. Considering it's genre, it comes off as perhaps a little too slick (horror films are unique in that a low budget/shitty film stock often contributes to their overall effectiveness/atmosphere), and it's overt, slapsticky attempts at humor diffuse any genuine tension/horror from the situations it presents. Having said that, Buddy's certainly a memorable character and it's a welcome addition to a sub-genre too crowded by Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes sequels/remakes/reboots.
Dir: Rick Roessler
"Buddy has an axe to grind. A big axe."
When a movie's opening credits are set to footage of real pigs being slaughtered over a goofy, "Wackety Sax"-style intrumental, you know there's only one place you can be! So c'mon, y'all; toss on your best overalls, wipe the pig offal off the couch and get cozy down here in the basement of sleaze...We're about to spend a little time in the Slaughterhouse!
This Texas Chain Saw imitator begins with a group of obnoxious teens fucking around at a run-down rural farm. When one horny couple intentional antagonizes a pen of swine, they're bumped off by an enormous, bearded, overall-clad redneck with a comically large meat clever (I mean it; it's fucking HUGE!). We then meet teenage sweethearts Skip (the vaguely Rob Lowe-ian Erich Schwarz) and his girlfriend Liz (real-life stunt woman Sherry Leigh, Sid and Nancy, TV's 24, whose very unattractive long perm and masculine jawline make her less an object of desire and more a dead ringer for "Weird" Al Yankovic), hard-working but beleaguered Sheriff Borden (get it?) and local bigwigs Tom (Bill Brinsfield, Death House, the Chuck Norris masterpiece Top Dog) and Herb. Tom and Herb want to purchase the foreclosed local slaughterhouse run by Lester Bacon (Don Barrett, Hobgoblins) to turn into a citrus farm, but the proud meat man refuses to sell to these soft-handed pansies. We're also introduced to Bacon's son, Buddy (who is, in fact, the killer from the beginning); a hulking man-child who sleeps in a pigpen and can communicate only through grunts and squeals. In true Texas Chain Saw fashion, the Bacon farm is decorated with decomposing carcasses and sculptures crafted from animal bones, and it's revealed that Buddy has hung his earlier victims up in the slaughterhouse with meat hooks. Facing bankruptcy and refusing to sell out, Lester decides to sick Buddy on Sheriff Borden (arm messily lopped off), Herb (Buddy crushes his skull with his bare hands in the movie's coolest/ickiest kill scene) and Tom (stuffed alive into a meat grinder in a disappointingly non-explicit scene). After these grisly killings, we get an interlude in which Skip and Liz make out...GAH! Fuck me, this is more upsetting than ANY of the death scenes in the film...imagine Rob Lowe making out with "Weird" Al dressed in drag...Yeah; you're welcome. Of course, these two love birds end up trapped in the slaughterhouse...Will they make it out? Or will Billy turn them into choice cuts?
Slaughterhouse is never anything more or less than a competent homage to/parody of Tobe Hooper's rural cannibal classic, but loses points because Hooper himself did it better a year earlier in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ("It's like death eatin' a cracker, ain't it?"). Still, it's surprisingly well made, seeing as it's the sole effort from writer/director Roessler. Considering it's genre, it comes off as perhaps a little too slick (horror films are unique in that a low budget/shitty film stock often contributes to their overall effectiveness/atmosphere), and it's overt, slapsticky attempts at humor diffuse any genuine tension/horror from the situations it presents. Having said that, Buddy's certainly a memorable character and it's a welcome addition to a sub-genre too crowded by Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes sequels/remakes/reboots.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Entry 81: The Howling (1981)
The Howling (1981)
Dir: Joe Dante
"Imagine your worst fear a reality."
After she's sexually assaulted by a serial killer named Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo, Legend, Innerspace) TV newswoman Karen White (Dee Wallace, E.T., Cujo) and her husband Bill (the late Christopher Stone, Wallace's real-life husband) agree to take a sabbatical at "The Colony," a Northern California retreat owned by her psychiatrist (Patrick MacNee, TV's The Avengers, Waxwork). All is not as it seems at this camp for crazies; the other guests all behave strangely, an eerie howling is heard in the woods every night and vegan Bill is seduced by creepy nympho Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks, Family Plot) and begins eating red meat. Things get really "hairy" when Eddie Quist turns up back from the dead; turns out he's a werewolf and, in fact, "The Colony" is a haven for lycanthropes trying to exist beneath the notice of human society. Karen is able to excape this den of monsters and warn the world, but not without great personal sacrifice.
1981 was the year of the werewolf picture; in addition to this film, the big screen was also graced with John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Michael Wadleigh's Wolfen. While I love all three films, The Howling is my personal favorite; in fact, it's one of my favorite goddamn horror films period. Director Dante (Piranha, Gremlins) manages to make an age-old trope genuinely scary again. His use of low-light filters makes even the sunniest California day look dark and oppressive, he imbues every scene with menacing fog and shadows, his use of jump-scares are perfectly timed for maximum effectiveness and the werewolves (created by Legend and Robocop's Rob Bottin, with a little help from legendary Rick Baker and Basement of Sleaze regular Dave Allen) are bestial and frightening, with at-the-time-astonishing in-camera transformations. More impressively, Dante and screenwriter John Sayles (Alligator, The Brother from Another Planet) manage to imbue the film with a sly humor (characters read "Howl" and Tom Wolfe novels, a Three Little Pigs cartoon plays on television, a jump cut to a can of wet dog food being poured after a violent death scene) that actually works and never detracts from the horror. Add to that a killer supporting cast of character actors (Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller, John Carradine, Slim Pickens) and you've got a genuine horror classic. Oh yeah, avoid the shitty sequels!
Dir: Joe Dante
"Imagine your worst fear a reality."
After she's sexually assaulted by a serial killer named Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo, Legend, Innerspace) TV newswoman Karen White (Dee Wallace, E.T., Cujo) and her husband Bill (the late Christopher Stone, Wallace's real-life husband) agree to take a sabbatical at "The Colony," a Northern California retreat owned by her psychiatrist (Patrick MacNee, TV's The Avengers, Waxwork). All is not as it seems at this camp for crazies; the other guests all behave strangely, an eerie howling is heard in the woods every night and vegan Bill is seduced by creepy nympho Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks, Family Plot) and begins eating red meat. Things get really "hairy" when Eddie Quist turns up back from the dead; turns out he's a werewolf and, in fact, "The Colony" is a haven for lycanthropes trying to exist beneath the notice of human society. Karen is able to excape this den of monsters and warn the world, but not without great personal sacrifice.
1981 was the year of the werewolf picture; in addition to this film, the big screen was also graced with John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Michael Wadleigh's Wolfen. While I love all three films, The Howling is my personal favorite; in fact, it's one of my favorite goddamn horror films period. Director Dante (Piranha, Gremlins) manages to make an age-old trope genuinely scary again. His use of low-light filters makes even the sunniest California day look dark and oppressive, he imbues every scene with menacing fog and shadows, his use of jump-scares are perfectly timed for maximum effectiveness and the werewolves (created by Legend and Robocop's Rob Bottin, with a little help from legendary Rick Baker and Basement of Sleaze regular Dave Allen) are bestial and frightening, with at-the-time-astonishing in-camera transformations. More impressively, Dante and screenwriter John Sayles (Alligator, The Brother from Another Planet) manage to imbue the film with a sly humor (characters read "Howl" and Tom Wolfe novels, a Three Little Pigs cartoon plays on television, a jump cut to a can of wet dog food being poured after a violent death scene) that actually works and never detracts from the horror. Add to that a killer supporting cast of character actors (Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller, John Carradine, Slim Pickens) and you've got a genuine horror classic. Oh yeah, avoid the shitty sequels!
Friday, October 9, 2015
Entry 80: The Nest (1988)
The Nest (1988)
Dir: Terence H. Winkless
"The terror has hatched."
When pharmaceutically-enhanced killer cockroaches invade a small coastal town, Sheriff Franc Luz (Ghost Town) teams up with his estranged lover (Lisa Langlois from Class of 1984) and an alcoholic, chain-smoking, Hawaiian shirt-wearing exterminator (Stephen Davies, Inserts, Lords of the Deep) to stop them. The roaches are the result of experiments conducted by sexy, crazy scientist Terri Treas (from the Alien Nation television series), who gets turned on when the bugs begin munching on her hand. Because this flick dips it's toes into Jaws territory, corrupt mayor Robert Lansing (Empire of the Ants, TVs Automan) tries to cover everything up. The roaches gestate inside cocoons that look like giant, slimy, engorged scrotums and can take on the characteristics of whatever they consume, so we get a cat-roach and Lansing mutates into a Cronenberg-inspired man-roach. There's a battle with roaches in a diner using all manner of kitchen implements and a climactic showdown with the 8-foot tall, multi-headed roach queen in the caves beneath the town.
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, this 50s creature-feature throwback is a helluva lot of fun, and much better than most of the other films Corman's Concorde was putting out at the time. There are some great, surprising gore effects (a cat being eaten from the inside out, roaches forcing themselves down the throat of a bedridden fat woman and Lansing's aforementioned transformation are particular highlights), solid performances by a cast of genre vets and character actors and director Winkless maintains a lightly humorous tone that never veers into overt slapstick. Give this one a look! As an aside, Guillermo del Toro's film Mimic uses some suspiciously similar plot elements to this film (right down to the origin of/purpose for the mutated roaches), albeit played completely straight...
Dir: Terence H. Winkless
"The terror has hatched."
When pharmaceutically-enhanced killer cockroaches invade a small coastal town, Sheriff Franc Luz (Ghost Town) teams up with his estranged lover (Lisa Langlois from Class of 1984) and an alcoholic, chain-smoking, Hawaiian shirt-wearing exterminator (Stephen Davies, Inserts, Lords of the Deep) to stop them. The roaches are the result of experiments conducted by sexy, crazy scientist Terri Treas (from the Alien Nation television series), who gets turned on when the bugs begin munching on her hand. Because this flick dips it's toes into Jaws territory, corrupt mayor Robert Lansing (Empire of the Ants, TVs Automan) tries to cover everything up. The roaches gestate inside cocoons that look like giant, slimy, engorged scrotums and can take on the characteristics of whatever they consume, so we get a cat-roach and Lansing mutates into a Cronenberg-inspired man-roach. There's a battle with roaches in a diner using all manner of kitchen implements and a climactic showdown with the 8-foot tall, multi-headed roach queen in the caves beneath the town.
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, this 50s creature-feature throwback is a helluva lot of fun, and much better than most of the other films Corman's Concorde was putting out at the time. There are some great, surprising gore effects (a cat being eaten from the inside out, roaches forcing themselves down the throat of a bedridden fat woman and Lansing's aforementioned transformation are particular highlights), solid performances by a cast of genre vets and character actors and director Winkless maintains a lightly humorous tone that never veers into overt slapstick. Give this one a look! As an aside, Guillermo del Toro's film Mimic uses some suspiciously similar plot elements to this film (right down to the origin of/purpose for the mutated roaches), albeit played completely straight...
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Entry 79: Slaughter High (1986)
Slaughter High (1986)
Dir: George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, Peter Mackenzie Litten
"Marty majored in cutting classmates."
I've been slacking off! I'd resolved to double my output during this, my favorite of months, but here we are a week into October and I'm just now getting to an entry. Life's been hectic lately, but tonight I'm taking some time off and paying a visit to the graduating class of Slaughter High...
This picture starts off with a pretty fucking great garage rock-sounding opening credits theme as we're introduced to the student body of Doddsville County High School. It's April Fool's Day, and sexpot Carol (Caroline Munro, StarCrash) decides to play a prank on insufferable nerd Marty (Simon Scuddamore). She makes this unfortunate loser strip down to his skivvies in the shower of the girls' locker room as a prelude to some serious deep boning, but instead pulls the curtain away to reveal a bunch of her "cool" friends pointing and laughing at this nude nebbish. We get a LOT of unfortunate dick and taint shots as the jocks drag his naked body around the locker room before giving him a swirly. At this point, I should also point out that the sexy-as-hell Munro (one of my favorite B-movie actresses) was 36 years old when she was cast as a high schooler in this movie! Later, another prank-gone-awry results in Marty getting burned with nitric acid and set on fire...Hilarious, right?! Flash-forward ten years and Carol has become a B-movie starlet (art imitating life?) working for a producer whose office is adorned with posters for Pieces and Infra-Man! Carol decides to attend her 10-year class reunion but, curiously, she arrives to find the school in a state of disrepair and, suspiciously, the only other attending guests are her friends who helped to prank Marty! Yeah, you guessed it; this "reunion" is a fake put on by vengeful, deformed Marty for the sole purpose of killing the shit out of his former tormentors. As you'd expect, Marty (now hidden behind a creepy jester's mask) stalks Carol and friends one-by-one, dispatching them via coat hanger through the head, butcher knife through the torso, a bathtub filled with acid (this one uses some surprising, Wolf Man-style time-elapse photography), riding lawnmower dropped from a hoist (creative!), electrocution-via-metal-bedframe, drowning in a septic tank and, in the film's most technically impressive kill, he tricks a mark into drinking a caustic, carbonated substance that causes his intestines to explode. For her trouble, Carol gets impaled in the very same shower in which she'd humiliated Marty during the prologue. Since this is an April Fool's Day-themed film there is, of course, a twist ending, but it is at best pretty stupid and, at worst, totally nonsensical.
Slaughter High is, ultimately, a pretty minor entry in the slasher canon, and I can't for the life of me figure out why it took three goddamn people to write and direct it! Munro gives the only decent performance, but even she is strictly phoning it in. The abandoned school setting provides some slightly unnerving atmosphere, but it's almost totally undone by clumsy direction and too-dark cinematography (there are several scenes in which it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on). The film's biggest saving grace is that it's one of the few slasher films to provide a wholly sympathetic killer; Munro and her friends are all unrepentant sociopaths who show no remorse/admit no guilt for their part in destroying the life of their former classmate. Slaughter High was shot under the working title of April Fool's Day, but was changed to avoid confusion when a (superior) film was released using the same title that year.
Dir: George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, Peter Mackenzie Litten
"Marty majored in cutting classmates."
I've been slacking off! I'd resolved to double my output during this, my favorite of months, but here we are a week into October and I'm just now getting to an entry. Life's been hectic lately, but tonight I'm taking some time off and paying a visit to the graduating class of Slaughter High...
This picture starts off with a pretty fucking great garage rock-sounding opening credits theme as we're introduced to the student body of Doddsville County High School. It's April Fool's Day, and sexpot Carol (Caroline Munro, StarCrash) decides to play a prank on insufferable nerd Marty (Simon Scuddamore). She makes this unfortunate loser strip down to his skivvies in the shower of the girls' locker room as a prelude to some serious deep boning, but instead pulls the curtain away to reveal a bunch of her "cool" friends pointing and laughing at this nude nebbish. We get a LOT of unfortunate dick and taint shots as the jocks drag his naked body around the locker room before giving him a swirly. At this point, I should also point out that the sexy-as-hell Munro (one of my favorite B-movie actresses) was 36 years old when she was cast as a high schooler in this movie! Later, another prank-gone-awry results in Marty getting burned with nitric acid and set on fire...Hilarious, right?! Flash-forward ten years and Carol has become a B-movie starlet (art imitating life?) working for a producer whose office is adorned with posters for Pieces and Infra-Man! Carol decides to attend her 10-year class reunion but, curiously, she arrives to find the school in a state of disrepair and, suspiciously, the only other attending guests are her friends who helped to prank Marty! Yeah, you guessed it; this "reunion" is a fake put on by vengeful, deformed Marty for the sole purpose of killing the shit out of his former tormentors. As you'd expect, Marty (now hidden behind a creepy jester's mask) stalks Carol and friends one-by-one, dispatching them via coat hanger through the head, butcher knife through the torso, a bathtub filled with acid (this one uses some surprising, Wolf Man-style time-elapse photography), riding lawnmower dropped from a hoist (creative!), electrocution-via-metal-bedframe, drowning in a septic tank and, in the film's most technically impressive kill, he tricks a mark into drinking a caustic, carbonated substance that causes his intestines to explode. For her trouble, Carol gets impaled in the very same shower in which she'd humiliated Marty during the prologue. Since this is an April Fool's Day-themed film there is, of course, a twist ending, but it is at best pretty stupid and, at worst, totally nonsensical.
Slaughter High is, ultimately, a pretty minor entry in the slasher canon, and I can't for the life of me figure out why it took three goddamn people to write and direct it! Munro gives the only decent performance, but even she is strictly phoning it in. The abandoned school setting provides some slightly unnerving atmosphere, but it's almost totally undone by clumsy direction and too-dark cinematography (there are several scenes in which it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on). The film's biggest saving grace is that it's one of the few slasher films to provide a wholly sympathetic killer; Munro and her friends are all unrepentant sociopaths who show no remorse/admit no guilt for their part in destroying the life of their former classmate. Slaughter High was shot under the working title of April Fool's Day, but was changed to avoid confusion when a (superior) film was released using the same title that year.
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