Slither Me Timbers

Welcome to the Annual February Shortening! In honor of the shortest month on a blog written by a short woman, all posts are devoted to stories about vertically challenged villains. If you, reader of any height, have your own mini-horror to share, do so in the comments and I'll include you in a final post roundup as the calendar changes!

I don't LOVE the idea of throwing snakes in the short villain club; when they do that coiling thing, some could probably tower over me. But hey, Vipers was on Amazon Prime and sometimes, you just have to listen to the universe of streaming SyFy creature features.

Quick Plot: Overhead stock island footage introduces us to a secret facility where government scientists are genetically modifying snakes in order to fight cancer...and terrorists.

Naturally, these titular CGI vipers escape their thin glass barrier and find their way to another small island, strangely enough, one that looks the same in an overhead stock shot. Luckily for the few townspeople that aren't extras and therefore immediate snake scraps, former 3-star military man Dr. Silverton (Twin Peaks' always delightful Don S. Davis) was in the middle of transitioning his practice over to young army vet Cal, leaving the island with slightly more strategic experience (handy in an "escape the genetically modified man-eating snake invasion" emergency).

Also on hand to do some reptile combat is greenhouse owner Tara Reid, her friend-turned enemy Ellie, Ellie's angry teen daughter Maggie, Ellie's cheating husband Jack, the woman he's cheating with, Georgie, played by the always perfect and never used well enough Mercades McNab. Did I squeal in glee when her name showed up in the opening credits? Of course. Did I immediately deflate when I realized that, by placing her smack in the middle, it meant she'd die early? Blondy Bear, you know me well.

There aren't many surprises in Vipers. This is the kind of movie where a mother muses that her teenage daughter will be the death of her only to, you guessed it, die by snaking barely a full scene later trying to save aforementioned daughter. Don't expect much more.

High Points

You know what's probably very difficult? Acting terrified for the course of a 90 minute film when there is literally NOTHING physical to act terrified of. Obviously, the vipers of Vipers are pure computer generated art, meaning director Bill Corcoran probably had to dangle more tennis balls than George Lucas to capture the right eye positions. We can laugh at the SyFy pool of goofy CGI attacks all we want, but as this was made before the network went fully off the rails in terms of style, we should also respect the fact that each actor in Vipers plays their part as if they are genuinely afraid of these almost-ridiculous vipers.

Low Points

There are three white male characters who all stand about the same height, with the same dirty blond hair, and have generically white names. It's genuinely difficult to tell them apart for the first 10 minutes or so, and just seems like such a silly decision on the part of casting. 

Lessons Learned

Give a lady a big rock and you become nothing but a wallet

If your lover thinks mistakes a snake for your caressing hands, it's probably a note to moisturize more often

Genetically enhanced snakes bite like hell and more importantly, scream like baby velociraptors 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Vipers isn't anything terribly special, but it's interesting as a time capsule of the era when you could make a cheap CGI TV creature feature and still treat it somewhat earnestly. If the mood strikes you, find it now on Amazon Prime. 

You Will Believe

I saw Urban Legend in the theater as a 16-year-old horror fan who was witnessing the rebirth of slashers aimed squarely at my generation. Having been that awkward kid with full video store access, it was a strange place to be. Suddenly, the type of movies I'd beg to watch at slumber parties were actually cool. The only problem: the actual movies were not.

I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween H20, Disturbing Behavior...the list of movies with good talent and promise that don't actually work that well as horror is pretty long. My memory of Urban Legend was that it was more fun than most of its peers, but, well, it's been 22 years. Let's see how it's aged.

Quick Plot: Pendleton University student Michelle Mancini (yes, the name should remind you of a certain hero of mine) stops for gas on a dark, rainy evening, immediately becoming suspicious of the twitchy gas station attendant beckoning her to get out of her car. Considering he's played by Brad Dourf with Charles Lee Ray eyes and Billy Bibbit's speech impediment, you can understand her edginess. 

Enter the first urban legend of Urban Legend: there's someone in the backseat, and Michelle learns too late that some legends can be true...particularly in slashers all about turning urban legends into elaborate murder set pieces.

The Pendleton student body seems fairly ambivalent about one of their own being brutally murdered. Only Paul (Jordan Catalano era Jared Leto), an ambitious school newspaper reporter, and Natalie (Alicia Witt at her most radiant red-headedness), who knows a thing or two about the deadly possibilities of modern folktales and Michelle Mancini, suspect there's a bigger story at play.

Like any Canadian-posing-as-New-England university, Pendleton has its share of haunted, shrouded history. 1998 marks the 25th anniversary of a fabled massacre, and mysterious professor William Wexler (Robert Enguland!) seems to have a bit much invested in covering it up while also convincing his students that urban legends are pure myth.

Cut to 16-year-old me, who had just begun receiving colorful college brochures with autumnal imagery, becoming even more excited to get out of high school and sit in lecture halls where Freddy Krueger showed slides straight out of Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark.

Anyway, future dreams aside, Urban Legend is indeed the perfect late '90s slasher. Sure, the brown lipstick fashion trends and resigned sighs of seeing your roommate on dial-up and getting a busy signal on your landline give you a knowing wink 22 years later, but here's the thing: Urban Legend is actually kinda good.

Yes, we wouldn't have had Urban Legend in theaters had it not been for the success of Scream one year earlier, and yes, it follows many of the same beats BUT, guess what: the same can be said for Friday the 13th to Halloween, or The Intruder to Friday the 13th, and so on and so on. 

Urban Legend knows its slasher playbook: pal after pal of our final girl dies in a high concept way by a dark figure whose face is obscured (in this case, with a winter coat that apparently everyone in town owns). Each murder is inspired by a popular urban legend, sometimes with an added twist. It's a perfect horror movie setup from first-time screenwriter Silvio Horta, and first-time director Jamie Blanks manages a surprisingly sharp balance between treating the horror seriously while clearly holding in a giant wink.

There are plenty of small touches throughout Urban Legend that demonstrate a clear affection for the genre, from using Chucky creator Don Mancini's name to casting Halloween 4/5's Danielle Harris as Natalie's ill-fated goth roommate. The reveal of the killer is big and stupid in the best of ways, while the coda lets you reframe the entire movie in whatever guise you choose. 

We're at a very specific moment in time when we can look at the '90s with rose-colored glasses. Horror cinema at this time was defined by the self-aware slasher, and while Urban Legend may have felt trite in 1998, it has aged remarkably well two decades after its debut.

High Points

Most of the actual violence is so over-the-top that it's more silly than scary, but the opening scene is genuinely thrilling, with the reveal played to perfect effect amid a rain-soaked dark highway

Low Points

There are two genuinely unpleasant things in Urban Legend, and I'm not talking about the many dead young people or Joshua Jackson's hair color: yes, a dozen innocent students are brutally murdered, but the force-alcohol-fed dog-in-the-microwave moment feels line crossing. The other is one of those uncomfortable real-life mirrors that's hard to put out of your mind: in 2001, Rebecca Gayheart was convicted of vehicular manslaughter that caused the death of a child. Much like Natalie and Michelle, this wealthy white woman received a small fine and probation. There's a lot to process there and it doesn't necessarily need to be done to enjoy a sharp '90s horror flick, but it feels wrong not to acknowledge it when discussing the movie

Lessons Learned, Late '90s Edition

As witnessed here and in Se7en, there was a high correlation between serial killing and excessive rain

A bad bleach job was all you needed to pass yourself off as a Hanson brother

You'd never get a job in the newspaper industry without a hefty batch of school paper writing samples

Rent/Bury/Buy

Urban Legend is currently streaming on Hulu, and I found it surprisingly enjoyable to revisit. It won't change your life, but it just might make you look fondly back at a period of genre cinema we'd all once written off.

Bonus Content!

Hungry for more discussion on '90s theatrical horror? Allow me to point you back to Canada for Alexandra West's fantastic essay book on the subject, The 1990s Teen Horror Cycle. It's a smart, scholarly, and fun look at a decade that we long took for granted. 

Kid of the Corn

Any film that elicits wildly diverse opinions from blog sources I respect is always worth a weigh-in. Considering I’ve heard the very best and very worst of Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni’s The Fields AND it landed on Instant Watch, here we go.

Quick Plot: It’s tough being Steven, aka a 10 or so year old kid with a recently returned Vietnam veteran dad that has anger issues and an alcoholic mom played by Tara Reid in a bad wig. As his parents attempt to figure out their relationship, Steven is sent to leave with grandparents on a farm surrounded by ominous cornfields that just might house a dead body or two.

Also, it’s 1973 and a good chunk of the nation is busy being terrified of dirty hippies and Charles Manson. 

It’s easy to see why someone would despise The Fields. Let’s take a look at the synopsis: 

“Based on chilling real-life incidents that occurred in Pennsylvania in 1973, this gripping horror film tells the tale of a young boy and his family whose ancestral farm has been mysteriously possessed by an evil, unfathomable presence.”

An ‘evil, unfathomable presence’ might lead you to picture, I don’t know, something like this:

Or this?

According to the Internet, also this:

But Google Image Search be damned, The Fields has other ideas. Less about something to be afraid of than about fear itself, you can’t quite fault an angry audience for feeling hoodwinked. With a few eerie dream sequences and constant threats of home invasions, The Fields feels as though it’s building up to a grand finale. Accept this mild spoiler: 

There isn’t much of one. 

It’s not that nothing happens in The Fields. It’s more that it’s less about WHAT happens than the paranoia in the time surrounding it. Mattera and Mazzoni spend a fair amount of time developing a sense of foreboding, dropping in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-worthy family visit to Granny’s disabled sister’s family complete with People Under the Stairs-y teens that play with chickens in a way that doesn’t seem ready for a kids’ morning TV show. Everywhere Steven seems to turn, SOMETHING is planting a quiet threat, be it the maze of cornstalks designed to shield some sort of menace or the ubiquitous overgrown flower children that sing nonsense songs everywhere in town.

Working with a script from first timer Harrison Smith, The Fields is a very different kind of horror film. The monster isn’t REALLY the murderous gang of hippies that might be leaving corpses behind the rows; it’s the general unease growing not just in big cities or LA garden parties but also in the innocence of a family farm. It’s a subtle theme, and the filmmaking team displays great skill at conveying it. Sure, guiding a pro like Leachman can’t be too hard, but observe how natural most of the family scenes are, with characters munching on cigarettes while interrupting familiar stories. The longer I sit back from this film, the more impressive it seems.

High Points

Leachman. Seriously, is it ever anything else?

Low Points

I’d love to NOT pin every low point in a Tara Reid movie on Tara Reid, but even with limited screentime, it’s simply impossible

Lessons Learned

Never accept peanut butter on a cracker without first inspecting the jar

Walking through cornfields alone might leave you dead and/or swollen and/or black and/or terrible

No grandma is cooler than Cloris Leachman. Actually, no living human being is cooler than Cloris Leachman

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you approach The Fields knowing that it’s NOT a bloodbath, I think you might find something unusually haunting. The film is far from perfect, but it’s a certain type of unique accomplishment that makes me look forward to what this filmmaking team might do next. 

Allow me to add: what kept The Fields on my radar was James Gracey’s wonderfully thoughtful review. For further reading, head on over here  to see what I mean.

Reader Recommendation: Alone In the Dark

“Alone in the Dark (2005) five words... "Tara Reid plays an anthropologist." That is all.”--Lis

Why would I NOT watch this movie?

Quick Plot: What feels like a 20 minute voiceover laid out in exciting scrolling text tells us something about the ancient Abkani people’s toying with alternate dimensions and orphan children used for experimentzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzz

Oh. Excuse me. How embarrassing. I don’t normally fall asleep 90 seconds into a movie.

Okay. So. Christian Slater is Ed Canby, a former orphan/paranormal investigator forever confused by a lapse in memory from something bad that happened once. I care about orphans, really, I do. I just can’t pay attention to their plight when I’m bored during their introduction.

Anyway. Canby. Slater. Tank top and used Heathers duster. Back on track this review shall be.

So. Canby is transporting an artifact (looks like a lizard skull but is only ever referred to as “the artifact,” so I’m going with that) to his ex-girlfriend/archaeologist girlfriend Tara Reid. I’m sure her character had a name, but since, for the entire 90 minutes of this film, we only ever think of her as Tara Reid, that’s really all I shall call her.

If you need further proof, allow me to explain:

-Tara Reid wears lipgloss so pink, even Barbie finds it a bit much

-Tara Reid’s mouth hangs open in every scene. Maybe she was congested and just couldn’t breathe through her nose

-Tara Reid naturally wears glasses and a bun when in archaeologist mode, going so far as to wind her hair back into a bun after a roll in the sack when reading from a computer. Blonds can, if you didn’t know, only read when wearing buns. And glasses.

-Tara Reid, playing a “promising archaeologist” (although her boss and mentor only calls her “Miss,” leading us to wonder what the educational credentials of a professional working at an elite museum actually are), mentions a few locations, including, I kid you not, New-found-land.

New. Found. Land. 

Those are the sounds that come out of her glossy pink mouth.

But wait, what was the movie about?

In all honesty, Alone In the Dark isn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. Keep in mind, the person that just wrote those words has survived the following:

It’s Alive!, starring “grad student” Bijou Philips

Santa Claws

The first 2/3rds of The Twilight Saga

Sunburst, aka Slashed Dreams

Feeders AND Feeders 2: Slay Bells

(in which this was the big special effect)

and a whole lot more that cannot BE contained on a Mill Creek pack

But seriously, it’s not THAT bad. Not Godzilla 2000 or The Happening bad. It is, however, incredibly boring.

Take, for example, the two most action-filled sequences. An early fight between commandos (led by the always needs-a-punch-in-the-face Steven Dorff) and zombified former orphans (I just like that angle) is...okay. I guess. It’s darkly lit and annoyingly scored. But you know...stuff happens. Similarly, a big gunfight with CGI monsters has just about no weight whatsoever. We don’t know a single character that dies. We barely see how they die. They just die. And we don’t care.

Much like the rest of the movie.

High Points

A love scene between Slater and Tara Reid is hilariously scored to cheesy Cinemax style sexy music. That amused me.

Low Points

Gah. I can’t just say Tara Reid, because thought she’s the worst thing onscreen, she’s also the most fun to make fun of

Lessons Learned

Kepler’s first law of fruit stands in film: they will be run over by cars during exciting high speed chases

Commandos entrusted to fix generators are slow-working and incredibly sensitive

If you want to make your characters seem like smart and educated people, be sure to have them say a lot of big words, like “photons,” “luminescent,” and (giggles giggles giggles) New Found Land

Getting electrocuted as a child is a life experience that can occasionally be extremely useful

Screenwriters, take note: never name a character “Marko” if a) he will be called for repeatedly and b) you don’t want your probably drunk/bored audience to retort “Polo!”

Rent/Bury/Buy

Alone In the Dark comes nowhere near being the worst studio film ever made, but that actually makes it much less interesting to recommend. Yes, true bad movie fans owe it to themselves to see Tara Reid look confused in every single one of her scenes, but at the same time, this just isn’t as much bad fun as something worthier of beer, like The Room or Showgirls (which is actually a masterpiece, but nevermind). Anyway, the DVD does have a few featurettes and a Uwe Boll commentary, so--

Oh. Shit.

I mean, Alone In the Dark is a delightful romp into terrifying and dark territory, the likes of which have rarely seen the screen with such pristine intensity. I love everything about it, particularly its directing and producing.