Midnight Movie of the Week #207 - Santa's Slay

"Why, I'm just trying to spread a little yuletide fear!"

 (2005)

Starring: Bill Goldberg, Douglas Smith, Emilie de Ravin, Robert Culp.

Directed by David Steiman.

Rated R for the interior of a nudey bar and all it's sights, some choice language, cartoonish violence that produces blood and a whole lot of grunting and sneering. Also, for Fran Drescher's voice.

Santa's Slay in Six Words:

Goldberg as Evil Santa? Silliness next.

Why You'll Love It:

Love is a strong word for Santa's Slay, which is best viewed as a comedy (that's not really that funny) first and a horror movie (that's not really that bloody) second. Cheese is on the menu as WCW and WWF superstar Bill Goldberg stars as Santa, who is actually a demon that lost a bet on a curling match with an angel (Robert Culp, a welcome face in the goofy film) and was thus forced to spend 1000 years spreading joy. As you might guess from the title, that time is up and now the massive Santa is bringing terror to the town of Hell, Michigan. It's as ridiculous as it sounds and the whole thing comes off like one big joke, but if you have friends who love bad movies too and you want to celebrate Christmas then this is a good treat to find in your stocking (and then probably re-gift at a bad movie exchange next year).

The Highlights:

• The opening dinner sequence, in which several cameos occur, should give you a good feel for how ridiculous this movie is going to be. If you can't have a little fun with it, you should probably stop the movie and save some time.
• The writer/director Steiman clearly must have graduated from The Arnold Schwarzenegger School of Excessive One-Liners (I swear to you guys that that school is out there somewhere; I believe it) and every kill the massive Goldberg makes happened is assisted by some kind of corny add-on. If you're in a punny mood you'll probably laugh a couple of times.
• The weird thunderbuffalo thing that pulls evil Santa's sleigh is pretty darn cool. Yeah, I'm stretching for highlights here. But it's Christmas and I assume you want to see Santa kill things.

Also Worth Noting:

•  Hollywood heavyweight Brett Ratner was one of the producers behind the film, and his touch is visible through some of the names who cameo in the film. The "stars" involved range from the great James Caan and comedy hero Dave Thomas to less welcome faces like those of Chris Kattan, Fran Drescher, and Rebecca Gayheart.
• Also randomly appearing is Tommy "Tiny" Lister, whose time as Zeus in the WWF (and the all-time classic/masterpiece of modern cinema No Holds Barred) makes him the second former professional wrestler in the film. Sadly, he and Goldberg never get to throw down.
• Totally random tangent - In the real world, people are often very sensitive about saying it's "the holiday season" and not just saying Christmas. It's clear to me that horror movies do not share this sentiment. That's probably because there's not money to be found in a Kwaanza based slasher film, or maybe it's because kids love Christmas presents and dreidels are stupid. My point is this - Thanks for remembering Christmas, exploitative filmmakers.

Santa's Slay is for fans of...
Analyzing the impact of the decline of WCW on what was once it's biggest star, people who love corny holiday puns mixed with blood, Lost completists who want to see how this is actually a prequel to that show, and people whose standards are a little lower because they're just trying to get through Christmas alive. Which is all of us, right?

If You Like This You Might Also Like...
Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)
Tales from the Crypt (1972) (Which is really, really good, and I feel bad for listing it here, but it has good killer Santa.)
No Holds Barred (1989) (The Citizen Kane of WWF stars in movies.)
See No Evil (2006)
Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)

Midnight Movie of the Week #205 - Dorm

"We have a lot in common, you know? No one cares about either of us."

(2006)

Starring: Charlie Trairat, Chinatra Sukapatana, Sirachuch Chienthaworn.

Directed by Songyos Sugmakanan.

Not rated. Includes Taiwanese boys in various states of undress (but not fully undressed), said boys swearing, ghost stories, death, and unrequited lust for baton twirlers.

Dorm in Six Words:

A ghost story. With friendship too.

Why You'll Love It:

I'm not proud of it, but sometimes I get stuck in the mindset that most Asian horror movies (which is a stupid grouping anyway since that's a whole continent) are the same thing about long haired ghosts and jump scares. It's true that there was a type of horror film that became a fad after the success of The Ring and Dark Water, but there were also several horror stories from the far east that offered a touching and human twist on the age old ghost story. One of the most shining examples of this is the Taiwanese chiller Dorm (or, if you're Taiwanese "Dek hor") in which a teenage boy is sent to a dreary boarding school where his closest friend ends up being the spirit of a boy who died years earlier. With a healthy balance of chills and real world drama, Dorm is a rare treat that offers an original tale while providing some classic chills.  The final product is a touching coming of age story, but also a heck of a horror film.

The Highlights:

• An early film sequence in which several boys try to scare the new kid with stories of ghosts haunting the dorm provides several eerie visions, leading to an unforgettably tense scene where even the dogs are terrified.
• Also jaw-droppingly effective is a sequence at an outdoor movie theater, where '80s cult hit Mr. Vampire helps produce a big reveal about the haunting at hand.
• While director Songyos Sugmakanan provides striking images throughout the film, he also gets fantastic performances out of the young actors involved. Without their work, the film probably would have lost much of its power.

Also Worth Knowing:

• The film has been released with two different covers at two different times in the good ol' USA, both by the usually excellent Tartan Asia Extreme label. However, both covers sorely misrepresent the film. One features a picture of a boy standing in front of a house (that looks nothing like the titular Dorm) while a long haired ghost hides in the window, while the other makes us assume the boy is possessed by a demon that needs to be exorcised. Rest assured, this poorly marketed film is not what you would expect based on the awful cover art.

Dorm is for fans of...
Stephen King-esque stories where kids deal with horror and the fact that they are kids, ghost stories, dorms that don't look anything like what Americans think dorms look like, women with a reputation for being mean who have incredible posture, and kids who can act.

If you like this, you might also like...
Stand By Me (1986)
Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1991-2000)
Stir of Echoes (1999)
Dark Water (2002)

Midnight Movie of the Week #182 - Hellraiser: Inferno

It feels a little like a stretch when I bring out the direct-to-video fifth film in the Hellraiser series and say this is a piece of genre cinema that you need to look out for. This series of films is one of the most maddening of all horror franchises, partially because the producers decided to abandon continuity (and numbers in the title) after the third film and partially because almost all of these sequels are really, really bad movies. But if you can sift through everything and find the right sequel - this one, which has Inferno as its subtitle and the only yellow tinted cover of the bunch (seriously, for years I would say "the yellow sequel is pretty good" because I couldn't keep track of this franchise) - you might be surprised to find a mature and sadistic horror film.

Hellraiser: Inferno tells the story of a corrupt police detective who comes into possession of the fabled Lament Configuration puzzle box and, after a trippy night with a dreadlocked prostitute, finds himself trying to unravel plenty of hellish mysteries. While most of the Hellraiser films that preceded this one - all of which had bigger budgets and theatrical releases - took their characters into hellish realities, Inferno keeps our lead character based in reality and brings hell into his world.

Compared to the rest of the series, a literal Hell comes slowly into this character's world - the iconic visage of Pinhead only appears briefly near the end and visions of some new cenobite characters are spaced out by real world drama - but Inferno always finds unique ways to surprise our shady lead character. He's played by Craig Sheffer, formerly a "future star" in films like The Program and A River Runs Through It and before that the star Hellraiser creator Clive Barker's awesome Nightbreed, who has always seemed pretty slimy to me and seems more slimy than usual as he carries this film. He's got a pretty good supporting cast around him, including Nicholas Turturro and the great James Remar, but it seems like most of the scenes in the film revolve around Sheffer looking angry and confused as he faces new and ridiculous surprises that come with the puzzle box he has opened. Does that sound like a bad thing? It does kind of sound bad, but it really isn't. Sheffer is a bit challenged in the charisma department...which is great when he's playing a doomed soul who the viewer doesn't have to like.

The film is co-written and directed by Scott Derrickson, who has gone on to make two quality Hollywood horror films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister (and one terrible, terrible, completely terrible remake that I will not name here despite the fact that it featured Keanu Reeves speaking Chinese to James Hong). All three of Derrickson's horror films are about dudes who are actively pursuing a horror that has entered into their every day world, which makes Hellraiser: Inferno a bit interesting as a case study in how the director got where he is over the last 13 years.  Derrickson's characters are never sharp or punchy like so many modern characters in the post-Tarantino film universe, and there's something refreshing about his willingness to just make these characters feel like they came out of an older and more restrained cop drama. With the exception of their hairstyles, characters in the Hellraiser series have been best when they're normal looking, and Derrickson allows Sheffer to be average enough to keep the film feeling like it's more than just another cheap sequel.

The film feels interesting to horror fans like myself because creepy stuff and cenobites keep popping up throughout the film, but there's more to this plot than that. We don't travel into any hell dimensions like we did in the overambitious Hellraiser II, and Derrickson and Sheffer manage to keep the film feeling like a crime drama while they provide enough gory and unsettling images that make us squirm. Most of the creature makeup is top notch, and there are plenty of new and unique creations that advance the cenobites as a race and prevents the film from just rehashing what we've seen in the first four films. And, at the same time, the gritty plot could even be called "Hellraiser noir" as the seedy side of the detective's world mixes with the cenobites while the star's drab narration pushes the story forward. Like film noir, the lead character's existence seems to spiral downward rapidly through the film's finale, which attempts to push the legend of that little puzzle box and it's spike-headed friend to new places while dragging the corrupt man down into Hell. 

Hellraiser: Inferno never really manages to wow us, but at the same time it's one of those horror movies that's simply never dull. It feels unique, especially as an addition to a series that had been off the rails for a couple of films (and was about to derail once more), which helps make the blood splatter a little brighter and the grimy detective's plight a little more engaging. It might just be a case of being in the right place at the right time - this movie would be a disappointment in a better franchise but seems like a standout against some of the more awful Hellraiser sequels - but Hellraiser: Inferno has always managed to stick in my mind as one of those horror sequels that's good enough to make you not care you're watching something that's not that first thing that you loved. And that's enough for me to give this sequel a solid recommendation to horror fans.

(Usually the trailer goes here, but Dimension Films was god awful at trailers and spoiled like half the movie in their 47 second teaser for this one. Good job, doofuses.  Instead, here's a short Hellraiser "fan film" that I love which was made by special effects guru Gary Tunnicliffe...)

Midnight Movie of the Week #177 - Wendigo

When I look back at the early part of the 2000s, one of the first things that comes to my mind is all the independent and/or "art house" cinema I found myself watching. I was a college kid with too little to do and too much internet to read, and I found my way to a lot of films that now seem rather drab and uninteresting to me. But this time period was not a waste by any means; I found plenty of relatively unknown films that I still love to death by spending my time at the theater and rummaging through the rental section at the video store. There were a lot of ambitious and effective low-budget winners that I found, but unfortunately very few of them came from the horror genre.

One of the primary exceptions to this rule is Wendigo, which was my first exposure to current indie horror producer/director/actor extraordinaire Larry Fessenden. Fessenden has been involved in a lot of FMWL's favorite things over the last ten years - acting in I Sell The Dead, directing former MMOTW The Last Winter, and producing things like The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers under his Glass Eye Pix company - and along the way I kind of forgot how impressive Wendigo is as a dramatic, poetic piece of storytelling.

Jake Weber (Dawn of the Dead 2004) and Patricia Clarkson (lots of stuff) star as a couple who, along with their son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan, aka the big ears kid from Malcolm in the Middle), head to a desolate house in the Catskills for a quiet weekend outside of the city. Anyone who watches horror movies knows quiet weekends are never quiet, but what follows here is not the cliche you might expect.

I'll get to the mythical creature from the title in a minute, but I'm going to do the same thing the film does and first mention the film's human aggressor. His name is Otis, and he's an unhinged country guy played by John Speredakos. Speredakos has shown up in a lot of films produced by Fessenden - including all four of the movies I mentioned when talking about the director - but his performance as Otis is a real standout in his career. Speredakos manages to pose a believable and realistic threat with little effort, and the conflict between his gruff character and Weber's passive aggressive father is easy to understand and incredibly tense. 

None of these characters are incredibly original, but the three adult leads are talented enough to give each of them depth. The real focal point of the film, however, is little Erik Per Sullivan as Miles. The son becomes caught up in the legend of the Wendigo, a shape-shifting deer-like creature that - according to a Native American man that only young Miles seems to see - is always hungry and generally destructive. Miles' focus on the creature blurs the line between what is real or not, and much of the film raises questions about whether Otis or the Wendigo is the bigger threat to Miles and his family. I'm rarely wild about child actors in cinema - too often have the tried to ruin an otherwise good film - but Wendigo packs a strong dramatic punch in part thanks to its youngest star.

Like he did in The Last Winter, Fessenden has a little bit of a monster problem in Wendigo. The creatures that we are shown in both films are not going to make their way into a lot of nightmares - partially due to bad special effects, partially because they're abstract and bizarre - but the director's eye for creating tension and building up concern throughout the film overshadows these flaws. As we get to know the characters there are very few moments that don't build some kind of conflict, and Fessenden's patient control over the film draws us in to the mystery. So what if he's got more "giant deer monsters" to his name than any director ever.

Fessenden's recent colleague Ti West has become the poster boy for the "slow burn" horror film, but Wendigo is a fantastic example of how to turn a family drama into a creepy thriller. If nothing else, Wendigo shows as that a strong set of characters, a moody setting and just enough conflict is all you need to create horror - and that once you've done that it won't matter if you create a monster by dangling sticks in front of the camera and chasing a child around the woods. There are still a couple of cheesy moments when the monster gets involved, but for the most part Wendigo works and the fantastic final act cements its status as as the all-too-rare perfectly mature horror film.

Evil Things

(2009, Dir. by Dominic Perez.)

In the movies, there are two kinds of things: good things and Evil Things. But what interests me when a movie is trying to scare me is how it deals with ordinary things and whether or not it can turn them into extraordinary things.

Horror movies are, more often than not, housed in the land of the extraordinary. Something in the film - it could be the setting, it could be the character's mental status, it could be monsters - is out of the ordinary and causes conflict and fear. Sometimes, that's all the movie is about.

Case in point: Evil Things - a movie that makes sure that almost all of things inside of it are out of the ordinary. The fun part of this movie is that it's not just one part of the movie that aims to fear, because writer/director Dominic Perez takes every chance he has to add some tension to the proceedings.

Most aspects of the film will seem familiar to the viewer. A group of college kids head to a secluded location. Those kids are terrorized by an unseen driver behind the wheel of a simple van. And then they get lost in the woods. There's a full horror movie you could make just out of those elements, which makes it that much more rewarding when Evil Things adds even more to the mix.

A supernatural twist takes the film into its third act, and raises the question as to whether or not Evil Things has too much going on. The answer, for me, is a resounding no. "Too much" would be introducing all these aspects and then trying to explain them all away with final act exposition. Perez gives his film just enough gas before letting it coast through the final act, and he makes a wise decision that saves his atmospheric horror film.

With all these things adding legitimate tension to his film, Perez simply lets them go. He doesn't try to explain away all the details, he just settles for having a creepy and tense handheld horror. Some might want more reason, but I'm perfectly fine falling into a movie that sets out to creep me out and succeeds. Evil Things works because it aims to scare us and doesn't drown in all that other stuff that can set a horror movie back.  As the film rolls to its conclusion - and continues to creep them out beyond the end credits - I think most horror fans will find themselves smiling at the devious and clever little film.

Midnight Movie of the Week #167 - The Salton Sea

A crime drama centered in the world of California meth users isn't the kind of film you'd normally find in the Midnight Movie of the Week spotlight, but there's nothing normal about The Salton Sea.  A multi-layered story of revenge and rebirth that centers on an informant who is stuck in a real world purgatory, D.J. Caruso's film is one of my favorite hidden treats of the new millennium. It's a film that I found fascinating when I first saw it more than a decade ago - I was a college kid and it was undeniably cool - but as I watch it now I'm even more fascinated by it.

Val Kilmer stars as a meth-head who is actually a police informant, more commonly known as a snitch.  But it's clear from the opening that this man, known presently as Danny Parker, has a different moral code than most of his methamphetine abusing acquaintances. As he moves through this underworld of "tweakers" he interacts with a rich supporting cast that features plenty of talented actors in unique roles.  As Danny works his way around this world of users, dealers, and cops, he finds himself sinking deeper into a mystery that seems to swallow him whole.

In my professional life in the real world, I've heard the word "snitch" used as one of the most damning insults of a person's character more often than I can count. I get the mindset behind the "snitches get stitches" mantra that has permeated the culture of drug use - it's the same as playing in the playground as kids, when mom doesn't see it it doesn't happen unless someone tells her - but it always amazes me at how much this ideal is accepted. You walk into a room with a bunch of potheads - and comparing potheads to meth users is like comparing toddlers on a tumbling mat to Olympic gymnasts - and they're going to tell you that snitches get stitches in the same tone they would use to tell you the sky is blue. It's become a fact in drug circles, and it's an almost unwritten part of The Salton Sea's tense plot. No one ever says "Hey, this guy's a snitch, he's in danger" - but it's understood from the first time we learn about Danny Parker's role.

The negative stigma that surrounds his secret makes every relationship Danny has a bit difficult. Some of these relationships are just awkward, like the one with his tweaker best friend, played by a young and mullety Peter Sarsgaard or the ones with the more volatile-but-light-hearted tweakers, led by Adam Goldberg. Other relationships - one with a completely nonsensical dealer played by Glenn Plummer in a fantastic cameo, another with a diabolical distributor played by a noseless Vincent D'Onofrio - are dangerous to Danny's life. And then there's the triad of lawmen he's working with - played by Doug Hutchinson, Anthony LaPaglia, and B.D. Wong (as a cowboy-themed FBI agent - who are obviously using Danny for their own needs.  There's a sense of dread much like what you'd find in a classic film noir, because the lead character is clearly on his own if he wants to meet his own goals.

Danny's reasons for what he does are expanded as the film goes on, and what begins as a look into a bizarre subculture of bizarre Los Angeles evolves into a more meaningful and profound film. But the film never loses its sense of humor along the way, as the script is peppered with oddities that keep us surprised by whatever comes next. I won't spoil all the reveals, but let's just say that brain-eating and genitalia being stuck in a badger's cage are two examples of The Salton Sea's bizarre world. (By the way, one of those examples leads to one of the all-time great mantras on film, "People say a lot of things when they're sportin' badger food for a pecker!")

Like cinema's most mysterious treasures, The Salton Sea is better appreciated after the final credits roll. The ending is true to the film's noir roots - which means it is a little over narrated and a slight bit melodramatic - but looking back at the film as a whole makes me recognize that its heart is in the right place. The Salton Sea is a fascinating look into a dark society that doesn't lose sight of where it wants to go. Despite the well-known cast and the assist of producer Frank Darabont, The Salton Sea has been lost in the years since its limited release in 2002. But I assure you that this film, like the truth that Danny Parker seeks, is worth finding.

(By the way, that's an awful trailer. The movie doesn't have the plot or tone it implies. Think noir!)

Big Three Slasher Series Bonanza! The Halloween/Elm Street/Friday the 13th Countdown

Cool image stolen from this dude because it's cool.

So it was October a bit ago and I was like "YEAAAAAAAHHHHH, HORROR!" like I was Slim Pickens riding a bomb to the DVD store. And then it ended, and things around FMWL got a little too quiet for my tastes.  And then I was like "Oh yeah, that's because I need to come up with things to write about."

And so it came to pass that I started thinking back to October and realized how often I popped in a film from one of three slasher franchises.  You know, those franchises with Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees* and/or Freddy Kreuger in them.  And then I realized that, sometimes, it wasn't even because I liked the movies.  It was just that these three killers and their films have become such a comfortable place for me to go when I'm looking for a dose of slashy horror.
* signifies the possibility of Jason Voorhees not always being Jason Voorhees.

Now, don't get me wrong - there are tons of other slashers that are better than many of these films and there are tons of franchises with iconic dudes - like Leatherface and Pinhead, to name two - that are just as awesome as some of these dudes.  But these three franchises have always been "the big three" to me, based on a) the longevity of their reigns and the multitude of films in each series, and b) the fact that they kind of feel like the three killers that are most accessible to both fanatical and casual horror fans.

So now that I was thinking about these movies, I figured I'd do that thing I do when I got nothing else to do - MAKE A LIST. With no further ado, here's The Mike's official countdown of how much he loves/respects/hates all 30 films/remakes/cross-overs in these three beloved - for better or worse - bunches of horrory good(or bad)ness.

The Worst of The Worst

30. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers - Rushed into production with a star who wanted too much money (Ellie Cornell, whose assets from part 4 were disposed of quickly) and a poorly written replacement for her (the annoying Tina Williams, the worst character in the history of movies), Halloween 5 is among the five or ten movies that I hate more than any movie ever. And don't talk to me about what they did to Michael. *tear*

29. Halloween 2 - Rob Zombie's sequel to his remake of Halloween is one of the most maddening films I've ever seen.  I can't talk about how much Zombie crapped all over everything I love about Halloween without wanting to punch kittens. And I gosh darn love kittens.

28. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - It wasn't actually the FINAL nightmare - a trend that will continue on this list - but it was Freddy at his low point. There are more awful (and now outdated) pop culture jokes than scares in this film.

27. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday - Also not FINAL, despite being the second Final in its own series. Jason becomes a shape shifter, and things get weird and stupid. Only ranked this high(?) because it's got Erin Gray (from Buck Rodgers!) and that teasing ending.

The Very, Very Bad

26. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan - The tamest Jason film doesn't have enough of everything I enjoy about this series. And only about 15 minutes take place in Manhattan, which makes me just wish it was Jason at sea with a better director.

25. Halloween: Resurrection - Most notable for the opening sequence with a returning Jamie Lee Curtis, this film was a) years ahead of its time and b) the only film in any of these franchises to rely on Tyra Banks and Busta Rhymes. And, despite all that, it's still incredibly silly and boring.

24. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Master - I just saw this one for the first time during October, and the opening sequence really had me hooked for a few minutes.  Then it became an average Freddy sequel, thanks to bad jokes and annoying characters, and I lost all interest.

23. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) - A pointless remake that wastes a good cast and some decent dream sequences.  The fact that Robert Englund was replaced by Jackie Earle Haley has been lamented by many fans, but the awful CGI kills are what really lost my interest.

The Just Simply Bad

22. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge - This might be the most bizarre film on this list, and there are a few moments that are kind of great.  But the decline of Freddy was visible with every joke and one-liner, and the whole film ends up weird in a bad way.

(RANDOM TANGENT: I used to complain that the Friday the 13th movies were so repetitive and that I couldn't remember which was which when they all basically did the same things. I still believe that to an extent, but they have nothing on the Elm Street sequels. You could show me images from any of them (save 3, which we'll get to in a bit) and I'd probably guess wrong about what movie it was.  If you've seen Freddy pop out of one item and say something stupid before killing someone, you don't really need to watch anything after Part 3.)

21. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers - I've always really wanted to like the sixth film in the Halloween series. Many dismiss it because it tries to explain away Michael Myers in an unconventional way, but I love the fact that it's trying. The "Producer's Cut", which has become a thing of legend to Halloweenaholics like myself, could have been a fresh new twist on the series if given a proper release. But even that version can't overcome some neutering by new distributor Dimension Films, who didn't have their Scream-based swagger yet.

20. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood - This is the most forgettable film on this list. I've watched it a bunch of times, and I never hate it when I watch it, but then it's just gone. It's like lettuce. There's no benefit from eating, but at least it doesn't do any harm.

The Enigma

19. Halloween (2007) - I don't hate Rob Zombie's Halloween! But, at the same time - I REALLY HATE ROB ZOMBIE'S HALLOWEEN! I know I don't like Rob Zombie's Halloween. But I kind of feel like I could like Rob Zombie's Halloween. Except that it's called Halloween. And it shows no interest in representing what I love about Halloween. And that drives me absolutely crazy. But, if it wasn't called Halloween, I might kind of like it. Then again, maybe I wouldn't.

My brain hurts.

The Average Ones

18. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - This one gets a slight bump because it's directed by the amazing Renny Harlin. It's a little less annoying than the two films that would follow it and not as ridiculous as Part 2, and the teen cast is actually pretty good.

17. Friday the 13th Part III - The mask! The mask! We finally get the mask!  Aside from that, this one and I go either way. At some points in time, I've said it was my favorite F13. At other points in time, I've thought it was excruciatingly dull. It is one of the better F13 movies for party viewing, if only for the 3D gimmick.

(RANDOM TANGENT: There's no debate on one thing - the Friday the 13th series plays better with a group than the Halloween or Elm Street films do. There's less plot and less ambition, and lots and lots of silliness with kills and sex. You can not lose with Jason at a horror movie party.)

16. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later - An attempt to reboot the series after Scream's success (which ignores the events of Halloweens 4-6, creating what I like to view as alternate timelines for Michael Myers (which I also sometimes argue can be branched back together). The return of Jamie Lee Curtis is welcome, but the mood isn't right - partially because the guy they got to play Michael never watched a Halloween movie and partially because it just doesn't work as well without Donald Pleasence as "the Ahab".

15. Wes Craven's New Nightmare - Wes Craven is a major league slugger when he directs horror movies - meaning that he usually hits a home run or swings and misses wildly. New Nightmare is basically a fly ball that gets caught a few feet before it crosses the fence. Bringing Freddy to the "real world" could have worked - but the film runs about a half hour too long and features a terrible child performance. What could have been.
 

14. Friday the 13th (2009) - I'm not gonna lie. I almost ranked this one ahead of the original. I thought it was a lot of fun, even if it took liberties with the material and featured incredibly bouts of dumbness.  Heck, I might watch this one again before I watch the original again.  Then again....

13. Friday the 13th - The original "shocker" has never been one of my favorite movies, and I often have to be reminded that I do think there are good things about it. There are some good sequences, but there's so much about the film that is just plain average. I think people like this movie more than they should because they like the sequels, which are often better. There, I said it.

The Ones I Always Have Fun With

12. Freddy vs. Jason - The 2003 crossover hit had been talked about since Jason went to hell, and I've always been pleased with the end result.  There's a ton of self-aware comedy, but there aren't sharp contrasts in tone like their were in many late Freddy films. Jason gets to do his Jason thing, and the joke never gets old.

11. Friday the 13th Part 2 - Amy Steel, you guys. There's no way I'm saying this isn't better than the original when Amy Steel is running point. Final girl extraordinaire, you guys.

10. Jason X - Yes, I love it. I know it's terrible. But it's one of the funniest movies ever. Never. Gets. Old.

9. Halloween II - Rick Rosenthal's sequel makes a lot of mistakes and I always get really annoyed by that one twist that changed the series forever. But there are some great moments, and Michael Myers is as creepy as he was in the original - even when he hides underneath the camera waiting to pounce.

8. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning -  When the topic is F13, I go straight to the Tommy Jarvis trilogy. This one gets the short straw tonight, but it's still got some of the better surprises in the series.

7. Halloween III: Season of the Witch - The outlier in the Halloween series is a love-it-or-hate-it horror film. I've done both in my life, but this one of a kind horror story has grown on me over the years.  It's got Tom Atkins and that ending, so once you get past the fact that there's no Michael Myers you'll probably have fun too.

The Darn Good Ones

6. Jason Lives! Friday the 13th Part VI - A reanimated Jason and a 20-something Tommy Jarvis (played by the great Thom Mathews) square off in the most interesting F13 film.  There's a strong focus on the story behind the battle and Tommy's quest to find peace, and the pace is fantastic.

5. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter - My favorite F13 film today. Is it just because of the nostalgia value of Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover? Nah. It's because of Banana Girl.

4. Halloween 4: The Curse of Michael Myers - I've lauded this as one of my favorite sequels ever for a long, long time. Heck, I used it for a lecture in a college course once. Pleasence gives a fantastically hammy performance, and Ellie Cornell and Danielle Harris are great additions to the series.  Myers would never be this scary again.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street - Search this blog for mentions of this movie and you'll find out how mad I get about the ending. I just hate it. It's so bad. I can't forgive it. You've got 80 minutes of a truly great horror movie...and then THAT. Boo.

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - DOKKEN! OK, it's not all about Dokken. But man, there are few horror movies from the 1980s that scream 1980s like this one. It's the perfect balance of comedy and horror that Freddy would never match again, and the kills are fantastic.

The Great One

1. Halloween - Doesn't even belong on the same list as the rest of these movies. They range from terrible to fun, but it's my favorite horror movie ever.

--------------------------------------------------

Here endeth the list. Agree? Disagree? Hit up the comments! In the meantime, I'm gonna watch a horror movie. Adios!

Midnight Movie of the Week #148 - Pontypool

One of the most unique and challenging horror films of the new millennium, Pontypool is a rare kind of treat that works on several different levels.  It seems like such a simple film - a radio DJ covers the strange events going on in a small Canadian town - but there are more things going on in this film than even I can keep up with.

The centerpiece of the film is clearly Stephen McHattie's performance as shock-jock-turned-morning-report-guy Grant Mazzy, a man who has clearly been sent to radio purgatory for sins that are never revealed to the viewer.  The film's choice to leave us in the dark regarding Mazzy's path to the small town of Pontypool is a great move, because it makes it easy for the viewer to think about other things and ignore any questions about the man in the middle.  As a result of this choice and McHattie's natural performance, Grant Mazzy becomes something of an underdog hero in the film. We know he's not a pure hero that we should root for - he does swear a lot and argue with his boss, after all - but he's got that charming antihero thing going on as he leads the film's charge.

Surrounding Mazzy, and taking up much of the film's landscape, is the outbreak. Or maybe I should call it an event, or an epidemic, or even a reckoning. As the film begins to roll, all we really know is that a woman is talking gibberish in the middle of a snow storm. But then the reports start to roll in to the station and Mazzy and company are tasked to make sense out of what's going on and then the fun part begins - because the viewer's imagination is asked to start working on its own image of Pontypool's big problem.

 

Director Bruce McDonald is definitely hiding his cards from the viewer - probably because it's a lot cheaper to talk about an uprising of flesh eaters than it is to show an uprising of flesh eaters - but at the same time he doesn't allow the film to get stagnant.  The film could have ended up feeling like a stage play but the director finds subtle ways to involve the viewer.  One of my favorite realizations about the film came when I noticed how the opening act is framed by a camera that seems to be constantly in motion, circling around our characters and occasionally changing its direction on a cut, a minor effect that seems to keep us moving around the characters despite the restrained setting.

By keeping its camera mobile while framing a small area and a small number of characters, Pontypool becomes quietly disorienting as it tells us about the events that started this nightmare for the radio man, the station's crew, and the mostly unseen small town.  Looking back at the film, it's almost ironic that dangerous things only start happening to the characters after Mazzy proclaims he's "had enough of this" and leaves the radio booth - which means there's not much more spinning camera left in the film.

The film's most haunting sequence, which I'm willing to bet comes straight from the pages of author/screenwriter Tony Burgess' book Pontypool Changes Everything - is a series of black and white images that are shown while Mazzy reads odd an incredibly macabre sequence of obituaries.  Recounting deaths - which I assume are only a small portion of what has gone on in the town - in a chronological and almost sadistic manner, McHattie's voice is calmly professional while also exhibiting a heavy dose of fear.  The film uses this sequence mostly as a break between acts - and logic makes me think that it's unlikely that all the details that Mazzy gives here would have been available to him in the film's timeline - but at the same time it really does a lot of work selling the scale of this event to the viewer.

This all leads to the horrific final act, and the less I say about that is probably the better. That's partially because I don't want to ruin any of the surprises you're going to find, but also because I'm still not sure I completely understand all of it.  It is perhaps the most ambitious explanation for a horror event that I know of, and - if nothing else - it helps cement the simple fact that Pontypool is a dynamite film that should not be ignored by anyone with an open mind to horror. The writer and director have mentioned that they were inspired by Orson Welles' infamous broadcast of War of the Worlds, and I think it's safe to say that their film recaptures that productions spirit of terrifying wonder perfectly.  So check it out, and let your mind create its own visuals regarding this one-of-a-kind outbreak in Pontypool.

Midnight Movie of the Week #130 - Eight Legged Freaks

Hollywood seems to have forgotten that they once made a ton of money on the giant animals subgenre of sci-fi and horror cinema.  It is true that most of that money came in way back in the 1950s - and that the times have changed quite a bit since then - but I still find it a bit odd that the type of film which put known actors and impressive special effects against mutations of science that resemble their real world counterparts has pretty much disappeared from existence.  Especially when you look at the surprising outlier to this equation, the 2002 spider-epic Eight Legged Freaks.

Though the Hollywood "stars" - David Arquette and Kari Wuhrer (the latter of whom seemed to be "the next big babe" for about 6 years running and was fading from prominence at this point) - are unimpressive and the special effects are not always fantastic, Eight Legged Freaks is a film that does not settle in behind its limitations.  Writer/director Ellory Elkayem, who was noticed by the producers thanks to a big bug short film he made a few years earlier, seems completely interested in making this type of film and shows a strong love for the standards set by big bug films gone by.

From the ominous opening warning (turned conspiracy tirade) by Cool Runnings' Doug E. Doug to the barrel of toxic waste and an "origin" scene featuring the great and powerful Tom Noonan, Eight Legged Freaks is rooted deeply in the methods of the classic mutant monster films that came long before it.  There's family drama (Wuhrer plays a single mom, with her teenage daughter played by a young Scarlett Johansson(!), getting her early career "scream queen" on), there's the displaced hero (Arquette, returning to his hometown as an outsider as the outbreak begins), and there's plenty of teeter-tottering between monster action and scenes without monsters in which characters debate the existence of monsters. 

The whole film is written to formula - you could pretty much shake this script out and the pieces would fit into cracks in the scripts for Them or Tarantula almost 50 years earlier - but the fresh coat of paint and some technical prowess do wonders for the film.  Colors pop off the screen, and the color pallete of the film seems to almost emulate a comic book horror tale, with the southwestern USA setting shining under the blazing sun and glistening under a blue moonlight.  Music from talented composer John Ottman adds a lot to the film, and the script manages to balance between eras with its monster action.  In one scene we see an old man attacked in an armchair.  In another, we see dirtbikers stampeded by giant arachnids.  There's a little something for everyone.

Many have listed Eight Legged Freaks as a "horror comedy", and I will concede that there are a few jokes scattered throughout the film.  But I've always felt it was a little unfair for the film to be labeled as such, because it seems like a lot of people come to that conclusion based on the film's sensational premise.  Younger generations aren't accustomed to films that make huge leaps of science and take them seriously, like those giant spider films mentioned earlier, and I think that hurt the perception of Eight Legged Freaks a lot. The film hauled in just 17 million at the US box office - I imagine it covered costs and made a profit with video, but not by much - and a lot of people who did see it labeled the film "so bad, it's good" or worse.

Maybe there's not as much of a market for mutated insects as I wish there was, but I still feel like Eight Legged Freaks is sorely underappreciated. It's got the same small-town charm that Tremors offered, some Gremlins-like scenes of mayhem, and it plays the viewer just like any good matinee monster movie should.  Eight Legged Freaks works as an old-school monster flick, and it adapts to its time well, too.  By the time the town mall and some dirt bikes in underground caverns come into the film, Eight Legged Freaks has established its place as a b-monster madhouse, and I think anyone who's open to the idea of giant spiders in a small desert town will leave the film with a smile.