Diary Of A Movie Watchin' Madman, Vol.II, Part 2 - Revenge Of The Madman

     It turns out I was probably being a little overly optimistic in thinking that only two parts of this year's Diary Of A Movie Watchin' Madman would get the job done.  I'm watching too many movies and writing too much about them to cover everything in just two parts.  This just turned into a trilogy, folks.  Vol. II, Part 3 is forthcoming...

(10/14) See No Evil 2 (2014)  Watching See No Evil 2 was an odd experience.  I suspect I'm not alone when I say that my interest in this flick stemmed almost entirely from the fact that it was the Soska Sisters' first directorial effort since the stellar American Mary (2012).  Then the news came that the cast of See No Evil 2 would include Katherine Isabelle and Danielle Harris, two talented veteran sweethearts of genre fans everywhere.  Now I was really jonesin' to see this.  Rarely, if ever, had I found myself so excited about a sequel when I cared so little about the original.

     I suppose that's both the movie's blessing and its curse.  No one is going to be watching See No Evil 2 because they liked the first one so much, but it will find its way in front of a lot of eyes because everyone wants to see if the Soska Sisters are the real deal.  If they can work enough cinematic magic to make this belated sequel to a franchise non-starter worth seeing, then they're definitely filmmakers to watch.  Poor Kane.  See No Evil 2 isn't a Jacob Goodnight movie, it's a Soska Sisters movie.  Even if it's good, he'll get no credit.

     But is it good?  Well, yeah, it's pretty good.  It's not good enough that I'd want to see another if the Soska Sisters aren't involved, but it is good enough that I was impressed by what the sisters accomplished when playing in someone else's sandbox.  The characters display some personality, the performances are better than average, Kane makes an imposing bad guy, his character's mythology is deepened, and the whole movie is obviously more carefully constructed and artful than fans have come to expect from movies of this type.  The Soska Sisters have acquitted themselves nicely, and I'm sure a reinvigorated Jacob Goodnight will return to kill again thanks to their efforts.  Everybody wins.  (First Watch)

(10/16) American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014) -  Yeah, I'm counting this again this year.  I'll spend at least the length of a movie watching American Horror Story during Pre'Ween, so why not?  After growing irritated with the fact that no action seemed to have any lasting consequence in last year's Coven, I was looking forward to the fresh start.  Seriously, what kind of dramatic stakes could Coven possibly have had when almost no primary character that died ever stayed dead?  Witches just kept conjuring everyone back to life... 

     Freak Show sounds like horror story gold though, right?  It pretty much was save for one heinously anachronistic misstep that totally pulled me out of the moment.  Jessica Lange's character performs the David Bowie song "Life On Mars" - a song dating back to only 1971 - in a scene that ostensibly takes place in 1958.  It appears from the previews that the show's producers will repeat the miscalculation in the second episode with a performance of Fiona Apple's "Criminal".  Why would a show that otherwise lavishes so much attention on period detail choose - repeatedly - to break the spell with anachronisms?  I'll keep watching, though, to see if there's a method to the music madness.  (First Watch)

(10/17) Halloween 6: The Curse Of Michael Myers, Producer's Cut (1995)  After hearing for years about the mythical Producer's Cut of this movie, I was tickled to death to finally see it.  Does it redeem the movie at all?  Does it make it anything more than the worst Halloween sequel after Halloween: Resurrection (2002)?  No.  No it does not.  

     I hadn't watched any version of Halloween 6 for well over a decade.  It makes me sad to see an old, frail Donald Pleasance trying as hard as he can to make something worthwhile out of this turd.  Also, even though I've come to enjoy Paul Rudd over the years, I seriously don't know how he ever booked another acting gig with this terrible performance being the first on his resume.  And why the hell would you make a movie that hinges upon the appearance of Jamie Lloyd, a character we've been following now for three movies, and recast the role?  I'm sure there's a reason for that one, but I don't even care.  Danielle Harris dodged a bullet.

     All things considered, I still feel the same way about Halloween 6: The Curse Of Michael Myers as I feel about Twinkies.  You think, "Hey, I haven't had a Twinkie in a long time."  Then you have a Twinkie.  Then you remember why you haven't had a Twinkie in a long time.  The Producer's Cut is still a stunningly bad Twinkie.  (First Watch)

(10/18) Curtains (1983)  After suffering through Halloween: The Steaming Pile just a couple of days ago, it was encouraging that the very next horror flick I watched exceeded my expectations.  I didn't even realize I possessed a void in my life where a Canadian giallo was supposed to be.  I'd never really watched Curtains before because all the bits I'd seen led me to believe it was stylish enough to warrant a better presentation than a crap public domain copy.  I'm glad I waited.  

     If you're wondering, the new Blu-ray release of Curtains from Synapse looks fantastic.  The movie itself is pretty damn entertaining too, as long as you realize from the outset that it actually has loftier ambitions than most of the early eighties slasher movies with which it's usually associated.  I was surprised several times by how stylishly composed much of it is.  I mentioned to Adrienne - who also enjoyed it - how much the shot compositions and color palate frequently put me in mind of Suspiria (1977).  Of course, Curtains as a whole isn't as good as Suspiria, but it was a lot better than it really needed to be to ride the slasher wave.  A pleasant surprise.  (First Watch)

(10/20) Witching & Bitching (2013)  I've somehow managed to live to a ripe old age without seeing a single movie by Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia even though I've been hearing about his critically lauded film Day Of The Beast since it was released in 1995.  His recent feature The Last Circus (2010) has been sitting in my Netflix queue unwatched for months.  Subtitles, you know.  Don't get me wrong - nothing ruins a foreign flick faster than a bad dub (Blood Glacier, anyone?), but I still have to be in just the right mood to want to read a movie.  I'm so happy I found myself in the right mood when Witching & Bitching turned up on Netflix this week, and I'll probably end up finally watching The Last Circus before the week is out.  Added incentive: the lovely lady with the broomstick in the pic above, Carolina Bang, stars in The Last Circus as well.  I had so much fun with this one that I'm hungry for more from director Alex de la Iglesia.  Also, I've got a pretty big crush on Ms. Bang now, too.

     The tough part here is trying to explain to others exactly why Witching & Bitching was such an exhilarating watch for me.  The Netflix synopsis describes the movie as follows:  In this heist film turned horror fest, a gang of thieves lands in a coven of witches who are preparing for an ancient ritual -- and need a sacrifice. That synopsis is accurate insofar as it goes, but it does the movie a disservice by failing to even hint at the sense of pure anarchy that permeates the film.  It's a crime caper, a comedy, and a horror film all at once, and each of those components is carried to absurd and exuberant extremes.  I realized what an almost unclassifiable delight Witching & Bitching was when I tried to describe to a friend why she should watch it and words failed me.  They still do.  Believe the hype this time, folks.  Witching & Bitching may not the scariest movie you'll watch this Pre'Ween, but there's no doubt in my mind that it will be one of the most entertaining.  Recommended.  (First Watch)

(10/22) The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)  Who'da thunk it?  The Town That Dreaded Sundown crept up on me like The Phantom Killer of Texarkana, and it turned out to be a fairly decent potboiler.  Don't be fooled by the title, though.  It isn't so much a remake as a kind of meta sequel to the 1976 Charles B. Pierce movie of the same name.  

     This follow up exists in a world where the citizens of Texarkana are still haunted by the real life unsolved mystery of the Moonlight Murders, a series of brutal killings perpetrated over the course of three months in 1946 by a hooded assailant who came to be know as The Phantom Killer.  The Phantom was never captured, the mystery never solved.  Each Halloween the locals gather to watch Pierce's 1976 movie about the murders at a local drive-in - pretty tacky, huh? - and last Halloween the murders resumed (fiction, not fact).  Since it couldn't possibly be the same killer some sixty-five years later, who's responsible for the new rash of murders that rock the community and eerily mimic the particulars of the old Moonlight Murders? 

     The Town That Dreaded Sundown chugs along pretty effectively for most of its run time, and it doesn't play it's self-referential scenario for laughs.  It "remakes" many of the murders as depicted in the 1976 movie, but it's very much its own beast.  It boasts beautiful cinematography, solid performances, and an intriguing premise.  Sadly, its one big misstep is a resolution that fails to satisfy and seems as though it was airlifted in from a different movie.  That's not enough to completely derail an otherwise effective thriller, but it unfortunately compromises the good work that precedes it to some degree.  The story might have been better served by a more ambiguous ending.  Still, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is better than one would expect from a quasi-remake/sequel to an obscure low budget horror movie now nearly forty years old.  I look forward to the next installment some time around 2054.  (First Watch)

Horror Movie Advocacy - You've Gotta See This Movie Because It Earns My Own Personal Seal Of Approval

Slightly better than a rooftop antenna . . .

     While shopping for a few new Blu-rays to order in anticipation of Pre'Ween, it occurred to me that I rarely ever purchase movies on disc anymore.  I view movies almost exclusively by streaming or media server.  That's not really news, because increasingly, that's how most people view movies at home.  What was interesting to me was how my criteria for what warrants a "buy" rather than a "stream" has changed along with my altered viewing habits.

     Like many movie aficionados, I am by nature a collector.  I'm just old enough to remember a time, though, when even movie fans rarely owned their own copies of their favorites.  The tech wasn't as widely available, and the movies themselves - because they were exorbitantly expensive - weren't as commonly purchased to own.  We rented instead.

     Once upon a time, Mom and Pop video rental stores were almost as ubiquitous as Redbox kiosks are today.  The good news was that the cost of rental was well within most families' budgets provided they could make the initial investment in a VCR.  Even better, all of those video stores (and their customers) were so eager for new content that store shelves overflowed with movies of every stripe.  Of course, such a wealth of choices was a movie fan's dream, but rental did not scratch the itch to collect one's favorites.  If you were really enterprising you could purchase a second VCR and dub copies of your rental tapes, but it was only a matter of time before the movie industry plugged up that hole by widely adopting Macrovision copy protection.

LaserDisc - It's Portable!

     All things must eventually pass, however, and the arrival of new format called DVD eventually drove the last few nails in the VHS coffin.  I'm intentionally glossing over LaserDisc because it was never widely adopted in North America - or anywhere else save Japan and South East Asia, really.  DVD was the giant killer, and the format popularized the idea of sell-through pricing so that many of us were finally able to start our own movie collections in earnest.  Many of us went a little ape-shit on that point, too.

     Throughout the first decade of the new millennium I purchased an absurd number of DVDs.  Curating my own collection even took precedence over actually going to the theater, since for the cost of a movie ticket and some popcorn I could actually own my own copy of each new release just a few months after it was in theaters.  My rule of thumb:  if I entertained the notion of venturing out to the theater to see a new release, I just bought a copy of the DVD a few months later instead.  My DVD collection grew exponentially in a very short period of time based upon this somewhat specious reasoning.

My first Limited Edition DVD purchase

     Of course, new releases were only the tip of the iceberg.  It was the catalog titles that really broke the bank.  Distributors like Synapse, Code Red, Anchor Bay, and Blue Underground were releasing old favorites at a brisk clip, and I was buying most of them.  Not only was I finally able to own my own copy of movies like Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) and Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977), but I was awash in a sea of special features that augmented these releases.  Now even the most obscure titles were getting the Collector's Edition treatment.  It was truly a wonderful time to be a movie fan.

    Not surprisingly, though, I soon found myself with a sizable collection that housed far too many disappointing catalog releases and watch-it-once-and-forget-it new releases.  I had to institute some buying parameters to insure more judicious purchases.  I stopped buying new releases sight unseen, and I began to be far more selective about my catalog purchases.  A DVD did not warrant a purchase unless I was certain it was a title I'd watch multiple times.  Catalog titles did not warrant a purchase until after reviews hit the internet to tell me whether or not it was a quality release.

A bigger priority than Jaws

     Perhaps most importantly, obscure titles, long out of print titles, and titles that rarely aired on cable or satellite were always the priority.  For example, to this day I don't own a copy of Jaws (1975) on disc.  Jaws is always on television and will never be out of print in my lifetime.  It's a brilliant movie, but it's not a priority purchase.  I do, however, own a copy of The Manitou (1978).  What the f**k, right? 

     Since my purchases were now required to be titles that were previously difficult to obtain,  or difficult to see elsewhere, or - in my own humble opinion - worthy of multiple viewings, it almost goes without saying that the discs I did purchase were usually titles that I would enthusiastically recommend to others.  One more parameter, perhaps more important than all the rest, began to govern my purchases:  if it's a title that I want to share with others, it's a buy.  It was the birth of my horror movie advocacy.

     At the same time, it was essentially the death of my spend-crazy ways.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, I guess, but it did mean that my purchases became fewer and far less frequent.  Since by that point I already owned copies of most catalog titles worth owning, my buying began to revolve only around newer titles that made the grade.  When I consider now my purchases over the course of the last several years, I find that there have been distressingly few of those.

     I've been vocal here at the Dog Farm with my advocacy of Pontypool (2008), a movie I still frequently loan out to others.  I continue to share Trick 'r Treat (2007) with as many people as I can every Halloween,  because I'm determined to do my part to make it a perennial staple.  I frequently loan out [REC] (2007) because it kills my soul that American audiences are still more familiar with the inferior English language remake.  Attack The Block (2011) is one of my more recent causes.  I just can't understand how this relatively big and wildly entertaining release managed to fly beneath so many radars.  There have been others - Laid To Rest (2009), House Of The Devil (2009), John Dies At The End (2012) - but still too few to warrant more than a trickle of new purchases.  I still see plenty of movies that I enjoy, but I don't see that many that inspire my whole-hearted advocacy.

My Pre'Ween shopping list for 2014

     For what it's worth, every movie I've chosen to purchase for Pre-Ween this year is a catalog title.  The Director's Cut of Nightbreed (1990) is a must have, as is Without Warning (1980).  I'll also be picking up Sleepaway Camp (1983) and Curtains (1983), neither of which have previously enjoyed decent releases.  I'll probably also purchase Blue Underground's bargain priced release The Complete Blind Dead Saga since I never purchased The Blind Dead Collection Limited Edition from 2005.  That's it, though - not a new movie in the bunch.  It looks like this horror movie advocate is stumping exclusively for the oldies this year.

     Which newer movies have you really gone out of your way to recommend to others recently, and what makes them deserving of special attention?  If you consider yourself a horror movie advocate, what qualities are most likely to earn a movie your own personal seal of approval?

I Was Raised On The Slashers, Bitch

A splitting headache, slasher movie style.

     I was just coming of age when the slasher movie boom that began with Halloween (1978) and ended with A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) was storming the pop culture landscape.  Though I've developed a wide-ranging taste in horror movies over the years, slashers were the first horror movies to make my heart go pitter-pat.  You never forget your first love.

     At the time, slasher movies defined horror for me.  This was, of course,  a pretty narrow definition, but it's a great sub-genre for a budding horror fan to cut his teeth.  The simple charms of a slasher movie exist on the surface.  Slashers are so beholden to a fixed narrative template that it's easy for nascent film critics to perceive variations to the form.   The slashers display a conservative morality that fosters jump scares while avoiding any ambiguity that might render the story more profoundly disturbing.  If you do bad things in a slasher, you die - easy peasy.  Even the movies' characters tend to be recurring archetypes - jock, joker, slut, virgin - that are instantly recognized and understood. 

Kramer's got nothing on Jason Voorhees

     Once a viewer becomes attuned to the slasher movie paradigm the movies themselves become the cinematic equivalent of comfort food.  You know almost exactly what's being served and how it will be served to you.  The thrill becomes less about originality and more about seeing how the particulars will change in the interest of tarting up the hoary foundation.  In many ways, a slasher movie holds the same appeal one finds in a t.v. sitcom.  A visit from Jason Vorhees is akin to a visit from the wacky next door neighbor who does a variation of the same shtick every week.

There damn well better be cookies and milk . . .

     Luckily there were enough irate mothers and incensed community leaders railing against the slasher movies of the era to guarantee the maligned sub-genre's continued low and dangerous rep.  How so many morally upright pillars of the community failed to see what one presumes should have been  the attractive notion of a black and white morality displayed in the slasher movies they vilified still perplexes me.  The notorious Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) would have slipped beneath my radar altogether had a batch of overwrought PTA mothers not made enough noise about it to land themselves on Entertainment Tonight.  Since they did, I made sure to get to a theater before they succeeded in having the movie abruptly pulled from distribution.

A "shot" from Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970)

     Even otherwise perceptive movie critics didn't really get it.  Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert famously decried the entire slasher sub-genre on their show At The Movies (watch the entire episode in two parts, here and here).  Sure, they gave props to Halloween and made some cogent points about the exploitative nature of many of the slashers that followed in its wake, but . . . Take a look at Russ Meyer's wildly exploitative  Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970) - based upon a screenplay written by Roger Ebert - and tell me how Mr. Ebert's sensibilities become so delicate in the span of just a decade.

Bag of pot or murder weapon?

      As a youngster, though, the perception that slasher movies were deviated and dangerous - and therefore not fit for consumption by any decent person - only enhanced their appeal.  I still recall many a childhood night that I'd set an alarm to wake me in the wee hours of the morning so I could surreptitiously watch some promising slice-and-dicer airing on HBO or Showtime.  Almost everything about a slasher movie seemed designed to appeal to an adolescent boy.  Slashers were my gateway drug.

He Knows You're Alone (1980)

     This rumination was prompted by the realization that there are still slasher movies from this era that I haven't seen.  I was indoctrinated by the likes of Friday The 13th (1980) and My Bloody Valentine (1981), but I'd never seen He Knows You're Alone (1980), Happy Birthday To Me (1981), and The House On Sorority Row (1983) until recently.  Just this week I've watched both Curtains (1983) and New Year's Evil (1980) for the first time.  I've decided to embark upon a more in depth investigation of these movies and the era they sprang from, so more posts about the topic will likely be forthcoming.  We can talk about the FX superstars, the iconography, the gratuitous nudity, and perhaps even the curious mini-trend of custom made ballads celebrating the legends of the slashers themselves. 

     It's on.  Let's get wet . . .