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Not so random review: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

You'll be hooked on the brothers!

Not so random because today is March the 10th which can mean only one thing…it's Mar10 day! Though he had appearances in the early 80's in Nintendo titles such as Donkey Kong and Wrecking Crew, it was the 1985 Super Mario Bros. that really catapulted Mario and Nintendo in general into the stratosphere. Their popularity continues to this day, with 2023's utterly charming Super Mario Wonder being another smash hit success. But I'm choosing to celebrate Mar10 Day 2024 by finally sitting down and watch his 2023 motion picture epic; The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Given the $1.36b performance at the box office, I was apparently one of about 6 people who didn't see this in the cinema at the time but it's time to wrong that right. Though, it's funny how that performance still wasn't enough to be the leading film of the year. *Shakes white gloved fist at Barbie*

I don't quite remember the general reaction this had when it was first announced. I suppose it would have been one of surprise given the…interesting adaptation we had back in 1993 which seemingly made Nintendo swear off such things. The part I do remember though is when the voice cast was revealed and every man, woman and child losing their collective shit at the idea of Chris Pratt voicing Mario. I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if this was a character that had been played by lots of different people over time but Charles Martinet had been THE voice of Mario for over 30 years so he had become synonymous with the character. I can see how Martinet's portrayal might be seen as gimmicky or grating to be done over a feature length movie but it does smack of them just wanting to throw a bunch of Hollywood talent at the thing in favour of more traditional voice actors because that's what everyone else seems to do with this animated movies.

For what it's worth, Pratt is…fine? I have no qualms with most of the cast. Charlie Day I think was a great bit of casting, as limited a role as it is in terms of screen time, he helps sell the somewhat cowardly nature of Green Mario that I appreciate is still an eduring character trait having being such a prominent thing in titles such as the Mario & Luigi series. Though, it's easy to be a scardey cat when you have villains proclaiming to be 'the mustard of your doom'. I did forget that Jack Black was voicing Bowser until the sharp pivot his character took part way in. When the movie starts we see him laying waste to the Snow Kingdom as the native penguins ineffectively fight back with their snowball based offense. It makes for a great opening setpiece, really selling the intense threat that Bowser poses whilst also mixing in some comedy. Which is partly what I think they had in mind when Bowser breaks out into song later on professing his love for Princess Peach and states he aims to marry her. I was a little unsure on this shift at first as it does diminish the threat somewhat but this is a kids film after all so it helps to have something dumb in there for them. Plus I suppose it does give his character an extra edge than just being generic evil bad man. And it helps contextualize the existing game elements into this environment, there's a reason why Bowser is going after Peach other than just because without it we'd have no game.

Re-contextualizing is the order of the day throughout the whole film as it really is fan servicey as all hell but tries to make it so it's not just fan service for fan service sake. Just like those 'turn your brain off at the door' movies, fan service is good from time to time and we there's obviously there's wide appeal here in seeing this beloved game franchise adapted to the big screen but fan service can sometimes feel a little bit like some waving some keys in your face. Here though there's reasons behind some of the things we see in the game to help explain why they're happening in this apparent normal world. Like, why are Mario and Luigi in these bright outfits and wearing white gloves to their plumbing gigs? It's a gimmick, a calling card of sorts. Here's a part of the Mushroom Kingdom that looks like something of the games that Mario needs to run through, but that's because he's in training. On that last point, this ultimately is a really by the numbers movie, the kind of story you might see in a fantasy sword & sorcery movie where an outsider is drafted in to come slay the big bad that's threatening to destroy the world, complete with the aforementioned training montage with a backing soundtrack of Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding Out For a Hero', or at least a new recording of it for some reason. That's just one of various licensed songs that appear in the film which can feel a little out of place given that most of the movie has the obligatory tracks from the various games, down to such obscure gems as the DK Rap of all things. The story goes that Mario & Luigi are two down on their luck Brooklyn plumbers hoping to catch their big break whilst striving out of their own, with Mario facing fears of inadequacy as his family lament him giving up a steady job to follow a pipe dream, doubly so for potentially dragging his brother down with him. Not only that, but Mario is also apparently seeking validation from his own father who seems particularly dismissive of this whole venture. Who would have expected such depth from a Mario movie?! During a city wide flood, Mario spies a chance to play the hero as he and Luigi head downtown to check it out, figuring the source of the problem is in the depths of the city sewers. It's here they come across a strange green pipe that the two brothers get sucked through before being split up and deposited in separate parts of a strange new world; Luigi landing in the Dark Lands and Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom.

Mario is promptly lead to Princess Peach by our friendly neighourhood Toad who suggest she'll be able to help find Luigi, only for Mario to have to sneak in the castle before inadvertently attracting the attention of pretty much every guard in sight. Peach doesn't seem concerned by this random intruder in her castle though and agrees to help, provided he can pass the training course first. I was a little iffy on this at first but they do allude to Peach's mysterious past and question why she's the only human around here so I suppose it's natural that she would see some solidarity when another one shows up. I might be reading too much into that though as I'm not sure where you'd go with that as a story thread in future movies.

It's hard to be skeptical though when you get swept up in the joys of seeing all of your old favourites beautifully animated, all the characters, powerups, enemies, right down to the last question block. Including my favourite…

Baby Mario and Luigi! Given my deep nostalgia for the SNES, Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island, I did mark out a bit when these guys popped up in flash back. Yoshi's Island by the way remains one of the great video game intros of all time. Words truly fail to properly capture the majesty of a wizard koopa committing a drive by kidnapping on a stork whilst a music box lullaby plays in the background. I think that's what this movie is always going to come back to, if you've ever appreciated the Mario series at any point in your life you're going to get a kick out of this. It's a simple re-telling of Mario vs Bowser but serves as the groundwork for what will doubtless be an ongoing franchise, an origin story to branch out from. Aside from the teaser in the post credits, you also have Peach looking to the starry night sky at one point and talking of all the different 'galaxies' that are out there. Presumably we're a way off that though, you don't normally go into space until around the 4th movie. Luckily, we wont have too long to wait to find out what's next for Mario and Friends as just today Nintendo announced the next movie is due out in April 2026. Presumably they just need to find a Japanese movie they can re-skin and call Super Mario Bros. Movie 2.

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Christmas 2023 - Day 2 - The Night The Animals Talked (1970)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Two blue pigs!

So, events have conspired this year that meant the Christmas-a-thon and the Halloween-a-thon had to be sidelined, that you'd really notice compared to any other year I suppose, but we can't let a good 'The' title go un-paired so it's a last minute festive entry with a bible tale from all the way back in the 70's. As it is often want to do around this time of year, one of the entries from yesteryear, 'The Star', popped into my head. That odd but strangely enjoyable child friendly romp through the story of the nativity but from the lesser heard narration of the animals. And that put me in mind of another story much like it that had come years before that I had heard of but banished to the neglected watchlist. But it's been rescued today and thrust into the spotlight, if only so I can verify that there really is more than one piece of media that has run with this bizarre concept.

The animals actually talking can't start soon enough because this special starts with like 2 minutes of all manner of grunting, squawking, bleating and barking that feels like an assault to the senses. I know kids like to have colours and noises thrown at them to keep their attentions but I don't think the foley sounds of Old MacDonalds farm are the kind of things the kids are expecting.

Nor is the accompanying soundtrack prophesying that a miracle will take place there that night. If this is the music that is meant to play when two thousand years of our time has gone by then I think I'll pass. Maybe it's the bootleg quality shining through that seems to have survived in all of the finest potato quality recording but it sounds like whoever is singing is doing so from two rooms away.

But the requisite star finally makes it's showstopping appearance above the barn and bathes the surrounding area in it's wonderous light, a light that bestows the miracle of speech upon every ox, chicken and cow that happens to be within reach of it's rays. And what is that these creatures do with this most precious of miracles? Well, whine ineffectively at each other for all of the noise mostly.

And it takes the most wise and noble of all of God's creatures, the Ox, to point out what a bunch of nobheads they're being and that they're no better than that great evil they see every day…man. Luckily, that appeals to the vanity of the huddled masses and they all chirp up and begin prancing around the place singing about how great they are and how much better they are than their so called masters.

The animal arseholery continues when Mary and Joseph rock up and the barnyard dog offers the donkey and his owners a place to stay for the night when he hears the story of how every inn seems to be full. But when they're brought back to the barn, the donkey is told in no uncertain terms that the stable is full too. They even break out into another song as they go all Suella Braverman on their Ass: "If one of them's allowed in Just watch the way they crowd in I'm saying that no weakness must be shown."

#StopTheBoatsToBethlehem

It looks like the dog has just walked in on his mother having sex with Hitler.

The immigrant thing is a fitting analogy given that very much in keeping with the 'help our own' crowd, it's not just outsiders they've been shunning this whole time as we also find out the pigs are not wallowing in their own muck outside by choice, rather they too are excluded from staying inside. Even when that lefty, pinky, commie Ox manages to win everyone round and convince them to leg the heavily pregnant woman inside for a rest, they worry the place is worse than a pigsty and try to clean it as best they can, all the while complaining that it's not even fit for a pig in it's current state. Pigs clearly had it much better in the George Orwell universe.

But truly this is a night of miracles, for born unto you this day in the city of David is a saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And not only that, whilst every basks in the quite frankly absurd radiance omitted from said child, even the pigs manage to sneak in and are allowed to stay. It feels like this is meant to be some revelation on how the animals have learned to embrace their neighbours and to love one another but it seems like basic tolerance rather than acceptance.

The animals do seem emboldened by the arrival of this child though and are encouraged by their defacto Ox leader to take unto the streets en-masse to spread the good word, only to find their words turning back into the squawks and squeaks they omitted only hours before. This is, perhaps, the ultimate lesson; the Good Lord giveth and the Good Lord taketh away. Or perhaps it's all a metaphor on the oppression of Christians, it's either or honestly. Much like The Star, this premise only leaves me with a yearning for more. With The Star, it was a desire for follow up films on such other chapters in Jesus' life, maybe we'll get the camel's opinions on his crucifixtion. Here, I kinda want to see the eventuality where all the animals continue to speak and do so telling every man, woman and child how they're keen on Jesus. I can't imagine Christianity would grow into the juggernaut it is today if it's humble beginnings were a horse, a pig and three chickens knocking on your day asking if you're got five minutes to hear about our Lord and Saviour. Maybe there's a cleaner version out there (though by all accounts that seems unlikely) but the version I was watching didn't help matters with the random jump cuts I'm attributing to issues with the transfer rather than any editing mishap. The sound was off in parts too, with seemingly missing sound effects and what could be heard wasn't great. But, quality aside, I always appreciate a little cynicism around this time of year and it was appreciated during what I was expecting to be a saccharine retelling of this story for an age even younger that it normally is. And it gives us the faint hope that, if the animals can learn to live in harmony and forget their once bigoted ways, maybe in time man can too… ...yeah, not bloody likely.

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Christmas 2023 - Day 1 - The Mean One (2022)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

A man dressed like a furry!

It's Dec 1st which can mean only one thing, it's time once again to lament on a not so 31 day filled Halloween marathon and shift to anticipating the arrival of a jolly fat man in an red costume. What better way to do that than with another round of holiday related media? And, being the purveyor of Grinchly related matters that we on this here blog, we're looking at a certain release from the space year 2022. "But Ellis…" I hear you cry as you erect your evergreen tree based shrine to capitalism, "it's day one. You only watch horror related Christmas movies on day one, right? Surely this is some sort of mistake…" There is no mistake, friends.

For what we have here is one in a growing trend of cheap, 'no copyright intended' spins on popular franchises in an effort to make a quick buck on shock factor alone. I say trend, it's realistically only one other one given The Banana Splits Movie was licensed, as was 'Arthur, malediction' which I'm just learning about which is a spin off of the Arthur fantasy novels which were adapted into animated movies in the late 00's. The other big knock off children's horror is the infamous Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which I think is able to delve deeper into the actual characters because it's dealing with a property that, at least in some part, had just entered into the public domain. Here, they skirt around the stuff that's liable to lead to litigation with such lines as "His name is The Gr…" "FINCH, ORDER FOR FINCH!" which leads to our villain being referred to simply as 'The Mean One'. But they're quite happen to revel in some of the key points of previous iterations, such as our protagonist being a girl named Cindi and existing dialogue, such as when Cindy is studying a sketch of The Mean One and wonders if his evil is because his shoes are tied to tight or whether his head isn't screwed on quite right.

The film starts out innocently enough with Cindi (no Lou), who is way more than 2, finds a shadowy figure in her living room that appears to be stealing their Christmas related paraphernalia. She hands him her necklace as a gift and he scampers off into the night, only, this story doesn't quite play out that way, as the scene suddenly shifts to Cindy's mother confronting the intruder, only to get knocked to the floor and finds herself impaled on an errant nail on the floor that goes through her neck and kills her.

A young Cindy is asked to draw the intruder but leaves police puzzled when she draws a green, furry Santa. He looks surprisingly happy here, it's kind of a cute drawing if it wasn't tinged with the reality of bloody murder. Twenty years later, she's back in 'Newville' and looking to deal with her traumatic past at the behest of her therapist. She and her father roll into town with their car decorated with reindeer horns and a shiny red nose, only to get pulled over and told such things are illegal within city limits. Apparently it's too distracting for the other drivers. Honestly, Frank Costanza has the same problem with tinsel. Things only get stranger for Cindy and her Dad when they go to find decorations to spruce up their place for Christmas, only to find no store in town sells them. But no matter, Dad is able to find some old ones knocking about the place and promptly sets them all up.

But celebrations are short lived when a rampaging beast breaks into their home and attacks daddy, finishing him off by pinning him against the front door and driving a pointed candy cane through his skull and out of his eye socket. Tony from Hack the Movies would not be thrilled.

The movie hints at a few different things from here, with Cindy having a psychotic episode on account of the same green monster killing both of her parents some twenty years apart, staring at her bloody hands like she's New Generation Bob Backlund after choking out someone with the Cross Faced Chickenwing. You've got her trying to look for answers while a suspicious police force keep an eye on her and a frustrated mayor is on the scene trying to cover everything up Jaws style because she's worried about how the bad publicity will affect her attempts at re-election. And it's here that I feel the movie starts to fall short. We come to learn that The Mean One is alerted to all things Christmas and will come murder your ass if you so much as hum Jingle Bells to yourself so pretty much all mention of the big C has been eliminated in the town of Newville. But this movies feels so small that it's never able to fully run with that concept or show the ramifications of that. There's some obvious recency bias here but looking back at something like Halloween Ends, and the whole trilogy, I obviously waxed lyrical about how those movies really looked at the town of Haddonfield itself and focused on how the actions of Michael both 40 years ago and through to the present day shaped the town itself and it's inhabitants. But here, there's such a small cast of characters that we never really get to see how the townspeople have been affected by this or how they react to outsiders coming in. Even when Cindy and her Dad are after decorations only to find no one sells them, that all happens off screen. It would have been much more interesting to see the shopkeepers being nervous or even hostile to the idea of these two mentioning the word Christmas, alluding to some conspiracy as to why the town keeps the whole thing under wraps. Show, don't tell.

I think that could actually be a neat concept for someone to explore, Christmas is obviously such a ubiquitous thing in society and something that brings joy to so many, why wouldn't you want to go spread that with everyone? Wouldn't it be weird if you turned up somewhere and everyone was against it? Actually, to dip back into one of my ongoing tropes, this would actually be a really cool stealth 'War on Christmas' horror movie. Someone feels they're being persecuted in not being allowed to celebrate Christmas and goes to great lengths to break the rules of the town by putting up displays, playing music etc but is actually doing more harm than good as their actions bring this evil force into play and puts peoples lives in danger.

That's not to say that the movie is without it's charms, if you want gratuitous gore than it has that, specifically a scene where The Mean Ones slaughters a bunch of drunken revelers dressed in festive costumes. The Mean One is played by David Howard Thornton who also plays Art the Clown in the Terrifier movies which actually makes a lot of sense when looking back at this one scene because it's very Art like in the way he does this almost theatrical routine in front of his confused would be victims before starting his slaying. The movie isn't quite as cheap as I was expecting and I felt pretty engrossed throughout, it only takes a bit of a dive at the end as it really ramps up the stock footage and phoney looking news reports which very much smack of 'let's get one of my mates in a cheap suit and stick them in front of a green screen'. Maybe I'm too used to these big Hollywood movies that shell out to have respected news presenters like Sophie Raworth show up to tell us that the world is ending.

The acting feels pretty lame all round and, surprisingly, the whole thing is played way more seriously than I expected. I did like Doc Zeus actually, partly for his odd name and also for being somewhat convincing as a grizzled, old hunter who is out avenge his murdered wife who was chopped to bits by The Mean One. The movie doesn't really venture into the silly buggers territory until two thirds of the way in when it abruptly turns into Home Alone meets Terminator where Cindy goes all Sarah Connor and has a Rocky-esque montage to become skilled in all manner of hand to hand combat and firearms, before setting up her house with bear traps, machine guns and bauble based explosives to help her in her final showdown with The Mean One.

She definitely paid $5 for the Festive Gun Skin DLC though.

And SPOILER WARNING, I do kinda dig the anticlimatic ending somewhat where Cindy has The Mean One beat but hesitates in pulling the trigger on getting her revenge, that whole 'if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you' thing and actually forgives him.

This causes his heart to grow three sizes that day, only in the Moe Szyslak 'this is a serious medical problem' sort of way and his heart promptly explodes 5 seconds later. Huh.

The whole ending is another sign of them not having the scope to deliver on their ideas because they try to get across in flashback that The Mean One didn't mean to kill Cindy's mum, that he was horrified by his actions and Cindy's reaction to him after initially being so welcoming to him tipped him over the edge and made him into the monster he would become. Which, again not wanting to sound like 'let's just turn this movie into Halloween Ends', would have been an interesting thing to see play out. If you had The Mean One be at least semi-sociable like the 2018 Grinch that would be out and about in Whoville, only this accident makes the town ostracize him like Corey Cunningham in Halloween Ends, you're actually developing that sense of sympathy over the course of the movie instead of trying to humanize him with a 10 second flashback right at the end. So in a lot of respectives, this is a pretty lacklustre movie but I have to at least give it some credit for seeming like it had some decent ideas that it wasn't able to execute. I was going in expecting full on cheap explotation to come out somewhat pleasantly suprised is at least something. The costume on The Mean One is pretty good too. They put some effort into the mask and it helps sell the scary factor. The movie is just an odd curiosity and I can imagine some people might get some mileage out of it, if you just want a Christmas gorefest or a novelty piece of subversion on a childhood classic, it's got that going for it.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 7 - Halloween Ends (2022)

Does Halloween End with a bang or a whimper?

So, not quite Day 31 but this is indeed Halloween Ends in every sense of the word. Not just the season but the very franchise itself…sort of. But we'll come back to that. This is the last of the David Gordon Green directed trilogy, a man who has taken a sharp turn into horror in the last few years after that little stretch into stoner comedy back in the late 00's, early 10's. After this trilogy, he's moved onto The Exorcist with the newly released Believer, with another sequel Deciever planned in 2025. That seems to have opened to fairly poor reviews so we'll see if they'll make it to that next sequel. I kinda fell off that franchise after the third one but since we've wrapped up Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm St, there might be room for it to slip into the schedule.

Speaking of poor reviews, I remember this time last year when this was getting a lot of negative feedback. I managed to keep myself at a distance in terms of plot, trailers etc and only really had a vague sense of the feedback to go on where the word 'weird' kept coming up, in that it's weird for a Halloween film. That is something I would agree with but, for me, it's a good weird.

Does it reflect badly on me that the opening of this movie elicited a laugh from me? Not like a belly laugh or anything, I do tend to have this almost nervous laugh as an immediate reaction to something that should be considered scary or intense. And there's perhaps little more intense than a guy dropkicking a door open straight into the face of an 8 year old who is sent flying down a multi-storey building to his untimely death. Geez, this movie isn't fucking about, is it? Kids don't die in a Halloween movie, Michael Myers has at least some standards. Maybe that's what people were complaining about?

But the curious case of young Corey Cunningham, a young kid just trying to get through college before this accident sends his life into a tailspin is just the catalyst for the ever spiraling events of the movie but he's also a shining example of the kind of world building that I've come to love about these new movies. There's this idea that's brought up that for a town that has been living in the shadow of Michael Myers and his crimes for the last 40 years, and lest we forget still living in fear that he's still on the loose somewhere, Corey is the monster that the townspeople can see. He's the one that they can point their fingers at and unleash their angry energy towards. Arguably you're never going to have a good time of it if you kill a child, accident or no accident, but I like the idea that it's so much worse for him given that this is Haddonfield and it's residents are at the end of their tether with this whole thing.

Without wanting to delve too much into other people's criticisms at this stage before logging my thoughts, I am curious how much of it is down to the lack of Michael and the emphasis on Strode family drama, which is obviously something I was wanting them to lean into more in the 2018 Halloween so I was on board when it started playing out that way here. 'Where's Michael' is always the initial criticism of something like Halloween 3 and he is very much a peripheral character here. Or maybe it's more that as a movie presumably built up as this grand finale and a final showdown between Michael and Laurie, which we do get, felt like it was tacked on in a 'Okay, you sat through the meat and veg of our spin on Halloween so he's here's your treat.' Without going through the trailers and hype going into the movie I'm unsure if that's how they were building it but that's certainly the impression I got from the end of Halloween Kills.

After a run in with some punk kids, Corey is introduced to Laurie's granddaughter Allyson at the local hospital and the pair hit it off, a duo of nihilists whose trouble backgrounds seem to serve as a bit of a bonding experience. She's the survivor of a homicidal maniac, people think he is a homicidal maniac, they're just a perfect fit as they wallow in their collective misery and intent to watch the world burn.

But after another run in that leaves Corey injured, he's dragged into some sewers by a shadowy figure that we come to learn is Michael who promptly strangles Corey to near death but seemingly lets go. Michael is shown to be frail at times so did he just lose his strength, did Corey break free or did Michael see something in this youngsters eyes that made him set his victim free?

It's something that Laurie sees as well, particularly when Corey starts lurking outside her house like he's The Shape from 40 years ago. But as on the ball as she is, you do sound like the boy who cried wolf when you start protesting that he's 'just like Michael Myers' which is something you've been bleating on about for the past four decades. It's kinda like that meme about Boss Baby, when you spend your life fixated on Michael Myers then you're probably going to get a lot of Michael Myers vibes from this…

The only thing I am iffy on is the relationship between Corey and Michael. Corey is played off as this young apprentice of sorts but it's not as if Michael is readily accepting of help, even Dr. Sartain in 2018 he killed off pretty much the first chance he got even though they were meant to be buddy buddy. There are times when it looks like Corey thinks he's in control of Michael, which is probably just in his head, but there's moments when he's doing weird things with his hands and due to the scar he has, I did wonder briefly if they were going for some weird mark of the Cult of Thorn type thing here. I guess it is just this weird connection between them, like Michael understands this shared anguish they have or maybe a sort of 'passing the torch' thing given Michael's advancing years. Or maybe he just recognizes a greater evil than himself, like I said, even Michael knows when to draw the line when it comes to child murder so he's just paying his respects to Corey.

And I guess the ending in a way I'm a bit iffy on as well, specifically the Laurie/Michael showdown. I get that they felt obligated to include it, you probably would have had people rioting in the streets if you didn't show that after these 3 movies, never mind all the other ones in the franchise and especially given this is likely the last chance saloon for the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis. But the vibe I got from Halloween Kills was that there never was this connection between the two that Laurie seemed to play out in her head, it's all just some cosmic coincidence that she happened to be the one all those years ago so it seemed like plot convenience that Michael just happened to make his way out into the world now to track her down.

But the actual ending itself I really like because, spoiler warning, not only does she incapacitate him and slit pretty much every available appendage, they make sure this fucker is never coming back by taking him to a giant metal grinder that they promptly feed him into. Unless he's planning on reassembling the quivering piles of jelly T-1000 style, this guy is deader than he's ever been. Granted, they stopped short of burying whatever bits are left in a concrete filled coffin 2 miles beneath the Earth's surface like I would but they put a good shift in.

In the build up to that moment though, there's this whole procession where everyone in town shows up to witness this momentous occasion. Even when the cops look on uneasy about what's about to play out, like this isn't in the rule book, the sheriff from Halloween Kills shows up to stress that tonight it is. The whole moment is very cathartic, not only for the viewer in that we've finally seen good triumph over evil, but for the entire town of Haddonfield. Even if his timeline has been retconned six ways from Sunday over the years, it's almost as if every resident from every possible continuity is here to finally witness the moment his corpse is destroyed so they can get some closure on the vast body count he must have built up over these last 40 years.

So, whilst I can appreciate that people going into this movie last year with all that hype behind it might feel like they were on the end of a bait and switch, I really loved this. I've said it til I'm blue in the face over the years that slasher movies can be very hit and miss for me and something like Friday the 13th just bores me to tears. Something like Terrifier that I watched this year, it felt like it was just going for the immediate, visceral reaction but trying to be as gory as possible for cheap pops. But it hadn't earned the real weight behind those deaths because these are just disposable characters. When you have people like Dr. Loomis or Laurie Strode who bring some actual gravitas to proceedings, they can actually make you care, there are actual stakes involved and you're not just cheering for the bad guy and waiting for him to stab Camp Councillor #12.

If you want your bog standard slasher movie, go nuts. I'm sure there's hundreds of them out there. Hell, there's like a dozen other ones in this series alone so I'm all for when one of them wants to try something different. If someone wants to mix their indie, moody, coming of age teen drame in with Halloween then I'm all for it. It certainly has a unique atmosphere to it unlike anything in the series, it put me in mind of something like It Follows in artistic terms, the look and feel to it as well as that general overarching look at these younger characters and their lives being shaped by these traumatic events. Here we have this culmination of movies that has been building up Haddonfield as this deeply toxic place where misery is just a way of like and everyone in it almost seems cursed, with two characters specifically that have every reason in the world to want to get out, with things in their lives ripped away from them in harrowing events but ever after all of that, they feel trapped and bound to this place and unable to break free.

And what does the future hold for Halloween as a franchise when everyone has ridden off into the sunset, quite literally in Laurie's case? Well, everyone seems content for now to let things lay but considering the number of reboot and remakes we've been through, whose to say this will ever truly be over? This is easily one of the biggest franchises in horror, if not the biggest, so it's not going to lay dormant forever. This timeline might be over but I'm sure someone somewhere will start a new one in 5-10 years. Hell, multiverses are all the rage, they'll probably end up drawing in all the different iterations of Michael for some monster mash. And that's just speculation on the future of the silver screen, because we've already had word this month that Miramax has won the TV rights for Halloween so we'll be seeing that before too long.

But, for now, we must retire our Halloween cap as we look forward to the next major event of Christmas and the hopes that I might make the effort to round up the full dozen reviews this year. We live in hope…

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Halloween 2023 - Day 6 - Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

Still not from the arsehole of Clive Barker...

I'll admit this hasn't been the best year, feels like it's been a few years since I let it slip this badly but we're going out with a bang tomorrow with Halloween Ends and before we get there we need to look at one of our yearly staples; Hellraiser. Yes, after mentioning his potential cameo in Freddy vs Jason, it's time that we visit the world of Pinhead. After taking a detour last year to partake in all the Wokeraiser hot takes, we're back to our regular schedule of linear releases which brings us to part seven which is very much in the territory of crowbarring Pinhead into someone elses unrelated script. Apparently one of the potential names for this one was Jihad which I just dread to imagine what sort of weird exploitation movie that would be. The 9/11 terrorists are promised pleasure indivisible in the afterlife after carrying out their task but get a whole lot more than they bargained for…

What we do get is the story of Amy Klein, played by Kari Wuhrer, as she investigates a cult like entity in Romania before eventually running into the Cenobites. Wuhrer of course will be notable to many for her work in cult sci-fi TV series Sliders. Or perhaps Beastmaster 2, Anaconda, Eight Legged Freaks or some of the later Prophecy sequels. But, to me, she'll always be Agent Tanya in the delightfully cheesy cut scenes of RTS juggernaut Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. As much as she helped bring life to that character, I think the script and general tone of the thing can claim just as much credit. Nothing like a widescale invasion of the United States and nuking of Chicago to serve as the backdrop for some b-movie level chicanery. They certainly cast for it too with the likes of Wuhrer, Udo Kier and Ray Wise.

I digress because there's really not too much I can say about this one. We've touched upon the fact that the Cenobites are pretty much strangers in their own films at the best of times but these later ones really do become exorcises in drive by Pinheads. Like, it takes 30 minutes for him to show up for the first time and even that is for all of about five seconds. By my count he shows up in about 3 scenes across the whole movie, and whilst not long or anything, this is still a pretty standard 90 minute movie.

Wuhrer plays a reporter who after finishing off her expose on the seedy world of drug use, including what has to be a rather uncessary guide on how to become a crack whore (seems pretty self explanitory to me), her editor sends her to Romania to investigate a man who can seemingly bring people back from the dead.

All of which is hastily tied back into the Hellraiser mythology through exposition towards the end of the movie when it's said the leader of the cult is a descendent of the toymaker from back in part 4. He intends to become ruler of the Cenobites but is unable to open the box himself so is using his followers to do it. But Pinhead promptly shows up five minutes from the end like 'bitch please' and straight up murders everyone. Maybe if you like the sort of oblique storytelling found in Hellseeker this might be for you but I couldn't get on with it. There's some vague intruige in following Klein as she tries to piece everything together but ultimately this cult doesn't really amount to anything feels disconnected from the Hellraiser story despite the movies best efforts to try and tie everything together. Say what you will about these find and replace Hellraiser scripts but I think something like Inferno shows they can work when it still feels in universe. There it was very much an outsider looking in from the outside on all the weird shit that was going on and their reactions to that. This felt more like someones attempt at creative writing that they slapped Pinhead onto in an effort to get more eyes on it by putting 'and then the Cenobites showed up' at the end.

At least it has British actor Marc Warren in for local flavour, he of Hustle fame from the late 00's. Apparently he was in Homer Simpson's favourite movie about piano genius', Shine, as well as 2006's Colour Me Kubrick which is somewhat infamous for a scene in which Jim Davidson flounces down a staircase whilst singing Lionel Richie's 'Hello' to John Malkovich. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a scene far more bizarre than anything the twisted world of Hellraiser could ever conjure up.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 5 - Freddy vs Jason (2003)

Voices in the air I hear 'em loud and clear Telling me to listen...

OK, so I know I've been slacking this year so far but it's Friday the 13th and I sure as hell wasn't going to miss this. I've been building up to it since last year after all and, whilst I might not have documented it on here, I capped off the original run of Friday the 13th movies with Jason X back in January. Having the done the same with New Nightmare last year, all that's left (aside from the reboots) is this, the ultimate showdown…Freddy vs Jason. Given that I wasn't into horror back when this came out, it wasn't really on my radar so I don't recall any of the build up around it or how much anticipation there was from the general public but I can't imagine anything other than this being one of the biggest events of the year. It's Freddy vs Jason, man! You don't even need a trailer at that point, that name will sell you on the movie more than any sneak peek at moments from the film ever could. It harkens back to those school yard debates about who would win in a fight or the golden age of 'versus' movies in horror like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or the House of… films.

Right out of the gate we find out that Freddy has been banished to Hell but is unable to come back to wreak havoc upon the next generation of Elm Street kids because he's been forgotten. No one even knows who Freddy is anymore and if's not remembered, there's no fear. No fear, no powers. But luckily there's someone else down there that he thinks he can use…Jason Vorhees. Jason can never truly die and is just buried somewhere, suddenly given fresh impetus to rise up when he sees visions of his Mother demanding his go take care of those naughty kids down on Elm St. Sadly, the role of Mrs Vorhees is not reprised by Betsy Palmer but Paula Shaw does a good job as this angry, Freddy-inspired version as she berates Jason. Given the name of the movie, we all know this alliance isn't going to last forever but I really love this idea. It brings this whole extra layer of danger to proceedings, this dual threat of being targeted in your sleep as well as when you're awake. Plus it gives a plausible reason to allow Freddy a route back into the dreams of his victims and it adds this extra edge to him. He's not just this violent killer, he's manipulating Jason for his own nefarious needs. It helps play in to this odd sense of sympathy the movie seems to be trying to elicit for Jason. He's being used here, there's a flashback to his mistreatment by the other kids and councilors back at Crystal Lake and he's often taking a beating during the later fight scenes with Freddy. Kinda weird to think of Jason as the good guy in any situation but when the guy is a half melted nonce with Wolverine claws, Jason is the lesser of two evils.

We soon meet said Elm St kids and amongst them, for some reason, is Kelly Rowland. I guess I never had her pegged as an actress. It's funny because I've been looking at a Japanese movie called Kairo recently which was then remade in America as Pulse which starred Christina Milian. Again, AM to PM is a banger but I didn't realise she did acting too so I guess having that on my mind made this Kelly Rowland appearance catch me even more off guard. She's fine here though, the role is just standard slasher movie fare as the friend of the final girl who doesn't quite make it through the whole show so there's not much you can do with that. Her character does refer to Freddy as a 'faggot' at one point which is a bit…of it's time to put it politely.

It doesn't take long with Jason to show up and start bumping everyone off, including one gruesome kill where he stabs a guy half to death whilst in bed, then folding him up in said bed like a sandwich. This first kill takes place at the old Thompson house so when the cops show up and see where it happened, as well as the violent nature of the murder, murmurs soon start about it being 'him', murmurs that are very quickly shot down. The local Sherriff isn't keen on people talking about he who shall not be named (not Voldermort) and with the kids being asked all sorts of strange questions about their dreams rather than who might have just massacred their friend, it does lend the whole thing a bit of a conspiracy vibe, like the parents are covering something up. Kinda brings full circle because the original had that as well.

Conspiratorial would be accurate given that one of the kids dad is killed and I did a double take thinking it was Alex Jones.

There's these other characters as well who are in a psychiatric ward who keep making references to 'dream demons' and being kept away from their families so there's a lot of moving parts in play here but it really adds to the whole atmosphere and I like the angle they're going for, it was something I really wanted in Freddy's Dead.

It's easy to tell this is an Elm Street sequel because only hours after the death of two of their friends, the kids are quietly ushered off to school where they're gawked out by their classmates. Aren't their regulations in place for this kind of stuff? Give the kids some time off at least, maybe a passing grade. You know, that 'passing by catastrophe' kinda thing, Dead Man's Curve? Maybe given all the killings they had to abolish it because they were having to pass everyone given how prolific Freddy was.

But it's not just subtleties and world building here, this movie can deal out some action when it wants to. Such as when Jason's 'fun police' alarm goes off and he breaks up the kids party out in the cornfields. Someone tries to fight back by setting him on fire, which only seems to make him stronger especially when he starts wielding a flaming machete. The power of the Charcoal Pine Resin strikes again!

Or a vicious scene where one of the kids is haunted by visions of his brothers suicide, the brother played by non other than Scut Farkus himself, Zack Ward. Scut Farkus staring out at us with his red wrists! So help me God, red wrists!

And when this movie promised Freddy vs Jason, it duly delivers. Multiple times in fact. You get the best of both worlds, with one fight taking place in the dream world after Freddy possesses one of the kids and uses tranquilisers to put Jason to sleep. Then, in the finale, Freddy is draw into the real world. It allows both of them to play to their respective strengths; Freddy with his powers and use of misdirection in the dream world and Jason being able to use his strength and invulnerability in the real world where Freddy is weaker.

It's a cool touch that Jason ends up being reverted to his child form in the dream world fight, obviously ties in to Freddy being a child murderer but also brings back that origin story of Jason as well. The actual ending, whilst it doesn't sour the overall movie in the slightest, I'm not overly happy with. I get that it's ambiguous and doesn't necessarily undo what came before it, plus are these characters ever really dead? But I think with the hindsight of this being the last big send off for both characters, it was nice to have this Double-KO as a way to write them out and send their franchises off into the sunset before their reboots several years later. The original ending was apparently disliked by those at initial test screenings. It featured one of the characters suddenly turning violent and wielding the Freddy glove as a final sting which doesn't seem out of place with the franchise. After all, right back in part 1 we had the false finish of everyone thinking they'd beat Freddy only for him to re-emerge. And whilst we're talking about endings, this apparently had all manner of different possible endings including a giant hand pulling both villains back down to hell to play out a Sissapyhian battle for all eternity to the amusement of onlooking devils and demons. Or one where they both run into Ash from Evil Dead, supposedly shot down because Sam Raimi insisted on Ash winning. Or, Freddy and Jason waging bloody war on one another, only to be suddenly pulled apart by hooked chains before Pinhead emerged from the shadows.

Maybe some people could argue that not having a definitive winner is a bad thing, I think it would have been cool if they'd done something where Jason wins in certain showings and Freddy wins in others. Probably wouldn't have worked even back then due to the growing prevalence of the internet, whilst not as widespread and immediate as today since it was before social media and the like, news would have travelled fast and it wouldn't have been able to get that sort of urban legend feel. How cool would that have been though, you're talking to your friends about the movie and you're like "Man, I can't believe Freddy won." and they're like "What are you talking about, Jason killed that motherfucker!". Think of the repeat ticket sales! As it is, I really loved this one. Certainly the best Jason movie out there, even if the likes of Part VII and Jason X had their charms (we'll get back to them one day). Certainly up there with the best Elm Street movies too. I just really dug the city wide cover up going on to try and suppress Freddy, really fleshed out the story and allowed it to be more than just padding whilst we waited for the main event showdown.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 4 - Nothing But Trouble (1991)

Valkenvaaaaaaaaania!

We take our first trip into the 'horror adjacent' realm today with this horror comedy from the mind of Dan Akroyd. For as much as he is revered for his early work on the likes of SNL, Ghostbusters and The Blues Brothers, Akroyd's later career seemed to go downhill with less favourably received showings and this is probably amongst the low points. It seems like people recognized the potential troubles with is as Akroyd had to write, direct and play multiple parts in the film which can't have been easy and perhaps spread himself a bit too thinly.

The film centers around a bunch of yuppy types, amongst them are Chris Thorne (played by Chevy Chase) and Diane Lightson (played by Demi Moore) who end up taking a wrong turn into a former mining village, Valkenvania, that has been picked clean and all but abandoned except for a handful of old timers who look suspiciously at these interlopers.

Valkenvania is overseen by a strange family, the head of of which Alvin Valkenheiser (played by Akroyd) has appointed himself judge and jury and personally handles even the most minor of infractions that place within the limits of his juristiction. Thorne and friends run a stop sign whilst passing through and chased down by chief of police Dennis Valkenheiser (played by John Candy) who has a tricked out cop car that is able to keep up with Thorne's top of the range BMW.

Given the genre of the movie and Thorne being the defacto good guy here, I was really hoping we'd get to see John Candy play against type here. Whatever movie I've seen him in he's just the nicest, sweetest guy so it would have been interesting to see him in a more edgier role as a bit of a bad guy. From the outset though, even though his character is stern, he's also lenient when he overlooks some of the groups infractions as they try to outrun him and tries to get the judge to give them a light sentence. He's even convinced to let two of the group escape later on and abruptly disappears from the movie.

Well, that character does at least, because Candy also drags up to play the role of Eldona, a master mechanic and strong as an ox as she's often seen dragging around criminals by the scruff of their necks. The character is a mute though so, other than through body language, it's a bit harder to get across that menacing aspect since she's little more than the family's muscle.

There's also a pair of grotesque twins that are the black sheep of the family, so to speak, being kept at arms length and not allowed within the family house. They're kept outside, smithing through the night like a Dark World version of those dwarven swordsmiths from A Link to the Past. Dan Akyroyd plays one of these two as well so, yeah, a very busy production for him here. It's these kind of characters that really try to sell the horror aspect of the horror comedy, definitely going for that 'fish out of water' thing of someone chancing upon some bizarre, unstable characters like something out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I definitely think the 'horror' aspect is overstated here though, given that the inspiration for the story was a run in Akroyd had after a speeding ticket and being made to spend several hours with the justice of the peace, but rather than just ramp that up by having a group of people trapped within a corrupt town from which they can't escape because of the stranglehold the law has on it, they try to take things in a different direction by making the family into these warped characters. But I'm not sure it really works because, barring the twins, everyone is relatively normal. The judge character is the most exaggerated character with his grotesque facial features but it's undermined by a performance that plays him more for laughs than going for anything menancing or intimidating.

It doesn't really help either that our protagonists aren't the most relatable either so you don't have much sympathy for their plight. Thorne is a bit of a dickbag, which seems to be Chase's go-to role from what I can tell, Lightson is the smartest person there but just repeatedly gets shutdown by Thorne and the other two are these loud, wealthy foreigners that are the aforementioned people that manage to escape so get written out half way through, leaving the unlikable Thorne/Lightson.

The movie does contain a rather interesting cameo though, as a hip hop group get hauled before the judge and amongst their members is a young Tupac. I can only imagine the movie had left over make up budget and, in addition to the judge's fake nose, Tupac's mate here got one as well. It's a very timely cameo to see given that this isn't the only Tupac matter being brought before a judge right now…

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Halloween 2023 - Day 3 - Censor (2021)

It's for your own good...

Following on from the veritable blood bath that was Terrifier, it's perhaps fitting that we now move on to a movie set at the height of the so called 'video nasty' craze of 1980's Britain and centers around a young woman working for the BBFC in their ongoing efforts to cleanse the depravity from those ghastly filmakers. A montage of various titles play, the only one that stands out to me is Driller Killer which I only know by name. And hey, it's a local film too! Filmed in Leeds and Bradford, apparently some people do want to get there quicker.

The true video nasty on show here though is a shot of Mary Whitehouse and, speaking of the Tories, we even get footage of Maggie Thatcher and her ongoing tirades against industrial action. A Tory government being against worker strikes, glad those days are behind us… I think the only video nasty I've seen is I Spit on your Grave and that was years ago. But my gosh, what a list this thing is, I could dedicate a whole month to this thing!

The Beast in Heat Gestapo's Last Orgy Mardi Gras Massacre Night of the Bloody Apes SS Experiment Camp The Werewolf and the Yeti And, needless to say, the word 'Cannibal' comes up several times. Still not convinced myself to see Cannibal Holocaust… Say what you will about the whole thing, I imagine there were times when cuts or bans were just and others where they were massive overreactions but dubbing the things 'video nasties' seems like it would only create more publicity around these titles and increase demand. Whilst it might seem odd to work towards circumstances that would lead to the limitation of sale on your own work, it wouldn't surprise me if people viewed being added to this list as a badge of honour. You're almost handing people a ready made watchlist of all the most extreme movies possible. I forget where I saw mention of this film or how it came to be on my watch list but the cover art especially put me in mind of some sort of comedy horror where a censor is driven over the edge by watching these films all day, every day, and goes on a rampage of their own. Which, in some small part is probably right but the way it's done is right up my street.

The film centers around Enid and her work at the BBFC which she sees as a moral crusade of sorts, it's her job to save the viewing public from possibly seeing this sick filth and she is not afraid of doing her own hatchet job by butchering these movies in the name of righteousness. But we slowly learn that there are skeletons within Enid's closet and the dark tail of a missing sister who disappeared at a young age when the two were out playing together. All these years later, her parents want to put the whole thing behind them by declaring the sister, Nina, legally dead but Enid isn't prepared to just give up like this.

The movie really builds up this sense of mystery by creating an in universe controversy surrounding a murder that takes place said to be inspired by a video nasty that Enid approved, leading to her being hounded by the press and obscene phone calls after someone seemingly 'leaks' her involvement. When all these other things start happening, it does make you question if there is some darker force at work or if Enid is hiding something. Maybe he own mind is building walls to protect her from the truth, drawing inspiration from the films she sits through each day to build a narrative that helps her explain away what happened to Nina. Even something as innocent as the parents getting the death certificate for the sister, which is a reasonable thing to do in the circumstances and it gives them some small measure of closer, can suddenly be seen in a different light. When they start shutting down any of Enid's talk about possibly finding Nina it can almost feel a little bit like what are they hiding?

With it already carrying such an oppressive tone, the movie only enhances it with an ominous musical score throughout and the dark visuals, be it Enid's dingy offices or the underpasses and alleyways that Enid makes her way through so often, with each journey back and forth her face growing more ashen as she struggles under the weight of this conspiracy playing out in front of her. It puts me in mind of something Cronenberg-esque with the visuals (minus the body horror) and overall vibe, Videodrome especially with the use of media compelling someone down a rabbit hole. I really dig the subversion of sorts on the whole 'video nasty inspiration' idea, rather than just do a straight up story about someone being a copy cat killer of what they've seen on screen, this delves into it on a deeper level and from a different angle. For all that the whole video nasty thing put the idea out there that movies lead to all these deranged real life killers, something that pretty much every artistic medium seems to go through at one time or another, here they just amplified an already exisiting problem that was present in Enid's psyche. To paraphrase: grief loaded the gun, violent movies pulled the trigger.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 2 - Terrifier (2017)

Ain't too much sadder than the tears of a clown...

Well well well, if it isn't 'today's standards'. Fresh off the panic surrounding Ghostwatch with it's disturbing scenes of banging on walls and brief glimpses of men with skull like heads, we have Terrifier with borderline comical levels of gore that barely registers as a blip on the radar. Frankly, I couldn't have asked for a better movie to contrast the two ends of the scale. It does though mark something of a return to the heydays of slasher villains, if not for the critical or financial success but for the iconic look of the character. Obviously the big icons of slasher horror are the likes of Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger but it feels like we haven't had a notable one in the modern era. Everything just seems to be the occasional re-emergence of an old favourite like the Child's Play reboot, the new Halloween trilogy, more Scream sequels…I guess the closest you'd get is Jigsaw but even he's not a slasher in the same way and he's getting on for 20 years old at this point.

Speaking of Scream, the main protagonist here, Tara, has a total Neve Campbell thing going on.

Art the Clown could definitely catch on and he's already forming something of a pedigree, having first appeared in the anthology movie All Hallows' Eve before starring in his own movie here which would be followed with a sequel in 2022 and another on the way next year. Sure it's cliche (a creepy clown, how original…) but there's no denying how creepy he looks with those blackened teeth, pointy nose and sinister smile. I hear that sequel actually manages to be one of the rare occasions where the follow up is rated higher than the original.

Not that I can see myself watching it though because I wasn't really a fan of this one. Much like the Rob Zombie Halloween movies, it feels like it has two settings; weird and absurd brutality. One minute you might have Art curb stomping someone or literally sawing them in half and the next he's riding a tricycle or nursing a baby doll. The wafer thin plot is just a means to move from set piece to set piece of extraordinary gore and for that, the movie is to be commended to a point. Whilst not exactly creative, if you want to see a movie that pulls no punch's on it's kills then you've come to the right place. I liked how the film seemed to poke at subverting expectations as well, like when Art is trying to suffocate someone with a plastic bag, a struggle that goes on for a minute or so before the potential victim realizes they can just tear the bag open in order to breath. Art just looks at the bag so confused and disappointed. Or when he's in a showdown with this one girl, who is fighting back and seems to be on the verge of winning before he just pulls out a gun and shoots her.

Hey, that's not fair! Something just feels really unsporting about that, you can't be a slasher villain with a gun, the clue's in the name! The way Art makes no noise, even when he's being attacked himself only adds to the creepiness of the situation. It add's this emphasis that the reaction of the victim is the only one you hear and it kinda speaks to this possible backstory to it. Like, is he just that committed to the bit that he won't speak or make a noise, or did something happen to him that renders him mute? And, ultimately, the film makers are to be commended on what they managed to put together on such a small budget, only 35 thousand dollars. To me, this wouldn't look out of place next to any other big budget Hollywood horror affair. I guess that's the benefit of horror, you can keep it low budget, film somewhere cheap and grimey and call it a vibe.

But, for me, this isn't my thing. It's just all the gratification of the gore with none of the substance. There needs to be thrill in the chase, you know? There's no joy in overcoming adversity if you're not invested in these characters. I guess I'm looking at it from the wrong perspective, slasher 'villain' very much seems a misnomer with these movies. Half of the time people are probably going into it with the intent of cheering the bad guy on and wallowing in the muck of their antics, with a bloodlust that can only be quenched by a maniac bastardly clown splitting pretty blonde girls from pussy to post.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 1 - Ghostwatch (1992)

Don't have nightmares...

Don't like the unusually warm weather trick you, it's October 1st so that must mean it's time for another month long-ish extravaganza of horror adjacent media. And what better way to start that month than with a chilling reminder of our own fragile mortality by reflecting on the passing of Sir Michael Parkinson by watching one of his stranger TV appearances. His passing just a few short months ago was mourned by many across the country, not least of all here in his native Yorkshire, with many news crews speaking to his lifelong friend Dickie Bird to reflect on their relationship and pay tribute to the broadcaster.

Parky was obviously a British institution and a beloved figure for his long running chat show which played host to all manner of classic moments that have been replayed countless times over the year on British television, who can forget his run in with a shutdown and closed off Meg Ryan, or the vicious attack he suffered at the hands of Rod Hull and Emu. So to see him in a mockumentary type piece is very out of the ordinary. But there perhaps is the heart of the matter, what better way to pull the wool over the eyes of the viewing public than to install a well loved and respected public figure in the drivers seat and lend the thing an enormous sense of credibility. Though, I'm not sure if that would have been the intention of those behind it.

I'm curious as to how this was promoted, whether or not it was played totally straight and spoken of as an investigative piece, but given that the intro plays out with a 'Screen One' ident, a BBC anthology series running from the late 80's into the 90's, and has a brief credits card for Parky and the supporting cast, it doesn't scream that they're trying to fool anyone into thinking this is real.

Ghostwatch is essentially playing out a live broadcast of a paranormal investigation of a supposedly haunted house, featuring a mentally frazzled mother and his two daughters who have been troubled by strange noises and poltergeist type activity. There is both an in studio element where the aforementioned Parky is sat with a paranormal expert, assessing the goings on, as well a manned phone line for the viewers at home to call in to report any of their own paranormal experiences. The phone line given out was apparently a standard one used by the BBC at the time for similar live call ins, lending it some credence, and if you were to call you would be given a brief explanation as to the fictional nature of the show before being invited to share your story. But because the phone line was so busy, people weren't necessarily hearing that recording.

There's also a supporting cast out in the field, with Red Dwarf star Craig Charles interviewing people out in the street whilst TV's Sarah Greene was in the house with a small camera and sound team to record the spooky goings on. Charles' part really helps underline the overall level of skepticism that runs throughout the whole thing, he leans more towards playing it off as a laugh as he really hams things up by making cliché ghost noises or putting emphasis on words like 'spooky'. It's similar with Parky back in the studio too, but he's more bluntly dismissive of the situation, always looking for an easy explanation or assuring the viewing public that there's nothing going on and nothing to worry about. He almost has a bit of the tone to him from that later Meg Ryan interview. It seems like people feel he was a bit harsh in that interview, prodding at Ryan for answers that she was reluctant to give. Like there's a moment where he's asking about her hesitancy towards the celebrity life being played out to the public and how that seems counter intuitive to being an actress. She seems a bit off put by the line of questioning and people act like he was bullying her almost? To me, it feels like maybe they're at cross purposes. Like, he wants to have a deeper conversation and really get to know what makes her tick, whereas she's more used to the American style of TV chat shows where you're on for about three minutes to give the outline of your next movie, they cut to commercial and then you're back for Jimmy Kimell to do a sketch.

He get's a bit of that here as the expert is trying to work out the unfolding scenes in front of them and, when she doesn't have an immediate answer, he scolds her and barks 'You don't know, do you?'. That really helps the show though because it's realistically what would happen, maybe there would be a greater level of professionalism and going in with an open mind but it's obviously a niche opinion to think of things as ghosts and goblins as being actually real so there's going to be a lot of outward skepticism on show. But, with the slow build where things do start happening, that skepticism does lead to excuses being made, almost as if Parky is in denial or too scared to fully admit what he's seeing might actually be true.

Whilst some of the acting can be a bit ropey in parts, I think the whole thing works really well and it's a neat premise for a show, if anything it feels very ahead of it's time. I know by the turn of the Millennium we had things like Most Haunted with ghost hunts and the like but I don't know if there would have been any similar contemporary shows to compare this to. Some of the effects are a little off too in places, like where they show footage where a supposed ghostly figure can be seen and it just looks super obvious because they really want you to notice. Same thing too later on when you start seeing brief glimpses of the ghost whilst the camera is panning or in reflections, to me it could have done with being slightly more subtle.

It's very interesting as well to learn more on the aftermath of the show, like how many complaints they dealt with and some serious situations that developed, such as a person with learning difficulties committing suicide after becoming convinced that the ghost from the show was after him. Or children watching the show and being traumatized from it. Always feel very strange to read such things from a modern perspective because it's the whole show is tame by today's standards. And this isn't even that old, granted it is 30 years at this point but there must have been slasher movies playing out on TV that are much worse in terms of their gore and horror elements. Maybe that element of realism made it that much more believable in people's minds. There is a separate documentary that was made back in 2021, a sort of anniversary look back I suppose, which I might watch some time.

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Christmas 2022 - Day 2 - Home Alone: The Holiday Heist (2012)

On t he second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

...two thousand dollars worth of tools!

Oh hey, we’ve reached the point where they got embarrassed about the number of sequels they were making. We took a diversion last year to look at the newest entry in the franchise, Home Sweet Home Alone, but we’re going back into the archives now to check out the last new to me entry actually set at Christmas. I’ve never seen 3 but I know that’s not set at Christmas and doesn’t involve the McAllisters either but maybe I’ll look at that one day as a random review just for the sake of completeness. With this coming out in 2012, it almost sort of maybe looks like they’re going for a ‘once a generation’ thing where they draw in one bunch of kids, then hit the next batch when the others have grown up. I mean, you had the original and the sequel at the beginning of the 90’s, 3 came out mid-to-late 90’s, then 4 was early noughties, now this one in the early tens and finally HSHA in 2021. At this rate I suppose we can look forward to the next entry in the early 2030’s. Maybe by then it’ll be set on a terraformed Mars.

I don’t know why but I’ve somehow always managed to misjudge this art for the film. I think something about the hair looking floppy made me think he was a spoilt little rich kid. Plus what is quite plainly a hoodie I’d somehow seen as like a blazer of sorts with a tie. I can only assume I only ever glanced at this and didn’t pay too much attention because boy is that ever a wide of the mark assessment. Indeed, this is the story of your average American family with 2.4 kids who have moved all the way from California to Maine in aid of mom’s new job.

At least he’s doing the whole ‘scream’ thing here to immediately remind you of the old movies. They even mention the painting at one point and the kids get oddly embarrassed at their parents doing the pose. I don’t know if he’s really selling fear here though, he just looks slightly appalled by something.

Fittingly for Maine the house is allegedly haunted by the spirit of an old timey bootlegger but we’re not exactly going into Stephen King territory here. It does give extra reason for our young protagonist, Finn (played by Christian Martyn), to be scared senseless but he doesn’t exactly need any help since he’s pretty much scared of his own shadow most of the time. It’s also the motivation for our obligatory gang of baddies as they plan to steal a painting which is said to reside in the house.

And hey, there are actual recognisable people in these roles again! Malcolm McDowell makes another appearance on our Christmas list, this time as the ringleader Sinclair. Alongside him he has Jessica played by Debi Mazar who sort of looks familiar but I don’t think that’s down to some of the more logical places I would have seen her like Goodfellas or Empire Records. She’s apparently Madonna’s bestie as well and she’s been in a whole bunch of her videos.

Maybe it’s because she looks like she’s come straight out of that Jim Carrey Grinch movie at one point. Definite Who vibe off her here. Plus there’s Eddie Steeples who was ‘Crab Man’ Darnell Turner on My Name is Earl and was also in Would You Rather that I watched during Halloween a year or two back.

Say what you will about these sequels being cash ins but they put their hand in their pocket sometimes to get people you might actually know. Granted, McDowell is very much a working actor and whilst thoughts do obviously turn to A Clockwork Orange, you can just as easily find him providing voice work to Pinocchio 3000 (okay that sounds stupid and I kinda want to see it) or Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes (...same) so it’s probably not an amazing ‘get’ but I imagine he doesn’t come cheap.

Another recognisable face is Edward Asner who just feels destined to turn up in so many Christmas films. I swear it’s either him or the goddamned Northen Lights. At least he’s not playing Santa this time. It’s kind of a weird performance because he’s hosting this Christmas party and the mum is his new hire, only they’re trying to play him off as being massively drunk but it’s not that far removed from just being a vaguely senile old man.

The whole former bootlegger house does very nearly come close to giving this movie a gimmick and some sort of identity as pretty early on Finn inadvertently finds a hidden safe in the basement. Eventually he and his sister find out that it has a hidden wall that has a speakeasy behind it which, when his sister tries to steal a bottle of alcohol, triggers the door to shut behind her and lock her in. The idea of the house itself having these sort of traps built in and leftover from it’s former occupant would’ve been a new dynamic and you could potentially have moments of peril from Finn accidently finding himself on the wrong end of one. But it doesn’t really come up so we’re just left with the results of Finn’s imagination; icing up the front porch (a classic), pouring oil over people or baking poisoned cookies full of hot sauce. Hey, Home Sweet Home Alone took that one! That movie has clearly sunk to a new low if it’s having to rip off this movie. Thinking about it though, the kid in these movies is meant to be the viewer analogue, the little boys and girls watching at home are meant to be able to imagine themselves being the one setting the traps and getting their own back on all the mean grownups so it doesn’t exactly work if the kid isn’t the one actively setting the traps.

His big secret weapon is the power of sexual harassment as Jessica gets stuck in a window trying to break in so, when he two partners in crime try to pull her out, Finn keeps firing things at her that smack her on the arse and makes her think the guys are trying to cop a feel. A swift mule kick to the nards sorts them right out though. I don’t know if I want to run the risk of upsetting the moderation bots of Tumblr again though in order to show you, I’m not sure what the party line is on a nice bottom.

The traps feel a little tame in comparison to the other movies, especially when you consider the multiple times Kevin nearly killed the Wet/Sticky bandits with blunt force trauma, electrocution, burning, falls, Birdemic... Honestly, the most violent act isn’t even directed at the bad guys, it’s when he’s convinced the house is haunted so tries to collect evidence and ends up shooting his own Father with a taser. I know these kids are shown to be resourceful in these movies but where did he get that from?!It’s like the reverse Chekhov’s Gun as it never shows up again.

Or when this one guy pretty much gets Swatted and maced by about a dozen cops.  See, there’s this whole subplot where Finn just wants to play videogames and not make any actual real life friends, only it comes across vaguely weird when the one guy he’s talking to online is this one dude in like his mid 20’s. Finn kinda has this whole borderline social issue though as he seems geniunely anxious at the thought of any human interaction with his peers. His sister is portrayed as being obssesed with her phone so it’s very much the type of writing you expect from that relatively early period of smart phones where adults are complaining about how their kids just wont get off the dang cell phone or those violent viddy games!

Then there’s this whole scene where Finn tells the guy they’re being robbed so he hacks Finn’s gamertag, gets his mum’s mobile number from the account details and calls her to tell her what’s happening. Only it turns into this whole misunderstanding where she thinks he’s grooming her son and has her daughter locked in the basement. Oh, noncing and child abuse, what japes we have.

Honestly, this one wasn’t too bad. It’s massively derivative and there’s no reason to watch it over 1 or 2 but it’s not the worst thing in the world. It’s just a very safe rehash that makes absolutely no attempt to try and stray from the formula, it just settles into the well worn arse groove that the original movie and the sequel already made and is quite content with that. It’s just the same movie but adjusted 20 years down the line with some new possibilities thanks to the advancement of technology.  Still, because it’s giving itself such a low bar it didn’t really come across as making any massively glaring faults. Whereas last year I think Home Sweet Home Alone kind of forgot it even was a Home Alone movie for large portions so it’s a lot easier to pick fault with it. Maybe that one just set some low expectations for me that this one was able to meet.

It’s not to say there aren’t problems. Like Finn is just a massive dweeb who seems to have this sad look on his face the entire movie. Plus, him being scared borders on the ridiciousless on occasions. Like there’s one moment where he manages to run screaming out of the secret room, through the basement, up the stairs, through the kitchen, up another flight of stairs, into his room, throw off the covers and then dive under them. It feels like one of those jokes where someone is falling for a really long time so they have to stop to breathe before starting to scream again. Granted, Kevin was pretty scared in the first movie but he was a good couple of years younger, was actively left alone for days on end rather then just a couple of hours whilst his parents went to a party and the Wet Bandits were a lot more intimidating the guy guys on show here.  These guys are only interested in the painting and even when they do discover Finn and his sister, they just try to keep them out of the way. The Bandits though, they took that shit seriously when Kevin was fighting back against them and you really did think they were going to kill him before Old Man Marley showed up with that snow shovel. I suppose this is a kids movie after all though and you’ve got to keep the menace and fear to a minimum.

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Christmas 2022 - Day 1 - Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

a homeless man named Ricky!

The mood is right, the spirit’s up, we’re tonight and that’s so we can watch all manner of Christmas movies. That’s right, it’s December 2022 so let’s break out the festive horror and get this show on the road! It’s been a couple of years since we last looked at the franchise so why not return to the Silent Night, Deadly Night universe? They seemed to let these stew a little more during the early releases but as we’re getting to the end here, they’re really pumping them out; Part 3 in 1989, Part 4 here in 1990 and the final release in the original run in 1991. Then there’s the remake in 2012 but we already covered that many moons ago.

You know, this franchise turned into Rosemary’s Baby so gradually I didn’t even notice.  Which is really the biggest take away from this movie which continues to distance itself further and further from the original release. Now, granted that’s not the worst thing in the world as we’ve said on here before, there’s not point being stuck in a rut creatively just churning out the same movie over and over again (almost literally so in the case of Part 2) but this is really just a sequel in name only. The cheesiness was already stripped back in Part 3 but it’s entirely gone here and I’d almost suggest they’re going full latter day Hellraiser on it by just slapping the franchise name on a totally different movie but at least with Hellraiser you still get the interesting part of Pinhead interacting with these random characters and different settings. Here you don’t even get any returning characters, though they do bother to name one character Ricky which is the closest link you’ll get…well, apart from one moment we’ll come on to. But it’s not even the Ricky from the older movies, it just feels like a nod they made to either satisfy existing fans or trick them into thinking it’s the same character somehow.

It’s barely even Christmas themed barring the odd decoration here or there, a brief stop off at an office Christmas party or family living room, there’s certainly no killer Santa running around. Heck, the movie was released in the UK as Bugs so I’m pretty sure no one would be able to indentify this as a Silent Night, Deadly Night sequel unless you told them.

[REDACTED IMAGE BECAUSE TWO PEOPLE DRY HUMPING IS TOO MUCH FOR TUMBLR]

At least we have reason to welcome back Christmas Tor within the first five minutes, hello again old friend! I don’t think we saw regular Tor this year, nice to have him back.

The movie centers on Kim, a budding journalist who feels held down within her workplace and looked down upon by her male colleagues due to her not so secret relationship with her colleague Hank. She’s rather keen on covering the story of a local woman who apparently committed suicide by self immolating and throwing herself off the roof of a building downtown, whereas Kim wants to explore the possibility of spontaneous combustion. It’s a rather odd case of spontaneous combustion though as the lady only really seems to be burned from the waist down. Most people are just left as little green globules on their drum seats.

We do get some Christmas related events when she and Hank visit his parents house, only his Dad goes a bit Archie Bunker when he finds out she’s Jewish. Shame this man wont live to experience Kanye West, I think he would have really dug Ye’s philosophy on life. (Yes, we’re horribly dating this post. Grats to Kanye though on his recent media appearances though, it’s no small feat to be able to make Alex Jones seem like the sane and rational one during a conversation but my gosh did he manage it)

During Kim’s investigations she befriends the owner of a local book store who advises her on suitable books on the subject, as well as the occult and feminism. Kim is more generally annoyed by the chauvinistic attitudes of her workplace and the perceived glass ceiling that’s in effect but this lady, Fima, and her friends…boy do they hate themselves some men. It’s a bit of a weird direction to go in when you’re ripping off Rosemary’s Baby; hardcore feminism and cockroaches.

The whole thing culminates in Fima drugging Kim, only for her to awaken in a daze to find herself in the middle of some sort of ritual where she’s raped by a man in what appears to be some sort of prototypical Noseybonk mask, have some sort of sizeable insect inserted into her and then proceeds to vomit up a cockroach about as big as a medium size dog.

It’s like that one chewing gum commercial if it was directed by Satan.

She manages to escape but seems to be in some sort of weird trance where she flips between wanting to swallow a bottle of pills to jumping her boyfriends bones. They are rather rudely interrupted though when the witch’s accomplice, the aforementioned Ricky played Clint Howard, walks in and decides to watch some TV before stabbing Hank to death.

Okay, gratuitous use of stock footage of the previous movie? Now it’s a Silent Night, Deadly Night movie!

Instead of giving birth to the son of Satan like in Rosemary’s Baby, the idea here seems to be for Kim to give birth to some sort of insect hybrid? I’m not sure, I kind of lost track of exactly what their motivation is here. Possibly something about her being the reincarnation of Lillith, which was suggested to be Fima’s daughter but I think they mean literally the mythological figure who is meant to have been Adam’s first wife in the Garden of Eden before she basically ran away and is painted as some sort of radical figure because she wouldn’t obey Adam.

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Halloween 2022 - Day 28 - Halloween Kills (2021)

EVIL DIES TONIGHT!

I’ll hold my hands up on this and admit that the whole overtime thing didn’t pan out. I think figured that I had this whole month before Christmas in order to make only 4 extra posts so I’d put it off...and off...and off until there was no time left. That and the 28th entry was going to be Coaraline but, whilst I enjoyed it, I couldn’t really think of anything to say outside of “...yeah, that was alright. Sure did look nice!” so just didn’t bother. Bit of a Godzilla 2014 moment in that regard.  Also, just checking that I had the year right there and, upon seeing the cast, I have absolutely no recollection of Elizabeth Olsen being in that movie.

But, with Christmas and the potential dirty dozen of reviews, let’s have one last sendoff for Halloween 2022 with...Halloween. Especially because I was looking at the hubbub around Halloween Ends from the outside and I want in on this action to see what all this backlash is about. In order to do that as part of next years marathon though, I do really need to get caught up on this entry.

And kinda just look in Halloween 2018, this feels like a movie that is on the precipice of having this idea that would be intriguing to me but it never really runs with it. In fact, it kinda feels a little all over the place in what it’s trying to go for. What I really loved about the 2018 movie was when they were focusing less on Michael and more on the Strode family, how the actions of Michael had cast this shadow over generations of Laurie’s family and the terror he’d inflicted had compelled her to push her own family to such extremes that it had left her ostracised from it. That was just a really cool idea to me to take this franchise and look at as something slightly different that just ‘here’s a maniac stabbing people for 90 minutes’, you have this examination almost of how the actions of this killer are still haunting his victims 40 years down the line.

Which is kicked up a notch here as the scope widens to the entire town of Haddonfield, a people who don’t take kindly to the news that Michael Myers is loose again because, spoilers, even being trapped in a burning basement can’t keep Michael down. Maybe Laurie had a fridge down there that he hid in. I love the idea that everyone gets a warning broadcast to them in the same way they would for an emergency weather warning or something. As if someone in that control has a panel with pre-set buttons for the natural disasters they might have to warn people about; tornado, snow storm, Michael Myers...

So you get this whole town that is up in arms about it and actively sets out to lynch the bastard, led by Tommy Doyle, sadly not a role reprised by Paul Rudd. Although, that’s probably for the best as I don’t know if he could have pulled off this gruff, middle aged average Joe kind of character. Might have been interesting to see him try mind you, try something against type. Apparently he was offered the chance to do it but had to turn it down because he was doing Ghostbusters.

Tommy is just one of a number of returning characters from the original movie, along with the likes of Lindsey Wallace, Marion Chambers and Leigh Brackett. It can feel a little overly fan servicey, like someone jangling some keys in your face and saying “Hey, remember these guys?!” but it does add to the sense of community to actually have these returning characters, especially when they’re trying to sell the 40 years of pain this town has lived through since the events of 1978. And you instantly have some degree of connection with them rather than just having some no names show up and get killed off quickly with no real investment. Though, I was starting to get invested in the story of Big John and Little John before they got bumped off. I am curious as to how many people at the time were complaining about the gay couple in a Halloween movie and how it’s gone ‘full woke’. “WHAT’S NEXT? ARE THEY GOING TO HAVE A WOMAN DEFEAT THE SLASHER VILLAIN AND LIVE AT THE END OF THE MOVIE?!”

Ooh, speaking of fan service, they have the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween 3! Score another one for the ongoing rehabilitation of that movie.

The police incidentally seem relatively indifferent to this whole mob justice idea, with the local sheriff making an appearance but not doing a whole lot to stop the situation or even really vocalize his disapproval all that much. Maybe they figure it’s going to cause a lot of trouble if they try and stop all these people, or they don’t have the resources to stop that many people, but it doesn’t seem like the best idea to send everyone off to challenge a homicidal maniac to one on one combat armed with whatever they’ve got laying around in their garage. Like, one guy near the end turns up with a hockey stick. What the fuck are you going to do against Michael Myers with a hockey stick?

To that end, Michael is way more violent here than I remember him being in the 2018 movie. Looking back at my post on that one, I comment that he seems to have this efficiency in his kills, just quickly stabbing people and moving on. But not here, things get pretty brutal at times. Like, when he escapes from the Strode house you have this whole squad of firefighters who line up to try and stop him but he just uses their own tools against them, like axes and chopsaws.

There’s something just kinda cool about seeing a whole bunch of people lined up ready for war, even if they are just lambs to the slaughter here. The whole scene is pretty awesome, Michael just walking out of this burning building with his weapon in hand, ready to fight. Then you’ve got this whole team lined up against him, makes Michael look pretty bad ass.

But the whole mob justice thing is neat because I feel like it doesn’t come up too much in these kind of movies just how widespread the fear and panic would be if you had someone like Michael going around killing people. Granted it’s usually isolated to just one night so arguably that’s not enough time to get a panic going but it does open up all these possibilities, like in the original movie (or was it in 2?) where that kid gets shot or run over because he’s dressed similarly to Michael. It’s something that’s touched upon in The Town That Dreaded Sundown as well but most times these kinda movies are narrowed in on individuals or small groups of people and their story so it’s interesting to pull things back slightly and see how this fear grips the whole town.

Though it’s taken in a weird direction when another escaped patient from Michael’s asylum rocks up at the hospital where all these people are and everyone mistakes him for Michael. Even with Laurie and her daughter, Karen, trying to calm them down and explain it isn’t him, the mob are out for justice. They chase this guy to the upper reaches of the hospital where he’s cornered on both sides and figures the only way out is to jump out of a window where he plummets to his gruesome death. The crowd can only look on as his brains coat the pavement and they have this immediate realisation of what’s just happened. It just came across really weird that they instantly go from being seconds away from killing him themselves to being absolutely horrified about seeing this dead body. And there’s this whole introspection from them where they’re pretty much literally like “Are we the baddies?”, in hunting a monster they have somehow become monsters themselves. The magnitude of the situation is undone somewhat by Karen calling out Tommy on his part in all this, only for him to be like “Oops, we’ll get the right one next time.” and she seems happy enough with that and offers to go help him. Unless that’s the writers way of showing that we as a people never do truly learn from these situations and are all too quick to jump onboard the next bandwagon, not taking the time to reflect and realise what our actions have caused.

Speaking of introspection, there’s a moment at the end where both Michael and Laurie are shown to be looking at windows that have this reflection of themselves whilst another character is talking about Michael’s habit of looking out of his sisters window. Only, maybe he wasn’t looking out, maybe he was looking in, at himself. It came across to me as obvious baiting for the next sequel and big finale, like we’re going to get this one last epic showdown between Laurie and Michael to settle things once and for all, but also hinting at this duality and connection between the two. But they also took great strides to walk back all of that family history between the two that became established in the later sequels, which is actually something else I like in a sort of dark and twisted way. I don’t know if they’re trying to incorporate this slightly meta angle where they’re playing upon your pre-existing knowledge of the franchise but here this was never Michael’s obsession; it was Doctor Sartain’s own twisted desire to reunite the two. For all the life that Laurie has spent living in fear, planning for his eventual return and becoming this toxic presence within her own family, it was never about her.

It’s kind of like a metaphor for life, she’s searching for this deeper meaning or explanation to everything but there really isn’t one. It kinda adds to that whole victim impact thing, to Michael it could have been literally anyone else and he wouldn’t have cared in the slightest but this has stuck with Laurie for the rest of her life and impacted everyone else around her. Or, to paraphrase a great man; for her, the day Michael Myers graced her town was the most important day of her life but for him it was...Tuesday.

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Halloween 2022 - Day 27 - Black Sabbath (1963)

And so as you hear these words Telling you now of my state I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late 

Okay, so we’re overrunning slightly but I’d still say that 26 entries within the 31 days is a respectable effort, especially when compared to some of those years where I stopped not even halfway. So, since we’re pretty close to the end, Halloween’s going into overtime and we’re going to see out the full 31 as intended. But looking back over the list so far, there’s certain bases we haven’t covered so far this year. But worry not, look at how efficient we’re being with today’s choice of movie:

Anthology film? Check!

KARLOFF film? Check!

Foreign film? Check!

Film from the 1960’s? Check!

With that last one we’ve now covered a film from every decade spanning from the 1930’s to the 2020’s, the 30’s probably being as far back as we’ll go this year. Maybe one year we’ll try to see how far back we can go. I’ve already seen some of the more notable films of the 20’s in Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari but that’s probably some more in there, lot of Lon Chaney films around that time. I feel like the 1910’s and 1900’s might be a stretch.

We’ve certainly covered a lot of the big hitters when it comes to anthology horror; Creepshow, V/H/S, Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, Cat’s Eye...so we have to look slightly further afield for new entries. Well, I suppose there are the various V/H/S sequels if I wanted something not as original, I hear 94 is pretty good amongst those. Black Sabbath is the work of Mario Bava who is apparently quite the big name in the Italian Horror scene but isn’t one I’m overly familiar with my then again my frame of reference isn’t the best when it comes to this sort of thing outside of being aware of the odd Dario Argento film. Sabbath takes a slightly different approach with it’s different segments being adapted from stories by Anton Chekhov, Aleksei Tolstoy and Guy de Maupassant. I’ve heard of at least two of those! Maybe they were trying to be seen as a bit more highbrow considering they were adapting the works of these well respected authors. Or maybe it was cheaper to take the work of a bunch of dead guys rather than pay someone new to write a script.

Rather than have an overarching narrative as some of these movies tries to do, Black Sabbath goes the simple route by having little intros by KARLOFF himself. There’s probably not many people that could give a sinister edge to a humble title like ‘The Telephone’ but bless him, he manages it. Apparently the running order of these different stories changes depending on the version you see but mine started with The Drop of Water.

Oh, and to address the elephant in the room before we start, yes this was the inspiration for the name of the band.

Bloody hell, Helena Bonham Carter’s looking a bit rough, isn’t she?

No,  this would be a late psychic medium who left grave warnings for anyone that may mess with her belongings after she passed. A nurse is called in to help prepare her body but is drawn by the precious sapphire ring upon the lady’s finger. Figuring no one would miss it, she rips it from the corpse and pockets it, only for strange things to start happening. After closing the ladies eyes, she soon finds them open once more, staring at her. Things don’t get any better when the nurse gets home, with weird noises and the lights going out inspiring great fear within her.

And the sudden sight of the old woman laying in her bed near enough sends her over the edge. There’s something borderline hilarious about the sight of this corpse floating across the room, arms outstretched like she wants to choke this nurse out with this stupid look on her face.

When the neighbours raise the alarm about the screams they hear, the police arrive to find the nurse’s dead body and a strange bruise on her finger where it seems like a ring has been ripped from her finger. One of the neighbours can only look on nervously...

It’s a rather simple affair of revenge from beyond the grave and the corrupting power of greed. It’s like that cartoon, One Froggy Evening, with the singing frog that people think will lead them to untold wealth but only brings them misery. One is left to imagine how far this cursed ring could go, how many victims the old woman might dispatch as one person after another unknowingly takes hold of what will ultimately lead to their demise.

The Telephone is a rather more tangled affair, seeming like a run of the mill ‘THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!’ type story as a young woman, Rosy, is on the receiving end of a increasingly threatening series of phone calls that have the eerie ability to pinpoint exact details on what she is wearing and doing inside her own house.  But as the story rolls on,  more and more details are slowly revealed that raise questions on the relationship between Rosy and the man on the other end of the line, and how they’ve now come to be in this position where the man has promised she will meet her end before the dawning of the morning sun.

Again, it’s a simple story but does meander down a path of intrigue as the possibility of this lady maybe having some skeletons in her closet. It reminded me of Psycho a little bit in that respect, how I went into that movie with this idea in mind of his innocent victim who actually had this more shady background than I was expecting.

The real meat of the movie is in the final segment The Wurdulak, described very much as a vampire but with the distinction that the creature favours feasting on the blood of loved ones. That adds a potential layer of nuance to the vampire mythos, instead of just being a means of sustinence, you could get across this idea that it’s almost an act of love within itself, that the Wurdulak wants to help it’s family by having them join them in eternal life. It does lead to scenes more reminisce of something from a zombie movie, where people have to be talked down, that the creature in front of them is no longer the person they once were, that the right thing to do is put them to eternal rest, even if the idea of putting a stake through the heart of one of your family is abhorrent.

It’s here that KARLOFF takes a more starring role as the family patriarch who returns home after time hunting a local villain. He had previously warned his family to kill him if he returned home after 5 days had passed because it was likely that he would have become a wurdulak. But even though everyone establishes that 5 days have indeed passed, no one seems to want to take on the grisly responsibility of bumping him off.

Even his surly demeanor and dishellved look do little to persuade them to commit this patricide. Why, he even orders his son to kill their beloved family dog after it incessantly howls after his return.  So much dog murder this year.

But that’s nothing compared to his greatest evil...

BAD TOUCH! VERY BAD TOUCH!

KARLOFF is fun in this one, really gets across the ill-tempered and changed nature of this once beloved family figure who has now returned and risks cursing 3 generations of this bloodline. The heavy makeup on his face really underlines some of the crazes expressions he has throughout. This even features a more whirlwind romance than that which we saw in Cat People. That one at least seemed to be suggested to be taking place over a relatively prolonged period of time, here we have this passerby get embroiled in the whole family Wurdulak drama and declare his undying love for one of the women the same night after her husband gets killed off. Geez, the body’s not even cold yet, let the lady mourn a little first eh?

Overall, the film is nothing out of the ordinary with the various stories following similar lines to ones I’ve seen before but it’s always cool to see KARLOFF. It did take me a second to remember the Italian way of dubbing pretty much all of their cinematic work though, apparently even so far as to get the original actors to redub their lines. KARLOFF is doing his voice so I wonder if he had to go back to redub. I’m not sure why they do that or how persistent it was over the years. I could see that for an isolated period if equipment wasn’t up to scratch to record out in the field but they surely can’t still be doing it now? It certainly throws you off for a second when the lip syncing is a little all over the place.

What I will say about the movie though is that it is very visually interesting.  I remember Susperia being the same so maybe that’s just an Italian thing? I think a lot of these movies of the time are similar though in just how vivid the colours are. I know there were different colour techniques going on in the early days of colour films so maybe it’s that or they just had a habit of really ramping up the colours to really sell the whole thing as a concept.

The Drop of Water especially having a lot of fancy scenery, opulent settings and use of filters that run through various colours. Lots of reds and purples in use, the visuals really add to the whole segment.

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Halloween 2022 - Day 26 - Cat People (1942)

In the rhythm of the newborn day You know sometime you're bound to leave her But for now you're going to stay In the year of the cat

Cat People has a rather strange genesis in that someone came up with the title first and just handed it off for someone else to build a story around it. It doesn’t particularly strike me as some amazing title that will get butts in seats but maybe that’s what passed for the creative team back then, just a bunch of people coming up with movie names. It’s a lot of hard work to be an ideas man, someone else can write the film, direct it, score it, edit it...but these guys deserve all the credit for thinking of the idea.

Directing duties would go to Jacques Tourneur, who would later direct Night of the Demon. That’s night of the Demon singular, not to be confused with that movie we looked at the other week. Though we did look at Night of the Demon some years ago and that was fairly dull too. Cat People would later have a sequel and a remake in the 1980’s which had Malcolm McDowell and John Heard amongst its cast. It also starred Nastassja Kinski who had also starred in a Roman Polanski adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I had to read that book in school, lots of implied rape and phallic use of strawberries as I recall.

Cat People tells the story of a young Serbian girl, Irena Dubrovna, living in New York who has a whirlwind romance with a young man, Oliver Reed (not that one). She shares with him a tale from her homeland of the great King John who slaughtered many a peasant after they turned to the dark wizardy of witchcraft and these is said to be a curse that strikes all young women in they turn into cats when the fire of passion burns within them. And we’re not talking Jocelyn Wildenstein here, like into a big cat of some kind, like a puma.

So there’s meant to be this idea that Irena is very reluctant to fall in love because of her fears of the legend coming true, worried that she would hurt the person closest to her. Only, it’s hard for that to come across because when I say whirlwind romance, these guys have met, fallen in love and got married within the first 15 minutes of the movie. The whole thing only lasts 73 minutes so, whilst I pointed at Doctor Sleep’s length recently, this would be an example of a movie that could probably do with more time to flesh things out. I know it wasn’t uncommon for films of this time to be quite short, I’ve seen a few of the old Universal movies that are about the same length or shorter like Frankenstein at 70 minutes, The Black Cat 66 minutes or The Raven at only 61. Irena does allude to some loneliness but it’s easy to dismiss that as her being in a foreign country or just being a bit shy. It would have been nice to expand on this idea and get across a bit more her reluctance to have these romantic relationships.

It would’ve helped the other side of the story as well where it’s very ambiguous as to whether or not this story is real. Certainly everyone thinks its all stuff and nonsense, with the movie setting up that Irena has this compulsion to visit this panther in the local zoo and hints at her letting it out. So when you have Irena’s love rival thinking she’s getting stalked by someone or something, it’s quite alarming to hear what sounds like a big cat’s roar.

Which is actually just a bus braking. Hey, I forgot this was this movie; it’s the Lewton Bus! This is like one of the originators of the jump scare in horror cinema.I wonder if the people behind this would regret their actions if they could see what a tired cliche it had become today.

But again, it would have been nice to actually see more to suggest one way or the other, maybe a slightly bigger body count to get across the potential threat. There is a part later on where the couple have a disagreement so you could potentially have Irena run off upset, end up at a bar where she meets some randomer who then turns up dead the next day.

I suppose you could argue that would dampen the end somewhat that has been building to this possible reveal. This moment does come across really creepy because her doctor ends up forcibly kissing her which, okay, maybe his thought was that he could ‘cure’ her of her delusions by showing her that nothing happens. But the way he talks to her and the way he was earlier trying to convince Oliver to anull the marriage makes it come across like he has slightly different motivations.

In a way these short movies can be helpful during these month long marathons, to be able to quickly breeze through a movie instead of having to think 2+ hours (or 3 in the case of Doctor Sleep) into it but I don’t recall ever having that sense of those other short movies having this problem of being hamstrung by the shortened runtime.  It does seem like there would be potential here for a psychological piece on Irena’s personality, her relationships and how these ‘delusions’ are affecting them, but it all feels very rushed.

Which would actually make me somewhat curious about the remake, it often feels like remakes are only done for commercial reasons, something familiar yet new to bring in that sweet ticket money. Just look at horror, people love the original Jason movie, the original Freddy, Michael Myers...so why keep remaking them? But to take something flawed and give it another chance to be what it could have been, that makes more sense and perhaps that 1982 version could tap into that potential.

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Halloween 2022 - Day 25 - Eraserhead (1977)

Do pencil necked geeks have eraser heads?

I had to double check I didn’t already use that reference in last year’s The Lighthouse post, which luckily I didn’t because it’s obviously far more suited here given that it’s a joke about Twin Peaks which is another David Lynch project. But really, I could re-use that entire post here and it wouldn’t be out of place as the two films are both in black and white, have an unsettling use of sound and something of an unreliable narrator thing going on.

Being that this is a Lynch movie, I’ve been hesitant for a number of years to actually sit down and watch it because it very much feels like one that I will have pre-conceptions of. Lynch is well known for his surrealism which is historically something I don’t get on with. Whilst I have spoken at great length of my appreciation for movies that don’t immediately spell out what’s happening and leaving wiggle room for interpretation or misdirection, stuff like this often goes so far over the line that it just leaves me confused and disinterested in the whole thing.

In a very broad sense there’s not a great deal going on, you have the protagonist Spencer going through a rather awkward evening of meeting his girlfriend’s parents, only to be told he’s Fathered a child with her that turns out to be some sort of abnormal  baby that the pair struggle to look after. I’ve always appreciated Spencer’s look when looking at this movie from afar, I think I dig the big hair.

He’s always reminded me of a younger version of TV’s Frank.

But there’s so much more than that going on with cutaways and strange symbolism going on with a stage performer living behind Spencer’s radiator, weird elongated sperm looking creature and even Spencer’s own head exploding off his body at one point which a small child takes to a factory to turn into erasers. And, no, that’s not an impromptu game of mad libs, that’s an actual scene that takes place in this movie.

Donning my entry level psychiatrist hat again for my low level interpretations, between the ongoing story with the baby, the heavy use of industrial locations and Spencer’s strange collection of dying foliage and Charlie Brown esque barren tree in a mound of dirt, it doesn’t seem like a radical take to say this is a film with themes of fear of parenthood, of bringing children into a world to parents that ill equipped to raise them and into an environment that has been ravaged by those that came before it.

But even if the film confuses you as much as it did me, you can at least appreciate the atmosphere which it has in spades. There’s a very nightmarish quality to it which everything being very off, from the visuals, the bizarre dialogue and cadence that people will have and especially the use of sound. There’s this almost deafening silence at time, where minutes can pass with absolutely zero dialogue but you’ll still have the sounds of Spencer’s radiator, the buildings lift or even the wind as this droning white noise.

And of course the ending which is likely to be the most intense and disturbing thing I’ll see during this year’s marathon, if not throughout the history of this blog. This baby, if it even is a baby, is just so far removed from what you could consider human that I think it triggers that animal cruelty thing in my head. I can watch all sorts of movies where Freddy or Michael Myers might hack people to quivering cubes of meat and not flinch in the slightest but there’s something deeply unsettling to see this innocent and helpless creature suffering.

So whilst this might be a difficult movie to recommend on any plot type level, it absolutely is one when it comes to the other elements and the unique experience one will have whilst viewing it.

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Halloween 2022 - Day 24 - Bad Taste (1987)

Hey, up yours too buddy!

Too soon, movie, too soon...

It’s not everyday we’re graced on this blog with the work of an award winning director, much less an Academy Award, but that’s what we’ve got today in the form of Sir Peter Jackson. Much like year one of this blog and our look at Braindead (Or Dead Alive as it may be known to you if you’re from certain parts of the world), we’re going back to his early days of pissing about with his mates making films just choc full of cartoonish violence. This is his very first feature length film, no less, but certainly does share that same sense of over the top gore and unpleasant sounds affects as Braindead.

Jackson wears many hats in this film; director, producer, writer and even actor...twice in fact! I didn’t even recognise him in the role of Derek, one of a small team of government agents sent to investigate a supposed alien invasion of the fictional village of Kaihoro, which apparently comes from two Maori words of Kai (food) and Horo (village). A fitting name given that it transpires that these alien invaders plan to use the Earth as their own personal supermarket, 4 billion prospective choices for food that they can shuttle back home and use in their homosapien fast food business.

He is much more recognisable as one of the aliens, Rober, though, seen here just casually tucking into the head cheese of one of his dead mates. Where do you think he got a spoon from? Do you think he just always carries one around like Joey?

These aliens are ore like zombies really, a bit dimwitted and slow moving at times and with headshots being the preferred way to kill them. Though, they are a bit more intelligent than most zombies and eventually even start using firearms.

The action here is much more muted in comparison to Braindead, at least from what I recall, but you’ve still got copious amounts of fake blood, projectile vomiting, heads being caved in, guts flying everywhere and arms being ripped off. It really is amazing what Jackson and his pals were able to pull off on such a limited budget of only $25,000. Though, that might need to come with an asterix as apparently the New Zealand film board would later give them a rather hefty grant too. There is a short behind the scenes documentary for this which would be interesting to check out. Seems like Jackson has always been very into documenting the whole production aspect of his films even from day one. I know I’ve got a DVD around here somewhere of his production diaries from the 2006 King Kong remake and I think he did similar videos too for The Hobbit movies.

The movie does really ramp up into straight up action farce by the end with a huge shoot out between these two warring factions but it’s good cheesy fun overall. Just seeing these rather unassuming guys take on these waves of other worldly creatures with their New Zealand accents is rather amusing, but maybe that’s because I watch far too much DankPods with all his off the cuff stories of bogans with delusions of grandeur. Again, from my hazy decade old memories Braindead really did kick this up a notch with the gross out visuals and kung fu priests that kick arse for the Lord, but it’s interesting to see Jackson’s humble beginnings and It really is a marvel what these guys were able to produce with all these different setpieces, props, effects etc.

Including the Popemobile esque car where the driver sites in an elevated position because the normal driver level front window is taken up by four cardboard cut outs of the Beatles. Whoever owns that car must be a real Day Tripper...