Shocktober Revisited: A Nightmare on Elm Street

 editor's note: this review originally appeared in 2011.

Last week the Cap'n stated that "I've seen A Nightmare on Elm Street many times." This is true, but it has fairly been pointed out that I've never reviewed the film. Ever. I reviewed the excellent Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy; I handed off the write up for Freddy's Dead to some guest bloggers (while it makes sense in its own way, the review really only resonates if you'd been in the room during the screening); and I scared you off of the remake, a film I've dubbed "Shit Coffin 2" with good reason. While there's no review for it, one of the proto-Horror Fests featured A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors. The series has been a long-standing part of my (semi)adulthood.

So why no review for the film that started it all? The movie that pushed New Line over from the home of John Waters and Reefer Madness to the eventual home of The Lord of the Rings*? The movie that took character actor Robert Englund (Dead & Buried, Galaxy of Terror) and thrust him into horror movie icon-dom? I don't have a good reason.

The Blogorium is a place where I generally try to cover movies I haven't seen; since its inception, I've attempted to give reactions to movies flying under the radar or to put my two cents in on major releases. I tend to save movies I've seen multiple times for "fest" coverage, but A Nightmare on Elm Street has never played Horror Fest for the simple fact that nearly everyone I know has seen it. The goal of Horror Fest has been to mix in lesser known films with some favorites that didn't get much attention, particularly sequels.

A Retro Review does give me an opportunity to talk a little bit about my history with A Nightmare on Elm Street, and not only the times I did see it, but at least three times I could have seen it, but didn't. Our paths have crossed several times since 1984, when I was five and A Nightmare on Elm Street was released, so let's take a look back after a brief recap of the plot.

Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss), Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) and Rod Lane (Jsu Garcia, although listed as "Nick Corri") are four teenagers in Springwood, IL; separately, they've been having similar nightmares about a gloved killer with burnt skin and a red and green sweater. Their nightmares seem to be bleeding over into reality (literally), and Tina fears for her life. As the teenagers start dying off, Nancy appeals to her parents Marge (Ronee Blakley) and Lt. Donald Thompson (John Saxon) to come clean about the history of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a child molester killed by mob violence who swore vengeance from beyond the grave. Can Nancy stop Freddy from killing all of the children of Springwood in their sleep, or is there no way to protect yourself in your dreams?

By the time I was in late elementary school and in middle school, A Nightmare on Elm Street was on VHS and readily available to kids with parents less judicious in their rental habits. There were a few times where I was at a friend's house and A Nightmare on Elm Street was on, but I opted not to watch it (like most "scary" movies). I don't think I actually watched all of A Nightmare on Elm Street until I was in high school (during the budding horror phase of my geekdom) and I remember two things distinctly: the "joke-y" Freddy is almost wholly absent in the first film, and the "arm" scene (you all know the one) looked really stupid.

The latter isn't really worth pointing out, as it seems to be the consensus opinion of most Nightmare fans, and even some of the crew on the film. The former, on the other hand, was a bit of a surprise considering what I knew of Freddy from popular culture. Whether you watched the films or not, it was impossible not to know who Freddy Krueger was, either from Halloween costumes, appearances on MTV, or in songs like The Fresh Prince's "A Nightmare on My Street." The prevailing image of Freddy I had was a wise-cracking villain, one who delighted in torturing his victims and dropping cringe-worthy puns.

That Freddy isn't really in the first film. In fact, he's "Fred" Krueger for most of the movie, a creepy, malevolent entity capable of striking at our most vulnerable point. He had a mastery of dreams but didn't use it to play into a character's main attribute (or "gimmick," as it increasingly became with the sequels). Most of the dreams, in fact, take place in familiar places (boiler room aside) and rely on one or two lingering images (cutting fingers, a body bag being dragged down a hallway, the goat at the beginning of the film). Glen's death isn't tied specifically to a character trait, but instead are iconic in their own right (the two most memorable, Glen and Tina, take place in or around their bed).

Revisiting the film over the years I was more impressed with the nuance that Wes Craven (The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes) weaves into the film - there's a brief conversation between Rod and Glen that makes it clear they've had nightmares as well, but both are too embarrassed to tell the girls. I also appreciate the Psycho-esque fakeout about who the protagonist is - the film opens with Tina, and certainly seems like the film is focused on her, and not Nancy, up until Tina is brutally slashed from floor to ceiling by Freddy.

I was also impressed by the logical reason why the "adults" refuse to listen to their children; their complicity in Krueger's death gives them incentive to "hush" any investigation of what happened, and why a phantom killer (they don't believe in, by the way) is picking off their children, one by one. Similarly, I appreciate that Nancy is more resourceful than the average "Final Girl"; many of horror's most famous survivors become that way by accident, by default because everyone dies around them. Nancy, unlike Laurie Strode or Alice Hardy, is proactive in curtailing Freddy's killing spree, and her plan to drag him into the real world - a real world laced with home made traps, by the way - beats the usual "run and hide until finally killing the monster" motif.

The film makes the most of a low budget, save for two moments: the aforementioned "arms" scene in the alleyway, and the final "stinger" involving Nancy's mother being pulled into 1428 Elm Street through the door window. The image would be more potent if it weren't so clear that Blakley has been replaced by an immobile dummy and awkwardly sucked into the door.

From there on out, I sometimes have trouble disentangling elements from the first Nightmare and its sequels, many of which are linked by characters or continuing stories (1, 3, 4, 5, and New Nightmare could be considered to be one extended narrative, and if you really push it, Freddy's Revenge). Every now and then I think about showing A Nightmare on Elm Street during Horror Fest, because I don't think its status has lessened with time, and almost everything the remake does is a half-assed retread of the original film, and I'm not showing THAT any time soon. Maybe it's time to finally consider the first Nightmare, the limited but still potent slice of horror, one that appeals to basic fears without the cheap jokes that came later.



* There's an extra on the Nightmare on Elm Street disc called "The House that Freddy Built," focused on this exact narrative, just to make it clear this isn't conjecture on my part.

Shocktober Book Review Revisited: Shock Value

Since we're officially into Shocktober now, the grand month of Horror Fest(s), I thought I'd kick things off with one of Cap'n Howdy's rare book reviews. Today I'm looking at Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. It explores the period between Rosemary's Baby and Halloween, when outsiders made a huge impact on the way audiences experienced horror films, revitalizing the genre and ushering in a new era we're still feeling the effects of today.

 When Shock Value appeared on my radar, the only concern I had was that this might be old hat for the Cap'n. I'm a big fan of that particular era of horror, and have been soaking up books, interviews, and DVD extras about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, Alien, and Night of the Living Dead for years. I'm always interested in more analysis, but I had trepidations that Shock Value might bear no new fruit for a horror fanatic. Fortunately, I was well off base.

 Almost immediately Zinoman surprised me with a story in the Rosemary's Baby chapter, about a Vincent Price appearance on the Mike Douglas show where the horror icon was unable to defend the genre that made him famous (or, perhaps, was not interested in defending horror) from attacks by Dr. Fredric Wertham, the same man who killed EC Comics in the 1950s. I must admit that I had never heard of the debate, or of its impact in the transition from Old Horror to New Horror. Zinoman's coverage of the development of Rosemary's Baby also provides a nice counterpoint to the what Robert Evans presents in The Kid Stays in the Picture, his memoirs of developing pictures for Paramount.

 Shock Value is filled with surprising moments, including the aborted collaboration between John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper that eventually morphed into Halloween. I was particularly fond of the reactions the major figures in New Horror had to each others' work: for years, I suppose I considered Brian De Palma and Alfred Hitchcock to be mutually exclusive - that one simply mimicked the other, so it was (rightly or wrongly on my part) revelatory to hear that the Master had seen De Palma films before he passed (and didn't like them, to wit). Dan O'Bannon's fall out with John Carpenter after Dark Star produces a great deal of animosity on the former's part, especially to the success of Halloween. Sean Cunningham's reaction to Carpenter's slasher film is classic, and the way that Rosemary's Baby formed what The Exorcist became to William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin (along with the extended explanation of how the "Version You've Never Seen" came to be) were all stories I thought I knew well, but Zinoman finds a way to bring a fresh perspective.

 Speaking of Halloween, I'm a little curious about the construction of Zinoman's analysis of the film. Generally speaking, what successfully separated New Horror from Old Horror is the ambiguity of motive from the villains, a reflection of the uncertainty of America during and immediately after the Vietnam War. It's not that element that bothers me, but the way Zinoman frames Halloween - a success in spite of its "sloppy" mistakes. One or two of his assertions sent me back to the film, particularly the breakdown of Carpenter's opening sequence. For some reason, Zinoman chooses to fixate on the perspective shot of Michael Meyer's knife when he's stabbing his sister (a choice that identifies the audience and director's interest rather than the character). However, Zinoman treats this paragraph as though it's the first time we've seen the knife in the film. That wasn't how I remembered it, so I checked, and sure enough...

 The audience is already aware that the (to that point unseen killer) is carrying a knife, and we know what to expect when Michael arrives and his sister recognizes him. The shock of the murder is on her part, not the audiences. Zinoman's point is well made, but it's a sloppy mistake in a critique of "sloppy" moments in Halloween.

 My only other issue with Shock Value is that Zinoman echoes the central thesis of Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls at the end of the book. He arrives at the conclusion that the seminal voices of New Horror peaked in their early years, and have struggled to match, let alone surpass, their original masterpieces. Like Biskind, Zinoman highlights the struggles of many of the creative forces to move forward with any success (highlighting the failure of Romero's projects between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, or O'Bannon's reputation as an intrusive curmudgeon kept him unable to parlay his involvement with Alien to anything until Return of the Living Dead. The controversy surrounding Tobe Hooper and Poltergeist isn't glossed over, either). Wes Craven is given the Scorsese-like pass of the "exception to the rule" because of the Scream series re-invigoration of horror in the late nineties (although A Nightmare on Elm Street is given a lukewarm reaction for its innovative first film and watered down sequels)..

 I take umbrage with this in part because I disagree with the premise of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and Zinoman mostly chooses to ignore the fact that John Carpenter had varying degrees of success in and out of horror through Vampires, not limited to The Fog, Christine, or In the Mouth of Madness. He scarcely "topped out" after Halloween and The Thing with an immediate (or even steady) decline attributed to Hooper and Cunningham and Romero. It makes me wonder whether the curious exclusion of Sam Raimi (save for a brief mention of The Evil Dead director during the "end of Horror's New Wave" portion of the epilogue), and the cursory inclusion of David Lynch and David Cronenberg during O'Bannon's "body horror" chapter.

 Overall, Shock Value has more than enough going for it that I'm willing to overlook minor quibbles like the Halloween analysis or the ambivalent closing. I was initially concerned that the book might be a retread of stories I'd heard in other documentaries (or from the directors / writers / producers themselves in other books), but you'll be pleasantly surprised by the more obscure anecdotes and the depth of insight into some of the heavily covered entries. Horror aficionados shouldn't hesitate to pick up Shock Value, even if you're positive you know what you'll find inside.

Shocktober Revisited: Documentaries - Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors

  (Originally posted in July of 2011.)

 Many of you may not know this, but 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the VHS release of Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, a sixty minute documentary about the first ever Fangoria convention. Held in 1985, the first Weekend of Horrors was a gathering point in Los Angeles for horror enthusiasts, short film makers, and aspiring make up effects artists. Unlike UnConventional, a film I reviewed last year, the Weekend of Horrors doesn't feel sleazy or exploitative, despite promoting Fangoria throughout (it's co-director, Kerry O'Quinn, is actually the creator of Fangoria, along with Starlog).

 Compared to 2004's Unconventional, Weekend of Horrors feels relatively quaint: the enthusiasm of the fans is infectious, with many effusively gushing about their favorite monsters and why they're attracted to horror films. While there are merchandise tables - the site of a surprise appearance by Star Trek's Walter Koenig, wandering around the convention with his son - most of the tables that appear in the film are designed to showcase amateur makeup, monster, and effects work by fans of the genre.


 Like UnConventional, there is also an auction and a costume contest, but the costumes are all homemade and shall we say, less slutty. Instead of auctioning off Tiffany Shepis' underwear, the Fangoria fans bid on a shooting script for John Carpenter's Halloween, and judging by how little other items were going for, I'd be willing to bet someone went home with it on less than twenty dollars.

The main attraction of Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors is the guests of the convention, who range from Wes Craven and Robert Englund (there to support A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Craven-less Part 2: Freddy's Revenge) to a beardless Rick Baker, who brought along some ape effects from Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan. Tom Savini appears briefly during a montage; Elvira answers questions from the audience (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was apparently the worst Movie Macabre film she ever aired); John Carl Buechler does a Q&A for Troll; Steve Miner and William Katt talk about House; Dan O'Bannon talks about Return of the Living Dead; Tobe Hooper appears to talk a bit about his films but also to preside over the Cinemagic Short Film Search Festival, where fans are awarded for their 8 and 16mm films.

With a magazine like Fangoria behind the event, it's no surprise that the emphasis is on special effects makeup, and many of the montages are devoted to masks from films like Friday the 13th and Creepshow (as well as a certain monster Tales from the Darkside fans will recognize immediately). Makeup effects artist Craig Reardon (Altered States, Poltergeist) gives People Magazine reporter Tony Lawrence a quick monster makeover in time for the costume contest. Special attention should also be given to Nora Salisbury, a fan who made her own Freddy Kreuger costume (with full head piece and glove) that's pretty impressive.

 For a sixty minute film, Weekend of Horrors does at time lean too heavily on scenes from films mentioned by guests (I still don't understand why the entire trailer for The Toxic Avenger needs to be there) and it takes a curious detour into promotional territory when Tobe Hooper finishes with the short film competition and begins talking about his remake of Invaders from Mars. There's a lengthy section devoted to behind the scenes footage, which does admittedly find a way to include Stan Winston in the film, but it's a jarring shift in the movie that sticks out when O'Quinn and Mike Hadley cut back to Dick Miller. Why this breaks up the previous montage, which includes interviews with Clu Gulager (Return of the Living Dead, Feast), producer Alex Gordon (Voodoo Woman, The Atomic Submarine), and composer Albert Glasser (The Cyclops, The Amazing Colossal Man), who talk, in part, about Roger Corman, is unclear.

 There's a bit of a "home movie" feel to Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, but in a good way; it feels like a tape made to share the good time had by people there instead of a document of the lurid side of horror conventions (okay, I'll stop beating up on UnConventional), and I have to say it sure seemed like a great place to be in the summer(?) of 1985. People came from all around the country to share their enthusiasm for horror films, to show off what they could do, and to meet their heroes. I give O'Quinn and Hadley a lot of credit for conveying that sense of joy in such a concise package.

Horror Fest VIII (Day Two): All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and A Nightmare on Elm Street

 As some of you have already noticed, I re-posted a review of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane earlier this month, with more contemporaneous thoughts about the film (as much as two years’ worth of reflection allows, at any rate), so I don’t have much more to add. It’s strange how the intervening years (Jonathan Levine made the film before the smartphone was a regular presence in the life of teenagers) make Mandy Lane more “quaint” than it would be otherwise: the choice in music and many choices in editing resemble any of the CW-style “modern” slasher film, but the lack of always connected, social networking makes for strange bedfellows.

 It’s a modern horror movie that isn’t quite modern enough, and not enough of a “throwback” (as loathe as I am to use that term) to feel different. I understand why people aren’t responding to it now, but I’m curious how it would fare in the height of remake-mania seven years ago. I apologize again for not spoiling the end of the movie – this is the third time I’ve brought up All the Boys Love Mandy Lane without directly addressing the ending of the film. To be honest, it’s why I like the movie, and why I think people interested in Final Girls as a horror trope would find it worthwhile. If this gives you any hint to how it ends, Mandy Lane would have beaten Scream 4’s “twist” to the punch by five years, and only been behind High Tension by a year. It’s a newer, if under-examined, development in Final Girl theory.

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Along similar lines, I feel like I’ve written about A Nightmare on Elm Street so many times that I’m not sure what to say about it. I appreciate how grimy Freddy Krueger is in the film, how disgusting and creepy without relying on puns or horror showmanship. Robert Englund is clearly relishing the opportunity to make Freddy (really, it’s more “Fred” in the first film) as sadistic as possible. The more I watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, the more I notice that, frankly, surprise me that I didn’t remember from the last time. To wit:

The “dream logic” of the first film is much more, let’s say “practical” than in the subsequent films. It’s more like actual dreams are than what people might associate with the series (although Dream Warriors did push it in a direction that was almost impossible to come back from). The craziest “nightmare” moment early in the film is a goat in Tina (Amanda Wyss)’s dream that opens the film, and after that it’s largely limited to things Freddy can do: the (terrible) extended arm effect, cutting off his fingers, pulling off his face, etc. When Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) starts experimenting with her dreams, we see simple things, like the door into her basement leading to the boiler room at the high school. It’s more of an Inception level of “dream logic” than what people assume when they think of the series. They resemble dreams we’ve had, where one place becomes another but it seems to make sense in the dream.

 This is not to say there isn’t some nightmarish imagery in Nancy’s dreams – while it’s hard to forget Tina in the body bag while Nancy sleeps at school, I’d totally forgotten about the second time she appears later in the film. Nancy is dreaming and Glen (Johnny Depp) is supposed to be watching her (more on this in a moment), and in the dream Tina appears again, her feet covered with worms writhing around on the pavement. It’s an effectively unsettling image, as much so as the trail of blood Nancy follows in the hallways of school.

 Now, speaking of Glen, it’s worth pointing out that Wes Craven does something in A Nightmare on Elm Street that would subsequently be picked apart and reconfigured for the sequels (and, apropos to this discussion, a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment) that I completely forgot was in the film. Nancy is at home, watching The Evil Dead, and nodding off when Glen climbs in through the window. She asks him to sit next to her while she’s dreaming and wake her up if she starts struggling, which he agrees to do.

 Nancy then enters the “dream world” and is walking down Elm Street, when she turns and asks Glen if he’s still watching her. Inside the dream, Glen appears from behind a tree with to let her know that he is, and then disappears again. With the other films, and also The Simpsons in mind, this is an odd moment, because Nancy is dreaming, not talking out loud, and if Glen is in her dream, there’s a good chance he’s not awake. Now it turns out he isn’t, but they aren’t sharing the dream, so either Nancy imagined Glen reassuring her in the dream or he really was responding to her from the “real” world. I bring up The Simpsons because when Lisa appears in Bart’s dream, that’s how Bart knows she isn’t awake to save him. It’s not something that harms the film – as I mentioned before, I forgot it even happened – but upon reflection, it’s an odd moment.

I also picked up some dumb details that I’d never seen before, like the poster of a cat wearing a Hawaiian t-shirt and riding a trolley in San Francisco in Dr. King (Charles Fleischer)’s office. While he’s monitoring Nancy, you can’t miss it behind him on the wall.

It’s not difficult to spot the palm trees in the background of A Nightmare on Elm Street (like in John Carpenter’s Halloween, Craven is doubling California for the Midwest – Springwood is supposed to be in Ohio and Haddonfield in Illinois), but for some reason I’d never focused on how prominently a palm tree appears in one scene. When Nancy and Glen are on the bridge having a conversation about homemade weapons and giving dreams power, there’s a rather large palm tree right in the middle of the frame. I guess I’d been focused enough on the story that I willingly blocked it out, but it’s really hard to miss.

The last one is just an odd tidbit I picked up, one that only has any relevance if you’ve listened to the Wes Craven / Heather Langenkamp commentary before: during the bathtub scene, Langenkamp and Craven point out that the girl pulled into the tub and trying to escape is a body double. No, fanboys, that’s not a nude Heather Langenkamp you’re seeing. On the other hand, when Nancy is pretending to sleep so her mother will leave her alone, she does get up and change shirts, exposing her bare back to the camera in a shot that is Langenkamp. I suppose it’s a “neither here nor there” addition to the conversation, but I did know because of the commentary that she avoided any nudity in the film, so it was a scene I didn’t remember being in the film (technically it’s not nudity, but it’s a shot that implies it and doesn’t necessarily add anything to the plot).

 Up Next: John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, the middle chapter of his “Apocalypse Trilogy.”

Summer Fest 5 (Day Three): Shocker, The Blob, and Beware! The Blob

 Over the years I've learned that a light day is the best way to close out a Fest. After all of the marathon-ing and late nights, it's good to take an afternoon and kick back with three easy-going films that aren't going to send people away in droves (like a, say, ThanksKilling 3). With that in mind, I selected a Wes Craven movie that's just strange enough to be entertaining, a better-than-it-ought to be "alien invasion" B-movie from the 1950s, and its fourteen years later quasi-sequel directed by J.R. Ewing. Good times.

 I already said nearly everything I have to say about Shocker while covering it for The ABCs of Movie Masochism earlier this year, so click on that link to have a gander at what you have to look forward to when you sit down and watch Wes Craven's failed attempt to kick start another franchise (and you should). The one thing I can't believe I forgot to mention was the electric blue lips! How did that escape my recap last time??? If, for some unfathomable reason, you aren't going to watch Shocker,

 Horace Pinker is on death row, moments away from walking "the green mile" and he's managed as a final request to be given a TV set and a pair of jumper cables. Prisons in the 1980s, I guess. So he's doing some kind of evil ritual and out of the TV comes a pair of floating blue electric lips to grant him his wish (they say something to the effect of "If you want it, baby, you got it!") to turn into Electricity Slasher Man. In a movie where our hero (director Peter Berg, he of Battleship fame) runs into a goalpost and gains a psychic connection to a serial killer, something like electric blue lips isn't actually that out of place, but it was worth mentioning.

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 In the interest of full discretion, there's another reason I chose The Blob for this Summer Fest. Every year, friends of mine who live in Pennsylvania invite me to come to Blobfest, which is a weekend-long celebration of the film. It culminates with a recreation of the scene where the blob invades the movie theater and everybody runs out, and it sounds like a lot of fun. Almost without fail, Blobfest happens right around the same time I'm getting Summer Fest together, so I've never been. Maybe someday, but not yet, so I felt like The Blob should get some recognition here at Summer Fest. It is the perfect kind of summer B-movie experience, and five years in one could argue we're long overdue to watch it. Also, I love the theme song. For good measure I threw in Beware! The Blob, because what the hell, right?

 The Blob is the story of the worst first date ever. If you're being picky, you could the worst first two dates ever, since they do technically go home and then sneak back out. The "they" in that sentence are Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and Jane Martin (Aneta Corseaut). For Jane, it starts out less than great because she's convinced Steve brought her up to Make Out Point to, well, make out, but it turns out he's just really into astronomy and falling stars, so she doesn't even really get to be indignant about his advances. He's too much of a dork to be a horndog. But he does offer to take her back to town and buy her a sandwich after they can't find a meteorite that lands somewhere in the woods. Good on you, Steve.

 They never get that sandwich because the meteorite lands near a cabin where an Old Man (Olin Howard) and his dog live, and inside said meteorite is the titular monster, which promptly affixes itself to his hand. Steve and Jane find him on the road begging for help and take him to Dr. Hallen (Stpehen Chase) and then they go about their merry way, which involves backwards drag racing with some other teenagers. Lt. Dave (Earl Rowe) doesn't really approve of this, but those crazy kids these days, right?

 So we've set up a carefree atmosphere of teenagers being teenagers and police that already have every reason to doubt they're telling the truth about anything, so an audience of twenty aught thirteen should know what happens when the blob eats the old man and the doctor and his nurse. Nobody believes them because the doctor was headed out to a conference and Steve and Jane caught him just in time but we won't know for sure if they made it up or if he really was eaten by a gelatinous space monster until he arrives at the conference (or doesn't). Better sit on that for now. Those crazy kids!

 Well Jane and Steve go home with their respective parents after making statements at the police station but they decide to sneak back out and find out what happened. Meanwhile, the blob continues to eat people, which makes it grow, but it only eats people with convenient excuses about needing to be somewhere else so nobody really misses them. Say what you will about this nearly brainless thing, it knows how to pick victims!

 Anyway I don't want to spoil the rest of the movie because The Blob is a lot of fun in the way that you just don't get with "wink wink" B-movies these days. There's no sense of snark or mean edge to the film, just some basically decent kids trying to save everybody from a space monster before it's too late. There are parents and kid brothers and people who seem like jerks but turn out not really to be so bad after all and the solution to stopping the blob is a pretty good one that you might not immediately think of so that's good too. I hope Jane and Steve went on to have a normal date.

 In reading about The Blob, you invariably find out one of two things: this is Steve McQueen's first starring role and / or that he was 27 when he made it. I guess maybe you're supposed to think it's funny that he's playing a high school student but Aneta Corseaut was twenty four, so it's not that crazy. That was pretty much par the course up through the 1990s (I mean, did you really think the kids in Scream were 18?). He's not quite the Steve McQueen you're used to - in fact, his line delivery at the beginning of the movie is pretty shaky - but he gets better throughout the film and you can see that this is a guy to pay attention to. Before too long he'll be making some really classic movies and then his grandson will be in Piranha 3D. But The Blob is good stuff.

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 Beware! The Blob is entertaining for different reasons, and not always good ones. It's not a sequel in the strictest sense, although it does (SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE BLOB) basically start because somebody brings home a frozen sample of the blob and leaves it on the counter. Other than that and an ending that tries to up the ante on the "movie theater" scene, it's not really related to The Blob at all.

 In fact, it's barely a movie: Beware! The Blob is a collection of vignettes strung together by the barest of narrative-through-lines you're likely to see. Mostly it seems like Larry Hagman decided he wanted to direct a bunch of his friends doing stupid things and then sometimes being eaten by the blob (but just as many times not). The "movie" is a who's who of character actors, and even if you don't know the names, I guarantee you'd recognize the faces: Sid Haig, Gerrit Graham, Dick van Patten, Cindy Williams, Burgess Meredith, Robert Walker Jr., Shelley Berman, Godfrey Cambridge, Marlene Clark and for good measure, Larry Hagman.

 After the blob gets out and starts eating people, we jump from one "bit" to another, involving hippies, hair stylists, cub scouts, and even a naked Turkish man (Tiger Joe Marsh) and his little dog. Most of the scenes are terrible skits (the hair stylist gets a dirty hippie who wants a haircut) that end when the blob eats them, or in the case of the scouts, go nowhere at all. Dick van Patten is nowhere to be found at the very end of the film, but two of the scouts are there to use clacking balls to... I don't even remember. Sorry. There's even a birthday party / psychedelic happening early in the movie, because why not?

 Well, if you can have a blob invading a movie theater, why not a bowling alley? And if it's a bowling alley, why not have a full diner attached to one side and an ice skating rink that's "under repairs" on the other side? It makes perfect sense in the same way that the "spa" in Death Spa does. Since there's an ice skating rink and I technically implied the spoiler to how to stop the blob, I'm guessing you can figure out how the young and less interesting couple manages to save the day.

 If The Blob encapsulates B-movies of the 1950s well, then I guess it would be fair to say that Beware! The Blob captures the vibe of the early 1970s. We're not quite into leisure suits or anything people would clearly associate with "the 1970s", but there are still people who hate hippies and the movie is kind of built on a variety show structure of "guest stars" who show up for no good reason and then go away just as quickly. It's not very good and not as much fun as The Blob, and you should probably never watch them back to back (as we did), but if you're in the mood for a very silly movie that also features the blob in it and you already watched The Blob and / or The Blob remake last week, I guess this is a good option.  It was a light, goofy way to close out Summer Fest, and exactly the kind of movie that works in this atmosphere.

 Thus ends Summer Fest 5! It was a great time with a lot of highs and only a few lows. It was ball hugging, bad science-ing, and Ninja-tastic, with just the right does of audience participation. And now we're only three months out from Horror Fest... yeesh, I need to get the lineup together!

"S" is for Shocker

 Wes Craven's Shocker might not be the dumbest movie that I sat through during The ABCs of Movie Masochism, but it isn't for lack of effort.

 Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files) is Horace Pinker, a serial killer (?) who brutally murders families. He can also apparently escape unseen, even when pursued by the police, despite his noticeable limp. Meanwhile, college football wide receiver Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg, who went on to direct The Rundown*, Friday Night Lights, and Battleship) runs into the goal post during practice and develops the ability to mentally link with Pinker while dreaming. Or something. It might also be because Parker is adopted and Pinker is his real father (SPOILER FOR THE FIRST 40 MINUTES).

 Anyway, Pinker kills Jonathan's adopted family, except for Lieutenant Donald Parker (Michael Murphy), so they track down the killer using his special ability. Just not before Pinker becomes obsessed with Jonathan and murders his girlfriend Alison (Cami Cooper). Eventually even the football team gets involved, particularly Coach Cooper (Over the Top's** Sam Scarber), assistant Pac Man (Oz: The Great and Powerful's "Theodore" Raimi), and linebacker Rhino (Richard Brooks). Pinker is electrocuted but develops the power to leap from body to body using electric pulses, or something, so he continues to hunt Parker while also killing people for kicks. Can Jonathan stop him before he becomes... um... invincible? That's also not very clear. In fact, not much about this movie makes sense, save for the reason it exists.

 It's evident that Craven and Universal wanted Shocker to be the first film in a series because they don't even bother actually killing Horace Pinker off at the end. He's still ranting and raving about how Jonathan had better "never turn on a TV again!" and then the movie just ends. As you'll see below, there are a myriad of reasons that Shocker failed to kickstart a new horror franchise, the least of which is how not scary it is.

 Maybe it's the incongruous heavy metal soundtrack that plays during the worst possible points, or maybe it's Mitch Pileggi's mega-acting from the first time we see him, but after the opening credits, Shocker is devoid of tension. The opening credits only really do anything because Craven is shamelessly ripping off the beginning of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Instead of making the gloves, we see someone building a television set, intercut with footage of war and various atrocities while a news reporter (John Tesh) mentions some unsolved murders. Fortunately for those who can't figure out what this has to do with a TV repairman, the guy building the TV uses a bloody knife as a screwdriver. Whew, I'm glad we cleared that up!

 The cat and mouse chase scenes between Pinker and Jonathan (and there are many) are about as exciting as watching paint dry, which is all the more evident because the dream sequences lifted from Nightmare are sometimes creepy, if not at least atmospheric. So when Craven isn't ripping himself off, the movie is boring or really, really silly. Like, everybody Pinker jumps into also limps like he does, which looks really bad when a little girl does it. I guess you could say that maybe it's supposed to be funny, but I think that Craven was trying to generate suspense (and failing miserably).

 What it lacks in tension, it also lacks in economy of storytelling: Shocker makes all the mistakes we now associate with comic book "origin" stories by devoting most of the film to explain how Horace Pinker becomes a supernatural villain and not enough to him being one. We spend the first thirty minutes of the movie following Jonathan and Lt. Don Parker chasing Pinker around, and the titular character doesn't even "die" until around the 40 minute mark. He doesn't realize that, as a ghost powered by electricity, that he can hide in a wall outlet until the 71 minute mark, and we're 80 minutes into Shocker before Pinker enters the television. That leaves less than 30 minutes of movie for him to go wild in.

 By "go wild," I mean "go from just being a dumb movie with some weird touches" to "being one of the stupidest movies I've seen." It's almost a shame that Shocker didn't take off, because there are so many inexplicably dumb plot elements that I don't know where to begin...

 There are skinned cats and black magic rituals involving Pinker hooked up with jumper cables (this is in his prison cell right before he's going to the electric chair!) and then nightmares that are also premonitions that Jonathan can use against Pinker. But wait, there's more! Jonathan's dead girlfriend goes from appearing in dreams to making a ghostly appearance to fight Pinker with the light of goodness (if it helps, think about the "time arrow" scene in Donnie Darko).

 Things go from "that's just a silly idea" to "oh no, he's not going to... oh yes he is" when Craven sends Jonathan and Pinker into the television to fight. We've already seen all of the stock footage of wars and nuclear explosions, but now we have the added benefit of watching Peter Berg and Mitch Pileggi awkwardly fight as though they're IN the footage. We also finally discover why the local news broadcaster is John Tesh - they interrupt his report about the two of them fighting through the channels. Okay, it doesn't really explain why it was John Tesh (and I'm merely assuming that he was playing himself), but it happens.

  And because that's not stupid enough, they also find themselves in an episode of Leave It to Beaver, an Alice Cooper video, and the movie Frankenstein, before leaping out to fight in the living room of a morbidly obese woman and her family (eating popcorn, of course) so that she can say "I've heard of audience participation but this is ridiculous!" And to top it all off, they jump back into the television to interrupt a televangelist (played by Timothy Leary) who was begging for money. Given the spiritual overtones of good defeating evil, I'm not certain why Craven felt the need to stick it to televangelists in Shocker, but since it's the second appearance in the film, I doubt it's coincidental.

 While I'm talking about the stupid and / or obvious storytelling in Shocker, it's probably worth mentioning all of the electrical / water imagery in the film: Jonathan sleeps on a waterbed which is next to his TV and his vibrating chair. All three are relevant as goodness is symbolized by the water (that's how Alison contacts him after she dies, either in water or emerging from the bathroom where Pinker killed her) and the evil (obviously) by electricity, which culminates in the ridiculous scene where Jonathan's chair turns into Pinker while he's sitting on it.

 Oh, and it's raining when Rhino and the rest of the football team cut the power to the town. You know, symbolism. Wes Craven is a deep dude.

 I have a hard time believing that Shocker was meant to be tongue-in-cheek because it's so bad at it. The actual jokes and one-liners are obvious (for example, when Pinker bites a cop's hand, he says "finger food!") and the more absurd elements are handled in such a straightforward manner that it only increases how ridiculous they are. There's a slightly goofy tone early in the film - especially when Jonathan is at practice - but it goes away for most of the movie while the police are chasing Pinker. After he dies, the movie slowly gets weirder and weirder but maintains an earnest tone. It's hard not to watch Shocker and not be confused as to what the hell you're seeing.

 Shocker's story is like comparing the first Nightmare on Elm Street to the first episode of Freddy's Nightmares, "No More Mr. Nice Guy," which is about Fred Krueger's trial and culminates in him being burned alive. It was the back story nobody needed, just like the first 2/3rds of Shocker. Appropriately, Craven (who wrote the episode in question) borrows "No More Mr. Nice Guy" for Shocker: a cover of the Alice Cooper song (by Megadeth) plays DURING the scene when Pinker is scheduled for electrocution, and then Pinker says it to Jonathan. IMDB has it listed an an "alternate title," so maybe Wes Craven felt it was a nice way to subliminally connect his new horror franchise killer to his most famous. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it didn't work.

 This is not to say things didn't work out for Craven; after unsuccessfully trying to create a new franchise (not usually the best idea), he struck gold with the meta-slasher Scream and turned it into a series that people remember as well as they do A Nightmare on Elm Street. Okay, that's maybe stretching it a little, but for a certain generation he's the dude who brought you Ghostface and not Freddy. Stupid millennials.But the point is that it worked out for him and eventually (as they do with all of his movies), someone will remake Shocker. I may live to eat these words, but I find it hard to imagine that it could be any stupider than the original, which is the only reason anybody remembers Shocker in the first place.



 * Featuring The Last Stand and Red Heat's Arnold Schwarzenegger
 ** Featuring Bullet to the Head's Sylvester Stallone.

Summerfest 4 Recap

 I know, you're thinking "Wait, what Summer Fest? How did I not hear about this?" Well, the truth is that Summer Fest 4's gestation has been long in the conceptual phase and sudden in its transition to reality. The Cap'n didn't really know when (or if) Summer Fest was going to happen this year. After last year's abortive attempt to get things off the ground, this year's marathon of all things schlocky and horror came together so quickly I barely had time to contact friends in town, let alone ones from further away.

 Also unlike previous Fests, I limited Summer Fest 4 to one day, which had its pros and cons. The downside is that, as usual, I programmed more movies than we had time to watch, but the upside is that we ended up with all killer, no filler. I'll get into a breakdown of what we watched shortly, but as Summer Fest 4 was a consensus "hit," I may have finally landed on the formula five years in to its existence.

 Horror Fest was always designed to showcase classic horror films, creepy flicks, and generally crowd rousing flicks throughout horror history. Summer Fest was designed, in concept, to be a looser affair - we would watch horror comedies, B-movies, ridiculous failures, and "what the hell were they thinking?" movies. Summer Fest introduced us to Blood Car, Terrorvision, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, ThanksKilling, and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, as well as noble failures like The Descent Part 2, Uncle Sam, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, My Bloody Valentine 3D, and Alien Apocalypse.

 For a while, I tried to mix in more recognizable horror and slasher fare into summer programming, with mixed results. The Friday the 13th films are a natural fit (summer camp), but The Prowler didn't work so well, the legendary Troll 2 fell flat, and while Creepshow and Shaun of the Dead were fun, they felt out of place. This year, by hook or by crook, I decided to just go crazy with the picks, and as you'll see, they epitomized what's great about Summer Fest.

 The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 - Just to clear things up immediately, this is the sequel to the original The Hills Have Eyes and not the sequel to the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Made in 1984, right after the surprise success of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven apparently decided to cash in on his horror clout by writing and directing a sequel nobody was asking for.

 Where do I start with The Hills Have Eyes Part 2? Should I mention fact that Bobby and Ruby, two characters from the first film, return for no real reason. Bobby doesn't even go back to the desert, so the scene where his psychiatrist tries to convince him to is just an excuse for a flashback to the end of The Hills Have Eyes. Meanwhile, we DO follow the rest of the Yamaha Dirt Bike Racing team (with their "Super Formula" racing fuel) into the desert and down the same unmarked road because they forgot about daylight savings time!

 Ruby (the member of the cannibal family who did escape) is all grown up and Beast (the dog who attacked Michael Berryman's Pluto) join the team for no apparent reason, although it does mean we get a DOG FLASHBACK once the team's bus runs out of gas and they find an abandoned (?) mine. Of course, it's not abandoned, because Pluto is joined by Papa Jupiter's brother, The Reaper. They promptly steal a dirt bike to separate the team and then start killing them. But NOT eating them. No, Reaper likes to kill people and then dump them down a mine shaft (Pluto tells Ruby that before her character just disappears).

 Look, The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 is a terrible movie. There's a major character that is blind and while we may not have been the most attentive audience members, we didn't realize she was supposed to be blind until halfway through the movie, just before she says it. Honestly, it seemed like Craven forgot he needed to make it clear she couldn't see, so suddenly a character who was walking around a moving bus with no problem is groping around the mysterious cabin late in the movie (but climbing down a ladder and up a rope despite not knowing where they go). Oh, and she's also psychic. Sometimes. This is as unnecessary a sequel as they come, but we had a blast trying to make sense of the mess.

 Carpool - A short film I first saw at the Nevermore Film Festival, a young woman is harassed by her boss until he accidentally dies and she tries to sneak the body out. Things compound as witnesses get in the way and her lust for murder grows. I think it's a little bumpy but overall pretty enjoyable.

 The Galaxy Invader - I first heard about this from Red Letter Media, who holds it up as a great "bad" movie, and I have to concur. Don Dohler's ridiculous movie about an alien who lands in the woods near the most dysfunctional hillbillies and yokels Maryland can produce. The alien isn't even that hostile, as he happily leads a college student and his professor into the woods after they rescue him. For a "Galaxy Invader," he (it?) only behaves with hostility when a gang of backwoods psychos try to capture / kill him.

 In truth, the "Galaxy Invader" isn't the most interesting part of the movie, as the perpetually dysfunctional Montague family provides most of the entertainment. Joe, the father with a t-shirt that has three of four large holes in it, chases his oldest daughter into the woods with a shotgun after she accuses him of ripping off her boyfriend's father. And it's not the first time he's tried to KILL his daughter after an argument at the breakfast table. It's a good thing that Joe and his 40-50 year old son JJ find the "Invader," shoot him, and steals the power source for his ray gun.

 Joe decides to sell it to Frank Custor, a dubious guy with a habit of smoking a magic cigar (the size constantly changes), drinking a can of Busch (unsolicited product placement), and wearing a hat that doesn't really fit. Instead of buying it, Custor talks Joe into putting on a flannel shirt (holes still showing) and going to the local watering hole to find more yokels to hunt the alien, who steals the power source from JJ (but doesn't kill him). In all honesty, the nonsensical domestic drama is more of the focus in The Galaxy Invader than, well, a Galaxy Invader, but the cheapness, bad acting, shoddy direction and cheesy special effects make it worth watching after kicking back a few.

 Tub - I don't want to say too much about Tub because it's better that you find this short film online and see what happens when a guy accidentally knocks up his... bath tub.

 Rise of the Animals - I must admit that I'm a little surprised that Rise of the Animals is regarded so poorly on IMDB and by user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes*. After watching the pre-credit sequence, I had hopes that it would be the low budget splatterfest of the Fest like Blood Car and ThanksKilling before it. It's not quite on the level of those two, but Rise of the Animals has a "can-do" attitude, a healthy sense of humor, some amusing puppet work, and sparingly bizarre CGI to keep moving things along. I'd put it up with last fall's The Puppet Monster Massacre as a no-budget wonder that uses the cheapness to its advantage. It has some memorable characters, decent gore, and we had a good chuckle as it continued to tell a story of animals deciding to start killing people, often in horribly violent ways.

 Blarghaaahrgarg - From the makers of Banana Motherfucker, a short I was unable to catch at Nevermore (but Neil has been raving about) comes the story of an exterminator who ends up facing down a, uh, booger monster. A booger monster with a ravenous appetite, terrible digestion, and a propensity for murder. It's a fast paced, gross, and funny, even for people who hate reading subtitles.

 Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies - Ah, The Asylum. They specialize in releasing knock-offs of movies playing in theaters (like Transmorphers and American Battleship) designed to trick people too lazy to pay attention. I call it "Grandparent / Uncle" syndrome, where family member who vaguely remember you wanting to see Transformers and see a movie that looks kind of like what they heard, so they buy it for you. They also were responsible for Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, a former Summer Fest movie.

 To be honest, I don't plan on seeing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter but when it was suggested we watch this instead of Demons, the consensus was "well, why not?" I mean, if it sucked, we could turn it off. We didn't turn it off, but that doesn't mean it didn't suck.

 Sure, I could nitpick the anachronisms (the concrete in Fort Pulaski and corrugated steel in Savannah where the zombie outbreak happens) or make fun of the misuse of the Secret Service or the idea that Lincoln mentors both Pat Garrett and a young Teddy Roosevelt while secretly fighting zombies in Georgia - much to the chagrin of Stonewall Jackson (I am not making this up) while John Wilkes Booth is a double agent in the Secret Service as "John Wilkins." And Porkins, I can't forget Porkins. I could mention the single shot rifles that don't need to be reloaded, or the secret prostitute that Lincoln has a history with (but her daughter isn't Lincolns, never fear, they wouldn't go THAT far).

 But instead, let's talk about the fact that early on it's established that Abraham Lincoln kills zombies with a collapsible scythe he keeps in his jacket. He repeatedly tells his Secret Service that shooting zombies in the head makes too much noise and they should find ways to sever the head, but he seems to forget about the only cool weapon in the entire movie for most of the movie. Lincoln is even shooting at the undead during the climactic battle when they blow up Fort Pulaski to wipe out all the zombies in Georgia and save the union. Then he makes the Gettysburg address, is bitten by a zombie, and sends Booth a letter asking him to assassinate him. That is why we continued watching, because writer / director Richard Schenkman clearly spent fifteen minutes on Wikipedia researching history before making this film. Kudos to him, because it's probably better than most Asylum films.

 But really, what is that saying? It's saying that fake beards go a long way. Yup.

 The Beach Girls and the Monster - No short film in between this time, we went straight for the money! And by money, I mean a sixty-six minute movie with so much padding I think it could have been an episode of Scooby Doo. See, the gyrating beach girls who hang out with surfers and beatniks and at least on ventriloquist are being attacked by a monster who strangles them, slashes them, and then leaves their breathing corpses in the sand.

  Well, one beach girl. There is a lot of jiggling and gyrating, in the tame way a 1965 movie can be, but most of the plot is about Richard Lindsay (Arnold Lessing), the son of Dr. Otto Lindsay (Jon Hall), who also lives with his stepmother Vicky (Sue Casey) and Richard's sculptor friend Mark (Walker Edmiston), who injured his leg in some kind of accident before the movie begins. Richard abandoned his plans to follow Dr. Lindsay as a Marine Biologist and instead bums around on the beach with Mark, and his girlfriend Jane (Elaine DuPont), who is probably much younger than he is.

 Vicky tries hitting on Richard even though he's probably also older than her (but younger than the even older Mark, who looks like he's pushing a midlife crisis) but is spurned. Dr. Otto doesn't like those beach girl "tramps," but mostly stays in the background. In a beach monster suit. SPOILER.

 Anyway, with all of that dramatic tension, we still have time for an extended opening credit sequence of dancing bikini girls (set to the music of Frank Sinatra, Jr.), a gratuitous surfing montage (from a projector Mark shows Richard), another dance sequence, a song and dance sequence complete with bad ventriloquism (he has a fake beard on) and baby-voiced singing, that climaxes with the beach monster killing a guy who looks like Roy Scheider, Mark getting blamed, and then Mark stealing a police car.

 It all climaxes with some of the worst rear-projected driving I've ever seen but is pretty damn funny in a "what were they thinking?" way. Again, not a good movie, but one that was fun to watch.

 A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master - So the fourth Nightmare on Elm Street movie was by far the highest quality film we watched on Saturday night. What does that say? Well, that The Dream Master is actually pretty good anyway, and director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Deep Blue Sea) took what could have been just a generic sequel opportunity and used his mad Finnish powers to make an inventive, visually interesting, sometimes clever expansion of the Freddy-verse.

 Also, it has a karate montage early in the movie, and the guy who does it loses to an invisible Freddy in his dream (budget shortfall).

 So yeah, Nightmare 4 is no A Nightmare on Elm Street, or even Nightmare 3, but I feel like The Dream Master has a lot going for it. After Freddy kills off Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), Joey (Rodney Eastman), and Fake Kristen (Tuesday Knight filling in for Patricia Arquette), he then sets his sights on Alice (Lisa Wilcox) and her friends, but what he doesn't know is that the shy girl is going to be tougher to kill than he expected. Definitely tougher than the girl he turns into a cockroach, the girl with asthma he sucks the air out of ("want to suck face?"), or the guy he invisible karate's to death.

 But seriously, Harlin brings some energy to the film and comes up with some interesting visuals, like the kaleidoscope tunnel, the chest of souls (including naked Linnea Quigley in her only Elm Street appearance), and the dream loop that Alice and hunky Dan find themselves in as Freddy goes roach motel on Debbie (Brooke Theiss). He may even foreshadow Deep Blue Sea by turning Freddy's hand into a shark fin (Deepest Bluest) during an unconventional beach assault dream. It's definitely the most MTV-friendly of the Elm Street movies, but by the time you get to a third sequel I'm impressed that The Dream Master is as enjoyable as it is.

 Also, Nightmare 4 is notable for the soundtrack collaboration between Sinead O'Connor and MC Lyte. I did not see that one coming. Oh, and the Fat Boys with rapping Freddy. I saw that coming.


 So that was Summer Fest 4, which does not have a poster. Maybe I'll come up with one, but in the meantime it was a good time had by all. The cheese factor was exactly what it needed to be, and there wasn't an outright stinker in the whole bunch. Mission accomplished!


* To be fair, Rise of the Animals 3.3 on IMDB is rated higher than The Beach Girls and the Monster and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.

Retro Review: Wishmaster

 Today's Retro Review is a special one for two reasons:

 1. It was the first movie I watched with Professor Murder, and largely the reason we became friends shortly thereafter.

 2. For better or for worse, it's the catalyst for Cap'n Howdy becoming the "trash savant" that you dear readers will assume is going to watch literally any shitty film that comes out. And you're right. Sometimes.

 While it is true that I would rent nearly anything from Carbonated Video that looked interesting for years prior to the release of Wishmaster, young Cap'n Howdy had a slightly more discerning taste when it came to seeing something on the big screen. I stopped hanging out with a friend in high school because he tricked me into seeing Biodome and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls on separate occasions (also, he stole my yearbook and burned my German textbook after borrowing it). To be fair, I also saw 12 Monkeys and Pulp Fiction with said person, so you can understand why I'd fall for two proto-Trappenings.

 It is also true that I saw McHale's Navy earlier in 1997, and while that is barely a watchable film, the large group I went to see it with all went for the same reason: Bruce Campbell. We support our Bruce, even when he's a third banana in a Tom Arnold TV-make.

 What distinguished Wishmaster from those films, and what began a regular trend afterward, was that the entire reasoning behind seeing a movie that in no way looked good was predicated on The Rocky Horror Picture Show experience: see the shitty movie, mock the shitty movie. It's a low-rent version of MST3k, another show I was (and am) a huge fan of, and one that continued for years and years.

 (For the record, we have certain rules in place when we do this: we always sit close to the screen, usually three rows back, so we'll never be louder than the movie. We also try to keep ourselves separated from the poor souls who wanted to see something like Lost in Space or Ghosts of Mars so that we don't ruin your experience of a horrible piece of shit. We don't like to be interrupted during movies we like, so we limit our interaction with said schlock to our own sphere).

 At the time, I knew of Professor Murder* from high school drama productions but didn't actually know the guy. We were actually kind of at odds - the musical he was starring in was preventing our smaller production from being able to rehearse, and we'd received word that he thought our Literary Revue was "stupid." When he leapfrogged from Drama 1 to Drama 3 between the 96-97 and 97-98 school year, we found ourselves in the same class, and didn't really know how to navigate that.

 The solution came when we both signed up for a series of classes on Shakespearean acting from Burning Coal Theatre, who was putting on a production of... Love's Labours Lost, I think with a student who graduated two years before me. As we were the only students from our school (and we were riding with our drama teacher every day), we got to know each other, our senses of humor, and the many ridiculous interests we had in common.

 One day, after getting back early and having time to kill before our rides got there, we decided to walk from high school to the nearby Imperial Theatre (now The Galaxy) to see a movie. And why not see Wishmaster? It was produced by Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street), written by Peter Atkins (Hellbound: Hellraiser II), directed by Robert Kurtzman (the "K" in KNB Effects), and featured cameos by many of the "big names" in horror, and was about an evil Genie. How bad could it be? Very, we hoped.

 And bad it is - I remember we had a nearly constant running commentary about the logic gaffes, bad acting, and the scenery chewing Djinn, played Andrew Divoff. Whether in his Djinn "monster" makeup or his "human" form of Nathaniel Demerest, Divoff was a hoot as the deliciously EEEEEEVVIIIILLLL villain that tricked people into making wishes so he could punish them ironically. There's the girl who wants to be beautiful forever (he turns her into a mannequin), the guy who wants to escape (he gets put into a tank full of water), and the guy who wants to see him "walk through him" (he turns him into glass or something).

 The last two are interesting because they were played by Tony Todd (Candyman) and Kane Hodder (Jason Vorhees), who appeared alongside Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and the voice of Angus Scrimm (The Tall Man) in Wishmaster. Also appearing: Reggie Bannister (Phantasm), Ted Raimi (Army of Darkness), Joe Pilato (Day of the Dead), Danny Hicks (Evil Dead 2), and uhhh... Verne Troyer (Pinocchio's Revenge)! I'd also like to point out something I just discovered, which is that Andrew Divoff was not only the Djinn in Wishmaster, but also Mikhail, the one-eyed Russian from Lost. I did not know that.

 It's a loaded cast (and crew) for a movie that amounts to surprisingly little - it's a slasher movie structure but with a supernatural genie that can make anything happen as long as someone wishes for it. He needs to collect souls or something to become real or take over the world... honestly I don't remember. It's bad of the Cap'n to not go check but let's be honest, there's only one scene that sticks out for me, and it involves Kane Hodder as a security guard who won't let the Djinn get by. The genie says "ask me for something", and Hodder replies "I want you to leave."

 The Djinn, forced to walk away, begins saying "no, no, I have to get inside," setting up the ironic kill. It's hilarious. In fact, here it is (the encounter begins at the 2:26 mark, but you might want consider watching the scene in the police station too, which is also silly).

 After Wishmaster, the Professor and I were on the same page, and we banded together with the rest of the gang to see terrible movies and give them what-for, even if only for our personal enjoyment. It also meant we intentionally sought out movies that were worse than Wishmaster and accordingly earned us a reputation of being willing to see every terrible movie that someone released (in theatres or on VHS / DVD). I cannot say that we didn't earn the rep, but I've been living that down ever since. The Professor? Well, he doesn't really care. He's the reason I saw Satan's Little Helper, Monsturd, and Dinocroc vs Supergator. Then again, I'm the reason he saw ThanksKilling, so I'd say we're even.

 And Wishmaster? Well, there are three more sequels, only one of which I've seen part of. Wishmaster 2 somehow sends the Djinn to prison, so that Divoff can spend most of the movie without his makeup and grant wishes like "I wish my lawyer would go fuck himself," which of course literally happens as the lawyer is trying to get the guy released. Divoff couldn't be bothered to play the Djinn again in parts 3 and 4, and I guess I couldn't be bothered to watch them. Someday... they're probably good Cranpire Movie candidates.




 * I don't use his actual name because of the sensitive work the Professor does, but most people familiar with the Cap'n know exactly who I'm talking about. I also can't claim any credit for the nickname - he earned it while away at school.

News and Notes: Horror Edition

 Welcome to another edition of News and Notes, where the Cap'n catches up on a few things I've been noticing and felt were worth sharing.
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 Far be it from the Cap'n to neglect the fact that October means more horror releases, especially on Blu-Ray, and this year there are some doozies. For example, right now you can buy Basket Case, Frankenhooker, The Frighteners, The Others, The Bad Seed, The Last House on the Left, Torso, Dead Alive, Guillermo Del Toro's director's cut of Mimic, Herschel Gordon Lewis' Blood Trilogy (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, and Color Me Blood Red), The Hills Have Eyes, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Maniac Cop, Troll Hunter, The Phantom Carriage, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and The Ward.

 That's right now. If that's not enough to fill up your queue, Attack the Block is coming next week, along with The House by the Cemetery and The Island of Lost Souls. If you're like me and feeling a bit industrious, you can shimmy on over to Amazon.co.uk and order the Nightmare on Elm Street Collection on Blu-Ray instead of waiting on a U.S. release next year. New Line figured it would be enough to leave Freddy fans with the existing first film on BD and a double feature of the best (Dream Warriors) and worst (Freddy's Revenge) Nightmare entries, the United Kingdom gets the whole shebang plus some new extras (including episodes of Freddy's Nightmares) in a Region Free package.

 Yes, that's Region Free as in "it will play on your PS3 / Blu-Ray player / etc." And so I'm not sounding like a commercial, in the interest of full disclosure I already ordered one which means I paid what was roughly $55 bucks with currency conversion. It won't even arrive for another week and a half at the soonest, but it's worth the hassle for me. If it's available and the same thing I'm going to see twelve months from now, I'll drop a little more for the privilege of having all the Nightmare flicks in one box again.

 I also put a little bit down for Arrow Film's Blu-Ray release of Day of the Dead, the much maligned third entry into Romero's "Dead" series. It's also region free, looks better than the Anchor Bay BD, and has something that no release of Day of the Dead has since VHS - the original audio track. For whatever reason, all of the Anchor Bay DVDs of Day of the Dead had slightly modified tracks that arbitrarily replaced profanity. Arrow Films found the original track and included it on the disc, along with new and old extras, a special effects commentary track (with the "N" and "B" of KNB plus two other crew members) in a really nice box that kicks the old BD all over the road. That I was able to find on the Amazon Marketplace for less than what a comparable set might sell for over here.

I'd considered Arrow's Dawn of the Dead, but the darned thing isn't Region Free, which makes it about as useful as the All the Boys Love Mandy Lane Blu-Ray I bought without reading carefully. Ah well, all the more incentive to seek out a Region Free Blu-Ray player down the line...

 Oh, and just so we don't leave out Amazon.ca, they have [Rec], [Rec]2, and Martyrs on Blu-Ray, which has my attention (although not my wallet.... yet). So there are plenty of options out there for a high definition Horror fanatic with an urge to splurge. Which would be me, but currently isn't: of the massive list above, I only have The Phantom Carriage and Troll Hunter. That Frighteners discs is really calling me though - both cuts and everything from that flipper disc special edition!

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 In order to make this a proper "News and Notes" and not just a "hey gang, this is what's coming on Blu-Ray" I must stress my disappointment in the walloping that the prequel to The Thing is taking. I had a more than passing interest in seeing the film, but the negative buzz is such that I just can't bring myself to waste $10 for something that disappointing. Damn. Well, there's always Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, and Piranha 3DD when that comes out.

Blogorium Book Review: Shock Value

  Since we're officially into Shocktober now, the grand month of Horror Fest(s), I thought I'd kick things off with one of Cap'n Howdy's rare book reviews. Today I'm looking at Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. It explores the period between Rosemary's Baby and Halloween, when outsiders made a huge impact on the way audiences experienced horror films, revitalizing the genre and ushering in a new era we're still feeling the effects of today.

 When Shock Value appeared on my radar, the only concern I had was that this might be old hat for the Cap'n. I'm a big fan of that particular era of horror, and have been soaking up books, interviews, and DVD extras about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, Alien, and Night of the Living Dead for years. I'm always interested in more analysis, but I had trepidations that Shock Value might bear no new fruit for a horror fanatic. Fortunately, I was well off base.

 Almost immediately Zinoman surprised me with a story in the Rosemary's Baby chapter, about a Vincent Price appearance on the Mike Douglas show where the horror icon was unable to defend the genre that made him famous (or, perhaps, was not interested in defending horror) from attacks by Dr. Fredric Wertham, the same man who killed EC Comics in the 1950s. I must admit that I had never heard of the debate, or of its impact in the transition from Old Horror to New Horror. Zinoman's coverage of the development of Rosemary's Baby also provides a nice counterpoint to the what Robert Evans presents in The Kid Stays in the Picture, his memoirs of developing pictures for Paramount.

 Shock Value is filled with surprising moments, including the aborted collaboration between John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper that eventually morphed into Halloween. I was particularly fond of the reactions the major figures in New Horror had to each others' work: for years, I suppose I considered Brian De Palma and Alfred Hitchcock to be mutually exclusive - that one simply mimicked the other, so it was (rightly or wrongly on my part) revelatory to hear that the Master had seen De Palma films before he passed (and didn't like them, to wit). Dan O'Bannon's fall out with John Carpenter after Dark Star produces a great deal of animosity on the former's part, especially to the success of Halloween. Sean Cunningham's reaction to Carpenter's slasher film is classic, and the way that Rosemary's Baby formed what The Exorcist became to William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin (along with the extended explanation of how the "Version You've Never Seen" came to be) were all stories I thought I knew well, but Zinoman finds a way to bring a fresh perspective.

 Speaking of Halloween, I'm a little curious about the construction of Zinoman's analysis of the film. Generally speaking, what successfully separated New Horror from Old Horror is the ambiguity of motive from the villains, a reflection of the uncertainty of America during and immediately after the Vietnam War. It's not that element that bothers me, but the way Zinoman frames Halloween - a success in spite of its "sloppy" mistakes. One or two of his assertions sent me back to the film, particularly the breakdown of Carpenter's opening sequence. For some reason, Zinoman chooses to fixate on the perspective shot of Michael Meyer's knife when he's stabbing his sister (a choice that identifies the audience and director's interest rather than the character). However, Zinoman treats this paragraph as though it's the first time we've seen the knife in the film. That wasn't how I remembered it, so I checked, and sure enough...

 The audience is already aware that the (to that point unseen killer) is carrying a knife, and we know what to expect when Michael arrives and his sister recognizes him. The shock of the murder is on her part, not the audiences. Zinoman's point is well made, but it's a sloppy mistake in a critique of "sloppy" moments in Halloween.

 My only other issue with Shock Value is that Zinoman echoes the central thesis of Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls at the end of the book. He arrives at the conclusion that the seminal voices of New Horror peaked in their early years, and have struggled to match, let alone surpass, their original masterpieces. Like Biskind, Zinoman highlights the struggles of many of the creative forces to move forward with any success (highlighting the failure of Romero's projects between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, or O'Bannon's reputation as an intrusive curmudgeon kept him unable to parlay his involvement with Alien to anything until Return of the Living Dead. The controversy surrounding Tobe Hooper and Poltergeist isn't glossed over, either). Wes Craven is given the Scorsese-like pass of the "exception to the rule" because of the Scream series re-invigoration of horror in the late nineties (although A Nightmare on Elm Street is given a lukewarm reaction for its innovative first film and watered down sequels)..

 I take umbrage with this in part because I disagree with the premise of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and Zinoman mostly chooses to ignore the fact that John Carpenter had varying degrees of success in and out of horror through Vampires, not limited to The Fog, Christine, or In the Mouth of Madness. He scarcely "topped out" after Halloween and The Thing with an immediate (or even steady) decline attributed to Hooper and Cunningham and Romero. It makes me wonder whether the curious exclusion of Sam Raimi (save for a brief mention of The Evil Dead director during the "end of Horror's New Wave" portion of the epilogue), and the cursory inclusion of David Lynch and David Cronenberg during O'Bannon's "body horror" chapter.

 Overall, Shock Value has more than enough going for it that I'm willing to overlook minor quibbles like the Halloween analysis or the ambivalent closing. I was initially concerned that the book might be a retread of stories I'd heard in other documentaries (or from the directors / writers / producers themselves in other books), but you'll be pleasantly surprised by the more obscure anecdotes and the depth of insight into some of the heavily covered entries. Horror aficionados shouldn't hesitate to pick up Shock Value, even if you're positive you know what you'll find inside.