Shocktober Revisited: Tales from the Darkside - The Movie

 This review originally appeared in 2010.

The Cap'n makes no effort to hide my love for Tales from the Darkside, a staple of USA's Up All Night and horror anthology show that frequently gave me the creeps in the wee hours of the morning. After Season Three arrived on DVD two weeks ago, a set that contains quite a few of my favorite episodes (including The Circus, The Geezenstacks, Seasons of Belief, and The Milkman Cometh), I realized that despite my unabated enthusiasm for the show, I'd never actually seen the movie.

I blame this on a handful of factors: when it came out in 1990, I would have only been eleven and still in a phase where horror scared the hell out of me. I've also rarely heard a kind word about Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (it has a 38% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and generally seems to merit [at best] a "rent it"), so while I've seen the DVD around before, I just never bothered renting it.

And let me tell you, I kind of regret that now. It's not a great movie, but it does do two things that kept me on board for 90 minutes: the anthology structure (which keeps it true to the spirit of the show) and a pretty damn good cast (also keeping in spirit of the show, if you look at the number of people who worked on the series).


The structure is pure anthology: three unconnected tales wrapped together punctuated by a "bridge" story - in this instance one of a boy named Timmy (Matthew Lawrence) trying to avoid being cooked by a witch (Deborah Harry). The stories are vintage Darkside: a killer mummy doing the bidding of a meek college student; a deadly cat threatens an eccentric millionaire and a hit man; a gargoyle spares the life of an artist - but at a price.

I've read in a few places that Tales from the Darkside: The Movie fails to really take the TV show forward into a cinematic presentation, but I'm not really sure that's the point. While it's true that it sticks to fairly limited locations with small casts and limited (although at times pretty good) special effects, broadening the scope isn't really going to do anything but make Darkside like any other anthology film. One of the strengths of the show was the fact that it had a limited budget, and within that they managed to foster a sense of dread and claustrophobia for the stories. There is "no escape" for these characters, and in some ways I think that the movie does replicate that nicely while still benefiting from higher production values.

The cast is also more interesting to me now than I think it would have been twenty years ago: at the time, I supposed that Christian Slater (Heathers, Pump Up the Volume), Deborah Harry (Videodrome, Hairspray), and Rae Dawn Chong (Commando, Soul Man) would have been the big "names" for the film, but the movie also features James Remar (Dexter, Ratatouille), David Johansen (Scrooged, Married to the Mob), Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights, Far from Heaven), Robert Klein (Primary Colors, Jeffrey), William Hickey (Wise Blood, Prizzi's Honor), Mark Margolis (Breaking Bad, The Fountain, Oz, and oh, a dozen other things you've seen) and Steve Buscemi (I shouldn't even need to tell you). It's a nice combination of well known character actors - some of whom were on the show - and up and comers that would be better known later.

The stories are pretty good too, particularly the last one ("Lover's Vow"). Even if you can figure out the "twist" (and it really isn't that hard), there's a surprising poignancy I wasn't expecting from a low budget horror film. The first segment ("Lot 249," based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story) is also nice, although it relies pretty heavily on arcane explanations of scrolls and translations that dull the last "shock" a little bit. What it lacks there, it makes up for with solid performances from Buscemi, Slater, and Moore and some inventive mummy kills.

If there's a weak link, it may be the too-long-for-it's-own-good middle section (Stephen King's "Cat from Hell", adapted by George Romero). It's not that "Cat from Hell" isn't interesting in its own way, it's just that the story is broken into two sections: Millionaire Drogan (Hickey) relating the story of the cat to Hit Man Halston (Johansen), and Halston stalking the cat in a mansion with almost no lightning. The first half sets things up nicely, and you can tell that Romero's relationship with King on Creepshow had some effect on the flashback structure (while Romero didn't direct the film, I strongly suspect the use of a deep blue to indicate "flashback" came from the same comic-book formula used in Creepshow).

The problem is that once we get to Halston hunting the cat alone, it's pretty clear what's going to happen, so the drawn out hunting gets a little repetitive. It's saved by what may be the grossest gore effect in the entire film (involving the cat crawling into Johansen's mouth, down his throat, into his stomach, and back out), but by the end it's almost too little, too late. The wraparound story starts out strongly - with Timmy in a cage trying to prevent a very modern witch from cooking him in her suburban oven - but fizzles out at the end by trying to not play into Darkside audience expectations. It's not the best way to end the film, especially after a great third act anchored by Remar and Chong.

Gripes aside, I still don't quite understand why people dislike this movie so much; it's closer in spirit to the show than either Tales from the Crypt movie (and to some degree, the earlier anthology version Amicus put out) and considering that it's competition in that era was Campfire Tales, Creepshow 2, and Grim Prairie Tales, I'd say Darkside works better as an anthology movie. The genre is probably better known for having a lot of "good" entries and only one or two really "great" films, and I'd certainly say that Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is on the same page as The House that Dripped Blood, Asylum, or Trilogy of Terror. It's probably better than Cat's Eye, Quicksilver Highway and Twilight Zone: The Movie, if not up there with Doctor Terror's House of Horrors, Tales from the Crypt, or From Beyond the Grave.

If you like the show, then the Cap'n feels like you'll appreciate the step up in production value of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, especially because it doesn't stray too far from what made the series work. The film has a good cast, limited - but impressive - gore, and two of the three stories were better than I expected they'd be. So count me as one of the 38% that's "for" Tales from the Darkside: The Movie; it worked for the Cap'n.

Shocktober Revisited: Death Bed - The Bed That Eats

 This review originally appeared in 2010. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is also currently available on Blu-Ray from Cult Epics, with some nice supplementary features.

 Tonight I watched Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. This film, shot in 1972, finished in 1977, and never officially released until 2002, is by no means a "good" film. What it is, however, is a film that manages to combine woeful ineptitude with a handful of inventive - albeit stupid - tricks to create a film that, while awful, is imminently watchable.

 To set the stage, listen to this portion of Patton Oswalt's cd "Werewolves and Lollipops" and join the Cap'n on the other side:



Are we all back? Cool.

 The first thing I need to mention is that despite what Oswalt says, the movie is actually not titled "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People", because the Death Bed eats a lot more than people. In fact, because the Death Bed enjoys toying with its victims so much, it will often eat anything on the bed before it eats a person.

 For example, in the opening scene, the Death Bed eats an apple, drinks a bottle of wine, and then empties a bucket of fried chicken in order to confuse the couple making out next to their food. No, really. Then the death bed closes its curtains and kills the couple off screen, just so we don't quite know what happens to people.

 What we do know is that the Death Bed eats in a way I was not expecting. Yes, it's true, when I saw the name "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats," I just kind of assumed that it created a mouth out of the mattress and baseboard or something like that. Oh no, not this Death Bed. Writer / Director George Barry had a much better idea: digestive fluids.

 That's right; when the Death Bed starts eating something, the person / food object / luggage is covered with yellow bubbles, and then falls into the bed, where the camera cuts to one of two tubs behind yellow glass. This is the clever part: sometimes what we're seeing is food dropped into acid, so that you can clearly see it eating away.

 Other times, we just see skeletons, people, blood, or other objects in regular water. Either way, we're meant to assume this is the inside of the Death Bed. The other clever thing Barry does is to design a bed that has a mattress clearly two or three feet above the floor, so that audiences would theoretically be confused as to how the Death Bed worked.

 Believe me, that's not what's confusing about Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. Everything else is confusing: almost every character narrates part of the film, and there are flashbacks within flashbacks that span.... maybe hundreds of years? It's hard to say. Basically, this demon has sex with a girl on some bed in the middle of a field, but she lives and the demon bleeds on the bed. The demon goes to sleep inside of a tree and the girl dies but doesn't really die, so she's just lying half dead / half alive in a grave that's waaaaayyy to close to a lake.

 Meanwhile, the Death Bed moves into a mansion, then out of a mansion, then back in the mansion, and then to the cellar. Then at some point the mansion is destroyed and only the cellar remains. According to a newspaper - and the narration of a dead artist who lives behind his painting and talks to the Death Bed (don't ask) - thousands (THOUSANDS) of people are killed by the Death Bed between when the girl dies in 1897 and 1977 when I guess the movie takes place.

 But mostly we're asked to follow these three girls who apparently have the property for the weekend (or something). One of them is kinda loopy and is quickly eaten by the Death Bed; the other scares the Death Bed so it holds her prisoner; the last girl uh... well, let's just say she's there to explain how the Death Bed grabs a suitcase earlier in the film.

 Actually, the first girl isn't really "quickly" eaten by the Death Bed, because first it decides to play some dumb "choking game" involving her crucifix necklace, then her skull magically appears outside of the cellar underground and sprouts a rose bush. No, really.

 I'd say more than half of the film's 77 minute running time is devoted to the history of the Death Bed, the demon, the dead girl who isn't dead, or the stupid artist that hates the Death Bed but benefits from it murdering people. I don't really know why; maybe because he painted the Death Bed before letting it eat him...

 When that isn't going on, the brother of one of the girls (you kinda assume it's the loopy one who dies first, but then it turns out to be the one the Death Bed is scared of) shows up in time to be trapped in the cellar.

Oh, and this happens:


 I know it sounds like the Cap'n spoiled practically everything in the movie, but I can't begin to tell you how weird Death Bed: The Bed That Eats gets. This synopsis doesn't come close to capturing how bizarre and arbitrary this movie is, and I didn't even get to the why the Death Bed eats the suitcase (hint: there's Pepto Bismol in the suitcase. Seriously.).

 George Barry recorded a comparably arbitrary and inane introduction to Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, which ends with him essentially saying "go ahead and watch it because it's too late to return the movie," but he doesn't need to do that. Patton Oswalt might sell you on checking it out, but Death Bed will keep you watching well beyond the opening credits. Oh crap, I didn't even mention how it's broken up (by screen titles) into meals of the day.

See Death Bed: The Bed That Eats as soon as you can, and with as many people as you can find. I assure you it's worth your time.

Shocktober Revisited: Sisters

 This review originally appeared in 2010.

 Sisters, a film that arguably is the first time the signature "style" of Brian De Palma is on display, is also a precursor to his "homages" to Alfred Hitchcock*, like Dressed to Kill and Body Double, cobbling from a number of the "Master of Suspense"'s films.

 Danielle Blanchon (Margot Kidder) was born half of Siamese twins, with her sister Dominique. After being separated, Danielle pursued a career in modeling and acting, appearing on game shows like "The Peeping Tom Show" (which opens the film in a curiously race-baiting manner, both for the contestants and the audience). When Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson) avoids the temptation of watching a "blind" woman undress, he wins a dinner for two to the even less politically incorrect "African Room" and invites Danielle (the "blind" woman) to come along (Danielle wins a set of knives). Aside from an awkward run-in with her ex-husband, Emil Breton (Bill Finley), the date goes swimmingly, and he accompanies her home to Staten Island.

 After a night of heavy petting, Phillip overhears Danielle and Dominique having and argument and accidentally knocks her medication into the sink. Phillip runs out to find the twins a birthday cake, and comes back only to be (SPOILER, I guess) stabbed in the groin by Dominique, and then viciously sliced up before scrawling "HELP" on the window in full view of investigative journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt). Collier becomes obsessed first with proving the murder happened, then on uncovering the "true" story of the Blanchon twins, enlisting the help of private detective Joseph Larch (Charles Durning). What is Breton's actual relationship to Danielle and Dominique? Why aren't the police interested in the murder? And what is really going on at the institute that the Blanchon twins grew up in?

 I don't feel bad about ruining the death of Phillip Woode because if you've seen Dressed to Kill, you have some idea how the first thirty minutes of Sisters is going to play out. Hell, if you've seen Psycho, you know how both of them are going to play out, but sticking strictly to De Palma films, Dressed to Kill is likely better known than Sisters, which plays out like a grindhouse-friendly warm up for his more direct Psycho homage.

 But it isn't just Psycho that gets the nod in Sisters: there's also Rope, Rear Window, Frenzy, and a strange running gag akin to The Trouble with Harry involving Woode's final resting place - and the film's MacGuffin - a fold out couch-bed. The last shot, in fact, echoes the futility of the MacGuffin, as Joseph Larch (the Sam Loomis /Lisa Fremont stand-in) sits perched on a telephone poll, spying on an abandoned couch in a comparably abandoned Canadian train station, never to be claimed.

If it feels like I'm spoiling a lot of Sisters, really I'm not; I deliberately left out the film's "twist," which shouldn't be difficult to figure out given De Palma's penchant for Hitchcock plot turns, and I'll dance around the hallucinatory third act, which takes place in the institution and intentionally echoes Freaks or The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in its dream sequences. It's placement in the film is rather jarring, considering the great technical lengths De Palma goes to earlier in the film (including not one, but two intricate split screen sequences), and nearly derails the picture. It kicks the Freudian overtones into overdrive and drastically switches gears from an exercise in intertextuality into an overcomplicated bundle of psycho-mumbo-jumbo before returning to a by-the-numbers murder mystery.

Which is not to say that critics with a psychoanalytical bent won't have a field day with Sisters (as they do with virtually all of De Palma's films): the almost literal "castration" of both male leads (and a more figurative form for Larch and Arthur McLennen [Barnard Hughes**], the reporter who broke the twin story) is consistent throughout the film. Dominique seems to be triggered by arousal and her weapons are always phallic (a kitchen knife, a scalpel), and Collier's general disdain for men (and her overburdening mother) eventually point her towards a safe, if unsatisfying, end.

Sisters is a bit sloppy around the edges, lacking in much of the precision evident in later Brian De Palma films, but it has a scrappy quality to it that keeps the film watchable when it teeters on incomprehensibility. It doesn't hurt that Kidder is very good as Danielle and Dominique, and Salt carries most of the film as the truth obsessed Collier. Wilson, Finley, and Durning are also believable in mostly thankless roles, and when De Palma is on, the film crackles with suspense. It's easy to see in Sisters the traces of his later, superior films, as well as his interest in incorporating Hitchcockian themes and images early on. As a horror film - which I suppose is technically why it's included this month - you could do worse, although Sisters is probably going to appeal to cinephiles more than casual viewers.

*edit* In my haste to put this up, I forgot about the Cranpire's favorite character, who will be referred to only as "The Midnight Gardener," who so inexplicably a plot device that I must assume he's a direct reference to another film. Kudos to you if you identify it in the comments!

* The debate rages on whether these are homages or rip-offs, and I don't really want to get into it here. For plenty of starting points, I refer you to Google.
** If the name doesn't ring a bell, Hughes' voice should automatically ring a bell, particularly if you remember Dumont in Tron or Grandpa in The Lost Boys.

Shocktober Revisited: The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror (I-XXIV)

 This originally appeared in TV Talk as two parts in 2011.


  I am both old enough to remember a time before The Simpsons and still young enough not to have understood its impact on television or, eventually, on the show itself. At the time, anyway. Now it's easy to look back and understand why I stopped watching the show around season 12, then would check in sporadically, only to eventually give up around season 17 or 18. The show just wasn't that funny anymore. A brief flirtation with The Simpsons Movie and the show's shift to HD collapsed midway through the Blu-Ray of season 20, and I'm fairly content saying that I don't watch The Simpsons anymore. They recycle their own jokes now, unironically aware of what South Park already knew: "The Simpsons did it!"

 You can actually trace the downward trajectory through the first ten Treehouse of Horror's (which, oddly enough, are all called The Simpsons Halloween Special on the title card, but not on IMDB or the boxed sets). For those not familiar with the concept - in season two, The Simpsons introduced a yearly Halloween special. It was always a triptych, and they all typically involve the following: 1) a Twilight Zone redo, 2) a film parody, 3) a literary interpretation, 4) Some variety of social commentary (this happens increasingly as time goes by).

 People tend to be hard on the first few seasons of The Simpsons, but the first Treehouse of Horror isn't actually all that bad: there's "Bad Dream House," a Poltergeist/Amityville homage; "Hungry are the Damned," a Simpsonized twist on "To Serve Man," and an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," wrapped around by a story of Bart and Lisa trying to scare each other.

 From there on out, there are a number of great moments: send-ups of King Kong, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Fly, The Omega Man, Godzilla (kind of), and The Indestructible Man; versions of The Monkey's Paw, Frankenstein, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Dragonwyck; and Twilight Zone episodes Little Girl Lost, It's a Good Life, Living Doll, Terror at 20,000 Feet, and The Little People.

 What I noticed though is that there's a steady decline starting with Treehouse of Horror VII (season 8), which stands out for an otherwise pretty stellar season (Hank Scorpio, Mr. Sparkle, Larry Burns, the Insanity Pepper episode): I could have sworn the "Hugo" evil twin segment happened later in the series' run, the "Little People" segment runs out of steam, and the Bob Dole / Bill Clinton Kodos and Kang story is a non-starter. It hints at the dull-witted political commentary to come, reaching a nadir in the late 2000s with a "War of the Worlds" / Iraqi Invasion segment.

 Treehouse of Horror's VIII, IX, and X are all hit and miss, but indicate a downward trend: for every "Homega Man" and "Fly vs. Fly," there's a pointless cameo by Jerry Springer or Regis Philbin (the Springer being a serious low point in the show's pop culture commentary), and things just fall apart in season 11. Again, I'm a little surprised by this because while it's nowhere in the same league as season 8, the next-to-last season of The Simpsons I watched entirely had at least given up on a semblance of plot, instead trying to out-surreal itself with each successive episode.

 It turns out that when that's the case, when making Santa's Little Helper say "Chewy?" and introduce Tomacco into the mix, that a Treehouse of Horror is going to struggle in comparison. Not only is it the first time the show directly references Kodos and Kang as not fitting into the Halloween milieu (something they would continue to do from what I've seen), the segments just aren't any good. The parody of I Know What You Did Last Summer sputters to a conclusion and is more fixated on the developing "Jerkass" Homer that characterizes seasons 12-onward. "Desperately Xeeking Xena" is a dumb comic book parody that also doesn't know how to end, so it settles for random: see, Xena can't fly, but Lucy Lawless can! That's the joke! The only thing funny about the "Y2k" segment comes in retrospect: notice Mark McGwire and Mel Gibson on the "best of humanity" rocket.

After Treehouse of Horror X, I can only say I remember parts of XI and XII: I'd honestly thought "Day of the Dolphins" came sooner than it did, the Ghost Dad parody doesn't stir much other than Homer dying on a piece of broccoli twice, and I have vague memories of Pierce Brosnan as the voice of a house that hates Homer. I don't recall the Harry Potter parody at all. From there on out, I understand they've spoofed Transformers, 28 Days Later, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, The Dead Zone, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Most Dangerous Game, A.I., The Blob, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Twilight. Mmmhrm...

Believe me, I'd love to jump on them for more movie parodies, but going back and looking at it, the Bram Stoker's Dracula send-up was right after the movie came out, and they weren't wildly removed from A Nightmare on Elm Street's sequels at the time either. What I can say is that I laughed less and less from Treehouse of Horror VI to X, and I laughed quite a bit during VI. The episodes are a fine time capsule of where The Simpsons was, what the writers found amusing, and which elements were emphasized - story, character, parody, or randomness.

 At a certain point, I simply stopped watching The Simpsons - it was likely in the early 2000s, when the repetitiveness of the stories became too taxing and I just gave up. Every now and then, I'd notice a Treehouse of Horror episode (in particular, ones that aired after October), but didn't pay them much mind. However, it seems unfair to start reviewing these episodes and not try to cover them through the present, so the Cap'n soldiered on. I was left with a "good news, bad news" scenario: the good news was there were flashes of my favorite Treehouse of Horror's, but the bad news was they were often fleeting, and a rarely did one of them lasted for an entire segment of its episode.

 Things get off to a shaky start in Treehouse of Horror XI with a parody of the Bill Cosby movie Ghost Dad, but evens out with the final segment, the aforementioned "Night of the Dolphin," which manages to fit in nods to Jaws and The Birds and has a fitfully dark ending. The middle segment, "Scary Tales Do Come True," is symptomatic of a problem that plagues the latter Treehouse entries: many of the parodies are tangentially (at best) tied to horror.

  A Hansel and Gretl meet other fairy tales would make sense in the context of other Simpsons anthology episodes (which have covered works of literature, myths, or Biblical stories), but it begins a trend of moving away from Twilight Zone stories and horror films to other parodies - some of which don't even make sense. But Transformers? Mr. and Mrs. Smith? The Harry Potter spoof doesn't even get a pass because if you took that, "Scary Tales Can Come True," and "Four Beheadings and a Funeral", a Sherlock Holmes / Jack the Ripper story, and put them into their own anthology.

  I'm more willing to give the Mad Men-esque spoof "How to Get Ahead in Dead-vertising" because it at least continues the trend of zombie celebrities, even if it is just a variation on the Homer the Grim Reaper segment from XIV. However, "Bartificial Intelligence" doesn't make any sense in a Treehouse of Horror, and a Golem story (like "Hex in the City") eventually shifts from possibly horror related to cheap ethnic jokes. A Fantastic Voyage (really?) spoof turns it self around into a variation on Treehouse of Horror II's "Homer and Burns share a body" joke, followed by a song-and-dance vaguely reminiscent of the "Bart Simpson's Dracula". "The Ned Zone" never really goes anywhere, and "Married to the Blob" starts great but falls apart long before Dr. Phil appears as himself. A Tales from the Crypt-style opening sequence falls apart as soon as Smithers appears, which is a shame.

 The nadir of the latter Treehouses is"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid," a segment that seems to be a take on Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" hoax, but then devolves into a boneheaded (and woefully unfunny) critique of the War in Iraq, with Kodos and Kang arguing about who said they would be "greeted as liberators" and ends with an awful "hearts and minds" gag. Of course, if you like Kodos and Kang, then stay away from "E.T.: Go Home" which seems promising but quickly goes south.

While there are some serious lowlights, it is fair to mention that there are some sporadically clever segments: there's the spot-on Hitchcock homage "Dial 'M' for Murder or Press # to Return to Main Menu," a pretty good take on Dead Calm (although I can't imagine most fans getting that reference) marred only by a pointless A Clockwork Orange reference ("Simpsons did it!"), the Twilight parody actually has a few good jokes, as does Pierce Brosnan's evil house in XII. While I don't love "Frinkenstein", it was amusing to hear Jerry Lewis as Professor Frink's father gleefully collecting organs at the Nobel Prize ceremony. "The Island of Doctor Hibbert" and "Survival of the Fattest" are pretty good, and the 28 Days Later "tainted Krusty Burger" segment is great but drops the ball at the end.

 The closest thing other than the Hitchcock segment is an almost perfect send-up of Charlie Brown cartoons called "It's the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse." For a while, it sustains the animation style, but overuses a few obvious gags (Marge's trombone, for example) and breaks the tone with Nelson and the bullies before halfway redeeming itself with a racist pumpkin ("all pumpkins are racist; the difference is I admit it!"). The Grand Pumpkin and Tom Turkey's screams of "Revenge!" still make me chuckle.

 At times, the choices of Treehouse of Horror movie references boggles the mind, as is the case with XXII, which opts to parody 127 Hours and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, turning the latter into a series of fart jokes involving an incapacitated Homer. It then closes on a pot shot at the already forgotten Spider-Man Broadway musical. The final segment turns Ned Flanders into Dexter in "Dial 'D' for Diddly," which I guess they chose the title for after forgetting they'd already used that Hitchcock reference. In truth, I'd just as rather not mention Treehouse of Horror XXIII, which I had to look up to remember - the Paranormal Activity is borderline unbearable, and the Back to the Future-inspired "Bart and Homer's Excellent Adventure" doesn't remotely qualify as horror related. The inclusion of a Mayan calendar joke to open the episode and a totally forgettable "black hole" opening segment are best left to be recalled
fuzzily.

 Perhaps the most notable element of Treehouse of Horror XXIV is the extended opening directed by Guillermo Del Toro: it manages to include references to all of his films (closing with a couch gag that ties directly into Pan's Labyrinth) and a number of horror films that influenced him. It does set the tone for what is (at times) a disturbingly violent episode, perhaps no more so than during "The Fat in the Hat," a Dr. Seuss inspired story of trick-or-treating. Take your pick at what's more upsetting that Homer as the titular character does, but I think killing Mr. Burns (as a vulture) and feeding him to the homeless (uncooked) might do it for me. Or skinning Moe and wearing him as a coat. It's surprisingly dark, even for The Simpsons. Comparably speaking, the parodies of Freaks and The Thing with Two Heads are tame, if also violent. Unfortunately, "Dead and Shoulders" is likely to remind you of not one, but now two other similar stories (Treehouse of Horror II and XV).

  Watching the back stretch of the Treehouse of Horror episodes, I can see many of the things I've noticed while popping in on The Simpsons over the years after no longer being a regular viewer - jokes are periodically funny, but often are followed by something that reminds me of a better Simpsons episode. The "jerkass" phase of Homer Simpson is abundant in many of these episodes, and it's more grating than hilarious. The pop culture references become more obvious and get lazier as time goes on, and much of the sharp writing of earlier years is undermined by lazy shortcuts or, worse, an inability to stick the landing. While I don't plan on watching the show regularly again, it was nice to catch up on what used to be a Halloween institution, and I'll try to catch XXV (airing this weekend) to see if an upswing is ever in the cards. Call me hopeful - it might be...

Shocktober Review: In the Mouth of Madness

 True story: the Cap'n has often mentioned, but never officially reviews John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. There's no good reason why I haven't; it was on my "Top Ten Horror Movies" list, I played it for college students during a pre-Horror Fest III event, and generally speaking I think of it fondly. Hell, when I picked up the Blu-Ray, I thought I'd throw it on just to check out the picture quality and ended up watching all the way until Sutter Cane first appears. The phrase "this is reality!" comes up frequently in conversation with friends (to be fair, we talk about Lovecraft quite a bit). For its twentieth anniversary, it only seems fair to actually talk about In the Mouth of Madness, my second favorite entry into Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy."

 Many years ago, back in the early days of the internet, I remember going to an H.P. Lovecraft fan site and looking at the "adaptations" section, only to find that the entry for In the Mouth of Madness goes out of its way to insist that Carpenter's film is in no way "inspired" by Lovecraft and was clearly more influenced by Stephen King. Because, uh, King is mentioned by name in the film? Because it sort of sounds like his name? I hadn't laughed that hard since a Cliff's Notes knock-off insisted that MacBeth's "parade of Kings" was in no way Shakespeare flattering the royalty because "he was above such things." So In the Mouth of Madness is not directly lifted from a Lovecraft story (true), but it shares locations, character names, and thematic elements that come from his stories. Let's not forget the direct passages from "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Haunter in the Dark" attributed to Cane. It's as clearly tied to the concept of "cosmic horror" as Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy is, and that doesn't get brushed away into the broom closet.

 Perhaps it's because In the Mouth of Madness is Carpenter at his most unabashedly pulpy (at least, until Vampires). This is the last of his great run that began with Halloween and came crashing down with Village of the Damned (the less said about Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, the better), but as I mentioned in the Horror Fest III recap, it's "quaintly 90s." It represents the last of an era of "contemporary" horror films that don't have any version of cell phones, the internet, or digital anything. I'm not actually sure how you would make In the Mouth of Madness today, as some intrepid Sutter Cane fan would have easily found (and posted) the map to Hobb's End online well in advance of the publication of his final novel.

 That's also why In the Mouth of Madness still works, because at first, we're not entirely sure what's happening to John Trent (Sam Neill). We know he's in an asylum (Arkham, if you were curious), and that he's been admitted under the care of (sic) Dr. Saperstein (John Glover) - hello, Rosemary's Baby reference - and that "things are really going to shit out there." When Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) comes to visit, we're introduced to the flashback of how insurance investigator Trent ended up unleashing the "Old Ones," with the help of literary agent Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) and, inadvertently, Arcane publisher Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston). But it's a slow burn - aside from the framing device, most of the first thirty minutes of In the Mouth of Madness are procedural. This is punctuated with moments of violence, or hallucinations and, in one case, and old Carpenter favorite - the "double dream" fake-out.

 Well before we're aware how much influence Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) has over the story we're being told, a sense of unease permeates In the Mouth of Madness. It's arguably more effective than Prince of Darkness, which attempts to set the same kind of tone of foreboding menace. Carpenter and screenwriter / former New Line President Michael De Luca (who often doesn't get the credit when discussing this film) wisely frame the film through the perspective of the pragmatic John Trent. He's trained to spot a con, to find the angle in any story too good to be true, and the "disappearance" of Cane in anticipation of his novel In the Mouth of Madness is one he can't pass up. Not that, if you take the ending at face value, he ever had any choice, but his stubborn insistence on what is "real" juxtaposes nicely with the increasingly impossible world he finds himself in. Paired with Styles, Trent becomes the Dana Scully to her Fox Mulder, in some improbably warped version of The X-Files.

 Cane's novels have an "effect" on readers, one that slowly works on Trent as he does "research" - Carpenter sets up the overlapping dreams as being grounded in reality (an overzealous cop beating some kid in an alley) and slowly distorts it, introducing imagery we'll see later in the film. In the Mouth of Madness benefits greatly from multiple viewings, as Carpenter and De Luca set up much of where the story's going well before Trent and Styles leave to find "Hobb's End," the fictional town that Cane is believed to have disappeared to. There are a number of other, smaller, details, like Trent's asylum and hotel room number or the color of everyone's eyes being tied directly to something Cane says that you might not catch the first time through. In many ways I think that Carpenter improved on the weaknesses of Prince of Darkness and made In the Mouth of Madness a stronger film for it. This could, to be fair, also have something to do with my affinity for Lovecraft, whose influence hovers over every minute of the film.

 This brings us back to the distinction between Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. In the Mouth of Madness presents us with a sort of hybrid of the two - a wildly popular horror writer whose fiction is tied together by a sense of impending doom. It's an unofficial version of Lovecraft's mythos, to be sure, but De Luca and Carpenter are treading into the territory of the "normal man who stumbles into a vast conspiracy of cosmic proportions and goes mad" almost from the end of the opening credits. This is not a story of good vs. evil (which, I would argue is a hallmark of King's novels, if not his short stories), but of inevitability, of humanity realizing its insignificance in the presence of the "Old Ones," for whom Cane is a conduit. (If you're SPOILER averse, I'd skip the next sentence) As tends to be the case for the poor sap who wanders headlong into the Mythos, Trent eventually succumbs to his own madness, embracing his fate and transforming in a final audio cue. His hysterical laughter while watching the film-within-a-film (that is the film we're watching) is all the more telling. He's just a pawn. Embrace the change.

In the end, Carpenter might have one too many visual or editing flourishes (the kid on the bike, for example), but In the Mouth of Madness is one last great salvo from a director who would largely fall off of the cinematic map by the end of the 1990s. Sam Neill is great as the hard boiled-ish type who slowly but surely melts down in the presence of something more ancient, more powerful. I've always been shaky about Julie Carmen as styles, but as time passes I find her less grating. And how can I finish without mentioning Wilhelm Von Homburg, aka goon from Die Hard but more importantly as Vigo the Carpathian? He has a small role in Madness as the father of a boy that Cane takes in Hobb's End, and his two scenes ("Cane! Give me back my son!" and "I have to, he wrote me this way") are memorable in a film full of chilling moments. It's certainly the most pessimistic of the Apocalypse Trilogy, but if you're going to follow The Thing and Prince of Darkness, why leave any trace of hope?

Shocktober Revisited: Never Sleep Again - The Elm Street Legacy

 Review originally appeared in 2010. Some amendments have been made to reflect the Blu-Ray edition.

 If anything good came of Platinum Dunes' remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, it's that more attention shifted to the original film and its sequels. Not only did fans get A Nightmare on Elm Street on Blu-Ray (and let me tell you, the "arm stretching" scene looks even sillier in HD*), but the insanely comprehensive Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy arrived for Fred Heads to pore over. And boy howdy is there a lot to pore over.

That is, if you could find it. To date, I still can't find Never Sleep Again in stores. It just recently made it to Netflix, and I had to order my copy from Amazon, where it was on a "Ships in 1 to 3 weeks" back-order. Fortunately, I ordered from one of the Marketplace sellers - Moviemars - based in NC, and got it in about a week. However, it was totally worth the wait.

 2014 Note: At the time this was written, it was more difficult to find Never Sleep Again, but in the four years that followed, a second edition of the DVD and Blu-Ray were released, which are widely available. I currently own the Blu-Ray and recommend it wholeheartedly.

Surrounding the remakes of Halloween and Friday the 13th, retrospective documentaries were released for each: Halloween: 25 Years of Terror and His Name was Jason, which set the template for Never Sleep Again - interviews with cast, crew, fans, and creators of each film in the series. In fact, Never Sleep Again is co-directed by Daniel Farrands, who directed His Name Was Jason. Each set came in two discs - one disc was the documentary, and the other was extended interviews, set visits, recaps, or short featurettes on music, makeup, or fandom.

The difference between the all-encompassing docs for Friday the 13th / Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street is sheer depth of presentation. Halloween: 25 Years of Terror and His Name was Jason are 89 and 90 minutes respectively; Never Sleep Again is 4 hours long. That's just the documentary. I'm guessing the second disc has roughly 2-2 1/2 hours of additional material. And none of it drags.

 Directors Farrands and Andrew Kasch managed to get just about everyone involved in the Nightmare series to appear on camera** and talk about the films, and almost none of it rehashes information from the previous making-of's in the Nightmare on Elm Street boxed set or Infinifilm disc. Narrated by Heather Langenkamp, each film gets a good 30-40 minutes covering every aspect of the production from story to casting to production, release, controversy, and direction.

 There's a surprisingly comprehensive list of cast members who came back from the first seven films, including Mark Patton (Jesse in Freddy's Revenge), Danny Hassel (Dan in Nightmares 4 and 5), Ken Sagoes (Kincaid in Dream Warriors), Jsu Garcia (Rod in Nightmare 1), Alice Cooper (Freddy's father in Freddy's Dead), Mike Smith (Super Freddy in Dream Child), Lisa Zane (Maggie in Freddy's Dead), Zack Ward (Bobby in Freddy vs. Jason), Lisa Wilcox (Alice in Nightmares 4 and 5), Clu Gulager (Jesse's Dad in Freddy's Revenge) and even Charles Fleischer (Dr. King in Nightmare 1); people I've never heard talk about the Nightmare movies before. For crying out loud, the even talk to Dokken!

 Once and for all, there's a comprehensive discussion of the various iterations of Freddy vs. Jason in one place, complete with a breakdown of how the final script differed from the film - including reactions from some of the cast about changes that occurred between signing on and filming. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash even comes up, and there's a pretty good explanation by former New Line executive Jeff Katz (who wrote the spec script for FvJvA) on why it never came to pass. Even Kane Hodder (Jason Vorhees from Friday the 13th part 7 to Jason X) chimes in about how he was in and out of the film without ever being given a specific reason.

 It was also interesting to hear Wes Craven talk about each of the sequels on the record, including (as one of the extras) the remake. Additionally, I have to say it's fascinating hearing the ways that Jack Sholder, Chuck Russell, Renny Harlin, Stephen Hopkins, Rachel Talalay, and Ronny Yu talk about their approaches to the film, and cast and writer experiences of working with each director, warts and all.

 My personal favorite section of the documentary was the discussion of Freddy's Nightmares, the ill-received anthology TV series that aired between The Dream Master and Freddy's Dead. Considering that almost no one ever talks about the series, it was fun to see William Malone (House on Haunted Hill), Mick Garris (Masters of Horror), David J. Schow (The Crow) and Tom McLoughlin (Friday the 13th Part 6) talk about making a very low budget show for syndication where the limits on gore and sexuality were, shall we say, lax. Nobody seems particularly proud of the end result, including former New Line CEO Robert Shaye, but that it was even mentioned - let alone get its own block of documentary - made me happy***.

 I haven't completely finished the second disc (in that I haven't watched all of "Horror's Hallowed Grounds: A Nightmare on Elm Street") but the extended interviews are great, the 10 minute recap of the Nightmare films - comprised of cast members performing memorable lines - is a lot of fun, the fan segment is cool, as are the various people who make glove replicas, the music section is cool, I liked the spin-off books (which also cover FvJvA), and a nice interview with The Angry Video Game Nerd about his Nightmare on Elm Street game review is included. Overall, it's just a solid package covering damn near everything you could want to know. Think of it as a documentary version of Peter Bracke's Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th.

 2014 Note: Speaking of which, Farrands and Kasch went on to "adapt" Bracke's book into a companion piece for the Friday the 13th series, which is comparably exhaustive (thereabouts seven hours) in its coverage of the films. It's also notable for an alternate version of the interviews from Freddy vs. Jason, focused more heavily on the Friday the 13th side.

 While I'm slightly biased as a massive Nightmare on Elm Street fan, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that even casual fans won't be bored watching this 4 hour documentary. There's never a point where the discussion isn't interesting or there's something new to learn (for example, I'd somehow never heard that Tron's David Warner was originally cast as Fred Krueger and had to drop out) and it's broken up in such a way that you can spread it out over a day or two. This is an absolute must-see for Nightmare fans, and a high recommendation for people who want to see what all the hoopla is about.


* That being said, everything else looks great. Don't let the cynics tell you that a low-budget movie from 1984 can't look good in High Definition. A Nightmare on Elm Street looks better than I'd ever imagined it could.
** Notable absences are Johnny Depp, Patricia Arquette, Ronee Blakely (Nancy's mother in part 1), Breckin Meyer (Freddy's Dead), Frank Darabont (who co-wrote Dream Warriors), Peter Jackson (who wrote the mythical and unproduced A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Dream Lovers) and strangely much of the cast of Freddy vs. Jason (including Katharine Isabelle, Kelly Rowland, Jason Ritter, and Ken Kirzinger), although there is a great joke involving Jason Mewes and the assumption he played Freeburg in Freddy vs. Jason.
2014 Note: During the commentary, it's explained that Depp and Arquette were willing to film interviews but could not find time in the schedules, and that Frank Darabont was filming the pilot for The Walking Dead during production of Never Sleep Again. While Darabont was unable to film an interview, he provided many stills and behind the scenes memorabilia for the production.
*** Craven and Shaye, among others, also address Dreamscape - which was released the same year as A Nightmare on Elm Street - for the first time I can remember.

Shocktober Review: High Tension

  So, High Tension has been out for eleven years, and looking back, I never reviewed the film. There's probably something tucked way back there in the old days of the long lost Blogorium (or buried in a Word file) that amounts to a paragraph, and I'm almost positive I can tell you what it says:

 "Great 2/3rds of a movie, really violent, well made, but damn if it doesn't fall apart at the 'twist*'."

 That was, for two or three years, the way I felt about Alexandre Aja's second film**: it was an extremely well made film, one that lived up to its title all the way until the "greenhouse" scene, and then completely collapsed in logic as it lurched towards an ending. And I'm not alone in thinking that. It seems to be the universal response to High Tension for people who've only seen the film once. When I saw High Tension the second time (and subsequent viewings), it's more apparent that Aja and co-writer Grégory Levasseur had more carefully planned out what seemed arbitrary the initial viewing: there are hints, and details in the background that explain where the antagonist found weapons to kill with, and aside from one important element that was (wisely) deleted from the finished film, most of the seemingly arbitrary decisions are actually on screen.

 Of course, to discuss that further means SPOILING High Tension for anybody who hasn't seen it, and I don't want this review to become a "look here and then look here and then here" tutorial. I'd rather people who saw it, liked it, but felt the ending didn't make any sense to go back and watch it again. You know how the story plays out, and what happens the second or third or fourth time is that you can focus on the details of what Aja is and isn't showing you. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll be watching this again very soon to answer one lingering problem I have with the film which specifically leads to the "greenhouse," but I'll save that until after the SPOILER warning. For everyone else, watch High Tension, enjoy High Tension, and don't immediately give up on the film when the "twist" happens. You'll want to; I know, many of us did, but it's not as out of left field as it seems. Just very well disguised. SPOILERS to follow...

 So the second time I saw High Tension, one of the first things I noticed was the shotgun above the mantle above Alexia (Maïwenn)'s parents' fireplace. At that point, I realized that the killer / Marie (Cécile De France) wasn't magically finding murder implements or pulling them out of her magic truck - she noticed them around the house when she arrived. Yes, most of the movie - particularly after the bedroom scene that instigates her murder fantasy - is from Marie's perspective, but Aja is careful to plant most of the seeds in camera so that even though we think the killer is "Le Tueur" (Philippe Nahon), it's mostly plausible that she could be "seeing this" in a dissociative identity delusion. How did Marie manage to move the armoire and push it fast enough to remove Alexia's father (Andrei Finti)'s head on the bannister? Probably the same way she was able to slice off Alexia's mother (Oana Pellea)'s hand - Marie is a lot stronger than we think she is.

 There are certainly logic lapses, and I'm not trying to give Aja and Levasseur a complete "pass" for them - I don't know what happens to the car that Marie wrecks outside of the greenhouse when she's chasing the truck from the gas station. The last time I saw the film, I was positive you could still see the wreckage before she chases Alexia into the woods. Aja cut a scene where Marie and Alexia drive past the truck that "Le Tueur" uses, in part because he thought it was too obvious to give that information away too early. While I can't argue with that, it does open the plot hole of "where did Marie get that truck?" It also makes the introductory scene of "Le Tueur" seem like it's something the audience is seeing objectively and not - as it is ultimately revealed - to be Marie's invention of a villain she can conquer to win over Alexia's affection.

 The subtext of Marie's rescue fantasy has been the subject of debate about whether High Tension is homophobic or not. Marie is clearly uncomfortable telling Alexia that she's in love with her and depending on how you read "Le Tueur" (the killer), he's either an expression of repressed homosexuality lashing out at a hetero-normative world, a manifestation of her self-loathing about how she feels, or a straw man she invents to fulfill a "damsel in distress" fantasy. Arguably, it could be all three, but there's not much arguing that because he doesn't appear until after she self pleasures that the idea of "sex" and "death" are linked in Marie's mind. How the two are linked is less apparent, given the book-ending chapters and that most (but not all) of her victims are men.

 Her idealization of "Le Tueur" is that of a disgusting, obese, middle-aged man, slovenly kempt and prone to using severed heads to pleasure himself (in fact, it's how we're introduced to him). He "collects" women, seeing them only as sexual objects to toy with and eventual kill. My initial reading of her manifestation of masculinity was along the lines of the "homophobic" reading. After seeing the film the first time, one written and directed by men, it felt like having him be how Marie sees herself (which, technically speaking, is what she's doing by imagining she isn't murdering and kidnapping) was indicative some self-loathing, of projecting her lesbian attraction to Alexia as monstrous, as purely destructive.

 With time, and subsequent viewings, particularly in light of understanding that the "twist" wasn't just thrown in to the film, I'm more inclined to go with the bookends of the film and read Marie's fantasy (i.e. the film) as her attempt to win over Alexia in a jumble of fractured logic. If she really doesn't believe that she is "Le Tueur," and that she's "saving" her, then one could argue this is not self loathing but a rejection of hetero-normative relationships by someone who truly can't distinguish between reality and her imagination. It's certainly how the film begins and ends - that Marie genuinely has no idea what she's done - so I'm more inclined to put the "homophobic" argument aside, at least a little bit. When the reading of High Tension is that "a woman loves her best friend, snaps, kills her family and any stranger who impedes her, and believes she's doing it so they can be together," I can't totally ignore that interpretation.

 That said, whether you choose to read anything into High Tension / Haute Tension / Switchblade Romance, it's hard not to appreciate what Aja accomplishes with the film. It's a genuinely suspenseful ride, with some truly disturbing moments of violence. The use of Muse's song "Newborn" still gives me chills - it's so well matched to the editing and the specific point in the film it's used. I can't think of the song without also thinking of High Tension. However you choose to read the "twist" - positively, negatively, or not at all - as a horror film, High Tension delivers for almost all of its running time. For some, all of its running time, but I'll concede that it can be very confusing the first time. Give it a second chance, and I think you'll be surprised. I was.




* Here's exactly what I wrote in a piece about the "Splat Pack": 

I really like High Tension, and while I've heard the pyschoanalysis, I don't buy the twist. Not at all. Too many elements of the movie are abandoned in favor of the twist, and I hold it akin to Frailty, a movie that lacks the suspense and build of Tension, but still has a rotten third act "twist" that undermines the first two acts. That being said, High Tension works for a long time and builds on itself well enough that I can pretend to agree with the psychoanalysis. 

 ** In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't seen Furia, but I didn't want to write "debut" when that's not accurate.

Shocktober Revisited: You're Next

 This review originally appeared in February of this year.


  Festival screenings are a funny thing: movies can really build or destroy their reputation based on playing at a festival, and sometimes it happens for reasons beyond the creators' control. For example, while I really do like Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End and I think it does the best possible job it can adapting the book with the budget he had and the time constraints (and there's a lot that didn't make the adaptation), I think it benefited immensely from playing after Dawn of the Dead with audiences at the Nevermore Film Festival last year. I was there, and most of the people who came for Dawn of the Dead (and it was packed) stuck around for John Dies at the End, which played shortly thereafter, and they were already pumped having just seen what is arguably the best of Romero's "Dead" films (it's not my favorite, but I won't argue it's the best constructed). As a result, what is already a very good movie went through the roof because people were excited in the first place.

 I didn't see You're Next in 2011, because I wasn't in Toronto, Austin, San Francisco, Sydney, Los Angeles, or any of the other cities it played it. But apparently audiences went gaga for it. I probably read about it and then, as time went on, forgot about You're Next. Like The Cabin in the Woods, there was a sizable gap between the completed product and release. In the case of You're Next, it finally came out last August, and just recently came out on DVD and Blu-Ray, which is how I saw it. And you know what? It is pretty damn good.

 Crispian (AJ Bowen) is going to visit his parents - Paul (Rob Moran) and Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) - at their fixer-upper house in the woods for a family reunion. He's bringing along Erin (Sharni Vinson), his girlfriend, to meet his siblings: Felix (Nicholas Tucci), Drake (Joe Swanberg), and Aimee (Amy Seimetz), as well as their respective SO's Zee (Wendy Glenn), Kelly (Sarah Myers), and Tariq (Ti West). What none of them know is that three killers just murdered Paul and Aubrey's only neighbors (Larry Fessenden and Kate Lyn Sheil) and are preparing for a little family reunion home invasion. Then again, what the killers don't know is that Erin may be more than they can handle, much to the surprise of everyone else...

 I was already enjoying the set up of You're Next as it built towards the first attack on the family, but the moment that one of the killers (dressed in black and wearing animal masks, like they do in these kinds of movies) breaks through the glass and tries to grab Erin, I was sold. Instead of scream, she plunges a knife into his arm and pins him to the window pane, and the killer is standing there, howling with pain, while she looks for something to finish him off with. Her rationale why they shouldn't hide in the basement and the reaction it gets from the others is also priceless. The tone is just off-kilter enough to to overcome the predictability of the genre, which is always welcome, but Vinson is without a doubt You're Next's selling point.

(Also seeing Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond) again is a bonus, who came out of semi-retirement to be in the film, although I honestly didn't recognize her until I saw her name in the credits)

 Coming in, I'd seen the quotes that You're Next was "ground breaking" and that it would change the rules of horror movies, which to be honest is the kind of festival-related hyperbole that increases expectations for a movie beyond where they need to be. You're Next is a really good horror movie, and probably the best domestic "home invasion" entry I've seen in the last decade (at least), but it doesn't reinvent the wheel, gang. It's okay for a movie to just do its job very well. Director Adam Wingard (V/H/S 2) and writer Simon Barrett (The ABCs of Death) made the kind of straight ahead horror movie that audiences will eat up: great kills, some clever laughs, fun characters, and actual suspense. The Final Girl has a novel back story that explains why she knows so much about fighting back (she grew up on a survivalist camp in the Outback), and the "twist" may not be novel (it's taken from the playbook of 60% of all thrillers) but it plays out well. You're Next doesn't need to be described as game changing, because it plays the existing game and does a damn fine job of it.

  You're Next also (apparently) falls into a category I'd never heard of before: "mumblegore." To be honest, I wasn't aware such a distinction was necessary, but the internet does love to create hybrid subgenres, and it was only a matter of time before "mumblecore" horror films had their own category. Other than Baghead, I'm not really certain what else qualifies as "mumblegore," because You're Next is most certainly too well scripted and too tightly directed to be considered a largely improvised, boring piece of shit. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm letting my bias slip through, but I really don't like mumblecore movies. Unless the way they've been made has changed drastically since I endured Funny Ha Ha, You're Next has one scene that even resembles "mumblecore" - the dinner table conversation right before the first attack.

 In the extras on the disc, Wingard and Barrett mention that they wanted each conversation to be distinct from each other and that there were many, many takes to get it just where Wingard wanted it to build to, but even in that I sense a greater sense of control than "just let them act and we'll shoot it." There's still a sense of control in the editing that I don't associate with movies by the Duplass brothers or other directors of that ilk. To be honest with you, I haven't seen A Horrible Way to Die or Pop Skull (Wingard's other horror movies), so maybe that's why You're Next gets lumped in, but I don't agree with that any more than the ridiculous notion that Ti West also falls into that category.

 Maybe that happened because West (The House of the Devil), Swanberg (Drinking Buddies), and Barrett are in You're Next, and (SPOILER) have some of the most memorable death scenes. Wingard does mention in the cast commentary that he wrote many of the parts for his friends (including Seimetz, who could only film in fits and spurts because she was in Upstream Color), which I suppose is something that gets lumped into the "mumblecore" playbook, but You're Next doesn't feel improvised. Once the movie really gets rolling, it's clear that Wingard and Barrett have a plan for every scene and how things are going to play out, which is the antithesis of "mumblecore." So is "mumblegore" a real thing? I don't know, but I'm going to go ahead and declare that if it is, You're Next shouldn't be part of that subgenre. It's a straight-ahead home invasion movie with some slasher influences, and what it does, it does very well.

 You're Next is the kind of movie I would have liked to have seen with a crowd. I'm strongly considering breaking the rule of what plays at Summer Fest so I don't have to wait until Horror Fest in October to show everybody the movie. I would have loved to have seen it at Nevermore, because it plays right into what the crowds there love, but that was not to be. The good news is that You're Next is finally out there, and while it doesn't rewrite horror (and I don't think it was even trying to), it's a hell of a fun movie to watch. Check it out.