Shocktober Revisited: The Final Terror

There's no certainty that people would even know that The Final Terror existed today, were it not for the fact that most of its cast of young stars went on to bigger and better roles a few years later. In fact, The Final Terror was shelved in 1980 and not released for another two years, and only then because it suddenly had "name" talent in it. It's not hard to see why producers might find the film hard to sell - it just barely qualifies as a "slasher" film - but there's a scrappy, underdog quality to The Final Terror that makes it worthwhile. Coupled with some soon to be well known names was director Andrew Davis, who these days is probably better known for The Fugitive, but back then still had a keen eye for visuals, which is important considering the entire movie takes place in the woods.

 Forest rangers Mike (Mark Metcalf), Nathaniel (Ernest Harden, Jr.), Boone (Lewis Smith), Zorich (John Friedrich), and newcomer Marco (Adrian Zmed) are heading up for a weekend of clearing brush and river rafting in the Pacific Northwest*. Against the advice of their mechanic, Eggar (Joe Pantoliano), they decide to bring along some girls: Windy (Daryl Hannah), Melanie (Cindy Harrell), Margaret (Rachel Ward), and Vanessa (Akosua Busia). They also choose one of the most remote paths back to where Eggar is going to take the bus, and during campfire storytelling, Boone shares the story of a crazed old woman who escape from the local asylum and lives in the woods. But it turns out that might not just be a story...

 There's actually nothing supernatural about The Final Terror (which is pretty ambiguous based on its poster what the "terror" is supposed to be - aliens?), and by the twenty minute mark, before anybody's been killed (although Marco goes missing) we have a general idea who the backwoods slasher is or is going to be. You can actually guess even earlier than that based on clues that are not so subtly dropped on the way to the woods, or the fact that one character is clearly more deranged than everyone else. Still, Davis does a good job of misdirection throughout the movie, causing you to wonder if Boone's story is entirely accurate, or if there's a Psycho-esque angle at play. And when the kills do start, they are pretty brutal. There's actually a pre-credit double kill of two unrelated characters that Davis shot when producers informed him the body count (three) was "too low" for a slasher film.

 The Final Terror is nevertheless more "survival horror" than "slasher film," and it hews more along the lines of Walter Hill's Southern Comfort than something like The Burning. Most of the movie is spent with our protagonists trying to outrun the killer and make it back to the bus (their alternative is a 45 mile hike), with military enthusiast Zorich becoming the de facto leader and resorting to survivalist tactics. The end of the film is more or less a showdown in the middle of the woods that, in the ensuing three decades, is unfortunately going to remind a lot of people of Predator, even though The Final Terror had it beat by six years. Aside from a few tense sequences on the bus and a few good kills early on, you'd be hard pressed to really include The Final Terror in the "classic" slasher era.

 On the other hand, you probably noticed in the synopsis just how many names you recognized, even if vaguely. After Zmed's career took off with TJ Hooker and Daryl Hannah figured prominently in Blade Runner (and would make it big with Splash the following year), The Final Terror was deemed worthy of cashing in on, but they're far from the only recognizable names. Joe Pantoliano would appear in Risky Business the same year, and go on to memorable roles in The Goonies, Midnight Run, The Matrix, and The Fugitive (again directed by Davis). Rachel Ward had already appeared in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and Sharky's Machine, and would star opposite Jeff Bridges in Against All Odds the following year. Mark Metcalf might not be a name you recognize, but he was both Niedermeyer in Animal House and The Master on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even less familiar names, like Ernest Harden, Jr. went on from The Jeffersons to The Final Terror and would pop up in White Men Can't Jump and J. Edgar. Lewis Smith who, coincidentally, joined the cast of Southern Comfort after filming this, would go on to make North and South and appeared in Wyatt Earp.

 In that regard, it's fun to watch The Final Terror and see so many people on the cusp of stardom or, barring that, recognize-ability. It's similar to The Burning, which was the film debut of Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens, although the end product is perhaps less memorable. I don't want to give the impression that this film is a long lost gem (although it has been MIA for a while) - at best it's a pretty good thriller / suspense film with some horror elements. It's well shot, has a pretty good pace, and an ending that doesn't disappoint, but I'd hesitate to leapfrog The Final Terror to the top of my "horror" list. Still, I'm glad I got the chance to check it out, and if you've seen everything under the full moon, this one is worth seeking out for a throwback to when "slasher" was a little more nebulous in its formula.




 * I don't recall if it's specifically stated in the film, but The Final Terror was shot in Northern California and Oregon.

Shocktober Revisited: The Skull

  The Skull is a movie I had heard about but hadn't seen until very recently. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it was a more obscure Hammer title, but in fact it's an Amicus release. If that name doesn't sound familiar, I'd be willing to wager that most horror fans have seen at least one of their anthology films*: Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave, Dr. Terror's House of Horror, Asylum, or The House that Dripped Blood. The Skull is one of their non-anthology releases, and while it's a minor entry in the realm of British Horror, there are enough creepy and / or surreal flourishes to recommend the film - if you can find it.

 If this were a spoiler, I'd mark it accordingly, but before any character identifies the person who the titular object belongs to, the credits give it away by saying the film is based on Robert Bloch's "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade." After a prologue where a grave robbing phrenologist (Maurice Good) steals the Marquis' head and meets and unfortunate end for it, we move to modern day London. Amateur demonologist and collector Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) is at an auction and in a friendly bidding war with fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips ("Guest Star" Christopher Lee) over a few statues representing Hell's hierarchy. Phillips bids far more than the statues are worth, but cannot explain why he was so intent on purchasing them.

 Maitland returns home, and is visited by the unsavory Anthony Marco (Patrick Wymark), who "acquires" rare pieces and sells them - cash only, please. He offers Maitland a copy of The Life of the Marquis de Sade, a book bound in human flesh, with a promise he has something "even more interesting" to bring the next night. Despite Maitland's wife, Jane (Jill Bennett)'s protestations, Marco prefers to let himself in, and the good doctor tells him that Marco is "always welcome." The following night, Marco brings along the skull of the Marquis de Sade, and seems willing to part with it for less than his initial offering price. Maitland is suspicious that it's stolen, and his suspicions are concerned when Phillips vouches for the authenticity of the object. It was stolen from him, and he doesn't want it back: the skull of the Marquis de Sade brings with it evil spirits who drive men to do horrible things during the new moon.

 But as The Skull is a horror movie, we know that Maitland will give in to temptation. It's a "curiosity killed the cat" sort of story, and while it sometimes drags a bit during its 83 minutes, once the skull starts working on Maitland, there are a few stylistic flourishes that keep you invested. The film features a rare pairing of Cushing and Lee where the latter is the voice of reason, which is worth watching, and there are a few small parts for recognizable British actors: Michael Gough (Batman) appears early as an auctioneer, and Patrick Magee (Die, Monster, Die!) is the police surgeon baffled by the means in which Marco meets his end (SPOILER). Genre go-to director Freddie Francis (Tales That Witness Madness) stages Marco's death scene without ever showing him die, in what is both an excellent bit of narrative suggestion but also a surreal break in the mostly straightforward narrative.

 Maitland hasn't decided to buy the skull yet, and is sitting in his study reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade, when his window begins to glow a strange green hue. Two policemen arrive and inform him he's under arrest, but will not tell him what he's charged with. Instead of taking him to the station, he finds himself in a large, mostly empty room. In the center is the Judge (Frank Forsyth), who never utters a word but instructs the "police" to force Maitland to play a game of Russian Roulette. When he lives, he's shoved into a red room which serves as a sort of "gas chamber" and awakens to find himself in the stairwell of Marco's apartment, a place he's never been before. Thanks to a flashback to the phrenologist's home, where his Executor is hypnotized by the skull and murders the dead man's mistress, we know that the skull is capable of creating a trance-like state, but the dream sequence adds a better sense of mystery to The Skull's midpoint.

 It also introduces the stairwell for a scene later, when Maitland returns to take the skull and confronts Marco's landlord (Peter Woodthorpe), leading to a death scene that may well have influenced the "stained glass" kill in Suspiria. I certainly thought of Argento's film when it happened, although the latter film embellishes the end result more than the earlier one does. There are several moments throughout the second half of The Skull with suspense and atmosphere, and despite some obvious wires carrying it around, the image of the floating head is striking.

 The (mostly) wordless climactic battle of wills between Maitland and the evil spirits goes on for far too long and becomes bogged down with awkwardly place religious imagery (although the return of one of the statues from the beginning is a nice touch). I get the impression that Francis and screenwriter Milton Subotsky (I, Monster) were trying to whip the audience into a frenzy of terror, but the lasting impression is more of histrionics than fear. I appreciate the ending, but at times it feels that The Skull might have been better as a part of an anthology rather than a feature unto itself. Still, for fans of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, it's worth seeking out as a minor chiller.





*They also released both of the Peter Cushing "Dr. Who" movies, but we won't get into that.

Shocktober Review: Satan's Blade

 Satan's Blade is, hrm... it's tricky to really describe this movie because it's not exactly a slasher movie. For most of the mid-section, it follows basic slasher rules, but the beginning and end of the film have this "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" quality. Is it a crime movie? A demonic possession movie? Maybe a "crazy killer in the woods" movie? At first, I thought it was just going to settle down and be a slash and stalk kind of horror film, but then there's an out of left field final scene that confirms a backstory we only half heard, leading to one of the strangest last shots I've seen in a while. It's almost Death Bed-esque in the "what the hell?" randomness. And that's not even taking into account the beginning.

 We don't actually start Satan's Blade in the ski lodge where most of the film is set, but instead at a bank somewhere back in town. Two masked robbers force their way in at gunpoint, make the tellers give them all of the money, sadistically cut their clothing off (gotta get in that gratudity early), and then shoot them. It's more than a little unseemly and misogynistic, but oh wait, what a twist, the bank robbers are WOMEN you guys! They go check into the lodge and hide their ill gotten gains, and while they're waiting for "George," their accomplice, it's time to strip down. There's some betrayal, and then a mysterious stalker kills them both and paints a symbol on the wall using their blood. (It does turn out at the end that the hidden money isn't just a MacGuffin, although I won't tell you who comes to collect it).

 After that lovely prologue, we meet our overstuffed main cast, consisting of two groups: a group of sorority sisters looking to relax and two couples celebrating one of the husbands passing the Bar Exam. The girls are there to party, the couples are there to relax, maybe do some fishing - it's a slight contrast of age, intermingled with some sexual tension. Oh, plus the story of a  giant mountain man who killed people with a weapon from the "evil spirits of the mountain" to kill anyone who came to the mountain, and also kill his family. He had an evil blade and maybe lives in the lake as a monster. But let's not scare the tourists. Also, one of your cabins is where the women from the prologue were killed, but we did our best to clean it up. Enjoy your stay!

For a while, Satan's Blade transitions into a pretty standard slasher, cutting back and forth between the two cabins (well, it might have been one cabin redressed, considering this was a pretty low budget affair). The guys decide to prank the college girls, then they get drunk while their wives justifiably grouse about them hitting on younger women. There's a dream sequence to add an extra level of kills to the proceedings, and also so horror fans don't get too bored while director L. Scott Castillo, Jr. spends a lot of time developing various characters. Did I mention that, not counting the police or the criminals in the prologue, there are 9 protagonists? The lion's share of the storyline is spent with the couple, but you can't wipe out all of the college girls (SPOILER) except one without at least spending a cursory amount of time getting to know them. Of course, the deaths happen in such rapid succession that they barely register. Satan's Blade is the sort of movie that crams in a bunch of kills at once, builds a little bit of tension and then does it again. It's not really surprising that the dream sequence happens, and it actually ends up being more memorable than when they actually die.

 Kudos to you, by the way, if you happen to remember the prologue after all of this mayhem, because the "George" - who does comes to pick up the money - is (SPOILER FOR THE END OF THE MOVIE) the Sherriff's Deputy who is also the killer. Yep. Let that sink it, because this is when Satan's Blade also gets even weirder. He's too young to have been the original killer, and the Sherriff was a deputy when the murders happened the first time, but there's an explanation! The story the old lady told is true, and the knife he's using (*coughtitleofthemoviecough*) is possessed, or something. He kills the Sherriff, goes stumbling around in the woods for a while, washes his bloody hands off in a creek, and then throws the knife into the lake we saw earlier. Then, a hand raises up from under the water, holding the knife, and throws it back. It lands in a tree where some unwitting hiker is passing by, who sees the knife and decides to touch it. The cycle begins anew? Uh, maybe?

 The demonic possession angle is so briefly touched upon during the Lodge Keeper's story that you wouldn't be blamed for missing it, because it really just seems like a "guy who went crazy and killed everyone, including his family" story. But nope, possessed demonic blade that turns you into a killer with an Excalibur-esque delivery system. It's introduced so quickly and with so little fanfare that my honest first reaction was "what?" To be fair, it is so unexpected that this one plot twist makes Satan's Blade more memorable than it would be otherwise. Between the stilted line delivery and many dead-end subplots, I'd almost forgotten the whole "evil spirits gave him a blade" part. After all, the killer doesn't seem supernatural, just pretty good at slashing. In fact, he tries to keep the murder scene "shut down for a few days" as deputy, presumably so he can get the money and run. So why is any of the "possessed knife" part necessary? It wasn't until I watched the lodgekeeper's mother tell the story again that, oh yeah, I guess they did lay it all out. It's just that Satan's Blade is weird and  meandering enough that you'll totally forget it has a plot to begin with.

  That and the open-matte Blu-Ray, which about halfway through the film becomes a game of "spot the boom mic". If nothing else, I would recommend Satan's Blade for its inexplicably disjointed twists and turns, held together by only the barest of threads. If you're looking for gore or gratuitous nudity, this is probably not going to scratch your itch. Having a set of (comparatively) older protagonists is a nice contrast to the usual "nubile young college girl" trope, but it doesn't amount to much. Really, it's the last ten minutes that leave you scratching your head giving Satan's Blade an edge over more conventional slasher fare.

Shocktober Revisited: Motel Hell

 Motel Hell is an odd duck as horror movies go - originally Tobe Hooper was attached to direct, completing a "cannibal" trilogy of sorts with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive, but when Universal studios took issue with original script (which included bestiality and wasn't comedic), they passed and he left. MGM picked up the film after director Kevin Connor (From Beyond the Grave) crossed the pond from the U.K. to direct the film in five weeks. While the end result doesn't actually resemble Hooper's earlier films, it does feel like some of it directly influenced The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 - more on that in a little bit. Motel Hell is comedic in a manner of speaking, but borders more on camp much of the time, and in many ways feels like a spiritual cousin to Jack Hill's Spider Baby. For slasher crowds, I can only imagine that this was not what they had in mind...

 Farmer Vincent Smith (Rory Calhoun) runs the Motel Hello with his sister, Ida (Nancy Parsons). He's also the face and proprietor of Farmer Vincent's Meats, which are famous in the countryside surrounding the Motel Hello (if only they could use the profits to fix that pesky "O"). Everything seems to be on the up-and-up: Vincent has regular visits from inspector Bob Anderson (E. Hampton Beagle) and his hogs are in good shape. His customers always leave the motel happy... well, most of them, anyway. If you've seen the original poster (not included here), you already know what the phrase "it takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters" means, and it's not like I didn't write "cannibal" in the first paragraph. So, uh, SPOILER if you somehow never came across Motel Hell or read the synopsis. Don't worry, it's not a mystery for long. Even how Vincent and Ida find their prey isn't much of a mystery, and catching their guests is the exception, not the rule.

 Before we really know much about Farmer Vincent's meat, we seem him out "hunting" - out in the woods, at night, with a shotgun, he finds a biker, Bo (Everett Creach) riding with his girl, Terry (Nina Axelrod). They have an "accident" that runs them off the road, and as Vincent is loading up the Bo, he takes a shining to Terry and decides to "keep" her in the motel. Bo goes to the "farm": Vincent and Ida's specially hidden area that is, at least for the early part of the film, a mystery (unless you've seen the poster, that is). While there's a lot more of Vincent setting up traps to catch people (most notably a tour van for "Ivan and the Terribles" featuring John Ratzenberger), much of Motel Hell is concerned with Terry living with and learning about the Smith family.

 It would be tempting to call it "Stockholm Syndrome," but since she doesn't have any family or, apparently, a life elsewhere, Terry adjusts pretty quickly to life at the Motel Hello. Ida doesn't necessarily like her - she tries to drown her, in fact - but Terry is quite smitten with the much older Vincent (Calhoun was only 54 when the film was made, but he looks more aged than that). More upset than Ida is Vincent's kid brother, Sherriff Bruce Smith (Paul Linke), who has eyes for Terry from the moment he meets her and is constantly rebuffed in his advances. The family skirts around the "cannibalism" issue at first, but eventually Vincent feels confident enough in Terry that he promises he'll teach her his "secret recipe." He inadvertently also proposes, and on a trip into town talks Reverend Billy (Wolfman Jack) into performing the ceremony, unless something goes horribly awry back at the motel...

 Motel Hell alternates between victims and family life, and unlike your traditional slasher movies, both are equally unusual. The film is more of a black comedy, with very little suspense - it seems like we're meant to find the eccentricities of the improbable Smith clan more amusing than disturbing, despite the fact that they consider humans to be just another food source. Vincent believes in treating them ethically, although the most disturbing part of the film is easily the "farm." Victims are buried up to their necks, and Vincent surgically cuts their vocal chords so all anyone can hear is them gurgling desperately. The way he kills them is admittedly pretty comical: first Vincent and Ida hypnotize them, and then snap their necks by tying nooses to a tractor. He considers it to be more humane to reduce their "suffering." That the hypnotism sequence is presented mostly for laughs does make it slightly upsetting, but also successful in finding gallows humor.

 I mentioned the possibly unintentional influence of Motel Hell on Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and while it isn't readily apparent early in the film, by the end you can see some uncanny echoes from one film to the next. Farmer Vincent is only a slightly smaller scale version of what the Sawyer family is doing (local "flavor" vs. regional barbeque champions), and it's really hard to argue that a climactic chainsaw fight between a police officer and the villain (wearing a mask) isn't awfully familiar. The tone is more exaggerated in Chainsaw Massacre 2, but it's a similarly comedic approach to what would normally be played for straight horror. Since Hooper left the project when a more serious Motel Hell was abandoned, I have a hard time thinking he didn't see Motel Hell. Perhaps the end result of Connor's version (re?-written by Robert and Steven-Charles Jaffe) gave Hooper some ideas, as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is much more like Motel Hell than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is mostly speculation, but I was strongly reminded of one film while watching the other.

 Motel Hell is a tricky movie to recommend, because it's not going to be everybody's cup of tea. It's a leisurely paced film, a more character oriented film than most of its ilk from the 1980s, but at the same time characters are often barely sketched out. I haven't mentioned Ida or Bruce much because there isn't much to them, and Terry is even less of a character. You get a better sense spending five minutes with a pair of swingers that Vincent and Ida lure in than for most of the main characters, with the exception of Vincent. That's largely due to Rory Calhoun investing an inherent - if bizarre - sense of decency into the role. It's tonally amusing but not often very funny. It can be disturbing but is rarely scary. Like I said at the outset: Motel Hell is an odd duck. I'm tempted to say it's like a toned down John Waters making a Tobe Hooper film, but that doesn't even quite work. I enjoyed it, but you really have to take the film on its own terms and not come in expecting Motel Hell to be like other early 80s horror movies.  With that mindset, there's a good chance you might enjoy it.

Shocktober Revisited: Spider Baby

Jack Hill's Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told is one of the more unusual films I think I've ever seen. That has to say something, as the Blogorium has seen its share of the strange and "off the beaten path" cinema. It's more coherent than Death Bead: The Bed That Eats, and less hyperbolic than Blood Car, to be sure, but there's something about the tone of Spider Baby that resonates well after the film ends. Lurid? Yes. Graphically violent? At times. It meets most of the check-marks for "low budget shocker" from the 1960s, but Spider Baby is nothing like the two most famous titles from that era: Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls. It's so weird that the film often makes Freaks look tame by comparison, if only in how nonchalant everyone seems to be about the Merrye family.

 Somewhere in the hills of California (?) is what remains of the Merrye Mansion, a place nobody wants to go anymore. Its only inhabitants are Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), her younger sister Virginia (Jill Banner), and their older brother Ralphie (Sid Haig), under the care of the family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). Well, there might be a few odd uncles and aunts in the basement, but that's Bruno's business. The Merrye's have a unique affliction: a genetic disorder that causes them to "regress" as they grow older, mentally at first but eventually physically as well. Virginia believes that she's a spider, and eats bugs, along with anything (or anyone) she catches in her "web." Elizabeth dresses and behaves like a child and wants nothing more than for Bruno to hate her sister, to the point that she allows Virginia to kill the mailman (Mantan Moreland) early in the film. Ralphie? Well, it might be better to think of him less as a person and more like a dog - he's in the late stages of "Merrye Syndrome" and is basically feral.

 To Bruno's great dismay, the mailman (who was dead when he got home, to be fair) is delivering notice from the niece and nephew of "The Master" of the Merrye Estate, Emily (Carol Ohmart) and Peter (Quinn Redeker) Howe, who have come to take control of the manor and assume custody of the children. Emily brings along her lawyer, Mr. Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) and his assistant, Ann Morris (Merry Mitchell), with hopes of cashing in on the estate, but what they find is a very different matter indeed. The children trust Bruno and they do their best to appear "normal" for their extended family, but it's only so long before their natural tendencies surface...

 Originally titled Cannibal Orgy, the film begins with a kooky animated credits sequence, accompanied by a song about the story to come, sung by Chaney. If you didn't know what you were getting into, this sets the tone right away, and Mantan Moreland's jittery mailman give a clear sense that Spider Baby teeters on the brink of "camp" territory. Not intentionally, mind you, but the bizarre display of "Merrye Syndrome," and Elizabeth and Virginia in particular are a template for the sorts of characters who populated John Waters films in the 1970s. They just don't know any better - it's how they've always lived, with Bruno keeping a close eye on them and the rest of the world shut out.

 For the Merrye family, it's perfectly normal that Ralphie uses a dumbwaiter between floors of the house, and while Emily is appalled at their lack of "manners," Peter takes it all in stride. He accepts them as they are, a choice that makes Spider Baby all the more unusual; the film doesn't revel in how bizarre the Merrye's are (and they certainly are), but takes them at face value and presents the intruders as the "strange" ones. At no point in the film is the audience ever sympathetic towards Schlocker or Emily, and the emerging romance between Peter and Ann seems to exist so that Virginia's affections toward him go unrequited. That they're family only seems to go noticed by Peter, but he's so accommodating of the girls that in more lurid hands, who knows where the story may have headed...

 I'm almost positive that Spider Baby is a direct influence on Rob Zombies' House of 1000 Corpses, particularly on how the presentation of the Merrye's mirrors the behavior of the Firefly clan. It's not just that Sid Haig is in both films, although that certainly doesn't hurt the case that Zombie has seen Spider Baby and borrows from it (in particular, watch the dinner scene and compare Baby on the couch in Corpses with Virginia and Peter in the "web" scene). The difference that makes a difference between Spider Baby and House of 1000 Corpses is that the former was intentionally designed to be a comedy and the latter resembles a grab-bag of "grindhouse" tropes in the guise of a horror movie. (In the interest of full disclosure, the Cap'n is not a fan of House of 1000 Corpses).

 We're meant to laugh at the arch behavior and the unexpected resolution to the Ralphie / Emily "romance" - if you want to call it that - in the same way that Bruno's admission the family is "vegetarian" at the dinner table. The concession to this rule is that Virginia eats bugs and Ralphie is allowed to eat whatever he "catches," which includes the cooked cat on the table. Only Peter seems interested in partaking, mostly because he assumes it's a fox or something of that nature.

 The distinction that Spider Baby is a comedy - a very, very black comedy at that - is often missed by people who discover the film. Hill, who made his feature debut with Spider Baby, lost the film in a series of tangled rights issues following the producers going bankrupt, delaying its release for the better part of the 1960s. When Cannibal Orgy finally made its way to theaters, it was unusually paired with biker films (Hells Chosen Few) or horror anthologies (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors). Given that sort of pairing, it's understandable that Spider Baby remains largely unknown to this day. I had heard of it, but had never seen a copy of the U.S. DVD, and ultimately came to the film through the Arrow Video Blu-Ray release, which does look fantastic for a 50 year old film that only made it to drive-ins. It existed on the margins of cult cinema for so long that even Jack Hill is surprised by the affinity its fans have for the film. He seems puzzled to be remembered for this over Switchblade Sisters or Foxy Brown, but for a young filmmaker working on a low budget, it's a very assured debut.

 Part of the appeal was seeing a younger Sid Haig, and also Ohlmart (memorable as Vincent Price's venomous wife in House on Haunted Hill), but chiefly I wanted to see Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his better later roles. Unlike Alligator People or Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Chaney wasn't consigned to the "drunken caretaker" role, and is instead the surrogate parent for the Merrye children. He has quite a few tender moments with the girls, particularly when Virginia does something unforgivable and Elizabeth desperately wants him to shun her for it. He tells them that he could never hate them, and does his best to manage an untenable situation when Emily and Peter arrive. His sense of resignation about the real world colliding with the fantasy world of the Merrye "children" keeps Spider Baby from simply being a freak show. Tonally speaking, Chaney is what makes Spider Baby such a strange film, in that he simply refuses (as a character and, presumably, as an actor) to treat this madness as anything other than "par the course."

 The big surprise, at least for me, was Jill Banner as Virginia. I knew almost nothing about her going into the film, and only found out after the fact that she had been developing scripts with Marlon Brando prior to her untimely death (car accident). While Beverly Washburn has the more "camp" performance, Banner is mesmerizing as the titular character, who seems totally disconnected to reality in any form. Her fascination with "Uncle Peter" is both creepy and sweet, although her intentions always lead back to playing "spider" with a pair of kitchen knives for fangs. It's a shame there isn't more of Banner to see on-screen, but as first impressions go, she makes the most of hers.

 (SPOILERS AHEAD) I do have one minor point of contention for the film - the original title, Cannibal Orgy, doesn't actually make much sense until the very end of the movie, when the completely devolved "relatives" in the basement are revealed. To that point, we're only aware that Bruno and the girls put the bodies of the mailman and Schlocker in the dumbwaiter and send them to the basement, but it's not clear that the "uncles" and "aunts" are eating them. Furthermore, it's hard to tell exactly what Elizabeth eats other than moss and mushrooms, and Virginia only eats bugs and cuts up people - she keeps the mailman's ear in a box, but never makes any overtures that she'd eat it. Ralphie eats other animals, and Bruno doesn't appear to have any cannibalistic tendencies. I understand that the title is lurid and grabs your attention, but in this instance Spider Baby may, in fact, be the better choice, even if the opening song specifically references cannibalism.

 It's a minor quibble, I admit: Spider Baby is a film that deserves to be better known than it is, but if you like hunting out on the edges of cult classics, I think you'll find it is every bit as deserving of your attention as Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead. Possibly as influential, albeit to a different group of filmmakers. And don't worry too much about the goofy prologue with Peter that sets up "Merrye Syndrome" - the closing bookend wraps it up well (or does it???).  Spider Baby is the sort of low budget exploitation that sneaks up on you, and continually surprises, confuses, and amuses you. I wish I'd have seen it sooner, but even a Cap'n can be late to the party some times. Come over some time and I'll be happy to show it to you, but do watch out for my web. I get to eat what I catch, you see...

Shocktober Revisited: It Follows

For at least the last decade, there seems to be a concerted push to anoint one horror movie as the next "classic": the genre reinventing, flying-under-the-radar take that will usher us out of this endless trend of remakes and PG-13 zombie/vampire/werewolf teen-friendly tripe. Sometimes, the hype is justified (The House of the Devil, The Cabin in the Woods), sometimes not (Hatchet, Behind the Mask*), but I think it's safe to say that we're not going to get rid of the PG-13 horror trend any time soon. In fact, there was a trailer for the Ghost House Pictures remake of Poltergeist in front of the movie we'll be discussing today. It Follows has been riding on a groundswell of praise from horror fans, and Radius / TWC is finally listening to audiences and putting the film in theatres, as opposed to dumping it on VOD. By the time the Cap'n heard about it, It Follows was already being labeled "this year's The Babadook," and I was a little worried about going in with heightened expectations, so I just stopped reading about the film. Does it live up to the hype?

 (if you really don't want to know anything else, skip to the last paragraph, but the short answer is "yes.")

 Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a college student living at home with her mother and younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). She's been on a few dates with Hugh (Jake Weary), and is thinking about taking things to the next level, but Hugh's behavior is a little strange. He seems to see people that Jay can't, and is always in a hurry to leave wherever they're settling in. But she decides to sleep with him, and as she's relaxing in the back seat of his car, Hugh knocks her out with a rag and chemicals. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair in the abandoned remains of a hotel, with Hugh pacing the building, looking frantically for... something. There's something following him; it's slow, but it's not dumb, and it's going to kill him, so he passed it on to Jay. If she wants to live, she has to pass it on to someone else, or it comes after him. It can look like anyone, but if it's feeling cruel, it will look like those you love most. She's tied down to prove that he's not making this up, and before long, someone - or something - slowly walks up to where she is...

 We already know what the "It" is capable of from the opening sequence, which also establishes writer / director David Robert Mitchell's visual style: long, unbroken takes, using the most of the wide screen composition. If it helps, think of Halloween, and understand that I know how lofty of a comparison it is to make. Mitchell walks us through the moment of panic for "It"'s last victim - Hugh's first attempt to pass it on? - as she tries to escape from her house, to drive to the beach. And then a smash cut to the next morning. The stakes are established. Once Hugh explains the rules, we know what Jay is up against. We'll learn a little more about the "It," but not directly from the characters. It Follows is a film heavy on inference, on visual clues rather than exposition dump scenes. What you take away from the film depends heavily on how carefully you're paying attention.

 Mitchell packs plenty in the frame to pay attention to, as Jay and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Kelly, and neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) try to find Hugh, who rented his place in Detroit under a fake name and presumably skipped town. When the threat could be anything, it's a demented version of "Where's Waldo" in the frame - who's really a person? Who is it? Early on, Mitchell makes it abundantly clear, but towards the middle of the film, he starts playing with the audience. Much later in the film, "It" takes the form of someone we've only seen in photographs, and he relies on the viewer to have been observant. You don't need to know who it is - or was - but it's a bonus that weighs in It Follows' favor.

 There are many things about It Follows I'd like to talk about, but would risk SPOILING plot points. Boiled down to its core, the film is a very straightforward variation on the horror trope of "Sex = Death," one that's been analyzed ad nauseum in college courses the world over. It Follows will likely join those thesis proposals, in part because Mitchell takes a very ambiguous approach to how and what we find out about the threat. They "why" is abandoned, strictly speaking, which distinguishes the film from many of its modern brethren. A reductive reading would call it "The Ring as an STD," but remove all of The Ring's second half - there is not history here. Jay only traces it as far back as Hugh (real name, Jeff, at home with his mother) - he got it from "some girl at a bar." We have some idea of what happened to Annie (Bailey Spry), the girl from the beginning, after Jay's attempt to pass it on goes horribly wrong, but it's only in flashes. What it wants is up to us to decide, and why the rules are the way they are is similarly up to interpretation.

 Instead of devoting most of the film to monster lore creation, Mitchell spends almost all of It Follows dealing with Jay's fragile emotional state, as she struggles with how to deal with her state. It's a curious wrinkle that all of the sex in It Follows is consensual, and yet Jay is clearly left violated in every situation (one in particular is left to the imagination, only holding on her face before and after she swims out to a boat). Does she want to pass this curse on to someone else? Does she want to die? There seems to be no way to stop "It," and only the "infected" can see it. "It" can see them once they've passed it on, but it isn't interested. Not yet, anyway. You can drive and get ahead for a while, but it will always be right behind you, walking slowly, emotionless.

 The inevitability of the threat could be a detriment to It Follows: in a more conventional approach, like the Final Destination series, it simply becomes an excuse to put Grand Guignol kills on display, character development be damned. But the death toll is relatively limited in It Follows, and they both count, emotionally. One sets the tone for the film, another gives us a vague insight to the first death, although what you take away is largely a matter of interpretation. I give the lion's share of the credit to the cast, although Mitchell certainly gives them plenty of time to breathe and to exist on screen. As a matter of fact, it's refreshing to see a group of young actors who don't look like the Hollywood Casting Template for Horror Films (see anything released by Platinum Dunes), and instead a cast that look like normal teenagers, that act like normal teenagers.

 I say this knowing full and well that I just saw Maika Monroe in The Guest, playing a character just a little bit older than Jay is. I saw her in The Bling Ring, too, but didn't remember he when I saw The Guest. Monroe, like the rest of the kids (adults don't factor into It Follows in many ways, aside from two, meaningful moments involving the "It") is totally believable as Jay, a young woman thrust into a situation she doesn't understand and forced to cope with it. She doesn't magically become Nancy Drew or Buffy when "It" appears. She gets frightened, panics, makes bad decisions, and when she tries to help it doesn't always work. Likewise, Sepe, Luccardi, Gilchrist, and Zovatto aren't just assigned "types." They're Jay's friends, and despite the fact that Mitchell sets Greg and Paul against each other, the end of the film still isn't as apparent as I thought it would be.

 Arguably the film's weakest moment comes from Paul's plan to stop "it" by electrocution in a public swimming pool they all went to when they were younger. The plan doesn't really make sense - the pool is too big, for one - but they aren't aware of what Jay and the audience know. We know that when she tried to shoot "it" (and as she just learned how to fire a gun a few hours before, she's a terrible shot), that didn't work. Mitchell foreshadows their plan with a shot that seems to be out of place in the film - the smaller pool out back that Jay enjoys swimming in, inexplicably ripped open - but it makes sense only in retrospect. That might have worked, but in their desperation, Paul's plan backfires and it ends up hurting more than just Jay. The only thing that works in the scene is the final shot, where Jay looks into the swimming pool and sees something the others can't, an image left open to your own interpretation.

 The pool sequence is a minor stumble, but one I feel like I should point out. Mitchell and It Follows bounce back with a less conventional, more ambiguous ending that left some of the audience disappointed. Then again, I made the deliberate choice to see It Follows with a more conventional audience just to see how'd they would react. I could have seen the film at a smaller, art house theater with a more enthusiastic crowd, but it seemed like this would be an interest test case to see how the multiplex crowd reacted to less mainstream horror. They liked it while the film was going on, but seemed dissatisfied that it didn't end on some grand show down, the kind I imagine the remake of Poltergeist will (their enthusiastic reaction to the trailer was also telling).

 But here's the truth about the internet hype machine surrounding independent horror: it only works for people who are seeking out the kind of movies that are like It Follows. The buzz is not going to change the minds of people who get impatient with something different from the formula, or something as stripped down as It Follows. And that's great. It really is, because I wouldn't have known about It Follows otherwise, and I will see it again. I want to see it again, because there's so much that Mitchell packs into the frame that I know I missed some of it. I want to pay closer attention to the forms "it" takes, because they're careful hints about the creature's history. Or maybe not - it's clear halfway through the film that "it" can and will take the form of a previous victim. I want to see if I somehow missed something that led to the pool in the backyard being torn open. The sign of a great horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) is that you're thinking about it after the fact. That you want to watch it again, to dig through and pick up pieces you missed. It's what distinguishes It Follows from the more basic "Sex = Death" movies that are enjoyable, but disposable.

 I also have to point out how amusing it is to have Yara reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a clamshell phone, which is a minor subplot in the film. Nice touch.

 So if you're reading this review and wondering "should I see this or is it all sizzle and no steak?" the answers are an emphatic yes and an emphatic no, in that order. If you think you'd like It Follows, then yes, see it. If you liked The Babadook - which It Follows has a tonal connection to, particularly in how it ends - or You're Next or The Cabin in the Woods or The House of the Devil, basically anything that flew mostly under the radar as horror goes, go see it. I think you're really going to like it. Sometimes the hype is justified. That doesn't mean that It Follows is "game changing" or "genre redefining," two terms overused to help sell movies of this ilk. Much like Starry Eyes, another independent horror film that's flying under most people's radars, It Follows takes a concept you're familiar with and tells it in a unique way. I don't want to undersell this film, nor do I want to oversell it, because your mileage may vary. Don't seek out spoilers. Try to see it with limited knowledge. Which, uh, means not having read this review, I guess. Oops.



 * I realize this is going to be a difference of opinion, but I found nothing in either movie worth watching: Behind the Mask either doesn't understand or chooses to misrepresent slasher movie "tropes" in order to advance its narrative, and the first Hatchet film has extreme gore and nothing else going for it. I have not seen Hatchet II or III, but have yet to see a review that made me want to.

Shocktober Revisited: The Mutilator

 editor's note: this review originally appeared as part of Horror Fest 7 coverage, but as the film is scheduled for release later this year, it seemed appropriate to include it.

 So... The Mutilator. What the hell was that?

 I don't know if you remember Sleepaway Camp, or have even seen Sleepaway Camp (which you clearly should, if you haven't), but it has a prologue and some really bizarre flashbacks during the movie that slowly hint that Angela is in fact a dude (SPOILER), something revealed at the very end of the film.

 Nothing that outlandish happens in The Mutilator, but it does have an opening every bit as inexplicably odd and an ending that's up there with Pieces in the "Wait! That can't happen! What the hell?" category. Also, I guess it might help to have seen Pieces so that the last sentence was in any way relevant to what I was talking about. Oh well, if you'd been at Horror Fest V, you would have seen Pieces, and if you wanted to watch Sleepaway Camp I can only assume you would have already. If not, I guess you could watch them and then read the rest of this review, even though I'm not really going to mention either film again.

 So The Mutilator (written and directed by Buddy Cooper) begins with young Ed Jr. (Trace Cooper) and his mother (Pamela Weddle Cooper) getting ready of Jack Sr. (Jack Chatham - and I know that should say Ed Sr, but I'm sticking with what IMDB says)'s birthday. Ed Jr. decides he's going to clean all of his father's guns while his mother makes a cake, and like the genius he is he also pulls the trigger, accidentally killing his mother. Oh sure, technically it's his father's fault for keeping a loaded rifle in an unlocked cabinet where his kid could accidentally kill his mother, but Ed Jr. is clearly an idiot.

 Anyway, so Jack Sr. comes home, tries to kill Ed Jr., then drags his dead wife into the study where his guns are, pours himself a drink, and then pours a drink for his dead wife. He also tapes the "For Your Birthday, All Cleaned By Me" sign that Ed Jr. put on his gun case to her body. Just because, I guess. And then we hear police sirens while the kid stares on (did he call the cops?).

 From this promising beginning, we leap forward ten years or so, when college-aged Ed Jr (Matt Mitler) is sitting in the local hangout arcade / pizza joint with his friends, deciding what to do for Fall Break. When his father inexplicably calls him AT THE arcade / pizza joint, to tell him that he has to come to Jack Sr.'s beach condo to "close it up for the winter," Ralph (Bill Hitchcock), Sue (Connie Rogers), Mike (Morey Lampley), and Linda (Frances "related to Claude" Raines) talk him into letting them come along to party for Fall Break. They also bring along Ralph's girlfriend  Pam (Ruth Martinez), so everybody can pair up and have sex. Well, almost everybody, anyway.

 When they arrive at the beach condo (in Atlantic City, NC, which means the college is probably ECU since they complain about not being close to the beach and they have southern accents that come and go) it's already unlocked. Little do they know that Jack Sr., aka "The Mutilator" is planning on killing all of them, and pretty much anybody else.

 This begs the question: was he just planning on killing his son and it's just a bonus that Ed Jr. brought five friends, or was Jack Sr. just insanely over-prepared for his murder rampage. Considering that he never says a word to his son, or really anyone else ever (including at the beginning of the film), it's hard to know what his motives are.

 The condo is filled with his trophies of previous kills and Ed Jr. mentions he's hunted everything except for humans (foreshadowing) so we can kind of guess what Jack Sr. is planning, especially since it's not long before we see him hiding in the garage downstairs, cradling his battle axe and dreaming about murdering his son (as a child). He is, however, not much of a mutilator, although there's a reason for that I'll get to in a moment. See, Jack Sr. does drown somebody, and he uses a motor boat to rip someone's guts out, and he also decapitates a police officer ("special appearance by" Ben Moore), but it isn't until much later in the film that he does anything that would qualify as "mutilating." That said, when he does it's a real doozy. I mean, I've seen some creative kills with a hook before, but this one takes the cake by a long shot.

 So I mentioned the whole "mutilator" thing, in part because the title of the movie wasn't The Mutilator until it came out on VHS. Prior to that, it was called Fall Break, which explains the lengthy title song that plays over the credits while the gang is driving from unnamed college (ECU) to unnamed beach (Atlantic City, NC) which is also the least slasher movie theme song you're ever going to hear.

 So I guess by 1985 maybe Buddy Cooper and company decided that Fall Break wasn't a sufficient holiday to make the title of a slasher flick, so the film was renamed The Mutilator. I can't say for certain whether one is better than the other, but it's a weird movie indeed. In addition to all of the strange dialogue ("you're more likely to get struck by lightning on the beach" while the moon is visible in the background) or the fact that these wild college kids spend most of their time playing Monopoly and a version of Blind Man's Bluff that looks suspiciously like Hide and Seek mashed together with Sardines, interspersed with some gratudity and a killer that unlocks the door to the kitchen so he can sneak back into the condo he has the keys to later that night... look, a lot of The Mutilator doesn't make any sense. And that's part of the charm, even if it isn't very good. I found it strangely entertaining in the same way that Splatter University is. Now that doesn't make it good, but it makes it watchable, and I'll take watchable over Moontrap any day.

 Also, the killer is cut in half at the end but still manages to stay alive long enough to chop off a cop's leg before dying, just for kicks. Spoiler.

Shocktober Review: The Dorm That Dripped Blood

 The Dorm That Dripped Blood (aka Death Dorm aka Pranks) came out relatively early in the "slasher" craze (1982), which is why it's often lost in the shuffle. While rough around the edges, first time writer / directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow do include a few story elements that, even for the time, are novel enough to recommend the film. It's not an excessively violent film, so gorehounds might be frustrated at the amount of time between slashing, but many of the kills are vicious, which makes up for the relatively low body count. Its surprisingly bleak denouement has been repeated, to better effect, in the ensuing years, but it does stand out among its contemporaries for going in a different direction.

 On the eve of winter break, students are throwing a party at Dayton Hall, a dormitory designated for conversion into an apartment complex. Once everybody leaves, it's up to a small group of volunteers to inventory, move, and clean up Dayton: Joanne (Laurie Lapinsky), Craig (Stephen Sachs), Patti (Pamela Holland), and Brian (David Snow). Debbie (Daphne Zuniga) was supposed to help out, but her parents are picking her up early. The foursome is staying in Dayton while they clear the desks and furniture out, to be sold to wholesaler Bobby Lee (Dennis Ely). Unfortunately for them, there's also a mad killer somewhere in the building, who we see hacking up some poor guy's hand at the beginning of the film. Could it be the janitor, Bill (Jake Jones)? Could it be major sleazeball Bobby Lee, who tells Joanne he likes to drive by the dorm at night? Maybe it's John Hemmit (Woody Roll), the wiry haired weirdo that digs through garbage and stares at them through windows at night. What's he even doing on campus?

 The killer takes advantage of the vast space in Dayton Hall, which is several stories, and the small group's inability to search all of campus at any one point. Debbie (SPOILER) gets knocked off when she finds her parents dead in their car, but since she's leaving, who's going to know anyway? What is the killer after, and who will survive until the end? None of this is really reinventing the wheel for a slasher movie, but Carpenter and Obrow get a lot of mileage out of the seemingly abandoned college campus. The students are basically on their own, and because they've volunteered to handle the busy work of cleaning Dayton Hall out, other than Bill, there's nothing resembling an authority figure to be found. Police aren't a factor until late in the film, in part because the killer is careful who to pick off so that their absence won't be missed. They're also pretty sure that it's just Hemmit, who doesn't speak to anyone and might just be playing pranks.

 The Dorm That Dripped Blood specializes in misdirection, although not always to its benefit. There's a lot of time devoted to setting up one story thread and then heading in another direction: at the party in the beginning of the film, we learn that Joanne is hesitant to take her relationship with Tim (Robert Frederick) to the next level. She sidesteps his offer to move in, and has clearly prioritized Dayton Hall over going skiing with Tim. It's not long after this that we meet Brian, who she spends most of the time hanging out with. Is there romantic entanglement? Well, not actually, because it turns out that Patti has a crush on Brian, and Joanne knows it. Where does that leave Craig? Not really clear, but he's kind of the clown of the group, so I can understand why Patti's not that interested. He is the kind of guy who puts a plastic bug on their eggs while Joanne is cooking.

 At the risk of going full on SPOILERS, I think it's fairly obvious to most seasoned horror fans that John Hemmit is a red herring, although the degree to which Carpenter and Obrow push him as the killer goes well beyond suspension of disbelief. It's fine to have him in the same room with Brian's body and for Joanne to assume he killed him, but to reduce Hemmit to being unable to even finish a sentence so late in the film is pushing a bit too far. Even though it adds up who the real killer is if you think about it, it's clear who it isn't, and they just keep trying to sell it. Similarly, Bobby Lee isn't just a red herring, he's almost a superfluous character: he makes an inexplicable decision to leave his girlfriend in bed at 2 in the morning to drive to Dayton Hall, for what turns out to be a plot convenience that makes the end of the film possible. He's the perfect scapegoat for the killer, who didn't even know he was coming, but who knows the police are on their way.

I will give The Dorm That Dripped Blood a lot of credit for the way the film ends (SPOILERS, again): while Final Girl theory was still in its evidence gathering stages in 1982, Carpenter and Obrow head in a completely different, more nihilistic direction with their film. It's in keeping with the brutal ways people die in the film - a drill to the head, spiked baseball bats and machetes to body parts, a garrote to the throat, running over people, or boiling them alive - but the brazen way the killer fakes being a victim in order to finish the job is particularly cruel. Joanne does her best to stay alive, so to be knocked out and stuffed into an operating furnace is especially dark. Worse still, the film closes with the still oblivious police commenting on the smell coming out of the furnace. Ouch.

 The pacing is, at times, a little lopsided, and the low budget creeps through a few times during The Dorm That Dripped Blood, but overall the Cap'n would put it in the higher end of mid-tier slasher films. It doesn't quite have the atmosphere of a Halloween, or as many inventive kills of something like The Prowler. Its twist isn't as good as Friday the 13th, but the ending is more bleak and downbeat, and it's not as much of a slog as Splatter University or Final Exam. You might even care about the uncharacteristically non-sexualized protagonists; I certainly felt bad when they started dying. It's weird seeing Spaceballs' Daphne Zuniga in her first role, and even though it's clear she won't last long, how she goes is pretty rough. The Dorm That Dripped Blood won't vault itself into your favorite slasher movies, but if you're in the mood to dig deeper into the subgenre, this is a good flick to start with, and a great kick-off to Shocktober.

Meanwhile...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Quick Review: Ant-Man

 Ant-Man is a tricky situation when it comes to reviewing the movie itself, but in the wake of my Fantastic Four review, I feel like it provides a much needed contrast. What Ant-Man had, going in, that Fantastic Four didn't, was a level of expectation on the part of much of Marvel fandom. Maybe not even Marvel fandom, but Edgar Wright fans to be certain. Ant-Man was, by Wright's admission, a passion project, and his very public departure from the film left Marvel and Kevin Feige with a serious PR mountain to climb. Ultimately, it turned out to be more of a molehill, or - wait for it - an anthill. At least for me; there's still some debate about what is vs. what "could have been," and I think that's going to last a lot longer than the "Fox won't show my Fantastic Four, which was a great movie" Twitter war.

 I get the easy jokes directed at Peyton Reed, who was hired to come in after Wright left the film (rumor has it over story changes mandated by Marvel's "creative committee"). Reed directed Yes Man and isn't considered to be much more than a puppet of the studio who hasn't made anything since Bring It On that you've heard of. For me, he also made Down With Love, (a movie only I seem to like) which nearly landed him the Fantastic Four gig the first time around, and would have fit in with the 60s vibe that Down With Love is an homage to. But anyway, visionary Wright out, hack Reed in - that's the narrative you can still see in reviews for Ant-Man. But then there's the tricky part, because the Ant-Man that is turned out to be pretty good.

  There are a few different factors in play that help Ant-Man: one is that is dispenses the "origin story" pretty quickly and integrates it into the narrative in a way that keeps everything moving forward. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a thief, recently released from prison, who can't get his life back together. He can't get a job because he has a criminal record, so he can't provide alimony payments to his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) which complicates his ability to have any leverage to visit his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). Also standing in the way is Maggie's new husband, police officer Jim Paxton (Bobby Cannavale). This could be played very heavy handed and one sided, but there's a surprising effort to be balanced and not make Maggie or Paxton out to be antagonists. They want what's best for Cassie, and Scott is a thief.

 Like most ex-criminals, he goes back to his old habits to make ends meet, teaming up with his partner Luis (Michael Peña) and his new gang: Kurt (David Dastmalchian) and Dave (T.I.), who are working on a heist of "some old rich guy" who has a safe Scott might be able to crack. Unfortunately, when he breaks in, the only thing Scott finds inside is a suit, which he takes anyway. The "old rich guy" is Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and he wanted Scott to steal his Ant-Man suit, because he needs him to use it for a particular heist involving Pym Industries. His former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has advanced the shrinking technology that Pym hid from his company (and S.H.I.E.L.D.) and he needs somebody to make sure Cross doesn't sell his work to the military (or worse). Pym's daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly) wants to do it, but Hank refuses, for personal reasons.

 The narrative of Ant-Man moves at a brisk pace, with Scott learning how to use the suit and become the new Ant-Man while also planning the heist. There's even time for the reveal of why Hank won't let Hope take the suit, which allows you not only to shrink but also to be able to control ants. It gives you increased power because of the reduced size, so Scott becomes "like a bullet" and has to meter out how hard he hits someone, as not to kill them. Rather than front load Ant-Man with this, Reed / Wright put it in the middle of the movie, and it never bogs down the film. It also helps that Ant-Man is balances comedy with superhero shenanigans in the same way that Guardians of the Galaxy does. It's never too silly or too serious, although Peña pushes it sometimes. Surprisingly, though, not in the rapid cut flashback/monologues he uses to very quickly get exposition across to Scott.

 The special effects are pretty impressive, considering that most of the film is from a very tiny perspective - the sequence where Scott shrinks in his apartment and falls through the floor to a neighbors party downstairs is quite good. His terror at nearly being stomped on while people are dancing and trying to navigate his way out (he doesn't know how the suit works) takes a fairly normal situation and makes it fun for the audience. Also kudos to the de-aging team for making Michael Douglas in 1989 not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's body double in Terminator Genisys. It's a nice touch and gives the scene with Howard Stark (John Slattery, back from Iron Man 2) added gravitas. It makes sense why Pym would choose a thief over the Avengers, and why he'd have no second thoughts about sending Scott in to steal something from one of "Howard Stark's old warehouses". Of course, the warehouse turns out to be the New Avengers Facility, where Scott runs into Falcon (Anthony Mackie in an amusing cameo). The scene is mostly designed to set up Ant-Man's role in Captain America: Civil War, but I'll allow it because Mackie and Rudd make the scene entertaining. There's a much better use of foreshadowing later in the film, with a very quick reference to Spider-Man (now back in the MCU).

 If there's one thing that really elevates Ant-Man over most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and I'm mostly talking about the Disney releases), it's the scope. Appropriate to its source, it's scaled back, smaller, but not simply because Scott shrinks down to ant-size. The trend, at least since The Avengers, has been to have a giant fight at the end of the movie involving something in the sky that's going to destroy the planet / our heroes / etc. Seriously, just take a look at the finales of Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, where they're trying to keep an entire city from crashing down from the sky and killing everybody. Airborne battles are, it would seem, the thing that Marvel loves the most. There are even variants of it in The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four because, you know, if the formula works, overuse it.

 Ant-Man, on the other hand, sets the climactic battle inside of the bedroom of Scott's daughter, and most of the final battle with Yellowjacket takes place on a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. Reed frequently cuts back from the action to actual scale so you can see what it would look like to normal people. It's mostly for comedic effect, but for this film, that technique works just fine. Ant-Man acknowledges its somewhat goofy premise without ever demeaning what Scott (or Pym) can do while in the suit. When he goes sub-atomic to stop Yellowjacket at the very end, the risk implied with doing so (involving the original Wasp) isn't treated like a joke. There's a fine balance between being silly and diminishing the movie overall. How much of that was Wright, how much was Reed, we're probably not going to know. Wright retains a writing credit, and by many accounts the first half of the film is almost exactly what he wrote. Increasing Evangeline Lilly's role as Hope (to set her up for future films as the new Wasp) is allegedly what pushed Wright away, but she didn't seem to overshadow Paul Rudd or Michael Douglas to my eyes. The only problem Ant-Man really has is the same one Marvel has struggled with since Iron Man: having an interesting villain whose name isn't Loki. Corey Stoll is mostly wasted as "angry scientist villain who is mad at Hank Pym for some reason and becomes Yellowjacket".

 In a perfect world, we might know what Edgar Wright's Ant-Man looked like, and while I'm not happy about his departure, there is some solace in knowing that the version of the film we did get is still a lot of fun. I'd go so far as to say that I enjoyed Ant-Man more than Age of Ultron - a movie I've tried to write a review for repeatedly since May* - and am looking forward to watching it again. It has some of the problems of MCU movies, but eschews many of the "same old, same old" story structures in favor of a more character based narrative. While I wasn't crazy about the villain, Rudd, Lilly, and Douglas made for a fine combination, and I'd be happy to see more of their adventures outside of the increasingly unwieldy "crossover" films. As shoehorned in as it seemed, I actually liked the thieves, mostly because the chemistry between the four of them makes it entertaining enough to overlook the fact that Scott doesn't really need them to get into Pym Industries near the end. Reed also somehow made me feel bad for an ant, and not only that, but one with a terrible pun for a name. Good job.

  More importantly, since I brought it up in the first paragraph, whatever happened between Wright leaving and Reed taking over, the end result is less disjointed than in Fantastic Four. Without looking it up online, I didn't take a mental tally of "which part of the film came from which," and more to the point, I wasn't thinking about it at all. Instead, I enjoyed Ant-Man, Frankenstein-ed as it is. It has the benefit of being altered before cameras started rolling, but the mixture of original vision and studio mandated chicanery doesn't show in the same way it does with Fantastic Four. We're never going to see the pure, unadulterated versions of either film, but at least with Ant-Man I know there's one out there I would see again.




 * While in aggregate, I did like Age of Ultron, every time I sit down to think about it, or to focus on specific points, the draft ends up becoming a fanboy-ish critique of "Whedon-isms" throughout the film. They aren't so bad in their entirety, but when I have to address things like "well, I was born yesterday" or the party scene, it begins to feel like nit-picking. The fact that a HYDRA soldier actually says "no, it wasn't" after Iron Man shoots them and says "good talk," kind of annoys me. Anyway, the short review is that it's a fun movie that suffers from trying to set up too many parts of Phase 3.

Quick Review: Fantastic Four

 This one has been a tough nut to crack: on one hand, I really don't want to pile on to a movie almost everybody has been tearing a new one. Because, yeah, it's a mess. Most of it is pretty bad to really, really bad. Some of it is okay, maybe even pretty good, but then structurally it collapses again. On the other hand, there's almost something worth mentioning in Josh Trank's Fantastic Four that I've seen mentioned offhand in a few reviews, but that most people haven't picked up on, or at least discussed in depth. This isn't the first superhero movie that's dipped its toe into Cronenbergian "body horror," but in whatever it's original incarnation was - more on that in a bit - Fantastic Four is definitely the first mainstream comic book movie to have tried to specifically approach an origin story using that pervasive sense of dread.

 It's just too bad that we'll never see that movie, if it was ever finished. We will probably never know, at least until an "unauthorized" book comes out in a decade or so. Actually, blog post. I keep forgetting that's the world we live in now, where a book like The 50 Greatest Science Fiction Movies Never Made would now just be a series of articles on some geek friendly site. Anyway, the post-mortem on Fantastic Four is going to make for fascinating reading someday, more so even than the movie that came out of it. Which is, let's be fair, not worth seeing. I'm sorry, but even given what I'm going to tell you, the end product just isn't worth your time. It's not bad enough to be entertaining, and what few moments of interest it has don't amount to enough to make it worth your time.

 Without getting into the salacious details of what the director did or didn't do on set, or how Fox rushed Fantastic Four into production so as not to have the rights revert to Marvel, let's just say that the production of this film was haphazard. And it shows. If nothing else, there are clear markers of what scenes were reshot because Sue Storm (Kate Mara)'s hair color changes due to a comically mismatched wig she's wearing. It's more prominent later in the film, but you'll see it sprinkled throughout the first half as well. Apparently - and again, other than a deleted tweet from Trank and rumors, we have no real confirmation - Fox saw the completed footage and were shocked that the director of Chronicle was less interested in making a Marvel Audience Pleaser movie and was much more interested in a psychological exploration of what super powers do to the human body and mind. They also allegedly claim the film didn't have an ending, which might explain the embarrassingly bad one cobbled together from every other Marvel film, whether Fox owned the rights to them or not. There is a marked shift from the first half of the film, which at least looks like it was shot in practical locations, to the last 15 minutes, which were clearly shot on a green screen, in order to have a showdown with our heroes and the barely established Dr. Doom.

 As I said, that's not really what I found interesting. The final showdown with the giant beam in the sky that manages to steal from X-Men, Thor: The Dark World, and The Avengers (actually, both the first one and Age of Ultron, not that I think about it) is kind of par the course for Marvel movies now. To the point where a comparably small scale fight in a little girl's bedroom makes Ant-Man* a refreshing change of pace. But I digress. Back to the only thing about Fantastic Four that's vaguely worth discussing. There is a moment, in the middle of the film, when Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) and Sue Storm (Mara) are in Area 57, a top secret military facility. They've been exposed to the green goop from Planet Zero, which also swallowed up Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) after they got drunk and used the Quantum Gate to visit the other dimension. It's a long, dumb, story, but basically Government Man (Tim Blake Nelson) wants to take the project away from Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and send NASA to the other side. Anyway, I guess it's less dumb to go Ninja Turtles than "Cosmic Radiation".

 So they're in Area 57, and Franklin has been given access to visit them. When we first see our heroes, they're in separate, dimly lit rooms, strapped down and totally unable to control their powers. Reed's arms and legs are extended and he can't move his fingers. He doesn't even seem to be aware what's happening. Ben is screaming for help from his darkened cell, embedded in strange rocks from Planet Zero. Johnny uncontrollably bursts into flames, and Sue phases in and out of invisibility. Trank films these scenes to appear as disturbing as this sudden change would be - Reed is sweaty, distended, and horrified. Ben is a giant rock monster, and he's alone with no one to talk to him. Johnny is dangerous to the lab technicians - during a nightmare, he overheats and blows out the glass window they're watching him from behind. For a change, our young protagonists behave the way someone might actually behave if they experienced a radical change to their bodies, and while it might not be what audiences expect from a Fantastic Four movie - let alone Marvel in general - it's a refreshing take on comic book adaptations. This is a far cry from discovering you can stick to walls, or many of the "discovering your powers" montages from other comic book movies. This is all of Brundlefly, all at once - the power and the rotting fingernails. The fear, the loathing, alongside a perverse fascination. Trank does an admirable job of mimicking Cronenberg's fondness for shots that linger on "new flesh," so to speak. For a moment, I thought this might be a movie worth watching.

 And then that all falls apart, because of an unusual choice to cut ahead "One Year Later" after Reed escapes, where we're given quick exposition on what their powers are and how they work. The Government has been conditioning their powers to use in combat situations - Grimm first, but they're grooming Johnny to also be a weapon. Were it not handled so poorly, this might be an interesting extension of the creepy shift in approach to being a "super hero," but instead it's underdeveloped, like everything that follows. It's the first hint of the Scanners-like finale we might have seen (again, we'll never be sure), but once they rebuild the Quantum Gate and find Doom is still alive (albeit fused to his suit and glowing green), things quickly collapse. Most of this happens in the last twenty minutes and is rushed, to put it mildly. I'm not sure what part of Doom's powers made him a scanner, but he absolutely walks through the facility making people's heads explode. It's surprisingly violent for a PG-13, even when the lights conveniently cut off.

 This extension of Cronenberg inspired body horror is, however, quickly abandoned in favor of a much more conventional "fight it out" ending on Planet Zero with the punching and the fireballs and the invisible force field blah blah Doom sucked into his own portal whatever. Victor Von Doom goes from being a fairly interesting human character - albeit one that resembles the comic book version in no way shape or form - to being evil C-3P0 with scanner powers who decides to destroy Earth so that they can't exploit Planet Zero. We get that from two lines of dialogue before he pops Government Man's head like a zit with brain powers. I'm not honestly sure that Trank's take on the Fantastic Four could have worked for the entire film, or even how he had planned to close out his version of their origin story, but it was different. Admirably different, even: I had heard it was "dark and gritty," which is not exactly something I'd associated with The Fantastic Four, but it's not "dark and gritty" in the way that Batman v Superman looks. Instead, it's psychologically traumatic, drawing from The Fly and Rabid and Videodrome more than Spider-Man or any of the X-Men films.

 And yet, we're left with the mess that is Fantastic Four - one pretty good ten to fifteen minute stretch couched between a fairly stupid beginning (really, Dan Castellaneta was somehow Reed's science teacher in elementary and high school?) that cuts ahead to bored actors - Teller and Mara particularly seems disinterested the entire film - and peters out at the tonally incongruous coda. I wouldn't be the least bit enthusiastic about the further adventures of this foursome, even if Bell brings pathos to Ben Grimm / The Thing that makes a talking rock monster not inherently comical. That's an impressive feat, but it's one of a small handful of moments that make Fantastic Four that much worse. Because if it was just awful, like Terminator Genisys, I might even consider recommending it. But instead, there are some tiny, neat, ideas rolled up into a patchwork mess of a movie, one that's just going leave you dissatisfied. So stick with the real Cronenberg, and I guess if you need to see that world collide with comics, there's always A History of Violence...




* Speaking of a movie with its own sordid behind-the-scenes history, albeit one whose seams are much less apparent, and with a much more enjoyable end result.