Finally, we come to the late-night portion of the show. I waited until just after midnight to put on Trick r Treat, so we were officially watching it on Halloween.
Trick r Treat works just as well on a second viewing as it does in the first. In fact, it's easier to pick up on all of the interconnected elements once you know how they tie together, and Michael Dougherty really succeeds in making the four stories feel like part of a larger canvas.
Part of the reason Trick r Treat works so well is that it addresses, in varying fashions, what Halloween means and what it used to represent. As a horror movie, Trick r Treat gives real stakes to characters disregarding the "rules" of Halloween, and also consistently subverts "horror movie" expectations. A number of times during the film, folks in the room thought they had the story pegged, only for Dougherty to zag when they thought he'd zig.
For an anthology film, the twists and turns are well constructed, and time is played with well enough that it is possible not to catch the ways Trick r Treat sets things up before they happen, which is actually pretty rare. If you haven't guessed, I'm a big fan of this film, and it's a shame it never got a fair shake theatrically. I really hope the dvd sales are good enough for another Trick r Treat film, because the way this anthology is designed could keep them coming for years and not retread old horror tropes.
---
Scream Blacula Scream is something of an oddity. For those of you who haven't seen Blacula, it's about an African Prince or something like that who Dracula turns into a Soul Brother Vampire, and then he gets ashed. Scream Blacula Scream is, I think, about the struggle to take over a Voodoo Family, and for some reason this dude named Willis brings Blacula back from the dead by burning his skeleton.
I think Willis wanted Blacula to kill Pam Grier, who is taking over the Voodoo family (it's like the mob but they very rarely practice voodoo in the film), but instead Blacula turns Willis and everyone else he meets into a vampire, including two pimps, a honky, and a sassy woman who keeps trying to undermine Blacula's rule.
Of course, Blacula gives her a "bitch, back off" stare, and that settles thing. I think. It's weird, because all of Blacula's vampires look like zombies. They move like zombies, and they don't really bite people. It's silly.
Some other things happen that don't really make sense. Mostly some cops try to stab Blacula's vampires with fence posts, and Pam Grier tries to use voodoo to turn Blacula human again. Instead, Blacula kills everybody and then starts screaming because she stabs a voodoo doll of him in the heart. Here's where things really don't make sense.
See, Scream Blacula Scream doesn't actually end. Blacula is screaming in pain from being stabbed by the voodoo doll and then the film freezes and goes to credits. Maybe they were hoping for a cliffhanger ending for a third Blacula film, but since that never happened we won't know what happened to poor Blacula. Damn jive turkeys at American International Pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment