Shocktober Revisited: A Nightmare on Elm Street

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Meanwhile...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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.

Cap'n Howdy's (Back)Log: Documentary Recap!

   While it may come as a surprise to readers that the Cap'n spends time watching more than just schlock, more often than you'd expect I'll sit down and watch a documentary. What you may notice is that I don't often write about them, usually because I don't feel like rehashing what they're about. Ultimately, the question is whether there's something new to learn about the subject that you didn't already know (if you knew anything about it in the first place), and I suppose that most of the below succeed in that category to one degree or the other. In this instance, I'm including these mini-reviews to let you know they exist, because I hadn't seen or heard too much about them prior to screening.

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters - It's hard not to see this movie and draw parallels to The King of Kong, because they are, in essence, about the same thing. Tetris fan Pat Cotri discovers that while there are a number of rankings on various sites, there has never been a tournament to determine a champion for the game, so he organizes one and invites various "masters" from around the world to compete. Looming over the entire event is the question of whether Thor Aackerlund, the legendary wunderkind of the Nintendo World Championships of the 1990s, will return from a self-imposed exile in order to join the tournament.

 Where Ecstasy of Order differs from The King of Kong is that there's no "David vs. Goliath" angle, ala the Billy Mitchell / Steve Wiebe high score battle. These are evenly matched players who accomplished extraordinary feats with the game of Tetris (the NES version, for those curious), including the rumors that Thor not only reached "Max Score" but has more lines than anyone on the "Kill Screen," - the point at which lines begin to fall so fast it's nearly impossible to line them up.

 Rather than deal with human conflict, Ecstasy of Order centers around technique, about the approach to Tetris, and about the many ways players accomplish feats most of us didn't know where possible. It becomes a bit hypnotic, and that's well before the demonstration of the "invisible pieces" version of Tetris appears in the film. I won't reveal who does and doesn't make it to the tournament, let alone who wins, but I appreciated the level of respect among competitors. The title of Tetris Master is no misnomer in this case.


 Rewind This! - A documentary about VHS tapes and the people who love them? Yes indeed, my friends. Designed as a love letter of sorts to a (mostly) defunct staple of home video, Rewind This both covers the history of the videotape, its rise and fall, and the fanatics who go out of their way to collect the obscure and the bizarre releases that will in all likelihood never be released again. As somebody who grew up during the era of home video (and who has more than a few VHS tapes at home), it's nice to see that the love for the format still exists, even though tapes have a worse chance than vinyl of enduring over time. The very things that come up about why VHS is so endearing - the tracking lines, the wear over parts of the film replayed repeatedly - are the very reason that they don't last. Tapes wear out, break, and can sadly be erased at a moment's notice.

 Now that hasn't stopped me from keeping the ones I have (and coveting the one VCR I own that still works) but the truth is that it's harder to maintain this medium. The nostalgia factor and the access to titles that, quite frankly, have and probably will only exist on tape is the driving thrust behind the documentary (not to mention a continuing thread on series like Red Letter Media's "Best of the Worst" or Everything is Terrible), so it was nice to see a celebration like Rewind This!. VHS essentially launched home video, and it was (and, I suppose, is) the longest running format to date. After all, DVD barely made it ten years before Blu-Ray began chipping away, and who knows how long that has before digital or the next innovation takes over? Eventually we may come to a point where the tapes no longer play, and Rewind This! might go from a love letter to an archive of a lost era, but in the meantime, it really got me jazzed to fire up the VCR again...

 41 - I didn't know much about George H.W. Bush - as a President or as a man - when I watched 41 so in that regard this HBO documentary was informative. It's much more focused on Bush as the man rather than as the public servant, and surprisingly doesn't cover much of his time as President (or, for more obvious reasons, his period in the CIA). If you don't know much about him or his family history, it's certainly worth checking out, but don't expect much in the way of political gossiping, ala Clinton's My Life. Other than a very curt mention of how he "doesn't want to talk about" Ross Perot and the 1992 election, Bush is remarkably magnanimous towards most of the people he worked with. You also won't learn too much about what he thinks about George W. Bush, or Jeb for that matter, but there's plenty about the dogs. I don't mean to undersell the documentary as fluff, because it really isn't - you'll learn a lot about Bush's personal history and home life, but there's a limit to the political lessons to be gleaned from the experience.

 Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic - Showtime produced a rather thorough documentary about the life of Richard Pryor, from his earliest stages of comedy right up until his premature retirement due to advanced MS. I must admit to being surprised at how much of Pryor's career I wasn't aware of, in particular the period before he dropped out of comedy to reinvent himself in anonymity out west. There's a great deal more to the "freebasing" incident that led to burns all over Pryor's head and body than one would think based on more cursory career retrospectives, and certainly more about how he lived after MS sidelined him (something even a heart attack couldn't do earlier in his life). I'm not sure that I'd ever seen footage from the failed attempt at Live on the Sunset Strip that preceded the concert film we all know, but it's fascinating to see his awareness that it's just not happening. My only gripe is that among all of the other comedians, celebrities, friends, and lovers interviewed, I don't understand why Dave Chappelle was included if he only appears twice in the documentary, for a total of less than two minutes. Both times he appears the comments are more conjecture than insight, and it seems like a waste of Chappelle to bring him in only to add nothing.


Necessary Evil: Super Villains of DC Universe - My familiarity with the villainy of the DC Universe is mostly limited to Batman, with a smattering of Superman and Green Lantern antagonists thrown in for good measure. Other than knowing the names Manta Ray, Black Adam, Reverse Flash, and Gorilla Grodd, I don't know much of anything about them. I'd like to say this documentary helped, but while a lot of DC antagonists are included, the focus sways heavily on psychoanalytical reasons for villains to exist and how each DC hero's rogues gallery is uniquely suited towards them.

 This is not to say that the documentary, narrated by Christopher Lee, isn't interesting, but if you're looking for more than the most cursory discussion of major villains, you might wish that this could be spun off into a series. Lex Luthor and the Joker get most of the screen time, and that's not actually that much, because at a little over 100 minutes, there's more of a focus into breaking them down into types with the occasional brief overview of characters like Man-Bat or Harley Quinn (again, Batman characters I already knew about).

 I'm not certain who this documentary is for, either, considering that many of the participants - including DC executives, artists, writers, voice actors, and people who on the surface have next to nothing to do with the comics (WWE Superstar CM Punk shows up once specifically to mention Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and nothing else!) - talk about major characters as though fans have never heard of them. Doomsday's entire first appearance is covered, up to the death of Superman and an explanation of what happens if you kill Doomsday. Perhaps Necessary Evil was designed as a primer for readers of DC's new-ish "52" re-launch. I'm not sure. It's fun to watch, but I must admit that it amounts to little substance by the time it ends.


Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown - There's a lot of substance at hand in this documentary about one of the titans of horror writing. Yes, Stephen King sells more and Clive Barker is more disturbing, but the influence of H.P. Lovecraft permeates every crack and crevice, every darkened hallway of horror to this day. What I wasn't expecting from Fear of the Unknown, what turned out to be the most welcome, was how in depth the coverage of Lovecraft's personal life and how they influenced his writing. The documentary moves in a basically chronological fashion through his life, but takes detours to analyze major stories in depth with a who's who of writers, directors, and historians.

 Among the interviewees are Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi, writers Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Peter Straub, and directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, and Guillermo del Toro, all of whom bring a wealth of knowledge about the author and his stories. Carpenter tells the story of how, as a child, he read The Rats in the Walls in a horror anthology and its lasting effect on him. Much to my surprise, the racist tendencies in Lovecraft's writing isn't glossed over and discussion and contextualization of his opinions on immigration appear throughout Fear of the Unknown, often with a more frank and less apologetic tone than might be expected. The analysis of the stories is most welcome and the participants go well beyond rehashing the Elder Gods mythos in bringing insight to Lovecraft's many phases of writing. Also, make sure to watch the extra interviews if you pick up the disc to hear Carpenter discuss In the Mouth of Madness, Gordon explain why his adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth is called Dagon, or about del Toro's (currently) aborted attempt to adapt At the Mountains of Madness.


Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony - Well, maybe this should be called "the Extremely Unexpected Pre-teen to College-Aged Male Fans of My Little Pony," because at least at the outset, that's what Bronies seems to be about. This documentary is all over the place, and while I suppose it is enlightening, I'm not sure what audiences are supposed to take away from it, other than adults watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

(After doing a little research, it looks like the documentary was originally going to follow John de Lancie at conventions (he appears on the show as the voice of Discord) but when the Kickstarter campaign ended considerably more successful than anticipated, the scope changed. I'm not sure it was for the better.)

 Bronies is a schizophrenic film, one that starts with a montage of teenage guys talking about how weird it is that they like My Little Pony ("it's for little girls") and then later the persistent argument is that it shouldn't be weird but gee, isn't it so weird you guys? It's never a Trekkies level of "freak show" documentary* but I really think that if people didn't continually mention how weird people must think it is even though it's totally not and we should get over being prejudicial about the fact that adults watch cartoons for kids, the message might just sink in for itself. Seriously, all the documentary really needed was the scene where the dad of one Brony who doesn't know how to feel about his son liking the show talking to another dad who embraces his son's fandom. It says more than a dozen talking heads repeating ad nauseum that "there's nothing 'weird' about it" and that bullies should stop picking on Bronies. Yes, we got it. Please can we not keep reminding the audience that it's not weird that people are geeky about things. Most of them - particularly ones who are inclined to watch a documentary about Bronies - are going to move past the "weird" phase quickly.

 That said, the increased scope does mean that while the focus is all over the map, there is more of an international vibe to the film. Bronies follows an Israeli DJ who makes music based on the show, a couple in Germany who make their own figurines, a young man in England with Asperger's who travels to Manchester for his first convention, and stateside, a fan from a small town in North Carolina who is incessantly bullied for proudly displaying his fandom for the show. Hearing what the show means to all of them is worthwhile, and while I don't necessarily think it's "weird" for adults or young adults (we don't really meet adult fans until well into the movie) to like a cartoon, I get that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is probably viewed differently than Invader Zim or SpongeBob Squarepants (shows that started airing when I was well into my twenties).

 Interviews with de Lancie and voice actor Tara Strong are valuable, as well as insight from creator Lauren Faust, but I think Bronies tries too hard to be too many things - a late inclusion that "oh yeah, adult women like My Little Pony: Friendship is magic, too!" seemed, well, odd, as though the focus needed to shift once more well into production. This is a side note, but I could tell it was a Kickstarter funded production when the movie ended with nine minutes to go, and sure enough, eight of those nine minutes were names of people who helped to fund Bronies. I hope they don't mind that I skimmed that part - normally I watch the entire credits of a film out of respect for the people who made it, but even the Cap'n has limits. Still, enlightening, I guess, in that I a) had no idea there was a new My Little Pony show (and I worked in a toy store!) and b) that it had unexpected adult fans. Good on you, Friendship is Magic!

* In truth, nothing is ever as strange as the Trek-themed dentist, and yes, I get that initially My Little Pony cosplay just looks like neon "furries," but I've seen weirder examples of fandom. Like Steampunk. Yeah. Steampunk Comic Book Cosplay. That is a real thing.

Shocktober Revisited: Documentaries - Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors

  (Originally posted in July of 2011.)

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shocktober Revisited: Four Reasons to Remake Obscure Horror Films

Welcome to another installment of Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium. Tonight I'll have a few preamble-ish comments, followed by what I hope will be a brief addressing of a question I posed long ago: "why are studios remaking such random horror movies?"

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One blogorium reader was kind enough to point out to me that the spaces do count in that "140 characters max" on Twitter, which renders my little experiment moot. It also proves to me that I could in no way give you reasonable feedback on movies using that ridiculous site.

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To be honest, I understand why the remake happens. I don't necessarily like it, but rather than harp on its downsides - as the Cap'n usually does - I thought I'd take the opportunity to look at the pluses of this trend, because there are a few.

Big name remakes make enough sense; repackage a title that's well enough culturally recognized (your Friday the 13ths, Nightmare on Elm Streets, Halloweens, Texas Chain Saw Massacres, and so on), throw in a dispensable cast of Abercrombie and Fitch models-turned-CW-stars, and pay lip service to the "classic" original producers know their target audience doesn't watch because it's "dated" and "stupid", and voila - big box office pay off. I get that.

We've moved in a different direction, though: one you get past the "top tier" remakes, rather than simply go for the comparably well known second tier movies (your Critters, Phantasm, The Exorcist*), studios are jumping for lesser known "cult" films. In the past seven years, we've seen The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, Prom Night, Terror Train, Black Christmas, April Fool's Day, My Bloody Valentine, It's Alive, The Crazies, The House on Sorority Row, The Stepfather, The Fog, The Wicker Man, The Toolbox Murders, and When a Stranger Calls.

Not exactly part of the cultural zeitgeist, I'd say. Horror aficionados? Sure, but hardly the kind of movie everybody knows immediately. I can say "Freddy Krueger" and people who haven't seen A Nightmare on Elm Street. If I say "The Tall Man", it's 75/25 against, but I guarantee you most people couldn't name the killer in most of the above slasher films. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a solid 2nd-tier title like Creepshow is mostly unknown to the masses.

So why turn to such obscure films for remakes? Name recognition falls off steeply after The Last House on the Left, so let's look at four other reasons (besides "it's cheap"):

1. The Days of Video Store familiarity are almost at a close - meaning that the era of familiarity with "cult" horror films, or even more obscure titles like The Crazies, The Stepfather, and The House on Sorority Row are coming to an end. The DVD market, also winding down, is so packed with releases of "cult" horror films (not to mention Blu-Ray reissues, as Blue Underground has been devoting themselves to) that it's very easy for these once-recognizable films to lose shelf space.

That wasn't really the case in the golden age of VHS. Speaking strictly from personal experience, Carbonated Video and Video Bar had rows of horror films with lurid cover art, facing forward so that you always knew what it was you were in for. Go to Best Buy and try that. Their horror section (at least here) is packed in tightly between the end of "Drama" and the beginning of "Boxed Sets", with every movie scrunched together, spine forward. Unless you know what you're looking for, it's up to the title of the movie to do the work for you, and while I might think about looking twice at something called Bloodsucking Freaks or Gore Met: Zombie Chef from Hell, I never missed those titles at the video store.


2. Attention Spans are Getting Shorter and the Market is Getting Larger - It's very, VERY easy to find a dozen horror titles from the last year you've never heard of. Seriously, now that DVD distribution can get every zero-budget slasher / zombie movie a review on the major web sites, the older films get lost in the shuffle, no matter how revered they are. The frequency of releases and the relative obscurity of some of the titles even makes me mistake a movie like Street Trash for a movie like Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, chronology-wise.

When I have to remind people that a movie from last year - The House of the Devil - even exists, imagine how tricky it is to keep the horror neophyte abreast on The Burning. Or jeez, Visiting Hours, which I don't even like that much! There are simply too many horror movies that somehow never made it to DVD that should, because the VHS copies are getting harder to find. However, if a studio remakes the film, we get to reason number #3

3. The Original Film Gets Its Day in the Sun - Oh sure, it may not be for very long, but consider the fact that until The Stepfather remake was on its way to theatres that you couldn't get a copy of the original on DVD. There was an out-of-print copy of the sequel, but the very fact that a remake was happening ushered the release of both Terry O'Quinn Stepfather films in special editions, which might have eventually happened, but until that point had not.

The same applies for The House on Sorority Row (albeit several months later), Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine (in an uncut version to boot), The Gate, Child's Play**, The Crazies on Blu-Ray, and (I would imagine) is coming for Piranha, Suspiria, Patrick, The Brood, I Spit on Your Grave, Maniac, Fright Night, and Night of the Demons.

Even if you aren't planning on seeing the remakes (and I think I've seen two in the last year - Friday the 13th Shit Coffin and My Bloody Valentine 3-D), it was nice to be able to pick up the originals on DVD and Blu-Ray in something a little better than "bargain bin" editions. In fact, this leads me to my final point, one that might seem tangentially related, but -

4. Other, Lesser Known, Horror Films are Also Being Released "Just in Case" - There may be no plans to remake Night of the Creeps, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, Maniac Cop, Two Evil Eyes, Silent Night, Deadly Night, or Monster Squad, but they've been slowly but surely coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray in between releases of movies that are being remade. As much as might might seem annoying, the remake mania opened up the market for older, "cult", titles to get their own special editions, on the off-chance somebody decides to option them. How else do you explain video nasties like Cannibal Holocaust getting a two-disc edition, or Faces of Death on Blu-Ray(!)?

This gives me hope for those films yet to be available. I talk a LOT about Terrorvision, but considering how many movies that are much worse are already on DVD, it's a crying shame that such a twisted movie is only on VHS. Or The House of Long Shadows, which maybe isn't a great movie, but has Vincent Price, John Carradine, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee together on-screen. That's not on DVD, but Uncle Sam is coming out on Blu-Ray. Look, I can understand City of the Living Dead on Blu-Ray, but Uncle Sam??? Really? And we can't even get a standard definition copy of Terrorvision?

But I digress. The point is, that with all of these remakes in the pipeline, as much ire as it raises, and the slow push to get "every movie out on DVD", I can look forward to eventually seeing these and many other lost "cult" horror films on shelves, however briefly. Then I have to contend with their remakes eating up space, but the option will be there for a while. And smaller companies like Severin or Blue Underground or Synapse or Dark Sky will continue to release other movies, possibly with remakes in mind, but possibly not. As long as I'm not obliged to see the new version, it's really a win-win

So there you have it, the "silver lining" to the remake madness. If I have to put up with continual announcements about this-or-that beloved rarity being churned out for a quick buck in order to have a proper copy at home, so be it. It could be worse: they could not be greedy and just bury the original films to we can never see them again...

* I realize some of you are going to take umbrage to my suggestion that The Exorcist is in any way "second tier", you have to admit that the fact nobody is even trying to remake it when The Evil Dead continues to be a viable remake is odd. I intentionally left out Hellraiser, as it apparently is the subject of ongoing remake attempts.
** While, technically speaking, there is no Child's Play remake yet, its existence figures prominently in the special edition dvd and Blu-Ray commentary tracks.

Meanwhile...

 

 

 

 

 

Coming this weekend!