Tag horror

The Evil Dead II

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Night 11 of 31 Nights of Horror

Evil Dead 2

I’m writing this now with twenty minutes still to go in this movie because I’m bored. With more time to work on the script, and a much bigger budget I was hoping Evil Dead 2 would show Sam Raimi’s growth as a filmmaker, but just didn’t like it and I’m obviously in the minority here because the average ratings for this sequel are higher than the original.

Maybe I’m just not the right audience for this one. I liked how the first started sombre and became weird and outrageous at the end. Number 2 starts out weird, then just puts the pedal to the floor and rides the crazy to the end. Obviously some people loved that, well, most people judging by the 88% rotten tomato score, but I preferred the first one.

I get the feeling that Sam Raimi has a love/hate relationship with this series. I don’t know him, and I’ve never heard him talk about the films, but he’s essentially made the same movie three times. While wikipedia says this is a sequel to the first, it tells the same story, minus the three friends that went to the cabin with Ashley and Linda in the original. Without these people the first half of the story is Ash alone, running from the camera, beating on a mannequin head and fighting himself for over 30 minutes. That’s when I got bored and nothing in the second half pulled me back in.

The other thing I noticed was that very early on, they start setting up another sequel. It’s like the filmmakers really wanted to make the third movie, didn’t like how the first ended and wanted to re-do it so as to set things up better for Army of Darkness and did just that, calling it Evil Dead 2. Then of course he let other people re-make it again in 2013.

The increased budget obviously went into the effects. Bigger makeup, whole body latex suits, enormous mechanical trees, even more blood than the first, and this time in four different colours. The camera movement was less interesting this time as well. It’s like with a bigger budget, they focused more on the visual effects side of things than on using the camera itself to better alter the mood and feel of the film

Overall, it was a disappointment to me, given how much I enjoyed, not just the first one, but so many of Sam Raimi’s other movies. Drag me to Hell was great and The Quick and the Dead is one of my favourite westerns, I watch it almost once a year.

You can stream Evil Dead 2 for free with ads on Plex. I’m personally glad I didn’t pay to watch it.

The Evil Dead (1981)

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Night 10 of 31 Nights of Horror

The Evil Dead (1981)

It’s interesting to me how many huge directors got their start in horror films. James Cameron’s first was Piranha Part Two, Peter Jackson made Bad Taste, Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles (while that one’s not strictly a horror, it’s got the same feel) Guillermo del Toro is still making horror movies, even after winning three Academy Awards for The Shape of Water and before resurrecting Spider-man from obscurity, Sam Raimi wrote and directed The Evil Dead, which spawned six feature films and a tv series.

I’ll admit, for a franchise that has become so iconic over the years, I’ve never watched one of the movies all the way through. I’d catch it when it was on tv occasionally, but only in bits and pieces, so this was my first experience of seeing it from start to finish.

It works. Despite the tiny cast of unknowns with little to no acting experience, the minuscule budget, the (how do I say this generously uh, inexpert?) makeup and almost non existent visual continuity, the movie just works.

The film is nowhere near perfect. The face makeup is fine, but instead of body paint and prosthetics on the hands, it looks like they went with what seem to be rubber gloves that actually look like they came from a Halloween store. They even rip at one point with the actors fingers poking through. A movie with a larger budget would have a continuity coordinator. Evil Dead has actors drowning in blood in one scene and then the camera moves and their faces are suddenly clean. Holes in doors become spots of dark paint in wide shots and change shape depending on which side of the door we are looking at, but it just doesn’t matter. Once the action starts, it doesn’t let up until the credits roll.

I think the camera work is impressive. Not the camera equipment itself, it’s obvious there was no room in the budget for a steadicam, as the shaking at one point was almost enough to give me motion sickness, I’m talking about the way shots are framed and the cameras moved. When I listened to the directors commentary on Mallrats, it was pretty clear that critic’s complaints about the static camera shots in Clerks bothered Kevin Smith a lot. No-one can make those claims of Evil Dead. The camera almost never stays in one place, it is dynamic and constantly moving in interesting and unusual ways. Some don’t work, but it is never boring.

Another thing that stands out in my mind is the tone of the film. It’s almost the inverse of what you expect in this genre. So, most movies of this type will start out light and comedic and then grow darker and more menacing as people start dying. Raimi does almost the opposite here. It starts off fairly sombre and gets suspenseful and terrifying early, but then as the violence increases, it grows wilder, crazier and wackier until almost everything is drenched in blood and gore. Sooooo much blood. If I actually believed they put a lot of thought into it, I’d say they wanted to mirror Ashe’s descent into madness visually, but it’s probably just coincidence.

One more way this movie stands out is the departure from the ‘silent killer’ standard. With the exception of Freddy, most well known horror monsters like Jason, Micheal and the others make almost no noise, let alone talk. The demons in Evil Dead almost never shut up. When Linda gets possessed, she laughs more than The Joker and that makes it almost more disturbing.

I think I’ll watch the sequel tonight, if for no other reason than because I’m curious to see how Raimi and Tapert’s film-making evolved in the seven years between them, and given a larger budget. Hopefully the lighting is more natural because everything in this one was unnaturally bright. I mean, it’s good that we can see everything well, but a cabin in the woods shouldn’t look like it’s illuminated by flood lights from a football stadium.

House of the Long Shadows (1983)

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Night 9 of 31 nights of Horror

House of the Long Shadows (1983)

This may be the movie I’ve been searching for all week. Unfortunately, I didn’t like it.

In the last article, I raved about how big a difference having experienced actors, and I still believe this to be true, but even the massive talent pool of this cast wasn’t enough to make me enjoy it.

Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, John Carradine, all giants of the horror genre… from the 50s and 60s. I mean they can still act, they were great, it’s just that the film itself felt out of date, given it was made in the 80s and it’s not due to the age of the cast, the whole tone, look and feel from the music to the camera movement to the colour pallet just felt like an homage to movies that films that made the cast famous. It’s just not my thing.

I don’t want to come off like I’m bashing the movie, so I won’t say any more about it. If you like older movies like ones from Hammer Films, you may like House of the Long Shadows.

April Fool’s Day (1986)

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Night 8 of 31 Nights of Horror

April Fool's Day (1986)

Now THAT was a horror movie worth watching. In my quest to find a movie I only half remember from my childhood, I took to Reddit because Google was no help. The first suggestion I was offered was April Fool’s Day, another box I passed by in the video store but had never watched myself and honestly, can’t remember anyone renting, which is a shame because it’s great.

This movie illustrates exactly what my problems with Night of the Demons were. Both films were about a small group of friends who get together in a remote location when bodies start dropping, but April Fools Day does it so much better.

First off, the casting, you can tell right away that these are more established actors. Amy Steel had been in about 14 other productions before this, including Friday the 13th Part 2, Ken Olandt had done a pile of TV shows and one of my brother’s favourite films Summer School and Tom Wilson will probably be called Biff until the day he dies. All that experience shows. The performances are natural and believable. A polished script helps a lot too. The characters, their backstories, their relationships, all are laid out well in the first half of the story, without slowing it down or boring you. The premise aids here as well. They don’t need to fill the time with murders to keep your heart rate up, because filmmakers pepper the beginning of the movie with April Fools trick to surprise you, and I have to admit, as corny as some of them are, they made me jump and brought a smile to my face. I even laughed at the whoopee cushion.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I was just in the right mood for this movie, or maybe it’s that it was the polar opposite in quality to the film I’d watched the night before, but I’m surprised this one doesn’t get talked about more. Even when I was looking it up on IMDB, I had to scroll to the next page to find it, in spite of the fact that the average rating is much higher than most of the movies I’ve watched so far this month. There isn’t a lot of gore or blood, so it should be easier to edit for broadcast (maybe trim down the shots with the severed heads).

Most of the holiday-as-a-horror-title movies that tried to ride Halloween’s coat tails are pretty lame, but this and maybe Black Christmas are instances where it works. Also the recent Thanksgiving from Eli Roth was a lot of fun.

I was unable to find anywhere you can stream this for free without a subscription, but I feel this one is well worth the rental price.

Night of the Demons (1988)

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Night 7 of 31 Nights of Horror

Night of the Demons (1988)

Ummmm… some of the camera work was pretty good? There’s a lot of spoilers in this one because I just don’t care.

Yeah, I didn’t like this movie. The premise is sound, a group of friends get together in an abandoned funeral home to party on Halloween, they perform a seance and summon a demon that kills them one by one. It should work but it all just felt kind of… meh. First off, there’s only ten people at this party (one wasn’t even invited) and half of them don’t seem to like each other. The dialog feels off, or maybe it’s just the actors delivery of it, probably both. A lot of time these movies will have a call back to something earlier (Chekhov’s Gun), and the audience goes “Ah!” when it pays off, like a reward for those paying attention. Well you don’t have to pay attention in this, Judy literally goes “Rodger, remember when Angela said ‘blah, blah. blah’ at the beginning of the movie? Remember? That’s what she said, isn’t it? Remember?” like she was explaining to the audience because the writers knew they’d lost them a while ago.

There’s a dance scene at the half way mark who’s purpose is unknown to me. Was it supposed to be sexy? Unsettling? It was neither, so I’m still confused by that one.

The movie could have been significantly improved with just a few changes. Even though I felt the acting was weak, it wasn’t terrible, I’d leave the cast alone, but I would have added a bunch of extras. Make it a bigger party, and it would have added to the body count and terror factor with more people running around screaming and trying to get out or find a place to hide. It also would have felt more alive and natural. Second, have a script doctor polish up the dialog, as lot of it felt forced. They could even add in a throw away line to explain why Stooge was there. He was a dick to EVERYONE and nobody got along with him, Rodger and Helen could have said he had a car and was the only way for them to get there. One line would have explained his whole character which made no sense otherwise. Also, Judy’s pervy little brother is spying on her from her closet and the only thing she’s upset about is the fact that he tried to scare her? Not that she was naked thirty seconds before?

I also would have liked more background or story about the house, or the demon(s) because…. I’m confused by that as well. The title is Night of the Demons, plural and someone (I think Angela) mentions feeling three presences. But we only see one demonic face in the mirror and at the end of the movie. It starts by one POV camera going into Suzanne and then she spreads the possession by kissing Angela, who then kisses Stooge, so is it one demon possessing people by physical contact, or was it three moving from one person to another and if three, why did they all start in the same person? Does it even matter? Because later in the movie everyone who dies seems to come back possessed, why?

I have no plan to watch the sequel (and I was shocked to learn there was more than one) so maybe someone can tell me what happened to Suzanne? Unlike the others, she didn’t die and her body suffered no damage (except a lipstick tube being inserted into her breast, which was a very well done special effect, but weird as hell)

No, I didn’t enjoy this film, I’m not Con Air levels angry about watching it, but I am annoyed that I started it late and skipped practising the guitar because of that.

You can stream Night of the Demons for free on Plex, if you REALLY want to watch it, or you can rent it from other streamers, but I wouldn’t.

Hell Night (1981)

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Night 6 of 31 Nights of Horror

Still not the movie I’m searching for from my childhood memory. I asked Google for a 1980s horror movie with teens in a haunted house and this is what it suggested. Four fraternity and sorority pledges have to spend the night in a mansion where, years prior, a man killed his entire family and hilarity ensues. I mean murder, obviously, lots of murder.

This one turned out better than I thought it would. It’s a slow starter that gradually ramps up the suspense and adrenaline levels and relies a lot more on jump scares and tension than on shock and gore. Surprisingly the premise is a little misleading. I mean it’s accurate, I just thought a movie about a fraternity initiation would be a cross between Animal House and Friday the 13th, but there’s no nudity, there’s very little blood, there’s no swearing and even though drugs are mentioned, you don’t actually see anybody do any. I think if it were brought before the MPAA today, it wouldn’t get an R rating. It feels like a slightly more violent episode of Goosebumps.

With the exception of Linda Blair, none of the names or faces of the actors are ones I recognize, but they all did really well. Probably because it’s a B movie that is lacking in the “B”s that most people are looking for in the genre, but I’m surprised it isn’t better known, or maybe it is and I’ve just been oblivious all these years. It would take very little editing to let it play on TV and is one you can easily put on and not worry about a trick-or-treater accidentally catching a glimpse and being scarred for life.

You can currently catch it on Plex for free, or rent it for as little as $2 on Google play.

The Prophecy (1993)

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Night 5 of 31 Nights of Horror

The Prophecy (1993)

This is one of my favorite movies. Wanna know how good it is? My wife told me she was going to bed, so I started the movie playing. She was putting away her laptop as the opening voice-over started and asked me what it was about, then stayed to watch until the end.

It’s weird. I was twenty when this film came out, but I don’t recall it coming to the theatre, or any advertising for it. It must have, but the first time I remember seeing it was at the video store, which is kind of shocking given how absolutely stacked the cast is. Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen, Eric Stoltz, Viggo Mortensen and Chrisopher freaking Walken. Even the periphery characters are memorable. Steve Hytner, Amda Plummer, and Adam Goldberg may not be names you can place immediately, but you’ll recognize their faces when you see them.

The plot is about one angel’s plan to end the stalemate of a millennia old war in heaven. You don’t need to know a lot about the bible or Christianity to follow the story, it’s all explained very well and done organically as the movie unfolds instead of in big exposition dumps.

It’s not a heavy special effects or action driven film, although the makeup and what effects there are are very well done, but it’s the performances that really sell it. Thomas’ pain and hurt when he describes no longer hearing God’s voice, the utter disdain and hatred Gabriel has for humanity and whenever I do see people talking about the movie, it’s usually when they’re listing best portrayals of the devil in film, and putting Viggo’s near the top.

My wife asked today at lunch what other movie like that we could watch and I’m wondering the same thing myself. Constantine she’s already seen and Legion is probably more action oriented that she would like. Maybe Ninth Gate or Seventh Sign? Lords of Illusion isn’t very biblical, but I’ve always felt it had a similar feel. Any other suggestions I might have missed?

Hellraiser (1987)

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Night 4 of 31 Nights of Horror

Yeah, this one holds up. I forgot how amazing this movie is. Not the plot or dialog, no I mean the look and atmosphere. There’s a reason they’re still making sequels and why so much of the imagery of this film has stuck with us for so long.

A man named Frank goes looking for the ultimate experience in sensation and is taken to Hell. His brother cuts his hand in the house where it happened and resurrects the damned man. Franks sister in law seduces and murders strangers to rebuild Franks body. Demons from Hell come to bring Frank back along with anyone nearby. That’s the story. It’s pretty simple, I mean the novella it’s based on is only 186 pages long, but it’s not the plot that is memorable, or even the characters (I had forgotten what anyone’s name was until I re-watched it just now) it’s the make-up.

I don’t know how this film didn’t win a ton of awards for make-up and effects when it came out. Well that’s not true, it premiered the same year as Robocop and Lost Boys, that’s why, also, it’s horrifically disgusting. It’s amazing to me how much people’s sensibilities can change in just seven years when you watch Hellraiser and then Friday the 13th and realize the later one is the version you got that was CUT DOWN to avoid an X rating. I mean… everything in Hellraiser makes Pamela’s kills look tame in comparison.

That’s the thing about this movie though, it’s all about making you feel things. Shocked, horrified, disgusted, afraid, it’s a roller-coaster of emotion and the constant ups and downs and changes of direction make you forget that there is no character development and the plot is as thin as single ply toilet paper, but that’s okay because the cinematography and special effects are so well done, your brain isn’t paying attention to anything else. It reminds me of the few H. P. Lovecraft stories I’ve read. Not great literature, but very evocative and emotion driven.

As old as I am, I still would have been too young to see this in the theatre, but the 4k transfer I watched is gorgeous (I can’t think of a better word, even if I am describing a slimy skeleton covered in muscle and cartilage but no skin) and probably as close to seeing this film the way it was meant to be, short of a theatrical re-release. Sometimes an HD copy of a movie can really highlight flaws in the original (like the cops moustache in Sleepaway Camp II) but not this time, it just showed me how wet and gooey the corpses were.

If I’m going to complain about anything it would be that I feel the movie could have been longer. I would have liked for them to spend some time fleshing out the characters and their relationships more. Why did Kristy not get along with her step mom? Just how depraved was Frank before he bought the box? Who the hell was that guy eating the crickets in the pet store? Why did we have to wait until Deep Space Nine for people to appreciate how awesome Andrew Robinson is?

I may or may not watch more from the series this month, I haven’t decided. What’s interesting about them, from what I remember, is that after the second movie, which was very similar to the first, they all take radical different directions, one is even a police murder mystery so it’s not like they keep repeating the same thing over and over. I feel like I’m talking myself into watching them.

I couldn’t find anywhere streaming it for free, but I think this one’s better if you can buy , rent or borrow a 4k version anyway. I mean, unless you really can’t hand the sight of blood.

Fright Night (1985)

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Night 3 of 31 Nights of Horror

Fright Night (1985)

IMDB lists this as a horror/comedy, but the poster makes it look scarier than it is and I chuckled more than laughed while watching it. Don’t let that description scare you off though, it’s not a bad movie. I actually wound up really liking it. The film starts off slow, but really kicks into high gear in the second half.

It’s a vampire movie made at a time when vampires had fallen out of public favour. Roddy McDowall’s character even says they’re less popular than “demented madmen running around in ski masks hacking up young virgins”, and this movie feels a lot like a love letter to the older vampire movies. McDowall’s character (and can I just say how fantastic he is in this movie?) is even named Peter Vincent, which I assume is an homage to actors Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.

I said in the intro post to this series that I wondered if older movies would hold up today. In this case, I would say yes, absolutely. Only the hair and clothing really date it, the special effects and make up hold up really well, there’s a wolf-to-man transformation scene that was clearly inspired by An American Werewolf in London (should I watch that one this month? I feel like I should) that looks better than a lot of today’s CGI.

Kind of a short review, I know, but I don’t have a lot of nitpicks for this movie, and I don’t want to spoil anything. I enjoyed it. I couldn’t find anywhere you could stream this one for free (in Canada at least) but most every online service seems to have it for rent. If you remember this hidden gem or are suddenly inspired to give it a watch, let me know what you think

Sleepaway Camp II (1988)

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Night 2 of 31 Nights of Horror

Sleepaway Camp 2 : Unhappy Campers (1988)

Messy. While watching this movie, my first reaction was ‘disappointing’, but after thinking on it for some time, I think messy is a better description.

This article was difficult to start, my thoughts are kind of all over the place, but so is this movie. I think it lacked focus, it COULD have gone in a bunch of different directions, but didn’t. As a horror movie, it wasn’t very scary, there was no suspense, no shock, as a slasher movie, there was very little blood or gore and the kills were mostly unimaginative. There were times when I thought it was going to be a parody of ’80s horror movies, but it never quite seemed to lean fully in that direction either, and it wasn’t funny. I would have said it felt rushed or underfunded, if there hadn’t been a 5 year gap between the original film and this one and the budget weren’t almost double.

The absolute biggest problem, in my opinion, is on the audio side. I forget if it was in an interview, an article or director’s commentary, but I remember learning that the original Halloween movie by John Carpenter tested very poorly with audiences until he went back and added that now iconic musical score. Sleepaway Camp II proves just how important the soundscape is to the feel of a movie, because it doesn’t have one. There are a few rock songs peppered around the place, but the majority of the 80 minute runtime is devoid of atmosphere, except for one solitary chase scene towards the end that has a low key, almost too quiet background track that doesn’t add much to the suspense. Remember how I liked the first movie because it felt like a real living camp? That’s gone. This one has a good number of extras and background people (though not as many as the first) but you don’t hear them. In crowd scenes, you don’t have that hum of human activity that would naturally be present. You hear bugs though. All of the forest and nighttime scenes had normal, natural environmental noise, but anything with people didn’t.

Fixing all that would have helped with the feel of the movie, but that probably would have only elevated it to mediocre. To be at least a more memorable experience, all they needed to do was pick a lane and stick to it. Since they weren’t going for mystery (they show who the killer is within the first five minutes) they could have focused on Angela’s backstory, shown her experiences after the first film, why she was obsessed enough with camp to murder anyone she thought didn’t belong. They could have made one of the campers or other counsellors the lead and done a Columbo style story where the audiences know who the perp is, but the protagonist slowly pieces the clues together, or they could have really set themselves apart from the other movies of the time by doing a full send-up of the kings of this genre. When Angela is walking around the cabin trying to figure out the best thing to murder Demi with, I thought that’s where they were going, but as a comedy, the jokes just didn’t land.

I paid attention to the credits. There was a stunt coordinator, but no stunt performers. They took mostly inexperienced actors and had them do their own stunts and it shows. The action is boring, the single chase scene of the film is at low speed and you even have a fall that literally just cuts from the actress stepping off a rock to her lying on the ground.

This part may just be me nitpicking, but the ages of the “campers” skewed way too high. In the first movie a lot of the cast were believable as teen summer camp attendees. If you need adult actors because you’ve decided to crank the nudity dial up to eleven, then at least make them counsellors. Sorry, I’m not buying these 18-20 somethings as kids spending their holidays there because their parents made them.

Do I need to talk about the ending? There wasn’t one, the movie just… ends. Was that a cliffhanger? Are they forcing me to watch the third movie? No, I’m not going to and they can’t make me. If you want to, then be my guest, this movie, the first and the third are all available to stream for free with ads on Tubi, or without if you have an Amazon Prime sub.