Tag movie-review

Scanners (1981)

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Night 17 of 31 Nights of Horror

Scanners (1981)

For the longest time, I thought this was a Stephen King story. There’s just something about it that made me associate it with him. Probably the similarity between the “The Shop” and the company in Scanners that was producing a drug that gave people mental abilities. That’s not a spoiler by the way, it’s pretty much explained right at the beginning.

This movie is all David Cronenberg though, well, Cronenberg inspired by William S. Burroughs. It’s not as strange as Naked Lunch or eXistenZ and I’m not really sure why it’s considered a horror. The movie is more unsettling than it is scary, but it’s still really good.

It has been a long time since I‘ve watched Scanners and I had forgotten most of it, except the imagery of the people using their powers. I think that’s the thing about David Cronenberg’s movies, the vivid mental pictures that get burned into your memory and haunt you.

I’ve been a comic book nerd most of my life and this film is one of the few times I can recall mental telepathy being shown as an almost physical act, both the scanner and victims emote and struggle. It’s also not a passive thing, it’s an act they have to wilfully engage, which I guess is why two gunmen are able to get the drop on a literal room full of psychics.

Michael Ironside takes a lot of the credit for this movie staying with me for so long. His performance is fantastic. Actually, I’m trying to think of a movie with him in it that I didn’t enjoy and am coming up blank. There probably is one or two, nobody has a perfect track record of picking their projects, but I think it says a lot about the man’s talent and charisma that I only remember the good ones.

It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch, I feel Cronenberg is a lot like early William Gibson in not knowing how computers work and just making things up because it sounds good. I’ve worked in telecom for thirty years and I can guarantee, that even with psychic powers, there is no way a pay phone will explode like that unless you pack it with C4.

For an older movie, the effects hold up really well. The story has some pretty big holes if you start thinking about it, so it’s best not to get too analytical and just enjoy the ride.

Possession (1981)

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Night 16 of 31 Nights of Horror

Possession (1981)

In 52 years, I have watched a lot of movies. Some of them have been very bizarre. I’ve seen The Forbidden Zone, A Clockwork Orange, Killer Klownz from Outer Space and most everything David Cronenberg has directed. Possession is right up there as one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever watched.

The people in this movie act weird, they stand too close, they don’t look at each other when they talk, they flail against the walls, they say the most bizarre stuff that nobody else in the scene reacts to, their characters are inconsistent from one scene to the next and I’ve watched Sam Neil sit in a chair in plenty of other movies, so I know he can do it without looking so manic, so this all must be intentional on the part of the director.

It has to be an art style I’m unfamiliar with. A film student could probably tell us it’s part of the neo-brutalist-hyper-realism school or something, but it just confused the hell out of me. Judging from the high ratings on almost every platform, 74% on The Movie Database, 7.2 on IMDB, 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m one of the few viewers who didn’t understand it.

The blurb for this movie describes it like this “A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.” So you’re probably thinking what I was. She’s possessed. It’s going to be a film about demonic possession (I mean it’s in the title, right?) that sounds cool. No. That’s not what it’s about at all. I’m still not sure what it WAS about. The closest I can come is that it is an allegory for the possessiveness we feel towards people we are in a relationship with. Maybe. I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it most of the night and I’m still baffled by what I watched.

I just spent about ten minutes trying to explain to my wife all the strange and incomprehensible weirdness that is Possession, but I’m not going to do that here. Why? Because despite everything I’ve said so far, I didn’t hate this movie. I’m not going to say I liked it, or that I’ll watch it again, but I also don’t want to deprive anyone else of the experience of watching it unspoiled. It is bizarre and hideous in a fashion that makes you unable to look away.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

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Night 15 of 31 Nights of Horror

Pltergeist 2: The Other Side (1986)

I want to start of by saying, the movie is not as bad as the Rotten Tomatoes score would indicate. I mean, it’s nowhere near as good as the first movie, but it’s not terrible. I think people were just disappointed when they compare it to the original, and they used the rating system to reflect that.

What went wrong with this movie? Well, nothing really, or maybe everything. You can’t say the effect were bad, they weren’t. You can’t say the acting was bad, it wasn’t. The story wasn’t terrible, although it was just a little harder to believe than the first one. I think it’s more about the crew behind the cameras, and how they changed almost everyone involved from the first except the cast, the head writers and Jerry Goldsmith.

Gone are Steven Speilberg and Tobe Hooper, which are probably the biggest changes and had the most impact, but it’s also a different cinematographer, different editor, producers, production designer, set decorator, makeup, when I compare IMDB credits side by side, not a single person in the art department was in both movies. Film-making is a collaborative effort and when you change so many of the people involved in it, you’re going to wind up with a very different outcome, even if you keep the same actors in front of the lens.

What would I have changed about this movie? If they were going to change so much of the crew, I hate to say it, but I would have changed the cast as well. Make a clean break. Make the story about a new family, maybe focus this time on the researchers going to a new house, or maybe put Tangina at the centre. More Zelda Rubinstein would have been a good thing in my opinion, she’s in far too little of this movie. As much as I loved the cast, Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are great and Heather O’Rourke a treasure taken way too soon, it’s hard to believe *SPOILER ALERT* their house was built on a DOUBLE graveyard. Seriously? This type of movie requires some healthy suspension of disbelief already, but to ask people to buy that there was a cave with more bodies underneath the cemetery that was already hidden is pushing it in my opinion. Especially when you add that, not only is this family unlucky in where their home was built, but Diane, her mother and her daughter ALL have strong psychic abilities? Pick one, either the land is cursed or the people are the reason the poltergeists are attacking them and following them, asking us to believe both is a little too much for me.

Some of the world-building I didn’t buy into. The first one, the spirits were spirits, they acted by moving and possessing inanimate objects. In this one, there is a lot of physical manifestations. I get wanting Julian Beck in as many scenes as possible, he’s the best thing about this film, but if he can appear and walk around whenever he wanted, why did he need Carol Anne? It seemed like the effects people had cool ideas they wanted to try (the braces attacking Robbie, the mescal worm) and the writers found a way to try and work them into the story, instead of the effects being needed to tell the story.

I hate that is sounds like I’m bashing the movie, that’s not my intention, I think, like a lot of the people voting on RT, that I had such strong feelings about the first film, being let down by the sequel makes you just a little angry about what could have been.

Poltergeist (1982)

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Night 14 of 31 Nights of Horros

Poltergeist (1982)

The first time I watched this movie I was fairly young. So young that I didn’t realize until this re-watch, that it wasn’t a normal cigarette that JoBeth Williams’ character was smoking in bed. Sometimes, as an adult, when you watch a movie that you have fond memories of as a child, the experience isn’t as good as you remember. I had this happen with a few films, Highlander, The Crow, The Last Starfighter and I was worried that would be the case here. I was very happy to learn it was not. This movie still surprised me, shocked me, scared me, for a story over thirty years old, it holds up remarkably well.

I always thought Steven Speilberg directed this movie. He produced it, and he co-wrote it based on his own story, but it turns out Tobe Hooper directed it. Yes, that Tobe Hooper. Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper. I guess I was surprised because for a guy who is best know for a movie about a family of cannibals, and who’s signature character wears a mask made of human skin, he does an amazing job of being more subtle here, reminding us of what it felt like to be a child in our bedroom at night, afraid of clowns, lightning, monsters under the bed and in the closet.

I like how the movie is structured most of all. It starts out spooky and the family passing off Carol Anne talking to the TV in the middle of the night as just a child maybe sleepwalking. Then they think it’s fun when strange things start happening with the furniture and eventually becomes more menacing and malevolent. Then when you think everyone is finally safe, you find out they aren’t. It’s a roller-coaster that is aided significantly by Jerry Goldsmith’s music.

Some of the green screen and stop motion isn’t as convincing in a high def transfer, especially when you are used to modern CGI, but it isn’t glaringly bad and the scenes that are dated are brief. Modern TVs don’t show static like that anymore, so it may puzzle younger first time viewers, but overall the makeup and effects are done well enough that they still look good. I’ll admit, I was still repulsed and a little freaked out when that guy rips off his own face.

Also, I can’t not mention Zelda Rubinstein. That woman adds sooo much atmosphere and character when she shows up, the movie would not be the same if any other actor had been in that roll.

If you’ve never watched it, or it’s just been a long time since you have, I would strongly recommend it this Halloween if you’re in the mood for a great ghost story.

The Howling (1981)

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Night 13 of 31 Nights of Horror

The Howling (1981)

A product of the Roger Corman factory that produced incredibly successful directors, Joe Dante has made some of my most loved movies. Gremlins, Innerspace, Explorers and the underrated Tom Hanks masterpiece, The Burbs. Until now though, I had never watched The Howling.

I don’t think it’s giving away anything to say this is a werewolf film. I mean, the title is The Howling and just look at that poster. What’s cool about this movie is that it starts off making you think it’s about one thing, but transforms (like a werewolf, get it?) as it goes into being something else. Bottom line is I enjoyed The Howling, but I can’t discuss it more without spoiling things sooooo.

SPOILERS BELOW

Things I loved. Reporters. A lot of monster movies are about people in their teens and early twenties who inadvertently wind up victims of atrocities no one would ever believe. The main characters in The Howling are journalists who actively seek out the facts. That was a nice change.

I also like that it begins leading you to believe the story is about a werewolf serial killer, when it was more about a serial killer who just happens to be a werewolf, and part of a larger community of wolves.

My biggest complaint about the film is that I wish it had been longer, as I have a lot of questions that either weren’t answered, or maybe I just didn’t understand. The killer, for instance. How did the community feel about him? Was he an anomaly? Were they upset that he drew so much scrutiny down on them? His actions are never really discussed. You get a small glimpse that there is a schism developing between the traditionalists and “The Doctor’s” way of thinking, but it’s very brief and we aren’t shown much of their way of life. Why did the old man want to throw himself on the fire? Was he lamenting the loss of their traditional way of life? Was it dementia? Was he just a drunk who seeks attention by doing this all the time? Why did Patrick Macnee’s character bring Karen and Bill there in the first place? Was it to convert them, because they later plan to just kill Karen and make it look like an accident. I know that theatres didn’t like long movies back then, but I would have loved another thirty minutes to really flesh out the wolves and their story.

The special effects were good, but… An American Werewolf in London came out that same year and their werewolf transformation scene was mind blowing in comparison.

The ending was fantastic. I know I put a spoiler warning up already, but if you really haven’t seen the movie yet… no, you know what, I was going to tell you to stop reading and instead I’m just going to end the review. Go watch the movie.

The Fog (1980)

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Night 12 of 31 Nights of Horror

The Fog (1980)

You can’t go wrong with a John Carpenter movie. Halloween, Christine, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Dark Star (okay maybe not Dark Star), Prince of Darkness, They Live (campy but fun) and my personal favourite horror The Thing.

This one just didn’t click with me though, and I’m not sure why. There’s nothing I can put my finger on that really stands out. It’s a cool ghost story, which is a nice change from zombies, demons and vampires. It has a great cast, may be the first time I’ve ever seen Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother in the same movie, the dialog is natural and all the characters behaviour realistic. Maybe the cast was too big? It didn’t seem to have an anchor character and jumped around a lot. I assumed it would be Adrienne Barbeau, but she spent most of the film alone.

I think the issue this time was me. I was really tired and not in the mood to watch a movie, but did it anyway for the challenge. I think I’ll need to see this film again on a day I’m in a better mindset. Maybe I’ll do a John Carpenter marathon.

Despite the good rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Fog doesn’t seem to be in high demand. I could only find it on Amazon and Apple TV.

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.

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.