Welcome, everybody, to MMMMM2018!!
I am doing it again - watching a horror movie I haven't seen before every day in October. This is the first of what will hopefully be several digests of reviews from this project. I do try to crank one of these out every week, but often fall short a week or two. I can't promise you I'll manage it in 2018, but I'm going to try my very, very best.
This is my rating scale. Almost every year, people tell me flaws about it. You go right ahead and try. Some of it will always be tempered by personal taste. Try to see if you can't figure out how (that's the funnest game of all to play with critics, don'tchaknow??)
A = Excellent, a must see
B = Very good, I’d watch it again
C = Worth Seeing
D = Maybe don’t bother
F = Worthless
+ = Superior for this grade
- = Just barely makes it into this grade
Interestingly, this rating scale first came into my life before I got into horror, and I used it to create a 'master list' of films I'd seen, trying to rate all of them from best to worst. Now, I only ever use this system to rate horror. Why do I mention it? When conceived, it was VERY difficult for movies to get an A rating. So... if by chance an A (or A-... an A+ has never appeared on this blog), you can be sure I really, really, really loved it. On the other end of the scale, anything as low as a D- suggests that there was *something* I liked about the film, while an F means it is a lost cause. Thus, if you have a reaction like 'You hated the VVitch! You only gave it a C-!', you are projecting your own feelings on my rating scale (I'm happy watching a C-...), that is not what I meant.
Now, unlike most, right-minded film reviews, I personally do not care about SPOILING EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING about these movies for my readers. Let me be extra super clear about this. Some effort will be made not to reveal every detail when it comes to more recent films, but some of these damn movies have been around longer than I have. If you haven't seen it yet, are you really going to? I'd like to think I'll convince some people that they should, but, that comes at a price, dear friends... So just be warned about it before you go any further.
Likewise, some links might feature.... Not Safe For Work clips or imagery. This isn't a recap of This Is Us, gang, we're getting into some grim horror movie shit, here, and sometimes my words alone can't do them justice. So just be aware of it, should you go a clicking....
ONWARDS TO OPINIONS!!
Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler) - B
During those heady days of the 1890s, a drifter rolls into the wild west town of Bright Hope, leading to his arrest at the hands of sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell). That night, the drifter, along with one of the sheriff's deputies and the nurse attending him. A cursory examination of the evidence finds that they have been abducted by the Troglodytes, a vicious group of native raiders, known in particular for their taste for human meat. Sheriff Hunt, along with his elderly deputy Chicory, a brave war-survivor named John Brooder, who boasts he has killed over a hundred natives (played by TV's Matthew Fox), and Arthur O'Dwyer, the nurse's husband, who just so happens to have a broken leg he's recovering from (played by Patrick Wilson, who often vastly improves whatever movie he's in). After losing their horses, sheriff Hunt, Chicory and Brooder are forced to leave O'Dwyer behind and press on to the lair of their enemy. In the ensuing battle, Brooder dies while Hunt and Chicory are taken captive by the Troglodytes. It falls to unlikely hero, O'Dwyer to save his comrades and wife before being horribly devoured (and I mean horribly...)
There's a lot to like about Bone Tomahawk. The introduction starts with Sid Haig and David Arquette murdering a group of people in their sleep on the road, and that level of intensity and dread lingers throughout the film. The camera work is excellent, and shows off a lot of desert landscape. Many shots imply the vulnerability of the rescue party, even when there is no apparent threat to them. Most of the film is light on action, giving you time to learn about your characters (Chicory, who feels the part of a Redshirt, gains a surprising amount of depth, I noted). This helps maintain the tone, even makes you feel for the characters when things inevitably don't go their way. The lead performances are all very well done, with the possible exception of Fox, who doesn't quite feel as believable as the rest. I was often reminded of Ravenous, another film about cannibals that I probably enjoyed more, though a fair case could be made that Bone Tomahawk is a better film (certainly visually, but perhaps completely)...
If I had to nitpick (which I don't, but I will), I take issue with the final act of the film. Given how dark and foreboding the preceding tone is, around the time Hunt and Chicory are taken captive, the realism takes a hard exit, and events seem to just happen to get the conclusion the film needs. While it does feature one of the most outrageous kill-scenes I've ever witnessed (honestly, now, don't click that link if you're not ready - I warned you), almost everything goes right for the 'good guys'. It's hard to believe O'Dwyer would become such an absolute pro at gun play when being rushed by multiple enemies. Or that a certain character's sacrifice goes completely as planned (off-camera, no less!). This isn't the kind of ending the film advertised. It felt a little lazy on the scripting. An argument could be made that O'Dwyer's prayers to God managed to give him the ability to still walk after falling down hills on his gangrenous leg and gun down multiple native warriors without formal training, but that's kind of a reach if you ask me...
That said, among its peers in this digest, Bone Tomahawk's uneven ending is hardly the chief offender in that department. The rest of the film is hard to complain about, so I'm perfectly willing to give it high grades (I even bumped it from its initial B-, and if the rest of the month carries on like this week did, it might be bell-curved even higher at the end).
Some toxic waste is dumped into a small body of water near Prosperity, AZ. Only Joshua, a rancher of spiders goes anywhere near it, thankfully, because when Joshua starts feeding crickets found at the lake to his stock, they start to grow freakishly large (the crickets themselves are unaffected). Meanwhile, Chris (played by David Arquette), has come back to town to try and work his deceased father's mine, take care of his elderly aunt Gladys, and make amends with Sam (presumably Samantha), his old flame and the town's sheriff. It is her son, Mike, who first discovers that Joshua's pets have become giant. He tries to warn his parents, but they don't take him seriously - until giant spiders are everywhere. Now the residents of Prosperity need to band together and gun down as many giant computer-generated spiders as they can, lest they become people-sized flies.
Sloppy writing. Baffling score. So many unexplained narrative decisions (why do the giant spiders have a Donald Duck-esque gibberish language?). So many cringe-inducing performances. I'm not sure where to start cutting this movie apart. If I didn't know better, I'd guess some good old fashioned studio meddling occurred at some point (I can't help but notice it was produced by Roland Emmerich, who notoriously makes movies that are aimed at the lowest common denomination of audiences), leading to choices like the bizarre, Looney Tunes-style orchestral score (it is a Warner Brothers film billed as a comedy, so this is probably intentional). It also features CG from 2002 that has not aged well at all. Even the tiny, pre-mutation spiders are clearly computer effects, and looked awful. The film claims to be a cheery throwback to 50s giant monster sci-fi horror movies, and I guess it succeeds with that initially. But very few 50s horror movies featured huge, expensive action scenes with exploding monsters, spraying green goo everywhere. It's cheesy and lame like a lot of those 50s classics are, but it's a very, very different kind of cheesy and lame.
Who was the intended audience of Eight Legged Freaks? I think that's really where a lot of the confusion lies. While it is clear at the end of the film that Chris is the hero, atrociously-acted Mike drives most of the action until the violence starts. No character (save Joshua in the opening scenes) we are introduced to in the film dies (not even the bad guy), rather, they are usually quickly spun around and around in webs, while screaming comically. Even extras are never seen being done in, giving very little gravity to the proceedings. Much of the humor in the film is fairly juvenile, which lends credence to the notion that it was created for young audiences initially, but with the huge amount of violence, swearing, sexual misconduct and other adult situations that happen over the course of the movie, you know they were trying to rope in teenagers too (always the target demographic of studio horror - who probably wouldn't have come out for a kid's movie). It is just a confusing mess, in general, and didn't win me over with its comedy either.
The zombie apocalypse has struck. Molly and her boyfriend, Nick are trying to flee Las Vegas to meet up with Jimmy, a friend of Nick's, probably their drug dealer, and, most importantly, is located at a safe and sound remote, desert airstrip with a fully loaded escape jet. The pair are set up as nasty drug addicts who are constantly at odds with one another, before their car gets stuck in the sand. Almost immediately, they are beset by a single zombie, who quickly dispatches Nick. Molly flees into the desert, with the zombie hot on her heels. For another hour or so, the zombie, who Molly comes to nickname Smalls, chases Molly from one scene to the next, while we learn more about Molly's past, and what this little trip is all about for her. Before long, despite it being a terrible idea, Molly comes to adore Smalls, keeping him safe from any encounter they may happen upon (and, at least once, vice versa). Or at least until she gets where she's trying to go...
What we have here is an interesting, fresh take on a familiar premise (one woman against one zombie during a zombie apocalypse). You can excuse a lot of the lapses of logic (don't think too hard about how she has any idea where she's going...), because the outset is engaging enough. I feel I might have liked it more if I hadn't watched a superior film about characters in a desert a couple of nights previous, but, that's a me problem. The camera work isn't bad at all, but the day scenes are usually extremely washed out to make pastel-like pinks and other colours stand out more. This is somewhat essential to a drab, endless sea of sand.
Where the movie falls down is two-fold. First, and chiefly, very little of what goes on is particularly interesting or captivating. You hate everyone. Molly and her boyfriend are established early as losers and jerks, so never do you pull for her once she's on her own. You might start to come around to sympathising with her more after she's raped, but her behaviour doesn't improve much. Smalls is a zombie, and has to be played pretty straight for the film to work, so there's not much to like about him either. When Molly arrives at her destination, the few characters she meets there are more or less non-characters that don't improve the film, or have any impact on the plot.
Secondly, the ending - in which Molly drives back to the city she just ran from to rescue her abandoned son, Chase, who the film slowly reveals through flashback the existence of - is weak as hell. I suppose the idea is that through being on her own in the desert with Smalls changes Molly into more of a mother, it kind of cheapens the initial premise by forcing dumb action scenes. It also entirely turns its back on the entire first hour of the film, which, I guess can work in some instances, but in a film like this makes you wonder what the point of that extremely long zombie chase was? Once again, we have a film that started strong, but loses its way in the final act. It isn't as strong of an effort as Bone Tomahawk, but even It Stains the Sands Red isn't devastated by its ending issues. That mantle belongs to another, this week...
J.D.'s Revenge (Arthur Marks) - C
Ike, a college student in 1978 New Orleans, comes to be possessed by the vengeful spirit of J.D. Walker, a gangster from the 40s who was framed (and executed) for the murder of his sister, Betty Jo. Ike struggles initially against the churlish J.D. who womanizes with abandon and beats Ike's wife, Christella, but before long, J.D. is in complete control, and will not rest until the Bliss family is in ruins. J.D. is largely concerned with slaying Theotis Bliss, who murdered Betty Jo to protect himself for older brother Elias (played by Lou Gosset Jr.), J.D.'s unwitting killer. Elias has moved on from a life of crime, instead now being an effective church minister, eager to put his dark past behind him. Yet Theotis is less pleased with Ike/J.D.'s arrival at his brother's church - this young punk seems to have designs on his daughter, Roberta (who instantly is attracted to J.D.). Eventually, J.D. manages to confuse the hell out of everyone, and while the three Blisses struggle over a gun, Roberta shoots Theotis, and the film has an unbelievably happy ending.
Now, I haven't seen many Blaxploitation-Horror hybrids (Blacula, naturally, but I think the only other one has been The Zombies of Sugar Hill, back in the very first year of the MMMMM). We live in a sensitive time for exploitation films of any stripe, blaxploitation included. Yet there's definitely still humour to be had. Scenes before J.D.'s return are interesting, and competent (the adult hypnotist scene that seemingly causes the possession is particularly charming, even though its low on action or dialogue). The film is low on blood and gore, often using suggestion rather than special effects, to achieve its ends (there's some - what appears to be - stock footage of a cow's throat being cut for butchery that repeats several times through the film - easily the most gruesome thing in the movie). The film suffers from pacing, and a wafer-thin script, but the performances are appropriately over the top and loud. It's entertaining, even if it's not a masterpiece by any stretch.
What doesn't make a lot of sense though is why J.D. is such an absolute monster - especially to Christella, Ike's poor wife, but honestly pretty much everyone who crosses his path gets a taste of jive. Like, I get wanting to ruin the lives of the people you're back to haunt, but Christella and J.D.'s other conquests are more or less innocents in his way. What's the reason for J.D. to be so hostile? Are we just supposed to infer that it's business as usual for a 1940s gangster? I mean, I'm not a screenwriter with a credit to my name, but, it seems to me you could have at least showed a bit more of J.D. being like this before he gets shot dead by the Blisses.
I'm also going to leave the comparisons of later-film J.D. to James Brown aside. You can draw your own conclusions on that score.
Tommy and Austin are an unlikely Father-Son duo of coroners, who late one night, take a mysterious body from a baffled sheriff. The body, a Jane Doe, was found half-buried in the home of a brutal triple-homicide, yet, her presence and identity are a complete mystery. While Austin's girlfriend wants him to leave work and go to the movies with her, Austin can't leave his father to perform the autopsy himself, so he agrees to stay. Some weird shit starts happening while they begin to dissect their Jane Doe, starting with freezer doors popping open, and the radio flipping around, but before you know it, cats are dying, bodies are coming back to life, both men are having hallucinations, and the body yields puzzle after puzzle to the two. Before long it becomes clear that there's far, far more going on in the morgue than a simple autopsy.
Look... I was on board, at first. Brian Cox plays Tommy, and I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of a bad Brian Cox performance. The film actually makes you care about the relationship between Austin and Tommy, and, frankly, their autopsy is rather fascinating at first. Even when the shit starts to hit the fan, things are still captivating. The use of darkness by the director I found especially effective, even though the coroners don't observe a lot of hygiene rules or standards (don't eat in the morgue, you weirdos!!). Moreover, despite the entire film taking place in a morgue, they manage to keep it fresh with changing rooms, adding the odd character, and enough body horror to keep you engaged. That's about all there is to like, though...
It's just.... that ending... like... Yikes. It's too new for me to just come right out and spoil for everyone, but the level of logic that Tommy uses when he concludes on what happens is just... like... have you ever watched them solve one of the Riddler's riddles on the 60s Batman show? The riddle will always be completely subjective, and more than often, won't make any sense - but Batman and Robin always figure it out immediately, often throwing in some line like "OF COURSE!!", despite how ridiculous the answer they land on is. That's the end of this film. A couple of dumb things happen, Tommy spits out an absolutely bullshit explanation, and then more bad, stupid things go down. It was such a 180 on the otherwise enjoyable previous scenes, that you can't help but feel betrayed and angered by such a spoon-fed conclusion. No other film springs to mind about just how badly it drops the ball, after playing such a righteous first half.
I've started to use too many 'likes' and ellipses. I gotta move on. I GOTTA!
JASON VORHEES! Jason Vorhees, Vorhees. Jason Jason Jason, Vorhees, Jason. Vorhees! Jason Vorhees - Vorhees, Jason Vorhees (Corey Feldman). Jason Vorhees, Vorhees Vorhees Jason Vorhees! Vorhees Jason Vorhees Jason Vorhees, Jason Vorhees. Vorhees Jason Vorhees Jason Jason? Jason Vorhees (a very young Crispin Glover among them!) Jason Vorhees Vorhees Vorhees Vorhees Vorhees Vorhees Jason. Vorhees Jason? Jason Vorhees!
What? You don't love my recap? What else do you need to know? He's back, and he'll be back again. I've bitched about this series before, and I'm pretty sure I said I was done with it. Yet I came back for this one because I'd heard it was one of the best. Plus, it was the next one in the series - for some reason I demand to do this series in order, while having no qualms about jumping around in the Nightmare on Elm St. franchise (People can be weird).
And you know what? It was acceptable. That makes it the best Friday the 13th movie I've ever seen. Make up effects by the legendary Tom Savini are on glorious display, giving the kill scenes a huge kick of oomph from their previous humdrum (I don't mean to say there aren't iconic kills in the first three, but the effort is consistently more solid here). The final encounter with Jason is particularly great, and a lot of the character's lore feels like it sprang from this outing.
Oddly, it has me thinking of the Bond franchise, and how the character and tone of James Bond evolved through the first three films (Dr. No is a fine film, but Bond doesn't feel like Bond. From Russia with Love puts more of the pieces in place, like gadgets and Bond's wit. Goldfinger successfully combines these, and more, now-familiar elements to a sort of prototype of what comes to be established as the character, but it isn't quite there yet with its tone. Thunderball is truly where the Bond films become the Bond films). Jason is barely in the first film, wears a pillow case over his face for the second, and gains his now iconic hockey mask in the third. The films have always taunted and manipulated the audience with its stringy, intense musical score, but it feels more even, and less shitty in The Final Chapter. Any pretence that the characters are important in any way is dispensed with. Let's just get on with the bloodletting!
Oh, but don't worry - there's plenty not to like about it. The cast is mostly zeros - Glover is charismatic, Feldman is actually decent for a child actor, but everyone else might as well be made of wood. It features a 15 minute recap (read: shortens the length of the film by bombarding you with clips of the old movies - something Friday the 13th loves to do, despite hardly anything from the other movies mattering). I mentioned that the kill scenes were improved, but only the ones that use make-up - a lot of kills, more than you'd think, are just someone getting hucked out of a window in slow motion. And as much as we complain about jump scares being used to death in modern horror movies, every single scare in this movie is a cheap jump scare, usually bluntly using the music to tell you how to feel. Fine if you like that kinda thing, but, hard to really get into when you're being analytical.
The big question for me now? What do I do when I pony up to the horror movie table next year? Do I hit and watch Part 5, hoping against all odds that the series continues to improve? Or do I stand, and stop with Friday the 13th again, leaving the series on the most positive note I'm likely to give it?
Find out in 2019, dear friends.
And, there you have it, my little Scream Queens! Our first week of digests is out and ready for digesting. Now, I can't tell you exactly what will be coming up this week for MMMMM2018, save that I must immediately leave this desk to go watch my film for today, which is none other than Mario Bava's classic Black Sunday! I'll be back next week to tell you all about it, and more! Until then, fright fans....
