Bad Movie Podcast Episode 14

Episode 14: The Blood of Heroes

In this week's episode, Aaron and Zach spend some time discussing the late 80's passion project from writer/director David Peoples (writer of Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and 12 Monkeys). It's a movie about a traveling group of athletes living in Mad Max times that play a brutal game that's suspiciously (meaning exactly) like Quidditch. I think Mr. Peoples has a compelling case in civil court...

We also talk briefly about beer and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (which fucking owns, and you should watch it soon).

You can find the podcast here: http://badmoviepodcast.libsyn.com/the-blood-of-heroes

And if you're curious, here are the weird floaties that Zach's ancient Heineken had in it:

Never drink Heineken out of the bottle, by the way.

The 2017 Spooktober Oscares

Wow, what a month: 36 films watched, 31 reviews posted, innumerable beers consumed, and one genre of film!

This post is just going to be some of my random thoughts about what I loved, what I hated, and everything in between that stuck out during this bloody and disgusting journey.

But first, I want to thank anybody who followed along, or maybe took a chance on a movie they'd never seen before. I really appreciate it, and I hope you'll reach out and let me know what you thought!

Best Movie (that's not The Shining)

There's no doubt what the true best movie of the year (and every year) is, but we have a lot of other options for second best. 

5) Suspiria - One of the three giallo films I watched this year, and easily the best of the bunch. Suspiria looks and sounds like a nightmare on film, and definitely qualifies as an experience.

4) Raw - One of my favorite films of the past year, and an excellent exploration of feminine sexuality. It's disgusting, beautiful, and erotic all at once. I love it.

3) Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton's only directorial effort, and an easy masterpiece of post-war American filmmaking. It's shot like a German expressionist film, with elements borrowed from both the silent era and the stage. Robert Mitchum plays one of the best villains I've ever seen in a movie, and I can't imagine any film fan not loving it.

2) Dawn of the Dead - One of my all-time favorite movies, and my longest review of the month. Biting social commentary woven into a terrifying and compelling tale of the apocalypse, all crafted with a balls-to-the-wall independent spirit from George Romero. A classic.

1) The VVitch - Easily the best movie of the past few years, and probably the best American film since There Will Be Blood. It's a modern masterpiece, and everybody should see it.

Worst Movie

There wasn't a lot of crap this year. Last year was waaaaay worse. But there were a few that didn't quite strike a chord with me.

5) Creepshow II - I know it's becoming a cult favorite, and features the talents of Stephen King and George Romero, but it feels so much lazier than the first Creepshow, and a lot of it falls flat. It's still goofy fun, though.

4) Invaders from Mars - I was excited when I sat down to watch it, because I love Tobe Hooper, but meh. I understand that it wasn't made for cynical old drunks like me, and I do love Cannon Films, but that didn't save it from being boring for big chunks. Not horrible, but definitely near the bottom of everything I watched this year.

3) Pumpkinhead - I watched this but didn't even bother reviewing it. It's an actual movie, keeping it out of the bottom two, but it's pretty boring and uninspired. It's directed by creature effects wizard Stan Winston, but the actual pumpkinhead monster looks ridiculous. I fast-forwarded through much of the third act. The only good part is how ripped Lance Henriksen is.

2) Rock and Roll Nightmare - Such a lazy and incompetent vanity project. But it's a long-time Z-level movie favorite, and I had so much fun watching it with Zach. If you're going to try and tackle it, load up on beer.

1) Uninvited - Ugh. The worst movie of the month by a country mile. It's amusing at times (like when the cat puppet is attacking, or a drunk and surly George Kennedy is on screen), but 80% of it is a boring waste of time. Truly awful.

Strangest Movie

Maybe my favorite emotion during a movie is shock. If something gets me to clutch my head in an effort to keep my brains from flying apart, I get so happy. There are a few things that made me feel that way this year.

5) Maximum Overdrive - Stephen King's coked out misadventure trying to make a monster movie. It's maybe not the most bizarre story, but the creative choices made (especially that abrupt ending) speak to either insanity or a beautiful mind. A beautiful mind dusted with cocaine.

4) Raw - This might be an obvious choice because of its cannibalistic subject matter, but the story is more elevated than its shocking gore might indicate. There's a thoughtfulness to Raw that audiences may have trouble unpacking, but still: that finger scene is shocking and strange!

3) Suspiria - This was my first time seeing Suspiria, and I loved it. It's not a particularly shocking movie, but the way Argento translates a nightmare onto film definitely qualifies it as strange. You'll never seen lighting in a film quite like this.

2) Videodrome - David Cronenberg's classic analysis of media and the digital world in a society that fetishizes violence as sex. The master of body horror doesn't disappoint, and there's a lot of gross out goodness to enjoy. But nothing tops the scene where James Woods has violent BDSM style sex with a fleshy television.

1) Society - A movie where not a ton happens until the end, when a man is hollowed out and turned into a flesh puppet that an old man violently fists, while everyone around them fucks wildly. You should definitely see Society to truly understand what motivates our glorious God Emperor Donald Trump.

Favorite Actor

5) James Stewart - I saw two Jimmy Stewart movies this October, and his performance in Vertigo is one of the great roles in film history.

4) Bruce Campbell - The way he blends Three Stooges physical comedy with over-the-top B-movie emoting as Ash in Evil Dead 2 always makes me laugh

3) Michael Rooker - I'm concerned that he might actually be a serial killer after watching his distant and chilling performance in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

2) Robert Mitchum - Mitchum owns the role of psychotic preacher Harry Powell. He never seems to lose his temper, even as he's murdering his wife and hunting down her children.

1) Tom Atkins - *cracks open an Old Style at 8 am with nicotine stained fingers* Hell yeah.

Favorite Actress

5) Jessica Harper - In a movie without a lot of strong performances, Jessica Harper does a great job with Suzy Bannion in Suspiria. She can't dance (so of course she'd play the lead in a film set in a ballet school), but her sleepy, almost meandering performance fits the look and tone of the film perfectly.

4) Lillian Gish - She plays the perfect sweet foil to the dark Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter. She's also the only actor on either list to be born in the 19th Century.

3) Garance Marillier - Marillier's performance as Justine in Raw is equal parts sexy and vile. The way she transforms from a shy fawn into a fierce wolf throughout the film is amazing, and especially so considering she's not even 20 years old yet.

2) Anya Taylor-Joy - Another incredible young actress, but she gets the edge because of the difficulty of the dialogue in The Witch. I love her performance, and she's a big part of why the film is so successful.

1) Shelley Duvall - As I mentioned in my review of The Shining, Duvall's performance as Wendy Torrence was panned by contemporary critics, because film critics are morons. Without her, The Shining wouldn't be nearly as honest or impressive, and the abuse she suffered on set from Stanley Kubrick speaks to a tremendous internal strength. Her performance is my favorite among all of the 10 actors I've highlighted

It's sad to hear that she's struggling with such profound mental illness currently, but it's a fucking shame that giant-headed asshole hack Dr. Phil exploited her illness for his own benefit. I hope he freezes to death in a hedge maze.

Goals for 2018

Seems like 2017 was the year for giallo and strong female performances. My goal for Spooktober 2018 is to include more films both made by and starring people of color. It's too bad that horror is dominated, like so much else in film/society/business/politics/etc, by white men, but it gives me something to look forward to next year. 

I'd also like to chew my way through a full series of movies, maybe Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, just to see what it's like to follow one thread through piles of crap.

I think I'd also like to try and make some video content next year. Nothing too crazy, but I've always liked editing together video projects, and I think it's a logical next step.

Spooktober II Review #31 - The Shining

The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick

"God, I'd give anything for a drink. I'd give my goddamned soul for just a glass of beer."

How appropriate that my final review of Spooktober II is my favorite movie of all time, The Shining. If you have ever had a conversation with me about movies, there's no doubt that I've brought it up and told you how I think it's perfect, and how perfection is so rare in film. Maybe that's how everyone feels about their favorite movie, and I'm willing to admit that it doesn't HAVE to be everyone's objectively favorite film, but what makes it so special to me? 

I've seen The Shining many times throughout my life. I can still remember the first time, when I watched a VHS copy on an old CRT television while my parents were out grocery shopping on a Sunday morning. It must've made an impact, because I can still remember little details about when I watched it, and how the movie sucked me in. When my parents came home, they weren't exactly sure why I chose to watch The Shining on a Sunday morning nowhere near Halloween, and they seemed noncommittal about their love for it. This likely had more to do with fighting crowds at the grocery store than a true dispassion, but I can still remember feeling slightly wounded, because I was hooked from the jump, and I couldn't fathom someone else not feeling as excited about it.

The true impact of The Shining didn't really hit until I saw it on the big screen, with incredibly rich and loud sound. At the time, I was working as a social worker in a children's hospital and regularly met women and children who were in similar situations as Wendy and Danny. My first experience as a social work intern in 2010 was at a clinic in Michigan that did court-mandated assessments and group therapy for male offenders of domestic violence. I was trained to recognize the symptoms of power and control in an intimate partner relationship, and the tactics that male abusers use against their partners. 

That knowledge helped shape my deep appreciation for the honesty of the film's depiction of domestic violence. I've heard people claim that Jack Nicholson is "chewing the scenery" and Shelly Duvall looks and sounds ridiculous throughout the film (she was even nominated for a Razzie for worst actress in 1980), but those people have either never spoken to offenders/survivors of domestic violence, or are minimizing the effectiveness of the performances out of discomfort. The Shining means a lot of different things to different people, but for me it's first and foremost an honest and frightening study of domestic violence.

Let's jump right in with an easy example, and then we'll break things down as we go along:

In the director's cut of the film, there's a scene near the beginning when Danny passes out after Tony (the imaginary friend that speaks to Danny) shows him the bleeding elevator in the hotel. Wendy has a doctor come to the house to check him out, and they have a conversation in the living room about when Danny started talking to Tony. This is a scene I've lived in my professional life countless times: Wendy explains that Danny first talked to Tony after he was hurt a couple of years ago when his arm was broken by Jack. She says that Jack came home after drinking too much, saw that young Danny had thrown his papers around the room, and pulled on his arm to get him away from the mess. Wendy explains it as "the sort of thing you do to a child a thousand times," but that this was the time that her child's arm broke. She dismisses the potential threat going forward, because Jack promised never to drink again, and has now been sober for months. This is where Kubrick ends the scene and cuts to a long landscape shot, allowing the audience to process Wendy's faulty timeline. Jack hurt Danny years ago, but has only been sober for months. She is making the sorts of excuses innumerable women make in an effort to survive and keep their families together.

Jack's explanation of this incident later on in the film takes a different tone, but with a similar result:

He starts his imaginary therapy session with a non-existent bartender by claiming he never hurt Danny, but reflects on the broken arm situation Wendy described earlier in the film. Jack says the problem was "a momentary loss of muscular coordination" shortly after calling his son a "little fucker" and pantomiming just how hard he did yank Danny up off the floor. This is what we call minimizing, denying, and blaming.

If you're not familiar with the cycle of domestic violence and the power and control wheel, we'll do a little crash course:

This is the power and control wheel, and it does a good job of laying out all of the tactics that male abusers use against their partners. It's not an exhaustive list of the sort of abusive things that an intimate partner can use, but it's a good teaching tool to help survivors understand these signs and symptoms going forward. I should have handed these out before my showing of The Shining this year, because Jack hits every spoke of the wheel throughout the film.

Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming is the most challenging subject for male offenders who are in treatment to process effectively. The hardest thing someone can do is admit how wrong they were, especially when it comes to something so shameful as abuse toward a woman or child, and it takes a lot of work to make progress on this front. In the scene above, Jack is clearly locked into his cycle of denial. He denies that he ever hurt Danny (which is a blatant lie), gives in a little to say that maybe he hurt him once but only unintentionally (minimizing), and that really it was Danny's fault to begin with because the little fucker was making a mess (blaming).

The setup to that clip is Wendy finding Danny covered in bruises and with a ripped shirt, sucking his thumb. She logically blames Jack and lashes out at him (who else could have harmed Danny?), but is willing to give Jack another chance after Danny tells her (off screen) that a woman in Room 237 harmed him. Here's the payoff when Wendy tells Jack about it:

This is a classic example of emotional abuse. Jack's story is that he didn't hurt Danny, but he knows that Danny is covered in bruises. Wendy tells him that someone else is still at the hotel and harmed his son, but this is his response to his panicked wife. Does this mean Jack actually did hurt Danny, perhaps while 'shining' with the hotel? Maybe. It doesn't really matter, because Jack believes himself to be innocent, but is still not willing to listen to his wife when she presents an alternative explanation. He hates her, he doesn't respect her, and and he's lashing out. The derision he feels towards Wendy supersedes anything else going on in his life. It takes over the logic centers of his brain, and all that's left is rage and disgust.

Here's another good example of Jack's feelings toward Wendy when she's just trying to be nice and have a conversation with her husband:

As we learn later in the film, Jack isn't able to write anything of substance, and is just typing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over again. There's no small amount of shame inherent in domestic violence, which can cause rage. Here, Jack is ashamed that he can't get over his writer's block, and finds a way to blame Wendy for his failings, lashing out at her in a wildly inappropriate (but brutally realistic) way.

The story of the woman who attacked Danny doesn't make a lot of sense on its face, because the family is so isolated. Jack's decision to take this crazy job as the caretaker of a secluded hotel has put his family in the middle of nowhere. Logically, how could there be another person in the hotel after so much time has passed? But Wendy is distraught by her son's injury and story, and turns to the only other person she can: her abusive husband. That's why it's an effective abusive tactic. If Wendy had any other options, she would have pursued them, but Jack has designed the situation to keep her reliant on him and him alone, even though he hates her and her 'interruptions.'

You get a sense for her isolation in a few other scenes as well. In the scene where she talks to the forest ranger over the radio, she seems desperate to carry on a conversation with him about anything at all. The ranger is the first person besides Jack and Danny who she's spoken to since Dick Halloran took her on a tour of the kitchen at the beginning of the film. There's also a palpable loneliness in the scene that Wendy has with the doctor in their home. She has no other friends or family for support during a trying time, and their tiny house doesn't look particularly great for entertaining. There's also the scene where Wendy and Danny are watching TV in the lobby of the hotel, and she has a flat, distant stare that seems well-practiced. She's used to feeling lonely and isolated, and she can sense Jack's rage building like a storm on the horizon.

Jack's use of male privilege and economic abuse are more subtle, but some of my favorite understated things in the whole film. Jack says he wants this caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel because it will allow him time to work on his novel while also earning money. It doesn't seem like a particularly complicated job: he has to make sure the boiler keeps working and some other light housekeeping duties. That's pretty much it. And yet, by the last act of the film, after only a month or two of being in the hotel, Wendy has fully taken on his duties without a discussion. 

It seems likely that Wendy does not usually work while at home (if Kubrick wanted us to know that she had a job, he would have included something about it in the film) keeping her economically tied to Jack. If they don't do their job here, they probably won't get paid, and the family will be in dire financial straits. Wendy understands this, so she takes up his daily tasks while he sleeps off yet another imaginary hangover.

When she tells Jack, after Danny has been attacked, that they should try to leave the hotel and make it to the nearest town in the snow car, Jack flips out:

Jack is forcefully adamant that he has responsibilities at the hotel and that he has chosen to take on this important job. But he's not actually doing any of the work! If he were a reasonable man in an equal partnership with his wife, he might be able to work out a compromise, but this is not a partnership. If Wendy leaves the hotel, who's going to do all his work for him while he sleeps and "writes his novel?"

He's the man, she's the woman, and she absolutely must be there to pick up his slack, no matter what other circumstances might arise...including the eroding physical and mental health of his only child.


The Shining is such a layered film. While we've explored how Jack fits the profile of an abusive husband to a T, there's more going on here that Kubrick weaves into the story so masterfully. I particularly like the scene where the manager of the hotel is taking Jack and Wendy on a short tour of the facilities, and explains that the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground, and that the construction workers had to fight off a few waves of Native attacks while trying to build it. This hotel, the western states, and frankly all of the United States were literally founded and built on violence, just like Jack and Wendy's relationship.

The documentary Room 237 (which you should totally see if you're a fan of The Shining at all) presents a number of theories as to the true meaning of The Shining. A couple are pretty outlandish and funny (that this is Kubrick's admission of guilt that he helped film the fake moon landing, or that it's a retelling of the Greek myth of the Minotaur) but one sticks out as probably having a kernel of truth: an examination of the genocide of the American Indian.

While I don't think Kubrick made the film solely about the extermination of Native Americans, the idea is there, and he teases at it throughout the film. There's lots of Native art on the walls, there's the explicit mention of the burial ground, and there's even the recurring shots of Calumet baking powder in the background:

There's a history of violence to the United States that we, as a society, have collectively decided to minimize our role in, deny that it ever happened, or blame the Natives for their role in it. It's not the central story of the film, but it's definitely part of the same theme. 

I'd even argue that Grady's use of the n-word to describe Dick Halloran is another example of the inherent violence to the American experience. Racism is a distinct and insidious form of violence, and the way he spits the word out gives it extra weight. It's a jarring scene, and always elicits some uncomfortable murmuring when it happens, but it has a distinct purpose. Kubrick was a genius obsessed with detail and perfection. There's nothing added to his films that wasn't meant to convey some sort of message or build upon the world he's created.


Another layer I love about The Shining is the power of addiction. It's also not a central plot point, but Jack's alcoholism is a powerful motivator and personal excuse for a lot of his behavior. This is also where Kubrick elevates the film above the source novel by Stephen King.

King's novel uses Jack's alcoholism as a plot device throughout, because addiction is something that King himself was dealing with in the 1970's when he wrote it. Maybe King doesn't particularly like the movie because it pushes the alcoholism into the background, making it a fuzzy static that adds to Jack's character, but doesn't wholly control him. Stephen King wants to blame all of his negative emotions, abuse, and self-doubt on his addictions, and this is common. 

The brilliant social worker who taught and guided me through my first internship had a great response when men would say that they only hit their wife/girlfriend/whoever because they were drunk or high. She would say, "how many beers did it take before you hit your girlfriend," and they would answer. She'd then ask, "how many beers would it take before you'd have sex with your grandmother," and they would contort their faces and exclaim that no amount of alcohol could ever get them to that place, because it's such a disgusting and improper act. And there's the lesson: fucking your grandma is abhorrent and completely unacceptable, but beating the mother of your children is not. Alcohol isn't the reason abuse happens, it's just the excuse.

I think that idea makes Stephen King uncomfortable (the novel mentions that there's cooking sherry in the hotel, and it's presumed that's how Jack is getting drunk and why he's doing all these bad things), but it's something that Kubrick doesn't shy away from. In the film, Jack can't get alcohol. There's not a drop to be found, and he certainly couldn't bring any from home without Wendy knowing. So in his desperation, he has to invent (or shine) a bartender to help him deal with his problems, and to excuse his upcoming behavior. He's coping like a child: just as Danny has Tony, Jack has Lloyd the bartender.

King ends the novel with Jack resisting the temptation to murder his family, and blowing up himself and the hotel by not maintaining the boiler. King believed that there was a goodness inside of Jack that was kept down by alcoholism and self-doubt. When Jack hits bottom (trying to murder his wife and child) he gets a glimpse of what he's become and has a presto-chango desire to be a good man. Kubrick understands that the journey toward recovery is long, painful, and requires a lot of help. Completely isolated from the outside world, and with a healthy supply of enablers (both imagined and real), it's unlikely Jack would be able to achieve recovery on his own. It's a darker, but more honest interpretation of the story.


So is Jack actually getting drunk in the film? Maybe. There's an undeniable supernatural element to the film, and the shine of the hotel has the power to manipulate some objects (it's how Jack is able to get out of the locked pantry near the end of the film), but since we don't see either Lloyd or a drink in Jack's hand when Wendy finds him at the bar, I believe he's just imagining it out of sheer desperation. 

So does the hotel want Jack to kill his family, like in the novel? Or does the hotel just have a strong shine that Jack is in tune with, and his consumption of imaginary alcohol unlocking the deep, dark thoughts he has tucked away in his brain after months of cabin fever? Great questions that don't really have a true answer. It comes down to how optimistic you are about the human condition. For me, I always assumed Jack just needed a nudge that the violent imagery that the hotel can shine provided.

This is also a good time to discuss the process of 'shining.' Mr. Halloran explains it to Danny and to the audience after the Torrence family arrives at the Overlook. It's where we realize that Mr. Halloran is afraid of the hotel, and that Danny has a powerful gift, perhaps even more powerful than Halloran's. We also learn that the ability to shine might be hereditary, since Halloran says that he and his grandmother could have a whole conversation without ever opening their mouths. Because of this, it's safe to assume that both Wendy and Jack have the ability to shine, and have passed it on to Danny.

But since the Torrence family does not cope well with problems, they all deal with their gift (or curse) in different ways. Jack tries to write, but ends up drinking to dull the voices; Wendy pours herself into Danny, but often seems to disconnect or disassociate, sublimating her gift into a desire to just keep the peace; and Danny has Tony, who is the voice of Danny's gift, but is a distinct personality brought about by the trauma of being abused by Jack a couple of years ago.

While people without the shine can probably spend time in the Overlook Hotel without incident (there have been many caretakers, and only two have gone wacky), the Torrence's aren't that lucky, and the hotel is able to manipulate Jack's mind to fulfill his darkest desires. It's not even like the hotel has to work all that hard. All it took was two fake drinks and a bathroom conversation with Delbert Grady (the former caretaker who hacked his family to pieces with an axe) to send Jack over the edge. Even without the hotel's influence, a forgotten bottle of whiskey and time would have achieved the same effect.



There are so many other things worth mentioning about The Shining, especially about the filmcraft, the production design choices, the pacing, and the way Kubrick handled his performers, but this has gone on long enough, and other reviewers have gone into detail on all of those things more ably than I could. So I'll just say that if you haven't watched The Shining before, or if it's been a while and you don't really remember it, tonight's the night. You'll be dazzled and scared and staggered, and you'll hopefully have the same sort of feelings I did watching it on a bright, happy Sunday afternoon so many years ago.

It's a masterpiece, the best film I've watched all month, and will probably remain my favorite movie forever. It's a perfect film, made by a director at the top of his craft, who was totally in control, and working on levels that people are still trying to unpack 37 years later. 

Spooktober II Review #30 - Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
George Romero

"Yeah they're dead. They're all messed up."

For the penultimate Spooktober II review, I've decided to do another podcast/commentary track. After showing Night of the Living Dead at the Five Hours of Terror event, I thought it might be more fun to do an audio recap rather than writing up something.

So I watched the movie for a second time and recorded this:

http://badmoviepodcast.libsyn.com/night-of-the-living-dead-commentary

If you want to watch the movie with me, you can follow along by watching the whole film in HD at this YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/-_f2Enn8x5s

If you just want to listen to it as a podcast, you should be able to. There are a few long-ish pauses as I wait for something to happen on screen, but I do a lot of blathering about other things as well (my America-hating leftist politics, mostly), so it's not totally necessary that you have it on.

Hope you enjoy, and I'll see you back here tomorrow for my final review of the year, and on Wednesday for my 2017 Awards Show.

Spooktober II Review #29 - Slumber Party Massacre

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
Amy Jones

"You know you want it. You'll love it."

I'm not mad at Slumber Party Massacre, I'm just...disappointed. I watched it tonight on a whim, mainly because of the goofy title and the fact that it's only 76 minutes long. At first glance, it seems like a standard 80's schlock slasher flick, and in many ways it is, but it's unique among the field by being both written and directed by women. The woman who wrote it, Rita Mae Brown, is a novelist, poet, screenwriter, feminist activist, and lesbian. The director, Amy Jones, is an established screenwriter, director, and editor in her own right. In fact, she had a choice: make Slumber Party Massacre or edit E.T., and she decided to take on the bigger challenge. It was too enticing not to watch.

Unfortunately, the studio got a hold of Brown's script, and changed it from a parody of slashers into something more straightforward. Had the film been directed by some Cannon Films scumbag like Michael Winner (who infamously wouldn't let Marina Sirtis cover up her bare breasts while in between shots during a disgusting rape scene in an ice cold warehouse) I'm sure the film would have devolved into something completely irredeemable. As it stands, it's not great, but there are some parts, especially close to the end, that are funny and insightful.

The story here is as simple as possible, and yet I spent the first half of the movie confused (most of the actresses look alike). The parents of a teen girl, Trish, are going out of town, and are leaving her alone at the house. She decides this is a good time to throw a slumber party, and invite her three friends over for some beer, pizza, and tacked on nudity. All of the girls are on the school's basketball team, along with new student and star player Valerie, who the other girls don't particularly like (because she's a good student and good at basketball). Valerie is also next-door-neighbors with Trish, so she'll be forced to listen to their fun all night.

In the midst of this, various radio broadcasts inform the audience (and the oblivious characters) that an escaped murderer named Russ Thorn is on the loose. Thorn's weapon of choice is a large drill, that he uses to penetrate his victims. If the symbolism isn't clear by this point, maybe this scene will help:

Watch until 46:07

So yeah, some of that clever feminist scriptwriting held on to the final cut, but it sure takes a while for it to hit. The first act is nothing but tits, and horny boys, and killing. There's so much more they could have done here, but whatever humor and insight he screenplay had here was sanded down into a dull boob-filled teen romp.

Luckily the third act fleshes out the characters a little more, and modifies Russ Thorn into a more explicit rapist, making a commentary about men in general. All of the male characters in the movie are worthless, it turns out. They are sex-crazed dullards who die easily once Thorn needs to get them out of the way. 

You know what happens in the middle: teen girls giggling, drinking, smoking pot, getting undressed around each other (for some reason), and murder. Thorn is a pretty creepy villain all things considered. The actor playing him does a good job as a quiet psychopath, and it's nice that he's not a masked figure nor does he have some horrible disfigurement. He's an average guy, which means he's a big threat to women.

Eventually Valerie realizes something strange is going on at Trish's house and shows up to investigate. She finds a corpse stuffed into the fridge (which is a pretty impressive stunt by the actress!), and comes face-to-face with Thorn.

Valerie, easily the most empowered character in the film, arms herself with a machete and takes the fight to Thorn. This is a genuinely great scene, with some solid symbolism:

Watch however long you want. What do I care?

But once Thorn is dead, that's kind of it. It fades to black as you hear sirens in the distance. Pretty disappointing, but not unexpected by how quickly the movie speeds through anything that's not killing or nudity.

That's a good description of the movie in general: disappointing. There's enough here to delight the weirdos who only want tits via any means necessary, but the kills aren't particularly amazing (until Thorn gets hacked apart at the end), and you don't care enough about the characters to tell them apart (the giant 80's hairstyles don't help either).

I wish I could see the original screenplay, because there's such a missed opportunity here. Why not have a locker room scene with a bunch of guys hanging dong and playing up their homoeroticism? Have the girls stay one step ahead of the male murderer without really trying. Have the girls realize the power of collective empowerment, and allow them to team up against Thorn more. Heck, redo the whole thing and make the murderer a girl who drills into sex-crazed teen boys! I know Rita Mae Brown had something special in the original script, but it's forever lost to time due to craven male studio executives.

Summary:

It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, and at least it's not lazy and spiteful. There's an intelligence to it that I appreciate, but it's a shame that it only flashes through in a couple of spots. If you're a fan of the slasher genre, give it a whirl. But if you're expecting something with solid bite, temper your expectations.

You can watch it for free on Amazon Video, but honestly, the YouTube video I've been using for clips is a much higher quality transfer.

Oh, last and least: this movie is exactly as old as I am. It was released on November 12, 1982. And we've both aged horribly.

Spooktober II Review #28 - A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
Jack Sholder

"Help yourself, fucker!"

Last night I had the opportunity to see Rear Window on the big screen, presented by a local movie group here in Grand Rapids called Cinema Lab. It was great to see it in a theater, and the discussion afterward was pleasantly illuminating, but I don't think I can stretch enough to call it a horror movie. 

With only 4 more reviews to go, I needed to come up with something to watch, and since it was late, I thought it should be goofy. Since I haven't watched any of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies yet this year, I asked an online random number generator to pick one for me, and it decided on #2 in its infinite digital wisdom. So here we are.

If you've never seen Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street, that's an easy recommend. It's a little sloppy at times, but the idea of a murderer who attacks you in your sleep is brilliant, and the dreamlike quality to the film really adds to the experience. Freddy became one of the all-time great movie monsters in just one film, and you can't beat the practical effects on the brutal kills:

Wes Craven had no intention of turning A Nightmare on Elm Street into a series, and wanted the original to have a happy ending (the scene at the end with Nancy's mom being sucked back in through the door was suggested by a producer as sequel bait), so there wasn't a lot of guidance on what to do with the sequels, and it shows with Part 2.

Freddy as a character has had an interesting progression. In the first movie, he's a genuinely terrifying psychopath who attacks children in their dreams. In Part 3 and beyond, he's a bit like a cartoonish supervillain, who kills teens in increasingly goofy ways while dropping one-liners. But in Part 2, I don't think the filmmakers knew what they had with Freddy, and he's almost completely wasted. I mean, he's barely in the movie until the very end, and that part is borderline embarrassing.

The basic story of Part 2 is that a new family has moved into 1428 Elm Street, and Freddy begins haunting the dreams of the teenage boy (Jesse, played by Mark Patton) who is now sleeping in Nancy's old bedroom. When Freddy comes to Jesse in his dreams, it's not to kill him, but to recruit him to help kill teens in the real world. Why? Who fucking knows, because it's never explained why Freddy suddenly needs a conduit.

Jesse resists Freddy for as long as he can, but eventually lets his guard down, and starts hacking and slashing his way through the school. Initially he kills his gym teacher, but moves on to his friend, and some other kids at a party. Well, maybe it's Jesse...

During each kill, his victims see him as Freddy, not Jesse, and by the end, it turns out that Jesse is living physically inside of Freddy (and vice versa). The story might have been more successful if Freddy was just controlling his mind, but I guess why bother paying Robert Englund all that money if you're not going to use Freddy, right?

The story culminates in Freddy attacking a bunch of teens at a pool party, in one of the most embarrassing scenes in any slasher film ever:

How is it that every single extra is the worst actor ever? I've never seen anything quite like it.

Eventually, Jesse's girlfriend leads Freddy to the factory where he worked when he was alive, and she kisses him. This is evidently Freddy's weakness, because he bursts into flame and Jesse climbs out of the crispy husk. They look like they'll happily ever after (despite his fingerprints being all over several murder scenes), but Freddy comes back at the end to provide more sequel bait in a scene that mirrors the end of the first one. It's super dumb.

Luckily there are a few bizarre things that I loved about Part 2, and I think make it worth watching. A lot of it stems from the lack of communication between the director and the writer, which resulted in some hilarious weirdness. You can tell the screenplay was a lot more cheeky and humorous than the direction.

Right off the bat, we have one of the best fake products in any movie:

Fu Man Chews! The greatest movie cereal box since Mr. T Cereal in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. The only reason it's here is because the free toy inside are red "Fu Man Fingers" which look like Freddy's claws when the little girl puts them on. It's a long way to go for a dumb gag, and that box is impossibly distracting. I mean, just look at it! I want it on a poster.

Next is the infamous bird attack scene:

Why does this happen? Did Freddy take over one of the parakeets? Why does it explode at the end? I think this is supposed to be scary, but it doesn't play as scary. It plays as laughably ridiculous.

The very ending is also completely absurd:

A day or two after a pool party where a hellish demon murdered like five children and maimed several others, this is all the dramatic gravitas we can muster:

"I can't believe it's all over."

"Let's not talk about it."

"K."

The thing I love most about Part 2, and probably the only reason people still talk about it, is the gay subtext of Jesse's character. Mark Patton, an openly gay actor, proudly calls himself the first "scream queen" in a slasher film. He read the screenplay and understood the not-so-nuanced homosexual undertones, and embraced it with his character. The director clearly did not. He blocked and shot this scene (which was in the screenplay, in detail) and still treated Jesse like he was straight:

But that's not all:

• Jesse/Freddy's first kill of the film, the murder of his gym teacher, involves naked male bondage in a steamy shower, complete with welt-leaving towel snapping on some bare buttocks. 

• The "Scream Queen" moniker comes from Jesse's high-pitched shrieks throughout the film. 

• Jesse's one potential sexual encounter with his girlfriend ends before it begins, and he runs out of the room.

None of this is meant as a slight on Jesse's character, or the homosexual subtext of the film. In fact, I wish Jack Sholder had been on the same page as screenwriter David Chaskin, because it would have been a more interesting film to have Freddy represent Jesse's repressed homosexuality. Instead, it's just a lot of confused filmmaking and unrealized potential that adds to the amateur cheesiness of it all.

Summary:

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (which is an annoyingly long title) is a bad movie. It's not the worst movie ever, and it's under 90 minutes, so it might be worth watching if you're interested in what a movie looks like when the director never has a conversation with the screenwriter. It's not a great movie to watch if you love Freddy, however. He's only in it briefly, and he hasn't yet evolved into the gory Looney Tunes character he'd become in Part 3 and beyond.

Still, there's enough here to keep you laughing with a friend over a few beers on a cold October night.

Spooktober II Review #27 - Maximum Overdrive

Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Stephen King

"This machine just called me an asshole!"

I'm a big fan of Stephen King. He's come up with some of the best horror stories in history, and wrote one of my favorite books of all time, The Stand. I love how unhinged he was, especially early on in his career. He wrote his first novel, Carrie, while locked up in a mobile home, drinking and doing coke for weeks. He had to plug his nose with wadded up toilet paper to stop bleeding all over the typewriter. He's a true mad genius.

He was also a bit eccentric. In many of his novels, King uses a lot of autobiographical elements. The Shining is great example. King was a desperate alcoholic, resented his family, and worked as a school teacher while wanting to be a novelist. He imagined having to be locked up with his wife and child in total seclusion, thought about the strain that would cause to him, and The Shining was born. 

When Stanley Kubrick, another insane genius, bought the rights to adapt the novel into a film, he would pester King constantly, once calling King at 2 AM to ask him if he believed in God. This, along with Kubrick removing Jack's redemption from the story, left a bad taste in King's mouth, and he has always openly expressed his disappointment in a film that I consider to be the finest film ever made.

Maybe that's what inspired King to try and tackle filmmaking himself, because in 1986 he decided to direct the film adaptation of his short story Trucks, about murderous, self-driving big rigs. Powered by an insane amount of cocaine and with absolutely no directorial skill whatsoever, he thrust Maximum Overdrive onto the world in 1986.

It's such a weird balls-to-the-wall style movie. Instead of buying a cheap derelict truckstop in the middle of nowhere, the production built one from the ground up, just so that they could tear it down during filming. There are so many big stunts and crazy explosions, and at least a dozen semis are blown to bits. The coke-fueled filmmaking was also a threat to life and limb. During one shot, a remote controlled lawnmower went rogue and ran over a chunk of wood, sending a splinter into the Director of Photography's eye (which he lost). In another scene, a cameraman was almost crushed by an ice cream truck, after the attempt to flip it over went awry. He was pulled away at the last second. Insanity from top to bottom.

King also managed to get AC/DC to provide the entire soundtrack for the film. I'm not entirely sure how he pulled it off, but they produced both original tracks and allowed use of their classics. It's not exactly an inappropriate soundtrack, but it does lend a certain goofiness when watching it in 2017. AC/DC has long since traveled down the long, dusty road toward grandpa rock, and hearing Hell's Bells blaring against the backdrop of possessed trucks crushing bible salesmen in a truckstop parking lot makes the whole thing extra silly.

The story is completely ridiculous. We get some expositional text at the beginning to tell us that a passing comet has left Earth shrouded in the mysterious energy of its tail for 8 days. The strange space energy causes machines on the planet to develop their own autonomous personalities, ranging from petty jerks to homicidal maniacs. 

This is such a great way to introduce the kind of craziness we're heading toward:

The rest of the story, like most Stephen King stories, focuses on a small group of disparate characters holed up together in an everyday place, trying to survive an inexplicable crisis. In this case, everyone's hiding in a backwoods truckstop in North Carolina run by a cigar chomping good ol' boy named Bubba. The crew is mostly truckers, but there's also a waitress, a couple of pump jockeys, and line-cook Bill (played by Emilio Estevez). As the story develops, we're also introduced to a young boy and a newly married couple (the new bride played by Yeardley Smith, better known as Lisa Simpson) who are also trying to escape the terror. 

Obviously the trucks are the main villain of Maximum Overdrive, but the film makes it clear that every machine is capable of being affected by the comet's energy. A waitress is attacked by an electric knife, a man is called an asshole by an ATM, lawn sprinklers go on and off by themselves, and a steamroller attacks a little league game:

This scene was originally supposed to have a bag of blood in the child dummy that would leave a red streak on the roller, but it burst all at once, making it look like the child's head exploded as it was crushed. A coked out Stephen King was delighted by the unexpected result, but the scene didn't survive the censors, and it was cut from the film. You can kind of tell by how quickly that shot ends. It's too bad. That would be an all-timer in schlocky 80's B-horror deaths.

My favorite death in the movie is when the little league coach is killed via pop machine:

The kids trying to get away from the pop cans with some getting mowed down is just outstanding.

I can suspend disbelief for certain machines, but some just don't make any sense whatsoever. Like, how do sprinklers go on and off by themselves? They're not machines. How does a hair dryer strangle a woman to death? The rest of the machines that come to life are still bound by the limits of Earthly physics, but that one clearly had the ability to wrap itself tightly around her neck. And some machines just never come to life. The car that the married couple are driving in never goes crazy, despite ample opportunities to kill them. Bubba's car, which is parked right in front of the truckstop, also never wakes up, and is later destroyed by a maniac bulldozer. The machines also somehow figure out how to mount a machine gun onto a golf cart and use that to murder and terrorize the survivors. There's no cohesiveness to the central conceit of the movie.

The movie tries to imply that there's a collective intelligence to the machines, as Emilio Estevez whispers to one of the trucks about all the diesel he can give them, and trucks from all over line up to get refueled. The movie plays fast and loose with the rules, and every plot point is just another excuse to film a blood-filled dummy getting rammed by a Mack truck. Like King said himself, this is definitely a moron movie.

Led by Bill, our characters have the bright idea to make a run for the marina, so they can steal a sailboat and head for a small island off the coast of North Carolina that doesn't allow motorized vehicles (like Mackinac Island, I guess). They make a mad dash to the shore, defeat a possessed ice cream truck in the most anti-climactic climax in history, and board the sailboat. The original script had our heroes fighting off a motorized Coast Guard boat with mounted weaponry, but that was cut out in favor of...this:

What? UFO? Soviet weather satellite? Laser cannon? Nothing about what happened to the machines? Was the UFO controlling all the trucks? This is so confusing.

Either the money ran out, or the coke did, because Maximum Overdrive has the most absurdly abrupt ending since this:

Why not just end the movie with the characters being run over by an ocean freighter? Or just end it with the sailboat heading into the sunset. Anything but a nonsensical postscript.

But maybe that adds to the strange charm of Maximum Overdrive, right? It wouldn't be a hilarious schlock-filled B-movie without something truly incompetent, and the ending definitely qualifies.

Summary:

Stephen King says he's ashamed of Maximum Overdrive, but that probably has more to do with his raging addiction than the quality of the film. It's goofy fun and easier to enjoy now than in 1986. If you're jonesing for weird 80's schlock or some pounding dad rock, watch Maximum Overdrive. If you want something like this, only done well, watch Tremors instead.