Census Bloodbath: Omega Woman

Year: 1984

Director: Simon Nuchtern

Cast: Belinda Montgomery, Solly Marx, David Greenan

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Silent Madness begins with the scariest of all horror movie plot developments: a clerical error. When homicidal maniac Howard Johns (Solly Marx, a stunt performer from Death Spa) is accidentally released from Manhattan's Cresthaven Hospital rather than the mild-mannered John Howard, he instantly returns to the scene of his famous sorority girl murders: Barrington, New Jersey. Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) decides to chase him down, because nobody at her hospital, especially the slimy maximum security wing director Dr. Kruger (Roderick Cook), seems to much care about the situation. She finds herself teaming up with local reporter Mark McGowan (David Greenan) to infiltrate the Delta Omega sorority and try to catch this killer once and for all, protecting the sorority girls including the prudish Jane (Katherine Kamhi of Sleepaway Camp), all while facing naysayers and nonbelievers like the lazy Sheriff Liggett (Sydney Lassick of Pandemonium and The Unseen) at every turn.

Analysis: I don't really understand why Silent Madness doesn't have a huge reputation, even within the slasher community. If nothing else, it's the only other slasher movie released in 3-D during the boom in the early '80s, other than Friday the 13th Part 3-D. It's also, after The Mutilator, the only other slasher I've ever heard of to be set explicitly during Fall Break. Those two factors should be enough to get Silent Madness circulating, even if the film wasn't good at all. And it's kind of good! Color me surprised!

Notice I didn't say great, however. It certainly has its faults both as a slasher and a 3-D film. For one thing, it lacks a clear organizing principle to guide the body count. For a film that is largely set in a sorority house, it spends far too little time establishing young co-eds and letting them get stabbed with sharp implements. Instead, it heavily weights scenes of hospital intrigue as Dr. Gilmore attempts to uncover a conspiracy, scenes that are dialogue rich and interest poor, especially considering how goddamn obvious it is that Dr. Kruger is lying, even on the page (there are multiple moments where he and another doctor trip over themselves trying to correct a blatant contradiction in their stories).

It also doesn't really make sense why they thought this film would be interesting in 3-D, as most of the kills aren't particularly geared to shine within that visual format. However, the 3-D of it all results in a variety of incredibly appealing deep focus compositions that show off the detailed production design. It's not an atmospheric movie by an stretch of the imagination. It's cheerily lit and full of bright colors that pop off the screen, even in 2-D. However, it not only visually legible (which is not a quality to overrate in a mid-80's slasher) but absolutely aesthetically pleasurable from top to bottom. The Americana designs of the buildings of Barrington are put to full use, and the interiors are excellent and lively spaces that the 3-D allows viewers to explore in full force.

The kills don't reflect the same level of care and attention that the rest of the film does, unfortunately. They're not very bloody (the MPAA crackdowns of previous years had really come to a fore here), they're frequently awkwardly framed (try as he might, Solly Marx does not nail a scene where he's asked to swing a sledge directly into the camera without breaking it), and in one of them, the 3-D effect is created by literally turning the midair axe into a cartoon. The killer is also pretty boring to behold, looking like nothing in the world other than a man who didn't apply enough sunscreen and fell asleep on the beach.

However, the third act Final Girl chase sequence has enough energy to allow the film to claw its way back toward being interesting. Belinda Montgomery is a low urgency runner at the best of times, but the sequences where she is trapped by the killer - and especially the moment where he is menacing her while she is at the bottom of a vertical air duct - are quite tense. There is also an added wrinkle in this sequence of having the threat come from multiple directions, as men from the institution have arrived to silence her right as the killer begins his rampage. 

Silent Madness is a hard movie to love, perhaps, but it's an even harder movie to hate. It's a perfectly charming slasher romp that is worth checking out if you haven't seen it, which you probably haven't, even if it can't quite earn the coveted title of "hidden gem."

Killer: Howard Johns (Solly Marx)

Final Girl: Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery)

Best Kill: The most elaborate and thus most exciting kill involves Pam hanging upside down from a pull-up bar and having a rope attached to a weight tied around her neck, at which point the weight is tossed nonchalantly out the window. Ouchie.

Sign of the Times: One sorority girl dies while playing a Dragon's Lair stand-up video game.

Scariest Moment: After Virgil kicks Dr. Gilmore out of Ward L, he stares at her through the opaque glass of the ward door.

Weirdest Moment: In the morning, one of the sorority sisters pours a can of Coke on her cereal.

Champion Dialogue: "That worm would crawl his way back here if you dropped him on the far side of the Moon."

Body Count: 14

1. Susan's Boyfriend is sledgehammered in the face.
2. Susan has an axe thrown into her back.
3. Barbara is crushed in a vise.
4. Lorraine has her face blasted with steam.
5. Flashback Sorority Sister #1 is shot between the boobs with a nail gun.
6. Flashback Sorority Sister #2 is shot in the neck with a nail gun.
7. Flashback Sorority Sister #3 is shot in the forehead with a nail gun.
8. Flashback Sorority Sister #14 is shot in the back with a nail gun.
9. Cheryl is stabbed in the back.
10. Pam has a rope tied to her neck that is attached to a weight, which is thrown out the window.
11. Jesse is drilled in the back of the head.
12. Virgil is impaled in the chest with a crowbar.
13. Mr. Hackler is stabbed in the back with an awl offscreen.
14. Howard Johns is stabbed through the neck with a shard of mirror.

TL;DR: Silent Madness has its weaknesses, but it's a totally pleasant slasher that deserves more of a reputation than it has.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1096

Splatter University: Part 2 - Creature Features

Serendipitously, over the past two weeks in my horror class, we've been focusing on 50's horror, which is a genre that had, I think, zero entries in my "Movies I've Seen List." I'm well on my way to being the most celebrated horror scholar of 2025.

I will accept applications to be my personal assistant starting Monday.

Please, no signatures.

The Thing From Another World

Year: 1953

Director: Christian Nyby & Howard Hawks

Cast: Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, James Arness

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

When oh when will we start remembering movies correctly? Vader never says "Luke, I'm your father." Jason kills zero people in Friday the 13th. Dr. Frankenstein's assistant is named Fritz, not Igor.

And it turns out the Thing doesn't shapeshift! John Carpenter, you misleading scoundrel!

That said, turning the Thing into a shapeshifter in the remake is a work of brilliant genius, especially considering that he shows no inclination for doing so in the original film. Good work, John. A+.

Many important horror directors cite The Thing From Another World as a major influence, perhaps because all the other films from the decade were even worse. In the immortal words of my professor, "The best thing about the 50's was that they ended."

Not that The Thing is bad, it's just egregiously slow and overwhelmingly optimistic by today's standards. The state of horror in the 50s was at an all-time ebb and it really shows. In the aftermath of World War II, nobody felt the need to watch scary movies, the real horrors were out there across the pond.

And now that the war was over and the Great Depression was a quickly receding memory, things began to look up for the American people and we entered an age of consumerism and complacency. The advent of TV was a massive blow against Hollywood and the studios hadn't quite gotten on their feet yet.

The Thing From Another World, one of the best films of the entire period, was turned down by all of the major studios until the relatively dinky RKO Pictures finally picked it up with a budget of $40,000.

The fact that it's the best is very indicative of the time period because by God does it take a long time to start up. The Thing doesn't make its first move until about an hour into the film.

Oh, the plot?

An Arctic military base investigates a nearby explosion and finds that a flying saucer has crash landed in the ice. They excavate a body and, when the ice accidentally melts, release a bloodsucking creature out into the snow. They argue about whether to research it for the betterment of mankind or squash it before it can squash them.

Then they fight it and they win because screw you, Science, this is the 50's.

The single best element of the film is Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), the sexy and capable love interest of Our Hero, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey). Howards Hawks was known for his style of the women being just as tough as the men and in the age of housewives and suburbia the idea of a strong, sexy woman was downright radical.

You go, Howard Hawks.

The Thing is a pretty fun film when all is said and done, but if I were you, I'd go with John Carpenter's 1982 remake and watch that guy's stomach turn into a mouth again.

Rating: 6/10

Creature From the Black Lagoon

Year: 1954

Director: Jack Arnold

Cast: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Carlson

Run Time: 1 hour 19 minutes

MPAA Rating: G

Television at this time was still stealing viewership from cinemas, so movie theaters fought hard against those tiny black and white boxes with big screen color spectacles, the likes of which were impossible to recreate in one's own home. Thus was born Creature From the Black Lagoon, Universal Studios' second 3D picture and their only successful monster movie of the decade.

The film centers around two ichthyologists, David Reed (Richard Carlson) and Kay Lawrence (Julia Adams), who are not quite married (a weak stab at feminine independence that dissipates as Kay goes from Smart Science Woman to Damsel in Distress, alternating between "standing there and shrieking" and "schmooping with David in his swimsuit") and are currently working for Mark Williams (Richard Carlson), a wealthy man whose lust for the pursuit of science is only matched by his lust for the massive profits he makes off of it. When an archaeologist discovers a partial fossil of a webbed foot deep in the Amazon (despite the fact that the natives are ludicrous Mexican stereotypes), the three travel down to the Black Lagoon, a tropical paradise from which no explorer has ever returned in pursuit of The Missing Link of Man's Evolution from the water.

Black Lagoon is essentially a mashup of the anti-Science themes from The Thing (Man shouldn't interfere with nature! Nature will eat you!) with the forlorn misunderstood monster found in Frankenstein. The Creature (Played by Ricou Browning in water and Ben Chapman on land. Heaven knows what they did in the scenes where he climbs out of the water onto the boat. Maybe they shared halves, like a horse costume.) spies on the scientists from his underwater dwelling and more or less immediately becomes enamored of Kay. His pursuits of her lead to a series of unfortunate crew member killings and the group has to decide whether to capture the monster for Science or kill it in order to, you know, keep being alive.

They end up deciding on Getting the Hell Out of There while they still can as their crew is whittled down in record time, but the monster won't give up that easy. This is a fairly entertaining entry in the Dude in a Rubber Suit Chases People Around genre, but by the third or fourth time the scientists put on scuba gear to go dump chemicals on the monster, I was ready to backstroke my way outta there.

But what of The Creature? What made this movie more successful than any of Universal's other horror attempts in this time period?

Although the stiff rubber suit doesn't do wonders for the monster's credibility, the performance of the men inside is inspired. Somehow while simultaneously drowning in a heavy suit and being blinded by a mask, Browning manages to swim in a manner that suggests that this Creature hasn't evolved for thousands of years and is intimately familiar with its watery environment. That's quite a feat of physical acting for a man who isn't even credited.

Although the suspense slowed down at the two-thirds point (the film did actually creep me out in an early sequence - a rare feat for the film's age and pedigree), the Creature's travails resonated with audiences and both men's performances allowed theater patrons to attach emotions to a frankly ridiculous looking bug-eyed monster.

A quick note before we go: please admires director Jack Arnold's handiwork for a moment. 3D cameras in the 50's were bulky affairs, with two cameras attached side-by-side to an enormous rig. To shoot his majestic and ambitious (and frequent) underwater shots, not only did they have to waterproof both cameras, they had to stick this entire contraption underwater and move it around, all for the sake of a gimmick that is used to sell Smurfs merchandise.

The clincher? Arnold is blind in one eye. He can't even see in 3D.

All the awards.

Rating: 6/10

The Blob

Year: 1958

Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. & Russell S. Doughton Jr.

Cast: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Before you read the rest of this review, please press Play.

This revoltingly twee Burt Bacharach composition is the theme song to The Blob and there has not been a single second since I first heard that is hasn't been playing in my headphones, on my car stereo, or quietly somewhere in a back corner of my mind.

I bothered Sergio with it when we were in line for Escape From Tomorrow (more on that... tomorrow) and Henri and I have practically choreographed an entire routine that involves us leaping up and down and waggling our arms like a Native American rain dance.

This resolutely unterrifying song is but the first toe in the waters of The Blob, a campy classic sci-fi B movie, and my absolute favorite film screened in class so far.

The film opens like all good 50's movies - at Make Out point, where Steve (Steve McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corseaut)'s night of passionate starlit smooching is interrupted by one of the aforementioned stars comes hurtling down to Earth. At the crash site, an old man (Olin Howland) finds a gelatinous mass that isn't a big fan of being poked with sticks. It gloms onto his hand and Steve and Jane rush him to the doctor's office.

They are sent out on an errand and return to discover the doctor and his nurse have vanished, and Steve thinks he might have seen the doctor being dissolved in a mass of goo through a side window. Or maybe it was a Jello dessert he made for a potluck, who knows? The cops certainly don't believe him.

On their quest to discover the truth, a friendly gaggle of rowdy schoolboys races them in the streets and assists them in their journey, but not before quipping and goofing and malt shopping and whatever else it is those dang kids did in the 50's when they weren't rock 'n rolling and roller skating.

The Blob is basically American Graffiti with a gelatinous blob monster and this is great.

The effects are astounding considering the time period, Steve McQueen makes his handsome movie debut, a giant blob comes bursting out of the projection room and devours a movie theater, the monster is destroyed with fire extinguishers and airlifted to the Arctic...

What's not to like? This is camp sci-fi at one of its highest points.

Before this day, I had no interest in the film but I have seen the error of my ways. Consider me a Blob convert. Soon you'll see me going door to door asking people if they've found Blob.

If only I can get these dang pamphlets printed.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1728
Reviews In This Series
Splatter University: Part 1 (September 25, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 2 (October 5, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 3 (October 23, 2013)

The Blob (Yeaworth Jr./Doughton Jr., 1958)
Beware! The Blob (Hagman, 1972)
The Blob (Russell, 1988)

Census Bloodbath: The Third Die-Mension

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1982

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Richard Brooker

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Here is where I brag about how cool I am.

Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D was the third feature in Friday's mini-marathon, and the theater screened it in actual red/blue 3D, be still my heart.

Hi, Sergio!

Nevermind the fact that red/blue 3D is the easiest way to make your brain explode this side of Fran Drescher, it's authentic! I never thought I'd live to see this film in 3D in theaters and I am immensely grateful to live so close to LA and have this opportunity.

It's only a minor detriment that the film sucks, this is Friday the 13th we're talking about here.

This never fails to make me happy though. Maybe I'm a terrible person.

Friday the 13th Part 3 manages the impressive feat of being visibly worse than Part 2 within about 2 seconds when it turns out that the first five minutes of this film are just the last five minutes of the previous film shoved in there unceremoniously like the final peg after hours of building IKEA furniture.

The film proper doesn't fare much better with its first scene in which Crystal Lake shopowners and odious comic relief characters Harold (Steve Susskind) and Edna (Cheri Maugans) wander around their general store, shove things into the camera, and die in the toilet for no reason.

With that over with, we can meet our real heroes. And what a bland vanilla whitebread bunch they are!

We have Andy (Jeffrey Rogers), who is one half of the couple who has sex; Debbie (Tracie Savage), who is the other half, but with the added twist that she's pregnant which is mentioned in two lines and promptly forgotten about; Shelly (Larry Zerner), Andy's roommate and the what we can by now call the obligatory prankster who pulls a series of the most malicious and unjustifiable stunts yet all in the name of having low self esteem; and Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell) whose family owns the lakefront property they're driving to despite her not quite having gotten over What Happened.

This wouldn't be a sequel if there weren't more meat than that, but luckily our new characters are doled out in small enough chunks that they are all pretty distinguishable from one another.

In the second dollop we get Vera (Catherine Parks), Shelly's way out of his league blind date who has to deal with the twin problems of growing up in a Hispanic household and struggling to afford groceries with food stamps despite the fact that she looks like she just stepped out of Little House on the Prarie; and Chuck (David Katims) and Chilli (Rachel Howard), two outlandish hippie stoner stereotypes who feel the need to prove their hippiness by saying "man" every three words and are palpably older than the rest of their crew. 

At the property we meet Rick (Paul Kratka), Chris' on-and-off boyfriend whom she left behind to go to college. Please ignore the fact that he looks like he's about 30.

And to top all that off, Shelly and Vera attract the unwanted attention of some motorcycle thugs during an altercation in a grocery store. Foxy (Gloria Charles), Ali (Nick Savage), and Loco (Kevin O'Brien) perform a vital task in the movie as they sneak onto the property, disable the car, and get summarily murdered to fuel the audience's bloodlust after such a large amount of exposition.

I'm sure you guys could use a little break yourselves.

You're welcome.

The next part is all spontaneous nighttime and unnecessary backstory (Chris apparently was attacked by Jason in the woods years ago, which in no way ties in to the rest of the film considering she doesn't even recognize him until the end. Also, the word "Jason" isn't even said in this film. Whatever.) as the expendable characters get picked off in various 3D versions of other scenes from the previous films.

Debbie's death is especially heinous. She's lying in a hammock reading a magazine until blood spatters from the ceiling and she is pierced with a knife from below more or less exactly like Kevin Bacon in the original. So much for being pregnant (Jason is equal opportunity. He murders regardless of race, creed, gender, sexuality, disability, or fetus-having status).

Evidently after having sucked Twitch of the Death Nerve dry of gore scenes to rip off, Friday the 13th turned to its previous entries and began to devour itself. Part 3 bears the brunt of it, but this will be a common problem throughout the series from this point on.

Luckily, the creative deficit isn't yet at its all time ebb and we get some admittedly pretty great shots of Vera getting gored by a harpoon and Andy being split in half while walking on his hands, all rendered in glorious three-dimensional photography.

What an eyesore.

Fun Fact: Jason gets to wear his iconic hockey mask for the first time in this film.

Sad Fact: He stole it from this guy.

Shelly ruins everything.

But enough with these clowns. What about the important guys? What of Jason? What of the Final Girl?

Unfortunately Dana Kimmell's performance as Chris starts off bland and then starts to degrade like plutonium as the film goes on. It doesn't help that she is given the least to do of any Final Girl yet, running around and shouting for Rick and turning off bathtub faucets and stuff.

She does have the good sense to double tap (she gets Jason unconscious and then hangs him) but then immediately goes out of sight range (where anything can happen) and ends up facing his wrath.

So that's a bust, but upon this screening I gained a real appreciation for Richard Brooker's work as Jason. He has a casual, almost tossed-off vibe to his killings in a way that makes it seem like this is all in a days work for Jason. Which, in fact, it is. And it's immensely cool.

Love Kane Hodder though I do, Richard Brooker is the first standalone Jason (Hodder is the only actor to play the killer in multiple films) that really captured my attention and his performance is truly commendable, more than just an anonymous stunt actor.

And when Jason gets an axe to the forehead he thrusts his hands out in one last ditch effort to grab Chris in a manner reminiscent of the classic Universal movie monsters and that really just got me.

Feel bad for your eyes? Imagine this for 90 minutes.

And there's no way I can get out of this without talking about the ending, can I?

Boy is it stupid. It's campy and ridiculous enough to end on a light note but geez man.

With Jason defeated, Chris gets in a canoe and floats into the middle of the lake.

Sound familiar?

Playing with our suspicions, the film throws a couple of weak jump scares at our tortured heroine (in the form of a log and a duck) before the money shot.

Do you see the zombie of Mrs. Voorhees jumping out of a lake? Cuz I do, but I might be having a fever dream.

If you're gonna make a film as bland and tedious as this one, I suppose it benefits you to have an utterly incomprehensible closing shot so at least the audience has something to talk about. Considering that it made $15 million more than Part 2, I'd say it worked.

As much as I love Jason making money, this doesn't change the fact that this film is less vivacious than its predecessors, has actors way out of age range, features two distinct outhouse scenes, and hinges on the performance of Dana Kimmell. The cherry on top is that returning director Steve Miner is too distracted by waggling things at the camera to frame anything even remotely approaching his style in Part 2.

This film is still worth watching for a Friday the 13th diehard because the mask makes its first appearance, Richard Brooker does right by Mr. Voorhees, and the cheesy 3D effects always elicit a laugh but for a less committed horror enthusiast, I'd suggest skipping straight to The Final Chapter.

Killer: Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker)

Final Girl: Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell)

Best Kill: This one, filmed in eye-popping 3D.

 Geddit?

Sign of the Times: Foxy and the Chain Gang

Scariest Moment: The van gets stuck on the bridge as it runs out of gas and Jason approaches.

Weirdest Moment: Just listen.

Champion Dialogue: "This is the sweat of a worker on my forehead, not of a lover."

Body Count: 12

1. Harold gets a meat cleaver in the chest.
2. Edna is stabbed in the back of the head with a knitting needle.
3. Foxy is pinned to a rafter by a pitchfork through the neck.
4. Loco gets a pitchfork in the stomach.
5. Shelly's throat is slashed offscreen.
6. Vera gets a spear fired into her eye.
7. Andy is macheted in half while walking on his hands.
8. Debbie gets knifed through the chest from beneath a hammock.
9. Chuck is electrocuted on a fuse box.
10. Chili is impaled with a fireplace poker through the chest.
11. Rick gets his head crushed by Jason's strong, manly hands.
12. Ali gets bludgeoned with a wrench, loses an arm via machete, and is stabbed to death. 

Cheesy 3D Effects Count: 26; including my personal favorites, a blunt and a yo-yo.

TL;DR: Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D is cheesy and fun but immensely dumb and unable to overcome its biggest problems at the script level.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1617
Movies In This Series
Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981)
Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D (Miner, 1982)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985)
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (McLoughlin, 1986)
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Hedden, 1989)
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993)
Jason X (Isaac, 2001)
Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003)
Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009)

1D 3D

Year: 2013

Cast: Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles

Director: Morgan Spurlock

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The biggest problem inherent in making a One Direction documentary is that none of them have been alive all that long, really. At 21, Louis Tomlinson is the eldest, and how many truly insightful stories does a 21-year-old have to tell?

Granted, much has happened in One Direction's meteoric rise to fame since the seventh series of The X Factor in 2010. But the fact still stands that this entire documentary spans what would be the fifteen minute "early life" segment of any other artist's onscreen story. Heck, even 28-year-old Katy Perry has lived veritable eons compared to these fresh-faced young lads (And don't even get me started on Katy Perry: Part of Me, which I can say with no guilt is my favorite documentary film).

Suffice it to say, One Direction: This Is Us just couldn't have had enough to say to justify a 92 minute feature, and really it doesn't. It's just a corporate product shoved out by Syco Entertainment in an attempt to ride the tidal wave that is 1D's success before it evaporates into thin air.

I am being relentlessly bitter here because I can afford it. You see, One Direction: This Is Us has a few tricks up its sleeve. First and foremost is director Morgan Spurlock who, despite his films' spurious claims having recently come under fire, is a darn good documentarian, perhaps the first veteran doc filmmaker to tackle a project of This Is Us's bubblegum magnitude.

With a strong hand at the wheel and the boys' charming personalities at the forefront, it might not have a lot to tell, but the manner in which it is told is flashy, precise, and a lot of fun.

Shirtless boys provide a valuable thematic arc throughout.

The beginning of the film is, by no coincidence, the first song of their 2013 concert tour and right off the bat This Is Us proves itself as a work of cinema. Summertime popcorn cinema, yes, but there is a lot of talent behind (and in front of) the camera. Crisply shot and thrillingly edited, the opening sequence pairs modern quick cuts and flashy cutaways with a more traditional sense of introducing characters and location (let us never forget that documentaries and fiction are very similar in the way they tell stories).

Concert footage thankfully doesn't dominate and the songs get room to breathe as we delve into the history and interactions of these five boys. Their interrelationship is at the forefront as it should be, and it is not hard to see that there's a lot of love and attention that goes into keeping One Direction what it is - a purely enjoyable experience no matter how you slice it.

Or pants it.

And for once in a concert doc, the 3D is put to good use. While the staging of a One Direction concert is fairly simple (empty stage, big ol' screens behind them), the material displayed onscreen during the performance is laid over and intercut with the live footage in a way that makes the performances immensely tactile and aesthetically pleasing. These creative twists elevate the movie from simply repeating a live show, a trap which their previous DVD venture Up All Night: The Live Tour enthusiastically fell into.

There were less shirtless boys in that one.

Now if you'll allow me to indulge myself for a couple of paragraphs, I'd like to discuss the nature of One Direction's appeal. They've oft been criticized for being just another dumb boy band that girls wet themselves over and love them though I do, this isn't exactly far from the truth (It's a mark of my professionalism that I don't jump into the ring and defend their singing abilities, which are showcased to great effect in This Is Us).

What rubs me the wrong way is that these girls are criticized just as much for loving the band the way they do. Many reviews reduce them to shrieking harpies paralyzed by their hormones or the first signs of the apocalypse from the dumbed down "Me Generation." This could not be further from the truth. Yeah, maybe the ten-year-old girls with smeared mascara and "You Are My Heroes" posters are overreacting.

But let me ask you a question.

When was the last time you were so ecstatically happy that you cried? Or danced without fearing that other people will see you? Have you ever been happy enough to scream at the top of your lungs?

I know I haven't (well, maybe not the dancing part). That's just a sad truth of growing up. For a limited time only, these young girls have access to emotions the likes of which most of us have never seen. They experience happiness so pure and positive that it colors their entire experience on this Earth. We shouldn't judge them for loving a dumb boy band. We should be jealous.

I would give every last cent I had just to be as happy as one of those girls for twelve seconds.

Who are we to say the reason they feel this way is invalid?

Happiness is happiness is happiness is happiness and there's not enough of that in the world as it is, so let it be.

For some extra fun, check out the KidsInMind review of the film. They're a "parental review" web site that makes sure your precious children don't see such violent things as "five teen boys cry[ing]" or filthy smut like a girl whose "T-shirt rises up partially to reveal her navel."

America.

TL;DR: One Direction: This Is Us is a piece of cotton candy fluff, but it features beautiful editing and is packed with buoyant energy.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Only if you're a One Direction fan, but if you aren't, you're probably not reading this anyway. 

Word Count:  1000