Census Bloodbath: Guten Morgan

Year: 1982

Director: David Schmoeller

Cast: Morgan Fairchild, Michael Sarrazin, Andrew Stevens

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

When you're reviewing a Morgan Fairchild slasher movie, do you really need to go much further than the phrase "Morgan Fairchild slasher?" It's not good, folks. But oh, we do find ourselves in a pickle when David Schmoeller's name pops up on screen. Attention must always be paid to the director of Tourist Trap, even if the highest peak his career did ever manage to reach was Puppetmaster. So here we're stuck with The Seduction, an early entry into the erotic thriller genre that is neither erotic nor thrilling, so is it even a movie?

Unfortunately, it takes 104 minutes to prove that yes, in fact, it is.

The Seduction takes a very familiar tack to anyone who has watched early 80's porto-slashers as closely as I have. Los Angeles news anchor Jamie Douglas (Morgan Fairchild in her first feature film) has found herself a stalker in Derek (Andrew Stevens of 10 to Midnight), a photographer who seems to be her neighbor but the geography of the movie isn't exactly clear on that front. And thus does the movie announce itself as a Windows-esque obsession movie rather than an out-and-out slasher. Although he does torment Jamie with knives in tow, and she is reporting on a chain of serial murders that have literally nothing to do with the plot, the body count remains resolutely, frustratingly low.

Among the cast members that Derek refuses to kill are Jamie's best friend Robin (Colleen Camp in an early role), a struggling model and commercial actress with the greatest outfits ever designed by cocaine; her assistant Bobby (Kevin Brophy of Hell Night); and her boyfriend Brandon (Michael Sarrazin), who seems positively elderly when placed next to Morgan Fairchild. So yeah, Derek makes threatening phone calls and follows her around and does stalker stuff. You pretty much get it.

Yeah, you get it.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Morgan Fairchild. I just think she only works as a reaction to who she used to be. She's great as a Chandler Bing's aging sexpot mother on Friends and in her cameo as maybe an actual angel in the gay comedy eCupid, and those roles wouldn't have existed if not for her early work, which they exist as a winking comment on. But let's admit that that early work isn't exactly the stuff of legend.

Transferring her skills from the TV drama Flamingo Road to the thriller genre involves a lot of sexy pouting in life-threatening situations and almost nothing else. She's easily outstripped by every other character, including Brandon - who is just a cardboard cutout of a vanilla extract ad. Honestly, Colleen Camp should have been the lead here, because she turns in a performance that's intriguingly prickly and angular, embodying the desperate need for attention and hardened, defensive exterior of someone who is totally failing at being famous. Even Kevin Brophy, who could rightfully call this a career high point, exudes charm and charisma in spades. They all run circles around Fairchild, who needed a couple more years under her belt to get perspective on what exactly her place was in the entertainment sphere.

ACTING!

The Seduction is at least trying for something in the scenes with Maxwell the cop (Return to Horror High's Vince Edwards), which comment on the fact that stalker situations weren't taken seriously in the 80's, just barely brushing up against how crimes against women were more normalized back in the day. But let's not pretend that The Seduction had some grand agenda here, it was just using real life facts to underscore how helpless and alone its sexy, sometimes topless protagonist truly is.

And there are a couple helpfully weird scenes that pique the interest every now and again. A pop psychologist character who appears randomly in one scene and never shows up again has a delightful turn, seeming to channel Zelda Rubinstein's future breakout role in Poltergeist. Plus. there's that line where Morgan Fairchild objects to getting a gun, because "what am I gonna do, pack a gun, take karate, and become some kind of street thug?" (Obviously her only reference for gang life is a bunch of early 80's TV movies). But these brief moments of incoherence don't make up for a total lack of interest in any of the proceedings onscreen.

I've already mentioned the fact that this film isn't in the least bit scary, and in spite of a couple nipples sprinkled in, eroticism is so far afield that it's sending postcards. There aren't even any kills to whittle down the surprisingly ample cast while we're waiting for the story to kick in! (spoiler: it never does) But on top of that, The Seduction isn't even particularly well-made. The final scene (AKA the only sequence where anything actually happens) is bizarrely edited, placing the killer inside the house to do a kill, then teleporting him back to his apartment so he can approach the house again to drum up some tension [sic]. It makes not the slightest bit of sense geographically or from a character standpoint, and the muddy cinematography elliptically swooping around to avoid showing gore they can't afford just makes the whole thing even more scattered.

If I wanted to watch a bunch of interchangeable men in tight pants and feathered hair run around not being scary, I would just watch an aerobics video. And if I want to watch an early 80's celebrity stalker slasher with an obnoxiously low body count, I would just put on The Fan. At least that movie has Lauren Bacall, a shirtless Michael Biehn, and some glittery musical numbers. The Seduction couldn't even dream of anything that interesting.

Killer: Derek (Andrew Stevens)

Final Girl: Jamie Douglas (Morgan Fairchild)

Best Kill: This really isn't much of a decision, so I shall abstain

Sign of the Times: Jamie has to use a phone booth to check her messages.

Scariest Moment: A threatening letter is slipped into Jamie's teleprompter and she automatically starts to read it aloud until she realizes what she's saying.

Weirdest Moment: A department store salesman attempts to sell Jamie a 55-pound solid silver cigarette lighter shaped like an elephant, and if it had come back in any capacity during the third act, this would have been a 10/10 movie.

Champion Dialogue: "What rattled your cage? Did you get a facial by mail or somethin'?"

Body Count: 2, oh so disappointingly

1. Brandon has a knife thrown into his back in a hot tub.
2. Derek is shot in the gut.

TL;DR: The Seduction isn't so much seductive as it is entirely stultifying.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1122

Popcorn Kernels: Chokes And Daggers

A set of mini-reviews from movie explored in month 3 of the Scream 101 podcast, all 70’s proto-slashers.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1976

Director: Charles B. Pierce

Cast: Ben Johnson, Andrew Prine, Dawn Wells 

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A hooded maniac known as the Phantom Killer murders couples in various lovers’ lanes of Texarkana while a Texas Ranger and an assortment of kooky cops attempt to track him down.

I was excited to check out The Town That Dreaded Sundown, if only because it was name-dropped in Scream. I should learn to have stricter criteria for my movie-watching, because this inept slasher tested my endurance even more than the previous week’s late 70’s trash fire When a Stranger Calls. Although, I will give it one thing: Much like Golden Era slasher A Day of Judgment, The Town That Dreaded Sundown’s best quality is that it’s a weirdly convincing period piece, this time set in the post-World War II 1940’s.

Other than that, TTTDS (the weirdest acronym I’ve ever had to type) is a plain-jane riff on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. A killer strikes in a rural Southern town, accompanied by foreboding narration that gravely insists this was all based on a true story (although John Larroquette’s gravelly Chain Saw intro easily outpaces Vern Stierman’s jaunty monologue, which carries through the entire film and makes the whole affair sound like a documentary you’d screen in a second grade classroom). There’s also a severe hesitance toward showing any onscreen gore.

However, where Tobe Hooper’s kinetic, gritty direction gave Chain Saw a brutal tang in spite of its chaste gore, The Town That Dreaded Sundown got Charles B. Pierce, an inept at best amateur who was more keen to capture B-roll of his beloved town that actually tell a satisfying story. In his hands, the tone flies wildly out of control, tilting into slapstick comedy both unintentionally (the Phantom Killer tiptoes and pratfalls his way through his own murder scenes like he just stepped out of a Pink Panther movie) and with deadly seriousness.

You see, The Town That Dreaded Sundown has the yuk-yukkiest goofy cops this side of The Last House on the Left. I’m talking characters that would be shunned in the cop movie cafeteria by folks from Police Academy or Keystone Cops. Their staggering ineptitude weighs heavily on this movie, especially the drag-dressing, car-key-forgetting, crash-car-into-the-swamping Sparkplug, played with tooth-gnashing, Barney-Fife-ish glee by Pierce himself.

These characters, who we’re forced to spend the entire movie with, tear the atmosphere to shreds. The killer’s vague positive qualities (i.e. the creepy way his mask moves with every breath he takes, at one point he murders a girl with a trombone, etc.) are hardly strong enough to pull this wacky, boring slasher experiment back from the brink.

Rating: 3/10

Alice, Sweet Alice (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1976

Director: Alfred Sole

Cast: Linda Miller, Mildred Clinton, Paula E. Sheppard

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After her sister is brutally murdered at her first communion, Alice is blamed for it and the killings that follow.

Alice, Sweet Alice is definitely an oddity. Not quite a drama, not quite a horror film, and not quite a slasher, it’s sort of a primordial ooze of mood and sleaze that made it essential viewing for this month. It’s basically a 100-minute riff on Catholic iconography and ideology, twisting holy imagery into something devilish and unclean. Considering I’m about as far from Catholic as it’s possible to be without being actively Satanic, this didn’t really do much for me. But I nevertheless respect its gusto.

Alice, Sweet Alice’s focus on image and mood is unfortunate, considering that its director isn’t especially talented, but there are some prop designs that just plain work. The mask worn by the killer is a particular triumph, an opaque plastic, face-obliterating monstrosity with garish make-up that maps perfectly onto the eyes to create a chilling expressiveness despite its blank features. There’s also a three-headed doll that’s straight-up nightmare fuel, though it’s easy enough to make a doll creepy.

And the plot itself isn’t all bad. The reveal of the killer only ever feels arbitrary (especially considering that the plot unspools for a good 20 minutes or so after that no-so-pivotal moment), and the movie doesn’t provide enough red herrings to make it a truly satisfying mystery (we’re meant to believe Alice is the killer, but it’s so transparently desperate to convince us of this that it’s obvious she’s not). But many early sequences feel like an Italian melodrama, reveling in tear-stained close-ups of women on the brink, and you won’t catch me complaining about over-the-top drama. Hell, I was a fan of Empire.

That’s really about it for Alice, Sweet Alice. The gore is slight, although their retractable knife provides some stunning shots, and there’s plenty of Tobe Hooper-esque sleaze filling in the gaps of the story. I’m looking at you, Mr. Alphonso, the cat-owning perverted landlord who is by far the most interesting character in the entire movie. Alice, Sweet Alice isn’t the best proto-slasher, but it was enough to renew my faith in the form after the ignominious one-two punch of When a Stranger Calls and The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

Rating: 6/10

Tourist Trap (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1979

Director: David Schmoeller

Cast: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Five young vacationers get a flat tire and find themselves trapped in a creepy roadside museum stocked with evil mannequins and a telekinetic killer.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the kids from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre made a pit stop at the Psycho motel, only instead of Norman Bates behind the counter, it was some sort of twisted Pinocchio man? If you aren’t at least a little curious, then maybe Tourist Trap isn’t for you.

However, I’m a devotee of weird cinema, and if there’s one thing that Tourist Trap has in spades, it’s weirdness. It’s not so much a functional narrative, but its deranged nightmare logic is captivating. The use of mannequins as a source of terror is a logical step forward from the classic trope of creepy dolls (one that would likewise be put to good use in the next year’s Maniac), but Tourist Trap does more than just a lazily effective gimmick. These mannequins are a buck wild special effects spectacle that more than makes up for the 70’s-esque lack of gore in the kill scenes.

Tourist Trap throws all logic out the window in favor of pure, off-kilter energy, having its mannequins twist their heads to reveal gaping mouths, motionlessly vocalize in a screaming chorus, and occasionally spring to life for a spot of soup and crackers. It’s unpredictable, it’s incomprehensible, and a truly pure experience unlike any other, all underscored by the unadulterated lunacy of Pino Donaggio’s score, which seems to have been written for a children’s cartoon and is spliced in here at the most inopportune moments.

If you’re not into films that have the singular purpose of knocking you on your butt with pure strangeness, then don’t seek out Tourist Trap, because it doesn’t have much else to offer. The characters are thinner than Donald Trump’s skin, the Final Girl is kind of an asshole, and the killer has an incredible mask but ruins it by flapping his gums a bit too much. There’s a slight feint toward the political potency of Texas Chain Saw with a dropped line about the highway driving away business, but despite having plenty of time to do so in the interminable third act, it never goes anywhere.

But that mannequin material really is some great stuff. And Tourist Trap knows it, hauling them out as often as the meager budget can allow. Which is quite a lot. Turns out mannequins ain’t expensive. Where it’s not a great movie, it’s a delightfully twisted experience, and I’m glad I took the time to sit through it.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1366