I Used To Sit And Talk With You

I know we're full-tilt into our Children of the Corn marathon and you're just dying to know what happens next, but first I think it's due time we catch up on the newest entry in last year's marathon, which got kicked around the schedule so much after it was filmed in 2014 that I was pretty well convinced it would never actually be released at all. I was wrong.

Year: 2017

Director: Franck Khalfoun

Cast: Bella Thorne, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mckenna Grace 

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Previously on The Amityville Horror...

Following a trilogy of mediocre but increasingly entertaining films, the franchise goes nuts with a half dozen increasingly inane direct-to-video and TV movies, the best of which involve evil objects from the original house (keep an eye out for a haunted clock, a haunted floor lamp, and - my personal favorite - a haunted mirror), until it hits the mid-2000's and one truly egregious remake. Cue the rise of Redbox, when filmmakers realized the name "Amityville" wasn't copyrighted and churned out about a quarter million knock-offs that I couldn't bring myself to watch. 

Amityville: The Awakening is not quite a sequel, not quite a remake, but it's the first film in over a decade to even seem like a valid part of the franchise proper, whatever that even means. At the very least, it was picked up by Blumhouse, a for-real production company, and its weird half-stab at a meta angle reveals that they at least have the rights to mention and engage with the original Amityville entries. So I'll take it.

Do I have to, though?

So here we have Belle Walker (Bella Thorne), a surly teenager who has moved into a new Long Island home with her little sister Juliet (McKenna Grace), her mother Joan (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her brother James (Cameron Monaghan), who is wasting away in a coma he will probably never recover from. Wouldn't you know it, but the house they move into just happens to be the very same eyeball-windowed home where one Mssr. DeFeo shot up his family forty years ago. 

James' condition seems to improve almost immediately, but is he really getting better, or is his hollow shell of a body the perfect conduit for whatever demon/ghost/CGI blob wants to gain human form and wreak bloody havoc? I daresay it wouldn't be a spoiler to say that yes, it's totally a demon ghost thing. Bella wants to do what's best for James and mercy-kill him, but her super intense mother refuses to allow that to happen.

But it's a Jennifer Jason Leigh character. The descriptor "intense" can be assumed.

As I briefly touched on earlier, this film is aware of both the events of the Amityville murders and the film franchise that sprung from it, in a twist that is reminiscent of the other Blumhouse remake-quel The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Of course, it does almost nothing with this. The fact that the movies exist has exactly as much impact on the story as the fact that the original case happened in the first place. But we do get a scene of the requisite teen friends having an ill-advised slumber party to watch the original 1979 film in the living room of the actual Amityville house.

I'm suddenly having a bad acid flashback to last year's marathon.

But of course this goes nowhere. Nothing in the movie goes anywhere. Not even the character pictured above, who vanishes from the film along with a third, female friend (good riddance though, because he's a textbook example of a toxically annoying randy teen). All we get for the entire first 70 minutes of this features are dream sequence after dream sequence in an endless display of tired scare gags that are so dull and repetitive that they might as well be the cast of Cheers for how familiar and un-scary they are.

And I know the movie has been on the shelf since 2014, but it feels like the script has been sitting there since the mid-90's, especially as it concerns Bella Thorne's character. She wouldn't be out of place as one of Cher's classmates in Clueless, and her black lipstick with matched endless angstifying wear thin within seconds. The only human being in this movie with any sort of personality is Jennifer Jason Leigh, who's in just enough of the movie to make you feel like it's not a cameo but you still want way more. Sure, she's coasting, but JJL on autopilot is worth a hundred fake CGI scares.

Scarewise, at least the finale sequence has some tension to it (because that's the only time in the movie that anything is actually happening to our protagonist without her waking up in bed and shaking it off the millisecond the jump scare is over), as well as above-average special effects, but it's certainly not enough to recommend a movie that is this painfully lethargic. And none of it ever reaches the point of actively scary.

MAYBE it's scary if you remember that the little girl she's clutching also played Young Tonya Harding in last year's I, Tonya.

Amityville: The Awakening is like a horror film on Xanax. Everything is ground down into a gently monotonous sea with no highs or lows to speak of. Even the cinematography seems to reflect this, with the daylight scenes being just as grey and washed-out as the scenes set in the basement in the middle of the night. 

The film doesn't even feint at the potential to pick up on the original's theme of economic despair and update it for the health care struggles of the current time. Ditto the tossed-off line referencing Belle's trendily dark backstory involving revenge porn. But that's probably too much to ask for a movie that thinks exposition is a character reminding her own mother that she has a twin. 

Amityville: The Awakening isn't the worst of these (how could it be?), but it's definitely a waste of precious time and chock full of people both in front of and behind the camera who deserve a much better showcase of their talents. Or any showcase at all, because this is hardly a film, just a loose burlap sack of horror tropes that were already weathered and aged back when the original Amityville came out thirty-nine years ago.

TL;DR: Amityville: The Awakening isn't the worst film in the franchise by a long shot, but it's a weak entry that doesn't justify its return after twelve long years.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1094

Reviews In This Series
The Amityville Horror (Rosenberg, 1979)
Amityville II: The Possession (Damiani, 1982)
Amityville 3-D (Fleischer, 1983)
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (Stern, 1989)
The Amityville Curse (Berry, 1990)
Amityville 1992: It's About Time (Randel, 1992)
Amityville: A New Generation (Murlowski, 1993)
Amityville Dollhouse (White, 1996)
The Amityville Horror (Douglas, 2005)
Amityville: The Awakening (Khalfoun, 2017)

Shimmer And Fade

Year: 2018

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There are certain combinations of director and actor that you can't ignore. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. And with only Ex Machina as evidence, I'd already say Alex Garland and Oscar Isaac were one of those pairs. Of course, sometimes you get Edward Scissorhands and sometimes you get Dark Shadows, so there's always a risk there, but I wasn't not gonna go see Annihilation.

Gimme all the Oscar you've got, the shirtlesser the better.

OK, so the plot... The plot. It sure is a plot. I think. Lena (Natalie Portman) is a military veteran biologist who is now a professor at Johns Hopkins, whose husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) has been MIA on a military operation for a year. When he shows up randomly one evening in a near-catatonic state before falling terribly ill and internally bleeding all over her damn carpet, she realizes that his mission may not have been a particularly routine one.

She and Kane are taken to a military outpost in a national park that is the site of a mysterious phenomenon called the Shimmer, a zone surrounded by light that keeps expanding. Everyone who has been sent into this zone has never returned... except Kane. An all-female science expedition is about to make their way into this zone, led by the sketchy psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and made up of the brash Chicago paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), shy physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson), and nihilistic geologist Cass (Tuva Novotny). Lena asks to be able to lend her skills to the group and just maybe figure out what happened to her husband. When they enter the Shimmer, they discover an environment where the laws of physics don't apply, and mutated beasts roam the gorgeous, forbidding swamp. As they make their way to the lighthouse at the center, what they encounter will rattle them to their very DNA.

They also touch a lot of things without gloves, which is the most disturbing part of the movie for yours truly.

Annihilation is a very cerebral film, with a lot of different interpretations as to what's actually going on and what it might mean. This isn't dissimilar from Ex Machina, necessarily, but the way it goes about it is much more in-your-face arthousey. That's not meant as a detraction, but the ambitions of the movie to be a beautiful metaphor for a cavalcade of elements of the human condition are a little misguided, because for a lot of the time the movie just isn't that.

Honestly, the earliest comparison that comes to mind is The Cloverfield Paradox, with all the muddled popcorn movie baggage that comes along with that. With one dropped line in the beginning, they provide a decidedly liberal umbrella explanation for a whole cavalcade of random sci-fi bullshit, very little of which actively corresponds to any of the major thematic interpretations going on here. Annihilation wants to have its cake and analyze it too, but there's a lot of sound and fury in the first half of the film that just doesn't connect at the end of the day.

But sparkles!

But wow, what a gorgeous film it is. At least once every five minutes comes a shot that you could frame and hang up in your house, displaying the vast grandeur of the sci-fi universe it has created with all the awe-inspiring scale that it deserves. And the design of the plants and creatures in the Shimmer is excruciatingly detailed, drawing beauty from the grotesque and presenting sight after sight of nature turned on its head in appealing yet subtly unsettling ways. If this was just a travelogue promoting some semi-terrestrial safari, it would be a perfect movie. 

But there do happen to be humans in this movie and they are going through the motions of a plot, so there we are. The cast is mostly strong, but oddly the off notes come from the places you'd least expect them. Oscar Isaac, for one, isn't given a terribly prominent role, but is imprisoned inside a grating accent that just won't let him flourish, so it's a blessing that he's not onscreen that often. And Natalie Portman herself is probably being directed to be as bland as she is, but the ticking biological clock that is meant to generate suspense in the second half of the film is not in any way reflected by her physicality, and it falls entirely flat. And then there's the incomparable Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is making an incredibly strange series of choices that provide a restrained, keening performance that I'm not entirely convinced I like.

Gina Rodriguez, who has heretofore been known primarily for comedy, is the obvious standout here. She leaps from providing levity to ratcheting up the tension without making any huge, obvious shifts, letting a multitude of tones inhabit her character in a seamless, authentic manner. 

And if the performers aren't drawing you in, neither is the plot. Annihilation does generate a level of interest in its spooky mayhem for a while, as you're playing catch-up with what the hell is happening here in the Shimmer. But after more and more scenes of characters clubbing you over the head with dialogue that loudly announces "WE'RE GOING TO DISCUSS THE THEME OF THE MOVIE NOW!" with the obvious handicap that the more arthousey elements are grafted onto a basic sci-fi slasher structure, it just fails to impress on a structural level.

Don't get me wrong, when Annihilation gets into its third act, it leans in hard on those elements and finally cuts itself loose from anything resembling commercial entertainment. You can't watch the closing twenty minutes in any state other than transfixed rapture as it blends the ever-beautiful cinematography with the evocative motion of ballet to create something marvelous and cinematic, the likes of which haven't been seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey or maybe 2014's Under the Skin. 

Plus there is one moment with a bear that's flat-out the most terrifying scene of the year, I'm calling it now. So yeah, it's overall a win, but there's so much going wrong here it's more of a testament to how strong the movie is as a visual piece of craft more than an act of storytelling.

TL;DR: Annihilation is a beautifully achieved work of cerebral sci-fi, but it might not be quite as deep as it thinks it is.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1095

Popcorn Kernels: The Fairer Sexploitation

In which we present mini reviews of two female-directed entries in stereotypically male-directed genres.

American Psycho (For our Scream 101 episode about this very film, click here.)

Year: 2000

Director: Mary Harron

Cast: Christian Bale, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon

Run Time:1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A pent-up Wall Street VP lashes out in a variety of homicidal ways.

American Psycho is a crazy film. One of the few generally accepted horror classics that I hadn’t seen, it defied my expectations at every turn. Based on the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel that divided critics between viewing it as a dressed-up misogynist tract or a razor-sharp satire, the film was directed by – of all species – a woman. In case you’ve never read this blog before, let me make it very clear that this puts me firmly in the movie’s camp pretty much from the get-go. As far as I can figure it, this is the only popularly regarded staple horror film to have a woman behind the camera (I’m not counting The Babadook, which is far too new to qualify as a classic, as much as I may love it. And I’m certainly not counting Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare).

And how does having a female director affect the horror and humor of American Psycho? Not one whit. Well, maybe we linger a little longer on a showering Christian Bale, but you ain’t catching me complaining there. Other than that, it’s a perfectly sharp yuppie satire for people who liked Fight Club a little too much.

Perfectly skewering the venal, acquisitive nature of Reaganomics-fueled Wall Streeters who are all shallow, greedy, and interchangeable, American Psycho depicts the meltdown of a single individual: Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman – in this massive horde. As he strains to rein in his homicidal outburst, his peers ignore him entirely, even when he publicly confesses to his many sins. This is best encapsulated in a key scene where Bateman trundles a body into the trunk of a cab and a passing coworker coos over the trendy duffel bag he’s using to perform the deed. This is a world where you can be a murderer or, in fact, be murdered yourself, and you won’t make the slightest dent in the indestructibly grinding clockwork of capitalism.

It sounds intense, and it is. But it’s also pitch-black hilarious humor so grim that even the folks on the gallows might find it distasteful. Patrick Bateman is a man who murders people who can nab reservations at better restaurants than he can, discussing the finer points of Huey Lewis and the News while zipping up a plastic poncho to protect his designer suit from stains. Patrick Bateman is a man who trembles at the mere sight of  trendy business card, who has a stroke of panic when an opponent’s apartment is nicer than his. His viewpoints and motivations are so pointlessly inane that you can’t help but laugh, even as you cringe at the thought that the world around him allows him to get away with his crimes.

The only thing stopping American Psycho from being a flat-out black comedy masterpiece is a tendency toward repetition in the second act. Every scene follows a very precise structure, hobbling its ability to shock. A glorious ATM scene that simultaneously implies that Money is God and kicks the film’s craziest sequence into gear provides the jolt that the system needs, but the film enters a holding pattern for a little too long to preserve my patience. But we can’t all be perfect. American Psycho is a clever, superb little lick that’s just as keen to reference The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as Ivana Trump. I love that, even if it houses a half hour that falls short of being a masterpiece.

Rating: 7/10

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Year: 1982

Director: Amy Heckerling

Cast: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The teens at Ridgemont High really love bangin’.

Another entry in an exploitation genre secretly helmed by a woman, Fast Times at Ridgemont High definitely wears its gender on its sleeve, at least a teensy bit more. Despite its unfair proportion of bare breasts (a male full frontal scene was excised by the ever-progressive MPAA), Ridgemont High is first and foremost a story of a young woman discovering her sexuality and learning what she wants from men. Of course, this is a rote toss-up between a smooth talking stud and a namby pamby Nice Guy, but this was 1982. Let’s not expect too much.

This young woman, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in the role that made her a star (though she showed great promise in the previous year’s Eyes of a Stranger), is a sexually active teenager treated with a tremendous amount of respect. Her sexual misadventures are never presented as shameful, and an abortion scene late in the film is presented as a natural – if difficult – part of life, used to further Ridgemont High’s sweetest relationship, between Leigh and her ne’er do-well brother Judge Reinhold.

Of course, she’s the only character given anything even remotely resembling a story arc. The movie around her is a haphazard explosion of random, occasionally comic vignettes following stoners, football players, cool guts, and nerds through their daily lives. Each fragmented piece is part of a vast mosaic, depicting nothing in particular. It’s vexing, and the tendency to showcase overlong, almost actively unfunny sequences (an imaginary surfing championship interview, an enraged football player winning a game) is damning. To be fair, I have the personal bias that Sean Penn’s stoner drawl and Robert Romanus’ droning deadpan rub me exactly the wrong way, like a sandpaper suit.

This total disconnection from the concept of “story” or “character” is intensely frustrating and the movie’s habit of poor continuity editing only highlights how scraped-together the overarching plot feels. Even Phoebe Cates’ iconic bikini scene suffers from – frankly – a dreadful botch-job on the part of the splicer. This is less like cutting a movie and more like cutting the cheese (Hey! Rimshot!).

Of course, the “time in a bottle” aspect of Ridgemont High does much to soothe any wounds it may have caused. With a pitch perfect soundtrack of 80’s hits that have actually aged terrifically (Jackson Browne, The Go-Go’s, The Cars… This is a synthcrap-free zone) and a horde of future stars (joining Penn and Leigh are Forest Whitaker, Nicolas Cage, and horror icons Amanda Wyss – Freddy Krueger’s first victim in A Nightmare on Elm Street – and Kelli Maroney, who would eventually return to the Sherman Oaks Galleria where this film was shot four years later in Chopping Mall), Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a dreamy time capsule of days gone by.

It might not be a perfect high school sex romp, but it’s decently funny and occasionally sweet. I can make do with that while jamming to “We Got the Beat.”

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1155
Reviews In This Series
American Psycho (Harron, 2000)
American Psycho 2: All-American Girl (Freeman, 2002)

Census Bloodbath: Motorin', What's Your Price For Fright?

Well, this is awkward, isn’t it? As I got busier and my free time drifted away into the mist, I’ve at least been able to keep up a reasonably steady diet of movie watching and reviewing. However, several ongoing features are begging for completion, and I still haven’t rectified my unforgivable sin of leaving October’s Cardboard Science feature on a cliffhanger. However, as my health, my finances, and my schedule begin to level out, I shall once more give a grasping attempt to catch up with myself, starting with the resurrection of my most popular feature (in polls conducted on me’s everywhere): Census Bloodbath.

Year: 1986

Director: Robert Harmon

Cast: Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1986 was a weird year for slasher movies. They had already died their first death following the video boom of the early 80’s, been resurrected by Wes Craven’s 1984 masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street, and had a brief supernatural vogue before dwindling once more, more or less immediately. 1986 catches the tail end of that second cycle, in the period of the decade where the perms were at their biggest and the legs at their warmest. This was the age where the slashers were really flexing their muscles to try and rise above the rest of the pack. Seeing that the year bore three separate slashers that took place on April Fool’s Day, I wouldn’t say this was entirely successful.

However, 1986 also saw the release of a different beast that accomplished that separation effortlessly, using the by now well-known slasher idiom to create an entirely different horror tale, hybridizing the subgenre with the popcorn action-thriller antics that were spreading across cinemaplexes like a virus: This movie was known only as… The Hitcher. Now, The Hitcher wouldn’t be the first quasi-slasher to take on Duel-esque roadside thrills (the 1981 gem Road Games beat it to the punch), but it’s certainly one of the more successful action slashers in the business. 

I mean, it’s no Terminator, but what is?

In The Hitcher, Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is a young Chicago native taking a driveaway car to San Diego, where he intends to start a new life. Maybe. The Hitcher isn’t exactly a repository of character details, but then again what 80’s horror or action film really is? At any rate, he’s driving along the dark Texas highways and decides to pick up a hitchhiker to keep him awake.

He certainly made the right choice, because after picking up John Rider (Rutger Hauer), he may never sleep again. The hitcher turns out to be a vicious roadside serial killer and Jim narrowly escapes with his life. But he’s hardly in the clear – thus begins a dangerous game of cat and mouse as the Hitcher torments Jim along his journey, framing the boy for a series of grisly murders. It’s up to Jim and roadside diner waitress Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh, making her second Census Bloodbath appearance after Eyes of a Stranger) to prove his increasingly dubious innocence.

And if having great hair is a crime, he’s certainly not innocent.

The Hitcher starts off with a bang, plunging us almost immediately into gut-wrenching thrills. Hell, this is a movie where a toddler gets murdered in the first twenty minutes. It might be offscreen, but it doesn’t pull any punches when setting up our pal Hitch as a Bad, Bad Dude. He is evil incarnate, and though he might never vanish into thin air or otherwise show any signs of supernatural hijinks, it wouldn’t take much arguing to convince me that he’s the actual Devil. And the film opens with his most solid, sustained presence: a solid 10 minutes of torment that makes the skin crawl.

Whether you respond to Jim’s hopeless predicament, the stiletto-sharp screenwriting, the enclosed space, or Hauer’s uncomfortably serene performance, there is something in this scene to make you rethink ever getting in your car again. It’s the single strongest moment in the film, clocking you in the jaw before the plot even has time to warm up.

Now, that means the rest of the movie can never quite live up to this moment, but it sure as hell tries. Hauer’s inscrutable menace propels the tension whenever he reappears, and the increasing desperation of Jim’s situation means that the pace never really flags, but the increased focus on Jim and Nash allows some flab to creep in.

Slowly and subtly, like the fourth week of a diet plan.

C. Thomas Howell’s performance is just a wee tad cheesier than my taste, so spending any alone time with him is like putting on a Paul McCartney solo record. You don’t hate it, but you wish the other guys were still around. Plus, his lack of character depth doesn’t lend as much to the story as The Hitcher’s. An unknowable villain is scary. An unknowable protagonist is just frustrating. Jim’s blankness lends to its general urban legend-y air, but once the movie ditches nail-biting, close-up horror for bullets and car chases, there’s no way to get purchase on his character, making it a chore to even pretend to care about his fate.

Oh yeah, did I mention how many car chases there are in The Hitcher? I already said it was an action-thriller hybrid, but the sheer amount of car chasing, car crashing, bullet ricocheting mayhem here comes totally out of left field. The second a freaking helicopter comes hurtling onscreen, the 80’s have fully asserted themselves on the film, and my estimated budget shoots off the charts. The fact that this level of action is present at all in a slasher is pretty unprecedented, which certainly makes the film an intriguing curio, but the repetitive, over-the-top nature of these scenes causes the film to stall quite a bit during its second act, sputtering and coughing exhaust before it hits the right gear with its gonzo finale.

But oh, what a finale! Although the film’s gore level never hits a lofty peak (most kills are offscreen, and the ones that aren’t are pretty tame – even by 1986’s downright Puritanical standards), its viciousness returns with gale force. It exits the way it came in, leaving a wicked taste on the tongue that won’t quite scrub out.

I suppose that I should mention the artistry of certain moments: the slanted shafts of light cutting through the frame, the elegant photography of the dusty terrain (as should be expected from DP John Seale, who later shot Mad Max: F**king Fury Road), the lone dog walking through the empty police station, turning the scene into a waking, Craven-esque nightmare… but more than its generally being well put-together, The Hitcher leaves you with a sense of being genuinely unsafe, something totally unique in the realm of 1980’s slasher cinema. It’s a wonky entry in the genre, to be sure, but a lasting one. 

Killer: The Hitcher (Rutger Hauer)

Final Girl: Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell)

Best Kill: Poor Jennifer Jason Leigh. That's gonna hurt worse than being snubbed by the Oscars this year.

Sign of the Times: Listen to thirty seconds of this nonsense.

Scariest Moment: The Hitcher tells Jim he'll leave him alone if he says four words: "I want to die."

Weirdest Moment: Jim is eating french fries, but one of them turns out to be a finger.

Champion Dialogue: "Actually we're all from Mars around here, we keep our spaceship out back."

Body Count: 13; not including a potential truck passenger that may have been briefly glimpsed in a sandstorm, as well as five squad cars and one helicopter that crash, presumably killing their occupants.

1. Father is murdered offscreen.
2. Mother is murdered offscreen.
3. Child is murdered offscreen.
4. Truck Driver is murdered offscreen.
5. Cop #1 is stabbed to death offscreen.
6. Cop #2 is stabbed to death offscreen.
7. Cop #3 is stabbed to death offscreen. 
8. Cop #4 is shot.
9. Cop #5 is shot.
10. Nash is ripped in half between two trucks.
11. Cop #6 is shot.
12. Cop #7 is shot.
13. The Hitcher is shot through the chest. 

TL;DR: The Hitcher is a gritty slasher action-thriller, and that's the least of its charms.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1367

Census Bloodbath: Stranger Danger

Year: 1981

Director: Ken Wiederhorn

Cast: Lauren Tewes, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John DiSanti

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Eyes of a Stranger is a slasher film displaced in time. A sleazy rape-murder thriller in the vein of the late-70's grindhouse era, the film came late to the party in March 1981, by which time the despotic teen splatter film had risen to its rightful throne. It's a lonely straggler, left out in the cold by the genre's abrupt transition following the release of Friday the 13th.

The true misfortune of this is that Eyes of a Stranger is possibly the best of its skeevy brethren, certainly far more than its lackluster counterpart from 1980, the utterly reprehensible Don't Answer the Phone. Taking cues from the vibrantly grimy Maniac, the film rises above its lowly stature to actually bestow a modicum of artistic merit upon itself.

Not that I'm asking for high art from my meat cleaver movies.

The film tells the story of Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes), an empathetic Miami reporter who is profoundly personally affected by a recent rash of rape-murder crimes that has been striking the city. These crimes trigger her feelings of guilt about the molestation of her sister Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first feature film role), which left her deaf and blind. When she begins to suspect that her neighbor Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti) is the culprit, she takes it upon herself to investigate, despite the protestations of her lawyer boyfriend David (Peter DuPre).

While it could have just been yet another throwaway trifle of misogyny, Eyes of a Stranger has much more to it than that. On top of two strong female protagonists, the film has a focused sense of style and an exquisite amount of tension during many sequences. It's almost like it's actually a movie instead of a string of nasty kill scenes. What an idea!

Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty to dislike about Eyes of a Stranger. Its focus on rape as a key element of the murder sequences prevents them from being any fun, though the bulk of the sex crimes are thankfully relegated to the offscreen void. That keeps the kills from becoming too nasty, but it also keeps them from becoming much of anything. In a film with a flimsier plot, this would have sunk the entire affair like a lead iceberg.

But lo and behold, we have a surprisingly solid thriller narrative anchored by characters with actual dynamics. The victims are still generally one-dimensional and introduced only to die five minutes later, but the main storyline is nothing to shake a stick at. As the body count begins to pile up, Jane's foolhardiness puts a strain on her relationship with David, with whom she has been using Tracy as an excuse to avoid shacking up.

Despite the fact that she can handily do laundry, make toast, go swimming, and all sorts of totally normal teen things all by herself. As a matter of fact, I think the laundry thing puts her ahead of the average teen.

So, in Eyes of a Stranger we have realistic characters interacting in a world with consequences, many of whom are performed with surprising skill. Tewes is absolutely stunning, creating a nuanced backstory told completely by her face, and Jason Leigh milks tension out of every moment she's in, no matter how brightly lit or visually unimpressive they may otherwise be. Only DiSanti is a weak link, providing an utterly banal villain performance in which he is out-acted by his car, which has a swooping Night Rider design and sinister eye-like headlamps. Honestly, if there's ever a sequel in the works, any smart producer would tap that car first thing.

Earlier I mentioned the film's sense of style and I'm going to expand upon that now, because segues are the worst. Especially in the first act, the world of Eyes of a Stranger is populated with rich, vivid colors that, much like its spiritual forebear Maniac, invoke the atmosphere of the classic Italian gialli.  The swooping camera slowly carves its path through highly saturated greens and reds, lending the film an air of class and panache before it brutalizes the audience.

I've already spoken out about the imbalance in the kill sequences, which struggle to avoid the nastier side of exploitation, in which violent rape is merely an excuse to see boobs, but many other moments before and after the questionable acts are fraught with genuine tension. I shudder to spoil too many of these, because they're really quite alarming, but Eyes of a Stranger puts in a bid at actually achieving scares, something many an anemic slasher has utterly failed to do.

On top of all this, the film has an intimate, detailed sense of its own geography, it paws at thematic potential with a half-cocked subtextual discussion on sight and the male gaze, a unique exploration of the life of a girl cut off from her senses, and it's possibly one of the most female-empowering films of its ilk. Even in the finale, which sets up a "the hero races to the scene" subplot, the women prevail over all and the bonds of sisterhood prove to be the most effective defense. It's like Frozen but with more belt stranglings!

Although to be honest, I'm a little sad nobody even attempted to whack Olaf the snowman.

Tom Savini doesn't get a lot to do, but his effects perk up the film where it counts, and creates an ultimately very enjoyable experience. I'm extremely hesitant to throw my support behind Eyes of a Stranger because despite its charms, it's still beholden to its pedigree of sleaze, but all in all it's a worthwhile watch.

Killer: Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti)

Final Girl: Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes) and Tracy Harris (Jennifer Jason Leigh)

Best Kill: Jeff is decapitated and his head is placed in a fish tank, much like the awesome He Knows You're Alone from the year before.

Sign of the Times: I'd be screaming too if I was asked to put on that forest green tracksuit.

Scariest Moment: Tracy goes about her business in the kitchen, but when she claps her dog doesn't come. We see that it's dead on the floor and realize that the killer is in the house.
Weirdest Moment: Debbie watches Shock Waves on TV. This is weird because nobody has ever willingly watched Shock Waves.
Champion Dialogue: "Why don't you go stick it in your ear and then go jump in the bay?"
Body Count: 7; not including a corpse found in the beginning of the film, or Tracy's seeing-eye dog.

1. Jeff is decapitated.
2. Debbie is strangled with a belt offscreen.
3. Annette is killed offscreen.
4. Smoocher is stabbed in the neck with a switchblade.
5. Smoochette has her throat slit.
6. Stripper is killed offscreen.
7. Stanley Herbert is shot in the head. 

TL;DR: Eyes of a Stranger is weighed down by a sleazy atmosphere, but features some terrific performances and a great deal of legitimate tension.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1178