Census Bloodbath: Dead, For A Ducat, Dead!

Year:
1985
Director:
Tony Lo Bianco
Cast:
Mike Connors, Anne Archer, Ian McShane
Run Time:
1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Too Scared to Scream follows a series of slayings that take place in a luxury New York City high-rise apartment complex known as the Royal Arms. Could it be perpetrated by the charming, Norman Bates-esque doorman Vincent Hardwick (Ian McShane), who has a strange relationship with his mother and doesn't realize that absolutely nobody is thrilled by his habit of constantly quoting Shakespeare? Probably not, because the movie keeps refusing to show you the killer's face, so if you know a single thing about murder mystery tropes, you know that the detectives on the case - the hard-bitten Lieutenant Alex Dinardo (Mike Connors of Mannix) and the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Kate Bridges (Anne Archer of Fatal Attraction) - have their work cut out for them.

Analysis: I'm going to give you a quick peek behind the curtain of Census Bloodbath. I generally watch each year's movies in chronological order by release date, but there is always a random cludge of titles that don't have proper release date information. These are usually obscure video titles or movies that nobody has cared enough about to keep proper records on, and they are usually abysmal for that reason. I used to carve my way through said cludge at the end of each year, but that always killed my drive to want to keep moving forward, so I switched it to the beginning of the year, thus saving the best (or at least the better) for last.

They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore was the last from the "unknown" pile of 1985 (your clue as to it belonging to that elite group was the 2/10 score), which is why we're suddenly finding ourselves with an embarrassment of riches. A beautiful poster and actors whose names we recognize (Murray Hamilton from Jaws and The Graduate is also kicking around here)? An original song that gets credit in the opening titles? Will the wonders never cease?

Yes, yes they will. That is because Too Scared to Scream is boring as shit, but at least it's a well-appointed boring movie that wasn't shot by teenagers with a camera they stole from a junkyard. 

So, here's the problem. Too Scared to Scream wants you to think that it's classy. It's a Psycho riff that would even look down its nose at Dressed to Kill, is what I'm saying. This blatantly ignores the fact that the movie is tacky and exploitative as all get out, shuffling women out of their clothes at a relatively rapid clip, trying to startle you with a cheap spring-loaded bird jump scare (now there's a new one), and featuring multiple tawdry gay reveals. This is back when "gay" meant "psychopathic," of course. Again. Psycho riff.

Anyway, the result of it thinking it's better than being a slasher movie (when it really shouldn't, considering it's a big screen vehicle for fucking Mannix) is that its kills are woefully tedious. The ones that don't take place offscreen might as well have, because they are all delivered in the same Norman Bates stab-stab-cutaway style. This lacks the visceral intensity of Psycho, of course. Tony Lo Bianco ain't no Hitchcock. What we get in between these wan kills is a bunch of go-nowhere romance with Kate and Alex, a final girl sequence where Kate keeps desperately trying to figure out if the screenplay wants her to have skills or not, and Ian McShane reciting Shakespeare. That last part is delivered well, at least. I mean, we'd all go see him do Richard III, right? We're only human.

However, because this is a real movie with a real professional crew making it, there are at least some bright sides to our first soujourn into movies with actual legitimate release dates in 1985. There is a killer thriller moment where a victim is looking through her closet and is confused by a sleeve she doesn't recognize, only to realize that it belongs to someone holding a knife. And a playful scene where what seems to be spilled blood is actually wine. The movie is also a New York-set story that doesn't forget people of color exist, which is nice, even if it doesn't always remember to avoid trapping them in stereotype purgatory for all eternity.

All in all, this is still not a great showing for the slashers of 1985, but one could do worse. And I certainly have.

Killer: Edward (Chet Doherty)

Final Girl: Kate Bridges (Anne Archer)

Best Kill: There's really not much to choose from, but when Cynthia (Victoria Bass), the first victim, is Psycho stabbed, the camera lingers on her prone body while a voicemail from her mother plays, which is effectively tragic.

Sign of the Times: More than anything, this is a sign that the movie was shot in 1981 and shelved for a couple years, but it sure was a pleasure to see The Burning on the marquee of a Times Square movie theater.

Scariest Moment: Alex finds suspect Barry (Beeson Carroll) naked, bound, and gagged, with cigarette burns on his ass, under a pile of cushions in his apartment, and when he ungags him, Barry begins screaming his lungs out. It's all very Se7en.

Weirdest Moment: Kate grabs a telephone receiver to use as a makeshift weapon, and it works! Twice! You can't do that with an iPhone.

Champion Dialogue: “I've been in and out of so many clothes, I feel like a dancing coat hanger."

Body Count: 8

1. Cynthia is stabbed to death.
2. Mrs. Horner is stabbed to death.
3. Sidney is killed in the head offscreen.
4. Nadine has her throat slit offscreen.
5. Mike is killed offscreen.
6. Irma is killed offscreen.
7. Vincent is stabbed in the back offscreen.
8. Edward is shot.

TL;DR: Too Scared to Scream puts on airs of being classier than it is, which results in it failing to be much of anything at all.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 998

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Theater

Year: 1978

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Cast: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Jaws was bigger than any movie that ever came before it. It splashed onto the cinema scene like a 400-pound Great White shark, and the only surprising thing about the fact that it got a sequel was that it took them three years to make it. One good thing about this is that it allowed Italy time to crank out Orca: the Killer Whale, in which a whale devours a Great White in a show of aquatic horror supremacy (more on that in a bit). The bad thing is, they don’t seem to have spent those three years developing a shark animatronic that would actually work properly.

Bruce Jr. is carrying on the family name of being a massive disappointment.

One thing Jaws 2 has going for it is the return of a lot of the core cast and locations from the original: We pick up off the coast of Amity Island, where two scuba divers are attacked by a Great White shark, which we know more because of the John Williams score than the actual special effects. Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) isn’t alarmed at first, but a sudden spike in disappearances and accidents (including a beached Orca with a huge chunk bitten out of it – zing!) leads him to believe that Amity is once again under siege by a giant shark. Lord knows how he got re-elected, but once again the Mayor (Murray Hamilton) intercedes with his attempts to shut down the beaches on the account of some visiting investors.

This is how Brody’s son Michael (Mark Gruner), now a sexy teen, ends up on an ill-fated sailing expedition with a gaggle of his sexy teen peers and his little brother Sean (Marc Gilpin), who appears to be the exact same age as he was three years ago, eve though Mike has apparently accelerated through puberty like a regular Jack. Time is weird.

Anyway, Brody finds himself in the position of singlehandedly saving his sons and their friends from the ministrations of a ravenous, very pissed-off shark.

Also, it got its face burned in an explosion, because it was almost the 80’s, so SOMETHING had to explode.

You know that thing that happens in the credits of movies where, after the names of the main stars appear, they’ll save time by showing a block of eight to ten names of the lesser actors? There are no fewer than two of those blocks in the opening of Jaws 2, and that speaks to what is perhaps its biggest flaw. The film has already speared as many Jaws actors as possible into returning (including the guy who played Screaming Swimmer and the lady who asked “Are you going to close the beaches”) and yet it still feels the need to cram in a baker’s dozen of horny teens, only four or five of which get any semblance of a personality or even an introduction.

There are a couple horny and loathsome nerds, the mayor’s son, two female cousins, and three or four couples in various combinations, but they live and die in a world that’s almost entirely undisclosed to us. They are but ants, interchangeably suffering at the fins and teeth of Amity’s second largest export. Coming after Jaws’ expert work at imbuing even the minor, one-scene characters with color and inner life, the endless parade of identical slasher-esque teens with floppy hair is a crushing disappointment.

Although, let’s give a warm Census Bloodbath shoutout to Donna Wilkes of 1980’s Schizoid!

There is more to Jaws 2 than the uncomfortable marriage of small town drama and teen horror, but precious little more. While Chief Brody does the old “man who cried shark” soft shoe, he finds himself at the receiving end of some mildly amusing dialogue, and the devastated townsfolk are for the most part well-acted. It’s not a slog to sit through, and if you bob along with your brain turned off, you will make it through to the end just fine.

That’s far from strong praise, but it’s the best I can do. Unlike its titular sea beast, Jaws 2 is pretty toothless. It drops any and all pretense of actually being a horror film (though it does keep the faux-grindhouse ending that cuts to credits with brutal efficiency the second the threat is vanquished), and that tonally flat presentation mauls any sense of tension.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the shark menacing this film’s shores looks downright terrible. Even with the added crutch of a scorch mark across the shark’s face, it rings incredibly false, all emotionless rubber and endlessly gnashing teeth. Unfortunately, director Jeannot Szwarc (of the similarly lauded Supergirl) is no Steven Spielberg, and he flails when he tries to walk the tightrope of suggestion: trying to imply the beast’s size and strength without actually showing it requires an actual vision.

The shark might as well be played by an oven mitt with googly eyes, but the alternative is worse. The shots of people thrashing about in the water are much too wide, exposing the fact that, unless the shark is nibbling on their toes, there’s actually no way a fish that huge is touching the person in the shot. It’s all just desperate artifice without a solid story to hold it all together.

And the villain looks more like a hot dog with teeth than a shark.

Jaws 2 certainly isn’t the worst sequel in the world. At least it’s faithful to the universe it takes place in and the characters who live there (the same could not be said for the likes of the abominable Exorcist II: The Heretic, released just one year prior). Unfortunately, it’s a charmless waste of time. I know Spielberg makes everything look easy, but you wouldn’t think it’d be such a challenge to make a big budget shark attack movie into something that’s actually fun to watch.

TL;DR: Jaws 2 is mildly entertaining but completely fails to even attempt to compete with the excitement of the original Jaws.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1024
Reviews In This Series
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
Jaws 2 (Szwarc, 1978)
Jaws 3-D (Alves, 1983)
Jaws: The Revenge (Sargent, 1987)