The Evil Is Gone From Here

Year: 1982

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Cast: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O'Herlihy 

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

And here we are. Just like that, our October marathon has brought us to the most infamous franchise flick of perhaps the entire decade: Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Yup, this is the Halloween film without Michael Myers. Cue the dramatic music.

This is how the story goes: Halloween II was never supposed to be about Laurie Strode and her bemasked boogeyman brother. The original intention was that the Halloween franchise would be an anthology, telling a different spooky tale about the holiday every year. Let’s cut to the chase here. 47 million dollars later (on a budget of $300,000), that dream was not going to become a reality. Michael Myers was back and synthier than ever. However, Halloween II pretty emphatically killed off both Michael and his arch-nemesis, the linguistically uninhibited Dr. Loomis, in a massive explosion. How could they possibly expect them to come back from that?

Clearly they’d never seen a Friday the 13th sequel.

So after Halloween II made a clean slice through cinemas, the anthology idea was resurrected. Here is the story they chose.

After Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is mysteriously murdered in the hospital following a life-threatening incident, his bereaved daughter Elli (Stacey Nelkin) and his doctor Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins of Night of the Creeps and Maniac Cop) team up to investigate a Halloween mask that seems to be involved in the case. Their sleuthing takes them to the small town of Santa Mira, California, the home of the massively popular Silver Shamrock mask company.

Silver Shamrock is planning a big giveaway following an October 31st broadcast of the horror classic Halloween (hey, I know that movie!). Our intrepid gumshoes (after a night of vigorous genital calisthenics, courtesy of Tom Atkins being Tom Atkins) begin to snoop around town and uncover a secret plot by the company’s owner Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy) to utilize the masks (and their secret powers, activated by a chip off one of the blocks of Stonehenge – making this and Troll 2 the only evil Stonehenge movies that I’m aware of) in a grisly sacrifice to honor the druid festival of Samhain.

Dr. Loomis may be tragically missed from this film, but his butchering of the pronunciation of Samhain is not.

Let’s make one thing clear. A Michael-less Halloween movie doesn’t bother me one bit. I’ve been through thick and thin with this genre: an imposter Jason Voorhees, a rock-singing driller killer, a prom ghost who haunts neither the first nor last films of her franchise, a troll film about goblins, a Last House on the Left Part II that was released a year before that film, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2… I could go on. I’ve seen and survived it all.

This puts me in a much better position to approach this film than the audiences of 1982, eager for the continued misadventures of one Mssr. Myers. I’m ready to take a crack at it, but I never want you to forget the perturbed reaction this flick received upon its initial release. It’s important to understand that feeling, because Halloween III is absolutely nutso, with or without the dissonance of an MIA boogeyman.

This is its secret strength, and the reason that legions of Halloween fans have slowly been revisiting it and elevating it to cult status. Of course, that’s just knocking it from one extreme pole to the other. The love and hate of fandom is intense, passionate, and knows no moderation. But the truth is that Halloween III is neither a miserable scum bucket nor an overlooked glittering diamond. Are you ready to hear the truth? Can you handle the truth?

Halloween III is… pretty good.

The truth is out there.

In its way, Halloween III is the perfect anthology tale. What it lacks in overall arc or scope it makes up for with scores of twists and turns, buckets of gooey goodness, and an unflagging energy. It’s not a true classic like the original Halloween (though what Part 3 is?), but it’s an emphatic campfire tale. First of all, it’s certainly the goriest flick in the franchise so far, but the carnage it curates is gleeful and zestily creative. Halloween III has it all. Head ripping! Laser beams! Bugs squishing out of eye sockets! These sequences are presented with the boundless enthusiasm of a kid rifling thorough their chest of toys.

This unabating sense of fun also permeates the characters themselves. Obviously, Tom Atkins is no stranger to comic roles, but his doctor oozes raw, sensuality in levels so ridiculously high they’re unfit for human consumption. And though no person on earth could match his animal power, Nelkin gives it a daring go, leapfrogging between the bereaved damsel in distress and the horny vixen with see-through pockets (the ludicrous sensibility also spreads o the costuming – this way 1982, after all). The cherry on top is O’Herlihy, whose Cochran is a scenery chewing villain to the utmost degree. His charismatic mustache twirling is so fierce that he has to borrow Atkins’ mustache for backup.

He is also this film’s recipient of the Donald Pleasance Hyperbolic Loquacity medal of honor.

Honestly, Halloween III feels a little like an amped-up Scooby Doo episode, with all the camp and entertainment value that that implies. No moment is perhaps more indicative of this than our two sleuths sneaking into the villain’s lair behind a rolling cart. It’s pure cartoon mayhem peppered with gruesome Raimi-esque gore setpieces. It’s almost impossible not to have a good time while watching it play out. That is, unless you were expecting a silent psycho stalking babysitter.

Ah, there’s the rub. As jubilantly enjoyable as Halloween III is, it sticks out like a sore thumb in the middle of its franchise. As heartily as I enjoy it, context is killer. This frivolous exercise in stretching those EC Comics muscles has no place among the continued adventures of Mikey and his Knife. Removed completely from its surroundings, it stands as a shallow but effervescent piece of camp horror (as do most slashers, come to think of it), but the truth of the matter is that it’s just not polished enough to cleanly break those bonds.

Well, that’s why it will never be truly accepted back into the fold. But heck, I like it. Not enough to throw my wright behind it when push comes to shove, but nothing like this has ever been attempted before and I think it’s something truly special. But Michael or not, I’m still a little pissed off that there’s no witch in the movie. I feel like both titles being misnomers is a little excessive, don’t you think?

TL;DR: Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a light, entertaining, vividly gory anthology tale.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1150

Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Endless Summer

Alrighty, buckaroos. It’s September and things have slowed to a crawl around here because the sheer mass of movies that I’ve watched (among other real life obligations) is dragging behind me like tin cans on a “Just Married” car. Try as I might to knock out full reviews for each of these suckers, I’m but one fallible human being trying to have a good time. So it’s high time for some spring cleaning. Or rather, end of summer cleaning. I’m opening the windows, letting in some air, and clearing off those cluttered shelves to make way for the rich splendor of the Halloween season, where we can once again kick things into high gear. Buckle your seatbelts, kiddos.

The Return of the Living Dead

Year: 1985

Director: Dan O'Bannon

Cast: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Thom Mathews

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Despite the splendors of American Army engineering, a chemical agent at a medical warehouse leaks into the nearby cemetery where a group of punks are partying, causing zombies to rise.

80’s horror is kind of my thing, in case you hadn’t noticed. As an extension of that, I deserve a lifetime sentence in nerd hail for having waited so long to see The Return of the Living Dead. Having been written and directed by Dan O’Bannon (frequent John Carpenter collaborator and the man who wrote the story treatment for freaking Alien), and starring Clu Gulager (The Initiation, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2), James Karen (Poltergeist), Thom Mathews (the cutest Tommy Jarvis, from Friday the 13th Part VI), and Linnea Quigley (everything), I’m basically a Benedict Arnold to my cause, but I’ve rectified that now.

For its first thirty minutes or so, RotLD is unimpeachably the funniest horror comedy ever to walk this freshly-dug earth. The script is tight, fast-paced, and the tongue is so firmly in cheek that the teeth keep biting it every time they try to talk. The punk ensemble is a pitch perfect Greek Chorus of prickly delinquency led by a fearless Quigley with fire engine red toilet brush hair. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Linnea crab walk her way over the hood of a car. The fact that she spends almost the entire remainder of the film naked certainly doesn’t tarnish the film’s cult reputation, but it’s also a dastardly hilarious shock gag that keeps on giving.

While the punks are pure bubblegum fun, the adult cast knows exactly what type of movie they’re making and have no qualms about pitching their performances up to the rafters. Karen and Gulager seem to be locked in a fierce battle to see who can burst their own blood vessels first, and the winner is us.

The set design is pretty top notch, too. Although the film never escapes the “this was made in somebody’s basement” feel, each element of the set is integrated into the storyline in a unique and clever way, from the eye test chart decorating the office wall to the pinned butterflies in the storage room.  Everything has a purpose, whether it’s a sight gag so subtle you’re liable to need further viewings to even notice it, or merely a feature that will come in handy later.

Unfortunately, Return of the Living Dead runs out of steam faster than me after foolishly assuming I can run a mile without warming up first. The characters are too thin to hang such a good movie on, and it ends up ripping right through them by the hallway point. The film never ever let up being entertaining, but its nonstop, careening clip flags in favor of a more standard house in siege movie that gives an inexplicably heavy level of focus to Miguel Nuñez (of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, in which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Demon, the enchilada-scarfing biker who gets impaled while Hershey squirting in an outhouse).

And while the lead zombie has an impressive visage and a terrifying mien, the effects in the film are surprisingly demure for an 80’s zombie epic. For all the obsession with brains, there’s hardly a flash of the pink stuff, and what little we’re left with doesn’t exactly hold up all these years later.

It’s a very cheap, unassuming, slapdash little movie, but that’s exactly what allowed it to harness the gonzo anti-establishment energy that drives its engine for so much of the time. Do I wish it were more consistent? Yes. Would it be better with a gore top-up? Undoubtedly. But it’s still Return of the Living Dead, and its ratty, clever, indefatigable energy refuses to be held down. Nor would I want it to be. Let your freak flag fly, baby.

Rating: 7/10

Night of the Creeps

Year: 1986

Director: Fred Dekker

Cast: Jason Lively, Tom Atkins, Steve Marshall

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Two college freshmen accidentally unleash an alien experiment that turns people into evil zombies.

If I deserved a lifetime sentence in nerd jail for missing out on The Return of the Living Dead, having seen Night of the Creeps certainly qualifies me for parole on good behavior. The film, which has unfortunately almost been lost to the mists of time, is a true gem that deserves to be unearthed, packed with goodies from director Fred Dekker (of The Monster Squad, a much more recognized flick).

For starters, I’m a sucker for college movies and Night of the Creeps is an excellent depiction of the freshman year experience. Within relatable situations (crushing on the unattainable girl, rushing the unattainable frat, experiencing freedom for the very first time), Dekker (who also wrote the screenplay) etches out a genuine friendship between two teens, ride with rich humor and poignant humanity. With such a strong core to branch out from, Night of the Creeps is free to explore all sorts of crazy side streets and as such is one of the most explosively creative, jubilantly hilarious horror-comedies of the decade, hitting both sides of that hyphenate in nearly equal measure.

Admittedly though, one side does dominate through seer strength and willpower so let’s begin with that one: the comedy. There’s so much going on in the film (frat pranks, alien ray gun fights, parasitic zombie worms, a black and white sci-fi prologue, and even a mad axe-wielding slasher) that it would rattle with pure energy even without a strong creative vision. But Dekker must be French for “duct tape” because the man holds all the disparate elements together like a pro, infusing them with laugh-out-loud wit every step of the way. The film traffics in self-referential, winking humor in the vein of Jason Lives, but just like its plot, it can’t nail itself down to one single style. High camp, sophomoric frat comedy, goofy sight gags, and intellectual barbs are tossed into the mélange and blended expertly.

No single actor exemplifies this movie’s personality more than Tom Atkins (of Maniac Cop and Halloween III: Season of the Witch). Atkins swallows the script, digests it, and expels it from every pore of his body. His “Thrill Me,” catch phrase is iconic, but every aspect of his character (the detective investigating the strange happenings on campus) from his deadpan one-liner deliveries to his clipped, decisive movements and hyperbolically serious demeanor is explosively inexplicable and outrageously mirth-inducing. It is also thanks to Atkins that the horror portion of the film works even a quarter as well as it does.

The gravitas he lends to the proceedings allow the scarier moments to get under your skin and claw their way firmly around the base of your spine. Between him and the excellent special effects (which render what could have been totally silly parasite worms as utterly menacing, absolutely autonomous creatures with drive and sinister purpose), Night of the Creeps lands some square sucker punches when you least expect it.

And the filmmaking ain’t half bad, either. When you compare Night of the Creeps to Return of the Living Dead, another goofy horror flick directed by its writer, it’s light years head behind the camera. There’s some daring cinematography, including an immensely memorable spinning shot that outstrips any single visual moment in RotLD, and the lighting scheme (especially when it veers into pulpy pinks and blues) is quite dashing.

All in all, Night of the Creeps is an easy film to fall head over heels for. It’s a heap of fleshy, flashy fun, and it really deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with classic titles like Evil Dead II and Ghostbusters, if I do say so myself. It’s my blog. Sue me.

Rating: 8/10

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Year: 1998

Director: Danny Cannon

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Brandy

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Julie James is back and wetter than ever – on an island vacation ruined by monsoon weather, the rain slicker-clad killer returns to claim the lives of her and her friends.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is hardly a classic teen slasher, so the fact that it more or less instantly dove into the realm of ludicrous, crappy sequeldom shouldn’t come as a surprise. In a way, it almost improves the series, and in many ways it makes it a whole lot worse. The instant backslide into pulpy nonsense is fondly reminiscent of 80’s slasher dreck, but the film is so inextricably stupid that – like the Eskimos – I was forced to come up with 50 different words to differentiate the various gradations of stupid that I encountered. Here is but a small sample.

Idiotsplosive: This is a word for something that’s loudly, obnoxiously idiotic. You can’t possibly ignore it because it’s in your face with a bullhorn shouting “Here I am!’ and sharing Facebook posts about Donald Trump.

This word is the exclusive domain of characters like Jack Black cameoing as the local pothead. Yes, that Jack Black. He runs through nearly every scene in the first act, practically flapping his arms and shrieking inane stereotypes. It’s sheer bliss when he gets a set of hedge clippers buried in his chest. This word also handily describes the score, which is mostly content to busty itself combining rip-offs of Friday the 13th and The Exorcist, but the second anything remotely tense happens, gets overexcited and lets loose with a cacophony of bleats and squeals. Someone touches Julie’s shoulder? BWAMP! A mote of dust lands on a lamp in the foreground? BWLEH! It’s exhausting.

Infinidim: This is a word for something so richly, complexly stupid that it borders on incomprehensible.

This word was created for scenes like the opening red herring, which assume that nobody in the audience knows the capitol of Brazil and that no angry bystander will have irately shouted the correct answer before the reveal an hour later. This word also comes in handy for a film that bases two entirely separate scare scenes around clothes dryers. If you care to extrapolate from that, there’s rather slim pickings when it comes to decent frights in this flick, though one of its jump scares is suitably goosebump-inducing.

Stupidndous: This is a word for something so outrageously daft that it can’t help but be heaps of fun.

Here’s a line from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer: “That was like, heart attack time!” In short, this is a fantastic party movie if you’ve got a big bowl of popcorn and a pile of quip-ready friends. From the high camp of the killer’s reveal and the epilogue (“I love my electric toothbrush!”) to the nonsensical voodoo subplot and the daring decision to put Jennifer Love Hewitt in a sports bra while a hurricane rages around her, this movie does everything wrong in all the right ways.

Micromoronic: This is the word for when the stupid hasn’t entirely gone away, but has temporarily subsided to manageable levels.

Believe it or not, there’s a couple almost completely decent elements to ISKWYDLS. For one, the cinematography is gorgeous, capturing long summer nights with a crisp honey glow and shooting the hotel hallways with an almost (dare I say) Dean Cundey-esque precision to the placement of light and shadow. And I must admit that a stormy tropical island is a pretty awesome place to set a slasher movie, Brandy or no Brandy.

At the end of the day, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is harmless. If you’re lactose intolerant, you won’t be able to stomach its lethal levels of cheese, but otherwise it’s a half-decent flick for a summer marathon as long as you never take it seriously. It’s not as well made as its predecessor, but it might just be more fun to watch, so take your pick.

Body Count: 9

1. Dave is hooked through the mouth.
2. Derek is hooked to death.
3. Housekeep has her throat slashed.
4. Titus is stabbed in the chest with hedge clippers.
5. Hotel Manager is knifed in the skull.
6. Tyrell is hooked through the neck.
7. Hestus is harpooned in the back.
8. Nancy is harpooned in the gut.
9. Will is hooked in the chest.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 2194
Reviews In This Series
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Gillespie, 1997)
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Cannon, 1998)

Census Bloodbath: Fright Flashback: Bad Cops

Welcome to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will revisit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week, we are anticipating Let's Be Cops, an alright-looking comedy about the two dudes from New Girl dressing up as cops and wreaking havoc about town. Today we'll explore a more evil film exploring the same premise, the 1988 slasher Maniac Cop.

Year: 1988

Director: William Lustig

Cast: Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon
Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Writer/producer Larry Cohen was behind some of the most beloved cult classics of the 80's, including It's Alive, The Stuff, and Q, The Winged Serpent. I am ashamed to say that I have seen none of these. In fact, the only work of his I'd seen before yesterday was the 1996 DTV Fourth of July venture Uncle Sam. Obviously, I have some deep issues to correct with my movie-watching, but there's hardly a better place to start than his first collaboration with director William Lustig, of the uniquely under-appreciated Maniac (I like him, but the man's not terribly creative when it comes to naming movies, is he?).

This film shows an even deeper, more thematic portrayal of the New York City underworld than Maniac, although thanks to its release date eight years later (after the rise and fall of the slasher genre) it doesn't quite have the same visceral impact. What is does have, however, is Cohen, who gamely brings to the table a sense of knowing exactly how to please the B-picture audience even without high-impact gore.

Bruce Campbell in a white V-neck is one of those ways.

Maniac Cop tells the story of Lieutenant McCrae (Tom Atkins), a wizened cop who's tracking a killing spree supposedly perpetrated by a man in uniform. After the force detains the young Officer Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) following the murder of his wife - which occured moments after she caught him in bed with vice officer Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon) - they think they case is more closed than a Blockbuster, but McCrae isn't so sure.

Neither are we, since the killer wears a name badge reading "Cordell" in the title sequence. Thus begins a race against the clock as McCrae and Theresa search for the legendary Officer Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar), who supposedly died years ago, and clear Jack's name.

That plot doesn't sound too much like a slasher movie. And Maniac Cop doesn't feel too much like a slasher movie. It absolutely is, considering its body count and its first act (in which two scenes repeat endlessly - civilian gets killed, cops discuss, lather, rinse, repeat), but it aspires to be much more than that, throwing in elements of crime procedural and hardboiled detective mystery (the mystery more pertains to how and why the killings are occurring rather than who is performing them - again, the name tag kinda deflates the suspense there).

Seriously, I'm not kidding. It's practically the first frame of the movie.

While it's not exactly what one would expect from a movie called Maniac Cop (for crying out loud), the mystery is engaging and the subtextual material hits a nerve. The killer is taking advantage of the public's trust of men in uniform, luring them into a false sense of security before he exterminates them. It really makes you think about the fact that law enforcement officials are real people. People with guns, fighting skills, and motives entirely hidden from us.

This isn't to say that one shouldn't trust the police or that law enforcement is inherently bad, but it plays on very real fears about the nature of violence and trust. How do we know that this stranger really has the best intentions for us? We don't. Unfortunately, this thematic material is mostly lost in the second half, but when it is present, it is sharp and unsettling to the extreme.

Much like the Maniac Cop's baton knife.

By all means, Maniac Cop should be dreadfully dull, as most low budget procedurals tend to be. The cool slasher killings die down after the opening half hour and never return, replaced by offscreen massacres and indecipherably edited violence. Compound that with Campbell's absence for almost the entirety of the second act and any other movie would have stopped dead in its tracks.

But this movie, being in the hands its in, takes those blows and survives. Larry Cohen provides the film with some great one-liners and B-movie appeal, creating a loopy tone that the actors pick up on with no problem. A favorite of mine is William Smith (also of Memorial Valley Massacre) as Captain Ripley, a perpetually-sunglassed man with a gravelly voice who is able to thoroughly digest the scenery because he chews it so well. Then of course there's the obvious choices - Bruce Campbell and Tom Atkins don't disappoint - but Landon holds her own, relishing every vowel she gets to spit out.

And Lustig's direction, while not exactly groundbreaking, does more than it needs to with the material, providing shot compositions that give the film a bit more gravitas than it would with any old hack. It is an unusual slasher film in that there is more than one shot that is actually memorable in the entire affair. And a flashback attack in a prison shower is an inspired riff on Psycho. Also I would be loathe not to mention a great scene copied almost beat for beat in Scream, in which a girl uses her windshield wipers to try to clean off blood. The more 80's movies watch, the more I can piece together Kevin Williamson's DVD collection.

Unfortunately, this hairstyle was not an inspiration for Scream.

In addition to its solid visual and tonal foundation, Maniac Cop has one more element to recommend it - an astonishingly progressive treatment of its female characters. The first victim is, of course, a woman walking home alone at night, but before she runs afoul of the business end of a maniac cop, she singlehandedly fights off two muggers with her purse. We also see a powerful woman in the media make a splash, not to mention that the heroine is "the other woman," a character usually beset with foul stereotypes.

One of the benefits of steering clear of the slasher model is that the inherent misogyny in the formula is nearly eradicated. So there's more than enough good in Maniac Cop to compensate for some of the more egregious missteps. And there isn't any space for the duller moments thanks to the zippy run time. There's dozens of slashers I'd pop in before this one, but if you're looking for a more obscure good time, maybe give this one a whirl.

Killer: Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar)

Final Girl: Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon) feat. Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell)
Best Kill: A man has his face pressed into wet concrete, which dries overnight.
Sign of the Times: The coroner is buried under one of the most heart-wrecnching mullets of all time; someone makes a comment about the killing spree being "bigger than AIDS."

Scariest Moment: The attack scene in the shower is electrifying.

Weirdest Moment: A couple decides to make out because a red light is taking too long.
Champion Dialogue: "This isn't about romance. It's about murder."
Body Count: 17; not including an offscreen victim reported in the paper, two policemen mentioned but not seen in the station massacre, or the mayor who dies in the extended cut.

1. Cassie has her neck snapped.
2. Sam is slashed and thrown onto a windshield.
3. Some Dude has his face pressed into wet concrete.
4. Cop #1 is shot in the head by a frightened woman.
5. Ellen has her throat slit.
6. Cop #2 is hung offscreen.
7. Sally is slammed into a wall repeatedly.
8. Cop #3 has his face slammed into metal bars offscreen.
9. Cop #4 is strangled with handcuffs offscreen.
10. Cop #5 is hung offscreen.
11. Cop #6 is killed offscreen.
12. McCrae is thrown out a window.
13. Commissioner Pike is stabbed in the chest.
14. Captain Ripley is stabbed in the chest.
15. Cop #9 is stabbed in the stomach.
16. Security Guard is hit with a van.
17. Cop #10 is shot in the chest. 

TL;DR: Maniac Cop is a little uneven, but is one of the better crime procedural slashers with some good B-movie charm.
Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1397