Census Bloodbath: Jack Of All Trades

Year:
1985
Director:
Christopher Lewis
Cast:
Tom Schreier, Mona Van Pernis, Tom Savini
Run Time:
1 hour 42 minutes

Plot: The Ripper follows Tulsa professor Richard Harwell (Tom Schreier) discovering an antique ring that belonged to Jack the Ripper (Tom Savini, whose name does ring a bell, now that you mention it) at the same time that he's reached the Whitechapel murders unit in his film class about movies adapting real crimes. Not so coincidentally, women around town have begun to turn up dead in slayings that seem eerily similar to the real Jack the Ripper's crimes.

As Harwell begins to have dreams of Jack the Ripper and fall into fugue states where he loses time as the body count rises, he nurses suspicions about the ring, as does his obsequious student Steve (Wade Tower of Revenge), a film geek who calls Harwell three times a night to remind him about what Vincent Price movie is on TV that night. Will either of them solve the problem before Steve's girlfriend Cindy (Andrea Adams of Revenge and Blood Lake), a fellow student, or Harwell's girlfriend, dance professor Carol (Mona Van Pernis), end up at the wrong end of a blade?

Analysis: Christopher Lewis is a director we've seen quite a bit of in 1985, because he was the director of that year's early shot-on-video slasher Blood Cult. The extremely low-budget regional Tulsa production had its ample flaws, as I detailed in my review, but I also couldn't help but being won over by its handmade charms.

That said, I wasn't exactly champing at the bit to see his immediate follow-up. However, nervous as I was, Lewis pulled out all the stops with a movie that is leaps and bounds better than Blood Cult. It still retains some of the movie's flaws (most notably an intense lack of interest in the victims who provide the body count, the majority of whom wander into the movie during the same scene in which they are bumped off). However, it shines in a number of meaningful ways.

First is the fact that the kills themselves are 1) legible and 2) actually quite brutal. In spite of the fact that the majority of them have the same M.O. (throat-slitting, sometimes followed by Herschell Gordon Lewis-esque disembowlment), there is enough variety to the way that they are presented that they feel consistently brutal and shocking. That feeling is enhanced by some half-decent, disgusting, drippy gore. You'll find blood spurts aplenty in The Ripper (even for wounds where there probably shouldn't be any), which was more than enough to keep me entertained during the murder sequences.

The movie also manages to ditch the atmosphere-killing police procedural element of Blood Cult while retaining all of its little idiosyncrasies and weird regionalisms, including two inexplicably long scenes with a pushy antique store clerk (Bennie Lee McGowan of Blood Cult and Revenge) that are about nothing and hold no importance and yet are riveting from start to finish. Another beautiful idiosyncrasy is the seemingly intense psychosexual relationship between Steve and Harwell. I'm not even sure the filmmakers are aware of its presence, simmering beneath the surface, but when you have a character calling his professor while shirtless in the dark of night, any responsible viewer must ask questions!

The movie is still far from perfect, though. Naturally so, considering the movie allegedly had a budget of just $75,000. However, the majority of its flaws come from places that have nothing to do with its price tag, including the fact that the plot is a little repetitive and really peters out in the third act. It can't even sustain enough energy for Tom Savini's big scene to be remotely interesting (even though it cost them a full 20% of that budget just to get him for one night).

The gore maestro's turn as Jack the Ripper is notable only because he allowed it to happen in the first place and not because he deigned to imbue the character with any actual menace. It truly feels like Christopher Lewis wished on a monkey's paw to have Tom Savini work on his movie.

So no, not perfect. But The Ripper is ever so charming, even more than its predecessor, to the point that I'm almost excited to take a gander at Lewis' next feature, which was the 1986 Blood Cult sequel Revenge. Stay tuned, I guess.

Killer: Jack the Ripper (Tom Savini) acting through Richard Harwell (Tom Schreier)

Final Girl: Carol (Mona Van Pernis)

Best Kill: As neat as the throat slittings tend to be, my pick would have to be the woman being garroted with a phone cord, both because it stands out and because I do love a good improvised weapon.

Sign of the Times: I mean, it has to be the dance class that Carol teaches, which involves students in aerobics leotards doing a minutes-long performance to a faux Bonnie Tyler song while smoke machines fill the room with haze. On day one, mind you.

Scariest Moment: The opening sequence where Jack stalks a woman down a foggy London street has more atmosphere than every scene in Blood Cult put together (in addition to somehow transforming Tulsa into a halfway convincing facsimile of 19th century Britain).

Weirdest Moment: The class clown Brian (Jeffrey Fontana) sings a song about Jack the Ripper in front of a chalk drawing of the man himself while accompanying himself on the harmonica.

Champion Dialogue: “You can jump on me any time you like."

Body Count: 6

1. Fancy Lady has her throat slit.
2. Old Timey Carol has her throat slit in a dream.
3. Cocktail Waitress has her throat slit.
4. Judy is garroted with a phone cord.
5. Cindy has her throat slit offscreen.
6. Richard Harwell is shot.

TL;DR: The Ripper is a totally charming SOV slasher that has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 978

May All My Backlog Be Forgot

Happy New Year, everybody!

I know you’re probably still sifting through that gargantuan post I dumped on you two days ago, but I would like to take this first week of 2016 (Oh man, we really are living in the future, aren’t we? The other day I met a Big Lots cashier who was born in 2000.) to enact one of my New Year’s resolutions. As you may or may not know, I have vowed to write a review of every single movie I’ve watched since I started this blog. However, as my work gets harder and my free time shrivels away, it has become more difficult to pen my ambitiously wordy reviews with my old frequency.

I’ve already begun to transition to a new format, bestowing full reviews on current or featured movies and penning medium-length reviews for the rest. But the avalanche of film with which I’ve concluded my year has left me with a backlog of embarrassingly overwhelming magnitude. In an attempt to clear my slate before the cinema offerings of 2016 really get kicking, over the next few weeks I’ll be flushing out my system with a glut of mini-reviews. I’ll also be finally catching up with some promised titles. Sorry, Hunter. We’ll be starting with a set of films already reviewed in full on my podcast, Scream 101.

Please enjoy this Popcorn Culture reboot and have a wonderful 2016!

The Thing

Year: 1982

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David 

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An Arctic team discovers a spaceship buried in the ice, along with a shape-shifting alien creature that infiltrates their group.

The thing about The Thing is that it has pretty unequivocally the best practical effects in the history of cinema. Sure, some scenes have aged better than others. But even the most jaded of modern viewers, those caustic children of CGI, will be utterly unable to keep their spines from turning to jelly when that severed head sprouts spider legs and stars skittering across the floor. It’s a movie full of gooey, bombastic effects setpieces, and yet it still lets its smaller moments (of which there are plenty, because John Carpenter isn’t made of money) breathe.

This can be seen in both the special effects (a cut thumb and the subtle detail on an icicle of blood are just as chilling as the grand latex arias that follow) and the tension building. This is a story about paranoia. Whether it be AIDS or commie related (pick your metaphorical poison), it’s a harrowing masterwork of distrust that places just as much emphasis on the dialogue scenes as the blockbuster heebie jeebie showcases. The characters themselves are a smidge shallow, but it works in the context of not really knowing your fellow man (there are no women in this film, the musk from Kurt Russell’s bear repelling femininity like Kryptonite).

And at any rate, they’re all very well-performed. Even the dog is an incomprehensibly terrific actor, providing a powerful argument for the introduction of a Best Animal Wrangler Academy Award. Overall, The Thing is a chilly menace, propelled by a thumping Ennio Morricone score, John Carpenter’s stark, Arctic cinematography, and enough latex to smother a small army.

Rating: 8/10

Listen to the podcast episode here!

Troll 2

Year: 1990

Director: Claudio Fragasso

Cast: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A vacationing family learns that the rural town they’re staying in is populated by wicked, people-eating, vegetarian goblins.

There are bad movies, there are fun bad movies, and then there are comprehensive experiences that transcend the mere act of filmmaking. Guess which category Troll 2 falls into. A jumbled hash of lunacy, Troll 2 is a treasure trove of unintentional comedy. Humor thrives on the unexpected and the increasingly wacky ways the film flies off the rails are an endless spring of entertainment. There is literally no way of predicting what scene might be around the corner. It’s a funhouse ride of lime green amateurism.

Yes, it’s a bad movie. Poorly translated lines are drunkly performed by amateur actors in front of cardboard sets and community theater special effects. But the madcap intensity and genuine earnestness with which the film was created have made it an instant cult classic.

Incredibly, given its reputation, there are actually a small handful of actually OK filmmaking moments, betraying director Claudio Fragasso’s long history with Italian B-movies. Two shock gags actually hold water, some low angle shots are legitimately imposing, and the finger trauma gore as one character is turned into a plant (don’t ask) is quite stomach-turning. But that semi-skill is part of why Troll 2 is so indelible. It actually sort of knows what it’s doing the whole time (as opposed to the rampant inadequacy of, say, The Room), and those moments help provide contrast for the truly inspired awful bits, of which there are a couple million. 

Troll 2 is a must-see for any aspiring cult film fan. Watch it with a friend and seal your bond together with the super glue of dozens of new inside jokes and shared peals of snorting, gasping laughter. Plus, you’ll want a spotter in case you choke on your popcorn during the process.

Rating: 8/10

Listen to the podcast episode here!

Nightbreed (Director's Cut)

Year: 1990

Director: Clive Barker

Cast: Craig Sheffer, David Cronenberg, Anne Bobby

Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A young man is accused of murder and flees to the underground city of Midian to live with the monsters.

Nightbreed is a very scatterbrained movie. Sold as a slasher when it was really a parable about how minorities are treated by a society that doesn’t understand them, it made next to no money at the box office with its monstrous mish-mash. Now here comes the director’s cut two decades later, to finally restore the original monster-fueled, gothically romantic intent. It’s still a hell of a mess, but with Clive Barker at the wheel, at least you know the crimson tide is flowing in the right direction.

Nightbreed is like a magic eye puzzle. The individual pieces (a button-eyed slasher, a hillbilly shootout, a full rock ‘n roll number…) don’t exactly gel, but when you step back and unfocus your eyes, you can see the shape that it has created. An over-the-top, bold exploration of its universal themes of being sidelined and misunderstood by the world at large, Nightbreed is an orgiastic, hallucinogenic canvas on which Barker paints his magic.

More than character or plot, the headliner of Nightbreed is its spectacular make-up effects, used to create glorious (and gloriously expensive) creatures of every shape and size. A triumph of macabre monster manufacturing, the wicked creativity of Nightbreed is its goopy oozing, raison d'être. It’s an art gallery of nightmares more than it is a film, but that’s hardly a problem if you’re in the mood.

Rating: 6/10

Listen to the podcast episode here!

From Dusk Till Dawn

Year: 1996

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Cast: Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Juliette Lewis 

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A pair of criminals and a kidnapped family end up fighting for their lives in a biker bar run by vampires.

Many fans of notorious foot fetishist/occasional filmmaker Quentin Tarantino have been yearning for him to create a horror film for quite some time. And while some detractors of From Dusk Till Dawn might still argue that he hasn’t, the truth is that the film is a campy horror flick penned by the greasy maestro himself, so it’s about as close as we’re gonna get to that wish, under the circumstances.

Directed by Robert Rodriguez in signature “Baby Quentin” style, FDTD is a fun thrill ride. Actually, it’s two fun thrill rides. The first hour, which is focused on the criminal exploits of the Gecko brothers, and the second, full of balls-to-the-wall vampire mayhem, don’t quite cohere together as well as they should, but they’re both excellent, flippant exemplars of the craft. Sometimes campy, sometimes creepy, always irreverent, the tone is what carries the stories through to the finish line rather than the actual plot.

However, it’s hard to find much to complain about when the ensemble comes together as ludicrously, ingeniously well as this film’s. George Clooney dishes out a standout role as a churlish, protective thug, and Tarantino gives the performance of his career as his little brother, an all too human monster imbued with sweaty, clammy menace. The rest of the cast also rises to the challenge, but the true blue standout is gore imperator Tom Savini as Sex Machine, the purest, most effortless bad-ass of Rodriguez’ career. From Dusk Till Dawn might not be a coherent whole, but the sum of its parts is far greater than that, anyway.

Rating: 7/10

Listen to the podcast episode here!

Ghost Cat

Year: 2004

Director: Don McBrearty

Cast: Michael Ontkean, Ellen Page, Lori Hallier

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A young lady and her father move into a home that is watched over by the spirit of its former occupant, Margaret the cat.

The crux of our episode was that this “supernatural thriller” was quite easily repackaged as the heartwarming family film The Cat That Came Back, so as you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly a spine-tingling excursion into Animal Planet original content. A basically adequate Lifetime-esque cheese puff about saving the animal shelter from the wicked real estate developer, Ghost Cat ticks all the boxes for being as safe and bland (not to mention disappointing) as it could possibly be. There is one almost absurdly dark scene where the villain attempts to asphyxiate an entire barnful of adorable baby lambs and puppies, but it’s more a runway for Ellen Page’s ludicrous mid-2000’s fashions than anything resembling a horror movie.

As an insipid, rote story, it does the trick, but there’s nothing to make Ghost Cat stand out above all the other formulaic crap that daytime TV stations force sick (and hopefully delirious) people to sit through. There are some vaguely amusing tidbits, like how a lantern-jawed 21-year-old is supposed to be both a high school student and a viable love interest for Ellen Page (gag me with a spoon), or the presence of My Bloody Valentine Final Girl Lori Hallier as the animal rescuer with a heart of gold. 

But the only reason to watch this movie in today’s enlightened age is the presence of Ellen Page, who gives far from a star-making performance. She’s clearly a step up from the other youngsters around her, but this is not a script that challenges its performers to push the envelope. My recommendation is to steer clear of Ghost Cat like you’re allergic to animal dander. Even in ectoplasmic form, it can still screw you up.

Rating: 4/10

Listen to the podcast episode here!

Word Count: 1821

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

Census Bloodbath: Camp Blood

For the crossover review of The Burning over at Kinemalogue, click here.

Year: 1981

Director: Tony Maylan

Cast: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1981 was the year of the slasher film. 

No, it didn't have the most slashers released. 1982 beats it out with 43 of the godforsaken things, and the post-video boom years of '87 and '88 also clock in above the legal limit. 

Nor did it have the most franchise involvement. That would be 1989, the grisly offerings of which included Friday the 13th VIII, Halloween 5, Silent Night, Deadly Night III, Sleepaway Camp III, and Nightmare 5. 

But what it did have was a generous slate of what are pretty widely considered to be the absolute pinnacle films of the genre, including Friday the 13th Part 2, Halloween II, Just Before Dawn, Hell Night, Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, and The Prowler, and that's not even including the ones that I like that stray from the general consensus.

Our subject today is one of these films: The Burning, which is subject to wide-eyed adulation by many a Johnny Slasherfan. It's got it all. Summer camp shenanigans? Check. Cameos from a pre-fame Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter? Check. Gruesome gore effects provided by Tom Savini, the patron saint of bloody murder? Effects so nasty that Britain successfully persecuted and banned the film as a "video nasty"? Check and check.

So why don't I like it quite as much as all the hype has led me to suspect?

Well, I guess I'll have to tell you now that I've painted myself into this rhetorical corner. 

Also, try not to be depressed that Jason Alexander starred on Seinfeld as the miserably bald George Costanza a mere nine years after this film was shot.

I'll explain my lukewarm affair with The Burning in due time, but let's take a whack at the plot first, shall we? The film opens in the mid-70's in Camp Blackfoot, where young Todd (Keith Mandell) and his friends are planning the prank of a lifetime. They sneak into the bunk of the evil groundskeeper Cropsy (Lou David) and place a worm-riddled skull candle next to his cot. Their innocent jest turns disastrous when Cropsy knocks the candle off the nightstand in fear, igniting a blaze that could toast an admirable number of marshmallows, but toasts the poor groundskeeper instead.

Five years later, a murderous Cropsy has been released upon the world, skin covered in third-degree burns. He hightails it to Camp Stonewater, which is located just down the lake from the now defunct Blackfoot site, which presumably burned down in the blaze that stole his face. The blaze also stole the plot of Friday the 13th Part 2, but that is neither here nor there. Regardless, producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein (I know, right?) claim that their script was written in 1979, before any of this Voorhees nonsense.

Insipid controversy aside (All slasher films are rip-offs of Halloween, which was itself a rip-off of the rip-offs of Psycho. It's a very incestuous gene pool, and it's not worth getting our knickers in a bunch), The Burning has a classic slasher set-up with a new twist. In addition to the nubile counselors and older campers, there's also a heapload of children on hand, making a mess of the mess hall and inciting the ire of the dangerous lurker in the woods.

When a group of campers goes on a weekend canoeing trip, their canoes drift away in the night, trapping them on a wooded island where Cropsy is waiting with his wickedly sharp garden shears. The campers are overwhelmingly numerous, but the ones we really need to keep track of are Todd (played as a teenager by Brian Matthews), the handsome and easygoing head counselor; Michelle (Leah Ayres), his counselor girlfriend who wishes he would be more stern with the camp troublemakers; Glazer (Larry Joshua), one of the aforementioned troublemakers, and a supposed hunk with an alarmingly lumpy musculature; Sally (Carrick Glenn of Girls Nite Out), Glazer's coy girlfriend; Karen (the excitingly-named Carolyn Houlihan), Sally's BFF who is such a virgin that it's hard to walk because her legs don't open all the way; Eddy (Ned Eisenberg), a horndog supernova whose latest target is Karen; and Alfred (Brian Backer of Fast Times at Ridgemont High), a weird loner who expects our sympathy because he's picked on, but is hard to love because he's a voyeuristic creep who watches girls in the shower and stalks couples who trundle off to bang in the woods. If he were that age today, he'd probably be writing My Little Pony fanfiction on his dad's computer while he's at work.

Now don't get any ideas, ya little creep.

So, why am I not as huge a fan of The Burning as I probably should be? Well, for one, the sheer mass of characters in the quivering blob of the film's cast is pretty overwhelming. Because the genre was still new and not completely, soul-witheringly desperate in 1981, the slashers didn't have the Weimar-esque hyperinflated body counts that would come into play later in the decade. Thus, The Burning couldn't compensate for the terrifying size of its ensemble, and far too many of the campers survive without being put into any sort of danger at all.

It's a little hard to be terrified for poor trembling Katie CounselBoob when you know that about 200 other kids are happily splashing in the water just down the riverbank without a care in the world. And, just like in every Ryan Murphy show, there's far too many cast members jostling for attention to really nail down the characterization of any of them.

And don't even get me started on the pacing of the film, which lurches to a halt after an arbitrary opening kill, contenting itself with Parent Trap-esque camp escapades for a good 40 bloodless minutes. The music is stomach-turningly bland, like eating a gallon of oatmeal, and the acting is needlessly showy. When the kills finally arrive, they do offer a shot in the arm of the film, but some of it comes too little too late, and it doesn't help that the effects haven't aged particularly well. It's still Tom Savini, so there's no doubt that it's a master class of latex and Karo syrup, but his work here is the least convincing that I've ever seen from him. 

He's allowed a minor reprieve, though, considering that his work in the same year's The Prowler is far and away the most gruesome, effective kill work he's ever contributed to splatter cinema.

And Cropsy's weapon is too awe-strikingly rad to even quibble about some minor elasticity problems.

One more major complaint: When the ending finally comes around, instead of lining Michelle up as the obvious Final Girl, The Burning tosses her aside and shoves Todd and Alfred into the fray to split duties in a perfunctory sequence that has some decent effects work, but falls flat with a big pffffbt. By its closing moments, the movie has sputtered and spilled out over the sides like an overheated soufflé.

Now keep in mind that while these unfavorable moments are foregrounded, they still exist in a well-shot, well-edited (by Nightmare on Elm Street 2 director Jack Sholder, of all people), high-energy camp slasher that is still one of the best in the business. These issues drag it down somewhat in my esteem, but The Burning is still worth anybody's time as a camp slasher curio of the highest order.

There's sex, pot, hijinks, wacky dialogue about sex, pot, and hijinks, a blissfully generous helping of female and male nudity, and a cool weapon/killer. Cropsy being based on a real urban legend of the New England camping community, his presence adds an extra dimension of cyclical urban legend terror to the film, which is already pretty decently successful in its scare sequences, including [SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT] the film's notorious raft massacre.

In a flurry of choppily-edited action that is reminiscent of the post-Hitchcock era of classic horror, Cropsy raises the average kill count of the movie tenfold, bursting out of a drifting canoe and mowing down a pack of campers right after the film's longest stretch of goreless paradise. It's shocking and visceral, liberal with its grue, and downright nasty in its brevity. It would be the best part of any slasher film it was placed in, but here it's the cherry on top of a pretty, well-made, if insubstantial classic work of slashcraft.

The shots AND the men are pretty, so there's really no losing here.

So, heed my warnings if you want to dive into The Burning anytime soon: Don't expect unparalleled greatness. But rest assured that you'll have a terrific summer at Camp Stonewater, whatever the downsides are.

Killer: Cropsy (Lou David)

Final Girl: Todd (Brian Matthews) and Alfred (Brian Backer) and very slightly Michelle (Leah Ayres)

Best Kill: THE RAFT SCENE (Skip to 2:30 - gore warning)

Sign of the Times: This is perhaps the only decade of film history where the men's swimsuits were at least three times as revealing as the ladies'.

Scariest Moment: THE DAMN RAFT SCENE

Weirdest Moment: A hospital orderly attempts to scare a new intern (who is middle aged and balding) by showing him Cropsy's burns, openly comparing him to a monster and an overcooked Big Mac while in the room with the notorious psycho.

Champion Dialogue: "Maybe it's because she likes you, you dumb bastard."

Body Count: 10

1. Prostitute is stabbed in the gut with scissors.
2. Karen has her throat slit with shears.
3. Fish is sliced in the chest with shears.
4. Barbara is stabbed in the stomach with shears.
5. Woodstock has his fingers cut off and throat slit with shears.
6. Eddy is stabbed in the throat with shears.
7. Diane is sliced in the forehead with shears.
8. Sally is killed offscreen.
9. Glazer is impaled in the throat with shears.
10. Cropsy is stabbed in the back, axed in the face, and burnt to death. 

TL;DR: The Burning is probably the least exciting of the A-list slashers, but you can never go too wrong when Tom Savini is in the fray.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1713

Census Bloodbath: Back To Back To Skull

Year: 1981

Director: Joseph Zito

Cast: Vicky Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Lawrence Tierney

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

I'm graduating in May. This is the first week of my final semester of college. Actually, this is my final semester of any school ever. In just five short months, I'll have to start pretending to be an adult as I face the vast unknowable expanse that is my future. Sometimes real life is more terrifying than the movies. At any rate, I've decided to celebrate the end of my educational odyssey by bringing back a personal favorite feature that has proven to be an educational odyssey in and of itself. It's time to return to Back to Skull, where we will be celebrating a new college-themed slasher every day this week!

First up on the chopping block is The Prowler, which isn't quite as eminently college-sounding as last year's entries like Cornell Sorority Babes in Explosion at the Bra Factory, but nevertheless revolves around a local college's denizens on the eve of their graduation as they prepare to begin their lives.

Or not.

The Prowler has a reputation for being of relatively high quality for the slasher genre, and its opening doesn't do much to refute that claim. We see some black and white news footage of the Queen Mary bringing GI's home from World War II, a lovely looking letter with a voiceover about how a girl named Rosemary (Joy Glaccum) just can't keep waiting any longer for her soldier beau, and her subsequent murder at the graduation dance by a man in army fatigues as she attempts to get it on with smug prick "My Dad Is Richer Than Your Dad" Roy (Timothy Wahrer). This prologue, set in 1945, is competently shot, sets the era in a satisfying and historically accurate manner, and features costumes that actually attempt to mimic the period instead of just hide the blown-out hair and perms underneath frilly hats.

The plot then skips to graduation day at that same nameless New Jersey college in 1980. Pam MacDonald (Vicky Dawson) has a problem. Her boyfriend, Deputy Mark London (Christopher Goutman) - who looks like Sandy Frink from Romy and Michele after his face transplant surgery - has to work the night of the dance because the Sheriff (Farley Granger) is spending the night out of town on his annual fishing trip. Oh, also a murderer dressed in WWII fatigues is murdering her friends, but she's a little slow on the uptake on that one.

Who can blame her? It's hard enough to keep track of all your friends' throats without dealing with boy drama.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's meet our Meat before they're slaughtered, shall we? Pam's friends who shall soon be graduating from this mortal coil include Sherry (Lisa Dunsheath), her BFF in the world and an unfortunate sufferer of Mare Winningham In Miracle Mile Hair Disease; Carl (David Sederholm), Sherry's boyfriend, a man so horny that he's willing to take off his 18,000-piece tuxedo just for a little shower play before the dance; and Lisa (Cindy Weintraub), the kind of 80's slasher girl who will flash the paraplegic man across the street for funsies.

As the night wears on, dates are snatched, drinks are drunk, and epidermises are punctured. This forms first half of the film, in which it functions as a typically generic slasher flick. There's music that sounds like a kettle boiling, an allergic-to-doors victim who runs up the stairs, couples who sneak away from a building on lockdown to bang, and so on. At least it's easy enough to keep their names apart.

It is this portion of the film from which The Prowler derives its magic. Director Joe Zito and gore maestro Tom Savini (who would later collaborate on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) work in tandem to create some of the tensest, most finely crafted slasher work to date. Zito handles his lighting with great care, using cast shadows and dark corners to great effect.

Although maybe we could have used a little more shadow over here to highlight those Frinky cheekbones in a non-offputting way.

Likewise, he utilizes swift cross-cutting to marvelous ends, at one point switching between two separate scenes of people wandering off into the darkness, actually manufacturing tension from one of the most hoary tropes of the genre. We all know from experience that whoever wanders off from the party will inevitably come a cropper in an amusing way. But by showing us two similar scenes simultaneously, it raises doubts as to where the killer actually is. When he finally strikes, it surprises the audience in a meaningful way through subverting the trope and their expectations. 

There are several moments like this that actually inspire emotions in the same family as fear, which is startlingly uncommon for the parsimonious slasher subgenre. Combined with Savini's excellent gore (he believes it to be the best work in his career and I'm not inclined to disagree with him), in which blood oozes like a broken dam, The Prowler is actually quite affecting.

In fact, the gore is so powerfully realistic and brutal (Savini keeps the first kill light to get the audience complacent, then hits them with a set of marvelous, oozing, grinding prosthetics with multiple moving parts that challenge everything you've ever seen in the practical effects game*) that it almost feels a little too raw. The kills are challengingly misogynistic when women are on the receiving end, which occurs more often than not. Especially in moments like Lisa being kicked in the face and a topless Sherry being speared in the shower, the brutality is truly overwhelming.

In a way, this is a good thing. Horror films are actually supposed to be, you know, horrifying. But the kills cross the line too far into reality for the lighter thrill ride tone of the slasher genre to truly function properly.

*Carl's death is especially detailed, involving his eyes rolling back into his head and the knife penetrating his skull pulsing beneath the skin. It's an exquisite piece of work that practically belongs in an art gallery. 

At least the Prowler brings flowers to honor his victim's deaths. It's kind of sweet, really. You don't see Jason Voorhees holding no wakes.

Unfortunately all of this hesitantly good, legitimately tense buildup is chucked to the ground by the middle of the second act, in which the film becomes a desultory mystery about Rosemary's father Major Chatham (Lawrence Tierney) and an assembly line of wan potential suspects. The identity of the killer is both predictable and nonsensical, revealed with nonchalant regard and entirely divorced from the clues we have been forced to watch Pam and Mark dutifully collect over the previous half hour.

During this time, we have watched Mark call his boss at his lakeside cabin, only to be tricked by a lazy office worker who keeps him on the line while he plays solitaire, just to mess with him. This is in real time, mind you, and the audience gets the special privilege of sitting through two full minutes of this claptrap. A character literally taps his pencil in boredom and I wish he'd at least have the decency to shove it into his own skull and save us the trouble of having to wait for the Prowler to show up again.

This dull section is marked by a sore lack of death, especially considering that many loose ends (including a couple that blatantly disregards slasher conduct by sneaking into the basement to bang) are never properly tied up. There's only two deaths in the final third of the film, and they are both perfunctory gunshot wounds. Apparently the filmmakers expended all their effort in the early going and were too bored to include scenes in the third act that aren't "Mark and Pam wander through a dark house blowing dust off of things."

Spending time with Pam is not the movie's strong suit, especially since Dawson's performance inevitably trails more toward "sleepy" than "scared," although I suppose running will do that to you. At least this gives us a chance to reflect on the film that came before and just how wonderful the Prowler's getup is, removing his face with green cloth to dehumanize him in a cleverly organic way, much in the vein of Michael Myers and other masked killers.

Evil lies in the faceless unknown. It also lies in the case of plastic army men in your toy chest, but don't tell Joe Zito.

The Prowler is one of the most decidedly uneven slasher movies that I've seen thus far, and Census Bloodbath might as well be called The Uneven Film National Championshp, so that should tell you something. But the first 45 minutes are some of the best slashcraft I've seen in a good long while, so as far as these things go, you could do a mite worse than this Savini-fueled bloody nightmare.

Killer: The Prowler (Peter Giuliano) [Sheriff George Fraser (Farley Granger)]

Final Girl: Pam MacDonald (Vicky Dawson)

Best Kill: Carl is stabbed through the top of the head and the knife emerges clean through his chin.

Sign of the Times: The band at the party can sing topical New Wave songs about wanting to see girls bleed and nobody bats an eyelash.

Scariest Moment: Pam has to run toward the Prowler in order to escape down a side hallway.

Weirdest Moment: That Final Shot [Carl's corpse reanimates itself in the shower and grabs Pam for no discernible reason.]

Champion Dialogue: "I don't want to swim. You're all I want."

Body Count: 8

1. Roy and
2. Rosemary are pitchforked together while they canoodle.
3. Carl is stabbed through the skull.
4. Sherry is pitchforked in the abdomen.
5. Lisa's throat is sliced.
6. Miss Allison is stabbed in the throat.
7. Otto is shot with a shotgun.
8. The Prowler has his head blown off with a shotgun. 

TL;DR: The Prowler is stunted by an outrageously dull third act, but features Tom Savini at the top of his game and sidles up to achieving actual tension.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1688

Census Bloodbath: Texas Battle Land

Year: 1986

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, coming out 12 years after the original film, one of the longest sequel gaps in recorded history? Actually, yes. It comes in at around number 21, beaten out by none other than the 46 year gap preceding Return to Oz, among a few additional elder statesmen of film franchises. But although it's not the most impressive hiatus in cinema history, I'd like to argue that it's one of the most impactful.

1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre saw Tobe Hooper as a hungry young filmmaker, eager to rattle the walls of the nihilistic and beaten-down 1970's with the oppressive heat of Texas. But as the years passed, the times drastically changed. Hooper failed to recapture the grubby magic of Texas Chain Saw in Salem's Lot and The Funhouse, saw creative control of Poltergeist wrested away from him by producer Steven Spielberg (exactly how much control he ceded is still the topic of furious debate and a topic far too complex for a mere frail parenthetical), and hit rock bottom with his high budget space vampire flop Lifeforce.

As Hooper's life-force (so to speak) was draining, the country itself was beginning to perk up. The economic downturn that permeated the previous decade had begun to reverse itself and the populace began to turn to rampant consumerism once more. Nuclear fears, Reagan's presidency, and the AIDS crisis were still occupying people's minds, but the nation had taken an upward tack that would spring them forth into the blissful 90's.

Even more significant to the film we are discussing today is the massive face-lift the horror genre had received since the original Chain Saw. The slasher boom had come and gone, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter with the advent of the supernatural, heralded by A Nightmare on Elm Street and its soon-to-be comic superstar Freddy Krueger. The enduring popularity of the slasher formula ruled the silver screen, seeping into films to the point of exhaustion; by the mid-80's even ghost and exorcism stories had to have a supple teen cast picked off one by one and even movies completely outside the genre fell victim to this insidious disease.

The genre ushered into being by Texas Chain Saw soon found no use for its brutal, unappealing, nihilism and squalor, so Tobe Hooper was faced with a tough decision. A sequel to his immensely popular film could reboot his career, but there was just no space in the market for something so grim and intense. This post is getting a little long in the tooth and I haven't even mentioned a single character yet, so I'll cut to the chase. Let me direct your attention to the poster at the top of this post, then to the image below. Seem familiar?

Unless you have the attention span of a Drew Barrymore character, it should.

I hope it has become immediately obvious that Hooper decided to adopt a comedic tone with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. It's by no means an outright comedy, but it is light years more lighthearted than its predecessor. Filled to the brim with pop culture references (among other mentions, we get Rambo 3, the censored Beatles baby massacre cover, and enough rock and roll bands to fuel the cocaine market for a small country), silly props, and even - I kid you not - a couple puns. That's 100% more wordplay than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

It's an interesting decision but by no means a bad one. Trying to recreate the original film's mood would be like Will Smith having a kid - it wouldn't turn out as good and nobody would want to see it. Especially with the amount of story beats that are copied from the original, it's a definite bonus to have a new tone to chew on - it keeps things lively and entertaining.

But for all the repetition this film has (including an almost word for word recreation of the dinner party scene), there is a heaping helping of brand new elements that keep the films firmly planted in its new wacky atmosphere. Our new Final Girl (if any Chain Saw chick could truly be considered one) is Stretch (Caroline Williams - a genre veteran with appearances in Stepfather 2, Halloween II, and Hatchet III to name just a few), an Oklahoma rock 'n roll DJ with a passion for just about anything other than being stuck in a rinky dink booth surrounded by old records.

After a pair of prank callers (Who are two of the most poisonously douchey characters in the history of cinema. Never have I wanted a set of opening scene characters to die more and I lived through the anthropomorphic nuclear waste that is Harold and Edna of Friday the 13th Part 3.) are chainsaw massacred while phoning into the station from North Texas, Stretch teams up with Lieutenant "Lefty" Enright (Dennis Hopper), the uncle of Sally and Franklin from the first film (Though later he acts like an older brother, so who can be sure? Not Hooper, if the amount of pot he smoked in the 80's has anything to say about it.).

Lefty has been searching for the mysterious cannibal family for over a decade and uses Stretch as bait to draw them out into the open.

A brilliant plan - that sequined jacket is visible from space.

One thing leads to another and Stretch is trapped underground with the villainous Sawyers in their new abode - an abandoned theme park. Returning by popular demand are a rather svelte looking Leatherface (Bill Johnson), his even more withered grandfather (Ken Evert), and his father the Cook (Jim Siedow, the only returning cast member). And although Leatherface's brother the Hitchhiker found himself on the wrong end of a Mack truck last go-around, he finds a surrogate in Chop-Top (Bill Moseley, another genre veteran also in Texas Chainsaw 3D, Halloween 2007, Army of Darkness, Silent Night, Deadly Night III, and perhaps most notably, Evil Bong), an equally crazy Sawyer brother newly returned from his stint in Vietnam.

Despite the immense shift in tone which, despite not being an outright laugh riot, is quietly successful in its own way, Hooper is up to his old tricks but with a little more stylistic panache. That is to say, this film is more overtly styled than Texas Chain Saw, not that the aesthetic is any better. Although comparing the visual schema of that film and its sequel is like comparing apples and ball gags - they're both highly effective but serve entirely different functions.

In this film, Hooper indulges in a color scheme beyond brown and grey, splashing vivid reds, blues, and greens across the frame in broad swaths. Especially in the terrifically manic nightmare theme park set that contains the third act, this creates a sense of carnival thrills and spills, rather making up for everything that 1981's The Funhouse isn't.

The Funhouse could have definitely used more chainsaws. Or more Dennis Hopper. Or more... anything that isn't me crying tears of boredom.

And in spite of everything, there are moments when Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is actually scary. Because the franchise is so palpably deranged and twisted, these moments rely more on character dynamics than jump scares so it's a tremendous boon that the replacement actors are almost entirely top notch. Johnson obviously can't do quite as much with Leatherface as Hansen could, but his performance darn near cuts it close, adding an extra dimension to the character in what could have been a tremendously clumsy love subplot using naught but his eyes and tongue.

Likewise, Bill Moseley is an excellent addition to the family, revamping Edwin Neal's frenzied Hitchhiker for the modern age and seamlessly straddling the twin tones of comedy and horror, milking each one for everything they're worth. And the gore (of course there's gore now, it's 1986 for crying out loud) is spruced up by maestro of the macabre Tom Savini. It's perhaps not his best work, but Savini on autopilot is still Savini, which means that the effects could still run circles around the dime store VFX artists of whatever the hell else came out in 1986 (which includes Sorority House Massacre and Killer Party - not exactly firm competition. Supple, maybe. But not firm.)

On the other hand, we have Dennis Hopper. Though nobody who's ever seen a single work of cinema would consider his performance "great" (unless, that is, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is that single work of cinema), he brings a focused lunacy to the role that is captivating. This is a character that exists in quite a different universe than the rest of the film, brandishing chainsaws and screaming epithets at nobody in particular, oftentimes while standing alone in locations quite far from the action. He throws himself into the role headfirst, shaking up every idea one might have about the craft of filmmaking for better or for worse.

It's a legitimately tough call on that one.

So really, there's a lot to like about the film. However, it loses major points for its frequent reverting to tried and true story beats and the slower moments are a mite too slow, dragging the film like a half-open parachute. And although there's plenty to chew on about the effects of Vietnam and long-term poverty, the political fire isn't in Hooper's eyes as much as it was when he was 12 years younger.

But in spite of all that, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a rousing success, plying the audience with legitimately great performances of iconic characters, legitimately ludicrous performances from a well-known actor, and enough Savini-honed nightmare fuel to keep the whole thing going down smoothly.

Killer: Leatherface (Bill Johnson) & Co. Pretty much everybody kills everybody else.

Final Girl: Stretch (Caroline Williams)

Best Kill: Buzz proves that his name is appropriate by getting his skull cap sawed off.

Sign of the Times: A picture can say a thousand words. Two pictures can prove my point.

Scariest Moment: Leatherface lunges at Stretch from the station's record vault.

Weirdest Moment: Leatherface puts L.G.'s face on Stretch and ballroom dances with her in a meat locker.

Champion Dialogue: "Oh great grandma in chainsaw heaven, please don't hoodoo the boy."

Body Count: 8; Although y'all know several of them ain't gonna stick.

1. Buzz gets the top of his head sliced off with a chainsaw.
2. Rick "The Prick" is killed in a car crash.
3. L. G. is bashed in the head with a hammer and has his skin removed.
4. Drayton gets his butt chainsawed and blows himself up with a grenade offscreen.
5. Leatherface is chainsawed in the stomach and blown up with a grenade offscreen.
6. Lefty is blown up with a grenade offscreen.
7. Grandpa is blown up with a grenade offscreen.
8. Chop-Top is sliced in the torso with a chainsaw and falls into a turbine.

TL;DR: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is perhaps even more insane than the first film, though absolutely not as effective.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1861

Reviews In This Series
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Burr, 1990)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Henkel, 1994)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Liebesman, 2006)
Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)
Leatherface (Bustillo & Maury, 2017)