Women In Horror Month: Topless Crusaders

In today's celebration of Women in Horror month, it's time to look at the most frequently derided character archetype of the slasher/horror genre: The Slut. There's one in every group of teen vacationers/camp counselors/students on a field trip to a meat packing plant. This character is created for the sole purpose of taking off her top, usually in the process of servicing the nearest schlub.

It's a construction, and a lamentable one at that. But on occasion, these characters use the power of sheer personality to wrest control away from the inherently misogynistic screenplays and become some the most interesting characters in their movies. Today we celebrate these victors, the Sluts who broke away from their one-dimensional construction to thrive as distinct personalities - before they get hacked to bits, of course. But that's fine, it happens to everyone.

The Top Ten Designated Sluts Who Are Secretly Awesome

#10 Helen Shivers (I Know What You Did Last Summer)

Played by: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Method of Demise: Slashed with a hook during a parade

Helen Shivers is the most stereotypical "skank" of them all. Prom queen, pageant princess, wannabe blonde actress... She's designed specifically for unadulterated audience hatred. Maybe it's because she's played by inveterate horror hotshot Sarah Michelle Gellar, but she manages to be the most likable teen in an resolutely unlikable bunch (Kevin Williamson pulls no punches when he's writing high schoolers, bless him) with her upbeat optimism and unflagging devotion to her best friend.

#9 Wendy (Prom Night)

Played by: Eddie Benton
Method of Demise: Hacked to death with an axe

OK, Wendy is a terrible person. She despises our heroine Jamie Lee Curtis because she "stole her boyfriend" which - let's face it - is a petty high school complaint at best unless they started dating at gunpoint. She seethes with rage and plans to Carrie poor innocent JLC at the prom, so maybe she's not the best role model. But she's a magnetic, unforgettable villain of soap operatic grandeur and high school villainy.

#8 Lisa (Final Exam)

Played by: DeAnna Robins
Method of Demise: Stabbed to death

Lisa's a pretty young co-ed in a college movie. So of course she's gonna use her looks to seduce a good grade from her chemistry professor. Can't blame her for that. But just like all the other characters in the surprisingly effective Final Exam, Lisa is brought to life as a living, breathing personality through copious interpersonal connections and actual, human dialogue. It's a miracle!

#7 Terry (Friday the 13th Part 2)

Played by: Kirsten Baker
Method of Demise: Killed offscreen

Terry is one of my absolute favorite characters of all time. Not only does she have the ingeniously licentious line "I think I'll stay. [My dog] Muffin may show," she gives the franchise its first full-frontal nudity without ever having sex with anybody. Meanwhile the Final Girl gets it on left and right! Way to bust stereotypes, girl! I love your Mickey shirt.

#6 Ingunn (Cold Prey)

Played by: Viktoria Winge
Method of Demise: Pickaxed in her hotel room

Cold Prey is yet another solid slasher in which the characters are fleshed out instead of merely being flesh fodder. Although Ingunn is the first to die, she charms the audience in her brief appearance by being utterly believable in her relationship and her relative discomfort hanging out with her beau's group of friends. We've all been there. Luckily, the rest of us haven't been slashed to death in the process.

#5 Tina and Terri (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter)

Played by: Camilla and Carey More
Method of Demise: Speared in the back; Thrown out a window

Proving once and for all that the Friday the 13th writers couldn't go five minutes without ripping each other off, Tina and (ahem) Terri provide double the trouble in this installment of Jason Voorhees' misadventures. Because The Final Chapter is essentially a John Hughes flick with edged weapons, it's far from painful to spend time with these girls, who draw from their experience as real-life twin sisters to bring a warmth and humanity to their roles.

#4 Tatum Riley (Scream)

Played by: Rose McGowan
Method of Demise: Neck crushed in the cat flap of a garage door

Although most people remember her for her adventures in a freezing cold garage, Tatum is the world's best best friend. She's Sidney's rock, a spunky, fun-loving chick who doesn't trivialize her pain but encourages her to cut loose. She's always on hand when you need another beer, want to shut down a boyfriend's bravado, or need the deets on where exactly to pause movies just right so you can see Tom Cruise's penis. One gets the sense that, had she lived to see the new millennium, she would've been a huge fan of Gone Girl.

#3 Lynda Van der Klok (Halloween)

Played by: P.J. Soles
Method of Demise: Strangled with a telephone cord

Halloween was the film that firmly cemented in the rules of the slasher genre, so Lynda might just be the first Slut ever to strut her stuff on the silver screen. Because the film is an actual work of cinematic art, it's no surprise that this sapphic prototype should appear on our list today. Totally.

#2 Tina Gray (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

Played by: Amanda Wyss
Method of Demise: Slashed apart on her bedroom ceiling

Although Tina only lives through about twenty minutes of the film, she is the character that first draws us into the world of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It is her dream that introduces the shadowy dream demon Freddy Krueger and it is her frantic clawing as she's dragged onto the ceiling that brutally drops us into the killer realities of his handiwork. But before all that, Tina is a perfectly realized all-American teen, shining with youthful vigor and idealistic energy.

#1 Joyce (He Knows You're Alone)

Played by: Patsy Pease
Method of Demise: Stabbed to death offscreen

I know it's unorthodox to pick a deep cut for the number one slot (insert pun here), but trust me. Joyce is worth it. He Knows You're Alone is already a special little duckling for featuring Tom Hanks in an early role and some surprising feminist undertones, but - much like many of the examples on this list - my favorite element is by far the well-developed characters populating the rote Halloween rip-off. Joyce falls into the Designated Slut category due to her early death and her torrid affair with a professor, but their love is so genuine and real and their sex scene so erotic and oddly emotional, that you are firmly in their camp before the horror strikes. And that's really all I can ask of a well-heeled slasher.
Word Count: 1123

Women Are From Venus

Warning: This review contains moderate visual spoilers for Under the Skin. Because the film operates on a plane almost entirely separate from what we mortals would consider a "narrative," these are actually more relevant than actual plot spoilers. Keep that in mind and carry on if you dare.

Year: 2014

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams, Kevin McAlinden

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Hello everybody, and welcome back to Women in Horror Month! As I mentioned in my catch-up post, one of the most influential horror(ish) films of the past year was Under the Skin, which I have finally had the modest pleasure of receiving into my eyeballs. Starring Scarlett Johansson, this experimental sci-fi/horror picture is playing a game where the rules are made up and the points don't matter, but it's more than a little stirring.

And not in the way you're probably expecting.

Under the Skin is about many things, most of them as intangible and ephemeral as a midsummer night's dream. Or one of Lady Gaga's bras. But the one thing it can confidently assert to be about is the Female (Scarlett Johansson), a woman who is pretty clearly an alien although this film's definition of the word "clear" is in a completely different spectrum of reality than the one we live in. On the scale of clarity, it's long gone from "it's outright stated in the film," past "it's implied in the film," and somewhere in the vicinity of "the IMDb page says it's sci-fi so I guess something must be going on."

Anyway, the Female drives around Middle of Nowhere, Scotland in an unmarked van, chatting up random dudes and observing the rest with a keen eye. The ones that she successfully picks up she takes to her home, an inky black void that swallows them up. Presumably this is how she eats, or powers her ship, or... gets off? Honestly, I don't know. This film views specificity as a sort of mangy dog that should be kept in the backyard when company is around.

Just like men, Amirite?

As she examines the human race inside and out, she slowly begins to form a sense of her own identity. Her exploration of what exactly that means forms the extended third act, which is where the film drops its experimental, inscrutable nature in favor of a perplexingly dull slog through the woods in the extended third act.

All said, Under the Skin is a very unique little duckling. Focusing on tiny human events and interactions that form a tableaux of life, love, and violence to underscore the Female's journey, it's like the Boyhood of experimental horror. It doesn't cohere quite as well as Linklater's film, but director Jonathan Glazer has had considerably less experience in the realm of the perfectly meandering narrative.

As the film cycles through its metronomically unstructured beats, it slowly loses grip on its already admirably slippery premise. There's more than enough pulsing beneath the surface to lead to many different interpretations of the central theme, and that's great. Experimentation is encouraged in cinema, but there's ambiguity and then there's opacity.

Despite its teeming thematic possibilities, Under the Skin frequently slips into an arcane fog of ostentation. Of all the potential readings of the film (the formation of identity, the performative aspect of gender, the arbitrary nature of death and health and human action), most of them wither and die in the corner during more than one visually stunning occasion where the film firmly plants itself up its own ass.

And the rhythm goes splat.

Now, a film doesn't have to come right out and declare its intentions. If that were true, cinema as an art form would be duller than a vacation to... well, Scotland. So let me just say that a film this arcane in which nothing in particular happens and even the most simple of ideas is hidden behind an obscuring curtain of avant-garde is not necessarily my cup of tea. Moving on.

By far the most invaluable element of Under the Skin is its aesthetic. The costume design is simplistic but evocative of the shoddy, worn aesthetic of the world. The sound design is chilling, juxtaposing long periods of silence with unsettling muffled, garbled noise and a bone-chillingly shrill string score. And the expertly chosen locations help keep the film feeling isolated and alien. Let's face it, Scottish accents might as well be a different language unbeknownst to us regular humans. 

But above and beyond all that, there's the fact that the experimental art pieces that lay scattered about the film are, in actuality, truly superb bits of visual phenomena. Creating colorless voids of pure white and inky black and countermanding them with bold, bright hues, under the skin creates a stark, brutal colorscape that provides an effortlessly disturbing atmosphere. You're never quite sure what's happening, but it's damn beautiful. Also the gore-type effects are rare but stunningly executed. I shall say no more in this regard.

I mean, look. This wig is a work of art.

Oh, also this film shows an erect penis. All of its ample nudity is stalwartly non-erotic, so there's no need to get one's knickers in a bunch, but I always like to point out films that break through our archaic censorship system with some male nudity. Equality!

All in all, Under the Skin is only worth it for the pretty pictures. So if that's what you love, dive right on in. It has enough pristine special effects to make up for its paucity of plot, but for those looking for a more traditional good time, please feel free to move right along.

TL;DR: Under the Skin is an inscrutable experimental film, but it supplies some truly brutal and unforgettable horror images.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 970

The Biological Clock

Year: 2009

Director: Jac Schaeffer

Cast: Emma Caulfield, John Patrick Amedori, Michelle Borth

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Since Valentine's Day is coming up, why not toss caution to the wind with a review of a rom com? On the actual holiday you can be sure to expect the usual Popcorn Culture gold standard fare of blood, bondage, and hearts in candy boxes, but why not stray from tradition and go mainstream for a second? Not that 2009's TiMER is mainstream by any definition of the word. But there's not a drop of Karo syrup on set and that's good enough for me!

Presumably there is blood inside of these people, but we don't get to see it. Alas.

TiMER is a high concept indie sci-fi romantic comedy, and the more words you need to use to describe a thing, the better it tends to be. Think about it. Would you rather watch a Western or a space zombie Western musical? Anyway, the film tells the story of Oona O'Leary (Emma Caulfield of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), an unlucky-in-love girl in the not too distant future. She is a lonely neurotic who rushes into relationships, causing them to crash and burn. 

But here's the twist: in this not too distant future, a tech company has created a device called the Timer, which is a clock implanted into your wrist that counts down to the day you will meet your soulmate. The second you lock eyes with them on the proscribed day, your timer will go off and you two will live in eternal bliss. It "takes the guesswork out of love."

Or it's supposed to. Oona's timer has never switched on, which either means that her One hasn't gotten his ass a timer yet, or... maybe she doesn't actually have a soulmate. Her already relatable neuroses are kicked into overdrive by this little blank gadget, a constant reminder that there's a potential for her to never have the happy ending that she's always dreamed of. No, it's not subtle. But it doesn't have to be. It's a fun, lighthearted comedy, dang it!

Side note: I really dig touting movies that nobody would ever expect me to love.

The best thing about TiMER is that it really puts effort into exploring the implications of its central invention on the dating lives of its participants and the world around them. The opening credits show a montage of how the device is incorporated into pop culture including sitcoms and the nightly news, and the rest of the film provides endless scenarios depicting its effects on race, class, sexuality, family, and friendships.

It's not often that a comic romance blends with soft science fiction, but it's downright statistically impossible for it to be such a successful combination of the disparate genres. There's even different models of timers depending on the period in which each character would have gotten theirs. There's not much else to the film outside of the timer and its immediate effects on the dating world, but when the topic is so a captivatingly original and comprehensively expressed, it's hard to complain.

After Oona meets a cute musician/bagboy named Mikey (John Patrick Amedori) with a timer reading four months, she begins to question her devout deference to the gadget's accuracy and begins a torrid romance despite her presumed knowledge that he will soon be meeting his true soulmate. Over the course of the film, Oona learns about life, love, messy reality, and the joy of taking detours.

And - oh my god, there's a clock. I see what you did there.

TiMER is unrelentingly sweet and sincere, operating in a low-key register that won't earn any hard-won fans, but never fails to charm. The film is full of tiny, scattered comic gems that brighten up the story like a 90-minute Easter Egg hunt. The tone is a perfect match for its budget: none too challenging and delightfully off-kilter.

After a while the dearth of budget does begin to wear on you (the timer makeup is never quite right and there is a preponderance of fade-outs), but TiMER makes up for it with a spunky, no-holds-barred approach to its material. Many of its central themes are surface-level, but it never shies away from staring down the audience and asking them the questions that really count.

Should we trust technology as implicitly as we do? Can we trust it to smooth the wrinkles out of life or are humans too complicated for that? Is there one fate for us? One love, one path, one true romance? Is life worth it without the mystery or is it better with a guarantee? And, most importantly, would you get a timer?

The film gets down on its knees and begs, implores you to ask these questions of yourself. It may not be the most subtle kid on the block (neither is Jenny, but y'all love her), but it successfully integrates ideas about our developing technology with some sunny comedy for flavor. The only other film to come close to truly tackling that subject in the way that it deserves was Her. Spike Jonze's film did it slightly better and more notably, but it's never quite as much fun as this quirky little lark with a spark in its eye.

By the way, this is Mik- hey look! Another clock. I'm onto them...

TL;DR: TiMER is a low-key, low-budget, high concept, weird little gem of a romantic comedy.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 918

Women In Horror Month: What You Missed

Hello, everybody! It's February 1st, which everybody knows is the beginning of this year's Women in Horror Month? What do you mean football? Super what?

I have some great female-centric features coming at ya throughout the month of February, but I'd like to start by playing a little bit of catch-up. The horror genre is still somewhat of a boy's club even in this enlightened age, but this has still been a great year for the ladies, so let's go through some of the most important developments since our last celebration in February 2014!

Women in Horror: A Year in Review

Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin (April 4, 2014)

OK, I haven't seen Under the Skin yet. I'm a bad horror blogger. But get back to me a week from now, I'm supposed to watch it for a class soon. At any rate, it is one of the most divisive films of 2014, with an alienating, inhuman role at the center of a crisp, cold film that plays to Scarlett Johansson's strengths with eerie clarity.

Karen Gillan in Oculus (April 11, 2014)

Karen Gillan made waves in 2014 as The Blue One in Guardians of the Galaxy and The One Who Needs to Stop in Selfie. But before all that could happen, she was the deadpan lynchpin of this pristine indie flick. She took what could have been a boring, ten-page, exposition dumping monologue and wrangled it into an infinitely compelling diatribe that simultaneously highlights her characters flaws and virtues without even pausing for breath. The film is a little rocky on its rails, but Gillan is impervious to any of its flaws.

Tilda Swinton in Only Lovers Left Alive (April 11, 2014)

I'm not sure exactly what planet Tilda Swinton comes from, but her otherworldly ethereal demeanor provides a pitch perfect physicalization of an ageless vampire filled with the knowledge of countless aeons. Only Lovers Left Alive had no real plot to speak of, but merely getting the opportunity to watch her performance transcend the limits of space and time is worth the price of admission.

Perdita Weeks in As Above, So Below (August 29, 2014)

The movie didn't follow through on its potentially awesome ideological fillips, but featured a strong female lead whose halfhearted love interest paled in comparison to her capacity for survival, capability as an explorer and scholar, and encyclopedic working knowledge of the history of just about every culture ever to walk this little blue marble we call home. Perdita Weeks brings a brusque energy to an interesting character. So what if the film's a bit of a clunker?

Maika Monroe in The Guest (September 17, 2014)

Blossoming from what could have been a stereotypical "surly, edgy older sister" role into an out-and-out action heroine, Maika Monroe's performance in one of the best films of the year is top notch. Taking her role seriously enough to ground her in reality while keeping the entire character firmly in the film's realm of 80's camp is no easy task, but she takes it on with aplomb.

Annabelle in Annabelle (October 2, 2014)

I may have secretly hated Annabelle, but its semi-decent scares and connection to The Conjuring made it the highest grossing horror flick of 2014. You gotta respect that at least a little bit, especially because the film featured a female protagonist, two female antagonists, a female deus ex machina (like I said, not a great film), and the only male characters are but douchey wisps on the ocean breeze.

Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl (October 3, 2014)

Maybe this isn't exactly a horror film, but its adjacent enough to the genre to count. Pike's ruthless breakout performance makes a perhaps overly-lauded film worth every dime. Simultaneously off-putting and uncertainly trustworthy, she breathes life into a character that is nothing but pure construction.

Olivia Cooke in Ouija (October 24, 2014)

Olivia Cooke also starred in The Quiet Ones in 2014, but we don't like to talk about that. Neither of her film's this year were what we like to call "movies I'd want to watch again," but Cooke is coming into her own as an out-and-out scream queen and she deserves it. Her work is competent even when spouting the drivel forced upon her by a Hasbro commercial disguised as a teenybopper fright flick and that's no small achievement.

Ana Lily Amirpour in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (November 21, 2014)

OK, here's another film I haven't seen so I apologize. But the only things I've heard about A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night have come in the form of pants-wetting molly-popping brow-sweating rave reviews. As a female Iranian-American director, whether or not the film was incredible (which it seems to be), Ana Lily Amirpour is an inspiration for us all to just go out there and get it done. Also I love those glasses.

Jennifer Kent and Essie Davis in The Babadook (November 28, 2014)

The Australian psychological horror flick The Babadook was my number one film of 2014 for good reason. It's tense, meaningful, and displays a dark side of motherhood that could never have been conceived by a male filmmaker, operating as they do under the assumption that bearing children is a religious experience for women on the level of, say, baking cookies or a sale at Nordstrom. Essie Davis gives a screen-cracking performance as a woman on the verge of a mental breakdown and newcomer Jennifer Kent's expert direction keeps the tension crackling. This film is the unquestionable high water mark for 2014's women in horror and I hope they get a chance to work together again.

Manuela Velasco in [REC] 4: Apocalipsis (January 2, 2015)

Although [REC] 4 was a disappointing finale to a masterful franchise, Manuela Velasco's performance as the harried reporter just attempting to survive the night is a breath of fresh air in a fetid genre. The script may have been unfocused this time around, but her fiery performance is the only thing that makes the flick worth watching at any level.

If any of these films or performances interest you, I urge you to check them out! Support women in horror! Go to RedBox! Watch on Amazon! Buy DVDs! Girl power!
Word Count: 1038

Census Bloodbath: Cadet Killy

Year: 1981

Director: Eric Weston

Cast: Clint Howard, R. G. Armstrong, Joe Cortese

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I might as well just stop Census Bloodbath right here and now, because Evilspeak is possibly the most 80's movie ever made. Of course, I must continue - my contract with the Dark Ones has very little wiggle room. But this film is so exhaustingly, damnably culled from the darkest depths of the decade that it pushes beyond the envelope of camp into the dark, impenetrable void beyond.

Combining Video Nasty status-earning gore with the waning specter of Brian de Palma's Carrie, the caveman-like fascination 80's screenwriters had with rudimentary computer technology, and the burgeoning Satanic Panic, Evilspeak is an indelibly strange amalgamation. If it only included a pair of roller blades and maybe some Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, it would be the indisputable king of 80's horror.

All hail the goblin king.

Evilspeak tells the story of Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard), a cadet at West Andover Military Academy, which I guess unofficially continues my Back to Skull college slasher marathon. Every single person in the world hates Coopersmith. He's basically the Justin Bieber of the Massachusets military. 

The school bullies, led by the vicious Bubba (Don Stark) despise him because he is chubby and clumsy and school rules force him to play on their soccer team. Their bone-chillingly clever, incisive nickname for him is "Cooperdick." Keep it up, fellas. You're doing God's work. The Coach (Claude Earl Jones of Dark Night of the Scarecrow and Miracle Mile) hates him because he keeps losing games. The head of the school hates him because he is a poor orphan welfare case and a symbol of the school's financial erosion.

Coopersmith's only friends are his classmate Kowalski (Haywood Nelson of What's Happening!) and the school's cook, a gruff but understanding man named Jake (Lenny Montana of Blood Song). But after relentless torment at the hands of everybody and their mother and their kitchen sink, he's understandably a little irate at humanity in general. When he is sentenced to clean up the chapel basement as punishment for something he didn't do (I mean, seriously), he finds a Satanic book left behind by the excommunicated Spanish Satanist Father Lorenzo Esteban (Richard Moll of House).

He loads the text of the book into his trusty computer, and it becomes an expert on the rites of Black Mass. He fashions a secret room in a convenient basement cave, fills it with the entire candle stock of Pier One, and sets out to see if he can summon that pesky Devil. While he searches for the blood of a consecrated host ("Gotta have it," he sighs, like he's buying pomegranate juice at the supermarket), the computer gets possessed by the vengeful spirit of Esteban, who seeks revenge for something or other.

Maybe he's mad he didn't snag some of that Apple stock before he died.

For just about its entirety, Evilspeak is a supernatural bullying drama rather than a slasher movie, only picking up any sort of body count during its final sequence. So as a candidate for Census Bloodbath it's not exactly prime, but as a candidate for cheesy Satanic horror it's... still not exactly prime. There's a great deal of amusement to be found in the computer graphics which have aged worse than the horse-drawn carriage, but beyond that the film is plodding. Despite matching the classic Carrie in its slow-burn buildup to an explosion of carnage, it lacks that film's sense of gravitas and thematic resonance.

For the bulk of its run time, Evilspeak devotes itself to a depiction of bullying unrivaled in even the most hardcore John Hughes films as Bubba and his crew prank, injure, and verbally assault Coopersmith. They toss his hat out the window, sabotage his class project, and (last but not least) slaughter his dog. It's unrelenting and mean-spirited, doing a good job of depicting just how bad a situation the act of bullying can cause, but not providing much reason to enjoy the act of watching the film.

It's a nice bit of representation to have a lead character who's a little dumpy, so I respect that, but the tone of the film is just a bit too morbid. Not even unintentionally campy moments like a character vowing to "extract revenge," the music evoking Tom and Jerry whenever the janitor comes onscreen, or the bullies attempting to seem threatening at a roller disco can save Evilspeak from its dismal fog.

Not even THIS scene can - OK, this scene is pretty cool.

The saving grace of Evilspeak is its ending. The supernatural horror steadily builds up in the background in the form of some surprisingly effective low-key fright gags until it screams like a kettle, pulling out all the stops and dumping the entire remainder of its budget.

Many of the movies persecuted in Britain as Video Nasties live on the strength of one particular scene and this film is no different. This grand explosion of a finale features decapitations galore in a burning church, an evil heard of pigs mauling a soccer team, and a bully's still-being heart ripped from his chest. It's, in a word, awesome, and the one reason I would recommend this film to anyone.

You'll have a devil of a time.

If you're stalwart enough to survive the dreary excesses of the first half of the film, Evilspeak can be immensely rewarding. And its attempts at depicting the mistreatment of young cadets is admittedly impactful. Although I wish that it was more than a cut-and-dry Satanic revenge story and had more thematic meat on its bones, the flick is chock full of top notch Magic Computer nonsense and surprisingly decent grue when the time comes.

I'm afraid I have to halfheartedly recommend it. Do with that what you must.

Killer: Father Lorenzo Esteban (Richard Moll) and/or Lucifer (Himself), acting through a boxy computer and/or Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard)
Final Girl: Not even close.
Best Kill: As the wrist of a large crucifix begins to show a pulse, the nail through Christ's hand wriggles out and impales Reverend Jameson's forehead.

Sign of the Times: Literally anything that happens to any computer, which is pretty much everything.

Scariest Moment: A weird fetus creature in a jar begins to wriggle and escape during a dream sequence.
Weirdest Moment: Coopersmith asks his computer "What are the keys to the kingdom of Satan's magic?" and somehow expects an answer in the era before Google.
Champion Dialogue: "Don't they teach you damn fool cadets nothin' about pigs?"
Body Count: 13; not counting poor Freddy the dog.

1. Topless Sacrifice is decapitated with a sword.
2. Sarge's head is spun around backward.
3. Miss Friedemeyer is mauled by pigs in the shower.
4. Colonel Kincaid is impaled on a hanging chandelier.
5. Reverend Jameson is impaled in the forehead with a crucifix nail.
6. Cadet #1 burns to death.
7. Colonel Something or Other has a sword burst his skull.
8. Cadet #2 is mauled by pigs.
9. Cadet #3 is decapitated with a sword.
10. Cadet #4 is killed offscreen.
11. Coach is decapitated with a sword.
12. Cadet #5 is mauled by pigs.
13. Bubba is strangled and has his heart pulled out of his chest. 

TL;DR: Evilspeak is a mean-spirited slog that is occasionally livened up by some top notch practical effects.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1229

The Wrath Of Achilles

For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.

Year: 2015

Director: Rob Cohen

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Kristin Chenoweth, Ryan Guzman

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

What makes a movie good? Production values? Performances? Layered subtext about the Irish potato famine? These questions get infinitely more complex when you dive into the world of genre films. Many of you may have noticed my adjusted scale slasher movies, which is the only possible explanation for Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Gravity getting the same score. So how do I come to these impossible conclusions?

The new J-Lo thriller The Boy Next Door is an excellent illustration of the process. This little cheese puff has over-baked performances, dialogue so wooden you could kill a vampire with it, and a thoroughly trashy sensibility. But the film is so sincerely, effortfully committed to producing a perfectly disposable morsel of popcorn movie magic that it's beyond reproach for being exactly that. Its goals are far from lofty, but it accomplishes them with aplomb.

It's not quite clever enough to earn itself a truly reputable score even on my scale, but The Boy Next Door captures the spirit of the Dance. Sure, every plot beat is predictable from the opening credits. But the pleasure of the film comes from enacting that exact generic formula in a way that's just different enough to be exciting. Sometimes an audience just wants to sit back, turn off their brains, and have a good time, which this film faithfully delivers. 

Also included on the delivery list: perfect sideburns.

The plot, insofar as it matters, goes as follows: high school teacher Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) is unhappily married to a cheating husband (John Corbett of United States of Tara), who she can't quite bring herself to separate from. When her son Kevin (Ian Nelson) befriends the hunky next door neighbor Noah (Ryan Guzman), she finds herself irresistibly attracted to him although he's a student in her class.

Don't worry, he's "20". We wouldn't want this to be too illegal and/or un-hunky.

After a disastrous double date with her BFF/vice principal Vicky (Kristin Chenoweth), the vulnerable Claire gives in to temptation and hops onto Noah's ark. After a steamy, unforgettable night, Noah becomes obsessive, attempting to seduce, menace, and blackmail Claire into running away with him. His violent temper soon threatens to destroy everything she holds dear.

Between several surprisingly high tension action sequences held together by a wing, a prayer, and a handheld camera (possibly operated by a bungee jumper) lies howlingly trite dialogue like "I'm not following you... I live next door." A bully who looks like Ed Sheeran attempts to sound threatening while name dropping Wizards of Waverly Place. There is equal screentime allotted to thematic throughlines wrangled around both Homer's The Iliad and a plate of cookies. So, North by Northwest this ain't. 

The power of The Boy Next Door lies in the fact that it throws caution to the wind to embrace its pedigree. Nothing in this film is meant to be taken seriously on any level other than unadulterated fun. It might not be quite as exhilarating as it wants to be, laboring as it does under a first act in which the plot is a little more lethargic and Lopez acts like she's a Barbie that has just been brought to life via a gypsy curse. However as the plot picks up and the actress shakes off the slick MTV fairy dust, the film really comes into its own as a pitch perfect disasterpiece.

That dude sure loves belly buttons. He kneeled all the way down there just to- oh.

While The Boy Next Door is a generic, glossy thriller at best, it has some remarkable idiosyncrasies that help it rise to the top of the heap. First, coming as it does from Blumhouse Productions, the film abruptly veers toward gory psycho horror in the final act, even including an honest-to-goodness Spring-Loaded Cat scare. Of course, this also means that Claire makes her share of bad horror movie decisions, which only ramps up the audience investment in the implacable formula of the film. Sometimes you just gotta yell at that lazy-ass character who forgets to double tap - it's human nature.

In addition to this surprising turn of events, The Boy Next Door is almost shockingly shot from a female perspective. Although the director is a man, the writer and star are both women, and the film's content is a magnetic reversal of common genre tropes, objectifying its male antagonist into oblivion. That's right, Ryan Guzman gets the full Bond Girl deluxe treatment. The camera lingers on his taut, muscular flesh, barely hidden beneath thin, exposing layers of fabric. You can almost see the sweat beading on the camera lens. 

This is not a screengrab from the movie, but it ain't too far from the truth.

And I won't get too into this because it's not like the movie has any similar inclinations, but the entire driving plot is centered around the idea of male entitlement gone wrong. Every problem in the film is caused by either a cheating husband or a petulant, greedy boy. It's important to note that it is not Claire's sexual transgression that brings the hammer down upon her and her family, but rather Noah's mind having been poisoned by unrealistic expectations. It's fascinating, to say the least.

And there's even another cherry on top of all of that. Although the thriller elements of the plot feel like they are pitched squarely toward the relatively wholesome teen audience, this film has an R-rating for a reason. It could never in a million years be considered a hard R, but the film sets low expectations for itself and exceeds them with gusto. Claire and Noah's night together is about as explicit as a film can get without actually showing nipples. I definitely saw fingers going places that would not be permitted in a PG-13. Let's just say that whatever drama Claire went through afterwards might actually have been worth it. It's a steamy, steamy scene and an utter shock to the system in this bland slate of January programming we've been getting in 2015.

Also there's cursing and gore, so I feel right at home.

All that's missing is a chainsaw and a scene at a drive-in.

OK, some quick thoughts before we wrap up. First, Kristin Chenoweth is the clear standout, providing a generic Sassy Best Friend role with some real fire and panache. Second, modern technology is integrated more successfully than ever here, including a scene that somehow turns deleting files into an action-packed extravaganza. You know how much I love my tech not uncomfortably shoved into the narrative (*cough cough* The Fault in Our Stars).

All in all, The Boy Next Door is shameless fun, recommended to anyone who doesn't want to think to hard but still feel like they got their money's worth of soap bubble entertainment. Hollywood hasn't made an idiotic film this airy in a long time, so please don't just write it off. Respect the genre. Enjoy yourself.

TL;DR: The Boy Next Door is pulpy trash, but who says that has to be a bad thing?

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? As long as you know what you're in for, I'd give a resounding yes.

Word Count: 1223

The Eyes Of The Storm

Year: 2010

Director: Guillem Morales

Cast: Belén Rueda, Lluis Homar, Pablo Derqui

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Guillermo del Toro has a sterling reputation for Spanish-language horror, so any film with his name attached must be treated with appropriate reverence. Although he only produced 2010's Los Ojos de Julia (aka the supremely boring translation Julia's Eyes), the del Toro brand immediately puts the film under a great deal of pressure both as a horror film and an artistic work. Luckily for everyone, just about clears that overambitious bar.

Directed by Guillem Morales, the sprawling flick suffers without a firm directorial hand to guide it from start to finish, but the performances are riveting, the quiet horror hums with tension, and the visual schema is absolutely stunning. 

A bit ironically, I suppose.

You see, Los Ojos de Julia is about blindness. For a card-carrying hypochondriac like myself, this might as well be Spider Clowns: The Movie for all the immediate fear this topic draws within me. So take this review with a slight grain of salt if you're a hale and hearty specimen who has never stared infirmity and mortality right in the face. I mean, not that I have, but when you have a six hour lighting class with only one bathroom break, you get pretty close.

Julia Levin (Belén Rueda) suffers from a degenerative disease that threatens to tear her vision away from her, especially during periods of high stress. After her estranged twin sister Sara (Belén Rueda in a terrible wig) loses her sight and apparently hangs herself, Julia is understandably distraught. Against the protestations of her husband Isaac (Lluís Homar), she investigates Sara's untimely death, using the last of her waning vision to uncover a series of clues that prove that all might not be as it seems.

Later on, she has an operation to replace her eyes, relying on helpful nurse Iván (Pablo Derqui) to guide her through her recovery. Plunged into a world of darkness (she can't allow any light to reach her eyes in the first couple weeks, lest she lose her sight permanently), she battles her own body for dominance while beginning to realize that a shadowy entity who preys on the blind might very well be coming for her.

Spoilers: It's the lamp.

The first part of the film is markedly stronger than the second - which begins to unravel rapidly during its final stages - but the vision horror that forms the spine of the disparate halves is universally magnetic. The entire film crackles with live-wire tension, coaxed out by its expertly precise cinematography.

Obviously cinema, being a visual medium, faces certain challenges when it comes to the depiction of blindness. But Los Ojos de Julia takes one look at that argument and laughs so hard it snorts milk out its nose. Using the camera to limit the range of vision, cinematographer Óscar Faura (who also shot The Orphanage and the Oscar-nominated Imitation Game) only exposes objects in the set as the characters come across them, forcing us to make the stumbling journey right alongside Julia as she struggles to make her way around. People's faces are also mostly kept out of frame, plunging the entire film into a mysterious shadowy netherworld where even the simplest of ideas - like the identity of a long-present character - are cast into doubt.

The film also uses light and shadow to its distinct advantage, creating entirely new environments within established sets by suddenly casting areas into perilous shadow. It's really an unparalleled cinematographic masterwork, dragging the audience headfirst into the blistering tension.

You never know what's just around the corner.

The story itself is secondary to the stunning aesthetic, but it's a largely engaging and ethereal mystery. It incorporates the quasi-mythological idea of shadow people into a Hollywood-style narrative, which is a very Guillermo-esque touch, but other than that it's mostly unexceptional. The final half hour screams to be cut almost entirely, introducing inexplicable new subplots to the detriment of the main throughline, but several episodes of nail-biting eye-trauma keep the film from sinking entirely.

All in all, its keen style makes Los Ojos de Julia worthy of rubbing shoulders with some of del Toro's Spanish works, but its story is too saggy to truly create anything more than a fun, tense murder mystery. That's adamantly not a bad thing, but this film could be a life-changing experience and only manages to be a memorable one. Oh well. Que será será.

TL;DR: Los Ojos de Julia is a stunning visual masterpiece, but features a story with too much bloat to be truly epic.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 775

Census Bloodbath: Back To Back To Skull - Graduation Day

Year: 1986

Director: John P. Finnegan

Cast: Mollie O'Mara, Sharon Christopher, Mari Butler

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

"In the darkness, there is evil. Within the evil, there is death."

Hello, everybody! Welcome to the final day of Back to Back to Skull! The torment is about to end! Well, for you. I still have an entire semester of college left after this. Our final excursion into the world of co-ed campus slashfests is Girls School Screamers, another release by the notorious bad movie production company Troma.

The poster for Girls School Screamers has it all: a syntactically confusing but tantalizing title, a tagline that has more punctuation than a text message in 2007, a wormy cadaver with a cleaver, screaming bikini girl mayhem, and a nun on uppers. I might actually prefer staring at that poster for 80 minutes over the film, because not a lick of it is accurate in any meaningful way.

And there are NO good screenshots on Google. Like I want to work to find slasher stills. Rude.

Girls School Screamers is a woefully dull late 80's B-flick, wavering between being a haunted house movie and a slasher for 40 minutes before deciding that it should be both. Poorly. We open with the best scene in the film, in which a young boy is dared to enter an empty haunted house and is confronted by a rotted, worm-riddled ghost in a wedding dress. She gibbers and he runs and the credits roll on a film that is in every way less interesting - and almost entirely unrelated.

Some time later the estate - which belonged to the late Tyler Welles (Charles Braun) - is bequeathed to the Trinity School for Girls. When a group of young women is sent along with the kindly Sister Urban (Vera Gallagher) to catalogue the contents of the mansion, they hold a seance (of course they do) and awaken the slumbering spirit - who seemed pretty lively just a minute ago but what do I know.

By the way, the barely distinguishable Meat platter consists of Jackie (Mollie O'Mara), a young woman who discovers that she has a striking resemblance to Tyler's young niece Jennifer, who died in that very house in 1939; Elizabeth (Sharon Christopher), who is engaged to an unseen character, though if her strange predilection for acting with her eyebrows is an indicator, it might just be Eric Freeman from Silent Night, Deadly Night: Part 2; Rosemary (Monica Antonucci), a childish slob who wears an ash gray track suit who probably would have become a gym teacher had she not met her untimely peril; Adelle (Marcia Hinton) the token black friend who has not a trace of a character trait but is charming anyway; Susan (Karen Krevitz), the Blonde One; and Kate (Mari Butler) and Karen (Beth O'Malley), who are not the Blonde One.

After a full half hour of Sister Urban toddling around like a dizzy turtle and the girls counting objects (riveting), they finally begin to murdered one by one by an unseen force as Jackie slowly reads through Jennifer's diary at plot-convenient intervals to find out exactly what terrible thing happened in this house. Spoiler: It's boring.

Somewhere between The Dorm That Dripped Blood and Sorority House Massacre II, the plot is DOA, seemingly only a channel to display buxom ladies in their skivvies. The fact that the film fails to even do that (not a single topless scene, and no underwear to be found) is a testament to its supreme, almost otherworldly inadequacy. The kills in the film are shot with a level of basic splatter film competence, but lack any arresting grue thanks to the social climate of 1986 and or a budget flimsier than those "tearable" edges on notebook paper. So what any self-respecting cheapie would do is scoop up an armful of breasts and drop them onto the set to make up for a lack of bloody FX. Those come cheap and you don't have to wash them off quite as often. But alas, Girls School Screamers is beyond even that basic courtesy.

Also some boys show up, but we don't even get a sex scene. Exploitation shouldn't necessarily be a genre to strive for, but if you're going to take your stab at it, at least do it right.

The biggest sin of Girls School Screamers is that it's damn boring, but there's plenty of smaller sins sprinkled around for taste:

Sin #1: The Acting

When there are no headshots on the entire IMDb cast list of a film, you know there's a problem with the talent. So we won't dive into this too much, but it must be said that Mollie O'Mara makes no attempt to differentiate Jackie from Jennifer Welles (who she plays in flashback) or even hazard a guess as to what people in the 1930's might have acted like. Vera Gallagher plays her elderly character so woozily that it looks like she might drop dead at any moment and Peter Cosimano (as Paul, Jackie's boyfriend) rattles off five page monologues with machine-gun monotony.

Sin #2: The Music

The composer here could give the guy who wrote my AAA driving video theme song a run for his money. His go-to theme is nothing less than a steel drum variation on The Exorcist and though I can say that I never dreamed I'd hear something like that, I can't say that it was good by any definition of the word.

Sin #3: The Dialogue

When it's not being written and enunciated like a masterpiece theater melodrama, the screenplay skitters into the corner and concocts strange new verbal creations, the likes of which have never been heard before or since. A personal favorite is "he wanted to paint a portrait of me with himself as the artist." Also, I'm pretty sure Paul keeps calling his girlfriend "pal," but I could never get a bead on his exact verbiage because of his record-breaking vocal WPM.

Sin #4: The Miscellaneous

It's just a poorly-constructed film, is what it is. Sister Urban tells the story of what happened to poor Jennifer, the film cuts to an entirely different person telling the same story to somebody else. Unnecessary and perplexing moments like this abound, like when Paul insists on visiting the newspaper archives to investigate the house where his girlfriend is staying, though he has absolutely no reason to be suspicious. The film briefly livens up during a flashback when it very nearly turns into  a silent melodrama, but for the most part it clunks along like a bike with square wheels.

The best thing I can say about Girls School Screamers is that the kills are mildly engaging for their variety and that people are actually visible in the nighttime scenes. These moments are quite obviously "lit" but I'll take a visible spotlight over a murky pool of darkness any day. So, don't go running out to Netflix to rent the film (how do things even work anymore?), but if it's a choice between this and, say, a Transformers marathon, you could do slightly worse.

Killer: The Ghost (?) of Tyler Welles (Charles Braun)

Final Girl: Jackie (Mollie O'Mara)

Best Kill: Susan pulls the chain on a light bulb and it electrocutes her. This is the kind of design flaw you'd think the engineer might have noticed, but American craftsmanship just isn't what it used to be.

Sign of the Times: Elizabeth wears a pair of cream-colored heels that I'm pretty sure dissipated back into the netherworld at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve in 1989.

Scariest Moment: The opening (see: only) effects shot is quite a doozy.

Weirdest Moment: A Jewish doctor named Robert Fisher mysteriously appears at the beginning and end of the film although he was never asked to come to the house and has no impact on the plot whatsoever.

Champion Dialogue: "You're gonna make a pretty good parent the way that you're worrying. Just kidding."

Body Count: 9; including the killer, assuming he wasn't a ghost maybe.

1. Rosemary is cleavered in the mouth.
2. Karen is hung on a hook.
3. Kate is drowned in the lake.
4. Bruce is run over by a car.
5. Adelle is killed offscreen.
6. Susan is electrocuted on a light chain.
7. Paul is pitchforked in the chest.
8. Jennifer Welles is tossed down the stairs in a flashback.
9. Tyler Welles has his eyes poked out. 

TL;DR: Girls School Screamers is a plodding, sexless wisp of an exploitation film.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 1418