Census Bloodbath: The Rage Of Aquarius

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 1987

Director: Michele Soavi

Cast: David Brandon, Barbara Cupisti, Robert Gligorov

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In my experience, there is a big divide between the slasher movies that people imagine and the slasher movies that actually exist. Everyone knows the set-up: a bunch of horny teens move to an isolated location and doff their tops until a big guy in a mask renders them literally topless with a machete or maybe a pair of garden shears. 

These are the tropes and traditions that come to mind when one thinks of a typical 80's horror flick. But in my unfortunately vast experience, the average slasher is nowhere near as fun, campy, sexy, or gory as the ones we picture in our heads. Many slashers are bland, tasteless affairs that are either gutted by the MPAA or left floundering by an inept filmmaker. Sure, there are plenty of tasteless, sleazy, gory masterpieces like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter or The House on Sorority Row, but more often than not the micro-budget formula of slasher movies leads to a bunch of junky clunkers.

I do still tend to enjoy these lesser slasher films, but like a connoisseur of fine wines (or an overly devoted Katherine Heigl fan), I've developed a taste for them. So don't go thinking I'll abandon ship on Census Bloodbath. No way no how, this feature is my pride and joy. I'm just saying that this project involves a lot of long slogs through underlit, flavorless wafers to get to the good stuff. I want you to understand this. I want you to know the entire background of where I'm coming from so you'll listen good when I tell you that StageFright: Aquarius (aka Deliria) is one of the best damn slasher films I've ever seen.

It's a certainly flawed, utterly demented little beastie, but I'll be darned if I can find another late 80's slashfest that's such a dynamic, twisted joy to watch.

It's pretty much Birdman with a chainsaw, so it's technically the Best Best Picture.

StageFright hails from the hallowed grounds of Italy and is a product of some of the greatest horror minds of the era. First time director Michele Soavi had previously worked under giallo maestro Dario Argento for many years, producer Joe D'Amato was already notoriously prolific in the Italian horror/softcore business, and the script was even penned by George Eastman, who played the villainous cannibal in the astonishingly effective 1980 proto-slasher Anthropophagus.

But enough with that nerd garbage. Let's get to some slicin' and dicin'! StageFright: Aquarius takes place at a run-down American theater, where a troupe of out-of-work actors is putting together a terrible play described as an "intellectual musical" by its pompous director Peter (David Brandon). The play, which revolves around a series of murders perpetrated by a dancing man with an owl mask, comes to wicked life when an escaped lunatic named Irving Wallace (Clain Parker) sabotages their rehearsal and begins murdering the cast one by one while they're locked in for the night.

The play's cast forms some of the most interesting and varied Meat I've seen in my many years as a slasher historian. The characters are still painted in bloody broad brush strokes, but they capture the attention more than a generic slate of teen spam. 

There's Alicia (Barbara Cupisti of Opera and The New York Ripper), a pleasant young woman with a sprained ankle who desperately needs the money this role can provide; Corinne (Loredana Parrella), the young ingenue who reads Stanislavsky, wildly overpreparing for a play where a ballet owl murders hookers; Laurel (Mary Sellers), the Designated Slut who will do anything for her own gain; Brett (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), the sassy gay friend that every theater kid remembers having in high school; Sybil (Jo Ann Smith), a feisty young woman who is encumbered with both an unwanted fetus and a feathered mullet - it's up to you to decide which is worse; and Danny (Robert Gligorov of Murder-Rock: Dancing Death, which is a real movie), Sybil's baby daddy and Sting's evil twin.

It's pretty easy to watch every breath Danny takes. He doesn't have many left.

As the quickly dwindling group makes their way around the darkened theater in an attempt to find either the key or an escape route, the film slowly reaches a boil, tossing out everything it's got in a rip-roaring climax of chaotic mayhem. The final act of this film is like a shot of pure adrenaline, propelling any fan of slasher panache or cinematic composition out of their seats with a rousing hurrah. OK, maybe I'm a little drunk on gore, this is my first slasher in a while. But it's great!

The best thing about StageFright is that it's full of surprises. Just when you think you have the film pegged, there's a new surrealistic shock around the corner. Whether it's an actress being stabbed to death in the middle of a scene after the killer is mistaken for her co-star, a high octane Die Hard-esque action sequence in the rafters, or an out-of-the-blue gore effect that matches nothing else that came before, the sense of "what the holy hell am I looking at?" rarely abates.

Although the actual construction of the special makeup effects are pretty standard fare, the filmmakers mix them up in creative and unique ways, manufacturing a lively and consistently engaging gorescape.

I bet when you clicked on this article, you were thinking "I hope he describes this film like he's on the Food Network." You're welcome.

On top of the thrills and spills, StageFright: Aquarius is imbued with the stylish brio that only the Italians could bring to the genre. Arranging a clash between stagebound theatrics and the gruesome reality intruding upon the players, scenes are arranged in messy tableaux of gore and pandemonium. Real blood drips onto spilled stage blood, merging with it beneath a burst of feathers that flit through the air like a blizzard. 

By the end, the set looks like the aftermath of a pillow fight at Andy Warhol's house.

The film slams the audience with jarring overhead shots, creepy mannequins, and extreme eyeball close-ups in a deliciously unpredictable rhythm. And all of this is interspersed with the lively banter of two cops who are obliviously standing watch outside. It's a real doozy.

It's been so long since I've sat through a film that's just so tremendously fun, so I highly recommend StageFright to any slasher fan, veteran or neophyte. Heck, I recommend it to any movie fan, as long as they can stomach some good 80's grue.

And some FANTASTIC dancing.

Now, a caveat. This film isn't perfect. Shocking, I know. But to fully appreciate the vivacity and color of StageFright: Aquarius, one must be subjected to its truly horrendous electric guitar score. Let me paint you a picture. The lead singer of Flock of Seagulls sits down in his dressing room and pops the needle onto his StageFright soundtrack record. After some thoughtful contemplation while he sips his New Coke, he blows his bleached tip out of his eyes and unplugs the machine. "Too much synth," he says.

The music ineffably lends almost exactly the wrong tone to every scene in which it lurks. Whether it's a tense search for a missing key or a POV shot zooming through backstage, the score lends operatic overture and shrill, Mockingjay-esque whistling in precisely the wrong amounts. At times, the zany energy of the music catches up to the presented visuals in a galvanizing way, but these moments are few and far between.

We're also saddled with a final scene that needlessly extends the run time and makes a half-baked stab at a "killer is still alive" scare that slightly deflates the power of the whole affair.

But while those flaws might be fatal to a lesser movie, StageFright: Aquarius is still more than worth your time. If you make a point to watch just one obscure 80's slasher movie from my frighteningly long list, do yourself a favor and let it be this one.

Killer: Irving Wallace (Clain Parker)
Final Girl: Alicia (Barbara Cupisti)
Best Kill: Peter's arm is cut off with a chainsaw which then runs out of gas, at which point the killer decapitates him with an axe. Deliciously brutal.
Sign of the Times: Oh sweet Debbie Harry, please spare me.

Scariest Moment: Alicia struggles to get a key out from between the floorboards while the killer sleeps.
Weirdest Moment: The film ends on a shot of a Marilyn Monroe lookalike playing the saxophone.
Champion Dialogue: "She's a perfect example of the method, she really feels her parts."
Body Count: 10

1. Orderly is stabbed in the neck with a hypodermic needle.
2. Betty is pickaxed in the mouth.
3. Corinne is stabbed to death.
4. Mr. Ferrari is stabbed to death.
5. Mark is drilled through the stomach.
6. Brett is axed in the chest.
7. Sybil is cut in half.
8. Danny is chainsawed in half.
9. Peter is decapitated with an axe.
10. Laurel is stabbed in the gut. 

TL;DR: StageFright: Aquarius is bogged down by some truly dreadful musical decisions and an unnecessary ending, but it's one of the most electrifying and exciting entries in the late 80's slasher genre.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1548

Beat It, Essay: Why Should I Try To Resist?

Happy March, everybody! I didn't post nearly as much as I was hoping too in February, largely because of my commitments at The Backlot and the crushing burden that is my final semester of schoolwork. Believe you me, I have a devastating avalanche of reviews I'm preparing for you, it's just hard to write blog posts when you're already writing papers and articles all day. The human brain can only take so much, the Brennan brain even less so. I am a fragile puppy dog who needs his beauty sleep.

Anyway, lucky for me, I have chosen a major which allows my schoolwork to double as content, so please enjoy my latest essay, which I wrote for my Classical Film Theory class!

The Prompt

Choose two of the four theorists you've read so far and explain what you think their assessment would be of Under the Skin.

Early film theorists developed the rules and philosophies of cinema in a time when the art was in its formative stages. The black and white, silent works that occupied the minds of many theorists are a thing of the past, and cinema has developed beyond the scope of their opinions on the nascent technology. However, their philosophies on the nature of storytelling and the artistic qualities of film remain essential in the discussion of modern cinema, especially when applied to fringe genre or experimental films that push the envelope, like Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin.

Although not every facet of their writings may apply today, theorists like Béla Balázs and Hugo Münsterberg would have had a lot to say about the state of 21st century filmmaking, and it’s important to use their theories as a sounding board for narrative and aesthetic criticism of current films that challenge the nature of the craft. While Balázs and Münsterberg would have undoubtedly mixed opinions about a film like Under the Skin, portions of their theories work in tandem to prove that, despite its radical nature, the film taps into the inherent qualities of the art and harnesses the potential of cinema to create a unique, outsider perspective on humanity.

Hugo Münsterberg in particular would have severe doubts about Under the Skin from the very beginning. Aside from the fact that he considers color and sound to be superfluous because they don’t activate a new level of the mind, his tendency toward realism would bias him against the film’s more experimental moments. Because the film is so distinctly non-narrative, comprised largely of improvised conversations displayed in no particular order, he would have qualms about the film’s value, considering his opposition to arbitrary choices driving a narrative and his predilection for films that tell a clear-cut story.

However, this view ignores the central tenet of his theory; that a movie is made in the mind of its spectator, mirroring mental events – or emotions - as it overcomes and organizes the outside world. In fact, in his work The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, he clearly states that, “To picture emotions must be the central aim of the photoplay.” (48) Far more than any narrative or structural considerations, Under the Skin excels at curating emotion. Although the central character is an impassive observer travelling through the messy human world, the deliberate muting of emotions that should be manifestly present (and would be in any other narrative) incites heightened emotion in the viewing audience.

The best example of this concept in practice is the scene on the beach, in which a dog, a woman, and her husband all drown in quick succession, leaving behind a crying baby on a rocky Scottish beach. The alien protagonist observes these events from the sidelines, but it forms barely a background hum in her perceptions, as her focus is on a lonely diver whom she intends to ensnare. The backgrounding of this evocative, life-altering event gives it muted importance in the narrative, but creates shrill alarm bells in the minds of the audience. They perceive this occurrence as brutal and powerful, but the scene’s conscious removal of emotion creates discord within the viewer, heightening their distressed reaction to a fever pitch.

Münsterberg’s own words lend credence to his potential support of this method of storytelling: “The photoplay tells us a human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely space, time, and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely attention, memory, imagination, and emotion… [These events] reach complete isolation from the practical world through the perfect unity of plot and pictorial appearance.” (74, 82) If there’s one thing that can be said about Under the Skin, it is that it successfully isolates itself from any aspect of the real world, through its eccentric small town Scotland setting, its ice cold protagonist, and its challenging, experimental visual schema.

Under the Skin’s violence, eroticism, realism of setting and dialogue, and lack of causality likewise find a friend within his theoretical works, although its ambiguity doesn’t allow the film to come full circle and satisfy the energies it creates in the audience. This is purposeful on the part of the filmmakers, intending to leave the audience with a lasting, indelible sense of unease, but Münsterberg would not have been pleased. He may have never fully supported the film because its ambiguous narrative and thematic structure clashes with his fervent belief in filmic unity, although it does satisfy his prime concern of depicting the inner emotional workings of the mind rather than simply representing real events.

Balázs, on the other hand, would have an almost entirely opposite reaction. The fundamentals of his theory perfectly mesh with the film, but his esteem would be undone by opinions located at the fringes of his work. He would adore the film as an adaptation of an inferior literary work transformed into a work of high cinema, and appreciate its delicate use of its material to draw attention to unnoticed details of the human experience.

Its close-ups take on the perspective of an alien presence, watching the minute interactions of human beings as if they were entirely unknown, especially in the scenes where the woman is driving around the streets closely observing the male passersby, eventually shifting to the females as she comes into her own identity. This perspective is key to Balázs theory on close-ups, which he explained in his Theory of the Film by saying, “The close-up shows your shadow on the wall with which you have lived all your life and which you scarcely knew.” (55)

The soundscape, in which sounds are either muffled through the van’s glass as if it’s driving underwater or speech is shrill and garbled, powerfully attacking the senses but not transmitting meaning, also acts as a sonic close-up. One particularly memorable moment is when the woman is swept up in a crowd of women heading to a dance club. Their happy chatter is rendered unrecognizable by a sort of aural blurring effect that renders the recognizable, pleasant sounds as harsh and unfamiliar. 

This is a concept that would have delighted Balázs immensely, considering that he was one of the only early theorists to welcome to presence of sound in film. In fact, he wrote fervently on this topic, saying, “Only when the sound film will have resolved noise into its elements, segregated individual, intimate voices, and made them speak to us separately in vocal, acoustic close-up; when these isolated detail-sounds will be collated again in purposeful order by sound montage, then will the sound film have become a new art.” (198-199)

The sound design, use of close-ups, and presence in an outlying genre would have made Under the Skin a film of incredible interest to Balázs, but the stricter tenets of his philosophy jar against the experimental, ambiguous nature of the film. While he believed that distortion and transformation of reality was necessary because “only by means of unaccustomed and unexpected method produced by striking set-ups can old, familiar and therefore never seen things hit our eye with new impressions,” (93) he also believed that this distortion should function to advance and support a structured, orderly plot.

Under the Skin has no truly recognizable plot structure to speak of, existing only in moments of human life glimpsed from behind a pane of glass or moments of human death and despair in the dark, terrible void of the woman’s lair. The plot, insofar as there is one, is languorous and obtuse, refusing to adhere to recognizable structures. And many moments, especially the colorful kaleidoscopic view following the first victim’s consumption and the lengthy opening scene in which a series of syllables is spoken over the image of an eye, have very little concrete narrative value whatsoever.

Balázs would object to this very much, having said that “distortion… must always be distortion of something. If that something is no longer present in the picture then the meaning and significance of the distortion is also gone.” (102) He would consider moments this experimental to be a “degenerative phenomenon of bourgeois art… like visions seen with closed eyes.” (108, 179) 

Although this inhuman style of filmmaking deliberately and effectively displays humanity through a cold and unusual lens, the style is just far too unnatural for either Balázs or Münsterberg to truly be capable of appreciating. But despite their potential ardent dislike for Under the Skin, their theories support the film’s validity as a piece of cinematic art in many startling and timeless ways. Although cinema technology has advanced far beyond the scope of their imagination, their central tenets continue to hold true throughout the ages, because even as the materials of film advance, the ancient techniques of storytelling and evocation of emotion remain eternal.

Word Count: 1613

Works Cited

Balázs, Béla. Theory of the Film; (character and Growth of a New Art). Trans. Edith Bone. London: Dobson, 1952. Print.

Münsterberg, Hugo. The Photoplay: A Psychological Study. New York: D. Appleton, 1916. Print.

I See You Shiva With Anticipation

Year: 2014

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There are three types of indie movies. 1) Films which showcase a brilliant artist who is given short shrift in Hollywood for no good reason. 2) Films which showcase a dreadful artist who is given short shrift in Hollywood for a very good reason. And 3) Films that attempt to be indie and meaningful because they know that's cool now, but they're directed by the guy who did Real Steel and Cheaper by the Dozen.

Guess which category This Is Where I Leave You falls under. 

Now I'm not saying that director Shawn Levy is a terrible artist. No way no how. I'm just saying that his pedigree (which also includes The Internship and all three Night at the Museum films) in no way prepares him to treat this film's material with the delicacy that its demanding tonal shifts deserve. It would take a lot of skill to finesse the low key dramedy of Jonathan Tropper's source novel into even mildly diverting cinema, and Levy just doesn't have the practice.

Well, I guess Ben Stiller and his museum buddies are KIND of like a dysfunctional Jewish family.

This Is Where I Leave You tells the story of the Altman family, which is brought together by the death of a patriarch. His last wish was his wife and kids to sit shiva, forcing them to remain in proximity with one another for the first time in years. 

The most important member of this family (in terms of screen time, not interest) is Judd Altman (Jason Bateman), a bitter man who just discovered that his wife was cheating on him with his boss. This causes some super indie problems for him, because he has exactly followed his plan for how his life should be, but it isn't bringing him happiness. A chance encounter with Penny (Rose Byrne), an old flame, reminds him that sometimes love can be messy, especially if you're in a movie that premiered at TIFF.

The rest of his family includes Wendy (Tina Fey), who has a kid and is married to a neglectful businessman despite the fact that she's in love with a brain-damaged neighbor inexplicably named Horry (Timothy Olyphant); Paul (Corey Stoll), who is a straight-laced square failing to have a baby with his wife Annie (Kathryn Hahn); Phillip (Adam Driver), who is the baby of the family, a hopeless lothario, and a perennial screwup who somehow convinced a beautiful psychiatrist named Tracy (Connie Britton) to fall in love with him; and their mother Hillary (Jane Fonda), who just got a boob job. 

Yay! Isn't it gross when old people show interest in sex? Judd certainly seems to think so, according to the immense amount of screentime spent on him staring at his mother's chest in revulsion.

Them old broads be crazy, amirite?

It's certainly exciting to see a depiction of the interactions and customs of a Jewish family in the modern, secular world. But it would be more exciting if most of them were actually Jewish or gave half a flying Pop-Tart about the implications of their minority faith on the subtext. 

There's a smattering of funny, charming moments, largely thanks to the abundance of funny, charming actors. And the drama is handily handled (to coin a nifty phrase), especially by Fey and Bateman, who have the heaviest of burdens on their shoulders. But despite the best efforts of the cast (all of whom are genuinely enjoyable save for Driver's perplexing emphasis on shouting his lines and Byrne's hard swallowing of her natural Australian accent), This Is Where I Leave You falls flat as a pancake.

In all fairness to Rose Byrne, who I love, her character is so indie vanilla that I can't imagine what else there would be to do other than babble lines in half-cocked American. You gotta make things enjoyable for yourself.

The biggest problem with the film is that it has no idea what to do with its prodigious cast. The performers are all proven talents with mid-level star power just dripping off of them, but the plot only has the attention span for at most three protagonists. The sprawling number of celebrities in the background steals focus from the characters that we're supposed to care about, and the imbalanced plot threads prevent us from caring about them in the first place. It's a lose-lose situation. 

Basically, this film is what would have happened if, instead of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, The Skeleton Twins had cast the entire line-up of Saturday Night Live. There are so many balls being juggled here that some of them just roll away without anybody noticing.

Characters twirl in and out of existence, vanishing from this dimension until they're needed for the next forced plot point. Several of the siblings' significant others are banished to purgatory early on, only to be trotted out on special occasions. And I'm pretty sure Connie Britton's character died of neglect, locked in an upstairs closet. The only consistent presence is a potty-training toddler, who is incidentally the most compelling of the bunch.

This isn't even a third of the cast of this tiny tiny film.

Overall, This Is Where I Leave You is just too generic to be worth the hassle. There's endless heavy-handed exposition laced conversations, routine characterizations, and nothing new to say about the state of the American family. Been there, done that. There is one great sequence where the siblings repeat a series of cordial platitudes to guests at a funeral that highlights the repetitive dullness and constant lying that these types of polite gatherings require.

But beyond that, the film doesn't attempt to do anything more than exist as a piece of disposable cinema. Miss this film, and don't bother calling it on its birthday.

TL;DR: This Is Where I Leave You is dull and generic, but has a decently sized slate of charming actors.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1005

Women In Horror Month: Fashion Victims

When I was coming up with ideas for celebrating Women in Horror Month, my mind kept wandering to the 80's, because that's just how I'm wired. I guess I was born with a legwarmer in my mouth. Anyway, when one thinks specifically of women in 80's horror, it's hard to see past the Mount Everest of teased hair and shoulder pads, so I decided to pay tribute to some of the most indelible fashions of the decade, as presented on the catwalk of horror (I call dibs on that movie name).

The Ten Best-Dressed Eighties Ladies

#10 Kim (Prom Night)

Inflicted Actress: Jamie Lee Curtis
Year: 1980

OK, this outfit isn't truly special until you see it in motion during a three minute disco sequence crammed into the middle of a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher film. But Jamie Lee's ringlets combined with the ineffable puffiness of that Pepto pink dress keep legions of fans coming back to Prom Night, a dull film which really should be overshadowed by its brain-dead, endlessly bizarre sequels.

#9 Denise (Splatter University)

Inflicted Actress: Denise Texeira
Year: 1984

Splatter University is low on this list - as it should be on any list - because it's too low-fi to actually afford any provocative (read: non-beige) costumes. But Denise's spiked fingerless gloves and fire engine red hair that threatens to engulf her entire head like the creature from The Blob form an irresistible axis of evil.

#8 Debbie (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master)

Inflicted Actress: Brooke Theiss
Year: 1988

Among all the high school stereotypes presented in this film (jock, nerd, outsider, etc.), Debbie's is the only label that could only have existed in 1988: Workout Queen. Although she's only shown lifting weights (good for her, though - bustin' gender barriers), you just know she spends every weekend sweatin' it to the oldies in her headband and aerobic sneakers. Add in the nails and that chained belt and you've got yourself a recipe for instant success.

#7 Sara (Sorority House Massacre)

Inflicted Actress: Pamela Ross
Year: 1986

The unequivocal best scene in Sorority House Massacre is when the sorority girls try on their rich friend's clothes, resulting in an endless montage of the girls wearing different-colored baggy pantsuits. But even the gauzy garishness of that scene is outmatched by Sara's midriff-revealing fruitsplosion, which makes her look more like a Fantasy Island desk clerk than an actual human university student.

#6 Diane/Blaze (New Year's Evil)

Inflicted Actress: Roz Kelly
Year: 1980

As any aging music host knows, it's tough to keep up with the shifting trends of youth culture. But for Blaze - wife, mother, and patron saint of crappy New Wave rock - it's as easy as slipping into her hot pink aluminum foil minidress and accompanying choker.

#5 Jess (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II)

Inflicted Actress: Beth Gondek
Year: 1987

I told you Prom Night is always gonna be inevitably overshadowed by its much weirder sequels. Jess is living proof of just how far fashion had gone down the rabbit hole in the seven years since the beginning of the decade. Her mismatched astrological earrings fit exactly imperfectly with each carefully clashing layer upon layer of endless cloth that drapes her trembling frame. I'm surprised her bones don't just snap under the weight, but I have a sneaking suspicion that her hair is aerodynamically designed to prevent her from falling over.

#4 J.J. (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan)

Inflicted Actress: Saffron Henderson
Year: 1989

She almost made it. Poor J. J. almost escaped the decade before Jason's resurrection dragged her and her bubblegum guitar and her patent leather jacket and her broom bristle Joan Jett bangs out into the open ocean... and certain doom.

#3 Violet (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)

Inflicted Actress: Tiffany Helm
Year: 1985

For a movie supposedly set a full decade after the mid-80's set Final Chapter, A New Beginning doesn't do much in the way of makeup, hair, dancing, and music to even vaguely attempt to paw at futurism. Violet gets the worst of it, looking in every scene like she was just mugged by a Go-Go's video. Even her death is mired in 80's garbage - she dies doing the robot, for crying out loud! If you chug a New Coke before bed and sleep with a Rubik's Cube under your pillow, Violet is who you'll be dreaming about.

#2 Samantha (Night of the Comet)

Inflicted Actress: Kelli Maroney
Year: 1984

The Valley Girl Chic sweater wouldn't be too much of an imposition, but toss on those Cindy Crawford ringlets pulled so tight that she looks like a 40-year-old Target manager and you've got yourself a nuclear meltdown of a fashion disaster. We're gonna have to call in the EPA on this one.

#1 April (Killer Party)

Inflicted Actress: Danielle Kiraly
Year: 1986

Even if you can forget the fact that she's at a drive-in, the most 80's thing about April is everything. I can't quite recall the details of this scene, but I'm more certain than anything I've ever known that she is wearing roller skates in the bottom half of this picture. The song may go "April, you're no fool," but whoever dressed her certainly is.


Thanks for hanging out during this year's Women in Horror Month extravaganza! Stay tuned for next year, where things are gonna get really crazy (In that I don't have school and can actually write more than one post every 94 days)!
Word Count: 914

Love Is A Battlefield

Year: 2015

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle

Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Fifty Shades of Grey is one of only two wide-release movies this year so far directed by a woman (the other is Selma, which was released in early January after bombing its Oscar-qualifying run in November). So there's that.

It's also the first movie ever to be based on a fanfiction. At least, the first movie not made in a Minnesota basement. It's true. E. L. James, author of the wildly successful smut trilogy, originally wrote it for the characters of Edward and Bella from Twilight, which explains the Washington setting, the romanticization of stalker behavior, and the deceased romantic lead.

Oh wait. This just in - the character of Christian Grey is, in fact, performed by a living man. Please excuse my mistake, it's a little hard to tell.

I thought it was a Weekend at Bernie's-type situation.

If you've been on the Internet for more than twelve seconds over the past couple weeks, you probably know the intricacies of the plot more intimately than your own name, but humor me for a second while I run through it. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a dowdy lit student who travels to Seattle on the behalf of her under-the-weather journalist roommate (Eloise Mumford) to interview business magnate Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). After tripping into the room and crashing to the floor like she's in an X-Games adaptation of a Katherine Heigl movie, she piques his attention. 

As she fumbles with the pre-printed sheet of interview questions, he hands her a pencil of such prodigious size and girth that it stretches the limits of phallic symbolism, ripping the space-time continuum and sucking Jamie Dornan's penis into a black hole, preventing it from ever being shown onscreen. Of course Miss Steele sucks on the pencil, which she doesn't even need because she's using a recorder. Also she never actually asks more than two questions, requiring him to send his answers in an email. 

The reason I've spent so much time describing this one scene is that it's a perfect representation of the themes and motifs of the entire film. Namely: wildly misguided sexual imagery, the insipid non-structure of the plot, and a mysterious predilection for 90's technology. 

I mean, really. Anastasia is the last woman on earth still using a flip phone, and Christian sends her more emails than a Nigerian prince. I suppose we shouldn't expect technological realism from a 51-year-old fanfiction smut author who worked under the name "Snowqueen's Icedragon," but presumably screenwriter Kelly Marcel (of Saving Mr. Banks) has met actual humans that don't sport frosted blonde tips and Walkmen. It's a mystery far more vexing and intriguing than the wan drama that plays out during the film's overlong running time.

What are his motivations? What lies behind those eyes? Where did he get that jacket?

Anyway, Christian eventually reveals to Anna that he is a dom, the controlling partner in a BDSM relationship (which, if you're truly interested in the topic, is far better explored... well, anywhere else, but especially here). He wants her to sign a contract and become his willing submissive partner, turning over the decision-making in their sexual relationship to him and allowing him to punish her with flogs, ropes, and other toys from his "playroom."

The bulk of the film is about Anastasia testing the limits of her willingness to enter into this type of relationship with a man as aesthetically stimulating as Christian Grey. 

According to the philosophy of Russian Formalism, there are four categories into which the functions of human action fall: the practical (serving immediate use), the theoretical (serving general or unspecified use), the symbolic (serving in the place of another object or activity), and the aesthetic (serving no purpose whatsoever, existing for themselves for pure contemplation and perception). In order for an object to achieve true artistic value, it must first divorce itself from all useful attributes to attain the status of pure aesthetic. Considering that his character has no practical use (his motivations and desires in no way shape the plot), theoretical use (he has no value to other people, serving only his needs), or symbolic use (the idea of characters serving a "theme" is beyond the scope of E. L. James' literary prowess), he is an object of pure aesthetic. Therefore, Fifty Shades of Grey is a work of art. Just a little tidbit to bust out when you're cruising the bars.

The book (unfortunately the first in a trilogy) is notorious for two things. 1) Depicting a typical abusive relationship tarted up as vanilla BDSM erotica, and 2) terrible, terrible writing depicting a variety of superfluous sex acts (including something unspeakable with a tampon) sprinkled with phrases like "inner goddess" and "double crap." It's misleading, malnourished dreck, but it's provocative dreck and as such has a huge following.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the film adaptation tones down both of these aspects. In the plus column, Christian Grey is still a controlling, manipulative boyfriend, but the film shifts the tone a long way away from idealizing abuse. The downside is that, in turning down the volume on every single characterizing aspect of the book (especially the atrocious parts), they removed any particular reason to see it.

People came to see some godawful smut, dammit, not some watered-down trifle with little sex, vaguely cheesy but unfunny dialogue ("laters, baby"), and non-starter drama. I always expected there to be walkouts when I went to see this film in the theater, but not because it was so extravagantly boring.

The sex scenes are sparse, repetitive, and framed with absolutely no sense of danger. And when we're not watching Grey lightly spank Anna with his silk flog du jour (literally the only thing he does, despite his playroom wall looking like the dental tools from Little Shop of Horrors), we're feasting our eyes on leaden, conflict-free drama like "I'm going to visit my mom" or "let's fly in this impractical helicopter to an Ellie Goulding song" or "Rita Ora has two lines in this movie," all rendered through exhausting spinning camera shots.

"Let's have vague, thrusty, barely R-rated sex."

By far the film's biggest fault is its complete lack of sex appeal. Fifty Shades of Grey is almost anti-erotic, and I don't just mean in the "BDSM is unappealing to many people" kind of way. Johnson and Dornan strip down at regular intervals to hump like mindless, alabaster automatons going through the motions to make their sacrifice to the gods and goddesses of softcore bondage. Their lack of chemistry is downright appalling. Mother Theresa has had dreams more erotic than this film.

Now, let's be fair to Jamie Dornan - the character of Christian Grey is more or less impossible to play. This role could vanquish even the most accomplished actor. This man has no past or future, and no particular reason to be drawn to this specific woman. He is literally just a penis, which, incidentally, he is not allowed to show. It's a conundrum.

I want to make it clear that I'm not blaming him for the failures of this film as either a work of cinema or a tawdry piece of erotica. No, that buck should be passed directly to Hollywood, who robbed the source material of its already extremely limited appeal in an attempt to force it into a toothless, mass-appeal framework.

The whiteness! It burns!

But do you want to know the really sad thing about Fifty Shades of Grey? It's really not that bad. It might be a terrible adaptation of a terrible book, but that double negative means that it's at least something you can be capable of sitting through. It may be boring, unerotic, and bland, but it's not, like, the worst thing ever. Which, in some eyes (mine), would have made it the best thing ever. It's noncommittal in both directions, so it's even more completely useless.

The one bright spark to come out of this whole sodden mess is an unexpected talent: Dakota Johnson. She has a quiet spark that brings a bubbling humor to Anastasia Steele, anchoring the film in a decently pleasurable register for a surprising amount of time. I can honestly say that I would rewatch the film for the sole purpose of seeing her cast her spell, particularly in Anna's unforgettable drunk scene.

Oh, also there's exactly one impeccably shot moment - a meeting in which Anna and Christian discuss the contract, silhouetted through a soft red light that's unmistakably beautiful.

Oh, and they do a much better job of making Anna seem dowdy and average than they ever managed to do with Bella Swan. So that's something.

Look at me, I'm a human woman!

All things considered, Fifty Shades of Grey has enough to just barely squeak by as a non-hateable experience. But it's an utter failure at each and every feat it attempts. It's not offensive or sinful, as its puerile declaimers are saying. But it's also completely devoid of even the erratic, warped spark of its source material. One to miss.

TL;DR: Fifty Shades of Grey is non-erotic and dull, but spruced up somewhat by Dakota Johnson's lively performance.

Rating: 4/10

Should I Spend Money On This? It made enough. Leave the poor thing alone.

Word Count: 1563
Reviews In This Series
Fifty Shades of Grey (Taylor-Johnson, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (Foley, 2017)
Fifty Shades Freed (Foley, 2018)

This Franchise Has Gone Straight To Hell

WARNING: This film is batsh*t insane and this review contains spoilers for many key WTF moments. If you are the one person in the world who has genuine interest in watching the ninth Friday the 13th film sight unseen, leave now or forever hold your peace.

Year: 1993

Director: Adam Marcus

Cast: John D. LeMay, Kari Keegan, Kane Hodder

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's the early 90's. You are a New Line Entertainment executive. After Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan flopped miserably in 1989, Paramount decided to up sticks and sell you the rights to the franchise. The Friday the 13th title has been sucked dry by one too many trips to the well, but you think you can squeeze one last droplet of box office gold out of the Voorhees name. What do you do?

Was your answer "stick a stake in the franchise by turning Jason into a Lovecraftian hell demon, keeping Kane Hodder offscreen for as long as possible, claiming it's the final film, then sending Jason to space a decade later"? If not, congratulations. You are not a New Line Entertainment executive in the early 90's. Though maybe you should have been.

In this scenario, Jason represents the F13 series and the other guy represents what New Line did to it.

Wanting to bring a little bit of that New Line charm by injecting some Nightmare into a cut-and-dry franchise, they completely lost sight of why anybody wanted to watch the damn things in the first place. Jason Goes to Hell is insane enough to be worth spending some time with, but it's about as far away from a Friday the 13th film that a flick with a double digit body count can be.

The film opens reasonably enough. A young woman drives up to a cabin on the edge of Crystal Lake, fixes a broken light bulb, then steps into the shower. Considering when last we left our dear Jason (Kane Hodder), he was a nuclear waste-infected dead child in the Manhattan sewer system, one might reasonably expect some incredibly bizarre Rube Goldbergian chain of events to bring him back to life. One is about to experience the first of many disappointments as Jason shows up alive and well for no apparent reason, other than the fact that he really really hates it when a woman commits the cardinal sin of owning breasts.

He chases her through a laundry list of slasher clichés, teleports in front of her in the woods, and... she dives into the bushes, whereupon the hockey-masked behemoth is promptly blown up by the FBI.

This is but a taste test of the weirdness yet to come.

I think it's interesting that the FBI realizes the only way to lure Jason is to send a lithe female agent to a cabin to open and close a medicine cabinet a couple times, but the rest of the film ignores this kind of genre-savvy quality. Anyway, during Jason's autopsy his heart begins beating again, possibly because he finally learned the true meaning of Christmas. Falling into an age-old slasher trope, the coroner picks up the heart and takes a huge bite out of it - wait what? I think that violates the Hippocratic oath.

What all this boils down to is that Jason is a body-hopping demon worm who needs to find a member of the Voorhees bloodline to be reborn, temporarily occupying other bodies on his quest for resurrection. If he gets to slice up some horny campers along the way, all the better. Life is about little detours. 

All of this insane exposition is handily explained to us by Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), a bounty hunter with an open mind who has been following Jason for years. A sleazy TV shock jock named Robert Campbell (Steven Culp) offers Duke a hefty sum to bring down Voorhees once and for all. Or at least until the sequel gets greenlit.

Action converges onto the town of Crystal Lake, where "Jason Is Dead" celebrations are ramping up at the local diner, courtesy of local business owner Joey (Rusty Schwimmer) and her totally straight husband Shelby (Leslie Jordan, who is basically the gay equivalent of Danny DeVito). When Jason (in the body of the sheriff, his hockey-masked self only revealed in reflections) murders a waitress named Diana (Erin Gray), her daughter Jessica (Kari Keegan) rushes to town, bringing her boyfriend Robert and new baby in tow. 

When will my reflection show who I am inside?

Jessica's baby daddy Steven (John D. LeMay, the only person to appear in the Friday the 13th TV show and one of the films, ring a ding ding) is accused of Diana's murder, but I'm more concerned with his sense of style. His glasses, voice, chin, and hair paint him as a stereotypical high school nerd, but he seems to be about 30 and wears a letterman jacket so I honestly have no clue what's going on with him. I know I shouldn't be concerned with Steven's hypothetical archetype when the townspeople are being murdered by a Lovecraftian worm demon, but just look at this.

Nerd.

Jock.

Nerd.

Jock.

Muppet Baby Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It's like all the male characters of The Breakfast Club were in a horrific automobile accident and the doctors combined all the surviving parts into one dead-eyed monstrosity.

Regardless of Steven's classification, the film lumbers along its loopy way, weaving through three entirely separate genres: along with the Clive Barker-esque supernatural shenanigans, the writers also see fit to toss in a traditional Friday the 13th replete with naked campers (and ample male ass - progressive!), as well as a small town family soap drama. This is not a storytelling format the ceaselessly formulaic franchise is equipped to handle. Jason Goes to Hell is hardly good enough to tackle one of these genres with full steam, but with so many disparate threads to keep track of, it lolls drunkenly back and forth with a plodding monotony.

There is a large cast to provide a suitable body count, but most of the deaths are cheap and general (if I see one more body smeared with blood but lacking a discernible slash wound, I might just grab a machete myself), and the film can't even keep track of its protagonists, let alone the minor characters. The baby subplot is an enormous waste of time with no impact on the narrative in any way (in fact, the central couple walks away from the rubble after the climactic showdown, having apparently forgotten that there was a small human accompanying them before), and random characters fulfill requirements of the plot with absolutely no motivation or agency. This occurs most execrably in a scene where Joey's teen son provides Steven with a getaway car out of the blue, a moment so unfounded that it accidentally shoots the script off into the avant-garde. 

And I'm beyond questioning why Jason performs his killing on the people he does, but way too many victims are outside of his range of focus. It's just distracting.

There are only two genuinely good moments in the entire film. The first operates on a cinematic level, in which Jason is lit by a car's blinker lights. The second operates with humor, during an exchange between Steven and his cop friend on the side of the road. Other than that, Jason Goes to Hell is a downright mess at a fundamental level.

Did you think I'd let you escape without seeing the gross demon worm?

The film is only saved (and slightly, at that) by its pure commitment to the inexplicable. Some gore gags surrounding Jason's body-swapping are truly unbelievable moments that need to be seen to be believed. And every new plot point, homoerotic shaving scene, diner shootout, or musical kazoo sting slathered onto the complicated screenplay like too much barbecue sauce furthers the tremendous, indecent weirdness of the entire thing. It's not quite bizarre enough to reach a truly bad-good register, and it inexcusably wastes Kane Hodder, who is the best thing to ever happen to the godforsaken franchise. But it's at the very least watchable, and for a film this unequivocally broken, that's a very very good thing.

Killer: Jason Voorhees, the Body Hopping Demon Worm (Kane Hodder)

Final Girl: Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan)

Best Kill: As Deborah has sex with her boyfriend, she is impaled with a spike and split in half. That's what you get for not using a condom.

Sign of the Times: The wordless, copyright-free "rock" music that Steven listens to in the car uses actual guitars.

Scariest Moment: After Jason abandons Josh's body, it disintegrates into a gooey puddle of nightmares.

Weirdest Moment: A police officer checks someone's wrist pulse and announces "He's breathing!"

Champion Dialogue: "That makes me think of a little girl in a pink dress sticking a hot dog through a donut."

Body Count: 23; not including five more Jason-style murders that were reported on American Case File.

1. Coroner is possessed and disposed of.
2. Coroner's Assistant is pushed into a metal grate and stabbed with a probe. 
3. Security Guard is killed offscreen.
4. Mullet Security Guard is killed offscreen.
5. Alexis is slashed with a straight razor.
6. Deborah is stabbed in the back with a barbed wire spike and ripped in half.
7. Luke is killed offscreen.
8. Edna gets her head slammed in a car door.
9. Josh is possessed by Jason and messily disposed of.
10. Diana has a knife thrown into her back.
11. Robert is possessed and impaled on a barbecue skewer.
12. Officer Ryan has her head bashed against a locker.
13. Officer Mark and
14. Officer Brian have their heads smashed together.
15. Ward's arm is broken and he dies because he's a loser.
16. Diner Patron #1 is crushed against the counter.
17. Diner Patron #2 is shot with a shotgun.
18.  Shelby has his face cooked in a deep fryer.
19. Joey gets her face bashed in.
20. Vicki is impaled on a barbecue skewer and has her head crushed.
21. Randy is possessed, then gets his neck sliced with a machete.
22. Creighton Duke is hugged to death.
23. Jason Voorhees is stabbed with a ceremonial dagger and finally dragged to Hell. 

TL;DR: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is tremendously weird, which is the irrevocably broken film's saving grace.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1719

Reviews In This Series

Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980)

Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981)

Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D (Miner, 1982)

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984)

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985)

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (McLoughlin, 1986)

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988)

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Hedden, 1989)

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993)

Jason X (Isaac, 2001)

Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003)

Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009)