Surprise Cameo

It's been a while since I've featured another writer on the pages of this blog, but why be stingy? It's always nice to have a guest star. Today's very special article introduces Shannon, one of my very best friends, in her Popcorn Culture debut as she writes about her introduction to horror (I am not ashamed to admit that I appear heavily in this tale) and why scary movies make the perfect date nights, along with some personal recommendations.

Horror with your Honey: 

Why a Week of Scary Movie Dates are Beneficial to a Relationship, and Where to Start

I had never seen a single horror movie before meeting Brennan Klein. All of a sudden, by signing a contact of friendship, I was his go-to movie date for all the classics and everything in between (Literally everything, I cannot tell you the weird horror movies I have seen thanks to him— not complaining).

Luckily (or so I thought), Brennan met someone else who is now responsible for watching horror movies from Spain about someone chopping pieces of students and then piecing them back together into a monster. Initially I was slightly relieved to pass the torch to his boo, but now, in reflection, I miss him dragging me into a movie starring Lee Pace with a title I had never heard of.

[Editor's note: She is referring to Pieces and Possession, the former a great/terrible slasher movie and the latter a decent psychological ghost/possession piece.]

Why?

Because if you and another person were stranded on an island, in scary, deadly conditions, and you get rescued, only that other person can understand the trauma you went through, and thus you and that person have a magical, singular bond because of a horrific experience.

Brennan and I became best friends because we went through the mini-traumas that these horror movies are. Horror is like a roller coaster that pumps adrenaline and dopamine into our systems, and we get off the ride a little closer than before.

So, when you reach that part of your relationship when you are looking at Fandango trying to decide between a sappy romance or some indie flick with subtitles, close your browser and turn on Netflix, because nothing could be better for a relationship than a solid injection of horror.

Now whether you are a horror movie buff like Brennan, a gorehound like me, or a novice on the scary front like I was two years ago, these movies I have selected hit a multitude of the bases.

Allow me to introduce the perfect introduction-horror-movie-date-night-movies!

Movie Cluster #1 : The original trifecta of horror, and its sequel

(watch in this order for the best effect)

Day 1:

Halloween (1978, dir. John Carpenter)

Why this movie: 

Horror movies used to be about tiny budgets, shadows, and masks. John Carpenter (who I met with Brennan) knows this better than anyone else, and which is why the rather tame, theatrical Halloween is my first choice. You get an introduction to the Scream Queen (now better known for her Activia commercials) Jamie Lee Curtis, get to look evil in it’s face, and is not scary enough to make you want to give up on horror as a genre.

Day 2:

Friday the 13th (1980, dir. Sean S. Cunningham)

Why this movie (Writing about this one without spoilers is hard): 

While this movie is no Revenge of the Unhappy Campers (if you have seen that movie, email me), it is the greatest introduction, and arguably just the greatest camp-genre horror movie. One of a major aspects of the horror genre in general is the fact that people are in a contained area when the monster decides to pick off victims one-by-one, and what better buffet is there than kids at a summer camp? Plus, Kevin Bacon is in it. Just watch it.

[EN: For my lengthy review of this film, click here.]

Day 3:

A Nightmare on Elm Street (THE ORIGINAL ONE) (1984, dir. Wes Craven)

Why this movie: 

Wes Craven (who I also met with Brennan) has a really weird mind, as you will see in this movie. Unlike Halloween which is a psychological slasher and Friday which is a classic camp kid killing spree, Nightmare goes beyond the fathomable, into a world one could only dream of— or should I say nightmare. Freddy Krueger is probably the most well known of the three horror baddie front runners, maybe for his complex past or simply his use of wonderful puns. Or maybe it’s because he’s the only one of the three that actually speaks… Also, young Johnny Depp.

[EN: For my lengthy review of this film, click here.]

Day 4:

Scream (1996, dir. Wes Craven)

Why this movie: 

Kevin Williamson basically wrote fan fiction about the three original horror classics and Wes Craven made it amazing. Craven reintroduced horror in the 90s. I was one of those kids who had no idea why everyone was so obsessed with ghost face costumes (keep in mind that I didn’t see a horror film until college) and now I am so bummed because I want to own one. I guess that’s what the internet is for… But in all seriousness, Scream is a perfect watch for a couple who just watched the original three, because together you can point out the references to other horror films that this movie makes, and point out all the stars who were just kids back then, and point out most importantly the horrible 90s fashion.

[For my lengthy review of this film, click here.]

Movie Cluster #2: The other bases (watch any order, but be prepared)

Day 5:

They Live (1988, dir. John Carpenter)

Why this movie: Some of the different subgenres in horror are torture porn (sorry, not covering this one in this feature), monster, slasher, and psychological thriller. So no, I did not pick this movie simply because it is one of my all-time favorite movies, but also because this bad-ass action/thriller/monster movie has the most incredible freaky monsters ever, with an additionally creepy Carpenter commentary on the state of the country. Also you know Shepard Fairey’s “OBEY Propaganda” line? Originated from this movie. BOOM HISTORY MADE.

Day 6:

You’re Next (2013, dir. Adam Wingard)

Why this movie: 

Modern day badass Australian chick visits her boyfriend's family and they start getting killed off in their old family house. It’s essentially a great survival story up to par with classic horror but without the horrible 80s hair-dos.

[For my review of this film, click here.]

Day 7:

The Exorcist (1973, dir. William Friedkin)

Why this movie: 

In my opinion, this is the scariest of them all. This is a possession/ghost sort of horror film, and a classic one at that. For it being the oldest on the list, this movie has the most intense special effects. It is also super perfect for couples, because every time someone decides to walk up those stairs, you will need a hand to hold. And then once the credits roll, you two can both celebrate surviving the possession of Linda Blair.

This concludes the introduction to horror and the conception of a long lasting relationship.

And if things don’t work out, maybe you could use some of the skills you’ve learned from these horror films for other things… 

Thanks for reading, everybody! If you have any opinions on these picks and/or how a horror movie has changed your relationship, please sound off in the comments below. I'm sure Shannon will be patrolling the comments section like a mad hound. If any of these films have piqued your interest, I can offer further recommendations. Have a nice day!

Word Count: 1281

Speak Of The Devil

Year: 2014

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Eric Bana, Édgar Ramírez, Olivia Munn

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Whatever happened to horror posters? At the risk of sounding like an "uphill both ways" old grump, I'd like to posit that studios are playing it way too safe with this year's slate of horror advertisement. And don't even get me started on the screechingly bad DVD cover art. The terribly bland shambles of a poster for Deliver Us From Evil in no way affects the outcome of the movie (which, in its own right, isn't very good), but it's worth noting that, if it was advertised effectively, people might actually go see it.

Deliver Us From Evil is yet another "true story," a horror cliché that has been experiencing a resurgence since the massive success of the "based on the true case files of the Warrens" The Conjuring. To those nervous types out there, never fear. That "inspired by" on the poster means that they added so much fiction to the NYPD sergeant's story that they can't even legally use the already morally dubious phrase "based on" to advertise their film.

Among the fictive elements are the time period, the priest character, the protagonist's backstory, and the antagonist in its entirety. In fact, the studio was so desperate to claw onto the success of James Wan's seminal and mature ghost story that they basically took the story nugget "police officer was friends with the Warrens" and throttled, poked, and prodded it until it resembled The Exorcist as closely as possible, even down to the dynamic between the lead characters and an opening scene in Iraq.

Although there weren't as many shirtless dudes in the Friedkin film.

To be fair, this film is much less beholden to the 1973 classic than recent flicks like The Last Exorcism or The Devil Inside thanks to its unique focus on police procedural and crime drama. The story goes as such. Sergeant Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) stumbles upon a series of interrelated cases thanks to what his adrenaline junkie partner Butler (Joel McHale, yes the guy from Community and The Soup) calls his "radar," a sort of sixth sense about unique emergencies.

A series of strange occurrences around the Bronx lead Bana on an epic quest to discover the source of the demonic possession of Mick Santino (Sean Harris) although, as is par for the course, he doesn't view it as such until long after the intervention of Father Mendoza (Édgar Ramírez), a helpful hunk priest with a connection to one of Santino's victims.

Paranormal events begin building up and linking together across town in a vast web of evil until finally (SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A POSSESSION FILM) a third act exorcism completely derails everything and renders the rest of the plot entirely useless. It is a gamble that does not pay off because, while so much of the beginning of the film is about intrigue and investigation, the return to the normal tropes of the genre brings an adequate plot crashing down onto the cold, hard concrete.

It kills the momentum because there is no indication that such a lengthy process was vital to the plot at any point in the preceding 90 minutes of an already too-bloated film. It's something like if a romantic comedy managed to squeeze some laughs and awws out of a small update to a hoary formula - maybe... an unlikely couple fall in love in space (I'm not a screenwriter) - but then the last twenty minutes are just an exact recreation of the ending of Sleepless in Seattle. It's not like Sleepless is a terrible movie, but we've already seen it. And shoving your Martian princess into a scenario that brings her to the top of the Empire State Building would ruin all the goodwill your film has accrued up till now.

You see where I'm going with this.

 I couldn't be any clearer if I wrote it on the wall.

The plot also has a damning tendency to shift into plodding family drama whenever Sarchie returns home to his wife (Olivia Munn) and daughter (Lulu Wilson). This tonal shift highlights the kinks in the acting far more than the horror sequences, but to be completely honest, none of the actors is working at their full capacity here.

Ramírez is probably the worst, with some wooden deliveries that don't even seem to convince himself of their legitimacy. But Bana and Munn have a devilish lack of chemistry that rivals even the worst line readings from any child actor in the film in terms of the sheer effort it takes to slog through them. McHale delivers the best performance, simultaneously convincing as an acerbic comic relief and eager action hero, but his character mysteriously vanishes for the bulk of the second act in favor of more chomping melodrama between Sarchie and Mendoza.

Bless the casting director who came up with this, though.

But the biggest flaw in the film has been apparent in every section of my review - the writing. Although it's mostly adequate, there are too many moments that push suspension of disbelief too far including when Sarchie somehow fails to notice that his daughter's room is exhibiting the same phenomena of the cases he is investigating and his wife's subsequent failure to remove her daughter from said room.

There are an abundance of subplots that wither and die during the third act and a bizarre obsession with the music of The Doors that intimates at a super special metaphor but rather tests the boundaries of how invasively annoying one single act of symbolism can be.

Also this Jack in the Box gets more scenes than Joel McHale just because scary kids toys are a thing that happens in movies.

But on to the more important matters - is Deliver Us From Evil scary? In a word, yes. In more words, well kinda. It's all part of the dance, this elaborate contract between modern audiences and horror films. It'll make you want to cover your eyes when it's on surround sound in the big screen, but the scares are delicately choreographed to be exactly like every other scene in every other big horror movie.

When there's a mirror at the top of the screen and the hero bends down, you can guess what will happen when he stands up. It'll give you a shock for sure, but all that fear immediately evaporates once the credits roll. It's a boo machine, designed to give you your fair share of frights, but without an ounce more creativity than is necessary. This is all part of the studio attempts to play it safe, just like with the poster design.

It's just scary enough to get people talking, but not so terrifying as to get people thinking. Nobody but the most susceptible moviegoer will go home and have nightmares about Deliver Us From Evil because that's exactly what the producers want. They want to create a ride - an experience of popcorn terror that carefully avoids pushing the envelope to become a truly frightening flick.

And that's fine. It's nice that there are horror films that don't pull out all the stops to bury themselves deep under the skin of their audience. There's a market for that and it's a good way to bring less than hardcore fans into the genre. But I'm not going to pretend that I'll be revisiting Deliver Us From Evil anytime soon.

It's exactly what it needs to be, but what it needs to be is an uninteresting trifle with just enough spice to keep it going but too many flaws to support its lengthy running time.

TL;DR: Deliver Us From Evil is a typical possession flick, scary but not memorably so.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I wouldn't if I were you. And as box office numbers are clearly indicating, people aren't.

Word Count: 1323

Census Bloodbath: Hurts Like Hell

Year: 1981

Director: Tom DeSimone

Cast: Linda Blair, Vincent Van Patten, Peter Barton

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Way back when I was reviewing The Slumber Party Massacre, I professed my intent to follow along with my favorite reviewer Tim Brayton's Summer of Blood feature when he reviews a new slasher movie every weekend. As you might have noticed, I fell behind, largely because the last three films he took on were difficult to obtain if your DVD purchasing budget is below the double digits.

When I discovered he was to be reviewing Hell Night this week, I was psyched. Not only is it one of the more popular non-franchise slasher films, but it was from the slasher watershed year of 1981 and I had never seen it. Knowing nothing other than the fact that it starred a post-Exorcist Linda Blair as a sorority girl, I was rarin' to go on this adventure with Tim.

The poor man.

I am mystified by the popularity of this dull, gore-free mess of a film. Now I have seen some terrible slasher films in my time, many far worse than Hell Night, but usually the fan-beloved slashers have some merit to them, whether it be a cheesy 80's sensibility or at least some great kills. Hell Night has nothing besides a barely competent Linda Blair shaking her boobs in fear, and even with that it's a bland affair.

Clearly she needed to break free from her earlier, more innocent roles like Regan MacNeil.

But before we get to the heavy duty complaining, let's volley up a little bit of plot. It's Hell Night at the Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity/sorority and five new pledges are to be locked up in Garth Manor - the site of a vicious family murder/suicide leaving behind one mentally unstable son - overnight for initiation.

These pledges are Marti Gaines (Linda Blair), who is an obvious enough Final Girl thanks to her star power, but just in case there were any doubt, she is a virtuous and smart girl who doesn't care for sororities and also an accomplished mechanic; Jeff Reed (Peter Barton - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter's Doug), the son of an upper-class family whose father is forcing him to join his fraternity; Seth (Vincent Van Patten), a sex-crazed surfer who loves to hunt; Denise (Suki Goodwin), a British hottie whose pure sluttiness is so overpowering that she doesn't even get a name until 50 minutes in; and Boomer Michaelson, aka "Boom Mike," a small oblong fellow who enjoys acrobatics and like to hang out in the top of the frame every other scene or so.

Since having four kids in a house with a crazed murderer isn't nearly enough for a slasher film in the height of the genre, there are also three pranksters - higher-ups in the frat/sor that are playing tricks on our main foursome. They aren't important and they're knocked off pretty quickly, but one of them is played by Jenny Nuemann, the killer from Nightmares, so that's something.

In terms of where to do your killing, this sure beats a rinky dink old theater.

What follows is a particularly cut-and-dry slasher, the kind that would be produced in abundance preceding the climate change of A Nightmare on Elm Street. There is not a single shadow of a doubt about who the killer is or who will live to see the end of the film. There are only two breaks from formula, subtle ones that I only noticed because I've been spending so much time with the darn things. 

Instead of the girls receiving lengthy stalking sequences and the boys getting quick shock deaths, it's the other way around. I'm not about to speak out for gender representation on the behalf of a film that reduces a female mechanic to a quivering wreck about 20 minutes in, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

The second break from formula is one of the few moments where I can see even a speck of the verve and creativity that so many others seem to find in this film - the car that breaks down (This is a horror film. There is always a car that breaks down.) is actually fixed and rendered usable. Incredible! Call it Chekhov's Wrench.

Unfortunately, the adherence to formula that fills the rest of the moments in Hell Night is unspeakably tedious and unremarkable. Mountains of needless exposition are ladled out during visually unenthusiastic walking sequences, and any moment of "tension" is stretched and stretched until every last bit of flavor is gone.

It's annoying because all the promotional stills make it look so cool.

The single most damning element is that during the death scenes you can't tell what the hell is happening. The blame for this can partially be laid on the crappy VHS transfer I was watching the movie on, but the real culprit is the editing, which muddles even the simplest reveals and mutilations compounded by halfhearted gore wherever it should count the most. If you can't even tell how people are dying, the slasher, she don't work so well, you see?

It's demure, especially by the standards of the gorefests of the early 80's. With its quick cutaways and darkened frames, this film feels more like an MPAA-neutered entry from the waning period toward the end of the century rather than a classic smack dab in the middle of the subgenre's Golden Age.

But no! 1981, darn it! I tentatively held out hope that even without great gore maybe it would make up for lost time with some sleazy exploitation or at least a forest of feathered hair. But no. Seth runs around in his underwear a lot, which is great, but the sex scenes are as musty as a candy rolling around in the bottom of a grandmother's purse and the 80's seemed to give this film a pass, rendering it timeless. Timeless crap, but timeless nonetheless.

No flesh, no blood, no fun.

And Marti spends probably a quarter of the film in a bedroom doing absolutely nothing and steadfastly refusing to be interesting. I can think of far more interesting things this film could have done with Linda Blair and a bed.

What, this isn't what you were thinking of?

Thankfully, the last five minutes or so are well directed (by Tom DeSimone of Good Hot Stuff, Swap Meat, Skin Deep, and Bi-Coastal, among other such family-friendly films) although far from revelatory. These final moments and several bits of flair that lightly sprinkle the middle third of the film are the only things Hell Night has going for it.

The leading lady is wan and whimpering, the gore is barely a spatter, and it made my mind wander so much I began to suspect it might actually be a subliminal hypnotism tape. I can't honestly in good faith recommend this film to anybody anywhere at any time. But at least it was better than To All A Goodnight.

Killer: Andrew Garth

Final Girl: Marti Gaines (Linda Blair)

Best Kill: Scott gets his head twisted around in the only even remotely interesting gore effect.

Sign of the Times: People actively understand an in-depth Leave it to Beaver reference; May's party outfit is a cheetah-print dress and a Madonna ponytail.

Scariest Moment: Seth has to climb over a tall fence with sharp spikes at the top.

Weirdest Moment: Seth walks through an open door in a police station, in which there is a table piled with guns and steals one.

Champion Dialogue: "These quaaludes are murder on my skin."

Body Count: 7; including the killer.

1. May is decapitated with a machete.
2. Scott has his head twisted around backwards.
3. Peter is impaled on a scythe.
4. Denise is killed... somehow. Her body is found in the basement.
5. Seth is shot with a shotgun.
6. Jeff is thrown to his death.
7. Andrew is impaled on the gate spikes. 

TL;DR: Hell Night is a pale specter of a slasher film, always remaining dull and flavorless in the worst possible places.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1348

Census Bloodbath: Happy Fearth of July!

Year: 1988

Director: John Hough

Cast: Yvonne DeCarlo, Rod Steiger, Sarah Torgov

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Again we wade into that strange holiday netherworld in which I watch a festivity-appropriate movie on the day of, but don't get a chance to review it until a day later. So I apologize for not reviewing my Fourth of July pick, 1988's American Gothic, until today, but believe me it's worth the wait.

Since we haven't really talked about the climate of 1988 in detail yet, let me paint you a picture. By the end of the decade, the slasher genre was a grotesque and decadent monstrosity lumbering across the plains of cinema. After the advent of home video, DTV slashers had inundated the market, overwatering the already twisted root that was the subgenre.

If you picked any slasher film from the year at random, you would likely find a bloated franchise picture (Friday the 13th Part VII, Halloween 4, Sleepaway Camp II, etc.), a post-Nightmare supernatural twist on the tropes (Bad Dreams, Deadly Dreams, Ghosthouse), or one of a few DTV stragglers that held on to the traditional slice and dice ways with an iron grip (Death Nurse 2, The Last Slumber Party, Amsterdamned).

At this point, it was a genre set in stone with an increasingly bloodthirsty MPAA slashing out gory scenes left and right. Without the appeal of being a shiny new genre or shocking the audience with bloody kills, desperate slashers were grabbing at straws, eager to find anything twisted and exciting to make a quick buck. Usually these films crashed and burned, but American Gothic is a special little monster that almost certainly deserves more attention than it gets.

OK, maybe not that much attention.

The story goes as such. A group of friends traveling to an island in the Pacific Northwest has their propellor plane break down halfway there. They make an emergency landing on nearby shore and decide that an island is an island, so they can camp here until they repair their plane.

The Meat in this film is an exceptionally uninteresting crop, save for one standout, but when something stands out in this movie, it stands the hell out. First there's your usual crop of clichés like Paul (Stephen Shellen, also in The Stepfather), the cute man with glasses who is offscreen for a good two thirds of the film; Lynn (Fiona Hutchison), this film's nomination for Most Slappable Douchebag;  Terri (Caroline Barclay), a terrible actress and scuba diving enthusiast; Rob (Mark Lindsay Chapman), a handsome and playful young man unfortunately saddled with the worst mullet in human history; Jeff (Mark Erickson) an annoying blonde with a Jew Fro and a pilot's license; and Cynthia (Sarah Torgov), his wife and purveyor of that interest I was referring to earlier.

You see, Cynthia has agreed to go on this trip in order to get over the accidental drowning of her child, the trauma of which led her to be institutionalized. The movie begins with her release, opening on a shot of her trapped behind bars.

It's a metaphor, see?

When the group goes exploring, they discover a large home full of 50-year-old toys and furniture. Instead of running away immediately, they play dress-up with clothes from a wardrobe and dance the Charleston because trespassing is OK as long as it's on an island. Needless to say, when the elderly homeowners return, they're none too pleased, although they do invite the youngsters to stay for the night.

At first Ma (Yvonne DeCarlo, also of Silent Scream) and Pa (Rod Steiger), as they prefer to be called, seem just a wee bit eccentric (their religious fervor shows just a tad too strongly and they won't let anybody near the basement door), but once their three children begin to appear from out of the woodwork (it takes literally several days for all three of them to make their presence known), the travelers grow suspicious.

You see, these kids are actually middle aged men and women who act and dress like they're 12 years old. Fanny (Janet Wright), Woody (Michael J. Pollard, also of Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland), and Teddy (William Hootkins) seem to believe wholeheartedly not only that they're young and hearty, but that it is the 1920's and the era of President Woodrow Wilson.

This is mighty unsettling, but the best of the three actors is Wright, who captures a sort of Umbridge-esque menace while at the same time 100% accurately portraying the simple emotions and responses that an 11-year-old girl would have to her environment.

Needless to say, the family begins to bump off the group one by one because they perceive them to be sinners. This idea isn't helped by many of the members' utterly oblivious smoking, swearing, and sexing. I know this is the way of the slasher world - you drink, you screw, you die - but never has the way to avoid meeting a grisly end seemed so obvious from the get-go.

Maybe don't willingly piss off people insane enough to wear these outfits.

Before we go on, let's get one thing straight. American Gothic is a poorly made film, but not as bereft of artistry as the typical genre entries this late into the decade tended to be. Sure, maybe the boom mike totally eclipses a quarter of the frame in an early shot. Sure, maybe the ancient house looks freshly painted and underpopulated like the production designer constructed it that day and bought whatever he could find for fifty bucks at a thrift shop.

There's little to no gore in the film thanks to the dictatorial rule of the MPAA but somehow, miraculously, the filmmakers took what they had and turned it into a near masterpiece of bonkers B-cinema. The kills are clever and compensate with humor and tension instead of gore (Rob is swung over a cliff via swingset, a long-forgotten Paul turns up dead at the worst possible moment). And despite the limitations of the budget, American Gothic manages to ramp up the creep factor more than any other slasher in the tail end of the decade.

Sure, it's in a campy register. But if you combine the fun of the kills and the totally bizarre characterizations of the killers along with the surprisingly resonant thematic through line provided by Cynthia as she navigates this world of long-preserved children while coping with the loss of her own, the movie transcends everything and becomes startlingly capable. One memorable scene with a mummified infant corpse still manages to be utterly chilling despite the fact that it looks like an alien sculpture made of raisins. 

And if you show me a person who says they don't find this even slightly unsettling, I'll show you a liar.

This goes on for about an hour, at which point the film just gives up and launches into an entirely new storyline. It feels like the sequel to this film was tacked onto its final thirty minutes. It constantly goes places you never expected it to go and defies any and all expectations, all while maintaining its status as a tacky and silly slasher film.

I won't spoil this half, so lunacy-filled as it is, because I'd rather have everybody experience it on their own terms. But let me just say the final shot actually proves that there was at least a smidgen of talent behind the camera and reminds one of The Descent in a mystifyingly positive way.

This film is a terrific story of a family trapped in time wrapped with a slasher bow and I thought it was great fun. It's not truly scary and it won't be getting on anybody's top ten lists unless you pare it down to the most specific of subsets, but American Gothic will certainly become a new classic in the Brennan household.

Killer: Ma (Yvonne DeCarlo), Pa (Rod Steiger), and their Brood (Janet Wright, Michael J. Pollard, William Hootkins)

Final Girl: Cynthia (Sarah Torgov)

Best Kill: They're all lovely, but I'm rather partial to Rob getting swung over a cliff, to which nobody really has any reaction.

Sign of the Times: Aside from Rob's mullet, he listens to that instrumental (copyright-free) 80's rock that all slasher kids seem to be so into.

Scariest Moment: Fanny asks Cynthia to kiss her baby good night.

Weirdest Moment: Take your pick, this is a deeply weird movie. But I'm personally in favor of when Rob tries to get everybody to dance by shouting "C'mon, gang!" at them repeatedly like he's in a 60's sitcom.

Champion Dialogue: "Don't you wanna be in the clean plate club?"

Body Count: 10; 5 vacationers and 5 killers

1. Rob is tossed over a cliff via swingset.
2. Lynn is hung with a jumprope.
3. Jeff is stabbed in the eye with a toy soldier's bayonet.
4. Paul is axed in the face offscreen.
5. Terri has her neck snapped.
6. Fanny is beaten to death with a tin bathtub.
7. Woody is stabbed with a toy soldier's bayonet.
8. Ma is stabbed with knitting needles.
9. Teddy is stabbed in the neck with a scythe.
10. Pa is shot in the chest with a shotgun. 

TL;DR: American Gothic is a fascinating curio and worth more attention than it gets.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1544

L. A. Noir

Year: 2005

Director: Shane Black

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's a testament to the high quality of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that I went in expecting to hate it, but was forced to make a dramatic turnaround. To be fair, I expected to hate it because I was being dumb and confused two titles together so I thought my dad was making us watch Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. But nevertheless, this film grips you from the moment it begins to the moment it ends, a near perfect neo-noir.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang tells the story of one Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.), a small time thief who, when on the run from the cops, accidentally barges into a Hollywood audition room and steals the show. When he is flown out to LA for a screen test, he meets a childhood friend, Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), who moved to the city years ago to try and become an actress. 

After riding along with a sarcastic and suave detective named Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) to train for his role, he manages to convince harmony that he is a private eye. Much to his chagrin, Harmony thinks she's in luck because she's in desperate need of investigating her sister's recent death - an apparent suicide, but Harmony has serious doubts. 

Enormous, perky doubts.

Working alongside Gay Perry, Harry begins to unravel a web of crime, deceit, and murder that spreads throughout the city like a particularly violent and bloody case of chlamydia. I shan't get into the plot specifics here, but it is a twisting path that Harry walks down, a thoroughly modern murder mystery packed to the brim with influences from the very best noir cinema and literature.

On top of all that is a highly unexpected sprinkling of structural humor. The entire conceit of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is that it is a movie being presented to the audience by Harry himself. It's overwhelmingly meta and it's spectacular. Meta movies and I are like Taylor Swift and boys. Most of the time they're dumb but I love them anyway. 

It is with this immense joy for the craft that I can announce that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a truly fantastic example of the form. An important thematic thread that runs throughout the film is the divide between fiction and reality, present in the Hollywood setting and the parallels between the film's plot and the in-universe series of pulp crime novels.

Under extremely microscopic analysis, the true intent of the concept becomes a little dodgy, but it's too hilarious and integral to the tone and mood of the movie to affect enjoyment in any important way. Prolific action screenwriter Shane Black, in his directorial debut, serves up a sardonic world filled with wit and sparkle (and casual gore that wouldn't be out of place in a horror film) and the meta humor - largely applied through narration - is just the icing on the cake.

Or the bandage on the... hand? I didn't get much sleep last night.

The entire cast is impressive for a genre film this slick, but the MVP without a doubt is Robert Downey Jr. Still scrabbling to find a foothold in the business after his descent into drug abuse, this hungry young actor had something to prove. And boy did he. Harry Lockhart is equal parts bitter sarcasm and whimpering puppy dog, a man caught somewhere between his id and his heroic perception of himself.

This is the role than won him Iron Man and it shows. He is tongue in cheek and pithy and lovely and also a sublime idiot. Harry is a man struggling to tamp down on his awkward impulses because the ones that slip out get him deeper and deeper in the muck. His cockiness and his deeply flawed psyche are a playground for the talented Downey, who creates a masterpiece of psychology perfectly conjoined with the heightened tone of the film.

So much so that even relatively mundane actions for the genre become hilarious.

I am perhaps not as well-suited to discuss the ins and out of the action genre as my friend Zach Nix, who indeed runs a blog about the very topic. So I won't make a fool of myself by digging into Kiss Kiss Bang Bang any further than I need to other than to sing its manifold praises.

But I will close out by saying that this film is notable for being the first action film to depict a gay character in a protagonist role, which is a tremendously important development in cinema. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is remarkably progressive, so much so that Google lists the movie under its "LGBT Films" category, which is patently ridiculous (and, in fact, indicative of a deeper prejudice at work - just because a film has a gay character doesn't mean that it is a gay film. You wouldn't label Reservoir Dogs "Crime/Action/Hetero" #socialjusticebrennan) but not altogether unearned.

All in all, this is a film with tremendous value, both entertainment-wise and thematically. It tells a riveting mystery story with a punchy upbeat tone and is absolutely a gem of both the genre and the decade. Always worth a watch.

TL;DR: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a hilarious and sharp mystery movie featuring a top notch performance by Robert Downey Jr.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 906

Fright Flashback: Found Footage

Welcome back to Fright Flashback, where every week until the end of summer we will visit an older horror film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to an upcoming new release. This week we are anticipating Earth to Echo, a found footage E.T. throwback. In celebration, We'll be revisiting The Blair Witch Project, the most influential found footage picture of all time.

Year: 1999

Director: Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez
Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
Run Time: 1 hour 21 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

There is no film that caused more of a stir in the late 90's than The Blair Witch Project, and for good reason. The horror genre had been languishing for an entire decade and change. It was briefly reinvigorated by the release of Scream, but had since returned to increasingly low-rent slasher knockoffs. It was as if the entire genre was taking a deep breath, waiting for the moment when all of a sudden this mysterious little nanobudget found footage flick burst onto the scene and became a massive phenomenon.

Contrary to popular belief (most facts about this film are contrary to popular belief), Blair Witch is not the first found footage horror film. No, that distinction goes to the notorious Cannibal Holocaust, an Italian film so realistic that the director was arrested shortly after its release. A few more entries in the genre were released in the decade that followed, but time has long since forgotten them.

But when you're earning over ten thousand dollars per dollar you spent on a film, you're not gonna be dithering about subgenre history. 

It saves a lot of budget money if your cast isn't around to collect their salaries.

Which allows me to effortlessly segue into the brilliant mechanism that made Blair Witch explode the way it did. The ingenious viral promotional campaign was among the first of its kind, utilizing the young Internet in a way that blew the lid off of everything people knew about film advertisement.

Trailers? Posters? Press releases? Screw that! Rig them with dynamite and knock them off a cliff! Sure, in actuality the film had all these things, but what really made the people take notice, grabbing them by the throats and pulling them in, was the internet campaign. It all started with a web site detailing the history of the Blair Witch "myth," detailing the exploits of this fabled creature through history, finishing up with the story of three student filmmakers who vanished in the Maryland woods in October 1994 when attempting to shoot a documentary about her.

As the film neared completion, more information was added to the web site about new evidence - the discovery of two cameras around the area where the three kids vanished. According to the page, the families of the three students tearfully requested that the footage of their final days be compiled together to hopefully suss out the truth about their fate.

This was revolutionary. For those who grew up out of the influence of this film, it's perhaps a little hard to believe looking from a place of millenial cynicism, but to nearly everybody during the first few weeks of Blair Witch's run, this film was real. I mean, even their IMDb pages read "missing, presumed dead." This was a time before most people had even figured out how to put signatures on their emails and the filmmakers were creating an entirely immersive online universe. It blindsided absolutely everyone.

I was two and a half months old when these photos took place. There is no evidence to the contrary that the Blair Witch was not an infant. The investigation is ongoing.

Blair Witch was one of the very first horror films I ever watched when I was starting to get into them (at the extreme level that I am today) in the Summer of 2011. Revisiting it three years later, my goal was to determine - out of all the influence and power that the film had over its audience - what of that actually shows up onscreen when the film is taken by itself, devoid of context.

The truth is, it isn't very much. It's not an out and out terrible film like some contrarians have complained in recent years, but without its immensely successful promotional campaign, the film wouldn't have made a splash at all.

The Blair Witch Project is the story of Heather (Heather Donahue), a young film student whose pet project is a documentary about the local legend of the Blair Witch. The intrepid young lass intends to camp out in the woods around Burkittsville, the city formally known as Blair, and see what cool footage she can get. She ropes her grunge-to-capacity friend Josh (Joshua Leonard) into helping her shoot it and he brings his friend Mike (Michael C. Williams) along to work audio.

It goes without saying that they never find their way back.

Come on, don't cry. It's not even spoilers, we just talked about it.

Right off the bat, there are several things the film does very well. First and foremost, it creates credible characters in its student documentary team, an incredibly important accomplishment considering that these three are the only characters onscreen throughout the entire film after minute 13. This is compounded by the found footage aspect which, like no other film after it, fully succeeds at using its cinéma vérité style to create depth and realism.

They're not the most likable characters in the world, but likability is something far different from reality. These are young men and women with their own sets of foibles (Mike is a little too hotheaded, Josh is kind of clueless, Heather is self-important and thinks she has all the answers), which lends credence to the conceit that this footage is nonficition. I can attest, I sat next to girls like Heather and guys like Josh all semester.

(WARNING: WE ARE ENTERING SPOILERS TERRITORY. I DON'T SPOIL THE END OR ANYTHING - I'M NOT AN IDIOT. BUT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM, STOP HERE. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU GO IN NOT KNOWING WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE REST OF THE FILM.)

Get that camera out of here. This is a spoiling zone.

Sitting next to those students was just as tortuous as the middle third of the film turns out to be. Although Blair Witch handles its scare sequences with hardscrabble tact and grace (this film works much on the same level as The Descent, introducing a primary danger - being lost - to keep the audience on their toes before ever even hinting at the secondary, more perilous danger - the witch or, you know, whatever), those sequences only work exactly once.

Due to the film's reliance on the power of suggestion for its scares rather than anything visual whatsoever, the film's rewatch value is nil. I'm not claiming that we needed to see the witch for the film to be effective and the "creepy noises" scenes are still creepy, but after one viewing of the film, it's difficult to latch onto the scenario once more with the forehand knowledge that nothing is actually going to happen.

Instead the film becomes a dire slog between listless scare scenes, punctuated with endless arguments. The beginning and the end are still tremendous, but the core of the film just isn't there upon revisitation. The lack of budget really shows and the seams become exposed. Blair Witch is a phenomenon, and I invite all who haven't seen it to appreciate the magic of an initial viewing, but it's not worth sitting through a second time - there's nothing to the film beyond its basic campfire scares.

Its simplicity ends up killing it and it becomes far too easy for the mind to wander after the initial shock has worn off. So yes, it's still a classic. It's a fascinating tentpole in the horror history of the late 20th century. But you won't catch me at any revival screenings searching for hidden meaning. It's just not there.

TL;DR: The Blair Witch Project gets its magic from the cultural phenomenon, not what appears onscreen.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1359

Reviews In This Series

The Blair Witch Project (Myrick & Sanchez, 1999)

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (Berlinger, 2000)

Blair Witch(Wingard, 2016)