Splatter University

As some of you may know, I'm currently enrolled in a class called "American Film Genres" that, by some sinister twist of fate, is focused on horror movies this semester. Hopefully this class will help me be able to enhance my blog by teaching me a lot more about the context in which classic films were made and ways to analyze horror's relevance to society.

Because it is relevant.

More than any other genre, horror reflects the tensions and mores of the society in which it was developed. Afraid of the implications of going nuclear? We got Godzilla. Afraid of the noblemen having too much power? We got the sinister Count Orlok in Nosferatu and the mad asylum director in Dr. Caligari.

Horror is catharsis that allows us to face our fears in a safe environment while at the same time receiving the thrills and chills that keep our adrenaline pumping (and our endorphine levels high). In this class, we're working chronologically through the development of the genre from German Expressionism in the 1920s all the way up to current Postmodernism.

I'll release a series of mini reviews as I go along, so you can catch up with the same horror classics I'm learning about in class! Here's what I've got for my first three weeks in this beautiful beautiful class.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Year: 1920

Director: Robert Wiene

Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher

Run Time: 1 hour 7 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

In the 1920s film was so new that you couldn't turn on a camera without doing at least three things for the first time. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Widely regarded as one of the first horror films, it also featured one of the first cinematic twist endings. This was a studio mandated ending to avoid the "people in power are psychos" theme that I mentioned earlier, so this is probably one of the first examples of studio meddling too for that matter.

Perhaps the most notable feature of Dr. Caligari is the visuals. This film and the same year's Nosferatu ignited the period of German Expressionism in which the setting and costumes don't reflect reality, rather the emotions behind the characters. Caligari is filled to the brim with twisted, spiky scenery that instantly places the viewer in the mind of its less than sane protagonist.

The story really doesn't matter, it's all just in support of the lavish (and outrageously cheap - they were mostly painted backdrops) and surreal sets. So much so that the IMDb description of the plot can hardly  even be considered a sentence (and certainly not a coherent one).

"Dr. Caligari's somnambulist, Cesare, and his deadly predictions."

At 67 minutes, the time doesn't exactly fly by but it mostly avoids the dangers of watching silent films in the modern era by being too short to be reasonably considered boring. Yes, it is slow, but that is more than made up for by its intense design and astoundingly creepy characters in Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist. It's hard to be scared by a film from this era, but there's a layer of chilliness that settles over the film that's quite unsettling.

Rating: 7/10

The Bride of Frankenstein

Year: 1935

Director: James Whale

Cast: Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive

Run Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

This one here is a load of firsts for me personally. I love all aspects of horror wholeheartedly, but frankly I've been very distracted by slasher movies and slacked on some of the classics (I've never seen Alien, eep!). That's one of the reasons I took this class. It's not "slasher class" so I'll have a more in depth knowledge of some of the genres I've been neglecting.

Anyway, this is both my first Boris Karloff movie and my first Universal monster movie! I know, I know. I deserve to be stoned to death in the parking lot of a Walmart for not having seen any of these. 

Anyway, not that I have a frame of reference, but Bride of Frankenstein was an excellent place to begin. Yes, it's a sequel but I know enough about the original Frankenstein and the novel to piece together what happened. Baron Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive - My first surprise. he's not named Victor. Who knew?) is alive but barely. He's being nursed back to health by his fiancée Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson) but ends up on the wrong end of Dr. Pretorious' (Ernest Thesiger) mad attempts to harness his discovery of manmade life.

Furthering the "man playing god" idea from the first film, this one extends even further, drawing heavily from the story of Adam and Eve.

The film draws heavy influence from German Expressionism and the sets are unbelievably evocative and gothic. My professor likes to say that sets are characters in the film and this one more than any other proves him right. From Frankenstein's sumptuous mansion to the baroque arches of the prison interiors, the sets draw more on a sense of old time majesty than realism.

The most stunning example of expressionism at work (perhaps in any film ever) is when Frankenstein's Monster is freed from his fiery tomb and left to wander the forest on his own. Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and the brook is babbling. Unfortunately happiness is always transient for the Monster and he is discovered by the villagers who chase him back through the same forest, now filled with dead trees, twisted and black.

Man oh man, what a great scene. This is why film historians should really pay more attention to the horror genre instead of treating it like a sideshow.

Not that the film is ever scary. It's a tragedy through and through, enhanced by Karloff's forlorn performance as the friendless Monster who tries so hard to be good, but nobody can see past his appearance. I think we all have felt like that at one time or another. Whenever he smiles, full of naïve hope and plaintive loneliness, I swear it will break your heart.

Bride of Frankenstein survives a sluggish first act to deliver a staggering tale of longing, heartbreak, and loss as told by a Monster.

Rating: 8/10

I Walked With a Zombie

Year: 1943

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Cast: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison

Run Time: 1 hour 9 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Let me set the record straight. This was 1943. The idea of "zombies" didn't exist yet. The flesh-eating, virus-having, shambling corpse variety wouldn't come into play until George Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Back then zombies referred only to undead voodoo slaves. Yeah, they're dead, but they won't hurt you. They just do whatever the voodoo priestess commands. 

Does that sound pretty boring?

It was.

Betsy (Frances Dee), a nurse, comes to a lonely island in the West Indies to take care of Wesley Rand's (James Ellison) sickly wife (Edith Barrett). She's bedridden and comatose, only able to follow simple commands but not able to speak or interact with people. Can you guess what she is? Did you guess zombie? Congratulations! You did in 12 seconds what Betsy did in 45 minutes.

At a brief hour and ten, I thought the film would slip by, no matter how slow the plot was. I was wrong. Time passed like molasses to the point where I thought my watch was lying to me.

This film was produced by Val Lewton, one of the few successful horror filmmakers in the 40's, but it certainly does not feel like the best the decade has to offer. 

I really don't have much else to say about this film, considering that I sat there slack-jawed for an hour struggling to stay alert and not slip across into the tantalizing realm of unconsciousness. I will say this though - I hate Betsy. She falls in love with Wesley with absolutely zero provocation despite having no chemistry and him being a huge douche to her the whole time. 

She fell in love because she was in his proximity and this was the 40's.

Betsy is the worst.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1366
Reviews In This Series
Splatter University: Part 1 (September 25, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 2 (October 5, 2013)
Splatter University: Part 3 (October 23, 2013)

Census Bloodbath: Scissors, Der Zorn Gottes

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1980

Director: David Paulsen

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Donna Wilkes, Marianna Hill

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After some time traveling all the way through to 1984 with my Friday the 13th marathon, let's reel it back in here with the next film, straight outta 1980. This was a unique year for the slasher film because nobody really knew what they were doing yet. The rules hadn't yet been set in stone, and the flicks that came out in the months following the Crystal Lake Massacre were too deep in production at the time of release to reasonably be able to copy Mrs. Voorhees' exploits. That would come, my pretties. That would come.

But in the meantime the slasher film was still on uneven ground, and this film falls in more with the Silent Scream and Don't Answer the Phone features, focused more on plot and characters than elaborate gore effects. In fact, except for the damning aspect that a serial killer is offing women with a pair of scissors, Schizoid could hardly be considered a slasher movie at all.

It regards itself more as a psychological thriller, which is evident in the film's lack of gore (except for one split second shot of a cut on a woman's face, it's absolutely bloodless) as well as its cast. For you see, Schizoid is helmed by the frequent Werner Herzog collaborator Klaus Kinski, a man of no small talent who would certainly see it as an insult to be asked to perform in something as lowly as a slasher picture.

Those Germans, man.

As a result, the film takes itself very seriously, which to be honest isn't a total benefit to Census Bloodbath.

The plot follows recently divorced advice columnist Julie (Marianna Hill) as she receives a series of mysterious and threatening letters cut and pasted from magazines. She is unsettled by this, but she is rebuffed by the police when she requests an investigation. Nobody has actually been harmed by the letter sender, so there's no justification to warrant police action.

Things begin to look up for her case when members of her therapy group begin turning up dead, brutally stabbed to death with scissors like a demented giant's art project. These victims include Sally (Cindy Donlan), who was supposed to leave for Tennessee so nobody noticed she was gone; Rosemary (Kiva Lawrence), who disappears for the entire second act only to be killed in the last half hour; and a woman who is apparently called Pat according to IMDb, but I assure you gets no name in the film. I took to calling her Boobs McGee (Flo Gerrish, aka the Final Girl from Don't Answer the Phone, a movie with a suspiciously similar plot) because there's a scene with her being a topless dancer at a bar that has absolutely zero impact on the film at large.

As the bodies pile up, Julie gets more and more perturbed. And the dramatic upheaval of her personal life certainly isn't making things any easier. She has recently kindled a relationship with her therapist, Dr. Pieter Fales (Kinski) against the objections of his daughter Alison (Donna Wilkes), who hasn't yet come to terms with the death of her mother. And her annoying ex-husband Doug (Craig Wasson who we'll later see in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, one of the actually good Freddy movies) simply won't leave her alone, especially since they work for the same newspaper.

Also creepy plumber Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd aka Doc Freaking Brown) stands in the background being creepy.

You know what else can go 88 miles per hour...

Julie is much more reactionary than your typical Final Girl which is a little disappointing, but she does stick to her guns and get what she wants. Go feminism!

Honestly I don't have a ton to say about this film. It was obvious they were trying to be scary (you'd be surprised how many slasher films seem to forget that's an element of horror) and they were intermittently successful, meaning this is one of the scariest slashers ever made (slashers aren't scary). But for the bulk of it, it's just pretty boring.

The greatest redeeming factor of the film is the interplay between Kinski and Wilkes as an estranged father and daughter. Their chemistry is so strong it burns holes in the film and the scenes they have together sizzle and pop.

For some reason, I can't find a picture of them together without her boobs showing. Screw you too, Google.

There's really a lot of good in this film, it's a shame it's so slow. Alongside its pretty well accomplished actors, it has a uniquely realistic plot and the twists bubble up naturally from the movie's universe so they're totally believable as well as being unexpected. The reveals at the end are a marvel of intricate slasher plotting that are only undone by the sedate finale, in which Kinski walks around an office building for five minutes.

So, maybe not one for the record books, but this slasher has a brain and it's not afraid to use it. I'd much rather rewatch this film than any of the Don't films or even Mother's Day. Schizoid has understandably been forgotten by time, but it perhaps doesn't deserve its fate as much as some of its 1980 brethren.

Killer: [Doug (Craig Wasson)]

Final Girl: Julie (Marianna Hill)

Best Kill: The kills are all the same, but Rosemary's is the best cuz she's in a hot tub.

Sign of the Times: Typewriters and pay phones are both integral to the plot.

Scariest Moment: Sally is chased into an abandoned house off the side of the road.

Weirdest Moment: The doctor has sex with Boobs McGee in a scene that, rather than increasing the mystery, makes everything that much more confusing. Also he never takes his pants off.

Champion Dialogue: "I have felt less terrified in my life."

Body Count: 5; including the killer.

1. Sally is stabbed in the gut with scissors.
2. Boobs McGee is stabbed in the back with scissors.
3. Rosemary is slashed with scissors in a hot tub.
4. A man is stabbed in the back.
5. [Doug is killed somehow. Let me get back to you on that one.]

TL;DR: Schizoid is of a higher class than some of its slasher counterparts, but we're not in this for the class.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1077

The Splat Pack

Year: 2012

Director: Matthew Spradlin

Cast: Cameron Deane Stewart, Augie Duke, Ali Faulkner

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Based on a comic book series that I admittedly haven't read and billed as a slasher riff on the 80's classic teen comedy The Breakfast Club, Bad Kids Go To Hell proves in the end to be not much of anything. Its failures as a comic book film, its failures as a horror film, and its failures as a genre parody all pale in comparison to its failures as a work of cinema.

Watching Bad Kids Go To Hell is shockingly similar to going to Color Me Mine for the first time. You think you know what you're in for, it starts off great, but then everything ends up terribly wrong.

If you search "Color Me Mine" on Google, all it comes up with are pictures of David Beckham. I thought you'd like to know.

Six students are stuck in detention in the newly remodeled library of Crestview Academy. So far so good.

There's Megan (Amanda Alch), the sexy nerd with sexy asthma - no kidding, she uses her inhaler in a suggestively phallic manner seconds after we meet her; Veronica (Augie Duke), the goth/punk/whatever anti-conformist trend is cool now girl who smokes and brings vibrators to school and stuff. Also she looks more like Stifler's mom than a high school student, sorry Augie; Craig (Roger Edwards), the womanizing athlete; Tarek (Marc Donato), the token Middle Eastern kid whom everybody calls a terrorist because that's the level of discourse in American high school movies nowadays. He's played by an Italian actor from Canada and that's exactly as un-ethnic as it sounds.

I thank the Film Gods every day that they elected not to put a turban on him or something equally terrible.

Also there's Tricia (Ali Faulkner), the Princess and why can't horror movie girls figure out how to dye their eyebrows?

Come on! I'm looking out for you, girl.

As far as I can tell, this fashion started way back when in 1997 with Portia de Rossi's appearance in Scream 2 and as much as I love the idea of her being a trendsetter, can we sit back and think about this for a moment?

This is more tragic than any of the deaths in that movie.

And our protagonist - Matt Clark (Cameron Deane Stewart, and halfway through Shannon realized he's the Shower Guy from Pitch Perfect and our lives changed forever), who is on parole from juvie for some unspecified crime and runs an unspecified business with an unspecified Mexican assistant. Maybe this makes more sense in the comics.

It doesn't matter though. This is what we get. Also he has a Band-Aid on his face for the entire movie that they don't even try to explain, much to my amusement.

You gotta be careful shaving with an axe.

The best thing about the film is its consistently low quality, without which it would be immensely boring as well as stupid. There are no convincing gore effects to speak of, not a single line reading that comes off as remotely human, and the entire thing is swaddled in a snug blanket of tinny electronic drums masquerading as a score.

In short, a great pick for Tuesday Scary Movie Night but not fit for human consumption.

The gang spends some time having meta discussions about how this isn't a feel good 80's movie (it's not, but then again it's barely even a movie, so... ya burnt.), fighting off CGI roaches, and wondering if they unleashed a ghost during that séance they held earlier.

Because the writers woke up from their naps in time to look up at the John Hughes DVD they had on repeat and see the scene where the kids talk about their pasts, they figured they should probably do that too. In a series of flashbacks tied together by the vague idea that Matt accidentally gets himself in trouble a lot, the plot pinballs wildly, all flashing lights and bright colors.

This part is easily the most nonsensical and inscrutable part of the movie (second only to the final scenes) as Megan does a striptease for a crowd of students in the middle of the gym (when only minutes before we saw them all in class), Matt attacks a dance team with basketballs, and somebody steals the wheelchair kid's soup.

No caption necessary.

The actors try to fit their mouths around lines that were clearly written by attaching a dictionary to a board and blindfolding a monkey with a fistful of darts. I'll pepper the rest of this article with some choice cuts, there's way too many to pick a single best line. And then things get even weirder as Megan dies of asthma, blood streaming from her mouth. You know. Asthma. That mouth bleeding disease.

Champion Dialogue: "All this haunted library shit is shit."

The teens begin dying one by one, mostly at the hands of one another, but frankly it's hard to tell because the MTV editing screwed with my brain. It's also hard for them to tell because they're not smart people and the panic over their alleged haunting grows worse, especially once they learn that the library is built on the land of a Native American man who was murdered and their parents were all pivotal in funding the construction process.

Champion Dialogue: "Careful lighting the fuse on her tampon."

I know it's bad form to just discuss plot in reviews, but I can't help myself. In a film as richly layered with dumbness as this, I just want to lay it all out and bask in the absurdity. I mean I'm this far in and I didn't mention Matt crawling through an air duct full of cockroaches, falling through to another room, and frantically brushing off the bugs which immediately disappear.

In an even moderately good movie, that would be the centerpiece of my review, but that barely even scratches the surface of what's going on here.

And let's never forget the on campus striptease.

Champion Dialogue: "When I start screaming, I don't need some crazy bitch to start screaming over my screaming."

Now I won't give away the grand finale because the film saw fit to include not just one, but five entirely separate twist endings. That is cinematic gold right there and I wouldn't dream of ruining it for somebody who really wanted to watch. I wouldn't dare step on the toes of schlock connoisseurs, and Bad Kids Go To Hell is the Sauvignon blanc of bad movies.

There are a still a million scenes, lines, and moments I didn't mention, for fear of merely transcribing the entire movie, so any viewing will still feel as fresh as the day this turd was released into the world. I encourage anyone who's even remotely like me to watch this frantic hallucinatory nightmare of a film and have the time of their lives.

Champion Dialogue: "Don't listen to him, he's not a good person."

Oh, and Judd Nelson's in it.

His agent is now working in a Siberian coal mine.

It's clumsily handled. The characters are uniformly unlikeable. The film is offensive to Native Americans, Middle Easterns, the mentally handicapped, and anybody with a soul. Matthew Spradlin, directing the adaptation of his own bestselling graphic novel series, clearly has no idea how to properly convert what probably made sense on paper into a coherent visual work.

The music is awful. The budget was clearly spent on pretty faces and clothes rather than creative effects. The editing is a whirl of motion, not stopping quite long enough to capture any important details. There are plot holes large enough to sink the Titanic.

Do not watch Bad Kids Go To Hell if you aren't a cynical person. You won't enjoy it.

If you are, I have the DVD on hand. I'll lend it out and we'll have a laugh.

TL;DR: Bad Kids Go To Hell is wildly erratic, completely nonsensical, and loads of fun.

Rating: 4/10

Body Count: 6

Word Count: 1354

Reviews In This Series

Bad Kids Go to Hell (Spradlin, 2012)

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy (Browder, 2017)

Barmageddon

Year: 2013

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

We as a culture are rather obsessed with the end of the world, aren't we?

Perhaps this is a reaction to the massively misplaced hated of the generation that has come to be known as the "millennials." According to web news outlets, BuzzFeed articles, and angry bloggers, we millennials are less intelligent, less informed, more selfish, and so detached from the world that we may as well exist on a planet called "Tumblr."

This is patently wrong, of course. This is the topic for a rather different essay, so I won't expound on my opinions quite as vehemently as I might in conversation. But nevertheless a greatly misinformed older generation is contemplating a future filled with idiots in power (I'm not gonna go there), an inevitable economic downturn, and various bits and bobs of outlandishly pessimistic terrors.

It's no surprise that the end of the world has transfixed our current tastemakers, especially with the appeal of the deliciously sensational Mayan Apocalypse theory of 2012.

Thus audiences were inundated with songs like Britney Spears' "Till the World Ends" and Jay Sean's "2012 (It Ain't the End)" and the less obvious "Give Me Everything," a song about getting' busy because "we might not get tomorrow."

And of course Roland Emmerich had to jump on the bandwagon (what with his predilection for exploding American skylines) with 2009's 2012. Evidently he struck a chord as his worldwide disaster film made $800 million globally.

Nihilism still runs rampant even after the imminent apocalypse has come and gone.

So that's how we can end up with two major wide-release summer comedies that center around the end of the world. This is the End set cinemas ablaze in June and summer was capped off by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's final entry into the unofficial Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and...), The World's End.

Oh yeah, I'm talking about a movie. Whoops.

The film follows the efforts of alcoholic Gary King (Simon Pegg) to reunite his childhood group of friends and complete a pub crawl they attempted just after graduation. Their hometown has twelve pubs (whose names subtly reflect the progression of the story in true Cornetto fashion) called the Golden Mile. Their plan to drink a pint at each of these pubs was derailed something fierce by a bad crop of... drug cigarettes,

Since then the friends have drifted apart. Andy (Nick Frost) is a bland teetotaler. Oliver (Martin Freeman) is a successful real estate agent (I mean "real estate crumpet," or whatever the hell they call it in England) with a bluetooth glued to his ear (a cliché that I'm not entirely sure still holds water). Steven (Paddy Considine) is a recently divorced man who spent his teenagehood in Gary's shadow, losing girls to him left and right - most painfully the beautiful Sam (Rosamund Pike), Oliver's little sister. Also there's Peter (Eddie Marsan), who... I don't even know. He's something. He's the least important.

As they go along their journey, they begin to realize that most, if not all of the inhabitants of their hometown have been replaced by murderous robots.

Either that or he accidentally broke open a glow stick. They warn you about that.

The trilogy's classic standard of rapid fire jokes and cuts is back in full force, but it is in support of a much more subdued narrative. There's a lot to unpack about The World's End, and while it's certainly the most intelligent and layered film of its brethren, this is at the expense of out and out hilarity. Where Shaun of the Dead is like being sprayed with a fire hose of comedy, The World's End is more like taking a warm bath.

There are some great and hilarious moments in here of course, that's to be expected for this team of artists. But Wright and Co. are a bit more grown up than in 2004 and commentary about growing up (and apart) and the "Starbucking" of society are more at the forefront. Global homogenization is a topic ripe to be skewered and it is done better here than anywhere else, but it's really just not as punchy.

Perhaps it's not fair to hold The World's End up to the light of the other two movies of what is only nominally a trilogy, but it's just human nature. Life is unfair.

In a righteous world, we'd all have British accents.

So what we have here is an admittedly funny screenplay that's content to be more sober than its brethren. Pun intended.

But when the action gets kicked up a notch (and it does, oh believe you me it does) and the protagonists fend for their lives, the film shines bright as the glowing eyes of imminent doom. The robot fight scenes are truly inspired, filled with wacky slapstick, wry dialogue, and some truly impressive choreography. It plays like the daydream of every youngster who grew up through the Stars, both Trek and Wars, fantasizing about conquering planets in a galaxy far far away.

With these scenes to buoy the narrative, the film never drags. And, I need to make this clear, the movie is really pretty freaking funny all the way through (save one unfortunately repeated joke that relies too heavily on the phrase "WTF" and rings with all the clarity of the Liberty Bell).

The ending is pretty weird, but what are you gonna do?

All in all, The World's End is a film that really isn't meant for my demographic. It's a tender and human depiction of men growing up and entering middle age, which isn't exactly something I can relate to, try as I might. One for the parents, perhaps, with enough sizzling bite and snarky British comedy to propel any younger viewers alongside them.

Unfortunately, most of the adults I've talked to have been put off by one element of the film or another, most commonly the high octane robot angle. So The World's End is a trapeze artist swinging madly over the net, reaching for but never quite grabbing either side. And that's a darn shame.

But still. Robots.

TL;DR: The World's End is content to be more sedate than its predecessors, but still packs a punch.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? It's all but out of theaters at this point, but I'd say run out to see it while you still can. I want to be proven wrong about the film missing its demographic goals.

Word Count: 1104

The Furtherer

Year: 2013

Director: James Wan

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Who'd've thunk that the director of Saw would become the most prominent horror filmmaker of the decade?

Starting off with 2010's Insidious, a tight little haunted house thriller and continuing his horror collaborations with Patrick Wilson in this year's grand scale witchcraft/haunting/demonic possession shocker The Conjuring, Wan has risen to the top of pop horror for better or for worse. 

In my opinion, he's overwhelmingly derivative but clever enough to synthesize his sources into something that doesn't feel stale and hackneyed. So really, I don't mind. But, sitting as it is in the shadow of its older brothers, it's hard to go into his third haunted house feature of the decade without some measure of baggage, especially considering the super weird place where Insidious left off.

Remember that? [Warning, this review contains excessive SPOILERS for the original movie if you care about that sort of thing.]The old lady who had haunted Josh (Patrick Wilson) as a child had taken over his body, strangled the medium Elise (Lin Shaye) and snuck up behind his wife. She turns around, gasps, and CUT TO BLACK.

Horror movie or Sopranos episode? You decide.

This film starts about three days after that event and right off the bat we get two age-old horror sequel standbys that cement in my fears of how stupid this movie is going to be. First, the whole "Patrick Wilson is evil" thing gets shoved into a corner as his wife Renai (Rose Byrne) immediately trusts him again. This angle will play out in allegedly mysterious ways as we see her begin to doubt his sanity over the course of the proceeding weeks. Since we already know he's evil, this is just hella boring.

The second (and most egregious) offense is the sheer amount of scenes in the first 20 minutes in which characters say "Let me explain the entire plot of the first film to you, even though we both already know what happened." It's just plain clumsy screenwriting and the extensive flashbacks to Josh's childhood compound this with screechingly bad acting and very unnecessary depictions of events we have been told about twice already (once in the last film and once in the beginning of this one).

If you recall my review of Insidious, you'll remember that that film was an effective and scary film for the first two thirds but peters out, opting for a bizarre and out of place ending that goes on far too long. Chapter 2 is the opposite of that, so the good news is it gets better as we go along. The bad news is that for the first half of the film, what we get is Rose Byrne is Scared of Things 2.

This half of the film acts as a dictionary of horror tropes, cycling through a laundry list of clichés. It touches upon many of the old Insidious standbys and throws in Pausing a Videotape to Look at Ghosts, There's a Scary Lady in the Mirror, Mysterious Piano, and more! Wan is up to his old tricks, cribbing heavily from The Shining, The Blair Witch Project, The Changeling, Black Swan, The Silence of the Lambs as well as such seminal horror classics as Final Destination and Return to Horror High.

And just a dash of American Horror Story.

This entire section of the film is ineffably, laughably bad. The filmmakers falter at basic things like match cutting or making sure there's no dust on the camera lens. At one point Patrick Wilson teleports about ten feet in a one second cut. Almost as bad are the outlandishly stupid characters.

It takes investigators about fifteen minutes to realize that the dead bodies in a serial killer's house are victims, nobody seems to notice Josh is transparently murdery, and apparently Elise recorded her hypnotism of Josh as a child but then never rewatched the tape.

My personal favorite bit of dialogue is perhaps a bit hard to understand transcribed, but I'm gonna do it anyway because it's so indicative of the level of contempt Insidious 2 holds for its audience.

[Magic Ouija dice spell out "Our Lady of Angls" when asked where to find clues}

Paranormal Investigator: "Our Lady of Angles?"

Rose Byrne's Mom: "No. It's Our Lady of Angels. I know because... I used to work there."

No, you know because you have a basic grasp of the English language.

So. Not to beat a dead horse, but it's dire and embarrassing and the crowd was laughing uproariously the whole time.

And this lady who is in like five minutes of the film is in every single freaking promotional still.

But then! All of a sudden, you can feel a different film struggling to break through the mire. The first tremendously effective scare happens about three fifths through the film, and boy is it a doozy. I shouted in my seat and recoiled. Unfortunately, it is immediately followed by probably the worst scare in the entire film, but from that point on the terribly scary movie Chapter 2 so desperately wants to be begins to assert itself.

The second part isn't perfect with its inscrutable baby motif and mild transphobia but it really starts to pick up steam, chugging along with some terrific scares and a tie-in with the original film that could have been a cheap gimmick but works so brilliantly that it must have been planned out the minute they wrote the original script. And if not, it's an absolutely seamless bit of universe building.

It's involving, it's pretty terrifying, and it totally works. Even the obligatory sequel tag ending works in a way that completely gels with the narrative universe, more along the lines of The Conjuring than Insidious, which is really a great place to be, that film being Wan's magnum opus.

Again, Wan milks a PG-13 rating for every drop of atmosphere and dread. The lighting scheme inside of the house is beautiful and weird in a nod to Dario Argento that doesn't hold the tang of Wan's typical pilfering, the effects are realistic and brutal, and the final act zips along even managing to wring scares out of The Further, the location that absolutely killed its predecessor.

Although the flaws outnumber the successes, I am excited to see where this series ends up going. I never thought a sequel could work for the original film, but Chapter 2 showed spurts of excellence that prove there's more story to tell here.

Also she played the teacher in A Nightmare on Elm Street. So there's that.

TL;DR: Insidious: Chapter 2 is weighed down by a bloated and boring front half but still delivers solid PG-13 thrills.

Rating: 4/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Definitely one to marathon before the inevitable Chapter 3 comes out, but there are much more exciting horror films coming down the pike in October so don't fret if you miss it in theaters.

Word Count: 1178

Reviews In This Series

Insidious (Wan, 2010)

Insidious: Chapter 2 (Wan, 2013)

Insidious: Chapter 3 (Whannell, 2015)

Insidious: The Last Key (Robitel, 2018)

Census Bloodbath: Dead Teenagers

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1984

Director: Joseph Zito

Cast: Kimberly Beck, Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Here we are at the end. The MPAA had just about had enough of Jason and his exploits and the parental dissent turned from a grumbling to a roar. Theaters began to close their doors to slasher films and the great splatter tentpole of the decade, Friday the 13th, made the announcement that this next film would be their last.

Of course we all know that's a crock of sh!t now, but it was a big deal, I'm telling you.

In a grand explosion of effort, the forces of slasherdom pulled together to produce the quintessential Crystal Lake film to say goodbye to the now beloved hockey masked antihero. Tom Savini returned, reportedly so he could kill his the monster of his creation. He hated the sequels and wanted to be there personally to oversee the death of Jason. Regardless, the presence of Savini and the filmmakers' desperate awareness that this was going to be their last chance to make a splash in the horror genre combined to form the most exploitative, goriest, and most fun entry yet.

Again, this obviously wasn't the end, but nobody knew this wouldn't the final film of the series. And in a way, it kind of is. After this, the sequels become considerably less airtight in regards to continuity (which is shocking for such a continuity anorexic franchise) and many consider the first four films to be the "real" essence of Friday the 13th. 

So. The fourth and last of the core Friday films. Here we are at the end.

As represented by the 80's, in which it wasn't considered a movie if something didn't explode.

The film opens with a much more competent recap than the stock footage unceremoniously thrust into the beginnings of the previous two entries. With clips from the previous three films set to Paul's campfire story from Part 2, this sort of "previously on Friday the 13th" segment is a relative masterpiece of coherence simply by not being immensely tedious (Especially at a marathon where you're forced to watch the films back to back).

This film opens the morning after the climactic events of Part 3 (which took place a day after the climactic events of Part 2, meaning this film takes place on Sunday the 15th, which I think is worth noting) as Jason is carted into the local morgue. Seeing as he's got a huge axe wound in his head, this would be a reasonable mistake.

Slimy autopsy technician Axel (Bruce Mahler) flirts with sexy Nurse Rose (Lisa Freeman) and thus begins a verbal ballet of epic proportions transcribed in dutiful detail in the Champion Dialogue section. Despite her initial objections, Nurse Rose hops on Axel the first chance she gets - when he's watching a steamy aerobics video next to the covered corpse of one Mr. Voorhees.

The combination of inexplicably porny workout videos and the imminent threat of premarital sex prove too much for the poor corpse and Jason leaps back to life, performing a brief showcase of Tom Savini's work as he hacks Axel's neck with a surgical saw and twists his head around before stabbing Nurse Rose with a scalpel.

That Jason. What a pain in the neck!

With those two out of the way, he makes his merry way back home to the shores of Camp Crystal Lake which by this point is more like a sea considering the amount of property that lies upon it. This time we arrive at the Jarvis household, a secluded woodland hideaway inhabited by Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman), a doting mother; her teenage daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck); and her young son Tommy (Corey Feldman), who is an expert maskmaker, a skilled handyman, and also is Corey Feldman.

See?

Obviously that's not enough people for Jason's fourth and final outing, but there's a huge tray of Meat being delivered to the house next door. Although the film doesn't bother to name them until about half an hour in, I (being extraordinarily committed to y'all) have compiled them here.

There's Paul (Alan Hayes) and Sam (Judie Aronson), the requisite couple who seem even less necessary than usual because they're one of the few pairs of teens who don't actually bone (this film is notorious for containing the most nudity in a film franchise notorious for gratuitous nudity); Sara (Barbara Howard), Sam's best friend and Grade A virgin who'd be a shoo-in for Final Girl if it weren't for those pesky Jarvises; Doug (Peter Barton, who got to play opposite Linda Blair in the future Census Bloodbath entry Hell Night), the object of Sara's affections who has no objections to being such; Ted (Lawrence Monoson), the prankster and they couldn't even try to hide the fact that he's transparently named after the prankster from Part 2 (Whose name is stolen from Ned in the original. It's all very incestuous.); and Jimmy (Crispin Glover, proving that it's impossible for this movie to get any more 80's), the lovable and lonely (read: horny) nerd.

So that's 3 Jarvises, 6 randy teens, and to top things off we get two sexy twins (Camilla and Carey More) and Rob Dyer (Erich Anderson), the brother of Sandra from Part 2 (about whom I remember nothing) who's on a Jason hunt in the woods.

Now that's a party!

Come party with us.. Forever and ever and ever...

Basically the teens get freaky, go skinny dipping (legs and boobs akimbo), and swap partners faster than a square dancer on crack.

Although the teens can be hard to get track of, they're bumped off at a pretty steady pace that makes things much easier as time goes on. Between the mercurial teen relationships, Crispin Glover's rock steady and immensely sweet performance as the bumbling Jimmy (his death is the most heartbreaking - and don't pipe up about spoilers, this is Friday the 13th), and the most vibrant and fun character moments in the entire franchise, this does seem rather like what would happen if John Hughes decided to write a slasher film (seeing as this one seems to have been swept under the rug).

Really I have nothing groundbreaking to say about these sections because for once the disparate elements work in perfect harmony. The teen drama is alternately cheesy and sweet and outrageously raunchy in the best possible way and meshes weirdly perfectly with the darker register of some beautifully realized gore sequences. Tom Savini really pulled out the stops here and ironically, his massive success in this movie perpetuated the studio churning out more Jason vehicles than ever (the next film would follow this one by less than a year).

You have to be a special kind of awful to really be able to enjoy this photo but it's enough to bring tears to one's eyes to watch a master at work.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the quintessential slasher movie. Teen partying. Future stars slumming it. Copious nudity (spread across two skinny dipping scenes, two shower scenes, a changing scene, various sex scenes, and we're just getting started). And plenty of Karo syrup, just for good measure (and to give a hearty middle finger to the MPAA).

Now the things that go into making it a great slasher don't necessarily make it a great movie, which by no means this is. But as a slasher connoisseur it's hard not to expect a certain level of outlandishly exploitative cheese. Slashers being what they were (namely, cheap ripoffs and quickie cash grabs) and the MPAA being what they were (terrible, deeply unhappy people), this is ultimately hard to come by (especially in the post-VHS Hell we now live in) so to find a movie that meets and exceeds expectations is a dream come true.

Allow me to linger on the death scenes for two more paragraphs, because these are what set the movie apart. Forget what I said about the characters, delightful though they are, because they clearly only exist so we can watch them be brutally murdered. Friday the 13th had that figured out by this point so they weren't even trying to give them any sort of depth beyond the basic archetypical characterizations already established within the confines of the franchise.

The creative deficit of Part 3 seems like a distant memory as we see a hitchhiker stabbed through the back of the throat while eating a banana, Paul gets a harpoon gun in the crotch, Jimmy gets a corkscrew in the hand and a machete in the face, one of the twins is thrown through a freaking window, and now this is just a laundry list but it's really just the best sort of gleefully gory mayhem. And Doug's death (his face is crushed against the shower wall) holds up tremendously well both as a shocking gore moment and as a tiny miracle of sound design.

Also an instant classic line. This movie's full of those.

The teens get inevitably whittled down as Trish and Tommy hole up in their home. Jason bursts through the window, but they fight back with the force of a thousand hurricanes. For you see, this is the first film where Jason really and truly dies. And boy does he die. Savini makes good on his promise to destroy his creation and the final sequence is just one long gore setpiece and magnum opus for the massively talented maestro of violence.

Oh, also Corey Feldman shaves his head so he can remind Jason of what he was like as a child or something and that doesn't make sense but it's still alright because everything about the scene is freaking awesome. I can only describe it in fanboy terms because this movie is impossible not to love if you're in any way a Jason enthusiast.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter honestly would have been a great note to close on, but boy am I happy to carry on with the rest of this journey.

We'll follow Jason through Manhattan, into the bowels of Hell, and up into the vast reaches of Outer Space.

And Tommy Jarvis?

You ain't seen the last of him.

Killer: Jason Voorhees (Ted White)

Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) feat. Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck)

Best Kill: Jason himself. He gets a hammer in the shoulder, a TV in the kisser, his hand is split in half, he gets a blade to the chest, and there's a sickening sequence of his face sliding down his own machete. Then he gets ruthlessly machete punched by Corey Feldman. What a way to go.

Sign of the Times: I have it on good authority (my notes) that Sara's shirt is very 80's. Unfortunately I remember exactly zero things about what it looked like. And this is the only picture I can find. 

I'll just have to trust Past Me on that one.

Scariest Moment: I'm gonna stick with Doug's death on this one.

Weirdest Moment: THIS

Champion Dialogue: The entire exchange between Axel and Nurse Rose. Ranked in order from least to most hilarious:

4. "For you I always have a headache."

3. "You are the Super Bowl of self abuse."

2. "Axel, I'm not going to fake any more orgasms for you."

1. "Holy Jesus jumping Christmas shit!"

Body Count: 14; for once including Jason himself.

1. Axel gets a bone saw to the throat and his head twisted around.
2. Nurse Rose is scalpeled in the abdomen.
3. Hitchhiker gets a knife through the back of her neck while eating a banana.
4. Samantha is knifed through the torso while laying in a raft.
5. Paul is speared in the groin.
6. Terri gets a spear in the back.
7. Mrs. Jarvis is killed offscreen.
8. Jimmy gets a corkscrew in the hand and a meat cleaver in the face.
9. Tina is thrown out of a window.
10. Ted gets a knife in the back of his head through a movie screen.
11. Doug's head is crushed against the shower wall.
12. Sara gets an axe thrown through her chest.
13. Rob is stabbed in the throat with a garden harrow.
14. Jason Voorhees is macheted in the face, among other things. 

TL;DR: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the most perfect iteration of what the Jason saga could be.

Rating: 10/10

Word Count: 2067

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)