Endless Summer

Alrighty, buckaroos. It’s September and things have slowed to a crawl around here because the sheer mass of movies that I’ve watched (among other real life obligations) is dragging behind me like tin cans on a “Just Married” car. Try as I might to knock out full reviews for each of these suckers, I’m but one fallible human being trying to have a good time. So it’s high time for some spring cleaning. Or rather, end of summer cleaning. I’m opening the windows, letting in some air, and clearing off those cluttered shelves to make way for the rich splendor of the Halloween season, where we can once again kick things into high gear. Buckle your seatbelts, kiddos.

The Return of the Living Dead

Year: 1985

Director: Dan O'Bannon

Cast: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Thom Mathews

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Despite the splendors of American Army engineering, a chemical agent at a medical warehouse leaks into the nearby cemetery where a group of punks are partying, causing zombies to rise.

80’s horror is kind of my thing, in case you hadn’t noticed. As an extension of that, I deserve a lifetime sentence in nerd hail for having waited so long to see The Return of the Living Dead. Having been written and directed by Dan O’Bannon (frequent John Carpenter collaborator and the man who wrote the story treatment for freaking Alien), and starring Clu Gulager (The Initiation, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2), James Karen (Poltergeist), Thom Mathews (the cutest Tommy Jarvis, from Friday the 13th Part VI), and Linnea Quigley (everything), I’m basically a Benedict Arnold to my cause, but I’ve rectified that now.

For its first thirty minutes or so, RotLD is unimpeachably the funniest horror comedy ever to walk this freshly-dug earth. The script is tight, fast-paced, and the tongue is so firmly in cheek that the teeth keep biting it every time they try to talk. The punk ensemble is a pitch perfect Greek Chorus of prickly delinquency led by a fearless Quigley with fire engine red toilet brush hair. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Linnea crab walk her way over the hood of a car. The fact that she spends almost the entire remainder of the film naked certainly doesn’t tarnish the film’s cult reputation, but it’s also a dastardly hilarious shock gag that keeps on giving.

While the punks are pure bubblegum fun, the adult cast knows exactly what type of movie they’re making and have no qualms about pitching their performances up to the rafters. Karen and Gulager seem to be locked in a fierce battle to see who can burst their own blood vessels first, and the winner is us.

The set design is pretty top notch, too. Although the film never escapes the “this was made in somebody’s basement” feel, each element of the set is integrated into the storyline in a unique and clever way, from the eye test chart decorating the office wall to the pinned butterflies in the storage room.  Everything has a purpose, whether it’s a sight gag so subtle you’re liable to need further viewings to even notice it, or merely a feature that will come in handy later.

Unfortunately, Return of the Living Dead runs out of steam faster than me after foolishly assuming I can run a mile without warming up first. The characters are too thin to hang such a good movie on, and it ends up ripping right through them by the hallway point. The film never ever let up being entertaining, but its nonstop, careening clip flags in favor of a more standard house in siege movie that gives an inexplicably heavy level of focus to Miguel Nuñez (of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, in which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Demon, the enchilada-scarfing biker who gets impaled while Hershey squirting in an outhouse).

And while the lead zombie has an impressive visage and a terrifying mien, the effects in the film are surprisingly demure for an 80’s zombie epic. For all the obsession with brains, there’s hardly a flash of the pink stuff, and what little we’re left with doesn’t exactly hold up all these years later.

It’s a very cheap, unassuming, slapdash little movie, but that’s exactly what allowed it to harness the gonzo anti-establishment energy that drives its engine for so much of the time. Do I wish it were more consistent? Yes. Would it be better with a gore top-up? Undoubtedly. But it’s still Return of the Living Dead, and its ratty, clever, indefatigable energy refuses to be held down. Nor would I want it to be. Let your freak flag fly, baby.

Rating: 7/10

Night of the Creeps

Year: 1986

Director: Fred Dekker

Cast: Jason Lively, Tom Atkins, Steve Marshall

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Two college freshmen accidentally unleash an alien experiment that turns people into evil zombies.

If I deserved a lifetime sentence in nerd jail for missing out on The Return of the Living Dead, having seen Night of the Creeps certainly qualifies me for parole on good behavior. The film, which has unfortunately almost been lost to the mists of time, is a true gem that deserves to be unearthed, packed with goodies from director Fred Dekker (of The Monster Squad, a much more recognized flick).

For starters, I’m a sucker for college movies and Night of the Creeps is an excellent depiction of the freshman year experience. Within relatable situations (crushing on the unattainable girl, rushing the unattainable frat, experiencing freedom for the very first time), Dekker (who also wrote the screenplay) etches out a genuine friendship between two teens, ride with rich humor and poignant humanity. With such a strong core to branch out from, Night of the Creeps is free to explore all sorts of crazy side streets and as such is one of the most explosively creative, jubilantly hilarious horror-comedies of the decade, hitting both sides of that hyphenate in nearly equal measure.

Admittedly though, one side does dominate through seer strength and willpower so let’s begin with that one: the comedy. There’s so much going on in the film (frat pranks, alien ray gun fights, parasitic zombie worms, a black and white sci-fi prologue, and even a mad axe-wielding slasher) that it would rattle with pure energy even without a strong creative vision. But Dekker must be French for “duct tape” because the man holds all the disparate elements together like a pro, infusing them with laugh-out-loud wit every step of the way. The film traffics in self-referential, winking humor in the vein of Jason Lives, but just like its plot, it can’t nail itself down to one single style. High camp, sophomoric frat comedy, goofy sight gags, and intellectual barbs are tossed into the mélange and blended expertly.

No single actor exemplifies this movie’s personality more than Tom Atkins (of Maniac Cop and Halloween III: Season of the Witch). Atkins swallows the script, digests it, and expels it from every pore of his body. His “Thrill Me,” catch phrase is iconic, but every aspect of his character (the detective investigating the strange happenings on campus) from his deadpan one-liner deliveries to his clipped, decisive movements and hyperbolically serious demeanor is explosively inexplicable and outrageously mirth-inducing. It is also thanks to Atkins that the horror portion of the film works even a quarter as well as it does.

The gravitas he lends to the proceedings allow the scarier moments to get under your skin and claw their way firmly around the base of your spine. Between him and the excellent special effects (which render what could have been totally silly parasite worms as utterly menacing, absolutely autonomous creatures with drive and sinister purpose), Night of the Creeps lands some square sucker punches when you least expect it.

And the filmmaking ain’t half bad, either. When you compare Night of the Creeps to Return of the Living Dead, another goofy horror flick directed by its writer, it’s light years head behind the camera. There’s some daring cinematography, including an immensely memorable spinning shot that outstrips any single visual moment in RotLD, and the lighting scheme (especially when it veers into pulpy pinks and blues) is quite dashing.

All in all, Night of the Creeps is an easy film to fall head over heels for. It’s a heap of fleshy, flashy fun, and it really deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with classic titles like Evil Dead II and Ghostbusters, if I do say so myself. It’s my blog. Sue me.

Rating: 8/10

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Year: 1998

Director: Danny Cannon

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Brandy

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Julie James is back and wetter than ever – on an island vacation ruined by monsoon weather, the rain slicker-clad killer returns to claim the lives of her and her friends.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is hardly a classic teen slasher, so the fact that it more or less instantly dove into the realm of ludicrous, crappy sequeldom shouldn’t come as a surprise. In a way, it almost improves the series, and in many ways it makes it a whole lot worse. The instant backslide into pulpy nonsense is fondly reminiscent of 80’s slasher dreck, but the film is so inextricably stupid that – like the Eskimos – I was forced to come up with 50 different words to differentiate the various gradations of stupid that I encountered. Here is but a small sample.

Idiotsplosive: This is a word for something that’s loudly, obnoxiously idiotic. You can’t possibly ignore it because it’s in your face with a bullhorn shouting “Here I am!’ and sharing Facebook posts about Donald Trump.

This word is the exclusive domain of characters like Jack Black cameoing as the local pothead. Yes, that Jack Black. He runs through nearly every scene in the first act, practically flapping his arms and shrieking inane stereotypes. It’s sheer bliss when he gets a set of hedge clippers buried in his chest. This word also handily describes the score, which is mostly content to busty itself combining rip-offs of Friday the 13th and The Exorcist, but the second anything remotely tense happens, gets overexcited and lets loose with a cacophony of bleats and squeals. Someone touches Julie’s shoulder? BWAMP! A mote of dust lands on a lamp in the foreground? BWLEH! It’s exhausting.

Infinidim: This is a word for something so richly, complexly stupid that it borders on incomprehensible.

This word was created for scenes like the opening red herring, which assume that nobody in the audience knows the capitol of Brazil and that no angry bystander will have irately shouted the correct answer before the reveal an hour later. This word also comes in handy for a film that bases two entirely separate scare scenes around clothes dryers. If you care to extrapolate from that, there’s rather slim pickings when it comes to decent frights in this flick, though one of its jump scares is suitably goosebump-inducing.

Stupidndous: This is a word for something so outrageously daft that it can’t help but be heaps of fun.

Here’s a line from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer: “That was like, heart attack time!” In short, this is a fantastic party movie if you’ve got a big bowl of popcorn and a pile of quip-ready friends. From the high camp of the killer’s reveal and the epilogue (“I love my electric toothbrush!”) to the nonsensical voodoo subplot and the daring decision to put Jennifer Love Hewitt in a sports bra while a hurricane rages around her, this movie does everything wrong in all the right ways.

Micromoronic: This is the word for when the stupid hasn’t entirely gone away, but has temporarily subsided to manageable levels.

Believe it or not, there’s a couple almost completely decent elements to ISKWYDLS. For one, the cinematography is gorgeous, capturing long summer nights with a crisp honey glow and shooting the hotel hallways with an almost (dare I say) Dean Cundey-esque precision to the placement of light and shadow. And I must admit that a stormy tropical island is a pretty awesome place to set a slasher movie, Brandy or no Brandy.

At the end of the day, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is harmless. If you’re lactose intolerant, you won’t be able to stomach its lethal levels of cheese, but otherwise it’s a half-decent flick for a summer marathon as long as you never take it seriously. It’s not as well made as its predecessor, but it might just be more fun to watch, so take your pick.

Body Count: 9

1. Dave is hooked through the mouth.
2. Derek is hooked to death.
3. Housekeep has her throat slashed.
4. Titus is stabbed in the chest with hedge clippers.
5. Hotel Manager is knifed in the skull.
6. Tyrell is hooked through the neck.
7. Hestus is harpooned in the back.
8. Nancy is harpooned in the gut.
9. Will is hooked in the chest.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 2194
Reviews In This Series
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Gillespie, 1997)
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Cannon, 1998)

Fright Flashback: Teen Adaptations

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 Paper Towns, this summer's hipsterbait John Green adaptation  In celebration, we'll be revisiting I Know What You Did Last Summer, the 1997 Kevin Williamson slasher based on the 1973 suspense novel by Lois Duncan.

Year: 1997

Director: Jim Gillespie

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr.

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

You and I have spent so much time poring over slasher dreck from the 80’s, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually been a great deal of cinema history between 1989 and now. I know, right? So between the recent reignition of my Scream marathon and this Fright Flashback entry, I’d like to give you a quick crash course on what it meant to be a horror flick in the late 90’s.

Once 1989 hit and the slasher market crashed for god, horror was in a tough place. Direct-to-video dreck like the Leprechaun sequels were still sticking to the bottom of the genre’s shoe, but true classics like Candyman were few and far between. Then Scream went and changed everything in 1996. All of a sudden, horror was marketable again. All you needed was a cadre of teen stars in tight tops, a handful of self-knowing jokes, and – if he was available, and he was – Kevin Williamson. The floodgates opened, sending films like Scream 2, Halloween H20, Urban Legend, and The Faculty spinning out into the market.

At the forefront of this trend was a little film called I Know What You Did Last Summer, based on a slasher script that was penned by Williamson before Scream but snapped up like a prize piece of sushi following that film’s success.

And buoyed to box office dynamite by Jennifer Love Hewitt’s ample cleavage.

IKWYDLS tells the tale of a group of graduating seniors in Southport, North Carolina. Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) is a privileged dick, as either of those names might have proven to you; Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is his beauty queen girlfriend with dreams of stardom; Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is her best friend, a down-to-earth (Final Girl), straight-laced Final Girl), straight-A student (Final Girl); and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), is her boyfriend, who is less privileged than the rest of them, which means that his perfectly bleached tank tops are an inch looser than Barry’s.

Life is hard below the MTV poverty line.

The friends spent the night partying at the beach after the annual Fourth of July celebration and during the drunken ride home they accidentally hit someone. After some frantic arguing – Julie wants to call 911 because Final Girl – they decide to dump the body into the ocean and take this secret to their graves. It turns out that that won’t be too difficult, because the very next summer a psycho in a rain slicker brandishing a hook begins threatening them with notes that read “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and bumping them off one by one. During the year, Julie and her friends have become estranged, but now they must work together to solve the mystery and discover the identity of the murderer… before it’s too late.

Spoiler alert! It’s stupid.

If we’re speaking to the film’s raison detre: namely, delivering prepackaged babes straining at the seams of their crop tops before safely kicking the bucket so that blood drips pretty from their pouty Dawson’s Creek 3-episode-arc lips, IKWYDLS is a sterling success. As a bona fide slasher whodunit flick, however, it does have its flaws. Against all odds.

Having been written before Scream, the film largely lacks the arch-ironic spin that characterized most of the slashers of this period. That isn’t necessarily a liability, but it does leave it ill-equipped to process the layers of urban legend that penetrate the central story or engage with it at any level other than face value. Not to be outdone, that exact goal would be fulfilled by the Jared Leto slasher Urban Legend the very next year, but IKWDLS wastes too much potential on an underexplored premise that leaves it stuck with a killer who looks alarmingly like the Gorton’s fisherman.

I know what you breaded last summer.

On top of its generally thinner screenplay, the core mystery is insipid gruel, hopelessly extending the run time with its watery trivialities. When the film takes a break from terrorizing its teens to let Julie put on her Nancy Drew knickers and galumph around sleuthing in backwater townships, the pacing grinds to a screeching halt. Although these scenes introduce us to Anne Heche, who delivers the most nuanced, dependable performance of the lot, the plot they serve is an uninterested, nonsensical slog. And I do realize it’s difficult to provide decent motivations for the sorts of body counts we’re used to looking at in slasher flicks, but SPOILERS [isn’t it more satisfying to get revenge for your murder if you’re actually been… you know, murdered? It seems a bit beside the point if you’ve actually been alive the whole time. Water under the bridge and all that.]

And of course, existing as it does smack dab in the middle of the Teen Soap slasher trend, the actual horror in this horror film is remarkably tame. The stalk sequences aren’t particularly well thought-out (run perpendicular to the car chasing you, Ryan Phillippe! Did that shower you just took fog your brain up as well?), the killer obviously attended the Jason TakesManhattan School of Teleportation, and there’s nothing particularly gory worth mentioning beyond the first kill. There are a handful of surprisingly nifty jump scares, but mostly the film is content to be blandly functional.

It’s so hard to stay friends after high school.

But it ain’t all bad. Though admittedly not all of this may be on purpose, IKWYDLS can still be a pretty fun teen romp when it wants to be. 90’s garbage punk blares on the soundtrack, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts enormous breasts threaten to swallow every gaudy necklace she wears, Ryan Phillippe’s shirts get bigger with every passing scene like he’s the Incredible Shrinking Man, and Kevin Williamson’s arch dialogue reminds you of just how smart you and your friends thought you were in high school.

And, hey. It’s trying. There’s only one truly memorable shot (the killer viewed upside down from a victim’s perspective) amid the generically slick cinematography, but somebody obviously fought to include it. And the idea of Freddie Prinze, Jr. in abject poverty might be laughable but the idea of class disparity isn’t just a throwaway line. It’s about as sincere as an Oscar acceptance speech begging for world peace, but at least it’s trying to open a dialogue. In a slasher movie! You gotta have a little respect for the sheer mad audacity.

Of the core teen cast, only Sarah Michelle Gellar turns in a performance worth truly commending (Love Hewitt seems to be attempting to blink her lines in Morse code and I’m fairly certainly Prinze, Jr. forgot to take out his retainer before shooting), forming some genuine chemistry with her castmates, but they all make for a believable bunch when it comes down to brass tacks. At least they all seem to appropriate age within a reliable margin of error, which is more than I can say for even the best of the 80’s slashers.

At the end of the day, I won’t be popping this flick into my DVD player every time summer rolls around. It’s not eminently rewatchable, like even the worst of its Scream brethren. But every now and again, it’s a decent frothy 90’s delicacy, as long as you can survive the fiddly mystery bits. Watch it at a party so you won’t feel embarrassed taking over it.

Body Count: 5

1. Max is hooked in the chin.
2. Barry is slashed to death with a hook.
3. Policeman is hooked in the gut. 
4. Elsa has her throat slashed with a hook.
5. Helen is slashed to death with a hook. 

TL;DR: I Know What You Did Last Summer is empty-headed, but benign.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1378
Reviews In This Series
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Gillespie, 1997)
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Cannon, 1998)