Be Fearful What You Wish For

Year: 1999

Director: Jack Sholder

Cast: Holly Fields, Paul Johansson, Andrew Divoff

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R 

Usually when horror movie sequels get subtitles, that's when you need to keep an eye out. They're not always bad. But when Halloween II gave way to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, things got so wild that the film was disowned by the horror community for decades. There's something sublime about the simplicity of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 or Exorcist III rather than Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III or Exorcist II: The Heretic. It's not a hard and fast rule, to be certain, but I can't say I was incredibly optimistic when I learned that Wishmaster succumbed to the fever immediately, delivering Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies the second that Hollywood uncorked the franchise bottle.

I truly am a martyr to these franchise horror movies, you're welcome.

Wishmaster 2 begins in a place I legitimately could have never predicted: an art heist. Morgana (Holly Fields) and her boyfriend Eric (Chris Weber) rob the local museum, in the process releasing the ancient Djinn (Andrew Divoff) we've come to know and love when Morgana smashes the crystal that held him. Eric dies in the escape, but the Djinn, in human form, takes the blame for the heist and is sent to jail, where he sets about granting wishes for the prisoners and collecting the 1,001 souls he apparently needs before he can grant Morgana three wishes, thereby unleashing the Djinn dimension upon the world. As if the mythology of the first movie needed to be even more complicated.

Anyway, all this sends Morgana into a moral crisis about the choices she's made in life, and she runs into the arms of hunky goatee priest Gregory (Paul Johansson), who turned to the church after she chose Eric instead of him. They work to learn more about the Djinn and how to go about destroying him.

Meanwhile, Andrew Divoff gets a chance to work on his Godfather impression.

Wishmaster 2 was helmed by Jack Sholder, a director who seems to be stuck as Wes Craven's clean-up hitter, considering he also helmed A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. I can't help but imagine he feels the same way, because that film - and its highly publicized homoerotic overtones - seems to be weighing heavily on his mind. At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for why this film is so hideously homophobic. Even for a film set in a prison, the sheer amount of F-words flying back and forth is... shocking. It feels like a grotesque overcompensation, and the only scene that helps me feel better about the whole affair is a scene where a prisoner wishes that his shady lawyer would "go fuck himself." This results in him literally having sex with himself, which he does in fact seem to enjoy. 

Visibility is so important, y'all.

Generally, the wish scenes are about as satisfying as the original film, though the leading questions the Djinn is forced to ask to eke requests out of people are even more strained and ludicrous. Wishmaster 2 never captures the sheer, indulgent mayhem of the original's third act, but there's still a solid sense of fun to the proceedings (minus a truly atrocious joke in the climactic casino showdown, where a lady at a craps table literally craps hundreds of slot machine tokens out of her ass). And while the effects are hardly at the level of KNB's previous contributions, they are delivered with no small amount of gooey zeal by future Sharknado auteur Anthony C. Ferrante.

This stuff one can find on IMDb is wild, folks.

The only place where the DTV effects budget really shows is in the Wishmaster himself. We're getting a lot of Andrew Divoff face time in this one, and when he shows his true face as the Djinn, it's a lot more plasticky and immobile than last time. Rather than resembling an actual organic organism with a dripping, twitching carapace, it just looks like some dude's Wishmaster Halloween costume.  A very expensive Halloween costume, but still.

Beyond the effects setpieces, sadly, Wishmaster 2 has almost nothing to offer. The protagonist is even blander than the last time, a feat I didn't think could even be possible, and her inane thrashings that are intercut with every effects scene are even more irritating for it. Plus, this business with the priest lands the film in some deeply vexing sub-Exorcist territory. Down to the score (an airy interpretation of "Tubular Bells" by somebody who's clearly only heard it once, years ago) and the method of defeating the villain (repeating the same phrase over and over and over again until everyone at the slumber party watching this VHS tape has passed out from exhaustion), this film transparently aspires to Exorcist-level greatness, not realizing that all the hot air it's blowing about God and purity and prayer are a needless distraction at the absolute best.

Catholic imagery permeates the film to the point that even the Wishmaster seems perplexed by it. He's literally not a Christian figure, and his attempts to explain this fall on deaf ears.

Morgana's plotline is frustrating tedium. No matter what she does, we must see it repeated three times in three consecutive scenes before we can move on. Same goes for the Wishmaster, but at least he's turning people into goo in the process. But, dear God, the moments with him that go for myth-building or menace rather than gore fail miserably. Let me paint you a picture. At one point while our protagonists are preparing to head over to his lair, we cut to him sitting in a chair. He spins toward the camera, makes his magic gemstone appear in his hand and then disappear, at which point he says "Magic..." He's alone in a room! Who is this for?!

This film was clearly not thought through one tiny bit, and it's buoyed only by the mild amusement of seeing Wishmaster perform his dirty deals in new locations (the prison yard and later a bar run by the Russian mafia for some reason).

But hey. There's always a quality drop-off point in my franchise marathons, and considering that the Wishmaster franchise only ever stretched to four films, I was nervous they would condense their timeline and fall straight into the gutter immediately. Luckily, that was avoided, though being a big step down from the already mediocre original doesn't really leave the film in a great place regardless.

TL;DR: Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies is a sometimes fun, entirely forgettable horror sequel.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1110

Reviews In This Series
Wishmaster (Kurtzman, 1997)
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (Sholder, 1999)
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (Angel, 2001)
Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (Angel, 2002)

Cardboard Science: Prisoners Of The Wind

It's October, which means it's time for our annual crossover event between Popcorn Culture's Census Bloodbath and Kinemalogue's Cardboard Science! My good internet friend Hunter Allen has assigned me three more 50's sci-fi flicks and you should head over there later this month to catch his thoughts on my three 80's slasher picks!

Year: 1961

Director: Cy Endfield

Cast: Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

Evidently, the constraints of Cardboard Science are less strict than Census Bloodbath (I'd love to thoroughly break down more slashers outside of the 80's, but 400 titles don't need to be added to), because this month we're briefly slipping out of the 50's to tackle a movie that, one year after Psycho, just doesn't really feel "genre" anymore: It's Mysterious Island (the lack of a "the" is continuously confounding to me), based on the Jules Verne story that also gave us 2012 Dwayne Johnson vehicle Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. 

Perhaps I'd have been better off watching that one. Who can say?

In Mysterious Island, which is set midway through the Civil War, four Union prisoners - dashing Capt. Cyrus Harding (Michael Craig), loyal Cpl. Neb Nugent (Dan Jackson), cowardly Herbert Brown (Michael Callan), and newly captured war correspondent Gideon Spilitt (Gary Merrill) - escape in a hot air balloon with kidnapped Confederate soldier Sgt. Pencroft (Percy Herbert). When a storm blows them off course, they crash land on a lonely island in the Pacific, where they must work together to survive.

Of course, eventually two shipwrecked women - Lady Mary Fairchild (Joan Greenwood) and her niece Elena (Beth Rogan) - wash up, and of course the male servant they had with them died in the process. I can't think of a worse place for two women to be in the 60's than stranded with a bunch of male soldiers, but they seem to make it work and the ladies both find themselves suitable partners in Spilitt and Brown respectively. Oh, and eventually they discover another denizen of the island, a mysterious Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom). This isn't a spoiler because the opening credits proudly announce his presence, a good fifty minutes before he shows his face onscreen.

Oh, and also there's some giant monsters prowling around the island.

More on that later.

So, the opening credits. (Yes, this review is gonna get really granular.) You know credits, right? The part where the names of the people who worked on the film slide across the screen? Well, this movie doesn't seem to have ever seen a credits sequence before, because instead of politely arranging the names atop a crashing ocean backdrop like any other 60's island movie might have, we get a relentless cacophony of color. The ocean background is filtered into oblivion in a half dozen Day-Glo colors, with the credits in alternating stripes of different, equally obnoxious hues. When green over purple is the easiest combination to read, you know there's a problem. It's a hideous display that actively reduces the amount of information the audience is able to receive, which one would think would be the opposite of any movie's intention.

Nothing in the film is worse than this (how could it be?), but I think the credits speak to a deep problem with the entire project. Not a single ounce of forethought was put into the way they could make this appear as a coherent whole. If Mysterious Island is a Lego set, it was assembled by a blindfolded child with no instructions. Random plot points jut out from the center while others are elliptically rushed by without a passing glance, to the point that the monstrous contributions by Ray Freaking Harryhausen feel even less than an afterthought.

It's really obvious when Mysterious Island remembers that there are giant monsters roaming about, because about once every 25 minutes they chuck one in, to the shock of all the characters who have also forgotten there are giant monsters in the middle of their island survival adventure. We spend 75% of the film watching them fashion sexy Gilligan's Island cosplay and spruce up a cave, but not prepare to deal with the horde of monstrous and violent creatures they periodically have to defend themselves from. It's implied that the women have lived there for months and none of the men have even mentioned fighting a giant crab at one point. Plus, the monsters are provided by Ray Harryhausen, and while they're not his best, they're certainly a delight. Which makes their sidelining even more infuriating. And then, later on, the movie has the gall to assume we will be afraid of pirates showing up when there are literally giant bees like eight yards from their house.

Side note: for a supposedly deserted island, it certainly gets a lot of tourist traffic.

Mysterious Island is very concerned with the process of survival, so we get a lot of hunting for food, fashioning huts and primitive weapons, and exploring the terrain. This would probably be interesting if it was an adventure movie from the 40's before we'd already seen 8 million similar narratives. This movie has elements that make it stand out from the generic Robinson Crusoe model, but the fact that it seems to actively want to ignore them means it relies on a lot of truly boring material instead.

But that said, I will not complain about a bunch of shirtless men being friends on an island. Before (and even after) the women show up, it's an alluringly homoerotic tale of men being stubbly and barrel chested, struggling for dominance via gravelly voice-offs and intense stares. I'm not sweating, you're sweating. Unfortunately, neither monsters nor men are enough to unsink this film from the choppy waters of insipidity. I didn't hate watching it, but I wouldn't be so bold as to recommend it to anyone else.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

• Instead of just telling the group his plan to raise a sunken ship, Captain Nemo has a whole diorama fashioned with a fish tank, because there's nothing a Cardboard Science flick loves more than explaining its bullshit science in excruciating detail.
• Literature from this period was really drawn to hot air balloons, but that is no excuse to setting a full 20 minutes of this movie about an island on a balloon.

The morality of the past, in the future!:

• Elena decides to marry Herbert, who is clearly the least interesting or useful of the soldiers, because he is the only one who is young and white, and that's how these things are supposed to go.

Sensawunda: 

• There's a part where the men discover the skeleton of a man who hung himself, which is the closest to horror this film ever gets.
• In a very serious moment, Captain Nemo activates a very silly-looking Wonka-esque water pump that flaps wildly behind his head. It's hilarious.
• Captain Nemo also plays the "Phantom of the Opera" theme on an organ in his submarine. You know what, he may actually be the best comic character of the 60's.

TL;DR: Mysterious Island is a waste of Harryhausen, instead choosing to focus on a bunch of boring men doing "cool" survivalist stuff.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1201
Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

A Scream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

Year: 1997

Director: Robert Kurtzman

Cast: Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Robert Englund

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's that time of year again, folks! Every October I begin a brand new deep dive into a franchise I've never covered on the blog before. Now, consider this fact: Sergio and I are now doing a lot of franchise marathons on our podcast Scream 101. So when I was picking out what series to do this year, I had to select one that was flat-out vetoed from being on the show, so the quality of these movies (which have in the past included infinite Amityville and Children of the Corn sequels) might be dropping precipitously. Pray for me. 

I hope against hope that I have struck a rich vein this year, because at the very least my favorite director Wes Craven is the producing entity that launched the franchise. I'm not saying I have any faith in the man's producing (he also made Dracula 2000, lest we forget), but at least his work is something I have a vast amount of context for and interest in. So. The Wishmaster quadrilogy. I guess we're doing this.

Here goes nothing!

Wishmaster tells the tale of an immortal djinn, so of course it starts off in a wildly misguided ancient Middle Eastern sequence. Nevertheless we learn that the titular master of wishes (Andrew Divoff) is not the babbling blue Robin Williams you've come to expect from genies in bottles. For one thing he's trapped in a gemstone. For another thing, he is a malevolent force of ancient pure evil, and if he grants three wishes to the person who releases him, he will break the veil between the human world and the djinn world, causing the apocalypse I guess. It's not super clear what the djinn would do to our world, but I'm pretty sure they're not just here for the sightseeing.

Oh, also the djinn is powerless unless somebody makes a wish, which he can then misinterpret to accomplish his desires. Upon which point he also steals their soul, which powers up the gemstone. There sure are a lot of rules for a movie about an evil genie. Anyway, jewel appraiser Alexandra Amberson (Tammy Lauren - who some people thought was too controversial to star in a horror movie about genies) releases the Djinn by... rubbing the gem on her shirt? Had nobody done this in millennia? He bursts from his gemstone prison, in the process killing her best friend/wannabe lover Josh (Tony Crane), then wanders around granting random people's wishes in a bunch of slasher setpieces before setting his sights back on her.

All while being dressed to the nines.

It is perhaps now I should mention that director Robert Kurtzman is much better known as one of the makeup effects gurus behind the KNB EFX group, a special effects company that has dominated the horror world from Elm Street 5 to Scream to The Walking Dead. As with most films directed by a special effects wizard, Wishmaster is packed to the grim with drippy, practical gore gags that still look phenomenal.

The two party scenes that bookend the film, in which all hell breaks loose during the Djinn's final bid for power, are pure, unfiltered movie mayhem. Glass shatters faces, skeletons burst out of their bodies and run around, creatures emerge from people's chests to devour other people, statues come to life and smash ancient weapons into skulls... It's chaotic, but an excellent built-in reel for KNB's next pitch meeting. 

These scenes (as well as most of the slasher setpieces that have no bearing on the actual plot) are going to be pure candy to any gorehound. Ditto the endless slew of cameos from horror icons like Robert Englund (given the meatiest role - thanks, Wes! - as a rich collector who orders the statue containing the Djinn's jewel), Kane Hodder (as a security guard, the role he was apparently born to play when not smothered in latex), Tony Todd (as a doorman, which is insulting), Angus Scrimm (as the narrator, which is perhaps less insulting because at least it's a cool trivia tidbit), Ted Raimi (as, guess what, a weaselly assistant), Reggie Bannister (as a pharmacist who gets "cancer" AKA boils that explode and kill him) and (for true devotees of cult film) George "Buck" Flower (as a bum, which he has extensive experience playing considering he's done it over 25 times since the early 80's).

Do you think he's just mad he's constantly forced to face off against people who played villains more famous than him?

And the detail in the Djinn design is something to behold. He's grotesquely organic, full of squishy parts that wiggle and move of their own accord (my favorite moment is when he's facing away from the camera and you can see a pulsing heartbeat in his back), counteracting the slight stiffness of his latex face with pure, realistic nightmare fuel.

Unfortunately, other than appealing to the basest lizard-brain instincts of the horror fan (the Where's Waldo of Horror game continues with an Easter egg Pazuzu statue in the background, etc. etc.), Wishmaster just doesn't quite have the juice to go anywhere. There's a little bit of fun to be had when the Djinn is in disguise trying and failing to trick Alexandra into making wishes, and Andrew Divoff has a blast chewing the scenery into tiny little splinters ("If you can't beat 'em, burn them... baby"), but their interactions are mostly dull as dishwater. When the film's budget briefly cools its heels late in the second act and they're required to match wits in some anonymous apartment, my interest wanes severely.

You see, there's almost nothing compelling about Alexandra as a protagonist. She's trapped in a bland Friendzone Love Story and does nothing but stumble ass backward into revelations about the Djinn despite having a convenient psychic link to him every time he makes a kill. This element is the most Wes Craven-y of a movie that quite openly suckles at the teat of Craven's filmography, and it is the most poorly handled. When a dude gets his jaw ripped off, I don't want to waste time cutting back to Tammy Lauren bulging her eyes, pursing her lips, and fainting left and right. All the interstitial bits between the horror scenes needed a punch-up or two or three before they hit the silver screen, because connective tissue isn't supposed to be tissue paper.

But there's a scene where a dude gets his jaw ripped all the way the fuck off, so who's complaining, you know?

TL;DR: Wishmaster is fun as far as turn-your-brain-off practical effects movies go, but it doesn't have too much to offer beyond its baseline pleasures.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1131
Reviews In This Series
Wishmaster (Kurtzman, 1997)
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (Sholder, 1999)
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (Angel, 2001)
Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (Angel, 2002)

Where Have I Been?

If you're somebody who only follows my blog and not my Twitter, you may have noticed how much the content has dried up in recent months. I've been writing and podcasting in a lot of other spaces, so I haven't had as much time to devote here. Rest assured that October is going to be as jam-packed as usual, but if you're missing me why not check out this recent run I did on Alternate Ending, picking through the highlights of the krimi genre (German proto-slasher films from the 60's)? Links are below!

Fellowship of the Frog (1959)

Room 13 (1964)

The Phantom of Soho (1964)

Creature with the Blue Hand (1967)

Gorilla Gang (1968)

Cheers, and see you soon!

Word Count: 119

Reviewing Jane: The More I See Of The World, The More I Am Dissatisfied With It

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

Year: 2018

Director: Steven R. Monroe

Cast: Cindy Busby, Ryan Paevey, Frances Fisher 

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

So far in the line of duty, I've only encountered one franchise built off a riff on Jane Austen, which would be the Bridget Jones movies. The first film (adapted from the novel by Helen Fielding) was based on Pride and Prejudice and the sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was based on Persuasion. That's interesting in and of itself, but then 2018 rolls around and the Hallmark Channel goes completely wild as usual.

2016's Unleashing Mr. Darcy, a modernized retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in the dog show circuit, was deeply mediocre. Which means it's an above-average movie for Hallmark and of course earned itself a sequel. The wages of sin come in the form of Marrying Mr. Darcy, from the director of the 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave. 

Appropriately, this movie spits on the grave of Jane Austen.

Let me lay out two scenes for you. 1) Elizabeth (Cindy Busby) feels that her fabulously wealthy CEO fiancé Darcy (Ryan Paevey) is pulling away from her because he keeps working extra hours at work. What she doesn't know is that he's working extra hard because he's planning for them to have a monthlong honeymoon. You know, the kind of surprise that's appropriate to spring on a woman with a job. 2) During wedding planning with Darcy's mother-surrogate Aunt Violet (Frances Fisher, tempted back by the smell of that Hallmark money), Elizabeth feels like her desire for a simple wedding is being crushed by the upmarket society the Darcy family keeps.

You got those two scenes down? Good, because they're the only two scenes in the movie, repeated back and forth, back and forth ad nauseam until the movie runs down the clock enough to give us the promised wedding.

Did I mention that this movie was the centerpiece of Hallmark's annual June Weddings movie marathon? I bet you didn't think you'd be learning so much on a horror blog.

The fascinating thing about Marrying Mr. Darcy is that it attempts to create a sequel beyond the ending of Pride and Prejudice, which is usually the stuff of fan novels rather than actual cinema (I'm stretching the definition of "cinema" to the breaking point, but this is a feature film so I say it counts). The fact that it's not even a good sequel to Unleashing Mr. Darcy does not inspire confidence. It literally mentions the dog show element in exactly one line (conveniently, about how Elizabeth doesn't want to do dog shows anymore), and the dogs who were pretty much central characters in the film have been relegated to cute transitions. When the screenwriters can't figure out how to end a scene, they just have a character coo over a puppy until the audience forgets there's a plot going on and they can switch to a new scene without anybody noticing.

Naturally, it also removes the element that made it Austen-y at all. The bare minimum that most Pride and Prejudice adaptations (including Unleashing etc.) achieve is featuring a couple that has friction before eventually falling in love. But now that Elizabeth has already sanded the edges off of Darcy and has achieved her happy ending, the character is a totally featureless block of wood. He's a perfect Tuxedo Ken doll for the audience to project whatever man they want onto. Not only is his sublime, unwavering love and support for Elizabeth irritating, it actually makes the movie actively worse.

While Darcy's actions are causing problems for Elizabeth, they're actions that are so clearly morally "good" that it's hard to care. And in every scene they have together they constantly profess their love and mutual respect and immediately apologize for the way they've been acting, pushing the tension the film has built right back to zero. I was literally more interested in the romance between Elizabeth's sister and some dude who I've surely forgotten from the first movie, and they collectively have about three-quarters of a scene in this, in which they do absolutely nothing.

The back-breaking lengths this movie goes to avoid conflict are truly staggering.

So Marrying Mr. Darcy is a failure as a narrative, and being what it is, it's also a failure as an aesthetic object. From the lighting (even the outdoor scenes are lit like they're inside a Macy's) to the production design (Darcy's New York apartment has a roaring fireplace in mid-June) to the acting (at best, they're a fast asleep Frances Fisher, at worst they're cold automatons petting doggies without a hint of affection), every element fails to achieve even the basic competency one expects from a TV movie.

The wedding cake the happy couple eventually chooses is "vanilla buttercream with white ganache drizzle," the revolting blandness of which reflects how insipid and unchallenging this entire affair is. I get that that's exactly what Hallmark is going for with their movies, so I guess they get top marks for that. If you want an endless parade of women sitting on cushy chaise longues with champagne flutes clutched in their talons, boring handsome men who are full of empty flattery and refuse to take their shirts off, and a misunderstanding-based plot that wouldn't pass muster in a sitcom, then this is the movie for you. And I get being in the mood for that. But this is not what I'm looking for from a movie, not now, not ever.

TL;DR: Marrying Mr. Darcy is a tedious, atrocious slog.

Rating: 2/10

Word Counter: 947
Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley Manor (Theys, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Census Bloodbath: Ice To Skate You

Year: 1983

Director: Jonathan Stryker

Cast: John Vernon, Samantha Eggar, Linda Thorson 

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's the accepted party line in the slasher fandom that Canadian slashers are as a whole superior to their American counterparts, and I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. However, for every Visiting Hours or My Bloody Valentine, there's a Prom Night or Humongous (come to think of it, maybe I'm just not a Paul Lynch fan). But Paul Lynch had nothing to do with Curtains, a movie that was created by a Who's Who of Canadian slashmakers, including composer Paul Zaza, producer Peter R. Simpson, and Funeral Home and Happy Birthday to Me actress Lesleh Donaldson. So I guess there's a hole in that theory, because Curtains is an absolute mess.

And not just because they left doll heads all littered about.

Curtains is a uniquely unfocused film due to its notorious troubled production, a three-year exercise in frustrating rewrites and additional photography that led the director to remove his name from the project entirely. At first it's about actress Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar), who is preparing for a role in her director boyfriend Jonathan Stryker's (John Vernon) upcoming movie about an insane woman. She's method (AKA irritating) so she wants to be checked into a mental institution, which Stryker helps her accomplish before completely abandoning her and refusing to check her out. That's one way to ghost somebody you're dating.

Cut to years later and he's prepping for the very same film once more, gathering six young actresses from all over into his secluded cabin for a weekend of hardcore auditioning. They wonder what his scheme could possibly be, because they're all so very different. What right do a skinny white lady with short hair and a skinny white lady with long hair have to audition for the same part?

Anyway, there's clearly no possible way this could go wrong. Of course, Samantha breaks out of the institution at the exact same time that the girls he's gathered start dying off one by one? Is this the work of a jealous, aged actress? Is one of the young and hungry actresses a little too hungry? Or is Stryker just the psychosexual maniac the whole premise of this film would show him to be?

But seriously, I have no answers about the dolls. Don't even ask.

The reason Curtains enjoys any sort of cult status must be the ice skating scene. For one thing, it's the only scene I seem to be able to find screen grabs of online. For the other, it's the only scene that is actually creepy or remarkable, and it's a heck of a lot of both. The killer, bestowed in their trademark "hag" mask, skates after one of the girls bearing a curved scythe, and the film's music and cinematography lurch into pure psychedelia. In or out of context, it's an off-kilter and exciting moment, but it's a diamond in a whole lot of rough.

Unfortunately, not a single one of the other kills in the film are an ounce as outré or exciting. The bulk of the deaths in the back half are relegated offscreen, and the ones we do get to see are bloodless and uneventful. I definitely think there's something there in the killer's getup, thematically evoking the fear and horror of women aging out of Hollywood, but other than Samantha Sherwood being a delightful vamp, the film doesn't seem particularly interested in pulling at that thread. 

Also, I'm sure the months and months it was knocking around in the back of some producer's trunk probably helped with its uncanny, withered look.

Really, pretty much every element of Curtains is lacking in one way or another, especially the plot, which is meandering nonsense. I know it took three years to make, but it shouldn't feel like it takes three years to watch. There is no apparent structure to the film, which makes it difficult to set up the series of red herrings and twists that a whodunit like this desperately needs. 

Even if it doesn't have that, the whodunit at least needs to have who's that "it" is done to. OK, that line might not have worked, but I'm saying the characters are entirely interchangeable. It's even more ironic that the girls are so perplexed by how deeply different they are because I literally had to look up a plot synopsis to figure out who died when. I usually have a Meet the Meat segment in my plot synopsis where I run through all the characters and their one personality trait, but I don't think this collected group of six girls has two interesting traits to rub together. The only one of them who's had a career worth mentioning anyway is Sandee Currie, who played Mitchy in Terror Train. Here she's a character called Tara, who... does something, I guess.

Curtains isn't necessarily a bad film, but it's just so thoroughly unremarkable that every detail slides right out of your brain by the time the credits roll. It certainly joins the pile of exceptions to the Canadian slasher rule, though. I will always perk up when I see a movie in the schedule that hails from the Great White North, but if there are more cracks in the armor like this one, that enthusiasm may fade sooner than later.

Killer: [Patti (Lynne Griffin)]

Final Girl: Patti (Lynne Griffin)

Best Kill: C'mon.

Sign of the Times: A man suggests Pac-Man themed role-play.

Scariest Moment: The mask is pretty creepy.

Weirdest Moment: There are definitely parts where this movie wants us to think a sentient doll is the killer, at least for a couple seconds at a time.

Champion Dialogue: "All's fair in love and auditions."

Body Count: 8

1. Mandy is stabbed to death.
2. Christie has her throat slit with a scythe.
3. Laurian is stabbed.
4. Brooke is shot.
5. Stryker falls out of a window.
6. Matthew is stabbed in the back offscreen.
7. Tara is killed offscreen.
8. Samantha is stabbed in the gut.

TL;DR: Curtains is a messy, largely incoherent slasher that leans on one iconic kill to prop up its reputation.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1030

Reviewing Jane: Indeed, I Am Very Sorry To Be Right In This Instance

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

Year: 1996

Director: Diarmuid Lawrence

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Bernard Hepton, Mark Strong 

Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes

I really do think Emma is Jane Austen's best heroine. She has the least to lose, so she is the most comfortable in her own skin and makes her decisions based on completely different criteria than your Harriet Smiths or your Catherine Morlands. This allows her to tread further, make more dire mistakes, and achieve more growth as a result. Clueless gets this. But of the two non-modernized adaptations of Emma to arrive just the following year, I certainly wasn't expecting the TV movie to be the one to get it right.

And I was correct. It didn't.

I really don't even see why I bother synopsizing the plots of these, so let's make it quick. After making the mysterious decision to open on a chicken thief raiding the grounds of Hartfield (setting up a bookend sequence at the very end, very poorly), we meet Emma Woodhouse (Kate Beckinsale, the only reason this adaptation has made the slightest impression on the culture at large), a rich young woman who has grown rather bored with her small town life and seeks to manipulate the other young people around her into falling in love, especially her docile simpleton of a friend Harriet Smith (Samantha Morton). She does this despite the admonishments of her brother-in-law Mr. Knightley (Mark Strong, the only other famous Brit to escape this project), who of course she eventually falls in love with.

Also Mark Strong (right) is an attractive man, so kudos to the stylist who managed to make him look so thoroughly unappealing.

I could end this review in a single sentence, because that's how little thought apparently went into the proceedings here. Though I shall soldier on as much as I can, because I owe myself a little venting after suffering through the thing. This Emma is yet another dull as dishwater Austen adaptation for British television, boasting all the creative vivacity and spark of a hot sausage. Literally just listening to the audiobook is a more engaging experience, the visuals are that deeply generic.

Emma suffers from the common mistaken assumption that Jane Austen's works are Serious Literature and thus must have all the air sucked out of them at once. While the humor of the novel isn't quite as present as her other works (or, at least, it's a little more repetitive and tiresome), it's still meant to be a satirical comedy about dating. Instead, as the British are won't to do, they have given us yet another stonefaced slog filled with wall-to-wall Goofuses posing as leading men.

Or maybe it's just that nobody can pull off Regency fashions. Come to think of it, they were probably created to discourage sex as much as possible, which would explain a lot.

Thankfully, the film does have a single creative bone in its body. Though it's certainly not enough, it at least provides relief from the crushing doldrums in brief little flashes. First and foremost are the fantasy sequences in which Emma imagines the happy results from her matchmaking. These are very reminiscent of the daydreams in the 1987 Northanger Abbey, and they break up the narrative quite nicely with a little burst of color and visual verve.

And I always say that the best measure of a Jane Austen adaptation's worth is if it can do something with its obligatory dance sequence that's more than just flatly showing people dance (think the other ballgoers vanishing in Pride & Prejudice to highlight Lizzie and Darcy's intimacy). True to form, Emma misses the mark, but it does at the very least make an attempt. There is an exchange of eyes in between choreographed moves that really allows the viewer to take stock of where each character is emotionally in relation to one another. It's a simple but effective tool, and I commend it for at least doing something, even if it wasn't enough for me to give the film a wholehearted recommendation.

I've suffered through a lot of stodgy, boring Jane Austen material in my time, and Emma is at least not the worst of them. That's about all I can say in its favor though. But until next time, all we can say is thank goodness Amy Heckerling was there in 1995 to save this novel from complete cinematic ignominy. Maybe one day we'll get a straight adaptation that's worth its salt, but today is not that day. Nor was 1996, for that matter.

TL;DR: Emma is plain as porridge, an incredibly listless adaptation of a work I admire rather a lot.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 794

Other Films Based on Emma

Clueless (Heckerling, 1995)

Emma (McGrath, 1996)

Emma (Lawrence, 1996)

Aisha (Ojha, 2010)

Emma. (de Wilde, 2020)

Census Bloodbath: The Killer Wore Short Shorts

Year: 1985

Director: Jeff Hathcock

Cast: Ava Kauffman, Robert Axelrod, Lonny Withers 

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

If I spot a release by Slasher // Video on the Blu-Ray shelf at Amoeba, I have to buy it sight unseen. Their releases aren't guaranteed gems (in fact, most of their films are terrible; see Killer Workout), but the preservation work they've done has helped this project tremendously. Unfortunately, despite the name, some of their films can be pretty borderline with their slasher-ness. Victims!, which is about a vanful of girls on a desert vacation, seemed like pure formula fodder, but oh if I could but count the ways that I was deeply wrong in my assumptions about the movie.

You'd also be forgiven for assuming this was a musical.

Victims! starts off well enough. And by well enough, I mean "a totally disconnecting string of thirty-second slasher kills perpetrated by a Norman Bates lookalike who is apprehended before the opening credits and never seen or heard from again." Then we cut to two men robbing a grocery store and beginning a trail of murderous terror as they make their way out to the desert. And wouldn't you know it, but four sexy girls are also making their way out to the very same desert for a little camping trip.

Now, here's where I normally list the characters' names and their single character traits, but I had a uniquely difficult time with Victims! As you might imagine, the characters are entirely indistinguishable from one another, but the audio was so muffled it was difficult to decipher anybody's name. I was not aided by the fact that the IMDb credits don't list any character names. So I shall be referring to the characters in the way the script presumably did - by the color of their bathing suit: Purple, Red, Green, and Orange.

I did hear the names Lisa and Debbie thrown about. And maybe Jem? Also one of them has a boyfriend who doesn't think she can handle herself in the wilderness, and Green has a mom who doesn't approve of her outfit. So the only things I know about them are how other people feel about them. You know, good writing!

And here's where things start to break bad. Once we have all our pieces assembled on the chessboard, it becomes very clear that this movie does not have slashing on its mind. It very quickly reveals itself to be a rape-revenge movie of the scuzziest kind.

Emphasis on the former with only a teensy bit of the latter.

Rape-revenge films, if created responsibly, can pack a real punch. Films like Revenge or The Last House on the Left have a lot to say about the way regular human beings can be forced into violence and its effect on their psyches. Victims! is not, shall we say, responsible. It is a deeply reprehensible plunge into the dark corners of the patriarchy, chock full of lines about how "they were asking for it the way they were dressed" and whatnot. It might as well be called Rape Culture: The Movie!

I think opening up a dialogue about the many justifications society, especially in the 80's, provided for rapists can be a useful thing to do. But the only reason this movie is actually about any of these topics is because it's indulging in those sentiments too far to be self aware of any sort of subtext it may have conjured up. Victims! is not meant to be useful. It is meant to be provocative and titillating and it's merely disgusting.

The film has already made its bed long before the true horror starts, with a string of scenes objectifying every female character, including ones we've never met and don't even receive names. The film will cut from a nude woman being stabbed to a girl taking a shower to a crotch shot of some aerobics. Victims! has one reason to exist, and it is not a reason that should endear itself to any socially aware human being on the planet.

Pictured: the appropriate response to somebody putting this movie on - evacuating the premises.

The film offers nothing to redeem itself beyond its central premise. The production value is low, even by the standards of shot-on-video offerings, boasting muddy visuals generously ladled with muddier sound. At least it's not packed with dialogue, so there's not a lot you need to attempt to parse out. 

I wish anything in the movie matched the manic, almost cheery energy of the opening credits, which are full of smashing zooms to crazed calliope music. Or even the opening kill of the movie proper, of a picnicking couple who seem to think that sprinting through the forest is the best foreplay. If it had continued in that vein, Victims! could have been a dumb, silly, but forgettable slasher film. Instead it's something totally different and rotten to the core. Never has the male gaze been so weaponized in an 80's horror movie and that is saying a freaking lot.

Killer: Eric and The Other One (Robert Axelrod, Lonny Withers)

Final Girl: Purple, Green, and Orange

Best Kill: He doesn't die, but the killer who isn't Eric gets his dick cut off with a knife, which will always give a film a point in my book.

Sign of the Times: The girls make a Steve Martin reference, talking about their "wild and crazy" road trip.

Scariest Moment: The girls pull into a gas station full of men who all stare at them lecherously.

Champion Dialogue: "Mother, I'm going to see other girls, we ALL have boobs!"

Body Count: 7; not including Red, who I super duper thought survived but is not featured in the closing interrogation scene so maybe she died in a rock slide and I didn't notice?

1. Stripey Polo Girl gets axed in the head.
2. Naked Woman is slashed with a cleaver.
3. Campus Woman is stabbed in the back.
4. Grocery Man is shot.
5. Sunburned Mustache Dude is hit in the face with a shotgun.
6. Eric is kicked off a cliff.
7. Random Woman is shot in a flashback.

TL;DR: Victims! is a despicable film that could have been a terrifying indictment of the patriarchy but doesn't seem to notice its own potential.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1049