December Cleanup

I'm trying, I'm really trying to get my slate clean before the new year. I'd love to begin 2014 without any pending reviews to write, free to watch movies and write as I please. But as it happens, in the idleness of Winter Break, I've been watching far too many movies to keep up with. I am but a mere mortal. So, as per monthly custom, it is time to purge some of the less relevant films I've seen this month in a spate of mini reviews. Here goes nothing!

House

Year: 1986

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: William Katt, Kay Lenz, George Wendt

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Our first target is 1986's House, not to be confused with the 1977 Japanese fever dream House (Hausu), or the 8 seasons television medical drama House, M. D., or the 2008 Michael Madsen thriller House. Or really any of those other movies that are exponentially better than this one.

From producer Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) and director Steve Miner (Friday the 13th: Part 2 and Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D), House is an alleged horror comedy in the vein of campy gore classics like Raimi's The Evil Dead or Gordon's From Beyond and Re-Animator. What those three movies share is a singleminded dedication to gleefully over the top gore and high camp in spite of the limitations of their poor budgets. Helmed by devoted and enthusiastic auteurs, these films looked cheap but made up for it with cleverness and fun.

House is nothing like those movies. Despite having directed one of my favorite slasher films, Sean Cunninggham has been a passionless hack ever since his early days in the soft core porn scene. While Steve Miner has proven himself to be a capable director with the actually pretty good Part 2 and Halloween: H20 (and, weirdly enough, the pilot episode of Dawson's Creek), there's not a lot he can do with the material he is provided.

House is yet another 80's cult classic where its reputation (largely derived from its sequel - House II: The Second Story) vastly exceeds its quality. Starring Norm from Cheers and William Katt aka The Greatest American Hero, House is a dull oddity about a struggling horror writer who is trying to write a memoir of his Vietnam experience in a house owned by his recently deceased aunt which turns out to be haunted.

In the grand tradition of cheesy B-horror, this film attempts to plumb a much deeper thematic vein than your average horror flick (namely the post-war reassimilation of veterans). Unlike its brethren, it is an unusually shallow and pointless exploration of such. There is some joy to be found in the monster in the closet and the gonzAno closing scene, but most of it is stifled with pacing as stiff as a corpse's joints.

There is a surprising deficit of actual comedy and the whole affair feels much longer than 90 minutes. It's plagued by a common 80's horror ailment - Fadeout Disease - and despite some of its more gleefully campy charms, it is better to let sleeping ghosts lie in this case.

Rating: 4/10

Caddyshack

Year: 1980

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It is interesting that a comedy at least nominally about the young caddies at a golf course should focus so heavily on its older male characters, but as it is it's an interesting combination of upper class caricatures heavily intermixed with copious teen nudity and revelry.

A classic comedy that doesn't play quite as well today, Caddyshack is still a clever and charmingly batty look at life behind the scenes at a country club. Cast with a whole pack of comedy greats in their prime, classic line deliveries zing left and right.

The filmmaking of Caddyshack isn't the best thing in the world. In fact, it's quite grainy and washed out for a studio comedy of its time. It seems like something that could have been produced in the 50's, although this isn't necessarily a problem and lends a kind of wholesome feel-good atmosphere.

And though the script is well done, the teen antics pale in comparison to the veterans of the craft who are made of much sterner stuff. Allowing Murray, Chase, and Dangerfield a chance to run the show instead of placing protagonist duties on the young shoulders of Michael O'Keefe would have allowed the film more room to breathe and avoid the hijinks overwhelming the script.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 764

Every Ship Needs An Anchor

Year: 2013

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Although I know in my heart that I've seen 2004's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, I can't for the life of me remember a single thing about it. So that leaves me in a bittersweet spot approaching its nearly a decade later sequel. On one hand, I can come at it with a pair of fresh eyes, but on the other, I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Perhaps it's for the best, because I seemed to enjoy it markedly more than fans of the original.

Heathens just don't know how to appreciate a good cowboy hat.

The plot picks up in real time in 1980 - about nine years after the events of the original. When Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is passed over for a big New York promotion in favor of his wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), he loses control of his life. He abandons Veronica and their son Walter (Judah Nelson) and moves back to San Diego.

After hitting rock bottom, he is approached by producer Freddie Shapp (Dylan Baker) to be an anchor for a brand new station in New York - the Global News Network, the world's first 24-hour news station. Seeing that this would put him in direct competition with his estranged wife, he takes the position and reassembles his old news team.

Once he gathers Champ Kind (David Koechner) the racist cowboy sportscaster, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) the sleazy field reporter, and Brick (Steve Carell) the eccentric weatherman, they head off to New York and start brainstorming ways to make their 2AM - 5AM slot a ratings bonanza.

Singlehandedly inventing fluff news, Ron Burgundy quickly shoots to superstardom at the expense of his friends and family, at which point the plot structure adheres to that of every other movie of this type. You know how it goes. Right down to the idea that he can't miss his son's piano recital. Let's not get into that.

Why discuss that when we can discuss how Paul Rudd rocks that perm?

You can't go in expecting sophistication, although I don't know why you would. But Anchorman 2 is surprisingly slim on the lowbrow humor and high on absurdity. You still have to sit back and shut off your brain's filter and let it all wash over you unadulterated. And even though your face may look like this:

 more often than not, gosh darn it you're gonna laugh.

There are quite a few belly laughs to be had in Anchorman 2 (and quite a few angry stares from other theater patrons who need to remove the sticks from their butts) and most of my notes are rendered completely useless because I spent most of the time just writing down my favorite jokes.

Perhaps it would be better at a taut 90 minutes, but no individual part felt particularly saggy or dragged out. And there are several scenes (not to give them away, but look for a shark, a park, and interracial sex) that are all laugh out loud funny and patently absurd. This film is essentially a live action cartoon and the veritable avalanche of celebrity cameos and escalation that occurs makes me pray they'll never make an Anchorman 3 because it's impossible to top.

It's all good natured and totally weird in a way that safe studio comedies haven't allowed themselves to be in quite a while and I really respect that.

Although I wish they had released promotional still that had ANY other character in them.

The film's biggest sin is being a little too on the nose about why things are funny. Most of Will Ferrell's lines pointedly explain the punchlines of other jokes in a way that's incredibly insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

In fact, throughout the entire film Ferrell's performance is of a particularly grating and pedantic vein that could have derailed the entire film if it weren't for a stellar supporting cast. Steve Carell is great as the non sequitur-spouting Brick and has great chemistry with Kristen Wiig. Wiig plays a love interest of equal dopiness and I'd say she's underutilized but perhaps any more of those characters would have been a little too much.

Aside from Ferrell, the only other weak link is Judah Nelson. Although it's perhaps not fair to bemoan a child actor's terrible performance, the kid might as well have been wearing a carrot costume on an elementary school stage for all the wide-eyed and wildly unmodulated line readings he gave.

All in all, Anchorman 2 is a fun film that has natural laughs and a less questionable use of female characters than other films in its vein (although there's still progress to be made). As a sequel, it uses callback and character humor well while still standing largely on its own as a separate entity. It's not perfect, but it's lively and fun entertainment.

TL;DR: Anchorman 2 isn't going to be a cult classic like its predecessor, but it's a good natured and absurdly fun comedy.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Why not catch a matinee? Don't overpay but it's an enjoyable way to pass the time.

Word Count: 883

A Sketchy Comedy

Year: 2013

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Movie 43 is sketch comedy, so for better or for worse there's at least a frequent shift in attention. For the laggiest parts of the film this is a boon, but for the few and far between "good" sketches, this means being dragged unwillingly into yet another prolonged scatological gag that is only made worse by the relative quality of the sketch before it.

There are several funny jokes in this comedy movie, thankfully. But finding them is like panning for gold downstream from a cow field. Sometimes you'll find something shiny and glittering but mostly you end up with a panful of crap.

Let's break down some sketches, shall we?

"The Pitch"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common

The awful one in between all the other awful ones.

Much like in the horror anthology series V/H/S, there is an interstitial sketch that links everything together into one big heaving mass. In this case, it's a series of pitches for a movie that Charlie (Dennis Quaid) wants to get made. Studio executive Griffin (Greg Kinnear) shoots them down because, frankly, they're a better fit for awful sketch comedy than an actual feature film.

Desperate, Charlie demands that Griffin get his boss(some rapper called Common)'s approval to greenlight the script at gunpoint. Through remarkably uncomic escalation, tensions with Griffin's boss reach a boiling point and he ends up with the gun pointed right at his boss's head.

On top of this linking sketch being a grueling series of reminders of how terrible each of the sketch ideas are, it starts with an Isabella Rossellini fart joke and goes downhill from there, ending up with forced fellatio and a meta gag that is baffling even by the haggard standards of this script.

The One Good Joke: A cameo by Seth McFarlane pitching a new sitcom called "Hollacaust" is surprisingly self-aware and funny.

"The Catch"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman

Beth (Kate Winslet)'s blind date goes horribly wrong when the handsome Davis (Hugh Jackman) turns out to have balls on his chin. Seriously.

Right off the bat, the movie homes in on its primary goals - getting the biggest stars they can to do the stupidest and/or grossest stuff they can think of. There's a place for grossout humor, but a script where they can't think of anything funny beyond "chin testicles" is not that place.

This film is just an endless cycle of ball joke - reaction shot - grossout that doesn't see fit to even resolve itself with a punchline. It's tedious and further proof that Peter Farrelly burnt himself out on directing There's Something About Mary, because not a single film he's directed since 1998 has had any merit whatsoever.

The One Good Joke: OK, when he's forced to kiss her on the forehead while taking a photo and they end up in her face, it's kinda funny. But it doesn't justify the total lack of direction the sketch has.

"Homeschooled"

Director: Will Graham

Cast: Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Jeremy Allen White

Homeschooler Kevin (Jeremy Allen White)'s parents (Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber) want him to have a totally normal high school experience - complete with emotional trauma.

OK, this one was actually pretty good. Watching this kid's parents act like petulant high schoolers to maintain the loneliness and alienation that are an essential part of the high school experience is a sharp concept.

But the trouble is, as the good gags rolled out and nothing came up to replace them, they kept going further and further in the hopes that audiences would laugh at the obscenity and not notice the absence of humor. This sketch doesn't "end" as much as it just throws in some incest jokes, runs out of steam, and dies panting on the carpet.

The One Good Joke: Kevin's mom knocks his books down in the hallway and calls him mean names.

"The Proposition"

Director: Steve Carr

Cast: Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, J. B. Smoove

Vanessa (Anna Faris) wants Jason (Chris Pratt) to move things to the next level.

Real quick: What is the sketch that you think would spring forth from the fertile imagination of the man behind Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Dr. Doolittle 2, and a short film called Touch a Tit, Save a Tit?

Did you guess something lowbrow and inane? Close.

It's actually much much worse. 

Vanessa wants Jason to poop on her. That's it. No more comedy. After that first reveal, the sketch is just an unending conveyor belt of advice on how best to poop on your girl. Several burritos and laxatives later, he really needs to poop but she wants to savor the moment.

Ha?

I can't even with this one. It's just five minutes of a guy needing to poop and then he gets hit by a car and no I'm not making that up.

The One Good Joke: I don't know if I can even keep doing this.

"Veronica"

Director: Griffin Dunne

Cast: Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone

Neil (Kieran Culkin) is working as a cashier at a grocery store when his ex Veronic (Emma Stone) comes in. There's dirty flirting, and some of what they say is caught on the intercom.

That's it. This sketch is approximately 45 seconds long. There are no discernible jokes and the microphone seems to be able to turn itself on and off at will.

Emma Stone tries her hardest and manages to eke some laughs out of a "joke" that can't even be considered a full-fledged premise. I'm talking failing out of Premise School and huffing crack on the street-level jokesmithy here.

The One Good Joke: It's not even a joke, but Emma Stone's line delivery makes it so. Hence, it would do me no good to repeat it here.

"iBabe"

Director: Steven Brill

Cast: Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Jack McBrayer

A company has created an MP3 player that looks like a naked woman, but there's a dangerous fan in the area where her vagina should be that is harming teen boys who try to get creative.

A sketch invented solely as a medium for showing boobs. Again, there's not so much "jokes" here as there is a table discussion of fans and vaginas. And nobody but Kate Bosworth realizing that this might be a bad idea.

The dialogue meanders around the room and fades into the wind, as neither the actors nor the audience really care what anybody is saying at this point.

The One Good Joke: Their solution is to run a commercial with the tagline "iBabe. Don't f*ck it."

"Super Hero Speed Dating"

Director: James Duffy

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Justin Long, Uma Thurman

Batman (Jason Sudeikis) embarrasses Robin (Justin Long) on a blind date by being supremely inappropriate.

When your superhero parody would be just as funny (funny being a relative term here) if every one of the characters was just a regular person, you've got a problem here. It's just a cheap way to wring laughs by putting a guy in a 99 cent Batman suit and having him talk about vaginas.

And show Superman as a Guido with jizz in his hair.

Another sketch with no ending, it just cuts to black once they run out of things to say.

The One Good Joke: Supergirl (Kristen Bell) can see Batman hiding under the table as he gives Robin advice, not with her X-ray vision as he suspects, but because it's a tiny café table and his butt is sticking out.

"Middleschool Date"

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Patrick Warburton

Amanda (Chloë Grace Moretz) gets her first period in a house full of boys. Periods are gross.

Isn't it weird that this movie and Carrie came out the same year? Chloë is just getting her period all over the place in 2013. Although this kind of humor is played out, some of the boys' attempts to help despite not knowing anything about periods are pretty funny.

Honestly, as a cinematic directorial debut for Elizabeth Banks, she could have done a lot worse.

The One Good Joke: One of the panicking boys proffers a sponge to Amanda.

"Happy Birthday"

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Gerard Butler

In retribution for sleeping with Brian (Seann William Scott)'s girlfriend, Pete (Johnny Knoxville) captures him a Leprechaun (Gerard Butler).

Finally, a breath of fresh air. Instead of scatological humor, this sketch uses violence to disguise the fact that it doesn't actually contain jokes. At least it's a new one.

And to be fair, it does have a punchline unlike most of the other sketches. Unfortunately, the punchline has nothing to do with the actual story, isn't funny, and just... dumb! EVERYTHING IS DUMB.

The One Good Joke: Nothing. Nothing about this is funny.

"Truth or Dare"

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant

Emily (Halle Berry) is bored of internet dating so she invites her newest blind date (Stephen Merchant) to a game of truth or dare in a Mexican restaurant instead of small talk.

This one is up there with "Homeschooling" in that it had a really great beginning! Berry and Merchant have really sweet chemistry and the sketch was promising to be quite charming before it turned right down the road of all the others, investing way too much time in crass humor including, but not limited to, a baster full of hot sauce shoved into her vagina and massive breast implants.

It's quite dispiriting, because I was really beginning to like this one.

The One Good Joke: Emily is dared to blow out the candles on a kid's birthday cake before he gets a chance to.

"Victory's Glory"

Director: Rusty Cundieff

Cast: Terrence Howard

A five minute sketch with one joke: Black people are good at basketball.

For five whole minutes.

The One Good Joke: There's only one joke and it's not good.

"Beezel"

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel

Amy (Elizabeth Banks)'s boyfriend Anson (Josh Duhamel) has a cat named Beezel that is in love with him to the point that it attempts murder.

Right when you think the movie's over, they shove this one on in with the end credits and Jesus Christ is it just a train wreck of biblical proportions. Have you ever wanted to see Effie Trinkett get hit by a car and then go to town on a CGI effect with a shovel? OK, maybe.

But have you ever wanted to see a cartoon cat jerk off to pictures of Josh Duhamel in a Speedo while anally penetrating itself?

You'd do well to just turn this film off after "Victory's Glory."

Actually you'd do even better just to avoid the film in its entirety.

The One Good Joke: Josh Duhamel has this on his résumé forever.

Also there's two commercial parodies, but I am not going to talk about them because WHAT THE HELL ARE COMMERCIAL PARODIES DOING IN A MOVIE. NO. NO. I HAVE REACHED THE END OF MY ROPE, GUYS.

The only reason this movie exists is for actors who want to direct to have an opportunity to try it out in a low-risk cinematic environment.

Movie 43 is 90 minutes of celebrity after celebrity being pitched into the brackish waters of bottom-feeding grossout comedy and slowly sinking into the muck. Only Emma Stone, Chloë Grace Moretz, and maybe Seth McFarlane manage to thrash themselves loose by attacking the dialogue with the power of sheer comedy.

Basically, between this film and Gary Marshall's systematic attempts to ruin beloved American holidays, there's nobody left in Hollywood to embarrass.

Sketch Ranking:

#12 "Beezel"

#11 "The Proposition"

#10 "Happy Birthday"

#9 "Victory's Glory"

#8 "The Pitch"

#7 "Super Hero Speed Dating"

#6 "iBabe"

#5 "Veronica"

#4 "The Catch"

#3 "Homeschooled"

#2 "Truth or Dare"

#1 "Middleschool Date"

But only the top 3 are any good at all.

TL;DR: Movie 43 isn't a good film.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 2013

The Summer Of Our Discontent

Year: 2013

Director: John Wells

Cast: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute

MPAA Rating: R

Typically, when adapting a play for the silver screen, a director will take advantage of the action not being required by theatrical necessity to take place in mainly just one room by either expanding the setting or utilizing filmic tricks to expand the narrative universe. 

In the 1986 musical adaptation Little Shop of Horrors, Frank Oz keeps the location consistent but uses various imaginative flourishes like fantasy sequences to keep the film alive and makes great use of inherently cinematic close-ups to show details of the story a theatrical audience wouldn't be able to get.

On film, Noises Off... becomes a cross-country journey of madcap proportions and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead explores every intimate corner of Hamlet's universe.

In August: Osage County, based on the play of the same name by Tracy Letts, director John Wells makes the executive decision to do absolutely nothing. One gets the sense that what we see onscreen is the play as directly transcribed by a particularly dutiful screenwriter (who upon closer inspection turns out to be Tracy Letts himself, so maybe not so dutiful). 

As a man whose directorial credits up til now have only included 9 episodes of ER and one feature film three years ago, perhaps it was wise not to tool around with the script too much and to let the actors speak for themselves. With a powerhouse cast like this, this isn't a sin but the film itself feels as musty and dim as the house it takes place in.

But Meryl Streep.

This meandering family drama isn't so much a narrative as it is a showcase for today's brightest Hollywood talent. Everybody gets a chance to let their gray hair show and strip themselves of their star personas to bare their souls onscreen. This is the primary gift of August: Osage County, and it's not one to spit upon.

Meryl Streep stars as Violet Westin, the pill-popping cancer-ridden matriarch of a royally screwed up family. When her husband, the alcoholic poet Beverly (Sam Shepard), commits suicide, the extended family gathers for the funeral.

The visitors include Violet's sister Mattie Fae Aiken (Margo Martindale), her irritable husband Charlie (Chris Cooper), and their son Little Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch). Little Charles has a secret (something not uncommon to this family) - he's in love with the beautiful Ivy (Julianne Nicholson). Their relationship gives him a great deal of happiness, but the only problem is that she happens to be his cousin.

As Ivy tries to hide her incestuous tryst, so does her sister Barbara (Julia Roberts) try to hide her crumbling marriage with her unfaithful husband Bill (Ewan McGregor). And Barbara's daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin) tries to hide the fact that all she really wants to do is smoke pot with her Aunt Karen (Juliette Lewis)'s new boyfriend Steve (Dermot Mulroney), a sketchy gentleman at the best of times.

Basically the kissing' cousins have the most stable relationship in the entire film.

The cast does a uniformly terrific job bringing their characters to life (Cumberbatch, Nicholson, and Margo Martindale especially, although Meryl Streep's performance is of course unmatched), and in fact most if not all problems with August: Osage County are at the script level, if only because everything else resolutely refuses to get up to anything remotely interesting.

In fact, the few occasions where the other filmic elements peek up their tender heads, they seem to be actively conspiring against the performances. A key emotional point that is central to Meryl Streep's drug-addled breakdown is overtaken by shrieking sound design, an element that hadn't come into play before and wouldn't again, as if being punished for interjecting.

As the Westin family grapples with their manifold personal issues, tensions bubble and rise to a boil at a massive dinner table scene that probably lasted for an entire act in the original play. It is a monumental achievement in extended scene editing and provides a fantastic stopping off point, bringing all the interpersonal conflicts to a climax and exploding in a firework display-worthy exhibition of film performance.

Unfortunately the story has the tenacity to continue for a good 30 minutes beyond this point. The plot meanders, tossed like a beach ball between minor characters, of which there are too many too keep track of and fully flesh out. The film overextends itself in trying to showcase as many actors as possible and results in the sidelining of even the most important characters (Meryl Streep - duh - and Julia Roberts) for up to ten minutes at a time.

Pictured here deep in discussion about topics that really should have had more screentime than Abigail Breslin getting high.

It can't really juggle everything adequately and as such loses anything like a "theme" or a "conclusion," both of which are privileges reserved for more coherent stories. The story doesn't end so much as it peters out, but at least the final act has one solid scene - a confrontation between Violet, Barbara, and Ivy where the three women duke it out in a rampage of acting that culminates in my favorite line ever: "EAT THE FISH, BITCH!"

So the film definitely isn't a waste of time, but all the dramatics fade to vapor when the script turns up the heat and finds that it never really had anything to say in the first place. Definitely one to catch if you're in the mood to watch underused older Hollywood women eat it up, but it is a decidedly uneven piece of narrative cinema.

TL;DR: August: Osage County is a powder keg of great performers, but falls beneath the weight of a clunky script.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 963

Terror on the Landline

Year: 1996

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As a Christmas present to myself, I picked up the BluRay box set of the first three Scream movies and two documentaries at Target. It was only ten bucks, how could I not? (I promise I'm not a corporate shill for Target - although I wish I was. I'd be making more money on this blog, that's for sure.)

The purchase afforded me a great opportunity to review one of my absolute favorite horror films of all time. In fact, without Scream, this blog wouldn't exist. At least, not in the form it takes today.

It all started way back when in early 2011. I was looking for a good movie to watch, and the only one coming out that looked interesting at all was Wes Craven's Scream 4. I wasn't really a fan of horror films at the time, although I loved reading horror fiction. 

Goodness knows why I hadn't made the leap to watching films yet - I think I thought I was too scared of them despite having already seen The Sixth Sense, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, and Drag Me To Hell. Whatever. I was a fool. The fact remains that I was intrigued by the trailer for Scream 4 and made the momentous decision to rent the first three films from Netflix to catch up.

I devoured those movies with the voracity a kid who just discovered ice cream sandwiches. I thought they were scary, hilarious, and well-crafted. The only thing was, I hadn't seen any of the films they were referencing. Scream 4 had long since came and went in the time it took to receive and view the entire trilogy so to feed my new hunger, I turned to the films mentioned by the Screams to provide some important background.

That's how I spent summer watching every single Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street film, Halloween, The Blair Witch Project, both Paranormal Activities (at the time), Sleepaway Camp, and a whole canoe load of other shockers. 

I fell in love with the genre. Head over heels. I became a black hole, sucking in terrible three-dollar DVDs like they were candy. I never did watch Scream 4 until the DVD release in October, but by that time I was a committed disciple.

Scream began the chain reaction that led me to Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Jamie Lee Curtis. And later [REC] and Dario Argento and Prom Night. Pinhead. Gingerdead. Mario Bava and  Barbara Crampton. It's what led me to pursue a career in film and to start this blog.

So what the hell impressed me so much about this little slasher from 1996 that it shaped my entire life for two years and infinitely more to come?

Nipples.

I kid, I kid. But much like Rose McGowan's nipples, Scream is visually stimulating and rock solid. 

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? The 12 minute opening scene to Scream is, hands down, one of the most important and terrifying scenes in horror history. I could write an essay about this scene. In fact, I have. 

Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is home alone preparing to watch a video when she gets a call from a mysterious stranger. What at first seems to be an innocuous wrong number turns sour when the man on the other end threatens to gut her like a fish. Chastising her for shouting "Who's there?" when she hears a strange noise and challenging her to a deadly game of horror trivia, the stalker (Ghostface) reveals that Scream is no ordinary slasher flick.

Not only are the victims in Scream unusually crafty and clever, they're big horror fans. They've seen enough slasher movies to know what not to do when confronted with a masked serial killer, so they're well-equipped to fight back.

Rife with movie references both obvious (the kids watch Halloween at a party) and subtle (a line in the opening scene, "Drive down to the MacKenzies," is a direct reference to Halloween's final scene), Scream is the first widely successful "meta" horror film (although Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a meta masterpiece, came out two years earlier, it didn't find much of an audience until long after its release). 

The cinematic postmodern movement was just beginning and Scream's genre-savvy protagonists who are well aware that they are, in fact, characters in a movie pushed it over the edge. It spawned dozens of copycats and brought postmodernism to the mainstream. 

She must have just watched I Know What You Did Last Summer. Copycats, man.

So here we are with Drew Barrymore, the film's biggest star, fighting Ghostface in the very first scene. Audiences must have been surprised but nothing could have prepared them for her gruesome murder five minutes later. That's right, Scream pulled a Psycho. By killing off the major star early on, it made the audience feel like anything could happen.

No character is safe.

And that's just the first of Scream's masterstrokes.

The film shifts focus to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a spunky brunette whose mother was brutally raped and murdered one year earlier. This has left her with some real intimacy issues much to the dismay of her horny boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). Although characters in the film keep insisting that he's hot and the perfect guy, I have a hard time believing them considering that he looks like this.

I dunno. Maybe it's a 90's thing. But I'm pretty sure the name for this look is "raccoon bassist."

And although this isn't your typical slasher, so every character is more important than just being considered Meat, it's time to Meet them anyway. There's Sidney's best friend Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), the feisty hot blonde; her boyfriend Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), an obnoxious bumbling oaf; and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), a sarcastic video store employee who's obsessed with horror.

There's also Tatum's brother Dewey (David Arquette), her older brother who is a newly minted police deputy and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), a trashy TV journalist who would be willing to stab her own grandmother in the back for a great scoop.

Just within the confines of this list, two of the most important elements of the Scream franchise are displayed. First is that the adult storylines are given just as much weight as those of the teenagers (Dewey and Gale's interactions are a major plot thread), which is highly unusual for a slasher film. Usually they prefer to focus on the young pretty starlets as they line up for the slaughter.

Second is that no death in the film is tossed off. Every character has an important influence on the plot and a rapport with the audience. Whenever Ghostface knocks off another victim, we know their personality, backstory, and regret their passing. This is the key to making effective horror and Craven has long since learned his stuff.

All of this is indicated in the fact that each character has a specific last name. I bring this up in my Wes Craven essay, but most slasher films prefer to have their characters listed as "Billy" or "Stu" or "Randy." This way they're just meat and their deaths have no consequence. But Craven wants you to feel it hard when he slices and dices.

Also the last names are a handy way to link them to their families, family being a key theme of this suburban slasher. Throughout the plot Sidney learns the secrets that her mother has been hiding from her - secrets that have been bringing danger down on her daughter's head. Craven has made a career off of the dark corners of idyllic suburbia and Scream is no different. By displaying a "perfect" nuclear family life ripped at the seams, the film has much more thematic resonance than the typical slice and dice flick.

Also there's a brunette protagonist. Don't scoff, this is a big deal.

Although Scream is by no means a perfect film, it stands tall on the backs of a cavalcade of masters of the field. Craven is a consistently intelligent and creative director and imbues the film with his personal stamp of elegant visual compositions. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson expertly balances the comedy and horror elements in a never-before-seen style that brings the movie a lively spark. 

His tradition of writing overly eloquent dialogue for high school students as they deconstruct genre clichés (also seen in Dawson's Creek and Halloween: H20) works at its absolute best here in the hands of a capable cast. And composer Marco Beltrami's score takes Western influences to give an unexpected jolt to the typical horror score.

And the acting is unusually solid across the board - you can tell they're having fun and a lot of the best comic moments are tiny improvised details that arose naturally from the script as interpreted by a talented and dedicated troupe of young actors. Cox and Arquette have great chemistry (although the amount of acting in that regard is suspect), with her reveling in a delightfully bitchy character and him turning in a career-best performance as a young officer of the law trying to prove himself.

And all the kids are game, although Matthew Lillard displays the best comic aptitude with pitch perfect line deliveries peppered throughout the film.

He's literally the most obnoxious character put to celluloid but you can't not love him.

Although I have long posited that there is no good story that can't be told in 90 minutes, I welcome Scream's nearly two hour run time with open arms. There are very few slashers that deserve this distinction, but Scream isn't your typical film. Not only is it an excellent horror comedy, it's also a whodunit.

As the cast is picked off one by one, the central mystery of the film is that of who is behind the mask (which would quickly become a Halloween icon). I won't spoil it here, but that mystery is given one of the most unique and unexpected solutions in a manner that is totally supported by the previous events of the film and completely satisfying.

Usually the end of a slasher film with an unknown antagonist is anticlimactic. Either it's some character who hasn't been onscreen once until the big reveal (Friday the 13th) or the killer is someone we could never possibly have guessed because the script never gave them any possible motive (Memorial Day). It's no fun when the big reveal isn't one of our possible suspects (or at least a character that we know well).

Ghostface in the garage with a candlestick!

Scream manages to avoid all of those pitfalls yet still be a fresh and enticing mystery movie that plays on our knowledge of genre conventions to keep us guessing until the very end. And that infinitely compelling framework is why I will allow it to exceed the typical approved slasher length.

And it does this all without having a single actress take her top off. And the gore scenes are pretty great but couldn't quite make it through the MPAA filters intact. So this is a slasher with no boobs and a medium amount of gore that is still great because the people making it knew that storytelling is what will keep an audience interested.

This is why we should keep hiring geniuses. A slasher could have buckets of blood but still be a piece of boring cardboard without a strong story. Craven knows this and I thank him for being a genius.

On the strength of its incredible story, Scream overcomes all of its obstacles, of which there are few. I mean, there's a couple dubbing issues here and there. Maybe the later deaths could have included more genre satire. There's some weird unscary daylight moments in the middle ten minutes. And there is one joke that falls entirely flat (A "Wes Carpenter" reference that makes no sense in a movie that acknowledges the existence of other horror films. Wes Carpenter is not a real person. Yeah, I get the joke but it makes no sense considering that every other director or actor mentioned in the film is 100% nonfiction).

But one joke isn't enough to kill a solid comedy and one silly moment isn't enough to kill a classic horror film.

Scream created an icon in Ghostface, led the postmodern revolution, and revitalized the entire suffering slasher genre, which still carries on in spurts and starts to this day. It's entirely original and works within the tropes of the genre to create a new entity that is entirely alive and beautiful.

Scream is one of those few smart movies that hit it big and we have Wes Craven to thank for that. This film is just another brick in my argument that the horror genre has weight in cinema. It's often looked down upon, but under the guiding hand of a talented auteur, horror can be just as important and game changing as any other genre.

So keep screaming. I know I will.

Killer: Ghostface (voiced by Roger Jackson)

Final Girl: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)

Best Kill: Tatum gets stuck in the doggy door as the garage opens, crushing her nipples neck.

But really though.

Sign of the Times: Sidney has an Indigo Girls poster in her bedroom; People are shocked that Billy has a "cellular phone."

Scariest Moment: The opening scene.

Weirdest Moment: Ghostface stalks Sidney and Tatum in a grocery store.

Champion Dialogue: "I'm the one who's been selfish and self absorbed with all this post-traumatic stress."

Body Count: 7

1. Steve is gutted with a hunting knife.
2. Casey is gutted and hung from a tree.
3. Principal Himbry is stabbed, gutted, and hung from a goal post. 
4. Tatum is crushed in a garage door cat flap.
5. Kenny's throat is slit.
6. [Stu has a TV dropped on his head.]
7. [Billy is impaled with an umbrella and shot twice.] 

TL;DR: Scream is a witty and scary horror comedy that changed the game forever.

Rating: 10/10

Word Count: 2342

Reviews In This Series

Scream (Craven, 1996)

Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)

Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)

Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)

Merry Deathmas!

Merry Christmas, everybody! I firmly adhere to the philosophy that you should never give a gift that you wouldn't want to receive yourself, so here is the second film from this year's Christmas Slasher Marathon!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday and thank you for reading my blog.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

Year: 2000
Director: Michael Cooney
Cast: Christopher Allport, Eileen Seeley, Chip Heller
Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Right off the bat, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman does something most horror sequels don't have the smarts to do: show a survivor who has been psychologically affected by the events of the prior film.

After Jack Frost(Scott MacDonald)'s attack on the sleepy mountain town of Snowmonton, Sheriff Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport) is severely shaken and seeing a psychiatrist who mostly just giggles at his story of a killer snowman. Christmas is approaching, and with it comes the anniversary of the dreadful attacks.

His wife Anne (Eileen Seeley) decides it's best to get away for the holidays so she and Sam decide to accompany their friends Joe (Chip Heller) and Marla (Marsha Clark) to their Christmas wedding in the Bahamas and that's exactly how I want my future marriage to begin.

Jack Frost can be my best man.

Another thing Jack Frost 2 does right in terms of horror sequels is to bring back most of the original surviving cast. Not that this is a Scream level accomplishment, but it is worth noting that at least on paper, this is a great sequel.

Due to some sort of Rogue Science Brigade, Jack Frost is accidentally revived and stronger than ever. He can melt and freeze himself at will and follows the happy couples to their island resort.

And before I get into this, let me explain. This is in no way a well made film. It looks like crap filmed in somebody's backyard for twelve cents. But on the script level, this is quite an impressive film - on the heavily curved scale of holiday slasher films based around bad puns, at least.

But the fact remains that this is a campy slasher films with genuine moments of intentional comedy that is actually quite funny. There are a couple truly sweet, tender moments and a couple of big guffaws mixed in with all the gory holiday mayhem.

Of which there is plenty. Merry Christmas to me.

Of which there is an ample supply. Although they may be low on functioning telephone lines, the Meat Supply on the island is at an all time high. There's Rose (Jennifer Lyons), Ashlea (Shonda Farr - best known as Warren's girlfriend robot in the Buffy episode "I Was Made To Love You"), and Paisley (Granger Green), three college-aged girls on vacation; Dean (Brian Gross) and Ben (Jason Hall - another minor character from Buffy), two dumb but hot Cali surfer boys who have their eyes on the trio;  Charlie (Stefan Marchand), a fashion photographer, and his models Sarah (Melanie Good) and Cindy (Stephanie Chao).

There's also the staff: Bobby (Tai Bennett), the genre savvy Jamaican bartender who nearly survives the entire movie; Colonel Hickering (Ray Cooney), the British owner of the resort who we suspect has been alive since the British occupation of India in the 1800's based on his stories; Agent Manners (David Allen Brooks), the FBI agent from the first film who is now Head of Island Security; and Captain Fun (Sean Patrick Murphy), the party master and somehow not odious comic relief character.

With such a heaping helping of potential victims, Jack has a field day. Either the producers gave more money or less f*cks because the gore is wonderfully done and utterly bananas (sometimes literally). People are killed with icicles and snowballs and ice cubes and iced coffee and banana arrows and it's all just a wonderful explosion of the absurd.

Combine this with the actually genuinely good subplot elements the film carries along with it and you have yourself one of the best B-movie sequels I've ever seen. It's campy, hilarious, fun, and has cute little snowballs.

Exhibit A.

It's one of those hidden gems of the horror genre that I have dedicated my life to finding.

Killer: Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald)
Final Girl: Sheriff Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport)
Best Kill: One of the surfers gets his tongue stuck to a pole in traditional Christmas fashion. Jack Frost rips it off in traditional slasher fashion. One of the best combinations of two very campy genres I've seen yet.
Scariest Moment: A mini snowball dies in Jack's arms. It's terrifying how emotional this scene makes me. I shouldn't be having feelings in the middle of a slasher film.
Weirdest Moment: One of the models ices her nipples with a little piece of Jack.
Champion Dialogue: "You brought caulking on our vacation?"
Body Count: 22; Not including Jack Frost because come on.

TL;DR: With a bigger budget, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman could have been a pretty good movie, but for what it is it's a classic of the form.
Rating: 7/10 - the highest grade I can give to a film this poorly made.
Word Count: 890
Reviews In This Series
Jack Frost (Cooney, 1997)
Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (Cooney, 2000)